Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2021/09

HOW-TOs or Use-Case Recipes

JPEG image Lossless Transform is a HOW-TO I made on lossless JPEG DIY rotate mirror flip spin crop. Comments? Is there a wiki Namespace to search for articles like this? .... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 13:46, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

There is the "Help:" wikispace, I am not sure if it's the best match but it sounds like it would fit there. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:39, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Template:Spa

Once upon a time, there was a template {{Spa}}. Like en:Template:spa, it was used to tag single-purpose accounts. See Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Abdullah_Öcalan.png as to why we need this.

In 2011, it was repurposed by @Vincent Steenberg: to point instead to a small town in Belgium. I have no idea why, if this was discussed anywhere, or why Commons would need such a thing.

I propose to revert this. Andy Dingley (talk) 01:28, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

We have a lot of these: Category:Multilingual tags: Locations by country. --El Grafo (talk) 06:55, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

This template is being used 169 times. Use Template:Single-purpose account instead. Vincent Steenberg (talk) 07:32, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Hold on, if you give me 20 minutes, I will free up this template. Vincent Steenberg (talk) 13:23, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

 Done I renamed {{Spa}} to {{Spa, Belgium}}. You can now restore the first the way it was 13 years ago. Regards, Vincent Steenberg (talk) 13:35, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

• Thank you Andy Dingley for noticing this - I was going to use the SPA template for a DR only to find it didn't apparently exist, If we can put SPA back into existence that would be grand :), –Davey2010^Talk 15:25, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

• I've split the history up. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 15:49, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Improve Special:CiteThisPage in file namespace to show the license and author

Instead of the above proposal, I propose that we improve Special:CiteThisPage in file namespace to show the license and author, so as to actually comply with the license. This same code could extend to all wikis.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 10:05, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

•  Support, in fact "CiteThisPage" should be used to illustrate "a good example" of how to properly attribute freely licensed media content, I'm not sure if it can be technically tailored for the Wikimedia Commons, but if it could it should. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:26, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
•  Support, though I will note that this is not a particularly high priority and file pages already have an attribution that provides a legally correct attribution.  Mysterymanblue  22:18, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
•  Support -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 22:19, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
•  Support, but see my proposal below about watermarking. --Nicolas G. Mertens (talk) 09:49, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
•  Support Let's just Nihil Obstat this. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:19, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Encourage uploaders to use compression for TIFF format?

Hi,

I happened to run into a few TIFF uploads. They are sometimes relatively large batches of large files (100-200MB), and even if Mediawiki creates jpeg thumbnails of them, I wonder what's the advantage of those large files? I am all for keeping the original files (The files can be as large as they have to, if they need it), specially for things like donated collections, but just by using TIFF compression to the original uncompressed TIFFs, I was able to make the file size 5 times smaller with lossless compression (identical file printed on screen, will never degrade, no matter how many times is re-saved), keeping the metadata and file format. Patents for compression no longer apply. The compression is so low resource intensive (compared to JPEG), that it won't have any issues being opened in old phones or computers. But the original file size may have issues being opened due to higher memory requirements. I think the TIFF format that was used in those cases, even things like "Library of congress" was whatever came out of the scanner software, without many regards for practical usage/reuse. Even Mediawiki software sometimes has issues creating thumbnails of those very large files: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T290462

My questions is, other than "keeping the original files intact", would it make sense to recommend to use compression on large TIFFs on the File formats page? I think it will make life easier for the uploader (5x speed on uploading), the software and the reuser/downloader. Am I missing something I am not thinking about? I am not suggesting to enforce this, I think it is not super-important for/on occasional uploads/occasional TIFF contributors, but may make things faster/easier for large batch uploads (converting things losslessly, on the fly before uploading)? --jynus (talk) 10:32, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Uncompressed TIFF is a library standard. There's not much of a reason to upload TIFF besides keeping the original files intact.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:27, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

 Support.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 10:06, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

No. At least in my (long-term ago) experience, TIFF-compression was a mess. And: Storage place is not really a problem today or for the WMF. --Túrelio (talk) 10:14, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

• Don't we already have options to download smaller files? I don't think that we should place this responsibility on the uploaders, there are already a tonne of things to make sure before uploading (licensing, scope, file type, name, categorisation, Etc.) so the size of the file should not be. A bot could compress files like locally uploaded files are at the English-language Wikipedia. We should try to make the upload process as user-friendly as possible not add extra restrictions outside of the licensing and scope policies. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 16:50, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
•  Support If by "encourage" we mean some polite mention that it is possible to compress losslessly with a page describing how to do so. I would also like to see a ban on mention of uncompressed files as a rationale (even if in passing) for bringing a person for discussion regarding banning of a user. Perhaps we can have a strongly worded template along the lines of "Immediately stop harrassing people who contribute to Commons!!! It is never OK to belittle anybody for the formats they chose to contribute in! You are in violation of all Commons principles! Do not attempt to harrass a person who has left this template on your talk page!" (extreme use of ! is intentional). ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 05:50, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Hide Special:CiteThisPage from file namespace

Special:CiteThisPage is enabled by default on all mainspace pages, however it is also enabled on files as the file namespace is in $wgContentNamespaces on Commons. This proposal is to use CSS to hide the special page on file pages. Why? If a content reuser clicks on the Cite this page link in the sidebar or under the more menu on the mobile site, they likely intend to reuse the media in some form which requires attribution. The issue is that Special:CiteThisPage does not create proper attribution for this at all. As an example: [1], it lists the author as "Wikimedia Commons contributors" which is not only insufficent, but in many cases completely wrong as not all files are by Commons contributors, it also lists no license. Special:CiteThisPage is designed for textual content, so it does not make sense to have it on file pages. Dylsss (talk) 21:52, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

•  Support I do not think it makes sense to spend energy to rewrite this page to display the copy of what is displayed on the file page itself. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 05:40, 17 October 2021 (UTC)