Commons:Village pump/Archive/2019/01

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Polish Railway line 52

I scanned some old slides from a trip to Poland. The railway line has probably closed a long time ago. I suspect that this station is 'Grudki'. The station building File:Czerlonka station 1991 2.jpg looks very similar to File:Hajnowka-Czerlonka.jpg. When was this line closed?Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:57, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

It was closed in 1994 as is shown here. Ruslik (talk) 20:41, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
It was not only closed, even the rails and other equipment were demounted. But in mid-2017 a decision was made to restore the line and in October 2018 it looked like almost ready, perhaps it has been already opened again. See pl:Linia kolejowa nr 52. BTW File:Mechanical railway signals in Poland 1991 31.jpg depicts the station not in Hajnówka but in Bielsk Podlaski, the town I live in. --jdx Re: 05:54, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

I have added two categories Category:Smiley Toerist 1991 Poland trip (I will later on add non-railway items) and Category:Unidentified train stations in Poland.

I suspect that File:Mechanical railway signal in Poland 1991 26.jpg and File:Mechanical railway signals in Poland 1991 31.jpg are taken at the first Polisch railway line crossing (Czeremche - Siedice) of the Bug river. (Solved) For File:Spoorbrug over Bug rivier 1991 120.jpg and File:Wachtershuisje 1991 122.jpg I suspect the closed railway line passing Treblinka. The railway bridge over the river has been reused as a road bridge, The guard house was probably for the railway bridge over the river. File:Bug bridge Małkinia.JPG?Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:26, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Happy New Year and let's make 2019 great!!!

A happy new 2019.

A happy new year to everyone making it easier to find and use free media at Wikimedia Commons. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 22:26, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

January 01

Holiday themed photo callenges

Wouldn't it be a great to have holiday themed photo challenges like one for New Year, one for epiphany, one for Chinese/Vietnamese new year, one for Easter, Etc.? This could help the coverage of those holidays and get some high quality photography out of it. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 09:01, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Than propose one at Commons talk:Photo challenge/themes so others can comment on your proposal. --Jarekt (talk) 03:12, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Category:Swastikas

In the German city of Hannover, there is a trial due to the public display of a Hindu symbol banned for its Nazi connotations. Should this category be added to Category:Nazi symbols status or Category:Kennzeichen verfassungswidriger Organisationen? --88.70.32.51 19:25, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

January 02

Map workshop

I am posting here just to bring to the community's attention that Commons:Graphic Lab/Map workshop has received little attention by those who have the ability to edit images. I, for one, have had several requests that I think are simple/straightforward but which haven't been looked at in several months. Other editors also have months-old pending reqests also. --1990'sguy (talk) 17:05, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

January 03

Animated GIFs

[[File:Platonic Solids Stereo 1 - Tetrahedron.gif|thumb|201px|201 pixels - animated]]
[[File:Platonic Solids Stereo 1 - Tetrahedron.gif|thumb|200px|200 pixels - not animated. Why?]]
[[File:Platonic Solids Stereo 1 - Tetrahedron.gif|thumb|199px|199 pixels - animated]]

Does anybody know why this GIF file is not animated in 200 pixels? What are the restrictions for GIF files on the MediaWiki software? 4nn1l2 (talk) 09:36, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

It's working on my end right now. BMacZero (talk) 18:33, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
I just tested. It is static on Firefox 64.0 (64-bit), but animated on Opera 57.0.3098.106 .--Roy17 (talk) 18:56, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Works fine on Firefox 64. Probably a cache issue. — Racconish 💬 18:59, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
So, it depends on the user agent. Chrome works fine for me. Firefox 64 has problems. 4nn1l2 (talk) 09:14, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
I get exactly the same - Windows 7 SP1 - FF64: 200px only is static, Chrome 71:all animated. Bizarre. I've purged and cleared everything I can - no joy. Do different server-side thumbnail caches get served to different User Agents? Because I'm too dumb to see how it can be a cache issue otherwise. -- Begoon 14:42, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
...and, as if by magic, after testing and typing all that, I refreshed Firefox yet again... and they are all spinning now... -- Begoon 14:51, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:38, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Suggestion for a new smartphone application - Wikiwidescreen

Wikipedia and Dr Peter James Chisholm

Theres a paradox with the Wikimedia projects and myself personally. I was given the literal "Dr Wikipedia" award when I graduated medical school, and it was for good reason.

In order to try to understand myself, I tried to read the whole of English Wikipedia. However,

The paradox of understanding myself was that trying to read the whole of English Wikipedia was the whole problem.

I had to diagnose "internet addiction" myself. It wasn't good. It is very very real.

Understanding each other again might come from Wikipedia though, it is so neutral, but our arguements need to be less toxic like the ones I've seen here. It is very stressful editing Wiki projects, we know this.

The main solution for Wikipedia addicted readers worldwide is I think a new application needs to be widescreen, perhaps only widescreen. I was prescribed Apple's landscape lock as treatment of my condition. They removed it intentionally. This is reported by me elsewhere. I have a valid neuroscientific theory about this, and it is being seriously considered, with more and more proven data from my external project.

Wikiwidescreen - makes it more real. You can see the reality behind it and put it down a little easier. It's also a little harder to hold. When I was able to use it on my iphone, i wouldn't keep scrolling and scrolling, clicking and clicking, and I would actually just go to sleep.

We know, as my French page especially shows, that the ACCC is taking this very seriously and I have also used many other methods in law to address this.

Wiki can change as well, to be more real. It already is the most real, but I think there are too many links, and the scrolling on smartphones to find interesting things is very addictive.

Widescreen could be a great solution. E.3 (talk) 11:37, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Hey E.3. It's not clear that this has very much to do with Wikimedia Commons in particular, which is a repository for free media for use by the public, including the various Wikipedia projects. Individual projects don't have very much control over the software programmed by the Wikimedia Foundation, and Commons doesn't exercise any control over individual projects such as the English Wikipedia.
For particular changes in the software used on mobile devices, that's probably better suited to the Community Wish List on the Meta site, once the new wish list for 2020 comes out (the one for 2019 has already closed). However, if you want to put together a proposal, you will most likely need to compile more compelling evidence than personal anecdote, if you are to engender widespread support for the commitment of substantial (and limited) resources in pursuing the project. As to how many internal links are appropriate for articles, that is an editorial issue that is decided by each project individually, and there is no top-down process for imposing a uniform standard on all projects that they would be forced to follow, or even to really make a substantive recommendation for best-practice. For better or worse, both the strength and weakness of the several hundred Wikimedia projects is that they are first and foremost a decentralized endeavor based on mostly local consensus building. GMGtalk 11:54, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I do have quite compelling evidence other than this personal anecdote. It is not quite scientific, but it is the what5words project. E.3 (talk) 12:03, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Oh and btw as I care about this so much, I'll probably just ending up donating the cost of development, cant imagine it would be more than $5000? E.3 (talk) 12:17, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

I couldn't tell you. I don't know the first thing about the logistics of software development. I also don't know that the Wikimedia Foundation has a system in place for earmarking donations for use on particular projects as you suggest. What I can say with some degree of certainty is that the only place you're likely to find substantive discussion on the issue is at Meta. You might try the m:Wikimedia Forum as a starting place. GMGtalk 12:26, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
Thanks again. I proposed it being a little WP:Bold here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiwide and we'll see what they think. E.3 (talk) 12:50, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
@E.3: I get how addictive reading 📖 Wikipedia can be and in real life I've been called "a walking Wikipedia" plenty of times. You could request a grant but also just propose this idea in the Phabricator where other volunteers could help you develop Wikiwidescreen. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 11:47, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
@E.3: My usual orientations when using WMF sites are:
  • Laptop: Landscape (forced by the manufacturer)
  • iPad: Landscape (except for certain portrait media)
  • Tablet and phone: Portrait (to conserve display space at the expense of on-screen keyboard size, except for certain landscape media)
I use Puffin Browser to override zooming restrictions and use Flash on these devices, at the expense of having to wait to be globally IP block exempt. Very occasionally, I will lock orientation when using one of my iPad or smaller devices while on my side, or when trying to experience media that is wrongly rotated. I sometimes curse app developers that do not allow use of their apps in all four orientations (as sitting devices on their active charging and headphone connectors can be harmful).   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 13:00, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
Thanks so much for that everyone. I'll try work out the Phabricator thing. People like us have been wailing about portraits and landscapes for ages, but the scientists haven't taken it seriously. I think that was a mistake. --E.3 (Talk to Dr Peter James Chisholm). I sometimes don't understand rules, and I think abstractly. [1] 07:03, 2 January 2019 (UTC)


As I mention in the gallery, I find it very difficult to understand a lot of rules on the projects, partially because of the way my mind works. I would greatly appreciate anyone who would be able to help me interpret what happened on Phabricator in relation to this. ["please don't make further tasks in relation to this"].
This broken link actually states "Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." I much prefer it like that.
So where do I go from here, in this present moment? Should I just pay for the app development myself as an externally owned project? Any thoughts appreciated. --E.3 (Talk to Dr Peter James Chisholm). I sometimes don't understand rules, and I think abstractly. [2] 23:19, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Authorship when 2 works are involved, and copyright/ licensing

I have a file which is a photograph of a fashion designer in one of his costumes. He made/ designed the costume, and another person (a woman) photographed him wearing it. As near as I can figure, this makes them both "author" of the resulting work (him the author of the underlying work, her the author of the derivative work) each with their own copyright claim. She has signed a Licensing Agreement that gives him control of the photographs, only reserving her right to be credited as their author, and allowing for the creation of derivative works (though the words "CC-BY-SA" do not appear anywhere in the contract). Question: does this sound like it will be good enough for OTRS? And also, do I need them both to submit permission statements in addition to showing the contract to reviewers? Also, the contract has this clause: "All rights not expressly granted hereunder are reserved to thePhotographer, including but not limited to all rights in preliminary materials and all electronic rights. For purposes of this agreement, electronic rights are defined as rights in the digitized form of works that can be encoded, stored, and retrieved from such media as computer disks, CD-ROM, computer databases, and network servers." Since the Commons servers are in the US, and since we are talking about uploading them in digital format, doesn't this clause need to be removed before we upload? Please advise. Thanks! A loose noose (talk) 11:52, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Difficult to say without reading the full contract. Ruslik (talk) 16:53, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
You don't say what country, which can affect this. Commons tries to follow both U.S. copyright law and the law in the country where the picture was taken.
Offhand this sounds probably fine, but I'd guess you would get better answers at Commons:Village pump/Copyright. - Jmabel ! talk 17:29, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
I am giving that a shot right now. So far, no responses. I am getting the idea that unless the copyright was transferred en toto from one person to another, the existing license agreement means nothing since both will need to submit a permission statement to OTRS. How to have two authors/ copyright holders send in the same statement and have them processed under the same OTRS ticket, though, is still beyond me. FWIW, the photo was taken in the US. A loose noose (talk) 16:35, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
"…two authors/ copyright holders…": we just need them to grant the same license. - Jmabel ! talk 17:31, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
@A loose noose: This is easily done. Person A emails permission to OTRS with a copy to person B and a suggestion of reply all. B replies all with permission.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 18:48, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Category naming conventions

Question: isn't this going against the use-English naming conventions for categories? --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:46, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Nevermind. My assumption that the English word order should always be "[Name] Hotel" is proven wrong by several NYC hotels following the "Hotel [Name]" order. And then of course there's "Hotel California" ;) --HyperGaruda (talk) 21:34, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
@HyperGaruda: Ah, en:Hotel California. Great song, but not an actual hotel.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 06:00, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
There is one in Palm Springs, but I don't know if it predates the song. - Jmabel ! talk 06:08, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

January 04

Uploading "Land Rover MENA"?

Can someone upload from Flickr the Land Rover MENA CC-by-2.0 images for VSS Unity?

-- 67.70.34.69 06:45, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Well given that User:Hedwig in Washington previously deleted one of these. I'm not sure the Flickr is legit. At least that's how it appears? GMGtalk 11:57, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
 Comment What does Land Rover Middle East and North Africa have to do with Virgin? They MAY have gotten the pics from Virgin or Land Rover in the US. That doesn't mean they can license them freely. Needs OTRS. --Hedwig in Washington (mail?) 00:50, 26 December 2018 (UTC)
Then what of all the photos that are not in North Africa nor Middle East currently residing at Category:Photographs by Land Rover MENA and Category:Land Rover MENA ? (such as photos in Paris; photos that have snow in them)
Land Rover MENA is the regional divsion of Land Rover (a division of Jaguar Land Rover) that deals with the Middle East. https://www.landrover-me.com/en/index.html It is headquartered at Abbey Road, Whitley, Coventry CV3 4LF
Jaguar Land Rover is headquartered at Abbey Road, Whitley, Coventry, CV3 4LF (UK Gov)
It is the same entity. -- 67.70.34.69 05:03, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
That's an apparently perfectly legitimate question on the face of it. Unfortunately, I don't know what the answer is. GMGtalk 12:20, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
The real question is: who owns the (c)? Unlikely that it's LR MENA. Some may even be (c) Virgin, who knows? -Hedwig in Washington (mail?) 14:40, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Basketball categories

Hi. Anyone can tell me what's the difference between Category:Basketball matches and Category:Basketball games? I'm considering merging them. --Yuanga (talk) 12:17, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Same thing. They definitely shouldn't both exist. It's also worth noting that there are a lot of individual game categories like Category:2018-02-06 Northwestern v. Michigan basketball game that aren't anywhere under either Category:Basketball matches or Category:Basketball games, but probably should be. --B (talk) 12:52, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
Thank you. Which word should prevail, match or game? Since basketball originated in the United States, I guess "game" is better option than the other. Isn't it? Personally I prefer the term "match". --Yuanga (talk) 15:06, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
I would use game for that reason, but then "match" for any subcategories that concern countries where that term is more common. --B (talk) 15:31, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
I agree with B. There is no game, set, match hierarchy in basketball like there is in tennis.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 15:37, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
Ok! I'm gonna do like this! --Yuanga (talk) 20:50, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
Sorry but Blackcat (talk · contribs) decided that the "schema" is matches. No possibility to argue (if you want you can see the "discussion" here). --Yuanga (talk) 14:51, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
Since the schema is Sports matches by sport it's consistent to name all the children cats "matches", not "games" which is - as a matter of fact - an Americanism -- SERGIO (aka the Blackcat) 14:59, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
P.S. @Nyttend: , also here, a match doesn't become a "game" just because you decided so. Please respect the consistency of the mother category. The Games are only the Olympics.

Gender wars, again

@GT1976: I've repeatedly objected in the past to recategorization like this, that breaks up categories by gender, where gender has nothing to do with the matter. Quite a few other editors have weighed in in finding this objectionable, but you keep doing it without any real discussion. I am particularly unhappy about recent edits like this. During history, most people in business have been male. If businesspeople are broken down into "businessmen" and (I suppose) "businesswomen", the result will be that women in business are ghettoized off into a small category entirely separated from the bulk of their colleagues. - Jmabel ! talk 18:30, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

@Jmabel, GT1976, and Fæ: I favor moving everything from the businessmen and businesswomen categories to businesspeople categories, and installing category redirects to enforce the moves.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 18:39, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
The parent categories for example Category:Businessmen and the subcategories should be deleted or not allowed to created it new. How should the many users know if existing categories should be moved to the next existing subcategory or not? --GT1976 (talk) 19:48, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean by "the next existing subcategory". Can you give a concrete example of what you are talking about? - Jmabel ! talk 23:54, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
For example, if the Category:Businessmen from the United States or Category:Female cellists from France does not exist, the creation is prevented, or that category is deleted, then the topic gets done. If these categories exist and they are already partially filled, nobody can prevent other users from ordering those articles there. --GT1976 (talk) 10:51, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
the next existing subcategory means previously created subcategory. Good luck and all the best for 2019: --GT1976 (talk) 10:57, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
I support Jmabel's position on gender-specific categories. Besides the reason given, there is increasing recognition of more genders than just male and female, and anything we separate by gender would eventually need even more gender subcategories. --Auntof6 (talk) 20:34, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
yes, and the category time wasters do not understand how they may soon be a laughing stock, i.e. [3]. User:Jmabel go mass rollback his category changes, but until some one is blocked, no one will care. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 01:31, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
  • I think it would be feasible to have a system of flat categories and intersections maintained by bot, but I'm just waiting to see what Structured Data provides. Feasible at least for individuals with their own categories: single photos are harder because they may contain multiple people. --ghouston (talk) 02:05, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
  • @Ghouston: Re: "Are you proposing...": there are several different solutions I'd be happy with:
    1. As you suggest, completely get rid of categories that intersect gender and occupation.
    2. Confine it only to categories where gender is highly relevant, e.g. vocalists, actors/actresses, models.
    3. Allow it, but never as a diffusing category. But I think I'm in a minority in liking non-diffusing categories. I do think there are situations where there are few enough people in a profession of a particular gender or ethnicity that it would be interesting to have a category for those few, but not if it ghettoizes them by removing them from the category that contains the overwhelming bulk of their colleagues.
- Jmabel ! talk 03:45, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
  • It's not a bad idea. The flat categories would usually be a level below the top, like in "Blacksmiths by name". Taking country of citizenship from Wikidata may give some mismatches with Commons, due to things like Wikidata considering "Nazi Germany" to be a separate country of citizenship, and Commons using a vague definition for associated countries. --ghouston (talk) 07:17, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
  • The right thing would be to add categories for all citizenships, I suppose. It's interesting that it's giving Germany for Einstein, does it somehow map the different versions of Germany in Wikidata to one? --ghouston (talk) 09:24, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
  • @Ghouston: Wikidata returns "German Empire", there's a switch in the code I put together to rewrite that to "Germany". Other switch options can be added in straightforwardly, although ideally there would be as few as possible of them. Maybe you and @Jmabel: can do some testing of this option to see if it works OK more widely (I'm happy to fix issues as they arise, but would have to ask @RexxS: about the all countries bit), and if so perhaps it should head towards Commons:Village pump/Proposals? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:04, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
Consensus for flat categories = Flickr style tags = something magic and undefined from structured data / wikidata
We have been talking about this for more than six years. Never going to happen. It's like trusting the Government to pull a perfect Brexit deal from their back pocket. This project will be dead and archived before it happens, want to place a bet? --Fæ (talk) 11:21, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

My 2 cents: as stated before, we don't need to keep separate categories of occupations for which the gender is not relevant (racecar drivers, musicians, poets); we should be keeping gender for those categories where gender is relevant: actors/actresses, male/female sportspeople, gender activists, and very few more topics. The other categories must be neutered and include both male and female people (businesspeople, chairpersons, and so on). The fact is that we should meet and create guidelines and policies on these topics, otherwise we will always be opening discussions to the Village Pump everytime someone adds / remove a gender specific category. Hope it makes sense. -- SERGIO (aka the Blackcat) 15:18, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Very late blanking of a user page

I had just come across this edit where the userlage of Kong of Lasers was blanked, from what I can tell Kong of Lasers was blocked in September 2017 but their user page was only blanked in 2019, why? If the blocking admin didn't blank it then why should this be done later by another user? I only know of Kong of Lasers that he was an INeverCry hunter and that he uploaded a few quality images, but even his status as a sockmaster isn't clear as he claimed that his little brother was trolling him (which could explain the same IP) and he even requested his brother to be blocked on multiple occasions and the only accusations of sockpuppetry against him were by INeverCry. But even all those things aside, why should his user page be blankes? What does that add to the project? What policy or guideline on user pages explains that indefinitely blocked users should have their user pages blanked? This just comes off as a very petty move by observers (commenting on the culture, not the individuals). Is is user page blanking/deleting even a thing? In any other situation we'd call it vandalism and according to the blocking policy indefinitely blocked shouldn't mean "blocked forever" so why don't these people also do this with users who are blocked for a month for example? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:44, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

AFAIK Kong_of_Lasers cohabited with IExistToHelp (talk · contribs). But I doubt that—except for this intersection—evidences of sock puppetry were seriously analyzed, especially since Bbb23 was involved in blocking both in Wikipedia. @Elcobbola: anything to add? Isn’t Kong_of_Lasers yet another Solomon203? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:34, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Issues with Academy Award winner categories

We seem to have multiple categories assigned for the same award in some cases. Look at Category:Patricia Arquette: this is in both Category:Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winners and Category:Winners of Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The first one, which you can see isn't defined here, seems to be coming from Wikidata.

That's just one example. Another is Category:F. Murray Abraham, with duplicate categories for Best Actor. There are other similar ones. How to resolve? Do we rename the category here to match what Wikidata says? --Auntof6 (talk) 08:05, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

@Auntof6: These are caused by missing sitelinks on Wikidata, but it's a few steps removed from the person category, sorry. From Patricia Arquette (Q215976) you can get to Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (Q106301), then look for category for recipients of this award (P2517) and click on the link there, which takes you to Category:Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winners (Q7044715). The duplicate category is created from the English label of that item, since there's no Commons sitelink. adding the sitelink then removes the duplicate category here. The category redlink will then go away and the category will automatically move over to the correct award category over time (you can speed this up by making null edits to the categories if needed). Hope that helps. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 09:07, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
@Mike Peel: Thanks! I had found my way to the correct page, but not realized what needed to be done. I'll work on these. Little by little, I learn how Wikidata interfaces with other sites. It's a great project once everything is set up correctly. --Auntof6 (talk) 09:31, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

January 05

Renaming of "Automobiles" categories to "Cars" categories

More input wanted: Commons:Categories for discussion/2018/07/Category:Automobiles. Affects thousands of categories. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 14:25, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

FMA's News

Hello.

After months of uncertainty about our future, the Free Music Archive is joining KitSplit, a camera gear rental platform by and for creators. With KitSplit's support, we will stay up and running for the indefinite future - something we are very relieved to report. Though KitSplit is a for-profit business, the FMA will remain true to its mission of sharing free, curated audio to all.

http://freemusicarchive.org/

--ComputerHotline (talk) 08:27, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

This is good news. It would actually be better if we had a tool like "Commons:Free Music Archive2Commons" to import them to Wikimedia Commons as well, music is such an important part of the human cultural heritage and places like the Free Music Archive don't have the mainstream (financial) backing as the Wikimedia Foundation has. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:55, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
100% OK --ComputerHotline (talk) 16:12, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Looking for advise on what to do with WW2 pictures

Hi, I received from a cousin a picture book of his father (so my uncle) who passed away in 1998. The pictures in this book are all from WW2 and show the war in all its brutality. The picture book consists of 41 pages with 211 pictures in total. To what we know the pictures are all made by my uncle during his time when he was a young German soldier. While the first 7 pages where commented (Paris 1940 till start of the war with Russia on June 22, 1941 in Brest-Litowsk, today Belarus) all the other pages are without any comments. I had been able to identify a few places/churches in Vilnius/Lithuania and Minsk/Belarus but for the big majority of the pictures it is unclear where they are made; I guess deep in Russia or Ukraine. So now it is up to me to do something useful with the pictures and I think it would be best to release them into the public domain. However I would prefer to publish them as an album/collection so that it will be possible to identify more places and events shown there, and eventually been able to follow the trail of my uncle. So I'm looking for advises on what to do. Am I allowed to release the pictures into the public domain? And how best to organize an "album" in Wikimedia so that every picture will be linked to there - even when used elsewhere? --Lothartklein (talk) 13:01, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

If the executor of your Uncle's estate has effectively waived any rights and wants them published as public domain, then you need to ensure that this is official and verifiable to upload them on this project. You can do this in different ways, the normal recommendation is to write a confidential email with evidence following the process described at COM:OTRS, but that has a 200 day backlog before the evidence will be checked and the photographs can be uploaded here.
1998 is twenty years ago and the estate has probably long since been resolved. The executor may not be even alive. May be nothing was decided about who manages the copyrigths of the deceased. In practise the remaining family members get to decide.Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:39, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
True, but we want to avoid 'technical' challenges. If the photographs are on Flickr and there is a statement that they are published by the copyright holder as decided by the estate, that would be taken in good faith and unlikely to ever get challenged, unless there are clear reasons to doubt it. --Fæ (talk) 14:07, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
An easier method would be to create a free Flickr account and upload the scanned photographs there, choosing a CC0 license, or CC-BY if you want to keep an attribution, but definitely not a public domain mark, perhaps using your Uncle's name as the Flickr account name, and explaining the background in the profile, along with a contact email for "the estate" (which could be you) if possible. You can then either upload the same images here, or ask at the village pump for someone else to upload the collection on your behalf, as we have easy tools to do exactly that.
Note that any photograph where there may be doubt that your Uncle was the photographer, such as photographs that he appears in, cannot be verified as public domain without knowing who the photographer was and getting their, or their estate's, copyright release. --Fæ (talk) 13:15, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
You can always use a hidden category to keep the images together. For example I use the Category:Smiley Toerist 1991 Poland trip to keep all the images together to determine the chronology. (with the slide numbers)Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:21, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
Nor was Brest-Litovsk in Russia in 1941. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:41, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
Check the history: Polish until september 1939 (Sovjet invasion under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact), then German from june 1941 (Operation Barbarossa)Smiley.toerist (talk) 20:53, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
@Smiley.toerist: this map of the USSR can help Hollanders to learn some history of Russia. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:46, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
A part of Poland under Sovjet (Russian) occupation from september 1939, until the German attack in june 1941.(File:Mapa Paktu R M Izwiestia-18.09.1939.jpg)Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:06, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Works-by-year categories: images difficult to find?

Good time of the day,

Can anybody tell me if WC has a policy about Works-by-year categories? I mean categories using a template in Category:Works-by-year templates, such as Category:2017 at Munich Airport Riem.

In my opinion such categories, however useful, make it difficult to get an overview of all pictures in a category, since when you are looking for pictures on a certain topic you normally do not know (or care) in which year a picture was taken. As a result you may end up needlessly scanning ten or twenty subcategories – or resign. Is there a way to compensate for this?

The background of my question is that currently somebody is putting pictures of mine into newly created by-year subcategories (mostly with one or two pictures only), and as a result these pictures no longer are in any really meaningful category.

I did some searching about “works-by-year” and “by-year” in the talk and help name spaces but found nothing. Any advice is appreciated.

-- Renardo la vulpo (talk) 19:55, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

  • By-year categories make a lot of sense when there are a large number of images to break down; not so much when there are fewer. It would really help if you could give specific examples instead of describing this entirely abstractly. For example, I would almost never break down images of a particular building by year, but I would break down a city by year or even month. E.g. File:Pioneer Building, Seattle, 1906 (CURTIS 2031).jpeg goes in both Category:Pioneer Building (Seattle) (the most likely thing someone would be looking for if they wanted this image, I think) and Category:1906 in Seattle (which has 51 images, certainly enough to be a reasonable grouping).
  • If there are a small number of "best" images, you might seriously consider a gallery page. - Jmabel ! talk 20:41, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
Thank you, @Jmabel. Actually in my first paragraph I gave a specific example, Category:2017 at Munich Airport Riem. Another one is Category:2018 at Munich Airport. Both contain only two media each. Or look at other categories recently created by the creator of Category:2017 at Munich Airport Riem.
Your proposal of gallery pages is interesting but in this case I think somebody is just burying small amounts of media in unnecessarily detailed categories. This is not the first time I have noticed this phenomenon.
I still think that the old rule-of-thumb that a category should have ~ 10+ elements is not that bad. But how do you tell people who create new categories galore? -- Renardo la vulpo (talk) 21:37, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
Maybe, but I see some of these years have hundreds of images for that airport. I wonder why so few for last year. - Jmabel ! talk 00:17, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Because, maybe, it's too soon, being 2018 and 2017? Too soon to have photos in Commons and/or to have them categorized. That’s one of the many reasons the existence of a category should not be evaluated blindly in the number of items categorized in them. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 00:27, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
Thanks to both of you. That may all be true for categories such as Category:2017 at Munich Airport Riem but not for Category:2017 at Munich Airport Riem; this airport was closed 20 years ago and only a few remnants are still standing to be photographed.
Anyway, the core of my question was about a policy; I imagined some system of parallel categories, violating the no-overcategorizing principle. A similar thing exists for creating alphabetic lists for super-categories; e. g. there is Category:Cities in Romania and for each Romanian county there is Category:Cities and towns in … County, which are assigned in addition to the super-category. This way you can easily find a city in Romania without knowing its county.
Likewise we could say that by-year categories do not count as over-categorizing but are assigned in addition to the descriptive category. Then you could easily find pictures without knowing the year. From your answers I conclude there is no such rule. That's more or less what I wanted to know. – Have a nice time, -- Renardo la vulpo (talk) 12:35, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Mass speedy deletion of PD-art

The files in Category:Images subject to Reiss Engelhorn Museum lawsuit 1 and Category:Images subject to Reiss Engelhorn Museum lawsuit 2 are covered by PD-art, but were all mass speedy deleted without a valid reason for deletion. I re-opened one deletion request at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Jacob Ochtervelt Musikstunde.jpg and I would like to get more input on that one. Multichill (talk) 13:08, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi, If the original uploader faces a lawsuit, I agree with a speedy deletion. But then they should be reuploaded (or undeleted with the orginal username changed). Regards, Yann (talk) 13:12, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
There is already a discussion opened on Commons:Administrators' noticeboard#Reiss Engelhorn Museum lawsuit deletions. Better to keep all in one place. Regards, Yann (talk) 13:24, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

File:Kurfürst Karl Theodor (Bayern).jpg

The deletion rationale at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Kurfürst Karl Theodor (Bayern).jpg, by User:AndreasPraefcke ("I was sentenced to remove the file by the German Federal Court of Justice /BGH) in a lawsuit instituted by the city of Mannheim on behalf of their REM museums") seems bizarre; the comment by User:Raymond, the deleting admin ("Deletion is necessary to protect him again further sentence."), doubly so. I think - providing it meets our usual standards - the file should be restored. See also the case of fr:Station hertzienne militaire de Pierre-sur-Haute. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:05, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: This is already discussed above, and on the admins' board. No need to duplicate discussions. Regards, Yann (talk) 16:09, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

January 07

Public Domain Day

Is there a central place to see all of the media (if any) that could be (or has been) undeleted due to entering the Public Domain today? Did we acquire anything of interest from the U.S. in particular? -- Powers (talk) 01:19, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Category:Undeleted in 2019? --ghouston (talk) 01:30, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
I also started Category:Media uploaded for Public Domain Day 2019 for images that weren't previously deleted but are now being uploaded. BMacZero (talk) 18:06, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
Hi BMacZero, I think this doesn't make much sense: what if they were only uploaded on January 2nd? I don't see anything special to files uploaded on January 1st. Regards, Yann (talk) 19:18, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
@Yann: Yes, you're right, that's why I went for "Uploaded for Public Domain Day" rather than "Uploaded on Public Domain Day". The category should contain images that became public domain as a result of Public Domain Day 2019. I'm open to other names that make this more clear. I added a description on the category, at least. BMacZero (talk) 20:19, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
@BMacZero: OK, but again the scope of the category is not clear. Should all works which have become public domain in 2019 be added to the category? Even there will be uploaded in December 2019? Regards, Yann (talk) 08:00, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Related concern: Can someone please update related copyright language to read "1924" instead of "1923"? E.g. when choosing a license with Special:UploadWizard. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:49, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

If people are undeleting these, could I ask that categories are added when required? I've just found one uncategorised which could have been lost in the bowels. Rodhullandemu (talk) 12:30, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

In case it's of use: I'm happy to undelete batches of now-PD files if needed (I have a python script to do this) - just let me know the info/file lists on my user talk page. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:28, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Question regarding batch upload using video2commons

Hi everyone, I'm one of the founders of the Wikitongues project. We have about 90 videos on our YouTube channel that are appropriately licensed for the Wikimedia Commons (cc-by-sa 4.0) and I'd like to do a batch transfer using video2commons. I'm a little new to using Commons myself, so I've uploaded five as a test. I want to make sure I'm doing this correctly. For clarity: 1) Wikitongues is a nonprofit organization. We share attribution with the author of each video (not necessarily me, the individual). 2) The YouTube source for each video has the licensing information in the video description. Below are the five videos I've already uploaded to Commons. Are they in good shape? Thank you!

File:WIKITONGUES-_Abderrahman_speaking_Tachelhit.webm
File:WIKITONGUES-_Achille_speaking_Mooré_and_Dioula.webm
File:WIKITONGUES-_Aakriti_speaking_Kashmiri.webm
File:WIKITONGUES-_Alaric_speaking_Afrikaans.webm
File:WIKITONGUES-_Afou_speaking_Nyarafolo.webm

Bogreudell (talk) 22:34, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Hey Bogreudell. I looks like the YouTube videos are uploaded with a CCBYSA license in plain text, rather than using the YouTube standard licensing formatting. I don't know how to fix this, because I don't upload to youtube, but the license on the video here should be {{cc-by-sa-4.0}} rather than {{self|cc-by-sa-4.0}}. You can also add {{LicenseReview}} so that a license reviewer can verify the source, in case something changes or the video is eventually removed from YouTube for whatever reason. GMGtalk 22:46, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Thanks GreenMeansGo. Unfortunately, YouTube doesn't have a CC-by-SA option, so our work-around was to leave licensing information in the comments. I'll go ahead and change {{self|cc-by-sa-4.0}} to {{cc-by-sa-4.0}} and add {{LicenseReview}}. Will do this for all video2commons transfers from our channel going forward. P.S. I noticed you've moderate our videos before, so thanks for your help! I very much appreciate you :) Bogreudell (talk) 23:08, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
No worries Bogreudell. Thanks for all the work you're doing producing useful content and helping us give it away for free. If I can ever be of any help feel free to stop by my talk page. GMGtalk 23:20, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Thank you GMGtalk! I just finished the batch transfer. I believe I've flagged them all as {{LicenseReview}}, but I'll leave the list on your talk page in case you'd like to review them yourself :) Bogreudell (talk) 17:48, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Flickr to begin purge of photos in February

See also: Commons_talk:Flickr_files#Flickr_paid_plans_and_deletions.

See previous discussion (archived) at Flickr will start deleting photos in 2019-02. Per Flickr's announcement:

Free members with more than 1,000 photos or videos uploaded to Flickr have until Tuesday, January 8, 2019, to upgrade to Pro or download content over the limit. After January 8, 2019, members over the limit will no longer be able to upload new photos to Flickr. After February 5, 2019, free accounts that contain over 1,000 photos or videos will have content actively deleted -- starting from oldest to newest date uploaded -- to meet the new limit.

The good news is that Pro users are probably more likely to have high quality, educational, in scope photographs anyway, and their photographs are apparently safe for now, and older freely-licensed images have a better chance of having already been transferred than recent ones. The bad news is that a lot of potentially useful images are at risk of deletion. I have nothing to add regarding prioritization or bots, just wanted to bring this notice back to the front page for awareness. --Animalparty (talk) 22:07, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

@Animalparty: Commons:Village pump/Technical#file contains HTML or script code Commons:Village pump/Archive/2018/11#Flickr will not delete CC photos - Alexis Jazz ping plz 22:11, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Oh thanks! I misread that section. Looks like we're in the clear (for now), folks! I saw two Flickr accounts briefly 404'd (both US Government land management agencies) and had a small heart attack, but they seem to be back in action now. --Animalparty (talk) 22:19, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

If you wonder why many streams and photos return an error on Flickr this morning, it's probably people rushing to download all they can: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/how-to-save-flickr-photos-deleted-download (let's hope they learn something). Nemo 09:47, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

January 08

Backlog on Deletion requests, and deletion review suggestion.

I know there there are backlogs in many areas (OTRS, license review, etc), but just wanted to bring to attention Commons:Deletion requests/Older discussions, with deletion discussions dating back to July 2018. And secondly, is there a way to visually see the images under consideration, rather than mere list of virtually meaningless file names? [Edit: found at Category:Deletion requests, but it should be more obvious from the main page]. Many prime suspects for copyright violation can be determined from image alone (celebrities, promotional photos, etc.), and I think the deletion request function could be vastly improved, inviting more comments and discussion, and more quickly identifying violations, if it was stupidly easy to see what was up for debate. --Animalparty (talk) 19:06, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

More participation could be useful in the discussions where there are no comments other than the proposer and the uploader, but mostly I suppose it's a matter of having less hyperactive admins in the last few months. Maybe more admins could be encouraged to close some DRs if they had more leeway: for instance, is it fine to close a 6 months old discussion as keep for lack of clear consensus/policy? Not all admins can be expected to be comfortable with digging years of deletion requests to find precedents, nor with the prospect of creating precedents in unclear cases. Nemo 20:32, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
Actually though which stay open the longest are typically those with unclear copyright concerns (for example, where it is tricky to determine the copyright status, or these where copyright violation is suspected but is difficult to prove). More admin participation in deletion requests is of course welcome, but I am afraid it is generally not going to solve the problem of the oldest requests.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:06, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
I agree with Ymblanter above. There is also an aspect that discourages admin actions on these cases, imho. When closing a borderline DR (where personal interpretation matters, for instance), very often the admin is criticised (either if they delete or keep the file(s)) with messages in their talkpage, if not on some Village Pump section. Given that difficult cases are... difficult to close as well, leaving them go (or stay) when the admin's decision is not shared, would make the task easier (still imho). Of course, a second opinion can be always asked an a new DR or UR can be opened afterwards--Ruthven (msg) 14:17, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

January 09

Policy disagreement

User @Jcb: insists on leaving threatening messages on my talk page about the subject of disambiguation. It started when I was populating the category Category:Disambiguation of galleries last year. In fact, with each gallery I created as a disambiguation, jcb went and reverted many of the changes I made. This change on the Silver Peak gallery is a good example.

Commons:Category disambiguation and Commons talk:Category disambiguation have the beginnings of a policy discussion, but as far as I can tell, there is no official policy. Yet, jcb insists that creating gallery pages as disambiguations, and that correspond with the wikipedia pages is somehow wrong.

First, I'd like jcb to stop threatening me. Second, I think there needs to be guidance that corresponds to w:Wikipedia:Disambiguation. Thanks. Evrik (talk) 03:39, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

  • User:Evrik asked me to look at this. Evrik, I see a couple of perhaps slightly sharply worded comments on your talk page, but nothing that rises to the level of what I'd call a "threat". What statement of his do you consider threatening? - Jmabel ! talk 03:51, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
    • @Jmabel: the fact that he issued me a warning and that he characterizes my work as 'pollution.' However, to me the more important subject is whether or not there is a policy, and if so, where? If not, can we see this developed? Thanks. Evrik (talk) 03:55, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
      • If you are accusing someone of "threatening" you, that is to me more important than a particular disagreement about disambiguation pages. And you yourself singled this out as coming "first". As I said, though, I don't see any threats. I don't even see any warnings. I see him telling you not to do something. He may be wrong, and in that case we need to discuss it, but "stop doing that" is not a threat. And I think you are wrong in saying that he "characterizes [your] work as 'pollution.'" He is saying that certain edits of yours are "polluting" a category, e.g. putting elements in the category that don't belong. Again, his word may be ill-chosen, or he may be outright wrong, and we need to discuss it, but that is not a threat.
      • Again: you asked me to look in on this, and I dropped what I was doing to do so because you said you were being "threatened", but that isn't how it looks to me. It looks to me like a policy disagreement, with perhaps a few ill-chosen words.
      • With that: sure, move on to the policy question.
      • @Jcb: can you clarify, what is the policy that you are saying Evrik's edits violate? - Jmabel ! talk 04:32, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
  • That apart the question is: why subcategorizing a non-topical category like Disambiguation? Let's get rid of all the subcats and leve it populated only with disambiguation categories. -- SERGIO (aka the Blackcat) 13:11, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
  • We have had this discussion many times in the past few years and every time the clear outcome was that Commons has only disambiguation pages in category namespace. Evrik is well aware of that, already for a long time and has been warned several times for this. Jcb (talk) 16:51, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

So, since JCB blocked me, this topic has been 'polluted.' I'm starting it again. Evrik (talk) 17:35, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

I have been populating the category Category:Disambiguation of galleries over the last year. Many of these galleries I created as a disambiguation, jcb went and reverted many of the changes I made. This change on the Silver Peak gallery is a good example. I think there needs to be guidance that corresponds to w:Wikipedia:Disambiguation. Commons:Category disambiguation and Commons talk:Category disambiguation have the beginnings of a policy discussion, but as far as I can tell, there is no official policy. there is this discussion here, Large numbers of unilateral deletions of DAB galleries, but not much else. Thoughts? Evrik (talk) 17:35, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Warning: Don't do this again. You cannot simply wipe away the contributions of other users to a discussion if you don't like them. You are walking on the edge. Jcb (talk) 20:54, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
A warning? For what? Starting a new thread discussion? Your kidding, right? I wanted to remove the personal spat from the discussion and keep it to the facts. No one has had their comments edited or deleted. Really? Evrik (talk) 21:19, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
I think the diff link speaks perfectly well for itself. Jcb (talk) 21:24, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Evrik was blocked for splitting up a discussion? I'm getting too old for this shit, I don't get it. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 22:03, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
No, that's not what the user was blocked for (which you can verify by compairing the times of the events). Jcb (talk) 22:13, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
I was blocked because one admin decided to abuse their power. Evrik (talk) 20:32, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
@Evrik: no page in namespace currently appears to use {{Disambig}}. Even without a policy to ban it, it's not common. There's no policy against replying to everything on discussion pages using bold, but it would be frowned upon anyway if someone decided to start doing that. You could start a new proposal on Commons:Village pump/Proposals to make disambig pages in gallery (main) namespace an accepted thing. Do present some sensible use cases if you do to help convince the community. If the community supports it, Jcb will no longer revert you. If the community doesn't support it, you'll have your policy right there. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 22:03, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Commons:Category disambiguation and Commons talk:Category disambiguation have the beginnings of a policy discussion. Evrik (talk) 20:32, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

How to prevent mass duplicate uploads?

It happens often that some mass Flickr2C uploaders transfer a Flickr stream that already is on Commons with all different file names. The duplicates have to be deleted or redirected to original files, a time-consuming manual job. But is there really no way to prevent such situations technically? For example, FlickreviewR 2 could detect duplicates and refuse license confirmation and mark as duplicates? Or any way to prevent duplicate uploads in general? Abuse filter or something? Any idea? --A.Savin 15:21, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Locally generate a SHA1 checksum and use the API to search for a match. This normally only fails when someone has changed EXIF values at some point.
F2C does not even have to do this to avoid problems, it just has to respect API upload warning error messages about an exact duplicate existing. This is generated when the file is uploaded to the WMF server. I know these warnings are working perfectly well, as my batch uploads respond to the warnings before any change is made on-wiki. --Fæ (talk) 15:36, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Unfortunately I don't know what is SHA1 and API, so I cannot do anything at this point. If you can, feel free; my point is to prevent mass duplicate uploads in future, as some Flickr2C uploaders obviously don't care about anything else than their own upload count. --A.Savin 15:51, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
@A.Savin and Fæ: So far developer @Magnus Manske has been unwilling or unable to stop the duplicates per these issues. See also Commons talk:Flickr2Commons#Flickr2Commons does not check for duplicates (or ignores them) and Commons talk:Flickr2Commons#duplicates.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:04, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I am aware of these problems.
I would switch off F2C until someone can fix it, create a Heath Robinson housekeeping/timewasting duplicate management bot, or create a replacement tool that does the exact same job. It is not the only tool available to do uploads.
Perhaps we should run a vote right now to block it, no criticism of Magnus implied, he is still wonderful. --Fæ (talk) 16:20, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
F2C does check for duplicates, but its mechanism is somehow not perfect.--Roy17 (talk) 18:07, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Fuck if I know. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 18:27, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
The trouble is, I can imagine ways of writing a bot task to speedy duplicates as they arrive. However I do not want to recommend it, we should fix the root cause, not focus on repairs. As for F2C, I have not examined the source code, if someone wanted to pay me, I would think about it... at the same time I would examine in more detail the reasons for Magnus to be pissed off. He's a genius and does not do or not do things without good reason, so I do not want to be an idiot and step on his toes. --Fæ (talk) 19:45, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Proposal

Flickr2Commons has been causing backlogs and disputes due to the poor handling of duplicates. Please add links if you have comments about work arounds or case evidence.

Do you support this tool being switched off until there is a working fix? --Fæ (talk) 16:20, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

  •  Support As proposer. --Fæ (talk) 16:20, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  Oppose: I often upload my files to Flickr, then bring them from there to Commons. I don't see why my workflow should be disrupted because someone else has been careless. - Jmabel ! talk 17:17, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  Support, enough is enough.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 17:24, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  Oppose Good tool. Shouldn't be switched off. Abzeronow (talk) 17:39, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  Comment - not sure if it would be helpful to restrict the use of this tool to a group of experienced users. I have the impression that most of the duplicates were caused by relatively new users. But I may be wrong in this impression, I have no numbers to support it - Jcb (talk) 17:46, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  Oppose But as Jcb suggests, perhaps it could be reserved for, say autopatrollers. Flickr is about to reduce free storage. It is not a good timing to disable this tool.--Roy17 (talk) 18:07, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  Oppose for now, although I do hope the duplicate problem is fixed. However, I do think there should be some more informative text to serve as a check against rampant, uncontrolled transferring: e.g. a reminder to establish the works you are transferring are credibly taken and uploaded by the copyright holder (a Flickr washing reminder), and a reminder to add appropriate categories (maybe a flag if no categories are selected), to reduce mass uploads into Uncategorized or unhelpfully broad categories. The more idiot-proof the front end, the fewer problems back here on Commons. --Animalparty (talk) 18:14, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Sadly, they keep making better idiots.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 18:17, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  Support Careless Flickr transfers add damage to Commons anyway, but if they cause additional mess, this tool definitely should be disabled at this point. --A.Savin 19:38, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  Oppose Duplicates can be easily handled (and I don't consider them a huge issue). Switching off the tool would disrupt the workflow of many users. For the rest, I agree with Alexis Jazz. --Ruthven (msg) 14:20, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
    How can they be easily handled as long as they are not marked as duplicates? My question above was also, if there is any way to mark them automatically and/or prevent upload automatically -- should be actually possible because, as we know, the system identifies duplicates as such. --A.Savin 15:17, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  Oppose upload wizard not ready to replace. you can UW to duplicate detect, while using Flickr2commons. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 21:39, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  Oppose UploadWizard's Flickr import feature is useless for me, because it presumably works with IP addresses. Flickr is not accessible where I live (either it is blocked or it does not give services to the people where I live). My only option is F2C. 4nn1l2 (talk) 15:33, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  Oppose I use it when I upload from Flickr, I tried one or two times UploadWizard but was not happy. A pity if it is stopped without alternative at least totally equivalent. A step forward two steps back. If it is absolutely necessary, introduce a limitation access to certain user right, or a limit of use according to the user rights. Christian Ferrer (talk) 20:42, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  Oppose, I would rather want to see the ability to upload from Flickr be extended to the MediaEiki Upload Wizard for users with a certain amount of uploads or something, Flickr2Commons has a lot of issues but what it needs is active development and not complete abandonment. I would rather say that there is a huge backlog of useful free educational images on Flickr that needs to be imported to Wikimedia Commons. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:44, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

incomplete uploads

Incomplete uploads are quite common. Many happen to be cross-wiki uploads. Is there something wrong, or is it just a coincidence? (If you patrol User:OgreBot/Uploads_by_new_users or Category:All media needing categories as of 2019, it is easy to find a handful of these.)--Roy17 (talk) 17:37, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

It's probably not a coincidence, but not necessarily cross-wiki upload's fault (why is that faulty software still enabled at all, by the way?). It may have to do with the demographics of the users who end up using sub-standard upload systems: maybe they are disproportionately located in areas or networks with poor connectivity to Wikimedia Foundation servers? Nemo 14:07, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
@Roy17 and Nemo bis: This is the 5MB crosswiki upload cutoff bug.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:18, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
Now we simply tag with db and delete them rightaway. If this bug is going to persist for a few years, I think we could design a new template (similar to npd/nsd), that reminds uploaders to re-upload (and tell them how to ensure successful uploads). If it goes unanswered, the incomplete file will be cropped and kept, or speedily deleted, after seven days.--Roy17 (talk) 15:25, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Photo challenge November results

Bones: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image [[File:|x240px]]
Title Ibex skull in Vanoise National Park, France Diorama of late Cretaceous Period (85 million years ago) marine life
that inhabited a shallow inland sea located in present day Kansas and
Oklahoma. Top, Platecarpus (a fish-eating mosasaur), left, Protostega
(an early sea turtle), and bottom, Xiphactinus (a large bony fish
measuring up to 16 feet long). Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of
Natural History, Norman, OK.		 Ossario di San Martino della Battaglia
Author Ibex73 OKJaguar Garonzi Stefania
Score 38 18 14
Measurements: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image [[File:|x240px]]
Title The Man Measuring the Clouds Russian submarine measuring instruments Roberval scale, France, 19th century
Author Mark11000 Spielvogel Cquoi
Score 25 23 12

Congratulations to Ibex73, OKJaguar, Garonzi Stefania, Mark11000, Spielvogel and Cquoi. --Jarekt (talk) 03:41, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Apologies, two of these jumped out as having potential copyright issues when I looked at this thread this morning. As I have found no prior questions being raised about their copyright, I have created deletion discussions for them. No criticism of the photo challenge competition implied, though it makes sense for copyright to be double checked during the process. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 06:46, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
I agree, we might have an issue with the winner of "Measurements" challenge, which is too bad. Photo challenge draws a lot of new editors who despite of best intentions do not always understand copyright issues and our policies about them. We had to delete winners of several past challenges. Thanks for paying attention. --Jarekt (talk) 18:20, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Photos from DoD personnel, always PD...

Another contributor, an administrator, voiced an opinion that we can't make assumptions about the public domain status of images taken by GIs.

Well, I have never been in the military, but I am pretty sure that, when you are in uniform there are strict rules about your personal camera, personal cell phone. A couple of decades ago, when cell phones were first becoming popular, I read an article about how soldiers in the Israeli Army were not allowed to carry their cell phones, when on duty, because those cell phones allowed Palestinian phone hackers to know the locations of their patrols.

I would be amazed if commanders, in war zones, didn't strictly enforce rules on cameras or cell phones. They would be concerned that, if there were no rules photos GIs took could be a risk, because, if they published them online, or sent them home in an email, the image might have accidentally included a vulnerability, that would allow an enemy to sneak on base, for a sneak attack. They might be concerned that the images might expose a breach of regulations that triggered unwanted attention from the brass.

In the unlikely event those rules allowed a GI to take a phone or camera on patrol, and Sarge tells everyone to "take five", some people might argue that a photo snapped when Sarge said "take five" belonged to the photographer. However, it could be argued that since there was a general order about camera use, even photos taken during a "take five" counted as a photo "in performance of their duties".

What about photos taken back in the USA, or taken on a foreign excursion, but in peacetime? Surely there will be strict rules about the use of cameras, when in on duty, or on patrol?

On the Guantanamo Naval Base reporters are routinely told photos they took that included the Bay itself, or the beaches, had to be seized, because they were a security risk -- even though the Base's Public Affair Office has published hundreds of similar photos. Geo Swan (talk) 14:16, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

@Geo Swan: Hollywood movies have me believing that US Army soldiers sign away all sorts of rights upon enlistment, and they can get told "You belong to the Army now" truthfully. Other services are probably similar.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 15:15, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
(Guy with a background in Army human resources.) The operative things about images by soldiers, is 1) they have to be a federal employee, and 2) the image has to have been taken in the course of their official duties. Not everyone who is in uniform is a federal employee. There are some circumstances where a person may be in uniform but might be a state employee, most/all of them involving state National Guards. Other than that, if I am in uniform and I take a selfie to post on Instabook or Facespace, that image wasn't taken in the course of my official duties, and I still own that image. However, if there is an official Air Force photographer doing his job, or a graphic designed by Army Public Relations for an Army publication, those are done as an official duty and those are public domain. GMGtalk 17:28, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
Other than that, public domain images that have to do with classified or sensitive information would fall under Commons:Non-copyright restrictions. GMGtalk 17:30, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Hmmm. GMG, I looked at, and didn't see anything in Commons:Non-copyright restrictions that would restrict publication of public domain information that had been classed as secret, or top secret, or equivalent. If the Pentagon Papers were published today, I am sure we would host images from them. We do host public domain images published by WikiLeaks, without regard to shouting from some US government officials that looking at once secret information, published by WikiLeaks, could serve to deny individuals a security clearance. I uploaded most of the formerly secret JTF-GTMO detainee assessment briefs, published by WikiLeaks.
  • At Abu Ghraib sadistic Charles Graner, a prison guard in civilian life, brought his modern digital camera to Iraq, in 2003, and took the images in Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse. He seems to have routinely taken his camera with him, when he was on duty, or when he and his cronies were torturing captive, in their off-duty hours. He had burned writable CDs with hundreds of sadistic images on them.

    Those pictures became known to the public when he proudly shared a copy of the CD with a colleague who had been away. His colleague was disgusted, and informed on Graner and his cronies (and had to be put into protective custody, and probably ended his military career.) Anyhow, we treat these images as public domain, even though Graner's superiors are very unlikely to ever publicly admit ordering him to take those image. Geo Swan (talk) 11:40, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

  • I mean, we might treat those as PD, but if we do then we are wrong. If they were not taken in the course of their official duties, then they are personal photos and not public domain. Consider also that, unlike most Federal government employees, active duty military are never out of a military pay status, even when off duty or on pass. You are in pay status 24 hours a day seven days a week. But the difference between whether you own your work or the government owns your work is whether the government ordered you to produce that work as part of your duties, or whether you produced it of your own accord.
As to whether laws related to national security are specifically listed at NCR, just because editors haven't listed it there doesn't mean that releasing classified or sensitive information may not violate US law, where Commons servers are located, and editors who disseminate that information may be personally legally liable for doing so. Now the government in exercising prosecutorial discretion may not have pursued the issue thus far, but if a Commons editor who works for the CIA, DoS or DoD or what have you, decided they're going to start pinching classified documents from work and uploading them to Commons because they wan't to play Wikileaks, "public domain" isn't going to help them very much when the FBI shows up at their door and seizes their computer, and you're kidding yourself if you think the WMF is not going to do anything but completely cooperate with law enforcement on any investigation. GMGtalk 11:59, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
  • A hatnote at Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse says the images are in the public domain because, during the Abu Ghraib Court Martials Graner and their cronies testified that they were under orders.
  • You wrote: "But the difference between whether you own your work or the government owns your work is whether the government ordered you to produce that work as part of your duties, or whether you produced it of your own accord." And I reply "the law can be very counter-intuitive". This is precisely the kind of opinion that we need to have confirmed or refuted by a lawyer who specializes in this area of the law. Geo Swan (talk) 12:37, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Don't Press Officers, touting the superiority of US GIs, routinely claim that US GIs are superior to the PFCs equivalents from other nations armies -- because they were better-trained, more intelligent, and able to bring more initiative to their execution of their duties? So, I suggest that if a veteran had taken a photo, on their own initiative, that turned out to be valuable, and the veteran went to court over who owned the photo, a court might discount the veteran's claim that "but, I took that photo on my own initiative, no one ordered me to take it..." I suggest the picture taking would be seen as an instance of a GI bringing initiative to their exercise of their duties. Geo Swan (talk) 12:47, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
  1. GMG, so, (some?) National Guard soldiers are state employees, not Federal employees?
    • I assume senior officers, appointed to positions in the Pentagon, to oversee the entire National Guard program remain Federal employees?
    • When National Guard soldiers are mobilized, by a Governor, when a dam bursts, or there is a huge riot, its temporary. But surely if their unit is called up for six months, or a year, to serve in a war zone, they are Federal employees?
  2. GMG, you wrote: "if I am in uniform and I take a selfie ... wasn't taken in the course of my official duties, and I still own that image..."
    • I can see that reasoning. However the law, maybe particularly intellectual property law, can be deeply counter-intuitive. Maybe these questions are ones where the WMF's lawyers are asked to give an informed legal opinion. Consider Feist v Rural. It is so non-obvious that the SCOTUS and Autralian Supreme Court made diametrically opposite rulings on whether hard work alone earns intellectual property rights.

      Here is a counter-argument... A ship's captain, or base commander gives a general order, like:

    1. "Members of Command XYZ can bring personal cameras onto the base/ship. But they must remain in their foot-lockers when they are on duty. (Alternately, remain in their foot-lockers except when they have a weekend pass to leave the base/ship)
    2. "Caution must be exercised with any photos taken when off duty. Photos of weapons, control rooms, access gates, are totally restricted. Photos of other areas may be uploaded to social media, only after review and approval by the Morale Officer."
    • I suggest that an equally valid non-lawyer opinion is that, since a Superior Officer has issued an order about photos taken by his or her subordinates, on his or her base/ship, those photos should be considered in performance of their duties.
    • WRT being "in uniform" ... So, some GIs get to live off-base. When reporting to base they can put on their uniform, at home, and proceed to base wearing their uniform, or put their uniform on, once they arrive on base? Suppose they are nearby, when some kook shoots up a military vehicle, on a road near the base, and a Superior Officer orders "You! Private! Stay with this injured man, do what you can for him, while I search for the shooter. " Does our private get to say, "Sorry Sarge, I may be in uniform, but my shift doesn't start for another fifteen minutes, and I am still off duty, so you can't order me around..." The law can be highly counter-intuitive, and I have never been in the military, but I suspect the SCOTUS might rule that when a GI puts on their uniform they are on duty. Geo Swan (talk) 12:03, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Whether or not you are wearing a uniform is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether you are a federal employee and the work you produce is part of your official duties. You can throw out all the hypothetical you like, but the answer to each of them is that if they are not a federal employee, and the work is not produced as part of their official duties, then the work isn't public domain. GMGtalk 13:26, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
    • GMG, I am not trying to irritate you. I do think these are complicated questions, because the law can be deeply counter-intuitive. That means that lots of people, even people who work in the field, who aren't lawyers, can hold a very strong opinion as to how the law should be interpreted -- and can be completely stunned when they learn how lawyers actually interpret it. Feist v. Rural, a SCOTUS ruling is a good example. Lots of people feel sure that someone can earn intellectual property rights when the thing they published required a lot of work. Feist v. Rural was a lawsuit between two small telephone companies, where one copied a whole subsection from another company's phonebook. SCOTUS rules the amount of work was irrelevant, and copyright required a "creative spark", not present in assembling the first phone book. GMG, no offense, but I think your dismissal the questions I raised as mere hypotheticals, is based on the mistake of assuming your interpretation is so obvious it must be correct. Now, if your Sergeant, your Captain, your Colonel, actually gave you some instruction on using your personal camera or cellphone to take photos, while on base, or on mission, that would be very useful additional input here. And I appreciate you weighing. So, thanks for that. But I am taking your dismissal with a grain of salt.
    • WRT your point about members of the State militia's, the weekend warriors of the National Guard... That is interesting. I didn't expect this. If I am not mistaken, they serve a certain number of weekends per year, and then one solid block of weeks, usually their summer vacation, when they have an employer who respects their National Guard committment enough to accommodate it, and then for brief periods when their State Governor calls them up, if there is a flood, or forest fire, or prison escape -- something the regular State police and other State emergency personnel can't handle alone. The soldiers who shot those student protesters at Kent State, 45 years ago, they were National Guard soldiers, I believe. Have I got all that right?

      If I remember correctly, there was an important civil rights case, where an old-fashioned Governor called out the National Guard, to help make sure a Federal School desegregation law went unenforced, and then the President of the time (Eisenhower? Kennedy? Johnson?) said he would escalate, and send in the 82nd Airborne to overwhelm the National Guard? Do I have that right? Okay. Doesn't the President also have authority to mobilize National Guard units? And, when they are mobilized by the POTUS, aren't they then Federal employees? I asked this already -- when a National Guard unit is called up, to serve in a war zone, aren't they serving the Federal Government? Geo Swan (talk) 19:57, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

  • Yes, when a National Guard soldier is mobilized on Title 10 federal orders, they are a federal employee. Besides this, there are a number of scenarios of varying degrees of ambiguity (state technicians, guard soldiers mobilized under state orders authorized by the federal government, guard soldiers mobilized under state orders not authorized by the federal government, guard soldiers on inactive duty training status). My personal recommendation is to assume that these are all not public domain for our purposes under COM:PCP, unless the state itself releases it's public works. Members of the Army Reserves proper (not National Guard) are under direct federal authority. Others, such as the Adjutant General of Washington DC, may be under direct federal authority despite being a member of the National Guard.
In the case of Public Affairs Associates, Inc. v. Rickover the Supreme Court ruled that speeches written by an admiral were personally copyrighted, despite being produced on government time, using government equipment, in government facilities, and presented while he was on official travel.
In the case of Sherrill v. Grieves the courts ruled that an Army Captain retained the copyright for materials he wrote in order to teach a military course because his duties were to provide instruction, and this duty did not oblige him to write the material for the course. This was despite the fact that the Army later requested and was granted permission to publish the work in an official Army publication. Making works for official Army publication was not the official duty of the author.
In the case of US v. First Trust Company of Saint Paul the courts ruled that the writings of en:William Clark, who as an Army Captain at the time of his expedition, were private property, and not public domain, because the duties he was assigned as part of the expedition made no specific instructions for official records keeping for official use.
I am not aware of any court case that has interpreted the "duty" of military members so broadly as you would seem to imply. GMGtalk 21:04, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Thanks for following up, and doing homework. I had never heard to those cases, and am now looking at some references that talk about them. Here are some quotes from a couple of scholarly article... Geo Swan (talk) 04:17, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS: Their copyright and ownership
"The Copyright Act provides that "the word 'author' shall include an employer in the case of works made for hire. In Scherr the court held that section 26 creates a rebuttable presumption of copyright in the employer, which can be overcome by evidence of a contrary agreement between employer and employee. The essential factor in determining whether an employee created his work of art within the scope of his employment duties is whether the employer possessed the right to direct and to supervise the manner in which the work was being performed."
I said I thought a GI's superiors had the authority to direct "no use of personal cameras on base", or "personal cameras can't record weapons, fences, gates, control rooms. All photos have to be cleared with the Morale officer" So, doesn't the passage in bold support my suggestion?
"United States v. First Trust Co. of St. PauP1 was a suit to quiet title in the notes of Captain Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. At issue was not so much the literary rights as the rights to the physical papers themselves..."
(1) Clark's notes dated to 1800 or so, so even if they had been copyright, that copyright would have expired, by the time of the lawsuit. (2) The scholarly article says that what was in dispute was ownership of historic artifacts, not intellectual property rights.
COPYRIGHT IN GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE AUTHORED WORKS
"The first case to involve the applicability of the statutory copyright prohibition in the Copyright Act of 1909 was Sherrill v. Grieves ... Because a suitable textbook for the course was not available, he wrote one during his off-duty time... Thus, when he used the pamphlet to teach the class, it had to be assumed that his superiors consented ...
So, on his own initiative, an officer drafts instructional material, during his off-duty time. The court ruled his duties were to instruct, not draft textbooks. Since the text was prepared in his off-duty time, not part of his official duties, he owned the copyright.
That administrator was probably me. And it has to do with the definitions given in Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 15 of the US Code. It has to be part of their official duties in order to be in the public domain. Most of the time these photos have notices on them that explicitly say "Public Domain". Or it is easily determined that it was taken as part of their duties by Googling the name of the photographer given. Most of the time it comes back that they work in public relations or some photography division. Quite easy to connect the dots there. Photos taken that are not part of the employee's official duties are not in the public domain. Take the army example. Photos taken of them in the barracks are probably copyrighted, group photos of squadmates are probably copyrighted unless they are "official" photographs, etc. --Majora (talk) 19:02, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Majora, thanks for weighing in. Yeah, it was your comments WRT a photo of Corporal Remedios Cruz, that reminded me of this concern.
  • That photo was taken at a marker showing 8000 foot elevation of an endurance hike. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, a fellow Marine took this photo, after Sarge said, "Take Five". I assume they were supposed to ask permission of whomever was in command, whether they could bring their cameras with them. I assume that, if they got permission, that permission was conditional -- went something like, "You can only take your camera out during break time, you must not take pictures of anything of military value. I am the arbiter of what is or isn't of military value."
  • Can't the argument be made, "You are in uniform, you are on duty. You are in public, civilians, the enemy, even your opposite numbers in other units, see you as on duty. So you are on duty."
  • If someone more senior than you can say to you, "Hey you, Soldier, who told you to take photos here!", then I ask whether you aren't on duty, so far as the intellectual property rights to your images.
  • Okay, thanks to everyone who has responded so far. Geo Swan (talk) 12:56, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
The discussion so far seems to indicate that unless the photos were taken as part of that Marine's duties, the copyright on the belongs to the Marine and is not automatically in the public domain. But in Commons:Deletion requests/File:USMC Sergeant Remedios Cruz, on an endurance hike.jpg we are not discussing an image taken by a Marine, we are discussing an image taken by an unknown person, so this discussion probably won't help. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 22:24, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

My thanks to everyone who weighed in, with an opinion.

I continue to think the law can be deeply counter-intuitive, so it is time for the WMF to pay lawyers for an informed legal opinion...

GMG cited some court cases, ones I had never heard of, that they thought supported their position, specifically: Public Affairs Associates, Inc. v. Rickover, Sherrill v. Grieves, US v. First Trust Company of Saint Paul.

But, when I looked those cases up, it seemed to me that they did not support the points GMG seemed to think they supported. For instance, they wrote (paraphrasing) US v. First Trust Company of Saint Paul ... ruled that Captain William Clark's papers, from the Lewis and Clark expedition, were private property... But the courts weren't ruling on whether the intellectual content of his papers was owned by his heirs, rather, by the time the court ruled, the intellectual property would have been in the public domain, due to age. What the court ruled on was whether his heirs owned the papers, as an artifact.

Similarly, Sherrill v. Grieves can be confusing. The Captain was an instructor. His DoD duties were to instruct, not write a training brochure. He wrote a training brochure in his off-duty time. The court ruled that intellectual content created when off-duty belonged to him. Does this apply to a photo a GI snapped when Sarge calls for a break? I want a lawyer's informed opinion. I wrote an article, now deleted, on a USN officer who had been an instructor at the Navy's equivalent of a Community College, by day, and, was a high-end call-girl, by night. She was one of the employees of the infamous DC Madam. Her story shows me that officers, who were instructors, enjoy freedoms, when off-duty, similar to a civilian instructor at a civilian college. I continue to believe that GIs, who live on base, or are on a patrol, are covered by their commanding officers' standing orders.

As I noted, above, GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS: Their copyright and ownership says: "The essential factor in determining whether an employee created his work of art within the scope of his employment duties is whether the employer possessed the right to direct and to supervise the manner in which the work was being performed." I am not in any doubt that standing orders about where and when soldiers can use their cameras is what this document refers to as "the right to direct and to supervise the manner in which the work was being performed." Geo Swan (talk) 01:43, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

In as much as this concerns the apparent DR in question, you are wrong. In as much as it does not, I don't care to debate it any further. If there is any substantial doubt about whether it was part of their official duties then we shouldn't have it here. GMGtalk 01:49, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
No - when significant doubt is cast on high-profile images, we have WMF legal opine. PCP only exists because we can't afford to pay lawyers to look at every single image; it goes out the window once WMF has issued a specific opinion. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:04, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Image theft

I found one of my pictures on shutterstock, and upon further investigation I found a lot of Commons pictures on that user's account. You may want to look for your pictures, especially if you've participated in any of the competitions. See Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard/User_problems#Theft_by_a_Commons_user. --Trougnouf (talk) 01:45, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Copying isn't "theft"... File:Copying Is Not Theft.webm --dsprc (talk) 01:29, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
  • @Tuválkin Except that it isn't theft as nothing has been stolen, and no one deprived of the Work. The activity you describe – with your false equivalence – is clearly fraud, and perhaps misappropriation, but it certainly isn't theft. Words matter, and we should be careful not to mix, distort, or conflate them. --dsprc (talk) 18:08, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
  • The word "theft" applies only to material goods, of course, and legal terms never harbour any mataphor, no siree! So, no theft, just fraud, because words. Okay. Now that the distraction is out of the way, lets get back to the matter that matters. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 19:20, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
  • There’s an additional issue here, on top of the blatant plagiarism with defraudation of the original author, of the duped paying re-users, and of the commercial hosting service (if they are innocent, which they obviously are not): If one’s work has been fraudulently hosted at places like Shutterstock, Alamy, Getty Images, and such others, one may be futurely challenged in one’s ability to rightfully license (or have licensed) the work and even be prosecuted — with the backing of those powerful parties. In consequence, the legitimate author will be «deprived of the Work», at the very least. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 19:20, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Theft need not be limited to physical objects, per se; it just doesn't apply here. Yes, plagiarism is fraud, against all parties involved; no one is arguing it's not a crime. If ISPs violate redistribution clauses of the License (slimeballs like Getty...), they too are complicit in that fraud. The Author is still not deprived of the work, they can still license it under restrictive monopoly terms.
No one has a right to just maybe, possibly, perhaps, turn a profit in anything; they've only the right to try, with no guarantee in success. Contributors to Commons release their works under licenses which allow commercial redistribution. No deprivation can be suggested in such an event. [4]
Copying (even illicit) still isn't theft. --dsprc (talk) 21:05, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
  • @Tuvalkin: I had a new version in the works (in fact I think I already have a new version), but when I was working on that my other essays got nominated for deletion and were deleted. So there's no point. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 22:01, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
The most anyone can ask in return for hir contributions here is to have them attributed, and fraudulent misrepresentations like these certainly deprive the creators of their due. Whatever you want to call it, the action results in a loss, however intangible. Note the expression “to steal credit”, which suggests that something very like theft is taking place, even if it doesn’t qualify as such under a strict or legalistic interpretation of the term.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 22:30, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

There is also the issue that someone else's false claim of copyright may muddy the ownership rights of the actual copyright holder. The original free license may be called into question because of the conflicting, bogus, copyright claim. And at that point, if it can't be sorted out correctly, something of monetary value has effectively been taken away: everyone's right to use the picture without paying the bogus claimant. So I don't see "theft" as much of a stretch. Even without that case: trading on someone else's reputation is also a sort of theft, even if it's not easy to assign a precise monetary value. - Jmabel ! talk 23:18, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Third opinion on potential duplicates

With regard to this and that, third opinions would be appreciated. @Editor-1 and Koavf: FYI. — Racconish 💬 13:48, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

I've converted it to a DR. It isn't an exact duplicate so it doesn't qualify for speedy deletion. That said, I think deleting it per a DR would be reasonable. The larger size doesn't add anything of value. — Huntster (t @ c) 01:44, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Why can't I add captions to images I have uploaded

The request for captions seems to be something new. In any case any captions I try to add is met with the words FORBIDDEN in red. No further explanation given. Its rather annoying. Creuzbourg (talk) 21:59, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

@Creuzbourg: captions are new, they were switched on only a few hours ago and bugs are being worked out as they're found here. There's a problem with the edit filters that is being worked on that may be causing this, but I can't be sure until I know more about it. Could you please provide a little more information about where you were trying to upload (in the UploadWizard or on the file page), what additional warning if any you're seeing, and what browser/operating system you're using, that sort of thing? I'll see what we can figure out. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:32, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
@Keegan (WMF): I did not try to upload a new image. I first saw the request by a picture I haven't uploaded, tried to write a one-liner but was "forbidden". Then went to an image I uploaded some time ago - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Major_John_A._Harman.jpg - tried the same with the same result. I did not see any warnings or anything. When I hit "Publish changes" the red text "Forbidden" appeared. I am using Windows 7. Creuzbourg (talk) 22:41, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
So something like this would result in an error correct? --Majora (talk) 22:45, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
@Creuzbourg: that sounds like something that might be specific to your account and/or settings. Can you file a brief report of what you're experience and attach a screenshot, if it happens again or is still happening? We'd like to figure this out. If you do not have a Phabricator account yet, you can create one using your Wikimedia credentials. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 23:02, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
@Keegan (WMF): In order to log in, I have to give my e-mail address, which I don't care for. I guess Wikimedia Commons can do without my contributions concerning the captions. Creuzbourg (talk) 14:22, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
@Creuzbourg: "If you do not have a Phabricator account yet, you can create one using your Wikimedia credentials."   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:32, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

January 11

Best practice for file reviewers

Hi, While reviewing files, could you 1. inform the uploader, 2. check the user's other uploads, 3. add a warning if there are already recent copyright violations, 4. ask for a block on COM:AN/B if the user continues uploading copyvios after a warning. I find some uploader with more than 30 copyright violation notices, and no final warning. Regards, Yann (talk) 18:40, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Maybe it matters that this is a cross-wiki upload user. It's very hard to communicate, let alone influence, users of such a counterproductive interface used outside Commons. Nemo 22:34, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

January 12

EXIF/Metadata issue

I'm curious if something internally has changed recently regarding the display of EXIF metadata. Maybe it's just a fluke, but anecdotally I've seen the real names of 'creators' (editors) of scanned uploaded images appear in Metadata much more frequently in the last couple of days. This could potentially have severe privacy implications, and could obfuscate true file origin. --Animalparty (talk) 01:11, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't think so. Anyway, about what data field are you talking about? Fields such as Copyright holder or Author have been always visible if the author of a given image filled them in. Although I agree that in case of scanned images/documents sometimes it may be confusing. --jdx Re: 07:44, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Getty Museum subcategories

Hi, I am trying to add categories for all files in Category:Media contributed by the J. Paul Getty Museum, and in particular Category:Google Art Project works in The J. Paul Getty Museum, by types of works: paintings, photographs, illuminated manuscripts, sculptures, etc. What other subcategories do you suggest? Drawings? Regards, Yann (talk) 06:43, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Source categories are hidden and usually not subcategorized. Category tree is currently a bit of a mess. Categories like Category:Paintings in The J. Paul Getty Museum and Category:Photographs in The J. Paul Getty Museum tell something about what it is, not about who contributed it. Multichill (talk) 22:45, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
i do not find subcategory by type of work useful, other than 2D versus 3D. subcategory by decade of creation is more useful. wikidata does it better. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 03:25, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
Then how to find all photographs or all paintings from the Getty Museum available on Commons? There is no other way than to have category for that. Regards, Yann (talk) 10:10, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_sum_of_all_paintings/Collection/J._Paul_Getty_Museum -- Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 13:21, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
@Slowking4: This is only available for works which have a Wikidata item, only a tiny part of the whole. Regards, Yann (talk) 12:26, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
for LOD GLAMs, they have uploaded all their object id's https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P2582 ; you have a better case for smaller institutions such as the Louvre, where we have some cleanup to do, i.e. File:Desiderio da settignano, san giovanni battista goupil, louvre, 1455 circa 02.JPG ; you can stay in your category cul-de-sac, i have moved on. -- Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 17:02, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
The full name is J. Paul Getty Museum, why don't we use it for categories? So I would redirect all categories under Category:Getty Museum. Then there is confusion between Category:Getty Center‎ and Category:Getty Museum. How do we fix that? Regards, Yann (talk) 10:23, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
@Multichill: I agree that categories need to be merged. What do you think? Regards, Yann (talk) 18:58, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
What are you confused about Yann? J. Paul Getty Museum is the organization and they have two locations:
This is also how everything is categorized (at least was before). So what do you want to change and merge exactly?
Renaming Category:Getty Museum to Category:J. Paul Getty Museum seems to be the more correct name. Creating Category:Collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum as an intermediate step for navigation wouldn't hurt either. What else?
Important remark related to what you said here: On Commons we generally don't mix the topic (what's in the picture) and the source (where did it came from). So take for example the MET donation I also worked on. We track the source in Category:Images from Metropolitan Museum of Art (hidden category) and we categorize by topic. Multichill (talk) 13:33, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
@Multichill: This rename proposal is OK for me. In Category:Collections of the Getty Center‎, we do have subcategories for types of works. That is exactly what I'd like to do. I didn't find them, as I looked for subcategories in the Museum main category.
Yes, the Museum includes 2 physical places. It seems better to have subcategories under the legal entity rather than the physical location. Regards, Yann (talk) 16:36, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Tree layout proposal

J. Paul Getty Museum
-> Paintings
-> Drawings
-> Photographs
-> Sculptures
-> Sculptures in the Getty Center
-> Sculptures in the Getty Villa
etc. Yann (talk) 16:46, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Structured Data

I uploaded File:Sabena trein 1989.jpg. What I dont understand is where this 'Structured Data' comes from. I removed the caption. I dont see the information in the file code. I am used to only filling in the file description. Does this come from Wikidata? I dont see any link to Wikidata. In File:Airport city express bord 1989.jpg I dont see 'Structured Data' but still the new 'Captions' I see in the upload script.Smiley.toerist (talk) 22:14, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

@Smiley.toerist: please see "Commons:File captions", these "Captions" are a first step in a large process to structure the data on Wikimedia Commons. This is not coming from the Wikidata website(, yet) but in time there are plans to make Wikimedia Commons work better with Wikidata. All files on Wikimedia Commons now have captions. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 09:35, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
I just saw it, this was beyond my imagination... Complete mess. Wow. Just wow. — regards, Revi 11:18, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
Yes, complete mess. Apparently uploaders are supposed to just carry on, shut up, and ignore the mess, rather than expecting changes on the project where we create content to actually be helpful. --Fæ (talk) 11:23, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
Even the h1 is still there. Shocking. Nemo 11:58, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
-1. No reason to be ironic - you made the "Description" a mandatory field during uploading, so you should at least bother to explain. Maybe it would seem less idiotic / confusing if the uploader is told, during the freaking uploading process, what type of information is expected under "Description" and under "Caption". That explanation page "Commons:File captions" right now seems just like a bodily harm to normal people who try to upload a single photo. No audio or video... Alexpl (talk) 19:05, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Broken files?

So far only come across two files with a strange issue, not sure if its something on my end that is the problem.

*File:Townsville city.jpg (no image, but there is a small thumbnail) strike that too! *File:Australian Army (A38-018) Eurocopter EC-655 Tiger ARH at Wagga Wagga Airport.jpg (thumbnail and image sizing works but only a small per cent of the image displays at full res) now works...

If this is a server-side issue, I wonder how many other files has this problem! If my end... Clearing the cache, rebooting hasn't worked! Bidgee (talk) 03:42, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Tried the files before I posted the above, now they work as if there was no issue. This really doesn't solve what causes them to hang when trying to open the full res. Bidgee (talk) 03:45, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
@Bidgee: This appears to have been a temporary backend hiccup. You may want to follow mw:How to report a bug If it recurs.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 03:48, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Adult content?

Hi. I found this via Google search. I guess it could be a painting by this painter (it is even published with a compatible license, CC BY-SA 2.0) but Flickr delivers me an "adult content" lock and does not let me check the image. Could someone with a Flickr account (I do not have one) check if the image would be OK here? Strakhov (talk) 12:27, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: in your preferences under Privacy and Permissions, you need to set SafeSearch to Moderate or Off: [8]. clpo13(talk) 00:40, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
@Clpo13: On your linked page, I have checked all three boxes. On the parent page https://www.flickr.com/account/privacy/, under "Content filters" and next to "Search settings", I have "Content type: All".   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 00:58, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
Wow, hubba hubba, va-va-vavoom! :) --Animalparty (talk) 00:10, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
The bagpiper appears to have the lowermost four buttons of his knee-breeches unbuttoned at his left knee, if that excites you. The drummer also has one of his six coat buttons unbuttoned... AnonMoos (talk) 14:49, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Thank you everyone. Apparently Flickr2commons knows how to crack the Flickr protection. So here it is. It's signed by "A. Jaspe" and it's dated in 1876 or 1896. I guess ...1876, since the painter died in 1887. Strakhov (talk) 13:20, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Adult content -> Paying bills, mowing the lawn, planning for retirement, driving the speed limit ... for heaven's sake save the children! GMGtalk 13:44, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Nudity and [lack of?] educational focus

See also: Commons:Village pump/Proposals#Exhibitionist uploads.

I know "Commons is not censored", and I personally have over 1000 photos here of nude or nearly nude people among my 50,000+ uploads (mostly body-painted participants in Seattle's Fremont Solstice Parade), but I really don't like seeing them categorized in ways that seem to have more pornographic than educational intent. E.g. is there really any appropriate reason to single out Category:Nude women with curls‎, Category:Nude women with red hair‎, etc.? I note that there are no analogous categories for men. - Jmabel ! talk 05:09, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Welcome to the free repository that anyone can edit ;). I'm not fond of hyper-splitting either, but some nude women sub-sub-sub-categories have arguable artistic value (Category:Paintings of nude women standing outdoors and Category:Nude or partially nude women in the morning are at least based in classical aesthetics). Categories like Nude or partially nude women in or next to inflatable pools probably won't be a place for art historians to look, but it as well as Nude women with red hair might plausibly help someone find what they're looking for, be they artists seeking reference photos or someone wanting to illustrate an article on oil wrestling. Of course, there is some actual graphic material and depictions of sexual acts that many would probably consider pornographic (e.g. Category:Sex practices and NSFW categories therein), but low quality, unrealistically educational images can always be nominated for deletion. --Animalparty (talk) 05:42, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
@Jmabel: Some people are visually oriented and look for particular types of images, and some of those people like to categorize that way.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 05:48, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
And that explains the lack of similar categorization of men how? - Jmabel ! talk 06:25, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
Also note that while there is a "Penis Fighter Barnstar" there is no "Vulva Fighter Barnstar" or "Vagina Fighter Barnstar".
@Jmabel: I think that nudes of blokes are more quickly deleted than those of female humans, also note that while there is a "Penis Fighter Barnstar" there is no "Vulva Fighter Barnstar" or "Vagina Fighter Barnstar". (see the image above (on mobile)/to the right (on desktop)) I don't think that nude photographs are automatically out of scope, but images usually get more detailed categorisation when there are more images to categorise, and "the Anti-Penis Police 👮‍♀️" usually nominate every nude male photograph for deletion they see. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 12:26, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
Donald Trung -- the "penis fighter" thing was because there was a constant flow of low-quality cell-phone-camera images taken by drunk guys of their own genitals which were being uploaded here. Frankly, we only need a certain number of blurry drunk penis selfies, and any more beyond that would be "surplus to requirements". Whatever problems there are with revealing female images being uploaded, they do not take that particular form or tend to cause that particular problem (though there is an image File:Nobreasts.svg)... AnonMoos (talk) 15:15, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to the heteronormative patriarchy of the free repository that anyone can edit.
It is not possible to start a sensible discussion about existing systemic bias on any Wikimedia project without quickly being derided and painted as a fringe loon. However this project relies on contributions from people living in the real world, and any real world bias will naturally be reflected here. Scientific and statistical facts exist, regardless of rhetoric or who points them out.
Good luck should you want to try to fix it. --Fæ (talk) 12:43, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I believe I've uploaded a roughly equal number of such images of men and of women. Never bothered counting. @Donald Trung: I don't think there is any doubt that the images are in scope. My issue is how they are now being categorized by a third party: that the photos of women are being described with what I consider very objectifying criteria.
Examples of the photos I'm talking about can be seen in Category:Solstice Cyclists and its child categories. Possibly NSFW. - Jmabel ! talk 18:32, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
If pictures are inadequately described, for example insufficient in objective categories or insufficient in non-objective ones, that can be remedied by supplying what is missing. I do more buildings and structures than people, and when it's people, they are mostly clothed and my attention goes not to objective criteria but to other things like birth and death dates, occupation, home town, and education. Often I think details which are already easily visible in pictures of naked women are categorized with a painstaking care that is frivolously applied. That attention would more profitably be applied to other subjects and other criteria. That is not because frivolous, objective detail is evil, rather it is because similarly precise attention to other subjects would evince information not otherwise as easily seen. Jim.henderson (talk) 21:01, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
Entirely agreed.
But the problem here isn't lack of categories. It's that categories are being added to pictures of women that treat women as objects. I don't think this is in accord with policy. And I find it particularly objectionable when it is being done to photos I've taken. When I photograph someone and upload here, I don't like finding myself implicated in the objectification of that person. I realize that I'm providing a license that lets someone go elsewhere and do pretty much whatever with the photo as long as they don't violate the person's personality rights, but still, I think the tone of descriptions/categories on Commons is worth arguing. And, also, I think this sort of objectification at least borders on a personality rights issue. - Jmabel ! talk 00:12, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
I think the lack of male nude subcategorization is mostly due to the fact that not a lot of people take (find beauty and value in) photos of nude men, for example we don't even have a featured picture of nude men, subcategories follow content. --Trougnouf (talk) 01:42, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
Imagine people on Mars studying the pictures flying through the Internet, to learn what Earthlings look like under our clothes. Typically we are female adults, young, white and pretty, with big round titties. Everyone else is odd. Jim.henderson (talk) 19:30, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
Yes, this is largely cultural too, the female body is both more celebrated and appreciated than the male form, these women tend to be "adults, young, white and pretty" because nudity is more acceptable in Western cultures than in let’s say Eastern cultures, in places like Japan, Pakistan, and the Philippines there aren't that many exhibitionists and nudity is frowned upon there, as nudity is more acceptable in Europe, North America, South America, and Oceania these women tend to be White because Asians only make up a minority there. Because older women aren't as revered for their beauty (which subconsciously has to do with their fertility) Deletionists will be quick to nominate them. Also people tend to say that nudity and sexual related images should only be of well-known porn stars who also tend to fall into those demographics more (I'm not saying that there are no 90 year olds in the porn industry, I’m just saying that those usually fail the w:en:WP:NOTABILITY standards). And again Wikimedia Commons has developed an ingrained form of penisphobia and selfiephobia, combine these two (2) with the cultural norms that disapproves of anything but the young white woman’s physiqué and it becomes clear why men are severely underrepresented. Just peruse nudity-related deletion requests and one will find that the vast majority of them are of males.[dubious][citation needed] (anecdotally speaking, of course.) And the reason why they’re all mostly adult is a bit too obvious as it's something everyone here agrees on.
Now here is something I want people to think about, look for images of any “tribal traditional clothes” or “ethnic clothes” of any group in the world and most images seem to be of females, most people who visit my native Vietnam often go visit the Hmong (Mieu) people and many tourist agencies both inside and outside of Vietnam showcase these people by showing either young girls, adult women, or even elderly women, for the life of me I can’t remember a single poster showing a Hmong man in his traditional clothing, now the male traditional clothing (to me) looks more interesting as many Hmong men wear a Chinese changshan suit with a French barrett, these clothes perfectly illustrate both Chinese and French influence as the Hmong from a place I worked for had a Chinese King and they were colonised by the French. Yet any image of basically any minority or even the dominant Kinh (Metropolitan/”City-people”) ethnic group is almost always represented by the females, just search for “Ao Dai” to see (and yeah, I wear one of those every February and during formal occasions but outside of Vietnam I’ve never seen the Vietnamese people be represented by a male ao dai). Exception: Balkan(ese?), Greek, and Sikh people do seem to have their male national dresses represented by tourist agencies and magazines, but they are literally the only ones that come to mind.
Which brings me to the overrepresentation of the female form, as there is already a bias favouring the clothed woman, why wouldn't there be a bias favouring nude women? As both men and women like looking at naked women, and even look at the same body parts. This is a bias that we at Wikimedia Commons can't solve if we keep nominated good quality and potentially educational male nudes because it's one editor’s opinion that “Commons doesn't need any more penises”. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 00:36, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

All well & good, but little to do with what I initially asked about.

  1. For what it's worth, as I said above, I believe I've uploaded a roughly equal number of such images of men and of women. Never bothered counting, so if the thing about what does & doesn't get uploaded is directed at me, it missed the mark.
  2. My issue isn't the presence or absence of various content. It is the addition of objectifying categories to pictures of women. Yes, I suppose we could add objectifying categories to pictures of men, and at least address the balance, but I think that is the wrong way to go. Am I the only person here who thinks these categories do not sit well with Commons educational scope?

Jmabel ! talk 01:05, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

You are probably the only person that cares about a completely non existent issue (Non existent in the real world outside of your head). There simply is no such thing as "objectifying categories" it is complete nonsense. Extremist political and social justice agendas should have no place on commons. Oxyman (talk) 01:26, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
Just because you don't understand doesn't mean it is complete nonsense, and just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's extremist. It seems a quite mainstream issue.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:38, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
Well obviously I do not stand under it, but I do totally comprehend what this is about. Strange that you claim to know what I "understand", I would say that it is arrogant to claim to know that. Just because you seem to think erroneously that it is a mainstream issue does not make it so. I think it is extremist to claim that commons categories are a mainstream issue. That is quite absurd. You make no point other then you disagree with me but you seem to object to me stating my disagreement. That seems to be the actions of an extremist does it not? Oxyman (talk) 01:49, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
  • @Oxyman: you just said that «social justice agendas should have no place on commons». (Let’s that sink for just a bit.) This is a free media repository — its very basic idea is about social justice: inclusive, diverse, empowering, intersectional. Now, why don’t you let go of the dog whistles and speak clearly about what’s bugging you? -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 04:15, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
Please don't misquote me or take what I said out of context, I actually said "Extremist political and social justice agendas should have no place on commons." I thereby equated this type of social justice agenda to extremist politics which is what this is actually about. You'll have to educate me as to what exactly "let go of the dog whistles" means as I have no idea. I think commons should be allowed to go about it's mission of providing a free media repository without pressure or lobbying from extremist political interests which will inevitably end up in some form of censorship. This means that people creating legitimate categories should be able to go about their business with people assuming good faith. This entire imagined issue only exists in the minds of people assuming bad faith. Oxyman (talk) 12:18, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
  • @Jmabel: (answer to the 19.01.11+01:05 post above): You’re not the only person troubled by the matter. I am however at odds about what to do. In my views of Commons, categorization is paramount — as I see it as the tool of choice for most uses, including search and selection by reusers, who are through cats shown multiple choices for the same file usage need. I have no qualms about throughly categorizing all aspects of, say, this photo, for a reuser might be looking for one or several of those specific traits. I understand that there is a difference between categorizing something as "Trams on steep grades" or as "Kneeling redhead women looking at the viewer", and maybe that’s why my work in Commons is more often about the former than about the latter. However:
  • detailed categorization of a human subject should not be problematic in and by itself, any more detailed categorization of anything else is (and of course I’m excluding here inappropriate cats a troll might create and or redlink to a photo);
  • perverts might make use of detailed categorization for sure (although I find unlikely it’s a widespread situation, given the amount of material online specifically targeted, easier to find and browse than Wikimedia Commons), but then again if we shy from catering for those who seek avidly always and only for, say, "Smiling topless women with crowfeet (freckles apparent), supine, sunglasses on forehead", we will be unavoidably catering for those who are not any less unsavory but who settle for "Nude women" and anything goes (we could avoid the categarization of nudity wholesale, but that raises a host of other issues, probably worse, and that was explicitly not your point);
  • and the existence of said “perverts”, or the very prevalence of “perversity” in general, is a problem of the whole society, worldwide — it unavoidably affects Wikimedia Commons as it does affect anything else, but it`s a problem that cannot be solved, or even effectively faced, with specific narrow measures we could take concerning something as derivative and contingent as media file page categorization.
  • As for being educational, I some times feel that being focusedly educational and avoiding the possible sensual content of a photo, vis-a-vis the model’s wishes or expectations might backfire: If what was uploaded as a sexy self portrait is being categorized for its erotic content, it would be less unexpected and, even, less disstressing than to find out that said photo is now illustraring an Wikipedia article or an Wikitionary entry on, say, "Ptosis (breasts)" or "Elbow rash" (way to be both educational and, frankly, a dick).
That’s what I can say to address your concerns (which are partly also mine) unsatitsfactory as it is. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 04:15, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
  • I'd say that the male categories should mirror the female ones, once enough files are in a category people start creating more specific subcategories to more easily find what they're looking for, a reason as to why more specific "objectifying" (note that these photographs are digital objects) categories are created. Maybe this difference exist because photographs of female humans get used more often even if the numbers were roughly equal. Category trees reflect usage, don't forget that we can have one hard to navigate category with a thousand images or a category tree that caters more to re-users. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 12:37, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
Perhaps one might define "object". Are there pictures that depict no objects? Can such a picture be objectified without editing the picture? Jim.henderson (talk) 03:51, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
I am using "object"/"objectify" in the sense of treating a human as an "object" rather than a "subject": focusing on physical characteristics that have nothing to do with their humanity. - Jmabel ! talk 05:29, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
It is an overused to the point of being meaningless phrase. Perhaps you can explain how "objectifying categories" can be guilty of a thoughtcrime Oxyman (talk) 14:30, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
"guilty of a thoughtcrime" are your words, and not something I am saying at all. People can think what they want. They can think, for example, that all women are bimbos, that all men are scum, that Donald Trump is either a savior or a demon, but they don't get to add Commons categories accordingly.
That is, of course, not an exact analogy, but I don't have a bunch of time right now, headed out the door. - Jmabel ! talk 17:12, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
Well if a category is subjective discuss it and get it removed on those grounds, but you have not pointed to any subjective category. You seem to have a problem with objective categories as you assume bad faith of the creators. If we remove that assumption and look only at the objective category we are left with no problem. Your entire argument is constructed by assuming bad faith with is entirely analogous with the thoughtcrime concept. You seem to have enough time to post your extremist agenda ad nauseam so it appears you are time selective here. Oxyman (talk) 17:31, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
Friends in Ohio
Nobody's naked here, but still maybe a few hypotheticals can help. Thus far, this photo is categorized by our names and location. They are not categorized by height, age, color, clothing or sex, which are obvious differences, thus perhaps are objective qualities, hence using them to categorized the picture would be bad. But, those qualities do have something to do with our humanity, so perhaps categorizing according to those qualities would be good. I also think my friend is wise, honest, kind, and pretty, which strike me as subjective judgments, much influenced by my respectful admiration for her. Does that also make them good as categories? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jim.henderson (talk • contribs) 23:13, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
IMHO the decribed problem has very much to do with the facts, that while Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that everone can edit, Wikipedia is also the Encyclopedia that nearly no one does edit. With more editors many things would be better. If I make fotographs at events and get asked about what I am doing, I try to motivate the person to contribute to Wikipedia (with media or text) her- or himself. I specifically remember of a talk with one of the organizers of a Dyke March about Wikipedia while taking photos. Dyke Marches are all about making one group of society more visible to the public and participants in such an event are activists, that put time and energy in activism: people you would be expecting to be more likely than others to contribute to this project. But even when asked to contribute, nothing happens. --C.Suthorn (talk) 15:42, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
I guess it's partly my fault that we are wandering afield. Anyway a couple months ago I explained to a street recruiter for Greenpeace, that I'm already a fully committed Wikipedian, leaving no public passion for other activities. I have flirted with other crazy cults that pulled me in less completely, and I guess other potential fanatics have found their niche, too. But, yesterday at Wikipedia Day in NYC I was one of the old-timers speaking to a dozen recruits, directing them to a news report and perhaps we snared a few. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:37, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

For some past discussions of overspecific microcategorizations of images of unclad or scantily-clad women, see Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/User problems/Archive 55#Strange categories created by Neelix... -- AnonMoos (talk) 15:15, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

January 10

sort files pending review by timestamp

Is there currently a way to sort files in a category by timestamp? If not, is it possible to adapt the templates, such that these categories are sorted like copyvios are? I notice B-Bot is proposed to do this task, but I think it can be resolved by modifying templates.--Roy17 (talk) 03:20, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

See {{Copyvio}} and {{LicenseReview}}. I think it makes sense to sort by REVISIONTIMESTAMP instead of PAGENAME. These categories act as border checkpoints. Early ones should be served first.--Roy17 (talk) 03:48, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Good idea, files could be stuck in that category forever. One way would be to sort it with PetScan, e.g., [9] will sort by upload date. There's also a "by date" sort option, but I'm not sure what it sorts by, it doesn't seem to be the last edit date. --ghouston (talk) 06:34, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Now I see what you mean, {{Copyvio}} contains {{{category|[[Category:Copyright violations|{{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} ]]}}}, which can also be done in {{LicenseReview}}. --ghouston (talk) 08:33, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Problem with File:Sv-museum.ogg

There's a saying: "to err is human, but to really foul things up, you need a computer". In this case, a bot and humans have both contributed.

This file was imported from another site by a bot, and is supposed to be a recording of the pronunciation of "museum" in Swedish by a native speaker. The original version correctly matches the name of the file, which is the singular indefinite form of the word. The problem is that the bot replaced it half an hour later with a recording of the plural indefinite form, "museer".

The bot that did this also adds pronunciation files to Wiktionary entries based on the names of the files- shortly after uploading this to Commons, it added it to the Swedish entry on English Wiktionary for "museum". Apparently no one has noticed that it was wrong for over eleven years, until a new editor removed it from the entry a few hours ago. Based on past experience, I'm pretty sure that the bot in question will add it back the next time it runs on Wiktionary, because the name matches, even though the recording doesn't.

Meanwhile, a human editor added the same sound file to the Swedish entry on English Wiktionary for "museer", where the recording matches, even though the name doesn't. I haven't checked, but I suspect this has happened on other Wiktionaries as well.

I'm not sure whether it would be better to revert to the original version and leave the file name as it is or to rename the file to match the current version. If there's some way to copy one of the versions to a new file name, that would be the best option, since both versions are correct for one form or another (the bot doesn't own the content, so the same license would apply to both as long as attribution is maintained). Whichever way is chosen, it looks like someone is going to have to go though the uses in the other wikis to fix them by hand. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:33, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 11:18, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 22:37, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Type of saw

Any idea of an appropriate category for the saw in this picture? Seems too coarse to be Category:Table saws; that term usually refers to something quite precise, used in carpentry. - Jmabel ! talk 03:04, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Sawbenches or one of its subcats?—Odysseus1479 (talk) 04:39, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
Sawbenches sounds good, I'll leave it to someone else to get more specific. - Jmabel ! talk 06:48, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Assaying

I'm guessing that someone who knows more about metallurgy and assaying could better describe what's going on in this photo, and add additional relevant categories. - Jmabel ! talk 06:50, 15 January 2019 (UTC)


Gallica

I'm really sorry about this, but... I remember it's really easy to get the high-resolution Gallica images... but I forget how. Please remind me. Adam Cuerden (talk) 13:56, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Commons:Gallica? --GRuban (talk) 17:38, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
@GRuban: Completely out of date and inaccurate, unfortunately. None of the suggestions work. Adam Cuerden (talk) 17:12, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
[10]. — Racconish 💬 17:34, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
@Adam Cuerden: I removed the 2 outdated links. Now the information is fine. Regards, Yann (talk) 18:14, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Currently in Wikidata Wikimedia Commons is treated like "an ugly stepdaughter" and can only be added by clicking "Other sites" while every other Wikimedia project family has their own dedicated section, I am planning on suggesting to add a specific section for Wikimedia Commons too there (as this would also help structure the website better as Wikimedia Commons wouldn't then just be "hidden away" from novice users), as a part of my suggestion I actually want to propose the option that both "(gallery)" and "Category:" Namespaces could be linked simultaneously. Categories are the de facto main space of Wikimedia Commons. However there exists an overlap with Wikipedia articles and Wikipedia categories/Wikimedia categories, this problem could be solved by adding a “Categories on sister projects” next to the “Sister projects” list on the left-side of the screen on the “Desktop view” mode (if I had access to Microsoft Paint I would illustrate this, but there aren't such applications for Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile).

The suggestion would be that a new “Wikimedia Commons” collection of links would be created for every “Q-item” and that both “(gallery)” and “:Category:” should be able to be linked. Maybe this would also automatically add a short description to the top of every (linked) Wikimedia Commons page that States “For the gallery see…” or “For the category see…” which would make navigating between categories and galleries easier. Sounds like a good suggestion? Any improvements? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 09:51, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

+1. AFAIK they were several suggestions to threat Commons as the main namespace, they were all met with oppositions. Good luck! Regards, Yann (talk) 10:16, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
This was one of the first questions I asked when I started to contribute to Wikidata. I still do not understand why it has not been implemented and why we have to choose between a link to the category or a link to the Wikimedia Commons page, and not both. No rationale given so far for the exclusion has made sense to me. RAN (talk) 10:29, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
I asked it before too, I think that I'll open up a request for comment (RfC) soon and will link it here. As the whole Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons thing is busy being implemented we need all the help from Wikidata they can give, a notability discussion went in favour of lowering the standards for Wikimedia Commons but it went nowhere because nothing was implemented and it was archived without follow up, guess that things need a dedicated RfC to try to change things. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 10:37, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
As I understand it, the reason for not doing this is that each Wikidata entry only links to *one* page on a different project. Having two links to the same project breaks the data model. That's also why it's under "other sites" - the Wikipedias can have a link to each different language edition, so it has its own section, but Commons would only have the one link so doesn't need a section. That's not just Commons - it's also the same for Wikispecies, Meta, and Wikidata itself. Although I like your suggestion, I think you'd get more headway if you asked 'Other sites' to be renamed to something else. Or we could go in another direction completely: we could (finally) scrap galleries here, and just use categories, in which case we only need the (existing) single link. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 11:58, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
So few galleries exist, that allowing to add two links would change very little. In those few cases where it matters, it's probably easier to get the gallery deleted. Nemo 11:59, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Something very cool would be two links when you are in Wikipedia : one link for the corresponding category and one link for the corresponding gallery. Furthermore in a Wikipedia page instead of "In other projects" we could have a section "Wikimedia Commons" and then just below the links that are available. Example:
Wikimedia Commons
Gallery
Category

And then exactly the same thing in Wikidata, instead of put the link into the section "Other sites", we should have a section "Wikimedia Commons" and a possibility to add the both links : to the gallery and to the category. Furthermore that would solve all the issues and discussions about the relevance to create "non notable "items just for our categories. And we should also have the possibility to add those two links two times : one time in the category's main topic and one time in the topic main category (or that the both links retransmitted automatically). Christian Ferrer (talk) 18:40, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

+1 Agree with the proposal. For a concept modeled in Wikidata both Commons category and gallery just represent different views on the same object, as do different language WP articles. Furthermore let me mention that galleries are considered language dependent, so you can have one for English, one for German and 200 more. We do not have many such cases, but in principle this is possible. And you can have galleries for various purposes, e.g. Angela Merkel through the years and Angela Merkel through the colors. While Commons does not restrict the number of galleries in a category (and vice versa, the number of categories a gallery is in), this constraint is imposed by Wikidata. Both Commons gallery (P935) and Commons category (P373) have the single-value constraint (Q19474404). --Herzi Pinki (talk) 03:03, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

 Update: The proposal is live at Wikidata, feel free to continue the discussion there. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:45, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

January 14

Wikidata RFC

In case the above link doesn't work well, I've started a request for comment regarding Wikimedia Commons site links on Wikidata at "Wikidata:Wikidata:Requests for comment/Proposal to create a separate section for "Commonswiki" links". I don't know where to properly announce it so I'll place a link here and at the proposals village pump. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:51, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

January 16

Captions and UploadWizard

This is about the Upload Wizard and siblings. I'm dealing with the results of some photo competitions quite a lot for some years now. Uploading images is a complicated process especially for new, sporadic or otherwise inexperienced users. It is also complicated for many other experienced users. I have seen a lot of different erroneous results that occurred during upload, even when the form was partially prefilled by the upload wizzard. Now the UW has got a second set of descriptions, which causes an additional complication for the upload. I uploaded a single image this afternoon and failed to do it correctly: Wondering why my English description went to the caption and my German description to the information template. I did it wrong, because I did not expect a breaking change, this is a pitfall for experienced users (you never read the hints and headings after some repetitions of a stereotypical process.)

  • there is no css hack to disable the input fields for the caption as it is possible for the description, both sets use identical ids.
  • css hacks do not apply to the overwhelming majority of contest contributors.
  • in the German version the heading of the input field is Beschreibung in both cases, for the caption as well as the description (as named correctly in the English version). The German version urgently needs clear wording (3fold at least).
    Tracked in Phabricator
    Task T213781
  • Uploaders have to enter the same information in different formats more or less in four different places now, the filename, the caption, the description and the categories. Non-masochistic uploaders won't. I fear this will increase the number of badly described files.
  • The caption field is optional and first, the mandatory description field only second. I understand that there is a conflict, the caption in second place contradicts the meaning of caption. But when there are two very similar fields, it is a bad idea to make the first optional and the second mandatory. This order also breaks the workflow learned-by-heart.
  • Add a one-line explanation of .. allows to enter line-breaks, which is contra-intuitive, an error, whatever. one-liners shall not contain line breaks.
  • Experienced users do not use the Upload Wizzard in many cases, they feel it is slow, too inflexible, not stable enough, etc. How will they get supported so that they can add the caption in their preferred upload mechanism? If they are still cooperative?

For photo-competitions with many thousand images (like WLM) we need a smooth optimized workflow, not additional hurdles. best --Herzi Pinki (talk) 00:36, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

lazy variant to fill all fields (not my preferred one, but feasible) --Herzi Pinki (talk) 00:51, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Moved to an extra section and pinging @Keegan (WMF): for an answer. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 01:11, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

What do we want to have in the caption? Information, that describes the depicted object, or information that describes the individual image? Would it be ok from the intended use cases to generate the caption from object information only? How will the small languages cope with many images e.g. from WLM that have the same caption, will they translate one by one? Or all identical captions within a single step? --Herzi Pinki (talk) 01:11, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Hello! Here are a few answers to your question. a.) in an upcoming set of patches, the Caption field will indeed be a single line field. b.) The translations for the input field were community driven, and this first round was a bit insufficient. We'll do what we can to help improve that. c.) Captions are indeed optional, and we want to stress that, but we also want to make them prominent if they're going to be the preferred way of adding short multilingual information going forward (which is still a matter of debate in the community). Last year, we proposed removing the filename to reduce confusion and use a unique ID instead so that uploaders had one less thing to worry about, but that proposal was rejected by community members. d.) We're providing an API for adding captions so that users who have no interest in using the default UI for adding structured data can use a community-developed tool (and there may end up being several of those to fit different styles, including updates to existing tools like Pattypan). e.) Regarding caption use: it's ultimately up to the community to decide the best use case for them. Some discussions are currently underway with the Commons Android app to define this better for their purposes, including a proposal to use the first entered caption as the default filename. In general, our challenge right now is to find some common ground between sometimes competing interests in the community. This will be a process, but one that we aim to make as short as possible, and we intend to make some quick adjustments to captions in the coming days/weeks. RIsler (WMF) (talk) 19:08, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
I don't know what to do with captions. I always use the old simple, basic upload. My description does not show in caption File:St-Saud-Peyrouse 13.JPG It happens that I put in descriptions in 3 languages (en, fr, de) but most of the time only one. I don't want to look up names in several languages for one upload. And how to update thousands of uploaded files, copying the text from description to caption? How will that be done? Traumrune (talk) 14:27, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
Captions have an API available, which makes it possible for the community to develop tools to batch edit captions. As for Special:Upload, the Structured Data project is not currently planning to work on that form; many legacy workflows and batch uploads depend on Special:Upload and will not require any changes. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:43, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

English translation

Hi, What should be the correct English for Category:Carte d'État-Major? I found 2 translations: "Ordnance Survey map" for en-gb, and "Geological Survey map" for en-us. These are old maps made by Dépôt de la Guerre in the 19th century. Suggestions? Yann (talk) 13:01, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Both of those name specific organisations, namely the British Ordnance Survey and the United States Geological Survey, that produce maps in their particular country. Neither would really be a suitable translation here. I wondered about "ordnance map", but the Oxford English Dictionary doesn't cite any uses other than to refer to the Ordnance Survey. My suggestion would be to use leave "État-Major" untranslated, and go for Category:État-Major maps. Alternatively, if you want to emphasise the source, Category:Maps by the Dépôt de la Guerre. --bjh21 (talk) 15:07, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
yeah, translation by analogy. more historical detail here Carte d'état-major (not translated, quelle surprise). you could also try category:French War Depot maps or category:French Staff maps. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 20:37, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
Hi, I followed Bjh21, and created redirects. Thanks for your input. Regards, Yann (talk) 08:40, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Gate vs. gates – help of a native speaker need

Why objects like File:Chirk Castle gates.jpg or File:Sankt Petersburg Winterpalast 2005 e.jpg in English are called gates instead of just gate? Is this because they have two wings? On the other hand, their respective categories use singular: Category:Chirk Castle gate and Category:Winter Palace's gate. Anyway, it sounds somewhat strange to me because in Polish we use brama what means gate. --jdx Re: 14:22, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

In English, "gate" can mean either one leaf, or the entrance as a whole. So it's proper to refer to the leaves as "gates" or to the entrance as a whole as "gate". The Oxford English Dictionary agrees: gate, n.1 has senses including "1. An opening in a wall..." and "6. a. The barrier itself ... used either in a pair or singly". --bjh21 (talk) 14:43, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
BTW, what is more proper: (gate) wing or (gate) leaf? --jdx Re: 15:06, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
Neither is a terribly common term. As an American I'd understand either after a moments thought, but would probably try to avoid the presuming my listener/reader would under either without context. I'd might say something like "a split gate with two parts (leaves/wings), each hinged at the outer edge". Really, though, I'd more likely refer to them as "a pair of gates" or "a pair of swinging gates" rather than use "leaves" or "wings". - Jmabel ! talk 16:44, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
I don't think "wing" is standard English for this: in architecture it usually refers to a fixed part of a building. "Leaf", while standard (at least in British English), is a specialist architectural term and not likely to be understood by a general audience. I think Jmabel's suggestion of just using "gates" is the best approach. --bjh21 (talk) 16:57, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
In Polish specialist architectural term for leaf of a gate/door/window is skrzydło which usually is translated into English as wing. BTW, winged altar has wings. Anyway, thanks guys. --jdx Re: 17:37, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
@Jmabel: How would you describe Elon Musk? I suspect as a South African, but would Nelson Mandela be described the same? What then is an African American? In America it is a euphemism for some one of African origin or ancestry. We don't describe people as Euro Americans do we? How do we describe folk like Obama, 1/2 "African American", 1/2 "Euro American", and raised in a white culture having to learn to be black.. The social structure of America which is addicted to racial classifications, in fact humans are addicted to classification, the need to identify and pigeon hole someone is endemic, and results in large scale social problems for which there is no cure. Something about pigeon holing people as Jewish American, Irish American, Italian American, German American (you never hear that one, nor do you hear Anglo American), etc rankles me. Regardless of origins or skin color, we all pay taxes. Except of you are of the 1% or so poor or that you don't earn enough income, then again we still pay taxes at least sales taxes. I was once told by a 4th cousin, "I am not an African American, I am black". It's a touchy subject caused by our need to identify, classify and discriminate. Was George Washington Carver an American Scientist and Inventor or was he a Black Scientist?. Is Russell Wilson, quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks a Quarteback of a Black Quarterback?Oldperson (talk) 22:31, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
This is way off topic about how to describe a gate. If you really want to go pick an argument about this, go to en:African Americans and you can get schooled there by the many people who will tell you that you are wrong. - Jmabel ! talk 01:11, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
This might help: Who’s Hispanic? at Pew Research. "Q. I immigrated to Phoenix from Mexico. Am I Hispanic? A. You are if you say so. Q. My parents moved to New York from Puerto Rico. Am I Hispanic? A. You are if you say so. Q. My grandparents were born in Spain but I grew up in California. Am I Hispanic? A. You are if you say so." We call Barack Obama African American because that's what he calls himself. We call Nelson Mandela South African, but if he said "Don't call me South African, call me Xhosa", then we'd call him Xhosa. Rachel Dolezal is an example of someone being transparently disingenuous, but generally everyone is given the benefit of the doubt to be called whatever they say they are. There's nothing about this that is unique to Americans, and it has nothing to do with Americans being "addicted to classification". Countries like Peru have a lot of experience with diversity, while those like Japan don't. You never hear "German American"? That's false. Of course you do, it's just that you don't hear it as often because the period of German immigration is relatively far in the past and most German Americans have chosen to be called American. Many non-white Americans are not given a free choice because of their skin color. All this information is out there for anyone curious to learn more about the topic. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 01:32, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Washing-up

I am not finding any category for washing-up. There are some for cleaning, but it is not really the same. This is still a common activity for many people.Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:16, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

What about Category:Dish washing? Jcb (talk) 23:20, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, I was searching with the wrong words.Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:36, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

January 17

Half gray filter

At the time in the non-digital world (1991) I was experimenting with a half gray square filter. The sunligth was still to strong so I wanted to reduce it on the rigth side and stil keep a normal exposure on the left side. How does one categorise these kind filters? Can this picture be digitaly corrected? (Keep the original as use for illustration). The next sunset pictures can be seen in Category:Smiley Toerist 1991 Poland trip.Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:09, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

if you had the specification on the filter you could categorize and make it easier to correct, i.e. File:Neutral density filter demonstration.jpg -- Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 17:29, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
It is a 'cokin A 123' filter.Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:03, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
here is a parent Category:Cokin filters - Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 15:04, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

January 13

Original (2nd, overwriting upload)
1st upload, now forked off as a new file.

How can this correct? If you look in the history there are two different picture. The upload user is named 'Tramwajeslaskie'.Smiley.toerist (talk) 14:07, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

  • I see two issues here:
  1. Both images suffer from {{Watermark}}. Not a bad case of, though, and easy to fix with a simple crop, since the bottom slice of each image is probably not topical.
  2. There’s two images, the later overwritten over the first. Both apparently by the same photographer, showing the same subject, but with different compositions: not a case of a “practical” duplicate. Both were uploaded by the same user (the photographer, apparently), within a two-second interval.
I would not hesitate about reuploading the older one, but the very short interval has me wondering: It is too short to fairly say «No baksies!» (licenses are not revocable), as this could be just a mistake while uploading: We’ve had cases of this before, namely when personal photos are uploaded by mistake and quickly overwritten (on which a revdel is further appropriate), but in this case, regardless of the photographer preferring one over the other, we could/should keep both. It may also have been the case that the photographer intended to upload both and the overwriting is the mistake. (@Tramwajeslaskie: ping, although this user has not made any other contribution, ever.) -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 15:50, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Additionally, it should be noted that the image description and timestamp as edited by the uploader matches the older, overwritten image — comparing with the EXIF date and image content of the second upload: "2013-08-15T16:50:13" v.s "|date=2013-07-05 14:42:05", tram on route 11 v.s tram on route 19. Since the uploader had at least a chance to look back on the file page several hours later and didn’t change that, it seems that this is a matter of a mistaken overwriting and that the uploader meant to contribute both photos. (A page layout showing one big image of a given subject, above, and smaller, clickable thumbnails below, including of the big image, as in our filepages with their File history sections, does resemble the page layout of BahnBilder.DE and other such trainspotting websites, although with a very different function; I think this might have confused this one-time contributer.) -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 16:14, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
@Tuvalkin: Requesting a split would IMHO have been much better, cf. COM:SPLIT. — Speravir – 23:00, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
  • @Tuvalkin: I agree that a split woudl have been better - these are two distinct photos and it is quite possible that the user of one or other might be interested in certain features other than the tramcars themselves, for example, the track layout. Martinvl (talk) 07:58, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
  • @Martinvl: A split was done, both photos are available. A COM:SPLIT (i.e., a way to split this while keeping both file histories complete, instead of one of them being a newly updated file) would have been preferible, in terms of wiki edit history, not of content — but, as said, I didn’t think of that possibility. Eitherway, I also did some categorization, which was lacking. I’m sure that asking for admin intervention for that would have been uneffective. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 08:04, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi, people. Is this image and this kind of licensed images allowed here? I read the rules and CC BY 2.0 supposed to be allowed here, but I want to make sure about it. And about the watermarking. Are watermarked images allowed here? Thanks for the help.--SirEdimon (talk) 03:48, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

@SirEdimon: Yes, we can host that image here (see Commons:Licensing#Well-known_licenses), and assuming it is the footballer (soccer player) Dallas Jaye, it would be within scope (random photos of non-notable people are generally subject to deletion). Watermarks are frowned upon, but not forbidden, see Commons:Watermarks and the template {{Watermark}}. --Animalparty (talk) 04:39, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) @SirEdimon: the licence is fine in general. Unfortunately it can’t always be trusted on Flickr, so a little “due diligence” is called for. Checks to make include that the photo has original-looking EXIF (check), is not of a copyrighted artwork, toy, character, &c. (check), and the source account is not on the list of problematic users at COM:QFI (check). See also the intro at the last link. Offhand this one seems OK to me (assuming the subject is within COM:SCOPE).
As for watermarks, I think the best way to put it is that they are discouraged here but not forbidden. AIUI the issue with omitting them is that they might be considered part of the author or owner’s right to attribution. One approach is to first upload the file with the watermark, then crop or otherwise remove it so at least the original is still in the file history. See COM:WATERMARK for some discussion on the topic, but note that’s not policy. In this case the mark could be removed losslessly with CropTool; the image would scarcely suffer from losing the bottom bit. For future reference, please note also that we have a specific noticeboard for copyright questions.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 04:45, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
Thank you people, that was really useful information.--SirEdimon (talk) 05:16, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
For easily and faithfully transferring Flickr images and associated metadata to Commons, once you're reasonably sure they're legitimately licensed by the creator (see License laundering), you can use the "Share image from Flickr" option on the Upload Wizard. Another handy tool is Flickr2Commons. --Animalparty (talk) 05:28, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Coming soon to all wikis: beta feature FileExporter

Coming soon to all wikis: the beta feature FileExporter

In the past, importing files from local wikis to Wikimedia Commons was problematic: If you wanted to import a file from a wiki such as Wikipedia, its file and page history couldn’t be transferred properly. In a Technical Wishes survey on German Wikipedia, users asked for a solution to this problem.

As announced earlier, the Technical Wishes team is developing a feature that can import files with all of their history intact. It uses two connected extensions: The FileExporter runs on local wikis, where it provides an “Export to Wikimedia Commons” link on local file pages. The FileImporter on Wikimedia Commons handles all the rest. For instance, it checks if the licensing of the file allows it to be on Commons in the first place. This is done with configuration files that are maintained by the local wiki’s community.

A first version of this feature was deployed in June 2018, when the FileImporter was released here on Commons, and the FileExporter became a beta feature on a few first wikis. Since then, bugs were fixed and features were added. Among other things, imports are now getting log entries so that it’s easier to find imported files. Now, an improved version of the feature will be released to all wikis. The planned deployment date is January 16.

If you’re interested in importing local files, please give the feature a try. Even though it’s a beta feature, you can use it for real file imports. Please note that in order to get started, you need to

  1. activate the beta feature “FileExporter” on a local wiki (Preferences > Beta features, for example here), and
  2. make sure your wiki has a proper configuration file. Configuration files are maintained by each wiki's community. They define, among other things, whether a file can be exported. Exports from wikis without a configuration file are blocked. Here's more information on how these config files work.

We’re looking forward to hear your thoughts on the central feedback page! A big thanks to everyone who gave feedback so far. If you wish to learn more about the feature and its scope, please visit the project page. -- Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 12:15, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

 Thanks a lot to everyone who commented so far! For future questions and feedback, I'd like to ask you to come the central feedback page. That makes it much easier for us to keep track of feedback than monitoring discussions on different wikis (because we spread this information on many places). Thanks a lot! -- Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:29, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T214065
@Johanna Strodt (WMDE): Thank you for that. Sometimes, users upload fair use and shorter term files to Commons that could move per WP:F onto English Wikipedia or m:nfc onto other projects & languages, before or while being deleted from Commons. Do these extensions support "backwards" moves?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 13:01, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
yes, making exporter reversible to create a local copy upon deletion at commons would go a way to lessen community drama. currently not a priority at commons, where the tools are not semi-automatic. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 01:30, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
@Jeff G. and Slowking4: It's not a built-in feature, but it’s already possible to manually delete the file on Commons and restore the original file on the local wiki. Both steps require admin rights. I’ve created a Phabricator ticket for the request to have this as a built-in functionality: T214065. I hope this answers your question. If you have more questions, it would be great if you'd place them at the central feedback page, as this makes it much easier for us to keep a good overview. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk)

January 15

Demonym in category name

I wanted to create a category for media relating to w:Ben Johnson (American sprinter), but there's already a Category:Ben Johnson (sprinter). I presume Category:Ben Johnson (American sprinter) raises hackles, so... Category:Ben Johnson (sprinter from the United States)? Then move media from Category:Ben Johnson (sprinter) to a newly-created Category:Ben Johnson (sprinter from Canada) or the hackle-free Category:Ben Johnson (Canadian sprinter)? --Rrburke (talk) 16:56, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

@Rrburke: I try to follow English Wikipedia's disambiguations when they don't conflict. Why would "American" raise hackles but not "Canadian", USA's adoption of "America" in 1776 to the exclusion of the rest of North America, as well as Central America and South America?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 18:22, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: Um, well, yes :) —Rrburke (talk) 20:45, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
@Rrburke: Well, as a citizen of the United States of America, I apologize for that adoption, but there's not much we can do about it now.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 22:09, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: Oh, we've already forgotten about it. All joking aside, I've noticed that there are virtually no categories American _______s; they’re all _______s from the United States, and I can only assume that objection is the reason—even though in ordinary usage American unaccompanied by an adjective only ever means of or pertaining to the United States.
But is it clear that I'm trying to distinguish media associated with w:Ben Johnson (American sprinter) from media associated with w:Ben Johnson (sprinter), two different people? I feel like I didn't explain that well when I posted my query. —Rrburke (talk) 23:02, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
@Rrburke: Yes. Year of birth is also sometimes used as a distinguishing factor, especially in dynasties.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 05:33, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
It may be better to put aside en.wp's way of categorizing and keep things slightly more generic on Commons. As the main cat is in the Sprinters from Canada cat, there is no special need to splice that text into the main cat name. Commons category names have a preference for being the simplest unique name, rather than a presumption that they are fully informative. If Nationality were a thing to add, then nearly every category about a person would then need it. However it would be useful to add a parent category indicating that he is African-American... --Fæ (talk) 18:40, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
@Fæ: Hi, Fæ. So what should I call the category? —Rrburke (talk) 20:45, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
Do not have a strong view. Perhaps Category:Benjamin Washington Johnson. --Fæ (talk) 21:01, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

@Fæ: Why would a category African American be desirable? Even that category is not accurate. There are real African Americans, people born in Africa and they are not necessarily persons of greater melanin in their skin. ex: Elon Musk (an African American). Whether Americans with African ancestors are properly called Afican Americans is a more difficult subject. In fact there are many such persons whose African ancestry stretches back to the 17th Century indentured servants, 18th Century slaves or are migrants or children of migrants from Africa, like Joy Reed. It is the need to categorize that is the problem. Is it notOldperson (talk) 19:51, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, yes, I live in London not America, so these so called "race" names appear meaningless to me. However, if someone were looking for black American sports people, being able to find them on Commons makes sense. What we aim for with category names is wording most useful to reusers internationally and in whatever is the most commonly understandable English, rather than the most technically correct. --Fæ (talk) 20:06, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
@Oldperson: Because etymology is not definition. The term "African American" means what it means, not what some random person would like it to mean based on a differently constructed etymology. See African Americans. - Jmabel ! talk 21:27, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
I suppose that Benjamin Washington Johnson would be African American and Ben Johnson would be a Canadian of Black African Descent. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 22:01, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
I think Category:Benjamin Washington Johnson is perfectly fine. It's unambiguous, language neutral, (hopefully) non-contested, and accommodates possible future additions of material unrelated to sprinting career. There is by no means a mandate that Wikimedia Commons categories must correspond exactly to English Wikipedia articles. Other commonly used titles one is likely to use or search for could be redirected using. {{Category redirect}}. --Animalparty (talk) 23:14, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
I went ahead an boldly created Category:Benjamin Washington Johnson, with Category:Ben Johnson (American sprinter) as a redirect. If consensus favors a different category name, the category can simply be moved to a new name. --Animalparty (talk) 23:49, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

We 100% should not use demonyms: Does "Congolese" mean Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, or the general region of the Congo? Does "Dominica" mean Dominica or Dominican Republic? Does "Chinese" mean the ancient Chinese empire, the Republic of China, the People's Republic of China, or Chinese culture and civilization in general? Is someone "Turkish" because he is from Turkey, a citizen of Republic of Turkey, speaks Turksih, is descended from Turks, etc.? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:31, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

I agree. However, Commons categories can't capture all of those differences. There are categories for places of birth and death, and there are categories like Category:People of Turkey which seem to be a combination of place of birth and place of residence (see Commons:Category scheme People, "Originating from or residing somewhere"). I don't think there are any categories for citizenship. Interestingly, Category:People of Turkey has been linked to an ethnic group item on Wikidata, which doesn't seem correct given how the category is defined on Commons. --ghouston (talk) 20:38, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Should 2FA become a requirement for access to rights with higher potential risk?

Some contributors may recall the security breaches a couple of years ago, where a few admin accounts were hacked.[13] This became an incentive to make Help:Two-factor authentication available for all accounts with sysop rights across all projects. Policies for whether 2FA is required and in which circumstances have been left for individual projects to decide. Though there has been past discussion on Commons, there has been no group where 2FA has become a requirement rather than advisory. For example admins who request interface admin rights frequently declare they are using 2FA, but this has not become policy.

I am raising on the Village Pump to prompt some views as to whether it is worth gaining a consensus to create a policy, rather than relying on 'norms' alone. Clearly the risk of project wide disruption that could be caused by a hacked or otherwise compromised account (such as session hijacking which would not specifically need a password to be compromised) is massively increased with Interface Admin rights, while Bureaucrat rights probably do not represent a much more serious risk than Admin rights alone.

So, given that 2FA is now well established across the Wikimedia Community, and all admins should probably consider adopting it, should we enforce a policy that 2FA is a firm requirement for access to Interface Admin rights, or any other specific rights which have a high risk of project disruption? --Fæ (talk) 10:57, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

@Fæ: couple of years ago? That was last year. I don't think 2FA needs to be a requirement for Commons, at least not for "normal" admins. Some thoughts though:
  • I wonder who exactly can upgrade users to interface admin? Only bureaucrats, or can regular admins do it as well? They shouldn't be able to.
  • Bureaucrats, oversighters and interface administrators who are inactive for 2 months should be stripped from those rights until they return. Jameslwoodward and RP88, I'm looking at you.
  • Admins should have a ratelimit (both for edits and making changes to user rights, especially for sysopping and desysopping), regardless of 2FA.
This is not the first time I'm making that point about ratelimits, but we'll have to wait for someone to fuck up a wiki before we understand this is needed. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 12:10, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
"That was last year." <= No. That was 2016. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 12:32, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
See global lock log of Perhelion, Yann, and probably few others. — regards, Revi 10:47, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
It's happened more than once. When Fæ said "the security breaches a couple of years ago, where a few admin accounts were hacked", it was somewhat odd, as the same thing happened last year. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 11:28, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
Some answers, noting that the suggestion above specifically is not about forcing 2FA on all administrators, only additional group members representing greater risk of project wide damage.
  • The password hacking big incident was in 2016
  • Yes, reducing advanced rights on inactive accounts earlier than the standard sysop limit of 6 months would make sense
  • Ratelimits for changing rights makes sense. I cannot initially think of any good reason why an administrator would need to change group rights on several hundred accounts in seconds, rather than minutes. In a security emergency, fast mass action should still require the advanced level of a Bureaucrat, Steward or WMF dev to authorize or do it. But agree the case is not strong while this remains a hypothetical risk rather than based on past cases
--Fæ (talk) 13:25, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Firstly, I am very please to see this opened as a discussion rather than our usual practice of going straight to vote. As can be seen on the previous vote, a lot of oppose votes then were based on false assumptions/information.
  • You do not need a mobile phone for 2FA. You can install the authentication app on a PC or laptop instead. You do however need some device that you personally own and have with you.
  • You do not need to keep approving the 2FA each time (or many times) you log on. You can still tick the box to be kept logged in on this device (via a cookie). That of course requires that your device is in a safe place and/or you are logged into your device with a personal account protected by strong password, rather than using a shared account in a library or cafe.
  • Although a strong and unique password helps and should be considered essential, this isn't something the community can enforce or check. So requiring 2FA would allow the community to protect the project in the event that your password is compromised.
  • While sharing passwords with other sites (which then get hacked) is a common way that passwords are discovered and used against you, malicious software or scripts on your PC or browser can capture your password, no matter how long and complex it is, as you enter it. 2FA means that even if someone gets your password, they cannot access your account.
  • Higher priority than Wikipedia/Commons, if you use internet mail and have not enabled 2FA on those mail accounts, then you are exposing yourself to significant risk. With access to your mail account, most website's "Forgot your password" procedure enables a hacker to access pretty much all your other accounts (which they will discover by reading your mail), except if those accounts also have 2FA. So while some may claim they don't need 2FA for Commons, they do need it for mail. Once you have it for mail, then there is no reason you can't have it for Commons.
Having been through the steps myself (non-admins can request it), the instructions are pretty awful and scary so I can see why some are put off. It is unfortunately a bit more complex to setup/recover than 2FA on other websites, though no more complex in everyday use. So I would encourage that those instructions and information about 2FA be improved before expecting hundreds of new people to use it. -- Colin (talk) 14:12, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
i keep waiting for 2FA by encrypted key. and if you cannot establish strong opsec practices with strong passwords, what is the point of another insecure device? yet another technical fix to a soft human resource problem. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 14:57, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
@Slowking4: Is there an existing discussion elsewhere about this as an improvement? Sounds like it should already be a Phab task. --Fæ (talk) 15:29, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
m:Help:Two-factor authentication, and this seems to be the most recent,
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T201784
here is an attempt at keys
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T133211
don't see much opsec strategy, merely tactics. -- Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 15:49, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

I am opposed to any solution that requires someone to own a smartphone. It looks like some tablets are an option as well but I don't much care for that either: perfectly good users may not be able to buy $600 surveillance devices to be admins. Also, what happens if one of these devices gets dropped in a pool or lifted at the bus station? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:18, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

  • I am an example of an admin with no smartphone, and judging by conversations at last year's Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, there are at least dozens of us. - Jmabel ! talk 05:31, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
@Jmabel: Do you use this? How do you do it? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:35, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
  • @Koavf: While perhaps I shouldn't advertise this, no, I do not. When I'm here in the States, I do reliably have a (non-smart) phone with me, but I do not EVER text (and have reasons not to, which I'm not inclined to discuss here); when I travel abroad, I don't even bring that. - Jmabel ! talk 17:46, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
There would be no reason to travel with a smart phone. Once set up, Authy or a similar Chrome/Firefox plugin would run on any tablet or laptop with an internet connection. --Fæ (talk) 17:51, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
@Fæ: Unless I am misreading the guideline, using 2FA by generating the codes on the same machine where you are logging in is not advised... Do you still need to buy a second device for 2FA? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:03, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
No, that seems paranoid to me. (Off topic...) If the machine you are accessing the internet with has been seriously compromised, to such an extent that you have a keylogger or similar copying your actions to a 'bad actor', then having your Commons/Wikipedia account hacked and getting blocked, will be the very least of your problems. Who cares if their Wikipedia account is hacked compared to the experience of bank fraud. Frankly if you use multiple devices and someone is targeting you in a MrRobot level of sophistication, then none of your devices is likely to be safe. One way of increasing the level of security on the same machine, would be to run a separate app/web app, or a different browser to your main one, just to generate the login codes.
When travelling somewhere not very safe, it would be best to take an old machine, or arrange a local borrowed machine, wipe it clean, and set up new anonymous throwaway accounts just for that trip. Many countries have the right to fully hack your machines on entry and may clone any data you have on them, with no guarantee that that data will be protected indefinitely from criminal use by other parties. Google it, there's better advice out there on how to protect yourself. --Fæ (talk) 18:23, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
I'd say for truly paranoid security, running 2FA token generator on any general-purpose device with a CPU is a security risk. The truly paranoid should go for hardware token generators like yubikey. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 20:20, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
Further, 2FA cannot weaken your existing security. It is an additional factor. -- Colin (talk) 18:26, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
Rarely, like once a year when the WMF Ops changes something and accidentally log me off, or when I have a new device. With a long (>20 char) randomly generated password and 2FA, it's probably a lot safer to very rarely be forced to type in your password on any device. My most realistic risk is session hijacking, but I get alerts when unexpected devices do anything new, so can (and have) log myself out of all devices as a precaution, then log back in (on every darn device separately; mental count, I'm logged in on 5 machines right now). --Fæ (talk) 12:37, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Transcriptions

I propose that we add a |transcription= parameter to {{Information}}. Please join the discussion. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:43, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

January 20

Captions updates

I've posted a list of current design and bug fixes for captions following its release last week. Thanks to all who have helped report these issues and helped discuss ways to resolve them. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 20:28, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

@Keegan (WMF): what's wrong with "Structured data" being a level 1 (one) section? Wouldn't it eventually look like "File:Full page mockup of airplane file page.png" eventually? So it would be a level 1 (one) section, so there is no need to waste donated resources on a temporary cosmetic change, right? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 22:36, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
What I know right now is that change is not a quick-and-easy fix if that's the design choice that will be made. The future of that task is still up in the air, but it's definitely worth mentioning as the header size difference on the current file page is notably different without apparent reason. The important point is that the discrepancy is known. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:51, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
  • It could be argued that The level 1 contents of a file page is the whole file page. But if Structured data were displayed in a separate tab, visually putting it on a “different page”, then I would be lekely to accept it as H1-level content, pending discussion. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 23:13, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Separate tabs are a level above page sections. But a section added for structured data should be at the same level as the other page sections, namely "File history", "File usage on Commons" and "File usage on other wikis". When additional sections are added in Wikitext, they are generally 2nd level to match those ones. I'm not sure why they are all 2nd level, since any issue of heading size could have been fixed in CSS. --ghouston (talk) 00:50, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Well, this very page, the Village Pump, is one of the few which includes a wealth of H1 headings (heading level-1 sections). It’s simple to make it happen in wikitext (= Like this = or <h1>Like this</h1>), but it’s seldom done because, I think, users feel that on each regular page the only valid H1 is its very title. (I’m sure that this has nothing to do with CSS: H2 is always under H1, regardless of letter size.) -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 01:32, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

January 19

Can I not restore this file and can I list a category by date added?

Harry Houdini.jpg

Hello, this picture of Harry Houdini could be relatively easy to restore because the actual image is very clear though it is damaged but the category I found it in, Damaged PHotographs, says these are files that are not to be cleaned up. I don't see why it couldn't just be cleaned of the foldings and scratches and otherwise pretty much left as it is for the sake of the encyclopaedia. Also on the same subject, say I was looking through the files needing restoration category, and there is something like 12,000 files in it. Fine, but when I come back a while later, is there some way to list the newly added files first so that I am not swimming in the twelve thousand just to find a small number of new files? ~ R.T.G 10:02, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

@RTG: You shouldn't replace the image with a cleaned-up version; that does not stop you from making a copy with fixes. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:46, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
Aha, the image already is an edited image. Original is here on the wiki. ~ R.T.G 19:40, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
feel free to restore as a new version. the general lack of version control, and blithe overwriting is a continuing cultural problem. the largest tif appears to be 32 Mb File:Stone walls and chains do not make a prison -- for Houdini LCCN2014636908.tif Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 14:16, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

"Keep local"

When an editor has placed en:Template:Keep local on an image that is obviously eligible for Commons, and we would like on Commons, is there any clear policy for what to do? E.g. en:File:Cayton-Horace-R-Sr.jpg. Would it be OK to bring it to Commons with the exact same name, and just leave it as en-wiki's affair that they keep a separate copy locally for no reason stronger than some editor's whim? - Jmabel ! talk 01:41, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

A template on Wikipedia can't stop anyone uploading it to Commons. The template would only stop it from being deleted on Wikipedia (if such templates are generally honoured). --ghouston (talk) 02:03, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
Understood: perhaps I was unclear, but my question is whether when we want to do this we typically use the same file name, or a different one? - Jmabel ! talk 10:48, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
I'd use a different name, so that the Commons version is accessible on Wikipedia. It will start out the same, but may not stay that way. Many file names can be improved anyway. --ghouston (talk) 11:34, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
The "Keep local" template also takes a parameter for the file name on Commons. --ghouston (talk) 11:39, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
@Jmabel: enwiki's affair. As for the image in question, it has no date. It shouldn't be uploaded here without a date. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 11:53, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
there you are. just do not transfer images with a "keep local" because "deletion before collaboration" here. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 14:06, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
@Slowking4: here's an example of why you shouldn't import files without all the info: "File:North Florida Wordmark.png does not have a source". - Alexis Jazz ping plz 14:41, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
your example looks like Template:PD-text to me, and you prove my point: why would anyone want to transfer images here, when we have a never ending cycle of deletion theater. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 16:57, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
  • I don't usually tread in these parts but since it is one of my files that spurred the query, a quick comment. The reason I use Keep Local on all my file uploads is to enable linkage to an En-WP version of the file, and thus immunize myself from retaliatory deletion here. I couldn't care less whether Commons does or does not import a parallel file; I do care putting my work at risk to the machinations of trolls, deletionmongers, and political gameplayers, which use of Commons as a platform would do. I know whereof I speak. I've given up hope that you'll ever clean up your house -- so live in it and have a happy life. Carrite (talk) 05:20, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

New URAA discussion at Commons:Village pump/Copyright

Files that are now in the public domain in their country of origin (like the Netherlands, Germany or other countries with a protection term of 70 years after the creator's death), but still protected in the USA for several (up to 25) more years because of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) continue to give us trouble here. For that reason, I've started a discussion at Commons:Village pump/Copyright#URAA revisited in 2019. Please have a look and contribute if you have anything to say. Also, feel free to notify other language discussion boards here (I'll notify Commons:Forum). Thanks. --Rosenzweig τ 14:28, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Poor deletion practices

A botmaster requested deletion of several mistaken uploads via COM:CSD#G7. Solution? To create a deletion request.
A file which technically may be non-copyvio, but manifestly falls under COM:CSD#G4, is tagged for speedy. Solution? To create a deletion request (finished off by another sysop in few hours).
Now guess what the protagonist of this story—listed as one of Commons administrators—made to

which are derived from files which were hastily deleted from Commons after the {{Duplicate}} tagging. No, even worse than yet another deletion request. Can we advice the protagonist to make some job other than dig into speedy deletion backlog? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:32, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi! As stated on my user page "This user tries to do the right thing. If they make a mistake, please let them know." I always answer on my discussion page and I am quite open to suggestions and/or comments. I really don't like this "public shaming" on the village pump. If you think I'm not able to use admin rights, just request de-adminship.
Don't be surprise if there is no administrators, no OTRS agents and huge backlogs. This kind of comments doesn't help and makes our community unfriendly. --Arthur Crbz (talk) 18:04, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
An effective way to learn is to add files and deletion requests to the watchlist. I am not a fan of posting to user_talk for every minor pretext. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 18:16, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
Incnis Mrsi, Arthur is right. User talk pages are justly made for "minor" requests. The Village Pump is not. Regards, Yann (talk) 18:26, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
Agree with Yann and Arthur Crbz. Minor issues, discuss with Arthur Crbz first and see if they improve. In the case of the botmaster-requested deletion, from what I understand the uploading account and requesting account were not the same. Better safe than sorry. Incnis Mrsi, suggestion: move this section to User talk:Arthur Crbz. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 19:33, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

NPGallery: huge resource for public domain images.

Escalante Ruin at Canyon of the Ancients National Monument

I just discovered the NPGallery, a trove of thousands of high resolution public domain (mostly?) historic and contemporary images from the U.S. National Park Service with great detailed structured metadata. 6,600 historic photographs from Yosemite alone!. Check out this blacksmith with his wall of horseshoes, or this boreal owl in Alaska or this interned Japanese-American chemist photographed by Ansel Adams. From casual browsing, this collection includes a huge diversity of photographs: landscapes, people, architecture, wildlife, etc. as well as documents, drawings, and maps. This seems like a good job for a robust systematic GLAM-style upload project to ensure maximum data transfer, machine search ability, and minimal duplication. It looks like only about 170 images with "npgallery" in the file data have been uploaded so far. Someone want to tackle this? --Animalparty (talk) 07:19, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

I started a batch upload page at Commons:Batch uploading/NPGallery in case this falls off this page. I'm very interested but I don't have the free time until at least the end of the month. BMacZero (talk) 00:13, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

I know that FPC covers video files, but do we have any process left that features sound files? It looks like Commons:Featured media candidates and Commons:Featured sound candidates are long inactive. Does FPC cover sounds, but just rarely has any? — Rhododendrites talk |  16:49, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Location in Andalusia in 1992?

... and others.(File:Andalusia rail 1992 2.jpg, File:Andalusia rail 1992 4.jpg, File:Andalusia rail 1992 5.jpg) It is presumed to be in 1992. The dating is based on (File:Córdoba station 1992 1.jpg, File:Córdoba station in 1992 2.jpg, before the renovation)Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:19, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

PSA: Disable Captions Box

For anyone who doesn't want to see the captions box, add the text 

.filepage-mediainfo-entitytermsview { display:none;}

to Special:MyPage/common.css -FASTILY 06:33, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

@Fastily: You probably want to include .mw-slot-header {display:none;} in that too to hide the header. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 07:25, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
Mike, for me the line Fastily presented is enough. can you give an example where “your” rule is needed? — Speravir – 00:04, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
@Speravir: If you have caption disabled but have that section header alive, when you browse the file with existing caption, you will see "Structured Data" H1 (= Header = ) header and then H2 Summary == {{int:filedesc}} == section. That is a mess. — regards, Revi 11:21, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, Revi, but I still do not get and so I am still interested in an example. (Though I will actually use the new collapse gadget, see below.) — Speravir – 01:30, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Never mind, I noticed it meanwhile myself. — Speravir – 23:02, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. It would be nice to be able to hide and show it back with one click. Regards, Yann (talk) 07:28, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
I've filed a Phabricator task to look into adding some CSS ID anchors so that this can happen. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 17:46, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
@Keegan (WMF): Given Commons users' diversity, it would behoove every good developer to ask "what if" questions, like "What if some of the target audience doesn't want this change?" and plan a good answer. Every addition to the UI should have a corresponding CSS ID anchor by design.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 17:56, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
While I understand the need for structured data. Do the caption fields have to be this massive? And is there a way to hand pick the language's? Natuur12 (talk) 21:46, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
In the moment only by adjusting your Babel box, Natuur12. So, you should see fields for Dutch, English and German, now. — Speravir – 01:30, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Thanks Speravir goodbye part off my babel-boxes it is then. Natuur12 (talk) 12:21, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Added to Commons:File_captions#How_can_I_mask_the_captions?. Jean-Fred (talk) 12:21, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Another option: this addition to Special:MyPage/common.js will collapse the box and show an "Expand" button to display it again. There's probably a way to gadgetise that, if anyone knows how to do that. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:02, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Didym, Zhuyifei1999 (and Perhelion, alas fairly active) are the ones I know. — Speravir – 00:04, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
✓ Done & ✓ Done MediaWiki:Gadget-Collapse-Captions.js & MediaWiki:Gadget-Hide-Captions.css. Jean-Fred (talk) 20:44, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

What I read here is if you do not want your Commons image pages filled with pointless empty boxes, either hack your css to make them all invisible, and forget about the noobs, or delete your babel boxes.

Huh, how is anything which causes this level of damage and disruption possibly a good thing? If an unpaid volunteer disrupted the entire project to this extent, and refused to remove it or fix it within a couple of hours, we would be discussing how long to keep their account blocked, not pussyfooting about trying to write phabricator tickets that look like technical points that might be parked until convenient for someone to think about reading. --Fæ (talk) 12:36, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

You don’t have to hack your JS/CSS, you can enable a gadget (a box to tick). Gadgets can be made "enabled by default" to be enabled for all users (including the ones you describe as « the noobs ».)
I imagine what I describe is not necessarily ideal in your view ; but things *are* simpler than « hack your CSS » :-)
Jean-Fred (talk) 20:39, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Styling with CSS

Info: Section later added, hence the indentation. My first reply was a reaction to Jean-Fred’s message that he had created the gadgets. — Speravir – 23:02, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Nice, Jean-Fred. Could you check whether you can add these CSS rules to the collapse gadget (mw.util.addCSS())? They work fine for me, but I had to use !important. I do not know whether this could be omitted when inserted with JS:
.filepage-mediainfo-entitytermsview.mw-collapsed .mw-collapsible-content { display: initial !important; }
.filepage-mediainfo-entitytermsview.mw-collapsed .mw-collapsible-content *:not(h3) { display: none;}
.filepage-mediainfo-entitytermsview.mw-collapsed h3 {
	display: block;
	border-bottom: 0;
	margin-bottom: 0;
	padding-top: 0;
}
(Edit: Only one !important necessary. — Speravir – 04:25, 14 January 2019 (UTC))
This makes the caption line (in English “Captions” ) visible. Or should we better add this only to Commons:File captions? — Speravir – 01:30, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
@Speravir and Jean-Frédéric: This way, it doesn't take up any space. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 03:08, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Nice one, Alexis, works also together with “my” rules. But the line with border-bottomis redundant because it is already catched by the first line with border. In CSS this would be:
.filepage-mediainfo-entitytermsview {
	border: none;
	margin-top: -3em;
	text-align: center;
}
Wasn’t there a way to completely deactivate the MediaViewer, so your change would interfere with the file size info? — Speravir – 04:03, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
@Speravir: Don't know about that, but the border-bottom is not redundant. The border line removes the border around the whole feature. The border-bottom line removes the line under "Captions". There was a minor issue though, when a file has a caption a header with "Structured data" appears. The line from this header would cross the word "Captions". There are various ways to fix that (like changing -3em to -3.5em), but I've just disabled the header. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 06:19, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Well, my reply was for this version, and written this way it was redundant. You are right that this is not the case for later versions. — Speravir – 23:02, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
@Speravir: I improved it some more. But I can't figure out how to reduce that massive 0.8em padding to 0.2em, which is more than enough and looks much better. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 07:37, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz and Speravir: No problem, happy to help. No need for mw.util.addCSS() I think − gadgets can load both JS and CSS. I’m a bit confused now though on what I should add to which gadget − if you could clarify that for me ^_^'. Jean-Fred (talk) 08:23, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
@Jean-Frédéric: I'm a noob, if a gadget can load CSS that would seem like a better solution. Perhaps the padding can be reduced that way as well.. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 08:30, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz: The top-padding of 0.8em is for the h3 header (but .filepage-mediainfo-entitytermsview has itself one). After I found jQuery css() Method I can tell you that you should change these 3 lines
$( ".filepage-mediainfo-entitytermsview h3" ).css( "border-bottom", "none");
$( ".filepage-mediainfo-entitytermsview h3" ).css( "margin-top", "2em");
$( ".filepage-mediainfo-entitytermsview h3" ).css( "margin-bottom", "-0.5em");
to something like this
$( ".filepage-mediainfo-entitytermsview h3" ).css({
	"border-bottom": "none",
	"margin-top": "2em",
	"margin-bottom": "-0.5em",
	"padding-top": "0.2em"
});
It didn’t work, so again ping @Alexis Jazz. — Speravir – 23:07, 14 January 2019 (UTC)— Speravir – 23:07, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
@Jean-Frédéric: Could you check whether this works? Add this one to the collapse gadget (jQuery prepend() Method):
$( ".filepage-mediainfo-entitytermsview.mw-collapsed" ).prepend("{{int:wikibasemediainfo-entitytermsforlanguagelistview-caption}}");
In worst case you must revert this. Then, I guess, we have to add the rules from above according to the style I presented to Alex, but I am not sure about this, too. — Speravir – 23:02, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
@Speravir: thanks, that helped, I think I have something now.
Default captions versus compact captions
@Jean-Frédéric: can you create a new gadget with the contents from User:Alexis Jazz/common.css and call it "Compact Captions"? It may need some more tweaking, but it works for me. It's compatible with the Collapse Captions gadget. I think Natuur12, Jcb (may still be big with 7 languages, but a lot smaller anyway), MPF and Trougnouf may like it. (you guys all complained about the size of the feature) - Alexis Jazz ping plz 08:39, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz: ✓ Done MediaWiki:Gadget-Compact-Captions.css. Jean-Fred (talk) 11:55, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
Just for your information: I added a Styling section in Commons:File captions and also rules I use now. Especially useful could be the part to show the caption in collapsed mode. — Speravir – 23:17, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
@Jean-Frédéric: Please add the following to the end of MediaWiki:Gadget-Collapse-Captions.js and check afterwards:
$( ".filepage-mediainfo-entitytermsview.mw-collapsed .mw-collapsible-content" ).css( "display", "initial" );
$( ".filepage-mediainfo-entitytermsview.mw-collapsed .mw-collapsible-content *:not(h3)" ).css( "display", "none" );
$( ".filepage-mediainfo-entitytermsview.mw-collapsed h3" ).css({
  "display": "block",
  "border-bottom": "none",
  "margin-bottom": "0",
  "padding-top": "0"
});
If after this edit the caption Captions still is not visible, then add in the first line an !important after initial, but inside of the quotes (!), cf. the according CSS rule above. If this does not work either, then revert. If it works I will reduce the styling text in COM:Filecaptions. — Speravir – 22:23, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

In watchlist and edit histories

Special:NewItem get frozen

In the last two days, the "Special:NewItem" form get frozen, it is not possible to use it successfully. --ŠJů (talk) 23:12, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

@ŠJů: are you still having a problem? If so, could you please describe what is happening, so the development team can look into it? Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:06, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
@Keegan (WMF): The problem continues. --ŠJů (talk) 22:54, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T214213
Thank you. I see the bug is also filed at T213975 and is being investigated there. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:03, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

January 18

How do I "replace the copyvio tag"?

We received a notice from user RonHJones that a photo we uploaded to Wikipedia might be a copywright violation. However, it is our own work. We have responded to RonHJones and explained the circumstances. The notice of possible violation states, in part, "If you believe this file is not a copyright violation, you may replace the copyvio tag with a regular deletion request." We do so believe, but we are not sure how replace the copyvio tag as we have never encountered this issue before. - Steve Beren. SteveBeren-Susan4Senate (talk) 21:28, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

@SteveBeren-Susan4Senate: Click "nominate for deletion" (under "Tools"), enter a reason why it should be deleted or kept and click "proceed". - Alexis Jazz ping plz 21:32, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
Adding to that: I know it seems perverse to remove the tag and the "nominate for deletion" in order to argue against it being deleted, but that's how to end up with a deletion discussion instead of just a one-sided decision. - Jmabel ! talk 04:58, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Absolutely, and also it can be seen as «starting a discussion about a possible deletion», not always «nominating for deletion». In such cases, I find useful that the DR rationale already includes a {{Vk}} warning, signed and dated by the nominator. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 16:09, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

January 22

Proposal incubator

I'm working on a concept for a proposal incubator at User:Alexis Jazz/Proposal incubator. The goals for this idea can be found at User talk:Alexis Jazz/Proposal incubator#Incubator goals.

Feedback is welcome. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 09:27, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

French departments

I have disambiguated a number of French departments, Category:Ariège, Category:Creuse, Category:Essonne, Category:Gers, Category:Landes, Category:Loire, Category:Marne, Category:Meuse, Category:Moselle, Category:Nord, Category:Oise, Category:Somme, Category:Tarn, Category:Var, Category:Vendée and Category:Vosges but others may need doing. I pointed this out at Template talk:Departments of France#Loire but the edit request still hasn't been made. The {{Departments of France}} should be updated so that it tries "Foo (department) for those and falls back on just "Foo". Crouch, Swale (talk) 13:01, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

For three similar files I recently uploaded—File:Nordic Museum - contents of a Viking grave and other warfare-related items 01.jpg, File:Nordic Museum - contents of a Viking grave and other warfare-related items 02.jpg, File:Nordic Museum - contents of a Viking grave and other warfare-related items 03.jpg—I suspect I've fallen woefully short in terms of categories. I suspect someone who knows the subject could do a lot better, if anyone wants to try. Categories should be identical for all three photos, which are basically three slightly different ways to photograph the same exhibit. - Jmabel ! talk 04:39, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

And I'm probably even more out of my depth with some of the others for exhibits in Category:Nordic Museum, e.g. File:Nordic Museum - objects of adornment, etc., case 1 - 01.jpg. - Jmabel ! talk 05:18, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

What license is suitable when anonymous relatives posted hobby photographs after the death of hobby photographer ?

What license is suitable when anonymous relatives posted a trivial hobby photograph (landscape photo) as public domain, after the death of original hobby photographer ? --Clusternote (talk) 22:30, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

This file would have been deleted 20 July 2017 if you would not have replaced the PDM tag by a bogus PD license. Please don't transfer files from Flickr if they have the "Public Domain Mark" license at Flickr. Jcb (talk) 22:35, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for reply. In other words, if a tirivial private photograph was uploaded on Flickr under the Public Domain Mark 1.0 by anonymous relatives after the death of original author, does it need the sent of OTRS ? It seems too hard task, in my viewpoint. --Clusternote (talk) 02:21, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
There's Template:PD-heirs, if applicable... AnonMoos (talk) 17:59, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

January 21

Tramline 37 in Katowice

There seems to exist a Silesian interurban tramroute 37. On the last tramline map of 2012, (File:Silesia Tramwaj Slaskie 2012.png) there is no route 37. Is there a more recent map? I hesitate to add a new category under Category:Tram lines in Upper Silesia until I am more certain of the existance of the tramline and route.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:20, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

I now found a second picture, so I created the Category:Trams on route 37 in the Upper Silesian urban area. As this picture is from 2005, the tram route map must be incomplete.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:41, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
@Smiley.toerist: As far as I can see from some googling, route 37 doesn't currently exist. See the map and the list of lines, which seems to agree with the plwiki list. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 16:51, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
It certainly existed in 2005:Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:15, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Category:Trams on route 10 in the Upper Silesian urban area This line is not on the 2012 trammap, but on the 1974 trammap. The files are of 2014.Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:12, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

The Mapparium is a three story map of the world created in 1935. The viewer stands inside the sphere, which is open to the public in Boston, USA. A recent deletion request raises some questions about whether it is still in copyright. It probably is, but can anyone find some firm evidence?

  • The architect was Chester Lindsay Churchill, born in 1891, but we have yet to find a date of death.
  • The Mapparium disallows photographs because they claim that the map is copyright of Rand McNally. Can anyone work out which map of the world was used and if it is still in copyright, when this expires?

Thanks! --Fæ (talk) 09:36, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

There need to be a copyright notice, and a renewal to be still under a copyright. Regards, Yann (talk) 16:24, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
Two sources giving a death year of 1958 for architect Chester Lindsay Churchill: [14] (search for "Churchill" in the B/W PDF), and [15] (page 17). Lupo 14:51, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
Brief bio, albeit without death date, in [16]. Lupo 15:01, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
I can't figure out exactly which original Rand McNally map was used, but that company did seem to renew its map copyrights from that era. For example, Cartoons of world map; for use in decorating large spherical surfaces. (from 1935) was renewed in 1963.[17] DMacks (talk) 16:53, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

A word in English needed

I'm using a lot of stuff about irrigation ditches. Sometimes a ditch branches in two by using a wall along the middle of the flow. That's called llengua or lengua as it resembles a tongue, but that's Catalan and Spanish. I need a word in English. Here you can find some samples of what I'm talking about. Thanks for your help! B25es (talk) 19:38, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

January 23

Wiki Loves Africa 2019 around the corner : your help more than welcome

Hello everyone. In less 2 weeks time, the latest (5th) edition of Wiki Loves Africa will launch on the theme Play for one month. Please check out the contest main page for details about the theme if you are directly interested and want to contribute pictures and join the fun online or locally.

But this message is also a pre-warning that hords of new and unexperienced users from Africa will join and upload pictures, that are often wonderful (but not really categorized or described) and sometimes terrible (blurred, irrelevant, promotional, copyrighted etc.). I would like to extend an invitation to you guys to help with image tracking and clean-up during the contest. If you plan to help heavily, please add your name to the team page so that we know where to go and who to ask if we have issues. But also, more generally, please help in keeping an eye on the general category where images will be uploaded (right now there is only a test picture from a painting from my daughter... but soon... we can expect probably around 10k images to look at). Your help will be tremendously and gratefully welcome.

Anthere (talk) 13:53, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Damaged photos

My apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere. Working on deletion requests, I see a lot of damaged photos, where upload looks like incomplete. I do not have an example of a survived photo, since they are always deleted, but for example this delete photo, File:ВОДОБОЙКА.jpg, was clearly broken. Does anybody know what the reason for these is. Are they really broken uploads, where the uploader did notice that the upload has been incomplete, or were they regularly and properly uploaded photos which became broken because of a server glitch or smth similar? In the latter case, we probably need to check our own photos and reupload.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:52, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

This is a fairly common problem—see Incomplete digital photographs—but it isn’t always due to a server malfunction. If the TCP connection dies mid-upload, then MediaWiki stores the portion of file it received. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:23, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. Are you basically saying that incomplete photos are always due to incomplete uploads (and failure of the uploaders to check the quality of the upload)?--Ymblanter (talk) 16:33, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
I say that there are reasons for a file to be stored incompletely. One of these is related to cross-wiki upload forms (see phab:T201379) and is perceived as a bug, but a truncated file may arise from a (premature) client TCP failure, and this latter is indeed a feature. As for “failure of the uploaders to check the quality of the upload” – of course, but we are in the wiki, Yaroslav, and you don’t really expect quality anywhere, it’s a rhetorical device ☺ Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:41, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
This is fine, I just wanted to make sure that if we do check the quality of the upload, the photo us guaranteed (barred some commonly unexpected events like Ragnarök or a North Korean missile hitting the servers) to stay in the same quality it was uploaded.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:48, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
This should not be possible to happen. Uploads go to the UploadStash. Only after an upload is complete the file is actually published and then removed from the stash. If an upload breaks, before the file is completly uploaded, you can go to Special:UploadStash, identify the file in question and then go on with the upload (provided the file size is less than 1(?) MB. --C.Suthorn (talk) 17:11, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
@Ymblanter, Incnis Mrsi, and C.Suthorn: See also the 5MB crosswiki upload cutoff bug.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 18:26, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Getting CC BY, CC-BY-SA and ODbL data on Commons

Hi all

As some of you might remember a year or so ago there was agreement that Commons would host open license data (expanding from only hosting CC0 data). This would mean that many data repositories could be used including map data from OpenStreetMap. Unfortunately there are still a few technical barriers to cross before this happens. If you are technically inclined and you'd like to help here is the Phabricator task:

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 21:12, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Filter images by weight, byte, or by quality?

Is there any way to filter images by weight, bytes, or by quality?MONUMENTA Talk 22:46, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

You can use PetScan to sort a category in order of file size, e.g., [18] will give the 100 biggest from Category:Felis silvestris catus in order of descending file size. --ghouston (talk) 23:03, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
--ghouston, how have you done to order them from largest to smallest size, bytes?MONUMENTA Talk 00:51, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
By ticking the boxes in the Output tab to sort by file size and descending. --ghouston (talk) 00:56, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
Thank you very much --ghouston.
MONUMENTA Talk 01:38, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

January 24

Bulk downloading images from databases

Black and white photograph of a gold death mask resembling a human face
Gold funerary mask from Emesa
Colour photograph of the Vendel 1 helmet
Vendel 1 helmet

A number of the files that I've uploaded—two examples are shown here—come from much larger databases that contain licenses appropriate for use on Wikimedia. The Vendel helmet, for example, is part of the Statens historiska museum, which uploads photos of its collection with a CC-BY license. The gold mask comes from the w:Hyper Articles en Ligne database, which licenses files under a licence ouverte. Other databases have similar policies—files from the Portable Antiquities Scheme, for example, are available under a CC-BY-SA license.

It seems that some databases, such as that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, have been uploaded in bulk here. Is there a way to suggest similar action with respect to databases such as those described above? Thanks, --Usernameunique (talk) 19:11, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

@Usernameunique: Yes, please see COM:BATCH.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 19:22, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
also, if the database has been uploaded to wikidata, you could use commons:pattypan with the Q number, title and license, and the metadata would be filled in. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 14:56, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Converting .avi and ,mp4 files

I have an .avi and mp4 file. Uploader rejected because of file format. I downloaded and installed Wondershare Video converter. I thought I had converted the files to .ogv format but they still have their .avi and .mp4 format. I know that they will be rejected if I try to upload them in that format. Can I change the extenstion to .ogv and still upload them?Will they play. I am stymiedOldperson (talk) 00:31, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

No, you cannot. Videos have to be of filetype Ogg Theora or WebM, and this is checked. You should test other converters if the Wodershare thingy does not really convert the files (or it does, but do not change the file extension?). I myself love XMedia Recode, but its working approach is first hard to understand. You could also check out MediaCoder. — Speravir – 03:02, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
Use the video2commons tool. // sikander { talk } 13:39, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
Yes, use video2commons. @Oldperson: Have you been reading my user page? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 13:43, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz and Speravir: I just followed your link to your page. I don’t quite understand what you were saying. You said “This is much easier”. But no explanation of what “this” is.. I logged into the Video2commons, and tried to start the process, but the first thing it asked for was a url, and I am trying to convert my own video. I don’t have a url. So don’t know what to do. I must be missing something.Oldperson (talk) 15:49, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
@Oldperson: click the button "Or upload a file..." below the url input field. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 15:57, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
"This is much easier!" was actually a sarcastic comment towards throwing that unhelpful error message instead of converting the video or pointing you to video2commons. Throwing an unhelpful error message is easier. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 16:00, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz and Speravir: apologies. If you read my user page you might notice I have some deficits, and one of them seems to be an attention span. When I went to the conversion page. I didn’t read everything and second time I saw upload a file.Sorry I just uploaded the file, but now am having a problem with permissions. I filled in the permissions with Own work, all rights released (Public Domain) and before I click Publish I am still getting the warning about Permissions and the file will be deleted in 7 days. File name is Ocicat on Cat Wheel.wbmOldperson (talk) 16:37, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
@Oldperson: not sure what happened, but go to File:Ocicat on Cat Wheel.webm and add the date and {{Cc-zero}} (without nowiki-tags, to be clear) under the license header. I already entered the rest for you. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 16:44, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

oversized flickr files

When we see downsized (recompressed) ones, we should replace them with the original, but what about oversized ones that look the same? See File:Inga Saffron Oct 2013.png. The original on flickr is only 727 kb but here it's 4.32 mb.--Roy17 (talk) 09:13, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

@Roy17: this image was, for no apparent reason, converted from JPEG to PNG. I uploaded File:Inga Saffron 10.16.13.jpg. Perhaps we'll see less of this rubbish when autopatrolled users get the Flickr import button. (granted this particular file was uploaded in 2015, but this sort of thing still happens) - Alexis Jazz ping plz 13:53, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
I also made Category:Inga Saffron. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 14:19, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Change visibility of version of file

How do I request changing the visibility (or perhaps deletion) of a vandalized version of an image? // sikander { talk } 13:37, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

✓ Done By some admin. (You just need to get the attention of an admin) BMacZero (talk) 16:25, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
Thank you, jdx. // sikander { talk } 22:10, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

{{PD-old-auto-expired}}

From what I can tell, the auto part maxes out at "100 years or less". Is that definitely the longest any world copyright goes? For an actual example:


Public domain

The author died in 1836, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer.

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1929.

This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.

...implies that, despite the creator having died over a hundred and eighty years ago, the work would still be in copyright anywhere with a longer copyright than 100 years. Adam Cuerden (talk) 14:32, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

@Adam Cuerden: there is no template beyond {{PD-old-100}} an I'm not aware of any country with a longer copyright term. Let us know if you find one. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 14:44, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
The current longest copyright term is Life + 100 for Mexico. Australia finally released all unpublished works by authors who died on 1948 or before to the public domain, so that technically was longer as unpublished stuff from the likes of Captain Cook finally became public domain. Abzeronow (talk) 16:33, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Whack of files from the Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art has been uploading a large number of files from its digital collection to Commons, about 3,000 over the last couple of days. The files are miscellaneous, uncategorized and lacking descriptive filenames, so they will be hard for users to locate and use. What's a good place to enlist some help? --Rrburke (talk) 14:23, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

File names should be reasonably descriptive, as they are less likely to change on the whims of users. What's in the description field today may be different or gone tomorrow, such is the wikiway. Clearly there's no perfect file naming criteria that will satisfy everyone, but a balance between uniqueness, descriptiveness, and conciseness should be stressed, especially with valuable institutional uploads. Uploading only museum name and accession number is unique, but not recommended (Commons:File renaming discourages meaningless or ambiguous names, which includes "Names that are not meaningless, but do not describe the file"). --Animalparty (talk) 01:12, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
you are wasting your time whinging about file names. if you do not make uploading your file name convention easy for newbies, then it will not happen. and then much file rename drama will ensue. i find file template metadata stable; rather, the edit warring over file names is the wiki way. since the search finds the template descriptions, it is edit warring for no functional purpose. and you realize we have hundreds of thousands of files with worse file names, with no metadata, with little prospect of cleanup. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 03:58, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
Got it, no more whinging from me. ;) --Animalparty (talk) 04:35, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Hi folks, I've been helping the Cleveland Museum of Art on this project as a short-term Wikimedian in Residence, mostly on the Wikidata side but I have let them know about improving image naming for future batches. Multichill has also been in touch with them about this. As you can see they used Pattypan only using accession number in the filename, though they did supply metadata in the template. We can do a mass rename based off that, and the Wikidata items for these have the relevant metadata for categorization tasks. See the Wikidata query here [19] The upload was part of their open access project today to release 30,000 images under CC0, so this was their first upload as part of that. [20] Thanks. -- Fuzheado (talk) 16:55, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
See Category:Images from Cleveland Museum of Art for an overview of the images. Multichill (talk) 23:08, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Do these two files meet Commons scope?

The first shows the 2016 U.S. Presidential results in the proposed state of Jefferson. It is unlikely to actually become a U.S. state anytime soon, and it seems a bit misleading to have on Commons, but it does illustrate the strong Republican lean of these counties in southern Oregon and northern California.

The second is essentially a fanart combining the California state flag with the Soviet Union flag. Educational value is minimal. In use by a number of en.wiki users on their user pages. Abzeronow (talk) 18:31, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

File:Jefferson Presidential Election Results 2016.svg is in use on en:Jefferson (proposed Pacific state), and doesn't seem grossly out of place there. COM:INUSE means that that brings it within scope. --bjh21 (talk) 18:42, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
The first is legitimately in use, and represents a subject that has been legitimately discussed (it's real election results by county, portrayed in a different fashion). The second in the large, subjective gray area, but imho its relatively innocuous and not worth the controversy and ill-will that deleting it is likely to provoke (see also Commons:Deletion requests/File:Flag of Communist California.jpeg, and the discussion above on POV pushing and unused images). There are thousands of user page images and humorous images on Commons, as well as probably hundreds of thousands of low-quality images of actual things that are "in-scope" yet will likely never be used, nor ever subject to deletion efforts. --Animalparty (talk) 19:21, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
Ok, thanks, Animalparty. Will just leave those files alone then. Also thanks for the input from Bjh21. Abzeronow (talk) 20:49, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Whats wrong with Template:PD-WorldWind?

Hi images using this license tag suddely appear in Category:Files with no machine-readable license and Category:Media without a license: needs history check. There are no changes in Template:PD-WorldWind or Template:PD-WorldWind/layout. What else has been recently modified which causes this behaviour? I cannot find it. Thx for any help. --JuTa 10:56, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

There is an A/N post about this. Guess a troll changed the en subtemplate. Thankfully that was reverted. Abzeronow (talk) 13:05, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

wrong namespace

Ficher : Logo PAU Béarn Pyrénées.jpg is test/hoax. special:diff/335061357 should be undone without leaving a redirect.--Roy17 (talk) 17:26, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Ottoman Empire by century ...duplicates

If we look at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ottoman_Empire_by_century, we see that the 4 first centuries (13–16th) each have two categories: [[Category:Ottoman Empire in the 13th century]] and [[Category:The Ottoman Empire in the 13th century]]

The longer version has the fewest items, but has a nice navigation bar at the top (which I am not familiar with.)

I assume the fact that there are two categories for the same century is a mistake? And that they should be merged into one? Does anyone disagree?

If not, I suggest it all is merged into the shortest categories, without the "The". Can anyone tell me how we get a nice navigation bar into those categories? Huldra (talk) 21:28, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Working on it. --HyperGaruda (talk) 06:54, 27 January 2019 (UTC) ✓ Done. --HyperGaruda (talk) 07:35, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Un-editable captions

Can you edit/remove the caption of File:Technologymoon.jpg? 4nn1l2 (talk) 01:04, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

{{Filedesc}} not displaying?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T213885

I noticed yesterday that, at least in English, the section heading created by == {{int:filedesc}} == is not displaying on any files, making it more cumbersome to edit the description field (one must instead use the edit tab at the top of the screen). Is anyone else encountering this problem? Did the new captions field break Commons? --Animalparty (talk) 21:49, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

@Animalparty: the Summary header is not showing up on files without a caption, it's not just you. A fix is currently in the works. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:02, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
  • I noticed that, too, and was mentally blaming the caption collapse and compact gadgets and/or its interaction with monobook.css. But it’s showing like that for everybody? Even for unlogged users (I could have checked that), and for users who go with each and every latest fad? Wow, really. When I though it couldn’t get any sillier… -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 22:53, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
Should be fixed now. At least it's working for me. --MB-one (talk) 13:57, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

January 25

Category:PD-Art (PD-old-100-1923) and others

Hi! I've created a special bot account to change templates (and redirected categories) due to the change of templates "1923" into "expired". I've started to organize it, but I've got a message that these edits are "dummy and they are cosmetic change. Generally cosmetic changes shouldn't be done as stand alone edits". Most of files in this category probably will not be editted in the next few years... or even never... they can stuck in a redirected category forever then. My question is: should my bot continue organizing these templates and categories or not? What do you think? Wieralee (talk) 22:21, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

You're mistaken. No edit is needed to empty out Category:PD-Art (PD-old-100-1923). Currently it has 353,564 entries and by the time I saved this edit, it will already have dropped a bit. The template {{PD-old-auto-1923}} already redirects to {{PD-old-auto-expired}} so edits like [21] are purely cosmetic and pointless. Multichill (talk) 18:01, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

"This also applies if you are the author yourself."

{{Image permission}} includes the sentence, "This also applies if you are the author yourself." but the directly related deletion tag itself, {{No permission since}}, doesn't. Shouldn't it? --Geniac (talk) 16:18, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Timed text on a Wikipedia project

My understanding is that if I add a timed text to a video, I will be able to see in Commons but not on Wikipedia project in which the file is included, e.g. [[File:Test.webm|thumb|Test]]. Is there a parameter to add to force the subtitles on the Wikipedia page? — Racconish 💬 17:54, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

@Racconish: w:User:Alexis Jazz/sandbox. I see subtitles. You don't? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 18:03, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz: yes, I guess it was just a cache issue. Thanks, — Racconish 💬 18:10, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

created svg of transcription of photograph of ink impression of stone stele dated to 7th century CE

Are there any problems with uploading this for wikimedia commons? The photograph appears in a book published in 2017 in China. But the stone stele dates over a thousand years ago.Hanbud (talk) 23:03, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

The photograph is actually of the ink impression of the stele which is over a thousand years old. The ink impressions were done 1957-1959. Tks for your response. The ink impressions are two dimensional.Hanbud (talk) 01:58, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
I suspect that the ink impressions are themselves eligible for copyright. - Jmabel ! talk 05:45, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
I don't think photos like Category:Rubbings of inscriptions on Chinese monumental stones can have copyright. I tried googling 拓本 版權 and similar phrases, but could not find any case in China. There is one article from Taiwan that says that such images are free because they are mere copies of the stones and if the original authors are long deceased.--Roy17 (talk) 07:57, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the info -- I have transcribed the words in the same order as the photographed ink rubbing - is this adaptation consider an original work created by me or permissible upload of something older than 100 years old? (I'm new to uploading) tks for your helpHanbud (talk) 04:32, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
@Hanbud: If you create something from copyright-free materials, you can upload your creative works here under a PD or CC licence. COM:L and COM:SCOPE apply.--Roy17 (talk) 17:18, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

January 26

Soapbox ?

What do other contributors think of this caption ? I have already redacted another one by the same contributor. @C.Suthorn: FYI — Racconish 💬 09:07, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Germnany? Is that some kind of slang the kids use these days? Or is the education of the author null and void? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 09:40, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz: please be mellow. This is about using MOTD as a soapbox. — Racconish 💬 09:50, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
@Racconish: I am mellow. I thought "Germnany" was some kind of intended vandalism. If it's not, I don't have much to add. The "education of the author null and void" comment was a direct reference to the caption which mentions exactly that. Don't take it too seriously. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 10:06, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Given the fact that C.Suthorn has almost no edits outside of Commons, I don't expect a lot of experience with Wikipedia's neutrality and original research principles. Commons does have a COM:NPOV policy but it is hardly ever mentioned. --HyperGaruda (talk) 10:12, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

I also have 2 other concerns with C.Suthorn's MOTDs, aside from non neutral captions.

Now that you mention it, half of this month's MOTDs take place in Germany. Not exactly what I would call representative of our global file database... --HyperGaruda (talk) 11:53, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
Bonhemme would have helped from rotation around the statue, but the fact that frond moves in the wind is clearly demonstrated by the video.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:14, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
What about the other one? Or File:Emmanuel Macron Motorcade in Berlin.webm? — Racconish 💬 08:57, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

@Racconish regarding Germnany: This is just a typo, m and n are neighbours on keyboards. Nothing what I noticed from C. Suthorn points to vandalism or pubertal behaviour. — Speravir – 00:56, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Hrrmpf ping @Alexis Jazz. — Speravir – 00:59, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
Sorry, was away from the internet and have read this only now. m and n was a typo, I didn't notice it. While many of my contibutions are made in Germany, it is also true, that the selected videos are about topics that are notable worldwide: schoolstrikes about climate take place all over Europe, artists are known not only in one country and there work is on display in a number of countries. A specific video has to come from one place and one time, but it stands in for more events of its kind. Commons has millions of photos, but the number of videos and audios is much more limited. If I create a video or foto of an event and decribe it, it does not mean, that I also support (or disprove) it, only, that IMHO the topic is notable. However I do find the tax video for 31th surprising and I think the word "climate" is more appropriate than "climate change", which is an euphemism and would clearly not have been used by the FridaysForFuture people (just look at the photos of slogans, that have been put in an own category). --C.Suthorn (talk) 06:23, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
C.Suthorn, adding "as education is null and void without a future" [22] or "even though Menasse had invented quotes by Walter Hallstein" [23] is not neutral and certainly not necessary for a short description of the file. Kindly take into consideration the feedback above, including repetition of MOTDs on similar subjects, quality of videos and neutrality of captions. Thanks, — Racconish 💬 07:50, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Flickr status

All discussion appears to have ceased/ disappeared as to whether or not Flickr is purging a bunch of content in a matter of days. Looking at the new content pages I keep track of, I see that various mass uploaders have stepped up their uploading from Flickr of photos which match their favorite topics, while not bothering to upload photos from the same photostreams which are actually useful to Wikipedia articles and other sister projects, pushing this site further in the direction of resembling a topical POV exercise. I remember that Flickr purged a bunch of content several years ago and it appeared that it was okay to let lost opportunity be lost opportunity. Just wondering what's going on here.

On a related note, during that discussion, I recall Fæ implying that there was no need to bother with military photostreams because we have DVIDS. Am I getting this right that everything is going to be mirrored on DVIDS? I've uploaded military photos from Flickr because they're useful to sister projects, not because I'm looking to pick low-hanging fruit in furtherance of some contest to see who can upload the largest number of files. 90 percent or better of the military stuff I come across on here is poorly described, poorly categorized and unused or unusable by sister projects and makes Commons appear to be a propaganda mirror for the U.S. military. So can I be clear or not on the idea that I don't have to worry if military photostreams get deleted? There's still tons of stuff I'd like to upload, but I'm normally on mobile data or wi-fi, and Flickr is resource-intensive enough to mess with both.RadioKAOS (talk) 06:24, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

  • You mean that «various mass uploaders have stepped up their uploading from Flickr of photos which match their favorite topics, while not bothering to upload photos» that match your favorite topics? How dare they!? -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 07:13, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Why should I upload pictures of, say trains and farming equipment if I don't care about trains or farm equipment? Why aren't you uploading more pictures of frogs or 18th century Swedish poets? I kid, but in seriousness, Flickr has said they will not delete CC-licensed photos, even if a user exceeds 1,000 photos, nor institutional photos from Flickr Commons: "Photos that were Creative Commons licensed before our announcement are also safe. We won’t be deleting anything that was uploaded with a CC license before November 1, 2018. Even if you had more than 1,000 photos or videos with a CC license." Since Wikimedia Commons can only accept a subset of CC-licensed files from commons anyway (CC-NC and CC-ND licenses are ineligible), this change seems unlikely to significantly affect Commons, unless non-Pro users choose to delete their images. --Animalparty (talk) 19:09, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
the point is well taken that uploads are often reflect the POV of the uploader and unused, rather than a taskflow "actually useful to Wikipedia" and other projects. if you had a category "image needed", "useful flickr image" or query, put it up, i will work it. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 14:12, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
Isn't there a template on some Wikipedia pages that says "image requested"? We could theoretically use that. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 14:40, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
@Donald Trung and Slowking4: there are thousands of pages in Category:Wikipedia requested images. The categories aren't very user friendly to browse through, as they simply list Talk pages, and some are probably outdated (i.e. someone has already uploaded a free or fair-use image but neglected to remove the template(s)). Finding suitable images might be expedited/prioritized by making lists by date of subject (e.g. lifespan of person or year of event) and nationality, such that low-hanging fruit like pre-1923 US or pre-1955 Australian photographs could be queried. --Animalparty (talk) 20:39, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
and i am working that backlog. categories are never friendly. photos of living people tend to be dependent on subject visibility at public events. but a query of "living people without image" would be a start, you could then cut that by "reading at event", "on red carpet". Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 03:27, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
  • "actually useful to Wikipedia" is not all that Commons was about. For example, when I closely document a historic building, probably 2 photos at most are useful to Wikipedia. Commons scope for media is a lot broader than Wikipedia's. - Jmabel ! talk 18:39, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
commons is now notorious for "not playing nice" with other projects. i.e. URAA. it is become a walled garden of license purity, not the image repository with a standard of practice, that you might posit. and we see scope as the new "i don't like it", it is the scope of the admins interest only. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 03:33, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
What does "admins interest only" have to do with it? You don't have to be an admin to import from Flickr. - Jmabel ! talk 18:28, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
Just in case you really wanted an answer to that question; Slowking4 is complaining that COM:SCOPE is applied according to the will or whim of an admin rather then any objective criteria, Oxyman (talk) 20:05, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
yeah, i see some DR's as "not in scope" which is not systematic, but random pot shots at newbies, subject to admins decision at DR. we are not surveying the content and systematically curating a consensus of what belongs and what does not. i.e. Commons:Deletion requests/File:Christophe aguiton 2018.jpg Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 16:32, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
I've been uploading Flickr photos on topics which I am knowledgable enough about to recognize photos that can useful expand our coverage of said topics and which I can categorize accordingly. We are facing potential loss of a huge amount of free licensed media. I wish we could save all of it. Being as I can only save a fraction of it, I concentrate on the fraction I can best deal with. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 08:39, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
this change seems unlikely to significantly affect Commons, unless non-Pro users choose to delete their images; sadly that's quite possible. Any non-Pro user with more than 1000 photos who wants to continue uploading new photos to Flickr will have to delete down to 999 first, even if all of those images are CC-licenced. I've spoken to a couple of friends who are intending to do exactly this, and I've possibly just encountered this in the wild by getting a Flickr 404 on the original source link for File:JamesCracknell.jpg (I was wondering if the photographer had any other shots of the same event) - the Flickr account had 1068 photos last year, but has since deleted down to 977. Sad to see all this history being lost. --Lord Belbury (talk) 15:08, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
can we systematically survey non-pro flickr users, to work those of interest? Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 14:32, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

We need to ban "unused" as an argument for deletion.

It never was an argument, but we need to actively ban it. We don't know what is in use. We don't know who links what, not on Wikimedia projects and certainly not outside Wikimedia projects.

Case in point: File:Ervaren lichaamsbeeld, naar geslacht en naar bmi, bevolking van 18 jaar en ouder, 2014 (in procenten).png, nominated by EugeneZelenko for invalid reasons, filling up the DR backlog using the following rationale for deletion:

  • "Out of Commons:Project scope": blatant lie.
  • "unused": no valid reason for deletion, but more on this below.
  • "chart of questionable notability." EugeneZelenko doesn't understand Dutch so he should stay away from this. He doesn't understand what he's looking at. I'm not nominating Chinese images for deletion because I don't understand Chinese. (Later added note because of Incnis Mrsi's comment: in this case it's not realistic to determine whether or not this image is in scope or not without understanding the language. I would nominate Chinese copyvios, but I won't nominate Chinese charts because I don't know what they say.)
  • "Should be in MediaWiki Graph or SVG if useful": no valid reason for deletion.

So I requested undeletion, and Jcb (the deleting admin) joined the UDR party to oppose it. Overruled by me and Natuur12 and the file has been undeleted by Ankry.

But now for the kicker: the file turns out to actually be in use. On on nlwikibooks to be precise. We just couldn't see it!

I think we should ban the "unused" argument from deletion discussions. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 18:01, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

The case reminds me of the battle for Jessica. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 18:08, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
Since COM:SCOPE (specifically COM:EDUSE) is an inherently subjective policy, I'd go farther and suggest banning any deletion rationale consisting only of a vague claim of "out of scope" without an explanation of why the nominator thinks a file isn't educationally useful (or "of questionable notability", though COM:SCOPE doesn't say anything about files needing to depict notable things) so that other users can understand their reasoning. In this case, going only by the definition at COM:EDUSE, this chart absolutely qualifies as providing knowledge or being instructional or informative, so EugeneZelenko should have explained why he thought that wasn't the case.
Additionally, the file format shouldn't be used as a reason for deletion in most cases. If an image or file in a better format exists, then sure, delete the superseded one, but if there isn't a better option, then keep the original until such time as there is. I don't imagine anyone would support going around and deleting all photos in PNG format since they should ideally be JPG instead. clpo13(talk) 19:02, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
@Clpo13: the question of format shouldn’t be considered in isolation of the media quality and attribution. This JPEG certainly resulted from a stupid choice… but now we ought to keep it to ensure proper attribution (see also: JoKalliauer and attribution chain). File:View of the stern and rudder of the Olympic in drydock.png could be better represented in JPEG had the scanner higher resolution… but if the only alternative is a severely edited JPEG, then the PNG is kept as a representative for the original image. On the other hand, these JPEG and PNG (no longer illustrative) stemmed from the same PD source ⇒ PNG deleted, although technically not a duplicate. As for PNG for bar charts… it’s worse than SVG, but PNG billets are compressing nice and such charts are fairly usable (unlike ones in JPEG). This PNG can be easily mapped pixel-to-pixel unlike the respective SVG, and occupies less room than the latter – each format has advantages wrt specific conditions. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 19:47, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
Very true. I worded that poorly. There are definitely more factors at play when considering whether to delete a file in a non-ideal format, so each case should be examined on its own merits, per COM:Redundant. clpo13(talk) 19:59, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
While I agree that this should not have been deleted (I don't have much Dutch, but I certainly have enough to see that this was something within scope), and that format is rarely if ever a reason to delete, I do think that "unused" is worth mentioning when it's believed to be the case, not because it is, on its own, an argument for deletion (presumably over 50% of files here are not used in any other WMF project), but because of the converse: that if it is being used, that is a strong argument to keep, so it's worth looking into that before nominating. Also, I would agree that "out of scope" requires some sort of explanation. As an admin, I would ignore a statement of "out of scope" that didn't indicate in what respect. - Jmabel ! talk 01:12, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

 Support, it's an odd argument to make especially since Wikimedia Commons doesn't exclusively exist to cater to other Wikimedia websites and some file formats may actually be better for some re-users than others. Wikimedia Commons exists for storing educational content, not just "whatever other projects need", and it's not uncommon for files to be "invisible" here (full story). There should probably be a rule that States if there are doubts about the educational value of a free file that it should be kept as re-users on other websites (both Wikimedian and non-Wikimedian) could see its value, kind like an inverse version of the precautionary principle. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:56, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

  • What makes you think "unused" is an argument for deletion? You seem to be confusing "information" with "rationale for deletion". Since "in use" is an argument for keep wrt "in scope" concerns, indicating that the image does not appear to be in-use is useful information in a DR. Btw, the file is not "in-use" on nlwikibooks. That page just has an HTTPS hyperlink to the image file-description page. A hyperlink does not make content "in-use", otherwise the entire web would be locked in interdependence. Seems to me a judgement call, where admins disagree, rather than an example that proves anything useful. -- Colin (talk) 09:06, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
    Colin: you should remember my anti-troll wars of early 2018 – there is a significant faction of Commons sysops eager to shoot at everything undefended. It is currently de facto condition on the site. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:32, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
    @Colin: the MediaWiki software silently agrees with you as it isn't (at least as of now) capable of reporting this kind of usage. Humans, on the other hand, do not agree with you. It's not a very good example of "admins disagree", Jcb and EugeneZelenko were wrong. If it were merely a disagreement, both sides would have valid points. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 10:23, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

strong  Support We really need to learn from this and take some kind of action, Other then just saying 'each case should be examined on its own merits' which in effect means we learn nothing. off course it's not easy to discourage people who seem obsessed with deleting files from making destructive and wholly negative DRs, but it is the case that 'I don't like it' deletions are destroying respect and trust in commons. perhaps there should be a limit to how many non copyvio or license issue related DRs a user can make. Oxyman (talk) 11:15, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

One more comment about Alexis’s “EugeneZelenko doesn't understand Dutch so he should stay away… I'm not nominating Chinese images for deletion…” – this approach is as bad as Jcb jumping into the dispute with his [delete] button. Nominations for suspicious images are generally fine. Deletions for weak nominations over opposition are not, and it’s this practice which should be stopped by various means up to desysopping. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:24, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

No nominations should only be for valid reasons Oxyman (talk) 11:31, 25 January 2019 (UTC) If you cannot understand the language used in a file you cannot have a valid reason and should not nominate the file actions should be taken against those that do Oxyman (talk) 11:34, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
@Incnis Mrsi: I added a note to that remark. I could nominate a Chinese copyvio for deletion, but I wouldn't nominate a Chinese chart for deletion. There's generally no way to know if such things are in scope without knowing the language. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 11:41, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
This must be elaborated. The creator of this PDF deems that one Incnis Mrsi can’t understand his above-the-mean-level «cs = 7.85km/s», «10 kG», and «78 гц» (cf. standard notation «km/s», «kg», «Гц» respectively). Whereas I deem that Evgeniy Yakubovski’s “language” has no place here except for Erroneous physics, stand by EugeneZelenko’s delreq in this case, and oppose an over-broad inclusionist agenda. By the way, Oxyman and alike… where you were when, for example, the sysop Taivo posed as an expert for forestry in Indonesia? Not kidding, really check the exchange! Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:12, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
What do you mean "where you were when" You do realise that it not just admins that are volunteers here? Don't you? What a bizare comment! how can you possibly expect any user to be everywhere? also the phrase "over-broad inclusionist agenda" is just commical. really everyone should be able to use commons without concern that an 'I don't like it deletion will take placeOxyman (talk) 12:32, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
That's correct: I am expert of forestry of Indonesia and almost everything else. Taivo (talk) 12:24, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  Support That being used is a valid rationale for keeping, does not mean that being unused is a valid rationale for deletion. The corresponding rationale for deletion is that the file is unusable. And no, you probably shouldn't nominate a file for deletion where text in that file, written in a language you don't read, is material to whether the image is in scope. Same as you shouldn't respond to a request at CAT:MOVE if you don't read the language of the requested target well enough to tell if it complies with policy. GMGtalk 12:18, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Very strong opposition, WC is not facebook, keep away from collecting all these boring personal photos. A few personal photos for the Wikimedia projects active contributors is enough. Christian Ferrer (talk) 12:33, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
  • I don't think that's my interpretation of this at all User:Christian Ferrer. Personal photos of unknown and by all accounts unimportant individuals are mostly presumed unusable for any educational purpose, and being used is almost a courtesy exception. But I don't think that's quite the same as taking...say...a photo of a bridge and saying that it being currently unused is itself a rationale for deletion. But something like "unused, poor resolution/lighting/composition/etc with multiple high quality photos of the same educational value", that's a valid rationale even without the use part, since if such an exceptionally poor quality photos is being used, then it should fairly objectively been replaced a long time ago. I mean, we do that kind of thing all the time with certain subjects for which we already have an exceedingly large number of files. GMGtalk 13:23, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
@GreenMeansGo: yes indeed I misinterpreted. "unused personal photo" is often use as rationale, and some users are often opposed to the removal of such images on the pretext that the images are useful to illustrate "a woman wearing an upside down cap" or a "man wearing socks", ect, ect... So when I read the word "unused" in your statement, I mistakenly thought it was an attempt to keep the personal images, sorry for that. Personally I keep, even unused images of bridges, roads, fields, ect... when they are nominated for deletion, in the extend that the quality is not too poor. Therefore we can say that I tend to agree with you on this point. However I often delete the graphes and chart when they are unused. A few case can be useful, and we can of course keep those graphes, but that remains exceptions and we don't need graphes for all and nothing. And of course useful files can sometimes be deleted but IMO this remains marginal in relation to the number of files deleted with the rational "unused", "lacks of EV", ect.... Sorry if I bothered. Christian Ferrer (talk) 19:11, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
The pron warrior shtick is worn out as an argument. Show me where we have too many penises painted with rainbow flags (other sites have them), penises decorated as turtles or elephants (it's a classic fun penis get up), or too many penises in the 'hamburger' position. All of these are educational photographs that we do not have too many of. In fact, I can not find one example on Commons using simple searches. --Fæ (talk) 14:19, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
I'm not sure we're really in disagreement here. What I'm saying is that the file needs to stand or fall on its own merits, not whether it is used or unused. I probably couldn't find the DR if I had to, but I remember a large phallic related one when you in particular were arguing to keep specific images based on composition and the fact that we did not have comparable quality images that duplicated the specifics. That's exactly the kinds of arguments we should be employing. GMGtalk 15:00, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
@Christian Ferrer: that's not what this is about. If we are talking about people actively abusing Commons' liberal hotlink policy (COM:WEBHOST) for material that can't be used in any educational setting, that's another story. A chart with statistics from a scientific institute is not a personal photo. But also, that "boring personal photos" policy damages Commons as well. Notable people from India can be completely unknown to people outside India. Those get deleted as "personal photos". (there's a photo of a journalist from India somewhere in the deleted archives..) And "in use" can be invisible. If someone cropped a photo for use on a wiki without using croptool and didn't link the crop on the original, the original may get deleted as "unused", breaking the attribution chain. In fact, the crop may get deleted somewhat later because the source for it was deleted.
A few examples:
When anti-democratic organisations embrace your methods, you know you fucked up. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 15:51, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  Support Far too many high quality photographs "with people in them" are being deleted as "unused personal photographs". Commons severely lacks a variety of good quality portraits for stock illustration, such as "man feeling cold weather getting on a NY subway", "mother looking embarrassed with teenager having a temper tantrum", "schoolgirls laughing, sitting around a table of cream cakes". If you disagree, point to where selections exist that illustrate those situations. All are available as stock photographs from other collation photo sites. --Fæ (talk) 12:44, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
    • The war against potential stock photographs is probably most heinous, it's kind of embarrassing that high quality stock photographs of humans engaging in certain actions are rare if not impossible to find on Wikimedia Commons, people here have developed such a high "selfiephobia complex" that the mere sight of "a non-notable human" becomes reason for deletion, just look at how sexual files are handled, the de facto standard is that one has to be a known porn star (with a Wikipedia page) in order to qualify inclusion of having a sexual act illustrated on Wikimedia Commons, imagine if we used this standard for anything else, "well, here is an example of a fire-fighter in action, but does this particular person have their own Wikipedia article? No? Then delete!", an image should be judged on their educational merit for visual illustration and not if the human depicted in it has their own Wikipedia article or not. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 13:49, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
    I think people who perform mass imports from Flickr should be pay more attention to Commons:Project scope, so deletion request will be unnecessary. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:09, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  Oppose Sorry, Commons could not store every possible chart, because number of data sets are unlimited and it should be multiplied by number of charts types. Usage fact is good criteria for fitting Commons:Project scope. Same is true for geometry diagrams. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:09, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
@EugeneZelenko: rubbish. Someone thought that particular chart was useful, otherwise they wouldn't have uploaded it. If you find an account that is uploading random charts for no apparent reason and without contributing to other wiki projects, we'll investigate. Let us know. Until such time comes, which is probably never because nobody has any incentive to upload random charts, stop nominating charts for deletion. Your "Commons could not store every possible chart" argument is severely worrying by the way. You are an admin. You bloody know nothing gets permanently deleted. In fact, your useless DRs do nothing but contribute to disk space usage! Text may not consume a lot of space, but when it's useless, every single bit is one too many. Not to speak of the DR backlog, volunteer time is far more valueable than disk space. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 16:01, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
Question is not disc space, but in not turning Commons into rubbish. Files are not fitting scope just because of fact of uploading. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 16:10, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
This is all a very strange way of saying "I was wrong, the file was both useful and used, and I'll be more careful next time." GMGtalk 16:22, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz: I disagree with you. Someone may upload a chart just for fun. And it is hard to say whether a badly described / categorized logo or graph is useful or not. This is to be up to the uploader to care for this, not for admins or other cleaning users. Making their work harder will potentially eliminate them from other fields with large backlogs. So I  strongly oppose. We just need to do everything with care. Ankry (talk) 19:28, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  Support I agree with Fae. We are too strict on illustrative photos and our "selfiephobia" hurts our archive long term. I also think nominators should have to elaborate on why they think something is out of scope. Abzeronow (talk) 15:22, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  strong oppose Since this has deteriorated into a vote. Nominators and other posters should be free to supply whatever information is useful in coming to a deletion decision. The presence or otherwise of sources, the usage or lack of, the educational value or lack of, etc, etc,. Deciding to "ban" anyone from noting the lack of use on a Wikimedia project is silly. Usage is a plus point (for in-scope concerns only), and lack of merely indicates that it doesn't get that plus point. People should be free to offer their opinion without rants about them being "blatant liars". One person might see no possible educational value in an image, and another sees a potential use. That's why it is a discussion and we review them as a community. One group of people deciding to "ban" what people can say, what arguments they can make, is not how Commons works. The argument, for example, of keeping random photos of people, considers lots of factors. Image quality is certainly important. And description/categorisation. Are those claiming we should keep Flickr5959344.jpg spending their evenings describing, tagging and categorising such? The "This could illustrate a woman with brown hair" argument is tired. I don't think those sorts of judgements can be made in a general way, and certainly not by banning certain phrases from DR. -- Colin (talk) 19:01, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
"Since this has deteriorated into a vote" same could be said about many discussions here. But really unused is hardly ever a useful comment, it is not supposed to be a reason for deletion so makes sense to not waste time having it continually appear in DRs. There is a problem here, the current system is broken, commons is losing respect and trust because of repeated 'I don't like it' deletions. We need to learn and make changes. You propose no solutions or improvements and wish to just learn nothing. Oxyman (talk) 19:21, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Oh, this is a vote? Well then: I  Support, obviously. (And, to be honest, some really good arguements against selfiephobia were made above. Thanks for that, too.) -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 23:33, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
  •  Oppose because weak argument given for such an extreme ambiguous proposal...
  • Weak argument because: The 1 example given, File:Ervaren lichaamsbeeld... Wikibooks has wrongly linked it, instead of using the correct interwiki link, which would've prevented its deletion.
  • Ambiguous proposal, the definition of "unused" has not been clearly defined. If I write the file name on paper, take a picture of it, and post a photo of that paper to Flickr, does that make it 'used'? If I comment on a YouTube video linking to it, does that make it 'used'?
  • Extreme because, other alternatives such as adding other links \ tools \ policy hasn't even be discussed. The file usage is a technical fact given on each file page, not opinion, banning it won't hide or change it.--BevinKacon (talk) 13:22, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
 Support the impulse to deletion has done serious reputational harm to commons. i wish those deletionist admins would take on board the lack of consensus here for their actions, however justified they may feel. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 15:01, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Photographs by USAG Benelux — PD-USGov?

I'm interested in this image of a significant monument. Now this is a Flickr-account of USAG Benelux (United States Army Garrison Benelux for NATO, see en:Chièvres Air Base), but the copyright status says 'All rights reserved' (though pictures from later years on the account seem to be all CC BY-SA 2.0). Could pictures of this account be considered PD-USGov, and thus uploaded to Commons, despite copyright tag? Jürgen Eissink (talk) 16:24, 27 January 2019 (UTC).

@Jürgen Eissink: Yes due to COM:Copyfraud, but {{PD-USGov-Military-Army}} is more specific.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:35, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
Thank you very much. I will upload it to Category:Liberation Memorial Monceau-Imbrechies and add that template. Jürgen Eissink (talk) 16:42, 27 January 2019 (UTC).
yeah, the flickr accounts of USGov are license challenged, more from ignorance than fraud, i'm afraid. you do need to consider that photographer could be contractor, but this case appears to be public affairs officer. [24] Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 14:54, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Jürgen Eissink, the operative thing to look for in these photos is the definite attribution at the end: "U.S. Army photos by Marie-Lise Baneton" which indicates that it was both 1) taken by an employee, and 2) taken as part of their duties for the purpose of official publication. Without this official attribution, it is often difficult or impossible to definitely say yes to both points. GMGtalk 15:02, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Well, they usually say specifically "U.S. Army Photo" or "U.S. Navy Photo". So even if there's no rank and they're a non-uniform employee (of which the DoD has many), they're still almost certainly a federal employee of the DoD. GMGtalk 19:15, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Can we use online rapidtables for changing languages of labels of SVG file?

Can we use online rapidtables for changing languages of labels of SVG file? So that smart phone users too can contribute without having inkscape or illustrator? They can test the label positions of the new SVG diagram and adjust (using space before label) by opening new files from the hard disk location/smart phone file manager through web browser before uploading.

Sumita Roy Dutta (talk) 20:56, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm not tech-savvy enough to fully understand the requirements but it sounds like an interesting feature request. Maybe, you should create a ticket on Phabricator about that. --MB-one (talk) 14:07, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

January 28

Useful website

cartophilie.be list the birthdate and deceased date of photografers for postcards. I scanned work of Lensens, Mons. The site says its free but does not mention a deceased date. Can i trust the website? The picture is dated 1928.Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:54, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

While it is user-generated, this site might actually be reliable. I doubt that the Delcampe publishing company would sponsor them if they had a reputation for uploading nonsense at their page. De728631 (talk) 16:21, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Mass low-quality uploads

An advice needed what to do about such things as:

Simply nominate for deletion? Suggest to stop uploading from Flickr indiscriminately? There are hundreds of photos (most of low resolution), and a significant portion has quality comparable to the samples above. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 05:20, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

I hope this conductor is famous and we need a crop of his face
@Incnis Mrsi: ah, B dash again. I noticed this before with Category:Emmanuel Macron visit to Washington, D.C. in 2018 which B dash was duplicating, thanks to broken duplicate detection in Flickr2Commons and not checking manually if the photos were already here. B dash uploaded some photos that FallingGravity had purposely skipped. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 05:36, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Folks, folks, don't waste your time trying to sanitize Commons to whatever you think should be allowed. This is not "low-quality", it's a 4,000 x 6,000 px photograph of a clear fist with wearing a ring against a blurred background. It could be used to illustrate several things: defiance, solidarity, marriage, or any conceivable thing that you just can't conceive of. This is another 4,000 x 6,000 (i.e.: high quality photograph) with the educational use of showing a real life event. This is a photograph of the leader of the free world, in an unusually artistic shot for the White House photographer (if we would have had a similar photograph of Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln would we be itching to delete that?). Its presence on Commons hurts absolutely no body. If you don't like it, don't use it. Besides, not every photograph needs to be used in an article right now. Stock photos representing emotions, feelings, events, etc. are totally okay. If you go on self-righteous crusades to weed out every photograph with a face you don't recognize, or an event you don't know about, or with a use you can't dream of, you're going to create more problems than you solve. --Animalparty (talk) 06:21, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
@Animalparty: oh, I absolutely agree, the Trump photo has actually grown on me a little since I discovered it. (not a lot.. but a little) But B dash could in general be slightly more selective with his uploads, that's all. But once uploaded, I'm not going to nominate any of these for deletion. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 06:27, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
A polite direct note to the uploader would be a great start. --Animalparty (talk) 06:35, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
B dash knows. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 10:14, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
We see a double standard in emergence. Animalparty defends tons of random stuff by B_dash – the latter is a Commons regular, hence has clearance, hasn’t he? Whereas the same Animalparty is silent when Jcb indiscriminately destroys all uploads by Allo002. Maybe we see Animalparty at undeletion requests then? Do we, actually? By the way, I have no idea why Alexis used the Trump photo in this context – I definitely don’t wish it to be deleted. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:32, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
May as well remove it as it grew on me a bit. And it's not like I would want to delete the conductor either (it makes no sense, it doesn't save disk space or anything), but the question is if B dash should have uploaded it in the first place. But I don't understand why you think everyone can be everywhere. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 10:14, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
@Incnis Mrsi: I had no knowledge of Commons:Deletion_requests/Files_uploaded_by_Allo002, and am not an admin so cannot see any of the deleted files to form an opinion. I don't normally patrol deletion/undeletion requests that don't involve me, and why should I? As with all things that exist in a gray area, a deal of common sense is called for. I haven't viewed tons of random stuff by B dash, I simply commented on some of the ones presented here. Certainly this image is of small size, and on its own not the most educational image (personally I wouldn't shed a tear if it is deleted), but when viewed as part of documenting the Philadelphia AFGE End the Shutdown Rally, January 2019, it adds some value. Should we delete all of the similarly small images from the category, potentially eliminating all freely available images documenting the event, or vote on which of the 58 to keep? There are better uses of our time. COM:EDUSE is rather vague (perhaps intentionally), yet I read it as having a broader rather than narrower scope. COM:SCOPE acknowledges the ambiguity of "realistically useful for an educational purpose": New and existing files of poor or mediocre quality may or may not be realistically useful for an educational purpose depending on what they illustrate and what other files we have of the same subject. Where a subject is rare and/or difficult to capture, even a poor-quality file may be of significant educational value, especially if Commons has very few or no similar files already. Low-quality and/or personal private photos are discouraged per COM:PARTYPICS, but we enter the gray when a member of that party is notable (e.g. File:Sarah Schneider 2007.jpg and File:Jake Hurwitz 2007.jpg), or when the setting moves from the private to the public. Should people be periodically reminded of Scope and to exercise some restraint and discretion when bulk uploading? Yes. --Animalparty (talk) 20:45, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
when you do not provide stringers to cover events, then you are dependent on the quality at flickr. the double standard is well taken; and see also the discussion above about "not in use" - should we add "low-quality" as a deprecated deletion rationale? Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 15:08, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Can we finally fix PNGs on Wikipedia?

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T39960

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T192744

Basically, our terrible rendering of PNG thumbnails comes down to a ten-year-old choice meant to help with edge-case diagrams that might look a bit bad sharpened, instead of, say, just generating a thumbnail manually for this tiny edge case that... have any of us ever seen it done?

I think it's time to get some movement on this, and the best way forwards is to overturn an old, bad decision. Adam Cuerden (talk) 11:53, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

  • It's bad enough that it requires unwieldy workarounds like jpeg copies of png images, but one of the worst aspects of our 'blurry' png thumbnailing is that, if you want transparency, for oval historical portraits, coins etc, etc - then you're just out of luck, because you don't even have the (poor) workaround option of keeping a lossless png 'master' synced with a jpeg copy for thumbnailing. I've even seen (and used) kludges where 'infobox' grey is used around oval/non-rectangular images to eliminate the white borders on copies of jpegs. This is desperation, though, and fails if someone has a custom theme or reuses the image outside an infobox. Resorting to 'tricks' like these should not be necessary and is pretty amateur.

    Honestly, the situation is unacceptable, and has been for a very long time. You'll see I'm part of the second discussion you linked, and the conversation that led to it. Sharpening should be applied to png thumbnails the same as it is for jpeg. For the odd edge case where it is not desired just have a per-file, user-configurable override flag. -- Begoon 13:23, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

    @Adam Cuerden and Begoon: I agree with both of you, it is a sorry state of affairs.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 02:43, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

January 31

Aerial photography of the UK

I've found a large number (10,000+) of freely-licensed aerial photos from the UK's Environment Agency, and have started to upload to Commons. A sample is displayed below:

  • Looe, Cornwall
    Looe, Cornwall
  • Flooding on the Somerset Levels
    Flooding on the Somerset Levels
  • Flooding in the Severn valley
    Flooding in the Severn valley
  • Thames Barrier raised
    Thames Barrier raised
  • Thames Barrier lowered
    Thames Barrier lowered

The files are geocoded, but categorisation will be cumbersome as the camera location is not the subject's location.

They also have released a quantity of vertical images. I'm not sure how best to upload these, as it consists of high-res tiles (up to 10cm per pixel).--Nilfanion (talk) 22:26, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

@Nilfanion: Fantastic find! It would be useful to link [26] / [27] to substantiate the OGL release; and perhaps also the individual zipfile that each image is drawn from. A maintenance category for subjects still needing identification might also be a useful addition. The images do also include a camera direction, as well as camera location, which can help with identification, particularly with the mini-map link you have so helpfully included. Jheald (talk) 23:03, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
Definitely agree with making the OGL release as explicit as possible. Also agree on the maintenance cat (I've put this initial batch into a temporary user cat). I also know the first batch has incorrect geocoding, I will fix that before continuing.
With regards to identification, I'm referring to the problems that the Geograph upload caused: Correct automatic identification is impossible, but it can be done manually.
Also uploaded File:Isles of Scilly aerial view 2007.jpg to demonstrate the vertical imagery. It has been heavily downsampled, the original res is at least 5x higher.--Nilfanion (talk) 23:32, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
@Nilfanion: Have you considered Commons:Batch uploading? A specialized bot may be able to extract and display more detailed information and metadata, which would facilitate more effective categorization and ease of usage. Using this and this for example (presumably representative of most or all of the files in Images from the Environment Agency), I'm a bit disappointed that the source field is a generic link to https://environment.data.gov.uk/, which makes it harder to track down and verify the actual source record, and the generic file names themselves are of little utility for conveying practical information. While they all have embedded (albeit biased) geographic coordinates, the critical information (city/region/landmass depicted) appears to be largely hidden within the EXIF metadata, if at all, making it harder to run search queries and find, say, a photograph from the series depicting South Cove. I think bot-assisted uploading along with additional/more detailed fields for the {{Information}} template would make this collection much more valuable. --Animalparty (talk) 05:08, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
@Animalparty: I know this is a batch upload task, but there is no more info available so nothing a bot can do to support. The only thing I can really do is improve the source link. The actual files come from zips, and cannot be directly linked as they are dynamically generated by the actual download page. That page doesn't give any licensing info, so isn't a good source link either. The only useful metadata supplied within the files are the geocoordinates themselves (which are not biased - they provide correct camera location), there is no actual description of the subject. Outside of the files, there is no contextual data supplied in the zips or anywhere else, the original filenames mirror the upload names and encode date/time of the image.
In the past I've had a great deal of experience handling the Geograph upload which were often incorrectly and/or under categorised. While I found ways of automating the localisation there, when the camera location is significantly different to the subject - it always is with aerial photos - there is no option but to have a human do the work. When the human is localising they can also provide a meaningful description. For instance, the generic coastline image you linked actually shows a notable subject - w:Benacre National Nature Reserve.
Over the next few months I am planning to trawl through and provide that information myself. Once they have been identified, should the files be renamed to something meaningful?--Nilfanion (talk) 08:26, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
@Nilfanion: Yes, please.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 12:29, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
@Nilfanion: The images give camera position, but they also give camera direction. Can we estimate what range of distances the offsets might be? If one generated three or four possible coordinates along that ray, could one reverse-geocode them to see whether there are any matches to any (quite large) features of interest, that could then be candidates for manual confirmation/rejection? Also one might be able to at least narrow down to a county or a parish. Jheald (talk) 17:14, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
Only the more recent images give direction (and also altitude). County-level encoding is realistic, but reverse-geocoding to a higher level is a chimera (precise and incorrect is worse than vague and accurate). The idea of using rays to trace out FOV of an image and identify possible matches sounds very interesting and is potentially a much broader project. That said not sure it will help much here: There are several images that don't show any specific features but are useful because they show the whole landscape underwater.-Nilfanion (talk) 23:02, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

January 29

AdBlock trigger

For the first time while viewing Commons from my Chrome browser, I got a pop up asking "This site has been known to target users with messages, would you like to block adverts?" (not quite the same wording, I did not manage to get a screen shot before the popup timed out). Has anyone else seen this? I'm wondering if Commons has accidentally been added to an AdBlock blacklist due to the behaviour of fundraising banners. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:21, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Why would it be accidental? Fundraising banners are adverts Oxyman (talk) 05:15, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
If this is the case, then I wonder if the WMF fundraising team has being mass AdBlocked as part of their strategy. --Fæ (talk) 15:14, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
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