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View of deleted files and pages for established users
Hi, i'm going to propose something here, but please don't kill me if it's been talked about before. Currently only admins and such who can view deleted pages and files because they may need to undelete them. However, that causes the problem during the undeletion discussion. People start talking about something that they can't see, and it ends up being quite often along the lines of "trust me, it's out of scope" vs "can you undelete to propose it for deletion". Can it be made so that the established user, who doesn't wish to become admin can view the content of the deleted page without any right to undelete it. I think that would really be useful, but maybe i'm missing something. VolodyA! V Anarhist Beta_M (converse) 05:21, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
No - we mostly delete copyright violations. If any user could view them, we would be distributing copyrighted works to the public without a license, and that's illegal. Even more alarmingly, Commons could be used as an image host for out-of-scope images, by hotlinking the deleted images. However, there's no reason we can't make a practice of undeleting images for the duration of any legitimate undeletion discussion. Some have also proposed making deleted files/pages visible to all admins of other projects, which would be very helpful for fair use transfers and such. Dcoetzee (talk) 06:13, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
Ok, i think similar things have been discussed before. Which is why you have assumed that i've said something which i didn't (i would guess that you've read something akin to what i've written, and upon coming across this post have decided that i'm talking about the same thing). Never did i say anything about making them visible to public but on the other hand i have explicitely talked about people who wouldn't want to become an admin even if they would pass the community vote standards.
Let me try to restate what i've said. There are currently three categories: admins (and bureaucrats, etc), users, anonymous users. I propose to have another category of people, who can see what admins can see, but do not have the power to undelete the deleted images or deleted revisions. So we'd have: admins, oversight users, users, anonymous users. General public would still not have access to deleted files, we would not open ourselves to sysop vandalism (in fact would get more protection against such). VolodyA! V Anarhist Beta_M (converse) 07:12, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
I would be absolutely fine with a new user right for this, but I wouldn't expect it to be as easy to acquire as you think. Dcoetzee (talk) 01:24, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for these. I really didn't know about this discussion, it makes sense ... sort of. I guess my request should have been then to create categorisation of deletions, some of which can be visible (for example "delete as out of scope" is most likely safe to show, while "delete per violation of personality rights" or "copyvio" should be only visible to a very limited number of ppl). However, i do recognise that it's an impossibility in the current MW, and seeing their backlog of work i don't think it'll become a feature (even if suggested) until version 3.0 or something. VolodyA! V Anarhist Beta_M (converse) 04:25, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
I would suggest seeking adminship instead of a new usergroup devs would take a decade to code. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 21:28, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
WMF will not allow users to view deleted material who have not gone through procedures less rigorous than RFA. See en:Wikipedia:Viewing deleted content.
On the issue of aiding undeletion discussions, I've thought temporary undeletion should be done more routinely, for anything that isn't an unambiguous copyright violation. I suggest we create a new template to request the temporary undeletion as part of an undeletion discussion (eg {{Request temporary undeletion}}) and a new template to tag the file with (eg {{Temporarily undeleted}}). The latter template would use a system like {{OTRS pending}} to mark the file for deletion after 30 days - the idea being that any temporary undeletion is strictly limited to 30 days. Rd232 (talk) 02:14, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, good idea! What about adding to both templates that copyvios cannot be undeleted (for obvious reasons)? PS: Nice to see you active. :-) Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 02:04, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. I did think some guidance would be needed on what cannot or should not be undeleted. I'm not sure if disputed copyvios cannot be temporarily undeleted, where the undeletion would be useful for discussion (eg cases where de minimis is claimed?). Do you want to propose something here, or add to the template(s)? Rd232 (talk) 09:42, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Now added to COM:UNDEL. I tried to leave the language vague, so admins have leeway to decide what's best. If necessary, we can add more guidance (to users and/or admins) based on experience. Rd232 (talk) 01:46, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
The results of the voting process for this picture can be found here. There are a large number of skillful and knowledgable contributors to the voting. Your input to future voting would be more than welcome. QUTalkQu14:33, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
Citypeek has "corrected the white balance" of hundreds of images over the years, apparently without paying attention to things like "did this just blow out the highlights of the image" or "did this just produce unnatural colors". I've checked the hundred most recent uploads for problems, which leaves only about 2000 more images to go. --Carnildo (talk) 02:58, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
Jeez. Citypeek (and others), as a rule to which there are few exceptions, if you are doing what you think is an "improvement" to someone else's image, but where they didn't ask you to "improve" it and what you are doing involves trade-offs, please upload it under a different name and connect the two with {{Derived}} and {{Derived from}} instead of overwriting the image. That File:Bald_Eagle_Portrait.jpg example is pretty blatant: I can't imagine that more than a tiny percentage of people would consider Citypeek's version the better one. Without knowing the colors at the scene, there is no way to know which image has more accurate white balance, but there is no question at all that Citypeek's version totally blows out the highlights. - Jmabel ! talk06:12, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
Toolbox issue
Things such as "report copyvio" and the like have disappeared on images pages which is a bit of a nuisance... Anyone else finding this? --Herbytalk thyme09:03, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Works for me (FF10, German, Monobook). Do you have JS errors in your error console? Do any other scripts not work? Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 14:15, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Yes to the quick delete. Yes to odd script errors though nothing on the last image page I looked at. FF10, en, Monobook btw. Will look out for the next script error and report - will also try clearing cache etc and report back. Thanks both --Herbytalk thyme14:43, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I am also on https. Okay: 1. filter the console to "errors" only! 2. hit "clear" 3. Go to an image page. 4. copy and paste the errors (you probably need to copy one after one) here or to some other page - review them for private information!. Most interesting would be errors mentioning "quickdelete", of course. But others are not necessarily unrelated. --Saibo (Δ) 18:02, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
weirder and weirder! Did that - went to an image page, no error and no "report copyvio". I'll try again later or tomorrow but I appreciate the advice :) --Herbytalk thyme18:35, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I do get some random error messages but usually I am moving too fast to see them...;) This one does not appear to have affected the copyvio one but it may be another issue? Thanks --Herbytalk thyme13:28, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
This one was related to gallery-preview, a gadget with no maintainer (or at least no maintainer who is using the gadget/ active). But Commons needs no maintainers, Commons needs administrators! I am a bit disgruntled about the VPP-thing. -- RE rillkequestions?14:52, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
The error is that it is a {{BadJPEG}}, so you need to replace it with an SVG (preferred) or PNG version of the same image to enable that feature. The JPEG format doesn't support transparency. --Stefan4 (talk) 18:43, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
OK, thank you for your explaination, however I am not sure if I understand how to convert the file into SVG or PNG format. If I need help in this, where do I have to ask for it? Is there a bot, that would do that? --Mates245 (talk) 19:26, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
I would advise you to pretty much leave it alone, unless you have access to an original lossless source from which the JPEG was derived, or you're willing to pretty much re-make the picture from scratch. There are image editing programs which you can use to try to convert a JPEG to a transparent PNG, but without careful attention to cleanup, the results aren't generally too pretty (due to the inherently "lossy" characteristics of JPEG)... AnonMoos (talk) 11:03, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
Wikitravel images
Can anyone enlighten me about the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license of images appearing on Wikitravel. I would like to use an image from their website in a Wikipedia article and I am a beginner about the many variations of licenses. What are my options? My experience is restricted to public domain images. Thanks. Ineuw (talk) 06:31, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
Not all images on WikiTravel are under CC-BY-SA 3.0. Anyway, if the license of the respective image is Commons-compatible and if there are not conflicts with third-party rights (I doubt that many WikiTravel contributors care a lot about such things), you can import it to Commons like an image from Flickr or whereever. Of course, as there may also be copyvios on WikiTravel, you should try to exclude that. --Túrelio (talk) 07:27, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks Túrelio. I will investigate the issue further. It's not urgent. Although this license was posted on their website in regard to uploaded content. . . and yes, I think it was from Flickr. :)Ineuw (talk) 07:53, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
When I change my language in Commons to Malayalam, the link on the left side bar in vector skin viz. Contact page that links to Commons:Contact us does not get translated. Can I know where can I add the translation for this text? --Sreejith K (talk) 08:40, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
I find this a useful feature for labelling historical maps and images. I am not sure, however, that casual browsers of Wikipedia, who are not particularly familiar with the site, will be aware of its existence. The button to access the feature is placed very low below the image and will only be discovered if the browser scrolls down beyond the various templates displayed there - something they are probably unlikely to do. Would it not be an improvement to move the information that an image is annotated to directly below the image and above the other information? Kim Traynor (talk) 13:33, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
While I admit I'm used to failry quick responses on CSD nominations from English Wikipedia, what's the time frame for a copyright violating image like File:ARL_Finals_series_format.jpg to be acted upon? I know that by posting this I alter the time frame, but I'd like to get an idea. Thanks Hasteur (talk) 21:13, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
To answer "what's the time frame for a copyright violating image": it depends - currently too long - find some more admins or get users to do better copyvio taggings (which require less time from the admin to verify that the tagged file indeed is a copyvio - some are relly bad and should be deletion requests instead). For estimation you can have a alook at Category:Copyright_violations: the tenth oldest iswas from 2012-02-21 (files are sorted by date of last edit, ascending). Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 01:22, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
(ii) "a sculpture or work of artistic craftsmanship or a cast or model of a sculpture or work of artistic craftsmanship, that is permanently situated in a public place or building".
Okay, so Canadian freedom of panorama laws say the above. How permanent is permanent? Specifically, the statue Kwakiutl... it was in front of a public building, then inside the lobby of the building, inside a library inside that same public building, at the entrance to a public park, inside a public greenhouse at that public park. My photo is from the current location. Does that count? The statue is also owned by the municipality, and the reason it's jumped around so many times since 1972 is because he's nude, and the greenhouse partially obscures his genitals. -- Nick Moreau (talk) 14:52, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
I think this would count as permanent. Who owns the statue? The local government or does the artist still own it? Is this photo already on commons? -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 21:00, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
I think we've considered "permanently situated in a public place" to mean that its in a public place all the time and not being put away for periods of time, like not a seasonal exhibition. I think that's what they meant by that. ViperSnake151 (talk) 21:19, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
It's owned by the City, now. Photo's not on Commons, yet. If it were off display for a month or two during one of the moves, would that be a ding against it? (I haven't the foggiest in that level of detail, yet, haven't checked the council minutes, etc.) There are no definite plans to remove it, though at any point, it could come under more controversy, and being banish forever. -- Nick Moreau (talk) 19:46, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
If it was put up without an intended end date, that is "permanent" to the best of my knowledge, so it sounds like the photos should be fine. Something like a sculpture festival scheduled for three months... that would not be permanent. Carl Lindberg (talk) 20:40, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
All categories should be within if statement like "{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|File|[[Category:......]]}}". You should also announce the intent to change the template at Template talk:Assessments. I do not think there should be any objections but that way people that usually maintain it would not be surprised. --Jarekt (talk) 04:29, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, I see how to fix it, but it is a right pain to bloat the template even more by surrounding every instance of [[Category:......]] with more code. It would have been easier (less messy) before a change at the end of last year that merged the seperate category setting section. Adding extraneous pages to categories is really a general problem when people are discussing templates by transcluding them into talk pages etc, perhaps we need a {{filecat|cat}} template that basically does {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|File|[[Category:cat]]}} --Tony Wills (talk) 11:06, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I created the template. You need a redesign? -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 00:29, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
QI/VI/FP categories
I still would like to know if there is a consensus to put or not to put categories like "Quality images of xxx" in the respective topic categories. For example, if the Category:Quality images of Germany should be put into Category:Germany. There was an issue on COM:ANU due to editwarring by some user, but as it's a policy question I have to make a proposal here. - A.Savin11:14, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
The question to answer is, if a Commons project is a topic. Or if some users opinion is valid to separate some files in the topic category, whith the users opinion becoming part of the topic. The alternative is to keep topic categories topic categories and highlighty featured conent in portals, projects and other wiki related sites. Thats how all other wikis do it with their featured content. --Martin H. (talk) 12:08, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Categories of quality images are very useful, so yes, they should be included in the relevant categories. Yann (talk) 16:35, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Those images are just a classification as many other: videos, B&W pictures, SVG files, drawings, audio, stereo images, aerial photo's, panoramics, ... and even historic, cultural heritage, ... They should be hidden categories and limited in depth as to avoid indeed parallel categorisation systems. --Foroa (talk) 16:43, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Author is citizen of Australia
Regarding these images ---> (File:National Front of Afghanistan.jpgFile:Ahmad Zia Massoud.jpgFile:Amrullah Saleh 1.jpgFile:Amrullah Saleh.pngFile:Anti-Taliban protest.png) --- the authors are given as "Tolo news.com" which is owned by Saad Mohesni (citizen of Australia and was born in the United Kingdom) but the license applied on them is {{PD-Afghanistan}}. According to the U.S. copyright office in Washington, DC, "Works that are... created by a citizen or domiciliary of a country with which we have a copyright treaty are also protected[1] See Circular 38a, International Copyright Relations of the United States, for the status of specific countries. This prevents us from uploading Mohseni's work because it is very well established that he is a citizen of Australia, a country which the U.S. has a copyright treaty with. Arguing about how many countries Mohseni is a citizen of is irrelevant and doesn't matter. I nominated them for deletion but Blackcat decided to keep them. I don't understand his reason so can someone please help resolve this matter. Thanks.--Officer (talk) 20:30, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
Blackcat's reasoning, as I understand it, is that the photos are authored by an Afghan company, and the citizenship of the company's owners isn't relevant. That seems reasonable to me. --Avenue (talk) 21:25, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
Sounds reasonable. Unless Mohesni was actually behind the camera, he's not the author, and has no personal interest in the copyright. The company could be the owner I suppose, but it may depend on where that corporation is registered. The owner's personal citizenship would not enter the equation at all, I don't think. If they were first published online, that could get into the "published simultaneously in every country in the world" ambiguity... Carl Lindberg (talk) 21:38, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
According to this and this, Tolonews.com's server is actually in the United States (at TheStreet.com).
There is no information if the person behind the camera was an Afghan citizen or the photos was obtained from a 3rd party.--Officer (talk) 02:33, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
What matters are two things:
Citizenship of the author. If the author is an Australian citizen, the work is protected. On the other hand, if someone who is only an Afghan citizen creates the work, possibly on behalf of an Australian citizen, this doesn't seem to be sufficient for copyright protection.
Country of first publication and any other countries where it was published within 30 days. If the physical servers are in the United States, I would guess that it counts as a work first published in the United States, meaning that it is copyrighted.
Based on the server location, I assume that we would have to treat this as something first published in the United States. --Stefan4 (talk) 12:30, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
I've felt like we pretty much have to assume that anything published online nowadays was first published in a Berne convention country. There may be some exceptions for Iranian servers, but Afghanistan doesn't have much Internet architecture, and if it was first placed here or on Flikr or anything remotely similar, it was first published here. (IIRC, the US Copyright Office is willfully vague about whether the Internet counts as being published at all.)--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:14, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
These images used in some articles on English Wikipedia. What is the best way to upload reduced versions of said images as non-free to the English Wikipedia? I can do it by hand, but if there is a better way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Laitr Keiows (talk • contribs) 10.47 2 March 2012 (UTC)
There's a bot (the Commons fair use upload bot) that can upload images to other projects. English Wikipedia is in scope. If you want to reduce / change the image though I'm not sure there's a bot for that. Instructions on how to tag the images for the bot are on its user page. QUTalkQu10:53, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
Actually Commons fair use upload bot automatically marks the images for reduction, and they are then reduced by another bot :-) Dcoetzee (talk) 23:37, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
I think that you still have to instruct the fair use upload bot that it needs to upload the images. The bot also fails to write a fair use rationale, so you would have to do that yourself, and possibly change a non-free content licence template into some other non-free content licence template. --Stefan4 (talk) 11:31, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
POTD again
For March 4 (the day over tomorrow) we got File:Madinat Jumeirah-Dubai3303.JPG, which contains Burj el Arab on the background. Any ideas whether it can be qualified as de minimis? If not we probably would need to replace the image as soon as possible. (Frankly speaking, I am not even sure the building at the foreground is free).--Ymblanter (talk) 23:48, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
I think the Burj el Arab qualifies as de minimis in that photo as it is clearly in the background and not the focus of the image. Kaldari (talk) 22:12, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for your reaction, probably it is de minimis indeed. Anyway, now we survived the day when the picture was on the main page, so that even if now it gets deleted it would not be such a big problem anymore.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:28, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
March 3
Original Research tag?
Is there a template tag to tag images that feature original thought? At English Wikipedia, policy specifically prohibits using images that feature presentation of unpublished ideas (w:en:WP:OI) ... so it would be useful to be able to tag such images on Commons, and perhaps have a bot orphan such images off of en.wiki to conform to its w:en:WP:OR policy. I suspect that other language Wikipedias also have such a rule on publication of novel ideas.
Yes, this is Commons, and the images are hosted on Commons, so unless you are suggesting that various Wikipedias should blacklist specific Commons images, it does appear that it needs to be addressed on Commons. 70.24.251.7104:34, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
If a Commons image can't be used on the English-language Wikipedia without breaking against English Wikipedia policies, the image shouldn't be used on the English-language Wikipedia. It would then appear to be up to the English-langauge Wikipedia to make sure that it follows its policies. I think that there is also a policy which states that material on the English-language Wikipedia should be in English, which probably rules out a couple of images with non-English text on the images. --Stefan4 (talk) 11:02, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Our policies are at Commons:Project scope. We can host images to support Wikibooks, Wikiversity, etc., not just the encyclopedias, so such policies are not necessarily in effect here. It's possible some such images would be considered out of our scope as well, but the criteria is different. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:51, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm not saying anything about not hosting the images, I'm saying that it would be nice if there were a template that can be applied to file pages for images that are wholly what on en.wiki would be considered w:en:WP:ORIGINALRESEARCH, so that en.wiki can manage use of Commons images better (en.wiki bans uses of such images on their articles) I suspect other language Wikipedias also have problems with original research, so such a tag would be useful for various Wikipedias, so they can also be able to prune such images from articles. 70.24.251.7104:34, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure we should be hosting tags purely for the use of one subproject -- there are hundreds of subprojects, and each could want their own specific tags. I believe that the image page descriptions can be edited locally on en-wiki, with the content being combined with the Commons page description, so custom local tags could be added that way. See for example en:File:Floury Baker cicada side.JPG (and the general note at en:Help:File page#Wikimedia_Commons). I suppose some tags may be useful across subprojects, but something like original research can be a pretty contentious and subjective issue, with possible differences in policies between subprojects, and those disputes should not be on Commons. Carl Lindberg (talk) 13:48, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
The original question was not if we'd delete these images (we won't) but if we'd create a tag to make a bot remove all uses of the image on a particular project (presumably because it's easier than doing so manually). I personally think this should be done by individual contributors using downloaded tools - in case the action is disputed, they would be blamed instead of the bot. Dcoetzee (talk) 19:37, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Unreferenced tag?
Also, in extending this idea, original images that do not feature original thought, but are built from published data, need references, since using unreferenced novel images fails en.wiki's w:en:WP:V, so while they can be used on en.wiki, they need references on the image description page for verifiability.
It's quite clearly impossible to determine what datasets some images are built from, only the original image creator would know such things. So... it seems, to be able to serve some of the client projects better, that a tag for "original user image" (created by a user) would be good, and if it's used on one of the Encyclopedia projects, then an unreferenced tag to go along with it (equivalent to an image without a source, except that user created images have a source, the user, but we don't know what data was used to create the images) ... 70.24.251.7104:29, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Hello! I uploaded a lot of images from the site mynewsdesk.com (Wikipedia entry about the site here) which, as I understand, is primarily a platform for press releases. Every channel on MyNewsdesk is operated by the spokesperson, press contact or similar from their respective companies. All of the images I uploaded were released under a Creative commons attribution 3.0 license, and all the Wikimedia commons pages contain a link back to the source page, an author as well as a request for review to confirm the license. Some of the images have recently been nominated for deletion and since the issues with the images are all the same it would perhaps be wise to have a centralized discussion about all these images in one place. --Bensin (talk) 17:49, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Though IMHO it's unfortunate that this discussion now has spread to the 4th location ([2], [3], [4]), I need to add some rationale for my doubts about this source:
mynewsdesk.com offers for download promotional-quality, high-resolution photos(some examples) from commercial rights holders such as Sony Music Corp., allegedly released under CC-BY 3.0.
despite the CC-BY-licensing, which requires attribution of the author for any legal use, for some of the images such as for example File:Tove Styrke 2010.jpg no author name is provided on mynewsdesk.com.
So, this problem/discussion is not about any misbehaviour of the uploader (made clear to him from the beginning), but about the credibility of the source website's licensing. As some pages provide a link to a PR person from the (likely) rights holding company (such as Sony etc.), I recommended to the uploader to ask these persons for confirmation of the CC-licensing or for a standard permission (OTRS). This would provide us with a legally solid record of the license and thereby protect our re-users in case mynewsdesk.com goes offline in the future. --Túrelio (talk) 08:45, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
I'll try and answer these doubts in order.
I have no objections to the description of the site. My best guess as to why they are releasing these images is that it generates good promotional value that the images are spread and used on, for instance, Wikipedia.
The license states "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor". So as I understand the license, attribution is only required when the work is reproduced if it was specified when it was published, not that it is a requirement by the publisher for the license to be valid. The license also says "'Licensor' means the individual, individuals, entity or entities that offer(s) the Work under the terms of this License." So it is the copyright holder (which is not necessarily the same as the author) that has the right to release the work under a new license. In the case of work for hire "the employer—not the employee—is considered the legal author".
CC licenses were designed to be compatible with copyright. It is therefore possible for a work to exist under two or more licenses at the same time, much in the same way a work can exist under a GPL-license and a CC-license at the same time. It is then up to the user to determine which one of these licenses (or both) to use when the work is reproduced.
As for the credibility of the website, mynewsdesk.com has operated since 2003 and serves as a platform for organizations that want to release information to the public. Every account is operated by a representative for the organisation, much in the same way that every flickr account is operated by the photographer himself/herself. I feel confident that any attempt to impersonate a representative for Disney, Sony Music, Swedish Royal Opera, Liseberg would not go unnoticed. --Bensin (talk) 10:29, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
I did look into the example image File:Avatar half face.jpg and support a keep for that example as the license is clear and used on a well established website. I am not 100% sure if Túrelio is suggesting that every image needs an OTRS confirmation or if it would be a good idea to send a generic query. The latter sounds reasonable even if only to spell out to the website management that Commons volunteers are taking many of their images have have them permanently and irrevocably available to the public for free commercial reuse as their license allows us to do precisely that. Unless we have a complainant, I feel such an action is icing on the cake and there is no imperative to go on a deletion spree on the basis of maybes rather than significant doubt as to copyright status. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 22:50, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
I was advised on the #wikimedia-commons IRC chat to suggest it here. Besides Talk pages often do not get frequented much unless they are from popular pages. SpeakFree(talk)23:45, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Strange. Not only do i Support that, but i was under the impression that this was a de facto policy here. I've seen this argument being made successfully on the Deletion Requests before, and i think that it makes a lot of sense. That's not to say that if the contributor is still active we can't politely ask for OTRS, but that lack of it doesn't mean that we must delete. VolodyA! V Anarhist Beta_M (converse) 04:41, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
I happen to Support it as well. I just think: suggest it here, but discuss it at its talk page, please? -- Cirt (talk) 05:10, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
I think we can have some initial discussion here, before having a formal vote on the talk page, properly advertised (COM:RFC). I say "initial discussion" because I want to ask, before we get into voting Support or Oppose: the essay is in effect explaining an exception to a "general practice". But that "general practice" is not itself a policy or guideline (or is it?). Making it a guideline without doing anything else would be a bit odd. Maybe we should think about making COM:GRANDFATHER a section of a new guideline on how to document permissions? Rd232 (talk) 12:29, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Regardless of guidelines, it seems that some people like to nominate files for deletion that lack "proof of permission". Since many of my uploaded files date back to 2005, it would be nice if there was some sort of written guideline that protected them from deletion. Kaldari (talk) 05:02, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
I do support this for files with an upload date that go back this far. For new files, obviously we have OTRS in place. Edoderoo (talk) 22:17, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
I've created Commons:Verifying permissions as a first draft of a proposed guideline on verifying permissions. Mentioning the grandfathering principle there may be enough for the purposes of proving "look, the principle is accepted", and the detail left in this essay; or we could merge the entire (fairly short) essay into that guideline. I'd prefer the former, I think, certainly at the early drafting stage. Anyway, comments welcome on the new proposal - and I stress that it's a first draft so don't expect anything too much :) Rd232 (talk) 14:43, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
LangSwitch uses server-side processing. Using too often can prevent page rendering. But the content of the page does not jump around when languages are hidden like when using
{{Mld}} or the single sublanguages. This is achieved by JavaScript. If you turn it off you will see that nothing happens.
So what is better? On file pages it is definitely better to use {{Langcode}} like {{En}}. This adds special attributes so search engines can recognize the language of the text. If you use LangSwitch the crawler will get only one language: English because the crawler is an anonymous-user and is unable to change the language. In the end, it's your decision. -- RE rillkequestions? (ریلکه) (里尔克) (リルケ) 11:28, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
I agree that {{LangSwitch}} should not be used in the file descriptions. Many people can read more than one language and we would like to minimize possibility of conflicting descriptions in different languages. I personally much more prefer {{En}} and similar templates over {{Mld}}. Which last time I looked at it did not seem to work properly, incorrectly hiding parts of the description which was not translated. Luckily there is some way to disable {{Mld}} so it shows all versions. --Jarekt (talk) 17:16, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Mld should work very close to using {{En}} because the same JavaScript is responsible for hiding the unrelated languages. BTW, in the near future, I intend to make a default gadget from MediaWiki:Multilingual description.js and remove the opt-out so all who opted out must deselect the gadget. The move is done for technical reasons (code minification, easier localization in the near future (the client only gets those languages that are needed) and dependencies, that allow other scripts to reuse the gadget). But this will be announced in your watchlist and requires 3 clicks so it shouldn't be a problem. -- RE rillkequestions?17:59, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Category loops
Does Wikimedia Commons have a guideline that covers category loops? They're strongly discouraged in the English Wikipedia, but I couldn't find the subject in the Commons guidelines. I've always thought of them as something to avoid, but I encountered a fellow contributor who clearly disagrees. I'd appreciate any guidance you can provide. Thanks! - Eureka Lott22:23, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
See COM:C#Category structure in Wikimedia Commons: "There should be no cycles (i.e. a category should not contain itself, directly or indirectly)." And the following, "The category structure should reflect a hierarchy of concepts, from the most generic one down to the very specific," implies that loops aren't allowed since it would require going from something more specific to something less specific somewhere. --Stefan4 (talk) 01:05, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
Often, when you'd be tempted to have a loop, putting a see also in the text for the category is a good idea. - 04:09, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
Please notify the other party to your edit war next time you start a discussion about their edits on a public board (or more importantly discuss it with them first!) I have now notified User:Beyond My Ken. Regarding the category, you are correct that the category tree should not contain cycles. I have reverted and temporarily protected the page. --99of9 (talk) 05:25, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
March 5
Broken thumbnails
Hi,
I uploaded a bunch of photos to Category:St Peter's Church, Linchmere yesterday, including 8 in one go with the new(ish) upload form - for some reason the thumbnails on 5 of them are broken - forcing the page to reload makes no difference, nor does looking at them on a different PC. Clicking through to the image is fine - it's just the thumbnails:
Strange - I've tried with my laptop and with an independent PC, with both Firefox and IE, and I just can't get those thumbnails to display. Simon Burchell (talk) 13:59, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
Effectively, the thumbnails at the bottom do not appear. This is also the case in the category. Yann (talk) 14:55, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
It is probably a problem with an overloaded server. In this case, it would be fixed by itself when the load decrease. Yann (talk) 17:23, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
It appears you're right - now only 3 have broken thumbnails and I expect they'll sort themselves out in due course. Many thanks, Simon Burchell (talk) 18:40, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
All OK now. <quote from IRC>jeremyb: anyway, maybe it was related to swift but it's hard to tell if nothing's currently broken.</quote>. Yann (talk) 04:46, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Norwegian localization question
Hi, I'm trying to do some localization work for Norwegian, more specific Bokmål. The problem with this language is that there are two language codes around: no and nb. I have selected no as my language, and I just added Template:Potd/2012-03-05_(no), but this is not visible on the frontpage, since the box there seems to be configured for nb. Danmichaelo (talk) 13:49, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
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The goal here is to identify what YOU (or groups, such as chapters or clubs) might be interested in, ranking the options by preference. We have not included on this list things like “keep the servers running”, because they’re not a responsibility of individual contributors or volunteer organizations. This survey is intended to tell us what funding priorities contributors agree and disagree on.
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Question about image that isn't properly accredited
I have a question about the image File:3prinsesjes.jpg. The image information states that it is public domain in the Netherlands and gives the author as unknown. This image, however, is one of a series of photos taken not in the Netherlands but in Canada, by Yousuf Karsh in 1944. Other images in the series (with the girls wearing the same clothing) can be seen here. I don't know enough about copyright law to know whether the current public domain disclaimer is adequate; Yousuf Karsh died only ten years ago, so under Canadian law his works may still be under copyright. But is this one, if it wasn't originally published in Canada? And if it does have Canadian copyright, does the Netherlands have the legal right to release it under the public domain? --NellieBly (talk) 01:46, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Netherlands has the full right to make whatever copyright law it wants to inside its borders ;-) (so long as they conform to Berne and EU treaties). It was apparently in a Netherlands publication (cover at File:De Wervelwind24.jpg) in December 1944, so the question is if that is the first publication. While I'm sure it's correct, I have not found an explicit credit to Karsh on that photo yet -- I do see a Karsh photo here, which is similar, although the girls are wearing different outfits. It would be {{PD-Canada}} as well (the term was 50 years from creation), but the main question with Karsh's works was whether they were published with a copyright notice and thus retained the U.S. -- some of his works did, and got renewed as well, though that may have been ones from later in his life. We do have a lot of his works in Category:Yousuf Karsh. There is some further discussion at en:Wikipedia:Public domain#Canadian_images:_Yousuf_Karsh. So... the question would seem to be where the first publication was. If it was Canada, without a copyright notice, then it's fine. If it was this Netherlands publication, it may well also be OK. If it was simultaneously published in both nations, the U.S. URAA restorations would use the "country with the greatest contacts with the work", which would probably be Canada -- and this image therefore would not have been restored by the URAA, most likely. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:59, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Rename to WikiCommons
I'm sure that the idea of changing the name of Wikimedia Commons to "WikiCommons", to be consistent with the naming of the sister projects, has been discussed before. Can someone please point me to that archived debate? Wittylama (talk) 02:30, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
We're not really a "project" in the sense of being one of the LANGUAGECODE.PROJECTNAME.org domains (e.g. en.wikipedia.org, fr.wiktionary.org, it.wikiversity.org etc. etc.)... AnonMoos (talk) 03:42, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Anonmoos, I don't think Wittylama was saying that. He/she was saying we are analogous to Wikipedia, WikiTravel, Wiktionary, etc. - Jmabel ! talk16:11, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Wouldn't that mean changing commons.wikimedia.org to something like wikicommons.org? Wouldn't that, um, break thousands or millions of links? -- Cirt (talk) 16:49, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
I think he is asking for links to possible previous discussion about Wikimedia Commons name, he is not proposing to change it. Wittylama, We discuss a LOT of things around here, but I do not recall ever running into discussion about official change of Wikimedia Commons name. However term "WikiCommons seems to be frequently used to describe our project. --Jarekt (talk) 20:35, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Jarekt - exactly. A lot of people already do call it "WikiCommons" because that is consistent with the other projects. AnonMoos, the original reason for calling it the way we do is indeed because of that, because Commons was a "service" wiki to support the Wikipedias, but now it has well-and-truly become a sister-project in its own right. Cirt, yes, I'm sure it would, but I'm also sure that that is a relatively easy technical fix to just redirect things.
So, to my original question, can anyone point me to any previous discussions about the naming of this project - specifically about the name "WikiCommons"? As far as I can see, the reason that Wikimedia Commons is called that way originally is because of a historical accident - because it was originally designed to be a "behind the scenes" wiki (commons.wikimedia.org similar to meta.Wikimedia.org and outreach.wikimedia.org) and not the "public facing" wiki it certainly has grown to become. Subsequently, all of the reasons I've seen for it to remain that way are "status quo" reasons rather than any genuine support of the existing name. So, I'd love to read through any previous debate on this issue to investigate the arguments/reasons that have been raised. Wittylama (talk) 23:10, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Same as Jarekt. I am pretty sure no discussion on this topic has occurred in the last 3 years (I cannot tell for farther back in time). And I believe this is because no one thought of any real reason for renaming the project. Are you suggesting we should? If yes, why?
(If I dare say: the "historical accidents", IMO, were more the naming of the software and the foundation than of this project. Ah well.)
Hi Jean-Fred. Yes - far more confusing than anything else is the whole MediaWiki-WikiMedia thing! :-) I've just always thought that "Wikimedia Commons" was a cumbersome name that, if we were starting the project today, would obviously be called "WikiCommons" for consistency with all of the other sisterprojects. So, my argument "for" would be consistency. But I'm not actually making a serious effort to have the name changed, I'm just trying to find out if there was ever a consensus on this issue out of curiosity. Wittylama (talk) 03:34, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
There are many thousands of categories to be renamed. We start with the ones that are most far away from Germanic and Romance languages; first the ones with non latin characters as they are not readable by 98 % of our users, then we will see. --Foroa (talk) 17:34, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Please rename those I found for now, and I will search for other non-British categories. Thank you. How did you know about 98%, was there any research? Or is this just a guess?--PereslavlFoto (talk) 18:07, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
From the 280 wikis, there are about one third that use a non latin characterset. If they (and or Commons users) would be evenly distributed and all languages are really different, then only 0,36 % of the people would be able to read a specific non latin character set. So I have a margin of 6 times. But the precise figure is not the important thing; what matters is that any specific non latin characterset locks out the large majority (almost all) of the users here, so we have to correct those as quick as possible. First, we have to be able to read it, understanding is for a second round ... --Foroa (talk) 18:33, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Starting what? I cannot rename categories. Even more, I don't think this is necessary. As soon as others think this to be done, I inform others about non-British categories.--PereslavlFoto (talk) 20:06, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Anybody can rename categories. Just create new category with correct name and move all images to it, or use CommonsDelinker, or drop {{Category redirect}} template. But as with any other rename, your action will be evaluated by others and possibly reversed. For larger or more controversial categories the move should be discussed first. Also PereslavlFoto you should keep in mind that this is a wiki run by volunteers, and most people volunteer to do the tasks they like doing or are important to them. So you should not be requesting people to do things that are important to you when you can do them yourself. --Jarekt (talk) 20:21, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
All wikipedias use UTF-8 character encoding, so latin or non-latin charsets is not an issue. But transcription to tha latin alphabet will off course make life easier for 98% of the users. Otherwise, place names should be in their original lagnuage (i.e. Category:Göteborg, not Category:Gothenburg). /Esquilo (talk) 12:16, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
I recently uploaded some photos of front covers of Brighton Voice newspaper, from between 1973 and 1985. Information on this newspaper is at en:Brighton Voice and I wanted to illustrate it. The seven photos uploaded were speedily deleted.
The newspaper was always published anonymously by a sort of anarchist collective. No copyright was ever claimed in the newspaper. I am thus unclear of the grounds for deletion of the photos. One of the covers was a photomontage, two were original drawings, with no attribution to the artist. The other four consisted of headlines, text and a couple of photos each. I was one of those working on three of the latter, and so I suppose I can claim part of the copyright. So my questions are: (1) why does something published anonymously have any copyright? and (2) if I was part responsible for some of the covers does that entitle me to claim copyright enough to upload the photos? Thanks Roundtheworld (talk) 19:37, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
If the material really was anonymous, you need to wait until 95 years after publication to comply with both British and American copyright laws. A work being anonymous is not a reason for it not to be copyrighted. If it was something made for a newspaper, the newspaper would typically be the copyright holder, not the individual journalists, photographers and illustrators. --Stefan4 (talk) 19:43, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
But the entire newspaper was anonymous, not just one contribution. There is no way of identifying the copyright holder from the publication. Roundtheworld (talk) 20:32, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
This doesn't prevent the newspaper from being copyrighted. Even if the copyright holder is anonymous, he might be able to present some proof in a court that he indeed is the copyright holder. --Stefan4 (talk) 21:05, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm not a lawyer, but: The UK doesn't require a copyright notice; it was one of the original 8 signatories to the Berne Convention in the 1880s, which gives authors their rights without any notice or registration requirement. (This is different than the USA, which only signed in 1989; pre-1989 U.S. works without copyright notices tend to fall into the public domain.) In the UK, anonymous works published between 1969 and 30 August 1989 are copyright for 70 years from the year of first publication: see Commons:Licensing#Ordinary copyright. My (uneducated) guess is that, since this was in the form of a losely-organized collective, each contributor retains the rights to exactly what his contribution was, and no more. (For a typical newspaper this wouldn't be the case, as your contribution would be "work for hire" for the newspaper company, and that company would have the copyright.) Assuming that it is not work for hire: If you took photographs or wrote text, you own the copyright. If you modified photographs or text, then the result is probably that you and whoever created the original would both have to consent to copying; the original photographer or writer has full rights to the originals, but not the versions you made any meaningful changes to. To answer the specific questions:
Copyright applies to anonymous and pseudonymous works because being publicly anonymous does not necessarily mean having no legal recourse or no further attachment. For example, an author could still have a publishing agreement and get money without having to reveal his name. Or the author, though anonymous, may wish to prevent other people from using or modifying his work to say the opposite of what he meant or otherwise exploit or misuse his work; the publisher, or the author through a lawyer, could still do that without revealing his identity in public.
You probably don't have enough rights to upload photos you didn't take yourself, only to stop others from uploading the photos. You probably need permission from everyone who contributed something meaningful to the work you're uploading; but you only need it from contributors to what you're uploading, not the whole newspaper. --Closeapple (talk) 23:03, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Noted and thanks for all the legal opinions. I am naturally disappointed. In a way, the paper and similar alternative papers in the UK in the '70s and '80s were forerunners of Wikipedia. Authorship was shared and no one could claim rights to any article. I suppose the only difference is that Wikipedia makes this explicit but with such newspapers and magazines it was only implicit. Roundtheworld (talk) 16:48, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
To javascript coders - please, add option to stop adding User talk:CommonsDelinker/commands to watchlist during moving file, even with enabled option "Add pages I edit to my watchlist". It is doable as nominating file for deletion is not adding daily nomination page to watchlist Bulwersator (talk) 19:48, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Howdy, I'm sure this will have been discussed before, but I can't seem to find it. Anyway, is there a straigthforward answer to this:
Works by employees of the US government created during the course of their work are supposedly in the public domain, right?
So, how do works published by the United States National Museum (nowadays NMHM) qualify. Can images from these be used freely even if publication date and author's life time would not let them qualify for PD-old?
Did the museum staff create the works in question? Do the works include only content created by the staff? --Carnildo (talk) 21:57, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Today, the question is about this paper, but it would probably be good to have a general guideline to situations like this.
In this case the authors are listed as:
Sophy I. Parfin: Entomologist, U. S. National Museum.
Ashley B. Gurney: Entomologist, Entomology Research Branch, U. S. Department of Agriculture.
There is no seperate mention of any other name for the artwork, except that one image is "adapted from Killington, 1936". The other images hence seem te be produces by the authors, both of whom are listed as employees of an US gov.dept. - that is, if the museum qualifies as such. Pudding4brains (talk) 01:47, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
Most Smithsonian employees are federal employees I think, but not all, making it somewhat ambiguous. In this case though, you could probably just use {{PD-US-no notice}} to be conservative. It probably qualifies as PD-USGov too -- anything done by the Agriculture Department employee would definitely fall under that -- but a copyright notice was required either way if they wanted to keep copyright, which they apparently did not as I don't see any. Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:41, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
<= Hi all, thanks a lot for the info and links. A murky mess and a bloody embarrasing shame that a public organisation such as the NMNH/SI seems to make a deliberate effort to making unrightful claims and keeping things as murky as they can possibly get away with as opposed to making an effort to clearly indicate what is what. IMHO the people responsible for such behaviour should not be paid by the people for their "work".
It would seem to me that Commons would benefit from a clear page/template about the issue, as opposed to the info being scattered in archived discussions on Commons and en.wp. I may try to have a go at summarizing later (first finish the lacewing project that I need the images for).
One thing that may need to be addressed: When did the murky mess of public and private funding that the SI is hiding behind start? Was this already the case when it was still called the NMNH or USNM. If we can draw a clear line there, that would be a good start.
For now, I'm satisfied that Carl made the most pragmatic point here: "but a copyright notice was required either way if they wanted to keep copyright" - I keep forgetting that quirk of US-law :o) Thanks all! Pudding4brains (talk) 13:13, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
The template {{PD-USGov-NASA}} contains a statement that images hosted on the NASA web site not necessarily are made by NASA. I think that a similar statement should be placed on the {{PD-USGov-SI}} template. The important difference is that the NASA web site typically indicates who the author is whereas the SI web site normally doesn't do this. --Stefan4 (talk) 13:17, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
March 8
Batch uploadings and API
Hi, I regularly uploaded some files via Flickrripper till yesterday morning. Now it writes:
Uploading file to commons:commons via API....
{urlopen error timed out)
WARNING: Could not open 'http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php'. Maybe the server or your connection is down. Retrying in 1 minutes...
As it was pointed out [6], the search in French Wikipedia on Devoirs or Vacances gives as one of the top results the pornographic film File:Devoirs de vacances.ogv. This is being used as an argument in discussions on the controversial content which I am not going to bring here. However, this particular problem has an easy solution: The file can be renamed into File:Pornographic_movie_Devoirsvacances.ogv, after which, I believe, it will not show up in the search. I could technically make the move, but it is clearly against the policy, which does not list such reason. From what I know, we do not have a dedication page for renaming discussion (the policy says just do it or do not do it, it does not say discuss it), therefore I open the topic here. If there is a more appropriate place, please move.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:35, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
I don't know how relevant Commons considers this but; the movie is certainly illegal in a number of countries (including the UK; 2 year jail term) and, although untested, almost certainly fails US obscenity laws. I am not sure which state law apply to Commons though, because laws around transmission of obscene material over the internet vary. --ErrantX (talk) 07:43, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
If this is considered hosted in the United States, it's illegal. All countries relevant of viewing aside (but are still serious to anyone who clicks on the link), if we're hosting this video in the U.S. it needs to get gone. Keegan (talk) 08:02, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
Why is it illegal? You link to a page of definitions that define bestiality as "sexually explicit conduct", but there is nothing on that page that says that it or anything else is illegal; it's merely a definition.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:01, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
Depictions of bestiality are not illegal in themselves in the US. Obscenity law would only encompass a work that "taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value", per en:Miller test. If the work indeed lacks any such value, it is out of scope and should be deleted, but I don't believe that is the case. As I have argued before, "hiding" things from the search by renaming them is an awful practice that makes it harder for people who are seriously trying to find these things for legitimate educational purposes to find them. Instead, we should be adding more tags and description to the other works which are supposed to be matching the search in question. Dcoetzee (talk) 09:35, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
Depictions of bestiality are not illegal in themselves in the US; depends on state law. Most states outlaw zoophilia - some have specific laws related to distribution of zoophilia pornography (the one I can recall of the top of my head is Iowa). The standard definition here is that transmission from or into states which specifically outlaw the material is probably illegal - including over the internet. So it really depends on which states laws Commons falls under. There is an argument this video holds historical value; but we have other portions of the video (w/o zoophilia) so... --ErrantX (talk) 11:34, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
It's worth considering having them review it. To me, based on my experience, this falls somewhere in the category of "things that probably won't cause an issue, unless someone happens to notice it and decide to pursue it". If the issue gets in front of the wrong person then it might cause ruction. You tend to see that a lot in grey areas of legality like this. (I think from our perspective it's also worth considering that this video is also illegal in several other prominent countries). Given that we (apparently) have other snippets from the same movie I think there is a potential case to just scrap this portion - but I'm not overly bothered. --ErrantX (talk) 15:55, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm not opposed to renaming (although not convinced that it would fix the search result). FYI, read w:The Good Old Naughty Days (At the time of its release (2003) it was the first R18 film to be rated for display in cinemas in the United Kingdom for over ten years, despite its contents, partly due to its 'classic' style and age and as "historical footage".) --Atlasowa (talk) 09:44, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
This is the title of the movie. What would be more suitable as to it's tile for the title of the file? What you intent is to manipulate the search engine to bias results. Yes, I'm against the renaming of this file, which isn't illegal. --／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼苦情処理係11:02, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
The problem is that the title of the movie contains words that are common search terms for something completely different. If we are going to host this file then ideally we want it to appear when people are searching for "Devoirs de vacances" and they want that specific film, but not when they are searching for "vacances". There are no easy solutions to that. WereSpielChequers (talk) 13:06, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) Other film-related images contain common words. The standard practice is to use file names containing the film title. This is analogous to a search for "toothbrush" and it is not our problem if a file is related to a common word. Compare with a search for "monarch" in the file namespace: there are very few pictures of monarchs in the results. --Stefan4 (talk) 13:15, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
This is part of the broader problem of improving search. See
I don't think renaming individual files is a good fix, but it might work in the short term until search is improved. However there is too much opposition to such renaming, so there's not much point in pursuing the idea. Rd232 (talk) 13:59, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
I would have nothing against a temporary solution. But if we rename the files now, edit their description (ranking includes them) and implement a better search later on, someone will need to revert all this changes. While I'm seeing an currently very active lobby that would do the first step, i don't see the same persons revert their changes in the second step. If we really want to improve matters, then we should start to improve the search as soon as possible. Otherwise it will only cause more disruption and delay. --／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼苦情処理係14:04, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
I am not sure whom you mean, but if I am the person to rename the file, I will also be the person to revert the change when/if your idea on Meta gets implemented. I also have no personal problems with the file (I am the only one in my office and hopefully this is not going to change).--Ymblanter (talk) 14:49, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
If a temporary rename solution is at all plausible, it's not hard to make sure it's really temporary: just tag all renamed files with an appropriate template and the original name. Then, once the search is improved so that the temporary fix is no longer needed, a filemove bot can rename the file back to the original name. This may involve breaking some links from external sites though, unless we use redirects (which might defeat the purpose, I don't know). PS We probably don't need to edit the description; I think the title features heavily in search rankings. Anyway, it would be difficult to edit the description in a sensible way that lowered the search ranking. Rd232 (talk) 16:12, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
I just want to mention again: That is a slippery slope! Is there good and bad content? Should be "Mohammed" be banned from file titles so that is never shows up in searches? Should people searching for this film be not able to find it? We have a technical problem of a bad search engine (which was found out now by some sensitive (to whatever) people), yes, but the solution is not to introduce content classification in good or bad and to rename half Commons (we have restrictive renaming rules for good reason). We can place a note inside the search: "caution - the search may contain images you do not like". --Saibo (Δ) 14:29, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
Honestly upon reviewing this in more detail, I think these search results make sense. There are only four works on Commons including "devoirs" in the title, and a multimedia search for "devoirs" naturally lists these four first. "Devoirs de vacances" is in the filename because of course it is the title of the work. The extracted blurb below the filename clearly labels it as "a pornographic short film involving nuns". It's not even the first result. A Google site search returns nearly exactly the same results - I wouldn't imagine even with extensive development that we could do better than Google. Relevance is subjective, and depends very much on the person searching - a person who is looking for the film will search for words in the title of the film and expect to find it, so a rename is unreasonable. Our intuition is that these people are comparatively rare compared to people searching for general media about homework, but do the logs bear this out? This deserves more careful consideration. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:16, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
Python library for generating attribution text
I've written a simple library that aids with generating attribution text when reusing Wikimedia Commons content from third-party code. It is based on User:Magnus Manske's and User:Krinkle's MediaWiki:Gadget-Stockphoto.js code. You can find it here. It's a Python library, but simple enough to be used from other languages, via standard I/O or a web service. It's experimental code, but I would love to get some feedback, suggestions and error reports. Regards, /Skagedal (talk) 15:11, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
Please help this user
On wikt:Wiktionary:BP#Uploading_filesUser:Istafe stated that he/she wants to contribute to Wiktionary adding audio files for Czech as a native speaker, but says that he/she can't add them to Commons. I don't really use Commons so I can't help. PS feel free to move this message if it's on the wrong forum. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:04, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
Hi, I am trying to upload a large number of files again. Actually, it will be somewhat more than 100. But that will be more than cumbersome enough for me to use a tool. The last time I did that was at least 2 years ago and it does'nt work anymore. I reprogrammed Nichalps uploadscript. I tried to use the Commonist. But they all fail nowadays.
It probably has to do with the fact that the upload page is being used by all these tools. This upload page nowadays requires the license to be set before a file is allowed to be uploaded. And that seems to fail.
Anyway, I want to find out whether someone else is trying to do a bulk upload and is facing the same problems or maybe not. I am already looking into it deeply by looking at the code, but I am not really a specialist in this area. Please report to me.
Ger Hanssen (talk) 09:07, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
I quickly drafted Commons:YouTube files to have our "state of the art" concerning files from YouTube, both licensing & technical aspects. Improvements are welcome.
I added two examples of Creative Commons videos (one eligible, one not eligible as NC) not using the YouTube licensing tool. --Dereckson (talk) 09:45, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
I've recently created Commons:Alternative outlets (COM:ALTOUT), modelled after en:Wikipedia:Alternative outlets. This aims to provide a listing of alternative outlets for material which Commons can't host. I think it may usefully supplement COM:PS in some contexts - we can then refer people not just to "COM:SCOPE" ("not here"), but also "COM:ALTOUT" ("try there"). That may make them more likely to not contribute again things we don't want, and perhaps even to contribute things we do. So I invite people to propose additions (or other changes) on the talk page, and also to suggest where COM:ALTOUT might usefully be linked from on other Commons pages. Thanks, Rd232 (talk) 12:55, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
Nutzungsbedingungen für DLR-Bild- und Videomaterial
Die Rechte aller auf dieser Website verwendeten Bilder und Videos liegen, sofern nicht anders angegeben, beim Deutschen Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR).
Sofern nicht ausdrücklich anders angegeben, stehen Bilder und Videos des DLR unter einer Creative Commons Namensnennung 3.0 Deutschland Lizenz. Das heißt, Sie dürfen das Werk bzw. den Inhalt vervielfältigen, verbreiten und öffentlich zugänglich machen, Abwandlungen und Bearbeitungen des Werkes bzw. Inhaltes anfertigen und das jeweilige Werk kommerziell nutzen, wenn Sie den Namen des DLR wie folgt ausdrücklich und gut lesbar nennen. Beispiele: "Bild: DLR, CC-BY 3.0", "Bilder: DLR, CC-BY 3.0", "Video: DLR, CC-BY 3.0".
Which means, that the import-bots can start working :). The dlr decided to do that because someone from wikipedia asked them about reusing the images (see here). cheers, Amada44talk to me16:03, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
Great news! :-) Thank you for posting here! To other users (who understand German): the "here" blog post is interesting. --Saibo (Δ) 01:28, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
However, beware: The license only applies to media where DLR has the sole rights and is able to release the material under this license. Note the "sofern nicht anders angegeben", i.e. "if not otherwise stated": The DLR website contains also images where the copyright lies with other entities and which are not relaesed under CC-BY. Two examples of which one is IMHO ok and the other one not:
A photo of German Federal Minister Philipp Rösler. If you click on "Informationen" in the upper right corner of the image, you get "Quelle: DLR (CC-BY 3.0)" - so, this photo would be ok (and you can download it conveniently in full resolution using the link "0,53 MB" above).
Counter-example:
If you click on "Informationen" for this photo (which is also downloadable), you get "Quelle: T-Systems". So, I suppose that this photo's copyright is owned by T-Systems, not by DLR, and it's not available under CC-BY. I would always check what "Informationen" has to say. Gestumblindi (talk) 20:21, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
Hi, i've been doing some datadumps of radio shows which do interviews and stuff, one of them is Puissance Maximale. I have recognised from the title of many of the shows that they are interviews, and because they were under a free licence, and i was doing similar work, i've uploaded them as well. Unfortunately somebody has informed me now that there may be issues with some of these shows not being educational, and that some actually feature copyrighted content. Can somebody who speaks french please go through them. I think that interviews should be kept, but if it's just a front for copyvio, i want no part to it. Thanks for your time. VolodyA! V Anarhist Beta_M (converse) 16:01, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
It's just an expression of an opinion. The question is valid: is it really a good idea to upload materials you don't understand? (I think not.) Rd232 (talk) 18:53, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
Is that actually the question at hand? Not only did Beta_M explain why he uploaded them, but — more importantly — they're already here. I don't think it is proper Commons procedure or etiquette to respond with a blind delete tag when someone asks for help, particularly when the uploader asked specifically for someone who was qualified to decide, and the responders haven't even bothered to mention whether they understand French. I'm sure Beta_M could nominate them for deletion himself once he gets the answer he asked for. --Closeapple (talk) 23:18, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
One doesn't need to know the language to at least listen to a few minutes of a file and realize that it's the kind of amateur programme where buddies speak for a few minutes, then listen to some commercial tune, speak for a few more minutes, listen to another tune, etc. I listened to the first five minutes of one file. It began with an excerpt from a TV programme (obviously not free), then an excerpt from a music album, then two minutes of the guys speaking, then a Michael Jackson song, etc. By that point, it should be obvious that the programmes include unfree material. I'm guessing that must be the usual format of all their one-hour programmes. If Beta_M wants to sort through all the material, he would have to remove at least the material other than the parts where the guys are speaking. Even then, are the spoken parts free? On the official website of the guys who make the programme [8], they link to recordings of their programmes on the www.archive.org website [9]. I don't know if the hosting of the recordings on www.archive.org automatically means that the spoken parts are under some free license. I couldn't find a clear indication about it there. I have no idea if the person who uploaded copies of recordings on the radio4all website with a CC-by license tag owns any copyright on any of that material or if he has anything to do with the guys who make the programme or with the community radio station that broadcasts it. I didn't see a mention of radio4all on the website of the programme or on the official website of the radio station [10]. Even if the spoken parts of the recordings are free, it's those guys talking about games (video games, board games, etc.) and is that in scope for Commons? -- Asclepias (talk) 01:12, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
What are the difference between The Commons on Flickr and Wikimedia Commons? I am looking for the advantages and disadvantages of those two participatory web tools. --Bmulatiningsih (talk) 00:58, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
The Commons on Flickr is a repository of public domain works contributed by various selected partners. It is not possible for individuals to contribute. Wikimedia Commons is a (somewhat larger) database of freely licensed and public domain works from a variety of sources, including individual uploaders. Wikimedia Commons works can be used directly on Wikipedia and related projects, while Commons on Flickr works would have to be uploaded here first. Dcoetzee (talk) 06:05, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
Wikimedia Commons usage guidelines for public domain works
Dear community,
In June 2011, some GLAM users wanted Wikimedia Commons publishes some guidelines about how to use correctly the public domain, like the Internet portal Europeana does.
In a nutshell, the goal is to have a page remembering attributions to museum should be given, maybe also a financial compensation on commercial usage (at least for the Europeana version) and to trust museums for moral rights application. This page should help to convince museums and institutions to give their digital collections to Commons.
Those guidelines are offered as a proposal, asking kindly user to follow them by goodwill. The page will even told users this is not a binding contract.
The problem is Europeana and Wikimedia Commons weight together 25 millions pictures, and so when we both define the same best practices on how to use public domain works, we're defining the best practices to use the public domain works; in other words, we are restricting the public domain use.
More technically :
this page never were consensual (they were objections about reciprocity - cf. the rama mail on the mailing list about how museums consider respect, I quote him, "do not photograph if it is not allowed, do not use you flash, do not attempt in any way to 'steal' photographs, as the quality will be poor", about the jurisprudence risk, about the fact our mission is to preserve public domain, etc.)
this page received some days after his publication, and is inactive for 9 months
Isn't the software supposed to prevent overwriting a file with a duplicate of itself. I am asking that because, apparently it is what happened here (the uploader thought it did not work, so reuploaded the files several times and the same version of the file appears to have been saved four times in a row) --Zolo (talk) 13:54, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure how possible it is to detect such in PDFs/Videos/Audios. But I agree that this would be greatly helpful when it comes to image files. I've seen a ton of similar cases. Will cleanup the file you mentioned to avoid confusion to other readers. Rehman14:03, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
It probably could detect for all file types (hash comparision) - but sometimes that is done intentionally - eg. to fix a strange display problem. --Saibo (Δ) 15:43, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
Actually, it's very easy to upload duplicates file versions; sometimes this can happen pretty much just by clicking more times than you intended on the "upload" button -- that's more or less what happened at File:Fine Gael historical flag.svg etc... AnonMoos (talk) 01:50, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
In addition, what I've always wanted to ask: could we create a deletion request template for versions only? -- πϵρήλιο℗09:06, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Pages with categories set via template may not appear in their super categories
This problem may may lead to apparently empty categories but in fact only the sub cats are not shown currently. This problem appeared in December 2011 in dewp: MP, AAF.
No, I must join the categories because these images are linked in the book on wikisource. Therefore i want a single category for all images updated. I have created this second category for mistake. Is this any way for join them automatically? --Saettadizeus (talk) 16:08, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
I don't believe so, their CSPAN Video Terms of use page says You agree not to use the Video for any commercial use without the prior written authorization of C-SPAN. --Captain-tucker (talk) 11:14, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
They have had some copyright spats before, including claiming copyright over government video because they slapped their logo on there. They have backed off some, now only claiming copyright in videos where they have their own cameras present (though William Patry had some issues with that even). However... telecasts of stuff like the above would certainly be copyrightable just like any other network. They have multiple cameras, decide when to switch between them, etc., etc. Carl Lindberg (talk) 18:30, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Move link for users who are no filemovers on file pages
Screenshot of a first proposal
How can I move a file?
Can you move that file, please?
Are common questions on COM:AN and COM:HD. That's why I wrote RenameLink (small installer script) and RenameRequest (contains the interface and main logic that creates a technically well-formed rename request).
RenameLink installs a "Move"-tab like you can find them on each normal page. I think this is the most intuitive approach. Clicking this tab will load RenameRequest. Translation will follow.
Some thought behind this gadget: File moving is always seen very critical by some users and has indeed ugly side-effects, so it should ensure one has read the page before one can request renaming and the policy is a central object.
You can test it with an account that doesn't have the file-mover or sysop-group attached.
Feedback is welcome.
Should this be enabled by default, improving the experience for new users? Should this be an own gadget or should we create a gadget "newcomers helpers" so we can include more functionality later or merge RotateLink?
Very nice, well done. (I still have notes from November on this idea: User:Rd232/Filemove). Problem: on my laptop (resolution 1366x768) the script window doesn't fit on my screen (the bottom of the box isn't visible), and there's no way to scroll it. Maybe the examples can be separated out from the rename reason, and provided as a popup on click or hover? Or else make the script window scrollable. Rd232 (talk) 23:06, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
As to the gadget question: does it need to be a gadget? Why would anyone want to turn the move tab off? Maybe it could just be universal (with maybe a non-gadget option - i.e. a line to add to your own script file - to turn it off just in case). Rd232 (talk) 23:11, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Well, this is live now. If you encounter problems (vandalism, too many unjustified requests), please tell me and I will add traps. Thank you. -- RE rillkequestions?16:09, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Sorting a category by date ?
My apologies if this is a "hardy perennial" feature request, but would it ever be technically feasible to add a button to each category page to allow the category to be sorted by date?
It seems to me that both for categories that contain works by particular artists, and for categories include historical works on particular themes (eg artistic works showing particular places), that this would be a really nice addition -- eg to group series and similar works together, or to show how a place or an artist's style developed.
Date-sorting of search results is a feature I have personally found very useful on image sites that provide it (eg the europeana project, compared to finding the same images on the British Library site), so I wondered if it was something that we could offer too? Jheald (talk) 08:29, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
Depends on which date. There's some old bugs (bugzilla:1289) in bugzilla about sorting articles by the date that the article/file was added to the category - mostly because it'd be useful to wikinews (And provided we don't separate the category into the subcat/article/file distinction, this is mostly feasible - and can be accessed via the api [11], as well as some extensions (DPL) that take advantage of it, but there is no real interface for it). Sorting a category by the date an image is uploaded is somewhat inefficient on large categories. Bawolff (talk) 03:23, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Change over of two pictures
Is it possible to switch between two pictures of same size, triggered by "mouse over"?. Example: Photo, and Photo + information if touched by mouse: [12]Akroti (talk) 10:56, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
In the license tag templates such as {{Cc-by-sa-3.0}} and {{Gfdl}}, there is html like this: <span class="licensetpl_link" style="display:none;">www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html</span> — useful for code that generates attribution text, such as MediaWiki:Gadget-Stockphoto.js (the "Use this file" thing). However, as you see, complete URLs aren't used — the w:URI scheme (usually http://) is left out. Is there a good reason for this? Otherwise, I would propose that the templates are changed to include full URLs.
There is currently a bug in MediaWiki:Gadget-Stockphoto.js in that it fails to complete these URL:s. Steps to reproduce: go to File:Ramaria-flaccida-fichtenkoralle.jpg, press "Use this file [on the web]" (the link with the globe icon), check the "HTML" button. The generated html will include [<a href="www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0">CC-BY-3.0</a>] which, if pasted into some page mypage.org will give a link to mypage.org/www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0... I could of course just report this as a bug to MediaWiki:Gadget-Stockphoto.js, but I would prefer if the root of the problem was fixed to improve machine-readability one tiny step at a time. /skagedaltalk21:49, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Filename conflicts between en.wikipedia and Commons
Beta was kind enough to run this script. There is a sizable number of files with identical names on en.wikipedia and on commons. This means en.wikipedia cannot see commons images of the same name. I propose either images in commons or en.wikipedia be moved. Suggestions? -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 22:12, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Would it be possible to check if some of these are duplicates of the same image? Does the script do that already? /skagedaltalk22:18, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
There are currently 1600 files which have been moved to Commons under the same name but not yet been deleted on Wikipedia. Those are not an issue since they don't block any different Commons file (both files would be identical). They are deleted as fast as the admins have the time to do so, and there's not really any hurry.
There are lots of images with the "keep local" template which may exist on both Wikipedia and Commons; these are only a problem if the images are different.
I sometimes notice that people move thumbnails from Wikipedia to Commons without proper sourcing. If these overlap with the same name, it would be better to correct the Commons move and delete them from Wikipedia than to move any files.
If files really are different, something needs to be done. They should at least be tagged with en:Template:ShadowsCommons and preferably be moved.
Not just because. If the filename conflicts because it's a vague, terrible name, then a rename seems justified to me. Dcoetzee (talk) 19:02, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Hi to all, I apologize now for my approximate English: I have a problem, I cannot understand how to structure a sub category of saints as well as a statue of a Christian saint, see for example Category:Sculptures of Agatha of Sicily v Category:Sculptures of Saint Agatha of Sicily when in the "mother" category the adjective "saint" is missing. I think I understand that in an international historical figure tied to a religion can only be considered holy by a POV, and I think this is to avoid problems related to the religion of those who use an image (a time ago, in it.wiki a discussion led to a consensus to remove from articles the suffix "saint") but but I think should find a guideline to avoid the creation of double categories and in this case not even know which one is better: help me, please. Thank you for your attention. :-)--Threecharlie (talk) 13:17, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
One can view "Saint" as a formal title rather than a description. This is perhaps easier in English. It seems unlikely that there would ever be a blanket removal of the term since so many early Christian Saints are known by only one name, and because we favor the common form of names. I guess I'd work on getting the category structure right and not worry much about the form of the category name. If you want an objective approach you could examine the frequency with which each form is used in written sources.Dankarl (talk) 14:05, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
We had similar problems where we had churches without a saint in the parent cat such as Category:Benno, Category:Cadoc, Category:Agnes of Bohemia, Category:Thomas Becket, Category:Thomas More, several popes ... to name a few of the many. So we followed the natural logic to use the name of the parent cats and named all categories without saint. This has been strongly contested because for many if not most people, a church without a saint in the name is not correct. So, if you like it or not, if it is some sort of saint, you will find the saint back in the category names on the end of the tree. So, I think that if the saint is unavoidable, we better take it on as high as possible in the category tree. --Foroa (talk) 17:02, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Symbols for non-literate people
Is there an international system of the use of symbols to illustrate concepts for people who are not literate in any language? When considering the Wikimedia Commons I realized that some images could use a system of symbols to help illustrate the concepts to illiterate viewers. I wonder if there is a system that could be used to help non-literate viewers understand more information about images they see.
WhisperToMe (talk) 19:35, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
There have been cases where immigrants and refugees from non-literate backgrounds have found themselves in first world countries, i.e. the Hmong coming to the United States. While there is now a written form of Hmong Dawb (that's in the Wikimedia incubator), many of the Hmong immigrants who originally came to the U.S.A. are or were illiterate. The way they communicated with distant relatives in refugee camps was sending audiotapes to each other. People from illiterate backgrounds can and do have access to modern technology that would let them view Wikimedia Commons. Even in undeveloped countries the proliferation of cell phones could hasten access to technology. WhisperToMe (talk) 21:07, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Somebody on the English village pump mentioned some resources:
Perhaps we could insert some of these symbols into select image descriptions, to help illustrate certain concepts to the illiterate
WhisperToMe (talk) 22:06, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
I suggest In the Land of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent to you. Her section on Blissymbolics says "He had created a 'universal' language that nobody else could figure out how to use" and compares it to aUI, both designed to have natural, obvious symbolism and yet nothing alike. I've spent plenty of time playing boardgames with natural, obvious symbols and spent a lot of time looking them up in the manual.
Given my experiences, I have a hard time imagining any multicultural symbols that could be useful without explanation in language. Given the small number of illiterates who would use Wikimedia Commons, the difficulty of actually installing these symbols, and the fact I have a hard time imagining a large gain in usability to them, I would oppose it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:10, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the reading! It was an interesting chapter. I guess people found more difficult with the practicality of the languages then the creators had hoped.
It turns out aUI has an ISO language code, "art," and Bissymbolics also has an ISO language code, "zbl" - I wonder if interested parties could simply ask for the ISO codes to be activated, and then, if no font exists, they could use the symbols as images, i.e. [[File:aUI001.gif|20px]]
English village pump contributors mentioned Bissymbolics, Pocket Comms from the UK police, and general traffic symbols.
In addition symbols can also be useful for people who are literate, but not in the presented languages. I.E. international airlines use symbols and illustrations on safety cards so all people can understand them.
If I receive no objections in a week or so, I would like to try adding more AIGA/USdot symbols to category pages, to supplement the written text descriptions. In cases of, say "barber shops in the United States" I could pair the AIGA symbol with the flag of the given country. WhisperToMe (talk) 16:29, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
I think this is a useful think to do, especially for users who don't speak much or any English, and to support quick browsing of those who do. I'm not terribly convinced there's enough demand from illiterate users to justify the effort from that point of view, but it's useful for a much wider audience, so I have no problem with that being your motivation :) . I would say though that in the interests of standardisation, the symbols you use should be documented. This could be part of COM:ICON - perhaps a separate subpage, if it's going to grow very rapidly. Also, we might consider using templates to help standardise the presentation and selection of symbols. Rd232 (talk) 12:12, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
About having the icons documented on COM:ICON - That's a great idea. COM:ICON can link to AIGA Images (for AIGA images), Category:ISO_7001_icons (for ISO 7002 images), and to a list of country flags. If we find more internationally recognized icon images, they could be listed too. WhisperToMe (talk) 16:31, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
How is email any better evidence of permission than description page content?
I was just very surprised to be asked for an email to prove that I have granted a license to a file which I have uploaded three different versions of, refining them each time. I think this is absurd. Why would an email be any better proof of the evidence of permission than the file description page? Both consist entirely of my computer keystrokes, with no formal real world documentation or authentication. If I have been lying about the fact that I created the file in question on the file description page, why would anyone think that I would tell the truth about it in email? I note with some consternation that the person who asked me for this email proof has a pornagraphic barnstar on his talk page.
In the future, I think it would be best if I avoided Commons, and uploaded content to Wikipedia instead, even if it is free. The atmosphere here is too adolescent. Npmay (talk) 21:33, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, my fault for not checking enough. Wikipedia files may also be tagged for no permission, so that would not make any difference except that it would create a bigger backlog of files to move from Wikipedia to Commons. --Stefan4 (talk) 21:51, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Sorry for your negative experience. A large part of the reason we get e-mail for pre-existing works is that we can authenticate the address by mailing it and receiving a response. In many cases when the address belongs to an official domain this helps to verify it. E-mail also allows us to request additional authentication information, if necessary, which you might not want to show in public. Dcoetzee (talk) 07:20, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Also the reason someone asked for ITRS (presumably OTRS - Jmabel) email is because your file description source does not mention that it is {{Own}} work, creating impression that the image was downloaded from stats.grok.se. And in such a case we would need permission of the author. I realize that your username is listed in the author field, but I think that was the source of the confusion. --Jarekt (talk) 18:07, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Yes, that's exactly what I thought: it looked as if the file had been downloaded from that page. Later, I realised that the page only contained Wikipedia statistics and that there is no issue, but at that point you had already started the discussion here and on my talk page. Again, sorry for my mistake, but it did look a bit confusing at the file information page. --Stefan4 (talk) 18:11, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
When using wikipedia or other sites and clicking on an image it opens up on a new page.
Wouldn't it be nice if it just scaled-up on the same page like a pop-up as in sites like facebook and google-image search when hovered. And then when we click on them the image page opens up.--Nischayn22 (talk) 20:03, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
Could be useful, probably a lot more a WP issue than Commons. If somebody ever implements this I hope they make it optional and the size selectable under preferences as it could get annoying in the category display. Dankarl (talk) 20:26, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
Actually this could simply be done in a site-wide JS (possibly a default gadget). Even with standard image popup code modules. IF we want that. And of course every user can run it as userscript. Thumbnails in all sizes are delivered on request by the servers - so it is just the display popup / overlay thing. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 20:47, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
How so? It's no different than the lack of attribution in the category pages (the most useful usage I can think of) - and the popup could actually include attribution anyway. Rd232 (talk) 17:16, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
I thought of this mode of viewing on the file page - of course not directly from the Wikipedia article. Then a correct attribution needs to be done - yes. --Saibo (Δ) 16:46, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
(currently works on all files that are shown as thumbnail and linked back to the file; adding additional information possible; linking image to file-description page, too)
I use MonoBook skin and in past weeks (or months?), I noticed a non-standard functioning of edit forms. The tool pannel below the edit window sometimes is displayed, sometimes isn't. I detected no regularity in such behaviour. Usually, multiple repetitive "refresh" helps to appear the tool. However, in case that the tool pannel below the edit window is OK, simultaneously some icons (mostly "New line" and "table") from the tool pannel above the edit window overflow into the edit window.
Since it might be related - maybe not: since some days the "Edittools" are sometimes (e.g. 15h ago, now they are ok) displayed below the edit box although they are (with my setting) ususally moved to a dropdown menu of the "enhanced editing toolbar". FF10, Monobook, Linux, German. --Saibo (Δ) 14:19, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
Please delete all files in your browser-cache. If you did not opt-out this feature (Old Edittools) in your prefs, the edit-tools should be now always in the blue toolbar (edittools). Fixed -- RE rillkequestions?16:08, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
How to fix chromatic aberrations
Dear people, could anyone advice me about the software to remove chromatic aberrations? I tested the CA filter in photoshop RAW convertor, but it cannot fix different CA in one image. I use a shift lens, so there is no «rigth» and «left» sides in my images. There are — «right top» side, «top» side, «left top» side. This is why CAs appear even in the center of the photograph. Maybe there is some way to reduce all those manual corrections?.. Thank you very much.--PereslavlFoto (talk) 13:32, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
Hi PereslavlFoto, the best for your camera, a Canon EOS 50D, is to use the Canon Digital Photo Pfofessional software, current version 3.11.4.10. I do it with best results. This software know the camera and all the canon lenses (unfortunately not the other). --Alchemist-hp (talk) 13:42, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
Lots of RAW processing softwares can reduce CA (lightroom or Canon DPP can do it efficiently I think), they may even have profiles for distortions for usual Cameras/Lenses. I know GIMP also have plug-ins for that such as Fix-CA. If you want I can try to help you test the results with lightroom or DPP if you send me a RAW file. --PierreSelim (talk) 14:35, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
Tamron 17-50 CAs are very easy to fix. My trouble is with shift lens. There are three types of CA in the image, so I produce three images and combine them into one.--PereslavlFoto (talk) 17:55, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
File:Steve McQueen.png
Can anyone assist with File:Steve McQueen.png? Is a drivers license photo, or an international drivers license photo, in the public domain? If so, can you cite for me the basis of that? Is a club racing license issued by a private organization, Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme, in the public domain? Can an auction house, Bonham's, assert copyright over the document? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:03, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Probably {{PD-US-no notice}} is the best bet. The blank form itself was issued by that organization, and printed in the UK, but that is probably not copyrightable in the U.S. in the first place, and the UK typographical arrangement copyright would have expired by now. If you notice, it was issued by "MICUS" (Motorcycle International Clubs of the United States), and there is a New Jersey stamp on the other side, meaning the photo itself was applied in the U.S. thus that would presumably be the country of origin for the photo itself. There are no copyright notices anywhere I can see, photo or otherwise. And no, the auction house can't assert copyright -- Commons:When to use the PD-scan tag is our position on that. Carl Lindberg (talk) 00:26, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
It says "This work is in the public domain in that it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1977 and without a copyright notice." Is issuing someone a document the same as "publishing" the document? There's no evidence that the license was handled or seen by anybody but Steve McQueen and race officials, and not displayed in public until the auction. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 15:43, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
They had to distribute at least one copy to paste it on the license. Who knows if McQueen had one lying around, or they took it there that day. The rules of "publication" were different before 1978, and if the photographer doesn't keep the negative (pretty likely in those situations I'm guessing), then they may not have kept any interest in the copyright either. If the photographer did not restrict how McQueen could use the photo print when they gave it to him, I'd have to think that was general publication, and not limited publication. It's unlikely there are any court precedents in this area, because suing over stuff like that was (and is) pretty silly. Carl Lindberg (talk) 21:12, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
Wikimedia Commons allows to publish some WMF copyrighted content, including the Wikimedia projects logos ;
we've a lot of variations, generally good-faith one (e.g. color + articles count) ;
this variation could create a confusion between Wikipedia and Anonymous, and so some users think it should be deleted (and they're right to think so, if they believe this confusion is reasonable enough and susceptible to provoke damages for the project - I'd personally trust each member of the community to do a good faith use (and so I voted kept) but I'm probably a little bit too optimist here) ;
the uploader claims he wanted to illustrate a This user does not want any Special User Rights. userbox with this logo (which is maybe a strange choice, as Anonymous or V for Vendatta or Guy Hawkes have or want to have some influence and power on the society!) ;
the artwork is clearly associated to Anonymous in the news, but it's also the V for Vendetta / Guy Hawkes mask, and so has a scope broader than Anonymous.
I think the community at large should have an opportunity to give an opinion, as the WMF trademarks are our intellectual property, and so our input is important. --Dereckson (talk) 21:57, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
This might be a copyvio just because the design for the mask came from the film V for Vendetta. Assuming it was not a pre-existing mask design, this could be a derivative work. I'm not sure how much of its appearance however is separable from its utilitarian purpose as a mask. Dcoetzee (talk) 03:22, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Well, if it is unfree due to WMF having the copyright, then we can keep it since we do host copyrighted materials made by the WMF on here. But if a third party has a copyright, then we do delete. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:18, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
March 12
Large image donation
Not sure if this is the right page for this - please move it if you know of a better place!
Photographer Cesare Brizio has agreed to donate 1300+ images here.
Can any one suggest how we might achive this? any bot writers help?
Images may be taken from the web page OR originals can be sent to anyone on a DVD if required
Data from OTRS ticket 2012021810002796 follows (permission obatined to copy this here)
++++++++++++++
Dear Ron Jones:
yes, I confirm that I am actually glad to release all the images located at via the "View
Media" link at
http://tolweb.org/onlinecontributors/app?service=external/ImageContributorDetailPage&sp=1810
as "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)".
Furthermore, I can provide upon request higher resolution versions (1024x768 or more) of
almost all the same images.
By the way, I would gladly release as "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0
Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)" all the audio samples (recordings of animal sounds) available at
the web pages listed here:
About http://www.iso.org/iso/graphical-symbols_booklet.pdf - What is the copyright status of the graphical symbols themselves? Would they be considered too simple to copyright? Or does the ISO have an effective copyright over them?
We already have a lot of them (or slight variations) as traffic signs, prohibition signs etc. (not formally listed as being ISO). The "supplementary ionizing radiation warning symbol" was kept, and it's more complex than most... AnonMoos (talk) 09:57, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
I have a single screenshot of a satellite image from Google Maps that I would like to upload. I have retained the original copyright information in the bottom right-hand corner, and have not made any modifications to it (aside from cropping). I read through the copyright/permissions page for Google Maps/Earth to find the proper, legal route to using this image here, but I am unclear as to whether this screenshot is acceptable. The permissions page does have this: "For screenshots, the Google or or Google Maps logo is not required but attribution must always be present. However, the reverse is not allowed - only including Google logo is not proper attribution, particularly when 3rd-party suppliers were used for the Content." Since I have kept the full original copyright attribution, is my screenshot safe to upload here? ~~ Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 17:42, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
No. While it may be legal according to their terms, Wikimedia Commons has a self-imposed policy which requires significantly more permissive copyright licenses than Google allows -- see Commons:Licensing. So, Google Maps screenshots are not allowed. The USGS does provide a bunch of government-authored overhead photography, but they keep changing how it can be accessed, so I'm not sure where it is at the moment. Carl Lindberg (talk) 18:37, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
One requirement for fair use on English Wikipedia is that free images can't be created. However, in this case it would be possible to create a free image by using your own satellite or by drawing a map or by using {{PD-USGov}} data, so I would guess that it would be very hard to find Google images acceptable. --Stefan4 (talk) 18:57, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
@Lothar von Richthofen. Could you provide a link to this screenshot? For small scales use Landsat imagery (actually Google use Landsat for small scales as well), there are places in the web where you could freely download it (currently I don't remember the url, but it's googleable). For large scales -- sorry, no luck. Maybe it's possible to use OpenStreetMap instead of satellite imagery? Trycatch (talk) 07:08, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Landsat is too low resolution for this island. There is some free aerial imagery from Germany (e.g. [16] for Bavaria), but not for this island. So from what I see free imagery for this place doesn't exist. Trycatch (talk) 08:51, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
I propose formation of Commons Aerodynamics and Space Agency (CASA) and a manned Commons Space Program to send commons photographers to space. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 21:33, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
How about we start with unmanned satellites and probes? People get all fussy when you blow up a satellite being launched, but much less than a human, and you've got to get a human down again. (Seriously, I might put in for a well-thought-out Kickstarter to launch a satellite for stuff like this, but I doubt it's feasible quite yet.)--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:27, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
I make a new trouble :-(
I don't understood why I could not find any category for the Sisters (in Italian Suora) but ony few minutes ago I find w:Sister (disambiguation)... Not Sister (or sister as well monk) but nuns? And the category of statues depicting nuns or sisters?--Threecharlie (talk) 17:46, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
By "the literal" he means sorella, not soura. Soura in English is almost always "nun," except when used as a form of address (e.g. "Sister Agatha" but "Agatha is a nun"). - Jmabel ! talk00:47, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
Is there some tool (from toolserver I guess) which finds files on some wiki that is dublicate of some file on Commons? --Edgars2007 (talk) 12:18, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Afghanistan has no domestic copyright laws and does not currently participate in international copyright treaties (Afghanistan and copyright issues, Circ. 38a). Accordingly, Commons created {{PD-Afghanistan}} to note that works from Afghanistan are in the public domain.
Unfortunately, until today, the template only said [17]:
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of Afghanistan, which has no existing copyright law or intellectual property relations...
This is completely insufficient to establish public domain status.
Firstly, both the Berne Convention and the US Code (Title 17, Section 104) have provisions for protecting citizens of Berne countries that might happen to publish in non-treaty states. Specifically, any work published by a national of a Berne Convention country within a non-treaty state is still entitled to copyright protection in their home country and by extension all other Berne Convention states. For example, if a Swedish man publishes an image in Afghanistan, the US Code declares that the country of origin for that image will be regarded as Sweden and not Afghanistan. It is still the case that no copyright protections exist in Afghanistan, but foreign authors publishing in Afghanistan are able to assert copyright nearly everywhere else.
Secondly, both the US Code and Berne Convention consider the possibility that a work might be published in both a non-treaty state and a treaty state nearly simultaneously. If a work is published in a non-treaty state and is then subsequently published in a treaty compliant state within the first thirty days, the law considers that the Berne Convention still applies. Specifically, an Afghani who wishes to protect his copyright interests can arrange to have his work published in a Berne-compliant foreign country within thirty days of its initial publication in Afghanistan. If this occurs then he would have a defensible copyright in that foreign country and in all other Berne states. It is still the case that he would have no enforceable copyright in Afghanistan itself, since Afghanistan has no copyright laws, but this would not legally preclude him from asserting rights internationally.
I have now added short versions of these caveats to the PD-Afghanistan template. There are presently, 700+ images in Category:PD Afghan. A cursory inspection suggests that many of these are works of the Afghani government and are likely to be fine. However, many others appear to simply have been lifted from websites on the basis that they show scenes from within Afghanistan. With no identification of authorship, and no knowledge of whether they were published outside Afghanistan, it may be impossible to tell whether many of these images are truly in the public domain or not. Many of these will need to be reviewed and those without sufficient documentation as to origin may need to be deleted.
Thank you for your clarification work, several users seem to think any photo taken in this country (and not published by an afghani in Afghanistan) falls in public domain.
All the same stuff applies. We have had several discussions on PD-Afghanistan; it can only be the country of origin if all the conditions User:Dragons_flight listed are true -- the conditions are basically a recap of the Berne Convention definition of "country of origin" which we follow; something can't be under PD-Afghanistan if the author is not an Afghan national due to those rules. However, we really should have added that information to the tag before now. Thanks for doing it. Carl Lindberg (talk) 04:11, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
We had this discussion on en.wikipedia here. This is a very very bad idea. Let me elaborate:
Are the images in the public domain in the absence of a treaty? Yes, for the moment.
Will they become fully copyrighted once such a treaty is signed? Yes.
Would we be required to delete these images the moment these countries sign the said treaties even though material is in the Public domain? Yes. The case law as explained in Template:PD-Soviet should set the precedent on such content.
Hence, we should avoid featuring any content that we know will be copyrighted eventually.
What is a very bad idea? If an image is PD in its home country and the US, why shouldn't we host it? Is it possible that that will change? Yes, but that could happen to any image, and we don't know how it will change. We don't know that the content will copyrighted eventually. Furthermore, we won't be required to delete these images the moment these countries sign the said treaties. In fact, in the US, we will be a reliance party and will have at least one year before our use could possibly be infringing copyright. We will want to delete it, because of our own policies, but outside forces won't force that.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:07, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
Calling on the WMF to get the professional opinion of IP lawyer(s)...
I am going to thank Dragonflight for raising this issue.
I have been calling -- for four or five years -- for the Wikimedia Foundation to call for the professional opinion of a lawyer or lawyers who specialize in intellectual property rights issues. I have called for the WMF to call for professional advice here, and in various other venues. I have called for the WMF to call for professional advice dozens of times. When I first raised this issue another contributor told me that while the WMF employed a lawyer, whose name I don't recall, he had no expertise in intellectual property law. Some years later another contributor referred to that lawyer saying he was a specialist in IP law. OK, over a couple of years a lawyer can become a specialist in a new field. But he didn't become a specialist answering our questions on the IP status of images from Afghanistan, and other nations without IP laws.
Last year I noticed a discussion triggered by a concern some contributors had over an aspect of human sexuality and some images. The contributors with that concern wrote that something like 48 hours passed between them calling for the WMF to get the professional opinion of its lawyers and that professional opinion being offered. Geo Swan (talk) 17:40, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
Summary of ideas from previous instances when this issue has been raised...
One suggestion has been made in a number of disccussions -- that we should treat all images that qualify as {{PD-Afghanistan}} as if all those images qualified for protection under the Berne convention. It has been suggested (for years) that Afghanistan was on the cusp of introducing its own IP laws, so we should treat the images are as if Berne applied.
My response to this assertion is that respect for Afghan sovereignty requires us to respect the laws they have in place == not the lawas we think they should have.
The underlying assumption under which we grant copyrights and patents is that, in the long run, doing so generally benefits society. The underlying assumption is that new inventions, new ideas, and new expressions of both new and old idaeas are good things. For individuals who don't believe in "Progress" granting IP rights that help inventors, authors, composers and photographers make money is not a good thing -- because they don't want to see new ideas introduced. It isn't only the Taliban who don't believe in progrss, many of the warlords that helped overthrow the Taliban, and who remain very influential in Afghanistan, also don't believe in progress.
Afghanistan images are already treated under the assumption that the country may join the Berne Convention at any point, meaning that any works published after the joining date would have to be copyrighted for at least life+50 years whereas works published before that date may be subject to any other term (currently creation+0 years). --Stefan4 (talk) 18:34, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
What those advocating this approach wanted was to require the explicit permission of the Afghan photographer, just as if they were the citizen of a Berne signatory -- and the deletion of any Afghan images that lacked that explicit permission. I regard this as premature. Geo Swan (talk) 00:19, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't know who is suggesting such a thing but to me life + 50 is the bare minimum we should always observe. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 00:24, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
No way. Life + 50 is absurdly long. I have an appreciation for a flat 40 years, and it's unlikely an argument about this will produce anything productive. Furthermore, it's a quid-pro-quo; the motivation every country has to protect the copyrights of foreign countries is that the other countries will in turn protect your copyrights. I'd be happy to ignore the copyright of Iran or any other nation that doesn't respect foreign copyrights even on paper.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:58, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
Life + 50, in anticipation of these nations joining Berne-world? So you are convinced that these nations signing international IP agreements is inevitable -- but you haven't said why. I explained, above, and elsewhere, why I don't think we should regard this as inevitable. I'd be very interested in reading an explicit counter-argument. Do you have one, or is this the traditional "gut feeling"? Geo Swan (talk) 01:50, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Afghan images are like gold mines?
One interpretation that has been regularly offered in previous discussions is that some uninvolved third party who somehow lays their hands on an image captured by an Afghan, in Afghanistan, can then race to be the first to publish it in a Berne-signatory country -- and claim all the intellectual property rights to that image.
An example -- Dilawar was an innocent Afghan taxi driver, brutally beaten to death by GIs at the w:Bagram collection point. A freelance journalist visited Dilawar's family, and was allowed by them to snap a copy of their only photo of Dilawar, prior to his capture. This freelance journalist was the first to publish the image outside of Afghanistan -- and he claimed he owned all the IP rights to this image. Geo Swan (talk) 17:40, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
In this case, I assume that the copyright holder would be the photographer, not the newspaper or the journalist. It is irrelevant if someone makes incorrect statements on who the copyright holder is. {{PD-US-defective notice}} no longer applies. --Stefan4 (talk) 18:30, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
You call the photographer -- the family member -- the copyright holder. Well they wouldn't be the copyright holder under Afghan law, as it doesn't support copyrights.
Are you saying that your interpretation of Berne is that an Afghan owns the copyright to as yet unpublished images they took?
And if that freelance journalist claimed the family member assigned all rights to him? I believe it is possible for photographers to do this -- but it is rarely done -- mainly because most buyers don't know any better. However almost all Afghans are illiterate, and I have doubts as to whether it is possible for an illiterate person to knowingly give consent to release all their rights to a passing freelancer. Geo Swan (talk) 08:45, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
No one can hold copyright to anything under Afghan law. However, outside Afghanistan, Afghan people would be the copyright holders of unpublished photos, unless a contract has been signed transferring the copyright to someone else. --Stefan4 (talk) 10:38, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
Recent discussions elsewhere have asserted that, under Berne, unpublished images are protected, even if they are taken by citizens of countries with no IP protection, in nations with no IP protection. Geo Swan (talk) 01:54, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
That is true for the U.S., yes. The Berne Convention tries to let authors from non-Berne countries publish their works in Berne countries, to get protection that way (since the Berne country would then be the country of origin) -- so it stands to reason that protection is there at least up to the point the author actually publishes it. Carl Lindberg (talk) 04:20, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
What does an "AP file photo" on an Afghan image mean?
In deletion discusscions we routinely treat a credit like "AP file photo" as if this were an assertion by AP that they own the IP rights to an image. I regularly come across images credited to a wire service, or even (c) to a wire service that I know for a certain fact were public domain, or at least owned by someone else.
Up until a couple of years ago there were no published images of Guantanamo captives, taken at the base. But a couple of years ago the ICRC who regularly visited the captives were permitted to take photos of the captives, to give to their families, out of humanitarian concern. About a dozen of the captives' familiies allowed the press to republish these images. These friendly looking photos continue to be widely republished. Less than half the time the images are described as "courtesy of the family" -- or similar. Most often they are credited to a wire service.
Wire services add images to their catalogs from a variety of sources -- including the public domain. I think it is important to recognize how frequently wire services misleading imply they own the rights to {{PD-Afghanistan}} (and {{PD-USGov}} images in their catalog.
Dr Aafia Siddiqui and her 12 year old son were captured in Ghazni about three years ago. A considerable time after their capture a photo emerged showing 85 pound Aafia desperately hugging her child, trying to protect him. This image was nominated for deletion with the nominator asserting that since the site it was uploaded from had an "AP file photo" the image must have been taken by an employee of the Associated Press. Those favoring deletion of the image advanced an absurd narrative. They asserted that an AP photographer snapped the photo at the press conference when Afghan officials announced the capture of Dr Aafia and her son. The narrative is absurd because parading captives violates the Geneva Convention provision that protects captives from humiliation. And it is absurd as the Afghans didn't announce their capture. Aafia was only briefly in Afghan custody, being handed over to the US in short order. The Americans did announce her capture -- about a week later.
This photo was not an official mugshot. I figure it was an unofficial trophy photo taken by a corrupt Afghan police official, and clandestinely sold to the press.
Was the photo published first in Afghanistan? I don't know. Did Afghan police officials publicly release the photo? I don't know, but in either case I think the image should be considered {{PD-Afghanistan}}. What if a corrupt Afghan police official sold the image? Does selling an image to a single wire service constitute publication? I can't recall the name of this image, so I can't link to the discussion. But I remember looking and finding an image I thought was PD -- maybe this image -- that was credited to half a dozen different wire services. Geo Swan (talk) 17:40, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
The copyright, if any, belongs to the copyright holder. If anyone makes an incorrect statement on who the copyright holder is, this is a problem when explaining the image source and not a problem with the {{PD-Afghanistan}} template. In fact, there may be sourcing problems with any template. --Stefan4 (talk) 18:28, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
Well, the freelance photographer seemed to think, and some who have weighed in on this topic seem to think, that if they come across an Afghan image, previously unpublished in a Berne country, and they publish it first, they then own the worldwide IP rights -- just as the first prospector to stake a claim to a vein of gold owns that gold. Geo Swan (talk) 00:44, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
"AP Photo" really just means that AP is the source, but obviously they aren't going to help you by mentioning it is PD, if it is -- it wouldn't be the first time a photo agency slapped their label on a PD image. But just like any other image, we need to determine the reason something is PD; the "AP Image" tag may not truly mean it's copyrighted (though it usually does), but that doesn't remove the requirement to identify the reasons something is actually PD in the first place. In your example, if the photo was previously published in Afghanistan, then there is no copyright. Is there any evidence of such publication? If not, then worldwide copyright can still subsist. The freelancer could possibly have paid the family for the picture, acquiring the copyrights. Or, they could have agreed to act as agent, funneling some of the profits back to the family, in which case they have every reason to act as rightsholder. It is of course possible they are just abusing the situation, but without some actual evidence indicating that, I don't see how we could possibly assume that to be the case. I don't think we should delete something which is tagged "AP Image" when there is fairly strong evidence to indicate PD status, but by the same token it is a good reason to delete if there is no other evidence at all to help its PD case. Carl Lindberg (talk) 04:35, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
Celebrating Guantanamo's tenth anniversary two months ago a wire service -- Reuters I think -- published a photo essay of fifty images from Guantanamo. Everywhere this photo essay was published each of the images was explicitly credited "(c)" -- not "file photo". Geo Swan (talk) 08:52, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
Guantanamo is in Cuba and is subject to Cuban copyright law with extraterritorial rights granted to the US so it may very well be US copyright law since practically everyone there with a camera is from a Berne signatory country or has a permanent residence from one. I do not see the relevance of Guantanamo to this discussion. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 00:26, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
You don't understand the significance?
Wire services regularly slap (c) copyright symbols on images that don't belong to them.
On the tenth anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo terror camp a wire service published a photo essay where they slapped (c) copyright notices on all fifty images.
To my certain knowledge about 20 percent of those images did not belong to the wire service
You are right but how do you prove who is the original creator of the work? How can you prove it wasn't published outside of Afghanistan within 30 days of first publication OR it was taken by a Berne permanent resident/citizen? -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 10:55, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
30 days == simultaneaty?
I suspect that the clause about publication within 30 days being "simultanous" publication dates back to the days of carrier pigeons and the pony epxress.
How supportable is the Berne clause that publication in a Berne-signatory country constitutes "simultaneous" publication? I described the claims of the freelance photographer who claimed all rights on the image of Dilawar. So, what would prevent some carpetbagger from monitoring the Afghan newspapers and television, and grabbing all kinds of images, republishing them in the USA, and then claiming they owned all the IP rights to tha image? Geo Swan (talk) 17:40, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
The Berne Convention clause on 30 days applies to all Berne Convention countries. The copyright would belong to the copyright holder who may or may not have anything to do with whoever published the stuff first. --Stefan4 (talk) 18:26, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
Sorry -- did you mean "the copyright belongs to the photographer"? "Copyright belongs to the copyright holder" is redundant.
My point is that if the photographer is an Afghan, the photograph was captured in Afghanistan, and is published in Afghanistan, what prevents AP, or that freelancer I mentioned above, from republishing every recently published Afghan image -- and claiming all the worldwide or Berne-worldwide intellectual property rights on them? Geo Swan (talk) 00:27, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
People can claim lots of things, but that doesn't make their claims true. I'm unaware of any case law that exactly addresses the scenario that you suggest, i.e. a third party republishing and claiming copyright over works that are PD due to non-treaty status. However, the US case law is very clear that slavishly duplicating a PD work does not create a new copyright. I would expect that third party claims to copyright over copied works made without the consent or knowledge of the true author would be tossed out if ever challenged in US courts. The true author could republish the work within the 30-day window (or arrange to have others do so on his behalf) in order to protect his rights, but third parties that simply copy works from Afghanistan would seem unlikely to receive any copyright protection in US courts. Dragons flight (talk) 03:44, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
It was the case back when there was still USSR, there were publishers who would try their hardest to get the new book from the Soviet Union, then make 100 photocopies and claim (successfully) that it constitutes publication and thus they have copyright within the US. This is why there are so many trashy translations of Solzhenitsin's work, they were translated while the cover and the number of pages was already set. VolodyA! V Anarhist Beta_M (converse) 03:52, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
Because the market for the english language version in the united states is slightly larger than for the russian one. Actually thinking about it, i think it was a different issue there. They considered everything published in USSR automatically public domain (thus you needed to add your originality to it, i.e. translation)...
It seems to me that the individual who speculates that Mohseni became an Australian citizen would have an obligation to substantiate this speculation before we would have to take it into account.
If, for the sake of argument, Mohseni considered himself a dual citizen would the "100 % Afghan owned" assertion be considered to be a (temporary) waiving of his Australian rights? Geo Swan (talk) 09:27, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
No. He can however release the images to public domain. He must agree to release the rights or else this will not work. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 23:57, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
I have modified the template so that it now takes parameters for verification. Above category lists all the images still in need of verification. Since the template is here to stay we should minimize the number of problems it creates.
Some of these images can be verified to be works of non-Afghan nationals signatories to Berne convention countries. These works are also freely license-able for other reasons. These should not be licensed with {{PD-Afghanistan}} since a more stable license can be preferred.
If an image is sourced to a web site, remember to do a whois check on the server to verify that it is located in Afghanistan (or Iran, Ethiopia or any of the other non-treaty countries). If the server is in some Berne Convention country, the image would be copyrighted in all Berne Convention countries. --Stefan4 (talk) 00:13, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Certainly true but it could be taken from the afghan webserver and then published elsewhere within the 30 day limit.If published outside of Afghanistan then it wouldn't be PD-Afghanistan. We do respect Iranian copyright law here on commons I believe. Also see below section. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 01:32, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
An Afghan copyright law
User:Nard the Bard pointed out on Template talk:PD-Afghanistan that Afghanistan does seem to have a copyright law enacted in 2008 (English version). From skimming it, the effective terms seem to be life of the author plus 50 years for most things. It is also applies to works published before the law was created. Hence most of the things presently tagged PD-Afghanistan, unless particularly old, should be deleted. Dragons flight (talk) 00:07, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
This is something I catched prior but seems like I missed its significance. This simplifies things significantly. I modified the template to handle the past claim but it seems it will have a different purpose to see if images are old enough or not. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 01:27, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Also the sign agreement between US and Afghanistan may be binding with the line "Establish a forum for the exchange of information on commercial matters including but not limited to [...] Intellectual property rights protection and enforcement". -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 12:07, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
On your user page, you claim to be a native speaker of English, so I don't understand why you misunderstand this. It says "establish a forum for ..." and that's all we need to know to know that it has no direct impact on anything. They've agreed to set aside some place where they can talk, that's all.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:44, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
In legal/diplomacy speak that shows both sides are willing to cooperate more in the near future and this shows if you look at the dates. You can judge how diplomatic discussions can go based on the signing of such documents. I suppose this may not be obvious for people whom have no experience in diplomacy. That bill was signed in 10/07/2007 and Afghan Copyright Law came into effect in 26/07/2008, practically a full year after the fact. This can be seen as further proof that Afghanistan will sign international treaties soon which is why we should take care of these images as soon as possible. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 17:57, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
When the US president creates an organization and promises the US will join it, that is a strong indication that the US will be a part of the organization. In the case of the League of Nations, it was a false one. In legal/diplomacy speak, "establish a forum for" means the exact same thing it means in normal English: "Okay, we'll talk about it, but we're not promising anything". The fact that it's to "exchange information" further distances the country from any obligation.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:02, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
It is a bad idea to discuss today's diplomatic practices using pre-WW2 era paradigms. But this is not the point. The point is Afghanistan is working for WTO membership which requires the establishment of copyright law as well as many other requirements unrelated to copyright such as tariffs and etc. Afghanistan has established a copyright to satisfy the minimum requirements of TRIPS/WTO which is why it is 50+life and not some other random number (for commons this is probably Life+70 as US copyright law uses the "longer term" rule). It matches it perfectly. Can Afghanistan back down? Sure. But it does not seem likely as not being a WTO member has significant penalties for a country like Afghanistan (such as access to medication and other goods). HENCE we should make an effort to satisfy Afghan copyright law as if they are a Berne signatory. All we need to do is uphold the copyright law of the source country + apply US law on top of it like we always do. We do this for countries like Iran which will not be a WTO member any time soon as US (and several other countries) actively blocks it. There is no reason for us to disregard Afghan copyright law even though it is not binding outside of Afghanistan currently. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 19:19, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
The United States does not use the rule of longer term. For example, the en:Book of Common Prayer (1549) is still copyrighted in the country of origin but is not copyrighted in the United States, which would be an implication of the rule of the longer term. --Stefan4 (talk) 19:28, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
US does apply the rule of the longer term. Table in the article as well as the section explicitly states "No" in a nut-sell. US does NOT follow rule of the shorter term unless public domain in the "source country" on the "date of restoration". Since Afghanistan already restored copyright before signing Berne/TRIPS the works will become protected in the US once works are signed as images will be copyrighted at the time of copyright restoration ie when the treaty is signed. Or to put it in simpler terms per cornell.edu source,
"Published in a country that is a signatory to the Berne Convention" -> 70 years after the death of author, or if work of corporate authorship, 95 years from publication
"Published in a country with which the United States does not have copyright relations under a treaty" -> Public domain
Hence it is in the public domain now and it will be fully copyrighted. I am pretty confident it would be life+70 (US Copyright Law) and not life+50 (Afghan Copyright Law)
Quite incorrect: the rule of the longer term would mean that the work is copyrighted in the United States at least until the copyright expires in the source country (so that Mexican works are protected in the United States at least until 100 years after the death of the last surviving author and so that the en:Book of Common Prayer is protected in the United States at least until it enters the public domain in the United Kingdom). The United States uses neither the rule of the shorter term nor the rule of the longer term. The restoration upon treaty establishments does, as far as I have understood, apply to all Berne Convention countries, so that all countries would have to restore Afghan copyrights upon a treaty implementation. --Stefan4 (talk) 18:38, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
(ec) No, the U.S. does not use the rule of the longer term. They use their own terms, whether they are longer or shorter than the source country. That is not the rule of the shorter term, correct, but it is also not the rule of the longer term. Also, when it comes to URAA restorations, it sort of is a one-day rule of the shorter term to define which works get restored and which don't. If works get restored, which is entirely dependent on the terms of Afghanistan's law on the URAA date, then yes they will get a term of 70pma or 95 years from publication in the U.S., depending on when they were published and by who. Carl Lindberg (talk) 19:01, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Fine, then look at the Kyoto Protocol that the US signed but did not ratify. Until the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed, it doesn't matter.
I don't see any reason to do anything based on an assumption they may join Berne someday. Their law does look to be specifically aligned to that, so it's always a good possibility, but they have not yet joined anything other than the WIPO Convention, which means relatively little. They have not joined any international agreements from the looks of it (nearly four years after their law went into effect), so it looks like they are now in the same situation as Iran, with a local copyright law which only applies within their borders. However, like Iran, I'm pretty sure we do honor those local laws, so we should start enforcing it. Carl Lindberg (talk) 00:12, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
It isn't that simple for countries to sign TRIPS if they lack a body in the country that can regulate copyright nation-wide. There may simply be other priorities. The point is we will have exactly one year to remove problematic images the second it is signed. If we notice this late (we were 3-4 years too late to realize that Afghanistan in fact had a copyright) we will risk lawsuits. This is why we speedy-delete copyrighted images. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 19:57, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
There won't be a delay for noticing them joining an international treaty -- it will be up on WIPO's site, the U.S. Copyright Office pages, etc., etc. well before it happens probably. And no, we probably won't risk lawsuits unless Afghan authors file NIE notices. Still, we do respect these sorts of copyright laws per Commons policy, so yes I agree we should start deleting them. But that is the main reason -- if policy were U.S. copyright only, I'd wait. Carl Lindberg (talk) 20:09, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
What is your argument? A few lines above you are stating that "we should start enforcing it" where it is Afghan copyright law. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 17:32, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Just noting that there are no current copyright agreements, which you seemed to be arguing there were, and I would not support doing anything based on speculation that there *might* be relations one day. There is no legal reason to delete images. But yes, there is policy reason, so the question is moot. Carl Lindberg (talk) 19:01, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
I made no such argument or claim. Images will remain in the public domain (provided they comply with the three conditions which has not been established for certain for a single image so far) until Afghanistan signs the needed treaty or treaties. That said the possibility exist that Afghanistan can sign the said treaty as early as tomorrow which is is a motivation factor for us to establish the copyright per policy and to avoid problems in the future. We wan't to avoid a PD-Soviet like situation. I do not make a claim beyond that. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 20:45, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Again it's moot, but there is no need to avoid theoretical problems in the future -- it's just as painful now as it would be then. If countries change copyright laws and make us delete stuff, fine, we deal with it as it actually happens. PD-Soviet was a misinterpretation of existing copyright law, anyways (works had been restored since the 1990s), and not the same situation. As it happens, policy is to respect the local law anyways, so the effect will be the same, which is fine too. So no, there is no motivational factor for me at all based on what Afghanistan might or might not do. They have changed their law, so now we deal with it per policy, as normal. Carl Lindberg (talk) 21:58, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
It is 700 image painful now. I do not want to have a situation where there is the mess of PD-Soviet repeated. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 21:26, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
That's entirely up to the countries and the laws they pass. PD-Russia-2008 was also painful, etc., etc. Pre-emptively deleting is just as painful, and may delete stuff where it turns out it would never have been necessary since you're operation on speculation alone. Let the laws be enacted, figure out the details, and proceed accordingly. Carl Lindberg (talk) 23:38, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
Having images with licenses we know will expire is the problem here. No body is suggesting pre-emptively deleting. Since the start the goal is to establish copyright to make sure the images stay on commons in a stable manner. The problem of open-ended licenses like how PD-Afghanistan was is that people begin to assume anything and everything created in the country is copyright-free which isn't necessarily true. Such licenses are impractical and should be avoided. "PD until country drafts copyright" or "PD until country signs Berne/TRIPS" is speculation-based licensing which assumes
The country will make no attempt to draft a copyright and sign Berne/TRIPS at a certain point
The work was created in Afghanistan initially.
The work was created in the non-signatory country by a national whom is also not a permanent resident of one of the Berne signatory countries.
The work was not published outside of the country 30 days within its creation.
How is any of these assumptions not based on speculation? I suppose you can establish the second bullet based on the content of the image but the last two bullets are very difficult to prove.
And to respond to your point, the laws existed. Images created by non-afghan nationals in Afghanistan always were copyrighted even before Afghanistan got a copyright law. The copyright of the national origin of the people creating the IP works was still in effect.
It is entirely possible that a country never signs a treaty, or that it won't happen within the foreseeable future. Some countries signed the Berne Convention in the 19th century while other countries still haven't signed it. Should all countries have been treated as signatories already back in the 19th century? --Stefan4 (talk) 19:47, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
That is not the point. There comes a point where there are non-legal practical aspects on how to manage content uploaded to commons. We should avoid loopholes in laws such as the case with PD-Afghanistan. That is my view that will not change. You are welcome to agree to disagree. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 10:55, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
You were most definitely suggesting we delete PD-Afghanistan and all images under it. In its former form, it was a perfectly legitimate copyright tag until they passed their retroactive law. The fact a tag can be abused is not a reason to avoid it -- any tag can be abused. That is a matter for eduction, and not deletion (unless of course it was not applicable in the first place). Deleting because Afghanistan or any country *might* pass a law, or *might* sign a treaty, is indeed pre-emptive deletion. The goal is stability, sure, but there is always uncertainty due to changing laws. When it comes to that stuff, let the laws pass and just deal with the pain then. "The country will make no attempt to draft a copyright and sign Berne/TRIPS at a certain point" is not a valid reason -- we follow the law, and if there is no law, or no treaty signed, then it follows there is no copyright protection. It's entirely possible that will change, just like it's entirely possible the US Government will remove the PD-USGov licensing, or retroactively expand to 120 pma someday -- doesn't change the fact we should follow the current rules. There is no foreknowledge on new laws whether photographs may have a shorter term (which was in fact the case), etc., etc. You'd have to make up speculative copyright terms, originality rules, freedom of panorama, etc., etc., which will just cause unneeded friction because we can't point to *any* reliable source to base a deletion on. Once the laws pass, all that changes. Which it has in this case. Carl Lindberg (talk) 20:15, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
Berne Convention signatoriesBlanket PD templates such as how PD-Afghanistan was in its older form was a problematic, unstable, ill-conceived copyright time bomb. My view of that has not changed and as far as how things have developed, I was proven right. Sooner or later such templates lead to pages AND PAGES of discussion being a complete waste of peoples time. The discussion leads to mass processing of all the images. For that reason such license templates are impractical and not useful because the PD status is expected to expire eventually.
A good number of images were also mistakenly tagged with PD-Afghanistan when they should be tagged with something else as the creator of the works are actually non-Afghans bringing their nations long arm of copyright law with them. There were cases were images tagged with CC-BY got replaced with PD-Afghanistan as well.
Afghanistan copyright law came into affect on 26/07/2008, the PD-Afghanistan template was created on 09/12/2008. So when the license template was created it already made false assumptions about Afghan copyright. I realized the existence of the law in 04/03/2012. You can see the multiple-year gap that images were hosted with a false license making false claims.
What we were doing was gambling over when the nation will have a copyright or when they will sign Berne/TRIPS. We should always assume the minimum conditions of Berne/TRIPS which is life+50 which makes transition much easier. I ideally want to avoid having an identical discussion about the other non-signatories of Berne/TRIPS.
I have changed my proposal based on the discussion as a compromise. Are you saying I am not allowed to compromise?
Once again you have been tripped up by your assumption that Afghanistan's signing an International IP agreement is inevitable. I don't think you have offered a defense of this assumption and several of us have explained why this is not inevitable. Geo Swan (talk) 01:31, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
The PD status is not "expected" to expire by anyone but you; PD could change one way or the other in any country and any time. Life+50 is not the minimum condition for Berne for preexisting works; you'll note that the United States does not give pre-1978 works life + 50.
These aren't in any way time bombs. Even if they sign Berne, we will have at least a full year to delete any works.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:36, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Yes, hence the PD status expires giving us just one year, provided we notice the signing immediately. Then we would have to process all images with a specific license. It is a lot of work that can be avoided. Otherwise I can upload every IP work from those handful countries without restrictions which would mean a lot of work for the reviewers at a later point. Why do you want commons to host content not released with free licenses and can only be considered PD under very strict conditions that are difficult to prove. For instance works would have to be NOT released in a Berne signatory and NOT be created by a Berne signatory national or permanent resident. Also should we not respect IP rights of these people?
The previous form of PD-Afghanistan was an accurate representation of the law (at least until they enacted their new law); it is never reckless to simply follow current law. Any country can change laws at any time, which will most likely always cause us some pain, but that is no reason to delete things prematurely. If the actual text of an upcoming law becomes available, then sure, we can start preparing based on that, but I still wouldn't act until it's actually passed -- wording and terms can change, and they can decide to not pass it, etc., etc.. And actually, in the event Afghanistan joins Berne, we will have a full year *from the time we are explicitly notified about specific works*, or authors file an NIE notice with the Copyright Office. It is not one year from when they join Berne; we would be a "reliance party" in that event. We just have to be sure to not allow anything new to be uploaded at that point. There is no guarantee that they will join Berne either; I wouldn't take any actions purely based on that speculation either. Also, life+50 is not the minimum term for all kinds of works -- Berne allows much shorter terms for cinematographic works and photographs (among a couple others), which are the most common media type we have. Unless we have concrete evidence over what terms a country is going to use, it's pointless to even speculate. Yes, it was always possible that Afghanistan would change their copyright terms, but that is possible for every country. You did fail to predict the 50 year from publication term for photographs, if I'm not mistaken. Anyways, policy is to respect local copyright laws whether Berne or not, so we can just proceed along those lines. Carl Lindberg (talk) 18:12, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Practical applications of the law is relevant. You are creating unnecessary work just to keep images on commons for 2-3 years (or 10 years) if you take the PD due to lack of treaty argument. Legally it is fine but it is impractical. We can assume life+50 because countries will either don't draft copyright at all or they will draft it for 50 years or more per WTO and/or Berne restrictions. We do reject images that are in the public domain only in the US if my memory serves me right. Afghan photos are copyrighted. The law does not state that they aren't copyrighted. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 19:50, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm arguing to follow our long-existing policy -- act only upon actual laws passed, but respect local copyright laws even if non-Berne. We should start removing Afghanistan stuff based on that, and that alone. We cannot assume anything about laws until they are passed, or treaties until they are signed. We absolutely cannot assume life+50; those are not necessarily the terms for all works, especially the ones we are most likely to have (i.e. photographs). We will not apply life+50 to Afghan photographs; there is no basis to do so, rather it is photos first published/broadcast since 1962. But if you are suggesting any additional deletions based on a treaty Afghanistan might sign, I would disagree with those. Carl Lindberg (talk) 20:35, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
This is a tangent from the main PD-Afghanistan discussion for countries that still lack a local copyright, we should apply the life+50 pd rule for practical reasons. We should only declare content in the Public Domain if the local law or US law explicitly declares it PD. This has no legal basis but instead has practical benefits. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 19:19, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
And I would absolutely oppose that. If there is no local copyright law, that is the law, end of story for me. I'm not going to go invent laws I think they should have. Particularly not life+50 for photographs -- minimum Berne protection is 25 years from publication. Carl Lindberg (talk) 19:23, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
You are entitled to have your views. I will nominate any work from these countries that does not prove that 1) It was created in the said country, 2) No Berne signatory foreigner has gotten involved in its creation, 3) It was not published outside of that country in a Berne signatory within 30 days which does include uploads to these countries. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 19:29, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
The US is an example of Berne Convention country that does not have life+50 for works predating Berne; there are US works of all types that were published the year before the US enacted the Berne Convention that are out of copyright in the US. More generally, in no case do works published before 1978 get a copyright term based on the life of the author in the US; works published between 1923 and 1977 generally get 95 years of copyright from publication, with many US works in that period already having fallen out of copyright due to formalities.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:17, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
We need to re-license them. This was exactly what I feared would have happened. If we can establish an image is free for some other reason, that is fine otherwise they would need to be deleted. Let's avoid a panic mass deletion. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 12:28, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Our only choice is a mass deletion. It's safe to assume most if not all to the files cannot be freely licensed. -- Liliana-60 (talk) 02:35, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Reviewing them carefully to check whether any files are old enough wouldn't mean any legal risks for the WMF since the files are supposed to be in the public domain in the United States. --Stefan4 (talk) 02:40, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Should we apply life+50 or life+70? If rule of the longer term applies it would be problematic to give it a +50 range. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 19:21, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
50 years from publication (or broadcast) for photos. It's also possible that normal snapshots may be not be copyrightable at all, but unless we can get further clarifications on that, it may not be a good idea to assume it. However, I can't fathom any reason to use 50pma, let alone 70pma, for Afghan photos, given their law. Carl Lindberg (talk) 19:30, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) You are misunderstanding things here. Currently, none of these works are copyrighted in the United States. Whenever Afghanistan establishes copyright relations with the United States, US copyright will only be given to works copyrighted in Afghanistan on the date when the copyright treaty is implemented. If the author died more than 50 years ago, the work wouldn't be copyrighted in Afghanistan and so the work would remain in the public domain in the United States even after the treaty is established. Those works becoming copyrighted in the United States would then be copyrighted for the usual US term, for example life+70 years or publication+95 years. --Stefan4 (talk) 19:35, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Likewise, U.S. copyright would not be restored to photos published more than 50 years before Afghanistan's implementation year. Carl Lindberg (talk) 20:00, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Why would this be different from Template:PD-Soviet. The case law is there. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 17:34, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
It's not any different. Russia had 50pma terms on stuff on the URAA date in 1996, so that is the scope of what got restored. If something was public domain in Russia in 1996, then its U.S. copyright did not get restored, despite the fact that Russia later retroactively enacted 70pma terms. Thus, something by an author who died in say 1944 is not OK on Commons (since its copyright got restored in Russia) but would be OK in the U.S. (since it was PD in Russia in 1996). I don't think Russia had a separate shorter term for photographs the way Afghanistan does right now; that may be the difference you're looking for. It's normal procedure for the URAA; whatever is under copyright in the source country on the URAA date gets restored, anything in the public domain in the source country does not. Afghanistan's terms at the moment are 50 years from publication or broadcast for photographs, so presuming those terms are still intact when the URAA takes effect, then all Afghan photos published more than 50 years before that date will not get their U.S. copyright restored. If Afghanistan changes their terms before they join Berne and trigger the URAA, then it may be different. Any Afghan law changes after the URAA is triggered would have no further effect on the U.S. status. Carl Lindberg (talk) 18:10, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Not for photos or audiovisual works, which are 50 years from publication, rather than 50 pma, per Afghanistan's terms. Granted we may not have any that old, but those are the terms in Afghanistan's law, and those are the terms which determine if their U.S. copyright gets restored. Life+50 would apply to very little that we have. Carl Lindberg (talk) 21:50, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
The files fall into two groups: those that are new enough to be copyrighted in both the US and Afghanistan, and those that are only copyrighted in Afghanistan. Files in the first group need to be deleted, while files in the second group can be moved to enwiki and other wikis that only require US public domain status. I don't know what date is the dividing line between the two groups, though. --Carnildo (talk) 23:37, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Clarification: the United States still applies a copyright term of publication+0 years for works first published in Afghanistan (or de facto publication+30 days since publication in a Berne Convention country within that time frame means maintaining copyright for the work). As such, the "new enough" works would mainly consist of unpublished works. --Stefan4 (talk) 23:45, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Not quite, as Stefan4 mentioned -- none of these files are copyrighted in the U.S. (yet). So there are only files which are copyrighted in Afghanistan, and possibly some old ones which are still PD even with the new rules. Once Afghanistan joins Berne, then the URAA will kick in, at which point virtually all the works still under copyright in Afghanistan suddenly become copyrighted in the U.S., and will generally not expire in the U.S. even if they subsequently expire in Afghanistan. At that point, the set of images OK on Commons should be the same as the ones OK on en-wiki. But yes, if en-wiki wishes to use U.S. law only, they can currently just transfer these images to be local. If any of them expire in Afghanistan between now and when Afghanistan joins Berne, then those can be transferred back to Commons. But en-wiki would have to delete any others once Afghanistan joins Berne -- but who knows, that could be years away still, and could conceivably never happen (though the law does seem carefully positioned to allow them to join easily). Carl Lindberg (talk) 01:15, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Under current policy, en-wiki treats works from non-Berne countries as if they are protected as long as they are protected in the country of origin. Recently, there has been a variety of discussion about possibly changing this though. Dragons flight (talk) 04:17, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Who mentioned that these images are copyrighted inside the US? I see discussion to this end but no one stating this prior. PD-Afghan images are currently in the public domain inside the US pending treaty signatures by Afghanistan. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 17:34, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
One other thing that might bear mentioning -- if any files which get restored by the URAA are hosted on Commons or en-wiki at the time, then the WMF may qualify as a "reliance party" under those laws, who are then able to continue to use those works without liability unless directly notified by the copyright owner or an NIE notice is filed, which could bring up policy considerations which have pretty much not been applicable before. I sort of doubt it would make a difference on a project policy level, but it would on a legal level. Carl Lindberg (talk) 18:10, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
We never wait that long for all the good reasons. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 18:16, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Simple rule
Disregarding the existence of Afghan copyright law (for the sake of argument),
Can you prove to me that these images are in the public domain? Let's follow the original three conditions.
The work was first published in Afghanistan.
The authors of the work are citizens of Afghanistan and are not also citizens or permanent residents of any country that participates in the Berne Convention.
Within thirty days of its first publication in Afghanistan, the work was never published in any country that participates in the Berne Convention.
Can you prove that all images tagged with Template:PD-Afghanistan comply with all three conditions? Condition #1 can be established fairly easily. Condition #2 and #3 will be very difficult for vast majority if not all of the images. Images can be speedy deleted if they lack proper sourcing ie who created them.
Proving all of those for any specific image may be hard. If it can't be proven for a specific image, I suppose that the image should be tagged as "no source" or be proposed for deletion. Anyway, proving this doesn't seem harder than proving that a photo, which possibly appeared at lots of places, didn't get its copyright renewed but qualifies as {{PD-US-not renewed}}. We already have similarly difficult cases elsewhere. --Stefan4 (talk) 18:45, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
These images almost entirely had been taken in the past 10 years. That vast majority is the concern here, not historic images. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 20:51, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
You will have to consider that laws don't reach back. You can't be fined for anything that happend before the law was put in place. That is a general rule in all jurisdictions i know. The present images where perfectly legal before 2008 and still are, following this basic concept. --／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼苦情処理係20:09, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Continuing to distribute them may not be. Distributions before the law went into effect would still be OK, but future and continuing distribution may not be, depending on how the law was written. There are often transition sections of laws near the end to determine the details. Carl Lindberg (talk) 20:27, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Lets say i grabbed a PD image in 2007, used it to create a new work from it and released that work in the same year under CC-BY-SA. Would it be now a copyright violation? I doubt that. --／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼苦情処理係20:34, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
US law. Title 17, Chapter 1, § 104A, (d)(3) says that you can continue to exploit that copyrighted work provided you pay them reasonable compensation; if you two can't agree on what that is, it's decided by a US district court. I don't know what a district court would charge you releasing a work under the CC-BY-SA, but I doubt it will be cheap.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:26, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
I guess it would simply mean that the CC-BY-SA licence only applies to your changes and that people using the work would have to pay royalties to the copyright holder of the original work. It was a true CC-BY-SA work at one point but has now stopped being one. --Stefan4 (talk) 01:37, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
See the thing is how are we going to track all this? I mean say we have an offline version of wikipedia with only one of these images. We would have to hunt all of them. Or how about projects like OLPC. It would be illegal to distribute the laptops with that one file. It is expensive and impractical to hunt them down. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 19:15, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
No, that's not the same thing at all. That is a past exploitation, nothing wrong there -- they are not exploiting the work. Owners of books that became re-copyrighted don't have to destroy them, that kind of thing. You only have to worry about future exploitations -- if you own a PD book, you can make copies, but once it becomes not PD, you can't make or sell any more copies (but existing sold copies are fine). Furthermore, any infringement would not be enforceable unless they were specifically notified by the (restored) copyright owner, or a special notice was filed with the Copyright Office. If neither of those are done, continued usage of works (i.e. selling more copies of the book in the previous example) I think is perfectly OK. Carl Lindberg (talk) 19:33, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
You are redistributing it though, internationally. Also you need to collect everything that is in the market not yet sold. So what to do will all that wasted printing? All of this is why I think we shouldn't accept images that are less that life+50 as PD. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 20:03, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
Problem with the upload wizard?
Since yesterday, I'm quite often seeing an error with the upload wizard where (after a long pause) it's telling me the upload has failed, and I get the retry button.
However, if the upload is retried, then it will sometimes work, but it then leaves two copies of the uploaded file (two identical thumbnails) in the "file history", yet only one contrib in the "View history" tab.
I know it's not just me seeing this particular issue, as when I look at some recent files uploaded by other users, I see the same thing - i.e. a file with two thumbnails in the "File history" (as if two versions were uploaded) but only one 'upload contrib' in the history.
There are many more with the same issue, if you browse through the "Latest Files" page.
It's not a major problem, but I thought I'd bring it to everyone's attention. The only problem it causes is that it slows down uploading of multiple files, due to having to wait for the error to appear and then to retry the upload.
I was seeing something like this earlier today but with edits; some problem with a proxy server. It got to the point I would go and look to see if the edit took before re-trying. Dankarl (talk) 03:26, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. Yes, I'm now also using the same workaround. I have a separate browser tab open on my contribs page. When the new contrib is created, I know that the file(s) have uploaded fine, even though the wizard is displaying the message "an unknown error has occured, none of the uploads were successful". I now just make sure that I don't click on retry in these cases. Regards, Rept0n1x (talk) 07:13, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
But I happen to know the answer. British English for specifically British topics, American English for specifically American subjects, otherwise you can start an article in either, and editors should generally respect the preference of the person who started the article. - Jmabel ! talk15:08, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Jmabel ! talk 15:08, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
thank you for your answers - much appreciated!
Unable to undo vandalism
I keep getting error messages when trying to undo vandalism at Category:License_migration_redundant (see here). Some tell me that Commons is down when it actually isn't; the most informative read: "Database returned error "1205: Lock wait timeout exceeded; try restarting transaction (10.0.6.41)"... AnonMoos (talk) 13:36, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
It seems that the edit finally went through, but taking many seconds and previously returning an errormessage; the edit is timestamped "13:26", but I doubt whether it was actually visible in the history list etc. until later... AnonMoos (talk) 23:54, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
PD for 70+ years old photos by unknown author
Currently, both used Demjanjuk pics [18][19] have an obviously bad license template. They could be PD-70 though or at least after 1 January 2013, but I am not sure (a personal document is not "published" as we know it). Also, even PD-old applies, I'm not sure which template is to use. Could someone help? Thx - A.Savin13:17, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
Most European countries don't care too much about whether a work is published (although some countries such as the UK do so please be careful). If published and first published at least 70 years ago, the work is in the public domain. If unpublished and created at least 70 years ago, the work is also in the public domain. Other rules apply if the photographer is known.
Since the photo is less than 70 years old, it is copyrighted in the European Union. If it was also copyrighted in the country of origin on 1 January 1996 (probably the case: the country of origin appears to be Germany), it is also copyrighted in the United States, and if it is unpublished, it is copyrighted in the United States regardless of the copyright status in Europe on 1 January 1996. The template suggests that the uploader either is the copyright holder or has permission from the copyright holder to upload the image, but this would require OTRS for confirmation. --Stefan4 (talk) 14:12, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
Publication matters for anonymous works, like this. For a 1943 work, it would be still protected in the EU if first published in an EU country -- but otherwise they use the rule of the shorter term. The Ukraine is not an EU country, but... looks like that was issued by German authorities, and it appears Demjanjuk was somewhere in Poland in that time frame. That ID card's authenticity may be disputed, reading the en-wiki article, but taken on its face I'd have to say published in Poland in 1943. Maybe wait for a year to restore it. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:11, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
(WRT Stefan4's point) In the UK, archives or publishers have been known to put "anonymous and not previously published" photographs on display or on their website (e.g. their digital catalogue) as a rationale to create a new copyright for photographs in their archives with copyright about to expire due to age. They may have a case if they publish in a book, but as far as I am aware there is no case law to support a claim of the institution gaining enforceable copyright on photographs that they do not have a clear pre-existing copyright claim on, just by the process of putting photographs (or faithful reproductions) on display or having them digitized. For old and about-to-expire photographs of this sort, they would have no practical claim of moral rights or suffer any measurable damage, any legal case would seem astonishingly thin. As most institutions do not want to set a legal precedent, aside from posturing, I doubt any would want to establish case law in the near future. Where this situation occurs, I would suggest we firmly ask an institution for published evidence of a claim of copyright, beyond an image appearing on their website or having been put in an obscure public display after sitting in their archives for 69 years. --Fæ (talk) 11:42, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
It really depends on where he was. If he was in Ukraine (and it has Russian writing and no Polish so it seems likely), the Eastern territories were never part of Germany, so this cannot be considered published in Germany. -- Liliana-60 (talk) 17:33, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
Per his article, he claims he was in Polish prisoner camps in this time frame, and the prosecution claimed he was a guard in a different Polish camp (which is where this ID card I think was from). The card was obtained by the Soviets after the war, as they had their own trials of USSR citizens who helped the Germans, and that is probably where the Cyrillic notations come from (they appears to be written over the stamps). I think the USSR provided the ID card during Demjanjuk's trial. I had forgotten about PD-Polish -- that may apply, though there is a Waffen-SS stamp on it, and I'm not sure they allowed Poles in their units. But I think it's virtually certain the photo was taken and processed in Poland. Not sure if that would be considered published in Poland or Germany though. I could see PD-Polish. Carl Lindberg (talk) 18:51, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
Looks like you have an EXIF field which instructs the image to be displayed rotated. There is a "request rotation" link under the image on the file pages, which will set things such that an automated tool will eventually correct it -- and it looks like someone has already done that for your image. Carl Lindberg (talk) 21:42, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Yes. Presumably, it means that you have edited the image in a faulty program (for example, most Microsoft and Apple programs are faulty). Faulty programs sometimes get the orientation wrong, so something which is correct from the beginning looks wrong in these programs, and something which is wrong looks correct. Simple solution: never rotate an image you've taken with your camera. The orientation is most likely already correct and Microsoft/Apple programs just mess up the images if you try to use the programs for rotation. --Stefan4 (talk) 22:00, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Interesting. I have uploaded hundreds of photos to Wikipedia edited with the same software, ArcSoft Photo Studio, with no problem. I wonder what went wrong. Also, how is it that the full-size version is correct? It is only the 1024 pixel version that is rotated. Shouldn't the 1024 px version and the full size version always be in synch? -- Mwanner (talk) 22:09, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
If the full-size version looks correct while the 1024 px version looks wrong, it just means that your web browser is broken. As far as I know, all web browsers are broken, so there is no way to "fix" this by changing to a different web browser. The MediaWiki software's support for correct image orientation is fairly new, so files uploaded before October or November last year might have been wrong although they looked correct. --Stefan4 (talk) 22:13, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
So is this likely to be fixed any time soon? I had the impression that the Rotate template would cause the image to be fixed within a few hours. -- Mwanner (talk) 12:14, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Nevermind! I figured out how to do a clean rotate off line and uploaded the new version. Should have tried that earlier! Mwanner (talk) 11:53, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
Please don't do that. You rotated the image using lossy rotation, so I assume that your rotation should be reverted and replaced by proper Rotatebot rotation. --Stefan4 (talk) 14:08, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, it's already done. If Rotatebot ever comes back to life, feel free to replace. Personally, I think the loss is too minor to worry about. Your mileage may vary. -- Mwanner (talk) 16:59, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
March 19
Upload broken?
Neither the upload wizard or standard upload pages seem to be working for me today. On the standard page, the "Browse" button does nothing, and clicking in the field for the file name/path also does nothing. In the wizard, clicking on the first button also does nothing. Help please? Sctechlaw (talk) 03:39, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Javascript is on, referrers and popups turned on to test and this doesn't help either. Sctechlaw (talk) 03:42, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
I operate a bot that I use to upload files. I'm going to start a large upload of files from a site whose files are all licensed under CC BY. The site may go offline at some point in the future; how do I "prove" that the files were licensed as such, so that there won't be issues later on? OTRS is not necessary since the license is plainly stated on the site, and using an empty Template:LicenseReview is just unnecessary, since the license applies to all the images. Do you think I could just use LicenseReview with my own user name, or perhaps the bot's?
I could see a few different approaches (including uploading a screenshot of the licensing statement, getting an OTRS volunteer to confirm and archive a record of the licensing statement as given on the site, and creating a custom source-and-license tag for the site that you get another trusted user to sign off on – these options are not necessarily mutually exclusive). It might help to know which site you're talking about and how many files we're dealing with. —LX (talk, contribs)10:57, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Hi there. I just created File:Frukto - ekzemplo de akuzativo.svg, and the thumbnail has a strange black square in it, which doesn't show up in Inkscape. (I created the SVG in Inkscape.) Is this a problem in Inkscape or the Wiki rendering? Can someone help me fix it? Thanks... Yekrats (talk) 19:09, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Hello, it would be nice if someone who is familiar with templates had a look at Template:Ukraineyear. Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union, but latter existed 1923-91. So, the concerning subcats have to be filed under "Category:19xx in the Soviet Union" only if 23 <= xx <= 91, but currently there's nonsense in the outcome (see Category:1902 in Ukraine etc.) Thanks - A.Savin12:28, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
You forgot to end the ifexpr statement, which I fixed. But, I'm not sure the logic is working. I suppose you could make "Category:19xx in the Ukrainian SSR" instead of putting it directly into the Soviet Union; not sure if that is overcategorization or not. Carl Lindberg (talk) 12:38, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
Scratch that, it's working fine. I'm not sure if you intended to just add the Soviet Union category, or replace some of the others in those years. Carl Lindberg (talk) 12:50, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
That's fine. Thank you. Actually, I'm OK with the current system; Ukraine was a part of the SU in 1923-91, which let one conclude that everything was taken there in that period of time was taken in the SU. It seems to me that unified geographical name over years is rather the practice here (compare to Category:Saint Petersburg in the 1950s et al., although the city was called Leningrad that time). - A.Savin12:58, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
I have recently renamed all of these files in good faith. I am not sure if this is acceptable in terms of the reason to rename them. To me it is problematic to have multiple files with the same name as it makes distinguishing them difficult. If this is a good move perhaps it should be explicitly stated. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 20:01, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I added a bunch of redlinks to show additional combinations. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 20:26, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
If you are not sure that a rename is acceptable you should not rename.
Files should be distinguished by categories and the description on the file page and not by the file name. So even if it may confuse someone it is not a big problem. Users can just look in the category and find the file they want to use and copy paste the file name.
Did you check if the files was used outside Commons before you moved the file wihtout redirects? If not you may have broken a website somewhere. --MGA73 (talk) 10:45, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Filenames should be distinguishable as well or else we would not have a need for the policy here. My proposal is an amendment to the current policy establishing that files that have identical names with only uppercase/lowercase being the difference should be renamed because it is confusing. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 18:16, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
I agree with Foroa and MGA73. While it is foolish that file extensions are case sensitive, that is a MediaWiki problem and not one that may be mitigated by means of rename. --Walter Siegmund(talk)04:26, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
So problem should not be fixed. No attempt should be made to fix it? -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 17:33, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
There is a problem when the filenames are identical. It is very confusing to link to files when case differences determines the different image you receive. The problem can be explained with an example:
How do you determine which file you want to link? A simple typo in the upeer/lower case gets you an entirely different file. This is unhelpful. Problem mostly arises with the extension where it is filename.jpg versus filename.JPG. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 14:07, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Typos are easily fixed. If you make the same typo without a different image being there, you'd get no image at all, and would have to fix the typo anyways. It's not like the file is going to change on you once chosen. I'd rather not have similarly-named duplicates like this, but if the upload software is not going to enforce it, I'm not sure we should be doing renames on them, which can be destructive for external users. Many external sites use either directly linked files, and non-WMF MediaWiki sites can use Commons as a repository as well, and we have no information on those usages. For those reasons, renames are usually more limited to situations where there are better reasons for renaming other than simply a better name. A similar situation could exist with .jpg vs .jpeg as the extension. In these situations, redirects should *always* be left, though I'm not sure they cover every external use. I can understand the desire, and I'm not strongly of one opinion or the other, but I'd lean towards just leaving the names alone. They are good enough to identify the subject, and really, if something like this is to be enforced, it should be done via software rather than creating a whole new category of maintenance work. Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:22, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Traditionally it has been the case on commons where we decided to find solutions when the developers did not have a solution fast enough. In the past the software didn't even give a warning if filenames were similar to existing ones. Now we do get such warnings. I am not sure if uploads of such filenames are explicitly forbidden by software or if there is consensus towards this end or if such a restriction is even necessary.
When I say typo, I mean getting a different image entirely due to a typo (using the wrong case). The problem can be a simple case of digital camera recording file extensions in upper/lower case. I do feel software should make all file uploads in the lowercase. Conflicting uploads such as the ones depicted in this thread aren't common any more thanks to the warnings in place but old uploads from years ago remain to be a problem. So this is more of a backlog of a problem.
External site argument can be made about file renames in general. External wikis using our content should not be affected. No one is proposing the removal of existing redirects.
This category of renames can be considered under COM:FM #3 "Correct misleading names into accurate ones" but explicit wording allowing this would be helpful.
While the jpg/jpeg difference is similar. It is a similar but separate issue. Those would not be treated as identical files under windows for example if you wanted to download all images in a specific category.
I don't think that these file names are a problem. If you make a typo, you'll notice that you've got the wrong image, and so you can correct the typo. Same if you get a red link. The file names also describe the photos. I think that file renames only should be used if the file names are meaningless (such as File:IMGA0032.JPG) or if they are misleading (such as File:Wittenburg.jpg). --Stefan4 (talk) 16:50, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Pieter's post also points out that a similar problem occurs when files are named using unfamiliar character sets, eg File:とある白い猫.jpg vs File:とあるい白猫.jpg. I have no idea how to type those characters from my keyboard, even if I had a way of remembering the character sequence. File:Terrier.jpg is also different from File:Térrier.jpg. Users quickly find the only sensible way to deal with filenames here is to copy and paste. The concept that upper and lower case characters are different (as are accented versions) is easy enough to grasp after intial confusion. Similar filenames need no correction any more than filenames in foriegn languages or character sets need to be converted to English. --Tony Wills (talk) 19:53, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Technical issues aside, the question I'd like to ask is do we want such filenames where they contain identical words even with different encoding. Tony Wills also raised a good point. Accents and other cosmetic manipulations could also be confusing to the user of our image repository. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 00:18, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Comment I also think these discussions sometimes confuse file naming policy questions with our file renaming policy. Bizarre as it may seem, there is a difference! We do not want to encourage file-name churn (every passer-by finds a slightly better name for a file) because amongst other things it adds to internet link-rot, and loads the system with unproductive busy-work (sometimes across multiple projects). The file naming policy should point out that upper/lower case, accents, and extra spaces within the name all result in a separate, possibly confusing situation. But once a file is created there needs to be a reasonably important reason to rename it, beyond it not meeting file-name policy/guidelines. --Tony Wills (talk) 00:50, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
I do see your point and I would agree that we should avoid generating ourselves a massive list of renames, but I also see a confusing situation that should be addressed in a reasonable manner. While it is important to limit the "damage" now-on , currently the more pressing issue is existing files as there are so many of them. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 13:26, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Comment MediaWiki has a filter that prevents similar or similar-looking user names to be created, as a safeguard against impersonation. I imagine that this filter could also be used to prevent files with "similar" names to be created. I suggest to file a feature request to that effect on bugzilla. (Btw: please don't use the term "identical" to describe this situation in a bug report/feature request, that is misleading. These names are not identical. Two things are never identical, if they were, there they would not be two things, they would be the same thing. I'd just call those names "confusingly similar".) -- Daniel Kinzler (WMDE) (talk) 13:52, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
They are identical in the sense that they write the same letters/words but they are indeed different in terms of encoding and/or individual character byte values but you do bring up an important factor. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 14:34, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
This seems to be the most reasonable solution to me if it is not too strict (a small change can make a new word in another language). But there are much more important tasks to solve. BTW, we have StockPhotos for reusing content in a wiki. I really can't understand this post here. -- RE rillkequestions?15:50, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Some of you may already know that we've opened a shop at http://shop.wikimedia.org to sell Wikimedia Merchandise. We're now entering our "Community Launch" allowing us to hopefully get as much feedback from the community about the store, it's products and everything else involved. For those that are interested we've set up an FAQ/information page, feedback page and design page. We also have a 10% discount up for at least the next 2 weeks (CLAUNCH or 'Wikimedia Community Launch' in the discount box at checkout) and a $10 maximum shipping fee world wide for most orders.
However the big thing I wanted to ask you about was Commons gear. Right now everything on there is Wikipedia related but we want to make sure we have merch from all of the projects as well. So far we have a couple things on order:
Stickers from all of the projects
1" buttons (or 'badges' ) from all of the projects
Are in the design and digital mockup phase of lapel pins for all of the projects to both go independently and as a set. Right now we're getting mockups to see how they look and to see if we want to go with the Pewter look that we have right now for the globe (this new set will have an interlocked v W for the wikipedia piece) or the full color enamel look like This Strike Command pin.
We want to have more though both soon and in the future and I wanted to know what you thought. One of my thoughts for something early on was a series similar to the I Edit Wikipedia shirts (we have two versions right now) on the shop for each project. If we did something like that should we just use Edit or adjust the verb? "I upload on commons" ? "I shoot for commons" etc. Other ideas? I think with Commons we could make some amazing pieces (obviously images lend themselves to a lot). Jalexander (talk) 00:24, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
That's correct. I couldn't get it to display either. Strange. It displays if I shorten the list, for example with &filefrom=V. From there, I could go to the "previous 200", but it took very long, like displaying those categories requires a lot of the computer's processing capacity. And yes, it's a persistent problem having to do with those files, not a temporary problem. -- Asclepias (talk) 03:43, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
Upload task - suited to a bot
Resolved
There are 116 or so high quality PD images of The World's Columbian Exposition at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22847/22847-h/ ... I think amenable to a bot-based importation. The HTML document pointing to the images is in a regular format, as are the image names. Would anyone care to tackle this task? thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:04, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
One other question. I want to get the number of pages in a Commons category by writing similar code within de.wikisource. Is that possible? Kolja Pastor (talk) 10:14, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
Dear Wikimedians, I am author of the equation editor Firemath. Firemath is free open source software. It allows exporting the created equations as bitmap images. Therefore, I was wondering if there could be interest in the community for a possiblity to directly upload these equation images to the Wikimedia Commons. If so, where do I find information on the upload interface? I understand that users would have to be logged in into their Commons account and that they would have to provide a filename, description and categories. The underlying MathML code could be submitted as "further information" automatically.--Cb22hh (talk) 16:45, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
I don't know what the time frame there is for closing Deletion Requests, but if an Administrator or editors who are familiar with the Commons Deletion Policies please take a look at Commons:Deletion requests/Class rings and review I would be greatful as I'm trying to get together a list of images for use on enWP. Thank you Hasteur (talk) 22:45, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
March 21
Alan Smithee or anon attribution rather than deletion
For problematic images which have been legally released in the past but there are apparent moral issuesand an involved complainant, it has been suggested we consider the Alan Smithee solution. This would involve leaving a record on OTRS of the agreed changes, but then removing the image page history and references to the previous problematic identifying information and swapping that to Alan Smithee or "anon". This would only be suitable for images that themselves would not by their nature identify the subject (if that were the complaint) and where the complainant were in a position to agree this solution and have it recorded on OTRS. Our most difficult deletion requests relate to identifying images of children or sexual images which have been released on Flickr and later withdrawn and this may be an option for the marginal cases where we are in communication with a verifiable complainant. Any thoughts on implementation or previous case studies that would be suitable for discussion? --Fæ (talk) 07:24, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
Hello all... anyone know of professional grade slide scanners? Something that would take less time than a flatbed scanner, but create a clearer image than the consumer-grade slide scanners seem to be. (Maybe there's one that's consumer-grade, but awesome, but the one that Canadian mega office chain Staples sells sucks.)
I'm looking to scan around 5000 in a few weeks worth of time. The only pro slide scanners I can find are for medical slides. -- Nick Moreau (talk) 23:32, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
Nikon 9000? See also this site, it has many high-quality reviews of film scanners. Also, some people simply photograph their slides using DSLRs and get passable results. Trycatch (talk) 07:22, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the recommendation. Ooh, nice site. It's amazing what I wasn't able to find Googling. While photographing the slide would be easiest, we need exact and immaculate. -- Nick Moreau (talk) 19:05, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
I use two scanners. As I have three wardrobes full of slides to work through (parents, foreign travel, 40 years) then I need speed. The fastest is a "staring" sensor that can scan(sic) a slide quickly in one shot. For quality, I then re-do a proportion of these with a better quality, but slower, scanner. Given how cheap the simple scanners are, then it makes sense too have one (or more!). It's also a way to employ your kids for some extra pocketmoney.
IMHE, there are several sorts of slide scanner.
+ Staring sensors. £50, plastic box that takes an SD card. Quick and cheap, with adequate quality for most slides.
+ Scanning slide scanners. These are things like my HP ScanJet that are designed for film & slide and only do film or slide. They cost a "couple of hundred" and are very good. Mine is so old that I have to keep a Windows '95 box up and running to host it, because HP don't believe in supporting their products with decent drivers.
+/- Immersion scanners. Fantastic quality, with prices to match. I've only done this for commercial work with stock photo libraries and high-value images. The cost is split between the machinery and also the labour to strip slide mounts and clean the film. Great if you need them, but how many do?
- A4 reflective paper scanners with add-on mirror-box or light-box gadgets. Avoid. They "work", but they have no better quality than the cheap staring sensors. They're also slow and awkward to use.
- Camera adapters. Used to be popular, but there's little advantage over the cheap ones these days.
Have a good metadata schema and recording system in place before you start, and use one that will allow you to automatically process the recorded data into other formats (such as popular metadata publishing formats, or even wikitext {{Information}} templates).
Sticker the slide boxes and record metadata at the box level too. Almost all of my (manually entered) metadata is recorded at the slide-box level, not the slides, because I have neither the time to enter it, nor the detail on each image. Use box stickers with human-readable numbers and also QR codes. I started by using human numbers and barcodes (I have a barcode scanner), but realised that long term I was better with a QR code and could easily type numbers at the box level anyway. Also use coloured dot stickers on boxes to track "first scan" and "quality re-scan". You can label the boxes with their numbers long before this. That's quicker, and it also helps if you can add broad box-level metadata (like city names for a holiday) before starting scanning. Mostly I key metadata myself, but have my son do the first scanning, then do the re-scans of the good stuff myself. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:46, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
Wow, in-depth! Regarding staring sensors, good to know what they're called. Thing is, I've twice tried that style, and both have been bleh. They were store bought, from two major Canadian chains, I thought they would be worthwhile. One, the software would cease up after a few uses. Obviously, the two I bought were exceptions to the rule, or else they wouldn't be on the market, but I'm just a little skittish of the whole category now.
Scanning slide scanners: I like purpose built hardware. What model is yours?
Immersion: Ugh. The price I don't think is too too much of an issue in this situation, for which I'm enquiring, but I don't want to strip slides, and I don't think we even could if we wanted to.
I think these boxes will be sorted fairly well, they're coming from a conservation authority. We'll be adding a little bit more control, including a standardized file naming system we use for all images in the collection. I suppose I should say, I'm inquiring on behalf of a municipal archives (but sadly we're still a fair distance away from partnerships, partially due to a renovation.) -- Nick Moreau (talk) 19:05, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
My staring scanner is just a cheap Chinese one from Lucky Golden Hedgehog or someone. Mostly it's just too simple to go wrong. It doesn't need to plug into a host computer, it writes to an SD card. Main problems are dust pickup (I keep it in a sealed plastic box when not in use) and not seating the slides carefully in the carrier, so that they scan on the skew.
My scanning scanner is a HP ScanJet for slides & film, but much too too old to be available these days - it's a pseudo-SCSI interface, not USB.
Old scanners are often a good acquisition, as some of the old scanners have a lower claimed resolution than today's, but they also have a greater depth of focus. This gives much better overall results when quickly scanning books or other non-flat materials. My book scanner is an even older HP, with one edge sawn off to allow it to fit closer to the spine (placed upside down on top of the book).
Immersion might be an option, but you do this by sending the slides out to a scanning house, like Redcliffe in Bristol.
Avoid standardised slide naming schemes. They're a bad idea.
You need metadata on your images, but filenames aren't enough to deliver this.
Metadata needs to be held in one of the many standard formats. You can embed these formats within image files themselves. Yes, there is a small level of technical complexity to doing this, but it's pretty much essential to the success of a competent, non-trivial project.
Your metadata handling shouldn't impose limitations on your filename formats. If you want to introduce a batch of images from some new source, you should be able to do this even if they have the crudest sort of auto-generated digital camera sequence number on them. At most, you might have to add a batch prefix to this, just to avoid overlaps with other images. Filenames are just unique identifiers, and your system must be able to cope if that's all they are - the filename (whatever you're given) must be enough to retrieve the metadata record for that image, and any detail you want should be available from that metadata record. Assuming that you can retrieve things from the filename alone will limit you soon and fail you in the future.
Within those constraints, set up a simple filename standard format. The purpose of this is to be a convenient identifier, not a metadata format. Something like 'date + sequence_number' is simple and works fine.
I use a scanning slide scanner. It can scan 8 slides at a time, but also do normal scan work for documents etc. The difference with normal flatbet scanner is that it has a tick top with a scannerligth so projects downward. Once the scanner uses a projection, you dont need an ultra dense image area sensor, because the image can be projected at a big size. There are however several other problems wich cost a lot of time and labour:
1) There is always dust and other things on the slides despite best efforts. Some software takes care off it, otherwise you spend a lot of time cleaning the image with fotoshop.
2) Time discolours the slides in an uneven way. This has to corrected as much as posible during the scan. Unfortunately the discolouring is often uneven, as this is a chemical process. There is a different discolouring between the dark areas and the ligth area. You have to adapt the curve manualy: For example add less green in the dark areas and more in the ligth intensive areas. This for three colours. I got some experience in these matters, but it cost a lot of time. Correcting digitaly is much more dificult.
3) Correcting levels is also important. Slides are very sensitive to ligth differences and have a narrow ligth range. Less than negatives, wich can be more easily forced. With adapting the levels you can broaden the narrow ligth range. (between the maximun darkness and maximum ligth. If there is no burnout in the slide)
My conclusion is that if you are working with old discoloured slides, forget the time planning. You can achieve the 5000 a week slides, but you are probably rescanning a lot of then later to get better results. Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:20, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
You did not mention your budget. Doing some googling I found the Hasselblad (used to be Imacon's product I think) Flextight X5 which has a 35mm slide feeder (50 capacity) link, cost is US$30,000. Another option is the Nikon 5000ED with the SF-210 Auto Slide Feeder (also 50 capacity) - both discontinued. Reading on Amazon, the Nikon slide feeder is quite susceptible to jamming. Price is about US$6,000. I can give you more details/links if you are interested.--Commander Keane (talk) 10:04, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
March 16
Deletion request of the day
In an effort to help fight deletion request backlogs and invite a wider range of viewpoints, I have created Commons:Deletion request of the day. It will be updated each day with an open deletion request requiring community input. Please watchlist it if you want to help! Dcoetzee (talk) 02:40, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
+1. Random selections can help shine a light on parts of a backlog, and help get things done. I might suggest though that taking a few more than just one (say 5-10) might be better, since it would then be more likely that users looking at the page would recognise something they know about, have relevant linguistic skills for, or are interested in. Rd232 (talk) 23:08, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
I tentatively disagree. More DRs would be more intimidating and would spread out responses, preventing a single discussion from gaining strong momentum towards closure. It is important to select them carefully though - there are open DRs almost anyone could contribute to, and open DRs that require special skills, and for the latter kind I think targeted recruitment rather than mass advertisement is preferable. Dcoetzee (talk) 23:57, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_SOPA_Boiler_Room_Meeting.jpg and general handling of "official" wmf photographs
My experience has generally been that, to the contrary, WMF employees tend to give incomplete source and rights information, because they're not very familiar with the process. However, since we have an existing relationship with the WMF, we can contact them for clarification and expect a response. Dcoetzee (talk) 10:43, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
The underlying problem of 'not being very familiar' is important and seems to apply to most photographers and archivists [and even editors] who aren't commons regulars. Has this gotten better since the new uploader was introduced? Is there a space for ongoing community review of how this is changing over time? --SJ+10:22, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Why would it need OTRS? Was it previously available on the web elsewhere? It sounds like it was a work for hire for the WMF, so a Foundation representative should be able to license it. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:24, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
Contract photographers do not automatically transfer rights of their work to their employer in the US, unless that is stipulated in their contract. If they were a full-time employee it would be fine. See en:Work_for_hire#Law_in_the_United_States. Photographs are not one of the nine stipulated categories for which contractor work is considered work for hire under the Copyright Act of 1976. Dcoetzee (talk) 00:18, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
Fair point -- however I would assume that the WMF is in general fairly aware of copyright issues and see no reason to not assume good faith on the licenses they apply -- it would be somewhat surprising if there was not a copyright license understanding on photographs taken for the WMF. If the photographer contests the license, sure, it would bear re-examining. For works not published elsewhere first, there had to be some sort of agreement by the photographer to give access to the high-resolution photos out, and that sort of thing. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:48, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
I don't quite remember what document it is, but in case it was not known... every WMF employee signs an agreement that their code is under the GPL (version left ambiguous) and their other public work is all CC-BY-SA (same as Wikipedia). While there may be attribution fixes to be made from time to time, any work produced by a Foundation employee or contractor as part of their job should be assumed to free unless specifically stated otherwise. Obviously stuff like screenshots including trademarks are a common exception here on Commons, but other than that I just wanted to point out that individual staff don't get to make up their own copyright requirements during the course of their work. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk20:42, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
If the photographer did sign such a document then yeah these photos are CC-BY-SA. I'm not sure if we need any further evidence than Steven's comment here. Dcoetzee (talk) 21:03, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
HDR image filetypes
It's been over 3 years since there was any comment on bugzilla:17505 (No High Dynamic Range Image (HDRI) file formats allowed on Commons). It would be nice if we could have another go at moving this forward; maybe we can have a little discussion here about what, if anything, we can update that bug with. What do we know about the current status of HDR filetypes we might be able to use?
I don't see a technical problem, there are several open source implementations of the HDR stack (e.g. pfstools). But what we can do if the maintainers simply do not care? We still do not have support for WebM (bugzilla:30653), FLAC or any other lossless audio format (bugzilla:32103), or any format for 3D (bugzilla:1790). Not to mention that "supported" formats are often supported in very buggy way (regression with CMYK JPEGs, epic 12.5 mpx limit for PNGs/GIFs and so on). The technical support from the WMF is terrible. --Trycatch (talk) 11:22, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
+1 and 5 surveys won't change this. Perhaps they'll get is sometime. The major problem, I think they have is that they offer thumbs in each size on demand. -- RE rillkequestions?12:16, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
Proposal: Someone could easily create a companion wiki to Commons, call it the Commons Archive, which looks and feels like Commons but allows uploads of all sorts of formats. The files would all be public with complete file description pages and licenses, could be linked from WMF projects, and would be ready to move to Commons as soon as it is technically possible to do so. There would be rules that prohibit upload of any file that can't be uploaded normally at Commons, and all files would have to link to another version of the work here at Commons. You could deal with security issues by simply not rendering previews of anything and having a prominent disclaimer. I would be happy to set this up myself, although if it grows large I may have to solicit donations to help fund it. Thoughts?
This is similar to the approach I adopted at Commons:Very high-resolution file downloads, where I am privately hosting tile sets on a seedbox and linking to it from Commons, with the hope that my traffic stats will persuade WMF to host them someday. My personal bugabear among unsupported formats is camera raw formats - I still have a cache of raws for all my photo uploads that I'm not able to upload. Dcoetzee (talk) 23:22, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
Some questions about video
Hello, my dear Commons Community! I am not an expert in Wikipedia - just want to publish my video for some articles. I need your help.
1) Second file in "Version history" have not a preview. Why and what I need to do?
2) Can I do 2 quality-version of this file? One video for article, one video — for file page and people who want more? I uploaded two versions, but they show in «File history».
3) Max file size — 100mb?
4) How you think — what is the optimal video file size for Wikipedia?
5) Can I change preview of video file?
6) I cannot rename file or change description? I want delete ".ogv" in name and add link to used music in description.
7) How I can change the embed width and height for articles?
1) Sometimes there are issues with local browser catches (you may empty it out) or server sided problems (use "purge" in the file menu)
2) Load up to versions of a file with different names (Example: file_(smal).ogv and file_(large).ogv) and use the field "other versions" to link to the other version.
4)see en:Wikipedia:Creation_and_usage_of_media_files#Offering_multiple_bit-rates. In fact not the video dimensions are the limiting factors. The issue is the bitrate. For example your file needs a connection of 1,81Mbps (at least) to see it "live". I think an orientation can be the average bitrate of internet conections in most countries (about 1-2Mbps in central Europe). I hope this problem will be solved in nearer future (see: prototype
5) No, not on the file page. However see Commons:Video#Video_usage for using the thumbtime parameter (on Wikipedia).
6) Have a look to Commons:File_renaming. For changing the file description use the edit button in the file menu.
This file is broken. Only 302 video frames are available... Please control the result of your local encoding process. The resulting video should play without any problems from the beginning to the end on your computer. Then update (reload) your file on commons. --Pristurus (talk) 22:30, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
Is there a way to link to an old version of a file?
It is possible, but you should not link to or embed old versions of files from WMF projects. Instead, re-upload the old version under a new filename with a clear description. Dcoetzee (talk) 23:20, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
Seconded, and if there are two different historically relevant versions, they should certainly be given separate filenames. - Jmabel ! talk11:55, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
Due to bug 35048, some author/description metadata was lost for some files. MediaWiki failed to add a database record of new version uploads for these files, so the current file history row had the wrong author, description, and metadata. The original versions were still in NFS. I have restored the original files version so that metadata matches up and moved the newer files versions to a special lost+found directory (accessible via http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/lost+found/). I'd recommend that the authors of the new versions re-upload those files. Eventually, files lost+found files will become inaccessible. The list includes:
Works for me as well now. Don't know what was up. Oh, but I see it has been changed again today, so that's what probably fixed it. ElMa-sa (talk) 12:53, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
Odd display in a category
Normally, category pages mention the total number of files in the category and display the files by groups of 200 per page. Right? What would be the reason for the behaviour of the category:Images from Library and Archives Canada, which doesn't mention the total number and displays 225 files per page, the first 25 files being always the same on each page? And for a different but somewhat related question, is there some way to force a category to display a specified number of files per page, other than 200, say for example 50 files per page? (That might be an imperfect solution the problem with categories such as Category:Revue des Deux Mondes.) -- Asclepias (talk) 17:06, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
This is same as Bugzilla:29787. The first 25 files in that category are stored in the database as having type "page" in that category. Null edits to the files can fix the problem in this case also. /Ö21:04, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. Indeed, the origin of the problem seems to be the same, as this page shows that the first 25 files have the type="page" and timestamps of 2011-07-07, like in that bugzilla report. (Btw, where do those timestamps come from?) However, I tried to make a null edit on one of those files and an actual edit on another, but that changed nothing. -- Asclepias (talk) 22:29, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
EXample template Speedy, when I add it to some picture, I can't add information to users page because line Click here to shoe futher instructions don't opened. Does it with other users.--Motopark (talk) 11:47, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
It works for me. What browser do you use? Do you see anything in your browser's error console? In any case, you do enough maintenance work around here from what I've seen that you would probably be better off enabling some of the gadgets from the Maintenance tools section in your preferences rather than sending notifications manually. —LX (talk, contribs)17:59, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
With Internet Explorer template don't work but with Google chrome it will work. I have used IE whole time and problem start today. But I change my preferences and try log out and in again.--Motopark (talk) 18:06, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
I just finished categorizing a group of 44 files (all the images in Category:1973 in Puerto Rico). I realized afterwards that instead of putting them in Category:John Vachon, I should have created a subcategory under Category:John Vachon and Category:DOCUMERICA of Category:John Vachon-DOCUMERICA. This subcategory would allow people searching under DOCUMERICA to find only those images by John Vachon he took for the DOCUMERICA project.
Short question: How do I do a mass recategorization of these 44 images? Can I 'batch categorize' another group of images?Downtowngal (talk) 15:42, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
Database/image/thumbnail servers broken again or still broken?
image deletions take forever, often end in either Wikimedia error message or database error message with SQL connection timeout message (or similar), with the latter message the image page is deleted but the image is still there
purging images takes forever
Gallery of new files has lots of files without thumb (not always and they appear after manual purging)
There may be other problems but those are really problematic - you can't really go through the new files to rot out the copyvios just before they get used if you can't preview all images and if you need to wait for minutes to ensure an image is properly deleted. Simultaneously deleting more than two image often results in at least one failed deletion (see #1 above with SQL error). --Denniss (talk) 00:29, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Update - failed image deletion, image page gone but image still there, trying to undelete the page to delete it again and in many cases I get the following error message:
I've enabled the "Use the old-style upload form layout" gadget, so Special:Upload normally appears with just three boxes: name of the file on my computer, name of the file as it should appear after upload, and description. However, I occasionally get a much more complicated form when I load the page, for reasons that I can't understand — instead of the three boxes, it produces nine: source filename, destination filename, original source, author, date of the work, description, other versions, permission, and additional info. I wouldn't be unhappy, except it forces me to fill in all of the boxes rather than permitting me to add a complete {{Information}} with all of these parameters in the description. Why does this version of the page occasionally appear? Note that purging the page will generally give me the three-box form that I wanted. Nyttend (talk) 16:56, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
Also, whenever I save a page, the subsequent load doesn't include the custom site CSS. Probably also related to 1.19. Kaldari (talk) 04:58, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
When Special:Upload loads it will first display the simple upload form (Special:Upload&uploadformstyle=basic). When the loading is finished a javascript or something is triggered by onLoad and expands the upload-form into the now standard, non-colapsed format. /Esquilo (talk) 08:44, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
March 25
Copyright on two images by same uploader.
English Wikipedia has just deleted both paid-for-articles that these two images where up loaded for.
File:Travel_fox_logo_1.png, File:BTOLA.gif By inference, the up-loader can therefore not be the copyright holder. Do we keep them? If so, how do we get the right copyright licence -we don't have free-use here.--P.g.champion (talk) 19:21, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
No, "VDM Publishing" sources are not necessarily Wikipedia collections - they have imprints that do that (Alphascript, Betascript, Fastbook Publishing and Doyen Verlag are the main ones, but there are dozens) but that's not all they do. However the "real" books they publish are not peer reviewed or edited; it's basically print-on-demand, so not really a "reliable source" (but it may be acceptable if the author has a relevant reputation). See en:VDM Publishing. Rd232 (talk) 22:00, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
But the large number of different VDM publications used by one or a few users seems to rule out any acceptable explanation, even if such an explanation in theory may exist. Ices2Csharp (talk) 22:19, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
Possibly, but then that's a matter for COM:AN/U, if you can show there's a problem with one or a few users. But you should really try talking to them first. For instance, the VDM source in File:Menschen am Eis (Bruegel).jpg is in a related German Wikipedia article - perhaps the person adding it to Commons got it from there. Of course, it could be that either the author of the work, or someone working for the publisher, is going around adding the works as sources, possibly with some degree of good faith... Rd232 (talk) 11:00, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
March 26
Template:Press (used by a media organisation)
Is there an equivalent to Template:Press around here? My searches of templates and past discussions have turned nothing up. The reason for asking is that I have a photo on Flickr which was used in an online press piece - and I've since uploaded it here too. Thanks. -- Trevj (talk) 09:09, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
First of all, I am the photographer of this photo... I'm not even sure WHY this photo is on Wikimedia. the photo was posted on my Flickr account. This is in violation of how I want the photo to be used, so I do want it to be taken DOWN. For the record, no one involved in that project was underage. This conversation is completely idiotic. It was a college final project and of course it was taken with a high quality camera and of course it doesn't match my normal life because it is ART. You're all crazy. REMOVE this photo from this site and all others that I have taken. If you need to contact me, contact me directly via Flickr. Do NOT publish any more of my photos on another site WITHOUT my consent. PERIOD. FURTHERMORE, your posting of my photography AND COMMENTARY are in VIOLATION of my PRIVATE life and those who are in the photographs. You all should be ASHAMED. Bunch of speculative meddlers. Find something better to do and respect other people's privacy.
The response was unkind... and out of line with our work to serve others.
This reminded me of a comment I left here last year about respecting personality rights [and photographer's rights]. I have seen perhaps half a dozen such requests over the past year. They share a few characteristics:
- Someone has taken a Flickr photo, posted under a CC license, of a barely-notable person/subject, and posted it here. the image in question has never been used to illustrate any article.
- The photographer or person in the photo has come here and requested that it be removed.
They often are amazed to find Commons, and a bit shocked at the way their personal photos are discussed here.
- The reaction by the curators here is dismissive and hostile, often saying "can you prove who you are?" "you released it under a free license, we don't have to listen to you, goodbye!"
Curators here often tell them to be more polite; since they use challenging language. Of course they felt attacked by the very posting of their photos outside their comfort zone.
A few comments on this trend:
This hurts at least one person: the one complaining. and we can have an enormous impact on them -- the visibility of an under-linked image on Commons is likely hundreds of times the visibility of their own portfolio. we have an obligation to use that media power wisely. There should be a higher bar for keeping it than "because we can".
The lack of clearer guidelines for inclusion make this worse: When there is no way to judge when it's worth fighting to keep an image -- just a vague low bar for inclusion rather than deletion -- the community fights everyone, rather than being kind to everyone except where there is a solid reason to fight to keep an image in our collection.
This hurts free culture. The number of people in the world who use free licenses is still tiny: a few percent of total creators. This community grows through social norms: one person uses cc licenses for everything and enjoys it, so they get their friends to. In these cases we have met one of them, and we are doing something that is guaranteed to make them stop using free licenses, and likely tell their "CC horror story" with their friends, encouraging them to stop as well.
This hurts Wikimedia. We are interfacing with a creator -- someone whose work we have already benefited from -- and carefully, methodically, telling them to fuck off. This hurts the image of all of our projects, and drives away a potential future contributor.
From looking at this photo again, there is only one person in this photo and from the zoom of the photo, the only thing you can see is the tongue, nose and part of the eyes of the person. There is no identifiable features (such as tattoos or piercings) or any kind to where this person is identified. In the second round of this image being at deletion request, I have found a similar image like this (in the terms of the act) that is visible and under a CC license (this image is gone from Flickr so that is why the user is upset). I feel that this image can be recreated by some brave Commonists or just find a replacement on Flickr that would not be as divisive as this one. Almost not worth keeping to be honest. User:Zscout370(Return fire)07:41, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
We want her to stop using free licenses. Optimally, we want everyone who uses free licenses to be on board with what that means, and she's clearly not. Look at the flip side; a user of free content who followed the terms of the license just got attacked by the author. I'm currently running a small business and using free content. If I was publically abused for using someone's CC-BY images, that could seriously hurt my business; at best I'd be very careful about using free content in the future. Even a private request would be a pain to deal with. So yeah, if she's not onboard with all and sundry using her images, we don't want her labeling her images CC, and we don't want her encouraging her friends who aren't onboard with free culture to do so, so that reusers of free culture can feel safe doing so.
I don't think inclusion rules really matter here. Perhaps the naked/sexual pictures have a slightly higher level of this, but we have got this with very useful photos in use.
In this case, I thought about advocating deletion, because it's not like it was in use, or likely to see use in the future. But I didn't like the attitude, and I didn't feel like standing up for someone who came in here like that.
In other cases (not hers), people abuse free content. They want to get their images out via Wikipedia, and get known, and then they want to revoke the free license. That's not acceptable and we should discourage that abuse.--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:23, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
To be clear, I'm not concerned in this context about 'very useful photos in use', only 'unused photos about non-notable events', where the creator was not gaming the system. I agree we want people to learn about free licenses and stop using them except where they are on board with what that means. But we don't want them to feel that the community of reusers are eager to trap the unwary. --SJ+11:12, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Photographs of identifiable people (Moral issues) is sufficient to support a deletion rationale. The photograph was taken in a private space (as far as I can tell) and the subject of the image is connected with the photographer's personal life as the source Flickr stream explains that all photographs are a document of their personal life. The photographer's identity is clear from the Flickr stream. Though it can be argued that only part of an identifiable person's face is in the photograph, the level of "identifiability" is subjective and as we have an active complainant, it is reasonable to err on the side of caution. I am going to raise for a fourth deletion review on this basis as reading the brusque and uncompromising response from those expressing an opinion and the admin closing the last deletion review, not enough thought was given to the guidance on the Moral issues part of IDENT. --Fæ (talk) 08:08, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
The photographer publically released the image under the CC-BY; that action gives the photographer's consent to use that image. There seems to be clear implication that photographed consented to the release of the photo, but whatever the case, the photographer has no ground to stand on here.--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:28, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
This line of reasoning is where the current process fails to be sympathetic. The question should be about the tradeoff between the value of keeping the image, and the offense given by keeping it. In general, I think we should honor good-faith removal requests from creators or subjects for images not in use -- where possible -- just as we honor "Right to Vanish" requests by contributors. There is no legal obligation to do so in either case; it is simply respectful. --SJ+11:12, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
I fail to see any real problem in all these words. The photographer will tell other a "horror story" about free licensing? Good. It will educate others about irrevocability of CC-licenses. It would be very nice if people would understand free licenses better, including _risks_ and _drawbacks_ related to free licenses. At least one person was harmed? Sorry, there is no evidence of any real harm to anybody. If you don't want to share the photo -- don't put it on Flickr in public under a free license. "drives away a potential future contributor"? I don't see any potential contributor there. And what about driving out real contributors, who will not be happy if their uploads will be deleted after random rude requests?
Anyway, Commons community generally fulfill reasonable requests from photographers/depicted persons/uploaders. Of course, if you begin your conversation in a new place with yelling and name calling ("Bunch of speculative meddlers", huh?), you can't expect that everybody will going to help you. Trycatch (talk) 09:12, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
Comment I share the concerns of the original poster; indeed I proposed a change to the deletion policy at Commons_talk:Deletion_policy#Privacy. I think there are number of issues, including (i) how "identifiability" is defined, for Photographs of identifiable people. Too many people seem to think that if you can't identify the person from the visual data alone, then the person isn't identifiable. Textual description, source information, username of uploader, related photographs - these too can provide identifying information, and that should not be ignored. (ii) there is too much weight placed on the irrevocability of free licenses. Many people publish material under free licenses without fully understanding the implications. That may mean that they cannot sue people for legitimate reuse of the material, but it does not mean Commons cannot remove the material in order to reduce the public visibility of the material. (iii) purely from Commons' perspective, if we systematically pay so little respect to subjects' wishes, we gradually damage our reputation, and reduce the willingness of people to upload material, or even to publish under compatible licenses. If word gets round that in order to stop Commons doing whatever it wants with your stuff forever, just use a no-commercial-use license, then you'll know what I mean. Rd232 (talk) 10:25, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
If word gets round that you should use a CC-NC license to stop Commons doing whatever it wants with your stuff forever, then I will roll my eyes, then shrug. At least then all the images that are labeled with a CC-NC license that the photographer has no intent on honoring aren't my problem. If you use a free content license, you are giving everyone the right to use it as they will in perpetuity. If you have a problem with this, then don't use a free content license. Under no condition should we be encouraging people who aren't okay with that to use free content licenses.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:27, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
That's fine for specific discussion re that image, but the village pump is more appropriate for general discussion re the principles involved. If we allow anyone on the Internet to complain about any image and say "that's my photo and I didn't realise what I'd agreed to" then we are laying ourselves open to trolling. In this case it has been taken off Flickr so it is reasonable to think there may be a real problem. But we can't operate on the basis that anyone can get any licensed release deleted simply by claiming that they are the photographer and they didn't understand what they'd agreed to. At the very least we should require them to put a note on their Flickr account requesting the withdrawal of the image. WereSpielChequers (talk) 12:31, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
The Flickr system is clunky and debatable, I would recommend that all complainants in this situation be advised to use the standard OTRS system to explain their problem and provide information to validate their claim to some reasonable level. For non-sexual images and for images not being used for harassment I would expect the OTRS volunteer to ask for a statement of the rationale for deletion that can be made public when this does not put the complainant or the subject of the image at risk of unnecessary identification or potential damage such as reputational risk or ridicule. --Fæ (talk) 12:49, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
WereSpielChequers: I agree about the need for verification; your proposal sounds like a good start. Ditto if it is the subject requesting a takedown, and the original uploader cannot be reached or confirmed. But for unused images, it would be nice to see offers of help and requests for verification come first, before assumptions of trolling. --SJ+10:41, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
@ Fæ, yes OTRS has its place, and no comment re the respective clunkiness of various systems. But OTRS casts a veil of privacy that isn't always required. "I'm the uploader on site *****, I now realise I used the wrong licensing option there, and I've put something to that effect on my page there, please would you guys zap this is a fairly clear neat route.
@ SJ, One feature of Commons is that we don't require users of these images to inform us of the use. There are non wikimedia sites that link in to this image library as well as Wikimedia ones, so unused tends to mean "not used on other Wikimedia sites, but total use unknown". I'd like to think that shouldn't prevent us from taking things down if we choose to stop hosting them, but if we are telling people they can comply with the license by linking to us, then I'm not sure if that doesn't put us under some moral obligation to maintain the link. WereSpielChequers (talk) 20:34, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
SJ, the haters of nudity/sexuality images are using all tactics to get rid of them. Did you also notice that? That is making us really defensive. As a board member you might want to ask yourself what these constant attacks are doing with this community. Multichill (talk) 14:51, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
Please try and avoid polarization or stereotyping of the participants. The previous DR was raised by the photographer, that was not seriously in doubt. This is not one of the "haters of nudity/sexuality" gaming the system as far as I can see and you know full well that neither am I, though I am the person taking the complainant seriously enough to raise a DR. Gaming the system, dealing with blatant travelling circuses and off-wiki canvassing is a serious problem for Commons, but I suggest that is covered under a separate thread. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 16:00, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
I know what you mean, about people finding reasons to get rid of images they don't like -- whether for personal reasons or to game the system. But that's not what we are talking about here. Regardless of the topic of the photo, these requests don't seem to be handled well. [I would love to see links to counterexamples of people being responded to kindly.] Most of these requests are photos of living people, where the person or photographer wants them taken down. The reaction in each case is defensive.
So you give an example where the deletion request is unsympathetic and legalistic, and expect the response to be otherwise? When lines like "the photograph was obtained ilegally" are thrown around, which is a legalistic attack on our ability to record things, what do you expect?--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:38, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Someone whose photo was uploaded here without their knowledge or permission doesn't have an obligation to be sympathetic to our work. We do have an obligation to be respectful and sympathetic in responding to them, just as an OTRS responder would, since those responding are acting as the public face of the projects. We shouldn't keep photos of people who don't want them here just because we can. If there's no strong use case for it, we can verify their identity and delete it. Not a matter of legality, just of respecting the subject. --SJ+
When you start a conversation, you set the tone for it. We have users who think "eat shit" is an appropriate response to an administrator request, and you expect Commons users to be sympathetic to abrupt legalistic DRs?--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:48, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
Maybe start with asking the question how or why it was taken illegally, when this is not obvious, instead of just brushing it off? (In this case it is on a user talk page [30] claimed it was taken at a public accessible event, but the event restricted the use of photography and recording (which is not too unusual from my limited experience). If this claim is true, then it is not up to me to judge if breaking this could be considered illegal or not when the Flickr image's owner claims otherwise.) -Laniala (talk) 15:32, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Where did you get the "Flickr image's owner claims otherwise"? Sj says that it was the performer. We are not an extension of an artist's publicist, and we're not here to blindly accept every claim of illegality. We've actually declared that we don't care about such restrictions; that it's the photographer's responsibility to follow or not follow them as they will.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:02, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
Fine, I mixed up Flickr uploader and Commons uploader. The assumed performing artist claims the image breaks the Portuguese law, but only mentioned so on a personal talk page. The Commons uploader claims it does not break the law. And as I said, it is not up to me to decide who is correct. And just as a matter of fact Commons does follow the legal restrictions of the contents in the image irrespective of the license on the image itself. Freedom of Panorama is just one obvious example where the image can be under a free license, but the contents still break the law. Plenty of those images are uploaded all the time and being kept deleted all the time. -Laniala (talk) 17:14, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
No, the problem with pictures of buildings and art where freedom of panorama doesn't apply is that they make copies of copyrighted works and therefore are derivative of those works. They aren't free. However, we aren't concerned with non-copyright restrictions, specifically in this case house rules.
In any case, it's of course up to us to decide who is correct; we aren't going delete every picture that anyone makes any legal claim about, no matter how ludicrous.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:44, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
Did you read what I wrote and answered to? You wrote that "[Commons is] not here to blindly accept every claim of illegality. We've actually declared that we don't care about such restrictions". I answered by writing that Commons does in fact follow and care about illegality restrictions, and pointed to the Freedom of Panorama just as an example. I did not state that it was the Freedom of Panorama that was broken in this specific case. I did not state that Commons doesn't decide. I stated it was me/I that (thankfully) doesn't have to decide. -Laniala (talk) 15:34, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
Such restrictions being in this case restrictions on photography in premises. Yes, we delete copyright infringements, which is all that pictures that lack freedom of panorama are.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:34, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
We get these claims every so often:
"I am the photographer, and I didn't understand what rights I was giving away when I released this image." Or;
"I released this photo, and now the model / my ex-girlfriend is furious with me."
"Flickr lets me put a more restrictive lisence on my images, and I had no idea that you would steal my image, telling me I can't change my mind."
But it is very uncommon for those claiming to be the original photographer to properly follow our procedure. There have, demonstrably, been some contributors who feel so strongly about getting rid of images related to human sexuality that they will violate all our policies and conventions in order to get images deleted. In particular, I think that there have been occasions when rogue participants here have used an IP address or a new SPA to claim that they were the original photographer.
I don't want to be mean to any of these claimants, as some of them might be who they say they are. But I feel very strongly that we should not start to consider complying with any of these requests until we hear that a member of the OTRS team has thoroughly and reliably established the claimant is who they said they are.
In addition, I have come across discussions where various contributors keep trumpeting, in tones of alarm, using emotional language, that the original photographer, or the subject of a BLP on the wikipedia, has requested deletion -- and yet, when I read the discussion carefully, and looked at the talk page, there was no record of the original outsider showing up to make a request. Rather the first trace of the claim was one contributor saying something like "how would you feel if you were the original photographer and we did not comply with your request" -- and some second person misread that question as if there had been a request from the original person, and expressed their outrage over using ignoring a (non-existent) claim from the original person.
So, in every case where we seem to have received a request for deletion from the original person we should politely but firmly insist they follow our procedures.
In the hacker world breaching the security of a system through what they call "social enginerring", and what the rest of us call deceit, is a lot easier than security breaches that depend on using technical tricks and technical tools.
What hackers know is that many or most people who normally know better will forget to be skeptical if contacted by some with a plausible sounding story where they are in a position of authority, and it is an emergency, or they describe some kind of emotional distress.
Shame on us for not learning what is necessary to protect ourselves from being hoaxed through social engineering.
All these claimants should be politely but firmly told we won't consider their request until they have fully complied with our procedures, and used OTRS to confirm they are who they said they are. Geo Swan (talk) 17:51, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
How would that help? A lot of the problems are images scrapped from flickr accounts and similar places. In general a flickr user does not understand licensing, and they have not taken legal advice. The consequences of clicking a button on flickr is not appreciated, they may have intended only releasing a bunch of photos for a specific purpose, and not realized that the action was sticky. One should always defend the rights of the individual against the machine, and unfortunately all too often Commons frequenters act as the machine. John lilburne (talk) 09:59, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
Good point. What proportion of these problems arise from uploads to Commons by someone other than the author, from sources like Flickr? Maybe we should explicitly address those types of uploads, e.g. try harder to ensure the author's consent (i.e. confirming that they actually understood the legal consequences of their licensing, and respecting any changes they make if they didn't). That might mean notifying the Flickr user, and waiting a reasonable time for an answer before uploading. Or make specific provision for making it easier for such authors to delete on request, at least for some time after upload. Free licenses are a bit like small print - maybe everyone should understand it, but not everyone does, and we should not act like a big company saying aha! gotcha! you should have read the small print! The "small print" of what a free license means may seem obvious to Commons regulars, but to many it isn't, and we should try and be more respectful of that. Even if you think purely from Commons' perspective, short term acquisition of material is not the be-all and end-all; there are also long-term considerations about the reputation of Commons and of the free licenses it relies on. Rd232 (talk) 11:56, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
Dealing with image-scraping from other sites, uploads of photos of others without the subject's permission, and an uploader later changing their minds and asking for their own images to be deleted, would cover all of the examples I've seen. --SJ+15:21, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
COM:Photographs of identifiable persons says that a photo taken in a private place that is uploaded without consent should be deleted. If the subject is a minor, than binding, irrevocable consent may not be possible - if he changes his mind before reaching adulthood, best to delete any such identifiable private photographs. Photographs of identifiable persons are also easiest to exclude fake claims about, since the subject can simply take a picture of himself (holding a sign saying "Delete <my filename>" if you want to be double sure) and you know who it is then. By contrast, I have no trouble holding a photographer to the letter of the fine print where a picture of the Grand Canyon is concerned. Now the situation for an adult photographer posting a photo of himself to Flickr is less clear, but I would worry that he might claim personality rights, just as Wikipedia warns our reusers about them. He might also make a more elaborate legal claim that he wasn't fully and knowingly consenting to the CC terms when he chose that option on Flickr, or that he should have had three days to change his mind or something. I don't think we have to hold a hard-line on photographs of most people who change their minds, because most of the time those pictures come perilously close to "snapshots of yourself and your friends" which are excluded by COM:SCOPE. However, sometimes we'll want to be more tenacious. Wnt (talk) 05:52, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
I don't believe that we should a adopt a form of the "MySpace Salute" unless we guarantee that the Salute image is promptly deleted after the issue is resolved. We would have to create an OTRS-ish system where the Salute image attached can be deleted from the entire system. Members of this OTRS-ish system would also have to agree to be legally liable in order to discourage them from preserving the Salute image on their hard drive or elsewhere. This would mean that its members shouldn't be anonymous. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 12:03, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
(Apparently a MySpace Salute is some kind of video request with text written, like what I was thinking of [31]) In this case Wikipedia would already have an image of the person for sure (the one being objected to) which is in some way embarrassing, and which is freely available. So while deleting the "salute" may indeed be best practice, it's a small consideration compared to the image it is meant to get deleted. Wnt (talk) 04:22, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
Default language
Hi! About Template:Cargar imagen - Is it possible to set a langswitch so that the default language is Spanish, or that Spanish content will display by default?
I think that Template:Cargar imagen should display in English if one's commons account is set to English, but by "default" (for people with no accounts, and for languages which do not have their own translations) it should display in Spanish
I think it would help to first explain the purpose of this template. It's used on Spanish-language placeholder images to explain to users how they can replace the placeholder with a real image if they've got one. I couldn't find similar templates in other languages, but technically, it should be possible to override English being the default fallback language. See Template:LangSwitch#Usage. —LX (talk, contribs)10:39, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
Okay. I understood it was intended for the Spanish Wikipedia, but it would still be helpful to translate the message into English, especially if someone wants to make a similar template for the English Wikipedia and/or for other Wikipedias, and also to help people working on the Spanish Wikipedia who have English or another language as their first language and/or language of education. Many U.S. citizens who are native Spanish speakers are educated in English, not in Spanish, so it may be helpful to have these instructions in English. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:59, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
Hmm... When I tried using Spanish as "default" and English as "en" - It seems like "en" overran default, even if one specified Spanish as the default WhisperToMe (talk) 00:24, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
It seems to have worked as far as I can tell. Looking at [32], the bottom half of the template is displayed in English, but if I look at [33], it falls back to Spanish instead of English. —LX (talk, contribs)00:34, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
Okay. Lemme revert. And then I could get some feedback on how it displays from somebody viewing it from the Spanish Wikipedia... WhisperToMe (talk) 06:37, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, it displays correctly :) - What I could do is for "default" make it bilingual English-Spanish (Spanish on top) but for "Spanish" (es) make it Spanish only WhisperToMe (talk) 06:40, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
Looking at your original question again, I realise that what I've suggested does not work for users who do not have an account, unless they arrive here by using a link that passes the uselang parameter as part of the URL. The reason for this is that the default interface language of Commons is en, and the "default" option in the template only gets invoked if there is no translation in the currently used interface language. I thought that most Wikipedia projects did pass the uselang parameter, but that does not seem to be the case any more. :( —LX (talk, contribs)17:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
Okay.. so what steps would you suggest I take? From the Spanish Wikipedia, viewing the template seems to display the "ES" one unless you set your account to display a different language WhisperToMe (talk) 20:36, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
I think the best approach would be to have a fully multilingual template with language links at the bottom providing in-place translation, like most of our templates. On placeholder images in a specific language, that language could be explicitly selected (e.g. {{Placeholder/es}}). That seems to be the most standard and least technically complicated way to make things behave in a reasonable fashion. —LX (talk, contribs)14:04, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
I have noticed that many uploaders of photographs of buildings and works of art do not give a reason why the original work is free but claim the photo to be entirely their own work. This problem is hard to fix because the {{Self}} template does not support giving a reason for the original being free. Therefore I propose a parameter called derivative.
The uploader is the (entire) author of the photo itself in cases like these. The issue is, as you say, the derivative work -- which may or may not be OK based on the circumstances. The template is mainly a *source* template, *not* a license template though, so I'm not sure a parameter there would make sense. The author of the original is *not* considered a co-author of the derivative, usually. Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:35, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
I think we need to think long and hard before messing with such a widely used template. (Incidentally, I think life would be better without the {{Self}} template, but that's a different discussion, and I know it's not likely to happen.) I do agree that we should provide better mechanisms for entering information about depicted works and their impact on the overall copyright situation. —LX (talk, contribs)18:09, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
I have several times had to think hard about how to do when uploading derivative works, and I think I know my way around Commons quite well. The problem is that adding {{Self}} is easy and properly indicating the source is hard (especially with a few layers of derivation). It is not clear from the upload forms in what circumstances a photo of your own should not be marked as own work (which it is).
If you claim copyright on the photo of a PD object (in EU you more or less have to, as PD-self is invalid over here, at least in many countries), then you should be able to use a template wrapper such as {{PD-art}}, but those have to be few and well-known.
There are numerous categories of unidentified/unknown/incompletely-described images, where the subject, location or date of an image (or other media) is missing. eg Category:Media with missing information and various subcategories such as
In many categories such as plants and animals there are people working to identify photograph subject and perhaps specialist knowledge is needed to properly identify them (we also have things like Commons:Identifying organisms). But with other areas (such as images of people, places, or events), perhaps identification would be more readily obtained via 'crowd sourcing' - ie there are people out there that will recognize the person or place simply because they are familiar with them, not because of their expertise or knowledge in a particular field.
So my proposal is to start a Project Identify (or similar), where images are selected for display on village pumps (there is more than one language here), welcome pages or similar (the project can come up with ideas :-) with a caption of "Puzzle of the day" (or similar ;-).
I don't know whether such a project already exists (or has come and gone already), but haven't found it.
I love the idea! It would be useful and perfectly in line with this projects objectives. Crowdsourcing the identification of pictures would be awesome for the historical photos of our museum/cultural partners and others too. (See Photo Mysteries by Smithsonian, Pasadena Digital History, etc... just google "Mystery Photo" for examples). Yes, this would make work, but if we find one dedicated editor/curator (how about you, Tony Wills? :-)) we could just give it a try. This would need catchy captions, a good eye for selecting interesting photos and a balanced mix (old and new, different topics like architecture, biology, history, technology, fun facts...) Let's give it a prominent spot ("Mystery Photo of the day" on Main page?), a space for identifying comments and proposing other mystery photos, and three months time to see how it works. Support, if we find a dedicated editor! --Atlasowa (talk) 09:04, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
I think a WikiProject for this could be a good idea, but only if someone is willing to really make it useful. That means coming up with good ways to get relevant eyes onto the unidentified material, and making it happen. Reaching out to relevant Wikipedia WikiProjects, for example. A mere project page doesn't do much, but if it's a hub for activity, it could be great. Rd232 (talk) 10:56, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
Yes we would need a few enthusiastic people to get it going. We already have a lot of user pages and project pages that display the POTD, a similar number showing a Puzzle or Mystery of the day would be good (may need a different title though as POTD and MOTD are taken).
As for the mechanics, the least work might be to have a category from which an image is randomly selected for display (no reason that everyone needs to see the same mystery picture). So maintenance work of the project is to populate/depopulate the category, perhaps via a template that says remove me when adding a description. Alternatively we can replicate the POTD/MOTD structure but that needs continual input and really a dedicated maintainer or two.
Maybe, to be useful, different projects would select their image from a different category (eg Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia would be fed images that are probably Australian)
And we would at least initially need to do monitoring to see if we are achieving anything and work out what approach works (if any ;-). --Tony Wills (talk) 22:26, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
Automation is better, if possible. On the random display: I'm not aware of any Commons mechanism for this, but there is en:User:AnomieBOT/source/tasks/RandomPagePicker.pm which could be adapted. In fact, to be really effective, there needs to be some cross-wiki element, to put things in front of people on other projects. Rd232 (talk) 23:12, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
There is Special:Random, can the mechanism be used to show content from a certain category? Anyway a bot changing a template once in a while should not add any significant load. Having a link to most recent file or files may be useful, as going to another page to confirm a guess might make another file turn up.
I like the idea, too. I think choosing files by hand (to be added to the bot category) would give a more interesting mix and the possibility to add clues (such as probable country, for WikiProject Australia above) and captions. May be some semi-automated scheme could do, where a bot suggests files and a human has the chance to reject bad choices, improve captions and designate a specific audience.
If extended outside Commons, any project could copy (and adjust as appropriate) a template to be used locally. They would have total control over where to use the template. For new languages the template could be translated here, then copied.
Some of you might have noticed ongoing mass upload of about 20 thousands images donated as a part of cooperation with Walters Art Museum. All donated images might be found in Category:Media contributed by the Walters Art Museum or broken by collections at Category:Collections of the Walters Art Museum. The upload and initial metadata cleanup should be completed within a day, and now we will need major help categorizing those images. All images have a category related to museum collection and most have a category related to the author (except for images in here), but majority do not have any other categories, like based on subject, depicted people, medium, time period, etc. Help with categorizing and adding to Wikipedia articles will be appreciated. --Jarekt (talk) 12:56, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
Being told that the categories may be named only in English, on the 6th of March I made a request for renaming several non-English categories. [34]Three weeks passed. Noone cares about renaming, while there is a special bot for this. Does this mean — that non-English categories are freely allowed and never bother anyone? If so, why several Commons editors warned me that Cyrillic category names are not allowed? Is it a special policy against Cyrillics that protects only French, Norwegian and German categories, but denies any Russian ones? How can I search for other incorrect category names to be renamed from non-English languages, if they are protected by some mysterious Western Languages policy? Thanks.--PereslavlFoto (talk) 13:17, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
I cannot understand what does it mean and who has to do that. Anyway, if it was about Cyrillic names, they'd be renamed in a day. But if it's about West European names, it can be put on hold, yes? And noone wants to do anything to rename non-Cyrillic categories, because West European names are allowed despite any rules?--PereslavlFoto (talk) 14:35, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
You have got incorrect information. Category names in languages other than English are accepted and even recommended in many cases. Names of institutions, for example, should not be translated ad hoc. The official names are much more usable, as they can be found by anybody knowing the institution, whereas an unofficial English translation might be hard to guess even by native English speakers. Even when there is a semi-official English name in wide use, the original name might be preferred.
Before making an argument about the issue, you should read the relevant policies, guidelines - and the proposed ones, including some of the discussion in the archives (there are messy references in circle). There is no consensus other than about certain cases: English is to be used when the category is not tied to any specific country or language, scientific names when the category is about species or such. In other cases there are discussions which might or might not suggest English is the "neutral" choice.
Remember also that this village pump is the village pump in English. You might get other answers if you ask somewhere else, as most people here have no problem using English and might be unaware of problems outside the English speaking world.
Each time I created a category in Russian, it was renamed without any discussions. Each time I tried to rename a category in French, it was stopped. This looks extremely strange. Samples.--PereslavlFoto (talk) 09:54, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
Enabling upload of ZIP types, such as MS Office or OpenOffice
Hi all,
(Four months I wanted to bring this up.)
According to the MediaWiki 1.18 release notes, one of the new features was : « 24230 Uploads of ZIP types, such as MS Office or OpenOffice can now be safely enabled. A ZIP file reader was added which can scan a ZIP file for potentially dangerous Java applets. This allows applets to be blocked specifically, rather than all ZIP files being blocked. »
Do I miss anything there, or we just need some community consensus and we can ask for this?
If so (and I would appreciate some confirmation :), I suppose a nice course of action would be a poll on COM:VPP advertised in siteNotice, requesting the change on bugzilla, amending policy Commons:File types.
The traditional location for discussing such things was Commons_talk:File_types. Generally, speaking, the uploading of formats which do not have a particular fixed visual form (such as word-processor or spreadsheet text/data files) has not been greatly encouraged. One proposal for dealing with this was Commons:Restricted uploads, but it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere... AnonMoos (talk) 14:32, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
According to Commons:Project scope#Must be an allowable free file format, Microsoft Office formats are not accepted on grounds of being proprietary formats (hijacking of standardisation processes notwithstanding). I see no reason to change that, but if others do, it should at least be considered separately. Commons:Project scope/Allowable file types states that Open Office files are theoretically permissible but disabled because of concerns over malicious payloads. These concerns are not necessarily limited to Java applets. —LX (talk, contribs)14:35, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
For Commons, what would be the benefit of uploading a ZIP version instead of unzip files? I don't see the benefit of uploading a series of images in a zip file instead of each separately. -- Docu at17:38, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
@Docu : Many file formats are in fact ZIP − including OpenDocument files (have a try in opening an .odt file with your file archiver program).
@LX: Agree about unfree MS Office format, of course (should have made that clearer in my first post)
As for potential malicious things in files: sure, that’s was the all point of my question. To me, the sentence “Uploads of ZIP types, such as […] OpenOffice can now be safely enabled.” sounds like “all potential security problems with such files have been tackled” and I wanted to check if this was the case. Gotta clear this with the devs I guess.
To be exact: the problem with ZIP files, was that they could contain JAVA programs, that especially Explorer would happily execute under certain conditions, because it happily treats any zip format as if it were a JAR-file. This was the reason that for years zip files of any type were not allowed. The new situation is that we can find any java file in a zip that explorer would execute and actively deny the upload of that specific file, making it no longer necessary to block all types of zip. There are never 100% guarantees of course. So yes, in theory I see no reason why OpenOffice files could not be allowed, other than potential 'project-scope' issues. TheDJ (talk) 14:57, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
This description sounds like there is an easily exploitable security bug in Explorer, which is not going to be corrected anytime soon, and thus we have to ascertain the bug is not exploited by files uploaded here.
My understanding is that .odt (and .doc) files can contain more or less arbitrary macros, which may be malicious. Unless also files containing macros are rejected (or the macros removed) we get into the business of running antivirus software on the files, unless we trust users to have macros disabled for Commons files. Does the software strip the macros too?
Are we supposed to keep the full attribution path of files migrated from other Wikimedia projects, even if not legally necessary? For example, I just uploaded File:CheltenhamSp.png, which is public domain, and I don't know if the full attribution path is wanted on such an image.
I personally prefer leaving it in, even if it isn't legally necessary. However, if that's not what's normally done, I don't want to waste people's time the next time I migrate a file.
I apologize if this is covered elsewhere: I didn't see it in a quick search.
I think files moved to Commons need correct attribution. In the information template Source should not be "Transferred to xx.wikipedia", Author should not be "Original uploader was User:X at xx.wikipedia", and Date should not be "Orignally uploaded at YYYY-MM-DD". That only duplicates info from the "Orignal upload log" section.
Instead source should say where the file came from before it was uploaded to a Wikipedia. Someone looking for the source will not be helped much by a link to Wikipedia, since files are usually deleted there soon after the move.
Author should say who the author is. That is sometimes but not always the same person as the uploader. When files have "Original uploader was.." as author, it is often not possible to know if uploader and author are the same. For PD files it may not be necessary to name the author, but it is still wrong to put uploader as author. /Ö17:36, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
Failed proposals
I've made an attempt to clean up Category:Commons proposed policies and guidelines, marking some old proposals as {{Rejected}}. I'm noting this here in case anyone would like to potentially revive the proposals, or use the proposals as inspiration for something new.
Failed proposals
Commons:Accreditation - an attempt to provide established Commons users with a form of "Commons accreditation", which might help particularly with access to museums, for example.
Very nearly four years have passed since the last comment on the talk page. An attempt might be made to revive it, but I suggest that, as per talk page comments, some attempt to involve chapters in accreditation would be the best place to start. If that were to get some momentum, then maybe some attempt to cover countries without a chapter would have some chance of success.
No activity for four years. The present COM:ADMIN guideline seems to cover this adequately; attempts to revive parts of the proposal might be best as amendments to that.
Commons:Restricted uploads (permit upload of insecure, possibly proprietary file formats to make sure that source files for media objects can always be added)
You mean have a policy on making policy? :) Perhaps. But we could also just try and remove any controversial/disputed parts from those stable proposals, and put them up for approval. The disputed bits can then be discussed separately. Rd232 (talk) 19:05, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
According to the current deployment roadmap the server software of Commons was switched over from MediaWiki version 1.18 to 1.19 on Tuesday, 21 February 2012, 23:00–03:00 UTCWednesday, 22 February 2012 at 22:06 UTC. Most other big wikis will follow some days later.
“The Wikimedia Foundation is planning to upgrade MediaWiki (the software powering this wiki) to its latest version this month. You can help to test it before it is enabled, to avoid disruption and breakage. More information is available in the full announcement. Thank you for your understanding. Guillaume Paumier, 14:53, 12 February 2012 (UTC)”
Problems are expected to occur in old user scripts. There was already a big bunch of work done to make our gadgets as compatible as possible - thanks to the community script wizards who did that!
If problems arise, please make new level 3 headings (=== MW1.19: problem - example text ===) for those new topics below (to keep this section together also in the archive). by (but you may edit!): Saibo (Δ) 16:27, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
If you report JavaScript problems, please copy the whole error-message and error-messages only. They probably will look like "mw.user" is undefined or "mw.util" is undefined or "jquery.ui" is undefined. You find them in your browser's JavaScript error-console (to open the JavaScript error console look for it in your browser's menus or in Firefox/Chrome hit the keys Ctrl+Shift+J, in Opera the keys Ctrl+Shift+O). Filter to "errors" only, clear it and then open the page where the problem occurs. Also include your browser's name, version, the page you are visiting and the action you are doing. Thanks in advance. -- RE rillkequestions? 20:28, 20 February 2012 (UTC) (added how to open the console --Saibo (Δ) 03:56, 21 February 2012 (UTC))
MW1.19: Update attempts description
Hi folks, I thought since I have a bit of a breather, I'd give an update on how the 1.19 deployment is going. We got a late start because we wanted to make sure we fixed Bugzilla:34508 before starting, which we just barely got fixed. That meant that instead of starting 23:00 UTC (3pm PST), we started at 00:30 UTC (4:30pm PST). We briefly broke stylesheets and CSS, which you might have seen, in a prep step rather than the actual deployment. At 01:09 UTC, we made our first deployment attempt, and ran into some performance issues. We're putting the finishing touches on some more fixes, and we hope to make another attempt before 03:00 UTC. -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 02:38, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
We encountered several problems with the 1.19 deploy (some upload wizard thumbnailing, gadgets, other strangeness). -- We're going to try again in several hours (tomorrow for us), starting at Wednesday, 2012-02-22 at 18:00 UTC. -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 04:35, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Alright, we're about to start late again, but we think we're just about ready to go. Maintenance banner has been turned on, and we're just making some final database log checks before starting. -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 21:51, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Scripts should load faster, but this (Ressource Loader 2.0) will also cause problems with old, legacy code (help: see e.g. migration guide to ResourceLoader).
The difference in bytes of each edit is displayed in the history view. Example of a removal (in total): (44,982 bytes)(-69).
Diffs are now yellow / blue.
Log-in duration is extended to max. 180 days (before it was 30 days).
URL parameters for included special pages can be used, example: {{Special:RecentChanges|namespace=8|hideReviewed=1}}
MW1.19: general discussion
Developers were looking at a last minute fix for bug 34508. Not sure if they found one.. That may produce problems. --Saibo (Δ) 01:27, 22 February 2012 (UTC) Is fixed --Saibo (Δ) 14:04, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I blocked this script via AdBlock while having using uselang=ku-arab with monobook and vector but did not notice a difference in the rendering. Probably that "workaround" part (inserted 2010-04-02) is redundant and should be deleted since the referenced bugs bugzilla:6756 (fixed since 2011-07-06), bugzilla:02020 (fixed since 2010-11-05) & bugzilla:04295 (fixed since 2010-07-15) are fixed in the meantime. Opinions? --Saibo (Δ) 14:52, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
What about adding ResourceLoader again, but declaring some dependencies for things which are used at w:MediaWiki:Gadget-popups.js? Maybe mediawiki.legacy.wikibits (since it uses "importScriptURI", "addOnloadHook", etc...), mediawiki.util (for "mw.util.wikiScript") are enough:
You are missing to add a css .. so the gadget seems to be different. Looking at b:pt:MediaWiki:Gadget-popups.js confirms that there the css is loaded inside the script but not via RL. And (that is really odd) the .js is loaded from pt:MediaWiki:Gadget-popups.js but the css from en. Uuhh.. the code at pt.Wikipedia then also loads CSS. However, many differences and probably different js code. However, we could try to load the css inside the gadget code instead of via the gadget definition... --Saibo (Δ) 16:10, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
Oh.. I didn't notice that before. I've removed this duplicated call to enwiki CSS. Helder 23:02, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
By the way, the @import statement recommended here no longer works reliably in MediaWiki 1.19. @import has to come at the beginning of a stylesheet, but ResourceLoader sticks it wherever it wants when combining gadgets' stylesheets. (RL seems to combine all gadgets' stylesheets, not just the ones that've opted into RL.) To work around this issue, the Vietnamese wikis now import the stylesheet using mw.loader.load("//path/to/stylesheet.css", "text/css"); in the JavaScript file. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 07:47, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
MW1.19: problem - Upload Wizard: describe field only shows 11 languages
Currently, if you want to upload a photo with upload wizard, you can only write the description in Deustch, English, Spanish, French... and other seven language.
Galician language is a language of a Wikipedia and a cooficial language with Spanish in Spain.
The attitude of "upload wizard" implies a políco, not neutral positioning.
Español: (Please, translate) Por conviciones, dejaré de colaborar con Commons si esta circunstancia no se remedia y no se vuelve a la situación anterior. Todo responde a la convicción personal de que Commons no debe marginar y dejar de respetar las identidades personales: Tengo derecho a utilizar, tal como estaba utilizando, "upload wizard" en mi lengua. Tengo ese derecho de la misma manera que los hablantes de las lenguas mayoritarias lo tienen--Miguel Bugallo19:53, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
For conviciones, I'll work with Commons whether this circumstance is not cured and will not return to the previous situation. All answers to the personal conviction that Commons should not marginalize and while respecting personal identities: I have the right to use, as was using, "upload wizard" on my tongue. I have that right in the same way that speakers of majority languages have so-automated translation by big G
On principle, I will stop working with Commons if this is not fixed and not returned to the earlier situation. My personal conviction, that Commons should not marginalize and stop respecting the identities of people [belonging to other nationalities], remains unfulfilled. I have that right, as do [other] speakers of minority languages.correctly translated by Magog the Ogre (talk) 21:18, 23 February 2012 (UTC), no offense
¡Hola Miguel! Hope you understand: Sorry! That problem appears not only in Galician - it is in every language. The list was much much longer until recently - that seems to be a bug. I have reported it (see the box on the right side). This problem should not happen - you are right - Commons is multi-lingual --Saibo (Δ) 20:13, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
But the problem is "Why are the languages that appear the languages with more speakers in the world?" --Miguel Bugallo20:55, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
Solamente los programadores saben porque estas lenguas son las únicas que aparecen en este preciso moment. Es posible que los programadores usaron estas once lenguas como un paso intermedio hasta que se arregle el problema (es decir, o el UploadWizard usaba solamente estas once lenguas, o no funcionaba en absoluto). Pero no se preocupe: este error (junto con los otros errores que han aparecido desde la introduccion de Mediawiki 1.19) es temporario y lo arreglarán los programadores dentro de poco. Magog the Ogre (talk) 21:30, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
But temporarily, until this has been fixed, one can choose any language for description, say Dutch, write it for example in Galician, and then manually replace nl -> gl.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:00, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
(es) Cualquier explicación por parte de "los que saben hacer" debería ser previa o tenerse dado al mismo tiempo de lo acontecido. Perdón por mi opinión, me doy cuenta de que mi opinión es como es y de que supone lo que supone, pero es que es como es: hay un acto de pobre sensibilidad con las lenguas minorizadas y minoritarias--Miguel Bugallo22:08, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
I know, I uploaded a file 15 minutes ago. Choose Nederlands (==Dutch), write the description in Galician, and save the file. The go, edit the template and replace nl -> gl.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:20, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
Español: Por cierto, los que usamos lenguas minorizadas, quizás también los que usan lenguas minoritarias, estamos habituados a ser desconsiderados publicamente, pero no por eso dejamos de protestar
I guess you mean 34712 (see box on the right). Fixed since 2012-02-25 20:31:14 UTC (according to BZ). Reopened since it still occurs. --Saibo (Δ) 00:05, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
MW1.19 - editing old revision and "show changes" does not work
Done
Try to edit any old revision of File:BPNM levees.jpg and use "show changes" to compare this revision to the current one. You'll probably see nothing as it obviously compares the recent version with the recent version. Tested in FF 10.0.2ESR and I-Exploder 9. If one looks at the adress bar it looks like the oldid-parameter is missing there. --Denniss (talk) 12:59, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
Confirm the bug (FF10, Monobook, German). Editing works - but the comparision apparently compares not with the current version (like before 1.19) but with the version you had edited. That is not useful since what will be overwritten when the save is done is the current version. Test: edit, click compare button. Expected: for example the first two "wrong licensing" lines should appear as deleted in the diff. Added to BZ. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 13:27, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm not getting that - but clicking some of the older revisions, the date in the URL doesn't match the date on the file description page (and AFAIK it's supposed to). Rd232 (talk) 10:00, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
Also, I have not found a bug-report for the 'font-family name' in quotes: it is recommended to quote font family names that contain white space, digits, or punctuation characters other than hyphens:[35] -- πϵρήλιο℗20:28, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
Good support news: I see now, more than half of people, converts text to paths. </irony>
Thanks both of you. I'm glad we have English Wikipedia and Commons notices up, but my main concern in publicizing this more was that so far there hasn't been much participation from those who aren't English speakers. I assume the watchlist notice appears to all Commons folks regardless of their language settings? Steven Walling (WMF) • talk18:35, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
Unfortunately no (as I forgot when I did it). If there's no opposition I will make it a sitenotice (visible to all). Rd232 (talk) 18:56, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
Maybe we should get a text-only CentralNotice banner translated instead? That way we can kill two birds with one stone on the translation side of things. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk19:27, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
Oppose for Commons from this strange and dangerous invention. From what I see the policy is not about global vandals and spammers (they can be globally blocked already), but about of legit contributors. Random guys on Meta (well known trollfest) should not decide for Commons what contributors to Commons are allowed, and what are not. It's up to Commons community, and I have no idea why the community should give up its rights. Looks like the WMF simply wants to block more people Jimbo don't like. Trycatch (talk) 05:40, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
I think you're misunderstanding the point of notifying locally. It's not to have a vote here about ratifying the policy. The new Terms of Use specifically mentions and calls for the community to create a policy about global bans, precisely so that the Foundation can stay away from it and reduce the number of office actions. The current situation is that community members come to the WMF, Stewards and even Jimmy with requests for global bans, and with no policy about it, one of these parties is left with having to just make a call. If you would rather see proper community control over global bans than the current situation where there is none, I encourage you to participate in the discussion that is shaping the policy. But like it or not, on very rare occasions global bans do happen. The question is whether we can get our act together enough to make it a transparent consensus decision, with proper consultation of all communities a user is active on. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk18:11, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
No. Am I missing something, why would you think it might be? Looks like a perfectly good photo and license. The uploader appears to indeed be the author, unless he's gone to a bit of trouble to create a website to fool us about just this one image - see website which is apparently his page and it links back to this image.
One might put a {{Watermark}} template on it and someone will have a go at cleaning it up, and maybe remove the picture frame style surround. One might also try contacting him and asking for a copy of the original image as it would be generally more useful than an edited one. --Tony Wills (talk) 09:05, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
This file is wrongly named. "Étude" means "study". It is not a study. It is an etching, as per the description. Could someone rename this please? Amandajm (talk) 03:19, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
I've declined, because file movers get bashed for such moves. Étude (study) means preparation, sketch for another project; it can be drawn, painted, etched, whatever. No information was presented on whether this is a final work or study; looks like a study to me. Materialscientist (talk) 04:31, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
There are two drawn "studies" for this etching uploaded as well as the etching itself.
As you say, a study can indeed be drawn or painted, but nobody goes through the time-consuming and cost-expensive process of making an etching as a "study" for another project. An etching might be produced in several stages, each more complex than the last, (as the plate is printed, viewed and subsequently developed further) but they are not produced as "studies". It is an error.
Wrongly named file. The figure is not "standing". He is seated on something high. Could be described as "leaning" but certainly not "standing". Amandajm (talk) 03:28, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
I've declined, because file movers get bashed for such moves. Here standing appropriately indicates the body position (we don't need to describe that he is also leaning, meditating, breathing, etc.). A person can be sitting/lying and leaning. Materialscientist (talk) 04:39, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
The point is, he is upright, but not standing. If he was swinging by his arms or treading water he would also be upright, but not standing. He is seated with his but on something high. The lean of his body indicates that he isn't standing. Don't cringe at the thought of being bashed! Just do it! Amandajm (talk) 13:44, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
The point is, the title under which this work is identified and known is "Édouard Manet debout" [36], [37] (Édouard Manet standing). It is much easier for everybody if we identify works of art with their usual titles. It is not a good idea to modify the titles and file descriptions just because a user doesn't like the usual titles of the original works and wants to make up new titles. -- Asclepias (talk) 15:45, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
Category rename
Category:Drawings by Hans Holbein der Jüngere should be renamed "Drawings by Hans Holbein the Younger". There are several Dutch and German painters known as "the Elder" and "the Younger" in English. The German terms are not used in conjunction with the artist's name in English art histories. His father is listed as "Hans Holbein the Elder". The Younger became very famous in England as court painter to Henry VIII and is regarded as a member of the English school of painting. Amandajm (talk) 13:40, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
I checked out Hans Holbein the Elder, and he needs moving as well. Category:Drawings by Hans Holbein d. Ä. to "Hans Holbein the Elder" . Amandajm (talk) 13:59, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
Lost in the category tree forever?
bugzilla:35614 requests an API module to get the members of a category and all subcategories. This could be, I think very beneficial for the interface ("the normal pages") as well. I would be thankful to get some support or valid arguments against the requests that are not of technical nature (it is difficult for the servers in the current situation). -- RE rillkequestions?17:49, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
March 31
Licence tags for derivative works
Do we have specific tags for mentioning the licence of derivative works? I mean mentioning both the licence of the original work, and that of the picture representing it. I know we have that for {{PD-Art}}. There's {{PD-art-3d}}, but it's quite recent and not very much in use. I'm asking specifically because of pictures representing {{PD-US-no notice}} artworks, and other cases where it's not easy to understand at first glance why the original artwork is in the public domain. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 11:47, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks! A few niggles: it's a bit counter-intuitive that {{3-D in PD|PD-US-no notice}} doesn't work. Also, I understand the "3-D" wording is a reference to our {{PD-Art}} policy, but perhaps the wording could be more general, something like: "this is a derivative work of a work which is not covered by copyright, etc." It would allow a link to COM:DW. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 12:34, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
It may be of course that William Beechey [RA] (1753-1839) did indeed have a anterior Christian name of Henry, but I have found no evidence of it, whereas his son, Henry William Beechey (1788 - 1870?) was also a painter. Therefore some thought and effort may be profitably expended on considering the naming of the page and category respectively, Creator:William Beechey and Category:William Beechey, and ensuring the works are correctly attributed. RichFarmbrough, 00:30, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Done Rd232 (talk) 11:07, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
Support that, but i was under the impression that this was a de facto policy here. I've seen this argument being made successfully on the Deletion Requests before, and i think that it makes a lot of sense. That's not to say that if the contributor is still active we can't politely ask for OTRS, but that lack of it doesn't mean that we must delete. VolodyA! V Anarhist Beta_M (converse) 04:41, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Oppose: the essay is in effect explaining an exception to a "general practice". But that "general practice" is not itself a policy or guideline (or is it?). Making it a guideline without doing anything else would be a bit odd. Maybe we should think about making COM:GRANDFATHER a section of a new guideline on how to document permissions? Rd232 (talk) 12:29, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Resolved
Delete the bunch; why do you upload hours of radio that you do not even understand? /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 16:56, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
Lower tool pannel missing
Lower tool pannel OK
Upper tool pannel above the edit window overflowing into the edit window
Fixed -- RE rillke questions? 16:08, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Jmabel ! talk 15:08, 17 March 2012 (UTC) 
See also: COM:ROTATEFIX. 
Comment I also think these discussions sometimes confuse file naming policy questions with our file renaming policy. Bizarre as it may seem, there is a difference! We do not want to encourage file-name churn (every passer-by finds a slightly better name for a file) because amongst other things it adds to internet link-rot, and loads the system with unproductive busy-work (sometimes across multiple projects). The file naming policy should point out that upper/lower case, accents, and extra spaces within the name all result in a separate, possibly confusing situation. But once a file is created there needs to be a reasonably important reason to rename it, beyond it not meeting file-name policy/guidelines. --Tony Wills (talk) 00:50, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Thank you. -- Trevj (talk) 11:44, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
![[4]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Bensin#Lizenzierung_und_Genehmigung_File:Markoolio_-_Borta_bra_men_hemma_b.C3.A4st_cover.jpg){kind=link}
![[5]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/Linchmere_church_stained_glass_window_5.JPG/90px-Linchmere_church_stained_glass_window_5.JPG){kind=link}
![[18]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Demjanjuk_1.jpg){kind=link}
![[19]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Demjanjuk_2.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.JPG){kind=link}
![[20]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/lost+found/Klejs_kirke_(Hedensted).JPG)){kind=link}
![[21]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/lost+found/கலவி.JPG){kind=link}
![[22]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/lost+found/Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1978-043-13,_Erwin_v._Witzleben.jpg){kind=link}
![[23]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/lost+found/Astronomystuff6.JPG){kind=link}
![[24]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/lost+found/Sir_Arthur_Wellesley,_1st_Duke_of_Wellington.png){kind=link}
![[25]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/lost+found/Straitsman_Ferry.JPG){kind=link}
![[26]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/lost+found/The_Dorothy.jpg){kind=link}
![[27]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/lost+found/Costa_Iloca.JPG){kind=link}
.JPG){kind=link}
![[28]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/lost+found/Klejtrup_kirke_(Viborg).JPG){kind=link}
![[29]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/lost+found/Anoop_jacob.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.png){kind=link}
Confirmed, works. --Saibo (Δ) 14:16, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Keep", for Commons:Deletion requests/File:Putin on the Ritz.jpg, there's now another similar nomination at Commons:Deletion requests/Santorum images.
