Commons:Village pump/Archive/2010/09

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Trouble using created with ... template

Hi, as discussed in Commons:Graphics_village_pump#Why_is_Category:Manually_coded_SVG_hidden? I created a new template {{Created with Text Editor}}. It's intention is to make it clear to autors that a SVG file is best edited with a text editor, because some programs like inkscape are not well suited for that. Examples are File:Sierpinski-Trigon-7.svg or File:Root-2-3-5-loglog.svg. {{Created with Text Editor}} is implemented using the magic of {{Autotranslate}} and {{Documentation}} and shall add the file to the already existing Category:Manually coded SVG.

However, the "Created with ..." templates always add to a category named "Created with *" and therefore I created Category:Created with Text Editor and redirected to "Manually coded SVG". But there are two problems with that:

  1. Some files tagged "Created with Text Editor" get added to cat "Created with Inkscape", an example is File:Particles_by_fundamental_interactions.svg (use "edit" to see "Created with Inkscape" is used).
  2. Files in cat "Created with Text Editor" don't get forwarded to "Manually coded SVG".

Could anyone help out of this and guide me through the template jungle? --Georg-Johann (talk) 13:09, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

...seems the problem is fixed now, I touched all affected pages. --Georg-Johann (talk) 18:06, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Experimentally enable LiquidThreads on some test pages

For more informaton about LiquidThreads, see Commons:LiquidThreads

I propose to experimentally enable LiquidThreads (lqt) on commons. Quick overview:

LiquidThreads replaces discussion pages with actual forums, giving the following benefits:

  • A clear, simplified post/reply workflow so new users can jump right into the discussion.
  • Simple management of threads, including automation of archival, refactoring, and other tasks currently undertaken by bots and humans.
  • A powerful, flexible notification system, allowing users to keep abreast of developments in areas in which they are interested, ranging from entire discussion pages to discussion fragments.
  • Support for following discussion pages with RSS feeds.
  • Flexible post ordering, allowing users to keep track of which threads on a talk page are dead, and which threads are active.
  • A modern, AJAX-based interface, that allows users to post and reply to other posts quickly, without clumsy page loading.
  • Automatic signatures.
    — http://liquidthreads.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

I don't mean to enable it for every talk or discussion page, but only to enable the technical possibility, for admins, to create LiquidThreads. This would enable us to test how Lqt would work with our existing processes (for example deletion requests), what would be needed to be fixed before it can be used more widely & how our existing Javascript gagdgets would need to be modified with to work with Lqt. Lqt is already used on a few wikis, eg.

You can test the extension here--DieBuche (talk) 12:47, 5 August 2010 (UTC) (bold by Saibo (Δ) 19:53, 22 August 2010 (UTC))

  • Strongly support. Deploying LiquidThreads on real WMF wikis is a step long overdue towards a superiour discussion system that eliminates an entire host of frustrating problems. Dcoetzee (talk) 12:50, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support I wouldn't mind enabling it completely. However, we should make sure that we archive all talk pages of the old system, so that the both systems don't conflict. This was one issue that I noticed at Translatewiki (where it however didn't really matter since only few talk pages exist there). --The Evil IP address (talk) 13:22, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Comment Based on my expirience on Translatewiki, functionality is definitely good. However, visual style, look and feel is out of sync with other MediaWiki pages. I think Usability team should work with this extension before wider deployment. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:03, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
The style could most likely be refreshed per MediaWiki:Vector.css to better fit to vector.--DieBuche (talk) 17:03, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support Definitely an awesome feature with a huge potential. We should help it by implementing it and providing feedback. And yes, we can fix the design ourselves if needed. Those design fixes are be part of the feedback as well. :-) Dodoïste (talk) 01:53, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose I needed to stop working of strategy because lqt doesn't work good on mobile phones, when this will be enabled here on Commons I would be forced to stop working here on 80% of the time I'm online. First fix the extension so it works always, than maybe I would support.
Secondly we are a multilangual project, very few people knows what lqt is, we should wait untill more people know the extension otherwhise we will scare new people away. Huib talk Abigor @ meta 11:03, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
As I stated "I don't mean to enable it for every talk or discussion page", but only on test pages so that problems like these can be evaluated. How is multilinguality an argument? It seems to be localized in most languages & how would people know it, if they never see it? Especially for newcomers it should be more intuitive, because it's more like classic forums, they can't forget to sign etc..--DieBuche (talk) 11:11, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
Google is your friend. First result. Rocket000 (talk) 19:28, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support, of course. It would be more better for new users. JenVan (talk) 12:46, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
    • But Commons talk pages (at least those for individual images) are almost entirely used only by the most experienced users, and that is clearly not primarily a matter of difficulty, since that is not the pattern for talk pages of Wikipedia articles. - Jmabel ! talk 03:06, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose. Yes, lqt are pretty good for a small number of short discussions on a page. But they are making discussions enormously large if there is a large number of brief comments. Even if these comments are very short (like just “Support” or “Oppose”), each comment takes some three or four lines, so that 10 comments already take a full screen. This system is more appropriate for something like comments to blog entries than for wiki-discussions as it hides some comments (unlike blogs, comments here are usually not senseless), is very difficult to administrate (deleting/protecting such pages is a problem) and has too many bugs (like problems with wiki-markup in headers, which makes translatewiki:Project:Translator rather unattractive) — NickK (talk) 12:48, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  • I can't say I'm particularly enthusiastic about this feature, but testing it in a "real" context and gaining feedback from real-life experience can only lead to a much better integration when/if it goes mainstream.
  •  Support. –Tryphon☂ 12:56, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support We need a better discussion system, too many people are locked out by the learning curve of the present system. LT has its limitations, but unless it starts deploying, these cannot be sorted out. --Vigilius (talk) 13:27, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support "enable LiquidThreads on some test pages" - this does not mean support for an migration, yet. Enabling it on test pages is a good thing to try it out in a real wiki with my user settings and such. Please tell us, where to test then. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 13:41, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose the current system has its flaws, but it is reliable and the same as the other wikis.--GrapedApe (talk) 13:43, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose unless look and feel will be not adjusted to style of wiki skins. It's task of Usability Team if I'm not mistaken.--EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:56, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support Same reason as Vigilius. --Kozuch (talk) 15:46, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  • I'm on the fence about this. LQT seems like a very good concept, and definitely represents the general direction Wikimedia discussions should go. The promised functionality is a great leap over where we are, will ease the way for new users, and will reduce the confusion inherent in large and complex discussions. And I don't share the allergy some folks here have to pioneering an changed/improved approach on the Commons. THAT SAID, from the comments above (esp. Nemo's) it sounds an awful lot like LQT is still an alpha product, not even advanced to beta yet. I'm okay testing out a beta in production systems, but an alpha needs to stay in the labs until it's mostly baked. Even restricting it to only a few production pages is not a good approach. But I'm not in any way an expert in dev control standards and I have hardly read comprehensively on the status of the LQT dev effort. Maybe someone else could clarify whether I'm correct in my application alpha/beta definitions? —Werewombat (talk) 15:57, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose please don't. Per above opposers. I find them not very practical & rather confusing. --Dferg (talk · meta) 16:08, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support lets give it a try. Amada44  talk to me 16:14, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose Very cluttered and makes pages several times larger. Long threads will be unreadable, and hiding comments is certainly not a good idea. I'm not in favor of heavy use of AJAX because of browser and platform compatibility issues, not mentioning load times on slower connections, so instead of making talk pages accessible to more people, we could end up doing the opposite. If the main disadvantage of the current system is inaccessibility to new comers, why don't we improve it in that regard without changing it completely? For example adding automatic signatures when saving a new section, maybe adding a "reply" link at the end of signatures, or improvement to the editor interface. -- Orionist ★ talk 16:43, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Comment Before taking position, I would suggest first a larger scale experiment on a wiki where they have many discussions with many participants, such as on en:wiki. I don't feel that Commons is a place to do such experiments. --Foroa (talk) 17:00, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support - I like them and they work well on the liquidthreads test wiki.   — Jeff G. ツ 17:27, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose - I don't see a real benefit here. Perhaps, as suggested, we can get en.wp or some other pack of gullible fools to perform a large-scale test. -mattbuck (Talk) 17:39, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support overdue. --rtc (talk) 18:04, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose - I personally find liquid threads unnecessary and confusing. Tiptoety talk 19:08, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support LiquidThreads is amazing. --Yair rand (talk) 19:14, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose  Strong oppose After using lqt for over hour instead just posting a couple comments, I now strongly oppose even enabling it on a single page. It's very difficult to do anything but the most common of tasks and the performance kills usability making us less productive by increasing the time it takes to read and make threads. There's way too much overhead and too many potential issues it would cause for something we don't need to begin with. I understand why so many people support this, it's actually pretty cool when you first try it out; the problems become more apparent the longer you use it. Rocket000 (talk) 22:32, 26 August 2010 (UTC) Unnecessary and I don't like the current design at all. Let's wait for en.wp or some other major wiki this time. Rocket000 (talk) 19:28, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
    What is a "major" wiki? en.wn, en.wikt, strategywiki, Mediawiki, and translatewiki are already using it, and pt.wb, sv.ws, se.wikimedia, and Hungarian Wikipedia have requested it. Are any of these "major" wikis? :) --Yair rand (talk) 19:37, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
    Not really. I guess I meant a large Wikipedia, i.e. a site that's usually a new user's first wiki experience (where they learn things like commenting). Rocket000 (talk) 19:43, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support why not? it seems good.. let's try it :D --Pino723 (talk) 19:40, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support A potentially helpful experiment. Let's give it a try. Steven Walling 20:46, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose per NickK and Abigor --by Màñü飆¹5 talk 22:31, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose. It's got performance issue for me. As an example, [1] spends 45 seconds formatting the page after it loads; I'd hate to see what it would do on some of the longer discussions here. It's also not too Lynx-friendly: it works, but each comment and associated tools take up so much vertical space that I can only see two or three comments per page. --Carnildo (talk) 22:36, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose This is supposed to be an improvement? The design is awful and the threads could actually lead to more confusion and therefore less participation than the present system. Experiment by all means, but please don't introduce this here as it is. Personally I never even realised there was a problem - apparently - with the present system, until now. Anatiomaros (talk) 22:55, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Comment There's still a lot more development to go on LiquidThreads before it's ready for primetime. Might be best to wait a while longer. Kaldari (talk) 23:50, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
    • As Ryan notes, LiquidThreads is under continued development. We've enabled it in production on a few wikis, and we believe that MediaWiki badly needs a next-generation discussion system that's easy, fast, and enjoyable. LiquidThreads still has quite a few quirks at this stage, so I would primarily recommend it for narrowly defined use cases (e.g. a new user help forum). If you're interested in LQT's ongoing development, please provide feedback on the proposed redesign.--Eloquence (talk) 01:34, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose Not a real benefit, no real need. Some technical issues (speed, etc., I've had it "crash" on me before), and logistical questions about integration/adaption by other users make it a big hassle for an answer to a nonexistent problem. On the English Wikinews, it is used for user comments only, not talk pages, and I think that is a good application. Here, there is no need.  fetchcomms☛ 00:11, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  • Weak oppose. I wouldn't scream if consensus went that way, but personally I see no significant upside, and I find it a bit annoying. - Jmabel ! talk 03:04, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose I agree with Rocket000. And I'm not sure whether lqt will be efficient for Commons. Discussions about important topics is usually accompanied by many users' comments. I'm concerned the scroll bar will become too long and in severe cases, browser might be crashed in low-performance computer. – Kwj2772 (msg) 14:18, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
    • I found a new bug. LiquidThreads's signature detection is unfunctional without JavaScript. [2] And while testing the extension without JavaScript. It was very hard and slow to use. – Kwj2772 (msg) 14:36, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support Useful --minhhuy*= (talk) 06:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose In my view superfluous eye candy. As Dschwen stated: the resulting discussion pages are not more clearly structured than what we have now. --High Contrast (talk) 11:25, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose for now: Let's wait until the issues are sorted out some more, e.g. mobile phone support and bug fixes. No point testing it when we already know quite a few bugs. Further, it doesn't seem to support right-to-left languages, which is a bad thing on a multi-lingual project, even if they're a small part of our userbase. Adam Cuerden (talk) 12:41, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support per Trần Nguyễn Minh Huy --shizhao (talk) 13:34, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support I like having a reply button Jane023 (talk) 13:38, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose Please, please keep it simple. The plain text is good enough - it's fast, it's easy, it's reliable. Throwing in JavaScript eye-candy is only going to slow down the interface, create more bugs and I'm not even convinced it would be easier to use (how hard is it to type or read plain text as now anyway??). I completely agree with Fetchcomms - "a big hassle for an answer to a nonexistent problem". Laurent (talk) 15:49, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support It's fantastic. These talk pages suck so hard compared to Lqt. Siebrand 16:54, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support The talk interface is not some sacred formula, and can be very cumbersome with long discussions, so yes, let's give this a try.-- Patrick {oѺ∞} 17:02, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  'Comment I think quite some of you have clearly misunderstood the proposal. The plan is to test this on a few talk pages and work out the problems still preventing it from enabling it on all talk pages. It's not the idea to enable this on all pages. --The Evil IP address (talk) 17:33, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose Ooh, shiny! But no. Dschwen, Carnildo, Adam Cuerden and others have raise serious doubts and nobody seems to have a compelling argument in favour. Why bother testing something which is years away from being remotely useful? Waste of time. Angus McLellan (Talk) 17:37, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support for "test on a few talk pages". Geagea (talk) 18:12, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose Why do we need to have a more complex system? Editing a talk page with LiquidThreads produces more complexity when you're at Special:Contributions: rather than going to a user's talk page on which you've commented, you have to go to the thread and then to the user's talk page. Moreover, if you're responding to multiple sections of a talk page, you have to make multiple edits, rather than just one. Nyttend (talk) 18:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose this system don't seems comfortable for me. Анастасия Львоваru (ru-n, en-2) 18:58, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose The LiquidThreads is a solution for many-many non-existing problems. I think the present system need no change, the newcommers are abel to use it, just like the older contributors. --Beroesz (talk) 18:59, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  • Limited Support - to enable this LiquidThreads on some test pages as the headline says. I recognize that this system is powerful, but some aspects of it can be confusing, and I think that a test should be a two-way street, with some feedback going from Commons to the developers of LiquidThreads. Wnt (talk) 19:05, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose The current system is conceptually simple. Keep it that way. Everybody is used to the present way and the problems are not worth rocking the boat. Also my limited experience with them at the strategy wiki is that they are slow, clunky, and slightly confusing. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:21, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support Matt (talk) 19:52, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  • oppose, working with lqt on a WMDE wiki is quite annoying. Current talk pages allow more structured work. Kind regards, —DerHexer (Talk) 20:55, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Comment I don't wish to vote against the new technology, but I'm not sure that it is proper one for this very moment. It should be more compatible with the current look'n'feel. The texts should be more condensed, like current discussions, and there should be a compatible history view mode. So I support LQT, but NOT NOW YET. Dr Bug (Vladimir V. Medeyko) 00:30, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose per above. I don't believe there's anything wrong with our current system. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. -FASTILY (TALK) 00:30, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support There really isn’t anything wrong with the current version (though it does get kind of sloppy), but it doesn’t hurt to give it a try. Azcolvin429 (talk) 03:02, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Comment I don't mind testing LiquidThreads on a small scale, so uptill here you may consider this point a "support". However, I know too little about the software. Several of the comments above suggest that LiquidThreads may be very slow, may not work on mobile devices, may not offer the information density of current discussion pages, may be less fit for very short discussions or information exchanges, and may have a user interface which is very different from the usual wiki interface. Each of these problems alone would be enough for me to oppose a large-scale application of LiquidThreads on the longer term. It should be possible to solve the issues within the current system. Besides, it is still unclear to me whether it is possible to use wikisyntax in LiquidThreads. I consider that an absolute must as well. J+ 15:39, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Just test it here. I made an example for you: here. Note: this an direct(!) link to my answer in a long discussion (linked there on top of the page) - try this with the current system. This poll here is just about testing (no customization without testing) lqt in a real environment not about using it here. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 16:27, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
OK, but is there any option to see what you have answered to? The “Parent” button does not work OK — NickK (talk) 18:07, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
See the line on top and it's links: "Fragment of a discussion from Talk:LiquidThreads testing". The "discussion" link shows you to the associated thread and the second link shows you the whole diiscussion page. The "parent" button seems only to work when viewing the whole thread - maybe it can be hidden when displaying (the special case) only one comment. It shows you the comment I answered to (only useful in long discussions where the parent comment is far away on the top of the page). Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 19:14, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose, perhaps allow here at village pump.--Avala (talk) 19:22, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
  • Strongly  Oppose a general use of this system. Old style discussion pages have the unbeatable advantage that you see the whole discussion at once and that you don't have to click through series of posts and get repeating quotes and the like. Wiki discussion are much more readable, unless they grow to a length of more than a few screen pages. This system IMO only makes sense for use on heavily segmented pages with hundreds of very long discussions.User:Chrkl
It seems to bring us further and further away from the scope of wikipedia/wikimedia --Havang(nl) (talk) 20:00, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support for experimentally enabling this extension on some pages. Lqt is very useful. When it reaches a stable status, it can be enabled for all pages. Srhat (talk) 21:48, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support upstateNYer 02:06, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Neutral on the fence collecting splinters, anything that reduces participation is a concern, running a test on a few pages is interesting but how would it run parralled to ensure everybody gets to participate. A trail on somehwere like FPC where a duel discussion can occur? Gnangarra 10:19, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose—extension is not mature and it's an attempt to make MediaWiki anything and everything. There are plenty of web applications out there that provide threaded discussions without needing to reinvent the wheel. Adrignola (talk) 12:36, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose, for now atleast. There are way too many issues at the moment. The answer for testing was given in the opening, so I see no reason to enable it here for testing. "You can test the extension here". –Krinkletalk 13:17, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose I can see why people would like to support this extension. But I have two problems. First, pages set up this way encourage all the same problems that threaded discussions elsewhere tend to have ... eventually they get lost in themselves and become unproductive very quickly. In our present system that has evolved into common conventions over time without the help of any software, it is usually easy to tell who is responding to whom without clicking back and forth. That's not always the case with threaded discussions.

    Second, it might encourage the sort of new user who thinks this is just a place to hang out and chat. We have enough users who think Wikimedia projects are social networks without encouraging them. Daniel Case (talk) 05:06, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

  •  Support A trial would not hurt, perhaps on a message board-type page like Village Pump. If we don't like it we don't have to continue. -- Mattinbgn/talk 07:36, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support Yes we should at least give the new Liquid Thread system a trial. If it does not work out we can always go back to the old wiki system. Just Imagine if we succeed in creating a better discussion system then that will be for the global good. The new users are the ones that face maximum hurdles getting used to the wiki concept. I am still learning. The future of the wiki project depends on the new users so making it easier for them is what we should be aiming at. Pattanaik --Pattanaik (talk) 08:23, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Neutral, does not appear to have any serious benefit or drawback. Stifle (talk) 08:23, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support, it's a good extention. --DS-fax 10:27, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose 'If it ain't broke...' Jebus989 (talk) 10:46, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
     Oppose Bleh. This is a wiki. 85.112.147.118 18:28, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
    IP can't vote! --minhhuy*= (talk) 11:28, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
    Is this a vote? --Dferg (talk · meta) 08:34, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support Some users seem to like features offered by liquid thread and dislike the freedom offered by standard wiki text, why not let them enable it on their talk pages? -- User:Docu
Because others have to leave them messages? And it would probably break all scripts and bots that add user messages (making them work for both types would be quite a challenge I think). There's no way to do it the old fashion way on pages that use it, otherwise, I wouldn't mind it as an alternate way of commenting. Rocket000 (talk) 20:36, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
re "scripts and bots", wouldn't that be another reason to test it? --  Docu  at 05:07, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
Sure, but that's why we have test wikis. There's plenty of known bugs that need to be fixed, it's too slow for long pages, it's supposed to be redesigned, etc. It's just not ready for production use. (But obviously some people are ok with using it anyway so this is just one opinion.) Rocket000 (talk) 13:33, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
I vaguely recall a member of WMF staff writing that Commons features cannot be tested on testwiki as that wiki doesn't reflect all features of Commons. Besides, I suppose you are aware that all the listed known bugs with status "WONT" will never be fixed. Obviously, VP shouldn't be the page to start with .. -- User:Docu, edited 21:00, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
That's true. Compatibility with things like Commons-specific scripts and processes need to be tested here but I don't think we're to that stage of testing yet. Rocket000 (talk) 22:32, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Now I kwow some people find wikisyntax the best and wysiwyg crappy and blablabla..........wake up guys!!!! Not everybody in this world is a computerexpert.....

  •  Oppose It freezes my computer. I had to stop working on strategy: for that reason. I'm not 100% sure but I guess it is no longer possible to refer to past talks with diffs, if we implement that system. The fact that very old talks (even those older than 1 year ago) can be reopened is not a good idea. I prefer old talks to be kept as closed archives. I also dislike the potential competition between different threads to be the "first thread" at the top of the page. This is not a good way of talking about serious matters. Forums are OK for chit chat, but not for serious talks. Teofilo (talk) 14:02, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support We really should test it in the wild. And NO, it's neither useles nor confusing. The current system is confusing to all little experienced users. --Cubefox (talk) 21:29, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Comment I support the idea of enhancing the dialogue page. However, I'm wondering if other tools have been reviewed or if only this programme tool is open for experimentation. I personally don't know of other tools, but my thought is someone may know of other tools that could be proposed also. I personally would like to see other things out there and then make a decision based on what seemed to work the best. That's pretty much where I stand before committing support. CaribDigita (talk) 23:33, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support I really like working of LiquidThreads at translatewiki.net. There are bugs and a name still unable to translate :), but support--Praveen:talk 03:00, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support for testing; probably needs a redesign before wider use (and not sure the current redesign is going in the right direction). It might have led to a more productive discussion if the problems with the current system are explained instead of the sales-pitch-sounding text from the labs wiki, which makes more sense to programmers than to users. --Tgr (talk) 14:51, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support limited testing on commons, as you can only do so much in labs. It's crystal clear that there will not be a future consensus to roll it out unless outstanding issues are resolved, but anything with the long term aim of reducing human and bot workload is worth attempting. WFCforLife (talk) 15:01, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose Very very unnecessary. Rauenstein (talk) 18:29, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support --Prolineserver (talk) 20:55, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Comment In case it changes anyone's views, it's worth noting that you can't view a diff on a LiquidThread. --Carnildo (talk) 00:42, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
    I don't understand what you mean. LQT allows viewing diffs of threads being edited ([3]) and allows linking to individual threads, and allows viewing individual revisions of discussions. What exactly do you mean? (Comment: I've had my main talk page using LQT for three months, and I absolutely love it. :) ) --Yair rand (talk) 01:18, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
    That's a diff of a single comment. If there's a way to view a diff of a complete thread, I haven't found it. --Carnildo (talk) 23:23, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
    There is no diff as such, but if you have a thread on your watchlist, new comments in it are highlighted. --Tgr (talk) 01:25, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Oppose I do not think that the present incarnation is sufficiently mature, and offers enough benefit to warrant using it on such a high-usage wiki as this one. I also have concerns over introducing anything on a 'well, you can always disable it' type of basis, following the ongoing DRAMA re. pending changes on English Wikipedia.  Chzz  ►  05:04, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
  •  Support Liquid threads are much more flexible and easier to use. --user talk: Brazos
  •  Oppose Really strongly opposed. Commons and/or Wikipedia are serious projects. We don't need forum alike discussion pages and heavily clustered discussion pages. Please do not introduce LT. --Matthiasb (talk) 08:14, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

This vote never had a pre-set closing date, but in my opinion has run its course. Current votes: 62  Support; 49  Oppose, Total votes 111. Percentages: 56% vs. 44%. This is not near a clear consensus, so I hereby close it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DieBuche (talk • contribs) 21:15, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

TIF image format support

Can we please either fix support of the TIF(F) image file format or remove it all together? I was just uploading an original image in TIF format, and it doesn't give me a thumbnail preview, which makes it pretty useless. Note that the format is not even allowed for upload on en.wiki. Nageh (talk) 10:14, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

The situation as you describe it, was, I think, the status quo for a long time. The TIFF files Commons' users encounter are normally very high quality versions prepared by professional scanners, and since many improvements one might like to make to an image also degrade it in some way, it is always useful to keep them so that no data is ever lost, regardless of whether or not they can be thumbnailed. A constant stream of innovation will result in improved TIFF handling, but in the meantime there's no reason to disallow uploads - that would be like a Wikipedia only accepting articles which sprung fully formed. Jarry1250 (talk) 10:43, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
But Nageh is right: If TIF(F) does not work properly for ages (?) we can get rid of it anyway. As for your second argument: On Commons:File types we donna have plenty of other formats, too. So better not to tempt people using TIF(F). --Yikrazuul (talk) 10:48, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Jarry1250. Right now, the stopgap solution is for editors, if they wish to, to upload a TIFF version of an image together with a JPEG version, and mention the link between the two files using the "other versions" parameter in the {{Information}} template. That way, the JPEG file is usable for Wikipedia articles and other uses, and if anyone wants to make high quality derivative versions, they can download the original TIFF file on to their computers and work on that. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 11:08, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
The question is, why not upload as PNG in the first place? If I had known I had done that, so now there is both TIF and PNG of the same image. Nageh (talk) 11:11, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
Well, at least it should warn you in red color letters that TIFF is only to be used as an archival format when attempting to upload such format. Nageh (talk) 11:14, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
There is some merit in warning people, I think. Regarding why TIFF is used over e.g. PNG, perhaps the most obvious reason is because the TIFFs are what is supplied to Wikimedians in the first place by, for example, the LoC. They then use that version to create a JPEG (as JackLee describes). There is no simply reason to create a third format. Jarry1250 (talk) 11:20, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
It's also true that TIFF is a very rich format; there are features, like alternate color-spaces, subimages and JPEG compression, that PNG doesn't support, and there's a nontrivial concern that even stuff that PNG does support may not get preserved in a conversion.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:43, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
TIFF thumbnailing support is very close. Last thursday a first attempt was made to enable it on Commons, but there was an error in the extension causing some problems and it was disabled again. But it really is very close (and this has been discussed right here several times over the past 3 months) TheDJ (talk) 22:32, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
Should be enabled again today btw. As you can see from Category:Tiff_files, at least part of the images now have thumbnails. I'm sure that this will be somewhat improved in the future. TheDJ (talk) 15:23, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Great! — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 15:34, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Cool! Just mine doesn't display. :) Nageh (talk) 17:10, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

TIFF is actually more of a collection of semi-compatible file formats, rather than a single unified file format, so supporting all TIFFs is suprisingly hard. AnonMoos (talk) 00:31, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Abandoned, deserted, defunct villages

Asked: a volunteer to rearrange somewhat the three categories: Category:Abandoned villages; Category:Deserted villages; Category:Defunct villages. --Havang(nl) (talk) 08:05, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you need help with. Can you explain? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 08:19, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Are we talking merging them? I feel they all mean slightly different things. -mattbuck (Talk) 10:36, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
The borders between the categories are not clear; I don't feel sure about how to clarify. May-be category descriptions help already. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Havang(nl) (talk • contribs) 20:13, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
I think abandoned and deserted are pretty close in meaning, and that we should choose one or the other. Abandoned seems to be the more commonly used term, since "Category:Deserted villages" has only one subcategory, so perhaps we should redirect "Deserted villages" to "Category:Abandoned villages". As for "Category:Defunct villages", defunct just means "not in use any more". I think there are two ways we could deal with this. One is to make "Defunct villages" the parent category, since one of the ways in which a village can become defunct is if it is abandoned. The other possibility is to rename "Defunct villages" as "Category:Destroyed villages" since two of its subcategories deal with villages destroyed by war. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 13:13, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
"Deserted village" has a certain amount of currency because of Oliver Goldsmith's poem ("Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain..."). Any of these names would be acceptable to me, I don't see much useful, verifiable distinction between them. I'd probably take this to Commons:Categories for discussion (tagging the categories appropriately), propose a course of action, allow a week or two for comment, and then unless there is real objection to your proposed course of action do it. - Jmabel ! talk 15:36, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Seems to me most defunct villages were merely dissolved, rather than abandoned. Powers (talk) 01:38, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. A defunct village or town is simply one that no longer officially exists, such as voting to merge with another town or simply voting to unincorporate. This is vastly different from being abandoned or deserted, and shouldn't be merged with those two. — Huntster (t @ c) 04:09, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

How do I transfer a relevant photo from one language wikpedia site to another language wiki ?

Hi there I tried searching for how to do this but wasn't able to find the answer. The particular image in mind was http://bs.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datoteka:Markale.JPG&filetimestamp=20060506210544#filelinks which I wanted to copy onto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markale_massacres but I couldn't work out how to find the source photo in Wiki Commons - and anyway there is probably a much simpler way to do such a process. Could anyone tell me the steps for such a transfer as this is not the first time I've wanted to do such a thing and presumably the image is in wikiworld somewhere...

Thanks in advance Malikbek (talk) 13:40, 1 September 2010 (UTC)Malikbek

This is a copyrighted image, so it cannot be transferred to the Commons. You have to download the image on to your hard disk, and upload it manually to the English Wikipedia. Before you do so, ensure that the image complies with the non-free content criteria. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 14:07, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry to be thick but how does one upload to English Wikipedia?

en:Special:Upload. - Jmabel ! talk 15:30, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
You can also access that page by clicking on the "Upload file" link in the "Toolbox" section of the panel on the left side of the screen. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 18:50, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks!Malikbek (talk) 20:40, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Erie, Pennsylvania subcategory

The Category:Buildings and structures in Erie, Pennsylvania should be a subcategory of Category:Erie, Pennsylvania, but I do not know how to make that happen. Please help. --Davidt8 (talk) 17:37, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Done. Man vyi (talk) 18:04, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

September 3

Category:Images by Leningradartist

I've just found these after a post at en:WP:COIN#User:Leningradartist. They've all been verified via OTRS, but it looks to me as if they are all copyright violations. He may well have had permission to use them in his book, and have permission to host them on his website, but AFAIK, that doesn't mean he has permission to release them under a commons licence for anyone to use. Surely the original copyright remains with the artist and until this expires we can't use them? I wasn't quite sure where to bring this up, and not having much experience in this area I could be completely wrong. Could someone take a look and see if my reasoning is correct? Smartse (talk) 12:05, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the links, it seems pretty strange but if that's what they say then I guess they know what they're talking about! Smartse (talk) 22:12, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
It does seem pretty strange, and highly unusual, and perhaps suggests that he also owns the original paintings, which would deepen the COI aspect. Johnbod (talk) 01:12, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Public domain ESA images?

Hi all. It seems that the (AVM) image metadata for ESA images like the one at http://www.herschel.caltech.edu/index.php?SiteSection=ImageGallery&ViewImage=nhsc2010-006a specify that the image is in the public domain; see http://www.strudel.org.uk/avm/js/ (click on the right-most image). Is this sufficient to be able to upload them here under the public domain? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:00, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it's fine. The correct license on Commons would be {{PD-USGov-NASA}}. –Tryphon☂ 08:44, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
http://regex.info/exif.cgi is also a useful tool for viewing metadata, but just because the metadata says "Public Domain", don't believe that it really is. To the best of my knowledge, unless ESA explicitly releases an image into the public domain (and they aren't known for doing that), it isn't. (To Tryphon, just because NASA releases works into the public domain, doesn't mean this is public domain...ESA's copyright trumps that.) This is most likely an encoding error on the Caltech side of things. Your best bet would be to contact ESA directly and ask about this specific image, and specifically refer to the given credit line of "ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/AURA/NSF/Univ. of Toledo". — Huntster (t @ c) 08:48, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Further, check this image with the above regex site. It has a very similar credit line ("ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech") yet the metadata contains no mention of being public domain. — Huntster (t @ c) 08:53, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
This is the NASA herschel website. Much as with the Hubble project, it is well possible that anything that the NASA Herschel center produces is PD-USGov-NASA. The data produced is PD anyways, it's about who creates the images from that data and how these images are licensed. I have sent a message to the NASA/Caltech manager, requesting clarification of the copyright status of the images that they host. TheDJ (talk) 14:03, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
This is the NASA Herschel Science Center website, but Herschel is primarily an ESA mission with participation by NASA and associated centers, as the website header clearly states. If an image had the credit line of "NASA/JPL-Caltech", then yes, it would be a form of public domain per their image use policy. (I'd actually suggest it would be more akin to CC-0, but that's irrelevant to this discussion.) As the final bullet point specifies, if another organisation has claims to an image or video, then restrictions are placed on commercial use; thus, not public domain. Since ESA is credited for that image and most others I see on the site, it is immediately rendered ineligible for upload here. Please read the Image Use Policy before making assumptions, as everything is clearly laid out on that page. — Huntster (t @ c) 04:04, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
The image use policy wasn't linked there yesterday at the bottom. I'm positive, i looked for it 3 times, there was only a link to the privacy policy page. My request for information was yesterday forwarded to another person, I guess this link is the result of that. TheDJ (talk) 11:16, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
I have thanked the NASA Herschel center, for adding a link to the image use policy, and informed them that we will not be using their images when ESA is credited. I have also attached a small note asking them to argue for Free works in the scientific world. TheDJ (talk) 11:36, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
"Thanks for asking us about this issue -- it's something that we need to get more clear on ourselves.... Gordon .... added the NASA/JPL image policy to the site." TheDJ (talk) 00:48, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Hah, well I have egg on my face. I guess I was reading over that minutes after they put it up. Thanks for going through that effort DJ. — Huntster (t @ c) 03:15, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

September 1

Show Preview stopped working

The Show Preview button has stopped working for me in the last one or two days. I use the Monobook skin with this custom CSS and an empty JS. I have just tried Show Preview with different skins with these results:

  • Chick: inactive
  • Classic: inactive
  • Cologne Blue: inactive
  • Modern: inactive
  • Nostalgia: inactive
  • Simple: inactive
  • Vector: works

The Show changes and Save page buttons still work. I am using the latest Firefox on Vista. -84user (talk) 03:33, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Same here (only Monobook tested) using Firefox and Chromium on Linux. –Tryphon☂ 08:37, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

asdfaf

Same here as posted three days ago at Commons:Usability issues and ideas#JS Bug in monobook - Old Toolbar. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 09:01, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
I fixed this, but now the quickpreview gadget only works for users of vector. TheDJ (talk) 13:19, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
The more interesting question, is why you no longer get the wikiEditor just if you switch out of vector to another skin. Asking the dev team. TheDJ (talk) 13:22, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

It's still breaks the normal preview button when not using vector. I'll add something in the gadget description, but maybe it can be modified to do not affect the preview button for other skins just in case someone has it enabled anyway. Rocket000 (talk) 15:25, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah, that was it. It's been a while since QuickPreview stopped working for me, but I still had it enabled and it didn't have any side effects... until now. Disabling it in Preferences did the trick. Thanks! –Tryphon☂ 15:31, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

@TheDJ: the "quickpreview gadget" did work for me before in monobook. It showed me the preview without reloading the whole page right above the edit window. Toolbar still not the new Javascript one. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 22:21, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes this was because the toolbar was loaded under monobook, and the toolbar requires jquery, and thus the livepreview gadget worked. There is a ticket on bugzilla:25014 about the error of wikieditor. Let us hope it gets fixed quickly. TheDJ (talk) 11:39, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Entirely my fault, fixed now. Feel free to start throwing stones... Apparently importing jQuery when it was already there, made it not work at all, thus it falled back onto the old editbar. Sorry again --DieBuche (talk) 20:34, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
No stones to throw. We all make mistakes. This particular one is understandable since you would have needed the quickpreview gadget enabled in a skin other than vector (which has not worked for awhile) to even notice it. Rocket000 (talk)
Thanks for fixing. Works again: Toolbar and QPreview. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 21:52, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
@Rocket000, It even did not work when Qpreview was off, too! --Saibo (Δ) 22:01, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Huh? Sure it did. Do you mean the wikiEditor? Rocket000 (talk) 23:20, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Special:WantedTemplates

Commons is dominated by the use of templates. Searching for wrong template use or links is essential maintenance work. The page Special:WantedTemplates is however useless because of all this MOTD/POTD templates. Is it possible to

  • Restructure the Motd/Potd pages to not longer create all this red links? E.g. the relatively uninformativ/useless page Template:Potd/2007-03 generates 100rds of uneccesarry red template links.
  • Bypass the problem with excluding Motd/Potd templates from Special:WantedTemplates?

Thanks, --Martin H. (talk) 12:32, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

It's possible to do the query at the toolserver with these templates filtered out. Multichill (talk) 14:30, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
I was just thinking about this yesterday. I could really use a good list to find things for my bot to work on. Multichill, would you be willing to run the query? You can drop it in my userspace (or wherever). For the long term, however, I would like to change the POTD system. Do we really need to be making a subpage for every translation of every description? A single {{LangSwitch}} for each day seems like it would be much better. I'll have to look into the current process more, but it just doesn't seem like well designed at all. Rocket000 (talk) 14:58, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
I agree we should change our POTD system. --Jarekt (talk) 18:13, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
Martin H. and I talked about the same topic some time ago (User talk:Slomox#Special:WantedTemplates). We didn't find a technical soluton, but I suggested that it's rather un-meaningful to have pages like Commons:Potd/2006-12 (fr) that are meant to be in French with dozens of image descriptions in foreign languages. Make the language-specific versions language-specific and we'll remove many many of the irrelevant entries on Special:WantedTemplates. --Slomox (talk) 13:38, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
Yep - I however still dont know a sollution so I think its ok to ask here again. Thanks for your input. --Martin H. (talk) 21:36, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
The MOTD/POTD system could be changed to only have one of each for every language. That is, one page for every day. Not even a seperate page to view it nicely and another page to edit the descriptons. But 1 page per day and in that page, something like {{ifeq:{{{view|}}}|show| show the layout with the image and description and navigation. Else just show the description (for inclusion). A LangSwitch would do the job, and something like {{Interface-lang}} to switch language. Removes a lot of clutter aswell. –Krinkletalk 02:55, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

A file disappeared

I uploaded a file 8 days ago, File:Itämetro-Östmetron.svg. It was uploaded quite strange, just a file without any information (even the page for the file was not created) so I created the page with the information about it. The file was visible for some time but now it has disappeared. I would like to know whether it's possible to restore the file since I've already deleted it from my computer. Stadscykel (talk) 13:55, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

There doesn't appear to be anything in the deletion log, nor in your deleted contribs. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:03, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
So is there any possibility to restore the file? Stadscykel (talk) 14:05, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
A blogger took the screenshots of this file on Monday: A screenshot of the Finnish Wikipedia with this image shown, the image itself. Stadscykel (talk) 14:20, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
We have been having some problems with uploads (see "Impossible to upload files?" above), so perhaps the missing file is related to that. I don't think there's any way of restoring the file. Where did you obtain it from? Or did you create it yourself? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 14:58, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
Almost the entire file was my own work, except the coastline (including islands) and municipal borders which were obtained from OpenStreetMap. I have already created the new version and uploaded it under the different filename because it wasn't possible to upload it with the old name. Stadscykel (talk) 15:18, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
OK, great. In future, you should be able to upload it under the old name by checking the "Ignore all warnings" box before clicking the "Upload" button. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 15:26, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for advice, I didn't note this checkbox. Stadscykel (talk) 15:58, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, this seems bad. Nobody deleted it intentionally according the logs which I can see, so it would seem to be a software bug or some other technical issue. That is worrying; maybe there are more? Are any backups made of media that sysadmins would have access to? Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:37, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
In my impression -- a lot of files disappears from Commons to nowhere -- just a few recent threads: [4], Commons:Village pump/Archive/2010Jul#Problem with old picture version, Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive 22#File was there on Monday, but shows 'failed upload' today, and I've seen multiple cases by myself. It's very troubling. Trycatch (talk) 16:37, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
That is interesting. The original, disappeared file here is still available at the URL http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Itämetro-Östmetron.svg but it's not visible on the image page (the same situation as one of the situations you link to above). Sure seems like a bug. Carl Lindberg (talk) 18:46, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I've just discovered that the same thing has happened to a file I uploaded a week or so ago: "File:YOGArtisticGymnastics-BishanSportsHall-Singapore-20100816-02.jpg". The thumbnail caption simply states: "File missing". — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 08:08, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Yep same thing. It is still available at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/YOGArtisticGymnastics-BishanSportsHall-Singapore-20100816-02.jpg . Carl Lindberg (talk) 13:58, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I suppose the techies are looking into the problem? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 14:54, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I have no idea. I'm not in contact with them -- not even sure how. Doesn't sound they looked into the original problem much but now there are three instances. Do we file a bug, or is there a better way? Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:06, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I referenced this thread as Bugzilla:24978.  Docu  at 15:16, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
The old File:Itämetro-Östmetron.svg is at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/It%C3%A4metro-%C3%96stmetron.svg Seems that the image table entries disappear for some reason. Platonides (talk) 15:40, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
The file description page has been deleted as the user has uploaded another version of the file under a new name. Can this "zombie file" that no longer has an associated file description page be deleted? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 20:03, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I've been told by the good people at Bugzilla that an administrator can link http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/YOGArtisticGymnastics-BishanSportsHall-Singapore-20100816-02.jpg and File:YOGArtisticGymnastics-BishanSportsHall-Singapore-20100816-02.jpg back together again. Could someone oblige? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 20:01, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

A commons admin can't . It has to be a server admin. I have opened Bugzilla:25065 for that. Platonides (talk) 13:40, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Greenways

Hello. Category:Voie Verte has been created, maybe too quickly. I tried to clean it, by moving photos in the more specific subcategory Category:Rail trails in France whenever possible (former railway lines). The correct name of "Voie Verte" should be "Greenways in France", I think, but the Category:Greenways doesn't exist yet, strangely. This also supposes that all bikeways (on former railway lines) are greenways (I may be wrong)... Jack ma (talk) 08:00, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I guess that most (touristic) trails for bikes, horses, walking are some sort of greenways or "Voie Verte". Difficult to split up overlapping meanings. --Foroa (talk) 16:30, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
Also, "Greenway" (or "Voie Verte") is a fashionable expression. I mean, in France, you have some pure recent bikeways (former railway lines) that are difficult to share with pedestrians. But they are abusively called "Voie verte". Real greenways are only in cities (sharable space between bikes and perdestrians). But aa you say, maybe difficult to split up. What about renaming "Voie Verte" to "Greenways" ? (Commons category naming conventions). Jack ma (talk) 06:12, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Why "Police autmobiles in"?

My question is simple: Why do the subcategories of Category:Police automobiles by country use the "Police automobiles in country X" naming format? Pretty much all subcategories of categories like this use the "Thing Y of country X". Examples of this include among many others categories like Category:Fire engines by country and even Category:Police vehicles by country.

I propose that the subcategories of Category:Police automobiles by country all have their names changed to "Police automobiles of country X" format.

Regards. - SuperTank17 (talk) 21:23, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, there are plenty of categories that use "XYZ in country A" rather than "XYZ of country A". I don't think we've agreed on any standard yet. In makes more sense in some contexts (such as police automobiles, perhaps), but of (or from) seems more appropriate in others (people, for instance). — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 08:59, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
The way I understand it "Police automobiles of country X" means all police automobiles manufactured by that country (or at least vehicles upon which they are based) as well as police automobiles used by the police force of said country while "Police automobiles in country X" means all police automobiles photographed within the borders of that country regardless where they were manufactured or what police force operates them. Because of this I think that "Police automobiles of country X" is a much better naming format considering for what these categories are used for. Regards. - SuperTank17 (talk) 13:05, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
I was thinking the opposite -- that most people would be looking to see what police vehicles look like while in use in (say) France, rather than what police vehicles made in France (and possibly shipped elsewhere) look like. Powers (talk) 14:04, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
Just to complicate things several areas have multiple police forces. It would be more sensible for the vehicles to be broken down by force/department. Dor instance in Liverpool you can find British Transport Police Port of Liverpool Police w:Mersey Tunnel Police and occsional w:MOD Police.--JIrate (talk) 14:10, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree that regardless of the in/of discussion, it should be harmonised in its family, so "Police automobiles of xxx". Anyway, most (if not all) police vehicles are customised/painted in the local country, so in and of are both correct. We cannot differentiate where the vehicles are customised, assembled, designed, commercialised, receives its main parts from (chassis, engine), ... Many police vehicles point to a specific basic car model, which on its turn points to the manufacturer and some (vague) country of origin. --Foroa (talk) 15:02, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Foroa that as far as possible there should be consistency within a particular parent category. In addition, given the vagueness of terms like from, in and of, editors should try and be clear as possible when they name categories, and add usage notes where necessary. For example, SuperTank17's example "Police automobiles of country X" would not have naturally suggested to me that the category was for automobiles manufactured in country X. It would be better to name the category "Police automobiles manufactured in country X", which is completely unambiguous. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 15:54, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Scrolling Panorama

Is there a template or a way to create a scrolling panorama out of a wide jpg? LoreMariano (talk) 22:45, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi Lore, the English Wikipedia uses Wide image for this, is that what you have in mind?--Eloquence (talk) 23:34, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
Great! Yes, this is what I was looking for. Thanks much. 68.46.20.249 00:14, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

September 5

Photochrom licensing poll

Should all European and Mediterranean photochroms be tagged with {{PD-Switzerland-old-unknown}} or a variant tag? The consequences:

  • If yes, the copyright claims of so far unidentified original photographers might be ignored. Given that most of the photographs were taken before 1900, the number of those cases is assumed to be small.
  • If no, most photochroms (a few thousand?) with European and Mediterranean views need to be moved to en.wiki.

A lengthy discussion of the copyright situation can be found above, a summary is at Category:Photochrom pictures from the Library of Congress. Please don't anyone comment that "they are from the Detroit Publishing Co.", "they are PD-US", or "but the LOC says...". Thank you. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 16:32, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

{{PD-Switzerland-old-unknown}} seems fine --Jarekt (talk) 18:08, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
{{PD-Switzerland-old-unknown}} with possibly an additional template mentioning the slight uncertainty. - Jmabel ! talk 23:27, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
A specialized license tag would make sense in any case. Just to be clear, by applying {{PD-Switzerland-old-unknown}} we're essentially creating a rule that says if the images is from before 1900 and we don't know the photographer, we assume PD internationally. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 13:18, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I don't see any problem with that, because they should be PD in the US anyway, as they're older than 1923. --PaterMcFly (talk) 20:11, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
{{PD-1923}} is quite explicit that it's insufficient for Commons, and {{PD-US}} doesn't apply because it doesn't originate in the U.S. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 09:43, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

wikiviewer

I made a DEMO WIKIVIEWER with all images of the demo-category full-screen; as it is done manually, i had to save the content, but it should be made a temporary display, to be generated by a toolbox-item, which makes it also return to normal when leaving the category page. I like to have this, not for maintainance purposes, but especially as a visitors-friendly gadget, which permits to not have to click for each individual image to show full-screen. Is the community interested and if yes, who is willing to programm such a toolbox-gadget? --Havang(nl) (talk) 06:09, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I can't really see myself using such a tool, but you could try asking DieBuche as he seems to be quite good with programming. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 19:15, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

So when did admins get this entitlement

The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

I love that admins can bend or push the rules without a single consequence. Take User:Slomox. I made a poor judgment call and removed pictures from several user pages that I believe are hate speech against a people based only on their following of an institution. The admin undid this, replied (starting what was for the most part a level-headed debate), and proceeded to add an image that I felt was a personal attack (It personally called me out). I mentioned this, and removed it. The admin replaced it and replied. In the end, I said I will continue to remove this until I am banned from commons. I have every right to remove something that calls me out specifically (just like an individual can request information removed from a BLP on wikipedia), and the admin (who is completely involved in this I might add) proceeded to block me for vandalizing his comments.

I'm just going to put it out there right now. I am a long standing contributor that has added hundreds of images. Regardless of whether I am a logged in user at commons, I can come back here until the end of time as an IP and continue to remove that insulting image/text. In fact, I am willing to do this, so I present a compromise instead:

- The admin remove the image, or have it removed every day - That admins be reinformed that they don't have a right to use their administrator powers in an edit war in which they are just as involved as the second party in order to get things their way.

Blocked or banned, I can continue to remove that image. I'd rather, however, be a happy editor that makes useful contributions, without admins that abuse their powers. - Floydian (talk) 17:36, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Childish behavior. Really, personal attacks like that are just not appropriate. Talk to eachother please. TheDJ (talk) 18:20, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Having said that, I have 0 respect for users, who are using "anti-something" statements on their userpages. Why can't you be "pro-something-else" ? Being "anti-" will only promote hate in responses of others. TheDJ (talk) 18:24, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Sounds like you're anti-"anti". Rocket000 (talk) 21:24, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) Wow, what a terrific waste of time. I guess you can now close the loop by adding an "I hate Slomox" image on your user page? Then we'll have consistent hatred displayed by everyone for everyone else. And here silly old me was thinking this was an image repository site. Guess I'm old fashioned. Wknight94 talk 18:22, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Except for naming the person, you've given us no idea what you're on about. After poking around, you don't have a right to remove images from other's user and talk pages. And you sure as hell don't have a right to edit-war, especially when that means getting around a block. In fact, I would block you right now for the simple threat to edit-war until you get your way.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:28, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Slomox made the anti-israel statement into an anti-floydian statement. That is a personal attack, and it was one so obvious and visible that I have since removed it from Slomox talk page. He has the right to talk there and even to make personal attacks, but this was just over the top. TheDJ (talk) 18:38, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
In context, with the alt text and the fact it's embedded in a thread, I would say it's the acceptable side of the line. Not something I'd encourage, but something we shouldn't force Slomox to delete. And frankly, if Floydian had come in, complaining specifically about that image, and not ranting about admins or threatening to edit war, I would have been a lot more sympathetic. As would I have been of someone deleting obnoxious political statements on other's user pages if they hadn't decided to put one on their own when told to stop.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:39, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Would be nice to inform me, when I am the subject of a discussion.
Before jumping to conclusions, please everybody reflect on what personal attacks are. en.wp has a page dedicated to it: en:Wikipedia:No personal attacks (as far as I know Commons has no own page about the topic and as en.wp is Floydian's home wiki, en.wp's page should be a relevant point of reference). The page has a list, it includes slurs and defamation, threats, outing, links to harassing material, ad hominem, unbased accusations etc. (Interestingly threats of continuing vandalism of userpages is on the list too.) I further cite: comments should not be personalized and should be directed at content and actions rather than people. If you hover over the image in question you'll see that the image is directed at Floydian's action and not at his person. The image title says This users disapproves of User:Floydian for suppressing other peoples opinions. This statement was made in direct context of the action Floydian mentioned in his comment above the image. The form and layout of the image were taken from the examples that Floydian deemed good use in his comment. So could you clarify where exactly I attacked Floydian in person?
If Floydian wants to put an "I hate Slomox" sticker on his userpage, go ahead. I won't like it, but if he feels like it it's his good right. --Slomox (talk) 22:14, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Can Floydian agree to leave other people's user pages alone? In my opinion, those anti-Israel signs just makes them look stupid, and it's hurting them more than it's hurting you, so leave their user pages alone, okay? Slomox, if Floydian agrees to that, can you agree to take down your spite fence? You are an admin here so could you take the high road please? If you have to write a whole paragraph to defend it, then you must know it is borderline at best. Admins should be clearly on the correct side of that borderline. Wknight94 talk 22:33, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
100% in agreement with Wknight. TheDJ (talk) 23:06, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Take the high road like Wknight94 said. At least in my eyes, that makes a stronger person and is not a statement of defeat or mistake but of selflessness (it's harder to do than to keep defending yourself). I rather have all of us do more productive things. :) Rocket000 (talk) 23:20, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
The alt text can stay, but the anti-Floydian image should not. The image itself is not directed at the users actions, but at the user himself, so it does constitute a personal attack. Also, even if it was on the allowable side of the rules, admins should not engage in such pettiness. I will go ahead and make the edit since Slomox does not seem inclined to do so. 99of9 (talk) 00:15, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Whatever happened to discussing something before doing it? Do we really need to edit war over Slomox's talkpage?--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:32, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Slomox had already reverted 3 other users, two of them admins, to restore this personal attack image. IMO I was being kind by not escalating this to a discussion of a block! --99of9 (talk) 00:49, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
So much for that. What a waste time. Rocket000 (talk) 03:32, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Apparently I needed to do it again before people would be convinced that he was edit warring. That's what I call a waste of time. --99of9 (talk) 22:49, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, this is just surreal to me.
Floydian censored the userpages of seven different users with an edit comment that was clearly false. I critizised his action(!) not his person by picking up the theme of the discussion (in the same style like the ones on my userpage for which Floydian had applauded me just moments before). He then chose to be offended and tried to censor me on my own talk page. I stayed calm in the whole discussion and only tried to stop him when he continued his vandalism after several warnings to stop it. Floydian is the one who chose to modify his userpage and state that Mohammed is a moronic rapist and his followers follow suit. And I am the bad guy here? Seriously?
I have explained why my statement is no personal attack based on the policy page about personal attacks. None of the users who removed it have even tried to explain why exactly it should be a personal attack. Please, 99of9, Multichill and TheDJ, could you elaborate your position - based on the policy about personal attacks - why my statement constitutes a personal attack?
--Slomox (talk) 01:17, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
The image on my page was merely to make a point that things can be easily taken to far when you categorize everything as an opinion, and that the line between a culture and an institution is very thin. Some opinions are nasty, and don't belong here. The one on my talk page is exactly that, but just in a much more direct way. I also did request Slomox keep it removed numerous times. - Floydian (talk) 01:34, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
The point you have gotten across to me is that your ostentatious claim that you're against political and social attack images on user pages is false, that you are in fact only against attacks that offend you.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:22, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
I have not anywhere condoned Floydian's removal of non-personal-attack images from user's talk pages. You were right to revert him. But then your way of arguing with him got personal. Putting a cross through a big image of his name is a clear personal attack, no matter what alt text you attach to it, because his username is associated with his identity on Commons (the image itself says nothing about his actions, just his username with a big cross through it). Three administrators have removed the attack, and you are now edit warring over it. --99of9 (talk) 02:19, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard/Blocks_&_protections#Block_of_Slomox --99of9 (talk) 03:45, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
I see no reason to view Slomox's little image as anything but a simple expression of opinion about whether such images should be allowed on user pages. To me, putting an edit summary about "Remove use of image as hate speech/propaganda/anti-semetism" is a much more significant personal attack - which is worse, a circle over a username or calling someone a racist? (I'm not saying it's worth blocking over that - but deleting the image from other users' pages no matter what anybody has to say about it may be another matter) And I don't believe that staging a jihad against this anti-Israeli flag is reasonable. I think that there is a perfectly acceptable difference of opinion about whether the founding of Israel was "legally" valid, and we should no more be dissuading people with Arabic names from stating their opinion than we should be threatening to ban people who express support for Tibetan (or Hawaiian) independence. And I say this, some might know, as someone who firmly supports the hosting of Muhammad images. Wnt (talk) 06:38, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
I think we ought to discourage them. Wearing political opinions on your sleeve make Commons a more contentious place for not even the marginal gain that you get on Wikipedia. Glancing through the edits, I saw that not a single page with the flag has languages boxes, info about their abilities or locations that could be useful to another editor. Nor does Floydian's page. There's a case that user pages that only have political complaints are out of scope, and if I don't think we should push that, I also don't think we should show the slightest bit of encouragement to them.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:08, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Unfortunately (as has been extensively discussed on Commons previously), the crossed-out Israeli flag can be ambiguous in meaning between "I oppose some of the policies of the Israeli government" and "I support throwing the Jews into the sea" -- and in some cases, the image appears to be used exactly for this reason (because of its ambiguity, not in spite of it). Furthermore, what legitimate reason is there that the existence of Israel would be considered less "legally valid" than any of dozens of other countries which owe their separate existence and borders almost solely to European colonialists drawing straight lines on the map while sitting around a table in Berlin smoking cigars and drinking sherry? Your expressions of doubt on this point would appear to be more revelatory of your own biases than anything... AnonMoos (talk) 13:28, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Who cares about any of this? None of the editors Floydian removed the image from were disrupting Commons in any way. Most of them are barely active and some of them have almost no edits except to a user page. If they want to divulge their personal animosities, it gives everyone else information about them, and therefore puts them at a disadvantage. Would you prefer someone were anti-Israel but kept quiet about it? I wouldn't. Wknight94 talk 13:56, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
The use of No_Israel.svg on Wikimedia Commons user pages is barely worth bothering about in itself. However, some people are not amused by the idea that users out there on the various language Wikipedias are smarmily smugly smirking about their ability to use such images to express their bigoted racist hatred against Jews -- and considering the fact that there's a well-established pattern here of tolerating anti-Jewish images of a type which would be deleted off of Commons so fast it would make your head spin if they expressed an analogous hatred for any other ethnic or religious group, the whole issue rubs some people the wrong way... AnonMoos (talk) 18:15, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Did you happen to notice the image that was on Floydian's user page? There's quite a few anti-Muslim images around here. As for the anti-Israel image, I seriously doubt that anyone is smarmily smugly smirking about their ability to use such images, and suspect that if it was deleted here, it would just get uploaded locally on the Arabic WP.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:42, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
Let them take responsibility for doing so, instead of using Wikimedia Commons as their convenient conduit... AnonMoos (talk) 08:51, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
As a late-comer to this discussion I would like to add my 3 cents. I do not like anti-... signs on user pages. I agree that they only hurt users who display them by making them look silly, but that also reflects the whole community making Commons much less inviting place to visit. Users should not be defined as what they oppose. It is hard to cooperate with users who loudly advertise their views you do not share, by helping them you might be supporting their views. I think all the sides should take a high road and clean up their user-pages, otherwise we are just perpetuating the cycle: User:Floydian offensive page, inspired by User:Slomox offensive page, inspired by other users, etc. BTW this is becoming a FAQ see very lengthy discussion at Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2008Feb#Wikimedia_Commons_and_anti-logos. --Jarekt (talk) 16:12, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Note: some of the anti-Israel pages could probably be brought to COM:DR as out of COM:SCOPE. There is no reason to keep any user page for an account that has barely edited. Wknight94 talk 16:43, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. If your only edit here is to show your animosity towards some group, you don't belong here. In fact, edits that show animosity directed towards a particular group of people has no place on user pages. Sure the images can be used for educational purposes, but when they are not, they should be removed. This isn't social networking. - Floydian (talk) 17:58, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
If this isn't social networking, then why does your user page say things like "This user believes cheese sucks!.. Unless it's on pizza." and better yet the political argument that "This user supports the legalization of cannabis."?--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:42, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
A statement, but one that isn't discriminatory. - Floydian (talk) 07:27, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
I disagree firmly that we should go around deleting the user pages of editors that have barely edited. Way to bite the newbie and make sure they never become a frequent user of Commons. If we want users of the various projects to upload their images here where possible, we don't want to bite those users who poke around Commons and leave a user page, planning to come back some day. Nor do I think we should discriminate between frequent users and casual users. If we want to ban the anti-Israel pages and all of its kin, then that should be applied even-handedly to every user.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:42, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
I don't object to anti-images as such, not even on userpages. I do object to political statements on userpages however. You're a communist? Great. We don't care. Moreover, we actively don't want to know. Political statements on userpages only engender hatred. -mattbuck (Talk) 01:58, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
I think the thing we need is not Care Bear happy tolerant people who are always pro-pro-pro and never contra. The thing we really need is people able to rationalize. To argue rational and act rational and not base their actions on unrationalized opinions. THAT'S THE REAL PROBLEM!
If somebody says "country X shouldn't exist" and somebody else interprets this as a racist comment against the main ethnic group of that country, that's just pure irrational. That's a dumb opinion. --Slomox (talk) 23:27, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the connection between wanting to "wipe Israel off the map" and wanting to "throw the Jews in the sea" is much more immediate and direct than you seem to be willing to believe. In some abstract realm of pure logic, the two might not necessarily be connected, but in the real world it's observed that they in fact are often very closely connected. Furthermore, the image No_Israel.svg "happens" to contain a symbol for the religion of Judaism with a superimposed negative cross-out sign. I don't think it's wanting the world to be only a shiny happy Pollyanna universe of rainbows, gumdrops, and unicorns to demand that Wikimedia Commons not be used as a medium to actively SPREAD AND PROPAGATE bigotry, hatred, and racism (as opposed to being used to inform and educate people about such things, which is a rather different matter). AnonMoos (talk) 23:59, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
There are some individuals who have racist feelings against Jews. And there are some individuals who have no racist feelings against Jews but who believe that the establishment of the state Israel was unjust and should be reversed. Instead of judging them by the statements they make you rather treat them as if all of them are racists. You just accused several users of bigotry, hatred and racism, although you have no evidence for this other than a statement from them that they are opposed to Israel. You don't see anything wrong with accusations like that?
By the way, your choice of words is very prejudging. The opinions are a little bit more complex than either "wipe Israel off the map" or "throw the Jews in the sea". --Slomox (talk) 00:37, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
I do not object to just No-Israel logos but to any political statements on user pages, lust like I prefer not to discus politics at work with people I do not know well. It can only worsen out collaboration. I do enjoy talking politics with friends I agree or disagree with, but I prefer to know them well enough to know that we can DISCUS politics, agree to disagree and still be friends. I can not talk politics with my mother without causing World War III. Talking politics is complicated and in this project it can only worsen collaboration not improve it. Why advertise your political views? I do not see a benefit to it other than to exercise out freedom of speech. --Jarekt (talk) 05:04, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
Dude, -- 1) Why is it that Israel is the only state in the world (out of nearly 200) whose legitimacy and basic right to exist is significantly questioned? Isn't that a form of bias and discrimination in itself? And your rather shallow, facile, and glib attempts to engage in pseudo-parallelisms on your user page are really quite ineffectual and meaningless, since no-one with any influence in the world is advocating for the abolition of France, China, the United States, or Spain, while a number of prominent national leaders -- continuing right on down to Ahmadinajad at the current moment -- have loudly advocated (and threatened) the elimination of Israel. If you fail to understand how that creates certain special sensitivities, then maybe you should make an effort to be a little less obtuse. 2) Since I first became aware of the matter, I have thought, continue to think, and will continue to think (until and unless I see specific disconfirming evidence) that a number of the users on the individual-language Wikipedias who place images such as No_Israel.svg on their user pages are motivated to do so by a hatemongering desire to express their bigotry or racism. Obviously I don't know which ones, and am not accusing any specific named Wikipedia user. However, to airily dismiss the possibility (probability, near certainty, whatever) out of hand does not seem to me to be very constructive or useful for Wikimedia Commons discussions. AnonMoos (talk) 08:36, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
Why is it that Israel is the only state in the world (out of nearly 200) whose legitimacy and basic right to exist is significantly questioned? Taiwan? Kosovo? Western Sahara? The reason Israel's legitimacy is questioned is that Jews were a small minority in Palestine until the end of the 19th century. Then the Zionists started to immigrate en masse and against the will of most of the native inhabitants of Palestine. 1948 they were so numerous and powerful that they were able to take over Palestine and make it a Jewish state and expel many of the native inhabitants. It should be evident that the Palestinians didn't like that...
Perhaps you know that many Americans have fears that one day Latinos will turn parts of their country into regions where Spanish is the main language and not English. Many Germans fear that Turkish immigration will turn their country into a Muslim country where native Germans are a minority. These fears are irrational but they affect large shares of the population of the USA and Germany. This trauma has come true for the Palestinians. What do you think would happen if the Mexican border of the US would be opened to free immigration and millions of Latinos come to America every year. After 20 or 30 years they outnumber the non-Latino Americans, make Spanish the official language and take over power and rename the country to "North Mexico". Would the non-Lation Americans accept that or would they question these developments? Would you deem "No to North Mexico" stickers on userpages hatemongering, bigotry and racism? --Slomox (talk) 10:04, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
Wow, there is nothing worse than listening to two people pontificate about world politics on an educational image repository site! Can you two take this to http://www.arguewitheveryone.com please? Or at least to user talk? Wknight94 talk 13:48, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
I, for one, would welcome our new Latino overlords. -- OlEnglish (talk) 15:11, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
I guess it's a pragmatic solution once that happens ;-) But the question was: The American who is subject to a culture he feels to be foreign, who has to use a language he feels to be foreign to cope with the administration or at the grocery store or anywhere in public, who has lost his home country "USA" and has to live in a country called "North Mexico", who had to move to another place cause his ethnic identity was a problem to his former neighbors, has this person the right to say "I want back the old USA, no to North Mexico!" or should this statement not be allowed because it is hatred, racism, bigotry etc.? --Slomox (talk) 12:27, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

So I suppose we're taking typical wiki action? That is, delaying the resulting actions of behaviour until such a point as people can say "Oh well, it was a week ago. I forget what happened a week ago..." - Floydian (talk) 19:56, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

What action are you looking for? There is apparently so little interest that it was devolving into a Middle East debate. How about you just ignore Slomox and ignore the people exposing their own hatreds? You'll live a happier life if you pay less attention to such things. Wknight94 talk 21:44, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
I don't know. I suppose I'm looking for a repeat offender to be stripped of their privileges. - Floydian (talk) 04:30, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Nah, not gonna happen. Wknight94 talk 12:10, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.


September 2

Tagging for problematic sources

Do we have a problem tag for files that do have sources but the sources are either not working or problematic? Several of Corpx's uploads cite the forum Shaggybevo and Flickr as a source, however it seems the forum can't be searched unless one is registered, making it difficult to verify the images and copyright status (linked topics also don't display), and the Flickr sources don't point to the images in question. E.g.,

BrokenSphere (Talk) 16:50, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

It is a common problem. Major websites disappearing or moving to new locations, people pulling images from webpages with temporary links ( I have seen links which seem to be defined by as record number ...), images from discussion forums, etc. There is not much we can do about it. We can tag it, by a template, but I am not sure if there is any action we should perform to correct it. --Jarekt (talk) 17:48, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Sadly, the first two cases are "no permission", mails should be sent to OTRS, photos on flickr are CC-BY-ND licensed. Third thing... I think DR would be appropriate. If some photo was found on a government website, it doesn't mean much. The very same Marines.com hosts the famous photograph "Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima" without any credit of Joe Rosenthal, for example. Trycatch (talk) 18:24, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
I just noticed that the permission is stated as "granted to upload here under CC 2.0 license through correspondence through site PM," hardly a credible means of verifying the author's license. These 2 have been tagged. The 3rd I tagged as a speedy since it looks like an NFL photo. BrokenSphere (Talk) 18:51, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
If you see images from an external source, {{LicenseReview}} is your friend. This way we know someone trusted reviewed it (just like {{Flickrreview}}). Multichill (talk) 21:44, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
How would I flag images that could use this review to the right attention? BrokenSphere (Talk) 22:07, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
If it is not from Flickr etc. you can just add {{Flickrreview}} and then someone should have a look at it. --MGA73 (talk) 22:59, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Make that {{LicenseReview}}. :) Rocket000 (talk) 23:11, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
I've gone through and tagged several more images that were sourced from the forum and state that the permissions were granted by the authors via PMs and chat messages. However it looks like this issue affects many more of the uploads. Does this require admin review of all this user's uploads? BrokenSphere (Talk) 23:17, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Admins or license reviewers. If an image has a source but the source doesn't indicate that it's freely licensed or has contradicting terms, you can mark it as missing permission. There's a gadget you can turn on in your preferences called "Quick Delete" which will make this really easy to do. If you come across a user that has many questionable uploads (like 10 or more), you can make a mass deletion request instead. Rocket000 (talk) 06:25, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
MDR here. BrokenSphere (Talk) 04:16, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

September 4

Lag time in file availability?

I created a picture file named: File:Ellen Reiss I also created a second file, because the first one was not linking to my article, called: File:EllenReiss (thinking the space had something to do with it not working). Neither file shows in a search, but if you try to create a file with that name, it will prompt you with a duplicate warning.

I created another file, last night, using the same licensing, called: File:Congressional Auditorium which works fine.

I would appreciate any help someone can give me as to why the File:EllenReiss isn't working. Is there sometimes a lag in indexing?

Thanks. LoreMariano (talk) 18:34, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Can you please provide links to the images you tried to upload? You can type them like this: "[[:File:Ellen Reiss.jpg]]". Without the actual filenames, it is very hard to try and figure out what went wrong. Your contribution history doesn't show that you uploaded any files called "Congressional Auditorium", "EllenReiss" or "Ellen Reiss". Did you upload them here (at the Commons), or some other Wikipedia project? Also, what is the name of the article you were working on, and which Wikipedia project is it at? Again, I cannot find any English Wikipedia article called "Ellen Reiss". — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 19:10, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for your help! I am making quite a few corrections on an article, and have it posted on a test page: [[5]] You'll see the Congressional Auditorium picture at the very bottom of the article; and you'll see the placeholder for the picture of Ellen Reiss. I used this link to create the picture files: [[6]] and named the uploaded files: EllenReiss.jpg and Ellen Reiss.jpg. LoreMariano (talk) 19:23, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
Just realized the Congressional Auditorium picture has the date on it.

[[7]] LoreMariano (talk) 19:51, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that the file is not found:

File:EllenReiss.jpg

File:CongressionalAuditorium_10-21-2009.jpg LoreMariano (talk) 02:21, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Well you uploaded them locally on the English Wikipedia, so of course they're nowhere to be found on Commons. The correct links would be en:File:EllenReiss.JPG, en:File:Ellen Reiss.JPG (notice the capital letters for the extension) and en:File:CongressionalAuditorium 10-21-2009.jpg. If you use the correct filename in your article (i.e. [[File:EllenReiss.JPG|thumb|left]], with capital letters), then it should work just fine. –Tryphon☂ 07:20, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
LoreMariano, it looks like you were not the person who actually took the photographs of Ellen Reis and the performance in the Congressional Auditorium. Are you able to contact those persons by e-mail and get them to confirm by e-mail that they are the copyright holders of the photographs and are willing to license the images to the Commons under the CC-BY-SA-3.0 licence? If so, the e-mails can be submitted to OTRS for confirmation, and we can transfer the images to the Commons. (Also, since "File:EllenReiss.JPG" and "File:Ellen Reiss.JPG" are duplicates, I have nominated EllenReiss.JPG for deletion.) — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 08:48, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
Just to clarify, if the extension is typed in lower case, the File macro looks to Commons and if it's typed in uppercase, Wikipedia? Can you tell me why it's better to upload to Commons over Wikipedia? (Obviously, I didn't know I was doing that. Retracing my steps, I now see that that the "simple form" link I clicked on was to the Wikipedia form.)
Thank you for tagging the duplicate for deletion. You are correct in describing the fact that I uploaded the 2 pictures taken by different authors. Thank you for the OTRS information. Is it okay to license under CC-BY (use with attribution)? I just sent the authors emails with that information (instead of using CC-BY-SA). I hope that's okay.
Thank you both so much. LoreMariano (talk) 11:03, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
No, it is not the way the extension is typed that makes the difference whether the file is loaded from the English Wikipedia or the Commons. The software is designed to look for a file first at the local Wikipedia project (say the English Wikipedia) where the article is located. If it finds a local file, it will display that file. If it does not find a file by that name at the English Wikipedia, then it will look for a file at the Commons and display it if it finds one. Filenames are case sensitive, including the file extensions. If you have uploaded "File:Ellen Reiss.jpg" at the English Wikipedia and another file "File:Ellen Reiss.JPG" at the Commons, and refer to "File:Ellen Reiss.JPG" in your English Wikipedia article, the Commons image will be displayed, because ".JPG" is not the same as ".jpg".
If an image is uploaded to the Commons, then any Wikipedia project can make use of it. If it is uploaded only to, say, the English Wikipedia project, then someone from the Portuguese Wikipedia cannot refer to that image. She would have to download a copy to her hard disk and upload it to the Portuguese Wikipedia. That's why we encourage freely licensed images to be transferred to the Commons. Yes, CC-BY-3.0 is fine. If you need help obtaining OTRS confirmation or transferring the images to the Commons once authorization from the copyright holders comes through, just post another message here. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 11:19, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
The thing about the upper/lower case has nothing to do with where you uploaded the file. It's just that the system is case-sensitive, so if at upload time you used capital letters, you need to use the same capitalization when you use the file (unlike on a Windows system, where filenames are case-insensitive and filename.jpg refers to the same file as filename.JPG). –Tryphon☂ 12:58, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
OK, now I understand it. Thank you for the explanations. I hadn't thought about sharing with other projects, but you never know! The two people--Amy Dienes and Donita Ellison--sent their permissions to OTRS. Once the new files are made, will you swap out the old Wikipedia pictures with the new Commons pictures? LoreMariano (talk) 15:17, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
Did you forward the e-mails to permissions-en@wikimedia.org or permissions-commons@wikimedia.org? If you didn't send them to the latter e-mail, I suggest that you do so. I've transferred the images for you to the Commons and tagged them with {{OTRS pending}}, so please mention in your e-mail that the images are in the Commons as "File:Ellen Reiss - 20050815.jpg" and "File:The People of Clarendon County at The Congressional Auditorium, US Capitol Visitor Center - 20091021.jpg". In future, you can transfer the files from the English Wikipedia to the Commons yourself using CommonsHelper. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 16:00, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
Great. The permissions were sent to Commons and the addendum note from each person (stating the filename) will be sent shortly. Again, many thanks. (PS Thx for CommonsHelper too.) LoreMariano (talk) 16:18, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I am amazed that the filenames take commas and spaces. Good to know. Thank you again for all your work in helping me get it into shape. LoreMariano (talk) 18:40, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Spaces are always equivalent to underscores in file names. AnonMoos (talk) 08:45, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Can someone help me out with editing the description of the file: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_People_of_Clarendon_County_at_The_Congressional_Auditorium,_US_Capitol_Visitor_Center_-_20091021.jpg
The description should read: "The People of Clarendon County"—A Play by Ossie Davis, & the Answer to Racism, presented at the Congressional Auditorium, US Capitol Visitor Center on October 21, 2009 with Lee Central HS Chorus and the Thelma Slater Singers of Bishopville, South Carolina.
This is an important correction as the current description sounds like the photo is of the play only. I tried to use commonshelper but did not know what TUSC login/password was. Apologize for asking. If someone tells me how to edit, I can do it myself. Thanks. LoreMariano (talk) 20:46, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
OK, I see now that it's editable in much the same way any wiki page is editable, by section. I was looking for a link to replace the version, which is unnecessary. Thanks everyone for your help. LoreMariano (talk) 21:18, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

File uploaded with unintended format

I choose the wrong file and uploaded a file .TIF instead of a normal .JPG. (File:Harkeberga kyrka M03.tif). I see that .TIF also is accepted, but I would like to have all in .JPG. Shall I do something about it? (i.e. beg for deletion and upload a new jpg-version?) --Xauxa (talk) 22:52, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Sure, just tag your TIFF file with {{Speedydelete|1=Accidentally uploaded TIF file instead of correct JPG file.}}, then upload the correct JPG. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:14, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for your advice, I will do that. --Xauxa (talk) 20:29, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
My deletion request was not accepted. Well, it does not matter too much;-) --Xauxa (talk) 16:14, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

September 6

Files without templates

If anyone's looking for some work, here's a list of file pages that don't have a single template. No license tag or anything. All the ones I checked had info removed or sections blanked after upload. Rocket000 (talk) 00:03, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Or google translation was used resulting in (( this )) or { { this } }. --Martin H. (talk) 00:57, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
Ah, I wondered why that was happening. It's kinda weird that Google translates even the stuff in textboxes and changes brackets into parentheses. I'll try an do a bot run to fix what I can. If it's just changing (()) back to {{}} it shouldn't be problem. Thanks for helping. Rocket000 (talk) 01:19, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
Regretably also the {{Information is now (( Información and the |source= is now |fuente= and so on, in various languages. Dont know if this is so easy to fix with a bot. --Martin H. (talk) 01:26, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes, unfortunately, I can't do much by bot. However, there wasn't that many. I searched for "((" and fixed the ones I found. Rocket000 (talk) 01:39, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
Very nice, thank you! --Màñü飆¹5 talk 09:11, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes, that list is very useful. I randomly chose File:Orna002-Bandmotive.png and noticed it belongs to a set of many scans from the same book in Category:Meyer's Ornament. Those pages used to have the {{PD-Ornament1898}} template but over the years actions of well-meaning bots and editors have resulted in quite a few without the template. Could someone change that template so that it becomes useful again? -84user (talk) 16:27, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
Files 151 to 239 are scanned from the Meyers Blitz-Lexikon, and used to have {{LA2-Blitz}} which has since been removed. These images appear to be in some kind of copyright limbo. Should we re-add {{LA2-Blitz}}? -84user (talk) 17:42, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
Why was the copyright tag removed? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 09:51, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
There was no edit summary to explain the removal, maybe the editor was confused by the auto-categorising behaviour of the template? I have been slowly re-adding them inside {{Information}} templates. -84user (talk) 20:31, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
84user, if the license template has been deprecated as invalid in the U.S., perhaps the associated files need to be deleted rather than the template simply readded? — Huntster (t @ c) 16:57, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Clubs and societies

I'm not sure how Category:Clubs and societies, Category:Clubs and Category:Societies should relate - I'd be inclined either to get rid of the first or to keep it and make the latter two into subcategories - but right now there is a circular mess. Does anyone else want to weigh in on how best to sort this out before I make changes? - Jmabel ! talk 04:19, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I share your concerns. To me, a club is a more narrow form of a society, which is used more in the context of a (people) association, not a real society which can be anything from a small company to a population of a continent. Maybe associations is a better word. Don't know but "Clubs and societies " sounds wrong to me.--Foroa (talk) 14:17, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

where is Commons:Deletion requests/Archive/2010/09?

Pls see Special:Contributions/DRBot. regards. --JuTa (talk) 12:51, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

It appears these monthly pages are not automatically created. At least the one for August wasn't. I've now manually created the remaining ones for this year. Lupo 14:10, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Category:Logo (programming language)

I'm not sure why this category accretes so many logos that have nothing to do with the programming language. I've kind of manually semi-cleaned-out the category once or twice before, but I don't feel like doing so again now... AnonMoos (talk) 18:19, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, the reason most likely is, that if you use the category selector on the upload form and type in "logo" the first entry ("Logo") is highlighted in blue and nothing happens if you click it. If nothing happens people assume that the highlighted entry is not part of the selection menu and they try the next entry in the list which is "Logo (programming language)". --Slomox (talk) 19:00, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

September 9

Common problems with CommonsHelper moves

I've noticed that a common problem with files moved from the English Wikipedia to Commons is, the Information template gets filled out with useless information from the transfer. For an example, compare this original Wikipedia file File:Earheart 1928 to this newly-created Commons file.

Many times, when I try to fix one of these, I find the original Wikipedia file has already been deleted, leaving a very-unhelpful file description at Commons.

It seems that the transfer bot needs rethinking. At the very least, it should be modified so as not to fill the Info template with nonsense. And a stronger warning NOT TO DELETE the original file, without carefully checking the Commons daughter-file, might also help. TIA, PDTillman (talk) 03:10, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

It looks like the file description page here is at least missing a "1=". You might want to ask Magnus to add that.
I'm not entirely happy with the entire process either, but we haven't really come up with a better solution yet. -  Docu  at 05:18, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
adding "}}" helps. As it stands, CommonsHelper can only be used to "assist" a transfer. The editor needs to review content. It remains useful. Finavon (talk) 05:51, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
If you find deletions on en.wp that are not appropriate, do try to point them out to the deleting administrator. If you don't point out errors that people make, they cannot learn. And there are usually a few enwp admins online on IRC chat if you need something from a page. TheDJ (talk) 09:35, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
More importantly, explain to the editor who carried out the transfer that he or she needs to ensure that the transferred image needs to be properly described and categorized. I've come across cases where editors appear to have transferred masses of files but have not bothered to tidy up the descriptions or categories. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 09:48, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
Why the bot can't just transfer full verbatim description from wiki? (and hide it in collapsible block) This information generally is very important. It's not normal that you need to search an admin from source wiki for such trivial actions. Trycatch (talk) 14:20, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
As far as I am aware, CommonsHelper usually does. It could be that now and then a character that it doesn't expect gives it indigestion. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 15:50, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
I added the "1=".  Docu  at 19:52, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
Hmm, for example, here essential information from the original wasn't transferred. Trycatch (talk) 20:39, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
Template:Зображення might be confusing the bot.  Docu  at 20:44, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
#1 issue with CommonsHelper: |Author = Original uploader was...
Sorry, those aren't the same thing, bot. For licenses that require attribution, nming the uploader doesn't fulfill this (even if they are the same person, you still aren't given them the required credit if you only refer to them as the uploader). Rocket000 (talk)
Actually, Docu, is the "1=" in {{En}} really necessary? I have not been using it and it doesn't cause any problems. In wikitext generally, parameters like "1=" can be omitted as it just means the first value in the template (i.e., "{{en|1=XYZ|2=ABC}}" is identical to "{{en|XYZ|ABC}}").
Rocket000, when transferring files from the English Wikipedia to the Commons, I usually check who the author of the image is, and if it is the same as the uploader I remove the words Original uploader was. I guess this just re-emphasizes the point that the editor effecting the transfer must make sure that the Commons {{Information}} template is properly filled in. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 08:42, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
Give it a try.  Docu  at 16:43, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
The "1=" format is only equivalent if the template parameter doesn't contain an equals sign. {{en|1=2+2=4}} and {{en|2+2=4}} don't do the same thing. --Carnildo (talk) 21:27, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

360° panoramic viewer does not work

I came across File:Finally 360.jpg and added the template {{Pano360}}. Trying the result, I did not get any image; the screen remained blanc. Trying on an other image of which I knew it had worked, the same result. What can be the reason? I work with Firefox 3.6.8. Wouter (talk) 13:54, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm using 3.6.8 as well and it works fine. Neither low res nor high res pano works at all for you? You don't even see the loading screen? — Huntster (t @ c) 17:01, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
I see the loading screen with the words "full resolution - This image on commons, Other panoramics", but further loading of the pano360 image does not happen. Changing from full to reduced resolution does not help. Wouter (talk) 06:39, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Try re-installing Java. That is what runs the 360 tool. The page also mentions that you might need to increase the Java heap space, but I have no idea how to do that in Firefox. — Huntster (t @ c) 06:46, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
I tried with Safari and there it worked for the reduced version (not the full version). It appeared that in Firefox Java Embedding Plugin 0.9.7.2 MRJ Plugin version 1.0-JEP-0.9.7.2 was not made active. Changing that gave the same result as with Safari. Wouter (talk) 18:35, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
That matches with what I see. I couldn't get the full resolution to work since I'm not sure how to increase the Java heap space. If that is increased, the full res should work as well. — Huntster (t @ c) 19:01, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Attree

My husband and I went to Lynmouth for a holiday this year and we walked through the gorge and embedded in the wall was a pipe with the name ATTREE which is our name. We are most interested to find out what this pipe does and why has the name attree been initialled in the pipework. Can anyone help. I am also doing our family history.

Brenda Attree — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.163.99.158 (talk • contribs) 02:57, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Brenda. This is not the right place for your inquiry. I suggest you leave a message at "Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities". — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 09:13, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Can you help me ?

Hello, I have a new versions of this file but I can't upload it. Can you help me please ? Gruinc (talk) 07:52, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Click on the "Upload a new version of this file" link that appears towards the bottom of the image description page. (I've copied the link into in the preceding sentence, so you can also click on it there.) — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 08:17, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Thank you very much for your reply Gruinc (talk) 08:39, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

How to re-upload images on wikipedia

The question say's it all really. When an image is on wikipedia, there is a change log or something like that. How do "I" re-upload images with better versions.

Thanks for all the help, John. — Preceding unsigned comment added by John Aplessed (talk • contribs) 23:15, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Funny you should ask – someone else just asked the same question. See "Can you help me ?" above. (By the way, don't forget to sign your posts with four tildes, like this "~~~~".) — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 19:07, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Potd overview pages

I made a comment above at #Special:WantedTemplates but I guess that thread's life cycle of attention is expired. So I start a new one.

We have several overview pages for our pictures of the day and media of the day (like Commons:Potd/2004-11 (de)). These pages contain a big number of links to non-existing descriptions and they thus mess up Special:WantedTemplates.

I suggest that we either unify the different language versions like Commons:Potd/2004-11 (de), Commons:Potd/2004-11 (fr), Commons:Potd/2004-11 (en) etc. into a single page Commons:Potd/2004-11 and use our common template localisation techniques to make them multilingual, or that we make the language-specific subversions monolingual (that means that Commons:Potd/2004-11 (fr) will only show the French translations but not the English, German, Afrikaans etc. pp. ones).

Opinions, objections, other proposals? --Slomox (talk) 00:46, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Instead of having a separate description template for every language and every day (e.g. Template:Potd/2010-02-21 (en), Template:Potd/2009-11-02 (it)) why not just have one for each day with a langswitch or something? Then we could easily have multilingual month pages like Commons:Potd/2004-11. The whole thing can be drastically simplified. I'm ready to do some work on this. Rocket000 (talk) 06:12, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
To get an overview of available translations for one month, one page that displays them all at once is quite useful, e.g. (the current version of) Template:Potd/2010-08.
If there are additional pages for various languages, e.g. Template:Potd/2010-08 (zh-hans), maybe they needn't include translations. BTW, there is currently no Template:Potd/2010-08 (en)
There is some advantage of having a summary of MOTD/POTD for one month (even if I don't use it), but I'm not sure this needs to be combined with the page for translators.
The way languages are displayed on the file description pages, e.g. at File:Saint-Maimbœuf_church.jpg#Assessment, is - IMHO - quite useful.  Docu  at 06:58, 4 September 2010 (UTC), revised 07:07, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
In that case, we can use something like {{Mld}}, so we can display all languages if we want. For translators, I agree it's useful to see them all at once, but we don't need separate month pages for each language. For the things that are different, like the calendar at the top and captions on the images, we can use {{LangSwitch}}. Actually, I don't think the captions are even necessary since all the descriptions are right next to it. Maybe we should just create a header template that changes based on the interface language, and the rest would be the same in any language. Rocket000 (talk) 19:51, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
Just to add some clarification. Pages like Commons:Potd/2004-11 (de) add to the problem, but the main troublemaker is Commons:Picture of the day for the overview over current POTDs/MOTDs (and its corresponding pages like Commons:Bild des Tages).
I was thinking about the most unobtrusive solution to the problem but I cannot come up with a good solution. The easiest solution I can think of is to change Template:Potd and Motd/Languages and change it so if the parameter "lang" is fixed it will display only this one language instead of all of them. That should immediately change almost all of the pages. But I'm not sure to what degree people want to have the full lists. The full lists could easily be replaced by e.g. a Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Potd/2010-09-07 link. --Slomox (talk) 11:55, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Well, I changed it now. We'll see how long my edit lasts. If I have luck nobody ever cared about the full lists and the next update of Special:WantedTemplates could be useful again. If I have no luck, I have to look for another solution. --Slomox (talk) 12:43, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Cool, let's hope it stays that way. Rocket000 (talk) 16:54, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Special:WantedTemplates works again! Have a look and fix! --Slomox (talk) 07:51, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Good work. Still a couple of POTD and MOTD, but, for once, quite a few others!  Docu  at 11:43, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Vintage calculators

I recently had to clean upp the clutter and I discovered File:Prinztronic 300IM.jpg. I placed it under the category calculators. However there seems to be no category "Vintage calculators" and there are lot of missing subcategorys. But before we create such a subcategory: what is vintage? (Trademarks no longer used or a cuttof date?)

I dont find any category Dixons and by the category displays I couldnt find a correct one. The "Vacuum fluorescent displays" is the closed one, but there also modern displays in that one.Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:57, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

And do we have categorys such as "Made in Taiwan"? If this is usefull?Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:58, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

As you pointed out, I think categories with names like "Old" and "Vintage" are slightly problematic in that if the terms are not defined in a usage note, it becomes uncertain what sort of images should be categorized in them. Compare "Category:Old maps", where a decision was made to consider maps as "old" if they are more than 70 years old. Of course, for electronic equipment like calculators a shorter period would be appropriate. As for categorizing images of objects based on their place of origin, you could use a suitable subcategory of "Category:Objects by country". — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 09:08, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
You could start a category:Calculators with LED displays. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 09:11, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
I have looked at the categorys, but I find a lot of unclear definitions: Wat is the difference between calculators and computers? For me calculators are handheld devices that are only active with human interaction.(input) But I am no expert. Another unclear category is:Sinclair Research. What is the link with research? Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:08, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
From the English Wikipedia: "A calculator is a small (often pocket-sized), usually inexpensive electronic device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic." On the other hand, computers perform many more functions than just arithmetic. Sinclair Research is the name of a British company that produced some of the early personal computers in the 1980s. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 08:21, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Wax museum sculptures in the US subject to US FOP guidelines?

How do we treat US wax museum sculptures? Are they considered sculptures that are subject to FOP? A DR was recently raised that poses this question, so I'm curious. BTW, this wasn't intended to draw attention to the DR, but is a general question. Thanks. BrokenSphere (Talk) 16:22, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

There is no FOP that sculptures are subject to in the US.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:50, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Actually there is. I've nominated numerous contemporary American statues for deletion on those grounds. BrokenSphere (Talk) 17:44, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
I think you're both saying the same thing - in different ways. Prosfilaes is saying there is no freedom of panorama for statues in the U.S., he's not saying there is no Commons policy about freedom of panorama for statues in the U.S. Wknight94 talk 17:57, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
And just so folks know about it, there's another DR on the same issue at Commons:Deletion requests/Wax figures in the United States. And yes, I'm still waiting on hearing back from the Madame Tussards folks about getting clearances... Tabercil (talk) 17:20, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Possible JavaScript problems

In revision #72349, the scripts like wikibits.js and the like have been moved to the bottom. Since I know how much Commons relies on JavaScript, I was wondering if we could live like that or if that might break stuff, so we'd have to somehow rewrite it. --The Evil IP address (talk) 18:21, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Uhm what? I'm not sure I fully understand teh implications. Among many other things wikibits.js defines addOnLoadHook, which is used by probably almost every script. The change is going to break them all? --Dschwen (talk) 18:39, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Is the concern that, since the .js files have been moved to the bottom, that stuff higher up might take precedence from them? I didn't think that js files had the same problems that css files did. — Huntster (t @ c) 19:03, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
As far as I understand it, all javascript will be run from the bottom of the page. So the load order will be the same as always. Only if you have an extension that is adding JS in an unconventional way before wikibits, there will be a problem I think. So for most people there shouldn't be a noticeable difference. TheDJ (talk) 19:50, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
The Resource Loader is still under development. My understanding is that most of the Javascript will be moved to the bottom (so that it doesn't slow down page loading). However, I believe there are a few components (such as global Javascript variables) that are likely to get moved back up to the head before the Resource Loader is deployed. As it stands in the current trunk code, a good many scripts on Commons would probably be broken, but there is work ongoing to make it more backwards compatible. Kaldari (talk) 20:17, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Ok, thanks for clearing that up. --Dschwen (talk) 20:26, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
More info at [8]. Kaldari (talk) 20:40, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Upload a new version of this file

The link "Upload a new version of this file" which is displayed on every file page does work in misleading way which causes frequent improper overwriting of files. The upload form misses an accentuated warning that new file has to be uploaded under a new name and that an overwriting of a file by another one is inadmissible, excepting minor technical corrections of the original file. The form contains quite misleading entry (related to the upload of new files and not to the upload of a new version) and a misleading field "licensing" which is ignored when uploading. Could somebody urgently fix this lapse? --ŠJů (talk) 01:08, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually this is also an issue for users who think it is the link to make licensing and source changes. When a file is tagged with {{Nsd}} or {{Nld}}, many uploaders attempt to add them using the "Upload a new version of this file". I see it often when cleaning the backlogs. ZooFari 01:14, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Bug 13802 - Add magic word to specify thumbnail width in category

From Bugzilla:13802: "There should be a __PANORAMA__ (or __LANDSCAPE__, whatever) magic word specifying that a category contains very wide images. This would then allow MediaWiki to optimize display. Instead of say 6 images per line with thumbnail dimensions "120 x 35", it would have one thumbnail per line, perhaps "800 x 235"."

Just wondering what you think of it? It would allow specific different thumbnail sizes for categories such as Category:Panoramics. --  Docu  at 17:03, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Having more control over the display of thumbnails in category pages would of course be helpful. Powers (talk) 14:43, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Given the amount of feedback here, it doesn't seem to interest most users. I guess we should forget about it then.  Docu  at 08:01, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

September 8

Marefa

Hi,

I am new in Commons, I mustly work in Wikipedia Arabic and I am not fluent with commons. There is a wiki Arabic online encyclopedia called Marefa. It uses the GNU licence even when we use material from it, the information is written in Arabic in there website [9] under the paragraph Uses of Marefa Material. My question is, can I upload in Commons media (pictures, videos) from that encyclopedia?

I give you 2 examples, here is a picture originally from Commons [10] but taken in Marefa and then modified (translation of brain parts names in Arabic) [11]. The other case is a picture probably from Marefa itself (So under GNU Free Documentation License). [12] --Helmoony (talk) 19:09, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

If they use GNU license (I can not verify it) than the files are OK to transfer. --Jarekt (talk) 19:30, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Thks, and what should I add in the upload page specially Licensing blank? --Helmoony (talk) 19:47, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
If the image is a derivative of an image originally on Commons, the licensing of the original image would typically apply, so {{Cc-by-2.5}} for the brain example. Otherwise, they would be under {{GFDL}}. By the way, I don't see any licensing info or credit to the original artist (Patrick J. Lynch) for the brain image on Marefa. I don't read Arabic, however, so maybe I'm just overlooking it. Kaldari (talk) 20:09, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Thks, its much more clear now! As it is written in the english article of Marefa (Knowledge in Arabic) in wikipedia (Marefa), they do not explicitly state that the content they use is under GPL (=GFDL ? is it the same thing). If we take the example of the brain. Normally they should cite Patrick J. Lynch for credits but they don't, for licensing info you can see below the page a little sentence underlined at the right it says in Arabic that « As stub, Marefa has used articles from allowed sites like Wikipedia and Kuwaiti Al-Arabi magazine content that are available under GNU Free Documentation License. See Marefa: about  » [13]. All the website uses the same method for media files. Can I make an upload and then tell me if it s done with the wright way? It will be much more simple to know how to manage the file.. --Helmoony (talk) 20:57, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Is it the wright way for that kind of uploaded files ? Plz take a look on the image [14], because I'll use the same method for other files. --Helmoony (talk) 22:05, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Looks good except that the editor parameter in {{RetouchedPicture}} should just be a name, not a URL. Kaldari (talk) 23:59, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Thank you, now I think I can upload and respect commons licences. Thank you. --Helmoony (talk) 03:02, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

September 10

search plugin

I'm not sure if this has been done before, but I've just made a Commons search plugin for Firefox. Hopefully this is of use to someone. Cheers. sonia 22:23, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Cool, but there were some long before. ;-) Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 23:34, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

September 11

2 Persons with the same name

I have written some questions on talk:Categories but since the response there is slow I am trying here also. The question is about when there are two persons with the same name. Should those two corresponding categories for those persons be contained in a supercategory explaining that there are several persons with that name. I'm thinking of something similar to haw Wikipedia articles are made when there are several topics with the same name. With the example I'm thinking of there would be one category named "Joakim Berg" containing links to two categories "Joakim Berg (Kent)" and "Joakim Berg (Hardcore Superstar".

The other option would be to just have the two categories "Joakim Berg (Kent)" and "Joakim Berg (Hardcore Superstar" and no supercategory.

And I also need help renaming the current category "Joakim Berg" to "Joakim Berg (Kent)".

Regards Averater (talk) 05:53, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I responded there.  Docu  at 08:28, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Again with the Thumbnails?

Clicking on New Files today, looks like we're having trouble with thumbnails working again. Anyone else having this problem? I'm no expert, but whatever changes to the system are trying to be made, clearly aren't working, because this is the 3rd time we've had this problem. Fry1989 (talk) 18:27, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, same here, it takes ages to load, and some of them don't show up at all. Looks like the server is overloaded or something. –Tryphon☂ 18:31, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

File:Ru-wiki KV-5 audioversion.ogg

I've uploaded Spoken Article for KV-5 in Ru-Wiki, but file is of a low quality, because of ceaseless clicks. I wonder if anybody, familiar with Audio-software, will remove them completely from the file. In case somebody decide to deal with it, I have original *wav-version of file. -- George Serdechny 18:54, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Deletions templates / use as a social networking site

I can't find any sort of tags for a user appears to be using Commons as a social networking site. I listed the image at a delition request but is there any reason File:PIC 0152.JPG, User talk:Leicamvb and User:Leicamvb can't be speedied? Soundvisions1 (talk) 02:36, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

It can't be speedied, because process demands we don't speedy things that are merely out of scope. We tolerate free personal pictures, provided they're in use on user or talk pages, and I don't see the information on the User page as unreasonable. If someone is really concerned about the talk page or the information on the image page, it can be edited without deletion of the whole thing.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:34, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
I just want to be clear - unlike Wikipedia, which is very clear in its "not a social network" and use of personal information, Wikimedia allows use as a social network and for distribution of personal (unverified) information? I admit my real scope is images, but when I see an image that has a summary of emails and phone numbers and a user page that has more of the same it appears more like a dating site than an image distributors website. Soundvisions1 (talk) 10:05, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
I just cleared out the spam from those pages. They're basically never here anyway. Wknight94 talk 14:42, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
If it seems like a dating site, then why are you saying it's a social network, which dating sites generally aren't? I don't see why it's unreasonable for a user page to identify the person up to including a phone number, if that's what they think is important. And I think that doing something because "they're basically never here anyway" is a way to be hostile to casual users.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:55, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
And I think your tone is an overreaction. The user uploaded a single picture - of himself - and wrote his name and address in a few places. Leicamvb's characterization of the user as a spammer/social networker is definitely closer to reality than your label as a "casual user". Wknight94 talk 17:42, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) What I said was Wikipedia has a Policy that, in part, essentially states Wikipedia is not a social network like MySpace or Facebook. I wanted to be clear if Wikimedia Commons had the same policy or not. If you aren't familiar with Myspace or Facebook, briefly: it is not uncommon for users to post their emails and phone numbers and other information. Facebook and Myspace are considered "Social Networking" sites, but are also common "dating" sites. (And many dating sites are also social networking sites. Match.com and OkCupid for example) There used be common jokes/expressions such as "From Myspace to your place" and "From Myspace to your face" because it was used to pick up people - or a dating site of sorts. Even now with interaction with twitter you get status updates like "Need to get laid" or "Hit up my cell" from many users. While it is not unreasonable for a user to have a little information about themselves it is a bit out of place to have a user uploaded two image of themselves with the summary and description stating the subjects full name, email and cell number (That alone seems suspect to me), create a user page and user talk page with phone numbers, home address and email. Now combine that one uploaded photo having several search "tags" consisting of emails, phone numbers and the like it appeared like more of a social networking and/or dating attempt. Beyond that there was no way of knowing if the emails and phone numbers were the uploaders, so it is/was a privacy issue as well. Soundvisions1 (talk) 18:13, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
By checking user contributions I found File:Maciel Rodrigues de Souza.jpg, another self-portrait of the user. I nominated it for deletion here. -- Orionist ★ talk 06:05, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Cézanne's original?

Could anyone knowledgeable enough on the subject please take a look at this discussion? That image has been there for so long that I find it hard to believe it's not an original, but I can't understand the differences to the other reproductions available on the internet. Capmo (talk) 15:39, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Looks like the discussion there has concluded. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 06:43, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

"my computer"

If somebody searches for work: Apparently some users have used "my computer" as a source for their uploads (Special:Search/"source=my computer"; Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:my computer). This can either mean "own work" or "I created this screenshot/graphic with my computer" or "it was on my hard drive, I saved it from some random website" aka copyright violation. It needs some consideration which of the three is correct in each single case. So if somebody is bored, here's the job for you... --Slomox (talk) 11:40, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Great source. I have a little list going of really bad sources like that people use. (e.g. "google", "the web", "C:\blahblah\My Documents" etc.). I'll do a database scan sometime and post the results (one of these days when I get bored). ;) Rocket000 (talk) 07:08, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Layout option "Place categories above content, but below image on file description pages."

At Special:Preferences, in the "Gadgets" tab, there is one to "Place categories above content, but below image on file description pages.". It's in the section "Tools for categories" of that page.

If you activate it, it will change the layout of Commons pages, by moving the category block just below the image of a file description pages (above the information template). For all other pages, the categories will appear at the beginning of pages.

Personally, it took me a week to get used to it, but I find it most useful.

What experience have you with that change? Did you try it? Do you use it regularly? --  Docu  at 08:08, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I settled for « Place categories above all other content » quite some time ago, and I could not live without it anymore. I find it most useful as well.
The only drawback is that the block is moved when the loading of the page is finished ; so it is often that I get impatient and go to the bottom... only to find out that the block was moved as I scrolled down. :-p
Jean-Fred (talk) 10:49, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for mentioning the option. Very useful in maintenance work because there is now no need to scroll down. Wouter (talk) 20:01, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Same expirience, Jean-Frédéric. Big categories and/or slow servers combined with impatience is a bad combination for that gadget. But it is so helpful to quickly categorize without scrolling the whole page. --Martin H. (talk) 20:35, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, I turned that on a couple months ago and can't imagine ever going back. It makes category work so much easier. Rocket000 (talk) 07:02, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
As some of the more frequent contributors seem to like it, I wonder if we shouldn't invite more users to comment. At MediaWiki_talk:Sitenotice, I suggested to add an invitation to the site notice.  Docu  at 11:31, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

September 12

Images of Abou el Kacem Chebbi

Hello. I am asking myself if these images of wax museum sculptures are allowed, File:Chabbi.jpg, File:Chebbi.JPG and File:Chabbi (cropped).jpg. I do not think so because the COM:FOP#Tunisia does not allow works of art galleries and museums. But, I am not sure, and, frankly, I would cannot delete them because my English level is not enough to do it. So, I ask you the question : does these images are, as I think, not allowed, and, if yes, does anyone could request their deletion (as I am not able to) ? I know there was a discussion on it some days ago, but these images are specific to Tunisia, so I think another discussion is pertinent. By the way, I inform you that taking pictures is allowed in this museum (but I am not sure it is important, is it ?). Thank you (and sorry for my approximative english, please answer with easy words lol). Cimoi (talk) 19:21, 12 September 2010 (UTC).

I think you are right, according to "COM:FOP#Tunisia". Even if taking photographs inside the museum is allowed, we still have to make sure that the copyright in the wax sculptures is not infringed by the uploading of the photograph to the Commons. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 19:27, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
OK. To make sure that I understand, you want in fact a proof that the copyright in the wax sculptures is not expired or something like that. If I am right, you then have to know that the Dar Cherait museum (where are these wax sculptures) was founded in 1990. And I am rather sure that the wax sculptures were created especially for the museum. But, precisely, do we have to know the name of the sculptor, or something like that ? Cimoi (talk) 19:51, 12 September 2010 (UTC).
Yes. If the freedom of panorama rule does not apply, then in order for the photographs to be uploaded to the Commons the uploader must show either (1) that the wax sculptures are in the public domain, or (2) that the sculptor(s) have consented to the photographs being taken and licensed to the Commons. Whether the sculptures are in the public domain depends on Tunisian law (see Tunisia Loi n° 94-36 Relative à la Propriété Littéraire et Artistique telle que modifiée et complétée par la loi n° 2009-33 du 23 juin 2009, I think – I do not speak French, so I am not sure whether this is the correct law). However, it seems unlikely that the sculptures are in the public domain as the museum was only founded in the 1990s. In many countries, the copyright in a work of art only expires 50 or 70 years after the artist's death. Tunisia may have the same rule. Therefore, the only way we can have the photographs in the Commons is if the sculptors of the wax sculptures are contacted and asked for permission for photographs of their works to be freely licensed to the Commons. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 06:22, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Hello. Sorry, but someone in the French wikipedia just explain me your answer because I did not understand lol. So: yes, it is 50 years for Tunisia (see Template:PD-Tunisia). So, I could contact the museum and they would give me the answer. OK, but, sincerely, now, I could not concentrate enough to do it (and also I do not have time...). Anyway, thank you very much for your help. Cimoi (talk) 21:31, 13 September 2010 (UTC).
You are welcome. I am sorry that my answer was not clear enough for you. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 13:34, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Is there a "Request New Photo" template?

I see alot of images which are good, but have minor flaws such as low resolution, over-sharpness, etc. I was just wondering if there is a template which can be added to the image's page asking people to take a better photo. Thanks for any help, John. John Aplessed (talk) 19:46, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

You could also ask for help at "Commons:Graphic Lab/Photography workshop" for existing photographs to be cleaned up. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 06:24, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
I think he was rather thinking of re-taking photographs.
The problem is that this might apply to quite a few (e.g. most geograph images that were downsized to upload to geograph) and I'm not sure the file description pages are such a good place to advertise that.  Docu  at 06:37, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I'm aware of that. Just suggesting an alternative. I suppose it wouldn't be too difficult to create a template that can be substituted or transcluded on to uploaders' talk pages requesting that a better photograph be taken, but it should be borne in mind that many people take photographs when they are travelling, so it may not always be feasible for them to retake poorly taken shots. Of course, we also have "Commons:Picture requests", but I don't know how efficiently the requests are fulfilled. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 06:41, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
First I would check in the categories where the photo is located whether there is a better photo of the same subject made by somebody else. If not, there are two options. If you expect from the exif data (camera type, date of capture, resolution) that the owner may have uploaded a lower resolution version of the photo, you can ask whether he/she has a better one and do that on the user talk page.
If you really want to have a better photo and you expect that he/she can take it, ask it and tell for what purpose you want to have a better photo. I think that a template to ask that is not very helpful. A personal request has much more effect as I know from experience. Wouter (talk) 21:35, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

September 13

Travelers in the Middle East Archive batch upload

I'm doing a batch upload on Travelers in the Middle East Archive and would appreciate some feedback.--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 14:05, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Zedler-Medaille 2010

This is a German speaking project, there is no English information available, my apologies: Wikimedia Deutschland verleiht einmal im Jahr die Zedler-Medaille für herausragende natur- und geisteswissenschaftliche Artikel. In diesem Jahr waren wir mutig und haben die Ausschreibung erstmalig um einen Bilderwettbewerb erweitert. Bisher ist die Resonanz leider eher gering. Noch sind ein paar Tage Zeit, die Frist endet erst am 30. September. Wenn ihr wollt und wenn ihr könnt: Macht mit! Wir freuen uns über Beteiligung und Feedback. --Nicole Ebber (WMDE) (talk) 15:23, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

clever bots and duplicate images

I'd like to call for others opinions on the danger of clever bots.

In the last year or so clever bots have uploaded thousands, or tens of thousands, of public domain images from US military sites. This is a good thing. There is one drawback. Those clever bots aren't effectively checking to see whether the images they are uploading are duplicates of existing images.

I notice these when images I uploaded get nominated for deletion, because they are duplicates. Below find an example. I suggest the older image has a better selection of categories. I suggest the longer an image is online the more refining will be applied to its categories.

The bot applied a {{ID-USMil}}.

The human-uploaded image is about 4 times larger. I don't know whether this implies it is a higher quality image, or whether it is merely less expertly compressed.

I suggest that when there are two images, one uploaded by a bot, all other things being equal, we should keep the older image. We should continue to encourage human volunteers to upload images, without their having to worry that their time will be wasted because an image uploaded by a stupid bot will supercede the image they uploaded.

If the images aren't equal -- as these are not -- I suggest we should cannibalize the positive elements missing from the image we plan to keep, present in the image we plan to delete, and add them to the image we plan to keep.

I wonder -- why can't the bot that uploads detect that it is about to upload a duplicate? Why can't the bot, in those cases, instead update the existing files description with MilID template, update the alternate version field with the other URL, and possibly add some categories?

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 13:06, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

image File:US Navy helicopter-borne firefighting bucket.jpg File:US Navy 071023-N-3069F-021 Chief Aviation Electronics Technician Rexford Sackett, assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 85, kicks open a 420-gallon capacity bucket.jpg
uploader me User:BotMultichillT
date 2008-02-03 2009-10-23
dimensions 1,500 × 2,100 (2.44 MB) 1,500 × 2,100 pixels, (665 KB)
categories
  •  Comment about this particular picture -- IMO image uploaded by bot is better (after careful comparison -- picture uploaded by you was additionally postprocessed and lacked details in dark areas), and has much better description. Trycatch (talk) 14:03, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
    • the image you uploaded is larger in size and has more detail. the bot versions seems to be auto-postprocessed. in this particular case keeping both - original and edit seems reasonable. given two images that differ in resolution but are exactly the same, the higher resolution version should be kept. this should be applied only for different resolutions, not for different edits. harvesting and transferring information such as cats, general information, etc. from the one version to another seems rational. --Peter Weis (talk) 16:14, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
We had similar issues with the Nasa images. I'll list my own criteria for what i did with these duplicates
  1. Obviously, quality and originals over bad versions and derivates
  2. When both are really duplicate, preserve the image that is most in use (usually the older upload), in order to avoid unnecessary disruption of other wikis. (Unless the old name was truly rubbish already)
  3. Prefer bot upload
I always made sure not to loose old translations and combine the best of both image description pages (often tagging and description from one page, but categories from the older one). This last is a cumbersome work, but I think it's the most important part of deleting duplicates. That way, I've never seen a complaint.
For the NASA uploads, we ran a search for the ids and grouped all the new uploads for which we had a "potential" hit after search query into a separate category of "potential duplicates", allowing for easier weeding. TheDJ (talk) 15:57, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree with your first two points. I am glad to see agreement that the information about the image should not be lost.
But why do you prefer the bot upload? It is discouraging to us volunteers to see our efforts superceded by a stupid bot. Uploading this image probably took up ten minutes of my time. I've uploaded about 2,000 DoD images, and they probably each took ten minutes or more. Potentially a bot could come along and upload duplicates of most of these images. Do we want volunteers to become disenchanted because we prefer bot uploaded images to human uploaded images?
I asked this above, and will repeat this again because I think it is an important point. Why can't these upload bots detect when an image is a duplicate? Instead of uploading a duplicate why can't the bots instead update the existing images' descriptions with a {{ID-USMil}} template, and possibly other missing information. Human uploaders get a heads-up when we try to upload duplicates. When I get to that point in the upload I check the existing images' categories, and add any missing categories I think are in order. If the URL is different I add the additional URL. Should humans be second-class citizens here, with higher expectations than what we require of bots? Geo Swan (talk) 16:55, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
My bots don't upload exact duplicates. Multichill (talk) 18:50, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
I'm the one who tagged it as a duplicate. Basically, I work through a lot of categorization of military-related articles, and I've found a small handful (about a dozen in the last year) of MultichillBot's duplicates. I pulled both up on separate tabs and did a quick visual comparison to make sure they are actually the same photograph, and then check the resolutions to see if they are the same. In this isntance, they were, so I tagged the image that was larger on the assumption of compression ineffeciency. I'm assuming that whomever considers the deletion will consider it more closely, and salvage any information (such as description and categorization) from the one that is deleted, as well as subsitute usage on project pages.
I'm really not meaning to step on any toes here. But when it comes down to it, this isn't personal: the better image should prevail, whether it was uploaded by a bot or not. That's not to say that the uploading bots can't be adapted to not duplicate, or at least create a list of them for later review by the operator; but given the low frequency I've detected thus far, this isn't exactly a wide-spread epidemic worthy of really worrying about too much. (BTW, thanks for the heads-up) Bahamut0013 (talk) 11:59, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
WRT the comment "I'm assuming that whomever considers the deletion will consider it more closely" -- no offense, but I am concerned over this approach. I think we have two stage processes so two sets of eyes will look at the instance. Over on the English wikipedia there have been articles that were erroneously speedy deleted, because neither the concerned contributor who tagged the article, or the concluding administrator, performed simple tests I think they both should have performed. In some of those instances, a vandal had taken a perfectly acceptable page, and gutted it, blanked it, or filled it full of patent nonsense. In those instances both the taggers and the administrators told me that they skipped the step of checking the revision history, to see if the current unacceptable state was due to vandalism because they assumed the other party would check. Our quality control volunteers, here on the commons, and on the wikipedias, do an important task. But there is a justification for skipping important tests that I see over and over again that I think is a serious mistake. (Paraphrasing) "I could have performed that important test, or sent that good faith heads-up, as policy recommends -- but it would have added 15 seconds or 30 seconds to the time I spent dealing with this article/file. If I spent an extra 15 or 30 seconds on each article/file I dealt with, it would cut my personal efficiency in half!" My worst experience was with a w:Allegations that Tablighi Jamaat has ties to terrorism. A pair of overly hasty nominator/administrator cost me over 12 hours to get that article restored, when skipping steps saved each of them only 15 to 30 seconds, as I had to go through both my first DRV and a "procedural" {{Afd}}. So forgive me for my concern over volunteers who suggest it is OK to skip steps. Geo Swan (talk) 05:14, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

USGov Public Domain, or not??

A White House press office photo, and therefore in the public domain, and legitimate for inclusion on Commons. Or is it? The photo's metadata states: "This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House." (italics are mine). This makes it equivalent to cc-by-nd-nc, not permitted on Commons.

What's the deal?? - MPF (talk) 10:46, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I think these are non-copyright restrictions, but pertain to personality rights. The important part is the end of the sentence (you may not do various things if it in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President; but you may do those things otherwise). –Tryphon☂ 10:54, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
That covers the second part (after the "and"). I think the first part is not enforceable. The license chosen at Flickr, "U.S. Government Work", clarifies that anyone may reproduce the work, whether in print or digitally, and may also create derivative works from it. Lupo 11:02, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! - MPF (talk) 11:06, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
We have seen in the past years, that the White House is trying more and more to "contain" what users do with photos of the president. But fact is that if the photographer is employed by the white house, he is a federal employee and his works made in that duty are copyright free. Personality rights and pretending that something is endorsed by the federal government or its employees, are the only things that are a problem here, but that goes for any work and those are highly limited due to the enormous importance of freedom of speech in the US. TheDJ (talk) 15:31, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Yup. They are bluffing. Geo Swan (talk) 05:19, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

NASA on Flickr and Internet Archive

In case people have missed it NASA just put a bunch of their images on Flickr [15] and Internet Archive [16] to "commemorate 50 years of photographing the space agency's spectacular ventures". Might be worth a look. /129.215.149.98 11:08, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

This has been mentioned. While there might be a new thing here and there, it is probably just a more select group of photos from nasaimages.org. — Huntster (t @ c) 07:04, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Sufficient license to upload?

When looking for illustrations of the medals for the en:Kavli Prize, I came across photos on the prize home page stating «There is no restrictions on the use of the photos, but the photographer's name should be quoted.» Is this statement sufficient so that the photos so labelled may be uploaded to Commons, and, if so, what license is appropriate? –Ordensherre (talk) 15:45, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd suggest {{PD-author}}, but add a note that the photographer's name must be specified and a link to the web page (please provide an archive URL link to the Internet Wayback Machine or WebCite in case the web page disappears). — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 16:52, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
{{PD-author}} definitely does not apply here: the photos have not been released into the Public Domain. You can use {{Attribution}}. The only issue is that I cannot find the name of the photographer on the original website, which makes it rather hard to quote... Pruneautalk 17:05, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing out {{Attribution}}. Yes, I also noticed that the photographer's name is not actually stated on the website. Perhaps the name of the organization owning the website can be used instead. Isn't a statement that there are "no restrictions on the use of the photos" equivalent to a release of the photographs into the public domain, or do we require a clearer statement than that? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 17:30, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for the advice. As there is no photographer name, my thought was to quote The Kavli Prize instead (as this is the institution that has made the photos available). –Ordensherre (talk) 17:33, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
I'd suggest the Kavli Foundation instead. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 19:44, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Did you consider contacting this institution? With any luck, they will provide the name of the photographer and other details. License status should be checked again. A clear statement of either the institution or the copyright laws that apply here could be helpful.--Peter Weis (talk) 08:44, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

File:Aisha follows the prophet.png - I have no clue

I ran across this image File:Aisha follows the prophet.png and wasn't sure what to think as I am new here. So I thought I would ask at the Village pump. Thanks. - Hydroxonium (talk) 19:43, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

The image is clearly intended to denigrate and makes me rather uncomfortable, but I think we've had discussions over this sort of image before. COM:CENSORSHIP applies, I believe. Compare some of the images in "Category:Israeli-Palestinian conflict cartoons by Latuff". — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 19:49, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
OK. I wasn't sure if I should be questioning this image or not. Thanks for the input. - Hydroxonium (talk) 19:58, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
At the very least, though, I think it should be retitled (that is, moved to a title that is more indicative of its nature). - Jmabel ! talk 21:28, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
I hope it is alright if I leave that up to the experienced users here at Commons, as I don't know how to do that. Thanks. - Hydroxonium (talk) 23:23, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Sure. - Jmabel ! talk 03:55, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Question/remark to others: I believe a bit more than half of the images in Category:Everybody Draw Mohammed Day have titles that indicate that they are associated with that event. I think they all should: as far as I can tell, that association is the only reason these are in scope. Is there any reason not to move them all to names that indicate that association? - Jmabel ! talk 03:55, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I think it would be useful to rename them in this fashion and would help avoid conflict and confusion. Dcoetzee (talk) 05:10, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I will make these moves. For the moment, I won't suppress the redirects; someone else can decide if that should be done. - Jmabel ! talk 03:56, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Why removing permission requests

Hello!

Here an admin removed a permission request with the argument "permission is given". I dont see it like this. There is no permission given. Look at the uploaders name. The image comes from a book of which the permission is needed to publish this photo freely in Commons. Or am I wrong? --80.187.102.153 20:14, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Uploader is IWeiss (talk · contribs), one of the authors listed, and presumably the person who made the photos. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 20:22, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Presumably? Looks like a guess-work. Why do you think he is the photographer? Trycatch (talk) 20:27, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps because the text says "Author R. Gerstmeier, I. Weiss". But I could not see the photo at the link given. Perhaps someone has found the full link? --MGA73 (talk) 20:36, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Gerstmeier also can be the photographer, he is also listed in the "Author" field. Trycatch (talk) 20:59, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Photographs were taken by R. Gerstmeier and me (I. Weiss). An OTRS-ticket containing (1) the URLs of all uploaded images and (2) the short conversation between me and Zootaxa has been sent immediately after uploading the images. It seems that this ticket got lost, so I resent it. If you need any proof that I am I. Weiss, feel free to ask for it. (P.S.: I am not the Ingmar Weiss who is running http://www.arachnologie.info/)IWeiss (talk) 16:42, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Roland Gerstmeier is the professor, Weiss is probably the graduate student who did all the routine work. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 21:06, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
He is not a graduate student: [17]. Trycatch (talk) 21:18, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Because uploader gave all this detail about the equipment: "image taken with Leica Z6 microscope, automontage done with LAS (Leica Application Suite) 3.2.0." This was not scanned from a book. The link goes to a scientific on-line journal, only the abstract is freely accessible. But the complete paper is only 1420 kB (see here), so that is not where these high-resolution files come from. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 20:38, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
The information about equipment is likely included in this paper. Trycatch (talk) 20:59, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Pieter, do not remove tags like this!! The uploader has added the OTRS-Pending himself so it wasn't a nasty admin who wanted to score with lots of deletions. So no reason for you to hinder any wrong. It is by no means clear if those images have really been released by the author or not. And anything else is just pure speculation.

I am not saying that it is not likely but assuming is just not good enough. And hey: There are two big fat emails in the abstract where one could nicely ask for the OTRS-permission-email or one could ask Mr. Weiss on his userpage!? I am not going to revert your edits but I'll delete the images if no permission or proof comes in. Amada44  talk to me 12:24, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I noticed they were added by the uploader themselves, but I also wonder if the new user chose that by accident not knowing what it means. We need to recognize that we have a notoriously poor and confusing user interface. Wknight94 talk 14:28, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Amada: what I removed was a threat of deletion, added by a bot. Weiss gave permission, and I see no reason why you would want to delete these. The permission for these images is as good as any uploads of own work to Commons. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 14:39, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
  •  Comment The template is a speedy-deletion-warning. This is not a clear case since the uploader is one of the authors. I think we should start a DR if we do not trust that the uploader has the copyright. --MGA73 (talk) 14:55, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I just got an email from Mr. Weiss confirming the release of the images. He said, that when uploading he sent an OTRS email. Can an OTRS volunteer check if there is an email? Mr. Weiss offerd to send an other one in case the email got lost. So: fantastic, now we don't have to assume and speculate any more. Amada44  talk to me 16:52, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

found her new one: ticket:2010091510007742. Backlog is only 8 days, so someone should get to it soon--DieBuche (talk) 19:08, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Image donation by Erling Mandelmann

Mr. Erling Mandelmann, a prolific professional photographer living in Switzerland, has very kindly released to Wikipedia all of his photographs published on his website http://www.erlingmandelmann.ch under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license. Confirmation of this release is recorded at OTRS Ticket:2010090210007829.

These images include a great number of portraits of notable people, which can be found at http://www.erlingmandelmann.ch/portraits_all/liste.php. These photos are of low resolution, but are generally sufficient for purposes of illustration. Mr. Mandelmann has asked to be attributed as in the case of File:Jan Tschichold (1963) by Erling Mandelmann.jpg, that is, by indicating "photo©ErlingMandelmann.ch" as the source.

All are free to help upload and use these images, which should be tagged with Category:Photographs by Erling Mandelmann. Sandstein (talk) 10:59, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

  • That's good news. BTW for the attribution to be done as requested, shouldn't we use the following (for the initial sample)?
{{Cc-by-sa-3.0|1=[http://www.erlingmandelmann.ch/portraits_all/viewer.php?sujet=Tschichold_Jan&nopage=12 photo©ErlingMandelmann.ch]}}
This in addition to the indication as source. You might want to make a request at Commons:Batch uploading.  Docu  at 11:42, 9 September 2010 (UTC), edited 12:12, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
And it would be good to add also {{Credit line}} template. Trycatch (talk) 11:51, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
I've made the batch request, Commons:Batch uploading/Erling Mandelmann. Sandstein (talk) 20:51, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

(Edit conflict)Maybe I am missing something but Sandstein said the the photographer has agreed to "the use of all [his] images published at http://www.erlingmandelmann.ch under the terms of Wikipedia's license, the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license via an OTRS email, which is fine, but the copyright information at the website states that the images use is allowed only with written permission from the author.. In other words we need to 100% sure the photographer not only "very kindly released to Wikipedia" the images, but also to the world via the same free license. Soundvisions1 (talk) 12:19, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah. That's why wrote back twice to Mr. Mandelmann to make sure that he understands that by releasing his images under this license he releases them to the whole world to use commercially. That e-mail exchange is also in the OTRS record. Sandstein (talk) 12:34, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
I didn't realize you were the OTRS team member doing this, so yeah - my concerns have already been addressed. But we should still wait until the reply I feel. If someone uploads the entire website and on the off chance the reply is "no, I didn't mean that" we don't have to go through the deletion process on them all. Soundvisions1 (talk) 13:10, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Mr. Mandelmann did write back to me indicating that he understands and agrees with the CC license and its extent. It might be useful, though, if another OTRS team member were to review the e-mail exchange to make sure that my understanding that we have the permission we need is correct. Sandstein (talk) 13:34, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Would you check if the attribution J-F and I just edited at File:Jan Tschichold (1963) by Erling Mandelmann.jpg matches the OTRS tag?  Docu  at 13:38, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I reviewed the OTRS ticket and confirm what Sandstein says : M. Mandelmann explicitly « agree[s] with the "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license" »
As Docu said, we updated File:Jan Tschichold (1963) by Erling Mandelmann.jpg to make use of {{Credit line}} and the attribution parameter of the CC template, as he and Trycatch suggested above.
I believe this is great news for Commons and that we can all congratulate Sandstein for how he dealt with this :-) Jean-Fred (talk) 13:42, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
I drafted Commons:Erling Mandelmann. Feel free to improve. Jean-Fred (talk) 14:43, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Thank you, that looks good! Thanks also for the improvements to the file descrition pages. Sandstein (talk) 20:29, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Just a question - My understanding is there was a ticket number for the first image but the rest came into the discussion later. Two permission email = two ticket numbers? Or are/will they (be) all under one? Soundvisions1 (talk) 15:13, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

It's just one ticket, Ticket:2010090210007829. --DieBuche (talk) 15:50, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
First 140 images uploaded, awaiting feedback at Commons:Batch uploading/Erling Mandelmann.--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 18:57, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
In the meantime the upload has been completed (approx. 600 portraits).  Docu  at 05:04, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

The series seems to be a success: most portraits enable us to illustrate Wikipedia articles that were previously without any image. Currently 30% of the images are in use in one of the Wikipedias.

If you want to check if a specific Wikipedia has an article on one of the persons depicted, copy the gallery at Category talk:Photographs by Erling Mandelmann#all images, paste it on a page in one of the Wikipedias and, in preview mode, follow the non-red links.  Docu  at 05:04, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Art Netherlands and no FOP inside museums in the Netherlands

One of my deletion requests at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Ghent Minne Fountain of Youth.jpg has been marked as "kept". Anyway, even if deleted it should have been undeleted on January 1st 2012, so this is not a big problem to keep it one more year.

What about other files like File:WLANL - 23dingenvoormusea - beekweggetje.jpg (painter died in 1957) ?

Supposing the statement on the template is true (validated by the respective museums and other copyright holders for licensing under Creative Commons BY and BY-SA licenses), don't we need the name of the copyright holder ?

The Creative Commons legal code requires to "keep intact all copyright notices" : doesn't that imply that we must write down the copyright holder's name ?

Don't we need an OTRS ticket with an "I hereby assert that I am the creator and/or sole owner of the exclusive copyright of WORK" (COM:OTRS) statement ?

In the case of that painter who died in 1957, who is the copyright holder ? Is it his son ? his daughter ?

Do we accept "validations" made in a merely oral form, without keeping a written track of that "validation" in the OTRS ?

What is the best way to adress that problem ?

By the way, shouldn't each WLANL files bear a creator template ? (Creator templates are a great help to quickly access painters and sculptors' death years.)

Teofilo (talk) 15:48, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the horse is by Vincent himself, see here. Your other questions I cannot answer. Open a DR? /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 22:27, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
So the roses at File:WLANL_-_E_V_E_-_Rozen_Van_Gogh_Museum.jpg must be from Vincent too. Teofilo (talk) 22:37, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to s:nl:Auteurswet_-_Hoofdstuk_I#Artikel_10 Dutch Copyright Law treats sculptures the same as paintings. So there doesn't seem to be FOP for sculptures, whether they're located in a museum or any other public space. Vincent Steenberg (talk) 22:57, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Although these images have a creative commons license, the object on the images don't have a creative commons license. So cc requirements like attribution do not apply to the objects on the pictures. Another example File:Tour_Eiffel_Wikimedia_Commons.jpg has a creative commons license, but it does not name w:Gustave Eiffel. --Wimmel (talk) 20:19, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
The point is, copyright lasts for at least 70 years in the EU; how could they get a right limited to copyright holders without knowing who the sculptor is? It's not inconceivable, but one would think if it were a work for hire, they would know who did it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:50, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Supressing redirects

How are redirects suppressed when a page is moved? There are no options to do this anywhere during the move process. Snowmanradio (talk) 20:19, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Thats a admin-only option. Huib talk Abigor @ meta 20:52, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Looks like the most needed page moves can only be done by admins. ..  Docu  at 21:02, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Anyone can move pages, they're talking about suppressing redirect creation (which is almost like deletion). Rocket000 (talk) 06:58, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Redirect suppression is generally needed if the current filename is misleading. These filenames are also the ones that are most in need of renaming.  Docu  at 11:24, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I think that all file movers should be able to suppress redirects, because it saves putting a tag for speedy delete (and work for others) where a file had been badly named. Snowmanradio (talk) 13:25, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I do point out that in general we should KEEP redirects. The reason for this is that there can also be "external" users of images, that are not visible to us. When you use redirects, these external wiki's continue to work, but if you don't leave a redirect, you will break their image inclusions. TheDJ (talk) 13:32, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Not everybody shares that opinion. Especially when there is a botanically wrong name, this wrong name will always pop up in the search results if one leaves a redirect. I think that this is more disturbing than a possible external usage of the image. And to be consistent, we would need to create redirects for all the deleted duplicates (which is not done). Doing that, we will have a redirect jungle in a few years time. Amada44  talk to me 14:08, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree there are some exceptions, for numbers only and other highly confusing names. P.S. I do create redirects for deleted duplicates. The admin instructions for deleting duplicates even direct you to do so. See also [[[:Template:Duplicate|{{Duplicate}}]] and point 4 of Commons:Deletion_guidelines#General_procedure and Commons:Deletion_guidelines#Duplicates specifically state to do so. TheDJ (talk) 16:28, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I am referring to bad name files (and perhaps some badly named duplicates) and the guideline is to get the resulting bad-name redirect speedy deleted or to suppress the redirect. Snowmanradio (talk) 21:59, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

The technology has no way of knowing if the suppression is good or if it page-move vandalism or would break a lot of stuff (Delinker may remove images in the mean time). Just like in the past, you simply have to tag it for speedy deletion is it shouldn't exist. Rocket000 (talk) 08:52, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

September 14

Is my monitor too dark?

What do people think of File:Vizantiou in Medieval Rhodes 2010.jpg? I ask because it looks good on my monitor, but I've now seen it on two other monitors where it looks too bright and washed out! Is there a way to tell which is correct? Thanks. Wknight94 talk 03:32, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

The image might be a little on the light side (although, admittedly, my monitor is a tiny bit on the light side). Do a web search for "monitor calibration", you'll find a lot of useful stuff to see if your monitor has a problem. - Jmabel ! talk 03:51, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
looks good to me. Levels are all fine. Amada44  talk to me 09:14, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
My monitor is a laptop purchased in 2007. The two brighter ones are both from the last six months. Maybe they ship laptops with brighter screen settings now. Wknight94 talk 11:55, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Parts of the awning, and all what is visible of the sky are actually blown (pure RGB(255,255,255) white). So probably somewhat overexposed. Lycaon (talk) 12:23, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
That is true, but the overall image is not to bright. Maybe a litte an the bright side but not much. Amada44  talk to me 13:12, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Okay, thanks. I'll brighten my monitor a bit before I do any more Photoshop'ing. Wknight94 talk 13:57, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
It is a bit too bright in middle tones (gamma is too high), for my settings. See also the tests here. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 18:10, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Since you're taking your photography seriously, the best solution for you is to get a Color Calibration Device (like the Datacolor Spyder or the Pantone huey). It will save you a lot of headaches. I've browsed quickly through your impressive collection of photos, and I think it'd help you greatly if you get a polarizer and some GND filters, too (and a UV filter of course, but you should already have one). These are essential for Travel Photography. -- Orionist ★ talk 22:05, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Single-word YouTube clips

Is it acceptable to upload edited (down to a single word) sound files from YouTube, for use in Wiktionary? As an example, File:Crawfish youtube audio.ogg. I wasn't sure of the correct name, or the license. Nadando (talk) 18:48, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Assuming that the sound files are not freely licensed, taking samples from them would technically be relying on the fair use doctrine, which is generally not allowed here on the Commons. However, perhaps single words out of entire recordings can be regarded as de minimis. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 20:05, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I would not count on de minimis, see en:Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films. –Tryphon☂ 20:12, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
According to YouTube, this usage is explicitly forbidden by the terms of service. Lexicografía (talk) 00:18, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
A volunteer answer is not "according to YouTube", and I'm never real happy with any answer that says it's "explicitly forbidden" without quoting or at least giving a citation to where it's explicitly forbidden.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:56, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
I'm uncomfortable with the legality of using audio samples we don't own as if they were public domain. If you do want to do something like this, I'll note that there is thousands of hours of public domain movies with PD audio on the Internet Archive and elsewhere. We can have our vocabulary voiced by Ronald Reagan and Marilyn Monroe. And there's a bunch of PD-USGov material easily available for recent presidents.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:56, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for your replies. Could someone delete the file, please? Nadando (talk) 14:53, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Deleted. --Màñü飆¹5 talk 03:23, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

License template | Collection of unattributed photographs of the September 11th terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, New York City | Library of Congress

Hello fellows,
i've recently discovered this collection from the library of congress. the images of this collection are in the public domain, as stated by the loc. though in the public domain, personality rights do apply here, plus the credit line shall read "Courtesy of the Prints and Photographs Division. Library of Congress." my concern is about the license tag which should be used here. after browsing through this overview, Template:PD-because was my conclusion for this issue. i would like to know whether other/better templates are available or an own template should be created. thanks for your input.--Peter Weis (talk) 20:01, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

My aim is to upload just a few selected pictures, the rest could be done by a bot. If there is a proper bot for this project it would be great. Descriptions need to be handmade but date, license, etc. could be automated. Magnus created this one by request for me: http://toolserver.org/~magnus/marcsman.php Alas he does not seem to support it. This tool extracts file information from the Library of Congress' MARC record system. Using and improving this tool could be useful for a wider audience.--Peter Weis (talk) 22:47, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

You could create a {{PD-LoC-911}} template, to create a consistent PD-because.. Just an idea. TheDJ (talk) 22:50, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
{{PD-author}} is better than PD-because. Technically any requirement of credit line is not enforceable via copyright (the LoC is not the copyright owner, and the images are public domain). Still, no reason not to mention it, and creating a custom tag is usually done for special LoC collections which are PD by virtue of specific actions by the donors (i.e. anything other than normal PD-US, PD-Old, etc. reasons). Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:03, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
I've drafted the template: {{PD-LOC-911}}. Trycatch (talk) 19:11, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for creating this. I changed the credit line to bold. ✓ Done--Peter Weis (talk) 20:00, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Assistance with Category:Marine life of Haiti

History of problem :

Dear MPF,

I notice that you have provided quite a bit of assistance in categorizing files. I ask for you help in solving a strange phenomenon. I uploaded 60+ images via Commonist app for Mac this last weekend and had the subject category in the field for categories in the general upload settings. I see that the category was registered for each of the new files (example file to the right) and in my view of the Category, I see 85 images total. Yet, when I ask others to view this Category page, they only see 17 images but they can see the other images that are not showing up on the category page individually on their respective File pages. What have I done wrong ? Any hints on how to fix this ? Thanks for your help. -Nick Nhobgood (talk) 22:37, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, no idea! But I get all 85 show OK on Category:Marine life of Haiti, so maybe it was a cache / time-delay related problem? Ask the people getting just 17 to see if they get the rest by doing a hard reload of the category (press ctrl + F5 at the same time) - MPF (talk) 22:47, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for checking. I asked two friends again and they still only see 17 images on http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Marine_life_of_Haiti. But if they go to either the "Printable version" or "Permanent link" links in the Toolbox section, they can see all 85 files. I think there is still something that is not right. Do you know what is the best email to contact regarding this kind of technical issue ? Thanks -Nick Nhobgood (talk) 10:31, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Strange! Best option is to post a query on the Village pump - MPF (talk) 13:10, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Any help is appreciated. - Nick Nhobgood (talk) 20:50, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
I did a purge of the category page. Perhaps a very old version had gotten stuck in the squid services. That should now be fixed then. TheDJ (talk) 22:39, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! Nhobgood (talk) 10:25, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

September 16

VIa Wikipedia - FIles hosted here issue

I am posting this question here as it was posted at Wikipedia but the files are hosted here. Soundvisions1 (talk) 03:18, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Looking for some help here. User:Zotmeister contacted me and asked me to solve a problem using my admin abilities, but I don't think I can. It's a bit complicated, so bear with me. Zotmeister created File:Masyu.png with his copyrights intact. User:Life of Riley (who seems completely well intentioned) created File:Masyu_puzzle.svg —which is the same content—and released it into the public domain with himself as the author. Zotmeister wants the ownership of this file to be attributed to him, and his copyrights to remain his—or failing that, to have the files deleted. This also seems to have affected the versions on the German wikipedia. How does this get fixed?--Mike Selinker (talk) 02:16, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

First, I think that it was appropriate for Zotmeister to license the image he created under the CC-BY-SA-3.0 and GDFL licences. The image consists of a grid of 10 x 10 squares with black and white circles in some of the squares in a particular pattern, and therefore I think there was enough originality in the creation of the image for Zotmeister to have copyright in it. That being the case, it was not appropriate for Life of Riley to have released what was essentially an identical SVG version into the public domain. It should have been licensed under the CC-BY-SA-3.0 and GFDL licences with authorship attributed to Zotmeister. I think there should be no issue with applying these licences to "File:Masyu puzzle.svg", and I see that Life of Riley has already done so. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 07:05, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Stereo cards again

Resolved

As some of you know, I've been slowly cleaning up Category:Temporary categories for images from the New York Public Library. We now seem to have approaches in place for dealing with the geographic temporary categories (get them into appropriate places in the category tree, eventually rename and/or disperse them to make permanent categories). What about the ones that are gathered together by who took the photographs? For example, everything in Category:NYPL by B.H. Gurnsey is also in permanent category Category:Stereo cards of Pikes Peak). Should we just remove everything from Category:NYPL by B.H. Gurnsey? The authorship information is there in the names of the files (e.g. File:Above the clouds, summit of Pike's Peak, July 1, 1876, by Gurnsey, B. H. (Byron H.), 1833-1880.jpg) but nowhere else. Any suggestions on how best to proceed would be welcome. - Jmabel ! talk 15:19, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd suggest leaving both categories in place. It is helpful to people looking for images to be able to search by both author and subject. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 15:28, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Then should Category:NYPL by B.H. Gurnsey be renamed to something like Category:Stereo cards photographed by Byron H. Gurnsey and have the comments about "temporary category" removed? - Jmabel ! talk 16:00, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I think that sounds like a good idea. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 16:19, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
OK, will do. - Jmabel ! talk 16:20, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Can "zombie files" be reunited with their file description pages?

I understand that changes have been made to the wiki software so that the "zombie file" problem – when a file upload seems to work, but due to a problem the file description page is created but the file is not associated with the page – does not happen any more, but can an administrator re-establish the link between zombie files and their description pages? Here are some:

— Cheers, JackLee –talk– 06:58, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Try to find back the originals and just upload them on top. That is probably the easiest way to do this. But there is also a bug ticket for this problem bugzilla:25065.TheDJ (talk) 13:19, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Both recovered. Lupo 14:03, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks very much! How did you find the original zombie files? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 15:29, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
I knew where they had to be, if they were zombies. Turned out that Andy Roddick was not a zombie at all, but that the Flickr bot somehow just didn't upload it. The sports hall indeed was a zombie: I knew it had to be in a subdirectory given by the MD5 hash of the file name; so I looked there, and there it was. Lupo 15:48, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
OK, so looks like this is something that editors will need administrator assistance with. You just lost me when you talked about an "MD5 hash"! — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 16:18, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
No admin needed. It works this way: You take the file name (in this case "YOGArtisticGymnastics-BishanSportsHall-Singapore-20100816-02.jpg") put it into the text field at e.g. http://md5-hash-online.waraxe.us/ and submit it. That page will deliver the md5 hash of the file name.
The hash is "efc91253b4bc61f3da3689b8179f0d82". Here you take the first two characters ("ef") and you have the directory. It's "e/ef/" (first character + slash + first two characters). You'll find the file under "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/" + directory + filename (= "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/YOGArtisticGymnastics-BishanSportsHall-Singapore-20100816-02.jpg"). --Slomox (talk) 17:49, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Oh, I see! Wow. Thanks. Maybe these instructions could be placed in some Commons guideline or help page? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 18:57, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
A description of this already exists (I wrote it quite some time ago): COM:FAQ#What are the strangely named components in file paths?. Lupo 08:00, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
That's good to know. Maybe you could mention http://md5-hash-online.waraxe.us somewhere in the FAQ as well. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 08:07, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

How do I keep away metacat-bot from specific categories ?

Resolved

Hi, folks. Please tell me some advices. I'm in trouble with a some kind of metacat-bot who add {{metacat}} to categories which meet some criteria.

I've removed some {{metacat}} because it disturb maintenance on some categories, but the owner of the bot revert these (i.e. re-add {{metacat}}), and not yet response to my message. How do I stop the bot ? --Shoulder-synth (talk) 16:25, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I also was surprised to see this bot acting of categories I use, with no clue as to how it made its choices. Geo Swan (talk) 17:17, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
and not yet response to my message: Because he wasn't active in the last seven hours.
I don't see the problem. In Category:Synthesizers by method the words by method are a sorting criterion. The bot and Rocket000 are right that it's a meta category. But that's okay. If there are files that do not fit into any of the subcategories they'll stay in Category:Synthesizers by method. {{Metacat}} is just an advice. Nothing will happen if you don't follow the advice. --Slomox (talk) 17:40, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for comments and advices. Finally, I decided to rename the category for solving the problem. --Shoulder-synth (talk) 11:32, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Fundraising is just around the corner!

Greetings, Commons!

The Wikimedia Foundation is getting ready for our annual fundraising drive, and we need Commons to help! We're currently testing testing messages on the English Wikipedia each Thursday until November to work with the global communities to provide the best and most successful messages written by us all. This year we will be able to localize messages for specific projects, such as Commons. We urge everyone to have a look and suggest banners for commons. You can also help in translating messages, or getting together with other Wikimedians on other projects to localize messages.

Let's look forward to an actively engaged fundraising season! Keegan, WMF m:Fundraiser 2010 19:38, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Kpeterzell (talk • contribs) 2010-07-16 19:38 (UTC)

Upload a new version of this file

Why, when I click "Upload a new version of this file" to upload a cleaned-up, or larger, or cropped version of an existing file - does it only load the basic upload page with the filename set? It's technically possible to have it load the infobox with the identical template and information - and since I'm re-uploading the same file, it's still date=1908, still {{PD-1923}}, still the same author, etc. So why don't we make it easier and save three extra pageloads on the user, and have it autofill that information as well? Max Rebo Band"almost suspiciously excellent" 23:21, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

You should only see the filename bar automatically filled in and a large edit box to write a brief summary of the changes you made. Looking through your contributions, maybe you are misunderstanding of what the box is actually for. ZooFari 23:25, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Ah, that's a summary box disguised as an infobox...mea culpa indeed. Max Rebo Band"almost suspiciously excellent" 04:04, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

September 17

Re-nominating a previously deleted image

File:NosferatuShadow.jpg was previously deleted after a deletion debate. I've now discovered that it got uploaded again, and as I think that the reason for deletion still applies, I nominated the image again for deletion, using the convenient "Nominate for deletion" tool. However, this has now led to my new deletion request being appended to the page of the original, closed deletion debate, which may be confusing (if you follow the link to the recent request, it looks like an old, closed debate, if you don't scroll down). What is the usual procedure in such a case? Create a new page, e.g. Commons:Deletion_requests/File:NosferatuShadow.jpg - 2? Gestumblindi (talk) 01:07, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

That is correct. Any subsequent nominations are appended after the other. ZooFari 01:12, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Time to change policy to allow more not quite free media files?

This DR Commons:Deletion requests/Template:Euro coin common face 2 makes me raise the topic here. If this has been raised recently: I’m sorry! Please leave a link. :-)

The goal of Commons is to host free media files for the world to use for educational purpose etc. Therefore:

"Wikimedia Commons accepts only free content, that is, images and other media files that can be used by anyone, anytime, for any purpose. The use may be restricted by issues not related to copyright, though, see Commons:Non-copyright restrictions, and the license may demand some special measures. There is also certain material the copyrights of which have expired in one country while still applying in another."

The DR mentioned discuss if images of coins are free enough to host/use on Commons. We do have permission to host/use the images but there are some limitations to the usage of the photos.

So the question is should we nuke the images of money (if there are limitations that make them fail our normal standard) or should we make an exception and keep them so that Wikipedia projects can show the money in the articles?

Personally I support that we delete files that are not truly free. So nuke all "nc" or "nd". I would even be willing to consider to delete GDFL-only if we have good replacements. So it is not than I think that we should allow all files on Commons. But I think that money is an important topic so I suggest that we make an exception from our policy and allow images of money even if they do not live up to our normal standards. --MGA73 (talk) 17:25, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Commons should be only free files. Too many reuses happen and I've seen lot's of incorrect reuses of our files to know that opening up to more exceptions than we currently allow would lead to more confusion in attributions, permitted usage, etc. If an individual project wants to makr more exceptions they can, but we should be totally free. If it means nuking a bunch of files, so be it. fr33kman -s- 17:44, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
"Authorised is reproduction in a format without relief (drawings, paintings, films) provided they are not detrimental to the image of the euro." appears to be a non-copyright restriction to me, not need to change one of our core values. Multichill (talk) 08:56, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Quite apart from that, which is the governmental body or international organization that owns the copyright to the design of the notes and coins? If the law applicable to that body does not say that the body's works are in the public domain, and the body has not freely licensed the designs to the Commons, then we can't have images of the currency here, quite apart from non-copyright restrictions on how such images should be used in other contexts (e.g., in advertisements). The same problem arises with Singapore currency – there are non-copyright restrictions on how images of currency may be used (see {{Singapore currency}}), but the main problem is that works of the Singapore government are not in the public domain (see the usage note at "Category:Coins of Singapore"). — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 07:47, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
It can be hard to tell in the case of a government owner, but a copyright restriction is simply one predicated on the power of copyright, and that one could well be so predicated. Not only that, that can be a nastily limited one, and could impact our usages. If, say, the trust in the Euro falls, they could demand that we remove images of the Euro from Wikinews articles depicting that fact. That's part of the reason for Free licenses, so you don't have to worry about clauses that censor the articles that the images can be part of.--Prosfilaes (talk) 06:16, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes, but you are forgetting the most important thing: fair use. Regardless of copyright status, they couldn't demand take down from news or commentary sites if they are using it because it's the subject of the article. And, at least in the US, we have freedom of speech. Rocket000 (talk) 03:28, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
But then we are relying on fair use, which is a Commons no-no. Fair use is also more fragile then a solid copyright license.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:10, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
You said Wikinews, not Commons. Rocket000 (talk) 08:44, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Wikinews can use it under fair use, but we were uploading it to Commons. If we're going to rely on our projects being able to turn to fair use, we could also use non-commercial licenses, since all Wikimedia projects are non-commercial.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:00, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
This restriction is in no way more limiting than laws concerning Personality Rights or Trademark. Such restrictions are expected when dealing with national symbols. The fact that the text of the restriction is included in a communication on copyright does not make it more limiting than, say, a separate law or a clause in the fraud or criminal law. For example, while the Indian currency is in the public domain (like all Indian governmental works), there is a clause in the penal code that prohibits its reproduction. Thus it's not allowed on Commons. So it's not just a matter of copyright vs non-copyright restrictions. Commons tolerates Personality Rights and Trademark restrictions, and this one is not that different. If by "free" we mean no restrictions whatsoever, we need to delete most of the files on Commons, including those licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike or GFDL. I think our normal standards cover these images. I'd support adding some mention of this to our Commons:Licensing or Commons:Currency to avoid going through the same process time and again. -- Orionist ★ talk 17:50, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Restrictions that demand our use not be "detrimental to the image of" whatever are always unacceptable, because they prohibit certain entirely valid uses of the image that Wikimedia might want to use. Not just the theory of Free licenses, but actual pragmatic reasons prohibit them.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:23, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
What about something called moral rights ? Every author outside the US has them automatically on any work he creates. He cannot give up or give away this rights. They are also recognized by the Berne Convention and the Creative Commons licenses, and even the US has some of them, see for instance the Visual Artists Rights Act. TheDJ (talk) 00:04, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Let's make clear the following points:

  • These restrictions fall into moral rights. And they will be there regardless of the copyright status and even if the Euro goes into Public Domain.
  • Moral rights are not incorporated into US Copyright laws because they are considered to be covered by other laws, like slander and libel.
  • Commons tolerates non-copyright restrictions, such as those covered by personality rights and trademark laws, which are more restricting than what we're discussing. They are not "considered relevant to the freeness requirements of Commons or by Wikimedia".
  • The only restrictions not allowed on Commons are non-commercial and no-derivatives. Nowhere the policies say that restrictions similar to the above are not allowed (quite the opposite). You can check for yourself on Commons:Licensing, Commons:Currency and Commons:non-copyright restrictions (where {{Currency}} is listed at the bottom).
  • The possible impact of these restrictions on the use of affected images in Wikimedia projects (or anywhere else for that matter) is very minimal compared with the benefits of hosting them on Commons. Especially when we consider the importance of the subject, which is bound to be on every single Wikipedia, if not all WMF projects. Use of these images on the different Wikipedias is encyclopedic while in the Wikinews example above it would be only decorative, and hence replaceable.
  • Yes, as for the Wikinews example, there is a very different set of rules that govern the press and reporting of the news. Some moral rights are not applicable for editorial use of images, e.g. your photo can be used without your permission if it's news worthy. Moreover, last time I checked, Wikinews didn't publish any columns or op-eds, and they had a strict NPOV policy. And even if your example applies (and that's a big if) in the highly unlikely case that some article there is considered to "damage or detract from the image of the euro" by the ECB (and remember it's not the North Korean Central Bank), then we have a ton of other images that can be used instead (and a very nice photo of the ECB itself, by the way).
  • Simply put: do not use the images in a defamatory or libelous context, do not draw swastikas on the images or claim that the details of a centuries-old conspiracy to take over the world is etched into the design, and I'm sure all will be fine. -- Orionist ★ talk 03:35, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
It is not true that the only restrictions not allowed on Commons are non-commercial and no-derivatives. COM:L says "Wikimedia Commons accepts only free content, that is, images and other media files that can be used by anyone, anytime, for any purpose." (Emphasis in original.) To say "do not draw swastikas on the images or claim that the details of a centuries-old conspiracy to take over the world is etched into the design" is a violation of that rule.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:53, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
When you quote Commons:Licensing, try not to take it out of context. The actual text says:
“ Wikimedia Commons accepts only free content, that is, images and other media files that can be used by anyone, anytime, for any purpose. The use may be restricted by issues not related to copyright, though, see Commons:Non-copyright restrictions, and the license may demand some special measures. There is also certain material the copyrights of which have expired in one country while still applying in another. Some of the details are explained below. Wikimedia Commons tries to ensure that any such restrictions are mentioned on the image description page; however, it is the responsibility of reusers to ensure that the use of the media is according to the license and violates no applicable law. ”
I think it's clear enough and does not require any special interpretation. -- Orionist ★ talk 20:38, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
But you haven't show that this is a non-copyright restriction. w:Free content makes it clear what "special measures" a copyright license can demand, and this isn't one of them.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:36, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Large File not Uploading

I keep trying to upload a 48mb file, with proper license, and it gets all the way loaded and then gives me the error below. Any suggestions?

WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION Error English

Our servers are currently experiencing a technical problem. This is probably temporary and should be fixed soon. Please try again in a few minutes.

You may be able to get further information in the #wikipedia channel on the Freenode IRC network.

The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organisation which hosts some of the most popular sites on the Internet, including Wikipedia. It has a constant need to purchase new hardware. If you would like to help, please donate.

If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request: POST http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload, from 208.80.152.69 via sq63.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE7) to 10.2.1.1 (10.2.1.1) Error: ERR_ZERO_SIZE_OBJECT, errno [No Error] at Thu, 16 Sep 2010 17:49:58 GMT

Sorry, forgot to sign. --Richard McCoy (talk) 18:45, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Can the Commons not currently handle a 48mb file?

I've been trying to upload this now for 2 days, and I keep getting the same error (see my post here from yesterday above). The limit says 100mb. Is the true limit lower? --Richard McCoy (talk) 11:31, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

The "true limit" is 100 MB. The ERR_ZERO_SIZE_OBJECT error means that the server never got any data from your computer. You said "and it gets all the way loaded". How do you tell it gets loaded? I guess the long time you have to wait for the error message to appear doesn't mean that it gets loaded but that's just the time that goes by until the connection times out.
I don't know the exact reason for the problem but it's the connection. You could try to upload the file from a different computer. --Slomox (talk) 12:27, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
An upload needs to finish within a certain ammount of time (not sure, 2 minutes?). If it doesn't finish within that timespan you'll get an error. If you have 1 Mbit upstream (regular adsl) it takes about 6 minutes to upload the file and you'll probably hit the timeout. Multichill (talk) 14:27, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
In juli, one time my internet connection was broken and I used the very slow wireless network of a helpful neightbour. That night I uploaded a file of about 28 MB. It did take about 50 minutes to get uploaded, but it got uploaded anyway. The connection is not likely to time out if the upload process still goes on, unimportant how slow the upload my be. Jcb (talk) 14:45, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
I could be mistaken, but I believe any limit on upload time would be on the browser side. Does anyone actually know of a specific server-side limitation? - Jmabel ! talk 14:54, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for all of the helpful ideas. I've tried it from two different connections. 1) A super fast work connection and 2) My home wireless. I know that it's "almost done" because in my Google Chrome browser I can see the % in the lower left corner. It gets to 99% than gives me that error.

I just tried it with Internet Explorer and got the same error ... --Richard McCoy (talk) 17:31, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

You could try to upload the file to a non-Wikimedia server. Then other users can try to upload it on Commons or at least reproduce the problem. --Slomox (talk) 18:10, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
Can you give us some details on what kind of file you are uploading. What type, and what software was used to generate it? --Dschwen (talk) 18:11, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks again for your responses. It is a Tag Image Format (TIF), which appears to be permitted, but in actually is not possible to upload. I've uploaded a much smaller version of the file in .JPG format. Check it out: .

Uploading should be possible. As Slomox said: Could you please upload your tif file to some one-click hosting service? For example http://www.sendspace.com and post the download link here. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 01:47, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikiproject Banners

The de:Datei:WikiProjektLuftfahrt.jpg on the German Wikipedia is a freely licensed WikiProject banner. Should it be transferred to the Commons? WhisperToMe (talk) 21:37, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Similar images are often transferred (Category:WikiProject logos), though I'm not sure whether they "should" be... AnonMoos (talk) 01:22, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
In that case I decided to move it to File:WikiProjektLuftfahrt.jpg WhisperToMe (talk) 01:57, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
The file is missing author information for the images used to make the banner. For example File:Eurofighter 9803 1.jpg is not made by Wikifantexter. /Ö 09:17, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
The File is based on de:Datei:PortalLuftfahrt.jpg by de:Benutzer:Sebastian. Source information there is "eigene Fotomontage (Liste der verwendenten Commons-Bilder folgt mit endgültiger Version)" (List of pictures from Commons to follow when final version is ready). Sebastian is inactive at de and does not respond to messages at his discussion page – no edits since 2008 so there probably won't be a "final version". Perhaps we could try to figure out, which pics he used and add them to the description? --El Grafo (talk) 16:02, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
OK, this one was easy: File:Lilienthal in flight.jpg. I also left a message at de:Portal_Diskussion:Luftfahrt … --El Grafo (talk) 16:21, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
+ File:C12 air ambulance.jpg. Not sure about File:Air-Alps-Dornier-328-110.jpg Docu  at 16:29, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, Docu. I found some more in an Archive of the "Fotowerkstatt" here (see below), who can help with the remaining one? --El Grafo (talk) 16:40, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Guys, thank you for finding that stuff :) WhisperToMe (talk) 16:44, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
File:A380_F-WWEA_LEGT_2.jpg?
Just thought that our categories for hot air balloons should make it easier to find that other pic. Obviously if it's not on Commons ..  Docu  at 16:49, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks a lot! Is {{WikimediaCopyrightWarning}} needed too? There's a "Puzzleball" on the tail of the A380 … --El Grafo (talk) 17:38, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
The German version of the Portal Aviation pic has de:Template:Bild-WikimediaCopyright - But I'm not sure which template on the Commons is the equivalent of it. If there is an equivalent, Template:Bild-WikimediaCopyright should redirect to it (so it is easier to upload images from the German Wikipedia to the Commons) WhisperToMe (talk) 17:54, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
BTW I also uploaded File:PortalLuftfahrt.jpg WhisperToMe (talk) 18:02, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
The content of the text is roughly the same, the only major differences I can see is that {{WikimediaCopyrightWarning}} a) provides some additional links to the foundation etc. and b) says "page" while the german version says "Datei (file)". --El Grafo (talk) 18:11, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Alright, so I redirected Template:Bild-WikimediaCopyright to Template:WikimediaCopyrightWarning - I copied the warning from the German Wikipedia to Template:WikimediaCopyrightWarning/de - German speakers, please feel free to modify this template page. WhisperToMe (talk) 20:56, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

September 18

an infobox for minerals ?

I wrote something about it on commons talk:Robert Lavinsky, but since I din't get any feedback, as it would concern at least 50.000 files (and potentially much more), I try my luck here:

"I do not know anything about rocks, but from what I see here, a special infobox (in the spirit of {{Artwork}}) would fit these images very well. Apparently, it could have the following fields:

  • the name of the rock (I don't know what the name of the field should be).
  • Discovery place
  • Size
  • Comments
  • Possibly something like "current location."
  • Source

It would have the following advantages:

  • Multilinguality
  • Better localisation
  • Smoother look

Given that the structure of the file description is well standardized, a bot could do the conversion (provided it is done before too many things are manually edited).--Zolo (talk) 07:59, 5 September 2010 (UTC)" (last edit:.--Zolo (talk) 17:58, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I think something like that might already have been brought up before the batch upload.  Docu  at 16:14, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Quite possibly but I can't find it anywhere.--Zolo (talk) 17:58, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
It got moved here. Doesn't really surprise me that you didn't get any feedback ..  Docu  at 18:33, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, but from what I see there, there was no mention of an infobox. It was rather about how to fit the description inside the "information" template. And it was quite well done, so that now we just have to create a new infobox that will adjust to the description, to make things flow in a more natural way.--Zolo (talk) 19:15, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Check around 08:34, 23 March 2010 (UTC). --  Docu  at 05:53, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Generating previeview with errors

Hi, I have just change a background of this image File:Vstupní brána Vrtbovské zahrady, Atlas.JPG from white to black. I uploaded it, but what was surprising, that there is another image with white background. So I have a look on my computer if this image has a black background. I assume yes, and uploaded the black backgrounded image once more (see history of the file). When it was uploaded, once more with white background!

But I have noticed the second upload is already blackbackgrounded. So whats the problem? Is it in the slow generating of a preview or is it with my cache? BTW, how files are cached when they are renewed to the browser?--Juan de Vojníkov (talk) 09:39, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

The following might answer your question:
 Docu  at 09:44, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I see, thx.--Juan de Vojníkov (talk) 08:26, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Montage or not montage ?

What do you think of this picture ?... --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 09:59, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't really look like a montage. What makes you think it might be one? But it's not terribly good quality, and the TV image on the screen is a derivative work. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 10:18, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Because there's clearly two parts there, one of which is B&W, so there's already been serious editing. The author could have trivially pasted whatever he wanted into that screen.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:33, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Is it black and white? I thought it was just very washed out. (Looks like a shot taken with a mobile phone.) Anyway, I'd suggest we do not upload the image. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 17:42, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Everything except the screen is pure grayscale. At least this is edited - see the border of the screen's image! Not sure if the screen's content is genuine. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 15:13, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
OK. Anyway, if you are right, that is another reason not to upload this image. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 17:19, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Copying files from Wikipedia

I copied File:USSPittsburghBallastBlow small.jpg from Wikipedia. Is there any reason to keep all the original upload information around, especially as I'm the creator and only editor of the file?--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:34, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

I see you got rid of it. In general, it's harmless to keep it, and might be useful if anyone ever needs to trace history of how it got there. On the other hand, since it is public domain, it's not a big deal, as long as the original source is clear. - Jmabel ! talk 04:55, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
Can be important for Audit trail. Geagea (talk) 05:08, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
If you really need to audit something, you can't trust the most recent version of a Wiki; you've got to peel back the layers. Personally, I've found a lot of files copied from Wikipedia carry around a lot of ugly ill-formatted junk, which is why on a picture that I was the only editor I tossed it all.--Prosfilaes (talk) 13:12, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree, most images transfered with a bot carry a lot of useless information (unfortunately, very few people review their transfers), that only makes the page confusing. When the license doesn't come from a release on the source Wikipedia (like {{PD-USGov}} or whatever), I usually remove all that upload history, date of upload, name of the uploader, etc. from the description page, and only leave the primary source, the real name of the author, etc. Everything is available in the page history anyway. –Tryphon☂ 13:45, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
Why not just to hide it in collapsible block if it disturbs somebody? Another method -- move it to talk page. For me upload history (& page history) is a very important information, and removing it from the recent version makes it hardly accessible. Trycatch (talk) 13:54, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
Why not, but I just never thought it would be useful to anyone. If an image comes from NASA, but was uploaded to en:wp first, and then transfered to Commons, I thought the only relevant information is the NASA source. –Tryphon☂ 14:02, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
For works like that, I remove the "bot transferinfo" in the information template, but I leave the "old history" in place, as it is useful part of the images history usually, and much less obtrusive than the stuff in the information template (which really is only useful for "own" works actually). TheDJ (talk) 15:26, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Just for fun

Encyclopaedia Britannica sometimes take their illustrations from Commons... But are very careful about not telling. Probable violation of the licenses, btw. --Eusebius (talk) 12:02, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Why, if they credit it with your name? Lycaon (talk) 12:18, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
They must also mention the license (§ 4a. of the cc-by-3.0 license: You must include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) for, this License with every copy of the Work You Distribute or Publicly Perform.) –Tryphon☂ 12:31, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
File:Grenoble - Saint-Hugues - vitrail.JPG - the real problem is that nobody mentions the artist... /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 12:35, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Solved now. About the license, the file should have been tagged PD-old anyways (also solved), so no real problem. And just to be clear, I don't (usually) bother reusers when they forget to cite the license... --Eusebius (talk) 13:29, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

If we don't already have one, maybe we should create a banner that can be placed on image talk pages indicating where a Commons image has been used. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 17:36, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

We have already ;-). Lycaon (talk) 17:54, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
And it is has a parameter, legal=, to put it into Category:Images used by media organizations but violating license terms. Wknight94 talk 18:01, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Good to know! (The template, by the way, is {{Published}}.) — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 18:27, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

File:Stamp boltzmann.jpg

Which copyright tag applies for this File:Stamp boltzmann.jpg image?

Claus (from als.wiki)

PD doesn't apply to Austrian stamps, see note on this category page: Category:Stamps_of_Austria. A permission by the stamp creator is necessary. --Iotatau (talk) 13:20, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

How is it called in English and what category?

I have uploaded this and that photo. I tried to find the right description in English and the right category, but did not succeed. Any suggestion? Thanks. Wouter (talk) 15:37, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I see that TheDJ has placed in the images in Category:Vehicle tracks for you. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 17:26, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

The useful things of langswitch

For those of you looking to add multilingual support to Commons templates, try langswitch.

Compare the following:

Even the mouseover image descriptions can change, depending on the language. WhisperToMe (talk) 03:48, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Is this to show that we all understand en/es/fr ? I think you could find a better sample. Try the links on File talk:Jan Tschichold (1963) by Erling Mandelmann.jpg.  Docu  at 06:03, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
This is to show how the langswitch template works and to remind people that they should use it in many of these templates.
Actually thank you for showing that. We have Creator:Erling Mandelmann which itself needs langswitch in one field... the "name" field. The language switching is automatic for the description fields, dates, and city, but the actual interwiki link to the man's article only goes to English (See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Creator:Erling_Mandelmann?uselang=es as an example) automatically, so we could add langswitch to make the interwiki links vary according to the preferred language
For file descriptions I prefer using MLD (See User:Raboe001/licence CC-BY-3.0 as an example)
The reason why I started with EN, ES, and FR is because the City of Paris uses those three languages in municipal communications. Others can add on to this if they want to.
WhisperToMe (talk) 16:46, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Mandelmann only has articles in English and French, so I added a langswitch between EN and FR.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Creator:Erling_Mandelmann?uselang=en
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Creator:Erling_Mandelmann?uselang=fr
Template:Creator encourages the usage of "langswitch" for the "name" field of the template. Even if the name is written in Latin characters (langswitch is stressed if the name isn't originally written in Latin characters), one can use langswitch to facilitate interwiki links to articles about a person in various languages. So, Docu, I provided another demonstration of how useful the "langswitch" template is.
WhisperToMe (talk) 16:48, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Docu changed the link to Mandelmann's Commons page. That works too :) WhisperToMe (talk) 20:15, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
That works too: And it's the preferred way. We use internal links whenever possible and provide further info through interwikis to Wikipedia on the gallery page. From a localisation point of view what we still need though is transliteration or transcription. It would be great, if we had a parser function like "{{#transcribe: Albert Einstein }}" that converts the input to "Альберт Эйнштейн" if the interface language of the user is set to 'ru'. (The other possible implementation would be to have a central interwiki repository and have a method to request the lemma of a specific language.) --Slomox (talk) 21:13, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
There is apparently a "LanguageConverter" MediaWiki functionality which enables a new bit of wiki syntax for embedding translations in the source. It seems to be part of MediaWiki[18], but I guess it's not enabled. It was discussed here some time ago, by the author suggesting us to enable it. I'm not sure what that would entail, but it sounded interesting at the time. At the very least, it sounds like an improvement on the LangSwitch template. Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:11, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
If there is a better way that is proposed, I encourage you to restart the discussions about it :) WhisperToMe (talk) 14:25, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

jQuery update

A few days ago, jQuery was added to all skins, so any gadget developers can now use it without having to script non-jquery versions.--DieBuche (talk) 16:40, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Looks like it is removed. Multichill (talk) 10:26, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Evil IP remove my "hack", since it now works without that--DieBuche (talk) 10:39, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
This is correct, all pages on all projects now include jQuery by default, so feel free to go crazy :) Kaldari (talk) 22:50, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Categorisation by date

Are there any guidelines about categorisation by date ? To me such categories should be used only if the file is clearly related to a speficic event that occurred at that place and date, otherwise they are rather useless. For instance, I must say I don't see much point in having files like this one categorized in August 2010 in Luohu, Shenzhen.--Zolo (talk) 12:41, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 15:48, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
+1 Multichill (talk) 19:29, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
+1 --Foroa (talk) 20:39, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
In a sense  Support. Looking to Bundesarchiv, Tropenmuseum and Fotothek images which cover several decades it seems to be a good idea having a throughtout year-categorization system, they have mostly Category:yyyy in Germany (e.g. Category:1960 in Germany), and there are even year by sub-division categories (Category:1982 in Bavaria pp.). But such categories as Category:August 2010 in Luohu, Shenzhen are a bit odd in this stage of development (we could be happy if there's a 1% year by country combination assignment). I'm interested wheather there is a guideline for year-related category assignments, too. To be exact: Should media or sub-categories of countries (a) have such a category assigend only if it is a special occurance or (b) regardless of that ("it looked like that in the year xxxx")? --Mattes (talk) 23:58, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
In cases like "images from the German Federal Archives, it seems simpler to have an automatic categorization by year (even if for some of the images the exact year does not seem to matter too much). However, if we say that April 2010 in Luohu district is too precise and that it should be moved to say "2010 in China", it would mean that virtually all photographs taken in China in 2010 should go there too. We may end up with a big, hardly readable category. Since it is not easy to decide to what extent the date is relevant for each particular photograph, maybe we should have something like a subcategory of "category:2010 in China" called "photos taken in China in 2010" ? That way we could include both files for which date matters and those for which it seems not to. However, and even if a good part of the categorization could probably be done automatically, I am not sure it would be manageable.--Zolo (talk) 06:00, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
I can see that categorization by year is more useful for older images. Perhaps we should adopt a rule stating that such categories should only be created, say, 30 years later, e.g., now that it is 2010, the latest category that can be created is "1980 in XYZ country". However, categorization by month and year is probably too precise. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 08:26, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
The last suggestion (... 30 year later ...) is a bad one. While I certainly believe that most images shouldn't have any date information in their categories, some should, even some very recent ones. Consider images (or categories) of:
  • A political demonstration
  • The aftermath of a particular hurricane
  • Celebration of a country's bicentennial (bicentenary for those in the UK!)
  • An election
  • A particular year's occurrence of an annual conference, festival, or parade
Each of these should have at least their year (and perhaps a more precise date, though that concerns meless) strongly associated from the moment they occur, not just a generation later. - Jmabel ! talk 16:27, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
I was trying to say something similar to what you expressed more clearly. It is probably not necessary to categorize most "recent" images by year, which is why I suggested that we should only start categorizing general images if they are, say, 30 years old. However, I did not intend to suggest that we should never categorize recent images by year. It certainly makes sense to categorize recent images relating to events by year. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 17:17, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
I actually like such categories. They let you get a picture of the evolution of an area over time, in a way that can be very hard without such categories.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:09, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
I guess the issue is whether it makes sense to start categorizing general images by year right from the time they are uploaded, or to leave them uncategorized by year for a period of time until the images are considered "old" and therefore worth categorizing by year. Having read the arguments on both sides, I am happy with either approach. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 06:28, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
I'm a bit dubious about putting things into day categories, but things like "2010 in Somerset" to me seem quite reasonable places to put all images taken in Somerset in 2010 - anything particularly significant will get its own category, eg Nottingham Pride 2010 is in the category 2010 in Nottingham. -mattbuck (Talk) 13:54, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

September 19

Image counting

Hello!

Where can I find an image counter with which I can count how many photos I have already uploaded (something where you have to type your username in online). --A.Ceta (talk) 14:56, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

http://toolserver.org/~vvv/yaec.php?user=A.Ceta&wiki=commonswiki_p says you have only 2 image uploads. Your gallery seems to match that, so I am guessing it is accurate. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, it can be very slow on users with a lot of contributions. - Jmabel ! talk 16:34, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Also, this doesn't count stuff uploaded by flickr2commons, commonshelper, etc. -mattbuck (Talk) 13:51, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Other wikis

As well as patrolling the Commons, people need to be looking at images in the 700 other wikis. I have just been visiting br: and was horrified to find images lacking any source or licence information. Indeed many have totally blank image descriptions. Examples:

— RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 15:34, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Don't you think we should leave that to the volunteers over at br.wikipedia? We have enough to do here, and in any case I'm not sure how many volunteers here speak Breton. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 16:09, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
edit conflict:
That's certainly not the task of Commons users. br.wp has a community of its own. Please have a discussion at their village pump equivalent and convince them . Try to be calm and friendly in the discussion, nothing is more contraproductive than a person "interrupting" ("interrupting" in their perception) a foreign wiki and "destroying" (again in their perception) their content with "unnecessary formalism" (you know...). (Please don't perceive the last sentence as an allegation! I have no reason to believe that you are not calm or friendly or reasonable. It's just an advice. I have seen many discussions that were misperceived as attacks and went totally wrong [and I experienced them on both sides...])
Point out to them the relevant policies: meta:Non-free content. They must either only host free content (and have license and source information) or they need to adopt an Exemption Doctrine Policy. --Slomox (talk) 16:17, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Okay, I had a look on the wiki and you already spoke to some users. Words like utterly horrified and please conform are what I meant. The likely reaction is: "Mind your own business!". It is more productive to give advice and/or help how to fix the problem. --Slomox (talk) 16:40, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

When I see an image with a completely blank description, I do not think that "horrified" is too strong a term. However, I shall try and moderate my language and since there are only three involved: br:, cy: and gd:, I shall raise the matter at the village pumps. Is Exemption Doctrine Policy relevant? This appears to relate to non-free content. I think it would be bending the rules to try and use it as an excuse for failing to reproduce the applicable licence on free material. — RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 21:39, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I already started a discussion on the Village pump at br. I proposed an image cleanup project that takes a look at all the files on the project. EDP is relevant. An EDP won't cover all images but it for sure is applicable to some of the images.
Of the 5 images you gave as an example only one is truly empty. The MikeKelley image is empty but the the image is identical to an image on en.wp with free license (although I have doubts about it's validity), and three are most likely own work uploads of active community members who have not set a license template and are likely willing to append it.
I'll wait how the discussion at br goes and will then look at the cases cy and gd. --Slomox (talk) 22:14, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
If you would like to come over to cy and assist us you are welcome, Slomox. You can find me there with the same user name or post at Y Caffi (Village Pump). However, I regret to say that the ground has not exactly been well prepared by RHaworth. He showed up on cy yesterday and behaved as if he had been appointed to his "mission" by the Wikimedia Foundation itself. Having been welcomed by an editor he then made the following comment: "It is no exaggeration to say that I am horrified at the contempt this wiki shows for image licensing"[19]. He went on to say "I do not want to single out individuals but..." and gave a link to the image uploads of a single indiviudal(!). He then went to the talk page of that person, who happens to be one of our most valued long-term contributors and left this little missive: "Will you please get firmly into the habit of uploading free images, ie. Creative Commons and GFDL licensed, to the Commons. (etc)"[20]). To my horror, this provoked the following response: "I think I'll get firmly into the habit of not editing Wikipedia instead. Most of the images you have marked as untagged are my own work. Delete them from here if you wish, but I do NOT authorize putting them on Commons. I find your comments arrogant and uncivil."[21]. I have since explained to the editor concerned that RHaworth has no authority whatsoever, contrary to the impression he gave. The editor he offended has not contributed so far today, which is unusual for him. The discussion that ensued at RHaworth's cy talk page is here. This has been an extremely counterproductive experience. It is not good for Commons and it is not good for us at cy. We need to sort our unlicensed images backlog out and will do so eventually - bear in mind we rely on a small team of regular editors with many other things to deal with - but this approach is not needed or wanted. Anatiomaros (talk) 16:17, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
And another comment from gd. I’ m sorry to say that the way RHaworth contacted me was just perfect to get me really upset. Sentences starting with "I intend to go through and correct all your uploads here" [22] remind me of stalking a user. Who does he thinks he is that he can tell me or our community what we have to do. The gd communtity is a really polite one, (users are even using the formal “you”), so cultural differences should be respected too.
As Anatiomaros said it so well: Welcome to the world of smaller Wikipedias! Gd is an even smaller wiki, without the resources to do all the work that needs to be done and without anyone having technical knowlegde to set up complex templates properly. So far I can’t even see where the problem is or why all those geograph images must be uploaded to Commons. I would suggest that that someone would explain the problem in a civil way in Talla a’ Bhaille (or contact me under Sionnach in gd) --Sionnach1 (talk) 22:10, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Project to upload many copies of one newspaper

Is there a script we could use to massively upload files from a single source?

The Jefferson County Library has copies of en:The New Orleans Bee, a French language newspaper that also had English and Spanish sections. http://www.jefferson.lib.la.us/genealogy/NewOrleansBeeMain.htm - All are in PDF files.

With the exceptions of the 1923 issues, all are public domain.

Is there a script we could use to massively upload all of the New Orleans Bee files at once? Then we could, to the best of our abilities, start a project to transcribe some of them for the French, English, and Spanish Wikisources (the ones that are fully legible), as the newspaper issues have content in all three languages. WhisperToMe (talk) 02:18, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

You can file a request at "Commons:Batch uploading". — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 06:24, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Actually, no newspaper outside of New York renewed any issues until after WWII. So the 1923 issue is also public domain, {{PD-US-no renewal}}.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:41, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Thank you! I started Commons:Batch uploading/New Orleans Bee and gave a link to the main site. WhisperToMe (talk) 15:59, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
You forgot to add "Commons:Batch uploading/New Orleans Bee" to the "Commons:Batch uploading" page. I've done this for you. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 20:39, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Thank you WhisperToMe (talk) 16:26, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Honestly, having just looked at it, I wouldn't bet that any part of this will get transcribed. They're barely legible, and not worth the time to piece them together. Not saying you can't upload it to Commons, but unless you're actually planning to transcribe them largely yourself, I'd bundle them together by issue and upload them to the Internet Archive, which is probably the best place for book scans if you're not trying to transcribe them.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:20, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Some issues (newer ones) are pretty legible, and some (earlier ones) are very difficult to make out.
But I think our first focus should be to upload them. We can decide at a later point whether to transcribe them or not.
We can also have them uploaded to web.archive.org also. It's good to have these files in multiple locations.
WhisperToMe (talk) 16:26, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Deletion nomination because of original research

I nominated Commons:Deletion requests/File:CM Dejeuner sur l'herbe 2.jpg for deletion, because of Original Research and even Point of View. Since there are many images like that, I would like to have a thorough discussion regarding this topic. Could anyone who is interested shed views and votings on that page? Thank you. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 11:54, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I was not aware Original Research is a criterium here on Commons; that is something to be delt with on the various wiki's where the image is used, so it would not be a valid creterium for deletion here. — Edokter • Talk • 16:32, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Exactly. You (Jan Arkesteijn) should read COM:NPOV (not to be confused with en:WP:NPOV). –Tryphon☂ 16:35, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

All right, it's clear. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 22:26, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

MDOC historical photos

The Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) confirmed via e-mail that all "Historical" photos at http://www.mdoc.state.ms.us/Photo_Archive.htm are in the public domain. The overall MDOC site is copyrighted, but according to the contact the historic photos are not copyrighted.

As a start I uploaded one photo from the historic gallery: File:ParchmanPrisonRodeo.jpg - If what I am doing is fine, I will upload the rest.

Do I need to have MDOC send an e-mail to the foundation? Or should I just list the name of the contact? Or do I just upload the rest and do nothing else? Should I name the MDOC contact who told me the information in the image description?

WhisperToMe (talk) 16:02, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

You should forward the e-mail from MDOC confirming that the photographs in the "Historical Photos" section are in the public domain to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org, and tag the images uploaded to the Commons with {{OTRS pending}}. Don't forget to provide OTRS with links to the MDOC images you upload so they know which images you are referring to. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 17:24, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Thank you! I'll get to work on that! :) WhisperToMe (talk) 21:58, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
I just sent the forwarded e-mails and the Wikimedia Commons links to all affected images to the foundation e-mail you mentioned. Each Commons description page links to the original location on the MDOC website. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:32, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
I also notified the contact that his e-mail was forwarded. I provided him with the Wikimedia foundation contact e-mail and links to all 12 of the images on the Commons servers. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

File:Promothumb.jpg

Wondering about the File:Promothumb.jpg image. It appears to have been uploaded by an official rep for the band, however in looking at the official website (http://www.officialquietriot.com/) it carries this notice: All images are copyright QUIET RIOT 2010. Use of the Mask artwork and logo are for press purposes only and for use in promotion of QUIET RIOT. Any use of these images for personal use is strictly prohibited. My first knee jerk reaction would be to tag it as no-permission. Over at Wikipedia there is a discussion about the image where an editor says I thought the claim of release of the promo photo was at least plausible, and restored it. Another editor (Who is assumed to be the uploader via a different user name) says Any official QR pic is better than one a fan took of the band with his baby. My concern, however, is that the website clearly states the images are "for press purposes only" and "in promotion of QUIET RIOT", and is not public domain as stated by the uploader, the supposed copyright holder. Soundvisions1 (talk) 17:58, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

It is open to the copyright holder to release its image into the public domain if it wishes to, regardless of what is stated on its official website. However, what we need confirmation of is the fact that Official Quiet Riot is indeed the copyright holder's user name. Please ask the uploader to confirm his identity, the fact that he is the copyright holder or is an authorized representative of the copyright holder, and the release of the image into the public domain by sending an e-mail from an officialquietriot.com account to you. Once you receive the e-mail, forward it to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org, mentioning the above file. If such an e-mail is not received, nominate the image for deletion. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 18:43, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Done, except I advise that it is best to have the copyright holder send a permission email directly to the OTRS team. Thanks. Soundvisions1 (talk) 19:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Sure, that's fine too. Just make sure that they mention in the e-mail the file name ("File:Promothumb.jpg") so that the OTRS volunteers know which file they are referring to. (By the way, you might want to tag the image with {{Rename}} so that it can be renamed with a more descriptive name.) — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 20:27, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Automatic import of embedded Metadata (e.g. XMP cc Tags)

I found a thread, which explains very well, what I want:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Request_for_extension_to_provide_metadata_support#Embedded_metadata

But I couldn't find out, if this works in the meantime. I am planning to upload hundreds of images of paintings to Wikimedia, which contain a lot metadata already. I don't want to write this manually again.

So, if this works, are there examples which fields are used by Wikimedia? I use exiftool to write the tags.

The fields of "XMP cc Tags" (http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/TagNames/XMP.html) are used in the images already.

Is there a sandbox to upload images, to see if the upload is done correctly? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bogner (talk • contribs) 03:48, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Soon (a few months), XMP tags will be accessible and displayed on File description pages. This part has been developed over the summer as a Google Summer of Code project. The information in the tags is however not yet editable. TheDJ (talk) 21:19, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Where can I get more details, especially which tags must used?

Till now, I used thes fields with XMP, but a lot more with EXIF and IPTC:

[XMP] - XMP Toolkit [XMP] - Artwork Copyright Notice [XMP] - Artwork Creator [XMP] - Artwork Title [XMP] - Categories [XMP] - Attribution Name [XMP] - License [XMP] - Description [XMP] - Publisher [XMP] - Relation [XMP] - Rights [XMP] - Subject [XMP] - Title [XMP] - Short Description [XMP] - Permissions [XMP] - Copyright — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bogner (talk • contribs) 18:14, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

September 21

"This file contains HTML or script code that may be erroneously interpreted by a web browser."

I cannot manage to upload files from Flickr anymore. I tried Flickr2commons on this photo of Jutta Urpilainen - everything seems ok, but then there is no file. I also tried first downloading to my own machine, but then I get the above message. What is wrong? /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 17:33, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

(probably) same problem was here: User_talk:Saibo#Mona_Sahlin_in_Helsingborg_2010.jpg. You need to remove the html from the Exif tags. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 17:41, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. Same Flickr account, so certainly the same problem. Seems too much work for me to fix. If the upload bot can detect this, would it not be possible for the bot to remove the html tags? /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 17:55, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) Yep, that was it. I removed the HTML EXIF tags, and uploaded it successfully at File:4682455742 f355d4c48a o d.jpg (crappy title, but I didn't notice it was reset when I selected the file). You can re-upload it with a better name and an actual description and put this one up for deletion. –Tryphon☂ 17:57, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
When I do that it says that it is a duplicate and wants me to "Please modify the file description below and try again." Which does not help, of course. I will put a rename tag on it. But uploading to commons can be such an incredible hassle... /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 18:30, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Even if you check Ignore any warnings? –Tryphon☂ 18:37, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Ok, I missed the button "upload anyway" (down there, in a corner). Thanks. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 18:45, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
The file contains an "<a href" and that is verboten. If you say "that's stupid and makes no sense" then you are right. This behaviour is due to an Internet Explorer bug in file type detection. If an image contains "<a href" IE could misinterpet the image as an HTML document. If IE does that random Javascript code could be executed which is a security issue. That's the reason why Wikimedia has to reject perfectly valid files. The error message could be more informative though. --Slomox (talk) 18:00, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
See this bug report regarding the error message. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 19:04, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Method to generate SVG customized by templates ?

Hello everybody ! I'm a regular contributor to the Graphic Lab and I've recently created a template for the Scouting project : Wikipedia:Template:Scout_kit. This template is inspired by the Wikipedia:Template:Football_kit.

How does my template work ? The idea is that the user can specify the colors of the different parts of the outfit by specifying them in a template, Scout kit. This one basically draws each part of the outfit, plus a colored background. The transparent areas of each part of the body is then filled with the color of the background, that is the one of the template. You can see the sandbox of the template to have an illustration. This method has unfortunately two drawbacks :

  1. you need to split the model of your body into parts, that is to split your svg, because you can only indicate one color for each background color
  2. each part of the body has to fit into a rectangle, and this rectangle cannot overlap.

My desire would be to be able to do the following procedure :

  1. I upload one svg, containing some "variables", that is some predefined color names, say TROUSERS_COLOR.
  2. The user specifies TROUSERS_COLOR in the template with a given color, say #00FF00 (green).
  3. MediaWiki would then replace each reference of TROUSERS_COLOR with #00FF00.
  4. Then it would regenerate the PNG version of the SVG, with the corresponding color.
  5. The PNG version now contains the specified colors by the user.

Is there a way to do so ? I've given a look at the SVG translation tool, but it seems it makes a copy of the SVG and replace the text fields... I would prefer a dynamic method, that doesn't perform any copy of the SVG.

PS: sorry if my explanation wasn't that clear :)

Thanks a lot ! Arnaud Ramey (talk) 15:31, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Currently, there's no such feature in MediaWiki. I've been thinking a bit about how to best integrate it with SVG standards and MediaWiki. IMO, there are two distinct ways a possible template feature could be used:
  1. use parameters, e.g. [[file:ebonia_road_number_sign.svg|nr=123]]. The parameter can be put directly into the SVG. No user-servicable parts inside.
  2. use pre-defined sets of strings, e.g. [[file:thing_with_description.svg|de]]. The parameter references a string table that's external to the SVG. Any user can edit the string table or add a new one (e.g. a new language or a new set of colours).
I haven't gotten around writing a feature request yet. — cfaerber ✐ 10:24, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Hmmm, both solutions would fit to my needs. On a wider scale, I think the first one would be easier to implement, while the second one allows a wider range of customizations, and is somewhat more user-friendly. How does it work with the feature request ? Has it a reasonable chance to succeed ? Arnaud Ramey (talk) 12:34, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Has it a reasonable chance to succeed ? No. The developers devote their time to other projects. You usually will hear "Nice idea. Go ahead and develop it and we'll take it" if you propose features. If you have amazing luck you perhaps find a developer who says "Nice idea. I'll do it", but the chances are small. Very small. --Slomox (talk) 17:01, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Hmm, I would consider working on this, except that it's, well, verging on the impossible (and I can explain why). MediaWiki does not embed SVGs directly (because a number of browsers don't know how to interpret them, most notably IE version up to and including 8, the latest release). Instead, it takes your upload, and then thumbnails/converts it at the same time to a PNG, which all browsers understand. Fine. Except now we have the problem of where our arbitrary variable goes: AFAIK we can't pass any old code to librsvg (the library which handles the SVG->PNG conversion). Instead, one passes it a reference to an actual SVG file on the servers. So now we have to handle multiple versions of the (virtually identical) SVG file, plus a master copy (with our %%VARNAME%% references in it), then understand and process which one it is we want, thumbnail it and display it reasonably. Now, until such a time as librsvg can handle arbitrary input, or we can make it do so, it seems to me that being able to be able to create hundreds of versions of the same file by passing the file to a template... well, the security implications alone make my head spin. I hope that clarifies why the whole idea is a potential minefield at the moment, and why it would take considerable effort to achieve anything meaningful, though I share your desire to see it happen eventually. Jarry1250 (talk) 21:42, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Instead, one passes it a reference to an actual SVG file on the servers. So now we have to handle multiple versions of the (virtually identical) SVG file: Create a temporary file at the time of rendering.
well, the security implications alone make my head spin: I don't see the problem. If I upload a SVG file I could include any malicious code if I wanted to. I assume that our current renderer is able to strip any code that could do harm. If we apply the same stripping to the strings given as parameters to the File instance there should be no security problem.
I don't see any fundamental technical obstacles for the idea. But we should spend some thoughts about what we want to achieve. What I can think of:
  • coloring areas of a SVG. E.g. your scout kit example or maps with specific countries or areas highlighted in different colors.
  • localization of SVGs. E.g. the captions of an info graphic or the legend of a map.
These two cases need to be addressed with different solutions.
Perhaps we should have something like [[File:Scout kit.svg|withcss=scout kit XYZ.css|lang=de]]. "File:Scout kit.svg" would be the raw scout kit, "File:Scout kit.svg/de" would contain possible captions and "scout kit XYZ.css" would be something like
.hat { background-color: red; }
.shirt { background-color: blue; }
.trousers { background-color: yellow; }
--Slomox (talk) 22:35, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
One question for developers : does MediaWiki just use the stand alone application rsvg of librsvg, or is there a way to use the whole librsvg library ? In the latter case, there must be a way to pass a stream of data. In the former, well according to the man page, I don't see any. Arnaud Ramey (talk) 14:50, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
up ? Arnaud Ramey (talk) 14:50, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Using an external program instead of a lib is not a problem, however. You can always pass it /dev/stdin or /dev/fd/n as inuput. — cfaerber ✐ 07:37, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
The security implication is that of a denial of service attack. Add a page with thousands of transclusions – with different parameters – and MediaWiki will generate thousands of PNG files. It's much more work to create a DoS attack when you have to upload each file individually.
There's a third use:
— cfaerber ✐ 07:37, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

The useful things of langswitch

For those of you looking to add multilingual support to Commons templates, try langswitch.

Compare the following:

Even the mouseover image descriptions can change, depending on the language. WhisperToMe (talk) 03:48, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Is this to show that we all understand en/es/fr ? I think you could find a better sample. Try the links on File talk:Jan Tschichold (1963) by Erling Mandelmann.jpg.  Docu  at 06:03, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
This is to show how the langswitch template works and to remind people that they should use it in many of these templates.
Actually thank you for showing that. We have Creator:Erling Mandelmann which itself needs langswitch in one field... the "name" field. The language switching is automatic for the description fields, dates, and city, but the actual interwiki link to the man's article only goes to English (See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Creator:Erling_Mandelmann?uselang=es as an example) automatically, so we could add langswitch to make the interwiki links vary according to the preferred language
For file descriptions I prefer using MLD (See User:Raboe001/licence CC-BY-3.0 as an example)
The reason why I started with EN, ES, and FR is because the City of Paris uses those three languages in municipal communications. Others can add on to this if they want to.
WhisperToMe (talk) 16:46, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Mandelmann only has articles in English and French, so I added a langswitch between EN and FR.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Creator:Erling_Mandelmann?uselang=en
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Creator:Erling_Mandelmann?uselang=fr
Template:Creator encourages the usage of "langswitch" for the "name" field of the template. Even if the name is written in Latin characters (langswitch is stressed if the name isn't originally written in Latin characters), one can use langswitch to facilitate interwiki links to articles about a person in various languages. So, Docu, I provided another demonstration of how useful the "langswitch" template is.
WhisperToMe (talk) 16:48, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Docu changed the link to Mandelmann's Commons page. That works too :) WhisperToMe (talk) 20:15, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
That works too: And it's the preferred way. We use internal links whenever possible and provide further info through interwikis to Wikipedia on the gallery page. From a localisation point of view what we still need though is transliteration or transcription. It would be great, if we had a parser function like "{{#transcribe: Albert Einstein }}" that converts the input to "Альберт Эйнштейн" if the interface language of the user is set to 'ru'. (The other possible implementation would be to have a central interwiki repository and have a method to request the lemma of a specific language.) --Slomox (talk) 21:13, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
There is apparently a "LanguageConverter" MediaWiki functionality which enables a new bit of wiki syntax for embedding translations in the source. It seems to be part of MediaWiki[23], but I guess it's not enabled. It was discussed here some time ago, by the author suggesting us to enable it. I'm not sure what that would entail, but it sounded interesting at the time. At the very least, it sounds like an improvement on the LangSwitch template. Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:11, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
If there is a better way that is proposed, I encourage you to restart the discussions about it :) WhisperToMe (talk) 14:25, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

jQuery update

A few days ago, jQuery was added to all skins, so any gadget developers can now use it without having to script non-jquery versions.--DieBuche (talk) 16:40, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Looks like it is removed. Multichill (talk) 10:26, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Evil IP remove my "hack", since it now works without that--DieBuche (talk) 10:39, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
This is correct, all pages on all projects now include jQuery by default, so feel free to go crazy :) Kaldari (talk) 22:50, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Categorisation by date

Are there any guidelines about categorisation by date ? To me such categories should be used only if the file is clearly related to a speficic event that occurred at that place and date, otherwise they are rather useless. For instance, I must say I don't see much point in having files like this one categorized in August 2010 in Luohu, Shenzhen.--Zolo (talk) 12:41, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 15:48, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
+1 Multichill (talk) 19:29, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
+1 --Foroa (talk) 20:39, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
In a sense  Support. Looking to Bundesarchiv, Tropenmuseum and Fotothek images which cover several decades it seems to be a good idea having a throughtout year-categorization system, they have mostly Category:yyyy in Germany (e.g. Category:1960 in Germany), and there are even year by sub-division categories (Category:1982 in Bavaria pp.). But such categories as Category:August 2010 in Luohu, Shenzhen are a bit odd in this stage of development (we could be happy if there's a 1% year by country combination assignment). I'm interested wheather there is a guideline for year-related category assignments, too. To be exact: Should media or sub-categories of countries (a) have such a category assigend only if it is a special occurance or (b) regardless of that ("it looked like that in the year xxxx")? --Mattes (talk) 23:58, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
In cases like "images from the German Federal Archives, it seems simpler to have an automatic categorization by year (even if for some of the images the exact year does not seem to matter too much). However, if we say that April 2010 in Luohu district is too precise and that it should be moved to say "2010 in China", it would mean that virtually all photographs taken in China in 2010 should go there too. We may end up with a big, hardly readable category. Since it is not easy to decide to what extent the date is relevant for each particular photograph, maybe we should have something like a subcategory of "category:2010 in China" called "photos taken in China in 2010" ? That way we could include both files for which date matters and those for which it seems not to. However, and even if a good part of the categorization could probably be done automatically, I am not sure it would be manageable.--Zolo (talk) 06:00, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
I can see that categorization by year is more useful for older images. Perhaps we should adopt a rule stating that such categories should only be created, say, 30 years later, e.g., now that it is 2010, the latest category that can be created is "1980 in XYZ country". However, categorization by month and year is probably too precise. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 08:26, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
The last suggestion (... 30 year later ...) is a bad one. While I certainly believe that most images shouldn't have any date information in their categories, some should, even some very recent ones. Consider images (or categories) of:
  • A political demonstration
  • The aftermath of a particular hurricane
  • Celebration of a country's bicentennial (bicentenary for those in the UK!)
  • An election
  • A particular year's occurrence of an annual conference, festival, or parade
Each of these should have at least their year (and perhaps a more precise date, though that concerns meless) strongly associated from the moment they occur, not just a generation later. - Jmabel ! talk 16:27, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
I was trying to say something similar to what you expressed more clearly. It is probably not necessary to categorize most "recent" images by year, which is why I suggested that we should only start categorizing general images if they are, say, 30 years old. However, I did not intend to suggest that we should never categorize recent images by year. It certainly makes sense to categorize recent images relating to events by year. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 17:17, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
I actually like such categories. They let you get a picture of the evolution of an area over time, in a way that can be very hard without such categories.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:09, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
I guess the issue is whether it makes sense to start categorizing general images by year right from the time they are uploaded, or to leave them uncategorized by year for a period of time until the images are considered "old" and therefore worth categorizing by year. Having read the arguments on both sides, I am happy with either approach. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 06:28, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
I'm a bit dubious about putting things into day categories, but things like "2010 in Somerset" to me seem quite reasonable places to put all images taken in Somerset in 2010 - anything particularly significant will get its own category, eg Nottingham Pride 2010 is in the category 2010 in Nottingham. -mattbuck (Talk) 13:54, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

September 19

Image counting

Hello!

Where can I find an image counter with which I can count how many photos I have already uploaded (something where you have to type your username in online). --A.Ceta (talk) 14:56, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

http://toolserver.org/~vvv/yaec.php?user=A.Ceta&wiki=commonswiki_p says you have only 2 image uploads. Your gallery seems to match that, so I am guessing it is accurate. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, it can be very slow on users with a lot of contributions. - Jmabel ! talk 16:34, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Also, this doesn't count stuff uploaded by flickr2commons, commonshelper, etc. -mattbuck (Talk) 13:51, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Other wikis

As well as patrolling the Commons, people need to be looking at images in the 700 other wikis. I have just been visiting br: and was horrified to find images lacking any source or licence information. Indeed many have totally blank image descriptions. Examples:

— RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 15:34, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Don't you think we should leave that to the volunteers over at br.wikipedia? We have enough to do here, and in any case I'm not sure how many volunteers here speak Breton. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 16:09, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
edit conflict:
That's certainly not the task of Commons users. br.wp has a community of its own. Please have a discussion at their village pump equivalent and convince them . Try to be calm and friendly in the discussion, nothing is more contraproductive than a person "interrupting" ("interrupting" in their perception) a foreign wiki and "destroying" (again in their perception) their content with "unnecessary formalism" (you know...). (Please don't perceive the last sentence as an allegation! I have no reason to believe that you are not calm or friendly or reasonable. It's just an advice. I have seen many discussions that were misperceived as attacks and went totally wrong [and I experienced them on both sides...])
Point out to them the relevant policies: meta:Non-free content. They must either only host free content (and have license and source information) or they need to adopt an Exemption Doctrine Policy. --Slomox (talk) 16:17, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Okay, I had a look on the wiki and you already spoke to some users. Words like utterly horrified and please conform are what I meant. The likely reaction is: "Mind your own business!". It is more productive to give advice and/or help how to fix the problem. --Slomox (talk) 16:40, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

When I see an image with a completely blank description, I do not think that "horrified" is too strong a term. However, I shall try and moderate my language and since there are only three involved: br:, cy: and gd:, I shall raise the matter at the village pumps. Is Exemption Doctrine Policy relevant? This appears to relate to non-free content. I think it would be bending the rules to try and use it as an excuse for failing to reproduce the applicable licence on free material. — RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 21:39, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I already started a discussion on the Village pump at br. I proposed an image cleanup project that takes a look at all the files on the project. EDP is relevant. An EDP won't cover all images but it for sure is applicable to some of the images.
Of the 5 images you gave as an example only one is truly empty. The MikeKelley image is empty but the the image is identical to an image on en.wp with free license (although I have doubts about it's validity), and three are most likely own work uploads of active community members who have not set a license template and are likely willing to append it.
I'll wait how the discussion at br goes and will then look at the cases cy and gd. --Slomox (talk) 22:14, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
If you would like to come over to cy and assist us you are welcome, Slomox. You can find me there with the same user name or post at Y Caffi (Village Pump). However, I regret to say that the ground has not exactly been well prepared by RHaworth. He showed up on cy yesterday and behaved as if he had been appointed to his "mission" by the Wikimedia Foundation itself. Having been welcomed by an editor he then made the following comment: "It is no exaggeration to say that I am horrified at the contempt this wiki shows for image licensing"[24]. He went on to say "I do not want to single out individuals but..." and gave a link to the image uploads of a single indiviudal(!). He then went to the talk page of that person, who happens to be one of our most valued long-term contributors and left this little missive: "Will you please get firmly into the habit of uploading free images, ie. Creative Commons and GFDL licensed, to the Commons. (etc)"[25]). To my horror, this provoked the following response: "I think I'll get firmly into the habit of not editing Wikipedia instead. Most of the images you have marked as untagged are my own work. Delete them from here if you wish, but I do NOT authorize putting them on Commons. I find your comments arrogant and uncivil."[26]. I have since explained to the editor concerned that RHaworth has no authority whatsoever, contrary to the impression he gave. The editor he offended has not contributed so far today, which is unusual for him. The discussion that ensued at RHaworth's cy talk page is here. This has been an extremely counterproductive experience. It is not good for Commons and it is not good for us at cy. We need to sort our unlicensed images backlog out and will do so eventually - bear in mind we rely on a small team of regular editors with many other things to deal with - but this approach is not needed or wanted. Anatiomaros (talk) 16:17, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
And another comment from gd. I’ m sorry to say that the way RHaworth contacted me was just perfect to get me really upset. Sentences starting with "I intend to go through and correct all your uploads here" [27] remind me of stalking a user. Who does he thinks he is that he can tell me or our community what we have to do. The gd communtity is a really polite one, (users are even using the formal “you”), so cultural differences should be respected too.
As Anatiomaros said it so well: Welcome to the world of smaller Wikipedias! Gd is an even smaller wiki, without the resources to do all the work that needs to be done and without anyone having technical knowlegde to set up complex templates properly. So far I can’t even see where the problem is or why all those geograph images must be uploaded to Commons. I would suggest that that someone would explain the problem in a civil way in Talla a’ Bhaille (or contact me under Sionnach in gd) --Sionnach1 (talk) 22:10, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

TypeError

A little while ago, I nominated one of my own images for deletion, using the standard script. Immediately after the nomination was finished, a box appeared near the top of the screen, just below the "file", "discussion", etc. buttons — it reads "• TypeError: Object doesn't support this property or method". Any idea what happened, and how I can get rid of this message? Other than its presence, nothing is different, for everything continues to work well. I'm running Monobook, if that matters at all. Nyttend (talk) 18:59, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

That's a Javascript error that occured in one of the scripts and that got loaded into the global notifications box (or is it the MyLangNotify gadget's box?). If the nomination worked and the error only occurred after the nomination that's nothing to worry about. --Slomox (talk) 19:33, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Can I get rid of it, or will it stay there for an indeterminately long period of time? Nyttend (talk) 21:09, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
No you cannot get rid of it at this time, unless you fix the script. You are seeing the problem because you are a sysop, normally they are not visible. The error is of course there, because it should be fixed. So I was wondering. What browser/version are you using ? And the error is there on every pageview, or just after deletion nominations ? Oh, and are you just using monobook, or have you fully opted out of all new features ? And what gadgets do you have enabled ? TheDJ (talk) 21:20, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
I see it too: TypeError: Object doesn't support this property or method. I use now IE7. I use all gadets under : Tools for admins and special users and:
  • Change the "+comment" tab text to instead display the narrower "+".
  • UTCLiveClock: A clock in the personal toolbar that shows the current time in UTC ...
  • Cat-a-lot
  • HotCat: Easily add / remove / change a category ..
  • Add a link to category pages to search for the category name with the option "-incategory". ..
Geagea (talk) 22:03, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

After spending an hour looking for a non-existant bug in my script I realized the following. Just a few hours ago, some kind of JS minification was enabled on some commons servers. This minification leads to parse error and other weirdities. Right now, it seems to be disabled again; hopefully because some realized that it was breaking script en masse.--DieBuche (talk) 22:07, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh, the ResourceLoader. Yeah. It deprecates some of the functionality many scripts rely on. I had no idea they are already testing that on live wikis. --Slomox (talk) 22:20, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Response to TheDJ — (1) although I'm an en:wp admin, I'm not an admin here; my only rights are autopatroller, file mover, and rollbacker. (2) Browser is IE version 8.0.6001.18943. (3) The only pages on which the error message doesn't appear are special pages. I should note that it disappears if I add a page to my watchlist (it's replaced, rather than simply moved, by the bit that says "The page ____ has been added to your watchlist...") or remove it, but that only works as long as I'm on that page; as soon as I go to another page and/or refresh my browser, it's back. (4) I'm not much of a gadget person, so I'm only running two: the one to use the old-style upload form and the one that adds a clock with purge link to the top right corner of the screen. Nyttend (talk) 03:50, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
@Nyttend. Ah, so also IE. Unfortunately, I personally don't have access to a computer with IE. Can someone else please investigate further. TheDJ (talk) 15:21, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
I still have the problem in other computer (IE8). Now the message in Hebrew when the default language is English. Geagea (talk) 15:25, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
We might be affected by this jquery issue. BTW, there should be a linenumber in parenthesis after the error I think. Do you see it ? TheDJ (talk) 15:58, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
I see this TypeError: ‏‏האובייקט אינו תומך במאפיין או בפעולת שירות אלה and after I made Fliker review of file (failed) I hed 2 error message . Both of them in Hebrew. Geagea (talk) 16:12, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
This should probably help. Try bypassing your browser cache. TheDJ (talk) 16:50, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes, the Fliker problem solved by still the regular TypeErro exist. Geagea (talk) 17:27, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
@TheDJ: No, there's no line number because IE doesn't report one in its exceptions. The message comes from our error handler in MediaWiki:Common.js. See below. Lupo 11:46, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
It is OK now. Thanks. Geagea (talk) 00:39, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Redux

This is not a (local) javascript error; it is coming from the server. The error is even wrapped in <div classname="mw-js-message-error">. I see it in about 75% of all pages on Commons, mostly in place of the "This page in other languages" box. — Edokter • Talk • 23:30, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, no. This is a bug in our JS here at the Commons. The message box comes from our error handler in MediaWiki:Common.js, which makes sure that even if one gadget's onload hook fails the hooks of other gadgets are still executed.
In this case the problem is in MediaWiki:AjaxQuickDelete.js, which calls indexOf on an array, which doesn't exist on IE. I've fixed this now. To get rid of the "Type error" message, reload your browser's cache. Lupo 11:43, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

September 20

Project to upload many copies of one newspaper

Is there a script we could use to massively upload files from a single source?

The Jefferson County Library has copies of en:The New Orleans Bee, a French language newspaper that also had English and Spanish sections. http://www.jefferson.lib.la.us/genealogy/NewOrleansBeeMain.htm - All are in PDF files.

With the exceptions of the 1923 issues, all are public domain.

Is there a script we could use to massively upload all of the New Orleans Bee files at once? Then we could, to the best of our abilities, start a project to transcribe some of them for the French, English, and Spanish Wikisources (the ones that are fully legible), as the newspaper issues have content in all three languages. WhisperToMe (talk) 02:18, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

You can file a request at "Commons:Batch uploading". — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 06:24, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Actually, no newspaper outside of New York renewed any issues until after WWII. So the 1923 issue is also public domain, {{PD-US-no renewal}}.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:41, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Thank you! I started Commons:Batch uploading/New Orleans Bee and gave a link to the main site. WhisperToMe (talk) 15:59, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
You forgot to add "Commons:Batch uploading/New Orleans Bee" to the "Commons:Batch uploading" page. I've done this for you. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 20:39, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Thank you WhisperToMe (talk) 16:26, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Honestly, having just looked at it, I wouldn't bet that any part of this will get transcribed. They're barely legible, and not worth the time to piece them together. Not saying you can't upload it to Commons, but unless you're actually planning to transcribe them largely yourself, I'd bundle them together by issue and upload them to the Internet Archive, which is probably the best place for book scans if you're not trying to transcribe them.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:20, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Some issues (newer ones) are pretty legible, and some (earlier ones) are very difficult to make out.
But I think our first focus should be to upload them. We can decide at a later point whether to transcribe them or not.
We can also have them uploaded to web.archive.org also. It's good to have these files in multiple locations.
WhisperToMe (talk) 16:26, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Deletion nomination because of original research

I nominated Commons:Deletion requests/File:CM Dejeuner sur l'herbe 2.jpg for deletion, because of Original Research and even Point of View. Since there are many images like that, I would like to have a thorough discussion regarding this topic. Could anyone who is interested shed views and votings on that page? Thank you. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 11:54, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I was not aware Original Research is a criterium here on Commons; that is something to be delt with on the various wiki's where the image is used, so it would not be a valid creterium for deletion here. — Edokter • Talk • 16:32, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Exactly. You (Jan Arkesteijn) should read COM:NPOV (not to be confused with en:WP:NPOV). –Tryphon☂ 16:35, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

All right, it's clear. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 22:26, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

MDOC historical photos

The Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) confirmed via e-mail that all "Historical" photos at http://www.mdoc.state.ms.us/Photo_Archive.htm are in the public domain. The overall MDOC site is copyrighted, but according to the contact the historic photos are not copyrighted.

As a start I uploaded one photo from the historic gallery: File:ParchmanPrisonRodeo.jpg - If what I am doing is fine, I will upload the rest.

Do I need to have MDOC send an e-mail to the foundation? Or should I just list the name of the contact? Or do I just upload the rest and do nothing else? Should I name the MDOC contact who told me the information in the image description?

WhisperToMe (talk) 16:02, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

You should forward the e-mail from MDOC confirming that the photographs in the "Historical Photos" section are in the public domain to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org, and tag the images uploaded to the Commons with {{OTRS pending}}. Don't forget to provide OTRS with links to the MDOC images you upload so they know which images you are referring to. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 17:24, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Thank you! I'll get to work on that! :) WhisperToMe (talk) 21:58, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
I just sent the forwarded e-mails and the Wikimedia Commons links to all affected images to the foundation e-mail you mentioned. Each Commons description page links to the original location on the MDOC website. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:32, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
I also notified the contact that his e-mail was forwarded. I provided him with the Wikimedia foundation contact e-mail and links to all 12 of the images on the Commons servers. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

File:Promothumb.jpg

Wondering about the File:Promothumb.jpg image. It appears to have been uploaded by an official rep for the band, however in looking at the official website (http://www.officialquietriot.com/) it carries this notice: All images are copyright QUIET RIOT 2010. Use of the Mask artwork and logo are for press purposes only and for use in promotion of QUIET RIOT. Any use of these images for personal use is strictly prohibited. My first knee jerk reaction would be to tag it as no-permission. Over at Wikipedia there is a discussion about the image where an editor says I thought the claim of release of the promo photo was at least plausible, and restored it. Another editor (Who is assumed to be the uploader via a different user name) says Any official QR pic is better than one a fan took of the band with his baby. My concern, however, is that the website clearly states the images are "for press purposes only" and "in promotion of QUIET RIOT", and is not public domain as stated by the uploader, the supposed copyright holder. Soundvisions1 (talk) 17:58, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

It is open to the copyright holder to release its image into the public domain if it wishes to, regardless of what is stated on its official website. However, what we need confirmation of is the fact that Official Quiet Riot is indeed the copyright holder's user name. Please ask the uploader to confirm his identity, the fact that he is the copyright holder or is an authorized representative of the copyright holder, and the release of the image into the public domain by sending an e-mail from an officialquietriot.com account to you. Once you receive the e-mail, forward it to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org, mentioning the above file. If such an e-mail is not received, nominate the image for deletion. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 18:43, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Done, except I advise that it is best to have the copyright holder send a permission email directly to the OTRS team. Thanks. Soundvisions1 (talk) 19:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Sure, that's fine too. Just make sure that they mention in the e-mail the file name ("File:Promothumb.jpg") so that the OTRS volunteers know which file they are referring to. (By the way, you might want to tag the image with {{Rename}} so that it can be renamed with a more descriptive name.) — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 20:27, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Automatic import of embedded Metadata (e.g. XMP cc Tags)

I found a thread, which explains very well, what I want:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Request_for_extension_to_provide_metadata_support#Embedded_metadata

But I couldn't find out, if this works in the meantime. I am planning to upload hundreds of images of paintings to Wikimedia, which contain a lot metadata already. I don't want to write this manually again.

So, if this works, are there examples which fields are used by Wikimedia? I use exiftool to write the tags.

The fields of "XMP cc Tags" (http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/TagNames/XMP.html) are used in the images already.

Is there a sandbox to upload images, to see if the upload is done correctly? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bogner (talk • contribs) 03:48, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Soon (a few months), XMP tags will be accessible and displayed on File description pages. This part has been developed over the summer as a Google Summer of Code project. The information in the tags is however not yet editable. TheDJ (talk) 21:19, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Where can I get more details, especially which tags must used?

Till now, I used thes fields with XMP, but a lot more with EXIF and IPTC:

[XMP] - XMP Toolkit [XMP] - Artwork Copyright Notice [XMP] - Artwork Creator [XMP] - Artwork Title [XMP] - Categories [XMP] - Attribution Name [XMP] - License [XMP] - Description [XMP] - Publisher [XMP] - Relation [XMP] - Rights [XMP] - Subject [XMP] - Title [XMP] - Short Description [XMP] - Permissions [XMP] - Copyright — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bogner (talk • contribs) 18:14, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

September 21

Automated replacement of licences

Ryuch needs help replacing the CC and GFDL licences he incorrectly applied to the 145 files in "Category:The Buddha's Moon Reflected on a Thousand Rivers (월인천강지곡, c. 1400)" with a suitable PD licence. Can anyone help to do this in an automated fashion? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 10:40, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

COM:BR might be a better place to ask. --Foroa (talk) 12:22, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Ah, thanks. Didn't know about that. What is an appropriate PD licence for the material? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 12:27, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
{{PD-South Korea}} doesn't seem appropriate, as that political entity didn't exist in the 15th century. Is {{PD-old}} suitable? Does {{PD-1923}} have to be added as well? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 19:20, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Why not {{PD-old-100}}?--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:24, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Guess that's possible too. I didn't know that tag existed. Are you suggesting that {{PD-old-100}} be used in place of {{PD-old}}? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 08:08, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
The licences have been changed to {{PD-old-100}}. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 10:26, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

"This file contains HTML or script code that may be erroneously interpreted by a web browser."

I cannot manage to upload files from Flickr anymore. I tried Flickr2commons on this photo of Jutta Urpilainen - everything seems ok, but then there is no file. I also tried first downloading to my own machine, but then I get the above message. What is wrong? /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 17:33, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

(probably) same problem was here: User_talk:Saibo#Mona_Sahlin_in_Helsingborg_2010.jpg. You need to remove the html from the Exif tags. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 17:41, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. Same Flickr account, so certainly the same problem. Seems too much work for me to fix. If the upload bot can detect this, would it not be possible for the bot to remove the html tags? /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 17:55, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) Yep, that was it. I removed the HTML EXIF tags, and uploaded it successfully at File:4682455742 f355d4c48a o d.jpg (crappy title, but I didn't notice it was reset when I selected the file). You can re-upload it with a better name and an actual description and put this one up for deletion. –Tryphon☂ 17:57, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
When I do that it says that it is a duplicate and wants me to "Please modify the file description below and try again." Which does not help, of course. I will put a rename tag on it. But uploading to commons can be such an incredible hassle... /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 18:30, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Even if you check Ignore any warnings? –Tryphon☂ 18:37, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Ok, I missed the button "upload anyway" (down there, in a corner). Thanks. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 18:45, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
The file contains an "<a href" and that is verboten. If you say "that's stupid and makes no sense" then you are right. This behaviour is due to an Internet Explorer bug in file type detection. If an image contains "<a href" IE could misinterpet the image as an HTML document. If IE does that random Javascript code could be executed which is a security issue. That's the reason why Wikimedia has to reject perfectly valid files. The error message could be more informative though. --Slomox (talk) 18:00, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
See this bug report regarding the error message. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 19:04, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Including author names and personal cataloging info

Please see Commons talk:File naming#Including author names and personal cataloging info and give feedback if you can. Ultra7 (talk) 16:30, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Transfering File:Coptic flat.jpg

I uploaded the File:Coptic_flat.jpg image, originally found on wikipedia as w:File:Coptic_flat.jpg. I followed these FAQ instructions . I now see the correct image on Commons, but it seems to remain distinct from the one on Wikipedia. I was hoping to end-up with a result similar to this one, for example, where the wikipedia page mentions This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. Information from its description page there is shown below. Am I just missing a few steps, or did I use the wrong procedure altogether? Thanks for any help. GiuseppeMassimo (talk) 18:09, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Local Wikipedia file with the same name have higher priority and in displayed instead of image hosted here. To finalize the transfer you have to mark wikipedia's image with {{Nowcommons}} template. It will lead to eventual deletion of image at English wiki and Commons image will be used --Justass (talk) 18:18, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to prevent unnecessary aggravation

Some copyright radicals are tagging loads and loads of files with "problem tags", see the giant category:Unknown. I am browsing those categories, and removing tags where I cannot see any problem. For example in File:RT-2 possible launch facility configuration.PNG there was no problem at all. But then I get warned with the aggravating {{Dont remove nsd or nld}} template. That template should be deleted. There are far too many of such tags being applied, it is harassing newbies, and if they remove the tag, it should be up to the tagger to make a regular deletion request. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 15:55, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

 Support. In short, second person gets the work. Template should be deleted.ZooFari 16:44, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
 Comment We already had a deletion discussion on this tag, stop forum shopping, Pieter. Additionally if you want to remove a problem tag you should either resolve the problem or care about it - delreq, information to tagger, different tag, offer help to the uploader, ask for help yourself, etc - dont just brush it under the carpet with removing tags. --Martin H. (talk) 16:55, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
 Support it would be nice to notify the tagger, but if there's no reason you can see for the tag--not merely disagree with it, but inexplicable--you can't forced to leave it or take to a meaningless DR. If someone tags File:08L 2010 5day.gif with no source, despite it being clearly linked on the page, the resolution of the problem is to remove the tag.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:39, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
 Support Regarding Commons:Deletion requests/Template:Dont remove nsd or nld. 2 people voted delete with good reasons, one person voted keep it because translated messages are better than hand-written ones, and one voted keep because it's "helpful" but didn't provide reasons why it's helpful (maybe because it's not silly and it makes it easy to do this?). I would say no consensus. COM:DR isn't usually the best place to discuss the use of templates, so coming here to discuss is okay, I think. Anyway, I agree with Kuiper. The only good reason for using this is if the information really isn't there at all (unarguable), but it doesn't seem like it's used that way. Rocket000 (talk) 19:14, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
Then this is not a proposal to remove the template but a proposal to use it more wisely. E.g. a {{Nld}} should not be simply removed if still no license tag is added. A {{Nsd}} should not be removed without an replacement if the source is not given or does not allow to verify the copyright status. The removal of this notification templates will not change this common sence perception but it will only make it more difficult for non-english speakers to inform the person who removed the tag unexplained or as an act of problem evasion. If Pieter has a problem that the tag is used to inform him he might either ignore it, argue why he properly removed something - or he might reconsider why always after he block he run riot in an act of 'ignore all rules and asume that anything from the internet is free unless someone has proven that it is not'. Thats my impression what he is doing sometimes. But he should not carry the problems someone has with him to a problem that he has with the user notification tag placed on his talkpage. Thats simply stupid, the tag is valid in some context and the removal of the tag will not be an improvement. --Martin H. (talk) 15:09, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Martin H. is just never satisfied with {{PD-anon-70}}. Not even for File:Guynemer dans son avion.jpg where uploader indicates that the source is glass negatives in his own possession. So what is the best course of action when someone removes the tag, because he finds that the source information is suuficient justification for the copyright tag? Martin H. just puts the tag back again and again, and refuses to take this to a DR. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 15:19, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
I hear this comment "Martin H. is just never satisfied" quite often from you. To correct you: It’s not my personal interest or my personal satisfaction or so, you may change your standard comment to "Martin H. will not lose his objectivity, he is judging only by the provided facts and not by fantasy". I’m also not the owner of copyright of the Picasso in my living room although its an original Picasso, not. The lucky man who bought the Ansel Adam glass plates is not the copyright holder. Physical possession is meaningless to determine the copyright status, just saying "I own the original plates" does not say anything about the intellectual property rights. --Martin H. (talk) 15:30, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
If the owner of the negatives of File:Guynemer dans son avion.jpg does not know who the photographer, I am satisfied that nobody does. (They would be worth more money if the provenance were known.) But you will never be satisfied by {{PD-anon-70}}. Your own standards go beyond the law, and beyond what is accepted on commons. You should recalibrate your standards to the consensus here, and bring such contested cases to a regular deletion discussion. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 15:42, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
You are a victim of your own fantasy, where did the uploader say that he not know the photographer or that noone knows him? Pieter, this project is not about guessing or playing with information. --Martin H. (talk) 15:47, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
I have to admit there needs to be some line drawn. I can't really prove that I took any of the photos I've uploaded. I have negatives from European trips in the 1990s - I really can't prove I own those. It seems a little paranoid to go so far. Wknight94 talk 18:38, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Correct that you didn't prove it, but you did state that it's own work. Believing someone's word and asuming something untold is not the same. I'd say that's about the line we draw on Commons. –Krinkletalk 03:21, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 Support Teofilo (talk) 22:57, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
Since when is this a forum for deletion requests? Powers (talk) 14:42, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
It is about what taggers should do when their tags are contested. Seeking wider input by opening a regular DR is more constructive than stubbornly starting revert wars. I really do not understand the resistance against it. Edits like this one are trying to change the rules on the sly. It seems that the Village Pump is an appropriate place to discuss this openly. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 14:48, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
I've always considered the proper etiquette with using tags like these is: user A adds the template, user B disagrees and removes the template with a justification in the edit summary (or agrees and deletes the image, if s/he is an administrator), user A either accepts the justification or creates a deletion nomination for further discussion. You never revert the removal of the tag. Simple as that. —Quibik (talk) 19:26, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
This is my view as well. ZooFari 22:08, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Same here. There is really no other recourse for someone who disagrees with a no-source/no-license/no-permission tag. Wknight94 talk 22:15, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 Comment The real problem seems to be that some of us are really a bit overcautious concerning copyrights. Even if it is obviously very difficult to prove who took the photograph as Wknight94 pointed out and even when the pictures are without much doubt old enough they tag them and make them someway unusable. A little bit more of "assume good faith" could be helpful. --Mbdortmund (talk) 11:31, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
Like this edit history shows - obviously an old anonymously published work, but User:Kam Solusar insists on getting this deleted without a source, and without a regular DR discussion. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 20:16, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Licence migration

If a picture which is originally only licensed with GFDL is transferred to commons (from another project) by the author, and the author himself decides to choose cc-by-sa now: Must the file have both licenses (GFDL + cc-by-sa)? Or is licensing with cc-by-sa only sufficient? In other words: Should the GFDL be kept or is this unneeded? -- smial (talk) 15:05, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

The GFDL license is still valid (the author can't take back the license) so it doesn't hurt to re-add it. May only be truly necessary if the work is used in a GFDL-only derivative work though. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:09, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
It is not known whether someone already uses the images as GFDL-only elsewhere, or not. -- smial (talk) 15:49, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Quite true. The file history though should be all that is required to show the original license, so I don't think it's a must that it be included on the page. It would however be a good idea in my opinion, for the reasons you note. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:58, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
It is about this edit. So this is under legal aspects ok, but lacks transparency for users outside wikimedia projects. -- smial (talk) 18:51, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
CC-by-3.0 was rewritten in conjunction with Wikimedia to enable its projects to be changed across to the CC license the CC-by-3.0 had to be written in such manor as to be a recognisd replacement of GFDL so that the GFDL licensing could be removed, so yes its ok to move from GFDL to CC-by-sa-3.0 and remove the GFDL specific license, we had a project to specifically see Commons:License Migration Task Force for details. Gnangarra 04:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

File:Atli.jpg

This file appears to have been replaced with a picture of a football player of unknown copyright. Could someone revert this? 80.42.213.240 21:05, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Reverted and deleted along with all other images grabber from the web by uploader --Justass (talk) 21:22, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

September 23

Call for pictures

In many towns where there are old tramlines the overheadlines where frequently suspended from buildings with attachmentpoints. These are frequently the only signs that there used to be a tramline. In de category Category:Overhead line rosettes there is now only one German town represented, while there are many other examples in the world.

I will shortly take pictures in Brussels, but there must be many other citys. Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:59, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Public domains pictures at English wikipedia

Hello, at this page some public domain pictures upload to English wikipedia, i want to use them for Turkish wikipedia. I don't know that how can i install them here. Can someone help or upload these pictures, thanks. Koc61 (talk) 12:38, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

You can transfer the images to the Commons using the CommonsHelper. (You will need to apply for a TUSC account.) However, if you are still unsure, leave another message here and someone will come along to help you. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 12:47, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
TUSC is not necessary but makes it easier. However, you need to check that the licensing of the file is correct! Do not transfer copyright violations are fair use pictures. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 12:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
I had a look at the images. It's hard to tell whether they have been properly released into the public domain. We may need OTRS verification before they can be transferred. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 12:50, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Social engineering-ignorance, instead of reliable answers?

Several times I asked the "Bar PL": "whether there is possibility to make an authoritative translation of the legal basis of the project Wikimedia Commons, concerns the transmission of their own work" Commons:Bar PL...- but have not received a credible answer? The way the issue of harvested resources should not be secret? The case, holidays, exams? Therefore, as the topic for the sake of their own work. ( Translate Google: Socjotechnika-ignorancja zamiast wiarygodnych odpowiedzi?
Kilkakrotnie zadałem pytanie w "Barze PL": "czy istnieje możliwość wykonania wiarygodnego tłumaczenia podstaw prawnych działania projektu Wikimedia Commons, problematyki przekazywania własnych prac" - ale nie otrzymałem wiarygodnej odpowiedzi? Przypadek , urlopy , egzaminy? Sposób wydawania zbieranych środków nie powinien być tajemnicą? Dlatego jak w "Temacie" w trosce o własne prace. ) --Alians PL (talk) 11:12, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Can a Polish speaker please provide a better English translation? The Google Translate version doesn't make sense. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 11:19, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Proposes to exploit the potential of the participants 'Babel', ignoring "reported" the possibility, also misses the point. --Alians PL (talk) 11:34, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
FWIW, I assume that by "Bar PL"/"Barze PL" he means Commons:Bar, the Polish-language of the Village Pump on Commons. But, yes, we need someone bilingual in English and Polish to translate this, the machine translation is incomprehensible. - Jmabel ! talk 14:39, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
The posts in Commons:Bar are not much more clear in Polish. As far as I can figure out, author is concerned about different working of our website with and without logging-in, discuses snails, IE cookies, connection errors, Avatar movie tickets, European Court and pornography on Commons, using stream of consciousness narrative. Finally he would like a see notarized translation of legal bases for Wikimedia Commons project. He is concerned that the funds collected by the project are not spend properly, since he can not find notarized translations of various Commons pages. --Jarekt (talk) 15:09, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Witty and biased. Response similar to the BOT for Actions? - "If not we find the appropriate keywords are most likely not receive a response, a social engineering" --Alians PL (talk) 07:10, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Alians, I do not think anybody is trying to ignore you or be nasty to you. We just do not understand what you are asking because the Google translation is not clear enough. For example, I do not know what you mean by "social engineering". — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 07:34, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi, eg. The World According to Monsanto Monsanto - Hypocrisy on top?, shows that a very good knowledge of English does not help when you ignores. Coming from a country in which half a century, authority was imposed by the Soviets. Have used their own methods of handling unit and the whole society-called social engineering. for example, used the misrepresentation of facts in such a way as to several percent were true, then the victim under the law must explain and prove. Now this form of social engineering appeared in the customer service supermarkets and banks. Reportedly came to terms with the so-called clergy. "Round table". Masquerade takes place - it was good, but President sp. Lech Kaczynski no vetoed the Act, to lower the salary the former SB officers and WSW! One party had breached the contract entered into, now in the local mass media reveal the details of the Concordat. Approximately 2-2.5 billion GBP a year. Additionally, the lack of clear expenditure on the part of RP? --Alians PL (talk) 09:57, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
This is not a board for politics. Lech Kaczynski is irrelevant here.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:53, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Policy PNG vs. GIF

Can someone more clarify explain which reason (with exception of alpha transparency and more colors) it gives to replace a GIF with PNG? Especially to this template {{Convert to PNG}}. I don't find a clear policy explanation for this. I mean there is a over cleanup (in this category). --Perhelion (talk) 19:38, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

(I improved the wording of the template's de version a bit) I do not see much use in a tagging of gif files with this. However, when I would edit a gif I would probably use the features of png (real transparency) and save/upload it in png afterwards. Maybe some gif files use dithering in gif because 256 colors of gif weren't sufficient, then I would apply the template. Best case: the uploader will still have the source file and is able to save/upload in png then. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 21:36, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
The original reason was that there were claimed patents on some of GIF's functionality, which some companies got sued over. Those patents have expired now though. Other than that... no definitely good reason I can think of, although it is my personal impression that some GIFs (particularly those with transparency) don't scale nearly as well as PNG. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:11, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
No more arguments? Really a lot of images in this Category:Images which should be in PNG format do not need transparency or more then 256 colors. So? So we can remove the marker cleanup template? (and I'll put it in brackets.). Should we add a additional note to "This template should not be used for"!? --Perhelion (talk) 14:23, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
Cross-linking Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2010Sep#Policy PNG vs. GIF (this thread) to the English Wikipedia en:Template talk:ShouldBePNG#PNG vs. GIF. Like Saibo and Carl Lindberg I also do not see much use for this template. -84user (talk) 16:37, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
This will affecting the Template:BadGIF too, with an earlier interesting discussion --Perhelion (talk) 09:03, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Perhelion, that's an interesting point (It did not came to my mind before): As gifs are scaled (thumbnails!) keeping their file format (gif) this scaling is limited to 256 colors, maybe the number of colors needed increases if scaled due to interpolation. Then pngs are useful. Also if transparency is used in gifs scaling with interpolation of the transparency will not be possible since gif only allows full transparency (no partial). This problems could be easily dealt with if the server would convert all non-ani gifs to png for scaling. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 12:45, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
There was another reason I had forgotten about -- for a time, GIF scaling on the server side was turned off (I think due to issued with animated GIFs), so the full-size GIFs were always downloaded and the browser had to scale them, meaning lots more bandwidth than necessary was used. But again I think that has been resolved, within the last year or so. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:40, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
There are many reasons not to convert GIF images to PNG images. Please see:
Template talk:BadGIF --Timeshifter (talk) 08:39, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

September 22

New Yorkers?

Anyone who is in New York City, please visit Union Square and upload some free images of Sukkah City which is going to remain there for one week only. If anyone has pictures of the installation that was there on September 19-20, please upload them, too. Amnon s (talk) 08:06, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Freedom of panorama in the US only applies to buildings. Does this create an issue? Perhaps the sukkahs are not artistic enough to be considered sculptures or other artworks? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 08:23, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
A sukkah is basically a temporary building. Shouldn't raise any more issue than a booth at a fair. - Jmabel ! talk 15:11, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
I was wondering if the winning sukkah was chosen to be displayed in Union Square because it is artistic in some way, which might justify treating it differently from a mere booth. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 18:12, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Buildings win awards, too, but in the U.S. that doesn't make them works of art. IANAL, but I think we're on pretty safe ground here. - Jmabel ! talk 19:10, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
I think works of art is a bad phrase here, especially as US law tries to avoid that question. Looking at the example sukka, it's a building, but if there were paintings on the walls or statuary or something it might be different. We can probably upload them here and fight out any remaining issues looking at specific cases.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:57, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

"File extension does not match MIME type."

I tried to upload the following file: http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/3856/projektyszkolneiakademi.jpg (it is a derivative work - just joined two pictures - from File:Collegium Novum w Krakowie, aula 2005-11-25.jpg and File:Geografieraum.JPG) and received the error: "File extension does not match MIME type.". The picture has been created with ImageMagick's montage:

montage -tile 1x2 -geometry '2048x1536+0+0' Collegium_Novum_w_Krakowie,_aula_2005-11-25.jpg Geografieraum.JPG 'Projekty szkolne i akademickie2.jpg'

Any hints? BartłomiejB (talk) 14:24, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

No idea. It worked here: File:Projektyszkolneiakademi.jpg (you can have it renamed and give it a real description). –Tryphon☂ 14:46, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! I gave it a proper description. Could you rename it to "Projekty szkolne i akademickie2.jpg" as its purpose is to replace File:Projekty szkolne i akademickie.jpg on the page pl:WP:Projekty szkolne i akademickie? Thanks in advance. BartłomiejB (talk) 19:52, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
You're welcome; I've tagged it for renaming. –Tryphon☂ 20:34, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

LadyofHats has kindly created these stars for POTD. What if we replaced the commons logo in {{Picture of the day}} with one of these stars? --The High Fin Sperm Whale 16:51, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

First of all: Great work! As these file description pages are also displayed in other projects (eg Wikipedia) I would like to see the Commonslogo, too. What about integrating the Commons logo in some way? Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 21:13, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

prevented from opening an account here with the same name here

Someone recently banned my English Wikipedia user name as a string of characters on Commons and now I am prevented from opening an account here with the same name here as my name there

How would I proceed to try and rectify this situation?--Francis Burnett (talk) 19:39, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I've also tried an iquiry here.--Francis Burnett (talk) 20:33, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I have no idea, it has nothing to do with me? I have commented here at a connected picture deletion review but that is all I know. Off2riorob (talk) 20:56, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

About which username are you talking? By the way: I have shortened your section title - it was toooo long. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 21:07, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
As you told me on my talk page it is en:user:Hodgson-Burnett's Secret Garden. This username is not taken at Commons. Create a unified login account at en.wikipedia and you will be automatically logged in with this name in commons: First log off here in Commons (top right corner here), then go to en:Special:MergeAccount. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 22:31, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
OK, I'm back! Thanks.--Hodgson-Burnett's Secret Garden (talk) 00:19, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
Cool, it worked: unified login / SUL (top of page) is activated. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 02:01, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Relicensing a Panoramio photo

Hi! How does someone relicense a Panoramio photo?

At http://www.panoramio.com/photo/21922908 the user said I could use his photo of the Florida State Prison on Wikipedia. So, what should I ask him to do before I upload the photo to the Commons? What should I do before I upload the photo to the Commons?

Thank you, WhisperToMe (talk) 20:47, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

You can follow the steps at COM:OTRS. Wknight94 talk 21:03, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Okay, I asked the user to fill out the e-mail and send it to permissions commons. WhisperToMe (talk) 21:13, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Trial of Video Labs Kaltura Sequencer Now on Commons

The Kaltura HTML5 video sequencer is being tried out on commons. We have added a Sequencer Namespace and written up a bit of documentation and a blog post on how the sequencer works. Looking forward to hearing your suggestions and comments -- Mdale (talk) 21:11, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Redirects on pronunciation files for languages with dual alphabet system

Wiktionaries put links to pronunciation files in their entries. Those files are stored in standardized format File:Lang-word.ogg (so e.g. File:En-hello.ogg etc.). Therefore it's easy to add the pronunciation since it is in fact File:Lang-{{PAGENAME}}.ogg form. This consistence also makes easy to create/use tools working on relevant things, such as automatical adding of link to audiofile on the page, if the file exists etc.

Now there are languages with dual alphabet system. I'll use Serbian as an example. Serbian uses latin as well as cyrilic alphabet. So, let's use the word "sedam" (seven). In cyrilic, it's "седам".

Now, we have one file on Commons - File:Sr-sedam.ogg, but two entries on random Wiktionaries. It obviously doesn't have a sense to duplicate the file on Commons under the new name. On the other hand, there should be consistence kept between the page title and link to the audio on Wiktionary pages.

Hence I would like to propose creating of redirects from one alphabet to another, so the consistence between the page title and file name could be kept.

Since I am not familiar with Commons rules, I rather chose this way to ask first than creating them directly. Also I'd suppose there could be some bot used for that anyway (anybody willing to take care?).

Thanks for feedback.

— Danny B. (talk) 21:37, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

 Support Nothing against creating these redirs for correct names of these files comes to my mind. Of course you should check at WS that your templates which check for existence also work with a redirect. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 23:23, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
A little misunderstanding actually - the tool checks for the existance of the file on commons according to the page title on the Wiktionary. Not the template. Just for clarifying...
— Danny B. (talk) 23:50, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Please help me with renaming a picture

I uploaded a picture File:Macau-View-from-Macau Museum.jpg. But it was a mistake to fail to put a hyphen between "Macau" and "Museum". Is there anyone with the right to change a file's name? AlexHe34 (talk) 03:13, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

You can add
{{rename|Macau-View-from-Macau-Museum.jpg|uploader request}}
to the file. Personally, I'd rather suggest to remove the "-" entirely, but it's up to you.  Docu  at 03:26, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for your advice! Besides, I like to use hyphens mainly in oder to make the file name appear in the same form in both its file name and the URL of that file's page (you know there is no space in a URL). But now I grandually find it unnecessary. So I decide to take your advise. AlexHe34 (talk) 04:41, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Google map locations

Is some server not working? All the pictures I uploaded the last days with location, dont appear on the google map. The first one with the problem is: File:Alle SNCV 8.jpg Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:04, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

You mean that your images are not showing up at maps.google.com? Please remember that Wikimedia and Commons has no control over when Google updates the site and what images are made available there. They only update periodically, so please give it more than just a few days. It should happen eventually. — Huntster (t @ c) 17:42, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
Works using toolserver overlay with gmaps. Even this takes sometimes several hours to update. If you are looking directly at gmaps: ask google. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 17:50, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Ownership of Independence Hall

I am unsure whether this image can be used at all. Consider the terms at [[28]] imposed by the Board of Revision of Taxes of the City of Philadelphia. Advice, please. --Davidt8 (talk) 13:17, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Consider Independence Hall (at "Independence Hall's History"). World Heritage Sites official webpage. World Heritage Committee. Retrieved 2010-03-16.--Davidt8 (talk) 13:37, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
Do you mean this pdf print from the website? Or just some part of it? Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 17:52, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
The website contains enough creative elements to be not ineligible for copyright, so the author is not the user who made the screenshot but also the copyright holder of the website, Commons:Screenshot and their terms: All other design[...]are the property of the City of Philadelphia. All rights are reserved. Permission is granted [*] to residents and citizens of the City of Philadelphia[...], annotation*: Only, the residents of Philadelphia is not anyone as required on Commons. As an screenshot of something that is not ineligible and not freely licensed this requires the copyright holders permission - maybe the screenshot will be ineligible if the header is cropped out. --Martin H. (talk) 18:52, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Annotations gone?

Did something happen to file annotations? Or am I the only one having a problem? I see no button for annotating files. (Sorry if this was covered - I searched the archives and found nothing). Wknight94 talk 13:06, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

It is a very sad development. I hope some solution will be found to get them up and running again in some form.--Jarekt (talk) 19:38, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Updating of images?

An editor has uploaded "File:BritishEmpire1921.png" as a corrected version of "File:British Empire 1921.png" (reason: "they are almost the same however the one to be replaced has Kamerun [sic: Cameroon] as part of the empire when it was actually given to France and South Yamen [sic: Yemen] is missing when it was actually part of the empire"), and "File:Colonial-Africa.png" as a corrected version of "File:ColonialAfrica 1914.png" (reason: "the replacing image is more accurate: has the borders of the colonies and the Cyrenaica region of Italian North Africa was shared with the British holdings in the region until 1919 when the borders of Italian North Africa were clearly defined and enlarged"). Should the corrected versions of the images should be uploaded over the original images, or left as separate images? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 17:18, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

  • Should be left as separate filenames. Uploads over the original should only be for trivial cosmetic changes, such as resolution.
  • The separate filenames allow editors at each project to make their own editorial decisions about the facts and the presentation. Otherwise articles and captions get way out of sync with images. (Also, uploading new images over old ones really messes up the archiving policy at English Wikinews.)
  • It is always helpful to link the images together, and inform using projects.
--InfantGorilla (talk) 19:17, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
The color shema is the same, so there is no editorial decision. There only was one British Empire in 1921, not two different, consequently one file must have a wrong filename and does not show what it indicates to show. Also, unless the layout is changed, changes to the files are not of cosmetic nature but related to facts. So yes, the files should be merged. --Martin H. (talk) 19:41, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
I disagree strongly. Unless they are absolutely uncontroversial changes--and I've seen a number of one man edit-warriors arguing for "absolutely uncontroversial changes"--they should go to separate files. Maps are frequently controversial matters, and Commons has chosen not to play that game; we leave it to Wikipedia to pick the "right" map.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:16, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
If they are controversial or different the file description must point out why they are different e.g. from what scientific point of view or from what sources point of view the maps are created. At the moment they both simply say that they show the British Empire of 1921, so they are exactly the same. Commons can offer different illustrations, but Commons should not offer such illustrations without an explanation. Thats a question of our reliability and our projects quality. --Martin H. (talk) 03:28, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

September 25

File renaming guideline change?

I would like to start a discussion on a possibility (or necessity) of changing the file renaming guideline. Everyone interested in the subject is invited to read my suggestion and comment. Thanks. Marac (talk) 01:18, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

There are far too many renames. A file name does not really matter, as long as it is not misleading. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 17:12, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
If file names didn't matter, it wouldn't matter whether they are misleading or not. If it does matter, then it means some people care about the filename (hence could be misled). The case described by me is a clear case of introducing ambiguity. "La casa entre las rosas.jpg" lies in fact very near "image039.jpg" - it's equally useless. It wouldn't be misleading for a photo of a generic house covered with roses - it is for a work of art by a famous painter. Marac (talk) 18:26, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
Seconded. And renaming of "good" names happens as well (mentioned just for the record). -- Klaus with K (talk) 17:20, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Battle of Marasesti

Could someone take a look at this image? Its metadata, text, and copyright information is an absolute mess, and it includes several pages worth of badly translated text. Thanks. 66.215.219.60 03:53, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

You're right about this being a mess. My thoughts:
  • The long description should be removed on the basis that (1) Commons is not Wikipedia and should not contain encyclopedic content; and/or (2) the text is a translation of a portion of a 1921 book – there is insufficient indication of whether the book is now in the public domain, so the text could be in breach of copyright.
  • It is highly unlikely that the uploader was the copyright holder, so the current licence whereby the uploader purported to release the image into the public domain is wrong.
  • As to whether the image itself (taken in 1917 and presumably published at that time or shortly after) is now in the public domain, according to "Commons:Licensing#Romania" the current rule is 70 years pma. Since the uploader has provided no evidence about the photographer, especially whether he is still alive or not, we cannot currently determine whether copyright has lapsed. Unless such evidence is forthcoming, I think we will have to nominate the image for deletion. (There is unfortunately a conflict between "Commons:Licensing#Romania" and {{PD-RO-photo}}. The guideline suggests that the 1996 law introducing the 70 years pma rule "reprotected works on which the shorter copyright terms from the earlier law had already expired". However, {{PD-RO-photo}} claims that "Romanian artistic photographs whose protection term expired before 1996 are now in the public domain". Someone who can read Romanian will have to resolve this inconsistency. In any case, I don't think {{PD-RO-photo}} can be used as it only seems to apply to "artistic photographs".)
— Cheers, JackLee –talk– 04:54, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
The long text replaced with a link to en.wikipedia and source request noted as well. Geagea (talk) 05:06, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

September 26

Update to "Template:Welcome": administrator help required

{{Welcome}} currently states: "Do you want to have a file renamed or moved? Simply mark it like this: {{rename|the_new_name}}". Could an administrator please amend this to "{{rename|the_new_name|reason_for_renaming}}" or something similar so that we do not get files ending up in "Category:Incomplete media renaming requests"? Thanks. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 07:43, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

✓ Done. Note that you could have used {{Edit request}}. Jean-Fred (talk) 12:28, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
True, but it's hard to know whether anyone is watching pages like that. Anyway, thanks very much. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 12:37, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
When you use {{Edit request}}, the page ends up in Category:Commons protected edit requests which several admins check regularly, so the template is quite efficient. Pruneautalk 16:35, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Ah, thanks for that. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 10:02, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Updating the image with a smaller one???

I found a picture (Monet - Das Frühstück.jpg) where someone replaced the original with a different version - much brighter, but two times smaller(!) Is something like that allowed? I thought updating is for clear cases like cutting the frame or replacing with identical but bigger image. IMHO it is not obvious if it is better to have a dark, but big image or a bright but small... It depends on personal preferences or a purpose of use. I thought in such cases the new version should be uploaded as a new file and added into "other_versions". May I ask any user with experience with updating policy for a comment on this? Thanks. Marac (talk) 11:13, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

✓ Reverted. Should've been uploaded under another name. Lycaon (talk) 12:02, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
That's what I thought. :-) Thanks! Marac (talk) 12:11, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

moving featured pictures templates below license

I'm sorry if the subject has already been discussed before, but would there be any objection against a bot moving "featured pictures" and "picture of the day" templates below license templates. It is a bit irritating to click on an image in Wikipedia and to see first thing "we think this image is great". To people not too familiar with Commons, it looks a bit self-satisfied, and if they don't scroll down, they won't even notice that there are real infos below that. To me, featured picture templates should be placed below license (with an appropriate header) rather than just below the infobox. Otherwise the license template can be quite far down in the page, especially for images featured in several wikipedias. That's not very convenient, especially when we have "permission: see below" and what is just below is "this is a featured picture".--Zolo (talk) 11:18, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Not because of the self-congratulatory impression but because of importance. The licensing is important and should not be outshined by assessments. For assesment templates I sometime see files with the order ==Summary=={{Information}}, ==Licensing=={{copyright tag}}, ==Assessments=={{Featured picture}}. I personally prefer this. --Martin H. (talk) 18:48, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree to. Geagea (talk) 18:54, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
It seems the best order to me too. Does anyhing like a {{int:assessment}} exist, or can it be created ?--Zolo (talk) 21:08, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
People tend to place assessment tags above all other descriptions. This tends to obscure the description and there isn't really any "see below" link for that.
As assessed images shouldn't have any licensing problems, I think we can easily place the licensing tags last. In general they are clearly referenced with "see below". --  Docu  at 05:23, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
It's not so much that they could have licensing problems. But featured pictures would also tend to be reused more, and re-users already have enough trouble complying with the license terms as it is. So burying the license is certainly not a good idea. –Tryphon☂ 07:19, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
I like Martin H.'s proposal. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 07:24, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Agree. Added this note on template page (diff). Teofilo (talk) 08:02, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
You might want to add that the tag should be in a separate "Assessment" section, as suggested by Martin H. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 09:27, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Actually, it could be considered that licensing is nitty-gritty technical "maintenance" information, while valued/featured/quality whatever status is more about the meaningful content of the image... AnonMoos (talk) 08:35, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Quite the opposite. Maintenance information is something that is only useful for Commons' organisation, but is not relevant at all to re-users. The valued/featured/quality status is more about having galleries or categories to help people find the best images more easily, but once you're on the image page, you shouldn't really need a template to tell you that it's a good picture; you should be able to plainly see it! The license however, it's information that should follow the image everywhere (not just on Commons, so not "maintenance" at all), and you cannot get it by just looking at the picture. –Tryphon☂ 09:39, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

In fact, perhaps we should adopt the practice used at the English Wikipedia, which is to put all article assessment material on the talk page, and only have a small icon indicating the assessment status of the file at the top right hand corner of the file description page. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 09:49, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Heck, sometimes I think it'd be nice to have the license at the top, above the summary and maybe even above the image itself. =) Powers (talk) 14:45, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually there is a nice little parameter in the information template called "permission". That's where the license should go. If that would be done consequently we would need no ugly "==information==" and "==License==" headings and we could easily verify whether a file has license information (parameter "permission" set, yes/no). --Slomox (talk) 20:39, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. Putting the license inside the description box should solve this problem, especially since there are other templates used on image pages that could also push it down. The description box is almost always on top. The license would capture more attention, and it won't get buried in the clutter at the bottom of the page. -- Orionist ★ talk 20:50, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
I can see the advantage of that. Where do the assessment tags go, then? Below {{Information}} in an "Assessment" section? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 20:51, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
It's probably more convenient to have the license inside the permission field, but I must say that I find having big license tags inside infoboxes even more ugly than the "==information==" and "==License==" headers. IMHO if license tags should are to be put inside the main infobox, they should also look much simpler (that is: just a plain text of a few lines). It would make them a bit less visible, but putting them in the infobox should be enough to make them impossible to ignore (at the very least they would still be more conspicuously displayed than in any other website I know of)--Zolo (talk) 21:08, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Big license tags are in most cases multi-license tags, of which I fail to see the benefit. There's no option in the upload form for "Own work, CC-BY-SA-3.0" that doesn't multi-license with GFDL. GFDL, of course, is impractical for images. So why is it included there? If there is a CC-BY-SA-3.0-only option at the top of the list, we'd be able to avoid this issue.
However, if the license is too big to be included in the permission field, we can at least mention it in writing, something like "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license and the GFDL. See below for full details." The best solution would be to modify the templates to fit in the permission field, and to take that into consideration when designing new tags in the future. Then, assessment tags can go below {{Information}} as usual, or in an "Assessment" section as you see necessary. -- Orionist ★ talk 18:42, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
I think text like "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license and the GFDL. See below for full details." is a rather bad solution. It is unlocalizable and redundant information. For me multiple license tags in "permission" look just fine (see below) but if they don't for other users we could change the design of {{Information}} and make the "permission" field wider (see below). --Slomox (talk) 17:15, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Example 1 (currently used in Commons)
Description
This file has no description, and may be lacking other information.

Please provide a meaningful description of this file.

Source
This file is lacking source information.

Please edit this file's description and provide a source.

Author
This file is lacking author information.
Permission
(Reusing this file)
I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses:
GNU head Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.
w:en:Creative Commons
attribution share alike
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
You are free:
  • to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
  • to remix – to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
  • attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
  • share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original.
CeCILL This work is free software; you can redistribute it or modify it under the terms of the CeCILL. The terms of the CeCILL license are available at www.cecill.info.
This file is licensed under the Expat License, sometimes known as the MIT License:

Copyright © The author(s)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

The Software is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and noninfringement. In no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages or other liability, whether in an action of contract, tort or otherwise, arising from, out of or in connection with the Software or the use or other dealings in the Software.

To uploader: MIT License has various versions, you may want to specify the license more precisely. Click {{MIT}} to see details.

You may select the license of your choice.
Example 2 (permission field extended)
Beschrievung
Datum/Tied
Born
Autor
Lizenz/Verlööv
(Disse Datei annerwegens bruken)
I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses:
GNU head Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.
w:en:Creative Commons
attribution share alike
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
You are free:
  • to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
  • to remix – to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
  • attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
  • share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original.
CeCILL This work is free software; you can redistribute it or modify it under the terms of the CeCILL. The terms of the CeCILL license are available at www.cecill.info.
This file is licensed under the Expat License, sometimes known as the MIT License:

Copyright © The author(s)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

The Software is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and noninfringement. In no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages or other liability, whether in an action of contract, tort or otherwise, arising from, out of or in connection with the Software or the use or other dealings in the Software.

To uploader: MIT License has various versions, you may want to specify the license more precisely. Click {{MIT}} to see details.

You may select the license of your choice.
--Slomox (talk) 17:15, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I hope you don't mind me adding the collapse boxes above. Actually big tags look fine for me, but then my monitor has a resolution of 1920X1200, so I can't speak for other users with, say, 1024X768 resolution. I think that Example 2 above defeats the whole point of putting the license inside the description box. So it may be better to stick with what we have now (Example 1). Most license tags were designed before we started using the description box. That's why some of them should be redesigned to be more compact. The other issue is the absence of a {{self|CC-BY-SA-3.0}} option in the upload form. Many people are familiar with the CC license (especially from Flickr) and they might not know the ins and outs of licensing as frequent uploaders do. So why when they choose a CC license from the list it's always coupled with a GFDL, even though it's basically a documentation license? If we add such an option (and maybe recommend it?) I think it would reduce the number of future, and in my view unnecessary, multi-licenses. -- Orionist ★ talk 00:53, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
That option is already in the dropdown menu. Both the standard one and the "Own work" one at MediaWiki:Licenses/ownwork here. –Krinkletalk 05:05, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Ah! I overlooked it in the main upload form, maybe because it's the last option. My point about the GFDL still stands, 3 out of 6 of own work licenses in the upload form are multi licenses. While on the own work form, the first two are multi licenses, and the GFDL multi-license option is recommended. I know this might not be a priority or a big problem on Commons, I'm just wondering why we're using the GFDL here at all. If we need to keep it for those who really want it, then it's better if we make it a secondary option, and feature the CC more prominently with a recommendation, that's all. -- Orionist ★ talk 19:20, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Upload a big file

Bonjour,

Sorry for my English, I hope you could understand me...

I need to upload a djvu file (here) and to replace File:Franck - Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques, 1875.djvu with it (same edition), because the first djvu file is better and has OCR. But the file is more than 100Mio (100, 9Mio). Yann told me that I have to ask to a developper, but I don't know where to find one. Thank for your help. Marc (talk) 17:57, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, you need the help of a System administrator. TheDJ (talk) 22:33, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
What about setting up a page for centralising these reqests? That sounds to me better than pinging randomly a sysadmin on IRC or something. Jean-Fred (talk) 22:43, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
Actually, i'm not sure if it is even possible at all, but if it is possible, then only a sysadmin can do it. TheDJ (talk) 23:48, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
It is, we requested a server-side import as part of the BnF project and it was kindly done by Tim Starling. But this was a big amount of files, I am unsure sysadmins would be keen to be pinged every now and then about uploading a couple of files... Jean-Fred (talk) 12:54, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, thank... That's not easy to know who can import this file. Marc (talk) 09:53, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you can consider splitting the large file into two files (e.g., A–M and N–Z). It's not ideal, but at least the uploads can be done. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 14:15, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Thank for your advise, but, as you said, that's not ideal. I think I'll wait several days, and then, if nothing new happens, I will consider this method. Marc (talk) 19:54, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
You removed your posting disapointed. No reason for that, we all have this 100mb constraint and anyone here can only split up the upload or ask an system admin. So dont expect other sollutions will come up so quickly, asking is the only available method at the moment, so you got very helpful information on this question here. Ask an system admin to please overwrite File:Franck - Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques, 1875.djvu with the 100,9mb djvu of http://www.archive.org/details/dictionnairedess00fran and say the server admin that you will care about the rest (image description etc). --Martin H. (talk) 11:37, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
Cette question ne me concerne plus, j'ai d'autres choses à faire que de courir après des réponses absurdes. Marc (talk) 12:01, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
This matter is now handled, cf. bugzilla:25291 --Dereckson (talk) 15:42, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Uploading copyrighted images to commons

I have a suggestion

  • All the image uploading to the commons should follow a standard
  1. Unedited picture (Directly from digital camera) should upload to commons
  2. If photographer/author need to enhance the photo to a better one, do it and re-upload as better version

Advantages

  1. High quality images with accurate exif will avoid any copyvio notices (If genuine)
  2. This will encourage good photographers

Why

  1. If a copyrighted image is not noticed by any wikipedians. It will remain in the commons without any problem till somebody discovers its copyright problem
  2. Commons need to trust on some internet search engines to find out the copyright problems of the file, If the matching image is not yet discovered it will remain in the commons, which is not good as commons will only allow free content

Disadvantages

  1. Uploaders (fake) will stop upload at its entry
  2. It may discourage them

I would like to seek everyone's idea on this regards --Common-Man (talk) 14:19, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

  1. My Yashica TL Electro SLR 35mm camera had a light meter and that was the extent of the electronics. Here is one of my public domain images on the commons Condor Club North Beach 1973. Kodak's Ektachrome and Kodachrome transparency film did not record any "exif" data. The photos I take with my digital cameras are edited for lighting, composition and other factors before I upload them. Logitech Logimouse 1983. I also edit my Wikipedia text contributions before adding them to articles. (Some may say that I should do more editing before posting.) -- Swtpc6800 (talk) 17:30, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
  2. All image uploading? Some people don't do photography; the majority of my uploads are from other websites or scans of books. If you want to encourage the uploading of the unedited photos that the edited photos we want in articles are based off of, there's an argument for that, but it's not nearly as broad-reaching as you'd suggest.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:45, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
  3. FWIW, this is my usual current practice for my own photos (though I've been known to slip up). I usually start by uploading my unedited image, then upload any enhanced version over it. In the past, I had been using two different file names, but I've stopped doing that except for a few exceptional cases, for example where the preferred image is an extreme crop and the rest of the original photo might be of interest. There is one circumstance where I will upload only the modified photo: where the modification is the addition of Gaussian blur to remove others' copyrighted materials that were present in the field of vision, for example when photographing a room with an art show on display. - Jmabel ! talk 18:18, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
  4. Most photo editing software nowadays keep the original EXIF data (unless you turn off such option). Each photographer might have his own workflow and preference to upload a photo before or after editing. Don't forget scans of photos taken on film. As for image search engines that search by image, if you can find one that works you'll be doing us a great favor. Regards, -- Orionist ★ talk
    Try www.tineye.com Effeietsanders (talk) 22:34, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
  5. Some contributors may release a medium or low resolution image to the Commons but want to release the high resolution version under a commercial license. -- Swtpc6800 (talk) 01:45, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
  6. What do you do about contributors that shoot in RAW format and only have edited files in a format allowed on Commons?-- Swtpc6800 (talk) 02:54, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
I think every serious photographer shoots in RAW. But does it really matter? What is the point of discussing such an absurd suggestion?

Re:

  1. As long as the image not down scaled or JPEG not disturbed, there is no problem
  2. Taking pictures from Magazine or Web should specify the source & reason or else it will automatically go for deletion, So there is no problem for that
  3. If the image is in high quality (Above 3 or 4 MB) and once you put the reason for blurring or masking, no question arises
  4. I am doing 3 types search to find out the duplicates, but sometimes it will not succeed and the image will be on commons for ever, until someone claim copyright. Thoughts are required to minimize the uploading of copyrighted images, Such as if the image is less than 1 MB it should say to upload the high quality version, Problem will not be solved but it will be minimized...--Common-Man (talk) 19:34, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
  5. Low resolution picture are a possible victim of copyright, If he need to sell his image, He should not upload the low resolution photos to commons, and such photo will stand as an advertisement and if anybody wants the picture in good quality, need to pay the money. Its against commons free content policy--Common-Man (talk) 05:28, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
  6. If RAW is converted it will not ended in low quality, As i said if the image quality is quite high, there is no question (As long as the uploaders picture are of similar sizes (3-4 MB, or same camera...)--Common-Man (talk) 05:28, 27 September 2010 (UTC)


If fighting with copyright violations is such difficult task, I have an easier solution. Let's implement a certification system, where only certified trusted people would be allowed to upload anything to Commons. With this simple move all the hordes of evil vandals and infringers flooding this site with billions of copyrighted pictures would be easily kept at bay. Marac (talk) 20:13, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
Having the exif doesn't matter; many people copy other people's images with EXIF included. You've done nothing to solve Flikr washing, and I'm not sure that what you've gained is worth what you've lost by enforcing it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:02, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

September 27

Help on file uploading

Hi all,

I'm trying to upload an image from my own camera, which has not copyright but keep getting the following message which I presume is an error because the file does not appear in 'my contribs'.

"If you do not provide suitable license and source information, your upload will be deleted without further notice. Thank you for your understanding."

The summary box looks like this and the also checked the box to stipulate that the image is PD.

Description Front of Ribston Hall looking over the river Nidd
Source Own work
Author Thedavegray
Permission
(Reusing this file)		 Public Domain

Can anyone please point out the obvious :-)

Thanks Dave — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thedavegray (talk • contribs) 23:27, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I see you've been able to upload "File:RibstonHall.jpg", but you did not specify a licence for it. I've fixed the problem by applying the licence {{PD-self}} to it. To avoid the problem happening again, what are the steps you took to upload the file – what links did you click on? (By the way, please sign your messages by typing four tildes after them ("~~~~").) — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 18:09, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
Sample:If you start with the "Upload file" link on the left side, you reach Commons:Upload
There you can select "It is entirely my own work", which leads you to http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&uselang=ownwork
In the last part of the page there is a licensing header ("Licensing:"), there you should select the license you want to grant. ..  Docu  at 18:13, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Copyright notices and OTRS tickets

Everything looks OK, with an OTRS ticket, except that the Creative Commons requires to "keep intact all copyright notices for the Work". Which are the copyright notices of this work ?

A) © Bernardien Sternheim, 2004
B) © Ha Li Sang, 2009
C) © Some mysterious copyright owner who wrote the E-mail to the OTRS ?

How do we know if Bernardien Sternheim still owns the copyright on his work or if he sold the copyright to someone-else (or in cases when the painter is dead, copyright passes to his heirs, so that the copyright owner and the painter are two different people) ?

Is it impossible for Wikimedia Commons to provide the information reusers need when reusing the work? Reusers need a copyright notice so that they can comply with the Creative Commons terms.

Why is there no "Copyright notice" field in the information template or in the Creative Commons template ?

Or couldn't we have this field on the OTRS ticket template. So that we could have The permission, issued by copyright owner <name> for use of this work has been verified and archived in the Wikimedia OTRS system . Or if necessary, The permission, issued by <name1> on behalf of copyright owner <name2> for use of this work has been verified and archived in the Wikimedia OTRS system ?

At present, the OTRS tickets try to hide the identity of the copyright owner. But is that OK when on the opposite the Creative Commons legal code requests to "keep" them ? What if the copyright owner expects his name to be mentioned and complains ?

Let's assume that there is no copyright owner beyond the painter and the photographer. In that case how do we know who wrote the permission E-mail : is it Ha Li Sang or Bernardien Sternheim ? It could well be that the permission is coming from Ha Li Sang, ensuring that it is OK for the photographer, while we have yet no news from the painter.

I think there is a contradiction between an OTRS system whose purpose is to hide things, and free culture which supposes that reusers have all the information they need.

(An OTRS system is OK to store Wikimedia-only permissions, though)

What on earth do we need such bragging language as we find on {{WLANL}} "it's been validated" "you know, it so perfect" and so on ? If Wikimedia thinks it is validated-enough for its own use, it's fine. But what the reuser needs is information so that he/she can make his own assesment. The reusers need to be able to validate by themselves, without needing to trust some validating Wikimedia-superhero. Is is childish to think that reusers are children trusting the Wikimedia-superhero. Reusers are grown-ups. Teofilo (talk) 07:43, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree, the language is pompous, and the secrecy is a problem. Also, see Commons:Deletion requests/File:Cloaca Maxima 2.jpg for some real problems that are not acknowledged by the agent who gave the ticket. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 07:54, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
See also Commons:Deletion requests/File:Angela Romeo.jpg - the application of OTRS tag 2135722 is not verified at all. It is just saying: "We trust Jacob Truedson Demitz." But that is not clear from the tag. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 12:06, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
OTRS handles all kinds of issues so I understand the need for privacy, but in regards to image (or other copyright related issues) copyright I believe there needs to be a clear name associated with the OTRS. I can think of a few case I am aware of where several images were uploaded and tagged for deletion because they came from a "personal" facebook collection. The owner of the facebook account sent a permission either to the uploader or to OTRS saying it was ok to use the images, however the facebook accounts owner was also the subject of the images - all of which were taken over a period of years (Decades). When that issue was brought up OTRS re-contacted whoever it was that submitted the permission email and "confirmed" all the images to be owned by the subject of the photos via "Works for hire", "deceased relative" and so on. However in th elong run there is no public disclosure of who submitted the actual OTRS email or who many of the photographers of the images are. In another instance I had one OTRS volunteer tall me that they do not do any research in relation to emails that come in, which if true, further complicates the matter. I would hate to have a subject lay claim to my copyright, and even worse if they did it in "private" via an OTRS. If I allow use of an image I would most likely want a by-line/attribution, but by nature of OTRS that is not fully allowed. In other words most anyone, even the true copyright holder, can zip off an email saying "Sure, go ahead use it via CCL by-sa 3.0" and that is that. The end user may still never know who the copyright holder is - only that the image was uploaded by "USER:Iamhere" and that "use of this work has been verified and archived in the Wikimedia OTRS system". And OTRS recommends submitting an email from the source of publication, which is fine if it is a new image posted on the internet but not for an image that has been scanned by someone and posted somewhere on the net. In which case we can have a photo that somebody scanned from a hard copy source, posted on a Wiki, and claims to have received permission to do so and there is a possibility OTRS would never try to find out if that was accurate. When the original photographer comes along and questions "who gave permission?" there is currently no way to find that out. Soundvisions1 (talk) 20:17, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Of course, a requirement of attribution must mean that credit is given to the copyrightholder. Files with a CC-BY license without the name of the author are a problem, because even the OTRS people rarely will have real proof that the author transferred copyright to the uploader. Even if the collector has owns all the economic rights of a work, it would in many countries still be the original author whose name must be mentioned. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 07:18, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

For video practitioners or those who'd like to be - WikiVideo-l

If you're a video practitioner on Wikimedia Commons, please consider joining the WikiVideo-l discussion list. It's intended to be an always-available forum to discuss both technical and content issues related to video in Wikimedia projects. This is not to replace existing wiki pages, but intended to help build community and norms around video contributions, and to be open to newcomers and experienced users alike.--Eloquence (talk) 01:20, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Changing the title of a photo (typo) and inserting commons uploaded photos into a Wikipedia text

(deleted content here) Please do not ask one question at several places! Stay at Commons:Help_desk#change_the_title - that's the correct place for this question. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 16:04, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ShelleyMetzBaumannHawk_Logo.jpg

I am following up on the progress of the image upload permissions request for the File:ShelleyMetzBaumannHawk_Logo, which was resubmitted, per Andre Savik's request at permissions. Please let me know if this is approved for use.

Wendyfables (talk) 18:33, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Not much point leaving a message here, I think: try "Commons:OTRS/Noticeboard" instead. In any case, I wonder if OTRS verification is really needed since the logo is very simple and should qualify for {{PD-textlogo}}. It consists of two words superimposed on coloured rectangles. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 12:49, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
I'm borderline on the PD-textlogo part, if only because of the arrangement... there are basically five elements, somewhat creatively arranged. Could go either way I think. It would be a good idea to get an OTRS statement on it, in my opinion. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:00, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
I can't see it, probably because it's CMYK... AnonMoos (talk) 14:47, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Now this is odd. When I view the preview image on the image description page, all I see is "METZ" superimposed on a light blue rectangle, and "BAUMANN" on an orange rectangle. However, when I click on the image to see it at its full resolution, I see the rest of the image: "SHELLEY" on a grey rectangle, "HAWK" on a black rectangle, and the words "STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING" at the bottom. However, even the complete image looks pretty simple to me. It's basically four words in a sans-serif font superimposed on coloured rectangles, with some corners of the rectangles touching each other. But if OTRS confirmation can be obtained, better still. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 17:58, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

September 28

Can't upload files in FF 3.6.10 - Is it just me or is this a new issues?

I can load the page and select the file I want to upload but after clicking on open the file isn't there (Filename.jpg). The only way I can upload is to use IE(9 Beta) or Chrome which is time wasting since FF is my main browser. Bidgee (talk) 00:24, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

FF 3.6.10 works fine for me. - Erik Baas (talk) 02:15, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
Mine works as a charm. I suspect a conflict with an add-on. To troubleshoot, try to disable add-ons or create a new clean profile for testing. Marac (talk) 02:47, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
Done that and the issue is with the Firefogg (1.212) add-on even with a clean install. Bidgee (talk) 09:00, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Mistake in how PDF displays in thumbnail

Hi! The thumbnail of File:Sandiego afo poster020607 spa.pdf mistakenly displays. Should there be a bug report sent? WhisperToMe (talk) 01:37, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Are PDF thumbnails not supposed to display? I didn't realize this. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 06:39, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
Language problem alert. WhisperToMe meant "the tumbnail displays wrongly". The text is completely jumbled in the thumbnail, while it displays fine if you open the full PDF. Lupo 09:09, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for clarifying it, Lupo :) WhisperToMe (talk) 17:53, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
Oh, I see. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 09:51, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Superseded jpgs?

File:OldSacramento.jpg bears the superseded template, which says that it's been superseded by File:Old Sacramento.jpg. No question that the latter image is better quality; but is the superseded template really meant for jpgs? I read through all of the superseded-image-related policies, and they all talk about gifs and pngs and svgs, not inferior or superior jpgs. Nyttend (talk) 13:42, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, in general the policies also apply to JPGs. But only if the motif is exactly the same. That's not the case here. The images are clearly different and should be both kept. To give an example on how both of them are relevant: imagine somebody wants to create a pictorial timeline about how Big Four House changed over time. One of the images is from 2004, the other from 2008. So the images can be used to prove changes or the lack of changes between these two years. --Slomox (talk) 15:20, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
(ec) :I think the superseded template is now more generic... so, I don't think that it is automatically precluded from being used on JPGs. To my mind though it should be used when it is very obvious the new one is preferable in basically all circumstances -- say a larger, better JPG version of a logo vs one which has a lot of compression artifacts. For photograph JPGs like this one though... I don't feel it's appropriate. It's simply an alternate image of the subject, and "better" is a subjective thing better determined by other projects. I would remove it (which I see has been done), and instead have a category containing both images. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:26, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
"it should be used when it is very obvious the new one is preferable in basically all circumstances -- say a larger, better JPG version of a logo vs one which has a lot of compression artifacts."
I thought that when I have a better version of an identical image (less compression/artifacts or higher resolution) I should just upload it as a new version of the file using "Upload a new version of this file" link... May someone clarify this issue (preferably with some examples)? When we:
  1. upload a new version,
  2. upload as a new file and use the "superseded" template on the existing copy,
  3. upload as a new file but only put both versions in the proper category and add info in the "other versions" section of the infobox?
Thanks. Marac (talk) 16:34, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
If the file is identical except for obvious advantages like higher resolution or less artifacts you can safely overwrite the old image. But if for some reason somebody uploaded it under a new name (e.g. the uploader didn't know or was unsure whether it is allowed to overwrite images) you can put {{Superseded}} on the old file.
"upload under new name and put superseded" should be used if there is any possible valid doubt about which file is better. E.g. if the file type is different (e.g. logo in JPG replaced by PNG or SVG) or if the images have differences that do not fall under 'obvious advantages'. E.g. an off-color logo is replaced by a logo with correct color. This case should not be handled with an overwrite because other users might disagree which colors are right. PNG -> SVG conversion of coats of arms is another example. These were often controversial in the past when the SVG was not perfectly identical to the PNG.
"upload under new name and keep both" should be used if there is a valid reason to use the old version. Take e.g. File:Bildfehler-2.jpg. It's a version of File:Bildfehler.jpg in which an image defect was corrected. The defective image is kept as a possible illustration of "image defect". --Slomox (talk) 18:52, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for making that clear!Your answer was very helpful. Marac (talk) 09:13, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Am I missing something here?

I tagged File:Traction conventionnal curve.png as having "no source" and twice User:Pieter Kuiper has reverted me. Am I wrong in tagging this as no source, because I don't see one listed and I don't know what Pieter means by "it does not matter, this is standard stuff". Thanks ahead of time for any input. Wizard191 (talk) 18:16, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps he means that the image is so simple that it is ineligible for copyright and the source doesn't matter. If you want to know the source, you can ask the original uploader. He's still active and my guess is, that the graph is "own work". --Slomox (talk) 18:33, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
I changed the license to {{PD-ineligible}}. Would be good to ask the author to add {{Own}} and author. Amada44  talk to me 18:59, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
Ah, ok. I didn't realized that images could be exempt from copyright for simplicity. Thanks for clearing that up. Wizard191 (talk) 19:51, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
Marking stuff uploaded in 2004 for semi-speedy deletion is very bad practice and a good way to piss off people. Multichill (talk) 20:28, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

possible misidentification of portraits

A user in Spanish Wikipedia, Jaontiveros, has contacted me saying that File:GuadVictoriaChurubuscoDF.JPG and File:Guadalupe victoria.jpg are misidentified as Guadalupe Victoria, when they should be identified as Agustín de Iturbide. I took the first photo at a museum in Mexico City along with its label so I was sure at the time that it was Guadalupe Victoria. However, I cannot dismiss concerns as I am not Mexican and he is. How can we be sure?148.241.190.42 19:54, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not a expert but I'd say those two images are two different people. If I compare the two pictures with other pictures of Agustín de Iturbide, I'd say that the second one is indeed Agustín de Iturbide. --Slomox (talk) 20:43, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

October 1

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