Commons:Village pump/Archive/2016/05

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WLE 2016: translation admin help

can someone please mark the last version of Template:Upload campaign header wle-de/i18n and of Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2016 for translation? Holger1959 (talk) 00:13, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
the template seems ok now (was a cache issue maybe). But the main contest page still lacks relevant corrections which are not possible in translated versions without help. 18 edits at the moment waiting for review. Holger1959 (talk) 15:35, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

@Steinsplitter: Can you do this? ★ Poké95 04:31, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
✓ Done Jean-Fred (talk) 14:09, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: ★ Poké95 03:37, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Cleanup

Can somebody remove the useless tags from File:Sesotho vowel chart.gif? Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:05, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Ok: do we really need these:
- "NOTE: "subject to disclaimers" below may not actually apply (...)"
- "Zyxoas at the English language Wikipedia, the copyright holder of this work (...)"
- "Note: This tag should not be used. For images that were released (...)"? If "Zyxoas at the English (...)" is wrong/outdated, why not replace it with an appropriate, current tag? Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:33, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
I'm asking whether they should be removed, and which tag should replace the "Zyxoas at the English (...)" one. I wouldn't be writing here otherwise. Mr KEBAB (talk) 12:22, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
✓ Done it was uploaded to enwiki before GFDL-self was explicitly without disclaimers. Storkk (talk) 12:29, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
Thanks! Mr KEBAB (talk) 12:53, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: ★ Poké95 03:36, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Something broke in Template:Commons policies and guidelines

Template:Commons policies and guidelines was a compact template with many policies listed in one line. Something broke and now we have one policy per 2 lines. Can someone investigate? I can not right now. --Jarekt (talk) 17:05, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Maybe this recent edit in {{Localized link}} by @Riley Huntley: is causing the extra line? The noinclude-cat should be better placed below... Gunnex (talk) 18:20, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
✓ Fixed; my bad, thanks for bringing this to my attention. I forgot this was template would be sensitive to the line break. Riley Huntley (talk) 18:23, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
Thank you Gunnex and Riley for fixing this. --Jarekt (talk) 18:26, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: ★ Poké95 03:34, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata data

Can we move the wikidata data to the bottom of the category page, instead of the top? It is out of place at the top and is a distraction. See Category:Philippines Delphi234 (talk) 17:39, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

✓ Done for this example, standard practice (from what I've seen) is at the bottom of the page. ~riley (talk) 01:18, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
That's my country... ★ Poké95 03:33, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: ★ Poké95 03:33, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Malware on linked site

File:Branta canadensis portrait.jpg has a link to the photographer's website, [http://foto.andreas-trepte.de Andreas Trepte]. Wondering where the photo was taken (nothing on the page mentions a location), I visited the URL, but my AVG Free immediately warned me that it had quarantined a Trojan horse. What do we generally do with an infected URL? For one thing, the image has been here for ten years, so it's likely that the URL got infected long after upload. Moreover, File:Branta canadensis juv.jpg makes it clear that "Andreas Trepte" is merely the real name of the uploader, User:Merops. Perhaps replace [http://foto.andreas-trepte.de Andreas Trepte] with [[User:Merops|Andreas Trepte]]? Just remove the link? Something else? Nyttend (talk) 14:57, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Can we link to an uninfected version of the site in the Wayback Machine closer to the upload date? That would seem to be an option; otherwise, linking to the user seems to be another. Rodhullandemu (talk) 15:02, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
Sorry for the trouble. It's my website. I have checked the site with four online scannern and can't find any trojan horse or malware. Merops (talk) 18:31, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
I am also unable to find evil code on the page. Likely this was a false positive by AVG Free. --Steinsplitter (talk) 18:50, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

May 02

Wikidata support: arbitrary access is here

Hey folks :)

As I announced a while ago we just enabled arbitrary access for you. This means you can now access all the data on Wikidata from any page on this wiki. Previously it was only possible to get data from Wikidata for the item that is directly connected to the page here. So for example Category:Berlin could only get data from the item on Wikidata about the category for Berlin.

Please do migrate gradually and maybe start with some smaller templates so we can see if there are any problems. If you encounter any problems or have questions please let me know.

I hope you'll build cool things with this and make your work here easier. This is another major step for Wikidata support for Wikimedia Commons. The next big step is actually enabling you to store the meta data for a file here like its license or creator in a structured and machine-readable way. This is still a lot of work for us and will take quite a bit more time. We're working on that and will show you very very early and ugly prototypes next month or so. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:40, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

\o/ Jean-Fred (talk) 13:23, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
So typing "{{#property:P36|from=Q183}}" returns "Berlin". Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:49, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
Great news! BMacZero (talk) 20:25, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
A little more options with {{Data}} template: "{{Data|property=P36|item=Q183}}" returns "Berlin"--Jarekt (talk) 03:53, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
Wonderful ! I'm will look into what can be done for monuments templates like {{Mérimée}} and {{Palissy}}. Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 15:00, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Commonist Vicuna Bash and Python

Simple question- is there anyone active maintaining Commonist or Vicuna? Is anyone with programming skills that is thinking of working on a fork? Has any one put together a repository of bash scripts or working python snippets that could be used to put together a efficient easy to teach tool.

My starting point is that of a trainer- I need a tool that is easy to explain to a room full of U3A types who would love to share folders full of their previous research work. Getting them into the room was hard enough, they are semi-comotose by time they have had notability, tables and referencing explained to them. We need something easy- that is within their outdated computer skills.

  • Pyrenamer is great for batch fixing filenames- but doesn't allow for uploads, describing, geotagging and simple cropping and straightening.
  • Shotwell viewer is great for simple cropping and straightening, but doesn't describing, geotagging, do batch, or uploads.
  • Commonist is a great batch upload tool- but won't do batch renames, geotagging is messy, and simple cropping and straightening could happen if it would just call Shotwell instead of the build inviewer.
  • Then there is Vicuna- that has workable widgets- does call Shotwell, but looks like nothing our clients have ever seen. The developer appears to have abandoned it around November. It is a great proof of concept- but is there any way we can help him get it right. There appears to be a need to design a skinnned front end that allows us to customise the user experience for our clients.

Are there any python libraries that are still supported- so we can write addons? Is anyone still working in bash? Have they made them user friendly!?

The simple question is there anyone active maintaining Commonist or Vicuna? The rest of the paragraphs above are merely there to send a message to any new and talented programmer that the community is full of ideas and would love someone to take the lead and put our ideas into practice. --ClemRutter (talk) 21:31, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

To answer your question about python: Pywikibot is active and maintained. Quite recently most of the upload logic was refactored and I tested it. Multichill (talk) 19:00, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
If you are more looking for an image editing software with upload-to-Commons capabilities, you may be interested in Commons:KIPI uploader, a KIPI plugin for some KDE family software (Digikam, KPhotoAlbum, ShowImg, Gwenview, KSquirrel) ; or for closed-source Lightroom Commons:LrMediaWiki Jean-Fred (talk) 15:05, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

April 28

Bot for redlinked sources?

The file File:F-orbitals.png directly links to a source that was deleted over copyright concerns, using a template's source field. Is there a bot to flag that sort of thing? Should there be? (Note: in this particular case the book "High School Chemistry" with these figures is on Wikibooks, and I suspect the deletion might therefore be the thing in error, but I don't know. Flagging and figuring out what to do are two different things...) Wnt (talk) 18:08, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-18

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • The visual editor now works when you use Internet Explorer 9. [1]

Problems

  • There was a security problem with the MobileFrontend extension. It showed information that had been oversighted. This has now been fixed. [2]

Changes this week

Meetings

Future changes

  • Pages could be added to new users' watchlists by default when they edit them. New users could also by default get email notifications when pages they watch are edited. This is discussed on Meta. [4]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:09, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

May 03

Dealing with accounts of dead users

As far as I know, we have no established procedure for dealing with accounts of users whose deaths have been confirmed. Following the recent death of User:Dravecky (not particularly active here, but an en:wp admin), I asked at COM:AN for advice on what we did following the confirmed death of a Commons user; the response made me guess that there was no procedure.

With this in mind, I'm making two proposals, which of course are mutually exclusive:

I have no preference for either of these over the other, but I'm confident that we should adopt one or the other. Of course, writing a new set of guidelines would take a while, so I'd also suggest that if we choose to write something new, we follow the en:wp page until our new guidelines are complete. Nyttend (talk) 01:33, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

We have Commons:Deceased contributors, and its talk page. It might be a bit more difficult to get an exact procedure put together here than at en.wiki considering the many countries Commons users come from and the different languages spoken. A general guideline would be good though. INeverCry 01:44, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
I would add that I agree with what Riley Huntley says at AN; the blocks are unnecessary as are the userpage blanking and full talk protections. Only a few of the users with memorial entries at Commons:Deceased contributors are blocked. I'd love to see User:Dravecky unblocked along with the others. INeverCry 02:17, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
The opt out procedure is rather bizarre, fortunately the four contributors are alive and kicking (not listed on COM:MISS.) Thanks for the solution (see below) in this case. –Be..anyone 💩 02:31, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
on itwiki I'm quite sure we don't have a guideline but i think we block the user, probably we block the user's page (never checked, although minor corrections like removal of obsolete cats have to be performed by sysops I guess), the talk is available for comment, but I don't remember any blanking of the user pages. I am misinterpreting some word here? I am assuming "blanking" is when you delete the whole page and put something like a template on it?--Alexmar983 (talk) 11:58, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I strongly agree with the user block policy. Account may be at risk for legal reasons. I would also clearly states if not blocked that at least users flag should be removed. Think the bad taste if someone send a mass message to sysops for a meta policy discussion or to autopatrolled users for some new tool available or something similar and some of the recipients are dead.--Alexmar983 (talk) 11:57, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
  •  Support indefblocking accounts of deceased users for safety reasons,  Strong oppose protection of their talk pages as already stated;  Oppose blanking user page and/or user talk page because I don't see any reason; but  Support adding there a notice that the user has died, or a template for this case, like they do in Russian WP. --A.Savin 13:31, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I agree with blocking the account, since literally nobody's supposed to be using it; a single edit is proof of compromise, so blocking makes sense. We can always unblock in the unlikely event that the death report is greatly exaggerated; the not-so-dead user will know how to post a diff or otherwise alert us while logged out, and sanctioning an IP for block-evasion in this case would be absurd. I agree that we shouldn't full-protect talk pages; while I can't point to it, I remember having to ask an admin to create a DR because the creator's talk page was fully protected, and the script wouldn't proceed when it couldn't edit the creator's talk page. Nyttend (talk) 19:01, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
  • If there were serious safety/legal concerns regarding these deceased accounts, wouldn't a global locking policy make more sense than a few scattered local blocks? INeverCry 19:34, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
  • As virtually nobody's particularly active on more than a few wikis (perhaps Meta, Commons, and a few Wikipedias or other single-language projects), a few blocks would cut off virtually everything at which a user was active. Is there a global policy against permitting multiple people to edit from an account? If there's no such global policy, mandating a global lock for a deceased user would be a bad idea, because it would potentially get rid of accounts that some wikis would permit, e.g. imagine that the Bahasa Indonesia Wikipedia would permit (either explicitly or by lack of prohibition) someone else to keep editing with my account after my death. Lacking a global policy, the global lock would potentially get in the way of local policy. Nyttend (talk) 19:53, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
  • If these accounts are a real risk, we've got 94 unblocked deceased accounts at Commons:Deceased contributors, many of which have been dead for years. I've never heard of an issue with any of them. The blocking rationale is a phantom. Why would a deceased account be any more risk than a retired account? We don't block those, and there are thousands of them. We even leave some user rights like autopatrolled on retired accounts. I  Oppose blocking deceased accounts, as I don't see the any real point to it. INeverCry 21:09, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
  • If you retire, you're entirely able to un-retire, and there's no fundamental problem with your account making edits post-retirement. If you die, you're not able to un-retire, and a dead user's account that's still making edits is obviously compromised; once you die, your account cannot make further edits that are permitted by policy. Might as well just block the account, as long as it's done with a clear statement that it's purely because of the user's death, and done with settings that won't restrict account creation or impose autoblocks. Nyttend (talk) 22:13, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I won't get into how long many of these retired accounts have been inactive, or how few editors return after 3+ years of retirement, or even how many known sockpuppets are left unblocked because they're "stale", but what seems strange to me is that we're talking about making a policy that would require admins here to block at least the 94 deceased accounts from Commons:Deceased contributors that I mention above, some of which belonged to editors who died more than 10 years ago. Blocking these accounts seems like a waste of time to me, or just busy work, but it's not a big deal one way or the other of course. My oppose to blocking them isn't terribly serious, though the blocking rationale "dead user" is a bit crass and insensitive if you ask me. I hope that doesn't become policy. INeverCry 05:53, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I think, blocking deceased accounts should be allowed (e.g. for cases where there are safety concerns), but of course it doesn't have to be mandatory, especially not for accounts with just some dozens of edits. --A.Savin 07:30, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
INeverCry talking about blocking I was thinking in fact to do it at meta level... I am the one who would prefer a meta policy with some guidelines (at least a list of standard possibilities that local platforms may or may not adopt) and I support in a SUL system some more meta-oriented user-related policies when possible on "formal" aspect. Just for an example: rumor has it that the babel template is becoming centralized, probably a deceased user template is not too futuristic to imagine. I would prefer to have a meta discussion to "discuss" ("process"?) the death of a user because in the end the level of crosswikiness is increasing and user do not belong to a single platform community anymore. But we have non-linear process on wiki so I am used to think step by step... plus it is not a "nice" topic so... I am not going to open it on meta right now.--Alexmar983 (talk) 15:11, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
From the Terms of Use: "You are responsible for safeguarding your own password and should never disclose it to any third party." So, any use of deceased user accounts by anybody else would violate this clause. Ruslik (talk) 11:54, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
See the 4.9.6. quote near the top of this page for a good summary, although one that excludes "must"; in legal documents, such as the Terms of Use, "should" and "should not" are forceful recommendations, but if you disregard them, you're ns. Tot in violation. "You should never disclose" is saying that it's a horrid idea, a piece of seasoned advice: very different from "you shall never disclose", a formal prohibition, the violation of which will cause you to be istan breach of the terms of use. Nyttend (talk) 12:04, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
In practice any account whose password is known to any third party is always treated as compromised and is locked. Ruslik (talk) 13:15, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

I would have commented sooner but couldn't but I was going to suggest something similar to what Alexmar983 did above. I know every community likes dealing with this sort of thing on their won but for something like this I really think a WMF Wikiwide Meta RFC would be the best way to go. I think the WMF, or at least the broader community should make a decision on how to deal with accounts of deceased editors globally. Obviously I don't think anyone wishes these folks ill nor is anyone wanting to gravedance, but I also don't think there is a lot of point to keeping the accounts unlocked with full privileges. The talk pages and userpages are there to assist that user and so others can discuss things with them. If they are deceased, then that is unlikely to happen. Reguyla (talk) 17:42, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

  • This is an issue I haven't given much thought to, but I see several people suggest commons look to the en.wiki process. That confuses me, as I have seen several instances where I have seen established en.wiki contributors had put themselves on a waiting list, that allowed them to usurp an the wikiname of another contributor who had gone inactive. Well, some fraction of those inactive contributors will be people who died, and we didn't learn about the death.
Personally I don't think a policy that lets names be usurped should ever have been implemented, anywhere. That en.wiki has this policy suggests to me commons should not follow its examples. Geo Swan (talk) 21:32, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Is it really a good use of our time to try to figure out who is dead? Commons:Deceased contributors should probably be Commons:Contributors thought to be deceased. I am a long time reader of Peter Neumann's long-running RISKS digest, which has addressed the terrible problems for living people who have been reported as dead due to human error, or malice. It is a terrible problem, cripples the individual's credit rating. False reports of death is so rare that there are no mechanisms for correction. 60 minutes devoted an episode to this recently.
The US Government, foolishly used to distribute its lists of the recently deceased, to financial institution, and insurance companies, on CDROM -- a read-only medium. This made it so difficult to correct entries for those wrongfully reported as dead, that most institutions never bothered doing so.
Why the heck should we plunge in here, potentially complicating the lives of people who aren't actually dead?
I agree with the opinion expressed above, that reversibly blocking the ID, is a sensible precaution, with instruction to the individuals on how to get the block reversed, if they aren't dead. I see no reason to blank the user page or user talk page. They may contain information useful to active contributors.
Someone might suggest procedures where OTRS, or some other committee, could try to reliably confirm reports of death. But, why should we distract ourselves from our primary goals to do this? Anyone who wants to leave a note on their talk page, saying how they appreciated their efforts, can do so without Commons taking an official position confirming that they are dead.
I doubt many of us would have a problem reversibly blocking IDs that had been inactive, for N years, without taking an official position as to whether the individual was dead or alive. Geo Swan (talk) 22:06, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

stopping video2commons

Hello.Why can not we stopping video2commons when transferring wrong video (Example)?Thank you --ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 08:59, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

@ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2: The feature isn't implemented, and that's why there's a note saying "a task cannot be easily aborted once it is submitted". Feel free to fork the repo, implement the feature, and create a pull request :) --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 14:12, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Category:Nature strikes back

Any suggestions on how to rename Category:Nature strikes back to a less "blurb-like" title? It mainly contains plants growing in ruins, in cracks, and "wild" animals in urban situations. - Takeaway (talk) 11:24, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Something using the word "feral", which is the technical term for items such as past 2nd generation stray dog packs, naturalized anthropogenic exotica, etc. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 15:37, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
There already are categories Overgrown structures and Plants growing in cracks, which I would argue most photos belong to. Maybe start to move the photos there and see what's left? --Sebari (talk) 19:58, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
I can start on it one of these days. Feel free to help out. In a broader sense, there's also an overlap with Category:Natural hazards. - Takeaway (talk) 20:35, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Request for comments on Mediawiki about interactive maps

FYI. Some users interested in maps here on commons could take a look at mw:Maps/Conversation about interactive map use.--Alexmar983 (talk) 07:19, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

May 05

When can we move/copy this file here?

en:File:Jacques Offenbach - A. Jannin - Robinson Crusoé.jpg death date of artist unknown, but the image is from 1857, so it's presumably going to be safe at some point... Adam Cuerden (talk) 23:50, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

I think that it is unlikely that the file is still copyrighted anywhere. Ruslik (talk) 12:17, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
I agree. My personal cutoff date before which I think works are almost certainly PD-70 is in the mid-1860s, somewhat later for non-photographic media or where the work is unlikely to have been created by an apprentice. I know others have later dates; I think Jim's is 1885. If we assume A. Jannin was 20 when they created this, they would have to have lived until the ripe old age of 98 to make PD-70 false (going by the file page's date of 1867). Storkk (talk) 12:28, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
While I agree it's highly unlikely it's not out of copyright, it does make one a bit worried to just presume it's fine. Perhaps we could slap a en:Template:KeepLocal on the en-wiki version? Adam Cuerden (talk) 23:25, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
Adam, precisely how old would unattributed published work have to be before you would be willing to presume PD-70? - Jmabel ! talk 00:01, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
I don't know, 161 years (90 years after creation + 70 years + 1 as copyright expires the next year)? That seems to sit well with oldest person lists. This is right on the border for my very conservative counting. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:00, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

May 04

ropucha napisy pl and ang

jestem mężczyźni ropucha mniejsze i większe siebie i są fu ale jestem Ropucha szara kum kum się {subtiles english} am a toad males smaller and larger themselves and are fu but I'm gray toad to kum kum — Preceding unsigned comment was added by 77.65.80.219 (talk) 14:25, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Nonsense in Polish and English --Jarekt (talk) 16:07, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Delphi234 (talk) 03:34, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Re-users are still getting confused, and are improperly crediting our uploaders

I wrote about this problem, in January -- Our information pages misleads visitors. Some respondents there claimed I was describing a non-problem, and merely showing our re-users "don't know how to read". Some other respondents suggested upcoming changes in media-viewer might fix this problem.

Well, it is still a problem. I was recently given credit for this image by Marine insight a for-profit enterprise.

I think the contributors who say this is a non-problem, that only highlights that people "don't know how to read", have got it all wrong.

If a team who designed, built and maintained a bunch of superhighways had their attention drawn to the fact certain sections of the highway, that were close to especially tight turns, or hidden intersections, had a hugely disproportionate number of lethal traffic accidents, would we allow them to say: "we put up warning signs, that said 'dangerous curves' and 'intersection 300 metres'. If drivers continue to crash, in these sections, it is their own fault, because they clearly 'don't know how to read'".

The highway designer has to put in more warning signs, or bigger warning signs, or change the location of the warning signs. Alternately the highway designer has to go to the expense of altering the highway's route, to remove the dangerous curves and hidden intersection.

I curse that stupid mediawiki extension, every time it is presented to me. I tried to set up my preferences, so I never see it. But that doesn't always work. But I don't think it is the main problem here, as the miscrediting predates mediawiki. I think most of our re-users find the image they want in ways that don't take them through mediawiki, and it is our old usual image description pages which need to be changed.

Our image description pages -- what if, along the top, where they have other handy internal links, they had one additional link to "copyright holder", or reasonable equivalent?

What if the uploader's names were hidden, and you had to click on a button to see them?

Why can't we change how we render these pages to help prevent our well-meaning re-users from constantly making this mistake? Geo Swan (talk) 13:08, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Geo Swan I confirm the problem. It is an outstanding issue.
"Why can't we change how we render these pages to help prevent our well-meaning re-users from constantly making this mistake?" You know the reason - conversation between Wikimedia Foundation developers and the community of readers and editors is paused on this issue. It is worthwhile to bring it up as "unresolved" and to make continued demands that the Wikimedia Foundation staff and development team acknowledge the problem.
An outcome that I think is tolerable is "problem acknowledged - there are currently no resources allocated to addressing this and we assert that alternatives are worse". I think this is where the situation is. If you feel instead that the situation is that the problem is not acknowledged, then feel free to press more.
This is a serious issue that worries me but I have hope that it will be addressed eventually. I appreciate your raising the issue and think that if you wish, you should feel free to discuss the issue as you like. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:00, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
I actually don't know that developers, or those who have the authority to give them direction, have recognized and acknowledged this as a problem. I'd be happy to learn it is on a list of problems scheduled to being addressed. If you know of a list of this schedule I'd be very appreciative if you linked to it here.
Alternatives are worse? Who decided that? I suggested two simple alternatives above. If you are aware of where alternative have already been considered, and dismissed, perhaps you could link to that discussion? Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 15:10, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
Side note: if you mean MediaViewer, it can be globally disabled (if you are logged in) by putting mw.config.set("wgMediaViewerOnClick", false); into meta:Special:MyPage/global.js. Though mediaviewer appears to credit the linked file correctly, so is probably not the source of that specific misattribution. Storkk (talk) 17:34, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
Thanks Storkk.
Geo Swan The best information that I can give you is that there is no good or easy way to get the information you would need to participate in the development process or talk with someone who could assist you in communicating about the issue. Such as I can, here is what I can offer -
  • All requests for development go on Phabricator. Here is the list in Phabricator of outstanding Mediaviewer tasks.
  • User:Fabrice Florin (WMF) was the public face of presenting the Media Viewer and User:Eloquence was the one who decided when it was ready to use in Wikimedia projects. Both of them are gone from the Wikimedia Foundation. I think it is fair to say that they left in part because of Media Viewer complaints that included calls to kick them out. There were other people on the team, but so far as I know, there is no point person who discusses the Media Viewer right now.
  • Documentation on the tool is at mw:Extension:Media Viewer/About.
  • Some of the culture and story about the tool is at en:User_revolt#Superprotect and maybe there are 1000 pages of Wikimedia community discussion in a few places on-wiki for people to find.
  • The WMF just had turnover of 20% of staff, most board members, and a lot of top people. English Wikipedia's community newsletter has been discussing this for several months. On 23 March there was this story, "Exclusive: interview with interim ED Katherine Maher", where the interviewer raised the Media Viewer issue. It is a chaotic time and I do not expect anyone to make big changes on this touchy subject before getting stability in the organization and leadership.
Again, there is no clear journalism about this anywhere, and no clear path to get involved. I care a lot about attribution practices and I want development in this space. Going forward, I wish that a peaceful base of stakeholders could ask questions and get answers, including a development schedule and acknowledgement of problems. You are a very experienced Wikimedia contributor. I am not sure what you might do in this, but anything you have to say about the matter would be insightful. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:30, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Let me repeat -- the problem I described predates the introduction of mediaviewer extensions.
  • @Storkk: I just checked my commons preferences. I have the dialog box for "enable media viewer" explicitly unchecked. I am frankly surprised to learn that developers are aware, and complacent, that this is not sufficient to block media viewer.
  • I was not aware of the sad drama described at en:User_revolt#Superprotect.
  • Let me repeat -- the problem I described predates the introduction of mediaviewer extensions. I made a couple of suggestions, above, as to how we render the image description pages, that don't seem difficult to implement to me. I am disappointed that no one has commented on these suggestions. Geo Swan (talk) 11:38, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
I have yet to notice a non-WMF commons user who thinks MediaViewer is a really good idea, and to the contrary, I have seen numerous bitter criticisms of it from multiple people... so you may be preaching to the choir here. My own opinions of are that it's a mildly irritating annoyance, enough that I thought I'd share the only way to globally turn it off that I know of. I don't really have a dog in this fight, though, and it's not clear exactly what you want the community here to do, other than acknowledge the issue... I don't think adding a separate "Copyright holder" field in the {{Information}} template makes much sense, since that is (within a rounding error) ~100% of the time the Author, who is already listed. As long as the uploader is visible in the File History section (and I don't think it's realistic or reasonable to expect this to ever change), some re-users will probably get confused. Storkk (talk) 11:55, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Well I am not advocating adding a copyright holder field to the information template that would start out empty for all our existing images, nor would I advocate filling it by a robot that interpolates. Garbage in, garbage out. Except for image that have a machine parseable copyright embedded in the exif field, all determination of the copyright holder should be done by a real human being.
Let me rephrase some of the easy thing that could be done:
  1. Reduce the font size of the uploader field. The uploader field is currently displayed in a more prominent font, in a more prominent location than the current author field in the information template. I don't think this change would require any policy change. I don't think this change would require very much work.
  2. Reduce the visibility of the uploader information, so it is on a subpage, or in a hide box, where the interested reader has to click on a button, with a warning, that the uploader isn't necessarily the copyright holder.
No, neither of these steps would eliminate all confusion, particularly for those good faith re-users, who are already used to conflating uploader with copyright holder, but it would eliminate a large fraction of the confusion, with relatively little effort. Geo Swan (talk) 21:18, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
FWIW, I wouldn't oppose either proposition... but given the time and effort this would likely involve (first getting consensus, then implementing), I'm not completely sure I'd support either. Storkk (talk) 12:05, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

African World Heritage Day

Hi all

Today is African World Heritage Day and I have created a small project to help improve knowledge of African World Heritage Sites on Wikipedia in all languages. Please get involved and also share the link to encourage more people to take part. One thing I can see that would really help Commons is many of the Wikidata items do not have the Commons category linked to them.

Many thanks

John Cummings (talk) 10:58, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

POD - so many churches ...

I know, the right place to discuss PODs is the talk page there. But my comment there is unanswered since April 10.
So, what bugs me little is the constantly growing amount of churches (+monasteries, abbeys, murals etc.) in the PODs. Of course there is nothing wrong with FPs/PODs of churches and religious content, but that there are more and more of them results in a lack of of diversity of themes in general and quite a bias towards one religion in particular. See February to July, days with such images in bold:

Feb.: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 - 2 of 29
March: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 - 6 of 31
April: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 - 10 of 30
May: 1 2 4 5 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 - 14 out of 31
June: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 - 5 of 30
July: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 - 9 of 31

While Feb., March and June seem to represent are more "normal" mix of images, in all this months there is still hardly ever any other religion represented, not a single synagogue, mosque, stupa etc. Don't get me wrong, I am not asking for a (religious) quota but for a more balanced selection in general. If it were that much images of butterflies or cars I would ask for that too. --Tsui (talk) 02:05, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

The reason is, that very big parts of FP is about architecture, and churches in particular. This is because there are far more photographers on Commons from Europe/U.S./Australia, than from Africa, Middle East etc.. And also, there are no special restrictions on POTD choice and anyone may nominate any picture for any vacant day. --A.Savin 11:15, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
Are there any stats on how many people view the PoTD on Commons? I generally start off with my watchlist rather than the main page. Perhaps it would be better to simply automate some random algorithm for PoTD. Be careful with that word "bias" since it typically implies some prejudice or unfairness. There are over 20 times more churches in England than there are mosques, and most of those will be new/converted buildings or otherwise not photogenic. There is only one QI mosque in the UK and only one QI synagogue in the UK (and it's a derelict building). In contrast there are over 100 featured pictures of churches in the UK. It is up to people to take and nominate pictures of other things at FPC, otherwise, the PoTD is likely just representative of what we have at FP. Perhaps instead, we could celebrate that with church photography, Commons can hold its head high in having some of the finest images available anywhere. The same cannot be said, for example, of photographs of people. -- Colin (talk) 12:40, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
Could somebody explain to me what the abbreviations POD, FP, PoTD, POTD, QI and FPC mean? Thanks, Wouter (talk) 20:43, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
COM:POTD: Picture of the Day, COM:FP: Featured Pictures, COM:QI: Quality Images, COM:FPC: Featured Pictures Candidates. -- Colin (talk) 21:03, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
Alright, due to the areas where contributors are coming from, we have a lot more (architectural) images from the western hemisphere than from other regions of the world and among this pictures is a big amount of churches (+monasteries etc.). That's a good explanation why there are far more POtDs of such buildings than that of any other religion. It does not explain why there have to be that much images of that kind presented as POtD - 30% of April's and July's, close to 50% of May's etc., sometimes on severeal consecutive days in a row. Among the FPs this images may be a significant part, but they do not represent 30 to 50 % of all FPs.
To me, as a daily visitor of our main page here, to be honest it gets a little boring. The pictures are fine and of high quality, no doubt, but I'd rather see more diversity. If I'm the only one who feels that way, ok, than there's no reason for others to be bothered about it. --Tsui (talk) 22:14, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
Simply do some nominations yourself. --A.Savin 09:52, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Rafay Baloch Page Creation

Dear All,

I would like to request any writer to go ahead and create Pakistani cyber security expert Rafay Baloch's page.

Regardsm

But certainly not on Commons... --Magnus (talk) 13:24, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

He visto que algunas empresas cuentan con información en wikipedia sobre historia, fundadores y la interacción de la misma en la sociedad. He querido contar un poco de historia de mi empresa pero todo es borrado en unos minutos. Porque muchas páginas cuentan con la misma información y yo no puedo utilizarla? Edvega21 (talk) 14:43, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

May 07

Tech News: 2016-19

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • Wikiversities now have better access to Wikidata. They can use data from any page on Wikidata on any page on Wikiversity. This happened on May 3. [5]
  • You can use Wikipedia GapFinder to find missing articles between languages. [6]
  • Users are invited to try Cross-wiki Notifications on all wikis. This is the last test session before the release by default, scheduled for May 12th at 23:00 UTC. [7][8]
  • You can use keyboard shortcuts to open the visual editor (meta+V) or the wikitext editor (meta+E) (on certain wikis, even if you have chosen a favorite editor). [9]
  • Uploading files bigger than 100 megabytes on Wikimedia Commons required to opt-in in your preferences. This is not necessary anymore. [10]
  • The UploadsLink extension is now available on Wikimedia Commons. [11]
  • Deleting a translation unit page didn't remove the corresponding content from the translation page. This is now solved. [12]
  • Translation suggestions based on Apertium are now available on Mediawiki.org. [13]

Problems

  • MediaWiki 1.27.0-wmf.23 has been rolled back from Wikimedia wikis, due to a performance issue. [14]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 10. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 11. It will be on all wikis from May 12 (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • Today, in categories, a page titled "11" comes before "2". We plan to reorder that: "2" will come before "11". Please tell the developers if the change will cause problems. [15]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

23:22, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

May 10

Why is this a dash?

What's up with https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Trent-Severn_Waterway vs. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Trent-Severn_Waterway vs. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Trent–Severn_Waterway?

Why is the easy one suggested to be re-cat? Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:40, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Because that's how the n-dash is usually used, see w:Dash#Relationships_and_connections and the Wikipedia Manual of Style. Using a hyphen isn't strictly incorrect and our own style manual doesn't mention dashes, so that the redirect could have been made the other way as well. Ease of typing shouldn't be the reason though, as hot-cat makes suggestions for the dash-version too, when typing a hyphen. --rimshottalk 17:25, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
... which is fine for those using hot-cat, but not for those who do their own uploads through Special:Upload and simply write text. - Jmabel ! talk 19:51, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
Which is precisely why I asked. Ease of typing definitely *is* an issue, as is searchability. Let's not rely on everyone using certain tools being able to use our site. Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:31, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
A hyphen is definitely better. There are not very many edits needed to fix this. Delphi234 (talk) 08:59, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

May 06

backlog in Category:Pages using Information template with parsing errors

We have a backlog in Category:Pages using Information template with parsing errors. Bot was down and files accumulated. Help with fixing them would be appreciated. --Jarekt (talk) 13:24, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

I did a coupla dozen. DMacks (talk) 03:11, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
17,178 R NYPL American popular songs

For a couple of months I have been slowly batch uploading images from the New York Public Library. Earlier in the year the library released 180,000 images to the public domain, which was too good an opportunity to miss for our Commons collections. See the project page for more information about the techniques used and the variety of collections being uploaded.

Selected cover pages of American popular music
  • The coffee colored coon
    The coffee colored coon
  • When a nigger makes a hundred, ninety-nine goes on his back
    When a nigger makes a hundred, ninety-nine goes on his back
  • Louisiana from Havana
    Louisiana from Havana
  • All I wants is my black baby back
    All I wants is my black baby back
  • When a coon sits in the presidential chair
    When a coon sits in the presidential chair
  • My watermelon boy
    My watermelon boy
  • It takes a man to be a soldier
    It takes a man to be a soldier
  • De Captain of de Coontown Guards
    De Captain of de Coontown Guards
  • Fairy tales
    Fairy tales

An unusual collection for Commons is the excellent quality scans of music scores. This is out of copyright popular 19th century American music. A theme readily apparent in the collection is how popular it was for white performers to black-up as minstrels, singing songs with titles such as "The Coffee Colored Coon", "Little Alabama Coon" and "When a coon sits in the presidential chair" (and that's just searching for matches to "coon"). These are a fascinating collection showing use of slang terms that people readily used in 19th C. popular culture but were less apparent in books and more 'serious' publications.

The scores are being automatically cross-linked to each other, so that the pages of a music score can be easily browsed. Categorisation is where more volunteers will make a difference, as well as getting some of the cover artwork in use on relevant Wikipedia articles and making useful image crops. Over 1,000 Commons users have contributed to this work, it's great to see our community in action.

Searching the large main category is difficult, so to dig out keywords you are interested in, use searches like this, just change "Christmas" to your keywords. You can then use cat-a-lot to quickly batch add images to useful categories.

Thanks :-) --Fæ (talk) 13:09, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

Fæ I see that you are once again forcing recategorisations of your uploads by spreading them out across a whole bunch of barely related or unrelated categories. For instance, where are the "razor blades" or "celebrations" in this file? - Takeaway (talk) 13:46, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
I am unsure what you mean by recategorisations. The categories in the NYPL metadata are generally reasonable and I apply them at the time of upload if they exist as categories on Commons unless the category is marked for diffusion or sub-categorisation. In the not so good case you give, the NYPL seem to be matching keywords in the song lyrics. The 'razor blades' matches the line "Then he'd give to each coon, and every one of his kin, A razor, chicken and a quart of nigger gin." This is part of why volunteer checks are needed to help improve categorisation, the alternative would be for me to upload with nothing but a bucket category. I can add exceptions, though if a category is getting flooded I suggest using {{categorise}} on it as a fix that might then apply to other uploads and batch tools. --Fæ (talk) 14:09, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
I still don't see the razor blades mentioned in that specific file. You must be talking about another file.
There are two ways to go about affixing categories to mass uploads. One way is to dunk the files into whatever category/tag it is in at its source, which most often only clogs up broad categories and which might but often doesn't correlate with what the file shows. This forces other contributors here on Commons to clean up after you. The other way is to place the files into one specific category such as Category:NYPL American popular songs from the 19th century and then let people recategorise them when they feel like it. This way categories don't get flooded with irrelevant files which only puts people off from clearing them out. - Takeaway (talk) 14:43, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
It is a nuisance when we cat herders wake up and say, "Cor, what's all this rubbish?" after the robotrain has dumped another roughly, even inaccurately, categorised load. Perhaps a third method can make a compromise. The first, existing method is to compare NYPL keywords with existing categories and drop the load in those. The proposed alternative is to make a new, fat bucket category by source, for the whole load, and sort at leisure. Perhaps instead, a cat tree can be built inside the new library source category, with names and structure taken from the existing cats. Then categorise those as subcats of the old, proper categories. That leaves us herders to move those not entirely lost souls up to their parents and back down into topical subcats, or to kick them out of that topic entirely because the word "razor" is irrelevant to that file. To be sure, I am suggesting this with no idea how hard it would be to code or implement. Jim.henderson (talk) 17:59, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
I'm not minded to overreact. The uploads have been gradually made over the last three months and there has been no worrying pattern of complaints about flooding. When I compare to feedback from some other mass uploads I have made over the last few years relying on third party metadata, this seems to be a reasonable process and gives some confidence in the NYPL data and API. If anyone finds hundreds of files suddenly added to the same generic category, like "music", then as mentioned above I can add it to the exclusion list or simply add {{Categorise}} to the category. As some of the collections have very weak or non-existent NYPL "topics", which are used to generate prospective categories, there are parts of this collection which are only included in "bucket" categories; so it's entirely possible to switch off the extended categorization or for that matter automatically mass trim categories post-upload if there was a complex categorization blunder discovered that could not be easily fixed with cat-a-lot.
By the way, your parody of "robotrain" is unwarranted. If you take a look at the project page (here), I have deliberately taken a slow approach to these uploads. So rather than pumping all 180,000 files through the GLAMwiki toolset, which would have completed in 1/20th of the time, I am giving plenty of time for feedback from fellow unpaid volunteers as I manage the upload for each collection, each with their own characteristics and different subject domains. --Fæ (talk) 12:02, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
Fae. Aha. That is why I was confronted with a couple of hundred files trickling into Category:Waterfalls a few at a time. Don't you think you actually could have put all those old waterfall photos into one category? 99.99% of those images were of waterfalls in the United States, and all of them were from old postcards by one publisher (if I remember correctly). It shouldn't be too difficult to imagine a bucket category for that. I put most of them in to Category:Waterfalls in the United States where they now make up the vast majority of the 500+ uncategorized images there. - Takeaway (talk) 13:02, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
Fæ. And I still fail to locate any mention of "razor blades" in this file. I also can not find any mention of razor blades in this file, nor in this one, nor in this one. It would seem that the majority of the files that you have placed into Category:Razor blades do not mention razor blades at all. So why did you put them in there? - 15:20, 8 May 2016 (UTC) User:Takeway

Takeway - Alleged razor-wielding black thugs were a very prevalent stereotype in the late 19th-century U.S. (some people may know it from the "razor-totin' Jim" lyric of the song Wang Dang Doodle). Presumably some of the lyrics of the songs refer to this stereotype... AnonMoos (talk) 00:33, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

I pulled out files at random and most didn't mention razor blades. It's such a pity that just because a few files contain the word "razor", everything, including unrelated files, is suddenly categorised into category "razor blades". Similar to the uploader, I couldn't be bothered to go through them 1 by 1 so I placed them all in Category:Razor blades in popular 19th century American music. - Takeaway (talk) 02:12, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
What is especially a pity, is that Fæ missed out on an opportunity to have all these files uploaded in one go into a subcategory of Category:Historic racist caricatures of African Americans as they are now scattered all over the place but mainly taking up a huge amount of real estate on the main Category:African Americans. - Takeaway (talk) 02:25, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
I just recategorised 1718 (!!!!) files from Category:African Americans in to Category:African American culture in popular 19th and early 20th century American music. That was a huge Robotrain load! - Takeaway (talk) 12:45, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
Still around 400 images left in Category:African Americans, most of them put there by Fæ and which could have been easily categorised into categories named after the books they were culled from instead of having each and every image put into the main category separately. - Takeaway (talk) 12:56, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
What i think it is a pitty is someone like Fæ took his own time for several months and made the work of preparing, cataloguing, classifying and uploading several NYPL collections, then took this space to announce this upload and asked for help in improving the categorization and yet no one complimented him, but instead only complains and more complains. Well at least from me Fæ has my thank you. Tm (talk) 13:19, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
I've asked Fæ before to please not spread out their mass uploads over a whole bunch of (main) categories when, with the tiniest bit of thought, they could have been put into one category which in turn can be categorised in to correct categories. They don't seem to understand what the problem is with their present way of categorising each individual file into main categories. - Takeaway (talk) 13:27, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
I have suggested two fixes above which you seem to be ignoring for the sake of having a good old moan and being unpleasantly sarcastic and personal. As I suggested to you, I added {{categorise}} to the African Americans category to avoid it being picked in future, and have set up a slow housekeeping process which is removing it as a category from matching images previously uploaded. As you have bypassed this by speedily batch moving files, feel free to continue doing that if you are enjoying it. If you are not enjoying it then do something else. --Fæ (talk) 13:39, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
Appreciated Tm :-). I've pretty much written off this village pump notice as a bad idea. I doubt anyone is going to want to chip in with positive suggestions after the griping. Maybe this sort of upload is better when you are paid to do it and just fly in and fly out again when the funding stops without much personal investment. --Fæ (talk) 13:39, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
Fæ, so you feel that due to your personal investment, it's okay to needlessly overload categories with hundreds of images which could have easily been put into one category? And as for me shifting the 1718 images to their own category, what stops you from recategorising them there? They haven't disappeared have they? - Takeaway (talk) 13:49, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
I have been uploading the NYPL files since February this year. Checking my talk page archives, I can't find your past comments about this batch upload, could you provide a link? As far as I'm aware just one person made a comment last month about recategorizing some of the stereoscopic photographs added to the Tornadoes category, which was fixed there and then. With regard to 'personal investment', I take care with my batch uploads with a process of five levels of checks, including tests and checks on categories and welcome practical suggestions for how to do it better. When uploading over 100,000 images it is not reasonable to either dump the lot in a couple of bucket categories and expect anything to happen, nor is it reasonable to expect the uploader to go through all the categories manually rather than simply being responsive to issues when they arise. As I said earlier in this thread, by slowly uploading the NYPL images there have been months allowed for feedback and changes to the approach. In practice the NYPL metadata has proved sufficient to add useful categorisation without massive disruption.
Refined categorisation I have learned from experience to leave to subject matter experts (and I include GLAM catalog creators where I source my data from), or volunteers with a passion for it. This thread is a good example of why it's best to avoid debating it whenever it arises. --Fæ (talk) 14:22, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
I have asked you before when you were uploading other stuff. So all this category pollution goes back to February this year without anyone asking you to actually think first before uploading hundreds of images into main categories? Wow! I just moved 1158 of your uploaded files away from Category:Love in to the more descriptive category Category:Love in popular 19th and early 20th century American music. Which seems to me to be more "refined" than just Category:Love. - Takeaway (talk) 14:34, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
Why would categorising your uploads in to a separate, descriptive category prevent "refined categorisation"? As I wrote here above, putting 100s of images in to main categories only forces people to categorise your uploads as they otherwise flood a whole category, drowning out uploads of other users who might not be so well-versed in how the category system of Wikimedia Commons works. Putting your uploads in to descriptive subcategories changes nothing to the future refinement of the categorisation of the individual files but it does prevent category overload. - Takeaway (talk) 14:43, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
I don't see anything here as "pollution". What a nasty way to ridicule the NYPL uploads.
I've given you suggestions and we can see that the 100,000 images I've uploaded so far have resulted in exactly one request to recategorize about 100 images which was fixed the same day. This discussion is unhelpful and your sarcastic jibing will not result in a knee jerk reaction to change my processes, when there have been no complaints about the project over the last 3 months. You are obviously shifting thousands of images around to improve categorisation quite easily using cat-a-lot, which rather shows how simple it is to adjust these using standard tools if you care about the specific categories. It's hardly a wildfire so maybe you should take a break from being so deliberately unpleasant about it. --Fæ (talk) 15:20, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
I have now finished moving many of your recent music uploads that were needlessly flooding main categories (=category pollution) such as "Love", "Dreams", "Fighting", "Murder", and "Death" to their own categories, and then put these categories in to Category:Popular 19th and early 20th century American music. There you can see that thousands upon thousands of files were needlessly flooding main categories. Please stop doing that. - Takeaway (talk) 15:39, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
And indeed, it was a simple (but time consuming) exercise which could have been avoided if you had uploaded the images directly in to newly created categories instead of flooding main categories. It would have cost you very little time to create these categories before uploading to them whereas now it took me much longer cleaning up after you and probably missing some of the more obscure categories that you have uploaded these files in to.. - 15:42, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

@Fæ: For what's it worth: I prefer too many categories to too few categories. It's easier to r fix a wrong cat than it is to find images that are lacking cats. That said, I like the idea of maintenance sub-cats when there are many uploads into the same cat, that are likely to need recategorization by hand. --Sebari (talk) 21:56, 9 May 2016 (UTC) P.S.: Also thank you for uploading this valuable collection. --Sebari (talk) 21:57, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

I must confess to using unduly harsh language that could easily be taken as disrespectful and unappreciative of the generous work that Fæ and other mass uploaders have done. This discussion has increased my understanding of the difficulties they face. But then, half a day ago, I came across Category:Athletics which has mostly pictures that don't belong, the majority having arrived last August from the same industrious contributor. I doubt this comes close to being the most irritating such incident. So, I hope maintenance subcats or some other method can be applied to mitigate the nuisance going forward. Throwing another half baked idea into the pot, perhaps something can be done to mark such files in a standard way so bots from other bot tenders can identify and deal with them properly. Currently the burden is shared between us manual cat wranglers and the mass uploaders; could other minds be tapped as middlemen? Jim.henderson (talk) 00:41, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
And I just tidied up Category:Sydney by recategorising 800+ images that have been robodumped there some 10 months ago by our busy uploader, just waiting for "refined categorisation" which apparently didn't happen. If anyone feels like a "refined categoriser", go visit the newly created Category:Historical photographs of Sydney and refine away! - Takeaway (talk) 12:05, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
The categorization task I set up made little difference as you moved all the files soon after the process started. There is a big difference between making personal attacks and working collegiately. You would get better results for the project if you parked the abuse, I certainly have no motivation left to work with you after this tirade of sarcasm or examine your changes. In practice I've been automatically removing your changes from my watchlist rather than risk going near the uploads you've modified. --Fæ (talk) 12:48, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
I already asked you before to please stop uploading hundreds of images in to main categories if they could easily have been put in to their own, very refined category from which the images can be recategorised into other appropriate categories. As for us working together: I don't force you at all to work with me, but you do force me, and many others, to clean up your many, many uploads from main categories. I fail to see how uploadig hundreds and hundreds (sometimes even thousands) of images in to main categories can be seen as collegiate if they could have easily been put in to proper categories which do not needlessly pollute main categories? Ermmmmm.... recategorising images away from the main Category:Sydney that have been sitting there for 10 months in to the very appropriate category Category:Historical photographs of Sydney is too soon? - Takeaway (talk) 12:53, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
No, you have made no previous requests in relation to the NYPL project. Your griefing here was the first I read from you on it. The uploads relating to Sydney have nothing to do with the NYPL project and would have used a quite different workflow. If the upload of those images (from Flickr) was 10 months ago, you have had a very long time indeed to ask me to take a look at it. Berating me for not looking at improving something in the past when the first time you mention it is during a series of personal attacks is not only unhelpful, it's off topic and disruptive.
If you have any further requests about a past upload project or this current one, you can raise them on my talk page. I shall ignore any request where the intent is to attack me for my unpaid volunteer work or it reads as obvious disrespectful sarcasm. --Fæ (talk) 13:10, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
You really demand to be asked for each and every robodump in to main categories that you do to please not do that? LOL! - Takeaway (talk) 13:13, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
No. Feel free to read and understand what I have said here. --Fæ (talk) 13:14, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
Feel free to stop flooding categories.
As for how I found all the images that were needlessly categorised in to the main category for Sydney was because I was recategorising an image that had incorrectly categorised into another category. It was then that I stumbled upon the flooded main Sydney category. Or should I go follow your robodumps around and ask you why you needlessly flood categories every time you do it? - Takeaway (talk) 13:19, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
Your intent is to troll me into saying something unpleasant in return, consistently ignoring my original suggestions on how to improve the uploads. Why don't you go and find something else to do rather than trying to turn what could have been a helpful notice and discussion about the excellent NYPL collections into a battlefield? You have ruined this notice, you get no thanks from me for being a major dick. --Fæ (talk) 13:21, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
You need not be so defensive. A few other editors have raised the same issue here in this thread, of you flooding main categories. It would seem that if you could find another way to upload your images that doesn't entail flooding main categories, everything would be fine. There have been a few good suggestions made here in this thread already to which you still haven't replied, concentrating as you are on defending your present work-method which entails flooding main categories. - 13:25, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
If you have any further requests about a past upload project or this current one, you can raise them on my talk page. I shall ignore any request where the intent is to attack me for my unpaid volunteer work or it reads as obvious disrespectful sarcasm. --Fæ (talk) 13:27, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
I have a request for future uploads: please stop needlessly flooding main categories. (<- No sarcasm intended here) - Takeaway (talk) 13:29, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
This is off topic. If you can demonstrate how the Commons API (or any other tool) detects whether categories are "main categories", you can link to it in a polite request on my talk page. --Fæ (talk) 13:44, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
Politely requesting you here. It saves work having to request it on a permanent basis. - Takeaway (talk) 14:24, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

May 08

binary metadata in exif causes corruption of exif table

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T135079

Hi, as an example File:Conringia austriaca sl36.jpg (but there are a lot more, so it is not an individual problem) please open the metadata table at the end of the image description. The User comments shows rather long binary metadata which causes the table to explode to the right with the need to scroll to read the essential informations. How can we fix this and who can we fix this for already existing images? If this type of user comment is rubbish, it should be omitted, if it is readable, it must be converted, if it is considered to be harmful, well, … any help appreciated. As a workaround, we could limit the table size. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 12:54, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

How about just left justifying the exif table instead of centering? Delphi234 (talk) 10:01, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, that sounds like a good start. Matma Rex (talk) 23:30, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

200 km/u coaches

I created the Category:200 km/u coaches. I think it would be usefull to have a classification of railway coaches by maximum speed, starting with the 200 km/h ones. The 160 km/u ones are much more common.Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:25, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Why km/u not km/h though? Railwayfan2005 (talk) 20:34, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
OK. It is even an international required symbol independant of language in the EU. km/u comes from the Dutch version: u=uur (hour).Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:37, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
Marco Polo? Delphi234 (talk) 02:59, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Two proposals to clarify de minimis for ancillary or incidental works

After a lengthy discussion on the undeletion noticeboard on how to interpret copyright for toys, I have written up two proposals to make reasonable (and brief!) clarifications to de minimis.

Please refer to Commons talk:De minimis#Proposal to clarify de minimis policy with respect to "ancillary" or "incidental" reproduction of copyrighted works. Comments welcome, especially from those that have struggled with deletion requests in this area. --Fæ (talk) 12:27, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

May 12

MediaWiki:Mwe-upwiz-license-cc-subhead doesn't display correctly in UploadWizard

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T134049
Boo

The current version of the message MediaWiki:Mwe-upwiz-license-cc-subhead, as set per Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2015/06#Raise awareness of OTRS by including it in the Upload Wizard, is not displaying correctly in UploadWizard (the wikitext is not parsed). Generally, it's impossible to use advanced syntax (like templates and parser functions) in localisation messages that are used by JavaScript-based tools, since they don't have access to the normal MediaWiki parser. I am a bit sad that no one checked that it looks correctly after making the change :( I'm working to extend the simple parser used for this to make it possible to display the intended text (see phab:T134049 for details). I'll also need to (later) edit that page (and all translations) to use the new syntax, so just letting you know. Matma Rex (talk) 01:10, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


Found potentially useful Flickr account from 2007 with multiple celebrity shots, but need ID help.

I've found an abandoned Flickr account last used in 2007 which was clearly used by an online magazine. It is mainly photographs from a Jean-Charles de Castelbajac fashion show and a couple of parties which were obviously attended by a certain subsection of the celebrity world. A number of the people in the photos look familiar, but I have only been able to identify a few, such as Susanna Lau ("Susie Bubble") and there are a number of great shots of the members of the band Supergrass. Other subjects include designer Pearl Lowe (a Supergrass WAG), almost definitely her daughter Daisy Lowe and possibly the designer Sadie Frost. Is this Lady Sovereign? If so, it's a really good pic of her, and if it's someone else it's still a good image of them. A number of others look familiar but I cannot readily place names to faces. So I thought I'd just flag the account up here as there seems to be a lot of potentially useful images here (I've uploaded some of the more immediately useful ones, mainly ones showing things that there were no decent image for) and they have all been released under an appropriate Flickr licence - the only thing stopping me from uploading more is that I need help identifying more of the people in the pictures. Is there anywhere I can go for assistance with identification? Mabalu (talk) 02:06, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

  • If you have a general sense of what broad category they are in, you might find an appropriate WikiProject on the English-language Wikipedia. - Jmabel ! talk 02:22, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

New 9/11 photos

Can these be migrated directly? Are they PD? http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/exclusive-new-photos-show-bushs-response-to-911-attacks Victorgrigas (talk) 17:26, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

It depends on whether the personal photographer was a government employee. Ruslik (talk) 02:58, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
Eric Draper was White House Photo Director. Rmhermen (talk) 23:31, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
In this case, yes, they are in public domain. Ruslik (talk) 11:15, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
Pinging Victorgrigas and Rmhermen ★ Poké95 04:01, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: ★ Poké95 04:01, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Template editor protection level on Russian Wikipedia

Template editor protection level on using 5 wikis. 83.220.237.62 16:08, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

This isn't Russian Wikipedia. You need to make requests related to ruwiki there. BMacZero (talk) 19:02, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
See [16], --188.32.111.138 02:38, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: This isn't Russian Wikipedia. ★ Poké95 04:06, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Uploading an image which qualifies as PD

I am trying to help out someone who contacted Wikimedia via OTRS. Among other things, they supplied an updated logo for Hearst reflecting the change of name from "Hearst Corporation" to just "Hearst".

The old logo is File:Hearst Corporation Logo.svg

It has a public domain license because "it does not meet the threshold of originality"

The logo I uploaded is File:Hearst logos 2015 HEARST RGB.jpg

I don't think there's much doubt that if the old one qualifies as public domain the new one does. The problem is that when I uploaded it I had a number of options and I chose the CC0 option. However, that license leaves the impression that the company affirmatively released it as public domain, while the actual facts are that they simply provided it to me and I am concluding that it qualifies as public domain.

I changed the license to: {{PD-textlogo}}

Is that the right thing to do? Was there a better option when I did the upload?--Sphilbrick (talk) 16:17, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

  • I have no idea whether there was a better option, but the way you've left this is fine. - Jmabel ! talk 22:24, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
  • @Sphilbrick: The basic upload form gives the PD-Textlogo license as a choice (it's 5th up from the bottom in the licensing drop-down menu [Logo with only simple text (wordmark)]); that automatically adds the trademark template as well. I never use the upload wizard, so I couldn't say if that offers the same choice of license. INeverCry 23:33, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
I never use the basic upload form - only the Wizard. The Wizard works fine for everything else I have uploaded, so frankly, I forgot about that option. If I have to do an upload which isn't handled by the Wizard, I'll try to remember that.
@Jmabel: . Thanks. When I started writing this, I had only the CC0 template, and that left me uncomfortable. While posting, I realized I should just change the license, but I thought I would make sure that was OK.--Sphilbrick (talk) 23:49, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
@Sphilbrick: For future reference, while UploadWizard doesn't offer this license among the suggested ones, you can use any license with it if you know its name. On the licensing screen, select "This file is not my own work" and then "Another reason not mentioned above", and input the wikitext for the license (in this case, {{PD-textlogo}}). Matma Rex (talk) 23:22, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
@Matma Rex: Thanks. I will try to remember that.--Sphilbrick (talk) 23:37, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: ★ Poké95 04:07, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Flickr2Commons is down

Just so no one else wastes a bunch of time: Flickr2Commons appears to be down. Some discussion at meta:Talk:Flickr2commons#Recent Observations. - Jmabel ! talk 00:39, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

BTW, the Upload Wizard on Commons supports doing mass (or single) imports from Flickr. You just have to have to be in the Administrator, Image reviewer, or GWToolset user groups. Kaldari (talk) 18:09, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
Does it do a comparably good job of bringing across the descriptions in Commons while allowing you to add your own as a supplement? - Jmabel ! talk 21:02, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
@Jmabel: I've never used Flickr2Commons myself, so I can't compare, but UploadWizard definitely brings across the descriptions and allows you to edit them. It might have more limited functionality in some other way (Flickr uploads are not the primary purpose of UploadWizard). Matma Rex (talk) 22:59, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
And you can only upload 50 images at a time with the UW, which is not that optimal for us mass-uploaders. Josve05a (talk) 23:10, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
@Josve05a: There is actually nothing in UploadWizard that limits it to 50 uploads, or at least I think so. I tried once or twice, you can change this value with a JavaScript debugger and it seems to work just fine. Raising this limit is something I've been thinking about, I filed phab:T135085 about it now. Matma Rex (talk) 00:11, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Flickr2Commons is now back up. - Jmabel ! talk 01:02, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: ★ Poké95 04:05, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Mapping a category page

Location of some of the photographs of dry walls in North Wales.

Is there a way of creating a map on top of a category page, showing where the images came from? EG Category:Dry stone walls in Wales. {{GeoGroupTemplate|article=cy:Name of Cat}} doesn't seem to pick up the geotags. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 07:25, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

You can fill in a description of the category. This description can include maps.Smiley.toerist (talk) 07:55, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, I'm not with you. I'm looking for a map on the top of the page which would show where each photograph was taken, similar to my example, which links all the images (or geotags) to a Google map. Example 2. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 10:31, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

✓ Done - see image. One day, it'll work on the fly! Till then, I hope this will suffice. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 06:01, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: ★ Poké95 04:08, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Refreshing categories

There seem to be a probleem of refreshing categories. (finding the images you have just added to the category) In this case Category:Krammer with the files File:Natuurgebied Krammer 1.JPG, File:Natuurgebied Krammer 2.JPG and File:Natuurgebied Krammer 3.JPG. There was the same problem some time ago.Smiley.toerist (talk) 07:59, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Seems to be solved.Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:47, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: ★ Poké95 04:09, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Crop policy

Hi. I'd like to crop some photos to rmove the signature, usually on the bottom of the photo, like here. Which are wikimedia rules for cases like this? Thanks, Mac9

See Commons:Watermarks -Dominikmatus (talk) 11:48, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
Tks for the link, but I'm not sure I can crop the image before uploading it to Commons. Maybe (if I crop) is on my own risk? Mac9
I recommend to upload the original photo and then crop the watermark afterwards, so we still have the uncropped photo in the history. --Sebari (talk) 12:48, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
That would be enough of a crop that I'd consider making both versions (cropped and uncropped) available under different names. - Jmabel ! talk 19:14, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
Thank you so much (both)! Mac9
This section was archived on a request by: ★ Poké95 04:17, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

SSL Connection problem with upload.wikimedia.org

Hello - starting today I'm having trouble getting images that are loaded from upload.wikimedia.org, unexpected SSL errors in firefox "sec_error_bad_der". Any hints? — xaosflux Talk 14:33, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Problem cleared itself up. — xaosflux Talk 12:57, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: ★ Poké95 03:52, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Please delete all my images

Please delete ALL the images on wikimedia commons I have submitted. I am over it. My talk page is horrible. I no longer wish to be part of wikimedia commons SriMesh | talk 10:22, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

@SriMesh: The reasons and processes for deletion are at Commons:Deletion policy, but you may want to take a look at Commons:Ownership of pages and files. On the up side, you're completely free to do what you want with your talk page (more or less). So if you find some of the messages are getting to you -- just remove them. — Rhododendrites talk |  13:10, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) @SriMesh: You have uploaded some good quality images under a free license, many of which are in scope. All free licenses that we accept are irrevocable. As a specific example, you often used {{Cc-by-sa-3.0}}, in which you grant " a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual ... license" to use your photos. See also the Creative Commons FAQ on the issue. We occasionally do delete images on request by the uploader (see COM:Courtesy deletions), however this situation fits none of the requirements listed there. We'd be happy to welcome your future contributions if you change your mind (and we hope you do!), but if you are really quitting, the solution is to simply stop participating. Storkk (talk) 13:21, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Call for community to decide on the theme for Wiki Loves Africa 2016

Hello All Commoners

There is a current call out for suggestions for the 2016 theme for Wiki Loves Africa. The page to nominate a theme and discuss already nominated themes is here. The chance to nominate closes on the 15th May. The community is then invited to vote on the options until the 31st May. Please put forward your ideas before the 15th May. Thanks!! Islahaddow (talk) 13:03, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

ODC-by is free license?

see Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By) v1.0, this a free license? Can upload to Commons? some photos under the license: [17]--shizhao (talk) 16:09, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

I just glanced quickly at the license. In my opinion it does not exclude images from being free, but it is not sufficient by itself to say that they are. The reason is that the license applies only to databases ("the Database model or schema, which is the structure, arrangement, and organisation of the Database, and can also include the Database tables and table indexes; the data entry and output sheets; and the Field names of Contents stored in the Database"). It explicitly does not cover contents of the database that have their own copyrights (such as images). BMacZero (talk) 17:01, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
but [18], just image under the license, not database--shizhao (talk) 17:06, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

{{Authority control}} and wikidata

As it was announced Commons finally joined Wikidata community with enabling of arbitrary access, and I just rewrote {{Authority control}} to use Module:Authority control to pull identifiers from Wikidata. When comparing Wikidata and Commons identifiers there are occasional mismatches and wikidata items missing identifiers specified on Commons. Help is needed with checking Commons / Wikidata identifier mismatches and either correcting or adding to Wikidata or removing identifiers from Commons. See Category:Pages with mismatching LCCN identifier and other subcategories of c:Category:Authority control maintenance. --Jarekt (talk) 16:19, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

@Jarekt: could you explain a little more, please? I tried to figure out why Creator:Paris_Bordone is tagged as having mismatched Authority Control data, but I can't find where the mismatch is. It's resolved by removing Wikidata=Q366081 from {{Authority control}}, but that seems to match correctly. Thanks, Storkk (talk) 16:40, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Storkk, Commons have LCCN=n86081102 while Wikidata's d:Q366081 (Paris Bordone) had LCCN=n88081102 which was for "Popovich, Matthew, 1890-1943" which was wrong. I corrected Wikidata record. --Jarekt (talk) 16:46, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Ah, thanks... I randomly tried changing control number in the template, and it categorized that error specifically, so I assumed it would do that for all of them. Thanks. Storkk (talk) 17:15, 12 May 2016 (UTC) Sometimes I am an idiot. Sorry for the confusion. Too much time staring at spreadsheets today. Storkk (talk) 19:33, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Do we know if there are canonical BnF forms? e.g. We have cb128663172 vs Wikidata's cb14973527v for Alfred Rethel, and BnF thinks both are correct and refer the the same person ([19] vs [20])... if BnF identifiers are not meant to be unique, how should this be resolved? Storkk (talk) 09:39, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
Wikidata allows multiple values for the same identifier. There is also some way of specifying which one is preferred (I think). --Jarekt (talk) 12:06, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Need to make Commons:Overwriting existing files clearer

There have been frequent problems with users overwriting files on Commons with completely different photographs, albeit of the same subject. Usually it happens with artworks but sometimes also portraits, etc. The page that "Upload a new version of this file" takes you to has a huge block of generic copyright/free stuff which should be largely irrelevant if it is the same file, and a hard to spot line "Please mind our guidelines on overwriting existing files. You agree to publish your upload under the same license as stated on the file description page.". I suggest this be pulled out into a box that is made very clear and with an alert icon next to it.

Secondly, on reading the guideline, the "substantial changes" section doesn't actually mention:

  • A different photograph or scan of the same subject or work of art.

And it would help if it did.

But perhaps there's also another thing we need to tackle. People are used to modifying content on Wikipedia. They see a bad lead image on a page, and they want to substitute a better lead image. So they click on the image and follow it to Commons where they upload a new photo of that subject. But instead they should have uploaded a different photo and patched up the info box to refer to this new photo. Is there any way we can tell they have come to Commons from Wikipedia link, and so to make the "upload a new version of this file" behave differently. Or have an extra warning on the file upload page to say "If you are uploading a new photograph or image here in order to replace an image in a Wikipedia article, you really should use a new file name for it, and fix the article to refer to that instead. This upload page is only for minor changes to an existing media file. ...."

Thoughts? --Colin (talk) 11:12, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I think these are good suggestions, except I don't think it is desirable to make the file upload page inconsistent, e.g., for certain users that have come to Commons from Wikipedia. I suggest the following wording: "This upload page is for tilt-correction, white balance, and other cosmetic improvements to an existing media file. If you wish to upload a new photograph or image to replace an image in a Wikipedia article, choose a new name for it, and change the link in the Wikipedia article to match." Walter Siegmund (talk) 16:59, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
Well I don't think it is possible anyway to make the page different for different users. I don't think your suggested first sentence is an improvement on what we had -- let's not complicate things by trying to list minor improvement as there is really no end of them. And I guess we need to be more explicit than "choose a new name for it / use a new name for it" -- we probably need to direct them to the general upload page for new files. -- Colin (talk) 17:14, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

May 14

A bot to mark images with no license

I have been marking unlicensed files. I'm getting pretty sick of uploaders giving me flack for tagging their unlicensed files.

I'm thinking we need a bot to do it. This will hit only hit a few false positives per week, but it will take out the human equation. This way it will be unambiguously clear that the fault lies with the uploader for not adding a proper tag, not with the person calling them out. In short, it's a lot harder to give shit to a bot than it is to a human.

I am open to other suggestions. Magog the Ogre (talk) (contribs) 02:52, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Good idea, likely best if Krdbot just expands one of it's current tasks (no license and with an external source). ~riley (talk) 03:07, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
I have been marking unlicensed files too, which were tagged by a bot and placed in Category:New uploads without a license (for new uploads) and Category:Media without a license: needs history check for old ones that somehow "lost" a license. We have about 50+-20 files per day like that. I do not recall too many people "giving me flack for tagging their unlicensed files", although I am sometimes yelled at for deleting them (after 7 days), even if deletions are mostly done by other admins. About 10% of files without license are due to typos or newbie errors which are easily corrected. Great many new users need some hand-holding as they are trying to figure out how to work with Commons, and they need someone to talk to. A bot is a a great wat to antagonize great many new users. --Jarekt (talk) 04:05, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
I noticed that several of mine were recently tagged and you de-tagged them without any changes I could see. Was this down to false bot identification? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 09:39, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
Fæ, this month we had much more false alarms, or files that according to the database query do not have a license, but in fact always had one. In the past we had few of those per month and now we have a few of those par day. See this discussion. We do not know why it change, but User:Zhuyifei1999 is working on a bot that will look for files that can be automatically removed from Category:New_uploads_without_a_license and similar categories. I am trying to make sure I do not leave any messages on people pages about such files. --Jarekt (talk) 01:51, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Using a bot will not indemnify the operator from complaints (assuming the noobies can figure out who they are). Delphi234 (talk) 09:45, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
@Jarekt: I have three people on my talk page right now who have told me I have no right to mark their unlicensed images. If you read my response, I've been less than cordial, granted, but explaining the issue never seems to make any difference, and I'm tiring of it (as I stated above). I hate to go there, but maybe it's because I'm primarily an English speaking American, which strikes a nerve, whereas you are not? Two of the three editors on my page have said I have no right to mark their images because they're not in English, and I speak English.
As for the typos, that is their problem, not ours. Asking long time editors to clean up after other people because they are too lazy to fix it themselves is discourteous and takes away resources from other valuable tasks.
@Delphi234: the idea is that the bot would run independently of an operator. People will no longer have an excuse: they must upload images that conform to our standards rather than expecting everyone else to do the work for them.
@Fæ: see phabricator:T132541. If I wrote a bot I could easily get around this issue. Magog the Ogre (talk) (contribs) 19:03, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
Magog the Ogre, For me it is often an exercise in patience but I try to assume good faith and stay mellow. If you are getting tired of it and can not stay cordial, than maybe you should work on some other aspects of Commons. There are plenty of things to do that might not get your blood pressure up. --Jarekt (talk) 01:51, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Cannot see image in category

Strange bug. I can see this file is in this category, but I dont see it there. Tested in FF and Chrome. Can you repaeat it?--Juandev (talk) 05:52, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Same problem elsewhere. In the category:Zlatník, I dont see one of the files, which suppose to be there!--Juandev (talk) 06:09, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
File:Lhotecká lípa (004).jpg shows up in category now, null edit fixed. MKFI (talk) 06:31, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
I've noticed a lot of lag lately. Sometimes you just have to wait a bit and things show up. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:38, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
It's supposedly phabricator:T117332. --ghouston (talk) 00:18, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Suppress category inference

When I go to Category:Skyscrapers in the United States and ask for Featured pictures in the FastCCI widget, it works very well. Try something like Category:Barcelona, and it fails very badly, grabbing pictures of the Museo Príncipe Felipe in Valencia and even Big Ben in London, as well as a slew of landscape shots from Alberta (example: [21]). The problem is that in the category tree, every parent-child relationship makes sense, but it breaks down when you try to extend that. In fact, this would cause pictures of Albert, Prince Consort to show up in Charles III of Spain. Anyone have any idea on how to address this issue? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:15, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Cross wiki notifications will be released by default on May 12 at 23:00 UTC.

Hello

Cross wiki notifications will be released by default on all wikis on May 12 at 23:00 UTC

During the beta phase, the cross-wiki notifications feature was enabled by over 18,000 accounts across more than 360 wikis. We receive great feedback from a lot of very happy users. After that 3-months long beta period during which we made adjustments and that feature is now ready for a release by default.

Users who don't want to receive cross-wiki notifications will be able to turn them off on their preferences on each wiki. If you haven't activated Cross-wiki Notifications during the Beta phase, you may receive old unread notifications from other wikis.

More information is available on the documentation. The talk page is still open for any questions or feedback, in any language.

All the best, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:49, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF): Where is the best place to raise requests to improve this function? I note that if a user reads cross wiki notifications on one project, the fact that these have been read is not propagated to other wikis. So, if you have 7 global notices on 7 different projects, you can mark them all as read on project 1, but then when you go to project 2 you find 6 notices still open, so effectively you end up being forced to mark 28 notices as read when in truth there should have just been the original 7. --Fæ (talk) 11:22, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
The talk page is always open, Fæ.
Your issue was supposed to be resolved. I've reopened it for investigation. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 12:18, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
I really don't understand what the numbers are supposed to mean. If it's intended to be intuitively obvious, it's not... AnonMoos (talk) 22:22, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Can anyone identify this Pacific Coast Highway bridge in California?

These three photos all appear to be of the same, double-arch bridge on the Pacific Coast Highway along the California coastline, probably in the general vicinity of Big Sur. However, they appear to be quite distinct from either the Rocky Creek Bridge or the Bixby Creek Bridge, both of which are single-arch bridges:

  • Bixby Creek Bridge
    Bixby Creek Bridge
  • Rocky Creek Bridge
    Rocky Creek Bridge

Does anyone know what bridge this is, or where exactly it is located? Thanks in advance for your time and effort! Michael Barera (talk) 03:38, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

It looks like this one: http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM6MZ2_Big_Creek_Bridge_Big_Sur_California --ghouston (talk) 04:11, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
I think you're exactly right, ghouston! Thanks so much for your help! Michael Barera (talk) 18:03, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Odd upload errors

I was trying to upload File:Florida Prison Population.svg and on the third screen got a warning that it already existed, with a link to a different file, File:Florida Prison Population Disposition.svg. I could not get past the error, so I switched to the old upload form, but this time a different error appeared - the categories that I carefully put in were tossed out when I did the upload, and I had to re-enter them. Not sure any action is needed, just thought I would leave a note if someone else had the same problem. Delphi234 (talk) 09:04, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, the hotcat-like category adder for the Special:Upload with ?uploadformstyle=basic no longer seems to work. When I add hard-coded categories into the metadata textbox they are included in the upload, but now when I don't have categories I just upload the file with the template and add categories afterwards with hotcat. I assume this bug happened because very few people care about the basic uploader anymore. Jane023 (talk) 13:19, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
I always use the basic uploader (and I think most of the more experienced people here do) but I don't use its category feature, I just put my categories in as straight text. This sounds like a real bug; does anyone know whether it has been properly reported? - Jmabel ! talk 15:34, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
@Jmabel: It's a bug in the upload form scripts specific to Commons, and was discussed here at the village pump in the past (Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2016/04#Bug_on_Commons:Upload). It was also filed as phab:T131382 (but declined, since it's not a bug in the software we normally maintain). I've been planning to look into it, but putting it off, since HotCat is a horrible piece of code :( Matma Rex (talk) 23:27, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
@Delphi234, Jane023, and Jmabel: The problem with the HotCat categories should be fixed (see phab:T131382 for details). Matma Rex (talk) 00:51, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
The categories are being put in now but before the license header instead of after. Same problem with a duplicate file being rejected by the wizard uploader just because it has the same prefix. Delphi234 (talk) 09:43, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
@Delphi234: Sorry, I was distracted by the entirely unrelated problem with categories in the old uploader. I now filed the issue with filename prefixes you reported as phab:T135394 and I'm going to work on it. Matma Rex (talk) 15:00, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. I think it is being lazy and only checks the first 10 or 12 characters. Delphi234 (talk) 20:28, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

May 11

Collaborative design of a Global "Credit" or "Credito" unit of currency, per ideal form and pattern

Suggest design of such.

  1. Implement as graphical project ..
  2. Use the most ideal economic concept of a global ("world" sic. per legalisms, and language under legalisms) unit of currency.
  3. call it what you like.

-Stevertigo (talk) 14:23, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-20

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • Some image thumbnails now load faster on mobile. They also take up less bandwidth. [22]

Problems

  • Last week's MediaWiki version was late on some wikis. [23]

Changes this week

  • Special:Notifications will have "mark as read" buttons for each day. The non-JavaScript version will get it this week. A JavaScript version will come later. [24]
  • Wikis can now locally decide what wikitext they want the signature button to produce. [25]
  • A one-time welcome message for users will now be shown in the wikitext editor. This will include existing users. [26]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 18. It will be on all wikis from May 19 (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • Using self-closing tags like <div/> and <span/> to mean <div></div> and <span></span> will not work in the future. Templates and pages that use these tags should be fixed. When Phabricator ticket T134423 is fixed these tags will parse as <div> and <span> instead. This is normal in HTML5. [27]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:01, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Winners of Places of the Spanish Civil War

Posición Puntos Foto Autor
1ª 93 Bunker of Albendin in Albendin, Cordoba, Spain (2016) - 03.jpg ElBute
2ª 38 Alcazar Toledo Amanecer.jpg Rafesmar
2ª 38 ElBute
4ª 32 Rafesmar
5ª 31 Pedro J Pacheco
6ª 29 Enric
7ª 26 Arkaninger
8ª 24 ElBute
9ª 22 Malopez 21
10ª 19 Alex90jm
10ª 19 Rodelar

B25es (talk) 18:08, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

May 17

Administrators sabotaging the Wiki Loves Earth competition

This is something that makes me really angry. We are currently receiving lots of images from the Wiki Loves Earth competition. These need to be categorized so they can actually be used in the right place. Some years ago, we created a complete set of categories for the more than 1000 nature reserves in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. Many of these cats didn't contain images yet, but they do have descriptions and local categories that were taken from an official database. They also contain a link to another database and map service, and they are linked to from project pages at de.wp. During the current WLE competion that lasts until the end of May, our work started to pay again, and many of these formerly empty categories received their first pictures. What happened next is hard to believe: In the middle of the WLE competion that is anounced prominently at the top of this page, some admins start deleting those "empty" categories that were just about to be filled. And when we persuaded User:JuTa to restore the categories she had deleted, in came User:Jcb and started to delete them again. How can we prevent admins from becoming vandals? --Sitacuisses (talk) 15:05, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

There are some points to be worked on concerning this subject:
  • provide concise examples,
  • make sure of adequate category descriptions hinting to that a filling is to bre expected and pointing out the systematic behind them,
  • eat some melon,
  • go back to the deleting admin, ask for his rationale of deleting,
  • check whether you still need accusations at the Village Pump,
  • keep in mind that Vandals are a populace as Saxons, Lombards, Goths or Huns are, only frowned upon by old Romans.
What's the problem, now? Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 15:21, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
We had the same problem for Russia. Please add templates to the categories saying they are being filled with the competition pictures and should not be deleted.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:27, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Grand-Duc, we've been going through that procedure several times now, and we have lost some of our best contributors to it. It's hard to stay mellow, and it's hard to provide examples when they get deleted under your hands. I'll try anyway: Category:Naturschutzgebiet Rheinknie Alter Kopfgrund was deleted and restored by JuTa. It's part of four categories, it contains a short description and a WDPA link. It's linked to from de:Liste der Naturschutzgebiete im Landkreis Rastatt, so that uploaders know were to go to. It has a history of five edits. Somebody actually spent some time to correct it. Anybody who deletes all of this on the basis that it's a "empty category" behaves utterly ignorant to say the least. --Sitacuisses (talk) 15:55, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Here's a list of JCB's latest deletions:
Some of these had only been restored by JuTa some minutes earlier! So, are we supposed to run from JuTa's talk page to Jcbs talk page and then to the next? Not seriously. What we need is a more responsible deletion policy that prevents admins from becoming vandals, and the village pump is a good place to start this. --Sitacuisses (talk) 16:04, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Please make sure the categories are not empty anymore and then just recreate it. Empty categories do qualify for speedy deletion. Those categories were tagged for speedy deletion. I processed those nominations exactly according to our procedures. Jcb (talk) 16:15, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
This is too simplistic. We need on Commons also categories for structural needs. Romaine (talk) 03:31, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
@Sitacuisses: As User:Ymblanter says above, "Please add templates to the categories saying they are being filled with the competition pictures and should not be deleted." I looked, for example, at Category:Naturschutzgebiet Rheinknie Alter Kopfgrund, and it does not have, nor has it ever had, such a template, e.g. {{Empty category}}. - Jmabel ! talk 16:27, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
@Jcb: We have plenty of precedent for building out a full category scheme to be filled in later in such situations. Yes, these should have been tagged with {{Empty category}}, but presuming they were created by one person or a small number of people I think you would have done a lot better to make contact before mass-deleting. - Jmabel ! talk 16:27, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
@Jmabel: - I did not tag them for speedy deletion. If a category is tagged for speedy deletion and it's empty, then I delete it. There is no need to invent unnecessary additional procedures. Jcb (talk) 16:33, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Well, there is the possibility to IAR, isn't it? A bot-like behavior shown by strictly following rules is not always the best thing to improve Commons. So, it's indeed obvious that the VP is a good place to request sound judgements and some thinking beforehand from our admins when they are due to process deletions. My point is, already somehow evidenced by Jcb, that you, Sitacuisses, are gonna have avoidable trouble due to your post voiced in an attacking manner ("sabotaging" and "vandalism" aren't exactly friendly words). This warrants a defensive reaction (cf. the statement "exactly according to our procedures") at its best, but more often an outright refusal of the request. Fortunately, deletions are easily undone and obviously not made in bad faith, so, no harm is to be expected, even if it means that someone has to explain procedural WLE stuff again and again. Maybe we could reach a conclusion, that Wiki competition categories, identified by some template, aren't to be speedily deleted even if empty (that to possibly allow an easier use/tagging for uploaders)? Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 16:43, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
@Sitacuisses, I've restored all cats from the above list, plus the one mentioned by Jmabel, and added {{Empty category}}. However, if some of them remain empty after finishing the WLE competion, it would be nice if you could remove the Empty category-template. --Túrelio (talk) 16:48, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
If empty cats are created in case of WLE or WLM or whatever reasons they should be tagged {{CatDevelop}} to prevent them from deletion or accidental modification. --Achim (talk) 20:42, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
This mess was caused by me, sorry for that. The cats redeleted by Jcb had deleted versions before, which inlcuded a year speedy deletion requests. When I restored the cats I restored the versions with the speedy deletion requests too, which were in some cases the current version. This was likely they allready have been deleted and restored before but the 1st restoring admin left the current version deleted. I didn't checked all and every single cat after restoring it (there were about 400 of them), so I missed that some of them included actual speedy deletion requests. --JuTa 02:10, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
To me, neither {{Empty category}} nor {{CatDevelop}} really fits the mold. In my opinion, in Commons it sometimes makes sense to create empty categories that belong to a certain category scheme, even if we currently have no files that go into them. This helps users to find the correct category when uploading. This also helps with a consistent categorization, because a knowledgeable user can create categories up front and consistently. And this being Commons, categories of current subjects will be filled eventually. The nature reserve categories are a good example, another example are the streets of Berlin: We have a cat for (nearly) every street and 99.9% of them have at least one photo. Nevertheless it makes sense to create cats for the few streets that don't have photos yet. I would suggest to create a new template for cases like that, that would display a warning like {{Empty category}} if it has no files, but does not show anything if it contains files or pages. --Sebari (talk) 14:30, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I agree. There's also no need to delete empty nature reserve categories as soon as the competition is over. Experience has shown that it will take a long time to fix all the categories, and I know that there are lots of uploads of nature reserves even outside of WLE. The bot uploads from Panoramio come to my mind. They are geocoded, but the bot won't add an image to a nature reserve category even if the coordinates would suggest to do so. It still takes some human time to match the images with the empty cats. The fact that the categories already exist makes this work a lot easier. If all these cats need to be created individually, redundance, errors and inconsistencies will be the result. And the next WLE competition will come as well. --Sitacuisses (talk) 00:15, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
I created {{Prospective category}}, which does not work yet. I think the problem is that Template:Prospective category/i18n still needs to be tagged for translation. --Sebari (talk) 23:14, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

May 16

Map template

Hi! In the city center of Moscow there are streets, where has a lot of notable buildings and monuments. Is there a template, which will show in the map of the street locations of buildings, which are subcategories of the street category? Otherway it is a bit messy, such template will easy navigation --Stolbovsky (talk) 09:06, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Attribution

Hi! I found a pic I took and uploaded to Commons 3-4 years ago on the internet. The issue that worries me is that the non-attributed use is performed by an official institution not a John Doe. Is it correct to put a warning in the file description such as this one? Thanks in advance.--Asqueladd (talk) 10:16, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

There's Template:Published that can be added to file Talk pages. --ghouston (talk) 10:52, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
Use {{Published}} on the talk page, set legal=no. Also, you should feel very free to contact the offending web site or institution. - Jmabel ! talk 14:12, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

The upload script doesnt work for single images

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T135200

I fill in all the details but nothing happens. After several tries I added a second image to the upload and then it works perfectly. Its not related to a specific image upload as I had this problem with two images. Generaly I would not be aware of the problem as I mostly upload several pictures at the same time to make efficient use of the copy function.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:44, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I can say the same. Dominikmatus (talk) 10:53, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
@Smiley.toerist and Dominikmatus: Yeah, sorry, it was a bug in my code that was deployed yesterday. It should be fixed now, see phab:T135200 for details. Matma Rex (talk) 15:36, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
The upload script has another problem. The automatic nummering of file-name by copying actions doesnt work correctly. It leaves unexplained gaps I have manualy correct.Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:48, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
@Smiley.toerist: Yeah, that was a separate issue that was reported here too (#Numbering of files while uploading) and should also be fixed soon. Matma Rex (talk) 13:14, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Template help request

Could some clued-up editor please create a template? What I'd like is a template for establishment decades in Oceania (e.g. Category:1840s establishments in Oceania, based on the establishment year in Oceania template and creating the categories as per the establishment decades in Asia pages. Once we have the template, I'd be most happy and create the category pages that are currently all redlinks. Schwede66 21:25, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

What do you want this template to do? Ruslik (talk) 16:34, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Template:Oceaniaestablishmentdecade -> editor adds decade (e.g. "2010" to cover the years 2010 to 2019). Template then creates the category page "Category:Oceania in the 2010s", and establishes the following categories: "Category:Oceania in the 2010s", "Category:Establishments in Oceania by decade", and "Category:2010s establishments by continent" Schwede66 18:44, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Please ping me if you can help, as I shall take this page off my watchlist. Schwede66 18:28, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Numbering of files while uploading

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T135396

Sorry, it should be on Phabricator, but I haven't realised how to do that quickly. So I'm writing here. I had a problems when uploading files and numbering them. When I use 01 and let it copy the titles, it's numbered correctly. But when I use bigger number like 55 it numbers it automaticaly like 57,73,120,280,350. I would expect 55,56,57,58. I'm often uploading many photos with numbering and I'm not using Vicuna Uploader every time. So it would be good to correct it. Dominikmatus (talk) 22:57, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

@Dominikmatus: Thanks for reporting this, I filed a Phabricator task at phab:T135396. Matma Rex (talk) 15:15, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
@Dominikmatus: I fixed this and the fix should be deployed later today (19:00–21:00 UTC). Matma Rex (talk) 13:11, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Thank you! :) Dominikmatus (talk) 14:29, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

May 15

How is it that the banner for picture of the year is randomly appearing? I was greatly enjoying a respite from anything at the top and now it is sometimes there and sometimes not. Where it is a problem is appearing when I am editing a page. I hit preview to see the text I have entered, and when I try to click on it to change something, it moves because the banner shows up, and I inadvertently am editing somewhere else. It is pretty annoying. Is there any way to suppress it when action=edit is true? (It is not here now.) Delphi234 (talk) 01:26, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

The traffic of this campagn is limited to 20% of the total. So, you should see it only 20% of time. Ruslik (talk) 10:41, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

A new "Welcome" dialog

Hello everyone. This is a heads-up about a change which has just been announced in Tech News: Add the "welcome" dialog (with button to switch) to the wikitext editor.

In a nutshell, later this week this will provide a one-time "Welcome" message in the wikitext editor which explains that anyone can edit, and every improvement helps. The user can then start editing in the wikitext editor right away, or switch to the visual editor. (This is the equivalent of an already existing welcome message for visual editor users, which suggests the option to switch to the wikitext editor. If you have already seen this dialog in the visual editor, you will not see the new one in the wikitext editor.)

  • I want to make sure that, although users will see this dialog only once, they can read it in their language as much as possible. Please read the instructions if you can help with that.
  • I also want to underline that the dialog does not change in any way current site-wide and personal configurations of the visual editor. Nothing changes permanently for users who chose to hide the visual editor in their Preferences or for those who don't use it anyway, or for wikis where it's still a Beta Feature, or for wikis where certain groups of users don't get the visual editor tab, etc.
    • There is a slight chance that you see a few more questions than usual about the visual editor. Please refer people to the documentation or to the feedback page, and feel free to ping me if you have questions too!
  • Finally, I want to acknowledge that, while not everyone will see that dialog, many of you will; if you're reading this you are likely not the intended recipients of that one-time dialog, so you may be confused or annoyed by it—and if this is the case, I'm truly sorry about that. This message also avoids that you have to explain the same thing over and over again—just point to this section. Please feel free to cross-post this message at other venues on this wiki if you think it will help avoid that users feel caught by surprise by this change.

If you want to learn more, please see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T133800; if you have feedback or think you need to report a bug with the dialog, you can post in that task (or at mediawiki.org if you prefer).

Thanks for your attention and happy editing, Elitre (WMF) 16:45, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

  • Obviously one of the more annoying things from the WMF. Here the visual editor that you do not use because it is lousy is now giving us a popup to be sure that you know that it exists. Which you can not read to tell what it says because you do not speak that language. Please make it go away. Yes we know there is a visual editor and no we do not want to use it - ever. Delphi234 (talk) 21:29, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Support for Wiki Loves Africa 2016

After two highly successful years, we have drafted the grant request for Wiki Loves Africa 2016. We need your help in two ways:

  1. Don't forget to vote on the theme for 2016.
  2. Please endorse the project on this page if you think it is a cool project (whether you plan to participate or not).

Main changes this year (which will impact on numbers of participants and levels of entires) are:

  • We asked that more money goes towards the local teams (to do more events, have local winners and prizes, etc.)
  • We are changing host organisation (the new host is a swiss non profit)
  • We would like to involve Elisabeth Coye, who has been working for Wikimedia France for several years now on fundraising matters, to improve accounting and reporting (to have it more consistant, more informative and hopefully more straightforward and simpler for participants)

Any questions or suggestions, please let us know! Anthere and Islahaddow (talk) 12:29, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

I read «The ability to add your own option will close on the 15th May 2016. (now closed)». Heh, thanks very much for the timely warning. And of course my would-be suggestion (Language diversity and endangered languages) is not among the available options, which instead stress the tired overdones (more lions and zebras?) and the iffy clichés (FVM, anyone?) — so sad.
Also, why the «__NOTOC__» magic word in that page? Design (or rather “purtiness”) over readability?
-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 00:46, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

My Account has been blocked

I am trying to make a wikipedia page to factually write about International Cleaning Service - Not an advert, but it has been blocked.

Please can you unblock this and let my page work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by International Cleaning Services (talk • contribs) 14:35, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

This is Wikimedia Commons, and we have no power to unblock you on English Wikipedia. On your English Wikipedia talk page, en:User talk:International Cleaning Services there are crystal clear instructions on how to request an unblock. You will have to choose a new name, since your name violates Wikipedia's username policy which is also linked from your talk page, but for convenience you can find at en:Wikipedia:Username_policy#Promotional_names. Storkk (talk) 14:49, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

May 20

The October 2015 categorization lag is back

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T135809

I'm sure plenty of people remember the problems we had with HotCat and Cat-a-Lot last fall. Well now they seem to be happening again. Is this just happening with me, or are there other editors experiencing this? ----DanTD (talk) 04:15, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

India to ban unofficial maps of India with hefty fines (also outside of India)

See this article from the India Times: Showing PoK Or Arunachal Pradesh Outside India On A Map Might Earn You 1 Crore Rs. Fine And 7 Years In Jail Here a part of the text:

...the Centre is planning to soon bring the Geospatial Information Regulation Bill by which such tough provisions will be brought and any person or institution acquiring and disseminating any geospatial imagery or data of any part of India through space or aerial platforms will have to first seek permission and license from a government authority.

This could mean that online platforms like Google will have to apply for a license to run Google Maps or Google Earth in India. The government authority will run "sensitivity checks" on the imagery to protect India's security and sovereignty. Amada44  talk to me 19:16, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Holy cow! That's some freedom of expression gone by the river. --NaBUru38 (talk) 20:14, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
@NaBUru38, Amada44, and Matma Rex: You can find the details of the bill here. My reading of the draft bill tells me that any camera or smartphone that is GPS-enabled would be prohibited in India. Maybe somebody should point this out to the politicians.
PS - AS somebody who is thinking of visiting India early next year, my question is "Do they want to kill the tourist trade?" Martinvl (talk) 21:31, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
And we have many maps of India. Also many of which India would not aprove. What do we do with these? Amada44  talk to me 10:49, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Imho no action is needed, this is not a copyright restriction and Wikimedia Commons is not censored. --Steinsplitter (talk) 10:58, 18 May 2016 (UTC)to take mag
<This could mean that online platforms like Google will have to apply for a license to run Google Maps> sounds like we could run into problems too. But you a right, at the moment there is no action needed. Amada44  talk to me 19:01, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Commons isn't "run" or doing business in India, therefore I'd say we definitely won't run into legal trouble (users from India uploading such content might, just like users in many countries would by uploading content for use in hate speech). Similar to Commons:NCR#"House rules".    FDMS  4    19:41, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
@Amada44: I agree with FDMS comment above. The google stuff is not relevant here. --Steinsplitter (talk) 13:53, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
@Martinvl: Why ping me? I have no idea what you expect me to do about this, sorry. I don't make India's legislation nor Commons' policies. :) Matma Rex (talk) 13:36, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

May 13

Sad news

Hi everybody,

For those who know this excellent macro-photographer and very good friend, Please notice that our fellow Jee's wife passed away two days ago, monday morning in Kerala, India, due to disease. She was 35 years old.--Jebulon (talk) 23:13, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

I express my condolences to Jeevan Jose and entire family. I think, Jose might be encouraged by her for the excellent photographs. May her soul rest in peace. -- Biswarup Ganguly (talk) 14:09, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
+1--Jarekt (talk) 14:00, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

May 19

BBC connection

Does he have any connection with the BBC as the category would suggest? And what is name of this ship? (His name is on the poster)Smiley.toerist (talk) 14:15, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

  • Sir John Audley Frederick Aspinall, so others don't also have to click through to find out.
  • And I think the only connection to the BBC is that the image came from their site. - Jmabel ! talk 14:51, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Hired talent excells at categorization

Anyone to ruminate on this one edit, perpetrated (on a Featured image, no less) by someone whose username ends with "_(WMF)"? -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 00:31, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Freedom of Panorama in France

I saw that earlier this year the French National Assembly approved a new law on the freedom of panorama, allowing the use of images of buildings if they're on public streets, and for non-lucrative purposes (such as Wiki Commons). But just today I've had several images of a French museum (The Musee de Quai Branly) deleted from Commons as a violation of the freedom of panorama law. Does anyone know the current status of this law, if it is now in effect, and when (or if) Wikipedia policy is going to reflect that change? Many thanks for your guidance. SiefkinDR (talk) 16:29, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Non-commercial clauses are not compatible with Commons. Storkk (talk) 17:02, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
More clearly: it's not that we'd be in any legal trouble for hosting such images, it's just that we choose as a policy not to host images with such a restriction. - Jmabel ! talk 00:28, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
If I understand you correctly, even if it's now permitted by French law, it's not allowed by Wiki Commons to put up pictures of public buildings (the Musee Quai Branly, the Louvre Pyramid, the new museum in the Bois de Boulogne, the new symphony hall, etc., if the architects have not been dead for seventy years? I wrote the article on architecture in Paris, and that means I can't put up pictures of any buildings constructed since World War II. I don't see the logic of that. SiefkinDR (talk) 09:16, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
See COM:Licensing/Justifications... Essentially, using files with non-commercial licenses in your article, nobody could use your article on a website supported by advertising, or charge a fee for a CD/paper copy, or do any number of other things. Storkk (talk) 09:34, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
I appreciate your explanation, but you can understand how this interpretation of the law makes it impossible for editors like me to write to an article about contemporary architecture in France. Wikipedia France lobbied hard to have the law changed, the law was changed, but now Wikicommons refuses to accept the change because the law didn't do everything originally asked. I hope that Commons can modify its policy so that images of buildings in France can be be used, with the restriction that they cannot be used for commercial purposes, in accordance with French law. . SiefkinDR (talk) 10:04, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
There was a campaign against the non-commercial restriction too, but it wasn't successful. [29]. --ghouston (talk) 10:30, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
It's unlikely that the Commons policy will change. I think it may be imposed by the Wikimedia Foundation. What you can do is write the article without illustrations, or write instead about the architecture of a country with more friendly laws. --ghouston (talk) 11:06, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Also you can investigate if the wiki where you want to write the article would allow uploading images, since they can have different rules. --ghouston (talk) 11:08, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Note that this strict policy on Commons does not apply to French or English Wikipedais that have more relaxed rules (e.g. for organization logos) and so they allow a limited use on a "scoped" page directly about the subject.
So you may still upload these images on French Wikipedia (may be they'll be imported too in English Wikipedia to to its allowed "fair use" for direct citations).
This will still cause problems when using the Wikipedia articles on other commercial sites, so these images must be properly tagged so that they can be automatically filtered out on those commercial sites (replaced by some blank image of the same size if these sites want to preserve the layout).
But Commons is not about making focused articles but just about storing collections of images. However Commons can properly store and display the licence requirements.
I see very little incentive for commercial sites to use directly images from Commons without the proper link or info panel for the attributions and licence (I think this is illegal even if the images are "free" for use). However these sites need a correct way to autodetect images that would not satisfy the NC restriction (including US "fair use" images). Those commercial sites could be (e.g.) social networks pages for users around the world (Facebook/Twitter/Google+ need a way to automatically reject these images if they accept images from external links, even if they have a strong policy that their users should obey).
For now the restriction just means that images are too much frequently (and needlessly) imported in several Wikipedias instead, wasting space when they would be better managed in one place on Commons with the correct licencing tags, and then easily reused on all Wikipedias that accept these images (those wikipedias can also autodetect these tags, if they don't accept the NC restriction and they don't have enough local admins to manage the flow of images: Automatically those Wikipedias would replace the image with an null image showing the non-free restriction, without having to check if these pages are directly related to the topic; the other wikipedias with enough active admins could place those images on hold in a tracking list to allow them to be displayed in specific pages). We would also allow better cooperation between Wikipedias accepting those images.
Commons itself would not display these images by default for searches, or would list them in specific ranges of categories, possibly even in a specific namespace (such as "Restricted file:", and "Restricted media:"). and these same namespaces could also be used on Wikipedia instead of feeding the standard collection of files (no need to create new categories for restricted images they would be listed separately and only for extended searches or by clickin a button to show also the restricted files).
Image galleries could also autodetect these images (according to their namespace) to force the rendering of a minimal banner about them with a link to the restriction. That banner should be always present, and the description page should probably include a short text line showing the "copyright line". When rendering those files as images embedded in pages, it would not be possible to override the link to the description page showing copyright statements and attributions. That short text line would also be rendered on top of all restricted images if their thumbnail size is large enough (this could be reducted to a single "copyright" character if needed to fit), except tiny icons (e.g. less than 40x40px). Such addition of visible text would be performed directly by the thumbnail renderer on the image server, without using custom HTML (standard HTML anchar tags would still be needed for activating the link to the attribution page).
Note also that many image formats are also internally some metatags specifically designed to include such attributions or restrictions of use: these can be decoded without even having to fill it the description page with Wikitext (those infos would be displayed directly on the description page, in a specific table: author, date of creation, copyright line, link to licencing terms), and sometimes these are even encoded in a standard RDF format r similar (for some media types we can support on Commons: e.g. JPEG/MPEG formats for image/audio/video/subtitles..., PNG, OGG, PDF, MSoffice/LibreOffice formats, OpenType fonts...).
verdy_p (talk) 14:30, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
The English Wikipedia accepts photos of copyrighted architectural works that were photographed in countries where there is no freedom of panorama (such as France.) For such photos, there is the {{FoP-USonly}} copyright tag. From what one understands, such photos are not subject to the English Wikipedia's non-free content criteria because the US has FOP for architectural works. Also, unlike Commons, the English Wikipedia operates under US law only.
According to the information in COM:FOP#France, it appears that the French Wikipedia has an exception where photos of copyrighted architectural works are allowed, but with many more restrictions than the English Wikipedia's policy on FOP and architectural works. (Some of the restrictions seem to be similar to the English Wikipedia non-free content criteria, such as not using more photos than necessary and only using a photo where it is directly relevant to an article's content.) --Gazebo (talk) 07:47, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Does it actually mean that there is no way anymore to let France establish a full FoP some day? I'm asking this because I had also signed that petition still linked to on Christian Ferrer's userpage, and I of course don't know how was the further process... --A.Savin 15:11, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

  • It seems, since the 3 may, the law was passed by the Senate from no FoP to FoP with no commercial reuse. The petition is still open and I just asked to Wikimedia France if they left open because there is still a chance of evolution. I wait for an answer... Christian Ferrer (talk) 17:59, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, this is very helpful. It's nearly impossible now to write about French architecture since World War II under the current rules. Pictures of the Pompidou Center and other landmarks are not allowed. The only pictures available now are these that a few architects have very kindly either put on WIkimedia themselves or allowed to be used, An article on architecture without pictures is like an article on Rembrandt without any illustrations. The best solution, I think, would be to allow uploading of images of French buildings to Commons with the notice given that these images cannot be used for lucrative purposes. Bravo to Wikipedia France for moving this through the National Assembly and Senate even in incomplete form. I hope their good work can be put to use. SiefkinDR (UTC)
As already stated, there is really no possibility on Commons to host "non-commercial only" images; but maybe there is a way to upload them on French and/or English Wikipedia under a more restrictive license. You may want to ask the local Village Pump resp. the community of French/English WP for advice. --A.Savin 14:04, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
For photos of buildings in countries where there is only non-commercial FOP or basically no FOP (such as France) but where the photo itself is freely licensed (i.e. CC BY-SA), it is possible to upload such photos to the English Wikipedia. For example, there is this photo of the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations (MuCEM) in Marseille, France. More information about the English WP policy is available at the page for the {{FoP-USonly}} copyright tag. For the French Wikipedia, some of the information under COM:FOP#France which talks about a local exception on the French WP may be useful. --Gazebo (talk) 10:23, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

May 18

What License?

Hello I want to upload a photo of a school but I do not know what license I should use for that because under the photo said Image Credit: Contributed Photo can you help me to find a license for this picture? First photo in this blog --Qian Nivan (talk) 07:38, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

  • There is no indication that photo is free-licensed, and no reason to think it would be in the public domain. Therefore, there is no reason to think it would be OK to upload to Commons, unless you could (through the website) find out who the photographer is and get that person's permission (via COM:OTRS) to upload it. - Jmabel ! talk 16:45, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Spanish speaking linguistic map

Hello For a couple of days,, I have a discussion on this linguistic map Hablantes nativos de español en Europa. I would like to have a neutral point of view on this disagreement. What is the best source map to use and also what are the colors of the legend (neutrality) has to be used ? So If you want to give us your opinion on the subject, you're welcome.  Thank you. --Zorion (talk) 12:03, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-21

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

Problems

  • Commons had problems with server lag. This meant that it took longer time for files to turn up in categories. [31]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 May. It will be on all wikis from 26 May (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on May 24 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • All HTTP access to Wikimedia sites and APIs will stop working. Some bots still use HTTP. They will need to use HTTPS instead. This will happen on June 12. [32]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:40, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

May 25

Mynewsdesk.com verdict

I'd like to revisit Commons:Village pump/Archive/2016/02#Huge problem with copyright on Mynewsdesk. As an active license reviewer, I've seen this site come up often, but I'll remind that license review is really an external license review (i.e., is the image available under the license it says it is) rather than a full DR-style copyright investigation about whether the uploader has the rights. To review the previous thread, Mynewsdesk.com is a site for marketers with a default upload license of cc-by-sa. On one hand, it's the job of the uploader to review what this means, and on the other, the site doesn't do an adequate job of warning uploaders that the default license allows commercial re-use. As a result, we get a ton of promo photos that the marketer does not own the copyright to relicense (being the marketer and not necessarily the copyright owner). I lean towards the recommendation that we should not accept files directly from the website while they default to cc-by-sa. I think it makes more sense to follow an item's source attribution and retrieve confirmation there. I find that I'm rarely able to find a cc-by-sa license at the origin site, hence my opinion in this discussion. At the very, very least, if we do not outright block the site, we need to have some sort of template to warn Commons users about how this site uses the license and what kind of discretion they should bring when doing their own license verification. See also Category:Mynewsdesk-related deletion requests. Pinging prior discussants: @Vätte, Revent, Josve05a, Denniss, and Gunnex czar 15:46, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

 Support As someone who is not deeply into DRs and license reviews, I have had the name mynewsdesk come up often enough to think that this makes sense. --Sebari (talk) 15:58, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
I've had that template idea too. I've seen many photos uploaded to Commons from Mynewsdesk, that really should not be on Commons, and once upon a time, I myself uploaded some photos from Mynewsdesk because they were labeled with a CC-license. Those photos were later removed. -abbedabbtalk 16:34, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
 Support per what Czar says. It is a problematic website that recurs often enough to warrant a more substantial policy/guidance. Green Giant (talk) 01:40, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
 Comment Would it be useful to add an entry for Mynewsdesk on COM:Problematic sources or maybe even COM:Bad sources? --Gazebo (talk) 06:40, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
 Support, but really they should all be deleted under the precautionary principal because their copyright status is unclear. I'll support this for now but MyNewsDesk has been a thorn for many years with several discussions, even this one back in 2012 when Axel Pettersson was making contact with them, but it appears he never made any progress. Back then several Sony images were deleted that were obvious copyright violations of obvious US copyright images. I think we should take a much stronger stance and delete them all unless they are verified as freely licenced, even those that have previously been nominated and kept. They should require an OTRS email but based on the many emails I sent to all the listed Sony reps back in 2012 and receiving no replies of any kind, we should become much stricter with this source. I estimate currently there are between 2800 and 3300 images from this source up from 125 four years ago. COM:Bad sources might be too strict right now but COM:Problematic sources would seem reasonable as not everything will carry a false licence. Ww2censor (talk) 23:07, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping. Revisiting my old mail thread with Mynewsdesk to see what happened with their promised change in January-February where they should alter the standard license and ask their costumers to go through previous uploads. Hoping for a fast reply from them. /Axel Pettersson (WMSE) (talk) 10:28, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

File:Facebook like thumb.png

Not sure what to do about this: File:Facebook like thumb.png has been the subject of three deletion requests, in October 2011, March 2012 and June 2012, all back when the image was a simple 16×15 pixel icon. In October 2012 the image was "improved" to a massive 2,000×1,713 pixel image by UserːLMFAO, with shading and a cuff button, retaining the same "The thumb graphic from the Facebook "like" button." description. It's unclear whether this was drawn freehand, or lifted from a higher-resolution corner of Facebook.

Should this be redescribed, renamed (if it's not the Facebook icon any more), reverted, or something else? --McGeddon (talk) 15:32, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

The 2000px is a rendered raster of File:Botón Me gusta.svg... -- AnonMoos (talk) 05:18, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
Which still raises the same question: File:Botón Me gusta.svg is described as "The thumb graphic from the Facebook "like" button.", authored by User:Enoc vt and it "may be protected as a trademark in some jurisdictions". Is it an actual Facebook graphic or just a representation of one? --McGeddon (talk) 08:27, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

What License #2?

Hi, I have upload file:Toulouse cassini 1815.tif, what licence applied ? Map is PD, but there is an OSM overlay. --Rulhe (talk) 08:30, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Categories for people by year

I noticed several of this kind of category being created recently (for example, Category:Felicia Day by year and Category:Wil Wheaton by year). (I didn't check them all, but those two were both created by User:IagoQnsi.) It seems to me that this type of category isn't needed for everyone. I think they're most useful when there is a fairly large number of photos of the person for each of several years (see, for example, Category:Bill Clinton by year), and even then not every photo of the person needs to be in a subcategory of these. If there aren't that many, these categories just make it harder to find general photos. I think several of the recent ones don't have that many, and I'd discourage creating these just because we can. Comments? --Auntof6 (talk) 07:59, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

  • I certainly wouldn't consider such as scheme on anyone for whom we had less than 50 photos; conversely at about 500 photos, this becomes almost compulsory. I believe the examples given are in between, so I'm neutral on these. - Jmabel ! talk 14:54, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
    • Thanks, User:Jmabel. I was looking for input on both the recent ones and in these in general, so your input is still helpful. For you, would it matter how many files were in the subcategories? For example, what if among 50 images, 40 of them were for one year and the rest were each for separate years? --Auntof6 (talk) 16:11, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
      • It would probably be really useful to have an easy way to spot the few that were from another time, and these categories would help. For example, consider Category:Mariide, still small enough to eyeball, no reason to break it down. Imagine if we had a ton of photos from this year; it might be very useful to easily spot that one other photo we have of her is from 40 years ago. Though if there were a bunch of them each from one different year, as in your example, it wouldn't work so well. But consider Category:Solstice Cyclists (content of subcats a bit NSFW, just happened to come to mind; NSFW won't arise if you don't click through to the subcats). It seems to me that it's as useful to be able to spot the years for which we have only one or two photos as to see that there is one for which we have 483. - Jmabel ! talk 22:15, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Hey Auntof6, thanks for the comment. I agree that breaking down into yearly categories doesn't make sense for small categories, and to that end, I've reverted a couple of instances where I did that that seem silly in hindsight. For Wil Wheaton and especially for Felicia Day, however, I think there are enough photos to justify needing to break into categories. I think the solution to make it easier to find general photos is to make excellent galleries for these people. To that end, I plan to work on the Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day galleries some time today or tomorrow. Cheers, IagoQnsi (talk) 18:28, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
  • In case there is need for more support, I also don't think it makes sense to sub-categorize people by year unless there is a large mass of photos. In general, I think all categories should be sub-categorized by decade before they are sub-categorized by year. - Themightyquill (talk) 10:57, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Deletion request

I nominated my file for deletion, but the request was denied. Does Wikimedia have the rights to own my file after i upload it? Does Wikimedia have the rights to keep it even if i am the author and i want it to be deleted? - Avatar9n (talk) 10:27, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

The CC-licence is irrevocable. --Magnus (talk) 10:30, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
Convenience link: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Mosin-nagant ecomare.JPG. And, as Magnus said, "I no longer want it to be shared" is not a valid reason for deletion. - Jmabel ! talk 16:50, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
Wikimedia doesn't own your file, but you granted Wikimedia (and anyone else) a permanent license to use it, and cannot simply revoke that. - Jmabel ! talk 00:56, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
Pinging Avatar9n ★ Poké95 12:15, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Can i change the licences of my files? If so, is there a licence which prohibits others from having a copy of it (or from sharing it)? I know those who already have it can keep it. - Avatar9n (talk) 15:08, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

As two other editors have told you, you cannot revoke the license you have granted for the file once it has been unloaded. You cannot control or prevent anyone from using it (including downloading and redistributing it themselves) within the limits of that license. You can cease distributing it yourself, or only continue distributing it under some other commercial or restrictive license. But again, you explicitly made an non-revokable license when you uploaded it. DMacks (talk) 18:12, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
Oh i see. I should have thought twice before uploading the file, before i changed my mind after three years. I understand that this site is for sharing free media and i understand your efforts to provide it to the world. Unfortunately i didn't know this back then, and i found the revert you made insolent. While i agree that this site serves for the common good, the fact that the authors have no rights over their work really disappointed me. It looks like this site has turned into a tool for self aggrandizement for some people. All these may be the reason why many people didn't and will not choose this site, including me. Thank you for your help. - Avatar9n (talk) 14:37, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
Pinging Avatar9n ★ Poké95 11:16, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

At the risk of stating the obvious: Commons is a repository of media available to be freely used. If you don't want material freely used, don't put it here. The least free licenses we accept are things like CC-By-SA, which require attribution and which require that any derivatives must also be similarly licensed. - Jmabel ! talk 13:45, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

May 23

Template:Information consistent?

My question is, is it okay to replace all parameters there by default to lowercase (like here and uppercase on the other hand here)? As mentioned under Capitalization silliness, there is a completely inconsistency in this issue. Was there any discussion to made a recommendation to this? If not I would get one. The uppercase (with mixed lowercase "other_versions") parameter seems mainly from the old (actual exist) UploadForm. The other main point is the inconsistency with the Upload Wizard, which uses consistent lowercase. What do you mean? mentionable ↔ User: Perhelion 18:12, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

  • As far as I know, it is case-insensitive. The discussion you are pointing to is from 8 years ago. Have you run across situations where case matters in this template? - Jmabel ! talk 19:33, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
  • As it is indicated in the template documentation Template:Information allows arguments with upper or lower case and with either spaces or underscored in 2 word arguments. The format used by Upload Wizard should be the preferred one but we do not want people or bots "correcting" this "issue" unless they are fixing some other issues. --Jarekt (talk) 19:41, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

May 27

Geotagging: Open street map- overlays and right click

We support Open Street Map- there is a cross over between volunteering on WP and OSM- so it should be our tool of choice for geotagging. I help a lot of very talented newbies who have limited computer skills- so my direction of travel is that technically we should strive to make common tasks easy, so our new volunteers can immediately start to contribute.

An OSM of Leicester courtesy of the WMflabs. This is a wonderful tool- but it lacks one facility, that I hope someone will add- when you right click the menu lacks the Where am I? link to give you a geotag.

It I select an image, and go to the file description and click on the lat/long link (not the Open street map link) then select Open street map- I get This Open Streen Map without the helpful roundels but with the Where am I? tool.

Yes I had noticed that one was a php file on our server and the second is an index file in a directory on there server but the task is to add a few geotags not do a http appreciatioin course.

There are many things we could do to improve this.

  • improve the wording- View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMap is too similar to the link on the Geohack page which is OpenStreetMap. Then again, if you are on the Geohack page- there could be an adjacent link to map with roundels
  • Modify the map with roundels to allow a What links here overlay in the same way that we already have the zoom bar. This is my preferred option.
  • On that page, when you hover over the roundel, a thumbnail appears- clicking on the thumbnail links to the commons file. This thumbnail could have a caption with a geotag link that called the other Open Streen Map

I am sure this is harder to describe than it is to do. Or, possibly it is so important that it has already been done but not adequately documented.--ClemRutter (talk) 11:01, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

May 28

VOA PD Review

Hi all, I was not here for a long time but I have seen these discussions and changes to the VOA template. Today I checked the BBG website which is the parent organization of VOA and it is stated that all of their original products are in public domain 

All original text, audio and video material produced exclusively by VOA and OCB is in the public domain. However, the Content, including VOA and OCB content, may contain video, audio, images, graphics, and other copyrighted material that is licensed for use in the Networks’ programming only. This material is not in the public domain and may not be copied, redistributed, sold, or published without the express permission of the copyright owner.

how can I change the template to reflect this?--Pouyana (talk) 16:07, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Template:PD-PhilippinesGov

There seems to be a discrepancy between the Commons {{PD-PhilippinesGov}} template and Enwiki's en:Template:Non-free Philippines government. According to Enwiki's template, Philippine governmental works do not allow commercial reuse and therefore fail the free use licensing required for Commons. So I had a look though the Act that authorized government free use. On page 80, section 176, it says However, prior approval of the government agency or office wherein the work is created shall be necessary for exploitation of such work for profit. That seems to match what Enwiki has and therefore Philippine governmental works do not fall under free use as they cannot be used commercially without prior approval (kinda like CC-BY-NC). So does that mean works licensed under that template do not actually qualify for use on Commons? Or am I reading that wrong? --Majora (talk) 03:30, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

This issue has been brought up twice before and has been considered to be acceptable for Commons. MKFI (talk) 07:47, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Pictures of surgeries in progress

There are some on Commons, but not many. I'm thinking that I could snap some pictures during some surgical procedures (in the OR, or outside it).

However, two questions here. The first has to do with the scope of the project; do in depth surgical procedures fall under it? For example pictures that detail the steps of a certain procedure?

The second has to do with ownership. Obviously the taker of the pictures owns the rights. But unlike a conscious person, the anesthetized patient didn't give explicit consent to have pictures taken of them (but the pictures still shouldn't contain identifying items. The picture would be of the abdomen, for example, focused on the site of the procedure, and the face shouldn't be visible). I don't know if this is a medical ethics issue more than copyright (but images of surgeries, diseases, procedures, etc are routinely used for educational purposes in medical schools and hospitals among doctors). Would any guidelines be broken in this case? --Hexafluoride (talk) 22:04, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

  • Such pictures would be within scope, but you should have a clear release from the patient (typically from after the pictures were taken) in order to upload them here. Typically you'd send that release to COM:OTRS and would also tag the pictures with {{Personality rights}}. Someone may have more to add to that. - Jmabel ! talk 23:21, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
I followed the {{Personality rights}} template, and finally reached COM:Patient images. Now per that article, OTRS can't be used because it violates doctor-patient confidentiality. The essay isn't definitive, it presents the current legal statuses and challenges in the UK & US. It seems like pictures of non-identifiable organs or samples are exempt from consent in general (such as pictures from a laparoscopy). The issue is still tangled. I'd like more input on this. --Hexafluoride (talk) 15:36, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

May 29

Finnish civil war images available

Vapriikki museum has released a set of photos related to the Finnish civil war in Tampere under CC-BY. https://www.flickr.com/photos/vapriikki/sets/72157668009883972/ Miraceti (talk) 19:31, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Dispite the mentioned CC-BY license all images from Finnish civil war should qualify for {{PD-Finland50}}. MKFI (talk) 06:51, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

May 30

Tech News: 2016-22

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • There is now a standard way to get the target of a redirect page from a Lua module. [33]

Problems

  • A new way to handle rollback was introduced. It broke some tools and scripts and was reverted. This will be re-planned after review. [34][35]
  • CentralNotice didn't work in some older browsers. This has now been fixed. [36]

Changes this week

  • When you edit a file or category page with the visual editor the rest of the page will be shown in its normal place. [37]
  • The Translate extension will get an edit summary field. [38]
  • A change to the <charinsert> feature could break some user scripts. Contact Bawolff if the "click to insert special characters" links in the edit window break on your wiki. [39][40]
  • Elasticsearch will be upgraded on Wikimedia wikis this week. This should not affect you, but if you have problems with the search function this is probably the reason. [41]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 June. It will be on all wikis from 2 June (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:18, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

May 31

WMF staff who do not understand licensing

I recently nominated a number of Wikipedia screenshots uploaded by a WMF staffer for deletion (DR). In response, JKatz (WMF) told me: You are correct that Nirzar and I were not aware that attribution requirements applied to screenshots of Wikipedia for use in discussing Wikipedia. This isn't a one-off: see Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by KHammerstein (WMF). On the other hand, many WMF staff do use the proper attribution and license templates. Thoughts? Has this issue come up before? BethNaught (talk) 21:51, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

This comment from Maggie Dennis is relevant. BethNaught (talk) 22:47, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
Hi BethNaught. I looked into this a bit the other day. I see a bunch of failures on Commons' part. Looking at File:Link 2.png, for example:
  • it was uploaded in October 2014 and only now is anyone noticing and saying something;
  • the upload appropriately includes description text and licensing info (great!), but is still wrong because it's missing source information; and
  • the file name ("Link 2.png") should not have been allowed as it's much too generic (same with "Media-01.png" and others).
There are people, inside and outside of the Wikimedia Foundation, who regularly screw up uploading to Commons. Perhaps we should revisit making uploading to Commons less error-prone. I think focusing on a specific organization misses the larger point: it isn't "WMF staff who do not understand licensing", it's "most users who try to upload to Commons do not understand licensing". :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 01:57, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
Your comments are all on point; my point was that the WMF should train their staff about licensing. Maggie Dennis says they are supposed to but the training process is not always well delivered. I was wondering if there had been issues on Commons previously about this. Given you have not mentioned any such, I will presume that no significant issues have heretofore come to wide attention.
As to making uploading to Commons less error-prone, I would welcome any ideas, but it's a well-known fact that many (most?) people don't read instructions and just try to upload the image as quickly as possible. You know this, I am sure. As far as I can think, the only option to ensure all Commons contributors understand essential licensing issues would be to force people to take a test, but that's not going to happen. BethNaught (talk) 18:04, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
It goes deeper: Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by DannyH (WMF). BethNaught (talk) 19:06, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
BethNaught, you made your point, nominating more files would be a bit too pointy. It would be better if you correct the files like Courcelles did. Multichill (talk) 20:27, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
Oops.
But seriously, it's not my bloody job to fix what messes WMF staff have made. Neither is it yours, nor Courcelles'. I am aware of what Courcelles has done so far and I am both grateful and somewhat incredulous. Quite frankly, I will not take kindly to being told to fix the failures of the WMF, an organisation which promotes free knowledge, to abide by the basic attribution rights of the software and content contributors who make what it does possible. Besides, I just spent an hour looking for the problems. The time to fix them will be orders of magnitude more. Just no. BethNaught (talk) 20:40, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
I too have been very frustrated by this issue in the past. However, I just got an email on my work account about how its important to properly license things when you upload to commons, so I believe that WMF is taking this issue seriously. Bawolff (talk) 22:53, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
You're right, BethNaught, it's not your bloody job to clean up after WMF staff. I can confirm that WMF has often done a poor job teaching staff how to attribute the content they upload to Commons, and (following Bawolff) that the Foundation is taking this issue seriously now that you have brought it to the right peoples' attention. Would it be possible to catalogue all the staff-uploaded images that are not correctly attributed in a single location, to help WMF coordinate our curation efforts? I realize that this is not your job either, so even suggestions on how to go about this are welcome and appreciated :) Thank you for bringing this up, and I humbly request your patience, on behalf of my WMF colleagues. This issue is being addressed and will be resolved. Best, Jmorgan (WMF) (talk) 15:59, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
@Jmorgan (WMF): Thank you for your response. I am glad to see that the problem is being taken seriously. I've had a think about this. The problem is that there's no way to know automatically whether an image (or video) has been correctly attributed and tagged. Even when a file is tagged with {{Wikimedia-screenshot}} it is not always correct: for example, this image is a screenshot of a Labs tool under the ISC license, not CC-BY-SA, GPL or GFDL, and the author is not attributed, so the {{Wikimedia-screenshot}} tag is not correct. Hence the important thing, in my opinion, is to find all the potentially affected files and put them in a tracking category (it can be a hidden category, no need for badges of shame). Since uploaded screenshots and user testing videos (also a problem) are not always categorised in Category:Wikimedia screenshots, I would suggest:
  1. Do a database query for all files uploaded by WMF staff accounts (better also include their personal accounts; for example, KHammerstein (WMF) also uploaded problematic work-related screenshots as Kaitymh, and of course the enforced separation of staff and volunteer accounts is still a relatively recent phenomenon)
  2. Use a tool like Cat-a-lot to easily remove files which are not screenshots or user testing videos, e.g. staff-produced graphs, slides for presentations, or event photographs
  3. Get someone who fully understands the issues (thinking staff, but Courcelles has contributed to fixing some files I already sent to DR) to go through the remaining files and check/fix them
Unfortuately I can't think of a more efficient way to ensure that all staff-uploaded files are in compliance. (I'll post again if I have a flash of inspiration.) The problem is that there will probably be thousands of potentially affected files. That said, if an organised and proper clean-up effort is underway, I'm sure we (and I) can all forbear, as a (ladies' and) gentlemen's agreement, from flooding DR and forcing the clean-up to happen faster than the WMF can cope with.
Care will have to be taken in one respect: once a list of files to be checked has been generated, files uploaded after that time will need to continue to be verified until sufficient training has been provided to all staff. So new uploads of screenshots etc. should be put in the tracking category unless they are by a person who has been shown to be competent in attributing and licensing the screenshots.
BethNaught (talk) 22:28, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
@BethNaught: . Would a query like this work? This one is only for the past 30 days (it's slightly easier to identify uploads using the recentchanges table), but I could probably retrieve historical data going back years as well. This query can be re-run on a regular basis, for spot-checking purposes. It would be more difficult to systematically identify files uploaded by staff using their volunteer accounts, as I'm not aware of any central index of Staff --> Volunteer accounts.
I could also generate sub-lists that show 1) staff uploads that have the {{Wikimedia-screenshot}} template, ones that don't, ones that are and are not categorized in Category:Wikimedia screenshots... any combination of those characteristics. Let me know what would be most helpful as a first pass, and I'll get started on it. Re: user testing videos, I've uploaded several in the past year (since I joined the design research team). Can you take a look at one of these and let me know what I need to add/change to bring it into compliance with Commons policies? I'll document that information on the Design Research portal on MediaWiki, so that we follow the practice going forward. When it comes to older videos (many of which are in Category:User_testing), I'm less sure of their provenance. I know the erstwhile Growth team contributed some, as did the Flow team (now Collaboration), IIRC. Some may actually go back as far as the Usability Initiative in 2010. I'm happy to help curate these too, so please let me know where to start! Thank you for your help, Jmorgan (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
@Jmorgan (WMF): I extended your query a bit. --Steinsplitter (talk) 19:12, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
I have no knowledge of SQL so I can't really comment on your query, although Steinsplitter's widening of the WMF string searched for is important as some staff use "-WMF". As for how to properly document the user testing videos: actually, I think it's really important that others chime in on this issue. I'm not a copyright expert and I wouldn't really call myself a Commonist. I just know enough to notice there's a problem. I think you should definitely attribute MediaWiki. A strict reading of the licenses would mean you'd have to attribute every article and image shown in the video, but that doesn't account for possible de minimis exceptions. A brief low-resolution copy of one image is arguably de minimis with respect to a 20-minute video. Meanwhile, the user testing videos you uploaded are so blurry that the texts are illegible, so attributing the articles are not necessary (?) - but again, in videos where they are, you probably should? Like I said, I couldn't give you a confident answer. I'm sure some Commonists could give you better advice - or, though I am reticent to pile yet more work on the fantastic Maggie Dennis, she really knows her stuff and I would trust her understanding of the requirements. Sorry not to be so helpful about this. BethNaught (talk) 21:09, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks BethNaught. I'll follow up with Maggie (or someone on her team) re: best practices for curating our DR data on Commons. Meantime, I'm happy to spend some time over the next few weeks chipping away at the backlog of incorrectly-licensed WMF staff uploads, but still not sure how to proceed. I'll as the Community Liasons, I guess. Best, Jmorgan (WMF) (talk) 21:41, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Instead of nominating them for deletion, we could slap a template (or just a category) with a tracking category on the images in question, to help Jmorgan (WMF) find the images affected. That seem easy enough. Josve05a (talk) 21:50, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

May 22

Category:farm teams

I know it is difficult to gear a multilingual platform, and I am not an expert in the field but I think that this discussion with User_talk:Beyond_My_Ken needs more input. Here is the thread: User_talk:Beyond_My_Ken#Farm_teams

I created the cat as a reorganization of d:Q31532, this item clearly relates to a concept that is present in all sports. I was looking for some nice pictures for the local pages, therefore I though it was a good thing to provide every user a good selection creating a specific cat here.

If you look on some dictionaries the Englsih term is mainly (but not specifically) for baseball in US and Canada, but in other languages that concept is to all the sports. So I think that in a multilingual platform that redirect is not correct. You decide.--Alexmar983 (talk) 04:04, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

I live in China so I don't have access to google and i can't sample the web very well but here is some examples where the word is used outside baseball in the English language here, here, here. I hope it helps.--Alexmar983 (talk) 04:30, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

The expression "farm team" is a distinctly American one, i.e. a team where players are "grown" for the big leagues, and in that context used only in regard to baseball. There are no "farm teams" in American football, NBA basketball, NHL hockey or MLS soccer. College football teams are not "farm teams". The myriad hockey leagues in Canada are not - at least to my knowledge - composed of "farm teams". As far as I know, "farm team" originated as a baseball term, and remains as such. Players on farm teams are professionals, as they are paid, but are not at the top of their profession: they are either just starting out, or are in-between. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:08, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
use with basketball. Also keep in mind that when i came back to the cat I wanted to add translation in other languages, where it is clear it is not just about baseball. here an example in German for hockey.--Alexmar983 (talk) 05:33, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
Well, you certainly do seem correct that the expression is used outside of baseball. On the other hand, what purpose exactly does a category "Farm teams" serve? On the other hand, what purpose exactly does a category "Farm teams" serve, unless it is broken down by sport and country? And a reference would be required for everything put into the category, to be certain that in that sport in that country the expression "Farm team" is used. Seems like a lot of hassle for very little profit. Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:25, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
Of course it will be broken down by sport and country, but first you create the cat, than you create the subcats. I go step by step, just in case there are issues (and I was right, I guess). Also, this is a multilingual platform, there are languages where the expression (or the "equivalent" translation) is used for one sport and not another one is which is not very common. it would be the first time someone use extensive references to set up a commons cat (also please show me how you are supposed put a reference required for everything put into the category here on commons, I am really curious). I do see a lot of complication but mainly because you kinda want it, not because it improves commons. A lot of hassle for very little profit is for sure imposing a limited view that contradicts the general structure of the item and the content of the local articles instead of just accept a natural evolution of the categories. Still, if I wanted an image of a farm team or related to a farm team in the broader sense which is more perceived probably outside the majority of US anglophones, I would look for it through the category here on commons. There is really nothing more than that. that's why I was here in the first place. And I did what I do in these cases, I create the cat if it is not there and I was going to improve it. It mainly needs good sense: I cannot even imagine more sources than the one already here.
BTW, I am practical. I am not an expert in sport and if it takes so much time to fix something wrong (your redirect), i cannot image what would require to do things right :D. I am still quite confused, so there is no point in spending so much energy for a cat like dozens of other ones when i can simply do those. Someone else will fix the redirect.--Alexmar983 (talk) 07:58, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
I don't quite understand why you are making such a big deal about this. I made a mistake, I'm sorry, but undoing it means going to Category:Farm teams and deleting the redirects. I just did that and it took all of 15 seconds, if that. You could have done it instead of wasting your and my time telling us how practical you are. I'm not going to populate your category, because I don't think you did it right, and you don't have a category structure set up for it yet. I did put Category:Minor League Baseball teams into it, since by definition they are all farm teams. Any other teams added to it should be done to the proper sub-category. I don't see much use for the cat, but that's really not my concern -- there are a lot of categories on Commons that I think are fairly useless. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:00, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
If it were so simple why you didn't so it as soon as you realized it was a wrong redirect? You decided instead to make an additional comment and ask for additional references, something so generic I really couldn't do anything with it. I cannot start a potential edit war, right? I repeat: complication was there mainly because you kinda wanted it, and as as soon as you accepted the easy thing to do was to mend your action instead of asking for a very generic concept of perfection, the complication disappeared. Before pointing out how other people "waste the time", I think i is fair to think about your gestures and requests and how they affect other people time. Also if you ask for some references fine, but start with yourself: I found those examples with much less efficient search engine than google, maybe you should have done the same before creating the redirect.--Alexmar983 (talk) 08:25, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Numerical sorting in categories

Hi, this has been mentioned in a few other places, but I thought I'd mention it again just to be on the safe side: the community tasked the Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech team with fixing numerical sorting in categories. For Commons, this is relevant for files names. For example, this means 9 11 comes before 11 9, because 9 has a higher numerical value than 11, as opposed to the current order, where 11 comes before 9, because 1 has a lower value than 9. I can't come up with any reason why this would cause problems on Commons, but am I missing something? /Johan (WMF) (talk) 00:37, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't have a higher numerical value, but page names (including file names, categories, etc.) are sorted in alphabetical order, and in alphabetical order "9" comes after "1", no matter what characters follow them. Of course, I'm just talking about Arabic numerals here. I don't know how it works for other ways of writing numerals. --Auntof6 (talk) 03:32, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
Page names are currently sorted in strictly alphabetical order. For example: 1, 99, 100 will sort as "1, 100, 99". The request from the community was to enable numeric sorting, so that the same pages would sort as "1, 99, 100" instead. You can go to https://ssl.icu-project.org/icu-bin/collation.html and turn on numeric sorting in the settings to try this out. Is there any reason that Commons would want to opt out of this? Kaldari (talk) 06:50, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
It's much better to use key sorting rather than forcing a special sort by filename. If anyone is desperate for "99" < "100" they should probably use "000099...", "000100..." as the keys for those files. As an example, File:747 400 barleescovi.svg and File:NY-747 3.jpg would need keys for the sorting to make any sense, not a numerical sort. I can imagine that this feature will encourage numbers at the start of filenames, rather than a more useful naming scheme. The number of files where numerical sorting would be useful or relevant must be a *miniscule* proportion of the 33 million files hosted.
This looks like a solution looking for a problem, please avoid doing that without solid statistical evidence that it is a realistic help for *this project*, rather than because it's useful on the English Wikipedia (which is what the example in the tickets I've seen are all based on). --Fæ (talk) 12:00, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
Sorry everyone, higher numerical value was obviously not what I meant, no. Mea culpa. Thanks for catching it.
Most of the discussions I've had around this have actually been with Wiktionaries, not Wikipedias. I can't think of a reason why it would matter either way for Commons, but didn't want to assume. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 16:44, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
I think Johan (WMF) meant to say that 9 sorts higher than 11. The Windows file system has done this since XP and only a programmer would expect filenames to be sorted by ASCII code rather than naturally -- to normal people, sorting 11 before 9 just looks like a bug. I know techie folk know work-arounds like using 0-prefix 001, 002,.. 010, 011, and using ISO 8601 date format "2016-05-30 16:42:00" that sorts nicely. But Commons renaming guidelines are unforgiving to those who upload with simple numbering or their local date format and don't allow us to apply this work-around. "Making the names sort nicely" is not a valid reason for rename. Applying this change won't cause dates to sort correctly, mainly because the Americans do it wrong :-).
The files within a category are often named quite randomly because they have multiple authors and appear over time. Unlike on other projects, the members of a category (files rather than articles) are much much less likely to be renamed to follow some style guide -- there is none. Patterns only occur when a group of images have been created or uploaded by one user or organisation. So I think this fix will be of only small benefit in a minority of situations. But I cannot see it doing any harm. What I'd rather have is a way of sorting category files by image size (MP), file size (KB), date uploaded, date taken, quality rating (FP, VI, QI, then the rest), etc. -- Colin (talk) 15:52, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
re fae: this would still allow sorting with keys if so desired. There's really two things at question here: sorting numbers in numerical instead of lexicographical order, and also sorting accents more sanely (eg è sorting next to e). We could potentially doboth or just the accent thing. I think the accent thing would benefit commons for non-media section of cats. I think the number thing would be a mild benefit but not really matter. Re collin: if you could sort the media section any way you wanted (even crazy things like sort by color) but could only choose one method, how would you sort? Bawolff (talk) 23:26, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
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