This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Hello,
as we will be running three challenges this month (one of them for two months), I tried to add further parameters to the template {{Photo challenge watchlist notice}} - but I don't know enough about templates to make it work. Can anybody help?
The parameters I'd like to use can be found here (the third theme 100 years later (September-October) is the one I can't add to the template...).
Best wishes, --Anna reg (talk) 22:38, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
Hello Jarekt! Thanks for asking, as yes, I do still need help. While I found a temporyry solution for September without using the template, it would be great to add the possibility of a third challenge (with a different deadlines) for future months (e.g. October and Nomvember).
Done That was a one messy template. Anna reg, I simplify it a bit by breaking it down into smaller pieces and it should work now. The situation with months is a bit confusing since months 1 and 2 are beginning and end of theme 1 and 2 and months 3 and 4 are begining and end of theme 3. That is an original design which is not well documented. --Jarekt (talk) 03:07, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
That looks great, Jarekt! I will probably need a bit of time to understand everything you did... especially the documentation - as I'm sure I was responsible for some of the messiness of the old template (e.g. the month 3 and 4 was my attempt to find a solution for a second deadline).
It might seem like a silly question perhaps, but in practice, there is currently nothing preventing a user who is blocked here on Commons from uploading files to another Wikimedia project that allows local uploads of ostensibly free files and having them tagged for transfer here. I just spent considerable time and effort reverting transfer tags and trudging through English Wikipedia's 26-step(!) deletion process (in which 23 of the steps are devoted to pointing to other deletion processes) – all to prevent us from hosting files uploaded by a user who is currently blocked for three months for uploading nothing but copyright violations.
Should that really be necessary? If not, what steps can we take to prevent such situations – automatic, procedural or otherwise? —LX (talk, contribs)18:16, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
IMO this would depend on why they were blocked. If they were blocked for issues regarding their uploads like Copyright content and the like then no we should not allow it. If however they were blocked for something unrelated to images then I don't think we should prevent good content from being pulled in from another project because that person is blocked here. It would be like ENWP not allowing any images I touched or uploaded here to be used there because I am currently blocked on ENWP. It wouldn't make sense. Reguyla (talk) 14:54, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
September 01
Copyright release question on image
There is a good mushroom image, File:Bronze Roehrling.jpg, which has an email permission dated from 2008 but not to OTRS unfortunately. The uploader hasn't been active since 2008. Are we sunk and do we have to delete it? Or might there be a permission lying around somewhere....? I would be unhappy but not heartbroken to see it deleted... cheers, Casliber (talk) 10:03, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
As understand from the e-mail, the image was released "for Wikipedia" only. Unfortunately, such a license is not compatible with Wikimedia Commons. Ruslik (talk) 17:32, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
Commons:Bar italiano is almost entirely unattended. People are asking questions but not getting decent answers. An admin or other experienced user with better Italian than I have (I can read Italian pretty well, but can't write it) would be very useful there. - Jmabel ! talk16:46, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
Les Paüls / Laspaúles / Laspaúls
I have moved category Les Paüls to Category:Laspaúles. The reason is that the oficial name seems to be Laspaúles/Laspaúls. As it is in a Catalan-speaking area, I expected it to be either Les Paüls or Laspaúles/Les Paüls or some other combination of both. Laspaúls doesn't conform to Catalan ortography, so, well, I just didn't feel it the right option. Anyway, I left a category redirection from Les Paüls to Laspaúles and I'm open to any other solution to this ortographical-sociolinguistic problem. In case things are moved to another category name, please keep a redirection from the other forms. B25es (talk) 17:47, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
September 02
Notification of DMCA takedown demand - Pappa Fourway
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.
And this is a very, very interesting exemple of Marwari or Kathiawari horse with curved ears ! Probably Marwari, they exists in white coat color. --Tsaag Valren (talk) 20:43, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
What may help is to delete the Category:Aviation files (check needed) from files that have a proper category as for example this one (can a bot do that?) and to add the category "Media needing categories ..." to images such as that one. If a bot can do that would be very useful because also outside this aviation category there are many files with Categorieën (++): (+). Wouter (talk) 07:52, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
There no standard rules to determine if the categorification is complete. You can have the airport category but stil have an unidentified aircraft. It can be usefull to move the file to unidentified aircraft categories. The files without categories I would move to a subcategory: Aviation media files needing categories. This way you dont lose the information that the file is about aviation. Aviation Specialists can then concentrate on these files.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:17, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
September 06
Open call for Individual Engagement Grants
Greetings! The Individual Engagement Grants program is accepting proposals from August 31st to September 29th to fund new tools, community-building processes, and other experimental ideas that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers.
Whether you need a small or large amount of funds (up to $30,000 USD), Individual Engagement Grants can support you and your team’s project development time in addition to project expenses such as materials, travel, and rental space.
Fixing the upload process is the most urgent priority. I don't mean fixing the Upload Wizard, but designing something which works from the start. Regards, Yann (talk) 14:04, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Problem with categorization with an old featured picture of horses
Hello. I'm writing articles about the horse breeds of the Basque country, and I think there's a problem with the categorization of this picture :
This is probably not a Pottoka, but an Euskal Herriko Mendiko Zaldia (english : Basque Mountain Horse, spanish : Caballo de Monte de País Vasco). My documents indicate that Euskal Herriko Mendiko Zaldia are mainly chestnut (like these horses) or bay in color, and have draft-horse-like, heavy type, like these horses. Pottokak are ponies, lighter in type and mainly black in color (see others photos in category:pottoka, or the english WP article). Is it possible to re-categorize this photos and all the others derived from this one ? --Tsaag Valren (talk) 20:36, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
I just made these changes to last April’s undeletion requests’ archive page, where automated processes (mostly CommonsDelinker and, in one instance, ArchiveBot) had caused a couple of entries to be almost unreadable. Is there a way to avoid this problem, without resorting to haphazard, eventual manual fixes? -- Tuválkin✉✇19:58, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
I don't know why, but I still cannot find my article if I google it with the same key words you used: angela craciun malraux. I will try to add some more categories to the article.
Precise categories are useful, but such broad categories as "Art", "Culture", "France", etc. are useless. I removed them. Regards, Yann (talk) 12:58, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
I have the impression that this person is trying to use Commons as a tool for s.e.o. — just like she seems to be using her position in this Foundation for self promotion, at least judging from the photos. I’m not against that, per se, but will grin devilishly as the plan backfires. -- Tuválkin✉✇01:23, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
Introducing the Wikimedia public policy site
Hi all,
We are excited to introduce a new Wikimedia Public Policy site. The site includes resources and position statements on access, copyright, censorship, intermediary liability, and privacy. The site explains how good public policy supports the Wikimedia projects, editors, and mission.
Gotta love how the clickable polygons were maked in the "process-wheel-link process-wheel-link_*" thingy — who’s geeky and has no regard for the naive user’s experience now?… -- Tuválkin✉✇19:11, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
I meant that each of the 5 wheel sectors should be clickable along a polygon that matches the visible element, not a rectangle, centered on the text, that bleeds off the said visible element and yet doesn’t cover it fully. The technology to make irregular clickable areas has been around since HTML 3.2, and the possibility of its integration with vectorial drawing software has been around ever since (just parse an .AI to harvest all xy values — it got way simpler later on). Funny to see these “designers” sneering at wiki markup and at most WMF projects’ visual design as «outdated» (even with Vector!) and yet falling in the trap of needless bells and whistles wrapped up in clumsy solutions. I meet this sort daily but non-profits should be free from this curse. -- Tuválkin✉✇00:58, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
@Slaporte (WMF): precisely who are the views on that site supposed to represent? WMF as an entity, I'd guess, but it doesn't seem to say that anywhere. Is there any way we, as active participants in WMF projects can influence that content? - Jmabel ! talk21:01, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
The policy page was written to reflect the views of the Wikimedia Foundation and we explained this in the about page on the site. The positions were also developed with input from other Wikimedians and based on discussions on the public policy mailing list. YWelinder (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Also, it says: «Everyone should be free to read and write without governments looking over their shoulders.» Hmm, governments? What about corporations? Obviously it should text instead that everyone should be free to read and write without anyone looking over their shoulders. Why restrict it to governments? Do I detect a whiff of libertarianism here? -- Tuválkin✉✇19:11, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
Jmabel, I think we can all agree about the need of being free to read and write without anyone looking over their shoulders. Corporations’ data harvesting are a problem both for their employees as for their clients, and in most countries private companies are especially shielded in ways non-profits, government agencies, and private citizens are not. -- Tuválkin✉✇01:49, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
The focus of these positions is about issues that come up when editing different Wikimedia projects. While user privacy from corporations is an important issue for the Internet more broadly, it's not the biggest issue for editors directly on our projects. Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 22:50, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
What about SEO-oriented paid editing clobbering valid content? Seems at least somewhat analogous, at least from a reader point of view. - Jmabel ! talk04:47, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
The same problematic outlook in this other quote: «Everyone should have the right to share and access knowledge free of government censorship.» I’d say that all censorship should be opposed — and while governments may be particularly pervasive and resourceful in their censorship practices, others forms of censorship are not less powerful, such as religious censorship. What’s with this anti-government mania? -- Tuválkin✉✇02:01, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
The biggest forms of censorship is caused by governments (currently blocking access for millions of people in China). The position statement on censorship also covers other attempts at private censorship, which we disclose in the transparency report. YWelinder (WMF) (talk) 22:45, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Another point: It says that «People don’t just read; they create, share, and remix. Copyright law should evolve to reflect this new reality.» This is problematic in two ways:
First, the creation of derivatives is no «new reality», quite the opposite. And copyright law has been growing more and more stringent against (i.a.) derivatives in recent times, not just lagging behing a «new reality», as this blurb wrongly implies. (This is though true concerning other points of contact between laws and new technologies, such as privacy — maybe whoever wrote this got their trends mixed up?)
Second, although it's probably the opinion of most WMF project volonteers (us all) that copyright law should change to be less restrictive (and not the opposite direction), I seriously doubt that lobbying for its change is (or should be) in any way the WMF’s policy — rather we work within the frame of existing (and “evolving”) legislation to provide access to free knowledge. That’s a very different job.
I think we may disagree about what the correct course of action is with respect to restrictive copyright laws and views on how laws should adapt to changing technology. Could you please explain why you think we should work within the frame of problematic laws instead of try to influence them to better support our mission? Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 22:50, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Well, they started this out saying they are «excited to introduce». While the wording lends itself to all kinds of shallow jokes to explain the delay in replying (they are still at it?, got excited again?), its tone is not sincerely the genuine chummy chirpy “excitement” we feel when a bug is fixed of some really cool content is added — this is fake excitement corporate drone speech. They were «excited», but now they have a long weekend to enjoy away from all that Wikimedia boredom (hey, and maybe next week there will be a breakthrough after that job application at 9gag or Reddit!). While it looks nice to post these announcements in the “village pumps” of all projects, it is hard work to monitor for replies: The centralized page on meta is easy to manage and specific concerns (like, how does this public policy site affects Commons?) can be brushed aside, while in the right venue for those concerns, the voice of the WMF is only heard through loudspeakers, announcing, not replying. -- Tuválkin✉✇12:40, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
I'm one of the top contributors to Wikimedia Commons, based on number of useful educational images uploaded, and I have a long history of working with institutions and speaking about public policy. From my perspective, it's nice to hear you are having fun creating a Wikimedia Foundation website discussing corporate views about public policy. Good for you. However you have neither properly consulted on its contents, neither have you made any apparent effort to engage on this with unpaid volunteers. I have seen the background discussions mostly between WMF employees and chapter employees, this is not the same thing as consultation with your volunteers.
The approach in creating a website about public policy which has locked out Wikimedia volunteers, and then writing on the Wikimedia Commons village pump asking for unpaid volunteers to translate your work, is unambiguous evidence of a massive gap between your actions and the WMF declared strategy—as promoted by your Chief Executive—to put unpaid volunteers at the centre, so that the future of the Wikimedia movement is driven by volunteer choice and collegiate working methods.
I doubt you are going to change what you have done to being based on our long established open projects and open methods. Most of the volunteers here will get the irony in publishing a closed site with contents controlled and created by paid employees which attempts to encourage other organizations to move to open content. I believe that WMF employees subscribe to a world view that has drifted a long, long way from our original shared vision when we created the Foundation to support us. It is a sad outcome, and I certainly will not spend my volunteer time trying to influence policies where I am being deliberately ignored rather than being treated as a fellow contributor.
Appreciate your thoughts. While translation is one way volunteers can help, we would also like to get input on the specific policy positions. The site will be an evolving document that we can update if volunteers reach a consensus on substantive changes. YWelinder (WMF) (talk) 22:47, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
An evolving site that can be updated is an interesting concept today as it was in 1983, when hypertext come from theory into practice — but more recent developments in collaborative content authoring for websites are worth a look, too. -- Tuválkin✉✇23:41, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
I fully believe there are mailing lists that would let me get a clue what is going on; I'm not on these lists; even as an admin for a decade plus, I have little idea what lists they would be or how I would find them. Unsurprisingly, my involvement here, as a volunteer, has been via wikis, not via mailing lists. If there is a portal leading to any sort of overview of WMF and how to get involved in it - including what mailing lists are out there that I should be monitoring for information that will not show up on the web until it is in a final form and beyond my having input - I don't know where it is. And if I, as an admin, have that little idea how to get into any of this, imagine where this leaves the average user.
I'm not saying this just to complain. I'd very much like to see -- and/or help create -- solutions. Is there such a portal? Is there a good annotated list of mailing lists? - Jmabel ! talk01:04, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
Looking around, I see meta:Wikimedia Foundation which looks like it would have at least the potential to be (or to be adapted into) a portal page for this purpose. Is there something closer already out there? Because clearly this page does not lead to a hierarchy of where one finds information about intiatives under way, etc. - Jmabel ! talk01:22, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
We've posted the text of the site on Meta:Public policy, so you are welcome to leave comments on the talk page. We plan to update the site on a regular basis, based on discussion with Wikimedians who are interested in working on public policy projects. (For mailing lists more generally, there isn't a great central index, but there is a full list of public email lists here). Best, Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 03:25, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
For any further similar projects, you might consider engaging the Commons community on the Village Pump when things are still under development with a fair chance to influence things before they go live, instead of by "excitedly" announcing a fait accompli. - Jmabel ! talk
Three weeks ago, I asked in MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-GalleryDetails.js#Broken_again.3F what’s wrong with this gadged. Apparently still broken. This is crucial for some categorization work, as it shows the contents of up to 200 filepages at once, allowing a lot of copying and moving around with Cat-a-lot. Could someone in power do something about this actually important tool? -- Tuválkin✉✇13:36, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
SMUconlaw, no. I did try, but even with OAuth this Phabricator thingy wanted my e-mail address. It is no big deal, but I do not condone that Wikimedia bugs need an external platform, for a lot of good reasons. Bring bug tracking back inside the project, please. -- Tuválkin✉✇22:15, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Probably all anyone needs to do is change * GalleryDetails|GalleryDetails.js to be * GalleryDetails[ResourceLoader]|GalleryDetails.js on the page MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition. (Honestly, I'm not sure why we are deprecated things in this manner. Seems like it would be much less painful to just change everything to load async with resource loader instead of just intentionally breaking things not marked as resource loader safe). Bawolff (talk) 03:32, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
Just to repeat what I said on the bug, I think, but am not 100% sure, that some versions of rsvg do not support embedded pngs larger than 9.5 mb (after base64 encoding), and that that is what is happening here. Bawolff (talk) 04:13, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
Commons mobile app: Born again!
Dear all,
The smartphone upload apps are back, now community-maintained!
User:Rolf H. renamed lots of railway related files without any backing by COM:RENAME. Could an admin (possibly with bot access) please have a look and those renames and possibly revert them? Thank you! --Sebari (talk) 11:33, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
#Edit2015 Video Collaboration
Hi everyone, I'm making a year-in-review video about 2015 through the filter of Wikimedia projects, and I need your help! The video above is what I and another video editor made last year. I think it was good, but it could be a lot better. I need your help to find the stories from as articles, photos or videos and how to tell each one in about 5 seconds. Like - how can one story link to the next? What photos tell our story? How can we be more internationally representative? I set up this page as a space to collaborate on this years' video. Here I explain what I learned from last year, and here is a space to fill in images and articles, sorted by month.Thanks! VGrigas (WMF) (talk) 14:57, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
This was fixed by User:Guy vandegrift by converting the text to paths using Inkscape, but I rely on text to make the translations so this definitely needs to be fixed in how the software works. I think the graphics lab deals with how to create images, not problems with how Commons does things. Delphi234 (talk) 17:00, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
The manner of creating the png was changed. The thumbs showing the upload are not created on the fly but at the time of upload. If you take an old image that was working fine and upload it today, it becomes trashed. Delphi234 (talk) 14:30, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
Is there a tool to mass upload content from Internet Archive to Commons?
Hi all
Is there a tool to mass upload content from Internet Archive to Commons? Internet Archive is able to scrape content from websites and so could act as a very useful intermediary between content holders and Wikimedia Commons to make the process easier.
A generic tool would be problematic, I did consider creating one but parked the idea. I use the IA API directly to support my currently running Internet Archive book plate project, now approaching 200,000 images, though this is limited to preselected and potentially valuable images from the related IA Flickrstream, itself filtered by image size and whether the image appears to be a blank page scan. I have played around with the API in a more generic way, as I would like to upload some interesting audio files and other obviously educational collections, but there is significant responsibility on the uploader to be confident of the copyright status (not everything on IA is correctly licensed) and to ensure good quality metadata is used to render the Commons image pages.
So, it's a bit messy, and the best solution is to plan large batch upload projects for specific collections with clear responsibility for housekeeping and responding to problems. --Fæ (talk) 12:09, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
Thanks very much for the information, I was thinking about this in terms of GLAMs wanting to release content who don't currently have an easy to transfer content library like a Flickr account.
I recommend a Flickrstream as an intermediary rather than IA. You can use 1TB at a time and the throttle limits are high at 3000+ transactions per hour (off the top of my head). The Flickr API is well documented, stable, and plenty of small projects are about to crib off in various programming languages. The Flickr servers have been know to have problems but this is rare (significantly rarer than WMF operational issues I believe) and discussed in the Flickr forums when it occurs. --Fæ (talk) 20:21, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
using pictures from wikimedia commons
I intend to use pictures from wikipedia commons in my new book. Please let me know what information should Iinclude in captions to satisfy wikipedia's regulations?
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Emilia Mroczkowska (talk • contribs)
The issue isn't "wikipedia's regulations" (and, by the way, Wikimedia Commons is not Wikipedia, though they are umbrella'd by the same foundation, the Wikimedia Foundation, WMF). With rare exceptions, images here are not property of the WMF. They are either public domain (in which case there are no legal requirements to use them) or free-licensed by the relevant rights-holder (in which case you need to comply with the license specified on each individual file page; these will differ from one another). Please see Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia. - Jmabel ! talk21:05, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
Wikitakes Ayora
A Wikitakes has been organized for September 19 and 20 in Ayora (Valencia, Spain). If any of you happen to be nearby on that dates, you're welcome to join in. Inscription page is here: [1].
While the Land of Valencia as a whole is bilingual (and proud of it!), Ayora and its valley are Spanish speaking. That's the reason we don't have a Catalan version. WMES supports all languages in Spain. Many of our members edit in Catalan and other languages used in Spain. Editing about Ayora in any language of your choice is encouraged. B25es (talk) 06:12, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
Hi, I need help to know if the file Montreal_Canadiens.svg from en.wikipedia could be uploaded on Commons. The en:Montreal Canadiens article has it's logo in svg format, but it's loaded at en.wiki locally. I think that the logo is so simple that it could be under Threshold of originality because it's only composed by the letters C and H.
There are lots of commercial logos at Category:With trademark, but there is not a problem because more of they are under Threshold of originality.
On the respective talk pages, use the {{Published}} template and indicate that the use is not legal.
Contact the Commons users whose rights have been infringed to let them know they may want to follow up.
Contact the site in question, explain how to attribute these correctly, and possibly indicate to them that their current use is infringing multiple copyrights, and if they don't correct it they should expect to hear from some or all of the copyright holders.
I cannot use Cat-a-lot for the last days. It's something wrong with it? I tried unpluging all my gadgets, but it didn't appeared either. Any hints? B25es (talk) 18:03, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
करणी माता जी का मन्दिर ग्राम-तिहावली , तहसील-रामगड शेखावाटी , जिला-सीकर , पिन कोड-332307 (राजस्थान्) मे सिथ्त है
— Preceding unsigned comment added by सम्पत सिंह (talk • contribs)
چگونه می توان در قسمت شرح,عنوانی برای اثر انتخاب کرد؟ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shabnamkm (talk • contribs)
(According to Google Translate, the question is in Persian and appears to be about the upload Wizard and how the description & title relate. Can someone who reads & writes Persian please help out, if only to translate the question? - Jmabel ! talk18:48, 8 September 2015 (UTC))
@Shabnamkm: سلام شبنم. هر عنوانی که دوست داشتی انتخاب کن. فقط سعی کن عنوان انتخابی مرتبط با محتوای اثر باشد. مثلاً اگر تصویرت دربارهٔ آرامگاه عطار در نیشابور است، اسمش را Attar tomb in Nishabur by Shabnam بگذار. حتی میتوانی اسم فارسی انتخاب کنی. مثلاً: «آرامگاه عطار از زاویه مخالف ۵». 4nn1l2 (talk) 08:06, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
September 09
Category view of images
Is there a way to change the thumbnail size in the category view? I want to visually scan all the Bain images from the Library of Congress and pick out the ones that were copied from other studios like the Pach Brothers and Moffett and Clinedenst so I can tag them. Some of the most iconic images from Bain were marked with a copyright symbol to prevent piracy and I want to cluster them in a gallery. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:36, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
At the moment, the thumbnail size can only be changed via mediawiki config, so no. Although you can make gadgets that do that sort of thing (e.g. the GalleryDetails gadget that's kind of broken right now). You can change the gallery mode via ?gallerymode=packed. Bawolff (talk) 09:41, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Categorization challenge!
Honest Abe gratefully asks for your assistance in the great book categorization challenge. (Great Americans and their noble deeds, p. 113, pub. 1901; one of six illustrative plates uploaded from this book but urgently needs categorization...)
In the last few weeks an amazing 280,000 new images of book plates have been added to our Commons repository and the initial uploads are nearly complete. These have been created by filtering the Internet Archive Flickrstream by size, and filtering the BHL Flickrstream by copyright license and size. The collection is delightful with some great quality finds to be had, however we do have a challenge with regard to good categorization. Using the metadata from the source sites it has been possible to add simple categories and as a result a few have been flooded with hundreds or thousands of images. In the case of the BHL collection some suitable book titles have been deliberately added as red-link categories, for example Category:Animaux venimeux et venins: la fonction venimeuse chez tous les animaux. The choice of whether to finally create the book category is being left to human review, automatic category creation being a bit of a nightmare in terms of usefulness and reliability.
Here's the challenge, could someone help out by writing a specific easy guide, targeted at the book plate categorization project, possibly added to the Internet Archive project page? This would cover how to use Cat-a-lot and the in-built search engine to move images to suitable book titles (which may include creating sub-volumes when dealing with a multi-year journal), and trim unwanted categories from the children of the new book categories. This has arisen a couple of times (see my talk page), with keen volunteers who are excited by the new uploads being a bit daunted at the idea of moving around thousands of images or even getting upset at categories they enjoy maintaining getting flooded.
Though I do many interesting things for Commons content, and in these projects attracted the collegiate support of around 400 volunteers, I am just too long winded and impatient to write good user guides. --Fæ (talk) 08:19, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
@Tuvalkin: Nice work. I am running searches for street car and trolley in the IA Flickrstream, allowing for images as low as 1,200 x 1,800 pixels (the book plate default being 2,500 x 800). This seems to be turning up some interesting additional stuff for you to munch using the same links. Don't forget that putting inferior crops in Category:Internet Archive (uncrop needed) will upload the whole book page. --Fæ (talk) 10:10, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
I had started clustering some pictures into a specific book category with the help of Cat-a-lot but stopped after two books because it generated a huge number of edits. As each image already had three categories (Books by year, Books by type, Subject), clustering meant four sequential edits per file (move to book category and then remove the three cats that were now attached to the new parent category). I now saw at your talk page that the removal would be done automatically by a bot afterwards, is this correct? Or is there any other way to remove several cats at once with Cat-a-lot? --Rudolph Buch (talk) 11:56, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
Plate I of A manual of North American Butterflies, improved by automatic category trimming.
If you create the book category and add any categories to it you think are relevant, there is a slow housekeeping task for the BHL uploads that will do the following:
Pick the next image from the main bucket category and guess the most likely book category, which must have been created for any further action to happen. The book category name must be a subset of the text of filenames for the process to run, i.e. if you move the files to something like "<book title>, 1891" rather than the more simple "<book title>" then these will be skipped, on the assumption that you have sorted these out yourself.
Run through all child images to work out which categories are common to all of them.
Add these common categories to the parent book category and delete those same categories from all children, leaving in place any unique categories.
For example, within the last hour Category:A manual of North American butterflies was processed. This book category has 10 children images, and was created yesterday by Hilohello with the parent categories 1891 books and Lepidoptera books. Further Hilohello had moved all the files from 1891 books when they used cat-a-lot to move them to the book category. After scanning through the images, the categories Lepidoptera illustrations and Smithsonian Institution Libraries were added to the book category, and then stripped from all ten children, leaving nice change comments on each file explaining what happened.
I am currently running this process for the whole of BHL uploads, but will consider how to do the same thing for the Internet Archive uploads, though in the latter case as there has been no automatic addition of possible book categories, this may be of less immediate effect. By slow, I mean that running through the 60,000+ images for BHL will probably take a couple of weeks and will need re-running to catch up with later created categories or further uploads. --Fæ (talk) 15:04, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
Göteborg tram
I have a lot of pictures and tried to subcategorise Category:Trams in Göteborg in the different tram types. I have problems with the older types. I look at the type of windows and the vehicle numbers, but I suspect there where some small changes during the ages. Can somebody check and try to subcategorise Trams in Göteborg? Usefull to would be location categories, with the tramstop stops.Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:30, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
PS:I passed the 6000 follow pages of uploaded files. (These are not bot uploads but individual ones with descriptions and cateories)Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:32, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
However, the categorization scheme for tram photos etc. of a given system (as with any other cluster of related media items) can only be as delailed and complete as the knowledge “we” have about it and as long as there is enough material to justify that level of detail. F.i., while we have this photo (↗) in its own detailed Category:Trams on Dom Luis I bridge, this other photo (↘) is in its more generic parent Category:Trams on bridges — that’s because there are 60 photos of trams on the same bridge as in the former photo, while only one in the latter.
If you want a model for a detailed categorization tree within a tram system, I can only recomend you take a look at Category:Trams in Lisbon: It is still a work in progress (what isn’t?) — but only made possible with information about the system (and I know a lot more about Lisbon, where I live, than about Gothenburg, where I was only once, for a few hours), and only made necessary by the number of media items about the system — over 1500 for Lisbon, just under 800 for Gothenburg, which is probably enough for more category detail than it has now.
While some kinds of categories can be created and populated by most anyone, like Category:Göteborg trams facing right, others might need specific knowledge about the subject.
this one can be usefull as a new tramroute in the towncentre is being built
Local knowledge is better, we have to do a lot of research. It would be easier if the serie numbers of the various tram types where known. I try to get the 3 categories rigth for all my uploaded files: line number, tramstop and tram type.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:57, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
SmileyTheorist, there’s no need to bother about series number ranges when you’re just categorizing individual photos. For instance, in this one, we see a tram with fleet number 200 — we just categorize it as Category:Number 200 on trams, and let the Gothenburg tram experts classify it by series/type. -- Tuválkin✉✇22:06, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
September 13
Move & replace (again)
I know this has been noted before, but it's still impossible to uncheck the "Leave a redirect" box when moving a file. There's absolutely no point in having a bunch of redirects just because some file names may initially have been misspelt. Is there any rationale whatsoever behind this behaviour? Asav (OTRS) | Talk15:54, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Hi, Yes, only admins can move pages without creating a redirect, because only admins can delete pages, including redirects. There is no harm in creating redirects. Regards, Yann (talk) 16:10, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Hi all,
I am happy to announce the release of a new program resource, the Photo Contests and Events Toolkit! This is a practical guide on how to plan and implement a photo contest in your community, with practical solutions, links to other resources and case studies within the movement.
This new toolkit is an ever growing resource of knowledge for people with no experience, some experience... and a lot of experience! We hope, in this way, to have many of you join the toolkit and connect with other wikimedians: offer your expertise, share something you learned, or a question you have. If you find other resources that you think will help, don't hesitate to share them on the Forum. Go to toolkit now!
Happy editing! María (WMF) (talk) 21:48, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
September 15
HTML rendering issues with notifications in toolbar
Is anyone else seeing rendering issues with the "Echo" notification feature in the toolbar? On Commons using Safari 8.0.8 I see broken HTML rendering as if partially transparent versions of the Alerts/Messages boxes are overlaying pages (i.e. transparent broken versions of the notification boxes that normally open when you click their icon in the toolbar). Interestingly this only started happening today, does not happen on en.WP, and does not happen in either Firefox or Chrome. It does happen on multiple machines, so it doesn't appear to be a cache or machine-specific issue. I don't see the issue if I am not logged in, but that is presumably because logged out users don't have the alert/message icons. —RP88 (talk) 20:43, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Don't see that problem, but ever since the new system came in, I see a solid black-filled bell shape and a solid black-filled quote-bubble shape inside the two boxes, which I presume is not intended... AnonMoos (talk) 21:14, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
I have the same in Safari 6.2.8 and 8.0.8 and only in commons. It only happened this evening, while the new alert system was a little earlier. Practically I cannot work on Safari.--Oursana (talk) 21:51, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
This was caused by invalid CSS statements in MediaWiki:Vector.css and some browsers not being able to recover from such an invalid state under certain conditions which happened to be triggered by the Echo change. Another Safari error report filed.... and invalid CSS removed from Commons. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:10, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
A “Wiki Loves Monuments” campaign that brought on an avalanche of poorly categorized photos that will take for ever to clean up? Wow, how unexpected!… -- Tuválkin✉✇16:48, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
September 16
Panoramio downloads not own works
This picture is obvouisly not made by the downloader in panoramio. I have added the correct licences, but how can I set the rigth source and author parameters while stil adknowledging Panoramio? Can the Panoromio download script be adapted to treat old postcard scans? By the way there are a lot postcard pictures downloaded as own work and the source mention `private collection`. Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:30, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
Is there a media viewer like in Wikipedia LIKE THIS, with which I can leaf through the images of a category rather than open each page? I need to see which image need to be updated with a clearer and better version? For example, THIS CATEGORY and the others. — Ineuw talk18:39, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
Ineuw, If you go into your Preferences and click on Appearance tab, there is a small checkbox in Files section called "Enable Media Viewer." Just tick that and click save. I turn it on and off when working on categories. --dsprc (talk) 19:07, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, I turned it on but there is no viewer in the category page. Only on individual images which were there before.— Ineuw talk19:57, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
Ineuw (and Dsprc), go indeed to your Preferences and tick on the checkbox "Slideshow", under heading "Improved navigation" of the tab "Gadgets". Unlike Media Viewer, it works. (It is supposed to be a default gadget, too: everybody should have it on, except those who opted out.) -- Tuválkin✉✇00:03, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
Offer to take pictures from a resident of Lahore, Pakistan: name your interest!
Wikipedia has received an OTRS ticket (Template:OTRS ticket) from a local in Lahore eager to be assigned some subjects for photographs— I have reviewed the Wikipedia list of requested photos, but the only requests for Pakistan are in Karachi, 1,300 km away. If anyone knows of historical or cultura subject matter in or around Lahore that could use some additional pictures, please either ping me here or leave me a note on my Wikipedia talk page and I will pass the request along to him. Offers like this are uncommon, especially from places as remote as inland Pakistan. To me, this seems like a great and rare opportunity, and I hope someone will want take advantage of it! Please let me know. Thank you! KDS4444 (talk) 02:00, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
This user has now taken and uploaded his images, a list of which is available on his file list here. There are three new images of the church and four of the market at night. KDS4444 (talk) 06:06, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
Lost brighness after resizing png by Commons (recent pluto sunset photo)
The original image contains an ICC color profile which is not present in thumbnails. Looks like this is a bug in Mediawiki image scaler. MKFI (talk) 06:09, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
Your opinions on this request are welcome to ensure a wide balance of views from the Commons community. Please do add links to any actions over the last year that help to form your opinion on my suitability to be trusted with sysop tools. The RFA is due to close tomorrow, so if you are interested in reading the nomination, don't leave it too long! Thanks --Fæ (talk) 16:33, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
Saw this too late to vote but I doubt my vote would have made the difference. I would try again in a year or so. Pay attention to the criticisms and see if they are valid, and any changes are needed. Delphi234 (talk) 23:11, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
I for one paid a lot of attention to the expressed criticisms, regardless of their validity… Indeed, I’d say that invalid criticisms in a RfA are worth a lot more attention than valid ones, which are usually trivial. And of course it is great lesson to compare Fæ’s RfAs with anyone else’s, especially in terms of the tone and level of expressed criticism and the strictness of scrutiny. -- Tuválkin✉✇17:57, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
September 18
Tweets by US President
If I were to screencap a screen shot of a tweet on Twitter by the President of the United States -- would that be public domain as product of a United States Federal employee -- or copyright of Twitter?
Could I upload that screenshot of that Tweet here to Wikimedia Commons?
Yes. Even the President is a federal employee, and everything they do in their official capacity is PD. But any twitter logo would need to be obscured, as that is trademarked. If the tweet includes a photo you need to be sure it was taken by a federal employee. Delphi234 (talk) 23:14, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
Based on past take-down notices, the work of a U.S. Federal employee may not be public domain if there is any possible reasonable claim that they were acting in their free time, even if created during the working day. If you are taking tweets, Facebook photos etc. it is sensible to check that these are on "official" channels rather than from personal ones. As far as I know, Obama only uses "official" channels which can presumably be thought of as POTUS channels, so in this case there would be no reasonable doubt as to copyright. --Fæ (talk) 09:50, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
Okay, thank you. The others all seem to be related to the initial tweet by the US President, were made after him in response, by federal government employees, related to their official capacity as delegates of his message. -- Cirt (talk) 13:46, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
I have uploaded the file of the Coat of Arms of Newfoundland and Labrador but in Commons it containes many errors and I don't know why, because in inkscape the file was complete. Can anybody help me? Thank you. --Echando una mano (talk) 20:03, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
When you zoom in heat distortions in the air are seen. Is there a category for these kind of images? You get these often with strong tele images.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:59, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
Category:Heat blur is more appropiate. In the category heat haze there is no distinction between the two effects of heat. The bleuish tint of particles in the air (haze) and the visual distortions caused the way ligth travels through the air. The heat itself does not cause the distortions but temperature differences in the air. Heat blurs can even be seen in the Artic. The distortions become a diffuse blur with a long fotografic exposure, but a fast exposure freezes the distortions. (The distortions are fast moving)Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:20, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
I propose a rename the Heat blur category into: Air refractions caused by temperature differences. I also explained the effect in the category text. De image effect is different depending on the exposure time of the image.Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:58, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
Smiley.toerist, I'm pretty sure "heat haze" and "heat blur" are two words for the same thing. en:Mirage uses the term heat haze for the blur/distortions/refractions, saying "Heat haze is not related to the atmospheric phenomenon of haze". This seems to be a fix term, so we should use it. I'd propose to
add a description to Category:Heat haze that makes clear that heat haze doesn't have anything to do with actual haze (and links to the relevant section of the Wikipedia article)
We could also call it heat blur, -distortions, -shimmer or whatever. But as far as I can see we don't need a category for the combination of heat and actual haze (particles/aerosoles/water droplets/…). --El Grafo (talk) 09:33, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
It is worth learning to use mw:Manual:Pywikibot to do these sorts of things, it addresses many of the questions you have raised before. I think you can use VFC to do this type of dump, but I've never played with that method. --Fæ (talk) 13:10, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
I have recently submitted some images and note the camera location for the image can be recorded on the image page. In the case of the first few images I uploaded this seemed to be obtained automatically from the EXIF data in the image whereas for the second batch it was not, and I needed to transcribe it, so that leads to my first question: has there been a policy change to no longer process geotags in uploaded images?
Next I tried the feature to view the image on OpenStreetMap. This showed that the co-ordinates from my cameras GPS were accurate in that it showed the marker where I remember standing to take the picture but in quite a few cases this was on the opposite side of the street from the subject of the picture, i.e. I was standing on the opposite side to get the whole subject in the frame, so hence the next question: is there a way to also add the subject location to the image page? I don't want to alter the existing location tag on the image page to match the subject as this then gets displayed as "camera location" which is then misleading. If we don't track camera and subject location separately, should we?
Yep, just compare {{Object location}} and {{Camera location}} — the latter is a redirect to {{Location}}. The thing is: Only camera location (incl. heading, or even azimuth!) is meaningful and exact; object location, well, it depends on the object: What about a snapshot at the full moon, for one? The best way to «add the subject location to the image page» is to categorize it for the subject in question, if it has a category for it. (Indeed categories, on the other hand, can make use of {{Object location}} if their subject is geographical; while {{Camera location}} is hardly meaningful for anything but photos and similar images.) -- Tuválkin✉✇02:11, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
(File:SNCV Forges bos II.jpg) wich allow you to add a direction and this elimates a lot of confusion. Most of the times one can guess the distance from the the camera to the subject and allow several subjects to be placed in context.Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:21, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for responding. I completely understand that for every photo there is a specific camera location whereas the location of the subject may not be known or, as in the example above, may not even be on earth. I was specifically thinking of buildings where I though it would be useful to be able to plot them on a map in the correct location and yes, of course, a building is not really a single point but a closed path when viewed from above but loads of maps show points for buildings of interest. I have also started to work out heading from a map and enter that too. Interestingly my camera also usually reports the distance from the camera to the focal plane but there doesn't seem to be anywhere to enter that.
On the automatic extraction of the location from EXIF the problem may have been with a specific version of darktable, though exiv2 could still find the geotag in the exported files. I have updated to a more recent version and now the problem has gone. Steve James (talk)
WLM participants report problems with the upload wizard. Symptoms are exactly the same as in the end of May (see screenshots there), so the same solution will perhaps work again? Admins, please, take a look at this problem ASAP. It is going to exaggerate over the next days when the number of uploads increases toward the end of WLM. Thanks!
@Rillke: --Alexander (talk) 13:00, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
Reproductions of two-dimensional works do not create any new copyright. So, you can upload this image as the original is in public domain. Ruslik (talk) 19:55, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
See http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2012/03/19/copyright-the-newspaper-article/. Assuming that the images in question are of U.S. origin (that is, not reprints of something first published and copyrighted in a different country), anything before 1923 should be fine, and most likely anything before 1964 (but you'll have to look into the unlikely possibility that the newspaper renewed its copyrights; I believe no U.S. paper outside of NYC did that). From 1964 onward, almost certainly all still copyrighted. - Jmabel ! talk20:09, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
... and wondering if it is the public domain. I'm wondering if Temple can copyright it once the copyright has expired. Evrik (talk) 17:26, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
@Evrik: The only way Temple's claim could be legitimate is if either the Bulletin renewed the copyright, and signed the rights over to Temple, or the Bulletin signed the rights over to Temple before 1983 and Temple renewed the copyright. Either is unlikely, and you should be able to work out any renewal of copyrights on the Bulletin at https://collections.stanford.edu/copyrightrenewals/bin/page?forward=home (I suspect there will none at all). - Jmabel ! talk18:24, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
Automatically generated category redirect
When we move categories by leaving a redirect from the old name, we get the following source code of this redirect:
{{Category redirect|Category:Something in some place}}
However, it should be the following code:
{{Category redirect|Something in some place}}
Otherwise, the redirect will be seen in the target category as a subcat, which is obviously nonsense.
Change the template? Looking at the template code, it seems to be intentional that this is happening. Specifically, the line in the template: [[{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE:{{{1}}} }}|Category||Category:}}{{{1}}}|~{{PAGENAME}}]] is what causes this. Bawolff (talk) 14:09, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
Which template? --A.Savin 14:20, 22 September 2015 (UTC) OK, I didn't know that Category redirect is a template, but my intention is not to change this one. Instead, the category redirects which are being automatically generated while moving categories, should not have this redundant "Category:" term, because it produces categories that are subs of themselves. I guess only someone with mediawiki access may change it. Also, we need someone who can process a database request for all existing category redirects with this pattern, and let a bot run to modify them all. --A.Savin15:34, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
The template does not care if there is a "Category:" perfix or not. It is technically not possible to remove the "Category:" prefix (with the current code). --Steinsplitter (talk) 20:19, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
I just looked at the code more closely. I think I was partially misunderstanding it. The template will add the current page to the target category only if the current category is non-empty. This is meant as a reminder to people to empty the category. This seems like a logical idea and probably should be kept. Bawolff (talk) 20:30, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
I agree with Bawolff. I use this feature to move the contents of renamed categories with Cat-a-Lot. The old category will disappear from the tree after it is left empty for a while (and maybe it shows up again if content is added? Not sure, I never tested this…). It seems to be both intentional, and a good idea. Maybe A.Savin could explain better what’s the trouble? -- Tuválkin✉✇23:20, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
Actually, categories dynamically added by templates only take affect after someone edits a page (including a null edit), or a template included on the page is edited (Or purge with special options). So the category link won't be removed after a category is empty until next time someone edits the page. Bawolff (talk) 03:04, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
I'd prefer if you would talk to User:The Man in Question and seek consensus before the files are moved back to the old category: It´s redirected anyway, so there´s no hurry and both spellings seem to be in wide use in publications. --Rudolph Buch (talk) 11:44, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
When I use the search option, no matter what word I type in, it shows on the bottom of the page "\n". That's clearly not its intention... any idea where and how to report this? Trijnsteltalk22:51, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
Less than one week left for Individual Engagement Grant proposals!
There is less than one week left to submit Individual Engagement Grant (IEG) proposals before the September 29th deadline. If you have ideas for new tools, community-building processes, and other experimental projects that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers, start your proposal today! Please encourage others who have great ideas to apply as well. Support is available if you want help turning your idea into a grant request.
Now, there comes User:Butko and does what he did thousands of times in the past with items of such unidentified somethings-or-other: Moved it to Category:Beaches of unidentified countries — witch is patently false, as the country is known, just the exact beach is not (*). Later on (and we know this because it has happend a lot in the past — before beaches it was forests, mountains, lakes, you name it), someone, maybe Butko himself, will notice that the contry is identified, and Category:Beaches of unidentified countries will be removed from this filepage — which will end up with a photo of a beach, but no category about beaches! (The only sensible recategorization here, short of identification, of course, would be to create under both those parent cats a new subcat Category:Unidentified beaches of Ireland, which is likely very useful (*) — however Butko doesn’t seem to do this.(He’s doing it now, yay! -- Tuválkin✉✇20:30, 16 September 2015 (UTC)))
This change affects this one photo and 27 other in my watchlist — the total is surely in the thousands. The result is damaged curation and reduced usefulness of Commons, which is called vandalism when done by an IP or a noob user. User:Butko, admin, please stop, please revert, please inform yourself about categorization.
(*) (Okay, Slovenia and DRCongo have only one sea beacha relatively short coastline which could be jokingly named one single beach, but most contries havd either many or none.)
Not enough (unless we think it is good to have a category crowded with thousands of photos), but certainly correct. Having a beach photo with no beach categories (as happened in the past with mountains and lakes) is not, and that was my main point. -- Tuválkin✉✇00:09, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
It shows a beach with fog in Ireland: In Irish Gaelic "Ceo" means "fog" and "trá" means "beach". (Also: Derailing much? This thread is about an admin disrupting categorization — can we please focus on that?) -- Tuválkin✉✇23:56, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
Unfortunately, this appeal in VP caused only the example image to be fixed: 9 days later, Category:Beaches of unidentified countries is still bloated from User:Butko stuffing into it everything other people categorized under Category:Unidentified beaches, regardless of the country in question being actually unidentified or not.
Go and take a glance at Category:Beaches of unidentified countries: Just from the filenames of its 180 images, a dozen or two countries can be readily identified. This causes the risk that a less attent fellow user might remove those images from this category — causing the “unidentifiedness” of the beach in question to be lost, thus reducing the amount and quality of the information provided by Commons and the chance of identification.
As said, Butko needs to stop splitting everything by country — were he a regular user, not an Admin, and this would have been swiftly dealt with in ANU…
Sure we can. There’s maybe 180 countries in the world with beaches of any kind, though, and once beaches are dealt with we should retrace Butko’s steps and do the same for lakes and mountains and forests and whetever. Or, as said at the begining, Butko could stop splitting everything by country, and for each of those the simple category "Unidentified whatever" (along with at least one country category, as “deep”/detailed as possible) would be quite enough thanks-very-much.
The problem here, though, is not just the needless creating of, the filing in, and the diffusing from what are essentially temporary categories, the main issue is the risk of losing category information when these instances of actual miscategorization are stumbled upon. As of course I (or any of us) could add back Category:Unidentified beaches to all these images where the country is known and properly identified in another category (like in the example above), but that would be edit warring (against an admin? I’d be toast!) and there’s no guarantee that it would not be soon changed back to Category:Beaches of unidentified countries.
There are articles using this image and they include an other image of the same bridge. Unfortunatly this is in Arabic script. What is the location and how is the bridge called?Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:01, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
The usage in wp:fa suggests a location on the Turkish side of the Iran-Turkey border, near to the triple point with (independent) Azerbaijan. It is apparently the the largest bridge in the Middle East. -- Tuválkin✉✇11:30, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
Good finding! (I did come across the name "قطور" but it is romanized in so many ways I missed the category.) As for the categorization, it’s just a matter of fixing it — it’s a wiki, right? -- Tuválkin✉✇14:37, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
I can find Khoy, but Rezi is a place in Hungary. I take it you mean the borderstation Razi? The next junction with an other railway line is Soufian (No station but close to Tabriz). This is part of the Istanbul Theheran connection, but technically the line starts at the Van lake in Turkey where train have to take the boat. Beyond this it can be considered part of the Turkey - Iran - P±akistan railway connection. (with a gauge change at the Pakistan border).Smiley.toerist (talk) 18:01, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
Note, Faebot is routinely overwriting the file while it remains in the "uncrop needed" queue, thinking that it has been re-added deliberately... --Fæ (talk) 23:30, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the fix, the system behaviour is unexpected. As a general rule, categories should not be added to redirect pages. I would have have expected a blank thumbnail or a faux thumbnail warning message. It's unhelpful to display a thumbnail from the target in the majority of scenarios I can think of for the mediawiki software to behave this way when displaying categories, and, as you say, if this is a glitch and the pre-redirect image was being displayed, then this is a bug of some sort. --Fæ (talk) 08:19, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
There is a certain logic to it. File:America, from discovery in 1942 to the present time (1894) (14578385267).jpg was in the category. So that page should be in the list. Redirects in general wikitext work just like their targets do, so why wouldn't they in categories. Bawolff (talk) 20:50, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
Bawolff at least the Participating and Highlights boxes... because the link that you send, is the screen-shot that I linked here... -- RTA03:16, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
I thought that was kind of intentional, to only show the most important sections. In any case, it can be changed by [someone with appropriate rights] editing the main page, to add the code to say which sections should be shown on mobile. Bawolff (talk) 03:55, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
WPA painting
I had asked this question at the Help Desk, and it was suggested I bring my question here.
The WP article for the American artist, Harry Sternberg, has no images and I found this image [5] of a 1939 painting of his on Flicker. The mural was done for the Works Progress Administration, Federal Art Project. The license for the Flicker image is described as "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)". Is it allowed to upload this image to Commons? Malcolm Schosha (talk) 21:24, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
If it was made as "work for hire" for the federal government, then it's in the public domain. If it wasn't, then there's a good chance that it's copyrighted, unless the artist or artist's estate has released rights. If "PD-art" reasoning (Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.) applies, then the photographer's claims are irrelevant here. AnonMoos (talk) 10:05, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
Se here for a funny one: WLM coordinator says that «If any of the files are deleted before this date, or if further deletion requests of this type appear, the organizers will refrain from any further support to Wikimedia Commons regarding image categorization». Yep, let that sink in — blackmail, from guys who are actually getting paid for what most of us do for free.(Striken at 19:16, 25 September 2015 (UTC): it is “only” blackmail for free, not paid for, after all…) Aint it funny or what? -- Tuválkin✉✇14:51, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
Without knowing anything about the background here, as the account you link to states "I am no longer interested in working on this project [Commons]", they are can no longer be interested in WLM projects either. The Commons community can presume they do not speak for any part of the WLM programme or its visionary goals for open knowledge. Rather than funny, it seems overly dramatic, if this is a response to deletion discussions resulting from unresolved copyright problems. --Fæ (talk) 15:44, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
Fæ, I called it funny as a figure of speech. I think this matter, and several others in the same vain, to be positively horrifying. -- Tuválkin✉✇19:16, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
I am the organizer of WLM in Russia this year, and it is extremely naive to reject this fact. If you still don't believe it, check here (in Russian).
I have written in the deletion request and I confirm it here that all non-FoP images will be presented to Commons admins for deletion as soon as WLM ends on October 31 and images are transferred to other projects. We can't organize proper image transfer earlier. Regarding categorization, Atsibot has done it for thousands of images, but it will, of course, stop any activity if it turns out that the Commons community is completely ignorant to the work that we are doing for them. Of course, we do it for free. It is very hard to get money for prizes in Russia (note that we can't get any support from WMF because of the current Russian legislation), and we obviously have nothing to pay ourselves.
Tuválkin, many if not most of WLM organizers are volunteers and do what they do for free. I agree that this line from Alexander was unnecessary − I kind of understand where he’s coming from, and the reason for the moratorium he asks, but I don’t think there was any need for this ultimatum − but let’s not escalate all that by throwing things about paid vs unpaid and so on, shall we? Jean-Fred (talk) 17:20, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
That line was harsh but intentional. The deletion request in question was not a standard one with 1-2-5 non-FoP images. It contained 200+ files that I myself have put in a special category for image transfer. So it was pretty obvious that someone will take care of these files, and they are selected with purpose. Instead of asking me or any of the Russian WLM organizers, one user (whom I won't mention in order to avoid further drama) decided to request the deletion of all these images at once without even checking that all of them should be deleted. Some of these photos were in fact old sculptures that are in PD since ages. You can see this from several images crossed out in the original deletion request.
Now, if you are unhappy with the ultimatum, it is in fact Commons users who started with this. Good files that are used in other projects are nominated for deletion and deleted after 7 days without informing any of the end users. This is an ultimatum. Endless ultimatum. I myself have saved hundreds of photos that we would simply miss because of this nice and careless deletion procedure. If all of you feel just fine to ruin the content that others create, why would you expect us to be soft and nice here? Especially in situations where we invested days and months of our time into running something like WLM, and the results of this WLM are completely destroyed because someone can't wait 2 months before files are deleted. --Alexander (talk) 17:45, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
Alexander, I also agree that the Deletion Request was unfortunate (even sloppy − as a general rule DRs that cover hundreds of files are rarely helpful), and that was not the brightest idea of the nominator ; but I also know that DRs are a (unfortunately) all-to-common mechanism here for « this needs to be discussed ». I simply regret how this all escalates so hard (a careless DR → a « harsh but intentional » line from you → Tuvalkin posting here about « blackmail » → what’s next?). For the record, I happen to be fairly involved in WLM so there really is no need for a us/them vision here. Now, folks seem to agree that there’s no rush, that we’re glad people are on deck with this, that we are happy cool content is here. So in definitive, the way I see it with my Assume-Good-Faith-Glasses™: « Nominator: “Hey, what’s up with these files?” ; WLM organiser: “Yeah, it can be tricky, but we take care of it. Fine waiting a few weeks about it?” ; Everybody: “Sure! Keep up the good work :-)” » Yes, I’m that AGF ;-)
I am certainly fine with this. However, it is not the first time that we have big problems with this particular nominator, and it's another reason why I was harsh (again, intentionally). Several months ago we could not do anything with hundreds of similar files deleted during a very short time, even though most of them were used on Russian Wikipedia. I still have a large amount of these files on my computer, because I could not organize proper image transfer, and uploading each file manually is, of course, a very time-consuming process. This massive file deletion had its repercussions on Russian Wikipedia where many people have (rightfully, in my opinion) claimed that Wikimedia Commons is a useless project that has its own goals, which are orthogonal to the goals of Wikipedia. Some of the Commons admins were aware of this discussion, but, unfortunately, no action was taken. This made possible the new massive deletion request that we discuss right now, and this was going to be vicious circle. I am happy that you want to break it, and I am very thankful for your active involvement, although we still have to see whether it will put an end to quick deletion of images, at least Russian images, that are useful and that are used by many WMF projects.
PS. Note also that deletion requests completely demotivate WLM participants, so they are obviously a very bad mechanism for «this needs to be discussed», at least in the WLM context. --Alexander (talk) 00:42, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
I do recognize your point about demotivation. Maybe we should just rename the process “Files for discussion” (just like we have “Categories for discussion”), to at least sound less hostile... Food for thought :)
(after edit conflict) @Tuválkin: Who is getting paid? Give a source for your statement or withdraw it. This kind of statements do not help in any way to get a solution for the situation.
And for my understanding, the local Wiki Loves Monuments team has tried to find a solution that respects the rules/guidelines from Commons but also at the same time tries to find/use the most practical way to participate in Wiki Loves Monuments.
Also they seem to indicate that they feel being frustrated by other users who show a lack of understanding of their situation and follow the guidelines/rules in a blind and too strict way. Those other users who follow the guidelines too strictly in such way that they miss the goal of what the Wikimedia movement tries to do, by thinking about this subject too simplistic.
Seeing a reaction about refraining support shows that there has not been an appropriate dialogue why it should be deleted soon, and that the situation has been worsened too much already. As result the frustration levels are too high.
And calling refraining support "blackmail" I can only call stupidity, because there is no support for assuming bad faith and Hanlon's razor. Let's try to have a normal discussion first instead of starting false accusations. Romaine (talk) 17:33, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
Because fair-use images should fulfill certain requirements. First of all, they should be used in the Wikimedia project where they are transferred to. All files in questions were uploaded very recently, so it takes time before they are linked from Wikipedia and Wikivoyage. Some of the linking can be done automatically, but as soon as we have more than one photo of a monument, we have to decide which photos to use and which photos to sacrifice because one can't accommodate an arbitrary large amount of fair-use images. All this work takes time, and we can't do it actively before October 1 because we have other tasks in September. --Alexander (talk) 19:31, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
And to the community in general: can we perhaps come up with a gentler way to inform newbies who upload reasonable-seeming images that are FOP violations? - Jmabel ! talk17:57, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
+1 to @Jmabel: . As I say above, Deletion Requests are the common mechanism here for « this needs discussion », but they quite understandably disturb good-faith uploaders. We should come up with a better system. Jean-Fred (talk) 00:19, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
I could imagine writing a small bot script to mirror any WLM images and their text pages under discussion to a handy public flickrstream or similar. If any get deleted they could still be reviewed and restored to other projects later. Though it's hardly ideal and I'd only be interested in spending my free time on it if folks want solutions in a collegiate way. --Fæ (talk) 18:02, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
This would be better than nothing, but the problem is not restricted to WLM images. It is about non-FoP images in general. Regarding WLM images, the easiest solution has been proposed and agreed upon by several admins. Everything stays on Commons till October 31. Then all non-FoP images are deleted at once. We can consider a different strategy for next year (if we ever continue to upload WLM images on Commons, given the attitude demonstrated in the beginning of this thread), but this year it is much easier to proceed with the strategy that has been agreed upon. --Alexander (talk) 19:31, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
I'd have no problem with that last, as long as we come up with a template to use as a tag on the images that are liable to be deleted (probably should place them in a maintenance category as well). And, yes, we need to come up with a more robust strategy next year, probably a tag that indicates time of upload that these images will need review, much as we often do on batch uploads. - Jmabel ! talk19:50, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
I don't see how it is different from what I am already doing. All "suspicious" images are placed into a special category. Then both humans and bots can work with this category, and they are indeed planning to do so over the next month. The best thing now is not to disturb me with complaints and accusations like those in the beginning of this thread. --Alexander (talk) 20:04, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
I for my part agree with Atsirlin. I talked with him via email as well and I do understand the problem the team is facing. So far, as I see, all no-fop files from the WLM event are in a special category. A category designed to transfer all non-fop cases to local projects and delete the files on Commons in one big sitting. No template needed. For next year it would be advisable to have one. Right now we are fine. DR backlog is long enough, no need to add several DRs with lengthy discussions. --Hedwig in Washington(mail?)23:08, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
Sorry, but since we have Wikibase, why monuments which are not allowed by FoP in country of origin are still not warned BEFORE uploading? This should reduce number of misunderstandings. And all previous WLM stepped on same rake many times... — Preceding unsigned comment added by EugeneZelenko (talk • contribs)
Sorry, I do not understand how Wikibase is related to this issue. The WLM participants are warned about FoP problems, but 90% of the participants are completely new wiki-users who do not even know how to leave messages on the talk page. They can't (and they won't) care about long sophisticated texts about FoP and non-FoP. This is normal. We could simplify things a bit by labeling which objects are copyrighted and which are not, but this requires one to go through more than 100 thousand objects, and, apparently, nobody from Commons is interested in doing this tedious work (neither the organizers are interested, because we better deal with 1000 non-FoP images already uploaded than with 100 000 objects in the list). Lastly, it turns out that here on Commons parts of architectural monuments, such as sculptures on the building or inside subway stations, are considered non-architecture and thus not subject to FoP in Russia. We as the organizers consider this as an essentially weird and hostile approach, but we can't (and we won't) try to argue with fanatics of copyright who typically dominate deletion requests here. The difficult part is that for a given object you can't say a priori whether a photo is covered by FoP or not. What should one do in this case?
Regarding other countries, thousands of non-FoP photos were uploaded in the Ukrainian WLM last year. One infamous user who was recently de-admined on Commons made continuous effort and nominated many of them for deletion. Luckily, he was not very careful in going through categories, and many of the images are still available. But hundreds were lost... Nothing new, basically. I am just making more noise about the problem, and so you see it, finally. --Alexander (talk) 15:02, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
@Atsirlin: With caustic remarks like "fanatics of copyright who typically dominate deletion requests here" and the fact you are still using your user page to publicly state "I don't want to have anything in common with Wikimedia Commons", I am surprised that you want to lead a WLM project which is de facto tied to Wikimedia Commons. I have no interest in researching everything you and others have written on related DRs, but going by your responses here, which will probably be the first time most members of the Commons community will read your thoughts, the level of dramatic spin and persistent hostility make you appear quite unsuitable to officially represent either WLM or Commons. I hope you have a change of heart after some reflection, and will be able to discuss solutions to copyright problems in a collegiate way in the future. --Fæ (talk) 15:21, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
I will discuss copyright problems in a collegiate way as soon as I see the same approach here. What I heard for months was the following: "Images should be deleted from Commons, and we don't care about other projects". Is it collegiate way of handling the problem? I don't think so.
The current situation with WLM images looks reasonable, because we are allowed to work within a reasonable time frame. I have mentioned that I am fine with this approach, and I am thankful to everyone who made it possible. What else do you expect from me?
Finally, I consider your attempts to instruct me about the content of my user page as highly unpolite. I know that the text is provocative. It is intended to be provocative because non-provocative approaches simply do not work here.
Regarding the organization of WLM in Russia, you are welcome to contact the Russian chapter and discuss whether I am a suitable person for doing this work. In the meantime, I represent WLM in Russia, at least in the year 2015, and you will have to live with that. By the way, I don't see how WLM is tied to Commons beyond the fact that Commons is a common image repository for all Wikimedia projects. --Alexander (talk) 17:02, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
lol, warning people not to get dramatic on comoons is hilarious. WLM happens every year, do you think people could not bite the newbies once a year? could we agree on a process to curate the uploads? it's the old delete first ask questions later; you should expect people to get irate about deletion just as you might be. and admins stomping off after getting a wrist slap has never happened before. WLM seems to get the work done, let them. Slowking4♡Richard Arthur Norton's revenge03:43, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
In the last 24 hours I have seen quite a few 503 errors when uploading via the Commons API (HTTP Error 503: Service Unavailable). This results in the upload being re-tried and succeeding but leaving the text page blank. See example from today and this user page discussion. This error only started to be an issue on the 25th September, the same upload process not exhibiting this problem in the weeks preceding. Is there a known WMF operational problem or system change that may be the root cause of this drop-out issue? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 16:25, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
How exactly should we proceed when we find a typo (in this case affecting a title) in data uploaded from another site? File:FMIB 40519 Companularia minuta (Nutting) A and B Hydfrothecae.jpeg, in title and elsewhere, Companularia should be Campanularia (it's quite clear on the illustration itself).
I'm guessing we should change the title and leave a redirect, but tell me if you disagree.
Should we edit the description just like we would any other description? If not, what should we do?
Should we somehow inform the holders of the source data?
Spelling error of scientific name of a species is fully within COM:FR as a reason to rename a file. Warning the source owners is a nice thing to do, too. -- Tuválkin✉✇11:35, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
That file comes from this batch upload request, which doesn't involve anyone actually affiliated with the source, so I don't think there's anyone who needs to be notified in this case, especially given that it's an obvious typo. BMacZero (talk) 16:39, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
September 27
What to do with non-Roman alphabet filenames?
It's a long time since I've dealt with this, so I need a bit of a refresher and I cannot remember where to get it from, so here is a good start. I recently came across a few files which have names in a non-roman alphabet (Armenian / HY) (example:
); now to my recollection, files are supposed to have a descriptive filename to aid in being found. So, with that in mind, how do we go about filenames like this? Obviously, they may be descriptive in Armenian, but to me at least, I haven't a clue... BarkingFish (talk) 11:40, 27 September 2015 (UTC)EDITED: 11:45, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
There is nothing to do. Filenames are comletely unimportant. Tet the people from other countrys her Filenames. Not all speak english. --Ralf Roleček14:46, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
You're not being rude or inconsiderate, Tuválkin. As I said, it's been a very long time since I've done anything like this, and I need reminding. I got reminded, and I now know that I need to do precisely nothing! Cheers for the assist, and don't be afraid to be blunt with me, I do the same with everyone else 😊 BarkingFish (talk) 16:25, 27 September 2015 (UTC)_
Lenin jacket with bullet holes
I took a photo of Nikolai Lenin's jacket with bullet holes when it was on display at the former Lenin Museum in Moscow. Can I upload it, or is it under somebody else's copyright? Thanks. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 21:10, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
As far as I'm concerned, you should be able to upload it; if you took the photo, it would be classed as Own Work, unless the museum has their own rules... Any other thoughts? BarkingFish (talk) 22:01, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
I don't think a jacket can get a copyright anywhere, so it should be OK. Killing people or making bullet holes in it do not either. ;o) Regards, Yann (talk) 10:02, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
By the way, "Nikolai Lenin" seems to be an old name confusion; I don't think he ever really went by that combination of names... AnonMoos (talk) 06:58, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
September 26
Public pianos at train stations
In Europe there is a trend to place pianos in the main train stations for members of the public to play on. This is a big succes with the players being generaly of a high level. Could we create a category for this? and to take pictures and move files to the category?Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:50, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
We have "Category:Street pianos" (see also "w:Street piano"), but maybe this category is better used for pianos that are situated in open-air venues. Perhaps the following category tree could be created:
Well it should be "railway stations", not "train stations", but I'd be dubious as to whether we really need to disperse this category yet. -mattbuck (Talk) 09:09, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
Noob tries to change an image on a page... hilarity ensues
So this noob saw on a WMF wiki’s page an image the noob thought could be improved — it was a placeholder image, and the noob knew there was a better image in Commons. Then this noob clicked on the image, and eventually come to the file page of that placeholder image in Commons. There the noob in question edited the placeholder’s filepage and transcluded the better image — or tried to: Not with [[File:Example.jpg|thumb]] but with [[File:Http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Example.jpg|thumb]]… We all know what happens after this kind of edits: A mild wrist slap and a few pointers to the Help: name space — unless of course the said noob’s account name includes the string x005F x0028 x0057 x004D x0046; x0029;, in which case looks like nobody dares to do anything… -- Tuválkin✉✇21:35, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
That seems a bit snide... Its entirely understandable that a recent WMF hire, in a non-technical role, is not familiar with wikis. I don't particularly understand why the foundation doesn't give their new hires a crash course in MW. Notwithstanding that, its not like the foundation is going to bite your head off, if, seeing a confused staffer, someone gives her a polite note helping her accomplish whatever she's trying to do. Bawolff (talk) 04:52, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
What's your intention? That the images get used on book or magazine covers? Such an image is quite likely to be cropped and arranged such that a plain bit (e.g., sky) is located where the title/author or other text appears. The image doesn't even have to fill the cover space. I don't think the source-image aspect ratio is particularly important. -- Colin (talk) 07:03, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
But the image doesn't have to fill the space on a desktop background, either, and there's certainly an option to crop desktop backgrounds. Pretty much anything in the featured desktop backgrounds is going to be very hard to use to fill a full-page cover; File:1928 Model A Ford.jpg, for one example, can't be cropped to come close. I don't want to see the perfect to be the enemy of the good here.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:57, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
Done That was a one messy template. Anna reg, I simplify it a bit by breaking it down into smaller pieces and it should work now. The situation with months is a bit confusing since months 1 and 2 are beginning and end of theme 1 and 2 and months 3 and 4 are begining and end of theme 3. That is an original design which is not well documented. --Jarekt (talk) 03:07, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
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Info I think it's better to finish this over at CfD: Commons:Categories for discussion/2015/09/Category:Heat blur --El Grafo (talk) 09:43, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
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