Commons talk:Essential information

Top

First of all, many thanks to Eloquence for putting up this page. I think it's pretty good already, however, I have a few more questions. So, here goes:

1. We should state more clearly that some licenses explicitely require some information; specifically, the GFDL requires the author to be named. Copying an image from a 'pedia and tagging it as GFDL is a copyright violation if the author is not named.
2. I'm not sure that we need to go through a deletion request after waiting a month for no info. I belive a speedy deletion would be OK in most such cases.
3. it may be good to put up a checlist somewhere that contains all the info that should go on a image description page. I started something like this a while back: User:Duesentrieb/Upload_howto - but that page is just a rough sketch yet.
4. People (esp. admins) should be told about this policy page. Where to link it?

So, what do you think? -- Duesentrieb 22:33, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. With regard to 1), I agree, and have edited the page a bit to reflect your point. On 2), I disagree - community review is usually a good idea when there is a potentially significant margin of error. A formal Deletion Request discourages "lazy deletes", and may encourage a larger group to research the file's possible provenance. Not all admins are likely to act in a responsible fashion, and especially in cases where there is no response from the uploader, a speedy delete is likely to go unnoticed.

On 3), I think this information should go directly into MediaWiki:Uploadtext and its translations. I would aim for a more concise version than the sketch you linked to -- perhaps even with a copy & paste template. Regarding 4), the correct place would be Commons:Licensing which, unfortunately, is currently a big threadmode mess -- are you up for some refactoring?--Eloquence 00:20, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Translation(s)

Is it planned to translate this page to other languages? If yes, I'll try to do so for French. :)
Best regards,
-- AlNo (talk) 15:36, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to translate. Siebrand 15:08, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Naming

If attribution is required, is it really necessary for my full name to be published? -Mardus 00:07, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Not required. A user name *is* required in that case. Siebrand 15:08, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Source

And what if the file is not completely created by myself, not moved from another Wikimedia project, not in the public domain and not from a website? What if it's a derivative work based upon an already existing file on commons? What should I do in this case? It's not easy to enter commons, really. --Mortalmoth (talk) 14:59, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Here's another: what if it's a file you got directly from the author? I got this photo, for example, off my friend's SD card, and then got email permission from him and went through the OTRS process. But what to put for "source"? I have another large batch of high quality photos directly from a friend who wishes to donate his work to the public domain anonymously (revealing his identity only to the OTRS team). So source=blank and author=anonymous + Public Domain... Hopefully the OTRS-pending/ticket template will keep admins from deleting them? --Peter ^Talk 04:56, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

To answer both questions:

1. "And what if the file is not completely created by myself, not moved from another Wikimedia project, not in the public domain and not from a website? What if it's a derivative work based upon an already existing file on commons? What should I do in this case?"
   • use the source which is mentioned of that particular file and add a link to the file (or the file itself by using <gallery> and </gallery>) behind "other_versions".
   1. • We also have a template specifically for such situations: {{Own based}}. Consider using this instead. KDS4444 (talk) 04:33, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
2. "what if it's a file you got directly from the author?"
   • use {{Own}} if the photo is created by the person who you didn't name on-wiki, but did mention in the OTRS ticket.

With regards, Trijnstel_talk 15:52, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

{{Own}} should not be used for such cases. We have {{private correspondence}} for this purpose. —LX (talk, contribs) 09:35, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Selfcontradictory

Part of this text is reasonable, when it says that source is not essential for "art which is many centuries old". But then the next section says that "pages [not having complete information] should be marked as not having a license or source". This is taken by some taggers as justification to tag obviously free files that do not have a direct source url. Rewrite the instruction, please. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 22:43, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

I should think that in such a case a description of why it is known to be old enough to be out of copyright would suffice. —Preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.139.81.0 (talk) 04:22, January 30, 2013‎ (UTC)

Source confirmation?

Is there a mechanism or bot to confirm that the file has not been modified by the user before uploading; to check that the stated source indeed contains the given file? —Vis M (talk) 09:16, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Licence review is used for verifying that files from external websites have been tagged correctly. It is mostly used for copyrighted but freely licensed images and less commonly for public domain images. --Stefan2 (talk) 20:18, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. —Vis M (talk) 12:30, 7 July 2021 (UTC)