Commons:Village pump/Archive/2013/06

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making commons a community you look forward to being a part of

The topic is split from the above topic, which I think everyone will be happy with. Penyulap ☏ 05:55, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I doubt most people would listen to me, and the chance of changing things is slimmer still, but driving people away from commons with the 'police state' mentality is a complete nobrainer for destroying this project. Hell, people here outright TELL people to leave and go to flickr. Is it any wonder that they do ? Is it any wonder that commons can do no more than gather crumbs from under the flickr table ? The clear and obvious future contains one or more major replacements for wikipedia which create a place people like to come to, rather than struggle to use despite the efforts of nasty people to stop them, and in the end, wikipedia will have no chance to stand up to these sites which can change the default, or only, licenses allowed, and choose commons-incompatible licences just to press flush on the toilet at a rest place beside the Internet superhighway and finish this project off.
We should make a comic strip showing the blocks 'voting people off the island' like in the TV show survivor, until in the last frame the island is the typical castaway under a sinlge palm-tree .
The recent nonsense with mobile phone uploads proves the insistence by the WMF on ignoring what the community is actually saying about the problems on the site and going their own way perusing 'churn' (short term uneducated ediitors) just DOES NOT WORK. People have to learn how and what to upload before they learn what a complete sh*thole wikipedia can be. If not they upload junk that can't be sorted.
Making a how-to page to direct the flickr users to, for the purpose of making it easier to run flickr harvesting bots will have no effect on the community whatsoever. Anything that makes it easier for a bot to copy in, any bot copied images can just as easily be copied out to a new project. The only thing of value to the life of the project which can't be copied out is the community itself.
Collect people, not images. A collection of images won't educate, people will. If we bring the people, they'll bring the images.
that's just my opinion and you should ignore it, I'm a bit melancholy today.Penyulap ☏ 01:32, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
Not sure what that tirade has to do with the subject at hand... AnonMoos (talk) 02:52, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
Do you think you can try to refrain from calling comments 'a tirade', it makes me rather less likely to answer your query, if that is a query. You don't understand something, then how is a comment like that going to get you an answer I don't know. Penyulap ☏ 03:39, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
Actually I often find what Penylap says to be... let's call it "off topic", but in this case it is spot on. I notice over and over again, that rather than making it easier for people to join Commons and directly distribute their work here we (the community) mass deete their images and then tell them to join flickr or whatever other site (and then we begin copying images from there). Take a look at rules on proof of distribution under a free licence, I see many times when a person has put {{Own}} in the source and their images are nominated as "no source provided", but somehow if that person will upload to flickr it will be quickly fickrreviewed and even in cases of copyvio it will be ages until we find out what has happened. I disagree with Penylap on one thing, there were many educationally useful images upoaded via Mobile tools that were deleted "just because we want to show everybody who is the boss". Look at this and then at something like this the latter are not only kept, but are constantly expanded "because they come from a civilized source" (a statement which by itself a personal attack to all contributors on Commons). This is why I do not contribute content to this project, I know that there will be people who fetishise deleting somebody's hard work. Sinnamon Girl (talk) 03:59, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
Penyulap's post is about the importance of strengthening the community and the problems of a "police state" mentality, and what a bad competitor we are for Flickr. I think... (you're always a bit abstruse to me, Penyulap).
Your post seems to be about the vagaries of scope and problems in the deletion system which make the site unattractive, again this is related to user retention. Also there are unspecified "people" who think our contributors are "uncivilized" and want to "show people who is boss", in fact they even get off on it, although you don't say who they are. Maybe the whole thing isn't as personal as you think it is?
All fine points both, if a little melodramatically presented for my taste. Read the original post. It's about providing guidance to Flickr users on how to use the site redesign in a way that might also help them contribute to Commons. It's about a new help page, mostly. No-one else has said one single word about that. This is not the definition of "on-topic". In fact, this is a classic derailment, almost textbook. The OP also contains something missing from the replies: a single practical suggestion. If you have a solution, or even if you just want to point out something that's bothering you, I'd encourage anyone to please start your own topic about it, be prepared to back up what you say. Just pointing out problems, especially OT in someone else's topic, is... well, it's just really rude –⁠moogsi (talk) 05:30, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
We (Flickr users) don't need much help. If we're matured enough to upload, add description, tags, license, location, etc., we can change the license too if we wish. I don't know how a minor redesign of Flickr interface become a life-taking threat to Commons. A single click on Show more on the right of Additional info and a single click on the edit on the right of existing license will give you all the options of licenses available from which you can select any.
The real threat from Flickr now is its new policy to give everybody one terabyte of free space and the facility to share in full resolution. Earlier they were limited to pro-users. Now Flickr is a real alternative for people who are not comfortable with the harassment of admins/other-big-heads.
I agree with Penyulap on Collect people, not images. It is always better to invite people to Commons than stealing images without their permission. I'm sure that many of them will come and start contributing high resolution works here, if we spend a few minutes to convince them about the benefits of contributing here (if any). But in practice, we prefer to harass people here with words and actions and many of them save their life from here. (This is a positive self criticism; I'm not blaming any. I came here accepting the invitation of ComputerHotline, and I too invited many people to here.) JKadavoor Jee 04:44, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
The real threat is, as you outline, the lack of harassment. If wikipedia was a meal for dinner, then the idea of letting everyone organise the site is, well, chaos. The resulting recipe is get all the bags of shopping from the supermarket, bring it home and then throw the bags into a cooking pot and apply heat. Hmm, interesting idea it was at the beginning, but now we get our ass kicked. There is all that melted plastic, boiled bread and bananas, flickr needs an arbcom like a kid needs a brain tumour. The nasty people never rest and are constantly thinking of new ideas to destroy things (though in their minds they're not out to destroy things, just to have everything their own way and get rid of people they don't like). Like, naughty people are 24/7 creating new ways and honing techniques to use commons as a battlefield, and when people don't take an interest in what is going on, and make sure they agree, then things get out of hand behind their back, it's hard to fix when they are dumped into the middle of it, it's a shock to the system. Catting all day everyday for 5 years and then next you know someone has managed to get you totally blocked for no reason, because people don't care to stop them.
The problem with the mobile thing wasn't that stuff got thrown out, that's not it, the problem was you can't get the core needs of the project filled by people who are here for 20 edits before leaving. WMF was trying to make up for the loss of long term editors by finding ways that people could make drive-by contributions. Quantity rather than quality. The project become a desktop trashcan where images went without any thought. Passers-by just throw a mess at the too few people left here to sort, cat, and find a use for. If there are no editors left, why bother collecting for articles that won't exist. Can't write things that way. If new people can't be tained before the trolls eat them, there is nothing here. Newbies can't do what needs doing. Like, why on earth is Peter kupier banned ? I've heard he was good, but is now gone. Then there is 'global bans' which are a new way for sneaky trolls to use tiny projects to make themselves sysops and then sniper off any commons editor. Period. No appeal, nothing. The person who does it is someone you don't know at meta, and that's the same person you have to appeal to apparently, so it's like everyday the sneaky trolls make up new ways to sniper off people, when you see that done to others, it takes a toll. A lot of editors were discouraged when they saw my block on en.wiki and they stopped editing. That was awful, the many objections were flatly ignored. When you see that stuff going on to other people here, it's like, you can't half be bothered putting your heart into it. Then, when editors get ignored by the few admins who have an 'us and them' mentality, (not all admins do) it's like, if you want to ignore everyone who is not an admin, fine, create the content yourself a-hole. That is especially how en.wiki is now, it's like everyone gets beaten down and ignored, not good for morale. Better to fix some of the problems that are being created, because when our backs are turned for too long, it's easy to think it's too late. It's certainly harder the longer things are left. Penyulap ☏ 05:29, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
Pieter Kuiper was banned because he seemed to be literally incapable of restraining himself from making constant "revenge" deletion nominations, and so trailed constant clouds of drama behind himself wherever he went... AnonMoos (talk) 14:37, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
Doesn't everyone ? no, but seriously, is he blocked or banned ? is there a discussion somewhere about it ? Penyulap ☏ 15:32, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
The discussion is at Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/User problems/Pieter Kuiper. We are currently waiting for an administrator to close it. --Stefan4 (talk) 15:35, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
Thank you. The section title "Anyone who oppose this gets a Pieter Kuiper-like treatment" speaks volumes about the atmosphere that a few people like to create, the Texas lynching mentality sort of thing.
Looking through more of it, seems there was a lot of people commenting there, and a well-divided community. I expect that it hasn't been closed because it looks like unblocking is, as a percentage, popular and admins don't want the blowback from the people who wouldn't like whatever action they take.
That makes me think that a lot of the tension could be removed from the largest cases with a bot. For example if it was so large that 100 people took part, and they had like 12 months and 2,000 edits each, then PALZ could count up the !votes and then act. Still, maybe people would want to lynch PALZ, interesting idea. Than again, after he plotted to MURDER me, so I wonder which way I'd vote :D Penyulap ☏ 16:22, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
I just made a quick glance through that discussion (Why should I waste my valuable time?); and the comment by Herby seems very reasonable. Some (other) admins/senior fellows still believe the tools are to teach naughty kids, a lesson. Yes; the only lesson we are learning is to find better places like Flickr. JKadavoor Jee 04:54, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
That's it, the people treating the project like a battlefield (like on en.wiki) have no concern they are driving away not simply one person at a time, but great numbers at a time every single time they do something bad like this. Penyulap ☏ 13:57, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

May 23

Auto replacement for images in Wikipedia namespaces

Hi, I noticed an increasing amount of higher resolution / better quality reproductions of 2D art and was wondering if there's any automated tool to replace uses of an images in all Wikipedia namespaces, rather than doing this manually. An example would be the Pontormo's Halberdier: File:Jacopo Pontormo 062.jpg vs. File:Pontormo (Jacopo Carucci) (Italian (Florentine) - Portrait of a Halberdier (Francesco Guardi?) - Google Art Project.jpg. Regards, Christoph Braun (talk)

With many we can probably overwrite the low resolution with the higher and delete the duplicates. We would have all versions one page and then. Graphics lab may be nice enough to adjust the tones etc. if we put the problem ones all in a cat for them.--Canoe1967 (talk) 20:51, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
You could add importScript('User:Sreejithk2000/JustReplace.js'); to Special:MyPage/common.js. And then use the dropdown near the "view history" to access the GUI on any file page. --McZusatz (talk) 14:20, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the hint. DYK if this tool replaces all uses or just namespace uses? Regards, Christoph Braun (talk) 06:03, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
The underlying library, MediaWiki:Gadget-GlobalReplace.js, will replace all usages (in all namespaces), if it is not prevented by AbuseFilters, Captcha-questions, protections, ratelimits or blacklists. -- Rillke(q?) 15:20, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. Regards, Christoph Braun (talk) 15:52, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

DeviantART files

Hi. Is it ok to upload files from Deviantart.com like these [4] [5]. The are both under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Kind regards.--Ileana n (talk) 17:20, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Their agreement at http://senshistock.deviantart.com/journal/SenshiStock-License-Agreement-240581233 Has some rules about how to attribute that you should add to the file pages for re-users. "Please note or leave me a link to your work." and Notification requested and a hotlink back to their DA user page. They cannot insist but they do request notification. The easiest may be to have a special license template made for their images. --Canoe1967 (talk) 17:44, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
I see, so I need to pay attention to the special requests and rules of every DA's user. Most works there with a valid licence are either stock or resources for graphic designers: in my experience in DeviantART, every user wants to be notified when their works are used and linked back to their account (This group has some interesting works that may be eligible). This image was released to the public domain, is it acceptable here?. Thanks.--Ileana n (talk) 15:06, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
It should be acceptable here as PD. You still need to link back to the source page though to show why it is PD. --Canoe1967 (talk) 15:17, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Our response to the appearance of a new resource on the web should not be "Hey let's do a batch upload"

I am concerned with both the ethics and the practicalities of extensive batch uploading. I'll address my practical concerns first.

  • Batch uploaded files often are inadequately described. Description is often essential to realistic educational use, and also makes it easier to find images.
  • Batch-uploaded files are often inadequately categorized or not categorized at all. It is all too easy to exceed the practical time availability of the uploader and/or initiator. Batch uploads are often from experienced contributors, but then demand categorization effort from other expeienced contributors who could otherwise be helping with uploads from inexperienced contributors
  • Batch-uploaded files may include numerous images with inadequate sourcing or licensing, which may not be noticed until after substantial work has been put into categorization and description.
  • Batch uploaded files from a number of sources, including US DOD and NOAA, often have non-descriptive filenames. If they were individually selected and uploaded they could be given informative names.
  • Batch-uploaded files are often duplicative of images we already have, either literal duplicates or offering no new content.

In other words, batch uploading does an end run around the eyes-on quality review that individual uploads can and often do get.

  • My ethical concern also includes a practical aspect. When a museum of archive has gone to the time and expense to put material on the web, they presumably have some expectations of drawing traffic and possibly physical visitors. They also probably have some metrics they are tracking, such as site visits, downloads, images viewed, etc. If we want to support their decision to make material freely available, we should try to make our uploading a win-win. If we upload selectively, to support specific articles and ensure we have a a reasonable number of images for a given subject area, we create back-links to their site and may actually increase their traffic and exposure. If on the other hand we attempt to immediately duplicate their coverage, we are simply competing directly for views. Under those circumstances what incentive does the next museum or archive have to make material freely available? There are already plenty of museums and archives that act very protectively, why do anything to discourage those that are willing to share freely?

My ethical concern does not apply to those cases where uploading is done with the backing and active cooperation of the archive, for example the NARA or Bundesarchiv collaborations. Nor does it apply to rescue projects where a site is about to close and a bulk upload keeps the material freely available. Even in these cases the practical concerns persist, and though they should not be taken to preclude such uploads, organizers and uploaders should take the initiative to recruit collaborators to ensure adequate titling, categorization and description.

I have seen some concerns expressed that Commons is in danger of being eclipsed by other free image sites. I think we occupy a different niche. We do not need to compete on quantity, but we absolutely should compete on quality, including not only the images themselves but description and provenance. Dankarl (talk) 19:54, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi Dankarl, the examples you give of DoD and NOAA appear pointedly directed at my uploads of this week. My most recent uploads from these sites as can be found at Category:2013 Moore tornado, with descriptive names using the source data such as File:Firefighters break through concrete during the search for survivors in the remains of the Plaza Towers Elementary School after a tornado struck Moore, Okla., May 20, 2013 130520-Z-BB392-005.jpg and at Category:2013 NCEP weather maps (from NOAA) with logically structured names agreed by consensus such as File:2013-05-20 Surface Weather Map NOAA.png, I would be interested in understanding how your concerns apply to these uploads, and what steps you might suggest to address them—unless you are expecting me to find another hobby and not bother uploading any more in my passion for preserving public domain content and increasing the value of Wikimedia Commons as a repository of relevant historical, cultural and educational material. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 07:25, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
replied to Fae on his talk page - no problems with the examples he quotes and my concern stretches back months Dankarl (talk) 15:47, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
I always though it was the other way around. You do the mass upload in order to preserve the metadata. Despite the best intentions visitors to a museum usually are not able to take as good of a quality image as "official" museum photographers, and the item description uploaded using standard upload page with {{Information}} is often inferior to bot created item descriptions using {{Artwork}} or custom templates. One of the goals of bot uploads is to make sure that all matadata available is preserved and displayed in a meaningful fashion, and that is not something that can be easily done for individual images, without a lot of work. That said there might be some mass uploads that are not done right. --Jarekt (talk) 12:09, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
OK so a careful bot writer can preserve the metadata, and a careful archive source may tell all they know. The image still needs to be categorized, someone should check whether the description is complete and accurate (often there is more to be learned, sometimes the description assumes a particular context, and also archive workers sometimes guess or make mistakes) and an informative title needs to be provided for those sources that use something equivalent to an accession number as a filename. Then we need to check for duplication; machine checks, when they are working, only go so far. All this usually requires some human intervention, and human time is limiting. I do not see why we need to upload faster than we can categorize except where there is a danger the images will go away. If we operate with the assumption that human time is limiting, then we will be selective in what we upload to avoid wasting it on duplicative content. Dankarl (talk) 15:25, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
One of my semi-automated large uploads (in that I had to hand-pick best category matches for modest-sized sets of images) has been Category:Public-domain-image.com. I did receive some valid criticism about weak categorization, poor titles, poor EXIF data and lack of location information. I responded as best I could by fixing small batches, or putting the most relevant files in backlog categories where appropriate. However, I do not apologise for getting on with the upload whilst I had both the time and inclination as public domain websites like this, tend to be run by solo hobbyists, possibly with a modest bit of advertising income to run the site, and if you research the life of similar sites, they tend to last for just 3 or 4 years (at best) before vanishing without warning. I agree that NOAA or the Department of Defense are unlikely to remove public access (although the DoD denied my request for API access, and warned me I would get blocked if they thought I was over-using their servers, so access is not always made as easy as possible...), however there are often good reasons to get on and upload the batch to Commons and then let the wider community help with adding value by good quality categorization and descriptions. An excellent example is COM:Geograph where nearly 2 million images were uploaded and over the years since, the community has gradually found new creative ways of engaging with, and re-categorizing the huge backlog of photographs of the whole of the United Kingdom as well as enjoying their reuse both on Wikimedia projects and off-wiki in the meantime.
By the way, with regard to time and inclination we find that those prepared to work on batch uploads, do some great work for a while, then get busy with "real life" or distracted by some gnomic corner of Wikimedia and gradually forget about their backlog of possible uploads. I have several potential uploads that I have been pondering for a very long time, and though I can defend and fix my upload from Public-domain-image.com (as a random example of value, File:Small lake.jpg has been used in 5 different non-English Wikipedias), were a similar case to come along now, I'd probably just park it and get on with easier and less controversial uploads just to have a quiet life. That is actually not a good thing for our shared mission of preserving human knowledge, as plenty of other sites also pick the low hanging fruit... --Fæ (talk) 15:53, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Well not everyone puts the care into running scripts that you do Fae, some people just use them in an obvious attempt to jack up their contribution and upload count by setting them running and then going out for the day, so they can return and boast to everyone. Take this image for example. Other people might not come to the same assumption that you did, that the crack in the glass was caused by militants, they might just think that the image was procedural, to be stapled to some requisition for a new windscreen. They might not think it has educational value. Penyulap ☏ 16:12, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

The community of active bot creators and large batch uploaders is actually very small. I don't know of anyone who puts their effort into this work to just "jack up their contributions" or to "boast to everyone". Boasting seems particularly pointless, as the general community on Commons spends far more time griefing the larger contributors they happen to notice, rather than rewarding them or thanking them for their efforts in the background, so we tend to learn to avoid engaging that much, and instead just get on with where we believe we can add the most value for the short time we are here. --Fæ (talk) 16:29, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
oh I agree of course, when I think about it, I don't know anyone who tries to "jack up their contributions" or to "boast to everyone", and yes, far far too many people make ad homi-thingy attacks against the (<*><_larger_><*>) contributors, rather than squishing the little ant-like <***>_smaller_<***> contributors who are so deserving of our collective distaste. The life of the commons aristocrat is such a chore. Penyulap ☏ 16:41, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
I'm glad you have a sense of droit du seigneur, though I will skip the offered maidens. Now, I have made an amusing riposte, do you think you could find something productive to do rather than finding yet more ways of accusing me of being a terrible person? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 16:47, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
I was just saying that you put a lot of care into running your scripts Fae, the same level of care you put into everything, like that last comment, with the big words and links and everything. The same great attention to detail goes into every contribution you make Fae, I don't know why more people don't praise you for this, I certainly do, keep it up and it won't be long before I consider giving you one of my special Barnstars. Oh, I noticed you dropping little hints, "rewarding them", "thanking them for their efforts". Hmm ? hmm ? nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Say no more. Penyulap ☏ 17:04, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
  • It's a stacked question, of course we don't just want "excessive" uploads just because "it's there", but addressing the original points made:
  • Description - I think this is the most important point, batch uploads (all uploads!) need a decent description on each file. An image's filename and categories give an indication of the content, but can not substitute for a descent description when it comes to making use of the image.
  • It is difficult to automatically precisely catagorize images, I would expect some categories but only broad ones, plus a particular one relevant to the particular source of the batch upload. I think it is a red herring to worry that "experienced" editors are taken away from helping with uploads from "inexperienced" editors - In general I think the provenance, quality, integrity of description (ie faithfully reproducing info from source) and licensing available from batch upload sources mean that an image from batch uploading is going to require less intervention and ongoing maintanence than if the same image (or a similar one from a different source) is transferrred here by an inexperienced user.
  • Yes it is crucial that the validity of the licensing be carefully checked, and in the case of mass uploads, that perhaps a test run of a random selection is done and evaluated before uploading 1000s from the same source.
  • Obviously exact duplicates need to be weeded out by any upload process, although for the sake of consistency (and some of the factors in my second point above), maybe all should be uploaded and then duplicates merged to gain the benefit of integrity of provenance, description and licensing. If they are similar, but not exact duplicates (different crops, different (preferably better!) quality, different editing) then they are potentially useful. For instance we intentionally keep many different photographs of the same painting. Yes a batch upload is probably not as good as an individual experienced editor's selected upload, but probably better than the average upload.
(as an aside, the process of "deleting duplicates" should more properly be thought of as merging duplicates. The problem of "duplicates" is not one simply of wasted storage space, or even of wasted resources in terms of time and effort that goes into describing/categorizing each one - these are only problems for us maintainers of the database entry. It is the logical problem of having two seperate, probably different sets of descriptions, licensing and catagories for exactly the same image - a real problem for users of the image (If both images have identical description pages then it makes no difference to the actual users of the image that we have two copies).)
  • I completely dismiss the ethical argument. Although Wikimedia Commons is a media project in itself (not just the back storage room for Wikipedia that some assume), it doesn't have the profile or exposure that would mean that an image being on Commons will significantly take traffic away from another site. On the contary, if an image makes it to a highly visible wikimedia project (eg wikipedia) it must have a positive effect in driving traffic to the other source site. But if an image is not uploaded to wikimedia it can not be included in any project (so we are doing them a service by copying their images :-). (Ok I have not looked at any research, I expect there is plenty, but this IMHO ;-).
  • Summary: I have no problem with batch uploads if done with care -
  1. ) thorough research and preparation especially regarding valid licensing
  2. ) no flooding of precise categories with imprecisely categorized uploads.
  3. ) a decent description on each. --Tony Wills (talk) 22:29, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
(First, sorry for my bad english, hope you will understand.) My opinion is that commons is not only a source for Wikimedia projects and wikis. It is a great ressource for images with a free licence that can use world wide, i.E. schools, science or the factory next door. Commons has possibly a longer lifetime than other free sources, so if an import is possible we should do. A imported but not categorized image is better than an image we do not have, IMHO. So I think too, not all images need to have a high EV. Sometimes the images without attracting attention are importend for others outside the Wikimedia-universe.
On the other hand, there are not a lot of people they have the knowledge and the possibility to run a batch job. So this people should spent her time to do the upload and the others help to categorize the uploadet files. Batchuploader usually have a high knowledge in scripting / programming, why they should spent her time to categorize images and i.E. find usefull descriptions for unidentified animals? There are a lot of requests here and here, but only an handfull people work on it and a lot of requests are still open since years! (Sometimes the source was lost before we start the job.) Should this people really categorize and check images instead? I think we are an community with a lot of experts. Experts in uploading, experts in categorize, experts for animals, and so on. We should share the jobs, not only the uploader do all steps alone. I agree with you that batchuploading can be a problem, but I think only for single people, not for a active community. --Slick (talk) 07:43, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
I certainly hope it is a language barrier issue, but are you seriously stating that batch uploaders should hold no responsibility, after the fact, for the files they upload? I'm so dumbstruck by this concept that I can't form a coherent response. (For transparency, I'm firmly in the anti-mass-upload corner, but still...) — Huntster (t @ c) 09:06, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
The concept of responsibility for images uploaded is an interesting proposition! Some people go to a lot of trouble to tell people who upload their own creative works that they have donated the use of the image and that they have no more rights over what goes on the description page than any other editor. I think batch uploaders need to be responsible about what they choose to upload and how they go about it, but once the file is here it is the communities decision as to whether we keep it, modify it, categorize and describe it. Of course if the uploaders abuse the process or don't take heed of community concerns they should be banned from uploading - responsible for the process, not resposible for the images.
@Slick: I don't expect the batch uploader to go through each file manually and categorise it thouroughly. But they should use the information available from the source to at least do a preliminary automatic categorization so it gives us somewhere to start. --Tony Wills (talk) 10:10, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
Response to Tony on three points, responding to both your posts:
  • Commons images show up prominently on Google image search, at least when they are well described, tho not as quickly or (maybe) as prominently as if they were used on WP. I am trying to come up with an experimental test for this, also assessing the prominence of Google gives the original source.
added comment - I haven't found a good approach to measure this but for illustration try individual US Presidents 1870-1920: Commons is generally lower than WP and the official White House portrait but well ahead of LOC and NPS. Dankarl (talk) 15:53, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes, the community can choose to delete images but the deletion process is as bogged down as any part of Commons.
  • Automated categorization can help, but it is not sufficient to just drop a big batch of images into a few high-level categories. If an image has enough information to be educationally useful it should be possible to get it at least to mid-level categories with decent accuracy. Maybe we need an artificial intelligence approach to a) map our fluid and adaptive category structure, and b) reality-check the tentative category assignments against the existing contents of the category. Maybe such a script could be integrated with the upload script: If you can't figure out where to put it don't upload it (just a suggestion). Dankarl (talk) 13:47, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
@Huntster, I guess there is a bit language barrier issue. I will try to explain. I see a difference between a batch upload that is requested (to do) and a batch upload that do a user by himself (i.E. he found a new free source, like the images and start his own job to import it) If I work on a requested batchupload I do my very best to add all metadata (i.E. descriptions) found on the source. After the upload, the person who made the request should check the images and is responsible for. In this case I think it is not my job to do more than the import, because I only support this user with the upload process. (Ok, I help to monitor the upload too and select crap and copyvio as soon as possible, if I identify it, because I am not a lawyer) On the other hand there are batch imports that a user do himself, so this user is responsible for its own uploads and should check it. But for me it is really hard to understand how we work on commons. There are batch imports requestet and often no one add a comment for months if we like to import this, what is the correct licence for and so on. I think I am experience in scripting and I really like to help (particular in this). But if there is no support for the request, what should I do? Waiting until the hell is froozen with the job, begging daily for comments on village pump or import it as best as I can? The current solution to request batch uploads on pages where nobody notice this, is bad I think. (So we should no amazed that user did her own batch uploads, possibly very bad.) --Slick (talk) 14:48, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

About all the uncategorizied images I had an idea some times ago. I am not sure I can explain in english. Maybe we can develop an categorisation system like a game. A user see an (uncategorized) image and we ask them? "What this?". And there are two ore more answers to choose. i.E. "an animal", "an object", "a person". So this image can categorized with this meta-category. Assume the first user select "a person" in the second stage another person can get this image with the question "What is the gender of this person?" Possible answers "a male" or "a female". So with the time a image can get very good categories, better than an scriptet bot. And if this "game" was developt fine, the user can play it on his mobile phone, i.E. in the subway, the bus, so on and maybe we can provide some little awards for the most categoried images or like this to animate the users to "play". --Slick (talk) 15:05, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

that idea is a good idea. There is also the problem to fix with categories, that some people say 'over-cat' is a problem, and then each image has not enough categories and is hard to find. I prefer your idea, each image needs a lot more information and categories to allow search engines to find it. when things are in sub categories, and taken out of parent categories, you can't get a selection of 'houses' visually and select what you want unless you use an external search engine. Penyulap ☏ 16:21, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
I think that's a good idea, too. Some people would have a lot of fun with this. To diffuse categories like Category:Animals, you could give people a list of options to choose from, based on the subcats. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:29, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
Snapshot Serengeti by Zooniverse uses a similar approach to engage people in categorising images of Serengeti animals. An interesting idea to lower the threshold of categorisation for subjects beyond one's own knowledge. A second Iconathon could help illustrating our Topics through icons for this purpose. An incentive for a CategorisationWizard? Regards, Christoph Braun (talk) 16:16, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

May 29

FoP Mexico

Hi,

I need to know two things about Commons:Freedom_of_Panorama#Mexico :

  1. Is it a valid license? JuTa said to me that "FOP-Templates are for a copyright exection for murals, scultures, building etc. placed in public space in several countries. But the fotos themself have its own copyright, the fotografer has to release the foto with a free license like any other foto on commons". But, I've noticed that, according to these explanations, "photographing 2D art (e.g. paintings) [...] does not generate any new copyright because the resulting work is defined entirely by the original work; there is no creative input. Therefore authors who create 2D copies are not entitled to copyright for these works, and the copyright of the original work applies". So JuTa answered me that "Such murals seems to be a special case if nothing of the "surrounding" is visible. But this dos not change the fact that FOP templates does not count as license templates. Such images without will apear anytime in Category:Media without a license: needs history check, and will by flagged as no license by people helping in that category"". So, what license shall we chose for File:Esclavismo.jpg or File:Mural pbm.jpg, for example?
  2. Can I upload to Commons such kind of pictures (like "Del porfirismo a la Revolución" by David Alfaro Siqueiros, National Museum of History of Mexico), even if I'm not the author, because "photographing 2D art (e.g. paintings) [...] does not generate any new copyright"?

El ComandanteHasta ∞ 14:56, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I suggest ask here User talk:Tomascastelazo Penyulap ☏ 18:43, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
1. About : File:Esclavismo.jpg. So far no evidence that the original work was/is a mural. Thereby, FOP no applicable. -- Túrelio (talk) 09:00, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
File:Esclavismo.jpg is "Cain in the United States". 1947. Pyroxylin. 93 x 76 cm. Carrillo Gil Museum, Mexico.
does a museum qualify as a public space in Mexico ? Penyulap ☏ 13:17, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
I've asked to sice@sice.oas.org (Organization of American State's Foreign Trade Information System). El Comandante (talk) 15:24, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
I would be careful about applying FoP to a photo of a work which amounts to a copy. I think the exceptions are more geared towards ensuring that photographers own the copyright to photos they take in public, but those exceptions usually don't apply if the new work can be used for the same purpose as the original work (i.e. a sculpture of a public sculpture, or a straight-on photograph of a public photograph, that kind of thing). The Berne Convention I think also says these exceptions should not prejudice the normal exploitation rights of the underlying work, which I think amounts to the same thing. Photos which show a mural in its public context I think are OK in such FoP countries (provided the photograph itself is licensed), but photos which amount to a copy (i.e. things where {{PD-Art}} would apply if the mural was public domain) I don't think should be allowed if the mural etc. is still copyrighted. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:23, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Flickr extended free membership

Flickr have recently (in the last few days) greatly extended their coverage for free accounts. This means that a lot of photos previously only available at reduced sizes are now available at full original size. This applies to at least some (and possibly many) Flickr images uploaded to Commons, now available in sizes larger than originally uploaded to Commons. Would it be possible to get a robot to check for larger sizes of all existing Commons uploads from Flickr? (same as the FlickreviewR robot does for new Flickr uploads). Also, if doing so manually, if a Flickr image has had a change of license, is it permissible to reupload a larger original now available, if the original upload was a valid license but the current is not? (I'm guessing not in this event, but thought it worth asking). - MPF (talk) 20:39, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. I also think we'd better stay on the safe side if the user has actively chosen a less free license since the low-res was uploaded. --99of9 (talk) 21:31, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
Here's an example. In this case, the full size original was very useful in allowing identification of the bird in the photo. - MPF (talk) 23:46, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
We will have to keep the smaller size where the larger size has a different license, it counts as a different image. Low-res free samples are often given out, so it is a widely known and accepted concept that the resolution matters. We can use the larger ones as references for the description for sure though, well done ! Penyulap ☏ 01:48, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
There is no option to give different licenses to the small and the large size. However, when uploading the full size version over our small size version you (or the bot) have to check if the license is still free. If the flickr user changed the license then what Penyulap said applies: we reused the small size under a free license and a license change can not make us stop doing so, but we can not start using the larger version. --Martin H. (talk) 04:51, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Caching problem with File:Flag of Galmudug.svg

There's something really wrong with this file. It doesn't correctly update it's thumbs and in some articles it's not shown at all (e.g. en:Galmudug)! I've tried purging the file description page, the file itself as well as the tumbnails but it doesn't help. I've never seen something like that before. Can anybody help on this? --Patrick87 (talk) 16:30, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

You may try to delete your browser data. – Kwj2772 (msg) 18:26, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
Oh, come on. Do you really think I didn't try that? Does the file history thumbnail for the current version of File:Flag of Galmudug.svg show correctly for you? Do you see the correct version in de:Flagge Somalias?
I know the default problems like browser cache and also workarounds for known MediaWiki bugs like purging specific thumbnails. But none of them seems to work in this case. At least the image is shown in all articles now (although not always the recent version). --Patrick87 (talk) 18:33, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
Works for me, now. Could you please link to any specific thumbnail size? (like this )--McZusatz (talk) 22:06, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
It works for me now, too. I hope the caching issues regarding thumb creation get fixed soon... --Patrick87 (talk) 00:32, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
Cannot reproduce either. Next time it happens, feel free to send the software bug to the 'Bugzilla' bug tracker by following the instructions How to report a bug. This is to make developers of the software aware of the issue. If you have done so, please paste the number of the bug report (or the link) here, so others can also inform themselves about the bug's status. Thanks in advance! --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 08:42, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
The problem is that caching errors are temporary by definition and I doubt developers will jump at the bug at the time I report it? I would not have been able to provide any useful technical information on the bug, that would have allowed to reconstruct it later. Furthermore, as far as I know, there are already many bugs filed in bugzilla regarding caching issues, also many of which are still unresolved? --Patrick87 (talk) 08:59, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

And a new one: . Should look like despite color. I posted to #mediawiki on IRC but there seems to be no one around who is involved in this kind of problem. --Patrick87 (talk) 18:36, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Hello everyone,

The WMF has received a cease-and-desist order from the World Trade Organization regarding the Wikivoyage logo (official announcement). WMF has decided to replace the logo rather than fight the allegations in court and has until the end of July to find & implement a replacement.

One proposed plan is to have a logo contest begin around June 10, but there is no agreement on just what the process/deadlines will be. Nonetheless, the process will need to proceed a bit faster than is usual. I'm posting this here so that those of you with creative graphics abilities can come up with proposals for a new logo and have them ready for the contest. There's no page yet for proposals or the procedure, but discussion can be found on Meta and on Wikivoyage. AHeneen (talk) 02:49, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Absorption and emission spectra

Hi!

I am hoping someone can answer a question regarding copyrights on spectra.

On the page violet astronomy, to illustrate the emission and absorption line locations for beryllium and boron, which are important metals in star formation, I have uploaded two such spectra calculated by the person credited. But in principle these spectra may be calculated by anyone and perhaps presented as this individual has done, without the company components of course.

Are these spectra as calculated and presented subject to copyright?

Thank you in advance for your kind attention to this matter. --Marshallsumter (talk) 17:32, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

This might be a case of {{PD-Ineligible}}, but it would be preferable is you just replot the spectra and use {{PD-user}}. --Jarekt (talk) 01:58, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
Make a request at the Commons:Graphics lab, we can make new images for you, and you can add the credit as a reference in the image description on the image page. Penyulap ☏ 13:26, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
No we can't. Absorption spectra are nothing one can just "redraw" Penyulap. You have to calculate them from a theoretical model or measure them with a spectrometer and then you can create a plot out of these data. --Patrick87 (talk) 14:33, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
Actually the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the USA has already calculated them including intensity per element. All that needs to be done is to graphically plot them like the spectra often seen with appropriate colors per wavelength. I would have to write the graphics software from scratch but I can supply the reference if Commons:Graphics lab can do it. Let me know and I'll supply the reference. --Marshallsumter (talk) 19:48, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
It could be done as a GIMP script, but not by me. I think writing it as a svg would be easiest, people tell me they are plain text documents anyway, so adding in the computations directly or with a text editor sounds dead easy. I don't do svg though, so I'd have to learn enough for this one task or co-ordinate with friends. It certainly sounds do-able. Penyulap ☏ 20:37, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
Thats what I meant: Graphics lab isn't the place were scientists crowd, but a place for graphics experts (not that this would be mutually exclusive). This request would probably fit better into en:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics. There's no need to write software for this, there are suitable tools around. I could probably do it, but I don't know when I'll get round it. There are multiple things I'd want to do first currently. Maybe you could start a request at graphics lab and post a link to it in WikiProject Physics. --Patrick87 (talk) 20:50, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
Hehehe the old 'I could do it if I felt like it' ;) But seriously, does anyone have the list of numbers of the calculated spectra. I can experiment with a text editor and 'linearGradient' in svg and I can't see this being brain surgery. Penyulap ☏ 20:57, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
Wah, there are some fun tools out there for playing with svg gradients. Plus, really fun names of documents as well, like "The Elements:A Visual Explanation of Every Known Atom in the Universe by Theodore Gray" I like that :D Penyulap ☏ 21:16, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
Try to read closer. I said I could do it if I had the time. I'm sure I could put "something" together within minutes, but if I do it, I want to do it right. And there are currently more important things that come first for me. Consider yourself glad if you can "waste" your time with such experiments while what you're trying is a standard procedure for many physicists out there. Surely you'll learn something in the process. --Patrick87 (talk) 22:47, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
This could be a five minute version. Spectral data already included... --Patrick87 (talk) 22:56, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Here's the NIST reference:

  • Alexander Kramida, Yuri Ralchenko, and Joseph Reader (September 24, 2012). NIST Atomic Spectra Database, Version 5. National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST). Retrieved on 2013-01-20.,

let me know if you have questions or problems. Absorption spectra are calculated with the line removing color from the spectra. --Marshallsumter (talk) 00:17, 3 June 2013 (UTC)


Boron emission spectrum, background credit:Teravolt,foreground credit:Alex Petty,mashup: Penyulap ;)
Here is my two minute noodles version. I'll have a look at the link, probably good to move this to the FX lab I figure.. Penyulap ☏ 00:20, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

copied to Commons:Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop#Absorption and emission spectra for beryllium and boron Penyulap ☏ 00:37, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Extended content
Sorry to spoil the fun Penyulap, but do you think only because you removed the background (containing the watermark with author information) and incorporated a new one it isn't a copyright violation anymore? Your graphics doesn't improve upon the original at all (despite the author might now even complain that we removed the watermark from his work). I'll not even start to make a statement on the physical validity of this diagram. --Patrick87 (talk) 00:43, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
well to answer the first question, yes I do think it's all PD now because it is far too simple to be the subject of copyright, I won't be the least bit offended if you DR the image, feel free. Marshallsumter is the only person I'd like to please with the graphics as they are the requester, if anyone else wants to make an even better image, they are most welcome to do so. Penyulap ☏ 01:01, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
You are wrong (although where there's no judge, there's no hangman...)! First of all, the graphics can be as simple as you want, the underlying data may still be copyrighted. Now lets assume your image is art (it's not very physical anyway): Even then it could be copyrighted, since even some colored lines could reach the treshold of originality (Where did you place the lines? How thick did you made them? What color did you choose? There's actually much originality in it!). --Patrick87 (talk) 01:14, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
wrong ? me ? unpossible I tell U ! ;D
The image is just fine, it's a spectrum, a representation of the Radio Frequency spectrum shown as visible light hues. Basically it is just a scale, same as numbers on a tape measure, a steady progression with perfect precision. This I know from general knowledge, I also know that the signature of each element is unique, you can't copyright that either. So those signatures expressed in this way are the simplest form possible. Now, there are some artefacts where I stretched things in the FX software, I'm not so sure it is as clean as it possibly could be, however this image is designed to be viewed with the eyes rather than fed into software, so I think it is ok, and more importantly, supremely important is Marshallsumter describing it as "Awesome!!!" at the FX lab. To me, that is the only thing that is important, that a requester is happy. It's like someone walks into my shop and I am the shopkeeper, and they ask for half a dozen D sized batteries, and some other person, not staff and possibly not a customer suggests that they should buy an iPod, what am I going to do as a good shopkeeper ? bill my customer for an iPod without asking, or do as they ask and provide a half dozen D sized batteries ? Penyulap ☏ 01:41, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
Oh come on, Penyulap, this is just childish. First of all you don't have to explain to me what an emission spectrum is since I'm afraid I already know it much better than you will ever do. Secondly your copyright arguments are just invalid but if you don't want to see the facts I can't aid it, continue violating copyrights. Thirdly the graphics lab is a place for graphics experts and we surely want to satisfy users (who might be satisfied easily) but at the same time we want to produce the best quality possible according to our standards, so the images can be reused for other purposes easily, and won't pop up here again in some months to fix the glitches that could have been avoided in the first place.
To stick to your silly example: Surely you can sell your customer half empty batteries and he will be happy since his device works again, but if you demand of yourself to fulfill some basic standards you'll sell him fresh ones (at least if you're not a crook). --Patrick87 (talk) 02:31, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
I find it endlessly amusing that you figure to lecture me on what I do and don't know, please continue, I can't get enough.
I suggest as far as copyright goes, put up or shut up, commons:DR is a nice place to address concerns that don't involve gratuitous 'remarks'. As for the quality of the images I'm producing, I'm the only shop open, the image is quote "Awesome" and I'm happy to refund the $0 paid twice over and give a free voucher for a free replacement image. If only you could get that everywhere in RL eh ?
I collapse the section where we're bickering, feel free to un-collapse if you feel a need to share with everyone. Penyulap ☏ 02:47, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes, probably it's best to hide the nonsense you're writing from the public. I'll give up on you at this point, some children are just unteachable. --Patrick87 (talk) 11:55, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
P.S. As an example you still didn't get that I actually wanted to help you produce a nice and shiny image that is free of copyright but if you're satisfied with imperfect results of questionable copyright status there's little I can do.

June 02

Notification of thread at English Wikipedia

w:Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Policy_Change_.28Images_of_minors.29

Someone suggested a debate should be had here at commons as well.. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 15:04, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Welcome to wikiArS Students

Hello, these days there are several students involved in the wikiArS initiative who are publishing their work in Commons. I wanted to ask you to welcome and help them as far as possible on issues such as categorization, see in which Wikipedia pages can be their artwork useful, create their personal profile page, etc ... And if you think they are making contributions featured and/or valuable that you consider its nomination. Albertvila1 and Andreu Modenes are students from EDRA school of art that have done infographies about de huge crystals of Naica Mine. Nuria nml, Hakima El Kaddouri, Manuelredondoduenas, Di.Francitorra, Monkeysdrawer and Mikel Borrull are students from Llotja doing their internship in Amical Wikimedia and publishing portraits of twentieth century characters and scientific illustration of extinct animals. Damek, C.calvo and Danitor1 are students from University of Cadiz who with the Animating Concepts for Commons (UCAC2) project are publishing 3D animations made ​​with Blender with the purpose of helping encyclopedic understanding of various topics. --Dvdgmz (talk) 10:30, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I must say that, as I read this report above, I felt this is a marvellous thing and that’s exactly what Common’s outreach should, in my opinion, be. And I add that I usually have a very curmudgeon-like attitude to this kind of initiatives (grumble WLM grumble…), so it looks really, really persuasive! -- Tuválkin ✉ 13:05, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments! :-) We're trying to do our best --Dvdgmz (talk) 11:56, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Did I made a mistake?

Hi, everyone! I'll try to put it clear. I've uploaded two coats of arms of the United Kingdom (Coat of arms of Chichester City Council and Coat of arms of Great Yarmouth Borough Council). They're own work and simple designs based on simple blasons (with no bizarre crests, better, with no crests at all). Apparently these coats of arms were granted and used since centuries ago (earliest 1570). Are they subject to the Crown copyright (which I don't understand completely, including that 2040 date) and must be removed from Commons? If not I would appreciate some basic guidelines to understand the nuances of this law applied to heraldic symbols of the United Kingdom. If they are a copyright violation, I am very sorry for the two uploads.--Asqueladd (talk) 22:18, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

In traditional European heraldry, the definitive authority is the textual blazon, and anybody can make a new artistic rendering of a coat of arms (even a recently-granted coat of arms) which matches the textual blazon, and then they own the copyright to their own particular image of the coat of arms. Of course, other artists also own the copyrights to their particular artistic renderings (unless copyright has expired with time)... AnonMoos (talk) 02:21, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the response, I was somewhat puzzled at the scarce amount of svg coat of arms of civic heraldry of the United Kingdom (and on the contrary rich information about blasons). So that made me wonder about british copyright law. Greetings.--Asqueladd (talk) 14:26, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Getting high resolution images of Agricola's work

Hey. Appreciate any advice/help in how to best obtain and upload high resolution images of Agricola's illustrations. We have many here, but they are very spotty quality. I feel they are intrinsically beautiful and very technically explanatory. (FYI: I AM NOT not an expert on technical aspects of pixel counts and file format and all that stuff!)

Smelting

See discussion here for more context: [6]

TCO (talk) 23:21, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Category:De re metallica contains scans from a variety of sources. Using your example image, I found this scan at the Internet archive. Next to uploading dvju files, converting their original JPEG2000 scans into TIFFs and JPGs could help to get good quality scans of depictions in de re metallica. There's another version hosted by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. Yet, rather than replacing current scans, we should establish seperate categories for different versions/editions of de re metallica. Later on selecting images for articles could be based on context (e.g. the earliest/latest version) or quality (the "best" scan available). Regards, Christoph Braun (talk) 12:24, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
I agree. Images that are totally inferior (e. g. thumbnail-sized) or especially redundant could be deleted, but I think it doesn't hurt to keep various versions of each work at all. --AndreasPraefcke (talk) 12:38, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
I'm just trying to get help with getting the good quality stuff uploaded (I lack the technical understanding of file types and all that, myself). I will even pay a moderate price for a CD of all of them or even some super prints of a select few. I don't care if we keep all the bad stuff. I'm not a deletionist. Our stuff is pretty confusing how arrahnged though, so I would probably do a better job with all the woodcuts (there are like 250+ of them) in organizing them (page order, by chapter, etc.) this would help others in same situation as me when I came to Commons and just saw the confusing different stuff we had.TCO (talk) 21:05, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

June 03

LOC/PD image with incorrect name

So there's File:Richard Cunningham McCormick.jpg which was included in the Wikipedia bio that covers the same person, however the LOC has revised its catalog entry because they no longer consider this to be a photograph of McCormick. I am unsure of what to do in this case - can the image be moved? I've already modified the description and categories but the filename itself contributes to the confusion. Or, since it's not used anywhere anymore, can it be deleted, despite the fact that it is indeed PD? §FreeRangeFrogcroak 20:33, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

We could use Template:Rename and give it the same name as they did: Unidentified man 'McCormick' scratched on plate. Someone may be able to ID him some day and it is a nice image from the era.--Canoe1967 (talk) 21:09, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
OK, that makes sense. Added the rename request. Thanks! §FreeRangeFrogcroak 23:53, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
done --Isderion (talk) 00:17, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

June 04

Translate is now enabled on Commons

The Translate extension has just been enabled on Wikimedia Commons, together with Universal Language Selector (ULS), which everyone should now be seeing next to their username on top of every page. This lets us translate pages the proper way, without the hassle of template tricks, and with additional features (details).

For now, only bureucrats are able to add (and remove) users to the 'translationadmin' group, so if anyone feel like managing translations, please request the rights at the buraucrats' noticeboard. Of course, shall the community decide so, we can enable administrators to add and remove themselves from that group. odder (talk) 20:03, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Allow admins to assign this right

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51173

Can we allow administrators to assign this right to themselves? It works well on Meta... —Mono 22:38, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

 Info See Commons:Translation administrators (already translated in a couple languages with the new system ;-) Jean-Fred (talk) 00:00, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
  •  Support I believe that is how they do it on Wikidata. I would also propose to speedy approve non-admins who already have those rights on Wikidata or other projects. A lot of names on d:Wikidata:Translation administrators sound very familiar. --Jarekt (talk) 02:29, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
  •  Oppose allow admins to assign themself to the user group. Instead, I  Support that the user rights associated with the tranlsateadmin user group being (also) added to the sysop group (=administrator group). Reason: It is really weird seeing admins adding themselves to a user group. Instead, they should have the rights by default. It's a different discusion whether we want administrators to be able to give this right to other people. -- Rillke(q?) 10:49, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
  • This discussion is premature, see also [7]. --Nemo 06:52, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
  •  Oppose That would be an mistake. Even though the administrators and translation administrators have one common word in the name of their rights, the comparision ends there. Administrators should go through the same proccess as any other user, when it comes to translation adminship.--Snaevar (talk) 16:52, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
    • If this mistrust goes on, I will retire from Commons. I can't work with a community that does not trust its community elected administrators being sensible enough to decide their own whether they are knowledgeable enough, or in case they made a mistake that they care for the issues. If we need a re-election process, I would accept this otherwise I oppose further splitting of the admin tools. No need to unbundle the sysop group here. This doesn't change anything for the better, only adds bureaucracy. Needless Bureaucracy. -- Rillke(q?) 18:20, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
  •  Support Duhh. Admins who can't be trusted to do this can't be trusted to delete pages, protect pages, block vandals, etc. I agree with Rillke that this userright should be added to the admin usergroup. Nyttend (talk) 21:00, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
  •  Support -- soon, please. Admins without the translate right cannot delete pages that have been tagged as translatable. I just went to delete the gallery page Kruistochten which was recently created nonsense. I got the message:
"Unable to proceed
You do not have permission to manage translatable pages, for the following reason:
The action you have requested is limited to users in the group: Translation administrators."

The page had the <translate> tag on it, put there by a contributor with two contributions, both nonsense. I removed the tag, and then blanked the page, but was still unable to delete it. Unless all Admins have this right, vandals need to just put the <translate> tag on a page to force its deletion by only the select group..     Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 12:16, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

User:Steinsplitter, who is a translation administrator, has subsequently deleted Kruistochten. I also tested adding the <translate> tag at User:Jameslwoodward/Translate test and I am able to delete that, so I don't understand what happened at Kruistochten -- can someone please explain? .     Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 12:23, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
 Support If that's the case Jim, then this right needs to be given to all current admins by default; we simply can not allow such things to occur on this project by way of sneaky vandalism that any admin is not able to handle. russavia (talk) 19:32, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Per Rillke and Nyttend: All admins should automatically get the translate admin user right. --Leyo 12:42, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I am probably a champion in documenting categories in several languages, but I am not looking for more work. Nevertheless, I have the following questions:
    • can the translated items be found through our search utility ?
    • can we display the English reference page against the translated page so that we can do a rough check on coherence ?
    • what do we see if a vandal adds all sorts of SPAM in say a Chinese, Russian, Arabic subpage
    • the fact that we cannot delete pages anymore, once they have been tagged once for translation, will be a nuisance. I delete 20000 or so items per year and don't reckon that I will waste my time tagging them for speedy deletion. --Foroa (talk) 16:35, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
  •  Support I'm with Rillke, Nyttend and Leyo that sysops should have this automatically. If we trust this group to be sensible enough for blocking, deleting and protecting, why on earth not for this? --Rosenzweig τ 19:15, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Enable TranslationNotifications

I think we should also use this opportunity to enable the TranslationNotifications extension (it's on use on Meta and Wikidata already). odder (talk) 10:00, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

The extension is not enabled on most wikis using Translate and I don't think it's a good idea to add it here: there are potentially thousands of templates to notify about (mostly always the same, not new things) and it would be overly spammy. It could be considered when it become more suitable for the specifics of Commons. --Nemo 06:47, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Note on ULS

In case anyone wonders, it appears the language detection for anonymous users of Universal Language Selector is not enabled − (Niklas hinted so on the RFC). Jean-Fred (talk) 08:13, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Modified version of most-valued image File:Wtc arial march2001.jpg replaced original

I just noticed that the image File:Wtc arial march2001.jpg- considered "Most Valuable"- has had what I'd consider a retouched version uploaded over the original (some time *after* the nomination was accepted).

I say "retouched" because the "removal of chroma noise" appears to consist of the slightly noisy off-grey colour/chroma of the Twin Towers having been entirely (and specifically) desaturated, rather than a "colour noise" filter simply applied. (The latter would leave the slightly off-grey balance of the original in place).

This really isn't noticeable under normal viewing, but for an important image like this, I feel the modified version should have been uploaded as a separate file. Any thoughts? Ubcule (talk) 13:10, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

June 06

Identifying Russian stations along the Trans-Siberian railway in 1982

In a 1982 train trip from Irkustk to Moscow I took these pictures:

For Moscow I identified a lot of stations with the help of the Russian Café, but I stil have a few to identify:

Smiley.toerist (talk) 22:09, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

In the second series: The first three are from Yaroslavsky Railway Station; the fourth one is impossible to identify, but since it is indicated as Trans-Siberian starting point, it should be the same station.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:32, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
No, the second one is Kazansky station, see below. --Amga (talk) 17:05, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
043 is Irkutsk.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:34, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
In the first series, only 036 and 043 is possible to identify I think (043 already is). --A.Savin 22:39, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
For instance, if they were all shoot within five minutes, that should be easy.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:59, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I have uploaded two more pictures:Smiley.toerist (talk) 22:26, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I havent started on identifying the locomotives. I could use a picture gallery for identification.

I am confused. On the left I can read letters КА… (but it may be not station name) but on the right there are routes Котлас — Москва and Владивосток — Горький (see image notes). But such routes do not have joint stations! And other wondering fact that locomotive ЧС4-128 is used by Ukrainian Railways now (see [8]).--Anatoliy (talk) 00:09, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
КАФЕ ? There is a picture of a coffee cup right to its left... Carl Lindberg (talk) 01:42, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes. --A.Savin 10:25, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
Based on a photo on this page, 047 is Kirov. Not the main building, but a couple buildings down. Google Maps can kind of confirm that, as you can see buildings which look like the one in the photo at the extreme left (in the back, other side of a street from the train station, with a sign on top which might be партии). That station does at least have a direct train route to Kotlas from the sounds of it, which may help explain the signage. Carl Lindberg (talk) 13:25, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
The destinations are confusing. There is no good railway map of the routes between Moscow and Siberia in the commons. (And the Thomas Cook map is in English) They are many route combinations between Moscow and Omsk. (via Yaroslavl, via Nizhni Novgorod, via Kazan, via Samara and Kurgan; via Tyumen or Kugan) The main route seems to be via Nizhni Novgorod and Tyumen in the Thomas Cook map 2007. On the Thomas Cook 1985 map it is via Yaroslavl and Tyumen. The english article on the Trans-Siberian gives no details on the routes on the western side or the history of it.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:01, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
The route via Kurgan is not really a trough route anymore. A part of the line goes througth Kazakstan.Smiley.toerist (talk) 22:09, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Created category: Irkustk railway station. Smiley.toerist (talk) 07:41, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

043 is Irkutsk. Are images in chronological order? And question about 039: if you are on the photo, and you are the author of the photo. How did you do it?--Anatoliy (talk) 22:12, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
Someone of the group takes a picture of you with your own camera. This is not legally considered to be work of the picture taker. This kind of thing happens often with group travel or people asking a stranger to take a picture of them. Are they in chronological order? No, as Irkutsk should be the first picture of the train trip. Smiley.toerist (talk) 22:35, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

There two clues for the location:

  • I travelled on the Baikal Irkutsk - Moscow. I obviously didn't take pictures in the middle of the nigth. The schedule is (1985 timetable, but little different from 1982)

Irkutsk 13:00 (A), Krasnoyarsk 9:29 (B), Novosibirsk 23:05 (B), Omsk 9:17 (C), Sverdlovsk (now called Jekaterinenburg) 23:46 (C)/ 00:01 (D), Buy 22:35 (D), Moscow 5:40 (E)

  • The 41 and 42 pictures are non-electrified stations. On my 1985 map the only non-electrified section on my travel was Omsk - Sverdlovsk via Tyumen. In 1982, three years earlier other sections could be non-electrified. The route Omsk Sverdlovsk via Kurgan is shown as electrified but not used by my train.Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:25, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I've notified someone who knows Transsib well, let's wait. --A.Savin 10:25, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

That's me. But I'm affraid I don't know it good enough... ;-) Okay, let's see:

  • Regarding electrification: the map showing Sverdlovsk-Omsk non-electrified in 1985 is wrong. Electrification from Sverdlovsk reached Tyumen in 1980. Nazyvayevskaya-Omsk was already electrified in 1956. Thus, the only non-electrified part between Moscow and Irkutsk in 1982 was Voynovka (that's a junction station 8 km east of Tyumen)-Nazyvayevskaya. That part was completed in 1983/84, so, in 1985 everything west of Irkutsk (and even Shilka) was electrified before 1985. Where between Tyumen and Nazyvayevskaja did the train stop in 1982? Maybe, Ishim, as the biggest city on that section? Seems to me, pic 041 (and most likely, 042, too - there's a lot of trees on that station) *do* depict Ishim (compare the house on pic 41 with the one on this Panoramio pic).
  • Yes, 047 must be Kirov, as Carl Lindberg wrote above. @Anatoliy: there was a Kotlas-Moscow train via Kirov-Kotelnich, and that is the only section where those trains (Irkutsk-Moscow, Kotlas-Moscow, and Vladivostok-Gorky) could meet. The other stations on that section are much smaller, except Kotelnich that has a new building now, but the older one, existing in 1982, was smaller, too, and looked different.
  • I'm still thinking about 036. I'm sure I've seen this, but I can't remember... --Amga (talk) 16:11, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
...it's Tyumen, in the evening (see the long shadows, some hours before Sverdlovsk, around 23:46, see above). And see this one on Panoramio ;-) with the pedestrian bridge a little "enhanced" and the new station building (completed after 1982, afaik) on the right. --Amga (talk) 16:39, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
  • We should find not big city but big station when train make long stop, I think. Btw on 041 picture I see the part of electric pllar after the car (похоже на верхушку электроопоры контакной сети за вагоном).--Anatoliy (talk) 20:44, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
In 041, it's not electrified nearly like Ishim is today (compare the Panoramio pic linked above). There are not quite enough common details to 100% confirm it is the same brick building in those two pictures, but it's pretty close. The building had downspouts added presumably at the same time as all the electrification poles, but all other details even including some of the weathering stains look to be about the same -- I'm pretty sure they are the same building, and there is no detail in the photo which is inconsistent with Ishim looking at Google Maps. 042 would be the same station. The Tyumen identification is definitely correct. But yes, otherwise knowing which stations were most likely for the Trans-Siberian to stop at would help narrow down the search, though the lack of details on the remaining ones (039, 040, 044, 045, and 048 I think) might make identification very difficult. Knowing the order of the photos would also have helped but it sounds like that is out. Carl Lindberg (talk) 12:37, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

File:Moscow 1982 mainline train station II.jpg is Kazansky station. The building under construction in the Background is the Moskovsky department store (hey, I bought an electric samovar there, in 1987 ;-) The high building behind it is the Moscow Railways data centre, the big building to the right is the Main mainline transportation center of the Russian Post nowadays (I've no idea about the correct translation). --Amga (talk) 17:04, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, I probably got it wrong.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:10, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, I have now added correct categories in all sure cases. --A.Savin 19:47, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

I put the 42 pic to Ishim. It is the same cloud cover and time of day and non-electrified. Out of the 1985 timetable: departure 13:50 Moscow time. Local time this is 16:50 (late afternoon) when the sun is Southwest wich matchtes perfectly with the pictures. Te station buildings are on the Southwest side. Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:09, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I have added pictures taken from the train window. It was not that easy to get a window open and on most electric lines there problems keeping overhead structures out of the pictures. Thanks for narrowing it down to the line between Voynovka and Nazyvayevsk, Unfortunately it is between two Oblast.

Not good quality but stil useful. Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:53, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Do you know the ordering of any of these? For example, if the original negatives came on strips, even if the strips were jumbled perhaps the ordering of a few of them could be determined by their order on the strip? Carl Lindberg (talk) 12:58, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
These are Kodachrome slides with nummering on them, however there are several films rolls. So the same number can occur several times. I will research these numbers and come back.Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:23, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
There are two film rolls: III and IV. They are of the IV film with two exceptions:

In the following order: 43,-,40,-,46,35,42,41,44,36,45,-,39,48,-,47 (- = gap in the numbers)Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:59, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

45 is Tyumen at the end of the platform. The same coaches can be seen in 36. Also the same time of day and light matchtes.Smiley.toerist (talk) 19:19, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

44 is Tyumen seen in the Eastern direction. Same ligth and time of day as in 36. 21:00 local time. Same overhead portals and train is at the smae platform.Smiley.toerist (talk) 19:51, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

40 is a more difficult one. It was taken before the second nigth (File:Trans-Siberia diningcar I.jpg and File:Trans-Siberia diningcar II.jpg) and the first nigth. (The departure at Irkutsk is 13:00 + 5 = 18:00 local time and 40 is not a evening picture). This narrows it down to the Kansk - Tayga part of the route.Smiley.toerist (talk) 20:33, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Hm. Given the sun angle there... the platform would have had to be on the southernish side of the track (or I guess northern side if angled somewhat northwest/southeast) which may rule out several of the stations in that stretch. From a few pictures, one possibility is Mariinsk. There are some intriguing earlier photos of it here which show an electrical tower with a stone-like cylinder in it much like the one in 040 (photos of several nearby stations have something similar so that's not unique). The second photo there also shows a rough ashpalt edge right near the train track (no real curb which some other stations seemed to have had), which also sort of matches your photo. It also hints that there were trees off to the east side of the station (more than Google Maps shows today). This photo shows a similar kind of tower even after the station was redone in the 1990s (according to photos here). But... the lights attached to the wires overhead seem somewhat distinctive and can't find a photo with those in them, and not sure Mariinsk has a walkway over the tracks on that side, and modern photos show that the track might curve shortly after the station (the sidewalk definitely does) which I'm not sure it does in the photo. Anzhero-Sudzhensk might also be a possibility if there were once many more trees than Google Maps shows now. What would be the time of day in that stretch do you think? Carl Lindberg (talk) 12:41, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
40 is obviously taken from outside the train. The conductors would only let you out if the stop is reasonably long (typically 20 minutes to change the locomotive). Between Kansk and Tayga I believe there are only four such stations: Ilanskaya (it is slightly east of Kansk, but qualifies), Krasnoyarsk, Achinsk, and Tayga.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:19, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
I know Mariinsk pretty well, and the overwalk is now at the western side of the station. Note however that in 1982, there was still the old Transsiberian station building in Mariinsk, from the 1890s, which has been demolished in the 1990s (this is about how Russian Railways protect cultural heritage).--Ymblanter (talk) 14:21, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
I do not think Anzherskaya was ever a long train stop, neither Mariinsk was one.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:23, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Category Soviet Union sleeping cars

It is handy to put all sleeping cars taken in soviet Union times in this category. But after 1991 this becomes problematic. The soviet Union sleeping cars kept being used in ex-Soviet Union states, but new modern sleeping cars where also introduced. I put al old type looking sleeping cars taken after 1991 into the Soviet union category. Where to draw the line? Examples: File:Rossija train.jpg, File:On the rails again.jpg, File:Kolej Transsyberyjska.jpg, File:K3次列車蒙古2.jpg, File:Kazansky vokzal.JPG Place them in:

June 01

Batch download of SVG files

I am making a proposal to the W3 SVG-WG. As part of that I was thinking of doing a survey of SVG files to determine how often certain features of SVG are used. It occurred to me that WC represents an ideal corpus of the practical usage of SVG. My question is whether there is an easy way to bulk download a large number of SVG files from wikimedia commons for analysis. That is, without having to scrape etc. Assuming, of course, that bulk downloading is acceptable. Thanks. BigBadaboom0 (talk) 04:30, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Commons has an API but runs in miser mode, thus you can iterate over all files but can't filter by mime-type.
User:Rillke/MwJSBot.SVGXmlNSFixer.js is a JavaScript implementation of this (it downloads [to memory] and uploads SVGs).
Here is the query it makes use of: [9]. There are also database dumps.
In any cace, you will have to download each SVG individually. -- Rillke(q?) 07:33, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
After you got the list of all svg files you want to download, have a look at User:Slick/convert non-interlaced botscript.sh and use the lines till the wget-command to download all SVG files in the list. --McZusatz (talk) 08:22, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
also see: User:McZusatz/SuperSimpleMWdownload.sh --McZusatz (talk) 11:15, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks everyone. BigBadaboom0 (talk) 00:25, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Category:Coats of arms of student fraternities in Belgium and Category:Logos of student organisations in Belgium

What to do with this category and its contents? Only these files seem to be somewhat in order: Category:Logos of student organisations in Belgium, File:Schildlvsvgent.jpg, File:Wapenplutonica.jpg, File:Argonaut.JPG, File:SchildHesb.gif (properly donated!), File:KDAschild.gif, File:Schild laetitia.png (OTRS), File:Linguakleintransparant.gif (I think), File:NFK-wapenschild.jpg, File:Coat of arms of Payottenland.jpg (OTRS), File:Wapenplutonica.jpg,File:Schild LVSV Hasselt.svg (SVG file, so that is probably actually own work), File:Schild -Kleur -Met keure.png, File:Schild rucantores.png, File:VGK schild.png, File:Wina schild klein.gif, File:UnifacGBlauw.png (I suppose), and File:Verbondskleuren.gif (though the author forget to add a license).

File:Schild brux 2.jpg, File:Clubschild Gavergild.jpg, File:Schild Dolfijnen.jpg, File:Folklore Schild.jpg (which is sadly one of the few with OTRS permission), File:Herawapenschild.jpg, File:Schild hesbania.gif, File:Het wapenschild van Moeder Lies, Belgie.jpg, File:HOT-schild.jpeg, File:Kentekens-schild-diepenbeek.jpg, File:Kentekens-schild-geel.jpg, File:Kentekens-schild-leuven.jpg, File:Coat of arms of Kila.gif, File:Coat of arms of Kila - old.gif, File:Logo Semini.png, File:Coat of arms of MEGA.gif, File:Schild Moeder Geelse.jpg, File:Netsilana.png, File:Scaldis.gif, File:Scaldisold.jpg, File:Schild - Kleur - Met keure - Groot - JPEG.JPG, File:Schild - Kleur - Met keure - Groot - PNG.PNG, File:Schild - Kleur - Met keure - JPEG.JPG, File:Schild lila.JPG, File:Schild LILA2.JPG, File:Schild MK 2.jpg, File:Schild Skald.jpg, File:ThemisSchild.jpg, File:Schild vv.jpg, and File:Wapenschild taxandria.jpg, File:Minos Logo.jpg, File:Politikajp.jpg, File:SigillumVlaVla.jpg, File:LVSV Gent.jpg are unused, and few of them are even properly sourced to begin with. I will start a deletion request for these after having posted this.

Removing the unused files will clean up the category, but won't solve the possible license issues. The uploaders most likely left Wikimedia Commons, at best one could alert users who have edited the pages on which the files are used. Lemmens, Tom (talk) 10:11, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Am I missing something here? Do we have a policy against keeping freely licensed but unused coats of arms? If not it seems the deletion should be specifically on license grounds rather than usage so that for instance File:Folklore Schild.jpg would be retained. Or do you have other grounds? The deletion request is vague.Dankarl (talk) 15:19, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
Folklore can be retained, I guess. I thought the fraternity disappeared because the website was down, but it seems they just can't afford it. It's for the opinions of others that I put this here. :) A lot of these fraternities might not exist anymore. I'd say a main motivator besides the copyright issues is practical reasons. A smaller quantity of files would make sorting out the license issues more manageable. I think it's hardly worthwhile to obtain OTRS permissions for coats of arms of quite obscure student fraternities that may or may not exist anymore. Oh, and the deletion request is here. I'll remove Folkore, your point is valid. Lemmens, Tom (talk) 15:35, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
Commons holds the memory of thousands of years of man kind. --Foroa (talk) 16:33, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
But are badly constructed unsourced coats of arms of ephemeral student fraternities really worth remembering? :p Lemmens, Tom (talk) 17:25, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
Unused is not a reason for deletion. You would have to make individual, case-by-case assertions that they fall outside of project scope (if any are in use, or even were for a length of time, they are automatically in scope), or are copyright problems (graphics copied from a source website without an evident license, in which case find the source). For scope, if these are say of a particular short-lived high school club or something you probably have a case, but any kind of long-running organization at a college (even if now defunct) is probably of interest. Carl Lindberg (talk) 12:46, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
I have retracted the one with OTRS permission from the deletion request. All of files listed are copied from websites, without evident permission. A lot of these websites don't exist anymore. Some of the logos differ a lot from what's currently (?) on the website. Most of these groups were founded quite recently (late 90s and 00s), they're not at all long running. Some of them are probably uploaded simply to promote a club they've just founded or joined (Minos, for example). Lemmens, Tom (talk) 13:36, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

LoC image improvement

Is there a project for improving and/or harmonizing metadata images uploaded from the Library of Congress?

For example, there are several thousand images in the Bain Collection, but it doesn't have a separate sub-category, not even a hidden one (except for PD-Bain). In contrast, the NARA images have extensive categorization by collection (of course they were uploaded and organized by NARA itself, unlike the LoC images). I don't mean to suggest duplicating categories like "Photos by location," but categories for Bain, Matson, etc., that help them to be targeted for further metadata improvement beyond the 30k files in "Images from the Library of Congress." The only way to rationally approach working with such large sets (by humans anyway) is to break them down into more digestible chunks. (See, e.g., the categories for uncategorized files.)

Another improvement would be to develop a template similar to Artwork for photographs, and/or templates specific to the images from LoC that more directly reflects their catalog data as reflected on their page for an image. And once that's done, to go through the images that currently have their data copy/pasted verbatim into the Description field of the Information template and convert them to the new image template. If this were done thoughtfully it could take care of the categorization too.

A lot of this could be best accomplished by bot, but surely there is a better place to discuss this sort of thing than in the quickly-archived Village Pump? Laura1822 (talk) 23:13, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Those are all good ideas, and should be persued. I am not aware of any projects related to LOC images. can you give some examples of metadata fields beyond those currently used by {{Artwork}} or {{Photograph}} which would be needed? --Jarekt (talk) 15:30, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
Hi, Jarekt! You slipped in with this response when I was writing the one below. I don't have specific examples yet, just scratching the surface here of what seems to be at first glance an enormous task, and wondering where best to discuss it. Laura1822 (talk) 15:53, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
I've just found the Art Photo template and will start using it. And looking at the Photograph template, it seems that there are several other institution-specific templates based on the Photograph template, so it should be fairly straight-forward to create one for the LoC and/or for specific LoC collections (at least for someone familiar with coding templates, which I am not). But I'd still love to know if/where there is a project page for LoC image sets, or if there is a more appropriate place to suggest or request template creation. Laura1822 (talk) 15:34, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
I didn't even know we had {{Art photo}} or {{Photograph}}. I'll have to spend time and update some of the images I've come across. Without having looked into it further, is there any reason for creating a new template when you can simply use {{LOC-image}} in the source parameter of one of these larger templates (photograph, art photo, information, etc.)? I did find {{LOC-prokc}} the other day, geared toward licensing and specific to an actual photographer. Which makes me think there may be others as well. – Kerαunoςcopia◁galaxies 15:43, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
I didn't know we had them either! I've been working on some images in the last few days after a hiatus of some months, if not years, and finally found them by extensive searching. I don't know how it would ever even occur to an average user to look for them, and so I think all these templates should be presented as options when uploading (if they aren't already) as alternatives to Information. I also just found "Category:Infobox templates: based on Artwork template" (and a similar one based on Photograph) that have a few institution-specific templates listed, including NARA and at least one art museum. The primary reason for creating institution-specific and even category-specific templates is to make the metadata fields correspond to those used by the institution. This makes it easier to upload the image and copy the information over, whether by bot or human. And there is some great discussion on the Photograph template's talk page about retaining original institutional descriptions for archival reasons while providing user-based updated and corrected descriptions too. Laura1822 (talk) 16:03, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
I have created most of templates discussed, including many institution specific templates; however I always prefer to use generic template if possible. Institution specific templates are usually created for batch uploads. I suspect that {{Photograph}} will do just fine for the photographs and {{Artwork}} for painting, drawings, etchings, etc. One way to organize the collection would be to use Commons:Bots/Work requests forum to ask for very specific bot jobs. Also many of those could be done with help of cat-a-lot tool. --Jarekt (talk) 16:15, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes, it seems you may be the go-to guy for this.  :) I'll look into cat-a-lot but I'm not sure that this is a project I want to take on single-handed. As for batch uploads vs. editing: I agree that more generic is often better, to a point. But if "Information" is the lowest common denominator, and no other options are presented to users when they upload, then a poorly documented mess is what we end up with. Granted, we'll never have the level of cataloging consistency as a national institution, but why should we reinvent the wheel? The LoC collections are so enormous. I've found large sets of images uploaded from the LoC (or LoC flickr) by an individual who literally just copied/pasted the LoC catalog data into the "description" field of the Information template, without using any other templates at all, or only PD-us and "File other" over on wikipedia. Many of them have been copied over to commons by bot and minimally cleaned up, but the task is enormous, including uncategorized and badly named files, and fixing them will require a whole workgroup of people and bots. And this is just one person's files I'm talking about here, but he uploaded thousands, and everyone else who uploads does it differently. Not meaning to censure him, because after all I've been doing this for years and just found the Art Photo template! Learning to use templates can be daunting. I thought perhaps more specific templates combined with promoting them might help prevent some of this kind of thing in the future, as well as assist in the cleanup. Laura1822 (talk) 17:03, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
I believe work is being done on alternative upload scripts. I can see why organizing and adding/fixing metadata to LOC images is not something anybody can do single-handed. That is why it is not done. Unfortunately, the metadata is often easier to do right at the upload time, when you have full control of it. Once people start editing and improving it, you no longer can use bots to fix it. It is often hard to organize a "whole workgroup of people and bots", but a good start would be to start a page related to it, where this kind of discussions can be held, and found in the future. Also even by yourself one can do a lot, for example by organizing LOC category. --Jarekt (talk) 13:50, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

June 05

Applying Template:PD-USGov-Military to images a GI might claim were snapped when they were off-duty?

Bryan Browles, the photographer who took this picture -- File:Guantanamo Military Commissions are held in what was once an air terminal.jpg -- was serving as an attorney with the Office of Military Commissions. A couple of years ago he published an ebook, of pictures from Guantanamo, on what looks like an online vanity press, called blurb.co.uk.

Fifteen pages are allowed in the preview the site allows. This building housed the courtroom where Browles worked. So I think this image counts as being taken in the course of his duties. The other pages include 2 pictures of his boss, and half a dozen nature photos taken at dusk.

When a GI's duties take them to a remote base, should we hesitate to upload images that GI took after dinner, when they coud say the photo was not part of their duties?

Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 00:34, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Legally, he will still be considered "in service" after dinner. For example, when you are assigned to a remote base, if you misbehave one evening and create a fracas with the locals, you could still face a court-martial for failing to behave appropriately in accordance with your contract; even though this can be claimed to be on your 'spare time', off-base and not part of the activities defined within your commission. --Fæ (talk) 07:44, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
I think that punishing someone for criminal acts is a very different concept, though!
Going back to the law in question, 17 USC 105 applies to "any work of the United States Government", and 17 USC 107 defines that term as "a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties". The use of "official duties" makes it clear that the person may still retain copyright in other contexts, and unless we take a very broad definition that anything done while on a base is an "official duty", it seems likely this sort of thing was private. Andrew Gray (talk) 18:37, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
I tend to think this is not something we should worry about unless such a claim is actually made. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:47, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
Was taking pictures part of his duties? I.e. did a superior officer ask him to take the photos and/or provide the camera? It's not simply that photos were taken while on duty, it's if the photos were taken as part of their officially assigned duties. The concept is basically the same as work for hire -- if you take a personal photo at work, would you consider the photo to be owned by you or your company? The situation would be different if someone handed you a company camera and/or asked you to take a few photos of a company function (even if those were not your usual job) -- those probably would be works for hire. Carl Lindberg (talk) 12:37, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
Here is a photograph I took when I was in the US Navy, File:Mitscher DDG35 Cuba Jan 1975.jpg . My task that day was to have some test equipment calibrated at the Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay while my ship went out on a training exercise. I brought my personal camera and took pictures around the base that day including some of the USS Mitscher returning that afternoon. I was an Electronics Technician not a Photographers Mate . -- Swtpc6800 (talk) 15:23, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Video sizes

Uploaded file is 400px wide and 1,41 Mbyte
File:Aliona Moon - O Mie presentation (English) 1080p.ogv
Uploaded file is 1920px wide and 9,88 Mbyte

Hi!

I occasionally upload videos to Commons, but I am never sure what size I should upload them in. I usually film in 1080p, but I never upload them to Commons in that size, since I know that videos are not handled the same way as photos.

If I've understood everything right, a thumbnail that is 250 pixels wide, of a photo that is 6000 pixels wide is automatically re-rendered so that there is a 250 pixels wide image file on the server. But if you have a 250 pixels wide thumbnail of a 1080p-video, it is the same heavy file that is just scaled down. Therefor I've uploaded some videos that are around 300-400 pixels wide, and in some rare cases I've uploaded the 1080p-version as a separate file in case someone wants it, although it is not suited for Wikipedia articles.

  • Have I got this right or wrong, or was I right and things have changed? Does Commons re-size videos just like photos?
  • What is the best method for uploading videos, if you want the videos to be used in Wikipedia articles but also want the high definition versions to be avaliable?

I just uploaded these three HD-videos, and was planning on uploading 30 more, but I want to get it right. The other videos (400 pixels wide) can be found in Category:Videos from Eurovision Song Contest 2013.
--abbedabbdisk 14:20, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Quoting the General_conversion_tips:
When uploading a large video (for use on Wikipedia), TimedMediaHandler will convert it into different versions, so you don’t need to provide separate versions for people on slow Internet connection. It is strongly recommended to upload your video with the best quality (bit rate and frame size) possible. If your resulting video file is larger than 100Mb you should enable chunked upload or use the Server-side upload.
You can select the "thumbnail"-size down right in the player (near the volume settings). Your 1080p upload has the following transcodes available: WebM 360P, WebM 480P, Ogg 480P, WebM 720P, Ogg source --McZusatz (talk) 15:55, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
Great! Has it always been that way? Or is the problem I mentioned above completely wrong? -abbedabbdisk 16:43, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
No, TimedMediaHandler was introduced by the end of last year. The extension is still not finished and progress is ongoing. Also keep in mind you can not force the video to be any given size. There are max. 5 transcodes available and the user has to choose which one fits his needs the best.
I will delete the three uploaded redundant version later, if that's ok. --McZusatz (talk) 17:51, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
Remove the HD-versions. I'll use the "new version of this file"-function on the low-res files, since that is easier and they are used on many of the projects.
-abbedabbdisk 17:55, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

upgrade COM:OVERCAT to policy

I am thinking that COM:OVERCAT needs to be labelled as either help page, guideline, or policy. However, just how much support does it have in the community as a policy ? should it be one ?

Personally, I think it is something of a nuisance, I find that it is faster and easier to use external search engines to look back into commons to find what I want rather than use the cat system, which often puts what too many clicks away. For example, a silly example, smilies, if you search externally, you're there in a click. If use the category it gives you the cream of the crap Halloween sort of smilies first and then you have to go looking through the sub categories.

I would think that having the epitome of the pictures in the top category is often helpful, as well as at the end of the long branches through sub-cats. I'd like to know if anyone else has an opinion on it. Penyulap ☏ 04:26, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

I think the name is a bit confusing the same way people use the term 'over-acting'. Think about it, there is no such thing as over-acting, you wouldn't call Vincent Van Gough an 'over-painter' would you ? there is simply good acting and bad acting, and over-acting and over-catting is simply bad acting and bad catting.
The ability of an image to appear in a parent and child category, because it belongs there, should be pointed out, so that people don't threaten each other with blocks and penalties and so on. Penyulap ☏ 08:57, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
I am not quite sure where you want to go with this? :) For cream o' crap you can always put in a DR. What you (seem) to want is more like a gallery? The cat system is to, well, categorize media so it can be found when looking for something specific. True, sometimes it takes a few too many clicks to find stuff. And right with your last statement, it should be clear that in some cases double categories for a file are useful. The policy/guideline should reflect that. --Hedwig in Washington (mail?) 15:25, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
Sorry I'm not clear, I need input to get direction sometimes, but you've zoomed right in on what I mean with your comment "it should be clear that in some cases double categories for a file are useful" that is what I mean, and I can't see it mentioned on the help page.
I think it is very important that it IS spelled out by the people who know, so that the rest of us know, when we should have the double categories, like an example of how a double category makes the category system more useful. (It was today that I had to find a Soyuz launch video by using an external search engine after giving up on the internal category system, seriously, try to find them!) Penyulap ☏ 07:05, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
OVERCAT is basically already a de facto policy - people routinely (and semiautomatically) remove files from parent cats when they are already in subcats, and have done so for years. Marking it as such might clarify this. I was confused at first though, because I also hear the term "overcategorization" used to refer to excessively specific categories. Dcoetzee (talk) 18:34, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
I think it should be a bit better defined as being a help page that is useful in many cases, and that it is too hard to define what is good and bad catting across the board to make it a hard and fast rule. I think the best contributors being blocked based on a help page that has become 'de-facto' policy should indicate it is time to make it clear one way or the other. Can't be a good thing to be losing editors over subcats. Penyulap ☏ 16:11, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Penyulap, can you please add categories to your own uploads, please (no category1, no category2, no category3)? Thanks in advance. Regars, High Contrast (talk) 22:17, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

On, I did lots on that third one, sorry just saw your message now. I'll get to those other two, one is a request and one is Barnstar. I often find that a requester is the person who knows all about catting a request image, and I think someone invented 'custom barnstars' as a category for barnstars I draw, but that category only has mine in it, so I don't know if it is useful. Penyulap ☏ 23:52, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes, this should definitely be policy; clogging up parent categories is quite unhelpful. We absolutely must be careful not to sanction newbies, since this is something that might not be intuitive initially and can easily be done in good faith, but people who don't care and do it repeatedly need to have it demonstrated to them that they're causing problems and need to stop. Nyttend (talk) 22:58, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
Should we have a RfC about it ? Penyulap ☏ 23:52, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
I would like to either have an exception for a few pictures to easily see whether one has found the right category, or an allowance to put a small gallery at category pages.
For example, categories about settlements and administrative regions benefit from a map showing the subject in a larger region, even if there's a separate subcategory "Maps of $X". Categories about people benefit from a good painting/photo of the subject, even if there are subcategories "Photos of $X" and/or "Paintings depicting $X".
Clogging up parent categories is bad, having a few iconic pictures at the start of the category (whether by sort key or by a gallery) is good. --80.114.178.7 19:35, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes, this has been long-standing practice for years and years, to the point it is enforced consistently, users correct violations almost immediately, and I think most would be surprised if they found out it hadn't been in the official guidelines. It should be put in the guidelines to remove any doubt. --Closeapple (talk) 04:52, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
Fully agree with Closeapple and Nyttend on that. Sure, every now and then there may be special cases where a "double" categorization makes sense. OVERCAT is a de-facto policy and I doubt that a formal rfc is necessary in this case. --Túrelio (talk) 06:29, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

discussions about Commons' problems on-Wiki though off-Commons

As may be known to some insiders, every now and then there are discussion about real, perceived or alleged general problems of Commons, taking place on-wiki, but outside of Commons, usually at :en-Wikipedia. (I am not referring to external websites by fundamental critics!) For example, the most recently started discussions, that I am aware of, are:

Currently there is no established mechanism of informing the community of Commons about these discussions.
Therefore, my request for comment:

  • 1) would it be of interest/benefit to create on Commons a permanent or occasional thread listing/linking such discussions in order to notify the community (or at least those interested)? Note: I have no intention to get such discussions "hijacked", but sometimes a voice of reason or a reality-check seems to be missing.
  • 2) If the answer to 1) is yes, where should the notification-thread be installed? COM:AN, sub-thread to COM:VP, a new COM-thread/page or elsewhere?

--Túrelio (talk) 09:54, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I think this would be feeding repeated and manipulative grandstanding. If people were interested in helping to solve problems rather than (successfully) creating drama without solutions in order to make a name for themselves as a "professional critic", then they would have the debate here instead. If you are keen to create notifications of off-Commons/anti-Commons political lobbying, these could usefully be posted on Commons-l, which anyone is welcome to join and discuss these matters if they wish, even if they never contribute to this project. --Fæ (talk) 12:07, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
Though I'm not a mailinglist-fan, I'm actually a subscriber to Commons-l digest. However, in view of its posting and discussion "frequency", I doubt that it reaches anybody. It feels like a dustbin list. --Túrelio (talk) 12:40, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes. :-) --Fæ (talk) 13:02, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
(I answer Túrelio, not Fæ)
  1. Yes, it would be of interest to have a place for those links
  2. Please, use a new venue. People who are interested, can look there. People who don't get excited by people getting excited about seeing the human body, don't need to look there.
--80.114.178.7 22:38, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

User uploads photos to Wiki projects after they are nominated for deletion at Commons

Today I nominated a number of files that violate copyright for deletion and explained why. MaGa, who uploaded some of them, is an administrator at hr.wikipedia and thus presumably acquainted with the importance of avoiding copyright infringement. Nevertheless, MaGa uploaded three photographs on hr.wiki soon after learning that they were nominated for deletion here, and without bothering to respond at the nomination talk pages. I hate to assume bad faith, but that is obviously an attempt to bypass the results of this discussion and continue with the copyright infringement. See Commons:Deletion requests/File:Spomenik zrtvama drugog svjetskog rata zupe Hrasno.JPG, Commons:Deletion requests/File:Spomenik don Stjepanu Batinovicu.JPG, and Commons:Deletion requests/File:Kraljica mira - Hrasno.JPG.

My question is: how do we deal with such cases? The copyright claim is as false at hr.wikipedia as it is here. It shouldn't be necessary to go through the nomination procedure all over again. Surtsicna (talk) 14:50, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Nominate them for speedy deletion at hr.wikipedia, with a link to the deletion discussion here? — SMUconlaw (talk) 15:09, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Since the question is rather general I must say this happens a lot. Lots of images that are deleted on commons because of FoP-issues are transferred to de.wikipedia. The rational behind it is en:Lex loci protectionis meaning that even for pictures taken in foreign countries German laws would apply if protection would be sought in Germany. As I have no idea about the policies on hr.wikipedia, I won't make a judgement regarding this case (it could also be that they have a edp). --Isderion (talk) 15:13, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
It seems the copyright infringement is due to missing FOP for these images, not that the uploader didn't shoot the photo by himself. :hr may eventually have an exemption policy for such cases, especially as some countries (don't know whether it's true in this case) allow non-commercial-FOP use, which wouldn't be allowed on Commons of course. --Túrelio (talk) 15:13, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
We have PDI (translates as exemptions policy doctrine) which covers usage of non-commercial or low-res fair-use pictures wherever that is appropriate. Only thing I'm not sure is our templates system, I know that we made all which we deemed necessary some 6 or 7 years ago (when we first voted PDI), but maybe some additions and refinements are possible or needed. To Surtsicna "I hate to assume bad faith", you should hate it a bit more. SpeedyGonsales (talk) 17:28, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
"Hate it a bit more"? The uploader did not seem to know much about FOP copyright policies,[10] so why should it be assumed that he or she knew about exemptions to it? Whatever. No harm done if the images are OK at hr.wikipedia, but I am not convinced that I was wrong to suspect the uploader of trying to bypass the results of these discussions. Thank you all for responding so swiftly! Surtsicna (talk) 19:27, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
It's very sad that many pictures (including much older than my pictures) was "ignored" so many years without any warning. I'm talking about pictures from 2008 and 2009, nominated for deletion just like my pictures. Four or five years on commons without warning? Someone that should work his job has failed. Yes, we are volunteers here, but four or five years? Come on, that is not four or five days or months. The only reason I've uploaded pictures on hr.wiki is to save those pictures, not any kind of bypassing and bad faiht, as you told at the beginning of this thread.--MaGa 19:52, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
P.S. As Speedy mentioned, we have PDI, so your comment for my upload on hr.wiki was not correct.--MaGa 19:56, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
@Surtsicna, 201306061927: "I hate to $VERB, but" is so transparant. If you want to $VERB, don't say you hate to $VERB. $VERB or don't $VERB, but spare us the excuses. --80.114.178.7 00:05, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Uploads

Just spent 30 minues tying to upload "Scandinavian Hotel, Liverpool, 06 June 2013.jpg" and getting the very helpful message "bad-prefix" finnaly twigged it doesn't like the first 4 letters being Scan. So I changed it to "The Scandinavian Hotel, 06 June 2013.jpg" this must cause some confusion, is there a way of making the error message more enlightening. Upload was via commonist. User:Irate 19:59, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Scan is not blacklisted, it is just on MediaWiki:Filename-prefix-blacklist which just produces a warning on the upload form ("The name of the file you are uploading begins with "Scan", which is a non-descriptive name typically assigned automatically by digital cameras. Please choose a more descriptive name for your file."). To proof it, I just uploaded File:Scandinavian Hotel, Liverpool, 06 June 2013.jpg, but I did not use the commonist--Isderion (talk) 01:06, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
Ta. It maybe the way the API works.JIrate (talk)

A category for Deletion requests closed without a comment

See Commons:Categories for discussion/2013/06/Category:Deletion requests closed without a comment Penyulap ☏ 22:19, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand - Darragh_MacAnthony_images

In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the WMF office which should not be undone. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me.

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Darragh_MacAnthony_images. Thank you! Jalexander (talk) 23:26, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

June 07

Feedback wanted on Commons brochure draft

A few months ago, I posted about the "Welcome to Commons" brochure I've been working on, and the community feedback was extremely helpful. We now have a draft of the designed version, so please share any thoughts you have on how to make it better. The main target audience is newcomers who are learning about Commons for the first time.

Commons brochure draft, 2013-06-06, tentatively titled "Illustrating Wikipedia: A Guide to Contributing Content to Wikimedia Commons"

A few things to note:

  • The current title is Illustrating Wikipedia: A Guide to Contributing Content to Wikimedia Commons, but we're open to better suggestions.
  • Neither the design nor the content are final at this point, so if you want to propose significant changes, now is the time.
  • Many minor design and text changes will happen in the next revision, but if you notice anything that needs to be adjusted, please comment.
  • There is simply placeholder content for the section on adding images using the Visual Editor; once screenshots of the interface are stable, that content will be added in.

You can discuss the draft at Commons talk:Welcome to Commons brochure. Thanks!--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:15, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Removal of Finnish translation of Licensing

Why was the Finnish language translation of COM:L replaced with the original page in English? ([11], [12]) The only thing that is missing IMHO from the Finnish page is URAA. Is that the only reason why the whole translation was removed? I personally translated the whole page into Finnish and this is the way Commons says thanks to me. /á(!) 20:06, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the translation! , see: klick. Regards--Steinsplitter (talk) 20:16, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
This is pure vandalism. I am not going to spend three days making a page combatible with some tool. Just dumped the Finnish translation in the first field. Doesn't anyone realize that there are hundreds of pages that should be made compatible, and that's just too much of work to do? I am going to do this kind of dumping in the future too, when the page has already been translated. /á(!) 20:48, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I agree with you--Steinsplitter (talk) 20:50, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
Dumped also COM:PS. The translated non-compatible page serves the reader as well as the compatible would. Having no translation at all due to a tool makes me feel like this would be a novel by Kafka. /á(!) 21:14, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

June 08

"Error 503 Service Unavailable" when trying to access images

Few minutes ago I run into some images with no thumbnails in articles or on our File pages, so I clicked on the raw image and got

Error 503 Service Unavailable
Service Unavailable
Guru Meditation:
XID: 627211266

Then a few minutes latter images were fine. Any ideas? --Jarekt (talk) 14:38, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

confirm. Had the same error. --Isderion (talk) 14:45, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
Some thumbnails selectively missing or very slow to appear on category and image pages. Dankarl (talk) 14:49, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
confirmed. Slick's bot also runs into this error quite often: 1 --McZusatz (talk) 14:51, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
This should clear up soon; engineers were "making some changes" I'm told, but I think they are done now and things should start working again.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:19, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
The problem persists; when will it be resolved? V85 (talk) 15:25, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
It's working for me now. Is anyone else still experiencing 503 errors or thumbnail problems?--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:54, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
If this still happens, a specific URL/link to an image and a notice on which continent you are located would be helful. Thanks, --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 00:46, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

By the way "Guru Meditation" is a geeky reference to old Commodore Amiga errormessages (if anyone was wondering)... AnonMoos (talk) 07:37, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

A Problem I have no idea how to Fix.

When I first joined Wikipedia, I was unaware of Commons and uploaded pictures to Wikipedia instead. I have just discovered this picture, which I uploaded on Wikipedia during those early days. However my name is not anywhere to be seen on the file. I don't have a clue how to prove its my picture or how to approach the editor who has uploaded it onto commons. I do not want to copyright the picture, but having my name as the source of the image would be good. Wiki ian 11:35, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

The log at en.wikipedia shows that you uploaded the file before it was uploaded to nl.wikipedia. Therefore, I would presume that the uploader at nl.wikipedia wrongfully claimed authorship or that the authorship information was lost in the process of transferring the file to Commons. You could ask the deleting admin (en:User:Quadell) to compare the license, authorship and date of the deleted file and the file at Commons, which they should have done before deleting, anyhow. --rimshottalk 12:06, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for the help. Unfortunately, (en:User:Quadell) has not responded to my request. Are there any other alternatives? Wiki ian 23:22, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
You certainly can correct the information on the description page (author, date, etc., everything that should be changed). The EXIF data matches that of your other files of the same era and there's no reason why anyone who is aware of the situation should doubt your word. The problem is the messy transfer information that remains associated with this file from its upload history, which may complicate the task every time someone would want to verify the origin of the file and the validity of the informations in the future. I suppose that one way to get rid of the confusing upload history, if that's what you're asking, could be to copy the file (if you haven't kept a copy), request the speedy deletion of the file from Commons (you might link to this discussion for a rationale) and reupload the file to Commons. I don't know if the sysops would find that request acceptable or not, but you can give it a try. -- Asclepias (talk) 01:05, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
That seems quite reasonable, have it deleted by an admin who is online at the same time as ian, and then ian uploads it again immediately, fills the file page in howsoever he wishes, and copy this conversation to the file talkpage, OR refer to this conversation in an OTRS ticket so that it can be checked when necessary, and has the appropriate air of legitimacy, without the ugly history. On the file page he may wish to fill in his original upload place and date to finish it off. Penyulap ☏ 01:40, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
Likely, the nl.wp user copy-pasted the PD-self tag, without care to do the necessary adaptations to fix the misleading result on nl.wp. And then a Commons uploader copied that wrong result from nl.wp to Commons. (Since then, the PD-self template has been deleted from nl.wp [13].) -- Asclepias (talk) 01:05, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

June 09

Proposal to enable Help:Gadget-HotCat for all logged users

Hi, please see COM:VPP#Enabling HotCat for all logged users ?. Jean-Fred (talk) 15:26, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Small business portraits and work-for-hire

Recently, with my en.wiki admin hat on, I've been helping a user with navigating the murky world of Commons permissions and OTRS. I am an OTRSer but am not active on Commons permissions stuff (I answer English Wikipedia questions) - the issue raised was one of portraits by small business proprietors.

I want to get Commons users' take on the copyright and good practice for a scenario like this:

User A comes to Commons and uploads a picture of himself and claims the copyright belongs either to him or to his business. It gets challenged and he is asked to send proof of copyright to OTRS. He sends a license grant from an email address that OTRS accept is coming from the business. But they do not accept he owns the copyright as he is not the photographer, he's the subject.

In a situation like this, it is very likely that the photograph was done as a work-for-hire - the photographer was hired, and his work was transferred on a work-for-hire basis. There may be no paperwork showing this work-for-hire, or the paperwork may have been lost.

My question is, in this kind of scenario - a small business getting a portrait of the proprietor of that business, usually on a work-for-hire basis - how much verification should we need? Is one person from the company verifying that it is a work for hire and releasing the photo under a free license enough? Or does an OTRSer need to go further and get, say, a scanned copy of some written proof of the copyright transfer between photographer and client? Should OTRSers have some common sense in this - there's a difference between the level of verification one might go through if Madonna or Britney Spears emailed us and said they had a photo to license out under CC than if the owner of a London pub uploads a photo of him standing outside the pub.

Thoughts on how we should deal with such scenarios are welcome. —Tom Morris (talk) 20:15, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

In these scenarios, based on my experience both on OTRS and on Commons, we sometimes (verging on often) find that when the photographer is eventually asked, they reply with a no, they did not take the photographs with the intention of them being on the basis of free commercial reuse by anyone apart from the business or individual they were taking the photographs for. When the photographer is an employee one might be more relaxed about it. The precautionary principle applies and one would expect an OTRS volunteer to ask for a confirmation email from the photographer, or someone verifiably acting as the photographer's agent or their estate. --Fæ (talk) 20:25, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
This is one of those cases where we get het up about hypothetical copyright instead of just applying a little common sense in my opinion. The answer, in the real world, is of course "nobody cares". I would suggest that OTRS should accept theses sorts of things in cases like Tom's example, although the subject in such a case could of course just get an employee to take another photo and release it under a Commons-compatible license, and if the photographer uploads it themselves it saves the need for OTRS at all. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:44, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
In the real world, professional photographers who make money off their photographs can get really hot about people listing them as public domain. We could "nobody cares" most of the photos found on the Internet and wait for DCMA notices, but we don't.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:53, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
In my real-world experience, portraits made for small businesses are not done as work-for-hire, and if they are, then the business will have a written contract explicitly stating this fact. They can scan and email the contract to you as proof. They commonly believe that they own the copyright, but they are simply mistaken most of the time. (For very large corporations, the photographer is likely to have been a regular employee, working in the business' own media studio, and it almost always is work-for-hire.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:34, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

User:Flickr upload bot

This bot often seems to fail these days, leaving a reviewed file information page with no image. I've added the ones I've found to Category:Image pages created for Flickr upload bot without files. Does anyone have a clue about what's wrong?

The files can be repaired by manually uploading them from Flickr and then requesting {{Flickrreview}}. --Stefan4 (talk) 20:22, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, I tried this with two images and upload gets interrupted by an identical duplicate message. I assume the others are similar (or the usual embedded HTML code). Bryan probable needs to optimize the Bot further so the images are checked for duplicates prior to filepage creation. --Denniss (talk) 07:29, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
Did it identify the duplicate? Sometimes the image gets uploaded to a separate file with no text, in that case the simple fix is to copy the text from the imageless page to the one with the image. Dankarl (talk) 14:39, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

June 10

Error generating thumbnail

I requested to rename a file. After it is renamed to Jangmi 2008-09-27 0445Z.jpg, all thumbnails of the file are broken. I have tried to purge but became in vain. However, nobody has ever replaced the file. -- Meow 02:14, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Deleted + undeleted and it's back again. Some kind of corruption during the move. --Denniss (talk) 07:21, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Check if a page is in a supercategory

Is there a quick way to check if a particular page on commons is in a particular parent category. I have a set of WikimediaCommons URLs, pointing to images of animals. I want to check which of these are in Category:Animal_distribution_maps (i.e. are not photographs, but maps).

I'm not sure, but it's possible I need something like the "article categories" list provided by catgraph but not outputting a plot, just a plaintext list of supercategories which I can check against. Having an upper limit > 100 categories would be useful too.

HYanWong (talk) 15:39, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Scripts broken

Hotcat, category [+] expansion and other scripts don't work for me. Firefox 21, Monobook skin.

Webconsole: 

[18:57:53.057] SyntaxError: syntax error @ http://bits.wikimedia.org/commons.wikimedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki%2CSpinner%7Cjquery.triggerQueueCallback%2CloadingSpinner%2CmwEmbedUtil%7Cmw.MwEmbedSupport&only=scripts&skin=monobook&version=20130527T163243Z:129
[18:57:54.303] ReferenceError: importScript is not defined @ http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-GalleryDetails.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&73936509:21
[18:57:54.339] ReferenceError: mw is not defined @ http://bits.wikimedia.org/commons.wikimedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=site&only=scripts&skin=monobook&*:1
[18:57:54.370] ReferenceError: mw is not defined @ http://bits.wikimedia.org/commons.wikimedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=user&only=scripts&skin=monobook&user=MKFI&version=20130113T094102Z&*:1
[18:57:54.401] ReferenceError: mw is not defined @ http://bits.wikimedia.org/commons.wikimedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=user.groups&skin=monobook&user=MKFI&version=20130527T164124Z&*:1

Anyone else having problems? MKFI (talk) 16:02, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, MPF had and {{Purge client cache}} resolved the issue. -- Rillke(q?) 18:18, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
I've got the same problem and the reaload doesn't cure it. I'm using FireFox 21 and Cologne.JIrate (talk) 21:45, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
In Firefox, you can press Ctrl+⇧ Shift+del. In the first control (the select element, on top), select all, then make sure only to check the cache checkbox in the details (remove other checkmarks!). -- Rillke(q?) 22:11, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
Done that no joy.JIrate (talk) 22:47, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
Just logged on on a public machine. Not working here either IE 8. Has mediaWiki been upgrded recently? One of the devleopers has a tendency to remove features he cannot see the point of without telling anyone. JIrate (talk) 18:12, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
Cache purging fixed things for me. MKFI (talk) 19:04, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
It just seems to be on Cologne Blue.JIrate (talk) 19:35, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
Acually any ski other than the default and HotCat for example does not work.JIrate (talk) 19:47, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Question on rules on getting hi-res images for Commons

Got a few questions on getting hi-res images for the Commons. Hopefully they can all be answered:

1. Is it troublesome if I got permission from the person responsible for the hi-res image via Flickr on Flickrmail? I e-mailed the permission and yet, I was told to forward the stuff via e-mail. My problem is most of the time, the persons responsible for the image don't have any other contact e-mail aside from the FlickrMail.

2. Is there a different procedure in getting permission from an editor of a photo, especially if it's not on Flickr? I haven't done this yet and I want to know if it's any different. Especially if I need to upload before I send the permission to the appropriate e-mail with the OTRS ticket thing.

3. If I have the chance to get permission for an image prior to upload to Commons (Using this as an example and this image as another example), do I have to upload the image even though it has watermarks on it or do I have to wait for a proper image without them?

4. There may be a point that I need to get a hi-res image from someone in a related forum as a last resort (such as a gallery or maybe a post, I don't know). Looking at this for example, does the license need to be Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0?

Ominae (talk) 03:42, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not entirely expert on this (especially your first question) but here is my attempt at an answer:
1. I presume that you could copy-paste forward the FlickrMail per OTRS. If the OTRS people have doubts, I presume they could contact the Flickr user to verify.
2. I'm not sure what you mean by "the editor of a photo" but if they are a copyright holder of any sort, then the procedure would be the same.
3. You can upload with watermarks and mark with {{Watermark}}. Obviously, if you get a cleaner copy later, you can upload the better version to the same filename.
4. As for any other photo on Commons, the license needs to be an acceptable license. Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 is certainly acceptable; is there another you'd rather use? As long as it meets the specified criteria, it could be a different license. - Jmabel ! talk 15:41, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
For 2, I may have to get a hi-res photo from a non-flickr site. When I say editor, he/she would be the copyright holder of the said photo. As for 4, I have no problem if ShareAlike 3.0 is okay. It's just finding out which licese is alright. Thanks. 121.54.44.135 16:04, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Confirmation of PD status of these publicly-available NSA pictures

I found a collection of publicly-available pictures from the NSA in its official Photo Gallery:

Is it safe to assume they were made by the agency? WhisperToMe (talk) 08:04, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I'd think so. Many of them seem to be pictures of the NSA's museum. Carl Lindberg (talk) 13:48, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Upload a new version of this file

I want to upload a new version of this file because we have a special logo tomorrow.But i can't upload:"This page is currently protected from editing because it is transcluded in the following pages, which are protected with the "cascading" option enabled:".who can help me before tomorrow?--DannyChan (talk) 14:34, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

If no native Chinese speaker steps by, you'll have to point to a relevant discussion at zh-wiki that this change is authorized. Also, this is a request for COM:AN but if it is urgent, please ask at #wikimedia-commons webchat -- Rillke(q?) 15:04, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

big filename

File:GAS STATION ATTENDANTS PEER OVER THEIR "OUT OF GAS" SIGN IN PORTLAND, ON DAY BEFORE THE STATE'S REQUESTED SATURDAY... - NARA - 555434.jpg

Hi everybody,

I found this file whose title is far too long and uppercased, could you rename it in a simpler and lowercased way ? thank you in advance 81.185.159.169 07:51, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

You can tag the file with {{Rename}}. — SMUconlaw (talk) 08:05, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
 Oppose, as it is the original title of th work and is descriptive, thereby in agreement with policy. --Túrelio (talk) 08:09, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
seems reasonable, like screaming in a library. Penyulap ☏ 09:08, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
I see nothing wrong with renaming it to "File:Gas station attendants peer over their "out of gas" sign in Portland - NARA - 555434.jpg", which would eliminate the incomplete sentence, and would be slightly shorter, just as descriptive, and less jarring on the eyes. — SMUconlaw (talk) 12:03, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
True, nothing wrong with that filename either, but we only rename if the original filename is wrong. That's not the case. Multichill (talk) 12:17, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
I'd support adding exceptionally long or cumbersome filenames as a legitimate reason for renaming. In my local public library, the computers have right-click copy-paste ability disabled (for security), and anyone working there and wanting to use that file on a wiki page would have to type it out manually: not a pleasant task. - MPF (talk) 14:03, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
Does drag&drop work? Disabling the clipboard is ill-considered. It only impairs accessibility. If you really want to steal copyrighted material, you will be also able without clipboard enabled. You may quote me. -- Rillke(q?) 18:31, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

let's find the policy that says we can't do sensible stuff and mess with it. Penyulap ☏ 15:02, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Since we wind up truncating the NARA titles anyway, I do not see the harm in truncating or paraphrasing to make a logical, readable title. The important thing is to preserve information (who, what, where, occasionally when) including the NARA number. The entire original title is, or should be, in the description. The one thing we lose is the quick indication the unreadable title provides that the file was part of the "official" upload.
There is, however, also the issue of respect for the judgement and efforts of the original uploaders (who may be defending the wishes of the NARA archivists?) Dankarl (talk) 15:19, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
  •  Oppose renaming: It appears to be discouraged by Commons:File renaming; it might break the Commons:National Archives and Records Administration system; it would have to be done manually to tens of thousands of files; and lack of copy-and-paste is an isolated, intentionally and artificially created problem (granted, by someone other than the user victimized by it). In detail:
    1. Commons:File renaming#Which files should not be renamed? says that, usually, "Files should NOT be renamed only because the filename is not English and/or is not correctly capitalized". "It's ugly" is not a reason to change a filename that is true and doesn't violate Commons policy.
    2. It might break/desync the NARA upload system. There are tens of thousands of NARA images on Commons with names like this, as part of a large and (as far as I know) ongoing donation project. The template for all of these images asks users to not modify anything except adding an extra description= line. If the information tag is fragile, I suspect the filename may be as well. Remember that there is a .tif and a .jpg for each image, and they don't always get uploaded at the same time; there are still lots of them that only have one and not the other uploaded; and, it's important to note, lots of NARA archives that don't have either yet on Commons. I don't know if changing the name of one of the files (or both of the files) will make the upload program think archives are missing when they're not. (Remember that wiki page names are case-sensitive, and the upload checker can be checking for exact existence of the file, not a search result.)
    3. The decision would affect tens of thousands of files, some in duplicate. NARA filenames are based on the original file descriptions, which, at least for older images, were in all upper-case. There is no good automated way to determine what the true capitalization for those words is; humans would have to go through and rename each one, with the resulting arguments about which capitalization is an error. Back to point #1: "Files should NOT be renamed only because the filename is not English and/or is not correctly capitalized".
    4. Lack of copy-and-paste is a corner case, and is the computer owner's fault anyway. What kind of "security" is disabling copy-and-paste? Sounds like a political problem to me. Copy-and-paste has been a standard system feature on every computer since before the world wide web was mainstream (mid-1990s).
    I also note that someone has submitted a rename request on this file, with a false rename reason number. It's extremely bad etiquette, and possibly against policy, to try to end-run around a discussion (like this one) already in progress, in hopes that someone will claim the issue is moot now even though it isn't. I'm striking the previous sentence, because it appears that the user was told above to use {{Rename}} and may not be experienced enough to know that we don't "just do" things while they are controversial and in the middle of a discussion. --Closeapple (talk) 23:58, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Amsterdam Museum CC-BY-SA 3.0

Picture from Amsterdam Museum, CC-BY-SA-3.0

Happily surprised I happened to note that the collection of Amsterdam Museum has got the CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence. This applies to photographs of objects (including 3D objects, like the nice marble portret) as well as text. I uploaded one or two images today, but perhaps this could better be done by some bot! It is a great collection of the history of Amsterdam, not only paintings but lots of objects.

Link to the website: http://am.adlibhosting.com/amonline/search.aspx

Regards to you all, Elly (talk) 15:54, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Through automated translation, I tried to read the Gebruiksvoorwaarden (terms of use) section of the page Collectie van het Amsterdam Museum online, but the result of the automated translation is not good. Could you please confirm what that section says and if it applies to the images? Does it say that they have withdrawn the CC license offer until further notice? (... hebben wij als tijdelijke maatregel de Creative Commons licentie teruggetrokken. Etc.) Is that not a problem? Also, they place an icon «public domain» that links to CC-by-sa. It all seems confusing. -- Asclepias (talk) 16:25, 10 June 2013 (UTC)


Yes, I didn't read that. I saw the CC-BY-SA 3.0 on every page and picture. I will translate the terms of use, as far as my English permits:
Gebruiksvoorwaarden
Terms of use
Het Amsterdam Museum streeft ernaar om zoveel mogelijk afbeeldingen onder de Creative Commons Licentie Naamsvermelding / Gelijk delen vrij te geven. Wij waren van mening dat wij voor alle door ons gepubliceerde werken goede afspraken met de rechthebbenden hadden gemaakt. We zijn onlangs benaderd door een partij die dit bestrijdt. Om te voorkomen dat wij ten onrechte rechten vrij geven, hebben wij als tijdelijke maatregel de Creative Commons licentie teruggetrokken.
The Amsterdam Museum has the intention to free as many images as possible under the CC-BY-SA licence. We were of the opinion that we have made good agreements with the "owners" (like photographers or other others, Elly) of each work. However, a little while ago we have been in contact with some party who is disagreeing on this point. In order to prevent us to give a free licence not in agreement with the "owners" we have temporarily decied to revoke the CC licence.
Om technische redenen lukt het ons niet om onderscheid te maken tussen omstreden en onomstreden werken. Wij zullen zo snel mogelijk alle werken waar wij zeker van zijn, weer vrijgeven. Tot die tijd vragen wij u, als u een werk wilt gebruiken, contact met ons op te nemen (emailadres). Wij zoeken dan voor u uit of wij dit werk vrij kunnen geven. Zonder deze toestemming kunt u de afbeelding helaas niet gebruiken. Alle tekst bij de werken kunt u vrij gebruiken.
Due to technical reasons, we are unable to distinguish between controversial and not-controversial works. We will relicence as soon as possible all works which we are sure of. Until this time, we ask, if you want to use a work, to get into touch (email adress). We will find out for you whether we can give the work free (under CC-BY-SA). Without this permission we regret to say you may not use the work. All text, however, is free for use.
Note: this is extremely friendly, you can read in between the lines that they are regretting what has happened. I hope it will be solved soon. The latest update of this page is from 20 februari 2013. If somebody thinks it is usefull I could e-mail the museum to ask for a planning. I could do that if somebody plans to make an automated upload. Elly (talk) 18:02, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes, it would certainly be very useful if somebody would contact the museum and and ask some news about what is going on with this situation and if they have an idea of when it might be sorted out. Because, in the present state of their website, with the weird "public-domain-CC-by-sa" tag still confusingly hanging on some pages, and considering in particular the interdiction stated in their terms of use, which is meant to contradict and trump any offer of a CC license, we cannot reasonably copy and keep images from there in good faith. To conform to the present terms of use, we should ask and obtain from them a specific clearance by OTRS for each image that we want to bring on Commons. If we are interested in a large number of images, that could soon become tiresome (for them, more than for us). For the moment you could ask them to confirm specifically at least if the images you have already uploaded have a CC license or not. -- Asclepias (talk) 13:47, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

June 11

How to make an image file more searchable

I can't figure out how to link the image file I uploaded to a page. It would be great if files became more searchable by including words in their discription in the search engine. That way, people could find a file by Google searching a phrase relating to its description even if there are no pages that link to it. -- 21:41, 11 June 2013‎ User:Blackbombchu

That capability is the norm, I'm not sure what problem you are having; maybe just delay in getting your description into the search data. I linked the wp article you mentioned, you can look at the syntax in edit mode to see how. You could probably add a more informative description of what you have done and what it illustrates. Dankarl (talk) 22:00, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
I also added category:Mathematical diagrams. You should move it to an appropriate subcategory and check to see where else it should go. Dankarl (talk) 22:05, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

June 12

Two images

Could someone fix these two images: File:US Army 51027 EFMP energizes exceptional education.jpg and File:US Army 51035 Leaders tackle tough issue.jpg. User:Armbrust (Local talk - en.Wikipedia talk) 09:16, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Request added at Commons:Graphic_Lab/Photography_workshop#Two_images. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 09:47, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

About the text in File:Licensing tutorial en.svg

In File:Licensing tutorial en.svg the statement that a work should usually be over 150 years old to be PD is a bit exaggerated. 150 year old works from EU and US are always PD. The text in parentheses could perhaps be replaced with "usually: author died over 70 years ago". There could be also one green box more that would explain shortly that EU-works are always PD 70 years pma (well, almost always (URAA)) and pre-1923 US-works are too always PD. /á(!) 08:57, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Not almost always; works by authors who died after 1926 from long term life+70 countries are not PD in the US unless they were published before 1923, which is important for Commons. I object to "usually: author died over 70 years ago"; by population, the largest counties in the world are China, India, the US and Indonesia which are life+50, life+60, its own mess, and life+50 respectively. Perhaps just "varies depending on the source nation, life of author and date of publication; see COM:L."--Prosfilaes (talk) 10:41, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
Would "Author died over 70 years ago, and published before 1923 (not France, Russia, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala and Samoa). For other cases see COM:L." be a good text? In this case the work is always PD, as far as I have understood. The text have to be short but still contain as much information as possible. In most cases the user would see already from this text that the work is PD, and at least the text is way more informing than the 150 years -text. /á(!) 14:06, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
Changed the text. Feel free to make it better. /á(!) 16:31, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
Add Spain and remove Mexico, please. Spain is 80 years p.m.a. for authors who died before 7 December 1987. Mexico is 100 years p.m.a., but because of old laws, works are in the public domain in Mexico if the author died more than 30 years before 1982, so {{PD-old-70}} currently holds in Mexico, and this will remain the case for more than half a decade. --Stefan4 (talk) 13:49, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Dating old postcards

Often there is no clue as to the date of the picture, not even a posting date. I notice that some old postcards have the warning:

Not all countries accept messages on the back side of a postcard. Or in French: Tous les Pays étrangers n'acceptent pas de la Correspondance au recto (Se renseigner a la Poste)

This message I only notice on pre World War I postcards. Is there some cut off date when such messages are no longer necessary? This would be usefull in dating.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:35, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Sounds strange to me. If, for instance, a US postcard is from 1922 according to the message, I don't understand why the message would not be accepted as a "proof" of date. Is there a court decision in some country where the message was not accepted as "proof"? /á(!) 14:17, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
  • á, I believe you've misunderstood the question. ST is saying that there was a period where this was routinely printed on postcards, and if we can know when this was commonly done, that might be a help in dating those postcards. - Jmabel ! talk 15:43, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
One thing is the date when the postcard was printed/manufactored, another is the date when the photo(s) used to illustrate the postcard was taken (obviously earlier, but could be much earlier), and finally something else is the date the postcard was written and mailed — the latter is obviously the latest date, and often easy to pinpoint via the sender’s own dating and/or the postal date stamp. That notice about «correspondance au recto» to make a postcard UPU compliant allows to date the manufactoring date of a postcard, but it is still possible that printers would keep adding it to their postcards a coupole years past the time it was not mandatory/accurate any longr, as well as, maybe, some postcards may have been manufactored without that notice, maybe those not intended for foreign correspondance, or by simple oversight. -- Tuválkin ✉ 01:33, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
Dating postcards is not exact - unless you have both sides when there is almost always a postmark - or if the message has a date. But there are some pretty good rules of thumb, e.g. if you have an "undivided back" card, it is almost certainly before 1907. Note that postcards are always "published" - none were produced as a one-off to sit in somebody's personal album. They were also generally not copyrighted (need both sides) See en:Wikipedia and Tips for determining when a U.S. postcard was published. Smallbones (talk) 02:00, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
For date of creation (needed for {{PD-Australia}}, {{PD-Sweden-photo}} and similar templates), check what buildings you see, if there are buildings on the photo. Are there recent buildings missing from the postcard? Are there demolished buildings which are present on it?
Date of publication is more tricky. If you have access to the back of the postcard, and if there's a dated letter there, then it must obviously have been published before the letter was written. --Stefan4 (talk) 13:54, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Newbie

What easy software can i use to alter a map? I'm a complete newbie so give me somthing simple. I'm specifically talking about this one. For instance Senegal and Chad are majority Sufi. Indonesia and Kazakhstan are majority non-denominational. I don't mind if someone else fixes it. Pass a Method (talk) 16:31, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

  • It's a PNG, so you could edit a copy in almost any graphics program. For something like this, even a minimal program like Microsoft Paint would do the job. The "king" of free graphics programs is GIMP, but I can't really call that simple.
  • Whichever program you would use, you would download the full-res image to your computer, edit it there, and upload the altered version. - Jmabel ! talk 00:02, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Pass a Method -- Sufi and "non-denominational" are not generally-recognized maðahib. Traditionally among Sunnis, the term maðhab as shown on the map refers more to the norms used by local legal scholars or judges, than to people's sect or denomination affiliation as such... AnonMoos (talk) 07:20, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

June 13

cutoff date (old) per country for anonymous pictures

I normaly use the EU-anonymous tag for European postcards, but perhaps there are exceptions. Is there a list? There is documentation for FoP cases. I am looking for Portugal. Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:46, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

If the photographer is anonymous and it was published more than 70 years ago, then it should be in the public domain in the entire European Union with possibly two exceptions:
  • French law extends copyright if the photographer died for France in certain wars. No idea if this also applies to anonymous photos. I hope not since it would otherwise be impossible to know whether any photo is OK or not as you can't easily tell how an anonymous photographer died.
  • German law might require that the anonymous photographer died more than 70 years ago if the photo is an artistic photo according to the old German copyright law, assuming that the photo was taken before 1 July 1995.
  • Spanish law might require that the anonymous photographer died more than 80 years ago if the anonymous photographer died before 7 December 1987. If the anonymous photographer died on 7 December 1987 or later, then 70 years from publication is enough.
For URAA matters, the cutoff date is different in different EU countries. In Italy, Poland, Slovenia and the Nordic countries, you will find that lots of more recent postcards already are in the public domain. There must of course also not be any FOP issues with the photos. --Stefan4 (talk) 14:12, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

June 14

IRS Star Trek Parody

Would this be public domain licensed as a product of the United States federal government? -- Cirt (talk) 04:06, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this work is public domain. However, it also incorporates copyrighted and trademarked material. A public domain work can still infringe on the rights of others depending on how it is used. It may be the case that the government itself is infringing on someone's rights by distributing this, but in any case, because it incorporates copyrighted music and trademarked logos it does not meet Wikimedia Commons guidelines for sharing here. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:24, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
Couldn't those be seen as de minimis compared to the scope of the entire work itself? -- Cirt (talk) 03:14, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

NASA images from Voyager National Air and Space Laserdisc 5 and 6

Hello everybody.

I'd like to bulk upload a large number of NASA images (i.e. public domain) that are archived on a couple of Laserdiscs (see here) (approx 120k images). Doing this manually will probably take the rest of my natural life. The images will be limited to TV resolution (720 x 480), and I will probably upload as PNGs.

Some of content of the discs is likely replicated elsewhere online, but I believe that there are a lot of images here that aren't available on the web. For example, the early Ranger program, I think we have about 10-30 images currently uploaded. I found approx 600 here: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/ranger/ but the disc has approx 1,400. I believe other programs covered, Surveyor, Lunar Orbitor, Apollo, X-15, Space Shuttle, will also include images not otherwise available online.

I have several questions:

  • Any objections ?
  • Does anyone have a utility or perl/python script to pull out video frames from a uncompressed AVI as PNGs ?
  • Does anyone have a script for bulk uploading, adding categorization, etc ?
  • Do I need bot permissions to execute such an upload ?, if so is it easier to get someone to do it (volunteers ?)

Megapixie (talk) 07:46, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

  • It's 720x480, but those aren't square pixels. PNG supports non-square pixels in theory, but the standard explicitly states that viewers don't have to support them correctly. They're 4:3, so you can store them as 640x480 or 720x540.
Extracting them isn't too hard; if nothing else, mplayer can dump to PNG as video out. It's going to you the video feed, which I'm guessing offers each picture for some length of screen time (and number of frames), and someone is going to have to figure out which of several very similar but with different analog noise to upload. I don't know how bad the noise on the original Laserdisc was.
I'd recommend you upload the AVIs to the Internet Archive. That's the easiest way of making it available to everyone here to poke at, and they've got a much easier way to deal with large video files then we do.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:27, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
  • You can also use en:FFmpeg to easily extract single images from a video. E.g. the command ffmpeg -i inputfile.avi -r 1 -f image2 image-%4d.png will extract one image per second (-r 1) to numbered filenames starting from image-0000.png. You can omit the -r parameter to extract every image from the video. There are a multitude of other options (start/end point of extraction, output resolution, etc.) to tune it to your needs.
Regarding noise: If the images are shown for some time, one could do some temporal noise filtering across those frames to greatly improve quality without loosing resolution.--Patrick87 (talk) 09:34, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I believe choosing the images to upload rather than breaking videos and uploading them is a lot better. Commons accepts videos, maybe you can upload both the archive and your own selections from it. The NASA repositories of images are next-to-impossible to navigate and find what you want, A similar collection on commons wouldn't be as useful as a properly chosen and categorised collection. Penyulap ☏ 19:51, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Photos on order

I want to upload a photograph of my own. But as it is mine, i have asked a cousin of mine to click the snap. In this case, the photograph is taken on my order. Won't i be able to release the photo under any license that i want? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 06:15, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

In such cases where someone else press the button to take a picture I envisioned and set up, I provided two authors and used license of my choosing after informing my coauthor. --Jarekt (talk) 12:47, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
I also have heard of this response and this works, but there is no clear answer to the ownership question in this case. It is best to mention all creators. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:23, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
Usually, the person who presses the button on the camera is the photographer and holds the copyright. However, you can create a contract with your cousin that says he is assigning the copyright to you. This is very usual for businesses whose employees are hired to take pictures.
(About the "usually": if you do everything about creating the image except physically pressing the button—choosing the place, arranging the items in it, setting up the lighting, choosing the camera angles, etc.—so that the contribution of the person pressing the button is no more than you would get from a machine that pressed the button when you couldn't reach it, then you are the author and you own the copyright already.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:16, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
The second paragraph might be true in some jurisdictions for an inanimate subject with artificial -- constant -- lighting -- but for any situation where the subject could move, smile, frown, tilt his head, or whatever, then the person who pushes the button is clearly the copyright holder. The creativity lies in pushing the button at the right moment, not in the setup.
With that understood, we are generally willing to accept an image taken by a friend or relative as "own work" if it is going to be used on a User Page and not likely anywhere else..     Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 21:40, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
So are you saying that if Cindy Sherman had someone else physically click the shutter, that shutter-clicker would be entitled to the copyright on the work? Because I doubt any court would agree with that. - Jmabel ! talk 23:59, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
The point is moot, because you know as well as I that anyone who pushes the button for Cindy Sherman has a work for hire agreement in place. But yes, that's exactly what I am saying. In portrait photography, pushing the button at exactly the right moment is certainly more than half of the creative effort in the photograph. At the very least, in the absence of a work for hire agreement, it would be a joint work between the person who set up the shot and the person who pushed the button. .     Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 10:14, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
My point wasn't about Sherman as an individual. If I've set up a photo of myself -- costuming, positioning, etc. -- and I use someone as basically a human tripod and autotimer because I don't have a tripod with me, I absolutely will claim copyright. - Jmabel ! talk 15:21, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
And I mention two people as authors. --Jarekt (talk) 03:25, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Commons:We miss you

Thanks to User:Túrelio Commons has now an equivalent to en:Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians. Feel free to add appropriate usernames to the list and link to this site from the right places within the commons and help namespace. --Isderion (talk) 22:22, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Global Replace Tool

File:GlobalReplace 0.1a.png
User:Fastily/GlobalReplace

Hi everyone, I have created a new tool to assist filemovers in the field of cross-wiki renames. Please help me test it!  :) -FASTILY 23:48, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Can you make a java webstart version (like Commons:Commonist#Easiest_way)? --Isderion (talk) 00:03, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
Ugh I hate playing with XML. I'll try later. -FASTILY 00:23, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

June 15

Juicy drama!

Bait and switch: could I get some advice on uploading a large number of images?

I have a CD of about 300 high quality scans of the De re metallica woodcuts. They are intrinsically artistic as well as being pretty important in the history of science (we end up using them on many mining/metallurgy articles at Wiki).

Right now, Commons has about 60 of the illustrations, so we are missing the bulk of them. Also, they are pretty disorganized (can't tell from what part of book, etc. and vary in source, quality etc. [But don't worry, I will leave them be...some have reasons for being duplicates (e.g. original editions) or cropped or the like. (possibly a few are even superior scans.)

Help needed:

1. What I want to do is set up a category for this whole set of scans, with subcategories by "book" (i.e. chapter). I have them in numerical order from the manuscript. Am I allowed to make categories and the like (e.g. one of those little article-lite pages) or do I need some admin powerz?

P.s. We can worry about merging the other images into the subcategories later (I'm indifferent).

2. I want to do the bulk uploads of the images and some boilerplate for sourcing and the like. 300 separate operations of the upload wizard would be insane. Which tool should I use (I am computer stupid!)? Or should someone help me? Also, is JPEG or Gif preferred (I have separate CDs of each, the GIF has more detail I think...)

Afterwards: I plan to go through and annotate all the images with a little extra information (e.g. page number of the book, description of the engineering aspect). It will be a really sweet project when the whole set is up.

TCO (talk) 00:16, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Set up the categories however you like. If it makes it easier for you to organize the files, then do it. Simple batch uploads? Try my tool: Commons:Up!. It supports chunked uploading and was designed with batch uploads in mind. JPG > GIF, because JPG supports some million plus colors while GIF supports only 256. Of course, it'd be nice to have both versions :] Good luck, FASTILY 00:26, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
My suggestions:
  1. Add generic stuff at the moment of the upload, to save work — namely a bagging category "De re metallica illustrations from So-&-so"; others can be added later, especially those that break up the "De re metallica" material by chapter/theme.
  2. Number of colors is irrelevant, as greyscale, even in JPG, goes from 0 to 255; these are monochrome illustrations (xylogravures, yes?), any color in them is an artifact (of course some artifacts can be interesting). The drawback of the JPG is that it is lossy, so I’d go for GIF — ideally converted to TIFF or PNG before uploading, as Commons wants GIFs restricted to animated ones. (Your CD’s GIFs may be however derived from the JPGs, a common mistake; pls look out for any compression artifacts, even in the GIFs.)
This seems to be an interesting project indeed! -- Tuválkin ✉ 00:57, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Not many people know about high quality GIF's, which don't have limitations to the number of colours the way most gif's we come across seem to. They have lots of colours. Penyulap ☏ 01:12, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

After reading en:GIF, I learned that I already knew most of what’s to be known about this file format. Your «high quality GIF's» seem to be, although not exactly non-existent, too unusual to be considered here. Either way, monochrome originals can (and should) be scanned and stored as monochrome images, which in turn are perfectly suited to be saved as «most gif's we come across». -- Tuválkin ✉ 17:53, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I want to try uploading the stuff, but it seems like the instructions for categories say you have to already have an image up to create a category? Is that right or can I make them before?

I think I figured it out. Did a sort of workaround with another image temporarily.TCO (talk) 04:36, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
Maybe you could upload a sample: One of the GIFs and the corresponding JPEG so the graphics experts can have a look. --McZusatz (talk) 08:08, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
If you want to create a category, the simplest way is to add it (rather its name) to a file or another category (which will be a subcat of the new cat), let it show up in red, and then click the red link and fill it out with the new cat’s content (which should be at least one parent category). -- Tuválkin ✉ 17:53, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

UploadWizard should work better in Opera and Chrome since today

Bugs 48091 and 49550 have been fixed and the fixes are deployed to Commons. This means Opera and Chrome users should be seeing the same interface as the rest of us. Please continue to diligently report bugs here and at Bugzilla, and thanks for flying Wikimedia Air. --MarkTraceur (talk) 01:58, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Illegal bytes in lots of pages due to file history comments being trimmed mid-byte

Has anyone noticed that a lot of pages on commons have illegal utf8 byte sequences in the file histories? I'm pretty sure this is down to the algorithm used to trim long comments in the file history using byte semantics rather than character: some 2+ byte characters have been trimmed in the middle.

There's lots of examples but here's three:

On all three the first comment has been trimmed and lots pretty ugly but the main issue is that the page is no longer valid utf-8. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anthonygerrard (talk • contribs) 19:51, 20 May 2013‎ (UTC)

I think there is somewhere to report bugs in mediawiki, but I can't recall where that is. Penyulap ☏ 19:58, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

It should be fixed for "new" files (files uploaded after roughly November 2011). The relavent bug is bugzilla:332. Bawolff (talk) 20:12, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Commons is broken…

… volume 123456789, delivered to you by your friendly Wikipedia Signpost. (Consider this a heads–up note.) odder (talk) 11:52, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Today's lead essay by Gigs, "The Tragedy of Wikipedia's commons" is an interesting but highly critical article about Commons written very much from an English Wikipedia perspective. Comments and responses can be posted in the comments section below the article, but I'd recommend that anyone who feels annoyed should first take a deep breath, count to 10, and re-read the essay Staying Mellow before responding. Remember that it's not in the interests of the Wikimedia movement as a whole to get into public arguments, nor would it be good for Commons' reputation as a thoughtful place that tries hard to avoid drama. Ultimately, we all have the same free content aims (don't we?). Let's export mellowness to the English Wikipedia! --MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:16, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
Michael, considering your long background in developing policy underpinning Commons, perhaps you could consider a mellow Op-ed piece of your own for the en.wp Signpost? We could feature it here too. It seems a sad fact of life that some Wikipedians are unlikely to express their critical views about Commons in a cooperative way on Commons any-time soon, preferring the grandstanding opportunity that Signpost and Jimmy's en.wp talk page offer. :-) --Fæ (talk) 13:23, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
Hi Fae, Beat you to it! I've already suggested that to the editor. Anyone is free to comment on the suggestion at en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Opinion desk#Submissions. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:39, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
I'm not, they still don't like people who can count past eight. Penyulap ☏ 19:45, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
Well, I read the article and I'd like that three minutes of my life back please ;) Penyulap ☏ 20:10, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
  • If people do have a perception that Commons is broken then maybe there is a problem that needs to be addressed. While the article raise a number of factors taking an adversarial stand in response isnt going to improve the perception rather its just reinforces the comments being made. Commons has shifted from been a storage/service area which enabled cross Wiki usage of media to a stand alone project as a "free media repository" we developed policies that suited our needs at the time. Given this criticism maybe its time we revisited our policies and discussed them with the projects that are still our primary purpose, to ensure that we are meeting their needs as much as we are meeting our own. Gnangarra 03:29, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Request for Checkuser rights

This is to inform the community that there is a nomination for Checkuser rights here. It was agreed a couple of years ago that such requests and for Oversight (which are quite rare) should be publicised due to the high level of trust required in users with these rights. Trijnsteltalk 20:38, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

June 16

Accessibility Project Ideas - Looking for Contributors

Hi Commons Community,

The nonprofit organization I work with, Benetech has been developing software for over 20 years to make books accessible to all with particular focus on students with print disabilities. Today our most prominent projects are [[14]Bookshare], the world's largest library of accessible eBooks, and the DIAGRAM Center, which is developing open source tools, best practices and standards to solve the accessibility challenges presented by images, diagrams and mathematics across all digital media. Our vision is that when content is born digital, it is born accessible. We are very interested in engaging the Commons community to help us with the following projects:

Accessibility Metadata: We[1] have proposed[2] an extension to Schema.org that will enable users to search for accessible content and quickly assess the accessibility of a web resource[3]. Adoption via MediaWiki and by Commons will encourage formal Schema.org adoption. An example use case is a student or a content creator, such as a teacher creating accessible supplementary materials, may want to find images that have alternative descriptions or videos that are closed-captioned or subtitled. A good way to demonstrate the downside of the lack of this type of accessibility metadata is to compare the below two Google searches for closed-captioned videos about the moon landing filtered by site:

Example video search filtered by whether it's closed-captioned


Open Source Tools for Cross-Platform, Accessible and Performant MathML: At a recent Accessible OER Sprint[4][5] we identified that the accessibility of math in web pages is a significant issue. MathML is the recommended accessible format for math and Wikipedia is supporting MathML through the use of MathJax, which can be enabled in MediaWiki[6]. Unfortunately, for blind and dyslexic students to listen to MathML they need to use either the proprietary and platform limited MathPlayer plugin[7] or Google Chrome's ChromeVox screenreader[8], which has limited adoption by blind users[9]. MathJax itself has presented issues due to poor rendering performance, particularly in IE[10]. We would to continue work on the productization of a prototype we built at the recent sprint, which pre-generated accessible SVG images of MathML via server-side application that enabled the server-side execution of MathJax for SVG rendering and ChromeVox for aural rendering[11]. In addition to having images that could be described via a screen reader for blind and dyslexic users, all users of Wikipedia would greatly benefit from higher quality SVG graphics versus the current PNG images.


Wikimedia Commons as a Repository of Accessible Educational Resources: Through the DIAGRAM Center Benetech has been doing a lot of work on accessibility of images and exploring crowdsourcing methods. One of the projects we want to undertake is to create a CC licensed repository of accessible images, with a focus on STEM education, that can be remixed/reused, thus freeing up teachers and disability services specialists from having to recreate these resources themselves. Wikimedia Commons can be this repository. These images could then be tagged with Accessibility Metadata[3] and LRMI metadata[12] to make it easier for educators and publishers to discover them. We would like to apply the methodologies and technologies developed out of the DIAGRAM Center to Wikimedia Commons. For example, we could include a wizard tool to help Commons contributors more effectively describe images. We could also include tools for more easily creating and incorporating SVG graphics that can be printed on tactile[13] and 3D printers. Once media resources were enhanced with accessibility features, we could enable discovery of those media resources via the search features on Commons. We could also partner with Gooru Learning and the Learning RegistryInBloom who have been working with us on indexing Accessibility Metadata in educational resources to index these resources.

Please let us know if you're interested in working with us on this project.


Thank You,

Gerardo Capiel

VP of Engineering, Benetech

  1. ↑ Accessibility Metadata Working Group [1]
  2. ↑ Schema.org proposal: [2]
  3. ↑ a b Accessibility Metadata: [3]
  4. ↑ Accessible OER Sprint blog posts: http://kefletcher.blogspot.com/2013/06/learning-born-accessible-sprint-design.html
  5. ↑ Accessible OER Sprint planning document
  6. ↑ MediaWiki MathJax Extension used on Wikipedia: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_talk:MathJax
  7. ↑ http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/
  8. ↑ http://www.chromevox.com
  9. ↑ WebAIM 2012 Screen Reader User Survey: http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey4/#primary
  10. ↑ http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_talk:MathJax#.5BADDED.5D_Using_magic_words_to_enable.2Fdisable_MathJax_functionality_per_page
  11. ↑ https://github.com/philschatz/oer.exports
  12. ↑ Learning Resources Metadata Initiative: http://lrmi.net
  13. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactile_graphic

-end of comment by (Gerardo Capiel)

  • Hi Gerardo, I can make images suitable for use in guides for sighted people to outline what they can do to help. I'm not good with svg, but I am an ok graphics artist. I'd like to help with the images you want on guideline pages. If you click on the green telephone next to my name and write any request on my talkpage I'll be happy to help. Penyulap ☏ 19:07, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
On the subject of math rendering, try sending an email to wikitech-l, you're probably get a better response on that topic there. On the subject of accessible metadata: Are there actually currently existing applications that would use this metadata (I only ask because its not uncommon for people to come out with X new metadata standard which nobody ever uses and then is forgotten about after a couple months)? Currently commons does not support microdata, but that could probably be changed if the people here wanted to use such markup Bawolff (talk) 22:01, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
With regard to math, it's a mess and it's a mess that largely has problems that need to be solved outside of MediaWiki/Wikipedia (it's the browser and operating system vendors that need to step up here). The current strategy is texvc rendering as PNG, with MathJax for those who want to bear it in terms of performance penalty. Some work is going on by Physikerwelt to replace texvc with LatexML rendering to MathML, with mathjax on top of that. He has a special focus on making Math searchable by using Content MathML, which might also be useful for accessibility purposes.
In general our community standpoint on accessibility has been rather sceptic and I presume this is a direct result of the many broken and misguided attempts at accessibility of the early web. So wizards are welcome, new versions of WCAG are welcome, but probably you shouldn't expect from the community to add a standard that nobody is using (we are not a sandbox or proofing ground for your technology). TheDJ (talk) 19:00, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
P.S. Have you considered developing something like the w:Acid3 html test, but then for mathml rendering of browser and operating system vendors ? TheDJ (talk) 19:11, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Extension:ImportFreeImages

Any reason why Extension:ImportFreeImages was never implemented on commons wikimedia?. Its a very useful tool to upload free and well licenced images from to a wiki. I generally go on a wikia wiki which implements this extension and search for my desired image and when i find it, i upload it to commons via this toolserver tool instead which is slightly more complicated for an average user to use...--Stemoc (talk) 11:10, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

The UploadWizard now provides direct upload from Flickr (restricted to sysops & image reviewers at the moment) − see Commons:Upload Wizard/Flickr. Jean-Fred (talk) 11:57, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Though the upload Wizard is limited to recognizing unrestricted files (in the sense that Flickr uses it) and those without "NC" or other licence components outside of CC-BY-SA, with no option to override this (even for admins or reviewers). This can be a real barrier for some streams where the contents are demonstrably PD but not tagged as such, especially if the stream owner is not responding to queries and it would be to the public benefit to preserve the contents on Commons. --Fæ (talk) 12:06, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Please expand Commons:Upload_Wizard/Flickr#Bugs_and_missing_features :) Jean-Fred (talk) 12:12, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like a job for... the Commons

"Giving away an archive of modern art" (International Herald Tribune, 6 June 2013, p. 10): "Help yourself to D. James Dee's luscious, sprawling photographic archive of the modern New York art scene. He has about 250,000 color transparencies and slides, ranging in size from 35 milimeter to 8 by 10 inches, documenting the work of almost every important artist of the past 40 years and installations at some of the most influential galleries. And, yes, he's giving them away. All you'll need is a truck large enough to hold 65 cardboard file boxes. It would help if you represent a nonprofit organization, because Mr. Dee hopes to receive a tax deduction for donating his life's work. But that's not a deal breaker. You should, however, be conversant with modern American art history. Really conversant. Almost none of the transparencies and slides are labeled. ... The National Gallery of Art, Getty Images, and the Fales Library and Special Collections of New York University have declined his offer, Mr. Dee said. ... 'At some point,' Mr. Dee said, 'I've got to get a Dumpster to put them in.' He sounded very sad. And quite serious."

Sounds like a job for the Commons! (Though I realize that photographs of the artworks themselves would not be suitable for the Commons until their copyright has expired.) — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 11:38, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Could be a nice project for someone/an organization with a bit of handy cool storage space and a few volunteers to categorize and scan the material with the highest public benefit. Maybe a couple of local enthusiasts could work with Mr. Dee to put in a bid for a small grant from m:Grants:Start to ensure these are stored, and at least the risk of having them dumped is removed? A few hundred dollars might make a big difference here to cover a bit of travel and the cost of a reasonable scanner. --Fæ (talk) 12:40, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
Doesn't sound like a job for Wikimedia Commons to me, for the reason you put in parentheses: it is a "photographic archive of the modern New York art scene". So, Commons has not a lot to gain from this, as probably most of these photos can't be used here due to still being protected by copyright. And why should we laboriously identify the artists and works of unlabeled pictures if they can't be published? I'm not surprised that Getty et al. have declined Mr. Dee's offer, as they of course are very aware of rights isssues. Gestumblindi (talk) 14:24, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
  • It does seem an ugly shame just for the sake of storage. Hopefully someone in NYC will fund transport and storage for them in the next couple of weeks. WMF grants would probably be too slow and the copyrights won't do here for decades. Ebay, photography schools, and art museums may be a good solution if they have temporary storage. Cataloguing will be a mess. He will be in FLA but most of those that can ID the shots may be in NYC area.--Canoe1967 (talk) 18:15, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
I guess that since this is primarily an online project with little physical space, it is hard to take a long term view and hold the items in storage. The photographs of artworks now copyrighted will eventually become free to use when the copyrights expire. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 03:20, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
This sounds like a job for the New York City Wikimedia chapter? They should grab the boxes and tape him talking about it while doing so. Next, since the boxes are formed in chronological order, an art history intern should be set to work to document his published photo shoots through the 70s and 80s and these should be picked out to work on. Uploads to Commons are definitely in the pipeline if we or a NYC team can get permission from the artists, as permission from the photographer is already granted. Usually it's the permission from the photographer that's difficult, as this is usually unknown. Jane023 (talk) 06:00, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
Good idea. I left a message at "meta:Talk:Wikimedia New York City#Sounds like a job for... the Commons" directing editors to the discussion here. If it would help, I am prepared to make a modest donation towards costs. However, I think the main issue will be finding a space to temporarily house the boxes. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 14:29, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
Are you sure that many artists (or their heirs) will agree to a license (as required by Commons) that allows unlimited use, including commercial use, of their work? - Regarding copyright expiration: many of the artists are still alive, I suppose. Copyright will expire 70 years after their death in most cases (that's now the term in the U.S. too for most works published from 1978, see Commons:Hirtle chart), so well... it would be a purely archival project (no publication under a free license allowed) for most works for a very, very long time and probably none of us would live to see publication on Commons ;-) Gestumblindi (talk) 15:59, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
I mentioned the copyright issue in my original posting. I doubt we will be able to obtain permission for free licensing of the photographs of artworks themselves so, yes, this would be largely a long-term archival project. Of course there may also be photographs of artists that can be uploaded to the Commons immediately, but we won't know whether such photographs exist until someone has had a chance to go through the material. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 21:05, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, but this is a no-brainer. You should watch the Banksy movie Exit Through the Gift Shop to understand why. Like Banksy's work, most of the works photgraphed were installments that no longer exist. If you read the linked article (which also shows the boxes - 65 shoeboxes should not be a problem to stash somewhere) you will see that he was often hired to document works, and these are the extra shots that artists are probably unaware of. Most modern artists I know are always delighted to receive more info about their work, and we are not asking them to release rights on their work, but on these specific photographs of their work. I can't imagine modern artists or their heirs objecting. Jane023 (talk) 08:15, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
I'm not so sure that this is a no-brainer. You say we are not asking them to release rights on their work, but on these specific photographs of their work - well... but in fact the free licenses mandatory on Commons are quite broad. Commercial use and derivative works must be allowed. So the artists should be aware that, if they agree to release rights on "these specific photographs", this means in fact: Anyone, if adhering to the license (e.g. CC-BY-SA), is allowed to e.g. print postcards, t-shirts or posters of these photographs and to sell them (it's not hard to adhere to CC-BY-SA, mentioning the artist and the license with the URL e.g. on the flip side of a poster or on the bottom of a mug is sufficient). Or to make a book "The art of <insert artist's name here>" containing these photographs, selling it for a good price. The artist would see nothing of the money and couldn't forbid publication of the book, as the photographs would be freely licensed, allowing re-use of this kind. Also, other artists might use the photographs as a base to create artwork, alter them, remix them, that's what a free license means. So, some broad-minded artists might still agree to this, but I wouldn't really say "I can't imagine modern artists or their heirs objecting". Gestumblindi (talk) 19:08, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I know some artists who would be thrilled to see their work on a postcard, mug or T-shirt! Your answer implies that if they release rights to these photos they would be missing out on "lots of money", which is just silly in this case, since even they themselves could not earn money with these photos, since they have never even seen them. The point is in any case, that the bigger half of the problem is already solved, which is the consent of the photographer. Most of the artists I have been in contact with look confused when I tell them that photos of their work are only eligible for Wikimedia Commons if they have consent from the photographer as well. Jane023 (talk) 07:18, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
Recalling I had read another article in the International Herald Tribune about the Internet Archive's efforts to warehouse every book ever printed, I decided to e-mail them to see if they are interested in taking Dee's photographic collection. I thought it was worth a try, since the worst that can happen is that they'll say no. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 09:51, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Writing as part of Wikimedia NYC, I think that it would be possible for us to temporarily store the collection in one or two members' homes, if no other option is available (of course, this would not be a professional archival facility). For actually using the images, I guess the hitch would be contacting and convincing all the artists or their estates. Probably we would also want to look into a non-proprietary online archive with more liberal rules than Commons (Internet Archive is the obvious one) in cases where that permission cannot be easily gotten.--Pharos (talk) 17:55, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Hi, Pharos. Would you and other members of your project like to reach out to Dee and see if you can work something out? Another editor has helpfully informed me that his e-mail address is dee@thesohophotographer.com. It might be a good idea to find a temporary storage place for the items to save them from being dumped, and then find a more permanent home for them such as the Wikimedia Foundation or the Internet Archive. (If a non-profit were to accept ownership, that would enable Dee to obtain his tax deduction.) I'll let you know if I hear anything from the Internet Archive. (No response so far.) — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 05:28, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
Great Pharos! You may be interested in a tip from the Public Catalog Foundation: They put all works online, including the ones under copyright, after they first took out an insurance policy against copyright violations. You could do this too for this specific group of photos, and then put them up on your website or on facebook with the question "Do you know this artist?". I would only bother with the photos that seem notable, but then you can always add the other ones in later as the yes/no answers come rolling in... I have no idea what the cost of insurance against copyright violations could be, but this way you increase your chances of getting responses, especially for those works where Mr. Dee doesn't remember the artist. Once you have five or so "yes" answers from prominent NYC artists, you can create a Wikipedia page for Mr. Dee based on his work for them, and then refer to this in your advertised question. Most people are willing to help if they see the benefit for them in publicity. Of course, maybe none of the artists are prominent, in which case it will be a waste of time - good luck! Jane023 (talk) 07:18, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Source and permission of File:Itzhak perlman.jpg lost during transfer from zh.wikipedia

Hi there,

File:Itzhak perlman.jpg has no author information ("Original uploader was Gazagoal at zh.wikipedia" isn't an author information) and the source was also lost during the transfer from zh.wikipedia. I can't figure out how to get the original information, as [15] points to the wikimedia file (and apparently the data was removed there). How can one access the original data?

Calimo (talk) 20:21, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

An admin at zh.wikipedia could access the (deleted) original image and description. It appears to be a scan from a photograph, possibly this one. On the original uploader's talk page, there are some deletion notices for photos of musicians (or so I guess, not speaking Chinese). I think this picture is another copyright violation. --rimshottalk 21:01, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
I think so too. http://www.allmusic.com/artist/itzhak-perlman-mn0000922859 gives credit to Akira Kinoshita. A self-created scan, yes, but not a self-created photo. Also another remaining upload from that user File:Richter concerto.jpg isnt own work. --Martin H. (talk) 22:43, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
Makes sense. I requested the data on zh.wiki (not speaking chinese but Google was able to translate it for me), and we'll see from there. Calimo (talk) 09:24, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Ok, an admin on zh.wiki (铁铁的火大了) provided some more information. Source and author were never supplied. I will tag the file accordingly Calimo (talk) 10:03, 18 June 2013 (UTC).

June 17

About the Upload Wizard

  • By default the upload wizard is asking description only in the interface language of the uploader. Most newbies, especially non-European, give the description only in their own language not understanding that a description on English should also be provided, because the upload wizard does not say anything about it. I suggest that by default description would be asked both in English and the interface language of the uploader. When looking at possible copyvios at new files it's making the check of files a lot harder when there is no description in English.
  • Most newbies also don't add any categories, because the upload wizard is not recommending it. If no categories is given, the upload wizard should be giving for example a warning in a red box or with red text that categories should be given.
  • The same should be applied if no desciption is given in English. Most uploaders would probably give then a description in English.
  • A third problem is that at least one third of the copyvios is uploaded by Spanish-speaking users. Is there anything we could do about it?
  • At least in Finnish the PD options are only "PD-Art", "published before 1923" and "PD-UsGov" (and the PD-Art has been translated wrong in Finnish). Many countries have a shorter protection period for photographs, and works by authorities are often PD. Would it be possible to make customized licenses depending on the interface language, perhaps by adding a dropdown box to the wizard? Or is it meant that the wizard should stay as simple as possible? Greetings, /á(!) 10:15, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51709
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51710
I've filed 49709 and 49710, the rest of your problems look like i18n problems which can be fixed in the MediaWiki namespace or at translatewiki.net, or problems with the culture of commons which I can't fix in software...yet. Thanks very much for the feedback :) --MarkTraceur (talk) 17:58, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
There's no obligation to upload a description in English; Commons is multilingual. An English description is certainly convenient, but not necessary.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:16, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

unblock request community input

"wider community input" has been requested here in regards to unblocking a user. Penyulap ☏ 20:59, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

June 18

Reorg proposal

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.
Gigs has proposed rewriting his proposal to be clearer, so I am taking this as consent to mark this stage of the discussion archived. Additional pointers with this in mind might be useful to tack on the bottom of this discussion, however the solution put forward here is likely to be superseded and may not yet be worth spending a lot of volunteer time drilling into, to discover devils in the detail. Fæ (talk) 18:41, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

There's been criticism that no one has proposed anything here despite all the recent noise. For those who didn't read my op-ed, here's a quick summary of points:

Assertions:

  • Commons is a project caught between the original function of inter-wiki (and mostly inter-encyclopedia) sharing of media, and the desire for autonomy and goals that differ from those of the projects it serves.
  • Despite a desire for autonomy, commons lacks well-defined inclusion policies (other than free licensing), with the educational requirement being effectively meaningless, because anything can be argued to be educational, or not, depending on the whims of the editors. This boils inclusion down to a popularity contest (I like it, I don't like it).
  • Commons has faced massive administrative backlogs in the past, some of which have improved.

Proposed solution, and consequences:

  • Separate the inter-wiki media sharing function from the function of a free media gallery.
    • Commons will no longer face the influx of abuse from those who are uploading images to the major encyclopedias.
    • Commons will not be subject to such a close association with the Wikipedias, which will allow for more autonomy.
    • Commons can become a true sister project, instead of a project created to serve the needs of other projects.
    • De-commons-ing inter-wiki sharing function will mean that other projects need to handle their own uploads instead of letting a large chunk of them fall into commons, reducing administrative load here.

On a technical level, the files could remain centralized. The only difference would be metadata on the files which kept track of which projects are "subscribed" to the file. When a file becomes completely orphaned (by being "deleted" on every project, which is the same as "unsubscribed"), it would be garbage collected periodically. Search functions on individual projects would not search files not "subscribed" to by the project by default. Searches could be expanded to include all available interwiki files, but this would not be the default.

In a way, this is a greater level of centralization, since there would be no need for the messy and time-consuming "move to commons" project. If commons wanted to claim a freely licensed image used at another project, they'd just subscribe to it. Then if the other project deleted it, commons would be the only subscriber.

My op-ed might have seemed negative toward commons, but I think the proposal is win-win. It's clear that autonomy is desired here, and it's clear that there are some at other projects who are unhappy that commons policy and administration, or lack thereof, impacts the other projects that commons was originally designed to serve. This is a way to establish commons as a fully independent project. It won't necessarily silence criticism of Common's inclusion criteria, but it is my hope that once full autonomy is established, Commons will develop more mature inclusions policies once freed from the requirements of the projects it currently serves. Gigs (talk) 16:11, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

  • This doesn't even make any sense. If I understand it at all you're saying that every file on any project is automatically transferred to Commons by subscription (including the Fair Use stuff, etc.?) and any file unused by a project must be automatically deleted entirely (better patrol your Wiki pages closely) and all of this will make Commons more independent. Clearly the first thing to delete is this proposal. Wnt (talk) 16:44, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
    • That's not the proposal at all. No file is "transferred" to commons. When a file is uploaded, it will be marked as subscribed to the project it was uploaded to. If it's a free license and within the scope of commons, commons can choose to subscribe to that file as well. Being "subscribed" to a file doesn't mean it's in use, it's just a tag indicating that the file belongs to those projects. If a file belongs to no projects, it's garbage collected. Gigs (talk) 17:33, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
    I agree with Wnt completely. This idea is ridiculous and unworkable. -mattbuck (Talk) 16:56, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Politically I disagree with this proposal, but ignoring that for a second and concentrating on the technical (since that's the area I'm interested in). I find the technical details of this proposal confusing. Is this what you're proposing:
    • you upload a file to some project
    • If people like the file at another project, there's a one click button to "subscribe" to the file, which transfers the file to the other project, copying over the file description page (or is the file description page centralized? Who owns it? Who can make edits to the file description page?)
    • If 0 projects have subscribed to the file, it is garbage collected. De-subscribing from the file is different from just failing to use it in any article(?)

Which raises the question - how do people discover what files they can subscribe to? What indications are there the file exists before the project has subscribed to it? How is this different from disabling commons file sharing system, and just having a slick upload by url UI that can upload from other Wikimedia projects? If this is really what people want, then I wouldn't expect them to actually use commons, but instead pretend it doesn't exist and just upload everything locally. Bawolff (talk) 17:10, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

      • The file description is tied to the file, not to a particular project. There is no "transfer" between projects. Need to think outside the current box to understand this proposal. If zero projects are subscribed to the file, that means that the project that the file was originally uploaded through has decided that it's outside of scope for that project (they are "auto-subscribed"), and that no other project has picked it up since it was uploaded. It has nothing to do with the in-use status of the file.
      • To your final question, there will be a search function for all inter-wiki files, regardless of subscription. There won't be a concept of "local files" anymore. It would not be hard for commons to operate much like it does now, monitoring these results for free-license candidates that are within scope for commons. Gigs (talk) 17:33, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
        • And what happens when enwiki and frwiki gets in an edit dispute over the file description page. Can somebody (who?) protect the file description page? Can other images be used on the file description page? What if someone want to use an image on the file description page but that image is only subscribed to some of the wikis using the file. If someone is blocked on project X can they still edit the file description page on that project, etc etc. Bawolff (talk) 18:22, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
          • Those are excellent questions that will have to be answered and I thank you for taking the time to understand what I'm getting at. I don't have an answer right now, other than I don't think those are insurmountable issues. I will take a stab at addressing them as I flesh out the proposal, but clearly there's going to have to be some back and forth and consensus forming to develop something that works. Gigs (talk) 18:31, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I don't know where to start with the issues, so a couple of random thoughts. Wikimedia is a not for profit organisation, with a limited budget, creating a free media gallery greater in scope than Commons is an invitation for people to use it rather than commercial services such as Flickr or Picassa for storage of their photos - what use is blurry CC-BY-SA photograph of a prize winning pumpkin from the local village fete ? The associated costs with that alone could cripple the WMF. MediaWiki isn't actually the best software for a pure imagery based website (c.f Flickr et al) anyway but if it's free, people will use (and abuse) it. The proposal as it stands is a legal nightmare of biblical proportions, there's already bizarre, clingy, weird and naughty behaviour regarding Fair Use imagery on my home wiki, English Wikipedia, so automatic deletion of photographs and subscribing to photos to make them available is a horror story in waiting, with people adding images to odd pages and creating lists to prevent 'their' Fair Use uploads from being deleted. Just no. Nick (talk) 17:12, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
    • If a blurry fair use picture of a pumpkin is uploaded to En, then commons would clearly not want it, so they wouldn't subscribe to it, and if En decided there was no use for it, they'd delete (or "unsubscribe") to it, and it'd get deleted. That situation isn't really any different from what it is today. Maybe subscription is the wrong word, but these changes in subscription are basically the same as "creating" and "deleting", and would be treated with much the same processes that occur today with creation and deletion. Gigs (talk) 17:33, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Could someone help Gigs out with a report of how much of the 17,000,000 media files on Commons are currently in use on other Wikimedia projects?
If we were to create a searchable "Interwiki Commons" consisting of only the stuff that is in use on sister projects (easy to write a bot to do this), I would expect that interesting collections such as the 100,000+ images from NARA, the 250,000 images from the Department of Defense, or the 1,800,000 images from Geograph would end up being 98% or 99% not visible on the inter-wiki; if my understanding of how Gigs' vision might work is what was meant.
Most Wikipedians, Wikisourcerers et al, might find this rather costly if the Interwiki Commons became the norm in terms of limiting their standard access options, as well as confusing. Compare this to having solutions for the real issue of managing sexual content. Creating options for how the public can browse Commons content does not need the permission or consensus of current Commons users to be developed, or to make available as add-ons or widgets, rather than integrated. --Fæ (talk) 17:20, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Who said anything about "in use"? Being "subscribed" to a file is equivalent to having a file uploaded, "unsubscribing" is the same as a local deletion. Except there's no reason to physically move any files around. It doesn't imply anything about whether it's in use or not. This has little to do with sexual content, and everything to do with solving the larger problems. Gigs (talk) 17:35, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
    • Sorry, then I still don't understand the benefits of "subscription" or identification of "garbage" if the users do not view potential media files in that way. I genuinely thought that was a key reason for the proposal. I have re-read your summary and I'm not sure it conveys your expectations for a solution. Perhaps you could think of expressing the solution separately from the goals, in the form of a user case statement or set of testable requirements? This might avoid more accidental misunderstandings. --Fæ (talk) 17:50, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
      • After the confused response here, I am tempted to close this discussion while I draw up a more detailed technical description with use cases and scenarios. I clearly have not done a very good job of explaining what I meant, and what the benefits will be. I don't want to seem like I'm shutting down negative feedback though, so if you think it's a good idea, please close this discussion pending a better explanation from me. Gigs (talk) 18:16, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Regardless of the intent, the technical aspect of this is ridiculously overcomplicated. For any technical solution, the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle is best. Every single additional element creates new potential bugs, flaws and failures; usually in proprotion to the number of existing elements. This is so overcomplicated it will almosrt certainly be in a constant state of crashing. The current system, simple transclusion, is basic enough to actually work. On a project level, this does not allow for images and other media to be available for new definition/guide/article/etc creation, forcing each new piece of content to hunt externally for material (if anyone can be bothered) and it does not support cooperation with GLAMs and their donations. So, more likely to fail and sacrificing a lot of functionality for no gain. I oppose this proposal. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 17:38, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
    • Interwiki transclusion has greater complexity than this. How many hours do people spend transwiki-ing files back and forth? All media would be available to all projects in a much more flexible way than currently. If someone uploads a file to French Wikipedia, there is no easy way for me to find that today unless someone transwikis to Commons. Under my proposal, they could easily find the file as soon as it is uploaded through interwiki media search, and tick the subscription flag for their Wiki. My proposal does have some flaws, but so far no one has cited anything other than their own misunderstanding of what is actually proposed. Gigs (talk) 17:47, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Americanocentric category names?

Are there any strong views for keeping Category:Hispanic? I believe the word "Hispanic" is being used in a way that is only really meaningful for Americans, living in Europe this makes far less sense to me. If we wanted a category for Spanish speaking people, or the Spanish (or those who culturally identify as Spanish, Mexican, Bolivian etc.), this would be a different and better defined grouping. If you examine the current contents of this category it appears a somewhat incoherent mish-mash and might even be construed as offensive by some of the living people arbitrarily categorized this way.

I believe this example category is part of a general bias in language use on Commons to American naming styles.

I welcome alternative views, not being American, Spanish or a Spanish speaking person myself. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:09, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps it could be changed to "Hispanic Americans" or "Latino Americans". Kaldari (talk) 21:18, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
Agree, inappropriate category name. Propose a new name or ask for suggestions on a less inappropriate name ("Hispanic Americans", "Hispanic people in the United States", whatever)on the talk page. See Commons:Rename a category. -- Infrogmation (talk) 01:58, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
✓ Done --Fæ (talk) 02:20, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
I wounder what would be "Hispanic people not in the United States"… An empty category? Or maybe this guy? (Who’d be promptly classified as WASP should he settle in the USofA…) -- Tuválkin ✉ 20:07, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Help with a template, please

Hi all

For use in some forthcoming policy discussions, I'd like to have available a new header/footer template pair {{Proposal top}} {{Proposal bottom}} along the lines of {{Discussion top}} {{Discussion bottom}} to mark off policy proposal sections. The idea is that typing eg {{Proposal top|3|Proposal title}} ... {{Proposal bottom}} would generate something like this:

Proposal 3 by ~~~~

Proposal title

  • text
  • more text
  • ...

I'm not very familiar with detailed template syntax and I wondered if someone could help me out here? I'd much appreciate it. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:11, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi Michael two solutions that avoid new templates:
  • Think about using {{Rfc}} instead.
  • Years ago I invested some of my volunteer time in significantly improving the way divbox works on en.wp and this was later brought over to Commons. There are many choices of style in {{Divbox}} such as amber, gold, orange, brown (we could always add more), an example is below. Again this avoids you having to define a whole new type of proposal process, particularly if you just use the standard discussion top/bottom template once the discussion is closed.
Code
{{divbox|amber|Proposal title|Introduction
*text
*more text}}
Results
Proposal title
Introduction
  • text
  • more text
--Fæ (talk) 12:23, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
OK, thanks Fae. That seems like a workable solution. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:09, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm feeling more educated by the minute

How about Category:Fantasy Fest 2006 for educational? And check out those quality, informational file names. — Scott • talk 15:16, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

It's a bit like the U.S. magazine called 'national geographic'. People would look at the pictures and get a better idea of how civilised other cultures in far-flung corners of the world are, or just giggle at the titties. I guess using the wiki, people in far-flung corners of the world can look at the U.S. culture and get a better idea of how civilised they are, or just giggle at the titties. Penyulap ☏ 15:32, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Bodypainting exhibitions in France are a family affair. Isn't that fantastic? (Oh and I uploaded it!)
That's fantastic Scott Martin. I am very pleased that you are finding Commons' content educational. In case you didn't know this is what we call a woman's breast. Keep studying Commons and you will learn many things about human anatomy and sexuality that you won't learn on English Wikipedia, and one of these days you might get to touch one in real life. russavia (talk) 15:40, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
There you have it, folks, a Commons administrator and bureaucrat. — Scott • talk 16:34, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Russavia, there are currently 15 images included in w:Body painting. Six of those images contain exposed breasts. In w:Breast there are 11 images, all of which, not surprisingly, show breasts. Plus, just about every WP article which could arguably be expected to contain an image of a breast has at least one image. If you think WP is lacking in images of breasts, you are very wrong. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:02, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
It's funny, because I showed the French image to the right to someone on French Wikipedia earlier, after they pointed me to fr:Masturbation which puts the English Wikipedia version to shame in terms of how censored English Wikipedia is. But it's great that English Wikipedia does have photos of breasts in articles in which one would expect it -- I am ecstatic that Commons is able to fulfill those imaging requirements for English Wikipedia, and provide a diverse range of images to choose from. Whilst my previous post in response to Scott Martin was obviously in jest, Delicious carbuncle I do thank you for letting us know that Commons is more than adequately fulfilling it's mission in providing freely licenced media content not only to WMF projects, but to the world at large. russavia (talk) 16:20, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, Russavia, I find it difficult to know when you are being serious and when you are trying to be funny. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:38, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
That category confuses me. Aren't contestants in wet t-shirt competitions meant to... you know... wear t-shirts? -mattbuck (Talk) 16:16, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
A NSFW painting by Rubens (nudity, do not enlarge).
Scott Martin, as well as browsing Commons, I think you would find many public art galleries a great education. As you are in London, you may want to look at a family membership of a gallery like the Tate, or just pop along to the free National Portrait Gallery a few times. My membership means I get to see all the special exhibitions, so I have a reason to get exposed to all sorts of modern artwork outside of my normal tastes (which tends to be 19th century), including much that I find bizarre, provoking or upsetting. This sort of art with nudes, is neither new in concept, nor a crime in Europe. By the way, Wikipedians often find the Commons file renaming process confusing; once you reach 1,000 edits or more, do apply for the right to move files, you can then help improve them to be more meaningful. In the meantime see {{Rename}} which is fairly easy to use. --Fæ (talk) 16:18, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
This is the sound of a point being missed. — Scott • talk 16:36, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
I think what Fae was trying to say to you is that if you want to look at "sexual" or "nudity" images all day every day, that you might consider broadening your horizons and going to an art gallery, and you will see more such images (or paintings) from time gone by (as in museums) or contemporary (in terms of art galleries) that might be able to better fulfill your requirements for sexy images above and beyond our somewhat limited collection. He also said that you could come to commons, build up your edit count (in file space tagging copyvios, etc is a good start) and once you hit 1,000 edits you'll likely get the file mover right. I think you can understand that now, and it's my pleasure to help you to understand the point of Fae's post. russavia (talk) 16:56, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
No, I understood that pisspoor attempt at trolling immediately. — Scott • talk 22:43, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Another anti-Commons rant. Some people seemingly cannot understand that Commons is not en.wp and the views as well as the users here (hint: quite a bit are not even from Anglo-Saxon nations) are different. This gets boring. --Rosenzweig τ 17:09, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Did you have a point? Yes, you don't like nudity. While there is a large body of people who agree with you, consensus on Commons is going against you. I don't see how your sarcastic statement advances the state of the discussion any.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:22, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
Do enlighten me as to where I said any such thing? Oh, you can't. — Scott • talk 08:29, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
I don't think someone who opens a discussion with a sarcastic statement has any right to object that he was misconstrued. I further note that you avoided the main thrust of my comment, that starting a discussion this way does nothing to improve anything anything.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:52, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

well, to bring up something less boring, there is a lot of nudity in the animal world, I don't know about where you live, but around where I live, it has become rather rampant. Penyulap ☏ 17:16, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Back to the original topic: I think there would be a clear justification for documenting such an event. It is of cultural interest. In my opinion, this particular photographer (or the uploader who selected the photos) appears to have been overly distracted by the chance to see exposed female breasts to the point where he or she made or uploaded a relative poor set of photos. Given that these were already out on the Internet, I'd have never bothered bringing them over to Commons, but I don't see it as particularly harmful that someone did.

By way of a possibly more interesting example: I am among those who have photographed an annual Seattle event where a lot of people are body-painted but otherwise naked. You might want a look at Category:Solstice Cyclists (some content possibly NSFW, depending where you work). I think these are quite valuable images, are certainly of cultural interest, and will become more so the farther away they are in time.

Which is to say, I don't see any active problem with the images Scott originally pointed out, but I think they are relatively low-quality contributions. - Jmabel ! talk 01:42, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Swimming pools in various countries

I'm trying to apply some order to categorization of swimming pools in all of the country categories. Swimming pools themselves are under the category of Category:Pools, Category:Swimming locations, Category:Architectural elements, Category:Baths, and Category:Sports venues which all but the last I agree upon. How can you say that a house swimming pool or even a hotel swimming pool is a "sports venue"? While checking out the categories under various countries, I've found the following Category:Entertainment venues in Germany, Category:Baths in Greece, Category:Structures in Hungary, Category:Tourism in Israel, Category:Recreation in Japan, Category:Buildings in Jersey, Category:Structures in Mexico, Category:Recreation in South Africa, Category:Architectural elements in Spain, Category:Sports venues in Switzerland, Category:Landscape architecture in Tunisia, Category:Swimming in the United States. There needs to be some order to the categories for each swimming pool by country. What do others think the categories for each country should be under Category:Swimming pools by country category? --Mjrmtg (talk) 17:04, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

All of the above seem to have some sense, but the whole is awfully incomplete. If you’re going to tackle "swimming pools" you need to create (and populate!) other concurrent meta tree structures, not only "swimming pools by country":
  • swimming pools by date
  • swimming pools by date of construction (these and the previous are two different things)
  • swimming pools by setting
  • swimming pools by attitude (incidental/background, or main subject of the photo, etc.)
  • swimming pools by size
  • swimming pools by depth
  • swimming pools by media (b/w photos, videos, etc)
  • swimming pools by usage (both generic usage and depicted usage; includes "former/derelict swimming pools", f.i.)
  • swimming pools by shape
  • swimming pools by color
  • swimming pools by type
etc. (with all their subcategories). All of these have "swimming pools" as their parent category and each have yet others. (Your disagreement about "Sports venues" as parent cat would be solved thusly: Create a new category "Sport swimming pools" and put it under both parent categories "Sports venues" and "swimming pools by usage".) It is great fun to do all this but only worthy if there’s really a lot of items to categorize. Or you can focus on "swimming pools by country" only, for now, and ignore the rest. -- Tuválkin ✉ 19:09, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
Regarding "Sports venues" and "Swimming pools", I thought about "Collegiate swimming pools" but that narrows it to college or university types. What about "Competition swimming pools"?
I don't want to break out swimming pools by the categories you mentioned... yet. But was interested in the categories that other counties have tagged them as, which is way too many in variety. --Mjrmtg (talk) 21:34, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
Category:Swimming is currently categorised within sports categories; I don't think it unreasonable to think it helpful for swimming pools to be cat:ted as sports venues. I may be mistaken but, like cycling, the inherent sportiness of the activity is subject to varying cultural perceptions - i.e. in some cultures swimming is regarded as sporty per se, whereas in others it is not regarded as sporty unless practised within a context of organised sport. Some countries may be big enough or wealthy enough to enable provision of sufficient swimming pools for such pools to be allocated for sporty and non-sporty purposes; but what about those countries, small or less wealthy or culturally less picky, where swimming pools that are not sports venues are improbable, if not inconceivable, by definition? How could one distinguish a "sport swimming pool" if swimming is, by cultural perception, sporty? Man vyi (talk) 22:48, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
You may find the work on en.wp with regard to the related taxonomy of infoboxes a helpful comparison. It seems logical to say that "sports" and "leisure" are not subsets of each other, similarly "baths" are not types of "swimming pools" and one can also find purpose built swimming pools with other facilities (such as exercise gyms). At the same time, one should note that images may appear in multiple branches of a complex hierarchy. To avoid pointless circular debate, I recommend a patient viewpoint, clear explanations at the top of the categories, with plenty of opportunity for others to comment on category talk pages. --Fæ (talk) 06:58, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Cat-a-lot

Hello, I have as gadget cat-a-lot, but this evening, the cat-a-lot button does not react any more. Is there a reason? --Havang(nl) (talk) 20:09, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Seems fine now. Ruslik (talk) 16:01, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

June 19

One template for all PD stamps

What do you think about template which is specially designed for stamps in Public Domain? There are a lot of countries with stamps, see Category:Stamps_by_country, each country have its own license.

My proposal is to create a template for countries with stamps in PD, see Commons:Stamps/Public domain.

So, when user fills "country code" and "year" (two parameters, e.g. country_code is "ro" (Romania), and year is "YYYY"): 

{{SpecialTemplateForPublicDomainStamps
|Description=
|Year=YYYY
|Country_code=ro.
}}

This template should be equivalent to the following template with 3 parameters filled automatically (Date, Author, Permission) and one category (country and year): 

{{Information
|Description=
|Source=
|Date=YYYY
|Author=Post of Romania.
|Permission={{PD-RO-exempt}}
|other_versions=
}}

[[Category:Stamps of Romania, YYYY]]

I think that it will help to upload stamps :)

P.S. One more useful parameter for this new template will be "WADP_URL=", e.g. "WADP_URL=http://www.wnsstamps.ch/en/stamps/RO007.03?lang=en" for this File:RO007MS-03.jpg. This parameter will be useful since:

  1. Stamps of almost all (17 of 20, see User:AKA_MBG#PDS) countries with PD stamps are available at the site of en:WADP Numbering System (from 2002...)
  2. www.wnsstamps.ch contains additional information about stamp: (1) description in English, (2) other stamps in this series, (3) denomination, etc.
  3. There are already 1,755 files at Commons with links to WADP, see [16].

-- Andrew Krizhanovsky (talk) 15:37, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea if the template is substituted. That means that what is actually saved is the filled {{Information}} template. --Jarekt (talk) 15:46, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
It could be substitution, or it could be the special template. I think that there are pros and cons for each variant. -- Andrew Krizhanovsky (talk) 19:54, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
As there are no special fields that are not easily mapped to the information template, substitutions looks sensible. If there were fields such as multiple dates, key reference IDs, provenance or history, materials etc. then there would be a case against substitution. --Fæ (talk) 11:08, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Review of Commons' Scope is now OPEN

I am pleased to announce the launch of a comprehensive review of our existing policy & guidelines on Commons: Project scope, and Commons:Photographs of identifiable people. This is an important review and will cover a number of contentious issues that have recently been extensively discussed both on and off Wiki. As background, you might like to look at these recent English Wikipedia Signpost articles:

Please visit the main review page to take part. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 22:25, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

June 21

Templates for artworks

I would like to ask some help with the use of templates for artworks (public artworks and artworks).

  1. At the moment i used the template object. Example Category:Fréderic Keiff, L'Arbre à Palabres. It doesn't seem that i am using it correctly: it is positioned in the Category:Unsupported object.
  2. is there something similar to the template:creator for artworks/monuments/objects? it would be better to create a separate page with all the information of an artwork so i can include the specific template in the photo description. it is possible?

thank you, --iopensa (talk) 10:46, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I think i understood. i use Template:Artwork and i create Template:Artwork:nameoftheartwork. please do not hesitate to let me know if you have any hint or different solution. thanks. --iopensa (talk) 15:38, 21 June 2013 (UTC). No. obviously it doesn't work. --iopensa (talk) 15:47, 21 June 2013 (UTC). ok, made it. I discovered the : --iopensa (talk) 18:15, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Upload list

Why files after working with rotate-bot do not appear in the upload list of a user? --thx K@rl (talk) 18:57, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Sofern nach einem bestimmten Benutzer gefiltert wird, werden nur die Dateien gezeigt, bei denen er die letzte Version hochgeladen hat. // When filtered by user, only files where that user uploaded the most recent version of the file are shown. -- Rillke(q?) 19:03, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Das heißt auch die eigenen sehe ich nicht mehr? --K@rl (talk) 20:19, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Ich weiß nicht, ob "eigen" in einem Wiki noch zutreffend ist, nachdem man sie unter eine freie Lizenz gestellt hat; aber wenn Du damit die von Dir hochgeladenen Dateien meinst, ja. Für diesen Fall haben wir übrigens Gallery tool ("Details on hover" bietet eine "schöne" Ansicht) und flommons. Ersteres habe ich geschrieben und es läuft mit JavaScript. Letztere hat Magnus Manske geschrieben. Warum werden Deine Dateien eigentlich so oft falsch ausgerichtet dargestellt? Nachträgliche Bearbeitung mit Windows Programmen? -- Rillke(q?) 21:17, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Danke, das mit eigen ist mir schon klar - nach 10 Jahren Commons ;-) --gruß K@rl (talk) 21:26, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Da bin ich gleich beim richtigen, denn das Mygallery läuft trotz aktivierten Javascript nicht. FF 21.0, zu den gedrehten Fotos - egal ob Original von EOS 600D oder noch mit Exifer Exifdatum gelöscht, in den Exifdaten stehen jeweils die korrekten Richtungsdaten drin, wird aber von Commons ignoriert. Ich weiß nicht warum --K@rl (talk) 21:34, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Da es Benutzer-Optionen respektiert und somit von user abhing und Deine monobook JavaScript file ungültiges JS enthielt, ist möglicherweise die Ursache des Problems dort zu lokalisieren. Versuche das mal.
Was das Ausrichtungsproblem angeht: Wenn man die Originaldateien, wie hier abruft, ist es physikalisch richtig ausgerichtet, aber dann steht zusätzlich in den Exif-Daten Rotate 90 CW. Die Rotate 90 CW wird von MediaWiki/Commons respektiert und um 90° gedreht. Der Fehler liegt also nicht bei Commons. Wenn die Kamera eine Speicherkarte oder so hat, versuche mal diese als Wechsellaufwerk einzubinden und direkt von dieser mit Hilfe des Hochladeformulars oder des Assistenten zum Hochladen von Dateien hochzuladen. Wenn Du dann hoffentlich feststellst, dass es so funktioniert, kannst Du dir ja überlegen, wo sich der Fehler einschleicht. -- Rillke(q?) 22:10, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Zum ersten: Danke das funkt jetzt - auf das wäre ich nie gekommen. Das zweite werde ich einmal versuchen. Ich habe schon einige Male hier gefragt, aber nie eine funkt. Antwort bekommen. Vielleicht klappts jetzt. gruß K@rl (talk) 06:19, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
Hallo Rillke: File:Blumen im Garten 1941.JPG Jetzt direkt von Speicherkarte geladen. Vorschaubild ist okay, Original ist verdreht ;-) - what can I do? --K@rl (talk) 06:30, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T33366
Das ist bugzilla:31366, also ein Fehler in der MediaWiki-Logik und den meisten Webbrowsern (die die in den Exif-Daten angegebene Ausrichtung ignorieren). Wenn Du der Meinung bist, dass das Original oft angesehen wird, kannst Du eine Drehung um 0° fordern, andernfalls kann es so bleiben. Um das Problem vor dem Hochladen zu lösen, kannst Du z.B. jpegtran oder das IrfanView lossless rotate PlugIn verwenden (etwas gewöhnungbedürftig) -- Eine vollst. Liste mit nützlichen Hinweisen ist auf User:Saibo/Image viewers review for rotation of images/de. -- Rillke(q?) 07:58, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
Okay, danke für die Auskunft, so ausführlcih bekam ich sie bisher noch nie --gruß aus Wien K@rl (talk) 08:23, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

En:wp politics

Someone keeps edit warring with File:CA Assemblyman Mike Gatto.jpg at his article in en:wp. Since the image was supplied by the State office it is most likely PD as a work of the state. I can't email Mr. Gatto directly because I don't live in his district. I did email the w:Chief Clerk of California State Assembly to confirm it is PD. Can someone in CA email Mr. Gatto or should I lie about my address on the email form to get his attention about his article?--Canoe1967 (talk) 19:24, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

June 22

CentralNotice banner for the Review of Commons' Scope

This RFC review is currently advertised via a Watchlist notice on Commons only, which does not provide visibility to editors on other projects. A CentralNotice banner seems appropriate as changes to Commons: Project scope, and Commons:Photographs of identifiable people may potentially impact on all projects throughout the Wikimedia community. I'm posting here to ask for consensus to support a request to a Meta admin to set up such a banner.

  •  Support as proposer. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:11, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
  •  Neutral Well, I don’t know. Seems to me that some people in wp:en with an axe to grin pulled off a rabbit from their hat out of pure spite and now suddenly Commons “must” address that kind of concerns? Surely there are things needing improvement in Commons, but whoever wants to lend a hand should be here. I’m not sure that inviting people in other projects (i.e., people who don’t come to Commons often) is a good idea. Besides, this seems to have been hatched from petty rivalries between Commons and the English Wikipedia — having a discussion, which necessarily is done in English, on their terms, may be taken as a first sign of submission. -- Tuválkin ✉ 11:23, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
Hi Tuvalkin. There are users both within the Commons community and without who take the view that there may be some room for improvement in our policies, and the review has certainly not been foisted on Commons by the English Wikipedia or by anyone else. The impetus came from me, and I'm a bureaucrat on Commons who very seldom edits on the English Wikipedia. While I agree with you that anyone who wants to lend a hand should be here, I do think it important that we reach out to users from other Wikimedia projects, and avoid becoming a silo. After all, users on other projects are some of the main re-users of our content, and the more we can encourage them to come here and get involved with what we are doing the better the projects could be for all of us. I'd be most grateful if you could give this some more thought, and perhaps reconsider. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:07, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
  •  Support I am encouraged by the discussion in the proposal so far, I consider this early days in the process which may take months. If a central notice, as it well might, encourages a travelling circus of obsessive griefers, anti-Commonsists or general seekers of dramah to descend on the proposal and use it for attempts to change Commons scope that threatens to damage the project's value in terms of educational material for the illustration or preservation of controversial topics (sex, religion, politics), this would rapidly become apparent and be self-defeating, as the end result is then more likely to have no changes agreed, rather than small and sensible improvements to scope definition based on several years of pragmatic discussion in Deletion requests and on our noticeboards. Michael seems a considerate moderator, and I feel it a good thing to encourage a wide net of Wikimedians to take part and join the evolution of this project, rather than encouraging them to grandstand or post op-ed pieces elsewhere. We should, and must, welcome a diversity of viewpoints if we are to achieve a robust and credible consensus; even those we find... difficult. --Fæ (talk) 14:08, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
  •  Comment I can't see any support for significant changes forthcoming in this climate. I had a look through, I couldn't see much need for change. I think it would be met and resisted with militant apathy. Penyulap ☏ 14:13, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
  •  Support A scope change would affect lots of contributors from other wikis so they should be notified of the discussion. --Denniss (talk) 14:15, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Please prepare the translation infrastructure before running a central notice. -- Rillke(q?) 19:49, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
Not sure what you're suggesting is needed, but in any event who could help with that? Should I request help from a meta admin? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:58, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

X!'s Edit Counter

(Sorry for writing in English. You can translate the proposal.)

Should X!'s edit counter retain the opt-in requirement? Your input is strongly encouraged. Voice your input here.——cyberpower ChatAutomation 04:15, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Distributed via Global message delivery. (Wrong page? Fix here.)

Is there a video or media equivalent to Commons:Quality images candidates/candidate list?

Is there a video or media equivalent to Commons:Quality images candidates/candidate list? I put a video on Commons:Quality images candidates/candidate list, I am not sure if it belongs there, but I wanted to see what other people thought. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! --Mattwj2002 (talk) 04:24, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Because some kinds of contributions are quite rare, there is often either no venue, or a venue that never attracts attention. As a result, the media is sometimes included in a similar place like you suggest.
Things like computer generated backgrounds and images are often stuck with the same problem, which is unfortunate because there is no other option for some objects like the Tscheljabinsk meteor. Dismissing valuable contributions out of hand because they are unusual rather than looking at their value is ignorant. Penyulap ☏ 05:08, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on Template:Cc-by-sa-layout

I originally posted this on Template talk:Cc-by-sa-layout, and then moved it here since I thought it was an appropriate venue for this question. --RAN1 (talk) 18:10, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Could the [[Image:Cc-sa.svg]] in the template be changed to [[Image:Cc-sa white.svg]]? For wikis that have non-white backgrounds and use InstantCommons, CC-BY-SA templates display the ShareAlike icon with a transparent background. The white-background version of the Attribution icon is used, so it would probably be better to make the ShareAlike icon use the white background as well. Thanks, RAN1 (talk) 17:01, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

✓ Done —Mono 00:17, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

hearts in sign language categories

~30 colouring book hearts (like this one) are erroneously in the ASL, BSL and fingerspelling categories. Help removing them from those categories would be appreciated. -sche (talk) 23:08, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Do you know Cat-a-lot? With this gadget the task was done within a minute. --Patrick87 (talk) 00:02, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

June 25

Feedback needed about UploadWizard modification

Hi,

My name is Nazmul Chowdhury. I'm a student taking part in the Google Summer of Code with the Wikimedia Foundation. During the summer, I'm working on making Extension:UploadWizard more contributor-friendly. For example, I'll be adding dynamic template support (allowing support for more file types like books and artwork), and adding some code to pre-fill some known info about the content. My main goal is to make it easier to upload books, but in theory, as long as there is a template, you will be able to upload that file type and its metadata along with it. By the end of the project we will be supporting Template:Information (as we already do), Template:Book, Template:Artwork, Template:Photograph, and more if time permits.

Currently, I have a patch in progress that adds the interface and configuration necessary to support these templates. In the near future I'll start work on supporting Extension:TemplateData-style inputs for that interface as opposed to the current hard-coded versions that UploadWizard has relied on for so long. My mentor User:MarkTraceur has already submitted a draft of the Information template with TemplateData information, so we'll likely be making those changes to other templates in the near future as well.

Please reply here with questions or thoughts. Looking forward to your feedback.

- Rasel160 (talk) 15:45, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

  • Can the JSON contents of the template-data tag be generated and sanitized by a LUA module? JSON is a very strict and specific format. I doubt a lot of people will be able to maintain it otherwise. Also TemplateData duplicates some of the parameter info provided by Template:TemplateBox. That's why I would like to extend Template:TemplateBox with a JSON generator that will then automatically expose TemplateData. -- Rillke(q?) 19:55, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
For reference, Roan's username on wiki is User:Catrope. Bawolff (talk) 22:54, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

June 23

For Commons users in Moscow: Edward Snowden's airplane to land at SVO Airport at 5:15PM Moscow time

Are there any photographers who take pictures at Sheremetyevo airport? Edward Snowden's plane is landing at Sheremetyevo at 5:15PM Moscow time: http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1267261/snowden-leaves-hong-kong-commercial-flight-moscow - I'm not sure if that would be helpful to articles about Edward Snowden, but anyone thinks so, there's the hint: you can photograph Snowden's airplane as it lands

It's Aeroflot Flight#213 (as stated by the Hong Kong news article) - Aeroflot's website says

  • SU213: Hong Kong - Hong Kong International (HKG-1) Moscow - Sheremetyevo (SVO-F) 10:55 (UTC+08:00) 23.06 Departed

The aircraft should be an Airbus A330-300 as that is the equipment Flight 213 usually uses. WhisperToMe (talk) 09:42, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

It is a brilliant idea to bring it up here. I wonder if it is possible to ask about the next destination as well, there are not too many possibilities. Also, important idea, is maybe some people here have something like twitter, or know other places to ask about a free image as well. I expect considering how many supporters there are, this is also a possibility. I saw someone on the news outright laughing saying 'what can the US do ? shoot him down with a hellfire missile over Russian airspace ? The way that the guy laughed, really hearty and unrestrained was really unusual for TV. I liked it. Then again, RT is like that. Penyulap ☏ 13:06, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, I thought maybe a Wikipedian could possibly photograph the plane (VP-BDD) as it landed (source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2013/jun/23/edward-snowden-leaves-hong-kong-moscow-live = It's landed!). Even if we don't have any free photos I'm sure aviation enthusiasts have photos available. WhisperToMe (talk) 13:18, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Snowden live updates from RT. Penyulap ☏ 19:31, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Putin said that Snowden is in Moscow: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/25/edward-snowden-moscow-vladimir-putin - For those wanting a free photo of Snowden himself, it's highly unlikely a Wikipedian/Wikimedian will have access to him at this point. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:53, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Proposal for maintaining meta data as structured data

Over the last year, we have seen some discussion about if and how Wikidata can be useful for Wikimedia Commons. One aspect of this is maintaining meta data as structured data. The technology of Wikidata would be very useful for this. The Wikidata development team has drafted a proposal about how this could look like at Commons:Wikidata for media info and would love to have your input and comments. Please use the proposal's talk page for this so we can keep it all in one place. Thank you! --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 12:44, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Institution of Civil Engineers editathon

Interested editors are invited to an editathon event at the Institution of Civil Engineers, in London, on 19 July 2013. There should be opportunities for photography. See en:Wikipedia:GLAM/ICE. Andy Mabbett (talk) 14:02, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

The project can't be a tool for tools, or can it?

If an image which perfectly meets the requirements of scope is uploaded, but the subject of the image turns out to feel bullied by that image, shouldn't one policy over-ride the other, so that as a precaution we remove the image while respecting it would otherwise be acceptable, or at least do that in cases where there is a clear consensus that the image can fall into both categories, that it is notable, but there is also a consensus that it is unacceptable because it could be considered an attack ? Penyulap ☏ 11:31, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like a very theoretical issue. Let’s wait for an actual case to come up, shall we? Jean-Fred (talk) 14:03, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
Well, it's a simple current case. The only person that commons won't 'attack' is Jimmy, why the f*** can't we make it scope that we don't attack _anyone_ or at the very least, not attack a few more people, groups, how about a few minorities ? can we manage one minority out of this ? Commons:Deletion requests/File:Jimmy Wales by Pricasso.jpg why does Jimmy get the special treatment that everyone should get ? Penyulap ☏ 17:41, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
I agree. If something applies to Jimbo, it should apply to everyone. As I said in the discussion there, I don't see any sign of that as yet. These e.g. are clearly more gratuitous attack images than Pricasso's penis-painted portrait of Jimbo, with considerably less artistic and educational merit. Deleting Pricasso's work of Jimbo while being happy to host those files strikes me as the height of hypocrisy. I suspect the general public might share that impression. Andreas JN466 20:39, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
Awesome, then let's delete the gratuitous attack images that aren't artistic or educational. Problem solved! :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:30, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
well, if you're serious, then help us draft a policy rather than say it in a manner that may imply it's a joke. Penyulap ☏ 21:41, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
You're right, I clearly shouldn't have tried to lighten the mood with humor. Commons is serious business and must never be approached with any sense of levity. EVula // talk // ☯ // 01:45, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your offer of help. You could start with this one: File:Santorum_spelled_with_santorum.jpg and most other images in that category. Unlike Pricasso, the "artist" in this case is not notable in any way, and the artistic merit is zero. Let's see if there is the will to apply this idea to other people than Jimbo. Andreas JN466 22:00, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
That is absolutely disgusting and I wish I hadn't looked. There are things you can't un-see.
Policy should start with a suggestion, like, for example, if 25% of people believe an image is an attack image, then it should be deleted. Add a three person minimum, point out the discussion should be the file talkpage or a DR, and that's the basis for a policy.
25% may be a little low, but if the grounds upon which they object are clearly articulated, and an appropriate minimum number of objections is defined, that should be an acceptable policy for the community. Penyulap ☏ 22:13, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

<-- The thing is, it's is a bit of a "tipping point" case. Yes, the same protection should be given to Jimbo Wales as well as to all the non-Jimbo Waleses (or Walesi ). But the relevant question here is what is the practical outcome of this vote and the real "on the ground" implications of it?

If it gets "kept" that sets a precedent that it's okay to use Commons as just another "revenge" website of which there are already too many out there. It makes a mockery of the idea that Commons is suppose to serve a practical, educational purpose. If you can harass Jimbo like that, you can do it to many "little people" who don't have the advantage of marshaling support via their much watched talk page (and I expect most of this harassment wouldn't even be noticed except by the people affected or by so called "troll" websites like Wikipediocracy).. My crystal eight ball says that if you go through this "path A", where the image kept, you're gonna get a bunch of idiots/schmucks voting "per outcome of Jimbo Wales by Pricasso DR" to keep revenge/harassment images.

If it gets "deleted" the worse that can be said is that Jimbo got special treatment. Ok. But for the right reason. We can then work on extending that "special" (which should be standard, not special) treatment to others, which is the right thing to do. The people voting "keep" on there just for the yuks and the lulz (and the yaks!) and because "it's funny" and because "I don't like Jimmy", are just myopic dimwits.

So yes. Jimbo shouldn't get special treatment. But ironically enough, if he doesn't get special treatment here, that will enable future abuse of people who never get special treatment or who don't even have a chance of getting special treatment. And if you're interested in making Commons a responsible non-idiotic, non-troll-admin infested place, those battles are going to be that much tougher to fight then.

This is actually the completely wrong conversation. It's not the one we should be having. The conversation we should be having is:

"Why do we have to even discuss this in the first place?"

"Why is a Commons admin using Commons for revenge editing?"

"Why is a Commons admin who uses Commons for pursuit of personal grudges still an admin?"

"Why is a Commons admin who uses Commons as a venue for harassing people even allowed to fucking edit here"?

Go back here where it all went wrong and remember those names that voted "support".Volunteer Marek (talk) 04:31, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

that's not fixing any problem, that's just picking sides. There are two sides at the least in every argument and you have to understand those sides to find the common ground and encourage, guide, or shove the parties towards it. I can't see how pissing off 1/2 of the people involved is a good outcome.
Someone was saying it was one of the best trolls they'd ever seen, well, I'd say the response was rather poor, a 'walked right into it' kind of thing. Let me summarise a bit:
  • up until halfway through the DR when Jimmy did the very unusual act of stating his opinion on the image, the image was perfectly in scope, wanted and needed on commons. Not my opinion here, just quoting the charter of the project. This crap is what commons collects.
  • Russavia is, at worst, extremely clever at gaming. Considering the thought, effort, and preparation that went into it, how can people not stop and know their 'opponent' first ? The entire effort was exploiting the written by-the-letter rules regulations and guidelines as they stand, keeping well within the lines that exist at the time.
  • The sole possible way you can accuse Russavia is by assuming bad faith, which is not something everyone is willing to do. Every editor goes through rough or wry patches and it effects the subjects they'll edit, happens everyday. Like my friend Tomas and the fly picture, it's just blowing off steam.
  • The counter effort, omg. Rather than send a wave of outside editors to commons to help draft a universal policy for everyone, no no, let's just do it for one person, me, because that's what the public will like most about this debarkle. Let me quote, "strikes me as the height of hypocrisy." this is magnified because not everyone lives in a country with such a class divide, some cultures expect at least lip-service to equality.
  • what was the response supposed to do ? get everyone to come to commons and martyr an admin, (and what other things he is) who, it can fairly and plainly be argued has done nothing wrong. (until Jimmy finally made his thoughts clear). I can't see how throwing half the people's favourite prince from the tower right in front of them is going to impress the little people, but you know, maybe there are the en.wiki bloodsport sector of onlookers who will cheer that. Who knows, maybe some of those will replace the people who leave. I don't know.

Why not turn the rage and anger into something constructive rather than 'walking straight into it' if Russavia gets the impression from hounding on en.wiki that his days were numbered, then martyrdom is rather attractive as a form or revenge on your harassers, from whom there seems no respite. Seriously, THAT is the freaking question, where the fuck is any anti-harassment policy that applies to everyone ? If he wanted to make a lasting point, like I said, the only way it could have been any cheekier or better would be to get the WMF to pay for the camera, hotel and airfares like they do at the drop of a hat for trivial reasons.

So the outcome is 'Commons users along with everyone else are free to stalk, harass, cyber-bully and eliminate anyone they desire, so long as it's not, you know, Jimbo Wales of course.' Where is the minutest lip-service to a better environment for 'everyone' oh sure, there were lots of big words about a better working environment just for Jimbo, but where is the lip service ? where is the lip service I ask. That's all I want, the empty lies of a politician, and we don't even get that much. Jipped. But seriously, how does Russavia not come out of this looking like the good guy who did nothing wrong according to the letter of the law, and Jimmy not come out of this as using canvassing for his own ends alone ? How does it not look like someone 'pressed Jimmy buttons' ? In a perfect world, or even a less-crappy project we could just draft a policy that says, hey one dozen editors say an image is an attack image, then, if they are not outnumbered 2 to 1, the image gets the chop. It's done. Problem solved for EVERYONE. Why is it so necessary to preserve the ability to use commons for trolling and harassment of some people, but not others ? That question is the elephant in the room. Is commons a tool for tools ? Penyulap ☏ 06:44, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

I disagree. People will just scream "harassment" to have content that they disapprove of deleted. This is the gateway for censorship. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 13:46, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
MDS, not being directed towards you, but that's what Volunteer Marek above did last year; except he also blatantly and wilfully lied about sources. Didn't you Marek? Please be honest about your past history with me Marek; especially your continued participation in EEML/Wikipediametric (a nationalist mailing list) which engaged in systematic and fully documented harassment on myself; and also your frank admission to me on email that you have been trying to get me banned, because in your words, I "fucked with" you on an article in which you were POV-pushing. And let's not forget your public libellous statements of me being a racist. Volunteer Marek, I suggest that you stop now with your continued harassment, or I will take further action. russavia (talk) 14:03, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
Russavia, I would appreciate it if you stopped lying about me, trying to threaten me, and stopped your bullying behavior. Yes, you are lying. I did not "lie with sources". You are simply full of shit here. There's no "continued participation in EEML". You are full of shit here as well. There was no "frank admission that I would try to get you banned". You are lying again Russavia. You seem to be just incapable of writing two sentences together without lying, attacking and smearing someone.
The only part of the above statement which is true is that you DO in fact "fuck with" people who point out your odious behavior or who are critical of you. That's what you've done to me, and that's why you were long term banned from en-wiki. That's also what you're doing to Jimmy here; because he dared to criticize you. And that's why it's simply insane that a person like you has admin powers on a Wikimedia Foundation project.
Volunteer Marek (talk) 22:11, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
I am responding to this outrageous rubbish to Marek directly on his user talk page. russavia (talk) 22:20, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
Actually, I'd appreciate it if you stayed off my user talk page.Volunteer Marek (talk) 01:43, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
@Michael, at least there would be a process where people could yell 'harassment' and 'freedom' at each other across a talkpage and that could be tallied up in a meaningful manner rather than the chaos there is now. What IS policy when there IS no policy. I think that people from lynching countries with high crime rates may have some kind of instinct to ignore the problem as a weird individual self-defence mechanism, but not everyone has that. There are many parts of the world, surely we can agree on something that works better than what we (don't) have now. Penyulap ☏ 14:16, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Returning to the question that started this discussion, I've just noticed that no fewer than six images of a notable person/public figure were recently deleted out of process on far flimsier grounds, that they "were unflattering" and might interfere with the subject performer's self-marketing. [17][18][19][20][21] If we're going to set the removal bar that low, there's no question that the JWales-related Pricasso files need to go immediately. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (talk) 22:40, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Urgh, what a wild goose-chase. Those diffs all look like they relate to the same issue, which appears to be no permission, a simple copyright violation. Penyulap ☏ 06:34, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
Then look again; they had no copyright problems, it was merely the approval of the photographed that was missing.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:40, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Alert !

Jkadavoor has just placed retirement templates onto their userpage and talkpage, please do express your support for the efforts of this great editor, in the hope that they may reconsider at some point in the future. Or if you think it is dramatic, then chastise them and tell them to stay just the same ! Penyulap ☏ 11:59, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Trademark discussion

Hi, apologies for posting this in English, but I wanted to alert your community to a discussion on Meta about potential changes to the Wikimedia Trademark Policy. Please translate this statement if you can. We hope that you will all participate in the discussion; we also welcome translations of the legal team’s statement into as many languages as possible and encourage you to voice your thoughts there. Please see the Trademark practices discussion (on Meta-Wiki) for more information. Thank you! --Mdennis (WMF) (talk) Approximately 12:00, 03 June 2013 (UTC)

Road train categories

would one or two people give Category talk:Road trains some thought and comment there. Penyulap ☏ 16:21, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

✓[OK] solved, Thank you everyone. Penyulap ☏ 21:50, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

June 26

File:Nightingale - Bulbul.jpg

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52262

Requesting temporary undeletion for renaming following a failed file rename - I renamed it to File:Red-vented Bulbul Pycnonotus cafer Pune, India.jpg (correcting a wrongly-named file) but something crashed in the process and the file at the new name is corrupted (no image present). I don't appear to be able to undelete it myself either to retrieve the image (which I should be able to?). Thanks! - MPF (talk) 17:53, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

The file was moved during SWIFT outage (see section above) and the file backend operation failed but the file description page (and the file revision entry) was moved. Moved back to old location and the file appeared, then moved again to new location and this time SWIFT did the job. -- Rillke(q?) 21:51, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! - MPF (talk) 22:08, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

June 27

British military enthusiasts needed

Images from MoD uploaded by Fæ

A heads-up to MILHIST and other folks with an interest in military images, I have just started slowly uploading photos from http://www.defenceimagery.mod.uk that have been released on the Open Government Licence {{OGL}}. There are nearly 3,000 on the MoD website, all appear of professional quality and should be of general public interest, having been selected by the Ministry of Defence for their potential public impact and educational value. Many photos have been taken of the UK forces around the globe, including teams in Afghanistan. I should complete the upload within the next few days, though re-runs may be needed in the future as the MoD will keep on adding to the OGL collection over time.

I would like to thank the Defence Imagery Team of the UK Ministry of Defence, for replying to my email request for free access to the image archives API, with the express purpose of batch uploading to Wikimedia Commons. The API service has provided the text content for the image pages, including many handy keywords and categories that will help Commons categorization.

If you would like to help us ensure these get used and found by the public, please add a couple of categories to a photo and then remove it from the check category backlog at Images from MoD uploaded by Fæ (check needed). If you spot a bad filename, please use the {{Rename}} template to get it moved to something more meaningful, though do keep the MoD's number in the name as this helps avoid non-identical duplicates. Please raise any comments for improving the future upload process on my talk page, or you can try finding me on #wikimedia-commons if you spot a bug (though I may take several hours to notice messages there). :-) --Fæ (talk) 13:56, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

I am seeing these kinds of requests more frequently. I think that there should be some directory of photo collections to be sorted as more people are sharing them. Here are some examples of some others:
I think that there should be a WikiProject on Commons which keeps a directory of such collections and maintains instructions on how anyone can sort through them to categorize them and integrate them into other Wikimedia projects. I might participate in the development of such a project if others would join. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:06, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
This sounds like a good way for volunteers to find a topic they enjoy to help out with. I am experimenting with auto-categorization, but with a high degree of caution. For example, I have now uploaded over 22,000 photographs from the US Department of Defense with categories based on their descriptions. The mappings are captured here, but represent many hours work checking and debugging them, so a solution like this would only be appropriate/worthwhile for large uploads (for me, that would be greater than 10,000 in a collection). Even with this sort of programmatic work, it can never be a replacement for a subject matter expert checking it through. --Fæ (talk) 18:27, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes, a very good plan. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:17, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
Related to this, soon the year of the "The Great War Centenary" will start, most probably followed by a greater media stream concerning that subject, so it might be a good idea to form a project group that can help on that subject. Example --Foroa (talk) 14:36, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

A British military enthusiast 		Thank you to the many Commonsists that have lent a hand since I started uploading these files. Over 2,800 photos have been uploaded with helpful metadata from the MoD's API, and I believe anyone browsing the photographs will agree that the Ministry of Defence has done a cracking job picking their best quality images to release for the public benefit. Loads of categorization and potential reuse on other Wikimedia projects requires volunteer support! :-) --Fæ (talk) 09:35, 28 June 2013 (UTC)]]

Text on path in SVG not rendering in previews

I just uploaded File:Coat of arms of the Duke of Manchester.svg, but as you can see, the motto, which is text on a curved path, isn't rendering in previews. I'm not very experienced with SVG editing here, so I assume this is a known thing with a workaround of some kind. Can anybody advise me on how to fix it? Many thanks. — Scott • talk 15:57, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

sounds like a job for the Commons:Graphic Lab, I'd recommend asking User talk:Fry1989. Penyulap ☏ 16:20, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
Wow, that's somewhere I was totally unaware of! Thanks, I'll post there. — Scott • talk 16:27, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
Penyulap -- I really don't know that I'd send someone to Fry1989 for this particular purpose. Fry1989 edits a lot of SVG files in Inkscape, but has a somewhat limited knowledge of SVG technical details outside of Inkscape. AnonMoos (talk) 01:36, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
I move your comment back down, hope you don't mind, thing is, I know that Fry is svg expert. I'm not, plus Fry is someone I like, I notice his work. Offhand, I can't actually think of others straight off who do svg great AND fast AND easy no-fuss except a few guys at the Gfx lab, which I also recommended. Fry already finished the request I think two days before you posted your comment :D that's fast. Plus, although Scott posted to both Fry's talkpage AND the GFX lab at the same time, Fry was done and finished I think before even one person said BOO at the GFX lab. Scott went and removed the request at the FX lab, so must have been happy. Can't get better than that. Don't forget, ask Penyulap for all your recommendations, you'll be happy and it'll be done before you know it. :D
People often come to my talkpage for gfx lab requests, and they are done faster than the fx lab and it's more informal. People like that informal sort of thing. My last one was a map, it was very fast. Penyulap ☏ 02:14, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Fry1989 has a lot of practical experience editing files in Inkscape (without being an actual SVG artist such as Sodacan), so if you want a quick Inkscape fix, Fry1989 could very well be your man -- but he's really not a general "SVG expert" (as you claimed). Having a lot of practical experience with Inkscape is actually something quite different from being an SVG expert, and involves a somewhat distinct skill set. Unfortunately, I'm not sure you know what "SVG expert" really means... AnonMoos (talk) 02:27, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
I mean expert in the actual expert way, he knows everything and does everything that anyone who needs help could want, as demonstrated with this request. There is I guess other more sarcastic meanings of 'expert' like someone who just talks and criticises everything and everyone else and talks and talks and doesn't DO the work, but I don't mean it like that. I wouldn't recommend people like that. If you need a svg, Fry is your man, if you need a lecture, try someone else. Penyulap ☏ 02:37, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Whatever -- if "SVG expert" has any meaning at all, it means that you can directly understand and deal with SVG code as it is found in an SVG file. If you can only deal with SVG files by means of an application such as Inkscape, but never directly, then you can be an Inkscape expert of considerable proficiency, but you are not an SVG expert. An SVG expert can often reduce an SVG file to a small fraction of its previous filesize while retaining the same or almost the same visual appearance, but an Inkscape expert can rarely do this. After many previous bitter complaints about how he bloated the size of SVG files just to change colors, Fry1989 eventually learned how to open a short SVG file in a text editor and manually change a few "#ABCDEF" hexadecimal color specifications of strokes and fills, but that's about the extent of his direct SVG knowledge. For most other things he's completely dependent on Inkscape. I don't want to denigrate Fry1989's considerable practical experience in editing SVG files within Inkscape, but as I said previously, he's not an SVG artist like Sodacan, and he's not an SVG expert, so he doesn't have the all-round vector abilities or qualifications which you seem to want to attribute to him... AnonMoos (talk) 05:51, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Scott Martin -- this is a well-known longstanding RSVG bug, and I would be very surprised if there wasn't already a bug report filed at "bugzilla"... AnonMoos (talk) 01:36, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
There is a bugreport (also directly in the GNOME bugtracker since librsvg actually is a GNOME project). However development of librsvg is stale more or less, so curved text should always be converted to paths currently for Wikipedia rendering. --Patrick87 (talk) 12:47, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Thank you both. Patrick, that's useful information on several levels. And AnonMoos - you seem to have some beef with Fry1989, and that has nothing to do with my question or its resolution. What I do know is that when I asked him, he not only identified the problem but fixed it for me rather than just explaining it and leaving it for me to do. Which was more than I asked for. So, please take your dispute somewhere else? Thank you. — Scott • talk 13:56, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
He has a lot of practical experience in editing SVG files in Inkscape, and he can be helpful if you catch him in a good mood, but I have strong objections to him being presented as an SVG expert when (after many encounters with him over a number of years) I have seen abundant and redundant evidence showing with crystal clarity that he is not an SVG expert... AnonMoos (talk) 14:50, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Hehe, how likely you are to 'catch' someone 'in a good mood' depends on your fishing skills. I like Fry, three days after he has beaten everyone else at the FX lab to the finishing line for Scott's request, we're still trying to work out how he does it so fast, with such flare, such daring ! I think to keep AnonMoos happy, by not referring to Fry as the expert he is, I'll have to start referring to him as "SVG MAN" the commons SUPERHERO !! faster than a speeding Graphics Lab, stronger than a dozen trolls, able to eat tall sandwiches in a single gulp, it's SVG MAN !!! WooHoo !! Penyulap ☏ 15:15, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
100% agree AnonMoos, but no matter. This bug is ancient and bold documented on the help page for everyone: Help:SVG -- Perhelion (talk) 16:04, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, I didn't know about that page either. If anyone reading this is involved with writing it, a little feedback from a first-time reader - it's way too big, and should be broken into separate pages. I can cope, because I have a technical background and am used to reading huge chunks of documentation; but for a new user, I can see it being quite intimidating. I can cross-post this feedback there if that would be of use to anyone. — Scott • talk 15:08, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Now that interwiki links on the pedia projects are now handled at Wikidata, User:Legoktm has been so kind as to put together a tool that enables editors, who may have reason to work on interwiki links on categories, galleries, etc, to quickly generate a list of interwiki links for use on Commons. The tool is available on Toolserver here and on wmflabs here (not the trailing /). Simply go to Wikidata, get the Q###### ID, and place the entire ID (including the Q), hit "check" and it will generate the list of interwiki links for placements on Commons. The wmflabs version is still Beta, and the toolserver version will stay up as long as toolserver. Get in touch with Legoktm if anyone has any issues, etc to report. Thanks Legoktm for putting this tool together for us. russavia (talk) 06:55, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I confess, I have followed the links and still do not understand the user workflow, or the outcome. If I am looking at a category on Commons, say Category:TAV-8B Harrier II (US Marine Corps), how would I go about generating or finding an existing related Q id, and then how would I apply it to the category? --Fæ (talk) 07:54, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
As far as I can see, there are no Wikipedia articles for this special variant and thus no interwiki links to add to that category. So let's pick Category:Harrier II (Royal Air Force) as an alternative example. Before wikidata was activated you would simply go to en:British Aerospace Harrier II, click on "edit", copy the list of interwikis from the end of the article, and paste them at the end of Category:Harrier II (Royal Air Force) (and add the english article to that list manually). Now that wikidata is activated, you can't do that anymore. Instead you go to en:British Aerospace Harrier II and click on "Edit links" in the sidebar below the interwiki links, which brings you to [22]. Copy the Q1351048 from your browser's address bar and paste it into the tool and you'll get the good old list of interwiki links that you can paste to the end of Category:Harrier II (Royal Air Force). (Of course you could also go to wikidata directly and enter "Harrier" into the search and pick out the one you need). HTH, --El Grafo (talk) 10:06, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
Sorry Fae for not explaining that, and thanks El Grafo for explaining that :) russavia (talk) 10:23, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
And thanks russavia for letting us know ;-) This might prove to become a very valuable tool. --El Grafo (talk) 11:11, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the example. It looks like something crying out for automation rather than something I would attempt to do by hand. --Fæ (talk) 08:28, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
Any idea if this will be integrated in Sum-it-up that I use many times per day to document categories ? --Foroa (talk) 09:14, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Outage

FYI, there's currently an outage of the media storage system, preventing files from being uploaded (Giving errors like "Could not create directory "mwstore://local-multiwrite/local-public/9/95"."). System administrators are on it and it should be resolved very soon. guillom 12:45, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Whoops ! should I put the hamsters back where I found them ? I had no way to know this would happen, honest! Penyulap ☏ 12:50, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the note guillom. (I had trouble around when you posted, but it seems to be working again now). --99of9 (talk) 12:56, 26 June 2013 (UTC) Still having trouble. --99of9 (talk) 13:45, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes, there are still a few issues. My uploads are going through now, but thumbnails are missing. guillom 13:52, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
The svg maps I am uploading are heavy (~5.5Mb) and might be rough on the thumbnailer? --99of9 (talk) 14:00, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
All seems fine for the last couple of hours. I guess you sorted it. --99of9 (talk) 15:05, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
Also it seems all files deleted during the outage have to be restored twice to get actually restored. --McZusatz (talk) 07:49, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

there was a ten minute full outage of all pages ten minutes ago. Penyulap ☏ 05:25, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

It started about 35 minutes ago on https, and then slowly moved to http. I thought that Diarall (Nordic god of deletionism, pronounced "D R all") has decided to delete the whole Commons. Sinnamon Girl (talk) 05:33, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

user:Sech11 uploads

I am way too lazy and retired for this. Can someone please delete the pics uploaded by this user? These are paintings used for Wikipedia article about clearly non-notable Lithuanian painter. Ergo, images are copyrighted. It's very likely that the user=painter but there is no evidence. 24.199.99.98 00:47, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

All the images are licensed and in scope. Do we normally assume good faith and accept donations from artists? They look better than many abstract paintings I have seen here by artists far more notable than he is.--Canoe1967 (talk) 00:57, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
File:Jp green lady.jpg
at the risk of Fastily or INeverCry hearing me, (those two always seem to delete things faster if I mention a four letter word that starts with 'k' and ends with 'p'), I think they are lovely pictures. I don't know enough about paintings to say what styles they are, or influences and so on, but I think they are useful. Penyulap ☏ 15:50, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
I also agree that they look fine but we always were very strict in regard to artworks (while we have a lot of blurry photos) and I am unable to draw a borderline (anyone who is, except (potential) Wikipedia usage as a criterion?). These files, however, are also leaking written permission by the artist (and artists sometimes tend to change their mind). -- Rillke(q?) 20:54, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
They are low rez and lacking exif. One was tagged speedy and I converted it to DR here: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Justaspetrosiusautoportretas.jpg.--Canoe1967 (talk) 21:45, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Generating 12,000 images from Cofnod

I'm presently discussing generating around 12,000 maps in image form, showing the habitat of a particular species found in Wales. Cofnod is one of four Local Records Centres (LRCs) in Wales. I've had two meetings so far with Ray, head of Cofnod, who has agreed to licence on CC-BY-SA. Can I use the Bling map on this site, or would they need to substitute with the Openstreetmap version? Secondly, Can this generating (screen grab) be done automatically, also attaching metadata, does this cause a problem if automated? Diolch yn fawr! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 13:57, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

If the objective was to provide up-to-date maps for articles, might be better to leave the database where it is until the articles are created. The database itself would in the meantime be kept fresh on a site built for that purpose, bringing it here to do would just create useless busywork perhaps? At the moment the article is written, the author may want the latest up to date map, they'd also keep the map as up to date as they figure is necessary for their article.
If the objective was to provide historical maps for articles, I think it may fall out of scope on over 99% of the database.
I get the impression that while it can be done, maybe it would lead to 11,500 maps that will never be used. Maybe a bot that generates the maps upon request would be much more useful, can it be written that way ? You could replace all the simple locator maps that are currently used. Penyulap ☏ 15:04, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Many thanks. It's the latter: a map showing where a species has been recorded over the last 100 years. The new 12,000 articles will be generated in a few months, and my AWB bot will append maps (of species which are found in Wales) onto the article on that species. I don't understand your sentence, 'I think it may fall out of scope on over 99% of the database' as these maps are very relevant to the article. You say it can be done; can you give me a clue as to how? Llywelyn2000 (talk) 15:22, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Hehe, I thought there was a possibility you meant people when you said 'a particular species' ;) but I see you mean another, yet unnamed species.
Well, how to do it is, and is not, difficult. Writing bots, which I can dabble with but not do very well, seems to be 'secret knowledge' to a degree. The thing is it is often the same people who write bots that also want to stop them being misused by spammers, and there is the dilemma. Many people won't help educate you on how to write a bot. Someone wrote a lovely bot for me called PALZ9000 because they understood me and my ideas. There are a few bots that I would like to write, but so far, I need to learn more programming first. There are some people about who may offer help publicly, but I'd give pointers privately. Penyulap ☏ 15:37, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
looking at the website, that is a complicated job, very very complicated. You'd need a great programmer, and the original database. A sample output image of what you would like as the output would help, with that you can start searching for help. Penyulap ☏ 16:57, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Hi Llywelyn2000, I have not checked through Bing, but I suggest we direct traffic to OSM rather than Microsoft as we love open source rather than Bill Gates.
  • It is entirely possible to scrape the relevant map from OSM under CC-BY-SA and pump these into Commons, but I would be concerned at that solution, as we would lose value from later improvements to OSM.
  • For my Geograph categorization work, I was including {{GeoGroupTemplate}} in the category descriptions, unfortunately as this relies on the toolserver, it does not appear to be working any more, however this used to take all the files listed in a category and provide links to Bing and Google maps which showed every photograph on a map automatically (by using a kml export for every image link with its geocoordinates). A re-working template might be all you need to pursue here. There might be a clever solution using OSM's API, but I have only touched that with mild interest in the past, rather than anything this detailed.
  • I can think of how to "hard" fix this by having a bot generate the KML export link, but that is probably a crappy solution compared to getting the service working again via WMFlabs. I am not sure this is a topic I would prioritize over other goodies in my backlog for the next couple of months, but you might ping Tom Morris for his contacts within OSM, or those Wikimedians with mapping special interests to advise.
--Fæ (talk) 09:26, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Bug report - category modification

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52135

(technical discussion ahead - sorry...)

I've modified the Template:ACClicense so that the "Ancient Chinese Characters" pictures with no decomposition be indexed under the Category:ACC needing decomposition. It works, kind of, insofar as the pictures with no decomposition are indeed categorized under the correct category - BUT - that category remains empty, though there should be ~ a thousand pictures concerned.

When I force the edit of a picture without decomposition falling in that new category (blank edit with no modification), the file itself remains as is, but the category is correctly updated and takes it into account. Honestly, I'm in no mood to make a blank edit on ~ a thousand files since that should be automated...

Apparently, there is somewhere a "modified" flag that indicates that something must be updated following an edition, that works for the files, including when files categories are modified by a template change (that may changes the categorization). But this modification flag does not reach the files categories, when file categories are modified by a template change that simply changes the categorization. The files hit by the template are obviously set by a "modified" flag, but when that modification alters the categorization, it is not taken into account : the modified file should be recategorized (modification propagation when the modified file is a template), which is obviously not the case.

  1. Is this a known bug, have I missed something obvious I should have known for the change to work correctly ?
  2. If this is indeed a new bug to be reported, can somebody link me to the place it should be posted (I'm lost) or (or course, preferentially) transfer this message to the relevant authority ?

Thanks in advance, Michelet-密是力 (talk) 17:45, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

When you add a category to a template that is used in a lot of pages, instead of fixing the categories for all the pages right away (which would take a long time), the template gets added to a list of things that need to have their [category] links refreshed. A different server is constantly going through the things on this list. Sometimes this list gets a little long (currently for commons there is roughly 13858 things on the list). Note that refreshlinks jobs are handled separately from HTMLCacheUpdate jobs, so adding things to a category is done separately from making the page look updated. So it may be the servers just haven't gotten to it yet. (Although you made the edit on the 11th, which is quite a while, so maybe their really is a bug). Bawolff (talk) 20:59, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
Still nothing on June the 17th... Michelet-密是力 (talk) 18:36, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Software bugs can be reported in the 'Bugzilla' bug tracker by following the instructions How to report a bug, in this case against the product "Wikipedia". This is to make developers aware of the issue. Please link to this discussion, and also (the other way round) paste the number of the bug report (or the link) here, so others can also inform themselves about the bug's status. Thanks in advance! --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 05:34, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
Last months, those updates did not work for non-empty disambiguation pages, broken category redirects and non-empty category redirects during 2 to 3 weeks, which was a pain. This was confirmed by the fact that when I emptied the related templates and restored them later on, the category contents was completely different. --Foroa (talk) 06:12, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
Filed as bugzilla:50135. Bawolff (talk) 21:49, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks a lot - I was just about to file it. Michelet-密是力 (talk) 08:13, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand - Mr. Malibu & Maria Shriver

In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the WMF office which should not be undone. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me. The takedown can be read here. 

Affected file(s):

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Mr. Malibu & Maria Shriver. Thank you! Jalexander (talk) 09:35, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Tyranny of the Commons

Please see Minority removal of welcome images. Penyulap ☏ 16:25, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Adding .flac to allowed file types

Hi all.

We (We being various people working on TimedMediaHandler. The technical work was done by J Gerber), would like to start allowing flac uploads in its native container format. FLAC is a free lossless format for audio files, often used when people want to be sure they are getting the exact same sound. (Think of it like tiff format, but for audio instead of images). Currently commons allows uploads of flac encoded audio if it is using the ogg container format (See Commons:File_types#Ogg). This is basically the same thing, except the files have a different extension (.flac) and it is much more popular way to encode flac data then using Ogg-flac.

How this all would work would be just like what happens when you upload an ogg flac file currently (for example like: File:Muriel-Nguyen-Xuan-Brahms-rhapsody-opus79-1.flac.oga ). You can embed it in pages, and have the audio player thingy. It is transcoded to ogg vorbis for in-browser playing, and people can download the original version at the image description page if they so desire.

Anyways, does this all sound good to you guys. If anyone has any objections, please speak up. For the technically curious, the relavent gerrit commit is [23] Bawolff (talk) 19:40, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Actually I always like it when free formats are promoted. While I'd like the possibility to upload FLAC audio (BTW, what's the file size limit currently?) I don't really know how useful the feature will actually be however: The only real use case of FLAC I currently know is for music albums and I doubt there are many free albums that can be uploaded to commons. Any way, as long as it doesn't break anything this is great news! --Patrick87 (talk) 20:08, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
The file size limit is 100mb for normal uploads, 500mb if you're using the somewhat experimental chunked uploads. For files bigger than 500mb, its possible to ask someone to upload them (see Help:Server-side_upload). Personally I expect most audio uploads will continue to be ogg vorbis, but I think its good to have the option available to upload flac in cases where we have high quality audio source material available. Bawolff (talk) 20:19, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Bawolff -- If you're advocating for a file format, I really would not compare it to TIFF, because TIFF is a semi-incoherent mess (more a grab-bag of many different file formats, some quite obscure, rather than one single file format)... AnonMoos (talk) 21:08, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
True. The point I was trying to make is that both formats are applicable to archival material where you want lossless encoding. Bawolff (talk) 21:40, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
TIFF is quite similar to OGG; a container format that stores various types of data. If you can find a list of what all goes in an OGG, your Google-Foo is better then mine, but Wikipedia lists 13 codecs, and RFC 5334 lists 14, and if I counted right that's 21 between them, many of which are quite obscure.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:02, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
However, it's almost impossible to write software to display all theoretically valid TIFF files, which means that TIFF sure doesn't seem like a positive point of comparison to me... AnonMoos (talk) 23:45, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Theoretically valid is vague, but ignoring private use tags and the unfortunate first JPEG extension (basically errated out of existence and replaced with another workable JPEG extension) it's not that big or complex a spec. Maybe for 20 years ago, but it's probably as easily to support all theoretically valid non-private-use files as it is to support OGG Theora with Vorbis audio; the libtheora libraries come to 350K alone, whereas libtiff is less then 250K. It's tarred and feathered because it is bigger (and more powerful) then other image formats, because it is expendable (and has been extended in proprietary ways), and because way back in 1988, it may have been hard to support the whole thing.--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:35, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
There are a significant number of TIFF files which are not thumbnailed by Wikimedia software, which makes it seem like there are still problems... AnonMoos (talk) 12:21, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, for sure. The way you have to choose containers at the moment is confusing even for me. I make some short videos as well as short soundclips, and it seems illogical the way you have to match up the codec and a different container for it. We should just allow all free file types if that is possible. There is not much documentation about how to assemble them, but then, there is not much demand, but this is a good move in the right direction. Penyulap ☏ 21:29, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

 Support Sounds good (no pun intended ;). Thanks Bawolff an the TMH team for following up on this. Jean-Fred (talk) 22:38, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
 Support per Jean-Fred. Yuvipanda (talk) 22:56, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
 Support When I read this my first response was "You mean to tell me that it is not supported yet?" Actually you can put FLAC stream into an OGG container, but there's no reason to force people to jump through this extra hoop. Sinnamon Girl (talk) 05:29, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 Support of course. --El Grafo (talk) 10:14, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 Support per Sinnamon Girl. Lemmens, Tom (talk) 12:47, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
@Bawolff, you have mentioned some pros for allowing this extension (and flac containers). Could you list the (potential) cons, if there are any. Examples coming into my uninformed mind would be #file-size (different to ogg-container?) and the #potential to hide malicious code in such containers. --Túrelio (talk) 13:20, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
Not a real con but flac is not supported by browsers. Only the transcoded version can be played. --McZusatz (talk) 15:28, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
AFAIK, ogg is the container format, not flac. And it is possible to upload flag in ogg containers right now (referring to the file size concern). BTW, does seeking in flag-files work properly (I read that the seektable is an optional feature)? Is it a valid concern that users may upload copyrighted music? "Buy music flac" (5'670'000 results) seems to generate more concrete google results than "Buy music ogg" (1'270'000 results). -- Rillke(q?) 15:50, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
The FLAC files I've tested don't seem to have problems seeking. In any case, people listening to the files on-site in the browser will be listening to vorbis transcodes. Bawolff (talk) 21:15, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
(Edit conflict)We would not knowingly allow a format that you could put malicious content in (Hence the original reason why odt and friends aren't allowed here). File size of the native flac container should be slightly smaller then with the ogg container [24]. However, either way, its not like we're running out of hard disk space. When users would play such a file in the browser, it would be transcoded to ogg vorbis, and the transcoded version would have the file size of an ogg vorbis stream. Bawolff (talk) 16:04, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks.  Support. --Túrelio (talk) 06:30, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 Support MOAR file types! — Scott • talk 19:24, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 Oppose Adding to the complexity of our systems is not a good thing; adding FLAC does not extend the set of materials we can reasonably handle, but it does extend the number of formats people dealing with Commons files have to deal with.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:54, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
This doesn't seem right. There is going to be a burden of file conversion, yes -- but doesn't it make more sense to put it on the person who wants to pull the content out than the person who is contributing it? When someone is sitting on the fence of "oh, should I release my material to a free license or not", that isn't really the right moment to run up to them and start nagging and moaning. Someone else can handle the translation later. Wnt (talk) 18:33, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Then someone should handle the translation, before it gets added to the archive. It's every archivist's recurring nightmare to be faced with an huge archive with every file in its own distinct format. It seems a weird place to make that stand, too, since it can be trivially interconverted without loss with a format we already support. Video makers, on the other hand, have to lossily convert to an obscure format using an obscure codec.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:34, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
 Support Sounds should be uploaded with Flac lossless codec to keep all the details of the sound. That way it will be easier to reuse it. Lionel Allorge (talk) 19:42, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
That's not an issue here; we already support the Flac codec, through Ogg Flac.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:34, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
Putting a Flac file into an Ogg container is an unnecessary burden and will discourage some uploaders. We should keep it simple by using the Flac container. Lionel Allorge (talk) 17:14, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
 Info Unless something unexpected happens, flac will probably be enabled on here on July 8. Bawolff (talk) 21:15, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
bummer.
oh, I mean 'that's great', it's just such a let-down getting what we want, I feel robbed of the chance to wave my fist in the air and yell at the WMF again. (sigh)
Hey, let's have another vote ! who else feels robbed ? Penyulap ☏ 22:05, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
If you get a bunch of people together with pitch forks, I would consider that to consist of something unexpected. Bawolff (talk) 22:31, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
(American accent)Right ! we need Beer and Twitter to get this revolution underway ! Penyulap ☏ 22:38, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
 Support Regards, Christoph Braun (talk) 13:10, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

June 20

Frustrating and Impossible for Use Upload Form

Dear Friends, as you can see from my profile, since you changed the upload form I stopped to upload content because of the frustrating, constantly crushing and totally impossible for use upload form. After a pause of couple of years I came back and did my best to upload 11 photos, but the "clever" machine crashed again. I'm using Firefox for Ubuntu canonical 1.0. Is there any chance someone to make simple, easy for use and user-friendly upload form, or you intend to receive content only from users with PhD in computer sciene? --Иван (talk)

I skip the whole thing and use the upload wizard, I just tell a lie and mark everything as 'my own work' and upload it. Then I go back and edit it later. This works better than the idiotic form. I don't get it either.
The only thing worse than the upload form is derivative FX.
Another option is to attach the image to an email and send it to the COMMONS:OTRS email address, and they upload it for you.
In commons preferences on the page marked 'upload wizard' down the bottom put a tick in the box marked 'Chunked uploads for files over 1MB in Upload Wizard' that may help as well. Penyulap ☏ 21:19, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
We have different upload forms. Please provide a link to the form that crashed and describe what crashed: The whole browser, …. Which Firefox version are you using? 4 or 5 beta or …? -- Rillke(q?) 21:30, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
If you don't like the Upload Wizard you can still use the old upload form which is easily reachable via Special:Upload (or even use the plain upload form reachable as Special:Upload?uploadformstyle=basic if you now what you're doing).
However I used the Upload Wizard myself and it is definitely is usable, so lets figure out what is going wrong in your case. --Patrick87 (talk) 21:43, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

June 30

How do I combine user names from En WP?

I'm trying to use my En/WP name for the Commons. I read the material below but it won't accept my other WP login.

"If you already have an account on another Wikimedia project, for example at Wikipedia, then you should be logged in Commons automatically after logging in your home wiki. You also should be able to log in here using the same name and password."

--Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 00:04, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

What's the other username? --Isderion (talk) 00:32, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
Light show --Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 00:59, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
You don't have a global account, please see en:Wikipedia:Unified login on how to create one. --Isderion (talk) 01:14, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
That did it. Thanks. --Light show (talk) 02:05, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Canoe1967 (talk) 02:33, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Cropped/derivative images

How would I upload a cropped image of another free file on Commons? Would I upload my work and put some template on it to say it is a derivative? Surfer43 (talk) 06:28, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

You could use {{AttribSVG}} for vectors and {{Extracted from}} for other files... AnonMoos (talk) 06:49, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks much, the cropped image is at File:BroadSt(cropped).jpg for use on Wikivoyage. Surfer43 (talk) 16:18, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
Your are very welcome. I tweaked the page a bit for you as well.
Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Canoe1967 (talk) 21:09, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
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