Commons:Village pump/Archive/2021/03

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Incorrect file name

Already several years ago I uploaded La Palma GR-131 Santo Domingo de Garafia.jpg. I recently have found that this picture was taken on the GR-130 hiking route on La Palma, not on the GR-131 hiking route. (The GR-131 runs broadly South to North, whereas the GR-130 circles the island.) In order to give our users correct information, I would like to rename the file to La Palma GR-130 Santo Domingo de Garafia.jpg (or to have someone else do this). How can this be effected? MartinD (talk) 09:42, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Moved the file based on above. Request can be closed. -- Deadstar (msg) 09:59, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 15:51, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Wikifunctions logo contest

Hello. Please help to choose a design concept for the logo of the new Wikifunctions wiki. Voting starts today and will be open for 2 weeks. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at Meta-Wiki. Thank you! --Quiddity (WMF)

01:45, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Flickr2Commons Stuck at "running" not works

It seems Flickr2Commons is not working in my case, there are many users complain about this issue on last week, but still not solve. Can anyone try to fix it as soon as possible?

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Flickr2Commons#Stuck_at_%22running%22

--Banetkool (talk) 12:07, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Glyph stroke order

@Jeff G.: @Mysterymanblue: I want to revive this unresolved and old section(read it before comment here).

It regards in these 7 files:
File:碎-order.gif
File:𠓨-order.gif
File:尼-order.gif
File:固-order.gif
File:世-order.gif
File:仍-order.gif
File:只-order.gif
Note: I am linking all their deletion requests of these files here: Reason these 7 files were taken from http://www.chunom.org , which do not specifies that those files have a license compatible with the common's one. So they should be deleted.

They say that there is a consensus, but it is not a matter of consensus, but a matter of fair use, and as a fair use it is not compatible with the wikimedia-commons' license, Here is all the information, read it and you will understand.
Note: in short here are the most important points for me:

  • "Because of this, whether or not usage of a GIF is legal depends on whether or not that usage falls under the doctrine of ‘fair use.’".
  • "So the doctrine of fair use creates a legal opening for copyrighted material to be remixed and repurposed, as long as the new use is derivative of the original and does not create economic competition for the copyright holders."

Final Note: Currently I only nominated for deletion only one file, I will nominate for deletion the rest of the files soon in next days. FanNihongo (talk) 05:46, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

    • @FanNihongo: when you write, "do now specifies" do you mean to say, "do not specify"? The most obvious interpretation of this phrase would be the opposite (paraphrasing, "It was not previously specified, but now it is") but that seems to contradict everything else you are saying. - Jmabel ! talk 15:50, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
In what country were these files created? Pinging @VulpesVulpes42 as uploader.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 23:20, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Hello (I'm probably the only survivor of the Commons:Stroke Order Project - feeling old timer),

  • In a font, apart from special cases where the glyphs are by themselves artistic (artistic initials, for instance), individual glyphs are not protected by w:Authors' rights (do not use "copyright" without caution, the concepts are different). The font as a whole is protected by commercial laws, so that one generally cannot freely copy and distribute it, but the individual glyphs are not subject to author's right, so that one can (obviously, logically) freely use and reproduce them, for instance to write a text, without authorization nor payment (just imagine it not being the case...).
  • In the stroke order project, it is therefore a standard procedure to take a character from a standard font as a basis for an animation, to create an image depicting the right stroke order (see protocol). In that case, the font as a whole is used as a "database", and extracts from a database when individual objects are PD follow sui generi rules (short version : OK as long as it is not a substantial part of the "database").
  • The source chunom.org has exactly the same approach : the glyphs presented are taken from Chinese "standard" fonts, they are not created by the site. In this case, since the source is simply "state of the art" calligraphy, there is no artistic fancy involved. Individual characters are therefore without copyright.

Since the .gif are not made from "copyrighted material", it is therefore OK (perfectly legal) to use them as a source. That is not exactly the project protocol, but it's OK so long as the font style is sufficiently near the ones used by the project, which is the case.

Therefore,  Keep Michelet-密是力 (talk) 07:19, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

While I am not saying that these files ARE copyrighted, I take trouble with the reasoning that because individual images of glyphs are copyrighted it necessarily follows that a GIF animation is as well. The question here is not whether a single character of text lies below the threshold of originality - this is undisputed. The question is whether the process of animating a series of those individual images into a GIF does meet the threshold of originality. It is similar to how a series of public domain words can created a protected poem.
Also, speaking of the stroke order project: if these files are determined to be in the public domain, the animated files of the stroke order project must also be considered to be in the public domain. So if these files are kept, I propose that public domain tags be placed on the gif animations of the stroke order project.  Mysterymanblue  17:09, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

 Keep These animations do not meet the threahold of originality required under copyright law. The idea itself of an animating the stroke order of a Chinese character is not protectible in and of itself - it is a scène à faire of electronic Chinese dictionaries and its original authors cannot be reasonably ascertained; the underlying idea of these GIFs belongs to the public domain. So when considering the copyrightability of these works, we must determine if the particular expression of the underlying scène à faire meets the threshold of originality. Here again, we find that the number of ways to express the idea of a stroke order animation is so low that it fails to possess at least some minimal degree of creativity. In the same way that the phrase "Springfield is the capital of Illinois" is the unprotectable expression of a piece of common knowledge because there are so few ways to express that idea, so too are these GIFs the unprotectable expression of a piece of common knowledge. Therefore, these files should be kept as they are in the public domain, and the animated files of the Stroke Order Project should be given public domain tags.  Mysterymanblue  17:44, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: To answer your question about country of origin, I sadly couldn't find any information answering that with certainty. I would like to add also that I was only 14 when I uploaded those files, and I did quite a few mistakes back then, and was generally more unaware and incautious about copyright. Today, I have become a fair bit more wary of accidentally committing copyright infringement. —VulpesVulpes42 (talk) 12:42, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Deleting images containing tables

Take for example Prestaciones.jpg. It contains a table which have only one link present. It is mentioned using 'ShouldBeText' template that once the image is replaced by wikitable, the file can be nominated for deletion. Since the image is used only in one page, can the file be nominated for deletion? Adithyak1997 (talk) 10:10, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

  • The periodic table example should be kept as it has a number of differences: firstly it's much more complex. It would be hard, outside the skills and time constraints of most editors, to reproduce that as a table. Secondly it's SVG, not JPG. So most of the problems with something as a bitmap image (scalability, accessibility, internationalisation) are not a problem for it. Thirdly it's a more widely useful subject. There is no simple law which states "any text table must not be a bitmap", and yet that first image does not justify its preservation as one. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:57, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
  • A badly-pixelated JPEG table is of no use to anyone anywhere. An SVG of the periodic table has an obvious educational use. --B (talk) 12:24, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

A comment on recent JSTOR uploads

Part of the COM:IA books uploads has been to mass upload "very old" scanned books that were missed from large, more obvious, collections. There's no doubt these are public domain, in any jurisdiction.

Flagging for community awareness of Category:Internet Archive (JSTOR cover page removed), where the files are being treated in the same way as Google scanned public domain documents. Logically these are fine, they are hosted at the Internet Archive, not JSTOR, but as the uploader I feel a bit, well scared. JSTOR ruthlessly came after Aaron Swartz and this led to his death.

The WMF has never directly offered to protect my good faith actions as an unpaid volunteer, or the wider community contributing to these upload projects. It's not a comfortable limbo to be left hanging in, unsure if actions for an open knowledge project will have me in court one day. Some volunteers have been surprised to find out that I'm one person, not a bot, so here's a reminder that I am human.

Thanks --Fæ (talk) 16:49, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Fæ, Removing pages from PD scanned books should not be an issue. However that reminds me of User:Dcoetzee and his very valuable upload of large volume of Public Domain Images from the National Portrait Gallery, London, which resulted in quite publicized lawsuit, some years back. Strangely User:Dcoetzee was indefinitely blocked couple years latter by WMF for unclear reasons (possibly something else). So Fæ, don't do do anything you are not comfortable with, as we would like to see your uploads for years to come. Recently I was looking for sources related to authoritative works about Albrecht Durer woodcuts and was pleasantly surprised that many were recently uploaded by you (see Category:Books about Albrecht Dürer). Thanks. -Jarekt (talk) 20:25, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

IANAL, but as a precaution, a statement of research has been added at COM:IA books#JSTOR. --Fæ (talk) 11:43, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Help in searching and filtering

I'm thinking of searching various uncategorized ("orphaned") FOP-related deletion requests, with the aim of adding relevant categories on them. However, is there a way to search those uncategorized case pages using keywords "Commons:Deletion requests/ [COUNTRY NAME like France or U.S. or United States] FOP" (or "Freedom of panorama") but filtering out all categorized case pages? Searching via the said keyword but not filtering out categorized case pages may take me months or even years to categorize most (if not all) uncategorized case pages. This is especially true to those having more than 1,000 categorized case pages. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 16:10, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, kind of. There is no "Commons:Deletion requests/[Country name] FOP" page, but other than that, it is doable. Basicly you would search for something like France FOP -incategory:"French FOP cases/deleted" prefix:"Commons:Deletion requests", although your search query would probably be longer, as you would probably not only exclude the "/deleted" category, but all of the subcategories under Category:[Country name] FOP cases and to do that you would have to specify all of them in the search query. The minus operator excludes the category, like on google.--Snaevar (talk) 18:57, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
Thank you Snaevar! :-) JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 01:00, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

U.S. FOP situation

Note: Just my thoughts only. I don't know if there are American Wikimedians who are attempting to introduce FOP for public art in the United States (at the very least for 3D public art outdoors like monuments and sculptures). Right now the cases resulting to deletion have totalled more than 1,600, surpassing Italy's but not yet exceeding Slovenia's and Japan's (non-buildings). Though there may be several more case pages uncategorized, and some speedy deletions made during the last two decades. The Commons:Freedom of panorama campaign (way back circa 2012) sank into oblivion. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 04:27, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

  • @JWilz12345: are you talking about lobbying for a change in copyright law? Because U.S. courts have been pretty clear in accepting what is effectively FOP for buildings and structures and rejecting it for art. To my knowledge, it hasn't hit the Supreme Court, but I think that is mostly because lower courts seem to have an effective consensus. Basically, the issue was forced when a blockbuster film chose to make a publicly displayed, copyrighted sculpture a major visual theme in the movie, and the artist successfully sued. As they say, bad cases make bad law. - Jmabel ! talk 05:02, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
  • @JWilz12345: Any suggestions for revitalizing Commons:Freedom of panorama campaign or otherwise getting things moving? Kaldari (talk) 06:06, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
    • @Kaldari: I cannot give major suggestions at the moment (my one suggestion is patterning US FOP after Moldova's, which is focused on outdoor 3D works only, but this might exclude George Floyd murals, and leaving architectural FOP intact) Though it is supposed to be spearheaded by American Wikimedians, and as a user here in the Philippines, I am not supposed to interfere with foreign matters (as FOP introduction involves politics). I can give support though, like #YesToFreedomOfPanorama shout outs (like what I did for future South African FOP and soon, our future FOP). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 13:09, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Octopus steals camera and wins underwater photography competition

Posted without comment: "Octopus steals camera and wins underwater photography competition". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:58, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

As the work of a non-human animal, this work is eligible to be hosted on Commons. Uploaded to File:The Day of the Tentacle.jpg.  Mysterymanblue  21:29, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Which of these two categories is the correct one?

Category:Chitral Fort or Category:Shahi Fort, Chitral?

The first one is in agreement with enwiki Chitral Fort, which has not been assessed, and with List of forts in Pakistan that is supported by this

The second one is in agreement with {{en|1=Shahi Fort Chitral KPK Pakistan}}{{Cultural Heritage Pakistan|KPK-88}}

When I originally discovered this, I combined the images into Category:Chitral Fort, but now I am in doubt. I would like someone more knowledgeable than I am to make the decision. Apparently this fort was important in the history of Pakistan. I do not know how the names of Category:Cultural heritage monuments in Pakistan are determined. Thanks, --Krok6kola (talk) 20:53, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

  • @Krok6kola: You might ask at en:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pakistan. - Jmabel ! talk 22:23, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
    @Jmabel: I asked over there and maybe I will get a useful reply. It does not seem an especially active WikiProject. Perhaps after Pakistan was designated as dangerous, the project became rather inactive. There is no encouragement to upload images of Pakistan on the Commons anymore. It is not encouraged every year as is India, for example. Very little information regarding Cultural Heritage Monuments in Pakistan is available anywhere except a few websites that have not been updated. And a few newspapers. Krok6kola (talk) 23:02, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
I've been through the campaign reports for the Illustrated London News. Think your safe keeping all in Chitral Fort, and leaving Shahi Fort as a redirect. Broichmore (talk) 16:16, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
@Broichmore: Thanks! I did not really expect to get an answer, so thank you very much. Krok6kola (talk) 22:30, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
@Krok6kola: Here is confirmation that Chitral Fort or Shahi Qilla, built in the 14th Century; is the same place. Several websites also confirm that the picture we have of the gateway is for the same complex. The majority of references name it as Chitral Fort 11:06, 5 March 2021 (UTC).

Does crop tools automatically compress images?

Take a peek at File:Louis_Julius_Freudenberg_obituary_in_the_Jersey_Journal_on_July_19,_1921_for_his_internment_in_the_United_States.png, I cropped out the name of the newspaper column, and the file size was cut in half. I am assuming that croptool is automatically engaging in lossy compression. Does any one have more details? I would think we would not want to compress the file and lose resolution. --RAN (talk) 14:48, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

The crop tool offers lossless and precise mode for jpg files and precise mode fro png files. Unless you rotate the file to a degree that is not a multiple 90 degrees, the crop will be lossless for the full area with the exception of the outer pixels (in lossless mode completely, but only multiples of 8 or 16 are possible crops). Your crop is lossless, but you either removed parts (the headline and the lines at the left and right) that do not compress good, or the croptool used png optimization or surplus meta information was removed or all of that. The main purpose of the tool is to keep all information from the original in the cropped image. --C.Suthorn (talk) 15:32, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): i tried cropping again but the file size was still halved.--RZuo (talk) 14:31, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
Let me look to see how the metadata changed, that sounds like a plausible explanation. Is there any chance that crop tool will be expanded to offer an oval crop? Croptool is one of the best things in all of Commons. --RAN (talk) 16:40, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
It may also be the case, that the original was 8/24/32 bit with 256/16M/4G colors and the cropped one is 1 bit 2 color line graphic only. png is in either case a lossless format. --C.Suthorn (talk) 16:46, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
Ah! That makes perfect sense. Thanks! --RAN (talk) 05:06, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Image + text together

Is there a way for me to store the text from a news clipping in the metadata of a png file? I want it so that when I download it, the text comes with it. --RAN (talk) 05:11, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): I would recommend you instead store the text in the file description. You can use {{Inscription}}. I don't think search will look for file metadata, and the description in the metadata may not be noticed. MKFI (talk) 07:40, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

File:Abobo map.png

File:Abobo map.png is a screenshot of an online map, from which certain parts have been cropped out, most notably the bottom right corner. The colour palette reminds me of OpenStreetMap, though it is not identical to the current map. Does anyone recognise a different (potentially non-freely licensed) mapping service? If not, I suppose I'll just update the information template to give proper attribution to OSM. --HyperGaruda (talk) 07:38, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Inflatable playhouses

How do we name/categorise these inflatable playthings?Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:57, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Category:Bouncing castles. --HyperGaruda (talk) 11:27, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Hursch mal wieder

Nachdem alle seine Uploads teilweise bereits mehrfach gelöscht wurden und nachdem Hursh einen undeletion request für example.jpg gestellt hat, hat hursh nun erneut 2 dateien hochgeladen und weitere werden bestimmt folgen. ich werde keine weiteren DR mehr stellen. Aber irgendjemand sollte irgendetwas tun. Vermutlich ist dieser pakistanische Choreograph der einen Artikel über sich selbst in der englischen Wikipedia schreiben will, wirklich ein pakistanischer Choreograph der einen Artikel über sich selbst in der englischen Wikipedia schreiben will. Aber so ist das doch murks. Entweder wird er weltweit gebannt, oder alle seine uploads weden wiederhergestellt oder jemand greift ihm unter die Arme und mentort ihn. Aber es kann doch nicht angeehen, dass der immer wieder seine Bilder hochlädt, bis sich dann niemand mehr drum kümmert und die Bilder dann doch irgendwie hier rumstehen. Das wäre einfacher zu haben gewesen... --C.Suthorn (talk) 16:51, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Hursch again
After all of his uploads have already been deleted several times and after Hursh has made an undeletion request for example.jpg, hursh has now uploaded 2 files again and more will definitely follow. I will not provide any more DR. But someone should do something. Presumably this Pakistani choreographer who wants to write an article about himself in the English Wikipedia is really a Pakistani choreographer who wants to write an article about himself in the English Wikipedia. But that's the way it is. Either he will be banned worldwide, or all of his uploads will be restored, or someone will give him a helping hand and mentor him. But it can't be allowed to keep uploading his pictures until nobody cares anymore and the pictures are somehow standing around here. That would have been easier ...
translator: Google Translate via   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 18:06, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
@C.Suthorn: Neither username was found, please check your work.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 18:06, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Hurshch --C.Suthorn (talk) 18:12, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: File:Hurshch.jpg he has more than one account. --C.Suthorn (talk) 20:23, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
@C.Suthorn: Please submit the account names and evidence via COM:RFCU.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 13:57, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Proposal: Move captions from file information to structured data tab

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T276718

Currently we have two tabs on files on Commons:

  • File information to display information about the file generally in a infobox template format
  • Structured data to see and edit structured data in a key/value format

Currently the captions are in the "file information" tab. This is weird because these captions are part of the structured data. These captions cause visual clutter. I propose that the captions are moved to the structured data tab. Please comment at Commons talk:Structured data#Proposal: Move captions from file information to structured data tab (not here!) to see if we have community consensus for this. Multichill (talk) 18:34, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

  • Please beware that this section of The Village Pump is for some reason not intended for discussion about the o.p., as asked above, and that this unusual use for The Village Pump is strictly enforced: See this reversion of a question by me about the subject, as performed by an admin. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 18:14, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

69 MILLION FILEEES

Niceeee. — Preceding unsigned comment was added by 119.59.121.169 (talk) 19:49, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
CurId: 100.000.000 --C.Suthorn (talk) 20:06, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

We need to talk about how hostile Commons is to video uploaders

I encountered once again today a problem that has been festering for years and that urgently needs resolution.

To set context, if we want people to contribute to Commons (especially casual contributors, as opposed to experienced Wikimedians), it's really important to make the upload process easy. People online are lazy, and for every obstacle they encounter, a sizeable portion will give up. Our interface for uploading photos is fairly good (certainly better than Wikipedia's local file upload wizard), but when it comes to videos, the process is atrociously bad.

An abomination.

Here's the process I encountered while trying to help a friend contribute a video today. First, we went to the upload page, and tried to upload the video, which was in MP4 format. I see that Commons chose not to support MP4s back in 2014 due to some ideological objections. Fair enough, but there's a difference between deciding not to support a file format and turning a blind eye to the fact that it's the most popular format on the internet. So if we're not going to support MP4, we'd better have a really friendly error message. It'd better communicate "hey, I see you're trying to upload an MP4. While we don't support that, no worries, just click okay and we'll convert it to our preferred format in the background and move you along." That doesn't happen. Instead, we get the error message at right, which doesn't even include a link to Help:Converting video (and the chance of a newcomer intuiting the namespace system and finding the page on their own rather than this is approximately nil).

Assuming that by some miracle someone finds Help:Converting video, what do they encounter? (Remember that the actual number of steps in the process should be one: clicking okay to affirm that they are alright with their video being converted.) They encounter a 28,000-byte manual that could serve as a textbook illustration of w:choice paralysis. The supposed "easiest way for most users" suggests the convoluted process of uploading to Vimeo and then transferring to Commons via video2commons (even though video2commons accepts files uploaded directly).

So for the fraction of users who choose to read the manual, follow the process, and end up at video2commons, further obstacles await. We kept on getting a "Error: Invalid CSRF token" message. After some web sleuthing, I figured out that I think it was being caused by my ad blocker, and that disabling it could make it go away. Ad blockers are not some niche custom setting used by 0.3% of web users; they're a really common add-on, and if we can't get our tool to play nice with them, we at minimum need to include a "try disabling your ad blocker" in the error message.

So we worked through that, but now we seem to be encountering size limits or something else; I left the task running in the background since it's quite slow (another barrier), and when I checked it had "TaskError: pywikibot.Error: APIError: stashfailed: Internal error: Server failed to publish temporary file." So as of now, we still haven't gotten the file uploaded.

The precise barriers different people might face vary depending on their circumstances and the paths they choose through the system (when I've tried uploading videos before, I've run into different but similar issues), but the overall point is that there is a comically arduous array of user interface obstacles arrayed against anyone who deigns to do something that we really want them to do. I cannot overemphasize how bad this is. Every day that goes by that we retain the current interface, we are losing good contributions. It's impossible to tell precisely how many people give up and decide to go just put their video on YouTube (not under a free license) instead, but I guarantee it's not a small number. I don't mean to place any blame on whoever set up and maintains video2commons; I presume that they're just a volunteer with more on their shoulders than they should be expected to carry. My concern is with what's happening higher up: Where is the technical and interface support we need to resolve this? Why wasn't it addressed years ago? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:26, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

  • TL;DR There is an array of user interface obstacles that confronts anyone who tries to upload a video in an unsupported format, including MP4s and other extremely popular types, and this is losing us an uncountable but large number of contributions. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:26, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
While I don't appreciate the somewhat dramatic tone and Youtube-like title (we don't "need to" talk about anything, this is an open forum), I do agree with the point. The current way Commons handles (or more like doesn't handle) unsupported formats leaves much to be desired.
For context, there was a more recent discussion about this very issue and the community seemed to agree that server-side transcoding of uploaded videos to free formats formats is the desired solution for this ("Proposal 2: Allow uploading of MP4 files, only provide transcoded Webm files to download/stream.") However, I don't really follow these developments, so I'm not aware of the progress on this, if WMF has reviewed the legal aspects of the feature, etc.
The chosen proposal isn't something I'd call "good" either, as not making the original file available for download is going to have implications for viability of creating derivative works (it'll introduce more generation loss). It's just the least bad trade-off in this non-ideal situation.
As a side note, unlike what that RfC and some other discussions initially seems to imply, "MP4" isn't the issue here, as it's just a container format that can actually hold both VP9 and AV1 these days and isn't even non-free AFAIK. It's the video coding formats MP4 is commonly used for (H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, and possibly H.266/VVC in the future) that are the problem. The issue isn't purely ideological either IMO, it's just as much the patent minefield around the more popular formats that MP4 used to hold (or at least the one that HEVC is burdened with, for the purposes of Wikimedia Commons). For some perspective, patents are such a big issue in the video space that a bunch of big companies formed a consortium to make their own video coding format because the core issue with HEVC (and probably upcoming MPEG codecs as well) is practically unsolvable.
As for Help:Converting video, the reason it's such a mess is that there really isn't an easy, one-click, no-need-to-know-what-you're-doing solution for video conversion (mostly because it's a complex process with a lot of variables). Even tools that might claim or seem to be fit for such a purpose really aren't, I've found, and are just incompetently abstracting the involved complexity away and making incorrect assumptions. So even though I've wanted to improve the conversion guide, there's nothing good to replace it with as far as simple conversion goes, and any major improvement would involve just deleting most of the page with no actually good solutions provided.
All in all, I'd be interested to hear how the development fares in this area of Commons. Doing things right in the realm of video is already a PITA without having to deal with additional format conversions, so I don't envy whoever is going to be working on this. -- Veikk0.ma (talk) 08:38, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
@Veikk0.ma: Thanks for the context (and apologies that my attempt to make the post engaging didn't come off well to you). Could you expand on why it's not possible to have a one-click solution? Vimeo and YouTube seem to be able to do it, so I'm not sure why we can't. I'm not surprised to hear that conversion typically involves a bit of quality loss, but I see that as a much lesser problem than what we currently face. Including a disclaimer notice along the lines of "this conversion may involve a bit of quality loss; if you really care, go convert manually" would be sufficient imo. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 13:24, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
This issue is not going to be fixed in any short therm. It might be best, at least as an stopgap measure, to fix video2commons and link directly to it from the error message.
This no-MP4 upload issue is completely in the control of the commmons community. There was an RFC on this in 2014, with several options. Youtube pays the licence holder, MPEG LA, an licensing fee for conversions. The idea was, back in 2014, that the WMF would use an "Internet Broadcast" licence, which is an non-commercial licence, to avoid paying MPEG LA. Despite this, a majority of the flat out no votes mentioned that it was not a free format and therefore they would not support it. That fact has not changed. An minority mentioned vandalism issues, which would be easier with phab:T132650. Specifically, there is an bug T45150 which covers this issue. In it, the 2014 RFC is mentioned and JdForrester mentions the following:

No. Everything has been derailed by the Commons community's vote. Until the community changes its mind, I'd consider it unlikely that anything more will be discussed, let alone happen.

— Jdforester in bug T45150
By the way, there is an basic MP4 support in MediaWiki, it is just not turned on in Commons. I do not see any signs that the WMF has been notified of the more recent RFC decision, it would be best to place it in T451050.--Snaevar (talk) 15:59, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
@Snaevar: It seems to me that the community may have changed its mind regarding this issue, or at least has since better formulated/presented its opinions on if/how the issue of uploading video in non-free formats should be handled. See this Village Pump Proposal from 2019-2020, in which "Proposal 2: Allow uploading of MP4 files, only provide transcoded Webm files to download/stream" garnered more support than any of the other proposals, and the complete rejection of handling MP4 files was nowhere to be seen. Not even a single Oppose or comment in the discussion sections brought up such a viewpoint.
It's been more than seven years since the RfC on "MP4 support". Since then, internet video has become even more ubiquitous, and the community's opinions on its importance and associated challenges may have changed. Perhaps there would be value in re-gauging community opinion with a new RfC, with feedback incorporated from these previous discussions? -- Veikk0.ma (talk) 23:30, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
It is a good thing that people are not as fussed about non-free formats as in 2014. I did see the new RFC, although admittedly my previous comment did largely glance over it, apart from the last two sentences. The new rfc apparently ended up being reported as T258540, there are some thoughts from the developers there. There where attempts to do the same solution as in the 2019 rfc with mp3 files in T45149, which ended up being limited to an specific user group instead. Maybe that solution is a bit complex in the eyes of the devs.--Snaevar (talk) 11:47, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
@Sdkb: : What I mean is that as far as I know, none of the one-click solutions currently available (either freely downloadable & installable software or free conversion services) are fit for use for the purpose of converting video to free formats for upload to Commons. There is no technical reason for why Commons couldn't do the conversion instead of the uploader having to do it beforehand. In fact, this would greatly reduce the risk of the user-conducted conversion adversely affecting the quality of the video, in addition to greatly simplifying the whole process of course.
One of the bigger reasons for why good one-click solutions for this purpose don't exist is probably that converting video to a free format in high enough quality for uploading is a very niche thing to do. Uploading to Commons is the only practical reason I can think of that a tool like this would be used for. There's also the fact that actual video quality measurement is difficult, and the widely used estimates of bitrate and CRF aren't actually very accurate at all, and are only very rough estimates that depend on other variables. Actual quality measurements like VMAF are commonly calculated after encoding and not really targeted beforehand, so the methods of targeting a quality level that are used in practice (see Youtube's recommended upload encoding settings for an example) leave much to be desired and may waste lots of storage space (and a bit of time) to ensure that a sufficient upload quality is reached.
I'm personally not convinced that the community still believes in a total hands-off approach for handling non-free video formats. It might be beneficial to query the community's opinion with a new RfC. In the meantime, in order to solve the various errors and bugs you encountered you should probably report them to the -- Veikk0.ma (talk) 01:24, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
This is not on the radar for WMF investment.
If someone wanted to be paid for, say, a month's work setting up and debugging a tool to provide a simple workflow to queue and transcode videos ($6,000), it would be a good proposal. You could expect it to take a year to get funding unless an Affiliate decided to sponsor it. Experience with the WMF "cloud" service, is that the tool might be banned from there, because it's no good for large files, apparently.
BTW, despite the WMF being insistent that Google tools are essential, Google (YouTube) has blocked IP addresses from the WMF attempting to download and transcode videos. Google has chosen actively to block the release of public domain educational material in this way. This has been happening for 2 years (I think), for example, the CDC video upload project had to be abandoned. --Fæ (talk) 11:42, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
The costs here are only programming costs, the licensing falls under the "internet broadcast" mp4 licence, and thus is free (that was approved by WMF legal, btw.). This is blocked on the commons community, not the WMF, see my comment above for more info. The Youtube download issue is an separate issue, please stay on topic.--Snaevar (talk) 15:59, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
@Sdkb: I totally understand where you're coming from. Even to me as an experienced Commons user and admin, having uploaded some videos myself, it always seemed to be a rather complicated and error-prone process. But there is another aspect which will probably make the community reluctant to make uploading videos too easy, as ridiculous as this might sound at first. Why should we make it hard on purpose? We want to encourage people to contribute after all! Well... Look at the case of MP3. Originally, Commons didn't support MP3 audio files for much the same reason as it's now not supporting MP4 video; because MP3 then was patented, it was not a free format. So people had to convert their files into the much less used Vorbis format. Now all patents on MP3 have expired, it has become a free format, the original "ideological" reasons for disallowing it no longer apply. Still, casual contributors can't upload an MP3 file - per Commons:File types, Commons currently only accepts MP3 uploads by users with Autopatrol or higher rights, due to concerns about the capacity of the community to monitor for copyright violations. And there are good reasons for that. Compared to virtually every other "media share" platform, Commons has very strict requirements for the freeness of its media (no "fair use" etc., media need to be really free), and it's a community of human editors who have to check whether these are met - a community that already struggles with its attempts to keep up with copyright violations in still images. Checking audio files is more time-consuming, and video files even much more so. If you have an image, you just have to look at that single image and the plausibility of its license, maybe check the web whether you find it anywhere else etc. In a video, there can be so many different kinds of copyright violation, and you would have to watch the whole video to make sure. We have no Youtube-like content match system here... Say, the video is 15 minutes long, and at minute 10, a copyrighted song starts to play. A nightmare to check for humans. So, we can't just open the floodgates to video here, I'm afraid, if we don't want to become completely overwhelmed. Gestumblindi (talk) 20:16, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
@Gestumblindi: I'm sympathetic to the difficulty of copyright patrolling, having heard lots of venting from my wikifriends involved with w:WP:CCI. That said, I think it's pretty core to the Wikimedia philosophy (and to the growth of the movement) to welcome contributions from newcomers, and it's certainly not as if experienced contributors have been able to upload videos for all the topics we might want them for. The current de facto barriers work as an imprecise cudgel, blocking good content along with bad. And they filter by technological savviness, which introduces WP:systemic bias concerns: we don't want to worsen the underrepresentation of videos from users in less tech-savvy demographics, which includes many minority groups. Yes, making it easier to upload videos will increase the amount of patrolling to be done, but we have options to deal with that, from improving the UI to better emphasize licensing to building bots that could better flag potentially improperly licensed videos for extra human scrutiny. Those strategies would allow us to manage the problem in a more targeted way that doesn't produce the invisible collateral damage we're currently enduring. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:38, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
While the problems themselves are complicated, there are some' ' simple solutions we can enact, I would say that the original poster's rewording of the error message is a good solution, or replace some part of it with a message notifying people about Video2Commons. Also regarding copyright © patrolling, well trusted users can get the "Videouploader" user right, though this is somewhat problematic as a new user that only wants to upload videos may have to spend many years uploading non-video's and/or requesting others to upload free videos to even be eligible, perhaps that can easily be solved by creating two separate user rights for video uploading where "the lower tier right" would have all of their uploads listed in an way that is easily scrutinised, and "the higher tier" uploaders (while having their uploads still listed at a place to be scrutinised) have it less so.
Anyhow, I am not sure if the ban on MP4 files still holds community consensus today as I have seen people complain quite often that Wikimedia Commons should have more tools and easier tools for importing videos. I have only imported a handful of videos and was surprised that many early 20th (twentieth) and late 19th (nineteenth) century films in the public domain weren't on Wikimedia Commons, but after importing some realised why this is, people are actively discouraged from contributing videos to Wikimedia Commons. I am pretty sure that we would have a large user base asking documentary makers for OTRS permission for their files if the video import process wasn't so convoluted.
It is not difficult to have an automated file conversion programme running, in fact that could be a tool for scanning for copyright violations. Though a common problem with video files would probably be that an hour long documentary about the lifestyle of giraffes might contain a one second shot of a coca-cola can or some building in an African country with no Freedom of Panorama and will need to be entirely deleted (or edited by people with the right skills and tools to remove the copyrighted materials), plus things like copyrights related to speech and personality rights. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:46, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Perth Stadium AFL images

I have a query in regards to the Perth Stadium and Australian Football League-game images from the stadium. The condition of entry policies are available here. The stadium allows photography for non-commercial use which, I presume, allows uploads to Commons. The AFL policy is more restrictive, stating you are not to "make any recording or take any photograph for any purpose other than private non-commercial purposes". As I have some images form an AFL Women's match at the stadium from last weekend, the AFL policy would indicate to me that I m not permitted to upload these images to Commons. Is my assessment of the policy correct? I would appreciate if somebody could read the relevant part of the AFL policy and give me their interpretation. Calistemon (talk) 01:15, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Commons would accept them per Commons:Non-copyright restrictions, but you'd be doing it at your own risk. --ghouston (talk) 01:51, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
@Ghouston: Thank you for your advice and the link explaining the matter. Interestingly, there already is Category:Australian rules football matches at Perth Stadium and Category:AFL round 6 2019, Fremantle vs. Western Bulldogs, created by User:Teratix. I'm pinging @Teratix: here so they are also aware of the situation and the potential legal hazard of uploading such images. It is an unfortunate situation as these images would be quite useful in AFL-related articles on Wikipedia. It might pay to contact the AFL for some clarification. Calistemon (talk) 03:32, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Why do you have to log in to create new non-talk pages?

I was trying to create my user page, but I can't as I'm not logged in. What is the reason for this? 2600:1012:B061:8EE3:B1A9:6184:1817:C099 19:16, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Anonymous IP users don't have user pages. Next week a different Verizon Wireless user could have your IP address of today and then succeeded with your user page. --Achim (talk) 19:30, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Invitation to help us understand how you work with media

Example screenshot of the survey taken on a standard Android tablet, showing it fails to render in a usable format.

Greetings everyone!

If you work with media files — either regularly or occasionally — we want to invite you to join a research session to help us understand this process and the challenges you face during it. To participate, we ask that you first complete this short survey in which we ask you a few questions about working with media. At the end, we ask for an email address that we can use to contact you if you are selected for an interview. If selected, we will follow up with an email invitation to select a day/time to participate. As a thank you for your time and insights, we are able to offer interview participants a gift card as compensation for participation.

You can complete the survey on any internet-capable device, but in order to participate in the interview, you will need access to a computer and internet connection fast enough to support video calls.

Thank you!

(MRaish (WMF) (talk) 17:35, 1 March 2021 (UTC))

This survey will be conducted via Google Forms, which may subject it to additional terms. For more information about privacy and data-handling, see the survey privacy statement.

@MRaish (WMF): this survey uses google - a service, that is not Open Source. Therefore I (and others who will not use Google for whatever reason) will not take part. The result of your project is flawed before you even begin, because you exclude a complete group of users (actually everyone who is into open source, open knowledge, free licences). This is the opposite of diversity, of non-discriminatory access to wikipeda (the goal of another project of WMF: this new code of conduct). --C.Suthorn (talk) 17:40, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
  1. [...] our Enterprise agreement with Google prevents Google from accessing the data for their own uses and requires them to inform the Foundation of any requests for data that they receive prior to disclosure, allowing us an opportunity to file a legal objection. Is this true for this survey, or not?
  2. we are purposefully not asking questions about sexual orientation or gender in any geographies where same-sex relations or identifying as transgender are criminalized Is this true for this survey, or not? Noting that, of course, this survey asks for gender identification on the first page.
If you don't know yourself, could you please get an official reply from WMF Legal, as they did review these statements and the WMF is committed to being transparent?
Thanks --Fæ (talk) 22:14, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
It would be better not to disclose in the survey, if you use media from commons to "promote" LGBTI issues in Russia or Poland? (I contributed content from a Pride Parade event in Poland) --C.Suthorn (talk) 06:26, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
@MRaish (WMF): Could you define "work with"? I presume it means more than (for example) uploading photos here, or looking at a photo some time as part of your job. - Jmabel ! talk 22:20, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
@MRaish (WMF): What is the value of each gift card? 68.194.100.148 23:35, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
@MRaish (WMF): Is it really a $100 voucher for the play store? iOS users can buy films or ebooks with it? --C.Suthorn (talk) 06:21, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
(Giving up on pings, it looks like the WMF are not responding here anyway) I have added an illustration of how the survey appears on my tablet. It appears that the WMF does not have guidelines in place for survey design so that they can work across different platforms, for some users making it impossible to take part using their normal kit.
This thread on Commons has been raised as an example at Wikimedia-l "Surveys using third party tools on Wikimedia projects" and WMF legal has been copied as there are questions raised for them, in return this provides me with a WMF ticket tracking number. --Fæ (talk) 16:26, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
Out of interest: Do they ask about if it is difficult to use the upload wizard? --C.Suthorn (talk) 16:23, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
No. --Fæ (talk) 16:26, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
@MRaish (WMF): Google-Forms is a no-go for a valid survey. No privacy conscious person will use the privacy destroying behemoth Google for anything. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk) 16:32, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi all, thanks for your patience with this over the last few days. We’ve been following up with Legal and Trust and Safety in the interest of due diligence. Several points were raised above that have been under discussion the past few days.

  • The issue of the use of Google Forms or related services for survey hosting is part of a larger conversation at the Foundation. For now, it’s an accepted tool within the Foundation that’s been approved by the Legal department. We are investigating alternative platforms, however, that will serve the needs of the various Foundation teams that use surveys to engage with and learn more about editor communities.
  • The gender identity item was included in this case because—like the other various teams across the Foundation who engage in research—we have an ongoing priority of engaging with diverse groups of editors. In the context of this survey, this optional question helps us gauge the extent to which we are meeting that goal. I’ve amended the survey form to include a statement to this effect. This question remains optional, and an answer to it is not a prerequisite for participating in this research or for receiving compensation if you do participate. Please only respond if you are in a safe and comfortable position to do so. The survey privacy statement includes more specific information about how the information collected during this study will be used.
  • The “work with media” items in the survey are intentionally worded vaguely—thanks for noticing this. Many people “work with” media in different ways across Wikimedia platforms and beyond. We’re interested in hearing participants’ insights into their working-with-media processes regardless of the individual ways that they edit or contribute.

Again, thank you for your patience and for raising these points. Please reach out directly if you have any concerns about this study that I can answer.

(MRaish (WMF) (talk) 15:24, 5 March 2021 (UTC))

  • From this statement, WMF Legal have not confirmed these words.
The answer to Question 1 above, is therefore no. This survey applies the standard Google Forms terms, as stated in the published Privacy Statement on the WMF website. Therefore there is no agreement with Google that overrides their ability to start their own security investigations or comply with requests by US authorities before contacting WMF Legal, precisely as in their legal terms and conditions for Google Forms.
The answer to Question 2 above, is therefore no. This survey is not written to avoid asking questions about sexual orientation or gender in any geographies where same-sex relations or identifying as transgender are criminalized. It does not even contain a warning.
The Wikimedia Foundation cannot make a statement about their ethical commitments and give the impression that these have been reviewed with the WMF legal team, while at the same time producing new surveys which directly contradict those statements.
Please take down this survey immediately, doing so costs nothing. There is no good excuse for letting it stay up and putting volunteers at completely avoidable risk.
@MRaish (WMF): should you be corresponding with anyone from WMF Legal, the ticket reference is 24634. --Fæ (talk) 16:46, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
  • To paraphrase, and clarify, "The Wikimedia Foundation cannot make a statement about their ethical commitments" (particularly Trust & Safety) without attracting gales of ribald laughter. As long as they fail to apply due process and proportionality, I have no confidence in anything they do, and particularly not in another deeply flawed survey. But maybe that's just my lawyer's mind. Rodhullandemu (talk) 16:18, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
I took the survey, so you two can just skip it, I'm sure I said whatever either of you would've. If I get picked for an interview I'll be sure and tell them what well-respected folks you both are. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:16, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
@Beeblebrox Are you sure you meant to say that? It could easily be taken the wrong way. But I'm sure that you realise that, on reflection. Rodhullandemu (talk) 20:50, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

There is a question is the survey that requires an answer: Which of the following aspects of working with media do you currently find to be challenging? May I suggest that you add "none of the above" as an option? And why on earth are you asking me about my gender identification? No, I didn't fill in the survey. Vexations (talk) 22:07, 10 March 2021 (UTC) 


How often do you work in English Wikipedia with media files taken from 𝗻𝗼𝗻-𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵 Wikis? *

@MRaish (WMF): I wasn't aware you can do this. I thought, that English Wikipedia allows only media from commons and fair-use-media from english wikipedia? What wiki syntax do I need to use a media file from isiZulu-Wikipedia in the english Wikipedia? Also is this survey about commons or about english wikipedia? Because there questions on english wikipedia, but not on icelandic wikinews or tagalog wiktionary or chinese wikiversity? Why are there 3 radio buttons for usage frequency (0-1, 2-5, more than 5) (a numeric input field would do) but gender is a free text field (how will you use an input like "trans klingon reformed", wouldn't radio buttons ( m/w/d/n/<not answered> ) make more sense? --C.Suthorn (talk) 04:10, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Jesus Messiah picturebook media

I recently came across a Dutch company that produces Christian propaganda comic books here, while I am an Atheist (and quite anti-theistic) I saw some value in these works, namely that the author, Willem de Vink, wants to release this book in every language in the world and it's now released in 163 languages. While Willem de Vink isn't exactly important (having only a single Wikipedia page in a singlw language that isn't even English), the Jesus character he writes about is a notable figure that has Wikipedia articles in almost every language Wikipedia is available in. Why am I bringing this up, well his website states the following facts "a. Graphic novel comic book, (English called "Jesus Messiah"): over 173 editions (growing number...) available in 163 languages." and "Willem de Vink created this Christian graphic novel book in 1993: Read here the Creative Commons SA-BY agreement." meaning that these comic books are eligible (copyright-wise) to be imported to Wikimedia Commons.

Now the question is, are these comic books educational enough to be imported to Wikimedia Commons? I would love to see good arguments why they, as works rather than as tools of religious propaganda, are(n't) educational enough to be hosted here. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:23, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Also, does the lack of notability of the author (having no English-language Wikipedia article) affect the status of his works in relation to Wikimedia Commons? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:24, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Are scientific papers and research papers really often deleted as "spam"? That is a scary thought about the state of science and/or Commons. —Iketsi (talk) 17:02, 10 March 2021 (UTC)
I should really collect links to the logs every time that happens, but in general Wikimedia Commons sees it as "out of scope" to publish your own research here. But I still wish to know if it's "in scope" to import this comic book series. Personally I would love to see these comic books here on Wikimedia Commons as they illustrate a globally well known story in many different languages. But I'm curious as to why this shouldn't be the case. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 10:56, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: Back to the original question: I would think this was in scope, but it is probably a borderline case. - Jmabel ! talk 20:06, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Help me, please.

I opened this deletion request.

Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Money of North Korea

However, there are too many files in this category, and there are too many uploaders who uploaded these files. It is too difficult to manually add files to the deletion request, and to inform the file documents and the uploaders who uploaded the file about the deletion request.

Where is the bot to help with this? If not, Help me, please.

Ox1997cow (talk) 23:44, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

@Ox1997cow: I opined at the DR.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 01:58, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Help on adding template via CustomReplace of VisualFileChange

I'm going to add {{PD-Philippines-artistic work}} on images of public domain buildings in the Philippines, like those at Category:Pangasinan Provincial Capitol, using the format as indicated below:

{{Licensed-FOP
|1={{PD-Philippines-artistic work}}
|2= <LICENSE>
}}

However, various files have various licenses, from CC-BY-SA to PD licensing. How can I insert such tags in the format of {{Licensed-FOP}}, without compromising the license tags of the files amd also other tags or elements of the file description pages? What syntax or element or parameter do I need to use? JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 14:21, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

  • @Tuvalkin: it's too technical. Even going to w:grep and visiting [1]. I just need help in substituting the different licenses via a form of representation (a single pattern) of those licenses (some having "self|cc-by-xxxx", some plain "cc-by" or "cc-by-sa", others "pd-self" or "pd-user"...). I admit I edit via phone (but with desktop view which I am used to enabled), and things like these become technical. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 17:44, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
  • It’s not too technical: It’s the right amount of technical to do the technical thing you need done. I’m not really good with it, but off the cuff it would seem you need to look for whatever piece of wikicode that stores the file’s license (either \|permission\=(*) or \=\=\{\{int\:license-header\}\}\=\=\n(*)\n, allowing for blanks and greediness) and inject it into the new code (\|2\= \1) and maybe remove it from where it was found. Someone with actual good regex and VFC knowleged should work on this. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 13:24, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
JWilz12345, I like to use VisualFileChange with some easy regular expressions; however when they get complex, I prefer to use en:Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser where you can look at each edit before saving. It is much safer way of editing pages without messing things up. --Jarekt (talk) 18:57, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
Still unsucceesful (causing me to abort the VFC/Custom-replace window without saving). I thinking of seeking AWB rights here on Commons, if it has the ability to add the FOP formatting I indicated above and using some syntax or form in representing the different licensing tags used in the files. But I don't have plan in requesting AWB rights at this moment, due to personal reasons. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 15:29, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees/Call for feedback: Community Board seats

According to m:Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees/Call for feedback: Community Board seats/Conversations/Topic panels there will be video recordings available on Commons. Since this meta page does not say when or where these recording will be available I am wondering if anyone here knows? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 14:41, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

User:49Angela10

New user User:49Angela10 has just uploaded a small series of files with all sorts of personal details including medical records, wage slips and addresses. I am little at loss to know how to handle this - gut feeling is they should be speedy deleted. Is the Uploader really Angela in the documents or is someone being vindictive? I have messaged the uploader on the assumption that it is the Angela in question but should it be Speedy Deleted anyway. If so, under what Commons rule? Suggestions??--Headlock0225 (talk) 17:12, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Out of scope? I'd speedily delete on privacy grounds, whoever they refer to. Rodhullandemu (talk) 17:38, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
I don't like some files where names are kept. I don't think they're out of scope (quite illuminating about work conditions in Montana) but they should be anonymized. In fact I love this sort of small everyday papers, and I have uploaded some, but not with people's data on them. B25es (talk) 18:40, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
@Rodhullandemu and B25es: The last two remaining uploads are under discussion at Commons:Deletion requests/File:My new car.jpg.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 15:18, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

"File:Yin and Yang symbol.svg" and "File:Yin yang.svg"

File:Yin and Yang symbol.svg

Can someone please rollback File:Yin and Yang symbol.svg ? The current (March 2021 upload) version is inherently wrong, and the edit summary is wrong. It is not the "original version", as it looks nothing like the file uploaded in 2007. The white portion of the circle should be white and not clear. The shape of the internals of the symbol are wrong, as it does not match what was there for over a decade. -- 65.93.183.33 15:59, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Resolved
 Thank you Redrobsche for the reversion -- 65.93.183.33 17:32, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
Thanks to everyone for rolling this back to the longstanding design at this filename. -- 65.93.183.33 08:23, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
File:Yin yang.svg

The same user who did this overwrite, Cmchan1995 (talk · contribs), did the same thing to File:Yin yang.svg 4 years ago. -- 65.93.183.33 16:03, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Cmchan1995 reverted this to the overwrite version. It was subsequently rolled back. -- 65.93.183.33 08:23, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

From their talk page:

File
Yin yang.svg

Whether it's the most theoretically "correct" version is not the point -- it's in common use, and various projects outside Commons have already made use of the image on the understanding that it had a certain visual appearance. Please upload any new version with substantially different appearance as a separate file under a new name... AnonMoos (talk) 03:15, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Then I wrote:

Supreme Ultimate symbol ==

If you want to upload a separate version of the Supreme Ultimate symbol then please upload it as a separate file, this is a highly visible page on many language Wikipedia's so it's better to upload another new file rather than overwrite the existing one. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 08:59, 13 March 2021 (UTC) .

&

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/3/3c/20210313085436%21Yin_and_Yang_symbol.svg

Don't get me wrong, I understand your arguments that this is the original version, but the version has evolved and many localisations exist and symbols change over time. It's better to upload the original as a separate page. The original Christian cross also looks very different from what Western people think it looks like, but I wouldn't replace the Roman Catholic Cross with the Orthodox Christian Cross because the latter is the original as it will confuse many people and it will break many image descriptions. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 09:19, 13 March 2021 (UTC) .

They seem to want to replace the current commonly known version with a historically correct version regardless of context. I think that perhaps someone that speaks Mandarin should address them, though I don't think that their English is bad, they just don't seem to respond. The solution would be to upload a separate version. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 09:25, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

I've reached my 3 (three) reverts limit for the file so I can't go further, but I uploaded their version to a separate page. Perhaps this image should be sysop-only protected for a fortnight and we should try to reason with Cmchan1995 and explain when to overwrite and when to upload a new image. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 23:39, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Cmchan1995 (talk) 23:44, 13 March 2021 (UTC) I can not accept the academic suppression by ignorance people like Donald Trung 『徵國單』 , please respect the history and the reality.

@Cmchan1995: please read "Commons:Overwriting existing files". I've uploaded your version here, you can use it however you like, just please revert your changes to the other file. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 23:53, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Cmchan1995 (talk) 23:56, 13 March 2021 (UTC) Please notice the academic suppression from China! Censorship in Wikipedia is unacceptable.

@Cmchan1995: , you are not being censored, I literally uploaded your version and you can do with that page whatever you want, just don't overwrite a file with a completely different file. Your contributions are welcome here, just follow the guidelines about overwriting. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 23:59, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
Cmchan1995's new file File:Original Ying and Yang symbol.svg
That file on a darkgrey background

The version that Cmchan1995 (talk · contribs) is uploading seems to be incorrect. It is using a clear background instead of a white background in the complementary part of the circle opposite the black side of the circle. This does not work for the uses the file currently is used for. So, if you have set the background to say DARKGREY, then it would be a black and darkgrey symbol. Or visually, an all-black symbol. The "base color" is only usable on a ink-writing medium, not on a computer screen, where people can set the background color. If one's personal settings were white text on black screen, then the Cmchan1995 upload version is a failure.

Cmchan1995 has been blocked. As this seems to be a multiyear effort to censor the use of the particular design already existing on Commons by deleting its existence in favor of the design uploaded by Cmchan1995 (ie. Cmchcan1995 despite claiming being censored, is instead the person doing the censoring) by overwriting both File:Yin and Yang symbol.svg and File:Yin yang.svg, when Cmchan1995's block expires, it would be a good idea to keep track of all the various yin-yang image files to see if they similarly are overwritten by some different image.

-- 65.93.183.33 08:23, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Ah, I uploaded their version, it's linked above so you are free to improve it. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 08:38, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Assistance with batch upload permissions

Hi, I could use assistance with how to handle a set of permissions for a large number of photos from an elderly acquaintance. I know how to forward emails for individual photos, but not for a large quantity. In short: have an 80-year-old acquaintance who was a bookstore owner in the 1970s, and as such, she had the opportunity to take photos of dozens of science fiction authors (en:Larry Niven, en:Harlan Ellison, en:Douglas Adams, en:Bill Rotsler, and more) in the 1970s. I have explained to her about how awesome it would be to have these on Wikipedia, and what a Creative Commons license is like. She does not have any interest in personally uploading each photo here to the Commons, but she is willing to send me copies of all of these photos, along with permission for all of them to be used under the CC-by-SA 3.0 license, so that I can get them uploaded. So, my question is, what is the best way to handle this? Should she send me an email that simply lists her license approval and all of the authors by name, and then we'll get that attached to each file here on Commons? Or what is the best way to proceed, to secure this treasure trove with a minimum of hassle on her part? --Elonka (talk) 17:33, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Sounds like a great opportunity! I faced a similar situation copyright-wise with four photos by a friend. My notes on how to handle it are here. I learned about all this when these files were marked for deletion, so it was more stressful than your situation where you can plan first. In the end I walked him through the "OTRS release generator" giving him the list of image files and he agreed, then had to send an email confirming that it was him. That took a bit of work but was doable. I believe the OTRS release generator is what you wan to use. If there are many such photos I would have her follow the other procedure there which is for her to grant you permission to fill out the OTRS generator. She has to send an email at least to confirm that, but not much more as I understand it. Then it's work for you to upload the photos but the copyright stuff is the same for each. -- econterms (talk) 18:52, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
How many photos are there. If it is hundreds, your acquinance could mail the OTRS team a permission with the license and the info, that the files will be uplouded by you. An OTRS member can than create a special license template with the OTRS ticket included and the information that this ticket and template applies to all uploads by you and your acquaintance as the author. When using the upload wizard you would then click the "this file is not my work" option and enter into the author field you ac., into the source field "private archive of ac." and in the licence field this special template "{licen.-for-uploads-of-works-by-ac.}". Ask at the OTRS/noticeboard for instrucitions. --C.Suthorn (talk) 19:55, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice. This will be hundreds of photos, quite the project! --Elonka (talk) 16:46, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
(followup) I have created a thread at the OTRS Noticeboard. --Elonka (talk) 17:45, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

In the US before 1963 many copyrights were not renewed and therefore images from many 1925-1963 works may be used on Commons. We can use {{PD-US-not renewed}} on each such Commons page. But later investigators won't know how to verify that based on the Commons page. However we can link to a University of Pennsylvania effort (by a heroic Wikimedian actually) which documents the not-renewed copyrights. Doing so on every such Commons page would be excessive work.

So I have added a paragraph to Category:Ebony_magazine to clarify the copyright situation for those works, linking to the best known information about their copyright status. We could do this in other publication categories, linking to the copyright info at https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/firstperiod.html.

Then in practice the Commons page for a particular work need only (a) be in the category for the publication, and (b) be marked with {{PD-US-not renewed}}, and the copyright detectives have enough information. Is that a good practice? I'm optimistic, but is there a better practice extant now? -- econterms (talk) 18:36, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

  • Seems reasonable. You can always create a more specialized template that transcludes the existing template and adds further notes. That is, you could create a {{PD-US-not renewed-Ebony-magazine}} . - Jmabel ! talk 14:50, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Undo category moving

Can someone please undo [2] and [3] (wrong grammar)? I can't move when editing as IP. --2A02:810D:6C0:2FB0:FD0E:E173:110C:CC48 14:04, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi, and welcome. The above post appears to be your first edit, perhaps you forgot to login. Logging in is required before uploading or creating user pages here, please do that. There are also many other reasons to create an account and log in. What do you see as the wrong or right grammar?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:24, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
21th is wrong, 21st is right. --2A02:810D:6C0:2FB0:FD0E:E173:110C:CC48 19:41, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Upcoming Maintenance for Wikimedia Commons Query Service

We'll be performing brief maintenance of Wikimedia Commons Query Service (https://wcqs-beta.wmflabs.org/) beginning at 2020-03-15 Mon 16:00 UTC. We expect service availability to be restored very quickly - on the order of 30 minutes or so. RKemper (WMF) (talk) 18:14, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

HI, surely you meant 2021. --Túrelio (talk) 18:17, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Copyvio for over a month

Hi, can a Commons admin attend to this deletion request? This copyvio has been sitting on the Commons since Jan 20: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Echota Cherokee Tribe 2020.jpg. Thanks. CorbieVreccan (talk) 19:55, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

@CorbieVreccan: The DR has been closed. Please see COM:D, and in the future, please use {{Copyvio}} for copyvios.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 22:30, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Original flag design

Hello, I'm less familiar with Commons policies than en-wiki's, and where the latter would prohibit original work, I can see that that doesn't apply to Commons, as plenty of image comments are accompanied by 'own work' or similar. Where does the responsibility lie, for restricting original work from appearing on en-wiki; over there? I'm thinking of File:Gay men pride flag.png which appears to be the original work of a ru-wiki user, and is used at ru-wiki ru:Гей and on one ko-wiki page. This came up for discussion at w:Talk:LGBT symbols, and I just said something vague about "different rules" for Commons, but didn't want to go further into it because I don't understand the nuances. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:29, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Hello, To answer the specific question: en.wikipedia rules what appears on en.wikipedia. For what can be on Commons, there is, for example, COM:NOTHOST and COM:EDUSE. The application depends on the specifics of each case. -- Asclepias (talk) 23:07, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
@Mathglot: I don't think self-designed flags are generally in scope for Commons. But if they are being used on Wikipedia, and perhaps elsewhere in some cases, then they will be kept. --ghouston (talk) 04:57, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
Thanks. I've notified ru-wiki about the one article that uses it there and requested its removal for OR and NOTPROMO, and I'll do the same thing at ko-wiki and see if there's any response. If it's deleted on those two articles, that will still leave a presence on various user talk pages and maybe article talk; but if there is no usage on any mainspace pages, can I request its removal here as well? Mathglot (talk) 05:47, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
Talk pages and user pages don't count as "in use", according to COM:INUSE, although there's a provision allowing users to have a few personal files if they are used on their personal page. --ghouston (talk) 06:20, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Typo in picture of the day

Any French-speaking admin please see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_talk:2019_-_%D0%9D%D0%9F%D0%9F_%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%96%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%81%D1%8C%D0%BA%D1%96_%D0%A2%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B8_-_02.jpg

Thanks! Syced (talk) 06:55, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Project Grant application for SDC support in OpenRefine: feedback and endorsements welcome

Hello everyone! Since 2019, it is possible to add structured data to files on Wikimedia Commons (SDC = Structured Data on Commons). But there are no very advanced and user-friendly tools yet to edit the structured data of very large and very diverse batches of files on Commons. And there is no batch upload tool yet that supports SDC.

The OpenRefine community wants to fill this gap: in the upcoming year, we would like to build brand new features in the open source OpenRefine tool, allowing batch editing and batch uploading SDC :-) As these are major new functionalities in OpenRefine, we have applied for a Project Grant. Your feedback and (if you support this plan) endorsements are very welcome. Thanks in advance, and many greetings – Pintoch (as OpenRefine developer) and SFauconnier (talk) 09:19, 16 March 2021 (UTC) (aka Spinster, as member of the OpenRefine steering committee)

We need to re-think deletion requests

I have started up several proposals on how we can potentially improve both deletion requests and undeletion requests over at "Commons:Village pump/Proposals#Re-thinking deletion requests to make them more accessible". If you're interested in this topic or have other ideas on how we can improve these features of Wikimedia Commons then please go there. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:56, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

  •  Title clarification, I'm not saying that the current deletion requests system is "broken", I am just exploring and proposing ways on how they can be improved. The English-language Wikipedia categorised their deletion nominations and it makes it easier to find by topic. This is about making a good system better, not "fixing" anything. Admins with more expertise in certain fields can immediately find open DR's in "their field" through categorisation. For example if you have a Romanian admin that knows a lot about Romanian copyright they can quickly find open Romanian copyright-related DR's this way. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 22:04, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Feedback page

Why don't we have such a page? --Mateus2019 (talk) 16:58, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

ok, I ask like this: Why is there no Commons:Feedback to receive comments from non-editors? --Mateus2019 (talk) 04:12, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
  • @Mateus2019: Because there is a talk page for each page here, and if you have questions about a page you typically ask them on the relevant talk page, not in some central location. We have over 50 million photos and tens of thousands of contributors. Having a single place to discuss everything does not scale to this level. - Jmabel ! talk 05:26, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
    • Of this more than 50 million jpegs and about 69 million files only 306038 actually have a talk page (and most of this talk pages only contain an assessment like "deletion was discussed, file was kept"). More than 7 million files have been uploaded by a single contributer, more than 2.3 million from panoramio bot, more than 4 million from 3 more users, more than 7 million files from less than 250 users, and more than half from less than 7000 users. 1.2 milion users have ever contributed a file, and most of these less than 10 files. 3593 pages and files have more than 29 watchers. Feedback on a talk pages is extremely likely not to be read by anyone ever. --C.Suthorn (talk) 07:07, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
I don't care how many files we have. Just answer the question. --Mateus2019 (talk) 06:29, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I would support the existence of such a page. Non-wikimedians who use Commons are unlikely to understand how talk pages work. The English Wiktionary has "If you have time, leave us a note." on the sidebar at all times to solicit feedback from these visitors who are unfamiliar with Wiki practices but may have something important to add. It would be valuable to have something like that here. I don't think the large number of files necessarily dooms such a feedback page to be overloaded with content. Commons only has about 10x more page views per month compared to the English wiktionary; since the feedback page at the English Wiktionary gets about 10–20 requests per month, one might estimate the Commons feedback page could theoretically get about 200 entries per month. However, the English Wiktionary is arguably much more geared toward use by "general audiences" than Commons, so this is almost certainly an overestimate. Even then, seven pieces of feedback per day is hardly untenable. The worst thing that can happen if this is implemented is that the feedback will simply sit unaddressed. Of course, the underlying concerns are still there regardless of whether we solicit people for them—the only difference is whether we're aware of them.  Mysterymanblue  07:01, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I also support a general feedback page, we have separate feedback pages for the MediaWiki Upload Wizard but those are extremely hard to find. In fact there usually comes a time in most Wikimedia websites that such pages become less accessible due to concerns about potential abuse rather than the value they provide. Even if it will later turn out to be a bad idea it's better to run an experiment where we have a "Commons:Feedback" page for a year to see how it goes rather than not try it at all, perhaps it can even evolve into separate pages like "Commons:Feedback/Uploading", "Commons:Feedback/Copyright information", Etc. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:18, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
    • If some group of people want to set up a general feedback page, and are willing to do the work of monitoring the page, triaging and answering the questions, getting rid of vandalism, etc. I doubt anyone would object. But if you are asking why those of us who are already doing the work don't take on yet another task, I think your question pretty much answers itself. - Jmabel ! talk 14:46, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
assuming a logged-out user is looking at any File page, the link to seek help is on the left sidebar "Contact us". it leads users to a page, where they can go straight to help desk to ask anything. so the answer to your question is: Commons:Help desk.--RZuo (talk) 14:46, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

image deletion on what grounds?

I have uploaded several informative images for which I found many similar publications on Wikipedia. quite unfair. How do I contest this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kleinavi (talk • contribs) 16:14, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Files_uploaded_by_Kleinavi — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kleinavi (talk • contribs) 16:16, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

@Kleinavi: , you can request undeletion, but Wikimedia Commons is not Wikipedia. You can upload an image locally to Wikipedia under fair use but all files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons must be under a free license which allow anyone to use it for anything. Please read "Commons:Licensing", if you take a photograph of a copyrighted work then you can't upload it here without permission, well you technically can but then it will be deleted and you need to get OTRS permission in order to have it restored. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:18, 11 March 2021 (UTC)


@Donald Trung: , But at least one picture is a picture I took myself with my own phone?? anyways, I have permission for all other pictures. How was it detected that I don't?

By the way, I tried uploading directly to Wikipedia, which proved being even more complicated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kleinavi (talk • contribs) 12:07, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

"How was it detected that I don't?" For copyrighted material, the only acceptable permissions for Commons are sufficiently free licenses granted by the respective copyright holders. - Jmabel ! talk 23:39, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Photo challenge January results

Darkness: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image [[File:|x160px]]
Title Maintenance of a railroad switch Searching the night sky. The Pink Floyd exhibition:
their mortal remains, Rome
Author Ka23 13 Annatsach Ddgfoto
Score 23 12 12
Umbrellas: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image File:Under the "Umbrellas" of Thessaloniki.jpg
Title Rue Saint-Jean,
Sancerre, France		 zwei Skulpturen in
Hannovers Innenstadt		 Under the "Umbrellas"
of Thessaloniki (Greece).
Author Rolf Kranz Sadarama Annatsach
Score 31 16 15

Congratulations to Rolf Kranz, Sadarama, Annatsach, Ka23 13, Annatsach and Ddgfoto. -- Jarekt (talk) 03:00, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

@Jarekt and Ddgfoto: I doubt that conforms Italy-FoP rules. IMO it is a RD candidate. — Draceane talkcontrib. 10:07, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
Do I understand this correctly: Second place in the umbrelles photo challange is an image, that had incorrect categories (no cats at the time of the challange), had no information on the artist or the name of the work, and a (not very useful) desription in German only (all fixed now)? --C.Suthorn (talk) 05:10, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Intersection cat between snow and forests

i was looking for it, but the best i found was Category:Trees in snow. in Category:Snowy landscapes there're basically three naming formats: 1. snow on XX, 2. snowy XX, 3. XX in snow. could the community plz come up with a more consistent naming scheme maybe?--RZuo (talk) 14:46, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand - Bogotá panorama

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

Affected file(s):

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Bogotá panorama. Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 19:32, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand - Maggie Hallahan photos

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

Affected file(s):

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Maggie Hallahan photos. Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 21:31, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

special query

I am using a query (someon sent me) that look like this " file: -filesize:>0 PikiWiki " and it gives me short pages. where is the syntax document for such queries? Pikiwiki - Israel free image collection project (talk) 08:45, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

How to use filters to query on size, file type, templates, categories, etc. is at mw:Help:CirrusSearch. --Fæ (talk) 10:22, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Pikiwiki - Israel free image collection project (talk) 14:36, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --RZuo (talk) 14:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Caption challange...

This weeks image - Commons:Silly_things#Week_Ending_(Monday_22nd_2021) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:22, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --RZuo (talk) 14:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

File:Hurshch.jpg

File:Hurshch.jpg - hmm, tja, ich sag nichts. --C.Suthorn (talk) 12:35, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

@C.Suthorn: Please file a report via COM:RFCU.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:56, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
Ich habe User:Achim55 eine Nachricht geschrieben. Dieser hatte das Bild laut Talk-Seite des Uploaders wohl zur Schnelllöschung vorgesehen. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 16:34, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
✓ Game over - beep. --Achim (talk) 18:53, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
@Achim: Thanks! Please watch that file.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 23:35, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --RZuo (talk) 14:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi, is it only me (a kind of cache issue) or the link in the left panel supposed leading to the Village Pump in the the Russian Wikipedia leads to a wrong page. Christian Ferrer (talk) 11:24, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --RZuo (talk) 14:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Search engine

I hate that stupid search engine ! Often it gives that result "haswbstatement:P180=something something" which means nothing to me. I hope it will be improved, one day. Wikimedia Commons deserves something better. --Io Herodotus (talk) 13:34, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

@Io Herodotus: See Special:MediaSearch. Zoozaz1 (talk) 21:05, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
Thank you. This one works well. Why don't they change it ? --Io Herodotus (talk) 06:15, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Hi @Io Herodotus: I'm glad you like the new search experience! We are planning to make Special:MediaSearch the default search landing page starting with anonymous/not-logged-in users first at the end of March, and then moving to logged-in users at the end of April as long as no blockers arise. You can read more about it in the release announcement here. CBogen (WMF) (talk) 13:35, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

deletion still in request

Is there any chance to delete copyrighted file Cinque Teste Logo.svg? Thanks in advance!!! --Gatto bianco (talk) 14:52, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Can I sort categories by when files uploaded?

Or were overwritten, whichever is newer. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:01, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

  • Try Petscan. You can set sort options on the final Output tab (or use SPARQL).
Try https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=18669230 as an example
If you've not used Petscan before, the first tab allows you to set "Commons", but don't forget to go to the 2nd tab and select the "File" namespace as well. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:54, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, it's very useful for searching for the most up-to-date good photo in a huge category. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:35, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Call for review, comment and discuss my PhD thesis on Wikimedia movement

Hello,

Just a short message to call people interested to review, comment and discuss my PhD thesis on Wikimedia movement. All the best, Lionel Scheepmans ✉ Contact 19:42, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

How to create new campaign

Hello. I am planning to organise a competition next month called WikiSelera. How do I create a new campaign? I don't see any Create button. --Tofeiku (talk) 04:12, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Are 'articles of association' copyrighted? I see articles of association being copied from organisation to organisation without any restrictions/issues, and several of these look very similar. In cause they are indeed copyrighted, how old must articles of association originating from Denmark be before they can be uploaded to Commons? --Froztbyte (talk) 14:36, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

@Froztbyte: probably better asked at Commons:Village pump/Copyright. - Jmabel ! talk 15:31, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Ignored buy CirrusSearch

When I use CirrusSearch to find the word redirect or redirected in file: it never finds it although it exists. What am I missing? Pikiwiki - Israel free image collection project (talk) 14:32, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

@Pikiwikisrael: Is this what you were looking for?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:54, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

Nope have a look to the page https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PikiWiki_Israel_76173_tel_yokneam.jpg it has both PikiWiki and a statement that contains the (file redirect) inside but cannot find them searching with CirrusSearch with file: or insource: File:PikiWiki Israel 76307 tel yokneam.jpg (file redirect) thanks Pikiwiki - Israel free image collection project (talk) 20:45, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

@Pikiwikisrael: Searching for "insource:#redirect" will find the source of the redirect to that file. You might want to use the Commons API tool and the Commons API.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 23:31, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

CropTool returns "Blocked user" error message

Two users (including myself) have reported that CropTool is failing with the following error message, even though neither of us has been blocked: "Upload failed! [api] Received error: autoblocked : Your IP address has been blocked automatically, because it was used by a blocked user." —Iketsi (talk) 04:13, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Actually not surprising? If you use the croptool, then the croptool uploads the cropped file with your login credentials but with the IP of the croptool. If the croptool has been used in the past by another user who is now blocked, it is no wonder when the IP of the croptool is autoblocked. Possibly the IP range of the croptool should be exempted from autoblocking? --C.Suthorn (talk) 07:34, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
@Iketsi: Maybe this is the result of a bug in the current MediaWiki updates of this week. The onfiguration message with the Autoblock whitelist changes from MediaWiki:Autoblock whitelist to MediaWiki:Block-autoblock-exemptionlist. The latest will be the new name. Due to the rollback of the software deployment I have restored MediaWiki:Autoblock whitelist for now. Please try again. Raymond 07:50, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
@Raymond: just got the autoblock error. --C.Suthorn (talk) 08:27, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
No idea then :-( Raymond 09:22, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
the last croptool upload was at 05:43 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges?tagfilter=OAuth+CID%3A+1784&urlversion=2&limit=100 . i tried looking at Special:BlockList but i cant find the problem. a sysop should check the autoblocks.
@Danmichaelo: could you please investigate? Thanks!--RZuo (talk) 11:10, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
Same Error for me. CropTool Message: Upload failed! [api] Received error: autoblocked : Your IP address has been blocked automatically, because it was used by a blocked user. What can I do to be unblocked? Xgeorg (talk) 13:09, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Whenever I use COM:Croptool and upload the cropped file to Commons, I see an error message saying, "Upload failed! [api] Received error: autoblocked : Your IP address has been blocked automatically, because it was used by a blocked user." Plz help me. --Soumya-8974 (he) talk contribs subpages 13:28, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Same here. — Draceane talkcontrib. 13:47, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

I began to use CropTool because I want to crop comwiki images during my short trip to Kolkata. However, that will never happen. )-; --Soumya-8974 (he) talk contribs subpages 13:56, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

@Iketsi, Xgeorg, Soumya-8974, and Draceane: it's fixed now.--RZuo (talk) 17:37, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
Thank you. :-) --Soumya-8974 (he) talk contribs subpages 17:49, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --RZuo (talk) 10:43, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Merger of case pages under Category:Russian FOP cases/deleted (non-architectural)

Hello. I'm proposing to merge all contents (case pages) under Category:Russian FOP cases/deleted (non-architectural) to Category:Russian FOP cases/deleted. Since there is FOP in Russia for architecture, in my opinion, having a "forked" category for non-architecture is redundant. I asked the category's creator A.Savin about this at User talk:A.Savin#Category:Russian FOP cases/deleted (non-architectural)?. In his reply, "Probably meanwhile this can be merged indeed." Nevertheless, I may need the inputs of other editors/users (most especially the Russian Wikipedians) about my proposal, if they agree or oppose, before proceeding — perhaps contacting another user who has AWB rights to make seamless recategorizations (I cannot obtain AWB rights as I don't have a computer or laptop, and merely edit here via phone, albeit using desktop mode). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 13:11, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

@JWilz12345: JWB can do the job with the same permission, and without a computer. Cat-a-lot can even do it without permission.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 23:38, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
I have no objections but I think it is better to ask someone with the bot than editing 1.6k+ pages, even with cat-a-lot rubin16 (talk) 17:44, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Caption challenge

This weeks caption challenge:- Commons:Silly_things#Week_Ending_(Monday_30th_March_2021) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:31, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Files from tamilvu.org pending licence review

there're quite a lot of tamil files pending review. they were uploaded by User:Info-farmer. licence review was requested by other users like User:Neyakkoo and User:TVA ARUN.

they are jamming the LR queue. i dont think they need to be reviewed because they've been quite reliably attributed and linked to their sources on tamilvu.org. therefore i suggest removing them from the LR queue. do you support or oppose?--RZuo (talk) 17:44, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

And also getting OTRS clearence. For example, File:நெஞ்சை உருக்கும் நீதிக்கதைகள்.pdf then cleaning the OCRed text by women college ofcourse the process is moving slowly Thanks for Indic wikisource team--Info-farmer (talk) 03:02, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

How is "depicts" intended to be used?

I believe I have a general loose idea of how "depicts" is intended to be used, but when I ask for clarification at Commons talk:Depicts#This continues to mystify me I am consistently ignored. Is there somewhere else I should be asking this? For the record, this is not the first time I'm raising this sort of issue, see for example Commons_talk:Structured_data/Archive_2020#Is_this_really_how_it's_supposed_to_work? It is my suspicion that there is really no consensus at all, and this major feature is being used with absolutely no discpline. - Jmabel ! talk 23:41, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

License plates (again?)

Hi, just saw this deletion request and I am not quite sure how to interpret it. Wouldn't this mean that everything in Category:License plates of Connecticut and all other license plates should be deleted? I have been told somewhere that a license plate with no particular design is not a copyright infringement, but would it be necessary to upload it with {{PD-textlogo|type=license plates}}? Can we add this template to existing uploads, even when the user is clearly dormant/gone? Can we save this user's four uploads? Hoping to avoid more purges. mr.choppers (talk)-en- 20:21, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

@Jmabel: what about the Connecticut plate which was deleted in the same sweep? Just text on a blue/white background. I just want to know, because there are literally thousands of pictures of plates uploaded and in use across all languages. mr.choppers (talk)-en- 15:51, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
@Mr.choppers: if simple text on a geometrically simple blue-and-white background was deleted as a copyright violation, that sounds like a bad decision. Can you link the relevant discussion and/or deleted file? - Jmabel ! talk 23:16, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
@Jmabel: List of deleted uploads - of course, now that I am looking at the list of their uploads I am suspecting that all of these were photos Gojira91 found on the 'net. Nonetheless, they were deleted with the justification that "unless Gojira91 is an official representative of the state of Alabama, they may not claim this work as their own and relicense it." I would like to clarify what passes the threshold of originality, and perhaps there is a template we can add to those license plates that pass. Best, mr.choppers (talk)-en- 01:03, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
@Mr.choppers: So a Connecticut plate got deleted over an issue about Alabama plates being above the threshold? That sounds sloppy, and presumably an undelete would succeed. Of course, if there were licensing issues for the photo itself, and it should have been deleted on other grounds. But I'd say that even with the slow fade from one color to another and the simple map of Connecticut, nothing on the Connecticut plate exceeds the threshold of originality. - Jmabel ! talk 15:30, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Kazimier Lachnovič

Well, some time ago I found a file with the abusive name. I renamed it, keeping its language, the meaning, and taking the only offensive word out. The file uploader, User:Kazimier Lachnovič, opened two topics trying to get me sanctioned, Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/User problems/Archive 91#User:Ymblanter (closed as no consensus) and Commons:Village pump/Archive/2021/02#Systematic disregard by administrators of rule violations (is Wikimedia not a multilingual project anymore?) (archived). Kazimier Lachnovič, an obviously disruptive user, was allowed for several weeks to cast aspersions and harass me by making statements which may express his own fantasies but have nothing to do with what I have ever done, thought, or intended to do. When I tried to object, he always doubled down basically insisting that he knows better. At one point, he accuse me in Nazism, which was particularly nice to hear in the context of him being Belarusian and me being partially Jewish. After the discussions were closed, he basically reverted my edits [5] and tried to harass the administrator who closed the discussion [6]. I basically could not do anything. Yesterday, he moved the file (almost) restoring the offensive word in the name calling this "Belarusian language censorship" [7]. I removed the offensive term again, and he immediately reverted my move, calling it, unsurprisingly, "renaming abusing", [8]. I again can not do anything about it, I am obviously not going to block him, and I am not going to continue move warring. In the meanwhile, I was called an "abusive Russian administrator" who had to be desysopped a long time ago but has to many "Russian friends" and can not be desysopped for this reason. In relation to these events, II have tosay the following.

  • I do not expect the Commons community to do something about this.
  • This is one more indication that the Commons community is completely disfunctional as far as anything beyond dealing with the clear-cut violations such as uploading of obviously copyrighted files is concerned.
  • In the last several years, already after I became administrator, I was subject to serious abuse here, on Commons, three times. (Not counting minor harassment such as sending an e-mail to my professional e-mail address). First, an administrator deleted my file out of the process, and the community refused to do something about this. I waited, and the administrator was desysopped. Second, last year, there was a conflict with one administrator indefinitely blocking a checkuser. Whereas I was not part of the conflict, I at some point closed a trainwreck discussion about the incident, which made some user think that this is an appropriate reason to start harassing me, with one of them even claiming that it is my fault that the blocking administrator retired. One of them has already been desysopped. In both cases, I reduced my activity on Commons to a minimum, and both times I was somehow motivated to restore the activity, because some things were not done which should have been done. This is the third time. I have no doubt that I will wait and Kazimier Lachnovič is going to be indeffed. However, nobody is going to motivate me to help this disfunctional community for the third time. I need my admin flag, because some other projects where I work (and where harassment is not tolerated) need to interact with Commons, and I will make sure I keep the flag by performing the minimum of (absolutely uncontroversial) admin actions, but I am not planning to return to the full-scale admin activity. I will not be responding on noticeboards either.
  • When the next time somebody would complain that we have too long backlogs on Commons and too few admins please remember this statement

Have a nice day.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:13, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

    • @Ymblanter: Is it possible that the word is abusive in Russian but not in Belorusian? Just for an example of something parallel, the common Yiddish word for a Jew is a slur in English, but we would certainly not object to a Yiddish-speaker using it. - Jmabel ! talk 23:21, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
  • From the previous discussion, it seems to me that it was something like that: the claim is that using the term "Маскалізацыя" for "Russification" is offensive to Russians. Perhaps just accept that there was no consensus on the issue and allow the file names to stand? Are there any Russians here who are offended? --ghouston (talk) 01:57, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
  • The word does not exist in Russian. When it is used in Russian, it almost always referred to an Ukrainian usage, which is beyond any doubt offensive specifically to Russians. My research shows that it is offensive in Belarusian as well, and that the uploader is well aware of this (and this is precisely why he insists on this name), but that it was not offensive historically, and possibly there is some contemporary usage today where it is not offensive. But no, indeed, I am not going to continue move warring. I am just frustrated by the fact that I was subject to verbal abuse for weeks, and then the guy just went ahead and reverted everything. Well, I will better concentrate on upload of my photoarchive. Sorry.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:27, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

is it still possible to choose a filename for a new upload?

I tried uploading a file earlier but there was no place for me to enter the file, so i had to rename the download and then upload it again. I dont know if this is being done for a reason, but it was convenient for me because often a file will not be named with a Wikipedia-friendly filename in its original source. Is there a way to upload a file where I can still choose the filename, or do I have to always rename it on my computer first? Thanks, Soap (talk) 22:52, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Also, please delete File:SPC_Outlook_March_25,_2021_1630z.jpg, as IM going to let someone else handle the uploads for files like this. Soap (talk) 22:54, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
@Soap: to mark your own recently uploaded file for speedy deletion, just tag it with {{speedydelete|recent upload, uploaded requests deletion}} or something similar and more specific as to why you want it deleted. If it's less than a week old and not in use, that should work. - Jmabel ! talk 23:25, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
Not sure what you mean by "place for me to enter the file" nor "rename the download". You don't even mention what upload tool (what web page, app, etc.) you are using. If you can be more specific, someone may be able to work out what's going on. - Jmabel ! talk 23:26, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
  • @Soap: When using Special:Upload it’s trivially simple to fill up a different filename to be the one used in Commons (Destination filename:), ragardless of the filename that’s being uploaded from the local machine (Source filename:); the local filename will appear prefilling in the Commons filename input box and will be used if not edited. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 23:38, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
Okay thank you, but there was no obvious way for me to know that there is an alternate method of uploading. we only link to Special:UploadWizard in the sidebar which does not allow the user to specify the filename so far as i can see. Soap (talk) 00:32, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
How to upload a file
specifically 1m16s.--RZuo (talk) 11:10, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
@Soap: I believe the "Image title" in the "Describe" stage of the Upload Wizard is what eventually becomes the filename. --bjh21 (talk) 13:00, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
Alright, thank you .... I would rather it say "file name" since it's the file name but .... I guess we did what we did for a reason. I will only use the old-fashioned expert form from now on, so long as it continues to exist. Best regards, Soap (talk) 16:24, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Problem in the size of the image that I not have knowledge to transform

I am creating images of a mollusk that had few images on this page. I'm trying to make images that I think are good, so I asked a friend to edit an image defect on her cell phone, and the image was turned small. I went to a very simple image editor, on the web, I increased it and the image became very big, at the time of uploading. Does anyone manage to transformed it in a proportion that is more or less like this, without very perceptible defects? Mário NET (talk) 23:13, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

The quality loss by downscaling (by your friend) cannot be entirely undone by upscaling the image. Neither downscaling nor upscaling is a good idea, unless this is absolutely required. I hope that you have retained the original photograph. I personally use a free software editor (GIMP) for cropping images, rarely also for some other transformation such as rotation or lighting correction. I also downscale some images, but for sites other than Wikimedia Commons that do not allow or do not wish to obtain larger images. --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 11:40, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
I kept the original photo and I'm going to upload it. Thanks. Mário NET (talk) 19:39, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

British Library shop

Is it acceptable for file descriptions to contain hotlinks to the British Library shop to buy higher res copies? For example here, which it is linked via a "bit.ly" shortener to this page. If so, can any uploader/source add their advertisement for linked services? Davidships (talk) 01:27, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

This was simply inadvertently imported with the whole description when copying the image from Flickr. IMO, the line containing the shop-link should be removed, as a sort of advertisement. As the source-link to Flickr remains, anybody interested in obtaining such high-res copies, will find the shop-link on the Flickr-page. --Túrelio (talk) 09:18, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
  • And yet en:WP turns ISBN links into a page that links to Amazon.
Is there any clear policy statement from WMF on such aspects? Andy Dingley (talk) 15:34, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

ART+sport+FEMINISM, in the year with (out) OLYMPICS

Are you interested in Sport? Olympics? Its failures and success? Consider to support and join creative and critical work on ART+sport+FEMINISM https://w.wiki/38f6 (also get in touch if you have interesting content donations/refs.) -- Zblace (talk) 09:34, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Stop deleting film locations categories without alternativesǃ

In several places a discussion has been going on about Category:Film locations by film. For reasons I still not understand or agree with, it was decided that this information has no value on Commons and should be moved to other places. At the moment people have already started to delete Film locations categories, without notifying the creator. By accident I discovered that at least two of my categories have gone. In this way hours of my reseach is being destroyed. I would suggest that whoever is of the opinion that there are better alternatives to secure the information on these pages, put their money where their mouth is and USE THEM. I would like to suggest a new (Is it new?) policy:

1. No film locations cat will be deleted unless al info therein is secured elsewhere.

2. Creators of these categories are notified in advance of deletion, with info about where the deleted info can be found.--Judithcomm (talk) 14:23, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

  • There would be no problem with a gallery page showing the locations used for a particular film, but I agree that categories are not the way to do this. - Jmabel ! talk 15:33, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
    • Tja, dann sollen die Leute, die Kats löschen, diese Galerien eben anlegen. In meinen Augen ist es Vandalismus, wenn einige hier systematisch Dinge "verbessern", indem sie eine Information, die man stundenlang erarbeitet hat, weil sie auf "die falsche Weise" eingetragen ist, rückstandsfrei entfernen, und nicht "auf die richtige Weise" eintragen, und dann von denen, die diese Arbeit schon gemacht haben erwarten, erneut stundenlang neu zu machen. Und sich dann auch noch beschweren, wenn sie dafür angemotzt werden und herausstellen, was für eine wichtige Arbeit sie hier doch (häufig mittels Skripten oder Bots) machen und dass sie einfach keine Zeit hätten, sich anzuschauen, was sie da machen. Noch dazu sind die ursprünglichen Uploader häufig garnicht mehr da, oder es war ein crosswikiupload, oder bemerken es nicht, weil durch Massenedits die beo überläuft. Oder die betroffene Datei stammt aus einem (Flickr)-Massenimport und es gibt lokal überhaupt niemand, der das Wissen hat, um die Info wiederherzustellen (außer durch Durchsuchen der Versionsgeschichte). --C.Suthorn (talk) 16:23, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
      • Categories are for defining characteristics of a subject: the occupation of a person, the architectural style of a building, the rail line that a station is on. For the vast majority of film locations, the use in film is not a defining characteristic of the location. (The exceptions, like the Exorcist steps, are locations whose only/primary notability comes from a specific use in film.) Categories on Commons are fundamentally the wrong place to be storing information about where movies were filmed, as you have been told on previous occasions, and we are under no obligation to host your research. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 16:50, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
        • If this kind of categorisation is soo wrong, why let it go on for at least twelve years before you decide to pull the plug? The Cat was already there when I first started contributing to Commons. If I had known of these objections years ago, I would not have put in so much effort in the first place. All I ask now is not to delete any info without securing it elsewhere. I do believe there is some 'obligation ' to treat your fellow Commoners with some respect.--Judithcomm (talk) 22:44, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
User Rudolph Buch has told User:Judithcomm in 2015: special:permalink/547051826#Film_locations.
and Rudolph Buch's commonsensical suggestion preceded by six years(!) mine in Commons:Categories for discussion/2021/03/Category:Film locations by film.--RZuo (talk) 10:43, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
@C.Suthorn: No, really, if you do something wrong it's not someone else's job to come in and do it right. It's nice if they do, of course, but it's not their job. - Jmabel ! talk 13:47, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
As a recent example: I photographed at the CSD in Cologne in 2019. One of the pictures shows a poster "The only meat I eat is pussy". The poster is unfortunately a bit blurred, but readable. I have tagged the file with the category "lesbian cunnilingus" because this is the poster's theme. Similar references to lesbian cunnilingus can be found at CSDs (e.g. "sorry boys i only eat pussy"). The image is therefore relevant for an article on lesbian sexuality in Wikipedia and can only be found via this categorisation (texts in images are neither found nor indexed by the MW software). Since the upload, the image has only been bot-edited and tagged by @Raymond: with SDC Cologne and Pride Parade. Until just now, no one took offence at the categorisation, until @Firefly: removed the categorisation without replacement. Nobody took offence at the spelling mistake "Kölm" instead of "Köln" (I didn't do anything myself because of this mistake, because my constant experience with renaming requests is that never all wrongly named pictures of a series are renamed, but always only one and asking the renamer doesn't help either). In what way is it a sensible action to remove every reference to lesbian cunnilingus here? I upload images here to be used, both in WM projects and via instant-commons or on external websites or even in printed works, such as this week's "Zeit Geschichte: Censored, the History of Freedom of Expression". For this to happen, however, these images must also be findable. The task of the provider "wikimedia.commons" cannot be to prevent this, but must be to promote it. I put a lot of time and effort into creating images for which there are often no free alternatives (not even on flickr, panoramio, the archives of the USA Gov or Germany Gov). This is especially true for LGBTIA images, like the one I used as an example here and the one used by Die Zeit this week. I don't think Flickr, for example, would put such cudgels between my legs. --C.Suthorn (talk) 15:16, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
@C.Suthorn: If that has something to do with film locations, I'm missing it. - Jmabel ! talk 03:54, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Fonts license's template

The following discussion is closed, and will be archived soon.

Hello all !
Do we have a template to say that raster image of well established (old enough to be Public Domain) writings are under open license (PD) ? I'am working with a font which clearly copied its shapes form classic, old wood blocks : 400 to 200 years olds styles. The font file was created in early 2000s and is under a kind of CC-ND-NC. I repeatedly dived into font licenses and copyrights for a decade now. It's quite clear by now that while the font files and vector data are copyrigthed, the shaped (copied from old styles) are not. I plan to upload raster images or characters so the vector data is NOT published. I guess we have a template for such cases, but I was unable to put my hands on it. Any idea how I could find it ? Yug (talk) 17:11, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

{{PD-font}}? --HyperGaruda (talk) 17:54, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
♥! Perfect ! Thank you HyperGaruda Yug (talk) 18:50, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Fail

Hi, any suggestion? https://ibb.co/SyMvr3L

Becausue this is horrible... --Luhačovice 2021 (talk) 08:28, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

  • @Luhačovice 2021: All I see here is a link to a site about which I know nothing, and which says that servers are under maintenance and the page is unavailable. Care to expand on that, and in particular about what is "horrible" about it? - Jmabel ! talk 13:51, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
@Jmabel: This is particularly related to the request at Czech Wikipedia Helpdesk ([9]). It seems that this user has longer problems with the file uploads, the linked screenshot is the message he gets. — Draceane talkcontrib. 14:00, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
Yes, i getting this error (https://ibb.co/SyMvr3L) very offten, so is a big problem to me to upload file... --Luhačovice 2021 (talk) 14:49, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Is this a problem with the core servers, or some more localised edge servers? I (in the UK) often get a server warning from Florida, but these never last long. So could this instead be caused by edge servers (i.e. the international caching infrastucture) closer to Czechia? If it's not English language, it then being a low priority, wouldn't be the first time with WMF. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:08, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

8( your help was "userfull", lol --Luhačovice 2021 (talk) 03:51, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

JS data into table : MediaWiki module ? Data page ? Else ?

Hello all, I grabbed the data of 2 heavy tables from :en:wp and :zh:wp, converted it into json format, merged them, and generate a new larger table... all on JSfiddle. The code is easy and all. But it doesn't make sense to create code hosted outside of Wikimedia to generate wikicode. Is there an other way to generate wikitable from (json) data on wikimedia sites ? Some modules ? Should I store this data somewhere here on Commons ? Yug (talk) 10:55, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Geurt-Jaap

test van GJE — Preceding unsigned comment added by Testgje (talk • contribs) 12:30, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

@Testgje: Test passed. Hi, and welcome.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 12:45, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Modification of a contested taxon

Hello everyone on Wikimedia Commons. I recently read a comment of a taxonomic dispute of a photo inserted here. So I wrote the text, below this text, and posted it in international communities of shell collectors, on Facebook. The confirmation was posted to me at the Seashell Collectors group. Who confirmed how Penion maximus was Luen Jones. This group has more than ten thousand members, so I don't think it's wrong.

Hello to all the scientists and non-scientists in the group.

I am posting this free copy image and a text I found on it. Could anyone help in the comment below? If someone comes to a conclusion, I will edit the image and leave it with its true rating.

"I'm a biologist who studies these snails, and I do not think that this is Penion cuvierianus from New Zealand. It instead looks like the species P. maximus from Australia. The coloring is typical for the latter species, and the axial ribs on the shell are more regular, and the protoconch has broken off, which is more common in P. maximus because the protoconch is very small compared to that of P. cuvierianus. Can be found on the Kapiti Coast (rarely), and these look very different to this shell.

Second issue - the name of the species is P. cuvierianus, not P. cuvieranus".

The mentioned image was inserted in this comment. Mário NET (talk) 01:00, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Special:MediaSearch landing for anonymous/logged-out users on Thursday, 1 April

Greetings,

Following up on my post from last month announcing the intention to shift default landing pages for search (Village Pump post, Media Search talk page post, Commons mailing list, Wikimedia diff blog), Special:MediaSearch will become the default search landing page for anonymous and logged-out users on Thursday, 1 April. The change for logged-in users will take place in approximately one month. Anonymous and logged-out users will still have access to Special:Search via link in the Media Search interface. When released to logged-in users, contributors will have access to both the link in the interface as well as a preference to keep Special:Search as the default landing page if that's their choice.

Thanks for your time, please let the development team know of any troubles you may encounter using the software. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 15:05, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Why aren't public domain files like File:Manifestação estudantil contra a Ditadura Militar 353.tif returned with a search with 'no restrictions' on the license? --Fæ (talk) 18:37, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
I think that is because of the custom license template. Definitely something to be fixed. --GPSLeo (talk) 13:21, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
It's because the file has structured data for public domain as the copyright license instead of copyright status. This can be fixed for all files that may have this problem in the mapping at MediaWiki:Wikibasecirrus-license-mapping if someone has editor interface rights, otherwise the single file can be corrected in the structured data tab. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 15:12, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Users interested in astrology can help

Hello, Category:Media needing categories as of 13 April 2017 contains around 100 files from NASA and others. Every help to categorize the files is welcome. GeorgHH • talk   17:18, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

You are right. Was a mistake by me. Correct is astronomy. GeorgHH • talk   19:19, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Odd whitespace issue with the infobox

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T279008

E.g., Category:South Pole Telescope suddenly has a lot of whitespace, with the infobox no longer appearing down the side of the category contents. I don't think the infobox code has changed recently, so I can't see how this has happened unless MediaWiki has changed. So I've filed phab:T279008. Suggestions for fixing this would be welcome! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:52, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Dead animals

Nice? [CONTENT WARNING: photograph of crushed dead cat with guts out and skull crushed]
Adding Category:Dead sheep (especially while we have Category:Sheep products) to Category:Mutton and to Category:Lamb meat is difficult to understand, for me. Category:Sheep slaughtering is also a wrong subcat of Category:Dead sheep, as dead sheep are not slaughtered, they have already been killed. Whatever, what I am trying to reach at is: This categorization was bothering me since some time. The same "meat categories" are also subcats of "Category:Sheep". I did not even feel like correcting the cat-a-lot mistakes in there. A short while ago I saw that Category:Dead turkeys was added to Category:Turkey meat and decided to open this discussion without losing more time. People may be vegetarian, or vegan, we non-vegetarians do understand and respect them. However, this should not come here as a "categorization POV". Yes, we eat animal meat, we also eat some live "animals" (like certain seafood, I guess they are also animals) but we also eat vegetables and have never thought of adding "Category:Dead spinach" to Category:Spinach-based food. Please. Let us keep "dead animals" out of "cuisine" cats. Thanks. --E4024 (talk) 00:52, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Was not ready for that ! Yug (talk) 10:55, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
I think these are corpses, cadavers, not food parts and could be re-tagged accordingly. Yug (talk) 10:56, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
They would be food for meat-eating scavengers though. --ghouston (talk) 04:03, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
We are still a human-edited, human-POV-based file repository project as far as I'm concerned. Aren't we ? O.ô Yug (talk) 16:37, 1 April 2021 (UTC) Be aware of the rise of the Scavengers !!!!
The category structure has often seemed very human-centric to me. I'm not sure if it's by design, or just because humans are very human-centric. Category:Animal food has been severely marginalized, when technically it should include all human cuisine. --ghouston (talk) 21:26, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Unsplash acquired by Getty Images

Wikimedia Commons hosts over 30,000 CC Zero licensed images from Unsplash. When the hosting site was first launched, it was a place where photographers could release high-quality photographs for copyright-free use by anyone. The images were incredibly popular and have been widely reused across the internet, appearing in site banners, educational materials, and newsprint. Sadly in 2017 the company dropped the CC Zero license and made all their content under a custom license which includes "Photos cannot be sold without significant modification" and "Compiling photos from Unsplash to replicate a similar or competing service", making them permanently unusable for Wikimedia projects.

It's sad that the original vision of how CC Zero could be used to run a successful service with significant public impact has sunk without trace, and cashing in with the blatant money-making machine of Getty Images is no surprise as the commercial end game. I guess the only opportunity that remains is to encourage photographers to consider choosing to release the same photographs on a standard free license, compatible with Wikipedia Commons, if they would like the benefit of seeing those images widely reused and available for Wikipedia.

Let's hope that our free volunteer work at Wikimedia Commons, does not go the same way in the long run. --Fæ (talk) 08:41, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

RIP Unsplash, I remember when that service was still viable (licence-wise).--Vulphere 12:45, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
  • INB4 Getty tries to make everyone pay for these free images. GMGtalk 13:04, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
    • Given that we have granted irrevocable licenses, and that Commons merely hosts our images and in no way owns them, there is no real danger of this going the same way. - Jmabel ! talk 18:00, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
      This may be technically correct, however we are aware of the shill game of reusers being unsure when faced with correctly licensed free photos and copyfraud claims on "respectable" big brand websites. Getty is not the only large image host which openly mirrors massive amounts of free historic content directly from Wikimedia Commons, then slaps license/reuse fees of several hundred dollars on top. It's been incredibly sadening to talk to academics that have paid these types of fees so they could be "sure" for their publisher before a book was finalized. This already happens to free Commons content, it happens retrospectively for Unsplash content already released as CC Zero too. --Fæ (talk) 05:27, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
      • Nothing -- I repeat nothing -- would prevent someone else from mirroring the pre-change Commons and being clear about the status of the images.
      • Your complaint about Getty's (and others') practice in this respect is justified, of course, but I would think it is is not really something we can affect in terms of PD images. Now, if they sell something that is (for example) BY-SA and they don't conform, someone has a good lawsuit. - Jmabel ! talk 13:34, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Removals

A large number of images were recently removed from Category:Tongyong Pinyin. The issue has been discussed at several places, with the Help Desk discussion linking most of them [10] (archived). I would like to request a mass 'undo' of the removals by an admin- everything in Case 1, Case 2 and Case 3 is what I understand as an image legitimately included in the category. If this 'undo' action is unwarranted for some reason, I would like to argue that many of the removals are not justified on a case-by-case basis. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 17:39, 26 March 2021 (UTC) (Because it has been five days since I made this post and no response has yet been given, I want to clarify for anyone cleaning up the page that I would like to be personally pinged and notified before this is removed from village pump.) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 19:55, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Hey- It started on one talk page here [11] and I got no response there. Then I went to the Help Desk. I got some responses on the Help Desk page [12]- that's where the bulk of the discussion is at. I also added it at the Category Discussion desk, but it garnered little discussion. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 01:02, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
Plea for Help As we approach the point when this discussion will be summarily deleted for lack of discussion, I want to say that we still need an authoritative judgment from the leaders of Wikimedia Commons made about these removal of these images from this category. I have come to the Village Pump because the issue will obviously lead to multiple retaliatory reverts if we don't come here because the positions between the editors on the different sides are irreconcilable and have already lead to a revert of a revert of a revert (see the history here: [13]). I am trying to protect everyone involved in the discussion from getting banned, getting into a rancorous discussion or getting into bad retaliatory-revert habits by bringing the discussion here so we can get an authoritative answer. Please help us. Thanks! --Geographyinitiative (talk) 13:00, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
See also Commons:Categories for discussion/2021/03/Category:Tongyong Pinyin.--Jusjih (talk) 03:55, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
Jusjih & others- if no response is given at Village Pump and this discussion is deleted without a decision, I plan to cease any participation in the argument to protect Kai from getting into trouble- if I kept going, I would do more second reverts and they would almost certainly be reverted as third reverts from that user. I am trying to learn to edit and discuss with a lighter hand- I want to avoid being rough on anybody. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 19:26, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Caption challenge

A new caption challenge has been posted:- Commons:Silly_things#Week_Ending_(Monday_10th_April_2021)

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:31, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

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