Commons:Village pump/Archive/2010/02

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Unknown insect, Katni, MP, India

unknown insect, Katni, MP, India, around 5 cm long

Please help me identifying this insect (around 5 cm long, attracted by light at night). Thanks, Yann (talk) 07:36, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Try leaving a message at the talk page of WikiProject Insects. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 16:21, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
At WP:RBIO/B on de.wp, an IP user suggested an Army ant, possibly of the genera Aenictus or Dorylus. Regards --Rosenzweig δ 00:02, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
PS: Having wings, I suppose it would have to be a queen or a male. At least if what's normal in the ants I know applies to those ants as well. --Rosenzweig δ 00:05, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
PPS: This IP is a well known expert for insects on de.wp. So, his determination of the insect as an Army ant was no suggestion and should be treated as a fact. However, he made indeed a suggestion regarding the genus, so it's probably Dorylus or Aenictus. Yours, --Accipiter (talk) 00:18, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Picasa

Hi all, I'd like to raise some questions about images taken from Picasa.

Thanks to FIST, I've be somehow able to find for free images from Picasa. I've noticed that there was no category for images from Picasa (so I did create Category:Files from Picasa). I'd like to know your opinion about the necessity of proceeding in a similar way to Flickr, specifically with regard to the way we "certify" the assurance of the original license (that is, by using {{Flickrreview}} by administrators or trusted users). Do you think it's necessary? Should a similar template be created? Many thanks in advance --Ecemaml talk to me/habla conmigo 21:51, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, we'd need similar processes as for Flickr also for Picasa, panoramio, and other repositories. Ideally bot-assisted, like in the Flickr case. There is already {{LicenseReview}} which can be used to manually certify images from these repositories, but we don't have bot assistance yet. Lupo 22:57, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll use it at the moment. I wasn't aware of the existence of {{LicenseReview}} --Ecemaml talk to me/habla conmigo 14:12, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

January 31

A while ago, I proposed a WikiProject on the English Wikipedia for requesting copyright holders to release their non-free content under a free license. However, the idea never took off there, presumably due to the lack of supporters. Therefore, I'm bringing up this proposal here. Could Wikimedia Commons benefit from such a project? --Ixfd64 (talk) 20:56, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Although not very active (yet), we have Commons:WikiProject Permission requests. Pruneautalk 09:12, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Wow, wasn't aware that this project existed. I hope more Commoners will pick up on this! I don't if this project was the result of my proposal on the English Wikipedia, but one thing for sure is that great minds think alike! --Ixfd64 (talk) 16:56, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

February 1

Copyvio

File:CivilPartnershipFlyer.jpg is clearly a copyright violation, as it is a publication of the British government and thus not freely licensed. TreasuryTag (talk) 12:05, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Deleted Even http://www.hmg.gov.uk/ states copyright. Bidgee (talk) 12:20, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Category:Marche (region)

This category is a mix, who knows how to resolve?--Havang(nl) (talk) 12:49, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Sample steps:
  • write a category description and/or add interwikis
  • recategorize accordingly/create additional categories, if needed.
  • find more files
  • review the result/rename categories, if needed.
Sometimes this works. -- User:Docu at 15:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

February 2

Suggestion for a new way for media donations

Suggestion (special wiki media donation project): a new highly efficient way for world public to donate images and video to wikipedia/wikimedia/commons etc.

  • There should a link on every wiki family project page saying "DONATE AN IMAGE OR VIDEO". Anyone should be able to click on it and make/upload a media donation easily, SPECIALLY SELF CREATED WORK with the profusion of relatively cheap personal devices available now in the NEW AGE.
  • In the donation form there should be all related disclosures and and Licenses that the donater can choose regarding donating a particular work.
  • There should be place where Donater has to fill all related information related to media being donated like location, subject, time, basic info about self, etc. and details if from other source.
  • People should be able to send copyrighted/unusable images to make suggestion of what we are missing and which we can put out on a list of required media, this list may be easily available to public view and/or ciculated.
  • There should be an email address to where images/video/media can be emailed, clearly stating that the donater has read the various disclosures and licenses (on our website or our news release requesting media donations) and he is donating under which license. Once a media donation email is received to a special mail account: 1) once an email media donation is received from the donater and automatic (from wikipedia/media/commons etc.) email should go out to their address from our no-reply email address reminding them to read, in mail, provided disclousers and provide appropriate license and info for use again. Donater should be asked to email back the reply keeping the same address line explaining preference will be given to media donations which have been replied to, hence making them more usable earlier. 2) It should be available in an online archive for mining by users looking for images for articles they are working on and the public at large.
  • Replied email donations with disclosures read and licences provided and direct media donations by clicking on link should be at all times available to our users and world public at large and journalists etc. There should be a warning to them to make sure BY THEMSELVES that they check (what could be our mostly unsupervised database) out if the donation has been made properly and if donater has read disclosures and provided consent and chosen the license properly. Users should be provided a basic guideline on how to make sure if the image/media is good.
  • Proper donations should ask for keywords that should activate various tags for easy mining of donated database.
  • The whole online media donation/uploading process should be VERY SIMPLIFIED with users asked to click/select choices with one click only from various choices after reading all. Short Disclosers should be page wise only, advancable by clicking NEXT so that all get read. Licenses should be chosen by a simple click from a choice. Media Info should be requested by filling blank by blank advancable software, including location, subject, time, DATE, donator info etc.
  • This Media donation project should be centralized in commons with centralized email for donations. Project should be accessible from all wiki family projects from all their pages at all times by clicking.
  • There should be a special option/Tags setting alerts for media donations regarding HAPPENING EVENTS and that should make news where world journalists/News companies can find Important or Immediate topics to pursue and other agencies like Aid agencies etc. to find places and subjects to assist. A media related to citizen reporting a historical national monument in bad shape should have the potential to trigger positive action to conserve. Potentially database mining should be able to facilitate new discoveries and affirmative action in right direction and build a tremendous world resource to record history/historical period datewise over the decades.
  • Anyone mining the database should be able to setup warnings with a simple click about offending/sexually explicit/illegal images and special users with experience and extra powers should be able to either remove the image or make it invisible where in doubt.
  • Should an option be provided where users of this donated media like journalists/new companies can provide citation like: Donated media from wikicommons server by ..(name of original donator).
  • Donators should be able to choose their nonconflicting wiki User name, and make it a Tag, so that by clicking on name tag all images donated by the users can lineup in a online gallery for public and for donator to promote himself in other/outside professional media fields, if he chooses to provide link to this online portfolio.
  • There should be a clear warning that there is no monetary compensation by wikicommons for media donation of any kind, it is a DONATION.
  • Wikicommons software should be able to mine technical info of media if possible and provide the same online for researchers, sometimes it may include type of camera used, aperture, date, time of day and in the near future models, the GPS position/coordinates of where the media was made. If needed donator should be asked to give consent to publish this info.
  • Public/Users should be requested to make media for donation with no recognizable faces/adertising/brand names as that may trigger having to take permission from people etc. shown in media made or fuzzing their faces/advertising/brand names etc.

Please forward to concerned persons/department for brainstorming and fine tuning.

I got the above idea while creating the article on Karvi shrub which only flowers once in eight years before dying.

Thanks

User:Atulsnischal (talk) 22:06, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Pasting from wikipedia [1], [2].

Posted on - Talk:Proposals for new projects; From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki - at: [3]

Posted on - Wikipedia talk:Creation and usage of media files - at: [4]

Posted on wikimedia commons at Commons:Usability issues and ideas: [5]

atulsnischal (talk) 22:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Building a “media donation culture” and a “world media archive” from donated media – help enlisted from volunteers to “visually document the world” for an ongoing visual world historical record.

This is in continuation of my last post, posted at the following locations: [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]

Building a “media donation culture” and a “world media archive” from donated media – help enlisted from volunteers to “visually document the world” for an ongoing visual world historical record.

  • We need to strive for creating a “media donation culture” where donating pictures and documentary videos, shot on people’s personal devices is thought of as a worthwhile activity / community service and a scholarly voluntary work which goes a long way in visually documenting the world we live in, in present times. An ongoing visual historical record available free for present researchers/authors to supplement their work with and for future generations to come, to look back upon. Gradually we should hope this will catch on as modern popular culture/fad, will also empower citizens and assist them in making citizen reports. Hopefully a time will come when if someone is taking a vacation then he will remember and friends will remind them not to forget making some documentary pictures/video for donating about the places they will visit during vacation. All this can be done easily now as there is a profusion of cheaper and cheaper personal devices available now incorporating embedded Still & Video camera technology.
  • This is about Campaigning and Requesting for “100 percent Media Donation” for “documenting the world” in a “copyright free world archive” to serve in the future as a world historical visual documentation. This could be an “uploading + emailing project” by itself and donated pictures/video/media can be freely usable in all wikis and similar projects or commercial publications/productions etc.. Commercial entities could be encouraged to develop an informal “best practice” where they “donate funds” to upkeep this world archive, especially if they use anything from here and if they can afford it now or in future.
  • There should be a link (“Donate an Image or Video”) to upload and donate media on every wiki family project page including on every page of various wikipedias in different languages and it should be centralized in one place like wiki commons in a world media archive. As and when possible over the decades viewers should be able to see/read this archive in their own language through translation software etc.
  • All media donations to be uploaded/stored in “high resolution” to be more usable to future generations. Most searches in the archive should only display a decent low resolution image where the user should have the option to call for higher/highest resolution version.
  • There should be a centralized Email address for media donation, and where ever it is publicized it should give all disclosures that this is in regards to 100 percent media donation.
  • The above media donation link and email address should be well publicized in newspapers, magazines, and press releases and media requests; with all related disclosures that media sent will be treated as 100 percent donation and the act of uploading/emailing means that donator has read all disclosures which are provided and well publicized here and elsewhere.
  • It should be preferred that media donation should be made by “original media creators” by themselves mainly as someone under normal circumstances can not donate someone else’s property.
  • It should be made very clear in simple straight forward language at the very beginning before uploading donated files that one is making a 100 percent media donation, “100 percent Media Donation” means there will be no copyright, no royalties, no monetary compensation or any compensation in any kind paid in return for the media donation by the wiki family or any secondary users and the world public to the original media donator/creator. One’s donation can be used, reused, modified, broken up and made into anything else by anybody in the world and that too without having to give any sort of credit to the original media donator. There will be no legal requirement to give credit; and all these rules to apply world over. Though some sort of voluntary “best practice” should be encouraged to emerge where secondary users of the donated media, i.e. the world public including journalists, newspapers, magazines, books, businesses, government institutions the world over, who use donated media to supplement their work, could be encouraged to develop a popular culture of crediting the media to wiki’s media donation campaign/world archive and have a reference/courtesy credit to the original donator. Voluntary citation could sound like: Wiki common’s media donation server, original media donated by…. Commercial businesses/institutions who use donated media could be educated by a regular campaign that if affordable monetary donations can be made to wiki for help in maintaining wiki’s media archives. This donation can be made in any country and wiki could set up a local body in major countries so that tax break forms can be given in regards to monetary donations.

Now the question remains what absolutely free but worthwhile perceived benefit could a media donator receive in regards to donated media. Can a $5 per piece ad hoc acknowledgement tax break form be sent automatically to the media donators in regards to media donations, at the time I guess not. A popular culture should be created where the biggest perceived benefit that the donator should receive is the satisfaction of having participated in historically documenting the world in a particular time. The only other major satisfaction that they could receive is that they are able to click on a tag by their name/username and their lifelong contributions are lined up in an online gallery of the donated media. This gallery they can show proudly to everyone and in many cases receive some other benefits from elsewhere or use it as a scholarly portfolio while pursuing arts and related professions. Some sort of awards be given out to media donators who have done exceptional work.

  • Professionals might want to earn money from their media but after money is made they can donate what they didn’t use or plan to use, that which they think is not as good etc.. Instead of deleting images/video footage they can donate.
  • The whole idea is to attract the help of amateurs around the world who can now create media with the extremely cheap good quality profusion of computerized personal devices incorporating cameras/video etc. Who already earn a living doing some other work and who are not dependent on income through media making. Amateurs are casually making media and enjoying the process and the results but most of the results are enjoyed for immediate gratification only. Anywhere upto 95 percent or even more, of the media casually created usually gets deleted as it is of no perceived use to the creator in the long run over the remaining decades of their life. Any media creation takes lot of work and expenses but Casual media creation is perceived as no work and the process is enjoyed by casual media creators, it is perceived as totally free in the mind of the creator hence unfortunately majority of the casually created media is deleted, “This is the targeted media that we must campaign to save, the one that is being deleted”. All over the world the common man/world public should be educated from now on that they can donate this media before deleting it from their personal devices and they could be educated how to create usable documentary media for donation. Additionally there should be links to special “Tutorials” on how to create “usable” media for donation which can be used by secondary users (researchers, authors etc.) in various ways including research on what was captured and illustrating articles etc.. Usable media should avoid brand names, advertising and recognizable faces, specially of friends and family etc.. as then it may trigger having to take permission from people shown in the media for it to be usable now. Educational courses and institutions teaching Media creating; and personal device manufactures who incorporate media making functionality in their devices could one day carry these tutorials and educate public the world over that media can be donated to remain forever in a world archive. Like we see Warnings!!! in Cigarette Packs: If you smoke cigarettes you could get cancer; similar principal may one day be used by personal device manufacturers educating the buying public in the device manual and brochures that the media you create with this device can be donated to assist in documenting the world in present times so that it remains in a world archive for present and the future generations as a worthwhile historical media artifact documenting a particular location at a particular date and time from a particular angle etc. or documenting any other subject or human or animal behavior etc. All major networking sites around the world in local languages should carry links to these tutorials and media donation links in time with the development of media donation world culture.
  • A lot of seemingly repetitive media will be created around famous subjects/locations but this should not be discouraged as no 2 media/pictures are exactly the same, they are created in different time, days, weeks, decades etc. and from different angles and magnifications, subject focus etc. this continuous record will be invaluable to researchers in time centuries later and could also be packed off with future unmanned space explorers to educate aliens who may receive these capsules in the chance that they exist.

It looks like in the near future GPS will be embedded in all personal devices. And if GPS data along with date & time is mined from media donations then in the future special software could be developed that would make it possible to play-out/ lay-out the donated media in various requested sequences. For example Taj Mahal is a famous tourist site; maybe pictures are created here every second of the day. Lets say over a century later a researcher having mined GPS data available to him from pictures donated of Taj-Mahal, could request the computer software to lay out a sequence where pictures are laid out in a movie type flow encircling the Taj from 150 meters (using pictures taken at every foot in the circle identifiable by the GPS coordinates imbedded in the donated media), starting from the year 2000 and the circle completes 100 years later in the year 2100. In this requested computer output sequence, mined information from donated pictures of the Taj including time and date along with GPS coordinates available in that (as it is evident that most personal devices will soon have inbuilt GPS) would assist the computer in arranging the sequence in such a manner that the camera would travel from the front of the Taj, all the way around clockwise and come back to the front from the other side. The future computer software would make minor adjustments in magnifications for the Taj to appear the same size in all the pictures. If over time the historical site deteriorates, researchers can see how it took place over time requesting daily or weekly pictures to play-out in a movie, from a particular angel and particular distance etc.. Many more applications like this may be available with future software. In the example above about the Taj mahal, it could be seen every year, month, week, day, time of day etc. and from many different angles/magnifications etc. with the assistance of GPS coordinates. All this will be possible if data is mined from the donated media and properly electronically catalogued along with the image. And if donators are requested to fill in various detailed tags about each image that they donate through the designated upload link where they will also see various disclosures that they are indeed donating the media 100 percent and foregoing all their rights. “Emailed” donated images/media could be sent an auto-email-reply with a form to fill in creating all the various Tags that could apply to the donated picture/media and the auto-reply should contain the disclosure that the donator is indeed making 100 percent media donation and foregoing all rights.

  • Should inappropriate media be censored and deleted completely by administrators? Well, I think not. The media donated with brand names visible, copyrighted material, too many friends and family visible, sexually explicit material should be temporally removed from public’s view and should not be available to search in the present times. This material could be sent/dumped in an unsearchable database where it could lie for a few centuries and for a few generations to pass and after that when no one remembers who these people were the material could again be provided to public as a historical record from a previous time assisting researchers in human/historical studies and studies in human behaviors etc.. It may be noted here that even uploading unusable media requires effort and this effort may prove useful to researchers centuries later. The copyrighted material will be usable again then as copyright would have expired long time ago and in most cases the original work may have also been destroyed without a trace as most originals like books, paintings, newspapers etc. are made up of biodegradable material which perishes if it is not stored in museum like conditions.
  • There should be various TAGs that should be chosen and created in respect to each donated media so that they may assist the public at a later time to pull images/media from the archive. Various appropriate Tags should be created by original media donator who should be first provided with list of short Tags he could choose from that were created by others and were eventually standardized, additionally when he starts typing, to reduce effort, other types of tags may be suggested from the ones that were created by other users elsewhere. Some standard tags could be name/user name of donator, Subject/Location, magnification/seen from what distance, angle, Date, Time, context, normal view or description of “special event captured” (Like rioter throwing stones on police, people fighting, people shopping, building on fire, reading, praying, neglect, human rights violation etc.), atmosphere tags like, sunlit, sunshine, sunset, sunrise, raining, overcast/cloudy etc.. If news-making event is captured then NEWS-making Tag should be chosen and donator should be requested for little extra notes/comments why he thinks the media has captured news worthy event and be asked to describe the event in greater detail. The news-making tags could be patrolled by actual news companies etc. and could provide them/journalists/authors potential leads as to what stories that they can pursue now or at a later date in the pipeline; additionally news making tag could provide government agencies the opportunity to take positive corrective actions and for aid agencies to find people/projects to assist. Original donators should create tags and then on a later stage when the archive is being viewed by researchers and secondary users they should be also in a position to quickly add/create some more appropriate additional tags to assist future searchers. For example someone casually shoots a picture of an unknown butterfly sitting on an unknown flower, a zoologist/botanist viewing the picture in future could add butterfly name and flower name and scientific names etc. and create tags or/and notes/comments to go with the image. Some sort of “voluntary acknowledgement tags” could be created for secondary users who actually use the image in a wiki or outside publication, they can leave a tag/info/comment if they used the particular archived image and where, could leave a citation like detail of their article/publication, where the donated media was used by them. There should be tags to rate the donated image or video so that researching public can rate donated media on quality scale and could also leave additional educational comments in case they know more about the subject captured in the media which future researchers could follow up.

Computer software should supplement the above created/chosen tags with mined embedded technical information that is available embedded in today’s electronic media files, like camera used, aperture used, lens used, date and time of day; and very soon most personal media creating devises will have embedded GPS coordinates about where the media was made. All the above will help in Citizen reporting & Citizen documenting of the world in a particular, soon to be, historical time i.e. Citizen documenting of history, especially visual world history as it happens. There could be a Tutorial on how to make and use tags effectively, also showing how to view translated tags/event-description in a particular language. As an article is written or improved on a wiki or elsewhere, tags can help authors search for appropriate media/images/video etc. that can be used to supplement their work.

A Tag-search could give an output of a list of appropriate media that could by it-self be used as an online gallery; or best chosen images could be lined up in a gallery. Donators should be able to line up their lifelong media donations by clicking on the tag of their name, there should be a link here (and elsewhere too) to a “tutorial” on how to make their donated media more useful as searchable historical documents where donators could be taught how to go back in and improve each media piece already donated by them and already listed in the world archive; basically most possible improvements should relate around creating extra and much more effective tags for fairing better in searches and writing researched notes with references in the comment space under their listed archived media about what was captured in a particular picture/video donated by them, where, when and in what context etc.. (Once a media piece is donated and listed in the world archive, it should be possible to go in there and create more tags to supplements those already created for the piece, rate the piece on a quality scale, write comments about the piece in spaces provided. There should be tutorials to show how to do all this better)

  • As this is about building what will undoubtedly be a world archive, the scope is world wide and immense and lot of funding will be required to build and maintain such a resource. Lot of worldwide large scale funding drives will have to be organized targeting large donors annually. United Nations could be a good platform to request help from as this project is about the world as a whole. If someone provides funding from another country then we should set up a local office in that country so that tax-break forms can be issued to the donator so that they can get an income tax-break/incentive against donated funds which is valid in their particular country.
  • Huge Archive hence Limited & More Accurate Searches to Save Energy: As overtime a huge archive will come into existence it will take lot of electronic energy to make a search in the entire archive so some of the material could be deemed to be almost duplicate by volunteers and boxed together; and time periods could be boxed together etc. and when some one wants to search the archives first these boxes should show up and only if researchers want to search a particular box then only that box can be searched. In this way searches can be made more particular and electronic energy saved by making smaller/limited searches. Additionally media should be tagged properly and accurately along with research notes/comments on what was captured so that it can be located easily when needed. If required lot of un-usable or copyrighted or duplicate media could be boxed off in unsearchable boxes for the time being and could be made to surface again years, decades, centuries later when it is deemed to be usable again as copyright would have expired, persons shown are not living etc..
  • Digital Archival Storage Economy: It is hoped that this huge digital archive of high resolution images and video (as donators will be requested to upload in high resolution) will need smaller and smaller digital storage space as technology advances with time and most storage when not being searched will need no or little electrical energy; and very soon most electricity will be produced with cleaner technology hence building and searching this archive will be a relatively smaller drain on energy/world resources and wont be as harmful to the environment.
  • Archival Strategy: Strategically it might become necessary to have 2 or 3 copies of this world archive with only one that is connected for searches. All copies of the world archive should be located in the Free-World which is free from dictatorships and meddling by medieval religious institutions and regimes. Physical locations of all the copies of the world archives should be located in secret underground tunnels/caves away from earthquake zones where they will remain safe from bombings during future wars or/and purposely targeted sabotage. Obviously in the future when man does colonize other planets then copies could be located there in addition to the archives they will build about themselves.

Please forward this to concerned persons/departments for brain storming and fine tuning.

atulsnischal (talk) 02:59, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Also posted here in continuation of my previous post: [11], [12], [13], [14], [15]

atulsnischal (talk) 00:29, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Some of your suggestions work already here in some way, some are planned.
  • "DONATE AN IMAGE OR VIDEO": On every wiki, there's a "Upload file" or "Upload" link which you can click to upload files. On this form, you can add all the information about the file.
  • List of required media: Media can be requested at Commons:Image requests.
  • For your e-mail address, we have the OTRS, to which files can be sent (though I don't know anything about their internal procedures).
  • Tags: We currently have categories, though many people don't like them and would also prefer tags over them.
  • I'm not sure it should be too oversimplified. While I can see the advantages of an easy upload form, if it's too easy, then more idiotic uploads will come. It's already like this currently that people simply choose a random license and usually don't even know what they're doing. Licenses are something important, especially those on Commons, because they mean that your media may be used by anyone in the world, for whatever purpose they want to. With a checkbox, yet more people won't get it. Simpleness also has their downsides.
  • The media donations are centralized on Commons already. This is the project where you upload your pictures to make then accessible for all >700 Wikimedia projects.
  • A place of recent media would certainly be good. AFAIK, it doesn't exist.
  • I agree about the thing that Commons should be censorable if people want that. At the moment, administrators are able to remove an image from public sight.
  • I believe that an option where people can see how to reuse images is long overdue. It should be similar to Special:Cite (which is just plain useless here on Commons). For that purpose, some users have created specific tags and some use a {{Credit line}}.
  • The donators must have a username, and if you go to one's userpage, you'll see a tab named "gallery" which contains all media uploads under this username.
  • The Commons software can mime technical info of a photograph (except the GPS data, but this is soon to be added as well).
  • Watermarking is discouraged already by consensus.
  • So, as you see, a lot of your ideas aren't something new to Commons. However, I'd recommand you to rather post your ideas at Commons:Usability issues and ideas. There's currently a team working on improving the Commons and multimedia in general, so your comments might get more attention there. Nevertheless, thanks for your ideas; we can need every help. --The Evil IP address (talk) 11:29, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
And another advice, which doesn't only apply here on Commons, but anywhere in the Internet: Don't overuse Capslock, use it with caution. It's like yelling in the real world. --The Evil IP address (talk) 11:35, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Nice timing: Multimedia Usability Project Underway. Note that this project will focus mostly on core (less visible) issues that will make much of the above easier to implement (for our volunteers). TheDJ (talk) 01:58, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

TLDR Can you summarize your proposal in less than 100 words? Paradoctor (talk) 08:54, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Bundesarchiv categorization

When will this matter be resolved? http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2010Jan#Bundesarchiv_categorization Last comment was: "I don't understand. An incredibly useful archives of photographs is now going to sit in the database in a state of near uselessness because someone thinks that assigning it into useful categories is "vandalism"? Is that what I just read? I mean, despite a consensus of editors/users who agreed that the by year templates would be a very handy thing to have indeed?" But no answer was given.68.144.162.78 00:17, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

An overhasty start was already made, see e.g. Category:Images from the German Federal Archive from 1906. Overhasty becaue for 99% of the images in that example category the date is simply wrong. Your help is appreciated to correct the date according to the archive description (most cases: between 1906 and 1918) and move the image to an appropriate content category such as Category:1906 to replace the temporary categorization permanently. You can also go to Category:Images from the German Federal Archive and search for subjects or years in the special search form there and add appropriate content categories. Go and make yourself usefull, thats an extremly time intensive work. We already made great advances in Category:Cities in Germany by decade, enjoy it. --Martin H. (talk) 01:54, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
I believe the last thing I heard was Multichill offer to rebuild the structure he dismantled through some semi-automatic means. I am not sure what he means so I was waiting to see what he is planning to do. Otherwise if we have consensus we can easily either revert the changes to the template and recreate the structure, or run a bot for a few days and add the categories to all 82k images. The template approach is easier but I dislike autocategorization if there is other way. But either way is fine with me. Also Martin H., the discussion here is not about any "temporary" structure but about a permanent "by collection by year" structure some of us find more useful than categories like Category:1906. I am a little confused why 99% of images in Category:Images from the German Federal Archive from 1906 are wrong: they are from Bundesarchiv and they are all clearly marked as from 1906. If you think the date is incorrect may be you can correct it? My bot was not a mind-reader and was only sorting images into categories based by date specified in the information template. --Jarekt (talk) 04:49, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
The date derived from BArch was only the first year, the correct date was not transfered. It is a terrible mess and an boring work to remove all the categories again, to correct the date (which must be done by a bot who can read the original archival description - or in my case by hand because I have not the technical knowledge to create such a bot or script). In this case of the 1906 photos the photos are all from Walther Dobbertin, a photographer in German East Africa, sorting them into a category tree of German Colonialism as a periode of time is satisfying, for most images a better by date categorization is not possible or not yet known. Categorization includes categorization by Date or time periode (German colonialism, pre WWI), location if possible, subject like animals, special buildings, ethnic groups,... In fact the subject categorization is poor for this images but the by date categorization for this images was already done! The addition of a new by date category takes all efforts done so far for a ride or is some kind of job creation program. And again: Temporary categorization is a good idea to finally include the images to the date categories. The date categorization was "catalyzed" by the BArch images, it was something we not did before this upload so consequently. But a permanent source category tree is unwanted. This is Wikimedia Commons, we have our own category tree, this is not the Bundesarchiv database or a mirror of it. --Martin H. (talk) 16:01, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Martin, I will be happy to help with some bot edits. If there is a need we could create some page coordinating those. However my AWB bot would not be able to access BArch database. --Jarekt (talk) 18:59, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Personally I prefer autocategorized for categorizing collections (most collection category are template based). If Multichill finds another way, I'd be interested in seeing it implemented. That corrections are needed isn't really an argument against it.
IMHO, suggesting people use search instead or discourage them to work on categorizing images aren't arguments relevant to the discussion. -- User:Docu at 08:09, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Dear IP could you explain why the BA-images are something special and should thus not be mixed with imgaes from other sources? Cheers --Cwbm (commons) (talk) 16:33, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

They are special because it's a collection of 100,000 photos! It's not easy to sort through 100,000 photos without some sort of internal categorization, especially since it is not possible on Commons to view intersections of categories. This dogmatic insistence that certain types of intersection categories are simply not allowed on Commons is ridiculous, and Multichill's insistance on enforcing this "regulation" is draconian and against consensus. I had the same issue with Wikipedia Loves Art. We needed internal categorization to sort the 5,000 photos into groups by museum. Even though everyone agreed this was necessary, at least until they could be hand-sorted into museum-specific categories like "Sculptures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art", Multichill insisted on deleting the categories so that no one could figure out which photos were related to which museums without going through 5,000 photos by hand. For extremely large collections of photographs, intersection categories should be allowed, at least until hand-sorting is completed. Kaldari (talk) 18:38, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
I would not call it a collection, but still, why do files have to be treated different if they come from a specific source? --Cwbm (commons) (talk) 07:36, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
@Cwbm - Nobody here insists on not "not mixing with images from other sources" that is still the key goal. The discussion is about categories allowing you to brouse a single collection of images often in order to organize it better. --Jarekt (talk) 18:53, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
But why then you want to mix the files don't you add regular year categories? --Cwbm (commons) (talk) 07:36, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
What is special about images from different sources is that they are all different. Templates are different, subject is different, time period is different, problems with descriptions are different. That is why it is easier to categorize them separately and this is why people like to browse them separatly --Jarekt (talk) 02:39, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
There are several other collections that can be browsed chronologically. I don't see why people go to such lengths to break this here. Besides that, the problem with the import Martin raised needs to be fixed eventually. -- User:Docu at 05:42, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
@Docu: Example or lie. @Jarekt: Apart from the tautology, files tagged with {{PD-USGov}} also form a collection according to the reasoning in this thread. Nobody has every asked to implement a category system by year for these files although there are at least as many of them. --Cwbm (commons) (talk) 06:52, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 Comment Isn't it possible to do categorization work on a private wiki? Paradoctor (talk) 19:11, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Since cat:s such as Category:19th century European art in the Honolulu Academy of Arts seem uncontroversial, I don't see why some resist cat:ting Bundesarchiv images by date. In any case, I had understood that the principle had been generally accepted - the question was how best technically to achieve the categorisation. Man vyi (talk) 10:43, 31 January 2010 (UTC)


So lets talk about how to add Bundesarchiv images by date. As I already mentioned above I see only 2 ways, but there might be other approaches. Please add your comments next to each:

1) By template - just undo parts of this edit and we are done.

 Support although, I and other people do not like using autocategorization for non-maintenance categories, on the other hand this approach would be fast and easy to maintain. --Jarekt (talk) 15:14, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

2) By adding regular category to each image

 Support I (or someone else) would run a bot for a couple days and add the categories to all 82k images. I thought that what we agree to in one of the frequent discussions on the subject; however when I started adding categories I was blocked for "Vandalism" --Jarekt (talk) 15:14, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

3) Is there third way?

--Jarekt (talk) 15:14, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I would prefer if you could answer my question. --Cwbm (commons) (talk) 15:59, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Here is the solution I would like to see implemented:
  1. Revert Multichill's edit to the template so that all of the Bundesarchiv images are auto-assigned to categories like "Category:Images from the German Federal Archive, year 1943". Make all of these categories hidden. This way you can use the categories to find things within the collection, but it won't intrude on the "official" categorization.
  2. Run a bot to manually assign year categories to all the Bundesarchiv images, so that each image belongs to a category like "Category:1943".
This should satisfy both goals. Kaldari (talk) 01:01, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
That would be fine with me. It might not work for the 68.144.162.78 who might have to get an account to see hidden categories ;) --Jarekt (talk) 02:39, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Since I hear no additional comments (for or against) I will go ahead and implement Kaldari solution. --Jarekt (talk) 12:50, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

What happened to artlibre?

Is this a temporary problem? http://artlibre.org/ is down? -- smial (talk) 10:21, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Looks like they most likely exceeded their monthly traffic quota. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:31, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Yep, back up now. Kaldari (talk) 23:33, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Geograph upload

Geograph image

Hi everyone, you might have noticed the recent increase of images (we passed the 6 million marker this afternoon), this is because I'm uploading almost 250.000 images from http://www.geograph.co.uk. This should significantly increase our coverage of the British Isles (United Kingdom, Ireland and the Isle of Man). Every image contains the location. The images are categorized by a bot based on this location. Each image at Geograph contains a topic. This topic is used to find correct categories here. Location and topic are combined to find even better categories. This worked for most images, I just have to recheck some images which got categorized into a main category (categories on this list, probably because the location tool was down). More information at Commons:Batch uploading/Geograph. How can you help?

  • Help check the categories at yesterdays and todays uploads.
  • A lot of categories were created prior to this upload. Help populate these categories
  • Help diffuse crowded categories to it's subcategories (for example Category:England).
  • Use the images at Wikipedia!

Multichill (talk) 20:05, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Disappearing images technical issue

I uploaded File:24th amendment ratification.svg on January 20th. Mysteriously enough, when I went to the article it was linked in, it had entirely disappeared today (not sure the date it actually disappeared). The image description file was still there, but no image, and nothing in the deletion log either. The entire record of my upload was gone (but not, strangely enough, for a similar image I uploaded at the same time - File:27th amendment ratification.svg). Now, I re-uploaded the file, but what's going on here?! This a known issue? I can't think a reversion to an old database or the like happened because I know I saw it in the days afterward... it seems very bad if images randomly disappear from Commons. SnowFire (talk) 00:57, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I reported similar case Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2010Jan#Missing_images here the very experienced uploader was positive the images were there after upload and disappeared latter. He did not have the images anymore and requested a deletion --Jarekt (talk) 02:02, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki software not displaying licensing information correctly?

On the {{Self}} template, it seems that the licensing information is not being displayed correctly. Instead, it shows some weird text (such as "<wm-license-cc-by-sa-3.0-text>"), which doesn't seem normal to me. --Ixfd64 (talk) 03:26, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Its not the self template, its something with all cc-by-sa and cc-by templates. I suspect Template:cc-by-layout and Template:cc-by-sa-layout? --Martin H. (talk) 04:30, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
Looks like someone broke the WikimediaLicenseTexts extension. I Will look into it. Multichill (talk) 05:32, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
Note that this problem obviously only exists for English. All other languages I checked display fine. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 07:41, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
It's fixed. Multichill (talk) 08:01, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Incomplete deletion requests - missing subpage

Hello,

I uploaded a picture, File:Pompe pistons axiaux camion en pieces.JPG, and it was automatically categorised Incomplete deletion requests - missing subpage. I don't see anything about it in the history, and I wonder what I could have done wrong. Any help page about it?

Cdang (talk) 08:10, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Apparently {{d}} redirects to {{delete}}. I fixed it in this edit. :-) Killiondude (talk) 08:19, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
Got it! I mistakedly wrote « d » instead of « da ». Thanks a lot.
Cdang (talk) 08:27, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

How to extract image with metadata from pdf

How does one extract an image from a pdf and still have that image retain its original metadata(if it had any)? I'd like to be able to upload as original an image as possible.Smallman12q (talk) 02:21, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Download the "xpdf" package, which includes the "pdfimages" command-line utility program. The version I have works great for embedded JPEG's, not sure about other formats. AnonMoos (talk) 04:30, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
Well I got it to work...but it doesn't seem to give the original metadata...am I doing something wrong? Or is it not possible to get the original metadata (such as date created/modified) from an image in a pdf?Smallman12q (talk) 13:44, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
It can only extract what is included in the PDF. If you mean EXIF data within the JPEG stream, then I'm not certain whether that's compatible with JPEGs embedded within a PDF. External metadata (such as the file creation date recorded by the filesystem) will definitely be lost. The great advantage of "pdfimages" is that it gets the embedded JPEG image data losslessly (so without generation loss). AnonMoos (talk) 20:17, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
If you have Adobe Acrobat Professional you can also go to Advanced > Document Processing > Export All Images... in the menubar. I have no idea if this preserves metadata (I imagine metadata would be striped from images during the PDF optimatization process when it is saved), but it is also lossless, like pdfimages. Kaldari (talk) 22:38, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
Thats the methode (Adobe professional 7.0) I used for Category:Ioannis Kupezky, incomparabilis artificis, Imagines et picturae... and others, its great because you have all images numbered after the extraction and you can simply handle them with batch renaming and go for upload. The images not contain any metadata. --Martin H. (talk) 23:02, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
Ye I've done that with acrobat pro...but it doesn't preserve the metadata. Do images in pdfs have metadata/exif data such as creation date? Or is that exif/metadata stripped when an image is added to a pdf?Smallman12q (talk) 23:16, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

WikiExpedition 2010

Hi. In this year, because of Wikimania in Gdańsk, we would like to organize expedition around voivodeship pomorskie and invite wikimedians from Commons :)) 1st - 7th July - just before Wikimania 2010 conference. More about this event: pl:chapter:Wikiekspedycja 2010/en. See also Taking a WikiExpedition on the blog of pfctdayelise. Przykuta (talk) 09:08, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Great idea.
I will begin by translating this page in french ;) Cdlt, VIGNERON * discut. 15:59, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The U.S. National Archives joins the Commons!

Just to let everybody know. See: Flickr.--JotaCartas (talk) 17:03, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

What I'm wondering is, is this new material that hasn't been made available online before, or is it all already available from the National Archives website? 01:30, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Much of the material was already available it seems, as we already have many of these images on Commons. Kaldari (talk) 20:34, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

February 3

picture quality after uploading

Hi. I've just uploaded this picture File:Diabetic nephropathy.jpg and it looks like it has been damaged after uploading. Can you help me? Thanks, --Doc.mari (talk) 19:34, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Please try uploading again over the old image via the Upload a new version of this file link --Justass (talk) 19:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
It works! Thank you --Doc.mari (talk) 20:02, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Image requests

So, I'm really into flags, and I've uploaded quite a few myself. However, I dont have the skills for SVG. Is there a place on here where I can make formal requests for png/gif flags to be redone in SVG? I think it's the Illustration workshop in the Graphics Lab School, but I'm just double-checking. Also, can I make requests there for flags from other sites(such as FOTW) I'd like to see uploaded to the Commons in SVG? Fry1989 (talk) 22:17, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Post your requests at Commons:Graphic_Lab/Illustration_workshop. As for the flags currently not present in Commons make sure those symbols are covered by local country exemptions from copyrights or in the public domain due to age. More information about specific country exemptions can be found Commons:Copyright tags --Justass (talk) 22:26, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! As for the ones I'd like to see uploaded, after I've checked that out, do I make the requests for them in the same place? Fry1989 (talk) 23:08, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

February 4

Can anyone see why Flickr2Commons won't take this one?

Resolved

[17]. I want to upload it to File:Seattle - Third Avenue between Pine and Union, 1911.gif. Flickr2Commons says

Unsuitable license : <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <rsp stat="fail"> <err code="1" msg="Photo "?addedcomment=1" not found (invalid ID)" /> </rsp>

Doesn't make sense to me. It is under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic, which as far as I know should be fine. Am I missing something? I've uploaded a lot of other files from this same source (Seattle Municipal Archives on Flickr). - Jmabel ! talk 00:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Because the URL you give is not "clean" : trim the ?addedcomment=1#comment72157623346397648 and keep only http://www.flickr.com/photos/seattlemunicipalarchives/4304953210/ : Ta-Da!
Alternatively, the Flickr Web Tools have no problems with finding their way with URLs. You may want to try those. Jean-Fred (talk) 00:44, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
Ah! No good deed goes unpunished. I was adding comments there. - Jmabel ! talk 00:46, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
And now Toolserver.org is crapping out entirely. But I assume that is temporary. - Jmabel ! talk 00:55, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

w:Wikipedia:Management of Commons content

This is why people don't like enwiki. :-/ Anyways, I'm just posting this here in case anyone was interested. I'm not sure that many people will agree with it, but there's some discussion on the talk page. I think that the author(s) may not understand some aspects of Commons very well. Killiondude (talk) 08:04, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Isn't April 1 two months away? -- User:Docu at 08:50, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
Don't worry, that proposal is not going anywhere. Paradoctor (talk) 09:56, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
It didn't go anywhere. The proposal has just been rejected Belgrano (talk) 01:49, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Re this previous version
From a Commons' perspective, we should probably like it. This might leave a lot of endless "blocking content" debates over there, at enwiki ;) -- User:Docu at 13:03, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, it would free time we can use for categorization debates. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 13:39, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Amateur cinema

Hi everyone. Shouldn't we create a Category:Amateur cinema for pictures like this one? What do you think? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 14:01, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Could be. Is it even within scope? - Jmabel ! talk 01:09, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Well it could be for 2 reasons: 1) it may simply illustrate amateur cinema! 2) soimetimes Wikimedia users upload that kind of pictures to illustrate their profiles (I know at least one case). --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 16:50, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Reuse without attribution

As this discussion mentions someone on Italian e-bay is selling free Hugin software and using images from commons for advertising. So far there are no problems here however they do it without of proper attribution required by licenses. The images in question are :

I think we could use help from italian (I think) speaker to inform e-bay Power Seller cashgangnet about evil of his/her ways. --Jarekt (talk) 15:01, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

cashgangnet claims to be in UK and speak English and German on his info page, I don't believe he's italian. -- IANEZZ  (talk) 20:22, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

February 5

Let's do better

Sadly not all users have good experiences with Commons. They therefore contribute less or not at all and in worst case they go to a Wiki somewhere and tell others how bad Commons is. Obvious that is not something we wish for.

We can all help by talking nice to contributors/users and offer our help. But with all those edits made on Commons and in different languages it is impossible to avoid that some get a bad experience.

Perhaps we could look at the templates we use and make them easier to understand or just more friendly. I noticed that {{Image source}} did not start with "Thank you...". It is not a big thing but to some it may make a difference.

I’m sure it has been tried before to make Commons more friendly but can we please try again? I hope that you will help by

  1. acting if you notice a template that could be improved
  2. telling other users if they do something that is good (everyone likes to be appreciated)
  3. but also telling other users what/how they could do things better
  4. thinking twice if a notice via template is the best or if a "manual" notice is better
  5. whatever you have of good ideas

I know I could do better. There is pleanty of space on my talk page for ideas but before you yell at me please tell two other users what a good work they have done. --MGA73 (talk) 11:42, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Today in images

I have restarted an old conversation at Talk:Main Page#Today in images redux about a templated daily showcase, with User:BanyanTree/Tii Main page mockup being the top of my sandbox chain. Comments are welcome. Fixes from code wizards who understand the markup I copy-pasted, badly, are also appreciated. ;) Thanks, BanyanTree 11:46, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Currently default search results don't include creator namespace (namespace number 100). As creator templates can include alternate names, I think it should be activated for all users. -- User:Docu at 09:28, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I would second that. --Jarekt (talk) 14:02, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I agree. - Jmabel ! talk 01:08, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Ok, I made a request at bugzilla:22404. -- User:Docu at 10:21, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Commons helper

I can't imagene any think more unuseful that this tool. Only sometimes is operative, and by TUSC I never can. Then it's need to load a local copy for load images in Commons. For this, commons helper is not need. Better supress it, I have the sensation to be deceived.

I believe that this happen because the english wikipedia want to have the exclusive use of the images and don't want share them with others projects (near one milion images, 90% in public domain, are in englis wikipedia and not availables for the others projects) and is boytcotting the easy move of images. --jolle (talk) 18:00, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I've used CommonsHelper in the past and it has worked fine. However, I have also encountered problems with it. I think this is just a transient server problem, and has nothing to do with English Wikipedia wanting exclusive use of its images. (What purpose would that serve?) If CommonsHelper doesn't work, try CommonsHelper2. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 18:31, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I assure you that the English Wikipedia is not nearly well enough organized to engage in a conspiracy. - Jmabel ! talk 18:52, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I use Commonshelper, with TUSC, regularly off both WP and WS without any issue. Further than that there is specific efforts from enWP to get the articles moved to Commons. So there is no conspiracy, it may just be a setup issue at your end. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:25, 5 February 2010 (UTC) + followup ...
Yesterday's example File:Francis Turner Palgrave.jpg
The bot at work

Proposal: Approaching FireShot about an upload functionality to Commons

I have been using FireShot firefox plugin to take screenshots of public domain works to upload to Commons (most of these are derivative works of large .djvu works already loaded here). It is very convenient, and has an upload feature, just not to Commons. I was thinking of approaching the developer to see if he was interested in having his software have the ability to upload to Commons using the upload API (obviously the user will have to provide their credentials to Commons).

Before I do that, I was seeking the communities POV/opinion for this move. billinghurst sDrewth 23:52, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

February 6

Problems when uploading djvu

Hi! When i try to upload this file: http://www.archive.org/details/tolkovyslovarzhi04dalvuoft (dejavu version 69MB), it's start uploading without errors, upload for a few minuts and in the end it's stops with a white page (with this in address: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&action=submit), and the file it's not uploaded. I do something wrong? I use Firefox 3.6 and i try to do this with standard upload form (web interface). --Grenadine (talk) 00:39, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

With PDF it's works: File:Dal slovar 1912 4.pdf. May be this dejavu file was corrupted? But i tried two different dejavu files and it's not uploaded, may be it's just problem with dejavu format in wiki engine? --Grenadine (talk) 01:38, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
UPD: I've tried to reupload one by one the 4 volums of a Dal dictionary in DJVU, but it's still not work. Can i see the "raw" log of uploads somewhere? With client and servers sides response? Or can i contact someone who has this log? --Grenadine (talk) 11:22, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

File:USS Washington BB-56.jpg

Is this image displaying wrong for anyone else? —Ed (talk • contribs) 04:26, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Looks fine. Paradoctor (talk) 04:43, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Hmm, same here now. Thanks anyway. :) —Ed (talk • contribs) 06:51, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

File:Zardari.gif

Is this encylopedic? If so why the dog? Railwayfan2005 (talk) 16:09, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that seems like a mild form of vandalism. The Zardari photo would be encyclopedic of course, but making it an animated gif with the separate image of the dog in there... seems a bit silly. We already have that crop of the Zardari photo in better quality at File:Asif Ali Zardari.jpg, so there is no need for this one at all. I think it should just be deleted. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:15, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
This image is trash and not ok. The original version File:Bush and Zardari 2008-9-23.jpg comes with many extracted versions, so no need for this childish animated gif. --Martin H. (talk) 16:56, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Please some one fix that image above. The image you click on goes to another image not the one shown on this page. --JustinFrancis (talk) 16:19, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Thats what the whole posting was about. --Martin H. (talk) 16:56, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

February 7

Argh duplicate batch upload

I decided today to upload ~60 images from http://www.birdseyeviews.org just to discover after I finished that someone else got the idea first and they were all duplicates and had to be deleted (with the exception of ~5 or so where my versions were technically superior). I didn't stumble across these until I went to add the images into articles. In retrospect I could've caught this if I'd just looked a little bit harder - e.g. a Google site search for the URL would have turned it up, or if I looked at some of the articles of the cities depicted on En. Server-side dup detection for JPEGs of the same image would be nice, although I realise this is nontrivial. I guess all I'm saying here is we've gotten to the point where you can no longer assume nobody else has done that batch upload you're thinking of, so be careful! Dcoetzee (talk) 09:41, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Rocket000 once requested to simply technically forbid the uploading of duplicates. I can't find the bug at the moment, but I believe that this is long overdue. --The Evil Public Computer (talk) 17:44, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
I can't find the bug either. Are you sure it exists? Kaldari (talk) 18:25, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Always do dupe checking in your batch uploads. Calculate the SHA1 hash of the image you want to upload and ask the api if it already exists. BTW, please update your projects at Commons:Batch uploading. Multichill (talk) 20:54, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
To save others reading this the search: mw:API:Query - Lists#allimages / ai. Paradoctor (talk) 22:26, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the link! Kaldari (talk) 03:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Hash checking is insufficient for a case like this, because different users use different tools to do a Zoomify rip, resulting in visually similar but distinct files. Like I said, dup checking of JPEGs is a nontrivial problem... we'd need new technology like the database algorithms used by Tineye. Dcoetzee (talk) 12:29, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't think duplicates should be forbidden in all cases. In the past I have uploaded the same range map for more than one species with identical ranges according to the sources I found. But the sources used to construct the range maps were different. Several images ended up being deleted as duplicates and now the data about how the maps were constructed is lost. Mangostar (talk) 00:38, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Tab skipping edit summary field for logged in users

When I'm logged in and edit a page and then hit tab repeatedly to move the cursor to the edit summary box, it visits the links in the "By submitting an edit..." message (which it should not do) and skips the edit summary edit box and does not stop in it. This is a serious accessibility problem for people who are unable to use mice. It reproduces in Firefox 3.5.7 and IE 8. I mention it here because it does not reproduce on En wiki. Any idea what's going on? Could this be an issue with my monobook.js? Dcoetzee (talk) 02:58, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Works for me. Maybe a corrupted cache? You could try to purge and reload. Paradoctor (talk) 03:48, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
It's likely a result of the recent Babaco interface "enhancements". See en:Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Edit box & monospace style changes. Until the Usability group fixes it, go to Special:Preferences -> Editing tab -> Experimental section at the bottom and make sure the three experimental features are turned off. - BanyanTree 04:25, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Works fine for me in FF 3.5.7 — billinghurst sDrewth 05:34, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Both the edit textfield and the summary field have a "tabindex=1". I think this has been fixed in trunk: r62022. It is not yet fixed in the version that we are running. Incidentally, the problem appears to manifest itself only with the experimental usability stuff turned on. I don't have it turned on, and I don't have this problem. Lupo 12:06, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

File:Gefüllte Magnetwand.jpg

Isn't that a case of duplicate? Or is there an exception I am not aware of? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 16:25, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean a derivative work? Well it is, but perhaps the individual images are so small as to be de minimis. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 18:32, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Yeah that's what I meant. Sorry for this vocabulary problem ;-) --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 06:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

3-view drawings

I am unclear as to the copyright status of line drawings of 3-D objects like cars, aircraft, tanks, etc. These are often presented with 3 views from different angles. Don't they belong to whoever drew them? Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:59, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, drawings are always copyrighted (both 2-D and 3-D) unless they are trivial works (e.g. a couple of straight lines or basic shapes). Rocket000 (talk) 00:07, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Tool to download content of category

I think will be good to have tool to download full resolution content of category/gallery in one click. It there is tool exist already, will be good idea to add link into category/gallery toolbox. Especially useful for books scanned by pages. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:57, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, though in a lot of cases, this tool also needs to be able to give people the neecessary licensing information, like licensing, attribution or credit lines. Otherwise, the downloaders aren't able to properly reuse the files. This might be done by creating a separate text document which contains necessary licensing infos. --The Evil IP address (talk) 21:07, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Depending on the format, it could just append licensing, categories, attribution, etc. to the file's exif. -- User:Docu at 23:29, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Watermarks in images from The Bugwood Network at the University of Georgia

Hi!

I was wondering if it the watermarks of these images should be removed? I am unsure if it makes sense and if it is wanted. If yes, I would be looking for some volunteer helpers if no, could someone remove the watermark tags? Thanxs! --Amada44 (talk) 20:43, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

The UGA**** number is mentioned in file name and in description (a link to source), so IMO, it is ok and would be appreciated if someone remove all watermarks, but please request it at Commons:Graphic Lab/Photography workshop.   ■ MMXX  talk  23:26, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes they should - we never accept watermarks in images (nor do we accept any image under a license that would prevent us from removing them). I've tried my best to get non-watermarked images directly from the source, but haven't heard back from them. Dcoetzee (talk) 08:06, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

okay, I just wasn't sure because the watermarks look so "official" . Then I have an other question related to that. I have removed watermarks of about 100 pics. (Lots of them are on the first page of Images_with_watermarks - the b/w goolge scans) Is there a way of uploading/replacing them automatically? To make it even more complicated: Some of the originals were jpegs, some png. I have saved them all as png (because they are b/w pics of text -google scans). So basically one would need to check if the original is a png, if yes, replace it, if no, upload the png and delete the jpeg??? Thanxs for the help! --Amada44 (talk) 09:30, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

There is no easy way that I know to do reupload of large number of files overrighting existing files. You should be use Commonist or some other upload tool and in the past I was able to use commonist to reupload images over existing ones but lately it was not working for me (see User:Jarekt/gallery#Sat_Feb_06_18:10:18_EST_2010). Even when it worked the commonist was asking with each image if I am sure I want to overwrite existing file, since the program did not have "Yes to all" option. Your case might be easier upload PNG and add {{Superseded}} to the old jpeg files. --Jarekt (talk)

February 8

"Free catalog"?

Do you think this picture is really free? And what about this one? What do you think? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 06:31, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

These are both copyright violations and need to be deleted. The first one had a tag regarding its status which was removed by the uploader, who clearly has no idea what "public domain" means. Dcoetzee (talk) 08:05, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
OK. I added speedy deletion templates. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 11:17, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Are those pictures really free?

Hi everyone. There's a Flickr user called Shine 2010 - 2010 World Cup good news (apparently linked to shine2010.co.za website) who offers many CC-BY pictures of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. But I am a bit skeptikal since it's written "Photo by 2010 FIFA World Cup Organising Committee South Africa" under each picture and I really doubt the FIFA would authorize such a non-lucrative use of those pictures. What do you think? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 17:21, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Bad Unexperienced --Martin H. (talk) 13:11, 3 February 2010 (UTC) flickr user. E.g. http://www.flickr.com/photos/shine2010/4294359825/ is credited to FIFA World Cup Organising Committee South Africa (OC), in fact it is simply take from http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/news/newsid=1162958.html#maradona+i+will+experiment where it is credited to Getty images. First idea: This flickr stream only collection images from the OC with wrong credit to them instead of the original source and without beeing able to license the content themself or getting a licensing from the OC becaue per the terms of Getty etc they have licenses for theire use but they are not able to transfer this license or sublicense the content. --Martin H. (talk) 17:31, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
I think Shine 2010 tread licensing very "liberally". From 69 images with compatible CC license in the photostream most credited with FIFA, and other part are Adidas balls that can be fount all over the web [18] --Justass (talk) 17:39, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
I wrote them. --Martin H. (talk) 17:49, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
And a note: Im unsure about File:Moses Mabhida Durban Stadium.jpg. But if this is not from somewhere else it wouldnt be possible for another flickr user (who is also not the creator) to upload the same image 2 weeks before. So the doubt applies to all images from shine2010. --Martin H. (talk) 18:10, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Who in fact is the creator / photographer? -- smial (talk) 20:10, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
I not found out so far, just try to determine if everything from this flickr account is bad or only some parts. --Martin H. (talk) 22:42, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Can you inform me if you have the confirmation that it's OK? Thanks. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 20:41, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
The stadium photo can also be found here (uploaded two days prior to the earlier Flickr one). And, that is likely not the original source either, but I think the licensing is bogus on it. Now... this "shine 2010" seems to be a world cup news/blog site, and some of the pictures on the Flickr stream do seem to be from people reporting for the site (such as some from this story). I would agree the FIFA ones need the license to come from FIFA itself, and should be deleted otherwise. Definitely a dodgy Flickr user, or at least one who takes images from other sources and does not take care to mark them "all rights reserved", but they may well also post their own original photos too. Tough case for some of them, but a bunch need to go I think. Carl Lindberg (talk) 07:24, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I had a kind answer today: Most of the images are created by them (80%), some are taken from press material (20%), received from various stakeholders in the 2010 World Cup production with the aim of publication - sources such as http://images.2010oc.com/. On request by another Wikipedia user some images changed to cc-by. --End Message-- I assume: Most of the images means images uploaded before December 6, thats http://www.flickr.com/photos/shine2010/page4/ at the moment, for most of the later images we have evidences that they are from elsewhere. From the cc-by licensed images uploaded before December 5 the Durban aerial remains questionable as it was uploaded by others, without any relation to that site, days or weeks before. Also in answer to Carls comment: the license need to come from the licensor, thats not FIFA as they use the images, judging from the default contract, under a non-exclusive, non-transferable license (often also restricted in purpose of use) from e.g. Getty. --Martin H. (talk) 17:39, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay. Some of the images have "Photo by 2010 FIFA World Cup Organising Committee South Africa" which seemed to indicate that FIFA themselves were the authors/copyright owners, which is why I said that. If any are from Getty or other agency, then yes obviously permission must come from them or even maybe the original photographers (not too likely). I still have not been able to find the source for the aerial shot, but it is definitely dubious. Getty has a bunch of aerial shots which look similar but they are from January 2010, and not the same flyover. The 2010oc.com site has some from a still different flyover, where the copyright is explicitly claimed by "2010 FIFA World Cup Organising Committee South Africa". But yes, it sounds like they were careless with the licensing statements for the 20% of images obtained elsewhere (and the aerial view certainly looks to be one of those). Carl Lindberg (talk) 18:16, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I already checked those aerials on getty carefully, the are all taken later. The aearials at the source [19] I named above are also to recent. --Martin H. (talk) 22:20, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Next update: The contact says, they updated the licensing according to their rights. I dont think thats entirely correct e.g. for the still questionable durban stadium we already talked about and the Adidas images (this set) which are clearly not theirs but still licensed cc-by. However, I think that this is a good source now starting with their >January 2010 uploads. What will we do with the Durban Stadium image on Commons? --Martin H. (talk) 13:11, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The only source we have for a free license is clearly not the original source. Without finding the true source I don't think it should be speedied, but it probably should be nominated for deletion. Usually those images aren't available at full resolution with metadata intact, whereas this one is, but that can't be used as an indicator of anything right now since the cc-by source is not the original source, and they are known to have been a little careless with the licenses attached to images they did not take. You could always ask them about that one specifically; maybe they could point us to the actual source. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:01, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
I get more and more confused... What may we upload then? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 20:12, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
Images where it is reasonably certain that the uploading group is the author, and have licensed. If that group is republishing images from elsewhere, as appears to be for that aerial shot, then they do not have the rights to place the license on the file in the first place. But for any image where they *are* the author, which it sounds like is the case for 80% or so of the images in that Flickr account, then any image they place the CC-BY or CC-BY-SA license on is fine to upload. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:09, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
So those ones, for instance, can't be uploaded on Commons. Am I right? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 17:11, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Right. They have fixed the license on many of them, but not all. Several on that page are marked "Photo by Lefty Shivambu / Gallo Images / 2010 FIFA World Cup Organising Committee South Africa" but still have the CC-BY license. Carl Lindberg (talk) 00:41, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Can a bot generate a list of images which are in some categories but not others?

I would like to clean up Category:Maps by century shown, Category:Maps showing history by region and Category:Maps showing history by language. One of the main problems, however, is that many maps are simply not listed in their structure. Checking them all one by one is time consuming; but I think a bot could easily list all images in the Category:Maps that are not in any of the above three categories and it subcategories. Would anybody know which bot could do that? I am familiar with User:Mathbot on en wiki, which could generate a list of pages that where in a given category but not listed on a given page. If we don't have a bot for this task, I'd assume it would be easy to design it based on Mathbot existing functionality. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 02:49, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

It is not completely what you are asking, but part of the clean up is possible by starting at Category:media needing category review and make a categoryintersect catscan with one of the categories you want to clean up; best is to do it in parts: see f.i. http://toolserver.org/~daniel/WikiSense/CategoryIntersect.php?wikifam=commons.wikimedia.org&basecat=Media_needing_category_review_with_4_suggested_categories&basedeep=3&mode=cs&tagcat=Maps&tagdeep=4&go=Scan&format=html&userlang=nl

or a smaller list : http://toolserver.org/~daniel/WikiSense/CategoryIntersect.php?wikifam=commons.wikimedia.org&basecat=Media_needing_category_review_with_4_suggested_categories&basedeep=3&mode=cs&tagcat=Maps+by+century+shown&tagdeep=4&go=Scan&format=html&userlang=nl Yet another one, etc.: http://toolserver.org/~daniel/WikiSense/CategoryIntersect.php?wikifam=commons.wikimedia.org&basecat=Media_needing_category_review_with_5_suggested_categories&basedeep=3&mode=cs&tagcat=Maps&tagdeep=4&go=Scan&format=html&userlang=nl--Havang(nl) (talk) 09:38, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll look at those soon. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:41, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Commons consensus

Would you review and tell me what you think of the conclusion to make from the discussion at Categories for discussion/Some of categories "by alphabet"?

The discussion was about a proposal by ŠJů to rename a series of categories from "[..] by alphabet" to "[..] by name" (many are already named "[..] by name". This was supported by 6 users. 4 users supported standardization in either way without a preference for one solution. 1 user suggested to delete it. 1 user suggested to use "[..] names" instead (a proposal that didn't find any supporting votes).

I closed the debate with the conclusion to rename the categories and renamed some of them already. Is there sufficient consensus for such a conclusion? Should it be taken in account that one user "vehemently opposes" or vetoes the change? -- User:Docu at 13:41, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes there is a consensus, I think, and I vote for "by name" too if that helps. Otherwise it should be "by alphabets" since we use multiple alphabets here and mix them together. Rocket000 (talk) 00:12, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
I agree with that decision too, even if I didn't participate to the discussion. Docu, I suppose you have "asked" a bot to move the articles from Category:People by alphabet to Category:People by name and that's why you made this edit, right? Do you plan to move the content of the cat page too or someone lese has to do it? — Xavier, 01:55, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Not yet. The problem with that category is that it's fairly large and probably includes a few template categories like the one you mention. These all need to be identified. Sometimes these take an eternity to update. Even if we finally agree that it should be moved it will take some time. -- User:Docu at 11:52, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for your feedback. I will restore the corresponding update to Commons:Categories. -- User:Docu at 11:52, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Are they majorettes?

On File:Mardi Gras parade 2008.jpg, is it majorettes? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 08:48, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

What is the relevance of this question? Are you deciding what category to add the image to? I think it may depend on where the photograph was taken. Majorette seems like a term largely used in the US. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 11:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes this was for better categorizing. It was taken during a parade in New Orleans. But the girls don't have any stick so I was wondering if they were really majorettes... --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 12:00, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Hard to say. They could just be a drill team, but the outfits are more like traditional majorette outfits than traditional drill team outfits. - Jmabel ! talk 05:30, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Two bugs

  1. Few month ago, I corrected translation of this map (Медитеранско море (Mediterranean see)) -> Средоземно море), but article Italy still shows version as of 6 March 2008
  2. Picture File:Cubura.jpg here is shown correctly (after a bot rotated it), but on Serbian Wikipedia is (erroneously) rotated. -- Bojan  Talk  04:01, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Try purging your browser's cache. It work for me on the first one, but not the second. They both look right now. Rocket000 (talk) 05:30, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. The problems were persistent during last few months, even when I was logged in on different computers. -- Bojan  Talk  06:17, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, the out-dated cache wasn't on your end. All it took was someone to ask the servers to rebuild the image page (attaching ?action=purge to the url). Rocket000 (talk) 06:55, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Something strange

Does anyone else have a problem with File:Great Moravia not cropped, eng labels.svg, I can't see the map but do see the warning "This file may contain malicious code, by executing it your system may be compromised." can this be true or even possible, or is it just a hoax? Can someone with experience with svg files have a look at it, thanks.KTo288 (talk) 15:16, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I can't see the map either. But the file looks like regular SVG and is totally harmless as it is plain text. — Xavier, 01:47, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
That's actually the standard message that the Wikimedia software delivers when a file is understood to be XML of some kind, but is not understood to be SVG. I doubt that any specific test for malicious code ever occurred... AnonMoos (talk) 11:40, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the fix, and know now not to panic when I come across such a message again.KTo288 (talk) 20:44, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

artlibre.org again

Some days ago artlibre.org was down for several days. For this time all images at commons, which use the template:FAL weren't linked to the license text, because it was not available online. In a strict view this could be considered as a copyvio. I believe it is necessary to have a mirror to the license here at commons. If I look at http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/mirrors this seems to be possible and legal. -- smial (talk) 00:01, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Again something contradictory on Flickr

What can we do with pictures like this one? The Flickr user, named "World Economic Forum", uploaded it with a Commons licence but the text says "Copyright World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org)/Photo by Nader Daoud". What are we supposed to understand? I still have no understanding about what to do with the FIFA World Cup affair (see above) so what about this one? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 15:01, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Ask them directly: http://www.weforum.org/en/contact/index.htm. --Túrelio (talk) 15:04, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
I've just sent an e-mail to one of the contact they mention on the website. I hope I'll receive an answer... --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 17:20, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
There is no contradiction whatsoever. They have the copyright, and are licensing it on Creative Commons terms. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 16:05, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
(ec) Um... using a creative commons license does not mean the copyright is gone. There is nothing incorrect or incompatible about still using a copyright statement in conjunction with a CC license; in that situation only *some* rights are being given up. A copyright statement is incongruous with a public domain license or statement, but otherwise they are fine. The FIFA thing is someone uploading both their own and others' images to Flickr; they can license their own but not the others, so the CC license is not valid. If we think the "World Economic Forum" has the rights to place the license on the file, then everything seems fine. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:06, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Refer to Template:WEF, they contract or employ the photographers and have full rights to release the resulting works under Creative Commons licenses. See also en:User:World Economic Forum. Absolutely NO reason for doubt anything here. --Martin H. (talk) 19:27, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for that information. I also received an e-mail from the WEF and they confirm that again. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 14:39, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

February 9

Picture upload question

I have a question about a picture upload, and am asking here (please move the question if it is best asked somewhere else). The picture is this one. My question is whether it is OK to upload that image, and what to do about the watermark, and how to get as high a resolution image as possible. Carcharoth (Commons) (talk) 09:37, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

well the image is public domain, no? (per the advice directly below it?) - seems like it would be fine to me - what took you to the aussie war memorial, Carch? :-) Privatemusings (talk) 10:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
oh, and I'm not sure about the resolution - doesn't seem an easy way to get a higher res. to me? - and isn't it quite nice to leave the watermark in as a courtesy? If not, then you can get rid of it in GIMP, or Photoshop, or pester a friendly image type person with a spare mo. to do so for you (Durova has some advice on how best to approach her over on her en talk page, for example) best, Privatemusings (talk) 10:31, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
pps. - by 'watermark' above, I'm referring to the little logo in the bottom right of the image - is that what you mean? Privatemusings (talk) 10:38, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Even if the picture's copyright is expired in Australia, it will have to be in the public domain in the US as well if you want to upload it onto Commons. The picture is from 1930, so if I understand correctly it's only in the public domain if the copyright was not renewed by the copyright holder (link). I'm not sure how to verify that, though. Jafeluv (talk) 13:48, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
The artist was David Barker (1888-1946). It became public domain in Australia on Jan 1 1997 then. For the U.S., copyrights on foreign works were largely restored by the URAA (see en:Wikipedia:Non-U.S. copyrights), subject to certain rules (renewals etc. only apply to works first published in the U.S.). Unfortunately, that image was still in copyright in Australia in Jan 1 1996, so the U.S. copyright was restored, which will expire on Jan 1 2026 (if it was first published in 1930). Carl Lindberg (talk) 19:07, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Missed out by one year then? Ah, well. Thanks for finding out all that information and answering my question. It's much appreciated. Carcharoth (Commons) (talk) 22:06, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Technical drawings submitted to Insurance Companies in UK

I am right in interpreting File:Stalybridge Cotton Mill 1919.jpeg as {{PD-UK-unknown}}. I am claiming this technical drawing was published when it was submitted to the Insurance Company, thus being available for consultation. It was published in 1919, before the magic date of 1923- but reading the licence the date 1940 is mentioned. Is it true that other images submitted to Insurances Companies before 1939 could also uploaded? --ClemRutter (talk) 18:42, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

The 1923 date is for the U.S. copyright law part of Commons policy; it has nothing to do with PD status in the UK. For the U.S., anything still copyrighted in the UK on Jan 1 1996 got restored in the U.S., and (if published 1923 or later, and before 1978) gets a 95-year-from-publication copyright term. Thus, if something really was PD-UK-unknown, then if it was published before 1926 it would have been PD in the UK in 1996, and the U.S. copyright would not have been restored. Published 1926 or later, then it would still have a U.S. copyright. Carl Lindberg (talk) 19:21, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

February 11

I've noticed that when one uses the "Report copyright violation" feature on the left hand side, the uploader's user talk page is edited with the edit summary "Please do not upload copyright violations." I feel like this is presumptive and potentially offensive, considering that in some cases copyvios turn out not to be (e.g. the uploader was in fact the author). Could we soften this a bit, and if so where is the code for it? Is there a better place to bring this up? Thanks. Dcoetzee (talk) 01:36, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

The code is here and I agree with you. There's no need to make accusations. Just a friendly neutral notice of the deletion request is all we need. Rocket000 (talk) 02:17, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Updated at MediaWiki:Notifier.js, thanks. :-) Dcoetzee (talk) 02:43, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

A quick cat question

Hi!

Is there a difference between the cat. Category:Piquant salads and Category:Savoury salads? Or can I fuse them. Thanxs, --Amada44 (talk) 08:45, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

The two have a bit of overlap, but wikt:piquant (WP m-w) is closer to "sharp", "tart", "biting", while wikt:savory ( savor Longman m-w) leans more to the "non-sweet", "fragrant" side. E. g., chili-and-cherry chocolate is piquant, but not savory, while cheese is generally savory (though Wensleydale with cranberries isn't ;), but not necessarily piquant. Paradoctor (talk) 09:27, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Great reply! thanxs! So I would guess, that the bean salad is savory (of course it may be piquant to, depending on the amount of chilly) and the matboha salad is piquant. Looking at Category:Piquant salads I would see most of them moved to Category:Savoury salads. Amada44 (talk) 09:45, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Forgot: Due to the overlap, some salads may be appropriate for both cats, cucumber slices with onions, salt, pepper, oil and vinegar being an example. This might require case-by-case reasoning. Just great, now I'm hungry. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 09:51, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
yummy, me too! I'd rather have this though: File:Steak_03_bg_040306.jpg Amada44 (talk) 11:39, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
You can have both. This is Commons, not "Either.Org"! ^_^ Paradoctor (talk) 12:09, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Picasa review is here

I've created a project page Commons:Picasa Web Albums files, which details:

  • How to properly go about uploading media from Picasa (trickier than you think!)
  • How to set up a Picasa account for best compatibility with Commons.
  • How to review Picasa images.

I've also created a {{Picasareview}} template and corresponding set of categories analogous to {{Flickrreview}}. At present this is all manual and no bots are yet operational.

After doing this I have a new appreciation for how much Picasa Web Albums sucks for us:

  • Picasa is configured by default to upload all images at 1600 × 1200 and reduced JPEG quality.
  • Picasa provides no way to privately contact users, as far as I can see.
  • Picasa's search does not permit you to filter images to the licenses we accept (you can search for images that are not ND, or not NC, but not both at once).
  • Picasa forces users to use a single license for all their images.
  • If you click on an image in your search results and copy the URL, the resulting link will be ephemeral (not a permalink).
  • All edits applied in the Picasa software are lossy.

You get the point - it's really frustrating. In any case, any feedback on the new process appreciated! Dcoetzee (talk) 07:05, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. --Túrelio (talk) 07:08, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Do we need a separate list of "trusted users" to review these files, separate from the Flickrreviewers? Maybe we can just merge them. I should hope that somebody who knows how to check a license on Flickr would know how to find that same info on Picasa. Killiondude (talk) 07:13, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
That makes sense to me - I just forked it naively. Really the list of trusted users needs to be generalised somehow, moved to a page with a more generic name that is not a subpage of Commons:Flickr files. Dcoetzee (talk) 07:34, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Regarding the search: I dont know how it works technically, but the fist tool already includes Picasa. Also Picasa=Google, so it is fully indexed in google advanced image search allowing to search by copyright status. The license selection tool on Picasa is better than flickr, in your picasa account settings the license selection is very clear: 1) allow reuse 2) optional choice of cc modules (allow for commercial reuse, allow for modification, requires ShareAlike). Regretably many people still ignore this, Picasa is a mess of copyvios especially searching for singers, actors, e.g. For the notorius copyright-sceptics, like me, its Time to create COM:QPI similar to COM:QFI. --Martin H. (talk) 08:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Notice the warning on the fist page ("Searches for "Commercial use allowed" CC images on Picasa Web Albums CAUTION: Might contain non-remix ones!"). It's possible to filter these out but you'd have to build another front end on top of Picasa's search. I think Picasa has an okay license selector, but it's buried and they don't explain (or link to explanation of) what these terms mean, so people can make an informed decision. I agree re the copyvio mess, which is part of why we need a review process, but I'm not going to create QPI until we have enough bad eggs to make an unwieldly list on Commons talk:Picasa Web Albums files. Dcoetzee (talk) 09:46, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Update: I've now converted over about 330 570 images already reviewed under the old {{LicenseReview}} system. Dcoetzee (talk) 09:26, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Watch out for images under the account "Sotti". He has hundreds of images in his account that he is releasing under CC-by-sa, but almost none of them are his. Kaldari (talk) 18:57, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
That's already the first entry for Martin's COM:QPI page ;-). --Túrelio (talk) 20:59, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Update on this: my bot spit out a list of images that might need a picasareview tag. I also added the {{Picasareviewunnecessary}} tag for the ones that don't need it. 00:38, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Template De minimis ?

Hi everyone. Shouldn't we create a template {{De minimis}} which we could add to pictures that are concerned by the de minimis rule? A bit like what we have for FOP templates. What do you think? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 20:22, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

This might be useful in some cases (like if an image survives deletion because of de minimis) but it's got a sort of irony to it: elements are de minimis precisely because they are minor elements and attention is not drawn to them. It seems odd to point things out because they're insignificant. :-) Dcoetzee (talk) 05:49, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
I think it might be useful to warn users that a crop of such a picture could be a problem, as it's actually explained in {{FoP-France}}: Framing this image to focus on the copyrighted work is [...] a copyright violation. I thought that when I found this picture (soon deleted because I added a speedy deletion template) which is (or was if it's deleted before anyone can see it) a crop of File:Pathe Spui The Hague (Sideview).jpg (which I'm actually not sure de minimis may apply but it's just an example). --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 14:35, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
I support this idea. Remembering of template:FoP-France, my first thought was that this template already existed but apparently it doesn't. Such a template could save innocent users a lot of frustration. — Xavier, 23:15, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Hmm, when you put it that way this does sound like a good idea. It would also be useful information for potential reusers of images to keep in mind. Of course this could apply to many images, but we'd only add the tag to the more obvious or problematic. I'd suggest wording something like the following:
"This work contains one or more non-free copyrighted works that are incidental to the overall subject-matter of the photograph. A crop or frame that focuses on one of these non-free works may constitute a copyright violation."
What do you think? I was thinking of adding something like "This message is a warning and its absence should not be interpreted as a license to reframe an image indiscriminately," but I'm less sure about that part. Dcoetzee (talk) 23:42, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Actually I'd support renaming template:FoP-France to template:De minimis and adapting it to the context so the explanation stay concordant... I mean De minimis is the reason that images using Fop-France are usually kept... Esby (talk) 00:00, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

February 10

advice on a centralised discusison

G'day all - I hope I'm not showing embarrassing ignorance here (or at least, not more than usual) - but do we have anything like a 'requests for comment' system? - I'm thinking of trying to structure a friendly, but productive, conversation about sexually explicit material in a less formal way than just suggesting specific proposals - more of a brainstorm to allow people that are interested to share ideas, and maybe try and get to some recommendations (or to heartily endorse the status quo as a community, of course) - I've been browsing around the community areas to try and find a pointer, but haven't had any luck, so thought I'd post here. Apologies if I'm missing something right in front of my nose! cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 06:49, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

There was one here a few days ago. It's now archived here. -- User:Docu at 06:56, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
that was me! (so I was indeed aware of the thread - but thanks for the intention to help :-) - what i'm wondering is if there's any way of taking a discussion out of this busy area? - If it's ok, I'd probably like to start a 'request for comment' in whatever way seems to make sense? - Probably just creating a page in the commons namespace, and linking to it from here? Maybe there's a far better established system, and that's what I'm asking here... best, Privatemusings (talk) 07:08, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
There's nothing comparable to the Requests for comments system here at Commons. Just discuss what's needed here in the village pump. --The Evil IP address (talk) 08:14, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
There was also this failed policy proposal. I'm not sure an RFC on the topic would be more successful or give a different result (seems to me that most people are fine with our current way of dealing with sexual content). –Tryphon☂ 09:03, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Believe me, we delete a lot of porn. I don't mean sexually explicit images that have use on the wikis. I'm real in-your-face hardcore porn found on the millions of websites made just for that. You can get your fix elsewhere. Usually they're copyvios, so you can probably even find the same stuff. In the US, we need record-keeping to host crap like that (especially for younger models). We don't need to discuss it. The reason it's hard to talk about guidelines for it is because it's a "you know it when you see it" type of thing. If you make guidelines about it people delete stuff because of those guidelines instead of common sense, which (for most people) is worse. It's better to have a guideline saying "we aren't censored" for those that lack that common sense. We also delete a lot of penises; boys think it's fun to upload tons of low-quality photos of their own genitalia. Anything that doesn't speedied in this manner probably has some use or potential use somewhere, and if it does it's in our scope (granted it's legal). Some are boarder-line, and that's what deletion requests are for. Rocket000 (talk) 13:41, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
"We also delete a lot of penises;": My dear Rocket000, I understand what you are trying to say. But please: always, ALWAYS, add "images of". The way you phrased it, it gives me nightmares. Like the one where Edward Scissorhands tries to raise money fo a good cause. -- A terrified Paradoctor (talk) 15:02, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Then don't look at Image:Nopenis.svg... (I uploaded it basically as a joke, and now it's used on over 100 pages.) AnonMoos (talk) 00:38, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, Paradoctor. ;) @AnonMoos: It struck a chord with the community. It's something we wanted to say to some uploaders but didn't quite know how to express it until your image showed up. Rocket000 (talk) 01:28, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
One is tempted to imagine a template containing the message "Please stop uploading images of your penis, or we will delete it." But it might work.;) MartinD (talk) 12:34, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

UAE image Commons eligibility

I heard that the UAE lacks freedom of panorama.

Would this image http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ETIHADHQ.jpg qualify to go to the Commons, or should this remain on EN? WhisperToMe (talk) 15:37, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Probably simpler to keep it on en, at least unless and until someone can weigh in on how much originality a building has to display under Egyptian law to qualify for copyright. This one looks like it's right on the line: some countries would consider it copyrightable, others not. - Jmabel ! talk 17:33, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Hopefully there is someone who is fairly versed in UAE law around here. I think I know who to ask... WhisperToMe (talk) 23:45, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
I think you mean Emirati law, since the picture seems to be from Abu Dhabi. Jafeluv (talk) 18:08, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
@WhisperToMe: Please always select the maximum size version from flickr. --Martin H. (talk) 18:11, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
If the picture is Commons-acceptable, then I would have selected the maximum size. On EN images of copyrighted things are typically reduced in size. If the image is acceptable for commons, then I will upload the maximum size on the Commons itself. If the image is not acceptable for commons, I will have to use a reduced image size on EN. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:51, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

npg downloads

hi all i wuz reading about the national portrait galery images on wikipedia and i was so sad that the galery took the images down from their site. but i found out you can still get the hi res photos from them if you buy the images at their store http://www.npg.captureweb.co.uk their like only 7 pounds each. i uploaded one at the name File:JohnKeats1819 hires.jpg. did i do this right and is this ok? they asked me a bunch of questions when i bought it about what i would use it for and i dunno if they can check that. thanx!

hi again fyi the licensing combo i picked wuz editorial, periodicals, scholarly journal, printed, single placement on any interior page, up to 1/2 page image, any size page, up to 5000 copeis, northern america, all northern america countries, afrikaans i picked this one because it wuz cheapest (7 pounds) thanks again

If I am not mistaken, the Commons takes the view that a photograph, regardless of who created it, that is a faithful reproduction of an original work that is in the public domain is itself free from copyright and may be uploaded to the Commons. "Commons:Image casebook#2D art (paintings etc.)" states:
If the original artwork is old enough to be in the public domain it is OK to upload a scan or a photocopy (from any source) or a photograph you have taken yourself. A faithful photographic copy of a public domain 2D artwork such as a painting may always be uploaded to Commons, even if the photograph was taken by somebody else and even if no photographer's licence has been provided...
However, be aware that you may be acting in breach of the terms of the National Portrait Gallery's website. According to these terms:
  • The supply of images by the Gallery does not confer or imply the availability of rights to store or reproduce the images or make them available to the public in any medium or form.
  • The cropping or manipulation of images is not allowed without express permission, and any such alterations to the presentation of an image must be acknowledged alongside the image, as agreed in writing by the Gallery. ... Where images are licensed by the Gallery for use in digital media, the Client shall provide a credit identifying the author of the images, provide a hypertext link to the Gallery's website at http://www.npg.org.uk and prohibit the copying, transmission, performance, display, rental, lending or storage of the images beyond the context of the specified licensed digital product.
  • The Gallery's images must not be copied, stored or transmitted in electronic or other media unless by separate written permission, except where such is incidentally and wholly necessary to the process of production for products properly licensed by the Gallery. At the conclusion of such production, all intermediate copies of this material must be destroyed.
Therefore, although the Commons has no problem with you uploading the image, just be aware that the NPG could take legal action against you if it wanted to. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 06:32, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
See en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-07-20/Copyright dispute for a relevant situation, though that user uploaded way more than one image. - BanyanTree 06:39, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
The legality of such contracts is uncertain. There are many unsettled legal issues related to such contracts, and I seriously doubt the NPG would want to choose your case (uploading an image to Wikipedia) to push for precedent in their favor. As far as Commons policy goes, everything you did is fine and according to policy. Thanks for the contribution. Kaldari (talk) 17:07, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

People renaming categories of cities in Basque country

Some contributors want to rename some categories which concern cities in the French part of the Basque country. See for instance the discussion 'here about renaming Category:Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port into Category:Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port / Donibane Garazi for Basque is spoken by a part of the city inhabitants. I add a topic on this village pump, since I think there is no reason to treat Basque language differently from any other language. In my opinion, the rules must be the same for all. Allowing this would be like renaming "New Orleans" into "New Orleans / La Nouvelle-Orléans" knowing that some people speak French there... Peter17 (talk) 01:17, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Category names are generally supposed to be in English, so preferably it would be the same title as the English wikipedia. It would be nice to have better multilingual support for them, but there are large technical hurdles. Remember people have to enter these names as categories when they upload pictures, so the names shouldn't be longer than really necessary. Currently, we just try to make sure that the description area has translations in different languages. *Galleries* don't have to be named in English, but even there redirects are better than dual naming I would think. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:38, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 Oppose strongly
Category names are generally supposed to be in English, but there is no english for proper noun.
This renaming is POV and if it is accepted it will open far more complicate cases (Rennes / Roazhon / Resnn for example) and question wich langages first and so on.
It is far better to wait for title internationalisation. Cdlt, VIGNERON * discut. 10:43, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 Oppose waiting for title internationalisation is good; question: in the meantime, may we make redirects for the inofficial names towards the offical ones? --Havang(nl) (talk) 10:48, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 Agree strongly Some people has decided that "categories of all French cities have only French name". Some might decide that "categories of all Basque cities have only Basque name". Bilingual proposition is more inclusive. Commons still to be defined, it can take two ways: a) Become "UN bis" with vetoing members (in that discussion there is an obvious intention of some to treat Basque language different from French) b) Build something new, supporting diversity and equality. Technique makes it possible as shown here. Use of French forms in English wikipedia is connected with "officiality" and historical prohibitions, that is power; Commons should take it into account to repare this unequality.--Adrar (talk) 15:41, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
English: As I said, it's totally POV ("repare unequality" is not Commons role). The technical solution are not really reliable now. Moreover, the shorter is the title, the better it is.
Français : Comme je le disais, c'est complètement POV (« réparez les inégalités » n'est pas le rôle de Commons). La solution technique n'est pas vraiment fiable maintenant. De plus, plus court est le titre, mieux c'est.
Cdlt, VIGNERON * discut. 16:08, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 Agree strongly. Basque language shouldn't be vetoed in Commons. Those French Basque towns are more commonly known by their Basque names and a high percentage of their inhabitants speak Basque. Commons rules state that category names must be as short as possible, but it doesn't say in which language should be as short as possible.--An13sa (talk) 16:24, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, An13sa, Basque language is not being vetoed, but is strongly neglected by even the basque people themselves. I am integrating the Basque places in the larger commons and wikipedia communities by making bilingual lists, interwiki's,rassembling images dispersed over different categories and making improvements to the Basque Country category tree. The basque languague, like other languages, becomes highlighted better by those actions than by bilingual category names (which cause people to get lost). See also what has been said about forthcoming internationalisation of file names. --Havang(nl) (talk) 16:55, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
It is neither veto against basque, neither french against basque; any argument based on that is invalid. --Havang(nl) (talk) 17:37, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
The category of all cities should have the English name. For historical reasons, that's most closely connected to the French name, though there are some pronunciation differences, e.g. Paris and Calais.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:41, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Historical reasons are historical impositions. Sometimes the proper names of the places are recuperated even if most people in the world still don't know them. Write "Bombay" in commons and you will see. That's la solution technique, everybody finds the place. I'm not exactly an expert in Hindi and many people wouldn't know or remember "Mumbai"; no problèmes techniques, you get there. If some people think that "reparing unequality" is not Commons role (hopefully some French speaking people think so; where has been agreed it is not?), what is SURE is that "maintaining unequalities" is not Commons role. Or is it? Short, long? There's plenty of kilometrical category names in Commons, much more difficult to write so this is not a relevant factor.--Adrar (talk) 17:30, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Izen ofiziala, Izen commons. --Havang(nl) (talk) 18:12, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Havang, you can't switch on continuously between two concepts which can be contradictory of defending French-only forms: a) using supposedly English placenames as a priority and b) officiality, which has to do with power and differences of status. If "official" ruled we wouldn't have Category:Mount Everest, we should have the Chinese and Nepali forms. Tibetan, even though it is the language spoken in both sides, is not "official", it is forbidden. Bu the way, a very unjust situation for this language. Technique works; I even made a mistake before: "Mumbai" is not Hindi, it is Marathi, I correct. Even not knowing the name of the language I arrived to the category very easily.--Adrar (talk) 18:38, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 Agree strongly. In Canada the french language is a very minority language or a little island in the middle of a sea of anglosaxon world (the population of all Canada). But the names of Quebec are in french and Quebec isn´t France, it´s Canada. So...
Erabat ados. Kanadan frantzesa anglosaxoi mundu baten itsaso erdian dagoen uhartetxo edo hizkuntza gutxitua da. Baina Quebeceko izenak frantzesez daude eta Quebec ez da Frantzia, Kanada da. Hortaz...
--Euskalduna 19:12, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 Oppose Things are what they are. Mumbai is so named because India is an English-speaking nation that so chooses to call the city formerly named Bombay Mumbai. If France chooses to change the names of their cities, then English usage will probably change for the more minor ones. It's not Common's place to get involved in these disputes. Name length and ease of typing is an important factor. Quebec is a French-language place, which is why the names are in French. You'll note that we don't try to impose an French/English policy to keep the Anglophone Quebecers happy; we use the names on the normal maps.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:23, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Sure we can't count on Prosfilaes to improve this world. Haiti? Well, things are what they are etc. You call India (English speaking?) "nation", you call Québec "place" and you mention "France". If France chooses to change the names of their cities it is because it is a STATE but this is a political concept. We talk about languages and contributors who, if technique makes it possible as is the case, are equal. We must remember that wikipedias are not state-minded, there is not a French wikipedia but a French language wikipedia. Again first and second class: so more minor ones can't choose to change the names of their cities? Where is the limit? Where do you start being "major" and not "minor"? That is the dispute. And you can't change the reasons depending on the example: is in commons name length and ease of typing an important factor? In this case you will agree that "Senpere" is much-much more easy to type than "Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle"--Adrar (talk) 18:57, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
I didn't suggest that Commons put up a banner to donate to Haiti, nor did you. India is the world's largest nation with English as an official language, and when they say that Mumbai is the English language name for Bombay, well, it is. Just as important as the official declaration is the facts on the ground; the people who write about about Mumbai in English use Mumbai now, particularly the Indians that are most of the people who actually use the name in English. Quebec (no accent) is the name of that province in English, and Nevsky Prospekt is the name of the street in St. Petersburg in English. I object on principle to Nevsky Prospekt, as -ekt is not found in English and the ending sound [-ekt] is spelled -ect, but that's the name as used in English language sources. The difference between major and minor is purely an observed factual one; if Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port wants to change its official name on maps, it's likely English sources would follow course. To take a real life example, Turin, Italy, is Turin in English, though there is some deviant usage. Of course, Peking becoming Bejing and St. Petersberg becoming Leningrad and back are evidence that even changes to major cities can happen.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:45, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Quebec is a French and English-language place (the quebecian people is bilingual), like Basque Country is a basque and spanish/french language place (and basque people is bilingual or trilingual). So is very hypocrite to say that Quebec must to has french language names when Quebec is in a english speakers nation: Canada, and to say that Basque Country should not has basque language names because is in a french speakers nation: France. Very, very jabobinism and hypocrite. The "normal" maps of Quebec? What are the "normal" maps of Quebec, the english maps or the french maps? Or the maps of Charles de Gaulle? I know that all Anglophone Quebecers are happy, all the Quebecers are anglophone like the rest of Canadians, but many of them also speak French are not always so happy about the English name of their localities or you want us to believe.--Euskalduna 19:12, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
I am sorry, but you are wrong : French is the only official language of Quebec (Charter of the French Language). Croquant (talk) 19:04, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

- <quote:en:Quebec>: Quebec is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking identity and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level. <end of quote>.--Havang(nl) (talk) 19:06, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

French the "only" official language of Quebec? Yes, and Spanish "only" oficial language of California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Florida and the fifht street of Bronx. Croissant, You can be very sorry, but the oficial language of Quebec is English, and French has cooficial status (only in Quebec), because the only oficial language of Canada is English and Quebec is in Canada. Maybe, not for Charles de Gaulle... but for the rest of world. The predominant identity if quebec is Canadian (%60), and aproximatily the other identity %40 is Quebecian-Quebecoise (no "French", "French identity" in Quebec? Yes, Charles de Gaulle when he was 50 years ago to say that Quebec "was France". Some people speake english in Ireland, Wales, Scotland... who has "english identitity" in those countries? Some people in Algeria, Tunisia... speake french but don´t have "french identity". You are deliberately mixing to speak french with to have "french identity=to be french". This discussion has shifted here when you were left without support in the place where this discussion has emerged and has already made the rating.--Euskalduna 20:20, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

A few months ago, some of the Brittany categories had "Bretagne" and some had "Brittany" (not sure about the situation right now)... -- AnonMoos (talk) 19:29, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

The parent category is single-named Category:Bretagne. The gallery page is double-named: Bretagne - Breizh. For gallery-pages double names are not a problem, there may be gallery pages in french, in basque, in english as well in double language titles and multi-language content, two being redirects. But even for gallery titles, it is preferable to wait till language internationalisation of titles has been realised. --Havang(nl) (talk) 19:39, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
English: The whole discussion is wrong. Title must not be in the (or one of the) local langage(s). Title must be in the reader langage. If the reader speak french, or english, or basque, or so on, the langage must be french, english, basque, etc. There is a tool to do that : internationalisation. For the moment, int: dont work for the main title (h1) but the work is in progress so please be patient, it will come.
Français : Tout cette discussion est fausse. Le titre ne doit pas être la langue locale (ou une des langues locales). Le titre doit être dans la langue du lecteur. Si le lecteur est anglophone, francophone, bascophone, ou autre, la langue doit être le français, l’anglais, le basque, etc. Il y a un outil pour faire cela : internationalisation. Pour le moment, int: ne fonctionne pas pour le titre principal (h1) mais le travail est en cours donc merci de patienter, cela arrive.

Cdlt, VIGNERON * discut. 19:37, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

There are no english names for the cities and municipalities of the Northern Basque Country. To write them in french (the only "non-POV position" for some french-speaking people in this conversation) does not follow the rules here in Commons. That's why the better and more inclusive solution is to write them both in french and basque. Basque is one of the oldest languages in Europe, and one of the languages spoken in the Northern Basque Country. I agree with the rule of the "shortest possible title", but not with the "shortest possible french title" suggested by some french-speaking people here.--Unai Fdz. de Betoño (talk) 21:11, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
What rules of Commons?
What you deem to be "the better and more inclusive solution" is certainly the most inclusive short of also including katakana, but I fail to see how it is better. The villages are known by certain names, and it is by these names that people will look for them. It might be in Basque XOR in French, but it will never be in Basque AND in French. Hence, using both names will fail for everybody, and thus constitutes a usability disaster.
The proper way to do is to use a name which results from a complex function of the most commonly used name and the official name. Expliciting this function would probably be a nightmare of trolling, but luckily, we do not have to because the solutions are pre-computed as the names of the corresponding articles on the English Wikipedia. Rama (talk) 00:45, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

<quote:Commons:Categories>We still lack internationalization for category names, but this issue should be resolved with appropriate changes to the MediaWiki software (see bugzilla:5638). Creating intermingled category structures in different languages would only make things worse.<end of quote>. --Havang(nl) (talk) 21:30, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

What rules of Commons? Commons:Categories#Category_names and Commons:Naming_categories#Language. I see no "french" there.--Unai Fdz. de Betoño (talk) 09:29, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
I see no basque too.
Stop silly argument and others non-sens (basque is not the oldest langages in Europe and even if it was true, that doesn't change anything). Please wait for internationalisation and help translating, there's a lot of templates that still doesn't exist in basque. Cdlt, VIGNERON * discut. 11:08, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but the small difference is that I claim for a both french and basque solution, and you don't. So...

Short summary:
My arguments are POV. Yours are not.
My arguments are silly. Yours are not.
Neither french nor basque are on the rules. So we have to put the titles in french.
We need short titles. Basque titles are as short as french ones, but we have to put them in french.
Internationalisation comes soon. So basques have to wait; not french.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité.--Unai Fdz. de Betoño (talk) 11:30, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes I do. In fact, you claim for two langages, I claim for 256 langages.
Your right, I'm POV. But my POV is the usual position on Commons and french is the only official langage in France.
Whatever, no comment.
Put basque if you want but it's lot a work for a little gain.
Idem plus again french is the only official langage in France (I agree with you, it's not a good thing ; but it's not Commons role to do lobbying).
French waits for internationalisation too (for example : New Orleans / La Nouvelle-Orléans, Londres / London, Cologne / Köln, etc.). In fact, all non-english speaker are waiting for.
Cdlt, VIGNERON * discut. 13:40, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
We don't put the titles in French. We put the titles in English, as taken from the English Wikipedia. As is relatively normal around the world, for most cities, that matches whatever the official names are, and they seem to be in French.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:32, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Vigneron, French isn´t the native language of New Orleans or Quebec, is a one of the spoken languages in New Orleans or Quebec like the Spanish or English for example (like Algerian or Moroccan are a very spoken language in Marseille, Paris, Toulouse or many cities and parts of France), but the French is a language of settlers. The Basque isn´t the native language of Newfowland or Port-aux-Basques, although Basque fishermen since the fifteenth century they called Ternua to Newfowland and the Basque was a spoken language in Newfowland until the eighteenth century (and parts of quebec), it was a language of settlers. I am not defending the French name of New Orleans, the Spanish name of Texas, the Italian name of Little Italy of New York, or the German name of Pennsylvania... Europeans have gone all over the world, imposing our native languages of the country, which is shameful.

We are speaking about the basque name or NATIVE NAME of our country: the Basque Country, the basque name of basque cities and villages. Names used by the fathers of our fathers of our fathers... for thousands and thousands of years... always in the same place, the Basque Country (long before even the creation of the French). Besides that in my opinion is ridiculous to ask the French is official in Quebec or New Orleans, when those who defend from France the oficiality of French far away from France to deny that oficiality to the Basque (in North Basque Country), Breton (in Brittany), Corsican (in Corse), Catalan (in Roselló), Occitan (in Occitania)...

The initial discussion started here, many people gave their vote there and before the discussion moved here by Croaquant (which made changes when the subject was in the discussion, it seems a bad datalle). -- 19:20, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Seriously, we don't care about the "Basque language" being oppressed or not. We don't care about the basque culture, history and supposed dominance in names of this given area. We don't care about your ideology and POV pushing here. This is an image depositery. Category names are meant to be in one language which is 'english'. English people uses 'Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port' for instance and not the basque counterpart. The same goes for other french cities like 'Rennes', 'Paris' or 'Toulon'. The same goes for 'Panoramics in France' and not 'Panorama en France' for instance... What you ask will not be done. There is nothing to argue. When title internationalization will be ready, title will be able to be into several languages, including basque. Esby (talk) 16:30, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Seriously, we don't care about your non transigent attitude (There is nothing to argue????). We we will continue saying "Lizarra-Garazi agreement", as scottish (which speak in english, I think), even though french and tolerant speakers like you will say "Lizarra-Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port agreement".--Unai Fdz. de Betoño (talk) 16:44, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Point taken that you just proven that pro-independence people will use the Basque name. Now that does not mean that english people will use this one. Esby (talk) 09:32, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

 Oppose I strongly disagree with the contributors above who wrote "there is no english for proper noun" or "There are no english names for the cities and municipalities of the Northern Basque Country." Obviously there are. These towns and villages are mentioned in books written in English ; though I have not many of them, opening one more or less at random (Through the Spanish Pyrénées - GR 11 : a long distance footpath, by Paul Lucia, Cicerone Guides) I read (p. 62) : The road to the left comes from St-Jean-Pied-de-Port which is certainly a sentence in English referring to the little town in Lower Navarre. Things have been (or should have been) thoroughly thought on relevant discussion pages on the Wikipedias (see for instance a debate now running on :en about the naming of some Basque provinces : [20] or an old debate on :fr to choose French names for southern Basque country towns : [21]). Of course alternative names are used in English, among them Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port/Donibane Garazi or even Donibane Garazi, but are obviously less frequent than Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. We should not try to find a solution here, but we should strictly use titles used by :en wikipedia, and discuss these titles on the relevant pages of this wikipedia if we think they are irrelevant. Touriste (talk) 18:28, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Esby, and who´s care France, "french language" or if you are the Frenchie "tolerant" and "multicultural" "Mesie" Jean-Marie Le Pen himself? Not me, in that we´re seriously agree me... and the englishman who write this article. Euskalduna 22:32, 3 February 2010(UTC)

So we are back to the 'if I don't agree with you, I am like Hitler'? (Those who don't know Jean Marie Le Pen can look up his Wikipedia entry.) Further insults will lead to your block here. Consider it as first and last warning. Esby (talk) 09:32, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
In the list of official names of Labourd, Soule, Lower Navarre you see names in basque language and in different basque dialects, as well as names in french, bearnais and gascon languages, and those are the choises of the local populations: not wikipedians but the municipality councils vote official names like Ainhoa or Trois-Villes; we respect both the local people's choice and the commons needs by sticking to the official names in its english equivalent, preparing internationalisation (--> the necessarely unique weblink-titles shall in the future show up for readers in languages of their choice). It is wisdom to keep single naming, not changing from the official names and PATIENTLY WAIT FOR INTERNATIONALISATION. --Havang(nl) (talk) 22:26, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Municipality councils can propose the name change but: a) Higher authorities must agree. b) It is FORBIDDEN to propose a name not in "French form"; if it was possible, plenty of councils would have at least a bilingual name. You can see as an example [22]. This would be respecting local people's choice but what doesn't make this possible is government policies against officiality of languages other than French.--Adrar (talk) 17:09, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Esby, don´t speak on Hitler and go far away from where you are... because his french allies of the Vichy France or Philippe Pétain didn´t be better. Greetings :D. --Euskalduna 10:28, 5 February 2010 (UTC)


I do ask all involved in this discussion to totally refrain from any name-calling and ad-hominem comments against other single users or (perceived) groups of users and to return to an unemotional discussion. Civility (as described here) is a standard on Commons as on all Wikimedia projects.
In addition, Commons:Categories for discussion might have been a better place for this thread. --Túrelio (talk) 21:45, 6 February 2010 (UTC)


Category:La Rhune

Category:La Rhune is inappropriate titling and a move is necessary. The name should be either Category:Rhune, or Category:Larrun. Before I put a move proposition on the talk page of that category, I want to discuss it here, as a case exemple. In french, La Rhune classifies under R: Rhune and the category should have to be moved to Category:Rhune. But there are no official names for geografical items and if etymologically it is basque Larrun, then it should classify under L: Larrun and the category should have to be moved to Category:Larrun. I know no basque, but there is a spanish mountain Larrunarri, etymologically Larrun-harri, stony Larrun, The first part of Larrun could come from larr, which could possibly mean uncultivated land? All this makes it convincing, Category:La Rhune has to be moved to Category:Larrun. What move must be proposed on the category page? --Havang(nl) (talk) 08:00, 4 February 2010 (UTC).

I agree with you. This one is not obvious - both "Rhune" and "Larrun" are found in significant amounts in pages in English. I would be (weakly) in favour of Larrun, since I have a (vague) feeling that the Basque form is gaining ground - the fact that the summit is on the French-Spanish border, while the Spanish name is Larrún, is another weak point in favour of Larrun. Touriste (talk) 08:13, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I did not know that the Spanish name is Larrún; it may be a weak point as argument, for decision-taking it is a strong point in favour of Larrun.--Havang(nl) (talk) 08:47, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
Then... as it is so clear that the french La Rhune comes from the basque Larrun, you propose to put Larrun.
I have to say that it happens the same with most cities of Northern Basque Country:
Arbonne is a french version of the original (and basque) Arbona.
Bassussarry is a french version of the original (and basque) Basusarri.
Ascain is a french version of the original (and basque) Azkaine.
Biriatou is a french version of the original (and basque) Biriatu.
Ciboure is a french version of the original (and basque) Ziburu.
Espelette is a french version of the original (and basque) Ezpeleta.
Guéthary is a french version of the original (and basque) Getaria.
And so on...--Unai Fdz. de Betoño (talk) 10:01, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
@ Unai Fdz. de Betoño: You said early in this series of discussions: (quote>I understand many people will look for this city in it's french name: that's why I think the french one can be first. <end of quote>. You making the comparison with official city names, does that mean that you are giving also preference to Rhune? --Havang(nl) (talk) 11:57, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I would propose Category:La Rhune / Larrun, and make two category hard (or soft) redirects.--Unai Fdz. de Betoño (talk) 12:07, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

This last proposal is the technical solution possible for plenty of "endonyms" as discussed previously (not "exonyms", people talking about these different cases at the same time) so that (also) original placenames get their place. On the other side, "Larrún" is not the Spanish name, but the form used by Spanish wikipedia which is not the same. The only form (in this case popular in both sides and also official in the southern side, for example government of Navarre) used in Basque and Spanish is "Larrun", obviously a Basque placename.--Adrar (talk) 12:15, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
Please, choose Rhune or Larrun but not Rhune / Larrun (or not at all La Rhune / Larrun). Rhune / Larrun is not a technical solution, it's a bad tinkering/political solution and it's will do be evil to use/maintain. The real solution is the internationalisation.
The wikipedia article should probably be rename too (like fr:Mont Blanc and not Le Mont Blanc). Cdlt, VIGNERON * discut. 13:11, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Unai, I´m agree with your propose. By the way, mountain´s original name is Larrun (from the contraction of the basque words "Larre Gune" ("Meadows Place"), "Larr+un", "Larre" ("medow") and "gune" ("place"). La Rhune is a deformation of the French language without meaning in that language or in other languages--Euskalduna 20:04, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposed. Paradoctor (talk) 04:07, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I found that not long ago, the ortograph in french was Larhune; equivalent of Larrun. La Rhune and Larrun are both used in english, meaning that english does not give a good criterium. I personally knew Larrun before knowing La Rhune. I am aware that this dilemma eventually will be resolved once internationalisation has been achieved; and that double naming is disturbing for coming internationalisation. But a move is indicated, so, I propose Category:Larrun as being most appropriate in view of the international character of Commons, respecting basque, respecting french (in its older orthograph), respecting spanish, acceptable for english and other languages as well and being most appropriate with respect to pronounciation in al the languages. --Havang(nl) (talk) 21:54, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
It happens just the same with most of the cities of the Northern Basque Country: their official names are french derivations of the original basque names. I'm happy because you see it so clearly in the case of Larrun; but it's really strange that you don't see it the cases of Arbona, Basusarri, Azkaine, Biriatu, Ziburu, Ezpeleta, Getaria, Larresoro, Mugerre, Zuraide, Urruña... It's not coherent. --Unai Fdz. de Betoño (talk) 10:28, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Not it's not "just the same". First of all, cities have official names in France, moutains dont. Then, the IGN (who is kind of official) give the name Larrun (along with La Rhune) but not Arbona. Larrun seems official in Spain (this mountain is on the border). Finally, Google results are balanced for 'Larrun/La Rhune', not for 'Arbona/Arbonne' ! The origin is just one factor among others, but not the most important so it's not at all decisive for the choice. When you look to the whole thing, it is coherent.
Cdlt, VIGNERON * discut. 12:08, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
In fact, both basque names and french (for France) or spanish (for Spain) names are encyclopedic lemmae; therefore, the basque names must have their own lemma side-by-to spanish and french names in the wikipedia's. At the basque named-lemma, there may be a texte different from the french-named or spanish-named lemma. Of course, such pairs ( or triples) of lemma's are closely related and sometimes a redirect is sufficient. But in the commons category title, we must respect other rules: a single category, single-named, english being the best preparation to internationalisation. --Havang(nl) (talk) 12:52, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I agree, origin is not the most important factor: Mundaka can be of Viking origin or Verdun can be of Celtic origin. The important factor is that they have been adopted as endonym respectively by Basque and French (Londres is an exonym both for Basque and French so it should be used just for each language's wikipedia), that is they are the normal placenames of these towns. It would be a miracle that a Google search give more results for a Basque placename but this, obviously, has to be with the size of each language community, as unfortunately some of the reasons to defend French-only forms shown in these talks; it is even a miracle that "Larrun" gets more results than a Frenchified form: just the fact of many Francophones copying it in webs would do the work, but it doesn't mean that it has "lost" the debate about legitimacy. And as you have seen, in Mundaka we see with normality the use of the proper placename and it becomes the "English" (?) form (I mean of course "form used by the English wikipedia") but for example in the case of Ezpeleta, with the same legitimacy as a placename, it doesn't become the "English" form: that is the problem of giving centrality to officiality, a concept I insist, related to power and forbidding the official use of some languages. This is something unfair and avoidable in places like "commons", at least if we don't think we should be like "standard institutions".--Adrar (talk) 18:22, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Havang, don´t delete my messages on the sly (see this: 10:16, 6 February 2010 Havang(nl) (talk | contribs) (142,893 bytes) (→People renaming categories of cities in Basque country: some cleaning from personal remarks) (undo). It´s my first and last notice to don´t repeat your dirty game, that goes against Wikipedia rules, you aren´t an administrator: next time I will contact administrators to notice your censorship conduct. Just show me and the basque people who person you are. I don´t like the false people. Don´t speak or write me never more. --Euskalduna 14:36, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I am an administrator. Your message was insultant and an unnecessary personnal attack (a more rouge admin could have block you for that).
Havang has the right (and maybe the duty ?) to remove this. Cdlt, VIGNERON * discut. 14:13, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

And I have the right (and duty?) to say that Le Pen, Petain and Vichy´s France are french like Esby... or you like Esby´s has the right to call us "pro-independentits" for to defend our language. Never a historical reality is an... you say "insult"??? Your only duty is to be an impartial administrator, I see you have much to learn. If Havang (or you) delete again my messages without some cause: Next time I will contact administrators to notice your impartial conduct and to stop being in your place of administrator. Do you understand me?. --Euskalduna 19:29, 6 February 2010 (UTC)


I do ask all involved in this discussion to totally refrain from any name-calling and ad-hominem comments against other single users or (perceived) groups of users and to return to an unemotional discussion. Civility (as described here) is a standard on Commons as on all Wikimedia projects.
In addition, Commons:Categories for discussion might have been a better place for this thread. --Túrelio (talk) 21:45, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I do agree with Túrelio. I only wanted to add that it's very ugly to delete messages, even if you're administrator. And now? Do we move the discussion to Commons:Categories for discussion? Do all french involved in this discussion keep saying that Espelette is an english toponym? --Unai Fdz. de Betoño (talk) 22:52, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
It´s Ok, Turelio. As I have written you in private: now the problem is finished. Greetings.--Euskalduna 0:47, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
I appreciate Túrelio's intervention. We were playing a match in which some are players and referees at the same time. In the name of civility (I totally support it) some other messages should have been removed: we don't care about the "Basque language" being oppressed or not. We don't care about the basque culture, history and supposed dominance in names (Esby), Stop silly and nonsense arguments (Vigneron). But how will "administrators" remove their own messages? So I ask these administrators to go away from this talk where they are very implicated in; this kind of referees will never see "Thierry Henry's hands". I want also to remember two facts in these series of talks: first, an anomymous contributor started a talk here in French (not English) and at the very first time he/she ideologised the debate. This is not acceptable but nobody said anything about it. Second, "M. Croquant" made a unilateral change in the middle of a discussion in "Anglet / Angelu" and nobody showed him any "card". So, in the name of a neutral discussion I ask:
  • Non neutral administrators to move off. There are more administrators in "Commons" to do a respectful task.
  • It is unacceptable to hear that use of French(-only) is "neutral" and proposal of using (also) Basque is "ideological". Languages are neutral and equal instruments of communication.
  • Let's go on discussing with qualified reasons and not with "reasons" based in quantity: "majors" vs. "minors" etc.--Adrar (talk) 8:32, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
"Languages are neutral and equal instruments of communication". This is your (respectable) opinion, I have another. Personal attacks toward contributors are rightly forbidden, not expression of social opinions as support for discussions. If somebody thinks that using Basque names is ideological, he can feel free to say so, this is not contrary to any policy of Commons talk pages (as long as these pages are not brought to a chit-chat state and stay relevant to help take a decision). Please admit contradiction as long as it is not rude towards you personally. People who think that "reasons" based in quantity are relevant should not be ashamed to express their opinion. Touriste (talk) 08:56, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
First you must choose: you can defend that proposing to use (also) "Ezpeleta" is ideological; therefore you are obliged, I'm sorry, to defend that using only (and imposing using only) "Espelette" is ideological. Or either you can defend that using all placenames is overall not ideological. But you can't defend that using "Espelette" only is neutral and using also "Ezpeleta" is ideological. Second, it is not only question of caring just about personal attacks; I think that something like "We don't care about the French culture and history" is not an acceptable message (well, it might be "acceptable" depending on the context, a personal one...but not in places like "Commons" based in "good faith" and "unemotional discussion"). Collective attacks can be serious, can't be? Third, OK some "quantity" arguments can be part of the discussion but many not, everything can't be taken to vote. If you say Seine crosses Paris I can start a talk saying: This is your (respectable) opinion; no, it is not only your respectable opinion, Seine crosses Paris as languages are neutral instruments of communication, it is not only my (respectable) opinion. So I maintain all I said on the previous message.--Adrar (talk) 10:19, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
OK I don't reply about Espelette or Ezpeleta since my answer was not intended to reopen the debate, but simply to make a remark concerning freedom of expression on Talk pages. I keep looking at these pages, and may give my opinion again if I deem it necessary, which is not the case presently. Touriste (talk) 12:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
It's not the French-language names; it's the names in use in English sources. And that happens to be the same as the French names, because not only are those the official names, French is known by vastly more English speakers than Basque speakers.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:27, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I come back to my original question about Category:La Rhune: What move must be proposed on the category page? Please, some admin make the move proposal. --Havang(nl) (talk) 12:59, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Why do we need an admin to suggest the move? There is a talk page. There is also Commons:Categories for discussion if needed. Technically if the article 'La' should not be part of the category name, then it should be fixed. The rest of the debate, if there is any to be, should not be done here. Esby (talk) 10:55, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

This is funny, because the one who started the discussion here (we were already discussing it here), hasn't take part in the discussion... I repeat: do you keep saying Espelette is english? Prosfilaes has accepted indirectly that the names of the categories of cities in the Northern Basque Country are in french. So we have to accept it because there are more french speaking people than basque speaking people? The rules in Commons say nothing about it. --Unai Fdz. de Betoño (talk) 09:08, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

It is not absolutely clear who you are addressing, but in case it might be useful, I confirm I have not changed my mind : I keep thinking that for towns and villages of South-Western France, the names in French happen to be from far the commonest names in English. Yes I thing that Espelette is english, as I thought "Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port" is, see for instance this page european-culinary-travel.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_espelette_pepper_a_piquant_french_chilli (blocked by spam filter) about "The Espelette pepper". Touriste (talk) 12:21, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
And you can see for instance that The Wise Choice prepares Lamb Chops with Red Wine and California Raisins (...) Season to taste with Ezpeleta pepper, salt and pepper.--Unai Fdz. de Betoño (talk) 13:59, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
OK thanks, one for each :-). I keep thinking that "Espelette" is more common, as I roughly read from a Google search of both forms on English language only pages. Touriste (talk) 14:19, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I checked some stats on grok.se about the consultation of the english wikipedia article (french name) and its redirect (basque name)... It's here User:Esby/Espelette Esby (talk) 16:07, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
and what about this: According to Universal declaration on linguistic rights (http://www.unesco.org/cpp/uk/declarations/linguistic.pdf), the basque in France belong to the basque language community. We must applie <<Article 38: The languages and cultures of all language communities must receive equitable and nondiscriminatory treatment in the communications media throughout the world.>> --Havang(nl) (talk) 15:56, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
This "universal" declaration has been signed by some "institutions and non-governmental organizations". I am not among them (I am not an institution, just a human being), and I presume the Wikimedia Foundation is not a signatory either. Hence this declaration has no impact on my duties as a citizen or as an editor of Commons - it is completely irrelevant, and just informative about the PoV of an assembly of scholars and other intellectuals, self-chosen for their adherence to this PoV. Please leave UNESCO alone, it is really off topic in my judgment. Touriste (talk) 16:36, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
It 's not off-topic in my judgment, same as: en:European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. --Havang(nl) (talk) 20:58, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
It's not off-topic in my opinion, neither. I agree with Havang(nl).--Unai Fdz. de Betoño (talk) 08:19, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
It is off topic. If you apply this convention, you'll be forced to have names for all existing languages... Wikipedias exists in more than 255 languages, Commons centralizes the free images. Reinventing the wheel and doing the work of 255 wikipedias do not make the things simplier. Esby (talk) 10:11, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
It is not off-topic: commons has made choices: official names, and otherwise original names, eventually in its english equivalent. The mountain has no official name, the french IGN uses Larrun and La Rhune; in english Larrun and La Rhune are used. Larrun is original. Based on these, the UNESCO convention pushes the balance towards category:Larrun on commons --Havang(nl) (talk) 11:00, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Not every contributor here thinks well of the UNESCO - I shall not insist, since I would be afraid to leave other participants think that my political resoning is of the same level of soundness and subtlety than en:Timothy McVeigh's, but I could discuss the matter for a number of lines ; simply this is not the place. As far as the debate is recentered on this beautiful mountain, as I wrote already, no problem for category:Larrun, absolutely independently of the opinion of UNESCO, Council of Europe, conseil général des Pyrénées-Atlantiques or any other assembly. Touriste (talk) 11:15, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Honestly, no real issue toward Larrun, it's just the actual category description do not match the usage here. Besides do the french uses 'Rhune' or 'La Rhune', with the 'La' article being part of the name, like for some other cases (eg: "Le Crès" for a city name.) Esby (talk) 11:25, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

 Agree I agree with the change. Using a bilingual name with two redirects from monolingual one is better than usin a supposedly english (but really french) name. And it the goal is the shortest possible, I propose to put only "Donibane Garazi" (15 characters) opposed to "Saint-Jean-de-Pied-de-Port" (26 characters), "Baiona" instead of "Bayonne" we win a character and "Senpere" instead of "Saint-Pee-sur-Nivelle" (we win tons of typing). -Theklan (talk) 16:05, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Change picture name

Could someone change File:Laura ingalls wilder.jpg to File:Laura Ingalls Wilder.jpg (and possibly an even more definitive name if available), please? --85.23.70.102 19:16, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

✓ Done. --The Evil IP address (talk) 21:02, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Why? -- User:Docu at 00:05, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Because proper names are capitalized. --The Evil IP address (talk) 18:04, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
That seems to be omitted as an acceptable reason on Commons:File renaming. -- User:Docu at 05:31, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

NASA images import

Could we do an import of NASA images from the Internet Archive? They have ~145,729 items, of which virtually all are under public domain as being a work of NASA.Smallman12q (talk) 02:37, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

For all those interested, there is a related discussion regarding forming a "NASA Collaboration Task Force" at the Strategy wiki.Smallman12q (talk) 02:42, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
I originally wrote up a long diatribe replying to this subject, but that was too much. Simple dumps of such massive databases are usually not worth the trouble they bring: for most NASA subject matter, we're going to have quality photos already uploaded! We already have the Great Images of NASA dump, which basically contained the best photos of the various archives. In short, I don't think such an import is a good idea...I've seen the vast numbers of useless photos that got imported with the Navy.mil photoarchive... — Huntster (t @ c) 10:11, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
So you're against such an import because you believe there is a lack of quality images?Smallman12q (talk) 13:34, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
I should also state that there are a number of videos as well...something that currently is not on the commons.Smallman12q (talk) 14:22, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
There are plenty NASA videos as well. I share the concerns of Hunster a bit, because I know how NASA works. Basically 80% of their shuttle launch/landing images for instance are the same angles and topics every time. Just a different person/shuttle in it. The layman can't even keep them apart probably. Also, there would be a lot of work to find all the duplicates after such an import (GRIN already was a humongous task). If we have certain sets of images, I'm all for importing them, but to simply import all of nasaimages, seems somewhat a wast of space and effort. I think there are more important collections to import at this time (all of the Library of Congress for instance). TheDJ (talk) 15:52, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
NASA also has internal databases that contain millions of unprocessed images. Although these are all public domain, and it would be possible to import them (through the right connections), I think such an effort would actually degrade the usefulness of Commons rather than improving it. If a search for "Mars" gives you 100,000 unprocessed images, chances are you're not going to be able to find the one you're interested in. I agree with Hunster that in the case of NASA, we already have most of the images that have real value. Importing massive amounts of generic images just because we can is a waste of effort, IMO. Kaldari (talk) 17:34, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
If you go to my userpage, you'll find a link to more than a dozen NASA center image databases (and I know there are more out there), plus Nasaimages.org, NASA Image Exchange and Great Images in NASA, all of which pull pics from the various other repositories. NASA's photo system is a disaster, but if you're looking for something in particular, well, there ya go. — Huntster (t @ c) 02:26, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm not going to argue that their photo system isn't a disaster...its clearly got that "government buracracy" style of organization...but what I would to do is to get more free images here on the commons. I thought the purpose of the commons was to act as a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone...from Commons:Welcome.Smallman12q (talk) 15:29, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
I agree completely, that is our goal. But we must strike a balance between being well-stocked and being useful. The problem is that with such a massive image dump, the ease of finding a target image greatly diminishes. — Huntster (t @ c) 22:46, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Would you be against smaller scale imports such as image in this small NASA archive?Smallman12q (talk) 14:31, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Norro categories

After trying on disparate forums, I have come here due to lack of response. Why are we naming a category after User:Norro, this is a wiki! We are not built on any one user. It is ridiculous to name a graphical concept after one user who may have come up with it. We don't name categories after Jimbo, this isn't the place to use cryptic, non-descriptive names. After all, what's a Norro? Is ot a kind of sushi? Where's the sushi pictures?--Ipatrol (talk) 00:45, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I think it was done more for a lack of "theme" name than to pay tribute to some user. I agree it's not ideal. No one knows what it is. At least with "vote icons", people knew what they were since that is exactly what they were created for, but the problem with that is it was a subject/use-based instead of theme based so images that didn't match that style were getting mixed in. I suggested "Wiki-symbols" (as kinda a pseudo-proper name) but someone didn't like that since they could be used for anything and not necessarily voting. True, so can desktop/computer icons but we still call them that because that's their original purpose. Rocket000 (talk) 01:14, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
I assume you are referring to Category:Norro style 1 icons and Category:Norro style 2 icons. I do not see a problem here, if someone created a new distinctive style of icons than it would make sense to name the style after him/her. What else would you like to call it in a way that would not be confused with other icon styles? --Jarekt (talk) 03:17, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Given the current names of the files, I would suggest Voting icons and Voting pictograms.--Ipatrol (talk) 01:45, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

no originality in photograph, license = ? charity, license = ?

1) For images such as:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bar_kochba_coin1.jpg#.7B.7Bint:filedesc.7D.7D

Can the uploader really claim to be able to publish it under a license of his choosing? Isn't the general international law the photograph originality must be present in order for a photograph to copyrightable?


2) The uploader claims the coin sits in the University of Glasgow "The Hunterian" museum, and the University of Glasgow (on the museum site) is said to be a "a registered Scottish charity". Additionally, the website does offer for anyone to peruse an enormous number of images of their collection on their site for free (I could not find the coin in question, though). What kind of license could that allow for in terms of this image?

--Agamemnus (talk) 07:20, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

The photographer (or whoever hired them) can place the photo under the license of their choosing, since coins are three-dimensional (although there's evidently little originality in this one, it may be enough). See Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag. The uploader, however, is likely unaffiliated with both, so this image will probably end up being deleted. Dcoetzee (talk) 07:24, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Well, there's no evidence that the uploader was not the photographer. Also, even if it could be considered "unoriginal", wouldn't the copyright (or public-domain claim) be that of the museum? And if it is the right of the museum to specify copyright or public domain, what would or could it say? --Agamemnus (talk) 07:32, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
The image is from livius.org: [23]. Site copyright notice is here[24]. Man vyi (talk) 14:30, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Ah, I didn't notice.--Agamemnus (talk) 17:31, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
The museum does not gain any copyright just by owning the coin; it would only have copyright if their employee or someone they hired took the picture.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:07, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Interesting. If that is the case, then shouldn't the image be in the public domain since it is practically a 2D image? I know what the earlier link posted above says about shadows making photographs of 3D works copyrightable, but I think in this case it is not true. The shadow the coin makes has 0 artistic value, so in my opinion it could be classified as such.--Agamemnus (talk) 17:30, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Our established practice is to consider photos of coins to not be mere reproductions. It is a borderline case, and a court may find differently; we are being conservative. Paintings have a similar three-dimensional quality, but are viewed from a greater distance. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:54, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
The reason coins are considered 3D is because if they weren't they'd be blank. The 3Dness is the only thing that makes the art visible. Paintings on the other hand have color. Rocket000 (talk) 02:57, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Categories and sub-categories

Urgent help needed before I go insane. I have spent about 5 hours reading EVERYTHING on here about Categories and sub-categories - and it would be easier to start learning Greek. This is brain-numbing stuff, eek!

I want to create a sub category within GLIDERS, here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Gliders

There are many types of gliders, I merely want to add the sub-category 'SLINGSBY' - which is a family of gliders.

HOW DO I CREATE THIS SUB CATEGORY? I have tried every possible combination I can think of, but the system will not create a sub-category.

Any advice deeply appreciated.

PS should there not be a section for beginners called ' How to make a category and how to make a sub-category'?

Thanks

Borderglider

There is one already at Category:Slingsby
See Commons:FAQ#How do I put a page / image into a category?
For new categories, there is Commons:Categories#Creating_a_new_category
-- User:Docu at 11:53, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Personally I find the easiest way to create a new category, is to add the to be created category to the image or category I wish to categorise. On saving this creates a red link at the bottom of the page. Clicking on the red link will take you to a page telling you that no such category exists. You can then create the category by editing this page, i.e. by adding categories to it.
So for example if you wish to create the category Slingsby gliders. You can do this by adding [[Category:Slingsby gliders]] to an image you wish to categorise as a Slingsby glider. This will create a red link which will look like this Category:Slingsby gliders at the bottom of the page. You can then turn this red link into an active category by the adding of categories to the new category, in this case something like [[Category:Gliders by manufacturer]] and [[Category:Slingsby]]. Category:Gliders by manufacturer is another red link, but if you want to you can create this category by adding [[Category:Gliders| ]],[[Category:Glider manufacturers| ]] and [[Category:Aircraft by manufacturer| ]].
You can actually create those categories from here if you wish, the red links above will take you to the category creation pages, click on them type in or clone and paste the parent categories with the wiki markup, and the new categories will then be created.KTo288 (talk) 12:30, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Sincere thanks, there is already a category called 'Slingsby' which is a sub category of 'Glider Manufacturers' which is a sub-category of the MAIN category 'GLIDERS'. Somehow, other users have created sub categories for each brand of glider within 'Gliders' but I cannot figure out how to do this.

I had a look at your edit history and you're almost there. Take for example your file File:Skylark IV Nose.jpg. You've managed to addCategory:Slingsby and Category:Gliders:manufacturers to the file. Slingsby is an already existing category so clicking on the link at the bottom takes you to that category. Category:Gliders:manufacturers has not been created yet so appears to be red, however if you click on it you will find a page with the three files you added Category:Gliders:manufacturers to. All you need to do to turn Category:Gliders:manufacturers from a red link to a working category is to add categories to it in exactly the same way you added categories to the individual images.
The category names you have used don't quite fit the naming scheme we use so will need to be tweaked e.g. Category:Gliders manufacturers rather than Category:Gliders:manufacturers so its best not to create them (but I'll leave them be for a day or to so you and others can follow this thread). At the top of the page in both files and categories is a "history" button. if you now take a look at the history of File:Skylark IV Nose.jpg you can see I added the category Category:Slingsby Skylark Model T50 to it, initially this was an non-existent category. Now have a look at the history of Category:Slingsby Skylark Model T50, you should be able to see that the first event in its history was its creation which was done simply by adding Category:Slingsby to it. Once the category was created I was able to tweak it by changing categories and adding an introduction.KTo288 (talk) 12:03, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Sincere thanks for all that work - really appreciate you taking the time to do this.

Categorizing by drag-and-drop

Is it possible to develop a tool that allows you to categorize images by drag-and-drop? It would save lots of time if you could select multiple images in one tab and drag and drop them into a category in another. --Jonund (talk) 15:55, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Maybe Cat-a-lot? --The Evil IP address (talk) 16:12, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
By the way, Cat-a-lot is broken with the new Vector skin (or, at least, it is for me). -- IANEZZ  (talk) 16:48, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Well, for me it "works". --The Evil IP address (talk) 17:28, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Some tools in addition to HotCat would be helpful, e.g.
  • an easy way to add search results to categories
  • a way to confirm/add from suggested additional categories depending on the type of image
-- User:Docu at 17:11, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I like an idea of drag-and-drop categorization. Cat-a-lot is great but my browser hates it when I try to move 20-30 files and it tries to open new tabs for all of them. I think there might be a way to implement it without need for user pressing save button on all those tabs. May be the way Gadget-HotCat have done it. --Jarekt (talk) 22:08, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

February 13

A while ago, I proposed adding an interwiki link prefix for Flickr to the interwiki map on Meta. However, an admin on Meta turned down the proposal, saying that only links to wikis should be added. It is true that Flickr is not a wiki, but the interwiki map links to several other sites that aren't wikis, either, so there must be some sort of exemption policy. Anyways, I think this could benefit Commons. The target of the link would be http://flickr.com/photo.gne?id=$1

Would a local interwiki map to Flickr on Commons be a bad idea? --Ixfd64 (talk) 00:03, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I would oppose this idea, on the grounds that Flickr links are primarily used in source fields, and we want source links to remain valid in mirrors with different interwiki configurations. We can achieve a similar effect with a template if we want. Dcoetzee (talk) 01:00, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

How to communicate sysop who wrote English-Polish mixture on discussion ?

I'm currently try to communicate some sysop. The sysop write English-Polish mixture, but I can't read such mixture language. And also he/she might can't read my English (i.e. he/she don't reply my English message). How to communicate such a case ? I think, we need proper discussion. --122.18.184.100 10:23, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

You can use m:User:Duesentrieb/CatScan to find users who speak both languages. Paradoctor (talk) 11:00, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
I speak both --Jarekt (talk) 17:05, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Learn polski. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:31, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

February 14

Please see here for details. Some may be interested in this. --Herby talk thyme 12:25, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Note: I added "POTD" to the section header. -- User:Docu at 18:47, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Upload problem

When I try to upload a jpg picture, I get a message "Het is niet toegestaan om bestanden van MIME-type "application/x-php" te uploaden." The file has an .jpg extention and is a picture (old slide) scanned and edited in fotoschop under jpeg format.

I never have had this before. I uploaded many pictures and scanned many slides. Is this some bug that misclassifies a file? I uploaded the picture on panoramio: Marseille_Trolley_1.jpg Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:22, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I vaguely recall that it's said to happen when the beginning of the file appears to mw like one with that other type. Doing some change to the file and saving it could solve the problem. -- User:Docu at 12:53, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
See Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2009Nov#Weird error message. You could try to strip all metadata, convert to .PNG, or resave with slightly different settings. Paradoctor (talk) 13:26, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I downloaded that file and examined it with emacs and noticed it contains 14783 bytes of XML-like metadata starting with: <?xpacket begin="" id="W5M0MpCehiHzreSzNTczkc9d"?> and ending with <?xpacket end="w"?> including a block of 12170 bytes of spaces and linefeeds. Could that cause the reported problem? -84user (talk) 13:40, 11 February 2010 (UTC) struck through my speculation. -84user (talk) 15:59, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
The "<?" looks like it could be responsible, but I'm no expert for the file magic heuristics. Try stripping it. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 15:41, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
In fact it was an earlier "<?" that resisted stripping :\. Smiley.toerist, I have uploaded File:Trolleybus in Marseille in 1984.jpg, which is the panoramio image you linked at Marseille_Trolley_1.jpg. I had to remove all the APP marker fields (that means EXIF information is gone too) before Commons would accept the image. Ignore my post above concerning the XML (I should have read Paradoctor's link which notes the probable cause: the <? sequence first appears at byte position 900, so the the one in the later XML was not it). I tried and failed to keep the EXIF but only by discarding the EXIF does the marker disappear from the first 1024 bytes. Even various lossless crops, and lossless rotates did not eliminate it. Maybe someone could find a better way to do this? -84user (talk) 15:59, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, I used "Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 Windows". I normaly dont have any problems with it, but I also used it to add text (a vector element) for an other picture in png format. I suspect the initial setting was wrong and that I accidentaly added a vector element. Smiley.toerist (talk) 16:19, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Just to clarify, I did not intend to suggest there was anything wrong with the image file uploaded. Mediawiki does indeed have a bug, bugzilla:16583 MIME type detection of "application/x-php" gives false positives on any file with "<?" in it, that miss-classifies a small fraction of uploaded files. Your other uploads also have similar Adobe tags and they do not trigger the bug. I believe it is just coincidence. If I read the bug status correctly, mw:Special:Code/MediaWiki/58682 is a partial fix, and that we need to wait for that partial fix to be installed for Commons. The page Paradoctor links to suggests users should try modifiying the image in some way to workaround the problem, but this is rather trial and error. But, might I also recommend you repeat the scan of the slide and try to save it at higher quality? If you do this, I can then request my upload be deleted. -84user (talk) 17:18, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
I did some edits on the original, but it doesnt solve the problem. The original is 216K bytes, but at that level it shows some imperfections. Wich tool do I use, to get rid off the offending marker fields parts? Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:26, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Did you try to save as PNG? Very unlikely that the same problem whould happen on two different formats for the same image. Paradoctor (talk) 09:25, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes, it worked. There is now a File:Trolleybus in Marseille in 1984.png picture uploaded under te same name. It is larger. Smiley.toerist (talk) 20:14, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

February 12

Request for help with SVG problem

I've made File:Acid-base_nomogram.svg, and no matter what I do, I can't seem to get the black boxes out. I edited it via TextMate to remove all the Flowroot elements. It now renders correctly in Firefox on my Mac, but it still isn't rendering correctly on the Wikimedia server. Any thoughts? Huckfinne (talk) 12:18, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

"on the Wikimedia server"? You mean, the file on your Mac renders ok, but the uploaded file doesn't? Did you use the purge tab? It looks ok on my FF3.6. Paradoctor (talk) 12:41, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
sometimes the image and/or the thumb doesn't immediately update after a new version is uploaded, repeated page refresh and purges did nothing but it sorted itself out a few minutes later.Just give it some time.--IngerAlHaosului (talk) 16:17, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Adding a Google Earth screen capture

Is it legal?

How do I do it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Derekmasg (talk • contribs) 11:28, 14 feb 2010 (UTC)

Briefly said, no. The images are neither availabile under a free license, nor you can claim rights on them (see the copyright notice at the bottom of the window, and the watermarks on images? They are there for a reason). -- IANEZZ  (talk) 11:02, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
See also their terms of use (the first sentences already says it) and compare them to the requirements of Commons:Project scope#required licensing terms. --Martin H. (talk) 11:17, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
I have used them but only to draw maps. I can draw the roads and other features I need and then I remove all original GE content. GE content is sometimes used in other picture material (advertisements, drawings etc), but even then it is not allowed. Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:05, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Well, some people have raised questions about whether you can seriously claim copyright on a top-down image of the ground which appears to have little to no creative content, but it's our policy at Commons to not accept this type of image, since the question remains unsettled. Dcoetzee (talk) 12:53, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Please don't use Google Earth datas to create maps. We have a long article in the german Wikipedia: de:Rechte_an_Geodaten that shows that it's not ok to create free content. But I couldn't find a similar article in english. The only thing I found was Legal FAQ on Openstreetmap-Wiki. --Kolossos (talk) 13:58, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

The german article is over the use of data(bank) wich is another issue. The terrain (info) (street patterns, location buildings etc) are free. Google Earth has the same as rigths as any picture taker of objects. (no derivatives) You can use many information sources to compile and draw your map. The difference between starting from a GE picture and removing all original content or copying the information with the hand to your drawing is only a technical difference. In both cases there is no evidence that the map originated from GE, so why bother? Besides it is not a criminal case, whereby the use of contaminated evidence at the start of the investigation, destroys the whole case. Judgement is needed on a case by case basis to decide wheter it is a derivative or not. Smiley.toerist (talk) 14:39, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

The google Earth screen images are not very useful to convert into a map, because it doesnt have enough detail. You can zoom in, but it remains fuzzy. The only way to make a map of decent detail is to collate several print screens together. It is a lot off work (and you have to remove all GE logo's, trademarks etc) and at the end of the day it is illegal. Where I find it very usefull is to look for traces of old railways. This information I can then incorporate in my own drawn maps. Smiley.toerist (talk) 14:39, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't know about your area, but the sat/aerial photos are good enough to draw a map from where I live. There's enough detail to clearly see cars driving on the street, intersections, etc. --J.smith (talk) 21:19, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
That is not the point: You can zoom in, but you cant enlarge the GE to the desired area. When you zoom out to cover it, you lose the details. So you have to collate different print screens to get enough details over an large area. This is deliberate so you cannot have a sufficiently detailed large map. For the normal viewer it doesnt matter as he/she can zoom to any detail. Smiley.toerist (talk) 19:10, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Do microsoft windows window decoration make image non-free?

I want to know the opinion of if commons on this mater do Microsoft's window decorations for the Luna theme and the Windows Aero theme make images using them non-free should this elements be removed from screenshots? There appears to be no consensus some images that have them are considered free ex: File:Screenshot-Firefox-van-firefox-pagina-op-commons.png , File:AndreaMosaicScreenShot.png others are not Aero_Example.png , Wikipedia_In_Mozilla_Prisim_In_Windows_7.png.--IngerAlHaosului (talk) 16:11, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd say the second one, assuming that the program is free, could be de minimis, the first one seems rather copyvioish to me. -mattbuck (Talk) 16:41, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
I've been under the impression that Classic = {{Pd-ineligible}}, Luna = maybe {{Pd-ineligible}}, and Aero Glass = too fancy, protectable. This is just my opinion though. ViperSnake151 (talk) 00:31, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Are there any school and university projects on Commons?

I wonder if Commons ever had any projects like w:Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects / Wikibooks:Wikibooks:Guidelines for class projects? There is potential for such projects on Commons, too. I can see two approaches: students tasked with generating new media, and students tasked with describing/identifying/translating/categorizing media. I am thinking about creating Commons:School and university projects to elaborate on that, if - as I suspect - we have no such page yet. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:32, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

It sounds like a good idea. The only interactions with universities I have seen was related to multiple students uploading their work related to a class assignment using a single account with name based on the class number. It was very confusing to everybody why so many different people are using single account without much explanation. If you create such page please recommend, each student uploading their own stuff. --Jarekt (talk) 20:05, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
An excellent Commons-related point I haven't thought about. Please feel free to share other suggestions like this, I'll make sure to incorporate them into the page I'll create. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 20:25, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Upload preview inconsistent behaviour

Is this a known problem? Sometimes the preview button the the Upload form has no effect: it displays a spinning icon for a few seconds and then stops, but the preview (if any) does not update. Sometimes this happens when the amount of text in the upload window is larger than a certain (but unknown) amount, but today I find the problem occurs with short texts. Furthermore, some texts do not preview when freshly pasted into a new Upload window, but the exact same text does preview after a cycle of "make a change, click preview, undo the change, click preview" (so far this effect is reproducible). This suggests the upload process is some kind of state machine and that it has an inconsistency.

For example I uploaded File:Harmonices Mundi 0003-lg.jpg only after I made such a "null" cycle. If I copied the exact same text (that upload previews) to a fresh upload window (different destination file name), the upload fails (silently, it just spins the icon and stops). I hope this makes sense. I can reproduce the problem any time using [25] (and fill in the form to match an existing valid page description). This is frustrating because I tend to prepare the full text for the page description and then copy and paste (from a text editor or spare buffer) to the new upload. So far I have not been able to narrow it down to a single cause. I looked through Commons:Bugs, and bugzilla:2537 is related but does not match my symptoms. -84user (talk) 21:54, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

February 16

File deletion

two fo my flags, the Standard of the President of Sierra Leone and the Standard of the President of Suriname have been deleted, Both were properly liscensed and contained free media. Whats worse, I have been going through the deletion requests centre, and can't find any evidence of their deletion ebing requested, or who did it, they're just GONE. How do I make un-deletion request? (personally, I think users should be notified before their files are unsumarilly deleted, it's almost like being violated) Fry1989 (talk) 01:19, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

You can appeal at Commons:Undeletion requests... which it looks like you found. I'll continue my comments there. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:27, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Error in Help:Namespaces

Has someone any idea about fixing the "documentaion" template (Help:Namespaces#Standard Namespaces) in Help:Namespaces? -10q-Pierpao (talk) 07:43, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I forgot to <noinclude>. My apologies. Killiondude (talk) 08:09, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

name change

Is it possible to change a file name? --Mladifilozof (talk) 13:11, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

You can use {{Rename}}, but take some time to read Commons:File naming first. Paradoctor (talk) 13:21, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Error uploading derivative images

I left a note on Luxo's talk page, but I just wanted to see if anyone else was having the issue. When I try to upload a derivative image (using derivativeFX), any file name entered for the original work generates "License of this file: File doesn't exist!" Consequently I can't upload any derivative images. Anyone else having similar problems? – VisionHolder « talk » 15:19, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I recently noted that some bots regularly change the (from my point of view) common order of 1) categories and 2) interlanguage links (cf. this random example [26]). It's not a drama for me, but I guess it would be for some others ;-) Did I miss anything about this issue? Was there any change in the default set of bot commands or so? --:bdk: 17:44, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there is a defined order for categories and interwikis at Commons. Probably due to the fact that the category placement by by the upload form is somewhat random. Most bots here use pywikipediabot and just use its defaults. -- User:Docu at 17:57, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
There may not be any formal policy, but I think the most common accepted practice is interwikis after categories... AnonMoos (talk) 21:54, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
That's indeed how it historically grew (categories initially being an afterthought on most wikipedia's). However, many people here keep the documentation part (descriptions, hatnotes, interwikis) together and the more dynamic category part that changes all the time, on the bottom (as is done mostly on the images too). Anyway, because we have no clear view how the various bots and uploaders treat (and rearrange) them, it makes no sense yet to define some sort of standard. Many bots and most users just leave them in the place they are. --Foroa (talk) 06:19, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
I used to follow the de facto English Wikipedia practice, which appears to be interwikis right at the end, until I started using the Hot Cat tool and found that it always sticks new categories at the end of articles. Therefore, you can end up with a block of categories, the interwikis, and more categories that have been added using Hot Cat. I therefore now place the categories at the end. To me, that seems like a pretty good reason for adopting the practice. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 06:36, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Please file a bug in the pywikipediabot track if there's a consensus on how it should be if it deviates from the current pwb defaults. If so, please add a link to this topic, or where ever the consensus was reached. Siebrand 07:21, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

February 17

Auto-validation for JS gadgets

Sometimes, when using gadgets (or just JS scripts) such as QuickDelete (to add no source/no permission/no license templates), or even when using the "nominate for deletion" link, the automatic validation of the edit forms doesn't work. I have to click myself on the validation button (and I hate sports). Does anybody else has the same problem or knows how to solve it? It might be local to the browser, but I fail to see in which way. Thanks in advance. --Eusebius (talk) 08:47, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I've noticed this recently as well. Killiondude (talk) 08:50, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
This happens to me systematically at home and never at work, so I think it's a local problem, but I haven't been able to track it down. Pruneautalk 09:32, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Same here, it currently happens at work and not at home. Maybe a sign that I should actually work instead of wandering on Commons. --Eusebius (talk) 09:37, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Russian stamps

We have hundreds or thousands of Russian/Soviet stamps tagged with {{PD-RU-exempt}}. (One example: File:USSR stamp 989 Pe-8.jpg.) This seems extremely dubious to me, since the government works discussed in PD-RU-exempt have little to do with stamps ("state symbols and signs" and "official documents", the latter having to do with access to laws and the workings of government). Has the copyright status of these stamps ever been discussed at length? Mangostar (talk) 00:41, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

A stamp seems pretty clearly equivalent to a banknote which is specifically listed as a symbol of the state. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:59, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Hmm, here's a translation of the russian stamp copyright page. Evidently something in the law about postage stamps uses the term "public sign", the same term used in the copyright act? Not knowing Russian, I can't really assess what they're saying. Mangostar (talk) 02:15, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
The Russian word meaning "sign" used is the one that can translate as "sign, symbol, token", and in the law on postage stamps is used inter alia in the context of "tokens of payment" in the same sense as used of banknotes. It's not the word used for signboards or inscriptions. For a Russian speaker, banknotes and stamps are both, on the face of it, "state tokens" or "state signs" depending how you translate the word into English; but for a Russian lawyer, there might conceivably be some difference of interpretation, I suppose. Man vyi (talk) 09:14, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Well, Eduard Petrovich Gavrilov, an eminent Russian copyright scholar,[27][28][29] mentions postage stamps explicitly as examples of official works in his commentary (archived link) on article 8 of the 1993 copyright law of Russia. (He also notes that if a stamp shows a copyrighted artwork, the author of that artwork may retain copyrights for other uses of this artwork, even though the stamp bearing the representation of this artwork is in the public domain as an official work.) In the current Russian copyright law, article 1259 of Part IV of the Civil Code exludes official symbols from copyright, mentioning explicitly "flags, emblems, [court] orders, banknotes, and the like". I would think that postage stamps would fall under "and the like". IIRC, the 1993 law used similar phrasing. Lupo 23:48, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Please keep in mind that a lot of foreign stamps are PD in their home countries, but not in the US, due to the frequent use of copyrighted material within stamp designs. For example, if a stamp from Azerbaijan features a photo of the Beatles, it's probably not public domain in the US, and thus not usable on Commons. Unfortunately, these have to be determined on a case by case basis. Kaldari (talk) 21:01, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Telvison Station Idents And Commerictals Telvison Show Tralers And More

If You Have Anny Videos I Can Show Plese Tell Me Its For The Pubic Not Just For Me See I Cant Not Use You Tube Or Otther Video Websites Just Wikipida

If you have problems with Shockwave Flash and "streaming", then you could try http://www.archive.org/ , where they have a number of downloadable PD videos. AnonMoos (talk) 11:16, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Panorama POTD on main page

Please see the proposal at Talk:Main_Page#Panorama_POTD. -- User:Docu at 21:00, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Call for proposals for Wikimedia UK initiatives

Hi all. The Wikimedia UK board has been putting together a budget for the next year (You can see this, and help with its development, here) and we have some money left over. We are looking for proposals for projects/iniatives with budget requirements in the range of £100-£3000 (GBP). These projects can be either online or offline, but they should be primarily focused on the UK and they must further the objects of Wikimedia UK (broadly, to collate/develop/spread freely licensed material).

The deadline for proposals is the end of this month (i.e. 0:00 UTC on 1 March 2010). You can find more details of the requirements, and how to submit proposals, on our blog. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:59, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

February 18

Adding videos from the LoC

I've just noticed that commons doesn't have many of the approximately 1,000 videos on the library of congress, so I thought I would start doing it. However, it just took me two hours to do five, partially because I was confused as to how to do it, and partially because I have a slow computer/internet, and lack good software for combining videos.

This link: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/browse/ListSome.php?format=Motion+Picture shows all the collections that include motion pictures. However, I'm not sure if we can put the post-1923 ones on commons. That aside, I've started with a couple in the San Francisco link. They need to be converted to ogv, and I'm using firefogg for that. Also, I'm using windows movie maker to merge longer videos before converting, but I'm sure there is better software. Some of the categories have longer videos that need ot be merged. Basically, I"m asking for help to finish all of these uploads. Any help would be appreciated, any specific questions can be left on my talk page. However, I will take care of the San Francisco area link first, so if you guys could stay away from that and start on the other link that would be great. NativeForeigner (talk) 03:55, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Capture/Screenshots from TV

When I wanted to direct a new user to our Image casebook for an explanation/instruction why he can't upload a photo taken from television screen, I found that neither COM:CB nor Commons:Screenshots says anything about screenshots/capture from TV. Anybody interested to write an entry about that? --Túrelio (talk) 07:18, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

In the "Gadgets" tab of Special:Preferences, there is an new entry in the section "Tools for categories":

Search not in category: adds a link to category pages to search for the category name with the option "-incategory". This excludes files already in the category, e.g. on Category:Ullswater this links to a search for Ullswater -incategory:"Ullswater". That doesn't work for categories transcluded by templates. For these, use the template name instead. Due to caching, files added to the category during the day still appear.

Please try it out and tell me what you think of it. -- User:Docu at 18:47, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Note: once in a while, the search index doesn't update at all, e.g. yesterday and today. -- User:Docu at 09:54, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

February 15

Characters not permitted or to be avoided in titles

I got the impression that some bots do not treat correctly titles with / . I found in the french wikipedia: Les caractères suivants ne sont pas permis dans les titres : « # », « < », « > », « [ », « ] », « { », « } », « / » et « | ». Where in commons can I find which caracters are not permitted or are to be avoided in commons titles for respectively files, pages, categories? --Havang(nl) (talk) 10:06, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

It's the same here, except that / is allowed but discouraged. Stifle (talk) 10:12, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. Does someone know whether / will fit in the forthcoming title internationalisation? --Havang(nl) (talk) 10:42, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
Why is the slash allowed? Considering that it is used for subpages, this sounds like a recipe for trouble. Paradoctor (talk) 10:46, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
The subpage feature is not enabled for the File namespace, because it doesn't make sense there. See meta:Help:Link#Subpage feature and mw:Manual:$wgNamespacesWithSubpages. —LX (talk, contribs) 16:39, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
Ok, but I still don't like it. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 22:01, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
There are subpages in this namespace, even if it isn't enabled. -- User:Docu at 22:05, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
Now I'm confused. How does that work? Paradoctor (talk) 22:33, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
Instead of [[/text]] one has to link them as [[:File:imagename.jpg/text]] in that namespace. from [[File:imagename.jpg]] -- User:Docu at 22:42, 16 February 2010 (UTC), updated 10:11, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

People should fix their bots instead. ¦ Reisio (talk) 11:10, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I still got no answer: Where in commons can I find which caracters are not permitted or are to be avoided in commons titles for respectively files, pages, categories? --Havang(nl) (talk) 10:05, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
It's in MediaWiki. -- User:Docu at 10:11, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
To some extent also in Commons:File naming. -- User:Docu at 10:13, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Hello, there is a hughe number of galleries of flora/faune at special pages Galleries without wikipedia links http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:WithoutInterwiki; these have same scientific name at en-wiki; could someone make a bot to search the corresponding english articles and to add wikilinks to the commons galleries? --Havang(nl) (talk) 13:29, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

You might want to add them to the corresponding categories instead. These generally have the necessary interwikis. -- User:Docu at 13:43, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
The general practice here is to put interwikis (to Wikipedia articles) on a gallery page if an exactly-corresponding gallery and category both exist, and to put the interwikis on the category only if there's no gallery page. Among other things, bots will periodically automatically update the interwikis of a Wikimedia Commons gallery page, but will not update the interwikis of a Commons category which has interwikis to Wikipedia articles... AnonMoos (talk) 12:31, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Interwiki bots don't work well, if at all with Commons. As for a long time it's being debated how to phase out interwiki bots at Wikipedia, I'm not sure if it is even maintained or developed for Commons.
Some of the older galleries and structures were built in the way AnonMoos outlined, but, e.g. recent structures, generally quite well maintained, rely primarily on Categories, e.g. for geograph images, a series of categories were created that link to the corresponding articles at Wikipedia. Setting interwikis on categories depending on the existence or the non-existence of a (generally unmaintained) gallery just complicates the structure.
Most special pages are designed primarily for Wikipedia. Special:WithoutInterwiki seems to be done specifically for non-English language versions of Wikipedia. Many of special pages can be useful for Commmons, but they are not necessarily so. -- User:Docu at 12:30, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
The hugh amounth of thousands of biological items makes an interwikilinking bot worthwile. I am not able to make such a bot, but it seems to give direct usefull results for both commons and wikipedia's. --Havang(nl) (talk) 13:46, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I have found a file where my Username claims to be the owner but as one can see in the history, I have never touched it!

File:Box_of_squibs.jpg

This may be an error (somebody probably just copied the Infobox from one of my pics) but it is actually quite crazy that it is possible to manipulate stuff like this. Would it not be possible to move user and copyright infos into a protected area or something similar? So only admins can edit them? Any other platform would work like this (flickr, picasa,......) Amada44 (talk) 20:48, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

It looks like this edit introduced your name, so take it up with User:Dmitry G that he did this. Meanwhile, I'll make the actual correction (which you could have made yourself).
Keep in mind: the page edit history was clear, and it's easy to work out who did what. There is no way this can be restricted to administrators, since there are all sorts of reasons to need to indicate that someone other than yourself is the author of a file. For example, if I upload a picture by Rembrandt, I can hardly need to be an admin to say so. - Jmabel ! talk 23:12, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes of course I could have done it myself... But that was not the point. The idea would be, that if you upload a pic it automatically adds your username to the image. Amada44 (talk) 21:05, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
The uploaders name is automatically added in the file history, visible on the Filepage aside the thumbnail. In the filedescription the autor is to be filled in, and may be or may not be the uploader, so automatically added username is not possible there.--Havang(nl) (talk) 22:17, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Topic categories in source categories

An edit i made started a little discussion at my talk page. The question is if topic categories should be included in source categories just because all images of that topic is from the same source, even if there may be images from other sources uploaded in the future. I was almost certain that they should not be included, since the categorisation will be wrong if other images are uploaded. Am I thinking correct? /Ö 11:45, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I tend to agree. The other way around maybe (i.e. Category:Images from the Southerly Clubs Image Archives in Category:Southerly Clubs).
One could imagine that there be another subcategory Category:Artists primarily available at the Southerly Clubs Image Archives that would include Category:Mia_Adolphson. Hard to say though how this category should be labeled though. -- User:Docu at 12:01, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Sometimes all the image in a subject category came from a single source and it is quite tempting to combine them; however I agree with User:Ö that this will cause categorization to be incorrect once new images are added on the same subject but from a different source. There are 2 solutions: 1) to add separate subject and source categories to each image 2) to create [[category:subject from source]] category ( child of "subject" and "source" categories) holding all those images. --Jarekt (talk) 14:05, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Mass uploads from flickr et al

Can anyone explain to me, which educational purpose benefits from mass uploads of the kind found for example in Category:Images from United States Army to check? -- smial (talk) 18:53, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

They vary widely, but clearly the activities of any military body, including how that institution presents itself, are of potential scholarly interest. The U.S. Army, unlike most, happens to release all of these images into the public domain. It would be great if we had a comparable set of images for dozens of other countries. - Jmabel ! talk 23:18, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Are the claimed public domain licenses correct for all these photographs? I added attribution to File:Flickr - The U.S. Army - Division 1, Color, Experimental category.jpg from my reading of the source and this copyright page. Should we not be using the license provided by the US Army? In other words is Commons assuming each photo is in fact "a work of a U.S. Army soldier or employee, taken or made during the course of the person's official duties"? A few seem as if they could have been taken off duty. -84user (talk) 11:49, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
I think w:en:Copyright status of work by the U.S. government answers my own question. I've struck out my speculation that a few might have been off-duty, although it still seems strange to me to not attribute the author. 84user (talk) 12:02, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

February 19

sort of a screenshot

Hello everyone, can anyone please tell me if this he:קובץ:Auto-text_by_Word.PNG image is allowed to be uploaded to commons? It's a screenshot of microsoft word Auto-text feature, the user typed a word and the software gives him an option of what he have might want the next word to be מתניה (talk) 07:09, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Don't see any problem, it's only letters. Paradoctor (talk) 10:57, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
Definitively too simple to have any originality as a picture (thus not copyrightable at all, so it's OK IMHO). -- IANEZZ  (talk) 11:44, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. מתניה (talk) 11:47, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Postage Stamps from Paraguay

I would like to upload two scans of postage stamps from Paraguay. They were issued 2009 and depict imagery of which the copyright is expired (which I happen to know for sure). There is no particular reference to copyright on the stamps themselves, It just says "Director General del Tesoro Publico - Valores Fiscales". Thx and cheers, OAlexander (talk) 14:36, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Translation of BotMoveToCommons instructions

Please see Template talk:BotMoveToCommons#Hebrew translation where a discussion about the Hebrew translation is occurring. -- Avi (talk) 15:12, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I think will be good idea to add link to GLAMorous to categories (as tab or in tool box). However I'm not sure that this should be done by default, so gadget for this functionality is other way of doing this.

I also think will be good idea to add functionality to GLAMorous to do the same for particular user contributions (and links on Commons too).

Gallery may be improved too to show global usage of files (or just counter).

EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:45, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

A gadget would be nice, similar to search link tab for categories.
In addition, we could add {{Usercattoolbox}} to {{User category}}. -- User:Docu at 11:24, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Help finding the original source for an image

Hey I'd like to post this image I've found of Anna Fisher (99% sure it is her). I've searched on TinEye and can not find any common original, most matches are people posting it because it looks cool and don't even know who she is. The following flikr page has a pretty good summary of interest in this image. flikr page

This image is only available in low resolution which makes me think that it may be from a video. I've searched on NASA and youtube for videos of Anna. I found only one video of her with a similar helmet in underwater training, but this exact shot was not included.

I am pretty sure that this image was taken at a NASA training site, but I can't find any credible sources saying so. --Timscaffidi (talk) 19:38, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Earliest version I could find was on this blog post from June 2009; they plainly state they could not remember the image source. As mentioned on the Flickr page, there is a Time/Life photo by John Bryson which is very very similar (seen here on gettyimages). It is not the same, but the reflections in the glass even are so close that the two photos must have been taken within seconds of each other. In the reflection in the glass, you can see the photographer with a tripod, and it doesn't look like there are other photographers around -- so the overwhelming likelihood is that this was allowing Time/Life to do a photo spread, and that John Bryson of LIFE is the author of both. It's possible there was another female astronaut at the same shoot (you can see other astronauts in reflections as well), and it's obviously a U.S. astronaut at least -- but given the very very similar reflections I'd find it hard to believe it is anyone else, since that would require a different angle and different reflections. Short answer though, virtually no chance it can be uploaded. NASA sites have lots of Anna Fisher photos but nothing like this one. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:43, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Corbis has some Fisher photos here; nothing really similar but they do have a shot of the first six women astronauts together; slight chance that this was a multiple-person photo-op and they took similar poses with different astronauts. Still... seems awfully unlikely to get the reflections that close. Carl Lindberg (talk) 04:42, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

February 20

A request to users in Greece: pics of strikes wanted

I'm contributing to the Dutch article on the financial crisis, see nl:Kredietcrisis. It's rather a lot of text, plus graphs. I'd like to enliven it with some (more) pictures. I understand that there are strikes going on in Greece now, leading to closed petrol stations and so on. If a user in Greece reads this, would he/she be so kind to take a few pictures, upload them and drop me a line? (In case of demonstrations: please, don't endanger yourself!) Best regards, MartinD (talk) 07:05, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

proposal of new review systems: photozou-review / photohito-review

Hi. I've uploaded about 50 or so images licenced under {{Cc-by-2.1-jp}} or {{Cc-by-sa-2.1-jp}}, from photohito.com and photozou.jp, e.g.,

The problem is currently there are no review systems like Flickr-review for these images, which means that if the original author changes his mind makes these licenses to "All rights reserved", efforts that I made would be vain and these images would be deleted. Could anybody create the new systems, namely, "photozou-review" and "photohito-review" ? --トトト (talk) 07:25, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

User:Dcoetzee might be an expert for that, as he has already established a Picasa-review. --Túrelio (talk) 08:24, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
You can use WebCite to document the license at the time of upload. Paradoctor (talk) 09:29, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
 Comment:Thank you guys for your replies. But {{LicenseReview}} can be used only by Admins and not by normal users like me. While WebCite may be useful, I am concerned that archiving every source page may consume a lot of disk spaces on WebCite servers, which is also a huge waste for the planet earth. Maybe I will ask User:Dcoetzee for the new systems in the near future.--トトト (talk) 13:15, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
"archiving every source page may consume a lot of disk spaces on WebCite servers": w:WP:PERFORMANCE, and I don't think that a handful of HDDs will pose a serious threat to future generations. ^_^ Paradoctor (talk) 16:22, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Accessibility of audio files

Reading this, I realized that our spoken audio files are inaccessible to deaf people. I think a transcription project would be a good idea. Paradoctor (talk) 10:27, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Deletion backlog

Over at en.wikipedia, a featured article review is stalled out, in part because there is no clarity about whether certain images are free or not. These two deletion requests, which are related to the FA discussion, have been open since January 12. Is it possible for an admin to close the deletion requests, so that this aspect of the FA discussion can proceed? I asked at the Help Desk a few weeks back, but nothing was done and the request was archived. Any action would be appreciated. —Josiah Rowe (talk) 06:09, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

There is a backlog. Given the opinions in the discussion, I wouldn't count on the images being kept at Commons. Just remove them from your article if it hinders FA process. -- User:Docu at 09:25, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
✓ Closed both requests. --The Evil IP address (talk) 09:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Thank you, Evil IP. —Josiah Rowe (talk) 12:19, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Schlaborn Kinderheim, Kr Ruppin, Germany

Searching under 'Schlaborn' lead me to File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-N0301-308, Flüchtlingskinderheim Schlaborn, Krs. Ruppin.jpg, with a photo of children in this home in 1946.

As the son of a German father and South African mother, I spent most of the summer months of 1943 at the age of 9 years in this home. The school then had a decided pro-Nazi agenda.

I been unsuccessful in finding the location of this facility in Brandenburg, Kr Ruppin and would appreciate any help to do so. Does its til exist and if so, what is it used for today? I am also looking for any information on the place during that time.

I would like to make contact with anyone who may also have spent time there in those years to exchang memories. I can read german, but not write it well. I can be contacted directly if preferred by e-mail at phmwoodt@mweb.co.za or by post at P O Box 147, Kleinmond, 7195, South Africa.

Peter Müller.

We just host the image file; that doesn't mean that anybody here knows much about the subject-matter of the photo. You may have better luck on German-language forums... AnonMoos (talk) 15:19, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Anybody Home ?

I uploaded a file Feb 11, and it was taged for license. I have sent emails with owners permissons, I've sent email asking for Decisions, Comments, frankly any responce at all, and have not heard a peep. I'm new to Commons, is this just a "hide and wait" situation ? Is it common "not" to get replys ? I would like to know where my file stands, [30] Do you need more or am I ok, or what ? Thank you Mlpearc (talk) 18:48, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Were the permission email(s) sent/forwarded to something like permissions-commons@wikimedia.org? Anyway, as the group of volunteers who work on permissions (OTRS) is rather small, it may take some weeks until the permission is checked and a ticket issued. In between, you should put this {{OTRS pending}} (including the brackets) on the image page (provided the permission was sent). --Túrelio (talk) 19:12, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
I requested an OTRS ticket in December which I received after 10 days, so you're still on schedule. ;) I took the liberty of making the edits. Happy editing, Paradoctor (talk) 20:00, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Thank you, I understand User:Túrelio.. Mlpearc (talk) 21:38, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

How to recat a lot from cross-catscans?

How to recat the files from a cross-catscan like : [31] , changing from Category:Coats of arms of cities in Pyrénées-Atlantiques to new subcat Category:Coats of arms of cities in the Northern Basque Country? Can I do this myselves or do I need to ask an administrator? --Havang(nl) (talk) 20:50, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

You can use {{Intersect categories}}. Multichill (talk) 21:35, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks-a-lot.--Havang(nl) (talk) 21:48, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
It doesn't work, it is not a case of simple category intersection: files from the first term of the crosscatscan are to be recategorised if they belong to subcategories of the second term of the crosscatscan. --Havang(nl) (talk) 09:56, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Are you moving all the files in Category:Coats of arms of cities in Pyrénées-Atlantiques to Category:Coats of arms of cities in the Northern Basque Country? If so, you could leave a {{Move cat}} request at User talk:CommonsDelinker/commands or User talk:Category-bot, together with a note asking the bot owner not to delete the parent category or convert it into a redirect. However, if you only want to move some of the files, then I think you will have to do this manually, perhaps using Hot Cat. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 10:54, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Those methods I know, I don't want to move all files; I have generated a list of 92 items, see [32] , changing for all these files the leftside Category:Coats of arms of cities in Pyrénées-Atlantiques into Category:coats of arms of cities in the Northern Basque Country and it looks sufficiently structured for a bot to do this. This situation occurs regularly, so it's worthwile if someone makes such a bot, I lack experience for that. --Havang(nl) (talk) 11:12, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
I think AutoWikiBrowser can do that (never tried though). Jean-Fred (talk) 15:29, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
But there I read that one has to check every edit by hand, I'm afraid that's as long as just open, paste, save page. And sorry, I don't understand that software part. I hope there is some bot. --Havang(nl) (talk) 16:02, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
It can be done with AWB. It takes some time to learn how it works, but it can be worth doing so. Once you have some experience with it, you can apply for a bot flag and it will do the edits directly.
Category-bot can take the input for category moves as a list or a CatScan2 request. For this specific category, I would require it to be tagged with {{Move}} for the usual two weeks though (there is no {{Split}}). -- User:Docu at 16:50, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
For some of them, such as File:Blason ville fr Villefranque (Pyrénées-Atlantiques).svg, categorization is made by a template : "catCOAof=cities in Pyrénées-Atlantiques" should be replaced by "catCOAof=cities in the Northern Basque Country", either by hand or by a specific bot request. Croquant (talk) 17:43, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
The only sentence I understand clearly in thoses pages about bots: If you aren't sure of what you're doing, AVOID USING A BOT! And oh, that terrible cat-in-template problem, Cats frozen in templates should be forbidden. I think that my job is fastest done by hands, then. Thanks all for your comments. And if someone has further ideas, a real solution... --Havang(nl) (talk) 18:05, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
✓ Done --Havang(nl) (talk) 18:51, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Bundesarchiv categorization by year

I see there has been some traction on the matter here:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2010Feb#Bundesarchiv_categorization

Thank you for the discussion. Where will I find the new categories?

Someone mentioned that I need a user account to find them? I have one, I just don't log in very often with it - I use multiple computers.68.144.172.8 12:55, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Using multiple computers is all the more reason to log in: otherwise, you just look like a bunch of quasi-random IP addresses. - Jmabel ! talk 23:04, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Where will I find the new categories?68.144.172.8 14:27, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

import from :en

Could someone import these two images from :en to Commons and categorize them into Category:Filk.

Thanks. --Túrelio (talk) 08:42, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Have you tried using CommonsHelper? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 08:57, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
No and it looks too complicated to me just to import two images (however strange that may sound from an admin). Nevertheless, thanks for the hint. --Túrelio (talk) 10:51, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
  1. File:2006-05-27 Baycon 2006 Saturday Night Open Filk Circle- Photo by Tony Fabris.jpg
  2. File:Dorsai filking conclave30.jpg --Justass (talk) 18:24, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
@Justass, thanks. --Túrelio (talk) 20:55, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I've never understood why the interface for CommonsHelper has to be so complicated. It should only ask for 3 things: The URL of the image you want to move, and your TUSC username and password. The rest of the interface is just clutter. Kaldari (talk) 20:27, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

The interface of CommonsHelper2 has been revamped and is much lighter. Jean-Fred (talk) 22:02, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Help for search?

Is there a help for the search? I tried to find it, but had no success.--Avron (talk) 19:19, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

lol, did you try searching for it? Rocket000 (talk) 22:15, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
^_^ Paradoctor (talk) 01:27, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
There is en:Help:Searching. It applies more or less to Commons too. -- User:Docu at 22:16, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
mw:Help:Searching is also something you might check out. It seems that is in other languages, fwiw. Killiondude (talk) 04:05, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. In the mean time, Help:Searching with IW's has been added. --Foroa (talk) 08:30, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

POTY 2009?

Just curious, is anyone working on this? Rocket000 (talk) 22:15, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

February 22

map processing

Do we have some kind of request page where people can ask for help with graphics tasks?

Let me describe, what I was thinking about: With the help of linguistic surveys that covered almost any town with an own school in Germany a team led by Georg Wenker created the most detailed linguistic atlas ever. It consists of 576 maps and is available online as Digitaler Wenker-Atlas at http://diwa.info/ (German). Based on the info present in the atlas I would like to create an isogloss map to visualize the isogloss density. So my idea was to access all the maps (which require a Java applet), make hi-res screenshots and then to make an overlay of all the 576 maps. The result hopefully will be a map where areas with many isoglosses running through are darker while areas with few isoglosses are lighter.

But it soon turned out, that it would take weeks to do this manually. So does anybody know an easier way to get the ECW served images in an automated way? And does anybody know a tool to do an overlay of the 576 maps?

Note: Although the maps are over 100 years old, scientific and freely available online they are not free in the sense Commons requires it, cause there's no proof that all the involved authors fulfil the PD-70 requirements. So the resulting map cannot be uploaded on Commons. But the information can be used to improve other linguistic maps on Commons. --Slomox (talk) 00:29, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Mistake in a category name

Hello. Category:Jean Duplessi-Bertaux should be Category:Jean Duplessis-Bertaux, what is the efficient way to correct that ? Regards. --GaAs11671 16:07, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

If it's just a misspelling, you can request this directly at User talk:CommonsDelinker/commands. -- User:Docu at 16:56, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I can see this already done, thanks. I'll remember this answer if I need that again in the future. Thanks for that also. --GaAs11671 18:10, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Main page headings

Hey, just thought I'd let you know that I've now hidden the first headings on all main pages. Unlike before, it's now on all main pages (not only some), in Monobook and Vector and only when you view the page, not if you're browsing the history, editing, moving, deleting or (un)protecting the page. I've checked it first and found no errors, but if there should be some, please let me know, and I'll do my best to fix them. I've now only added it to Monobook and Vector, because I'm not sure this is needed for other skins. Thus, help in this area would be appreciated. --The Evil IP address (talk) 18:25, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki:About/sl

Is it a standard page? It's the only one page appearing in search list typing mediawiki. Must be deleted... perhaps--Pierpao (talk) 23:48, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki:About exists (as well as MediaWiki:About/de and others), it's just the default so it won't show up by searching for it. MediaWiki:About/sl is a non-default translation of it. Rocket000 (talk) 18:56, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks --Pierpao (talk) 13:18, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

February 21

Image corruption

During the GeographBot's recent upload orgy, ten image files gave problems. They are listed here. When I attempted hand uploads of the first three on the list, they all gave the weird error message: Files of the MIME type "application/x-php" are not allowed to be uploaded. In the case of the two "now fixed", I used a photo editor to make a trivial change to each image. Browsers seem happy with these images - why is the Media wiki software so fussy? — RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 00:38, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

A bit further up the page you'll find what you seek. Paradoctor (talk) 01:31, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually that section had disappeared by the time I read this but I found it in the history. Thanks for the info. For ten images the easiest approach is to simply edit them and re-upload and someone has now done it. — RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 02:15, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Geograph images 202476 and 208892 were being reported as containing malicious code. can I assume this is a similar, known bug? — RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 15:30, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Apparently. BTW, I've never such a blue plaque. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 17:00, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

What can an artist help with?

Hello everyone. I am a long-time Wikipedia contributor, and since I can draw/paint/use Photoshop, I've been wondering if I can help with image creating/editing as well. Is there anything to do around here if you're not a photographer? I'm reading the FAQ and policies, but it's a bit slow and I haven't found my answer yet. --Urzică (talk) 16:13, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Look around the Commons:Graphic Lab. They can probably use some help. Jean-Fred (talk) 16:37, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Or you can help make restorations of historic images. Durova is very good at that and would love to help get you started I think. TheDJ (talk) 21:21, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Category:Images for cleanup, especially Category:Images with watermarks --Justass (talk) 21:27, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Besides just using Photoshop, when it comes to drawing/painting, I think the best way to help out is to create diagrams, which often include artistic elements. Other uses for artists include demonstrations of various types of art for which we don't have high-quality free images (User:Kasuga has done some of these), and drawings of sexual images (which for some reason people seem to find less graphic/shocking). Dcoetzee (talk) 04:48, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion for policy document rename

In the interests of plain English, within the Commons:Policies and guidelines, would it be sensible to rename Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag to something like "Policy on photographs of old pictures" and Commons:When to use the PD-scan tag to something like "Policy on scans of old pictures"?

I think this would particulary help new users who might not even know what a tag is. 9carney (talk) 16:34, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me. I never did like those names for policies. Rocket000 (talk) 17:06, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I have added redirects:
May be that is all we need. --Jarekt (talk) 17:46, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 Support: Good idea, the current naming sounds more like a help page than a policy. However, I'd drop the "Policy on" at the beginning, as this just makes the title awkwardly long w/o real benefit. If the word "policy" is needed, then it should go at the end, e.g. "Photographs of old pictures policy" or "Scans of old pictures policy". --The Evil IP address (talk) 11:42, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Prioritizing cleanup with GLAMorous

As we know, some cleanup categories (e.g. Category:Images with watermarks) have a backlog that just seems to go on forever and ever. In lieu of better image editing tools to help us get through this stuff, I think the best thing we can do is prioritize the images that are most useful - and the easiest way to identify those is by which ones are most used. Magnus's GLAMorous, although not designed for this, is quite up to the task. Here are some example queries:

(Don't hesitate to click on them as GLAMorous appears to be caching results.) I've also found GLAMorous valuable for targeting low-resolution images in various image source categories, so I can invest some effort in hunting down higher-resolution versions. Dcoetzee (talk) 05:17, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Is it a good idea to add {own} to a file ?

I mean, when you have good reasons to think the uploader is the author, but they forgot to say it ? ie that, is it a good idea I add author/source, or am I potentially becoming complicit of an infringement ? --GaAs11671 20:21, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

If you have no doubts whatsoever that the uploader is the author, then I guess it's ok, but usually I would leave that to the uploader. If you're wrong, that would not be a good thing. It's probably better idea just to inform the uploader. If they forgot it once, it may happen again. Rocket000 (talk) 21:08, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
There is a lot of old images on commons not using {{Information}} template. Many of them use CC license but do not have any specific source or author information, for example File:Joshua Tree 2004.JPG I noticed today. Sometimes they do not have any information other than license and a category. Often if I run into one of those I add information template and fill the author's field and add ((tl|own}} to the source if the image seems to be taken with a private camera and not downloaded from the web. Otherwise I leave it blank. --Jarekt (talk) 14:28, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Thats's what I was doing. Thanks for the answers.
(in this particuliar case, the author has just made a come back to indirectly answer to me :D )
--GaAs11671 14:48, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

February 23

Latest Files

I use this feature almost every day as it helps me find when when versions of files are up. But now when I click on it, it redirects to Wikipedia English, and shows all the new files uploaded there. Can anyone tell me why it's been moved? Surely the Commons should have it's own new files gallery. Fry1989 (talk) 00:57, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

They've done some stuff with the servers today and they're fixing it as we type. :-) [33] Killiondude (talk) 01:05, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
thanks! :D Fry1989 (talk) 01:12, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

February 25

Is someone messing with the edit buttons for images?

I went to edit File:TDKadaster2009 MdJ1.JPG (and, yes, I was on Commons, I started from URL http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TDKadaster2009_MdJ1.JPG) & got a message:

This image is on Wikimedia Commons—not on Wikipedia. Any descriptions should be placed there. This page should rarely be used except to indicate featured pictures. Please see the image description page on Commons for file information, a list of pages that display this image, or view the full-size version of the image.

Yes, indeed. That's why I was trying to edit it on Commons.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on? Does anyone have any idea how to fix it? I end up there even if I explicitly enter the URL http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:TDKadaster2009_MdJ1.JPG&action=edit ; that seems to be redirected to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:TDKadaster2009_MdJ1.JPG&action=edit, probably by some misguided canonicalization. - Jmabel ! talk 00:25, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

The problem does not appear to be general. I can edit other file pages and, of course, here I am successfully editing the Village Pump. - Jmabel ! talk 00:26, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
That is weird. It's only the edit button that "redirects" you. move, history, delete, etc. all work fine. Rocket000 (talk) 01:50, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TDKadaster2009_MdJ1.JPG?action=edit (without w/index.php) seems fine. I don't know what happened. – Kwj2772 (msg) 02:05, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. Mystery still not solved, of course, but that gives me a way to edit. - Jmabel ! talk 22:25, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
  • I clicked your links and the same thing happened to me. I purged the page on Wikipedia and here and the problem went away. No doubt some kind of database error. Seems the programmers had a bit of fun today (see below) -Nard the Bard 01:50, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

UAE Freedom of Panorama

Regarding an image of the Etihad Airlines HQ, I found en:Wikipedia:Possibly_unfree_files/2010_February_11#File:ETIHADHQ.jpg -- the administrator who closed the discussion said "Doubts as to whether this type of structure displays sufficient originality to bring the UAE's non-freedom of panorama into play are unresolved. Commons would almost certainly keep this. See, for example, Commons:Deletion requests/Image:UAE Embassy Moscow.jpg." - Based on this, would you recommend uploading the file on here? WhisperToMe (talk) 00:05, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

A building like en:File:ETIHADHQ.jpg exhibiting little originality (its form being primarily driven by utilitarian function) is probably not eligible for copyright in the first place, so feel free to upload it here. If it is ever nominated for deletion, you can put it back on En as fair use (at lower resolution). Dcoetzee (talk) 03:17, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Uploaded here: File:ETIHADHQAbuDhabi.jpg WhisperToMe (talk) 11:09, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Validation of PD-Art or PD-old

I would like to propose a simple check on license validity of files using PD-Art or PD-old and {{Creator}} template. Pages in Creator: namespace (see Category:Creator templates)), transcluding {{Creator}} template, are added to numerous files on Commons. Each creator page contains date of death field and one can easily autocategorize all images using creator pages of creators who died less than 70 years ago into a single hidden maintenance category category:Files of authors who died less than 70 years ago (or similar). Than it should be easy to intersect this category (using CatScan) with Category:Public domain due to copyright expiration for list of files which likely use incorrect license. Unless there is an opposition to this idea I will try to implement it. --Jarekt (talk) 19:27, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I think this will generate mostly false positives. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 19:33, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I could not think of a valid reason for an image to have both creator template of author who died recently and {{PD-old}} or {{PD-Art}} template. Either one or the other should go. --Jarekt (talk) 19:39, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
If you do this, I would start with only the very recent ones and see how it goes. Otherwise, too many false positives and you're left with maintenance categories no uses because of it. I would say 1977 and up (that way there can't be any non-renewed/no notice issues, I think the US was the last to require a notice). Another thing, the PD-Art (and PD-scan I guess) ones may have the photograph date instead of the original. Rocket000 (talk) 21:17, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Rocket000, Sorry can not do that I only compare creator's date of death and existence of PD-old. I do not use dates specified in the information template. --Jarekt (talk) 04:36, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I created Category:Works of authors who died less than 70 years ago autocategorized by creator template for files transcluding {{Creator}} templates with death-date less than 70 tears ago ({{#ifexpr: {{CURRENTYEAR}}-{{ISOyear| {{{Deathdate|}}} }}<71|...}). The intersection of that category with files using {{PD-Old}} returns many files. Some of them have incorrect license (for example this one), others have incorrect author (for example this one where all artwork and documents related to windmills collected by Günter Rapp are listing him as an author). --Jarekt (talk) 04:36, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Can we export the results to a list to remove the autocategorization? The Catscan gives some interesting 81 results like File:Theodor Pallady - Pe banca in Place Dauphine-Paris.jpg with wrong use of the pd-old/pd-art tag, I bet some other findings were already resolved, but for all other 46,110 images not tagged as pd-old but with different copyright tags this category is meaningless. --Martin H. (talk) 18:19, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
May be the best way to use it is to occasionally turn it on (create and populate category:Works of authors who died less than 70 years ago), tag all the problem images (add them to some temp category or a list) and than turn it off. Than resolve the problem images and repeat the cycle in a few months. I assume that is what Martin H. is proposing. I agree that we do not need to permanently keep 46k files in a category in order to occasionally catch a copyvio. --Jarekt (talk) 19:50, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes, if it is acceptable from server side it would be a very good idea to turn it on and off periodically, from a maintenance point of view it is a very good idea. --Martin H. (talk) 21:23, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I tagged bunch of images for deletion changed licenses in few others and disabled categorization into Category:Works of authors who died less than 70 years ago. I will try to add more creator templates and in a while activate this test again. This approach would be much more useful if more of PD-old images of known authors use creator templates. May be there is some way we can encurage it more. --Jarekt (talk) 03:56, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Advertisment for Photoworkshop

Any ideas how to advertise the Commons:Photoworkshop Nyköping 2010 a little bit more? So far it seems there is no interest from international Photographers to meet, in contrast to the overcrowded German photoworkshops. --Prolineserver (talk) 08:27, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Leave a message on the talk page of WikiProject Sweden on the English Wikipedia, and at the Village Pump of the Swedish Wikipedia? What about e-mailing photography clubs in Sweden? Also, would the mainstream media in Sweden be interested in picking up a story like this? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 11:58, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Well, this is going to be a workshop dedicated to people taking photos and not necessarily related to Sweden. We initially decided not to have it in Germany to put the weight away from German photographers, but so far they still dominate the registration list. --Prolineserver (talk) 13:40, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
I see. Well, I presume most of the participants are likely to come from Europe, so perhaps you might try leaving messages on the English Wikipedia talk pages of WikiProject Europe and WikiProject Photography, and similar WikiProjects in other European language Wikipedias. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 05:00, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
May be fr:Wikipédia:Atelier graphique ? --GaAs11671 13:38, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Category:Scalators in Spain

Could someone rename the category to "Escalators in Spain" and move the images to it? I have been moving all de UK "escalators" to the country category. We probably need to create a specific category for LU escalators. Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:33, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Leave a request at "User talk:CommonsDelinker/commands" or at "User talk:Category-bot". — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 11:05, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

✓ DoneSmiley.toerist (talk) 23:34, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Charles F. Beckman

Hi everybody, could you check the 3 contributions of Elgatoesme, which are all said to be from Charles F. Beckman. Thanks. --GaAs11671 18:24, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I see nothing odd about them. Presumably that is his name, and he prefers to use his actual name as "author" rather than his account name. I do the same, except that I make mine link back to my account. - Jmabel ! talk 23:38, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Right, in fact only one had no "source" field (I looked too fast), I added {{Own}} to it. --GaAs11671 13:34, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

How useful are those two pictures?

Should I launch a DR for these pictures? File:Flickr - cyclonebill - Øl (6).jpg and File:Flickr - cyclonebill - Øl (9).jpg. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 09:12, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely. Not useful, so beyond project scope. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 09:48, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
A great set always contains images of lesser quality, that doesn't mean we should delete them. Multichill (talk) 11:37, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
I suppose the images do make more sense in the context of the set they belong to. I was also a little concerned about the TV image in the background being a derivative work, but I think they are indistinct enough not to make this an issue. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 12:11, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

UK Government considers licensing scheme for orphaned works

The UK Government is considering introducing legislation to set up a licensing scheme for orphaned works, including photographs. The plan appears to be that use of an orphaned work will require payment of a fair licence fee, and this fee will be held safely and kept available to be claimed by the rightful owner should they come forwards. The stated intention is that "there should be no financial advantage from mis-identifying a work as an orphan work and that deliberate or negligent mis-identification should carry an appropriate penalty". Consulation will start later this year.

See: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/c-policy-orphanworks-photo

MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:53, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

How to ask for speedy deletion of pages (not files)

Sorry, I couldn't find help about asking deletion of pages, not files, created by vandals. Do I blank the page? Examples:

Regards.--GaAs11671 16:28, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I've deleted them. Next time, simply use {{Speedy|reason for speedy deletion}} and it will be deleted in due time. --The Evil IP address (talk) 16:34, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
OK, thanks. I was asking because the text of {{Speedy}} and the associated categories and explanations (eg Commons:Deletion_policy#Speedy_deletion) only speak of problems with files (copyvio...) and seem inappropriate. --GaAs11671 16:40, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Help needed for photo submissions via Email

Do you like to help people? Do you understand our licensing policies? Do you have a decent command of the English language? Do you have activity on Commons or another Wikimedia project? Do you have some idea what is within our project scope and what isn't?

If so, Wikimedia's volunteer email response team is looking for people to help others get their photographs and graphics online to add to Wikimedia's store of useful, freely licensed media.

The photosubmissions email address receives about 3 or 4 emails a day from people who need help adding their media.

Applications may be presented at m:OTRS/volunteering. Please specify that you want to be included in Wikimedia's Photosubmissions team. Bastique demandez 18:15, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

February 27

File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Bloemenhulde door Minangkabau vrouw aan... (too long title)

Sorry, I'm here again. Shouldn't a file with a name like File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Bloemenhulde door Minangkabau vrouw aan de vliegers en boordwerktuigkundige van de eerste commerciële vlucht Holland-Batavia tijdens de tussenstop te Medan TMnr 60046357.jpg be renamed with a shorter name ? --GaAs11671 18:31, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

People like long names. --Prolineserver (talk) 18:45, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Unless it is misleading about the file content, or completely wrong, or invalid, or not descriptive at all (file names should be descriptive per policy IIRC), why bother with file names at all? Even the most basic computer user can perform copy/paste, I fail to see the advantages of short file names. -- IANEZZ  (talk) 19:11, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
What is the advantage of a long name, especially if it is not English? Sure it should be descriptive, but there is the file description for this purpose. If you try to put such a long filename in a e.g. in a template it destroys the overview, or it makes it almost impossible to give the link to somebody sitting next to me with his ipone without sending him an email. --Prolineserver (talk) 20:34, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
"why bother with file names at all": I could do without them. Paradoctor (talk) 20:43, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Let's not be anglocentric. On Commons names can be in any language. However, there is a typical length of name, no more than about 80-100 characters - we'd only usually go beyond that if we needed to in order to be clearly identify the file. I've uploaded some classic artwork with very long titles and I usually put the whole thing in the filename along with the author. Dcoetzee (talk) 23:58, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
One advantage of a long name in another language is that increases the context for comprehension and therefore the likelihood of identification and finding. For example, in the cited example, I would be unlikely to be able to guess whether the file might be useful if only Bloemenhulde or vliegers were in the title, but the breadth of context is helpful. Man vyi (talk) 06:46, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Some advantages of long filenames:
  • Very descriptive
  • No naming collisions
Multichill (talk) 11:35, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
OK. But this one is not "long": it is "very very long" ;-) --GaAs11671 13:17, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Personally, I don't think the first part should be all caps, but it's too late to change that now. -- User:Docu at 13:24, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Next batch won't contain the caps. Multichill (talk) 12:43, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

February 26

File:Five Myr Climate Change1.png: is this a joke?

The File:Five Myr Climate Change1.png is a strange derivative of Five Myr Climate Change.png. Somebody changed the age scale from million years to years, and added some other nonsense. What's the best way to deal with this? Ignore? Delete? --Jo (talk) 01:30, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't look very educational to me. Paradoctor (talk) 01:33, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
This was apparently used for a hoax added to en:Glacier mass balance on Feb 18 by en:User:Cluntbait (diff), reverted 3 days later as vandalism.(diff) Dcoetzee (talk) 01:54, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I saw the usage listed on the description page, didn't find it in the article, though.--Jo (talk) 02:09, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
And it's gone. Lupo 06:55, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks.--Jo (talk) 00:53, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

File:Sede de Iberia en Madrid.jpg

Originally uploaded to EN by Xocolata1, whose images were found to be copyvios - The image is originally at Photobucket at http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v281/alfonsoc/DibujoIB1.jpg WhisperToMe (talk) 16:01, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Minors' contributions to Wikimedia Commons

Are we going to delete every image that minors contribute? I'm not sure whether to point people to continue the discussion at COM:AN, or start a branch thread here, but this needs to be discussed. More specifically, we have contributors and admins on this project who are not of legal age where they live (aka, minors). Avi and Lar seem to be of the opinion that we should delete their images as they cannot enter into a contract (assigning a license to their work). Lar and Avi, if I've mis-summarized your positions, please let me know. Was this an isolated incident because the minor was in the photo? Or because their username was their real name coupled with that fact? I guess I just wanted to get other people's opinions on minors' contributions to Commons. Killiondude (talk) 05:46, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

My general impression is that the argument was raised in this case because people wanted the image gone for privacy reasons. If it were a picture of, say, a stop sign, nobody would much have cared. En has long dealt with similar problems, where Oversight is used to remove contributions from minors that reveal personal information. If there's support for similar removal here, we should just codify that as policy.
As far as I know, there's little to no legal precedent in the area of copyright held by minors, whether they have the legal capability to license their works, and whether they even have the ability to sue for infringement. If things are as you describe, it'll be a sad day for the world when everyone under 18 has to wait for the age of majority before they can share pics online legally. I'd like to hear a real lawyer's opinion on this. Dcoetzee (talk) 06:04, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Well, anyway we have no foolproof way of telling the age of our contributors in general. Lupo 07:37, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Have a look at fr:Wikipédia:Legifer/août_2006_-_septembre_2007#Mineurs et propriété intellectuelle. In short, in French law, minors have the legal property of their creations, even if it is their parents responsability to handle this. --GaAs11671 09:33, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

England and Wales. Interesting question. I can't speak for the US position, but the position is not very clear under the common law of England and Wales, which applies to persons from this jurisdiction licensing files to the Commons, and probably to persons in other Commonwealth jurisdictions as well where the law of contract is similar. There are two relevant cases that came to different conclusions:

  1. The first is Edwards v. Carter [1893] AC 360, House of Lords, which stands for the proposition that the disposition by a minor of any form of property, whether realty or personalty, is not finally and conclusively binding on him or her. He or she is entitled to repudiate the contract while still a minor, or within a reasonable time after reaching adulthood. (Copyright is a form of personal property.)
  2. On the other hand, a different result was reached in Chaplin v. Leslie Frewin (Publishers) Ltd. [1966] Ch. 71, Court of Appeal. The plaintiffs, who were a minor and his adult wife, entered into a contract with the defendants for an autobiography of the minor to be written by two journalists based on information supplied by the plaintiffs and published by the defendant. The plaintiffs were aware that the defendants had entered into contracts with third parties for the foreign publication of the book. The plaintiffs approved the final proofs and assigned their legal rights in the copyright in the proofs to the defendant, and received a advanced payment of royalties. However, just over a month later the plaintiffs repudiated the contract on the basis that the book was libellous and attributed to the minor views that he did not hold. The majority of the court held that the minor could not recover the copyright that had been vested in the publishers. The minority judge (Lord Denning M.R.) took the view that so long as the minor could return any advantages he had received to the defendant (such as the advance royalties), relief could be granted to him.
The author of Cheshire, Fifoot and Furmston's Law of Contract (15th ed.) (London; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) at p. 560 prefers the minority position in the case, but says that the majority decision can be explained on the basis of the impossibility of restitutio in integrum. In other words, even though the minor was prepared to return the advance royalty to the defendant, it was unjust to require the defendant to revest the copyright in the minor as the minor could not undo the contracts that the defendant had made with foreign publishers.

My conclusions are these:

  • The position taken by the House of Lords, formerly UK's highest court, is that a minor is entitled to repudiate a contract to transfer property up to the age of majority, and within a reasonable time afterwards. However, the authority for this proposition, Edwards v. Carter, did not deal specifically with intellectual property.
  • On the other hand, the Court of Appeal ruled in Chaplin v. Leslie Frewin (Publishers) that once a minor has assigned copyright in a work to another person, he or she cannot back out of that transaction. (The argument may apply to licences of copyrights as well as outright assignments.) The conclusion can be explained on the basis that it is unjust for the court to allow the minor to recover the copyright if it is no longer possible to restore the parties to the original position that they were in. In the Commons context, for example, this could be the case when third parties have already downloaded the file in question and made use of it in reliance of the licence(s) under which it was released. However, if it is possible to restore the parties to the original position, then presumably the copyright licence can be rescinded.
  • Although decisions of the House of Lords are binding on lower courts such as the Court of Appeal, it is at least arguable that when deciding Edwards the House of Lords did not have to deal with the situation arising in Chaplin, and the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom may well come to a different conclusion if a Chaplin situation comes before it.
  • In any case, I agree that we are unlikely to encounter many cases where a person seeks to rescind a licence on the basis that he or she was a minor at the time it was granted. The onus would be on the licensor to prove satisfactorily that (1) he or she was in fact a minor under the law of the jurisdiction he or she was present in at the time the licence was given; and (2) that the law of the jurisdiction permits him or her to rescind the licence.

— Cheers, JackLee –talk– 10:20, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Definition of minor varies with jurisdiction, so does their legal capacity. Must be examined case-by-case. For example, in Russia minors from 14 y.o. have explicit and unrestricted legal capacity to manage their authors' rights for their own works of science/art/literature, without parental consent, and they bear full liability for such actions. Which is contrary to the general framework that requires parental consent for anything above grocery purchases. Authors' rights of minors under 14 may only be managed through parents or legal guardians. NVO (talk) 21:18, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

 Comment To clarify, I am not saying that we should actively delete all contributions by minors; the commons has, de-facto, agreed to ignore the legalities of that issue. However, when there are personal information issues involved, and potential safety, I will use all policy-based avenues to protect wikimedians. -- Avi (talk) 18:15, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Honestly I think selective use of something like this just sends the wrong message. If we need one, we should have a policy about privacy of minors independent of the license status of the images. Should it really matter whether the minor took it themselves or an adult friend of the minor?Dcoetzee (talk) 22:39, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely not; but as someone who deals with protecting wikimedians, sometimes even from themselves (in cases where minors post identifiable information about themselves on the net with no concept of the dangers that it poses) I want to use all available options to remove this information without outright breaking policy. I am unsure if the Commons oversight rules are similar to EnWiki in that a minor's posting personal information is considered an automatic breach of #1, "non-identifying…" but, of course, as the commons is NOT EnWiki, and we have our own rules and policies here, I could not make that assumption at the time. I will clarify that. Since illegal licensure is a commons-acceptable reason to speedily delete a file, I use that as a tool to protect minors all across wikispace. The greater question about the legality of minor-uploaded images that will not be proximate causes of harm to them is a different question, and the commons, so far, has decided to ignore the issue, with which I will comply (the ignoring) as long as there is no perceived danger to people who are legally not considered able to protect themselves. I guess I could have been "Bold" and deleted it without any mention, but that would disrespect the project, in my opinion, and that is not my intention. -- Avi (talk) 05:27, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I have asked for clarification here -- Avi (talk) 05:29, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

what the hell is File:1F167781058EFF55DIP1214L0M1.jpg??

sorry for my strong words - but does onybody know what this will be? Should be NASA PD Cholo Aleman (talk) 12:04, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

According to the Dutch page these are tracks on Mars. Multichill (talk) 12:42, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

thanks - I have added a cat. surprising, that this is a real photo Cholo Aleman (talk) 13:06, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

It's a photo taken by the Opportunity rover, stuck in the sand: see here (it's the seventh image) for others. -- IANEZZ  (talk) 13:13, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
Shouldn't we change the name to something mnemonic? - Jmabel ! talk 18:59, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
I've cleaned up the description and data, and requested a rename to "File:MER Opportunity Sol 446 photo of entrenched wheels.jpg". Also removed the Chinese text as it said nothing except (something like) "photographed April 26, 2005 at 5:49:54 p.m."; date was moved to date field, time left out as what it actually signifies is somewhat ambiguous. — Huntster (t @ c) 19:45, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Could I upload that picture?

I guess I can't but I wanted to check by asking here: [34] --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 18:34, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

To paraphrase Richard Nixon, you could do that, but it would be wrong. Presumably a copyrighted object, unless it's a lot older than it looks. - Jmabel ! talk 18:58, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
More specifically, it is likely a derivative work. Unless, as Jmabel said, it is a lot older than it looks. Killiondude (talk) 19:53, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
Well, it certainly can't be older that 1954. Looks far more modern. Jarry1250 (talk) 20:04, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
This would only be okay if the sculptor also released their work under a suitable license, which is quite rare. Alternative, it'd be okay if someone installed this as a permanent artwork in a public place in a country with freedom of panorama for sculptures. That'd be pretty silly though, it's tiny. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:21, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for your confirmation. I did think it was a derivative work but I wanted to be sure. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 15:22, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Deletion of a couple of images which violate the privacy policy

File:Jeremy_Hanson_in_Futhark.JPG

File:Jeremy Hansonin Tengwar Sindarin.png

These files represent the real name of a person who wishes to see said files gone, because of harassment in real life. Some argue that since they're licensed under the GFDL they can't be deleted. How so? They're a violation of privacy, and the original uploader has asked to have them removed. There was an image of a child answering the call of nature which was licensed under some free license suitable for commons, but it was deleted because it violated the privacy of the subject represented. How is this different, apart from the fact that the subject here is represented as a real name and not as a picture of the person? Double standards as usual? And who cares if the subject in question is banned? Even Jeff Merkey was banned, even Brandt was banned, but their respective pages were deleted eventually. Jdsddf (talk) 20:19, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Has the user requested deletion of the files? Is there a link to this somewhere? Author requests for deletion made in good faith are generally honored. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:14, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
He's blocked and banned, however he http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Jeremy_Hanson_in_Futhark.JPG&diff=35888110&oldid=35876894 requested the deletion of the files. In response to that, said files were protected from "vandalism". Jdsddf (talk) 21:49, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
It looks as though there are no obstacles to the user JarlaxleArtemis editing his own talk page. If he makes a request on his talk page asking for deletion, I imagine it'll be honored. I can't see why it wouldn't be.

If that account is somehow inaccessible, I think there are two options: (1) find a way to prove that someone is making a request who is the same person who was behind that account (JarlaxleArtemis); or (2) argue that it's outside of project scope, likely a copyright violation, identifies personal information, and isn't needed on Wikimedia Commons in a deletion request (there's a sidebar link for this, I think). --MZMcBride (talk) 21:58, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

He's globally blocked so he couldn't do anything with that account anyway. The page User:Wagonbroke122 says that it has been certified as being him. Jdsddf (talk) 22:06, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
............................ again, those images identify personal information... Jdsddf (talk) 22:08, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
I went ahead and deleted more because they aren't in use and lack any future value to Commons. Obviously someone can undelete them if they want and put it through DR, etc, but it probably would be a good idea to rename them. MBisanz talk 23:58, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Wah. Cry me a river. First you abuse the project so much you get globally banned, and then you whine the stuff you uploaded and agreed would be free forever is still free? OMG! -Nard the Bard 00:07, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
It's obvious Jdsddf is Grawp. --Bsadowski1 01:05, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
Andate a fanculo, teste di cazzo. I offered a serious discussion and it gets treated like a joke by Sadowski and the Bard. Thanks to MBisanz for deleting the images. Hey Bard, would you like it if someone phoned you to make a death threat towards your family because someone who's pissed found your details online? It's a bit more serious than a violation of copyright Jdsddf (talk) 01:09, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
Depends what you mean by "family". If they were talking about my ex-wife... -Nard the Bard 22:34, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

On a side note, the user who started this thread is a Confirmed sock of JtV. Tiptoety talk 02:25, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

March 1
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