Commons:Village pump/Archive/2015/06

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Category:Files that need updating

A new hidden category has been created, Category:Files that need updating for files that need to be updated. It has subcategories for articles that have time sensitive data that has to be updated on a regular basis, such as daily, weekly, monthly, and annually. Delphi234 (talk) 14:28, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Generally, it is a good idea to create a file redirect instead and upload those graphics for each time interval under a separate file name so we can reference historical data as well. After uploading a new file (e.g. File:Average Residential Price of Electricity by State 2015.svg), we would then change the file redirect to point to the newly uploaded file. Further reading.
Additionally adopting {{Current}} to categorize files into said categories and using the template instead would highlight the fact the files are updated periodically. -- Rillke(q?) 08:08, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
I do not mind creating dated files if anyone is going to use them, but in most cases the data changes more often than it makes any sense to create separate images for each time. Even the residential electricity rates, I would think that one named file every four or five years would be often enough, and just update the current file the intervening years. Could someone please modify {{Current}} so that it adds a parameter that if chosen will place the file into the "daily" "weekly" "monthly" or "annually" categories of Category:Files that need updating? Delphi234 (talk) 07:46, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
✓ Done -- Rillke(q?) 08:43, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. Delphi234 (talk) 02:35, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Is there a way to edit {{Current}} to remove the white space that it creates between it and the next item? I am not sure what is causing it. See for example File:US Crude Oil Production and Imports.svg I see that {{SVG Chart/box}} has the same problem. Delphi234 (talk) 02:39, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

edit counter help

When ever I click on the edit counter, a page does appear with the pie chart, but, a message does come on the top of the page static u are not register for something. I am a registered user, but what is it asking about registering and creating so.e JavaScript page or something? Can someone help me here please. Thank you, in advance. From, the friendly, Doorknob 747 (talk) 16:20, 31 May 2015 (UTC) 😃.

There are multiple edit counters. Please provide the URL from the location input of your browser. -- Rillke(q?) 20:46, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
Depending on exactly which one you are using, some current and old counters require you to create a .js page in your user space to opt-in to some type of 'deep analysis', like a breakdown of the time of day that you edit. A .js page is used for that purpose not because you need a script on it, but because nobody but you can edit a .js page in your userspace. Revent (talk) 03:36, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

June 01

no catagory for Us currency.

I did not understand hot to use hot-cat or the other gadet so I dicided to use the other old fashion gadget "visoual editor" to add cataegoireies. I added "pennies", "Us currency", and "stack of coins"; there are no categories for images that relate to US currency, from my understanding, but I my be wrong. If I am wrong can someone tell me the correct category names so I can correct them. Thank you in advance. From the friendly Doorknob 747 (talk) 00:52, 26 May 2015 (UTC) 😃

Something like that normally falls into two (or more) category trees, such as one to indicate the country, which would fall under the "Economy of XXXX" group, the other to indicate what it is, in this case coins. Did you see the group of categories here? Category:Coins by face value Facevalue 1 includes the category for one US penny, which is at Category:United States cents‎. Delphi234 (talk) 02:36, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. Doorknob 747 (talk) 18:18, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
Pennies have never been a US currency, so I don't see why you would have added it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:03, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
A penny is a US currency, it is a $0.01 coin. Look it up on Wikipedia. Doorknob 747 (talk) 16:42, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
No, US currency includes a one-cent coin or a cent. Calling that coin a penny is slang, and we don't use slang to name our categories.--Prosfilaes (talk) 10:36, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
At least the corresponding Wikipedia article disagrees with you. According to the article, the penny is the physical coin with a value of one cent. — Julian H.✈ 11:01, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
The second paragraph of that article says "The U.S. Mint's official name for a penny is "cent"[2] and the U.S. Treasury's official name is "one cent piece".[3] The colloquial term penny..." Colloquial term = slang.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:23, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
And yes, I'm being an annoyed pedant here. But if you're going to add random categories, add good categories.--Prosfilaes (talk) 10:17, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Oversight not working?

Over eighteen hours ago, I sent an email to oversight-commons AT lists.wikimedia.org, the address given on Commons:Oversight. I received a "Your message to Oversight-commons awaits moderator approval" bounce message, but nothing since, and the edit I reported is still visible.

Is something broken? Reports to en.Wikipedia's oversight address are usually responded to within an hour or two. Andy Mabbett (talk) 15:17, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

I revdeleted File talk:* for. Poked a OS on irc. --Steinsplitter (talk) 15:24, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

 Comment Looks like a problem with the Oversight mailing list, because your message was not in my email box when you wrote this message on Wikimedia Commons. Note that we are generally quite fast to answer to requests. --PierreSelim (talk) 18:30, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

It got placed into moderation and was not approved until a few hours ago by me. The Oversight mailing list is experiencing very high levels of spam and the list of emails awaiting moderation is very high. Apologies for the delay. Tiptoety talk 19:07, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

About featureless borders from flim scanning

The way I see the relevant guideline, photographs in Commons displaying featureless borders from flim scanning — as opposed

  • to those with featureless borders added or indended by an artiste, and
  • to cases of meaningful data inscribed off-frame

— should have them cropped off and be showing only the area with the photographed subject.

Indeed even in cases where such border might be useful, it could be argued that those images should be cropped off and futurely, if needed, the uncropped version of the image could be forked from its file history and uploaded as a separate version. This looks more useful than the opposite approach — to keep all borders everywhere and upload cropped derivatives only when needed —, as most reusers will prefer/need the cropped version.

-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 00:38, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

(Or, to ask it differently: Is this edit warring?) -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 00:38, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
I think it's perfectly fine to overwrite an original with a 'trimmed' version, unless someone objects (if they think the border is artistic, or if it includes some kind of information), and if they do they the original should be kept under the original filename and the cropped version uploaded under a 'cropped' name. That's what Tm did back in September, when he uploaded File:Jardim_Gulbenkian,_Lisboa,_Portugal_(3417920394)_cropped.jpg within about five minutes of reverting you. I would hope experienced Commons contributors would be 'mellow' enough to realize that it doesn't really matter much if there are two versions (since they should be linked with {{Extracted image}} and {{Extracted from}}, they should be visible as thumbs from the other page), and if the 'original' version is still around it should be kept under the 'original' filename for consistency.
The only thing I see that would end up causing any drama is if (as apparently happened here) neither editor seems to be willing to write edit summaries or use talk pages. Reverting someone without explanation is inherently somewhat hostile, and the kind of things that causes misunderstandings, drama, and noticeboard threads. This should have been discussed between you two six months ago, and only brought to the wider community if you couldn't reach an agreement. Instead, it seems to be popping up here because of a failure to communicate with each other, and, IMO, that's a bigger issue. ESPECIALLY, nobody should be reverting another editor with a completely blank edit summary, especially not repeatedly, and automated summaries aren't much better. You are both 'old enough' to know how to use an edit summary and a talk page. Do it, dammit. Revent (talk) 01:33, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Mapmaking of the FEVE metergauge network

I finaly finished the drawing out of the more 1000 km of lines and put the KML files on my website for free use. (My KML website) Station, tunnels, connections with broad gauge lines, etc can be added on. I will try to convert the KML to SVG, but I am having dificulty installing the rigth software for this. The info is in also in openstreetmap but I dont know a way to extract only the railway info.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:07, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't use KML much, but I do other XML variants. With that said I'm not fully familiar with all the available fields in KML. I looked through one of your KML files and I see the line data you're referring to. What extra data are you seeing that you're not wanting? I did a test at converting one of the data points to SVG using a regular expression and all seemed to work fine. You can see the example SVG here: http://jsfiddle.net/v7zLqn9j/ Offnfopt(talk) 03:59, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Edit: I just looked back at the SVG and used inkscape to add a transform to flip the polyline vertical, updated example SVG is here http://jsfiddle.net/9skqdpzo/ Offnfopt(talk) 06:46, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
It is more usefull if the SVG map is not standalone but joined to a map background layer with at least the coast line, rivers, lakes and maybe urban areas and mountains. I prefer not to have to much clutter such as roads.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:57, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Peer review and document improvement request

This is a Peer review request to seek broader input to improve page: meta:Help:Form I & Affidavit (Customised for reliqushment of copyright as per 'free cultural work' definition) an option available under (Indian) Copyright act 1957 rules.


Rgds. Mahitgar (talk) 02:15, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@Mahitgar: I found the link you gave confusing. The RFC is at m:Requests for comment/Applicability of Creative Commons in India which makes more sense as a place to take people to discuss the proposed document. By the way, the main meta page for the document misspells relinquishment; you may wish to fix that considering it is a legal matter. --Fæ (talk) 15:14, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Taiwan railways

I am a bit confused as to the rigth name. There is a local TRA branch along the high speed railway giving a connection to the high speed railway. Does this local station have a separate name? It is a suburb of Xinchu. Also confusing is that Jhujhong is in some pictures named as Zhuzhong (File:Public art in Zhuzhong Station.jpg)Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:40, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

As fas as I remember, in Hsinchu both high-speed and local trains stop at the same station.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:08, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Drawing cables

Do we have a category for drawing cables?Smiley.toerist (talk) 22:15, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Couldn't find any. If you want to create one, there are related categories which should be incorporated. e.g. Category:Underground electric cable signs. --Hedwig in Washington (mail?) 23:08, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
I get much more succes when I search 'pulling cables'. I suggest creating a category: 'Category:Pulling cables'.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:00, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
✓ Done quite a catch.Smiley.toerist (talk) 16:02, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

June 03

Is CfD backlogged?

I wonder when Commons:Categories for discussion/2014/05/Category:Sakura by country will ever get to be acted on? (2014 discussion). Commons:Categories for discussion/2013/05/Category:Sakura has been waiting since 2013. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 02:34, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it tends to get backlogged, especially when the discussions don't lead to an obvious conclusion. In this case, it seems like the Sakura categories need to be merged into Category:Prunus serrulata in flower and Category:Prunus sect. Cerasus in flower, or Category:Prunus blossom if the species is unknown. It seems like Category:Prunus sect. Cerasus blossom and Category:Prunus sect. Cerasus in flower are duplicates too. --ghouston (talk) 23:19, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
The whole Category:Trees in flower category is a bit of a mess it seems. Perhaps there should be separate categories for flowering trees and for close-ups of the flowers, since that's how the two Prunus sect. Cerasus categories are organised. Then Category:Prunus blossom could be split into "Prunus in flower" and "Prunus flowers". --ghouston (talk) 23:25, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Is there a category for right of way markers?

  • 1
    1
  • 2
    2
  • 3
    3

I've seen several photos for right of way markers, but haven't seen a category for them, like 1, 2 and 3 above. What should the category be called? I always get confused are they "right of way" or "right-of-way". As different material are used for the markers, what should the parent categories be? --Mjrmtg (talk) 20:05, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Gallery created due to format problems the thumbnails cause. --Fæ (talk) 10:57, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
How about renaming Category:Right of way to "Right of way signs"? --ghouston (talk) 22:38, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

June 04

How to convert a template in Machine readable format

At mr-wikipedia we would like to convert a new template w:mr:Template:स्वतः to Machine readable format (It is an equivalent template to Template:Self with few changes suitable for Indian copyright act rules, there are few more templates at mr-wiki which also may require coversion to machine readable format), where we can get help for this, or how do we do that.

Thanks and Rgds

Mahitgar (talk) 14:32, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

You should find some guidance on meta:File_metadata_cleanup_drive. Jean-Fred (talk) 21:17, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Commons:Wiki Loves Africa

Hello

You are kindly invited to give your opinion on the selection of the Wiki Loves Africa 2015 theme.

Please take a minute to come and vote here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa/2015_theme_ideas

Anthere (talk) 16:11, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

June 06

Please remove these photos

Hello. There are a few copyrighted photos on Wikimedia Commons that should not have been uploaded. Could somebody please remove these photos asap?

The photos are the following:

  • File:Debutantes International Debutante Ball New York City.jpg
  • File:Debutantes International Debutante Ball New York City 2012.jpg
  • File:Gangnam Style Dance Debutante Ball New York City.jpg

Thanks--Sirmagoo (talk) 13:48, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Convenience links:
Jmabel ! talk 15:28, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
@Sirmagoo, as you aren't the uploader, is there any evidence for your claim? --Túrelio (talk) 15:33, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
  • The requester is not the uploader, no evidence is presented, and the pictures have been up for months, so this would need to go through the normal process of requesting a deletion. Seeing no evidence at all of copyright violation, I personally won't start that process, but someone else is welcome to. - Jmabel ! talk 15:33, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
For the third one, I've found evidence of copyvio, but not for the other two. --Túrelio (talk) 15:38, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
Initially you didn't state that you are the photographer. Have these photos been published elsewhere with your consent and prior to being uploaded to Commons? --Túrelio (talk) 16:31, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
They were published in different publications. They must be on the internet somewhere. It is very important that these photos are deleted asap. I hope you can help me. Many thanks for your help--Sirmagoo (talk) 16:42, 4 June 2015 (UTC)--Sirmagoo (talk) 16:41, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
I have spotted them on an IMDb page. Somebody must have copied these photos from the IMDb page as they have copyright tags/permission on these IMDb links. No permission was given for these photos to be uploaded on Wikipedia: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1807742208/nm3268765?ref_=nm_phs_md_1 and http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1673524480/nm3268765?ref_=nmmd_md_nxt --Sirmagoo (talk) 16:52, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
Strangely, the IMDB links you've given show that those images were uploaded today. If you have original copies, it might be worth sending them to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org together with any other information you can provide. Green Giant (talk) 17:10, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
How is it "strangely" Green Giant? I have just given permission for them to be placed on personal pages and an IMDb page only as copyright tags can be displayed on them. I can upload the original files on Wikimedia Commons now to prove that I own these photos. I would however kindly ask for them to be removed again. I will not email the original files to anyone - I do not want them to be copied.--Sirmagoo (talk) 17:22, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
You can use any mean you want to prove that the images are yours and you are not just trying to delete someone else's images. There are several ways to prove this. A very good one would be to point to a web where the images might have been grabbed from before being uploaded to Commons. Another way is proving you have an original that you can't have just taken from Commons. Pointing to a place where they were published before being uploaded to Commons might help, too. There are a lot of ways. Please choose the one that might better fit you, but please keep in mind that it must prove something. The uploader claimed that the images were his own work. You claim that they are your work. It should be easy to prove for you since you are right, but just claiming can't work - uploader did claim, too.--Pere prlpz (talk) 17:30, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
I cannot find many internet sources at the moment. I am very unhappy with this situation. It is a shame that Wikimedia is making it that hard for the owner of a file to delete a photo. Doesn't it prove that the photos are mine as I requested for them to be placed on a website today with a copyright tag (the IMDb link proves that)?--Sirmagoo (talk) 17:55, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
In short: as I can see it, you need to show something you couldn't have done if the photographs weren't yours. Anybody can take the images from Commons and upload them to IMBd at the same resolution - or a lower one, as they appear on IMBd.
And I agree that it must be an unhappy situation.
Btw, how do you think the uploader grabbed your photos?--Pere prlpz (talk) 17:59, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
If I were to email you the original files, could you then delete the photos today?--Sirmagoo (talk) 18:07, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
You should email them to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org and mention this discussion. --Túrelio (talk) 18:47, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
Rather than email the entire original file, you might just crop a significant section from it an send it to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org. --Sitacuisses (talk) 19:35, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
permissions-commons@wikimedia.org is intended for _granting_ permission. To report copyright violation, please use commons-copyvio@wikimedia.org as described at Commons:Contact us/Problems. --Krd 19:39, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Monument mapping software - general use?

During the Summer of Monuments 2014, I made heavy use of the find a monument map that showed where all the unphotographed historic sites were. Was this developed by the WMF? Are there any plans for expanding that mapping software to general use by things like WikiProjects? Sometimes when I visit a city for a few days, I like to look at the "Category: <Requested photos in the city>" category, and hit as many of them as I can, but it's annoying to find every one of them and map them myself on Google Maps.

In the meantime, or if there's no plans to roll out that software for more general use, is there any recommended software I can use to create collaborative maps like that? I figure that while I'm generating the maps myself, I might as well post them on the relevant Wikiprojects so other people can use them in the future, but I'm not sure what's best to use. 0x0077BE (talk) 14:14, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

There are some labs tools to map articles in a category - although they are often out of order and don't work (for example, just now). In Catalan Wikipedia I use them a lot to see maps of subcategories of ca:Categoria:Articles de geografia que necessiten una foto (geography articles needing photos) and to download klm files of them - you can see the links in top right of category page. I suppose the same template could work in other Wikipedias with similar categories.--Pere prlpz (talk) 17:51, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll look into using that, though I did really like the specific implementation of the Wiki Loves Monuments map, where it grouped clusters of historic sites together when you were zoomed out, which were broken out as you got closer. 0x0077BE (talk) 13:17, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Pywikibot compat will no longer be supported - Please migrate to pywikibot core

Sorry for English, I hope someone translates this.
Pywikibot (then "Pywikipediabot") was started back in 2002. In 2007 a new branch (formerly known as "rewrite", now called "core") was started from scratch using the MediaWiki API. The developers of Pywikibot have decided to stop supporting the compat version of Pywikibot due to bad performance and architectural errors that make it hard to update, compared to core. If you are using pywikibot compat it is likely your code will break due to upcoming MediaWiki API changes (e.g. T101524). It is highly recommended you migrate to the core framework. There is a migration guide, and please contact us if you have any problem.

There is an upcoming MediaWiki API breaking change that compat will not be updated for. If your bot's name is in this list, your bot will most likely break.

Thank you,
The Pywikibot development team, 19:30, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

int:filedesc template

I was under the impression that the int:filedesc template was entirely optional. Am I wrong? Apparently a bot is systematically adding the template to pages that have no other heading. - Jmabel ! talk 15:24, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

See Commons:Bots/Work_requests. --Steinsplitter (talk) 15:25, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Could you link here to the standard referenced? I thought this template was optional, not standard. I would like to review any supporting community discussion. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 16:14, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
We don't have a policy related to such issues. I know only COM:Regex (not a policy). --Steinsplitter (talk) 16:33, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
To avoid contention I suggest mass bot changes like this are constrained to batches of images where agreed with the uploader or a credible community consensus exists. --Fæ (talk) 16:40, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
The bot has edited only a few files, i dropped a notice on the work requests. page shortly afters starting the botrun (if there are concerns), not sure why this discussion is getting spitted here. Please note, there was never a problem with my cleanup/fix tasks before. --Steinsplitter (talk) 16:45, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Bot operators have surprising power, even if we do not have hats to show authority. It would be nice if a wider community were part of accepting standard, default or cosmetic changes whenever millions of files are being changed by bots. This has been discussed before, a long time ago, it would not hurt to kick off a better process. --Fæ (talk) 17:00, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Agree :-) --Steinsplitter (talk) 17:20, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
@ Jmabel and Fæ what are the concerns you two have regarding these changes? What are some negative aspects of these changes? I only see positive results with these changes, which is moving towards the standard layout that is already used by the current file uploader(s).
@ Steinsplitter thanks for taking on these kind of redundant tasks, really helps to move things forward to bring the older content more in line with todays. Offnfopt(talk) 17:37, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
My concern is that there are hundreds little improvements like that that can be done, see for example Commons:File description page regular expressions for some examples. I am OK with "bring the older content more in line with today" standards, but do we have to do it one change at a time? Wikipedia has a policy: en:Wikipedia:Bot_policy#Cosmetic_changes which although is not the law on Commons but was followed by most bot operators. So it is OK to do those in addition to some "important" changes or bundle whole bunch of minor changes, but not individual cosmetic changes. --Jarekt (talk) 20:05, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
I had two concerns: (1) If I was "doing this wrong" I would want to change how I do my uploads rather than impose the work on someone else. (2) If not, I'd really rather not get tens of thousands of irrelevant notifications on my watchlist. - Jmabel ! talk 02:47, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
@Jmabel: Then you need to change your watchlist... Hiding +b edits. --Steinsplitter (talk) 05:55, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Steinsplitter has already agreed with me above. Just to spell it out again; there is no standard agreed and no community support for mass changing millions of images to enforce an optional template. If the template is to become mandatory then it needs to become a proposal. The corollary is that all image pages must be broken down into titled subsections, for this there must be a standard agreed before changing millions of pages. We have a few very experienced bot operators, but presuming a consensus is not needed for fundamental style and layout of Commons pages would be a mistake; we could see different operators each year making contradictory changes if this is not documented, tested and agreed with the community. --Fæ (talk) 20:12, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
I would very much welcome an effort to create guidelines for a somewhat streamlined, unified file page layout. For example, why on earth are we putting stuff like {{Quality image}}, {{Assessments}} or {{Wiki Loves Earth 2015}} in the Licensing section of the file page? Doesn't make sense to me. --El Grafo (talk) 07:47, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
By the way: @Jarekt: bot has made + 500000 edits like THIS. Imho this is wasting of resources and i am wondering why no one has complained. Why not generating a list from database? --Steinsplitter (talk) 11:26, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
I believe it would be sensible to consider if we should require bot operators to establish a documented consensus for any mass change of more than 1 million files (or in the order of 1 million).* This is of a level where conventional content creation projects, for example a single user's uploads from a source, or even a sizeable projects like the avionics projects I ran with Russavia which added around 200,000 photographs to Commons, would be below this requirement. Anything at the 1 million level starts to change how Commons appears to everyone.
* "Change" means a user-visible change, not a simple bug fix to restore a page to an existing default, or other obvious content error, as might happen with license corrections, obvious category improvement or template replacements.
By "documented consensus" I would imagine either a plain English thread on this village pump where planned changes can be summarised and hopefully if nobody objects within a couple of days it can go ahead, or for more complex proposals (such as agreeing a sub-title default/standard for all new image pages, or retrofitting this to past pages) these would follow the normal proposal and feedback system, probably taking a month for a reliable consensus and discussion to complete.
The Jarekt example you give would not be contentious if there had been a proposal where alternatives were discussed and the community convincingly decided that this was the best option.
Background For those unaware of how bot approval works, once a bot (like Faebot) has a bot flag, the operator can make as many changes as they wish. This is rarely controversial and experienced bot operators tend to be cautious and test out large scale changes, however there are no established policies to assess when more than the single bot operator's judgement is needed to reduce the risk of disrupting the project. Bot operators may retire or take a break at any time, and failing bots or partially done housekeeping remains a long term issue for us to resolve in a way that supports bot operators and encourages new programmers to work here. --Fæ (talk) 11:35, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
It is simple; some people (like me and Jmabel, at least) don't like sub heads like "summary", "license", "assessments" on our file pages. It is a simple user choice (artistic; isn't it? IMHO, that subheads look like ugly Microsoft style compared to beautiful Mac.). Please don't disturb us with your bots. I don't care if you update a ==Summary== with a {{int:filedesc}}. But if people prefer to opt out that subhead please let it as it is. (The Jarket example is very different as what we are trying there is to add information template to older files when that template not existed.) Jee 12:25, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
@Jkadavoor: Please read my notice on the working requests page again. This was only related to flickr files. Not sure why some people creating here drama. Only a few flickr files has been edited. --Steinsplitter (talk) 12:32, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Oops; I din't get it. Then the current issue may be (if I'm right), people like Jmabel first upload all files to Flickr and then transfer to Commons. So it may difficult for your bot to distinguish flickr files from Commons user files? Jee 12:37, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
The photo in question wasn't taken by Jambel. Apart from that: COM:OWN. I stopped it immediately, so only a few files where edited. I don't get why some users creating drama now. What about "be bold" etc. --Steinsplitter (talk) 12:42, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Further comment

I am not trying to "create drama" and, frankly, closing the discussion 5 minutes after someone accuses me of doing so is a lot more likely to "create drama" than my raising this question in the first place. I'll repeat: I asked this not as a criticism, but mainly because if I was doing things wrong I wanted to know. By the way, the Flickr2Commons bot also does not add this header. As for not watching bot edits: sorry, but I've run across far too many "bad" bot edits to completely exempt them from being watched. The ratio of good edits is far better than direct edits by users, but it's nowhere near 100%. - Jmabel ! talk 16:21, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Since yesterday flickr2commons is adding the header. With all due respect, imho you are creating drama. Instead of asking on bot operators talkpage (or on the bot work page, where i notified other bot operator about it) you start drama here. Maybe you like also to read COM:AGF and COM:MELLOW. I apology for starting the botrun too fast and for being too :w:bold, however i stopped the bot immediately and it caused absolutely no harm on commons (there is nothing broken and you can revert this few pages without wasting a lot of time). --Steinsplitter (talk) 17:34, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
@Steinsplitter: Please stay calm. Discussing or raising a concern at VP is not drama; it is a healthy way to achieve consensus. @Jmabel: Steinsplitter's two comments above are in response to my comments and are equally against me as to you. I closed the discussing considering two factors: 1. Steinsplitter agreed that he stopped that activity. 2. I have a general impression that Steinsplitter has a language difficulty that makes his comment rather rude than what he intended to. So I prefer to "kill" that discussion to avoid to further spitting of words. You can see from my comments that I well defended you. Jee 02:29, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Maybe this is a caching issue (it is client side js, clear your browser cache). It is adding the headers. See the code on git repo. --Steinsplitter (talk) 19:08, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

General issue

This discussion includes a general issue of governance which is not finished. If people are in a rush to close the original issue, fine, but the potential new requirement on bot operators should be separated. --Fæ (talk) 12:53, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes; a generic discussion can be continued. Jee 02:31, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
As you closed it down, could you take responsibility for setting it up please? --Fæ (talk) 12:08, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Well; if the "problem" remain as unhanded in next year too. BTW, it seems you already started it. Or your only time pass here is to make dramas? Anyway, I don't care. EOD. Jee 12:17, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Wow, you closed the discussion, then wash your hands of it and make bad faith allegations.
As for your resignation from OTRS (per your link), this was immediately after you published private emails from OTRS. You were not a victim, you were misusing your trusted access. Take responsibility for your mistakes and stop using bizarre false victimization rhetoric to censor the rest of us by painting anyone that disagrees with you as a troll. --Fæ (talk) 12:27, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

June 02

Broken talk pages

User_talk:Weglinde has so many template messages that a limit has been exceeded and templates at the bottom of the page are not expanded. Therre may be other examples in Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded. Should anything be done in these cases, such as archiving some of the old messages, or should they just be left broken unless the user wants to fix it? --ghouston (talk) 02:01, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

@Ghouston: Past edit wars about archiving seem to indicate that even though it's very annoying, there's not a consensus to require archiving in such cases. Some editors are, for some reason, adamant about not doing so. Revent (talk) 10:03, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

WMF Board elections

Just in case anyone is interested, the results for the elections of new members to the ever-popular Wikimedia Board, were announced on 5 June. You can find a full list at meta:Wikimedia Foundation elections 2015/Results#Board_elections, just below the FDC results. I'm sure everyone will want to congratulate users Pundit, Doc James, and Denny on their success and to send commiserations to the other participants. Green Giant (talk) 03:31, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Category:Palais de Tokyo

Aloha! Does anyone know who the architect of the Palais de Tokyo was? --Hedwig in Washington (mail?) 07:06, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

I didn't, but some Googling found http://www.aviewoncities.com/paris/palaisdetokyo.htm that gives the names. Don't know about reliability, but looks like a not-horrible site. Revent (talk) 07:42, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
I didn't see that one. Thanks a bunch! Or not. Now we have to delete half the category. First out of the four: Jean-Claude Dondel (*1904 †1989). Dang. Thanks again for scouring the web for me! --Hedwig in Washington (mail?) 08:21, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Files with missing usage links.

Just wondering why some files on here don't have links for using them on Wikipedia or embedding them? Is it because the uploader has made too many problematic uploads, therefore the ability to easily use the files on Wikis or exterior sites has been blocked? I am looking particularly at 19th century crinoline-related uploads such as File:DieModeIII158.jpg - the "Use this file" options are missing, and are missing from almost all the uploader's many public-domain crinoline/corset/bustle images. As I am currently trying to improve en:Crinoline it's a problem I keep coming up against and I wondered if there was a particular reason why the option might be missing from files. I know the uploader has been blocked from at least two Wikipedias, but he doesn't appear to be banned from Commons so I'm not sure what the problem might be. As I can manually load the pictures, it's not a huge inconvenience, but I wondered what's going on. Mabalu (talk) 13:58, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

@Mabalu: It seems the links you're referring to are reliant on the existence of the infobox template. When I added the template the links appeared. This can be the case for some older files that were uploaded either prior to the existences of the info box or at a time when it was still fairly new. Offnfopt(talk) 15:31, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
Oh thank you - I'll give that a go and see what happens. Hadn't come across it before! Mabalu (talk) 15:38, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
Gosh, looks like a simple edit resolved it. That's useful to know, thank you. Mabalu (talk) 15:39, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
Novel concept: just type [[File:DieModeIII158.jpg]] in Wikipedia or which ever project. No buttons required. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 16:48, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
OMG wow. Thank you ever so much a trillionty bazillion times forever and ever for that. It is the meaning of life revealed. ;) Mabalu (talk) 22:42, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Offnfopt(talk) 08:40, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

File:Sriracha Hot Sauce Bottles Freshii Restaurant Family Dinner Downtown Grand Rapids June 27, 2014 1 (14552677466).jpg

Image is a photograph of a bottle of sriracha sauce taken by uploader and licensed as "Attribution 2.0 Generic". The person who took the photo may have posted it on their Flickr account, but the problem is that they most likely do not own the copyright of logo on the bottle per COM:PACKAGING which states "product packaging carrying original printed designs cannot be uploaded to Commons, even if you personally own the physical object and even if you took the photograph yourself". The logo on the bottle does not, in my opinion, satisfy the exceptions specified in "COM:PACKAGING". So, unless I am missing something here (which is not totally out of the question), it should not be on Commons despite what this bot says. For reference, this is very similar to this archived VP discussion about a photo of a bottle of hot sauce: a photo which ended up being deleted. - Marchjuly (talk) 00:13, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

I'll let someone else more experienced chime in on the copyright issue, but if it is a issue, I'm curious if editing the picture to how I have done shown here would allow the picture to stay.Offnfopt(talk) 00:46, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
I think you went a bit farther than actually needed, but that's basically the idea. It's really only the rooster that's the problem (assuming that I'm correct that the arc below the rooster is non-Latin writing and not just decorative, I can't read it). The 'K' logo is too simple for copyright, and the 'circle R' is just a 'registered trademark' indication. Revent (talk) 01:02, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
I added the lower characters back in the event the edited image will be used. Offnfopt(talk) 01:41, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
I didn't know it was acceptable to edit an image in such a way, but if it is then I think that fixes things per "COM:PACKAGING". FWIW, I don't think the lettering below the image is purely decorative. It's something written in Chinese script, but unfortunately I cannot make out all of the characters well enough to try and read it. - Marchjuly (talk) 06:42, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
I went ahead and uploaded the edited image. - Offnfopt(talk) 14:17, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
@Marchjuly: It's simply a derivative work (and hence ok per the license). Revent (talk) 18:45, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
No worries then. Thanks for the clarification Revent and thanks for uploading the new version Offnpot. - Marchjuly (talk) 21:23, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Offnfopt(talk) 08:41, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Requirement: Creating a new category (recommendation)

I see some people creating dozens of categories that have only one (or two) objects (images) in it (example). I mean this is very senseless, counterproductive and more obstructive than anything. But I see no recommendation on COM:CAT #Creating a new category. So I propose a minimum of to be expected objects of four. PS: Yes, we can not generalize that, it is depending on the type of category, but the exceptions are rare special (or specific systematics) and this one could be so formulated⁉ ↔ User: Perhelion (Commons: = crap?)  10:21, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I think it´s difficult to define a fixed minimum number that fits all topics: Visual categories (cats where you´d look for files based on the actual picture) should contain a higher number of files while object categories (for particular individuals or places) make sense even with just one file - and these are not just "rare exceptions", as you said. Second, adding categories along a certain system may lead to some cats with low population, but the system should not be broken just because of a minimum rule. And third: Underpopulated categories on the outer twigs do not do much harm, as long as they are connected properly to an established branch and the rest of the tree; there is simply no need to forbid them. --Rudolph Buch (talk) 11:16, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Seconding what Rudolph said. Even with only one or two images, it's very useful to have a category that corresponds exactly to an existing wikipedia article or one likely to be created. Also, for example, subcats of Category:Seattle by year make sense even though they only have one element or (in a very few cases) are empty. - Jmabel ! talk 16:27, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
I too find it a little trying to have to click a subcategory to view images only to find that there are only 2 images within it. Isn't there some simple way to "flatten" a category tree? This would allow all images in a category and its subcategories to be viewable via a single paginated interface.--Cpt.a.haddock (talk) 17:49, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
@Cpt.a.haddock: Yes, FastCCI (enabled by default) can do that.    FDMS  4    20:43, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
I wouldn't want a blanket requirement. If we did have one, I would want the minimum to be two. Creating a category with two entries prevents having to keep multiple categories in sync on the two images. For example, if you have two images of a 1936 house with a Mansard roof that's now a museum on the National Register of Historic Places in Foo County, Nebraska, that would be at least five categories that would need to be duplicated on both images, probably more depending on how many combinations of those factors exist as categories. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:08, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments. I really mean we should describe somewhat to the whole issue, on the policy page. @Jmabel: Good example, as we can see the subcats from "Category:Seattle by year" are only secondary categories for this files, so this would be an exception for the rule. So I mean main categories (as it is on my example). (PS: I stroked rare) There is no sense really (with the given exceptions) to give every file his own category because due the nice category will, if there is no grow to expect. That makes the whole category system senseless "A category is a software feature of MediaWiki, a special page which is intended to group related pages and media". I think I do left the field of file-maintenance and categorization-mania completely… ↔ User: Perhelion (Commons: = crap?)  10:54, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Is Upload Wizard operational for Flickr?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T100540

I was just messaged by another user as they were having trouble using Upload Wizard with Flickr images, and I tried and repeated the same thing to no avail. Does anyone know if there are any outstanding issues with uploading things from Flickr with the tool, as I have not found anything else and figured I would post here. Thanks! Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:19, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Please be specific about issues. We have such an incredible amount of occurrences of them. Perhaps it is phab:T100540, or perhaps not. -- Rillke(q?) 09:27, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Until the fixed code landed in production: Try hitting enter after you filled in the URL in the input (clicking the button doesn't do anything). -- Rillke(q?) 09:31, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Here is an image of Plymouth Rock that I have, but what happened was that myself and the other user inputted the link, clicked the "Get from Flickr" button, and nothing happened. I just tried replicating it now, and received the same issue. I'm using Firefox and Windows 7, and I do not know what the system specifications are for the other person having the issue. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 11:50, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. Then try hitting enter while the carret is still in the text field instead of pressing the button until the corrective patch is deployed to Wikimedia Commons. -- Rillke(q?) 19:34, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
On the bright side, we are planning to rewrite the flickr feature. Bawolff (talk) 13:50, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Looks like there's a fix on the way. In the meantime, you should be able to hit 'Enter' to submit rather than clicking the button Kaldari (talk) 03:15, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
I've also had recent issues using it to try to do batch uploads from Flickr, getting a blank page at the 'release rights' step. Ended up doing most of these one at a time with the manual form. Revent (talk) 07:31, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
I am the one Kevin Rutherford was notified by, and after trying what was suggested for the enter button, I am now having the same problem with the "release rights" step, marking as an "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:UploadWizard at line 450: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'valid' of undefined". I am not a template geek or coding geek so most of this greek to me. If anyone has suggestions, I am all ears. It's been a massive headache moving my photos from Flickr to Commons with the Upload Wizard broken. Mitch32(Never support those who think in the box) 03:58, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
It's fixed now. Kaldari (talk) 23:13, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I had this issue, but works for me now. Yann (talk) 23:27, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Question about persondata

I've noticed a few categories and pages here that contain {{Persondata}} and I was wondering what the rules are for this template. Is it still used? Should I be adding it to certain pages? I know the English Wikipedia is voting to get rid of it and let Wikidata hold it but I wasn't sure about here. One example is Category:John Joseph O'Connor (cardinal). Thanks in advance. Reguyla (talk) 00:07, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

As it has existed since 12:23, 22 June 2012‎, this template doesn't do anything at all. AnonMoos (talk) 01:04, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
That's what I thought. Do we really need it? Reguyla (talk) 01:05, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
As I just commented at the DR, not particularly. It displays nothing, and the data in it's 100-odd (a not unreasonable number to check) transclusions should be in Wikidata already. Revent (talk) 00:27, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. Reguyla (talk) 14:00, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Proposing mass deletion of Saudi Arabia

There must be existing non-map images of Saudi Arabia. I couldn't just mass nominate all images. Instead, I would discuss them. Freedom of panorama is nonexistent in the country, but people keeping uploading these images without awareness of the country's prohibiting the FOP. --George Ho (talk) 19:59, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

In principle alle new creative buildings?Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:01, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
The best we can do is use {{PD-Saudi Arabia}}, but the buildings created by authors who passed away before 1961 might be in public domain. Newly created buildings might be still copyrightable. See COM:FOP#Saudi Arabia. --George Ho (talk) 20:26, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Lines not rendering on an SVG preview

File:Ariane 62.svg - somehow wiki refuses to render horizontal lines on a boosters. There should be four gray lines, but preview doesn't show any. I converted them from rectangles to curves, then resized SVG up over 1000px, then checked the thinness of them and they are thicker than two top horizontal lines on payload fairing, both of which render correctly on a preview. I run out of ideas - anyone can help me with it? SkywalkerPL (talk) 12:14, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Seems like the RSVG software that renders the PNGs was having problems with the gradients and the particular gradientTransform attribute those elements used. I made some changes to get it to work but that meant changing the gradients so you may or may not want to make some tweaks to the appearance of the new gradients. Offnfopt(talk) 19:50, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
Thank you. You have any tips how can I test SVGs on my own, without uploading them numerous times to wikipedia? SkywalkerPL (talk) 21:17, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
The SVG Check Tool will render SVG files as PNGs so you can test them. Alternatively you could also install the RSVG software and test by converting them on your PC. Offnfopt(talk) 21:42, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
You can also upload any SVG to File:Test.svg to see what it will look like. I do that to keep the upload history cleaner on a file that I am working on, and unsure whether it will work properly. Delphi234 (talk) 21:53, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
Specific bugs (and testcases) about the librsvg software can also be filed in the libsrvg bug tracker at bugzilla.gnome.org. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 22:15, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
Recently an SVG source code editing script has been extended with a preview button to compare an rsvg rendering (which is the same as Commons makes use of) from tool labs and a secure browser rendering. -- Rillke(q?) 06:42, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

File:Junud al-Sham.jpg and File:Flag of the Islamic Front (Syria) (Green).jpg

Images were uploaded a few weeks ago as "own work". Same image for "Junud al-Sham" can be found here and here on this website as well as the Twitter accounts [1] and [2]. In addition, a Google image search of the flag get lots of hits no non-English pages so I cannot see any copyright information.

I'm trying to assume good faith, but it doesn't seem totally out of the question the images were taken from other pages and mistakenly uploaded as "own work". I am partly basing this on the fact that another image uploaded by the same editor was deleted from Commons for copyright reasons in November 2014. Is there anyway to verify who holds the copyrights of these images? Does such information even need to be verified? Would the images still satisfy COM:L#Simple design even if the uploader is not the original copyright holder? Thanks in advance. - Marchjuly (talk) 00:52, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I am going to take a safe bet that the user in question does not own the copyright to the images, as I find it improbable that these organizations would be uploading to the project. As such, I have tagged them as copyright violations, so they will hopefully be addressed soon. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 12:22, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for taking a closer look Ktr101. - Marchjuly (talk) 14:14, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Old postcards under Flicker

This one is obviously an old postcard. The Flicker license is irrelevant. Quite often I come across old postcards with as owner ´private collection´ and uploaded as own work.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:54, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

  • Because Flickr2Commons is going to pass along whatever license is claimed on Flickr. You can correct this, just like you can make any other edit. - Jmabel ! talk 15:30, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
I removed the cc-by-2.0 license our should it be preserved wich was the original (incorrect) Flicker license?Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:10, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

June 09

Copyvios and out of scope

I am not sure where to notify this issues. Therefore, I place here. There are many copyvios and out of scope images at Images from Wiki Loves Food 2015. I have tagged several images for deletion. If some of you interested, you may clean up them too. Please note some of images are copied with valid EXIF.--AntanO 02:02, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

@AntanO: You could just remove the category, which would have been a good idea on this file. Granted, that same file might have its own issues on the site in terms of copyright and usefulness, but if they are out of scope there is no reason that we could not just remove the categories and add back in the relevant ones. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 12:19, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Music expert needed.

Resolved

Music expert needed for: Commons:Deletion_requests/2015/05/27#File:Range_balalaika.png. Which one is correct? --Hedwig in Washington (mail?) 06:41, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps ping the reference desk over at enwiki as well? Revent (talk) 06:56, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
Hallo Hedwig, schau mal hier und da. Weiter auf der DR-Seite. Gruß, --Achim (talk) 16:18, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
Herzlichen Dank fuer die schnelle Antwort! Datei ist bereits geloescht. --Hedwig in Washington (mail?) 05:12, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Datong

From the workcategory Category:Images uploaded by Natuur12 (clcean up2) I transferred some pictures to Category:Datong locomotive factory. However the Imperial train pictures I classified under Datong itself (see Category:1999 in rail transport) as I am not certain that the museum is also in the Datong locomotive factory. It could be separate. As this is taken in 1999 the imperial train could now be somewhere else. The steamlocomotives also need classifying.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:23, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

June 10

Doubt to rename image

Is possible rename a file without changing its extension? In this case, for example, the extension was changed (.JPG -> .jpg) and does not preserve the original configuration. --HVL talk 15:52, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

It's possible, yes, but most filemovers seem to like to lowercase the extension when they change a filename (and in this case the renamer was the original uploader anyhow). There's not a 'rule' about the extensions, but the lowercase form is more common both on and off of Commons. Revent (talk) 15:56, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
It's the default when using the gadget. JPG is changed to jpg. Regards, Yann (talk) 17:13, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
As the uploader and filemover, I would not hesitate to move it again if you prefer .JPG, assuming you can figure out how to make the gadget let you do that. Delphi234 (talk) 21:57, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
You should just be able to type the uppercase version of the extension on top of what the gadget gives as a default, though I haven't tested it. Not, tbh, something that 'matters' beyond personal preference. Revent (talk) 00:05, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
In fact, it's a personal preference. In the past I've tried to move a file keeping .JPG (uppercase version) when choosing the new name, and in a other case I've changed a .jpg image to the same title with .JPG, but the motion didn't occurred. It must be a limitation of the "filemover". --HVL talk 00:46, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
If you were only trying to change the extension, and it did not let you, you can move it through an intermediate name 1.jpg to foo.jpg to 1.JPG. Just clean up afterwards to avoid extra file names. Delphi234 (talk) 02:12, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

June 08

File:Saudi Arabia Fedration.png

Logo was uploaded as own work in 2013, but this google image search gets quite a lot of hits. Almost all of the pages are not in English so there's no way for me to tell whether the uploader is the copyright holder. Some of the urls such as this and this appear to be official pages of sports/news organizations which may or may not matter when it comes to copyright, but I'm not sure. - Marchjuly (talk) 14:41, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

After having a look at the user's other uploads, I doubt that any of the files are own work. I nominated all of them for deletion. --Didym (talk) 18:54, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

June 11

"Self-created artwork" as a reason to delete files from Commons

Link Commons_talk:Project_scope
I have seen many successful deletions of images with "self-created" in the nomination statement. Logically, it should make absolutely no difference to the deletion outcome what the source is, as during a deletion discussion what should concern the community is having a correct copyright release and that the image is of potential reuse value ("educational value" including cultural and historical value as well as images with use for teaching). I would like us to move to it being an irrelevant tangent to worry about whether an uploader created the artwork or whether the "self creator" is someone else.

Part of the possible confusion is that the Scope policy includes the example "Artwork created by the uploader without obvious educational use" for which I have proposed a minor change to "Artwork without obvious educational use". Please follow the link above if you would like to challenge the change or discuss it further. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 10:14, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree that an artwork without obvious educational use should be deleted even if it was created by someone else than the uploader (moreover it is often difficult to check who really created an image). Nevertheless, a lot of wannabe artist upload here a large sample of their creations, which is generally totally useless for the project and I think we need to state clearly somewhere that our scope is not hosting artistic creations of anybody. Therefore, I suggest: "Artwork without obvious educational use, in particular artwork created by the uploader". BrightRaven (talk) 11:35, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
This appears a subjective assessment that does not stand up to scrutiny. When I analysed all incoming uploads by source (see the VP archives), identifying that the camera source was a mobile phone, or that the upload was from a new Flickrstream were high indicators of the upload worth looking at for deletion (mainly as copyvios or out of scope random selfies). Similarly if someone is spamming Commons or excessively promoting their work, then this is well covered by other parts of the policy.
Could you provide some statistical evidence that Commons has a significant problem with artworks sourced to the uploader (compared to artworks uploaded by anyone other than the artist), and support the assertion that this needs to be explicitly enshrined in policy? My own subjective impression is that Commons has no significant problem with self sourced artworks, certainly not self sourced photographs as this was the basis of the WLM programme, and that deletion discussions would be improved if there were not a default presumption of bad faith for uploaders who donate their in-scope creative works to Commons (seeing your work being put up for deletion with hostile allegations of being a wannabe artist must be incredibly off-putting). We have many counter examples which should be positively encouraged. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:49, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
I agree with Fæ that who the uploader is should make no difference in artwork deletion discussions and would support clarification of the policy. Many notable artists upload samples of their work, and we do not want to discourage that, the way Wikipedia discourages them to contribute to their articles (as it should). An artwork can be of educational use because: artwork or artist is notable as defined by en:Wikipedia:Notability or because artwork's subject, technique, medium or history are educational. The rest is likely out of scope. I can imagine that out of scope artworks are more likely to be uploaded by the artists than other, but that should not be used as differentiating factor. --Jarekt (talk) 12:30, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
Can I encourage people to follow Fae's request: "Please follow the link above if you would like to challenge the change or discuss it further." It doesn't help to have discussion in two places, and the VP discussion will get lost whereas the policy talk page remains relevant. Note that this change text is just an example, not the actual rule, which remains "Must be realistically useful for an educational purpose". -- Colin (talk) 12:32, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
I totally agree with Jarekt here above. Artistic creation that are in scope belongs to 2 categories: artworks by notable artists and artworks relevant because of their subject, technique, medium or history (and of course, all the images that are in legitimate use are considered in scope). Maybe this should be clearly mentioned in the scope page. BrightRaven (talk) 13:57, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
The policy is long enough to cause endless wikilawyering and misunderstanding, if anything it should be trimmed back and let a case book handle liminal cases. I can already think of reasons why your list would be a major problem for DRs, but do not want to expand here if you intend to put a solid proposal. --Fæ (talk) 15:30, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

EN / ES Wikipedia Admin needed to look up file history

Can EN / ES Wikipedia Admins help tracking the author and proper license of File:TrendLinesOilDepletionScenarios41211.png? I think it was transfered from EN wiki -> ES Wiki -> Commons and the history and authorship got lost in the process. --Jarekt (talk) 14:17, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

June 13

Commons:Milestones

What was the 26 millionth file? I think, we have missed it (Actual file count: 110,920,599).--Kopiersperre (talk) 09:04, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Photographs removed from webpage

I recently posted 6 pictures of my own on the Barry Railway Station webpage. Apparently someone objected to the presence of these photos though I have received no explanation as to why. I raised the issue on the Wikipedia Commons helpline and received some replies but my postings and the replies have also been deleted, again without explanation. Could somebody offer me an explanation as to what is going on? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rhobat Bryn (talk • contribs)

This is Wikimedia Commons, the problem you refere to is related to Wikipedia. Anyway, even if you asked at the wrong project your questions have been answered. See Commons:Help_desk#Barry_Railway_Station and Commons:Help_desk#Barry_Railway_Station_2. --Martin H. (talk) 17:56, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

June 14

File:DELIDAS LOGO JPEG board.jpg and File:Gul Delidas Stark sås 150 grams flaska.jpg

First image was uploaded in 2006 and second was uploaded in 2013. These are the only images upload by the editor and both are claimed as "own work". Neither image seems to meet the exceptions specified in COM:PACKAGING and it is also likely that the uploader is not the owner of the copyright. - Marchjuly (talk) 07:51, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

I've nominated both of these files for deletion per my reasoning given above. I thought that discussing the issue here at VP was a good idea to do, but realize now such a step was not needed. OP, etc. can be removed/archived as needed if inappropriate for this page. - Marchjuly (talk) 01:05, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

File:Seymore D Fair Children's Education Foundation Logo.png

Image uploaded as own work. It is supposed to be the logo of the foundation, but I can't find it anywhere on the foundation's official website or any of it's social media accounts. Same uploader had various other files deleted as for lack of permission, so not sure if it is a non-free logo mistakenly uploaded as own work. - Marchjuly (talk) 13:02, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Uploading from other websites

What is the protocol, if any, for uploading photographs from other websites? Is this permitted?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Rhobat Bryn (talk • contribs)

Hi! Please do not double post. You already got an answer here. Gunnex (talk) 18:37, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

File:WHTX-AM 1570.png

Logo of radio station uploaded as own work, but there's no indication that uploader owns the copyright. This CNN article in which the image is used is dated exactly the same day as when the image was uploaded to Commons, which might indicate that the CNN article is where the image originated. For reference, similar images uploaded by same editor have been deleted for copyright reasons. Seems most likey to be a non-free logo mistakenly uploaded to Commons as "own work". - Marchjuly (talk) 16:58, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

  • Given his account name as User:Radiotvman, it could well be his own work. Or not. Have you contacted him? Nominated the image for deletion? I'm not sure why you think this needs the broad discussion of the Village pump. - Jmabel ! talk 16:21, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
Hi Jmable. Thanks for the push in the right direction. I thought that VP was sort of a Commons Teahouse/discussion board type of place to get general opinions of other editors about whether an image was acceptable or should be nominated for deletion. I wasn't intentionally trying to muck up the page with these posts. My bad if that is what I ended up doing. - Marchjuly (talk) 21:25, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
The 'copyright' VP is a better place for such questions, but this image is worthy IMO of a DR for the 'topical' evaluation there... it's a threshold of originality question, really. Revent (talk) 07:20, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for the reply Revent. I completely forgot that there are two VPs and that the "copyright" one is where I should've gone. Should I move this post their for further discussion or simply start a DR? Thanks again and sorry to all for getting the VP tabs mixed up. - Marchjuly (talk) 00:14, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Nominate-for-deletion script

Not sure where to request changes to scripts, so if you know of a better place, please move this there.

A "nominate for deletion" link appears in the toolbox when viewing most (all?) images, and it provides a link to a helpful script that takes care of the entire process of nominating an image for deletion, aside from writing the rationale of course. There's one problem, however: hitting "Enter" causes it to run the script. I'm often hitting the wrong key and sending through a nomination when it's not complete; see this mangled DR for an example, created because I accidentally hit "Enter" when I meant to type a quotation mark. Could it please be modified? I don't care if it's modified by removing the hit-enter-to-run feature (i.e. you'd have to click the Proceed button or navigate with the tab key), or by giving you a prompt, or waiting a few seconds and giving you the chance to stop the script before it runs. Nyttend (talk) 19:59, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

This would have a (negative) impact on the workflow of many users. If you click the expand icon next to the rationale field, you can already hit enter without proceeding.    FDMS  4    00:00, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
How would it have a negative impact? Hit "tab" twice and you're on the Proceed button, and hitting Enter or the spacebar will send things through. It's a trifling thing to reprogram a bot to do this. Nyttend (talk) 03:52, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
The enter-to-proceed was a feature requested by many users. The only way to accommodate both interests would be a user preference, from what I see. You may add a section to MediaWiki talk:Gadget-AjaxQuickDelete.js requesting that. -- Rillke(q?) 13:36, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

June 15

Zoom browser broken again

See, for example, File:All Saints Margaret Street Interior 2, London, UK - Diliff.jpg. Such images really need the zoom browser to be appreciated, and because many browsers or computers struggle to open them. @Dschwen: -- Colin (talk) 06:58, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Just have to comment, extremely nice image linked. Worthy of a FP nom, IMO. Revent (talk) 07:24, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
It has one: Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:All Saints Margaret Street Interior 2, London, UK - Diliff.jpg. And one problem is people complain it is too large, which is really a problem with browser's not really being designed as high-resolution image viewers. So that's where the zoom browser makes it much more useful. -- Colin (talk) 09:37, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T54717
This is f'ing frustrating. Something changed again on tool labs. This error is new. Fcgi is broken. Some libraries disappeared from the webserver nodes. I reopened the ticket in which I requested them to be installed. --Dschwen (talk) 01:54, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
Hmm, I fixed this by doing a
 webservice --release trusty restart
Let's see if this is all. --Dschwen (talk) 02:35, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Can anyone help with template/javascript code to make it easy to display an image at a given size. This might be a given megapixels or a given reduction from full size (e.g. 50%), or even a combination (e.g., 50% or 8MP whichever is larger). See Commons talk:Featured picture candidates#Image viewing tool for FP for details. -- Colin (talk) 11:59, 15 June 2015 (UTC)


Search function on Commons and Wikipedia is dead

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T102463

Already since morning, the search function here on Commons and on Wikipedia (at least :de) does not work and instead produces an overload-message

  • "Bei der Suche ist ein Fehler aufgetreten: Die Suche ist derzeit überlastet. Bitte später erneut versuchen."

However, when I call Wikimedia status[3], everything appears in green, AKA "no problem". WTF? --Túrelio (talk) 12:43, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

@Túrelio: Basically, they broke it WMF-wide, and rebooting the search server supposedly fixed it, but they are keeping it down until they can figure out why it broke. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T102463 Revent (talk) 13:00, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. --Túrelio (talk) 13:01, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

June 16

Dear Commons, I need advice on how to correct the Village Pump link that appears under the logo in the main menu when using Ukrainian locale (i.e. interface language). Presently it points to Commons:Форум, which is the Russian-language Village Pump. It should instead point to the Ukrainian-language one, Commons:Кнайпа. How to correct this? --YurB (talk) 10:52, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi YurB, I corrected MediaWiki:Village pump/uk and created MediaWiki:Village pump-url/uk, please tell me if it's good? Regards, Thibaut120094 (talk) 11:05, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
Thank you, Thibaut120094! It is correct. --YurB (talk) 11:29, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: YurB (talk) 11:29, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Comments in filename

File:The President Wilson Hotel Geneva - Starwood Luxury Collection! Switzerland - 01112009 Great hotel, good food and drink, photography is not allowed, smiles are rare here!.jpg Is this allowed?Smiley.toerist (talk) 07:01, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes. --Fæ (talk) 07:23, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
Policy Commons:Project scope/Neutral point of view says it may not always be possible for file names and related descriptive text to be "neutral". However, neutrality of description should be aimed at wherever possible. While the "review" in the filename is mostly positive, and so unlikely to attract unwanted legal attention of the hotel owner, Commons is not TripAdvisor. I suggest that our policy in fact strongly encourages the removal of that sentence, which appears to have ended up in the filename as a result of the upload tool's simple algorithm rather than any deliberate ploy to force Wikipedian's to insert hotel reviews into their article text :-). It doesn't belong in the description paragraph either. -- Colin (talk) 07:35, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
I have asked for a rename under reason 5.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:12, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
I have the same problem with most filenames in Category:Model at beach (Philips advertisement). While filename stability is very important, and although improvement file renaming is a neverending slippery slope, this kind of (needlessly) creepy/smarmy characterization arguably falls within the spirit of COM:FR§5: «gratuitous vulgarity, personal attacks/harassment». Anyone against such renaming? -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 14:49, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Gadget description translations

Hi! I have translated some gadget descriptions (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 & 15) to my language long time ago but I don't see translations in this page. Could some admin do something? --SMAUG (Talk – Contributions) 17:07, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

If I missed something, it was due to a loss of session data. Blame MediaWiki for that. Sorry you had to wait that long. Next time, please include {{Edit request}} so the page is at least categorized into the admin backlog. -- Rillke(q?) 17:24, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Restore image - File:TPoliceExplorer.jpg

I'm new to uploading, and uploaded File:TPoliceExplorer.jpg but it had the wrong license. I messaged the flickr user and he was okay with changing the license on the image. Can the file be restored? Is it the right license now? Thanks. Shoman93 (talk) 19:28, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

@Shoman93: ✓ Done File restored. Thibaut120094 (talk) 19:45, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

File:Ayesha Quraishi 2005.jpg

I see some problems with this file : in the history of this file, we see that the image has been changed. Which leads to 2 problems :

  1. The previous file can't be used anymore
  2. The OTRS authorization may apply to the first picture only.

Could anyone fix those problems ? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 05:40, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Template:SVG Chart

Moved discussion to Template talk:SVG Chart -- Offnfopt(talk) 12:07, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

June 12

an image from facebook

hi.i want to upload an image from facebook.can i upload it or no.and if i can how can i upload it?.https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xft1/v/t1.0-9/s720x720/1376569_1378298162444575_478043588_n.jpg?oh=277579154e5991403c2205a7e4805a0c&oe=56285F2D--سوزوار (talk) 15:15, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Your link here gives an error, so I can't see what you mean to upload, but very few images on Facebook can be uploaded, unless they are photos you took:
  • Generally, images on Facebook are neither in the public domain nor free-licensed.
  • Many pictures on Facebook are, in fact, posted by people who actually didn't even have proper legal rights to post them there.
Technically, if the picture is one of the relatively few that is OK, you would download from Facebook to your computer, then upload in the usual manner, attributing the source and indicating licensing that is appropriate to that photo. Unfortunately, even if an image on Facebook was uploaded at a high resolution, I'm unaware of any way of obtaining a resolution higher than what you can see on your screen. - Jmabel ! talk 16:16, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
That specific image looks more like marketing/advertisement than educational? And as written above: The license must fit. --Malyacko (talk) 08:31, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Credit-less reuse of Commons images

Hi, what is to be done when a Commons image is reused (particularly by newspapers) without due credit given and/or the licence noted? I've seen a number of Indian news sites use Commons images with (when they are feeling generous) a note attributing the source to just "Wikipedia" or more often than not, nothing at all. For example, here's a news article which uses a cropped version of this image without any credit at all. Thanks. --Cpt.a.haddock (talk) 14:21, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

As the copyright-holder is the one to complain, it's best to notify him/her (and eventually leave a link to the infringing re-use on the image-talkpage). --Túrelio (talk) 14:41, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Images of HM Government ministers and MPs (published on UK Government sites)

A reader has expressed displeasure that an image of a UK Government minister was deleted.

That reader argues: "Images of HM Government ministers and MPs (published on UK Government sites) are not private property - they belong to the people (UK subjects)."

I see two issues here: 1. Confirmation that photos of UK ministers published on government sites qualify as public domain 2. Clarification that it is helpful for the upload or to identify why an image might be public domain, especially in cases where it is not obvious, and it should be understandable that in the absence of such helpful information we err on the side of caution and delete until such evidence is provided.

I suspect that our contact person is correct regarding the status but I have been unable to confirm it within the pages I have reviewed.

I looked at Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory and I do not see anything within the UK section indicating the special status of photos of government ministers published on government sites.

I looked at: Commons:Copyright_tags and I did not see any tags seem to be appropriate.

Can someone help me identify within our guidelines appropriate guidance suggesting that this image should be public domain?

Once that is done, I will politely point out to the contact person that the uploaded file contained no information suggesting it qualified as public domain, as well as no suggestion that it came from a government site. Once that confirmation is provided I can undelete the image and tag it appropriately.--Sphilbrick (talk) 20:41, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

For most UK government sites, the copyright tag is {{OGL}} - provided that that license is stated on the site. Example.--Pere prlpz (talk) 21:20, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
The only UK government specific copyright information I have seen in passing would be "Parliamentary copyright" (see the template) and "Crown copyright" (see the template). I'm not a expert of any of this, so just providing the links so you can further research the issue at hand. Offnfopt(talk) 21:38, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
At the end of https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/prime-ministers-office-10-downing-street you can see at right "© Crown copyright" but at left "OGL All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated". Therefore here "Crown copyright" just implies that the Crown has the right to license the content, and it chooses to license it under the OGL license - a free license free enough for Commons.--Pere prlpz (talk) 22:04, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Key point to note of your quote is "except where otherwise stated". A prime example is on the MP page when you click the link "Download a high-resolution photo of David Cameron" it links you to a photo on their flickr account, which then says the picture is licensed via by-nc-nd 2.0 Offnfopt(talk) 22:36, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the prompt responses. I'm concluding that I should not automatically assume that a photo found on a UK government site can simply be copied. We need a more explicit statement of license.--Sphilbrick (talk) 01:27, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
In general, the official approach of UK Gov for new published material is to prefer OGL. However this remains optional for all Government departments and is not retrospective for previously published works (as mentioned above most often found as Crown Copyright or Parliamentary copyright). In all cases a reuser must check for an explicit statement of copyright. Though we should be grateful that OGL exists and is a great step forward, the reality is that most Gov websites remain confusing and unhelpful for reusers with respect to copyright, especially when compared to the approach taken by US Federal Gov. --Fæ (talk) 04:18, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

User talkpage errors

I'm getting errors with every letter I type on my own and other users' talk pages:

Error: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki&only=scripts&skin=vector&version=DIGuuO6q line 4 > eval at line 352: TypeError: pending.abort is not a function

These error messages obscure the right part of my screen, making it a bit of a bitch to finish messages. This just started happening today. Anyone know what this is and how to stop it, or when it will stop happening? Thanks. INeverCry 22:52, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Same here when i'm editing any page. Thibaut120094 (talk) 00:05, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

 Comment I just got the same error editing a deletion request page, and I'm getting the error now as I type this. INeverCry 00:23, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I haven't experienced the error yet. You two may want to compare the gadgets you use to see if maybe you can narrow it down to one of those. I only have the gadgets enabled that were enabled by default. If I experience the error I'll see if I can pinpoint the script and update this post. Offnfopt(talk) 01:28, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

June 18

Naturalis - using persistent links to come?

Naturalis Biodiversity Center intends with me to upload thousands of images to Commons from their online databases. However, they are in the process to introduce persistent links and want only the future persistent link to appear, so no longer, for example, this one. This can entail that in the mean time thousands of broken links will appear, causing error messages etcetera.

  • Is this acceptable?

Regards, Hansmuller (talk) 07:31, 12 June 2015 (UTC) Wikipedia project with Naturalis

Hi Hansmuller, it could be possible to find a smart template-based solution for that. Can you tell us more about how the links are currently structured and how they will be structured in the future? Will the IDs still be the same? Can you estimate how long the transition will take? Cheers, --El Grafo (talk) 15:04, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
File page of image as a example of the links in question, for those reading this. Offnfopt(talk) 07:33, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks! At this point IT staff at Naturalis isn't sure yet how it's gonna be. In the crab example of Offnfopt you see the present structure, a simple link for the image, and an api call on a Naturalis database for an original description page with biological info. Regards, Hansmuller (talk) 08:32, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Present link structure, for example that crab:

Future persistent link structure as a reference on the Commons page:

Before September 1, persistent links should be introduced at Naturalis. Of course, a smart template-based solution would be very attractive (i myself am not able to create this..). Kind regards, Hansmuller (talk) 14:32, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

@Hansmuller: I've got some ideas but don't have the time to test them at the moment. If you haven't heard from me after the weekend, i might have forgotten about this – in that case please leave a short message at my talk page to remind me. Thanks, --El Grafo (talk) 13:00, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Three weeks to save freedom of panorama in Europe

The London Eye, blacked out to show the effect of removing section 62 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, which allows the photography of buildings in the UK

As many of you will know, the amendment on freedom of panorama adopted to the Reda report by the Legal Affairs committee of the European Parliament on Tuesday was very bad, namely that the European Parliament

16. Considers that the commercial use of photographs, video footage or other images of works which are permanently located in physical public places should always be subject to prior authorisation from the authors or any proxy acting for them;

The text had support both from the centre-right EPP group and the centre-left S&D group.

It will now be voted on by the full European Parliament when it considers the full text of the Reda report in its plenary session on 9 July.

Unless we can generate enough public outcry to persuade MEPs at that plenary to stop or amend the text, in its current form it represents a threat to the overwhelming majority of Commons images of public art and buildings and Wiki Loves Monuments created since 1900 in all countries of the European Union.

There is more detailed (slightly UK-centric) draft article for the Signpost, at:

I have also started a project stub at

to be a central on-wiki space for campaign ideas, resources and discussion. Please sign up if you have ideas or can help in any way, and help to gather together a library of useful materials, contacts made, letters sent and responses received.

I am sure there are also other things going on across Europe. Let's share what people are doing, and do what we can to beat this thing. Jheald (talk) 09:01, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Convince the WMF to allow non-commercial licenses. Throw in non-derivative licenses while you're at it. INeverCry 09:38, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
You must have clicked the wrong button, @INeverCry: this ain't Flickr. odder (talk) 10:09, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
Well, I just helped a guy I opposed in his RFA get his bit at BN, so I figured why not extend the irony a bit further by standing with the inclusionists... INeverCry 10:20, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
Sorry, this rings of "24 hours to save the NHS". The long term Commons community is excellent at sticking to the facts, the message should be able to speak for itself. Perhaps our lobbying can remain factual rather than being spun by PR and new media professionals? --Fæ (talk) 09:48, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
Hi @Fae: . I'm not a PR or a new media professional, just a regular Commons user who was desperate to let people know what was going on. I'm sorry if you think I'm not up to scratch or don't have the skills -- but that's why this campaign so urgently needs more people to get involved. Jheald (talk) 10:11, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
No need to apologise, my comment was in no way a personal attack directed at your skills or background as is completely clear in the words I used if anyone reads them. I am aware of the context of how this approach was formed, the list of professionals who contributed to it, along with a number of chapter employees releasing statements for their organizations, and have already worked hard lobbying on this for many months.
It would probably be more effective to engage the project community early in this work, rather than with a deadline of the last 3 weeks, especially if you want some practical evidence, such as an agreed position with a supporting community consensus. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 10:35, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
@Fae: You're probably right. Chapter communications aren't as good as they should be. But to some extent it's our job, as the project community, to come forward and own this -- there's a limit to what chapters have the resources to do. I'm just a regular user, trying to do my best. I wrote to Mary Honeyball, sent her two author-illustrated books on statues and monuments in London, to try to show her what would be hit by this clause, talked to her assistant, all to no avail -- but on my own initiative, not the chapter. We can't expect the chapter to do this for us, we have to do it for ourselves.
Similarly, the Signpost article was me trying to do my best, grinding on until 4am to try to get the text together, because words don't come easily to me, but I was desperate that somebody needed to do it. Yes, it would have been great if we'd got our act together months ago. But this is where we're at, and this is what we have to work with now, if we're to pull the situation back. MEPs simply don't understand why "noncommercial only" is a problem, even MEPs from countries that currently don't have any such restriction -- for example, here's a blog this morning from the quite sane and rational and moderate Czech EPP member Svoboda, who was part of the overwhelming vote in the committee for the Cavada amendment. Unless we can get broader awareness and debate going, this will be lost. Jheald (talk) 11:47, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Jheald I have begun tweeting about it. Here, here and here. Thanks for bringing to our attention. 106.69.128.124 12:20, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
I have written to "my" MEP and asked to reject the anti-FOP proposals #413-418 und #420-426. --Túrelio (talk) 12:30, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

That's great (and good links). Did you get a reply back? Note that, going forward, those amendments have now been voted on and finished with. There may or may not be new amendments for the plenary, but the baseline text for the main Parliament vote will now be the text I blockquoted at the top above. Jheald (talk) 12:51, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
No, I didn't get a reply (didn't expect it anyway). But I will contact other MEPs from Germany and encourage other users to do so. --Túrelio (talk) 19:18, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Posted a mail to the mailing list. --Steinsplitter (talk) 16:36, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Actually it isn't important wether Turelio got an answer. There ist one thing what counts: each and every Member must get thousands of emails from different people. However it might also help if the WMF would engage in this but again the WMF considers playing Office action games at this time as a more important thing to do. --Matthiasb (talk) 20:07, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I am currently experiencing a few bugs when using the "Download" link to download images. I think it worked a few weeks ago.

Example page, picked at random: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wombat_Tasmania.jpg 

In Firefox, the Download link appears first in the list of links across the top of the image.
In IE, the Download link appears to the right of the image.

Clicking the "Download" link brings up a window showing 

Page URL:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWombat_Tasmania.jpg
File URL:
https:https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Wombat_Tasmania.jpg
Attribution:
By D. Gordon E. Robertson (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Notice the doubled "https:" in the "File URL" field. Clicking "Full Resolution" then loads a URL which will never work: 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Wombat_Tasmania.jpg

Scrolling down to the versions table and clicking the Date/Time next to the current version of the image works.

Any ideas? — Mwr0 (talk) 14:33, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I guess that's partially my bad due to gerrit:218819. The stock photo gadget needs to be updated. Bawolff (talk) 23:42, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
This now appears to have been fixed by this edit. At least, it works correctly for me now. Revent (talk) 10:54, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Yes!! Looks to be fixed!!  Thank you. — Mwr0 (talk) 19:09, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Ongoing Labs Outage Update

See details here about labs outage -- Offnfopt(talk) 16:11, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Labs is back up with some notes for those who run tools https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/labs-l/2015-June/003814.html Offnfopt(talk) 12:12, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Separating history - can it, should it, be done

Someone uploaded a new image, using the same name as a deleted image. The new image is File:6th FL ANV Pattern.jpg. This is a photo of a reproduction of the original. A photo of the original was uploaded and deleted.

I think it would have been better to upload this new photo with a different name, to avoid the mess that we have, in which an acceptable photo has the exact same name as a deleted photo. However, I am not sure:

  1. whether this is worth worrying about,
  2. or what to do if it is

I considered deleting the photo, and asking the uploaded to use a different name. However, the uploader will be unable to upload in that situation, as the Upload Wizard will detect that the image matches a deleted image.

I considered renaming the image, to, for example File:6th FL ANV Pattern (reproduction).jpg

However, I think the renaming, which of course is a move, will carry along the history of the deleted image. My goal is to separate the two. Can this be done? Should it be done?--Sphilbrick (talk) 14:48, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Fixed, yes.--Sphilbrick (talk) 21:15, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
  • I don't see any evidence of a prior file at that name. I'm an admin, so I'd expect to be able to access that if it exists. Why do you believe there was another image there? - Jmabel ! talk 15:48, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Click on history, then on
View or restore 3 deleted edits?
And look at the 17:47, 18 June 2015 entry--Sphilbrick (talk) 21:18, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, I've now handled that one. The other can remain deleted.--Sphilbrick (talk) 01:39, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi Commons,

Some years ago I came across w:Wikipedia:Public domain image resources -- a great resource both as an editor myself and for when I work with student editors. A little over a year ago Klortho suggested it, as well as meta:Help:Public domain image resources, merge/redirect to the same page at Commons (Commons:Free media resources -- and in particular /Photography). Seemed like a logical idea rather than try to maintain parallel resources, but it never really went anywhere.

All three are magnets for spam. There are plenty of great links, but many are clearly just set up to get some ad revenue, which just collect republish whatever domain images they could find on other sites. Others say public domain but seem sketchy about it. Others have just a handful of random pictures that either the site owner took...

I'd like to follow through on this -- move image resources to the Commons and clean up what's here. Nobody contended that move at the Wikipedia page, but it would, of course, require a thread opened at Meta to take action there. I think an important first step, though, would be to come up with a standard for links. For that I could use some help. Wikipedia has a pretty clear external linking policy. Being a list of resources in the Wikipedia namespace, it's a little fuzzy, but there's nonetheless precedent for removing spammy sites wherever they may be. As I have less experience on Commons, I don't know if there's the same sort of approach to or opinions on [apparent] spam. I could also use help creating a standard for the way the sites describe their copyright/terms. I'm familiar with copyright on Wikipedia, but say, for example, a site says, effectively, "we're pretty sure these are all public domain, but if we're wrong, let us know." Others say public domain but provide links to where they got the image -- and the license is a bit different. It's messy.

Maybe the best approach would be to only allow links to collections published by traditionally reliable sources (like a museum, government agency, or educational institution), collections of original work (e.g. here are all my pictures of birds I've taken and released CC-0), and collections on on sites which have an established reputation as resources (like, I think, Pixabay). Most importantly, this precludes including aggregator sites, which are most of what's added to these pages.

I'm posting to the Village Pump because I'm pretty sure people aren't watching those resources talk pages but it concerns pages which are likely frequently consulted by the public -- and the advice I could use is more general. Thanks. --— Rhododendrites talk |  15:58, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Problems with File Upload?

In last two days number of files was uploaded from a first time users (all with a single edit) where the metadata consists of {{Information |Description= |Source= |Date= |Author= |Permission= |other_versions= }}. Example files:

Is this related to the labs problems in last 2 days somehow, or did several first time users suddenly discovered some unusual way to upload images where they are allowed to leave all the fields blank and still upload the image? --Jarekt (talk) 18:52, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Replace pictures with watermarks

Dear all, I uploaded some years ago some pictures with my signature on the lower right corner. I do not want anymore my name to be on that images for a matter of privacy. I have each version without watermark and I can upload it. Can you please help me and tell me how to delete the images? It all seems so difficult, I already tried but I failed. Thanks a lot.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Files_of_User:harlock20

To upload a version without the watermark, go to the list of the files you have uploaded, click on the relevant photo, scroll down and then click "Upload a new version of this file". -- Robert Weemeyer (talk) 15:49, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
If desired for privacy, you can then ask an administrator to delete the older revisions that include your personal information. Revent (talk) 16:19, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
I tried to do it with one of the images, I link it here https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Puente_isabel_II_en_sevilla.jpg As you can see on the File history, the first two versions have watermarks, the last two versions no. How can I contact an administration for the removal of the signed versions? Thanks
I just did it for File:Puente isabel II en sevilla.jpg. Just send me a list (or post it here) and I can hide the other as well. --McZusatz (talk) 12:23, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks a lot. Here you can find the files. Thanks a lot for your support. For each picture there are two version to be removed: the first one and the "non interlaced" version, both have watermark. Thanks again. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListFiles/Harlock20&ilshowall=1

The last mile

I finaly reduced the work Category:Images uploaded by Natuur12 (clcean up2) to 10 files (was about 380). Can somebody find the location of the picture (and File:Amtrak loco on the level crossing (2289063956).jpg) from the same place and time?Smiley.toerist (talk) 19:41, 16 June 2015 (UTC))]]

It looks like someone grabbed the geotags from the Flickr pages already. Revent (talk) 00:17, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Er, actually, disregard. Those coordinates are apparently wrong, as they show up as inside buildings and not on railroad tracks. :( Revent (talk) 00:19, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Well, they helped a lot: Looked for the nearest 2-track railway on OSM, guesstimated that the image would probably show a railway station, picked the nearest one, switched over to Google street view, et voila: found the arches on the brick wall . The other one should be very near … --El Grafo (talk) 09:31, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, the next problem is File:Steam locomotive under restoration (197086166).jpg. There are several pictures of Peter Van den Bossche (:Category:Photographs by Peter Van den Bossche) taken on 2003-09-06 in some workplace/museum. I suspect in Luxemburg but I am not certain.Smiley.toerist (talk) 19:12, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
I found the location and created a new category: Category:Oignies CMCF. The locomotive 231.C.78 seems to famous: [4] [5], but I cant seem to pinpoint the precise category for this pacific type steam locomotive.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:42, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

When I check the dates: The last picture before this, is a boatrace in Turku, Finland on 26 august 1999. It seems reasonable that two days later, 28 august the two pictures where taken in Estonia and he didnt have time to be further away in for example Latvia. So I place them in Estonia. The last picture on 11 september has another picture taken on 10 september, so I also place them in Estonia.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:29, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

June 17

HTTPS


Hi everyone.

Over the last few years, the Wikimedia Foundation has been working towards enabling HTTPS by default for all users, including unregistered ones, for better privacy and security for both readers and editors. This has taken a long time, as there were different aspects to take into account. Our servers haven't been ready to handle it. The Wikimedia Foundation has had to balance sometimes conflicting goals.

Forced HTTPS has just been implemented on all Wikimedia projects. Some of you might already be aware of this, as a few Wikipedia language versions were converted to HTTPS last week and the then affected communities were notified.

Most of Wikimedia editors shouldn't be affected at all. If you edit as registered user, you've probably already had to log in through HTTPS. We'll keep an eye on this to make sure everything is working as it should. Do get in touch with us if you have any problems after this change or contact me if you have any other questions.

/Johan (WMF)

22:01, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

After the Labs outage with all my cron jobs suspended, my files reverted to a 10 days old backup, the API continuation parameter change, I hope this is the last change potentially breaking my bots. -- Rillke(q?) 22:06, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
+1 --Steinsplitter (talk) 18:30, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

June 20

OTRS question

Dear Commons, I have a question about getting OTRS permissions in the following circumstances:

  1. The permissions are planned to be received from inheritors of composer(s) of several classical musical compositions, recordings of performances of which by Ukrainian Art Song Project are planned to be uploaded to Commons;
  2. So there will be in fact two levels of the permission:
    1. The copyright on the musical composition itself - which belongs to the inheritors of the composer(s), and which is the critical aspect of my question;
    2. And the copyright on the performance and recording - which belongs to Ukrainian Art Song Project;
  3. The permission from the inheritors will be negotiated by Ukrainian Art Song Project, and then forwarded with their own permission on the recording to the OTRS team;
  4. The permission is likely to be on paper, because the inheritors may not be active on the Internet (I suspect some of them may not even have an email account).

The performance rights permission is simple - there are already files with such permission confirmed, because only the permission from Ukrainian Art Song Project had to be received, as there were only performances of public-domain music so far. In continuation of the project we plan to receive permission on several other non-PD pieces from the composers' inheritors in order to upload several more recordings. So my question is the following:

Which form of permission should Ukrainian Art Song Project request from the inheritors? Sure it will be based on Commons:Email templates, but how exactly would it have to look in this case? In particular, should we first upload the files and mark them with the {{OP}} template, and then include the links to the files in the (possible signed on paper) permission? Or may we just include the titles of the compositions to be published instead of the direct file names (because the process of receiving the permission may last a couple of weeks)?

The situation is also complicated somewhat by the fact that Ukrainian Art Song Project is based in Canada, and their representative will visit Ukraine for a limited time and meet the composers' ancestors, this is why I want to make sure we prepare a proper permission template beforehand.

Your advice will be highly appreciated. --YurB (talk) 13:46, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

June 21

Frequently, we will have a photo of a sculpture that has a tag like {{PD-old-100}} along with {{Cc-by-sa-3.0}}. The {{PD-old-100}} tag is misleading for at least two reasons: (1) it says, "This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights." That is definitively NOT the case - the file can only be used if you comply with the terms of the Creative Commons license. (2) It categorizes the image into a sub-category of Category:Public domain, which may lead someone to mistakenly believe, again, that the image is in the public domain.

I know that this is at least something of a common practice - but it's a very bad common practice. In some cases, it's ridiculously obvious that the underlying object is hundreds or thousands of years old and is obviously not subject to copyright.

Some image pages, like File:Hirsfängare Neapel, F Bourgeois - Livrustkammaren - 86545.tif, put the object in its own collapsed section, which is an improvement, although it still categorized in the PD category.

Others, such as File:Hispano-Moresque - Large Plate with Concentric Bands - Walters 481214.jpg, whose template Jarekt (talk · contribs) has now protected to his preferred version to prevent anyone from being able to improve it, are horribly written and display the PD template above the actual license template, and thus more likely to be noticed. A well-meaning person desiring to re-use this content could, from a cursory glance, think that this image is in the public domain.

I would like to suggest making an effort to standardize these template by adding an "underlying=1" parameter to the PD-old-100 (and similar) templates. If underlying=1 is set, then (1) the message "This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights" is replaced with "the object depicted in this image is free of known restrictions under copyright law, but this image itself is a derivative work with its own copyright. Please see the accompanying tag for additional licensing information."; (2) the image will not be in a public domain category, and (3) the grey (c) gets replaced with a different icon (maybe something like File:PD-icon-info.svg?.

The purpose of this exercise is to give it a visual cue that the image is not actually in the public domain. --B (talk) 04:45, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

{{Infosplit}} and {{Author}} can (and often should) be used in such cases, though it doesn't seem to be frequently done. The example uses in the documentation of the infosplit template, in particular, should be illustrative. Revent (talk) 05:45, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
(further comment) As far as the dig at Jarekt for protecting that template, a licensing template with over 18,000 transclusions seems a rather obvious candidate for protection. Instead of assuming bad faith on his part, you can simply make an edit request on the template's talk page with your suggestions. Revent (talk) 05:55, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
Is it possible to modify {{Cc-pd-mark-footer}} to not show up if any template that is not another PD template is present on the page? It just seems ridiculous to say "This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights" when that is definitively 100% not true. --B (talk) 15:22, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

I  Agree that {{Cc-pd-mark-footer}} text and machine-readable marking should not be added when PD license template is accompanied by other non-PD license templates, as it often happens with sculptures, music and other works which might have multiple licenses for multiple authors. Many images using {{Art Photo}} also have that problem. {{Cc-pd-mark-footer}} is part of all (or most) PD license templates (2.2k in all) but should be skipped if non-PD license template is present at the page. To my knowledge we do not have any templates which can change their functionality based on if other templates are detected on the pages or not. Maybe something can be done with JavaScript. I had discussions with other users about this before and usual attitude is that this is too complex to contemplate or that the problem is too rare to worry about. Others like B decided to remove DP license templates from 18k files without talking to anybody about it. One other drastic solution would be to remove {{Cc-pd-mark-footer}} from PD licenses. --Jarekt (talk) 16:21, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T89692
  • License and other information should be separated to be machine-readable, but that's not possible in the case of File:Hirsfängare Neapel, F Bourgeois - Livrustkammaren - 86545.tif. This should be fixed. Regards, Yann (talk) 16:53, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
    • I hadn't even considered the machine readability aspect of it. What about adding a parameter to the PD templates "underlying=1"? "underlying=1" would remove the message that the image is PD, hopefully come up with a different icon that makes it clear to someone casually glancing that this image is not public domain, and remove whatever machines are reading that makes them think the image is PD. That would allow the issue to be resolved in bulk for all of the source templates that transclude the PD template. I would bet that a bot could even add underlying=1 to any individual image that has two templates, one of which is PD. As for being able to detect what other templates are on the page ... how does the GFDL template do it? I have seen where GFDL will show the re-licensing notice, but hide it if there is a cc-by-sa-3.0 template on the page? Or on Wikipedia, there are navigation templates like en:Template:CBSNetwork_Shows_(current_and_upcoming) that show up as expanded if they are the only template on the page, but collapsed if there are any other navigation templates. In en:Zoo_(TV_series), the CBS template at the bottom is expanded, but in en:Blue Bloods (TV series), it is collapsed. Neither usage of the template has any parameters, so I'm assuming that there is some magic where it is aware that there is another navigation template on the page. --B (talk) 20:25, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
There are probably hundreds unique PD templates and each would have to be edited and documented separately. Then there are wrapper templates like {{Self}}, {{PD-Art}} or {{PD-old-auto}} that call other PD templates and would have to pass those parameters. The GFDL does change it's behavior based on presence and absence of CC template, but I think only when both are wrapped in {{Self}} template, so I think the magic must be hiding in {{Self}}. --Jarekt (talk) 03:08, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
because you do not have an easy uploader for artwork template, you are at the mercy of anyone who can php. you have no standards for metadata templates. why are you whining about how someone uploaded a license? after the metadata cleanup is "done", (i.e. images with no machine readable source or author) then you will have the larger task of standardizing metadata. what is your plan for that? maybe wikidata can fix it. Slowking4♡Farmbrough's revenge 04:01, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Missing information templates affecting reusability of content

Hi again guys/gals. This is Scott (Russavia). I am editing here using a proxy as the WMF globally locked my last two real IPs, and frankly, I can't be bothered resetting my modem to get a new IP at this time. The authenticity of this message can be checked by asking me on IRC if required.

It was recently brought to my attention on Twitter by an individual who utilises a lot of Creative Commons licenced media, and especially from Wikimedia Commons, that the "Use this file" option was missing on a file. I worked out this is due to it missing the {{Information}} template. A few days later, I was again alerted to another file which was missing the link. Upon checking Category:Media missing infobox template has approximately 530,000 files in it. This equates to around 2% of media on Wikimedia Commons that is essentially difficult (read: impossible) for external re-users to easily use. I alerted the WMF (@wikicommons) to the issue, but don't imagine this is something that is in their area of interest in raising with this community, so here I am.

Having 2% of Commons files being almost impossible for external reusers to use, and comply with licencing, easily is something that is untenable. I do understand that everyone has their own thing going on. Jarekt raised the general issue of missing templates in November 2014, but there was no input. Perhaps people don't know what these missing templates mean for reusability of this content.

Simply put, there needs to be a solution to this problem, and hope it can be looked at. I could recommend the following:

  1. Establishing a task force of editors, especially the gnomish type (editors like Revent come to mind), who could manually work through these hundreds of thousands of files and fix the issue
  2. Have a bot operator, such as Steinsplitter, Zhuyifei1999, Odder, Fæ, etc, see if a bot couldn't somehow help to put these information templates on such files. Perhaps this could be done with AWB, I don't know?
  3. Institute a filter that disallows uploading of new files which don't have such templates.

That's just a few ideas I have, workable or not, I don't know. I don't mind doing the changes to the odd file when it's brought to my attention by an external reuser, but obviously I am not in the position to do anything long-term, etc. So I turn it over to you guys and gals to see what you can up with. Cheers, 31.193.140.164 12:57, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Russavia, Thank you for raising this issue. WMF is actually also interested in it and they promote m:File metadata cleanup drive which resulted in Commons:Bots/Work_requests/Archive_11#Adding_the_Information_template_to_files_that_don.27t_have_it this effort by bot operators. Unfortunately it quickly died out since we are mostly talking about some of the oldest files on Commons, which were also edited for last decade and do not lend themselves easily to bot operations and doing it manually is too depressing to contemplate. We managed to clean up files with broken infobox templates and many home-brewed information templates, but that hardly made a dent. Somethings I was contemplating:
  • Contact all the uploders of files in Category:Media missing infobox template give tem a list of their files which are missing infoboxes and invite them to fix them. Some might still be around and willing to help.
  • Propose Policy requiring all new uploads to use a infobox, since ttere is still plenty new uploads without any templates.
  • develop bot preventing or reverting any edits that cause loss of all infoboxes or all licenses.
--Jarekt (talk) 13:19, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 Info probably won't help much, but I made a proposal to add Category:Media missing infobox template to Commons:Community portal. --El Grafo (talk) 13:40, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Not a priority fix IMHO. The information template, indeed any template is optional. Rather than de facto making it mandatory, it would be more helpful if the structured data proposals that the WMF started but have since forgotten about, apparently, were resurrected, gained solid community support, and were thoroughly tested and bought off by a community panel. --Fæ (talk) 14:09, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
As I understand it adding infobox templates is a first step of implementing structured data, because pages with infoboxes can be much more easily parsed than the ones without. --Jarekt (talk) 14:21, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
That makes sense. I know you are both good with bots and I am also to a lesser degree capable as well. When I looked through the lit of Category:Media missing infobox template I see images with some easy to automate scenarios, quite a few images that IMO we do not need and could/should be deleted anyway. So although I agree with Fae to a point that its not a huge priority, I also don't think we should ignore the problem either and if we can fairly easily automate the task and clean some up we should. Even if we can only do 50, 000 of the 550, 000 by bot, its a start. Reguyla (talk) 14:26, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
It's not so much that WMF forgot about it, actually lack of metadata was again identified this last quarter as one of the key elements that keeps back the projects in all kinds of manners.. It's just that realization has set in that we need a lot more fundamental work done before people can start building a system for File metadata. Starting now (or rather last year) would have resulted in a train wreck. There need to be more/better/standardized building blocks before we build a tower. I suspect this effort although initially very invisible to a lot of people will be very important in the long run to finally solve this problem. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:46, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
@TheDJ: Thanks for highlighting the tech discussion. It is a shame this is lost in the long grass (invisible is apt) considering what a huge difference it would make to how the projects might integrate, and how Commons could become a consistent user & mobile app friendly platform with a much improved API (hopefully out-classing Flickr's). For me at least, this is one to mentally park until the WMF makes a firm public commitment and invests some serious grant money into making it visible for contributors like me and end reusers of our service. --Fæ (talk) 15:07, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

 Comment COM:MRD is worth taking a look at for anyone not familiar with it, as it's relevant to why {{Information}} templates are desirable. Revent (talk) 14:28, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, one thing I was thinking about was scraping the Creator data of the applicable ones and then writing that to the Infobox of the File that's missing it. That should cover quite a few and although it may not be 100%, its still better than nothing at all. There are also quite a few (about 13, 000) with OTRS approval so IMO some of those can probably be done as well if the OTRS data is available and can be used to automate the task a bit (of course that would rquire someone with access). Reguyla (talk) 14:31, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 Info AFAIK @Ladsgroup: is working on a bot for this --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 14:36, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks and that will cover some as well. But it only covers certain situations which will still leave a lot to do. But that would at least be a chunk done. Reguyla (talk) 14:59, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
In December we fixed quite a few of those, I focused on files from some high frequent uploaders, there were some nice patterns and particular uploaders often have a similar style of formatting their file descriptions between their files. On User:Basvb/cleanup some links can be found for the approach I used there. Looking at the progress now it seems that in December we dropped the number of files without information template with almost 100.000, since then however the influx seems to be as high as the number of files being fixed. The approach of requesting all uploaders (especially those with a low number of files) if they are willing to add the information templates to their files as suggested by Jarekt seems a good idea. In January we also discussed the issue of how fast vs how good these files should be fixed. A higher quality in adding the templates (making sure the author is never on accident put in the description field etc.) makes for a slower progress. A more coördinated drive to adding information templates would be welcomed by me. Basvb (talk) 16:43, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for the link. I'll check that out and I'll definitely help chisel away at those myself. I'm not so much use here at uploading files and copyright decisions but I am pretty good at the gnomish stuff. :-) Reguyla (talk) 19:08, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi all, this is Russavia. Thanks for all the info above, I'll leave this in the capable hands of those above who have mentioned various things going on in relation to this. I understand it's a massive undertaking, but it will be well worth ensuring re-users can used repository content with ease in the future. Cheers, 85.234.133.143 20:19, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

If somebody wants to do some by hand/one by one than this search (other link with only FP on commons) might be a good starting point, this are 560 files which have the assessment template (indicating that they are likely a FP on some wiki or here) which are missing an infobox template (some of the higher ones have a user-template similar to an infobox template but without machine readable data, those likely need some additional discussing). These FP are arguably some of the most likely images to be reused because of their outstanding quality. Basvb (talk) 20:48, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Needed tools

Do we have any list of wanted tools here?--Juandev (talk) 18:28, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Do you mean something like mw:Tool Labs/Collection of issues after Toolserver shutdown or Commons:User_scripts#To_create ? --Steinsplitter (talk) 18:44, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Ya, the second one.--Juandev (talk) 20:44, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

June 22

Questions/issues with disambiguation

I've been looking at the entries in Category:Disambiguation and I have some questions. I've outlined them at Category talk:Disambiguation. Your comments are invited. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:39, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Files starting with File:Flickr - DVIDSHUB -

"Rush" - illustrating how wide a range of images exist at this source.

I noticed a large number of files with names containing things like File:Flickr - DVIDSHUB - such as this one and I was wondering if this is necessary. Can these be renamed to just be the file name like Don’t Tread On Me, Afghan forces, Marines disrupt insurgent activity ahead of fighting season (Image 1 of 8).jpg (which still seems excessively long) with out the Flickr - DVIDSHUB - part or do we need to keep that to show the source or something? Reguyla (talk) 20:56, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

  • It's certainly not necessary, but it's also not prohibited, and generally we don't rename unless there is an active reason to do so. - Jmabel ! talk 01:03, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Just letting @Matanya: know, if they are about. The naming is a bit unnecessary, but we often use filenames with batch upload identifiers. In this case a better practice would have been to include the Flickr photo ID or the DVIDS image number, but it is not worth the disruption to older images to do this retrospectively.
I'm responding here to highlight the fact that the DVIDS source has better data than the Flickrstream. The DVIDS source has information such as the VIRIN (military tracking number) and is clearly marked as public domain. Though the Flickrstream has a geo location, it is potentially misleading as this was not added by the camera and is unlikely to be better than the region description in the text or the DVIDS location field text. The Flickrstream has a serious disadvantage of using a CC-BY-SA licence rather than the unrestricted public domain that DVIDS makes clear.
If anyone is looking to have a mass upload of certain images from DVIDS, I am happy to consider any project where automatic filtering is possible and the upload is 1,000 or more images. One tricky aspect of recent DoD changes is that to download high resolution images from DVIDS you have to log in, so our standard uploading tools (like the GWT) cannot be applied.
P.S. If anyone has a passion for military matters, please take a look at Category:Images from DoD uploaded by Fæ and browse the category of images that need review. Of over 180,000 photographs batch uploaded to date, at least 13,000 can be improved by having someone check the categories by sight. --Fæ (talk) 11:31, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks Fae, I would certainly be willing to wade through some of those. I see a lot of only one category and those should be easy enough to improve with some additional ones. I also see a couple of maintenance categories there for Category:Images from DoD uploaded by Fæ (check needed) and Category:Images from DoD uploaded by Fæ (duplicate). On that first group what checks are needed and on the second if its a duplicate should I submit one for deletion? Reguyla (talk) 14:27, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
The 'check needed' category is a slight hang over from my earlier attempts at auto-categorization (what I do now is very stable). A visual check of these is all that is needed, and removing the check category if the categorization looks sensible, or add/removing categories as you see fit.
The duplicate category has been created by searching for duplicate identity codes, though the files themselves are not 'digitally identical' as they often vary by EXIF data even if the visual image itself is identical. One of the duplicates should be marked with {{duplicate}} (more efficient than a deletion request), normally the one with the least complete data on the image page. --Fæ (talk) 14:36, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
Roger that thanks. I'll add that to my to do list as well and pick away at those. Reguyla (talk) 15:03, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks Fæ. points taken. matanya • talk 20:46, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

June 23

License migration aftermath

As far as I know, the time window for migrating licenses from GFDL to Creative Commons closed on August 1st 2009 [6][7][8]. After that date, re-licensing was not possible anymore.

--El Grafo (talk) 11:23, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Or is it really just "must have been uploaded to Commons before August 1st 2009"? In that case forget about what I wrote above. --El Grafo (talk) 11:28, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
Files in Category:License migration candidates can be re-licensed if they were "uploaded to Commons or to some other Wikimedia project before August 1, 2009" and many might have been transferred from other projects. --Jarekt (talk) 12:31, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
That's what it says on our pages, but if you actually read the GFDL 1.3, in the section about relicensing (section 11) it says:
The operator of an MMC [Massive Multiauthor Collaboration] Site may republish an MMC contained in the site under CC-BY-SA on the same site at any time before August 1, 2009
To me this reads like the given date refers to the time of republishing rather than time when the content was contained in the site. migrate to CC BY-SA by August 1st! sound like that as well. --El Grafo (talk) 13:00, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
On the other hand the GFDL FAQ sounds more like the decision to relicense must have been made at that date (scroll down to section 11). That's all quite confusing to me. --El Grafo (talk) 13:05, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
That was my read as well of the GFDL 1.3 license and the GFDL FAQ: that the date August 1, 2009 is the deadline when the website has to decide if they want to be relicensing or not, instead of when individual images can be relicensed. I am also quite confused about it. --Jarekt (talk) 14:41, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

IdeaLab - Improve SVG rasterer

I came across this the other day when I was looking through the M:Grants:IdeaLab.

If you support this idea there is a:

  • Endorse button - If you think it is a good idea and just want to show your support.
  • Join button - If you want to take a more active role in the project such as:
    • Project Manager
    • Developer
    • Community Organizer
    • Researcher
    • Advisor
    • Volunteer
  • Feedback button - If you have any type of feedback you'd like to submit regarding the idea.

Offnfopt(talk) 20:09, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

June 24

Peer review and document improvement request

This is a Peer review request to seek broader input to improve page: meta:Help:Form I & Affidavit (Customised for relinquishment of copyright as per 'free cultural work' definition) an option available under (Indian) Copyright act 1957 rules.


Mahitgar (talk) 03:52, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Unexpected high for editors in May 2015

Newest Wikistats report for Commons shows an unexpected high number of new/active/very active editors for May 2015. Is there an easy explanation for this? (like there is for yearly peak in September, caused by Wiki Loves Monuments contests). Thx, Erik Zachte (WMF) (talk) 11:31, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

@Erik Zachte (WMF): Afaik, Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2015 was in May. From the contents of Category:Images from Wiki Loves Earth 2015 I'd guess that this brought us about 200.000 uploads. --El Grafo (talk) 11:40, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
Ah, that must be it. Thanks! Erik Zachte (WMF) (talk) 13:10, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

One multilingual file instead of many language files

The following discussion is closed, and will be archived soon.

Hello. One day I decided to help a few Wikipedia. I decided to download the series of files for ESC articles (used in score tables) with the texts of countries where they are used vertically. Each language section of Wikipedia I had to upload the new files (excluding the similar names). Now I decided to make a multilingual file and check it out. it works. And here's my idea, and the question:

Maybe I replace multiple language files into this one file?

What am I talking about? I mean delete (that currently used) and replace it with one files (40 texts of all participated country of ESC instead of 400 files of each set language of countries). For example, this one test file (for example, it names "ESCAustria.svg") can be replace 9 of same files (File:ESCAvstriya.svg, File:ESCÀustria.svg, File:ESCRakousko.svg, File:ESCØstrig.svg, File:ESCOostenrijk.svg, File:ESCAustria.svg (as basic), File:ESCΑυστρία.svg, File:ESCAustria.svg (in Polish it have same name, but some countries have'nt), File:ESCAvusturya.svg).

How it works?

Multilingual files is able to change. And I want to delete all language files and replace only 40 (how many countries in ESC?) multilingual files (that contains 10-20 "switch" varioations). I mean that (I want to delete File:ESCCountry.svg, because it used for test; and delete another images with supporting my opinion about replacing it on multilingual files).

And I want to do this with all files. Or by hand, or with bot. "lang" no need to enter, if your browser recognizes you as a native speaker (it very good for Native Wikipedia Users). For example, in Russian Wikipedia (if exist "ru" variant in code of file), (as Russian) I see the Russian version without the use of "lang=ru" variant in all Wikipedias. See more Commons:Translation possible/Learn more. ← Aléxi̱s Spoudaíos talkrus? 12:16, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

This is impractical and will not even work. To have one image file and then a bot to "change the text within a saved image", which is basically being proposed here is way too complexed for even a bot to do. It's like saying upload a blank canvas and depending on what is written in a parameter changes the image on that blank canvas. It is impossible. Wes Mouse | T@lk 12:50, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
@Wesley Mouse: I think you may have misunderstood the proposal. With SVG files it is perfectly possible to have one file contain multiple text layers for different languages and choose the one to be displayed based on the language settings of the user who looks at it (not documented very well, but see Help_talk:SVG#Multiple_Language_SVG). File:ESCCountry.svg is an example for this: You can change the language by adding a language code to the URL (File:ESCCountry.svg&lang=az) or manually by using the Render this image in option on the file description page. --El Grafo (talk) 13:13, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
@Wesley Mouse: It works even in non-Wikimedia wikis. SVG use standart HTML-tag. If I offer this, then it works. For example add [[File:ESCCountry.svg|lang=tr|30px]] at Turkish Wikipedia and you will se Turkish variant of file. All turkish users (that sistematically used turkish interface and language) will be see turkish name of country. And if you place [[File:ESCCountry.svg|30px]] at Turkish Wikipedia, you will see only English version (because I set up it as basic in code). BUT all turkish users will be see only Turkish version of file. ← Aléxi̱s Spoudaíos talkrus? 13:14, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
I like it, I don't know how it works, but I like it. --AxG (talk) 17:11, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
I all figured out. I'll update base files (English), and then replace them all (where use) for these basic files. It will have to call all of the same native names of the countries. After all the replacements, I will send a request for the removal of rest of existing files (Danish, Dutch, Czech ...). No one was hurt, and everything will work as it should. Before a request for removal, I test the functionality of changed files and report it to you so that you are sure. If something will not work, I will be rolled back all my changes and everything will fall into place as it was. As for the English Wikipedia, then you should not even be any changes. The only thing that may be unusual, that if these files will not appear in the language, but it is already associated with your language settings. If you use the Danish language in the English Wikipedia, then you'll see the Danish title. This can be corrected By stamping "lang=en" in each file. Then the files will be 100% in English, regardless of the selected system language of your wiki. In general, you do see everything when I start work on this in the coming days. ← Aléxi̱s Spoudaíos talkrus? 10:35, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
Most of my work is in creating SVGs and translations. See Help:Translation tutorial. Delphi234 (talk) 06:03, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
So it is possible then? Fabulous! I didn't know it woyld be possible, but now that a couple of editors have explained it can, then I REALLY like this idea. Wes Mouse | T@lk 15:30, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
At the moment, I discuss one small aspect with Delphi234. Soon I will finish all files and start uploading files. I am very pleased that my idea is supported by all of you. ← Aléxi̱s Spoudaíos talkrus? 10:13, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

At the moment I work with files and soon it will be updated. Topic is closed. ← Aléxi̱s Spoudaíos talkrus? 12:00, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

The above discussion is closed, and will be archived soon.

Requested policy to ensure reproductions of public domain works stay public domain

Case study 1 - a public domain painting (the painter, Magistretti, having died in 1936) but with attribution requested for the low resolution faithful reproduction, retrospectively adding copyright claims to images of the work.

This thread is to test the water for a Commons policy (perhaps an amendment to COM:L) that files should have superfluous licences removed and where a strong license applies (such as public domain) this should override all other (weaker) license statements unless exceptional and well defined legal circumstances apply. Being able to refer to a Commons guideline will ensure that OTRS volunteers can provide clear advice up front to GLAMs and other institutions attempting to claim attribution, where they may well be surprised and disappointed should the attribution licence be removed by the Commons community if it has no legal basis.

Most Commons users believe that if an image is public domain in the USA (our Commons hosting country) and the source country where an image was created, then it must be public domain and no other license applies. However we have examples such as File:Artgate Fondazione Cariplo - Magistretti Emilio, Quasi aurora consurgens.jpg which has been contested, and as a result is considered public domain in the USA and source country, yet because there is a claim of an attribution requirement for the photographer through OTRS, the CC-BY-SA license has been repeatedly added. Essentially this boils down to worrying tacit support for vague claims of "sweat of the brow", even though there has never been a successful legal claim for a photograph or digital scan as a faithful reproduction of a public domain artwork anywhere.[9] Though the example given here is an attribution request (the legal term used is often "moral rights"), we have many examples where an institution has used sweat of the brow to claim a Non-Commercial restriction, if recognized the photographs would need to be deleted from Commons.

I would like to see Commons avoid any circumstances where we collaborate with retrospectively claiming rights over public domain works, until such a time as an institution or photographer has successfully pursued a sweat of the brow case in court, or applicable national copyright acts exist that explicitly recognize these cases. The WMF previously rejected take-down notices against Commons in these circumstances, refer to m:Wikilegal/Sweat of the brow.

Feedback, case studies, evidence and opinions welcome. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 12:17, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

I applaud Wikimedia Foundation's decision to apply US law related to 2D PD works to the whole world and not require us to research who was the person who digitized (scanned or photographed) each artwork, so we can figure out if he should have any copyrights or not. However the fact that we decided to accept images which might be considered copyrighted in some jurisdiction does not mean that people reusing our images need to make the same decision in their jurisdiction. If the person digitizing PD image asks to be attributed we can ignore their request (because US law allows us) or pass on their request for the reusers to decide which option they prefer. That is why we have Template:Licensed-PD-Art, see for example my changes to File:Artgate Fondazione Cariplo - Magistretti Emilio, Quasi aurora consurgens.jpg to see how to use it. This option is much more preferable to just piling on PD and CC licenses together with no explanation of what is what. One can also use {{Licensed-PD}} or {{Copyright information}} to organize license templates. --Jarekt (talk) 17:28, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
I agree, regardless of the underpinning issue, it's a less confusing layout. Perhaps we should have a specific workflow laid out for these situations? Not only is it complex, but the guides we have available are not being maintained. For example the Italian law links at Commons:Reuse of PD-Art photographs have link rot, making it difficult to do more than read the interpretation someone wrote there, which may not match current legislation or be a poor interpretation. Compared to the many other demands on WMF funds, maintaining a current and substantial free international legal index with supporting workflow would be a great investment. --Fæ (talk) 17:49, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
You may want to submit this to M:Grants:IdeaLab and post the link here so those that support it can endorse it. Offnfopt(talk) 18:08, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
  • The changes made as a result of this discussion can be seen in the history. I think these changes are best - the work is marked as public domain and the Creative Commons attribution claim is kept because no one wishes to directly challenge it at this time. I am happy to leave the ambiguity for now and address the general problem by supporting increased education and development of templates and documentation on best practices. It might not be worth anyone's time to try to argue this out with individual uploaders when the long term solution is probably to prevent this kind of license application before it happens. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:45, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
Bluerasberry, the CC attribution does not require challenging nor is it ambiguous. The file description as it now stands clearly says WMF believe the file to be PD in the US but outside of the US you may be better to rely on the CC licence when reusing. This is the best of both worlds as there is reduced legal risk for a reuser to adopt the CC licence rather than to guess that it might be PD in their country also (something that may not have been tested in any court). For artwork that has been scraped off of museum websites where the museum [contentiously] claim copyright of their photo, we can't offer a CC option and so really the image is only reliably free in the US. That may be ok for you, but wouldn't be for me (UK) to rely on if I wanted to use the image on some website or book published in the UK. We should therefore be grateful that those who photograph PD works offer it additionally under a free licence. Even better would be if they made a CC0 declaration for their photograph. I don't know if the template supports that combination: "The artwork is in the public domain and the photographer has also released their photo into the public domain should this be necessary in some jurisdictions". -- Colin (talk) 15:00, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
Colin You mention the UK museum case so you must know that the outcome of en:National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation copyright dispute was that the museum applied CC-ND-NC licenses to all of their content and the Wiki Commons community here omits their licenses and tagged everything here as public domain. Despite WMF speaking up in that case I think it is always the Wikimedia Community that makes the copyright evaluations here on Commons, so I think it is never correct to say that any template indicates "WMF believe the file to be PD in the US".
You raise the point that in some jurisdictions a PD declaration may not be valid in which case a CC license could be used. That might be so, but that is not what is happening in this case. In this case there is a dubious assertion of copyright over a work that is probably PD in every jurisdiction. Historically the Commons community has not entertained these kinds of claims. I see no one here defending this particular claim as extraordinary or in need of special licensing.
It could be worthwhile to review which countries grant copyright to photographers who make reproductions of public domain works. If reproductions of public domain works can be copyrighted then I am not aware of the Wiki Commons procedure for managing this. You are claiming that photographers in some places can have this right, correct? Is this so in the UK? Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:26, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
For the UK, after many years there has never been a case taken to court where a faithful reproduction of a 2D public domain artwork has a claim of new copyright. All we have are published opinions of pundits and experts (not judges in cases) who have never tested their theories. People are often confused by discussion of non-faithful reproductions, or the quite different issue of publication rights.
Institutions in the UK are in fear of a case ever going to court, it being highly likely that this will prove that there can be no new property rights created in these circumstances. No institution's IP lawyer will ever give a direct answer on this, nor will they ever advise their institution to claim damages against a reuser or publisher, though they do issue take-down notices (which you can easily refuse); hence it has never happened. See sample letter.
TLDR: "Sweat of the brow" claims are endlessly propagated to create enough fear in re-users that they pay good money for reproductions of public domain works when they could just take the same stuff for free from, say, Wikimedia Commons. --Fæ (talk) 16:11, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
Bluerasberry the situation in the UK is unknown. It is believed that UK's law is in general more likely to recognise a new work of copyright than US law, but as Fae says, this has not been tested for a photograph of PD art. I agree there are political games going on, but the loser at present is anyone in UK wanting to use such an image. If, as a re-user, I just see a page saying "This is PD in the US" what does that tell me in the UK? As far as I may assume, it is still then under copyright all-rights-reserved in the rest of the world. There's no guidance to reassure me otherwise. I would, of course, much prefer if photographers explicitly waived any rights with CC0 on such images as it would be reassuring. Simply removing a disputed CC-ND-NC licence removes information and denies those capable of applying such a license the opportunity to do so without legal fear. I'd rather that we had a way of tagging such disputed licences as "Probably unnecessary, particularly in the US" or similar wording. In the case of the US, I believe the WMF has challenged PD art claims in court, hence my statement that is is more than just an anonymous "community" making this claim, but the Foundation stands by that assertion legally. The attitude of the community tends to be a mix of protesting action as Fae describes and a complacent "I'm all right Jack, it's hosted in the US". -- Colin (talk) 18:54, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
ColinI am not aware of the WMF ever going to court on this issue. I think that never happened.
In a lot of ways popular use interprets the law. The Wikimedia community has enough social standing and reputation to establish and propagate the precedent which determines how the law should be applied and the difference between right and wrong. There are years of comments and discussion here which are thoughtful and have included more educated and informed opinions that exist anywhere else. We have at least established where the law is weak and uncertain and taken action in the spaces where no one else has given sound guidance, which is the way that the practice of law develops to meet the needs of the public.
I see nothing wrong with the Wikimedia Commons community dictating to the courts of the world what is and is not in the public domain. It could happen that someone faces legal action as a result of using Wikimedia Commons public domain content, but if that happened, then I expect that the Wikimedia Foundation would finance the Wikimedia community in challenging that misuse of power especially if it was from a museum. Even now the National Portrait Gallery is writing new practice into law by thoughtfully condoning what they previously claimed was a theft of their content by the Wikimedia Commons community. The community here has talked things through and identified no legal objection anywhere. Based on the best available information that anyone in the world has been able to identify, we have the right to host the content that we host in accord with the rules which we have created for Wikimedia Commons. I would not be keen on this community developing restrictions for itself based on the imagined concerns from stakeholders who not here or anywhere else have spoken up about what we are doing here. We have actively solicited for external opinions for years and if anyone has objections they know they can take them here and be seriously considered. So far as I know, there is no institution in Britain that has voiced any objection to what happens on Commons. They all are aware of what we are doing and that we want their comments. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:58, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
I stand corrected if the case didn't reach court. I know the WMF stood by user Derrick Coetzee in this case. That was, AFAIK, a US citizen with US hosted images. I don't share your view the the Wikimedia community has even 1p worth of legal value, I'm afraid. They may well be right, but I have rarely found, in my limited experience, that copyright law follows common sense. Imagine for example, the UK's Guardian Media Group published a book containing of an artwork taken from Commons and was then sued by the art gallery who employed photographer to take the image. I very much doubt that the WMF would get involved. Indeed, it could be financially reckless for WMF to get involved in a dispute between two other large corporations. And if the image had been uploaded and declared PD by someone called "Blue Rasberry" (no offence intended), and this was what the photo editor trusted, I would think that photo editor would be finding alternative employment. -- Colin (talk) 07:49, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
Colin Cases rarely actually go through court - I think the Coetzee case is on hold until the museum's time has passed to make a decision. I know of two cases in which Wikimedia policy has forced a United States copyright clarification at the federal level - the monkey selfie issue and the issue of copyright of x-rays. Medical images and animal art is now public domain. The WMF does not need to get between conflicting parties and I would not suggest that it would, but it is nice when community members like Coetzee take action in disputed places and seek anyone who will challenge them. I work for Consumer Reports (US equivalent of your UK Which?) and my office, like practically all publishers, rather distrusts all Creative Commons content with any license. There are plenty of publishers who would never use museum photos from Wikipedia without explicit permission from the museums themselves. Still, I think Wikimedia Commons should continue to enforce its community practices and proceed as it has been. I see no reason to halt current practices, even while I understand that not everyone recognizes the legitimacy of what we do here. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:03, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
Bluerasberry, but that "Sorted in the US so just assume sorted for everyone" attitude persists. You claim "Medical images and animal art is now public domain.". Really? I don't recall the outcome of the x-ray debate was positive at all, and some images taken outside of the US got deleted (my assumption is that the only reason so many of our medical images haven't been largely wiped from Commons is that few users have the nerve to upset so many people). And I seem to recall weird copyright/neighbouring-rights laws in countries like Sweden, who may well take a different view about the Monkey selfie. It all defies logic and copyright is an extremely crude tool. -- Colin (talk) 19:25, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
I acknowledge the "sorted in US" attitude. I know of no coordinated opposition to it or will to second guess it. Seeing the National Portrait Gallery fold makes me think that only a more professional and knowledgeable organization could attempt to challenge community practice here. Previously I would have thought that the National Portrait Gallery knew their business, but now I doubt them and I doubt every organization in the world less organized than they are. Probably that is almost every organization globally because an old British institution like that one should have extreme expertise in this space.
I suppose it could happen if that some country wanted to have non-US copyright policy, Wikimedia websites could have a filter that blocks content based on IP or user reported location. Maybe Swedish people should not be allowed to see monkey selfies. I would entertain all kinds of proposals for new restrictions but I would not champion them myself. It would only give more credibility to Wikimedia projects to encourage and invite challenges, and so far as I know, every stakeholder in the kind of content Wikimedia Commons hosts knows that they can bring their concerns here at any time. With the medical images - I suppose that must mean medical images created and published in the US. In the UK, your queen holds the copyright to all of your xrays because she gets copyright to content produced by hospitals. I hope she is enjoying them but I wish she would share. @QueenE: Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:18, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
I don't want to discuss the morality, but here is a practical matter. As you know, Fæ, here in the UK a lot of GLAMs and universities are acting as if sweat of the brow is legitimate, as if the scans they own are new works with a new copyright date. This applies not just in their claiming copyright in scans, but in their paying commercial services for access to scans of old material. These include institutions who are very positive about Wikimedia and about sharing with us. If we take a hard line against them even applying very liberal licences to scans of PD content, that will unfortunately be seen as hostile to those institutions: the more than 100,000 files you have uploaded with the co-operation of Wellcome Images present one example. I reiterate that this is just a practical point and not an opinion about what the law or common practice should be. MartinPoulter (talk) 15:36, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
MartinPoulter, works photographed by photographers using CC0 probably should use {{Licensed-PD}}, which is much simpler. --Jarekt (talk) 15:48, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
In practice, the institutions I'm thinking of want to licence CC-BY rather than CC0, but I agree that using {{Licensed-PD}} or {{PD-Art}} to indicate a different intended licence is an elegant solution. I hope that practice will continue. Cheers, MartinPoulter (talk) 16:21, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
To clarify the example, the Wellcome Library has never claimed "sweat of the brow", and has no problem with the licence being changed to public domain by volunteers where in our judgement this is accurate. The default attribution is a precaution as assessing 100,000 images would require more resources than necessary just to get the images into the public's hands. On Commons, we take care with metadata and sourcing information, as well as allowing nice credit templates, so it is unnecessary to create faux moral rights in order to achieve the same objective of traceability. --Fæ (talk) 16:11, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
Case study 2 - The Imperial War Museum has persisted with a claim of Non-Commercial use on this 1903 Wright Brothers photograph, will charge for copies and force a legal requirement to be credited. A higher resolution version is available from the Library of Congress, with no restrictions.
I didn't know that about Wellcome, and that's good news. Not all institutions are nearly as happy with public domain. Again, I'm trying to explain it the way some institutions will see it, not what I think is right. MartinPoulter (talk) 16:21, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
The Imperial War Museum correspondence that you link to doesn't seem to me to be a case study of building good relations with a potential partner GLAM. MartinPoulter (talk) 16:24, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
There were more than 3 years of "building good relations" with backwards progress, I saw this from the inside as you know. It was only after the death of Aaron Swartz that I thought that life is far too short not to just take some meaningful affirmative action rather than playing at public relations and spin. I have personally created plenty of healthy and productive relationships from scratch with GLAMs and other institutions. The Wikimedia community's mission is to make human knowledge available for free. We should not let an organization that has let itself be run by commercial goal driven middle-management and transient politics, yet is funded by the nation as the nation's war archive, just continue to blatantly mislead the public with copyright claims they know are false,* and eternally withhold public knowledge from the public. In this case, they have subsequently chosen to deliberately make access worse, by finding ways to charge the public to access publicly owned assets that were previously free. I welcome this institution to write to me, if they believe I am misrepresenting the facts; I'm easy to find.
* 2.5 years after my complaint about the Wright Bros 1903 photograph and yet they still claim rights over it and will happily charge teachers to reproduce it. Not behaviour that Wikimedia should ever be seen to condone or facilitate. --Fæ (talk) 16:54, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Reduced resolution images

@Fæ, MartinPoulter, Jarekt, and Bluerasberry: , I see from the National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation copyright dispute article that the NPG licensed 53,000 low-resolution images under CC BY-NC-ND. I do hope that in our discussions with galleries and museums, we make them aware that CC does not distinguish between low and high resolution versions of the same photograph. They consider them to be the same "work of copyright" to which the licence refers. I know the NC-ND clauses make that licence unsuitable for us, but do hope that the community and WMF are no longer promoting the idea that releasing low-resolution CC BY-SA images provides any legal protection that safeguards their ability to restrict high-resolution images to those who pay a fee. -- Colin (talk) 07:49, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

  • Yes on board. Sharing low-resolution images while trying to withhold high-resolution images is no way for anyone to protect their high resolution content. I thought everyone here on Commons now agreed with this. I take the position that the National Portrait Gallery has mistaken understanding and ineffective practices. I do not recognize their asserted copyright on this content which the Wikimedia Commons community has asserted is in the public domain in the US and UK. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:03, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Flickr review EXIF orientation issue

I see quite a few images from Flickr not being passed by FlickreviewR 2 simply because, as with File:Outlaw Run.jpg, on Flickr the EXIF orientation is 3,648 x 2,048 while it displays as 2,048 × 3,648 here. I spoke to Zhuyifei1999 about this a while back (here). Any ideas on how the bot could be made to pass these without breaking the "Replacing image by its original image from Flickr" function? This affects hundreds of files per month that really don't require human attention and time. INeverCry 03:37, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Note the source is on gitweb on tool labs. The issue is caused by the size (both with and height, in order) to be not found in the available sizes return by the Flickr API. If I code it to adapt both "width, height" order and "height, width" order regardless of EXIF, it will succeed in review, but fail "Find the highest resolution image" in "Replacing image by its original image from Flickr". I don't know an easy way to make both functions work at the same time. Ideas? --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 13:03, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
  • @Fæ: @Steinsplitter: @Krd: @99of9: If any of you guys have time can you take a quick look at this? Also, why is it that only some Flickr images have this reversed EXIF orientation here, while most don't? INeverCry 20:02, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
    I have taken an extremely brief look, but have not followed through the source code in detail. I suspect that as commons_size is an ordered pair, not resolution (i.e. (height, width), not height * width in pixels), that you are discovering that (h, w) != (w, h). Probably an idea to convert to using actual resolution as an integer for both Commons size and the array from Flickr. --Fæ (talk) 20:11, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
    I had a brief look as well, and I don't get why it is not possible to ignore the order of height, width in the three(?) affected methods. get_flickr_image(), upload_hires(), and can_upload(). This should be better than just compressing the dimensions down to the total number of pixels (=width*height). --McZusatz (talk) 21:27, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
Something like swapping from array to a set? --Fæ (talk) 21:34, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
  • @Fæ: I don't think you would like it if the bot is thinking 2*6 image and 4*3 image the same. @McZusatz: Two problems with that: 1. I can't find an easy way to maintain the consistency of the order across several functions (without using some instance property or global variable) 2. How to fix line 326 & 327? --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 07:14, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
if hires[0][0] * hires[0][1] > commons_size[0] * commons_size[1] :
? --Fæ (talk) 09:11, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
The only way to check (secure check) if the file is the same is looking at the sha1. If the file has been modified sha1 will change and the bot will fail. --Steinsplitter (talk) 21:38, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
That's the logic I used to code Panoramio review bot. In that case User:FlickreviewR/reviewed-notmatching would have no use at all, a lot of recoding would be necessary, and the performance would go lower. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 07:14, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Request

Hey gang, this is Scott (Russavia). I have a request. If you look at, for example, File:Park Hyatt, Shanghai (3198569878).jpg you will see in the "Source": * Uploaded by [[User:russavia|russavia]]. I believe this is causing files that I have uploaded to be mis-attributed to "Russavia" instead of the actual author. An example is this. This is, unfortunately, a widespread occurrence, and harms the ability of re-users to easily credit works on Commons to their correct authors. Especially since "Russavia" appears in the "Use this file" links.

To make files easier for re-use, I would like to request that someone go through this, or ALL files uploaded by myself, and remove the above wiki-code from all those uploads. I am making this request using one of my normal IPs, and this request can be confirmed by checking with me on IRC if required. Thanks, 58.7.136.251 09:57, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I could look at this and maybe fire up user:YaCBot to do it. --McZusatz (talk) 10:27, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
@McZusatz: Not that I'm going to edit a third of a million files myself, but I did verify this with him on IRC (he has a Freenode cloak), and it is a legitimate request. Probably a bit pointless to block the IP, though. Revent (talk) 10:32, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
Lol, its not like WMF ever cared for Commons Wiki..they wouldn't even let Scott fix his own mistakes...--Stemoc 11:42, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks McZusatz if you could do that it would be great. Once it is completed for my uploads, I would seriously look at doing it for all uploads on Commons. It is a common problem and sincerely isn't limited to myself. 106.69.128.124 12:12, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 Running for your uploads and all others. --McZusatz (talk) 18:45, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
Thank you McZusatz. How long do you think this bot job will take? If you are doing them all, not limited to my uploads, I can only guess that there would be well over a million files to do this on? Cheers, 217.170.205.22 03:33, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
A couple of months at least, because I did not prioritize those flickr edits, yet. In total less than 1.5 years, though. --McZusatz (talk) 21:04, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

While not wanting to get involved in one of these battles, I've processed quite a few OTRS tickets in the last few weeks, and see a discouraging tendency of uploaders who think that the author field is the place to put the uploaders name. I get that we can't change the term to "photographer" because many images are not photographs, but I wish we could find a better approach.--Sphilbrick (talk) 14:57, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Author is the correct name for that field and definitely not suitable for any other info like "uploader". But unfortunately some people think uploding files from some other place is the most prestigious work and consider themselves as #1 contributors here. Some tools also designed to add that nonsense (eg: Commons:derivativeFX). I had manually fixed that field in many uploads earlier. Designers need to be well educated about copyright matters. Jee 15:23, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Probably, adding an "uploader" field would make the system more understandable for those uploaders. If there are different "author" and "uploader" fieds it would be clear that author doesn't mean uploader.--Pere prlpz (talk) 15:41, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
But our system allows anyone to overwrite files. So we need Uploader 1, Uploader 2...Uploader N. Jee 15:46, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
@Sphilbrick: Uploaders should be advised that they are credited for their upload work in the file history, any OTRS volunteer must take care to have truly validated the correct attribution for the Author field and advised the uploader if there is doubt. I could create a bot to pull the upload account information out of the image history log and slap it into an {{information}} template, but that would be exceedingly pointless at it duplicates what can already be seen on a standard Commons image page. --Fæ (talk) 16:30, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
I just took a look at the upload wizard. After selecting the image, default is that the file is not your own work and there are two fields labeled source and authors. The second field has a small light gray question mark in paranteheses. If you hover over it, the text says The name of the person who took the photo, or painted the picture, drew the drawing, etc.
However, despite using this hundreds of times I had never noticed that text before. I suggest that many uploaders have never seen it. My guess is that the designers of this form were looking for a clean look and I'd like to respect that, but the fact is, many many submissions have that field filled in with the uploaders name.
What harm would occur if we spelled that out a bit more explicitly, for example:


Author(s) (The name of the person who took the photo, or painted the picture, drew the drawing, etc.)
If we did that we might want to do the same with source which is also misused. I understand this shouldn't be considered casually and perhaps I should make this a formal proposal, but it might be worth an experiment to see if it cuts down on the number of mis-filled out files.--Sphilbrick (talk) 19:04, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

_____________________________________

That makes complete sense to me. Anything we can do to make it clearer to the submitter and making it less onerous to cleanup would be an improvement I would think. Reguyla (talk) 19:10, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Without regard to any anger some people may feel for the individual making this suggestion, he or she is making an important point. When I use google's image search on my wiki-ID, "Geo Swan", while I find that some of the images credited to me on other sites are actually images I actually took myself, most of the wikimedia commons images that have been re-used by third parties that are credited to me are actually images I uploaded that were taken by someone else, and were in the public domain, or otherwise free.
So, third-party re-users tried their best to correctly honor the right to attribution and credit the individual who created the image, and found our distinction between authors and uploaders so confusing they incorrectly credited the uploader (me), not the "author". I suggest that any of you who try this will find the same thing, that like Russavia and myself, you will find you are incorrectly credited with more images for which you were simply the uploader than the credits to the images you took personally.
@Jkadavoor: wrote "Author is the correct name for that field and definitely not suitable for any other info like 'uploader'." Sorry, I disagee. The field that Jee thinks should be labeled "author" is best filled with the individual or organization which owned the intellectual property rights, if the IP rights were owned by someone other than the photographer. "Credit to" is another alternative. Whatever name we use for this field, we should render it in bold, and double or triple size, to make it harder for good faith third party users to be confused and credit the uploader, instead.
I just did a google image search on my wiki-ID. Of the images it tosses up, that I recognize, the first seven are false positives, image I merely uploaded, which, however good faith third parties incorrectly attributed to me.
FWIW I don't google myself because I am vain. I occasionally google myself so I can see if those hatemongers at wikipediareview are slandering me again.
Even though some people seem to continue to bear a grudge against Russavia, he or she has raised an important point here, and deserves a thank you. So Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 21:42, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
  • I didn't fully understand your disagreement. If "copyright holder" is different from "author", it also need to be mentioned there with a prefix "copyright:". But "uploader" or somebody do minor edits which are not qualified for "derivative work" need not be mentioned there. Note that our generic template {{Information}} use "author"; but special templates like {{Specimen}} and {{Photograph}} use more specific words. "Author" can be changed to "Author/Copyright" if it is more easy to understand.
  • Media Viewer and many external sites like EOL is populating the attribution from "author" and "source" fields. So they should not be used for other purposes.
  • I remember that I made a proposal at VPC based on my experience. It attracted some response and LuisV (WMF) agreed with the need for improving our file pages. But after that, the proposal died without any action.
  • I suggest to improve the license tag and file page so that reusers can easily gather all attribution information like title, author/copyright, source, license (TASL) from a single point as boldly mentioned on top of the permission field. Jee 03:06, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Why an admin allow a banned user to edit here?

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.
Constructive discussion has been exhausted.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:12, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
Seriously? A banned user edits here, the WMF blocks the IP, and a Commons admin unblocks him? Good grief, Commons is broken. --B (talk) 18:18, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
You are mistaken, Russavia was never banned. Bans require a rationale and can be appealed. Office blocks have none of this transparent governance. --Fæ (talk) 18:37, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
Silly me to think that the organization that runs a website has the authority to ban people from using it. --B (talk) 18:56, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
Please do not parody what I wrote. --Fæ (talk) 19:57, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
To avoid further pointless wikilawyering over words; note that blocks are as defined by Commons:Blocking policy. A WMF Office action is known as a "Lock" and the WMF Office action on Russavia is known as being "locked globally". This system has no community consensus and none was sought. Commons Administrators have no authority in this system, nor are Commons Administrators requested to take any action to support such WMF Office actions. To protect themselves from risks external to Commons, unpaid volunteers should never take it upon themselves to either interpret or apply a WMF Office action, further no employee of the WMF shall ever ask an unpaid volunteer to take action related to a WMF Office action. --Fæ (talk) 12:07, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
If the WMF wants to ban him that's their right. Personally I am here to contribute to building knowledge (writing an encyclopedia, etc.) so as long as the editor is editing positively I don't really care if he is banned. He addressed a relevant problem so there is no validity to the argument that we should simply ignore it and stick our fingers in our ears shouting HE's BANNED, over and over. The WMF only gets involved when they want to and oftentimes when we ask them tin intervene they run off into a corner and hide so if the WMF doesn't like the community taking reasonable suggestions and valid problems seriously regardless of the source, then they can hire full time people to make improvement's to the projects to keep them running instead of volunteers. That's just my opinion. Reguyla (talk) 21:25, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
On User:Russavia: "Consistent with the Terms of Use, Russavia has been banned by the Wikimedia Foundation from editing Wikimedia sites." The only person wikilawering over words here is Fae. -- Colin (talk) 13:02, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Nope, I am as well I suppose because I agree with the technical definition that Fae gives as well and the term ban is loosely used in that statement but its not technically accurate. But technically you are as well. Lawyering, wiki or otherwise requires 2 sides. So regardless of the side of the argument, both sides are technically wikilawyeruing. As I said above. The WMF is free to do as they wish and the admins here are as well. I suppose any commons admin who wants to can continue chasing him around until their hearts content, but we should be doing what benefits commons, not what's politically convenient for the WMF. If positive edits are being made and they improve the project for our readers and users, I personally do not really care who is doing them. You clearly feel differently and that's ok. But that's not wikilawyering, its just life. Personally if the WMF wants to keep chasing after him let them. Otherwise there is a ton of work that needs to be done on the project and it takes editors to do that. Banned or otherwise. Reguyla (talk) 13:19, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
The point is that global locks and office actions are just how the ban is enforced (albeit ineffectually). So Fae, in arguing with User:B, is just completely wrong. It's a ban. It might not be a community supported ban. But it is still a ban. And every one of us signs up to the Terms of Use every time we edit. It is about time a few people here dealt with that and moved on, whether they like it or not. -- Colin (talk) 13:50, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
I must admit that, as someone who has been the ongoing target of an unfair ban (on ENWP) that was done by manipulating policy and continues to be an extremely frustrating and aggravating issue for me to date, along with the WMF's attitude towards commons and the Wiki communities in general, I am sensitive to a perception of being unfairly treated and find it personally difficult to blindly obey the "Trust us we know what we are doing" attitude and the "Secret evidence" justifications. I completely understand that they cannot tell us why they added the lock, but personally I do not perceive it as our problem. Let them deal with it if they want, or not. Especially if we do not "need" to know why they did it, when we all know about the JimboGate incident, we have no reason, requirement or need to enforce a WMF lock. Reguyla (talk) 14:06, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
We have no policy that requires anyone to do anything on this site: we are all volunteers. If an admin wishes to block a Russavia sock they may, and WMF takes a very dim view of anyone interfering with that (such as unblocking the account or harassing that admin). But an admin can choose to ignore socks just as they can pick and choose whatever they do on Commons. This is already all well established by earlier discussions. There's no need for anyone to continue to spread misinformation about the fact that Scott is banned. -- Colin (talk) 14:27, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
One of the fundamental policies of Wikipedia is "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." This clearly applies to blocks and bans. What sockhunters fail to recognize is that the only thing they can be hunting is vandalism, not the fact that a banned user is ignoring a ban. Policy requires them to ignore the ban. I thank Scott (Russavia) for bringing these edits to our attention. Delphi234 (talk) 06:06, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
So what this and this mean? Glad to see people have revelations when one of their colleague is victimized by the same set of rules and practices they followed for years to suppress their opponents. By his own words "it difficult to believe that he is legally competent to understand and agree with licencing terms, because it appears that he does not understand what being indefinitely blocked/banned on Wikimedia means." Jee 16:27, 21 June 2015 (UTC) Why R. allowed to report issues; but PK is prevented to report legitimate copyright issues is also worth to consider. Jee 17:09, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
Delphi234, just in case you didn't notice, this is Commons, not Wikipedia. Still, IAR, while not a policy here, is useful if interpreted correctly. Lots of our banned former-users were capable of of doing a lot of good work. The ban means we lose out on that work, which is sad, but we deal with it and move on. Being banned doesn't mean "you are from now onwards only permitted to post to Commons if everyone agrees what you write is really helpful and positive". Being banned doesn't work like that. It means you can no longer directly contribute or participate here. On any level. We are being taken for fools by those suggesting that somehow we need to permit the odd russavia posting or the odd unblocking, in order to receive these words of wisdom. Russavia knows how to use email, IRC, and many other communications where he can pass on suggestions like the above. If they are helpful, then I'd hope a non-banned user would act on them and improve the site. This is all totally known and understood. The only purpose to Russavia posting to the village pump, rather than indirectly to a friend, is to remind everyone how very not dead he is, and to moon at the WMF. -- Colin (talk) 17:14, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

As discussion on this sub-thread has devolved to making dramatic claims of "victimization" and "suppression" based on user talk page edits from 2013, I think we can safely move on.

If anyone wishes to provide evidence of harassment on Commons that requires action, then the Village Pump is not the right place. Present your evidence at COM:AN/U. --Fæ (talk) 16:59, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

The discussion is about whether a banned user should post to the village pump, and an admin unblock them so they can post further. They shouldn't. You know that. I know that. Denniss knows that. -- Colin (talk) 17:14, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Village pump gaming of discussion by manipulating titles

Could an administrator please give a warning for those changing thread titles after discussion is established? I find this unacceptable as a way to deliberately manipulate the views of others by post-hoc reframing of the topic. This is disruptive, non-collegiate, and in my view serious enough for a block.

Evidence
  1. diff
  2. diff
  3. diff

--Fæ (talk) 17:35, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Reverted for now - reverting & discussing is the standard procedure but edit-warring is not ok. --Steinsplitter (talk) 17:40, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
4. diff
@Steinsplitter: You will need to revert again to restore the original title, it was not "Why an admin allow a banned user to edit here?" which was not the topic that the comments on the thread were responding to. This is disruptive gaming. --Fæ (talk) 17:49, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
@Steinsplitter: do not revert again or you face a block yourself for edit warring along with Fae and Jee. Wrongs to not make a right. You are not permitted to take sides in an edit war. I suggest you step back, consider yourself involved, and consider whether Fae's request is in any shape or form an accurate representation of truth. -- Colin (talk) 17:55, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) ::This is not a side tracked discussion; have its on topic. That title was added by a banned user to dilute the seriousness of discussion after B made a serious allegation. Last, admin should not defend other admins. Jee 17:46, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Could an administrator please give a warning to those inserting POV thread titles after a discussion is established. I find this unacceptable as a way to deliberately manipulate the views of others by post-hoc reframing of the topic. This is disruptive, non-collegiate, and in my view serious enough for a block. Oh, wait, the user who did it is already blocked. Now I see Fae, Jee and Steinsplitter edit warring over a section heading created by Russavia. Why don't we ask User:B what sub-heading his query "Seriously? A banned user edits here, the WMF blocks the IP, and a Commons admin unblocks him? Good grief, Commons is broken." should have. I think "On whether Russavia should edit here and Denniss unblock him" is neutral and accurate. Jee thinks "Why an admin allow a banned user to edit here" is accurate. Fae prefers Russavia's text "Side discussion not actually relevant to this request" which is clearly an attempt to close an important discussion as "irrelevant". I'd like an uninvolved admin to comment and hand around the blocks to anyone edit warring, certainly not someone like Denniss. -- Colin (talk) 17:52, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

The standard procedure is reverting and discussing. Colin and Jee's behavior is explaining itself. I suggest you all to move on and doing useful things like working on the backlogs. --Steinsplitter (talk) 17:58, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
I already moved. :) Jee 18:02, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.


Fonts changed?

Is there some reason that the fonts have changed all of a sudden? I'm using the Monobook skin and my watchlist and my editing screen are totally differ from what they were yesterday. Did someone change something? Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:23, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Anybody? Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:54, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
I use the default skin (i.e. Vector) so I couldn't tell you. But looking at Special:Version it shows "(d766c17) 13:46, 14 June 2015" for the MonoBook skin, so based on your post date and the date listed there, it doesn't appear that anything has changed. But I could be wrong and perhaps someone did some manual changes outside of the repository changes. Just to be on the safe side, are you sure you haven't accidentally changed your browser zoom level? It will change the font sizes.
If you haven't tried the Vector skin recently, you may want to give it a try and see if you like it, pretty nice IMO. Alternatively you can use one of the Custom CSS pages or the Stylish browser extension(available for Firefox and Chrome) to change the look of the site to you liking. Offnfopt(talk) 06:05, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Thanks, the browser zoom level seems to have been at least part of the problem. Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:18, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
  • User:Offnfopt, Vector is, as you say yourself, the default skin. That means that everybody gets to see it — be it in other people’s computers and in one’s own when we’re not logged on. You can be sure that people who use Monobook instead of Vector prefer if not because we don’t know about Vector, but because we do get to see it often and we still abhorr it. Besides, Vector was (more oe less) the first of a neverending cascade of UI debacles forced on us by the WMF — then Visual Editor, Media Viewer, typography “update”… Using Monobook is not only an option for a clean, compact design, but is it also raising a flag of defiance. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 21:38, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
Monobook skin, no changes for me, same as before. Firefox 38.0.5, Win 7/x64. MKFI (talk) 07:19, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
Same here. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 16:01, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

June 26

Upload wizard & Flickr PD

Our upload wizard doesn't seem to recognise Flickr's new PD option: [10]. Andy Mabbett (talk) 12:47, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure how often the developers frequent here, you may want to fill a bug on phabricator. Offnfopt(talk) 13:58, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

June 28

Vote on whether to display a banner for EU visitors/editors concerning the Commons:Freedom of Panorama 2015

Concerning the Commons:Freedom of Panorama 2015 issue, there is a vote at Commons:Freedom_of_Panorama_2015/Proposed_messages#Vote_for_whether_to_implement_the_banner_or_not. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 01:39, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Uploaded djvu file cannot be used at Wikisource

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T104056

Hi there! This file looks okay at Commons but cannot be used at Wikisource -- reported to be 0x0 pixels, pages are not displayed, pagelist tags at index page also fail. At the time of upload and index creation (an year ago) everything was okay. Is this a known problem? Is there a corresponding bug at Phabricator? Hinote (talk) 11:58, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

I have never seen it before (others might have). I would search the Phabricator and if you do not see the issue reported than I would report it. You should also ask at some other big wikisource sites, since that might be a more likely place for people working with djvu files to find your message. --Jarekt (talk) 12:34, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
@Jarekt: , could you please create a report at Phabricator, I'm a bit confused with it... We will keep the index page in our Wikisource in order to illustrate the issue. Hinote (talk) 16:01, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
Just as a note, the issue happens at other wikis with this file, see English Wikipedia and English Wikisource, for example. Wierd. Revent (talk) 15:17, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, I've also already tried to look at the file at the English Wikisource and noticed same misbehaviour. So this issue is really related to Commons, not to the Russian Wikisource. Hinote (talk) 16:01, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
Well that's odd. I'm going to guess it has something to do with loading large OCR layer + caching... Bawolff (talk) 09:26, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the ticket in the Phabricator! Hinote (talk) 08:03, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

June 25

Flickr stream with signatures

Hi, sorry for my english. I found an interesting gallery on Flickr, mainly of cars but also other issues, and Some models are not yet present on Commons. The photos are very nice, probably made by a professional photographer, are released under CC-BY-SA license and all have a signature hard to remove. I suppose it may be a business strategy for their publication on Commons or elsewhere and get greater visibility. My question is: could be a problem to upload them if I can't remove the signature (or if the deletion would cause to a unacceptable worsening of the picture)? Keep in mind that some photos from this gallery are already uploaded on Commons, with signature unaltered.--StefBiondo 08:36, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

@Stefanobiondo: If an image is compatibly licensed, it's fine if it has a watermark... we prefer un-watermarked versions, of course, but it's not prohibited to upload them with the watermark intact. If you are uploading from Flickr, it's really best (IMO, at least) to upload the original version directly using something like flickr2commons (so it will be license-reviewed) and then overwrite it soon afterward with your modified version. If you need a watermark removed, but can't manage it yourself, you can ask at COM:Graphic lab.
You might also want to look at COM:WATERMARK. Revent (talk) 09:21, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
Tanks for the reply. In COM:WATERMARK i read that promotional watermaks are prohibited. You probably see the picture of the Bentley (all the watermarks in the pictures are similar): have i to consider these promotional watermarks or author watermarks?--StefBiondo 09:37, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
My interpretation of that has been that a watermark added by the owner of the image, even if plausibly intended to not only show ownership but to promote their work, is allowable, but that a watermark added by a third party (as is common with many image hosting sites that watermark even PD images they host) is not. This would be a (random) example of a promotional watermark. Revent (talk) 01:35, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
A couple of more examples, of watermarked PD images... I grabbed these from the 'request' queue of the Graphics Lab, where they are awaiting cleanup.
These are explicitly disallowed 'promotional' watermarks, though the existence such a watermark doesn't mean the image should be deleted, but that it should be flagged for repair or replaced with a clean version (since the images themselves are obviously fine). Revent (talk) 01:42, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
Added a thread headline.    FDMS  4    13:16, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
I uploaded a few: Category:Files from Falcon Photography Flickr stream. BTW, there are many files to be added in this cat. Regards, Yann (talk) 20:39, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Replace pictures with watermark

Dear users, some years ago I uploaded some pictures with my signature on the lower right corner. Now, for a matter of privacy I do not want this to be shown. I have just uploaded a new version of each file, without watermark, so, can someone (administrators?) please delete the older versions? For each picture of the following list there are two versions with watermark (the first upload and the second one which is the not interlaced version). Thanks a lot for everyone who will help me. Andrea Here you can find the pictures: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListFiles/Harlock20&ilshowall=1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Harlock20 (talk • contribs) 15:36, 28 June 2015‎ (UTC)

✓ Done to nine files, between myself and another admin. Harlock20, you might want to check that this was all of them, and you should be aware that your name might still be visible in the information page histories in some cases (if you used it for the original 'author' statement). That is itself fixable, if needed, by further revision deletion, but would be less 'simple' since it would also affect edits made in the interim by other users. Revent (talk) 02:26, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks a lot. I noticed that I forgot to do it for one file. I will do it soon and I will inform you for the removal.

Help:名称空间

Hi, does anyone know, what type of Chinese this is? I am migrating Help:Namespaces to be used with the new translation tool and this chinese help page needs to be moved to be able to do that. I already moved Help:名字空間 to Help:Namespaces/zh, but as I'm not capable of reading Chinese I can't even see a difference in those two chinese help pages. Can anyone help? Thanks a lot, XenonX3 (talk) 16:08, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

I think Help:名字空間 is Traditional Chinese (zh-hant) and Help:名称空间 is Simplified Chinese (zh-hans). Ping Jianhui67 ? Regards, Thibaut120094 (talk) 16:14, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
Yeah Thibaut120094 is correct. Jianhui67 talk★contribs 00:42, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Template:Cite news broken

I am getting errors using Template:Cite news which appears to have been changed recently. The error message is Script error: No such module "citation/CS1". For an example, please see File:Vincent Price, railway architect, 1934.JPG. Does anyone know why this was changed? Kerry Raymond (talk) 08:49, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

I have reverted a recent change by another editor. It seems he or she tried to copy the template from the English Wikipedia but didn't do so completely. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 09:08, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
Pinging @Evrik: --Steinsplitter (talk) 16:11, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
I thought I could adapt this template for the commons. I can't seem to figure it out. Help would be appreciated. Evrik (talk) 01:12, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

June 27

Category:Charlatan University - Real university?

May someone please check if Category:Charlatan University is real? Somebody categorized a bunch of Shanghai schools as "Category:Charlatan University" but I can't find a university with that name WhisperToMe (talk) 05:33, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

@WhisperToMe: Apparently, no. See en:Fortress Besieged, specifically the last paragraph. It's idiomatic, and POV. Revent (talk) 05:49, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
I'm agree with User:Revent, "Charlatan University" in Chinese is same with the "diploma mills" in English, the all schools under this category are diploma mills in Shanghai--Fayhoo (talk) 06:39, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
@Revent: @Fayhoo: So Revent was correct in what it meant. However he also pointed out "It's idiomatic, and POV." I don't think the category is suitable. If some agency or a newspaper accused these institutions of being "Charlatan Universities" that should be covered in their Wikipedia articles. WhisperToMe (talk) 15:20, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
Indeed, I don't think the category should exist, as it's scope is not defined by any objective standard. Even the definition of particular universities as members of this 'set' by a secondary source is still a matter of opinion, not objective fact. Revent (talk) 15:37, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Q: Portrait photo with written permission

At the Dutch Wikipedia is an article about WW2 resistance fighter nl:Gerrit Willem Kastein, who was executed in February 1942. After trying to find a suitable portait photo (CC license or PD), which I couldn find, I contacted the author of the biography about Mr. Kastein. I asked specifically if he could release a portrait photo for use under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license for use on Wikipedia. He graciously send me a picture I may use as such. I assume I first need to submit the e-mail correspondence somewhere at Commons Wikimedia, but do not know how or where. It's saved in my GMAIL inbox and it is written in the Dutch language. What to do now ? Regards, --OSeveno (talk) 12:03, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi OSeveno, look at COM:OTRS. We need the permission by the author of the photo, not the author of the biography. The release must be for all purposes, not only Wikipedia/Commons. Regards, --Emha (talk) 12:57, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks Emha, I guess I first need additional information. Regards, --OSeveno (talk) 13:19, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

GlobalReplace - Please update your version

All previous versions of Commons:GlobalReplace will likely break in two days due to the missing rawcontinue parameter when calling the API. Please refer to the Help page to update your version.

Beside the above fix, the new version comes with some improvements like

  • Log all replacements on a user subpage
  • Sign up is done before running this tool for the first time
  • Check for a new version at start up

Don't forget to report any bugs to the GitHub repository. --McZusatz (talk) 21:39, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

June 30

Help needed to classify old-timer automobiles

In Category:Hoek van Holland there is a series of pictures taken on 2010-05-16 of vintage cars. There must have been some event at that time. (or they where using the ferry)Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:48, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I changed some by looking up the plate, but I did a reverse search on one of the images and found this page de:Benutzer_Diskussion:Spurzem/Archiv/2010#einige_Autos... a lot of the same images, but they're lower quality than the ones you're going through. But you can get some of the car descriptions from that page. Offnfopt(talk) 22:18, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
I made a new Category:Hoek van Holland (car park) to reduce the number of pictures in the :Category:Hoek van Holland.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:15, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
You could also, look up Peugeot, Lotus, Ferrari, Maserati, and other european car companiey car companies to find the actual name of the car. If it looks like a bug, its a Volkswagen 75%. Froom the friendly and very helpfull, Doorknob 747 (talk) 22:13, 30 June 2015 (UTC) :D

June 19

Question about category usage

I have been working with categories and I would like some guidance/clarification on the usage of a category. Some articles contain categories for Category:People by name, Category:Men by name, Category:Women by name or some combination of the three. Some articles have flat list version of these categories, often in addition too those previously mentioned. Such as Category:Men by name (flat list) or Category:Women by name (flat list). My question is, is there some standard in place as to when to place one over the other or both? My opinion is that we only need one, either X by name or X by name flat last (I would prefer the former over the latter personally) but not knowing the history of these cats I was curious what the rules are for their usage. Reguyla (talk) 00:36, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

All people categories should be in flat Category:People by name that is our main people category. I have never noticed Category:Men by name, Category:Women by name, Category:Men by name (flat list) or Category:Women by name (flat list) before, but they seem redundant. --Jarekt (talk) 12:26, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
The category guidelines we have can be misleading. Trimming a file's categories to just a couple of super-specific categories will damage our project in the long term. Today, doing category intersections is overly complicated and beyond what can be expected of a new contributor. However, if we keep a balance between handy super-specific categories and generic categories with thousands of files (Category:Yellow flowers, Category:People by name, Category:Ethiopia) then in a couple of years time as well as searching out a useful category of images, even a new user could find, say, photographs of red-headed, 30 year old men, wearing sunglasses and with a bicycle because the WMF development team had done such a good job improving the mobile interface... :-)
Many volunteers disagree with my viewpoint on "bucket categories" and are busy 'diffusing' all images out of these top level categories, so perhaps the answer will be eventually implementing a system for "tags" where nobody cares that many thousands of files have the same tag, in addition to categories. It's been discussed here several times, so it may need someone with time to push forward a funded volunteer driven project to make this a reality. --Fæ (talk) 12:47, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
The flat list categories for men and women were created (and, I believe, populated) by the same person just this past February. You could ask that editor what he/she had in mind. You could also propose deletion of the flat list categories. If they didn't exist until this past February, they probably have little function. I also see that these categories are under discussion at Commons:Categories for discussion/2015/02/Category:Men by name (flat list). --Auntof6 (talk) 05:37, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
Thank you. I do agree that in some cases it might be useful for an all encompassing "People by name" category but I think generally combining those into smaller more digestible subcategories such as Male/Female, Men/Women by name categories is better. For what its worth, as I learn the site and edit more, I don't really like the assumption of Category:Living people equals Category:People by name either. As for images, I also think that there is a lot fo confusion about what categories should go on Images and Which ones should go on Categories and thats probably worth some discussion at some point too.Reguyla (talk) 11:04, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
"Living people" obviously doesn't equal "People by name", because the latter would include dead people. As for which categories go on files/images and which go on categories, any of these "by name" categories that we're discussing, whether flat or not, would only be on other categories. This is the kind of discussion we get into when people who aren't familiar with the category structure create categories just because they can. --Auntof6 (talk) 04:07, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
You say Category:Living people doesn't equal Category:People by name but that's exactly where it and several other unrelated categories redirect too. I'm also not sure if the unfamiliar with category structure was directed me, but I have admitted that I am still learning and asking questions of how it works is part of that learning process. :-)Reguyla (talk) 13:42, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
Category:Living people redirects to Category:People, not Category:People by name. Apparently Commons doesn't need the distinction between living and dead. It actually makes sense that we wouldn't need it here: on Wikipedia they would need it because of policies concerning what can be said about living people. We don't have content that says things, so we wouldn't need it.
My comment wasn't specifically directed at you or any individual. It's just a fact that we get new editors who don't understand there's established structure, so they do things that have to be undone. I've done it myself, and I may inadvertently do it again in areas where I don't realize there's an established process. Since Wikimedia doesn't require training before people edit here, and since established structure isn't well documented anywhere, it's just a fact of life. --Auntof6 (talk) 19:47, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
@Auntof6: @Reguyla: The reason why is that Wikimedia just like Wikipedia is incomplete. For example, if you talk about a picture uploaded of gay marriage in Kentucky (or Kansas, don't even care about the state that was forced to accept rule) before the Supreme Court ruling, a tag illegal activity would be wise to put when uploaded, now after the ruling, you could put a tag named legal activity (not needed), but, it would be wise to replace the category 'illegal activity' with, 'previously considered illegal activity in Kentucky', since the image was taken in the time when it was considered illegal. As time, goes on, new categories may become necessary. That is why there is no justification, on what categories should exist or strict rules to enforce it. The only rule in categorization or creating category pages is that, it must be humanly possible, an example a category like 'real life flying truck/car' is not allowed and would be deleted (probably also user would be blocked).

Forgot this part, in the same sense, time is the major reason behind this! If a person changed there name via legal papers, thier birth name really is not official anymore, and for this reason the man/women by name thing does not count anymore, so its now catagory people. Same for people who went thru gender change surgery, they wont count for people who are man/women by name, so its would be people by names. There is a reason for everything. The reason for these is because things change.

I only used the gay marriage and Kentucky stuff for an quick example, I AM NOT GAY NOR DO I LIVE IN KENTUCKY or what ever state that was, I LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY!!!!!! SO IF ANY ONE CALLS ME GAY I AM REPORTING THEM to admin bulltin board or what ever board! From the friendly, Doorknob 747 (talk) 21:52, 30 June 2015 (UTC) :D

Labadie Collection, University of Michigan

Labadie Collection, University of Michigan. A good deal of this should be in the public domain. - Jmabel ! talk 23:36, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand - Baffin Island fjord

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#Baffin Island fjord Thank you! Jalexander--WMF 23:47, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

July 01

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