Commons:Village pump/Archive/2007/03

Village Pump archives

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March 1

Anonymous Works

There's a debate going on at Template_talk:Anonymous_work#50 or 70 years? about whether Template:Anonymous work should state a term of 50 (as defined in the Berne Convention) or 70 years (as applicable in lots of countries). The current version has 50 years, which I find misleading and dangerous. Please comment there -- Duesentrieb ⇌ 11:23, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Per-user categories

Hi. Just a simple cuestion: is this kind of categories allowed? I mean, categories used only to group images uploaded by a user. Thanks in advance. --Dodo 11:41, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Scroll up licenses and categories a bit and you'll see this was very recently addressed. They are apparently allowed as long as they're under Category:User galleries which this category is under. Yonatanh 14:16, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

='

Headline text

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I don't know the category structure here on commons, so is there a special template or category for images without categories, for more advanced users to categorize them?--Vaya 11:56, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Images which aren't categorized show up on Special:Uncategorizedimages. I'm pretty sure that images that are under a category such as Category:GFDL and the likes also pops up on there. You don't need to add anything extra to your image for it to show up on there. Yonatanh 14:20, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

If you come across an uploader who does not categorise their images you can place the {{Please link images}} template on their talk page. However it really is fairly common to find uncategorised images and I'm sure you could work your way round some that you would be able to categorise - pick an area you know something about. I've found Mayflower really useful to pick up such images (if you use "advanced search" it will show you the current categories on images or lack of them!) --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:25, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok thanks for the info.--Vaya 15:39, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

You could also use OrphanImages. --EugeneZelenko 15:53, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I've been tagging uncategorized images with {{Uncat}}, which puts them into Category:Media needing categories. As for Special:Uncategorizedimages, I'm not entirely clear on how it's supposed to be working, because it seems to be including lots of images with categories. In some cases this is useful, like if the only categories are licensing categories, but in other cases it seems to be listing images that are well-categorized by all possible criteria. Anyone know why it's working that way, or who should be contacted such that it should only list images that are missing subject categories? --Elonka 21:39, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Argh... that's rather a bad idea. :( That template and category should be deleted. Such 'fake' categories destroy the possibility of tools such as OrphanImages working properly. It generally takes as long to find one relevant category as it does to use that template (your category doesn't have to be perfect, others can re-cat it later). Please go through that cat and just give those items categories... --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 05:17, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Image:233769862 2e67937333.jpg such images are not listed on OrphanImages.--Vaya 11:59, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Hm you're right. It should... I asked User:Duesentrieb about it. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 09:05, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

March 2

User:Ram-Man/StandardMultiLicense

This user template states: "You may NOT use this image on your own web site or anywhere else unless you release this image and any derivative works (e.g. your web site) by following the terms of one of the following licenses". I think the last part, especially "(e.g. your web site)" is a bit too constrictive. I don't know what the consensus here is about the "virality" of GFDL, but I think using one GFDL image wouldn't make the whole website GFDL. It's also a bit misleading as it's a double license with CC-BY-SA-2.5, which I think isn't as viral as GFDL. I'm just an amateur at copyright, so I might be totally wrong, but what do the rest of us amateurs think? Cheers, NielsF talk/overleg/discussion/discussione 02:43, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Please see this discussion for a previous discussion about this. However, since some people will probably not read that whole discussion, let me summarize here, if possible. The reasoning behind this is simple: Many people need a simple version to understand what needs to happen. This is of course why the CC licenses have a "commons deed", to help explain how to use the license without being a lawyer and reading the legal text. In this case, I am VERY clear that this only applies to derivative works, not collective works. In many, but not all cases, using an image under the CC-by-sa or GFDL would require the entire derivative work to be licensed under the same copyleft license. Unless said website is a collective work, then it by definition must be a derivative work, since it is derived from my picture and other media or text. I also make clear that I am not adding ANYTHING new to the legal text. In order to be in compliance with my warning, one must "follow the terms of one of the licenses". So I am adding nothing new, legally speaking. Essentially one can't just simply copy the image claiming it was "free", but has to be careful about the legal implications. Before this notice I did have people copying my pictures through the false logic of "Wikipedia is a free site, so the picture must be free too" I should add that it's exactly this confusion over "virality" that is the reason for the message. People do not generally take licensing via a copyleft license as seriously as they might some other kind of license, but it's important that if you don't understand the license or what a "derivative work" is, that you ask a lawyer. "free" does not mean "carefree". -- Ram-Man 03:13, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

If your interpretation of GFDL is right, I hate it even more than I did before. In any case, sorry for duplicating the discussion, I'm not up to speed with current discussions here. I'm an amateur as I stated before, but a whole website being GFDL because one image is GFDL doesn't feel "right". A page OK, not the whole site, although GFDL doesn't mention images anywhere. I've seen a lot of discussion about the "virality" of GFDL, but no-one has been able to give proof (e.g. jurisprudence), so it all boils down to us amateurs making interpretations of it, which is why I brought it up in the first place. Cheers, NielsF talk/overleg/discussion/discussione 03:45, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

This discussion was supposed to eventually move here for broader community input anyway, so I don't see the problem of bringing it up again. Understanding the spirit of coypleft and it's "virality" is actually pretty simple. A derivative work is nothing more than a set of items such as text, hypertext, images, or sound that are joined together as a work for some combined purpose. In this case they are related, and as such *should* have the same license, because they are a single work. The idea behind copyleft is that someone shouldn't be able to take your free work, use it in another work, and claim it as their own without giving others the freedom to do the same. Other usages, such as collective works and mere aggregations do not involve combined creativity at all, and should thus be allowed to have different licenses, because the works are entirely independent. The point of the derivative is that someone cannot benefit from using your free image without sharing that right. The moral argument being made here is "if you are willing to share with others, I'm willing to share with you" and "If you are not willing to share with others, why should I shre with you"? -- Ram-Man 03:59, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

As pointed out in the talk page discussion, some users DO choose to modify their requirements. If they are the original copyright holder, it is within there right to say something like this: "You can use my image under the GFDL, but while you must allow anyone to copy the photo under these terms and provide them with the license, etc, you do not have to release your entire work under the GFDL." This would be possible because as the original copyright holder, you can license your work however you see fit. You are essentially providing the copier with a special multi-license that mandates that they (or anyone else) follow the GFDL for FUTURE copies. This is essentially a fully GFDL compliant thing to do, however, it is much more loose. Some people may choose to do this, but I have not. -- Ram-Man 04:16, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

It's not clear whether including an image on a webpage makes that webpage an aggregation/collection or deriviative work of the image. I am inclined to the former view, which is what WMF has essentially adopted in allowing Creative Commons-licensed images to be used on Wikipedia, which is GFDL after all. Some people prefer the latter view. I don't know of any court ruling which could decide the case for us. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 05:28, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

The term aggregate should probably not be used. I know I used it above, but U.S. copyright law uses the terms "derivative work", "compilation", and "collective work", so we should likely stick to those terms for clarity purposes. What I don't understand is how anyone could come to the conclusion that, say, having a picture in a Wikipedia article is not a derivative work. It's not a matter of just adding to separate, independent works. For example, a plant or animal picture in a taxobox is clearly derivative, as it is an integral part of the creative structure of the article. Even if it was at the very bottom of the page, there was at minimum copyrightable creativity involved in the selection and placement, and it can't be a compilation if the page is ever edited, because then it isn't a collection of "preexisting works" as the law requires. But I will grant that the line between compilation and derivative works is sometimes unclear with regards to web pages, and more importantly there is probably not enough case law on the whole subject. In Wikipedia articles what you have is not just a compilation of pre-existing works, but works which are constantly changing, and the images are used to illustrate the article. In the case of a CC-by-sa license, the legal text itself explicitly states that for example adding synchronized music to images is derivative because they are then no longer independent of each other. So even if legally speaking it would have been a compilation in that scenario (which isn't clear that it would be anyway, but for sake of argument let's assume it was), then under the terms of the license agreement, it is then a derivative for purposes of the license. Perhaps the GFDL could be used in compilations like this, but the CC-by-sa clearly expects this to count as a derivative work. Now if the music is unsynchronized, then it is just two independent works that happen to be used at roughly the same time, but have no creative relation to one another other than a trivial non-copyrightable relation. NEVERTHELESS, after all this rambling, I agree that there is not enough court precedent to clear this entire thing up. In the end it is all opinion until proven in court. So I say "may" in my licensing preamble. As soon as there is sufficient case law to answer this question for sure, I can change the description accordingly. For now it is fair to provide this warning. -- Ram-Man 13:47, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Delete images

I suggest deleting these images:

• Image:233783298 2434727535.jpg
• Image:233781522 30a7df868f.jpg
• Image:233779918 cd58d43129.jpg
• Image:233778050 4e10227706.jpg
• Image:233776442 2e1945f48a.jpg
• Image:233774915 2767d45c57.jpg
• Image:233773124 6e2871a2b8.jpg
• Image:233769862 2e67937333.jpg
• Image:233768425 4d767711c7.jpg

The license is ok. But none of the images is used in any project, and I doubt they ever will be + they are uncategorized. They are from Flickr so if anyone needs them it will be possible to upload again.--Vaya 13:16, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

They are all pictures of Kari Byron and other people associated with the TV show "Mythbusters". I see no reason to delete them. But they should be properly categorized or put on a Mythbusters page, of course. —Angr 13:33, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I just thought they had nothing to do with Mythbusters.--Vaya 13:40, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

The only issue I see with those is that a nine-digit decimal number followed by a ten-digit hexadecimal number doesn't really make for a very descriptive naming scheme. —LX (talk, contribs) 19:15, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I might suggest to rename the files and maybe put the pictures in some kind of category for TV shows in the United States. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return fire)} 01:22, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Breakdance / Breakdancing

Category:Breakdance appears to be about some sort of amusement ride. I've created a Category:Breakdancing. We may want to juggle this, since the relevant English-language article for the latter is at en:Breakdance. - en:Jmabel | talk 19:22, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

The ride is actually called Breakdancer. So I suggest renaming the category to Category:Breakdancer (ride). --Dschwen 19:25, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Done. Category:Breakdance is now empty. Have fun filling it up the the appropriate pics. --Dschwen 19:32, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

March 3

Picture of the Year 2006 results

Commons Picture of the Year 2006: Results

Dear Wikimedians,

The Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2006 competition is now over, and the winner has been selected. Thank you for voting.

Of the 662 Wikimedians who voted, 83 selected the following picture as the Wikimedia Commons Picture of 2006:

The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, shines above Bear Lake, Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. Taken by Senior Airman Joshua Strang.

Second was Sans Domicile Fixe with 78 votes and joint third were Blue Jay and Hoverflies mating in midair with 70 votes each. We congratulate the authors of these pictures for their exceptional quality.

Some user comments:

• Fantastic! Love the earth.
• Crazy. Wish I could vote for them all.
• If I had to pic one thing I'd like to see, I'd go with that. Stunning.

We are also proud to announce the release of an archive of all the 2006 Wikimedia Commons Featured Pictures. You can find more information on Commons:Picture of the Year/2006/archive.

Thank you all for voting, on behalf of the organization,

-- Bryan (talk to me) 10:24, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Has anyone tried to contact the photographer to express our appreciation? —LX (talk, contribs) 18:02, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I believe that Bryan has emailed. --MichaelMaggs 18:18, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

That's correct. -- Bryan (talk to me) 18:26, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Wonderful! :) —LX (talk, contribs) 19:54, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

What license to choose when uploading a modified commons image ?

The commons dropdown list of licenses when uploading an image has been reduced in recent times. I have not followed any discussion on the reasons for this, but I recently did some image manipulation of another user's contribution and uploaded a copy. I put the source as the original image, but what licensing do I choose in the dropdown - since it only has own work. I should infact be allowed to leave the original author as before and upload under the same license as the original author except for the own bit. Shyamal 13:45, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

It depends on the license of the original image. Could you provide links to the original image and to your modified image? If the license were "public domain", for example, you can relicense your modifications to the work any way you would like. However, if the license were "cc-by-sa", for example, you can only relicense your derivative work under the same terms as the original. --tomf688 (talk - email) 19:47, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I understand the licensing. The point is that the dropdowns no longer read right. I would like to license as original, but the caption reads own work. There is another which says it is from flickr. No drop down option giving just cc-by-sa-2.5 but not by the uploader.

See original Image:CRW_4357a.jpg and my modified Image:Teinopalpus_imperialis_female.jpg. Shyamal 02:27, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

The drop down menus only show a small selection of the possible licenses, and I personally never use it. See a full list of licenses here. --tomf688 (talk - email) 14:40, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposed new guidelines: Commons:Photographs of identifiable people

Further to a discussion that has been taking place at Commons:Licensing, I have prepared some suggested guidelines for uploading images of identifiable people, with particular emphasis on when the subject's consent may be needed. The guidelines are based on some generic legal principles and some fairly universal moral precepts that I hope should find general agreement here. Please feel free to comment and discuss at Commons talk:Photographs of identifiable people. --MichaelMaggs 18:17, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

You might wanna replace the NSFW Image:Frau.jpg with another image that was shot in private and got permission from the person pictured. Yonatanh 19:58, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

That one includes the text "The model has waived the right to her own image and has agreed to publication under GFDL". But a non-nude picture might be better, if you could find one taken in a private place that needs consent and where consent has been provided. --MichaelMaggs 22:54, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

That's what I meant. Anyway, since I'm not familiar with the applicable laws, how do the tabloids release pictures of celebrities in their private lives (on private beaches, etc.) without breaching these laws? Yonatanh 16:30, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, sometimes tabloids have breached law and some have been fined for that, at least in Germany. But, more important, neither Wikipedia nor Commons are (or want to be) tabloids. And we can't automatically make a claim on rights that are valid only for media/press. -- Túrelio 13:13, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

March 4

Where does one make or find a Category proposal?

Newbie here. I ran across the following: "It has been proposed that Category:Military people (U.S. Navy) be renamed and moved to Category:People of the United States Navy." I believe that this is a really bad idea and expressed my belief on a discussion page for the Category. But where did this proposal come from? How and where does one make such a proposal? Where do I find the proposal, and find who made the proposal, and find who is responsible for acting on the proposal? Why didn't the person who made the proposal initiate a discussion at the Category page; there is no information or prior discussion there, and I had to create the discussion page to express my point of view. So far it feels like I've undertaken a discussion with a phantom. I've looked everywhere in Commons I can think of, and have found nothing to enlighten me about any of this. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help. Lorentzo 10:11, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

This would appear to be another item in the long-running discussion over nationalities and militaries. Compare Category:Navy people of France and numerous others. You'll find some back discussion here: Commons talk:By location category scheme. Man vyi 12:43, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Man vyi. It seems like I've had to do an awful lot of legwork to get from Category:Military people (U.S. Navy) to this point. It seems like there ought to be a policy like "If you post 'a proposal has been made', then you have an obligation to provide information or discussion about the proposal, or a link to information or discussion about the proposal."

Help with an SVG

I have limited experience with Inkscape, and so created this image to replace this image. However, I do not know how to "crop" the SVG so it only shows the text. Can someone do that, and generally look it over for me?--HereToHelp (talk) 18:02, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

In Inkscape, File→Document Properties→Fit page to selection. I’ve uploaded a cropped version; I’ve also changed the line between Y and A (it looked a bit weird). —xyzzy_n 18:17, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you!--HereToHelp (talk) 20:29, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

March 5

A tag for images from users from other projects

I propose a tag, to facilitate correct tagging of images imported to other wikis. The appearance is to be the same as the {{Self}} tag, with as headline Foo, from the Bar Wikipedia project, released this image under the following license:. {{somename|GFDL|cc-by-sa-2.0|user=Foo|project=en-wp}} -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:35, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand. We already have {{GFDL-user-w}} and {{PD-user-w}} for such purposes. They even add links to users' home page automatically. Samulili 22:29, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

The trouble is in the CC licences... there are too many variants of them to make a template like that for each license. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 23:29, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Not more tag bifurcation please! Split up the purposes: do a {{from_enwiki}} then {{pd-blah}}. We only need a GFDL wikipedia because of the disclaimers which makes it an effectively unique license. The fact that we have mix source and license (i.e. PD-from-the-US-department-of-Foo-on-a-second-sunday-of-the-month) creates multiple problems: First it harms machine readability since you have to investigate each subtag by hand (you can't just match on PD- see {{PD-CAGov}}), secondly it creates the false impression that all images from the same site share the same license status which is almost never true (wikipedia can be dozens of licenses, or even unfree... even US federal government sites will use commercial stock photography). Lets use license templates for licenses, source templates for sources. --Gmaxwell 00:46, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Cascading protection

The current POTD doesn't have an English caption. Cascading full protection is preventing me from adding one at Template:Potd/2007-03-05 (en). How about switching it to semi-protection? --Pmsyyz 05:40, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Ya, done. I thought we decided cascading prot was evil... --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:48, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

New namespace proposal

We have a "Creator:" namespace, so what do you think about having a "Museum:" namespace ? Cordially, Educa33^e 13:17, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Are we planning to import masses of content from museums? Until we do that, a simple template can be used, can it not? pfctdayelise (说什么?) 00:54, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Deletion list:Superseded

Could an admin please clear up this Commons:Deletion_requests/Superseded list, the most picture have votes, so they simply have to be deleted (or kept) --DieBuche 15:17, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

"The Wikimedia Commons deletion requests is not for voting; rather, it is intended to collect arguments in favor of and opposing deletion." But yes there is a big backlog /Lokal_Profil 15:47, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Military insignia

There’s an interesting question in en:Wikipedia:Media copyright questions#Source_of_claim_in_Template:Military-Insignia about the copyright status of rank/force/unit markings which also affects some material on Commons, particularly in relation to {{Military Insignia}}. —xyzzy_n 15:43, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Redirected user talk pages

It seems to have become a popular practice among some Commons participants to add #REDIRECT[[someotherwiki:User talk:User name]] to their user talk pages. This creates several problems:

• The automatic redirect doesn't actually work.
• One cannot add message templates, such as {{Image source}} from Commons to talk pages on other Wikimedia projects.
• One cannot sign messages on other Wikimedia projects without having an account on the project preferred by the person one wishes to address.
• One has to monitor talk pages on projects where one is not actually active in order to maintain a dialogue with users preferring messages related to their Commons contributions somewhere other than Commons.

I think it's fine if users who are not very active on Commons request to be notified of new messages on their Commons talk pages. However, demanding that others bend over backwards because one doesn't want to discuss one's activities in the place where they're carried out is simply rude.

Do we have a standard way of dealing with this? I'd like to see redirection to other Wikimedia projects explicitly discouraged in Commons:Talk page guidelines (redirection to other pages is discouraged, but not in a way that specifically addresses this issue) and that removal of broken redirection code from other people's user talk pages is given the all-clear. Instead of removing it outright, it might be nice to have a template to replace it with, stating that the user wishes to be notified elsewhere. It might also be useful to have a multilingual boilerplate message to notify the user on their preferred wiki of the removal and why redirecting user talk pages is bad.

—LX (talk, contribs) 19:58, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Is Single User Login ever going to happen or is this the wikimedia equivalent of Duke Nukem Forever? SFC9394 21:08, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

From mw:MediaWiki roadmap:

1.10 (April 2007)

Items expected to reach 1.10 release.

• Support for CentralAuth plugin (Single User Login; SUL)
  • mostly already in 1.9, but may need a few more tweaks as it goes live
  • Priority: highest
  • assigned: Brion

Sounds good to me... -- Duesentrieb ⇌ 21:37, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Unified login will not affect talk pages, so this would remain an issue even with unified login. —LX (talk, contribs) 23:03, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

LX: I (and I am not the only one) simply put warnings below the fake redirect. If the messages don't show up, try putting a space at the start of the RDR line.

I am not sure if SUL will have something like "global new messages", which will tell you if you have new messages on any of your talk pages. (If not, it should!) If it has that, we can leave messages on Commons talk pages and be confident they will still hear them. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 00:51, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Users now have the option of getting an e-mail when they've got a new message on ther Commons talk page. For users not normally active on Commons this should solve the problem /Lokal_Profil 01:12, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

EMF to SVG converter recommendations?

A little while back I tagged Category:Climate diagrams metric german Walther+LiethCategory:Climate diagrams system Walter+Lieth (edit by User:JörgM) as being good candidates for future SVG conversion. I've since been told by the editor who originally created the images that the software which produces them actually generates .emf files that he converts to PNG, which looks like excellent news because the EMF format is vector-based. I did some hunting around for EMF to SVG converters and the most promising hit appeared to be TotalVectorize but I was wondering if anyone else had recommendations. Bryan Derksen 10:17, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and while I'm at it I suggested to him that a quick and dirty way of "internationalizing" these graphs might be to simply crop away the data table on the right and the title from the top. Anyone know of a program that can do a batch process of cropping images like that? Bryan Derksen 10:22, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

en:ImageMagick is good for batch-processing of bitmap images, like cropping. It also has limited support for SVG and also EMF iirc - it may even be able to do the conversion you want. For simple graphics that may be sufficient - but generally, ImageMagick tends to be rather bad at processing vector graphics.

LaTeX's transfig/xfig can convert tex fig files to emf and svg both - maybe there's also a tool to convert emf to fig? -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 13:10, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

First: Sorry for replacing the category above – we reorganized the climate diagrams' categories during the last days, so this one will be deleted probably during the next hours.

Second: Concerning internationalizing, there would be ways of deleting the table by the the software we create the diagrams. Unfortunately, there are some more things to "internationalize":

• The diagram is written on with Latin letters (for the months and the unities of measurement); months' abbreviations will work in English, but for example not in Spanish and Slavic languages; I don't know if the unities are given in Latin letters in languages which usually don't use Latin letters.
• The same "problem" will appear concerning the headline of the diagrams with the name of the place, the country and so on. We could also delete this by the software, but I don't recommend that for a better identifying of the diagram.

As a compromise we could try to make the diagrams in some languages (of course not all – this is not the sense of the commons); for example, look at the diagrams for the Czech Republic which are there in a German and an English version (as far as they have not been deleted yet ;-) ). -- JörgM 22:51, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

March 6

A new Internationalization template : {{Multilang}}

I create a new Internationalization template : {{Multilang}}.
I realize that, for some simple description, languages use the same word.
For example (with location) :

Ribera, José de
Date of birth/death	17 February 1591	2 September 1652
Location of birth/death	العربية: شاطبة Català: Xàtiva Deutsch: Játiva English: Xàtiva Español: Játiva Français : Xàtiva Italiano: Xàtiva Nederlands: Xàtiva Português: Xàtiva	Afrikaans: Napels (stad) Aragonés: Nápols العربية: نابولي Български: Неапол Brezhoneg: Napoli Bosanski: Napulj Català: Nàpols Čeština: Neapol Dansk: Napoli Deutsch: Neapel English: Naples Esperanto: Napolo Español: Nápoles Eesti: Napoli Euskara: Napoli فارسی: ناپل Suomi: Napoli Français : Naples Galego: Nápoles - Napoli עברית: נאפולי हिन्दी: नापोलि Hrvatski: Napulj Magyar: Nápoly Հայերեն: Նեապոլ Bahasa Indonesia: Napoli Ido: Napoli Italiano: Napoli 日本語: ナポリ ქართული: ნეაპოლი 한국어: 나폴리 Latina: Neapolis Lietuvių: Neapolis Latviešu: Neapole Napulitano: Napule Nederlands: Napels (stad) Norsk nynorsk: Napoli Norsk bokmål: Napoli Occitan : Nàpols Polski: Neapol Piemontèis: Nàpoli Português: Nápoles Română: Neapole Русский: Неаполь Sicilianu: Nàpuli Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски: Napulj Simple English: Naples Slovenčina: Neapol Slovenščina: Neapelj Српски / srpski: Напуљ Svenska: Neapel Türkçe: Napoli Українська: Неаполь Tiếng Việt: Napoli West-Vlams: Noapels 中文：那不勒斯
Work location	Deutsch: Valencia, Neapel, Rom

We see that Xàtiva is for example defined X times....

{{ca|Xàtiva}}
{{de|Játiva}}
{{en|Xàtiva}}
{{es|Játiva}}
{{fr|Xàtiva}}
{{it|Xàtiva}}
{{nl|Xàtiva}}
{{pt|Xàtiva}}

It make long list....
So I create {{Multilang}}
For example, this list can be now write :

{{Multilang|Játiva|de|es}}
{{Multilang|Xàtiva|ca|en|fr|it|nl|pt}}

(1 to 20 language codes).
We can now obtain in the first example, with this new template :

Ribera, José de
Date of birth/death	17 February 1591	2 September 1652
Location of birth/death	العربية: شاطبة Template:Multilang	العربية: نابولي Български: Неапол Deutsch: Neapel Magyar: Nápoly 日本語: ナポリ Русский: Неаполь 中文：那不勒斯
Work location	Deutsch: Valencia, Neapel, Rom

But how to see your language in particular ?
You can have in your monobook.css :

only your language (example with fr)

.description { display:none }
.fr { display:inline }

to obtain :

Ribera, José de
Date of birth/death	17 February 1591	2 September 1652
Location of birth/death	Français : Xàtiva	Français : Naples
Work location

only two languages (example with fr and en)

.description { display:none }
.en { display:inline }
.fr { display:inline }

All the languages but highlight yours in orange and english in lime

.en { background-color:lime; display:inline }
.fr { background-color:orange; display:inline }

Only yours in orange, english in lime and russian gold underscore

.description { display:none }
.en { background-color:lime; display:inline }
.fr { background-color:orange; display:inline }
.ru { border-bottom:2px solid gold; display:inline }

In this last case, this render :

Ribera, José de
Date of birth/death	17 February 1591	2 September 1652
Location of birth/death	English:Français : Xàtiva	English:Français : Naples Русский: Неаполь
Work location

If you change your monobook, think to refresh your navigator to see change !
Cordially, Educa33^e 15:29, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

The colour stuff is good. Not so sure about {{Multilang}}... it's pretty hard to see what's going on. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 00:07, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I think, there is a javascript variable : wgUserLanguage = "XX" that exist (in all page). It can be use to automaticly change .XX class. What do you think to integrate a javascript code in Mediawiki:monobook.js to get wgUserLanguage and to have for all user in their uselang, language definition

English: gold underscore

(order to highlight). Cordially, Educa33^e 11:47, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

We can't access wgUserLanguage from within the wiki. Trust me, we have tried a million tricks to do it. But we can't (and there are no plans to let us - something about caching). pfctdayelise (说什么?) 03:16, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Strange ?!? If I add to my monobook.js :

alert("Your language (uselang/wgUserLanguage) is "+wgUserLanguage);

I obtain my language code.... ????

wgUserLanguage creation => en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-12-11/Technology report

Cordially, Educa33^e 09:33, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

That's Javascript. How about regular wikitext? Javascript is fine for extra optional add-ons, but not so great for core functionality. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 02:28, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Category:Animation

What does this category for? Images related to en:Animation or for animated images?--Vaya 21:15, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

It would appear to be animated images. Which would be wrong; although I believe many images related to the Animation process would be copyrighted or derivative. Cary "Bastiq▼e" Bass ^demandez 12:23, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

So I guess the category should be checked for copyright status of the images, and another category should be made for animated images. Right?--Vaya 02:43, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, a category should be made for Animated images under the media types categories. Animation should be media related to the process of animation. Cary "Bastiq▼e" Bass ^demandez 00:36, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Where can I ask for Bot assistance? Here? Or is there a special page for it?--Vaya 12:28, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Commons:Bots. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:04, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

March 7

creating sub-category

I recently added some new photo with guitar category tag. yesterday I realize that I'm going to make lot of mess if I don't divide them in some sub-category. But I don't know how i can do it.

I reed some documentations, but... Is enough put some text like [[Category:Guitar|Stringing guitar]] at the and of the edit page of each images? Or I have to create the sub-category first? how can I do it?

thanks in advance, Punkettaro 16:22, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Please look in Category:Guitar: there are already 39 subcategories. Best to use one of those if they apply, instead of Category:Guitar.

To create a new category, you can either create it first (by typing it into the search box, creating the page and giving it a parent category), or else add it to a file first, then follow the red link to create the category (and give it a parent category). Does that make sense? pfctdayelise (说什么?) 03:18, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

my wifes father

Iam working on my wife family genealogy. Her father Kurt Schmied Date of Birth April 22 1908 his date of death was Oct. 30-1944. I think he was buried in a German War Cemetary in Oslo-Alfaset, Norway. Could you help me with some documation or pictures of his grave site. Thank you very much, John V. Carney

You might like to post your question on one of the many geneaology forums on the internet. This is a media repository and I'm afraid it's unlikely in the extreme that we have a picture of the very grave you are looking for. Sorry. —the preceding unsigned comment is by MichaelMaggs (talk • contribs) 22:32, 7 March 2007

Find A Grave might be a good place to start. grendel|khan 03:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Currently, there is only one image of that cemetary on Commons, see here: Image:Den tyske krigskirkegaarden paa Alfaset.jpg. -- Túrelio 07:20, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

March 8

Art Renewal Center

Is there any coordinated effort to transfer images and metadata from the Art Renewal Center? --R. Koot 00:26, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh snap! That's a sweet resource, and if there's no current project for transferring images and metadata, there certainly should be. grendel|khan 03:40, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

There are a few images from that site uploaded, but not that many. I've uploaded Gérôme-Black Bashi-Bazouk-c. 1869.jpg; while individual images will have to be tagged for the proper categories, I think the fields map nicely. grendel|khan 06:06, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

It looks beautiful, Grendel! Really rich colour and excellent graphics. :) yay~ --Iamunknown 07:02, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Nice paintings but beware of the ones marked with "Living Master" or something similar. Whilst most of the paintings are PD there are still some which aren't /Lokal_Profil 13:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Ayep. The copyrighted paintings are all clearly marked as such. Fortunately, there's a gap between the last pre-Modern artists (seems to end around 1915, though I could be wrong) and the revival that they're championing, which is within the last few decades. There appears to be little in the way of gray areas. But yes, that's a good point. grendel|khan 07:26, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Found an image being used--did I do right?

I found a GFDL image being used without attribution; see Image talk:Villianc.svg. I sent a message to the artist; I'd like to make sure I did it right. grendel|khan 03:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I've replied at Image talk:Villianc.svg --Iamunknown 04:47, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Images from the CIA World Factbook

Does anyone know if all of the maps from the CIA World Factbook in the English have been uploaded to Commons? I went to Category:PD CIA WF to check it out, but stopped when I realized there were a lot more than were in the actual Factbook, mostly because of translations. --Iamunknown 04:21, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't en.wikibooks have the whole of CIA World Factbook up? If they do then I'm guessing all the images exist here (unless en.wikibooks has a local file repository) /Lokal_Profil 13:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Not on Books - Wikisource maybe --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

True. s:CIA World Fact Book, 2004 as a matter of fact. They seem to be hosting some of their images locally though. /Lokal_Profil 18:43, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

One reason that some images are locally uploaded is that images here are sometimes replaced with newer versions. For example Image:Antigua and Barbuda-CIA WFB Map.png was used in the 2004 factbook, but is now replaced with a slightly different 2006 version. So the factbook on Wikisource is now not exactly the 2004 factbook nor the 2006 factbook. /82.212.68.183 23:21, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I suggest a big Commons-Helper push to bring them here, those that aren't here already. Cary "Bastiq▼e" Bass ^demandez 00:35, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Marking the images with {{Original}} specifying that it is needed unmodified for wikisource should resolve any problems with newer versions /Lokal_Profil 00:56, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Categories to come

Does it hurt anything if I add references to as yet non existent categories, but don't actually create the category pages. eg if I'm working through a lot of images over a few days and start finding occasional pictures of people doing headstands I might add category:headstand to the image. Then when I've finished I can follow one of the red headstand links and look a what-links-here page to see how many I've found and whether I should actually create a category page for them. --121.73.5.55 10:23, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

You just have to be careful that you don't create duplicate categories. Maybe Category:Headstands or Category:Headstanding already exists... --Dschwen 10:53, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, with the necessary caveat that you should be careful not to leave tiny useless categories behind by accident, and to remove tags for categories that aren't going to be created. Dcoetzee 19:11, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Massive Import request

Hello, i found a very good spring of free images : en:Category:Author died more than 100 years ago public domain images... Could these images be imported quickly ? --Gdgourou 11:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

• How can you be sure that all of this images have verifable soruce? Have you checked them all? Sadly, Wikipedians are not so trustworthy... Apart from that: it's almost impossible for a bot to find proper Commons categories for these images. A.J. 12:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
• I would suggest looking for individual images and uploading them. Unfortunately, the template tag en:Template:PD-old is often misused. Make sure that the author actually died 100 years ago before uploading those images. --Iamunknown 22:13, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok i will check and come back after. Thanks --Gdgourou 10:29, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Trouble finding authorship of photograph of PD artwork (in US)

A while ago I uploaded dozens of photos of paintings of Saint Sebastian. I provided the painter (unless anon) for each photo, I provided the date of creation of the artwork, the source of the photos and asserted that the photograph was in the public domain (in the United States). User:G.dallorto tagged several of these photos (all of which, coincidentally, were painted by unknowns) for deletion. The user agreed that a photograph of a public domain artwork may be public domain in the US but isn't in other countries (since the servers are in the US, this shouldn't matter, right?). The source website does not list photographers per photo. To take a look at any of the six photos G.dallorto is raising concerns about, please find links from my talk page. --Oldak Quill 18:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Just a clarification: I did not ask for authors of the paintings (they are all ancient, therefore PD): I asked for the author of the pictures of the paintings, who he never gives. User:OlakQuill says that all pictures of paintings are ineligible for copyright anyway. Whereas in my country (and other ones as well) they are. That's all. --G.dallorto 20:14, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

G.dallorto is correct here. For an image to be acceptable on Commons it must infringe no copyright. For this type of image there may in principle be two copyrights: the first being that of the artist (which has obviously expired long ago), and the second being that of the photographer. Now, it's true that in the USA, a mere record-photograph of a 2D work of art can't in itself attract photographic copyright. But that's not the case elsewhere, and it particular I believe it is not the case in Italy (it's certainly not the case in the UK). Even though the servers are indeed in the US, the rule here is that an image must be copyright free both in the US and in the country where the photograph was taken. So unless you are able to get an appropriate licence from the photographer, these images will I fear need to be deleted. --MichaelMaggs 20:58, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Are you saying that {{PD-Art}} is a bogus tag? /Lokal_Profil 00:43, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

No, but it does need looking at as there are many countries in which it does not apply. --MichaelMaggs 07:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

But it does apply to pretty much all of the "motherlands" of all the major Wikimedia projects. So what. --AndreasPraefcke 14:10, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

PNG photograph cleanup process

I've made some changes to the recommended process for cleaning up PNG photographs following some conflict over the old process. The old process, which recommended replacing the PNG with a very-high-quality JPEG and deleting the PNG, in order to drastically reduce the filesize of thumbnails in articles, upset some people for two main reasons:

1. Because they believe the highest-quality original version should be preserved and changes based on it;
2. Because they believe projects ought to have the option whether to use a PNG or a JPEG thumbnail for the image.

The former objection is a little silly considering that high-quality JPEGs are very close to the original and have very slow generational loss. The second objection is a little silly because it applies as well to photos that never had a full-size lossless PNG version. The ideal would be for the software to allow the article writers to select what format to render the thumbnail in, so that PNGs could have JPEG thumbnails and JPEGs have PNG thumbnails (particularly useful for very small thumbnails).

As this feature does not exist, I've instead revised the process to recommend keeping both images, preferring the JPEG version in articles and basing edits on the PNG version. See Full details and an example. Any comments or suggestions are appreciated. Dcoetzee 19:23, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

It's probably easy to add a image parameter to set if you want the thumbnail in png or jpg. Platonides 14:14, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Naming Conventions (Astronomy)

My proposal: "[Name of object] from [picture taker (name of the space craft/mission etc)] ([Date in ISO format]).ext"

Ex: Image:Saturn from Cassini Orbiter (2004-10-06).jpg

I propose a new naming convention for astronomy related images (such as images of planets). We seem to have lots of these and they don't follow a useful pattern. I was wondering your thoughts. -- Cat ^chi? 20:54, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

• What about multiple images of the same object by the same picture taker? --Iamunknown 22:20, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Date preserves uniqueness. If there are two images on the same date (very rare when it comes to spacecraft since most images are discarded) time can also be added to the images' title. -- Cat ^chi? 23:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
    • True! I didn't think of that. --Iamunknown 01:52, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
• I like this proposal. In spite of Cool Cat proposing it. Cary "Bastiq▼e" Bass ^demandez 00:33, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

  ... -- Cat ^chi? 00:37, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

  Was that just an insult, or am I missing something? --Iamunknown 01:52, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

As a recommendation, I say go for it. As a rule or something where you're going to re-upload tons of stuff to conform with this 'convention', I say not worth the fuss and effort. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 02:25, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, but I meant the "rule" for newer uploads. -- Cat ^chi? 21:31, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

March 9

Image:Puppet3.jpeg

I moved this discussion to Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Puppet3.jpeg. I think that is the more appropriate place for it. -- Bryan (talk to me) 18:36, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

New user interface string translations

Where can I ask for a bunch of strings to be translated? They are needed for a commons extension. de,en,eu,es,fr,nl,pl are already done. --Dschwen 20:18, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

You might be able to fill a request at meta:Translations. I'm unsure if that is open for non-foundation translations. You may as well give it a try! :D --Iamunknown 20:40, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, good pointer! I gave it a try. (btw. thanks Bryan for nl!). --Dschwen 21:32, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Your best bet is to find active users in each target language and ask them politely. :) Or try the various language village pumps right here! --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 23:20, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

March 10

Images from SEL (USDA): are they on the PD?

Hi, in the Chalcidoidea site, which is a section into Systematic Entomology Laboratory (Agricultural Research Service of US Department of Agriculture, there are some pictures of Hymenoptera Chalcidoidea. I suppose these pictures were extracted from this handbook and the credits page tells:

Thanks to the input from all of these "critics" we feel that the handbook is finally ready for public use and that it will be a resource of first choice for those interested in identifying and studying the chalcidoid wasps.

Are these images of Chalcid wasps free? Commons is very poor about Chalcids but these insects are very important because they are parassitoids of many bugs. May I upload these pictures on Commons? I don't know it, I'm not expert. Thanks --gian_d 11:32, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Interesting question. Both Grissell and Schauff (quite probably) worked for the USDA in 1990, which would make their regular work PD; however, according to [1], this book was published by the Entomological Society of Washington, an organisation whose web presence seems to be limited to citations of its works. Its copyright policy certainly doesn’t look like that of the US government. The copyright status of the book depends on the exact circumstances under which it was written and published. I suggest asking the USDA. —xyzzy_n 14:19, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I have sent a question to SEL using the feedback form in the website. I hope receive an affermative response. Both en.wiki and it.wiki have articles about Chalcid families without pictures and they can be very useful to describe these small insects! Regards. --gian_d 18:14, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

March 11

Bloggers: Please join Planet Wikimedia

If you have a Wikimedia-related blog, please consider adding it to Planet Wikimedia, so to help raise awareness of Wikimedia Commons in the international Wikimedia community.--Eloquence 03:02, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Moving a Picture

Can someone please move this picture: image:Hyles lineatata livornica.JPG to image:Hyles lineata livornica.JPG? Thanks in advance, GlassOWater 15:15, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Just upload image under new name and place {{Bad name}} on old one. --EugeneZelenko 15:47, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Okey, thanks. GlassOWater 19:22, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Sister registration

From Wikipedia Logged in users can upload media to Wikipedia. It is recommended that free media (but not fair use media) be uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons (separate registration and login there is required).

I suggest the user can utilize his/her Wikipedia or other Wikimedia Project registration (login) in Commons (it could be called Sister login and the user would specify the project of registration - by default Wikipedia - ).

User would appear as User:Wikipedia:Mac (for Wikipedia registered user).

We are expecting this feature with the release of Mediawiki 1.10. That will be somewhere around April (but don't be surprised if it isn't implemented before Christmas). See m:SUL. -- Bryan (talk to me) 18:22, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Use ventrilo to talk to fellow wikipedians

Instructions. -- Cat ^chi? 21:00, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

March 12

Distortion of the information : an example

Hello everybody.

What think about this kind of « work » or « improvement », whatever you call it, on an image like this one ?!?

• 
  more or less the original image
• modified image
  modified image

I think that it should be prohibited and the image deleted, or at least clearly marked with a tag explaining that it's not showing the veracity (the template:Bilderwerkstatt is not sufficient), because it distorts at a very high point the reality.

I remember (many of you too) that not so long ago a photojournalist was the focus point of a scandal for having « improved » an image about the war in Iraq at a level, imo, having less impact on the reality that this one.

Improve a picture on the colours, the light, the background, undesirable objects, ok, but modifying the subject trying to make tell the image (almost journalistic) an other veracity copes with a code of ethics a way I cannot agree with. Sting 00:49, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

That does seem to be a pretty ridiculous "improvement." I would support deleting it. --Iamunknown 02:05, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

This qualifies clearly as an Attackimage. I recommend speedy deletion and a block of the uploader. Make no mistake, if no tough action is taken in such a clear case, in the future nobody will license any portrait pictures to Wikimedia/Commons. I left a notice for the original photographer; the uploader of the distorted image seems to have left Commons. -- Túrelio 07:35, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

This isn't the first image I've seen tagged with "reworked by the Wikigraphists" which was altered to the point of being a fraud.--Gmaxwell 08:08, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Retouching an image like is outrageous enough, and not even tagging ({{RetouchedPicture}}) it is even worse. I agree with all of the above. --Dschwen 08:18, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Let's have the deletion debate and establish misleading modifications are not acceptable. Again, one of those things you would think wouldn't really need to be said, sigh... --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 09:02, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I found the discussion about the picture in the german Bilderwerkstatt archive. Apparently it was just a joke edit. Btw. I remember Huebi as a sincere and valuable contributor, so calling for a block seems a bit harsh. I'd say delete it and forget it, or write the Bilderwerkstatt guys a friendly note that they should tag nonsenical edits appropriately... --Dschwen 09:05, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Nod. Also commented on the deletion debate, per pfctdayelise... ++Lar: t/c 12:46, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

• We had a very controversial case in Australia where an image of a man was manipulated to make the man look insane - see w:Martin Bryant#Media coverage. I believe the public deprecated such tactics and captions in newspapers now note of the image has been digitally manipulated. My concern would be that our captions are effectively hidden and we cannot ensure that the image is always annotated appropriately. I don't think that Wikimedia Commons is a useful repository for such subtle and malicious digital mischief.--Golden Wattle 20:27, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

License CC-by-sa 2.5 or 3.0?

Hello, at Creativecommons is written that the version 2.5 is replaced by 3.0. But 3.0 isn't implemented in commons. What shall we do? ---donald- 16:12, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

There is quite a bit of ongoing discussion at Commons talk:Licensing. You're welcome to come participate. --Iamunknown 16:39, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

After browsing through the kBytes of comments on that talk page, I’ve the impression that the problem discussed in the above next section Commons:Village pump#Distortion_of the information : an example would potentially qualify as a breach of the moral integrity of the author protected by CC.de and CC 3.0. In the actual case the original image was licensed under GDFL though. -- Túrelio 17:40, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

March 13

Deletion question

Image:Francis Joseph I.jpg was deleted

Log:

• 16:37, 12 March 2007 MesserWoland (Talk | contribs) deleted "Image:Francis Joseph I.jpg" (In category Unknown as of 28 February 2007; not edited for 5 days)

While it is true, that the image was not edited for 5 days, I added the proper source before that date (including the source's explicit statement that the image was public domain). Since User:MesserWoland doesn't communicate via his talk page and since he seems to use some kind of a script, I wanted to ask the community here, if there might be a problem with this script. Just because an image wasn't edited for 5 days (but source information have been added after it was tagged with "unknown since..."), doesn't seem to justify a deletion without checking if the proper information was added. Gugganij 06:49, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Samulili (talk · contribs) tagged it being unsourced, because it has an unknown author. -- Bryan (talk to me) 21:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Frank Hurley's Images

There's something wrong with the images by Frank Hurley († 1962): They are kept here quoting Australian PD status.

These images are copyright protected until 2033 in several dozens of countries around the world (all of the EU, the EEA, Japan and Taiwan to name some), so they must not be used in dozens of Wikipedias.

But even regarding en.WP, the images will be copyright protected in the UK until 2033. Also, the trouble is that while the photographer was Australian, these images are not Australian works. They have been made or first published in France, Belgium, Palestine and Antarctica rsp. the UK. As a result, these images are not even automatically PD in the US, since they were made after 1909.

I don't see a point in keeping these images here, suggesting anybody could use them in the Projects, which is not so. Unless we can find and prove a proper rationale (UK Crown Copyright?), these images ought to be moved to en.WP if we can live with the copyvio in the UK, or be removed alltogether. --Wikipeder 08:38, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I think you better file a deletion request on the images that are not published first in Australia. Please note that you only have to create one request for all the files. -- Bryan (talk to me) 21:38, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

DjVu files

While the implementation of the DjVu viewer is a good thing in the first place, it doesn't really work well. This is how it should work: Image:Thekla_Schneider_Irmentrud.djvu, Image:Rambaldi_Der_Welfen_Wiege.djvu
And this is how other DjVus (whose source files are perfectly fine when viewed with the browser plugin) are not displayed correctly: Image:Scharff_Reformation_Isny.djvu, Image:Juliana_Ernstin_Chronik_Villingen.djvu, Image:Die_alte_Rauenspurc.djvu

• Question #1: Does anyone get a correct display of these last three djvus?
• Question #2: As I couldn't find any documentation about Commons and DjVu at all, I'd like to know what to do in order to improve the display. Renewing my browser cache, or the MediaWiki "purge" command did not help. Maybe re-uploading would help, but with larger files, the upload fails more often than not (with a very non-descriptive error warning). --AndreasPraefcke 14:09, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Open a bugzilla ticket at bugzilla.wikimedia.org. It will be fixed but not if you don't report it. :) --Gmaxwell 22:59, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I am not really sure if it is a bug, or if somewhat my browser cache doesn't work right. --AndreasPraefcke 13:51, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

If it's any help I can see the first two fine but not the last three. This is in bothe IE 6.0 and Firefox 1.5 /Lokal_Profil 00:05, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I filed a bug: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9327 --AndreasPraefcke 21:17, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Idea for site JavaScript

The license selector on the upload screen has an HTML element ID (wpLicense). It should therefore be possible to add an onLoad JavaScript that adds a script event to the license selection, if the user is on the upload page, which checks if the license selected is actually valid. This way we could output something like

The licensing you have selected is not valid on Wikimedia Commons. If you proceed, your upload will be deleted!

if the user selects an invalid license. Would that make sense, and if so, is someone interested in coding it?--Eloquence

Why not remove invalid licenses entirely? This could be done with javascript as well. Otherwise I could code it, sure. --Dschwen 20:59, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Isn't the only questionalble choice that would trigger the warning {{Nld}}? Here is some prototype code. --Dschwen 21:13, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, it complains at four choices (unknown licenses and non-commercial) --Dschwen 21:22, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

The reason we have the invalid licenses is because people will then pick them even when they really want something else. When you don't understand the choices almost anything is a "closest match". :) --Gmaxwell 22:58, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Ditto what Gmaxwell said. It seems to me that people would just then select a patently false licensing option so that they could upload it anyways. With the bad licensing options, we can then spot the images quickly. --Iamunknown 03:23, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that right now there isn't even any indication in the license selector itself that the license is not permissible. I don't think there should be a pop-up like in the above code, but a big red warning IMHO would be a good in-between solution. Dschwen, it might be possible to do that by inserting an element into the DOM tree.--Eloquence 08:14, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I understand. I think that, especially with the pop up or red text, new users will see it, react, and change their license to an incorrect license. Maybe the the upload interface should be changed to reflect which licenses are appropriate? It would require reading, but at least it would be there. --Iamunknown 08:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

If they change it after reading that it's unacceptable, they are acting in bad faith. We can never preventively stop people who are acting in bad faith no matter what we do -- they might as well change the licensing again after they notice that it gets deleted if they choose one of the unacceptable licenses. Our main goal should be to capture good faith mistakes. I'm not sure it's even a good idea to have the unacceptable licenses in there at all, because it might mislead people who upload freely licensed content into thinking that NC is acceptable. Perhaps the best way is to go back to the way it was, having a single "Unknown / None of the above" option. Everything else is probably noise that you cannot prevent even with the best intentions.--Eloquence 14:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I like, had not thought of, and would certainly support that idea. I like your statement that "our main goal should be to capture good faith mistakes." Thanks for the input. --Iamunknown 19:11, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, sure. That was just a quick attempt to contribute something tangible to the discussion. Adding a big fat banner to the DOM tree is no problem. I'll do that later today.--Dschwen 08:44, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Check out the new version. Should this make it into the site.js I'll clean up the code. --Dschwen 09:07, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I like it. I've tweaked it a little. The only problem is localization ... perhaps it would be possible to detect the page language somehow and only run the script if it's English.--Eloquence 14:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Piece of cake and I could do you one better. Get me the translations and I make it display the message in the userinterface language of teh current user. --Dschwen 16:47, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Done. It defaults to english if no translation is given. --Dschwen 17:01, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks good -- when you feel it's ready, I'd like to trial it out in MediaWiki:Common.js.--Eloquence 17:26, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I cleaned it up a bit and added it to MediaWiki:Common.js. If it is supposed to stick around we'll have to ask for translations. --Dschwen 18:34, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

March 14

Bug in JPEG handling?

Autograph of Grób Agamemnona

I Just uploaded this image to the commons: Image:Grob-agamemnona-autograf-juliusz-slowacki.jpg and although the full-size image is correctly displayed by Firefox and Konqueror, I can't insert the image's thumbnail into any article - I just get an empty frame like the one to the right. The image was scanned and then edited and saved using the GIMP. It's a progressive, optimized JPG, quite large (ca 2000x3000 px) but I think I've seen larger images in the commons. So I suspect this might be a bug in the MediaWiki software. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mkosmul (talk • contribs) at 22:29, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

When I came to this page to see your new post, it did not work. I purged the page (go to [2]) and now it is showing up fine. I suspect it was a caching issue since the file is a sizeable JPEG. --Iamunknown 22:44, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, the problem seems to be fixed indeed. Mkosmul 20:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

March 15

Image:341126848 3260b8be53.jpg

As an example. This image is in Category:Ford Model T should it also be in Category:Automobiles?--Vaya 10:04, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

In this case, no, because Categoru:Ford Model T belongs to Category:Automobiles via Category:Automobile manufacturers > Category:Ford > Category:Ford vehicles. Samulili 11:58, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Category redirect bot?

Is there actually a bot that runs regularly to move images from pages tagged with {{Category redirect|newcat}} to the newcat, if so how often does it run? Thanks. --121.73.5.55 10:24, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Um, there used to be. Not sure if there still is. Volunteers? pfctdayelise (说什么?) 07:38, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

According to User:Orgullobot's page, it is supposed to do it. Yonatanh 08:20, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I see it used to do {{welcome}} messages as well. How do we tell if it's still running and/or activate it? I see some people are using #REDIRECTs instead, obviously with no better results ;-). I've moved the orphaned contents of a few redirected pages manually, and would like to be added to the Orgullobot's whitelist if/when it is up and going, it'd save me a bit of work ;-). I'll happily volunteer to do any maintenance that's needed on the bots pages (but don't have any admin rights etc) --Tony Wills 11:59, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

It still does welcome new users but only after they've uploaded a file. I actually think it should just auto-welcome them regardless of whether they've uploaded a file or not. Anyway, as Tony Wills said, you need to be an admin or user on the whitelist in order to make orgullobot actually redirect the category. For most pages it's better to move the whole category and then just use #REDIRECT if there isn't a high chance people will use it again but as the template says, you should it for categories like Category:Cars. Regarding the whitelist, I'm a fairly new admin so I'm gonna let someone else decide whether you should be added. Yonatan ^talk 12:30, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I've raised this issue with the BOT operator Template:Ute/User Talk:RobertG (user name talk there/here) here as I'd thought I'd done last weekend. There is an interesting (long) preliminary conversation that took place here on wikipedia over the last few weeks, but boiled down, the current software will with a BOT running on the list generated by Template:Category redirect (Edit Discussion links Page history) put together with a hard redirect (on the same line) gives an early capability similar to that promised by developers for hard category redirects, though not the multilingual benefits. The bottle neck is a BOT operator.

That new system software (patch?) is reportedly nearly ready as well, but what that means is any one's guess. The bugzilla:3311 reference link is that and also toward the bottom of the section I linked above. I wonder what reaction might be to a straw poll on Mediawiki Village Pump asking that the category redirect work be given a higher priority. Anyone care to make signs and form a picket line?. <g> Maybe we can pitch in and buy the develpers a couple of six-packs each instead. // FrankB 00:19, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello all. I'm sorry I'm a "bottleneck"; I frequent en: over there, and not commons: over here! Frank has asked me about running my bot on the commons. I will not have time to do that (and presumably there's a procedure here by which a robot account garners community consent) but I am going to start talks with a couple of interested parties who might run it here themselves. The code may want some modification, so it won't happen overnight, but watch this space… --RobertG 11:26, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Navigation templates

Are navigational templates useful here on Commons? I have found some, Template:Middle Ages Tall and Template:Middle Ages by region. But they only link to Wikipedia articles, so I can not see that they help navigation here. /81.229.40.149 12:43, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Apparently there's some sort of project to align Commons with en:. There's some discussion here: User talk:Fabartus/Templates and Wikipedia. I can't say this monolingual project appeals to me particularly. Man vyi 17:01, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Fabartus' project to align all wikis with the English Wikipedia has not met with much acclaim on other wikis; for example, see a bulk deletion nomination on Wikisource, which includes links to other discussions. —Pathoschild 19:03:44, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I also notice that large amounts of navigation has been added by this user to category pages, all pointing to en: - is this sensible? Category:Saxony is an example where one would expect, if this sort of navigation to be acceptable at all, to have the navigation pointing to the primary language - in this case, de: But when in their turn other users add their language links we arrive at the situation at Category:Munich. Note also the en: related navigation at for example Category:Middle Ages or Category:Regions of Africa pushing Commons content down the page. Man vyi 07:20, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Every time I see that #$%#$ it makes me want to cry. Pathoschild, I am glad to hear Wikisource has rid itself of it. I think we should do the same. Category:Wikipedia categories equalized with Wikimedia Commons categories...srsly...:( --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 07:25, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Why don't we nominate some of those for deletion as well then? I appreciate the hard work User:Fabartus is doing for what he thinks will make commons better but if commons truly is multilingual then I don't think there should be a box linking to just the wikipedia article on a subject. Maybe I'd agree to an en-wikispecies box on plant\animal categories\galleries. I'm generally inclined to support making English the prominent language in many cases on commons (for example, I feel the en interwiki and en description should go first and that categories, for now, should be in English) but this sort of thing I really don't support\see the point of. Yonatanh 08:43, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I would fully support a deletion request. --MichaelMaggs 16:35, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Potatoes then Apples, peaches, tangerines and oranges

First point-- this is four distinct initiatives so let's keep that in mind without confusion!

1. It also goes contrary to the original question which is/was navigation templates to articles (Potatoes <g>). So point one on those: English Wikipedia is one of the three common locations all other languages tag with interwiki's... any navigation link thus puts a non-English reader at most two mouse-clicks away from the material put up in her language--one to get to the English article, which for many provides more detail enough, or by transit from the interwiki there to their own language's wiki article, assuming their language has an equivalent article.

This is a service to all readers— and if you can't see that, I suspect you have some cultural biases you need to own up to and face squarely--perhaps even go to confession about. Bottom line, linking a category to an article on the topic is very helpful to casual browsers (Our customers!) not to mention editors trying to figure out an appropriate categorisation in the first place.

Linking to the French wikipedia or Mandarian wikipedia has no such likelihood of finding links back to a (statistically likely) browsers native language. So there is no attempt whatever to make English pre-eminent or above another language... it's merely the reality of 'where the links are'.

1. Interwiki category tagging with this template and the Template sharing project referred to by Pathoschild are two very very different initiatives, which were both indirectly spawned working here on the commons during and after the phase-I Maps category reorganization work with phase-I (setting up an sensible unambigous category structure) completed, last spring and summer here, and the Phase-I was completed somewhat later in the early fall on en.wikipedia (Changes needed sheparded through W:WP:CFD etcetera).

1. 1. The Template sharing project refered to by Pathoschild, is currently being set up as a model strictly on English Sister's, as it's goals are good documentation and making stable resources available to all users but which will need individuals on those other languages to translate or write their own language's, which are abilities beyond my language skills. Bottom line, it has no place in the complaints above, harms no one's nationalistic predilections, and needs no further discussion here now.

1. 1. 1. Returning to Interwiki category tagging that early Phase-I Maps effort spawned the need and desire for interwiki category linking. The Sisterlinks templates initiative is very much similar but lacks an article link, a severe shortcoming IMHO, and is extremely fragile, cumbersome and user unfriendly to apply. In short, is unfeasible or it would be more widely applied, and considering it's relative age, has obviously been unaccepted by the community at large.
      2. In contrast, my tags (Soon to be down to a single tag name), with an appropriate system software change, will I hope be a 'parser trigger' (semi-M:Magic word) for the link to be converted into a users base language, and so do for all readers what they currently only do for those browsing English--assuming the necessary interwiki's are available in the database I advocate and have discussed with Jimbo Wales.

1. 1. Further, a feature request on that is planned via bugzilla, but as a computer engineer, I can categorically state it is quite technologically feasible--it's almost easy, save for the additional database routines to manage an interwiki mapping and equivalence data set. Even so, overall, it shouldn't take much more than a man-week to implement.

1. UP-Tagging of Parent categories ({{Wpd-catlist-up}} & {{Cms-catlist-up}}) in the heirarchial tree, is a third technology work-around... It's needs are obvious to anyone that works in the skin the customer sees as I do for that very reason... I want to see effects from the customers eyes, not smoke and mirrors imposed by some .css script they don't have access to using.

1. and Category 'cross-linking' and/or 'down-linking', I would call a fourth idea, as it's focus is 'down from a node', or 'across to sister-categories' on the same level (which would be situation dependent by where one is in a scheme, and the type of node)

Both these latter linking is currently just trials put in place for discussion forum such as this, and like Interwiki category tagging, are trying to overcome deficiencies in the server system software, or in cross linking begun using such as Template:Cat see also wikipedia (Edit Discussion links Page history), which was deemed too inflexible, leading to the later tagging template Template:Catlst (Edit Discussion links Page history).

PURPOSE: The default skin places the categories off the near the south pole somewhere making the categories all but impossible to use for navigation by our readers, not to mention for maintenance by ourselves. Examining the modest Whatlinkshere list for those templates (which intersects in half the trials, more or less) is an attempt to get a feel for how much is good enough, how much of an up-tree is a good idea, what might be a convention to propose, in sum discussion points. I've just been too busy elsewhere to make a talk post yet. Obviously, this forces my hand on that planned 'pending announcement'. I've been soliciting spot feed-back from others when I had time moving it slowly forward at a crawl.

I have to deal with a blizzard and picking up a kid from school, so I'll leave it as an exercise as to what benefits might accrue to us all by crosslinks along a heirarchy's leafs or branches, or downlinks to twigs and leafs where things are supposed to inhabit. Oooops! Gave it away! Okay--no exercise. Gotta run. // FrankB 18:36, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Frank, I've noticed that many of your posts are rather long and drawn out. I am afraid sometimes that I have a simple mind. I personally have never understood the project on here or on Wikipedia. Would you be able to state it more succinctly? --Iamunknown 18:54, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay... hard to avoid that when things unrelated are brought into a discussion.

Breaking it into separate parts, so we can have a discussion on that topic, since the way this began rolls a lot of different things into one place: // FrankB 03:56, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Potatoes

Or 'general navigation templates'... there are maybe four or five I've adapted here to certain key category nodes and galleries. The Middle Ages is a good example of that. I actually have taken more over the other way... which display maps and such to Wikipedia pages. I've created one in W:Category:States of Germany linking to the galleries here, for their is a vast ignorance on en.Wikipedia at the least about the very existence of such pages here. Similarly, I've recently specially written Template:Tlxw and {{Gallery-link}} for discrete tagging on main space pages and category pages respectively. I hope to advocate the former as an article top feature, rather than buried way down in the external links with external sites. So I'm guilty of using navigation templates... but more guilty of using them to promote the commons than any sister.

English versus Not-English

So who am I working for when I could be doing many other things -- you my fellow editors, or the customer-reader-browsers? Am I promoting en.Wikipedia by feeding the browsing-customers related links -- I discussed above an article link lets the Japanese visitor reach Japan's wikipedia in two clicks... just like a {{Softredirect}} lets us reach a sister page.

So are we serving the customers? Or nurturing some petty resentment some party has because another language has a different role on the world stage?

1. If you don't like the place English has in the world, all you need do is go back in time and change history.
   1. Talk to the Spanish and warn them of the mistakes and idiotic decisions made by the nobility in charge of the Spanish Armada.
   2. Talk to the Dutch about winning their wars with the British,
   3. Talk to the French about spending less money on royal palaces and more on bigger navies, doing away with their feudal system sooner, etc. and especially about how important the Seven Years War was to all that followed. Talk to Napoleon for many things, for things could have gone very differently...
   4. Talk to Ivan the terrible and ask him to do what Peter the Great and Catherine did later for the emergent Russian nation. Talk to Joseph Stalin about more freedom and less repression, the incentives of working for ones-self, and the disincentives of carrying other people on your back when you're barely able to stay afloat...
   5. Talk to the petty nobility of the Holy Roman Empire, of the Balkans, of Austria, Poland, Spain, and of Italy through most of the last thousand years...
   6. Discuss it with the warring factions in India...
   7. and the Dynasties in China and Japan...

all holding dear to the feudal age, one way or another letting Britain emerge as the only superpower for two centuries plus.

But don't blame me for the Modern world, the place English the language has in it, or that the past shaped the now. I just live in it and have to deal with today's facts, not fancies and wishes. I'm and engineer, not a miracle worker.

Links are good, and if the Germans or Italians, Greeks or Israeli's have the pre-eminent language in some other parallel universe, I hope their Wikis thinks first of the customers and second of some unprofessional local pride, as this project should.

What I did to connect the galleries on the en.wikipedia's Category:States of Germany takes up more space than all those others combined, but asking someone to page down on such lengthy pages is hardly a big imposition... Most sub-categories are at most a screen-page down, and God forbid one should need to see a parent category on most pages with images... it takes forever! (relatively speaking! We live in the modern world, where all things are relative, after all! <g>) // FrankB 03:56, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Apples

Category tagging between the commons and en.wikipedia with various

Which set is about to vanish into one [or perhaps two templates. ({{WikiPcatNo}} may have some additional utility, which renamed like the original WikiPcatM will be the more user friendly 'WikipediacatNo')].

Category:Commonsroot (Edit Discussion links Page history) has the sisterlinks templates my Wikipediacat (well, in actuality it's eventual son or daughter) hopes to duplicate in effect, by using the server's database not error prone manual tagging to duplicate for any given language. The sisterlinks templates are:

Template:If defined call4	Template:Sistercommons	Template:Sisterend	Template:Sisterheader
Template:Sistermetawiki	Template:Sisterwiki	Template:Sisterwikibooks	Template:Sisterwikinews
Template:Sisterwikipedia	Template:Sisterwikiquote	Template:Sisterwikis	Template:Sisterwikisource
Template:Sisterwikispecies	Template:Sisterwiktionary	Template:Template call4	Template:Void3

and (in fairness) a couple of those are transcluded sub-templates, an editor on the page never has to deal with. In contrast, My tag is (as it's soon to be) one here and one on en.wikipedia, both of which tie to both an "Main article" (and it's interwiki's) and/or the category here or on en.wikipedia respectively (potentially marking those interwiki's) for the parser software routines. In the event, the two templates can be given the same name through the magic of using a template redirect, which means for two categories with the same function in the category scheme, the tagging on the wikipedia's and here would be identical.

I argue that it's bad enough for one knowledgeable human to have to manually edit and translate in three places by adding the interwiki's, but gets much worse when you also need a knowledge and confidence with a daunting template like the sisterlinks array of templates to link back to only a category page. Now the computers can take over what that sisterlinks set of templates can do with an small auxillary database on each site which stores by pagename, and the list of interwiki's on each. Given a tag (some keyword with two arguments [the arguments in this case are the equivalent category on Wikipedia relative to the one here, and the article or articles that best fit the category's role in the scheme, an so called "Main Article"]) ... I argue let the computer take that trigger tag, the browser's language datum (it knows if I'm using French, Polish, Russian, or Arabic) and using the English links as a reference, do a substitution on the fly of the eqivalent interwiki's when displaying the page to anyone. For me reading English, I see what is programmed in the template. For Hand Guderien reading German, the computer substitutes the German equivilent links--the appropo German interwiki's. English is the only language which can possibly act as the basis for such simple substitution mapping as it's the only one with fully developed sister projects to which all the other wiki's make ties.

Category:Wikipedia categories equalized with Wikimedia Commons categories is indeed a gross category name and one selected for me by the w:WP:CFD and the category naming conventions over there last June when some of this was attacked. However being template applied, it can be made to hide on command, so stop swearing Brianna, I like it as little as you. I'm going to fix it so it vanishes except when it's actually being used. It goes to the fact that it was a Work Progress tracking category, like Category:Wikipedia categories matching with Wikimedia Commons categories which I'll also make hide. The current scheme and experience with difference between the names of things here and there make the departure of one or the other imminent soon, like the excess templates, at least one has outlived it's use. // FrankB 03:56, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Peaches

This is Wikiproject template sharing which has nothing to do with anything affecting content. It's solely about tools, and documentation and making a handbook for editors on all wiki projects to end useless and wasteful bickering about whether this tool or that tool is needed here or there. Those are indeed local decisions, but having a project so someone can find what's in the tool box makes sense, as I abhor anyone wasting the time of any one of the rest of us. Having a guaranteed set of documented tried and true utilities that enhance productivity is only sensible. Wikisource picked on that project while it was but a toddler taking it's first steps. More could be said, but since it really should be said elsewhere, that's enough for here now. // FrankB 03:56, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Tangerines

This is the scheme for overcoming the category page design for the default skin, and especially to be used on long pages, such as most here. I think this is a very good idea indeed.

The template Template:Catlst (Edit Discussion links Page history) serves as the working template for two templates called Template:Wpd-catlist-up (Edit Discussion links Page history) and Template:Cms-catlist-up (Edit Discussion links Page history) which are simple and easy to use. Note that the exact appearance of these when tagging varies somewhat at the moment as can be seen by looking at the commons versus the en.wikipedia pages, which reflects the experimental nature at the moment. Both category pages however are tagged with exactly the same textual syntax... which says their is no fussy site dependent editing that needs done, one just defines the contents, and the job is done. The quasi-mnemonics 'Wpd' and 'Cms' for are for Wikipedia and Commons respectively, and just follow the three letter mnemonics for all sister projects. That list can be seen viewing {{Interwikicat-grp}}, but unlike intersister abbreviations which lack consistency, or a prefix like the 'commons:' which won't address a page on it's own spaces, the 'xxx-catlist-up' and 'xxx-catlist' templates are also designed to be interlingual at need*, allow one to change the default message prefix, and even the default text formatting such as bold, italic, whether the message prefix appears on one line, and the links on another. In short they are very flexible. If someone prefers to use a longer name, that is easy to do with a template move. It would ruin them as typing savers for some of us, but that's trivial. In practice, one applies them more often than not with a cut and paste buffer starting with the last page you worked with, so any name will do.

* as used above, interlingual means it should take 
a parameter that will allow it to reach de.wikipedia, fr.wikipedia, ja.wikipedia etc.
Thus by defining that parameter, the editor can easily reach across to tag their own
wikipedia's categories with the commons categories as I did the English wikipedias
in my experiments. Not that such tagging should be placed here, as some German stalwart
did in Munich. There isn't room for every language, though I suppose a sub-page
could be employed similar to the way Doc page pattern subpages are used for
template documentation. One click to that page, one click to the German wiki's...
seems like it'd be pointless, but maybe someone has a different idea.

That is to say I'm not advocating every language do that here... that's what the interwiki's are for. Displaying more categories for someone who is looking for things without requiring an link by link navigation is an overall attractive option. How it's implemented is up to the community, but given the interwiki's sticking with the English makes the best and most sense to me personally. // FrankB 03:56, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Oranges

The templates 'Wpd-catlist' and 'Cms-catlist' are currently redirects from the original names of what is the two templates above. Along with the older more inflexible Cat see also commons and {{Cat see also Wikipedia}} I'm minded to redefine them with a yet-to-be-determined message optimized for down linking (Example-- used in a main category node like Geography by country... Images may go not just one, but two levels down in a Maps by City, Maps by province, etc. sub-category such as: (Mountains of Mexico Islands of MexicoRivers of Mexico). In that case, the obvious place to list alternatives is on the Mexico category, but their are all the various categories by theme that can be listed, not just the same sub-categories, and those likely include further political sub-divisions and the like.

Bottom line, I've done some limited experimentation with cross-level tagging and apply maps or othewr useful data where use of that effort in links terms was mainly interwiki oriented (Naval ships of the United States, Munich and Bavaria), and none as yet in any scheme that would clarify that this category is only for sub-categories, please put your media elsewhere, suggest you use one of those listed here sorts of situations. That is to say, such a list would act as a disambigulation menu of possible better pages.

Basically, I've only had time to play with these and work with them maybe one hour or so every ten days and have no strong impressions nor recommendations to make about them whatever, save that anything that helps a customer-reader is a good thing. I am inclined that cross or down links those should be comma delimited lists like Template:Cat see also (Edit Discussion links Page history) presents, but as I changed the default on the 'up-linking' templates to present bullets instead of commas, based on feedback from others, I'm flexible on that nebulous thought. // FrankB 03:56, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

OK... we write three lines, you write three pages. here are some things:

• interwiki linking to Wikipedia can and should be done by standard interwiki links, not templates.
• 'see also' sections on categories do not require a special template.
• Your "English is the world's lingua franca, so get used to it" does not wash well on a multilingual wiki. Multilingual = all languages have the same priority, to the greatest extent possible. Multilingual = trying to serve customers in their chosen language, not just dumping English on everyone. Your little "7-point facts" show that you are totally out of touch with the basic aims of this project and therefore have no place trying to design interface elements to impose on everyone else or set as a "standard".
• We have no obligation or particular desire to make Commons "easier" to use for English Wikipedia users. (If introducing these arcane templates could be called an "easy" method of anything.)
• As others in Wikisource, Wikiquote etc commented, templates that only obfuscate wikisyntax are not useful.

--pfctdayelise (说什么?) 06:49, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

• I write 'pages' to clarify there are different things under discussion. Pathoschild tried to turn the whole conversation, and apparently this has become a referendum of sorts on a lot of my work here.
• English is the official language of categories here— what some childish nationalist did in Category:Munich (Edit Discussion links Page history) is certainly untenable and impractical. Linking to the other large category system--which does match very well with the one here makes sense as it guides people looking to create new names, and displays the overall structure and aids navigation for all.
• There is nothing 'archane' about templates they're old tech and been around in software since the seventies.

• The Wikipediacat variety will in time supplant the sisterlinks.
• The others underdiscussion are called typing savers-- time savers to us slaving away at no pay for the foundation's projects at no pay whatever. And they are part of wikisyntax, not off to the side of it in some magically confused way of thinking.
• I can cut and paste a see also section that presents tight and neatly in a row on ten pages in the same time it would take you to do two or three.

• So your telling me you can't learn the syntax of one or two template to have similar efficiency? Syntaxes which is merely a category list preceded by the template's name? Didn't know that was all that difficult. (Shocked at your confession of inflexibility.) Moreover, it's easier to maintain. One phrase needs changed if their is a change in the category tree, not a phrase and it's pipetrick, and it doesn't push things down and off the page even further, whilst adding useful navigation links.
• Lastly, I sectionalized things so these can be discussed individually, not mixed. // FrankB 17:46, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

So, according to Fabartus, if it's done by someone else in German, it's "childish", "untenable" and "impractical", but if it's done by Fabartus in English, everyone else has to accept it? It doesn't persuade me any more than obsurantist screeds in response to criticism, and I suspect it's unlikely to appeal greatly to the non-English-language usership. Man vyi 17:58, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

As I understand it, on this point, Fabartus is arguing that the English Wikipedia, as the most heavily edited Wikimedia project, has the most extensively developed interlinkage and categorization structures and thus should be 'leveraged' to provide a backbone to aid in interlinking all projects and languages. Or, to put it in practical terms... if you go to the Mozilla page you see interwiki links to Mozilla in Wikipedia in 23 different languages. However, if you go to w:Mozilla you see interwiki links to Mozilla in Wikipedia in 36 different languages (+1 for the english article itself). Thus, it would actually be beneficial to users of those 14 languages which Commons doesn't link if they visited the english Wikipedia page and there found a link to the article in their language. The same essential principle applies to categories and sisterlinks... in terms of total numbers more of these can be found, in more different languages, on the english Wikipedia than anywhere else.

Ideally, it would be preferable to have a linkage scheme which was language and project neutral... most logically using simple iconographic images (such as the sister-project logos) and the name of each language in its native script. However, I don't see one of those lying around at the moment... so taking advantage of the most extensive network which does exist does not seem like a bad idea to me. --CBDunkerson 00:21, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

March 16

NARA bookmarking

NARA says you can't bookmark their site, which means we can't link to image description pages. Isn't there some way around this — surely the pages are stored permanently somewhere? What would be ideal would be to make something like Template:LOC-image. You'll excuse me if this question is based on my virtual total ignorance of website structures.--Pharos 09:00, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I've done a bit of poking around and trying to paste the POST form fields into a URL, but it looks uncooperative. If ARC doesn't want anyone linking to their records, I guess no one can link to their records. The best you can do is something like (with an example record number): This image is record 299812 in the NARA archive. The archive does not support deep linking; to access the original record, search for keyword 299812. grendel|khan 16:39, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

• I just created {{NARA-image}}. If anyone has the time, I could use some help tagging. Thanks. Zzyzx11 01:31, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Registration message

The code of the message that displays when registering is broken. --Lemontree 12:01, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

What code do you mean? And how is it broken? What about it is broken? pfctdayelise (说什么?) 06:52, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

English or British oil paintings?

I'm looking to create a category in the spirit of Category:French oil painting or Category:German oil painting, but for paintings like those by Edmund Blair Leighton or Frederic Leighton. Should it be under "British oil painting" or "English oil painting"? grendel|khan 17:18, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

It could be either, but if you go for English, remember to do Scottish and Welsh as well, or you will annoy the non-English Brits! 'British' avoids that problem, but at the expense of grouping together the distinct English and Scottish schools. --MichaelMaggs 17:33, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Google Gadgets

I write simple wikicommons POTD code (see User:Shizhao/code) for Google Gadgets. Some interesting? --Shizhao 19:33, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

screensaver & wallpaper manager

If there is a developer around with too much time and too few ideas, I think there might be a "market" for a screensaver which takes its pictures from commons. Webshots makes its living with it, and unless they patented it we can offer the same.

Whats is in it for commons?

• for commons, screensavers and wallpapers mean free publicity
• for the uploaders, it means that their good pictures will be enjoyed by much more people
• for commons, it will attract new uploaders

Teun Spaans 20:14, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea and should be very easy to make. A Windows screensaver is nothing more than a .exe renamed to .scr. Unfortunately I am quite busy. If there is nobody who has picked this up in May, I might have some time then. -- Bryan (talk to me) 21:45, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

March 17

Sales pitch?

Even though this is in a good cause, I was wondering whether the sales pitch (for a T-shirt) at Image:619sign.JPG falls within what people are allowed to do here. - en:Jmabel | talk 00:51, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I have removed the overt advertisement para - I don't think we should be encouraging the "if you want this pic on a t-shirt visit this website" type comments - that is a fairly slippery slope. SFC9394 16:27, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Category merge needed

I cannot work out where to take this up, but we should merge Category:Terra cotta and Category:Terracotta. I don't care in which direction. - en:Jmabel | talk 07:34, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, i moved terra cotta to terracotta because terracotta is the right spelling --DieBuche 10:53, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Interwiki links and weblinks in image description pages

User:Nolanus has modified the image description pages of several coats of arms pictures, adding weblinks to the respective town websites and interwiki links to the respective town articles in the English, French, German etc. wikipedias. I think this is wrong, these links should be made only in the article/gallery page of the respective town. So I removed those links. He reinserted them, said he thinks "it makes the surfing easier" and asked me to show him any rule, vote etc. here on Commons that forbids this. I could not find any, but still think those links are wrong. Any thoughts on this? --Rosenzweig 12:14, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd agree that interlanguage links should not be made from images to articles, and I generally do delete them if I come across them while making other changes. From meta:Help:Interwiki linking: "Thus, interlanguage link is (sic) mainly suitable for linking to the corresponding page in another language. … The feature can also be used on an image description page to link to the same or a similar image in a sister project" (original emphasis).

Image description pages and articles are not corresponding pages. In fact, they're not even in the same or corresponding namespaces. Just as redirects across namespaces within a single project are widely discouraged, interlanguage links across namespaces should be discouraged.

A better way to aid navigation is to create multilingual image descriptions with in-text interwiki links.

—LX (talk, contribs) 13:21, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Agree, interwiki links should only link to corresponding pages. That is not an image -> article link. -- Bryan (talk to me) 22:22, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Although I agree with the general assertion that these links are unnecessary on images, I don't think we need to take the stance that they should be removed (what is the harm they cause?). I agree that we should be encouraging uploaders of images to put more in descriptions rather than less and multilingual descriptions, even single word ones, should be even more encouraged. So rather than delete his contributions, why not change [[de:Weimarer Land]] to {{de|Weimarer Land}} etc and move it to the description? --Tony Wills 00:24, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I agree with everything said above. How about a template modeled after Template:Image template notice to display links to the coat of arms of individual regions in different languages? I just created Template:Coat of arms notice and added it to Image:Wappen Epfenbach.png. FYI, I have no idea if any of the notices other than the English-language one are correct. And I have no idea how the template would work in inflected languages or in English when the statement should be something like "Coat of arms of the Netherlands." This is just my first trial at a solution. Feel free to change everything. :) --Iamunknown 01:03, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

March 18

New Tag for Suspicious Licenses

Quite often I see images that the uploader claims to be their own work but where it is unlikely that is true (e.g. celebrity photos at web resolution). The uploader will place a license on the image such as public domain, own work or something like that so I can't mark the image as not having a license. I can't mark the image as having no source because the uploader has claimed it to be their own photo.

If I put the image into the regular deletions process then that puts the burden onto the community to try and find the image source and prove that the image is is a copyvio. It seems to me that it should be a lot less work overall for genuine uploaders to provide good information about where and when they took the photo that it is for the community to prove it is a copyvio.

Should we have another tag such as "insufficient proof" or "more info needed" or some such wording which requires the uploader to provide more information within a certain time period otherwise the image will be deleted? Or is there such an appropriate tag already? --ksfan 17:15, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Try {{no permission since}} or {{disputed}}. --Benn Newman 01:17, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Ksfan: I would typically tag such items as NSD and ask the uploader to upload the original hi-resolution files, if not just delete them outright (for example, if the user has many similar "web resolution" images of the same celebrity). In the rare instance you catch a genuine contributor, just apologise and explain the benefits of uploading hi-res originals and providing copious source info (such as date, event, happenstance). :) --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 10:57, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. --ksfan 19:31, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Eurocoins

I uploaded this picture of a commemorative 2€-coin (which I got from this page). Since I thought that all Euro coins a copyrighted by the ECB, I just tagged it with {{money-EU}}. But after reading this side info (which essentially claims copyright over those pictures) I am rather unsure, how to assess the copyright status of pictures of Eurocoins. Gugganij 21:04, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

See also Commons:Deletion requests/Evasion license tags. --EugeneZelenko 14:45, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Drawing a map from a copyrighted source

Hello everybody.
There is this map of Deception Island which seems to be an almost exact copy of that other one from the Deception Island Management Group which is copyrighted. I know that the map on Commons is a new drawing, but all the information comes from the copyrighted map : wouldn't it be a Derivative work ? Can we do this kind of map ? Sting 23:24, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

This is questionable at best. You can't copyright geographic facts. There's enough creativity in the second map to allow it. Cary "Bastiq▼e" Bass ^demandez 03:15, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I think there may be a misconception there. You can't avoid copyright infringement by taking an original copyright work and adding creativity to it. You can avoid it only by not copying the work in the first place - or at least by not copying a significant part of the original work involved. Here, the second map appears to make use of virtually all the skill and labour that went into drawing the first, and apart from a couple of labels and a change of font they are pretty well the same. Absent evidence of a common origin, it seems reasonable to assume that the second is copied from the first and, as all of the original features are taken, there is therefore copyright infringement. It may be true to say that "you can't copyright geographic facts", but only to the extent that it would always be open to a new mapmaker to visit and personally re-survey the ground. Copyright can and indeed does subsist in a map that's based on an original land survey, and you can't avoid infringement by arguining that you are 'just' copying geographic features. Otherwise, no mapmaker could ever make a living. The image is a copyvio and should be deleted. --MichaelMaggs 07:56, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks like a copyvio to me. All the contour lines are identical. Geographical features can't be copyrighted, but the documentation of them can - to analogy with a photograph, if I go and take a picture of the sky then all the rights to that photo belong to me and I can decide if and when I want to release rights for its use. The sky isn't copyright, but the photo is - in just the same way the geographical features aren't copyright but the map is. SFC9394 13:47, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

And what if both images are based on the same set of GIS data, aerial images or satellite photography? The second map would likely seem nearly identical to the first under this consideration. The fact is, while boundaries and elevations are identical, that both images contain some features not found in the other. the case for copyvio is not so clear. In such a case, the first thing you should do is ask the uploader where the data came from. Cary "Bastiq▼e" Bass ^demandez 14:17, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that there is no digital elevation model available at that resolution for this area and no other high definition map on the Internet than the one of the Deception Island Management Group. So it's very likely that the drawer used only that map to make his one : all the topographic and geographic information, even the ice margins, are directly copied, without other reference source.

You can use some elements at a non-substantial level from a map to draw yours, but not the almost whole data, as it is the case here, which would be a copyright infringement. Sting 15:34, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

P.S. : I've sent a mail to their Chairman to ask him if they would authorize us to use the information.

Not the same one but also a map: is this map (Image:Germany map blank.png) really PD? (Source: Reference map provided by Demis Mapper 6, ...) -- Túrelio 21:37, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

This one is : see template:PD-Demis. Sting 14:12, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. But shouldn't this template be added to the image description page or is the above mentioned sentence sufficient? -- Túrelio 15:38, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I think so. I've modified the templates which are more appropriate. Sting 18:17, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

March 19

Is No cross.png unfree?

This image appears to be a kind of ugly copy of Image:Crossbuster.svg. Is this unfree? It's the Bad Religion logo, but I don't know how strongly it's attached to them. grendel|khan 03:22, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

It's either pd-ineligible or it's copyrighted. Yonatan ^talk 03:37, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

It must be ineligible --DieBuche 14:08, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

"Must be"? Based on what? grendel|khan 14:28, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Because it's not their logo nor it is trademarked by them. It's a common symbol used in their album --DieBuche 14:45, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

It may be creatively ineligible for copyright but it still may be trademarked. Cary "Bastiq▼e" Bass ^demandez 14:35, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Is Texniccenter.png unfree?

This is a screenshot of an MS Windows program. It shows the MS widgets, toolbar decorations and such. I think the guidelines say that any screenshot of a Windows program that shows the titlebar is unfree. Is this image unfree? Can it be made free, or should it just be deleted? I think I've seen some other Windows screenshots on Commons (I've certainly seen OSX screenshots, such as LaTeXEditor.png; should they be speedied? grendel|khan 14:28, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

This program uses many icons which also used in Microsoft Products (Word, Visual Developer Studio). So simple crop will not help. I think you should add {{Screenshot}} to this image. --EugeneZelenko 14:51, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

At least it shouldn't use WinXP style. The program is open source so we should check how they got the icons. Platonides 13:47, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

It's likely that it just uses the Windows API to pull the icons from whatever part of the OS they're contained in. Maybe WINE provides a workaround for this? If WINE doesn't use copyrighted icons, and it can run the program, we should be good to go. Heck, that might be a good workaround for all screenshots of open-source Windows programs---if it works like that. I wonder who we should ask. (I'd suggest ReactOS, but it's still very, very beta.) grendel|khan 19:25, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Has anyone checked up whether these icons are really protected in some way? How can copyright apply to such simple figures? Can they be trademark protected? Or maybe Microsoft has patent protected them? / Fred Chess 08:15, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how trademark restrictions would be relevant though, because the widgets are clearly not the main target of the screenshot.

Even supposing they are copyright instead of deleting the file, it would be a simple thing to crop out the widgets in question, rather than deleting the file.

Fred Chess 08:20, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Ivan Turgenev Help Please

Hi all, I'm working on the Fathers and Sons Wikipedia article, and was looking for any free art works to add. There is some Ivan Turgenev portraits, but is there anything else? I'd love some suggestions. Also, I found this Russian website with galleries of Turgenev etc. portraits; Gallery. Can the older works (seemingly older than 100 years as prescribed in US law) be uploaded from this site? Thanks very much. Zidel333 18:43, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I didn't find any old works in the above sourse all images come from differnt sourses and should be verified.--Vaya 23:15, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I think some of them are definitely {{PD-Art}}, but you must verify date of creator's death. {{PD-US}} could be applicable to works actually published in USA - I don't think it easy to verify. --EugeneZelenko 15:16, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Revision of Portugal Legislation regarding to Public Domain

I'm a wikipédia user that want's to open a debate regarding to Portugal Legislation related to Public Domain, since some administrators of the Commons are approving and others are deleting images and content related dto Portugal and territories related. I think there is a misconception regarding to this subsject leading to confusion and the deletion of Public Domain content. Usually i dont come to commons to discuss this subject, but since i've seen that some works we need clarification, so i ask for you all give your 2 cent. on this. It happened too that someone on the net used my work (derivative from NASA - Public Domain e completely legal) but since i gave that picture GNU/GPL i don't have no problem on that! So a admin Yann, with good intentions i believe, deleted my work from commons even it was approved by other admin earlier (months ago). Please clarify on this. It's sad i don't even what to go to commons since it's always down to this subject, treated diferently by diferent admins. :(

Cheers, --Luis Miguel P. Freitas 01:36, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Probably help to list the names of the images that should not have been deleted. --Tony Wills 20:50, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Luis: please list the images on Commons:Undeletion requests for a debate. / Fred Chess 08:11, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

In the course of tidying up over on en:, I found three Commons copies of the same CIA World Factbook map: Image:Cia-is-map2.gif, Image:Is-map.PNG, Image:Israel-CIA WFB Map.png. What's the procedure for dealing with duplicate images? -- ChrisO 22:27, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know why we want a copy in .gif, so perhaps someone who prefers them to .png or .svg for maps can explain that. I marked Image:Is-map.PNG as a {{Duplicate}} of Image:Israel-CIA WFB Map.png, but CheckUsage is currently down. Jkelly 23:15, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

A problem with the CIA maps is that wikisource needs the original unmodified images (from a specific version of CIA factbook). Therefore even images with minor differences like Image:Cia-is-map2.gif and Image:Is-map.PNG are not necessarily superseding each other. Image:Is-map.PNG and Image:Israel-CIA WFB Map.png are however exact duplicates so there should be no problem deleteing one of these. /Lokal_Profil 12:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Personal image gallery (i.e. non-useful) ?

I am not well acquainted with the Commons, but I came across this gallery while browsing about. Does this fall within the scope of the project? It just strikes me as a personal art gallery, and not something intended for use by others. Photochops of other images, basic Bryce renders, low resolution photo mosaics, and so forth. Consumed Crustacean

Eh, User:Nevit/Gimpressionist and some of his other galleries are along this line as well... Consumed Crustacean 04:46, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Why should this be a problem? Anyway, it's his user page. -- Túrelio 07:17, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm talking about the images themselves, not the pages. Again, Commons:Project scope says "This also means that files uploaded to the Commons have to be useful for some Wikimedia project. Media files that are not useful for any Wikimedia project are beyond the scope of Wikimedia Commons...Private image collections and the like are generally not wanted.". Hence I thought to inquire here. Consumed Crustacean 13:07, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

It is pretty clear policy that the commons is not a web-host for non-useful, private content. Now, if the galleries contained images that could be useful elsewhere, then there isn't a problem, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. I'd say put them all up for a deletion request. I myself have a large personal gallery, but there are lots of pictures that don't get uploaded because they are artsy in nature and are not terribly useful in a Wikimedia project. The argument about user pages is not correct. While it is true that we allow a limited number of images to be used on personal user pages (such as pictures of the user, etc.), that is not the same as creating a personal art gallery, which clearly violates the project scope. A user should host such non-useful pictures on an external website and provide a weblink to their other site if they need to advertise their work. -- Ram-Man 13:41, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Nevertheless I would recommend to first ask the user/up-loader himself to think about the problem (and eventually to delete the images) before filing a formal deletion request. -- Túrelio 08:25, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Aye, doing that. I'll nominate them for deletion in a few days if there's no response from the uploader. I'm in no rush. Consumed Crustacean 13:27, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Those pictures can be used on WikiBooks and WikiVersity to educate people, not useless, IMO. Wooyi 19:20, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Special Page

What process do you have to go through to be athurised to edit (or have something implemented) onto a special page?

--Symode09 11:52, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Bringing it up for discussion on the special page's talk page (or here, for that matter) is probably a good idea. You can go to the administrators' noticeboard, too, but they may tell you to gain consensus first. grendel|khan 13:33, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

The pages in question will be MediaWiki pages; if you say which special page concerns you we can trace what pages would need altering - if the change is non-contraversial.--Nilfanion 20:04, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

March 20

Images from SEL (USDA) are free!!!

Great! some days ago I wrote a question here about some images of The Chalcidoidea Site (SEL-USDA). Well, they are available in the Public Domain: I've sent a request to USDA, here you are the answer:

Giancarlo,

Feel free to use them with proper attribution, either for our site, or for the original source. If you have a particular image requirement, it might be possible to get something to you as we have lots of high-quality chalcidoid images not available online.

cheers,

Mike

On 3/10/07 2:06 PM, "xxx@xxx.xxx" <xxx@xxx.xxx> wrote:

Message: Hi, please excuse me for my bad English. I am Giancarlo Dessì, an Italian contributor for Wikimedia Foundation Free Projects (Commons Wikimedia and Italian Wikipedia). I have found the documentation in SEL about Hymenoptera Chalcidoidea very interesting, so I have extracted from this website information with other sources for write articles about Chalcidoidea families in the Italian Wikipedia. I would like to insert images of Chalcidoidea in these articles but Commons Wikimedia has got a few pictures. I know that the contents and media released by the USDA are often in the Public Domain but I am not sure if the pictures in the Chalcidoidea site are available in the Public Domain. We can only upload images (with related credits) which are released as free (Public Domain, Creative Commons, GNU Free Documentation License, ecc.). This contents in Wikimedia Projects will be available as free, for general purposes (commercial also). Can Wikimedia Foundation use the images of The Chalcidoidea Site with the conditions specified above? Thanks for your answer Regards Giancarlo Dessì Teacher in agricultural Italian School and contributor for Wikipedia

The message above was emailed to you through the ARS web site , where the author was looking at the following URL:

http://www.ars.usda.gov/contactus/site_feedback.htm?modecode=12-75-41-00

The author was using the following browser: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; it; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060909 Firefox/1.5.0.7 .

So, tomorrow I'll upload a copy of those images, they are very useful!

Regards --gian_d 23:28, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Please do forward the above to permissions AT wikimedia DOT org. Thanks! Jkelly 00:17, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Great work! Note that it's not stated that the images are in the public domain, rather that they are free for any use, so long as they're attributed to the author. This is, of course, acceptable on Commons, but let's make sure we tag them accurately. grendel|khan 13:40, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Does this also include commercial use and derivative work? -- Bryan (talk to me) 14:53, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, it doesn't state the exact terms that they're available under. Only that "we" can use them with attribution. I think a clarifying email might be in order to see if they're actually free (i.e. copyable and whatnot). Consumed Crustacean 15:28, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Read the request (quoted) that I've sent, I wrote: This contents in Wikimedia Projects will be available as free, for general purposes (commercial also). Is it possible that my request wasn't explicit? --gian_d 17:20, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Your request was explicit, but the response itself was not clear. It's very possible that the person who responded didn't fully read, or comprehend it. Consumed Crustacean 17:23, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I've just sent a second question. We can wait an answer before use those images. --gian_d 17:37, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

March 21

Alfons Maria Mucha

Why is Alfons Mucha off-limits? Yes, he died in 1939, but many of his works are much older than that: for instance, this stunning poster was made in 1897, and is in the public domain in the United States. Why is the {{PD-US}} tag not suitable for those works? grendel|khan 19:51, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

An additional note: I'd be pulling images from artrenewal.org, which (according to a WHOIS query) is in the United States, as am I. I'd then be uploading to the Wikimedia servers, also in the United States. Europe, where Mucha's early works are copyrighted, would not be involved, which leads me to think that it's kosher with the license requirements. Maybe we need a different template, different from {{NoUploads}}, for works by artists who died in 1937 or later, but who have works published prior to 1923. Maybe something explaining that only pre-1923 works can be uploaded, and the images can't be fetched from servers where the works are copyrighted or uploaded by users in those locations? grendel|khan 19:57, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Note the paragraph about the URAA in the section about public domain works in the licensing policy. This act, as I understand it, effectively renders {{PD-US}} inapplicable for non-US works. —LX (talk, contribs) 22:06, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Eeehhh.... PD-US isn't ment to be used for anything that is published pre-1923, because Commons is not a US image hoster but a universal image host for many different Wikipedias. If something is public domain in the US only, I suggest you upload it on the English Wikipedia. / Fred Chess 08:07, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that's quite accurate. We host all kinds of media that aren't in the public domain outside of the US. See PD US not renewed or PD US---these works may be copyrighted outside of the United States; it says so right on the copyright tag. The only reason the works of Mucha are copyrighted is that the US (foolishly, in my opinion) extended copyright to works first published outside the US for the length of copyright in their country of first publication. The reason I can't upload Mucha isn't because Mucha is copyrighted in France of Czechoslovakia; it's because Mucha is copyrighted in the US. grendel|khan 14:02, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, that makes me want to cry. Works from the 1890s still under copyright? Ridiculous. But the law's the law, even if it's ridiculous. I'll be marking January 1, 2010 on my calendar as Alfons Mucha Liberation Day. grendel|khan 14:02, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

An addendum: the constitutionality of the law was challenged in Golan v. Gonzalez, but it didn't even make it to the Supreme Court, due to the court's earlier asinine decision in Eldred v. Ashcroft. One wonder what wouldn't fly under the current copyright regime. Absolutely ridiculous. Maybe they'll decide to "restore copyright" on Shakespeare and Mozart next week. grendel|khan 14:50, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure your wrong about all this. Yes, some copyrights were restored on works that were previously public domain, but none to works published before 1923 in the United States.--Pharos 15:15, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

But Mucha's posters weren't published in the US prior to 1923, not that I know of. Painters and other visual artists didn't "publish" outside of the country where they worked. (In Mucha's case, this was France, from 1887 to (I think) 1906 at least.) On the other hand, he toured the United States from 1906 to 1910... I'll consult my legal staff on that one, and see if that lets us upload any of his works. There might be a little bit of hope yet. If it's kosher, I'll upload it along with a description of exactly why it is. grendel|khan 16:59, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

www.copyright.cornell.edu shows that most works published before 1923 outside of the USA are in the PD in the USA. And that anything published "Before 1 July 1909" is in the PD anyway. I hope it can help. Yann 17:06, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I forwarded that as well to my legal staff, who told me I should be getting a response by tonight. So... stay tuned. Maybe we'll get to update the template for artists who died after 1936. grendel|khan 16:29, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

March 22

failed processor?

i pulled my processor out and when i put it back in my pc. will not come on—the preceding unsigned comment is by 71.64.15.198 (talk • contribs)

You are really in the wrong place. You could try en:Wikipedia:Reference desk for computer problems. Jkelly 02:13, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Upload limit

I'm sure this is documented somewhere, but I can't find it. What's the current size limit on file uploads? I'm asking in reference to the possibility of a sign language Wikipedia, that would use videos of articles in addition to text, in the manner of Spoken Wikipedia articles.--Pharos 20:02, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Commons:Project scope says, "Audio and video files should have as high quality as possible as long as they are not above around 20 MB." Zzyzx11 22:12, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

March 23

Broken SVG?

Can anyone tell me why Image:Awen symbol 13.svg doesn't seem to work? It doesn't show up correctly when included in another page (e.g. its description page), but when I click on the direct link to the image, it displays fine. I use Firefox, and I had no problems with a similar image I created earlier. Thanks! MithrandirMage 00:43, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I've fixed the SVG beacuse the XML syntax was wrong. --DieBuche 14:40, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Could you tell me how it was wrong, so that I do not make the mistake again? MithrandirMage 16:24, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Printmakers from France vs Engravers Fom france

Should the two categories be merged ? I thought there were printmakers' who published (ie printed), artists who drew projects (inventors) and skilled technicians who engraved or etched, but the two categories do not reflect any subtle difference. --Anne97432 11:10, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Category:Cafes

There are Cafés, Cafes, Coffeehouses, I think there should be single standart, maybe we can leave Coffeehouses, but Cafés and Cafes for sure.--Vaya 15:29, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Café is the preferred American spelling according to Webster, and I'd wager Commonwealth countries would be even less likely to remove the accent. Given that the (since redirected) category with accented spelling was created more than a year before the alternative and that café outnumbers cafe in subcategories by 3:1, I say we ought to go with café. —LX (talk, contribs) 10:31, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

So is it ok if I post a request for renaming the categories on Commons:Bots?--Vaya 18:53, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

US Section 2257 and Wikimedia

Wikimedia projects are not censored, we know this and its not going to change - so Commons cannot be censored. My understanding of the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act means that it is not directly relevant to us as § 2257 concerns do not apply to Wikimedia as a non-profit organisation. However, these concerns are important for downstream users. This was discussed a month ago on the enwp AN and one image (w:Image:Creampiesex.jpg) was deleted by Jimbo due to concerns regarding this legislation. I think we need to clarify what to do about these images. Could we meet the requirements of § 2257 to enable downstream users to use it without legal concerns for a typical explicit image? At the very least we should create a template analogous to {{Nazi symbol}} to allow downstream users to identify images they could not use.--Nilfanion 17:40, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I've always been opposed to images of people that might possibly be underaged, and will continue to be so. Nilfanion, does the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act say that exploitation must be commercial to be punable? In the second paragraph it says "the Department of Justice (DOJ) defined an entirely new class of producers known as "secondary producers." According to the DOJ, a secondary producer is anyone who "publishes, reproduces, or reissues" explicit material." Can't Wikimedia Commons be a secondary producer?

Furthermore, the purpose of the w:UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is to protect children from being exploited and to put the interest of the child first. And I believe sexual explicit images submitted to Commons can be considered exploitative to the child. To defend by saying "the child did it him/her-self" is, imho, risky (not all children are mature enough to understand the consequences of their actions....).

There is also the question of bad press. And also a moral question.

Well, you know my opinion by now..

Fred Chess 19:14, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not a lawyer, that was just my first impression from a cursory read of the text, article and discussion. I'm just asking if we can host any of these images safely wrt this legislation. If I uploaded an explicit image of myself would Wikimedia be able to satisfy the legal requirements regarding that image? I have no intention of creating such an image, just using myself as an example. I think we should make a 2257 disclaimer asap and the categorization that produces will enable future deletion. Even if we do not have to respect the letter of the law, we should respect the spirit and require some proof of age for these images. Articles relating to sex are amongst the most popular on enwp; what would happen if the press discovered an explicit picture of a 17 yr old used on them?--Nilfanion 19:28, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I wish we could find a laywer to help answer this, since this is an issue that has come up time and time again (even on OTRS). Sadly, with the departure of Brad Patrick, I am not sure who we can find to answer our question. But, regardless, we should try to include as much information as possible on these kind of images, since not only a lot of them exist on the Internet and have been copied to here, but I would really hate to find out we been hosting child porn and have it be slipped in from under our noses. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return fire)} 19:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

We have had child porn ... multiple times. :( --Gmaxwell 20:39, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes and we can't stop it either :( What we need is some way to say "the people in this image, which is sexually explicit, are adult(s)". Would a special OTRS queue for this purpose work?--Nilfanion 21:26, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

That is worth a try. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return fire)} 23:14, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I've made a attempt at a disclaimer template in my userspace, with basic variants described on its talkpage; edits/comments are welcome. I don't think we can decide if we can meet the legal obligations without expert advice. However, we should have a disclaimer to reduce the risks for reusers of WM content.--Nilfanion 01:17, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I think we should just delete anything that is even remotely dodgy. It's not like naked bodies are a rare resource. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:42, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I so agree. If folk want it I'm sure they will find it but not here --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:52, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

That of course makes sense, god knows we have too much of this stuff. However, only keeping stuff we are 100% sure about means we can relax about it morally, we haven't solved the legal issues for re-users: If the subject is obviously over 50 a re-user could still run foul of the legislation as they cannot prove over 18. Also, it is likely that more youthful subjects make for better images. This could therefore degrade the quality of the articles, which is enough to make (some) people complain vehemently and mean no actual progress. A disclaimer is probably sensible, to help reusers and (through categorisation) to help us identify these images. IMO, the ideal would be to get rid of the lot - but I doubt we are that lucky. Bear in mind, we want to develop something we can apply equally on other projects; if Commons gets overly restrictive they will just keep them on enwiki where they are "safe" and would hide behind w:WP:NOT#CENSOR.--Nilfanion 13:07, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

OK I guess I was being a touch simplistic. I'll read round some more --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:13, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Of course, I was being overly simplistic too. Like is said above, we really need legal advice on this. Firstly like Fred mentioned, does 2257 apply to the foundation or not? Secondly, what constitutes "sexually explicit"? Hardcore porn clearly is, Image:Gen 21.jpg probably isn't. How about Image:Ejaculation Educational Demonstration.OGG? The community can develop guidelines on what to do, but the foundation itself probably has to consider these legal questions.--Nilfanion 13:34, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

March 24

Help determining whether or not an image is PD

I have an image of a newspaper that as published in 1891. The newspaper stopped being published in 1894, and the author died in 1938. Is the picture in public domain, or do I have to wait a year to upload it so that the author has been dead for 70 years? ɪkiɾɔɪd | talk 15:07, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello,

If the newspaper is published in the USA, it is already in the public domain. Otherwise, there is a doubt and it is probably better to wait January 1st, 2009 when it will be PD everywhere. Yann 16:46, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

What about Canada? It's from 1890s Canada in the Northwest Territories. It would probably also put it under English law, since Canada was a part of the British Empire at the time. ɪkiɾɔɪd | talk 18:22, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, a difficult one. Assuming we are talking about a photo (rather than text), the UK Copyright Act 1911 provided for photographs taken before 1 Jan 1912 to have protection for a period of 50 years from "the making of the original negative", so prima facie copyright will have expired by 1941. What I don't know is whether the 1911 Act extended to the then colonies, nor what happened to the copyright under Canadian law following full Independence in 1931(?). Given the date, I doubt very much that this image will pose any problem, but if you want to be absolutely safe you'll need to wait to 2009. --MichaelMaggs 19:04, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, according to Commons' license page, Canada releases material into the public domain if the author has been dead for over 50 years. But in order to avoid the issues with the newspaper, I uploaded a picture of the prayer book instead (here) which should be less controversial than the newspaper because it was not a formal publication...right? ɪkiɾɔɪd | talk 21:46, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Screen shots "with permission" by commercial software companies.

I'm in the middle of a fair-use discussion on Wikibooks at b:Wikibooks talk:Fair use policy, but an interesting point was raised about screen shots of Microsoft and Adobe software product. They do give permission under some very strict licensing terms for individuals to copy screen shots of their software for use in 3rd party content development. And from the terms of what I see they are asking here, it isn't incompatible with the GFDL or any other free content license to be using this sort of content under the terms of these screen shots, and it would be with the explicit permission of both Microsoft and Adobe to be using these screen shots in this manner.

The licenses for doing this can be found here:

• http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/permissions/default.mspx#E3C
• http://www.adobe.com/misc/permissions.html#screenshots

There may be other companies that do this (and the two licenses are incredibly similar... it makes you wonder).

I should note here this is not fair use at all, but copying these screen shots with permission of these two companies. Certainly you can apply fair use concepts to screen shots as well, but that is beyond this discussion at the moment.

Is there a role for allowing this sort of content on Commons, under the terms of these particular licenses? (notably: no partial screen shots, only resizing is allowed, no 3rd party content in the screen shots, etc.)

I know these aren't perfect licenses, and it would be nice to try and get them "more free", but there aren't any restrictions on these licenses that would explicitly stop them from being used even in countries that don't normally allow fair use, as this is with permission. It is also a very narrow exception to the rule of no screenshots allowed here on Commons, and would be very difficult to abuse. Certainly if a software company does not want to allow this sort of screenshot they havn't given permission, so the standard {{Screenshot}} tag would still apply for most software. Who would have thought that Microsoft would have a "free" content license? --RHorning 18:48, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

With permission images are simply unfree. They are not allowed on Commons, and neither on most Wikipedias. -- Bryan (talk to me) 18:57, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

These aren't even "with permission" images, any more than any image I upload under a free license is "with permission". Microsoft is providing a license under which screenshots of their software can be used by third parties. They have provided them, unfortunately, under a rather limited license that does not allow unrestricted derivative works and commercial reuse. Granted, they allow commercial reuse, but in a restricted manner (i.e. no obscene or pornographic uses, not in a comparative advertisement, etc.). But this is a real license, not a "with permission" image. --Iamunknown 23:14, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. This is not the typical "with permission" sort of situation that is "for use on Wikipedia-only". Iamunknown is spot on that this is a copyright usage license just like the GFDL, GPL, and CC-BY licenses. If we upload images under these sorts of licenses, we are free to reproduce them in any other publication, including within GFDL'd and other free content publications, including on even Wikimedia projects that explicitly prohibit fair use image. There are terms and restrictions on it use, just as there is with the GFDL. While the terms are a bit different, they aren't that much different.

The argument I'm making here is that the purpose of Commons is to help out Wikimedia projects by having a central database of images that may be used on multiple projects, and where copyright licensing can be verified. This is one such license. And that licenses other than the GFDL have been accepted here on commons, I'm asking if this is one additional license that can be considered. I'm also not uploading huge quantities of content and presuming this license is valid, but asking ahead of time in an attempt to "play nice" before I make a major action here that will require the content deleted.

I think these licenses are misunderstood and there is an unstated bias against Microsoft precisely because they normally have such draconian content licenses that they not only claim copyright but add restrictions on what you create and do with their products. It is clearly not that sort of situation here, and frankly I think the terms are quite reasonable and more or less stating the obvious like they don't want you to use a screen capture as a part of a user interface design in a competing product. Since Wikimedia projects (usually) don't design computer software, I don't see this as a serious problem. Most of the other points would also be considered unethical or at least something only Uncyclopedia would be doing, not something found with most Wikimedia projects. --RHorning 16:12, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the Microsoft license wouldn't allow us to release it under the GFDL and if we are to consider Wikipedia articles containing such screenshots as derivatives, they too wouldn't be able to be released under the GFDL as such. Yonatan ^talk 16:22, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Of course it doesn't allow us to release it under the GFDL, just as images under the terms of the CC-by-SA don't allow us to release them under the GFDL. But why can't they be released concurrently with documents that are available under the GFDL? I don't see the difference here. GPL'd images are allowed here, even though they are very clearly incompatable with the GFDL and can't be redistributed under the same license. --RHorning 20:00, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Microsoft’s terms do not grant all of the four freedoms, therefore content licensed under these terms is non-free. (Modification is not allowed at all and use is too restricted—freedom includes freedom to make porn.) Since Commons only accepts free content (cf. Commons:Project scope), these images are unsuitable. —xyzzy_n 18:42, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I hardly call the freedom to make porn as an essential freedom. In many countries and local jurisdictions it is illegal to have that even if you have copyright permission. I know I'm fighting an uphill battle here, but I really don't see what the real issue is here, as this is clearly for screen shots alone. I'm trying to think of a use of these types of screenshots where a user would really want to modify one of these images that violates the terms of this license as it would typically be used in Wikimedia projects. The only possible exception I can think of is to allow somebody to crop one of these screenshots to emphasize a particular section for critical commentary or to describe specific user interface features. In that case, it falls more under fair-use guidelines anyway to be dealt with on a local project basis where fair use is allowed. While I understand the desire to encourage more freedom with images, these are free images as you do have the ability to do limited modifications, and they can be used in derivative works. There are no restrictions on these license on how you may redistribute these images, just on what may be distributed. Frankly I think the restriction on not having 3rd party content displayed is also a good guideline for even screenshots of GPL'd software as well. --RHorning 20:00, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

The issue is freedom. It’s a matter of rights; if you can’t imagine what to do with them, that’s your problem, but freedom abridged is freedom denied and Microsoft’s terms do not remove enough restrictions of copyright law to make their content free. (By the way, works like w:Fanny Hill and w:Naked Lunch have been important in determining or challenging the extent and limits of the freedom of speech… that’s pretty essential, I’d say). —xyzzy_n 21:36, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

No, the issue is if this is content that ought to be permitted on Commons or not. You can wax philosophically about freedoms and open content licenses, and debate the merits of one over the other, but this is an issue of how constricted the licensing terms ought to be for Wikimedia projects. I do not see a copyright violation occurring if content under these licenses is used in any country that has signed the Berne Convention, nor would it really be a problem for use in Wikimedia projects that even ban fair use. I guess this is a debate over allowing practical images that are free (as in beer) with some restrictions where otherwise nothing else could be used. I can presume from the tone of your remarks that you are very much against this sort of inclusionary philosophy to be used within Commons. There are many reasons for why Commons was set up in the first place, and the promotion of free (aka GFDL-only) images is quite down the list of justifications for getting this project going. I can't imagine that I'm alone with this sort of outlook towards Commons. --RHorning 16:28, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Eh, problem solved. This resolution makes this definition authoritative and says that Commons can’t have any material not free under the definition, which includes the right to make derivative works. —xyzzy_n 21:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

And this too may change, but yeah, the fight to make that change did just get harder. --RHorning 11:59, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

March 25

Too large a transparent background in Corel created SVG

Urnaelettorale.svg

I've created Image:Urnaelettorale.svg from Image:Urnaelettorale.png using Corel Draw, but it's ended up with a transparent background larger than the artwork. Does anyone know either how I can stop Corel saving SVGs like this, or what I should edit out of the SVG file to fix it? LittlePete 01:37, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

See the english Wikipedia:Graphic Lab, help you is their job Yug (talk) 10:52, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Define your paper size identical to the transparent background size you want (e.g. tot the size of the bounding box of your drawing). Lycaon 11:36, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I fixed it with AI, but i don't know how to do it with Corle Draw --DieBuche 18:10, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

That's sorted, then. Thanks everyone. LittlePete 20:17, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Checkuser

Why are there all of a sudden (to me, at least) so "many" requests (3) for people to become Checkuser? There are already 4 of them on this site (Special:Listusers/checkuser), is it really needed to add another 3? Just asking because I think it's a very delicate task and I'm of the opinion that there should be the least of them as possible. NielsF talk/overleg/discussion/discussione 03:49, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

The status / contributions of the current four checkusers is:

• Dbenbenn (talk · contribs) has not, except for one edit in October, edited since mid-July
• Ausir (talk · contribs) has not, except for one edit in July, one in August, and one in September, edited since mid-June
• Arnomane (talk · contribs) has edited for brief periods (one day, two-six edits) once in February, twice in January, once in late December, and otherwise not since December 1st
• Semi-ditto for Alphax (talk · contribs)

So, in other words, we have no active checkusers. --Iamunknown 04:02, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay. Thanks for your analysis. Makes things a lot clearer, although from the Admin talk page I still am not sure if my idea of using CU "powers" is the same as what's being said there. Furthermore: if not active, de-CU'em. CU's should be active, and there should be the least amount as possible. NielsF talk/overleg/discussion/discussione 04:25, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree, but we don't have an activity requirement for CUs or admins. It might be in order. --Iamunknown 04:56, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

We do have an activity requirement for admins. Please see COM:A and recent discussion on the talk page. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 05:13, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah, silly me, I see it right under the "What is expected from an administrator?" Too many varying policies across different projects makes Iamunknown get confused. :-S One question, though: does that apply to CUs, or just to admins? (I know that it only mentions admins.) --Iamunknown 05:34, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

All our CUs are admins. CU is considered a position "higher" than admin, ie candidates should be admins before they request CU. Although that's not written anywhere, I don't think, I can't imagine a non-admin CU request succeeding. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 06:32, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

• reset

I'm going to check but I think CU rights are automatically removed after a year's inactivity - more in a bit --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:34, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Yep - meta:CheckUser_policy#Removal_of_access, rights removed after a year of inactivity (can't see whether that is inactive in the sense of using the tool or merely editing though). --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:37, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

LIVADAVIA

LIVADAVIA has been a summer residence of the Tsars of Russia! When you ask the question: the Internet returns "Never heard of it!

However whwn you ask: The Summer Palaces of the Tsars! You get a site with a quatation of the Tsarina: In St. Petersburgh we live, in Livadavia we enjoy life!

Why is it that a major information source (Wikipedia)does not have zipp on the subject!—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.45.141.233 (talk • contribs) at 08:38, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Your concern can better be addressed at w:WP:VP Yonatan ^talk 14:05, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

That'll be Category:Livadiya palace, then. Man vyi 16:45, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Category:Soccer

I expected this to be at Category:Football (soccer) (as is convention at en:wikipedia). Seeing as commons is non-language specific I thought it would be even less likely to be called "soccer". I propose the category be moved/renamed to Category:Football (soccer). (Is there somewhere else I should be posting this request?) -- Chuq 12:55, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems reasonable to me to have everything at Category:Football (soccer) and have Category:Soccer redirect to it. I am, of course, a proponent of football. Yonatan ^talk 14:04, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

CJK stroke order project need Deutsch, Chinese & Japanese support

Deutsch | English | español | français | italiano | 日本語 | 한국어 | 中文（中国大陆） | 中文（臺灣） | +/−

The CJK stoke order project already provide about one and half thousand Stroke order images. The project is the only one on the web to provide such stroke order images in all the 3 stroke order schools: Traditional, Simplified, and Japanese. All this under free licences.

This is done with an high quality, which allow users to use those images for stroke order teaching/learning, and for calligraphic teaching/learning as well. Images are already use by several wikiversity and Wikibooks, and also use by the free HanDeDict dictionary.

We already had set up our protocols, a Stroke order article, and a 214 radicals page to allow every graphist to join us and contribute. We also have an historical approach, encouraging to expand the Ancient Chinese characters co-project.

Give us an hand...

All this large graphic task is currently take only by an hand of 4 French users, one Japanese, one English user, and we need further graphic help. Chinese and Japanese graphists, are especially welcome. Deutsch and English teams of graphists are also especially welcome. Other graphists interesting in Chinese characters are welcome too, but are encourage to join the current English-language team, or to join the future Chinese-language team, etc.

All volunteers are encourage to contribute first to expand the 214 radicals. Each upload is Welcome !

For this, we ask you to raise help from your respective Wikipedia communities. Each new contributer or new team is Welcome ! Yug (talk) 14:33, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Ex: → →

Category:Uniform_polyhedra

They are all {{PD-shape}}. Even 3D pictures of seemingly complex geometric shapes are still "simple geometry" in the sense of copyright, because they are purely mathematical, and because these pictures are the result of application of a rendering algorithm that generated these images entirely without any influence of human creativity. The program's copyright is irrelevant either, because output of a program is copyrighted only to the extent that it contains copyrightable parts of the program itself (for example w:yacc), which is not the case here, or copyrightable parts of the input, which is also not the case here (because it is pure mathematics). --Rtc 18:04, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Fine to me. Let a bot do this dirty job if no one objects. -- Bryan (talk to me) 09:43, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Topic pages and categories

Is there a clear difference in scope spelled out anywhere? These often seem to be used interchangeably.--Pharos 18:20, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

All relevant files for a particular topic are included in a category. Topic pages, normally called galleries, are typically pages with selected files for a particular topic. Galleries can also be used to organize files in many ways, compared to the strict list that categories provide. ~MDD4696 19:00, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

There are some relevant answers in the COM:FAQ. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 23:23, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

March 26

Images from the Norwegian parliament

Dear Commoners,

User:Jeblad has lately been working closely with the administration of the Norwegian parliament, Stortinget. Stortinget is willing to grant a free license (as in cc-by-sa) for hundreds of images. They do not really know much about free licenses, and Jeblad can to some degree influence their choice of license.

Jeblad created a license tag, {{Photos by Stortinget}}, and I then asked other users at Commons_talk:Licensing#Photos_from_the_Norwegian_Parliament if the terms were ok. Some of the response was negative, and I agree to some degree, the license tag was confusing. I have therefore created {{Stortinget2}} and {{Stortinget3}}, as suggestions for the tag we can use.

You might ask why we can't use the regular {{Cc-by-sa-2.5}}. The reason is that Stortinget will be more comfortable about agreeing to the license if some of their concerns can be addressed in the tag. They are afraid of potential misuse of the images. We all know that the Berne Convention specifically prohibits mutilation or derogatory action, and that the MP's personality rights are unaffected by the license. These things should be unnecessary to specify explicitly, but Stortinget will feel relieved if we do. These are not additional provisions (as the license does not allow additional provisions), but rather a clarification of some of the rights of the author and depicted person.

Jeblad is meeting with Stortinget Tuesday at noon (CET), and we really need a clear license tag that he can show them. In my opinion, {{Stortinget3}} is a clear and concise tag, and I think that it does not go against Commons policy in any way. If you feel that the reference to article 6 of the Berne Convention is an overkill, we can use {{Stortinget2}} instead. If you think that the tags are unusable, I would greatly appreciate your help in rephrasing them. It is important to the Norwegian Wiki-community that a template is ready by Tuesday at noon, we will look extremly unprofessional if Jeblad attends the meeting without the community's backing or if somebody later decides that the tag is unsuitable for the Wikimedia Commons. A failure to reach an agreement with Stortinget may make it impossible to get free licenses from other Norwegian government branches and agencies. Kjetil r 06:38, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

The first tag’s verbiage is indeed a bit confusing. In the second and third, the line about resolution is a problem—what happens if I scale an image? It’s OK to mention that they can provide works in other resolutions, though. The line about the author’s right to object in the third tag should at least be cited and quoted correctly (see s:Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works/Articles 1 to 21#Article 6bis; in general, it is fairly futile to refer to the Berne Convention in a licence because the Convention’s parties are nations and in most of them, the Convention is not a legally binding document (AFAICT, IANAL). Conversely, the ‘moral rights’ in the second tag are too vague. Finally, if the additional text in the tags does not constitute additional provisions, then, as I understand the matter, a downstream user can ignore them and, indeed, use the works under a plain CC–BY–SA–2.5 licence, right? I prefer the third tag, but it still could use some clarification. —xyzzy_n 07:54, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback.

I have adjusted the resolution comment, as you may scale the image. The comment was meant to indicate that images in higher resolutions are not covered by the license.

The reference to article 6 was not ment to be an exact quote, but rather a summary. The reference to “moral rights” was a copy-paste for the full license text. Do you have any specific suggestions for a rephrase?

A downstream user won't have to copy the additional text (apart from the attribution requirements). It is ment as advice, cc-by-sa is the license they have to follow. Kjetil r 08:14, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, I’ve tried to copyedit {{Stortinget3}}. I’ve changed the quote from article 6 to include the missing bit at the end (which makes clear under which circumstances the author may object). Is there any information on the CC licence in Norway that we should mention? (Also, is anybody working on an –NO version of the license text?) —xyzzy_n 08:44, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Excellent, your assistance is appreciated.

The Norwegian CC project is more or less dead, I suppose. According to the project plan, the CC licenses should have been translated/ported to Norwegian in October 2005. AFAIK, not a single one is translated yet. Kjetil r 08:49, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Could you add a link to permission in OTRS, please. Samulili 08:23, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

There is no OTRS permission yet, but I am sure that Jeblad will take care of that before he uploads the images. I will then add the OTRS link to the template. Kjetil r 08:27, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I do not think it is a good idea at all to accept such custom licenses. They should either use CC, or any of the other standard licenses, or choose not to license their pictures at all. You indeed see people being uncomfortable giving a free license if they "do not really know much about free licenses". Convince them that their concerns are entirely unbased and that these often badly designed custom licenses are doing by far more harm than good. It is a fallacy for a company to believe they can do these things better in their custom license than the standard ones, who have been done really well by talented people. I think it is simply schizophrenic to require such additional things to be stated, but then claim that they constitute no "additional provisions as mentioned in section 8e of the license". Either they are additional restrictions, then it's not a CC-BY-SA license anymore, or they are not, then they can be left away from the very beginning anyway, since the license permits you to remove them then. In any case, even if these things are no additional provisions, then at least the restriction not to remove them is one... Further, the restriction to use no higher resolution of the same work is also an additional restriction! CC licenses, and free licenses in general, license your work in the abstract sense as such, not any particular resolution or format ("materialization") of it! Such restrictions can only be introduced by additional conditions that restrict the use to one particular. Similar issues have been seen concerning free software, and it always turned out to be a very bad and counterproductive measure if companies brew their own license. The FSF for example has several times admonished people for changing the GNU GPL and still calling it GNU GPL. --Rtc 11:09, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I have edited {{Stortinget3}} to reflect Kjetil r’s comment of 08:14 on the matter more closely. Is it better now? (Is it still what was intended?) —xyzzy_n 15:57, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Maybe Jeblad can comment on the current draft of the template? Do you think the current version is usable? Kjetil r 16:10, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I will not try to "convince them that their concerns are entirely unbased", I will allthough discuss the matter with my contact and other admins, then I will come back to you with an answare. Jeblad 16:04, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Some notes

• The license applies to the uploaded versjon, not to the image in general. This is important as there will be other versions of images which is not free. Those versions could have other resolutions, but more important, the history can be another for those and the present owner of that digital reproduction may not be willing to accept its release.
• The link may not be necessary, allthough noting the Storting as the source in the photobyline will be necessary. Probably some of the artists want to be named.
• Not all of the old images can be assumed to have Norway as country of origin, allthough for those images the part which makes the digital reproduction available will be Stortinget.

Jeblad 16:50, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

1. I have changed it to "The license applies to this file. You may contact Stortinget for images in higher resolution, possibly under other licenses". Should that do it?
2. I had actually no idea of how they want attribution when I created the template. I have now changed it to "Attribution must be given as Photo: Stortinget in the byline. You may translate “photo” into another language. If the name of the photographer is stated, give credit as Photo: nn/Stortinget." This is of course merly a suggestion, they may decide how they want attribution themselves.
3. Is it necessary to specify the country of origin at all? I am not really sure why I included it. If we have to, maybe we can introduce a third parameter that if provided will override Norway as the country of origin? Kjetil r 17:21, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

1. Not quite sure, I think so…
2. Perhaps just be able to add a byline and then prepend or append Stortinget will be sufficient.
3. Ideally there should be artist (photographer, painter, …), date of creation, date of death of death if applicable, date of first publication and publisher, country of origin, title of the work and a bounch other parameters. Make it simple and stick with country of origin, artist and title.

Jeblad 17:59, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

2. I'm not sure how your suggestion differs from the current draft. Maybe you can try to phrase it yourself?

3. We should use {{Information}} for metadata, I don't think that it is a good idea to put too much information about the work into the license tag. We can make a special template we can use in the "description" field to standardize the metadata. 05:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Adding "The license applies to this file" is a further restriction to CC that removes the permission to create derivative works and to use a higher resolution of the work, while the CC licenses without such additional conditions apply not to a file or a resolution, but to a work as such. If people want to keep control over higher resolutions, or want to add some "clarifications" to make the CC-license being effectively a press license, and if they are not comfortable with a plain and untainted CC license, free licenses are not the way for them to go, and we shouldn't try to force the the camel through the eye of the needle. We should instead encourage commons users to make and contribute pictures themselves, not to collect them from other people's web pages. Only if that becomes a common practice, Commons will one day become of real value. --Rtc 17:57, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

But we (and other Wikimedia projects) accept a lot of images where the author states that the free license applies only to a low-res version of the file, and that high-res versions are exempted. Such licenses seem to be accepted by the community.

"The license applies to this file" is maybe not the best way to put it, as one has the right to make derivatives. Maybe we`ll have to think of a better way of explaining it. Kjetil r 05:20, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it seems to be accepted by the community; but I think that this is a mistake. In any case, I see this as a further restriction to the CC license. The CC license nowhere talks about the work being restricted to a certain resolution. They have to create their custom license and may not call it a Creative Commons license if they want to introduce such restrictions. --Rtc 08:18, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

The original work is copyrighted by the source (in this case Stortinget). They then create a derivative that is the reduced resolution file, which they can do as copyright holder. That derivative is then licensed freely and given to us. It is not possible to recover the higher-quality image from the reduced resolution derivative. It might not be the best thing to do, but it seems fine to me. Note we have Wikimedians who contribute in a similar manner (retaining high resolution images for their own purposes whilst freely giving the project reduced res pics; which still meet COM:FP criteria.--Nilfanion 19:21, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Your fallacy is that you incorrectly think that a reduced resolution is a derivative. However, it is merely a different quality of the same work. You always license the work as such; and if you want to retain the rights on high resolution qualities of that work, you have to add an explicit restriction about that, which I'd not consider free anymore. --Rtc 07:40, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Nilfanion, it seems to me that this has direct equivalents in some open source programs, and it is also done by several other users at Commons. Following Rtc's argument a quote from a work will lead to a situation whereby the whole work should be released in pd. This seems to me to be an erroneous conclusion. A resampled source made by the copyright holder will not in general be complete, and will not be a reproduction. The copyright holder can release such a derivative work under any license he or she chooses. If the Munch Museum chooses to release one version of The Scream in PD (it will not happen) that will not lead to a release of other versions of the same image. Se gallery section on The Screem article for an example. 213.187.175.58 21:16, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I have followed this discussion with interest as I'm likely to be uploading (a lot of) these pictures. There is one voice in opposition, but apart form that I conclude that there is a consensus that the {{Stortinget3}} is acceptable. If that is the case we should rename the template to stortinget and present it to them as an acceptable mark to attach to the pictures. Haros 16:34, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Template:LibriVox public domain

An example of how to do it right. --Rtc 10:59, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Best place for a text file sample boilerplate model release to support a project primarily based on commons?

I'm working on a general health project wherein the object is to provide a large body of similar pictures of different people (of different body shapes, ages, heights, weights - currently only men, mostly for cultural/sociological reasons that may become clear if you look into the project more). Here are the index page, the category and the project planning page. I think/hope that the pictures so far uploaded and the ones still coming are compatible with Commons goals.

As a supplement to the project planning page, I'd like to provide a sample model release form that photographers contributing to the project could customize for their own use. I think I reasonably understand that such a text would not belong here on the commons, but if not, where should it go? Wikisource? Wikibook? Host on my own domain? This text would be a sample, non-legally-reviewed, boilerplate release form that would eventually be customized and filled out by a photographer and her/his model. I want to avoid as many potential legal complications as possible, and the sample boilerplate will be accompanied by dire warnings about how I know nothing about law and this is purely for example. Anyone have any good ideas about how best to handle the release form sample's hosting?

Thanks in advance, Malcolm Gin 17:26, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for doing this! Commons:Email templates would be the good place. -- Bryan (talk to me) 18:23, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. I'm glad someone approves. The model release is actually designed for phsyical signing and archiving by the photographer (I don't expect each model release is likely to need storage on the Commons or in a place like m:OTRS, for example). Thus, it almost seems like it would almost be best to create the sample w/in Commons, maybe as a sub-article Commons:Email templates page, or as a sub-article to one of the project pages or the category. Any votes? As far as I understand it, traditionally, in taking photographs of recognizable or identifiable individual humans or groups of humans in non-public places photographers get model releases signed and retain them in files in case of future litigation, but then turn around and own the copyright on the image and license the image as they see fit. In many cases the model release isn't actually required, but serves as good insurance against potential litigation. Does that make sense? I don't even know if I'm right here, it's just how I understand what research I've done into the topic.

Anyhow, thanks for the advice! --Malcolm Gin 18:51, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

After thinking about this for a bit, I think the best approach will be to add it as a sub-page to my user page for now and move it somewhere else if required. --Malcolm Gin 23:56, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

March 27

People laboring in obscurity

When is a road sign a sign, and when is it a piece of copyrighted art? An image is about to get nixed because an admin has set an impossibly high burden of proof that an image (which is really PD) is really in the public domain.

The image really deserves to survive. Please weigh in Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Road Sign Welcome to California.jpg. --Just calle me zippy 03:59, 28 March 2007

It seems to be there is convincing evidence the road sign is creative enough that it could be copyrighted by someone, which is an issue people are trying to resolve at the moment Nil Einne 10:37, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Inactive admins.

User:Greatpatton, User:Saperaud, User:Aoineko, and User:Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason appear to fail to meet our any edits in 6 months, 50 edits in 1 year activity requirement for admins. Should we desysop them? --Gmaxwell 03:26, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

We should. Kjetil r 03:35, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

------>Commons talk:Administrators#Inactivity pfctdayelise (说什么?) 04:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Template:PD-Demis

The mail at de:Bild:Demis Bestätigung.gif can be read as a permission for non-profit use only and for pixel formats (GIF/PNG) only. Can I use their data to setup a commercial competing database with it? --Rtc 08:21, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I think you're casting a rather jaundiced eye on that email... which is good, since we should be covering all our bases with this sort of thing. It's definitely worth a follow-up asking if the permission includes vector files and if derivative works and commercial use are allowed. I don't think the email reads as permission only for those formats; I think the writer was saying that they request ("we always appreciate") attribution, and that "GIF/PNG etc" clearly refers to the list "GIF, PNG, BMP, JPEG, SWF" in the original email. But if there's any doubt, it's worth a follow-up. grendel|khan 14:28, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

When to use {{PD-old}} and when to use {{PD-US}}?

Consider Robert Toombs.pageantofamerica.jpg. It's an undated photo of a subject who died in 1885. If the photographer was 18 at the time, and lived to be 70, he would have died in 1937, and the photo would be PD-US, rather than PD-old. What's the date cutoff for something like this? Clearly works that were executed prior to 1800 are PD-old, for instance, but what's the cutoff? What's the guideline to use for when to tag PD-old and when to tag PD-US? grendel|khan 14:22, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I think we should eliminate our system of PD tagging and use Wikisource's because theirs is much better. --Gmaxwell 14:31, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Theirs is, however, heavily US-centric (being the en wikisource and all). For instance, I think the only reason we can't upload the pre-1909 works of Alfons Maria Mucha is that they're still under copyright in their countries of origin--since they're certainly not copyrighted in the US. I'm still a bit puzzled by the rules here, and will probably be starting another thread later on to figure out how to deal with works like early Picassos and such which are PD in the US, but not elsewhere. grendel|khan 13:01, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Re: Picasso: please don't. See [3] on the copyright on Picasso's works in the U.S. (The entry for "Chicks of Avignon".) In general, upload works that are only PD in the U.S. at the en-WP, not here. Lupo 13:13, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

This would all be much, much easier if COM:L were clearer. The first footnote over there states that while Commons wants media "that can be used by anyone, for any purpose", but it doesn't specify who "anyone" is, or where a work must be PD in order to be uploaded at the Commons. Is it policy that works must be PD both in their country of origin and in the US to be uploaded here? Even if I go to a museum in the US and photograph a painting (or scan an art book published here in the US), and upload it from my computer (in the US) to the Wikimedia servers (in the US), it's unacceptable if the painting was created somewhere else and is under copyright there; is that what you're saying? If that's the Commons licensing policy ("PD-US is only for works created in the US"), it should be made clearer on COM:L. (Is that also the policy on the English Wikipedia, or should I just go ask there?) Also, I see from the Hirtle chart that if paintings are considered unpublished until they're printed in an art book or distributed as posters (or somesuch), then Picasso's works are Life+70 in the US (and thus not PD). On the other hand, many of Mucha's works were widely copied and distributed, being posters, so those would fall into the pre-July 1, 1909 'published outside the US' category, and are thus PD-US and can be uploaded to en-WP, right? (I may try to look into what this means for Mucha's paintings made in the 1930s becoming PD-US on January 1, 2010 later, but this is all making my head hurt a bit.) grendel|khan 18:54, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

1. Yes, the rule here is that works uploaded to the commons as PD must be PD in the country of origin and in the U.S. That is spelled out quite clearly at COM:L#Material in the public domain.
2. Therefore, we apply {{PD-US}} only to U.S. works.
3. At the en-WP you may use {{PD-US}} also for foreign works, if you can show that they were published before 1923.
4. To determine whether a foreign is really PD in the U.S., you have take into account the URAA. If the foreign work was copyrighted in its country of origin on the URAA date (January 1, 1996 in most cases), it may have had its copyright restored in the U.S.

HTH, Lupo 07:52, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Image move request

I recently created two maps of the south-eastern Mediterranean region - Image:Israel annotated topographic.jpg and Image:Israel.png. Unfortunately there seems to be some confusion on the English Wikipedia about the categorisation of these images, due to the filenames. Could someone please move them to Image:Southeast mediterranean annotated geography.jpg and Image:Israel and palestinian territories map.png respectively? They're quite widely linked from the English Wikipedia but I'm happy to update the links myself. Thanks in advance. -- ChrisO 19:41, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Please see COM:FAQ#Technical_questions under "How can I rename/move an image or other media file?" The CheckUsage tool shows that the second image is used on other wikis as well, which will have to be addressed before deletion. You might also consider en:Wikipedia:Bot requests rather than doing the re-linking work manually. —LX (talk, contribs) 20:02, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer. Actually the second image is only used on the English Wikipedia - the other wikis appear to be pointing to an image of the same name which was deleted some time ago. -- ChrisO 20:03, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Once you upload both under the new name, I'll be happy to tell orgullobot to replace the old image names with the new ones rather than you doing it manually. Yonatan ^talk 05:27, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

March 28

{{Personality rights}}

I am posting here to see if adding this template to all photos that are under categories such as Category:1945 births, starting with whichever year we decide, would be a good idea. It's highly likely most of these people are still alive or recently died and it's a pretty good way of finding pictures that need this template. Of course, it'd also get some pictures that maybe shouldn't have this template on them. Yonatan ^talk 10:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

<EC>:@Yonatanh, though I appreciate your commitment to this issue, I would recommend to stop adding this template indiscriminately to all portrait images without considering the ongoing discussion about the german version of that template [4] and the criticism of its current content [5]. -- Túrelio 10:51, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this template is a good idea. We don't remind about legal responsibility for breaking copyright laws, but just say, what license is given. Many juristictions give special protection to state and religious symbols: should we give them similar warning template? We are not caretakers for our users: if they're adult people, they are also legally responsible for their own actions. A.J. 10:45, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, we already have {{Insignia}} and {{Nazi symbol}}. -- Bryan (talk to me) 10:48, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

If you don't like the actual idea of the template you're welcome to discuss that, however I was under the impression that this template has already been accepted. In addition, I don't see why we shouldn't help out our users a little more if we can and help them avoid messy legal situations that can be caused by this sort of stuff. Yonatan ^talk 12:54, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Since it would apply to everyone, seems kind of pointless, like tagging all jpegs as "jpeg". Stan Shebs 13:02, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Not really as not all photos on commons are those of living people. If you feel this way maybe you should nominate it for deletion... Yonatan ^talk 13:12, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Let me clarify that, only nominate it for deletion after we've discussed the matter further here and after you got Kelly and gmaxwell to comment on why the template was created in the first place as I believe they were its initiators. Yonatan ^talk 13:13, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the template is a good idea and it seems to me tagging all births from a certain cutoff date would be a start. Since the template is new, and many contributors are probably not used to it, it would be a good way to get them used to it. Your message reminded me of this Image:Afghan girl Pashtun.JPEG which was recently used for a en:WP FA. While our use of it is fine, I think it's a good idea to remind people of her personality rights (even if it's a concept she doesn't understand and probably doesn't exist in Afghani law at the moment) and I've added the template. Nil Einne 12:02, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Harry Potter Fan art

I have listed Harry Potter Fan art for deletion. It has been suggested that more publicity is a good idea, so am posting it here. Please do not comment here, but on the deletion request. -- Bryan (talk to me) 12:23, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Picture frames

What we should do with such images? {{PD-Art}} could not be applied to frames. There are many other similar images in Franz Xaver Winterhalter, Category:Franz Xaver Winterhalter. --EugeneZelenko 15:56, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

If we have to I suppose we can crop out the frames even though it's fairly obvious that the actual painting is the focus of the photo so I think at least some judges would take that into consideration and rule in the same way as Bridgeman vs. Corel but somebody more qualified than me should probably comment. Yonatan ^talk 16:05, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

In the past I think we just cropped them. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 04:14, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Are frame designs protected by copyright in the first place? It seems a bit dubious to me. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 07:12, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

What's wrong

What's wrong with this: Image:Flag of Dilbeek.svg? - Warddr 16:09, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

And now this too Image:Ansuz1.svg

The second image contains a link to "C:\Documents and Settings\Ward\Bureaublad\Inkscape-0.45-2.win32\Ansuz1.gif". in it which probably is why it doesn't work. Similarly the image contains a link to "...\Flag_of_Dilbeek.png" /Lokal_Profil 17:49, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

TKX - Warddr 11:15, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

How to close account

How do I close my Commons account and delete the personal information stored here? LittlePete 17:58, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Your user page has been deleted by FrancoGG. -- Bryan (talk to me) 18:04, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there's no way to close an account. About the personal information, I deleted your userpage and all its subpages tagged with the speedydelete template. FrancoGG ^{( talk )} 18:08, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Please do NOT tag your images as speady delete. Once they have been dual licensed as GFDL cc-by-2.5 you cannot cange to a less free license afterwards. /Lokal_Profil 18:54, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

That licensing was not authorised by me, so was never valid. These images should be removed immediately. LittlePete 19:47, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

User:Dschwen has been altering the copyright and removing the speedy deletion requests that I have asserted over my images, which have been uploaded in error and without authorisation. Please arrange to stop this illegal activity, and arrange the speedy deletion of copyright images speedily. LittlePete 19:36, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, on one image so far. How is it that the licensing was not authorised by you? You uploaded and tagged the images? In any case its good that we are at least talking now. The speedydelete tag is inappropriate in this case, especially if used without any comment. What are we supposed to make of this situation? --Dschwen 19:49, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Mayday Mayday

Several users are asserting that I do not have the copyright over images of mine that have been uploaded without my authorisation. I did not upload these images and I have not rescinded my copyright on these images. Please stop users from messing with my copyright. Please delete these images forthwitjh. LittlePete 19:56, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Whan I'm reacting to is that the user states "These images were uploaded without my knowledge and without my authorisation and the license tags were inserted without my knowledge and without my authorisation." I.e. the user doesn't recognise that (s)he is in fdact the uploader which makes me suspicious. /Lokal_Profil 20:47, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Lokal has been altering the copyright and removing the speedy deletion requests that I have asserted over my images, which have been uploaded in error and without authorisation. Please arrange to stop this illegal activity, and arrange the speedy deletion of copyright images speedily. LittlePete 19:36, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Can we assume good faith, that this user was unaware of the terms when he uploaded? It has only been a few days, and we make allowances for short periods of time. Cary Bass ^demandez 20:44, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

What I'm reacting to is that the user states "These images were uploaded without my knowledge and without my authorisation and the license tags were inserted without my knowledge and without my authorisation." I.e. the user doesn't recognise that (s)he is in fact the uploader which makes me suspicious. /Lokal_Profil 20:48, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

If what the user is saying is true we should delete them as a copyright violation, because who uploaded the pics exactly? Maybe the account was compromised or is compromised now, either way "User:LittlePete" would not be an individual. I'd say delete at author request, due to misunderstanding of the free license. Is a little good faith too much to ask?--Nilfanion 20:53, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

The first image was uploaded on the same day as the account was registerd and is now marked as speedy. What worries me is the possiblity that the account was compromised at 17:50 today and that all of the users images will be deleted due to that. But do delete them if you believe it's the other way arround. /Lokal_Profil 21:00, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd still like to hear a clear statement from the user. What was it? Someone else had access to both your images and your login credentials? Were you just unaware of the consequences of the licensing? Same thing with the en.wp account. Anyway, looks like someone will have to rummage through the pickle-shelf in his local supermarket. Replacing those fairly decent pictures will sure strike a sour note. --Dschwen 23:15, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree. While we should try to respect our contributors wishes, people have to realise that they can't just turn the clock back. If for example, a user didn't realise the implications or just changed their mind, they should tell us. If a user claims their account was compromised when this seems surprising, we should at least ask for clarification first, especially given the possibility as Lokal pointed out that the account was compromised today Nil Einne 11:52, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

LittlePete uploaded http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=Image%3APickled_jalape%C3%B1os.jpg&timestamp=20070323144035 and http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=Image%3APickled_walnuts.jpg&timestamp=20070322181825 with free licenses and you then revoked these licenses. Which is actually not possible. I would say we should undelete these and similar images because the author/uploader changed his mind only five to six days later. --ALE! ¿…? 07:41, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with ALE and while very happy to assume good faith there is some history of this user misunderstanding aspects of other Wikis --Herby ^{talk thyme} 07:50, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

The complete deletion of the LittlePetes contributions with the discussion still going on puzzled me a bit as well. There is a huge flip side to the story. Can commons be a reliable source of free media to its users, or will all potential third party users of media from commons now have to fear arbitrary license revocation? --Dschwen 08:10, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

The point raised is a good one (& I may have to deal with some of it on Books if they are deleted, some Cookbook photos will go). The idea that a license can be revoked on a whim is wrong, however, with this one and some others recently, I am not sure that the license was validly granted. I too would like to hear something from the user but given the fact that he has marked his own pages for deletion here and on other Wikis I doubt that will happen. In the end - to me - this is less revocation than the validity (understanding?) of the original licensing (while assuming good faith of course) --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:21, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

{{FOP}}

I created that, perhaps it is of use. --Rtc 20:08, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

But are "fair use" (USA) and "freedom of panorama" really on the same level? -- Túrelio 20:58, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Can we even use it? User:Zscout370 ^{(Return fire)} 03:55, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Of course fair use and freedom of panorama, as well as quotation, for example, are all on the same level: They permit use in certain cases even if no permission has been given by the copyright holder. I don't think that we should remove "fair-use-like", because it gives just the right idea. --Rtc 07:57, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it is not a good idea, because we do not allow work that fall under NC-FOP etc. -- Bryan (talk to me) 08:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

There is no "work that [per se] fall under NC-FOP". It is always the law of the country in which the photo is being distributed that is relevant, not the law of the country in which the photo has been made. A photo shot in Germany can be used only non-commercially in Armenia and is illegal in the US, and a photo shot in Armenia can be used for commercial purposes in Germany and is illegal in the US, a photo shot in the US can be used commercially in Germany and for non-commercial purposes in Armenia. The country of origin concept exists exclusively concerning copyright expiry, not concerning FOP or any other details of the copyright law. Apart from copyright expiry, a work is always protected according to the law of the country of use, not according to the law of the country of origin. See the decision Hundertwasserhaus, where selling a photo in Germany that had been shot in Vienna, Austria, and was legal according to the less strict FOP there, was deemed as a copyright violation in Germany. --Rtc 11:14, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Rtc, you know too much ;-). Still confused but on a far higher level.(just joking) -- Túrelio 10:24, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

March 29

Checkuser?

What evidence is usually necessary if I want to request a checkuser on two users I suspect could be sockpuppets? Nil Einne 11:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Thumbnails and large version problem

Hi there. For some reason thumbnails are not appearing on the Maps of Japan page. Some thumbnails are displayed but some are not.

Also, when I try to download some of the large resolution versions of the files I am presented with the following error:

   * Unable to forward this request at this time.
This request could not be forwarded to the origin server or to any parent caches. The most likely cause for this error is that:
   * The cache administrator does not allow this cache to make direct connections to origin servers, and
   * All configured parent caches are currently unreachable. 

For example, clicking on the image on Image:Japan_Akita_large.png takes me to [6] which gives me the error above.

Thanks in advance for any assistance, Bobo12345 11:29, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Seems fine to me. Could be on your side (is it possible to disable your proxy server?) or could be a temporary problem Nil Einne 12:28, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

The same thing happens to me. I suspect it's a problem with a Wikimedia proxy server (which is yf1009.yaseo.wikimedia.org in my case), although I can't get a handle on why some images are resized properly while others aren't. (I'm using an anonymous proxy server to work around the problem for now.) YooChung 12:37, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Fine here, although there are some images in that gallery that do not exist. I am connecting via knams. -- Bryan (talk to me) 14:21, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried purging? Nil Einne 15:55, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I have the same problem in Category:National_Chiao_Tung_University and zhwiki. Purging is in vain. --Jnlin 19:07, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, purging doesn't work for me either. If it is a problem with a Wikimedia server, who should I get in touch with? Bobo12345 00:35, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure (i.e. you should check further) but I think normal practice would be to make a bug report (if one doesn't already exist). [7]. Nil Einne 11:00, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

A Wikimedia adminstrator has fixed the problem, so the images should load now. (Many thanks to the administrators for their hard work.) YooChung 13:52, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Do not delete "superseded" images!

I have moved the discussion from Commons:Village pump to Commons talk:Deletion requests/Superseded. The discussion became too long and to crowded. So please continue here a civil discussion without personal attacks. Thank you, -- Bryan (talk to me) 18:23, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

• I've proposed one iterim partial solution resulting from a note on my talk about the ability to cure the problems with these SVGs. This would put more eyes on the problems I've seen, and can only aid improvement and reliability sooner. Please see: this there. // FrankB 18:53, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

March 30

Image:Lord Ram.jpg

Never mind, I made a deletion request on Commons:Deletion requests/2007/03/30 Even though its more of a discussion, asking for advise. Oh well, --Spundun 02:21, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Missing search box

I missed since two days the search box. I use IE. Know somebody how to solf it?

Screen dump

Rasbak 06:44, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Isn't that the search box in the upper righthand corner of the screenshot? —Angr 07:30, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Please crop your image so it doesnt' display parts of XP interface. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:L#Screenshots or we wil lhave to delete it (the search is missing in other browsers as well, from what I've told, it's a bug cuased by some technical changes). You could have pointed people to look at Special:Newimages as well :\ -- Drini 07:44, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

angr, that's the "site" serach, not the "newimages" search, it shows there since he's not using monobook, the one you see it's the one on the left sidebar, the one it's missing should go top of images on monobook -- Drini 07:46, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments, but I use always monobooks.Rasbak 08:50, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I can see it in classic but not in monobook.Rasbak 09:01, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

The search box in Special:Newimages has been removed and is not likely to return anytime soon. Sorry. Best use Mayflower. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 07:44, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

That's REALLY bad news. Mayflower is no use to filtering newimages, (or searching within new images) as Mayflower cannto restrict by time. -- Drini 23:17, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Um, the default ordering in Mayflower is "newest first"... --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 00:29, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

On the search box we could put "pdf" to filter new pdfs. We can't do that on mayflwoer. We can't even search for "pdf". -- Drini 15:02, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

It is terrible. I can't find pictures which are not categorized. For an encyclopdy this search box must be back.Rasbak 09:52, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Freedom of panorama update

It's just come to my attention that the PRC has Commons:Freedom of panorama. I sure hope that photos of statues in the PRC haven't been deleted on 3-D copyright grounds. To prevent possible mistakes like that, is there any comprehensive list we could consult other than on our own pages?--Pharos 07:10, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean a comprehensive list of which countries have what kind of freedom of panorama? I believe our list is the only attempt at creating such a comprehensive list. Note, however, that COM:FOP is an incomplete list yet. Lupo 07:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Note that whether the statue (or whatever) is located in PRC or not is irrelevant. The law applies to where the photo is used rather than were it is taken. A photograph of a statue taken in a public place in the United States, where freedom of panorama would not apply, can be freely used in countries which DO allow freedom of panorama. Thus, nobody should have been deleting photos of 'statues in the PRC' even if PRC didn't have freedom of panorama. --CBDunkerson 11:39, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

So Commons has a policy not to delete any statue photos because they might be legal somewhere? I don't think that's been practiced in the past, but then I haven't been following things too closely...--Pharos 05:39, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

It is not like CBDunkerson sais. --ALE! ¿…? 07:28, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what Commons policy on this is - just that copyright law, with a few exceptions, applies to where the copy is to be USED rather than to where it was CREATED. Thus, what country the photo was taken in should play no part in determining whether it can be kept or not. It could be argued that since some countries don't recognize copyright at all that Commons should accept ALL images on the grounds that they are 'free' in those countries... but that obviously isn't the Commons policy. We allow some images which are 'free' or 'free for some uses' in some countries and 'unfree' in others, but I haven't seen a clear explanation of where the line gets drawn. Does Commons allow images which qualify for panorama freedom in ANY of the countries listed at COM:FOP (essentially any picture of a fixed object taken on 'public property')? Only those images which qualify for panorama freedom in ALL of those countries (essentially just pictures taken in outdoor public spots which are focused on some other object but happen to have copyrighted buildings in the background)? Or photos which qualify in some unspecified mix of countries? Does the fact that the Commons servers are located in Florida mean that Commons has to abide by US copyright law? I don't know, but country of origin shouldn't be a factor. --CBDunkerson 10:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Interwikis on images to Wikipedia articles?

On Image:T-Rex2.jpg a user added interwikis to w:Tyrannosaurus and other language Wikipedias (about 30) [8]. I removed them twice [9] with edit summaries delete interwiki from image: should not be on the image and emoving interwiki to Wikipedia articles. These should go to Tyrannosaurus rex. Imo it is quite absurd to add interwikis to images, but is there any policy or consensus on it? Siebrand 07:28, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

We've had that before and the general consensus was no. -- Bryan (talk to me) 08:53, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Just to be sure: "The consensus was that interwikis to articles should not be added to images"? Please provide a link if you have one. Siebrand 10:44, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

You can find one discussion from March 17 higher up on this village pump. /81.232.105.96 13:32, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Bots

I wanted to know if there is a bot for massive SVG uploads: I give it a code to write a greek letter in a SVG image, for example, but instead of the letter somethinbg like "<pseudo>from α to γ</pseudo>", or some human who has a bot that can make this, well operated. Any?--This comment was posted by Nethac DIU, who again forgot to sign because of getting used to forums... 30 Mar, 15:42

Why would we want images for that? Just use the character in a big font. :) Like this: Γ--Gmaxwell 15:45, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Not everyone has every font installed. especially in public libraries for example. It would be annoying to read an article about w:alpha and not be able to see a picture of it to confirm at least. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 07:46, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Both of you are right. But the character in a big font is still useful in common fonts, I think (Times New Roman... or isn't that in other OS?). But we're going off-topic...

I know there is a program to upload massive photos, but I was thinking in a way to get a bunch of images automatically created and sent (or something close to that). Any tool I can use?

—Nethac DIU, ¡¿?!—
21:18, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

It could be possible to write some command line script to do this in *nix, but I don't know one off hand. Sorry. You might need to pick the brain of a unix-guru. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 05:08, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

March 31

Category request

I'm not the best at sorting through the Commons' category system. There are some categories we could use, but I'm not sure where to fit them in the hierarchy.

This came up because I added an image of a taco truck and had no obvious place to put it. I suspect we have other taco trucks, etc. In Category:Ice cream we have lots of images of ice cream trucks (but no category to pick them out). I'm not sure what to call a top-level category of vehicles that serve food (and how this should relate to pushcarts, which also lack a category). In any case, the hierarchy should not start at trucks, because taco buses and taco trucks, both common, should end up together. - en:Jmabel | talk 02:49, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Category:Food vehicles? How interesting :) --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 07:45, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

We could use that, though it seems like a neologism. Is that OK? - en:Jmabel | talk 19:01, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Edit request for Image:Achtung.png

Could a sysop change the {{redundant}} template to this: {{SupersededSVG|Achtung.svg}}

 Done --EugeneZelenko 14:50, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

What am I supposed to do ?

Hi everyone. Yesterday I uploaded a picture about HMCS Terra Nova canadian war ship (HMCS Terra Nova.jpg), coming from English wikipedia portal (This picture was only available on this portal and not on the Commons one. I wanted to fix this in order to let this picture available for anyone else, especially for me cause I'm translating articles from english to french). Problem is I saw there was a fair use, in fact an approval from creator to use it into Wikipédia, and it was clearly mentionned by the user who inserted it into english Wikipedia. So, even if I thought it may be an issue on Commons, I uploaded this picture and tried to put the more information possible, including original license and comments. My thought right after was in fact "ok, someone on Commons will ask me something about it"......but I never imagined it would be deleted without any notice !!!!! I even didn't receive any message on my talk page.........not really nice. May someone can explain me exactly why it had been deleted ? Thanks in advance.......Scorpius59 (Discuss) 21:44, 31 March 2007 (CET)

I presume you are talking about en:Image:HMCS Terra Nova.jpg. The upload page makes clear which freedoms must apply to images uploaded to Commons – freedoms which are not granted for the image in question. It also says clearly: If you do not provide suitable license and source information, your file will be deleted without further notice. And that's what happened, because fair use is not a suitable licence (in fact, it's not a licence at all). (Honestly, the image isn't appropriate on English Wikipedia either, because it fails the first criterion of the fair use policy.) —LX (talk, contribs) 20:12, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid that Commons doesn't accept fair use images - only images with a free licence. Please see Commons:Licensing.--MichaelMaggs 20:14, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for this quick reply...I understand now why I didn't receive anything (thanks for this clarification). By the way, it's really a shame we can't use that kind of picture cause originator granted the use of it !!! (see english wiki page to look at originator's message copied by uploader) So where's the problem ? There's no copyright violation here...It may be something to discuss about in the future cause we really limit our action range if we exclude that kind of picture....Scorpius59 (Discuss) 22:35, 31 March 2007 (CET)

We are trying to create a free media repository. Here free means free for anybody, for any purpose. For more information, see Commons:Licensing and freedomdefined.org. -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:48, 31 March 2007 (UTC)