This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Date categorisation and ISO 8601

There is a discussion at Commons:Categories for discussion/2013/06/Category:ISO 8601 that doesn't seem to be getting any results. Can a few more people join in please, and help us resolve the problem. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:00, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Follow list works differently on my mobile

Several months ago I notice that when I try to check for any mutations to my uploaded pages/files (wich I put on the follow list) my android mobile tels me that I have no pages in my follow list. On my laptop however I have 3886 files wich I follow. Why cant I see the same list on my mobile as I used to? Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:19, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

You mean Watchlist? --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 11:26, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes Smiley.toerist (talk) 15:31, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

@Smiley.toerist: I have no idea why, but it seems that the Special:Watchlist in mobile version shows only galleries. Would it work for you if you try Special:EditWatchlist instead? --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 09:04, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Creator:Beatrix Potter

I've just created Creator:Beatrix Potter. Is there a way to automate the inclusion of all the necessary interwiki links/ names, and authority control values, by pulling them from Wikidata? Andy Mabbett (talk) 12:18, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Not currently; needs bugzilla:47930 to be fixed. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 12:59, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. Is there any other method for automating the creation of such links? Andy Mabbett (talk) 13:01, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I guess not. @Yann, Jarekt, Billinghurst, and Rillke: ^^ --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 13:13, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

One can probably write some codes to do that but it seems kind of pointless since all those codes will become obsolete once wikidata is fully operational. So for the time being we are in wait and see mode. --Jarekt (talk) 04:54, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

January 03

New search (CirrusSearch) available as BetaFeature

We've finished building the search index for commons and enabled CirrusSearch as a BetaFeature. You can find it under the Beta tab as "New Search". Please give it a try. A couple of points of interest:

We implemented a feature that lets you weight matches more highly if they have certain templates. You can configure the cirrussearch-boost-templates message with defaults that will be used for all searches that use Cirrus but don't specify it with boost-templates:"". Have a look at the documentation at mw:Search/CirrusSearchFeatures#boost-templates:.22.22 and let me know if this is useful.
Cirrus will queue an index update for a page when you edit it, or edit a template it uses, or edit a template used in a template that uses it, etc. The direct edits should hit the index in under a minute. The template edits get in a different queue which has grown pretty long since we enabled Cirrus on commons. I'm not sure how long they'll take to hit the index at this point but I'm actively working on the problem.

Thanks. NEverett (WMF) (talk) 21:45, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

!!! Thank you. --SJ + 10:12, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Something like ignoring edits to markup templates like {{Information}} would be useful then. Thery're highly used but changing them does not really change the content of the pages using them. -- Rillke^(q?) 10:28, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

That got me excited for a while but it is a heavier technical lift then you think when you first hear it. The problem is that we deduplicate the jobs that trigger search updates (called linksUpdate) pretty aggressively and we don't have a way of storing information from the duplicate copy. So if a template changes that shouldn't cause a search update then one changes that should we stand a good chance of never hearing about it. A shame. NEverett (WMF) (talk) 22:16, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

While I'm here I should let you know that we're currently indexing the contents of all the file types we can crack open and easily suck text out of. [example]. It'll take a few days to finish the process so please be patient. NEverett (WMF) (talk) 22:16, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

NASA art program

Hi All

I just discovered the NASA art program. There is a small collection of images available on Flickr Commons here, they have a confusing copyright notice. Any help would be appreciated, there are quite a few famous artists who have taken part. If the NASA art program images were in the public domain then this would the a great resource.

Thanks

--Mrjohncummings (talk) 23:22, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

{{PD-USGov-NASA}} applies. As NASA points out, this does not eliminate personal rights for portraits of identifiable people and for those we can use {{Personality rights}} in addition to the PD license. --Fæ (talk) 23:41, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi Fae

Thanks very much for the quick response (and the answer I wanted to hear). I'll try to sort this out over the next few days.

Cheers

Mrjohncummings (talk) 23:53, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Great! I've been looking for an image by Theodore Hancock to add to the article I wrote on him. Please let me know if you find one. Andy Mabbett (talk) 11:24, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Woah, hold on. User:Mrjohncummings and Fæ, these are not necessarily {{PD-USGov-NASA}}. This only covers works by government employees in their normal course of duty. This for example is by "Jack Perlmutter", and this states he was commissioned by NASA to paint various space missions. And then we have the likes of this by Andy Warhol. And this by Annie Leibovitz. And this by Chakaia Booker. Please do not upload this stream to Commons, as without tangible evidence that NASA actually holds copyright, they are copyvios. -- Russavia 22:32, 2 January 2014‎ (UTC)

Thanks for highlighting these. Luckily they are easily distinguished as they all say "All rights reserved" in the description, which seems correct. Anyone uploading from this stream should filter these out. --Fæ (talk) 22:40, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Well according to Flickr Commons NASA has certified these have "NO KNOWN COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS". Could this be a work-for-hire situation with NASA as the copyright-holder (and hence obliged to release into public domain). -- Colin (talk) 23:01, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

No. --Fæ (talk) 23:07, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

December 31

Common street names and Saint-Michel

I created Category:Boulevard Saint-Michel, Etterbeek and put it under Category:Boulevard Saint-Michel. This last category has no upperlevel category. Is there general category for all Saint-michel street names? There is one for "Place de la Republique". Furthermore Saint-michel is used to lots of churches, institutions, etc, but I category for the saint itself. Maybe a category for things named after the saint? Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:47, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

There is Category:Disambiguation. Other stuff tends to break the topical categorization. -- Docu at 12:38, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

We have the upper-level category "Category:Eponyms" with the subcategory "Category:Things named after people". I think a new subcategory tree starting with "Category:Things named after Christian saints" would fit nicely under "Eponyms" and "Category:Christian saints". — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 13:40, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I have been looking for a saint Michael, but the archangel Michael is not classified as a saint. Confusing as in the Roman Catholic church one talks of "Saint Michael".Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:50, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, "Category:Things named after angels" then, although I think it is probably all right to put Michael the Archangel under the "Christian saints" category. The English Wikipedia article "Michael (archangel)" states that "Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, and Lutherans refer to him as 'Saint Michael the Archangel' and also as 'Saint Michael'". — SMUconlaw (talk) 12:54, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Login using API and Javascript

I am planning to write a small HTA with JScript but cannot get even over the first step: to login. The test script is as simple as (the password replaced by *):

function wcLogin() {
  var xhr= new XMLHttpRequest();
  xhr.open('POST', 'https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php', false);
  xhr.setRequestHeader('User-Agent', 'NeoLexx HTA beta');
  xhr.setRequestHeader('Content-Type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
  xhr.send('lgname=Neolexx&lgpassword=********');
  window.alert(xhr.responseText);
}

By calling wcLogin I am just getting back the default API help page, no errors reported. By looking at the response headers I also see MediaWiki-API-Error: help which is completely meaningless to me. I carefully read API:Login help but it didn't provide any clue. Any suggestions? --NeoLexx (talk) 15:06, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Log-in is a 2-step procedure. The first time you post the credentials, you get a token back that you then have to re-post together with the credentials for the login to be complete. The reason why you get the help page is that you forgot action=login. I'll provide you with a working example in 10 minutes. -- Rillke^(q?) 15:11, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

function wcLogin() {
  var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(),
      xhr2 = new XMLHttpRequest(),
      userName = 'Neolexx',
      passphrase = '********',
      enc = encodeURIComponent,
      sReq = 'action=login&lgname=' + enc(userName) + '&lgpassword=' +  enc(passphrase) + '&format=json';
      
  xhr.open('POST', 'https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php', false);
  xhr2.open('POST', 'https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php', false);
  xhr.setRequestHeader('User-Agent', 'NeoLexx HTA beta');
  xhr2.setRequestHeader('User-Agent', 'NeoLexx HTA beta');
  xhr.setRequestHeader('Content-Type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
  xhr2.setRequestHeader('Content-Type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
  
  xhr.send(sReq);
  
  var r = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText);
  if (r.login && r.login.result === 'NeedToken') {
    xhr2.send(sReq + '&lgtoken=' + enc(r.login.token));
    alert(xhr2.responseText)
  } else {
    alert('You did not handle this case.');
  }
}

wcLogin()

That should work, although not nice because XHRs should be sent async and because you're repeating a lot of stuff. My suggestion is you're making a dedicated function for communicating with the MW-API. If you have stuff like promises available from a library, make use of them! Please credit me in your application. -- Rillke^(q?) 15:22, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

> The reason why you get the help page is that you forgot action=login OMG

... Great thank you! --NeoLexx (talk) 15:51, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Commons:Multi-license copyright tags

A file on commons might require many types of licenses, for example for the original work in the US and in the country of origin and for the digitization effort (like taking a photograph). As a result over the years the community developed many (often duplicating) ways of combining those templates into cohesive single block. A while ago I was cleaning up some of the more exotic and rarely used templates and merging them with more established templates, and was adding a way for some of the outer templates to pass required parameters to the inner templates. In the process I developed a cheatsheet of best practices, as observed in the wild and today moved it to Commons:Multi-license copyright tags. Please review, improve and expand. --Jarekt (talk) 16:54, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

I know I am a bit early, but I have always been in advance of my time... ;o) Yann (talk) 19:43, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Yann, and a very happy new year to you too! --SJ + 04:10, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

January 01

Image board

Has anyone ever thought of creating an image board on Commons? We can discuss the merits and educational values of each picture posted in a forum-like and more relaxing environment. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 02:06, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

You mean like 4chan? :-) --Dschwen (talk) 03:07, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Uh, yeah, like 4chan I guess... TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 09:00, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

That seems like a fine idea to me. We don't have wiki forums per se, but we certainly have threaded discussions very like them, on the newer wikis. And someone could set up a canonical (or anti-canonical) forum server, that the community could choose to link to from appropriate pages or sidebars. --SJ + 04:12, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Coordinates in UploadWizard

Hello. I forgot to write coordinates (select from map) when I was uploading photos with UploadWizard (at Describe stage). How can I do it now with each file? Xaris333 (talk) 21:01, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Manually insert the template {{Location}} (for coordinates in degrees, minutes and seconds) or {{Location dec}} (for coordinates in decimals) below the {{Information}} template. For an example, click on the "Edit" link for "File:Pulau Ubin, Singapore - 20070211-02.jpg". — SMUconlaw (talk) 21:05, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

You may use this tool which creates the template and you just have to copy and paste. -- Rillke^(q?) 21:14, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Thx both of you. Can I ask one more thing: I put the coordinates of the place that is been showed in the photo or the coordinates of the camera location? Xaris333 (talk) 21:33, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Camera location is preferred. --Dschwen (talk) 21:41, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

If you want to be very thorough there is {{Location}} and {{Location dec}} for camera location and {{Object location}} and {{Object location dec}} for location of what is depicted. - Jmabel ! talk 01:15, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

File renaming request

Is File:I like this image because it's showing peace to the world by being happy and show a smile to show peace to the world!☆☆☆☆ 2014-01-03 22-29.jpg eligible for renaming? I'm not entirely up to date with the file renaming policies but I don't think this title is completely appropriate. I'm not sure what the new name to call it is, so I'm bringing it here for some suggestions. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 23:17, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I'd say this is even eligible for deletion. --Dschwen (talk) 23:24, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

This image illustrates hand gestures. This image illustrates smiling. This image illustrates large (and IMO lovely) everted lips. Near as I can tell it is not like any other images we offer. I added some categories I think are appropriate. I suggest COM:SCOPE includes documenting everyday items and everyday events.

As for a replacement name, how about File:A happy young woman smiles, and flashes a peace sign.jpg? Geo Swan (talk) 03:15, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

How do you know she is "happy"? --Dschwen (talk) 03:53, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Her hand looks bigger than her face. Just a snap shot with a wide focal length almost touching the camera on her hand. Delete. J e e 04:26, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

January 04

My image got locked up when they did database maintenance

I uploaded an image at the same time the database went down yesterday. The image appears in Commons, but it only has a link that says "create." The image is here, and the file name is Pryor House.JPG. Do I need to upload this again, or is this version salvageable? Thanks, Jeffrey Beall (talk) 01:59, 4 January 2014 (UTC).

Just click "Create" and add the usual {{Information}}. - Jmabel ! talk 05:53, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

January 05

Special:Contributions/Kloew5115

Sorry if this is the wrong forum to post this in, but I have no idea where I am supposed to go for this and if it turns out that someone finds a better home for this thread, it'd be much appreciated.

It seems most of the contributions from this user are taken from other websites, a quick check on the Google Images tab will do, but I need someone's help in checking all their contributions to see if they meet the threshold of originality and can be tagged with pd-ineligible or copyvio as appropriate, since their upload history composes primarily of logos. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 12:38, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Done deleted all thanks for bringing it to our attention, very clearly these were all copyright violations Gnan garra 13:50, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Nominate for deletion for without account

Why the Nominate for deletion link in toolbox is enabled by default in Commons interface. I think this feature should appear by default after log in. --89.72.28.182 21:00, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

More that occasionally, a non-logged-in user makes a nomination for deletion that is upheld. We do get a higher percentage of really silly nominations for deletion from people who are not logged in, but I don't think that is particular to nomination for deletion: they make more bad edits. Why exactly would you single this out as a tool to take away from non-logged in users? (Tone is hard to get across in print sometimes, my question is not rhetorical; you've stated an opinion, but you haven't given any rationale for this suggested policy change. Hard to imagine this going anywhere without the latter.) - Jmabel ! talk 01:12, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Worth further discussion after SUL finalisation occurs, but today, IP editors here can be experienced and trusted users on other projects who don't have an account here (due to not owning the SUL account attached to their username at their home project) and not necessarily inexperienced editors who don't really understand the rules and policies here. Nick (talk) 01:42, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
- And there are a few very experienced users (only a few, but they exist) who have chosen not to create accounts, although this is rarer on Commons than on Wikipedia, since it deprives them of upload privileges. - Jmabel ! talk 17:04, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Clarification re logos of sports teams

I have seen quite a number of logos of sports teams on Wikipedia (e.g. the Saracens F.C. article, or Category:English rugby union logos. But the Upload Wizard refuses to accept "Non-free use rationale logo" as a valid tag when I try to upload a sport's team's logo. Are Wikipedians allowed to upload sports logos to illustrate an infobox? If so, what is the procedure, please? Or am I doing something wrong during the upload process, e.g. using the wrong tag? Thank you. DocDee 12:37, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Commons doesn't accept fair-use content. You can upload it to local projects like en.wikipedia directly. See w:Wikipedia:Non-free content and w:Wikipedia:File Upload Wizard. INeverCry 00:44, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the information INeverCry, you have been a great help - much appreciated.DocDee 7:15, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Automated tools failing to upload images

Twice in the last 2 days I've had automated tools completely fail to upload files. First, DerivativeFX claimed to have uploaded the file, but instead redirected me to a completely blank edit form. Now the Move-to-commons assistant claimed to upload a file, but in fact did not. Regular upload (haven't been using UW) and flickr transfers have been fine. I can file individual bug reports, but these two failures of heavily used tools are somewhat odd and, I felt, worth reporting. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 22:41, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I had the same problems yesterday with For the Common Good. But even uploading manually didn't work well - these files are not displayed properly, while they seem to be fine when downloaded locally: File:Лотоцький О. Сторінки минулого. Частина 2.djvu, File:Лотоцький О. Сторінки минулого. Частина 3.djvu, File:Лотоцький О. Сторінки минулого. Частина 4.djvu. Is there a way to fix them? --DixonD (talk) 08:20, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I think the problem with the DJVU files is a rendering issue on Commons separate from the uploading; you may want to make a separate section here for them. I tried reuploading one and it gave the same issue. Thanks for confirming the upload-tool issues. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 16:22, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

When I tried to open the djvu file locally, I got EvinceDocument:ERROR:/build/buildd-evince_2.30.3-2-i386-XSLfOu/evince-2.30.3/./libdocument/ev-document-misc.c:58:ev_document_misc_get_thumbnail_frame: assertion failed: (width_r >= 0 && height_r >= 0) Aborted, which suggests that it has a page with either negative width or height (or something really funky is going on). [This is just for rendering problems, upload problems are probably unrelated]. Bawolff (talk) 06:05, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Collaboration – Anyone remember that?

Maybe I'm losing my marbles, but I seem to recall that we used to have ways of doing things, like deletions and renames, that were based on collaboration and "many eyeballs". These seem to be a thing of the past. Twice today, I see snap decisions made by admins that IMHO should have had more time spent on them, more people look at them, but instead were done on the spot. In both cases, they've now caused more trouble than the initial situation. Fastily deletes an image, File:Jess Dixon in his flying automobile.jpg, as a "copyvio" (no more detail than that), when I'm pretty sure it had a valid licence on it last time I looked. He won't discuss it, so now it's off to Undelete and wasting yet more time for more people.

The category Category:Bentley 4½-litre 1930 is so obviously "wrong" that it's deleted on sight. Only to be replaced by Category:Bentley 4,5-litre 1930! Now the question of where we keep photos of the Bentley 4½ Litre (for that is its name) is a good one, but I've never seen this very famous model of car known by anything other than "4½" and never "4.5". What we certainly should not start doing is the truly bizarre idea of swapping the hateful half for using commas to represent decimal points. Maybe there's a category rename needed here. Maybe it's a category rename that abandons COMMONNAME, because Commons sure loves to do that one. But we are not going to start using commas for decimal points.

Once upon a time we did collaboration. Now we have admins. Admins so all-powerful and so importantly busy with Serious Bizniz that they are not to be challenged. Andy Dingley (talk) 03:23, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I restored that image. A previous DR was kept. As for the category, I think that we shouldn't have characters like ½ in a category name, but a redirect is OK. Regards, Yann (talk) 06:56, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

It seems a strange decision not to call the vehicle by it's usual name and rather to make up a name for it as some don't like the original name in categories, even stranger not to discus it beforehand Oxyman (talk) 17:43, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Andy’s basic statement, and, being fairly new here in DRs and general categorization, it is a sweet-sour feeling that once things were better. Any input in a DR, be it either keep or delete, is often met with indifference or outright displeasure by admins. That’s mostly so about keep-votes (I catch myself dreading to express my opinion that this or that image may be interesting to keep, because I know there’s a bucketload of abuse coming), but also in delete-votes, even those which are closed in favour of deletion. Allow me a caricature:

Nominator: Delete this because offscope — naked ladies are scary
me: Naked ladies are in scope. On the other hand, this image is a copyvio because So-and-So.
closing admin: Deteled per nom.
me: (Whoa, am I invisible?)

Kinda sad. I wish I could remember about collaboration in DRs. -- Tuválkin ✉ 03:38, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

An open door to UNESCO's knowledge

Hello and happy new year everybody.

Building peaceful, democratic and inclusive knowledge societies across the world is at the heart of UNESCO’s mandate. Universal access to information is one of the fundamental conditions to achieve global knowledge societies. This condition is not a reality in all regions of the world.

In order to help reduce the gap between industrialized countries and those in the emerging economy, UNESCO has decided to adopt an Open Access Policy for its publications by making use of a new dimension of knowledge sharing - Open Access.

Open Access means free access to scientific information and unrestricted use of electronic data for everyone. With Open Access, expensive prices and copyrights will no longer be obstacles to the dissemination of knowledge. Everyone is free to add information, modify contents, translate texts into other languages, and disseminate an entire electronic publication.

For UNESCO, adopting an Open Access Policy means to make thousands of its publications freely available to the public. Furthermore, Open Access is also a way to provide the public with an insight into the work of the Organization so that everyone is able to discover and share what UNESCO is doing. - See more at: http://en.unesco.org/open-access/#sthash.0xSeJOsv.dpuf

Next here.

Ready to upload it on Commons ?

--ComputerHotline (talk) 10:04, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I hope so. On pages 2-3 of UNESCO Open Access Policy for publications, it says:

Any publication created by a staff member for whom the Publications Board has given its approval on or after 31st July 2013 shall be published under CC BY SA license. As a reminder, according to UNESCO’s Rules and Regulations, all intellectual property rights concerning any work produced by a member of the Secretariat as part of his/her official duties, shall be vested in the Organization.

Any person external to UNESCO who co-authors a publication with a member of the Secretariat shall assign copyright to UNESCO. UNESCO authors are responsible for informing co-authors of the Open Access Policy and for obtaining the rights of the external co-authors. A permission form is provided by ERI/DPI for this purpose. Therefore, all co-authored content shall be published under CC BY SA license.

For any publication produced in whole by a member of the Secretariat and published by an external publisher, UNESCO should retain the copyright of the publication. ERI/DPI shall negotiate an agreement with the publisher and determine the CC license under which the publication will be released. If permitted by the publisher, CC BY SA will be used.

Resources published by external publishers that have received funding in whole or in part from UNESCO shall be made available under one of the CC IGO licenses, with an embargo period acceptable if required by the publisher that should not exceed 12 months. In this context, external publishing partners will be strongly encouraged to apply the most liberal license possible.

Seems that a new specific license template should be created, eventually. While there’s already a lot of uploading work to be done, some issues need to be clarified. I wonder especially at the retroactivity of this licensing. -- Tuválkin ✉ 04:17, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

What to do when license and image metadata don't correspond?

I ask the above because of this image.. The CC3 license releases the image, the metadata despite saying in French, prohibits reproduction of the pic. This obviously goes against the CC3. What do you do? CharlieTheCabbie (talk) 01:46, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

If "Baptiste ROUSSEL" is the same as "User:Lunon92" then there's no real problem as far as Commons is concerned, but you might want to call the inconsistency to his attention. If they're not the same, then there's definitely a big problem... AnonMoos (talk) 01:40, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

They're not the same person, AnonMoos, I suspect. See here - Lunon92's former user page, which shows his name as Léo Duval, which is how I saw him somewhere else. Baptiste ROUSSEL and this guy most likely aren't the same. It seems Lunon92 has a lot of localised upload to fr.wikipedia, maybe they should be checked. I smell a gigantic rat. CharlieTheCabbie (talk) 14:44, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I created a DR. Yann (talk) 16:05, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Metadata can be changed like normal data (Just unfortunately not online), so once its determined which is correct, the incorrect info should be changed. Bawolff (talk) 05:17, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

"Reproduction interdite" in "Copyright holder" field makes not much sense; but images in Category:Wikimania 2013 by Beria need immediate attention. J e e 05:38, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Jkadavoor: What's the problem? Yann (talk) 16:06, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Yann, all the images in that category are CC BY-SA Beria; but EXIF says CC0 Wilfredo R. Rodriguez H. Not a big issue; but need to be corrected. I already informed her; but it seems no easy solution than upload over all of them. J e e 16:17, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Copyrights

Hi. I just saw that this page claims copyrights on the image I've captured and freely uploaded Pfefferminze natur peppermint.jpg. You can't claim copyrights on something that is in the public domain, right? Alex‘s SeeSide 14:59, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Your question if very confusing. You say at File:Pfefferminze natur peppermint.jpg it is your photo, and you licensed it under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported, so unless you are lying there, how would it be in the public domain?
Assuming what you are accurate at File:Pfefferminze natur peppermint.jpg, the use at http://german.alibaba.com/product-gs/chinese-pure-natural-organic-peppermint-oil-mentha-arvensis-oil-natural-mint-oil-cas-8006-90-4-617524885.html is a violation of your copyright. You should probably consider serving them notice, or having your lawyer do so. However, since they are based in Hong Kong, this may be a bit tricky, because Hong Kong is not the best on enforcing copyright law. In any case, you should add the {{Published}} template to File talk:Pfefferminze natur peppermint.jpg with an indication that the reuse was illegal. - Jmabel ! talk 18:09, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I’m sure that, by "public domain", Alex means simply "free" (as in acceptable in Commons). -- Tuválkin ✉ 13:56, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Maybe, but if he's going to involve lawyers, or even send a message to the company that posted it, he'd better not use that term, since he would have no standing to demand someone stop doing anything (including a false claim of copyright) with a public domain image. - Jmabel ! talk 17:07, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree with your fierce demand for clarity, not being the most mellow type myself, but, on a different topic, isn’t a false claim of copyright akin to some one sticking a "no trespassing" sign on public land? While it infringes the rights of no legitimate landowner, it does restrict the rights of everybody, right? -- Tuválkin ✉ 02:34, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

In fact, the copyright vilator is Jiangxi Global Natural Spice Co., Ltd. You can make a complaint at http://legal.alibaba.com/index.htm so that alibaba will probably take action per http://www.alibaba.com/help/safety_security/policies_rules/IPR/002.html But use correct words (© Aleksa Lukic; CC BY 3.0) as Jmabel suggested. J e e 17:49, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

January 06

category loops

the are some category loops. i think they should be solved. --Akkakk (talk) 13:46, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

@Dschwen: Any plans on this issue? --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 14:19, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
You can always add them to the meta category Categories which are children or grand-children of themselves. I have been slowly populating it and keen volunteers seems to ensure it gets emptied every day. --Fæ (talk) 14:37, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Addressing both above comments: I think that Categories that are children of itself are are completely uncontroversial cleanup task. Grandchildren of itself, is probably rather uncontroversial as well. But other larger loops may not be an issue that we need to remedy. I had a discussion about this and one point I heard was that entanglement increases discoverability. Also it was pointed out that being a subcategory does not have the strong semantic meaning of being a fully contained sub-subject. Loops like the hypothetical loop Politics -> Politics of Country X -> Educational policies of country X -> High school curriculum of country X -> Social sciences -> Politics exist, where every individual step makes perfect sense. A decision where to cut this chain just to avoid a loop does not seem straight forward to me.
Loops seem to be just one symptom of the peculiarities of the commons category system. Look at this actual example of a (non circular) string of subcategories: Children → Adults with children → Parents → Mothers → Mothers in art → Virgin Mary → Mysteries of the rosary → Christian mission → Missionaries → Christian missionaries by denomination → Roman Catholic missionaries → Benedict of Nursia → Benedictines → Benedictine monasteries → Benedictine abbeys → Benedictine abbeys by country → Benedictine abbeys in the United Kingdom → Westminster Abbey → People buried in Westminster Abbey → Charles Darwin → HMS Beagle (ship, 1820) → Robert FitzRoy → Fitz Roy massif. It put a mountain in Argentina under the Supercategory Children, yet every individual step seems to make sense to me. It is only with powerful category inspection tools that we get a bigger picture of our category system, which we usually only see up close without much context.
I think we need to build consensus first about what we want category relations to mean before we go out and try to fix the category graph. In the mean time - shameless plug - check out the fastcci gadget!. It will show you the category chains that led to the inclusion of an image in the intersection results. I find it quite interesting to guess and then read these. --Dschwen (talk) 23:19, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I think some categories are going to be natural loops, in this I seeing event categories where a group of photographs taken for an event are in a subcategory but they also exist in the parent as the image is about the event. Also the category system we use has an inherent problem in that the further away from the parent a category becomes the less useful the content becomes. Definitely we need to explore how to make 14million media files more individually accessible but focusing solely on one part also has the potential to cause more harm than good. I also think it may be time to consider the primary categories also contain a quality portion(QI, VI & FP) as people searching there are more likely to be looking for generic use rather than specific, but in doing so it would be the creation of another loop. Gnan garra 00:07, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Gnangarra, have you looked at the gadget I linked to above? It Does exactly that, showing FPs and QIs in and below a category. It is not perfect yet, but it is a start. --Dschwen (talk) 00:52, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Forteen million, you say? It is close to 20 million, now, right? -- Tuválkin ✉ 02:29, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Category structure use more categorizing criteria and reflect more types of relations between items/categories. Purely hyponymic or meronymic categorization should not create cycles but its combining with other types of relations can cause some quasi-loops. Such loops are generally not preffered and should be avoided if possible but in principle, they must not be erroneous. However, an analysis of such loops can help to discover typical problems which can be solved by improvement of categorization rules and customs. There exist some types of relations where the direction of the relation is not determined clearly (original building/repurposed building, animals/zoology, Benedict of Nursia/Benedictines etc.) and some areas of the category tree use one way, some another one. E.g. any person can be a parent category (as a owner or founder of any organization) and simultaneously a subcategory (as its member or manager). Both is quite correct. --ŠJů (talk) 02:06, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

The exact eample of the latter is one of the (very few!) categories listed in Fae’s maint. cat.: Category:Ove Arup‎ founder and manager of Category:Arup‎ -- Tuválkin ✉ 02:29, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Editing error

I'm getting an "Unexpected non-MediaWiki exception encountered, of type 'Exception'" error message, every time I try to edit Commons:Voice intro project. Andy Mabbett (talk) 21:54, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

It is very likely something triggered by the translate extension. A very conclusive error message btw :) I suggest you report this on bugzilla: including the steps to reproduce this error. -- Rillke^(q?) 22:10, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Done, thank you. See https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59740 Andy Mabbett (talk) 22:44, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Problem appears to be fixed by tech staff. —Mono 23:04, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

January 07

Misnamed file

File:Salisbury Cathedral St John the Evangelist2.jpg

This isn't St John the Evangelist. He is depicted as a young man with no beard, long hair and an eagle. This person is female with a wimple (worn by women) over her chin and a dove with a halo (representing the Holy Spirit) on her shoulder. I am trying to discover who she is. In the meantime, the file should be renamed as "Salisbury Cathedral female saint with a dove.jpg". Amandajm (talk) 00:43, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your notice. Use {{Rename}} template for such proposals and file page for the discussion what is on the image. I copied your notice there now. --ŠJů (talk) 01:33, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Category problems

Category: Salisbury Cathedral-Morning chapel should be renamed as "Salisbury Cathedral - Morning Chapel"

Note the addition of spaces i.e this is the Morning Chapel in Salisbury Cathedral, not the "Cathedral-Morning" chapel at Salisbury"

Two categories should be merged. They contain similar content, and one is mis-named.

The category "Statues in Salisbury Cathedral‎" is misnamed. The statues are not in the cathedral. The statues shown are those of the West Front.

The other category is named "Sculptures of Salisbury Cathedral‎". It has only a few images, but includes an image of the West Front, probably with the intention of making the location of individual works possible.

My recommendation to sort out above problem is that

a new category is formed named "Salisbury Cathedral - West Front". That an image of the West Front and all the individual images of sculpture from the west front (that is most of the present images) go in that category.
The category "Sculptures of Salisbury Cathedral" remains, and into it are placed all those images that are not west front statues, i.e. the bronze statue which is outside the cathedral, and any other significant works, including interior sculpture.

Amandajm (talk) 01:01, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Use {{Move}} template for proposals for simple rename or merge of individual categories and use category talk pages for the discussion. Even though some proposals remain many month without any reaction, the proposal will be foundable for the users of the category as well as in the maintenance category of move requests. --ŠJů (talk) 01:16, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Abuse filter for COM:QIC?

Some colleagues who have know-how and experience with Special:AbuseFilter may want to help me please. It is far away from being the first time I must undo such edits in Commons:Quality images candidates/candidate list, where, as it seems, some people periodically have kind of invisible edit conflicts resulting in unintentional (?) deletion of previous (helpful) comments by other users. Moreover, the lost comments often have to be restored by hand, if a simple revert meanwhile isn't possible due to intermediate edits. Really, it's not anymore funny. I'd like to know if it's possible to establish an abuse filter which would activate a warning message for anyone (except User:QICbot), who is about to save an edit with a decrease of the page's total size in KB, before finally saving the edit. Thanks --A.Savin 18:19, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

This condition might work (for size decrease > 50; Trigger these actions after giving the user a warning should be checked to give a warning):

(article_articleid == 1894972) &
!("bot" in user_groups) &
(old_size - new_size > 50)

Also please Special:AbuseFilter/test before enabling. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 11:00, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Zhuyifei1999, thanks for the advice, I've just created Special:AbuseFilter/128, tested it, and it seems to work fine. The only thing I miss so far is an explanation in this warning message which would ensure that any user understands what exactly on their edit is "harmful". For example something like this:

You are about to remove content from Commons:Quality images candidates/candidate list. Please check your edit before saving it.

Can you help me to implement it? --A.Savin 11:17, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm neither an interface editor nor an Abuse Filter editor :/. To display a custom message, there has to be a page in 'MediaWiki' ns with the message. See System message to use for warning: selector. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 11:26, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

OK, I have now created the MW warning and included it. It seems to work, but: everytime I tested it using the "undo" button (rather than removing sth. by hand) the edit had been saved without the warning message; although the concerning action remained in the filter log (see [1] for entries at 11:42 and 11:45 UTC). Is there any way to modify the filter so that any removal of content (no matter if by hand, undo, or rollback) always goes through the warning message? --A.Savin 11:55, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

~~Change 50 to 0 will do so, but even a minor formatting/fixing (such as removing an extra }) will trigger that filter (which I don't recommend) --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 12:01, 8 January 2014 (UTC)~~

It didn't go through??? --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 12:03, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Works for me: Special:AbuseLog/420920 --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 12:07, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, just found out that it doesn't work for self-reverts only. Strange, but not disturbing. Thanks a lot. --A.Savin 12:16, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

File:Japanese Fairy Tales — Teresa Peirce Williston.pdf

Hello, fellow Commoners. Can some artists who have experience working with PDF editors help me crop out the first Google page notice for this file? It'd be much appreciated, TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 22:44, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

You could use en:Pdftk for this:

pdftk Japanese_Fairy_Tales_—_Teresa_Peirce_Williston.pdf cat 2-??? output Japanese_Fairy_Tales_—_Teresa_Peirce_Williston_cleaned.pdf

(replace "???" with the page number of the last page)

There's also a graphical user interface called PDFTK Builder, if you don't like using a command line interface. --El Grafo (talk) 16:01, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

January 08

A simple task for a bot?

I just noticed that all the uploads in Category:Media contributed by Zentralbibliothek Solothurn have a technically small (only one character needs to be changed in the description) but still substantial error: The dimensions of the artwork are in fact given in mm, but the artwork template is using "unit=cm" by mistake. So, e.g. File:Zentralbibliothek Solothurn - 212 Solothurn - a0038.tif is wrongly displaying "Height: 135 cm (53.1 in). Width: 178 cm (70.1 in)" when it should be mm (the original database entries at www.zbsolothurn.ch give the dimensions in mm). So, could a bot change "unit=cm" into "unit=mm" in these file descriptions? I don't know who to ask for this task - according to Commons:Bots, User:O (bot) is a bot that could be used for text replacements, but its owner seems to be more or less inactive - a bot job request at User talk:O from October was left unanswered, so I assume that O is too busy. Gestumblindi (talk) 18:32, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

@Gestumblindi: I guess I can do that if you're OK with it. odder (talk) 19:06, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Great, I gladly accept your offer, odder :-) Gestumblindi (talk) 20:28, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

@Gestumblindi: The bot is doing the replacement now. odder (talk) 20:36, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

@Gestumblindi: And it's finished. odder (talk) 08:22, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

@odder - thank you! :-) Gestumblindi (talk) 20:45, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

January 09

A Multimedia Vision for 2016

Happy new year, everyone!

File:Multimedia vision 2016.webm

Multimedia Vision Video (5:12)

Many thanks for all your wonderful multimedia contributions last year! We’re deeply grateful for all that you are doing to help create a richer media experience on Commons, Wikipedia and all Wikimedia sites --- and now that we have a full multimedia team, we look forward to making some great progress together this year.

To kick off the new year, we invite you to check out this proposed multimedia vision for 2016, which was prepared by the Wikimedia Foundation’s Multimedia team, with guidance from community members.

The best way to view this vision is to watch this video. You can also browse through these annotated slides at your leisure.

This possible scenario is intended for discussion purposes, to help us visualize how we could improve our user experience over the next three years. This particular exploration proposes ways to integrate Wikipedia more closely with Commons, so that Wikipedians could contribute more easily to our free media repository, wherever they are.

This presentation is meant to spark community feedback on goals we are considering. To that end, we hosted several roundtable discussions in recent weeks, and are now inviting more community members to chime in online.

After you’ve viewed the video, we would be grateful if you could share your feedback in this discussion.

Note that the designs shown here are only meant to illustrate a possible experience − and any final implementation may be quite different. We expect to adjust this vision from time to time, based on your feedback and our own findings.

In coming weeks, we will start more discussions on some key features outlined in this proposed vision, and hope you will join those conversations as well, so we can make informed decisions together as a movement. More on this next week.

Thanks again for all that you do. We look forward to more collaborations with you! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 19:31, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

January 10

A gadget for submitting images to replace

I think about something like User:Sreejithk2000/JustReplace.js gadget, however it didn't work for me. This gadget needs rewrite to submit image on User:CommonsDelinker/commands/filemovers. Could someone do this update (or create a new script)? Thanks in advance! --Rezonansowy (talk) 00:11, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Anyone? --Rezonansowy (talk) 10:55, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Automatic color correction

I corrected the color of this old picture using Photoshop. Initially the image was "pink", now you can distinguish some color. Because there are a lot of "pink" pictures like this, do you think it can be possible in future to add some function to commons to correct pictures' colors, similar to "request orientation"? --Daniele Pugliesi (talk) 01:49, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

p.s.: I reverted my correction because it is written in the page: "Please do not overwrite this file", however my question is still valid. --Daniele Pugliesi (talk) 01:55, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, that would be cool. I am quite sure it is already possible to do this 100% client side with modern browsers (so no tool or bot would be required, just a pile of JS-code). -- Rillke^(q?) 22:18, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

In this case , do you know where I can propose this function? --Daniele Pugliesi (talk) 03:08, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

That pile wouldn't even be that huge. I have done a similar thing a while ago for on the fly gamma correction. Might be a nice tool. One mode that shows some sliders to edit a color correction and save it as a template in the image description and one mode to let the viewer apply the available corrections (maybe a default ccorrection that gets applied automatically?). --Dschwen (talk) 17:13, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Gadget-ColorTune.js is a proof of concept. It only does a brightness gamma correction, is a bit slow, but it tackles the cross origin issues and shows how to perform the image->canvas replacement and pixeldata changes (@Rillke: , @Daniele Pugliesi: ). --Dschwen (talk) 17:29, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually it is pretty responsive now that I tabulate the transform first :-). --Dschwen (talk) 17:36, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

And now with independent gamma for each channel. The example image looks pretty good with a gammas of 1.4, 0.75, and 0.65 (for R,G, and B). --Dschwen (talk) 18:26, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Wow, impressive. Now "just" uploading and JPEG encoding (preserving metadata) is missing. -- Rillke^(q?) 19:14, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Kim Jong-un

This article credits its images to Wikimedia Commons, yet I cannot seem to be able to find the same image here. Has anyone found it or has it been deleted, and is now only viewable to administrators? TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 02:17, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

File was at w:File:Kim jong-un.jpg, on en.wp not Commons, and was deleted for having no license info; its possible it was uploaded before to another location too. Like most images of him, likely to be non-free in any case.--Nilfanion (talk) 10:23, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

January 12

Overcropped?

Take a look at this cropped version of this original. While the removal of the black border is something that I agree with (as I also agree with the ideas behind the retention in Commons of both versions), I think this one was cropped too heavily. Yes, the Poundering Lady with the Fedora is better framed like this, but a few details of the original are lost, such as:

the row of rivet heads parallel to the base edge of the original (a great touch, by the way);
the Senate Beer ad, visible in the original through the backmost window;
half face of a strawhatted youth, looking directly at the photographer (another point of interest);
the clerestory on the tram rooftop; and
the older gentleman on the front seat (half cut into anonimity in the cropped version).

I suggest that this cropped version should be replaced with a more faithful cropping of the original, and that, maybe, an extracted picture be separatedly uploaded should the better framed Poundering Lady with the Fedora be deemed of such interest.

This, of course, comes to the Village Pump not because of its own particular interest, but also to call for information and discussion about such “deframed” versions — what are the policies in place, evolved viewes, percieved problems…?

-- Tuválkin ✉ 06:18, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

When it is uploaded as a new file (as in this case) there is no problem at all. Any frame is OK. Problems begin when files are overwritten. Just upload a new file with your ideal frame. --193.18.240.18 07:28, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree completely with the comment from 193.18.240.18. We can have a number of crops that different people find useful, possibly for different uses. - Jmabel ! talk 17:14, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Generally, borders (similarly as watermarks, credits etc.) are defaultly unwanted as supposed in {{Remove border}}. A pure removing of simple border is a minor improvement if the frame is not a part of a relevant original work as a postcard, book page etc. and the file is not signed with {{Border is intentional}}. Such files can overwrite the framed version. However, we have maybe not an explicitly written policy about borders which can be linked from the maintenance template.

A substancial crop should be uploaded under a new name and should be described as a derivative work, not as an original work. Change from 3.5 depicted persons to 2 persons, from 2 faces to 1 face and from 3.5 upper windows to none whole upper window is substancial, in my view. However, such derivative work can be upload under a new name (as it was really). --ŠJů (talk) 21:23, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I cropped the original more tightly and uploaded it as File:People in streetcar washington dc 8a23414a (integral).jpg. Thanks for all the input. -- Tuválkin ✉ 08:03, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

January 11

Duplicate pics of Plácido Domingo?

I have fixed with GIMP this image but I discovered that another attempt was uploaded separately: should they be considered duplicates and only the original pic (the one I fixed) should be kept?--Carnby (talk) 00:22, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

For last question, see parallel case under section "What to do when license and image metadata don't correspond?" above... AnonMoos (talk) 21:24, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

It was an anonymous user who changed the permission in the information template.--Carnby (talk) 00:02, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

The DR Backlog

Please see Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard#The_DR_Backlog -FASTILY 10:26, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Just to remind, this is not just for administrators. Anyone is welcomed to add their comments to these pending deletion requests to help closure by admins. whym (talk) 04:33, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Either welcomed, hostilized, or (most often) utterly ignored. -- Tuválkin ✉ 18:40, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Q.E.D. -- Tuválkin ✉ 13:06, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

"Public housing"

Category question here: we have categories around "public housing," a term we don't define but which I presume means government-operated low-income housing. Still, that's something of a conjecture and I'm wondering whether we need to define our terms and perhaps create some other related categories. For example:

Housing can be heavily government-subsidized without being government-operated, such as Section 8 housing in the U.S.
Housing can be government-owned and -operated without being low income. Extreme examples are official residences of heads of state or mayors of cities, but also (for example) under Communism in much of Europe virtually all housing was owned by the government, but would not have all been characterized as low-income.

Further, in the U.S. at least, a lot of low-income housing is operated by churches or by independent non-governmental non-profits.

Anyone have any suggestions for how this part of the category tree should actually be shaped? - Jmabel ! talk 22:14, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

In my home state of Victoria, Australia public housing is 'services for low-income Victorians and people in need, especially those who have been made homeless and need support.' While for non-state housing we use the term 'Community Housing' ([2]). It should be noted that those in public housing do not get means tested to retain tenancy (although this may change in the future), and it is primarily for those in need due to limited supply. I don't think that state owned dwellings for the purpose of housing digitaries could by any stretch of the imagination be considered public, state owned housing possibly, but it is not, and is not intended to be available to the public, it is for a specific purpose. I would suggest that Victoria's definitions (which are pretty much nation wide across Australia) would be a good base, with localisations such as 'council housing' for the UK and - possibly - 'projects' for limited circumstances in NA. Liamdavies (talk) 13:15, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Generally, public housing means housing provided by a public subject. Such housing can be both costless or expensive, provisional or lifelong, poor or luxurious, depending on the country and the purpose. Some more specific name should be chosen for the government-operated low-income housing. --ŠJů (talk) 17:31, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

According to en:Public_housing, public housing is housing owned by the government regardless of purpose, while social housing is "affordable rental housing" (presumably meaning priced below market value) regardless of ownership. I'm sure you could find different defintions elsewhere. --ghouston (talk) 22:57, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

January 13

Template for 'Better quality image is available'

Hi everyone. Consider File:Batoni sacred heart.jpg and File:SacredHeartBatoni.jpg. The second version is better, because the resolution is higher. So, i would really like to add a template, indicating that there's a better version available. Unfortunately, i couldn't find any template for this situation. The closest i got was Template:Superseded-Image, but that seems to be more for tagging stuff instead of directing people to other versions. I've now added a gallery to the lower resolution image, but i wonder if there would be a better way. Also, consider Template:Provide better quality that indicates that 'a crosslink to the other image' would be helpful, but gives no clue how to do something like that. Husky ^{(talk to me)} 14:43, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Raise a DR on the low res image. It is in all respects redundant. 131.137.245.209 13:21, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

The second version might be larger, but it is a matter of opinion that this is "better". The colours on the two are quite different. No need to delete, no need to tag. You can add a link to the alternative version in the description of the image. If they're in the same gallery/category, people can make up their own mind. -- Deadstar (msg) 13:58, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

True, but you would not be able to create the larger one from the smaller, while the converse is indeed true. Someone could adjust the levels and colours on the same image in 50 ways. Surely we shouldn't accept them all just because they are different? No harm in keeping the two in this case, it is more a matter as to what is the best practice. 131.137.245.206 17:43, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Agreed: The field other_versions of {{Information}} serves this exact purpose. -- Tuválkin ✉ 14:38, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

January 14

Link to GLAM & Wiki Loves from the main page

Hi all, I think it would be great to have a link explicitly to "images from museums, archives and libraries" from the main page of Commons. Currently there's a link to images by image sources, but there's no indication on the main page at all for the new user that we have such rich image collections from national libraries and museums. Our GLAM efforts are really something to be proud of; I think we should highlight that we have such collections. Having at least one link to these on the main page would make GLAM collections easier to find, too; I know these collections exist but still have to dig around to find them. (The link could go to one of the existing GLAM pages or categories, or we might need to build a cleaner GLAM portal, as none of the existing pages/categories about GLAM are really easy to parse). Similarly, I think a permanent link on the main page to "images from the Wiki Loves Monuments Contest" would be fantastic. These can both go under the existing "by source" category. Thoughts? -- Phoebe (talk) 19:30, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Commons seems a bit ambiguous about the image source categories. Generally they are marked as hidden categories, which means as far as I know that they are for maintenance only, and not part of the main category tree. However Category:Image_sources can actually be reached within the main category tree. --ghouston (talk) 23:01, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Well.... these could be special things outside the main category tree? Perhaps a separate box? -- Phoebe (talk) 01:37, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata progress

Hi everyone, over the past couple of weeks I've been linking Wikipedia articles with Commons galleries and Wikipedia categories with Commons categories. This is an update of the progress.

Here on Commons we have 110.668 galleries. 81.635 of these galleries (or about 74%) of these galleries have been linked to a Wikipedia article. The 29033 unconnected galleries can be viewed in this report. About 3521 (12%) of these are taxo galleries, some are colllisions (only one page can be connected to an item) and some just can't be connected.

I've been connecting Wikipedia articles and Wikipedia categories to Commons categories for a number of years (for example some old stats). I continued on this logic. So first the Commons category gets added to Wikipedia categories. The next step is to use this data to add P373 (Commons Category) at Wikidata. The final step is a sitelink to Commons. Each of the steps include some checking to prevent errors.

This is the data I just pulled from the Wikidata database:

wiki: The internal name of the wiki
Categories: The number of items tagged with d:Q4167836 (raw data)
P373: The amount of categories tagged with P373 (Commons Category) (raw data)
Sitelink to Commons: The amount of categories that have a sitelink to Commons (raw data)

wiki	Categories	P373	% P373	Sitelink to Commons	% sitelink
enwiki	1070103	201025	18,79%	181703	16,98%
svwiki	223395	57529	25,75%	52771	23,62%
frwiki	210714	76257	36,19%	69220	32,85%
itwiki	207966	47833	23,00%	42047	20,22%
eswiki	207806	69927	33,65%	63876	30,74%
fawiki	190132	80959	42,58%	75511	39,72%
commonswiki	189165	187834	99,30%	189165	100,00%
dewiki	180267	91391	50,70%	54673	30,33%
ruwiki	167888	67910	40,45%	59278	35,31%
ptwiki	139573	58423	41,86%	53525	38,35%
zhwiki	128350	42679	33,25%	38095	29,68%
warwiki	116778	18412	15,77%	17154	14,69%
plwiki	109113	42223	38,70%	36822	33,75%
cebwiki	106867	3485	3,26%	3293	3,08%
jawiki	106426	43362	40,74%	39187	36,82%
kowiki	96272	54092	56,19%	49592	51,51%
nlwiki	81523	41203	50,54%	38621	47,37%
arwiki	80246	36959	46,06%	34813	43,38%
trwiki	78449	41449	52,84%	38247	48,75%
Total	2050221	249627	12,18%	189668	9,25%

Multichill (talk) 14:55, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Multichill, let me use the opportunity to ask about the practice of linking Commons-Categories to Wikipedia-Articles by the way of the standard interlanguage link. Help:Interlanguage links allows doing that and in fact it seems to be a standard practice. Personally, I prefer these cat-to-article links as I contribute mostly to categories about specific objects (people and buildings) where corresponding Wikipedia-Categories exist only as a rare exception. But whenever the category relates not to an object but to a class, the rationale (and the actual practice) might be the other way round. On the talk page of said help page someone asked a similar question a year ago but failed to get a substantial answer. So maybe a second try here at village pump: Is it still ok to link from category to article or does that obstruct your effort to systemize the links? And: Until some time ago it was sufficient to ad one Interlanguage-Link to a category and after a short time some bot came by and added all others. This seems to have stopped - is this because of Wikidata? Thanks, --Rudolph Buch (talk) 12:14, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Rudolph Some of this was being discussed in depth at d:Wikidata:Requests_for_comment/Commons_links and probably many other locations. I agree that Commons-Categories to Wikipedia-Articles are the most used and most useful type of links and that they should be available is some form through wikidata. However we are not there yet. Current thinking (as I understand it) is that wikidata database should stay clean connecting within the same namespace and using wikidata properties to keep track of pages in other namespaces. See here for more detailed explanation. All that assumes that if the data is clean and unambiguous and wikidata is fully functional, than it will be possible in the future to build the interface layer any way we want. --Jarekt (talk) 13:19, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Interesting link, thank you. I conclude that, until further notice, it is ok to proceed as before. --Rudolph Buch (talk) 16:43, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Article namespace should be not confused with gallery namespace. Their purposes and functions are quite different, even though they are seemingly similar by missing namespace prefix. However, the basic problem is that Wikidata doesn't organize links by item (as claimed) but by type of the linked pages. If "item" would be really item, then category pages, article pages and gallery pages of identic item would be linked to identic item page. --ŠJů (talk) 17:46, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Multichill, I was thinking about what you have written and I am still confused. Your bot goes through categories on Wikipedias and Commons and

template:Commons category (aka template:Commonscat which I always seem to read as common-scat) gets added to Wikipedia categories. How is that one determined? Based on template:Commonscat templates in other wikipedias which share the same wikidata page and commons interwikis? Or is there some deeper algorithm, like images used in the article share the same commons category, which also matches EN-Wiki name, or something similar?
Add P373 (Commons Category) at Wikidata. Why do we need it if we also going to have a sitelink to Commons? Aren't those equivalent, and somehow they would have to be kept in synch? Oh, wait I think I got it, it is because Template:Commons category looks up {{#property:P373}} but it can not look up the sitelink to commons. Is that the reason?

So at the moment it looks like each wikipedia has 3 places where commons-category name is stored: Commonscat template, wikidata property and wikidata sitelink. Are we going to be removing parameters from Commonscat templates so they rely on wikidata instead, so the structure is easier to maintain? By the way, I think it is great that you are working on this. Those links are badly needed and we are still in this weird transition period where Wikidata does most but not all. As Jacek Fedorowicz once said (about something else): it is like if UK decided to change trafic from left-hand traffic to right-hand, but in the transition period that applies only to buses. --Jarekt (talk) 14:17, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm doing it step my step because that way it's easier to trace the data and fix problems. There are still tons of conflicts (I believe about 10.000 in category namespace alone) and this way we can solve this problems. Because we have tracker categories at the Dutch Wikipedia, any user on Wikipedia can find these problems and help solve them.

Also language conflicts like at d:Q7287351 won't affect Wikipedia at the moment. If we would already base the templates on the Dutch Wikipedia on Wikidata, the link would have been gone. Multichill (talk) 15:35, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

PDF won't display

I uploaded the PDF "File:John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government (1st ed, 1861).pdf", but none of the pages will thumbnail properly. I tried purging the page to no avail. What's wrong? — SMUconlaw (talk) 16:19, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Don't know. When I try to view a thumbnail, I get

Error creating thumbnail: convert: no decode delegate for this image format `/tmp/magick-hg7YMuoz' @ error/constitute.c/ReadImage/532.

convert: missing an image filename `/tmp/transform_b1c9d0271ec9-1.jpg' @ error/convert.c/ConvertImageCommand/3011.

File a bug report at bugzilla. Lupo 16:34, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

OK, thanks. — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:52, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Many colored version from the internet archive do not work. (Often the greyscale version does work, however this is not a solution.)

Tracking bug: bugzilla:41037. archive PDF bugs: bugzilla:57278 & bugzilla:59975. --McZusatz (talk) 20:13, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

There is also bugzilla:59668, not sure if it is related --DixonD (talk) 20:43, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Locally I get the error:

error: cannot decode code stream
unable to decode JPX image data.

Next debugging step would be to test with the latest version of ghostscript to see if it works with newer ghostscript. Bawolff (talk) 03:54, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually, locally gs outputs this error, but still recovers and creates the file... Bawolff (talk) 02:56, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Category:Christmas 2010 in Russia

The category Category:Christmas 2010 in Russia is full of images from 2011 year. Isn't it a mess? It is right to put the 2011-year events in a 2010-year category?--PereslavlFoto (talk) 19:45, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

The topic of those photos being Christmas 2010, IMHO logically their "Christmas by year" category is Christmas 2010. Topically, they are related to Chrismas 2010 and chronologically they are thus distant by two weeks only from most other Christmas 2010 photos. Would some people call those celebrations Christmas 2011? Placing them with Christmas 2011 would seem artificial and chronologically it would place them with photos that are distant by 50 weeks. -- Asclepias (talk) 21:51, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

+1 --A.Savin 06:29, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

We could call it the Christmas 2010-2011 category. At the least, a note in the category might be helpful; there's certainly logic both ways, and the current way is not the most obvious one.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:33, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

RfC: Should we support MP4 Video on our sites?

The Wikimedia Foundation's multimedia team seeks community guidance on a proposal to support the MP4 video format. This digital video standard is used widely around the world to record, edit and watch videos on mobile phones, desktop computers and home video devices. It is also known as H.264/MPEG-4 or AVC.

Supporting the MP4 format would make it much easier for our users to view and contribute video on Wikimedia projects -- and video files could be offered in dual formats on our sites, so we could continue to support current open formats (WebM and Ogg Theora).

However, MP4 is a patent-encumbered format, and using a proprietary format would be a departure from our current practice of only supporting open formats on our sites -- even though the licenses appear to have acceptable legal terms, with only a small fee required.

We would appreciate your guidance on whether or not to support MP4. Our Request for Comments presents views both in favor and against MP4 support, based on opinions we’ve heard in our discussions with community and team members.

Please join this RfC -- and share your advice.

All users are welcome to participate, whether you are active on Commons, Wikipedia, other Wikimedia project -- or any site that uses content from our free media repository.

We also invite you to join tomorrow's Office hours chat on IRC, this Thursday, January 16, at 19:00 UTC, if you would like to discuss this project with our team and other community members.

We look forward to a constructive discussion with you, so we can make a more informed decision together on this important topic.

All the best, Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 01:35, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Fabrice. I think that even if the mp4-support-option passes, we at Commons should encourage free formats over those patented and we should not promote mp4. -- Rillke^(q?) 12:36, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Finding all FPs, QIs, and VIs in and below a category

Wouldn't it be nice if we had a simple interface to instantly show all Featured pictures, Quality images, or Valued images in and below the current category? Expanding on my work on category intersection I posted about above here is a first sneak preview at the fastcci gadget (Fast Commons Category Inspection) and its first functionality that does just that.

Click here to activate the gadget.

The user interface, shown on every category page
A galley of all FPs in Category:Railway bridges
A category trail is shown above the image when navigating from a fastcci search result, explaining why the image was included in the results

This is preliminary work (so paging is not implemented yet and it lacks a few error checks), but it serves as a proof of concept. The backend server is running in a brand new labs project (and could be scaled by adding more instances). Response times on typical categories are in the sub-second range. Longer running queries stream status updates (via WebSockets, if available) and a progress indicator will be added to the frontend code. --Dschwen (talk) 16:24, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Cool! J e e 16:41, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

This is a great development and hopefully the start of a shift away from deep categories towards keywords and better results lists. Are the images forced into square thumbnails? Could you do something like the packed-mode gallery so the aspect ratio is respected -- for many uses, the shape of the image is vital and a square crop may lose important info. -- Colin (talk) 16:52, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I've used the square crop because a) I had the routine ready, b) I like it (500px does it, too), c) I don't like the packed-mode gallery at all (very uneven distribution of screen space per image). If I have to change it then I'd probably emulate the original category gallery for consistency. --Dschwen (talk) 17:00, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Just tried to use it in FF26 (seriously Mozilla, TWENTY-SIX?), the links all appear at the top of the page (below title but above any category text) and they don't actually appear to be links (clicking does nothing, but mouseover does show underline). Same issue in MSIE9. Nice idea certainly, I look forward to a release version. -mattbuck (Talk) 17:03, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Only tested in chrome so far (but I would have expected better compatibility as I'm using JQuery for most of the stuff) --Dschwen (talk) 17:17, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

D'uh, mattbuck take a look at my user stylesheet :-). You'll need to copy my styles for it to look ok. --Dschwen (talk) 17:30, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Tried that now, and it shows up more like yours, but it's still not clickable. -mattbuck (Talk) 17:36, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, clicking gives a security error. I'll look into it (probably I am using a non ssl websocket). --Dschwen (talk) 18:12, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Fixed. Works for me now in FF26. --Dschwen (talk) 18:23, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Works for QIs certainly. I'll take your word for the others. Thanks! -mattbuck (Talk) 18:37, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

This raises the question of whether we should develop a quality metric other than FP/QI/VI. A sort of "good image" that would be below QI level and without the "taken by a Commoner" restriction. There would need to be a pretty lightweight mechanism for awarding it and perhaps some uploaders could be trusted to tag their own uploads and other images. A size (dimensions) filter and date filter like Google Images has could also be useful, along with a filesize filter. -- Colin (talk) 16:52, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

For good images I think a one-click like or 0-5 stars solution would be best. That is easy to implement, but hard to implement tamper proof. --Dschwen (talk) 17:02, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

If we're going to be doing this, it needs to be at a scale far exceeding that of QIC, so it needs to be very, very simple. How about: Anyone with x QIs (10? 25? etc.) may label any image (including their own works, works by other Commoners, and works by non-Commoners) as a "good image." The minimum QI bar is mainly just to make sure they know what quality is necessary for a QI. IMO the criteria one should use is the following: either 1) it would meet QI criteria if the Commoner criterion were dropped; or 2) it is of acceptable quality and one of the best in the category (in the vein of VIC). Moreover, all FPs, QIs, and VIs are automatically considered "good images." -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:00, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I am focusing on simplicity for this feature. I imagine this could be enabled for IP users who are not "power users" but just want to discover the best images that we have on a particular subject. For that matter the current interface is still too complicated. I'm thinking of a single button that lists FPs then QIs and then VIs and the current menu as popup on hover (or click). --Dschwen (talk) 17:14, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

The gadget is now displaying a category trail above an image when navigating from a fastcci search result, explaining why the image was included in the results. Our category system is a bit.. odd. In the example above the Half Dome is showing up in a list of FPs in the Category Idaho (however the Half Dome is located in California). --Dschwen (talk) 21:27, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Cool gadget, but it lists unassessed QI candidates too. Einstein2 (talk) 15:37, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

VERY good work. Congrats! But with Einstein2: Also unassessed QI candidates are shown. E.g. File:Schloss-Broich-Wappen-Wappenzimmer.jpg inside the category Category:Mülheim an der Ruhr --Tuxyso (talk) 15:50, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

This is corrected. The depth parameters are now respected by the backend so only actual QIs should show up. --Dschwen (talk) 16:02, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Hey, Dschwen, thanks so much for this lovely feature! This is a very cool way to surface quality content for a category. We're very grateful for your ingenious contribution, and would like to discuss ways to incorporate some of your code in upcoming tools on our roadmap. Thanks again for your impressive work! To be continued ... Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 01:57, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Nice, thank you Dschwen! Nota bene: the gadget doesn't work with the Modern skin. --Myrabella (talk) 07:53, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Fixed now, should work in all skins. --Dschwen (talk) 16:10, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Times when CCI does not display

I have been a bit dismayed and annoyed that these 3 new icons and text are taking up screen real estate when I view any category. Could this please be made a bit more intelligent and not be displayed for categories where none of the members is of these types or make this an opt-in feature rather than force it on everyone?

The *vast* majority of categories on Commons do not have a FP/QI/VI match in it and I resent the assumption that those interested in these aspects of Commons are free to change the way Commons displays for all other users. --Fæ (talk) 23:58, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry about the dismay :-(. I have experimented with various placements. In the bodyText there are lots of conflicts with templates and other gadgets (such as Categories on top). For me the icons take up only previously unused screen real estate. Are you browsing at a lower end resolution (or in a small window), or how comes there is not enough space next to the title? Anyhow I'd be happy about suggestions for improved placement or layout of the buttons. As to opt-in/opt-out there was a discussion about this below, and the result of it is to enable it as a test. --Dschwen (talk) 00:35, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

As an example, on my Android tablet (with a 1200px across display), these additional 3 buttons and text cause the titles to overflow over 2 lines with the links messily split between the two. This would almost never be an issue for me if the icons did not display when they were irrelevant. Again, some intelligence is needed here, these 3 links have no value and just litter up the screen if the user is viewing any of the majority of categories with no FP/QI/VI's in them. In these situations I don't want these buttons placed anywhere as they add nothing to the user experience but potential confusion when clicking on them just displays "No results." with text much smaller than the buttons take up.

I don't see why your experiment should be forced on everyone when common sense would have this as another optional add-in. I don't expect to have to keep finding out how to opt-out of these sorts of toys.

By the way, I do not understand why these buttons are shown for categories that only contain other categories and I have no idea why Category:Nudity and sexuality-related deletion requests shows File:Salix sitchensis 38258.JPG as a valued images when it obviously is not contained there. --Fæ (talk) 06:42, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

The text+icons can't be hidden when irrelevant AFAIK because they only know if there are results by performing a query, which takes some time. But they are bulky. Could they be shrunk down to just the icons and placed next to the slideshow icon. Like with the slideshow, they could expand to show text when hovered. I appreciate "hover" doesn't work on a tablet. Even reducing them in size might help. Alternatively they could be moved over to the "Tools" on the panel on the left. What sort of UI is envisaged when we can do cross-category searches? -- Colin (talk) 10:27, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

That is exactly right. It is not trivial to determine if the buttons are needed. It would require an intersection request per page view (or actually three!), which would be beyond the server capacities we have. --Dschwen (talk) 16:46, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Smaller buttons, yes, please! -- Tuválkin ✉ 12:37, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I heard you guys. How is this: the buttons now shrink down to icons automatically, if there is not enough space next to the Category title. --Dschwen (talk) 16:44, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Sure, however the interface is, in my view, already overly complex and confusing for new users. These extra coloured gadgets take up real estate and add to the complexity for limited benefit for newer users, while middling-experienced users can find their preferences and opt-in to try them out. Please make them opt-in by default rather than forced on everyone's screen. I speak as someone who has had to train new users who invariably get lost as the hundred links shown to them on our standard skins. --Fæ (talk) 17:01, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

As far as FP, QI and VI are well advertised on the Common's front page, I see no problem in enabling those options by default in categories too. J e e 17:18, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

As a FP advocate you are welcome to your opinion. However poll any room of new users at an edit-a-thon when explaining the main interface for Commons. All will say this is an overly complex and technically-designed website. Once you have been using the system for a couple of months it is hard to recall how much of a barrier this represents to new users, and thereby the future of our projects. Every new button and link is another barrier, I do not see any design initiatives to de-clutter our standard interface. Fortunately I know how to tailor my CSS skin so I can switch off and shrink some of the screen hogging unnecessary chaff. --Fæ (talk) 17:28, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

While cutter can be a problem it doesn't follow that every button is a barrier. People are capable of ignoring things they don't use. I'm sure the UI will change also when we have other cross-category queries and more ways of filtering categories (e.g. by size). It is more important that this feature be available to all, including IP users. Searching for quality content on Commons is vital. Which is also why I think this will stimulate a move to some simple rating system to grade "good" images that don't necessarily make FP/VI/QI. -- Colin (talk) 20:19, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Fæ, I'm not a participant at FP or QI since December 2012 (rarely nominate a few third-party works though). But those badges help me to find quality images from the sea of images to use in Wikipedia articles. Similarly, I hope they will be a great help for any potential reuser (in wiki or off-wiki) to find the best images. J e e 03:07, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Incompatibility

I had the following in my User:foo/common.js page:

mw.loader.load('//www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=User:Tpt/interproject.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');

It makes the 3 icons of CCI go away/hidden. I took it off and they are back. There was other annoyances in this gadget, so I’m glad I found a final straw to kick myself to get rid of it, but I thought that developers (of both) may want to know. -- Tuválkin ✉ 19:03, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Tuválkin, the problem is in the init() function of interproject.js, where the content of #firstHeading is completely overwritten. A suggested fix there would be to select #firstHeading>span and perform a replaceWith() on it. --Dschwen (talk) 19:10, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Testing default deployment of FastCCI gadget?

The FastCCI gadget allows quick display of all FPs, QIs, and VIs in and below a category.

I have been working on this since the initial announcement and would like to test if the backend server would hold up to a default deployment.

I believe this gadget would be useful to any reuser of commons content as it improves the discoverability of featured content significantly.

The gadget uses a backend server (currently hosted on Wikimedia Labs that is capable of performing fast operations on the commons category tree, such as intersection, files in Category A but not in Category B, listing of entire subcategory trees, and category chain path finding. The frontend gadget currently only uses the intersection capability on the three assement categories FP,QI,VI. In the future I will develop a power user interface that makes the other functions available easily. But for now I would like to start with a simple interface.

So, anyone opposed to testing the default activation of this gadget? --Dschwen (talk) 16:17, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Support for activation. --Tuxyso (talk) 16:20, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Oppose anyone who wants to use it can enable it in his or her preferences. Too much of a niche and overhead to enable it by default. Multichill (talk) 20:05, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
- Multibuzzkill ;-). Where do you see the overhead? How is making quality content more discoverable a niche? --Dschwen (talk) 20:09, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
- It is far from being a niche. A key problem in the German Wikipedia is the missing visibility of quality media for article writers. If e.g. articles about cities are written, authors often use their own (bad quality) photos because they do not know better. IMHO Dschwen's gadget is very helpful for quality-oriented article writers and surely for everyone who uses contents from Commons.--Tuxyso (talk) 07:53, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

IMHO this Gadget is only a first step. The next step should be to open QIC for more photographers and encourage them to nominate their own photos there. Currently the participation (in relation to the overall content) is still too limited. My impression is that some photographers do not dare to nominate own images on QIC.
Is there a way to generate an automated list (e.g. with a bot) of users who has uploaded more than 100 (20,50,200?) images but had not been active on QIC/FPC page? For those users a bot could make some advertisement for QIC participation on the talk page of the appropriate users. --Tuxyso (talk) 07:53, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
strong oppose: it would just overflow COM:QIC with dubious nominations by users who aren't familiar with the Image guidelines but see such an advertisement as an invitation to nominate nearly everything they ever uploaded. QIC needs more reviewers (!), not new nominators for the same number of reviewers. --A.Savin 12:08, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
I do not share your opinion at least not in that absoulte manner. On QIC we have disussed a guideline that for >3 nominations an appropriate number of reviews should be required. There are much more good photographers on Commons than active participants on QIC. Such an invitation should include a correct framing: If you spend usually a lot of work in doing good photos and are familiar with basic quality standards for phtos (e.g. ...) then QIC might be the right place for you. I am not a great fan of exclusive clubs. With Dschwen's widget QIs become a massively increased visibility. The logical consequence is to discuss how to encourage more photographers to participate on QIC. I know a lot of photographers who do good quality photos but have never nominated a single one on QIC. When such an invitation is not automatically done, a bot could figure out interesting participants and an admin (or another PH-2 / PH-3 photographer) who is familiar with good photos checks if this user might be a good candidate for QIC participation. If the check is positive a bot sends an invitation to participate on Commons. --Tuxyso (talk) 12:42, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
Sorry, did I really ever suggest an "exclusive club"? Nonsense. I'm always glad if a good photographer joins QIC, starting with nominations only, later either participating in review. Not to make advertising is not the same as making QIC exclusive. The proposed tool is a very good idea, but I'm against targeted mass advertising by bot, as we simply don't have enough people to review and maintain it all. Of course, if you know a certain user where you're sure that they could be a productive contributor to QIC, you still can (and should) contact them and to make them aware of QIC. Btw, PH-2/PH-3 templates are kind of trash to me. I don't use any, many potentially good photographers on Commons do neither, but on the other hand it's a question if everyone who swanks with a PH-3 on their userpage is really able to contribute what we see as good quality images. --A.Savin 13:19, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
I don't think it will have only an adverse effect to attract more nominations. Sure; it will attract more nominations; but it will attract reusers too. So chances that our "good works" get more eyes and so more used (as Tuxyso said above). But if there is a resistance, we can consider it as an opt-in rather than a default. Thanks Dschwen, I love to use it. J e e 15:46, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Support per Dschwen's comment below. J e e 07:53, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Quick comment: first of all I would like to test default deployment to see what kind of traffic it generates to test how the server would scale under real world conditions. But I would strongly suggest to eventually really enable it by default, as anonymous users cannot opt-in. But I have to admit that I do not have usage statistics about commons (I'll see if I can find some stats). If there is a substantial IP user base that browses commons through our category tree (rather than google images) I am convinced that giving them the possibility to discover quality media more easily would be a benefit for the project. I have heard people say it countless times. Content is buried in our category tree and There is no way to see which images in a category are FP - This gadget solves both of those issues. And the backend could do so much more by the way. Like find all images below a category contributed through WLM, find all images that are not tagged with a location, etc. The FP,QI,VI thing is just the obvious start. The advanced options should of course not displayed this prominently. --Dschwen (talk) 16:25, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Support for activation. --Jarekt (talk) 18:18, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Support Mrwojo (talk) 18:31, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
Support activation for testing. If it turns out to cause an overflow at QIC we can still turn it off again. --El Grafo (talk) 08:41, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I'll activate it on Monday (I'll be gone for the rest of the weekend). Support for IE8 is added and I'm thinking of a simple userinterface for arbitrary category intersections now. --Dschwen (talk) 14:58, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

How can I turn this off? 90.190.114.172 16:50, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Report of user (administrator) Denniss

The mentioned administrator is pushing his own political agenda by reverting maps like this one or this one, and protecting people that reverted these maps (there are more examples like these ones) without an earlier discussion on the map page or any permission to do so by the community...just like that....I hereby ask the community to comment and condemn these violations of the mentioned admin and warn him of any other actions like this one...--Ivan VA (talk) 22:02, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Denniss seems to have reverted the map to its original state, which seems reasonable. Different versions of the map should be uploaded into new files, and any argument about which one to use in a given context should take place elsewhere. --ghouston (talk) 22:44, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually that's true for the first, the second example seems to be the opposite situation. --ghouston (talk) 22:45, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

and there are more to come....1, 2, 3--Ivan VA (talk) 22:53, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Ping Denniss. (Right to defense or reply). Alan ^(talk) 23:22, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

And for all of that i'v got rewarded with a block warning and accused of making nonsense edits....--Ivan VA (talk) 22:58, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
Same here [3] --Milićević (talk) 23:04, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Strong support for Ivan VA, we see that the administrator Denniss is very problematic. Also, Denniss pushing his own political agenda by reverting maps, according to all the criteria it is act of vandalism by administrator.--Soundwaweserb (talk) 23:32, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Btw, just look with which argument he reverted and protected the file Milićevič mentioned below...→....i mean if this isn't a case of abuse of admin rights for, here in particular, pushing personal political agenda...i really don't know...--Ivan VA (talk) 23:39, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

more evidence....here (take a look at his argumentation)--Ivan VA (talk) 23:59, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

What would really impress me here? If there were some evidence that any of the people here were involved in understanding that Kosovo has been recognized by 106 UN member states and that maps need to recognize that, and where a compromise can't be made, there need to be two maps. Native English speaking countries have all recognized Kosovo, which should probably factor into to how English-language maps should look. Make it work, and stop just attacking each other.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:11, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

First of all i started this discussion coz it's obvious that a administrator used the powers trusted to him by the community for stuff hes not allowed to use for, so there have to be consequences for that kind of behavior, otherwise the whole project may take a road no1 of us wants to see...we had some examples some months ago how far some things can go (→ meta discussion on croatian wikipedia etc.)....so 1st of all as truly wikipedians, his behavior should be condemned b4 getting to the political stuff....

Secondly, i have to remind u, coz u mentioned the linguistic dimension in your argument, that no wikimedia projects are nation based - they are language-based projects (independent), so the decisions on problematical political questions can't be based on political acts of any states depending which language is spoken in them - by coping the same decisions (their point of view), but on decisions made by this community - a one which is writing an encyclopedia - on certain criteria, acting independently....(btw your english argument isn't hitting the center, coz many countries in which english is spoken, like India (1 billion people) didn't recognize Kosovo etc...)...so we need to set the criteria for stuff like this (maps here in particular), and my proposal is to act on the criteria of international law...in my opinion it's the best and most real one ....and thats the things we should discuss....

...but about the admin behavior there is little to discuss so things gotta move about that question....--Ivan VA (talk) 01:34, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Denniss' actions are commendable. This has been discussed before. I'm glad that admns are able to protect content against nationalist revert-warriors, and I trust that will continue. bobrayner (talk) 02:41, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

no they are not, for example here (one more evidence)....1st you “shaped” (reverted) the map to your own political agenda (updating to reflect 2008 borders), thereby vandalizing the map itself being posted to commons in its original, and after that, instead the admin Denniss reverted your edit and stopped the violation, like every admin elected by the community should do, he did nothing, but now after, he prevented a other user to reedit the vandalism done by u, and reverted to the vandalized map again, with a comment - this map is to show the current version, not the nationalistic serbian version....the case is clear!

i hereby warn the whole commons community of an dangerous precedent, that can danger the whole commons project....by this actions of such brutal vandalism and violation of admin rights, here in a particular sensitive political question, can cause in a stop of local branches of wikipedias in all the languages to stop sending their files to commons, knowing that they might be treated in a way they don't want, causing them to keep the files in the local branch stores....thats disastrous!

In this particular case its the administrative divisions of the Republic of Serbia, proclaimed by its laws and constitution....that are the facts in this file-case...and a dude just comes, violates, the admin covers him and then locks the file...like nothing happened....this hasn't to do a bit of encyclopedia and the reason we're all here...GOD--Ivan VA (talk) 03:30, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Could you take more care with your messages? Chat speak does not make it the easiest to read, nor do randomly varying the indentation of your messages. Yes, political maps are going to reflect a political agenda. Editwarring to force your political agenda on the map and then pointing fingers elsewhere and accusing others of vandalism doesn't help your case. We permit maps to reflect the differing political opinions, not enforce one interpretation of international law, so let's work on getting multiple maps when we need multiple maps to reflect differing opinions.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:08, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Indentation fixed. Andy Mabbett (talk) 16:03, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Offsite canvassing

We seem to have a broader problem of offsite canvassing here. With Serbian editors conspiring to revert map updates on Commons and to make trouble for Commons admins who try to deal with the problem. It's not the first time we've had problems with offsite canvassing in this area, but the scale of this one is alarming. Ivan VA, who posted this complaint about Denniss, was canvassed here; Soundwaweserb was canvassed here. Does Commons accept or reject extensive campaigns of reverts, and attacks on administrators, which are coordinated offsite? bobrayner (talk) 02:41, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

1st of all it's not an offsite, it's the serbian language branch of wikipedia, and as i remember this whole thing is one project....secondly im here as an wikipedia editor contributing myself to commons, and i don't need an extra invitation to comment or criticise stuff here or elsewhere, not from you or someone else (this is not your private party)....3rd, and most important, most of the files here are used in wikipedia articles, and if someone vandalizes files here it affects the credibility of articles on all wikipedias they're used on...and thats the reason i'm here...4th, i wouldn't open this discussion if the commons project institutions would do their job, stopping the vandalism, but looks like one of the carriers of the institution is the problem, and the community has to discuss that.--Ivan VA (talk) 03:59, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

People off Commons coordinated an attack on a Commons administrator. You volunteered, and you did lots of reverts too, and never mentioned here that somebody offsite had told you to do it. The active commons editor who coordinated this crusade has carefully avoided this thread, and didn't raise this supposed problem on the relevant Commons pages - they know what answer they'd get. That person already left en.wikipedia after getting blocked for similar antics there. Instead they found willing proxies on sr.wikipedia. (According to that thread I'm some kind of Albanian nationalist, which is a farcical personal attack). Personally, I think it's all highly inappropriate. What do uninvolved Commons people think? bobrayner (talk) 04:12, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Attack on a commons admin? lol wt*?....all the reverts i'v done were a try to revert the vandalism You and some other dude did by cutting Kosovo from Serbian maps without any consensus from the community or asking the authors of the maps, being covered by administrator Denniss, who was acting due to his own political agenda....i wouldn't react if the admin would do his job and revert the vandalism....after i tried to revert, the mentioned admin threatened me with a block, and then i asked for a comment of the community after obvious admin rights violations....

...i reacted on this after reading an article on sr. wikipedia about serbian statistical regions, seeing 1 of them completely missing on the map....it discredited the whole article....

...the only crusade here was the one you made, vandalizing maps and being covered by that discredited administrator...its easy to check the dates when the conflict begun....

on that demagogic accusations and conspiracy theories i won't aswer....--Ivan VA (talk) 04:44, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Why did You upload new image over another, so we got two same maps under different names? -- Bojan Talk 04:21, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I reverted to a better revision of the former map; I had no idea that somebody else had already uploaded a better version wth a different filename - I've never edited that one, so that's a non sequiteur. So, obviously, I did nothing wrong. However, you are active on sr.wikipedia, where this conspiracy was coordinated; just a few hours ago you were talking to Ivan VA, who has made similar comments on this thread, made similar reverts of maps, and agreed offsite to do all this on behalf of a different Commons editor. That smells bad, and it's not the only offsite canvassing. What do uninvolved Commons people think? bobrayner (talk) 04:39, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

The only conspiracy is shown here(like on many other maps), and its between you and that admin...vandalism is obvious...Maps should reflect the real world. The old version does not show current borders., with the admin covering - Kosovo is not part of Serbia, please accept it....were your actions based on community consensus to make this revert?,or with permission from the mapmaker?, vandalizing the original file posted to commons...--Ivan VA (talk) 05:10, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

"Community consensus"? I would be grateful if uninvolved Commons editors could comment on whether a conspiracy which was deliberately discussed offsite with a carefully chosen audience would count as "community consensus" here. And then look at the very large number of reverts on Commons by Ivan VA, who was canvassed over there and was previously inactive here. And which "community consensus" did Ivan VA have to stealthily coordinate an attack on a Commons admin? bobrayner (talk) 05:20, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh, very nice. I just had aim to open discussion about this here, but seems that Bobrayner already reported himself. Behavior of user Bobrayner in commons is simply unacceptable. He is obviously an Albanian nationalist internet warrior whose goal is to remove Kosovo from all maps of Serbia in commons (see examples: [4], [5]). Due to wikimedia commons policy, commons should contain both versions of these maps: maps of Serbia with Kosovo and maps of Serbia without Kosovo and it is editors in each wikipedia who should decide which version they should use in their articles. If Bobrayner tried to follow this policy he would upload map versions of Serbia without Kosovo under new file names and then he would propose usage of his file versions in his home wikipedia. But, did he done this? No. He simply switched POV in original images in commons and, in that way, changed POV not only in his home wikipedia but also in other wikipedias, in which he is not active editor. In this image he even changed language in which this map was made: [6] (original map version was in Serbian language and with Kosovo, see: [7], while version uploaded by Bobrayer is in English language and without Kosovo, see: [8]). In another words, he changed map in Serbian language which showed Serbian POV and was used in Serbian Wikipedia into map in English language which show Albanian POV and which is still used in Serbian Wikipedia. In this way, he directly push his POV into articles in Serbian Wikipedia, where he is not active editor. If Bobrayer wants to have version of that map without Kosovo and in other language then he should upload it under new name and he should not overwrite existing file. I also suspect that account Nikswerdhond is a sockpuppet of Bobrayner since behavior of these two accounts is identical (see: [9], [10]). I will also open official checkuser investigation about this. PANONIAN (talk) 10:26, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Here is checkuser request regarding Bobrayner which I started: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Bobrayner PANONIAN (talk) 11:11, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

PANONIAN's comments here are part of a broader problem. PANONIAN's claim that I'm "an Albanian nationalist internet warrior" is obviously false, and obviously a personal attack. This repeats the attacks that he used here to start an offsite conspiracy to manipulate Commons content and attack Commons editors. PANONIAN tried to take Denniss down; this new sockpuppet page seems to be an attempt at revenge after he was caught red-handed. I've had the same on en.wiki - most recently at the hands of one of PANONIAN's allies, who got permablocked after taking me to Arbcom and now does a lot of sockpuppetry. And now PANONIAN canvasses people to go directly to the sockpuppet page, and an IP which has never edited commons before - and is blocked on de.wiki as a proxy - duly obliges. It's not the first IP sock used in this campaign. PANONIAN's canvassing, deception, personal attacks, and sockpuppets/meatpuppets should be clear to any uninvolved editor who looks through evidence like this. Offsite, on PANONIAN's thread, people are gloating about how they performed mass reverts on his behalf and attacked editors on his behalf. How long should Commons tolerate this awful behaviour? bobrayner (talk) 12:32, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, Bobrayner, did you just admitted that you can read Serbian language in Serbian Wikipedia? As far as I know, many Albanians from Kosovo know Serbian, so my observation that you are an Albanian is just observation and not personal attack. Do you claim that you are not Albanian? Regarding discussion in Serbian Wikipedia, I only spoke there with other editors about files which showing Serbia without Kosovo in articles in Serbian Wikipedia and about persons responsible for such files. I neither called anybody to come to commons to revert your changes or canvased anybody to your sockpuppet investigation page. In fact, I got advice from other user in sr wikipedia to open this investigation about you. If you already read discussions in Serbian wikipedia then read all of it and read it carefully. PANONIAN (talk) 12:52, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

It is a personal attack. I am obviously not Albanian. You tried to hide the trail; but I saw Ivan VM appear out of the blue to make a massive string of reverts, and I clicked on the Global Contributions button, which leads directly back to your conspiracy, and shows that Ivan VM is your meatpuppet. bobrayner (talk) 12:59, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Sure, be free to open sockpuppet investigation if you think that Ivan VM is my meatpuppet. And this is not personal attack from your side? Also, if you are not Albanian, how you define your nationality? And where you learned Serbian? PANONIAN (talk) 13:07, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Really? That's the cornerstone of your argument - that I found your canvassing and meatpuppets and your attempt to bring down Commons editors who disagreed with you, therefore I must be able to read Serbian, therefore I must be Albanian? That's laughable, and I would happily disprove that by presenting proof of ID & address to a trusted third party (any uninvolved admin, feel free to email me) - or you could ask a friend on en.wiki. Anyway, back on track: My browser translates text. Not perfectly, but enough to follow the trail left by Ivan VM; enough to see your proxies and attacks, and a conspiracy to bring down Denniss. When that didn't work, you turned on me and canvassed allies to that too. Comments from uninvolved Commons editors would be very helpful. bobrayner (talk) 13:20, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Funny. So your "evidences" for "my canvasing and conspiracy" are this, this, this and this? First one is conversation between Soundwaweserb and Ivan VA, unrelated to me, second one is comment of Ivan VA where he agreed with me that we should use files with neutral titles in sr vikipedia, and the third one is also general comment of Ivan VA unrelated to me. My comment from last link in English means this: "Here I reported Bobrayner for sockpuppet. We now will see what will come from it". Do you have link to any of my comments where I actually called someone to come to commons to revert something or to do something? PANONIAN (talk) 13:52, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

All that is in the discussion you created on sr.wiki, where normal Commons users would not see it, and deliberately avoiding the usual Commons processes & oversight. Other editors diligently performed exactly the edits you wanted. They didn't disclose, here, that they were your proxies - although the pattern of editing is clear. Comments from uninvolved Commons editors would be very helpful. bobrayner (talk) 13:57, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I started that discussion in Serbian Wikipedia because it was related to issue in Serbian Wikipedia: POV maps of Serbia without Kosovo in articles in Serbian Wikipedia. And how you know that "other editors performed the edits I wanted"? I did not suggested them to perform such edits. I only informed them about the problem that I spotted, but they acted on their own with their solutions for that problem. You want to suggest that I am their "master" in sr wikipedia and that they all do what I say to them? I am not even administrator there. PANONIAN (talk) 14:10, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I´m not sure if a discussion about canvassing and/or a political agenda is much help in solving the underlying problem: Obviously, there is no widespread consent about the status of Kosovo, so there is neither "right and wrong" nor "old and new". I´d sympathize with the solution mentioned above: simply provide two maps with the respective description and - please - "speaking" file names that make the difference clear to recognize for everyone. But it seems we are talking about several hundred (or thousand?) files and it might be a bit overdone to duplicate whole category trees. Isn´t there a way to accommodate both views by ways of cartographical signage? Choosing perhaps a hatching for Kosovo that is indifferent to the controversial question? --Rudolph Buch (talk) 17:30, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Dear Lord, in this moment Kosovo is disputed territory (and its not first and not last case in the human history). Here on wikipedia we must respect reality and try to stay neutral. Reality is that Kosovo today is not a full recognized country nor a member of UN, IOC, FIFA etc. Serbian and Kosovan politicians works hard to make acceptably solutions for both sides and thats the fact, we are not politicians or judges to cut who is wrong and who is not here. Why is problem to make two version of maps? When we talk about administrations in any country around the world we must use official statements of their governments. Thats all. We just can't wrote article about Georgia (for example) without their disputed territories, same for Cyprus, Somalia, Morocco, India, China, Azerbaijan etc etc etc. Wikipedia must stay neutral cause this is not private project sponsored by Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin or anyone else politicians. And please, but please don't call me nationalist, I am really sick of that accusations here (on Serbian wikipedia some users mark me as Albanian stipendiary loool) --ΝικόλαςΜπ. (talk) 20:51, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

And here we have new example - User:Bobrayner redraw this map by his standards with reference on UN site. An here is the original map on UN site.--Ivan25 (talk) 22:03, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

The main problem here for Commons is that some people seem to be violating COM:OVERWRITE by holding edit wars over the content of certain image files. I'd suggest that an admin should protect each such file with the original version that was uploaded and give warnings to those involved so that they are aware of the policy. --ghouston (talk) 22:26, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I Support ghouston's suggestion, and would urge admins to hand out strong warnings, as there is clear misunderstanding of Commons guidelines here. -84user (talk) 13:17, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

I also Support. But problem is that admin Denniss is avoiding this rule (see history of this file File:Map of Serbia (municipalities).PNG). Additionally he is scaring users, saying he will block them if they revert to old version. This is not way one admin should behave. Pushing his own POV and using admin rights for doing this. I hope some of other admins will give him a warning. Best regards --Јованвб (talk) 15:25, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

I

Support ghouston's suggestion too. BTW I am very disappointed with his behaviour here. It's just not acceptable, and at least that level of conversation is not collegial --ΝικόλαςΜπ. (talk) 19:25, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Since the main issue is that serbian wikipedia does not want a map of europe with Kosovo, I would suggest that they would create a new file where that country is excluded. They can then use that file on serbian wikipedia.

On a related note, but not the same subject of this case, I think the action from panonian to ask for an CheckUser on bobrayner is compleatly unacceptable and that bobrayner does deserve at the very minium an sincere appology from panonian. CheckUser should never be used like this. Perhaps it needs to made clearer to users how serious an CheckUser request really is.--Snaevar (talk) 15:16, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

So, Snaevar, according to you, there is nothing suspicious or wrong if an new account is created today just to revert file to version of Bobrayner? see this please: [11]. Last time I checked, abuse of multiple accounts was forbidden by wikipedia rules. PANONIAN (talk) 19:39, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Whether it is suspicious or not is compleatly irrelevant when it comes to CheckUser. CheckUser would be used as a last resort where an editor has abused the wiki and is trying to get around blocks by switching ip-adresses or creating new accounts constantly. It is not something that would be used in a dispute. I reccomend that you read the Access to and release of personally identifiable information chapter of the Privacy policy (an policy that applies to all WMF projects, including serbian wikipedia and commons).--Snaevar (talk) 23:18, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Excuse me, but this is exactly kind of abuse that require check user: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Purushottama (A single purpose account created only to help Bobrayner and other involved accounts in revert warring). This account have no other edits. Put for a momment other involved accounts aside and tell me this: why supposedly new user in commons would immediatelly jump into this revert warring over file versions? If this is not case for checkuser then I do not know what is. PANONIAN (talk) 06:46, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

January 16

Model year or manufacturing year for cars

I would like a clarification regarding categories such as Category:2013 automobiles. Do we sort per manufacturing year or by model year? // Liftarn (talk)

Normally model year, though there might be some weird exceptions. - Jmabel ! talk 17:08, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Such as File:Saab 9-3 Aero MY14 02.jpg? // Liftarn (talk)

2013 category here seems like a poor choice to me. If someone wants a category for the time the picture was taken, that could be done in a separate category. - Jmabel ! talk 18:07, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

January 18

What are the good books / pictures on beinecke.library.yale.edu?

I've found a way to batch download high resolution images on http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/ where host many public domain works. Anyone can find interesting pulic domain books / pictures on that site? Please put the link / id here and I can download and upload them to Commons. --維基小霸王 (talk) 04:15, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

File name

Could someone who does these things please change "File:Klarfeld Lord Alistair McAlpine.jpg" to "Klarfeld- Alistair, Lord McAlpine.jpg" Klarfeld is the artist. The subject, though often called (in Australia) "Lord Alistair McAlpine" was properly called "Alistair, Lord McAlpine". Amandajm (talk) 23:10, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Uncontroversial file renamings can be requested by using the {{Rename}} template on the individual file page. They are usually dealt with in a day or two. No need to come to a site-wide forum for this. - Jmabel ! talk 02:39, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
- Move done. But in the future, please just use {{Rename}}. - Jmabel ! talk 02:43, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Jmabel ! talk 02:45, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

January 19

Archiving this page

Those level 1 section headers are not handled right when archived by bots. As a result they are missing here (e. g. before Jan 6 at the moment) and are wrong in the archives. --тнояsтеn ⇔ 15:32, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

You mean we need a better bot? --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 15:36, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Or we do without level 1 sections. --тнояsтеn ⇔ 17:28, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Isn't having level 1 sections other than the title of the page (here: "Commons:Village pump") considered bad style anyway? --El Grafo (talk) 13:52, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Certainly in articles, but they're used to organize forum pages like these so that ordinary non-date sectioning can use basic "==" headers. Otherwise, people would have to start new discussions with "===" headers... AnonMoos (talk) 09:43, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Anyway I think it is not a good idea to add those headings manually every day. They are copied to the archives step by step leaving some paragraphes without level 1 headings here and putting those mostly wrong headings there. --тнояsтеn ⇔ 07:20, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Misleading attribution in articles

Attribution works well as image hyperlinks in articles. But I see some problems in "download as PDF" option. See Banteay Kdei as example. "Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors" in "Banteay Kdei.pdf" lists "File:Banteay Kdei, Angkor, Camboya, 2013-08-16, DD 10.JPG Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Banteay_Kdei,_Angkor,_Camboya,_2013-08-16,_DD_10.JPG License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Contributors: Parabolooidal, Poco a poco" where Poco a poco is the copyright holder and Parabolooidal is just a user who add one category and removed it soon. I think the WMF approach to fetch the contributors form the page history works for articles; but it seems a poor and unfair approach for media. Pinging Fabrice Florin (WMF) for opinion. J e e 05:33, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately it is the best that we can do currently, since we don't properly store this information, but instead throw it into templates. The multimedia team is going to work on this, but it's gonna take years to update all our uploaded image credentials into a more 'structured' format. Also once they have laid out the infrastructure, much PDF renderer will need some work to fetch the information in the new way. TheDJ (talk) 10:37, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

It's even worse that Jee points out above. Poco a poco has specified that they want to be credited using a different name (perhaps their real name?). I'm not sure attributing the image to their Commons username fulfils the CC-BY-SA license requirements. And if they had included a copyright statement on the image description page (which isn't unheard of), the PDF file would certainly be non-compliant. If we can't include an image in the PDF file in a way that complies with its license, we shouldn't include it at all. --Avenue (talk) 11:13, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

The specific request by Poco a poco is one of many (oh, so many!) license variations we have, as TheDJ puts it, «throw»n «into templates». That information, instead of being “cleaned up”, should be dully used to insert proper licensing language in the PDF versions of the articles. It is a lot of work, but hey, apparently it is a lot of work doing it wrong, too, might as well do it right. -- Tuválkin ✉ 11:24, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) I’d say it is a matter of parsing the current file page for media version uploaders — still not perfect, but way better than to lookup every Tom, Dick, and Harry who ever edited the page. -- Tuválkin ✉ 11:18, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

TheDJ, thanks if the multimedia team is going to work on this. But I didn't understand your argument "Unfortunately it is the best that we can do currently..." because the Multimedia Viewer successfully pick his name and credit to it. Remember, [12]: "This License and the rights granted hereunder will terminate automatically upon any breach by You of the terms of this License." Wikimedians may willing to compromise; but we have several third party uploads and we occasionally refuse deleting files even if authors asked so. So if there is a failure from our side, we are forced to be more generous on such deletion requests. J e e 15:32, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Comment It is worse than that. Try downloading a PDF for w:Greta Hall. In the PDF file, I am credited for making the PD-old-100 image which is used in the article, but I merely moved the file to Commons from English Wikipedia. Apart from this being confusing to the reader, it can cause legal problems when files which are still copyrighted are copied to Commons.

Also note that attribution for articles is broken in the PDF file when articles are split, merged or translated into another language, unless Special:Import is used. --Stefan4 (talk) 23:04, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Hmm; the multimedia team should immediately chance the code so that attribution of media files must be populated from the "Author" parameter. Later they can consider reading from the "attribution" parameter used in the license tag or "attribution" parameter created by "credit-line". Populating attribution from page history is misleading and quite nonsense, anyway. J e e 03:17, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Category:Time by hour

Dear all, I would like to get your opinion on Category:Time by hour. This example is given at Template:Category definition: clocks and watches by time displayed : For 15:45 / Time 15:45: clocks and watches displaying the time 15:45 (3:45 pm). 12-hour clocks are categorized in category:Time 03:45. Seconds are ignored. See the parent category description for additional information.
This sounds a bit odd. Shouldn't this be: 12-hour clocks are categorized in category:Time 03:45, unless clearly being 15:45? Otherwise strange things happen, like this one: File:StationVoorschoten5.JPG (see gallery), where time is clearly indicating 16.00 hr (afternoon) and not 4:00 -as is now the category. Or this one: File:Tann-Rüti IMG 3491 ShiftN.jpg. The sun is clearly shining brightly, but the time category indicates Time 02:46, which is clearly nonsense. I think we should bring in some common sense into this category by relaxation of the definition of analogue clocks, and adding into the definition unless clearly being afternoon or evening. Vysotsky (talk) 00:15, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Unless there's a 24h clock, as is the case with your first example, I'd categorise 12h clocks into both categories, i.e for a clock displaying 3:45, I'd categorise into 03:45 and 15:45 categories. That way end users can easily find images of relevance and there's no longer an issue about where to put images, guessing about whether it's morning or evening etc. It was pointed out when we discussed this via the IRC channel earlier, EXIF data could be used to determine the 24h time the clock actually displays, if you're prepared to accept EXIF time to be correct (I'm personally not sure about that as there's obviously the risk someone has put in 12h time into a device expecting 24h time so it ends up out by 12h - I'd imagine there's a lot of afternoon photos taken with an early morning 24h time, if that makes sense).

The other option we discussed, is specific categorisation for 12h clocks, linked to from the other categories.

Nick (talk) 00:33, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I think EXIF data are unreliable. In my opinion, best solution would be to change (relax) the current Category definition of 12-hour clocks, so obvious examples like the above 16:00 won't be changed into 04:00. If the definition will not be changed, changes like these will continue. Vysotsky (talk) 01:35, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

The problem is some areas, especially more northerly and southerly areas around the world can have very long hours of daylight during summer and it is not impossible for clocks to be photographed in bright sunshine at 04:00hrs (i.e early in the morning). I believe the best option is either to have specific categories for 12h clocks or to dual categorise into both times, i.e 04:00 and 16:00. I agree there should be no changing of categories until this is resolved and a proper workable solution is agreed upon. Nick (talk) 01:49, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like a good proposal. Perhaps the categorization could be done within the rules, applying common sense. I guess there won't be much fuss about the categorizations, since most pictures are not taken in the polar regions. Category definition|clocks and watches by time displayed|15:45 now translates into: For 15:45 / Time 15:45: clocks and watches displaying the time 15:45 (3:45 pm). 12-hour clocks are categorized in category:Time 03:45. Seconds are ignored. See the parent category description for additional information. Perhaps this could be changed into: For 15:45 / Time 15:45: clocks and watches displaying the time 15:45 (3:45 pm). 12-hour clocks are categorized in the appropriate category: either Time 03:45 or Time 15:45. In case of doubt, use both categories. Seconds are ignored. See the parent category description for additional information. Vysotsky (talk) 14:17, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Doubled upload log

Something strange occurred with File:BSicon uxSPLa.svg. I uploaded it once, as can be seen its history and in my contributions, but in the "File history" section there are to entries with identical information. Likewise there are two entries in the logs for the file, and so two entries in my uploads. If this a one-off bug or a common issue? YLSS (talk) 10:49, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Speakerthon results

At the "Speakerthon" event at the BBC's New Broadcasting House in London on Saturday, volunteers and BBC staff identified and extracted around 300 sound clips of notable people speaking, from the BBC's archive of broadcast radio programmes. The BBC have agreed to release these clips under open licence (CC-by).

Around 100 of these have already been uploaded to Commons and many added to the (English) Wikipedia articles on the speakers, including, for example, Tim Berners-Lee, Alice Walker, Agnetha Fältskog and Morgan Freeman; with many more awaiting templating upload.

Colleagues are welcome to assist, by documenting, templating and categorising the files, and transcribing them, and adding them to articles. How to do all this is described in the project guidelines

The Open Knowledge Foundation have a blog post about the event.

This project is the first time the BBC have agreed to release extracts of broadcast material under open licence. Andy Mabbett (talk) 13:46, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

User:File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske)

This user seems to have stopped uploading files from Wikipedia, but is still uploading files from Flickr. What's wrong with the bot? --Stefan4 (talk) 13:59, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Yup, I was also unable to migrate a file from en.wp a week ago, but I thought that was a temporary problem. CommonHelper produces "Querying image data ...done. Retrieving image description ...done. TUSC verification successful. The image should now be at <...>. Edit the new description page." However, the new description page doesn't exist. YLSS (talk) 15:48, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I have had this problem for a couple of days. Looking at the 1000 most recent files at Special:ListFiles/File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske), I only find Flickr uploads, but no Wikipedia uploads. --Stefan4 (talk) 15:54, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Can someone identify the castle?

I suspect it is a landmark along the Cordoba - Sevilla high speed line. Problem is that the categories are to specific to have a general search.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:27, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Seems to be this one: Category:Castle of Almodóvar del Río. -- Tuválkin ✉ 11:08, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

And copyvio via http://www.panoramio.com/photo/4102678 (2007, CC BY-ND 3.0 by Federico Verjaga Bue...) (or not, eventually... Fedekuki sounds similar to "Federico"... hmmm...). Gunnex (talk) 16:37, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Most likely not. Identical exif is quite present in other uploads of this user. False alarm :-). Btw, here the Google Map link for Castle of Almodóvar del Río from where I got the Panoramio-source... Gunnex (talk) 16:44, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Glad to know it is likely not a copyvio (unless it is a moderately clever one). As for the geoloc, the values from Panoramio, 37°48′28″N 5°01′26″W / 37.807648°N 5.023777°W, mark the object location, which I added to the Category:Castle of Almodóvar del Río; the camera location for this photo must be SW from the castle, to include the rail line in the foreground; my guess 37°48′15.080″N 5°2′2.5224″W / 37.80418889°N 5.034034°W may not be exact, but it is better for this photo than the Panoramio geoloc as given. -- Tuválkin ✉ 17:31, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Also, I suggest this discussion should be moved/archived to the file’s talk page. -- Tuválkin ✉ 17:31, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Done. -- Tuválkin ✉ 00:12, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Video support

For efficiency reasons, there was a slight change in how the Javascript that supports videos is loaded. Well hopefully this should affect nothing, if you happen to see a video which has the play button to the right of it (instead of on top), and clicking on it links directly to the file (instead of playing the video), please let me know. Bawolff (talk) 04:08, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/Innovaxiom

Can someone review the contributions of this user? They appear to be uploading files on behalf of this organization and the terms of use are currently in French, so perhaps we need a good translator of French to determine whether it fits into the CC-By-SA or not. If it isn't we might need an OTRS ticket to prove that this user is a representative of the company who chose to release their files under the license indicated. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 06:04, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Wellcome Images

Thousands of years of visual culture made free through Wellcome Images, 2014-01-02. Tons of high-resolution images. Do we have any systematic plan for incorporating these? In any case, we are going to have a decision to make, because they say they are releasing them under CC-BY, and we'd usually argue that these are Public Domain. Still, it might be most polite to stick to the CC-BY, in the interest of good relations. ~- Jmabel ! talk 06:37, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

License-wise, we do have {{Licensed-PD-Art|PD-old-100|cc-by-3.0}} for such cases. Jean-Fred (talk) 07:53, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

The Wellcome Trust logo should be on Commons as PD-textlogo, so I would propose a dedicated template showing source and licence. I had a quick look to see what delights await and there's lots of excellent work, but there's a number of rights managed images in the library which are released under the CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0 licence, so we will need to make sure there's none of those imported. It does say on each page what the licence is however, so there should be no need for any guesswork. Nick (talk) 12:55, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

The EXIF also doesn't match the updated license, but we can get over that. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 13:33, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Cross posted at Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Can_I_upload_CC-BY_images.3F too. J e e 13:06, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

It's great to have these images available, digitally, but Wellcome are claiming copyright over, and to be the original source of, artworks and images from books which are already in the public domain. They have added a strapline underneath each image; and the precess of downloading high resolution versions of these public-domain works is tortuous, with a CAPTCHA, irrelevant terms & condition, and zipped files – why not make them available directly? Andy Mabbett (talk) 13:20, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

This is a great public resource. I have contacted Wellcome to ask about API access which may solve some of the technology issues for a batch upload. We often find that agreeing good context/metadata and providing links back to the source catalogue means that the desire for the source organization to add straplines or watermarks is avoided. As for the PD vs. CC-BY discussion, I suggest deferring that issue as the outcome may vary depending on the nature of the work; for example under UK law, there is reasonable precedent for a high quality photograph of an ancient papyrus to be considered a 3D work and the photographer may well claim appropriate rights. --Fæ (talk) 13:29, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

We could create something similar to {{Walters Art Museum license}}, reflecting individual copyright status. Are you also approaching the Wellcome Library explaining our stance on copyrigh? Regards, Christoph Braun (talk) 13:32, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

One step at a time. You know my track record on these things. --Fæ (talk) 13:35, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

January 22

Global usage for redirects

Do I understand right that Special:GlobalUsage started showing usage via redirects as well now? If so, I would request that an option is provided to show only direct usage, i.e. not via redirects. This is really needed for replacing renamed files in those cases when CommonsDelinker is unable to do it (e.g. with BSicons). YLSS (talk) 18:33, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

It does. However, I do not understand how that hinders with replacing the usage. (The redirect only shows the usage of itself (and possibly preceding redirects) ant not the usage of it's target file) --McZusatz (talk) 21:00, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but the usage of the target file now shows both the direct usage and usage via redirect. Sometimes these need to be separated. YLSS (talk) 22:01, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

However, keep in mind Special:GlobalUsage doesn't show all usage, so if nothing shows up, there is no guarantee that something is unused. For example, mw:InstantCommons usage isn't shown. --Stefan4 (talk) 22:48, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

So what, can anybody deal with this problem? Because otherwise, quite a lot of BSicons will need to be moved... YLSS (talk) 12:03, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

January 20

Image review request help please

Please see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Help_desk#Image_review_request

Thank you,

-- Cirt (talk) 15:49, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

One of bots and templates

Hi. I need some help. Yesterday I started to check this category. It's a container of lots of things (more than 3500 different pics). I think I finish of request rotation of all files than needed, but I need help to change categories and names.

I think problem comes from this template, with automatically add Category:Cultural heritage monuments in Montevideo. I'm not sure if there is a way to change this category per one more accurate. Example. If template says: {{Monumento Uruguay|019-220}}, put category Palacio Salvo. Besides, several pictures have a double category: Category:Cultural heritage monuments in Montevideo Category:Palacio Salvo. I think this is wrong because second one it is already a subcategory of Cultural heritage monuments in Montevideo. And so on.
I request several renames of pics uploaded by this user but still remains quite with wrong name. Also need it almost all contribs of this other. Is there any way to do this automatically (or at least request a massive rename)?

Do you know if there is possible to do this changes and where can I request them? Thanks. --Ganímedes (talk) 13:44, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't think the template you singled out is the problem. All that should do in terms of categories is place it in either Category:Cultural heritage monuments in Uruguay with known IDs or Category:Cultural heritage monuments in Uruguay with unknown IDs. - Jmabel ! talk 00:51, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
- Yes, you're right. I've seen in some cases was manually added. --Ganímedes (talk) 19:34, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
On the template front: could you give an example of an image that has the problem you are talking about? - Jmabel ! talk 01:00, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
- See i.e. File:Aduana de Montevideo.jpg: its only category is Category:Cultural heritage monuments in Montevideo, it's got template {{Monumento Uruguay|019-118}}. If this template could add directly Category:Aduana, Montevideo (neightborhood) or add Category:Edificio de la Aduana, Montevideo (just the building itself) it could be easier, more accurate and reduce the 3500 in Category:Cultural heritage monuments in Montevideo. --Ganímedes (talk) 19:34, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
If you want a massive rename, probably someone with a bot can do it if there is a pattern. Otherwise, it's hard to think of how software would make this any easier than going through by hand and renaming them. Can you give some examples of what you are trying to do? - Jmabel ! talk 01:00, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
- I think there are patterns in first case: [13]. He always write: "BMRnameofmonumentXX@0.jpg" I think this could be converted to "name of monument XX.jpg" but I don´t know if a bot can do it. In the other case, sadly I think it should be made file by file. Thanks. --Ganímedes (talk) 19:34, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

booker t washintong

hey everyone this is what i need help on im doing a project for black histroy and i need info about booker t washington with your help thumbnail — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.210.234.34 (talk • contribs) 19:31, 22 January 2014‎ (UTC)

You can find out more about him by clicking here. --Admr Boltz 19:32, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Illinois Supreme Court

Are decisions made by the Illinois Supreme Court considered free-use to upload to Wikimedia Commons?

For example, Supreme Court opinions listed at:

http://www.state.il.us/court/Opinions/recent_supreme.asp

Thank you for your time,

-- Cirt (talk) 08:40, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't see why they would be. The Illinois Supreme Court is not part of the federal government, to {{PD-USGov}} does not apply, and section 5 of the Official Court Reports Act indicates that the court holds the copyright to its publications. —LX (talk, contribs) 14:58, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Ah, okay, thank you. -- Cirt (talk) 19:56, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, they're okay. The US does not recognize copyright on edicts of government like court decisions. Use {{PD-EdictGov}}.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:52, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Well this is embarrassing... —LX (talk, contribs) 12:56, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

January 24

Geocoding: Arrow in Location template has wrong direction

I've geocoded some aerial photos, e.g. File:Thyssen Krupp Quartier Luftaufnahme Nordost 2014.jpg using the Location template and the direction field: {{Location dec|51.458686|6.985478|heading:NE}}

Camera location	51° 27′ 31.27″ N, 6° 59′ 07.72″ E	View all coordinates using: OpenStreetMap

Direction is north-east and the arrow goes to north-west. Has anyone an idea what's the problem here or who can fix it? Thanks, --Tuxyso (talk) 09:21, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, the "arrow" is actually the azimuth. That is: if you stand somewhere on the Northern hemisphere and look towards northeast, your compass will show 45° anticlockwise because its direction is of course the north. --12:04, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

If your interpretation is correct, the arrow is not really useful and hardly understandable. I am not interested in Azimuth but in the direction of view or in the heading. Azimuth might be useful for astronomy but imho it is very irritating to use heading in the Location template and get azimuth on the image description. --Tuxyso (talk) 12:16, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

The arrow (marked "N") is pointing towards "North", that is a traditional symbol used on the maps that usually requires the least explanation. The input to the {{Location}} template is heading aka azimuth, or clockwise angle from the North to the direction your camera is pointing (assumed to be the same as up direction of the up pointing vector located in the center of the image). If your heading is 45 deg (heading:NE) than north is

. There are not standards for displaying the heading direction. We could have used

, but it is not as clear for about the same size image. --Jarekt (talk) 13:31, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, I also know north arrows from maps. But in the case here there is great confusion with the arrow: The heading / direction of camera view is a quasi standard, everyone knows it. For the average user it is not obvious why with heading NE the arrow points to NO. Although it is semantically wrong from the viewpoint of a geographer I would strongly suggest to change the semantic of the arrow to the wide-spread heading. The compass rose shown here is imho no alternative. What do you think about different direction symbols like the ones [shown here]?. One symbol with appropriate text for every direction, N, NE, NW, ... Or a simplified compass rose with large letters? --Tuxyso (talk) 13:49, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I like the symbols shown at shutterstock, however they are copyrighted and would probably have to be recreated (with enough changes as not to run into copyright discussions) for 32 named directions, and added to {{Compass rose file}} template. If the result is as clear as current File:North Pointer.svg I would support it, despite the fact that I like the elegance of the current solution which uses a single file rotated with the help of {{RotateStyle}}. --Jarekt (talk) 15:15, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

What do you (and others) think about a simplified compass rose? It looks like the current arrow but with a circle around it and four markers which symbolize an abstract compass.

. With such a symbol we can use heading instead of azimuth. Our SVG experts can surely do much better, just a first draft. --Tuxyso (talk) 16:11, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

This image shows an arrow with label "N", what would usually indicate that arrow is pointing "North" which should not point in the same direction as "heading" but in "360-heading". If you want to point towards "heading" than you need to label your arrow accordingly. By the way, as far as I can tell heading means the same as azimuth, since both are clockwise angles from the North to the direction your camera is pointing. --Jarekt (talk) 18:00, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

First: My arrow was just an illustration how a rotated compass rose arrow could look like. The original svg has to start at 0° / 360° degree.
Second: There is a language misunderstanding: The key problem of the current Location implementation is that the direction of the arrow does not point to the heading which is according to en:Course (navigation) "[...] The units are degrees from north in a clockwise direction. East is 90, south is 180 and west is 270 degrees". With this defintion in mind the current Location implementation does not show heading but the direction to north and this is per defintion Azimuth. My first draft was wrong: We need only a rotation of the arrow, the compass rose remains in its position. Heading north-east should look like

. Better? --Tuxyso (talk) 19:46, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I hate to be splitting hairs, but we still have language misunderstanding: my read is that both heading and azimuth are exactly the same, and I agree with you that in the current implementation of the location template we do not show heading but the direction north which is calculated as 360-heading. I think we agree on the current implementation and on definition of heading, but not on definition of azimuth. However it is rather unimportant since we never use the term azimuth in relation to the {{Location}} template. Your File:Simple-compass-rose-symbol-draft.jpg #3 is much better, I would prefer different style arrow since I usually associate this style with North. I also find current design too close to Cross-hair target sight

, but that probably can not be helped. Any other opinions? --Jarekt (talk) 20:36, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree that indicating the direction on a compass with a fixed north is a bit more intuitive. If you want a rotating north I suggest giving the compass perspective (so it looks like a handheld compass parallel to the floor), i.e. a compass held while facing in the direction of the photo. --Dschwen (talk) 20:24, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

This might work but I am afraid that the perspective might get lost in the images of the size we are currently using (~20-30 pixels on a side). --Jarekt (talk) 20:36, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

There is also a more minimalistic solution e.g. for north-east:

(30 Pixel). --Tuxyso (talk) 20:44, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

support, it's intuitive and correct. --A.Savin 21:46, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I think, both types are intuitive and both can have their supporters and opponents. I was a bit surprised at first but it is not difficult to adapt to it. I personally lack direct displaying of the original (not recalculated) heading value from the template: the heading can be expressed by letters as well as by azimuth number in the template. --ŠJů (talk) 02:25, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

The current implementation is contra-intuitive and I still strongly suggest to change it. The current arrow has some logic, but only for those who know that the file is directed to north in relation to the direction of view. At the moment I see NO argument against my new suggestion with

. It is semantically correct (from the viewpoint of a geographer or compass expert) and it is intuitively understandable. --Tuxyso (talk) 06:57, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Tuxyso, while I generally agree with your opinion that the current solution is not good, the "minimalistic" arrow you proposed here might be not as intuitive as you think. Does the arrow indicate "north" (there's a "N" right next to it, and the arrow looks like north-arrows usually look like) or does it indicate the viewing direction, while the "N" indicates "north"? The second option is true, of course, but it's not completely obvious. I think you previous proposal (

) was easier to understand. --El Grafo (talk) 09:39, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Might be, but my SVG skills are too limited. Probably some one who is better in creating symbols can develop an alternative. The problem of

is that the arrow and its direction (most important information) is not clear enough. I still prefer

. --Tuxyso (talk) 11:03, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Same here when it comes to SVG, but I gave it a try:

. --El Grafo (talk) 10:17, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Better than my version. Why red/blue? I would prefer a combination of gray / black or is there a rationale to use these colors? --Tuxyso (talk) 10:27, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I made it colored because I thought that would make it easier to differentiate the arrow from the compass rose in the background – here's a b&w version:

. There's no special reason for choosing blue and red apart from green/red being a bad combination for many people and yellow not working well on a white background. Blue works well with the rest of the template and red for the important part seemed like a logical choice. Blue and black might be another option:

--El Grafo (talk) 12:03, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

There appears to be a problem with this whole approach: Currently, only a single image file is used by the template, which is simply being rotated according to the direction (NE, 123 degrees etc.) speified in the template parameter (using Template:Transform-rotate). Whit this approach, this doesn't work anymore because only the arrow would have to be rotated, while the compass rose (or the "N" in the "minimalistic" version) in the back remains static. So simply replacing the graphics file used wouldn't work. --El Grafo (talk) 12:31, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Use two files? A static, non-rotated background with the compass rose or "N", and overlay a rotated arrow with transparent background over it? Lupo 13:21, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

El Grafo, you are right, but we need to agree on "what" before we tackle "how", and by the way your

or

are my favorite options so far. Lupo, I like this idea, but I have never seen it implemented. Do you think you (or anybody else) can build a prototype with some 2 svg files, one static and one rotated, overlay on top of each other? I (or someone else) could take it from there. --Jarekt (talk) 14:05, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Overlaying them is relatively easy. Centering them seems to be harder. A start is here (feel free to edit and improve, or just take it and run). Would need cross-browser testing. Lupo 17:18, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

@Lupo: That looks very promising. I guess if both images were (partly transparent) squares with the exact same dimension and their visible content was centered perfectly whithin those squares, centering shouldn't be an issue, right? I think I should be able to do this … --El Grafo (talk) 17:41, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I also think with two square base images it would be easier. But note that the bounding box of a rotated square is larger than that square, unless the angle is a multiple of 90 degrees. Rotate a 20x20px square by 45°, and you get a bounding box of 28.28x28.28px (or just 28, I guess one could round). So you'll still need a way to align the centers, either through CSS, or in Module:Coordinates. In the 45° case, top and left of the inner span for the overlay should be both - (28 - 20) / 2 == -4. Lupo 18:42, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

You're right, I didn't consider that. Is it worth putting more time into this, given that a) we now can easily create several versions with differently rotated arrows (see below) and b) there might be problems with some older browsers? --El Grafo (talk) 22:00, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

@El Grafo: That should not be our (yours and mine) problem. We have excellent programmers and I am sure if we find a consensus here the template / parser experts will implement it. Using a different image for each direction is also not a big deal. --Tuxyso (talk) 13:26, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

@Tuxyso: Once again I agree in general, but keep in mind that the template also accepts directions in degrees → that could mean 360 different images ;-)

@Lupo: If someone can tweak the template to do this I'd be happy to create two different files. --El Grafo (talk) 13:45, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

@El Grafo: BTW: Your new black / blue version is quite good. Do you (or someone else) know if overlaying of two svg images is possible in MediaWiki? --Tuxyso (talk) 14:03, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

(2 Edit conflicts) Once there is a consensus I can volunteer to implement it. But unless we can get Lupo's solution to work, we would have to also get some help with creation of 32 (32 is probably sufficient, we definitely do not need 360) variants of

or

, but we can ask for help on Commons:Graphics village pump. --Jarekt (talk) 14:05, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I've done some research and updated

to a handwritten version. It doesn't look exactly like the previous version, but it has one huge advantage: The arrow can be rotated quickly by just opening the file in a text editor, changing the "45" in rotate(45, 800, 1100) to the desired angle and saving it as a new file. You are of coure right: we don't really need 360 versions … --El Grafo (talk)

Rotations work perfectly. Only the arrowhead and the intersection of lines in the middle of the circle looks a bit unexact if you zoom in. --Tuxyso (talk) 08:14, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Jep, you're right. Has to do with how I constructed the arrow, using borders around a white arrow with a black triangle on top. I re-constructed the arrow, putting a white triangle in a black arrow and avoiding actual borders. Still not perfect, since the coordinates for the white triangle were obtained more or less by trial and error. I'd like to actually calculate them eventually, but my skills in trigonometry are kinda rusty … However, since the target size is rather small anyway, I think that should do for now. --El Grafo (talk) 11:13, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Looks good, OK for that usecase. Can that be implemented? --Tuxyso (talk) 12:44, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Tuxyso, if everyone is fine with this layout I think I can create the necessary files rather quickly using a bash script or something like that. The rest would be up to Jarekt or someone else who has the necessary skills. --El Grafo (talk) 08:37, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I am fine with the current version of

. Once we have 16 or 32 versions of it, I will add it to {{Compass rose file}} and {{Location}}. Does anybody else have any last thoughts before this file gets cloned? --Jarekt (talk) 13:23, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

No, I look forward to the implementation. Thanks El Grafo for the file and Jarekt for the plan to implement it. --Tuxyso (talk) 10:27, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Done The files can be found in Category:Compass roses, filenames correspond to the "Abbr." column in en:Boxing_the_compass#Compass_points. Please let me know if you spot any errors. --El Grafo (talk) 21:20, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I added the files to {{Compass rose file}} and added the code to call it to Module:Coordinates which is the code I am testing that will (hopefully) replace large part of internal code of {{Location}}. The new version is accessible for testing as {{Location/sandbox}}. See for example this file. --Jarekt (talk) 18:15, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Looks great, imho. Thanks. --El Grafo (talk) 23:13, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I’m frankly appaled this discussion lasted so long, and where it went. The old (still current) pictograms are/were correct: That arrow points to wherever north is on the image — be it a map or a landscape. Now we’ll still have an arrow pointing to the north, which varies from image to image (or else it would be useless), but on its background a meaningless and misleading "N" on a fixed upper middle point. Genious. -- Tuválkin ✉ 13:18, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Uhm, no Tuválkin, unless there's an error in the implementation, the arrow in

does not point towards north. It points into the direction the camera was looking (relative to to north). So if the camera was looking to the north, it points up; if it was looking to the east it points to the right and so on. That's like taking a map and marking the viewing direction by using a pen to draw an arrow on it. Just like it's done here, with the tip of the Commons logo giving the direction. --El Grafo (talk) 13:44, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

An arrow pointing to the «direction the camera was looking» seems pretty useless: It will most of the times point to the top of the page/screen, unless in special cases of severe camera tilt, misrotated images, or lateral crops from orginals with large depth of field. More importantly, it means (if I understand correctly) that not only the pictograms are being changed for the heading argument of {{Location}} but also the underlaying code. Is that so?
The current functionality is named "heading" in a straighforward fashion; it is said above to be rather the azimuth, but that’s a way of muddying the waters with irrelevant gobbledygook: If you’re labeling a photo taken on the earth surface in late March or late September (from a horizontal standpoint, with usual FoV and DoF, et c., et c.) that shows a sunset (i.e., facing west), you will use the heading argument of {{Location}} either expressing heading (heading:W) or azimuth (heading:-90 or heading:270), to achieve the same exact result: an arrow, with an "N", poiting to the right of the page/screen, meaning that the photo is looking/facing westwards, and north is to your right. So, for all practical ends in this discussion azimuth=heading.
The current functionality shows in a straighforward fashion whereto north lies for each given landscape view. You guys seems to be trying to change it to something else: Something less useful and something that will render unuseful (even misleading) all its installed usage so far. Please tell me I am wrong?

-- Tuválkin ✉ 14:49, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

OK, forget what I wrote above, let me try to explain it in another way. In this example the camera was facing straight to the east (90°).

The current implementation would give you an arrow pointing straight to the left (270° or -90°), telling you: "If you were standing at that exact spot the picture was taken, looking into the same direction as the camera, north would be 90° to your left", indirectly telling you: "If […], you were looking to the east".
The "new" implementation would give you an arrow pointing straight to the right (90°), telling you "If […], you were looking to the east", indirectly telling you "If […], north would be 90° to your left"

Or yet another way to say it:

The current implementation is equivalent to what a compass needle would show you if you were standing at that point, looking into that direction
The "new" implementation is how you would mark it on a map (one of the common ones of course, with north being at the top of the sheet)

It's really just the same thing expressed in a different way. You obviously find the current implementation more intuitive, others (including myself) have expressed that they would prefer the new one. I'd guess that you are actually used to handle a compass – most people today aren't, but they are used to north being "up". --El Grafo (talk) 15:40, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I see. Thanks for the explanation. One last question: How do I turn off the new implementation? -- Tuválkin ✉ 18:18, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

New implementation is not live yet and at the moment is only available as {{Location/sandbox}}, but once it is live it is going to be the same for all. Just like you can not pick if you prefer DMS or decimal format for latitude and longitude, you will not be able to pick the heading icon. That is why we are discussing it here so we can reach consensus to change it or not. --Jarekt (talk) 14:24, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

One ring to rule them all, huh? Okay then, so it has to be

Oppose. Lets see some voting here, too, and lets weight the votes of with each user’s number of edits adding or correcting geolocation of files and categories. We’ll see who wins, whether the oldschoolers who know what a compass is (haven’t held one in hand in 10 yrs or more, though), whether the flatearthers. (Or the template could show both icons — is its not like there’s not enough room in it right now…) -- Tuválkin ✉ 19:13, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

The

'Support's of many users can be found in their postings above. --тнояsтеn ⇔ 13:16, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

So how shall we proceed now? I had the impression that we already have a pretty clear consensus pro changing it, but wouldn't mind starting a vote … --El Grafo (talk) 20:20, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

It will be implemented within next few days. The new version is implemented in my recent rewrite of the {{Location}} template family to use Lua code (Module:Coordinates) and the templates are slowly being switched, while I do last minute teaks based on issues that come up. See here. I already switched less used {{Globe location}} and {{Object location}} templates, so only {{Location}}/{{Location dec}} are left. --Jarekt (talk) 20:36, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Done the new version of {{Location}} is deployed. --Jarekt (talk) 15:36, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing this problem, that previous implementation was really confusing. Happy to see such improvement. --[Tycho] (talk) 20:39, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, I still think the new implementation is confusing — maybe many others, silent so far? We’ll see. I wont initiate a reversal because I can adapt to this new one, although it is to me clearly inferior. -- Tuválkin ✉ 23:03, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! --тнояsтеn ⇔ 13:10, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

+1 --El Grafo (talk) 16:04, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

UK: Chiltern Railways block Commons

Chiltern Railways, a DB-owned company which runs trains between London and the English midlands, offer Wi-Fi to customers. Although referred to as a free extra, it is clearly used as an inducement to customers to choose them over rivals.

For some time, the service has been blocking Wikimedia Commons, with the message:

This site was categorized in: Photo Sharing, File Storage, Software/Technology, Research/ Reference, Non-Profits, Visual Search Engines

Wikipedia, including its commons-hosted images, is not blocked. More than once recently, this has stopped me working on the project, or finding images to add to articles, when working on Wikipedia. I have reached out to them to ask for an unblock, and today they responded:[14]

Please be aware that we have looked into your request and this restriction will be removed. Thanks. E

but less than three hours later followed up with:[15]

I'm afraid someone has had a look at this site from the team and has found adult content so we're now not able to unblock. E

I'm told that the similar companies, CrossCountry, East Midlands and East Coast all don't block Wikimedia Commons.

If you use Chiltern Trains, please ask them to unblock Commons, either on Twitter or by e-mail or post. Keep your comments polite, and give reasons why access to Commons is useful. Remember that the staff involved ("E" is the initial of one) are not those making the decisions. Andy Mabbett (talk) 14:20, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Shouldn't they also block Wikipedia in that case, since Wikipedia contains adult content? --Stefan4 (talk) 22:51, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

There are, surely, substantial differences. The two are not equal in the extent & enthusiasm of their adult content. bobrayner (talk) 19:33, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

January 17

PNG vs. JPEG for photographs

Hello,

I wanted to upload a JPEG version of a photograph which had been uploaded as a PNG on Commons, in order to reduce the filesize of the thumbnails displayed in pages using it. However I found (on Commons:File types#PNG and Help:Scanning#PNG vs. JPEG) that it may not be so obvious that JPEG should be preferred for photographs...

So, are there some guidelines about whether to prefer JPEG or PNG for photographs? (I'm talking about a random illustrating photograph here, not for instance a high-quality scan of an artwork or historic document) Maybe the filesize difference between JPEG and PNG thumbnails is not worth the trouble? (although reducing the generated bandwidth always seems to me a good thing...) Would the ideal behaviour be, for each photograph, to upload it as a JPEG for usage and as a PNG for storage?

Thanks for your views on the subject.

Cos-fr (talk) 03:56, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi. It is obvious to me that any "normal" picture taken with a digital camera should be uploaded as JPG. Most PNGs I've seen uploaded here have little benefit at the cost of an enormously increased filesize, or ther are downscaled to keep the filesize manageable, thereby sacrificing way more information content than a JPG compression at the same filesize would have lost. --Dschwen (talk) 05:44, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

So, you're saying that a picture that was made as a JPEG should be uploaded that way; now, when I find a picture that another user uploaded as a PNG, is it a good idea to convert it into a JPEG and upload the new file? Or are the benefits (smaller thumbnail filesize) not worth the drawbacks (slight deterioration in the PNG->JPEG conversion, additional file to manage on Commons)? and if yes, would it also be a good idea to suggest deleting the PNG as redundant? - Cos-fr (talk) 07:31, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

If an image was uploaded as PNG there is absolutely no reason to reupload it as JPG. The bandwith you save (which is minimal for thumbnails anyway) is out of proportion to the downsides(quality loss due to JPG compression, additional maintenance work to deal with the two copies, potential to upset the original uploader with the duplicate; a deletion of the PNG is probably against our deletion guidelines anyway which state to normally delete the version with less quality or the newer version if both are equivalent which in both cases would be the JPG version). If you upload a new photograph, JPG is the way to go though. --Patrick87 (talk) 09:23, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Understood, thank you for that guideline. Shouldn't we write it somewhere, like in Commons:File types? - Cos-fr (talk) 13:48, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

{{PNG with JPEG version}} is documented in Commons:File types#PNG, maybe add Category:PNGs with JPEG versions and Category:PNGs_with_missing_JPEG_versions. –Be..anyone (talk) 15:50, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh, so actually Commons:Media for cleanup#PNG photos that require a JPEG version (found from {{PNG with JPEG version}}) is the very documentation I was looking for; but I gather, from this discussion, that maybe it's not to be applied too systematically. Thanks! - Cos-fr (talk) 19:37, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

"Cosplay"

We keep going around this, so I'm bringing the matter here. People keep adding "cosplay" categories to images in Category:Summer Solstice Parade and Pageant and its subcategories. File:Fremont Solstice Parade 2009 - 007.jpg is a recent example. I think this is wrong, but I'm getting tired of fighting it one image or category at a time.

Participants in this annual parade in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle variously wear uniforms, costumes, body paint, or occasionally nothing at all. I don't see wearing a costume in a parade as "cosplay", and as far as I can tell neither does the en-wiki article on cosplay. This practice predates even the word "cosplay". - Jmabel ! talk 18:25, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm inclined to treat this on an image-by-image basis. If I'm dressed as a character which is typically associated with cosplay at one of these events, the fact that I'm at one of these events does not make it "not cosplay." On the other hand, if I'm dressed as a character NOT typically associated with cosplay, the fact that I'm at one of these events does not make it "cosplay." However, in the interests of minimizing disruption, I would recommend that if anyone adds the "cosplay" (or any sub-category of cosplay) to one of these images, that they explain themselves on the image talk page. Likewise, if anyone removes such a category, they should explain themselves. If two editors disagree on whether an image should or should not be labeled "cosplay" then there should be a discussion. In any case, it's not going to do great harm to the project if a few images are improperly categorized for the duration of the discussion. Davidwr (talk) 02:46, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

OK, so, to take the example at hand: would the Mad Hatter be considered "a character typically associated with cosplay"? - Jmabel ! talk 06:01, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Further comment: there is little chance that the person who is the subject of any such photo will be offended by not being described as doing cosplay. If they do not see themselves as doing cosplay, they are likely to be offended by such a category. - Jmabel ! talk 06:04, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

If the man is costuming himself specifically to remind people of the Mad Hatter character, and we have a category "Cosplay of the Mad Hatter", then I don't know why the category wouldn't apply. Of course, merely wearing semi-random bodypaint and loincloths, without attempting to appear as a specific character from art, literature, film etc. is not Cosplay... AnonMoos (talk) 06:45, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

I guess my issue is that the term "cosplay" refers to a certain type of fandom, and that wearing a costume in a parade does not necessarily indicate an affiliation with that type of fandom. To take a more loaded example, it's as if we were to take self-flagellation by people in a Catholic religious procession and classify it under sado-masochism. - Jmabel ! talk 18:33, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

If they dress and adorn themselves to appear as specific characters from art, literature, film, etc. then I really don't see why we're stigmatizing them by adding specific categories which reflect this. It seems to me that adding categories such as "Cosplay of the Mad Hatter" helps accurate image classification. AnonMoos (talk) 18:58, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Folks appear to be making up their own definitions of cosplay on the fly, which may be unhelpful. There is a definition at Cosplay which is sourced and represents a consensus view there. It turns out to be quite wide, in that someone engaged in cosplay does not have to be dressed as a specific character. --Fæ (talk) 21:09, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

The first definition at the top of that article says "Cosplay, short for 'costume play', is a performance art in which participants wear costumes and accessories to represent a specific character or idea." I don't think it would be useful to categorize people merely wearing semi-random bodypaint and loincloths, without attempting to represent a specific character, in the Cosplay categories... AnonMoos (talk) 18:58, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Furthermore, though, our article says "Cosplay is generally considered different from Halloween and Mardi Gras costume wear," and the parade here is much more like Mardi Gras than like a cosplay convention or even a cosplay parade. - Jmabel ! talk 23:42, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

However, if they garb themselves with the specific intention of appearing like a particular media/literary character, and we have an appropriate cosplay category for that character, then it would not seem inappropriate to add that category. It's not like we're accusing them of being furries or anything...

-- AnonMoos (talk) 06:12, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I suspect that some of them would view it as exactly like that. - Jmabel ! talk 04:19, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Come on -- the stereotype of furries is slightly strange people with non-mainstream personal obsessions, while the stereotype of cosplayers is cute late teen / early 20s Japanese girls with too much time on their hands... AnonMoos (talk) 15:40, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Vector.tutsplus.com tutorial on how to create File:Titan's atmosphere.svg!!

I was paid to write a tutorial on how to draw my Titan's atmosphere diagram! See it here!!—Love, Kelvinsong talk 22:03, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Nice :) Congratulations Kelvinsong & thanks for sharing. :) Jean-Fred (talk) 02:18, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

January 21

Is crwflags.com a reliable source about flags?

Hello everybody. In my main Wikipedia (vi.wiki), my fellows and me often have to deal with a sockpuppet who is obsessed with flags as well as with adding wrong information. He has uploaded a lot to Wikimedia Commons also, for example: File:Flag of Tay Dam.png, in which he states that the source is crwflags.com. I think this website isn't reliable at all but is truly a self-published source. I don't know about flags of other countries there, but I found out that they uploaded a lot of fictitious Vietnamese flags (or maybe invented by them). For example, they uploads Lý Dynasty's flag, but I haven't seen anything that looks like their invention (very likely) in Vietnamese historical books or in any Vietnamese museums. The aforementioned sockpuppet uses this article in the English Wikipedia to present his uploaded flags, many of them are taken from crwflags.com. For your information, the equivalent Vietnamese article for "List of flags of Vietnam" was twice deleted after being nominating for deletion (proof) due to its extremely low accuracy. Gaconnhanhnhen (talk) 12:07, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Gaconnhanhnhen -- crwflags.com is just one of the hosting sites for "FOTW" or "Flags of the World" (see en:Flags of the World). I don't think it's accepted as a fully reliable source on en.wikipedia, but it's more authoritative than some random blog by some random individual... AnonMoos (talk) 14:14, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Please keep in mind that it is not the task of Wikimedia Commons to keep an eye on validity of information. It's up to local Wikipedia versions to do that. Jcb (talk) 12:58, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Jcb -- Commons doesn't really take sides in legitimate disputes about which set of claimed facts is true, but maliciously hoaxing or hatemongering content can be deleted... AnonMoos (talk) 14:14, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

That's true. I have e.g. deleted several times a series of hoax flags stated to belong to the Dominican Republic. But the flag in this example is in use in article space in four different language versions. Jcb (talk) 17:26, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Wellcome Library

See [16]/[17]: the Wellcome Library has recently released 100,000 of the images in its archive for people to use. Could we upload/use them here? It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 23:11, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes. See Commons:Batch_uploading/Wellcome_Images_CC-BY. --Fæ (talk) 23:14, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

January 27

Unable to resize File:Extreme XM logo.png

I am unable to resize File:Extreme XM logo.png, an image file from the Commons. If I attempt to post the file without any size specified, it appears just as it should (see below); if I try to adjust the size, the image will not display. I first encountered this problem while attempting to place this file in the {{Multiple image}} template on the English Wikipedia. Levdr1lp / talk 01:50, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Never mind. The previous version had errors -- I have uploaded an error-free version which seems to be working just fine. Levdr1lp / talk 01:59, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

sidebar navigation broken in German

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T56326

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T7092

something is broken. if you use Commons with German language interface, then there is no upload link in the sidebar. see report at the german village pump [18]. maybe someone can fix it. Holger1959 (talk) 02:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Latest comments over there imply that it's fixed. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:16, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Bawolff filed a bug for this some time ago because the MediaWiki default message was used and not the database one (the one customized by MediaWiki:Sidebar). -- Rillke^(q?) 14:24, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/Pandaravadai

Sorry to have to bother you guys again, but I found that all the contributions of this user and his other accounts Sharfudinpdv Rajaghiri and Sharfudin have all uploaded pictures containing pictures containing watermarks, so if someone could either review and tag their file uploads with the {{Watermark}} template and/or dedicate their time to directly removing the watermarks from the contributions, it'd be great. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 20:46, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Try Visual File Change, you should be able to tag them all yourself en-mass. --Admr Boltz 21:23, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure this editor is actually here to contribute to the greater good. We've previously been through a round of Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Pandaravadai, which did not generate any response from the editor. DMacks (talk) 02:24, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Those files were found to be outside of COM:SCOPE. I haven't looked at all of them but I believe they might be, and if you strongly think so you can use that tool to mass tag them with {{Delete}}. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 07:45, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

January 25

Likely misidentification: 2 "Ionesco" photos

Some edits by a novice editor on en.wp seemed to suggest that these two images are not Eugene Ionesco, as labeled, but rather George Enescu:

After a fair bit of (inexpert) eyeballing, I've concluded that the subject is very unlikely to be Eugene Ionesco. He might be Enescu (the profile in #2 is a bit suggestive), but that conclusion seems iffy. (Google Images was my reference source.)

Some additional info: the photos come from the Library of Congress Bain Collection (image desc: [19] and [20]). Most photos in Bain date from 1900 to mid-1920s. These two are undated. The title is from a caption card provided by the Bain News Service (not LC). The Bain title is not "Eugene Ionesco" but "Ionesco". (Seems like somebody assumed "Eugene".) The photos are from glass negatives, a technology I don't think lasted too far into the 20th century. Note Eugene I. was b. 1909 and George E. was b. 1881. The likely date of the photos would make them too old to be Eugene Ionesco I think.

So what should be done? At a minimum, it seems to me they should be retitled something like "Unknown Ionesco" and commentary added about the unliklihood of identification. Should they be deleted? --R. S. Shaw (talk) 08:09, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Wouldn't necessarily be surprising, given how Ertegun became "Ertrogren", etc... -- AnonMoos (talk) 15:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

It certainly looks like Georges Enesco (that's the spelling in his signature) when compared to the other images in the category. That seems confirmed by the following exercise. If we look at the other photographs in the same series of the Bain collection, we see this photo of musician Albert Coates (a photo that might be useful to have in the Commons, by the way). So, it is likely on the same ship and on the same trip. It shows that it is on the ship Berengaria of the Cunard line. From the list of passengers, Georges Enesco and Albert Coates were both on the Berengaria on the same voyage in 1922. (The name George Enesco is also recorded in other voyages in the records of Ellis Island, in 1918, 1923 and 1924. [21] I did not find the lists of passengers for those.) Another user had also mentioned the mistake on the talk page of the Ionesco article on the English Wikipedia last November. -- Asclepias (talk) 17:23, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

The files have now been renamed. -- Asclepias (talk) 21:32, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

The photos File:Georges Enesco on ship.jpg (formerly File:Eugene Ionesco.jpg ) and File:Georges Enesco on ship-restored.jpg (formerly File:Eugene Ionesco-restaured.jpg) are resp. were widely used on Wikipedias and other Wikimedia projects as depicting Eugène Ionesco. I have now removed most erroneous uses from Wikipedias etc. with Latin-based alphabets where I knew what I was doing, but there are still quite a few left; also, I didn't know what to do at fr:Portail:Académie française/Select image where the images are numbered and removing the "Ionesco" would have left a gap, so I just posted a pointer on the discussion page. File:Georges Enesco on ship 2.jpg is still used in the Spanish Wikipedia's article es:Intelectual. I tried to remove it there, but nothing happened, and I've see now that an IP contributor has already repeatedly tried to remove the photo, but without giving a reason, and got reverted multiple times - so maybe my attempt got caught by some kind of edit filter or the like; set a pointer at the discussion page, too. Gestumblindi (talk) 22:51, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing this, Asclepias, Gestumblindi. Nice detective work there, Asclepias. --R. S. Shaw (talk) 22:56, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually... I think the old file names File:Eugene Ionesco.jpg etc. shouldn't be redirects at all but be deleted, shouldn't they? The redirects are misleading, and if we delete them, the remaining Wikipedias etc. using the photos as "Ionesco" will become aware of the issue. Usually redirects are a good thing, but in this case where the subject is a different person than previously thought, I don't think so... Gestumblindi (talk) 23:06, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Can an admin please delete the page File:Eugene Ionesco 2.jpg, so we can finish this cleanup on the projects? -- Asclepias (talk) 04:14, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Done. - Jmabel ! talk 06:16, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

January 28

Request for Bureaucratship: Odder

As is now our custom when an application for advanced user rights is made, this is a quick note to let the community know that odder has self-nominated for Bureaucrat: Commons:Bureaucrats/Requests/Odder. --99of9 (talk) 01:58, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for this notification. Making a wider pool of contributors aware of these types of applications is an improvement to transparency. --Fæ (talk) 09:40, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Need some suggestion

I found this https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Babak_motavalli.jpg while going through pages. Is it ok with the category and if I upload the same kind of picture will it be ok ? I just want to create a welcome template in my native wikipedia. I don't want to keep my photo but some one else's. Please give me suggetion and the old pictures which seems to be edited are also there in the history list. Why those file are not deleted? I'm new to this so some basic question. Please some one answer me briefly with link. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jnanaranjan sahu (talk • contribs)

I'm unsure what you are trying to do here, but normally if you are uploading a different photo, you should be uploading it under a different filename. - Jmabel ! talk 16:52, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

January 29

FLAC on Apple devices

Following the Speakerthon (see preceding section, in which files were uploaded in FLAC format, I've seen comments from users of iPad and iPhone devices, that the audio cannot be played. This is also true for some Android devices.

I'm aware of the MP4 debate, which might impact on this, but in the meantime do we have a FAQ to which people affected maybe referred, which will advise them of the reasons, and work-arounds? Is there anything we can do on Commons, in the short term, to make the files playable on such kit?

Some useful apps for Apple devices are listed at [22]. Andy Mabbett (talk) 13:58, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Looks like Commons:Media_help might be relevant − does it appear up to date?

(though it does not mention FLAC ; but if I understand correctly a transcoded Vorbis version is available for every FLAC file).

Jean-Fred (talk) 14:23, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, but that seems to be for desktop/ laptop devices, not mobile devices. There's no option for Android, and the Mac section doesn't mention apps. It would be good if someone with the requisite knowledge could expand and update it accordingly. Andy Mabbett (talk) 15:41, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

the mp4 rfc is for video and audio, so it would have an impact on such things. My understanding (i dont have an iphone, so ive never put it to the test):

neither audio nor video works in iphone/ipad due to lack of free format (ie vorbis, in the future opus) support
- you may be able to download the media file and then play in vlc app if you get that app.
audio should work on all android devices (after android 2.3) if it doesnt work on your android device please let me know including what version of android you are using and what browser.
on the desktop audio wont work on internet explorer or safari without a plug in. For best results use firefox or chrome. In theory it should work if you have java installed, but i tested that today, and it didn't. Hopefully that issue will be resolved soon.

Bawolff (talk) 19:26, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

actually after testing, i must conclude that things are pretty bugy on android. First of all, if you arebrowsing in mobile interface, all videos seem to get stripped. In android browser (but not firefox app) only the first couple seconds of the video play. So pretty much ugh. Bawolff (talk) 13:41, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

OGA

Windows ffmpeg experiments: Chrome, Windows Media Player, and MPC-HC like the FLAC. I added "bare FLAC" again to the list of working file types, from where I removed it erroneously some hours ago. After that I tested File:Tim_Berners-Lee_-_Today_(ffmpeg_FLAC_in_OGG).oga. Windows Media Player crashes, MPC-HC works. So from my POV either FLAC in an OGG container is a dubious plan, or my ffmpeg.exe 2.1.1 doesn't agree with Xiph.org how to get this right. –Be..anyone (talk) 14:44, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

OGX

Another version created with ffmpeg -err_detect aggressive -i source.flac -vn -a:c flac -sample_fmt s16 -f ogg output.oga, 3.12 MB instead of 7.33 MB after stripping 8 unused (?) of 24 bits. However, the commons transcoder does not more grok the duration (48s). –Be..anyone (talk) 18:04, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I have no idea what any of that means. Andy Mabbett (talk) 19:55, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure what it means. If your 7 MB FLAC is the same as my 3 MB FLAC we're wasting disk space. If FFmpeg got it right the FLAC support on Windows (XIPH codecs) and Commons (duration) is "incomplete" (buggy). Otherwise FFmpeg is buggy. –Be..anyone (talk) 17:05, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Why do you think the original flac file is not 24 bit? --McZusatz (talk) 19:00, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

With the warning flag I'd expect some kind of visual info, if a wannabe lossless conversion loses relevant info. Your version shows the correct duration, but I'm not sure what you actually did, please add a note on the talk page. Be..anyone (talk) 18:00, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Filed bugzilla:60554 for the duration issue. Basically flac files contain an optional field saying how long they are. The field is optional, however most files seem to have it. If the file is missing that field, then we do not detect its length properly. I don't think the two versions of the file would be the same - The 16bit sample size file would be using smaller sample sizes I assume (See w:Audio_bit_depth for background on what that means. Both files are lossless in the same sense that you can have lossless png's with different colour depths, but the data recorded is different). Remember that disk space is cheap (and we have a lot of it), and when you upload a flac file, people playing the file generally get a compressed version that can be downloaded quickly (unless they intentionally download the original), so there's really no reason to worry about making the file smaller. Bawolff (talk) 01:25, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Andy: Ok, added links from COM:Media help. Now someone has to fill out Commons:Media help/iOS & Commons:Media help/Android ;-) Jean-Fred (talk) 18:26, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll see if I can find anyone who can do that. Andy Mabbett (talk) 19:55, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

20,000,000

The counter paused a bit before reaching 20M and then raised quickly to about 20,000,071. I am not sure which one of the above is the 'correct' one. --McZusatz (talk) 23:52, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

It’s File:WEREFOX at Clubschiff - WAVES VIENNA 2013 09.jpg according to Commons:Milestones. Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 23:56, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Congratulations everyone. --Meno25 (talk) 08:26, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Congratulations everyone.

I am disappointed that a chapter lend equipment to people who upload photo in low resolution. A photo made with a Canon 5D mark III (which cost more than 2000€ / 2500$) is around 25Mo, not 630Ko! I hope that Wikimedia Österreich will change this. Otherwise we should stop asking GLAM institutions to release highres files. Pyb (talk) 18:31, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

If you mean this photo, it has 3200x2000 px = 6,4MP which is not as few as you state, especially given the fact that it is a concert photograph with very limited available light, without flashlight (in general, it's out of the question to use flashlight during concerts, in order not to disturb / to blind the musicians) and so the original size will be relatively noisy and unsharp, with the result that some downscaling is unavoidable. So, for my part, I see nothing wrong there. --A.Savin 18:44, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

"Low resolution"? I think you are exaggerating. The original file is 2982127 Byte at 5760x3840 px in size. So the uploaded file is not that much smaller. The main reason I reduce (and sometimes crop) pictures in size is the quality (at least) I can achieve under lighting conditions like this. If you look at the picture in full resolution, you'll see that it is on the edge of a few realtively sharp areas to overall being blurry and a bit washed out (not sure if that is the correct english term to describe what happens at ISO 2000 in really dark conditions). Viewing the full sized original, there are basically no sharp areas. The camera is great though. With my own I couldn't achieve results anywhere close to the pictures I uploaded recently. See for example this picture taken at the same location with similar light three years ago.

Anyway. I have now overwritten the file with a new version without size reduction (if that makes it the 20006820th file, so be it). As you will see, it is not 5760x3840 px also, but 5580x3490 at 5.33 MB. That's because I had to rotate and crop it.

An additional note: Another reason why I especially reduce pictures depicting people in size, is that I basically never get the chance to portray them in perfect (=studio, with makeup, perfect light etc.) conditions. I do want to make such pictures available here, but I do not want to publish pictures where every pore, nose hair, wrinkle and pimple etc. can be investigated in magnification. That's a question of respect to the people I take photographs of. --Tsui (talk) 20:57, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

PS: Might be an interesting side note. Yann put the picture at QIC. XRay declined it: Insufficient quality. Sorry. Too dark and too unsharp. --Tsui (talk) 21:04, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

ok, thx for your explanations. Pyb (talk) 21:16, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

@Tsui: , @Claudia.Garad: as it is no accident that this image was our 20,000,000th, could we have an answer to Pyb's question please? If the original resolutions are available, it might be an idea to release them. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 18:47, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi, I would have answered anyway. But I am not online the whole day (at least not every day). I have now uploaded a XL version. Question is: What's the use of such files, which are blurry at this size (here: simply due to the conditions they were made in) and can only be viewed in reduced size on a monitor - usually this is done by the browser - in which process they look worse than when I would prepare them in a photo editing software? The only use for such large files is printing on a large scale or a projection on a larger wall, which is not the chief purpose here I think. Most people will view common's media on computer monitors. --Tsui (talk) 21:17, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

I can think of many reasons to upload the highest available resolutions. As an example, as part of an on-going batch upload I have just uploaded Looking south on Spring Street from First Street which though more than 100 years old, I have uploaded at a similar resolution to your higher resolution photograph. This gives the reuser more choice when taking crops, resampling, blowing-up for a high quality print or enhancing an image; even though when viewed at full size on my computer monitor every mark and flaw in the original is apparent. If there is a policy around this on Commons, it is to default to always uploading the highest version available rather than worrying about "web quality" or "computer screen" resolutions. Thanks for your responses. --Fæ (talk) 22:08, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

I think it depends on the content of an image. Your example can be interesting for cropping in on certain areas. Concert pictures like the one discussed above are not interesting in this concern. The only parts that might be of interest for cropping might be the heads/faces, to get some kind of portraits. But this photograph is just to blurry for that and there are better (almost) close-ups in the category of the concert.

One thing that's true is that we do not know which devices may be used in the future for viewing our contents. When I started in the area of multimedia production we had to consider resolutions of 640x480 px when making websites. Times are changing, quick. But even when I take alook af FPs most of them are not at the maximum size the respective cameras provide. I assume the photographers do have reasons why they prepare pictures the way they do it. --Tsui (talk) 22:24, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Comment Without commenting on this particular case (the discussion is beyond my photography knowledge), I’d like to point out this essay: Commons:Why we need high resolution media which may be relevant to the discussion. Jean-Fred (talk) 22:58, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Good and reasonable points - but only really applying to images that are sharp enough to zoom in on details for identification, cropping or viewing them. And, as mentioned above, I would rather not provide images of people, portraits, where one can zoom in on every pore, wrinkle and pimple. --Tsui (talk) 02:21, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Congratulations Tsui and everyone. I think the original upload here was fitting. --SJ + 21:21, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm certainly in favour of high resolution images, having created some 100MP+ images myself. But high pixel count doesn't equal high resolution. Compact cameras have long past the point where the sensor has too many pixels and doesn't actually resolve that detail. Todays DSLRs with 24MP+ sensors won't resolve that detail with kit lenses either. An ISO 2000 image really doesn't have the resolution that the pixel count might imply. Since MP decreases along a square law, quite a modest crop can dramatically reduce the MP. Most bird and plane pictures are significantly cropped partly because a longer telephoto lens is very expensive but also because it becomes hard to track the object in the viewfinder if the framing is tight. Processing such as vertical perspective correction, or panorama stitching can result in stretching and rotations that further reduce the resolution wrt pixel count. So there are reasons why modest downsizing might be an appropriate creative decision. When that decision is made for commercial reasons (or naively because the uploader thought we might be short of disk space) then there is an argument to request a more generous donation -- particularly if the kit is paid for by WMF. The same is true with people using WMF-paid kit and uploading with restrictive licences like GFDL. With historical analogue photographs, we should scan/upload as high detail as we can. But over-compression is a problem too (many NASA images are very highly compressed). The historical image Fae linked to may be high resolution, but it has huge quality issues that I'm sure are not present in the source photograph -- but we are at the mercy of whoever scanned and saved the crappy JPG. -- Colin (talk) 13:09, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

January 26

Tower roosters and Weathercocks

I think that Category:Tower roosters and Category:Weathercocks should be merged, and the resulting category be a subcategory of Category:Birds as weather vanes. What do you think? --Superchilum^{(talk to me!)} 09:24, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Agreed, and well spotted. --SJ + 21:23, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Better create a CfD entry. There is ground for disagreement, though: While moving Category:Weathercocks down from Category:Animals as weather vanes to Category:Birds as weather vanes is trivial, it could be argued that some tower roosters may not be weather vanes: Could be simply a towertop fixed decoration, akin to Category:Flag pole finials. On the other hand a weathercock may not necessarily be on a towertop. -- Tuválkin ✉ 22:38, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Tracing services?

I have a BMP that contains black and white "line art". I theory, it would consist entirely of infinitely thin lines and a little bit of text. However, as the artwork is originally scanned from a 1972 magazine, the lines are not infinitely thin, but have a distinct thickness.

I have tried tracing these using potrace, but it turns the lines into 2-D objects. All of the lines have a thickness to them that shouldn't be there. That is the limit of my ability to handle graphics, I'm sure they can be turned into simple vectors, but I don't have the ability.

Can anyone recommend a tracing service (human based) that might do this sort of thing?

Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:32, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Amazon Mechanical Turk? — SMUconlaw (talk) 16:51, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

CC 4.0 licenses in Upload Wizard

We now have about 8k files in Category:CC-BY-SA-4.0 and over 1k in Category:CC-BY-4.0, with a growing influx. What about adding these licenses as options for the UploadWizard? -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 00:15, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Comment See the discussion las month at Commons:Village_pump/Proposals/Archive/2013/12#Creative_Commons_4.0_as_default.3F. Jean-Fred (talk) 02:06, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

IMHO, they can be added as options as they fall in the Definition. Making CC-BY-SA-4.0 as default may need further discussion though. J e e 02:59, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

GFDL counts as part of the "definition," but we removed that as a default option because of its onerous requirements on reusers. Our analysis of adding it to the dropdown should be more in-depth than simply "it is part of the definition." Magog the Ogre (talk) (contribs) 03:55, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

@Jean-Frédéric: and @Magog the Ogre: I have a difficulty to understand what you mean by "default". From the comments above, I assume you mean "default" = those listed in the UploadWizard. It will be nice if we think to keep the UploadWizard as simple as possible without giving too many options. Then I see little chance for CC 4.0 options available there as there is a strong opinion against the new amendments like "a URI to the source is sufficient for attribution" and "to the extent possible, the Licensor waives and/or agrees not to assert any such rights held by the Licensor to the limited extent necessary to allow You to exercise the Licensed Rights, but not otherwise." which makes self portraits prone to abuse. So what is practical now is to add CC BY-SA 4.0 and CC BY 4.0 also in the list keeping CC BY-SA 3.0 as the recommended license. Or, add them as options at https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload J e e 03:30, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Comment A few points, trying to pull together a few conflicting proposals from throughout the section. As background, the license is obviously acceptable from a legal and freedom perspective, as I said when someone (correctly) created the template.

Since it is OK legally/freedom-wise, adding it to the very long license list at Special:Upload is fine. The license clearly fits within that list, and there is no cost to making that list more long and complex, because it is already long and complex. :)

Adding it as an option to Special:UploadWizard seems to me to be primarily a question of design, not law. The purpose of the UploadWizard is to make it simple and easy to upload files, and adding more choices goes against that, particular the vast, vast majority of users who have no idea of the differences between 3.0 and 4.0. (It might be worth noting here that since the license is not translated yet into any other languages, so for many users of UploadWizard it would be hard to even learn what the differences might be if they are presented with that choice in the UI.)

Making it the default for Special:UploadWizard has a couple of angles. First, as I said above, it's not translated yet, so I don't think it's appropriate for the default yet from a localization perspective. Second, while the rest of the Wikimedian community does not formally bind Commons' license choices, I think the default Commons selects for its uploads is an important choice that has impact across the rest of the project, and it should be part of the bigger shared discussion we'll probably have later this year. (FYI, we're waiting for there to be translations before that conversation starts.) So unless there is a very good reason to rush (and no one has made that argument here) it seems best to wait and participate in that broader discussion.

For people who are using UploadWizard a lot and also using CC 4, perhaps customizing UploadWizard through JS is a better option?—LVilla (WMF) (talk) 21:14, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Translation is an issue. Alignment with the rest of Wikimedia is irrelevant. The upload wizard already does not offer dual licensing as an option, and both upload methods offer alternatives that are not available for other Wikimedia (e.g. CC BY without SA, or CC0). All that matters is that the licence is free and that the community wishes to use it for new uploads. If that is the case, why make it hard? I would appreciate if CC/WMF gave a presentation to the Commons community as to why CC4 is a better choice for Commons. Because if it isn't more attractive than CC3 to Commons, then they have surely failed. So we need to know the pluses and minuses. At the moment we have just speculation and too much misreading of the meaning of the text (myself included). -- Colin (talk) 09:59, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

To be honest, in the earlier discussion I think LVilla misinterpreted "by default" to mean the licence we contribute our edits under which are part of our Terms of Use and clearly require a huge cross-Wikimedia discussion. The licence choices we offer in the Upload Wizard or the Form are up to us and nothing to do with WMF other than meeting the Definition. CC 4.0 clearly meets that definition (It is "Approved for Free Cultural Works"). It should certainly be a choice in the wizard/form and we don't need to wait for WMF to decide about changes to the terms of use for TEXT contributions. It is a pain to upload with CC3 and then quickly fix to CC4 or to have to use clumsy fields in the upload form. We should have a separate discussion about the CC4 differences -- as Jkadavoor indicates, there is much confusion about what the new terms are saying and we have, frankly, not had anything like enough input and clarification from WMF/CC on these. -- Colin (talk) 10:53, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm well aware of the distinction between the two defaults. But at the same time, whether by coincidence or for other reasons, the default license in the Upload Wizard has been the same license that was picked as a shared choice across the broader Wikimedia community. For Commons to go off on its own would not be unique (sigh, Wikinews) but it would be unusual, and I don't see anyone making a good argument for it to happy other than "ooh, shiny new toy!" —LVilla (WMF) (talk) 21:14, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

It isn't the same. It doesn't offer dual licence. -- Colin (talk) 10:00, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

CC 4.0 should not be made the default nor included in the upload wizard until we clearly define how we will respond to the changes and clarifications made by CC. At a minimum the license templates need to link to the actual license text not the deed. Moreover, the license templates omit important information, not the least of which are the issues surrounding the waiving of certain copyright-like rights. We have a moral obligation to ensure our contributors are donating from an informed position. With 4.0 the license text doesn't even fully inform the contributor and one has to resort to reading FAQs to better understand what is being given away (underlying copyright vice file, one's own personality and publicity rights, etc) Saffron Blaze (talk) 03:18, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

"Industrial heritage"

We've had a recent proliferation of "Industrial heritage" categories (Category:Industrial heritage and its subcategories. I've been discussing this with User:Marcbela, one of the main people adding these categories to images and subcategories. That discussion (which also included a couple of remarks from User:Jim.henderson) has proven largely fruitless, because mostly all we've established is that we disagree, so I'm bringing it here to this broader forum.

I think I can more or less fairly sum up his position with a citation he provided from TICCIH, but he should feel very free to expand on this: Industrial heritage consists of the remains of industrial culture which are of historical, technological, social, architectural or scientific value. These remains consist of buildings and machinery, workshops, mills and factories, mines and sites for processing and refining, warehouses and stores, places where energy is generated, transmitted and used, transport and all its infrastructure, as well as places used for social activities related to industry such as housing, religious worship or education. The historical period of principal interest extends forward from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the eighteenth century up to and including the present day, while also examining its earlier pre-industrial and proto-industrial roots. In addition it draws on the study of work and working techniques encompassed by the history of technology.

My view is that this is so broad that it is everything in Category:Industry and then some. If this is useful at all, it would make Category:Industry a subcategory of Category:Industrial heritage; we could then add Category:Industrial heritage to the relatively few other things that are not in Category:Industry but would be in Category:Industrial heritage; similarly for subcategories such as Category:Industrial heritage in Massachusetts vs. Category:Industry in Massachusetts (which oddly we don't currently have). Still, I personally find almost absurd a "heritage" category that effectively says that if I go out and do something at noon tomorrow, then at 12:01 it will be part of the "heritage". It's a distinction that instantly vanishes.

For those who wish to see the discussion so far, it's User_talk:Marcbela#"Industrial_heritage". Permalink to state of the discussion at the time I'm posting. - Jmabel ! talk 19:51, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Category:Industry directs to Category:Industries. The more I look at it, the more I realize it's a big mess. There is a solution, but it is not going to be a simple one. I want some time to think about this further.--Marcbela (talk) 01:22, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
- That's fine with me. I'm in no hurry. - Jmabel ! talk 04:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
- I would appreciate if you would let me know when you work out what you believe that solution looks like. - Jmabel ! talk 01:20, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
  - I think I have come up with a narrower definition for Category:Industrial heritage, which also currently lives under Category:Cultural heritage monuments. While “history” covers everything from the past, “heritage” is defined as “those things from the past which are valued enough to save for future generations”. Futhermore, a “monument” in this case is “a building, structure, or site that is of historical importance or interest – or, an outstanding example of something”. This is what we need to limit Category:Industrial heritage to. And, since heritage implies something that is “passed on”, it cannot include things that are no longer existing (demolished) - that is simply "history". I also think it would be a good idea to have a short description at the top of Category:Industrial heritage to explain what it is, and what it isn’t, similar to Category:Art by genre. Then, the “industry by location” categories can be expanded, such as Category:Industry in the United States by state, as well as the “history of industry by location”. Both “history” and “heritage” by location live inside “industry by location”. Category:Industrial heritage gets whittled down to exclude anything that is not meet the specific definition. It also needs to include some items that are currently not under Category:Industries, such as landmark bridges, like The Iron Bridge, considered to be one of the ultimate industrial heritage sites in the world.--Marcbela (talk) 11:48, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
    - I think that makes sense. Certainly makes more sense than the way the category has been used recently. - Jmabel ! talk 20:35, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Non-free pictures in Commons

Hi. Occasionaly, I find relatively new pictures with non-free licences. Why are they allowed and not deleted? E.g. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lake_Bondhus_Norway_2862.jpg brg.--ModriDirkac (talk) 12:56, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Because they also contain a valid free license. --Denniss (talk) 13:02, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't get it. Author states that for commercial use he should be contacted, and logo attached says picture is free art licence. CC licence attached prohibits derivative work, as total opposition (it is not in upload wizard, so everybody can licence as he wishes?). There are so many contradictions that I simply don't understand. --ModriDirkac (talk) 14:00, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

You might want to read en:Multi-licensing. Dual-licensing does not require to abide the two licenses, but allows reusers to choose one from the two licenses. whym (talk) 14:08, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Many thanks, I've briefly done as suggested. But I still not get it why use two overlaping licences. :)--ModriDirkac (talk) 14:28, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

It can have advantages for re-using. Not a lot in your example, I think, because the additional CC license is of the "ND" (non derivative) type. But if a work is licensed e.g. with FAL and CC-BY-SA-NC at the same time, this could be useful for someone who wants to use this work for a derivative work with the "NC" (non-commercial) restriction. This wouldn't be possible if the work were licensed with FAL alone, as derivative works of FAL works must allow commercial reuse, if I understand it correctly ("If the work can no longer be accessed apart from the larger work in which it is incorporated, then incorporation shall only be allowed under the condition that the larger work is subject either to the Free Art License or a compatible license"). However, I really don't quite see the point in adding a CC-BY-SA-NC-ND license to a work which is released under FAL (it is my understanding that anyone who could use the work according to CC-BY-SA-NC-ND terms would have no problems whatsoever using the FAL instead), you might ask the uploader about this directly :) Gestumblindi (talk) 20:49, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Cf. the talk page of the file. The uploader was asked. Apparently, he doesn't really have a reason, other that he can do it and so he's doing it. -- Asclepias (talk) 21:56, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand the log history. Is it allowed to modify this picture ? Pyb (talk) 21:01, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

@Pyb: yes it is. As far as I understand, the reupload was made based on a RAW taken elsewhere (or something along these lines), which was not available under a free license. Jean-Fred (talk) 23:09, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. The RAW image was hosted elsewhere and Ottojula took it and re-tonemapped it without Alchemist's consent. Personally I loved the now deleted version very much but I was unable to convince Alchmist keeping it. -- Rillke^(q?) 07:45, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

As User:Alchemist-hp explained here in German, he assumes that his files are licensed as FAL 1.1 instead of the current 1.3. Depending on your language settings on Wikimedia Commons, the link to the FAL license will either forward you to 1.1 (German) or 1.3 (English). As Alchemist wrote here in German he also thinks that using FAL 1.1 would affect the entire work in which the file is re-used (e.g. an entire book/newspaper would have to use the FAL license). User:Smial proposed a request at WMDE's Community Project Budget to get an official translation of FAL 1.3 into various languages (including German) involving costs of approx. 6.000 EUR. This request was not properly processed and remains unresolved until today. Back to topic: Although Alchemist refuses to explain his reasoning I think you can do the math. Regards, Christoph Braun (talk) 09:34, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Other benefits: Even though both FAL and CC BY-SA are similar, FAL is not as popular as a CC license. So many sites (like eol.org, indiabiodiversity.org) only accept a CC license; but they accept a CC BY-NC or even CC BY-NC-ND as they are enough for their needs. So such reusers can use this work. J e e 11:10, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

I've been using the upload wizard to upload my works. I've been picking the cc-by-sa-3.0 license. I've noticed that the text on the {{Self}} template for cc-by-sa-3.0 (i.e., {{Self|cc-by-sa}}) says in regards to attribution, "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work)" (see, for example, my image File:Giada de Laurentiis 22 Sep 2013 National Book Festival.jpg). The link for CC BY-SA 3.0 from the Creative Commons site however says "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. " regarding attribution, which is what I've wanted. The text that Wikipedia is using for the self template makes it seem like I should have been providing additional criteria with each of my images that specifies how I want my images attributed. Is the self-template in error or have I been improperly licensing my images? Jason Quinn (talk) 11:01, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

@Jason Quinn: I don't think that any additional criteria are required; with regard to File:Giada de Laurentiis 22 Sep 2013 National Book Festival.jpg, I would credit you as "Jason Quinn", as this is what the |author= field inside the {{Information}} template contains. If you want to be more precise, you can add | author = Jason Quinn to the {{Self}} template, like this: {{self|cc-by-sa-3.0|author=Jason Quinn}}. You can also require people to include an URL to your personal website (if any), etc.: User:Jkadavoor/desc is a good example of what can be done. odder (talk) 12:05, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

The text from the template was taken from an earlier version of the deed and wasn't changed since (see http://web.archive.org/web/20080410065928/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en). The current deed states "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." In the end the license, not the deed is legally binding. As you might have noticed, some users on Wikimedia Commons request a certain form of attribution (e.g. placement of the attribution, link to a private website, etc.) by using {{Credit line}} or the attribution parameter of {{Cc-by-sa-3.0}}. Creative Commons has a FAQ featuring several aspects of attribution, such as placement of the attribution. Regards, Christoph Braun (talk) 12:18, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

The "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." was an amendment from CC based on their development in CC 4.0 because "In 4.0, you must indicate if you modified the material and retain an indication of previous modifications. In 3.0 and earlier license versions, the indication of changes is only required if you create a derivative." We discussed this in depth at Template talk:Cc-by-sa-4.0; but not ended up a decision to make amendments in our side (in our templates).

Another important amendment on attribution is https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode#s3a1 "2. You may satisfy the conditions in Section 3(a)(1) in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means, and context in which You Share the Licensed Material. For example, it may be reasonable to satisfy the conditions by providing a URI or hyperlink to a resource that includes the required information."

Note that what CC said about the new amendments is they intended those in earlier versions even though not clear from the legal texts. So these amendments. So IMHO, sticking into an earlier version (like 3.0) will not give you any additional benefit than using the new version (4.0). J e e 12:40, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi, everybody. Thanks for your answers. To be honest, I'm not really so concerned about the licenses on my images but on the confusing messages that the templates on Commons are giving. Regardless of amendments and all that, the wording of the self template is confusing as is. The wording should be consistent with these amendments in a clear, easy-to-understand way. If the template talks about attributing the image in the way the author wants but the user was never prompted to enter such information during the image upload, that's a problem that should be ironed out. Jason Quinn (talk) 05:09, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

The template need to be updated. But only the license has any legal value; what written on the template or in the CC deed are mere explanations.

Upload wizard: From the reply of LVilla (WMF) above in a discussion, we can see "The purpose of the UploadWizard is to make it simple and easy to upload files, and adding more choices goes against that, particular the vast, vast majority of users who have no idea of..." (many license terms). So it will only add your user name in the "author field" which is the filed intended for "attribution". Some re-users may click on the link and visit your user page and try to find any more information provided there.

If you want to provide customized information like your real name, a pseudonym other than the username here, a web address, etc., either you can

edit the previously uploaded file page and give them in the "author field" / "other fields" using "creditline" / "author/attribution" parameters in {{Cc-by-sa 3.0}}.
use upload form where you can provide all those info as you wish. J e e 05:57, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Images under reuse filters in Google

I have found these images under "Labeled for commercial reuse with Modification" filters in Google Images. Some other reuse image filters are also there. Can we upload it in Commons?--தென்காசி சுப்பிரமணியன் (talk) 20:13, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Category problem

When I just transferred File:Kkd Roads.JPG from en.wikipedia with For the Common Good, I had to add it to a category manually; HotCat doesn't seem to be working for some reason. Is it just me, or is there a problem? All the best, Miniapolis 20:42, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

I use HotCat heavily and didn’t notice any problem lately. -- Tuválkin ✉ 01:24, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I just transferred File:Spencer Kkd.JPG and it's the same thing—just hidden categories at the bottom, and no HotCat (I double-checked my preferences, and it's still enabled; HotCat and Cat-a-lot are different gadgets). Thanks for the reply and all the best, Miniapolis 02:21, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

(Yes, I know that Cat-a-lot and HotCat are different things.) Please note that when a category is transcluded in a file or category page (usually through a template) HotCat cannot touch it. In this case, though that is not the problem: I must report that when I access File:Spencer Kkd.JPG I can see (at the top of the page, as that’s where I have them in my preferences) the HotCat tools: «Categories (+⁺): (+)». I added (separately) the categories "Kakinada" and "Spencer's" and it seemed quite normal, with all the usual HotCat abilities available. -- Tuválkin ✉ 02:34, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Solved the problem by tweaking my .js page :-). Thanks again and all the best, Miniapolis 02:38, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

January 30

Same two images

Hi I found that these two images: File:A Marmon-Herrington Mk II armoured car armed with an Italian Breda 20mm gun, near Tobruk, Libya, 8 May 1941. E2872.jpg and File:IWM-E-2872-Marmon-Herrington-Tobruk-19410508.jpg are the same if not for size and brightness. What should be done about them? Thanks, --Amendola90 (talk) 11:05, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

There is {{Duplicate}} function for tagging those. Anyway, I merged the descriptions and deleted the smaller one. --Jarekt (talk) 14:52, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Ok thanks, I didn't know what to do, I'll try to remember next time. All the best, --Amendola90 (talk) 15:14, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Credit in Motd?

Should we cite the source/author of (originally) external content in the description of the Motds on the mainpage? --Pristurus (talk) 12:11, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

EN do at their Pic of the day; but we don't. Not a bad idea though. J e e 12:19, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

January 31

Delete all history of file

Is is allowed to delete the whole history of any file, especially on user's request? I understand to remove few last minor changes of the same user, but what was done with these files: File:Arms of Ireland (Alternate).svg, File:IRL Dublin flag.svg, File:Leinster Flag (alternate).svg, File:Flag of Dublin City.svg, File:Presidential Flag of Ireland (Alternate).svg by User:Fastily (2014-01-29, 23:46 to 23:48 ) is imho not acceptable at all. But maybe it's a common practice and I'm wrong? Blackfish (talk) 12:55, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

There is nothing controversial in the deleted file and metadata history, and I do not understand either why user:Setanta Saki would need "history clean up" and why was his wish granted. I think deletion of old file versions, is OK, but I would keep the first and last one, but metadata edit history, should not be purged like this unless you are deleting violations of Commons:Privacy policy. --Jarekt (talk) 13:14, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

User page image of me?

Is it allowed here to upload a small thumbnail size image of me which is "all rights reserved" solely for the purposes of usage in user-spaces (pages, galleries and templates) under Category:User page images per Commons:SCOPE#File_in_use_on_Commons_only?

I'm much concerned about uploading a freely licensed self portrait of me per How are publicity, privacy, and personality rights affected when I apply a CC license?. Uploading a highly down-sampled version is also not very helpful per Can I apply a CC license to low-resolution copies of a licensed work and reserve more rights in high-resolution copies?

To be frank; I don't want to see those "pricasso things" being rubbed on my face. :( J e e 07:07, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons gives some protection under Photographs of identifiable people, in that derived works hosted here should not unnecessarily demean, ridicule or invade the personal life of the subject. However the boundaries of "respect" or even "harassment" are up for debate depending on the case and derived works are allowed both here and off-wiki. Were someone to create a derived work of your self portrait off-wiki that you find objectionable, not only does Wikimedia Commons have no policy or authority to do anything about it, but you are likely to find there are few legal tools available to you to ensure an objectionable derived work gets taken down.

Should the person creating derived works be a Wikimedia project contributor and appears to be intentionally using derived works as a weapon intended to harass our contributors, then we can take action by banning their accounts, however we still have no authority to do more than this and based on similar cases over the last few years it is unlikely that demonstrated behaviour of this type would even result in a global ban.

If you don't want "pricasso things" rubbed on your face, then do not release your images, anywhere, as copyright licences are a poor means of protection against harassment. --Fæ (talk) 07:25, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I can take some risks (as they are published in my Flickr and Facebook profiles); but unfortunately (or fortunately to warn against any potential abuse) CC clearly stated in their FAQ and in the new 4.0 release that self portraits are prone to abuse as we can't assert our right of privacy and even our moral rights to some extend. :(

My question is why we need a free license for user page images as the are only intended to use in "my user page"; not anywhere else? J e e 07:53, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

If somebody shops a dick to your nose that is clear vandalism in my book and reason for speedy deletion. And now I welcome Fae to explain to all of us why this makes me a bad bueaurocrat. :-/ --Dschwen (talk) 14:54, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I have just noticed this mention of me, I have no idea what this means. It might be a joke of some sort. --Fæ (talk) 13:07, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

@Dschwen: Is it allowed to upload/use an "all rights reserved" picture for my user page? Or I've to satisfy with the strictest license available at Commons:Copyright_tags#Other_free_tags? I see your user page picture is also a victim of COM:DR. J e e 15:15, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Ha, yes, but it was not a bad faith DR, as the image was actually not embedded on my userpage at the time. In any case an All rights reserved image won't survive on commons. And I don't really see the need for such an exception. It's not like a potential vandal would respect such a license restriction anyways. And who knows, maybe you picture could be useful for somebody with "good intentions", like somebody making a "diversity in wikipedia" collage, or to illustrate some wikipedia article :-) --Dschwen (talk) 15:38, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Hmm; then I must make a try. :)

But I'm disappointed to see people adding "useless" and all possible categories to such images too. See the images coming left and right of your images in a category. :( J e e 15:59, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, the category system is another topic on its own, but what do you mean by left and right of your images? --Dschwen (talk) 16:02, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I enabled some funny gadgets to speed up my works here; they show images in all relevant categories and galleries whenever I open an image. :(

Hope the amendment in Personality rights will solve some concerns on reuse. J e e 16:12, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Single user login

Since yesterday, automatical SUL doesn't work for me and I have to login on some WMF projects (esp. the Russian wp) separately. No browser settings were changed. Was there any issue? --A.Savin 10:35, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Not that I'm aware of. There's nothing in wikitech:Server_Admin_Log. The only recent thing that has happened to the servers is non-wikipedia projects had their version of mediawiki updated (on the 28th), but I wouldn't expect that to cause any problems on russian wikipedia, as that is not one of the wikis that was updated. Automatic SUL does appear to work fine for me on ru.wp. Bawolff (talk) 16:20, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

No, it fails for me, too. When I log in at the English Wikipedia, it works and logs me in also at the other wikipedias and at the Commons, or at wikinews. But logging in at the Commons does not log me in at the wikipedias. Lupo 17:34, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

As for me, it works for Wikidata, Wiktionary, and Wikivoyage; but fails for Russian and English WP. Haven't check for other projects, but by yesterday I definitely didn't need to login anywhere else than on Commons. --A.Savin 19:28, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Seems to work now. --A.Savin 22:09, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Weird. For login issues, Chris Steipp (csteipp) and Brad Jorsch (anomie) are good developer contacts. Please let me know if this happens again after removing cookies and/or with another browser. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 22:34, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, seems to work again. Without clearing anything or switching browsers. Lupo 06:41, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

1900s History of California

California Historical Society Collection, 1860-1960: 3715 photographs.

I have uploaded over 3,000 photographs this week (and am planning to upload a few thousand more) to the above category from the University of Southern California's digital library. These were taken on plate glass around a century ago. This include streets, buildings, transport, everyday life and a significant collection of photographs of the lives of native Americans.

Interestingly this includes the Hopi priest Wiki, on the right, who is not mentioned at the moment anywhere on the English Wikipedia. Anyone up for getting this on en.wp in a Did You Know, or perhaps considering the archive quality scan (4,050 × 5,320), this might be a candidate featured picture on Commons?

Call to Action: If you know California (I'm a Londoner, so fairly clueless), please do help with better categorization, identification, location, improving information on the photographers and ensuring that this valuable collection is well used across the different language Wikipedias. Comparing photographs of streets and buildings from 100 years ago to their modern equivalents would give excellent context to the image pages. --Fæ (talk) 17:08, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Congrats; and he looks very cool. J e e 17:15, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I’m faily clueless about California, too, but this is fun! -- Tuválkin ✉ 18:10, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Looks like a case for our ~~Restaurators~~ pardon Restorationists. --Dschwen (talk) 20:34, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Nice to have a photo of Wiki, our great-grand-father ... hehe --JotaCartas (talk) 20:36, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps someone could create a family tree from Wiki, 19th century Hopi priest in California through to Sue Gardner, 21st century "Mother Teresa of the internet"[23] and California based CEO for Wikimedia?

--Fæ (talk) 20:47, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Automobile Club of Southern California collection, 1892-1963: 87 photographs/scans

Transport enthusiasts may enjoy reusing this part of the archive, a collection of high quality scans of (pre-1923) pocket road maps and photographs of vehicles in California. --Fæ (talk) 12:41, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Historic postcards in the USC digital library: 0

I have started the batch upload of several hundred eclectic early postcards from the same archives. This includes a wide variety of California historic scenes as well as various oddities from elsewhere. As an example, Fraser's Million Dollar Pier (Ocean Park), an immensely popular attraction, was opened in 1911 but burned down only a year later. There is no article on Wikipedia about it. --Fæ (talk) 15:17, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi,

Do you think you could upload these: Old US postcards? Yann (talk) 15:26, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

The Flickrstream is too problematic as though most of the cards appear to be pre-1920, not all are, and a sample check shows me they are all rights reserved with no provenance or dates. The USC library postcards have excellent provenance and are all dated, consequently I can screen out those that can be seen to be published after 1923 and just stick to those that are unlikely to ever be challenged on copyright. --Fæ (talk) 15:33, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Personality rights and Consent?

Opinions on Template_talk:Personality_rights#Template_as_is_is_alienating_for_image_use and Template_talk:Consent#Full_consent.3F are highly appreciated. J e e 13:01, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

February 01

Commons:Village pump/Archive/2014/01