Commons:Village pump/Archive/2008/08

Image:SE Tower Bourscheid (1).jpg

Any idea whether this image I just uploaded is okay from the personality rights angle? In the lower part, two kids ran into the image just as I was about to shoot the picture, one of them is recognisable. I have no idea who the kids are etc.--Caranorn (talk) 14:40, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Same problem with Image:Stolzemburger House Bourscheid.JPG, I have another picture of that building, but the kids got into it as well. This time both are recognisable.--Caranorn (talk) 16:06, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Since the kids are not portrayed in a derogatory and since they are not the main topic of the image and since the castle is (I assume) a public place, commons should not be concerned about this image. Put a PR warning template in the image page, that's it. --Dschwen (talk) 17:54, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok, done and thanks.--Caranorn (talk) 20:59, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

If you want, I can take a shot at removing them from the picture. It doesn't look too hard -- half an hour with the "clone" tool should give a decent result. --Carnildo (talk) 22:26, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

That would be a good idea, if you could. —Giggy 23:11, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Done. Not the best work I've ever done -- someone looking for it can see where a section of stonework is duplicated -- but not bad. --Carnildo (talk) 06:25, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Yep, nicely done. Thanks.--Caranorn (talk) 10:53, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

"Next" and "previous" - navigation templates for viewing images

When images have some sort of linear order, e.g. figures in the order they appear in a book, it would be nice to be able to navigate easily using 'previous' and 'next', with these preferably being placed right above the image itself (so as to be hard to miss. But is this possible? Could it be if it is not now?). I think a template would be the best way to achieve this. I note that we do have {{Previous}} and {{Next}}, though these don't look that great (it's not immediately obvious what the arrows mean/do; something like 'next' or 'next image' would be more clear than '>>'. Perhaps these templates themselves could be modified to allow a custom appearance, but a new one might be necessary. I have used them as an example on Image:Darwin Drosera rotundifolia 4.jpg, which doesn't look that great. Maybe someone good with templates could come up with an improvement? This feature would have potential for a range of images, provided there is some natural order to them. It could even, optionally, include small thumbnails of the next and previous images. Richard001 (talk) 00:24, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I've just created this template Template:PrevNext for you, which might do the job, but its not tested at all, and does not cater for the first and last images in a series. --Inkwina (talk • contribs) 20:20, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

That's a good start. It seems not to work well with templates below though; they appear to the right of it and not below it. An exception needs to be made for images that are the first or last in the series too. Richard001 (talk) 00:06, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Derivative work licensing

I have a few photographs of works of art taken in the UK and Ireland. Some of the art is old and out of copyright; some is in copyright but located in a public place and covered by freedom of panorama. I want to make the photographs "as public domain as possible". I'm having a lot of trouble understanding which license tags I should use for this. The licensing tags on existing images seem confusing and inconsistent. For example, Image:Venus_de_Milo_edited.jpg, which is used as an example in COM:DW, is tagged simply {{self|cc-by-sa-2.5}}. There's no mention of the copyright status of the original work. Of course "everybody knows" that the Venus de Milo is in the public domain, but this leaves me unclear what to do in less obvious cases, like a sculpture whose artist died 70 years ago. Is there a tag combo I should use for that? {{PD-self}}{{PD-old}} sounds right from the template names, but the actual text of Template:PD-old refers to "this image or other media file", making it sound like it's talking about the photograph, while Template:PD-self refers to "this work", making it sound like it might be talking about the sculpture. COM:DW makes a big deal about the difference between copyright on the original work and copyright on the derivative work, which I understand because it is a big deal, but the license tags seem deeply confused on the same issue. There should be a completely separate set of tags for copyright on depicted artwork and every photograph of a copyrightable work should have two tags, but I get the impression that in practice people are using one set of tags for both photographs and depicted artwork indiscriminately in their uploads. It would also be helpful if COM:DW gave help in choosing tags; right now it seems to be devoted to discouraging the Web generation from uploading random images they found on 4chan.

In the case of FOP images I found Template:FOP because it was used in an image (it's not mentioned in COM:FOP). I assume I should use this tag for the original-work copyright. But I don't understand the nature of my copyright on my photograph. Do I have the power to release my FOP photos "into the public domain" even though they're derivative of copyrighted works? What does "public domain" even mean in this situation? Is there a separate tag for this? Or does FOP automatically imply that I have no copyright control over my photographs to begin with, making the {{FOP}} tag sufficient? Even after reading COM:FOP I'm confused about this.

Thanks very much. -- BenRG (talk) 03:16, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Whenever you take advantage of freedom of panorama simply select one of the licenses for your own work and add {{FOP}} to it. You can also put your image into the public domain, if you want. The FOP warning is relevant to those who reuse your photograph to create other derivative works as there are, in dependence of the local law of the country of origin, restrictions that protect the depicted copyrighted work. In German law, for example, you are not allowed to modify the depicted copyrighted work in a derivative work. --AFBorchert (talk) 05:25, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

For the case of PD source material, add tags for the depicted image and your own work. Then, put a written clarification, like "Venus de Milo is PD while my photograph is CC-BY-SA". It's a little redundant but there's no better system at the moment. Superm401 - Talk 23:33, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Image copyright question

Policy question - are someone's recent images (eg, photo or website image) "out of copyright" because the thing that was photographed was created by someone who died over 100 years ago?

Example: Image:Y Gogledd.jpg - copied from this external web page - yes, the book is over 100 years old, but this isn't a copy from the book; this is a copy of someone's photograph of the book, and that photograph belongs to the creator of the photograph, and we can't use it without permission. Right?

I've just posted a similar note at the English Wikipedia Village Pump. Thanks in advance. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 21:51, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

See Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag. If the source work (e.g. old painting) is PD in the U.S. and source country, and the scan or photograph was done in the U.S., the image is clearly PD under U.S. law (see Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.). In other cases, it's more uncertain, and has been heavily debated here recently. For instance, if the photograph were taken in the U.K., it would likely be copyrighted. Superm401 - Talk 23:59, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I'm aware of the angst ongoing on this kind of topic; for websites, there is usually no way to know when/how/etc the image was created, or whether its a photo/scan/etc; and that varying international laws confound the situation; and that the various wiki's have differing views. I expect that I will stay with contributing to the commons and make only unambiguous contributions. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 00:20, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

August 2

Common Public License and derivative work

Hello,

I'm looking for tilesets to put in an article concerning tile-based games (like this one). I have been unable to find any websites which could give me free tilesets. Then, I have found Blades of Exile, a 1997 video game that has been released in the Common Public License in 2007 (source code + tileset and sound files). Does this license authorize me to import a picture composed of parts of the tileset files of the game ?

Français : Bonjour, je recherche des tilesets pour illustrer un article sur les jeux basés sur des tiles (comme celui-ci). N'ayant pas trouvé de sites offrant des tilesets libres de droit (en tout cas, pas sans inscription obligatoire), je me suis tourné vers Blades of Exile. Il s'agit d'un jeu de 1997 qui est passé du statut de logiciel propriétaire au statut de logiciel Common Public License en 2007 (code source + ressources). J'aimerais savoir si cette licence m'autorise à transférer sur Commons une image de ma création, composée d'une dizaine de tiles de chacun des tilesets du jeu.

Tachymètre ✉ 14:39, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

• Yes, it does. It appears the copyright holders have released all the game's data under that license. Beware of some games for which only the source code, not the graphics, has been released under a free software license; this, however, does not appear to be one of them. Be sure to read the license in question, and license your derivative work appropriately. Lewis Collard! (lol, internet) 16:08, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Thank you ! Tachymètre ✉ 17:00, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

August 3

Blanked pages and non-empty Category:Disambiguation categories

Could Blanked pages/categories and non-empty Category:Disambiguation categories be automatically placed in a special category? That would greatly simplify maintenance. Items in non empty Redirect and Disambiguation categories could be moved regurlarly by bots, so people would be informed about the redirects. Another solution would be when assigning such a cat to an image or gallery, that the system returns an error. --Foroa (talk) 07:39, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Blank pages, no. Non-empty disambig categories, yes. I'll start working on it. Maybe the Category redirect bot can do these too. Rocket000 (talk) 17:38, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Category:Non-empty disambiguation categories (give it a bit to fill up). Rocket000 (talk) 17:55, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Great. See how it goes. Runs every night ? --Foroa (talk) 08:18, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

When cleaning Category:Non-empty disambiguation categories on the end of the list, they disappear from the category. The cats in the beginning or middle of the list seem to stay on the list, even when they are no longer non-empty (Ajax, Acre, Boekel) and they category changes correctly to "disambiguation categories". A purge did not change the situation. --Foroa (talk) 09:27, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Nothing runs, it's all in the disambig template. Categories are very slow in updating if no edits to the page occur. (You can always null edit them—hit save without editing anything, it won't show up in the history but it will refresh.) Sometimes, before I do maintenance on these categories, I have a bot go through and null edit them all so the category is up to date. You can drop me note anytime you'd like this done. Rocket000 (talk) 15:43, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Works fine, the most important is to know how the systems responds (I noticed something similar with broken cat redirects). That was a great job.

Do you happen to have an idea if one could could make the generation of the lists of uncategorised galleries, images, cats, ... a bit more often. Now, it is every 3 days around 8 hours AM, so each time you get slammed with a long list of items and most contributors are gone by then. A new set of (shorter) lists every night might be easier to manage too. --Foroa (talk) 16:44, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh I wish! I used to bug the devs all the time to give us smaller wikis (i.e. not en.wp) updates once a day... no luck. Right now, my biggest complaint is that we haven't had a fresh database dump since June 15. I count on these to generate nearly all my lists. Templates and categories can only do so much. AWB's list maker can only do so much. Other than requesting SQL query I know of no other way to get up-to-date lists... unless someone can create a bot to tag uncategorized whatever as soon as it shows up on the recent changes list. I know en.wp has a couple bots that do similar. We do have a bot (I forget the name) that marks galleries without media for deletion a little after they're created, so it's not out of the question. We just need someone with the skills (not me) and the willingness to create a bot like this. Rocket000 (talk) 02:59, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Normally, those list generations happen every 3 days, but the previous was 3 and half days while the next was suddenly only 20 hours. Have the dev Gods been listening ?

The updates of those non-empty and broken redirect cats can take several days, which is very long if you work on it. I believe that an update can be forced by doing a dummy edit of the concerned templates. It would be nice if those cats would be updated at least once or twice a day. --Foroa (talk) 15:33, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, an edit to the template will not update the cats. The dummy edit has to be done to the category itself, but as I mentioned above, I have a bot that can dummy edit all the cats whenever you'd like. Just drop me a note before you do some maintenance work and I'll update them. Rocket000 (talk) 04:59, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

@Rocket000, you can always bug me for a fresh query. I do queries all the time. Multichill (talk) 17:18, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll likely be taking you up on that offer. ;) Thanks! Rocket000 (talk) 04:54, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Image redirects

amazing they work!

Are we using image redirects on commons? Should we? Would it make renaming Images easier? --Dschwen (talk) 19:16, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

To answer my last question: No they probably wouldn't. --Dschwen (talk) 19:17, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I found the one usage which I remembered above. The image shows two birds so the uploader created duplicates with each bird name, which then was replaced by a redirect: Image:Pycnonotus barbatus 0010.jpg. -- Cecil (talk) 20:16, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. The side effects should be checked though: what about a redirect accessed from another wikipedia, what about the double redirects, what about highjacking for example pictures of the days, FP's to a slogan or sex picture. This could simplify indeed picture of the day publishing and maintenance. --Foroa (talk) 06:31, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

The vandalism potential is minimal. Remember, the image has to be deleted before it can be redirected, so effectively, only administrators can do redirects. And even if this weren't the case, if someone wanted to replace an image with a sex picture, they can do that anyway by uploading another version of the file. In short, it doesn't create any problems that don't exist already.

We've been using image redirects on commons for a few months now, mainly for dealing with duplicates, so that all uses that CommonsDelinker can't get to don't have to be changed manually and so that different language projects can use file names in their own language. They work fine when accessed through other projects, except they don't leave as clear a trail; the link in the article will point to a different file name than the one in the markup, which can be a little confusing.--ragesoss (talk) 18:41, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

There is a bug report here, which you can vote for if you'd like image redirects to behave more like article redirects.--ragesoss (talk) 18:52, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

There is another bug report here for allowing image redirects to work without having to delete the images first (which would make renaming easier, among other advantages).--ragesoss (talk) 19:58, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

There is an experimental feature that allows images to be moved like any other page leaving behind a redirect, see e.g. [1]. MER-C 12:41, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

August 1

Bot or normal account for mass upload?

I plan to upload several dozen images at one go by using a script, based on the file upload script. Do I need to have a bot account for this? Nichalp (talk) 13:14, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Just use this little tool: Commons:Tools/Commonist --Michael Sch. (talk) 13:36, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I tried, but I got some strange output on User:Nichalp/gallery. No image was uploaded as a result. Nichalp (talk) 13:54, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Re original question: I'd recommend it; the only possible issue is RC flooding. --O (谈 • висчвын) 14:56, 03 August 2008 (GMT)

August 4

old upload form: content of field deleted

Argh... where's the old upload form? This one's a pain... (Yes, I'm sure it makes people more aware of what they should enter, but it's much slower for those who'd enter that anyways etc.) Is the old form still available somewhere?

Thanks, Ibn Battuta (talk) 02:50, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Oops, I found a related earlier discussion and am all set now. --Ibn Battuta (talk) 03:36, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

... but... for some reason the description field is deleted if you navigate away from the page (and then come back). Pleeease, that was really convenient when uploading several images with very similar descriptions!... Could you pleeeeease restore that function? Thanks. --Ibn Battuta (talk) 04:44, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Should be resolved now with this morning's update of the script. You my need to force a reload to update your browser's cache: shift-reload in Firefox, ctrl-reload in IE. Lupo 08:43, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I need help

I uploaded this picture [2] on wikipedia and then I uploaded it on commons [3] but on wikipedia it doesn't say "This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. The description on its description page there is shown below. Commons is a freely licensed media file repository. You can help." like the other pictures. Can somebody help me? I have nominated this picture for featured picture but I am really new at this so I am affraid I am doing things wrong. Daniel Chiswick (talk) 04:39, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

The local (EnWP) copy needs to be deleted for that message to come up. The Commons image will work fine on other projects even if it doesn't come up, though. —Giggy 04:40, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Well I can't just delete it because I nominated it for featured picture, what should I do? Daniel Chiswick (talk) 04:53, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry about it. :-) It'll work fine on every Wikimedia project regardless of its deletion status on EnWP. Good luck with the FP nom. —Giggy 05:08, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Even more than "don't worry about it", when an image is deleted from English wikipedia, if it has the same name here, it starts to display immediately there. Also, I am recounting experience which seemed like magic because I have no clue how that works -- but it always does. And, as I type this, hacking that occured to me (putting a different image here with the same name there) but the bot that does the deletion there is pretty good at checking here to make certain it is the same image, has the same license and the description contains the same words. If you would like the link to the instructions of how to request a deletion there, just mention it here. The template that appears on the image description upon adding the request for deletion is not ugly nor distracting (in my opinion). -- carol (talk) 08:50, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

English Wikipedia featured pictures are often taken from Commons; it is no impediment to have the en.wikipedia copy deleted. Powers (talk) 00:05, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Though en.wiki specific tags, such as en:template:FeaturedPicture, should be readded to the image description page after deletion. Just to nitpick... - BanyanTree 07:15, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Serious database bug/corruption

Resolvedon July 30, per Bugzilla

Symptom

After you make a regular edit to a page and save it, the page commited to database is completely empty. The page's history does show a correct byte size for your edit (thus proving you didn't do it), but the page saved to the database is actually 0 bytes.

Example

• Look at this page's history: On 12:49, 26 July 2008, user Mattes makes a small edit resulting in a page supposedly of "823 bytes" up from "821 bytes" (both per history).
• But when you look at the diff for the very same edit, you see the whole page's source disappearing.
• Similarly, inspecting the source of the "823 bytes" revision shows an empty edit box: the 823 bytes have never been committed to the database.

Note

I noticed this because of a weird "You have vandalized the content of Wikimedia Commons" message I saw on the talk page of a decent-looking user I was leaving a message to, and I looked into it to check if I was talking to some actual vandal...

62.147.38.237 18:28, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

See bugzilla:14933 for a longer discussion on this issue. --Dschwen (talk) 19:23, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, good to know it was only for a few days ;-) 62.147.38.237 20:07, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Search box suggestion list width

We had a discussion on the search box suggestion list width being to small. Most results are chopped off, especially if you are searching for categories (with the Category: prefix). I just made its width customizable. Check Special:Preferences on the Search tab (you might have to purge your browser cache. Enter a number in pixels (i.e. 400 works well for me) and click save. --Dschwen (talk) 19:26, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

That's great! I've just enabled it, although took me a while to figure out it was the "...AJAX..." property under the Search tab. 400 works fine for me to. Could it be the default value or would that annoy others? -- Slaunger (talk) 20:56, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Hm, no, but I could work on a reasonable default. The main point is that the list should not become to wide for certain devices. I could make it 400px, but cap it at the screen width. --Dschwen (talk) 21:43, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Rocket000 (talk) 09:29, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you and great. (I have a high resolution screen which forces me to use larger text fonts)

What is the default edit box width (so users have a reference, in pixelS I presume) ?

Could the search field internally be expanded so that a prefix such as c:target, i:target, g:target ... is expanded into category:target, image:target, gallery:target. That would save quite some typing effort.

If that works, I could generate many more ideas for search result presentation. --Foroa (talk) 10:56, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for great improvement! Is it possible to make it default width bigger? Was customization done in MediaWiki (for all projects) or custom JavaScript? --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:02, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

For now it's a commons exclusive ;-). I need a clever idea for calculating the default width. The original code takes the width of the textbox. You cannot go wrong with that. The problem will be small screen devices. Something like 2.0*textbox_width migth work. After all what's the big difference whether the search suggestions get clipped by too small a box or by too small a display :-). The whole mwsuggest.js should actually be reworked. It has its own event attach function. Yay code duplication. --Dschwen (talk) 15:38, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Instead of using a pixel width, using a multiplcation factor of the text box width (in my case, two to three is fine). --Foroa (talk) 16:27, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

August 5

I messed up really bad and I need help.

I was trying to nominate this picture [4] and I did something but I don't know what, can somebody help me? Daniel Chiswick (talk) 01:25, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I cleaned up your mess. In the future, please don't blank pages. Don't try to "delist" your own FPCs, just say you withdraw and people will stop voting. We archive things here. Don't withdraw if you're planning to nominate a duplicate even if it has a better name. Don't create FPC subpages with different names than the images. Welcome to Commons. :) Rocket000 (talk) 02:27, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Image names

What do I have to do to upload an image?!!! I've tried three different times to upload an image & changed the name each time, only to get a "same image" warning, when I know damn well neither the image nor the name is the same. And I'm getting a warning of "no copyright" despite addding the tag & reloading twice. This is getting to be a real pain in the ass. Trekphiler (talk) 01:56, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

FIVE TIMES. After CHANGING THE NAME EVERY TIME. FUCK COMMONS. Trekphiler (talk)

Whats the name of the image and which names did you try? --Martin H. (talk) 02:10, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

You should be able to upload over an existing image anyway shouldn't you? If there really isn't one there shouldn't be a problem. It's probably just some simple thing. You shouldn't say 'fuck Commons' - it will get offended. Richard001 (talk) 10:42, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

GM Motorama coin from 1954

I have found a 1954 GM Motorama coin. I would like to find out what they were made from in order to try cleaning it up it was sitting under a tree in the front yard today.

This is the wrong place to ask -- this area is for questions about uploading and classifying images. However, if you want to see a movie about the 1956 GM Motorama, look at en:Design for Dreaming... AnonMoos (talk) 08:42, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

The right place to ask would be w:Wikipedia:Reference desk. - Jmabel ! talk 04:03, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

EN WP should be brought in line with Commons in regards to "free"

It was brought up on EN here that WP's concept of "free" doesn't always match up to Commons. Ideally, no free images should be on WP as opposed to Commons, but if there are different concepts of this term that causes a problem. I will address this issue on EN, but I'm asking here to find out exactly what issue I'm addressing. Specifically, what sorts of images (besides "fair use", and PD-art for now) are acceptable on EN that are not here? Would this be something that can be fixed on EN to avoid these problems? Once this is clarified I would like to add a note to all licensing-tags that says whether-or-not it is acceptable on Commons. Is this reasonable? ~ JohnnyMrNinja 09:41, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

The main difference is that Wikipedia follows US law (the images have to be "free" in US) and Commons follows the law of US and country of origin. This way Wikipedia can host images based on uniquely US law concepts (like "fair use") and Commons can host images based on local copyright laws of 100's of individual countries.--Jarekt (talk) 13:31, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm a participant in the conversation over at en.wiki and there is a significant sense by some users that they simply won't upload to Commons because they feel jerked around by the different policies. I suppose there are two questions: (1) is there a list of the specific differences , e.g. "Commons considers photographs of sculptures derivative works, while en.wiki unofficially tolerates them" and "en.wiki allows PD-Italy, but this will get speedy deleted on Commons" anywhere so users can make informed decisions about if they want to upload to Commons, and (2) would an effort to discuss the policy disconnect be better located here or Meta? - BanyanTree 01:16, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

What about reversing the upload instead of simply deleting it here? If the image is being used on English wikipedia and is qualified to be there (or tolerated) but not here, how about an upload bot for images to English wikipedia? -- carol (talk) 02:15, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Image details

Hallo, I included my name on my first image upload Image:Irish Sport Horse foal and mare.jpg‎. I now want my name removed from the details. What do I do? Do I use badname|Image:new name.jpeg ? and I want my name taken out of the history. Does my User name (account) need to be deleted? Also the image name needs re-wording. - Culnacreann (talk) 22:22, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Upload a new version of the image at the same title, without your name in the description, and I'll delete the previous versions. If the title is wrong, use the {{Rename media}} template. It will be automatically renamed and replaced wherever it's used. Nice pic btw - Badseed ^talk 22:25, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I did my best to hide your real name. If this image needs to be renamed too, please upload it again with different name and add {{Duplicate}} to previous one. A.J. (talk) 18:58, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Even with admin buttons, I cannot remove your name from log though... I suppose you may want an office action here. A.J. (talk) 19:07, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

August 6

Incidental use of newspaper clippings

I have been uploading copyright expired and copyright not renewed magazine pages. For the copyright not renewed pages, I only upload articles written by the magazine staff. It is unlikely that the Managing Editor would claim his writing was not a "work for hire".

I few years ago I spoke with the person who owns the copyrights for Gernsback Publications and Ziff-Davis Publishing's old electronics magazines. He said these publishers never renewed the copyright on magazines. I have checked about 50 issues and he was right. I have no doubt the magazines from the 1920s and 1930s were not renewed and are in the public domain. On two pages I have uploaded have newspaper clippings. On Image:Radio News Nov 1928 pg412.png there is a montage of newspaper clippings. I have blurred the text on the clippings. I still want to show the 1928 television broadcast was covered in the press but I don't need to show all of the text. The headlines are clear so readers could go to a library and look up the articles.

A second item on this page is the radio schedule. It was prepared for the newspaper by the staff of Experimenter Publishing's WRNY radio station. The list of facts is not creative enough to merit a copyright and if it did, it would belong to Experimenter Publishing not the various newspapers it was printed in. (The magazine and radio station were both owned by Experimenter Publishing.)

The next page Image:Radio News Nov 1928 pg413.png has a large clipping which I covered with a copyright notice. The article is in the New York Times archive which is available in most libraries.

Have the newspaper clippings been reduced to incidental portions that do not infringe on possible copyrights? These pages will be used in an article on WRNY's first television broadcast. -- Swtpc6800 (talk) 05:07, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Category descriptions are too mess

I think category descriptions are too mess. All languages are visible directly so Category descriptions seem too long. and there're some difficulties to access the categories. I propose to show only chosen language (like Meta-Wiki).--Kwj2772 ^{Disc. kowiki.} 14:18, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Can you give an example of what you mean? -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 16:56, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Probably means pages like Category:Félix_Houphouët-Boigny... AnonMoos (talk) 02:54, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I have made some "messy ones" recently, but taxonomy was messy long before commons existed. That being clearly stated (my messing of categories) it would be really really nice if the translations could be managed in a way that the language which is the option in the preferences is the language that displays. -- carol (talk) 03:34, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) We need some "show/hide" templates like the ones on English Wikipedia. See w:Template:Hidden and w:Template:Navbox. Click the show/hide links to see how they work.

I don't think the show/hide template on the commons is the same as the one on Wikipedia. See {{Hidden}}. I do not see "show/hide" text on the commons template. I only see arrowheads. --Timeshifter (talk) 06:48, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I think the coolest thing would be that the presentation defaulted to the description in the preferred language with a fall-back to a default language, like en, if the localized language is not available.

All this should be wrapped in an expandable container, where all localized versions can be seen. For instance, I have set the preferred language to en (because it is the language where most information is available), but it is not my native language. I would like the possibility to see all langanges in case I feel like translating a descriptionfrom en to my native language.

The user asking this question mentioned that localized templates are used at meta. Could an example of from meta be given, to get a better understanding of the possibilities? -- Slaunger (talk) 08:37, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

MetaWiki is now using <div class="multilingual"> on Metapub and Babel(not user language templates) header.--Kwj2772 ^{Disc. kowiki.} 13:49, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Please see also:m:Meta:Language select.--Kwj2772 ^{Disc. kowiki.} 02:43, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I tried looking at Meta:Babel as an example, and I must say the functionality is fine there with filtering out all languages bu the selected or showing all languages. Could the same thing be made available on Commons? -- Slaunger (talk) 10:03, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Looks good, but this is only for relatively small texts, otherwise load time will becomme too much. In the example case, I would always display the English text as a reference and in the user language if non-English. (I fundamentally distrust translations). Moreover, it would be interesting if the same text can be reused at several subcat pages (for example, churches, churches in country, churches in city. --Foroa (talk) 10:32, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Ugly (xC, yF)

Is it just me, but does anyone else find the recent changes to the way categories are listed with the number of sub categories and files a category possesess rather un-neccessary ,cluttered and just down right ugly. The simple cross after the category, was sufficient to show that the category was populated. Is there anyway to switch of this newly added and to me un-welcome feature. KTo288 (talk) 10:07, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Interesting & got me thinking. I think it depends who you are and what you want.

As an Admin I know how depressed to be when looking at Speedy deletion categories for example :)

As someone who has done some work on trying to make cats "better" it is quite handy to get an idea of overpopulation/depth of sub cats from a higher level I think. At least I know where to take a look for problems/issues.

As the "person" in the street looking for some media I think it may not be all that helpful. Just my 0.02. Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:40, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Even as a normal user, although it is ugly indeed, it is interesting to see upfront if there are deeper categories. I think the display can be improved using a smaller font and omitting the real ugly (empty) display. Maybe suppression of unneeded spaces (6C instead of 6 C) can make it even more dicrete. --Foroa ( ) 10:59, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

The duch wikipedia has found a very nice gadged: look f.i. at nl:Categorie:Kasteel and just point to a category, you will see a window opening with the category tree and recent changes given. This permits a quick textual run, very plaisant to use. Is it possible to extend this to commons? Havang ( ) 11:48, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I had some problems recently with a user who did not understand a development situation and in a not so much of a problem situation, I pointed out to a developer that the wiki software knows when a category is empty so it should be at least doable to write something that puts the empty categories into one place. The idea of "Empty categories" also seems to violate a tradition here which may or may not have been acquired from other wiki -- I don't know. There are two situations that I can think of right now in which empty categories are useful. 1) In using the software as a database more than just an image container and 2) a means to know of images that commons still needs. Functionality perhaps is first and then beauty second and then a third review which makes beautiful also easy to use.... -- carol (talk) 23:32, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, the categorisation tradition from other wikipedias is not necessarily good. We see on many Wikipedias significant categorisation growth. Strangely enough, empty categories are extremely useful. In addition to what Carol stated, I have to add that when having prepared (complex) categories, such as in species but equally in towns, names of famous people, birth years, ... people that bring in pictures find much more easily what they needed, so less mistakes and less re-(-re(-re))categorisation and renaming work. Moreover, a novice in categorisation makes many mistakes and incomplete or new redundant/parallel categorisation schemes. --Foroa (talk) 07:36, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

hotcat and kin suggest existing categories? -- carol (talk) 08:48, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I tend to think that the more info the better but the C and F are darn UGLY. I think that especially here on commons aesthetics is pretty important. Can the letters be replaced by Icons? Probably Icons that keep in style with these would fit in nicely. --Inkwina (talk • contribs) 06:30, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

If you can make the icons and think about what would look better and perhaps style page enhancements there should be a time for this. Giving the people who write software a little time to get acquainted with these new values so that they can get ideas for things to do with them should be time not wasted, I think -- especially seeing what some have done recently. Three million images is an appealing collection to work with software-wise; allow the appeal to "ripen" before the beautification begins? When the time is right, to be able to drop a style sheet into place (or have a collection that makes a choice for preferences) would be very cool, in my opinion. Number crunchers tend to think the opposite than you, btw. That the numbers displayed are beautiful and the icons that cover them are ugly. I don't think that either view is particularly correct or incorrect; I do think that a little time with the numbers now should be good in the long run. -- carol (talk) 08:48, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree on functionality comes before beauty, we just discussed the need for more categories here, the empty cats are handy for the bots uploading to common, if you want to control the structure or do a human check just mark "don't show empty categories", part of the maintenance can be autofollowed from the EN cat maintenance. It's different from the image search approach (where location doesn't matter) but it gives better acces to images related to experts on the subject. Mion (talk) 14:36, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Some icons that could work: P ⇒ , F ⇒ , C ⇒ OR empty: and not empty: . Just got to tweak em a bit to make them like MediaWiki's (desaturate and fix the proportions). Similar ones on Mini icons and Silk icons. Rocket000 (talk) 23:17, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Are user-created drawings of team-specific sportswear fair use?

E.g. Special:Contributions/Buonaparte69. --BrokenSphere 17:46, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I can imagine trademark issues, but it's hard to imagine a copyright issue. - Jmabel ! talk 23:02, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

August 7

Can you identify The Artist

who created Image:Firenze.Duomo.painting03.JPG...thank you.

Photo by user:JoJan --Jarekt (talk) 17:32, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Very funny, I think he meant the artist of the painting in the picture. –Anzee^TM 12:15, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Downloading SVG files

Whenever I download an SVG file, it gets saved as .svg.png. Removing the .png makes it unusable. It seems that everything I download loses its nodes/ vector aspect. Can anyone offer any information as to why? Thanks. Seegoon (talk) 17:27, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

What works for me is: click on the image and go to file/save page as menu than you can easily save original svg code. --Jarekt (talk) 17:38, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Svg images are always rendered as png by the software. What you see in the image description page or in an article is not the svg, but a png version of it. So, (in Firefox) if you "save image as" you save the rendered png file (thus removing the png makes it unusable, since it's a png and if you take its extension away it dies :) ). You should right-click on the image and "Save link as...". The same can be done with the name of the image just under the image itself in the descr. page (right click and "Save link as") - Badseed ^talk 17:55, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

You boys are geniuses. Seegoon (talk) 21:05, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Voting Suffrage discussion

Spin off from SB Johnny's Checkuser election, for Commons regulars to decide if a policy change is needed, seen here. rootology (T) 02:05, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Broken image?

Image:Eastside Townhouse exterior.jpg. Can't get it to show; don't know whether the problem might be on my end. Stumbled across it because I was trying to refine the over-general Category:Architecture. - Jmabel ! talk 22:18, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

It seems to be showing fine on my end, try clearing your cache? rootology (T) 22:39, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

no, can't see it. Maybe it is some problem with IE im using. --Martin H. (talk) 22:59, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I've the same problem, even after clearing the cache of IE 7. After downloading the file, IrfanView info said for Compression: jpg, CMYK. The latter is rather strange, may be that's the reason for the problem. --Túrelio (talk) 07:00, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I saved it locally out of IrfanView without any special options and uploaded it over the original one. The strange CMYK tag was gone and the image is shown normally. --Túrelio (talk) 07:04, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Works for me now. Thanks. - Jmabel ! talk 14:26, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like the image was stored using CMYK colors rather than the standard RGB. Those are rare, so it's not surprising that Internet Explorer doesn't handle it properly. --Carnildo (talk) 21:22, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

August 8

Picasa images

Hi! I am new here and I have a question: is it possible to upload pictures from Picasa Web Albums to Commons? Are there any guidelines for it? Many thanks! --Istvánka (talk) 10:57, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I think only in cases where album folder claims authorship and license images under licenses compatible with Commons:Licensing. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:39, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Removing my files from commons

Hi. A friend asked me how he can remove files he uploaded to commons. No copyvio or anything - he just wants them removed (sorry, didn't find it in the FAQ or related pages). How (if at all) can he do that? A standard RfD? Eranb (talk) 10:27, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Do you have any idea how you can withdraw something that has been donated to the public domain ? Would you find it acceptable that the public domain decreases in stead of increasing. --Foroa (talk) 11:23, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I understand your point. It might be beneficial to write something about this in one of the FAQs (or is there already an entry about this somewhere?). Eranb (talk) 11:50, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

All reasons for deletion are described in the Commons:Deletion guidelines, for the deletions of own uploads see the last sentence of Commons:Ownership of pages and files. --Martin H. (talk) 13:53, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

It is not illegal to withdraw your contribution and there are rules about changing its mind and undo transactions. So I propose to add on Commons:Ownership of pages and files a sentence like: If an uploader changes its mind about an uploaded image he has the right to withdraw it within a term of "n" days after uploading. Havang (talk) 07:07, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Or how about we just use our judgment and not pile on more rules. :/ Lewis Collard! (lol, internet) 13:39, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

What Lewis said. rootology (T) 13:44, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I also am not aware that it's "legal" to withdraw copyleft. If you release something as GFDL or CC, and I re-use it, then you can't withdraw once it's in-use without affecting me. Since Commons/WMF itself is technically in-use itself, that's a reason against carte blanche removal. Typically once something is in-use anywhere on WMF we do not do removal at all, but you can always do a deletion request and we can review case-by-case. But, again, once a file is "used" on one of our projects and not just Commons I'd personally be opposed to a removal since that would wreak havoc with the mission here, if anyone could take away what was once gifted/given away. rootology (T) 13:44, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

It's actually meaningless to ask whether it is legal to withdraw a valid CC/PD/etc release. The point is that you can't. It isn't illegal to try, as such. It's like if I bought Rootology a cake, and he ate it, and then after he ate it, I revoked my gift of the cake and demanded it back. Nothing's going to bring that cake back. But if I donned the surgical gloves in an attempt to re-claim the cake from his internals, well, that would be another matter. Similarly, having someone going around saying "I REVOKE THE LICENSE", is legally laughable; if they upgraded that to active legal harassment of people, then that would be actionable (at least in the UK, AFAIK, IANAL, YMMV, TLA, etc).

To the issue: We do occasionally delete things if the user requests it. Factors like quality, usefulness, privacy issues, precedent, etc etc are all considered, and weighed against each other. And so will the time after upload that deletion was requested. There can be no hard and fast rules here. Lewis Collard! (lol, internet) 14:54, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Cat question

Hello, how to deal with Category:Saint Leonhard churches (1 item) and Category:Saint Leonard churches (items and categories) and with Category:Saint Linhart (12 items and 1 category) and Category:Saint Leonard (3 items and 2 categories with several subcats)? Havang (talk) 16:57, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

If they are duplicates you can just merge them. If it's not a big job you can move each item manually, if it is you can get a bot to do it. Whichever category you don't want to keep can become a redirect (see {{Catredirect}}. Richard001 (talk) 23:29, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I shall redirect ...Linhart and ...Leonhard to ...Leonard. Havang (talk) 07:05, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

You might first check whether all categories refer to the same person. Currently, only Commons cat Category:Saint Linhart has any interwiki links, and those go to en:Leonard of Noblac, though there is also en:Leonard of Port Maurice with a portrait Image:S Leonardo.JPG hosted also on Commons. Remember, cat names on Commons shall be in english. I don't know to which language Category:Saint Linhart refers as this name isn't included in any of the interwikis.

As you can see from this en:Saint-Léonard disambiguation page, there are also a lot of places called Saint Leonard. Eventually, it might be wise to reproduce that disamb page on Commons, and for the cat of the saint use either something like "Saint Leonard (Saint)" or "Leonard of Noblac" though in the German language area the latter is also known as "Leonhard von Limoges". --Túrelio (talk) 07:15, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I would strongly advise to use a proper disambiguation page such as Category:Saint Paul (disambiguation) and repeat the same page under a gallery, such as Saint Paul. Especially with the hotcats and other Java things, when people see a name that fulfils their needs (not red), they take it without knowing nor checking that it is a dismbiguation page. --Foroa (talk) 07:42, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

It is my understanding that there will be a bot that knows about the soft redirected categories and moves the images to the correct category. -- carol (talk) 08:29, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Whereas I was classifiing churches and making a few redirects, there was a discussion going on here. May-be some-one of you can check my doings at the tree Category:Saint Leonard and add the disambiguation. By the way: in places and derivatives, normally one puts a trait-d'union Saint-Leonard. Havang (talk) 08:34, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Havang, it looks that you are doing a good job. Sorry, but I am against category disambiguation pages with the current state of the tools that don't take this type of categories into account, nor provide any means of maintaining such pages. There are about 40 categories that contain the word Leonard, and I guess we have a new one each week on average. This problem will exponentially increase and my guess is that it will be taken seriously in 6 to 12 months time. In the mean time, categorisation, which used to be minimalistic on various wikipedias, is encountering a rapid growth, so there might be several "clients" for improved wikimedia software at that level. --Foroa (talk) 09:02, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Re trait-d'union: in English placenames are customarily unhyphenated eg Category:Saint John, New Brunswick, Category:Saint Paul, Minnesota. Man vyi (talk) 09:33, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

And in commons, I would suggest to use St John as this would work for many languages and avoid the Sint(e), saint(e), sankt(a), San... variations. --Foroa (talk) 09:54, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Foroa, that is not generally accepted: recently they changed Cat:Way of St.James in Cat:Way of Saint James. Havang ( ) 11:38, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I know; English fundamentalism generally wins over international compromises. That being said, it is easier to implement a simple existing rule than to find new compromises. --Foroa (talk) 11:58, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it has to do with English fundamentalism. Havang (talk) 13:26, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Another Cat question

Category:Glass roofs is a soft redirect to Category:Transparent roofs. But what about Image:Pasajul Macca 2.jpg? Glass, but not transparent (merely translucent). - Jmabel ! talk 22:58, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, it's "sort of transparent" ;-). --Túrelio (talk) 06:54, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, but there's no way to place something "sort of in a category". - Jmabel ! talk 22:16, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you. I'd assume the person that created the soft redirect figured all glass roofs would be transparent and saw the two categories as redundant (and for the most part they are). IMO, transparent roofs should have been redirected to glass roofs, given the parent category is Category:Roofs by material. Rocket000(talk) 17:30, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Image:New River Gorge - beetle - front.jpg

Could someone help me identify this beetle? I am not sure how that step is usually done. --Jarekt (talk) 19:08, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

You might ask at WikiProject Arthropods. Richard001 (talk) 04:08, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks --Jarekt (talk) 02:58, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

How do you add a picture to a article in Wikipedia

Hi, I registered so that I could add a couple of pictures to the article on The Pink Lady (aircraft) on this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pink_Lady_%28aircraft%29

I have tried everything I could to link the following images so they appear on the page of the above article but without success. The images are http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:The_Pink_Lady_01.JPG http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:The_Pink_Lady_02.JPG

Is this something that can be done? If so how do you do it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Barconian98 (talk • contribs) 21:44, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Like this. Multichill (talk) 19:52, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the picture. The code you have added here obviously directed the picture to the right page, did it also specify the size of the image on that page? (info only, I don't want to change the image or anything. I am just trying to understand what you did)

300px means 300 pixels wide. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:22, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

More info on how to add images can be found here. Axelv (talk) 10:03, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

August 9

Request for technical change

When I am logged onto Wikipedia, and I open another tab/window and go to Commons from there, I am not yet logged onto Commons, and must do so separately. This is prudent, even with common user id's - the user must log onto each wiki separately.

However, when I am logged onto both Wikipedia and Commons, and I log out of Commons, I am automatically logged out of Wikipedia - that is not prudent, and not only does it have a certain aggravation factor, but now I am inclined to never log out of Commons so that I can continue working elsewhere without interruption - I assume that the tech people at Commons (and elsewhere) prefer that users log out when they are through, even though that may not be a serious preference.

I also assume that the problem is in the way Commons (and others) alters the cookies on the user's machine during a log out ... perhaps things could be changed so as to make this issue go away? If not, it's not a big deal, and I'll survive just fine. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 05:22, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Why would you need to log out of Commons when you're done? If you are concerned about security, then the risk is equal for every project which you are logged in for, and you should be logging out of them all. I have however requested bugzilla:15100 for users who want to use old-school login (for some reason which as of yet escapes me)  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 19:09, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't need to log out of Commons when I'm done, I was simply trying to go along with a clean user-style. And I'm not concerned about security, but I thought that wiki-techs might be, or might be interested in an oddity (? maybe its a "feature") where cookies on the user's machine are handled in a seemingly inconsistent manner.

The bugzilla report is incorrect: there is no issue with the logon; the issue is with the logout, and with the logout only. The logon procedure is fine as it now works: users must log on to each wiki separately (ie, logging onto one does not automatically log the user onto any other). However, logging out of one logs the user out of all — this is presumably done using cookies. It's somewhat of a mundane, not-too-deep technical area.

Thanks for the response and good efforts. As I said above, I can live with things either way. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 20:57, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

With a global account you are supposed to only login (or logout) once and be logged in (or out) on all projects. When you log in you should see the text "Logging you in to Wikimedia's other projects" followed by the logos of all projects. But global login does not work as intended, that is bugzilla:14736. For me global logout works with the default cookie settings in my browser, but global login only works if I lower the settings so that all cookies are accepted. /Ö 21:48, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

That explains it, and bug report bugzilla:14736 is on-target. Don't think that I want to lower the settings to accept all cookies unless I'm sure that it only applies to Wikipedia; I can live with it like this indefinitely. Someone more knowledgeable than myself might cancel bugzilla:15100, for the sake of good housekeeping. Thanks again to both of you for your quick responses and efforts. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 22:19, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Already WONTFIXed by Brion, as is proper.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 04:58, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Rename of images

Many times, when I find an image with a bad name (usually, an image uploaded with the automatic name generated by the digital camera) I place a "rename" tag to it, to a more descriptive name. But all such times, a message like this one, generated by the bot User:BetacommandBot, appears

This media object could not be renamed automatically because:

• the rename request was made by a non-trusted user.

The requested target is (new name). A user trusted for this purpose should correct this by:

• replacing this template with {{rename media|(new name)|Automatic name from a digital camera}} or
• removing this template if a rename is not appropriate

Some time later, such trusted user appears, place again the mentioned tag, and some time later an administrator performs the rename. It has never happen that a rename suggested by me was rejected at this stage.

Surely, I can nominate myself as a "trusted user" at Commons:MediaMoveBot/CheckPage, I don't expect any problem with that. But don't you think it's just an unneeded bureaucracy? Wouldn't it be much more simple if a human administrator simply see the request, decide if it meets the requirements and should be done or not, and take the right action? A vandal can't rename the article, no matter how weird it may be a vandal rename request it can not be more than just a template added to te image, easily removed by any user that founds it like any other vandalism. Thialfi (talk) 05:52, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

there is a need for a check page, otherwise vandals will abuse the tool. that is really the only reason for the checkpage, as a way to avoid and prevent vandals from making a mess, If you are interested in using the bot please have yourself added to the check page. Betacommand 12:35, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

It is even more interesting than that, in my experience -- each new layer of bureaucracy is a new layer of vulnerability which is not as easy to define as simple vandalism. Perhaps the bot can check edits, blocks and the amount of time the user has been active. I know, I did not consider "helping" with the renaming until I was pointed at the directory containing images which were tagged for that -- a person who knows to do this should already have a certain amount of "trust" just by the knowing. Actual vandalism seems to come from new users, IP edits and similar instances in which whoever is running the user instance has no care of the edit history. Perhaps the bot can not make those image name changes instead.

I cannot help but think that the people who can author this stuff get a little disgusted with the bureaucracy also. There are those who can accomplish things and those who can only piss and whine.... -- carol (talk) 06:43, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I dont't like putting tags, it's as much work as making the correction and it just puts work on other shoulders. But if someone wants to look here: Category:Way of St. James in France, he finds about 17 items to rename. Go ahead, do it, or learn me, simple user, how to do it. Havang (talk) 06:54, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Renaming those in the cat you've mentioned is currently of no use because the images are lacking a description. I've notified the uploader. --Túrelio (talk) 13:13, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Are you saying "renaming the images doesn't help to describe them"? -- carol (talk) 18:50, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

If you want to rename them, you first have to know to what you want to rename them. --Túrelio (talk) 20:13, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Duh, sorry. I saw the list of names, suspected that the rename suggestions were accurate and then read this entry. One of the most problematic types of images I encountered while trying to find a location for them (much less trying to find a more descriptive name) was images of building interiors with no descriptions. Horrible experience trying to find a place for them!! I should relurk, now.... -- carol (talk) 20:16, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I spent some time here downloading the poorly named images and uploading them with a different name; this was not a terrible experience, I am glad not to do it now though. Doing it that way still involves some tag applying, however. After the upload into the new namespace, {{duplicate|IMG_NNNN.jpg}} is the way to get the original one deleted (the NNNN being the number of the IMG in those images you pointed at). At least with that tag, the software doing the deleting checks to see if the images are the same and nothing about the user who suggested it.

I find it nice that there are "simple users" who seem to care some about real things. -- carol (talk) 07:21, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea to have such a bot, and, given how such semi-automatic features have been abused on other wikis (enwiki, sure, but others too) I also think it's sensible to have a check when a non-sysop wants to do something that can quite easily damage dozens of other wikis very quickly. It's a part of our duty to the other projects.

James F. (talk) 12:49, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I made a list of bad named items and proposals of new titles

Havang (talk) 17:28, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

List removed Havang (talk) 14:57, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Please see MediaWiki_talk:Titleblacklist#Images_with_bad_titles, User_talk:Luxo#Rotatebot and User:Luxo/Query: Titles match MediaWiki:Titleblacklist for more on badly-named images. We do need help from people who will {{rename}} images.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 19:13, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

FYI, Templated the above images.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 19:31, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

So and since it seems that now a lot of people start renaming, one thing for all of them: renaming is for images with cryptic or missleading names. It is NOT for your fun or to feel productive. File extensions in capital letters are not a renaming reason, the name 'x flag' is not a reason to rename it to 'flag of x' and it is also no renaming reason if you see a filename with several words where all the first letters are in capitals. That are just the first few ridiculous renaming actions I had to see in the last few minutes. FYI: the bot can't do everything. There are a few admins who have then to do the cleaning up by replacing the already used images with their new duplicates and then delete the old ones. And it is no fun to replace them manually, because in many Wikipedia projects they tend to include images in a way no bot can handle. -- Cecil (talk) 20:02, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

User has uploaded his image without using empty spaces? You don't like it? That is no reason to rename a image that is used over 500 times in the other projects. Oh, or the user has uploaded his image with a name like 'xxx01a.jpg' without using 'xxx01.jpg' first? No reason to rename. You people are putting a strain on the toolserver, waste the time of others and ridcule the uploaders. Oh uploader, you were too stupid to give the image a name that everybody likes. And you really think that is productive work. By the way I've still not checked more than 50 of the 700 duplicates the BetacommandBot produced in the last hours at your command. -- Cecil (talk) 20:15, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Has making this list been usefull? These files have a long awsome history: unsuccesfull attempts to rename - collected by a bot as uncategorised - categorised by me - Turélio worked on it for introducing information/description - then I came up with new titles - Mike spent time for introducing rename tags - and still there remains more to be done? Havang (talk) 20:41, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Next time I encounter such (a group of) files, I'll try to do all in once. Havang (talk) 20:41, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you just made suggestions for cryptic names, so this is a help that is appreciated. -- Cecil (talk) 20:46, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

"Wouldn't it be much more simple if a human administrator simply see the request, decide if it meets the requirements and should be done or not, and take the right action?" No, it wouldn't. Requiring admins to do moves manually would be less efficient, not more. Superm401 - Talk 08:56, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Orphan?

Hello, Just wondering what an Orphan is? It has appeared next to a photo I uploaded. I guess I have to give some additional info to stop it being an orphan! I am quite new on here. If someone has the time to look at the 5 images I have uploaded and can tell me what's missing. That would be very nice. Thanks. Harris578 (talk) 10:09, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Orphans are images that are not placed in any categories.--ragesoss (talk) 19:05, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks 78.145.163.93 09:33, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Category:Flickr images not found

What is to be done about the 452 images in this category? Cirt (talk) 20:10, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll take a look over these later, but the answer will probably be deleting them all. If they weren't {{Flickrreview}}'d by someone (or a bot) before deletion, we have no proof they are properly licensed... and deletion is the answer. I've done this before on another Flickr cat, didn't realize there was another... --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 07:12, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Additional note: seems alot of these were uploaded with Flickrlickr, so I'll just mark them reviewed from that (Since that bot is trusted). --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 07:14, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, so in that case what happens in the long run? Will someone have to go through all the images in the category on a regular basis? Or can some of the images in the category that have been reviewed as you did be moved into some other category? Cirt (talk) 08:48, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

For a lot of these old categories there is no "long run", really. Most of this problem Flickr stuff was left over from a time before there were bots. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 18:16, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, sounds good. Cirt (talk) 18:17, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

August 10

Renaming images, a list

Hello, for renaming images I made another list of bad names and proposals of new names. Can someone go further with these. Where can I put such a list in the future. Havang (talk) 11:17, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Please tag images with {{rename|new image name.jpg}} . --Denniss (talk) 13:22, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Please don't leave lists like this on VP. Users who are not on the checkpage may leave me a note, or you may tag them yourself regardless. The bot won't do the rename, but they will then be "in the system" and will get processed eventually.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 13:45, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

 Done and list removed Havang (talk) 14:17, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Please just use the {{Rename}} even if you're not trusted. Remember to make sure the page has a description, and you say the new name you want. I, (and other trusted users), been going through Category:Media renaming requests needing confirmation to confirm image renames. Superm401 - Talk 15:49, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Starting with categorising, I can now, thanks to you all, do all in one: make descriptions, add/remove cats, controle items of same cat by catscan in related wikipedia categories, and make new cats and incidentally new cat trees, and sometimes if needed tag items for deleting of renaming. But the learning process is long... and disencouraging for "simple users". And now, I unwatch Village pump for quietness. Goodby. Havang (talk) 17:16, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

User categories

I would like hear some opinions about the naming of user categories. For the most part they are in the form of "Files by User:Example" or "Files by User:Example from en.wikipedia". See Category:User categories. However some do not. See the categories left in Category:User galleries. This causes a few problems. 1.) They are not instantly obvious as to what they are. 2.) They can cause naming conflicts (there are some examples but I don't want to single anyone out). 3.) Categorizing bots (and unknowing users) may add images that don't belong there. I really support letting users make personal categories and, like user space pages, I think we should be more lenient on them, but in this area, I think there needs to be enforced naming conventions. I say "enforced" because COM:USER already states how they should be named, it's just we don't always correct those that don't follow it.

I felt like renaming some of them with a bot but I didn't feel comfortable doing so. This is another problem they cause. There's a sense of ownership there. It's the same feeling I get when I fix a link on a user page. Yes, it's a perfectly acceptable thing to do, but... well maybe they want a broken link there. Poor example, but you get the idea. Anyway, I like to get some viewpoints before I rename anything. Thanks. Rocket000(talk) 18:48, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

IMHO. They should follow a standard. Something like "Media by <Username>" (ex), that way there is nothing that can be confusing and we know exactly who they belong to. I know some people have "Media By <Real Name>" (ex) and I suppose that is OK also. As for exmplaining what they are - maybe we should just add more to {{User category}}. Instead of just adding the cat, it could add some information that the category contains media made by <Username> and to find more information at location X about user categories. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 20:10, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I've got 2 categories for easy use which are Category:Photographs by Bidgee and Category:Files by Bidgee (I see no point in having the 2 cats in Category:Media by Bidgee nor would I like the Files by Bidgee renamed to Media). Bidgee (talk) 20:17, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

(EC) I created my one (in Dec. 2006) using the name Category:Images uploaded by Túrelio in order to include my own images and those (few) I only uploaded. But if that cat name is no longer acceptable, I'm open for a change. --Túrelio (talk) 20:21, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

To clarify, I'm not implying they must be "Files by User:Example". Photos or Media or Uploads by <name> works too. I find the ones Bidgee and Túrelio listed as acceptable, although a "User:" in there would nice but not something worth renaming for. However, there are some usernames that would cause confusion or are ambiguous. For example, I would rename "Files by John" to "Files by User:Johnny13" or whatever. What I was really talking about were ones like Astur, BiDi Workgroup or Twisp-Silicon-Nanopowder and things like that. Rocket000(talk) 20:53, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

How will you distinguish between de photos of a user, the ones from a famous photographer (and not a user) and the ones from a famous photographer that have been uploaded by a particular user ? --Foroa (talk) 21:12, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Not photos of users, photos by/uploaded by users. Or did you mean what if the user is famous? There's a distinction that's there regardless of the user's notability. It's like en:Jimbo Wales vs en:User:Jimbo Wales. We have some of these too (e.g. Wayne Ray (although that barnstar doesn't belong there ;). Rocket000(talk) 21:33, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree that all user categories should have something in the name that suggest that they are grouped by author or uploader and Astur, BiDi Workgroup or Category:Twisp are a good examples of categories that should be renamed, hopfuly with users blessing. --Jarekt (talk) 12:37, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Olympics postcard

Can someone check to see if this postcard image is fair-use or public-domain? It is produced in 1924. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 19:27, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

It's one year after the cut-off in the US, so it depends on whether or not it was published without a copyright notice. In France, it's 70 years after the author's death. Rocket000(talk) 21:54, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I found another postcard image that shows the same Olympic Event (1924 in Paris). Is it safe to say that it's in PD then? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:21, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

No. Lupo 08:53, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, but the first one I showed doesn't have photographer credit. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 16:05, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Question about category within category

There is a category Category:Frank Zappa with 11 images. Within that category is another Category:Frank Zappa with two images. If I do a search for Frank Zappa the category with the two images comes up first. (The other on probably comes later.) The point is that if I did not know about the second category, I would never find the 11 images. Should there be a category within a category with the same name? Mattisse (talk) 19:48, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I assume you mean the page Frank Zappa? --Erwin(85) 19:52, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I have a few questions:

1. In which instance did you find the image you were looking for?
2. While using search engines elsewhere, do you always only go to the first link in the list?
3. Have you ever seen an old fashioned library card file where the books and other library stuffs each have three cards, subject, author and title?

-- carol (talk) 21:05, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

August 11

Upload is broken

I can't upload any photos to Commons. It keeps giving me the error message "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" or "The connection was reset" in both IE and Firefox after I click upload file. --Digon3 ^talk 02:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

• Found the problem. --Digon3 ^talk 02:32, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Image Attribution

I've been doing a lot of work with SVG map files from Commons lately, and have noticed that most, nearly all, derivative SVGs list their file source, but do not provide the author names of all works from which the latest is derived. As I understand it, this is a violation of at least the attribution clause of CC-by-SA & CC-by. Does Commons have a policy regarding this matter?

It's also a bit frustrating, because it means I have to crawl through the links to sources to find all the authors. --Peter ^Talk 05:42, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

We don't need to have a policy on it. The license speaks for itself, but yes, we require users to abide by whatever terms and conditions the free licenses may have. The problem is, there's over 3 million files. Obviously, it's usually the author that notices. And since this a wiki, they can fix it. Anyone else would have to crawl through the links to sources to find all the authors too. It's highly unlikely someone uninvolved would do this without reason especially if they only see the image on another Wikimedia project which doesn't directly list the authors either. Rocket000(talk) 06:03, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Some time ago I created this template Template:AttribSVG to make such attribution quicker. I hope you can find it helpful. But really it would be much sweeter is there was a bot or other automated system that could do the crawling. --Inkwina (talk • contribs) 21:47, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Duplicate images: a real example

I mentioned duplicate images a while ago; here is a real example. Image:Naturalist on the River Amazons 15.png is an image from Bates' book Naturalist on the River Amazons; it predates Darwin's book Descent of Man, the corresponding image being Image:Descent of Man - Burt 1874 - Fig 13.png . I have scanned the images from the former and this is one that was borrowed by Darwin in his more recent book, basically in same form as the original but with a different caption.

In this case I think the Descent image should be deleted because (1) They are both png, so there is little differentiation in terms of file size, (2) Bates' use was the original, and (3) They newer upload is a higher quality scan (the text isn't coming through, and the image has been edited to have a whiter background. I think it can be preserved as one of Darwin's images as well by adding the Descent details to the Naturalist image, and retaining the old category. If it was not of poorer quality, and(/or) was of a smaller file size and different file type, should such a duplicate still be deleted? Richard001 (talk) 07:34, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

IMO, yes. But I think superseded is a more fitting word. We are really misusing the word duplicate. Rocket000(talk) 08:05, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

The "good one" has the wrong figure number in the title and the correct number is not in the description. Is this a situation where uploading the larger version into the correct namespace is the choice option? Also, in the case that anyone would like to reassemble the book, a version with the fonts still showing is nice when finding a similar font.... -- carol (talk) 08:12, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

What was the problem again of just having both files here at commons? It's not like it will save disk space or something like that. Please also see COM:DEL/SUPER. Multichill (talk) 08:35, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by "wrong figure number", Carol? The figure I uploaded is from a different book that doesn't even use figure numbers - the ones I added are just artificial based on order of appearance and used to provide names for the images. I decided to remove the captions from the images because it lowers reusability, especially in non-English languages, and the caption is provided in the description anyway. Captions can also change from edition to edition, e.g. in font or layout, so there is nothing especially 'canonical' about them. For some the caption can be found in an old version, but I think it's a bit wasteful and time consuming to upload both with and without caption versions. Richard001 (talk) 09:20, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Heh, so they are not the same then.... -- carol (talk) 10:22, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, they are not duplicates in the narrowest sense, but they are they are still identical copies of the same illustration, once the caption is removed. I got the impression from previous posts here that the consensus was to delete such images and to avoid captions in the image itself. Richard001 (talk) 22:15, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

The same clipart used by two different books is kind of interesting as a case study though, huh? There are guidelines about this kind of thing. That being said, having the original with the text still on it in the upload history always makes me feel better. I am confident enough that my cleaned up version is nicer for display than the original before I upload into what I consider to be the default namespace. I have found many old images which were printed on acidic paper so removing the pink from that is a predictable restoration. Something I like to call "pee marks" when there is a marbling of the yellowing also is better removed. Curves from where the page was not flat on the scanner bed. I have uploaded three different versions of the same image, but some of the books I have been working with were awesome to me. Books from the 1700s and from 1800s. One version has the text removed and is ready for display on the encyclopedias. One has the text intact in the case that anyone is interested in reassembling the book (although to me, resetting the type would be the best option of all of them for this goal) and then the original because there is a chance that one of the other billions of people who are alive on this planet can restore the image in a nicer way than I did or the software might actually (again) improve in a way that is better than what I did.

All of the options you have presented so far mess up the metadata for one of the books this same image was used in. -- carol (talk) 22:42, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

More on Scope: Pdf and Djvu files

Commons:Project scope/Proposal now includes a proposal as to how we should handle these file types. Comments are welcome at Commons talk:Project scope/Proposal#Pdf and Djvu files. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:21, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

August 12

LU Is it true that the name of the community of Lu near Alessandria in Italy evolved from LV which was generated from being 55 miles outside Turin(?)

Mayflower

Is Mayflower dead now or has someone else forked off the code? Foxhill (talk) 03:26, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Still there. Still no update since 24 October 2007. Only a few days to go now until the database is a whole 10 months out of date. Man vyi (talk) 07:56, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Edit war about Image:Cyrillic Europe.PNG

Dear all, I would be grateful if some more people could take part in the discussion at Image talk:Cyrillic Europe.PNG. For the last 11 days, Rokerismoravee has not taken part in the discussion any more but reverted my changes without comment. Our discussion started in German, but I have explained our contrary positions in English so you can join in without understanding German. I just don't know what to do with this 1:1 situation otherwise. Probably someone else ought to say who of us is right. --Daniel Bunčić (de wiki · talk · contrib.) 13:15, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

w:Serbian language article says "The Cyrillic script is official under the 2006 Constitution of Serbia, but the Latin script continues to gain ground as a result of its popularity among the business community and urban population." Based on that I would say that "pink" Serbia seems like more accurate version than "red" one (see also stamps from may 2008 here). However if no agreement is reached than usual Commons solution is to create 2 parallel versions ( with 2 new different names) and push your discussion to the individual Wikipedias to resolve locally. --Jarekt (talk) 15:59, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for this advice. We'll probably go this way if we don't reach an agreement. --Daniel Bunčić (de wiki · talk · contrib.) 18:25, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Commons:2008 Election suffrage poll open

The poll is opened for 31 days at Commons:2008 Election suffrage poll per discussions and has been added to MediaWiki:Watchlist-details so that no one can possibly miss it while it is open, even if they do not log in daily or check Village Pump and Admin noticeboard, where I'm noting it's open. Please weigh in. :) rootology (T) 13:32, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

August 13

Photos of famous people

If someone famous wants his photo to be retired from commons can do it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.51.138.81 (talk • contribs) 19:11, 13. Aug. 2008 (UTC)

If the photograph was taken in public and the photographer has released it with a proper license, most probably: no. Are you thinking of a particular picture? --rimshot^talk 19:14, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Merge Pages

Hi there are 2 pages called Crassula coccinea. Can someone merge them. Many thanks Andrew massyn (talk) 18:32, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

And where is the second one? --Túrelio (talk) 18:35, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

There is Crassula_cocсinea and Crassula coccinea. TimVickers (talk) 18:38, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I've merged the content, can somebody delete Crassula_cocсinea? Thanks. TimVickers (talk) 18:43, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Lag

Is there a lag between when items are posted on commons and when they are available on Wikipedia? Hyacinth (talk) 00:10, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Not that I've ever seen. Can you give a link to the media on Commons that you're trying to use, so I can look into it?--Father Goose (talk) 00:58, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

There was a 12+ hour lag on files linked from 72 equal temperament. I'd start looking at Image:4 steps in 72-et on C.mid and move up in # of steps (since the quarter tone files as well as the just ratio files where already made and mostly uploaded to Wikipedia). Hyacinth (talk) 02:02, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Aha, maybe it's specific to midi files. Maybe it has to scan them or something first. Pass your question along to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) and Commons:Village pump, that's your best shot of getting an actual answer.--Father Goose (talk) 20:04, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

August 14

Categorisation conundrum

I've recently been working on Category:Ffestiniog Railway (FR), trying to organise it (and geocode it). In the course of this, I came to a disagreement with Keith over how the images should be categorised. I created individual cats for the railway's stations, and then put them inside Category:Stations of the Ffestiniog Railway, and moved the images from the main FR cat into the station cats. I further plan to create a category for the individual engines used. Keith however feels that while the images should be in the station cats, those cats should be in the main FR cat, and that the images themselves should also be in the main FR cat. We can't come to an agreement between ourselves, so we'd like to solicit suggestions from the community as to how it should be organised. Thanks. -mattbuck (Talk) 12:57, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Just to add to Matts' comment. I have no problem with his station category's. Originally the items were all under Category:Ffestiniog Railway. He had removed this and replaced with relevant [[:Category:<station name>]]. I feel the user is more likely to know the FR reference, rather than an individual station reference. I have no problem with them co-existing, my complaint being purely the removal of Category:Ffestiniog Railway Comments please --Keith (talk) 13:12, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Commons:Categories

I would go with mattbuck suggestion of the following hierarchy:

• Category:Ffestiniog Railway

• Category:Stations of the Ffestiniog Railway

• [[:Category:<station name>]]

• Category:Engines of the Ffestiniog Railway

• [[:Category:<Engine type>]]

with majority of images in the 'leaf' categories. It is ok for an image to be in station and engine category, but not in Category:Ffestiniog Railway. That way the parent category can be reserved for images that did not fit the tree. On the other hand such organization can make some of the images harder to find (due to more categories to look through), but this can be mitigated by use of well designed gallery (maybe Keith can be responsible for that). --Jarekt (talk) 14:47, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, Jarekt, but I have a life, and that means not wasting time. Keith (talk) 08:53, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Having reviewed what is proposed hear, I am inclined to go with mattbuck and Jarekt. Sorry Keith but I have an aversion to items being categorised in a sub-category and the associated main category. It seems a bit incestious to me. For example, all pictures at Tan-y-Bwlch will be in the TYB cat. A locomotive at TYB will appear in the engine cat and station cat. The main root cat should have very few images in it.

Please note, Stewart, that none of these subcats existed 36 hours ago (pre 10-Aug-08), and are all the creation of Matt over a short period. During which time he was also tagging for deletion some photos courtesy of our own ACG which had been tagged incorrectly. With him also moving images across from main wiki, the gallery of FR photos that existed some time ago is now depleted tremndously. As I have said elsewhere, you now have the prospect of an image showing an FR engine, on the FR route, pulling FR carriages .... and not being classed an FR photo. This system automatically falls down with the acceptance above of images not within station area (harks back to the policy on Festipedia where that problem was sorted before we started) Keith (talk) 08:53, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't follow how an image would be "not ... classed an FR photo." Photos are considered to belong to their categories and all of their categories' supercategories. The images in (say) Category:Road bridges in the United States are also in Category:Road bridges and Category:Bridges in the United States without having to be explicitly included in those categories. Powers (talk) 13:54, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

You are incorrectly assuming that the user knows that. If I was looking for pictures of a particular railway, i would think there would be a category for this. Not typing in to find I have to look through a number of different categories to get what I want. Currently C:FR shows only 16 photos, and a link to stations, which, without checking has another 100 photos. Sorry but as said above "such organization can make some of the images harder to find (due to more categories to look through)" --92.2.198.176 14:18, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, you're free to advocate for a change in policy, but that's how we do things here. If you're looking for photos of a particular subject, you can go to the category page, and see if any of the subcategories fit what you're looking for. If not, you can look in the main category and see what's there. I don't see the issue. The alternative is to have supercategories with too many images in them to be useful. Powers (talk) 21:17, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

The search button has a "Go" option and a "Search" option. The categorization is actually interesting for more reasons (interrelationships like "Cork" as a material and also the species that is the material; automobiles from 1943 and automobiles by model name, type of rocket, and what that one was carrying, etc) than simply displaying images. To limit the categorization to things that a Search button already do is the real redundancy problem. -- carol (talk) 21:27, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, I would not used [[:Category:<Engine type>]]; I would use [[:Category:<Engine name>]] as is used on Festipedia - Stations and Locomotives which is are perfect examples of what mattbuck is proposing. --Stewart ^(talk) 18:04, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I would be careful, Stewart, in making comparisons between here and Festipedia. Where as this sub wiki is more for "media" files of "everything", Festipedia is more to record "information" of a very narrow field, with a specific historic bent. Keith (talk) 08:53, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Help!

I came across this (strangely titled) and have no idea what to say because I don't really understand the question! Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

No idea either, but I'm always amazed to see where people decide to post their questions. Rocket000(talk) 16:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

(no heading)

Does anyone out there have information about the use of the JU-52/M1 aircraft in early Canadian aviation, say pre-WWII? Pictures of the aircraft in flight would be much appreciated too. I know that a few of these planes did operate in Canadian airspace.

I have written a fictional book that includes a segment where in this type of aircraft flys from Whitehorse to Edmonton carrying the frozen corpse in a collapsible canvas bathrub. The body thaws out of the ice block whilst enroute.

Thank you,

parowejr@juno.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.113.106.45 (talk • contribs) 16:26, 14 Aug 2008 (UTC)

Powerpoint links

I crank out powerpoints all day.

How can I get them to automatically link key words to Wiki?

For English Wikipedia, you'd have to create links of the form http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword. For how to do that, you'll get better help at Microsoft Office forums. --rimshot^talk 05:59, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

suspicious license

Hi! (Maybe it's a faq, but I didn't find it) While browsing the uncategorised images, I've seen Image:Сканирование0003.jpg and Image:AAM American Album.jpg. Both are reported as own work, but both are scans (see the exif and the raster on the image it-self) from printed pictures and it's hard to believe that the uploaders are the original photographers. What is the usual procedure in this case? Thanks. Vonvon (talk) 19:53, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

The first one was already included in a deletion request, so I tagged it with {{Delete}}, pointing it to that deletion request. The second one, I just tagged as {{Copyvio}} with an appropriate reason. Lupo 20:23, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Frustrating problem with image

I can't get Image:Stereographic projection of rational points.svg to generate thumbnails properly. It renders fine when I click through to the full size image, but the thumbnail just shows a little "barbell" consisting of a single point and a line segment. I did upload an earlier version in which I had forgotten to embed the images, and I don't know whether Commons is just refusing to generate a new thumbnail, or if this is the thumbnail and Commons is just having a problem with the SVG image. By the way, I don't know if it matters, but the embedded image is an eps image. I don't if the thumbnail engine has trouble with these or what. Thanks, Silly rabbit (talk) 20:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Inkscape and RSVG (what renders the thumbnails) don't always get along. I'd suggest you ask the Inkscape crew, or upload a PNG version of the SVG. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 21:03, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

If the SVG contained an embedded EPS, then it would be guaranteed not to work, but the last version uploaded by you (which I tried to fix) doesn't do so. Anyway, the SVG file does contain a lot of zero-width lines, and tries to render filled circles by thousands of tiny little stroked line segments, which may be part of the problem -- it would be better if you used SVG filled circle elements where you want a filled circle to display... AnonMoos (talk) 23:11, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

It must be a problem with the EPS to SVG conversion on my end. Thanks for having a look at it. One more question: Is there a frontend available (linux only) which I can use to troubleshoot SVGs without having to upload them to Commons? Silly rabbit (talk) 00:14, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

It all depends on what was in the EPS file in the first place. In general, the contents of your SVG file look like the commands that would be sent to a 1980's-style plotter. For best results, you really need to take the plotter driver out of your "workflow path"... AnonMoos (talk) 11:20, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

P.S. SVG files are in text format, so you can look inside them with a text editor. AnonMoos (talk) 11:23, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to register volunteer translators

Some system messages get modified from time to time to make pretty important announcements. I just noticed that MediaWiki:Watchlist-details is missing translations, big time.

It would be easy to write a bot that monitors these messages and notifies a list of registered volunteer translators. They could use a template similar to EditProtected on the message's talk page to propose a translation, which could be applied either by the same bot, or by an admin watching the page.

This seems to be a simple scheme to make commons more multilingual. --Dschwen (talk) 17:06, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

August 16

How can I extract images from PDFs?

It seems the scanners at my uni are not letting me scan above 200dpi, though the copiers also scan and I have learned that they are much faster too. However, they send me the file as a PDF and I have no idea how I can turn that into, say, a .png file to upload here. Does anyone know what I can do? Richard001 (talk) 09:50, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

You could open the PDF in GIMP, crop the parts that you need and save it as a PNG. --Kjetil_r 13:01, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I recommend the utility pdfimages of the Xpdf package. --AFBorchert (talk) 13:04, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Another simple approach that allows capturing anything you can see on the screen is old fashioned "PrintScreen" button on your keybord. You press the button, to Microsoft Office Picture Manager (comes bundled with MS Office) or possibly some other image programs and press "paste". Than the whole screen shows up as an image which you can crop. --Jarekt (talk) 13:23, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

• In Adobe reader, there's a tool which allows you to simply click on an image in a PDF, then it's marked, press ctrl and c, then paste it to Photoshop or similar, and save it. FunkMonk (talk) 03:07, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I think you can save the image in Adobe Reader 9. Bidgee (talk) 03:49, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

By using Adobe Reader many images in PDF documents can be right-clicked, copied, and then pasted into any image editor. I use the popular, free image editor IrfanView. Then use the image editor to save it in any format. You can also select any area of a PDF document with Adobe Reader's cropping tools and copy that selected area. Then paste it into any image editor for conversion to other image formats. The PrintScreen key on your keyboard is a good last resort, too. Click that key, and then open an image editor and click "paste" (usually in the edit menu). See also: w:Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps/PDF map conversion to SVG. Its info applies to many types of images in PDF documents, and not just maps. Finally, w:Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Image workshop can create, extract, or edit almost any image. Just leave a request for help or advice there. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:14, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I have been able to just copy and paste, though it seems the program tends to crash a bit when doing that. It seems the scans I made are also not of a very good quality; it might be better to use the other scanners even though they are limited to 200dpi, since the copier/scanners don't seem to allow very large files to be sent anyway, and grayscale scans over this size are going to be very large. Richard001 (talk) 06:48, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Can you bring your own blank CDs, or Flash drives, or other storage? Then you might be able to get larger files. --Timeshifter (talk) 05:14, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Alas, no, not with the "higher resolution" scanner (and I don't think it's actually that good anyway - it's more for scanning from a book to read than getting high quality images). A pity they have set them up so that the settings can't be altered. I'm only an undergraduate though so there's probably no much I can do about it. Richard001 (talk) 08:02, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Maybe the staff might help you out if you mention that you are uploading images to the Commons. They might also have access to better scanners. I would think that many librarians are supportive of Wikipedia. --Timeshifter (talk) 10:33, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Image issues

Seems as if Commons had some issues when I was getting some photos uploaded and still not showing up at Category:Mount Canobolas and Category:Orange, New South Wales. Bidgee (talk) 05:30, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I also had an issue trying to upload Image:Liberty enlightening the World BAH-p43.png. —Mike 06:00, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Seems to be an image resize issue with the server since the full sized images are there but just not resizing. Bidgee (talk) 06:06, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

As has been mentioned here before, PNG and GIF images with pixel dimensions greater than about 12.5 megapixels are not resized due to an intentional and deliberate policy decision. The originally-uploaded version of this image was 4,220×5,854, or almost 25 megapixels. JPEGs are not affected by this limit. AnonMoos (talk) 06:44, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

JPGs is what I uploaded. Bidgee (talk) 07:11, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I was referring to the first version of Image:Liberty_enlightening_the_World_BAH-p43.png... AnonMoos (talk) 17:09, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion for content licensing issues

Just a pointer — there's a discussion going on at Commons talk:Deletion guidelines on whether images with content possibly violating Commons:Licensing can be speedily deleted, or whether they should go through the regular deletion process. (That is, the images are not copyvios, but they contain works that may be copyrighted; a GFDL-licensed picture of a can of beer, for example.) Your comments would be welcome. Jpatokal (talk) 07:12, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Um... see COM:DW. If an image contains a copyvio, the image is a copyvio. Rocket000(talk) 07:23, 16 August 2008 (UTC) Misunderstood

See the discussion anyway, it's not really about what he just said. The topic is "whether speedy deletion of images that fall in the gray zone of Commons:Licensing is permissible". Rocket000(talk) 07:32, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

This started at User talk:MichaelMaggs#BudweiserNA_Arabic.JPG.--MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:11, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Image:Barmer Spitze - Vom Fenneregg.jpg

Thumbs don't show up - what's wrong with this file? --AM (talk) 11:05, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Now it works. No idea why - maybe a cache problem. --AM (talk) 11:08, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Same problem in many Special:NewImages. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 11:25, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

And here it's the same problem I suppose: Commons:Featured_picture_candidates/Image:Courrendlin_Haus.jpg. I just see the text instead of the thumbnail. What to do? --Ikiwaner (talk) 12:00, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Photo of statue of Hachiko

As part of getting an en.wiki article Featured, the question of the use of a commons image was brought up, specifically Image:Hachiko200505-2.jpg, a photo of the statue of the dog Hachiko in Shibuya. There's several of these in commons, but someone questioned if this is not a derivative work. If I am reading COM:DW correctly, this is the case here: Japan (where the statue is) has limited freedom of panorama but not for public status - they would only be for non-commercial use. Thus, these images fail their use at commons (as non-commercial is too restrictive a license). Am I reading this correctly? --Masem (talk) 12:48, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

My reading is the same as yours. From COM:DW, for Japan: "These countries have full freedom of panorama only for buildings, whereas images of sculptures or other works may only be reproduced for non-commercial purposes." I'd suggest you upload this to EnWP (if you want to use it there) so the Commons version can be deleted. —Giggy 13:38, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Hoar frost and rime images

Some images in the category have a name referring to hoar frost which is a different physical phenomenon. They should be renamed with "rime" in their filename, since it is clear that they represent soft rime and not hoar frost. These are the images (some of them are featured):

• D Hoarfrost1.jpg
• D Hoarfrost2.jpg
• D Hoarfrost 3.jpg
• D Hoarfrost 3 edit.jpg
• D Hoarfrost 4.jpg

I would suggest to rename them respectiverly:

• D Rime1.jpg
• D Rime2.jpg
• D Rime3.jpg
• D Rime3 edit.jpg
• D Rime4.jpg

--Carnby (talk) 16:46, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Minor changes that are essentially duplicates

User:Kanonkas made very, very minor changes to my Hilary Duff series of photos. I can't really tell the difference between Image:Hilary Duff 5.jpg and Image:Hilary Duff by David Shankbone.jpg, so I didn't understand why they were created. Additionally, Kanonkas listed the dates of the photos as August 2008, but that's the date of the cropping, not the date of the photo, which will confuse anyone not familiar with it. If a person wants to know a date related to the photo, it's not when it is cropped. But regardless, I don't see the point in having what are essentially replicas of the same image. --David Shankbone (talk) 20:53, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Well if you open them both in something like Firefox and hit ctrl+tab between the two tabs, you'll see that what he created is a much closer crop. Yes, they are similar, but the cropping _IS_ different. Anyways, as for the day - he put the date that he created the crops, big deal.... Some people put the date that they upload the images. If you feel that imposed upon, why don't you add a note to the pictures in the date box that says "(Photographed on 2008-01-10)" for example. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 21:02, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Excuse me, but what's with your tone? I'm raising a valid question about work I put a lot of effort into creating and uploading; I don't need sniping, thanks. Things like dates, etc., are completely valid questions since if we aren't going to address issues like "What date should be listed under date - when the photo was taken or when it was cropped" it creates confusion and false information, especially if they are reused. It makes us look inaccurate. Regardless, I'd prefer a discussion without the snide remarks. --David Shankbone (talk) 21:12, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Dude. Chill. I'm not giving you tone or sniping or making snide remarks. I was simply answering your question. If you are confused by my answer, that I can help clarify. The Date _Should_ be the date created. Now for a plain photograph that is the date you took it, for a crop (which is technically a Derivative work) the day it is created is the day it was cropped down. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 21:23, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with chillin and has to do with how you are communicating. Regardless, who cares when a photo was cropped? Why would anyone need that information? Does anyone care? Are people using dates of cropping instead of the date Hilary Duff posed for the photo? If a person is looking at a date on a photograph, is it the date a photo was edited they care about, or the date the image they are staring at was taken? The answer is obvious, so why are we putting dates of cropping and editing as if those are the date of the "work". Nobody cares. My images are re-used frequently, and dates are important and should be the date the image was taken, especially when the images are essentially being duplicated. --David Shankbone (talk) 01:11, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Let's see if I can answer all your questions: Someone who cares when the file was created. Anyone who would want to know when the deriv was created. I don't know, why don't you take a poll. Maybe. Date the image was created.

Let me try to explain it to you this way. You released your images under a license that allows derivative works. What was created in this case is technically a DERIVATIVE WORK. The "Date" field should be the date that the image was created. So in this case it was created when the uploading user ran your photo through photoshop, and modified it into their own. What are they obligated to do? They are obligated to attribute the origins of the image back to you. That is all you get to dictate. They could change the description or anything else to be what ever they wanted. I'm sorry if you feel slighted by the creation date of the images, but what the uploading user has done here, is exactly what we ask for. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 02:12, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Poll: If you were to only put one date on the description of this photo, would it be the date someone cropped it, or the date the subject was photographed?

Look, ShakataGaNai, your attitude that, "You took the photos, now fuck off, they are ours" is a good way to lose contributors, including me. If this is how you are going around talking to other photographers on here, then you shouldn't be an admin and you shouldn't be speaking for the project. We owe the people who contribute respect, regardless of who they are and what they contribute. I'm sure photographing strawberries and computer wires is fulfilling, but some of us go to great lengths to obtain images for Wikimedia projects, and your tone currently is "fuck you, we'll do what we want". Second, you continually are making this an issue of my feeling slighted, when I have continually raised the issue over accuracy - so stop putting on me emotions I don't carry. Anyone is welcome to edit my images - go for it. But I don't see the point in creating virtual duplicates (I made that point) and I am arguing that the date the original image was taken is far more important than the date the image was cropped. To anyone - why don't you go take a poll and ask people if it makes sense to have the only date found on a file the date that a person decided to remove a few pixels on the right side of the image. Nobody would. So, what I'm arguing is that we need to be accurate with our images; not that I'm slighted - so stop raising these jack-assed arguments and terse statements as if I'm saying "Don't mess with my photos" because I'm not. Many people have edited my work, renamed it, etc. I simply didn't see the need for duplicates, and I disagree with removing the original date that gives a time/place of the subject in question, which is important. I don't know why you have trouble getting that. --David Shankbone (talk) 15:00, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Guys, calm down. Whenever people swear, they are expressing strong emotions about something (justified or not, does it matter?). The two images are slightly different, the derivative is a slight crop so is not an exact duplicate. Therefore {{Duplicate}} tagging is inappropriate. David, if you think it is sufficiently close to the original so as to not justify having two versions on Commons by all means open a deletion request. As for the content of the "date" field, why not just edit it to show all relevant dates (date photo was taken, date of crop etc etc). Where is it written that there should be one date on a file anyway?--Nilfanion (talk) 15:42, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Nil - I started swearing because I never said I felt slighted, and instead of addressing the substance of the issue I raised, Shakagata kept talking about my feelings, to which he knows nothing about. More, we have two admins, User:Kanonkas and Shakagata, who are arguing that the date of cropping is the only one that need be on there, and this shows a problem on Commons if this is taken as how things should go. Over time, we will have images that don't tell the person the date of the subject, but the date someone decided to crop it. That's a problem, and is worth addressing. One of the first questions anyone asks when they look at a photo (such as the fire one) is "Where?" and "When?" Not "When was that photo edited?" I can just edit the photo, but the issue I raise is important, as it comes down to whether we are seen as accurate without descriptions. So, instead of talking about my feelings, can we address the issue I raise regarding the dates and what should be at the very least the primary date referenced? --David Shankbone (talk) 16:11, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't "keep" talking about your emotions. I made one educated guess, which I think is more correct since you've started insulting me. You complain about me putting emotes on you that you don't have, yet all you are doing is making claims towards my attitudes, opinions, so on and so forth. And I have tried address your questions/concerns about the date. I've tried explaining to you what we generally do. But instead, apparently I'm secretly and underhandedly saying "fuck you". Which... I don't remember saying anywhere... But Ok, what ever you say boss. As I've explained before the date in the info field should be the date the image was created. The case of a normal photograph, when taken. In the case of a derivative work, drawing, graphy - then when that was created. Now, if you think this is bad, and that image derivatives should be stamped from the original image date - then great. Let's discuss that. I'll even start right now with why I think it doesn't particularly matter (but this is just my opinion, do feel free to respond): You can crop an image down so it is practically nothing like the original image. I could take the Hillary Duff image and crop it down to just her breasts - then when the image was taken really wouldn't matter much. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 17:08, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

That's all you have, including the jackass statements like 'Why don't you go take a poll?' Every observation I have made about you comes directly from your statements. I never said I felt slighted, and you have no education on who I am or how I feel to ever make one half-assed guess as to why I do or say anything I do. That doesn't just go for me, Shakagata, it goes for everyone on this site. Stick to the issues I raise and not armchair psychoanalysis of how I feel about anything. Or anyone else, for that matter. And yes, you can chop off her breasts, but that's not what has happened here, now is it? Even if it was, the original date should be referenced. Leaving aside your silly argument, what in reality happened was we had the image of Hilary Duff that I uploaded, with the correct date, and used on her English-language article. We had User:Kanonkas make very minor crops, and remove the date she was posing for the photo and instead put his crop date of August on there. Then he swapped the photo on the English Wikipedia article. We're not just talking titties here, Shaka, but a very popular article's lead photograph carrying a wrong date just because another user decided to make changes that made no difference to the integrity of the photo. I'm sorry you can see that there is a distinction to be made between a pair of breasts being cut out, as opposed to the full Hilary Duff lead photo...but there clearly is. Right now, I'm just wondering how you got to be an admin. --David Shankbone (talk) 17:21, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

{{Information}} is supposed to display the relevant information for downstream users of the content, the copyright issues ought to be considered separately. The only date that matters with a photograph, or a simple manipulation of one, is the date that the photographer pressed the shutter on the camera. That is the date that anyone who looks at the image cares about, and so that date should be reported on the description page. If someone really cares about when the derivative file was created, the file history can tell them that! Furthermore, in the case of the Hillary Duff image, I can't see how the crop even approaches the threshold of originality and so gained an independent copyright status. Therefore, both images should credit David as the copyright holder. There is a distinction between straight-forward manipulations like this and complex derivatives (example). As an example of how this type of image should be labelled, consider this image. That is a typical example of the edited versions that the FPC produce, but all information within {{Information}} is identical to the original file - as should be the case with this image.--Nilfanion (talk) 22:00, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Nil, for recognizing the issues in this, including the copyright ones that I had not yet addressed. I approached this reasonably over at Kanonakas and here, and only became angered when the snide remarks, guesses as to my feelings about the issue, and other pooh-poohing of the author's concerns transpired. Your post above was exactly my point, and had Shaka not devolved this the way he did, we could have had a better discussion to arrive exactly at that. There is a real problem on the Commons if the attitude is going to be that once someone gives us something, we could care less about their concerns with how it is treated and described. We're going to lose contributors that way. --David Shankbone (talk) 22:50, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I can't see why Image:Hilary Duff 5.jpg can't be like how this image has been done Image:2007 Toyota Camry Altise sedan.jpg. Bidgee (talk) 23:52, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Would you have preferred that he upload over yours? I'm not sure why it's a problem. Can you clarify? Rocket000(talk) 22:38, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Just for my understanding of the mindset here, what would be a real life use for "crop date"? -- carol (talk) 22:48, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Just like a normal date, but you'd be going out with a plant of commercial importance. TimVickers (talk) 23:00, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

@Tim - ROFL. That was terrible. @Carol - I simply meant the date in which the image was cropped. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 23:24, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, this is what I meant also. What is the real life use of the date that an image was cropped? Reduced in size, a pixel area made to be smaller. -- carol (talk) 23:39, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I suppose for when it becomes public domain, it would be useful. Generally though, there's nothing wrong with what kanonkas is doing, and I simply suggest that the date the photo was taken be included as well as the crop date. That way everyone's happy. -mattbuck (Talk) 02:18, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Useful for what purpose? I am not doubting that this is useful information, I am just unable to (even in my wildest imagination) determine such a purpose. -- carol (talk) 03:07, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

A simple crop would not be copyrightable under normal circumstances, surely..--Nilfanion (talk) 15:42, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

And in the Description have "Cropped version of Image:Hilary Duff by David Shankbone.jpg"? Bidgee (talk) 03:10, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Not necessary. That is what Source is for. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 03:16, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

HERE, at commons, the {{Retouched}} template is available so that the actual information (date of photo, photographer, etc) can be put into the information template and the work of the graphic artist can be judged accordingly.... -- (with all due respect to the current administrative group and other interest participants.) carol (talk) 03:47, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

(out) Well a crop isn't quite a retouch but yes, the more information conveyed the better. It makes sense to make sure it's clear the image is a change from another one, wiht a clear link so the original image can be found, the contribution history and license info reviewed, and what both dates (the original, and this one) are. I get the impression that the issue is being resolved, though, by K. ++Lar: t/c 23:53, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Compromises are cheap, folks. —Giggy 14:17, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

August 15

Category redirects?

Hi there. I'd like to redirect Category:lymphokines, Category:interleukins, and Category:chemokines to the most general category Category:Cytokines, since these distinctions are now obsolete and most cytokines can be put in several of these categories. Are category redirects possible? TimVickers (talk) 15:20, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Not that I'm aware of. I'd suggest you use User:CommonsDelinker/commands to merge the categories together, then add {{seecat|Cytokines}} to them when they're done (see Category:Smiles for an example). —Giggy 15:31, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

In fact, that template linked me to a page we have on the subject: Commons:Rename a category. —Giggy 15:32, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Great! Thank you. TimVickers (talk) 15:36, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Equally for future reference you may find {{Category redirect}} useful. If I shift stuff to a new cat I tend to leave one of those for a while in case it helps others. Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:41, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've done that. Thank you both. TimVickers (talk) 15:58, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Attention, those redirects are equally visible in all sorts of Java tools such as HotCat and robotised classification tools, and therefore attract bad categorisation as images are not always visible in those redirected cats (specifying a redirected cat in an image does not redirect the image to the right category). Therefore, a article/page that carries the same name and points to the right category avoids a lot of miscategorisations. --Foroa (talk) 16:04, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

OK - I can see you are indicating there is an issue here. For us less experienced in category work could you explain a little more please. I tended to use cat redirect thinking for example that other wikis may have a link to a category. What would be a better way of dealing with such possibilities (& if it is bad maybe we should get rid of the cat redirect template?)? Thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 16:11, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Try to avoid category "redirects" at all costs. Both hard (#REDIRECT) and soft ({{Category redirect}}). But if you have to, always use {{category redirect}} because bots will randomly empty it for you (or regularly, if we ever get the category redirect bot running). Only create redirects if you absolutely need them, because images will end up in them. Every single upload/categorizing bot does this. Users also unknowingly put images in them either with Hotcat.js or simply because they saw that the link was blue. Soft redirects, while better than hard, completely ruin our category maintenance reports since they are technically empty categories. Rocket000(talk) 17:16, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

So what do you recommend I do Rocket000? Should I keep these as redirects, or delete Category:lymphokines, Category:interleukins, and Category:chemokines and create a page at each title saying that any of these proteins should be classified under Category:Cytokines? TimVickers (talk) 18:38, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, if you think people might create them if they're not there, then I would leave the redirects. If gallery redirects would work just as well, then go with those instead. To me, the two main reasons for using cat redirects is 1.) To prevent duplicate categories from forming. 2.) Navigation after a long-standing category gets renamed (mostly for links from other projects). Rocket000(talk) 18:57, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I think I'll keep them as redirects, since they are plausible categories. Thank you for the advice. TimVickers (talk) 19:20, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Internal server error for 800×600 resize

I have Special:Preferences Files image limit to 800×600px. When I visit Image:L-Auto-Bolide-Thrilling-Dip-of-Death.jpeg, an image I newly uploaded, I see no image. My browser shows an empty pattern when it's trying to display [5]. Attempting to retrieve that URL yields an internal server error at Wikipedia (see below). What's wrong?

Here's a transcript using wget:

$ wget http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/L-Auto-Bolide-Thrilling-Dip-of-Death.jpeg/800px-L-Auto-Bolide-Thrilling-Dip-of-Death.jpeg
--08:50:15--  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/L-Auto-Bolide-Thrilling-Dip-of-Death.jpeg/800px-L-Auto-Bolide-Thrilling-Dip-of-Death.jpeg
           => `800px-L-Auto-Bolide-Thrilling-Dip-of-Death.jpeg'
Resolving upload.wikimedia.org... 208.80.152.3
Connecting to upload.wikimedia.org|208.80.152.3|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 500 Internal Server Error
08:50:16 ERROR 500: Internal Server Error.

Eubulides (talk) 08:52, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I was getting a 500 error on several recently uploaded images about an hour ago. It has since cleared on those. In my cases the images that were not being generated on request were versions smaller than the actual image, such as 30px ones in navboxes. Seems like more servers needed. Cheers, Jack Merridew 09:05, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm having the same issue and have noticed Wikipedia is slow loading. Bidgee (talk) 09:13, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I just uploaded another image and am getting the 500 error again when I try and view a smaller rendering of the image (I'm only getting the alt-text); see [6] which gives a 500 - Internal Server Error as I post this. Cheers, Jack Merridew 10:00, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. This is not just on Commons. I just had it again on an image hosted on id:wp that I just added a usage to in a template;

• w:id:Templat:Kabupaten Pidie

where the image fails to render. Seems centered on new image uses; image usages that have been in place for a while appear to have been cached and serve-up fine; add a new usage for an uncached size and you don't get your image for some time. Cheers, Jack Merridew 10:10, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Ditto Image:Sphenodon punctatus head.jpg. But interestingly, not with Image:Epicrates subflavus.jpg uploaded 5 min beforehand. TimVickers (talk) 21:17, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

These are working now. Looks like you just have to wait for a while. TimVickers (talk) 00:02, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

It is not so much that you have to wait. Sometimes the thumbnail rendering engine "breaks". The full size of the images will always work, but calling for a thumbnail of any size that has not previously been used (during these "broken" times) will result with no image. Once it is rendered though, it is good to go (it is cached). --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 04:56, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Image won't preview

Hi, I have uploaded [7] and I can view it in full resolution but it won't preview and a link from Wikipedia ([8]) will not show it. I have tried clearing my cache but this problems persists in firefox and IE. Can anyone else view it? Cheers - Dumelow (talk) 12:13, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I should have read around a bit. I see many people have this problem with new images above and suspect this is the same - Dumelow (talk) 12:15, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

This problem seems to have resolved itself for this image at least - Dumelow (talk) 13:48, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

It isn't you. It is the servers. It happens once in a while, that the thumbnail rendering engine "Breaks". Nothing can be done other than wait till the dev's fix it. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 04:57, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Looks like those pesky little gremlins are playing the X-files game! Image:Renault Mégane Convertible.jpg isn't showing up so I guess the issue is back. :( Bidgee (talk) 07:42, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia/Commons file and page view statistics - latest news

If anyone is interested, I have the latest information on the status of the Wikimedia Foundation's page view stats for Wikipedia, with a response from the person in charge of it, Erik Zachte. I also asked him to please keep track Commons image hits. I have received a lot of traffic on my site from Commons images that aren't on Wikipedia, showing the Commons has really created a base on its own accord. That's awesome. --David Shankbone (talk) 22:52, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

How about adding link to statistics onto each image page on tab (as check usage) or in toolbox? --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:53, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Or even to all images in category/gallery or all images in watchlist? --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:55, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

bugzilla:14890 - "Make image views statistics available through wikistats". I also raised the idea with Erik at Wikimania (not that I expect him to remember, but hopefully it helped to plant the idea...). --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:44, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

August 17

POV vandalism - help needed

A Russian editor has overwritten a map I produced, Image:South Ossetia overview map.png, with a version in which the placenames are all in Russian. Can someone please undo this and restore the original version? I can't do it myself, since I'm on vacation. -- ChrisO (talk) 13:08, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any replacement, just addition of more names to the map. What am I missing? Patrícia ^msg 14:03, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

The uploader has taken my original map, changed placenames to their Russian forms (see e.g. Tskinvali), replacing the original Georgian/Ossetic names, and then uploaded his POV version overwriting my original. It's an obvious piece of nationalist POV-pushing. Again, can you or can't you revert to my original version? -- ChrisO (talk) 19:13, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Can't you just press the revert button yourself? It's not as if it's protected. -mattbuck (Talk) 19:48, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

I wrote the above on a mobile device - it's pretty difficult doing anything on that. :-) Anyway, I see the image has been reverted, so thanks for that. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:19, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Might be needed to have a look at the latest contributions of user:Bestalex. --Foroa (talk) 20:20, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

August 18

questioned identifications

Can someone tell me what the proper procedure is when the current identification of the subject of a photograph has been questioned? For example, there has arisen some doubt about whether image:Guy de Pourtalès.jpg depicts Guy de Pourtalès or his son Raymond (see Image talk:Guy de Pourtalès.jpg). Is there a category that can be added to the page to draw attention to the problem? Would it be correct to add Category:Unidentified people? - Nunh-huh (talk) 18:06, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

August 19

Image:Abbaye de mission.pdf

• Le Administrator, Delete mon (my) image here: Image:Abbaye de mission.pdf. Bad image and also duplicate of Image:Abbaye de Mission.jpg that is c'est supérieur! Merci, --Korman (talk) 02:16, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Bonjour. Le probleme avec Image:Abbaye de mission.pdf c'est ".jpg" ce une prefere pour Commons, parce-ce c'est plus bien pour le servers (je pense). Aussi, c'etais une duplicate de Image:Abbaye de Mission.jpg; regarder Category:Duplicate (en francais). Pardonnez mon francais!
  • Hello. The problem with Image:Abbaye de mission.pdf is that "jpg" is preferred for Commons, because it's better for the servers than PDF (I think). Also that image was a duplicate of Image:Abbaye de Mission.jpg; see Category:Duplicate. —Giggy 07:59, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Quick Question

What is the village pump? Kelladam96 (talk) 09:40, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

It is a page for general community discussion. You can see there are also more specialized areas for discussion linked at the top of the page.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 09:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the info, it's greatly appreciated. Kelladam96 (talk) 11:12, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

To add to his query, why does the village pump have a picture of a pond rather than a pump? -mattbuck (Talk) 11:17, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

It's supposed to be a picture of a well. In the days before indoor plumbing, every household in many villages had to draw water from a central well for everyday uses, so people (usually women) tended to congregate at the well (as is seen in several narratives in the Bible) and exchange news and gossip there. In the nineteenth century, hand-operated pumps were installed over many wells, in order to eliminate the necessity of lowering a bucket into the well and then dragging it back up heavy and full of water. When Bob Dylan sung about "The pump don't work cause the vandals took the handle", he was referring to such hand-operated water pumps... AnonMoos (talk) 12:50, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Since we're on Commons, a picture to tell 1,000 words. Image:Pakistan Pump water system at my farm lands.jpg TimVickers (talk) 18:40, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Foreign copyright or US copyright?

A question has arisen as to whether the Korean song [9] which was recorded in 1938 and published in 1938 in Korea is in or out of copyright. Under Korean law, it is out of copyright because more than 50 years has expired since the death of the last major contributor to this work. However, some have wondered if it still is under US Copyright even though it was never published in the US and US Copyright was not applied for, and the US does not use the "rule of the shortest term". Does anyone have any opinions or advice about this?--Filll (talk) 15:11, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Composer died 1950, author of lyrics died 1953. Composition and lyrics were thus still copyrighted on January 1, 1996, and became copyrighted in the U.S., too, under U.S. rules (95 years since publication in this case). See en:Wikipedia:Non-U.S. copyrights. Tag as {{Not-PD-US-URAA|South Korea|January 1, 1996}}. Lupo 15:29, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Mass deletion request: screenshots with non-free logos

There are lots of screenshots of free software that contain non-free logos not allowed on Commons — Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, Ubuntu, Google etc. Please see Commons:Deletion requests/Screenshots with non-free logos for the discussion. --AVRS (talk) 17:58, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

August 20

ladysmith & the Boer war

I'm an historian living in Durban South Africa specialising in the history of Ladysmith that includes the siege & relief. During my 14 years of research I have built up a database(not on the website) of ALL known British dead, over 25,000 names, for the WHOLE war, not just Ladysmith. I have recently added a column for memorials as I believe that a man giving his life for his country deserves to be mentioned somewhere.

If anyone can assist with a photograph or names on any Boer War memorials I would be extremely grateful. Please check with me first to make sure that the memorial you have details on is one that I have not already logged onto my database.

In addition I have a database of the residents of Ladysmith up to 1900 and would like to hear from anyone with information on Ladysmith South Africa for this period up to 1900.

I am willing to search my database, free of charge, for anyone searching for a relative that died in the Boer War

Your help would be much appreciated

Regards Brian Kaighin — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kaigs (talk • contribs) 12:05, 26. Jul. 2008 (UTC)

Signing messages is easier when hitting the third last signature icon above the editing screen (inserts 4 tildes that are expanded by the system)

This is quite interesting but will not work if we have no anchor point. I would suggest to

• create an article in a wikipedia about "Boer war memorials" containing essentially a list of the memorials and a pointer to a gallery(=Wiki article) here in commons
• Make a similar list here with cross references to the right cats/subcats in Category:Boer war memorials
• once we know what we get, we can see how to complete it.

--Foroa (talk) 10:20, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Disallowed image names

Is it possible to edit the types of disallowed image names to include ones such as "2768292819_e588287377_o.jpg" - these are the names flickr files tend to come with when you save them, and they're clearly utterly undescriptive, apart from telling you what number to plug into flinfo (which should be included anyway). -mattbuck (Talk) 02:10, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I second this motion. ;) I see plenty of these when doing flickr review, and often leave notes on the uploader's talk page asking them to use descriptive names when uploading files in the future. Enabling flickr reviewers to do file name changes also might be helpful in dealing with the non-descriptive names. Brynn (talk!) 02:36, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Whatever DID happen to rename for Image: namespace anyway? -mattbuck (Talk) 02:37, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Copyright chart

This document from Cornell University is a large, helpful chart discussing applications of US copyright law. As it's licensed under Creative Commons 3.0, could we just upload the linked PDF of the document to Commons? Nyttend (talk) 15:46, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Probably not, it's a non-commercial variant of the license. Haukurth (talk) 16:10, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Categorization progress

Hi people, you might have seen my bot running around here at commons. My bots tags all uncategorized files and tries to automaticly add categories to these files (the full process is explained here). When this process is done it still needs some human attention. I could use some help with the files in the following categories:

1. Category:Media needing categories requiring human attention - these files couldnt be categorized by a bot. A human has to find categories for these files and remove {{Uncategorized}}.
2. Category:Media needing category review - these files were automaticly categorized by a bot, but a human should check the result and remove {{Check categories}}.

If you want to help i recommend you enable HotCat (Your preferences -> Gadgets -> Tools for categories). Multichill (talk) 16:06, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Please instruct your bot not to insert category:Berg when the image has some relation with mountains. --Foroa (talk) 22:26, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, can it just blacklist all of Category:Disambiguation? Rocket000(talk) 20:40, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this, Multichill (talk · contribs), I have seen this bot in action on a few images and it is certainly doing good stuff. Cirt (talk) 23:27, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Because there is no reaction on the reported categorisation problems, from now on I put striking over- or mis-categorisation in Category:Bad botcat category so it gets not forgotten in the noise and the algorithm can be tuned. --Foroa (talk) 22:30, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Most striking examples so far Category:Articles to be merged, Category:Berg for mountain related items, Category:Organs, Category:Kyoto, ... --Foroa (talk) 13:18, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi guys, i'm using CommonsSense because its easier to categorize images when you have some suggestions than when you dont have any suggestions at all. For some images CommonsSense returns a lot of categories or wrong categories. For this i'm building filters. So i query CommonsSense, get a list of categories, apply all filters and put the result on the image. Possible filters:

• Blacklist filter: Filter out all categories which are in a blacklist, already implemented as an in code blacklist but i'm thinking of creating a page here so everybody can easily put categories in the blacklist
• Overcategorization filter: Filter out the parent categories. Implemented and in use
• Country filter: See User_talk:Multichill#Don't put files into Category:People by country. Have to think over how to exactly implement this
• Category redirect filter: Replace redirect categories with their target. Have to implement, but this code is already available in one of my other toys.
• Disambiguation filter: Filter out all disambiguation categories. Easy to implement.
• .... (insert your suggestions here)

There will always be errors, that's why i tag these images with {{Check categories}}, but i think with some good filtering this error rate can be lowered a lot. Multichill (talk) 16:27, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

The problem with {{Check categories}} is that you have to hit the edit tab... you don't have to do this to remove {{Uncat}}. Maybe you can simply apply a category instead? Rocket000(talk) 09:57, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

No, that wouldnt be a good. Those images should be checked by a human. Some nice javascript could solve this (was already on my list) or we just add it to Hotcat, but we risk getting images being checked without the user noticing it. Multichill (talk) 20:37, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I implemented all filters. Multichill (talk) 11:33, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Edit summaries when uploading

Why is there no 'edit summary' field when you upload a new file or a new version of it? It just seems to dump the description and such as your edit summary, so you have no control over it really. How would I make an edit summary for uploading a new version of the file, while leaving everything else as it is? Richard001 (talk) 08:27, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi, put your edit summary in the summary field, replacing the Information template. The old template will be kept and you should update it as appropriate afterwards. Not intuitive, I know. Cheers, Jack Merridew 08:33, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed this just after posting this. It certainly isn't intuitive; I hope it can be made better in future. What about when you upload the first time? Does it just dump whatever you put into the information area? Richard001 (talk) 08:00, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes. If really necessary you can add some <!-- commented out stuff --> before your actual {{Information}} (though this might not be possible on every upload form design), and then remove that from the image page when uploaded. —Giggy 08:38, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

This really isn't good. Is there any plan to have an 'edit summary' or 'upload summary' field? Is there a bugzilla request or anything? Richard001 (talk) 05:34, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Redirect from Category to the Gallery

I am working hard to put the about 600 photos I made of plants and put in galleries now also in categories. To my surprise I see several times a redirect to a higher category and a redirect to the gallery page. For example has Botmultichill (who sends me many contributions to my watchlist) created a redirect for the Category:Deutzia gracilis to the gallery page Deutzia_gracilis. What is the logic behind it? Because a link to a category does not automatically show up in a gallery as far as I know. Wouter (talk) 15:17, 18 August 2008 (UTC)it

A category that is redirected to a gallery becomes useless (Botmultichill converted only hard redirects to soft redirects) and hides the pictures in that category. I corrected it.

A gallery that redirects to a category can be seen as a (temporary) empty gallery that helps to find the right category. This is particularly interesting to help people to find the right category in many languages. --Foroa (talk) 16:19, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Foroa. An other point are the (many?) changes of the category to a redirect of that category to a higher one. See Category:Hydrangea heteromalla as an example. I have already reverted several ones but as there are many I would like the opinion of others about it. Wouter (talk) 18:13, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I am under the impression that a lot of categories have been hidden (redirected) in the "gallery versus category" war (which I never completely understood I must admit). I restored a couple of Hydrangea related subcats and it seems all logical to me. But I would prefer specialist advice, especially with complex species trees. You can detect redirects by the "What links here" function in the left toolbar. --Foroa (talk) 19:42, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I made a list of category to gallery redirects, but forgot to check it. Maybe someone else feels like checking? Multichill (talk) 21:28, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

All "faithful reproduction" photographs of 2D public domain works of art are now allowed on Commons

Following an official position statement in July 2008 by the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation, and a subsequent poll of Commons users, Commons policy now allows "faithful reproduction" photographs of 2D public domain works of art, even where the photograph was taken in a previously-disallowed country such as the UK or the Nordic countries. For details, see Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag. The {{PD-Art}} tag has been amended accordingly.

As a result of this change in Commons policy, "faithful reproduction" photographs taken in the UK and elsewhere can now be hosted on Commons and will no longer have to be transwikied to the English Wikipedia (where they have long been allowed on the basis that Wikipedia only considers US law). --MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:51, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Nice one! So we can start undeleting now? Maybe nice to have a central page to keep track of these undeletions. Multichill (talk) 18:01, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Start undeleting as fast as you like. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:37, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

This is the most irrational thing I've seen being done on Commons. To blatantly include an exception to our licensing policy by accepting copyrighted content and potentially hurt reusers of Wikimedia material is bizarre. Since it's the first time I'm reading about this poll and this decision, I'm just leaving my protest. I'm sorry. Patrícia ^msg 19:44, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Please leave complaints with the WMF Board :) --MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:00, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is a bit crazy but we had reached an impasse and this seemed like the least crazy way out. Haukurth (talk) 20:06, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I have created Commons:Reuse of PD-Art photographs with a warning about reuse of such content in some countries. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:00, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Michael, the Board didn't decide anything, they gave some (informed) opinions. the Commons community decided on this. The Board won't listen to my complains, because they will say "but you decided that, not us". Or is Erik "the Board"? Or Mike Godwin? Patrícia ^msg 20:08, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you're quite right, of course, but as soon as they jumped in with their "position", that was the end of the discussion about country-by-country laws. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:10, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Good work! Haukurth (talk) 20:06, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

• Comment. I think exceptions should be allowed for old 2D images as MichaelMaggs says for images like this Image:ThutmoseI.jpg which is used for the article on pharaoh Thutmose I. Someone could perhaps reproduce a copy of it too, I suppose. The only problem I think is that some uploaders of old 2D images forget to attribute a (book, etc) source for their work. If I am wrong in my interpretation, please correct me. --Leoboudv (talk) 21:22, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I think you are right and that PD-Art is fine for that image. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:27, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

• Finally, things make sense again! Rocket000(talk) 22:50, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

It might be useful to note that the poll itself is at Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag/Straw Poll ... I think I missed voting in it. ++Lar: t/c 23:01, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Before restoring images please note that the original uploader might not want this since (s)he might be held responsible for breaking the law in his/her home country (independently of any Commons decision) by uploading copyright infringing material. /Lokal_Profil 22:03, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Re-write of Commons scope is now at release-candidate stage

The text of Commons:Project scope/Proposal is now pretty well done. Please visit the talk page and leave a note to say whether you agree that the text is now ready to go live. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:14, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Is there a difference between before and after, apart from cosmetic changes? -mattbuck (Talk) 19:09, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there are quite big changes on the handling of Pdf and Djvu files (use History to compare before and after the changes I have made today: [10]). --MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:22, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:21, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Unknown guitarist

Unknown guitarist

Hello, Does anyone know the name of the guitarist on the right? Tony something, English or American... I was told he is quite known. Yann (talk) 22:58, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Is he one of these guys? --rimshot^talk 06:02, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Yep, looks like the guitarist on the right is Anthony Glise[11]. The woman on the left would be Marina. But that concert appears to have taken place on July 27. Why does the EXIF say August 10? Lupo 11:32, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Forget it, apparently they had a second concert on August 10.[12] Lupo 11:34, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

August 21

Certain pages appear faulty in commons

I use Firefox 3 on Ubuntu 8.04. I notice several pages such as commons:upload do not display correctly. The contents of the page only appear when I move the cursor or scroll down. Does anyone face the same problem? Nichalp (talk) 08:09, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Recent forms of older pics

Hello! I have the habit to upload wrought forms of previously uploaded pictures. Where can I categorize the previous forms? at duplicate?--Dimorsitanos (talk) 09:47, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I have no idea what you mean by "wrought forms", but usually variants of the same image can just point to one another as "other versions". - Jmabel ! talk 17:48, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Natural regional Park logos

A discussion is in progress of the reality of public domain for those logos. It's on wikipedia in French here : w:fr:Wikipédia:Legifer/août 2008#Logos des parcs régionaux français

There was a previous statement in the Village Pump : here : Commons:Village pump#Parks in France saying that it was not a problem, but after various research this statement seems not accurate. If some french speaking user have more informations it will help to clear this case. Some are saying there is no problem but we have someone that is saying just the opposite.

In case you have knowledge on that matter but you have trouble in French, don't hesitate to add information in english :) We will add a translation for french users :)

Dionysostom (talk) 09:54, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

"History" cats

How exactly are "history" categories supposed to be used? I look, for example, at and many of the images included seem to me to be miscategorized. For example, Image:Ebenthal Gurnitz Propstei 15052008 51.jpg and Image:Friesach Fuerstenhof Rathaus 17082008 51.jpg are just present-day images of old buildings. Image:Techelsberg Sankt Martin Kriegerdenkmal 16072008 34.jpg is a war memorial (almost certainly 20th century, though the caption doesn't say). I would never have thought to put these in this category. Am I under-utilizing such categories, or is someone else overusing them? - Jmabel ! talk 03:28, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

History is not restricted to events centuries ago. In general, such categories should, in my opinion, follow the scope of the corresponding Wikipedia articles, i.e. images that illustrate some aspect of the history of Carinthia can be added to this category. If such a policy is followed, it makes sense to add a {{Commonscat}} template that points to the category in the corresponding articles. --AFBorchert (talk) 09:31, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

But how do you decide which contemporary pictures of buildings belong in a "history" category? I understand how your criterion could be useful in setting up a gallery (always more subjective, in any event), but not a category. - Jmabel ! talk 17:44, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I think that such pictures would be appropriately categorized in such a category whenever they played a significant role in history, be it in contemporary history or in some event centuries ago. Whenever such a categorization is done, I would expect some rationale for it in the image description. I fail to see this in the two examples you provided. Hence it might be justified to remove these categorizations in these two cases. However, I would argue that whenever a building is indeed of historic significance in regard to the subject of the history of category, contemporary images can be added. A history of category is not the same as a historic images of category. --AFBorchert (talk) 05:41, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Regarding scope of categories vs galleries. I do not see different scopes in equally named categories and galleries. In such a case, a gallery is expected to present the best images of the corresponding category in a structured way. This does not mean that such a gallery that corresponds to a category has a different scope. --AFBorchert (talk) 05:45, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Attribution and License Info via Metadata?

Please forgive me if the answer to these questions are obvious, but I haven't been able to find it after a couple hours of searching:

If I am reusing an image by posting it on the web for commercial purposes, and if the creator of an image has requested attribution in future uses of the work, is it permissible to embed such attribution in an image's metadata (e.g., in IPTC fields for a JPG)? Or must I provide the creator's name via text on the same page as the image?

The same question for licenses: Can I embed the license info via metadata? Or must I provide it in another way?

Thank you for helping out on this. I appreciate it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.246.193.94 (talk • contribs) 20:15, 20. Aug. 2008 (UTC)

Merely embedding the author's name in the metadata without mentioning the author in the vicinity of the image is in my opinion not acceptable if attribution is required. This can be done within the caption (see here), or it can be made visible whenever the mouse is moved over the picture (see here), or the author's name can only be found when the image is clicked on (this is the practice at the Wikimedia projects). Some doubts were risen in the past if the latter option would hold up in court.

You are always free, however, to ask the author for alternative terms. --AFBorchert (talk) 21:36, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure how to respond to your helpful comments--that's how basic my knowledge is--but I figure editing my original post might work.

In any case, thank you very much for your input. I appreciate it. I will look into the options you mentioned.

A couple hours later: I still haven't figured out how to respond to posts, and so I will edit this file again.

In any case, I wanted to say that I have spent quite a bit of time trying to resolve this question of whether it's sufficient to embed license info in an image's metadata. I am sure many people know the answer to this question--I would love to become one of them! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.246.193.94 (talk • contribs) 00:13, 21. Aug. 2008 (UTC)

But User:AFBorchert has given you quite an answer. The image credit with the name of the author and the type of license should be easily visible when viewing the image and without requiring any special means. Writing the image credit in the meta/EXIF/IPCT data is fine, but IMHO no substitute for placing them directly under or besides the image where it is shown. Of course, the modalities vary a little bit between use in print and online. But if you place an image on a website or in a blog, nobody sees what's in the meta data, if he/she doesn't locally download the image. --Túrelio (talk) 07:20, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Túrelio. AFBorchert did not mention license info in his/her response, but I believe you are suggesting that I treat author and license info in the same way.

Here's my dilemma: I plan to use some images in very small web ads (110x80 pixels). The ad reseller through which I plan to deliver them does not allow for any type of mouse-over or click through, so there's no way to follow AFBorchert's good suggestions. I can probably overlay the author's name on the image itself, but overlaying the text of a license would almost certainly destroy the image, especially if I want it to be visible at 110x80 pixels.

In this case, what's the best plan?

Thanks again for your assistance--and if anyone knows how I can respond to messages without editing the entire thing, that would be great!

To answer your last question first, simply click on the Edit-link in square brackets on the right margin of the paragraph header.

About your problem: that sounds difficult. I've no experience in that. In regard to mentioning the license, IMHO it is acceptable just to write the license type in short form, for example: CC BY-SA-3.0, and underlay a weblink to the full license text. Nevertheless, you would have to write at least the 13 characters of CC BY-SA-3.0. But how to embed that into the image, at least I have no idea. --Túrelio (talk) 20:25, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry that I didn't mention the license information as this slightly more complex. Not all licenses require you to mention the licensing information even if the author is to be named. Take {{Attribution}} or {{Cc-by-3.0}}, for example. However, in cases like {{Cc-by-sa-3.0}} or {{GFDL-self}}, you must supply the license information as well in the vicinity of the image much like the attribution as shown in the examples above. (Both examples, BTW, fail to mention the license informations even if they are required to do so. This is unfortunately a quite common failure.) If license information is required and if it tends to clutter the caption if mentioned beside the author's name, I suggest to ask the author for alternative terms. I got several such inquiries for my images and whenever asked kindly, I have granted such an exception which I am inclined to give for non-profit projects or books. --AFBorchert (talk) 05:27, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Location before information

• Yesterday I edited an image to move the "location" box below the information box[13] (since image description and license are supposed to be the first thing listed), with a clear edit summary of "information before location".
• Two hours later, the image's owner User:Lycaon reverted my edit[14].

I can't see how I'm supposed to assume good faith when my edit was clear whereas his revert gave no rationale whatsoever. Is it now customary on Commons to have clutter and spam for Google Maps be enforced as the first thing we get from an image's description? 62.147.38.73 21:46, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure there's any particular policy on it, but I prefer the location after myself... I guess it's up to the uploader, though Lycaon was bing a bit rude. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:49, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Wasn't there a policy that information and especially license information have to go first? On a related note, I've noticed a growing tendency to clutter: on many images, before you can get any actual information, you have to swim through a sea of "This is featured on Turkish Wikipedia", "This is suitable for wallpaper", "This was edited with Photoshop", "This was shot with a Brandname camera", and so on ad nauseam - the location box being just one more among many such spammy things. 62.147.38.73 21:53, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I think it is a bit rude of an IP to come and change a structure of one image and then go and complain at the Vp when this is reverted. I have 900+ photographs on Commons which all are structured in the same way. Information always goes first and this includes geocoding (it often takes quite a bit of effort to gather this info btw). Then follows licensing and only after that comes other information. Please leave the structure as is. I'm NOT going to change all 900-odd images, thank you very much. Lycaon (talk) 22:07, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I personally also prefer {{Information}} before {{Location}}. I do not think there is a written policy about it, but that seems to be order the majority of geocodded images use. I do not think there is a need for Lycaon (or anybody else) to spend time changing "all 900-odd images", but I am not sure why spending time reverting improvements other make. --Jarekt (talk) 00:59, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I think that as long as there are no strict rules regarding the order (and I very much hope that we keep it that flexible as it is now) we should respect the layout chosen by the uploader. I recommend to minimize updating edits and to be conservative in it. Otherwise, high volume uploaders might become unnecessarily irritated and we might end up with edit wars regarding irrelevant details. This doesn't mean that I do not understand the concern that some image pages tend to become cluttered. But I do not think that this issue is resolved by reordering some templates on some random images. If at some time our community feels strong enough about enforcing a uniform layout, it seems best to run a bot who aligns all image pages. Then we would have at least some consistency. But I still do not think that this is worth the effort. --AFBorchert (talk) 05:12, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I prefer {{Information}} before {{Location}} also but it's really up to the uploader on what they personally want. Bidgee (talk) 05:31, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

August 22

Wrong image descriptions and licences

There is this flickr account pingnews.com by David Shapinsky, which publishes a lot of images which are under public domain. Flickr does not know the licence "public domain" so Shapinsky has used cc-by-sa, but but a long description under each image telling the real author and that the image is public domain. In the last few month now a few Commons Users have transferred several of this images rather thoughtlessly by using the FlickrUploadBot. The bot obviously can't read the description added by Shapinky, thus uploading all this images under cc-by-sa-licence and with Shapinksy as author. I've started already trying to fix that, but since there are a lot of those images, I could need some help. -- Cecil (talk) 03:13, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

{{User SUL}}

Hi all, I have made this template with the help of others in order to show which is the user's main account for SUL's user. For example, if you make {{User SUL|1=en|2=w}}, this show that your main account is on w:en:. Sorry for my English speaking Otourly (talk) 15:28, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Merci! TimVickers (talk) 17:18, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

{{Trademarked-Empire State Building}}

Does anyone else think that the wording of this template is incorrect? I am no lawyer but my understanding is that a registered trademark does not protect against all commercial use of the trademark. Also The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc. vs. Gentile Productions [15] suggests that trademarking a building may be hard to enforce at best. —JeremyA (talk) 17:18, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I have seen this template before, and I do not know why do we need a special template for each trademarked object. I think {{Trademarked}} would be perfectly suitable. I also do not like providing contact information, it looks like advertising and clutters image pages. --Jarekt (talk) 18:14, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Ffestiniog Railway images (formerly Categorisation conundrum, but the archive bot got there whilst I was composing my reply...)

Guys in order to add the Ffestiniog pictures to the Locomotives of the United Kingdom hierarchy they need to be moved to categories like Steam locomotives of the Ffestiniog Railway and Diesel locomotives of the Ffestiniog Railway. Are you happy to have this done? Does it help with the earlier discussion? Railwayfan2005 (talk) 19:39, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I guess that would be OK, though maybe a bit annoying. Wait a few days until I've finished uploading stuff. -mattbuck (Talk) 19:44, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be easier to have the categories now - then you can just add the images to them as you upload them? (PS Have I got the correct number of "F"s in the names?) Railwayfan2005 (talk) 19:48, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, I want to finish my upload of this batch of images. After that I can see if any new locos need their own cats, and then sort accordingly. -mattbuck (Talk) 19:50, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I wirhdrew from this discussion, when it became obvious that User Matt Buck was going to do what he was doing under some Wikimedia policy. This now means that wheras a few weeks ago, Cat=FR on main wiki, had some fifty plus photos, it now has one, and that is under threat of deletion. He acted without any consultation in doing this, and his actions have annoyed a number of people connected with the railway, including one who has declared himself unhappy with Matt Bucks actions, and will not be contributing again. He is not happy with material being transferred from main wiki to wikimedia, but again Matt Buck is quoting policy. Personally, and prior to this I would not submit any photos due to the wiki policy which by the letter, means that my photos may appear in print without my knowledge. --Keith (talk) 20:32, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Commons is all about freedom for people to use your photos, it's kind of the point. Any image on here can appear in print without notification of the author. As for the FR cat on wikipedia, Wikipedia is not meant to host hundreds of images - the only images en.wp should be hosting are ones which are not free use. All other images should be on commons. Furthermore, there shouldn't be very few unfree images of the FR on en.wp, as apart from maybe ones taken of the construction of locomotives which can't be obtained elsewhere, they are all replaceable by free ones.

As for Stewart's issues with me, this stems from my removal of a gallery from Minffordd railway station. Galleries are discouraged by en.wp policy, and should be replaced by images at the sides of the page, and relevant links to commons. This gallery contained 6 images, all of which I had transwikied, and I felt the gallery itself didn't add anything to the article. Therefore I was bold and removed it. I got jumped on by Stewart for this. I appreciate that he put a lot of effort into getting those photos, but that does not allow ownership of articles. I re-added several of the more relevant images to the page, with their captions intact. It does sadden me that he decided to stop contributing FR photos over this, but I honestly don't see how I could have handled the situation any differently. If he's getting "terminally demotivated" over the removal of four images, then what more can I say?

Now, as for my categorisation of FR photos, we all work within policy, although commons is more mellow than en.wp. I agree that there are instances where it makes sense to have an image in a category and its parent cat, but having the 328 FR photos I have uploaded in the past 10 days in a single category would make it quite ridiculously hard to navigate. Let me give an example - there are now more photos of Blanche - one single engine, and not even a Fairlie - than there were of the FR in total before I started. Now, if you feel like getting on my back over this, then fine, that's your right. All I want to do is get on with my job here without all these petty arguments from Wikipedians who have come over just to complain I moved their photos. -mattbuck (Talk) 20:56, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and since I'm done with this batch, I'll change them to the cats you suggested Railwayfan. Thanks. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:01, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

And done. Click your own links and you'll see. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:48, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Great stuff. Thanks. Railwayfan2005 (talk) 15:01, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

3 or 2

What is wrong here: [16] . Havang(nl) (talk) 21:35, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

August 23

Mainspace names redirecting to categories

Should mainspace names like death redirect to categories? I would never recommend this on Wikipedia, but here it's a lot different. I have created quite a few of these myself, and many others have too. Does it go against a guideline? Is it frowned upon? Encouraged? Richard001 (talk) 03:25, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

It's the best way to provide multi-language access to mono-language categories, and much les harmless than those category redirects that have more drawbacks than advantages. --Foroa (talk) 05:45, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

There are two bookmarklets at redirect bookmarklets to simplify their creation. -- User:Docu

No, there's no policy/guideline on it. Personally, I hate them (a result of my en.wp wiki-education), but I also know they're useful and are mostly harmless. I've even created a few myself. And like Foroa mentioned, these CNRs are better than category redirects. I guess the reason it's different here is that our mainspace is a lot like categories anyway. The only thing I would say that isn't ok, is redirecting to non-content categories, e.g. maintenance cats. Rocket000(talk) 15:31, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

And what's worst is redirecting from categories to galleries, and there are many. I started cleaning at the end of such a list. (hint). --Foroa (talk) 15:45, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm on it. :) Rocket000(talk) 23:52, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Template:Idw-new

A new template for notifying an uploader about a del req. It should be use for the "nominate for deletion" button and replace the old one. Any comments? Btw: The name of this template is of course still changeable... Forrester [[ hate+love letters ]] 21:29, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Something like this was proposed before. It's a nice idea—trying to lose the en bias and everything—but I think it's way too much to leave users. I would hate to see that thing substituted (user messages always should be subst'd so we don't alter people's words when we update the template). I think our current system works good, where you can choose the language the message is in. Rocket000(talk) 23:51, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Kinda ugly, not more useful than what we use already, seems hideous to subst, relies on js to not suck. I say "No."  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 02:50, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I forgot about the js... not everyone has it enabled (or at all). Imagine some newbie get bot-spammed with 10 of those fully expanded. Rocket000(talk) 07:22, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Negative. I know some people don't like the langbar, too bad. So far no one else has come up with a replacement that is just as small and works for all languages. On this template is a half attempt which only serves to make the templates even larger. Additionally that "additional section" looks terrible on Wide screen monitors, there is a huge spaces on the right which could fit another entire column. Oh, and lastly, the wording very muddy. "whether it must be deleted" - Well it is not a "must". "It is just about specific problems (like copyright issues) which could result from this image." - Yes it is about a specific issue, but not as a "result" (plus this is seems to reference the "Don't take it personally" sentence before hand. So ... Don't take it personally that there is a copyright issue? I understand what it means, but very oddly put). Oh and too many exclamation marks. Makes it seem very artificially happy - Unless you are an evil admin like myself, you generally don't enjoy destroying people's hard work. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 07:48, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Your arguments:

• "I would hate to see that thing substituted ": I don't see a necessity to substitute a message template since there might also be a difference between the text on linked templates. And even if we substitute it the source code is not that big and could be cleaned up.
• "I think our current system works good, where you can choose the language the message is in.": Here you also choose the language the message is. The other template only gives you a link where there is a different-looking template without the name of th file and in a different context.
• "Kinda ugly": isn't really rich in content. I say the current template is kinda ugly.
• "not more useful than what we use already": You need to give reasons for that. I could also say that it is more useful than what we use already.
• How many persons got no js? Should the system be best for most users or worst for all users? Forrester [[ hate+love letters ]] 07:52, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

The current template is ugly. Feel free to improve it visually, but there's no reason to include the translations like that. In fact, most our user message templates are ugly. How about standardizing them? Here's a start. Keep it simple. Rocket000(talk) 08:06, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

August 24

en Wikipedia - WikiProject Images and Media

I have proposed renaming en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Graphics to WikiProject Images and Media. The project was created a few months back as a "top-level" project for Image concerns on Wikipedia. It went inactive shortly after, which I feel is likely due to lack of attention. I figure a slightly more intuitive name and a broadening of the scope would make this in to a very useful top-level project, as image and media efforts are very scattered right now. Please weigh in on the talk page with regards to the rename. Also, if you feel that such a project could (at some point) be useful, feel free to join! Cheers ~ JohnnyMrNinja 06:03, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

August 25

Creative Commons Licensing by the photographer of photographs/video/scans of art in a personal collection of photographer.

I own several pieces of paintings, ceramic sculptures, pottery etc. Is a photograph of said art items, taken by myself able to be creative commons licensed for upload to the wikimedia commons? For example, hypothetically, say that I have a sculpture of a cat by artist Joe Smith made in 1928, after copyright law is in effect in the United States of America. As far as I know if I want to sell this piece of art, I have the right to take photographs of it, and put it onto Ebay, auction sites, etc. Also, I have the rights to allow someone else to come and photograph this piece of art for a book on Joe Smith that they are working on to be published by XYZ University Press etc.

In that vein, would I be able to take a picture of said ceramic cat, Creative Commons license the photograph and post it to Wikimedia Commons under hypothetical artist Joe Smith?

Taking this one step further. Say my friend has a tiger sculpture by said above artist, Joe Smith. Say that I got my friend to write and sign a permission for me to take a photograph of said tiger Would I be able to take a photograph of said tiger sculpture, Creative Commons license the photograph and upload it? Where would I upload an image of the permission? Does the permission itself need to contain permission for its own image to be creative commons licensed? --Ronaldwei (talk) 13:06, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Possession of the physical object is not the same as owning the copyright on it. Posting a picture of the cat sculpture to Ebay is covered by a combination of "fair use" and "don't care", but Commons requires free licenses. If you don't own the copyright to the cat sculpture, you can't release photos of it under a free license. --Carnildo (talk) 21:23, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Simple question

is this image Gehyra mutilata 2.jpg acceptable on commons ?... could all the comments be erased out ?... 212.203.82.132 15:51, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's fine & I will remove the text now.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:26, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Category:Photo:Places in South Tyrol

Please, propose a better name for Category:Photo:Places in South Tyrol. There is already a Category:Cities and villages in South Tyrol. Could these two merge? Havang(nl) (talk) 18:05, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

The Photo namespace - that's a new one. We usually don't have a photo specific category since so many of the images are photos, so just removing the 'photo:' part should do, though it does seem a bit redundant with the existing categories so a merge might be best. Richard001 (talk) 05:30, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Adding geographic coordinates to pictures

If this question has been asked before, please accept my apologies.;) I see that a growing number of pictures now have geographic coordinates in the description, to pinpoint the location. I'm willing to try to add this info to the pictures I have uploaded. But is there some sort of manual on how to obtain this information? Best regards, MartinD (talk) 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I suggest you look at COM:GEOCO. Install the wikimedia layer, compass overlay and coordinates for wikipedia tools on Google Earth, and get your geocode on. -mattbuck (Talk) 19:24, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your fast reply. I hope it won't be too technical for me.;) Best regards, MartinD (talk) 19:37, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I also like the other trick that somebody was recommending: create a bookmark of some random page; call it GetLocation; go to its properties and replace html address with javascript:void(prompt('',%22{{location dec|%22 + gApplication.getMap().getCenter().lat() + %22|%22 + gApplication.getMap().getCenter().lng() + %22}}%22));. Once this one-time step is done you can use GoogleMap and each time you want to get coordinates of a location you simple double click on that location (this centers the map) and press GetLocation bookmark. Then a window will appear with the text which you can cut and paste to below {{Information}}. --Jarekt (talk) 21:03, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Again, thanks! MartinD (talk) 10:31, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Template {{En}} problem

Every time I add an external link to this template (e.g. in the description of Image:Naturalist on the River Amazons figure 31.png), everything disappears. Anyone want to take a shot at fixing it? Richard001 (talk) 05:26, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that the URL contains a "=" sign. If you use {{Some_Template|Some text containing = and more}}, the MediaWiki parser thinks he has a template Some_Template with one parameter named "Some text containing" that has the value "and more". The work-around is to explicitly name (or number) such parameters if their values contain "=": use {{Some_Template|1=Some text containing = and more}}; this tells the software that there is one parameter (the first one) with the value "Some text containing = and more". Lupo 06:53, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

There is a problem with this template though. See the last section on Template talk:En. Rocket000(talk) 11:03, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Lupo 11:13, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

EIA

hi, i am just wondering wether resources (like this or those) from the US-government agency are public domain. Following this i am fairly tempted to use them but as is said i am not quite shure.

thx in advance for reply.(--193.97.170.13 07:51, 21 August 2008 (UTC))--Goiken (talk) 07:54, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Are they images made by federal government employees during the course of their official duties, or do they incorporate photos of non-governmental origin which this agency happened to make use of? AnonMoos (talk) 15:33, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

How can I tell? I asume them to be worked out by the oficilas. I am only interested in the stats which don't incorporate any photographs.--Goiken (talk) 21:15, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Data compilations made by US DoE employees, partly based on data from other countries. I would say that it is safe to assume that the US compilation is public domain. That is what statitics agencies produce these data for, so that others will use them. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 22:00, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, graphs and charts in government publications and on websites almost certainly are PD, unless credited to someone. But to be safe, simply e-mail the source and ask. They employ people whose job is to answer such queries. --Una Smith (talk) 07:24, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Chiropractic thumbnails went kerflooey

The Chiropractic article on English Wikipedia currently displays without images, assuming you haven't logged in. This is because its thumbnails (which used to be present) are missing. For example, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wiki/en/thumb/5/58/Chiropractic5.JPG/180px-Chiropractic5.JPG currently fails with HTTP error 404 (not found). This is accessing the 180px thumbnail; the original image is still readable. I guess the Wikimedia image servers have gone haywire to some extent? Other pages work fine, though. Can someone with some technical knowhow look into this please? Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 22:53, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

System error. Was fixed :)  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 09:30, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Let's automate deletion of files

- but let's do it right:

Obviously, a file should not be in use when it's deleted. The equally obvious solution to that, is to remove all links to it, preferably by replacing it with a perfect replacement.

Such replacements could be divided in four classes:

No difference apart from the filename

This ought to be the only class described as "Exact duplicate". Replacing these images should be trivial.

Differences in format

These may be rescaled images, or images with a different file format, but the notable thing is that they show the exact same content; if they would be rescaled to the same size, the only difference might be the quality. This is the only class to be described as "Duplicate", although NOT an exact duplicate". (In fact, currently a move from bitmap to vector is excluded from this class.) In reality, wikis will see these images replaced as "Exact duplicate".

Difference in detail

These images display the same thing, and they have matching descriptions, but they are not the same image. One would expect them being replaced as something like "Similar image", but in reality wikis will see these images replaced as "Duplicate", although NOT an exact duplicate".

Difference in content

These images are about the same context, but they do not display the same thing, or their image description differs. They may show a different element from the same class, or they may include different peripheral objects. This class would be eg. "Similar content", and its replacements ought to include the warning to check the page context. As this places the burden on the other wikis, it's doubtful whether such replacements should ever be made, except for copyright, yet in reality wikis will see even such images replaced as "Duplicate", although NOT an exact duplicate".

The rest

If there's no replacement in one of the above four classes, there's no replacement. If copyright violations require deletion, the other wikis had better be told that there's a problem. This is in itself a problem, as the other wikis will usually not know about the deletion effort until it reaches them, which means their objections, if any, will be raised exactly after the matter is closed.

Either, let's automate deletion of files correctly, or
Let's not automate deletion of files.
Aliter (talk) 17:49, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism would screw us unfortunately. -mattbuck (Talk) 19:05, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

There is really no way to automate deletions well enough. Vandalism is but the first problem. I wouldn't even want to think about all the other problems that would arise; it would not be worth the effort.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 09:34, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Bell towers vs. Church towers

I guess that nearly all church towers are bell towers, but not all bell towers are church towers.

Category:Bell towers in Italy is currently soft-redirected to Category:Church towers in Italy. This seems wrong to me. For example, to the best of my knowledge, Image:Torre Adelasia restaurata.JPG is a bell tower, but not a church tower. I would guess that there might be numerous town halls with bell towers. - Jmabel ! talk 22:39, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Indeed Category:Church towers specifically instructs "Per le torri campanarie che non fanno parte di una chiesa vedi Category:Bell towers". Man vyi (talk) 04:08, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Grazie, non avevo letto quella pagina. Sounds like we should just get rid of the soft redirect, then. I will do so. - Jmabel ! talk 05:54, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

August 27

Dental services

Could I get someone to photoshop out "Chris Taharis DENTAL SERVICES" in this image? I assume that's required for small businesses which feature prominently in images of commercial centres. Ottre (talk) 08:20, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Please, any assistance would be appreciated. Ottre (talk) 08:22, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Why would that need to be removed?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 09:36, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

It's not required - the only reason it might be is if the sign itself was copyright (not PD-textlogo), and even if it were, freedom of panorama and De minimis would likely apply. -mattbuck (Talk) 11:35, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

The sign almost certainly involves too little creativity to be copyrightable. I'd leave it. I've been very happy to find its equivalents in 100-year-old photos. I suspect a few decades from now people will feel the same about this. - Jmabel ! talk 16:16, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Please link to the image description page Image:Templestowe Village Shopping Centre 1.JPG instead of directly to the raw 1.9 meg upload... AnonMoos (talk) 17:06, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

sigh...

Special:Contributions/Jelahi -Nard the Bard 21:14, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Waah. Not again. -- Cecil (talk) 21:26, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Just delete the lot? -mattbuck (Talk) 21:42, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

That wouldn't bother me. The comments are demands, not attempts to engage the community in conversation. ЭLСОВВОLД _talk 21:46, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Someone should follow up on his new posts. Dragons flight (talk) 10:05, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

August 29

Another categorization question: Composite images

Category:Composite images: There seem to be two sorts of things here, images that are individually composites (e.g. blend two faces) and images that show more than one image side-by-side. Judging by the inclusion of the category under Category:Computer generated images, it must have been intended for the former, but we should really also have a category for the latter and this is what I'd expect to call it. Anyone want to suggest how this should be reorganized? - Jmabel ! talk 00:21, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

How about Category:Montages? Pruneau^talk 08:11, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Perfect! - Jmabel ! talk 15:48, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Requesting deletion

Hey, I uploaded a composite of two images, Image:OthnielCharlesMarsh.jpg and Image:Cope_Edward_Drinker_1840-1897.png as Image:Cope-and-marsh.png. As per a FAC on the english WP, none of the source images have proper author/rationales for licenses provided. I'm requesting the deletion of the Cope-and-marsh image, and tagging of the source images (sorry I don't know how to do this, I wish I had my adminship here so I could do this myself... :P) Which reminds me, is there some sort of template dictionary so I don't have to ask later? Thanks, David Fuchs (talk) 02:46, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually scratch the deletion, we mighta' found what was needed, sorry :) David Fuchs (talk) 03:11, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I found a source confirming pre-1.1.1923 publication for Image:Cope_Edward_Drinker_1840-1897.png and replaced the Marsh image with a properly-sourced version in Image:Cope-and-marsh.png. All is well. ЭLСОВВОLД _talk 03:20, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

PD photos of cars

I just noticed that at the beginning of Category:PD-self are a large number of photos of cars (e.g. Image:'00-'03_Ford_Taurus_Taxi.jpg). I'm concerned that the car designs depicted in these works are likely to be protected by copyright, even if the photographer has released their contribution. Thoughts? Dcoetzee (talk) 17:29, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

It depends on the country, if taken in a country with freedom of panorama, it should be oke. Havang(nl) (talk) 17:53, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Please take a look at this section. Cars have usually a intrinsic utilitarian function and are therefore ineligible for copyright. Freedom of panorama does not apply in this case as cars are moving objects. --AFBorchert (talk) 17:58, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Bad example - can you really identify any trademark or design pattern there? I pass. But Commons does have a Category:Advertising with subsets like Category:Buses with advertisement; cars are actually a small fraction of it. Go figure. NVO (talk) 18:00, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

So if I take a picture in which theoretically any man-made object is visible, it would be infringing the designer's copyright, unless I could claim some exemption like freedom of panorama? But I'm not using -in the case of the Ford Taurus picture- the Ford design to build a car of my own, I'm just publishing a picture of it. Are we not be a bit too afraid of the lawyers? I understand the Shakespeare has written something like "first thing to do, let's kill all the lawyers". As both my wife and my daughter are lawyers I would not second such a proposal. But I would suggest that lawyers who object to such a picture start looking for something more sensiblee to do! Regards, MartinD (talk) 09:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

This is nothing to do with Freedom of Panaorama. Rather, it's an issue about copyright in 3D articles. Some such articles, such as sculptures, do attract copyright, but utilitarian articles do not. See Commons:Image casebook#Vehicles. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:40, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

August 28

Report of copyright infringement at Yahoo! News

I didn't know where to put this but Yahoo! News is using Image:Solfuga CM.jpg in a news bit without any reference to the GFDL license the image is under. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason (talk) 15:58, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

The non-compliance process may be of use here. — Hex (❝?!❞) 16:24, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I've notified User:Duk, the copyright holder. He's the only one who can take action. Superm401 - Talk 18:47, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

The copyright owner is the only one who can send a DMCA notice, but anybody can send them an e-mail explaining the GFDL (steps 1 and 2 of the process Hex linked to). Of course, it's better if the copyright owner does it. Pruneau^talk 19:52, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not the copyright holder, that would be pl:Wikipedysta:Radomil (I think). Looks like Ævar notified him. --Duk (talk) 15:26, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

My mistake. Good to know the info got to the right person. Superm401 - Talk 02:25, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

How to deal with anonymous deletion requests?

I have noticed a couple of instances this summer where administrators have chosen to respond to anonymous deletion requests by immediately deleting the item(s) in question.

This practice of immediate deletion, without prior discussion, concerns me on several levels.

After the first incident I left some suggestions on the first administrator's talk page. This practice of immediate deletion, without discussion, based on anonymous requests seems more widespread than I first realized

So I am going to raise a suggestion here I left on the hasty administrator's page.

If an administrator receives a request for deletion by email, and, in their judgment it seems like an actual, bona fide, emergency, of course they are authorized to immediately delete the item in question. But, I suggest,if it is an actual emergency, and they exercised emergency powers, open and transparent decision making requires some kind of post-action reporting.

I suggest, if the request is not an actual, bona fide, emergency, that immediate deletion is wildly inappropriate. I suggest that if the request is not an actual, bona fide, emergency, then it would be more appropriate for the administrator to ask the person making the deletion request to come to the commons, and make their deletion request through the official deletion request procedures.

Unfortunately, in spite of our best efforts, the wikipedia community, and the commons community, is the target of malicious spoofs by trolls, vandals and stalkers. I suggest that administrators who respond to out-of-process deletion requests, from anonymous parties, are at great risk of being spoofed, and allowing their deletion powers to be abused.

I suggest that even if the administrator knows the person who requested a deletion by e-mail, or on some non-commons forum, I suggest that open and transparent decision making still requires the administrator declining to make the out-of-process deletion. Administrators may know that person in a context that did not make clear that they had a history of trolling, vandalism, or stalking here, or on other wikis. I suggest that, even if the administrator knows the requester they should still tell them to formally initiate a deletion discussion themselves.

Will there be the occasional situations where an outsider has a legitimate reason for making an anonymous deletion request? Sure. But, in that case, shouldn't they make that request after instantiating a ticket in the OTRS ticket system?

Candidly, Geo Swan (talk) 18:13, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I think you forget that speedy deletions are not "out-of-process" -- you're suggesting a solution for a problem we don't have (Though I can think of a few examples, I see no evidence of a systemic problem with bad speedy deletions).  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 01:42, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

When an administrator does not have a valid justification, based in policy, for their deletion, then I suggest it is fair to call it an "out-of-process" deletion. Geo Swan (talk) 11:27, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Geo Swan about post-deletion transparency, and I assume that such action is recorded somewhere (if so then where?). I do not agree with trying to figure motives of the sender. They are irrelevant as long as they have a valid reason. Also I assume that administrator will be able to decide for him/herself if the request is valid. I can imagine scenarios where users might be uncomfortable filing their own deletion requests. Good tips coming from a troll bend on revenge are still good tips. --Jarekt (talk) 14:01, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Some people would assert that the deletion log provides a sufficiently open and transparent audit trail. But I strongly disagree. Currently the deletion logs here, and on the wikipedia, has just two kinds of entries.

• Administrators record when a deletion follows a delete conclusion in a deletion fora;
• and Administrators record some speedy deletion criteria they judge matches the item they deleted.

When someone applies a speedy deletion tag, if they comply with the deletion policy recommendations, they will leave a note on the uploader's talk page. There is a permanent record for the good-faith uploader. They can follow up on this note, and learn why the image was deleted -- if, in fact, the administrator's deletion was defensible.

The way the deletion log is used now does not distinguish between deletions where some initial contributor first applied a speedy deletion tag, and those where an administrator has made a snap judgment, and deleted an item without any discussion, or a second set of eyes looking at the problem. So, it can look like an administrator is using their authority responsibly, and merely completing speedy deletions.

In recent months the deletion of an item that is on your watchlist shows up on your watchlist. But this is not sufficient to provide an audit trail, because our watchlists are ephermeral. My own typical pattern of contributions to the commons this last three years is to upload half a dozen images, a couple of times per month. So, that is long enough that checking my watchlist for entries from the deletion log is going to regularly fail to show me deleted items.

Last week an administrator here, who I won't name, because I would like this discussion to be about the general issue, deleted several related images, including one whose deletion discussion I had been involved with, without any warning, after getting an anonymous, out of process complaint. And back in July another administrator here deleted an article, without warning, and without advising the uploader (me!), based again on an anonymous email complaints.

With my typical pattern of coming to the commons a couple of times a month I can have no confidence that other administrators haven't deleted other images I uploaded in good faith.

Note, I am not challenging whether administrators should have the authority to delete images, without warning, if they regard that deletion as an urgent necessity. But, if they regard it as important enough to delete without warning I strongly suggest it remains urgent enough for the administrator to advise the uploader afterwards. I have no problem with administrators exercising their authority in a responsible manner.

So, I cannot agree that this a non-problem.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 21:02, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

If I recall correctly you have argued before that a note should be left on the uploader's page after every speedy deletion. But that has not found favour with the community. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:43, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

That would be a ridiculous, unreasonable and time wasting suggestion -- and it is one I absolutely never made.

I did suggest that administrators who decide to delete images without any prior warning should tell the good-faith uploader afterwards.

When the deletion is the end-result of a speedy-deletion tagging, where the good-faith nominator informed the good-faith uploader that the item faced deletion, of course there is no reason for the administrator to leave a second note. Geo Swan (talk) 12:50, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

My apologies for misrepresenting your position. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:25, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I said it does not seem to me to be a systemic problem.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 21:08, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Palin

Would an administator please check this out? It seems like a deletion request has been written, but no reason has been given on the image page, and the request has not been added to the log. Thanks in advance for checking this out.Ferrylodge (talk) 05:28, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Never mind, an admin has inserted the reason on the image page, and the request has now been added to the log.Ferrylodge (talk) 09:10, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Stairs vs. Staircases vs. Stairwells vs. Stairways vs. Steps vs. Stair ramps

Request for participation... I have started a large category discussion at Commons:Categories for discussion/Current requests/2008/08/Category:Stairways. I'd like to get this jumble of overlapping categories merged into one so people will have some clue of how to categorize relevant images. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:13, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

August 31

Free photos from stock archives

What copyright tag should I use for an image that has been uploaded to a stock archive with permission for non-commercial use? Should I get another permission from the author? See this photo here. --Sandris.Ā (talk) 12:48, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely. See Commons:Bad sources#Stock.Xchng. Without explicit release by the photographer also for commercial purposes and allowing the redistribution of derivatives, recorded via OTRS, this image will be deleted. Lupo 13:03, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

OK. Now I've got the authors permission and forwarded it to OTRS (see). What now? Should I add the appropriate tag or someone else is goig to do it after the 7 days will have passed? -Sandris.Ā (talk) 21:09, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Category:Wehl

Wehl is a municipality in the Netherlands and a german word for some kind of lake. The category is a mess, it should be good to split the category and replace for the lakes the german Wehl by an english word (I don't know the english word). Who can do this? Havang(nl) (talk) 08:00, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

It looks that a German Wehl is a Dutch wiel, a circular pond that is caused by a breach in a dyke. The most common international word seems to be en:Kolk, but that is really the vortex that makes the pond. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 08:49, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I made a Category:Kolk lakes, reserving Category:Wehl for the village, and added comments on these category pages. Havang(nl) (talk) 07:44, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Mastodon category

The current Mastodon category (don't know how to link to it) has images of a band called Mastodon, whereas the actual animal is relegated to a category called "Mastodon (animal)" This should certainly be switched around, since the band is named after the animal, not the other way around, and the animal is more notable by far. FunkMonk (talk) 12:41, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

You just need a colon (same for images too). You can link to it like this: [[:Category:Mastodon]] (which produces Category:Mastodon). And to produce the code you use <nowiki>[[:Category:Mastodon]]</nowiki> (and I'll stop there).

I certainly agree about renaming, and it's not a controversial one either. Richard001 (talk) 05:47, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Uncategorized/undercategorized

There is a template {{Uncategorized}}, but sometimes I have to remove this when I have only added one category, even though it is still undercategorized. Can we get a new template for files/pages that don't have enough categories? Richard001 (talk) 05:41, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I keep the template {{Uncategorized}} when I'm adding only a small number or obvious insufficient categories. Will this help? --Herzi Pinki (talk) 11:33, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, HotCat.js removes it automatically by adding one category (which I'm glad it does). We could make a new template, but there's so many images without any categories it wouldn't even make sense to ask for more. It would just be another maintenance template to clutter our pages with questionable benefit. I would say an overwhelming majority of our images are undercategorized. I see nothing wrong with leaving the {{uncat}} on there, though. Rocket000(talk) 17:07, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

If there is at last some cat, sooner or later an expert will refine the cat's. that's what I notice. And when I pass through the uncat list and see that an image has cat, I think that someone forgot to remove the uncat template and to avoid to open the image later once again, I remove the uncat template. I don't bother too much about undercategorisation, I bother more about overcategorisation. Havang(nl) (talk) 17:18, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I sometimes put the template subst:chc which shows as Check categories|year=2008|month=August|day=31|category=. Will this do? Havang(nl) (talk) 17:28, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

That's for bots but I guess you can use it. I actually hate those since they make me have to click edit tab, find the template, remove the template, type an edit summary, and press save. On top of all that I I still have to add the category. It takes about 3x time than it does using HotCat and removing a {{uncategorized}}. I much rather see a uncategorized template there. (And yes, I remove them too if the image already has a category think someone forgot). Rocket000(talk) 17:51, 31 August 2008 (UTC). Oké, the way it is. Havang(nl) (talk) 18:15, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Project scope proposal goes live

I have updated Project scope based on the proposals that have been in discussion over the last couple of months at Commons talk:Project scope/Proposal. Now, we need some translators to translate the non-English versions. If you can help, please go to Commons talk:Project scope#Translations of new text needed.

Thanks to everyone who helped by commenting on the draft as it evolved. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:55, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Translation needed for Commons:2008 Election suffrage poll

Good day folks, I'd like to request help on translating the 2008 election suffrage poll. I know it's a bit late, but better late then ever as Lar says. Hope to see you helping out! Thanks, --Kanonkas_(talk) 18:53, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Alarm !!!

Alarm !!! Help !!! People start using {{ }} templates in categorising. A few exemples {Category:Delft}}, {Category:Limousin}} {Category:Churches in France}}. This goes completely wrong... Alarm !!! Help !!! Havang(nl) (talk) 11:45, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Hm. Does the combination of "{{ }}" and categories ever make sense? If not, how about either

• a server-side change to treat "[[Category:Foo]]" and "[[Category:Foo|blah]]" identical to the "[[ ]]" notation, or
• a little Javascript that would do a "textbox.value = textbox.value.replace (/(\{\{)\s*(:?[Cc]ategory:[^|}]*(\|[^}]*)(\}\})/g, "[[$2]]")" on the content of the edit box/upload summary box before sending it to the server?

Thoughts? Lupo 12:10, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

But then how would you transclude them? Even if there's never a good reason for doing so, let's not take away features. You should be able to like every other namespace. People just need to learn the right syntax. Rocket000(talk) 02:08, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

You don't :-) That was my question: does transcluding a category ever make sense? Can you produce a single example where this "feature" is used on purpose? Note that a transcluded category just transcludes the page contents (including super-categories and interwiki-links) of the category page, not the list and display of the files and subcategories that are within that category. I honestly don't see how and where this could ever make sense. Lupo 10:02, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

The three categories you mentioned, Category:Delft, Category:Limousin, and Category:Churches in France are cleaned up now. Is there a way to systematically find such cases? Lupo 12:17, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, there are more of these. I don't know how to avoid this but give accidental warning messages to the users. Havang(nl) (talk) 12:42, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

That happened to me, too. Reason are templates like that. I just removed the content in the brackets and added the category. But I noticed it when re-checking it because it showed different categorys then I had added. But those uncat-templates are really tempting to use the wrong brackets. -- Cecil (talk) 13:06, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, a first implementation of an autocorrection to avoid this problem in the future is available at User:Lupo/autocorrect.js. You can try it out by adding the following line to your monobook.js (or modern.js, or standard.js, or whatever):

importScript ("User:Lupo/autocorrect.js");

Tested on IE6, FF2, and Safari 3.1.2. Does anyone see any problems with this approach? How about enabling this globally? Lupo 09:00, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Lupo, still using FF2? ;) Works for me on FF3 too (didn't try on upload, though). But I wonder if we shouldn't have something screaming "Warning: wrong category sintax, use [[ ]] instead of {{ }}!" instead (it's probably just a silly idea). Patrícia ^msg 09:32, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

This is just for the edit form. It doesn't do anything on upload forms. I will integrate it into the upload form script, too, if there are no objections. Personally, I think that since this is a case that can be silently (and correctly!) corrected, the user shouldn't be bothered with annoying warnings. And yes, I still use FF2. I also have FF3. Keeping some older browsers around has been very useful for me when I wrote the new upload script. We can't just target the latest and greatest browsers; many people out there still use older browsers. Lupo 09:57, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

And don't forget those who spent a lot of time trying to get FF to work like Netscape3!!!! -- carol (talk) 10:02, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed and agreed. No objections! Patrícia ^msg 10:31, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Looks good, but makes me wonder if it wouldn't be easier to have a bot on the toolserver that periodically sifts through the template-links table and fixes these broken category inclusions. Is it justified to add a considerable amount of JS to the site for a few(?) occasionaly confused users?! --Dschwen (talk) 16:34, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Sure, that's another possibility. Lupo 16:38, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I'll whip up a little bot for this. the SQL query shows 234 pages with template-like category usage

select page_title, tl_title from templatelinks, page where tl_namespace = 14 and page_id = tl_from;

--Dschwen (talk) 18:33, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Bot is running Special:Contributions/DschwenBot. --Dschwen (talk) 21:39, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Adding the above regexp line to the upload script would not increase its size significantly. So that's fine by me. However the comprehensive solution User:Lupo/autocorrect.js with all the event hookup and checking code is overkill for this negligable problem. 230 files out of three millions, and most of the cases go back several months. It seems to me that this mistake does happen infrequently. And there might be an acceptable use for this construct. I noticed that this gallery page included the category to have the multilingual description text of the category. --Dschwen (talk) 21:46, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, now that's really a legit use of this feature. Found a few more of these, and reverted the bot on them. Seems to be a speciality of User:Remember the dot... Lupo 22:36, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I strongly object. Brackets mean transclusion. You're messing with standard syntax that's on used on every wiki. If I want to transclude a category, I should be able to. There use to be tons of transcluded categories used as category descriptions. I substituted most of them a long time ago because I hate the idea of it, but technically disabling people from doing it is just wrong. Rocket000(talk) 22:58, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Messing up description templates

Please stop using this bot like that. It's been messing up a few category descriptions as well. See [17], compare with [18]. It's been doing the same with other province categories as well. A good solution would of course be moving that template text to an actual template in template-space, but in the meantime, there may be dozens of uses of these sorts of things, and merely replace {{ }} with [[ ]] without looking closer for the actual use is not a good solution if you don't want to mess up things... --LimoWreck (talk) 12:22, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

One more argument to not use << {{Category:... >>. We should avoid to put << Category: >> directly behind << {{ >> and put something in between, at least << : >>, in a way that << {{Category:... >> should be defended and << {{:Category:... >> should be allowed in templates. Or an equivalent solution. Havang(nl) (talk) 14:21, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Putting ':' behind something is for transcluding the mainspace. It has no prefix so it's just the colon. There's nothing special about templates except we can drop the "template" part as a shortcut. They're just pages like anything else. Rocket000(talk) 16:57, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Noted. I've since changed the bot to work in the Image namespace only anyways. However, it makes me wonder if using this construct is justified in the first place. Out of zillions of categories only a handfull categories uses it, is it really necessary? --Dschwen (talk) 14:26, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I really can't believe you guys are even doing this. There's so much broken syntax out there... and you pick something that does exactly what it's supposed to be doing to fix. You're assuming every time a category name is written that the user wanted to add the page to that category. There's nothing wrong technically with transcluding pages outside the template namespace. We do it all the time (like right now on this very page). Categories pages are no different. Rocket000(talk) 16:57, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand all this: what will be the final outcome, shall the problems get solved? Havang(nl) (talk) 17:04, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes and no. The solution to the original problem is to go to the handful of erroneously transcluded categories and fix them, tell the newbies they're doing it wrong, and let the MediaWiki software function as it's supposed to. The "no" part is that this will not end there. People will forever find something to mess up, but that doesn't mean we should radically change something as fundamental as the ability to transclude. Rocket000(talk) 17:41, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I have no problem replacing things like {{Userpageimage}} which have no added value. In fact, I hate complex templates that insert categories (maintenance problem). Nevertheless, they could be used with care and certainly not changed by a bot. --Foroa (talk) 18:25, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Categories in templates have been a big problem in the past, notably at the Coats of arms cat-tree, making refinements difficult. I think we should avoid as much as possible to generate categories by templates. By the way, what is "transcluding"? Havang(nl) (talk) 18:48, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

That's not what I'm talking about. Templates that categorize are a completely different issue. Transclusion is what happens when you put curly brackets around something instead of linking it. So using {{template}} is transclusion, [[Template:Template]] is not. When transcluding, the page (usually a template, but could be anything) is included in the page your editing. Rocket000(talk) 19:12, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I thought that {{ }} things were templates; but then my wish is that templates nor transclusions should generate categories (except for special ones like maintainance, hidden cat's) because that makes it difficult to refine the categories. Havang(nl) (talk) 19:20, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with you. Unless there is a well-maintained category/template system where you wouldn't normally change the category (like the with license tags), I think all content categories should be added the regular way. Rocket000(talk) 19:31, 31 August 2008 (UTC)