Commons:Village pump/Archive/2019/03

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Rename 50 files

The uploadwizard did not work as expected. Can someone rename

FridaysForFuture Hamburg 2019-03-01.jpg to FridaysForFuture Hamburg 2019-03-47.jpg

to

FridaysForFuture Hamburg 2019-03-01 01.jpg to FridaysForFuture Hamburg 2019-03-01 47.jpg

--C.Suthorn (talk) 20:27, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

@C.Suthorn: ✓ Done GMGtalk 20:41, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Speravir 22:31, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Identical files with some size different?

Hello, File:Gray956.png is same as File:Gray1204.png, but 1204 has a higher resolution, so what's the best practice in this situation? --Alaa :)..! 12:57, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Oddly enough, they are not identical but digital representations of two individual physical images that show almost exactly the same. The most obvious difference is glosso-epiglotic vs. glossoepiglotic. I'm not sure whether there are really two almost-identical images in the original print or maybe they come from two different editions, but for the sake of completeness I think it would make sense to just keep them both. --El Grafo (talk) 13:16, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
@El Grafo: make sense. Sorry, I forgot that I've a copy of this book (1918 version), I took a look before few seconds and I found that File:Gray956.png mentioned on page 1081 and File:Gray1204.png mentioned on page 1300. So of course  Keep both. Thanks --Alaa :)..! 13:56, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: ----Alaa :)..! 19:21, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Massive deletion needed

As I stumble upon another category striken by this plague I want to draw some attention towards this deletion request. --Qbli2mHd (talk) 19:04, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

They should be all taged imho. Every file which is up to deletion should be tagged. Its easy and quick to do with VisualFileChange. Amada44  talk to me 08:02, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
✓ Done for that category Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Duchy of Brittany Abzeronow (talk) 14:48, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

March 01

Mozilla Voice Dataset now as CC0, 1361 hours of spoken text in many different languages

Its a voice dataset of 1361 hours used to train AI: https://voice.mozilla.org/en/datasets now released as CC0. Should we import this to wikimedia?

Somehow related to this: We have many uploads of personal images which then are delete as being out of scope. Would they not be potentially useful for building a training dataset for faces? Amada44  talk to me 08:32, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

I think currently we should not build commons as a database for AI training media files. In the future we maybe could build a "shadow database" with all media would be out of th current scope. With structured data there could also be ways to hide media files like these from the regular search and then there would be less reasons for deleting these images or not uploading them. But I would definitely say that this should not be your priority. --GPSLeo (talk) 09:59, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

“Konnichiwa Stereo 1312”

Is the user name “Konnichiwa Stereo 1312” inappropriate, since it refers to the fact, that Japanese FM radios had been abused for listening to police radio, the number is an offensive slang term, and a certain German elevator brand has been bowdlerized? --88.70.36.234 22:45, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

By the way: Have the founders of the mentioned German elevator brand be found each other, since one (or even both of them) was aware of the fact, that many elevators in Japan have a brand, which is also be used for consumer electronics? --88.70.36.234 22:52, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

I, for one, can make no sense of the above. "Bowdlerized" means censored, especially with relation to sexuality (Bowdler edited a highly censored edition of Shakespeare's plays). I have no idea what German elevator brand you are talking about, or what it would mean to "bowdlerize" an elevator brand.

"Konnichiwa" is a normal Japanese greeting. Do you have some evidence that this name is problematic? If you do, please cite your references, don't just assert it and leave someone else to do the heavy lifting. - Jmabel ! talk 01:38, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

I've blocked the IP for a week - they're clearly not here to contribute. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 02:05, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

March 02

Commons_talk:Category_scheme_People#Categorize_people_just_by_relevant_categories

Can some interested people also leve on this discussion a comment. thx.--Sanandros (talk) 06:23, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Bengali-German Community Exchange Program Logo Challenge 2019

Hi Folks,

Bengali-German Community Exchange Program is inviting everyone to participate in the logo challenge.

The logo should be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by 20th March 2019 and should be licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).

You can also VOTE for the proposed logos.

For more information: Bengali-German Community Exchange Program/Logo Challenge

Thanks and Regards

~Moheen (keep talking) 09:48, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Internal advertising, why is there so little of it?

I only recently "discovered" the Video2commons uploader ("Commons:video2commons") which is a really handy tool for uploading videos from YouTube and other websites (although it has limitations like not being able to upload entire playlists), this is actually a really handy feature for uploading videos, especially since I had previously attempted to upload a 19th (nineteenth) century video to Wikimedia Commons but couldn't because it wasn't in a free format and didn't know at the time how to convert it online free of charge, however with Video2Commons you can select any YouTube video and import it without having to download this first, now this is really handy, especially since there is a whole Lumière Catalogue of videos produced between the years 1895 and 1905 which could also be backed up here. Now my question is, why isn't this amazing tool advertised anywhere in the MediaWiki Upload Wizard? The same could be said about Flickr2Commons, especially for new users such information directing them to these handy tools could help with uploading more images to Wikimedia Commons.

Maybe {{Welcome}} should tell new users about these tools, there are so many videos and images that still need importing and we could use all the hands that want, but unfortunately many potential mass-uploaders won't do so because they don't know that the tools already exist. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:23, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

It's mentioned on Help:Converting video, which seems like the right place. --ghouston (talk) 21:52, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
Yes, that is the right place but while you can upload videos to the MediaWiki Upload Wizard or other tools that page itself isn't mentioned anywhere in the form or at {{Welcome}}, in fact that template could use a whole "Upload tips" section which could link to various help pages. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:58, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
Between 21:20 and 22:20 todaYy the uploadwizard has been changed, to include a "flickr" button. It has also been changed to included a "agree to cc-zero text", even if the upload contains no caption at all and no way to uncheck cc-zero. --C.Suthorn (talk) 22:10, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

March 03

Video tutorial project

Hi, I have received a grant from WMF to support production of a video tutorial regarding creating references with VisualEditor. I anticipate that the video will be published in March 2019. Depending on funding considerations, this tutorial might be published in both English and Spanish. If this tutorial is well received then I may produce additional tutorials in the future, including tutorials for Commons. If you would like to receive notifications on your talk page when drafts and finished products from this project are ready for review, then please sign up for the tutorial project newsletter. Regards, --Pine✉ 05:15, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

  • Hi @Tuvalkin: , I think that VE is significantly easier for new users than the wikitext editors are, but even if a user is able to use the VE interface successfully, they may have difficulty with policies regarding referencing. As a side note, although this pilot project focuses on VE, if it is well received I hope that in the future I will create videos that cover Commons subjects such as uploading and the category system. If you have more questions please use the Ping template so that I know to look here for your question. Thanks! --Pine✉ 04:11, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Moving photos from ar.wikipedia and en.wikipedia to commons

Hi, I found a photo in Arabic Wikipedia that would be useful in English Wikipedia but I can't move it to English wikipedia or commons Wikimedia. Is there a way to move it without re-upload it? Here is the photo [1] the license says it is used fairly because the person in the photo has died. (Not sure if thats okay) Thanks.--SharabSalam (talk) 19:10, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

No, without re-uploading it. However in this case since it is a fair use image, you can not upload it to Commons. Ruslik (talk) 19:56, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
if you want to use it as fair use, here is the wikipedia uploader [2], here is a google image search [3] with none under a free license [4] -- Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 03:15, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Help me to upload images on Flickr

Hello, I found that a user "褒忠國中 雲端網" has uploaded a lot of CC pictures to Flickr. Most of them are helpful to introduce the education in Taiwan. Unluckily, the user isn't a pro-user, so those pictures may be removed because of the new rule of Flickr. Could someone help me to upload them to Commons?--It's Our Time (talk) 09:07, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Hello @It's Our Time: , you could simply use the Flickr2Commons tool which is really helpful and scans for images with licenses compatible with Wikimedia Commons. Your example is literally why I proposed more internal advertising above as this tool is simple to use and instructions are provided. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:11, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Commons:Categories for discussion/2019/02/Category:Power plants

Hello. As the above CFD affects a notable number of categories, your input here is appreciated. Rehman 09:22, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Picture of the year 2018 : Round 2 !

Round 2 for the Picture of the year 2018 has started: Vote page.

Eligible users may vote for only 3 finalists pictures, and the round end on 17 march 2019, 23:59:59 (UTC)

Good luck for choice! Tomybrz Bip Bip 21:50, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Help page : FAQ | Am I a Eligible user ? | Help desk

March 04

Local time adjustment in signatures

Hello. If you look at signatures on enwiki, they are signed in UTC, but when viewing the page outside the edit mode, they automatically display in your local time zone (as per timezone set in preferences). Anyone know how to do that here? Rehman 02:30, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

To load the enwiki gadget on Commons, put mw.loader.load('https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Gary/comments_in_local_time.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript'); in your common.js. It shouldn't need any localization as Commons uses English-style dates. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 02:47, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

WMF proposal would rename "Wikimedia Commons" to "Wikicommons"

Hello. The Wikimedia Foundation recently published the blog post "Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030":

But while “Wikimedia” may not be widely recognized outside our movement, there is a clear way to use our existing brands to better bring in the billions of people who have yet to join us in our vision. We can center our brand system around Wikipedia, one of the world’s best-known brands. […]

The proposed system change suggests elevating Wikipedia into a high-visibility entry point that can be used to better introduce the world to our range of projects and their shared mission. The proposal also recommends retaining project names as they are, while shortening “Wikimedia Commons” to its nickname “Wikicommons” to fit the “wiki + project” name convention. […]

By definition, Wikimedia brands are shared among the communities who give them meaning. So in considering this change, the Wikimedia Foundation is collecting feedback from across our communities. Our goal is to speak with more than 80% of affiliates and as many individual contributors as possible before May 2019, when we will offer the Board of Trustees a summary of the community’s response.

There is already some discussion on Meta-Wiki. Regards, PiRSquared17 (talk) 01:56, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Let's be super clear on one possibly "political" point. If this project is going to be renamed, the key RFC or proposal, should be on this project, not on another project where our community does not hang out. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 09:52, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
  • much ado about nothing. needing to wiki'splain that commons is a different place than wikipedia, will remain regardless of whatchamacallit. and watching all the amateur marketing of editors with no maketing experience is very amusing. pass the popcorn. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 13:49, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

We are WikiMedia if the Wikimedia foundation gets renamed the name Wikimedia is free. And as we are the Wiki for the media we should rename our wiki into WikiMedia. I think the foundation would say NO to this but it would be just consequent. --GPSLeo (talk) 14:39, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Fæ on their point that any discussion of changing the name of Commons requires a RfC on this project and would need a supermajority to go into effect. I  Oppose changing the name. Abzeronow (talk) 15:32, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

  • I think, overcoming the desire to say "it's change, therefore it's bad", which I don't really suffer from anyway, that the Wikimedia name is nothing special, and getting rid of it is probably a good idea. wikicommons.org seems like a nicer domain name than commons.wikimedia.org. It will still be "Commons" for short. If this site was "Wikicommons", and they were proposing to change it to "Wikimedia Commons", I think the outrage would be much greater. Would changing Wikidata to "Wikimedia Data" be a good thing? --ghouston (talk) 23:22, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
  • @Oxyman: No, the proposal identifies the fact that Wikipedia receives much more traffic than Commons, Wikidata, Wikitionary, etc, and wants to better leverage Wikipedia as "a high-visibility entry point that can be used to better introduce the world to our range of projects and their shared mission". BMacZero (talk) 00:48, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Call it whatever you like to name these abstract concepts. The Wikimedia Foundation does collect something like one hundred million US dollars each year and does spend most of it the same year. It does pay the bills and your scholarship for Wikimania if you want one. Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 10:38, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

After reading the brand research and the brand strategy proposal I have some comments. The researchers and consultants have listened to a lot of people around the globe. They have learned how outsiders perceive Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Commons, Wikidata and other "projects". The general republic recognizes Wikipedia, the rest confuses them. I am in favor of renaming the Wikimedia Foundation to Wikipedia Foundation. I am also in favor of adding "- a Wikipedia project" after the name of a so called sisterproject. I can imagine a future where all websites are hosted on the wikipedia.org domain (or a wikipedia TLD). The change for commons would be from commons.wikimedia.org to commons.wikipedia.org. Reading the comments above, media.wikipedia.org would also serve the purpose, for those who are ready to let go of the commons name altogether. The project team promised to have lots of meetings with communities at various venues, and I'm looking forward to discuss these things IRL with fellow editors, for example at Wikimania. Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 10:38, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi Ad. Very few of us core Commons volunteers will be at Wikimania. You'll meet lots of Wikidata advocates though, you see their names popping up in all the Commons Structured Data discussions, which gives them an odd bias which some keep on calling a "consensus". There's a lot more money and WMF dev time invested in Wikidata than this project, I'm sure you could more easily pin down the exact numbers than I. --Fæ (talk) 12:02, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
I’m not sure why you bring up Wikidata, and what comes across as dislike for it, in this conversation − does not feel very related to me − but I’ll bite. I guess I’d fall under your description of “Wikidata advocate”, as someone whose name keeps “popping up in all the Commons Structured Data discussions” ; while I am not sure what a “core Commons contributor” is (you clearly include yourself in that group − but who else is “us”? How does one qualify? Who knows), I don’t think the two are necessarily mutually exclusive. I certainly identify as both a Wikimedia Commons contributor **and** as a Wikidata contributor. In general, I don’t think framing things as Us vs. Them is very helpful. Jean-Fred (talk) 07:48, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
yeah, you see more scholarships from affiliates, and they do not have "renaming rights", no hope of WMF support, here. the corporate speak may be a productive way of listening to outsiders, but is grating on community ears. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 12:06, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Some thoughtful comments in a twitter thread here from long-time Wikimedia UK staffer Stuart Prior. Yes, the Wikipedias are by far the most recognised output. But the Wikimedia umbrella label can be useful to remind or emphasise to people that the ecosystem as a whole is bigger than just the Wikipedias -- so comes down, on balance, against retiring the Wikimedia label. I think there's a lot of sense in that; and I don't see the strength of potential benefits to make it worth devoting much (or any) organisation time to this. There is more pressing stuff to prioritise. Jheald (talk) 15:10, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Support. Yes, change as usual will cost something. A month ago my wiki photography attracted a little press attention (look up "Jim Henderson Wikipedia photographer") and to each interviewer I briefly explained Commons. The explanation didn't get into the published stories, and I figure that's because it would be a distraction. "Commons" as a term is far too obscure to be useful in this; a more understandable brand would work better, such "Wikipedia Media" or some similar term exploiting the WP name. Presumably with media.wikipedia.org or similar Internet domain, but that's a concern for the few who know what a "domain" is. "Wikicommons" would improve on the status quo, but unfortunately still use "commons". Remember, our market, or audience if that's the preferred term, is the roughly Billion readers, not us roughly ten thousand who constitute or at least dominate the wikicomplex community. And yes, we should discuss this at Stockholm and, for us on the other side of the pond, Mexico City this summer. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:54, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
  • I already wrote the same thing as GPSLeo wrote here: if Wikimedia brand ceases to exist, Commons should become just WikiMedia. Commons is hardly recognisable in languages other than English: if you check d:Q565 you will see multiple names in other languages, such as "Wikistorage" (many Eastern European languages from Latvian to Armenian, Persian), "Wiki Shared Resources" (Chinese), "Wikithèque" (coined from "Mediathèque", Lithuanian), "Common Media" (Bulgarian), "Common server" (Croatian), "Common storage" (Kazakh), "Wikimedia Treasury" (Macedonia), "Wikimedia Collection" (Slovenian). This is not what you call a strong brand name — NickK (talk) 23:50, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

PDM by rightholder

In the PDM is stated, that a "work has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights." But what if the rightholder has identify his or her own work as being free of known restrictions under copyright law. This means he must have licensed the work so, that the work is being free of known restrictions under copyright law. For example if I use a work licensed under CC0, I could state that this is being free of known restrictions under copyright law. And it's right!

The problem with the PDM often is that we couldn't trust and have stronger restriction for works that aren't public domain in the source country. But if the rightsholder publish something in a way that he say, that it is being free to use, with no restriction, I thing we must believe him or her.

Habitator terrae 🌍 14:09, 27 February 2019 (UTC) PS: Reason was File talk:Karl Nehammer.jpg

I've kept on uploading most of my self-authored images as {{PD-self}}, and didn't go over to using CC0/PDM, because it takes an advanced law degree to understand that stuff (or at least it did the last time I looked at it). I had little idea what I would be committing myself to legally if I slapped a CC0 tag on my images... AnonMoos (talk) 16:18, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
@Habitator terrae: No, we must not per COM:PDM.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 18:13, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
... --Habitator terrae 🌍 18:39, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
@Jeff G. and Ronhjones: Sorry, that I first get a little bit crazy;) But on the linked COM:PDM page there is nowhere explained, why my arguments are wrong. If you mean that there is no fallback-license I can calm you, in Austria (source country) and Germany, there we have §§ 914(Germany: 133) and 915 Anmerkung (Germany: 305c (2)). In the US, I have not the exact sections, but I think PD-license are there possible. So the picture is PD in the source country and (I thing) the US. Habitator terrae 🌍 19:32, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

If I rightsholder says that a work is [by them believed of] "being free of known restrictions under copyright law", it doesn't mean they release it into the public domain, simply that they do not believe there is any copyright to be protected. f that is due to incompetence (i.e. author doesn't know copyright law) or due to any other reason, they haven't actually released the work, simply stated that they don't believe it is protected. However, if we know it is the copyright holder who made the statement, in most cases (some) users take that as a {{PD-self}} release, despite it not actually being so (and in my opinion committing copyfraud). --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 20:05, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

If a Flickr owner really wants to donate the copyright, then it takes just a few seconds from them to change it from "Public Domain Work" to "Public Domain Dedication (CC0)" (flickr's actual wordings). I've seen lots of PDMs that have been correctly changed from PDM to CC-zero when the user here has contacted the Flickr owner - my view is that this should be the first course of action - it will also inform the Flickr owner of what the choice they have made means, and hopefully, in future, they will use the cc-zero option. Ronhjones  (Talk) 21:23, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
"In interpretions of contracts, it isn't to adhere on the literal meaning, it is to investigate the intention of the parties and [...]" § 914 öABGB
So the picture is public domain in Austria, because this was the intention. Habitator terrae 🌍 15:18, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
[comment censored by user:Jeff G.] censorious email to flickr users is not a healthy form of outreach, nor is speedy deletion of PDM. the world is astonished at the license purity. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 11:47, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

February 28

Choosing thumbnail pic for video?

I uploaded a video (File:Mikael Karlsson.melodifestivalen2019.19e119.1080617.presentation.webm) and in my computer it looks ok. But, in Commons, the guy has the eyes closed. In my computer, it looks like I edited that away. Now I have made a new version, it is not a big problem to upload that and delete the old version. But, can somebody technical explain: a. why are they eyes closed here, but not in my computer, b. is there any (simple) way of "forcing" commons thumbnails to a certain thumb-pic? If so, how? Can I select a pic further inside the video as "thumbnail"? If so, how? It looks stupid now, not "educational". If nobody knows... then be aware that the problem will appear over and over again, in the future. --Janwikifoto (talk) 11:50, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

@Janwikifoto: you are looking for something like this: [[File:Mikael Karlsson.melodifestivalen2019.19e119.1080617.presentation.webm|thumb|start=1|]] . I think the default thumbnail is the midpoint of a video. I learnt of this from some enwp Help pages but I could not find it.--Roy17 (talk) 15:21, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Tried it, seems to work. If default thumb is midpoint (why ?) then I uderstand, because the guy makes a lof of eye-signs. And I cut the video to avoid that as a start. However, I would ideally like to make Commons always supply "start = 1". Now anybody can take the video, embed it, and end up with the "strange midpoint eye"... So any further expert info is appreciated. --Janwikifoto (talk) 17:59, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Use thumbnail instead of start to set the thumbnail, when using the file. With start and end you can set the start time and end time the video player will use to show the video. webm is a type of matroska. See matroska cover art to learn how to set up to four image files as the generic thumbnail (low and high resolution, normal and landscape mode). --C.Suthorn (talk) 19:18, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
@C.Suthorn: Where is that?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 22:19, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Commons:Video#Setting_a_video_thumbnail_image ff. I mistyped thumbnail instead of thumbtime. Information on matroska cover art seems not to be part of Wikipedia (yet), but can be found in the WWW. --C.Suthorn (talk) 05:05, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
You may use thumbtime=1.2 when thumbnailing the file − see docs at mw:Extension:TimedMediaHandler#Syntax_synopsis.
As for setting it globally, as far as I know this is not possible yet, and is tracked at phab:T22647. Jean-Fred (talk) 23:04, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Will look at Matroska Cover Art - when I get time. If it works like I belive, it will solve the problem. Will look at the other suggestions as well. But it is a thing that will pop up more, in the future. --Janwikifoto (talk) 10:24, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Academic Free License

Is there any problem with this license? If there is no, we could make a new template, because somebody in the German Wikipedia quest wether he or she could upload some images from here. Habitator terrae 🌍 15:57, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

image copyright may differ from text - caption says: "Modified after 508 Armistead et al. (In Review)" -- Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 20:05, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

March 05

Photograph of photographers vs. Photographs by photographers

Do we have a standardized way to categorize "photographs of photographers" vs. "photographs by photographers". In most cases we have both in the same category which confuses a Google image search. Sometimes we set up "Category:Images by John Smith" and sometimes "Category:John Smith studio". Is there a distinction because one may be a solo practice and one may have multiple photographers working for the same studio? RAN (talk) 15:52, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Jmabel ! talk 16:22, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
Looks good, thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk • contribs) 18:27, 5 March 2019‎ (UTC)

March 06

Upload Wizard: "Please describe your image three times"

Well, it seems to me that this is what the Upload Wizard currently asks from uploaders. But before going into detail: I'm posting this here because Commons talk:Upload Wizard seems to be rarely visited, says that Commons:Upload Wizard feedback is for "simple day-to-day user feedback" (which this isn't, I think), and also points to "upload wizard" threads here at VP. But I will leave a pointer there. Back to the topic: With the addition of captions, the "Describe" step of the upload process now wants us to fill out three kind-of-description fields:

  • Image title. Create a unique descriptive title using plain language with spaces. Omit the file extension, if any.
  • Caption. Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents, including only the most relevant information.
  • Description. Provide all information that will help others understand what this file represents.

I guess that to the uninitiated, this could be a bit perplexing: Okay, let's do this. They want a "unique descriptive title" in plain language, fine, so... I describe my image there. Next... what, another "one-line explanation of what this file represents"? Isn't this what I've just done? Oh well, I describe it again. Next... I beg your pardon, "Description"? AGAIN? ;-) I think it would be a good idea to simplify that "description process" a bit, but I'm not sure what to suggest. Maybe make it clearer that the so-called "Image title" is actually just the file name? (I recently mentioned this issue in the thread about translation errors but think a dedicated thread could be helpful). Gestumblindi (talk) 00:10, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Discussed & rejected. Apparently (see archives January/Febuary). I recommend making some dots (...) if you dont need that feature. Alexpl (talk) 10:35, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
@Alexpl: I don't find an in-depth discussion of that specific issue, only this thread from January where Herzi Pinki mentioned it as one of several concerns (including categories as a fourth place to "describe" the upload). The replies by RIsler (WMF) and Keegan (WMF) don't really deal with that much, although RIsler mentions: "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". But I can't find that proposal to remove filenames (and the rejection) right now, maybe RIsler can help? Anyway, I think I would oppose that approach too, as meaningful filenames still have some value (e.g. they make the source code more readable when embedding files in Wikipedia articles). But, to reiterate, maybe it would already help to label the "Image title" as "File name" and tone down the asking for "descriptiveness" a bit, like "Create a unique meaningful file name" instead of "Create a unique descriptive title"? The Upload Wizard is the default presented; it's what new users are supposed to use, so it should be an intuitive and straightforward interface. By the way: As a "classical" wiki editor who doesn't really visit external tools like Phabricator (which are an alien and slightly confusing environment for me), I always find it quite hard to communicate with developers. They expect issues to be raised in Phabricator, I think; but we Wikipedians and Commons editors expect discussions to happen here, on-wiki. We need some improvement of communication there, I posted a thread regarding this at the Talk pages consultation - but I digress. Gestumblindi (talk) 12:12, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
Agreed. Reading your timeline I have to ask - are uploaders being asked to add captions under a different license to the image? If so, that might be confusing. If not... -- Begoon 12:23, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
@Gestumblindi: I had proposed to make "caption" at least a "non mandatory" field during uploading here on 13. January. But I finally kind of "freaked out" about it [5] and had then no interest to get engaged any further. But that should give you a start to read into the thing, or find the more informed people Alexpl (talk) 12:27, 2 Mar°ch 2019 (UTC)
Why are we only now considering this? Requiring different licenses for parts of the same upload seems like the kind of thing that needs discussion before implementation. (My apologies if we all agreed and I missed it) -- Begoon 12:41, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
@Begoon: Although the licensing of captions is indeed different from the rest (CC-zero instead of CC-BY-SA), that's an issue discussed in other threads and I would like to keep this thread on the topic of "too many description fields". Gestumblindi (talk) 12:54, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
Cool. You'll understand later. -- Begoon 13:01, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
What do you mean? There's a lengthy thread on the licensing issue, so I don't think we need to burden this thread with that off-topic issue. Gestumblindi (talk) 13:48, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
@Alexpl: Caption is actually an optional field (it says so there in fine print), that's not the issue now... Gestumblindi (talk) 12:52, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
It was not back in January. Alexpl (talk) 13:35, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Maybe I'm asking a redundant question, but without objecting to the possibility we now have to add a caption if we wish: what specifically is the caption used for? --SergeWoodzing (talk) 15:20, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Question: I never thought about this before the discussion about captions, but what is the copyright/licensing status of the title/filename? - Jmabel ! talk 17:31, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

@Jmabel: {{CC-BY-SA-3.0}}.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 17:36, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
What is the use of yet another field to fill in, when many uploaders seem to completely ignore the rules on how to do it. Especially applying a unique descriptive title using plain language with spaces to the file title seems to be no-longer a requirement at all. Especially for mass-uploaders using non-descriptive titles consisting only of archive or library codes from a donating institution. Also uploading whole photo-albums from Flickr of private collections often have malformed titles. It has evolved to a double standard. So why ask from me to perform yet another task filling in data in a new field? Commons is rapidly becoming a Tower of Babel. --oSeveno (User talk) 18:51, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
Now that we have captions, I would envision file names as really short, meaningful names, but not full "captions". So, not DSC123456.jpg, but also not "A raven (Corvus corax) sitting on a birch tree by a road in Stockholm in August 2017 at seven o'clock in the morning.jpg", rather something like "Raven Stockholm August 2017.jpg"... Gestumblindi (talk) 20:49, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Please don't call the filename a image title! This only adds more confusion and uncertainty to the reuse of files with a license that requires to mention the title given by the author. (all CC licenses afaik) -- Herby (Vienna) (talk) 19:56, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

  • @Gestumblindi: the rejected file name proposal is at Commons_talk:Structured_data/Archive_2018#The_future_of_file_names. File names as they exist now are a bit different to captions because a) they must be unique, so end up with random disambiguations b) they can be pre-populated from the file name sent during the upload, and c) no language is specified. I suppose it'd be possible to ask the uploader for a caption only, initially, and copy that to the description and filename (with automatic disambiguation). Adding a different filename and/or description would be purely optional. --ghouston (talk) 22:06, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
That discussion got a bit derailed by the idea of using a SHA hash for the page link, which wouldn't be a great idea because its long and cryptic, and it would change if a new version of a file was uploaded. However, it has also been pointed out that file pages already have a unique "Page ID", which can be seen by selecting the Page information from the left menu. A link to a file like https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_McKenna,_Associate_Justice,_Supreme_Court,_full-length_portrait,_seated,_facing_right_LCCN97502836.tif could instead be done with something like https://commons.wikimedia.org/m/67929603 and used within wikitext with something like [[media:67929603]]. The advantages would be a) shorter links in most cases b) file titles replaced with captions which can be multilingual and changed at any time without breaking links. The disadvantages would be a) the link doesn't describe the file in any way and b) if somebody types the wrong number they'll get the wrong file. --ghouston (talk) 02:11, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
@Ghouston: As a Wikipedian who still prefers editing wikitext, I would find something like [[media:67929603]] in the source code too cryptic, too. Well... it seems that people responsible for the Upload Wizard either a) don't read this discussion at all (despite my pointer at Commons talk:Upload Wizard), or b) for whatever reason decided to remain silent...? Gestumblindi (talk) 21:41, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Not exactly a diorama

Model of dog team and musher

At the moment it's in Category:Dioramas, but it's not exactly a diorama. I'm not sure what to call it. Can anyone suggest a better category or categories? (It has several other categories related to other aspects). - Jmabel ! talk 06:05, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Category:Museum figures? MKFI (talk) 07:08, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
Certainly worth adding (and thanks for that, new one to me), but doesn't seem to describe the whole exhibit including dogs and sled. - Jmabel ! talk 16:36, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
an article in the german wikipedia about a museum uses the word "Rekonstruktion" for a model on display. --C.Suthorn (talk) 17:50, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Every time a Commons File is shared on Facebook, the preview is wrong

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T213031
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T213505

As you see, when someone shares a Commons File on Facebook, the preview is all wrong. It shouldn't just grab the Exif template, but instead the Description. Jidanni (talk) 13:19, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Commons seems to be lacking 'Open Graph' metatdata headers, as described (for instance) at [6]. It's missing Twitter headers, too. See Phabricator links, above. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:20, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
If a third-party file is CC-BY-SA, it shouldn't be "shared" on Facebook anyway, I think: meta:Legal/CC BY-SA on Facebook. Gestumblindi (talk) 22:01, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  1. I often share my own CC-BY-SA content on Facebook, which is entirely unproblematic.
  2. The problem discussed at meta:Legal/CC BY-SA on Facebook is about posting the image on FB, which would indeed give FB an incompatible license, and shouldn't be done without the rights-holder's content.
  3. Jidanni's question is about linking from Facebook. Certainly it is legal to post a URL on Facebook, and certain Facebook does not gain any license from someone doing so. They show the image (which is desirable) but presumably only on a fair-use basis: they do the same thing with (for example) images from news sites). So the question, and Andy's response is entirely legitimate. - Jmabel ! talk 00:11, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Reorganizing Once a Week magazine categories

Currently, Category:Once a Week (magazine) is organized into subpages by volume. However, in fact, it was published in four series, each with volumes numbered 1 through X. So I would like to create further subpages of the form Once a Week (magazine)/Series N/Volume X (currently they are, with inconsistencies, mostly Once A Week magazine/Volume X). I'm not sure how to handle the redirecting, disambiguating, and reorganization involved. Before I realized that I was hopelessly confused, I created unnecessary category pages Category:Once A Week magazine/Volume 5 (series 2) and Category:Once A Week magazine/Volume 5 (disambiguation)-- please delete them if necessary. How should this reorganization be done? Levana Taylor (talk) 18:33, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

I wouldn't use slashes in category names. One option would be to ignore the series and volume and make a category for each year, e.g., as done for Category:The London Magazine. Then they would also fit into Category:Magazines of the United Kingdom by year. --ghouston (talk) 22:06, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
That certainly makes sense. It's more intuitive, and it makes for half as many categories (since there are two volumes per year). One difficulty is that volumes don't exactly line up with years: the odd-numbered ones start in the last week of December rather than the first week of January! I certainly wouldn't recommend splitting up volumes, trying to figure out which few images at the start of the book are "previous year" to the rest. Levana Taylor (talk) 03:26, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Image from 1936 book

Does anyone know if an image of this 1936 book is allowed to be uploaded here? Thank you! Mateussf (talk) 22:30, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Unlikely: The description page states "In copyright. Digitized with the permission of the Chicago Field Museum. For information contact dcc@library.uiuc.edu." The Biodiversity Heritage Library lists it as having a non-commerical license (by-nc-sa 3.0), which is not allowable per COM:LICENSES. There is a copyright notice on page 5 so {{PD-US-no notice}} doesn't apply. The only plausible way this might qualify as public domain is if it can be demonstrated the copyright was not renewed 28 years afterward, per {{PD-US-not renewed}}. Note: in the future, copyright questions are better asked at Commons:Village pump/Copyright. --Animalparty (talk) 22:49, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
It was supposed to be renewed in 1963 or 1964, but I can't find any records pertaining to Wilfrid D. Hambly, Primitive Hunters of Australia, or even the Field Museum in the volumes linked at [7] and [8]. Considering how uncommon renewals were (see [9]), it's possible that the book is public domain, despite what the Field Museum says. clpo13(talk) 22:59, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
I found no evidence of renewal either. It's possible the Anthropology Leaflet/Anthropological Leaflet series to which this publication belongs was renewed separately but I'm not sure how periodicals are handled: did every issue need separate renewal in its 28th year of copyright? --Animalparty (talk) 23:58, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure issues had to be renewed separately. They're grouped together in the Copyright Office catalogs under the periodical name but with different registration/renewal dates for each issue (see [10], for example).
FWIW, I found another scan of the book at HathiTrust, where it's marked public domain. clpo13(talk) 00:26, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
Cool, then from available evidence (or lack thereof) it looks like the text and the image in question are public domain. Although this doesn't necessarily mean that all of the images therein may be: the images and photographs credited "courtesy of ___" may have been previously published. --Animalparty (talk) 01:52, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

March 07

Zombie cats

(It have happened before; today’s example is as good as any:) The following popped up in my watchlist:

diff hist N Category:1983 in Sydney‎; 07:15:51 +30‎ ‎ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 talk contribs‎ (←Created page with '{{Sydneyyear|198|3|1980|1990}}') Tag: 2017 wikitext editor

Now, how come a newly created cat is already in someone’s watchlist? It’s because it had existed before and got deleted after it was watchlisted. Now, while it is deleted the redlink brings us to a handy pseudo-404 page where we can see when it was deleted and by whom and why (example). Upon recreation, though, that uinformation is lost and, for the typical user, there’s no clues in the page history about its former incarnation (curiously, if a page is deleted twice, two such notices are now shown in the redlink target).

Now, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to have, upon recreation, the whole history of the previously deleted version(s)?. I think it would. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 11:28, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

On the revision history you find on top of the page a link called "View logs for this page" which shows you this. There you can see if and when the page has been previiously deleted. --JuTa 11:42, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

March 08

International Women's Day

File:Women’s Day March (1975).jpg
International Women's Day 1975

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Tuvalkin (talk • contribs) 13:42, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Flickr will not be deleting any CC image

Flickr has changed its decision and that it will not delete any publicly available CC-licensed images from a user's account even if that puts them over 1000 images, and restate their commitment to the Creative Commons.s [11] --Masem (talk) 19:13, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Structured data development update

I've updated the tentative release timeline and other information for the next structured data features, including some points about testing and the coming ability to search for captions. Please have a look if you're interested. Thanks. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:11, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Railway lines

Before I turn this into an even bigger mess, which I regretfully also contributed to, I'd like to get some consensus on the naming of Dutch railway line categories.

  1. Should I use a hyphen or en-dash (like at en-WP) to link the two termini of a line? This discussion and the COM:Categories#Category names policy suggests hyphens. In case of hyphens, should the hyphen include spaces before and after?
  2. Should the categories end in "railway" or "railway line"?
  3. What should be done about categories that cannot be moved because there is already a category redirect in place?

Your input is highly appreciated. --HyperGaruda (talk) 05:02, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

1. @Dicklyon & @Tuvalkin: your opinion?
2. Just "railway" is sufficient. Calling it "railway line" is redundant, and for instances of referring to a specific company, WP:en uses the capitalized "Railway" to differentiate.
3. Request a category move here. Useddenim (talk) 14:13, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
Pinging @Dicklyon.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:07, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
  • My replies:
  1. About §1 I’m all for hyphens, for purely typographic reasons (the en dash is too similar to a real minus sign, which in turn should always match the form of a plus sign).
  2. I’m with Useddenim concerning §2, but specific companies in this subtree are expected to have Dutch names, nor English.
  3. As for §3, you can also ask me or anyone with filemoving abilities.
-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 14:56, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your responses so far. At this point I am leaning towards hyphens, also because it simplifies searches and typing. After all, Commons is a file archive where the ease of finding something should have priority over looking pretty, right? Perhaps the railway line/railway distinction has got something to do with English dialects or, as Useddenim mentioned, to distinguish lines from companies. I do agree having "line" next to "-way" looks redundant, though. I'll wait until the weekend before deciding; see if other views will come up. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:05, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Category move template

So I have just tried out {{Move}}, and the resulting banner says "... or rename it and move the content manually. If the new destination category exists, you can remove this template, replacing it with {{category redirect|Utrecht-Rotterdam railway}}." Isn't this suggesting to do a cut-and-paste move, which should be avoided for copyright reasons as mentioned at COM:HISTMERGE? --HyperGaruda (talk) 05:03, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Not sure exactly what you are asking, but maybe this will help:
- Jmabel ! talk 06:16, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, good to know cut-and-paste moves are less of a concern here than, say, over at Wikipedia. By the way, at User talk:CommonsDelinker/commands, I just noticed Cerkash's list of requested moves from hyphened to spaced en-dash category names. That would be the exact opposite of what is described in the section above. --HyperGaruda (talk) 07:20, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
Pinging @Cherkash.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:30, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Photo challenge January results

Bathrooms: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image
Title Mizunashi-Kaihin Onsen is a unique outdoor bath in Hakodate,
Japan, that combines a hot spring (water temperature 50
degrees Celsius) with the Pacific Ocean. Normally submerged,
the bath only appears when the tide is out.		 Baiz' toilet, Berlin Bathroom in a hotel in Honfleur, Normandy, France
Author OKJaguar Dreirik Kmtextor
Score 18 16 14
Engines and motors: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image
Title IL-62 Flugzeugturbine. Aufgenommen in Leipzig. Heavy truck engine Motor Basich Brothers (Los Angeles - San Francisco) in Borax museum. Furnace creek resort USA.
Author Kora27 Spielvogel Pierre André Leclercq
Score 16 15 14

Congratulations to OKJaguar, Dreirik, Kmtextor, Kora27, Spielvogel and Pierre André Leclercq. -- Jarekt (talk) 03:25, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your notification. Regards,--Pierre André (talk) 10:03, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Kendrew Myoglobin Model

File:Kendrew Myoglobin Model.jpg was deleted as a copyright violation. It's a molecular model - is that correct? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:00, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: Do molecular models not attract copyright? You may discuss that with @Túrelio at COM:UDR or COM:VPC.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 15:15, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

How long do deletions take?

Hi,

Several days ago I requested that one of my uploads https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:London_Overground_Class_378_interior.jpg be nominated for deletion. I noticed that this nomination has been open more than 10 days and nothing has happened. How long do such requests usually take? This is the first time I have requested a deletion so I don't really know how it works.

Thanks ElshadK (talk) 17:39, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

✓ Done now by Yann. --Túrelio (talk) 17:45, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
General answer: Except in obvious cases for speedy deletion, deletion requests are usually kept open for discussion for at least seven days. Per COM:DR: "In general, requests can be closed by an administrator after seven days". It can take much longer, however. The oldest deletion requests currently open are a few from September 2018, and quite a lot from October. It depends upon the complexity of the cases as well as how much time the volunteer admins are able to invest. Gestumblindi (talk) 17:51, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

March 11

Free online jpg to svg converter

Can someone recommend a free online jpg to svg converter, there are about a dozen online that give mixed results, several seem to just append svg to the filename and return a bitmapped image. Anyone using a good one to convert signatures? RAN (talk) 05:23, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

  • What’s needed here is not “converting” but rather tracing. Which is not a straightforward process, typically needing a lot of human input, judgement, and skill — not the kind of thing that can be expected to go down easily as an automated process, especially not one offered in a website on the fly for free. I recommend using Inkscape or some such. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 23:36, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
  • The only decent tool I've found for online tracing is Vector Magic, but it's not free. I think they used to offer a free trial where you could do two files for free before you have to subscribe (or clear your cookies), but I'm not sure if they offer it any more. Automatically tracing bitmap images to vector images is a hard enough problem that you're unlikely to find a good free online solution. --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 17:10, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Does it need to be online? Inkscape can do a pretty decent job. Spinal83 (talk) 10:12, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes, Vector Magic wasn't dreadful, and even gave some passable results on images which had good contrast/defined areas. In general though, I concur with Tuvalkin - tracing "is not a straightforward process, typically needing a lot of human input, judgement, and skill — not the kind of thing that can be expected to go down easily as an automated process, especially not one offered in a website on the fly for free". Some of the worst website "conversion" tools just wrap the bitmap in an svg 'wrapper', creating {{BadSVG}}s. -- Begoon 10:54, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Category:ACF Fiorentina

Please revert the bold move from Category:ACF Fiorentina to Category:A.C.F. Fiorentina. The correct version (ACF Fiorentina) had no dots. That user made a lot of cross-wiki disruptive edit. See en:wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Cross-wiki disruptive behaviour of bold move by User:DZwarrior1. Matthew hk (talk) 13:58, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

I am not sure the page history was well reserved if just c&p to move back to the original namespace. See [12] and [13] Matthew hk (talk) 21:39, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
Since nothing in the content of the wikitext for the page really rises to the level of being eligible for copyright, the history of the page isn't really material. And none of it is lost: it can all be found either at Category:ACF Fiorentina or Category:A.C.F. Fiorentina. - Jmabel ! talk 22:11, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Category pages with fake Creator templates

There are some 150 category pages that contain a fake Creator template, rather than a real one: hastemplate:Creator insource:/\{\{Creator[^:]/ -insource:/\{\{Creator.? *\|.? *Wikidata/i
Is anyone able to check for the existence of the corresponding Creator template and replace the fake ones? For the remaining ones, I guess that Creator templates need to be created and transcluded. --Leyo 23:58, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

@Leyo: It would be better to migrate the information in them to wikidata (creating new Wikidata items if needed) rather than creating new creator templates here. That way the info's automatically shown in {{Wikidata Infobox}} in the categories and {{Artwork}} in the files. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 00:30, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
That's fine, too. ;-) Any helping hand is appreciated. --Leyo 00:42, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
@Jarekt: Would this potentially a task for your bot? --Leyo 10:45, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
Survey of some of those pages, shows that they fall into many categories:
  • Many are created by me for Warsaw Uprising photographers for whom I did not have enough information to create Creator page. In many cases all I have was a name and that during Warsaw Uprising they took some photos. Some of those now do have articles on plWiki and items on Wikidata.
  • pages for other similar creators about whom we do not know enough. Years ago I actively surveyed soch pages and was moving them to "real" Creator pages if warranted.
  • Some pages are autobiographical for commons photographers, who were discouraged from creating "real" Creator pages. Such "fake" Creator templates was a recommended approach.
  • Others have items on Wikidata and should be migrated and replaced by {{Wikidata Infobox}}, like Category:Marc Duval (painter) was.
I do not think a bot can help here much, as for each page we need to search Wikidata and if not found assess if person meets Wikidata Notability criteria and if we have enough information to create an item for them. --Jarekt (talk) 13:26, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

March 09

How to license this? Help please

File:L'Arabie.jpg Please help!!. I have uploaded a map and I thought that it is free from copyright because they are from an old book turns out that there is a copyright by the photographer. In his site he says this "Images copyright © 2000 by Cartography Associates. Images may be reproduced or transmitted, but not for commercial use." https://www.davidrumsey.com/about he also added "This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License." I do not know how to change the images license to be in compliance with the copyrights he gave. Can you edit them? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SharabSalam (talk • contribs) 16:53, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

I think that the image can be cropped to satisfy the requirements of {{Pd-art}}. Ruslik (talk) 16:58, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
@Ruslik0: My problem is that I made the images completely with no copyright but they are under Creative Commons License--SharabSalam (talk) 17:01, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
@SharabSalam: What country were you in and what year was it when you "made the images completely with no copyright"?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 17:21, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
Jeff G.I am so sorry. My English is not good. What I meant when I said that I made them completely with no copyright. I meant that when I uploaded them to Wiki commons I made the license with no copyright because I thought they are from an old book that dates to the 17s. I then realised that the map that I uploaded is actually under a certain copyright because the photographer of the map says so. This is the map that I uploaded File:L'Arabie.jpg this is where the photographer says that the images are under Creative Commons License. https://www.davidrumsey.com/about The image are from his website. SharabSalam (talk) 17:30, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
The license that I wrote there is {{PD-old-70-1923}} and it should be something else or I don't know what it should be but it should not be like this. Are we allowed to upload images that are under Creative Commons License?--SharabSalam (talk) 17:36, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
@SharabSalam: Rumsey uses cc-by-nc-sa 3.0, which we normally don't accept, but after cropping the photo complies with {{Pd-art}}, which we do accept.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 18:07, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
Thank you so much for your help.--SharabSalam (talk) 18:21, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
@SharabSalam: You're welcome.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:58, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
It doesn't look like a work of art. IMO it should be just {{PD-old-auto-expired}}. BTW. I have hidden the original version due to copyright violation. --jdx Re: 11:06, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

March 10

Need to find the Wikipedia Common Administrator Talk page so I can communicate with him.

I am the contributor to the Wikipedia article of General Juan Francisco Morales Llerena of Ecuador that is on the Spanish Wikipedia.

I need to communicate with Wikipedia Commons Administrator about a photo that I uploaded to the article. However, I do not remember his name, but I would recognize it if I saw his name in a list of Administrators. Once I have his name, I can communicate with him on his Wikipedia User's talk page.

Thank you.

Bodvar Antonio Gregersen--Bodvar Antonio Gregersen (talk) 13:59, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Commons:Administrators Jim.henderson (talk) 14:05, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
...or just klick on the "Contributions"-button in the top right corner of your screen, identify your complaint from last year there and identify the person you look for. Alexpl (talk) 14:16, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
@Bodvar Antonio Gregersen: https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Juan_Francisco_Morales_Llerena&offset=&limit=500&action=history may help. If you are looking for the user who deleted File:Requim Mass for General Morales in Quito (4-12-1913).jpg for lack of a license, they can be reached via User talk:Jcb. What license did you intend for that file?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 04:18, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
do not bother communicating with that admin; no use. rather go to com:DRV. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 11:55, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

March 12

The price of coffee

I had to look something up in the English Wikipedia while not logged in just now, and got this “nag screen” asking for donations: «To all our readers in Portugal, »(…)« If everyone reading this gave €2, »(…)« The price of your Tuesday coffee». Well, if this is being tailored specifically for an audience in Portugal, it would be advisable to consider that here coffee is most usually an espresso, and that costs between 0,50 € and 0,75 €; two euros would be the price of one’s whole breakfast if one’s not especially peckish and avoids obvious tourist traps. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 08:39, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm tempted to move to Portugal. --ghouston (talk) 08:55, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
go grief them over at m:Talk:Fundraising. but you should expect more central notice banners from chapters, as they raise funds on their own, separate from WMF. you are not their target audience. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 11:52, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Mistake in coordinates

Seems that coordinates on this auto-uploaded photo are wrong :-) Could somebody from USA correct them (and change category)? --Slb nsk (talk) 13:04, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Don't need to be from the US to fix a missing "-" in the latitude and find appropriate categories ;-) If someone from Philadelphia could figure out the exact camera location, that would be nice. Otherwise I'd consider this done. --El Grafo (talk) 13:29, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
“14th and Market” ought to be enough info to place the camera location within 10 m or so with the aid of an online map.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 23:00, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Well, [there's no 14th street]. Only North and South Broad Street and none of them intersects with Market street. But yeah should be possible to figure this out with Google Street view or Mapillary or other pictures we have … --El Grafo (talk) 11:02, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
I found a likely spot. --ghouston (talk) 01:45, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

License question for RStudio logos

Hi, this is yet another random license question. I'm seeking to include a SVG logo for RStudio software. They are provided here with conditions, and trademarks discussed separately. The confusion is that the software has a {{AGPL}} license, except for registered trademarks (which includes logos). But the logos can be used by third parties without a license, assuming a few conditions are met. So does this logo meet eligibility for inclusion here? And if so, under what license model? +mt 20:42, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

@Mwtoews: A logo consisting solely of basic geometric shapes and text like this one is ineligible for copyright (at least in the United States, where RStudio is based), and could be uploaded with {{PD-text-logo}} and {{Trademarked}}. I'm not sure if the gradients on en:File:RStudio logo.png are considered simple enough to prevent copyright registration, so perhaps stick with the simple flat logos. See Threshold of originality and Commons:Copyright rules by subject matter#Trademarks for more info. (also, in the future it's more efficient to direct questions like this to Commons:Village pump/Copyright). --Animalparty (talk) 00:05, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the rational analysis! Flat logo now at File:RStudio logo flat.svg. +mt 02:15, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

March 14

the caption thing

Thanks for adding it, I now added and translated my first caption.

Why doesn't it take the description from the {{Information}} automatically?

Also when I view the file at another wiki (not Wikimedia Commons), the captions utility widget is not present. --Gryllida (chat) 22:41, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

@Gryllida: there’s been a fair bit of discussion on the subject, here and at COM:VPP. Briefly, since the captions go into a database they’re licensed differently from file descriptions (CCo rather than CC BY-SA, I believe), and this feature is the first to appear under the auspices of the Commons-specific COM:Structured data effort.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 23:10, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
They are confusing and duplicate metadata for no clear benefit. I recommend ignoring them, or as many of us already have, disable them in your preferences. --Fæ (talk) 23:17, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
I assume that by “disabling in your preferences”, you mean enabling the Hide-Captions gadget? If so, and for clarity on how many is “many”: according to Special:GadgetUsage, 50 out of 38,791 active users have it enabled (0.13%). Jean-Fred (talk) 23:57, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes, that’s exactly the kind of metric that allows a good understanding of how a wiki works, Jean-Fred, good job. I’m one of those 50, btw. That thing, being absent from a file page’s wikitext, doesn’t fit anywhere my usual workflow, anyway. Not to say that individual descriptions of media items, as opposed to their categorization, is usually a wasted effort. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 19:53, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
    • But the measure doesn't include those like me who consider it a crappy idea, minimize the tool, but still want to be able to see what's going on when someone adds a caption to my photos (so far, more vandalism than good captions on those, by the way). - Jmabel ! talk 23:42, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
      Sure, this is not meant to be, nor can be, a mood barometer about Captions :)
      @Jmabel: Have you noticed a pattern in the vandalism? We can think of adding AbuseFilters to curb it. Jean-Fred (talk) 14:09, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
@Gryllida: In case you have not seen it yet, you may be interested in Commons:File captions. If there are things on that page that are, say, confusing ; or if the explanations are unclear − please do point it out, either here or on the talk page (or feel free to edit the page directly). Jean-Fred (talk) 23:57, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Considering the tiny size of our active community, 50 people making the effort to suppress captions, because they litter image pages with redundant chaff, is large, thanks for the count. --Fæ (talk) 00:03, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
and getting tinier every day. but have no fear, you have turned off the functionality, even as they make your uploads more accessible. however, your custom template without a wikidata field images (File:The Dead Stretcher-bearer Art.IWMART3688.jpg) are on their own. how dare they interrupt your process. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 12:08, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
The only stats I have don't seem to show a decline in participation. As for my creation of the IWM template in 2013, making sarcastic comments because I did not use Wikidata several years before it was realistically useful, is beneath you, try doing some basic analysis before getting your shotgun out and blasting everyone please. Thanks so much. --Fæ (talk) 09:56, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
@Fæ: I don’t know how you define “Active community”, so it’s somewhat difficult to interpret your statement. However, there are (and have been for years) clear definitions used, Active editor (who make 5 or more edits in a given month) and “Very active editor” (who make 100 edits or more in a given month). Based on the data at stats.wikimedia.org (and unless I have made mistakes in my calculation), in January, Wikimedia Commons was the second most active community, on both metrics − behind en.wp, and just ahead of Wikidata (with de.wp and es.wp following). (As far as I recall, this has been the case since end of 2011 − although I can imagine Wikidata and Commons overtaking each other depending on the month). Based on this data (reproduced in the table below for convenience), I don’t think one can deem the Wikimedia Commons active community “tiny”.
Moving back to the usage of Hide-Captions Gadget: what we know is that 67 users enabled it − 16 of which have not edited in the last 30 days. So, regardless of how you want to define “active community”, the only way to interpret this number of 51 'non-inactive-users' (having edited at least once in the last 30 days) having enabled it is by comparison to the total number of 'non-inactive-users', which as I stated above, is 38,791 active users. The rest is speculation. You may choose to believe that these 50 users are not-only non-inactive-editors, but that all or most of them are of the 12,282 active-editors, or of the 2,190 very-active editors (or however else you may want to arbitrarily define “active”), and I can see the reasoning here (“the MostVeryVeryActive™ are the ones annoyed by this!”), but there is simply no data to back that up − the fact that almost a quarter (16/67) of the gadget users are non-active users (no edits in the last 30 days) would tend to disprove it.
Now, I don’t discard the feelings of these 51 users which obviously (at least at the point where they chose to enable the gadget) had a bad experience with Captions − in fact, I care so much about these users that I made the gadget for them in the first place ;-) I’m also aware, that the gadget is not necesarily the whole story as some users may have hidden captions directly in their common.css. Either way, the fact that 51 users did “make the effort” (aka: tick a box) to hide captions does say something ; but we have to stay realistic on how big that number is, and stick to the facts − that 0,13% of non-inactive users have hidden captions.
Thanks, Jean-Fred (talk) 09:26, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Wiki Active editors Very active editors
en.wp 71808 5172
commons 12282 2190
wikidata 12130 2159
es.wp 11521 757
fr.wp 9985 1072
de.wp 9619 1337
it.wp 7346 631
pt.wp 3995 309
Not sure I understand the point of stats from other projects, which are significantly different in nature to Commons. "Very active" by the definition you apply is almost meaningless, as 100 edits on Commons can be done in 5 seconds in 1 user action, using standard tools like cat-a-lot. I tend to look at User:Fæ/Userlist and the account names that regularly appear in discussions like DRs and noticeboards, these are the people that create 80%+ of all Commons content.
However this is a tangent, captions was rolled out without a meaningful consensus and has corrupted Wikimedia Commons by introducing a CC0 field for users on a project that since inception has been CC-BY-SA. This is fundamental, will constantly confuse new users, and stupid to get wrong in the first place. The only reason for doing this has been the covert take-over of Commons by Wikidata obsessives, not the long term interests of Wikimedia Commons. --Fæ (talk) 09:48, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @Jean-Frédéric: You said that «we have to stay realistic on how big that number is, and stick to the facts». Well, I stick to the fact that you’re the one who brought up the matter of how many people are disabling captions. Nor Fæ, nor Jmabel, nor I ever said that captions are problematic because many people think so. I’d still think captions are a bad idea even if everybody else were positively in love with it — which is not the case. Obfuscating arguments about every new poorly designed contraption by bringing up numbers of users “using” it is what WMF sycophants usually do, not the carmudgeons «clinging to their Monobooks». -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 13:44, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
    Er: I recommend ignoring them, or as many of us already have, disable them in your preferences (emphasis mine). Jean-Fred (talk) 13:48, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
I used the definition I used because we need definitions to be able to talk about things (and then we can indeed argue how good the definition is) − otherwise such discussions are meaningless. You made the claim that our active editing community is tiny without defining the term − which made me curious and prompted me to dig into the data.
I do get your point regarding tools like Cat-A-Lot ; as for the data, Cat-A-Lot is enabled by 1,866 non-inactive-users, not quite the 2,190 very-active-users but close indeed (interestinly VisualFileChange is enabled by a mere 406? Could need some publicity :))
The comparison with other projects is made to avoid having numbers in a vacuum ; I’d say relevant at the very least is Wikidata, which certainly has both a very discrete editing pattern (1 action = 1 edit, one racks them up very quickly) and the large ecosystem of mass-edit tools.
Regarding whether this is a tangent: again, you stated that “many” users choose to disable it in their preferences − which again made me curious to check the actual data of the usage of the gadget (that I happen to have created, hence also my interest).
I think my point is that there is enough to criticize on the way captions were rolled-out (the issues you list, although I’m not sure how many would agree with “the take-over of Commons by Wikidata obsessives”, and rather file it as a conspiracy theory), and that the concerns were expressed clearly by unhappy/concerned users (scoop: I was also not fully happy with this roll-out), that we do not need to deviate from facts and eg inflate the numbers of folks who hid it in their preferences.
Jean-Fred (talk) 13:54, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
A "conspiracy theory" is only theoretical if there is no evidence of a conspiracy, even a tacit one. A Venn diagram of participants in the related discussions about captions, shows how Wikidata advocates have dominated the false perception that the Commons community ever wanted captions, ever asked for captions or ever established a consensus.
Right now, we still do not know what this WMF funded bonus "functionality" is for, what to do with existing copyright violations they create, or why it might be worth duplicating text in titles and descriptions in a uniquely CC0 text box.
Hm, an unnecessary captions box that encourages and misleads new users to commit systemic copyfraud. Which side of this do you want to be on? --Fæ (talk) 14:30, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Note that Gadget-Hide-Captions is not the only thing interfering with the Wikidatan toy – I never used that gadget, for the record. There is also my amateur UI tweak and possibly some other solutions based on CSS. Certainly more than 51 Commons users are unhappy with the default settings in this respect. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:55, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Sure, of course ; and to be honest I’m one of them, as I use Compact-Captions (again, I care so much about these users that I made two other gadgets for such user customisations :) Jean-Fred (talk) 17:54, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
The long term goal is to replace file names by IDs so that there are no problems with renaming and languages anymore. As far as I know there where many similar wishes at the yearly technical wishes surveys. --GPSLeo (talk) 17:00, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Firstly there is no community consensus for such a freaky change.
Secondly, unique IDs for every file already exist. You are free to use them for projects, if you really want to. The use of automatically generated IDs is behind the scenes and has been since this project was first launched, there is no benefit to dropping filenames, which are easy for users to understand and reuse.
Thirdly, no, it's not a long term goal for this project. --Fæ (talk) 17:27, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Do you want to make a survey about something if there is no example for an alternative? We first need a better working system before we can decide to delete the old. (OK, you could say the current system is working very well and no change is needed. I do not think so.) I do not know what "behind the scenes" should be at a wiki, everything is public and all tools are open source everyone invited to change something. --GPSLeo (talk) 18:59, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
@GPSLeo: Are you saying that file names that are meaningless to everyone are better than ones that many but not all people understand? Seems a bit backward to me. - Jmabel ! talk 21:57, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Sounds like a quick way to stop everyone from using Commons, or maybe the intent is to turn Commons into a kind of file storage completely directed by Wikidata. It seems to be the strategy of Structured Data, so you'll soon have to create a Wikidata record to do anything significant on this project. The forcing of "Creator" to always map to a Wikidata record being a good example, if it does not, then that is flagged as an error. Super, let's have a vote on whether we want Commons to be entirely run by Wikidata wizards and any remaining obsessive Commoners can be slowly painted into the corners where we can be ignored. --Fæ (talk) 22:16, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
You only will need these IDs when you make changes by a bot or other mass edit tools or if you embed these images, but I think no one is typing the filename to embed a image in a Wiki everyone copy-pastes the filename or uses the embed code. For the downloaded file you could generate the filename by the captions or get the file with the ID as name like what is your personal preference. --GPSLeo (talk) 22:29, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Unique IDs already exist. There is nothing to stop you using them, if you really wanted to. Clearly you cannot find a file by using captions because they are not unique. I am not sure where you are getting this from, hopefully not a Structured Data plan. --Fæ (talk) 22:35, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
@GPSLeo: See Commons_talk:Structured_data/Archive_2018#The_future_of_file_names from April last year. Suffice to say, the suggestion of getting rid of file names was ... not ... well-received, and I would think might not be back any time soon. Jheald (talk) 23:33, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Who sayed soon? 2 or 3 years are a long time in the internet. --GPSLeo (talk) 23:41, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
@GPSLeo: I think the points made in that thread would be no different in three years, and probably no different in ten years. It may be possible that one will be able to additionally refer to files (or at least file pages) as M43219876, in analogy to Wikidata Q-numbers. But I see no prospect of file names disappearing. Jheald (talk) 00:06, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
You are probably right that (almost) no one is typing the filename to embed a image in a Wiki, but plenty of us are typing part of the file name into the URL bar of our browsers to get back to something we recently worked on. - Jmabel ! talk 15:40, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

March 13

Art in the metro of Brussels

Are the metro stations in Brussels 'public space' for the purposes of the FoP Belgian license. It is not very clear. There are many artworks in the metro: see Art Dans Le Metro.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:57, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

IANAL, only my legal conception. a) Railway stations including metro stations are public places, unless otherwise explicitly mentioned in a law and/or a case decision. b) Public interiors are to be treated same way as public exteriors, unless... (idem). c) in COM:FOP Belgium there is no mention of any restriction on metro stations and/or interiors. Given that all, d) I would say, no problem about metro station photos in Belgium. --A.Savin 15:24, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
The problem is that these stations are closed of at nigth when the trains no longer run. So in a strict sense it the spaces are not permanently open. The public accessible spaces in the metrostation is compagny space, where the transport compagny in principle can impose its own rules. It can ask junks to leave the station. It is similar (except for the longer opening hours) to a shopping hall. Is a shopping hall a public or private space?Smiley.toerist (talk) 15:39, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Well, as said IANAL (and much less a Belgian one), but metro stations are public transport buildings, and public transport buildings are for me clearly places dedicated to the public, despite the fact that they may not be open 24h/7d and an entrance fee (=ticket charge) is required to enter. Shopping malls are places dedicated to public either, though of course some countries may have distinct (case)law on that. --A.Savin 16:54, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
There is a Category:Art in MIVB station, with examples, so it is no problem.Smiley.toerist (talk) 14:05, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Communication tools

Please see Commons:Talk pages consultation 2019. Ignore the "talk pages" name; this isn't (only) about the Talk: namespace.

Nutshell: People complain about how hard it is to communicate, so the WMF has decided to do something next year (maybe something big, but probably something smaller) to make communication between contributors easier.

Your task: If you don't tell them what Commons wants, then they'll probably do whatever the Wikipedia editors want. So: Something to make it easier to coordinate Wiki Loves Monuments? A way to talk to Wikipedia editors without leaving Commons? Help with multi-lingual communication? Think about what you need to do every day, and what might make it easier for you, and then tell them. Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:33, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Images by vs. Photographs by

We have "Images by" and we have "Photographs by". Is "Images by" the standard for contemporary Wikimedia contributors and "Photographs by" for historic commercial photographers? I get the feeling this is what is implied, but it is not followed by everyone. RAN (talk) 20:51, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

For my personal user categories, I have "Photographs by" as a subcategory of "Files by", which also includes subcategories for maps and other non-photograph files. In that case, "Images by" would be neither accurate nor useful; however, most Commons photographers only upload photos and not other file types. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 21:01, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I agree, it seems like the "Images by" for photographs only are outliers, but too annoying to migrate just to have harmonization. RAN (talk) 21:55, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
Collections often have non photographs. --Fæ (talk) 23:16, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Request: please change the name of Category:Food and Agriculture Organization to Category:Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Hi all

I want to change the name of Category:Food and Agriculture Organization to Category:Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (this is the correct name for the organisation). I can't remember how to do it (I remember it involves moving files), I don't want to make a mess of it, could someone who knows what they're doing please do it?

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 14:06, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

@John Cummings: Should be complete; please see if it's as you want it and if so mark this section with {{Section resolved}}. - Jmabel ! talk 23:04, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Perfect, thanks very much @Jmabel: . Best, John Cummings (talk) 23:44, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by:   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 01:13, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Mount Kearsarge

Found this in Category:Wilmot, New Hampshire. Disc was not enlightening. I would like to kindly inquire as to the possibility to get it out of there, as there seems to be no relation to the topic at hand. Or could somebody please tell me? Yours sincerely, --G-41614 (talk) 20:52, 14 March 2019 (UTC) No, really, I don't get the point of this pic in that category.

Ah, yet another out-of-scope Unsplash image with misleading categories. Those images were automatically categorized with the town based on the coordinates, though that's not useful for images like this where the location is irrelevant. I've added better categories. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 21:54, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • (Funny thing — back when we started adding stuff from Unsplash, the main issue was that their website almost never added additional info about their images’s locations, with minimalist legends and scrubbed metadata.) I would say that all photos could/should have geolocation, but surely, yes, for some (like scans) that’s a pretty irrelevant data nugget. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 09:53, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

March 15

Creator templates

At one time the norm was to create a "Creator template" for each photographer or other creative person and add it to the top of the category such as seen here: Category:Photographs_by_Severin_Worm-Petersen, it was done sporadically because the template had to be created by hand, now they are created on the fly with Wikidata. Is there any consensus to automate the process and add them to all categories that contain the output of a creative person? RAN (talk) 22:01, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): Creating such templates I think would be a generally good idea. As for adding them to categories, in many cases images of an artist's works may simply just be put all into the main category for the artist. As that would likely have a {{Wikidata infobox}}, in such cases I would think showing a creator template as well would be unnecessarily redundant, and just clutter the page. But where there is a subcategory, specifically for the works of the artist, that in general would not have a wikidata infobox, then I can see that there could be a good case for showing the creator template instead. Jheald (talk) 14:15, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
I am only suggesting it for the categories of the creative works themselves, not the person category, which would use the standard infobox. RAN (talk) 18:27, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
Yes, automating the creation of creator templates would be good. Regards, Yann (talk) 19:07, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

March 16

Name of category

Hey guys, I was wondering if we can move Category:Wild Fire (band) to simply Wild Fire. Is that possible?--Épine (talk) 15:52, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

I don't think that's a good idea because people will probably confuse it with Category:Wildfires. It's also possible that other organizations exist named Wild Fire. By the way, COM:CFD is the normal place for discussions like this. BMacZero (talk) 17:33, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

March 17

See also: Commons:Bots/Work requests#Internet Archive preservation of external links.

As there seems to be consensus to archive links to external websites on Wikimedia Commons (Mobile 📱) this would actually need to be implemented with a bot (or by someone who wants a bot for this task), however as Fæ wants to important more content and as other users I've asked like Mike Peel don't have the expertise to archive external links someone should be able to archive them. I've seen several users who already archive their links so maybe someone who can run a bot to do this could take up this ask.

Should I otherwise file this on the Phabricator? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:06, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: I didn't say I couldn't do it, I said it already existed at InternetArchiveBot, and that you should ask @Cyberpower678: to turn it on here. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:23, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
@Mike Peel: My bad for misunderstanding you. 🙇🏻 --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 10:43, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
Copied from "w:en:User talk:Cyberpower678#Wikimedia Commons (again)" (permanent link 🔗 / Mobile 📱).

"Please see this at Wikimedia Commons and if possible reply here, I thought that Fæ would run his bot as he has already bot-archived several links but he's too busy, if you need any advice on how to run file pages ask him. As I don't watch this page please reply on Wikimedia Commons. --Donald Trung (talk) 14:17, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Donald Trung, you need to be patient. I just got done making Wikidata work which was not an easy job for me. I'm only one person. You have filed multiple Phab tasks to have IABot run on Commons. Please just watch those tickets for changes. As long as they aren't closed, they are still on my radar.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 16:10, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
Ah, for some reason the ping didn't work. Anyhow could you post the relevant Phabricator tickets to the village pump there, maybe more people will invest their free time in them if they're made aware. --Donald Trung (talk) 19:28, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
Donald Trung, How? They don't know how to set it up with IABot.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 19:30, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
But they do have experience bot archiving links. For example see Fæ's attempts which were successful, but he says that he would rather focus on creating content. So there is already some precedent. --Donald Trung (talk) 19:35, 16 March 2019 (UTC)" - Text released under CC BY-SA 3.0 unless otherwise noted

From what I get from the text he or she doesn't know how to set up the Internet Archive Bot for files but for whatever reason doesn't want to discuss it here where there are users with literally years of experience with files on Wikimedia Commons. @Fæ: and @Mike Peel: apparently there are Phabricator tickets filed for this, but as Fæ, as you have already successfully bot-archived external links 🔗 in the past could you give him/her the code needed for the task? I don't really watch the Phabricator that closely to know if either of y'all have responded to any of these tickets but since the two of you do massive operations with bots here I thought that maybe y'all could help out. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 06:35, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

In case anyone thinks that this shouldn't be hurried, we lost a great number of useful videos because of a license change which could've been verified if the licenses were archived, who knows how many free licenses we lose every day because of linkrot. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 10:56, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

I absolutely did not say I didn't know how to set it up with Files. I absolutely did not say I wasn't working on it. Please stop misrepresenting my words. I have code modifications in the works to expand IABot onto commons. I did say you need to be patient. I spent a considerable amount of time adding Wikidata integration into IABot.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 15:01, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Mandatory categorization

This was written elsewhere by @Jheald:

Commons expects uploaders to make a reasonable attempt at decent categorisation. Uploaders that do not make such attempt, including large-scale upload projects, can expect to be blocked until they start to make such an effort.

Is this based on any policy? I find it unsettling and hope this is not accurate, as some people might be wholly unable to add categories, for lack of language skills, technical hurdles, or any of several imaginable impairments. (I’m saying this even though I think categorization is the most important job around and that categories are the glue that keeps Commons together.) And it’s no big deal for some of us to browse page after page of uncategorized images and use Cat-a-lot to add one or two cats to most of them and thus set the ball rolling by putting them where they can be further categorized later. (Less so for non-image files, but those are a relatively minor concern, in terms of sheer numbers.) -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 09:48, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

The comment was made, and can be found, in the context of two threads on the Commons talk:Structured data page, specifically this thread (on categorisation) and this thread (on GLAMs).
Possibly I overstated the position, but particularly I had in mind large organised upload projects. I do think we do expect such projects to make some reasonable attempt at categorisation, along the lines of the advice given at Commons:Guide_to_batch_uploading#Categories; and projects need to be aware that that expectation is not going to go away with SDC. In 2019 I don't think the community finds it acceptable for the images from such a project just to be dropped en-masse into an "images needing categorisation" dump category, with no further effort made. If a project did start doing that, I suspect they would be gently stopped and asked to think again, and not be permitted to go on uploading until they had a better plan for categorisation -- or at the very least not to upload uncategorised images at a faster rate than the community (or they themselves) could absorb and process. Jheald (talk) 13:59, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
I would say that minimum expectation is have some meaningful category for the batch itself, such as Category:Harris & Ewing Collection. That is a meaningful persistent category with (usually) meaningful titles and descriptions that allow the images to be found through search even if they're uncategorized further (or for the purpose of categorizing them further). Still, a category like that can take hundreds of hours to sort properly, and it's not uncommon to have to spend 20 minutes trying to identify the subject of a single photograph because of a typo or misspelling. If we require GLAMs to commit hundreds of hours to highly granular categorization in order to donate their collections, I would say that most are simply going to opt out, as most won't have the resources to do so. So the question becomes do want that media, even if it means it may be years before it's all properly sorted? I'd say the answer is usually going to be yes, since even if a particular image is eventually categorized three years from now, the project is still better off in the long term. GMGtalk 14:35, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
I agree that we shouldn't expect donating organizations to do extra work to map their images to Commons categories. However, if the images have data already associated with them like tags or a location, I think Commons bot operators should make some effort to translate those to categories (my bot does this automatically with no intervention from me). The categories are often broad and not in a "final" state, but this accelerates the process of diffusing the images and probably saves editors a lot of hours across the entire lot. BMacZero (talk) 17:54, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
If someone is looking for examples, the recent Frank Bond uploads don't come with very useful tags, so they aren't a great example. Any of the Commons:Batch uploading/University of Washington Digital Collections uploads are a much better example (e.g. Category:Images from the Wilhelm Hester Photographs Collection to check). BMacZero (talk) 17:57, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
Nobody should ever be threatened with a block for poor categorization. It is far worse for the community to have 10,000 files categorized with "painting", "Paris", or "19th-century", than having the same files with only a collection category. Please avoid making statements that incorrectly represent Commons policies, especially when talking to GLAM representatives. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 14:47, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
A block is certainly excessive, but I disagree that using very general categories is worse than having no categories at all. A lot of my batch uploads go into categories such as Category:Seattle, and I feel this makes it much easier for editors who are interested in the Seattle area (or whatever topic is concerned) to find the images and use their knowledge to diffuse them into more specific categories. If I didn't do that, a lot of the uploads would probably never be noticed or processed by anyone. I add collection categories and check categories, but much fewer people go looking for those. BMacZero (talk) 17:41, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
(Probably worth noting that these categories come from tag data at the source, they aren't just added willy-nilly to the entire collection. BMacZero (talk) 17:44, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
I agree that every leafward step files are made to take down the category tree is useful, serving to invite users with relevant knowledge to refine & diffuse them. There is the drawback that the addition of a single category immediately removes the uncategorized state, but this can be mitigated by use of the ‘(Batch) to be checked’ type of maintenance cats. When categorizing by only one or a few of several possible ‘dimensions’ (e.g. by location or main subject), or fairly coarsely because I’m not familiar enough with the pattern of subcategorization in a given area, I generally decline the system’s offer to remove a {{Check categories}} in the expectation that further improvements will eventually be made. It seems un-wiki-like to require everyone who touches a file to leave it in a near-perfect state of categorization (rhetorical exaggeration); ‘a little better’ should always be ‘good enough for the time being’. While I’m all in favour of discouraging thoughtless bulk uploads that create more work for others than they add value, that’s a somewhat subjective judgement to make, and blocks shouldn’t be on the table until users have shown themselves to be uncoöperative, uncommunicative, or decidedly at cross-purposes with the project’s aims.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 20:55, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
we need to make a good category easier to do as a part of the mass upload process. right now upload wizard gives you a warning, but does not make suggestions. warning people, and blocking people are not a substitute for making categories easier. need to improve the process. you should expect non-existent categories until the UX design is improved, and blocks will have no effect. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 13:10, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Jacked-up buildings

Do we have a category for buildings jacked up like this? - Jmabel ! talk 02:50, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

@Jmabel: I think the closest you can get at present is Category:Buildings on piles in the United States, but if you have more Category:Buildings on piles in Washington would be reasonable.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:38, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  1. that latter would be Category:Buildings on piles in Washington (state).
  2. I could use that, certainly better than nothing. Still, that includes things like File:Cocodrie Louisiana Houses on stilts.jpg which is a very different thing than a jacked-up building. - Jmabel ! talk 15:57, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
those are not necessarily jacked up, nor piles but Category:Crib piers -- Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 02:10, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
Thanks on crib piers, I'll add that. The caption, from University of Washington Libraries says "jacked up," and all other things being equal I'm inclined to guess they are correct about that part, though I have certainly caught them out in errors before. - Jmabel ! talk 04:08, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

metadata Exif/Wikidata

How to give a bot the task to add metadata from a uploaded picture on commons to the infobox (like date of photo via exif, description or label via Wikidata, statements like located in the administrative territorial entity from Wikidata)? Regards, Conny (talk) 11:34, 17 March 2019 (UTC).

Bad idea, unless the EXIF data is known to be highly reliable from a reliable source. Some of my own photographs have location and dates that are so wrong, they put landscape photographs in the wrong country. --Fæ (talk) 13:30, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
It makes sence to describe pictures in Wikidata. How to transport these description made by my self into my upload at commons? Conny (talk) 13:38, 18 March 2019 (UTC).

New tool: QuickCategories

Hi folks! I want to announce a new tool I’ve been working on: QuickCategories (documentation). It allows you to quickly add or remove categories from pages, e. g. to ensure that all UK Members of Parliament (according to Wikidata) are in Category:Politicians of the United Kingdom (on Commons).

If you’ve worked with Wikidata in the past, you might be familiar with Magnus Manske’s QuickStatements tool, which lets you prepare a series of Wikidata edits (e. g. in a spreadsheet) and then run them all at once. Harmonia Amanda suggested that a similar tool for categories instead of statements would be useful, and so that’s what I built. You specify the page to edit and the categories to add or remove in a big text box: 

Page 1|+Category:Category to add|-Category:Category to remove
Page 2|+Category:Category to add|-Category:Category to remove

The page and categories can be separated by a | or by a Tab character – when you copy rows and columns out of a spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice Calc, Google Spreadsheets, …), columns are usually separated by Tab characters, so that should work out well.

Instead of assembling the list of commands in a spreadsheet, you can also generate it via a Wikidata query. For example, running this query lists all Members of Parliament of the United Kingdom whose Commons category is not a subcategory of Category:Politicians of the United Kingdom. You can copy the last two columns of the results (in Firefox, hold down Ctrl while dragging the mouse across them) and paste them directly into the tool. (Note that the category data in the Wikidata Query Service is only updated weekly, each Monday, so Sunday evening is pretty much the worst time to do this, since some categories might already have been added to a subcategory of Category:Politicians of the United Kingdom without the query service being aware of it.) You don’t need to know much about Wikidata queries yourself to use this – on Wikidata’s request a query page, other users can help you with adjusting this query to your own needs.

The tool supports all Wikimedia wikis, but it’s probably especially useful on Commons, that’s why I’m announcing it here. Feel free to copy or crosslink the announcement on the village pump (equivalent) of other wikis you think might be interested, or let me know if you think I should do it. If you have any questions, please contact me on the tool’s talk page, preferably with a {{Ping}} (I don’t check my watchlist on Meta that often, but I’ll see pings on all wikis, including my home wiki, Wikidata). --Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 21:56, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

  • In the example given, some of these omissions may be deliberate. Would you really call Bobby Sands a politician just because he was elected to Parliament by his constituency while he was engaging in his hunger strike? Are the various Earls of Devon really to be collectively described as politicians? That's two of the first ten, and spotted by a non-UK person. - Jmabel ! talk 00:52, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
@Jmabel: well, you can refine the query of course, e. g. to select only people who held a seat for at least two parliamentary periods, and aren’t representing an abolitionist party, plus whatever other domain-specific knowledge you have. That’s up to the people using the the tool – I tried to find an interesting example, but perhaps I should’ve stuck with one of the existing batches (e. g. adding Category:Figure skating officials, see batch #10). --Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 10:02, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Possible error while moving a file

See enwiki about Lee Dixon.jpg. Greetings & salutations, Klaas `Z4␟` V:  22:14, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Whats the name for this?

These ligths give e prediction how long the passenger has to wait. Waht kind of category and can I use for this?Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:07, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

 Comment hello, just a hint: It looks to me a kind of signage: In train systems in Japan, we have a unique category. Sorry I can’t show you what it will be in global setting. --Omotecho (talk) 13:23, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

March 18

Find source for file from Flickr

On a research I found this deep linked file: https://farm2.static.flickr.com/1725/42514022111_27e9762fd8_b.jpg – does someone know, how to find out the “right” Flickr link (with user/user ID and File ID)? I only know that 42514022111 is the file ID of this image. — Speravir – 23:19, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

I had to play a bit with Google: https://www.flickr.com/photos/28433765@N07/42514022111. --jdx Re: 01:58, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
BTW. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9400936h/f16.image --jdx Re: 02:05, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
Thankx, Jdx. This proves, that my search was not good enough. And, actually, the link to Gallica is more than I expected. — Speravir – 21:08, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

March 19

Category:Plast

Hi all, there is a problem to this category.

The template in the right hand side says the category is about w:Plast (town). However, many of the images are images are about w:Plast - the scouting organization Ukraine. Can somebody sort this out please? Borovi4ok (talk) 10:08, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Should be ✓ Done now, please check. --El Grafo (talk) 10:30, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Images which have the description in the title

I would rename this file at the maximum, - Arleta Mae Shining Star Plummer, Pueblo, Chippewa-Cree of Belknap Reservation.tif - instead of - Arleta Mae Shining Star Plummer, photographed in Pueblo, Colorado, at a gathering of North American Native People. She is of Chippewa and Cree heritage and was raised on the Fort Belknap Reservation LCCN2015633880.tif

I cannot rename files myself but I come across these files a few times now. Is file moving right a big deal? Should I migrate the words to description and request move to an appropriate title when I find these? Or is this to be left alone? It's very untidy on some articles and categories, and I don't think it does anything for the image itself all text all over it pushing it down the page, much as we want to advertise contributors. Any advice pls? ~ R.T.G 13:04, 19 March 2019 (UTC)


Also there is another concern here. This image is 458.62MB. That's right..? ~ R.T.G 13:07, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
That's a 80 Mpx TIF file from a Medium Format digital back … I don't think 458.62MB is much for that ;-) --El Grafo (talk) 13:56, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
The file name is a bit on the long side, but there's nothing in Commons:File renaming or Commons:File naming that would suggest renaming, so personally I'd just leave them be. Shouldn't keep you from improving descriptions, though … --El Grafo (talk) 14:01, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
When posting here I did consider the title represents a way to ensure an amount of attribution, but I will also post the first encounters which drew my attention, Category:Queen Anne Revival architecture, Category:Hospital for the insane, Cherokee, Iowa, Category:Charles H. Baldwin House, Category:John B. Lindale house and farm, which by coincidence are progressively overshadowing of the gallery effect of categories for the sake of over description and street addresses, not simply descriptive titles. There ought be something if indeed something exists? ~ R.T.G 14:18, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
Well, this is a file from a batch upload, and it is necessary to generate filenames automatically based on the metadata. I think these filenames are indeed on the long side but that’s because it’s based on the original title, which is itself long. Of course, the alternative would be to upload such file as LCCN2015633880.tif or something, but per Commons:File naming, filenames are expected to be descriptive.
As for the display in categories, interestingly, MediaWiki’s default is to truncate filenames, but we override this site-wide via MediaWiki talk:Gadget-Long-Image-Names-in-Categories.css
Jean-Fred (talk) 20:50, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Don't start renaming these please. People do, but with half a million files uploaded in this format, arbitrarily changing filenames is unhelpful and goes against our naming guidelines to keep harmonization. For specific information on the batch upload you can read User:Fæ/LOC. From my memory, using the LOC title in these filenames has been discussed at least 3 times over a few years, the naming scheme is both within policy and clearly robust in practice. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 12:01, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

yeah, if it ain't broke don't fix it. people's title conventions are not worth "correcting". you could be a lot more help adding structured data captions in various languages than moving titles to descriptions. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 21:58, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Red-Blue Chair, Gerrit Rietveld

Hi all,

How is it that works by dutch designer Gerrit Rietveld are published under free licenses, even public domain without the explicit approval of the rights owner? I did some research and found out that Rietveld is backed up the American Artists Right Society (ARS) as well as for example SABAM (Belgium). for example: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rietveld_chair_1.JPG (due to permission of the owner of the chair? Unless that's Gerrit Rietveld or his first in line, I don't see how the owner matters in clearing the rights). there are similar cases to be made for other designers like Maarten Van Seeveren etc.

Thanks in advance, O.

@Oliviervd: See COM:UA, and see whether that answers your question. Jheald (talk) 14:00, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
see also Commons:Derivative works#Isn't every product copyrighted by someone? What about cars? Or kitchen chairs? My computer case? -- all the US judges agree, there is no copyright in utilitarian objects. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 22:02, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
@Slowking4: That is COM:UA :-) Jheald (talk) 14:17, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
except the section at derivatives conveys some of the incredulity of those steeped in the rights permissions culture. a policy page is not enough. maybe we need to black out commons in support of german wikipedia to show the deleterious impact of that culture in the EU directive. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 14:27, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Request Google update to reflect Wikipedia changes

Dear all,

In the last few weeks I have been in contact with Commons Wikimedia in order to replace one picture [14] by a different one [15]. Now that the pic has been replaced, both links point to the same one, which is correct. However, via Google research engine, the old picture still shows as part of the results.

To tackle this, Google provides a tool, i.e. Search Console, in order to request an update of its servers' cache regarding a certain URL and recover the most updated data from it. I'd like to make this reguest myself, however, the problem is that the Search Console requires the person making the request to be the owner of the URL in question, and this URL is part of Wikipedia's website.

Does Wikipedia make these types of requests to Google or do you know whether there is a means by which I can make it myself? --Juan.mart.rubi (talk) 15:22, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

@Juan.mart.rubi: Wikipedia (in your case: the Spanish language version of Wikipedia) is made by a community of volunteer editors. They create and manage all of the content, but they do not "own" the URLs. All of the different Wikipedias and various sister projects (such as this one, Wikimedia Commons) are owned by the Wikimedia Foundation. They provide the infra structure, but they don't engage in anything content related. And they certainly don't manually poke Google whenever something has been updated. So no, nobody's going to do that for you. The only advice I can give is: just sit back and relax. It may take a while, but sooner or later Google will update the image. --El Grafo (talk) 12:32, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
@El Grafo: Many thanks for your answer! I will sit back and relax then. --Juan.mart.rubi (talk) 14:38, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Edit action feed (Android Wikipedia app)

Hey folks, as you know, our (in the general Wikimedia sense) readers mainly read the wikis on mobile phones; our editing tools are focused on desktop and keyboards. This will be a problem for us: Wikipedia (and thus Commons) became a big thing because everyone who read it could add information. If this is not true in the future, we’ll have a harder time getting new editors. The developers are working on a number of different solutions, including, of course, trying to make the kind of typical content creation that we’ve always done easier on mobile. However, we’re also looking into if there are specific tasks that could be specifically well suited for mobile users.

Soon, users of the Android Wikipedia app will be able to add captions to images on Commons. Those who take up that habit will be invited to the edit action feed, where they’ll be fed images from Commons (including descriptions) and be asked to add captions, or translate them to their language, where they are missing. This will only be shown to editors who have made at least fifty unreverted edits in the action feed (which also includes Wikidata descriptions). If an edit gets reverted, the the count starts at zero again. This is an anti-vandalism measure: we don’t want to specifically invite people to do this unless they’ve shown they can be reasonably trusted.

If you’ve got any comments or questions, you can leave them on the talk page on mediawiki.org, or ping me. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 17:15, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

The plan is to have this done at some point during the next quarter, i.e. April–June.
There will be a CC-0 notice. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 17:48, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

At Special:Search viewing it as a gallery would be easier. Could this please be added, and enabled by default? --Gryllida (chat) 19:04, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

March 22

Category scheme People for birth and death dates

I just wanted to put up a notice that there's a discussion regarding Commons:Category scheme People at Commons_talk:Category_scheme_People#Categories_for_birth_and_death. It would create a number of emptied categories after the fact if passed. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:23, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Strange captions

Please see LauraHarvey45 contributions. The first diff to File:Backlit keyboard.jpg says

"Image by Colin via Privacy Canada. A backlit laptop computer keyboard. Most fingers are on the “home” keys for touch-typing; the ‘U’ key is being pressed. Focus stack of 36 frame combined/retouched using Helicon Focus. Further retouching in Photoshop"

While "by Colin" might be fine, I have no idea what "Privacy Canada" have to do with it. Is that a website where my image is used? The next two sentences come from the keyboard description, but the focus stack sentences come from File:Philips Series 7000 shaver head.jpg. The rest of User:LauraHarvey45's contributions mention "Gun News Daily", presumably because that website uses those photos. Does anyone know what is going on? Does Commons have a help page for Captions? -- Colin (talk) 21:44, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

March 23

DynaSoar and HL10

Hi there, no idea where to take this, but how does Commons deals with cases like this: There's a fairly iconic image of the Northrop HL10 that has been photoshopped to display the X-20 Dyna-Soar. Latter image is being used in many places. Problem with the latter image beside the fact that it's fake is obviously not displaying the fact that it is a derivative work. What to do in cases like this? Milliped (talk) 10:55, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

@Milliped: Tag it {{dw no source since|month=March|day=23|year=2019}} (using {{subst:dw-nsd}}) like I did.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 10:59, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: Thanks! Learned something there! Milliped (talk) 11:09, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
@Milliped: You're welcome!   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 11:33, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Image scope

I have a project for which I collect all information about local charging stations for OpenStreetMap. This includes also location images (one per charging station). Are such images inside Common's project scope? I have already seen images of charging stations on Commons, but this would be a few thousand images (Object and camera location could be added though). --77.119.130.17 17:12, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

I think so. You would have to login to upload. Would these be categorized in Category:Electric vehicle charging stations or a related category?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 17:24, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
These images would be categorised in category Electric vehicle charging stations or a sub category. --178.165.131.232 10:23, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Help needed with upload

Bourgoin, Jules (1838-1907) published in 1873 a book called "Les Arts arabes". Unfortunately it is not abvailable on archive.org, but it is available here. It has some gorgeous pictures (in colour!), like this about a 1300s building I am writing about (on en.wp).

Does anyone know how to upload these pictures easily? Thanks, Huldra (talk) 22:19, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

@Huldra: I don’t know about “easily”, but offhand, based on a little experimentation with a URL found in the page code, it seems possible to capture pages from there as 5000-pixel-tall JPEGs. (The source images appear to be in TIFF format, but I haven’t figured out how to get at those.) I could try a test run with Plate 51 if you like.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 23:01, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
User:Odysseus1479 Please do! Huldra (talk) 23:03, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
@Huldra: OK, see File:Panneau et détails à Jérusalem – Les Arts Arabes pl.51.jpg. Not sure about the categorization, but I tossed in a couple for the time being—please check, and let me know if the filename is unsuitable. We should probably create cats for the book & author eventually …
Regarding the INHA book-viewer, it does provide for downloading pages, but the pictures aren’t as large as from the ‘URL hack’ I used: the JPEG version has about half the resolution, while the PDF has about two-thirds (in an outrageously large file to download, which I suspect might contain the entire book as invisible ‘overhead’ despite displaying only the chosen page).—Odysseus1479 (talk) 00:48, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
I created Category:Jules Bourgoin and Creator:Jules Bourgoin. Regards, Yann (talk) 01:01, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
And also Category:Bourgoin - Les Arts arabes, 1873, and the book is available from Gallica: File:Bourgoin - Les Arts arabes, 1873.pdf, but not in colors. Yann (talk) 14:16, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you so much, both of you!! This is great! Btw, it is part of https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tunshuk_Palace, presently part of en:Haseki Sultan Imaret according to "Mamluk Jerusalem" by Michael Hamilton Burgoyne. If it is not too much to ask for, I would love to have the other Jerusalem pictures uploaded, too. That is:

(Yeah, you know how it is: one job well done brings ....more work! ;P ) Cheers, Huldra (talk) 20:18, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

✓ Done @Huldra: you can now find these files in the book category. Please check my topical categorization &c., and let me know if you want more of any of the descriptions translated into English.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 23:42, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
Thank you so much! I really appriciate it! And the categorization seem mostly ok, Huldra (talk) 23:49, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
@Huldra: Do you need more images from this book? Regards, Yann (talk) 17:20, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
@Yann: , well, I don't think I personally will need any more for the forthseeable furture, all the ones marked Jerusalem are uploaded (and I only have the literature on Mamluk Jerusalem). However, most of the pictures are gorgeous (especially the colour ones)...so please feel free to upload them all! If you do, I will try to add the correct cats to them later, (PS: if you upload them, could you please put the plate no first? That way, the plates are automatically correctly ordered when we look at the cat. Like I have started ordering https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Recueil_de_cent_estampes_representant_differentes_nations_du_Levant ) Huldra (talk) 20:53, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
They can be given sort-keys by plate number in the book cat—I’ll do so for the files I uploaded—but elsewhere I don’t see much value in putting the number first.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 21:15, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
Well, now I learned something new today, thanks! Huldra (talk) 21:59, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

March 21

Template

Hello. What template we use to a category to tell to the reader that for something similar see that... ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xaris333 (talk • contribs) 14:11 24 March 2019 (UTC)

{{See also}}. - Jmabel ! talk 15:36, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
For categories it would be {{Cat see also}}. De728631 (talk) 16:33, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. Xaris333 (talk) 22:26, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

HR from Library of Congress

Hi, I notice that some images (like File:Margarett Sargent, 1915.jpg and File:Anna Pavlova, 1915.jpg) are available in high resolution at the Library of Congress, but not online. Could someone go there get these images? Regards, Yann (talk) 16:33, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Picture of the Year 2018: The results are in!

Picture of the Year 2018

Dear Wikimedians,

The 2018 Picture of the Year competition has ended and we are pleased to announce the results:

In both rounds, people voted for their favorite media files.

  • In the first round, there were 963 candidate images.
  • In the second round, people voted for the 57 finalists (the R1 top 30 overall and top 2 in each category).

In the second round – the “three votes” was used – eligible users could vote for up to 3 finalists – each of these 3 votes counted equal. There were 2983 people who voted in R1 and 3496 who voted in round R2.

We congratulate the winners of the contest and thank them for creating these beautiful media files and sharing them as freely licensed content:

  1. 439 people voted for the winner, File:Evolution of a Tornado.jpg.
  2. In second place, 361 people voted for File:FCAB EMD GT22CU-3 San Pedro - Ascotan.jpg.
  3. In third place, 356 people voted for File:Frostedbubble2.jpg.

Click here to view the top images »

We also sincerely thank to all voters for participating. We invite you to continue to participate in the Wikimedia Commons community by sharing your work.

Thanks,
the Picture of the Year committee

March 25th, 2019

Something is broken here at the Village Pump as all new discussions / announcements seem to be listed at "March 25", can someone fix it? Also, what caused this rather odd issue? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 01:59, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: I asked @Hazard-SJ about it at User talk:Hazard-SJ#Hazard-Bot and compensated manually.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 03:08, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
@Donald Trung: He fixed it.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 00:56, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, I forgot to mark this section as "resolved". --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:29, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:29, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Category naming - street names

Is there a standard approach for categories for streets which have common names, e.g. High Street? I had always thought it was "High Street, [Place]", but I see the approach "[Place] High Street" is being used. The slight problem with the latter is that where the category forms part of another category of the type "Streets by name", it will (by default) be listed under the place name rather than the street name. Lamberhurst (talk) 13:04, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

City Streetname is unusual and should probably be discouraged. --El Grafo (talk) 16:03, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Both are pretty much interchangeable in British culture "Kensington High Street" is what the street signs use but the tube is called "High Street Kensington" in the case of London there is Category:High streets in London for people looking in Category:Streets in London beginning with H, I listed them under their place name also so people can easily find them using the other common name, this led to some confusion [[16]] which is why I prefer them to be listed under the place name rather than the street name Oxyman (talk) 17:37, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
    • OK, then St. John's Wood High Street, which as far as I know is never flipped around the other way. Didn't think of the tube station being different. - Jmabel ! talk 21:33, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
      • "High Street, Place" is archaic usage that got frozen in a few places, like the name of the Tube station, and as far as I can tell persists in smaller contexts around the country, like towns or villages. The places listed in Category:High streets in London are an example of where it evolved into "Place High Street". — Scott • talk 15:59, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
  •  Comment While I don't know if it's "policy", I think good practice is to use whatever the official local name is - where that is potentially confusing or there is some common variant, a redirect from that can be useful. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 17:08, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Bot removes qid= from categories

I have noticed that a bot removes the qid number from the template wikidata_infobox from Wiki Commons, I am assuming because it is redundant once the category is filled in at Wikidata. Wouldn't it be better to keep the q number here at Wiki Commons in case the link gets broken for any number of reasons, like a manual name change of the category or a reorganization of the categories? It can be very difficult to re-disambiguate say a dozen John Smiths if there was a major renaming. See See here for an example of the bot removing the q number from the Wiki Commons side RAN (talk) 15:10, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm utterly opposed to any data ever being removed from anywhere because, supposedly, "wikidata now has it". That way lies absolute disaster. Say it ain't so... -- Begoon 16:17, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
In not so distant past some people said same thing about Commons. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:15, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
Does a QID number actually mean anything to anyone, anywhere other than WD?—Odysseus1479 (talk) 21:13, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
Does a Wikimedia Commons file name actually mean anything to anyone, anywhere other than WC? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:59, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: Yes, absolutely, and it it's not then it's a poorly chosen filename. Just to not bias the matter too much, I used the random file feature.
So while none of these names are ideal, yes, they do mean at least a moderate amount to a normal lay user. - Jmabel ! talk 15:24, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): I'm the bot operator (Pi bot). It removes the manually-defined QID as part of tidying up the calls to {{Wikidata Infobox}}, providing it's the same as the one that the sitelink is to. The information is still in the article history if needed, but it's unnecessary for the operation of the infobox in those cases (and possibly increases the server load when the manual ID is present). Keeping it will only increase future manual cleanup here if, e.g., multiple Wikidata items are merged, incorrect sitelinks are moved to the right Wikidata item, etc. The remaining categories in Category:Uses of Wikidata Infobox with manual qid then need some manual cleanup to properly sitelink them from Wikidata. Cases of manual moves/renaming of categories should have their sitelinks sorted out sooner rather than later (and the bot helps with these if a {{Category redirect}} is left behind), as e.g., links from Wikipedias also rely on these. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 08:55, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

March 24

Working with low resource organisations that publish only on Facebook and also publish under an open license

Hi all

I’ve been thinking about ‘free access to the sum of all human knowledge’ in relation to working with lower resource organisations. Some governments and other organisations with fewer resources who don’t have their own media repositories on their websites and publish only on social media e.g Facebook to share their content. I want to understand what burden of proof is required to show an open license when sharing photos from social media on Commons from a source that is under a Wikimedia compatible license? And where are the instructions for this?

To give an example, the government of East Timor is publishing images on Facebook only, which is causing confusion around copyright on Commons (some people think that this gives Facebook copyright on the images), see

People are not replying to OTRS requests and it does not seem like they ever will, my assumption is they don’t understand the message, why it is relevant, their understanding of copyright, or a language issue.

So to ask a question about this specific example: does publishing on Facebook add any special requirements or hurdles? (there is some confusion). If so where is this written? If not can this be written somewhere please so there isn’t any confusion.

Thanks John Cummings (talk) 11:10, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

The problem is strange. We are discussing about there could be a copyright violation, although the photograph made the photos by order of the government and the government is publishing it. Both are not even care about US law, because their intention is to spread their images. This fundamental will of the publisher is omited here, because of obscure problems. The deleter is acting like the automatic upload filters, we (Wikimedia and German WP community) are fighting against in Europe in the moment, caused by the new copyright law of European union. Deleting without hard facts and need. I left several times notices atF B, that I am uploading the images at Commons. There was never a reaction. Shouldn't we act here in dubio pro reo? If there are any "dubio" anyhow, what I am denying. Greetings, --JPF (talk) 11:21, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
+1 the community has a wilful disregard that their copyright purity may appear to benefit the copyright fee collection agencies. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 21:14, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
Publishing on Facebook does not waive ones own rights. It does grant virtually unlimited reuse rights to Facebook, and it doesn't constitute a free license for anyone else. Specifically: none of the rights granted to FB are exclusive, so it doesn't interfere with also granting other licenses.
What is the evidence in this case that the image is either free-licensed or in the public domain? - Jmabel ! talk 21:49, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
@Jmabel: , the image is produced and published by the government of East Timor, which has a public domain license for its work. John Cummings (talk) 13:23, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
@John Cummings: How do you know that "the government of East Timor is publishing images on Facebook only"?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:37, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

To go back to the original question, is the copyright effects of publishing on Facebook written anywhere in Commons instructions? If so where. Thanks, John Cummings (talk) 13:23, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

@John Cummings: My advice is: Facebook's Terms of Use are incompatible with lifting from Facebook and publishing here without owning the copyright (or without confirming beforehand that you own the copyright) because we don't allow Fair Use here. Please have the copyright holder edit or comment on their post with COM:L compliant permission and post here the link to that permission, or send permission via OTRS with a carbon copy to you and edit/post with the ticket number. If you want to use the file on English Wikipedia, please read WP:F.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 15:08, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Hi @Jeff G.: , an OTRS ticket or changing the Facebook page is not realistic in these cases (they don't reply to messages). Where on Commons can we make clear that publishing on Facebook does not effect the owners copyright, only that Facebook is given usage rights? John Cummings (talk) 15:16, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
@John Cummings: I'm still a bit confused here: what would lead someone to think that publishing on Facebook affects your copyright, any more than publishing anywhere else? Publishing on Facebook grants Facebook a license; it doesn't grant or revoke any other license. - Jmabel ! talk 15:31, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
@Jmabel: I think the confusion in this deletion discussion comes from lack of documentation on copyright in relation to publishing on Facebook. Where on Commons could we write this documentation to help people learn about copyright? John Cummings (talk) 15:56, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
@John Cummings: It's just that I can't think what we'd say there. There is nothing special about Facebook here. Publishing a public domain image anywhere does not change the fact that it's public domain. I can't see us listing dozens of common places someone might post and indicating that for each of them, publishing there does not remove a work from the public domain, and I can't see a reason to single out Facebook in this respect.
The more appropriate question, it seems to me, is what (if anything) on Commons gave someone the impression that either public domain status or a copyright-holder's right to grant a non-exclusive license are in any way diminished by publishing on Facebook. If there is such a statement, then it probably needs to be reworded. You might do well to canvas the people who thought this should be deleted (including the deleting admin) and ask what gave them that impression, so we can reword that. - Jmabel ! talk 19:33, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Facebook is a special case in that it is an extraordinary large company. My market cap I think it is about the size of the next 5 media companies put together, even though typical people imagine that small things like newspapers, TV studios, and movies are bigger. A significant amount of all publishing is through Facebook. I agree with Jmabel that in general we do not need to make special explanatory notes about media companies, but Facebook serves the role which in past generations is more comparable to a government entity than the old concept of a publisher. I think that it would be fine to establish a Commons page on Facebook rules, because this is of special interest to many people and the issues arise with enough frequency to justify particular clarification.
In the case of East Timor, if the government license is public domain by default, then I think that is compatible with Wikimedia Commons upload with their government public domain dedication. Posting to Facebook does not disrupt the original copyright status. If anyone disagrees then maybe this could be centrally discussed on a Commons:Facebook page, Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:28, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
perhaps we need "special explanatory notes", since we have a cadre of people who "delete because facebook". there is a lot of disparaging the distribution channel, not much standard of practice of examining the original status. on the other hand, no amount of warning template speed bumps will slow the deletionist mindset. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 14:32, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
The file in question in the beginning of this discussion was undeleted, FYI. Since East Timor government is public domain by default, Commons should be careful about not deleting pictures from them just because they use Facebook to disseminate rather than a dedicated web domain or even Flickr. Abzeronow (talk) 16:32, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
yeah, we should not have to rely on persistent experts to overcome the deletionist thumb on the scale. but is there any prospect of more care? any negative feedback to editors that get their deletions undeleted? Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 23:28, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

@Slowking4: , @Bluerasberry: , @Abzeronow: , thanks very much for your replies, really helpful to put the size of Facebook in context. Can I suggest adding an additional section to Commons:Copyright rules rather than starting a new page to help keep things in easy to find places (if the guidance gets too long we could seperate pages for see more or whatever). I'm not sure what the section should be called but I think it should include common mistakes made on Commons, here are two draft paragraphs.

Publishing on social media platforms

Publishing on social media platforms (eg Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) does not change the owner of the copyright, these platforms only require usage rights to the content and do not hold copyright of the content.

EXIF data

EXIF data which states 'all rights reserved' does not stop the content from being hosted on Commons. The EXIF data is often unknown to the user before uploading the files by Commons. The act of uploading the content to Commons changes the copyright of the image meaning the EXIF data is out of date.

Thanks again

John Cummings (talk) 14:45, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

March 25

"Walking man" symbols

Here's a wonderful Twitter thread on "walking man" symbols (the gendered term is common usage), painted on roads and cycleways to warn of crossing pedestrians: [17]. Do we have any such images, and if so in what category? I thought it would be a sub-category of Category:Stick figures, but there are none there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:07, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Maybe this one? Category:Pedestrian crossing indication signs - Jcb (talk) 22:12, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
They're all probably in Category:Human body symbols somewhere... AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 22:21, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
It should be under all of Category:Road markings, Category:Pedestrian crossing indication signs, and Category:Pedestrian path signs. The latter has a few examples. — Scott • talk 16:06, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

March 26

Anyone else want to help at the Library of Congress Flickr Commons project?

It feels like I am the only person working on categorizing the images from the Library of Congress Flickr Commons project. See here for the newest image in the queue Dr. Rosen, I already searched for the image here at Wikimedia and created a new category and added the image to Wikidata. All the LOC images are already migrated to Wikimedia under their original title by Fae, and about half are already categorized when the image name matches an existing category at Wiki Commons, but most are only identified at Flickr Commons through careful research, and the link to Wikipedia only appears at Flickr Commons. Perhaps it can be more automated. Does anyone else want to help. I had been keeping up each week, but fell behind about 6 months ago. For some photos there is no Wikidata entry for that person and new entry can be created. RAN (talk) 13:15, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi, Honestly, images like this one are not very useful. It would be much better to get high resolution from the TIFF original copies. These are often already on Commons, but badly categorized. Regards, Yann (talk) 13:51, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
"All the LOC images are already migrated to Wikimedia". . The jpg and the tiff are already loaded to Wikimedia Commons. This is more about categorizing them under their proper Wikimedia/Wikidata names once correctly identified at Flickr Commons. Ones that are completed, I add the Wikidata link at the Flickr Commons page so that no one duplicates the effort, if they decide to help. For instance the image I show in this post is labeled "Dr. Rosen" and at Flickr it was identified as Friedrich Rosen so a category was created and a link to Wikidata was added at the new category. RAN (talk) 14:00, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi all

Can someone tell me if there are any written instructions/rules about people sharing content on Commons with photo EXIF data that states a different license to the license they are releasing them under? Specifically does EXIF data which has 'all rights reserved' override the license they upload the image under?

Here is an example of a set of photos that are being nominated for deletion because the EXIF data is different to the license they have uploaded them under:

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 16:54, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  • There is no rule as such, but it is one of the things that would call into question whether a release is genuine. - Jmabel ! talk 21:40, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Also, the name under which all rights are supposedly reserved (Stacey Hill) does not match the author listed for the license (EvokeArtPhotography). I think starting with a deletion request was perhaps a bit clumsy, but if I'd encountered this I would certainly have contacted the user & asked them to clear this up, probably with OTRS or with permission stated on an external page clearly under the control of Stacey Hill. - Jmabel ! talk 21:46, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
As far as I know, "All rights reserved" is not an irrevocable license, as opposed to, say, CC-BY-4.0, which is irrevocable. If the legal copyright holder has voluntarily changed the license, previous details in the EXIF should be moot. EXIF often has incorrect/obsolete data (e.g. incorrect/misleading dates, misspelled or misidentified personal names) that persist with subsequent file changes. Commons:OTRS#When do I contact OTRS? suggests contacting OTRS isn't needed unless previously published without a free license on a medium one can't alter: changing licenses online or during upload is certainly a medium one can alter (although having OTRS confirmation wouldn't hurt even if unnecessary, to assuage the stickiest of sticklers). And lastly, we should never, ever, expect that a person's real name, or the name they use in their EXIF metadata, must match their arbitrary username. Not every photographer on Flickr uses their real name, even Pro accounts. My real name sure as hell isn't Animalparty. Unless there is significant, credible evidence to the contrary, I think benefit of the doubt should go to the uploader. --Animalparty (talk) 04:14, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
I am pretty sure Stacey Hill and EvokeArt are the same person: https://www.evokeartisanphotography.co.nz/about-me/about. --HyperGaruda (talk) 04:51, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
That seems pretty clear. As I said, I think it was reasonable for someone to raise a question, but starting with a deletion request was a bit clumsy. Presumably we will end up with a "keep". - Jmabel ! talk 06:01, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Agree that a DR is not ideal (but it will often be the community mechanism we rely on for such cases). However, I think that starting by slapping a {{Copyvio}} on these files was definitely not appropriate. Jean-Fred (talk) 11:30, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
It's User:B dash who needs some advice in that regard. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:54, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your responses @Jmabel: , @Slowking4: , @Animalparty: , @HyperGaruda: , I think that making it explicit in the instructions that having 'all rights reserved' in the EXIF data will stop this happening as much (or at least provide something to point to when it does happen again). Where could this information be added and what exactly should it say? John Cummings (talk) 10:57, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Can someone merge all the related DRs, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:57, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

✓ Done Jean-Fred (talk) 16:30, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Translate "images from ..."

I really don't know what to do with this, so I'm bringing it here. As a reference, this has been on Talk:Main Page for a while now. If you look at the the different language landing pages, found here {{Lang-mp}}, you'll see that the line Images from March 25 was never translated and added to the various templates. It was pointed out that each of the templates is separatley maintained and that changes would have to be made to each of the templates. Since each page is maintained separately, I went to each of the pages and posted a request to translate the text and add it to the page. A couple of days ago, @Majora: reverted most of the requests. Each of the templates is its own document. So, if this was not the way it is supposed to be done. How is it supposed to be done. I have gone and reinstated my requests. Thank you. Evrik (talk) 15:02, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Did you not think that putting all those requests back and reflooding Category:Commons protected edit requests perhaps would have been a bad idea? You doing so is incredibly disruptive and an absolute waste of administrative time. Main pages are done via templates. Specifically {{Main Page Template}}. A lot of the main page translations aren't even protected and require no administrative input. So all you are doing is adding requests to categories that do not need to be there. Stop adding to our backlogs. --Majora (talk) 20:18, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Reflooding? Is that an official term? First of all, adding files to a maintenance category is not disruptive. The worst thing that will happen is that they will sit there. I have examined the Main Pages, and while there are templates, this corner of the page tends to not have a template and is instead translated for each language. A solution would be great. Is there a better template to use? Evrik (talk) 14:53, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
And I just undid all your readditions except for one. They were all on pages there were not protected to begin with and/or used templates that have nothing to do with the individual pages. You are advised not to add them back. Adding {{Edit protected}} repeatedly to pages that are not protected is considered disruptive. --Majora (talk) 20:33, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Please stop edit warring. Perhaps instead of spending the time reverting the edits on scores of pages, you could have found a solution to the issue? I see you have now threatened me. Could you please provide the exact policy you claim I am violating? Evrik (talk) 14:53, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
If you really need a link to a page that tells you that disruptive editing is not allowed we have deeper issues. Continuing to add pages that are not protected to the protected edit request queue is disruptive. It unnecessarily creates work for admins and obscures requests that actually need our attention. If you want translations to pages since you don't speak a language you can use Commons:Translators' noticeboard. That took me five seconds to look up. If you continue to add pages to the protected edit request queue that do not need to be there I will block you for disruptive editing. That isn't a threat. That is a statement of fact. --Majora (talk) 20:14, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
So, you have no real policy to cite? Okay then, then please don't threaten me. Now, please go back and reinstate my second round of comments which you reverted.

For the record I thought that by using the {{Edit request}} template I would draw the attention of one of the Commons:Translation administrators. Instead of edit warring, summarily reverting scores of my edits, and threatening me I would appreciate it if you would contribute constructively to devising a solution to what should be a simple request. Evrik (talk) 21:11, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
@Evrik: I don't question your good faith, but now you've been told, so going forward please try not to use this template that asks for admin attention when you want edits to things that aren't protected. - Jmabel ! talk 23:17, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
@Jmabel: - Told is one thing. Policy is another. I was acting within the given policies. There is no Template:Cleanup translation like there is on wikipedia. Category:Translation, does not apply. Rather than starting an edit war, Majora should have suggested I move the request to, Commons:Translators' noticeboard. Instead of reaching out, Majora started making disparaging comments and issuing threats. Majora also removed my comments on a number of pages by simply reverting me. I've acted above board on all of this: soliciting assistance, posting request for help; etc. So, unless one can actually cite a policy, or act in a productive manner, then perhaps they shouldn't be uncivil. Evrik (talk) 16:12, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Scandinavian language help needed

The Salvation Army sign at right in this circa 1908 view of Seattle is clearly in a Scandinavian language. Can someone tell me which? - Jmabel ! talk 05:39, 27 March 2019 (UTC)\

Of the North Germanic languages, the letter "ä" is only used in Swedish. --HyperGaruda (talk) 06:10, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
Thanks! - Jmabel ! talk 15:44, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

problem of date selected by default with UploadWizard

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T219357

Until recently, when I uploaded a file on Commons with UploadWizard, the date automatically recorded in the description was the day (and time) of the shot. Normal. But now, since a few days, the date seems to be the day when the file was exported from Lightroom or Photoshop to my hard disk ("Date metadata was last modified"). I wonder if there has been a change with UploadWizard at this level. Due to this problem, I had to change manually the date of several of my pictures. In the table below are two examples.

Example 1 (correct date) Example 2 (wrong date)
GPS date (Exif metadata) 16 December 2018 16 January 2019
Date and time of data generation (Exif metadata) 17:04, 16 December 2018 06:32, 17 January 2019
File change date and time (Exif metadata) 14:27, 23 February 2019 20:41, 23 March 2019
Date metadata was last modified (Exif metadata) 21:27, 23 February 2019 03:41, 24 March 2019
Date and time of digitizing (Exif metadata) 17:04, 16 December 2018 10:02, 20 January 2019
Date of last version uploaded 07:30, 23 February 2019 13:47, 23 March 2019
Date recorded in the file page with UploadWizard 17:04:16, 16 December 2018 08:45:51, 22 March 2019

Also I don't understand why in the example 2 the "date when metadata was last modified" is the 24th of March 2019, which means one day after my upload (occurring on the 23rd). Impossible. Could someone help me to understand and fix the problem ? -- Basile Morin (talk) 12:32, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

@Basile Morin: Thanks for reporting this, and with clear examples and reproduction steps.
This is also discussed above at Commons:Village_pump#The_upload_script_no_longer_takes_the_date_given_as_the_original_photograph_date.
I filed phab:T219357 regarding this issue − your reproduction steps are very helpful, I will copy them there.
Jean-Fred (talk) 12:55, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, Jean-Fred, and happy to hear the bug was reported already (sorry I missed this thread, we can cut-and-paste this one if necessary). Hope a solution will be found soon -- Basile Morin (talk) 13:19, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
This was already tracked at phab:T219331, and a fix has already been merged. Jean-Fred (talk) 14:11, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

SABER SI MI ARTICULO FUE ELIMANADO

Hola. El día de ayer le di a publicar a un articulo pero hasta ahora no ha salido en el Internet. Recibí un mensaje que decía que una de las imágenes fue eliminada porque infringió los derechos de autor pero no sé si todo el artículo fue eliminado. Además, no hay una opción para colocar otra imagen y que así mi articulo no sea eliminado. Soy novata en esto y requiero ayuda de alguien que pueda darme respuestas, se lo agradecería mucho.

Saludos y gracias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marypotter22 (talk • contribs) 20:37, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

→Commons:Help desk#SABER SI MI ARTICULO FUE ELIMANDO.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 22:34, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
Por favor, no se pide la misma cosa en dos lugares. Jmabel ! talk 00:01, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

March 28

"wikitext" content is not allowed on page "page name" in slot "Main"

Hi I am receiving this message on page creation for a gallery. Is it no longer possible to create galleries? Thx. Jane023 (talk) 07:26, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Nevermind, I subscribed to Phab task T219450 above. Jane023 (talk) 07:33, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

65 files with naming scheme 185A4892 (46551690785).jpg in category ‘People's Vote March, 23 March 2019’

In category:People's Vote March, 23 March 2019 there are 65 files imported from flickr with a naming scheme of File:185A4892 (46551690785).jpg. The names seem to have been taken from flickr, the names are easy to enter, the caption field allows a good description, they can be found through the good categorization, but still: Would it be better to rename this files? There are 65 of them and to the human eye the names look nearly identical? --C.Suthorn (talk) 16:33, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Those images may be renamed to a more descriptive title per Commons:File renaming, #2: "To change from a meaningless or ambiguous name to a name that describes what the image particularly displays." A generic but sufficiently descriptive prefix such as "People's Vote March against Brexit (London), 23 March 2019" followed by a unique camera identifier (e.g. "185A4892") would be a reasonable naming scheme, unless there are specific elements worth naming in the title (e.g. notable people). --Animalparty (talk) 21:32, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
Keep the Flickr photoID in the filename please (like 46551690785). They are unique and can be mapped back to the source even if all the other data is lost. --Fæ (talk) 21:38, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
In what possible situation is all other information about the file lost on Commons, yet somehow the filename remains? The flickr ID is unrelated to the purpose of filenames - to identify the subject/contents of the file - and should be purged from filenames whenever possible. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 21:56, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
I mentioned camera number based on the bold text at Commons:File_renaming#Which_files_should_be_renamed?, but the arbitrary Flickr ID is probably a more practical unique identifier than arbitrary camera number for quickly ascertaining whether an image has already been uploaded to Commons. While there is software to strip EXIF data (an unlikely scenario), even if a file with Flickr ID gets renamed, the number will still appear as a redirect. --Animalparty (talk) 00:19, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
@Pi.1415926535: You are an Admin here. As a mere mortal here, all I can see is the filename if a file has been deleted speedily without detailed notice.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 00:39, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Where unique ids exist, they should always be used. This is so obvious, it is painful to see even this is subject to arguments. --Fæ (talk) 07:37, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
yeah, it is unclear why we have to keep repeating common sense, as set down in "File renaming". but the obsession over renaming and imposing other name styles is a waste of effort. description and category shows up in search results. "the perfect name" is the enemy of the good enough. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 22:21, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

"wikitext" content is not allowed on page … in slot "Main"

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T219450

I found a main space editing problem:

please try adding ":" in front of [[Category:Hardap]] at Hardap (to hide that redirect from the category page), and try to save. it's not possible. you get a red warning. --Te750iv (talk) 18:43, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Same problem, I was trying to create a redirection from Australia Occidental to Category:Western Australia but I couldn't save it. MarioFinale (talk) 19:08, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
Great bug. Making changes and breaking things is the priority, rather than retaining volunteers or maintaining what works well already. --Fæ (talk) 07:33, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Same here, see Commons:Help desk#"wikitext" content is not allowed on page Orgues d'Alsace in slot "Main". The most annoying bug I have ever encountered! --Edelseider (talk) 08:06, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

By the way, this bug stops even 'null' edits from being made. Consequently unrelated to the length or content of edit. Effectively these mainspace pages are now permanently locked by the WMF. --Fæ (talk) 09:49, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Again on Julia Margaret Cameron. Yann (talk) 11:31, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
On #wikimedia-operations: "that ticket was not noticed by anyone here; if yannf hadn't reported it we still wouldn't know". This seems to be fixed now. Yann (talk)
Clearly the ticket took way too much time to be noticed by anyone and acted upon (probably due to a combination of factors- edits on Main namespace as "hidden" by those on File, the ticket had not a proper priority, tags or a clear title, that made it easy to locate. I asked to followup what went wrong in the task management and see what can be done in the future -eg. advise certain steps for emergencies like this- to speedup giving attention to clear errors- Apologies, and thanks to Yann (talk · contribs) for the ping. --jynus (talk) 13:55, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Julia Margaret Cameron

Hi, Who is the author of this portrait: File:JuliaCameron.png (one of the oldest file on Commons)? It was initially credited to Category:Charles Somers-Cocks, as per [18], and then changed without reference to Gustave Rejlander and Lewis Carroll (both are possible, but 2 authors seem unlikely). Finally Julia Margaret Cameron credits it to herself. Even more confusing... Has anyone access to some reliable source? Regards, Yann (talk) 11:56, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

The National Portrait Gallery credits "possibly" Charles Somers-Cocks, as follows: "Julia Margaret Cameron / possibly by Charles Somers Cocks, 3rd Earl Somers / albumen print, 1858-1859". If these years are correct, we can rule out a self portrait photograph and Rejlander (who came to the Isle of Wight at the request of Julia Cameron and helped teach her photography around 1863). "Possibly Charles Somers-Cocks" seems like the best option. Vysotsky (talk) 14:14, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
OK, thanks. This is quite reliable. Regards, Yann (talk) 15:03, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

March 29

Searching captions for vandalism

On my watchlist last week was where someone had added the caption "Bollocks" to a photograph of a politician. I can not remember which one it was. Unfortunately as captions are, apparently, not examined by the "insource:" option in the normal project search I cannot find it again.

So, how am I supposed to search captions for vandalism, without having to write complex query scripts for the wiki database? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:54, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Query service should be coming soon... as (one hopes) should vandal filtering. Ping @Keegan (WMF):  ? Jheald (talk) 14:19, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
Caption search using inlabel is ready, it will be available when WikibaseCirrusSearch is fully deployed (which should be anytime now). Abuse filters already work with captions. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
So, we are into what, the second month of a successful captions rollout, where they now exist in two different copyright states, and nobody can search for vandalism. No lessons learned, and green status lights for the WMF.
Smart. --Fæ (talk) 17:28, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
And, it's a week later and no progress. --Fæ (talk) 09:40, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
Searching captions is now live. You do not have to put in any special label. For example, This search finds a caption I put on File:Tracks_(43677152441).jpg. Apologies for the delay, there were a lot of dependencies to get this working without complex queries. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 17:37, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Our 18.6Mb page

I do not recommend opening this link, but Emoji/Table currently has 1,437,488 bytes of wiki-code - and that's without any image files. The Pingdom tool has the page download as a whopping 18.6 MB. Is there any need for this? Can the page be split into several parts? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:14, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

See also Special:LongPages for other examples. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:21, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
The emojis have been improved a bit recently. Typing "emoji" in the search box used to take you straight to a gigantic page. --ghouston (talk) 04:08, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Mobile work platforms

How are these platforms called and is there a category for this?Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:41, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Category:Cherry pickers. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:53, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Searching captions in any language is available

Wikibase's search has been updated, you can find captions in any language using the Commons search bar. For example, I captioned Tracks_(43677152441).jpg. Search finds it in English and in French with no advanced features required.

I've added search instructions for captions to Commons:File captions. Depicts and other statements will be searchable right out of the box when they are released, beginning with simple depicts later next week. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:31, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

March 30

Caption changes in watchlists

Hi, when a caption is added it causes an entry in the watchlist even though it is a wikidata item and so should not appear if you are ignoring wikidata changes. Or is there some other flag that needs to be toggled to ignore these changes? Keith D (talk) 22:26, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

@Keith D: They are wikibase, not wikidata.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 22:29, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
OK but the question still stands - how do you turn off the entry in the watchlist? Keith D (talk) 22:41, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
@Keith D: Try posting at Commons talk:Structured data.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 22:46, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

April 01

The upload script no longer takes the date given as the original photograph date

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T219357

I scan a lot of old slides. As far as I am able I fill in a date 'taken on'. I cannot always be precise but it is more usefull than the scan date. Before the upload script used the photograph date and I changed the date to the (in)precision needed. The file manager on my PC alway insist on a complete date, but most times I only use the month and year the slide was developed. (sometimes only the year is certain and on some slides there is no indication at all)

Why was this changed?Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:21, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

PS: i added a artwork catalog URL to Category:Art in MIVB stationSmiley.toerist (talk) 11:47, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I think he/she is talking about the UploadWizard. The wizard has changed so that the prepopulated datefield uses the date and time when the file was modified instead of the date and time the photograph was taken on. --Estormiz (talk) 14:08, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
@Smiley.toerist, Jmabel, and Estormiz: That is a bad change. We rely on the "date" field to contain the date and time the photograph was taken. Is there a phabricator ticket for undoing that change?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:17, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
I agree it's a bad change, but I pretty much never go near the Upload Wizard, so I'm not the one to follow this up. - Jmabel ! talk 16:34, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
* Somebody please revert the UploadWizard script to the previous version. The current one forces an extra edit like this. I think it is devastating enough to make the whole community to crush. --トトト (talk) 03:05, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
I filed phab:T219357 (in general, if bugs are not reported on Phabricator, they won’t get onto the radar of developers).
  • Is it confirmed this everyone here is talking about the UploadWizard? (please let’s not talk about « the upload script », that’s like the less descriptive naming possible :-) ).
  • Since when is the problem happening?
  • @Smiley.toerist: Can you clarify what you mean by « used the photograph date » − is that an EXIF field or smth else?
Jean-Fred (talk) 09:33, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
It's been happening since ca March 22, I think? And no fix has been visible yet. An edit like this is still necessary. If somebody uploads a file via UploadWizard, it consumes another user's 5 - 10 minutes for correcting its date field. If the problem persists forever, it means the end of the commuity. --トトト (talk) 10:59, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

This makes me frequently "copy date" from the original to copy and remove the original from UploadWizard, and I don't know the purpose of this change either. --N509FZ Talk 前置，有座！Front engine with seats! 01:07, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

another reason to stop using upload wizard, use Pattypan instead. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 02:12, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Reading T219357, this could be a fantasy problem as nothing has been identified that would introduce the bug. It might help if someone added some screen shots and could reliably reproduce the claimed functionality. --Fæ (talk) 09:42, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

This was already tracked at phab:T219331, and a fix has already been merged. Jean-Fred (talk) 14:11, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Bug confirmed. This picture was taken on 2019-03-01 and uploaded with the upload wizard. 2019-03-11 was the date of modification. -- Herby (Vienna) (talk) 19:09, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

@Smiley.toerist: The fix for this should go out April 3rd. Kaldari (talk) 22:04, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Still there's no change as of 3 April.--N509FZ Talk 前置，有座！Front engine with seats! 14:49, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

And the fix has not yet been implemented after 3 April.--N509FZ Talk 前置，有座！Front engine with seats! 00:21, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
Did the wikimedia foundation intentionally change the UploadWizard script? If so, for what purposes? Is an edit like this necessary for ever ? --トトト (talk) 13:33, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

The problem is still not fixed today, 6 April! -- MJJR (talk) 21:35, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

It seemed that this bug has affected a wider range of users.--N509FZ Talk 前置，有座！Front engine with seats! 00:59, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Finally fixed (pending confirmation of other users)--N509FZ Talk 前置，有座！Front engine with seats! 15:13, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Help me on this image copyrights.

I am trying to edit this page en:Megan Crosson

The Megan personally provided me an image to be inserted in her wiki page. this is the image https://www.flickr.com/photos/145866906@N04/46532630115/

also, Megan told me that this is his own photo (he own the rights and carry the appropriate license to issue on Wikipedia) Can I insert that Photo in her Wiki article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mubashar44 (talk • contribs) 12:19, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

  • @Mubashar44: Signing your posts on talk pages is required by Commons:Signatures policy. To do so, simply add four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your comments. Your user name or IP address (if you are not logged in) and a timestamp will then automatically be added when you save your comment. Signing your comments helps people to find out who said something and provides them with a link to your user/talk page (for further discussion).
@Marcus Cyron: Is this the same photo you deleted as File:Megan Crosson.jpg?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 12:45, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
No. The image I've deletes was from a professional portrait fotoshoot, not from a game or training. Marcus Cyron (talk) 12:49, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
@Marcus Cyron: Thanks. However, I doubt that she took that photo of herself that she uploaded to Flickr.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:12, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
I would say no to that image, as to me that flickr account looks very suspicious - it's a single-purpose account, and several images have watermarks from different photographers. The best thing to do would have Ms Crosson use the OTRS method to confirm that she holds rights to the image. -mattbuck (Talk) 16:14, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
Mattbuck, I agree in your conclusion that Megan Crosson should use OTRS and either assure that she is the copyright owner of the image in question or otherwise get in contact with the photographer who has to give permission then. But what is suspicious? It’s her own Flickr account – it may show, though, that she may not have an idea of potential copyright issues. Mubashar44, physical ownership of an image copy on paper or as file is not the same like being the owner of copyright. Only the latter is the one that matters for Commons. If Megan cannot assure that she is the owner, and also get no permission by the photographer it may be possible to upload the file to the English Wikipedia (i.e. not Commons) under fair use conditions, but you should ask there. — Speravir – 01:23, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
Speravir, it's suspicious because we do not know that it is her flickr account. What it is an account with many photos of her culled from several different sources - you see these all the time for celebrities. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:58, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
Mattbuck, but the TO wrote that she herself pointed her/him to this photo on Flickr!? So, this account must at least be operated with her consent, I think. — Speravir – 01:41, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
Speravir fair point, but I'd still add that account to the banned list on the grounds of obvious copying of others' images. -mattbuck (Talk) 18:51, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
OK, fair enough. — Speravir – 22:07, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

"Category:Israel by year"

Presently, Category:Israel by year have a lot of categories before 1948. This is IMO, absurd, as Israel did not exist before 1948. I suggest that we move all those between 1920 and 1948 to Category:British Mandate of Palestine by year, and those before 1920 to Category:Ottoman Syria by year.

Comments? Huldra (talk) 23:23, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

The same should apply to subcategories of Category:Palestine by year before 1988.--Shlomo (talk) 23:47, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
Actually, I (mostly) agree! The question is when it comes to the pictures between 1948 and 1988; I think we must discuss that further. (Where should those pictures of the West Bank 1948–1967 go? And where should the pictures of the West Bank 1967–1988 go?) But those before 1948 should definitely go into the Category:British Mandate of Palestine by year, and the ones before 1920 into the Category:Ottoman Syria etc, just like those of Category:Israel by year, before 1948, Huldra (talk) 23:59, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
Mind you, there's Category:Palestine by year and Category:Palestinian territories by year. --HyperGaruda (talk) 05:17, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
The Kingdom of Israel existed long before 1948.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 04:52, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
This is tricky, and I understand how in this case it is particularly loaded; on the other hand, we routinely use present-day country (and smaller administrative unit) names to refer to present territory rather than territory at the time of an image. For example, we have a bunch of "...in Washington (state)" categories for the period when Washington was either part of the Oregon Territory or was a territory (but not a state) in its own right. - Jmabel ! talk 08:09, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
On the other hand, we have Category:Königsberg in the 1920s which is categorized as a city in Germany, not in Russia… Also, we have categories like Category:Yugoslavia by year, Category:Czechoslovakia by year or Category:Soviet Union by year, which certainly do not refer to their present territory.--Shlomo (talk) 09:04, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
Well, seeing categories like "Israel in the 1880s" is a bit absurd, IMO. It also looks as if it is mostly files relating to the Jewish community at the time. (In the 1880s about 5% of the population of present Israel/Palestine were Jewish.)
There is a name for those, namely en:Yishuv, and it actually has its Category:HaYishuv by decade. Perhaps all the Category:Israel by year before 1948 could go into the corresponding "HaYishuv by year"? Comments? Huldra (talk) 20:35, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
@Huldra: I'd have no problem with that. - Jmabel ! talk 21:46, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
Ok, if I hear no objections, I will start moving the Ottoman "Category:Israel by year" files into the correct "HaYishuv_by_year" cat in a day or so. Then do the same for Category:British Mandate of Palestine by year, Huldra (talk) 21:04, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
I would think, though, that HaYishuv categories should be used only for things related to the Jewish community in the region, not to everything that happens to be in the region. A picture of an Ottoman government building in Jerusalem in 1905 or an Arab person in Hebron in 1939 certainly does not belong in a HaYishuv category. Does anyone disagree with that? - Jmabel ! talk 01:45, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
I absolutely agree. I just came across this (changing it from "Category:1929 in HaYishuv" to "Category:1929 in the British Mandate of Palestine"). The Nashashibi Family is one of the leading Palestinian families in Jerusalem, having that as part of "Category:1929 in HaYishuv" is absurd. We should probably go systematically through all those "Category:xxxx in HaYishuv" and see if it shouldn't be in the "greater" category, Huldra (talk) 20:48, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Ok, I need help here. Does anyone know how we can change Template:Haifayear? Please see Template talk:Haifayear, Huldra (talk) 21:40, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

@Huldra: I replied there.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 22:15, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, well, I was looking for someone who actually dares to edit that template....the text of it terrifies me! Huldra (talk) 22:44, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
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