Commons:Village pump/Archive/2005/10

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Request for file deletion

I request this File:Terror-alert-banana.gif hapless & innocent little fruit to be deleted or eaten alive, whichever comes first.

I uploaded my merry mate for my de/en/es/it etc. user pages, as of now, I'm the only one referencing the file. As I have some hot disputes on de, I'm concerned about my privacy. I'd like to upload the pic -again- using some other name than Marek Moehling, as this is my real name that I don't like to see connected to my new identities anymore. Earlier, I applied for a new user name here, so far to no avail. Therefore I request and explain the deletion here and not on Terror-alert-banana, where curious people coming from my user pages are more likely to read it - some of them may know my old identity. Once deleted, I'll upload it again. thx in advance.

...yes, thank you, this is a bit twisted & silly: I could just dump the banana and use, say, a vegetable. But I'm a sentimental fool, that, hopefully, made himself clear anyway. --Marek Moehling 03:07, 2 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You don't have to "apply" for a new user name; you can always change to a new one with Special:Userlogin. dbenbenn | talk 19:38, 2 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I know, but at wikipedia there used to be procedure for changing names while retaining your edits, which I did. As here is no such thing, I will get me a new identity.

Besides, there's a deletion request for Terror-alert-banana as being uneligible for Attribution ShareAlike. I inferred this by what is says on [1] "feel free to mirror the banana or put it back on your site" and on [2] "...and always link back". Anyway, I'll try to contact the author for licensing. --Marek Moehling 21:44, 2 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't upload the picture again on Commons unless it can be obtained under a free license. Commons:Licensing specifically states that not just copying, but also modifications and commercial use must be allowed. In any case, you can never "infer" a license. Every license is a specific legal contract (e.g. [3]) which does not magically arise from certain conditions. So the creator has to specifically say that they put it under CC-BY-SA 2.5. Alternatively, they have to specify certain conditions, which may or may not be compatible with Commons. These are subsumed under Template:CopyrightedFreeUseProvidedThat.--Eloquence 08:07, 3 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Image:EdmondRothschild.jpg

If this picture is indeed PD, please upload it to the Wikimedia commons.

Thanks!

If you mean w:Image:EdmondRothschild.jpg: that picture has no source indicated, and furthermore the person who uploaded it was banned from the English Wikipedia for copyright violations. dbenbenn | talk 19:25, 2 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Video Thumbnails?

Apologies if this has been previously covered or this query is in the wrong place - but is it possible to enhance the layout and presentation of the video category so as to be actually a good deal more useful?

It is a bit unfriendly to load the video category page and be faced with an almost uniform view of ogg speaker icons. Would it be possible to instead include a suitable video frame as the thumbnail so the user would be able to see if the clip was possibly going to be of any use? I don't know whether this would be possible via automated means, or whether it would require individual work on each file.

An extension of that idea would then be to include a series of key frames on the file page as well as the description - thus enabling very large video files to be better viewed without having to actually download - saving the user and wiki some bandwidth in mistaken or curious downloading. --SFC9394 20:45, 2 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You'd be more likely to get a response and find someone to implement it at http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org Dunc|☺ 13:27, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I can't log in

Since a time, I just can't log in. The system says: Wikimedia Commons uses cookies to log in users. You have cookies disabled. Please enable them and try again. They are enabled, both in IE and Firefox and Wikimedia is not on a blacklist. I can log in on nl.wikipedia.org... Anyone ideas?

My experience is the same. I've tried IE and Opera, opened up for all kind of cookies, verified that logging in on en:, de:, no: and nn: all goes smoothly, deleted all existing cookies, but I get the same message here as you. I think it's quite obvious the problem is mainly on Commons' end. --User:Ekko 14. november 2005

It turned out that my firewall stops cookies from Wikipedia, but not others. Why this is, I don't know. So the solution for now was to turn of the firewall, let Wikipedia install i cookies, cross my fingers that nothing else slipped through the door at the sime time, and turn on the firewall again. --62.97.166.191 20:36, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Categories and Subcategories

The category Category:Architecture of Austria is a subcategory of Category:Austria and currently has 5 subcategories. 3 of these subcategories (Category:Bridges in Austria, Category:Churches of Austria, and Category:Monasteries of Austria) are also subcategories of Category:Austria, 2 of these subcategories (Category:Castles in Austria and Category:Otto Wagner) are not. What is the usual rule: Is it recommended that subcategories are also direct subcategories of categories from which they are already indirect subcategories? --NeoUrfahraner 06:46, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No, usually only the most specific category should be used. Sometimes, it makes sense to use one of the "ancestor" categories redundantly, but that is rare. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 09:55, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Generally yes, not in category and subcategory, but things can be in two sibling categories. And err on the side of making things easier to find. Justinc 10:18, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree and removed the redundant categories. --NeoUrfahraner

Leaves

I've just realized that one could make good pictures of tree etc. leaves by just scanning them! David.Monniaux 22:32, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

An awsome discovery! —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 09:27, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Commons Portals?

Can I set up my own Commons Portal for railway photographs? I'd do it properly, make sure it was multilingual, etc and link back to w:de:Portal:Bahn, w:en:Portal:Trains, w:fr:Portail:Ferrovipédia and w:ja:Wikipedia:ウィキポータル/鉄道. Dunc|☺ 13:25, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Looking around, Commons doesn't seem to have a portal: namespace, though it does have a Creator namespace instead. I suppose I could put it in Commons:Portal:Trains. I'll ask at bugzilla. Comments? Dunc|☺ 13:32, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Answering my own questions, http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1676 says that any m:Developer can do it. Dunc|☺ 13:38, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Webrings?

Could I, if Portals are alowed, join a w:en:webring? Has anyone thought of this before? It might attract a few new users. Dunc|☺ 13:25, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Trademarked images such as company logos

I don't know enough about copyright law and trademark law to answer this, but maybe someone else does.

In theory, company logos such as a Microsoft or IBM logo can be used to illustrate the encyclopedia article about the specific company. Isn't it true in every country?

Wouldn't it make sense to upload these to commons, even though they are copyrighted?

-- nyenyec ☎ 14:51, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No. What you are saying is pretty much the definition of fair use. The terms of fair use are very different in individual countries, and many wikipedias don't allow images under that pretext. To me, there are three reasons not to allow fair use material:

rules about fair use differ greatly between countries. It would be practically impossible to make clear which image can be used where under which conditions.
fair use content is not free content - the use of the image is very restricted. Images on the commons must be useable by anyone, for any purpose.
fair use simply does not apply to the commons. This is a media database, there is no editorial context. A collection of fair use material is a contradiction in terms.

Another question is if we should allow trademarked logos that are PD (like Coka Cola, because of age) or under a free licnese (like logos of some free software projects). There has been some discussion about this, but no definit conclusion reached. Jimmy Wales seems opposed to the idea. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 15:43, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Search for Extraterrestrial Life on commons

Hi All! I'm searching for Images, which could belong to Category:Aliens. Thanks in avant! --Stefan-Xp 19:40, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Copyrights of flags

Hi. I usually see people upload flags with a licence such as GFDL or Creative Commons. This would apply in those cases where a flag can look in more than one way, because then the flag would be a "creative" image. However, I think that most country flags have regulations only to look in one way: both the colors and the length width etc. Would it be considered wrong to remove the copyright-licence tags and replace them with PD-flag? // Fred Chess 23:22, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I belive PD to be the correct license. But it's probably best to also ask the people who created/uploaded the flags. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 23:40, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

PD-flag is a deprecated tag. --Sanbec 00:40, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Flags are NOT automatically public domain. Images of flags are certainly not public domain. It is up to the creator of each image of a flag how they are licensed, the same as with any other image. David Newton 12:27, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Constellations maps in SVG

I think will be great to regenerate constellations maps (see Category:Constellations) in SVG format since generating program (http://pp3.sourceforge.net/) makes vector output. --EugeneZelenko 03:06, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Vector output in the form of Postscript. Does anyone know how to convert Postscript to SVG? I haven't been able to figure that out yet. dbenbenn | talk 05:26, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Google comes up with quite a few options. These look prommissing:

http://www.square1.nl/TGC-SITE/ps_svg.htm (commercial)
http://thunder.prohosting.com/~rshi/svg/ (witten in postscript - cool...)
http://www.eprg.org/projects/SVG/ps2svg/ (pretty old, probably discontinued)

It would be cool to find out more about this, especially because PS files can be created from pretty much any application (even under windows), using a print driver. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 11:46, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've tried ps2svg, but it doesn't work for me. What about the possibility of just uploading Postscript, and having MediaWiki produce PNG thumbnails? ImageMagick's convert command (what MediaWiki uses to produce thumbnails) handles Postscript just fine. I just don't know if the security issues with Postscript can be solved. dbenbenn | talk 17:49, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, SVG uploads seem to have been disabled again. dbenbenn | talk 00:01, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That was not intended, it's being worked on. My fault in a way, sorry. Should be back very soon. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 00:55, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Are there PostScripts editors available? Will be good idea to upload images only if they could be easily edited... --EugeneZelenko 02:07, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard of a Postscript editor. But Postscript is a very common output format; for example TeX and Metapost produce Postscript. Ideally we'd be able to upload TeX or Metapost directly (and have it displayed as PNG), but that would require MediaWiki to support many different formats. It's much easier to just have MediaWiki support Postscript. People can always upload their TeX sourcecode to the image description page. dbenbenn | talk 04:08, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, in theory, supporting postscript would just be a matter of configuration. Converting a 20 page PS file to png would not be a good idea, though... -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 15:47, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki should support "Encapsulated Postscript", which, as I understand it, is a subset of Postscript that's a bit simpler, and limited to only one page. dbenbenn | talk 19:36, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You may have luck opening postscript files in scribus and exporting them as SVG. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 15:55, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the suggestion. It sort of worked. Compare

PNG version
SVG version

As you can see, it only just barely worked. Apparently converting Postscript to SVG is a difficult problem. dbenbenn | talk 19:49, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I made one Image:Ori elgaard.svg. Something strange happens that make huge postscript files.

pp3 inputfrom_pp3.sf.net 
latex ori.tex 
dvipdf ori.dvi 
pstoedit -f "fig:" ori.pdf > ori.fig 
edit with xfig and export as svg

--Elgaard 21:09, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Here's another example of PNG vs SVG:

PNG
SVG

I wish they were more similar. — Omegatron 18:55, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright and videos

I've recently come across a rather good question from a user at w:es; filmmaker Jean Vigo, who left few but immensely influential works, was deceased in 1934. According to French law, this would put his works in the public domain, as the term of author's lifespan + 70 years is over; his moral rights to the oeuvre are unchanged, and he must be mentioned as its author under any circumstances, but there are no further usage restrictions upon it.

I take that to mean that, as digital transfers would be considered non-creative under the Bridgeman vs. Corel precedent, we can safely seize digital snapshots from any of his works and upload them; heck, I take that to mean that we could safely upload full copies of any of his works.

I'd be delighted to provide the Commons with a full DVD transfer of L'Atalante and Zèro de conduit if I'm correct as to this point, but this would require devising a means for safely uploading 1Gb+ files. The question of whether images from the film would be appropriate is more important in the short term. As IANAL, I'd appreciate the help of any expert on the subject. Taragüí @ 07:51, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Straight off the top of my head, I would say that an entire feature film is not very encyclopediac, as it can never be used within an artiel.... Wikisource provides source material, maybe that's a better place for it?

Screenshots of the film or short animations would probably be OK on commons. I've made a few of those myself. The problem with gif-animations is that 10-20 seconds easily take 1 MB that loads automatically no matter your bandwidth, and can't be controlled in any way (start/stop, etc). The ideal would be an embedded movie that one could start and stop, in a video format such as divX, or wmc if it is "free". As we know, MS Encarta has had that interactive feature for year (at least since 1997), and should be a perfect example of the possibilities of the IT-encyclopedia. But I don't think wikimedia commons accept such files currently. // Fred Chess 10:09, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If what you say is true, images are definitely OK. The full movie would then be compliant with the commons policy, too: any media useful to any wikimedia project is welcome at the commons (if it's free content, of course) - this includes media that would be used by Wikisource. (Maybe we should re-thing this policy if wikisource goes into hosting lots of videos, but I see not reason not to put them on the commons. The files end up on the same server anyway). But i'm not too confident about uploading very large files - there may be technical difficulties.

Oh, and video must be encoded as ogg/theora. DivX is (apperently) not free enough for the commons, that includes divx-encodedd ogg files. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 11:38, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

BEEP. The duration of copyright is 70 years + the duration of the World Wars, if applicable (with a peculiar definition of this duration). Read again the French code of intellectual property. David.Monniaux 12:23, 9 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please

Upload these pics for me -

They all have a free license.

Image:Karte olympiamuc.jpg

I do not know what to do. The User is unwillig to answer to anyone even in the IRC (cite):

...
<sans_work> DaBPunkt: , interessiert mich nicht
...
<sans_work> aber wie gesagt, ist mir relativ wurscht
...

Any suggestions? --Paddy 13:28, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Redundant Wikimedia Foundation Project Logos

There has been a long discussion about those. Conclusion was: They need to be deleted. But how? I suggest every week one logo is overwritten and check usage is applied. After "three months?" all of those placeholder images will be deleted. Ich start with the first one right now. --Paddy 15:28, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Further Information: Commons:Village pump/Deleting of images

Image:Commons without text.png first victim. Nothing until next friday. What happend to Category:Redundant? It is full of images virtually bursting. Do we not have any admins on commons? --Paddy 16:17, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You can't be sure that they are really not used anymore. Check-Usage is'nt the proof. So, I recommend leaving them until we find a way to be sure. They does not hurt if they really are not used anymore, but it does hurt if they are missing in one single project. You have bad experience yourself regarding this and you must be crazy continue deleting "duplicate" images. -- aka 17:05, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

User_talk:Paddy#Logo_images Please read this first. We had a long discussion on that one an all of us agreed that we need to do something about it and that something like this would be the right way. It is just one logo per week. It is a very slow process. If something goes wrong we can always stop the overwriting process or revert the image. --Paddy 17:29, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you Paddy. I wonder though...on the deleted/replaced image, how many languages do we describe the process of complaining? Also, was there ever an update to Check_Usage to check all 600 (or however many) MediaWiki projects, not just the big ones? I think User:aka's warning about moving very cautiously here should not be taken lightly. --Connel MacKenzie 02:00, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It looks as though the test image was sortof a success; it proved that someone out there ~~(who doesn't speak English presumably)~~ is still using that image ~~and does not know how to ask for help redirecting it.~~ Back to the drawing board, for now, it seems. --Connel MacKenzie 05:05, 8 October 2005 (UTC) Edit --Connel MacKenzie 05:45, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The whole point of uploading an X is that any remaining uses will quickly get fixed. I don't understand why it was reverted. dbenbenn | talk 19:33, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect it was because the person reverting it did not understand what was trying to be done. I hope additional translations will help sort the matter out. But I am relieved that others found a method (quickly) that worked for them. --Connel MacKenzie 18:20, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Deleted duplicate has been translated to german I am asking for french right now. greetings --Paddy 13:25, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I saw you deleted the commonslogo without tekst (Image:Commons without text.png), and suggested to replace it on all the projects. Now there are a lot of projects, and they have now all a disfuntioning main page :( And templates :( Further, the alternative you offered, is bad. You offered a svg-pic with transparant background. With M IE it becomes gray, the background. Uggly. And because it is on all the main pages, I would like to request to put the old logo back, or to find a solution. I'm sorry not to have a nice solution of myself, but I don't know that much of pics. If you would like to give me a respond, please do it on my nl.wp-talkpage. [4] . Thank you very much for your time. Effeietsanders 09:59, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Project logo in PNG will be replaced by SVG next Friday, 14 October

Image:Commons-logo.png will be replaced by Image:Commons-logo.svg. This needs a lot of work on the wiktionary projects. Help is needed. Best thing would be if there would be a a complete list of the Wiktionaries at least for approx. three months somewhere on a subpage. Thanx for the support and all the help. --Paddy 23:04, 10 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry I didn't see this sooner. Which sub-page did you want that on? --Connel MacKenzie 18:22, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

User:Paddy/wiktionary list or something. I postpone overwirting, till this is resolved. So do not worry ;-) There is no hurry. greetings. --Paddy 16:49, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

These logos are not redundant. Please stop deleting them. They are in use on 1000s of pages across the projects. Many people can not use svg files, so please leave the png ones alone. If you so desperately need to delete Image:Commons-logo.png, remove it from use before doing so, rather than leaving people to find articles full of red links. Most people using these images do not read the Commons Village Pump - they just trust the project that usage will be checked before deletion. I'm amazed this process has broken down so much. Angela 15:17, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Just one information not regarding possible other points of criticm: SVGs in Wikimedia projects are rendered by MediaWiki and not by the user browser. --Avatar 16:16, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The image has been deleted, even though I had no chance to repair the links :-( see Log --Paddy 16:03, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Update: wiktionaries have all been done (At least the main page). Please help with other Projects. --Paddy 19:15, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I deleted Image:Commons-logo.png and Image:CommonsLogo.png and forgot to upload the cross and put Template:Deleted duplicate on them, oops, someone put it on the former and I just put it on the latter so it should be OK now. To answer Angela then yes, these are redundant, and people can use SVG just fine since we rasterize it, what exactly is the accessability problem you (or someone else) is having with SVGs? —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 19:39, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

@Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason first of all it was correct to delete the image. Second remark of mine it was not correct to delete the image at that stage. Do not worry. We need people that make decisions. But when people make decisions they must also take the consequences. Please help with the repair. I have done the main pages of wiktionary already. Help with the tiny projects and you are fine. The big projects already helped themself. greetings --Paddy 01:43, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I moved this up because it duplicates the discussion here —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 05:31, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I missed the discussion where it was decided to delete all PNGs that duplicate a SVG without warning, and the one in which User:Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason was given the power to ignore the text in {{Redundant}} that says:

Admins: do not delete this page until all uses have been replaced!

Could anyone point me to them? TIA. --Angus 03:01, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It was a secret discussion that you aren't allowed to see. Why do you ask? (In other words: ask a sarcastic question, get a sarcastic answer. Anyway, perhaps User talk:Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason would be a better place to address whatever it is you're talking about.) dbenbenn | talk 04:40, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I love sarcasm, anyway, you'll notice that I didn't delete any of them (actually two by accident, one of which I restored and one of which another user restored before I could get the chance) but rather overwrote them with Image:Cross.png. When all project have begun using the new images, which should be replaced quickly now that people see the cross on various pages, follow the link back to it here, and see which image they're supposed to replace it with the images in question will cease to be linked to, at which point we can delete them. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 05:31, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I didn't connect the title of this discussion with the issue (I noticed the deletion of the flag images first). I know that in the letter you didn't delete the images, in spirit you did.

I don't know if you realize the big disruption you provoked in all projects, just because you think that people should start using the svg files right now.

It doesn't make very much sense to use commons if every now and then some enlightened people will break our images so we are forced to change them for our own good. At least we have a say in our own projects... :-/.

Sorry the bad English. --Angus 07:07, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please restore the Wikimedia Foundation logos. They are missing from all the static revisions and this isn't fixable by non-developers. See [5], for example. Please stop deleting logos at all. There is no need to keep breaking the projects in this way. Angela 06:38, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is no need to panic. The page is fixable! You only need to fix the template see [6].

First I do not agree with the practice of deleting in these cases. Overwriting is much better.
There should only be one logo for a foundation project if the logo only consists of a symbol without text. The reason for this is the traffic which the developers already pointed out see link above at the start of the topic. Secondly Connel MacKenzie and me found out, that through the diversity of the logos it is often hard to identify the projects. In case someone comes up with a great idea for a new say commons logo it is impossible to fix all the versions if there is no central place to fix it.
Basically there are more reasons to replace with one central logo than having a separate logo for each project.
There is a very big necessity for small projects like: Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikiquote and Wikisource to fix all the logos. This can be done in one working day with 5 active people by going through Special:SiteMatrix. Wiktionary should all be fixed by me and is in 98% of the cases still OK I will go through all of the sites again and make it a 100%. So we need 4 other people helping to fix the other project and I volunteer to fix all the templates in the wikipedia projects. It is quite easy and fast work to be done because most of the small projects do not have a wikisisters template or even a main page at all. This should be organised though and coordinated. In 6 weeks I could finish the job on my own. Greetings --Paddy 14:46, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Put your name here User:Paddy/help --Paddy 23:07, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Do I get it right that the project of replacing the logo's will continue? Or will the deleting be stopped? It is imho prooved that there are several problems, so I don't think it plausable to continue this way. Please, I ask you, also regarding other ideas, talk first with the projects. Commons is the databank of a lot of "our" stuff, please handle with care! I dislike the idea of storing my pictures in here, just because of this kind of things, I will never hear about it if something happens with it (I can't follow my pictures with my nl.wp-watchlist). Further is it a real problem that it is hard to talk with people, you feel like a brick wall sometimes :(. Maybe that is not you fault, but please think about this. And last but not least is it very hard to find stuff in here, aspecially if you are not very common in here... Effeietsanders 20:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

RCBot looks operating again, please use it for replacing redundant images. --EugeneZelenko 15:05, 30 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Just to address Angela's question, I'd like to point out that the performance gains from centralizing the pool of logos seems to be significant. That is why I now condone the effort to centralize the logos down to a small, approved set of common logos across all projects. As Paddy and I have discussed, significant pains are being made to ensure that all links to an image are first corrected before the images are to be deleted/replaced with the big red X. There seem to be some procedural issues, but I believe these are being corrected. --Connel MacKenzie 16:27, 23 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Category bot

I've uploaded a bunch of plant pictures to their family categories, only to be told that these would be better in genus categories (even if these did not exist, I gathered.) So I've been creating genus categories and moving my pics there, but I wonder if I'm not doing bot work... Supposing I wrote a text file like this:

Pinus_pinaster_seedling.jpg
Pinus_virginiana_drawing.png
Pinus_halepensis_bark.jpg
Pinus_palustris_drawing.png
Pinus_mugo_cone.jpg
-Pinaceae
+Pinus
Tsuga_canadensis_cones.jpg
-Pinaceae
+Tsuga
Vieira_do_Minho_biblioteca.jpg
+Libraries
+Braga district

File lines are very straightforward, and have the following meaning:

if line doesn't begin with + or -, then it's a file name
+ (plus): add this category to the previous file list
- (minus): delete this category from previous file list

Perhaps there's a more general bot that takes a regex like /[[Category:Pinaceae]]/[[Category:Pinus]]/ - that would do as well (not so well). Does anyone have a bot that could be used for this? If so, do you supply the code so I run the bot from my Linux box, or do I submit my bot feed to one of you? It's all in the name of better categorisation - something much needed around here, I'd say. -- Tintazul 16:25, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that there is such a bot already, although it could be written easily. But what is more important is the fact that it is common to put the plant images into an article named after the latin name of the species. Then please put this article into the family category. Please see Gentiana asclepiadea or Tricyrtis hirta for examples. -- aka 16:59, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Genera with a hundred members make sense as categories, to break up the family categories that would have thousands of articles otherwise. But it's silly and unhelpful to make genus categories if the genus has only 1-2 species in it. Stan Shebs 23:58, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see why that would be unhelpful. It's easier to find a given species or genus from a genus than from a family list. - Andre Engels 08:02, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your answers. I've checked Aka's pages, and none of the (superb) pictures you've uploaded have any Category information. This is not the recommended practice - at least, I was told to categorise the pictures themselves. So you see - if everyone categorised their pictures within the Family categories, the Family categories would show hundreds of pictures. What should I do?

I've asked about genuses and families in Category talk:Plantae by family, but received no answer. Stan makes some sense in using common sense, but I personally don't have a way of knowing how many pics of a given genus will be uploaded to Commons. Should I guide myself by what's already here?

Also, if such a bot can be created, then please create one - see what I did in Category:Pinaceae when all I knew was that pics should be uploaded to family categories - those were the days... most pics in that cat page were uploaded by me, and there are several genus subcats: Abies, Pinus, Tsuga etc. Uploading pictures has become a much more diffuclt task when I was told I had to categorise within the genus, if such cat existed. Your comments, please. -- Tintazul 16:32, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A bot that you could use, from the Python wikipediabot framework, is category.py. The option "category.py tidy" lets you go through a category and asks for each page or image in that category whether to put it in a subcategory instead. It may not be exactly what you want, but it definitely speeds up things quite a lot. I personally am in favor of genus categories, by the way. - Andre Engels 08:02, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My bot (tawbot) already does exactly this thing on Polish Wikipedia. I don't have a bot account on Commons, but I can make one and tell bot to do such things. Taw 10:18, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Commons:Multilinguality

I created Commons:Multilinguality. It is about formalizing pages in a way, that they are fully multilingual. This will be very useful to let non English speakers participate and use Commons (German Wikipedia is thinking about closing their upload function and fully migrate images to Commons (see here). A main concern against this is the anglocentrism of Commons). Please check the site. --::Slomox:: >< 23:00, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What links to this page?

I have used several pics from Commons om da:Wiki and en:Wiki, but still I often see that "No articles links to this picture" or whatever the text is. Couldn't we either remove this paragraph, or make the system look for links from local Wikis? G®iffen 21:42, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for pictures on other wikis would require lookups in more than a hundret databases. Noone has figured out yet how to do that efficiently...
pictures should always be linked to on the commons, and/or they should be categorized. Otherwise, people comming here looking for pictures will not find them, and they are useless to the community.
To find out which wikis use the image, use the external check-usage tool [7]. Note that this does not search all the wikis, though, just the biggest ones.

HTH -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 21:57, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Footprints under what?

there is no Category:Footprints, but there are five pictures categorised there. One of them is mine, and since the prints are made in sand I've additionally placed it under Category:Sand. I've been pouring over the category system, and have no idea where Footprints should go. Is there a place for human activities? Do you consider a footprint an object? Any ideas? -- Tintazul 23:21, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That's a tough one. If put it under Category:Feet for now, but if anyone can come up with a better place... -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 13:28, 9 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

How can I know if a photo is applicable for the Commons?

Specifically, I have a picture I want to get off of Amazon.com (http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0060875410.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg) for Wikipedia, and I can't tell if this is even copyrighted material! Can someone help?

If you don't know, don't upload. You need to find out who created it (or at least who holds the copyright for it), and ask them to release it under a free licnese (for anyone, not just us). If it's very old (which I doubt), it may be in the public domain.

You can start by asking the people who published it - in this case, Amazon. Note that very often, websites contain copyright violations, and anything their webmaster tells you may be completely wrong. But Amazon will probably know better.

All this being said: it's a book cover. Ask the publishing hous. They will very likely tell you that no, they will not release it under a free license. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 00:22, 9 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I appreciate it! (By the way, look in a few days for FairTax at Wikipedia peer review or MAYBE featured article candidates) Trevdna 23:56, 10 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Translation requests

English: (missing text)

Commons:Requests for translation is looking very sparse, and needs more languages (and requests for translation to other languages)! Does this page need work, or should I be asking somewhere else? There are a number of templates (eg. {{redundant}}) that need translating into languages other than English... Alphax (sysop) 04:53, 9 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The categories could have a translation. The template translations sucked for me being presumably the sole person to take care of that Cat at the moment. BTW I could use a lot of help with the cleaning up which is not at all easy. --Paddy 23:10, 10 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The problem being, image use on other projects won't see the categories. At least with {{deleted duplicate}} people on other projects have a chance to understand what is going on! While the idea of having the translated versions is good, it doesn't help when {{redundant}} is used as a template, because the parameters aren't passed. Alphax (sysop) 04:08, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

And who reads this text? There are approx. 200 Redundant images (if you would delete the Nuvola/64/apps images you uploaded). The effect of it is ZERO POINT ZERO. The Deleted Duplicate Template has a completly different purpose. Therfore the translations are completely unnecessary. --Paddy 18:56, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

People on other projects, of course. The reason they became so widespread is because nobody could read the notice saying "Don't use these, use the better ones". Alphax (talk) 04:55, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Password reset request

I don't know if this is the right place for this, but I don't know of a better place.

I have a Wikimedia Commons account - "baccala@freesoft.org". It's email address should be "baccala@freesoft.org", but I don't think it is, because I've tried to reset the password and get nothing in my email. Could some kind admin please set "baccala@freesoft.org"'s email address to be "baccala@freesoft.org" and email me?

I think this happened because I was hoping I could just fill in the username field and the machine would copy everything else from Wikipedia. Obviously, I was wrong.

9 Oct 2005

Admins aren't able to do that. User:Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason might be able to do it for you. Or perhaps you could find someone on Meta who could help you. dbenbenn | talk 23:53, 10 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

SVG Flags

Image:Flag of Canada.svg I need some help on that one. I have done a lot already. Two weeks and I ask for overwriting permissions of the png version (Image:Canada flag 300.png). --Paddy 01:20, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I support this plan. The purpose of overwriting with Image:Cross.png is to get others to update any remaining uses. Perhaps that would work better if you overwrote with an image saying "Replace this image with Image:Flag of Canada.svg!". Of course, it would be nicer if we had RCBot back. (And even better than that would be to have image redirects. That would make the whole problem trivial.) dbenbenn | talk 03:47, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Image:Germany flag 300.png next one. These flags will take a lot of database server load off mediawiki servers hopfully. I'll try to fix this today and overwrite in two weeks again. --Paddy 22:17, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think that deleting so many flags together, used thousands of times in many Wikipedias, is an irresponsable behaviour. There are many bots out there that could have done the job seamlessly. BarceX 07:19, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I don't like this SVG-pushing. Many flags, including useful information in its comments, plus their history, are being deleted. Surely the SVG-format is a very good format for flags, but I don't like the way in which the replacement is being done. -- Quistnix 08:29, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
1. In my opinion, there should be two versions available on commons for flags that have a large white area at the edges: one with an outline for use against light-coloured backgrounds, and one without for use against other backgrounds. If two versions exist for this reason, neither of these is redundant! -- Quistnix 08:49, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Commons IRC channel

Hi. The Wikimedia Commons IRC channel on Freenode has moved from #commons.wikimedia to #wikimedia-commons to bring it in line with Freenode channel naming convention. The old channel redirects/forwards to the new one. Could a Commons admin update the Commons Main Page to reflect the new channel name? - Mark 04:26, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Done. dbenbenn | talk 13:48, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Images by the European Space Agency

We are working on proposals to ESA about using their images on Wikimedia projects. See m:ESA_images#Possible_proposals_to_ESA. Note: this is a very delicate matter, please read the article before commenting and make no inflammatory comments. David.Monniaux 11:25, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Is this a bug?

What happened here? Of course, I didn't type the substitited text by myself, the single theme galleries were commented out before (what worked without problems, see history). I don't know if such substititions happen often, or happen with normal galleries, which are not commented out. Who can help and explain, or add a bug report if necessary? Tanks a lot - Schieber 11:57, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Cannot upload new version

Hello, I tried to upload newer version of the file. I uploaded but file remains old, see: Image:Poland_Czluchow_-_castle_tower.jpg. Merlin 17:55, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

clear your browser cache. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 18:13, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Using a Wikimedia image on another Web site

Many Web sites use Wikipedia pages, but I don't know any Web site that uses Wikimedia images (or files) directly. The FAQ seems rather vague to me: "In most cases you will be okay if you copy the author and licensing information from the image description page, and publish that with the image or other file". Does it mean that all of the following scenarios would be OK, or only some of them:

The information about the image is displayed just below the image on the (corporate) Web site, with a link to Wikimedia and/or the license.
The information is displayed on another page, which you can see by clicking on the image (as it is done on Wikipedia).
There is no such link on the image, but there is a short notice at the bottom of the Web page. That notice links to a single page that lists all authorship/licensing notices about all images included on the Web site (cf. printed books, where all that information is often gathered near the end of the book).

Of course I understand that, given the wide variety of licenses used on Wikimedia, it is always necessary to read carefully the image description. Thanks. Thbz 19:47, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

IANAL, but I think all three of the above should be fine for giving attribution. The cc-by licenses, for example, specify that you must "provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied".

A couple other comments:

Some files here require notification. If you publish the file, you have to send an email to the copyright holder.
If you use a GFDL picture in a publication, you have to license the entire publication as GFDL. (It seems that the cc-sa licenses don't have such a restrictive requirement.)
The cc-by licenses require you to give a link back to the image description page here.

dbenbenn | talk 20:49, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

requireing notification was not compliant to the commons policy last time i checked. I belive ther's a thread about that in Commons talk:Licensing. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 21:49, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is a thread, at Commons talk:Licensing#Notify. No one suggested that it was against policy. Since a notification doesn't restrict the use of the file, and is trivial to perform (just whip off an email) I think there's no problem. dbenbenn | talk 00:33, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This would make things like Wikipedia-on-DVD practically impossible... potentially thousands and thousands of people to ask. And, since ther's no tag for it, you would have to look at all images to find out for which you have to do notification. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 22:26, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is Template:Notify. dbenbenn | talk 22:48, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

ACK Duesi --Historiograf 17:48, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Mandaory notification of use is absolutely unacceptable. All these images should either be under a different license, or deleted.--Eloquence 01:37, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that notification isn't under the GFDL. But it ought to be okay for owners to request that 3rd parties notify them, but not require them to. Dunc|☺ 10:50, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

All images using the Notify tag are now up for deletion. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 12:20, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it really belongs here

The image Image:Newton-Principia-Mathematica 1-500x700.jpg seems to be copyrighted: look at this link

Or is it just THAT fax of the principia that's copyrighted? I find it odd that they could copyright a 400-year-old book cover. Borisblue 23:15, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, it's public domain. The copyright claim is a lie. dbenbenn | talk 00:40, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Image:A smoky day at the Sugar Bowl--Hupa.jpg

Why should this image be PD? It was, if I understand well, published in 1923 after the watershed date before which everything is PD. David.Monniaux 00:16, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The image description page explains that the copyright was not renewed. As Commons:Licensing#United States explains, "Anything published before January 1, 1964 and not renewed is in the public domain". dbenbenn | talk 00:41, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In English?

What is correct: "Districts in North Rhine-Westphalia" or "Districts of North Rhine-Westphalia"? Thank you, Simplicius, Germany 09:07, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Category talk:Northrhine-Westphalia! “North-Rhine/Westphalia”. --Blaite 19:15, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Could a native English speaker tell me whether "in" or "of" is correct? Is "Churches of..." and "Castles of..." appropiate? -- Simplicius 08:42, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Either one is correct, but I feel that "of" is slightly better. Actually, I think "North Rhine-Westphalia districts" is even better. (Though note that the English Wikipedia uses w:Category:Districts of North Rhine-Westphalia.) dbenbenn | talk 01:30, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hi David, thanks. The English category was made by an user from Germany. But how about castles, lakes, churches ... in or of? Could you tell me please. -- Simplicius 09:48, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I would say “… in …”, if you mean it geographical and “… of …” if you mean it legal, maybe a (public) organisation as the owner of the castles. By the way, it’s maybe only my personal German Englisch. :) --Blaite 14:07, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Other opinions maybe? -- Simplicius 23:12, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

English Wikipedia uses w:Category:Castles in Germany and w:Category:Lakes of Germany. It would seem that "of" and "in" are pretty much equally correct, even for geographical features. dbenbenn | talk 00:55, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Link from fr: main page

On the fr: main page, there is now a call for uploading personal photographs of sights, animals, plants etc. on to the commons, with a page explaining how to do so. It is possible that we get a number of well-meaning but uninformed people uploading stuff.

Do you think we should ask them to tag them with a special category if they don't know what to do with them? David.Monniaux 09:27, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is good idea. It'll hard to find such images without SQL knowledge. At least this category will be easy to clean up by other users who know categorization/English better . --EugeneZelenko 13:43, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. Category:Unsorted it shall be. David.Monniaux 22:23, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Language Templates

At the moment en and fr are the only language templates that stay without using parameters as suggested by Commons:Multilinguality (for example de uses parameters). Perhaps somebody could change them and run a bot, which changes all occurrences of non parameter based language templates to their parameter based counterparts?

The change is not easy, because each version, both the old and the new, makes the other version look odd. If the template needs a parameter but no parameter is provided a {{{1}}} will show up in the page. If the text is given as parameter when the template doesn't expect it, the text will not be visible at all. Because the latter is the worse problem, the templates should be changed first, then all instances of the template. --::Slomox:: >< 16:11, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

New Blue Marble images

NASA has released a whole new series of their Blue Marble images, have these been uploaded already? I think this effort needs to be coordenated and the images need to be properly categoriezed. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 00:22, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Convert SXD to acceptable Commons format?

Sometimes I use OpenOffice to draw diagrams, most recently image:Life Six Kingdoms.sxd, and locally on my computer it looks OK but not after uploading to Commons. (a) Can you point me to a (free) Windows and/or Linux based program that may convert it to an acceptable format? Thanks. (b) Do we have, or would it be possible to have, some mechanism available at Commons to convert various mainstream and not so mainstream formats to acceptable formats? --Eddi 09:30, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

SXD is accepted on the commons as a source document format, not as an image: web brosers don't understand that format, and the wiki software does not know how to convert it. Automatic server-side conversion is possible in theory, but currently only supported for SVG images. It is also douptful if it would be technically feasable to do this for a whide range of formats, especially since it would be required that the format is open and there is free software to convert it.

As far as I know, OpenOffice-Draw supports SVG - which is the preferred format for draings on the commons. However, it has been reported that it does a rather bad job of generating SVG, so maybe a PNG would be better. As far as I know, OpenOffice supports PNG export. If not, you could make a screenshot and save it with any resonable graphics program (not MS Paint), like Gimp (free software), Irfan View (freeware), Paint Shop (limited version is freeware), or PhotoShop (for money).

But as I said, SVG would be much better - there is a veriety of SVG implementations (see [8]). SVG Maker sounds nice for windows users, because it allows SVG generation from pretty much any program, by providing a pseudo-printer that generates SVG. But I have not tried that, and it's not free.

HTH -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 12:19, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I just found SVG Factory, maybe you could give it a try. It converts WMF to SVG. WMF is windows' internal graphics representations format, used for instance to copy drawings beween programs using the clipboard. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 12:24, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I'll see if any of those will do the job.

Regarding server-side conversion I imagined drop-down menus for selection of from- and to-formats, a button for conversion, and a button to delete the original if the conversion was succesful. A bit too fancy, perhaps... As to free software, all – or most – Linux material is open source and free, but how to implement it on a wiki server I don't know. --Eddi 13:51, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

if you are using linux, you can try InkScape or Gill for creating SVG directly. Also, i'm aware that OOo is free software, and SXD could probably be converted somehow. But for many other "mainstream" formats (like the often requested MP3/MPEG and DivX), there are free software implementations, but the algorithms are patented, which makes those software non-free in a sense (or even illegal). Generally, conversion is nearly always lossy, people should create content in a format accetable to commons streight away. Thus, there will only be very limited support for automatic conversion. Regards -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 14:25, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

SXD is another format that can very easily be converted to Postscript. If we could upload Encapsulated Postscript and have it be converted to PNG on the fly ... dbenbenn | talk 15:42, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Why convert postscript to PNG, if SVG is much better suited? A working PS to SVG converter would be cool, though. WMF to SVG is also a good option for windows users (if it works).

I have fooled around with ImageMagicks PS capabilites a bit... it's pretty terrible (even though it seems to use ghostscript internally).-- Duesentrieb^(?!) 17:18, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

All of the PNG images in Category:Metapost diagrams were converted from Postscript to PNG with ImageMagick; I've never had a problem with it. You ask "Why convert postscript to PNG, if SVG is much better suited?" I agree, SVG is a better format, but it seems to be a lot harder to produce SVG than Postscript. Postscript has been around so long, most programs know how to deal with it. dbenbenn | talk 18:10, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I used a Linux screengrabber ('xgrabsc') to get a PS rendition, then used Acrobat and converted it via PDF to PNG, before I meddled with it in MS Pain (sorry about the latter): image:Life Six Kingdoms.png. It works, but the file size quadrupled. --Eddi 21:23, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If your drawing application can print to PS, why use a screengrabber!? David.Monniaux 21:37, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

At the time my drawing application could only produce SXD – nothing to be proud of but that's why I asked for help – and so I used a screengrabber to get a PS rendition etc. etc. Now I've updated my software and will hopefully not have this problem again. BTW, dbenbenn later improved the quality of the image and magnified it from 600x600 to 3000x3000. (Thanks.) --Eddi 01:16, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

For all those interested: you can convert PS to SVG using the shareware version of pstoedit. David.Monniaux 21:37, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Werner Heisenberg

Check out these two images -

Werner Heisenberg.jpg (WikiCommons)
Werner Heisenberg.jpg (Wikipedia)

The first is in the public's domain, while the second has unknown copyright status.

Who's right? 80.178.208.96

The image was taken around 1927, presumably in Germany. Since Germany has a copyright period of 70 pma, this picture would be PD only if the photographer died before 1935, or if it was published anonymously before that date (and the creator never confessed to his work). We can not make any such assumption without finding out how took the photo, or when it was first published, and with what attribution. Thus, I belive the image is not free and has to be deleted. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 18:34, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

ACK. Needs to deleted IMHO. --Paddy 19:06, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

question about cleaning up

When i take an image and i clean it, do i save the new file above the old one? meaning with the same name and everything or i upload it as a new file?LadyofHats 20:27, 14 October 2005 (UTC):[reply]

Save the cleaned version over the old one. dbenbenn | talk 23:09, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Images with Unknown source

We have a hell lot of images/media with no source/license info given but deleting takes very long and they still go via deletion request. Shouldn't there be a harder regulation such as a 14-day delay (starting with adding the unknown template) to add required info or this image/media will be deleted without further warning and without deletion request ? But that needs to use the unknown template with added date (unknown|2005-10-08 or similar) to find them easier. --Denniss 09:44, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

According to the discussion at Commons:Village pump archive-16#Speedy deleting unknown-copyright images, I'm going to go add "a file with unknown source or copyright status, that has been tagged as such for more than a week." to the speedy deletion guidelines at Commons:Deletion guidelines. Admins, let's get moving and clean up those categories! dbenbenn | talk 17:51, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Um, I've added "This image has been tagged since" to {{unknown}}... Alphax ([[Use

How to label gallery? in a usefull way or good looking way?

When I use <gallery>, I want to label the thumb. I found the formal filename of image long and a little annoying, but it's very helpful to linking. Atinncnu 23:06, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

how do you throw away a photo

I'm real curious! Migdejong 02:49, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You can tag it with {{Deletion request}} and list it at Commons:Deletion requests. dbenbenn | talk 04:39, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Image deleted

Hi, someone recently deleted some maps i uploaded to the Wikicommons, due to what i guess is copyright issue (i used Google Local maps for template, which as i later understood from Google is inappropriate). i now plan to create appropriate maps and upload them under the same names, including some which have not been deleted yet. So i'm wondering: where could i access a so-called "copyright-free" atlas to use as templates? --Plastictv 06:51, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the maps at demis.nl are public domain. Please correct me otherwise. Thuresson 19:50, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I also believe that there are maps published by the US Goverment the English Wikipedia used to highlt the areas hit by the recent earthquakes in Pakistan. Zscout370 (sound off) 20:28, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for that guys. i'm working on it now. :) --Plastictv 09:04, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Newspaper cuttings etc.

Searching through all the help resources for image copyrights, i can't seem to find anything on newspaper cuttings. What are they considered as? --Plastictv 09:07, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Oh i found an example in Wikipedia, seems like it's fair use. But what if it's a newspaper published outside the United States? Does the US fair use law still apply? And how old should a particular copy of the newspaper be before it could be considered public domain? --Plastictv 09:12, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

70 years after the death of the author. --Blaite 10:33, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

...or published before 1923 in the US. Also, please note that fair use does not apply to the commons. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 10:43, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

But Commons:Licensing states: A work is generally considered to be in the public domain after the creator of the work has been dead for more than 70 - or in the US, 95 - years. That is, if a non-American author died before 1935, and an American author died before 1910, their work can safely be assumed to be in the public domain in almost any jurisdiction. I've recently tagged an en:wikipedia photo of a 1914 cutting as PD-old-70: the author was non-American and died 1923. -Wikibob 17:11, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If you tell us what country or countries you are specifically talking about, we can be more helpful, as copyright laws vary wildly from country to country. (In Australia, for example, everything pre-1955 is PD.) pfctdayelise 23:33, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It was the Scot en:John Maclean MA, who wrote the letter written in Scotland, United Kingdom. Here is what I wrote on PUI on en:Image:Redcly182.jpg. I hope I used the right tag.

If it helps above image is a photograph of the 1914 September 26 letters page of the newspaper Forward showing a letter by John Maclean MA, entitled The Attitude of the B.S.P.. J. Maclean had earlier sent the same letter body text to [9] Justice, on 17th September 1914. Not an expert but isn't a photograph of a newspaper letter from someone who died in 1923 in the public domain? -Wikibob 14:44, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I've now tagged it with PD-old-70 because it is a slavish reproduction of 2D art, a letter by somone who died more than 70 years ago. My opinion only, of course.

-Wikibob 17:58, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

can someone please rename 2 files

Hi, I'm not really sure how to edit images and rename files but can someone please rename Venezuela-trujillo.jpg to Venezuela-merida.jpg and vice-versa. The pictures are mixed up. Thank you

Images cannot be renamed. You have to upload a copy under the new name and put up the old one for speedy deletion. Please make sure the image is used in no project under the wrong name first. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 10:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

SVGs and fonts

SVG images are rendered on the servers and converted to PNG images. So for a image containing text the in the file specified font must be present on the server. Do we have a list of fonts which are installed on Wikimedia's servers? --::Slomox:: >< 16:49, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well you can always use the universal "serif" and "sans", but sadily the issue is more complex than just fonts. The RSVG renderer that we use seems to have some bugs with respect to font alignment. (Well I say bugs because Inkscape, Firefox, and Batik, will produce one output, while RSVG produces another) If you would like to confirm the appearence of SVGs before you upload them, you can display them with rsvg locally. Hopefully RSVG will improve its rendering in the future, if not we'll eventually migrate to another engine. If you know any Java gurus, assistance getting Batik working in a completely free software enviroment (i.e. with GCJ) would be very helpful. --Gmaxwell 17:04, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Another piece of data: it appears the authors of RSVG know their text handling stinks and they intend to fix it. --Gmaxwell 04:29, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I had the hope, that there are more possibilities than "serif" (it's serif not serf, isn't it?) and "sans". I couldn't find a website with a manual or specifications for RSVG, could you point me to one where I can find such informations? --::Slomox:: >< 18:11, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As with HTML, SVG should only use standard fonts - even I you find out which fonts are available on wikimedia servers, your images yre going to be broken for anyonw who downloads the SVG and does not have the appropriate fonts. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 11:28, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template PD-RU-exempt and geraldika

Moved to Template talk:Vector-Images.com#Discussion from Village Pump. --EugeneZelenko 03:42, 5 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Non-free Wikimedia images on Commons

Recently[10] the main page started stating that "Additionaly some files under a non-free license which are copyrighted by Wikimedia are hosted by the project.".

This is totally not cool.

All images under {{CopyrightByWikimedia}} should really either be converted to some sane licence or moved somewhere else.

This practice is also quite legally shady. At least some of the original logos were GFDL, so you can't just "un-GFDL" their derivatives and say they're "all right reserved". Taw 15:07, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps a licence comparable to PD-Markenrecht would fit better. It states that an image is under public domain, but despite that is a trademark (after German law) and therefore underlies some constraints. --::Slomox:: >< 15:35, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The logos are currently up for deletion for this very reason, at Commons:Deletion requests#Wikimedia logos. Note that Jimbo wrote by email "I would also vote to delete them." dbenbenn | talk 18:17, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My proposal would be to modify the software so that we have a whitelist for images that can be used using inline linking (typing a URL like http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Wikipedia.png) on any wiki, even where inline linking is disabled to avoid image vandalism. Then we could delete the images from Commons, and put them in some directory on the Wikimedia servers. We would have to offer different sizes, but other than that, it should work fine.--Eloquence 19:06, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think these images should be kept on Commons until software solution implemented. I don't think it's good idea to synchronize several logos (even with bots) on all Wikimedia projects.

Just a curiosity: could Wikimedia logos be uploaded on German Wikipedia, which (AFAIK) accepts free images only?

EugeneZelenko 03:59, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

We have had the same recurring discussion on the de:wp. It was "solved" by dumping the problem on the commons. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 11:27, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Should DE even be using the logos? They're "by permission only" (where permission is given by the Wikimedia Foundation). dbenbenn | talk 00:14, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think they should be deleted as well, it's paradoxical for a supposedly free image repository to host nonfree images. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 23:43, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My opinion is that we should not take any drastic measure until technically convenient solutions are in place. David.Monniaux 21:30, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Deciding to take drastic measures is what will motivate others to supply technically convenient solutions. Best case senario: we decide to delete the logos, and the Wikimedia Foundation responds by making them free! dbenbenn | talk 13:27, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The issue of free vs nonfree with respect to Wikimedia logos is linked to delicate trademark issues that will take time to be settled, I'm afraid. David.Monniaux 13:19, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, no drastic measures before solutions are in place. BUt I am fed up with this coming up over and over again, so I started a vote process on this page. I have put a two week timing on the discussion, and a three week timing on the vote, as I believe those decisions should be advertised across ALL projects, since it affects all of them. Feel free to make any amendment on time line. I believe the question is pretty clear. The only thing I am still waiting to hear is what real solution is given if we choose not to host the Wikimedia logos here. notafish }<';> 00:56, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Overwriting images with copyright violation

Hi, i recently uploaded a bunch of maps i made using Google Local images for template - a clear violation of copyrights which i sincerely apologize for. Since then i've already made new ones which have no copyright problem. Will it do if i simply upload new ones and overwrite the bad ones? Or do the bad ones have to be deleted first? If the latter is true, i supply the links as below:

i apologize again for the inconvenience caused, and thank the kind soul who helps me in this. --Plastictv 15:56, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted. --EugeneZelenko 17:15, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Pictures of products, brand labels, company logos ???

You go to Redmond an take there a great picture of the Microsoft company logo at the main gate.
You take a great picture of Coca Cola tin. Of course of the Coca Cola sign.
You just make a large picture of a Nike t-shirt - exactly of the Nike label on this shirt.
Or a picture of product-box. A box of medication, medicine, remedy, etc.

Can you us such pictures in Commons??? What about American law/rights? How is this usually handled in Commons? Thx a lot. --TS

Ther's no simple answer to that: If you take a picture of a car, which also contains the logo, this is definitely OK. If you put a Granola box on your scanner, crop the logo and upload it, it's a copyright violation. The distinction is not clear, and has to be made on a case to case basis - as a rule of thumb, i would say pictures showing a logo in context are OK. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 12:29, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Not so fast. Showing the logo in context is fair use. That's great, except that it violates policy here. 24.170.177.130 01:19, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I uploaded a few logos, which were tagged {{logo}}. They were all photographs of logos on products made by that manufacturer. Take a look at this category: Category:Logo. I could understand that the Acer logo might be over the edge, but the Apple logo too? And what about the Dell logo? Some kind of policy should be made about this subject. Husky 10:39, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:PD-USGov-Military-Army-USACMH

Please, could you have a look at that template and the contributions the user is doing? It seems to me this doesn't fit wikicommons policies. Thank you. Anna 01:38, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

See Template talk:PD-USGov-Military-Army-USACMH. This is a recurrent question: do we accept content that is free with respect to copyright law but unfree with respect to other laws? Similar problems may apply to Image:Seal of the United States Supreme Court.png. David.Monniaux 10:25, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think in general we've decided we can't worry about every possible abuse of every image. If it's illegal to put up a billboard in Saudi with one of our images of un-hijabed women, we don't say that those images are "unfree" and delete them, even though a possible reuse is forbidden. Since commons images are simply stored, with no particular use in mind, I think it has to be up to commons' clients to ensure that their use of an image is not "disrespectful" (an anti-US screed in wikibooks?) or otherwise conforms to local laws. Stan Shebs 14:01, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Then what do we do about images licensed for educational and informational uses, but not for advertisement uses? They are essentially under the same effective licenses as these "public domain" images that are prohibited from being used in advertisements etc. by the US government. David.Monniaux 14:34, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think the difference is that this Institute of Heraldry restriction is more like a request, not a legal requirement, because the images are in fact public domain. We definitely don't want images where the copyright license gives restrictions on commercial use; we have Template:Noncommercial for that. dbenbenn | talk 15:44, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it is a legal requirement as per US federal law and regulations. Read Template_talk:PD-USGov-Military-Army-USACMH:

The use for advertising purposes of any engraving, photograph, print, or impression of the likeness of any Department of the Army or Department of the Air Force decoration, service medal, service ribbon, badge, lapel button, insignia, or other device (except the Honorable Service lapel button) is prohibited without prior approval, in writing, by the Secretary of the Army or the Secretary of the Air Force

So these images are restricted for commercial uses such as advertisements.

Additionally, you seem to confuse commercial vs noncommercial and advertisement vs educational/informational use. An encyclopedia like Britannica is commercial but educational and informational. David.Monniaux 13:12, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A good point about noncommercial-use-only. I guess the key point is the licensing - if a license said "not on Saudi billboards", we would respect that and call it non-free, but for a PD image we don't consider ourselves bound by any local laws trying to restrict its usage. Stan Shebs 17:13, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Similar discussions have taken place e.g. at de:wikipedia diskussion:wappen regarding German state and city emblems and at commons:deletion requests regarding Norwegian coats of arms. According to Norwegian law the coats of arms can be used only in official duties by offices of the Norwegian state, counties or municipalities. However, they are ineligible for copyright and informational use is allowed anyway, and it was decided that they can be kept on the Commons. The German city emblems are kept partly at de: and partly at Commons. --Eddi 02:58, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep May I add that according German laws some commercial use of photographs of living persons is not allowed (e.g. use for advertising) Thus a lot of images which are free in terms of copyright are unfree in terms of personality rights. GNU FDL and other licenses are concerning only the copyright but not other rights (right of land owner e.g.) --Historiograf 19:37, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Taking images from other Wikipedias

Hi, I was interested in copying some images from the english Wikipedia, is there any faster way than download there-load here to do it? Thanks

no. and please make sure that all necessary info (license, author/source, etc) is present. And please sign your messages in desicussions with ~~~~ -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 23:34, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

One slightly faster way is to use Konqueror as browser and save the download part. Just the URL, when you upload. --Elgaard 05:22, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What use is it to copy all info if an image is replaced by another one, but in a different format, not copying essential information from the original? (I am referring to svg-pushing on flags here) -- Quistnix 15:16, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What about this : Category:Double Indemnity ?

Hello, for sure if i read the licence here : [11] and if I made the screenshot myself, all the pictures in this category are Public Domain. Article 7-8 of the Bern Convention precises that the duration of copyright in a foreign country (ie EU) cannot exceed the duration granted in the country of origin (ie USA). So this applies worldwide. Too nice to be true ? Petrus 12:40, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. I'm not a copyright lawyer but I know enough of it to say that US copyright law is a patchwork. Thuresson 05:42, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Redirects within the image namespace

Currently it is not possible to rename an image, and redirects within the image namespace don't work. That is, a redirect may be created and if you are at commons it redirects you to the target page, but the picture doesn't show up neither there nor in other wikis that link to the redirecting page. Compare for example Image:Noreg flagg.png (a redirect) to Image:Norway flag medium.png (the target). May I suggest that renaming be possible and redirects enabled? --Eddi 02:16, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't a simple matter of "enabling" image redirects. The feature does not exist in MediaWiki. If you want to write the code, please do---it will solve a lot of problems. dbenbenn | talk 04:33, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry I don't have any knowledge of MediaWiki coding, so I can't as much as I want. But isn't this related to template redirects and transclusion, which work very well? --Eddi 21:50, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know much about the MediaWiki code, either. But it can't be that hard. I think the following would work: Suppose that Image:A is a redirect to Image:B (and no actual file exists named "A"). Then if an article uses Image:A, MediaWiki sees that the file doesn't exist, so looks at the image description page to check the redirect. Then the HTML code it generates is roughly

<a href="A"><img src="B"></a>

(it links to the image description page for A, but uses B as the actual image). And a Media:A link would simply produce exactly the same link as Media:B. dbenbenn | talk 18:08, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to be some effort to allow renaming of images at the moment. But redirects are not as trivial as it seems: to the software, image files are unrelated to the image desciption page for the most part. Redirects would mean to load and analyze the description page of every image before generating an URL for the image or thumbnail (completely different from templates). This means some non-trivial changes in the code, and also additional server load (as you know, images are quite slow already...). This also has implications for caching & purging - for one thing, thumbnails would have to be re-generated when the description page was edited (because it could have been changed to a redirect) - this also means more load on the servers.

I would like to have image renaming and redirects too. But it's not trivial. I expect renaming to be working before redirects, really - but renaming without redirects is kind of bad... Category-Redirects are simpler, btw - they are probably going to be fixed in the next release. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 20:06, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

When you include a page ({{foo}}), MediaWiki has to examine Template:Foo to see whether it's a redirect, and include the target page if so. A redirect from an image page would be no worse than that.

About regenerating thumbnails: I proposed above that image redirects should work only if the image description page is a redirect, and there is no actual image. In that case there are no thumbnails to worry about. dbenbenn | talk 20:49, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Forcing changes to SVG?

Well, it seems there have been a lot of discussion in commons about moving into scalable vector graphics (SVG) and so replacing several portable network graphics (PNG). However: Wikimedia-commons is a repository of resources used in all Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia in several languages, and I think that a serious discussion was lacking on all those other projects.

As I understand SVG is a better format for graphics that can be defined as courves and lines, like Wikimedia-Commons logo or many flags. The main reason is scalability: if I have to print fullpage Wikimedia-Commons logo in a 600dpi printer, a 128px width PNG will make a very poor result, while the SVG will give a very good quality.

However I have seen two problems in this whole incident:

Neither the reason to change, nor the change itself was announced to other Wikimedia projects. Once the first PNG were deleted and people complained, deleted PNGs were replaced by X symbols with one meaning: "we are forcing you to change".
Tech is not ready yet to SVG. Most browsers do not support them, and while an alternative is provided: servers rendered them as PNG, this solution is far from optimal. First: it overloads our already overloaded servers. Second: big images (above 467 pixel width images) are not scaling up a SVG but a 467px width PNG, so scalability for high resulutions is still not there.
Nope. Generating PNG from SVG doesn't overload the servers. And the servers generate thumbnails up to the larger of 1024px or the SVG's "natural size". dbenbenn | talk 01:10, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Furthermore it's a much more expensive operation to scale down PNG images than it is to scale down SVG images since the whole uncompressed image has to be loaded into ram (this recently killed three of our servers), so if you're thinking of overloading the servers you'd go with SVG not PNG. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 01:46, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

So SVG is not actually improving anything, but deleting PNG (or replacing them with Xs), is disturbing all other Wikimedia projects.

— Chlewey 22:17, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In order to avoid such a problem once again I have now created a project page at Commons:Transition to SVG to have a central point how to deal with the transition to SVG. Please edit on it. Arnomane 23:31, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

First of all nothing was deleted, I uploaded a cross over several images as part of phasing out redundant images which just so happened to be replaced by SVG images, I followed the instructions on how to handle redundant images at Category:Redundant and Template:Redundant to the letter in this matter, so this is no new "force svg's" initiative. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 00:29, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Why don't use a bot like User:RCBot? Sanbec ✉ 11:09, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, nothing was deleted, let's assume that's true. Replacing flags with a cross, or a frankly ugly "X", however, is the same or worst in spirit, it temporarily ruined thousands of pages. In my opinion, and in that of the majority of the people with whom I've communicated, images should be completely substituted before they are deleted or "X"ed. The Xing of images has no real purpose, as far as I can tell, it is simply there to call attention and to hurry a change that truly has no reason to be hurried. Additionally, if there were a reason to rush, pushing people around is not the way to do it. Bots are fully capable of a quick and painless transition and I firmly believe that if the over-one-hundred bot operators of the Wikimedian community were asked to cooperate with the transition, they would be more than willing although I'm not sure about what kind of strain such a sudden change would pose on the servers. In any case, there is absolutely no justification for Xing images with thousands of calls in the projects because they are &quot;redundant", it's no emergency. Attentively--Orgullomoore 22:41, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

When you're dealing with a project as this one, which certainly has an effect on all Wikipedias, it seems wise to make an announcement to the affected parties. Take into consideration (a) that the work involved in each WP may take hundreds of hours and (b) that Commons is a service for all the Wikipedias. I hope that this incident should be taken as a useful lesson, to prevent new confussions and mistakes. Besides that, an apology won't be out of order. Cinabrium 03:09, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You might be right that the deletion policy might need changing, but I'm not going to apologize for voulenteering my time to carry out maintenance tasks according to agreed upon instructions by the community on how to carry those tasks out. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 05:01, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Before we change them, we'll need to find them. Do you mind supplying a link?--Orgullomoore 07:22, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

See above. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 09:17, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

When images are copied without the essential information from the originals, and the originals are deleted, this can lead to a database filled with images of unknown flags with unknown use, from unknown organisations, whilst the articles are still on wikimedia projects, but without the images. Because of the nature of Wiki, images and text can get separated. Without proper references, it will be hard to rejoin them. -- Quistnix 15:22, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion it is a change with so much impact that it should have been announced at the local wiki's beforehand. Michiel1972 21:46, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

RCBot looks operating again, please use it for replacing redundant images. --EugeneZelenko 15:02, 30 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The way administrators on Commons are acting, deleting images used on tens of thousands of pages on all Wikimedia projects without even making an announcement on meta, makes me worry. I'll contact Jimbo to see if measures should be taken (i.e. taking their special rights on Commons) -- Quistnix 12:33, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Vote on whether or not we keep the Wikimedia logos on Commons

I believe the discussion cannot keep coming back every other two or three or even six months, so I have started a consultation/vote on Commons:Alter Wikimedia Commons policy to allow Wikimedia logos. Please feel free to better the proposal (although I believe it is very clear) and amend the time line (making it longer). This proposal needs to be widely announced across projects, and possibly translated. notafish }<';> 00:58, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Botanists help wanted

User:Thommybe had uploaded many plants photos and unfortunately they are not included in species pages/categories. As far as I saw some pages are not exists at all. So, please help with categorizing. Thank you. --EugeneZelenko 02:39, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

All photos are categorized now. JoJan 16:08, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

How do I keep track of my images, and other newcomer questions

I'm quite active on the English wikipedia, but I haven't gotten used to Commons yet. I have uploaded a few of my maps though. My question is: what do other users do to keep track of their contributions? I remember having seen some users who put their images in a category of their own (like, "Category:Created by X" ). It that a common way of doing things? Also, I would like to make the license information of my images consistent and for that it would be easiest for me to make use of a template (or a transcluded subpage of my userpage). How do other people do this? You can reply here or on my commons talk, I'll check back if anyone can help me out. Thanks, — mark 10:48, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what is most common, but a lot of users make galleries of their images, usually sorted by subject, as can be seen in User:Malene. This very talented user also has a template which gives the same kind of credit and licensing to all her photos. She could also have used the template to put all her images in one category. Feel free to follow suit, the most important thing here on Commons is to get proper licenses and place the files where they belong. -- Ranveig 12:02, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I was encouraged to categorize them with my user ID, Category:Tysto. This has made them a whole lot easier to manage. Adding each new image to a gallery was tedious and too easy to forget. I've contributed close to 300 of my own photos now; I doubt I would have continued to contribute much without an easy way to organize them. As for an upload template, I keep a text file with several versions so the descriptions are similar and the sig is the same. --Tysto 17:00, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Having your own user gallery is fine, but please always categorize all images you upload, yo they can be found and used by others. Images that are only in your private gallery are completely useless to the community. Thanks. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 17:43, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

submit photos via email

I'm trying to submit photos using the web based admin, but it keeps timing out and fails 9 out of 10 attempts on my connection (a very restricted university connection). I can send emails very quickly (the connection to the SMTP server is 10Mb), is there a way that I can email pictures to either a person (with fast internet), or to some automated process that will put the pictures on commons. My "to upload" folder is about 40MB, 17 photos of the w:Trafalgar 200 celebration.

Any ideas people? --Cyr 14:03, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is Commons:File upload service. The list of helpers is a bit of a mess and spread across translations (would probably make sense to merge it using templates), but there still seem to be a handful of active people involved. I personally stopped doing it because I got quite a lot of requests, many of them being "Please upload these two images for me", and many others requiring review and better descriptions. But if you e-mail me a ZIP file which follows the instructions on the page to the letter, I'll make an exception.--Eloquence 22:41, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I ended up upload the photos myself, took hours, but it's done now. Category:Trafalgar 200 Cyr. --138.37.246.224 13:19, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Tuning World Bodensee

Hi All, i created lately a Gallery about a Tuning Event in Germany (spring 2005) and now I don't know all cars and even not the right cat. I would be great if someone could Identify the cars. --Stefan-Xp 13:08, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

de: Ich fände es toll, wenn jemand die Autos identifizieren könnte, und in die korrekte Cat. einordnen könnte, ich kenne mich leider damit leider nicht wirklich gut aus.. --Stefan-Xp 20:27, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

ogg?

Why is everything in .ogg files? I don't have a program that supports them.

It's something to do with free software. Why not get Video LAN player, it plays most things (except Real). [12] --138.37.246.224 13:26, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Winamp (and most other players, even Media Player I think, if you install the appropriate plugin) supports ogg vorbis (audio). Ogg theora (video) is less well supported, but VLC should play it. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 13:39, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

See Jimmy Wales: Free Knowledge requires Free Software and Free File Formats --Pmsyyz 05:38, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

User:Psychonaut

I'm en:User:Psychonaut on English (and others) Wikipedia. I tried to create an account here but it tells me that User:Psychonaut is already taken. However, that user appears to have neither a user page nor any contributions. Is it possible that this account was created by a vandal (I've had people impersonate me before) or by an administrator hoping to thwart a vandal? If so, would it be possible for me to get control of this account so that I can start using it? —Psychonaut 15:18, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 15:26, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No to all three? How do you know? (I'm not trying to be snide; I just want to know if/how you know this user is legitimate. A user on English Wikipedia, en:User:JarlaxleArtemis, recently began creating a number of accounts to impersonate me, so I thought he might be responsible for the User:Psychonaut Commons account as well.) There doesn't even seem to be a means of contacting him/her by e-mail... I suppose I'll try leaving a message on the user's talk page. —Psychonaut 15:45, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No to the last question. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 22:30, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

User names can not be deleted. Of course, developers can do pretty much anything, but probably wouldn't take away somebody's user name just because you want to have it. See en:Wikipedia:Changing username#Requests to usurp an existing account with no edits for a similar request. Thuresson 16:52, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, it is possible for you to get control of the account. For example, you could guess the password. Or request a temporary password, and intercept the user's email. Or break into the Wikimedia server room and change the account's email address to yours. Or submit patches to MediaWiki until you're trusted, then submit a patch with a subtle back door allowing you to change the account settings. Alas, none of these options are practical. dbenbenn | talk 17:16, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if you think you can make a really strong case for your being the only Psychonaut on any of the projects, and the account never having been used, you might post a request to wikitech-l. I have heard developers become almost sympathetic to such causes in the past; there simply hasn't been precedent set yet. For instance, somehow forgot how to access the account he created for himself on en:wikt the other month, and now wants to create an account there... as in your case here, the account has lain dormant; and he is the only "Who" across the projects. Perhaps both of your situations can be resolved. Sj 08:07, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Renaming an image

Through inexperience, I have wrongly named two images I uploaded from Wikipedia in order to use them on fr. Is there any way the names could be changed? The images are: Image:450px-Ryokan's Grave.jpg (which should be Image:Ryokan's Grave.jpg) and Image:Image-Ryokan-web.jpg (which should be Image:Ryokan Statue.jpg). Sorry for the mess and thanks for your help. - Mu 11:04, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Images cannot be renamed. You need to upload them again with the correct names, and then mark the incorrectly named ones for deletion (I can't rememeber the name of the template to do this atm, but someone else will help there) noting that they are incorrectly named duplicates of the correctly named ones. Thryduulf 11:43, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Add {{Delete}} to the description page of the picture you want to have deleted plus an explanation why. Thuresson 11:56, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks! - Mu 12:03, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Add {{deletebecause | reason}} instead and it may go even smoother. --Eddi 21:28, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:PD-IndiaGov

{{PD-IndiaGov}} claims that images published on Indian government websites are public domain. It refers to the Indian Right to Information Act, which has only come into effect recently.

However, it looks to me that the RTIA does not put Indian government publications in the public domain at all. It guarantees access to government material, but not the other rights needed (to modify, distribute, use commercially). Can someone with more knowledge of the law take a look at it, please?

(Also posted on the English wikipedia: w:Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems#Template:PD-IndiaGov.) Eugene van der Pijll 08:23, 30 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Image:George-W-Bush.jpeg

Can sombody fix this why is is so difficult to revert uploads from other user. Kristof vt 09:22, 30 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Switching servers

Just a warning to everybody; I'll be moving the file storage for Commons from our overloaded image server to another machine in a few hours. Temporarily the ability to re-upload over existing files is suspended to ensure that files won't be lost in this process -- sorry for any inconvenience this causes.

Also during the actual switch, some of the latest uploads may also appear to be missing until the final bits are copied over. I'll put up a site notice warning when that's ready to happen. --Brion VIBBER 03:26, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, things should mostly be visible and working again. There might be some lingering permission error issues until everything's fully munged, though. --Brion VIBBER 06:22, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's been 5 (6?) days, I'll tone it down a bit. Alphax (talk) 09:34, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Adminship request

I've requested adminship on Commons at the link above. Besides being an admin on EN, I've uploaded 500+ images, 60+ videos, and 5+ audio files to Commons. Please see above for more details. Thanks. --Brian0918 15:56, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]