Commons:Village pump/Archive/2009/02

Structural Classification of Proteins (SCOP)

I plan to upload all the protein structure images from SCOP in to Wiki Commons. There's about 50,000 images that are divided in eleven categories. I chose to work on one category called "Designed proteins" and just finished uploading all 151 images in to 44 subcategories. Please take a look at Category:Designed proteins and let me know if what I've done is acceptable. I appreciate any feedback! I want to get an OK from here before I start to upload the other categories that have over a thousand of images. I also plan to use a bot that can upload 100 to 200 images at a time. So once I get an OK to proceed, I'd like a bot flag for my account. Thanks! Donabel SDSU (talk) 19:04, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I think it's fine. Good work. Lijealso (talk) 20:30, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Looks good to me too. I'd love for you to get a bot flag so you can finish this as fast as possible. COM:BOT is your starting place for that.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 21:33, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Beware over overcategorization. For example File:PDB 2eu0 EBI.jpg should only be in Category:Itk/tsk protein tyrosine kinase, not in all the parent categories. Multichill (talk) 21:57, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I understand how over categorization can be a problem. But in this case, I believe it may be useful. I've spoken to several of my colleagues (scientists in biotech) who suggested to display all the protein structures for each classification. That is, be able to see all of the "Alpha Proteins" at the parent category and then be able to go down a level within the parent category to see protein structures for a particular Fold, Superfamily, Family or Protein Domain. To have the protein image only displayed in the lowest level (Protein Domain) would prevent any protein structure comparisons that could be made at the other levels. Please take a look at Category:Small proteins as an example for when only the lowest category (Protein Domain) would display the protein structure. I think it illustrates how it would be nice to have images in the Fold, Superfamily and Family classification too. Donabel SDSU (talk) 02:04, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I think that, in the long run, it will be better to not overcategorize but to solve the issue you described with CatScan. Of course, in the long run, CatScan should be integrated in Commons. Unfortunately, at the moment, it's not easy enough to find files on Commons. Samulili (talk) 10:34, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Please, if you change your mind about category names, don't blank them but use {{Badname|Good name}} or {{Speedy|Unused and empty}} if no replacing category exists. I have been cleaning out tens or even hundreds unused and/or blanked categories in this area. --Foroa (talk) 10:42, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I support adding images to all levels of the SCOP tree for the reasons Donabel described. (Though I admit I was the one who suggested this in the first place.) I think people who are browsing will appreciate having all images in one view at any level of the hierarchy. Of course, also appreciate the danger of overcategorization. Other people care to chime in on this? Cheers, AndrewGNF (talk) 15:02, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

This is actually an old subject on commons. Because it isn't a reference there is a paucity of navigational information added to pages, which is perpetually diluted by the relentless avalanche of new content. Because there isn't a lot of good wikitext navigation, or decent text for search hits, that puts a lot of pressure on the Cat mechanism to serve both as a classification and a navigation mechanism. That's the fundamental problem, because the two offer inherently contradictory modes of traversing information. Contributors that see categories as a navigation mechanism see the addition of supercats as perfectly reasonable. On the other hand, the taxonomy police have blood on their hands too, because the result of categorization correctness drives the media into pigeonholes. This effectively hides information from visitors since it is exceptionally tedious to discover the pigeonholes via navigation. Still other contibutors, frustrated by lack of category intersection functionality propagate such intersections manually (eg Category:Naval ships of Germany in the 1880s- gives a taste of the combinatorial explosion issue).

One possible approach to this quandry is to use navigation boxes that are dynamically filled by querying for likely categories of interest given the subject matter context of a given page. Consider for example Category:Paris in the 1880s, or in the file namespace, File:Vernet - 31 juillet 1830 - Louis-Philippe quitte le Palais-Royal.jpg. These both use Template:Places by decade. If folks think that this is a good sort of thing for your problem domain, let me know and I'll take a look at producing a customized version for your cat structure. -J JMesserly (talk) 22:44, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the clear explanation of the issue and context. Pigeonholes versus navigation -- makes perfect sense. Well, I'm not so passionate about this to hold up the main part of the project. Perhaps Donabel should just modify to only categorize in the single terminal category, and we can think about navigation templates later, if necessary. (wow, clearly quite a lot of work went into those templates. Nice job...) Cheers, AndrewGNF (talk) 23:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. This mass upload is very cool at multiple levels. Global sharing of Genomics information is having substantial impact whose scope may be difficult for many to grasp. Thank you for your service in making this material freely available. There are also some beautiful images in there. Let me know if you change your mind about a category navigation template. It is likely a simple template is possible given the structured nature of your domain. If you think that might aid researchers, I would happy to be of service.-J JMesserly (talk) 17:44, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Not my area of expertise but sounds like one in which using both galleries and categories is a solution. Use the minimum of categories to categorise the file, but show its relation to the others related to it by using a gallery or a tree of galleries. Active linking from within a gallery can then be used to link to the appropriate category. This will also give you the ability to add captions and spell out the relationships between molecules.KTo288 (talk) 09:50, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm filtering your old uploads to remove the over-categorization. Multichill (talk) 12:09, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation and I can easily modify the uploads to only use the category at the Protein Domain. I'm very excited to get this project completed and have put a bot flag request for User:DonabelSDSU.bot. I hope to get the request granted as soon as possible. Thank you for everyone's help and suggestions in getting this project underway! Donabel SDSU (talk) 01:03, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Multichill! As soon as I get a bot flag, I can start uploading the rest of the images to get this project finally completed! Donabel SDSU (talk) 15:03, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

You trusted me enough to use my pictures

I suggest someone change the objectionable template-wording inserted in this edit, or I and others might decide that a service which publicly declares me "not trusted" isn't worthy of my time, efforts or pictures. Andy Mabbett (talk) 20:09, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

A trusted user is just a role here on Commons, just like an admin or a bureaucrat. It doesn't mean that people don't trust you. But I think there was some discussion for changing the name of that particular role, precisely to avoid that kind of misunderstanding (I can't remember were I read it though). --Tryphon (talk) 20:20, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Even better would be, to make uploaders trusted users if they request renames of their own images. Would make sense, I'd say --Slomox (talk) 20:27, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) At en.wikipedia, they might call that wording "bitey". I have proposed another wording for {{Rename needs confirmation}}. --InfantGorilla (talk) 20:34, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Please allow me this unrelated remark: When using a flash try to stand at an angle that avoids the light being reflected from plane surfaces right back to the camera. You cannot see much if the actual clock face in this picture. --Dschwen (talk) 21:08, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

If you wish to turn off the source of illumination in this image, you will need a spaceship and a very large bucket of water. Any time you're near Walsall, do feel free to supply a better pic. Andy Mabbett (talk) 21:12, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

So your reaction is simply do it yourself if you want it done better? I was simply offering constructive criticism. In any case, looking at the other pictures in your flickr photostream it becomes clearer that you didn't use flash, but shot with the sun low in the sky. Nonetheless, the clock face is completely blown. --Dschwen (talk) 22:06, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

No, my reaction is what I wrote above. Your criticism was both unhelpful and uninvited: not to mention inappropriate, given my reason for starting this section. Andy Mabbett (talk) 23:15, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Uhm, yeah, okay. Whatever, I didn't mean to hurt your pride. --Dschwen (talk) 16:40, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

If you can't stand to see your stuff criticised, you shouldn't be publishing it IMO. People will always criticise, and what Dschwen said was hconstructive criticism - giving you ideas of how to do something better. Far too few people in this world do that - either they say it's wonderful or they say it's shit, both of which are completely unhelpful. Learn to appreciate advice and you'll get a lot further in life. -mattbuck (Talk) 16:53, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Where did I say that I "can't stand to see my stuff criticised", or that anyone "hurt my pride"? I'm not clear what's constructive about advising on the supposed misuse of a flash in a natural-light photo; or doing so in a section on the current subject. I do appreciate good advice; but bad advice is worse than silence. Andy Mabbett (talk) 22:40, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh, don't worry, you made yourself blatantly clear. You can just strike the flash part, the rest of my comment still applies. But of course you knew that... --Dschwen (talk) 23:13, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I see; you'd rather have a picture of the clock with a tree growing from the top of it, or half a person in the background. Andy Mabbett (talk) 20:21, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I think everyone here took Dschwen's comments as well-intended constructive critisism — everyone but you. It's only been a week since you clashed with contributor where your attitude was partly to blame. Do try to learn from your mistakes. Even if a contributor were to make a snide remark or unfair critisism, mistaking it for an attempt to help is better than the reverse. If you need to pick fights, go to the pub. --Swift (talk) 21:09, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I assume you refer to this inicdent, where my attitude was in no way responsible for the problems documented, nor the way in which the creator of that template responded to those issues being raised. As for Dschwen's criticisms of my picture, I'm confident that I made no mistakes such as those you describe. Andy Mabbett (talk) 20:19, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

January 30

Category talk:Military decorations of the United States

Please comment on section Subordinate category organization for each military branch at the above category talk page. Thanks! FieldMarine (talk) 01:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

OGG Video

I succeeded in uploading two videos in Category:Vakgemaal De Leyens. Unfortunately they don't work correctly as I click on the files. The pictures don't show movement as the slide under them moves on and they give and error remark. The extra error is the length. As I made my first video with my fotocamera I wasn't aware of the fact that it recorded more than intended. My question is: can anybody correct the errors? --Stunteltje (talk) 07:11, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

The videos work fine. The editing should be performed on the original files to avoid degradation by multiple decompression-compression cycles. --Dschwen (talk) 17:15, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Video of crowd cheering over a music

I uploaded this video then i started wondering if it can really be free since the crowd is singing over a copyrighted music. What do you think ? Tieum512 (talk) 13:52, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Kissing category

In looking for a good cat home for Wervik kus, I come accros the category Kissing. There seem to be confusion with a place naam. Schould I create a new category: Kissing (??) or place the pic under "Oral sex"? Some kisses have nothing to do with sex. Or rename "Kissing" to "Kissing (Germany)"?

Greetings

Smiley.toerist (talk) 15:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Category:Kisses is your friend Man vyi (talk) 16:02, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

File:Panousis.png uhm. I'm probably going to be shouted for not reading some rules..

..but I saw the "the owner allows the use of the material for all purposes as long as credit is given" and I uploaded an image with it. Within minutes it was deleted and there's no history of the page or comment in my page. Is it allowed at all to use such licenses? And if not why is it available? Fs (talk) 19:14, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

It is a usable license tag, but you have to own the rights over the picture beforehand! Here, the source website owner is likely to own the rights over your picture, which makes its upload a copyright violation. In brief, you cannot give rights that you don't have yourself. I hope I was clear, if not, please tell me! --Eusebius (talk) 19:24, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

But he gives the right to anyone to use it for all purposes as long as credit is given. Why is that it can't be used in wikimedia with credit given? Fs (talk) 09:31, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

In this case, there should be no problem (it would have been prudent to quote the text in the "permission" field, especially for a non-english source). Can you point me to the text in greek? --Eusebius (talk) 09:36, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

[1] (Small print towards the end). Also the image itself [2] from the page [3]. Fs (talk) 13:00, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Automatic translation is not precise enough for me to check the declaration. Will ask a Greek-speaking admin to take care of that. --Eusebius (talk) 13:12, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Fs, you're not going to be shouted at (find me the infallible copyright expert :) ). What happened with the Panousis image is a common misunderstanding. It says, with itsy-bitsy-tiny letters that Οι επαγγελματικές φωτογραφίες αποτελούν πνευματική ιδιοκτησία του έντυπου που τις εξέδωσε. Οι ερασιτεχνικές φωτογραφίες αποτελούν παραχώρηση στο tzimakos.gr και επιτρέπει την αναδημοσίευσή τους αρκεί να αναφέρεται η πηγή. which translates as Professional photos are copyright of the media that published them. Amateur photos have been granted to [as in donated to] tzimakos.gr and [tzimakos.gr] allows their reproduction [republishing, to be precise] as long as the source is mentioned. Now this is not the same as allowing free use by anyone and for any purpose: apart from the permission to republish or reproduce the work, there has to be permission for the modification of the work, as in i crop the head of Panousis from the photo and paste it on the body of, say, Dalaras. So except if I'm missing something else, the photos can't be used in WM projects (as free material) - Badseed ^talk 10:52, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Agree, the given permission is not compatible with COM:L, because it does not explicitly allows for DWs and commercial use. --Eusebius (talk) 12:39, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Licenses for pictures from livius.org

Hello to all,
I just made an entire review of all pictures for which the source is mentioned as livius.org : Images from Livius.org. Looking at all these pictures, what I can say is that there is no clear policy concerning the pictures from this site. Some have been put under GFDL or GNU (some even mentioning the uploader as the author), some are under attribution, some as this one are freely released but excluding commercial use and some are under several OTRS tickets.

The question is : does existing OTRS tickets concern every images from livius.org or only a limited list? We could possibly extend these tickets to all pictures from livius.org if the answer is the first one. If not, we must clarify with livius.org if they accept a commercial use or not, and if yes obtain a new ticket for all images taken from their site. If they refuse the commercial use for the pictures currently without an OTRS ticket, all these pictures should be removed.

I think we should clarify as soon as possible the situation with livius.org to avoid such situation in the future. I let the administrators take the initiative. Regards Moumou82 (talk) 20:07, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

An addition to mention the policy of the site which is not currently compatible with Commons : [4] Moumou82 (talk) 20:30, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Those images all have to be removed from the commons, I think the statement on the homepage is definite. You could try, though, to go to en:User talk:Jona Lendering and see if you get a reply. In the case of one file, I decided that if editors want to use the image, I might as well move it to Wikipedia, see en:File:Motya-1.jpg. Since I couldn't find a licence that fitted, I wrote this little license box, which I think should suffice until someone with a lot of experience on copyright etc. takes a look at the issue.

This image has been uploaded from livius.org and is © by Jona Lendering and Marco Prins. However, Jona Lendering and Marco Prins, "allow you to download, copy, re-format and redistribute the pictures for use on computers, computer networks or as a printed publication, provided that you charge no fees for their distribution, are not a commercial website (with e.g. advertisements), add a link to www.livius.org (or add a similar acknowledgment in print). This also applies for Wikipedia-contributors: please do not describe the picture as 'in the public domain' but as 'from Livius.Org, with permission'." (Mail to Livius, Copyright Issues)

Zara1709 (talk) 03:05, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

We only allow images which can be used commercially (see COM:L) —Wuzur 16:15, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Note also that Livius host several "fair-use" images from museums; the site attributes the museums in the captions of those images. These museum pictures are not in the public domain. I also agree that the non-commercial clause for Lendering's and Prins' images excludes them from use on Commons. Jappalang (talk) 01:49, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

February 2

Wikimedia Commons notification system

FYI, I keep getting odd emails from the above system. For example, I get a notification about edits made weeks ago; I get notifications for each edit made in one page even though I visited the page several times; and the recent one: a notification about a change that does not exists. See notification:

(I added the above wiklinks) The system needs to be fixed. Regards, Yonidebest Ω Talk 15:58, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Similarly, I typically get notifications of updates to my user talk page days after the fact. - Jmabel ! talk 18:21, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Sort by big categorys

I have been adding the sort-naam to the files in Category:Train stations in Belgium, to get the stations names sorted by alfabet. (not by the file-name) I suspect the sorting goes wrong bij split categories (more than 200 entries). In the first blok it goes al the way to Z, but the starts again with "Flémalle". What is going on? Can an index rebuilt be done?

Greetings,

Smiley.toerist (talk) 19:55, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Category sorting is a bit naff on Commons. All the files are sorted as if they had names starting "File:", thus they comes a a big block in the middle of the listings. I've just completed moving all the files from Category:Railway stations in London to individual sub-categories for each station. In doing this I fixed the category sort issues. If you can't do this then you need to put the |sort key]] bit on the end of end of each category tag or add a {{DEFAULTSORT:}}. I suggest creating all the station categories as quickly as possible (even if they have very few files) as it will be easier in the long run. (I've added some TOC templates to help navigation on that category.) Can I point out the existence of Category:Railway stations by year of establishment... Good Luck/Bon Chance/Veel geluk. Railwayfan2005 (talk) 20:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Internally, category sorting takes the name space as a prefix (category, file, ...) while the piped arguments have no prefix. So indeed, the unpiped "files" sit in the middle after the E and before the G. --Foroa (talk) 21:50, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I did a small test, and it looks as if images are still sorted with the "Image" prefix. So the order is: all piped arguments till H, the files sorted by Image:Filename, the piped arguments from K onwards. --Foroa (talk) 22:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Problems with {{PD-TR}}

I noticed that File:Roosevelt Inonu Churchill.jpg and File:1 Turk Lirası on.jpg are popping up in Category:License tags (second page) and Category:Law in Turkey. I thought the issue was with the formatting in {{PD-TR}}. However, my attempts to fix this have failed. Can anyone more experienced take a look? Jappalang (talk) 01:55, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

 Done. I also added a notice about the newly created {{PD-Ottoman}} tag. Regards. --BomBom (talk) 03:40, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Problems with the new "newest files gallery"

I have Problems using the new buttons in den latest files gallery:

On the page http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NewFiles&until=20090203063901

I pressed the copyvio button (with notficiation) on File:Mamalucha2-150.jpg and the correspondent tags were put, but without the content in the variables. So in File:Mamalucha2-150.jpg no reason was given and on User talk:Fernadopozomx no reason and no files name was given. (See: [5] and [6])

Can anybody solve this? --ALE! ¿…? 08:43, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

What browser? Lupo 09:42, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

 Done. Problem was caused by a bug/misbehavior in Internet Explorer, which doesn't perform string replacements with a lambda function correctly. Code corrected and tested on IE6, and it also still works in real browsers. Don't forget to refresh your browser's cache (which may be a bitch on IE, maybe you'll have to do it several times and clear all "temporary internet files" manually). Lupo 10:18, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I will test now. BTW: I am using IE7. --ALE! ¿…? 10:39, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

• BTW, documentation exists now at MediaWiki:Gadget-GalleryDetails.js/Documentation. Lupo 13:39, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Canvassing

For context, this was originally a sub-section of #Klashorst? (again and again) above. Prolog (talk) 07:58, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Smial (talk · contribs) has been canvassing German Wikipedia users to come here to get rid of what he calls "child pornography photographs". He/she links to this very discussion. The same German Wikipedia editors are now engaging in vote-stacking in his deletion nominations:

• Raboe001 (talk · contribs)
• Steschke (talk · contribs)
• EvaK (talk · contribs)
• KS aus F (talk · contribs)
• Martina Nolte (talk · contribs)

After a campaign like this, it is safe to say neither this debate nor the deletion discussions accurately represent Commons community consensus on these matters. Even a featured picture is apparently not saved from this. Prolog (talk) 06:18, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

If I can recall correctly (and to my understanding) it's not about vote numbers but rather the argument/discussion for the deletion or why it should be kept but the argument/discussion must be not just your own view but also about policies (Say for a deletion you must explain why that policy (or policies) applies to that image ect) and it's also up to the closing Admin on what policy(s) apply and if the argument/discussion of those you have voted are valid or not. Also in no way am I saying that vote stacking is right as it's clearly wrong but I'm not sure if there is any policy against vote stacking. Bidgee (talk) 06:37, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Bidgee is correct. It isn't so much about the number of votes, it is about what they have to say. Closing admins are, technically, free to do as they please. That being said, canvasing is still annoying and harmful to the generally happiness of all involved. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 07:25, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

as a side note, I moved this convo and the previous is closed now. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 07:27, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Due to the mass nomination spread into several identical deletion requests, which leads to less regular editors presenting their opinions, and the out-of-process deletion spree and misandrist comments by User:Cecil, an admin and a bureaucrat, my confidence in policy-based arguments triumphing over moral panic is not at its highest at the moment. Prolog (talk) 07:58, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure a message on Smial's own user page is canvassing, even if the text mischaracterizes the debate. I don't see obvious recent evidence of canvassing at de:Spezial:Beiträge/Smial. I am not sure why the mass nomination spread into several deletion requests, but that was probably the only practical outcome of #Klashorst? (again and again)

In reply to Prolog's worries about policy-based arguments: I expect Cecil will participate in the debates, not close them, as she has a case to advocate. I have always believed that closes should be by uninvolved people.

--InfantGorilla (talk) 11:48, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Some of my german fellow Wikimedias should read the german-language Wikipedia-Article depending "Kinderpornografie". Then they would not write so much nonsense. But Smials User side is absolutely OK. Wverybody can do such things. Marcus Cyron (talk) 12:41, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I must say having seen some of the comments regarding these deletion requests and more importantly, the users making them, I did presume someone had been canvassing for support for the deletion nomination. This situation, coupled with numerous similar images being nominated for identical reasons, makes it impossible for the community to appropriately discuss the issue that has been raised. As such, I would suggest all of the deletion requests should be closed and merged into one where it will be much easier to discuss. Adambro (talk) 16:52, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't really agree with your proposal (independently from my opinion on the DRs), for two reasons. First, there are several different problems with the pictures, and it is exactly because they were all processed in the same batch in the past that we need to review them now. Secondly (more personal), I think it was difficult enough to get the pictures undeleted for proper reviewing, so I'd really like to have the job finished and not reset again. --Eusebius (talk) 17:07, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

The last few mass deletion requests I created (because the images all had the same problem, FOP in France and same artist) had the opposite problem. People complained because they could not discuss each image separate since all were in one request. The real topic of the request was more or less a minor point because the whole deletion discussion was just about how wrong it is to but all the images in one request. -- Cecil (talk) 14:38, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I beg you all, not to build up virtual frontiers like "censorship by German people with victorial ethics against the rest of Wikimedia's community" (btw: we have on de-WP a discussion on this portfolio with the whole spread of arguments like here including threats of ban against people like me). There are only some few but recurrent points in these pictures that both sides refer on.

Deletion requesters claim that one part of the pictures would not be compatible to COM:PEOPLE, in legal and/or moral aspects. Another part would not meet the Commons:Project_scope (de-Version). Both guidelines are official guidelines on Wikimedia Commons. Several detailed explanations on problematic aspects are - examplary - named in some deletion requests (see them embedded in my discussions page)

Keep supporters claim that the guidelines wouldn't affect the photographs, or the pictures wouldn't offend the guidelines, and the images were the work of a notable artist and thus be in the project scope. It doesn't really make sense to repeat the same arguments on both sides in each single deletion request. I think it could be helpful to clear some general aspects and then find single decisions.

For this aim I'd like to point out that the painter himself states, that he is not a "photographer" but that he is taking these pictures for his own pleasure and that he uses only some of them for his paintings ([7]). That means: we are not dealing here with his "notable work". Hence, these pictures also are not examplary for "development in arts", they are quasi hobbyist photos. The artist also states that the photographed persons are not professional models, but "friends" ([8]), that he partly payed for their sexual services ([9]). He has been hounoured for his paintings, not for his photographs.

Further, it has been verified that in several countries, were he took his photographs, his kind of photography (and thus publication of his photos) is illegal (and for the womenhighly unreputable). The artist is quiet aware of this aspect ([10], [11], [12]/de). In addition, some photos seem to concern minors or let's say it otherwise: it is not clarified if subjects were adult or not.

Commons:Project_scope#Censorship (de-Version) refers directly to "quasi-pornographic" images and names concretly: "photographs of nudity and male and female genitalia". The guideline says: "the statement “Commons is not censored” is not a valid argument for keeping a file". It demands high-quality educational content and that the images add an educationally distinct to the stock already existing. The guideline's goal is "the reputation of Commons as a good faith provider of educational content".

Another Commons guideline is the precautionary principle (de: vorbeugendes_Prinzip), that says in short: in case of doubt, delete. -- Martina Nolte (talk) 16:43, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

A mis-application of the commons precautionary principle where there is significant doubt about the freedom of a particular file it should be deleted - it is very specifically only about the licensing, we have no mandate to generalise it into other areas. --Tony Wills (talk) 20:37, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

¿fake license?

File:Accesibilidadsinexclusion.gif comes from Puerto Rico's supreme court, yet it's tagged as PD by USA Goverment work. -- Drini 21:00, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

February 4

Economic graphs versus economic charts?

There is a Category:Economic graphs and a Category:Economic charts. I'm not a native English speaker. Do I understand correctly that the first cat is meant for illustrations of concepts, for instance "price elasticity", and the second for illustrations of thing that have actually happened, for instance "unemployments rates in land X, 1950-2000"? Best regards, MartinD (talk) 18:37, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

More that likely one is a duplicate of the other, created by somebody who didn't appreciate the graph/chart synonym. Which the is preferred usage?Railwayfan2005 (talk) 20:25, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Graph is not a synonym for chart, all graphs are charts but not all charts are graphs. Graphs refer to data displayed in the format of points along an x and y axis which may or may not be linked. Charts refer to a visual representation of information e.g. bar charts, pie charts etc. The best thing to do would be to nest the cats, placing Economic graphs within Economic charts and to amend constituent files to be in the right place. KTo288 (talk) 08:52, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, I hope I now understand the difference. I've made a number of charts/graphs displaying things like house prices and trade balance figures in a visual form. OK if I put/keep them in "economic charts"? If not, please let me know. Best regards, MartinD (talk) 15:14, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Cortado Java Applet

I want to report applet not properly playing most of widescreen videos from Category:Al Jazeera Video Footage from 2008-2009 Israel-Gaza conflict.--Kozuch (talk) 00:06, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Videos are difficult to do correctly; the Wikimedia software is unable to scale videos on the servers, so even if you are just displaying a small-appearing version on an article, the *full* data needs to be downloaded to the browser before being scaled. This wastes tremendous amounts of Wikimedia's bandwidth, and big-enough videos can exceed available bandwidth and not play at all. I'm pretty sure the recommended approach is to make a small-scale one, about the size needed in articles, and upload it separately. The small one should be used in articles, with a link to the larger one if people want to download it. I got bitten by this recently :-) I think there is some discussion and suggestions at w:Wikipedia:Creation_and_usage_of_media_files#Video. Carl Lindberg (talk) 01:20, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Offering multiple bit-rates could be an input for Wikipedia Usability Initiative.--Kozuch (talk) 02:37, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I think that's likely something Michael Dale would probably be tasked with, rather than the usability initiative. Nevertheless, it's worth doing.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 02:43, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Aspect issues will be less of a problem if we have our application supply the transcode settings (we can then avoid the uploaders confusing the aspect ratio in their transcode settings, we can request two version one archival (dv res 1mbs bitrate) one for web streaming (320px wide 300Kbs bitrate or so). The client javascript library then automatically chooses logical defaults lowbitrate for embedding and high bitrate for download. (while allowing for user selection for either). This approach outlined in a post to commons Mdale (talk) 20:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

This is not about the scale of the videos, but about the aspect ratio. I also don't get what it has to do with MediaWiki; it is a Cortado problem. The videos are playig fine with a browser plugin (that I always use anyway). --Jeroencommons (talk) 06:47, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

You're right, it does seem to be a bug. It also seems to have already been filed as bugzilla:16149. (Also, according to the bug report, the bug is not really in Cortado but in MediaWiki's Ogg video handling: Cortado is just scaling the video to the size MediaWiki tells it.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 00:14, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Help checking categories

Hi guys, i could use some (more) help with category checking. The amount of categories to be checked is already reduced with about 15.000 images in the last month, but that still leaves about 75.000 images to be checked. All the images to be checked are sorted in several ways:

• Category:Media needing category review by date - The images sorted by the date the template was added
• Category:Media needing category review by number of suggestions - The images sorted by the number of suggestions (only recent images)
• Category:Media needing category review by usage - The images sorted by usage (gallery/wikipedia's)

You can easily mark an image as checked by clicking the link (Check them now!) in the template. Don't be afraid to remove a lot of categories which are not directly related. Thank you, Multichill (talk) 16:35, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Checked a handfull, but it's a time-consuming job, I'm afraid... Still, got rid of 0.0024%! ;) MartinD (talk) 14:09, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Catscan is very usefull, Im working on catreviews on African topics from time to time giving images categories, copyright review and a description. Maybe promoting Catreview by topic per Catscan intersections in local Projects and Portals can help (for example: Files in Category Nigeria needing Catreview). --Martin H. (talk) 15:13, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I am pretty sure that a presorting per country would make it easier for most people. Almost no people can work efficiently in all sorts of countries in all sorts of languages using all sorts of topics/domains. --Foroa (talk) 19:02, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

It would certainly help, providing it is clear where a picture is made. Unfortunately, rather often this is not the case. I sometimes feel tempted to start cats like Category:I really don't know where this pic is taken or Category:I'd have to guess what this pic is about.;) MartinD (talk) 11:58, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I checked quite a lot of images. I try to work on subsets of related images to be able to work faster. So i'm not trying to check all images straight away, but first the images that look easy. The images that look hard to me might be easy for someone else. The categories don't have to be exactly right. The image was first uncategorized, but is now placed in the right part of our category tree, that's already a big improvement. Don't bother changing the edit summary, that's a waste of time. By the way, if you happen to stumble across a meta category with a lot of images, please leave me a note, i'll add it to my blacklist. Multichill (talk) 23:49, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Computer game map made via spreadsheet

Hi all. I play several computer games where the map are made out of square tiles. The most expedient method for me to draw the maps for those games has been to use OpenOffice spreadsheets, with colored cells or borders to denote walls or special tiles, and using letters/numbers to annotate objects or events on the map.

1. Do maps for computer games fall under "educational"? They are informative for walkthroughs of the games.
2. Can the OpenOffice spreadsheets (.ods) be accepted "media" to upload to Commons? The alternative is to take screenshot of each page of the spreadsheet and upload the resulting image, but that means anyone who wish to improve upon the maps cannot easily obtain the original "source" file of the map.

-Afker (talk) 22:08, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

1. I would say it's possible for a map of a computer game to fall under our project scope, but I don't think just being computer game maps would make them educational — you'd have to justify their educational value on a case-by-case basis. However, I'd say that a more pressing issue is that maps of copyrighted computer game levels are likely to be derivative works of those games. They might fall under fair use in many contexts, but that isn't enough to make them appropriate for Commons.
2. See Commons:Project scope/Allowable file types. Uploading OpenOffice files is currently disabled, because we currently have no reliable way to filter out "fake" OpenOffice files that might be unsafe to download. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:37, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

A pity about #2, I hope a method develops soon. As for "derivative works" in #1, as the map only consist of squares with borders/backgrounds, it is more of a diagrammatic nature. Can it then be argued that bullet 4 in Commons:Fan art: "Diagrams which inform on the content of a work of fiction in a non-artistic, straightforward manner" can be applied? I am not artistically depicting the landscape in the game, I am showing the layout and relative positioning of the rooms/objects in the game based on walking tile-by-tile. An example of a map image produced from spreadsheet can be found here (external wiki). -Afker (talk) 23:01, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

February 5

Offenau / Saleschen

Hello,

Was the city Offenau once called Saleschen?

Thanks, Bill

You might do better to ask that question at en:Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities. - Jmabel ! talk 04:53, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Compliment of "Vector version available"

{{Vector version available}} is used to mark raster images that have an SVG alternative. Is there a standard method of marking the reverse, i.e. vector images that also come in a raster format? I am mainly asking because one sometimes encounters very poorly made SVGs that really aren't adequate replacements for the raster images they were created from, and it would be good to allow people to consider if falling back to the raster is actually superior for their use? Dragons flight (talk) 17:58, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I sometimes stick a link or thumbnail into the "other versions" section... but no, I don't think there is a template. Unless you count {{AttribSVG}}. Carl Lindberg (talk) 18:26, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

{{Bitmap version available}} shouldn't be too difficult to create based upon {{Vector version available}}. Railwayfan2005 (talk) 20:12, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Changes to other people's images

I recently noticed that some images I uploaded (example: File:Thayil et al 01.jpg) were overwritten by what someone else considered to be "improvements". In this case (and some others) I think the change is quite the opposite. There was considerable loss of information, and on my monitor I use for graphics work (which I believe is calibrated roughly exactly where it is supposed to be) the original image had an appropriate tone range, and the replacement looks rather washed out.

I don't claim to know my way around Commons policies on this in any detail, but I'd expect that if someone wants to make a change to someone else's image that is not unambiguously an improvement, they should do so under a new name and leave the original accessible. Am I wrong? - Jmabel ! talk 04:51, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

That's correct, but it's not always how it works. You can reupload the inferior one as a different name, and revert the original to the better one if you'd like. 65.96.164.13 12:52, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Or you can ask for the user to do that himself, explaining that you think the original should be kept as well (or at least notify him that you've reverted and reuploaded). In any case, it's nice to use the "other versions" field of both image pages. --Eusebius (talk) 16:39, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I've now followed that up, and the user in question (Jan Arkesteijn) reverted this particular image; he agrees that his change was not an improvement. However, he also remarked, "I do not agree that a picture should look at its best on a high quality monitor, it should look at least agreeable on an average monitor." I'm wondering: do we have any policies on that? My approach has been pretty consistently to do any prep of images for Commons on the highest quality monitor I have available to me, and do any adjustments based on what I see that monitor. Is that not what I should be doing? - Jmabel ! talk 17:03, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Request for extension to provide metadata support

Hi all,

As you are probably aware, enabling reuse is an important part of Wikimedia Commons' mission. We do this for humans by clearly indicating licenses and author information (that's the theory, anyway :)). But we also need to do it for machines, because it is machines that allow reuse of our material on a much larger scale, e.g. by libraries, museums, and other archives.

Currently the data we provide for machines in quite poor. Although it is quite easy for a human to look and see that {{GFDL}} is a license template, for machines it is much harder because there is no "standard" that says which templates represent licenses and which represent other things. Figuring out who the author is, for attribution purposes, is also often difficult (is it the uploader? what if someone uploaded a slightly edited version?). As an example, PediaPress would like to use this information, for their printed wiki-books, to put the licenses of the images. At the moment there is literally no way they could do this reliably without having a human do it for every single image.

Anyway, it is my strong belief that for Wikimedia Commons to be more successful and more useful, we need a way of encoding this kind of information in a machine-readable format. There are a number of different approaches one could take, but I think it is better if we just ask the developers for any extension/feature which will do this job, and let them figure out which is most appropriate.

If you agree, please sign Commons:Village pump/Request for extension to provide metadata support and indicate your support for helping Wikimedia Commons material reach a wider audience. Community support is a necessary condition to get a feature like this enabled. So please speak up if you want to support this idea, by signing the page.

Thanks! --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:16, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

We encode info on non-free license templates by embedding this little "stub" template that categorizes them, as the licensing policy actually require that non-free licenses tags must be machine readable to detect as such. ViperSnake151 (talk) 23:01, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Category:Central Business District

There's indeed a problem with that category. The term "Central Business District" is not only used in Saskatoon! This is a larger term. Therefore it needs to be renamed so that we can use the Category:Central Business District for what it should be used. Is there any bot who could deal with that? Thanks. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 06:38, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

User:CommonsDelinker ... --rimshot^talk 07:08, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

many people tweet a photo from commons

many people tweet a photo from commons, tweets 18 in the last week: File:Ittoqqortoormiit top hg.jpg. source: [13]--shizhao (talk) 06:45, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Template syntax

Is it possible to have a template with something like ~~~~ in it, that would change into a date/signature only when the template is subst'ed, not when it is saved? --Eusebius (talk) 09:04, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Put it in nowiki tags, but put the nowikitags in noinclude tags. I think that would work. -mattbuck (Talk) 12:02, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. --Eusebius (talk) 17:31, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

GNU license for images?

I really don't understand how images can be licensed under the GNU license. The GNU license is for "any textual work", not images or video or anything else.--71.233.197.161 15:26, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

The GFDL? Well, I don't know why people have used that license for images in the first place - 1.3 did introduce some clarifications in the text for how it can apply to images, since the first line now says "This License applies to any manual or other work, in any medium", and has definitions of transparent formats for images, giving examples such as "PNG, XCF [(Gimp's native PSD-like format)] and JPG". People did that because they were afraid that Wikimedia would only allow GFDL content (see m:Permission grant extent), at all (and not allow any non-GFDL/PD images), but then we just decided to only say the text was under the GFDL. Now we recommend that Creative Commons licenses be used for images, optionally alongside the GFDL. ViperSnake151 (talk) 15:59, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Clean the Commons v. 2

Dear users,
a list of Commons images from Category:Possibly unfree Flickr images reviewed by FlickreviewR that have been marked by FlickreviewR as having a license not acceptable on the Commons is available here. The list needs to be checked by hand, section by section, basing on this directives. Every pair of hands would be very helpful. Regards, odder 15:15, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure this has been brought up a bazillion times before, but what happens if a Flickr user changes their image's copyright to something not compatible with Commons? I know that in the U.S., a copyright holder has the right to change an image's copyrights even on previously released images unless a contract exists, and a contract *only* exists when there has been an exchange of value, i.e., the copyright holder has been compensated. In short, a Flickr user could upload a PD image, this image could be copied to Commons and verified as free, and the Flickr user could then change the copyrights. If the image was used in some printed works, the copyright holder has no recourse - for those works. However, in the case of online images which obviously can be removed, don't we have an obligation to remove those images once they are brought to our attention? Rklawton (talk) 15:28, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

These images are only the ones that haven't got {{Flickr-change-of-license}} put on their description pages, so I am pretty sure they are not free. This is why I wanted them to be checked hand-only. odder 15:33, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I was browsing the pages and i noticed a lot of red links at User:Odder/clean the Commons! 2/T. All lot of these images where uploaded using User:FlickrLickr. This bot only uploads images with cc-by licences alowed over here. Deleting these uploads is incorrect. Please stop deleting these images and recover the already deleted images. Multichill (talk) 00:09, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

What am I doing wrong? [14]-Andrew c (talk) 00:19, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Which part of {{Flickr-change-of-license}} don't you understand? Multichill (talk) 00:27, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll answer your question if you answer mine ;)-Andrew c (talk) 01:05, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Alternatively... what am I doing wrong? [15] -Andrew c (talk) 01:09, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I think you've figured this out already :-) Anyway, I am really impressed by your help :) odder 11:27, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

We have a lot of users here who are also active at flickr. Sometimes users decide to release their work here under a free creative commons licence and at flickr under a more restrictive creative commons licence. See for example User:Roel1943. To mark these kind of images i created {{Flickr own work}}. This is to prevent overeager bots/users from marking images as unfree. The template is very ugly, but that's easy to change :) Multichill (talk) 21:05, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't that practice require an OTRS release? (Image already published elsewhere...) Lupo 21:30, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

He's the author of the images, he can publish it anywhere he wants under whatever licence. Why would we need an OTRS release? Multichill (talk) 21:34, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

If an image has been published elsewhere, we generally require an OTRS confirmation of a release here, if the licenses don't match. Anyone can register here claiming to be a Flickr user. Or anyone else for that matter; Flickr is in no way special or different from other sites. Compare this recent incident. For Commonists also active at Flickr, there's of course also the options either to clearly state at the Flickr account that they are uploading at the commons under the name XYZ (though that may vanish if the Flickr account vanishes), or to simply use the same license. Lupo 21:50, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

February 6

Flagged revisions

Hello,

I don't know if this is already discussed, if it is I am sorry for this post.

Our image namespace (File:) is continues being vandalized, a lot of people work daily to revert the vandals but some times the vandalism isn't spotted and can stay there for three till four weeks until it is spotted, or people send a email to otrs with the notice. Now I think it is important to keep Commons clean from vandalism and if we activate Flagged Revisions our visitors will see almost always a clean version of the image.

Vandalism on files is most of the time easy to spot and so reviewing the edits on the image would be easy and it makes sure that our visitors doesn't see the vandalism, what is better for the status of Commons.

I would like to hear some imput on this Abigor talk 06:23, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Speaking as an active de.wp user (where we already have flagged revs), I am afraid that this might fail because we simply don't have a community that is large enough to go through all the changes. Many pages will remain unflagged, so vandalism on those images will show anyway. On the other hand, flagged pages will have to be flagged again once an IP or any user not having the reviewer flag edits it. As we can't even manage to go through recent changes (which would keep out most of the vandalism), I am afraid we won't manage to keep up with flagging all the edits. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 16:29, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Pictures from dawiki are tagged with no licens

Some pictures uploadet from dawiki are tagged with at "no licens". The problem is, that dawiki has at template names "{{Cc-by-sa-x.x-self}}". That seems to be a problem om commons. I find that a bit hard to understand since the {{pd-self}} seems to be ok. The self simply means that it is the uploader who took the picture. It is as simple as that. I wonder if dawiki is the only wiki who has some -self-templates?

It is silly to delete good pictures just because we have a different way of using templates. There simply HAS to be a way. Change of commonshelper? Change of the scripts used by the bots? A new script to find and correct -self-templates?

Is there anybody om commons who have a good solution? MGA73 (talk) 11:57, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi MGA73, you have to help Commonshelper. Change {{Cc-by-sa-x.x-self}} to {{Self|Cc-by-sa-x.x}} before transfering. This way Commonshelper will understand it. See User:Multichill/Moving to Commons for a guide on how to move media to Commons. Multichill (talk) 12:15, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Alternatively you could ask Magnus to modify CommonsHelper to recognize the templates. However, requests tend to be open for a pretty long time. Your best bet would be to talk to him directly on IRC or whatever. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 14:27, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

That's not worth the effort. Looks like we're talking about less than 500 images tagged with these templates. Multichill (talk) 18:41, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Derivative work, or not?

Should this sketch be regarded derivative work if the google comes up with this rather similar image?---<(kmk)>- (talk) 14:25, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

You could ask the user whether he took the Google image as inspiration. However, I think there are only so many ways you can draw this, so basically every self-made image could be consider a derivative or would at least look pretty much like the one you found on Google. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 14:31, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

In my opinion... not at all. The expression in each is completely different. If the original was some completely invented shape, like something made up for a sci-fi novel, then maybe. But, these are two separate drawings of a real-life object, so the basic shape is not copyrightable but rather only the presentation is, and these are different presentations. Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:43, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Trademark as file name?

Hey there, can I use "Uzebox" as a file name for uzebox images (from here)? The site says at the bottom that the name is a trademark.--Kozuch (talk) 19:08, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Legally, it depends on whether you're "diluting" the trademark by "creating confusion" in the mind of a prospective consumer. We have a lot of files with "Coca Cola" in their names... AnonMoos (talk) 08:14, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

February 8

picture on a page

Is it possible to add a picture to a page? thanks. J

Uhh yea, [[File:Example.jpg]]. ViperSnake151 (talk) 13:41, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Collection of Images From Book

A book about the Second World War has recently been published in my local community which contains pictures from the era. The pictures were provided by local residents who all gave permission for the pictures to be freely used in the book. The books authors have in turn given me permission to put these pictures on the internet. They told me that the majority of the pictures are in the public domain anyway. I just wondered what the correct procedure would be for publishing these pictures onto commons and what license I should label them with. Is there a precedent of something similar to this? Mazadillon (talk) 13:49, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

The correct procedure would be to ask the actual authors of the images. As you said, the authors have given permission to use the images in the book, thus the book authors are in no position to release them for free use on the internet, let alone hand out a free content license. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 15:47, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Registering subject's consent

I hope I'm posting this in the right place - I'm a complete newcomer to Wikimedia Commons.

I want to upload two photographs of Jonathan Crowther - one to add to Wikipedia's Azed crossword article and one for its Jonathan Crowther biographical article. (Jonathan Crowther composes the Azed crossword and is often referred to as Azed by his solvers.) The photos were taken by myself at a private function and I have his permission to publish them under a NFGL licence. (This is what I thought was needed at the time I asked. After I've sorted the query below, I'll get his permission for a CC-BY-SA-3.0 licence as well.)

I think I know how to name, describe and categorize the photographs and how to insert them into the articles when I've uploaded them to Commons.

However, I am having trouble with finding the correct way to register Azed's permission to use the photos (or even if registering it is necessary). I have been reading round Wikipedia and Commons articles on copyright until my head spins but none of the templates I have come across seem to me to quite fit these circumstances. I have adapted the text given in Wikipedia:requesting copyright permission's How to ask for permission - Declaration of consent for all enquiries and have put the modified text on my Wikipedia talk page.

Could someone check it out, please, and advise me if it is OK? If it is, do I need to get it sent to Commons before I upload the photograph (in which case should the declaration have copies of the photos attached?) or do I upload the photos first and use the computer names for them in the permission statement (in which case am I OK to add the photos to the articles)? And is there anything else I should be considering but have missed?

Dinoceras (talk) 14:48, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi, first you upload the images and put {{OTRS pending}} on the description page. It would be good if you left a small note saying that the permission of the depicted person should be in the e-mail you send to OTRS. Then you have the depicted person send the message on your talk page to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org. Please use the actual file names (or even better: links to the image description pages) in the mail to help OTRS volunteers identify the images you are talking about. Also, this makes sure that the depicted person has seen the images on the internet and knows what he is talking about. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 15:38, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi ChrisiPK. Many thanks for your speedy response. I'll do that. Regards, Dinoceras (talk) 16:35, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposed clarification of the rules on photographs of identifiable people

• The current policy is at Commons: Photographs of identifiable people.

Since this policy was introduced in March 2007 there has been more certainty on which types of photographic portraits we will and will not host. As a result, most deletion requests in this area are being closed more quickly and are less subject to the whims and personal views of the closing admin. There are still a few contentious areas, though, particularly:

• images requiring consent, and
• images where there is incomplete information about the circumstances in which the photograph was taken, so that the policy has to be applied on the basis of guesses or assumptions.

Examples include:

• Posed photographs, such as straightforward head-and-shoulder shots and studio portraits (consent unclear), and
• Images with indistinct or nondescript backgrounds that give no clue as to the type of location in which the photograph was taken (ie public/private is unclear).

Also of concern are certain potentially sensitive images, such as those of a child or of an unclothed adult. Some users consider that these should require a higher standard of proof that consent has actually been obtained.

I have made some suggestions with a view to clarifying these questions which can be found at Commons: Photographs of identifiable people/Proposal. Please comment at Commons talk: Photographs of identifiable people/Proposal. MichaelMaggs (talk) 22:08, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I have no time yet to think about it. But I admire your courage Michael. In the mean time, I have a question: do you think that people that piss all the time vinegar, they never feel a pain ? --Foroa (talk) 22:39, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, you have lost me there. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 23:02, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

He he, this calls for a babel downgrade.. ;-). --Dschwen (talk) 23:16, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Some more comments would be useful. Or have I shocked everyone into silence? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:47, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I have made comments on the proposal's talk page. I only want to state here that I'm in favour of this proposal, and that I thank you for your work! --Eusebius (talk) 22:23, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

And although I appreciate the effort and the good intentions, I will state that I oppose these further restrictions. Undoubtedly new rules are going to be retroactively applied, and good uploads will be deleted, if this is adopted as policy. More comments would be useful, and people here should be aware of what the consequences of the proposal will be. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 08:39, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

You say that "good uploads will be deleted", but the whole point of this is to discuss now, in advance, what we consider to be good and not good. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:12, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I take the precaution off fotoschopping individuals (example). A small effort to prevent any problems.

Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:00, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

You made them look like criminals. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 08:31, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

More comments are needed at Commons talk: Photographs of identifiable people/Proposal, especially - if I may be permitted to canvass mildy - from users who have views that are not at one end or the other of the spectrum. Please don't just leave the discussion to those with very strong views. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 07:56, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I have made some changes to Commons:Photographs of identifiable people/Proposal in response to a variety of helpful suggestions that users have made on the talk page. Please consider whether you would like to express an opinion there, and/or in the Poll towards the bottom of the page. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:45, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

February 3

COM:FOP and derivative works

It appears that Commons allows the uploading of copyrighted works covered under freedom of panorama, even where that FOP excludes the creation of derivative works (e.g. Germany, Mexico). Why is this being done, considering that it contravenes the commons' general licensing policy? Mangostar (talk) 16:41, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Could you provide some examples? --Túrelio (talk) 21:05, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

If such images are being uploaded, then it's probably because they're not easy to spot as copyvios. There are enough copyvios that are obvious - album covers, etc - that to take a look at every picture of a building as well to check if it's ok by FOP would leave you hopelessly overwhelmed. If you find such images, put up a deletion request. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:22, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

No, I'm sure tons of such images are uploaded. That's why we have the COM:FOP page, for general guidance--because FOP is how we get a decent amount of content. The main problem is the policy/explanation page COM:FOP, which appears to be totally wrong. For germany COM:FOP says: " OK It is possible by §59 of the Copyright Law Act to take pictures of works which are permanently located on public ways, streets or places and to distribute and publicly communicate such copies. For works of architecture, this provision is applicable only to the external appearance. Still, the right to modify the works and to produce derivative works requires the permission of the original copyright holder. (§62)" Should I change this to "not ok"? Mangostar (talk) 22:28, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

A quick example: File:Pferdemarkt in Oldenburg.jpg. Mangostar (talk) 22:31, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and one more thing-- COM:FOP says (as a general matter) "The right to modify: The panorama freedom is restricted to taking pictures of the actual objects. Generally, the freedom to modify such pictures is restricted." If this is the case, should we be excluding all FOP type images unless the copyright statute specifically discusses derivative works? Mangostar (talk) 22:34, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Please also see Commons talk:Freedom of panorama#Germany. My own take on this is as follows: §59 clearly allows FOP images. Now we have two works, the FOP image and the (architectural or sculptural) work shown in that image. §62 refers to the work shown in the FOP image, not to the FOP image itself. It says "Where the use of a work is permissible under the provisions of this Section, no alteration may be made to the work. Article 39 shall be applicable mutatis mutandis." FOP (§59) allows taking an image of a work, and §62 prohibits changing the work. It does not prohibit changing the image! (Likewise, §39 applies to the work.) The only restriction regarding derivatives of the image is given by §14, which is the moral right of the author of the work to the "integrity of the work", but first, we generally ignore such restrictions from the moral rights, and second, it again applies to the work itself. Whether it'd also apply to images of the work I don't know. In any case, since §62 is about the work, not about the FOP image, this is a non-issue. But maybe you'd like to ask User:Historiograf; he knows more about German copyright law than me. Lupo 13:37, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

This seems like a crazy, ridiculous distinction. Perhaps the 3D sculpture FOP was too confusing. What about this mural[16] from Mexico? Changing this "file" or "photo" or whatever is clearly the same as altering the image, and how is this consistent with the law, which says "sin alterar la obra"? I really don't think this is a free image. 65.96.164.13 19:03, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

The image File:Orozco_Hidalgo_mural.jpg you are refering to, is on :en not on Commons and is there under a fair-use rationale not under FOP.--Túrelio (talk) 08:54, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

But under commons policy as it stands, I could move it here. That's what I was about to do before I actually read the Mexico statute. (The fair use tag was just added yesterday by a different user, it had been tagged as free.) 65.96.164.13 12:47, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

That one in particular is pretty much a copy; once you crop away all context of it being in public, I'm not sure that FOP would apply and therefore I'm not sure we would allow it. The "don't alter" stuff I always took to be more about moral rights; don't make a fundamental change to the depicted work and then try to represent it as the original author's version, or maybe it more applies to some of the other, non-FOP circumstances in those clauses. Those laws seem to explicitly allow painting of such public works; those will never be the exact unaltered work, so those are inherently "altered" as of their creation, but are explicitly allowed by the law. Carl Lindberg (talk) 04:31, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I, too, have a question about this. Commons require that hosted images comply with the laws of both US and country of origin. Hence, would that mean that we cannot upload FOP images to Commons per the wording in {{Fop}} ("The allowed usage of this picture, if any, depends upon the laws of the country of creation, and may also depend on the laws of the country in which the derived image is to be used.")? What should be done for images such as my uploaded File:Chopin at Singapore Botanical Gardens.jpg (taken in Singapore, which allows FOP for buildings and public sculptures)? Jappalang (talk) 01:20, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh boy. This is one of the many longstanding unresolved inconsistencies at the Commons. See e.g. this old discussion. Lupo 13:37, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, U.S. FOP law only applies to public places within U.S. jurisdiction, so I don't think there's a conflict there. Powers (talk) 13:45, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

The U.S do not have a "FOP law". They have 17 USC 120, and I don't see any restriction to U.S. buildings there, and I'm not aware of any such restriction anywhere else in 17 USC. (Buildings are fine by 17 USC 120 anyway, irrespective of the location of the building.) Neither am I aware of any restriction in 17 USC that would make sculptures outside the U.S. not be copyrighted within the U.S. Could you please point me to such "U.S. only" restrictions in 17 USC? Lupo 13:58, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

The U.S. does use the law of the country of origin to determine copyright ownership -- so when determining the copyright ownership of the image, it seems fairly reasonable to use the law of where a sculpture is placed to see if the sculptor has any right to prevent photographic derivative works (especially since the sculptor has the ability to control where his sculptures are placed, and can avoid having them put in countries which have FOP if that is important to them). If the sculptors don't have the right to control such photographs in that country, then the photographer may well own the full copyright and therefore the sculptor may not have any grounds to sue in the U.S. I've looked for one on the web, but have not found a reference to a court case where these issues are dealt with -- if anyone knows of any, that would be very interesting. Short of that though, we are (mostly) non-lawyers guessing how a court would rule under incredibly complex circumstances (which also means it is pretty likely that different courts would rule in dramatically different ways until precedents are set by higher-level courts). But, the current approach (allow photos based on where the statue is located) seems somewhat reasonable to me. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:42, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Having read through the past discussion provided by Lupo, it seems that there was an agreement for FOPs taken in other countries to be applied only for buildings (due to U.S.'s FOP law). Somehow, it seems that motion was not enforced (or changed in another discussion?), and pictures of statues and public art remain but require the FOP tag. Jappalang (talk) 22:07, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't remember a consensus like that, though I may have just missed a discussion. I don't think I would agree with that approach though... I think what we are doing is fine, as I stated above. Carl Lindberg (talk) 04:31, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmm... so would the {{Fop}} tag (with its wording) be required for these images? Jappalang (talk) 06:29, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

It is certainly a good idea to tag such images with {{FOP}}. Lupo 07:59, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Help needed with classroom videos

I know very little about videos, or the best way to document permissions when it comes to groups of students (particularly minors), but over the past week I've talked to 2 teachers about this (on en.wb and en.wv), and wanted to see if anyone could fill in some details for an easy reference for them. I started a stub here this morning, if anyone has time and background knowledge for how this is done, please chip in. Thanks! --SB_Johnny ^talk 11:43, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Category intersection is no panacea

I have read more than a few times the broad brush comment that with support category intersections, we really wouldn't need categories that essentially AND two categories together (eg. Category:Germany in the 1890s). I admit I was once one that believed this too. Putting it to the test with catscan though, I have become a skeptic that this is the silver bullet that it is sometimes made out to be. I have been categorizing some historical photos from the 1890s and for fun tried to recover Germany in the 1890s via catscan.

Disaster. Out of 144 hits, only 8 of them corresponded to the category. I was a little shocked at how poorly it did. While it is true I have seen it perform much better on other category intersections, I would have thought it would be more successful both at recall and accuracy. Neither measure was acceptable. Anyway, results are at User:J JMesserly/catIntersection in case anyone is interested. -J JMesserly (talk) 07:31, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Large portion of categories on Commons can be described as intersections of parent categories and I do not think CatScan will make them obsolete. I personally found CatScan usually performing just fine, but "ListComparer" tool from com:AWB is a much more powerful. I think intersection categories are here to stay because end-users unfamiliar with Commons should not be expected to work with tools like CatScan to find images they need, browsing is easier. Also Commons interface (in my opinion) breaks down when there is more than 200 images in a category: when images are divided in sets of 200 each something strange happens to subcategories and galleries and some of them are moved from the top of the first page to what seems to me a random page (see example). I am often surprised not to find subcategories in the expected place only to discover that number of images went over 200 and need to be dispersed into subcategories. Finally I still did not found a tool to easily do intersection of 3 or 4 categories easiest way to do that is to use CatScan to intersect "intersection categories". --Jarekt (talk) 13:37, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

(After edit conflict) What do you want to say by this post? That category intersections will never work? It's obvious that category intersections will perform bad if applied to a category hierarchy that is not designed for intersectable categories. CatScan gives up after 550 subcategories. It's thus no wonder that it won't find all images.

If you look at the list, you'll see many categories and pages irrelevent to "Germany" "1890s". That's cause in the currect system categories are used more like a association tool than a hierarchy.

Your results primarily show one thing: How messed up the current system is.

With a sane and well thought out category hierarchy, a category intersection would produce useful results.

To analyze the example you brought: "Germany" "1890s" mainly fails cause of the YYYY births and YYYY deaths categories being categorized under YYYY. It seems to be reasonable on first thought, but it's not very bright if you think about it some more. We have to ask: What do we want to categorize, "subjects" or "files"? YYYY births is a property of a person, thus a "subject". But for YYYY expected behaviour is, that it contains "files" from YYYY. And not files related to people who where born in YYYY. In a sane category hierarchy YYYY births would thus not be a subcategory of YYYY. And I guess, your results would improve greatly, if that would be changed. --Slomox (talk) 13:51, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

What I am trying to say? I was just reporting some results that surprized me. I am now much in line with Jarekt's POV. Catscan is a great tool and we are very thankful to daniel for his hard work. But categories that hard code intersections are here to stay.

Re Slomox points- So the point is that Category intersections could be relied on if more rigour were applied to taxonomic correctness? If so, then what is being succumbed to is the Camelot belief in a unified taxonomy for the world. Even amongst rigorous practitioners of the science of categorization, the goal appears unachievable. It is fairly well known problem, so lack of rigor is really beside the point. The goal is achievable only if a single taxonomic method is selected and autocratically and ruthlessly enforced. Not exactly a wiki way of doing things. -J JMesserly (talk) 18:17, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Not exactly a wiki way of doing things. Categories are about hierarchy. If you say, that this is un-wiki, that would mean to abolish categories.

Everybody knows, that there is no one and only perfect taxonomy. You will never achieve perfectness, but that's no reason not to reach out for it. Our current system is just mud. What do you type in, if you want to find images of Lutheran churches in Landkreis Stade? Let's try: Category:Lutheran churches in Landkreis Stade. Was never created. Next try: Category:Churches in Landkreis Stade. Ah, Bingo, we hit an existing category. But does it list all churches? No, just two. For further churches we have to walk through the subcategories. If we had a meaningful tool for category intersection (meaningful means able to do intersections of more than two categories, being able to display [instead of just listing] the images, and of course being part of the software core and not on toolserver), if we had a meaningful tool like that, we just had to intersect "Landkreis Stade" with "Churches" and with "Lutheran" and we'd get the complete list.

Btw: I chose a simple example hitting an existing category on second try. Once in a while I tried to find a specific category by directly typing the guessed name and normally it tooks more like five or six guesses until I hit something (which is often still quicker than walking through the hierarchy [e.g. starting at "Churches" and then going down the road "Churches by country", "Churches in Germany", "Churches in Lower Saxony" etc.]). --Slomox (talk) 19:16, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

All I was pointing out was that you may find your goal elusive due to the nature of the problem. Seldom is there agreement on general domain categorization schemes- people simply have different ways of organizing information- and even when there appears to be consensus on a set of categories, in practice they have implied semantics that are localized and not coherant at a global level. It's not a class of problem like progressive refinement of scientific theories to explain a phenomenon. It is of an entirely different class. To be concrete, local semantics of birth dates make it perfectly reasonable to assume that a birth in 1951 would have a parent supercat of the decade of the 1950s. But from the POV of the category of "meaningful events of the 1950s" it has little significance. Catscan can't possibly understand these implied semantics. You are welcome to join in the myriad debates on the correctness of various category schemes- for example, you may run into a surprising amount of opposition to your statements regarding categorization of temporal events. You may also find that hard won standards can be quickly brushed aside when a new set of active contributors try something new. And really, contrary to your notion of evolving perfection that trial and error and evolution of organizational perspectives is the way it should be. In a way, what we are doing is collective consciousness, collective organization of information. I'm not sure that your model of evolution and refinement towards a systematically coherent categorization scheme is epistemologically possible. Theoretically, I suppose one could be imposed by fiat, and that is what I was referring to as not being a wiki way of doing things. This has taken a rather philosophical tone, so I'd really rather get back to categorizing some events in the 1890s. I just thought it was interesting about the failure of category intersections. It may or may not have broader implications. -J JMesserly (talk) 23:22, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

But you haven't shown the failure of category intersections, you have merely demonstrated that the current category system is unsuitable for intersections (as are the current intersection tools). This is old news! People who are lobbying for category intersections are also lobbying for atomic categories. --Dschwen (talk) 23:28, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Correct, but we can go there if you like. In more formal terms, categories do not declare the semantic relation of inclusion. Tree of life cat schemes are lovely but human beings are not so restricted in their ordering of the world. EG category membership may in some cases be COM:TOL ISA-AKO semantic relations (Cow ISA Mammal), but in other cases may be an is-part-of relation (Kansas IS_Part_Of United States). Many more of these types can be implicit in categories, but the point is that set operations without knowlege of these undeclared and implicit relations can be shown by formal logic to generate garbage results because they are mixing category hierarchies of different semantic types. Advocates of atomic categories offer no escape, and only perpetrate the charade. So, instead of categorizing as "1881 deaths", we code 1881 and death as separate categories. But look at what we have done. We have merely shifted the implied semantics from a hierarchy of taxons to the act of assignment of atomic categories to the image. The hidden implicit semantics are still there, and the result of set logic on it will be just as fallacious if we compare sets of different types. So the category tree is not the source of the fundamental flaw at all, as the atomicists would have you believe. Actually, the fundamental issue is even older than the particular detail of category intersections. You can see recognition of the problem of informal semantics all the way back to inception of commons and categories. This informality I think was in part the motivation behind Eloquence's interest in development of semantic wiki software at the Omega project. BTW- Although I applaud the guts and wish those following that approach well, I do not advocate or favor the attempt to make these relations explicit. In a nutshell, I favor natural language.-J JMesserly (talk) 09:07, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, yeah. I'd argue that "1881 deaths" is pretty atomic. As it looses all meaning if you split it further. In any case it seems like a waste of time to rediscuss what pretty much all other image archive/stockphotography websites have found to be the superior system: tag based categorization. Neither will you be able to cram every possible bit of information about a subject of a picture into the tag set, nor should you. You'd eventually be duplicating the information content of Wikipedia. Putting the deaths of subjects as tags is already borderline. --Dschwen (talk) 17:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Right. Larger topic that one (search on a restricted vocabulary). I don't see why we have to focus on zero sum game unitary solutions so much. Many ways paths to buddhahood and all that. The more pathways to the media in the repository, the better. One is not necessarily mutually exclusive of the other. People like Categories because they are high precision. They like galleries because they have even less recall- selecting the best of the best. They like search on restricted vocabularies (eg flickr) because they have better recall (more results, though false positives). Returning to the subject of this thread, the point was to report results that concerns one proposition that it turns out is an urban myth. Categories that apparently represent a set intersection of two categories cannot be replaced by a mechanism that promises to dynamically generate such intersections. Along the way I realized what is probably an elementary proposition to someone who regularly uses stuff like first order logic. There are those who say that a mechanism that did category intersections would make categories like category:New Orleans in the 1890s obsolete. It's a false notion. The limitations of logic say that such mechanism can produce valid results only for categories of the same semantic type. -J JMesserly (talk) 16:57, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, but it is not helping to paint a wrong picture of cat intersections just to tear it down. It would rather be helpful to explain how and under which circumstances they would work. The straightforward approach would be taking each tag/category to mean The image shows .... Then you apply a test: can the tag you are about to add be described via The image shows ... and it shows .... If so, then the tag is not atomic (i.e. The image shows a Railroad bridge can be The image shows a railroad and the image shows a bridge). We'd then have a consistent system describing what our images a showing. Demanding that we should encode encyclopedic data on our images (i.e. biographies of people) is just unrealistic. We could never keep up with that goal. You just have to draw a line somewhere. --Dschwen (talk) 17:38, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, well I certainly agree. If anyone interpreted my remarks as seeking to light a funeral pyre for intersections, then they need to understand that most definitely was not my meaning. It would be a useful mechanism to have as a wikitext function call eg #intersect:cat 1|cat 2|... The desirability of listing such intersections on a page or for particular templates could be determined on a case by case basis. If you are proposing that there be a vocabulary of "tags" (not categories) that have new rules of correctness, then that seems fine too. You probably need to look closer at those rules if you want intersections to have high precision. As for the "demand that we encode encyclopedic data on our images", that is also a proposal that I do not I favor. Tangentially, I admit I do favor making categories accessible to non english speaking visitors by somehow encoding summary statements on the meaning of the category in a hidden way. But we are talking about a topic statement extracted via Bot, which could be whittled down by editors to just the likely search terms and could be made invisible so it wouldn't clutter a cat page. This sort of thing would be a partial response to the "Category in English" issue and would make Commons' media available to multilingual users via engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN search. But that is tangential. A subject for perhaps a different day. -J JMesserly (talk) 18:20, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Without reading the entire discussion above in detail, I'd say a major problem seems to be confusion between what tools like category intersection can achieve with our current category set, and what they could accomplish if we recategorized our content to make full use of them. At the moment, as I'm sure everyone here has noticed, our categories make for lousy atomic tags; they're also not very good at forming a consistent hierarchy. Indeed, they're really neither fish nor fowl, with no semantic relationships that can be reliably inferred beyond "A has something to do with B". They're reasonably useful for casual browsing, and for finding more images that show the same (or a related) thing as a given image — but for anything more automated than that, they suck.

This is IMO mostly because there's currently little incentive for the casual human editors who actually do the bulk of the categorization work to keep the categories useful for automated tools. I do continue to hope that, if we some day finally get a good, easy and efficient category intersection (or more generally, category set algebra) tool integrated into the MediaWiki interface, people will start to make use of it by recategorizing images in a more atomic fashion. Until then, we're kind of stuck with what we have.

(Ps. The problem with categories like "1881 deaths" is that, as used on Wikipedia, that category name is really shorthand for "people who died in 1881", which is indeed an atomic property. (Okay, you could split it into "people" and "things that died in 1881", but that'd be splitting hairs.) However, a picture that in fact showed (or an article that documented) an actual "1881 death" — that is, a picture taken in 1881 that showed someone dying — could indeed be meaningfully tagged with "1881" and "deaths", and one would, in a properly maintained atomic tagging system, expect the intersection of those two tags to retrieve all such images.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 00:04, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I reiterate my support for getting category intersections as a wikitext feature. My point is only that the challenges are significant and it should be appreciated that there is a significant body of research on the subject. So called "atomic categories" are a case of what in the literature is known as search on restricted vocabularies. Various, and sometimes quite elaborate set operations can be validly applied on the restricted vocabularies, but results are unreliable if the vocabulary is not rigorously applied with the restrictions that make such operations valid. Ilmari notes the problems of casual use of categories, and this same theme was sounded in my comment concerning the authoritarian enforcement necessary for such a restricted vocabulary. A death is fairly unambiguous, most terms are not of this class, but there would have to be rules on everyday terms such as what is and is not properly considered a "house". Besides the pedantic sorts of controversies this will ignite, whichever way the community decided there would be a right and wrong way of applying the tags and would have to be enforced to a far greater degree than that in force for categories. The authoritarian structure required would conflict with the wiki way of doing things. So I think the hope of a high precision mechanism may remain elusive, not from a technology perspective, but from a process perspective. As an implementation detail, it may be that the server load for such set operations would be high. Pages using a wikitext function like #catintersect will have their caches' invalidated every time anyone adds to an unrelated page the category mentioned by their #catintersects. If the functionality delivers on its promise of easier navigation for users, it will be widely used. But with wide use of the function, very large numbers of pages could be perpetually invalid, defeating the purpose of the cache. Of course, cat interects might be implemented as a form of search- eg a Catscan just on this restricted set of tags, but that would run into the problem of restricted vocabularies- users don't understand which terms are valid in the restricted vocabulary, may not understand the restricted sense of those terms therefore find it difficult to use. -J JMesserly (talk) 18:02, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't expect it to be quite so bad. Sure, people, being people, will make mistakes, and so sometimes files will be miscategorized and sometimes the category boundaries may not make sense, but, well... that's what we have now, and people still seem to find the system useful. So your search for pictures of houses also turns up some garden sheds and some pictures of a guy who plays a doctor on TV — so what? Fix them yourself or just ignore it and let someone else fix them. Fortunately, such mistakes, though easy to make, are also, with enough eyeballs, easy enough to spot and fix. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:43, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe not. I think my poor examples caused you to miss my meaning. Language is by nature polysemous. Controlled vocabularies are not. The implications of these differences present the rocks upon which this sort of approach has foundered in the past. I am giving you a nutshell description of a large body of research, but in sum, I reiterate I am not against adding this sort of functionality, just that you shouldn't attempt to trivialize the challenges, or overestimate the scope of the functionalities such a mechanism could replace. Although it has drifted into the theoretical, that is the general drift of this thread- to point out that cat intersections present no silver bullet, but another path among many to the mountain top. -J JMesserly (talk) 16:16, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Information change

Hi everyone, {{Information}} is changed. The fields source and date are now parsed by a template which tries to show the field in the users interface language. If you see any strange behaviour please report it here. For the people who are curious how this works, the templates to make this possible are {{Parse source}}, {{Own}}, {{ISOdate}} & {{Date}}. Multichill (talk) 17:49, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R67029A, Polen, deutsche Soldaten, junge Frau.jpg has strange date. --Jarekt (talk) 04:12, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

February 7

Change of class name

I have requested a change of name of a class, "description", used in {{Discussion}}. Please see the background at Template talk:Information#Clash of classes, and comment there to centralise discussion. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (talk) 20:28, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

What are the costs and benefits? Would templates have to be changed that used this class? How many and which? The template talk on Information template is unclear- what is the benefit of this effort? -J JMesserly (talk) 16:22, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

February 9

User:Elvanino

Hi to all,
All contributions of this user seem to be full of vandalism (no description, date or source replaced by groups of letters). There is no description and most pictures seem to have been uploaded from the Web. He also uploaded pictures already on Commons. I think all these pictures should be suppressed rapidly and the user blocked. Moumou82 (talk) 19:11, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

 Done, uploads are with high certainty copyvios. I did a quick browsing through the uploads and encountered meta data from about 6 different professional cameras. Also, resolution varies a lot and the images didn't have descriptions. This all points to the images definitely not being made by Elvanino. I nuked the uploads and left the user a warning on the talk page. 2 weeks should be ample time to read COM:L. Thanks for reporting and best regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 19:57, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Supercategories of "Museums"

I noticed a new supercategory (Category:Heritage) added recently to Category:Museums, didn't like it (is that really an appropriate category for a planetarium, for example?), but noticed that pretty much every other supercategory already there has similar issues. If I had clarity on what to do, I'd just change them, but I don't and I'm here seeking other opinions. Right now, Category:Museums is in Category:Entertainment venues, Category:Culture, Category:Education buildings, and Category:Heritage. Any better suggestions? - Jmabel ! talk 21:29, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

February 10

Fir0002 - copyright issue

I just came upon this template. First is appears to release the image under the GNU documentation licence, but then qualifies this by saying, "If you are a (commercial) publisher and you want me to write you an email or paper mail giving you permission to use my works in your products or a license with the terms of your choice, please email me to negotiate terms. However please note that some of my images are of people and buildings (eg the War Memorial) which I can't give permission to use due to personality and copyrights."

Is the apparent attempt to restrict commercial use valid? If the answer is yes - and I think it is - than all this user's images have questionable copyright status. Blue-Haired Lawyer (talk) 16:43, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

This is perfectly valid. The addendum does not restrict commercial use. People are still free to use his images under the GFDL. Many commercial publishers however prefer to pay money and be freed of the GFDL restrictions (like printing the license text). --Dschwen (talk) 17:00, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Your TUSC verification was not successful. Aborting.

Having worked some time without problems with the Move-to-commons assistant, I have since two days the problem that I get the message "Your TUSC verification was not successful. Aborting". In my opinion it is certainly not because of a wrong userid or password. What could be the problem? Wouter (talk) 10:36, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

• I get this problem when "direct upload" is ticked. Noodle snacks (talk) 10:58, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

For me it is also when "direct upload" is ticked. Wouter (talk) 12:50, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Also see #TUSC login problem. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 13:33, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I've put a note on all of Magnus' talk pages I could get a hold of;-) In case someone spots him on IRC, make sure to let him know too ;-) --X-Weinzar (talk) 15:26, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Object IDs

Am I the only one to see "object IDs" instead of page names for the pages in Category:Pollination? --Eusebius (talk) 12:31, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

No problems here. Abigor talk 12:36, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I had the same problem with Category:Municipalities_in_Trentino. Doing a reload of the page in the browser Firefox showed then the "normal" names. Wouter (talk) 12:45, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, temporary then. --Eusebius (talk) 12:48, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Same problem occured on DE-WP (Thread and screenshot). Should be fixed according to people who understand more about this stuff then I do ;-) See also: bugzilla:17207 --X-Weinzar (talk) 15:23, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I had the same problem when viewing and changing some categories on en.wiki. It was only temporary and appears to be a known bug.-Andrew c (talk) 17:26, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Category:Churches in Belgium

Hello. I would like to ask the opinion of the community about the way to manage Category:Churches in Belgium, which presently contains 2,777 files and 192 subcats and is consequently quite difficult to use. After discussing with Foroa and LimoWreck, I discovered that the present situation was the consequence of a former discussion. So I made a new proposition here. Your comments would be appreciated. Thank you. BrightRaven (talk) 18:17, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Technical display problem

Does it show?

Can anybody work out why the embedded bitmap in this SVG map isn't displaying? (see also here and here.) The gallery thumbnail here displays fine. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:42, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I have a feeling it may be too big for the png renderer. Globbet (talk) 00:30, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

The strange thing is, it used to display fine in the beginning. Was the SVG renderer changed recently? Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:34, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Problem partially solved by uploading a raster version. Sting (talk) 20:13, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Multilingual search on cats- any objections to this sort of approach?

I am proposing a bot run to add multilingual descriptions to categories so that our english categories are accessible from other languages. Any suggestions for what tree of categories this trial bot run be applied to are welcome, otherwise I will run it on subcats of Category:Electronic components. I imagine only a hundred or so categories would be affected, and the bot would add a hidden category so that the information could be easily removed by a subsequent bot run. This will be a low nuber of pages bot run and prior to larger runs i will establish a separate account, apply for a bot flag and conduct volume runs. Any volume runs would of course be announced here at least a week in advance.

Example: Category:Shenzhou 7. (please feel free to edit to change how you'd like the infobox). With this sort of addition, if some guy google searches on spacecraft in chinese or tamil, they have a way of discovering that there may be relevant media on Shenzhou 7 in our repository. Thumbs up or down?

Note that although google has not crawled this page, it can be verified that search on such text in collapsed infoboxes on wikipedia does generate search hits.

Operation of the bot: basically it would just follow interwikis from the en article corresponding to the cat, lift the first sentence and paste it in the infobox. -J JMesserly (talk) 18:43, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I would have no objections at all in making files more easily searchable in other languages, however is there anyway of making the template box either invisible or more discreet. It would have less effect on categories with a few more images, but to me its both ugly and distracting in its present guise.KTo288 (talk) 23:36, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I think that is about as minimized as the infobox comes, I could remove the color to make it more discreet. EG:

How about that? Any refinements? -J JMesserly (talk) 23:59, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Better, but why does it need a box at all, even if the text was invisible a spider should still be able to come across it and maske a note of it. The only reason to have a box would be to let people know that it exists and allow people to add to it if need be. Maybe a small icon in the side menu would be sifficient, a miniature tower of Babel?KTo288 (talk) 18:54, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

This seems to be a reduplication of what Sum-it-up does, but in bot form, no? http://toolserver.org/%7Emagnus/commons_sumitup.php --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 01:48, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Right. Bot form, and only for cats- Also I am doing just the first one or two sentences, not the first para. I'd prefer the first paragraph though. Is everyone is amenable to that change? If so, then we'll go with the sum it up functionality. It's all collapsed box so it's not any more of a hit to the default cat page. BTW- Not my idea at all. Duesentrieb suggested the interwiki following method I dunno- 3 years ago as I recall. I'm just volunteering to run the bot, and propose a collapsed navbox to encapsulate them. Probably should nuke the vde edit thing on the infobox since it is useless. -J JMesserly (talk) 02:54, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

On second thought, some of these could get rather long. Most cultures regard the famous emperors as important material, so here is a killer example. category:Augustus using sum it up data (refs culled). -J JMesserly (talk) 03:33, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Category:Augustus is a good example of how bad it can get... What I often find more useful are links from Wikipedia to Commons. Samulili (talk) 06:28, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

There are currently 265 different wikipedia's. By the time you get them all (which will comme unavoidably), one will has to scroll through several pages and wait a long time for download. Therefore, I would strongly suggest to give priority to the interwiki based documentation (why I have a higher priority for compact IW's to articles, I think that a second block of IW's to categories would be nice but much more volatile). Alternatively, there might be a jump block on the top of the category display that allows to jump to the documentation either on the very bottom of a category or on a subpage. We should pay attention to keep the navigation swift, especially when considering the navigation is already a weak point in Commons but still one of the two main search tools. --Foroa (talk) 07:49, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

It would already be a big help if the search function could target interwiki's, which I believe it does not. --Foroa (talk) 07:52, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, interwikis are good. Samulili (talk) 08:26, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with need for international searching, but feel that those potentially enormous templates in each category are not the right solution. I like Foroa and Samulili (and others) idea to use interwiki based search. First some robot should be constantly updating interwikis and every link from commons to wikipedia should also add a interwiki link from wikipedia back to commons. (Is {{Commonscat}} still the only way to do that, or is there some interwiki way to add links to commons?). And second our search should be using those interwiki links. For example I looked at Category:Carpenters, picked russian name "Плотник" and search for it - with no results. So Foroa is right, our search engine do not include interwikis and need to be fixed. A bot automatically fixing all those interwiki links would also add link to polish wiki article Stolarz, so this search would also find Category:Carpenters.--Jarekt (talk) 14:03, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

(undent)Ok, it seems like a completely reasonable approach to rip this material out via bot when the hoped for interwiki search materializes. Note however this is not a new subject and people have been talking and waiting a long time for this already. In the meantime, what is being proposed? The rest of the world will just have to learn english? Acknowledging people use external searchers to get to Commons is not bad, acknowledging that visitors may need to use external searchers to navigate commons in the meantime is also not bad. It's just practical. Not to do so has the effect of concealing ourselves from a world of people hungry for knowledge typing in search expressions in languages it has not been convenient for us to support. What this proposal does is enlarge the bulls eye portion of the dart boards that external searchers hit on. Deliberately keeping the bullseye small and in english is deliberately excluding people of other languages. We know the weaknesses of our search- that is why we provide links to other searchers from our search results page. Recognizing the valid objections above (after all, I deliberating created the Augustus example to illustrate this weakness), I ask: Are there any objections to the following proposal to provide multilingual search for commons in the interim?

• no paragraph descriptions 1 or 2 sentence max, depending on length of sentence.
• when the volume of hidden text exceeds a threshold for a topic, only the more common languages are prepresented. The threshold and number of languages is set my community agreement.
• these navboxes are deprecated and expunged from commons when other mechanisms have made them obsolete.

How does that sound? -J JMesserly (talk) 15:50, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

If there are then no further objections, before this slips off the bottom of village pump page, my plan is to proceed with a small volume (hundred or so cat pages) as a test and report back when it is finished. If the reaction is thumbs down, I will run the bot to reverse the changes. I will wait for further comment on this proposal for 5 days otherwise I shall proceed with the small test. -J JMesserly (talk) 02:56, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

 Oppose for the reasons above and for the following additional reasons:

• You cannot exclude a language for another, this is can only lead to discrimination as there are no important or least important language groups
• there are other suggested solutions (re-explained below) that are far less intrusive
• priority should be given to interwiki's and they should not be undersnowed by big templates or text boxes on top of the category pages. We have already more than sufficient annoying boxes on top of the category pages.
• you might as well implement something that can stay

Technically, there is not much difference by creating a subpage, for example categoryname/description, where you can put whatever you like to. I would suggest:

• On the category page a one line English text and a link to the description subpage
• On the description subpage, a link to the category page. I would suggest in a first round to extract all the IW's from the main page, from there the first sentence of the referenced article.

That way, the search goal is met without being too much intrusive and hindering almost all users by big displays and downloads. Only unexperienced users and users that pass the first time on the category need that kind of information. --Foroa (talk) 06:50, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

All languages other than english are excluded now, I was proposing a middle ground to incrementally get to the goal of full expression. Farao proposes an interesting alternative way of going about it. Unless there are objections, I will proceed with a small volume test demonstrating his proposal. Presumably we can get some boilerplate text in each language to tell the user unfamiliar with commons what they need to click on to see the main category page. -J JMesserly (talk) 16:46, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

For now, until the UI can be properly translated, I do oppose. Imho, at the moment, interwikis are the best solution. Samulili (talk) 07:50, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand, probably due to the brevity of the response. Are you saying you are also opposed to the Foroa idea of using subpages as well? I think that is what you are saying, so I ask if you could go along with a pilot test of a hundred or so articles to see if this might deliver some value. It would be reversable and I will tidy up after trial if the community decided against going forward with it. Regarding the "interwikis are the best solution", if I understand correctly, you are not describing a functionality that allows to users from global searchers to find Commons content from other languages. Isn't that correct? So are you saying that it is better to have nothing in the meantime? I don't understand why less functionality is ever better, especially when there are very minimal negative consequences. Perhaps that is where I am missing your meaning? What are the negative consequences of doing it this way until better methods show up? -J JMesserly (talk) 18:50, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Association Wikimedia Foundation in Belgium?

In the Dutch [Auteursrechtencafé] and the French[Legifer], the topic Freedom of Panorama in Belgium has been discussed. The Belgium copyright law doesn't clearly say that there is a freedom of panorama, as this seems to be clearly stated for Germany. This means that formally no photos of statues and buildings may be uploaded on Commons unless the artist or archtect is more than 70 years dead. The best would be in my opinion to have the law changed so that the freedom of panorama is clearly mentioned. One option is that someone in Belgium has the right contacts to convince people to take action to change that law. The other - and possibly best - option is that a local association of the [Wikimedia Foundation] does that. Unfortunately there is no association in Belgium as there are in [France] and the [Netherlands]. Is there anyone who wants to take the initiative?
I have put this message here because probably more people from Belgium will see this. Wouter (talk) 13:52, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, they are establishing a local chapter in Belgium though. ViperSnake151 (talk) 20:11, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I did not know that and will have a look. The structure of the pages of Wikimedia are very confusing for me. For example I would expect that I could find [Wikimedia Belgium] starting from [Wikimedia organisation], but I will find it out. Wouter (talk) 21:16, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

EXIF-like info

Hi, is there a "normalized" way of displaying EXIF-like info in the information template (or somewhere else) when they are not present in the JPEG (like for HDR merges or pano stitching)? --Eusebius (talk) 14:36, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't quite understand what you want to do. Do you want to put EXIF data in an image that does not have any? Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 14:51, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry if I wasn't clear. Let's say I make an HDR merge of three pictures, I upload it. EXIF info about camera settings is not available anymore in the resulting picture, but I have it anyway and want to provide it. I'm only asking whether there is a standard way to display it on the image page (like an ad hoc template). I'm not talking about modifying the resulting picture, but if you think it's a good thing to do and know how to, tell me! --Eusebius (talk) 15:07, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Use exiftool to re-add the EXIF data to the final pano/HDR/whatever before uploading. Then the file has EXIF data, and it'll be displayed automatically. Lupo 15:13, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, good. Thanks. --Eusebius (talk) 15:24, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I was about to recommend Exiv2, but Lupo's tool seems to do basically the same. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 15:56, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Another way is to use {{Photo Information}} to manually add info usually found in exif data. --Jarekt (talk) 16:19, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

February 13

TUSC login problem

I've tried using Flickr2Commons a couple of times but it's telling my "TUSC verification failed." I'm just using my normal username and password. Is any/everyone else having this problem? Richard001 (talk) 09:40, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Did you already take a tusc account? Because your wikimedia and tusc account is not the same thing. Check this page Abigor talk 09:52, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes. I have transferred almost 300 images from Flickr using TUSC. Richard001 (talk) 21:35, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

BTW, several users were reporting TUSC problems on IRC yesterday. So this might indeed be a server-side issue. Regards. -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 11:39, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Any updates on this issue? Also having trouble right now. The user contributions of User:File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske) suggest it has been broken completely since Saturday. --X-Weinzar (talk) 03:05, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

It's a pity that obviously nobody cares about this topic. --Scooter (talk) 10:42, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

It's working for me now. Richard001 (talk) 01:17, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Rollback

What would everyone think about enabling the rollbacker group and the rollback feature? It's a useful feature for vandalism reverts and, since edit wars are not a big issue on Commons, there is really no downside to it. There could either be a request for rollback process similar to what en has, it could be an ad hoc process where you request it from an individual admin or on COM:AN, or rollback could simply be given automatically to every auto-confirmed user. The upside is reverting vandalism is faster. The downside is ... nothing. --UserB (talk) 21:28, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

•  Support- I support this idea, it will help fighting vandalism. Abigor talk 21:59, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support Also consider combining it with the Account Creator feature from enwiki or the auto-patrol feature from the Nordic wiki. MBisanz ^talk 02:51, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Comment I would oppose giving it automatically to any auto-confirmed user. Handing it out on request would be fine with me. Lupo 08:33, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

  +1 sугсго 10:17, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

•  Comment - I still support but admins must give the right to users and the must not just get it when the are autoconfirmed. Abigor talk 10:41, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Neutral This tool is often considered, when “badly” used, as an “abuse of admin tools”. I can't foresee the consequences of the use of this tool for “everyone”. →Diti the penguin — 10:51, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support, rollback is possible for every user by editing older revisions, this is only a shortcut. --Martin H. (talk) 11:30, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support with request required. --Joku Janne^(Fi) (Wikiwiki) 12:31, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Comment What is principal difference with undo? Popup with same functionality script is also available. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:49, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

  EugeneZelenko, with the undo it isn't possible to revert a lot of edits at once. It would make vandal fighting much more easy. Abigor talk 17:27, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

  In fact, it is, but I guess you need more clicks. You have to do Compare versions between the last edit and the good one, and then undo. The other downside is that you have to fill in the edit comment manually, but at least it allows "normal" users to revert vandalism. --Tryphon (talk) 17:42, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

•  Support Very useful for mass-vandalism from single IPs. PeterSymonds (talk) 16:14, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Comment This might require structural changes in terms of access rights and its management. A comparaison/trade-off with pop-up tools or some sort of trusted user state that gives access to pop-ups or special scripts might be much lighter to implement, manage and maintain. --Foroa (talk) 16:20, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

  Can't it be just like Flickr reviewer? A little vote and than it would be given. But first we have to decide if we activate this after that we have to discuss the policy. Abigor talk 17:27, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

  Foroa, how do you intend to contain access to JavaScript? There are browser plugins allowing you to oad any javascript you like. Preventing access to scripts cannot be done with the MediaWiki permission management. I don't see where the problem with adding a rollback user group lies. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 18:48, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

•  Support I oppose giving it to all autoconfirmed user. Otherwise the proposal seems fine so a support from me. --Kanonkas_(talk) 19:10, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support Majorly ^talk 19:34, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
• Support handing it out by request. Finn Rindahl (talk) 19:37, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

  Eliminate layers of bureaucracy, give it to any autoconfirmed user. Bastique ^demandez 19:49, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

  Cary, Vandals can also be Autoconfirmed, I don't think that is such a great idea. Abigor talk 19:51, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

  Users could be autopromoted to rollbackers with stricter requeriments :P Platonides (talk) 22:08, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

  A vandal could install a javascript rollback tool, too. The risk from rollback is no higher. I think in a multilinqual environment, automatically assigning rollback is helpful from the standpoint of someone who only speaks an obscure language not having to find an admin in their language to give them the privilege. I don't have an overly strong opinion, though - I'm content as long as the permission exists, whatever the standards for assignment are. --UserB (talk) 00:54, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

•  Support. Page Commons:Requests for rollback might be good for this. — str4nd ☕ 14:22, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support activating the feature like on enwiki,  Oppose autopromoting. →Na·gy 19:53, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support definitely. --Meno25 (talk) 19:10, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
• Should be grantable by admins on request, include the autopatrol and rollback permissions, but not the markbotedits permission. If we're going to grant is with autoconfirmed, then it should not include the autopatrol or markbotedits permissions - just rollback.  — Mike.lifeguard 20:52, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

FYI: As it seems pretty clear that we want to have rollback, I have created a proposal on Commons:Rollback. I tried to address the concerns about too many users automatically being autopromoted and put in pretty high criteria for autopromotion. I'd appreciate it if you could comment on Commons talk:Rollback to see what direction we want to be going with this. Best regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 18:05, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

there's gotta be a better way...

Can we just hide Nominate for Deletion to anons or make it impossible for anons to fully complete a deletion request? I'm getting tired of generic IP "this is porn and porn is bad" nominations. ViperSnake151 (talk) 20:50, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

We probably could, but we shouldn't. That they;re wrong is no reason to bite them. It takes very little effort to close the DR. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:00, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

On the other hand, it can be annoying that deletion nominations which are clearly without merit, and which have given rise to minimal or no discussion, sometimes hang around for months and months ... AnonMoos (talk) 09:36, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

February 12

Question about photos at a photo booth given out to partygoers

I am in contact with a flickr user that has photos on her flickr account, marked under "all rights reserved". (I am in communication with her so that hopefully she will change the licensing tags on a photo to CC-BY or CC-BY-SA). She informed me that she obtained the photo because it was given out to her at a party, it is a photo of her and a group of her friends. The company that paid for the party hired a photographer who manned a party photo booth, and photos were given out to the partygoers. If this flickr user agrees to change the tag for the photo at flickr to CC-BY, can I upload it here to Commons? Thank you for your time, Cirt (talk) 03:52, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

No, as it is pretty certain that the photographer did not give her the rights to release the image under a free license. If we want to use this, we would need the photographer's permission. Besides, what do we need an image of a few girls at a party for? We have plenty of that stuff and can get even more on Flickr, if needed. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 08:26, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

In answer to your second part: Multiple people in the photo are notable and have their own en.wikipedia entries already, some without a free-use image. As for the first part, I will see about attempting to contact the photographer. Thanks, Cirt (talk) 10:42, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Under "work-for-hire" provisions of U.S. copyright law (if the event took place in the U.S.), there's a possibility that the company that hired the photographer would own the copyright, not the photographer. But definitely not the persons photographed... AnonMoos (talk) 09:32, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Images by User:Jens-Uwe Ritter

Hi! I'd like to ask the community whether the images by User:Jens-Uwe Ritter are within the scope of Commons. They are free but are they realistically useful for any educational purpose? I have left Jens-Uwe a message and hope he will come here and express his opinion. Naturally, if we are to delete these images, I think we should give Jens-Uwe enough time to transfer the images somewhere else, like Flickr. Samulili (talk) 15:41, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Regardles of whether or not the images should be deleted, his gallery page clearly has to go (be deleted or moved out of main namespace to a sub-page of his user page), unless he's personally notable or newsworthy... AnonMoos (talk) 09:39, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Couldn't he go as artist? --Túrelio (talk) 10:02, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

"Taken with..." categories

We have categories for pictures by camera model. These categories look a bit technical to me, should they were hidden? Currently, some are, some aren't. --Eusebius (talk) 15:56, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Sure. It is about time that we agree about what should be hidden categories (camera, user, maintenance, source ...) and what not. We better translate that in Commons policy because I am tired to see those hidden modifications back and forward. So better go for a global policy campaign ? --Foroa (talk) 16:11, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Everything except topic categories hidden? Multichill (talk) 17:01, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

What's a topic cat then? Should births/deaths by year be hidden? --Eusebius (talk) 17:42, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

That's by definition a topic cat I think, see Commons:Categories#Major_categories. It is source, license, type and user that should be hidden. Finn Rindahl (talk) 18:08, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the link... I rarely go there :-) But what about cats that are descendents of several major cats? I think there are many between topic and media, especially for audio and video (see the subcats of Category:Audiobooks). Another "newbie" question, if a file is categorized only with hidden cats, will it be detected by the bots? --Eusebius (talk) 19:07, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I think camera categories should be visible. When I'm buying a camera, I seek out pictures taken by the models I'm considering. I don't think our "average" suer will know to look for hidden categories. Andy Mabbett (talk) 20:33, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

They could always just look at flickr. -mattbuck (Talk) 20:50, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

We had this discussion already on January 11 (see Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2009Jan#Category:Hidden categories), but some of the basic points were not decided. To repeat some of my points:

IMHO Category:Hidden categories should contain maintenance categories like:

1. categories related to license templates like Category:CC-BY-SA-2.0-ES
2. categories related to informative templates like Category:Attribution metadata from licensed image or Category:Media with locations
3. maintenance categories like Category:Malformed deletion requests
4. user specific categories like Category:Archives by D-Kuru or Category:Files by ABF

and it should not include categories related to:

1. camera used like Category:Taken with Canon EOS 40D
2. software used to create the image like Category:Created with Hugin
3. photographers (even if not famous) like Category:Photographs by Marek and Ewa Wojciechowscy
4. species like Category:Species of Asteraceae
5. sources or collections category:Images from the Library of Congress or category:Images from the New York Public Library

The last group contains categories that outside users might want to search by or a Wiki articles link to. Such users might not know that they have to change their preferences to see all the categories an image belongs to.

May be we should bundle some of those more technical types of categories (related to camera, software, photographer or source) into a "tree" and mark images which were categorized only with those categories as {{Uncategorized}}. I assume that is already happening with images categorized only with Category:Hidden categories or Category:Meta categories. --Jarekt (talk) 21:51, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

What would be the difference to you between a "not famous photographer" and a Commons user taking photographs? --Eusebius (talk) 22:38, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure where I would draw a line. On one hand I like to easily find other pictures by a photographer (taken by, not uploaded by). That is often the best way to find related pictures. So I would like to keep all of the photographer categories together. On the other hand some of the Category:User categories are clearly for maintenance purposes and should stay hidden. May be use something similar to (any) wikipedia notoriety threshold. --Jarekt (talk) 18:51, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Agree. To me, the second part of the list, except species, should be hidden and only unhidden categories should count as "categorized". --Foroa (talk) 08:40, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

I was actually arguing for keeping them un-hidden, but there should be some separate tag / category to mark categories which do not make image "cetegorized". That tag should be independent from hidden/not-hidden tag. --Jarekt (talk) 19:05, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Video

To repost a question I have jotted down on my user page: Should we have a (non-redirect) page Commons:Video? I suppose I could also say the same thing for Commons:Audio. I imagine such pages would be useful additions, but just that nobody has got around to making them. If you do think we should have them, please throw some ideas out on what they should contain.

Also related to video, should video files always be uploaded in highest resolution like pictures? I say this because the high quality videos I have taken are about 1 megabyte per second, which, no doubt, makes for very big, very bandwidth hogging files. Richard001 (talk) 04:30, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Public Domain or not ?

hello,

Is this file really into the public domain ? I don't find any licence on the Declare Yourself website, and I have no results with a Google search on it. Perhaps a person with a better english than mine could contact them to know if we can really import all these photos on Commons under a free licence. Thank you (and sorry for my really poor english). Okki (talk) 05:15, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

You are right, I couldn't find any information about the images being PD on the source website either. I tagged the image as missing permission, hopefully the author can provide a link to a permission statement on the site. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 08:50, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Not referenced

By chance I found what seems to be the original of this File:Barzini&Borghese.jpg in this Gutenberg Project article: [17] or a more direct link here: [18], about 80% down the page, with the title: "Prins Scipio Borghese te Berlijn". Should that reference not be mentioned with the picture? --JohannesJ (talk) 14:55, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Providing more relevant source information is always good... AnonMoos (talk) 17:21, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Default our search box to "Search" instead of "Go"

If you go to Whoopi Goldberg you won't find this.

If you enter in the search box Whoopi Goldberg you come across the same page you find wikified. It looks like we only have three images of Goldberg. In reality, we have five - my two. This is a common problem on Commons that in all my years here has never been rectified. Many of us do not organize our work on this site by pages--I'm not the only one. We use categories. Experienced users may know to check the Category:Whoopi Goldberg at the bottom of the Whoopi Goldberg page, but we aim to be more than a place just for Wikipedia and experienced users. We want to be a useful repository. We aren't particularly useful when people will assume that what we have on a page is all we have got to offer.

There's a solution: The search default should not be set to "Go" but should be defaulted to "Search", so that a search actually turns up a plethora of files, categories and pages. It's a simple solution for a problem that is unlikely to be solved by community campaigning against the sole use of categories, as opposed to the more labor-intensive act of having to go to every page for which there also exists a category. Why don't we make this small change in our search box? --David Shankbone (talk) 06:30, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

•  Support I support this proposal. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 06:51, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support, good idea. Cirt (talk) 09:48, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support --AFBorchert (talk) 10:55, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support thanks for explaining what GO does, I thought it was our version of Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. Do we need it? --Jarekt (talk) 13:12, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

  I think the "GO" is a media-wiki feature that made sense for Wikipedia, which would logically be organized around the concept of pages/articles, but it is not useful for the file searches conducted on Commons. It will take a developer to make the change. I actually think removing the "Go" feature would be fine, but the more important issue would be to just have the "Search" button be the default when someone presses "Enter" after they type in "Whoopi Goldberg" (to keep with the example). --David Shankbone (talk) 18:58, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

•  Support →Diti the penguin — 14:26, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support makes a lot of sense. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:18, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support. Second that. makes sense for commons. --Dschwen (talk) 19:13, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support --Mbdortmund (talk) 23:11, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support --Wuselig (talk) 23:45, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support --Slomox (talk) 01:10, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support, sure, but why is this at the Administrators' noticeboard and not the village pump? Multichill (talk) 11:29, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Oppose - Uhm... what if I want to go to Category:Whoopi Goldberg, as your example says. Or COM:VP - it will just search for it and not actually take me there. -mattbuck (Talk) 12:13, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
  • You could still get there, only you would need to click on "Go". The only difference is what happens when you hit Enter. Pruneau^talk 12:20, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
  • I don't understand the question. Category:Whoopi Goldberg is the second result in a "Search" (as opposed to "Go") for Whoopi Goldberg. Both options are still available; we are only talking about the default when a person hits "Enter" on their keyboard after typing in a search term. To see a more dramatic example, do the same searches with Counting Crows. --David Shankbone (talk) 14:32, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
    • I support the idea in its principle, but after Mattbuck's remark I'm quite worried about what will happen to the Firefox search engine, which I intensively use. I don't know on which mediawiki component it is plugged (nor how), but I certainly wouldn't like to get a search result when I can have something with a "go". --Eusebius (talk) 16:34, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
      • The Firefox search engine sends a direct request to the server and will not be affected. It's just the default for the search field here on the wiki, that will change. --Slomox (talk) 20:28, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
        • Conditional  Support - if it changes it to "Go" automatically if you enter a namespace, as Slomox suggested. -mattbuck (Talk) 01:44, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
          • See below --David Shankbone (talk) 02:02, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support Makes sense. Pruneau^talk 12:20, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support, though this poll should probably take place on the village pump instead. guillom 16:15, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support Fully support! Wouter (talk) 08:45, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Oppose sort of. I would propose to relabel the buttons to something like Search All and Go To Page. Once I figured out the current system I liked it. But it confused me for awhile. Changing the names on the buttons might allow the best of both worlds. There's still the issue of which to default to and I don't have a strong opinion as to which function it should default to. Maybe there should be a search box and a goto box. As it stands now labeling a box that defaults to an address entry box as search is going to lead to confusion.--Davefoc (talk) 07:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
•  Support BTW- renaming is a separate proposal and no linkage to this button default issue was established, so unless I am missed his point, the only oppose so far (Davefoc) is not really an oppose to this proposal. -J JMesserly (talk) 16:55, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Comments

As to Mattbuck's concern: With some Javascript it should be easy to look whether the user included a namespace in the search term. If a namespace is provided, this is indication, that the user wants to go to that specific page. The Javascript could decide whether to submit via "Go" or via "Search" based on whether a namespace is provided. --Slomox (talk) 20:36, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

• Unless I am misunderstanding: It should not automatically go to an Article page automatically if one is created. This is exactly the type of problem we are seeking to rectify. We want more comprehensive results than the current way the system is set up. Otherwise, what mattbuck is suggestion is the current system. We want people to find more, not less files when they search Commons - and taking them to an "Article" page on Commons is misleading them into thinking we have less. Now unless I am misunderstanding what mattbuck is saying, what he wants is exactly what most of us want to see changed. --David Shankbone (talk) 02:02, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

If I insert "Whoopi Goldberg" and press Enter I will be taken to the search. But if I insert "Category:Whoopi Goldberg" and press Enter I will be taken to the Category, cause with typing "Category:" I have made clear, that I don't want to do a general search for Whoopi Goldberg related stuff, but rather be taken to the specific page. That's what I mean. Namespace "0" will always go to the search, but if the user has explicitly specified a namespace, he will be taken directly to the page. --Slomox (talk) 03:17, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, definitely I don't have a problem with that, if possible. If it's not possible, it really should make little difference since it's a far more minor problem (essentially, a person needs to click their mouse one extra time) than the one we currently have with people having difficulty finding our files. --David Shankbone (talk) 03:49, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I have no real problem with it, but I would greatly appreciate when I enter a namespace prefix (I.e. "C:Whoopi Goldberg", "F:Whoopi Goldberg", "G:Whoopi Goldberg", search would be limited to respectively the category, file or gallery namespace. --Foroa (talk) 10:32, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree, but I'd prefer to deal with each issue separately so we don't sidetrack the issue under discussion. --David Shankbone (talk) 16:57, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Bugzilla

I placed the bug on Bugzilla. Abigor talk 21:27, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Problem with category on basic upload form ?

Is there a new problem with the basic upload form?

I uploaded a non trivial number of SVG images yesterday and even though I specifically selected a category on each one of them before clicking in the Upload button, not one of the category selections stuck. It was rather painful to have go and fix them all. (See here.)

Peet Ern (talk) 03:09, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Don't know what happend. I just tested it on IE6 and FF3, and it worked in both. No problems whatsoever. Lupo 08:05, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Pee Tern, did you press the OK button after you added a category? Multichill (talk) 22:28, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Should in fact even work if he didn't. If he submits the upload form without having clicked HotCat's OK-button first, HotCat will "click" the button for him. Only if he had a category name in the input field that was actually a disambiguation category would the name not have been taken, but I don't see any disambiguation categories in the vicinity of e.g. Category:15 (number). Lupo 22:42, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. I actually remember sometimes clicking Ok and sometimes not. I was using IE7 this tiem around. Looks like when I do some more I will just have to see what happens . . . Peet Ern (talk) 03:12, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

batch of 100,000 media files

I have downloaded over 100,000 media files from http://nasser.bibalex.org/ . These are egyptian public domain media files and can be uploaded to commons for educational purposes. I was wondering how I could upload them the most efficient way. The problem that arises is the description page of each media file, categorization and all the problems that were also with the german archives donation. So please can someone tell me how I would be going on uploading this the best way? I'd have no problem devoting all my bandwith for uploading these media files to commons for days ahead. --Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 19:11, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

For educational purposes? Files on commons must allow commercial use and modification. How are these files licensed?-Andrew c (talk) 23:45, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, you said public domain already, right? -Andrew c (talk) 23:46, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Please write to the webmaster of the site to make sure that all of these files are indeed in the public domain as you claim. I wrote to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina several weeks ago to ask whether they would accept to release under a free license the huge collection of photos and other media files available in the Memory of Modern Egypt Digital Archive. Their answer was pretty clear: "Referring to your e-mail, we do appreciate Wikimedia projects and encourage them and we would be glad to offer any possible support. Unfortunately, the BA cannot release the copyrights for Memory of Modern Egypt's photos. But you can still use them in your projects by inserting the link of any photo for the user to display." Only official documents of the Nasser era (such as texts of laws, regulations...) can be uploaded to Commons without problem, since they are ineligible for copyright protection in Egypt. The status of other files, notably photographs, is not quite as clear-cut. --BomBom (talk) 07:36, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

ALl pictures on nasser.bibalex.org and modernegypt.bibalex.org ar public domain media. The person who replied to you doesn't know the concept of PD and bibalex doesn't have the rights to license them otherwise. The PD-Egypt clearly states in Article 164 that works of applied art which was published before 1980 (25years) are public domain. All the images on both sites were published before that which is stated on the image description page. The images are probably from newspapers that were published then.--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 20:48, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Please do not be that dismissive towards the people working at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Their site devotes several pages to copyright issues, and it actually took them one week to provide me with a final reply, so they must have done some research before deciding that they did not have the rights to release the images into the public domain. In fact, I think that you are a little bit confused with regard to Egyptian law. The article you refer to deals with applied arts. Applied arts encompass things such as fashion design, interior design, etc... However, photography is NEVER considered part of applied arts; it is always considered part of fine arts. Article 140 of Egyptian law, which defines the types of works eligible for protection, makes it explicitly clear that "photographic and similar works" (item 10) and "works of applied and plastic arts" (item 11) are two separate categories. Moreover, please note that there has to be proof that the images were indeed published as you claim. I already had an Egypt-related featured list nomination fail at Wikipedia in large part because the images used could not be confirmed to be in the public domain in Egypt. Although some images in the Memory of Modern Egypt Digital Archive have a date of publication included in their description page, the overwhelming majority of them do not. Without a verifiable publication date, it is unfortunately not possible to confirm that an image is PD. In fact, it is likely that many images in the archive were never published before since a large part of the collection comes from privately donated photographs. In the case of nasser.bibalex.org, I read that his daughter donated a lot of private (and thus most likely unpublished) items. Such images may still be subject to copyright, hence the BA's reluctance to release them under a free license. Don't forget that creation is not publication, and that some extemely old photographs may still be copyrightable! Regards. --BomBom (talk) 21:30, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I guess you convinced me. It seems though that most of the images on Category:Gamal_Abdel_Nasser don't have enough information about it's source and publication to be PD-Egypt. Aside from that I don't know how but I will try to convince the bibalex to release their pictures under public domain as it is a public library funded by donations and it would therefore be nice if they donated some of these pictures like the National library of germany. Thanks for the comments.--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 11:50, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

February 15

Not sure where or how else to report this. A serial abuser and sockpuppet from Wikipedia, User Dominick1283, placed dozens of inauthentic images into cryptozoology articles. While going through the process of deleting them, I found that this user has uploaded many, many images to the commons as his own work. He has agreed to change the tags, but I'm still concerned that the images are copyvio. 66.142.52.106 03:03, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

• It has been taken care of, see COM:AN/U#Dominick1283. In general, you can report user problems on COM:AN/U, and for other stuff that requires admin attention, look at the sub-pages of COM:AN. --Tryphon (talk) 12:05, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Ogg/vorbis/theora encoding correct?

I used MediaCoder for this video. Could somebody check that it plays correctly (won't display in my browser) before I upload another, larger video? Cheers, Ottre 10:41, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

It's ok for me with Ubuntu Linux + Totem 2.24.3 for the player. Okki (talk) 11:21, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Works here too, with Firefox-3.0.6 on Mac OS X. --Tryphon (talk) 12:00, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

That's a relief. Just finished uploading File:ATA hydrogen fuel cell demo.ogg. Ottre 08:42, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Nonsense "Wikimedia Commons page User talk:Jarekt has been changed by ... " emails

I do not know if anybody else has this problem but today I got 13 emails notifying me about changes to my talk page (and page of my bot user:JarektBot) while no real changes occurred. En example of link from one such email: [19]. It seems like someone is playing with the notification bot while sending a ton of nonsense emails. --Jarekt (talk) 13:38, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Got it from my bot account too. The mails were about quite old diffs. --Eusebius (talk) 13:41, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I believe it's more likely that there are backlogs in e-mail notification. If so, that's even more disurbing than anyone playing around, because it means that the notification system isn't really working. Finn Rindahl (talk) 13:43, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm being flooded as well. MBisanz ^talk 13:55, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I've got over 260 e-mails at the moment, with at least over 50 (I guess over 100, but didn't count them) deleted. And they are still coming... That's really a massive spam, and it should be fixed ASAP, IMO. odder 13:57, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

So far I only got only 2 notifications of old diffs. But I noticed already several weeks ago that the notification system doesn't really work or notifies me very late. --AngMoKio (talk) 14:22, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

---

There's a message on wikitech-l posted by Tim Starling informing about that situation. Apparently the Wikimedia e-mail notification system had a backlog, and it's now "being cleared". So, people, be patient and just delete all those e-mails – that should be over in few hours. odder 14:24, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Add me to the list of people besieged. I have gotten hundreds of emails.--Davefoc (talk) 18:16, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Like some people would have noticed whe had a big job-queue and that made some backlogs, Special:DoubleRedirects and others like that wouldn't work either. The email system is also on the same job-queue and TimStarling fixed that today, so its started running again and sending all those emails. Its to bad we all got spammed but its good news that the jobqueue is working again :D Abigor talk 18:39, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Trouble getting copyright.

Hello,

I have uploaded 3 images (Wikimedia Commons) in relation to Arrow Karts which is a page I am working on.

I want to make them copyright images like this one - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pepsi_logo_2008.svg

I feel as though I have tried everything to achieve this with my images but I cannot figure it out. Can someone help me with this.

We (ArrowKarts) own these images so there is no violation etc... — Preceding unsigned comment added by ArrowKarts (talk • contribs) 03:36, 2009 February 11 (UTC)

This type of licensing is not permitted on commons. --Dschwen (talk) 03:53, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, how can I get copyright then, different wiki site? I want to be able to upload a image with copyright ability.--ArrowKarts (talk) 03:57, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

You never loose the copyright. On commons however we appreciate if you upload the images under free licenses. You can upload non-free images in en.wp, however, bear in mind that there must be a good rationale for using a non-free image. Allow me to make one comment: you will get publicity from these images, which is not a bad thing, but you might want to think about giving back in the form of freely licensed content. --Dschwen (talk) 05:20, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

If you release them under a free license you certainly lose the right to not have other people modify or make money from the image. You can release low resolution versions as a compromise if you don't want to release high quality ones. Richard001 (talk) 05:31, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

To upload an "all rights reserved" logo to English Wikipedia like the Pepsi logo, use en:Wikipedia:Upload. If it doesn't work, look for more help at English Wikipedia Wikipedia:Community portal. --InfantGorilla (talk) 12:25, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

The three images are still on Commons, under a free license, which is obviously not what the uploader wanted. Can an admin delete them?

• File:Arrow FullBody Shadowsweb.jpg (edit · last · history · watch · unwatch · global usage · logs · purge · w · search · links · DR · del · undel · Delinker log)
• File:Cik front left.jpg (edit · last · history · watch · unwatch · global usage · logs · purge · w · search · links · DR · del · undel · Delinker log)
• File:X1 cik.jpg (edit · last · history · watch · unwatch · global usage · logs · purge · w · search · links · DR · del · undel · Delinker log)

Thanks. --Tryphon (talk) 12:50, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

 Done by Dschwen. Thank you. --Tryphon (talk) 15:56, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Word of warning on English fair use images.

Read Wikipedia:Non-free content. For each image you need to put a fair use statement, that demonstrates the image fulfills 10 criteria.

There is no flexibility, and all images are patrolled by bots and a superbly organised policing team. For instance, if, while editing the text page where they appear you comment out the image, you breach rule 3a. Within 15 minutes the image will be tagged for speedy deletion.

I have submitted a batch, for a page I am writing on List of mills owned by the Lancashire Cotton Corporation Limited and have been challenged multiple times on each image. Fair use generally is very hard work, and should be avoided at all costs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ClemRutter (talk • contribs) 13:54, 11. Feb. 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, you post in incorrect place. Commons doesn't allow such images. See Commons:Licensing for details. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:49, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

@Eugene, I think the comment of ClemRutter is directly related to the request immediately above.--Túrelio (talk) 16:03, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah, you're right, I didn't get that either. I just modified the title level to make it more obvious. --Tryphon (talk) 16:15, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to confuse. The point I am trying to make, is that often, commons users are advised to post an image on their home wiki- as a fair use image. This is generally bad advice. Fair use is extremely complicated to use. --ClemRutter (talk) 00:31, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Imagemaps - can they be stored in commons?

If you have never seen an image map then look at w:Image maps. There are quite a few on the english wikipedia and they are created with tools here. Recently however someone "improved" one of the images and the imagemap in question will take some time to repair. Is it possible that a space could be set aside for storing not only the images but also trhe imagemaps on commons? In many cases they are pretty multilingual (if it can agreed that Guy Fawkes and Guido Fawkes (for instance) are the same person.) Is this the correct place to ask? Victuallers (talk) 16:01, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd think it would be appropriate to just put the imagemaps onto the image description page of the mapped image. Just add a new subsection Imagemaps and dump them there. You'll have to fully qualify the wikilinks though, or they end up red pointing to non existant commons pages. --Dschwen (talk) 16:48, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I made a few of these. I put both the wikimarkup and the html on the image talk page. -- carol (talk) 17:23, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Thx for the advice. I have saved some on the talk pages, but the real problem is that later image experts who do not see the image map "improve" the image and the image map then fails to work. I think I'm suesting that images for image maps need extra protection or warnings to prevent well meaning editors (who are focussed on just the image) from losing other work. Victuallers (talk) 19:09, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

An alternative which might be useful to consider depending on circumstances is {{Template:Overlay legend}}. Personally I find this much more useful and viewer friendly when there is encyclopedic content in the image, as distinct from the image itself only being the item of interest.

The basic problem of "image improvement", however, is possibly the same. But unless the changes are dramatic the approach is probably much more resilient?

Peet Ern (talk) 03:24, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Put a comment/template on the image page about the image being used for imagemap purposes and that any improvements should take this into consideration. If the info is on the talk page then a link there from such a template would also be good. I've enocuntered templats like that either here or on en.wiki. /Lokal_Profil 00:05, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Making a link on the page of Wikimedia organisation

Whan I was trying to find info about Wikimedia Belgium I have started at the category [Wikimedia organisation] without success. I found out that I have to follow the category sequence "Categories" -> "WM Foundation" -> "WM management" -> "Local Chapters". What I wanted to do is to add a sentence on the category page [Wikimedia organisation] mentioning that if you want more info about the Wikimedia Foundation you have to go to [[20]], but the page cannot be edited by me. Could somebody do this? Thanks, Wouter (talk) 10:00, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Please note: The page you want edited is on the Wikimedia foundation's wiki. Right now you are on the Wikimedia Commons, which is a different project. People with administrator access on this project cannot edit the Wikimedia Foundation's wiki. Besides, the Wikimedia Foundation will probably not link to Meta from their own page as their page certainly has more information regarding the foundation than Meta has. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 12:11, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I have found now the right place to ask. For the result see difference thanks to User:Az1568. Wouter (talk) 22:35, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Using {{Autotranslate}} on the sitenotice

Is it possible to use {{Autotranslate}} on the sitenotice? I tried to crate a localised version of the sitenotice and it did not work. So would it be possible to use eg. {{POTY 2008 sitenotice}} on the sitenotice? The template {{POTY 2008 sitenotice}} would be an autotranslated template. --Joku Janne^(Fi) (Wikiwiki) 10:31, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

I tried it, but it shows only the english text, not the translated text in finnish. Otherwise works fine. --Joku Janne^(Fi) (Wikiwiki) 11:35, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Why wouldn't we use the good old {{POTY 2008 sitenotice/{{#ifexist: POTY 2008 sitenotice/{{int:Lang}}|{{int:Lang}}|en}}}} instead? →Diti the penguin — 00:19, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Getting permision to use pictures

Hi, I found an internet-forum community of freelancing photographers who are willing to license their photos under a free license for the benefit of illustration of some Wikipedia article topics (and they have some very useful photos indeed). However, they implicate that some of the users are inactive (not online) and can't upload each image they've made by them self on the Commons, but they will give the permission to someone else to license and upload any work they have made. My question is - is this possible, if so - how? Do I send an e-mail to the author, to which he replies ans specifically gives the right of free licensing and uploading to any picture he has made in the past? Then? Send a request to OTRS? Does the correspondence have to be in English? Please help me, I thank you in advance. --Brainmachine (talk) 19:25, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi, this sounds great, if you can get those licenses. As far as I know, there's basically two preferred methods of documenting it: either the copyright holder puts a notice on their own website, or they send an e-mail. They can send it to you and you can forward it to the OTRS system (permissions-commons (at) wikimedia.org), perhaps with your translation if it's in another language. There's also some e-mail templates at Commons:Email templates. It's best if the e-mail text clearly states that the author understands he's granting the license for anybody to re-use the photo, not just for wikipedia. If they write in their own language (Macedonian, I presume?) and the guys at OTRS have doubts about what it means, they can always find somebody trusted on commons who can check the translation (like for instance, User:Spiritia, who is a Bulgarian-speaking admin.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:07, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Did you look at Commons:OTRS? It gives a procedure. I'm also collecting relevant links at COM:EIC#OTRS. --Teratornis (talk) 01:04, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

February 17

CC Developing Nations license

Can I use it for Commons? [21] --Kozuch (talk) 08:25, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Didn't you see the warning on the page you're linking to?
This license is retired. Do not use for new works.
So I guess no, you can't use it on Commons. --Tryphon (talk) 08:35, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I do not create content, I am asking about uploading existing content licenced under this licence. How can one judge what is a "developing nation"?--Kozuch (talk) 08:41, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I understand. In that case, the answer is still no, because this license is too restrictive. For starters, the Commons servers are in the US, and these images would not be free there. But more importantly, it doesn't allow the other projects to use it freely, and since the purpose of Commons is to serve these projects, this situation is not acceptable. --Tryphon (talk) 09:00, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

D'accord with Tryphon. This license is not compatible (for details see Commons:Licensing) with Commons as its applicability is restricted to "developing countries". Sorry. --Túrelio (talk) 09:11, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Other speedy deletions

En Category:Other speedy deletions hay algunas imágenes desde hace más de un mes, ¿algún administrador podría pasar a comprobarlo? Mercedes Gusgus (discusión) 13:50, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Could a Spanish speaking user could please translate this (or admin take care of it). Finn Rindahl (talk) 14:58, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

How about asking at Commons:Café.--Túrelio (talk) 15:00, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

The user is observing in Category:Other speedy deletions images that have been "speedied" more than a month ago, and asks if an administrator could have a look at it. --Foroa (talk) 15:17, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Foroa. Backlog... I'll start working from the bottom, any volunteers to start from the top ;) Finn Rindahl (talk) 16:48, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Freedom of panorama in Iran

I recently encountered some Freedom of panorama related cases for Iran e.g. File:Muzehonarm01.JPG. Does anyone know the situation about Iran? This is the Iranian copy-right rules (in Persian). Thanks in advanced. -- Meisam (talk) 14:56, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Per discussion on the channel i assume current law is to vague for FOP so we need to a lawyer about this subject so i believe we should allow those kind of images till further information --Mardetanha ^talk 17:12, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Bots leaving "0" in the description field

Over the past week or two I've noticed file upload bots sporadically leaving {{en|0}} in the description field (and nothing else). For a recent example, see http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Masjid_Sultan_Singapura.JPG&oldid=18552983 . I don't think the "File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske)" is the only one, either. Does anyone know how this problem arises. AnonMoos (talk) 19:07, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Bot BotMultichillT left me a message

This Bot left me a message to categorize a image loaded on to Wiki commons, but that image is no longer on there. Do I just ignore it? There is no images in my gallery. --ArrowKarts (talk) 22:11, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

This image has been deleted, just ignore. --Eusebius (talk) 22:15, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

February 18

Jimbo talk page watch

It would be lovely if a few people who are active here could add my user talk page to their watchlist - if you check the history, you will see why. If you're curious what this is about, please email me, but suffice to say, I don't need to hear from this person.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 03:18, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I think it's fair to say this won't be a problem anymore. -J JMesserly (talk) 04:23, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't we remove (totally) the IP versions, if that is possible on Commons (as on wikipedias)? --Túrelio (talk) 08:57, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, watched. The cops are there. :p →Diti the penguin — 10:37, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

where do i ask for translation of a graphic?

for an article on Fr:wikipédia, i'd like a French version of File:Sistine Chapel ceiling diagramA1.PNG and of File:Sistine Chapel ceiling architecture plan.PNG. --Diligent (talk) 08:14, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

You could try with one of the Graphic labs: on French, English or Commons site. bamse (talk) 09:40, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

thx - i'll follow your advise and take it to the French lab. --Diligent (talk) 11:14, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Higher resolution of File:Haeckel_Prosobranchia.jpg

Anybody who can help me get a higher resolution of image Haeckel_Prosobranchia.jpg? I am working as a graphic designer and I would love to use the image on a menu for a restaurant.

Thanks

Torgeir

Did you try contacting the uploader? If he can't help you, you can try finding the book where this image comes from (Kunstformen der Natur, Ernst Haeckel, 1904). --Tryphon (talk) 14:50, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Torgeir, did you try clicking on the image? Full resolution‎ is 2,351 × 3,298 pixels and should be plenty for a "menu for a restaurant". --Jarekt (talk) 17:43, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Any idea ?

Any idea why the search function does not work at all (finds nothing) ?

Any idea why Special:WantedCategories and Special:UncategorizedCategories and their refresh are stuck now since 8 to 11 days and how it might be accelerated to say once a day (now, mostly updated once every 3 days) ? --Foroa (talk) 08:19, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I believed the specialpages are stoped because the techcrew is safing CPU, double redirects and broken redirects aren't updated also. It will be fixed after the new hardware has arrived. I don't know it that is the reason is why the search function isn't working also. Abigor talk 08:59, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Search works again now --Foroa (talk) 11:19, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

A couple of times per week, search seems not to work for a couple of hours. Should return at least an error message as it makes the user think that the search item does not exist at all. Logging of the failure or no failure at all should of course be better.

Still no updates of referenced pages since 15 to 18 days. I hardly believe that this is caused by the waiting of new hardware. --Foroa (talk) 07:51, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

All updated now, except Special:WantedCategories. Gives me a new backlog of 600 uncategorised items to clean up. --Foroa (talk) 10:05, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Bogus metadata

I wish to draw attention to the fact that pages like Category:Warsaw in the 1860s are currently emitting bogus hCalendar microformat metadata, in this case dtstart=1860-02-13T20:13:00Z. Attempts to discuss this and related issues with the author of the templates concerned have proved fruitless. The correct dtstart ("Start date") value for the 1860s would be 1860-01-01 (though 1860-01-01T00:00:01 or 1860 would also be passable, depending on the level of specificity required). The same page is also emitting an hCalendar location location=Warsaw , , , http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Warsaw_in_the_1860s. The address in the hCard microformat is equally mangled: locality=Warsaw , , , and label=Warsaw , , , http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Warsaw_in_the_1860s. the correct value of each (though one is redundant), and of the hCalendar location, would be Warsaw. Andy Mabbett (talk) 20:27, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Could you correct one category and show how it supposed to be done? --Jarekt (talk) 21:59, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately not; the problem is in the templates (in this example, {{Time and place is}}), which are undocumented; not the individual categories. Andy Mabbett (talk) 22:34, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

On further examination, it appears that the bogus time-stamp is a combination of the correct year and the current month, date and time. Category:Germany in the 1870s was, a few moments ago, emitting dtstart=1870-02-14T15:23:00Z. It is also emitting hCard metadata of locality=Germany , ,, when the correct value would be country-name=Germany Andy Mabbett (talk) 15:26, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

On Category:American Airlines Flight 11, we have metadata asserting that the event, which ran from dtstart=2001-09-11T11:59:00Z to dtend=2001-09-11T12:46:00+99, took place in location=New York City […], when it actually started in Boston, Massachusetts and took lace over many miles. I'm not clear what +99 in the end date signifies. Andy Mabbett (talk) 15:39, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, this topic and its various permutations has been discussed at length both here and at en Wikipedia with Pigsonthewing. It is true that in the current version that I last worked on in January some of the values are incorrect encodings, but these will be dealt with in a subsequent version. Much work has been completed recently with (see wikipedia date microformat templates, and this work is being ported over for use on Commons. In any case, the impact of the errors described is currently nonexistent, since the only applications that currently can use this data (eg: Yahoo calendar) don't recognize dates before 1972, and are used for people's appointment calendars, not to remind themselves of the exact hours and minutes that various Terrorist events occurred. Perhaps in a few years some historically oriented sites will emerge that use this data, and this is the importance of this early work. -J JMesserly (talk) 19:24, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with the issues discussed at Wikipedia. Your claim that "the only applications that currently can use this data (eg: Yahoo calendar) don't recognize dates before 1972" is as bogus as your metadata, which includes non-existent and inappropriate place-names. There is no justification for emitting bad metadata. Andy Mabbett (talk) 20:36, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Now now. My point was that there is no urgency here, not that the inadequacies of the current template should not be dealt with. Don't worry Andy. I am getting to it. In the meantime, I hardly think that a lot of folks are interested in sticking a pointer to the German decade of the 1870s in their Yahoo calendar -J JMesserly (talk) 04:56, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

They might not be, but since that's not the only use for an hCalendar microformat; and especially since you don't know who else is using that metadata, or for what; and since the address metadata is also wrong; that's a straw man. Is the metadata emitted correct, or not? Why are you causing Commons to emit incorrect metadata? Andy Mabbett (talk) 22:29, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

February 14

Flinfo tool?

[22] What is up with the Flinfo tool? Cirt (talk) 01:01, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I noticed similar behavior a few times in recent months. I just waited a few days and it got better. This motivated me to save the output of Flinfo to a text file if it happened to be working at a time when I wasn't quite ready to upload a particular photo from Flickr yet. That is, if you see a photo on Flickr you might want to upload later, you might as well run Flinfo right then if it works. --Teratornis (talk) 01:08, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah okay thanks. Cirt (talk) 05:53, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Movie trailers from http://archive.org/details/sabucat_trailers

There is a collection of public domain movie trailers owned by SabuCat Pruductions, Inc. at http://archive.org/details/sabucat_trailers. According to http://www.sabucat.com/?pg=copyright, all movie trailers owned by SabuCat Productions, Inc. are in the public domain in the United States, as they were published before 1964 and they copyright were not renewed or they were published before 1978 and without a copyright notice. I was wondering, if we could create a copyright tag like {{PD-SabuCat}} for these movie trailers and is it possible to upload screenshots of them. --Joku Janne^(Fi) (Wikiwiki) 16:53, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

The appropriate license would be {{PD-US}}, possibly with an explanatory line. {{PD-SabuCat}} would be inappropriate since SabuCat (as far as I know) don't own the trailers. /Lokal_Profil 17:10, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

But be careful, some of these movies are works from outside the US; this trailer (Hound of Baskervilles) is from a British movie, it is still protected in the UK and in the US (renewed in the 90ths). sугсго 17:30, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

It's a British work, therefore it is still protected. But renewing the copyright in the US in the 1990ies would be too late.(1959+28 = 1977, last chance). Believe old Mutter Erde. Btw: the trailers from the IMDB collection are not as small 78.51.63.109 17:52, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

So if I create the template, should I add a notice to the template about non-U.S. trailers? --Joku Janne^(Fi) (Wikiwiki) 17:57, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

{{PD-US-no notice}} or {{PD-US-not renewed}} are a bit better than just PD-US. If they are trailers of foreign movies, that could definitely cause issues (unless the trailer was first published in the U.S. before the movie was published elsewhere). I'm not sure we need another template, unless it is a source template which embeds the actual license tag. Carl Lindberg (talk) 18:06, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

For non-US movies which are still protected in the source country only local upload to en.wiki would be allowed. As with other similar cases. /Lokal_Profil 16:57, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I created the template {{PD-SabuCat}}. --Joku Janne^(Fi) (Wikiwiki) 18:32, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

"screenshot of a movie trailer physically owned by SabuCat Productions" doesn't say much. The only relevant thing is that it's the source of the digital version, physical ownership means nothing since they are not owners copyrightwise./Lokal_Profil 23:21, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Deletions by an author's request

I notice a few of cases (File:Svatyjanpodskalou.jpg or File:Praha, Vítkov, nové spojení.JPG), that an image was speedy deleted with a stated reason: "User request". I didn't know that there exists such a possibility. I can't see such possibility among admissible reasons of speedy deletion in Commons:Deletion policy#Speedy deletion. As far as a bad quality was the real reason of deletion request, Commons:Deletion policy#General procedure says that "Redundant or bad quality files never get speedily deleted." I can't see a reason, why the author of image should have some special right to deletion solution, given he have agreed to an exposure once. --ŠJů (talk) 18:52, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea about these specific cases, but I can imagine a few situations were it makes sense to speedy delete on user's request. For example, if someone mistakenly uploads one file when they meant to upload another (with possible copyright/attribution problems), then the file was clearly never released under a free license -- it's an honest mistake. Or sometimes people do not understand the license completely (they think it's for wikipedia only, or for non-commercial use); if the deletion request comes shortly after the upload date, I think it's okay to speedy as well -- again, it's a misunderstanding, not someone changing their mind.
Anyway, I think admins know the difference, and if a borderline case presents, they will convert the speedy into a regular DR. --Tryphon (talk) 19:01, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I think that these specific cases consist in the fact, that the upolader began to be ashamed for a quality of his earlier image. I think, the later feelings of author are unrelated to judgement of image usefullnes by other users. --ŠJů (talk) 19:13, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

In the case of the first picture, uploader has proposed, with his request for speedy deletion, better quality files as alternatives. --Eusebius (talk) 19:21, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I deleted the first of the images referred to above. This case wasn't an uploadmistake as Tryphon describes above (such cases are obvious speedy in my opinion), but an image that had become redundant. When the uploaders themselves ask for deletion of low quality images that are not in use and for which we have better replacements, I only think it's fair to comply their request as a courtesy, even if the license is irrevocable etc. If anyone has a problem with this I'll restore the image and ask the uploader to file an rfd. If not, I'll try to use summaries like User request, low quality superseeded or something in the future. Regards, Finn Rindahl (talk) 19:39, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

In the general case, I think it would be better to file a rfd, since it is not a stated reason for speedy deletion. I often oppose such rfds saying that an image being superseded is no reason for deletion, but there might be obvious redundancy cases. --Eusebius (talk) 19:46, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Finn made a good call. The deletion did not controvert the spirit of commons in providing free media but rather helped, if the author provided better quality replacements. We should favor courtesy towards the people who generate the content over policy-lawyering. --Dschwen (talk) 19:51, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm the author of the two better images as well as of the one worse image of similar views of Svatý Jan Village. But I don't want to other images of other authors be deleted on account of my images. Possible redundancy or quality should be disputed in a standard way before deletion. The deleted image was taken at another time than the rest images. --ŠJů (talk) 19:54, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

By the way, the deleted image couldn't be so much bad, if it was 2 years at the top of the article Svatý Jan pod Skalou. (in, out). Such a subsequent deletion breaks needlessly a history of articles too. --ŠJů (talk) 20:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

No, the deleted image wasn't so bad, and if anyone else other than the photographer had asked for deletion it would have been a clear keep. Pr Commons policy, if anyone requests undeletion the image will be restored, but I do hope we can favor courtesy over policy in a case like this. Regards, Finn Rindahl (talk) 20:23, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure we can be a bit mellow at times. I agree with Dschwen, and Finn did the right thing (IMO). --Kanonkas_(talk) 21:03, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Notice of upcoming bot run Historic images of Toronto & Ottowa

This is a noncontroversial Cat move of two sets of categories mistakenly created with a pattern that is not to the naming convention. The creator of these cats (User:Skeezix1000 is in agreement on these moves (see talk), so there was no need for consideration at Commons:Categories for discussion. Categories affected are all those for Toronto and Ottowa fitting the pattern: Category:Historic images of Toronto, 1790s. These will be moved over to conform to the naming convention (EG the example would be moved to Category:Toronto in the 1790s. The bot run will be executed by User:MandelBot and commence on 2009=02-20 unless there are any objections. Only a few hundred images are affected. -J JMesserly (talk) 22:09, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Category:Toronto in the 1790s is using {{Time and place is}}. If your plan is to include this or a similar template in the bot run, then I object. Andy Mabbett (talk) 22:26, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

This is a category move only. What templates people put on the category is up to them. -J JMesserly (talk) 22:40, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

←(Undent) User:Skeezix1000 and I agree that Historic images of Montreal, (decade)s should also be included in this cat move. So far, I have heard no blocking objections, so the move will proceed on the 20th. -J JMesserly (talk) 19:28, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

These moves will be delayed until later in the day, perhaps late this evening due to server load. -MandelBot (talk) 17:52, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

February 16

Upload-and-delete for works that will soon be out of copyright

For some works that will be out of copyright in the next 10 or 20 years, it seems like it would be a good idea to hold onto them somewhere, so that they can be made available as soon as possible. This way even if we can't use them now, they won't be lost just because the person who has access to them now has forgotten or died by then. To this end I suggest that we have a process for uploading these images, where they are uploaded, immediately deleted, and listed in order by date in a page like Common:List of works to restore in the future. What do you think? Dcoetzee (talk) 23:08, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, technincally we are not even allowed to keep copies of copyright violations. I don't think encouraging users to upload stuff they are not allowed to upload, is not really such a good idea. Maybe it would be better to archive those works somewhere in private, e.g. on your machine or whereever. Or maybe the WMF wants to provide some space for that, but I think it cannot be done on a public WMF project. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 11:44, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

And it would mean that any image can be uploaded, because it will be PD someday, even if it's in 70 years. So we would have to check if those images are in scope, but how can we decide: something can be in scope now, but won't be anymore when it becomes free, or some will argue that even if it's not in scope now, it will perhaps gain historic value over the years. I really don't think we want to deal with this. --Tryphon (talk) 11:54, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, we currently store copies of many copyvios on the server that only admins have access to; as a matter of practice this seems to be considered okay. The issues of predicting whether an image will be useful in the future is exactly why I want to restrict it to the next 10-20 years, as opposed to all images that will eventually be PD. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:20, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

The way that copyright terms are going, you can't count on anything ever entering the public domain. --Carnildo (talk) 20:56, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

While this comes from a good intent, I think this will lead to problems. It's best to solve issues when they are recent. How will you be sure to check allegations of someone in 10 or 20 years, when the uploader could be missing or dead? The best that can be done would be categorizing media for deletion that are going to have their copyright expire and supposing the category will be available on a deleted state. That does not mean we would allow copyvio to be uploaded. Esby (talk) 22:55, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

February 19

Basketball game pictures

I don't know if this has been discussed before, but what would be the status of pictures taken at an NBA basketball game? I have some pictures of this one, but I don't want to upload them if they're going to be deleted anyway. Thanks, --Dori - Talk 12:50, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Probably completely unrelated, but I read a fiction once about a future in which college athletics had been separated from the academic parts and became their own business (funding, support, determining their own non-academic reason to be a safe tax shelter). Has this happened yet anywhere in the world that has colleges with athletic teams? -- carol (talk) 13:54, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

The photographs are copyrighted, so please do not upload them. If you took them yourself, you can upload them. --Joku Janne^(Fi) (Wikiwiki) 14:06, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

That's not what I was asking. Obviously they are copyrighted and I took them myself. My question is are they derivative works of some NBA copyright, or are they strictly under my copyright. --Dori - Talk 19:23, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Only your own lawyer can answer for sure, but I think portraits and wide shots should be ok (See Commons:De minimis.) Close crops of shirt artwork, posters or banners are probably not OK.

Unless you had a photography permit or a press pass, you might breach the contract terms printed on the back of your game ticket, but that would not be a reason for an admin to delete your uploads from Commons, as it is a non-copyright restriction.

We often host pictures of pro sports action and players from Wikimedian photographers. Have you thought of contributing a Wikinews picture article?

--InfantGorilla (talk) 08:41, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Los Angeles photog needed Sunday evening

I've got access to an Oscar party red carpet, anyone know anyone that could photograph at it? The posting is here on Craigslist. -- Nick Moreau (talk) 01:30, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I recommend posting somewhere at: en:Wikipedia:Requested_pictures. Dcoetzee (talk) 02:51, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

WikiProjekt Fotografování and RfD based on "low quality"

I want to make a general posting concerning some recent Requests for Deletion connected with users from czech wikipedia. These deletion-requests have in common that both the nominator and the uploader are both active users on Czech wikipedia, that the request is based on the argument "low quality", "no encyclopedic value" or similar and that there are quite a lot of delete "votes" from czechspeaking users.

I was puzzled by this, and contacted user:ŠJů via e-mail to ask for an explanation. Upoen my request (s)he provided me with some relevant links to Czech Wikipedia. It seems that these deletion requests in some way originate in cs:Wikipedie:WikiProjekt Fotografování. This is a project aimed (as far as I have understood, I don't read czech language;) at encouraging and enabling user at the Czech wikipedia project to contribute free images. This also include some sort of ranking/competition in number of uploads Hodnosti. So far well&good, actually very well! This project seem to be something other Wikipedia projects could learn from. (I also personally noticed how committed some Czeck wikipedians are in providing images for Wikimedia when user:Chmee2 visited Norway last year and really made good contributions to Wikipedia in Norwegian by providing&adding lots of images, I don't think this user understands much more Norwegian than I do Czech ;).

What has become problematic is that it appears that as part of this project some users seem to think that a way to raise the quality of images at Commons is to delete images that are not of high quality, or for which there are many other alternative images. I don't understand the discussion, but I understand the links to COM:RfD on this page [23]. First of all, low quality is not in it self a reason to delete images that are within our scope (exceptions of course for corrupt files, very low res and such), and the fact that an image has been replaced by another as illustration for relevant articles doesn't mean that it is superseeded. Images from different angles, seasons, weather etc all enrich Commons, even if there are "better" images of the same place or subject. And more disturbing, to nominate other users contributions for deletion stating "low quality", "useless" etc and then piling up with {{Vd}}, is at best discouraging for users exposed to this and in my opnion also comes very close to harassment.

I hope we all can agree that this kind of deletion requests must stop, and that excisting (or new ones should they come) should be speedy-closed as keep. I hope that committed users at cs:wiki keep up their good work to provide free media, but that this for the future will not include RfD for other users contributions.

For examples, see

• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Borovice ožraná od poníků.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:RT6N1 - Vozovna Medlánky.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Srní vrch, polom (01).jpg

The posting Commons:Village pump#Deletions by an author's request further up on this page may also be related.

Regards, Finn Rindahl (talk) 18:02, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree; if noticed that some people spend more time in debating and deleting pictures than categorising them; administrators should stop this kind of silly so called "low quality, not encyclopedic, almost duplicate" competition as quick as possible as it is a major waste of time for a whole community. It looks as if they will earn a trophy when they get many images deleted. --Foroa (talk) 18:50, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we really disagree with lowering the traditional Wikimedia Commons quality and well-arrangement by systematically produced highly poor quality semi-duplicated photos and with supporting these trends by the Wikimedia Commons project. This trend is slightly evident recently and according to us very improper for the aim of the whole project. It endangeres the project usability and we cannot support anything similar in no case. This project way is wrong. Signed by the following wikipedists from Czech Wikipedia:

--Chmee2 (talk) 18:52, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

--Martin Kozák (talk) 18:55, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

--Aktron (talk) 18:57, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

--Packa (talk) 20:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

-- Mercy (☎|✍) 09:11, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

--Tlusťa (talk) 09:12, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

--Jagro (talk) 14:24, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

--Milda (talk) 06:33, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I disagree in some point: Just take a look at Category:Media needing categories requiring human attention - beside felt like 20% non-notable persons, 20% copyvios, 20% useless Screenshots, 30% good images there are some images with:

• low quality
• no or totaly useless descriptions
• uploaded by users without the intention of providing anything of encyclopedic any value

I will keep to nominate such images for deletion. --Martin H. (talk) 21:16, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I have to say that 3 deletion request examples above are of images with very little value. I would still leave such images alone, if they have proper descriptions and categories. But if images of similar quality require a lot of work to fix various issues like watermarks, lack of descriptions or categories than it is just easier to nominate them for deletion than to waste time fixing them. --Jarekt (talk) 21:44, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I guess I wasn't very precise in my wording above, I'm not aiming for a new Commons policy here, and obviously images like the ones described by Martin H. above should be deleted. I'm talking about images that have low quality but relevant description&categories, and have been uploaded by users who have long since proved their good intentions and commitment. It's the mobbing together to get images uploaded by fellow active contributors deleted that has to stop.

I hope I managed to get myself a bit clearer this time. Regards, Finn Rindahl (talk) 12:32, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

To me it seems that majority of Commons contributors is okay with the fact that the project is used as dumpster for anything tagged with a free licence. So although that this makes the project much less useful as media repository (nobody is going look through hunderds of inferior images to find a high quality one), it's best to keep it this way, since disk space is quite cheap and there isn't enough people willing to sort out the uploads anyway. --che 16:57, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

February 20

"Check usage" tab disappears after login

Hi there. After I login the "Check usage" tab disappears. It was there when I was not login. Is this normal? If it's abnormal, how do I fix it? --Jackl (talk) 12:00, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Did you check Remove Image Tools in Special:Preferences -> Gadgets -> Maintenance tools? Or any other special settings? --Martin H. (talk) 17:35, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Check your skin settings -- many of the special tabs are not present on many of the skins... AnonMoos (talk) 12:52, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I use Modern as my skin, and neither the CommonSense-tab nor the CheckUsage-tab has never worked. These problems should be really fixed, even if 90-95% of users used Monobook. --Joku Janne^(Fi) (Wikiwiki) 13:19, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

File:Stop bad orthography nuvola.svg

Is it possible to merge an image licensed with GNU Free Documentation License and an image licensed with Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5? I did Stop bad orthography nuvola.svg from a GFDL-image and a CC-BY-SA-image. I thought that it is enough to license it with both licenses explaining that derivative works must be also licensed with both licenses. Or should I request Booyabazooka, the author of the feather, license the feather with CC-BY-SA 2.5? --Joku Janne^(Fi) (Wikiwiki) 14:02, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I just realized I have the same problem with File:Commons Overcategorisation Rules 01.svg: some components are {{Cc-by-sa-2.5}} and some are {{GFDL-1.2}}. I included both licenses but 2 licenses usually mean one OR the other and here we need one AND the other. Also does anybody know why File:Commons Overcategorisation Rules 01.svg image is not showing today, it was fine few days ago. --Jarekt (talk) 16:41, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Fixed it for you. ViperSnake151 (talk) 23:58, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

This is a great example of why basic graphics like these should be released to the public domain rather than licensed. Kaldari (talk) 00:45, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the fix, but I feel that it is rather sad that we can not mix and match our "freely" licensed graphics to create new graphics without worrying about licenses of the individual pieces. Otherwise we might mix pieces with conflicting licenses and produce copyvio. There seems to be a problem here. --Jarekt (talk) 03:40, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I requested Booyabazooka to license the feather with CC-BY-SA 2.5. --Joku Janne^(Fi) (Wikiwiki) 11:59, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

February 21

Some thumbnails and previews not working

[OK] Resolved.

About half of my contributions are not creating thumbnails or previews properly.

• File:Congressional Pictorial Directory 110th Congress June 2007 cover.jpg - no preview
• File:Congressional Pictorial Directory 110th Congress June 2007 cover - low resolution.jpg - no preview
• File:HovermanDimensions.jpg - no preview
• File:HovermanDimensions-2.jpg - no preview
• File:William L. Clayton arrives for Potsdam conference.jpg - no preview
• File:Turner Falls, Davis, Oklahoma, Winter.png - no preview, no thumbnail

I have preview set to max at 640x480 and thumbnails to 200px. Davidwr (talk) 02:25, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I see previews everywhere. Refresh your browser cache. --Dschwen (talk) 02:45, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

File:Turner Falls, Davis, Oklahoma, Winter.png has no preview or thumbnail. I've tried multiple browsers with all browser history and cache deleted. Davidwr (talk) 03:00, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

It's "normal". There are some technical problems with the Wikipedia and Commons servers. Okki (talk) 04:12, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

And again, I see all previews. A little patience please. --Dschwen (talk) 06:31, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Is there an underlying problem likely to repeat itslef or was this a one-off or very-rare-occurrence thing? If it's an underlying problem, is it being worked on? I realize you might not know the answer to this but I hope someone does. Oh, it's working for me now. Davidwr (talk) 16:50, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Not the first time. This have happend a lot of times. --Kanonkas_(talk) 17:01, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Woodeye - Image similarity search

Hello. I'm working on an image similarity search (called Woodeye - as in Tineye, only crappier). Currently it only looks at rough color distribution (on a 3x3 grid), but I hope I can add spatial features (using gabor filters maybe). It doesn't have a user interface yet. Here are some static example pages. Each query takes only microseconds on a set of about 4500 images (all QualityImages so far).

Some of the better matches (feel free to browse the directory for more): [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29]

If anybody has any suggestions or pointers to existing implementations I'd appreciate to hear about them (I know OpenCV but don't see how I could use it, I know about GIFT but that project seems to be pretty dead, I am already using ANN for finding matches). --Dschwen (talk) 18:02, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know of existing implementations, but I have also been thinking about this problem for quite a while. A suggestion, which I read somewhere on the internet: try comparing the en:Image histograms. If the images are identical, those should match quite well. It might of course differ if contrast/brightness/colours have been messed around with, I am not sure whether that can be calculated. Another idea I came up with: Scale the image down to a certain (pretty small) size and compare pixel by pixel. If they match, do the same again with a higher resolution, thus eliminating the false positives step by step. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 15:54, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm essensially already doing the Scale the image down to a certain (pretty small) size and compare pixel by pixel..

However the general approach is generating a high dimensional vector from the image and then using an optimized approximate neighbour finding algorithm on these vectors. In the first iteration the vector was composed of all the color values of a downscaled version of the image (3x3px). The current version adds more vector components: one component to meassure detail (low value for smooth undetailed images, high value for lots of contrast), and eighteen components for the predominant edge directions and magnitudes in the nine subimages (3x3 grid). This looks more and more promising. --Dschwen (talk) 17:41, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I've had good results with the imgSeek tool, finding the originals of images that have been cropped, resized, colour balance changed and other small modifications done ("restored"). The tool is apparently based on wavelet transformations from a 1995 paper on multiresolution image querying. The server side version seems to still be developed. --Para (talk) 12:06, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

That was an excellent suggestion. I didn't know of imgSeek before. I generated a few test searches in a set of 22000 commons images (not very many) starting at http://toolserver.org/~dschwen/woodeye/imgseek01.html . I'm sure results improve with more indexed images--Dschwen (talk) 22:07, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Now interactive and working on a db of 120000 images river, coin, dude, musician, and this is the best: Moths?, and also quite good some portraits, cars. Server is still flaky. --Dschwen (talk) 16:37, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Knocking out a few hundred German archive images in one stroke.

In Category:Images from the German Federal Archive needing categories, there's a series of a few hundred pictures starting with File:Bundesarchiv Bild 195-0004, Rheinbefliegung, Kaub - Lorchhausen.jpg (bottom of this page) which seem to me to be frames from a film surveying a river (or, at least, photos approximating such frames). Perhaps those could somehow be combined together into an animation? BD2412 T 07:38, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

The images are called "Rheinbefliegung" which can be roughly translated to "Flying along the Rhine". It is a series of areal photos of the Rhein riverside(s). See also Category:Images from the German Federal Archive, location Rheinbefliegung, most of the images already have and some still need a category related to the exact position. --Martin H. (talk) 11:10, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Good to know, but they are a bit repetitive, no? BD2412 T 23:55, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Here, something like this:

File:Rhine-animation.gif

BD2412 T 00:24, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Wow, great work. The license was wrong as this images are not public domain - will fix it. --Martin H. (talk) 01:28, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Can't fix it, you have to make a list of you source images. Marked the image as missing source, sorry. --Martin H. (talk) 01:31, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Done. Cheers! BD2412 T 21:00, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Images are intended for medias... No compensation is required

Are this photos enough free for Wikimedia? On top of the page is written:

Фотографије су намењене медијима и могу се преузети без надокнаде. Надамо се да овако доприносимо бољем и реалнијем презентовању општине Темерин. За додатне информације контактирајте службу информисања општине Темерин sluzba_informisanja -at- temerin.org или на телефон 021 843-888.

English translation:

Photos are intended for medias and can be used without compensation. In this way we hope that we will contribute to better and more realistic presentation of municipality of Temerin. For more information, please contact information service of Temerin municipality sluzba_informisanja -at- temerin.org or by phone ...

If they are suitable for wikimedia, which license should be used? I see that {{No rights reserved}} is deprecated. --BokicaK (talk) 09:52, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Press releases like this are in most cases not ok: Not all commercial use is allowed, derivative works are not allowed. --Martin H. (talk) 11:21, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, then. I'll ask them for commercial use and derivative works. --BokicaK (talk) 11:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Will be good idea to ask them permission for free license like {{Cc-by-sa-3.0}}. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 16:15, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Please use Commons:Email templates for permission and send it to Commons:OTRS. Walter Siegmund (talk) 00:28, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

February 22

Wikimania 2009

Wikimania 2009, this year's global event devoted to Wikimedia projects around the globe, is accepting submissions for presentations, workshops, panels, posters, open space discussions, and artistic works related to the Wikimedia projects or free content topics in general. The conference will be held from August 26-28 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. For more information, check the official Call for Participation. Cbrown1023 talk 17:59, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Images of artworks by Dale Chihuly

A user's retort against a copyvio tag brought to my mind that probably most media in Category:Dale Chihuly will have to be deleted as copyvios (or moved to :en under Fair use), as this glass artist in still living (born 1941) and as there is no FOP for artworks in the US. Any idea how to safe them? --Túrelio (talk) 22:46, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Check out en:User talk:OrcaBay. Perhaps you could contact this user and see if OTRS permission from Chihuly for the photos we currently have would be possible. --dave pape (talk) 04:10, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Very valuable! Thanks. Let's try that.--Túrelio (talk) 07:06, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

February 23

Upload work from a government source

Is there any reason why United States Fish and Wildlife Service is not given as an option? Richard001 (talk) 06:55, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Option where? It is in the list at Commons:Copyright_tags#US_Government_agencies, perhaps it should be in the Commons:Copyright_tags#US_Department_of_the_Interior portion of available licenses but it does exist as an option. -- carol (talk) 12:47, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

We have a template, see {{PD-USGov-FWS}}. Multichill (talk) 18:30, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you can see that I've used the template (e.g. here), but it wasn't given as a drop-down option when uploading (at "Upload work from a government source") so I had to choose "I don't know what the license is" (which leaves it looking like this), even though I clearly did. Richard001 (talk) 06:27, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Shares on paper

I am surprised that there is no category for paper shares and other financial papers. example Image:Actions Soc Belge Tramway Saratov.JPG. I suspect there are a lot more off these defunct shares papers lying around undetected in the commons. There are categories for old postcards. Or am I looking in the wrong place?

Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:20, 24 February 2009 (UTC) (moved here from Commons:Categories_for_discussion --Tony Wills (talk) 11:28, 24 February 2009 (UTC))

You are right, there are some traces about shares/obligations/ category:War bonds, but nothing systematic. Most older shares are just worthless (on the market, valuable here). I think that it could indeed use a similar structure of postcards (the "old" is not needed, for recent one, you will not get copyrighrs anyway) but connected to the money system (coins, banknotes). --Foroa (talk) 12:20, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Stock shares can also be found in Category:Stock, which could certainly use some populating. --rimshot^talk 17:56, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

There are about 34 share certificates under there already plus a few other documents that I'm not sure about. Perhaps "Shares" would be a less ambiguous name though - I assume File:Water_Tower_in_Toppenish.jpg is there by virtue of the painting on the water tank :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 19:53, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I have removed category:Stock from category:Scripophily and added category:Stock certificates to category:Scripophily --Tony Wills (talk) 20:10, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Mass deletion needed urgently

We have many photographs which infringe derivative works copyright, and yet there are not only being kept, but actively used on many projects around Wikimedia.

• this is a photograph of a derived work of a Disney character. A disguise, especially such a good one, is a derivative work and as such covered by copyright.
• a painting of Pokémon on a plane is copyrighted by the Pokémon Company. In 90% of cases it is being used to illustrate Pokémon, and not the plane. It is not acceptable even to illustrate Boeing 747, since many Pokémon-free alternatives exist which do not infringe on copyright.
• the same as the first case.
• this is a blatant case. To put a warning of copyrighted material does not justify it being uploaded to Commons. Otherwise, I could just upload the latest Universal Pictures film and put a {{Trademark}} warning.

There are hundreds of cases like these, they should be deleted straight away. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.56.176.170 (talk • contribs) 09:44, 17. Feb. 2009 (UTC)

It's true, there are some problematic files on Commons, and they should be deleted. For that, you should follow the deletion process, which allows for discussion of each case by the community.
As of your last example, you are right that {{Trademark}} is in no way a license; the appropriate license in this case is {{PD-textlogo}}, but it was removed by someone (now restored). --Tryphon (talk) 08:55, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

But treating each case separately will take ages, there are hundreds of files like those. Wouldn't it be better to debate and reach a general consensus, and then apply it to all of them? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.56.176.170 (talk • contribs) 11:52, 17. Feb. 2009 (UTC)

How can you have a general debate about the examples you just gave? They are quite different from each other, and hardly clear-cut. But if you come across pictures which would benefit from being discussed together, then you can do a mass deletion request. But please don't group together picture for the sole reason that you think they are all copyvios; for the discussion to be useful, the same arguments must apply to all images. --Tryphon (talk) 11:09, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

It is possible to open mass deletion requests on similar images or cases, e.g. we have from time to time for Wax Figures and many more. --Martin H. (talk) 11:16, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

If several images fit the same argument, you can nominate them together, otherwise they need to be separate requests. Every file you list is far from obvious, despite what you may think. Most especially the one you marked "blatant"; that one is actually obviously OK (it is not eligible for copyright in the first place, so it is not copyrighted). As for the other ones, I would be surprised if any court declared those a copyright infringement; their presence here more hinges on whether they are considered "fair use" or "de minimis" (kind of a blurry line at that point). Carl Lindberg (talk) 04:53, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

There's the Speedy deletion process for obvious cases. Use the {{Speedy}} template, if an admin agrees with you the file is speedily deleted if not it gets put in for regular deletion. Test the water with one or two that you think are obvious copyvios, derivative works until you can be certain which meet the speedy criteria and whch ones might need to go to regular deletion.KTo288 (talk) 00:51, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Where did the Category box(s) go?

I noticed the Category box(s) isn't on the bottom of the full upload form. Maybe I've been up for too long and have gone blind. Bidgee (talk) 12:16, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean "full upload form". For Special:Upload, I see the categories box below the licensing box and above the "Watch this page" checkbox. -Andrew c (talk) 15:13, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

She means the HotCat form. You have to re-enable the option in your preferences for some reason. Ottre 17:45, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Strange. That should actually not be necessary as the upload form script includes the gadget if you don't have it enabled. Just tested it myself: disabled HotCat, cleared my browser's cache and went to Special:Upload. I did get the category bar in both FF3 and IE6. Lupo 20:58, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I got no category box for any of my uploads today or yesterday, on three versions of IE under WinXP and this one, IE 6.0 under WinMe. So, I wrote the cat in the description as in olden times. Thanks; I'll go and enable the box but yes, someone who understands these things should find out why; mustn't discourage newcomers to cat their pix. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:22, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Notice: Seoul city will release some files under Public domain

Seoul Metropolitan City will provide some text and images to Wikipedia or other project under Public domain. Klutzy and 정안영민 have discussed in Seoul City hall. Community on Korean Wikipedia have a project to upload files to Wikimedia Commons. I will create {{PD-Seoul}} template, and Files may be uploaded via Commonist or other ways. Nice regards.--Kwj2772 (d) 07:06, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Sweet! Kudos to whoever worked to make this happen. ++Lar: t/c 17:49, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

SVG image default sizes

Just encountered a size problem... (That likely has a wide scope, and needs a standard minimim size "ideal" target size in a guideline.)

Viewing the Japan (en) article, I enlarged the image: Regions_and_Prefectures_of_Japan, which does not display large enough to read the legend. Nor does it navigating from here... which gives a "fairly good 'vetting test'"

(SVG file, nominally 2,480 × 3,372 pixels, file size: 95 KB)

• IMHO, all such saved pages should be scaled up so the legend is readable when the image is clicked on (or the pages are viewed directly, which is the same thing.

• Otherwise, the images are just fancy trash and useful only to someone with graphics software to scale them up.

• IMHO, at a guess, the image in question needs boosted by 50% IN WIDTH pixels for the text to be legible to tired old eyes on a typical 1024 X 800 px monitor setup. Higher resolution monitors exist of course, but typically the problem would get worse, not better!

Best regards, // FrankB 19:25, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

You can view the images at any size by including an appropriate tag on some random page (maybe your own userpage, or just a preview edit of your own user page, which you later cancel): [[File:Regions_and_Prefectures_of_Japan.svg Regions_and_Prefectures_of_Japan.svg|1280px]] or whatever, but the default maximum display size on image description pages is 800x600, and that's unlikely to change for several reasons (such as not causing unnecessary load on the servers, or overhwelming people's browsers with huge image displays which they might not even want in the first place). AnonMoos (talk) 02:55, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

P.S. I just trimmed some whitespace off the lower margin of the image, which should slightly improve readability as displayed on the image description page... AnonMoos (talk) 03:04, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, it would probably be better to remove the legend from the image and place it in text on the image description page and within the articles in which the image appears. Barring that, the image could be edited to make the legend text larger. Powers (talk) 13:46, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Agree. In general images with text in them are then less likely to be useful on wikis in other languages and we have templates to apply to encourage folk to make language independent versions. ++Lar: t/c 17:38, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Creator templates

Some questions about this type of template: {{Creator:Hans Holbein d. J.}}

• I saw these were being added, so I include them myself now, but I don't feel strongly about them, and this one seems weakly written and thin. To what extent are they officially approved?

• If they are thought a good thing, could not the basic upload form be designed to include them? Because at the moment they look inelegant to me, being a template stuck on a template if one puts them in the author field, and looking tacked on if they are kept separate from the upload template.

• The one above has a German title, which is not completely spelled out. Would it not be better to spell out "Der Jüngere"?

• It takes you to a gallery. Would it not make more sense for it to take you to the category?

• How does one edit such a template? A different date format is used for his birth and his death; this needs making consistent. And en dashes. His date of death is not as precise as this: we only know that he died between makiing his will on 7 November and its enactment on 29 November. Also, Holbein worked for two years in Lucerne (will need two spellings), so that should be added to his work location. I will carry out the changes if I can work out how to.

Any thoughts or advice? qp10qp (talk) 20:14, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

They have been in place for a long time. Creator is a namespace just for these special templates; see Help:Namespaces#Creator. I'm not sure how the upload form should include them -- just put in the reference as the content for the Author field (the Information template often contains other templates in its fields). As for going to the category or gallery, pick whichever is better -- some galleries give good, organized overviews for crowded categories, in which case they would be preferable. To edit it, just go to Creator:Hans Holbein d. J. and edit like any other template. I have no idea about the specifics of this person though; typical English usage is to use "Jr." instead of spelling out "Junior" but I have no clue which is more appropriate in German. Carl Lindberg (talk) 21:36, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

This template definitely needs some documentation and fixing before being useful, see discussion Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2008May#Problem_with_Creator_space, Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2008Sep#Problem_with_Creator_space_-_decision_needed and Template_talk:Creator#Problems with automatic categorization. For example check link on the bottom of this page - now Commons:Village pump belongs to Category:Hans Holbein d. J.. does anybody know why? --Jarekt (talk) 14:19, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Ha ha, I didn't notice that (I've now nowiki'd it above to stop that happening). Funny how it places a page in a category and yet if clicked takes you to a gallery: that wont help the muddling one gets with artist categories, subcategories, and galleries.

Thanks for the replies: I'm inclined now not to include the template. Could someone tell me if this sort of information should be provided about an artist? If so, I'd rather just add dates of birth and death and work location freehand in the author field of the upload template, which will look neater. If the value of the template is supposed to be in auto-categorizing, then it's superfluous for pages that are already categorized. Also, for that it wouldn't need to be stuck on the description template but rather at the bottom of the page. The reason I've been including these templates recently is because someone or a bot had gone round adding them en masse to the Holbein files, so I thought it must be somehow official. (I tend to add Holbein images most days.) qp10qp (talk) 15:24, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, I've edited the template but it's problematic languagewise. The title is in German "Hans Holbein d. j.", which is awkward; however, this is a German artist. But I've used English words like "between" for the dates, which are a complex issue and cannot just be put in figures without becoming confusing. For Holbein's work locations, I've put: "Basel, Lucerne, London". These are the most common spellings, but Swiss cities are known by both German and French spellings, and I have a German and a French version there (even though Lucerne/Luzern was v. German)! Erk. Of course one can use language brackets to give German, English, and French versions, but that would be so so messy on something whioh is supposed to be pithy and instant. And we'd have to have Londres. Help! I wish I'd never got into this. At least the info itself is more accurate now.qp10qp (talk) 16:13, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

February 26

Renaming of image files

At the moment there is an unnecessarily complex way of renaming a file

1. Reload the file under a new name
2. Delete the old file or get someone in authority to do it for you by posting the ((badname)) template
   

Is there a good reason why one cannot rename a file by using a new template such as ((rename|old name|new name))? After all, the image stays the same, it's just the identifier that has to be changed Rotational (talk) 20:00, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

This feature has been desired for some time. See Commons:Rename for more information. The feature should be available soon. Adambro (talk) 20:13, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I am very reluctant when it is made too easy to change a file name by somebody else than the original uploader. For example the file name of a photo of a political leader is changed from the name of the leader to a nickname used by opponents of that person. Wouter (talk) 11:18, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, the more easy it gets to change file names, the more clear the naming rules have to be and the more controlled the process of discussion and arbitration. I've seen many examples of files (and galleries) where one has one or more languages, other than English, so we have to take care not to open another can of worms. --Foroa (talk) 11:31, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

It should simply be an available tool - renaming WP pages by the simple expedient of moving them, has been around for a long time and has not been abused to the point where anything catastrophic has happened. Any tool is likely to be abused, and if fear of abuse is going to paralyse us and block innovation, then God help us! ciao Rotational (talk) 11:26, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried using the template you gave as an example name? ;-) {{rename|new name.ext|(optionally plus a reason)}} is the syntax. If the request is made by a trusted user or approved by a trusted user it will be processed by a bot. --Slomox (talk) 12:25, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Huh? The image renaming function was installed on Wikimedia wikis on 7 January 2009 and will be activated in the coming weeks when testing is finished. It will initially be available for admins only. Good. ViperSnake151 (talk) 13:42, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Could an administrator please change the incorrect and misleading file name of File:Rodent1.JPG for a possum photo to a more correct file name for the possum. Thank you. A Possum is not a rodent — it is a marsupial. Figaro (talk) 13:49, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Uploader unsure

Well, I noticed that selecting the "I don't know who the author is, or I don't know what license applies" just leads to a warning page saying not to upload, and there is a link to the help desk for those who need help determining the licensing status of a work. But, I think we should have some system where new users can specifically ask for help determining the licensing status of a work. I made a variant of the {{No license}} tag called {{Uploader unsure}}, if anyone wishes to tweak/fully implement it, you may. ViperSnake151 (talk) 21:51, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

This seems reasonable to me, though I'd like to hear other opinions. I feel it should probably have a notice on it about copyright violations though. -mattbuck (Talk) 00:40, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't we be discouraging people from uploading things that they are not sure of the provenance for? ++Lar: t/c 18:02, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Don't know if I have a strong opinion either way on adding this as an option to the upload form, but presumably the reason why it's not already an option on the upload form is mainly because people have been wary of causing even more images which will be flagged as problematic and in need of personal attention to be uploaded... AnonMoos (talk) 12:46, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Good idea. Should we replace the {{subst:nld}} in the license selector with this? --Joku Janne^(Fi) (Wikiwiki) 18:20, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

February 25

Help appreciated

POTY 2008 could do with some help if anyone has the time/feels inclined. Each of the pages of votes needs reviewing to check voter eligibility. No glory in it :) but there is quite a bit to be done. In passing, if you find a user who has been "welcomed" by me who has voted then they are eligible - saved me checking people I'd checked once! Thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:34, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I think we need bots help... --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:46, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Is it possible to make a list of all the voters by checking all the POTY subpages using a bot/script? After that, the bot will be listing all of the users that did not have 200 edits before the voting began. --Kanonkas_(talk) 15:49, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

A bot would be very appreciated. Doing this by hand is long and not much fun. Pruneau^talk 12:25, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Boston Photo UK, not MA

I was looking at photos of Boston, MA, and came across one photo labeled Boston, Lincolnshire, which is in the UK. Now I cannot find that page, but perhaps someone more experienced knows how to find that photo and correct the labeling. Davidt8 (talk) 15:25, 26 February 2009 (UTC)Davidt8

Hi Davidt8, we have Category:Boston for Boston, MA and Category:Boston, Lincolnshire. If you find an image that is categorized wrong please change the [[Category:Bostong...]] on the images description page. --Martin H. (talk) 17:00, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I would certainly change it if I could find it again. I am still learning how to use the search in advanced ways. Davidt8 (talk) 20:00, 26 February 2009 (UTC)Davidt8

How many maps on Commons ?

Where Can I get this info ? Yug (talk) 05:13, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Could start with Category:Maps. -- AnonMoos (talk) 06:58, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

According to a very expensive CategoryIntersect query (looking for all images in Category:Maps with a depth of 30), there are 41,306 maps. I am not sure if this is very accurate, though. Mvangeest (talk) 10:36, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

February 27

Can copyright be claimed on...?

Some museums forbid photography of their exhibits for commercial use, which in theory would make these images unsuitable for Commons. Nevertheless, I think they have no legal basis to claim copyrights to photographs of some of these exhibits:

• fossils of dead organisms (dinosaurs and such)
• ancient artifacts (prehistoric tools, Egyptian sculptures and such)
• works of art whose copyright has expired centuries ago (Leonardos, Rembrants, Velazquezs...)

Therefore, I believe this kind of photographs could be uploaded to Commons despite the fact that museums forbid commercial use. Am I right or wrong? Can museums claim copyright on something they have not created solely on the basis that they house the object in their premises? Thanks for your help. Leptictidium (talk) 14:03, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

You're right, museums do not have any rights over the image of public domain objects and works of art. --Eusebius (talk) 14:18, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps the legal situation for statues is different than for paintings, even for statues placed in public parks. Davidt8 (talk) 15:05, 27 February 2009 (UTC)davidt8

Different and not different: the museum do not have copyright on the image of anything. The photographer of a statue gets a copyright over its image, copyright recognized here on Commons (even for a PD statue - if it was a PD painting, we'd consider the reproduction as PD), and this copyright might eventually be transferred to somebody else (which can be the museum). Here I thought we were talking of photographs taken by Commoners. If we're talking about reusing existing photographs of bidimensional PD works of art, all the info is here. --Eusebius (talk) 15:22, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Basically correct; see Commons:Image casebook#Museum and interior photography and the link listed there. The museums generally do not have copyright control over your photographs, though of course they can ask you to leave, or prohibit you from visiting in the future. It is a decision for each photographer (and an issue between them and the museum); Commons will accept them though. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:28, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Photos of bridges and infrastructure

After September 11, 2001, there was a highly increased sensitivity about taking photos of bridges and other infrastructure that is clearly vulnerable to terrorist acts. Local police were stopping and questioning people who were taking photos of bridges.

Are contributors to Wikimedia Commons concerned about being questioned today? To me, there are so many photos of the Brooklyn Bridge out there, that taking more of them should not be a concern. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidt8 (talk • contribs) 15:10, 2009 February 27 (UTC)

I guess it's similar to the issue of the museum described in the above topic. The photo would be an issue between you and the cop, if you could manage to take it and get home with your camera, then you can do whatever you want with it. Belgrano (talk) 19:22, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I already took the bridge photos and some others, but I am just learning how to do things here on Wikimedia Commons. I will start slow, but I have a lot of photos to add. Davidt8 (talk) 20:03, 27 February 2009 (UTC)Dthomsen8

Possible massiv copyviolation.

Special:Contributions/Infozentrale-Bild lists planty of pictures taken from other sources. I am convinced most of these pictures are not licencesd correctly. He is now activ as de:Benutzer Diskussion:Tuskulum.--Captcha-Nick (talk) 16:17, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

 Done, I deleted all uploads by this user. Looks like he was just grabbing images from various (internet) sources and then uploading them here without permission. Thanks for the note! Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 09:23, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Metadata source for scanner information?

Newguy here... so I have a question that perhaps some of you may help me with?

On several of my files that I uploaded, I wasn't sure where to put the information on the image page for it. I used a flatbed scanner to capture images, but unlike what a digital camera does and provide a nice block of information in the 'Metadata' section (towards the bottom), the scanner is too stupid to know what/how to provide that information.

Suggestions on how I do that/provide this information? Is it important? For example, my scanner is a: Visioneer OneTouch8700 USB.

Thanks!Zul32 (talk) 20:19, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

It is not necessary to provide information about the scanner, it is just recommended. If you want, you can provide it in the ”Description:” field. --Joku Janne^(Fi) (Wikiwiki) 15:52, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

February 28

Addition to Picture?

Hello, I would like to bring your attention to a description that should have something added. The photograph: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-582-2103-18,_Frankreich,_Fallschirmj%C3%A4ger_mit_MG.jpg

Should indicated that the weapon the German Paratroops are using, is an American .30 cal M-1917 Machine Gun.

Thank you for a very informative site!

regards, D. Smith USA

Actually, the original image description mentions it - "Zwei Fallschirmjäger in getarnter Stellung mit erbeutetem, amerikanischen Maschinengewehr Browning M1919". Someone has put it in the wrong category (MG42), I'll fix it. --Daggerstab (talk) 09:51, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

POTY - help needed to check round 1 results

Before the finalists in the 2008 Picture of the Year competition can be announced help is needed to check the round 1 votes for eligibility. Please comment here. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:51, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

POTY - award logos needed

We urgently need some award logos created for the 1st round POTY sectional winners. If you can help, please go to Commons:Picture of the Year/2008/Preparation#By the way. If you can't help yourself but know someone who can, please ask them urgently! --MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:25, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

GFDL-presumed

If anyone is interested, I have proposed to removal of the GFDL-presumed tag from use on Wikipedia. Just an FYI. ~ JohnnyMrNinja (talk / en) 19:11, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

March 1

Category:Flower Images

What is Category:Flower Images good for?

What is the difference between Category:Flower Images and Category:Flowers?

Why, for example, is File:Stapelia gigantea flower and bud.JPG in Category:Flower Images and not in Category:Stapelia gigantea and in Category:Flowers by color/by country/by shape/...)?

-- 85.177.182.162 14:10, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I must say I asked myself the same question when I first came across this category. Following this logic, we would double the number of categories on Commons. If we need a distinction for different kind of medias, it would make more sense to create ... video or ... audio categories (although I doubt we have much of those for flowers :-) --Tryphon (talk) 14:52, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Imho we should nuke the whole Category:Pictures and images by shown topic category structure. Multichill (talk) 15:21, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm with you guys. I think it makes sense to assume a file is an image unless otherwise specified; we can have categories for videos, animations, etc. and it might make sense to subcategorize those by topic. Dcoetzee (talk) 19:55, 28 February 2009 (UTC)