Commons:Village pump/Archive/2010/11

Finding My Photos on Wikimedia

Hello,

I was very disturbed in finding that five of my pictures from the Städel Museum were uploaded here from my Flickr site. I care not that they are paintings seem to be considered in the common domain. I took the photos, and I should be the one to decide if I want to share them or not. In addition, the photos are in high resolution so would make good copies. The camera information is also displayed. I want to have these photos removed. How do I go about doing that. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oar square (talk • contribs) 13:58, October 28, 2010 (UTC)

You can't. You have no proprietary right in those photographs, so you have no right to demand we take them down. And frankly I'd be in a little better mood if I didn't have to go digging through all the pictures that mention Städel to find one of the photographs to see what the details of the issue were.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:23, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Just to explain a bit further – as you have pointed out, the paintings themselves are in the public domain as the copyright in them has expired. That being the case, under the principle established in the case of Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. no one who creates any reproduction of such paintings gains copyright in the reproductions. I note that there is no information identifying you personally in the EXIF. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 21:40, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I understand this may seem harsh, but to make an analogy: suppose you wrote quite a good short story set in the world of the Dune series of science fiction novels. Even though it was your own writing, the copyright holder of the novels could come after you and say that this is a "derivative work" based on his novels, and prohibit distribution. Believers in the public domain likewise feel that there are times when a work based on a public domain artwork should still be held by the public domain. Substantial alterations to the painting would make it yours, but not the careful adjustment of camera settings and angle. (And I won't dispute that you did a great job!) If it were otherwise, probably the museum could claim copyright over your photograph because they carefully selected the position of the lights illuminating it.

That said, there are countries that believe in "sweat equity" and which would choose policies that might essentially end the public domain, because with every photo, every scan, every digital transformation, perhaps every transfer between routers over the internet the image could be subjected to a new copyright by the last person to hold it. The U.S. just isn't one of those countries ——— for now. Wnt (talk) 22:15, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

For a more detailed explanation of the PD-Art policy that allowed us to use this image without your permission, see Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag. Dcoetzee (talk) 04:49, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

October 29

Image download - idea

Regarding my previous question which I posted at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Image_download_question - has anyone thought of getting a bot to fill in the Information template and add it to articles where it's not downloaded, so that people can download the images/link to them etc.?

Not sure where the relevant page is to suggest this... but hope my idea helps.

Thanks for your suggestion. I think you're raising an important point. Now that the Stockphoto gadget needs the information template to work we should start adding it to every file. I don't know if a bot will be able to do the job, since it cannot understand which is which of the arbitrary information that might be on a file page. So maybe we need to do a kind of "Template Addition Drive". Yes and we need to standardize the use of the "Author" field, to take in consideration its use in the credit line. -- Orionist ★ talk 06:45, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

It's pretty much useful, especially since I'm going to be creating an automobile site, and will rely on Wikimedia Commons for my material. Thanks.

November 1

Geocalizing categories

Hi everybody. I just added a template:location on a category (Category:Église Saint-Éphrem-le-Syriaque (Paris)). Is it a good idea? Does it exist a specific template for geolocalizing categories (I didn't find any)? --Aʁsenjyʁdəgaljɔm¹¹⁶⁷¹ 09:38, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

There is {{Object location}}. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 09:45, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh! according to this template's name, it should be what I was searching for. But for people like me I think I'll create Category:Geolocalizing templates (or sthng like that). Thanks. --Aʁsenjyʁdəgaljɔm¹¹⁶⁷¹ 09:51, 1 November 2010 (UTC) Sorry, there is already Category:Geocoding templates. --Aʁsenjyʁdəgaljɔm¹¹⁶⁷¹ 09:55, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

 Done See Category:Église Saint-Éphrem-le-Syriaque (Paris). Thank you very much for your help. --Aʁsenjyʁdəgaljɔm¹¹⁶⁷¹ 10:00, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

If I may ask a more or less related question: do I understand correctly that "location" marks the spot where I stood when I took the photograph, and "object location" marks where the object (building or whatever) is (was) at the moment the picture was taken? MartinD (talk) 13:25, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's my understanding as well. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:22, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Clock with timezones

09:13 [update]
Commons clock - made from this set [update]

Example of hard to see clock

{{User:Docu/clock}} (displayed to the right, with Commons' UTC) allows now to set time zones. Try e.g.

{{User:Docu/clock|float=right|width=400|dt=-6}}

or, for CET/CEST,:

{{User:Docu/clock|float=right|width=400|dt=+{{Horloge analogique/CEST}}}}

Cheers. --  Docu  at 07:35, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Hey, cool! — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 11:57, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Note the non-existent file "File:BC040004.JPG" ... — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 07:22, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I think I should refresh the collection. BTW, the timezone feature was added by Jarekt.  Docu  at 07:49, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

It would be nice if the template could randomly pick images from the collection, but that might be a bit difficult to achieve. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 07:51, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I could use seconds to pick different ones for the same minute. In the previous refresh I was glad that I didn't have to re-use the same image for too many different minutes anymore ;)  Docu  at 11:26, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I think some images should be avoided if the clock is a very small part of the image, which is hard to find. See example on the right. I also I think this should be moved to template namespace. Otherwise this is a great template. --Jarekt (talk) 01:42, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

This is really cool. I had no idea we had so many clock pictures. :-) Dcoetzee (talk) 03:58, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Can a copyright holder retain anonymity?

I'm looking for a picture to go on a wikipedia page and my understanding is that I need to get it from wikipedia commons.

There is no suitable picture there, I have found a picture but the copyright holder wants me to deal with it and doesn't want his name on the internet.

Is it possible for me to upload this photograph with his permission but without his name being published?

Nick mitchener (talk)

If he is okay with a pseudonym, aka a nickname that isn't personally identifiable, you could have him send an email to OTRS (see Commons:OTRS) giving his permission for use of the file, along with the license he wants to use (see Commons:Licensing) and the pseudonym of his choosing. If the image is not currently online and linkable, if he agrees to this, you'll need to go ahead and upload it, tag it with {{OTRS pending}}, and have him include a link to the image so OTRS knows what to look for when completing the process. Make sure he understands that OTRS is not publicly visible, so his real identification won't make it onto the 'net at large. Read those pages and let me know if you have any questions regarding the process. — Huntster (t @ c) 18:05, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

An OTRS is nor publicly visible; but one can ask for it, that means: it is publicly accessible. --Havang(nl) (talk) 10:04, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Problems with upload form

Hi I do not use upload form much lately, so I was rather surprised that it looks different and I can not get it to work. I followed the following steps:

1. press "Upload file" in the lest column to get to Commons:Upload
2. press "basic upload form" to get here
3. I copy/pasted image description, picked an image, pressed upload, and got progress bar showing 0 percent done, which did not change through the night (uploading 90 kB image)
4. I tried again in the morning and got 80% done before I got "Invalid token" error, whatever that is

After few more failed attempts I tried to start from the beginning with the new upload window and this time it worked. But the process was very confusing and reasons of failures not explained. I believe this can be quite confusing for the new users. --Jarekt (talk) 02:43, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a glitch in Michael Dale's (User:Mdale) mwEmbed stuff. Lupo 13:49, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

What browser/version was that with Jarekt ? I'd like to try and replicate such a problem. TheDJ (talk) 21:57, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Since it is a FAQ. I have this info on [[user:Jarekt]. But it is Firefox 3.6 under vector skin. --Jarekt (talk) 19:56, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Should I contact Mike Godwin?

Regarding Commons:Deletion requests/Raruto - I think it would be helpful for Mike Godwin to give advice on whether the United States law would recognize the right of parody and allow the author of Raruto images to license them for CC licenses according to US law. Should I e-mail him? Or should I get legal advice from another party? WhisperToMe (talk) 02:11, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I guess so, but I believe he "parted ways" with Wikimedia recently. THENEWMONO (a real person) 04:00, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

From [1]:

If I get a legal complaint or have a question that in the past I would have forwarded to Mike, where should I now be sending it?

All legal information should be submitted in the same way that you are doing so now: any changes to the process will be handled further downstream.

So, feel free. The question here is, of course, whether these works are derivative of Naruto (which has, of course, not been released under a CC license). Dcoetzee (talk) 04:31, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Alright... if his Wikimedia Foundation e-mail address is no longer available, what is the best way for me to contact him? WhisperToMe (talk) 09:18, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Read what I quoted again. Mail it to the same place you would've mailed it before. They'll route it properly. Dcoetzee (talk) 10:03, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Ah, so by the "same way" it means sending it to the same e-mail address using the same procedure. I'll e-mail him at "mgodwin" at Wikimedia. Thank you WhisperToMe (talk) 17:23, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

And I have sent the e-mail to Mr. Godwin. Hopefully he will provide analysis that will reveal what to do with these images. WhisperToMe (talk) 17:35, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Try legal at wikimedia.org as well if needed. The temp legal staffer (no counsel) probably has access to that address and can handle and assess issues. Advice from last weeks office IRC meeting. TheDJ (talk) 19:56, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

The Foundation announced departure of Mike Godwin or am I a fool? --Aʁsenjyʁdəgaljɔm¹¹⁶⁷¹ 09:43, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you - I'll send a second e-mail to legal so that it gets involved too. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:18, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Must the two be mutually exclusive? ;) -mattbuck (Talk) 17:40, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

{{PD-scan}}

{{PD-scan}} is quite similar to {{PD-art}} is asserting that process of scanning/photographing 2D work is insufficiently creative to generate a new copyright. They are usually used for images of works already in PD, usually due to age. Unlike {{PD-art}}, {{PD-scan}} does not mention why we believe the work is in PD, so in the current form it should be used only in conjunction with other PD template (like {{PD-old}}). Unfortunately that is quite rare. I would like to propose to rewrite {{PD-scan}} as a wrapper around other license, with PD-old as default, the way {{PD-art}} is written. --Jarekt (talk) 19:24, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Good idea, all correct usage of {{PD-scan|PD-US}}, {{PD-scan|PD-old}} etc will not be affected. However, all uses at the moment with only {{PD-scan}} and no license tag should first be moved to some 'PD scan tag requires update' category. Doing the change and thereby adding a default pd-old to files that are maybe not 70 years pma pd-old but only pd-us or ineligible etc. wouldnt be a good idea. --Martin H. (talk) 20:39, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

@Martin H. Btw, I've just tried changing the license for one of my few PD-scan files to {{PD-scan|PD-old}}, as you suggest. However, this produces the red category 'Category:PD-scan with parameter'. Anatiomaros (talk) 22:40, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I think this is a very good idea. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 07:16, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this needs sorting out. I've not often used {{PD-scan}}, but have sometimes done so for scanned book illustrations etc found on the web; this was only after first tagging as {{PD-old}} (as PD-scan is not a menu option on file upload) and then changing the tag to PD-scan after uploading the file. The current wording at the license description page is not clear at all on this. Anatiomaros (talk) 22:40, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Agree, many tag users forget to include the license and we should have a reasonable default. Dcoetzee (talk) 04:51, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I take it this effort is why a lot of our stereo cards now show Category:PD-scan without primary license? (For what it's worth, almost all of those from the US - perhaps all - will be {{PD-1923}}.) Right now, it's an empty category; if this is going to be much use to anyone, someone needs to create that category & put instructions there as to what to do. - Jmabel ! talk 04:15, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I would add: particularly confusing because if I do what is presumably desired and make it {{PD-scan|PD-1923}} that places it in an also nonexistent Category:PD-scan with primary license, not exactly something that reinforces that I've done the right thing. So maybe I haven't? - Jmabel ! talk

Those 2 were just temporary maintenance categories. I removed Category:PD-scan with primary license as unnecessary and someone created Category:PD-scan without primary license which my user:JarektBot was using to replace things like {{PD-old}}{{PD-scan}} with {{PD-scan|PD-old}}. I will try to reduce number of images in Category:PD-scan without primary license, for images with additional licenses. --Jarekt (talk) 04:16, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

October 28

Problem with a template

When I open {{Anonymous work}}, below the box (that I see in french because of my prefences) I have the message NOTE: Please do not use this template directly! This is just for translation. Use {Anonymous work} instead! (which is in english). I guess this message should appear only on translated subpages, not on the main model. More curious, it disappears when I click on any language link.

Does anybody know how to fix that ? --Aʁsenjyʁdəgaljɔm¹¹⁶⁷¹ 15:00, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

PS when I open Template:Anonymous work/fr I have the message twice.

Fixed, {{Translated tag}} needs to be wraped in <noinclude></noinclude>

Experience

Are there any pages on wikicommons where people share their experience in making photos? Where we can learn? Thanks.--PereslavlFoto (talk) 15:00, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Scans of comic book characters

I happen to be a big fan of comic books. Therefore, I am constantly checking in with Wikipedia to research as it were history or other details about various superhero characters from the comics. In doing so, I notice that more than a few of the entries are missing photos of the comic book characters in question. So here are my two questions.

Is there any problem with providing an upload of scans I have personally done from any of the numerous comic books of any of these characters (from either DC or Marvel comic books)?

And, assuming that scans done from published comic books (again either DC or Marvel) are not a problem re any copyright infringement since (presumably?) they are now "public domain", how do I go about uploading any such JPEG files I have made by scanning a panel from comic books that I own? (IE, which licensing category would it fit under, and otherwise, how do I go about doing an upload, please, of any such scans?)

Thanks

glsowder@yahoo.com

The presumption is, far as I know, mistaken. It will be difficult to find anything published by these companies that is not copyright. That's why cartoon characters in general are scarce in Wikipedia. Only a few have lapsed or been set free by their owners. Jim.henderson (talk) 05:44, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, for example Marvel Comics being first published in 1939, it is very unlikely that any of the authors was dead more than 70 years ago. --Aʁsenjyʁdəgaljɔm¹¹⁶⁷¹ 09:58, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

It's irrelevant when the authors died, since they were producing works that were published in the US prior to 1978. The only thing Commons cares about for US works is US law, and the only thing US law cares about is that they were published after 1923 (or 95 years ago, which ever is later), with proper registration and renewal. Life+70 in the US is only for works created and published after 1978 or first published after 2002.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:10, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you ar right. Do you think they could be "copyrigth not renewed" ? --Aʁsenjyʁdəgaljɔm¹¹⁶⁷¹ 14:10, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

The 1940's Fleischer Superman cartoons are out of copyright in the U.S. (see Category:PD Cartoon - Superman, but most other things which had long-term sustained commercial value probably aren't... AnonMoos (talk) 11:51, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Those have always frustrated me; there is a solid commercial argument--the fact that a dozen tiny PD DVD distributors, several selling through mass sources like Wal-Mart, weren't sued out of existence for selling them indicates they are PD--but though I've heard the argument for them not being derivative works of the Superman comics, I've never understood it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:35, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Most comics from this era (like most published books and films) were meticulous about including a copyright notice and both registering and renewing copyright. As such most of them are still in copyright and will be for a long time to come. There may exist isolated cases where they failed to do so, and these could be public domain. Dcoetzee (talk) 18:23, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I would have agree before reading that: A 1961 Copyright Office study found that fewer than 15% of all registered copyrights were renewed. For books, the figure was even lower: 7%. (Peter B. Hirtle, CC-BY) --Aʁsenjyʁdəgaljɔm¹¹⁶⁷¹ 22:56, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's true that most comics from this era are renewed. Public Domain Super Heroes and the Digital Comic Museum seem fairly careful about their copyright clearing, and have a wide collection of works. But what you won't find is any names that don't predate the comics and that a non-comics fan would recognize.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:35, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I stand corrected. :-) All the more evidence that most works people have no interest in retaining copyright over in the long term... makes me miss the days of copyright registration and renewal. Dcoetzee (talk) 04:51, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Photographs of identifiable people and limits of abusive off-wiki reuse

I've commented at Commons talk:Photographs of identifiable people#Re-use of the image, and reassuring image donors about a subject that I feel it is important to clarify for when dealing with image donors.--Pharos (talk) 20:47, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

November 4

Thumbnails

Is it just me or is there something wrong with the thumbnails for the last three days? Dornicke (talk) 15:24, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

At #Problem section you'll see the information about this issue. Best regards. – Kwj2772 (msg) 15:31, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I see. Thank you. Dornicke (talk) 15:40, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

November 5

Propose to cease all FOP-related speedy deletions

I notice that "No freedom of panorama in the source country" is actually a deletion reason in the admin's delete drop down menu. I also notice that users are tagging files for speedy deletion with rationals of or similar to "No freedom of panorama in so and so". In the past, I have learned the many exceptions these files can have. For example, a city-scape or street-scape can be exempted from deletion because of Commons:De minimis. Others are depicted during its construction stages and may require review from others to decide if deletion is appropriate (see Category:Construction of Burj Khalifa for example]]. The actual reason why I post this is because someone nominated a bunch of files, some which I declined for exceptions, and others I can't decide. Because of this, it would be more appropriate if such images are nominated for deletion where others can take a look at and see if there are other ways the image can be exempt. I understand that there are some images that are quite obvious, but one never knows and it would make people (like me) more comfortable. I propose that the criteria for speedy deletion is modified so that it prohibits these types of deletion, just like the superseded images policy. The majority of FOP-related deletions already happen through DR anyways. ZooFari 18:04, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree. And as we come to this subject again, I propose to open a site distinct from to commons, in which site we can hosts those original photographs, not published elwhere, under a no-license-to-copy, but with links on wikipedia's to them, pureley for encyclopedic purposes and not for offering free images as commons do. --Havang(nl) (talk) 18:25, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I was just going to suggest the same. If you look at this thread above we were discussing some of these files. I failed to notice they were speedy requests and a couple got deleted mid-discussion. It seems that "No FoP" has become a magic word that can kill any image with even a lamp post or a painted wall. They should all be discussed first. Another issue is that some of the deleted images were used in WP articles. Since uploaders are absent in many instances, the nominator or deleter should at least have the courtesy to upload these as fair use to the affected WP, or instruct the uploader to do that (if present) and give some time for the process before deletion. -- Orionist ★ talk 19:17, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

There is a new, ongoing duscussion here. I am afraid that some of the participants have totally misinterpreted the intentions of the said laws. I am of the opinion that I have presented proves that their interpretations do not match with reality, and we should have a thorough study of te issue before any photos are deleted. After all, I can not see that anyone has ever received any sort of complaint from the UAE - which we certainly would have if the publications were not lawful. Bjoertvedt (talk) 19:25, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, the difference with "no FOP" and "superseded" reasons for speedy deletion is that obvious "no FOP" violations are in fact copyvios which are and will always be speedy deletion criteria. I have no problem discouraging speedy deletion of these (e.g. removing the default reason from the drop down) but for the real obvious ones and admins who know what they're doing, I don't think we should outlaw it completely... I don't know. Is there any "real obvious FOP cases" or "admins who know what they're doing"? ;) Rocket000 (talk) 19:36, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm divided on this. On the one hand, allowing speedy deletion speeds things up a bit and I'm sure there have been many speedy deletions on no FoP grounds that have been entirely correct. On the other hand, I have seen quite a number of image with speedy deletion requests on no FoP grounds when they could probably be kept under de minimis or similar, which makes me wonder if any admins have deleted images on spurious no FoP grounds. However, for all dodgy nominations I've seen I've either removed the tag as permitted by policy and given a reason on the talk page, or another admin eventually declines the nomination. CT Cooper · talk 20:20, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Speedy deletions are for obvious cases. FOP is never obvious so not suitable for speedy deletions. Multichill (talk) 21:52, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Zoofari on this. As Multichill has said above, these are often not clearcut cases. Far too many files are being speedied - and indeed DRed - for the wrong reasons (albeit usually in good faith). I'd even be tempted to go a step further and suggest modifying the side-bar menu so that the 'Nominate for deletion' option is only available to established regular contributors. Anatiomaros (talk) 22:04, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Partly agree. A "no FOP" deletion is sometimes painfully obvious (for example, a very common case: a full-frame photograph of a modern sculpture in the United States), and other times is more subtle. I would prefer to avoid outlawing FOP speedies in favour of reprimanding overzealous deleters and providing clearer guidelines for when to speedy and when not to speedy. Dcoetzee (talk) 04:43, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I must disagree with Multichill. I live in a country where FOP isn't acknowledged at all, be it for buildings or for statues. I have treated loads of FOP cases. The vast majority of them are plain and obvious. The De minimis exception can apply to all copyright issues and I see no reason to treat FOP cases otherwise. Reading this thread gives me the uneasy impression that for most of you, an admin is someone who clicks the 'delete' button as soon as they see a SD template on a file. This is not the case. On the contrary, far too much files rot in DR forever because one guy wrote ‘there's a pigeon on this statue so this is De minimis!’ and nobody dares to take it down. Honestly people, what's the difference with ANY OTHER SD request? Jastrow (Λέγετε) 08:55, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I have always handled no-FOP pictures in DRs, never in speedy. During that process (amon hundreds of DRs) I made a few mistakes (sometimes identifying the wrong country, sometimes misinterpreting the requirements of the country's law (Once I thought Mexican FOP applied only for "permanent" works, but Mexican FOP is OK for transient wokrs too) . If I had used speedies, some pictures would have probably been mistakenly deleted. To Dcoetze : I don't see what is so obvious concerning US statues. How do you know how modern a statue is ? Many modern US statues are like the en:Chicago Picasso, free. Teofilo (talk) 20:13, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

By "modern statue" I usually mean a statue where the author is known and died less than 70 years ago. Of course I'm oversimplifying things since there's the copyright notice and registration requirements. Maybe it's not as simple as I thought. Dcoetzee (talk) 04:00, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

"in favour of reprimanding overzealous deleters " This is typical admin tyranny. Admins are pope-like elected for life people who restrict as much as they can the number of admins , trying to remain a small club of "happy few". They can make any mistake they want, they won't be bothered because they are elected for life. On the other hand, if a non-admin makes a small mistake, come on, let's reprimand him. I am fed up of this tyranny. Teofilo (talk) 20:21, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I was actually referring to the admins doing the deleting, not the taggers, since they bear the final responsibility. I'm just saying we shouldn't speedy things that shouldn't be speedied, we should be conservative and send ambiguous cases to DR. Dcoetzee (talk) 23:53, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

The only place on this wiki where non-admin can have a say is the DRs. So what the admins are thinking now is : let's make the DRS become meaningless and pass all deletions as speedies, so that the deleting power remains concentrated into the admins' hands. Teofilo (talk) 20:23, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Maybe {{FOP-cv}} should be deleted. FOP cases often cannot be decided at first sight. It is clogging category:Copyright violations - real blatantly obvious copyvios are now taking longer to delete. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 14:44, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

European copyright for plain photos of old art

A lawyer representing Sweden's Nationalmuseum has kindly pointed out, in a letter and phone conversation to the Swedish chapter Wikimedia Sverige, that some pictures found here of paintings by Anders Zorn are photos taken by the museum's photographers and thus covered by copyright in the European Union. The Swedish copyright for plain photos ("fotografisk bild", Upphovsrättslagen § 49a) lasts 50 years after the initial publishing, and was 25 years before 1994, so only photos older than 1969 are in the public domain. This is of course very similar to the case this summer between London's National Portrait Gallery and Dcoetzee. The main defence in the EFF letter was that Dcoetzee was working from the United States, where this copyright does not exist. Did NPG stop with that?

Does this mean a European uploader of such images (or downloader and reuser) might still be the target of a lawsuit? Perhaps we need to be more careful. Being a board member of the Swedish chapter, I'm trying to remain a helpful mediator, and have no desire to become directly involved in the content. So far, there are no threats of lawsuits, only a polite discussion. --LA2 (talk) 17:39, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

"...thus covered by copyright in the European Union". That's unlikely. At the very least, it is untested, and thus in gray legal territory. If you're worried about it, have someone in the US delete and re-upload it. Kaldari (talk) 18:59, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

It still is against the law, as you have to mention the source-uploader. And you have no licence for the copyrighted metadata as well. --Havang(nl) (talk) 19:32, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Of course the source should be listed as the museum. What metadata are you referring to? Do you have an example? If they are including paragraphs of text in the metadata, yes, that should be removed, but otherwise it is unlikely to attract copyright protection. Kaldari (talk) 19:42, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

===> in dutch --Havang(nl) (talk) 19:57, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Database rights are a completely separate issue, and largely irrelevant to our use. We aren't copying their database, we're copying the paintings. It's very unlikely that our metadata and metadata presentation are identical to that of the museum. Kaldari (talk) 20:17, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I've usually dealt with the issue of database rights by copying only as much data as needed to uniquely identify the work (usually title and author) from the source website. Any other data should be derived from other sources. Dcoetzee (talk) 00:05, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, it is untested. The law for simple photographs would seem to be quite clear. Germany also has protection for Lichtbilde, but according to Klaus Graf that does not necessarily imply protection for art reproduction, see Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive 7#PD-Old or PD-Art of German Paintings and here (in German). /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 19:41, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

A very long time ago I pointed out one of the weaknesses of the Directmedia/Yorck Project being the absence of any photographer information. This applies to File:Edouard Manet 007.jpg (a painting not from Zorn, but located in the Swedish National Museum). Teofilo (talk) 19:10, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps we should add some new source parameters: photographer of the painting, art book publisher who published the photo of the painting, guy who scanned the published photo of the painting from the art book, DVD publisher who published the scanned version of the photo of the painting published in the art book, ad absurdum. Kaldari (talk) 19:52, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Kaldari, did you see this discussion Commons_talk:Licensing#How_to_give_credit_for_Digitalisation:_own_work --Havang(nl) (talk) 20:15, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Basic provenance information such this is not absurd at all. Trycatch (talk) 20:18, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you are right, although I'm worried that the suggestion of adding provenance information could quickly turn into a

requirement, which it shouldn't be in the case of PD-Art. Kaldari (talk) 20:22, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Kaldari, you apparentlky overlooks the sentence in the PD-art template: "Please be aware that depending on local laws, re-use of this content may be prohibited or restricted in your jurisdiction." One part of the content is the photographic form and its metadata; adding a photo-licence PD-own has effect in european jurisdictions. --Havang(nl) (talk) 20:35, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

the licences the photograph in digital form (including metadata) :Perhaps we would need to hear the opinion of another Swedish lawyer. Has this kind of claim any chance of success before a Swedish court ? Does a photograph of a painting enjoy the status of "fotografisk bild" ? Is it not still a painting, even after someone makes a photographic copy of it ? There is very little photographic substance in it. Is there any special effect making the work look different on the photograph than how it looks when people view it with their own eyes at the Museum ? Teofilo (talk) 19:49, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

(reply to OP) Copyright violation is a civil offense. The main difference between a European citizen and a U.S. citizen is that any civil penalty imposed on an EU citizen can be directly enforced by their member country upon the offender, while for a U.S. citizen they would have to ask the U.S. to enforce it (which normally, they would, unless it is a gross offense to U.S. standards of morality, etc.) The other main difference is that in my case the act of uploading occurred entirely inside the U.S. (between me and WMF's servers), and so that action would be interpreted in that jurisdiction. I might have been the target of a lawsuit but ultimately was not; I cannot speculate about NPG's reasoning, or about what the outcome of such action might be. Dcoetzee (talk) 23:59, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes it has chance of success in Swedish court. The definition of "fotografisk bild" is that it does not need any requirements to enjoy this status. It only has to be a photo of something. So while it does not fill the requirements to be called "fotografiskt verk" wich is the definition of a photografic work of art it does by default become a "fotografisk bild". So any picture taken in Sweden during or after 1969 is atleast protected until 2019 by Swedish law. -- ostro (talk) 09:30, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

November 2

The requested URL could not be retrieved

---

While trying to retrieve the URL: href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Abasha_COA.svg/200px-Abasha_COA.svg.png"

The following error was encountered:

• Unable to forward this request at this time.

This request could not be forwarded to the origin server or to any parent caches. The most likely cause for this error is that:

• The cache administrator does not allow this cache to make direct connections to origin servers, and
• All configured parent caches are currently unreachable.

Your cache administrator is href="mailto:nobody".

---

Generated Wed, 03 Nov 2010 14:29:27 GMT by sq51.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE7)

I received this while trying to generate a thumbnail access for this file.--George M. (talk) 14:31, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't know exactly what it means, but I notice that the disk of sq51 appears to be full. A server admin should clean up on sq51.[2]

But our servers seem to have problems anyway right now; at least for me, Special:NewFiles takes ages waiting for the server to serve the thumbnails, and times out on many of them. Lupo 14:55, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I had the same thing when posting the message below. --Aʁsenjyʁdəgaljɔm¹¹⁶⁷¹ 15:05, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Mark is creating some space on the thumbnail servers and that should hopefully fix it. TheDJ (talk) 15:24, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I hope it gets fixed, this is really annoying, and seems to happen ever other month or so. Fry1989 (talk) 19:50, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Template:Advertising facility

Please help to discuss, correct and improve a draft of a new template Template:Advertising facility/en. --ŠJů (talk) 11:36, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

still not solved problem

some admin delete this files: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Il_corpo_senza_vita_di_Benito_Mussolini_accanto_a_quello_della_sua_compagna_Claretta_Petacci.jpg This is an image of Neville Chamberlain, Benito Mussolini, E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax and count Galeazzo Ciano.png published under pd-italy... can somebody restore him?

Why it still that not done? each admin is afraid to do their job? --77.48.153.172 16:25, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

For that purpose we have COM:UNDEL. I save my comments for a possible undeletion request there. --Martin H. (talk) 16:50, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Plaques discussion transferred from DR-section for wider policy discussion

User:Havang(nl) is requesting feedback on Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Lendal_Tower,_York_(21st_October_2010)_001.jpg. He accidentally pasted the current version of the discussion verbatim here, which is forking, so I've removed it - please see the deletion request for more information. Dcoetzee (talk) 11:28, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

And don't forget to comment there on the suggestion of introducing at commons a kind of DISCLAIMER". --Havang(nl) (talk) 20:52, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

As far as I understand this was a similar discussion: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Voorpl.jpg - even this argumentation is correct by the words, I still cannot believe that memorial plaques in the US and England vor instance are really protected by copyright laws. That contradicts the intention of the plaques. Cholo Aleman (talk) 06:05, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Copyright laws are big, sprawling, and pretty universal. And the intention of the plaques is to attract tourists, which may not be enhanced by our inclusion of them.--Prosfilaes (talk) 06:51, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

several unused and uncategorized Diagrams of "Telosys" + other screenshots

User:Jgeant has uploaded several diagrams of "Telosys" (I am not quite sure, what this is in fact), see [3] - and I am not sure if this is in scope. As far as I see all are unused, all are uncategorized. I did not make extensive searches in other wikipedias if this is from a deleted article. If in scope: what categories fit? Best wishes Cholo Aleman (talk) 09:06, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

nearly the same is true for this images: [4] from User:Laguna - for me unusable. Cholo Aleman (talk) 10:03, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

hm, there seems to be an overwhelming interest in uncategorized nonsense - often projects like the commons may have different phases - at first you collect everything, next you have to look for quality and omit the unusable content. Obviously the commons are in the first phase. Cholo Aleman (talk) 22:14, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

deletion request http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Telosys_Actions.PNG Cholo Aleman (talk) 22:19, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Fundamental error in Commons as wikipedia image host

Wikipedia has as primary objective the free access to knowledge, marvelous. Commons has as primary objective to host free images, excellent. But.... at some m oment Commmons has become the host for wikipedia images. And there it has gone wrong, as this had as a consequence a censure on free access to knowledge presented by non-free images. It has been a fundamental error to make Commons the wikipedia image host. There is a real need to have a second hosting-media for non-free images for the encyclopedies wikipedia. --Havang(nl) (talk) 10:20, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Spill over from #Plaques discussion transferred from DR-section for wider policy discussion above? Just upload locally under fair use, if the projects where you want to use non-free images or images showing non-free subjects allow that. Lupo 10:25, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Spill-over: yes and no; it is a long-time concern for me. Uploading locally: More and more wikipedi's stop hosting images, transfer images to commons, and have upload forms linking to commons. That's what has creaqted the problem, going back is not the solution. Upload under fair-use I retain that expression and I restate : there is a need for a wikimedia hosting non-free fair-use images. --Havang(nl) (talk) 11:23, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

We have Wikipedias stating that they would rather not include fair use material. I fail to see why that means that we or a new Wikimedia project is needed to support fair use material.--Prosfilaes (talk) 12:11, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

+1 with Prosfilaes. And Havang, please be careful when using the word « censure ». Jean-Fred (talk) 13:20, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Havang(nl) -- Fair-use laws vary greatly between different countries, and whether something counts as fair use can also depend on the way in which it's presented in an article. So far, it's been decided that it doesn't make sense to handle fair-use in a centralized global way... AnonMoos (talk) 14:04, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Excluding fair use material results in censuring information for a site which wants free access to information. But there is a legal way out to have that information accessible for wikipedia's. --Havang(nl) (talk) 13:37, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

What does "censuring" mean in this context? AnonMoos (talk) 14:07, 5 November 2010 (UTC).

(Some message-crossing). Fair use, I was on the point of adding as well as hosting images with licenses only for non-commercial use, I add that now. "Censuring", excluding info. --Havang(nl) (talk) 16:21, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

You'll have to take that up with the individual projects. By consensus or by necessity, some projects have decided that not allowing fair-use media is the best route to take. Like others here, I fail to see how this is censoring. (To censure is to blame or reprimand, just fyi.) Having two separate external media projects will be difficult because, ultimately, they'll have to by synced to avoid naming conflicts. And given that WikiMedia, in general, promotes an atmosphere of freely licensed material (hence why Commons exists), I find it highly unlikely that consensus or the Foundation would ever allow for a non-free hosting project. — Huntster (t @ c) 18:27, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Havang, did you ever read wmf:Resolution:Licensing policy? Multichill (talk) 11:28, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

NO, I didn't know of its existence. I haven't seen it in DR discussions. I'll study it. That Exemption Doctrine Policy seems to be related to what I am looking for: a solution for hosting all exemptions for educational and encyclopedic purposes. --Havang(nl) (talk) 12:48, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Right. But note that the Commons is explicitly not allowed to have EDPs. Lupo 18:25, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Right. But what do you propose as solution to have such educational and encyclopedic media accessible for wikipedia's? --Havang(nl) (talk) 18:47, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure what is wrong with the current system, which is that individual language Wikipedias must decide for themselves whether to allow fair-use files, and if they do, such files are uploaded locally at those Wikipedias. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 19:09, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

FOP for billboards?

Does Freedom of panorama cover a photo of a billboard?--Chaser (talk) 21:46, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Read COM:FOP. It depends on the country, and what we have in there for Spain tells me it's a possibility, but no certainty.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:29, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

As far as I understand this Freedom of Panorama in Spain applies only to works that are permanently displayed, not to advertisement and billboards?! Cholo Aleman (talk) 08:58, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I'd have thought so. The ad itself is sure to be copyrighted as is the prominent magazine photo of George Clooney. And de minimis is out of the question here. Anatiomaros (talk) 18:06, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

November 7

Nominate for deletion button

This section was moved to MediaWiki_talk:AjaxQuickDelete.js#Bugs.3F. Helder 18:05, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Copyrighted logo

A created via vector graphics (like File:Argentine Football Association.svg) is obviously a copyright violation, am I right? The great number of Wikipedias that use the image without raising an issue is what makes me doubt. Fache (talk) 07:01, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

What does vector graphics have to do with it? If that logo is copyrighted, which I see arguments for and against, then it's a copyright infringement for us to use it, vector graphics or not.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:57, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

If the original logo is non-free copyrighted, which is likely, then yes, this is an illegal derivative work. Neither this image nor the original logo image are permitted at Commons, and I recommend nominating it for deletion. The only exception would be if the original logo is public domain due to age or (unlikely) released under a free license. Dcoetzee (talk) 09:10, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

As has been highlighted during deletion review before, uploaders should check when the logo was adopted. If the sports organization in question has been around for a while, it may well be that the logo is now in the public domain. The onus is on the uploader to provide evidence that it is in the public domain. If he or she is not co-operative in helping to determine this, the logo in question should be deleted for lack of evidence on its public domain status. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 09:16, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

The AFA logo is defined textually in Art. 87 of the bylaws of the AFA.[5] Our SVG appears to be an independent visualization of that textual description; it differs significantly from the rendering shown on the AFA website. Our SVG here is not a derivative work of the graphics on the AFA web site. (The font used for the letters "AFA" is not copyrightable, is it? Maybe we should remove the two stars at the top; these are not mentioned in art. 87.) There would be only problems if our drawing here was considered a derivative work of the textual description and therefore not OK because that textual description was not PD yet. Lupo 09:23, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

P.S.: This logo is apparently in use since 1952.[6] Lupo 09:32, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

If the artist who designed the logo is anonymous, {{PD-AR-Anonymous}} may be applicable. Otherwise, if the artist is known, the 70 pma rule applies. But I agree that if this particular rendering of the logo was based solely on the textual description in the AFA's by-laws (are we sure that there is no visual depiction of the logo?), then it may not breach the copyright in the official logo. — SMUconlaw (talk) 09:40, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

There is no depiction of the logo in the AFA bylaws as published online. Oh, and the two stars do not appear to belong to the logo; they represent the two wins in the World Cup 1978 and 1986. Lupo 09:48, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Here's an image of the logo used on the shirts of the national team . -- Orionist ★ talk 16:24, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

In traditional European heraldry, many alternative artistic depictions of a coat of arms can be acceptable renderings of the original textual Blazon, and anyone who makes a new artistic visual depiction of a coat of arms based on the textual blazon legitimately owns the copyright to the particular depiction which he has made. This differs from logos, where usually only one fixed visual version of a logo is acceptable. AnonMoos (talk) 12:07, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

This to me appears to be a separate expression of the same idea; the copyright is owned by the person who drew this particular version and can be licensed as they wish. There are almost certainly trademark restrictions of course; the {{Trademarked}} tag should be added. It is often irrelevant when a general design was adopted; what matters is the specific expression seen in different versions. For logos being reproduced exactly, yes, you need to look at the history of that logo, but it doesn't always go that way. I think this one is basically the situation described in COM:COA. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:36, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

November 3

Source=Transferred from en.wikipedia, Author=Original uploader was User X

Commons has thousands of files with that says the author is "Original uploader was User:X at yy.wikipedia" and source is "Transferred from yy.wikipedia by User:Z". The exact wording may differ depending on what tool was used. In some cases the original description pages contain clear information about the author and source, and the information here can be corrected. But the problem is that many original descriptions are deleted or does not contain the needed information. When can it be assumed that the original uploader is the author? And what should be done with files here if too much information is missing?
Some examples of problems:

• Description for File:Mikecarroll.jpg was only "{{GFDL}}". Is the uploader the photographer who released it as GFDL, or was it a GFDL image found in internet? Was it correct to mark the file on Commons with {{Nsd}}?
• Description for File:Zodiac-July1969-proof.jpg was only "{{PD-US-no-notice}}". Is its use in Wikipedia enough to assume the author, or does it need a source to verify that?

/Ö 12:00, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

File:Mikecarroll.jpg is a plain copyvio, just like the other uploads by this user at en-WP. Lupo 13:05, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Then it was not wrong to mark it as missing a source. So I think I can do that to other similar cases. /Ö 10:25, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

This is really a problem, and Commons should have a way to deal with that. --Aʁsenjyʁdəgaljɔm¹¹⁶⁷¹ 17:56, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

• The author or the source can be assumed when it's reasonable. Nothing wrong with it, we do it all the time when we transfer pictures from Flickr, Picasa and so on. Why Wikipedia is different? But I think we need Template:Assumption or something to distinguish assumptions from explicit original authorship claims. Trycatch (talk) 20:24, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Template:Universally replaced

I often upload higher-quality versions of existing images and use CommonsDelinker to replace uses of the old image with uses of the new image. However, as soon as CommonsDelinker tags the old image with {{Universally replaced}}, inevitably some admin comes around and deletes the old image even though it's often from a different source and ineligible for deletion since it's not a scaled-down duplicate. I've had to go back and systematically remove these tags to prevent this. Is there a better way of dealing with this? Thanks. Dcoetzee (talk) 20:31, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I've taken notice of this too. If our master script writers can make the dupe processor alert the user when the replacement is lower-res than the deleting image, that would be nice. ZooFari 04:33, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

November 8

gallery captions currently not displayed (JS issue)

Please see e.g. combine harvester where I used <gallery caption="Black and White">. This is displayed correctly without JavaScript, but isn't with activated JS … could have something to do with that magic "more than 4 images in a row" piece of code, I guess.

Could someone fix this please? Thanks --:bdk: 15:09, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Looks like some recent changes to MediaWiki:ResizeGalleries.js broke a bunch of things. I'll see what I can do to fix it. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:55, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

 Done, should be fixed now. If it doesn't work immediately, try clearing your cache. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:54, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

perfect! many thanks --:bdk: 19:10, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

November 9

Pointing "COM" to "Commons"

Hi. At Wikipedia, if you type "Wikipedia:About" or "WP:About" it goes to the same page without being redirected.

However, at Commons, there is no internal connection between "COM" and "Commons". I propose the assigning of "COM:" namespace to point at the current "Commons:" namespace. Rehman 03:29, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Good idea, I didn't realize Wikipedia had implemented this namespace redirect. ZooFari 03:39, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

This has been decisively rejected several times before, due to potential conflict with a hypothetical Comanche-language Wikipedia (believe it or not). The idea of a "CM:" prefix was found more acceptable (since there's no "CM" in ISO639-1, and new ISO639-1 codes are only supposed to be assigned in very restricted circumstances). However, "CM" was never implemented (not quite sure why). AnonMoos (talk) 11:12, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Why not just C: (as M: for meta)? There are no correlation with 2/3-letters codes. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:48, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

See also the village pump archive from 2008: Commons:Village pump/Archive/2008Jan. Commons:Village pump/Archive/2008Feb and the related tech at bug 12600. –Krinkle^talk 20:35, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

At AnonMoos, I think the com.wikipedia no longer exists. I think "COM" is the best shortcut in terms of understanding or 'catchy-ness', well at least to me. Many COM redirects has already been handmade too to prove this, (e.g. COM:PUMP). Rehman 02:14, 5 November 2010

The "com" Wikipedia has never existed (as far as I'm aware), but Wikimedia foundation people (developers etc.) have refused to create a "COM:" namespace as a matter of policy because it theoretically could exist... AnonMoos (talk) 14:17, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

The bug is currently marked as "REOPENED" so maybe there's a chance of getting the "C:" shortcut. It would also be nice to have a shorter interwiki prefix like meta has "m:", alias to "commons:". Rocket000 (talk) 19:50, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

This is actually not comparable to the way meta has "m:" since "m:" is an interwiki prefix to the meta wiki, not the meta namespace (on the meta wiki). Ie going to M:Babel on Meta will not get you to Meta:Babel. What we're requesting here is a namespace alias within to the Commons: namespce (on the Commons wiki). Which one can compare to the WP: alias on English Wikipedia, and the H: alais on Dutch Wikipedia. –Krinkle^talk 23:12, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Yup, Krinkle is right. My original proposal is "COM:" within Commons. Just like "WP:" in the English Wikipedia. Or like ZooFari said, a namespace redirect, not an interwiki shortcut. Rehman 04:15, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Is commons illegally evading european database copyrights?

Another fundamental question: Is commons illegally evading european database copyrights? --Havang(nl) (talk) 10:35, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Excuse me, but could you give some kind of elaboration to this contextless statement ? You question whether Commons is illigally evading some kind of copyright. Which copyright ? And what suggests that is it being evaded at all (leave alone, illigally). Assuming you want "us" (users) to answer... –Krinkle^talk 10:37, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

• A quote: <<However, how much recognition do we give to database rights here at the Commons? Do they amount to non-copyright restrictions that we generally ignore?>>(JackLee)
• A exemple of a detour: A user proposed to upload as US-citizen for an EU-citizen images under european database copyright restrictions. --Havang(nl) (talk) 11:10, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

No, Commons--that is, the Wikimedia Foundation--is an US non-profit, and therefore out of the jurisdiction of European law.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:44, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Read Commons:licensing

Interaction of United States copyright law and non-US copyright law

Every faithful reproduction of Mona Lisa is considered by Commons to be public domain. See "Exception" in text for details.Commons is an international project, but its servers are located in the U.S., and its content should be maximally reusable. Uploads of non-U.S. works are normally allowed only if the work is either in the public domain or covered by a valid free license in both the U.S. and the country of origin of the work. The "country of origin" of a work is generally the country where the work was first published.

When uploading material from a country outside the U.S., the copyright laws of that country and the U.S. normally apply. If material that has been saved from a third-party website is uploaded to Commons, the copyright laws of the U.S., the country of residence of the uploader, and the country of location of the web servers of the website apply. Thus, any licence to use the material should apply in all relevant jurisdictions; if the material is in the public domain, it must normally be in the public domain in all these jurisdictions (plus in the country of origin of the work) for it to be allowable on Commons.

For example, if a person in the UK uploads a picture that has been saved off a French website to the Commons server, the upload must be covered by UK, French and US copyright law. For a photograph to be acceptable for upload to Commons, it must be public domain in France, the UK and the US, or there must be an acceptable copyright license for the photograph that covers the UK, US and France.

Exception: Faithful reproductions of two-dimensional works of art, such as paintings, which are in the public domain are an exception to this rule. In July 2008, following a statement clarifying WMF policy, Commons voted to the effect that all such photographs are accepted as public domain regardless of country of origin, and tagged with a warning. For details, see Commons:Policy on photographs of old pictures.

But a commons vote does not legalise what is illegal. --Havang(nl) (talk) 12:02, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

You can link instead of cutting and pasting. And that's completely nonresponsive to what I said; the Wikimedia Foundation has no more obligation to follow the laws of the EU then it does to follow the laws of China or Iran, which we ignore pretty freely.--Prosfilaes (talk) 12:15, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

The wikipdia fouindation may-be not, but the uploaders, yes. And I protest against Wikipedia offering such illegal detours as there are legal ways to get the information accessible in wikipedias. --Havang(nl) (talk) 12:34, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

There's no p in Wikimedia, and Wikipedia is not the only project supported by Commons. It is not illegal for an American citizen to upload such material to an American server, and each person's relationship to their country's laws and interpretation thereof is a personal decision.--Prosfilaes (talk) 13:30, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that the european wikipedia foundations and ligues, syndicats, whatever the official form, are rechtspersonen, body corporates with juridical responsabilities also.--Havang(nl) (talk) 16:32, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

As Prosfilaes just alluded to, it is the responsibility of the uploader to ensure that what they are providing is legal in the country of origin and their country of residence. Ultimately, Commons must follow United States law and assume a good faith effort on the part of its uploaders that the files are correctly licensed. Of course, we find all the time that uploads are not appropriately licensed, and they are dealt with. Short of shutting down entirely and approving each and every file before it's visible, the folks here are doing what they can. — Huntster (t @ c) 18:32, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you, Huntstrer, but that's not Prosfilaes statement: he says that one can freely ignore the laws of the country of origin. But he has to take account of those, too. --Havang(nl) (talk) 18:50, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

That applies to the legal status of the content. People are always responsible for their own actions however. Besides, what are we talking about here ? Did we recently actually ignore database copyright in a country ? Since the NPG case with Dcoetzee, i thought we all kinda agreed that uploading entire collections without collaboration with the copyright holder was a bad idea as a practice. Allowed perhaps, but possibly not very good PR for Commons. Please discuss specific cases, it's much more useful. But in general, administration wise, we ignore most laws that are not US specific, or that we did not agree upon as group that we should follow (latter case would be "respect copyright of country of origin"). TheDJ (talk) 00:59, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Even in the NPG case there was no credible argument that database rights were violated - only bare essential information like title and author were copied, and the 3000 images amounted to 0.5% of their database. They were really grasping at straws. Dcoetzee (talk) 05:16, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

The quotation by Havang from me above is from "Commons talk:Licensing#Non-free map data". The issue I was commenting on was whether use of GIS data in the form of shapefiles provided by Natural England for free download for non-commercial purposes to create maps which are then released into the public domain or licensed under free licences might violate a database right in UK law, and if so, whether we recognize database rights at the Commons or regard them as a non-copyright restriction which we ignore. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 07:07, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes,Jacklee, you formulated it quite well as a question, that's why I cited it for a wider context. Digital copyright is copyright for the digitalisation, which acts as a restriction in case of PD-images. For digitalisations of PD-images falling under digital copyright, I propose the procedure: download and print the PD-image, by which you whipes out all copyrighted digital information, including metadata, and redigitalise it by scanning, photographing, and upload this, mentioning both the source of the PD-image and you as the author of this newly digitalised version. Or otherwise, emprunting Prosfilaes words hereabove: you can link instead of cutting and pasting: you can link instead of downloading-uploading. --Havang(nl) (talk) 19:33, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't see what database right has to do with the right asserted in some countries that the person who digitizes a public domain image gains copyright in the new digital image. They are two different things. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 19:41, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

That's, frankly, silly. Printing out an image and scanning it back in does not remove copyright, or any other right, in any country. It merely creates a degraded copy, and should never be done. And while we should always link the source, Wikipedia cannot (and should not) directly use image data from third-party sites, for a variety of practical reasons (not the least being that hotlinking would overwhelm their bandwidth). Dcoetzee (talk) 23:04, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

arc-aligned text in svg image

I've uploaded this file (it was made with Inkscape). There was arc-aligned text there, but it has dissappeared after uploading. Why? Auanika (talk) 14:56, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Because not supported. You must give every letter a separate position for an arc. I dont know sure but I mean Adobe Illustrator can handle this. --Perhelion (talk) 18:51, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Try converting it out of being text and into being a path. Bad for translation, but it will work. Or find an alternative to path aligning it. And if you want to check your revised version before uploading, try SVG Check (other tools are available!). Jarry1250 (talk) 21:53, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! --Auanika (talk) 19:01, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Where is this (aligned text) not supporting documented? --91.14.188.47 12:20, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I am not so Good With Video Ripping from Youtube

The is video puporting to be done by Thomas Eddison has been making the rounds of Him Filming a Crossing of the Brooklyn in 1899. Since is obviously in Public Domain Can Some one snatch it as it is invaluable film. Seen on YouTube, Boing Boing, Huff Post Gizmodo ResidentAnthropologist (talk) 21:08, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I'll do the conversion. However, the resolution is very low - I'd prefer to get my hands on the original. Dcoetzee (talk) 03:33, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Found the orignal File at Library of Congress. Thats annoying we might have it already I thought it was rarer than a LoC Website file ResidentAnthropologist (talk) 03:46, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Specifically, it's here. Not archive quality, but better than the YouTube version. We don't appear to already have it, so I uploaded it at File:New Brooklyn to New York via Brooklyn Bridge, no. 2, by Thomas A. Edison, Inc.ogv. Dcoetzee (talk) 05:09, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Nice. Thank you both for this worthwhile addition to our archives. How I wish Eddison had visited Wales! Anatiomaros (talk) 18:01, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

At over 100 years We are lucky it survived in any condition, I'll take low res of a video that old. I might start uploading the rest of Edison's Vids from Libary of Congress later this week. Most of its worth while content as its Old and filmed by an extremely notable individual.ResidentAnthropologist (talk) 15:12, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm in touch with the LoC about obtaining high-quality reproductions, for a reproduction fee, and will post about it once I have all the information. Dcoetzee (talk) 02:20, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

wikipedia->commons transferred images which lost source info

Often, files imported from wikipedia to commons, and subsequently deleted at wikipedia, have lost their source info; the given source reference to wikipedia references back to commons. For File:Joseph-Louis Lagrange.jpeg, i ask for someone who can undelete the german file, copy the reference data into commons and redelete the german file. Same for File:Langrange portrait.jpg on en:wikipedia. And what about all other similar cases? --Havang(nl) (talk) 09:12, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Added some info to the file originally from de.wp. Not very helpful though. --Rosenzweig δ 21:34, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

For other cases, A vote has resulted in the consensus to grant Commons administrators the right to globally view deleted files and their asociated pages (See also Global deleted image review) so that they can fix these cases, which are indeed not all that rare actually. –Krinkle^talk 10:21, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

In many cases there is no source info at the Wikipedia file page. Looking at File talk:Langrange portrait.jpg it says "Text: Joseph Louis Lagrange {{PD-old}} {{NowCommons|Image:Langrange portrait.jpg}}", and that is probably all information that the file description at en.wikipedia had. (#Source=Transferred from en.wikipedia, Author=Original uploader was User X higher up on this is related to this question.) /Ö 10:22, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

You have to remember that much of this stuff is from before 2005. Only at that time did we start to get really serious about sourcing images. These images do not have to abide by the new "documentation" rules if there are no credible indications that the image is in fact illegal. (At least that is there status on en.wp) TheDJ (talk) 12:45, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

But I am merely interested in knowing the source, if possible. Nothing to do with tagging for being unsourced. --Havang(nl) (talk) 09:18, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Early closes of successful adminship requests

We recently had an early close of a successful adminship. I don't think this is a good practice. After a fruitless discussion with the 'crat who did it, ( permalink ) I decided to seek wider comment. I've edited the policy page to clarify that successful requests run for at least the time stated, as early closes are not a good idea. I invite discussion of my edit at Commons_talk:Administrators/Howto. Please propagate this as appropriate. ++Lar: t/c 11:33, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

It seems a bit odd. It's not even clear what the user would use admin tools for, e.g., it seems he never listed any image for deletion. (Deleted edits: 47 compared to Total editcount: 10962)  Docu  at 11:42, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Eh? I am not in any way trying to question the suitability of this candidate for adminship. I am merely saying we should let the successful RfAs run the allotted time instead of closing them (even a little bit) early. ++Lar: t/c 12:50, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure if there is reason question his suitability either, but there just isn't much to demonstrate that he is suitable. If you are just arguing over three hours without any additional explanation, it's seems a bit an exaggeration. That said, Julian tends to close things too early.  Docu  at 19:59, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Examples, please? (I'd appreciate you notifying me if you mention me. It's a good thing I check here often.) –Juliancolton | ^Talk 20:04, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I withdraw the last part of my comment as it's not Commons related. (Somewhat I thought Lar would notify you of this thread, sorry about that).  Docu  at 20:10, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I did: [7] ++Lar: t/c 20:23, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I think it would be good practice to let it run the full period always, to avoid any future doubts or misunderstandings. In the particular case, considering that there were no written down rules about it, I have been a bit surprised about how hard Julian was critizised for the slightly early closure. In the particular case, there was no doubt about the outcome anyway, and I think the particular case has been blown a bit out of proportions. --Slaunger (talk) 21:05, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I've been a 'crat here for a while (longer than all the rest except Cary, maybe?) and what I was surprised about was that Julian dug in so hard, rather than saying "oops, I won't do it again" when it was first brought to his attention. Because we hardly ever (never?) close successful RfAs early. It just didn't seem at all unclear to me prior to now. So I was rather dismayed. ++Lar: t/c 01:01, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

is Julian now cool with no longer closing any request at all early? - seems to be the idea of blame hijacked your discussion based on a misunderstanding (ironically it was kidna no-one's fault ;-) - I'll copy this across to his talk page too, and hopefully this is an easy one to resolve :-) Privatemusings (talk) 01:46, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, he's happy. Discussion continues here.--99of9 (talk) 02:13, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

License rights on models and replicas

An artist works are protected and cannot be reproduced without his agreement. But what about someone who builds an very accurate scale model of an historic streetcar, locomotive etc? A lot of research and ability goes into the building of the model. Do I need permission of the maker to take a picture of the model and upload it on the commons? What is de definition of an artwork?

Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:47, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

An exact replica doesn't get a new copyright.--Prosfilaes (talk) 13:12, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Not, but a model is never an exact replica :-) I would consider such a model a sculpture, and yes it would be best to get that permission. The research and effort involved does not make something copyrightable, but I would think there is almost certainly going to be creativity found in someone making such a model. Carl Lindberg (talk) 13:56, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

{{Multilingual description}} puzzle

Some files like this, this, or this one seem to be using {{Multilingual description}} but I can not find where is that template called. It is very confusing especially since default language was set (for me) to something random. Also at least in case of the second image large portions of the description are not shown in any language or with "Show all" option. --Jarekt (talk) 19:11, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

If the description of an Image in the {{Information}} consists soley of language descriptoins such as {{En}} and {{De}} etc. then the script that triggers on {{Multilingual description}} triggers aswell, so that we dont have to edit a million pages to add in a {{Mld}} wrap-around.

Regarding your first issue, the language of choise on the first encouter with the script is set bases on a few factors. When you're logged out the first factor is the language of your browser. When logged in the first factor is the language set in your account Preferences. From that point on that language is saved in your browser (not in your wiki-account, but in your browser as a "cookie"). So the second time it doesnt have to check again. You can manipulate this cookie-stored setting by picking another language from the dropdown menu

The second thing you named (missing content) I can't seem to reproduce. Can you be specific as to what "large portion" is missing ? I dont see anything missing. –Krinkle^talk 23:33, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

In case of File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-41636-0002, Warschauer Ghetto-Aufstand, Verhaftungen.jpg we are missing the note at the beginning and the Bundesarchiv description template at the end. I assume they should be visible for all the languages including "select all" --Jarekt (talk) 02:41, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

It seems a very interesting idea. But why do I get a language-choice menu containing a dozen languages for File:050817-N-3488C-028.jpg, while only English and Finnish are available ?--Zolo (talk) 14:09, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

The script doesn't seem to behave well with {{Picture of the day}}. I'll fix that later--DieBuche (talk) 14:19, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Is there a way of turning off this feature in individual preferences. I found it quite confusing,--Jarekt (talk) 02:48, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I think {{Mld}} is confusing because it does not translate all texts, only those with a language template. To me, it would be a major improvement if language choice through mld changed all texts of the page, much like when we add a "?uselangXX" to the URL. To inexperienced users especially, it may come as a surprise that when we choose a language, it changes some parts of the text, but not others. --Zolo (talk) 10:11, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I think that is mainly because of its position just below the image, and above all text. At such position you'd expect it to translate all text. However, if it was inside the "description" box, it'd be clear that it's going to translate the description only. -- Orionist ★ talk 15:58, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

November 6

Superseding Images

Adaptor

I'm looking into the superseding of images and wondered how this image could be superseded. What would be a better representation of the object? A different photograph altogether? A cropping / editing of the existing one? A change of file type? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Andrewlister (talk • contribs)

we dont as such superseed images what we do is upload alternative views, higher resolutions etc under a new file name. Where its an edit to the original again upload a new version and link back to original file and license the derivative image with an equivellant license. Gnangarra 05:13, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Jaredjonker's uploads

I was hoping a few users could go through Jaredjonker (talk · contribs)'s uploads, as I have found at least two images that are copyright violations. I am personally skeptical that this user owns any of the images they uploaded, but I don't have the time to go through it all now, as I've been quite busy IRL. So I'm hoping some folks can take up my slack. Thanks!-Andrew c (talk) 21:19, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

The first two that I picked at random File:02_sterling.jpg matches [8] and File:YaleOldCampus1.jpg matches [9]--P.g.champion (talk) 17:10, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

A ton of the images do come from filmatyale.com; in addition to the above File:The Yale Commons.jpg comes from here and File:TheCommonsDiningHall.jpg is here. His most recent two look like scarf product photos lifted from jpressonline.com. The earliest two are US Navy photos so they are fine, but yes, other than that most of these should probably be deleted. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:56, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

The very first uploads are ok, so I acutally dont know why the uploader not continued the good work. I deleted the Yale related, bad uploads. Already deleted was File:HarknessTower12.png and File:Brandford_College21.png per takedown request. --Martin H. (talk) 18:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Truth in Numbers? Everything, According to Wikipedia

• http://truthinnumbersthemovie.com/

Please see the website. Note it says at the bottom: "This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License." -- Any idea specifically what part that is referring to??? -- Cirt (talk) 23:24, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I think according to the terms http://truthinnumbersthemovie.com/noHome.html?modulo=footer&accion=terms#.terms_and_conds it referst to any content of the website that Glen Echo Entertainment is allowed to publish under that license. Because its under their copyright or was given to them under a non-exclusive license with free content conditions. This may e.g. not apply to the music in the video but to the rest of the video. This may not apply to the Wikipedia logo (unless I missed something and it is free now and was given to them not only under an exclusive license contract). This must apply to all screenshots of Wikipedia as they are ShareAlike or(the mediawiki software if not de minimis) GFDL. --Martin H. (talk) 00:01, 11 November 2010 (UTC) P.s.: if you want to replace the music, try File:06 - Vivaldi Summer mvt 3 Presto - John Harrison violin.ogg and start it at 0:22 with the word "spam". It was the first song coming into my mind, it fits perfectly :) --Martin H. (talk) 00:06, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Does it apply to the film's logo and/or theatrical release poster? -- Cirt (talk) 00:02, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

The Wikipedia logo can be a problem and is maybe {{Non-free Wikimedia logo}} (unless Wikimedia gave free license). --Martin H. (talk) 00:10, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

So even though the film's official website says: "This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License." -- nothing from the film's website should be uploaded here to Commons? -- Cirt (talk) 00:16, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Any frames with Wikimedia logos can be tagged with Template:Copyright by Wikimedia... AnonMoos (talk) 16:04, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah ... but what about creations by the film, on the website? -- Cirt (talk) 18:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Centralnotice

Can someone please fix the main page, so it is not blocking the Centralnotice CSS? It is blocking the fundraising banner from being displayed on the main page (although it displays find on other pages). This is an urgent fix for us, as the fundraiser is starting in just a couple of days. Please contact me with any questions. Drosenthal (talk) 23:27, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Fixed. Kaldari (talk) 00:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

November 11

Copyright Question: Election Ballots

I already asked at the administrative noticeboard, and didn't get much of a response, so I'll ask this again here.

I don't do much on Commons, so I apologize if I'm in the wrong place. Could someone look at the licensing in the category:United States Senate election in Minnesota, 2008:ballots? (here's an example: File:Challenged ballot001.JPG). The editor is claiming "own work", which is highly unlikely, unless he's the Minnesota Secretary of State. Or maybe he's claiming that the photo is his own work, which I'm not sure if it's legit, given that its just a photo of a 2D document (as pointed out by user:Max Rebo Band, a computer cursor is seen on one of the images). A file at the English Wikipedia, [10], says that the Secretary of State released all the challenged ballots into the public domain. However, I can find no documentation of this online (I don't even know if ballots are copyrightable in the first place). If they are indeed Public Domain, then I suppose it's technically OK for user:Appraiser to release them under a CC license, but it would be better to host them as public domain. Can anyone confirm that the ballots were released into the public domain? I couldn't find much about them at the secretary of state's site, but there is a full list at MPR. If it can be confirmed that the ballots are public domain, I'll probably work on copying them all onto Commons. Buddy431 (talk) 03:26, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

• if they are PD then it isnt appropriate or acceptable for someone to upload them here under CC license, if the person isnt the creator then tagging them as their own work isnt approprite either. Documents are more likely to be protected under patent laws in the US rather than by copyright laws but I have no idea about ballot papers as to what protection they have suggest contacting the relevant body that is responsible for the running of the election Gnangarra 05:32, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
• on the face of it they all appear to be copyright violations, as they are not the work the author but rather deravitives. What we need is source information so that we can verify that they are pd, these appear to be on screen views of the documents related to the court case but further research will be needed to determine copyright, suggest starting a deletion discussion here Gnangarra 05:42, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
• In my opinion these are {{PD-text}} - they consist entirely of text and simple shapes, and the text itself is ineligible for copyright as a simple list of facts with no special organization. I've marked them as such, and you can nominate for deletion if you want. Dcoetzee (talk) 06:29, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

That's what I'd say as well--DieBuche (talk) 08:29, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, I think those are PD-ineligible. The current category almost seems to be photos of a TV program which showed them, but I don't think the ballots themselves are copyrightable. Carl Lindberg (talk) 00:01, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Flickr, Getty Images and saying thank you

You can't blame them I guess but in what looks like an attempt to monetarise their site Flickr is now encouraging its users into entering licensing agreements with Getty Images, this is bad news for us. Flickr users who in the past were willing to release their work with Commons compatible licenses have moved to uploading images with a "no commercial use" caveat, including applying such restrictions retrospectively. Yes I know, as some here will no doubt insist, licenses cannot be altered retrospectively, but what worries me is not the retrospective changing of licenses but the possible loss of future Commons compatible files. I'm as guilty as most uploaders of files to Commons from Flickr, although initially I made an effort to alert the author to the transfer and thank them for choosing a license that allowed wikipedia to use their work, it became all to easy to just tell the bot to make the transfer and forget about the author of the images. It's not much compared to possible financial rewards from Getty, but in order to prevent the total loss of future Commons images from this source, those of us that do make Flickr transfers should try to thank the Flickr users for their public spiritedness in choosing a free license, to congratulate them on creating an educationally useful image and, if it is used, provide an article link.--KTo288 (talk) 10:48, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I do agree it is important that we make an effort to thank Flickr users for their contributions. I personally make it a point to do so. (Such a message also alerts other Commons volunteers to the fact that the image is already in the Commons and doesn't need to be transferred again.) — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:33, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

While I certainly agree that one cannot retroactively retract a permanent license, I would certainly say that there are two equally valid sides to whether people free-license their images or not. I choose to, but it's touch and go. KTo288, you talk about Flickr's desire to monetarize undercutting our ability to get free images; the flip side is that the many of us who put out images under free licenses undercut the market for professional stock photography.

I personally thought we struck a better balance when we only supported GFDL (which was not useful for most print media unless they were also free-licensing their own work) rather than CC-BY-SA-3.0 (which makes lower demands on the re-user). I'm very happy to support the re-use of my images by people who also allow free use of their work; I'm not sure it is good that we make it so easy for people who are, themselves, out there doing standard commercial work to exploit our "copyleft" content as a free resource for their own un-free work. - Jmabel ! talk 15:55, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Not all free content is copyleft. Not all commercial work is un-free. BTW, there's nothing stopping you from using good old {{GPL}} to really ensure derivatives stay free. Rocket000 (talk) 20:52, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I'll disagree about the GFDL (we've never just supported that license), but otherwise good points. Pointing out the options to Flickr users should make them more aware of what they are potentially giving up by licensing images freely, which while it may mean fewer freely-licensed photos, there should also be fewer occurrences of people having second thoughts about the license later, as they would be better-informed up front. I haven't seen how Flickr is doing it, but I have no issue with the concept. However, licensing something freely does *not* preclude also licensing it to Getty -- is Flickr making it appear as an either/or option? Third-party users may very much rather just use a license through Getty, rather than worrying about specifying "CC-BY" in the caption, making a link back to Wikimedia Commons or wherever, or worrying about what the "SA" part would mean for their use (i.e. complying with the Creative Commons requirements). If that is the case -- presenting it as an either/or, and not allowing *both* to be done, that may not be so good. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:37, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I approached this from a rather selfish viewpoint of 'how can we maintain the stream of Commons compatible images from Flickr' though I think it will be a while before we threaten the economic viability of established stock photography companies. Information on the Flickr-Getty Images team-uo can be found here my experience of it so far is of a migration from Commons compatible Creative Commons licenses to more restrictive Creative Commons-no commercial use licenses, e.g. File:Tap Mun ferry.jpg. if we hadn't already have this image we could still probably use the image as a local upload at wikipedia but not have it here.KTo288 (talk) 18:12, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Ah OK. It's Getty which is requiring an exclusive license. It sounds like any Creative Commons license will "automatically change" to All Rights Reserved if Getty is chosing, which is misleading, as it seems to imply that you can revoke the Creative Commons License, which you can't (if someone can prove that the image was once licensed that way, anyways). All the more important to document the Flickr license status at the time. Carl Lindberg (talk) 18:24, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I just looked up six images at random there and the Getty tags were on half of them already. Not one was fully free. It looks like we've just pretty much lost Flickr as a source — what proportion of Commons images was that? Wnt (talk) 22:00, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Giving the data on http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ the collection of free pictures on Flickr grows all the time -- now Flickr hosts 37,5M of free pictures vs 15M in July 2008. Trycatch (talk) 22:24, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I tested it on my account, and opting in on the Getty link does not make your images Non-commercial. They retain their commons license until your image is actually picked up by Getty. Still though allowed, this practice will complicate assessing the history of an image. It would be helpful if Flickr provided a license history for images. TheDJ (talk) 23:21, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I have no direct experience of how this works, but as I read it a Flickr user can choose to have Getty act as an intermediary in the event that someone browsing through Flickr wants to use one of their images. The user still has a choice of how they wish to license their image, but if they wish to maximise any potential finacial rewards from their work, the logical thing to do is to choose the no commercial use option. This is still fairly new (I think) and hopefully I'm just being Chicken Little, and those devoted to free content will continue to do so. At a guess I'd expect the rate at which Commons compatible Flickr files grow to decrease if not exactly plateau. In the mean time, and we should be doing it already, we should make sure that we have a good record of the license of any Flickr images copied here at the time of the transfer.KTo288 (talk) 10:57, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Small problem with the UniversalSubs

Hi. I tried to put Romanian subtitles to File:Wikipedia video tutorial-2-Reliability-en.ogv. I have never been asked about the language in the whole process (I double checked), and in the end, the file was saved as English subtitles, even if I have Romanian as interface language. I tried renaming the file to TimedText:Wikipedia_video_tutorial-2-Reliability-en.ogv.ro.srt, but this did not work. How can one change the language of the subtitles?--Strainu (talk) 16:50, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

It works for me now. What path did you follow to create the subtitles ? The Universal subtitles editor ? I'll ask Michael to add a language selector somewhere before that gets loaded. TheDJ (talk) 19:08, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it also worked for me later on. It seems there is a small delay between creating the sub and it actually sowing up in the player. To translate, I used the embedded UniversalSubs link. A language selector would be a great idea.--Strainu (talk) 11:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes there is a 5 min delay so that the gadget does not hit the apaches too hard. ( i should add a cache clearing request on edits as a gadget and in the extention it can just purge the same way articles do ) And yes i should add a language selection menu when you first start up the editor ) Mdale (talk) 15:35, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Color stereo cards

Stereo cards, yet again.

I've recently added more specific subject matter categories to the images in the temporary category Category:NYPL Halftone stereoscopic views of Yellowstone National Park and am looking to get rid of the temporary category. I intend to just move them to Category:Stereo cards of Yellowstone National Park, but the mention of "halftone" in the category name got me wondering if there is anything notable in category terms that I should be careful to preserve.

Unless I'm mistaken, pretty much all stereo cards from this era are halftones, which is to say, I believe this is just an oddly named category, rather than "halftone" conveying information we need to preserve.

Conversely, quite a few of these are colored, presumably by using some technique along the lines of photochrom(e) (though these look coarser than most photochromes I've seen). Does anyone know just what technique would have been used on these, and where we might best get that information into the category hierarchy? At the very least, we could create a Category:Color stereo cards (subcat of Category:Stereo cards and maybe Category:Photographs, but I'm wondering if something more specific than Category:Photographs would be appropriate. - Jmabel ! talk 07:16, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, it's been almost a day with no feedback, I'll just use my own judgment. - Jmabel ! talk 05:45, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Problem displaying images

I can't see some of the images (for instance this) which I have uploaded on their file pages. There's a link to the high resolution image, and if I click it, I can see the image, but not otherwise. Does the image appear on the file page on your screens, or do you have to go to the high resolution image? Does any one have an explanation? --Årvasbåo (talk) 17:49, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I had problems viewing images a few days ago. But now I have no problems viewing this image or other images. Have you tried refreshing the cashe in your web browser? /Ö 20:49, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Tack, det hjälpte. --Årvasbåo (talk) 16:36, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

November 12

Portraits from National Gallery

Hello. My name is Igor Sokolov. I am a history teacher at the university. I am very interested in portraits of rulers of Europe. Maybe you have the ability and desire to place and other high-resolution images from the collections of the National Gallery? I'll be very grateful for the help. I think these high-quality images will please many fans of portraiture.

• Portrait of the Doge, Andrea Gritti probably 1523-31, Vincenzo Catena http://nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/vincenzo-catena-portrait-of-the-doge-andrea-gritti
• Cardinal de Richelieu 1633-40, Philippe de Champaigne http://nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/philippe-de-champaigne-cardinal-de-richelieu
• Triple Portrait of Cardinal de Richelieu probably 1642, Philippe de Champaigne and studio http://nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/philippe-de-champaigne-and-studio-triple-portrait-of-cardinal-de-richelieu
• Edzard the Great, Count of East Friesland 18th century, German http://nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/netherlandish-edzard-the-great-count-of-east-friesland
• Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici and Monsignor Mario Bracci after 1532, Attributed to Girolamo da Carpi http://nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/attributed-to-girolamo-da-carpi-cardinal-ippolito-de-medici-and-monsignor-mario-bracci
• The Duke of Wellington 1812-14, Francisco de Goya http://nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/francisco-de-goya-the-duke-of-wellington
• The Duc d'Orléans after 1842, Studio of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres http://nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/studio-of-jean-auguste-dominique-ingres-the-duc-dorleans
• Portrait of Pope Julius II 1511, Raphael http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/raphael-portrait-of-pope-julius-ii
• The Dauphin, Louis de France 1760s, Studio of Alexandre Roslin http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/studio-of-alexandre-roslin-the-dauphin-louis-de-france
• Cardinal Fleury after 1728, Studio of Hyacinthe Rigaud http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/studio-of-hyacinthe-rigaud-cardinal-fleury
• Portrait of the Archduke Albert about 1615, Studio of Peter Paul Rubens http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/studio-of-peter-paul-rubens-portrait-of-the-archduke-albert
• Portrait of the Infanta Isabella about 1615, Studio of Peter Paul Rubens http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/studio-of-peter-paul-rubens-portrait-of-the-infanta-isabella
• The Grand Duke Ferdinand II of Tuscany and his Wife probably 1660s, Justus Sustermans http://nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/justus-sustermans-the-grand-duke-ferdinand-ii-of-tuscany-and-his-wife
• The Emperor Napoleon I 1815, Emile-Jean-Horace Vernet http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/emile-jean-horace-vernet-the-emperor-napoleon-i
• Philip IV of Spain about 1656, Diego Velázquez http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/diego-velazquez-philip-iv-of-spain
• Philip IV of Spain in Brown and Silver about 1631-2, Diego Velázquez http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/diego-velazquez-philip-iv-of-spain-in-brown-and-silver

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.187.77.54 (talk • contribs) 08:37, 8 November 2010 (UTC) (This anonymous request was copied from my talkpage to here. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 13:25, 8 November 2010 (UTC))

Has the National Gallery's threat of legal proceedings against one of our editors been withdrawn or resolved in some way yet? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 13:49, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

That legal threat was from the National Portrait Gallery, wasn't it? On that matter, NPG staff Tom Morgan, Head of Rights and Reproductions, will give a talk at the next GLAM-WIKI UK, titled « Wikipedia and the National Portrait Gallery - A bad first date? ». Certainly we will learn more there. Jean-Fred (talk) 14:24, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

The threat was merely a threat, but as long as it serves their purposes, they're not going to withdraw it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 14:31, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

In that case, Mr. Sokolov is essentially asking one or more Commons editors to stick their necks out on his behalf and risk incurring the wrath of another national gallery. Hmmm. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 19:17, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

If it were the NPG, but it's not. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 21:41, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

To be fair we have no idea what the UK National Gallery's policy is with regard to enforcing their copyright claims on their digitalizations, so if anyone does upload them you should be prepared for a negative response from them. However it would be within Commons policy. Note that we already have (generally lower-quality) versions of some of these images, e.g. File:Felipe IV de castaño y plata, by Diego Velázquez.jpg and diego-velazquez-philip-iv-of-spain-in-brown-and-silver. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:57, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I consider it steeling. Why does the requester not simply adress himself to the site concerned. It smells like ordering a theft. --Havang(nl) (talk) 07:39, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

If you consider it stealing, perhaps you should work with a project whose philosophical basis is more in tune with your own.--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:50, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

If a (2D) painting is in the public domain, a mere (2D) faithful reproduction does not create new copyright. I fail to see how uploading such an image would violate someone's copyright. -- Mathias Schindler (talk) 07:52, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

The website does denie unauthorised access for the purpose of copying. It has the right to do so; there is no freedom of copying data from UK databases. You may order a copy at the website, costs to be payd; but you may not order to steel a copy to avoid paying costs. --Havang(nl) (talk) 09:08, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

So far as I know, in the U.S. "shrink-wrap licenses" have generally been held as unenforceable - if this ever changes, I assume we'll find out because free junk games on Websites will come with a $1,000,000 hidden price tag and people will lose their houses em masse to such a scam. "Victims of the Internet", they'll call them. But if anyone worries about this, and hasn't yet viewed other pages at the site, you can reach the images at [11], [12], [13] etc. without ever seeing so much as the words "terms and conditions", which obviously means that they can't apply to you. You can't be expected to read through every page on the whole site looking for such things, after all. ;) Wnt (talk) 09:46, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Don't one expect any longer at commons, that users prove the legality of their uploads by sourcing, etc.? --Havang(nl) (talk) 10:54, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

This is a non sequitur; we demand legality in a narrow sense, ignoring non-copyright restrictions, etc., and these are legal by those standards.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:44, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Ignoring UK law is not legal. --Havang(nl) (talk) 12:03, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

The point is that it is disputed whether the action is legal or not. The National Portrait Gallery asserts that under UK law the gallery gains copyright in digitized versions of paintings it has created, even though the paintings themselves are in the public domain. I believe there are no court cases in the UK yet on this issue. The Commons takes the position that if an artwork is already in the public domain, one cannot obtain a new copyright over it simply by creating a digital version of it. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 12:07, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, ignoring UK law is perfectly legal. I do not pay VAT on what I buy; I do not buy my groceries or gas in metric; I can reprint books published before 1923 no matter when the author died. My political forefathers fought a war to ensure that right. I have no intent of humoring restrictions from China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Germany or the UK on what I can publish.--Prosfilaes (talk) 13:07, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

(Though, of course, to ensure that the Commons – an international project – is as free as possible, our general policy is for images to be in the public domain in both the source country and in the United States. It's just that whether UK law permits people who digitize public domain artworks entitles them to fresh copyright is disputed.) — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 13:27, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

It's more than that; Commons has agreed that we don't worry about digitalization copyrights; see Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag.--Prosfilaes (talk) 14:25, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I mentioned that point in my earlier posting. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 16:02, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

• Note User:Havang(nl) is also arguing about this at File talk:James Bradley by Thomas Hudson.jpg and at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Charles Abbot, 1st Baron Colchester by John Hoppner.jpg. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:16, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

see also BBC news about it http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8156268.stm - obviously the problem is that there are high resolution images used in the commons. If there is a case between the national gallery and D. Coetzee, these images should not be used until the case is closed (that can be done by a judge in the UK, I suppose). Nice to see that the wikimedia foundation refuses any comment, help or interpretation. The collaboration between the German archives and Wikimedia Foundation (mentioned in the BBC-report) are no argument at all. We need a statement of D. Coetzee what his lawyer is thinking about it. Nice advertisement for the commons.... (I admit: I have no real idea of legal issues, all near-midnight-arguments.) good evening Cholo Aleman (talk) 22:42, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

It's a very old story, see User:Dcoetzee/NPG legal threat/Coverage. And, sorry, but if you "have no real idea about legal issues", I don't quite understand what are you talking about, because "legal issues" are crucial here. Trycatch (talk) 23:33, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

This all happened nearly 18 months ago. NPG has not pursued any sort of legal action, nor are they likely to withdraw their demand letter (there was never a "case"). I strongly support the PD-Art policy in its present form and believe we should continue to follow it. Dcoetzee (talk) 01:03, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

There is more to it than commons PD-art policy. There is the route to obtain a copy. DON'T RUN OUT OF THE SHOP WITHOUT PAYING. --Havang(nl) (talk) 08:33, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

DO NOT SELL WHAT IS NOT YOURS. If they want copyright to protect them, they should be paying the heirs of the creators of these paintings.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:18, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

In this case, paying the National Gallery (NG) or National Portrait Gallery (NPG) for use of a digitized copy of an artwork won't help the project. If one does so, one would most likely only be allowed to publish the copy in a publication, and not to release it on the Internet for other people to freely download, modify and use for commercial projects which is what Commons material is for. Therefore, either the Wikimedia Foundation (1) accepts the view that a gallery gains a fresh copyright in a digitized version of a public domain artwork, and deletes all such works from its servers; or (2) adopts the legal position that a gallery does not gain a fresh copyright in such situations. Havang, I take it that you accept view (1) rather than view (2), which is the Foundation's position on the issue. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 09:22, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

View (1) and view (2) are not in contradiction. But the reciever makes the thief. If the reciever commons refuses to accept these images from the thief, but treats with NGP what is free for commercial use by thirds, I see no problem. --Havang(nl) (talk) 11:25, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. View 1 and 2 directly contradict each other. A person who takes an image from NPG's website without paying for it and without complying with NPG's terms of use is only a "thief" (or, rather, a copyright infringer) if and only if one accepts view 1. If one accepts view 2, as the Commons does, then the person is acting in a perfectly lawful manner because NPG does not have any copyright in the image in the first place. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 18:15, 10 November 2010 (UTC).

View 2 does not affect what is between the thief and NPG; Commons is not wrong in offering the picture, it is wrong before offering the picture by accepting stolen ware. --Havang(nl) (talk) 20:30, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

This is bordering on personal attack. People who upload public domain paintings to Commons are not thieves, regardless of whatever bogus legal claims museums in the UK are making. The National Portrait Gallery doesn't need you to harass Commons uploaders on their behalf. If they have a legitimate legal claim (which they don't), they are perfectly capable of having their lawyers pursue the matter further. We are not ignoring the law of the UK. We are ignoring the NPG's dubious interpretation of the law of the UK. Our PD-Art policy was established over months of debate and discussion (with input from actual lawyers) and agreed to by consensus of the community. If you are not happy with it, feel free to propose a new policy. Kaldari (talk) 21:09, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes. As I mentioned above, I don't think there are as yet any UK legal judgments stating that a person who spends time and effort digitizing a public domain artwork gains copyright in the digitized copy. At best, this is a legal position asserted by the NPG but it is certainly not established law. Let's say a person A sees a table in a shopping mall with several bags on it. If the bags were for sale and A took one without paying for it and gave it to B, that would arguably be theft. However, if the bags were actually second-hand bags that had been donated for anyone to take away free of charge, then A's act of removing a bag cannot be regarded as theft. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 07:59, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

The images, which are copies, have been stolen to get copied at commons. Accept the 15-years digital protection term, delete them and put them in one of the categories Undelete at year..... --Havang(nl) (talk) 08:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

And what law states that they have 15 years digital protection of PD objects (photos, paintings, maps ect)? Bidgee (talk) 09:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Uk and european law. Digital protection against stealing overrules the PD-status of the object. Especially when tools are used to circomvent the technical protection. --Havang(nl) (talk) 10:20, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

What section of the law? Sounds like (to me) you're getting confused with DRM (which is digital protection for games, movies and music) which doesn't cover digitalisation of PD images. Bidgee (talk) 10:51, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

For some reason that I don't understand, Commons has been respecting non-U.S. laws for countries of origin of images in most matters. But the PD-Art statement is pretty clear that they're not accepting the idea that public domain items get a copyright by digitizing. Whatever the 15-year thing is in Europe, I doubt it has any legal standing in the U.S.! Though certainly free content advocates will have to watch for some sneaky effort to make it so.

I doubt it would be worth keeping a category of deleted images to undelete in 15 years. You're more likely to get sued for possessing the hidden copyrighted material in an Admins' Pirate Room than that the term would not get extended to 25 or 30 or 45 years before the 15 years are up. Wnt (talk) 22:08, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Although I agree with your conclusion that we are making a special exception for our usual policy of respecting copyright law of the source country (which is just a policy, and not a legal obligation), note that Category:Undelete in 2025 does exist. :-) Dcoetzee (talk) 09:38, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

That brings us to the protections built in the commons database. Access to deleted files needs autorisation; and abuse of authorisation may result in a block. Take f.e. Commons:Deletion requests/File:Einar Jonsson.jpg about a file which may be copied by individuals for non-commercial use. Fot non-admins, there is a technical protection, admins have to access to that file, but have only autorisation if there is a valid reason. If an administrator abuses his right of access and undeletes, speedy-downlaods and speedydeletes the file, removing historydata, he risks banning, although strictu sensu he does not transgress the copyright-law. That's what database protection is about. Commons too has database protection overruling the licensing. If we accept that for our site, we have to accept that for other sites as well, especially when that right has been confirmed by law. --Havang(nl) (talk) 13:07, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Havang, last time. The servers are located in the United States under United States legal jurisdiction, where no database rights exist. Access to our servers is covered by disclaimers, community standards and US laws. Stop beating this dead horse. You are becoming annoying. TheDJ (talk) 14:53, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry that you may find this annoying, but acces to british servers is covered by british laws, disclaimers, community standards. --Havang(nl) (talk) 15:10, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

That is between the original party who accessed the website and the website itself. Websites that are afraid of the Internet, might choose to isolate themselves by denying incoming requests from likely non-British IP addresses. BBC iPlayer does this very efficiently. TheDJ (talk) 15:14, 12 November 2010 (UTC).

UK laws apply within the borders of the UK only, just like US laws apply within the borders of the US only. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:15, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Havang -- please note that the only law that Commons is bound to follow is United States law, as it is a United States institution. That is the only area where "legal" vs "not legal" comes into play. Anything else is a matter of policy, either from the Wikimedia Foundation, or our own consensus. Deciding which (non-U.S.) laws to respect, and which laws to ignore, is generally a matter of policy. General policy is to follow the copyright law in the country of origin, plus the U.S. copyright law. That very much leaves open the possibility that we host works which are still copyrighted in other countries; users in those other countries must be aware of their own law and be careful about re-using content -- they can't just assume that it is OK in their country because we host it. The same goes if certain usages are illegal in their country (such as trademarked items) -- that may not prevent our hosting the data, but users need to be aware of the legal ramifications of their own usage. In certain circumstances, some of those general policies may have exceptions. The PD-Art situation is one -- it has been fairly definitively ruled that such photographs are not "creative" in the United States, and therefore do not gain any further copyright protection over and above the original painting. Such photos are therefore in the public domain in the U.S., and philosophically the Wikimedia Foundation itself professed a desire to adhere to that principle over possible protection of such photos in other countries, so after a vote that did become our policy as well. It is quite certainly "legal", based on U.S. court rulings -- Corel was not breaking any law, nor are we. In some other countries, this may well be a problem for re-use. Since the protection seems to fall under the "simple photo" laws in some EU countries, it follows that it is actually outside the scope of the EU copyright directive (which mandates 70 pma for any work which it applies to), and therefore protection will vary significantly even between countries in the EU. It is up to third parties to evaluate the use in their own country. Another exception to policy is, frankly, on the U.S. side -- we have been ignoring URAA restoration of some works which have since fallen into the public domain in their own country ({{Not-PD-US-URAA}}). That seems to go against usual policy as well, and in reality probably depends on U.S. fair use laws for "legality". But, it's there. U.S. users need to be very careful about re-using those works. Lastly, EU database protection does not apply in the United States, just as much as U.S. law does not apply in Europe (and the EU even explicitly doesn't reciprocally protect U.S. databases... EU users can "steal" those if they wish). Also, in some rulings, the EU database protection was significantly narrowed, see here, here, here, and here. It appears that "databases" made up of content which had previously been created by that institution are very likely not protected -- only when a significant effort was used in the gathering of already-existing material. So, some of this stuff may not even be protected by that sui generis right in the EU either. Lastly, "digitization" in general is not necessarily copyrightable at all. The copyright protection, where it exists, usually appears to be for photographs of objects taken from a distance, with lighting and other factors under control. Simply scanning an item does not appear to fall under copyright most anywhere; see Commons:When to use the PD-scan tag. If the Netherlands does allow such copyright, then yes, users there will need to be careful, although frankly at first blush that sounds more like the sui generis database protection (which is 15 years), not actual copyright. I see nothing in the Dutch database law which refers to digital copyright, nor really on copyright of individual elements inside the database -- it seems to be a straightforward implementation of the EU database directive, so I don't know where the concept of a "digital copyright" comes from. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:15, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

I used in an earlier discussion a week before this came up the simplified term digital copyright, but yes, Clindberg, it is about the 15-year database protection, which actually may overrule copyright licenses. And TheDJ, your remark is in accord with me making distinction between the thief and the receiver. The thief may come from abroad, it doesn't make him a lesser thief. It's not about a few single elements, it's about mass uploads. Tools are being used to circumvent the protections etc.: the three last replies above give stuff for lengthy new discussion, but I have said my word. I'll see what comes out of it. --Havang(nl) (talk) 15:52, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

A more straightforward example is our {{PD-old-70}} tag. If you read it carefully, you'll see that many works which are PD-old-70 are still copyrighted in Mexico, Colombia, and Guatemala and Samoa. We could exclude these images, but we don't, simply because having these works is more valuable than being "safe" for content reusers in these three nations. If our servers were in Mexico, we would have to remove them. Dcoetzee (talk) 23:47, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Ah, OK. I would not use the term "digital copyright" then because it is rather misleading. The database right, as far as I can tell, is simply an additional right on a database of material as a whole. It does not imply anything about the contents of that database -- the items could be under copyright or public domain. In general, countries do allow some databases to be copyrighted (usually as one example of a more generic type of "collective work", which is an original and creative selection or arrangement of separate individual works). This copyright only exists provided they pass the threshold of originality in that country's copyright law. Not all databases pass that threshold; for example see w:Feist v. Rural for a U.S. case where it did not. Also, to violate it, the selection and arrangement itself would have to be copied -- the contents carry their own copyright. Europe decided to add this "sui generis" database right as well, where there was basically no threshold of originality check -- it applies to all databases. Collections which pass the threshold of originality would still get the 70 pma term, in addition to the 15 protection afforded by the database laws (perhaps the penalties are different? not sure). All of that however does not imply anything at all about the actual copyright of the individual items. It does not "override" copyright, rather it is an additional right on the database as a whole From reading the law, copying an individual item out of a database is not a violation of that sui generis database right -- it only applies to copying a substantial portion, or repeatedly copying a small portion. Copying a single element would not be an issue, provided it was PD. If someone scans a bunch of PD works, those scans are still public domain, but yes they may well have created a "database", so copying a decent percentage of those scans would then be a violation of this database right, although not a standard copyright violation. This database right applies throughout Europe, but is not part of any further international treaty (much less the Berne Convention), so this right does not exist outside the borders of Europe (the U.S. considered one briefly but it didn't get anywhere -- if you want a detailed background history, see here, which was a report by the U.S. Copyright Office on database protection in 1997). Actions which would be a violation inside Europe are perfectly legal anywhere else. And since no other countries have implemented something similar, the European database laws explicitly do not afford similar protection to databases coming from outside Europe -- meaning that doing the exact same database extraction from foreign databases is perfectly legal, even in Europe. It's hard to call either situation "thievery" -- they are perfectly legal acts, done according what is deemed "right" by their respective nations. Different countries also can have quite different thresholds of originality; what is a copyright violation in one country is perfectly legal in another, and often vice versa. Works which do not pass the threshold of originality in their own country have full protection in the United States, if they pass the threshold there. At any rate, in short, I don't think there is any kind of a digital copyright on scans, even in the Netherlands, from what you have said. For European users, copying a substantial part of a European website *may* be an issue for them (see the ECJ rulings I linked to above; they seem to have put a pretty significant dent into what can be considered a protected database). I'm not sure we have ever really discussed how much to respect the database rights for uploads here; that could be a matter of discussion. It may well depend on the nature of the items; we may not feel too favorably about an institution using these database rights to try to create some sort of monopoly over public domain works (i.e. only providing images as part of a database, and not permitting third-party photography of the originals) -- that was what the Foundation's PD-Art policy was about in the first place. Other types of databases may well be different. Hard to say... you will have people from different copyright regimes and experiences with different opinions on what is "right". National laws are not *always* respected... for one example, displaying the swastika is mostly illegal in Germany, but we continue to host such works regardless. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:40, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Hide fundraising banners

For those already annoyed by Jimbo constantly looking at them, I have reenabled the HideFundraisingNotice gadget, so you can enable that in your preferences if you don't like to save cookies etc. For Chrome and Safari users, it will now block the loading of the bannercode (better than just hiding it). TheDJ (talk) 19:20, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Sideline but you can also kill it, sorry, remove it via monobook.css (or similar). I did that last time and have been untrouble here :) Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 19:26, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

This does the same (and more actually), but is easier to explain to other users :D TheDJ (talk) 20:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

November 13

WMF - Projeto Brasil Catalisador

O Projeto Brasil Catalisador (Brazil Catalyst Project) visa desenvolver e abrir abordagens de colaboração pelas quais a Fundação Wikimedia pode apoiar o fortalecimento e crescimento da comunidade dos projetos Wikimedia no Brasil. A Fundação Wikimedia não tem agenda definida para além de ver o crescimento da comunidade contribuinte e de leitores no Brasil. Em última análise, o projeto vai criar um plano que recomende um conjunto de iniciativas e projetos-pilotos com o potencial de nos ajudar a avançar em nossa missão coletiva no Brasil e para possivelmente gerar exemplos de sistemas, processos e métodos para o avanço dos projetos dos projetos da Wikimedia no Brasil e no mundo. Participe! Acompanhe Projeto Brasil Catalisador (Brazil Catalyst Project) ou entre em contato direto com a Carolina Rossini.

--Carolrossiniatwiki (talk) 01:34, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Map of Oceania-Pacific wide.svg

I was alerted (through an OTRS email) that something weird seems to have happened with File:Map of Oceania-Pacific wide.svg as it appears on the WP page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania. I assume the country names on the latter page are meant to be superimposed on the actual map? Could someone with technical prowess try to sort it out? --Asav (talk) 07:35, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Looks ok to me. What exactly was reported non-working?--DieBuche (talk) 17:23, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

It seems that a newly added infobox clashed with the labelled map. I've moved the map down in the WP article to avoid this. The problem hasn't been reported on the article's talk page, where it might have got a quicker response. --Avenue (talk) 11:01, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Copyright status of older editions of Petit Larousse

Hi everybody. I have a copy of the french dictionary Petit Larousse 1930, and I was wondering what was the copyright status of the drawings inside, considering

• it was published in France, more than 70 years ago
• there are no authors listed (anonymous work ?)
• Petit Larousse is still yearly updated, printed and sold, with some drawings being clearly derivative works of the 1930 (or even 1905) editions

--Aʁsenjyʁdəgaljɔm¹¹⁶⁷¹ 08:12, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Any works first published in France in 1930 are still in copyright in the US where the servers are.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:18, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, copyright of these items was restored by the URAA, so they are still in copyright in the US regardless of whether they are in copyright in France. See COM:URAA. Dcoetzee (talk) 11:04, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Really, you mean US law applies to something which was never published in the US ? Hum, see hégémonie. --Aʁsenjyʁdəgaljɔm¹¹⁶⁷¹ 15:43, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

The fundamentalists can tag them as {{Not-PD-US-URAA}}. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 16:02, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Excuse me? Ever heard of the w:Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works? You know, that whole thing driven by Victor Hugo and the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale? The US refuse for a hundred years to join the damn thing, and until 1998, that dictionary probably was out of copyright in the US, but the insistence of the EU finally got us to put it back under copyright. And you have the gall to blame the US for this situation your country created?--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:13, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

I presume it was more a reference to the only partial implementation of article 7(8) i.e. the rule of the shorter term. But there's no need to have an argument over it. Jarry1250 (talk) 21:25, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Why don't you look for a pre-1923 copy? It's very likely you'll find many of the illustrations of the 1930 copy. -- Orionist ★ talk 03:40, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

The 1905 edition referenced above should be fine, provided the illustrations are anonymous. Dcoetzee (talk) 04:54, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

As far as I know, there is no author list in the older editions (there is in recent ones). Unfortunatly, I don't have a copy of the 1905 edition, but it is on line on Univertsité de Cergy-Pontoise web site, which let me think these people consider it as public domain and Larousse doesn't deny that. --Aʁsenjyʁdəgaljɔm¹¹⁶⁷¹ 16:25, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Character insert tool

Did someone recently mess with the character insert tool in the edit page? It no longer offers me a dropdown for the characters for various languages. - Jmabel ! talk 07:38, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

in Vector it should be Special characters in the editor. It is not so convenient as before (as many things in vector), but still there in the top menu bar. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 09:10, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Or you can move it back to the bottom by activating "Use old edittools" in your preferences--DieBuche (talk) 09:43, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Somehow it got borked in a recent update. See MediaWiki_talk:Edittools#Disappeared for discussion. -- User:Docu

I'm not using Vector. I've now fixed this for myself with the "use old edit tools" preference, but what possible reason would there be for making it harder for people to get at these? - Jmabel ! talk 16:49, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

It's always a hard to balance different users' wishes. Others complained about the high amount of visual noise induced by the block of buttons. And one extra one-time-click shouldn't make anything really harder--DieBuche (talk) 17:03, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

From the perspective of novice/newer users and getting them comfortable with editing, the balance of prejudice between having easily visible and accessible tools and people complaining about visual clutter does not favour the complainers. Where is the discussion where people complained and there was a consensus to hide the tools? --Skeezix1000 (talk) 18:18, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

BTW, there is some bug with the way it's configured as it's not a one time click. -- User:Docu

Jmabel, the characters for languages are supposed to be in the edit toolbar, in the section "Characters". If you find some characters missing, just report them in the bugzilla, as made in bugzilla:25851.

Skeezix1000, the problem with the use of MediaWiki:Edittools in the old system is that it was always broken:

• All the content of MediaWiki:Edittools is sent to all users, even those who don't have javascript (and for which it won't work at all);
• There is no option to stop receiving it, no matter if you have javascript or not (to hide it after received is not a solution).

Besides, since vector is the default skin:

• It duplicates a lot of buttons from the "Characters" section of toolbar.

As pointed at MediaWiki_talk:Edittools#Duplication_of_special_characters, the intent was always ([14], [15]) to replace edittools by the features from usability initiative (the characters section in enhanced toolbar) as soon as it became enabled by default. Any bugs found during the updates will be fixed, but there is no reason to step back, since the system provided by the new toolbar allow us to disable the addition of all unused sections and buttons, but the old edittools doesn't.

The usability initiative have already restricted the clutter for novice users, splitting the buttons of toolbar into sections and leaving only the essential visible by default, and indeed removing others (like math button). When the users get familiar with the tools, or when they are curious and try out the sections of the toolbar, the last opened will be visible by default. This makes it possible to provide for each one the most used buttons by default (this is/should be saved in a cookie). Helder 12:26, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I think we don't disagree that it can be improved, in the meantime, it just shouldn't remain broken. -- User:Docu

Indeed, we agree with that.

As far as I can see, it is not broken, neither logged in or logged out. Did you clear your cache? Helder 17:31, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Thoughts on a Montage

Any thoughts on File:DCmontage3.jpg and the related File:DCmontage2.jpg which use as an element of the montage File:African American Civil War Memorial2.jpg which was deleted over Freedom of Panorama concerns (see Commons:Deletion requests/File:African American Civil War Memorial2.jpg). Would de minimis apply here? Personally I don't think so, as it is a specifically chosen image reduced in size but included in its entirity rather then an accidental element in a larger image. I'd rather not have to nominate these two for deletion, and replace them on the multitude of pages they are used on, so can someone with experience of montages change that element to one with no FOP problems. Thanks?KTo288 (talk) 11:52, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Why not try asking the original creator of the montages, en:User:Epicadam? Powers (talk) 18:09, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Sure but first I want to canvas opinion as to whether such a change is needed.--KTo288 (talk) 06:30, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Economic charts and diagrams

Hey all. I have a question about procedure. There's a CfD out on Category:Economic graphs which clearly wasn't transcluded when it was created in March. I think both Timeshifter and I agree that a merge between graphs and charts is the way to go, since it then allows categorisation purely by subject and not but some arbitrary linguistic that probably doesn't translate anyway. But my question is a procedural one: since we have a CFD with some discussion on it, but not much, does it need to be closed before a new one can be created and listed? Or should the old one be listed? Or has there been enough discussion despite it not being listed? Thanks, Jarry1250 (talk) 19:42, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

COM:FOP for Cyprus

FYI: CT:FOP#Cyprus. Thanks. Wknight94 ^talk 19:42, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

November 14

Category:Miami Museum of Science move

Category:Miami Museum of Science should be renamed to "Category:Miami Science Museum" because that is the proper name of the museum. Also, I don't seem to have move capability on Commons? How do I get that? Jason Quinn (talk) 11:37, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Change the categories in the files and then put a redirect on Category:Miami Museum of Science.--Prosfilaes (talk) 12:26, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Moving categories is not straightforward. Following the suggestion above is the fastest and easiest way. However, if you find a category that has too many files, you can add your request at COM:DL, but it might take some time to get to your request. -- Orionist ★ talk 14:11, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Verification of license for picture from the European Parliament audiovisual unit

Hi,

just uploaded a picture from the European Parliament audiovisual unit: File:31-01-07 De Vries 3.JPG. I would like someone to double-check that this is indeed an allowed picture to upload to Commons and that the license I selected is the correct one. Thanks. Badzil (talk) 15:57, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Birthcat and Deathcat are hidden now. Does it make sense?

Like asked in Template talk:Birthcat Birthcat and Dathcat are hidden now. There was no serious discussion, a single user made this change. Does it make sense to have this categories hidden?--Avron (talk) 08:56, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree those should not be hidden categories. --Jarekt (talk) 20:00, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I can't really see what is gained by this. Making a huge metacat like 'People by name' a hidden cat is one thing, and I see that is where the discussion took place, but surely the *birth and *death cats are a useful tool, especially for earlier periods? Even though the categories are still visible, in small font beneath the main category line, they are far less obvious. At least a fuller discussion should have been held and perhaps the move should be reviewed. I've no really strong feelings, but it just seems a rather pointless move. Anatiomaros (talk) 21:54, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I actually asked the question myself, and wasn't particularly satisfied with the answer I was given on the template talk page. It struck me that these were more than just maintenance categories. However, at the time no one else seemed to notice/care, so I deferred to Docu's judgment. However, I also do not think that they should be hidden categories. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 20:07, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I've noticed that none of the parent cats, e.g. Category:1200s births, are hidden. If the births and deaths by individual year cats are hidden because they are maintenance categories (and are they?) shouldn't all the parent cats be hidden as well? But then why should they be? At the very least this is inconsistent. I really can not see the logic in this. Anatiomaros (talk) 23:42, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

These should not be hidden. It should be easy for anybody to add and to inspect such categories, for example to see what whether copyrights expire. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 23:47, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Okay, given these comments, I have reversed the change, without prejudice to anyone who wants to propose making these hidden cats in the future. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 18:36, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

There seems to be a misunderstanding. The change didn't in fact hide the categories as these categories are used on subcategories of Category:People by name. Practically, it simply added a newline before these categories, as it does at Category:People by name. Obviously, I agree that the categories shouldn't be hidden, meaning "not generally visible".  Docu  at 03:24, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like there was a misunderstanding. Sorry about that. So these categories are visible to everyone, even users not logged in? I assumed they were visible to me because of my preferences, but that appears not to be the case. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 15:03, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

In fact, categories with hidden status are invisible for users not logged in and those who haven't activated "show hidden categories" in preferences. However, there's no sufficient reason to hide the birth and death categories. They are visible in most Wikipedias, why not on Commons? --Eva K. ^{is evil} 15:23, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Try, e.g. Category:Jimmy Wales and log out. -- User:Docu

Docu, what are you talking of? Of course the change hides the birthcat. At this time I reverted your change on the birthcat and not birthcat and the behaviour is different.--Avron (talk) 18:07, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Did you try Category:Jimmy Wales? -- User:Docu

Of course I did try. As I said, your change hides the category. See image.--Avron (talk) 18:54, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

What part do you think is "not visible" in File:Birth and death cat.JPG? -- User:Docu

I'm surpised you are asking because it is obvious. The category 1374 deaths is hidden.--Avron (talk) 19:34, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

It's visible (not hidden), just next to "People by name". -- Users:Docu

Of course you can see it, but they have the status "hidden". Maybe the discussion is a little missunderstanding. I mean, why just these categeries have the status hidden? What is the purpose, what ist the benefit, does it help somewhere somehow? The categories also lacks consistency now; so the categories for birthplace like Category:People from Alabama don't have the "hidden" status.--Avron (talk) 19:57, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I also think that hidding birth/death categories doesn't make sense. These are not categories used for maintenance but categories used to actually sort people into. Nothing needs fixing with elements in these categories. --PaterMcFly (talk) 21:25, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Author definition(s)

Can anyone elaborate on the definition of being an author according to Commons? Specifically, I would like to know, if it is considered being an author when someone scans or photographs a two dimensional object like a postcard, map or similar - or, when someone rips a vinyl record for a tune? Do not consider copyrights issues, I am just interested in knowing whether someone is an author or not. Links to appropriate Commons policies is appreciated. Philaweb (talk) 22:47, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

We define "author" as it is defined in the relevant law. Files may have multiple authors, as in a collaborative work or a derivative work, and the file description page should list all known authors. Someone who produces a copy by scanning or photographing a two-dimensional work, or by ripping a vinyl record, is not creating a new work and is not entitled to their own copyright (at least in the United States) - as such they are not considered an author of the work. However, there is no harm in keeping track of this information, where it is possible to do so - we often enter this information in the Author field, because really, where else would we put it? Dcoetzee (talk) 01:09, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Sometimes it is in the source field, "Scanned by [[User:]] from A Book". /Ö 10:54, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Since we now have the Stockphoto gadget, which uses the "Author" field to produce attribution lines, it's better if such info is put in the "Source" field, as Ö suggests above. -- Orionist ★ talk 16:11, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks for your answers. It seems differences exists juridically from country to country as to when faithful reproductions of two-dimensional works of art are considered in the public domain - COM:PDARTREUSE. Well, at least I now know what permission to use. Philaweb (talk) 20:17, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

November 10

some JS issues, again (gallery tab, ResizeGalleries, etc.)

Hi, is it only me (I'm still using monobook here), or does anyone else miss the gallery tab on user pages, too? And what happened to ResizeGalleries.js? It currently has no effect, as far as I can see.

Btw, I'm not really happy with the sheer amount of .js changes that are made by a couple of admins [clarifying, after complaints:] especially one admin nearly every day. It feels a bit like being used as a guinea pig … and at least some changes within the last weeks were obviously not (or not well enough) tested (e.g. on personal /whatever.js subpages) before being rolled out to the whole community, cf. several reports here and there. Well, I know that one can't always test every tiny bit properly just with personal JS files, but the main parts should be safe and should not conflict with existing code so often. jm2c --:bdk: 07:36, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

[EDIT: merge with previous thread] Hi. When visiting a user's page, there used to be a "gallery" link (in the form of a tab in my Monobook) leading to a tool (probably hosted on the toolserver) showing the uploads of the user. It was very useful to me but it seems to have disappeared. When, why? Should I re-add the tab manually? Regards, --Eusebius (talk) 08:17, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Please restore this. I find it very useful as well, and strongly suspect that so do many others. Changes like this should not be happening unilaterally. - Jmabel ! talk 15:41, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

The user gallery feature is still available by clicking the down-arrow to the right of the favorites star. On that drop-down menu, you'll find the link to the Gallery (so long as you're on a page in the User or User Talk namespaces). Powers (talk) 16:02, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

This was already fixed/restored by Lupo some hours before you wrote the above (see the thread below). Some users still may need to clear their cache though. --:bdk: 18:08, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Upload patrol has come!

Howdy all, In my secret cave I've been working for quite some time with a few fellow patrollers helping me out to debug and test it. But today I'd like to publish it as right now getting patrolling up and running is more important than making it look nice. Untill to is resolved native patroling of the 'upload' logtype (and it's actions such as 'overwrite' (aka "Reupload") and 'upload' (aka "New file")) is not possible. For that reason I've setup a database on the toolserver enabling this in a way optimized for Commons which may or may not be better than a native implementation would be, but it's certainly better then what we've got now.. which is nothing.

The tool has different views. I'll talk through them briefly but would like to refer to the Usage description on it's Meta page here. And it's technical description page on the toolserver wiki.

Recent uploads
The main page of the tool is an overview of recent uploads allowing to frame it by start time, end time and optionally reverse it from old to new (no need to use the limit=5000 "hack" and scroll to the bottom to get the oldest!). When logged in with an account that has the patroller right (login goes through TUSC), aside from the other options described below, the ability to Hide patrolled uploads and view the Patrollog are available aswell.

Patrolstatus
The wiki integrates with Commons through a userscript. Check out the Meta page for 1 line snippet you need to insert in vector.js. With it you can see the patrolstatus of an upload in the upper right corner of a filepage (example).

// [[File:Krinkle_CommonsUploadPatrol.js]]
importScriptURI('http://toolserver.org/~krinkle/CommonsUploadPatrol/script.js');

If you're not a patroller and would like to help out with the backlog on uploads, become a patroller and request the right on Commons:Requests for rights. Don't forget to read up on the deletion policy, in particular the produre and templates used around speedy deletions such as for copyright violations.
Note: As with any patrolling functionality, a patrolled uploads means it's "taken care off". It does not mean the file is in perfect status. If a file is perfect it can be patrolled right way, if a file has issues tag them as such, notify the user and then mark it as patrolled. Also, like edit and newpage patrol, users with the autopatrol right are hidden/unpatrollable

Editnotice
To fix common things like dateformat, localization headings and more there's an editnotice loaded with a few snippets. Also the script dynamically inserts an action button in this editnotice which, when clicked, will automatically clean up most of these in the wikitext and show the diff afterwards (be sure to check the diffs, there may be some bugs as it's not been extensively tested).

Alrighty, that's it for now. I'd love to hear feedback and suggestions. Any specific bugs are best reported as a new ticket over here on the tools-feedback page. –Krinkle^talk 01:31, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Different users on IRC asked me about the same thing so I'll it here

The patrolling mechanism here is pretty much the same as for Edits and New pages (Commons:Patrol). You patrol the good ones, and revert/tag/nominate the bad ones and then patrol those aswell. So in the end everything should be patrolled. It is not a flagging system that says 'this file is good'. Instead it means 'this file is checked - either it was good, or it was bad and tagged as such' (ie. "missing ... since", or "speedy" or whatever).

On Commons:Recent uploads patrol you can find an overview of each day and which parts have been checked already. Please note though, that becuase we have the ability to mark something as patrolled and hide patrolled uploads you don't have to finish an entire day-part (say 10-11h). Instead you can patrol as many as you like and it will contribute since the next person clicking that link will see a shorter list untill the list is exhausted and it can be marked as "Done". –Krinkle^talk 23:49, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Looks pretty neat, but doesn't seem to work for me: In both FF and Safari I can login and get red unpatrolled labels. But clicking on them doesn't work. No console errors, is that maybe some kind of permission problem (do I need an explicit patrol flag?)--DieBuche (talk) 08:46, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh god, I should have RTFM ;-)--DieBuche (talk) 08:51, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

If you have suggestions for the interface, let me know what you think a click-action on the red label should be added and what action should be executed based on it. I'll see what I can do.–Krinkle^talk 02:43, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Should Metropolis be on Commons?

It doesn't look like we have w:Metropolis (film) on Commons. Discussion on the Web suggests that it is public domain.[16] Discussion at the film's Wikipedia talk page [17] suggests vague threats. Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag suggests that we should be free to use any portion of the original film, including the sections found with a collector in Argentina. I'm uninformed about whether the copyright ever expired in Germany, and whether the principle that "what is public domain stays public domain" applies to Commons' courtesy policy regarding works copyrighted in their home country. Finally, of course, such a long and singularly beautiful film would be a major strain of resources and would raise questions of entertainment vs. educational purpose. Thus I think it would be interesting to discuss whether it belongs here. Wnt (talk) 04:23, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Won't it run into the 100 Mb upload limit? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 04:30, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I assume it could be broken into parts, though admittedly, one would prefer to see a single direct rip to CD from the highest quality digital source... if it can be managed here and/or at the user's end. There are probably certain short clips that are specifically notable and worth keeping separately. Wnt (talk) 04:41, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Can't specific requests be made to the server admins for files over 100 Mb? — Huntster (t @ c) 04:50, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

As a post-1922 German work, I see no reason to think it's not under copyright in the US. As a valuable work under copyright in the US, I don't see any reason to think we can treat it with our usual casual neglect of our obligations towards the URAA.

Most older movies are going to be educational material in teaching film history. It'd be like uploading another Rackham illustration, scope-wise. I don't think that it would be that big of a strain of resources. What I do think is that we are not practically set up to handle films, and that in general right now it's better to upload them to the Internet Archive.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:06, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I fail to see how it is public domain. Even if it once came out of copyright in Germany, its copyright has since been restored, and it would seem to be under copyright there (and throughout Europe) until 2047 (Fritz Lang died in 1976). It would have additionally been restored in the U.S. by the URAA, and would be copyrighted there until 2023 (for versions first published in 1927). I don't think it qualifies for Commons in any way. The "public domain" discussion linked above would seem to be misconstruing the court ruling, which was specifically about "reliance parties" (people who had been making use of the works prior to restoration, which excludes Wikimedia), and not about the restorations in general (which were required by the Berne Convention). So, neither public domain in the country of origin, nor public domain in the U.S., so it fails both Commons tests as far as I can tell. Carl Lindberg (talk) 05:38, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Germany and Austria (Firtz Lang was an Austrian) have both adopted w:Copyright Duration Directive (93/98/EEC) in 95/96: The term of protection of cinematographic or audiovisual works shall expire 70 years after the death of the last of the following persons to survive, whether or not these persons are designated as co-authors: the principal director, the author of the screenplay, the author of the dialogue and the composer of music specifically created for use in the cinematographic or audiovisual work. - w:Thea von Harbou (German, main author of the screenplay) died in 1954, w:Fritz Lang (Austrian, author of scrennplay and director) died in the 1970s, the movie is at least protected till the 2040s in the EU. sугсго 08:44, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

There's also the issue that all of the available copies are "restored" (that I know of), which would possibly entail some copyright protection. Kaldari (talk) 21:03, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

The last I heard, the courts had ruled something semi-sensible like that what is in the public domain stays in the public domain in the U.S. I just checked w:Golan v. Gonzales and I don't know what it means. Wnt (talk) 09:28, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

That was only in the context of reliance parties, i.e., people or organizations who had already been using a work based on its then-PD status. The court decision did not dispute that copyrights had been restored; but said that such reliance parties should be able to continue to use the work without license. But that doesn't mean that other people or organizations, who had not been using the work based on its once PD status when it became re-copyrighted, could now start using such a work claiming it were still PD. Neither the WMF nor individual uploaders here are reliance parties; and so that court decision has no bearing on us. Maybe we should add this all to the FAQ; it seems to crop up every so often. Lupo 09:37, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

So if one person had taped it on his VCR prior to the copyright extension, he could distribute it to us? Wnt (talk) 22:02, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

The concept of reliance parties is meant to imply economic reliance, e.g. if you have been publishing a book containing the image since before the URAA was passed, you would quality as a reliance party. Mere personal use probably would not qualify. Of course I'd like to think the URAA will eventually be struck down in its entirety, but reliance parties are all we got for now. Dcoetzee (talk) 23:04, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Whether they could or not, it would be like buying a copy of Star Wars on DVD; just because we had a copy wouldn't give us the right to make more copies.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:23, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

So is Wikimedia Commons officially out of the club - the next time congress decides to give away public-domain content to wealthy heirs, everything on here is illegal anyway? If so, we need to put more effort into getting stuff put onto media and mass distributed before it's banned. Wnt (talk) 12:34, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

There is more steeling by mass upload to commons

There is more steeling by mass upload to commons: see User:Dcoetzee/Batch uploads. According to the NYPL Digital Gallery site http://www.nypl.org/help/about-nypl/legal-notices/website-terms-and-conditions low resolution images are not free for commercial use and high-resolution images can against a fee be obtained even for commercial use. And then, read this: Commons:Batch uploading/NYPL Digital Gallery and you see that Dcoetzee is hacking sites. That is a criminal offense, and I ask immediate blocking of Dcoetzee. --Havang(nl) (talk) 21:22, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Did you actually read the page you link to? Dcoetzee states there that he is in touch with NYPL folks, who go as far as opening doors for him to download the images. This hardly qualifies as « hacking sites » (whatever that means). Dcoetzee is even careful to not overload their bandwidth. Jean-Fred (talk) 21:33, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Opning a backdoor to let in the thief, that's it. But as I said before: A thief who defends himself by saying that he foundn a backdooor open, is stikll a thief. Using a tool to circumvent a security measure, even if that security measure is ineffective, is in some countries of Europe punishable to 3 years of jail maximum. This must stop. --Havang(nl) (talk) 21:39, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Don't we already have a discussion about this issue above? Do we need really another? Adambro (talk) 21:42, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I do point out that there is a much wider abuse going on. It is not my intention to restart the above discussion.--Havang(nl) (talk) 21:44, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

First of all, please don't call copyright infringement "theft". Those words mean different things, especially legally. (I'm not implying it is copyright infringement, but use that word if that is what you mean.) Second of all, don't accuse people of crimes unless you know what you're talking about. And why are you defending what is, in my American opinion, copyfraud and an assault on the public domain? Maybe you're on the wrong site? Rocket000 (talk) 21:49, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) I'm getting a bit tired of your new found crusade. If you really think you have a case, open a central discussion on the subject and provide court cases, citation of copyright laws, and precise examples of conducts that violate our policies or the relevant laws.
But considering you keep calling "theft" what would in fact be "copyright infringement", and that you talk about European law in the NYPL case (a U.S. institution, U.S.-based uploader, U.S.-located WMF servers), I doubt you'll come up with any serious case. –Tryphon^☂ 21:52, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Sure I am not on the wrong site, but the stolen images are. --Havang(nl) (talk) 21:57, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Please stick to the substance of the issue, and avoid name-calling ("thief") and unnecessary accusations ("stolen"). We don't need either. Thanks. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 21:59, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I have said my word, I'll see what comes out of it. --Havang(nl) (talk) 22:01, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Lay off the personal attacks, Havang. If you don't agree with the COM:ART policy, take your complaint there. Calling Dcoetzee names isn't going to help your case. Kaldari (talk) 01:09, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Josh Greenberg of the NYPL specifically approved and assisted in the upload of these public domain images (not that it was necessary for him to do so, but they're obviously not upset about it). The terms of use on their website are intended to apply to works still under copyright. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:25, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I am happy, that this part of my accusations is unfounded, and I apologize. --Havang(nl) (talk) 18:16, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Dammit Havang, stop opening these stupid topics where you accuse people of things! I don't read the Village Pump that often, but I keep running into these topics started by you. It seems to have started when you were voted admin. Should I have voted against you? Anyway. I met the NYPL people (Josh and colleagues) in person a couple of months ago and they're happy with us copying their public domain stuff. Multichill (talk) 22:22, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Question on possible mass deletion of over 80 images

I posted this in the mass deletion request discussion page. I post it here also since it seems it may be more fastly answered, and also I am not sure on the best place for the questions.

I have spotted a quiteclear copyvio of over 80 images. (See this discussion). Is there a bot aid for such big requests? It would be quite tiring to nominate them as explained in this page. In addition it seems that with some periodicity images are taken from the origin of those images and uploaded into commons as NASA, when they are not. Is there something like a black list of web sites that eliminates the possibility of uploading images from a given source? I'll try to watch this page for an answer, but it would be great if somebody posted a notice at my talk page of the English WP. Bests.

--Garrondo (talk) 15:20, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

In any case, with or without bot, a list of files is required. If all files came from one website you will quickly create a list of files with Special:LinkSearch [18]. If the list is given it takes only a few minutes to delete the images by hand, thats not so much work. IMO a sollution will be to add a list of files to Commons:Deletion requests/Images from the Remote Sensing Tutorial from NASA Goddard Space Center and to reopen the then completed deletion request. --Martin H. (talk) 14:51, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks: I am going to create the list and check one by one the images in it to see if all of them have copyright issues.--Garrondo (talk) 07:23, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I have made the list and checked all images to be most probably copyright violations (See here). How do I reopen the case? In addition nobody has still told me if there is a way of including in a blacklist the rstutorial website, since it is a common origin for copyrighted images which people believe that are made by NASA.--Garrondo (talk) 13:50, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Oscar and copyright

I was in Canberra for two days for study related activities for a museum course I'm currently studying. While looking around at the National Film and Sound Archive, I came across a 1943 oscar award. Now in Australia it would be deemed to be in the public domain (and FoP is fine) but since this award came from the US it would have to have some copyright protection? Bidgee (talk) 12:48, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

They claim copyright on it; see here. A 1991 court case ruled that the statuettes were deemed "unpublished" until 1941, when copyright was registered, and copyright was renewed in 1968. So it would seem as though U.S. copyright on the statuettes (or at least the old versions) will last until 2037. Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:30, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Thought so. Pity that the copyright can be renewed in the US, I think it hurts projects such as Wikimedia Commons. Bidgee (talk) 13:44, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Interesting that one or two press exhibitions was enough to publish w:Chicago Picasso, but Oscar remained unpublished after all these mutiple award ceremonies. Trycatch (talk) 06:42, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

"Works"

I recently removed Category:Works by country from Category:Work, to which it had only a loose, purely linguistic connection, but that leaves it uncategorized, and I have no idea where it belongs. Could someone either get it back into the hierarchy tree or work out what it should merge into? Thanks. - Jmabel ! talk 00:27, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Same for Category:Works by date. Someone will probably want to explore around this part of the hierarchy. - Jmabel ! talk 00:30, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Hm, kinda interesting question. I've not explored the category tree at the higher levels much ;-) "Works" would seem to be a top-level element. Maybe under Category:Media types? Or even Category:CommonsRoot? They could go under Category:Categories by country (or Category:Categories by date) as well. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:40, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Interesting indeed. I'm not sure that I'd want a "by country" category in "CommonsRoot", but 'works' is such an incredibly broad term. Realistically, "Media types" and one of the "Categories by..." categories may be the only reasonable answers. Better yet, lets scrap all the categories and start from scratch ;) — Huntster (t @ c) 03:46, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

This tree is ridiculous! Category:Works by country and subcats should just be nuked! It takes forever to find an image in that tree. If we keep on going like this we end up with one image per category. Multichill (talk) 22:15, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Museum Art images.

I got this from the GLAM-UK blogpost. A paper called Control of Museum Art Images: The Reach and Limits of Copyright and Licensing by Melissa A. Brown, Columbia University and Kenneth D. Crews, Columbia University. I found it to be an interesting read and I think other Commons users might be interested in reading it as well. TheDJ (talk) 17:10, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

November 15

Javascript error 1

There is a message on File:Train_at_station.JPG saying

TypeError: $.cookie is not a function
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=-&action=raw&smaxage=0&gen=js&useskin=monobook&283-12 (276)

- Erik Baas (talk) 00:46, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Javascript error 2

The (old-style) buttons above textarea's don't work anymore:

Fout: EditTools is not defined
Bronbestand: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Edittools-legacy.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript
Regel: 2

- Erik Baas (talk) 00:46, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Does this answer your question? Multichill (talk) 22:08, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

It does, thank you. But it also raises another question... ;-) - Erik Baas (talk) 00:17, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Proper template

What's the proper template of an 1933 published baseball card image, but never copyrighted with the copyright office, even though it clearly said in the back that it was copyrighted, I'm talking about File:MartyMcManus1933Delongcard.jpg, it's a group of about 30 baseball card images I want to upload. I checked both the year it was supposed to have been copyrighted and the year of the supposed renewal. Thanks. Secret (talk) 15:55, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Registration could occur any time in the first 28 years after publication, but that is basically irrelevant. The renewals, however, had to occur (for something published in 1933) either in 1960 or 1961 (i.e. 27 or 28 years after initial publication), so both renewal years need to be checked. If no renewals are found, then {{PD-US-not renewed}} is the correct license. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:53, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Yea I checked that prior to posting here and nothing, I don't think any baseball card from the period was renewed, I uploaded over 300 of them already, just another set I have to upload. Thanks Secret (talk) 19:42, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Allowed ?

Is that allowed ? I mean : isn't it a derivative work ? And if German FoP applies, isn't there a more appropriate licence tag ? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 16:31, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

The license is for the photograph itself, which seems fine. {{FOP}} and/or {{FoP-Germany}} can be added if desired. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:50, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

But... FoP Germany shouldn't apply here because this poster is probably not permanently located on public ways, streets or places as the law states --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 15:40, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Usage of attribution

Hi,

when the license of a file specifies that attribution is needed, should the copyright of the image be specified when using the image on Wikipedia projects (ie the caption of the image shows the copyright) or is it enough that the image is a link pointing to Commons where licensing is developed? Badzil (talk) 00:25, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

It is not necessary to attribute the image in the caption or anywhere on the page using the image - it is enough to link the image to another page containing attribution information. Dcoetzee (talk) 00:45, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. Badzil (talk) 00:51, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Cat-a-lot

Hello. A few weeks ago, the gadget "cat-a-lot" changed. It is now of a much better performance and speed. Unfortunately, its design has a few weak points : the photographs on the bottom line can not be selected (because their bottom borders are hidden); and, in the cat-a-lot window, the "Move Copy"'s are not lined up and are too much far on the right (difficult to see which category they point to). I've just dropped a note here. Jack ma (talk) 07:37, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

A BIG PUBLIC COMPLIMENT

A BIG PUBLIC COMPLIMENT FOR THE MAKER OF THE SLIDE SHOW PROGRAM. --Havang(nl) (talk) 18:17, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

November 17

Britannica using our images without adequate citation or licensing?

I just got wind of the fact that File:SydneyUniversity_WesleyCollege.jpg is being used in a Britannica Online article. Their image page credits my name, but does not include any statement of the license under which it must be released, nor does it link back to Commons, nor does their "citations" button contain any attribution of my name for further reusers. Am I right that they're breaking the licensing terms? Looking into it, this appears to be a widespread problem at their site. Any suggestions on how to address this? --99of9 (talk) 03:21, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Yup, CC-BY-SA requires them to provide at a minimum the name of the license when attributing you. They don't have to do it in the caption, but has to be there somewhere. However, since they're apparently making an effort to give credit, I'd recommend just sending them a friendly letter requesting them to update the caption to "Toby Hudson / CC-BY-SA 3.0". They're not required to link to Commons. See Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia#CC-BY-SA. Dcoetzee (talk) 04:15, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

(ec) You need to contact them and inform them that this is a copyright violation. This is serious (a lot of times, it's just crappy websites ignoring licensing terms) but Britannica doing it is surprising. I also could not find the necessary mention of the license on the image page. ←fetchcomms 04:17, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes they have one of mine. Its nice to think that the quality of their material is improving- and one day they may be almost as reliable as Wikipedia!! In the meantime reprint your business card with the Tag line 'Internationally published Commercial phtographer' and double the rate you charge your friends for copies of your snaps!! --ClemRutter (talk) 09:59, 9 November 2010 (UTC) Proud to be violated!

You might want to stick {{Published}} tags on your images. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 11:06, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Just putting the text "CC-BY-SA 3.0" doesn't cut it either. That should be a link to the licensing terms. - Jmabel ! talk 16:00, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Right, my mistake. They have to mention the license terms or link to them (and linking would be much more typical and concise). Dcoetzee (talk) 20:32, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

• not really an unusual problem one of mine and there are many other images on there that have been sourced from here with the same issues, to date I havent heard of anyone being successful in getting changes to the credit, even with my images where the attribution requirment is specified. Gnangarra 05:21, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

• Have you tried? I did see a number in there. --99of9 (talk) 09:50, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I am in the midst of updating {{Published}}: see Template:Published/sandbox and Template:Published/testcases. All comments welcome at the template talk page. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 09:25, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I wonder though. Is it even legal in the first place to embed such Share-alike images in copyrighted work that is "All rights reserved. Encyclopædia Britannica is copyrighted 1994-2008 by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.". Some would argue that by embedding the image in the article in question, the article has to fulfil the Share alike requirements of the CC license of the image and is thus a copyright violation by definition. I really urge image owners to put more pressure on Brittanica to get this issue resolved. And otherwise perhaps someone should blog about it. TheDJ (talk) 15:55, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia text is under CC-BY-SA, and lots of photos in the articles are under different (and not compatible) licenses. So mixing licenses in a web page seems to be acceptable. --Aʁsenjyʁdəgaljɔm¹¹⁶⁷¹ 16:15, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, provided they note the separate copyright terms of the photo. Technically, the article text is one work (a literary work), the photos and other illustrations are completely separate (artistic) works unto themselves, and the selection and arrangement of all of them together is yet another work (called a "collective work"). None of those three types of works are derivatives of each other, so there is no license incompatibility. The single, overall copyright statement is then taken to apply to the collective work, and all of the component works as well, unless there is a separate note. The situation is the same in a Wikipedia article (we can use GFDL images alongside CC-BY-SA text and vice versa), newspapers, published books, and similar things. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:20, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I gave up on trying to enforce the nuances of the copyright with my work. I had to settle on getting bent out of shape when a mainstream media source doesn't even give the courtesy of a credit (like the Miami Herald). Even then, I just write an annoyed blog post. --David Shankbone (talk) 23:40, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

An update: I received a reply from Britannica including the following: "It has been EB's practice to link back to creative commons and gnu licenses, and this recent failure to do so is due to a bug that occurred with the latest site release. The bug has been fixed on our develpment servers and is expected to be released to the public in mid-December." So it looks like their problems will be rectified eventually. 99of9 (talk) 23:00, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Are all svg images copyrightable computer code? (no matter how simple the image is)

There is a small discussion going on here about a simple clock that imho is PD-ineligible. Then somebody wrote Pixel images can be PD-ineligible; all but the most trivial vector images are copyrightable computer code that's not PD-ineligible even if what they display is. In other words: even the most simple green square can not be changed to PD-ineligible because the svg code copyright can not be changed. Now I changed a number of simpe geometric svg's to PD-shape. Was I wrong to to this?

• What do other people think of this? - Amada44  ^{talk to me} 10:42, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
  • It depends on how simple the code is. A statement like <polygon points="50,200 130,400 550,400 470,200" stroke-width='4' stroke='black' style='fill:none' /> cannot be copyrighted. But I believe that closing Commons:Deletion requests/File:Opera O.svg as kept was not correct. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 10:58, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
    • Well, what about stating that by uploading a svg the uploader relinquishes the copyright on code (the copyright on the images stays untouched)? The Opera O for example could very easily be transformed into a completely new svg code (the image itself will stay identical). This can be done by saving the file as pdf, re-opening with inkscape and saving again as svg, this rewrites the complete code. I could do this with the Opera O. Would that solve any problems? Amada44  ^{talk to me} 11:30, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
      • One can argue that would create a derivative work. I prefer to take the view that SVGs are not "computer code" but merely a particular digital encoding of an image, and copyright should be based on their appearance when rendered. But I don't really know what a court would do... Dcoetzee (talk) 11:37, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
        • The case law says that Postscript fonts, which encode something not copyrightable, are themselves copyrightable. And SVG files can reasonably contain comments, and enough discussion on how and why something was done can certainly be copyrightable.--Prosfilaes (talk) 12:25, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

• • Don't know about "all". You can make the argument for people who hand-edit SVG files, definitely. If they are generated by a program, then I don't think the text itself is "authorship" (as all the decisions about the actual text are decided algorithmically by Inkscape or whatever graphic program is used), but rather the copyright is just on the graphic image itself. I do feel Commons:Deletion requests/File:Opera O.svg was decided correctly, at least per U.S. law. Postscript fonts were deemed copyrightable, yes, but not necessarily (originally) for the outlines -- there is kerning and other information in there which guides how letters are laid out, and the whole was deemed a "computer program", and quite protectable that way. The clocks mentioned... are very close to being PD-ineligible, if they are copyrightable. That is a pretty minor variation on a common design. The original File:Gnome globe current event.svg is certainly copyrightable, but not necessarily component parts. Not sure on the clock. They are basically just concentric circles, with a few slightly offset to give a particular visual effect. That doesn't seem to be copyrightable arrangement to me. In combination with that style of clock arms... then maybe. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:24, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I share your opinion esp. with the automatically generated code. Its difficult to see if someone coded by hand or not though. Wouldn't it be good if the coder needs to add a special sign if she/he thinks that the own code is copyrighted? Or could we have a general policy that you give up the rights on the svg code by uploading to commons (rights on the image stay untouched)? Wouldn't we have less problems by doing something like that? Obviously people don't regard this as a problem, looking at how few people posted on this thread. Amada44  ^{talk to me} 10:44, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

There's Template:HandSVG and Category:Manually coded SVG, but I doubt whether most of the people who added these to the description pages of images they authored did so for copyright reasons... AnonMoos (talk) 22:09, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

yea, I have seen those before and I am sure, that I changed a few of those to PD-simple. My perception is, that 'we' don't grant copyright on the code itself. Only to the image. But we should probably write that down somewhere. Amada44  ^{talk to me} 09:40, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Please do NOT remove the template for that reason, since it does not assert a copyright claim, but merely informs as to how the image was made. AnonMoos (talk) 10:56, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, but I am NOT stupid :) cheers, Amada44  ^{talk to me} 11:15, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Fixed number of images per row in gallery

It looks like some Mediawiki developer thought it was a great idea to fix the number of images per row in a gallery to 4, instead of making it a customizable setting. Is there a really good reason to hardcode this? Or is it just that some guy with commit rights always reads Wikipedia on a 640*480 screen? --Eusebius (talk) 08:48, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I have the same problem also with categories. Instead of 10 images on one row I have only 4. How to change it back? Wouter (talk) 09:05, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

You can always add a perrow="10" parameter to <gallery>, but it is does not "change it back". --Eusebius (talk) 09:32, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I think this may be associated with bugzilla:bug 3276 and recent changes made by DieBuche, I've mentioned this to him. I can't obviously see the diff (locally or to MediaWiki) that's caused the change, but I'm no expert.--Nilfanion (talk) 10:20, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Lupo's fix works. (And +1 to the comment in his edit summary).--Nilfanion (talk) 10:30, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

+1 --:bdk: 10:55, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Common.js has a big, fat editnotice that should be shown to anyone who tries to edit that file. I don't know why people regularly ignore it. It's hyper-annoying. Lupo 11:02, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

• A bug in MediaWiki:Common.js broke lots of things. The toolbox links to nominate for deletion on image pages were missing; galleries were not resized to the window width; and I don't know what else didn't work anymore. If you experience any problems, please reload your browser's cache. Lupo 10:27, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Some recent JS problems solved, indeed, but not the width of galleries. I also see a fixed width of 4 images on the French Wikipedia (although I can't swear it wasn't the case before: I'm only active here on Commons), that's why I thought it was a MW issue. --Eusebius (talk) 10:52, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki's galleries display four images in a row per default. As far as I know, this behaviour was only adapted on Commons, because on other (more or less text-based) projects flexible numbers of images per row tend to break article layouts, especially on wider screens. We don't have much text, so it's clearly an advantage here :-) --:bdk: 18:29, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I understand that your last remark is ironical? --Eusebius (talk) 18:50, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Nah, no irony inside. Having a flexible gallery width is an advantage in a media repository. That's why I missed the functionality earlier today (see the thread above). I only pointed this out because you mentioned fr.wikipedia, where it wouldn't be such an advantage (and isn't implemented therefore). --:bdk: 22:12, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh ok, I just misread you, I thought you said fixed width was an advantage on Commons. I still don't understand why the feature has been removed from the Commons installation... where a per-user setting could be very convenient. I guess I'm complaining in the wrong place again, anyway. --Eusebius (talk) 07:59, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

It has not been removed. Someone made an edit that broke many javascripts on Commons, but it was reverted. Try clearing your cache if you are still having problems. /Ö 09:49, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I see it now, thank you. Yet, when I first cleared my cache yesterday, I saw other JS feature come back, but not this one. Sorry for the inconvenience. --Eusebius (talk) 14:26, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

On one of my computers, I still see galleries with a fixed width, and my cache has been cleared (local cache and MW cache). This is clearly a local issue, any help/suggestion would be welcome. I also see the regex filter in the contribs list the way it used to be in the past, I guess it's part of the JS bug. --Eusebius (talk) 11:56, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

What browser are you using on that computer? I sometimes have difficulty getting IE (especially old IE6) to properly clear its cache. Requires (for me, at least) manually clearing "temporary internet files", restarting, and then Ctrl-reloading; possibly even the whole shebang repeated multiple times. Lupo 14:05, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Up-to-date FF on Linux. Actually regular galleries look ok for me now, but I have galleries within {{Hidden}} in a userspace page, and they still show 4 images per row (at least on one of my computers). Maybe it's a limitation of the corresponding JS code, and it's probably not important. And I still see the regex filter of the contrib list dynamic enough to be annoying for me, but I guess it's a wanted feature. --Eusebius (talk) 15:34, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

How to delete extra information?

I have uploaded a photo of a small church where I added extra info to link to a detailed photo of the church bell. I added to the photo of that church bell a thumbnail of the whole church so that people can easily find that photo. The problem for me is the info "there is extra info ...". I would like to suppress it because it is not relevant here and it disturbs the lay-out. Further I would like that the heading "License" starts below the thumbnail. Is that possible? Wouter (talk) 08:22, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

(Heading solved: moved line from below upload template into upload template).--Havang(nl) (talk) 08:33, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean the "There are notes" blurb ? If so, there are templates to switch this on and off, see Help:Gadget-ImageAnnotator. Jean-Fred (talk) 08:42, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I did mean the "There are notes ..." (I just translated the Dutch text). {{ImageNoteControl|img=[[File:Tenerife_Adeje_church_K.jpg|left|100px]]|notes=none|caption=off}} solved the problem. Thanks both of you. Wouter (talk) 09:26, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Licensing conflict?

Hello. While reviewing this batch upload request I noticed a possible problem regarding licenses. While the site which the media was taken says that the content it is licensed CC-BY-SA-2.5 Colombia there's also a note at the footer of the page saying "Todos los derechos reservados © COLDEPORTES 2009" which means "All rights reserved". Which license applies here? Thank you, --m:dferg 15:23, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

There is no conflict between the statements. It's copyrighted but licensed according to cc-by-sa-2.5. // Liftarn (talk)

Agreed; I would imagine that the freer license trumps the basic copyright statement, though the possibility remains that it is the other way around (less free trumping more free). — Huntster (t @ c) 18:10, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Many free license statements include the language "All rights reserved", even though they obviously do not reserve all rights - it's a holdover from the times when such a statement was included on all copyrighted documents. They don't really mean it. A good example is the BSD License. I think the intention is clear and would be clear to a judge. Dcoetzee (talk) 20:50, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that was my thought as well, but always good to get second (and third) opinions :) — Huntster (t @ c) 06:46, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Commons Wanted Templates

Hi Village pump, A tool has been created much like Special:WantedTemplates, on the toolserver: http://toolserver.org/~krinkle/CommonsWantedTemplates/ . The difference is that it refreshes more often and can be filtered in any way you like by request. For now, the biggest request, it only displays transclusions from the Template-namespace without those starting with "Potd" or "Motd". Cleaning up mistakes becomes a lot easier now ! If there are any other patterns that may aswell be ignored to give less clutter let me know here or here. I'd like to invite you to visit the tool and check the red links for templates that need fixing.

For those with high link-numbers and should be unlinked, replaced or unwrapped ({{}}> curcly brackets removed), let me know on my talkpage so I can run KrinkleBot to take care of it. –Krinkle^talk 01:40, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Great tool. Please add it to our tools page. One issue I found are some "false alarms" related to template:Information\n. --Jarekt (talk) 04:07, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Sloop John B by The Beach Boys in Public Domain?

I just found the file File:Tiger Rag ODJB.ogg. It has two templates, one saying the composition is PD (published before 1923) and one saying the recording is PD (published before 1978). I can't imagine Sloop John B by The Beach Boys is in PD, but the composition was written long before 1923 (trad. Histe up the John B Sails) and it was recorded before 1978. I didn't study the law, but it can't be true that traditional songs recorded by Americans up till 1978 are in public domain, can it? I hope anyone can lighten up a bit. Probably I'm missing something and is it just a stupid question with an obvious answer. :-) Clausule (talk) 20:26, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Well two things. I'm sure the Beach Boys would CLAIM that their composition is original enough for a new copyright, if it were ever brought to court. On which side the judge would side is hard to predict. Second, the performance/recording is indeed dependent on the laws as defined by the state. I'm not sure where that song was recorded, so that would have to be figured out, and i'm not sure if we have information on which states have which laws for sound recordings (officially 'phonogram production'). Under modern law, the rights extend 50-120 years from first publication (so anytime someone rips off a song and produces a recording, they can profit for 50 years from that recorded performance, but they might have to pay performing rights themselves) See also: related rights. TheDJ (talk) 21:27, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

November 18

Quality images

Bringing this here for wider reach. Does the source of an image affect the quality of the image? Please reply there. Rehman 03:42, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Bug in "Use this file on a wiki"

There seems to be a bug in the feature (see heading). It looks like if there's a ' (whatever that sign is called, apostrophe maybe?) the formatting of the wiki code doesn't work. See this page[19] for demonstration.--81.175.142.2 08:00, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting this, I've fixed the script that escapes the quotes to escape single quotes (') too as supposed to just double quotes ("). Thanks again –Krinkle^talk 08:53, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Good licence for Featured Picture?

Have a peek at the permission section and license of File:NesjavellirPowerPlant.jpg (and its linked derivative work). Doesn't it supposed to go through OTRS or something? Rather than on a "he said its ok from me to upload" basis? Rehman 14:10, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I would be inclined to agree with that. Normally we expect more than "so-and-so said it would be okay".--Skeezix1000 (talk) 14:41, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

There was a point, before OTRS was full set up, where we may have allowed this kind of thing, and we typically don't retroactively change that assumption. I don't know if mid-2007 was past that point or not though. It would be good if the original uploader could forward the original evidence to OTRS though. I do not like the recent upload-over-top, BTW -- that was uploaded separately to File:NesjavellirPowerPlant_edit.jpg and we do not need to make a copy over top of the original source version; that needlessly creates a duplicate. I would revert the one in question to the original, and link the others in the "other versions" area. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:21, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, I've reverted. –Tryphon^☂ 18:51, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry about new version upload, I thought general colour fixes to images are supposed to be uploaded as a new version? Anyways, so since the licence in not really that good, does it in anyway affect the FA status? And does that mean that the uploader responsible must now work towards a better evidence of licence (and if not, deletion)? Just curious. Rehman 02:14, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I have been bold and added this to Commons:FAQ#How can I upload a new version of a file?

:Secondly, consider uploading to a separate file unless the changes are very minor. See Commons:Avoid overwriting existing files. Maybe the above discussion could be added as an example of when "relatively minor improvements" are not so minor? -84user (talk) 23:02, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, good addition. Although sometimes, even minor changes should not overwrite the original. Take this particular case for example. Both images were in use on en:Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/NesjavellirPowerPlant.jpg; that page wouldn't make any sense if suddenly Original and Edit 1 by Fir0002 were the same file, no matter how small the difference between both versions. In general, when overwriting files or dealing with almost-duplicates, one should always look at the context in which they were used. –Tryphon^☂ 23:13, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree, sorry again, I did that in good faith. Anyways, coming back to the topic, what to do with the FP? I doesn't feel right to ignore it. Shouldn't we move towards asking the user to proceed to OTRS, and in the mean time de-FP it? Rehman 14:03, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

News on the German Federal Archives cooperation project

Hello folks,

This was twitted by the Signpost : an interview with Mathias Schindler, published yesterday, about the future of the Bundesarchiv project. I cannot read a single word of German ; if someone could do a quick sum-up of the contents it would be great.

Thanks, Jean-Fred (talk) 09:08, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Basically the Bundesarchive is not planning on releasing any more images for Wikimedia for the time being. I dnt see what the big fuss is about.--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 09:27, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I think these are the main points:

* In 2008 Wikimedia Deutschland and the Federal Archive made an agreement. The terms of this agreement have been fullfilled, and the Federal Archive has decided not to extend the agreement.

* The Federal Archive states a lack of manpower as one reason, and they also are annoyed at finding that images have been re-used in a manner that did not conform to the terms of the licence. Postcards using these images have been offered on eBay without any mantion of the licence.

The rest of the interview is about Flickr Commons. Best regards, MartinD (talk) 18:30, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

It's the same problem around digital copyright which is the basis of talk for the German National Archive, but which wikipedia treats as if it doesn't exists. In non-juridic terms, the Gerrman Archive feels cheated by wikipedia. --Havang(nl) (talk) 19:22, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

No. --Martin H. (talk) 19:35, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes. See also: http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/8427530/ --Havang(nl) (talk) 19:59, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Gerrman Archive feels cheated by wikipedia - thats incorrect. And thats not written anywhere. So: No. According to your link, a report by Wolf Thomas who attended a librarian conference, the BArch will not extend the agreement because it 1) increased the number of research request by 230% while the BArch not has enough funds/manpower to fulfill this requests and 2) the BArch is concerned about illegal reuse of files on other platforms against the terms of the license terms. This has nothing to do with "feeling cheated by wikipedia" or the "same problem around digital copyright" - the copyright claim on digitalization etc that you often repeat here on COM:VP. The BArch is not claiming copyright on the scan of originals that are public domain, nor do they claim copyright on the digitalization of works that are not in the public domain. They refer to the photgraphs themself that they either have contracts with the copyright holders or they own the copyright themself. That copyright was illegaly violated e.g. on ebay - despite the free licensing. Aditionally Wolf Thomas writes that the BArch is satisfied with the cooperation and that positive aspects, an increase of their revenue by 197% (I sepculate that this is from licensing of high res files) and the content related work by the Wikimedia Community, outreach the two mentioned negative aspects. --Martin H. (talk) 21:21, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to both Martin for the explanations. Cheers, Jean-Fred (talk) 23:16, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

UK road signs images question

Whilst I understand diagrams of road signs are crown copyright and fall under fair use, taking photos of them shouldn't be a problem, but what are the legalities of doing this, since this site is (arguably) an educational one? Any advice is appreciated. --Kexford (talk) 10:58, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

You might want to read Commons:Licensing#Acceptable licenses. Multichill (talk) 14:51, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

As the page Multichill highlights will explain, Commons and the Wikimedia Foundation projects being of an educational nature doesn't impact on whether images can be uploaded here. On the issue of UK road signs, these are defined by the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002 which can be read on legislation.gov.uk. It says in the page footer there that "You may use and re-use the information featured on this website (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence" so it could be perhaps the case that, whilst the road sign diagrams are copyrighted, they are available under an accepted licence so could be uploaded. I'm less clear about the situation regarding photos of road signs. Adambro (talk) 15:31, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Given that the only caveat is "logos", I wouldn't think that road signs would fall into that category (and if any given road sign featured a logo, that can be left out of the graphic). I need to get around to making the OGL license template... I see it has been made since I last checked. — Huntster (t @ c) 18:57, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Berber names of plants

I tried to add a berber name for Iris germanica, in tifinagn alphabet (here) but it did not work.

Is there a solution ?

--Lucyin (talk) 11:13, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

According to this article it's a language family. "ber" is not a valid language code supported by mediawiki. You can browse the languages in your preferences to see valid language codes. Multichill (talk) 11:37, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Central Morocco Tamazight Wikipedia is in incubator mode (code tzm), might have more chances to reach official status. (Berber being rejected as it is a group of languages). --Foroa (talk) 11:54, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, image descriptions on Commons do not depend on the recognition of a Wikipedia project. If you want to add Berber names, that is just fine. We can add functionality for that easily if you want to have it. You should however first find the right language code for the name you want to add. If you have done that, I can help you doing any necessary changes to templates to make it work. --Slomox (talk) 16:46, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Company logo that is just lettering?

•  Question - Please see [20]. Can this type of logo be uploaded here to Commons, as just a font type of lettering, or is there enough creative input and graphic design going into such seemingly simple logo style that it has to remain on its own local project with a fair use rationale? Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 03:36, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

For the U.S., just the lettering like that is not enough (even if stylized). The background on that image may be enough to push it over the edge though, I think. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:52, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

The best option would be to simply extract the text and upload to Commons without the background. That would definitely be PD-text or PD-textlogo. — Huntster (t @ c) 08:00, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Huntster (talk · contribs), extracting the text like that is not my specialty - could you do it? -- Cirt (talk) 21:01, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Mmm, probably will just have to match the font and make from scratch. I think I could do it, just not speedily due to time constraints. — Huntster (t @ c) 06:47, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

 Done. I just pulled a current image from the company website and did a little cleaning. Better than the original one on en.wiki. It is at File:Landmark Education.png. — Huntster (t @ c) 22:59, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

The best thing to do in these cases is search the website for any PDF files (you can use Google advanced search for this). Once found, the logo can be extracted and uploaded as an SVG file. You can use Inkscape or Illustrator to do that or you can ask someone in the Graphic Lab to do it for you. I've just used this method to find and upload the the above logo at File:Landmark Education.svg. By the way, I found that it is usually used with a frame around it in printed material, so I kept it. Regards. -- Orionist ★ talk 10:59, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Nice job. I always keep an eye out for scaleable material, but I have zero ability with handling SVG files. Inkscape is my nemesis. — Huntster (t @ c) 12:30, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

External link gadget

En-wiki has a useful opt-in gadget in preferences that allows a user to open external links in a new window. Would it be possible for someone who knows about these things to install this in Commons please? Tivedshambo (talk) 15:53, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Resolved - I've added it to my .js file. —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) 19:00, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Delete the thumbnails

Hello. Do any developer can delete the thumbnails of File:Diderot - Encyclopedie 1ere edition tome 7.djvu, please ? We got problems to work on it at fr:wikisource. Thanks. Piero (talk) 16:58, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

What's your problem exactly? If you describe your problem people can help you. Asking for a developer to delete something without exactly stating why is not going to get you anywhere. Multichill (talk) 19:02, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry Multichill, but I'm not use of Commons and my english is really bad. Well, we don't understand why the images do not come in order of the new djvu I've done here. Some time it's good, and later the pictures come in the old order when whe edit or look the pages. I do ask help on french wikisource and ThomasV told me to *ask developer to delete the thumbnails*. It is quite mysterious for me. Anyway, if my description still incoherent for you, I will ask more help from a user of ws. Thanks for trying help me. Best regard. Piero (talk) 21:48, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

My response might have been a bit direct. That's not because I'm annoyed or something like that, but because I would like to help you. Feel free to write French if the English isn't working out. I'm afraid you're running into caching issues. These are probably quite hard to debug. Purging the page might help, but I'm not sure. Multichill (talk) 00:13, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Multichill, thanks a lot for your patience helping all the wiki-illiterate from oversea ;-) Of course, I do prefer you be direct, as you did. I do not feel you upset a minute, and understand you justify's reaction. For me you did open the dialog to help me. We all now here, how it's hard to ask the good question the smart way, but inescapable.
I can say, today, that our file it's looking better on fr:ws. Sometime, when we edit a page, it still the old page coming. But I believe that is temporary.
One other thing I want to told you, is : when I do upload the file (of 88.7 Mio) the interface say at the end that wikimedia have a problem to upload, and I should try again. But it was done... Maybe this is a part of the problem ? Have a good day, friendly. Piero (talk) 09:38, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Cannot upload

See this photo:

I attempt to upload a new image which has a duplicate name on wikipedia with a new name and there is a loop. Adamtheclown (talk) 19:03, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

You try to upload a duplicate of File:Crazy.gif. If you check the whole page and not only the part you made a screenshot from you will see the buttons "Ignore warnings and save file anyway". That button will allow you to upload the file despite it is a duplicate. But of course it will have no use to click that button and upload the file because the file already exists ;) If you have a problem with an image of the same filename on Wikipedia you should rather rename that local upload (or move it to Commons if possible), that will only require to change the inclusion in 1 project and not in many projects. Or you can rename it, see COM:FAQ#How can I rename/move an image or other media file?.

Aditionally what about your screenshot filename "Wikipedia commons volunter police are ruining mediawiki.PNG". I dont see why you insult us for helping you. And I wounder why you created directly a second sockpuppet account. Is this a serious question or are you just trying to troll this project? --Martin H. (talk) 20:38, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

There is a real problem with an upload loop problem mentioned at present. If you follow the "upload a new version of this file" link from a file page (for example from File:Example.jpg to [21]) it works. However, if you use the upload form and try to upload over an existing file it gets stuck into a loop and will not allow upload - you don't ever get the "ignore warnings and upload anyway button" This is an inconvenience when you are genuinely trying to upload a new version of the file, as you cannot use the upload links but have to go through the file first.--Nilfanion (talk) 00:22, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

The reupload (the regular way, same filename and Commons:Upload: "From somewhere else" or "own work", not the basic upload form) will indeed result in this loop if the file has deleted revisions. Crazy.gif did not have deleted revisions. I tested it, if I delete my new uploads of File:Crazy.gif I can not reupload it again. If all versions and revisions is undelted I can reupload. So this was not the problem of the origignal posting, for File:Crazy.gif it is possible to upload new versions or even the same image without problems. For File:Example.jpg it is not possible, if my finding is correct you will be able to use you link, Nilfanion, if you undelete every old version and revision of Example.jpg first. --Martin H. (talk) 02:10, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

November 20

About RFA

Is it difficult to become a sysop on commons? Or in general does RFA on Commons also need some requisitions as those local Wikipedia?-Mys 721tx (talk) 06:57, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Your activity might be a bit too low. --Leyo 08:57, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, got it. -Mys 721tx (talk) 09:18, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Need French speaker to help correct a misuse of one of my images

I was browsing through my uploads to see how they were being used, and I found that the French Wikipedia is using my image File:Louisefromadistance.JPG. While I find that gratifying I'm afraid they have misidentified what is pictured. They are using it on their article on the Glenn Highway but the road pictured is actually Lake Louise Road, which connects the isolated settlement of Lake Louise to the Glenn Highway. Ironically we have just been discussing which image or images to use on the en. version of that same article and there are several options available to them here on Commons. I do not speak French and I didn't want to register an account there just to try to communicate via machine translation, hoping somebody here can give them a pointer on this. Thanks in advance. Beeblebrox (talk) 10:29, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

My French isn't brilliant, but I've replaced it with a correct photo. —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) 10:37, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Sound problem

File:Nunchaku.ogg is the Japanese pronunciation of the word nunchaku. But it seems to be a ninja's pronunciation of the word, I do not hear anything... Is it a problem on my side or is the file broken? (I can however perfectly hear the first version of the recording from the version history.) --Slomox (talk) 18:09, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I can hear it, but it plays only in the left channel. Maybe your system only plays the right channel? Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 18:38, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess that's the problem then. Can somebody change the file to mono? Stereo is kinda pointless if you only serve one speaker without any specific reason. --Slomox (talk) 18:51, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Userspace templates

Are there any policies on using Userspace templates in main space? I subst'ed {{User:Ignis/tag}}, a wrapper for the {{Information}} on one image, because it made it more confusing to translate, but then I noticed it is transcluded into between 500 and 1000 images. Besides my general feeling, carried over from Wikipedia, that userspace should not intrude on mainspace, I'm concerned that it's not obvious how to edit these and that it's interfering with bots that regularize and i18n things, especially dates in this case. Should it be subst'ed in the rest of them, or is it fine? (And if so, is there a bot that can mass subst this?)--Prosfilaes (talk) 10:47, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Commons:User-specific galleries, templates and categories policy should cover that. Jean-Fred (talk) 13:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I am very surprised, that Commons:User-specific galleries, templates and categories policy allows this. That's an utterly bad idea. Nothing would be lost, if the files used the normal {{Information}}. The user template renders the file description basically useless for any automated analysis. --Slomox (talk) 18:04, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

At least the current wording allows it. I am unsure whether this was intended. The original proposal did not contain the line about using {{Information}}. It was only added later by a different user. To me the original proposal sounds very different from the current one. The original proposal sounds as if it allows user templates in the "author" field of {{Information}}. That's something I'd support. But the later amendment explicitly extended it to the whole {{Information}} template. Completely different statement. It's in there uncontested since three years, so maybe it's consensus. Or maybe nobody ever thought through the implications of that one edit in all the time. --Slomox (talk) 18:15, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Maybe it is allowed to create it (the template is very old and {{Information}} had various improvements since then), but that does not mean that it is required to keep the user template. Anyone is allowed to edit the file namespace, there is no ownership in file description. The most appropriate file description is a description that uses the {{Information}} or one of the equivalent templates for artworks etc. So the sollution in this case is simple: fix the source in that template to {{Own}} and substitute the template so that {{Information}} is placed directly on the files. Doing this cant be disputed, it is file namespace editing, legal information is not changed, it is common filenamespace editing and a good move towards uniformity of file meta information. --Martin H. (talk) 18:43, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

User templates are a pain in the ass. We should fight them with carrot and stick! Multichill (talk) 22:17, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

@Slomox: That line was added in later by another user, but it wasn't accepted as a guideline untill several months later in 2008. The line that was added didn't make the proposal more free, it made it more strict. It was added to avoid users from making their own thing instead of {{Information}}, so that tools and bot scrapping the HTML can still extract the information as usual and so that translations are kept centrally for all file-information. –Krinkle^talk 03:07, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

The line that was added didn't make the proposal more free, it made it more strict Well, that is a question of interpretation. The original sentence was ambiguous and could be interpreted in a wide sense (templates in general) or in a narrow sense (templates in the "author" field of {{Information}}). The "Acceptable" sub-sections only speaks about author information which suggests that originally the narrow sense was meant. The added sentence decided for the wide sense and made the narrow interpretation impossible. Therefore it's not more strict but less strict. --Slomox (talk) 18:59, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

U.S. Navy geographic photo categories

I notice a lot of categories with names like Category:Images from US Navy, location SEATTLE, Wash. that don't fit our usual conventions, but seem to follow some moderately consistent conventions of their own. I'd be inclined to name that Category:United States Navy images in Seattle, Washington. (I'd also put a lot of images that are currently in Category:Seattle, Washington into that category, because they are clearly Navy images.

Thought I'd check here before I do this, in case something is going on here that I don't get, given the many categories with similar names. - Jmabel ! talk 03:17, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I believe the images are uploaded by a bot, which fetches all the published Navy photos and auto-adds those categories. If it is an on-going bot, it may be hard to rename categories like that (there are lots of them). Though maybe a category redirect would work. May have to ask User:Multichill how easy it is to adjust category names... or if the bot's work is completed, such that they can be renamed at will now. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:32, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

These cats are made with the first few words of these navy pics which ussualy begin with the location until it reads a bracket and they are meant to be temporary cats.--Sanandros (talk) 08:53, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Temporary categories that can be removed when appropriate categories have been added. Please do not fill the with images. --High Contrast (talk) 09:01, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I've created a separate Category:United States Navy in Seattle, Washington. - Jmabel ! talk 15:51, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Very good. I have moved all images to Category:United States Navy in Seattle, Washington. I have deleted the 'old' category. --High Contrast (talk) 21:59, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Yup, these are temporary categories and should be moved to real categories and nuked. I'm very unhappy with the Category:United States Navy images by location tree. Multichill (talk) 22:07, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

@Multichill: Can u do maby a template so users will know if they find a Images fomr usn cat?--Sanandros (talk) 18:41, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry US Navy images by location was never intended to be permanant (read the blurb), the thing was the bot was loading thousands of images by location which were not attached to the tree in any way, and this seemed to be the easiest way to do so.--KTo288 (talk) 10:42, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't mean that they should be permanent but that we can add a template for these cats we already have and that we don't have always discussions about these cats

Go swiched to Search

Hi, Id like to ask what happened with Commons settings recently as Search is now a prefered option under search dialog box. It is seen in Monobook skin and I would say many people suffer from this. Once there is mw:$wgEnableMWSuggest it is not logic to have Search on ENTER. Whats the problem? Can Go be prefered as it was before?--Juan de Vojníkov (talk) 16:00, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think "Go" is of much use in Commons. One keeps ending up in galleries which is rarely the place where one can find anything.  Docu  at 16:03, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, its attitudinal and I may argue with you, that Commons is not a web browser. Thus non registered users will not look for images here. Registered users can preset it in preferences if they'll like to browse categories, files or galleries.

What is the problem right now is, that there isn't consistency. If you are looking for a categories, you can set to your images, you type a string to search dialog box and a drop down menu helps you. Then you can select it by mouse and click - it takes you to the destination. Unfortunately when you use keyboard it takes you to the search list. And this is the problem. Keyboard clicking is in this case about accessibility and if there is there is a different behavior of the system from mouse and keyboard input, something is wrong. So do you know, who and why set this?--Juan de Vojníkov (talk) 11:07, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I thought that ENTER on keyboard and click on mouse are equal in computer science. Here it looks we are discovering something new.--Juan de Vojníkov (talk) 11:18, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

It is a bit annoying if you start typing "something", then use the down key to select "Category:Something else" from the suggestions, and then when you press enter you get the search page and not the selected category. It is possible to get the go button back as default by writing

GoButton=true;

in your personal monobook.js script. /Ö 18:50, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it is annoying and users, who edit Commons need to spare their time. Thank you very much for that script, I will recommend it to other annoyed users I met.--Juan de Vojníkov (talk) 11:07, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

How to rename an image?

I'd like to rename File:Middlesbrough and Guisborough Railway map 1902.jpg, which I uploaded, as File:East Cleveland railways map 1902.jpg. However I can't see any way of doing so. Can someone please advise? Prioryman (talk) 23:48, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Prioryman. Add to the file page {{rename|new-name.ext|reason for rename}}. An admin or file renamer person will come by and rename it for you (though I've done this one for you). Cheers, ZooFari 00:02, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I wonder if East Cleveland, United Kingdom, railways map 1902.jpg might be more descriptive. I would strongly suggest expanding on the description field, as it currently is a little vague about what's what on the map. — Huntster (t @ c) 00:10, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

November 21

Second opinions requested about possible Flickrwashing

Can I get some second opinions about these uploads? It appears that this editor inadvertendly uploaded some Flickr images that were Flickrwashed by the Flickr user. Most of the images look like blurry vacation photos, but there are also these two images from an official state visit to Cambodia by Hillary Clinton. The first photo in particular looks like a press photographers' pool photo, although I cannot find an exact copy of it anywhere. Given the lack of a real photographer's name (or any real name) on that Flickr stream, I'm inclined to believe the Clinton photos are Flickrwashing. I'm not sure what we usually do about other photos from the same stream.--Chaser (talk) 02:32, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

To me, it looks like flickrwashing, considering the randomness on photograph contents. But I'm not sure. Looking at the Hilary image; I think it all good to delete. Rehman 02:57, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Most of them look to be Flickrwashed. A couple towards the beginning may be legitimately licensed by a Flickr user. The first Clinton one appears to be a photo listed on this page as by "REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea". The second is here, credited to "AP Photo/Heng Sinith". They are both speedy deletions. Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:01, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

From a technical standpoint, there is no question that User:Khmerrlok is operating the lokryan account on Flickr. This is evident from the upload log of File:Kohrong3.jpg (which was nicked from http://www.visitcambodja.nl/kohrongeng.htm, by the way). —LX (talk, contribs) 13:12, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

User has been blocked for a day (can be extended if needed), I'm deleting any image I can find by the true publishers/authors. I also feel that this is likely a blocked copyright violator. Bidgee (talk) 13:31, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Ok the copyrighted files which I've found elsewhere have been deleted, others I'm unsure on (since I've been unable to find them) have been taken to a mass DR and the user has been added to the Questionable Flickr images/Users list. Bidgee (talk) 14:21, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

New cat for the picture of the day

Could someone authorized add Category:People at the beach and Category:Walking males to File:Porto Covo March 2010-2.jpg ? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 18:32, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Crosswiki spam

Hello.

Please check the contributions of the following accounts, who have been blocked on several wikis and globally locked as sockpuppets and crosswiki spamers :

• Ews1=2 (talk · contribs)
• Goryki (talk · contribs)
• Maxxii (talk · contribs)
• Wasiel (talk · contribs)
• Wasielgallery (talk · contribs)
• Zwasiel (talk · contribs)

They created many files, and the aim is to find out which are to keep, and which are to delete (as copyvio, useless or spam). Note that every file or page containing Zbigniew Wąsiel should be for deletion as crosswiki spam.

Thanks a lot for the service. -- Quentinv57 (talk) 10:38, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

The aformentioned User with a Thousand Names may have been a bit too keen on autopromotion and has certainly not taken enough time too understand Wikimedia policy. However I don't see any reason why files like File:Zbigniew Wąsiel - Tors I.jpg should be deleted. Apparently it was uploaded by the sculptor. Even if it was not, there is freedom of panorama in Poland. Of course, we have to assume that the photo was really taken by the uploader, but that's a bet we have to make for all photos in Commons.--Zolo (talk) 11:33, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

That is an impressive number of puppets accounts (I can see more than you listed)! I've blocked one extra one and I see the IPs are globally blocked. Thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:16, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

There are some users on a destruction craze who have deleted much valid content which was used on Wikipedia articles because they want to punish abovementioned user(s) for his/their self-promotion. My home wiki is nds and nds was also one of the targets of the user. Although the article was certainly created with an self-promotional intent it is factual and does not hurt any content policies. Still there were repeated attempts to delete the articles with non-content reasons. After that I have looked at the biography of Wasiel in more detail and he meets the notability criteria of nds.wp. So his article is not gonna be deleted on nds.wp. As Commons has the purpose of being a media repository for the local wikis Commons has to keep images on him as long as nds.wp or any other project makes use of them.

I have contacted Wasiel to get a correct OTRS permission to void any remaining "no permission" claims. I'm gonna restore all deleted images if Wasiel should provide an OTRS permission. --Slomox (talk) 18:48, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I second to the Slomox opinion. There is way too much deletion frenzy in this story. If content is self-promotional it doesn't mean that it's out of scope or useless. Trycatch (talk) 07:31, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Please delete

Please delete File:The Silverado squatters.djvu. It is a duplicate of File:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu (which is the correct name of the file). Thanks! Mattisse (talk) 22:32, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

In the future, just use {{Duplicate}} to ask for this. Rather than delete immediately, I'll make a "universal replacement" request to the Commons delinker, in case there are incoming links. - Jmabel ! talk 22:46, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

November 22

HELP!!

HELP!! I have uploaded a picture for an article already existing, and I know that both the article and the picture exist: the artcle in Wikipedia, and the photo in Wiki Commons. HOW DO I GET THE PHOTO INTO THE ARTICLE? THE ARTICLE IS ABOUT AN AUTHOR, AND THE PHOTO IS OF THAT AUTHOR. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jaimema1043 (talk • contribs)

Place [[File:imagename.ext|thumb|caption]] wherever you want the image. ZooFari 02:33, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I added File:Jaime Martinez-Tolentino.jpg to en:Jaime Martínez Tolentino. See here to see how it was done. --Jarekt (talk) 02:38, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

License-tags on upload form

{{PD-ineligible}}, which is essentially different from other PD licenses, is missing on the upload form. Can it be added?
And also the break-button for editing the text?--Wickey-nl (talk) 16:35, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

In the appropriate upload form for such uploads - It is from somewhere else - the license option "Too simple to be copyrighted" exists in the drop down license selection. --Martin H. (talk) 20:23, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Not found. Anyway, also own work can be such. E.g. chemical formulas, all mathmatical symbols, many diagrams.--Wickey-nl (talk) 17:08, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

The "appropriate" upload form is horribly unhelpful to users uploading free content 'from somewhere else'; as is, it's not appropriate, at all; dumping initially guided users onto an unguided page that (at least on my screen) doesn't even have a visible next step It is from somewhere else is incredibly unhelpful. How 'bout a second guided page like the first one? --Elvey (talk) 20:09, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

November 16

Michel Szulc-Krzyzanowski

Dear reader,

Please help me. I am working on a page about Michel Szulc-Krzyzanowski, in Dutch and in English. I published several pictures, but with the wrong license. I do have a license to use these pictures, by the makers (Michel himself and a portrait of him made by Merel Waagmeester). The license these pictures should have is "Own work, copyleft, attribution required (Multi-license GFDL, all CC-BY-SA)". I can't change this, I don't know how. Can you advise me, before every picture is deleted?

Thank you very much. Patricia Borger

patriciaborger@gmail.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by Patricia Borger (talk • contribs) 10:14, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, you do have a suitable picture, made by someone (not you) who is willing to have it used within the context of Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons. The procedure is a bit complex, I'm afraid, but is meant te ensure that the maker of the picture is fully aware of what he is agreeing to. It consists of sending an email requesting permission for use on Wikipedia, under one of the licences in use here. See Commons:OTRS for more details, and standard texts you would be expected to use.

Once you have received the permission, you have to forward the entire email-chain to permissions-commonswikimedia.org.

Once you have forwarded the email-sequence to the team, you are expected to upload the picture on Commons, adding the "OTRS pending"-template to it. In order to be able to upload, you should register as a user. This is done exactly the same way as on Wikipedia.

A member of the team will then check the corresponce and, if satisfied that all is well, will allow the picture of Commons, by changing the template to "PermissionOTRS".

Any pictures that are no longer necessary can be put up for deletion. If you mention them in the description page of the correct picture I trust that the OTRS checker will take care of this.

Best regards, MartinD (talk) 11:50, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

• Also see your talk page. Lupo 14:56, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposal:Language guide

I'm not sure exactly where this would fit.. but one of the ideas I had is that Commons should have a guide stating which languages should be a priority for various content, depending on the countries of origin and/or countries involved.

I have a draft at User:WhisperToMe/Commons:Language guide

EDIT: The status of the proposed page would be like the "Essay" on the English Wikipedia (en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia essays)

According to my draft, English is obligatory for all content, but for other languages it depends on the countries involved. I.E. for the United States, my proposed guide highly recommends adding Spanish descriptions, especially under certain circumstances.

I would appreciate feedback, and anyone is welcome to edit my proposed guide. WhisperToMe (talk) 21:51, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Well to me, our language guide should go something like this: if you see a description in a language you can understand, and are able to translate it into any other language, by all means do it.
I don't see what benefit having priorities might bring. Should people refrain from translating an English description into Italian just because the image is about France? No, of course not. And if they can't speak French, but that language is a "priority", should they machine-translate it? No, that will certainly not be an improvement. And what if someone who doesn't speak a word of English wants to upload content described in their mother tongue only? Should they not do it because English is mandatory? Is having no media at all better than having media described in a language that maybe fewer people can understand (and eventually translate)? I don't think so. –Tryphon^☂ 22:10, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

How can you make English obligatory for a person that speaks 6 languages but no English ? How to manage the support for the 270 or so wikilanguages ? Category_talk:Plaques#Multilingual_category_description might give you some inspiration for more simple rules. --Foroa (talk) 22:23, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

"How can you make English obligatory for a person that speaks 6 languages but no English ? " - That person can contact a person who does know English and ask for help. That person could try the best he or she can do with the language, then pass on the links to someone who can check his or her work.

WhisperToMe (talk) 22:31, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Contra to the guide and +1 to Tryphon's and Foroa's comments. --Slomox (talk) 22:35, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

The person shouldn't blindly machine translate anything. He/she should try the best he or she can with the other languages, then ask someone who does know those languages for assistance.

Tryphon and Foroa: The idea is that in many circumstances some languages have more of an importance than others, and this depends on the subject. For instance, say you know Latvian. It's very helpful with images related to Latvia (as they would be interest to people from that country and/or people studying the country) - But while one shouldn't be discouraged from adding Latvian to, say, an image about Mayan ruins, the Latvian language isn't as crucial to that subject as it is to a Latvian subject. It is more helpful for someone to request a description Spanish for those images than it would be for someone to request Latvian. If the person says "Yes, I want to post Latvian anyway" he or she should do so. It's just that Latvian isn't as crucial for the subject as Spanish is.

That's part of the reason why Commons:Requested translations exists. - Speaking of that, I just posted a link to it on the guide

Foroa: "How can you make English obligatory for a person that speaks 6 languages but no English ? "

That person can contact a person who does know English and ask for help. That person could try the best he or she can do with the language, then pass on the links to someone who can check his or her work.

Tryphon said: "And what if someone who doesn't speak a word of English wants to upload content described in their mother tongue only? Should they not do it because English is mandatory?"

No. It's not that they shouldn't upload the content. They should upload the content, then go find a Wikipedian and say "Hey! This page needs English content. Please add it" - They should go out of their way to make sure someone adds an English description - For local languages, one should go out of their way to add them to the respective content

Tryphon said: "Is having no media at all better than having media described in a language that maybe fewer people can understand (and eventually translate)?"

No. The user should upload the media in the language, then post on the requested translations page and/or directly contact a Wikipedian who does know the language so that the image can get English or those other languages ASAP.

WhisperToMe (talk) 22:36, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

This is a proposal that is dead on arrival, imo. While English is the main language on Commons, we have no reason to demand that everything be provided in English. Remember, we're trying to encourage people to provide free media, and if we stipulate that "this, this, and this language must be provided", that will discourage a majority of people. If the proposal does not stipulate a particular language be provided, then I fail to see the point of having such a guide in the first place. Either way, this just won't work. — Huntster (t @ c) 22:57, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

This proposal is for a recommendation guide, not a hard and fast rule - So it's not a demand - it's a recommendation.

With this in mind, I believe that one should recommend that (a) particular language(s) be provided, but at the same time making it clear that one shouldn't be discouraged from contributing if he/she doesn't know them

WhisperToMe (talk) 23:51, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

The idea is futile. If I don't speak language X I won't be able to create descriptions in language X irrespective of what the guide tells me to do. Users are volunteers. Volunteer donators even. You can't tell them that they have to add descriptions in specific languages. People will become annoyed if you press them to run around and ask people for translations. That just won't work.

If a user uploads a Russia-themed image and he doesn't add a Russian description, then you want people to put "please localize the file description" text templates on the user talk? The uploader will answer: "I don't speak Russian!" The other user then: "Then please ask somebody for a translation." The most likely next reaction of the uploader is: "Wtf? If you care so much, then do it yourself! Delete my pic if you don't like my upload. Gosh"

If people care about having localized descriptions they should work on their own turf. If you want to have Spanish descriptions for US-themed images, then go to Category:United States of America and work through all the images in there translating the English descriptions into Spanish.

You can of course make recommendations if they are non-binding. No problem with that. But don't expect them to have any effect. People already know that it is good to have Hebrew descriptions on Israel-themed images and they usually add them if they speak the language and care about it. If they don't speak the language and/or don't care, then they won't follow your recommendations either. --Slomox (talk) 23:07, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, these are recommendations. I am not proposing a binding rule. This is more akin to an "Essay" (en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia essays) on the English Wikipedia

Also people may not know all of the nuances of language usage in certain countries. Sometimes languages that are important to a subject are obvious to a person - and sometimes they are not so obvious. For instance people already know about Hebrew and Israel. But they may not know about Arabic and/or Russian and Israel.

From my experience, volunteers do follow through with non-binding requests. I have made requests for various tasks on various Wikimedia projects. Of course nobody is required to do them. But when requests are visible on the proper channels, people fulfill them. It may take a week. It may take one month. It may take six months. It may take two years. And I patiently wait. But from experience volunteers do take advice into consideration.

WhisperToMe (talk) 23:14, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

"need to have English-language descriptions and/or equivalent English-language content available" No thanks. Somehow this reminds me of an English language Wikipedia admin that renames files on Commons to English language, because he lacks language skills.  Docu  at 06:40, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

And who is this? I don't know any admin who "Wikipedia admin that renames files on Commons to English language, because he lacks language skills." WhisperToMe (talk) 06:45, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I've got the same feeling as docu, but I don't think it was an administrator. Anyway, I think that the best solution is to give the good example. Translations will appear as people feel they are needed which will be much more effective than an extremely incomplete and fuzzy guideline. the guideline as is now states basically that all things should be documented in English followed by many pages of special cases (tens or hundreds of pages if you want to become complete). So, no real added value to the current practise. --Foroa (talk) 07:15, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, I guess I'll just keep it as an essay on my user page, then. WhisperToMe (talk) 07:23, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

You might find it useful to enable sum-it-up in "my preferences/gadgets". It appears then on the left toolbar when in category display. A real time saver and far better than a translation machine. --Foroa (talk) 08:06, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Hey, thank you for telling me about it! I just enabled it. Lemme test it out... WhisperToMe (talk) 08:21, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Even if it may be better than machine translations, the results still needs to be checked before adding them to a page. For example in Category:Jokers (playing card) (old unfixed revision) it obvious even without knowing the languages that the Hebrew, Hungarian and Ukrainian descriptions are not good. The Portugeues description is also not good, but maybe not as obvious if you don't know any Romance languages. The Belarusian looks suspicious with italics and a * in the beginning. If you know some Norwegian you can see that that description is for a card game and not the playing card (probably because of bad interwiki linking). /Ö 14:31, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Just my two cents, as a Dutchman, which means that my language is spoken by only a minute part of the world's population.;) I'm quite conformatble with having English as the working language on Commons. I have descriptions of my uploads in English (or what I think is English) and Dutch, and I've never received criticism. I'm aware that that leaves out (at least) two languages which are spoken by a large part of the world's population, e.g. Spanish and Chinese, but I can't help that. Of course, anyone who speaks that language is free to add additional descriptions in those languages. (Something that seems to have been overlooked in the above discussion.) Additionally: suppose I stumble on an image that I think might be useful on my local Wikipedia (the Dutch one), but I'm not quite certain and I can't read the caption, being in, say, Welsh.;) In that case, I'm sure I could ask on the Requests for translation-page (or the Village Pump) whether I understand correctly that this image depicts this-or-that, and would get a useful response within a few days. Having said that, I quite agree that we should suggest the use of English as at least one of the languages used in descriptions. (Just like the signage in any major airport.) As to WhisperToMe's proposal: for Belgium I would suggest using both Dutch (Flemish) and French descriptions. Whether the use of German descriptions should also be suggested I gladly leave to our Belgian friends.;) For the Netherlands: Frisian is the second official language of the Netherlands, but Frisians don't make too much of a point of insisting on it. Best regards, MartinD (talk) 10:13, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I am also not comfortable with this "language policy". Languages should be added as we are able to do so. I wasn't aware that there were problems, and this policy strikes me as a solution in search of a problem. The Canadian section of the "policy" is particularly problematic (and I say that as an anglophone who strives, wherever possible, to add both english and french descriptions to images pertaining to Canada). "French is obligatory for everything involving the federal government" -- notwithstanding the comments above about this "policy" being a recommendation, and not binding, that kind of language sounds awfully directive to me. So, if a uniligual American tourists takes a photo of this, French is obligatory? What does that even mean? And if someone comes along and adds a Latvian description to the image, is that addition of less value to the project? Of course not. Frankly, the language just sounds like something that would discourage the American tourist from uploading the photo in the first place. As far as I am concerned, this language policy is completely unnecessary. Let's just assume that our contributors are intelligent enough to understand that it's helpful to have image descriptions in the local languages, where it is possible to do so, and leave it at that. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 15:44, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree with others, in that I don't see the point. In the near future, I hope to have available a number of photos taken in the 70s and 80s in Vietnam, Germany, Italy, etc. At such point, I will label them in English. Perhaps if I feel like going the extra foot, I will label them in Esperanto. Any attempt to label them in Vietnamese, German, Italian, French, Romansh, etc. would be futile, and hence I won't make that attempt. I don't know what you more you can reasonably want or expect.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:18, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

November 19

How to add my pictures to already existing pages?

Hi!

I am quite new in using Commons and I have a question regarding the possibility to add my pictures to an already existing page.

I posted pictures of the Aletsch glacier, here my contributions: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=aletsch+del+biaggio

Now, if I search for it in the search engine of Commons, my pictures do not appear, but instead, this page appears: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Aletsch But in this page, my pictures are not inside!

How can I put my pictures in that page, so that everybody will see my pictures as well, while searching for "Aletsch"? Now you can just find them if you put "Aletsch Del Biaggio" (with my name).

Thanks for help, Cris77

Hi, Cris. Thanks for the fantastic photographs! Let me answer your queries:

• "Aletsch" is not a category but a gallery page. Gallery pages are usually used to display good quality images on a certain topic. To add your photographs to the gallery page, click the "Edit" link and follow how other editors have done so.
• There is already a category called "Category:Aletschgletscher", so you should put your photographs into that existing category instead of creating a new category called "Category:Aletsch glacier".

I hope that is helpful. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:17, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much. Yes, this is clear. I will do so and change my category in the existing one (did not see it before). Will slowly add my picture collection, but well... unfortunately I do not have much time in this period.

- two minutes later -

oh, but you did already change the category!!! Thanx! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cris77 (talk • contribs) 19:23, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

You're welcome, though it wasn't me but who recategorized your photographs. I think you have to thank Pieter Kuiper for that. (By the way, please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes ("~~~~") at the end of them.) — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 19:08, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Pieter fixed the first instance, and I went through and cleaned up the categories for the rest of the uploads. Cris, just be aware when you add categories that the category is not a red link. This means the category does not exist, and you need to find another category. Good luck, and let me or anyone else know if you need help. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:29, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Viggianello, Italy, and Viggianello, France

Is anyone familiar with the towns of Viggianello, Province of Potenza, Basilicata, Italy; and Viggianello, Corse-du-Sud, Corsica, France? I believe images of the two towns have become mixed up in "Category:Viggianello" and need to be separated. Please help if you can. (For a start, that category should be renamed "Category:Viggianello, Corse-du-Sud" to avoid further confusion.) — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 19:48, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

•  Done --Foroa (talk) 07:22, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Brilliant job. Thanks very much! — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 08:21, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

November 24

Flickr review when derivative

Hello,

I was looking at helping out a bit with the Category:Flickr images needing human review, and found this image (among others): File:Yohei Otake - mixed.jpg, which is a crop of another image which has passed the Flickr review. My question is, should a derivative from a Flickr image have a flickr-reviewed-pass tag? Or is there a template somewhere that allows for this kind of review?

Another question: this image is derivative of this Flickr image, which I could not find on Commons. Should I upload the original? Is there another way to do this? Should I just leave it be?

Thanks for your help. notafish }<';> 16:39, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I think the way the first one was done is preferred (crop also with flickrreview, and original uploaded seperate to Commons). This way the files are stand-alone (no need to verify by looking at another page that this one is reviewed - and no problems when either one is moved or deleted for whatever reason) and linked in other_versions like this:

on the original: | other_versions = {{Image extracted|File:Crop.jpg}}
on the ctop:     | other_versions = {{Extracted from|File:Original.jpg}}

This way, would the image be deleted on Flickr the original can still be referenced. –Krinkle^talk 17:42, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. :) notafish }<';> 00:09, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Need program to convert files to SVG

Can anyone recommend a good free program I could use that would take files such as this(1) and trace/convert them into SVG format that I could then edit in Inkscape? I'd really appreciate it. Fry1989 (talk) 22:32, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

An SVG has to be drawn by hand, and Inkscape is actually the primary free software that's used for this. It has an auto-trace function (Path -> Trace Bitmap...) that traces a raster automatically, but it is highly not recommended because the results are almost never efficient and are beneficial for advanced graphists for other purposes. ZooFari 23:31, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

You can use Inkscape itself for it. Import the image, and let inkscape trace it for you (select the imported image and go to Path -> Trace Bitmap). But be aware: Low quality input produces also low quality traced SVGs. If it is as small as in your example, it will most likely not be as good as you may expect. Only option in this case is tracing by hand. -- Niabot (talk) 23:33, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Another note, auto-tracing produces messy elements and components that complicate the editing of the results, so if you plan to convert a file and then edit it, it is even more highly unrecommended for this option. The best way is to learn Inkscape's tools by starting off with easy files, and gradually vectorize more complex images. It took me less than a year to master it and is fairly easy once you get to know the techniques. ZooFari 23:42, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I see. How would I go about tracing something by hand? Fry1989 (talk) 23:47, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

See your talk. ZooFari 23:49, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for uploads of restricted file types (Scribus, OpenOffice etc.)

We need to find a way to support source file uploads to Wikimedia Commons to ensure continued reusability of all content. This is my proposal, based on earlier discussions on wikitech-l and commons-l. I'd appreciate your feedback/edits here:

Commons:Restricted uploads

Thanks, --Eloquence (talk) 23:51, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Is there any discussion within the free software/open source world to redefine what an open file format is, to include that it must also be verifiable and secure? --LA2 (talk) 05:21, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Why don't we redefine file format or maybe even just file, to mean that it must be verifiable and secure?--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:45, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Should announce this proposal on Commons talk:File types, the traditional discussion area... AnonMoos (talk) 10:03, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

November 25

FOP in Macedonia?

Is anything known about an eventual freedom-of-panorama provision in the copyright law of Macedonia? Our Commons:Freedom of panorama has no entry for Macedonia. --Túrelio (talk) 12:05, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

 Done: yes, there is freedom of panorama. I've created "Commons:Freedom of panorama#Macedonia, Republic of". You may want to create {{FoP-Macedonia}}. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:06, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Great, that saves quite some images from deletion. --Túrelio (talk) 15:24, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

File:Freedom of Panorama in Europe.svg might also be updated. --Leyo 15:29, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

For good measure, I've also created "Commons:Licensing#Macedonia, Republic of". — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:54, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

7,777,777

What a shame this had to be image 7,777,777. File:Barney-evil.jpg 7 7s, it will be a while until we reach 8 8s!. 148.197.98.67 15:04, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

November 26

Adding suppressredirect to Filemovers

Would it be possible to add this function to the 'filemovers' user group right? I think that this would be beneficial since it eliminates the need to delete redirects from previously bad file names leftover from moves, especially when there is little to no global usage attached to a certain image (e.g. having to delete the redirect File:Image.jpg after moving it to a more descriptive name). :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 02:03, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I would support such a change, as I find it quite useful. But, some editors may not like it, as suppressredirect is pretty much same as deletion rights. If this feature is a go, I'd say we need to do an extensive "review" of all the non-admin users with Filemover; I've seen numerous cases when a filemover-user wrongfully renames files (leaving a redirect), of which is reverted quite some time later, and probably never. The only thing saving the file link from all the other wikis is the redirect. And handing over such a "suppress redirect" option to such users is only asking for trouble. Rehman 02:51, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I personally prefer to just remove that option completely, I don't see the benefits of removing redirects. Even if it's considered, a guideline would have to be established of when and when not to suppress a redirect. We got file renaming guidelines already and they are not taken seriously by many, nor do they receive much attention when it's abused. Redirects are more beneficial than a suppressed ones anyways (maybe someone can convince me otherwise?). ZooFari 07:23, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

The files most in need of renaming should generally use "suppress redirect", e.g. there is no point in having a redirect "File:Flickr main page.jpg" to File:Main page commons.jpg.  Docu  at 10:55, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Deleting redirects is a bad thing. It breaks images included trough features such as InstantCommons and cannot be tracked in any way. Redirects should only be deleted if they are VERY confusing, or if the file was only uploaded a few days earlier or something. Any file that has had a name for a considerable amount of time should have a redirect from that name. TheDJ (talk) 12:58, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I think it's reasonable request. Especially in case of misspelling or identification of image subject. Of course it should be assumed that file mover knows what he/she are doing. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:51, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

The only time where I think it's reasonably ok to delete a redirect is if the author requests to do so or if the file is incredibly new, for the reasons TheDJ gave above. If it's not the case, I don't see harm in leaving a redirect called File:Flickr main page.jpg that leads to File:Main page commons.jpg. I would just abandon the redirect, the search engine doesn't pick them up, and at least for misspellings no one is going to upload that file name again. ZooFari 23:30, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Suppressredirect prevents redirect creation during a move, so you cannot exactly say that the "deleted" redirect would be old, since the "deletion" accompanies the resulting move. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 05:36, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Well anyways, If I'm going to support your proposal, I would like to see a guide to go along with it that considers the above points as well. ZooFari 05:40, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I  Oppose giving the right. COM:FR says file redirect should be kept in most cases. I think adding {{Delete}} is the best option to prevent abuses of that right. Or when the right is assigned, we should make it more strict to give the filemover right. Also when suppressredirect is used in namespace other than file their right should be immediately revoked. – Kwj2772 (msg) 15:37, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking of much more obvious cases like File:DC0101003972 or what have you, some random string of variable numbers apparently preloaded by the uploader's camera, to be applied to those with the filemover and suppressredirect right. But if such a guideline were to be added to the page about the filemover class, can this userright be included? :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 07:54, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

 Oppose Per Kwj2772 --Leyo 15:51, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

checkbox in settings "Use the old-style upload form layout." does not work for new accounts

Hi! maybe somebody can help: The checkbox in our settings/gadgets "Use the old-style upload form layout." seems not to work for a fresh (today created) test account (german, monobook) - but does work for my old account (german, monobook)? It always (regardless of having ticket the setting or not) shows me the new uploadform for my new test account.

The checkbox in our settings/gadgets "Use the old-style upload form layout." does not work for a fresh (today created) test account (german, monobook) - but does work for my old account (german, monobook)? it always shows me the new uploadform for my new test account.

And another user had the opposite problem which I could not reproduce: he registered, changed language to german and went to the upload form using the upload link in the toolbox at the left, clicked on "own work" and only saw the old upload form (Internet Explorer). After enabling "Use the old-style upload form layout." he saw the new upload form?!

Can somebody help with this issue or test. If the "opposite problem" would occur to all newly registered accounts it would be not very nice because they would only see the old upload form. ;) Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 18:41, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

{{PD-self}} -> {{Self|Cc-zero}}

I already talked about this before : I propose changing {{PD-self}} to {{Self|Cc-zero}} on all upload forms. Why? We live in a world of open standards. We already use a lot of Creative Commons templates to indicate license status, but for indicating that something is released into the public domain by the author, we have our own custom template. By changing this we make it easier for authors and (re)users to determine the license status of a work. Multichill (talk) 21:36, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree we do not need both. Can we redirect {{PD-self}} to {{Self|Cc-zero}}. I thing that would be allowed as far as licenses are concerned. --Jarekt (talk) 03:17, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

The licenses are similar, but far from equivalent. Trycatch (talk) 03:24, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, redirecting isn't possible, but would it be possible to "deprecate" PD-self, and point users to CC-zero (and replace any interface instances of PD-self with CC-zero)? — Huntster (t @ c) 05:41, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Let's just first take this first step (replace at the upload form). We could later ask the top x PD-self uploaders if they're willing to relicense to cc-zero. Multichill (talk) 08:28, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree entirely, and perhaps misspoke. I say deprecate, but in reality the PD-self license would still exist, it simply wouldn't be easily accessible any more except by those who know it exists. As you say, replace in upload form, and if later desired, the active folks who are known to use PD-self can be asked, but I wouldn't *even* suggest that be a primary (or secondary, or tertiary) goal. — Huntster (t @ c) 09:24, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree, CC-Zero has much better wording than our home-brewed PD license. Trycatch (talk) 03:24, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree that CC0 should be the only choice for public domain grants on the upload form. The locals may take a little bit to get used to it but it'll be fine. I've already used CC0 on a lot of my uploads. Dcoetzee (talk) 10:05, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

 Done at the upload form. Multichill (talk) 18:41, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Good work, it i was about time indeed. Props for being pro active. TheDJ (talk) 21:02, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

•  Comment Yeah good idea. But if the file is PD we could do pretty much everything we like so I think we could relicese to the Cc-zero. But lets just take one step at a time. --MGA73 (talk) 19:28, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

My comment about redirecting {{PD-self}} to {{Self|Cc-zero}} was made in the same spirit as User:MGA73 comment. We can decide to do whatever we want with PD files including releasing them as {{Self|Cc-zero}}. That is the beauty of that license. I do not think terms of either license are more restrictive than other. Of course we should not do any steps which might antagonize our contributors, but I do not think that would be a problem either. --Jarekt (talk) 19:30, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

It makes no sense to automatically redirect PD-Self to a template that starts "The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work". I did not associate the file I released under PD-Self with the CC-Zero deed, and no one has the right to claim I did.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:53, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Note that CC0 and PD-self are not legally equivalent. The Zero waiver includes neighbouring rights, waives any warranty, and is considerably more explicit about forbidding revocation, among other differences. This is the more important reason we cannot simply redirect it. Dcoetzee (talk) 07:20, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

I stand corrected., and should have read text of the licenses more carefully. --Jarekt (talk) 04:47, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I have no strong opinion on the real issue, but I don't see why we should change how a contributor licensed a work without asking them about it. But I do have a quibble {{Self|Cc-zero}} produces (in English): "I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license". A public domain dedication is not a licence after all. Changing that to a sentence that is both correct and doesn't result in an awful-looking redundancy looks tricky to me.--Nilfanion (talk) 22:18, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I think CC0 is not well known to some countries. Even there is many people who don't know what is cc0. And translation is not available in many languages — even French. I wonder whether most users would use cc0 rather than PD-self. – Kwj2772 (msg) 13:53, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Update your local Wikipedia

A lot of images are not directly uploaded to Commons, but uploaded to Wikipedia and transfered to Commons. Would be good to do this change at the Wikipedia's too. Based on these stats I think at least these Wikipedia's need to be changed:

language	discussion	done?
en	[22]
de	link
ru	link	Done
it
ja
fr	-	Done
uk
hu
he
ro
zh
fi
tr
th
id

Please help! Multichill (talk) 20:33, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

No need on Fr, the form only suggests exceptions. Jean-Fred (talk) 21:55, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

November 23

Recursive EXIF data

According to an email from Hipcrime and this tool, File:Haeckel Orchidae.jpg ahs recursive EXIF data, which is a known exploit that crashes certain Apple products: "IFD1 pointer references previous IFD0 directory". This needs to be fixed, please. Guy 17:29, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Maybe you should ask at apple.com for a fix. ;) SNCR.

Well, if I call exiftool it also reports "Warning: IFD1 pointer references previous IFD0 directory". Probably your tool uses exiftool internally.

I have removed the exif data (exiftool did not show any useful data) and re-uploaded it. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 18:10, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

excellent, thanks. Guy 23:37, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

support for Blender files

I'm working on a Blender textbook at WikiBooks, and I want to upload example files with the ".blend" extension to Commons. Unfortunately, Commons does not allow uploads of this type. ".blend" files store 3D scenes and models. They are media, not executables. Blender is GPL'd software, and its file format, while poorly documented, is not in any sense proprietary. I raised this issue on both Commons talk:File types and Commons talk:Project scope a few weeks ago and got no response. Is there some reason not to allow these files on Commons? If not, how do I go about getting them allowed for upload? --Stepheng3 (talk) 19:24, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

This is being discussed right now and there's a proposal for a new policy for such uploads. Have a look at the discussion above #Proposal for uploads of restricted file types (Scribus, OpenOffice etc.) and the proposed Commons:Restricted uploads. -- Orionist ★ talk 01:15, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

That's far from being even remotely implemented however. Supporting blender wouldn't really be much of a problem actually. It's a simple fileformat, and does not use Zip, xml or javascript, the 3 major problems with file uploads. TheDJ (talk) 13:56, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

November 27

Broken template?

Can anyone please check what's wrong with the first line of Template:Cc-by-3.0-au? Once it's fixed please answer the help request on its talk page and remove the "helpme" tag. Thanks in advance. -- Orionist ★ talk 00:50, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

 Done. Multichill (talk) 10:06, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Lost Account

Hey guys.. I lost my account(it got banned temporarily before I knew rules(tried to change vote towards my side... ugh)) and now i dont remember it... i thought it was DCollins52 or Tim Tebow Rocks!(something along those lines) but now i cant find either, so i dont know.... help? 24.110.49.230 05:37, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Try typing "User:Dcollins ..." or "User:Tim ..." in the search box at the top right-hand corner of the screen, and close matches will pop up. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:25, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

That will only show up if a user page exists, better try to type "User talk:Dcollins..." etc or search the Special:ListUsers. --Martin H. (talk) 17:17, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Images from the Smithsonian Institution

I've just come across Template:PD-USGov-SI which states that any work produced by employees of the Smithsonian Instiution is in the public domain. Can someone clarify what constitutes an "official duty" in this sense? As an example, would this image, created by the head of the office of bioinformatics be in the public domain? (I'm in contact with him as well to find out about this but thought someone here might be able to enlighten me too) Thanks Smartse (talk) 15:39, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Found some archived discussions on en.wiki: 1, 2. Clearly the situation is complex! Smartse (talk) 16:10, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Eugh. Hadn't seen that tag before. I'm not sure it's completely true; the Smithsonian is a tricky issue. At one time they were pretty bad about copyfraud, claiming copyright over all sorts of old works which they did not create (some from the U.S. Government, etc.). They also had restrictive licensing terms. At some point, the resource.org owner called them on it (see here), which received some attention in the press (see here and here). Most Smithsonian employees are in fact U.S. Government employees, and their work should fall under the usual U.S. Government PD rules (same as {{PD-USGov}}). Apparently some small percentage though are "trust fund" employees, as the Smithsonian does get some non-public funding. While acknowledging that the Smithsonian Institution cannot own copyright in works prepared by its federal employees, they do claim that works by those other employees can still be copyrighted (see here, the footnote). Naturally, I'm sure the Smithsonian does not make much effort to determine which works are which, leaving things in a somewhat ambiguous state. Since then, I think they have removed some of the more egregious copyright claims, and have undertaken efforts to digitize and upload a ton of PD material to Flickr, see here. The Smithsonian does try to generate funding from outside the government, so selling copies of historic photos is probably a fairly important part of its business, and I'm sure they want to protect that. It is not strictly a government agency, and does have a somewhat unique legal status, so things are more ambiguous here. At any rate, "official duty" is more or less the same concept as "work for hire" -- was it done as part of the job, or as a personal work on their own time? The Smithsonian has more ambiguity though than most other institutions, and they are claiming copyright over the image you link to above (which means it would have been a work for hire, at the very least). Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:14, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

(Edit conflict)Generally speaking, the anything completed by a Smithsonian employee which is published/paid for by the federal government is in the public domain. If it clearly funded by a private donor or a grant, then it cannot public domain unless explicitly stated to be so. Everything else falls in a grey area which we have been unable to get clarified from our contacts in the Smithsonian for GLAM/SI. The standard response has been, everything falls into the terms of use which means that they assume most things are in "No known copyright" which is really fuzzy on the Smithsonian's website because it is compounded by their terms of use which specifies only academic reuse without permission. This becomes especially problematic when their mixed funding comes into play. Also their terms of use gets rather complicated and are really specific per item, for example this image has commercial rights restricted whereas many of their items on Flickr are purely "no known copyright" which in the Flickr sense is public domain. Part of the reason why we haven't done a content sharing partnership yet, is because every discussion about copyright we have had so far is very unclear, (also, both ends have let the relationship become a little more distant since the summer), Sadads (talk) 16:24, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

In regards to the original question I would say that the picure you have of the plant would fall under the public domain. If it were a picture of a painting on display or an item on display from a loaned collection I might say otherwise but in this case I think your ok with using the image. --Kumioko (talk) 01:32, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, I'll await a response before doing anything. They are part of the en:Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and I'm not sure where they get funding from. (It might be helpful if someone could create a page on this somewhere, as it seems to come up again + again). Smartse (talk) 00:40, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Smartse: Many things for the Smithsonian are gray areas, and not sure about this. Though, I did meet someone who works for Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. If you want, I can ask him. It might well be public domain, and they can let us know or otherwise they likely would grant permission (via OTRS). -Aude (talk | contribs) 23:37, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer Aude, but the author is hopefully finding out from "the powers that be" whether or not he can release the photos for us to use. I'll keep my fingers crossed until I hear back. (I don't think it they are PD as images by the same author on pages like this are marked with ©. Smartse (talk) 16:16, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

see also talk: Ernest Spybuck Image copyright lots of complications. Accotink2 (talk) 01:50, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Those do not appear to be government (or SI) works at all. Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:04, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

yes, it seems to me there are three cases:

• works of US employees - {{PD-USGov-SI}}
• works of SI foundation employees - copyright SI, per copyright rules
• works of others in collection - copyright artist, per rules as US art {{PD-art}}; {{PD-US}}

easy to get confused, given the age and number of orphan works. if we could work through the pile with them as was done at Bundesarchiv, a process of (PD thumbnail), could drive traffic to their higher quality images, meeting both their public outreach and property rights issues. Accotink2 (talk) 14:43, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

"Parade of ships"

Resolved

- Jmabel ! talk 17:53, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

The U.S. Navy, at least, has a concept of a "parade of ships". We have quite a few images of these, but I can't ofdhand find anything related in the category tree. I've recently added Category:Seafair Parade of Ships for the one that occurs annually in Seattle, but I'd like to tie it better into the category tree. Any suggestions? I'm not sure it belongs anywhere under Category:Parades (the term seems to be only metaphorical here). Maybe somewhere under Category:Processions? Thoughts would be welcome. - Jmabel ! talk 22:30, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Would this be same sort of thing as a naval review (Category:Naval reviews of Israel) or fleet review? Man vyi (talk) 06:51, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

And File:Vlootschouw in Vlissingen ter herdenking van Michiel de Ruyter.ogv. Dutch: vlootschouw or botenparade. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 07:07, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

It's beginning to look like we don't have any appropriate supercategory (the Israeli ones are mainly "hanging loose" in the hierarchy tree much like my Seafair one). In the U.S., at least, a "Naval Review" is more formal, and suggests the presence of a high official "reviewing" the fleet. Not that we have a category for that either, but it would simply be a special case.

Does anyone know if "parade of ships" is used outside the U.S.? Another alternative would be "sail-past," but I think that's a rather obscure term. - Jmabel ! talk 05:25, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

It's been a day or so without further input, I'll go with Category:Parades of ships, we can always change it. - Jmabel ! talk 05:06, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Clearing wood from a hole saw.

We are drilling 1-1/2 inch holes through a 2 x 4 to use as holders for 1-1/2" candles in a display. The hole goes through, nice and clean, but the wood waste is impacted into the hole saw and requires drilling, chiseling, and prying to get out. Is there an easy way to clear the waste wood from the hole saw? Cleaning the saw between holes took most of the time we spent on this project. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.194.39 (talk • contribs) 2010-11-28T03:26:57 (UTC)

I am sorry - you misunderstood Wikimedia Commons. You can ask at en:Wikipedia:Reference desk if you really cannot find the answer via the search. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 03:59, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Removal of ConvertToSVG template?

There have been some debate between me and Cwbm (commons) (talk · contribs) regarding if {{SVG}} should be used also on unused images. Cwbm (commons) seem to think that the template should be removed from every file that is not in use while I think it should be used on every image better represented in SVG format. Please advice. // Liftarn (talk)

What Liftarn is saying is incorrect. He adds the template to all images in one category although the category already carries the template and although there is already on image converted so that you only hav to change the number. --Cwbm (commons) (talk) 12:19, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I add the template to the images that is better represented in SVG format. What Cwbm (commons) so is borderline vandalism. What the "already carries the template" refers to is unclear, but it might be this edit[23], but an entire category can not be replaced by a single image. // Liftarn (talk)

You might also notice that the ConvertToSVG template was removed from many other places where it clearly should remain.[24][25][26] // Liftarn (talk)

I don't see why not to use the template on all images. I just wonder why all this unused garbage is uploaded.--Wickey-nl (talk) 17:26, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Cwbm, am I correct in understanding that you believe having the ConvertToSVG template on the category page is better than having the template on each image? If this is the case, you are very much incorrect. You have to consider that people may not visit the category, but may reach the image directly, used or unused on projects. It is always preferred to have the template on individual images. If I've misunderstood, my apologies. — Huntster (t @ c) 18:06, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

As far as I can tell what Cwbm wants is to have the SVG template on images in use only. Look at the edits. Cwbm actually removes the template from all unused images. // Liftarn (talk)

All cleanup tags should be placed on all images to which they apply. If you're trying to find images bearing the tag which are in use, you can use GLAMorous for that. Dcoetzee (talk) 20:52, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Liftarn. It should be on every image that would benefit from conversion, "in use" or not, with the exception of those that shouldn't be converted. These exceptions could be for copyright or licensing issues, pending deletions or changes. We should remember that conversion isn't magic - it takes a lot of manual time and effort, so whenever we add one of these tags, we're implicitly dumping work onto someone else. We shouldn't do this carelessly, or when the likelihoood is that conversion of the tagged image will be invalidated by some change in the near future.

Tagging categories might work as an intermediate step, but it breaks 'bot queries for finding those tagged. It might be justifiable for intermediate workflow, tagging the category manually first as the easiest, traversing the category to re-tag those images (we could automate that), then picking up the now tagged images. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:27, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

→→ Template talk:Convert to SVG#new parameter ←← --Leyo 08:54, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

The tag removal is continuing even though no consensus has been reached for doing so. I find this quite disruptive as these edits are undoing the work of many editors while not really solving any problems. If I, as one of the editors who actually does bitmap converting, want to prioritize or at very least weed out the unused images, I use the GLAMorous tool (and even better tools can be developed for this purpose). Also, not being in use at the moment does not mean the images could not be used in the future. So, Cwbm, could you please respect the community and cease the tag removal at least until we have some sort of consensus for removing the tags. --Quibik (talk) 14:15, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'm glad that finally somebody who actually converts images says something. Secondly, I would like you to explain to me how you use GLAmorous on Category:Coat of arms images that should use vector graphics. I can give you the answer, you can't. The category is too full. So I wonder is the goal really to clog up categories untill they can't be used anymore? --Cwbm (commons) (talk) 15:16, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Regarding Glamorous not working on big categories, I created User:Tryphon/Top 200 coat of arms images that should use vector graphics, which lists the 200 most used images in that category (only counting the main namespace of the 20 biggest wikipedias).
More generally, the solution isn't to undo the hard work of hundreds of contributors. You could try splitting those big categories into subcategories, filing a bug report against Glamorous, etc. Try to be more constructive and take into account the opinion of others working on Commons (we're all here to try and improve the place, and doing what you think is best all alone is not the way to go). –Tryphon^☂ 16:20, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that these lists don't help me find images that are tagged with vva, but there somebody forgot to remove the other template or to find images that are placed in the wrong category. And while all of you publicly declare how important you think it is to tag unused images, nobody of you (understandibly) actually converts them. Go figure. --Cwbm (commons) (talk) 18:11, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Finding images in Category:Coat of arms images that should use vector graphics that are tagged with {{Vva}} is not too complicated, is it? -- Common Good (talk) 19:57, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Again, if some tools are missing, find someone who can write a bot for this task (or write one yourself if you can). You say no one is working on converting those unused images; but if you remove the tags, there's even less chance that anyone ever will. –Tryphon^☂ 21:57, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

The solution to that would be to make (or ask someone to make) a bot that removes the SVG tag when a VVA tag also exists. AS for converting (or sometimes recreating) images I have done it so there is no need to be rude about that. // Liftarn (talk)

I suggest continuing the discussion here. IMHO creating low priority subcategories (using a parameter in the template) could be a good compromise. --Leyo 23:16, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I think it would be better with a high prio parameter (if necessary at all since prio is subjective anyway). Tagging would be easier that way. // Liftarn (talk)

What do you suggest should a high prio parameter that is set, change in the file description page (incl. categorization)? --Leyo 14:14, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I see it from a practical viewpoint. It is easier to change the existing tag for high priority than to do it for low prio. AS mentioned above I don't really see the need for such a tag. Let people work on converting the images they see fit. // Liftarn (talk)

high priority or low priority tag, it will in any case be usefull.--Wickey-nl (talk) 11:53, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Download button code

On an image description page, where is it pulling the license information for the download button from? On File:Virginia Tech Hokies block punt vs Duke.jpg, which I created, the "Download" button falsely claims that this image is public domain and falsely claims that attribution is not legally required. --UserB (talk) 04:10, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

See above. {{Trademarked}} made incorrect use of {{PD-Layout}}, which led the tool to believe the image was public domain. Clear your cache to see a difference.

Thanks --UserB (talk) 13:45, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

By the way, what is the purpose of {{GFDL-1.2-en}} ? Don't we already have {{GFDL-1.2}}?

Jean-Fred (talk) 08:51, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

That's part of the disclaimer problems ("Subject to disclaimers"). Multichill (talk) 10:37, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

About re-uploading

One of my friends User:Northia uploaded some pictures of his own on Flickr in an earlier time but these pictures were soon deleted for the reason of copyright. He says he might have had incorrect setting of his Flickr account and this resulted in copyright problems. It is now not permitted for him to re-upload it despite that he can provide sufficient evidence to prove these pictures' copyright. How to solve this problem? AlexHe34 (talk) 06:51, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

We can't really answer any questions about Flickr's policies and user accounts here. Your friend should contact Flickr about this. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 10:56, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Uhn..I mean, now, even I attempt to upload the same picture not via Flickr and use a different file name, the system will block me. AlexHe34 (talk) 11:23, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh, you mean you are helping Northia to upload the images to the Commons. Can you describe exactly the error message you are getting? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 12:30, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

When I upload the same picture as what has been deleted before, the system notifies that an earlier-deleted file is identical and I always get stuck in the "Upload" page. Like this:

A file identical to this file (File:琴台路.jpg) has previously been deleted. You should check that file's deletion history before proceeding to re-upload it.Please modify the file description below and try again.

Note: I have select GFDL and CC-BY-SA option. I guess the server has a system to identify whether two files are the same no matter what their names are. AlexHe34 (talk) 14:26, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, I think I know what needs to be done. But before I explain this to you, I would suggest that it should be Northia who uploads the files because he is the copyright holder. If you do it on Northia's behalf, then you will have to get Northia to send an e-mail to OTRS at permissions-commonswikimedia.org to confirm that he is the copyright holder of the images and agrees to release them into the public domain or to license to them to the Commons under a free licence such as CC-BY-3.0. If this step is not done, then there is a possibility that the images will be deleted again because there will be insufficient evidence that you were authorized by Northia to license the images to the Commons.

Assuming that Northia will be uploading the images again by himself or has sent an e-mail as described above to OTRS, the way to successfully upload the images is to click the "Ignore all warnings" box before the uploading is done. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:43, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

In fact I know what OTRS is but I just cannot manage to upload it before telling him to send OTRS message. OK, I will try the "ignore all warnings" button. Thanks for your advice and direction! AlexHe34 (talk) 14:53, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Something for your Watchlist

There are some pages on a project that active community members should have on their watchlist. For anyone who is interested in the development of this project this is the selection of editors with access to restricted technical features - Administrators, Checkusers, Oversights and Bureaucrats. On Commons the votings to give someone 'the tools' take place on Commons:Requests and votes, that page is not linked much and maybe not anyone knows it. Also the page has the shortcoming that you will not see it on your watchlist if a new request is added. So to get a little more participation in this requests I ask you to please put the following pages on your watchlists:

• Commons:Bureaucrats/Requests watch
• Commons:Oversighters/Requests watch
• Commons:Checkusers/Requests watch
• Commons:Administrators/Requests watch

Thanks, --Martin H. (talk) 16:48, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Question over OTRS release

File:ElvisCostello09TIFF.jpg is derivative from an "all rights reserved" image on Flickr, the permission is listed as: {{OTRS|2008111310002081}}

Having checked the OTRS ticket, it is a forwarded email that says "Wikipedia has permission to use this". That is not a free license, and the email does not itself originate from the photographer but is at one remove. I think this should be reviewed carefully as we cannot take "Wikipedia can use this" as being a Creative Commons derivatives allowed release. Guy 15:23, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

You seem to be an OTRS volunteer since you have access to the ticket. Well, if the release is insufficient, go ahead and nominate the image for deletion. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 17:11, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Looks legit to me. The ticket contains an email from gdcgraphics (the rights holder) saying "I agree to release the images in the set(s) TIFF08, TIFF07, and TIFF06 under the Creative Commons Attribution license." Then a later email says "...As before, you can use what you find helpful and I will move the ones you pick to a new folder called TIFF09. Wikipedia has permission to use TIFF09 the same as TIFF08, TIFF07 and TIFF06." That implies to me that the TIFF09 images are also Creative Commons Attribution, although the wording isn't as clear as for the others. Any 2nd opinions? Kaldari (talk) 00:21, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I've sent an email to the rights-holder asking for clarification. Kaldari (talk) 00:43, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

The rights holder has responded with an unambiguous statement that all images at http://www.flickr.com/photos/gdcgraphics/sets/72157622546781229 (the TIFF09 set) are released under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Kaldari (talk) 18:21, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

November 28

License clarification

I'm working with User:TimSample to get his headshot properly uploaded and tagged. He's going to send me the file to upload. Assuming that he says that I'm correct in my understanding that Nina Fuller is the photographer, Sample is the rights-holder, and Sample licenses the image under GFDL/CC-BY-SA, what are the most appropriate tags for me to put on the file? Thanks. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:33, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I think I got it. File:Tim Sample headshot.jpg‎ Thanks anyway. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:33, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Please email permissions-commons(at)wikimedia.org to get an OTRS ticket verifying the release. Thanks! Kaldari (talk) 00:04, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Done, and OTRS-tagged. Thanks again.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:33, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Image caption

Hi! Could someone native English speaker take a look at the image caption at file:Dieselpump Preem Avesta.jpg and modify what's have to be modified, so it won't look silly when it's time for it to show as POTD? Best regards --V-wolf (talk) 20:19, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. - Jmabel ! talk 04:02, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you was in after the nicely done edit by Docu.--V-wolf (talk) 04:57, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

November 30

Help cropping?

Could someone crop File:Bridesmaid and junior bridesmaid.jpg to show less ceiling? I'd like to use it at en:Bridesmaid, and I think it would look better if the junior bridesmaid were more centrally placed. Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:39, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

like this? or do you mean a closer crop? Btw, here is the right place to ask for something like this. Amada44  ^{talk to me} 19:33, 30 November 2010 (UTC) 

Using images from sales brochures in articles

If I scanned an image of a car that is not commonly found that can be photographed, how would I properly add the necessary information so that the image doesn't get deleted for copyright violation? I have a large collection of car sales brochures from different countries and would like to scan them into the Wiki-world. The images are of items that are extremely rare to find and can not be photographed under "own work" license agreements. (Regushee (talk) 19:48, 30 November 2010 (UTC))

You can not upload the scanned photographs unless the copyright holder gave a written permission to a free license. Arguments that no free equivalent could reasonably be obtained is part of a non-free fair use rational on some Wikipedia projects, on Commons fair use is not allowed. The photographic work must be public domain due to copyright expiration or published under a free license, see Commons:Licensing. --Martin H. (talk) 20:04, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Motd - thumbtime

Using the thumbtime template of Motd results in no changes of the thumbnail for me. What am I doing wrong? --Pristurus (talk) 22:52, 30 November 2010 (UTC)