Commons:Village pump/Archive/2018/01

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Q: Commercial use of CC-BY-SA works

I was wondering, is it allowed for companies to use works with a CC-BY-SA license for commercial products, without mentioning the author on those products? I am asking this since I encountered a product (a wallet) in a store with a coat of arms on it, which I have seen here on Commons. Also, is the sale of such products in violation of the license? --oSeveno (talk) 16:01, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

@OSeveno: No, it is not allowed. Please notify the author or uploader of any such copyright violations.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:07, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for that information. I will do so. --oSeveno (talk) 16:55, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
see also discussion at Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Facebook. there has not yet been a lawsuit enforcing SA, in spite of some bad actors, copying images on stamps. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 00:36, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Timezone maps in commons

Recently, I have received a message from IP user about some timezone maps not being up to date. After taking a look at Category:Maps of World time zones, it seems like there are at least hundred of maps about world timezone in commons (including maps in subcategory, but still not include timezone maps of individual countries), however timezone information are being updated many time each year by different countries around the world (see the frequency of tz database update), and there are little effort being made in updating all these different maps according to changes in timezone information. How to ensure they are actually being updated? C933103 (talk) 02:53, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

There are some “frequent tz database updates” due to leap seconds and (in some cases) because dates of standard↔DST transitions are not determined beforehand; some countries (e.g. Israel) chose such dates irregularly. As for leap seconds, first, nobody cares about sub-minute precision here, and this is about UTC, not chronogeography. Maps also don’t try to show exact date ranges when DST is in force; they only report whether a given area observes DST in principle. Updates changing local–UTC difference, borders of the zones, DST establishment/abolition back and forth, or other considered significant enough to be shown on maps, are not so frequent. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:36, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
Side note. I've been impressed by timezone information at this site: https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/usa/howland-island (look at 1925-1945 changes).
The date range for a map could be declared in a Dublin Core date RDF statement.
Glrx (talk) 21:18, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

@Incnis Mrsi: Leapseconds actually doesn't amount to very much of those updates and situation for like Israels are not really counted. You can look at https://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/ as an example of updates being made. As an example, in 2017, following changes are relevant to maps in commons:

Updates need to be made
  Annoouncement date Standard Time only map Map with DST
Mongolia No DST Feb 9 - Yes
Haiti Reintroduce DST Mar 13 - Yes
Turks and Caicos Islands Reintroduce DST Jul 25 - Yes
Namibia use UTC+2 Aug 9 Yes Yes
Sudan UTC+2 Oct 19 Yes Yes
Northern Cyprus Reintroduce DST - Yes
Turkey end Permanent DST Oct 31 ? Yes
Turkey suspend from ending Permanent DST Nov 23 ? Yes

That mean almost every one and a half month those DST maps will need to be edited and standard map actually need to be edited twice a year. And it is not because of this year being particularly more different either, let's look at changes in year 2016:

Updates need to be made
  Annoouncement date Standard Time only map Map with DST
Zabaykalski Krai in Siberia use UTC+3 Jan 5 Yes Yes
Astrakhan, Russia use UTC+4 Feb 17 Yes Yes
Haiti No DST Mar 12 - Yes
Chile end Permanent DST Mar 13 ? Yes
Sakhalin Oblast use UTC +11 Mar 17 Yes Yes
Ulyanovsk Oblast use UTC +4
Altai Republic and Altai Krai use UTC +7
Azerbaijan No DST - Yes
Magadan Oblast use UTC+11 Apr 7 Yes Yes
Venezuela use UTC-4 Apr 18 Yes Yes
Tomsk Oblast use UTC+7 Apr 27 Yes Yes
Egypt Reintroduce DST Apr 29 - Yes
Egypt Stop Reintroduce DST Jul 4 - Yes
Novosibirsk Oblast use UTC+3 Yes Yes
Turkey Permanent DST Sep 8 ? Yes
Northern Cyprus Permanent DST Sep 14 ? Yes
Tonga Reintroduce DST Oct 27 - Yes
Saratov Oblast use UTC+4 Nov 11 Yes Yes
Magallanes, Chile use Permanent DST Dec 6 ? Yes

Even if you group all those Russian timezone together there are still as much if not more changes in the year. Note that almost all of these changes are supposed to be permanent at least when announced and as such they are to be edited on related maps. And also, if you look at the timezone map category, many of these changes are still not included in some of these maps.C933103 (talk) 02:34, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

I have received another message from IP users, I will copy the message down below:

Hello.

Cany put in the Wikipedia articles the up to date file File:DEC31 World Time Zones.png whose title is not restricted according to a certain year, because many Wikipedia articles are using files that are restricted to a certain year and therefore are obsolete (unless these articles indicate the year of these files).

Here are the files that need to be replaced with the above mentioned file:

The reason I requested this because I live in Turkey, and Wikipedia is completely banned and blocked in Turkey by the Turkish government. If I lived in another country I could have replaced these files myself.

Thank you.

31.200.22.112 15:26, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

C933103 (talk) 19:33, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Japanese-language filename

For File:Garrand Hall of Seattle University 芸術と科学のブランチ - panoramio.jpg, I renamed it to this because the old name misidentified it as "Casey Hall". I suspect that there is a parallel error in the Japanese language filename & description, but I don't know enough katakana to fix it. If someone does, please fix the filename and description accordingly. Thanks. - Jmabel ! talk 19:57, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

@Jmabel: if you changed the name at all, then why didn’t you delete Japanese characters from it entirely? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 20:33, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
The sign in the foreground does mention Casey Hall though... --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:36, 31 December 2017 (UTC) Nevermind that. Looks like Casey Hall is just around the corner of the picture. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:39, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
@Incnis Mrsi: I didn't change the Japanese because for all I knew it could be a correct description of the image in Japanese. - Jmabel ! talk 03:48, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
It might be correct, but the building stands on the American soil, wasn’t built by Japanese, isn’t inhabited by Japanese, wasn’t damaged by Showa forces during the war; generally, there is nothing Japanese at all. Moreover, a US-registered company runs the Commons, it is hosted in the countries using alphabets (US and EU), using software built and working with (Latin Alphabet)-based compilers and interpreters. Why on Earth should this file name contain any of these CJK and kana? Moreover, when one renames the file, it’s one operation irrespectively of the number of characters changed or removed. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:06, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
@Incnis Mrsi: Evidently, the photographer and Panoramio uploader Bohao Zhao has been a better photographer than a photo namer, and has appended Japanese language names or short generic descriptions to many of its English language photo names to the best of its ability, regardless of any historic relationship of Japan or any aspect of Japanese culture to the subject of a photograph. I suspect that person has been a native speaker of Japanese, has used English as a second language, and did not expect this level of scrutiny.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 08:45, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
On Panoramio, they may have Japanese photographers with Chinese nicknames who shot mostly American locations. But Panoramio won’t live for long, whereas Commons lives. In any case, why should Commons inherit naming customs from Panoramio? Image naming here and there has different aims. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:56, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
Before anyone is going to blame the photographer, I'd like to remind you all that the person in question is not the uploader and probably is not even aware of their Panoramio photos being copied to Commons. This was all done automatically by Panoramiobot, which for the sake of convenience simply copy-pastes the title over at Panoramio during the transfer. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:53, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

The Japanese name and description mean "Branch of Arts and Sciences". So it does not contain the same error, although it would still be needed to verify if it is a correct description. Also, one might want to improve the Japanese description to more specifically describe the image.C933103 (talk) 02:42, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

January 01

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Wikicommons hosts 301 images from the USHMM. Yet, on their website, there are almost 6,000 public-domain pictures that could be usefully uploaded. I see that there was also an editathon there last year - so maybe someone already has contacts and could work with them for a batch upload? @Fuzheado: , @Rosiestep: , @Sturmvogel 66: , @Kellyjeanne9: , @Brock-brac: , @Kirill Lokshin: --Dans (talk) 21:25, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Good idea! Thanks for the nudge. -- Fuzheado (talk) 15:42, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

December 29

Whats the rate limit for uploads?

I had reached it while uploading files. Artix Kreiger (talk) 16:30, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

For 'autopatrolled' users like you it is 999 uploads per second. For general users it is 380 uploads per 72 minutes. Ruslik (talk) 19:55, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
@Ruslik0: , thanks. Appreciated. Artix Kreiger (talk) 21:21, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

January 04

common's SVG to PNG generator

I am looking at Image:Standard time zones of the world (3).svg and why it seems like the tool that generate PNG thumbnail there is functioning improperly and throwing texts across the image that are dislocated from their original position? C933103 (talk) 20:04, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

rsvg is durable enough to convert at least some of this crap. For comparison, W3C Validator crashes. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 21:03, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
I tried checking the svg File:Standard time zones of the world (3).svg at https://validator.w3.org/check, and it did not crash: „This document was successfully checked as SVG 1.1 + XHTML + MathML 3.0!” --oSeveno (talk) 11:19, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

January 03

User:UploadStatsBot

At one of the images I have recently uploaded (it's of a mass grave exhumation so only look if you can handle that): File:ICTY - One of the graves at Nova Kasaba..jpg, I noticed the use of the file on a userpage of a bot, that appears to count upload stats of individual Commons contributers. I do not mind it persé, but since I do not use this bot myself: why is it counting my uploads to the upload statistics of an other individual Commons contributer? Or do I have a wrong perception about the use of this bot? --oSeveno (talk) 11:10, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Maybe it's an error, maybe it is used for counting something else like new files in a Category of interest. Why not simply ask the User? --El Grafo (talk) 12:29, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
Good suggestion, I contacted the User. --oSeveno (talk) 15:02, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
It is not counting your uploads to my statistics. Those subpages (see here) serve solely informational purposes, so I can check freshly uploaded material on my regions of interest. There is no reason to worry. Regards, j.budissin+/- 16:06, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Surreptitious recording

File:Mistrust in the harassment resolution procedure.ogg has a surreptitious recording. Someone uploaded it as part of an agenda piece against an institution (w:Special:PermanentLink/818486206). I actually cannot think of any copyright grounds for removing it, although it may be illegal for other reasons (is this a two-party consent jurisdiction? Slander? etc.). Thoughts? Magog the Ogre (talk) (contribs) 02:45, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

see also https://www.mwl-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/LAWS-ON-RECORDING-CONVERSATIONS-CHART.pdf - however Japanese law may apply w:Okinawa_Prefecture. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 03:59, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Censorship of Farsi Wikipedia administrators. (Remove 2017–18 Iranian protests images without reason)

Hello. The Iran Islamic Republic's terrorists remove images of people on Wikipedia from 2017–18 Iranian protests, they get money from the government and have access to remove images. They do not want people to see the protests :( As a typical Iranian citizen, we do not have much familiarity with Wikipedia. Please report to the administrator. if you want see this.. They also reject our edits in the article in farsi wikipedia and they say iranian people do not have problems with terrorists and "islamic Republic of iran" See this Closed this user's access and many other of normal iranian people! Mohammadmosalman (talk) 22:46, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

They do not want foreign people to see pictures :( Mohammadmosalman (talk) 22:46, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

They are Nominating all photos for deletion! Mohammadmosalman (talk) 22:48, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

  • Before you go accusing fellow contributors of terrorist intent: can you give at least one example of a photo whose licensing status is clear but has nonetheless been nominated for deletion? Because enforcing Commons' policy of hosting only PD or free-licensed content is certainly not an act of "terror." - Jmabel ! talk 23:11, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
@Mohammadmosalman: Evidence would certainly be helpful. Also, in English we call your language and Wikipedia "Persian" now.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 23:43, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
I suppose by now any low-res photograph in said category is up for some sort of deletion, including a few related to VOA, e.g. Commons:Deletion requests/File:29 December 2017 protests in Kermanshah, Iran (full).jpg. That DR in particular is difficult to judge, since VOA Persian put their watermark on the image originally, but others argue that the photo was sent to VOA by a third party and is thus not PD-VOA. --HyperGaruda (talk) 06:08, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
  • I do not mean all those users. Most of them (Wiki fa users) are good users. Few of them are government-owned users who remove anti-government photo and images. you can see images on this link but many images are previously deleted.. Mohammadmosalman (talk) 07:35, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
This and This user are deleting all images, please warn them. thank you very much Mohammadmosalman (talk) 07:43, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Copyright issues are my only concerns. I nominate files for deletion from both sides:

"Pro-establishment":

"Anti-establishment":

And please notice this user's language [2] (in Persian, of course). 4nn1l2 (talk) 08:16, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

 Comment Files sourced from VOA should not be speedy deleted. A proper discussion is much better. Thanks, Yann (talk) 08:39, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
user:Mohammadmosalman please remove the term terrorists since this is not the place for such kind of terms and if you want not to seem intolerant like the government, for opposite reasons, but still intolerant.--Pierpao.lo (listening) 09:04, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

January 05

Should we consider wax figures as artistic sculptures and/or copyrighted material ?...

... because if it's the case, since there's no FoP in France, all files from Category:Collections of Musée Grévin should be deleted... And I had almost the same question for sculptures like File:Iron Man Statue.jpg, File:Spider-Man Statue.jpg and File:Statue Hulk.jpg. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 22:50, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Wax figures are sculpture, and treated the same way. The FoP may apply, but not in France.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:17, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
@TwoWings and Prosfilaes: I agree, please see Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Collections of Musée Grévin.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 04:21, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

January 06

Wikidata request for comment on the ideal data import process

Dear all

We are currently running a discussion on Wikidata about what the ideal data import process looks like. We want to get the thoughts of people who work on different Wikimedia projects who have different needs and knowledge of different kinds of data to make it our roadmap as inclusive as possible, please take a look.

Many thanks

John Cummings (talk) 01:14, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

@John Cummings: tl;dr Does this affect Wikimedia Commons? --Steinsplitter (talk) 12:32, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

@Steinsplitter: , yes, especially once structured data on Commons happens. John Cummings (talk) 13:48, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

@John Cummings: "ideal data import process" is quite cryptical, but if it has a potential impact on Commons, of course it interests. Can you explain what is that "ideal data import process", and why does it has any impact on Commons at all?-- Darwin Ahoy! 16:42, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

At moment I only see image category about a specific subject as usefull or Wikidata. The problem is that categories can be renamed or otherwise changed on a whim. The images used in an article are are often also added to the subject. To conclude I would add any Commons category linked from a Wikipedia article to Wikidata. But this has to be manualy checked. Add to Wikidata? Yes/No. Smiley.toerist (talk) 20:22, 25 December 2017 (UTC)
There seems to be some bug on Wikidata, and when we move a category it does not get replicated on the "Commons cat" field over there. But I still don't get what the heck is that "ideal data import process" they are speaking about. I really don't like the idea of having another project messing up with the way things work over here, let's pray they don't break anything.-- Darwin Ahoy! 20:48, 25 December 2017 (UTC)
and for example, when upload wizard imposes information template, when artwork template is needed, it creates a lot of metadata cleanup, on both wikidata and commons. i.e. by making data input easier the first time, it saves a lot of rework by volunteers. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 22:59, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

 Comment, thanks for the comments, please can you add any additional comments on the discussion page of the RFC so we can keep all discussion centralised in one place. Thanks again, John Cummings (talk) 03:41, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

 Comment @John Cummings: , thanks for the invitation, please can you explain what it is, and why would it matter to Commons, on first place?-- Darwin Ahoy! 13:02, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
@John Cummings: That proposal you are inviting us here seems confuse and unclear, and I still don't understand what it has to do with Commons at all. For the record, I  Oppose anything coming from there that has not been discussed and approved here as well.-- Darwin Ahoy! 18:21, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
 Comment @John Cummings: I agree with others that this is completely confusing. How can we talk about an "ideal process" to achieve something when there is no statement of what we/you are trying to achieve? What is to be imported into Wikidata? And to what end? - Jmabel ! talk 20:13, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
 Comment i am not confused. we are already importing creator and accession number metadata from wikidata. if you will not take the trouble to comment, then you should not get a veto. what exactly would you have them do in order for you to agree to use data "from there"? Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 21:03, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
 Comment @Slowking4: I'm (genuinely) glad if this is clear to you. It is not clear to me, even after that remark, but if it's clear to you, perhaps you can explain to those of us who are mystified. First, does "import" mean from Commons to Wikidata or vice versa? - Jmabel ! talk 00:53, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
both. data can be input into the wikimedia wikiverse by uploading an image with metadata on commons, or uploading metadata into wikidata. you can also import data into wikidata from commons templates. commons already uses data from wikidata for creator template. data flows both ways. lowering barriers to entering data right the first time will save a lot of data cleanup. do not create barriers to data sharing. it is a loser strategy. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 01:02, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
So when they say import they actually mean something bidirectional? - Jmabel ! talk 02:48, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

@Slowking4: I don't know what to comment. I went there, and all I could see was a cryptical wall of text intermixed with hieroglyphs as the one opening this thread. "Ideal data import" seems as vast and vague as those 2030 strategy discussions the WMF was promoting a while ago. Is there something concrete to discuss at all?-- Darwin Ahoy! 01:59, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

you can don your own concrete shoes, i could not possibly. you have to give feedback in the forums as provided, you do not get to dictate how collaboration occurs. you want to call strategy, promotion: you will have talked yourself out of being heard. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 02:06, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
Right. Let's just hope it's indeed "collaboration", and not imposition. But given the past behaviour, I've not many illusions about it, though.-- Darwin Ahoy! 11:10, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
Hope has nothing to do with this discussion ;-) - the question (as I understand it) is, what kind of information we on Commons want to share with Wikidata and how that export from Commons is supposed to work? We're already exchanging information like coordinates for objects with a category on Commons, so how for example could we make that process easier? How could we get all the information stored in Category:Buildings by century into Wikidata, and vice versa? It's not that difficult :-) Braveheart (talk) 14:57, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
@Braveheart: Not difficult, quite interesting and even more useful. But I have no idea if such a thing is being discussed there, I couldn't find it at least.-- Darwin Ahoy! 16:00, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
Correct - so we either start it in this thread or somewhere else, but I do think it would be beneficial to all if we'd think about this sooner than later :-) Braveheart (talk) 20:29, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

@DarwIn: feel free to start it :) John Cummings (talk) 17:57, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

@John Cummings: I'll not go into some unknown project to start some random thread about something I don't even know if and how is being discussed there, that's absolute nonsense. When you start discussing some practical stuff instead of those vague concepts, feel free to ping me over there. I would like to participate in the improvement of the integration between the 2 projects, there's an enormous potential on that. If you happen to discuss that, please ping me there.-- Darwin Ahoy! 18:50, 28 December 2017 (UTC)


Let's re-set this discussion. The basic reason why, if you are doing a big image upload here, you might also be interested in adding to Wikidata is visibility. If you're doing an upload here, presumably a part of that is that you want the files you are uploading to be found and used. This last month the WikiData Query Service (WDQS) has been answering 3 to 4 million queries every day [3], a number that in recent months has sometimes gone as high as 10 million queries a day. So if you want images to be found, it makes sense to help make them and/or their categories also discoverable through Wikidata.

The classic Wikidata properties that point to Commons are image (P18) to indicate a preferred Commons image for a Wikidata item; and Commons category (P373) to indicate a Commons category for the item. There are also a number of more specialist properties (now more than 40) that can be thought of as special cases of P18, as listed by this query: tinyurl.com/yadhpkf3 -- for example, to indicate an image of a signature associated with a person; or a sectional view; or a coat of arms; or a detailed map, etc, etc.

So if one is doing a big image update here, it makes sense to ask: are there statements that could/should be added to Wikidata that point to those images. For example, if one is uploading plans of a set of buildings, does Wikidata have items for those buildings, and do those items have detail map (P1621) statements? If one is uploading images of a set of paintings, does Wikidata have items for those paintings, and do those items have image (P18) statements? If one is uploading images of chemical structures, does Wikidata have items for those molecules, and do those items have chemical structure (P117) statements? If one is uploading photographs of particular statues, does Wikidata have an item for each of those statues, and do those items have image (P18) statements? etc, etc. If the building/painting/molecule/statue/etc doesn't have an item, then it makes sense to create one, add further properties to describe the item, and in that way make both the item and your image for it more discoverable.

This probably goes even more so for any new categories for things, that will be created as part of the upload process -- eg new categories for books, artists, places, events, etc etc. It is worth checking Wikidata to see whether there is already an item for the person/thing/place that the category represents. If so, and you add a Commons category (P373) there, you may automatically get "Commons category" links from a number of Wikipedias. If not, and you create the Wikidata item, then (a) that helps guard against duplication down the line; (b) it means that if someone later makes a Wikipedia article for the thing, it will link to your Commons cat; and (c) if you add relevant statements on the item to describe it, then it can be found by WDQS queries, including the link to your category, if looking for Commons categories has been included in the query. If, along with the images, you have facts (metadata) about what the images represent, or about the artists who created them, it makes real sense to add that to Wikidata as well, making those items more discoverable, and so ultimately making your images more discoverable too.

As a concrete example, I am currently preparing for an upload of 30,000 old maps that were illustrations in 19th century books. The maps cover all scales, from plans of buildings to plans of towns to maps of counties to maps of countries to maps of continents; the first 3,000 (single-page maps and plans relating to the UK) can be found listed here, broken out into preparation pages for different proposed upload batches. As part of the preparation process I have been using Wikidata heavily for the maps and plans of features up to about 200 metres from side to side -- typically castles, cathedrals, churches, significant buildings etc. (See batches 2, 3, 4, 7, 7a, and 8). Because of the way the map image were acquired, there is next to no digital information as to what the maps may be of; but because of the georeferencing project that is underway, there is information about the coordinates of the maps. So I can use Wikidata to find the Commons category that has a Wikidata item with coordinates nearest to the centre of the map. I can also read off the classification of that item on Wikidata to split out castles, cathedrals and other religious buildings. The process is not perfect; there are mis-identifications, and it will require manual clean-up. But it is a lot better than nothing. And as a by-product, I am getting the Wikidata identifier for the subject of the map, which can go straight into the {{Map}} template "Map location" slot, as per these examples -- or alternatively if the right Wikidata item has not been found, I can try to identify why not (eg: no P373? no Wikidata item? wrong coordinates?), and fix it. In this way, I find it makes sense to improve Wikidata as part of the upload preparation process. And, as a bonus, when Structured Data comes along, the Wikidata identifier in the "Map location" slot will immediately transfer over to the statement of what the image describes.

Of course, that is just one upload case. But there will be a lot of other types of uploads as well, where checking Wikidata (and updating it if necessary) as part of the preparation process for the upload may make a lot of sense. Jheald (talk) 20:49, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

@Jheald: Thank you very much for caring to explain and clarify things, it's now much more clearer indeed. Actually, I often do those connections myself, whenever I can, linking the Commons categories to the interwikis, though even on such an usual task I've found controversy on Wikidata, as for some weird reason they seem to believe over there that we link Commons categories to Wikipedia categories, when by far the most common situation is linking Commons cats to articles. They also seem to believe our Commons galleries are something totally diverse than what they are, as they keep linking them to articles instead of the categories, which is what everybody generally needs and uses, both on Commons and in the rest of the projects.
As for the case when no interwikis are available: I'm following the work of Joalpe, who is preparing something with street statues and monuments in São Paulo, Brazil, and at one point I tried to do what you suggest above, and actually created the stuff on Wikidata as I was creating the cats here on Commons. My experience was not neat and smooth, though - it was buggy and very time consuming - Instead of 1 minute or so I generally take creating the cat here in Commons, I took +10, and in the whole process I had that awful feeling that I was doing something I would never need and would ever use again (and nobody else, actually, as I don't expect that an article on that statue replica will ever be created, as it does not seem notable in the least by Wikipedia standards). And now, looking at the WikiData item I was working in at that time, it looks confuse and obviously wrong - It should be about a statue, but has the name of the man in the statue. I understand it can be used afterwards to generate dynamic lists, but the amount of time lost preparing that seems to be incredibly more than if I designed the list from scratch, and the maintenance is absurdly more complex than simply maintaining a list. Commons category (P373), if I well understand, is often redundant with the interwiki connection, which is what we actually use to move back and forth between projects, and here in Commons it generates a dumb self-link to the category we are already in on the left side bar. It also doesn't seem to understand when a category is moved, and if that happens, it produces a broken link on every project on the left side bar (the interwiki property does not has that problem).
Concluding - While I've seen an obvious advantage in using Wikidata for easily generating and maintaining "creators", at the moment I'm quite sceptical about the utility of using Wikidata for files. I'm very wary as well about any interference of Wikidata with the category system, which is something we heavily use and rely over here. It seems to have a lot of potential, but the path to success is still very foggy and unclear. And if WikiData people starts trying to impose rules on us relating our category system, as they tried to do with the galleries a number of times, I don't predict anything good at all from the relationship between the two projects. Let's hope good sense prevails.-- Darwin Ahoy! 18:10, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
"if WikiData people starts trying to impose rules on us relating our category system" Please could you avoid such ridiculous FUD? No on from Wikidata has, or is likely to do, nor indeed could they enforce, any such thing. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:51, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
lol - "impose rules on us relating our category system" - no, rather they have rendered the dysfunctional category "system" obsolete. and made all the edit warring about categories, childish. why waste time searching by category, when there is viz query? fear not commons ostrich, the WikiData people have it under control. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 04:23, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
@DarwIn: I fixed several points of your WD item: the height, length and width were of incredible precision, so I rounded that to the centimeter. I changed the description and the label, and added the subject, which is the most important property in a WD art item. Regards, Yann (talk) 14:03, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
@Yann: The statue was not "mine", I just tried to improve it adding the sculptor, but even that was quite confusing, as the sculptor, though being a well known one, was not the actual creator of the statue, which *supposedly* was a replica (I say *supposedly*, because at least from the photographs, Tabacco's work in São Paulo seems to be of much better quality than the original from the original creator himself, but the official version is that it is a copy). Anyway, thank you very much for your corrections and improvements (I've not the least idea where the bizarre measures came from, BTW), I really hope we can integrate both projects more easily some day in the future, I'm sure it can save a lot of dull work over here, if well designed.-- Darwin Ahoy! 03:45, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
The issue of how we attribute replica work of art is an interesting one, and it concerns Wikidata as well as Commons. We probably need a separate discussion about this. Regards, Yann (talk) 12:08, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
@DarwIn: Sorry to have taken so long to get back to you.
It's true, the Wikidata restriction to only one sitelink per item per wiki has caused us a lot of headaches. But for sitelinks to most Wikis it makes a lot of sense -- eg saving them from multiple WD items all having Commons category (P373) links 'claiming' the same Commons category, which is going to be quite a mountain to clean up. The good news is that we now have workarounds in place, both here and on the Wikis, so that it should now be possible to avoid it causing too much trouble. On the Wiki side, articles on most Wikis now use Commons category (P373) to link to a Commons category, rather than having to have a sitelink. Over here, adding the template {{Interwiki from Wikidata}} to a category will cause sidebar links to point to Wikipedia articles, even if the sitelink goes to a category item, so long as the category item on Wikidata has an article item it points to using category's main topic (P301).
This means that if there is a gallery page here, or a category item on Wikidata, it shouldn't inconvenience anyone too much any more if we link Commons category <-> Wikidata category item. On the other side of the coin, there does now seem to be general acceptance at Wikidata that if there isn't a category item there, and there isn't a gallery page here, then there should be no objection to making the simple sitelink Commons category <-> Wikidata article item. (Which is the situation which will most often be the case). It would be nice to get the Wikidata rules updated to that effect in black and white; but, as I wrote, there does seem to be general acceptance of the point.
As to the broken links, I don't know why the P373 statements aren't being updated to take into account category moves here. The last time I asked (at WD Bot requests), I was told there had been a bot active on Wikidata for years, taking care of exactly this. So perhaps we need to identify exactly what it is or isn't doing, to try to pinpoint the problem of exactly what cases it's missing. It's something that ought to be fixable.
As to your experiences adding data to Wikidata, well I think this is exactly the kind of story that User:John Cummings is trying to unearth with this request -- how have people been working so far? What are the pinch points? What can we learn from each other, about good ways of organising and doing things? How much can or could better technology help, and where?
My own experience is not dissimilar -- it is very quick and very very easy to add or change categories here on a mass-scale using tools like cat-a-lot. In contrast, editing Wikidata by hand is a slow slow time-consuming process. I was putting in some fixes this afternoon to things like co-ordinates and missing P373s, to try to make some anomalies in my intended category identifications go away, and it was slow. And fiddly. And did I mention it was slow. I fear this may be inevitable with 'retail' edits to Wikidata, done by hand one at a time, which (IMO) should be seen as a last resort. Wherever possible (IMO) the best way to interact with Wikidata is at scale, doing big blocks of edits to multiple items together, all at once. This is what I think John is driving at, too: What are people's workflows, when adding content? Can the Wikidata edits be batched up in this way, so that one does an entire spreadsheet at once? What tools and practices help with that? (eg semi-automated matching, using WP/WD tools for Google sheets, or SPARQL searches and custom scripts) What tool-"gaps" still remain, where things could be improved?
Yeah, it's challenging. But I have also been very impressed at helpful Wikidata has been, eg in my case for finding categories for buildings I have old plans of (and classifying them), based just on coordinates. Jheald (talk) 20:49, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
@Jheald: I believe the potential there is really huge to help the folks around here saving time, and definitely would like to join any such discussion, but it seems nobody has started it yet (and it's out of question me starting it). I understand some issues could be facilitated with structured data - licenses? no idea what they would be, really, those wikidata discussions are always very cryptical - and that's a big part of the problem as well. I don't understand wikidata jargon, and at this point I don't feel like joining that community, so all I see generally is what passes the borders of Wikidata into the projects I participate, in good and bad ways. Using Wikidata to build {{Creator}}s is great, and using it for interwiki purposes is even better, as far as I'm not reverted by Wikidata people that sometimes seem to believe they know better about other projects than the users of those projects. Galleries are a good case in point, indeed. I really don't understand why Wikidata people keep prioritizing them over categories, when galleries where *never* designed for that purpose. They are a Commons endemic thing, and are not meant to be mandatorily used with any article at all. They can be linked with articles, but were never designed to be linked to articles in a 1 on 1 basis, or even linked at all. As it is, the Wikidata approach to galleries is completely wrong, not only doesn't use galleries in an appropriate way, but even interferes with other stuff, as the category links to the articles. Wikidata people seem to have looked only at the namespace number, and apparently presumed galleries were like Wikipedia articles, and proceeded to do whatever they wanted using that wrong as a pressupost, with obviously bad results. Anyway, if they ever start discussing something more concrete about improving the integration with Commons, I would be very glad to join, and would appreciate if you could ping me there.-- Darwin Ahoy! 21:14, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

BBC Radio Times

Radio Times - Christmas 1935 - out-of-copyright article by William Temple, (died 1944), with in-copyright illustration obscured

The BBC have put the entire run of the Radio Times magazine, for the 1930s, online, as part of the BBC Genome Project

This was the BBC's own magazine, sold to the public. It contains a mixture of programme listings (also digitised as text by the Genome Project), magazine articles (not as text), specially-commissioned artwork, advertisements, and photographs.

Some of the artwork is signed, some credited to named artists, and some anonymous.

Some of the attributed articles and artworks are clearly out-of-copyright, some clearly not. Some pages, such as the one shown above, have a mix of copyright and out-of-copyright content.

How can we best make use of this content? It would be good to avoid a piecemeal approach, to avoid duplicated effort and to ensure systematic categorisation (I've been putting images in Category:Radio Times for now).

I have a contact on the Genome team at the BBC, should we need to liaise with them, and have reached out to our colleagues at Wikisource regarding text articles.

@Jheald and Fæ: as UK contributors with experience of managing bulk imports. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:28, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

I can run the bulk import using an agreed style with a gallery from each page to related pages in the same print. Though it would be possible to import the transcription from Genome project, I'm not sure this would be the smartest thing to do, compared to pointing users to the source project. As for Wikisource, again I'm unsure of the value of effectively mirroring the Genome Project which looks a lot like Wikisource and is being maintained and indexed very nicely.
I'm not up to creating a batch upload page today or tomorrow, you may want to kick one off under COM:BATCH and pen down some ideas about categorization which are realistically automatable. --Fæ (talk) 14:28, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, Fæ. A few points:

  • For clarity, I wasn't suggesting we replicate the Genome listings. But we can use the graphics, and the non-listing articles.
  • We can't just import everything, as not everything is out of copyright; an sometimes the content of a single page includes both copyright and copyright-expired material
  • Someone on Wikisource has claimed that none of the content is PD in the USA.

Sigh. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:16, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Plenty of other fish to fry. --Fæ (talk) 19:35, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
by transcribing, we would not be duplicating their pdf's with a nice media viewer. we would be cleaning up their text ocr layer. we could also have a fair use on wikisource for miscellaneous images on PD text documents. you could upload to internet archive, and then use IAuploader. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 02:40, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
Hi Andy. Thanks for the name-check, but I can't hold a candle to Fæ for projects like this. (Hope you're feeling better, by the way!) I'm still struggling after months to get the Mechanical Curator maps ready to go, whereas this is now so much bread-and-butter to Fæ it's the kind of thing he can knock out in his sleep, or in a couple of minutes before breakfast. But thanks for thinking of me, and hope you can find a way through the copyright issues. Jheald (talk) 16:21, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

File:Blason Ourville-en-Caux.svg

Could someone with better knowledge of French please review the file File:Blason Ourville-en-Caux.svg? The first version was a completely different coat of arms. The categories still make reference to the old version. If the municipality adopted a new coat of arms the old version should still be available as a file of its own. --Slomox (talk) 13:25, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

I do not speak Frech sufficiently to reply to that part of your question, but replaced coat of arms may be catagorized as Superseeded coat of arms of ..., which is usually a subcategory of Coat of arms of .... When a coat of arms is replaced by a new design altogether, I would be a shame to make the old one disappear below a new upload. Especially as it may still be used for articles on the history of the (developent of the ) coat of arms of that community. My suggestion would be to reupload the old coat of arms with the text Superseeded coat of arms in the file name. --oSeveno (talk) 15:10, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
The description of the coat of arms on fr-wiki luckily came with a reference: [4]. According to the first line in said source, Ourville-en-Caux simply did not have a coat of arms before the current quarterly shield of December 2015. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:50, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
That's interesting, thanks for looking that up. But where did the creator of the file take the blazon from back in 2010 when no coat of arms existed? The creator is User:Chatsam. The user is still active. Perhaps somebody can ask him in French? (Chatsam has "en-0" on his user page and I'm "fr-0") --Slomox (talk) 06:57, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
Searching for the blazon led me to this page, where the header says “Les blasons ci-dessous sont issus de l'ouvrage "Blasons des communes de Seine-Maritime" édité par "Le Pucheux" coécrit par MM Denis Joulain, Daniel Juric et Raymond Taconet.” However, that book is dated 2012, so might have taken the image & description from here. I didn’t find anything older than the original upload.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 23:45, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
The same happened with File:Escudo de Zaldibar.svg by the way. --Slomox (talk) 16:37, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Photo not uploaded Photo challenge 2018 – January – Trash and waste management

Hi there. I uploaded a photo for the Photo challenge 2018 – January – Trash and waste management. The name of the file is number of fruit crates.jpg Unfortunately, when I check the challenge page, the photo doesn't appear. Thanks --Aleco86 (talk) 18:33, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

I fixed it. It shows now. Ruslik (talk) 19:02, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Commons:Photo challenge November Results

Graves and Cemeteries: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image
Title Waverley Cemetery, NSW, Australia during the night with Milky Way in the sky Romantiker cemetery Maria Enzersdorf lit by many candles on All Saint's Day 2017 Panorama de la Colline des Croix, à Šiauliai en Lituanie
Author Antongorlin Granada Pierre André Leclercq
Score 15 11 10
Cables and Wires: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image
Title Tahtali cableway in Turkey Woodpeckers on telephone pole and cables. Huron County, Ontario, Canada
Author Maasaak GabrielleMerk Magnolia677
Score 15 11 9

Congratulations to Antongorlin, Granada, Pierre André Leclercq, Maasaak, GabrielleMerk and Magnolia677. -- Jarekt (talk) 15:54, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

January 07

Proposed custom template for an open access journal

The homepage of the the scientific journal Contributions to Zoology states "Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License." This link is in Category:Media from Contributions to Zoology, but individual articles (online in HTML or PDF form) do not seem to state this license. Assuming that the articles themselves are under CC-BY-3.0, it might be useful to develop a custom template that can be added, similar to {{PLOS}} or {{ZooKeys-License}}, to aid in more readily verifying permission. Or, is there a generic template that allows particular URLs be added? Or should I (and future uploaders) simply copy the license statement/url into the Permission fields? There are many open access journals in which the license may not be readily apparent, and so a plethora of tailored templates may be less than ideal. Thoughts? --Animalparty (talk) 03:39, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

@Animalparty: You are welcome to make such a template.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 08:01, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Category moves

Is the category move rate limit different when using the API instead of the web interface? Manually I'm restricted to about 2/minute, but pywikibot can do it at 8/minute. Jc86035 (talk) 10:58, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

@Jc86035: What categories do you want to move so quickly, and why?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 11:04, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: There's a large number of BSicon categories, which are being gradually being moved from titles beginning Category:Icons for (railway|motorway|canal) descriptions/ to titles beginning Category:BSicon/(railway|road|water)/. It could probably have been done all at once but there are a lot of places where the titles should be changed in other ways or categories should be to be deleted. Jc86035 (talk) 11:08, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

January 08

Serial deletionist

AshFriday has an agenda: remove smut from Wiki. He/she stated it on his/her own user page. He/she advanced a series of deletion requests for NSFW photos. Is this even remotely acceptable? As far as I know, Wiki is not censored, this is not the Sunday school. At least on English Wikipedia, w:WP:ACTIVISTs aren't welcome. So, AshFriday has admitted his/her intention of violating enwiki policies, which he/she has to obey per the Terms of Use of the Wikimedia Foundation. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:54, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

This is cross-posted from COM:AN/U. Should keep things in one place. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 02:53, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
Well, I had posted here first, then I had realized the problem with en.wiki policies. Sorry for cross-posting. Tgeorgescu (talk) 04:51, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
As with any file collection, (kittens, sunsets, contemporary abstract paintings by unknown artists, unknown people, etc.) it is not a bad idea to occasionally trim the collection to remove unusable files. We do have Template:Nopenis and Template:Nobreasts templates for a reason. Porn images are especially delicate as people have much stronger opinions about them. So I would invite people to look at DR's by AshFriday and evaluate their merit. However, if the images are good quality, are found to be useful and their copyrights and authorship seems valid than please vote in DR to  Keep them. --Jarekt (talk) 15:33, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Pinpoint files in a category by their formats

Hi. For Wiki Science Competition I am using Montage, and as a results I have to prepare the evaluation of films and videos separately, since they cannot be uploaded to Montage which is designed for specific format of photos and images such as jpg, tiff, pdf and so on. (as far as i have understood, but I am newbie :D).

For certain categories, I can spot the leftover files manually, but when they are a bunch files out of 800-1400 this becomes more complicated, and I want to double check I am not missing anything.

So which one is the best tool, in your experience, to list all the files that are videos (or, in general, a specific format) in a given category? Maybe it is something very simpe but I never did it.--Alexmar983 (talk) 11:31, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Take a look at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:CirrusSearch#filetype --Fæ (talk) 11:34, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
Interesting but if I write "filetype:video incategory:Images from Wiki Science Competition 2017 in Italy" in the Special Search bar I get no results, I guess is one of those pages that you have read twice with care finding the exact spot that you need to make it work in a huge amount of details.--Alexmar983 (talk) 11:54, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
You're missing some quotation marks. Try this: Special:Search/filetype:video incategory:"Images from Wiki Science Competition 2017 in Italy" --bjh21 (talk) 12:44, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
Perfect! And it confirmed my manual search, so no problem to address. thanks bjh21, also Fæ.--Alexmar983 (talk) 13:23, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Upload campaigns refuse to accept file descriptions

This problem affects most (if not all) uploads related to natural monuments (WLE) and cultural heritage (WLM). File descriptions are taken automatically from the monument list using the &description= field in the upload link. Recently, the upload wizard fails to recognize this field and provides an empty file description. The description will only appear when the campaign= field is removed from the upload link. Here is an example: this link will not add any file description, whereas this one, with the "campaign=wlm-ru" removed, adds the correct description. However, it misses all essential features that the upload campaign provides.

This should be fixed ASAP. Otherwise, hundreds and thousands of images without file descriptions will be uploaded to Commons, because people frequently use the upload links for natural monuments and cultural heritage even outside of the Wiki Loves competitions.

@LilyOfTheWest, Effeietsanders. Also tracked at Phabricator:T184380 (to no avail). --Alexander (talk) 20:19, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

@Alexander: Even though the bug was filed back in January, for some reason it never got tagged as an UploadWizard bug, so no one who works on the UploadWizard ever saw it. I added the UploadWizard tag today, so hopefully someone will at least see it now. Kaldari (talk) 23:05, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
@Atsirlin: P.S. - You might want to change your sig so you don't miss pings :) Kaldari (talk) 23:07, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

January 09

Tech News: 2018-02

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

  • On Wikidata, the "save" button when you edit is now called "publish". This means all Wikimedia wikis have now changed from "Save page" to "Publish changes". This is to help new editors understand what it does. [5][6]
  • Some edits will get an automatic tag on all wikis. This will happen when making a page a redirect, blanking a page, removing almost all content, undoing an edit, or rolling back an edit. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist. Some wikis had already marked edits like these in other ways. [7]
  • Special:UnusedFiles shows files that have been uploaded but are not used. It will show a file that is not used on the wiki it has been uploaded to, even if the file is used on another wiki. The new Special:GloballyUnusedFiles page on Commons only shows files that are not used on any wiki. [8]
  • Structured discussions now uses the 2017 wikitext editor instead of its old custom one. This will work with your preference for wikitext or visual editor. The documentation has been updated. [9][10]

Problems

  • Older versions of the Chrome web browser on mobile devices may see the PDF download button, but it does not work. The developers are looking into the problem. [11]
  • With the new filters in the recent changes, "Exclude selected" in "Namespaces" did not work for "Saved filters" between 13 December and 2 January. When you loaded the saved filter all other namespaces were excluded instead. This has now been fixed. If you made any changes to your saved filters between 13 December and 2 January, you need to save your filters with excluded namespaces again. [12]
  • The latest version of Google Chrome broke how section links are shown in the address bar. You now see #R%C3%A9sum%C3%A9 instead of #Résumé even if MediaWiki did not encode it that way. This happened in early December. This problem has been solved. The fix will be in Chrome 64 (23 January) or Chrome 65 (6 March). [13]
  • Some POST requests to the API took longer than usual in parts of December. This affected the Wikidata UI and some gadgets the most. It has now been fixed. [14]

Changes later this week

  • Wikidata will be moved to its own database servers. This is because it is growing and needs more resources. Because of this you will be able to read but not edit Wikidata and the German Wikipedia between 06:00 and 06:30 UTC on 9 January. You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. This includes editing the language links on other wikis. [15]
  • The font size in the editing window will change slightly for some users. It will now look the same on all browsers and operating systems. [16][17]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 January. It will be on all wikis from 11 January (calendar).
  • WikiEditor's ResourceLoader modules have been simplified to one: ext.wikiEditor. All the other modules are now deprecated aliases and should be removed. [18]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 January at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:19, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Category:Demographics of Hyōgo prefecture

How to move Category:Demographics of Hyōgo prefecture from Category:Hyogo prefecture to Category:Hyōgo prefecture? It must be a change of Template:DemographicsJapanPrefecture or any subtemplate. I wasnt able to find it. Any help would be nice. Thx. --JuTa 19:31, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

The list of prefecture names is at {{Prefjp/name}}; there are a few others where O-macron is apparently being forced to plain O. BTW I notice another problem with the DJP template, something wrong with the language switch (which I don’t understand well enough to fix). My preferred language is Canadian English, and I see a red Template:En-ca where I would expect some sort of description.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 20:13, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
@JuTa: looks like more tricks will be needed to get the template to display File:Map of Japan with highlight on 28 Hyogo prefecture.svg, or maybe create a redirect to that file including the O-macron in the name. Right now it just shows a red 100px, indicating a broken file link.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 23:58, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
Hmm, I moved it now to File:Map of Japan with highlight on 28 Hyōgo prefecture.svg, but that didn't help either. --JuTa 01:35, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
It's got to do something with the number in front of the prefecture name, which is not called by the current (sub-)template for some reason. --HyperGaruda (talk) 19:46, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
So {{DemographicsJapanPrefecture}} seems to call {{Prefectures of Japan2}} which in turn tries to call {{Prefjp/code}} when deciding on the map. However, the latter template gives me a 500 error when I try to get to its source code. Anyone got more luck? --HyperGaruda (talk) 19:59, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
@HyperGaruda: Special:Export/Template:Prefjp/code. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 20:24, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
@Incnis Mrsi: thanks. Prefjp/code apparently needs macron-less versions to work properly. I have restored the original code that was needed to properly call sub-templates and the like, but now we are back to the template-mediated (mis)categorisation which is due to a recent category move. I would not be surprised if many more templates broke down because of Gryffindor's page moves to macron-containing category titles, especially those about the prefectures. --HyperGaruda (talk) 22:13, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Subject and photographer but not selfy...

Happy new year!!!

New user @Greg Herman: has uploaded some files -without any EXIF- and says he's the author but he's on the pics (if I believe each desc/title) and they don't look like selfies. Is he really the author or just the subject? If he's the subject don't we need some OTRS from the photographer(s) of these images? May some one explain him the rules (with a native US english language lol) on his TP?

Thanks. lol LW² \m/ (Lie ² me...) 00:05, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

@Llann Wé²: ✓ Done.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 00:15, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks a lot @Jeff G.: lol LW² \m/ (Lie ² me...) 00:59, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
@Llann Wé²: You're welcome.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 02:33, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Large useless old versions

Hi there! I was wondering if there is some way to get rid of useless file history, such as at File:Fendt-828-Vario.jpg#filehistory? There are 2 useless images that seem over 80 megabytes or so. --Palosirkka (talk) 10:57, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Case-by-case would do best. Some or many file histories have verifiable information, like ones uploaded by We hope. See ones from Category:Lucille Ball and Category:I Love Lucy, like File:Lucy desi 1957.JPG and File:I Love Lucy Cast.JPG. George Ho (talk) 11:45, 10 January 2018 (UTC) On second thought, let's not encourage. George Ho (talk) 11:51, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
Why do you want to delete them? --bjh21 (talk) 11:49, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
+1. If storage space is what you're after, the usual comment on that from the server people is "don't worry about that". Note that files and file versions that are "deleted" by a Commons admin in the usual way are never truly deleted from the system, so it won't free up any storage space anyway. --El Grafo (talk) 12:08, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
Indeed. In fact, since the file is not removed from the server, merely 'hidden' by marking as deleted (which if you think about it has to be the case, or undeletions could never happen) - by 'deleting' you actually use a small amount more server space to store the details of the deletion transaction in the database. This is pretty much true for any action - server space used increases with each transaction recorded. -- Begoon 12:28, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

January 11

Westerbork 1944 films

In Category:Videos of concentration camps are some films, of which the file names start with Westerbork 1944. I found out there are better resolution versions of the same films available on a different website: https://openbeelden.nl/media/958723/Westerbork_Acte_1_HD.en Those files have a Public Domain Mark 1.0 license. Any thoughts on the possibility to upload these files? Should they be a newly created file upload? I am inclined to answer with yes, because of the different sources. Should they also be uploaded under a PD-old-auto|1944 license, like the files already available on Commons? --oSeveno (talk) 10:48, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

In any case it should be PD-old-auto|1945, as that's when the author died. I've fixed that for the existing files, also adding the appropriate Creator: template. --El Grafo (talk) 11:01, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
@OSeveno: Public Domain Mark 1.0 is a mark, not a license. We do not accept it as a license per its absence at COM:L. Per Template:Flickr-public domain mark/doc, "Unlike CC0 or the other Creative Commons licenses, the Public Domain Mark is not a legal instrument; there is no accompanying legal code or agreement. Instead, the Public Domain Mark is a tool that allows anyone to mark a work that they believe to be free of known copyright restrictions. However, it does not say why the image is in public domain".   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 11:17, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks to you both. PD-old-auto|1945 seems the right license. --oSeveno (talk) 11:44, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
When you do this, add the new source, but don't lose the old one if that gives clearer evidence as to why this is public domain. - Jmabel ! talk 16:48, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Wikimuseum

See m:Wikimedia Forum#Wikimuseum; if I get it right, it would be a kind of gallery page with at least one larger thumbnail and an explanatory text (somewhat different from a normal image caption). --pegasovagante (✉) 16:48, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

User:Pegasovagante thank you!--Alexmar983 (talk) 09:39, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Musical scores of Fantasia Apocalyptica in scope?

Should I upload the musical scores of Donald Knuth's musical composition Fantasia Apocalyptica, the scores made by Donald Knuth himself in PDF format? They are distributed under a free license, the only question is if they fit Commons's educational scope.

The scores and meta-information about the piece are found on Knuth's homepage. That page explicitly says that the music is put into public domain as per the Creative Commons CC0 waiver.

I'm asking now because the work was premiered yesterday, on Donald Knuth's birthday. Donald Knuth is notable as a writer, but wasn't yet notable as a composer. He says so too: “In short, Fantasia Apocalyptica is far more extensive than anything else that I've ever attempted to write. I have, however, spent thousands of hours playing the works of other composers, hopefully learning a thing or two in the process.” The work is so new that it's hard for me to guess how famous it would become.

– b_jonas 17:04, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

After reading the description page, seems worth importing into commons. Platonides (talk) 17:08, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
Notability criteria for Commons are, in general, lower than for Wikipedia. Even ephemera and curiosa are likely to be in scope, if they pertain to notable people. - Jmabel ! talk 19:46, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for your feedback so far. I'll probably upload the scores then, unless someone else does it faster. – b_jonas 00:39, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
might want to upload to internet archive as a pdf first; we can transcribe using the score extention, see also s:Wikisource:Sheet music Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 04:57, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
You can; I certainly won't transcribe them. Why is uploading to archive.org useful though, if we can upload to Commons? – b_jonas 12:51, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
because internet archive is a professional library and archive that will not delete five years later. and it used to convert to dejavu, and there are tools that put on the book template for good metadata for wikidata. one day we are going to get serious about score transcription, no reason for it not to be open for PD scores. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 04:27, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

I uploaded the sheet music under Category:Sheet music for Fantasia Apocalyptica. – b_jonas 14:18, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

January 12

Category:Media requiring renaming

Hi,

Could someone take a look at this category please? There are some files to be renamed. Thank you . – Rozmador [Contact]

This section was archived on a request by: Speravir 18:46, 20 January 2018 (UTC): Quite old message regarding a maintenance category.

Elektricity loading points

This is unusual as there is no bus pantograf but a loading arm coming down to the vehicle. Is the category 'Charging overhead lines' correct or should it be set to some other category?Smiley.toerist (talk) 14:37, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

January 13

Changing a valued image

Hello, I would like to change a valued image, but I don't know how to do it. Will anyone help me? Images are below:

  • Current valued image
    Current valued image
  • Image that I would like to nominate
    Image that I would like to nominate

Thanks, Tournasol7 (talk) 08:25, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Derivative works not identified as such and with incompatible license

What is the practice when someone creates a derivative work of a freely licensed image but fails to identify the original image and attaches a different license that is incompatible with the original. I've seen this happen a variety of times, but I'm not sure how it is usually handled. In the most recent examples File:Nuclear power history.svg is clearly inspired by (though not identical to) File:Nuclear Power History.png. The original was licensed GFDL / CC-BY-SA, while the subsequent image (by User:Delphi234) was licensed CC-0 and gives no mention of the prior work. Dragons flight (talk) 14:25, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

@Dragons flight: Tag it, as I have.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:35, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
I suppose deleting for lack of source / bad license is a possible outcome. Really though, I'd rather see that the source and license information was fixed. I could presumably add the prior source information myself, but I'm less sure about fixing the license issue unless Delphi234 updates it to match one (or both) of the previous copyleft notices. Dragons flight (talk) 16:14, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
@Dragons flight: The templates I left were designed to get the uploaders to fix their own mess.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 21:31, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

For anyone following this, the follow-up is apparently over here. Dragons flight (talk) 13:13, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

January 14

More fonts now available for SVG rendering

The WMF has added some more fonts to the scaling servers that are responsible for rendering SVGs into PNG thumbnails. Most notably, several of Google's Noto fonts have been installed. The Noto fonts have excellent glyph coverage (and probably look better than most of the other free license fonts we have available). The WMF plans to eventually install all of the Noto fonts (covering most of the Unicode standard), but there are some packaging issues with some of them. Here is the full list of Noto fonts that are currently installed:

  • Noto Sans
  • Noto Sans UI
  • Noto Sans Armenian
  • Noto Sans Devanagari
  • Noto Sans Devanagari UI
  • Noto Sans Ethiopic
  • Noto Sans Georgian
  • Noto Sans Hebrew
  • Noto Sans Lao
  • Noto Sans Lao UI
  • Noto Sans Tamil
  • Noto Sans Tamil UI
  • Noto Sans Thai
  • Noto Sans Thai UI
  • Noto Sans Khmer
  • Noto Sans Khmer UI
  • Noto Serif
  • Noto Serif Armenian
  • Noto Serif Georgian
  • Noto Serif Lao
  • Noto Serif Thai

Feel free to start using these in your SVG files. Here's an example of Noto Sans in use: File:Tree_Map_of_Employment_by_Industries_in_Alabama_(2015).svg. Kaldari (talk) 19:38, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

@Kaldari: could you explain please, what means “Noto Sans script” where script = Armenian, Devanagari, Ethiopic, Georgian, Hebrew, Lao, Tamil, Thai, Khmer? We don’t see anything similar on þe olde goode m:SVG fonts #List of available fonts. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 19:52, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
It means they're separate fonts. You can't make one full Unicode font; OpenType stops working at 65,000 glyphs. So this is how Google has split the Noto fonts. Check out the Wikipedia page and the Google Noto webpage.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:34, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
@Incnis Mrsi: Basically, each font covers a different set of scripts. The generic "Noto Sans" and "Noto Serif" include all the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic characters. So if your SVG only included text in those scripts, you would use font-family="Noto Sans" (or even better, font-family="Noto Sans, sans-serif") in your SVG. If, however, your SVG used Hebrew text, you would use font-family="Noto Sans Hebrew". Hope that makes sense. In theory, Google could include all the characters from all the scripts in a single font, but the font would be insanely huge, so font makes typically split fonts up by script. Kaldari (talk) 23:03, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
They physically can't; the Noto fonts cover over 60,000 characters, and the complex shaping for Indic scripts means that's far too many glyphs to fit in one font.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:37, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
The font list at SVG fonts needs to be updated. I'll try to do that soon. Kaldari (talk) 23:06, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Script to generate attributions

Is there some kind of library that allows to automatically build attribution text for a given image? I plan on reusing large amount of images and I need some way to automate generating credit.

I prefer to avoid writing parser of commons templates from scratch - reusing existing code would be preferable. I expected that there is some pywikibot script already and I am unable to find it.

I found only https://www.lizenzhinweisgenerator.de/?lang=en with code at https://github.com/wmde/Lizenzhinweisgenerator - but unfortunately it is not really reusable as it is written in form that expects user interaction (though it is useful as inspiration and a starting point). Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 21:37, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

The Commons:MediaViewer creates automatically generated attribution strings based on the description page. --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 21:51, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks! I tracked down source, unfortunately also in JS https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-extensions-MultimediaViewer Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 01:09, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
So does the Stockphoto Gadget.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 22:22, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
Source code at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Gadget-Stockphoto.js Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 01:09, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
This one has link to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Machine-readable_data that may be really useful - thanks! Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 01:09, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

requesting template help

I tried, and failed, to create a template, by copying an existing template.

Lots of museum and government archives request re-users show their idiosyncratic internal reference numbers. Smart contributors created templates to help comply with those requests. I tried copying and modifying Template:TPL to create a new one, Template:NWT archives.

I'd welcome some help getting the new template to work.

Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 21:53, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Edit: Moved answer to Geo Swan’s talk page. — Speravir – 18:55, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: --Speravir 18:55, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Degraded JPEGs on top of good ones

While examining contributions of a user I noticed this phenomenon – a high-res JPEG scan uploaded initially, and then a gravely degraded version with low resolution uploaded over by the same person. This irregularity can also be seen in several other places in Drawings Album to Russian Army XIX Century Firearms by Colonel V. G. Fyodorov (or search for it in uploads), although on B&W images the effect is not that striking.

Obviously, a degraded image on top of a File: page is not good. But what namely should I suggest to KVK2005 (talk · contribs) to rectify the matter? To place {{LargeImage}} on huge images? To use {{Archival version}} on originals and {{Compressed version}} on separate files to be used on wiki? Which format (PNG or the same JPEG) to prefer for compressed files, and if the former, then in which cases should they be posterized? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 15:37, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't think the situation is quite as simple as you suggest. For instance, the crest in the high-resolution version of File:RussianFirearmsXIX_cover.jpg is heavily pixelated, while the text underneath it is not. Similarly, the high-res version of File:RussianFirearmsXIX 16-18 FlintlockRifle1826.jpg seem to have been scaled up by a factor of two at some point. --bjh21 (talk) 16:42, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
Whoops… the thing I took for a high-res scan during a cursory examination isn’t so. I didn’t notice this thing, thanks Bjh21! A good point to ask the uploader about. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 18:57, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-3

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

  • Bureaucrats on Wikimedia wikis where the Translate extension is installed can now add and remove the translation administrator permission by default. Administrators of wikis where this extension is enabled can add and remove this permission to or from themselves. Wikis that used a different configuration before have not changed. [19]
  • There is a new Discourse test support channel for Wikimedia developers. You can ask questions or answer others questions about MediaWiki and Wikimedia software development. [20]

Problems

  • Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a bug that changed non-ASCII characters when a page was edited. [21][22]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 January. It will be on all wikis from 18 January (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 16 January at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • A few hundred wikis with less than ten high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 31 January. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [23][24]

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

18:45, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

File:OSIRIS Mars true color.jpg

What does "true color" (or rather "true-colour") mean in this context? "Natural colours", that is colours a human (or a standard camera) would see? --jdx Re: 20:46, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, it seems to mean "natural colours" because OSIRIS seems to be "standard" digital camera with CCD sensor. --jdx Re: 20:57, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
Ideally, yes. Space probes are rarely trichromates like us primates who made them. They are scientific, not artistic, instruments. If they have any color it's most often by a color wheel with several filters that make them multispectral. Scientists choose the filters by mineralogical criteria; by their ability to discriminate rocks. For popular release they choose three of the filters that happen to correspond roughly to human cone cells, or to printing inks or usual electronic screen phosphors that in turn were chosen to correspond roughly to human cone cells. So, yes, it's approximately what our eyeball would see if we were there but looking through a transparent window. False-color, on the other hand, picks filter bands that show the particular rocks or temperatures or magnetic fields or altitudes or whatever else is under study at the moment, including wavelengths (usually infrared) and properties such as polarization that human eyes cannot see. Jim.henderson (talk) 20:59, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
@Jim.henderson: Thank you very much for the explanation! --jdx Re: 21:07, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Wu Cheng'en portrait

Hi. I can't find any information about this image. Is it in the public domain? Thank you ~ DanielTom (talk) 23:49, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

January 16

Flickr2Commons is broken

This is starting to become worse and worse as more Flickr images are uploaded so an announcement here seems to be in order. Flickr2Commons is currently broken and is uploading corrupted images. For example see File:Debra Medina (6162036574).jpg. Pinging uploader MB298. These images are being put into the license review needed category as they are, obviously, not being accepted by the bot. --Majora (talk) 02:05, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I realized that when I transferred a couple hundred images. Most came out fine, but a few (especially the early Debra Medina images) were broken. MB298 (talk) 02:07, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
It wasn't just you. This has been happening all day. I just notified you since you were the latest "victim". --Majora (talk) 02:08, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
I've had a separate problem where Flickr2 Commons would upload a photo, but point the source to a different picture. It needs maintenance. Artix Kreiger (talk) 02:31, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
Poke Magnus Manske who (I think?) maintains it. --Majora (talk) 02:44, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
Just my 2 cts: I think that the first issue is a bug related to timeouts. The second issue can happen when you reuse the form while it is actually still uploading. To prevent this I normally close the tab and restart the tool in a new tab. Rudolphous (talk) 04:59, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Moving a file from commons to en.wiki

Is there an easy way to do it?

Thanks. Evrik (talk) 20:42, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Just making sure, you do know the images on Commons can be used on all wikis without moving? --Palosirkka (talk) 10:58, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
@Palosirkka: Yes. There is an image on commons that is fair use, and not free. If it's possible to transfer it without deleting and re-uploading, I'd like to know the process. Evrik (talk) 15:30, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
Anyone? Evrik (talk) 19:28, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
FWIW, I'd take this silence as meaning there is no easy way anyone knows to do this. - Jmabel ! talk 20:26, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
I mean it isn't hard normally. There just isn't any automated tool that I know of. Downloading to your computer and reuploading locally doesn't take that long though. --Majora (talk) 20:31, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
I thought there were a couple, but they seem to have disappeared:
  • There is a separate Windows (or Linux Mono/Wine) utility called "For the Common Good" (FtCG). I use it, but only to copy to Commons. It can be run in reverse, but requires a bit of configuration file editing: The author describes this at en:User:This, that and the other/For the Common Good/Reverse transfers. It sounds like the configuration changes aren't worth the work unless you have a lot of files to move.
  • I think that an older version of "Move to Commons Helper" (CommonsHelper) used to do it, but I don't think the current version does; the source code seems to have commons.wikimedia.org hardcoded in multiple places. @Magnus Manske: Do you know of any utilities that work in reverse anymore?
  • I don't see any sign that the new external program "Move to Commons!" (MTC!) will do reverse moves either. @Fasily: Have I got that right? --Closeapple (talk) 00:36, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

January 10

Are images on Wikimedia Commons indexed by search engines?

Whenever I use a service like Microsoft Bing or another search 🔍 engine to look for an image I never get results from Wikimedia Commons unless that image is being used in a Wikipedia article, and even then it's more likely for the image to link 🔗 to Wikipedia then it is to link to Wikimedia Commons. Strangely enough user pages, user sub-pages (including user-galleries), categories and galleries do show up in search 🔍 engines (though not all of them consistently, most do still show up), if I were to search for User:Fæ/Userlist it shows up here, but if I were to search for File:Steam Boiler 2 hu.png it doesn't show up either here or here. Now if I were to look for educational resources relating to steam boilers I would expect to find images from the world's largest repository of free images (maybe after Verizon’s Flickr) but apparently Wikimedia Commons images are hard to discover.

Personally I would guess that this is some “anti-abuse” measure that was put in place to stop “spammers” from promoting something but user pages (of non-blocked users) and galleries can still be found with search 🔍 engines so that wouldn't make much sense. It just seems odd to me that a website that should be about making educational resources available to an as wide audience as possible is trying to hide itself. Most people I know don't even know that Wikimedia Commons exists and the few that do ended up here accidentally by clicking on an image on a Wikipedia, thinking that they’re just on “a different part of Wikipedia with a different logo”, the only way this website would actually get traffic 🚦 from people who are genuinely interested in finding free images would be by making Wikimedia Commons images indexable by external search 🔍 engines which doesn't seem to be the case right now. If this is deliberate, is there any support for making actual educational images on Wikimedia Commons to be searchable via search engines like Microsoft Bing?

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱. --Donald Trung (Talk 💬) ("The Chinese Coin Troll" 👿) (Articles 📚) 09:48, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

I guess it depends on the search engine; afaik there is no "don't index this" instruction on our side. If I use Google to search for "vermisste eckersdorf", File:2.WK Vermisste Eckersdorf.jpg is the first hit in both web and image search even though it is not being used anywhere. If I try the same thing with Bing, it doesn't show up at all. Same for Beidou, but at least the image search finds a lot of cats. Yahoo image search doesn't find it, but the normal search finds at least Category:Taken with Pentax K-5 and Category:Photos by User:El Grafo. --El Grafo (talk) 10:15, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I've found quite a few of them in searches that I'm pretty sure are not used in Wikipedia articles. As I understand it, though, Google still tends to give lower rank to images with no incoming links, so if it can find lots of images of something, it's unlikely to give high priority to an unused image on Commons. I can't speak much of other search engines, because that's the one I use 90%+ of the time. - Jmabel ! talk 16:26, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
The magic word __NOINDEX__ works on Commons as elsewhere, and should stop search engine indexing for relevant page types. I doubt it applies to image pages, but someone would have to check $wgExemptFromUserRobotsControl for Commons to work this out (I don't know if I can see this as a non-admin non-dev). --Fæ (talk) 15:02, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Remove Flickr header

Hi,

Other than this at the start and 33 Pompeii-related files at the end followed by three files nominated for deletion, all of the files in Category:Media renaming requests needing target begin with "Flickr - ". Is it possible for an admin who is bot or script savvy to do a mass preliminary rename which removes "Flickr - " and add another targetless {{move}} template? It would make coordinating this little project much easier as it would alphabetically order the series of pictures.

Thanks,

StraussInTheHouse (talk) 10:01, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

✓ Done --Fæ (talk) 12:03, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Rhacophoridae

Can someone create collage of Rhacophoridae diversity (picture as File:Spiders Diversity.jpg)?--OJJ (talk) 14:47, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

I made it. OJJ (talk) 18:46, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Have a collection of Chinese penises

Aren't they just lovely? Special:ListFiles/A570204111 --Palosirkka (talk) 15:36, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

勃起陰莖&龜頭 is probably the best, in terms of illustrative use. Is that the sort of answer you are fishing for? --Fæ (talk) 15:41, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
Actually I was expecting a mass delete as the Commons penis collection is pretty encompassing already but hey whatever. --Palosirkka (talk) 16:30, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
Do some research on cock rings and ball stretchers, there's a lot of types we don't have illustrations of. A photo competition might be helpful to fill in the gaps and make nice change from monuments and butterflies. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 16:32, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be better to approach a sex museum 🎨 (or the penis museum 🏛) or pornography website or just a sex toy company and ask them to donate their images to Wikimedia Commons? By far the most recurring argument I find for deleting these images is low quality which could easily be solved by phoning in the professionals. --Donald Trung (Talk 💬) ("The Chinese Coin Troll" 👿) (Articles 📚) 13:55, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

January 17

PHP fatal error: Stack overflow

The URL https://commons.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/api.php?action=query&meta=tokens&type=login&format=json&formatversion=2 gives "Error - Our servers are currently under maintenance or experiencing a technical problem. Please try again in a few minutes. PHP fatal error: Stack overflow"

A developer assures that this error was not occurring yesterday.

Where should I report the problem? Or is it somehow expected?

Thanks! Syced (talk) 09:34, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Raise it on Phabricator. Easy to do and even if it is a temporary problem, it may be relevant for ops to do some analysis and log it against the ticket. --Fæ (talk) 09:40, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
Done, thanks! https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T185088 Syced (talk) 10:24, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
Fixed :-) Syced (talk) 07:24, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Correction of the English name for a category

Hello, forgive me , but my English language is nor as good as I would wish. In the purpose to categorize templates in the kind of {{Month by year in Hérault}} I want to create Category navigational templates for months by years in France. Are there any spelling or grammatical errors, especially for plural agreements, in the name I chose? Christian Ferrer (talk) 20:04, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

  • It's fine. In general (nothing you can do about it) this is a somewhat odd construct, and either "month by year" or "months by years" is equally acceptable. - Jmabel ! talk 21:51, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
Great, thanks you! Christian Ferrer (talk) 04:36, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Except, looking now at what you linked, you don't want to use "Category:Category..." It should be Category:Navigational templates for months by years in France - Jmabel ! talk 05:51, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
I was thinking like you, but in fact no, look Category:Category navigational templates for countries, it is because these templates are intended to be used only in categories. Christian Ferrer (talk) 06:00, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

January 18

Error due to deletion of Wikidata item

What should occur at 中国#Casino which is currently showing an error due to its use of {{label|Q5047871|link=commons}} and the fact that d:Q5047871 was deleted in November 2017. A text caption could be made up to replace Q5047871, or the photo/caption could be removed. Johnuniq (talk) 07:09, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Instead of complaining about one caption of little significance, wouldn’t be better to focus attention on headings first? These are incoherent {{Label}} gibberish, possibly not a single item from Multilingual tags: Gallery headings. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:55, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
I'm removing a few pages from Category:Pages with script errors and don't know what should happen when a caption goes bad. A similar problem is at Poitou-Charentes#flag & coat of arms due to deletion of d:Q16629984. As you suggest, the headings in 中国 are strange, but I don't have the expertise to fix them. Taking your hint, perhaps Lustenau is a model of how section headings should be done, while 中国 and Deutschland are not. Johnuniq (talk) 08:24, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
@Johnuniq: I need you here with your care about galleries. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:24, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
I put that and Caspium on my watchlist and will try to work out what is going on in due course. Johnuniq (talk) 09:40, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
yeah - welcome to the wikidata deletionism. you could ask for an undelete as "structurally useful" or use another item. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 17:56, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
I undeleted the item, but it is not notable by Wikidata standards, so that another solution is preferable (such as for example replacing the template with the actual name of what should be there).--Ymblanter (talk) 21:18, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks although I agree that d:Q5047871 (label "Casa Real Casino") is a problem. It was apparently created because en:Casa Real Casino existed, but the latter has been deleted twice. Its website says the name is "Casa Real Hotel Macau" and I see no mention of "Casino". If Q5047871 is deleted again, should the caption be replaced with just plain English? Poitou-Charentes#flag & coat of arms also has an error due to deletion of d:Q16629984. Johnuniq (talk) 23:50, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
The problem with d:Q16629984, d:Q5047871 and other items is that people create them, do not fill any information: No sitelinks to wikipedia articles or commons categories, no address, country or other information. If Wikidata item does not have enough info to distinguish it from other items than it will get deleted. {{Label}} is a translation template: You put your translations on Wikidata and access them using {{label|Q5047871|link=commons}}, but in this case there is no translations in the item only English title. There is no point in using {{Label}}. So if yo do not want your favorite item deleted than fill in some information. If you think some deletions are in error, I can help checking them out and possibly undeleting. --Jarekt (talk) 03:51, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks but I do not think the deletions were in error. I see you have fixed d:Q5047871 including its en label. By the way, if you haven't seen Template talk:Label#Deleted Q numbers yet you might have a look. Johnuniq (talk) 04:01, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Nazi symbol template

There is a proposal at Template_talk:Nazi symbol#Proposal to remove "(or resembles)", intended to reduce the possible misapplication to non-Nazi related artworks, especially pre-20th century works that happen to include swastika type elements.

Please add comments on the template talk page rather than here. Raising a flag as compliance with this part of German law is a sensitive topic for many contributors. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 13:50, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

is it necessary to merge identical image?

File:Caspar_Schmalkalden-Formosa.jpg and File:CasparSchmalkalden TaiwanMap.jpg seems to be the same. Is it necessary to merge these 2 images? --Wolfch (talk) 17:19, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

The images aren't identical: they appear to be different scans of the same map. I don't think it would be appropriate to delete either of them, but each should be linked from the other_versions of the other. --bjh21 (talk) 17:32, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Hello, I noticed that the Wikicommons Upload Wizard had problems in the links structure when you go to the "Release rights" (Droits accordés in french) phase. But only on the french version of the page.

For example, to read the legal text of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International, this link is used and leads to a page with content: 

Bad title
The requested page title contains invalid characters: "<".
Return to Main Page.

And it's like that for all the external links, they're all broken. I don't know if we can fix it ourselves or if we have to make a ticket on the Phabricator, so I wrote it here... Cordially. Lofhi (talk) 22:02, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

January 19

Duplicates of grammar templates

template:I18n/by (hist • logs • abuse log) vs template:by (hist • logs • abuse log)

Thanks to Camulogene77 (talk · contribs) Commons now has a pair of templates (maintained separately) for the preposition. And this problem may recur in any future time – how many template masters are aware of template:of (hist • logs • abuse log)? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:11, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Insects

If someone is good in insects: [25]. Rudolphous (talk) 08:58, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

How to change font size in edit box?

Is it possible to change font size in the edit box, i.e. the box shown when one presses "edit" link on a page? I suppose the size used to be 12pt, but after recent changes in MediaWiki it seems to be 10pt. IMO there should be some CSS' "magic incantation". Vector skin, Firefox, Windows. --jdx Re: 17:07, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Post the following in your common.css:
#wpTextbox1{
	font-size: 12pt !important; 
}

--Steinsplitter (talk) 17:16, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, it works! --jdx Re: 17:36, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
@Jdx and Steinsplitter: Just as information, not correction: mw:Editing/Projects/Font size in the editing window. — Speravir – 20:59, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Files by Panoramio user Gio la Gamb

Hi, there are screenshots or captured images from broadcast televisions in Files by Panoramio user Gio la Gamb. Unfortunately, ｔhe some files have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (Files by Panoramio user Gio la Gamb) from Panoramio.

For example, File:Dera Jinjia - panoramio.jpg (deleted) and File:Seiti - panoramio.jpg, these are captured image from NHK World TV (International broadcasting service by Japanese broadcasting station NHK), and have copyright violation problems.　Additionally, there are same problems in Files by Panoramio user Gio la Gamb.

I think that the files about things Japanese are most likely due to captured image from NHK World TV. The files have unusual and characteristic motion blurs. In the case of this, I don't know what one is going to explain details of them in Deletion requests.--Categorizing (talk) 04:01, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Agree, such stuff as File:S_A_K_E - panoramio.jpg is anything but not a photo made with a modern camera. But note that overwhelming majority of images from Photos from Panoramio ID 3265834 are fine. @Categorizing: submit a mass deletion request for all “things Japanese” from the category. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 05:03, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
@Incnis Mrsi: You've been a huge help! Thanks to you, I have just been able to try to submit a request.--Categorizing (talk) 06:14, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

File:Flor de la Vida y los 7 Solidos Platonicos.jpg

Could someone speaking Spanish look at this change, please? --jdx Re: 16:22, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

  • The uploader, Arstempo was someone briefly active here, only in 2015. Arstempo, if you are still here, feel free to weigh in.
  • Perhaps this would better be handled at Commons:Village pump/Copyright. If someone wants to move this discussion there, or to link from there, feel free. I'm more-than-average knowledgeable on copyright, but not expert.
  • Because this is a low-quality rendering, possibly scanned from somewhere, it's hard for me to get all that exercised about keeping this particular image.
  • I'm not sure that image is even eligible for copyright: it's a simple arrangement of reasonably conventional renderings of the Platonic solids. The only thing that is arguably original is some slight shading on the solids, but it's so minimal and so poorly executed that I don't see much creativity there. The text in the image dates back to matter old enough to long since be in the public domain. So there may not be any copyright here at all.
  • Instead of using any conventional means of notification, someone has anonymously (IP address) put a claim that the copyright belongs to a defunct esoteric organization. They haven't provided any evidence of that; they've merely asserted it. I have no idea how to evaluate the claim.
  • The claim is written in a way that I find downright bizarre for a claim about copyright. E.g. "En base a la Esencia de la Vida Sagrada, lenguaje universal en que están escritos textos: sánscritos, alquímicos, códices, codex, crop circles, biblia, torá, etc. con la perfecta Psicogeometría cromática-armónica del Arca del Alma (barca) y exacta Gnosismatemática alfanumérica-simbólica del Gran Espíritu, superado el Tribunal de Osiris, Elohim, Guardianes del Tiempo, Vigilantes o Vivientes de la Ciencia de la Esfinge y Veredicto de Isis, Aelohim, Ancianos de los Días, Arquitectos o Dioses del Conocimiento de la Pirámide y decodificado el Génesis Creativo y Apocalipsis Evolutivo." ("On the basis of the Essence of Sacred Life, universal language/jargon in which texts are written: Sanskrit, alchemical, codices, codex, crop circles, Bible, Torah, etc. with the perfect chromatic-harmonic Psychogeometry of the Ark of the Soul (boat) and exact alphanumeric-symbolic Gnosis-mathematics of the Great Spirit, surpassing (? the grammar is quite odd) the Court/Tribunal of Osiris, Elohim, Guardians of Time, Watchers or Dwellers of the Science of the Sphinx and Verdict of Isis, Aelohim, Ancients of Days, Architects or Gods of the Knowledge of the Pyramid and [having] decoded (again, the grammar is quite odd, and I'm not sure I'm correct to use a gerund here) the Creative Genesis and Evolutionary Apocalypse.") Frankly, this is well outside of the language of a normal claim of copyright, and it's a bit hard for me to see how someone can say, in effect, "This goes back 3000 years, and it's copyrighted." It goes on in the same vein; I don't have the patience to translate it at this time, but if it's really needed I will.
  • So, if I have this right, we could resolve this simply by someone creating a similar image, better rendered, not matching this particular shading; any copyright claim on this image would be moot. That's the course of action I'd suggest, unless someone thinks there could be other copyright issues; I don't know for certain what threshold of eligibility would apply, since I don't know what Spanish-speaking country we are dealing with. Maybe Costa Rica? Some of the uploader's contributions seem to come from there. The reference to "artículo 270 del vigente Código Penal" might make that clear to someone, but not to me. Some of their other non-photographic contributions look possibly a bit doubtful on copyright basis, but the only time one of this contributor's uploads has ever been deleted on a copyright basis it was an FOP issue, which is a common honest misunderstanding. - Jmabel ! talk 17:02, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
The added text looks copypasted. Can copyright notices as elaborate as this be copyrighted themselves? --HyperGaruda (talk) 18:41, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
Noting that TinEye finds a similar image from 2012 here: the polyhedra are basically the same but this arrangement of six elements is somewhat different from the file in question‘s seven. No idea whether these two are part of a series or one is an alteration of the other. I’m inclined to think they might have been scanned from a book, but that’s just a guess.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 21:33, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

It's very peculiar, since the geodesic dome ("sexaedro") and sphere are NOT Platonic solids! -- AnonMoos (talk) 11:02, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

How to manage large categories with well named files in 2018 ?

  • 中-xingshu.svg
    中-xingshu.svg
  • 中-oracle.svg
    中-oracle.svg

Hello All,

I'am back on Commons and my pet projects after few years away and need information on how to manage such rich categories. The sum of the Commons:Stroke Order Project & Commons:Ancient Chinese characters project's categories I act upon is about 18,000 well named files. For better encyclopedic accuracy and due to recent expansion of our projects' scopes, we are considering changes in our strict naming conventions. I come here to get guidance, help is welcome to point me out relevant resources, tools, tutorials, or place to ask these questions.

  1. Download a category: In 2018, how can I provide non-wikimedians a download system for all files within one category ? is there a download link by category ?
  2. Massive rename with regularity: In 2018, how can I lead massive renaming upon 5,000 well named files {chinese_character}-{keyword}.{ext} into {chinese_character}-{new_keyword}.{ext} ?
  3. Mass upload with right tags: In 2018, how can I time-efficiently upload 1,000 files to a category with custom descriptions ?
    Ex: file {chinese_character}-{keyword}.{ext} must be uploaded with template {{ACClicense| {chinese_character} | {keyword} }}.

I'am aware that the renaming would have rippling effects on other wikimedia projects so I first want to learn about available tools, so we can set up contingency measures easing the transition. All help welcome. Yug (talk) 12:01, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

(1) RE downloading, I don't think we have a one-click-solution available, unfortunately. Commons:Download tools links to a bunch of different command line tools, but your best bet is probably the Java-based Imker. --El Grafo (talk) 09:58, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
(2) RE renaming all I can say is that it would probably make sense to keep redirects from the old file names, as it seems there are some external re-users who might be linking to the old names.
(4) Machine readability: By the way, looking at some of the files I noticed that some (all?) of them use specialized templates that produce things like "See the date of uploads shown in the "File history" section." for dates and "see contributor name shown in the "File history" section." for authors. I can see why this was done, but it is problematic as we'd like to have all these things stored as Machine-readable data. To make things worse, they don't even show up in Category:Files with lack of machine-readability, as those "see file history" statements themselves are technically machine-readable. This is important for external re-users (see also meta:File metadata cleanup drive), as well as our efforts to store meta data at Commons as COM:Structured data. Probably easy to fix by bot though …
Oh, yeah, almost forgot: Welcome back, of course! --El Grafo (talk) 10:35, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
Hahahah, thanks @El Grafo: . If I remember well we were both active on one of the Graphic Lab, on map making (?). If you are interested in map making and have Nodejs skills, we have a talk to do ( https://github.com/WikimapsAtlas/WikimapsAtlas-generator ). Also, please note that I added a point (3).
(1) Ok thanks. It's quite sad we still haven such easy download ability as of 2018 (!). It's core functionality for a repository. Don't we allow to download a whole wikipedia dump ? the dump of one single category should be accessible via a simple link / archive. #callForDeveloper #PleeeeeeeaseHelpMeeeee
(2) Thanks for the hints on redirect. Would be better indeed. I plan to plant AGRESSIVE RED WARNING template on the file moved, for one year, so the local community edit the relevant templates to adopt new naming conventions. Noet: Yest it's for you Wiktionary guys !!!!
(4) As for citation, ACC and SO projects being on Chinese "letters", ALL our images are PD. Do we really need to name a creator ? We are literally filling the existing shapes with the Inkscape "bucket" tool. So we all agreed to be very cool with our authorship and play the PD license fully.
PS: As for 2-Renaming with pattern and 3-Mass uploads, I still miss guidance and I still welcome everyone's input. Yug (talk) 15:12, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
(3)-Massive uploads "@Yug:  :) I recommend using mw:Manual:Pywikibot- it has a script for batch uploading images: mw:Manual:Pywikibot/upload.py, which I used when uploading the glyph images. Wyang (talk) 08:06, 19 January 2018 (UTC)" -- copied here by Yug (talk) 11:56, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
(3)-Massive uploads, the tool Commons:Commonist (github) has also been recommended to me. Yug (talk) 11:59, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Stop bulk-uploading using meaningless generic file names!

Should this be Google Art Project inv. nr. SK-C-5 by photographer eQEojRwTdypUKA at Google Cultural Institute, or should it be The Nightwatch by Rembrandt? (or something similar) For most of us I think the answer is clear: the latter.

Commons is being flooded by mass uploads of files, that have meaningless generic file names, that aren't allowed on Commons. Often they use bots and apparently they don't verify the quality of their contributions. Generic file names like (fictitious examples) flickr-image-0023.jpg or national-museum-of-france-catalogue-nr.403272.jpg are against Commons guidelines. They contribute to Commons becoming more and more of a chaos. People need to be able to find files easily. The standard for file names is not the internal method of the supplier or individual uploader, but the guidelines as determined by Commons.

Similar as Wikipedia is not meant to be used as a personal blog, Commons is not a cheap personal file storage space of individuals or organisations. Cooperation should never mean submission. Arguing by some uploaders that the files providing institution is demanding certain file naming, is also a contradiction to the Creative Commons license or Public Domain status of the files. The files where released supposedly to be free for anyone to use, even commercially. The only demand even close to obligatory file names is naming of the author, but even that is not necessary in the file name.

Also, Commons is being flooded by mostly those same uploaders by files that have no or almost no categories added at the uploading stage. Often all they add is the category name of the institution which provides the files.

Furthermore, some institutions feel that their institutions name should be in the authors space of the file description on Commons. Only the name of the artist should be in this space, even if the institution should somehow commercially own the authorship. The same goes for photographs of 2D art works like paintings, where some institutions demand that the photographer should be mentioned in the artists field, no even mentioning the artist that made the painting.

It seems like some bulk uploaders feel that Commons is at the level of beggars can't be choosers. I think all uploaders of files should consider the fact that when they created their Wikimedia account, they agreed to abide by the rules of Wikimedia, and in this case Wikimedia Commons. And when they perform a new upload, they should apply the file uploading rules of Wikimedia Commons, not those of any third party.

I have in the past even been approached by other Commons users, to undo files name changes, where I changed meaningless generic names to file names according to the standards of Commons. That they should be descriptive of the content of the file. All because their institution (apparently) demands that their own standards be applied on Commons.

Hopefully we can start a meaningful debate on how to deal with this subject. Personally, I rather have a smaller amount of files on Commons than huge amounts of files of which we can not discover that they even exist, and where their descriptions are filled in according to rules of institutions that conflict with those of Commons Wikimedia. As a contributor that has done a lot of categorization work of files that I didn't add myself, trying to be useful as a Commons volunteer, to help build up Commons, I feel that something needs to be done. Regards, --oSeveno (talk) 14:55, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

I don´t mind meaningless file names and would rather support a proposal to remove that point from the list of reasons for renaming. They are just an identifier and renaming them is usually not worth the effort, especially if this leads to annoyance for the uploader. I don´t mind undercategorized uploads either if they are due to a lack of data at the image source. The only expectation I have is that mass uploads that need further categorization are put into a specific maintenance category instead of flooding content categories based on best guesses. In my experience this is respected by most organized GLAM uploads, problems occur mostly with individual flickr or panoramino imports. In general I do not share your somehow negative view of mass donations but I´m sure that any detailed suggestions you have for further improvement of the process are welcome by the contributors that are active in that field. --Rudolph Buch (talk) 17:03, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
No, I completely disagree. They're not just an identifier that only needs to be unique, they're more than that. The filename is the only captioning that an image gets in a category view -- it is the only way to sum up information about what the image is for somebody browsing the whole category at speed. In that context a meaningful and informative filename adds *hugely* to readability. Jheald (talk) 17:34, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
Agreed but of two minds I think that meaningful names are obviously a good idea and the benefit extends to search, captions, etc. But the one advantage of arbitrary naming is that it's language-agnostic (especially if it's just numbers and no Latin characters). But the strengths outweigh the downfalls. Frankly, the most international language is English as so some kind of language agnostic name is preferable (e.g. one built around ISO codes), followed by English, and then some logical local language (e.g. Arabic for a map of the Middle East). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:06, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
I'm functionally monolingual (though linguistically interested), and I'd far rather have any of the Romance or Germanic languages in Latin script than numbers. There's a good chance I can figure something out--the painting used as an example is known in Dutch, the language of its painter, as De Nachtwacht. Pretty much any language in Latin script is likely to be more mnemonic for me than numbers. Maps should be named in the language of their labeling, not the place depicted.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:22, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
I think in many cases, having some institutional code or number can be beneficial, e.g. if it is an accession number or meaningful bit of data that can help identify works. If it's just arbitrary enumerator, like the file names in Flickr files (e.g. File:Secretary Tillerson Arrives in South Korea (24374348158).jpg), the meaningless numbers aren't required (Fae bot uploads appear to omit these), but they can help differentiate and avoid overwriting multiple files with the same title, and I'd assume help in verifying original source should file descriptions be altered. Commons:File renaming (an official guideline) and Commons:File naming (a proposal) cover reasons to change or not change fairly well. I suppose an ideal file name from a museum would include the name of the work, the artist, and accession number, but files should not be hastily renamed without reason. Animalparty (talk) 01:53, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

There are some rules of thumb, beyond policies, which are helpful for mass uploaders; i.e. projects of more than 10,000 files where files are coming from an existing archive:

Best practice is to create a project page on Wikimedia Commons which explains technical aspects, copyright checks and license chosen, filename scheme, categorization scheme and anything else worth laying down as a long term record of how the upload was run.

Archive based filenames can have several basic schemes, before starting any large upload these should be defined and if unusual are worth raising for discussion. Some archives have hard challenges, such as containing hundreds of valuable historic images with titles like "undefined". Here are some suggested formats and good and poor examples of them from my projects:

  1. Modern photographs <descriptive title> <date?> <archive reference or unique identifier>
    1. File:'A Good Ship Was She' - RAHS-Osborne Collection c. 1930s (15777226145).jpg
    2. File:Afghan National Police at a Graduation Ceremony in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan MOD 45153406.jpg
    3. File:Aermacchi MB-339PAN, Italy - Air Force JP6366808.jpg
    4. File:Digital Jihad- How Online Networks are Changing Extremism (16093295344).jpg
    5. File:1933 Fortepan 77969.jpg
  2. Artwork <artwork title> <archive reference>
    1. File:A convention of the not-ables LCCN2004676789.jpg
    2. File:Croix-rouge française (French Red Cross) (6798225776).jpg
  3. Organism <common name?> <taxonomy> <archive reference>
    1. File:Gymnopleurus sericeifrons (Zoosphere 147 066).jpg
  4. Landmark <feature> <location (simple address)> <archive reference>
    1. File:Lake Loppio, Lake Garda, Italy-LCCN2001700813.jpg
    2. File:"Guest House", 300 East High Street, Oxford, Butler County, OH HABS OHIO,9-OXFO,1- (sheet 0 of 6).png
  5. Historic artefact <artefact title> <period, album or collection> <archive reference>
    1. File:'A Seaman fishing off a gun' (Bray album) RMG PT2015.tiff
    2. File:1890 garden and farm manual (Page 20) BHL42592341.jpg

At a fundamental level these all look like: 

<title with specific to generic descriptive elements going left to right> <unique archive or project identifier>

Filenames created this way will sort most usefully in categories, without necessarily needing sort keys added. The inclusion of archive identities in the filenames, means it is much easier to re-categorize or have housekeeping run on them if anyone wants to research the external archive and improve file descriptions or categorization with later mass automation, without having locally to download the text of every image page and analyse it.

Most mass uploads with problematic undescriptive file names come from using standard upload tools like Flickr2Commons, by someone well meaning but with no experience of larger upload projects. It has been discussed several times about how to implement potential restrictions, I would still like it to become an enforceable "norm" that anyone uploading over 10,000 files as part of one apparent project, might be asked to stop what they are doing until they can link to a project page that explains their approach.

Lastly, Wikimedia Commons is not a bureaucracy. If someone wants to upload their personal collection of 100 photographs, they should be free to go ahead without worrying an awful lot about file naming structures, so long as they are "reasonably" descriptive names. If someone is planning to upload 100,000 files, that's different, a responsible uploader must be advised to create a batch upload project page or they are very likely to run into lots of complaints about how they are categorizing, naming, licensing their uploads and this may create a lot of downstream work and hassle for them and others. However, so long as they create a project page, they have evidence of being open to feedback and can show the logic of their choices, even if these choices do not match other standard schemes that is still likely to be okay.

Anyone looking for past reference projects, possibly to refine our guidelines or gain some insight to issues and working practice, should browse Commons:Batch uploading and User:Fæ/Project list. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 07:54, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

—— Thanks for the replies. I notice we do not all agree on the best formats. I speak five languages, of which three on an advanced level. Being natively Dutch speaking, I do not object to using English descriptions and titles for files of Dutch authors. This since I recognize that Wikimedia Commons is of U.S. American, thus of English language origin. I strongly feel that nationalistic feelings should have no place on Commons, it being in the spirit of an international effort, to cooperatively provide freedom of access, to information or files, that may be freely studied and used. Often I notice, that although information is available regarding descriptions of files, the bulk uploader doesn't make any or insufficient effort of adding it to the description or categories. Or when it is clear that the default file name of a series of photo's doesn't describe the actual photo's, like amounts of file names that have the name of a street in it, although it is very clear that the photo's are of several different places. When the uploaders to panoramio or flickr clearly provide incorrect information about the content of the images, why even bother uploading them to Commons? Still, this happens regularly even by 'experienced' contributors. To me, the value of contributions should not be about the quantity, but about the quality. You may expect a minimum amount of effort put into each upload. I am not talking of human mistakes, which we all make, me too. In the end Commons is for the end-users, the people looking for a file on the Internet, to add to their article on Wikipedia or their homework for their school project. We need to keep that in mind, in my opinion, when uploading new files. Providing descriptive names and adding descriptions and categories, are essential for it's purpose. I hope this debate will go further than just that. I see there are some good proposals. Regards, --oSeveno (talk) 17:36, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

There's nothing all that new about this -- the files uploaded in 2005 with source "The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH." all had pretty generic filenames (many of which have since been changed). AnonMoos (talk) 10:43, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
Apparently it didn't lead to useful policies. It would be quite unrespectful of me, if I started bulk uploading files, expecting of other users to clean up the mess after me. Perhaps it should be the job of moderators to take action in these cases to approach those uploaders and if need be, freeze their accounts or something similar. That is, if respect is an important part of the Commons community. --oSeveno (talk) 14:13, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
"To me, the value of contributions should not be about the quantity, but about the quality. You may expect a minimum amount of effort put into each upload.... Providing descriptive names and adding descriptions and categories, are essential for it's purpose." you do not have a consensus. the upload help is minimal, and more concerned with licenses than metadata. mass uploads are met with mass deletions, rather than mass upload help. looking forward to your proposal for metadata coaching and cleanup team. submit for a grant. m:Grants:Project Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 15:57, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

January 21

Place map

Hello. With Template:Countrymap and Template:Countryonmap, you can see red spots on the map and when you click on them you are moving to a different place. I want to do something similar and easier I quest. I have a map of a place and I just want to add the spots to some places, so they can link to some specific pages. Is that possible? Anyone knows something similar? Xaris333 (talk) 21:50, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

You need to create your own version of {{Countrymap}} by replacing the contour image and then using the existing {{Countryonmap}} template to place dots at appropriate locations. Ruslik (talk) 18:21, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
@Ruslik0: Can you help with that? Xaris333 (talk) 19:23, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Small success story

This became a valued image today because it was used to identify a vehicle in a hit and run. Free culture is valuable for its own sake but even mundane pictures of cars can make a tangible difference in the world. Thanks to User:OSX. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:43, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Good story, thanks. Having comprehensive images of different products and places makes Commons a useful and near definitive reference. How this stuff is organized and searchable is a long term improvement challenge that is nowhere near solved. --Fæ (talk) 08:40, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
And, I fear virtually intractable. :/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:43, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
It might be interesting to notify the WMF press/PR department about this case. --Túrelio (talk) 08:44, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
Good idea. I'll tell The Signpost on en.wp as well. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:49, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-04

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

  • With the new OOUI look menus and popups can open upwards instead of downwards. This was meant to make long dropdown menus easier to use. Sometimes these menus have been overlapped by other things. This is now fixed. [28]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

Future changes

  • irc.wikimedia.org will be rebooted on 22 February. Some bots use this to get the recent changes feed. They need to be able to reconnect automatically or they will not work until they have been fixed. Most bots can reconnect automatically. [29]

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

23:55, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

January 23

Image from Newspaper to Commons?

Is it suitable load to Commons an image from a newspaper, like this one: [30], not the first image, but the global image of the painting that is in the middle of the report? It is a mainstream portuguese newspaper: Diário de Notícias Thank you, Greetings, GualdimG (talk) 04:51, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Bem-vindo, @GualdimG: do you mean this photo? Yes, it is acceptable to upload photos of works in the public domain as long as there is nothing new or transformative about that photo. But it looks like this is a cropped image of much larger work, so it's probably not ideal. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:10, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
@Koavf: Thank you for the answer. But the photo, as I pretended express, is not that, but one in the corpus of the news but this one: [31]. Is this acceptable?. Thank you. Greentings, GualdimG (talk) 08:25, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
@GualdimG: Ah I see (it does not display in my browser because I have scripts disabled). Yes, that photo would need to be cropped to remove the frame, I think. (I know it sounds silly but it's true). Then you would just have essentially a 2-D image of the painting itself. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:44, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
i would upload it. no indication it is a modern frame or creative. if the frame freaks want to use crop tool, they can. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 13:13, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
The problem isn't that the frame might be subject to copyright, but that the photographer might have a copyright in the photograph of the frame because it's not just a slavish copy of a two-dimensional artwork like the rest of the picture is. --bjh21 (talk) 13:48, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
but since there is no case law of someone making such a claim, it all amounts to a bunch of empty theorizing and hand-wringing. you realize how many photos of paintings there are with frames from the Louvre ? [32] , and frame information is not generally available. so you are pontificating about the unknown, to the unknowning. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 15:51, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
There are many examples of people making a claim on their photos of paintings. Why give them a foot in the door by not excluding the frame? Yes, there exists Category:Paintings in the Louvre with many pictures with frames, but the ones I glanced at are freely licensed. Copyrights of the frames themselves are more complex, and generally not held by the Louvre, which makes it less likely for there to be an argument about that.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:57, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
what foot? the NPG did not raise the issue of frames, what makes you think they will? "which makes it less likely for there to be an argument about that" you do not have any evidence to support that assumption. clearly there will always be an argument about obscure copyright issues here, regardless of the standard of practice of not enforcing frame copyright. nobody knows who owns it, nobody is claiming it, nobody cares. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 17:50, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Tagalog Licensing needs translation.

Hi. Can any editors fluent in Tagalog take a look at Commons:Licensing and translate it? On a related note, the Tagalog Wikipedia licensing page seems to be virtually entirely in English. Thanks. -Animalparty (talk) 20:05, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Filename blokkage

I get the message 'Please choose a different, descriptive title (more info).' by an upload. The link under more info does not work. The filenames are: Noorderlijn​ tram in aanleg 2018 01, Noorderlijn​ tram in aanleg 2018 02, etc. There is even a Category:Noorderlijn. What is going on?Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:52, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

January 24

Notification of DMCA takedown demand - St. Michael (Löffingen) interior

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

Affected file(s):

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#St. Michael (Löffingen) interior Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 00:14, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

That's such a shame, but it's unfortunately how copyright © laws work. --Donald Trung (Talk 💬) ("The Chinese Coin Troll" 👿) (Articles 📚) 11:09, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Timed text translation

I asked a question on the timed text talk page about a problem I had on editing a translated video subtitle. I wonder if someone could have a solution to this problem or have already translated timed text. Djiboun (talk) 22:20, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Koavf found a solution to my problem. Gratefully, Djiboun (talk) 22:55, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

January 25

FOP in US Question

The city of Columbus, Ohio is having the Columbus College of Art and Design students do artwork on the construction barriers during road work and city improvement. I really am talking about students doing artwork on concrete barriers. I don’t believe these will be under copyright. I will make sure of that before I ever publish photos of this. If they are under copyright this question is meaningless so for the moment let’s assume they’re not. My question is – Is there a difference in regards to FOP between temporary vs. permanent non-copyrighted artwork in the United States?

FOP in US did not seem to address this so if anyone has a policy page addressing this I’d love to see it. Thanks everyone -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 21:03, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

If the artworks really are ineligible for copyright for some reason, then FoP is irrelevant. FoP allows you to photograph artworks without infringing the copyright in those works, but if there's no copyright, you couldn't infringe it anyway. --bjh21 (talk) 21:24, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
The reason why FoP in US does not address temporary vs. permanent installation may result from the fact that US-FoP covers only buildings (which are usually permanently installed), but not any other works of art. --Túrelio (talk) 21:32, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
That's what I thought about when I read FOP in US (it only covered buildings) but in some countries there is a difference between temporary vs. permanent artwork and I wanted to be sure. I also agree if they really are under no copyright there wouldn't be any problems, but I don't like running with my assumptions when it comes to copyright. I appreciate everyone's thoughts. -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 21:36, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
Are you saying that you think the art won't be copyrightable because it's only going to be temporary? I don't think there's any reason to think that would be the case. To be copyrightable, it may need to be fixed in some medium, but it probably doesn't matter if it's temporary. Any photos you made would also be fixing it in a medium. --ghouston (talk) 02:51, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
I can't think of any reason such artwork wouldn't be copyrighted. However, I'm guessing there is a fair chance of getting the students to grant a license, via the methods described at COM:OTRS. - Jmabel ! talk 04:33, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
What I was wondering was in effect does art being temporary vs permanent change any status in the US. It's a question I haven't considered before yesterday. I didn't know the answer and I wanted to learn. As for pinning down if CCAD copyrighted this artwork, I always planned to email them or the Short North Art District who manages the project where they will be displayed to make sure. It's being referred to as a public art project which could mean anything but it sounds like it would be ok. As I usually photograph landscapes, architecture and occasionally an aircraft while never having photographed art I would be treading carefully. -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 06:32, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
Temporary or permanent is not relevant to anything in US law, so long as it's fixed. I don't think any form of painting wouldn't be considered fixed at any point, unless the painter is working on a canvas that the paint doesn't adhere to, even temporarily. Nothing has to be actively copyrighted in Berne Convention nations; they're automatically protected by copyright upon creation. The students would own the copyright, not CCAD, baring explicit contracts*, and you would need their permission to freely release photographs of their work.
* I understand that some universities tend to claim copyright, but in the US, copyrights have to be transferred in writing and signed, making any blanket claims questionably legal, baring works for hire, and basically screw that behavior; trying to take copyrights from students who aren't employees is bullshit.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:56, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
I believe I have an answer. Thank you very much. Emails are definitely in order. -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 00:37, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
put it on flickr with a CC-NC commons is not ready for it. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 23:47, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Abolish the 380 images upload rate for non-admins

It's quite often that I come across Flickr batches with more than a thousand images from GLAM's, but I can't upload them as I am only limited to 380 images in every few hours, I don't really get why this restriction is in place as high content editors usually know copyright © laws enough to what is acceptable and not, meanwhile the majority of the copyright © violations come from users with less than 150 edits, so why not abolish the 380 images rate for all users with more than 150 edits, or 150 uploads? Limiting mass-uploads to such a small user group seems counter-productive. --Donald Trung (Talk 💬) ("The Chinese Coin Troll" 👿) (Articles 📚) 11:07, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Hey @Donald Trung: , The limit of 380 per 72 minutes is to throttle possible bad downloads and for reviewers to not be overwhelmed. What uploads and links you have? I'm willing to help out. Artix Kreiger (talk) 14:04, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
Note, that this limit does not apply to people in either the bot group or the accountcreators group. Given that the account creators group doesn't give people very much, perhaps it should also be given to people who want to get around the limit. [Technical note: I just wanted to state that MediaWiki fully supports the config described by Donald Trung, so if the Wikimedia commons community decides they want that, it is definitely possible with current code using autopromote groups] Bawolff (talk) 06:55, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
I wish I was in the accountcreators group. Would anyone object to that?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 01:44, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
If you have valid rationale (you have a flickr or such batch to upload/move and you hit the ratelimit), sure. I'm willing to grant you one. — regards, Revi 03:17, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
@-revi: Yes, I wanted to finish uploading the works of Rodrigo Paredes, and it would probably be useful for null-editing from AWB or JWB.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 03:47, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
Meh, realized for now Crats' can grant AccountCreators. I think it's COM:BR or such. Krd? — regards, Revi 04:08, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

The link to 'high content' editors sets a starting point of 10,000 edits. I see no problem with those accounts bypassing the constraint. Other changes should be driven by hard stats on levels of good vs bad uploads, on average, for accounts with different contribution levels or types. --Fæ (talk) 07:21, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't see why we couldn't just rename the "Account creators" right to something more appropriate for the user right it actually has (noratelimit). With only two current members of that group, both of which have over 10,000 edits, that seems like the most logical avenue here. --Majora (talk) 01:48, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Please excuse my ignorance here but what is the different between a noratelimit right and the COM:GWToolset? Wasn't that extension specifically designed to batch upload files? Just from the users list on that page thousands, of images have been processed with that tool. Some of them very quickly. Wouldn't it just be easier to request access to that? I'm more than happy to draw up an RfC if we want to go down the account creator rename route but the GWToolset seems to do what you want. Unless of course I am completely mistaken. --Majora (talk) 02:22, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
GWExtension allows special tool access (Special:GWToolset) with required special syntax (so it's usually not used by ordinary volunteers - mostly those with specialized needs uses it, imo), while AccountCreator is just "NoRateLimit usergroup". UploadWizard or Flickr2Commons is usually easier for most users. For the noratelimit users, we currently have 200>x>300 users with noratelimit. (Admins + stewards + global rollbackers) I think accountcreator name doesn't much suit here on Commons, and VPP proposal - I fully support. (PS: Admins cannot grant accountcreator - maybe we want to fix this too?) — regards, Revi 03:17, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
Ah makes sense. Thanks for the explanation, Revi. I was halfway through the proposal anyways when I thought about GWToolset so it shouldn't be long now before it is ready. I'll post it at VPP with an official RfC template. --Majora (talk) 03:20, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
COM:VPP#Proposal to rename account creator group to batch uploaders --Majora (talk) 03:31, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Try -> Use

Template:Email_templates/Consent/en I want to change the word "Try" to "Use", but I guess as a regular user I perhaps should not be making changes to templates like those. Besides, a bunch of other languages should possibly be changed as well and I don't know all of them. The word "try" implies this is some sort of beta feature that hasn't been tested properly and only the fine print will tell you this is the preferred way. Or is it acceptable if I make changes to that template myself? Alexis Jazz (talk) 23:41, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

 Support Artix Kreiger (talk) 03:34, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. Your support tells me it's not too much of a controversial change, so I've just made the edit. If I'm being out of line I suppose an admin will tell me. The other languages don't seem to even have a button like the English one, so they don't need to be changed. Alexis Jazz (talk) 14:04, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

January 26

Creator:Urbain J. Kinet

Can someone fix Creator:Urbain J. Kinet, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:43, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

The cause is identified at Template talk:Creator#‎Major rewrite. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:47, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

January 29

Find missing DEFAULTSORT by Petscan

Dear all, I had bookmarked a Petscan query that found missing DEFAULTSORT-Templates in the subcategories of a certain category. Regretably I´ve lost the link- can anyone please tell me how to do it, again? Thanks, --Rudolph Buch (talk) 10:52, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

@Rudolph Buch: I'm not familar with petscan, but you can get the info with quarry using something like https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/24395 (I used 'Dogs' as the example category, replace with whatever category you want). Bawolff (talk) 18:01, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
Thank you @Bawolff: , I forked it and used it with Category:Politicians of Germany by name where it showed 0 results, which is what I hoped for. --Rudolph Buch (talk) 18:32, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
@Rudolph Buch and Bawolff: It is very unlikely that there is a zero count on 3.713 pages. So I tested the SQL (as I'm also a SQL beginner) and found 2 errors (a typo and the right DB left).[33] I got 23 hits (which is indeed very low for 3.713 pages):
Erik_Marquardt
Karl_Egon_II._zu_Fürstenberg
Johan_Karl_von_Zeppelin
Joachim_Lenders
Klemens_Mömkes
Karl_Nagel_(Politiker,_1960)
Anton_Schöpke
Winfried_Wolf
Jutta_Lieske
Bernhard_Wildt
Andreas_Butzki
Patrick_Dahlemann
Manfred_Dachner
Jürgen_Strohschein
Jörg_Kröger
Holger_Kliewe
Adolf_Freiherr_von_Wangenheim
Willi_Döring
Ina_Scharrenbach
Ilka_von_Boeselager
Rainer_Bischoff
Mario_Krüger
Werner_Lohn

Maybe we can save the query somewhere. -- User: Perhelion 22:44, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you both, @Perhelion and Bawolff: . I´ve saved/linked the query at the talk page of Category talk:Politicians of Germany by name together with the other maintenance-related queries. --Rudolph Buch (talk) 21:48, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. Those are both embarassing mistakes. I should have tested that better before posting. Bawolff (talk) 20:31, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

January 20

Dr P.S.Ramani

Dr. P.S.Ramani is a noted spinal neurosurgeon based at Lilavati Hospital Mumbai and he is also the father of Indian Spinal surgery and he has landmarks named after him in the anatomy of the spine and surgeries designed by him that are famous and currently in vogue such as PLIF. He is 80 years old and still is actively doing surgeries and recieving opatients from all over the world. his students are spread all across the globe. He has also recieved the university researcher award in London. Kindly allow me to create a page taht can ultimately be on wikipedia main page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Drpsramani (talk • contribs) 06:58, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

@Drpsramani: If you want to contest the deletion of a file, the place to do it is at Commons:Undeletion requests. Note that the picture was ultimately deleted as a copyright violation, so you may need to explain who owns the copyright in the image and how they've granted a free licence to copy it. On the other hand, if your reason for wanting the picture on Commons is to use it on Wikipedia, it may be better to create the Wikipedia article first. That would remove any doubt about whether the picture is within Commons' project scope, which would otherwise likely come up as soon as the copyright question was resolved. --bjh21 (talk) 09:16, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-05

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

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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

17:06, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

January 30

Image donation from Data USA

Data USA has contributed several hundred SVG data visualizations for use on Wikimedia projects. Please help by categorizing these images, adding them to relevant Wikipedia articles, and reporting any errors or issues at Commons talk:Data USA. More info can be found at Commons:Data USA. Here are a few examples:

The full set of images can be seen at Category:Media contributed by Data USA. If you have specific requests for more data visualizations from Data USA, please suggest them below. Kaldari (talk) 03:45, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Deletion spree in Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Photos from Panoramio ID 2875355

There is a situation occurring Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Photos from Panoramio ID 2875355. In this deletion request, for four times, thousands of file were deleted for the dubious reason of "Low quality, unusable, many alternatives available", without giving what are the "many alternatives available", when there were several files of reasonable of good, and many times the images were the only images that documented particular buildings or landscapes of Russia.

Even if they were several rightfully deleted files because of being of low or very low quality , the situation is still bad as the deletions were made in the first and second time within the regular 7 days but the third time was made 4 days after being open and the fourth time 2 days after being opened, so under a 7 days as the rules state.

Fact is that there were several deleted files of low or very low quality, is also true that there were several thousand files of good quality, as i could see for myself in both cases.

Nominations of thousand of files to deletion, because of quality and such speedy deletions do not give times to anyone make a reasonable and factual assessment of quality. So all this thousands of files should be undelete and then, if needed be, nominated in smaller groups so that there is a reasonable assessment of quality and not deletion of thousands of reasonable or good quality images deleted by a sloppy job of the nominatorMitte27 and the deletionist administrator Jcb. Such shotgun approaches to deletion requests, if copied to all Commons, only to make a count on deletion moninations and administrative edit, would leave only the FP and QI and not much else. Tm (talk) 23:36, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Basically over 99% of these files were useless. Till now only very few files out of several thousands were identified as usefull. These files were criticlessly mass uploaded, apparently without any human review. The DR is so large that it e.g. makes the day page hardly accessible. That's why I closed the 3rd DR a few hours early (not after 4 days as Tm somehow wrongly calculated, but after six and a half days). In the fourth DR I saw that all the files were uploaded by User:Panoramio upload bot, so that any comment on individual files was not to be expected. In e.g. the 1st DR, two manual transfers by NickK were involved, which I kept. Flooding Commons with thousands of useless files in the hope that a handful of usefull files will be between them is disruptive rather than helpful. If you can indicate individual deleted files that could be usefull, please let me know, so that they can be undeleted. Individual usefull files can be identified and kept (or undeleted), but they are like a needle in a haystack. Jcb (talk) 16:09, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
These are thousands files uploaded without any meaningful selection that create a boring job and lead to increased tensions, not the reaction from Mitte27. Administration should admonish the user(s) who abused mass transfer tools for such an end. Also note please that I don’t like unilateral and hasty actions by Jcb either. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:32, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
The DR should have been closed as rejected due to being unmanageable. I attempted to comment, but was unable to do this as I was limited to a tablet, the page simply would not load.
Mass DRs with thousands of files listed should be rejected on sight, not closed as keep or delete. It is simple enough to insist that more thought goes into a DR before it is raised. --Fæ (talk) 20:14, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
@Fæ: separate requests were of a manageable (although large) size. But Mitte27 was lazy enough to post all five requests under the same name, and they were concatenated to a single wiki page having five sections with identical heading. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 20:30, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
We could somehow archive the DR page? That may be an unprecedented action though. Jcb (talk) 22:00, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
Everything is unprecedented until someone does it. Just leave a link to the archive at the top of the page for interested individuals and be done with it. --Majora (talk) 22:33, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
I saved you the trouble of making the unprecedented move and did it myself. Old requests archived and notice left on the top of the main page. Anyone is free to revert me and speedy the archive page but this seems like a necessary evil. --Majora (talk) 22:54, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
I agree with the solution, seems the most practical for now. Jcb (talk) 23:07, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

January 22

Design feedback request: Multilingual Captions

Greetings. The Structured Data on Commons team has a new design feedback request up for Multilingual Captions support in the Upload Wizard. Visit the page for more information about the potential designs. Discussion and feedback is welcome there.

On a personal note, you'll see me posting many of these communications going forward for the Structured Data project, as SandraF transitions into working on the GLAM side of things for Structured Data on Commons full time. For the past six months she's been splitting time between the two roles (GLAM and Community Liaison). I'm looking forward to working with you all again. Thank you, happy editing. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:17, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Reminder

There is a week left for this conversation. If you would like to join in with others who have left feedback on the mockups, now is your chance. If you have left feedback already, thanks for doing so. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:55, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

January 22

Misuse of {{Artwork}} and its derivatives

Look at this Summary section ridden with “do not rewrite” warnings – which kind of image do you expect to see above? A 77-years-old photo from U.S. National Archives, right?

In fact,

an incorrectly oriented derivative uploaded by one François de Dijon (talk · contribs).

IMHO placing these templates on derivatives of historical images (restoration not counted) should be strongly discouraged. And all bluff like “the metadata on this page was imported directly from NARA's catalog record; additional descriptive text may be added by Wikimedians to the template below with the "description=" parameter, but please do not modify the other fields” should be expunged from such File pages on sight. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:12, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Do you have a proposal? --Fæ (talk) 11:29, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
  1. Compile a list of users who ever uploaded a media now bearing {{Artwork}} or its likeness. Via Quarry or similar.
  2. Segregate users who uploaded genuine historical works. By examination of said media.
  3. Warn all “floppers” that they have some time to make repairs in filedesc. Manually if not very numerous, but bots can be employed otherwise.
  4. Nuke all the bluff, taking anything of value under {{Information}}. By bots, likely.
  5. Take some precautions against recurrence.
Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:51, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
Template migration might be useful, so long as nothing of value is lost. A SQL script would give the report you want, asking at bot work requests might find you a willing helper. It would be smart to make this non-confrontational, better chance of collegiate work with a spoon of honey. --Fæ (talk) 12:21, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
Have you had a closer look at the "incorrectly oriented derivative", specifically the numbers on the trains? The original scan was mirrored for some reason, which can easily happen with slides or large-format photographic plates. The derivative only fixes the error introduced during digitization. It's the "original" files that should be in Category:Flopped images, not the derivatives. --El Grafo (talk) 12:48, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for this observation. After examination of File:Photograph of President Truman and members of his party lounging in the sun on the after deck of his yacht, the... -_NARA_-_199033.jpg I reached the same conclusion. François de Dijon made a good job fixing the mess (compare against e.g. this photo of Rear Admiral Donald J. MacDonald). Should a parameter be included in {{Artwork}} and likenesses to warn a consumer about incorrect orientation? Noone should be compelled to conduct investigations. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:18, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
I think placing {{Original}} e.g. in the notes= field of {{Artwork}} would be sufficient. Parameter 2= of {{Original}} could be used to explain that the "original" has been mirrored during digitization. --El Grafo (talk) 13:48, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
@El Grafo: can you show an example usage? Also, please, see Commons:Flopped, a draft. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:58, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
why don't you have a discussion with the editor you take umbrage with, before fulminating, and warning editors. it is not a functional process of quality improvement. the essay is a start in the right direction. next develop a standard of practice to detect, tag and correct, reversed images. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 23:53, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

January 26

Would small Wikidata-enabled infoboxes be useful on category pages?

<nowiki>Drusas; Drusas; Monumento Drusa; monumento na cidade de São Paulo; monumento localizado no Brasil; monument in Brazil; monument au Brésil; Denkmal in Brasilien</nowiki>
Drusas 
monument in Brazil
Upload media
Instance of
Location
Street address
  • Parque do Anhangabaú
Creator
Heritage designation
  • public heritage listed by the Monuments of São Paulo project
  • monument cataloged by the city of São Paulo
Date of official opening
  • 1992
Width
  • 16 m
Height
  • 8 m
Map23° 32′ 43.3″ S, 46° 38′ 11.6″ W
Authority file
Wikidata Q43330334
Monumentos de São Paulo ID: drusas
OpenStreetMap node ID: 4983916824
Edit infobox data on Wikidata

I've been testing out a small Wikidata-enabled infobox, like the one on the right for Category:Monumento Drusa, on a few category pages. The aim is to display some basic information about the content of the category, such as the type of thing shown in the category, the location, and a small embedded map - or for people, the date of birth/death and some useful identifiers - in a way that doesn't get in the way, but is there to provide a bit of context if needed. You can see it in action at the categories linked to here - and you can try it out on other categories by adding {{Wikidata Infobox}} . It should work on any category page that has a site link in a Wikidata entry, and it should work natively in any language.

Is this something that would be useful? It's still under construction - suggestions for improvements would be very welcome! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:57, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

They are useful. I'd prefer a horizontal template instead of a vertical one (for obvious reasons aka wasting empty spaces). We already have, as far as I know, {{Wikidata person}}, {{Wikidata place}},... Probably it would be cool integrating those ones into a single wikidata template (maybe two, even three, but no more). strakhov (talk) 21:08, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
Hi Strakhov, I find horizontal templates getting too much in the way of the images on the category, which is the main purpose of categories, and the main reason we use them. There are cases where you have a pile of them, cluttering the category, and forcing you to page down to see what is there, which I find not nice at all. A vertical template on the corner, like this one, does not steals much space and it's not too intrusive, it's to the side, so you can immediately start seeing what actually is in the category. I find this kind of template very useful as a guide, especially if it's discrete and non intrusive. If it could integrate with some of the horizontal templates we already have here, as you suggested, it would be even better.-- Darwin Ahoy! 21:30, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
Hi, DarwIn. I do not get what you mean with "intrusive". I open the category and I see, in my computer, an enormous empty space with this template at the right side. Then, if (only if) I scroll with the mouse wheel, I see "images". That's intrusive to me. strakhov (talk) 21:40, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
Maybe it's related with having a Reasonator gadget activated showing a link to the wikidata item, because in the very first milliseconds of pageload, it's OK. Then, when category is fully loaded, it appears the problem I described. strakhov (talk) 21:47, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
Yeep, it's that. This script enters in conflict with {{Wikidata Infobox}} template. strakhov (talk) 21:51, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
@Strakhov: Ouch, that's not a nice conflict. this edit would fix it - @Jheald: would you consider making that edit in the gadget please? I didn't know about the existence of the other templates, thanks for pointing them out, and I'll look into integrating their functionality into this template (it should be possible, but there's some complexities like auto-categorisation that I need to look into). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:59, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
@Mike Peel and Strakhov: Done. Nice fix -- it actually now makes it look better on regular categories even without infoboxes, I think. Thanks! Jheald (talk) 21:51, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
Maybe the Reasonator link could be included at the foot of the infobox? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:27, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: Reasonator's now included. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:03, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
Thank you. And what about Scholia? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:55, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
I can't see the relevance of lists of publications to a media repository - can you make the case for its inclusion please? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:22, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
There's much more to Scholia than that; it has page-types for people, taxa, journals, publishers, funders, (other) organisations, awards, chemicals, diseases, and more. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:29, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: OK, how do I call it with a given QID? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:54, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
https://tools.wmflabs.org/scholia/Q42 - it will magically determine the correct page-type to display. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:26, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: OK, done. Although Category:Plzeň Region seems to break Scholia - see [35]! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:43, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Looks good, but it would be nice to have something to click to make it go away. - Jmabel ! talk 23:36, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
@Jmabel: There are several options for doing that. Do you mean make it go away while on that page, or go away on all pages? Maybe a show/hide link would work, or a css ID that could be set to display:none in user css if desired... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:59, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
"show/hide" is what I had in mind: shrink it to a single line on "hide". - Jmabel ! talk 02:05, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
@Jmabel: I've now added that functionality, how does it look?
Looks good, though I'd have worded it "show/hide". But that's a quibble. - Jmabel ! talk 03:23, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
@Jmabel: Aah, I figured out how to do that in a multilingual way, so I've now changed it to use show/hide. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:07, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
BTW I also designed such a thing which already has some (very limited) service. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 21:10, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
@Incnis Mrsi: Nice! Would it be useful to merge that in with this one, or would it be better to keep them separate? Watercourses are kinda tricky when it comes to coordinates... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:05, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
IMHO nothing can be gained from actually merging (with #REDIRECT, eh?) templates for very different classes of objects. But a united guideline for usage of navboxes (syntax of parameters, relation to {{Interwiki from Wikidata}}, etc.) will be beneficial, and some specific design solutions can be ported and shared. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 22:12, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
This is good idea. some minor comments:
  • If this template is to be used in categories of files, consider to remove the image from the template itself to it make smaller (the image shown in the template would probably appear also in the category itself), and consume less space.
  • The wikitext code generates empty space because of #if - see in Category:Lovell Telescope with "Country" where there is br following UK.
Eran (talk) 21:49, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
@ערן: Thanks for the comments! On the first, I'm not sure: I included it as it might be useful to see the 'best' image in the category - or if not the best, then the one that's shown in Wikidata-enabled infoboxes elsewhere (which might encourage changing that image for a better one). Or if no image is available, then one can be added. But you're right it does take up space, and it is likely to be repeated. What do others think?
On the second, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how to fix this. If I comment out the linebreak before the #if statement, then the table row break doesn't work. If you can figure out a way to fix this, please implement it (or try it out in the sandbox). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:05, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
I say keep the picture. Good to see what wikidata has; good opportunity to replace it if it's no longer the best choice. - Jmabel ! talk 02:07, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
I like this very much! Please can we make it display the Wikidata QID? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:20, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
Also, it doesn't work on Category:Pica pica, presumably because d:Q25307 is associated with Pica pica. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:25, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: Thanks! It should be multilingual by design, please let me know if anything isn't multilingual. Where would you like the QID to be shown? I'll look into the Pica pica problem. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:29, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, I think we ec'd! I'd put the QID in a table row, probably underneath the "creator" row in the above example, with the label "Wikidata", linking that label to Commons:Wikidata. BTW, see Category:Synalpheus pinkfloydi for a minor layout clash with {{Taxonavigation}}. Category:Eric Ravilious shows a comparison - and redundancy - with {{Creator}}. better handling of cases where Wikidata has no images would be good; that case is sometimes legitimate, for example where we have an empty category for an artist, with sub-categories for their work. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:40, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: Handling of no image available should be better now. With the taxonavigation clash, I think the easiest thing to do is to put this template second; it's either that or ask an admin to remove "<div style="clear:both"></div>" from the taxonavigation template. On QIDs, I've been thinking about this and I'm not sure it helps to display the ID, as it's just a number that doesn't mean much to readers/editors and takes up space - for the same reason the template doesn't show VIAF numbers and so on. With the creator template, I was thinking it would be one or the other - or is it desirable to show both, and if so do we need to remove the redundancy in those cases? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:02, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
If we don't display QIDs, then this template cannot replace {{Wikidata}}, such as at Category:Twi. I've never had anyone complain about the display of a QID in that template. I'm ambivalent about the use of an infobox alongside creator. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:33, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: The link to Wikidata is shown at the bottom, I just can't see the benefit of showing the QID as well, since apart from a few cases (e.g. Q42) the number doesn't mean anything, so I can't see the added benefit. Can you make the case for its inclusion, please? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:22, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
I thought I had; It will obviate the need to also include {{Wikidata}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:29, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: OK, now added, and I'm also showing the ID numbers for other IDs, but in the hidden suggestion suggested by John below. How does that look? If anyone has an objection to showing the numbers, please say so! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:05, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: On Pica pica, there's several possible solutions here. One would be to change the sitelink from the gallery to the category. Another would be to create a Wikidata category item and use P301 to link through to the main topic (this template will follow that through). Or you can manually specify a QID if absolutely needed, but I tend to think it's better to keep the solution on Wikidata if possible. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk)
@Mike Peel: Just wondering, can the template follow a sitelink and then a category's main topic (P301), if the sitelink is to a wikidata category-type item, rather than an article-type item? Jheald (talk) 23:47, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
My internet connection has died, and I can't reply much on mobile. But it should follow P301 already. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 00:01, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
@Jheald: The simple answer is yes, an example in action was at [36] (although @Gbarta: has since removed it, I'm not sure why). It also auto-includes {{Interwiki from wikidata}} in cases like that. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:23, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

There's a bug in the instance on Category:South Staffordshire Tramway Generating Station, perhaps because the Wikidata item has two images? On the same page, it can also bee seen that the {{Object location dec}} template could be rendered redundant if its contents were included in the infobox. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:54, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: Fixed, by fetching a maximum of 1 image. I've re-ordered the templates to avoid the whitespace issue - do all horizontal templates here insist on using clearing linebreaks..? I hate to say it, but I think the question with the location template again comes down to 'do we want to show the number?' - the functionality's already available by clicking on expand icon in the map. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:35, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Hi. Thanks, great work. I'm not OK with always showing the Scholia link, even if empty (as it happens in most potential uses): Showing project links (wikisource, wikiquote as such) when they exist would be way more useful. Wrt authority control links I'm not OK with linking only "VIAF / LoC / GND" and combinations as such because of systemic bias. Maybe "only Wikidata" or "only Wikidata + VIAF" would be OK enough. If not, maybe a more-generous-collapsed-by-default-approach should be considered. strakhov (talk) 11:23, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
@Strakhov: Which aspect(s) of this alleged systemic bias led you to oppose 'linking only "VIAF / LoC / GND" and combinations as such'? If there are other authority control links you would like to use, are they in Wikidata? If not, why?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 11:37, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: Do I really need to list you every authority identifier existing right now in Wikidata as a property? Do I really need to explain how biased towards English and German Language is only including for people the VIAF + LoC + GND" combination? strakhov (talk) 11:52, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
@Strakhov: I'm hoping @Pigsonthewing: can answer about Scholia and the collapsed-by-default bit. I've been steadily adding more IDs, e.g. see the example one in this discussion that includes a Brazil-specific ID. I will look into adding the project links soon - I'm not sure how to code them up yet, otherwise they'd be there already. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 11:40, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
@Strakhov: E.g., Category:Tower of Baño de la Cava now includes Asset of cultural interest code (P808). I'm happy to add more, although I might need to find a more optimised way of checking these at some point. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 11:46, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. There is an enormous quantity of identifiers and the not-collapsed-view is a no go in the end. IMHO keeping a reasonably short box is important. strakhov (talk) 11:52, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
The "not-collapsed-view" is most definitely not a "no go". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:31, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Could you say why is a "yes-go"? A vertical column with endless numbers and codes is not aesthetically viable. strakhov (talk) 13:48, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Why are you asking me to defend something I didn't say? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:18, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
We're rapidly getting into Bikeshed territory. I suggest we decide what we want this template to do, rather than what specific data fields we want to include. For example, do we want to replace some or all of {{Wikidata}}, {{Authority control}}, {{Object location dec}}, and the Reasonator sister-link box? Or keep them? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:31, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
I'd suggest removing the identifier part from {{Wikidata Infobox}} and keeping {{Authority control}} (or "external links") as an horizontal bar. And drop the rest. strakhov (talk) 13:48, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Great idea but needs a few changes. Just tried it on 'Wales' (of course! ;-) and it says that Wales is an "instance of Countries" (!), and located in (amongst others) the "Kingdom of England"! I suggest we just add "suppressfields =" as is usually on cy-WP and others so that this kind of stuff doesn't appear. The Wikishootme also gives a pocket full of places in the center of Wales. But I think it will be a really valuable addition, when it's refined a little. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 16:20, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

@Llywelyn2000: I've made a slight tweak that fixes most of the location issue - if you set values as preferred on Wikidata, then it now uses those instead of all values. Hopefully that functionality also helps in other parts as well. The code can support suppressfields, but I'd rather not use that unless it's absolutely needed - it's better to improve things on Wikidata instead. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:31, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Mike! It looks much better. UK still down twice though and it would be good to include Europe after UK! Best regards! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 18:39, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
@Mike Peel and Llywelyn2000: Do be aware that setting values as 'preferred' can be really annoying for people writing queries based on the other values. Query writers almost always use the simple wdt: form of properties in their queries. This only returns values that are top-ranked. That's usually not a problem, because usually normal rank is the top rank, and if deprecated items get ignored then so much the better. But if somebody comes along and sets one of the values to preferred rank, that has the effect on such a value of making all the other values silently disappear -- a rather nasty 'gotcha' that writers of most queries (myself included) will most of the time never even realise they've just been bitten by. So do ask yourself, "is my preferred rank really necessary?" Cheers, Jheald (talk) 22:55, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Maybe Wikidata infoboxes could be either bot-added or automatically linked when instances of Wikimedia Commons categories are added to Wikidata, this way we can see which Wikimedia Commons categories do and don't have an entry on Wikidata, and there has been several proposals to add Wikimedia Commons categories to the Wikidata "Notability" policy, so this could eventually help with structuring Wikimedia Commons. --Donald Trung (Talk 💬) ("The Chinese Coin Troll" 👿) (Articles 📚) 12:05, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: Definitely - I would like to see this happen, and I've been thinking through some ways to do this in the longer term. One thing I've been finding is that there are a lot of interwikis here, or commons category links on Wikipedias, that it would be good to migrate to Wikidata automatically at some point, and something that copies P373 to a commons sitelink might be useful too (Dexbot already does the reverse). There's a lot of potential here, but it needs some thinking through / planning on what order to do things in. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 12:32, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi, @Mike Peel: It looks great. Several months ago I proposed a new feature in es.wikipedia for "infobox building": Adding a buttom to switch between "normal image" (P18) and "night view" (P3451). It somehow didn't flourish, probably due to a lack of technical hands at that moment. P3451 has been an underused property in Wikidata so far, but I see potential here in Commons and IMHO this template using that property would be cool. What do you think? strakhov (talk) 18:13, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

@Strakhov: Sounds interesting. Fetching the image from P3451 is straightforward, but having a switch is more complex. If you can point me to an example of the switching you're thinking of, then I can have a go. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:30, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
@Mike Peel: The only switching example I'm aware of around here are fr.wikipedia infoboxes wrt to maps, but I always thought about something more minimalist, even with little "clicking-icons" & . strakhov (talk) 18:52, 31 January 2018 (UTC) PS. the words "[default]" / "[night]" would also do the job
@Strakhov: OK, it's possible - see User:Mike Peel/Sandbox2. However, to see it working you'll need to add this to your common.js file - and if we want it to be viewable by all, that needs to be added to commons' default javascript file. So I think this might need a separate discussion on the topic of 'do we want a switchable image template?'. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:54, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
It works awesome. Thanks! Well, maybe it's a too long step, I do not know what other guys will say about this stuff being implemented. Anyway, if possible, I'd put three switches in-a-row instead of the vertical stacking. Thanks again. strakhov (talk) 21:19, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

January 29

Jaguar MENA

There are many good images in Category:Photographs by Jaguar MENA, yet my attempt to upload more from their Flickr account just failed with the error message "User:FlickreviewR/bad-authors|blacklisted]] Flickr user".

The Flickr account is indeed listed at Commons:Questionable Flickr images, with the allegation "Uploads picture of Jaguar Cars under CC-BY-2.0 without regard to copyright owner (which is shown in the EXIF data", but there is no supporting evidence - no deletion discussions, for instance.

Can anyone shed any light on this? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:24, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: @Steinsplitter: added that information in this edit.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 15:08, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
here is the minimal discussion at talk Commons_talk:Questionable_Flickr_images/Archive_5#Jaguar_MESA Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 18:15, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Fine, pinging @Elisfkc: too.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 21:43, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
I remember that there was a discussion, but I'm having trouble finding it. --Elisfkc (talk) 02:46, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

January 30

User:Kaizenify talk page access

Hi all,

User: Kaizenify was blocked as a sockpuppet of Oluwa2Chainz. He filled an appeal here. Unfortunately, this was declined and his talk page access revoked. I am requesting that his talk page access be restored to enable him defend himself. Thank you. Olaniyan Olushola (talk) 10:00, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

hey User:Elcobbola and User:Guanaco is there a reason you should be acting like Inevercry? what justification is there for blocking talk page access, when there is no history of abusing talk pages? Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 15:53, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Blocking talk page access is limited to rare cases where there is serious abuse of talk pages, such as using them for harassment. If the blocking administrator has no information about talk page misuse to put forward, this may be a useful case to raise at COM:AN for further review. --Fæ (talk) 17:54, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
To be clear, I applied a standard block based on checkuser information from English Wikipedia. It was Elcobbola who declined the appeal and revoked talk page access, presumably after reviewing the local checkuser data. I can see both sides on revoking talk page access here: on one hand, it prevents admins from continually having to investigate frivolous appeals; on the other, there is a minute possibility that the accounts are technically indistinguishable but the users are different. Reading the blocking policy, the block seems to be supported: "As noted above, users who have abused or are likely to abuse the ability to edit their own user talk page and/or send e-mail in this or any other way may have either or both of these privileges revoked, which also prevents these privileges from being used for unblocking requests." If we want to expound the situations where revocation is appropriate, let's have the discussion. But no admin has violated established policy here, and there's no reason to compare anyone to a globally banned user. Guanaco (talk) 18:27, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
(ec) Indeed, Fae's "standard" is a disingenuous concoction. Per COM:BLOCK, "Only prevent the blocked user from using their talk page or sending e-mail if they are likely to abuse these privileges." (emphasis mine) Two independent checks--on different projects, run by different CUs--have found Kaizenify to be related to Oluwa2Chainz (1, 2). Talk page access was removed because Oluwa2Chainz socks have not uncommonly posted unblock requests with substantially similar "rationales" (i.e., in at least those cases, the very trolling referenced by the {{Unblock}} template itself - "Please note that trolling or otherwise abusing your ability to edit your talk page will result in that ability being revoked.") In aggregate, these factors easily meet/met the aforementioned threshold of "likely" in the instant case. Further, the questionable nature of Kaizenify's request has been unpacked in some detail on that account's en.wiki talk page, which notably includes an admission of using an alternate account to circumvent a sanction. Эlcobbola talk 18:36, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
The statement about limited use of talk page blocks is not a "standard" nor a "disingenuous concoction", the words I used were clear and carefully chosen. Please provide the evidence that would be required to support the allegations that I am a liar, or withdraw them.
Any follow up should be at COM:AN/U, where you can create a thread for further action. The Village Pump is not a free for all for allegations with zero evidence, or personal attacks, especially when the parties making bad faith allegations are trusted with sysop rights.
Thanks --Fæ (talk) 20:21, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
"based on checkuser information from English Wikipedia" this is not acceptable; do not import drama from english. demonstrate the disruption on commons that the block addresses. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 20:55, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
@Slowking4: I agree that Elcobbola performed poorly in this case, but blocking is a measure of prevention, not punishment. Admins may and should react to tips about ongoing sock puppetry. It isn’t at all about “importing a drama”. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:42, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
The issue originally raised was removing talk page rights, not the block itself. There was no evidence that Commons was being disrupted by talk page misuse. Justifications that the policy uses the word "likely" are at best thin, the most common sense reading of this being that there is an existing pattern of misuse of the talk page. There was none. --Fæ (talk) 21:14, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
@Olaniyan Olushola: If you know Kaizenify personally and can vouch for them, this might be evidence supporting an unblock. I don't think the account itself has been abusive, only the checkuser-related accounts. Have you met Kaizenify in person? Guanaco (talk) 18:32, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Thank you Guanaco. I am the president of Wikimedia User Group Nigeria and User:Kaizenify is an executive member of the group. I have met in personally. In fact, Kaizenify is currently with me as he's one of the organizers of WikiMaster Conference, a 3 days conference that started on 29th of this month and will end tomorrow. I have known him for more than 2 years now. He is not the same person as user:Oluwa2Chainz. User:Kaizenify is the head of photography and Oluwa2Chainz was formally the manager of our social media account. I should have comment on this since the issue started but I don't want to be harassed. Let me know if you require further information. Olaniyan Olushola (talk) 19:04, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
I would like to endorse this unblock request. Given the limited number of IPs in Nigeria, and the events attended by both Kaizenify and Oluwa2Chainz (BTW: I believe Olushola meant to write formerly and not formally up there), there is more than reasonable doubt about the CU determination, and I am prepared to accept Olushola's vouching for him. Thank you. Asaf (WMF) (talk) 21:23, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
I'm willing to accept the explanation and plan to unblock tomorrow unless @Elcobbola: (or another admin) beats me to it or someone comes up with a really strong argument why this account should stay blocked. Multichill (talk) 22:12, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
I have no objection. This new information is helpful, and we can certainly AGF. Эlcobbola talk 22:31, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and unblocked Kaizenify, as I placed the original block. Guanaco (talk) 03:44, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
Nice words about good faith, it's a pity that good faith was absent in the block, unblock request response, and this thread where questioning the block was responded to like a personal attack.
As the unblocking administrator, please give Kaizenify a new response to their unblock request and the reasons why you have done a U-turn. Explaining block actions is required, not just a courtesy that can be skipped. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:01, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be better to create a UTRS system for Wikimedia Commons? I have been wanting to propose this at the proposals pump ever since the bad faith TP revoke done by INeverCry here. In this case a simple conversation with this user regarding the scope of Wikimedia Commons would've been a better alternative to what happened. Note that at the time this user asked INeverCry regarding his block on Wikimedia Commons on the English Wikipedia that INeverCry had an Adminsock, so this user could've been unblocked a lot sooner. I think that this is a symptom of a larger system where blocks on Wikimedia Commons are hard to appeal unless you are lucky enough to have someone notice the block. --Donald Trung (Talk 💬) ("The Chinese Coin Troll" 👿) (Articles 📚) 13:38, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
we would not need a UTRS, if admins did not import this RBI behavior, and communicate. that is the commons policy. apparently some are oblivious to the limitations of checkuser with proxy ip's. (by the same logic you should block the attendees of wikimania and wikiconference USA) we should not have to elevate to VP or UTRS. we do not need another technical channel to route around bad behavior: we need good behavior. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 16:44, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Blog post on GLAMs, Commons, and Structured Data

Hi,

There's a new Wikimedia blog post up, "What galleries, libraries, archives, and museums can teach us about multimedia metadata on Wikimedia Commons.". The post contains insights learned from research with GLAM institutions about challenges that exist without structured metadata, and how the situation can be improved. It's interesting reading, I recommend giving it a look. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:55, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

For those wanting to cut to the chase, the blog post is essentially a trail for m:Research:Supporting_Commons_contribution_by_GLAM_institutions, that people may have already seen, posted a couple of weeks ago. The collation/summary of the GLAM views is under "Research themes" -- be sure to click through to the actual breakout page for each section. From this, the team identified some observations, challenges, and recommendations, presented at "Key findings". Jheald (talk) 18:36, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2018/01&oldid=303778544"