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Suggestion: create redirects to categories

Welcome.because thr theimportance of categories for Commons.I suggest Create redirects for all categories So:

the redirect name:Category name

#REDIRECT [[:Category:Category name]]

(Except galleries names)

The process needs Bot, who can run a bot to do it? --ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 09:21, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

My English is not good, so maybe I do not understand your suggestion. But there is a well established policy for category redirects at Commons:Rename a category. One of the relevant points there (as far as I understand them), is to use {{category redirect|target}} for category pages instead of #REDIRECT, as this will allow a bot to automatically move files from the old to the new category and is recognized by the HOTCAT-Tool as well. --Rudolph Buch (talk) 11:51, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

My English is good enough to spot redirects for all categories and add a speedy

Oppose. Replicating a complete namespace foo: with its foo:bar pages by #REDIRECT [[foo:bar]] on bar pages in namespace 0 (articles, here galleries) would be a surprisingly bad idea. Many important cases of category:bar actually have a gallery bar, therefore the page is anyway not available for a bogus redirect. If you really MUST have a shortcut use page CAT:bar for the redirect, this is documented on Help:Namespaces and an established vintage 2005 workaround. –Be..anyone (talk) 14:52, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

My English is not good also.People are looking at the main namespace first and then categories.Why do not we help them to quickly access to the categories?! --ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 07:37, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

It seems that the software already does what you are suggesting. If you enter a name of something to the search slot, where there is a category, but not a page, you will get redirected to the corresponding cat. E.g. try Spitzerberg. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 00:26, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

POTY banner

At top right says "Image credit (2007 winner)." That seems pretty odd, in that it's hardly an image credit, but even beyond that the image shown appears to be a portion of the 2010 POTY winner, not the 2007 winner. I have nothing to do with POTY, but would someone who does please sort this out? - Jmabel ! talk 07:22, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Discussed on the POTY talk page and in an archived thread on en:VP/T. –Be..anyone (talk) 08:03, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

I was unaware of those discussions, but the upshot there seems to be "Yes, someone on Commons should fix that." Or do you read them differently? - Jmabel ! talk 01:49, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

closed deletion request of teaching materials

Hey everyone once there was a deletion request to delete the files uploaded by user:dapeldo. It was closed by User:krd with the statement that the files will be kept. Now the request was reopened by User:ellin Beltz and some files have already been deleted. I would like to ask these files to be restored. I am holding the MOOC on Web Science on Wikiversity v:Web_Science. We upload videos and exercise sheets on wikimedia commons. All content is original by me and my coworkers and we are fully aware of what we are doing by putting a creative commons license to them (especially there is no copy right violation since we also pay close attention on what graphics we can use (most of them are in public domain)). As far as I understand these files are Open educational resources which is one of the scopes of WMF. Since they are used on Wikiversity (currently not all of the files a linked in wikiversity, since some of the content is not completly produced yet) I do not see how they are out of scope of wikimedia commons which is the media archive of Wikimedia projects. Since we also use them in our lecture it is highly unconventient if these files get delted all the time. Since we link them from our university homepage and students cannot access them. --Renepick (talk) 11:14, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

All the files are uncategorised, the description is not very helpful and some of the files are not in use. So I can fully understand that they were deleted. I´d suggest to categorise them and describe their content and relation to the Wikiversity project in the description field of each file. Then all misunderstandings are avoided and they will surely be kept in the future. --Rudolph Buch (talk) 11:32, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

We can certainly do that. What category and discription would you suggest so that admins will understand the problem. And in order to be able to give descriptions the files have the ber restored first --Renepick (talk) 13:58, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

A Category like Category:Web science MOOC at Koblenz University would either fit in Category:Wikiversity projects‎ or in Category:Wikiversity courses (the two a not very distinctive against each other in their contents). I think files in this Wikiversity category tree are rarely deleted for scope, so this category is a bit like an DR-thwarting amulett :-) I can´t really help you with the file descriptions as I don´t know your project, but at least the fact that it is a Wikiversity project should be mentioned along with the institution that supported it, and perhaps a rough outline of the specific file´s content. Most files at Commons have just a few words of description, but nobody will accuse you of being chatty even if you donate your files four or five full sentences... --Rudolph Buch (talk) 15:07, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi: Agreed that the lack of description and category is part of the consideration here, but I'm still concerned about the statement "pay close attention on what graphics we can use (most of them are in public domain" and point out that all of them have to be public domain to be hosted on Commons. Sources for any open permission graphics which appear on the image upload page are required. For example File:Web Science MOOC Exercises Week 5.pdf please provide the source of the graphics in use on the page. The compilation may be your own work, but each item in it needs a source and a citation. Cheers! Ellin Beltz (talk) 16:45, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Especially the graphics on the seet of week 5 (with all the icons and computers) are completely from scratch made by us in SVG format with inkscape in 2013 by User:Rob-nowman... have a look at all the videos that we created Category:Videos_for_Web_Science_MOOC_on_Wikiversity as you can see in there either the used graphics are public domain (most of them) OR we have created them (some of them) OR at the very end of the videos we put references to the original files (which where CC-BY or CC-BY-SA). In the sense of creative commons we should probably quote our videos if we reuse the screenshot with the computer network for exercise sheet 5 but since we are the ones who created the files we can reuse them at any point since we are the creator. Otherwise in all the videos that we have created and used the graphic we would have to quote the first video since the computers have already been used in there. Our university spends 3 full positions to employ people to create original content for this course. Especially in order to not commit any copyright violations (which by the way makes the process of content creation much harder) We do this in order to be able to share the teaching resources under an open licence... What is happening here (not for the first time) is really frustrating. Asking if everything is cool is ok. Deleting stuff if you detect a copyright violation and can proof it perfect. But assuming that our material are copyright violations and deleting without asking and trial is really frustrating. --Renepick (talk) 22:08, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Let me see if I am understanding this... You write above that User:Rob-nowman created the graphics on images that User:Dapeldo uploaded and claimed as own work. Also, User_talk:Dapeldo has been fully noticed for the proposed removal of the files. Each DN one is given at least a week for discussion. I'm sorry you don't feel this is sufficient "asking and trial" but the concern at Commons is that the material be within scope, which includes full sourcing and open licenses. Cheers! Ellin Beltz (talk) 01:36, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Ok what do you want me to do now? Since the files have been deleted I cannot even correct the mistakes of sourcing done by User:Dapeldo. He together with User:Rob-nowman and me work all on the same project. We share the files in the same file server at the university sometimes we cannot even for sure say who of us was the original producer or if it was all of us or a subset. We can put all our names as sources. On the files we also stated who was the author. So the missmatch was only between what was written on the file and what was entered into the mediawiki system. So the files should never have been deleted but just tagged correctly. So would please someone restore the full list of files so that we can fix the problems?

This is just a matter of correct tagging. And while we are doing this: Does someone have a bot or tool that can set rob-nowman and me as the author of all our videos. If not please feel free to also delete the video content that we have originally created and donated as OER since at the end of the video we do all the copyright stuff but it is not correctly reflected in the mediawiki system. As for the project scope discussion: I will not discuss this c.f. v:Open_educational_resources. I am sure you'll find more official documents... --Renepick (talk) 16:15, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Flickr accounts and License laundering

Regarding to this DR. Can someone make a list of files uploaded from Flickr account and the total uploades of the same Flickr account to Flickr is less then 10 (or 20). We can find possible COM:LL.
And one more - a list of of files uploaded from Flickr account which uploaded to Flickr in less then one hour before it uploaded to Commons. It could indicate of possibility to COM:LL. -- Geagea (talk) 12:27, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

I was slightly confused by the DR referred to, as there is only the one file on Commons loaded from that particular Flickrstream. Here's a general rephrasing:

List all files uploaded from Flickr where there are fewer than 10 images in the Flickrstream
List all files uploaded from Flickr where the upload to Flickr time is less that one hour before upload to Commons

Both can be done, "fairly" easily. I would do this by calling the FlickrAPI using flickr_people_getInfo. I have run through two examples below using a small script, the first is the account in the DR you mentioned:

username Chris Baugher

photosurl https://www.flickr.com/photos/82271859@N00/

firstdatetaken 2013-08-19 11:40:02

firstdate 1376937739 19 Aug 2013

count 1

username Fæ

photosurl https://www.flickr.com/photos/50398299@N08/

firstdatetaken 2000-07-20 14:16:22

firstdate 1274272808 19 May 2010

count 6460

Checking "count" solves your first question, while "firstdate" seems to solve the second. "firstdate" appears to be the date in Unix timestamp format that the ~~Flickr account was created~~ first photo was uploaded to Flickr, while "firstdatetaken" is the date of the earliest photo in the stream deduced from its EXIF data.

If we were running a large report, we may have to throttle to 3,000 queries per hour or fewer (if from WMFlabs, this might not be the only app using the same IP address to Flickr).[1]

P.S. I'm overstretched right now, but I can imagine the solution and can add this to my backlog to do it later, if nobody else experiments with a report.

…

Here's an example of what can be done by first searching Category:Deletion requests January 2015 (4,816 files) for images with flickr.com in the image page text, then searching the resulting 190 images for related distinct Flickrstreams with fewer than 20 images. This search takes about 2 minutes in total (running from my desktop, not labs).

Suspect Flickrstreams in Deletion requests January 2015
NSID	Date	Username	Count
41599103@N05	2009-08-19	Ciko7	15

--Fæ (talk) 02:29, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Fæ. It is good to hear that it can be done easily. The two different cases above can help us to find possible license laundering. But the query should work for the existing files not those that already in DR. The EXIF is not important but only the dates of the uploads to Flickr and Commons. If file uploaded to Flickr and shortly to Commons there is good chance that it is license laundering. The files should be checked manually and carefully of course as it is not necessarily means it is license laundering. -- Geagea (talk) 04:02, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

This may be less of an issue for Commons than you think, in terms of quantities, though may be serious when it does happen. I have run a test last night which watched RecentChanges for uploads from distinct Flickr accounts and found about 1 per hour. All file edits were checked, so this does find accounts from old uploads with recent minor edits, though this may be useful if an old upload is now from a deleted Flickrstream. See Report, feedback or suggestions welcome. I'm imagining this can become a live report on Commons, updated every hour (only with suspect sources), with uploads dropping off the report after a week.

Based on the 2 highlighted suspect streams, I have created Commons:Deletion requests/File:The 2011 Film Independent Spirit Awards 2.jpg for one of them. So even now the process is adding some value.

--Fæ (talk) 10:13, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank Fae. Maybe we can try less than one day instead of one hour? -- Geagea (talk) 12:05, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm running another test, just showing suspects. As I was getting false matches like this, I have changed the criteria to "Flickr account created within the last 30 days" OR "fewer than 30 photos in the Flickrstream". I'll link to results here when a few hours are done, then a full 24 hours. After that I'll think about putting it on WMFlabs and having it as a wiki page of suspected Flickrwashing for investigation rather than relying on my desktop. --Fæ (talk) 12:11, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks very much. It can be very helpful. -- Geagea (talk) 12:18, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

A test "live" report is at User:Faebot/Flickrstreams of concern. This "live" in that new entries will be added from recentchanges in realtime. However improvement such as checking the log for past NSIDs being reported has yet to be added. Based on the last soak test, the criteria are now:

Flickr account created in <= 30 days or photos in flickrstream <= 30.
Image on RecentChanges has a first edit < 90 days ago (taken as equivalent to image upload date).

By all means watch the test report, however this may be overwritten by better formatting or stop being updated while in a beta version.

Keep in mind this is "Flickrstreams of concern" rather than "Flickrwashers". Uploaders should be checked with a presumption of good faith, especially if they just need some advice on copyright before continuing to contribute to the project.

Update I have rethought the way RecentChanges is queried, so the report is a magnitude more efficient and is able to examine all new uploads in a given day. The report is now only looking at new uploads rather than all edits, but can go back in time to any day in the last month if needed. I consider User:Faebot/Flickrstreams of concern being effectively live as it is giving useful results and if it goes offline, it can now catch up with missed results.

Question I tried adding a bad Flickrstream to Commons:Questionable Flickr images, however the in-page tool to do this appears to just hang for me. Is this still working or maybe it is supposed to be limited to admins? --Fæ (talk) 11:09, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Commons:Questionable Flickr images not protected. this page is protected. -- Geagea (talk) 11:31, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I presume that has something to do with the QFI page not working for me. It would be a pity if non-Admins like Image reviewers are put off helping with investigating bad uploads from Flickr, due to the drag of having to go pester an Admin to take action to list the source every time. --Fæ (talk) 12:03, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Flickr2Commons

This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 01:02, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Anyone else having troubles recently with http://tools.wmflabs.org/flickr2commons/? I've gotten several failures in a row just now, with no comments that give a clue. ~- Jmabel ! talk 00:46, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Aha! If the underlying photo is a GIF, Flickr2Commons suggests a name ending with .jpg, then fails on its own mismatch without any indication of the nature of the problem. Brilliant. - Jmabel ! talk 01:02, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Tram line 4

Can someone update this map with tram line 4?Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:24, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Something's screwed up about the nomination for deletion script

I tried to nominate File:ThrillingComics60.jpg - it failed to ever finish the script. Really malformed deletion, and, unfortunately, since we all use the script, not very good instructions to finish. Adam Cuerden (talk) 14:50, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Confirmed, happens for me, too. @Rillke: any idea what's up? Lupo 15:18, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Entirely my mistake. While I as inserting assertions that user is still logged on when performing a change if the action was started from a page where the user is logged on, I made a mistake. This change was important for privacy reasons. Thanks for pinging me. -- Rillke^(q?) 15:27, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Please purge your browser’s cache or enable JavaScript in your Browser's settings. (You only need to do it once.)

Operating system Browser	Microsoft Windows or Linux	macOS
Internet Explorer	Press `Ctrl`+`F5`
Mozilla Firefox	Hold down `⇧ Shift` while clicking Reload (or press `Ctrl`+`F5` or `Ctrl`+`⇧ Shift`+`R`)	Press `⌘ Cmd`+`R` (reload page) or `⌘ Cmd`+`⇧ Shift`+`R` (reload page and rewrite cache)
Opera	Press `Ctrl`+`F5` or `⇧ Shift`+`F5`
Konqueror	Press `Ctrl`+`F5` or `⇧ Shift`+`F5`
Apple Safari	Hold down `⇧ Shift`+`Alt` while clicking Reload
Apple Safari	Press `Ctrl`+`R`	Press `⌘ Cmd`+`⌥ Option`+`E` (clear browser cache) or `⌘ Cmd`+`R` (update)
Chrome	Press `Ctrl`+`F5` or `⇧ Shift`+`F5` or hold down `⇧ Shift` while clicking Reload	Press `⌘ Cmd`+`F5` or `⇧ Shift`+`F5` or hold down `⇧ Shift` while clicking Reload

Fixed 5 minutes ago. I fear load.php is updating things very slowly so try emptying your network cache. -- Rillke^(q?) 15:25, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Uitnodiging Wikimedia Belgium Project Days

Wikimedia Belgium wants to work on a better Free Knowledge and wants to support all efforts in this regard. Wikimedia Belgium cannot do this on their own and needs your help. We can assist you with your plans and projects. Please talk to us during the Wikimedia Belgium Project Days, organized every three to six months. The first Project Day is scheduled for Wednesday 4 February 2015. Lotje (talk) 16:20, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

February 03

Template edit not transcluding

Curiously having made this edit, the removed details still appear in the transcluded template at COM:LR and at the various language versions, and at CAT:FLICKR which I use a lot. Yes I have purged all those pages in my browser. Any ideas why those removed details still appear? Ww2censor (talk) 00:24, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Maybe a missing translation admin, as on {{Commons upload tools}}. Something is odd with this procedure, should there be a request page, or a request template populating a pending translation category, or should everybody with some edits in the template namespace automatically be a TA, with a help page explaining what this means? –Be..anyone (talk) 05:17, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Removal of a category so the file left uncategorized

User:Alan Liefting removed all the files from Category:Israel so they left uncategorized. I was failed to explain to him why it is better that files be in category instead of being uncategorized. I explained to him that files better to be categories rather then to be un categories. In a working place when all the time new files uploaded you will find all the time files in this category to be classified not to be removed from the category. I'll be glad if someone can help in this matter. -- Geagea (talk) 08:05, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Personally, I prefer that people categorize files in a generic category, instead of not categorizing them at all. I often clean up Category:Berlin, for example. And since I do a lot of categorization work there, I know exactly where to put files, or at least where to look for categories. I do the same when I am not an expert in a subject matter. Just this morning, I categorized images without categories, and I put many in general categories, because I didn't know the exact sub-structure. And to be honest, trying to make sense of a such a structure takes a lot of time better spent - if I even get it right. TLDR: I agree with you. --Sebari (talk) 08:15, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

+1: I think it´s almost impossible to work the "uncategorized" heap and sort each file directly into the finest category. We should accept that it takes two or three steps as every level needs more expertise regarding the topic or the structure of the particular category tree. Country is a good first categorization step to increase the probability of someone taking further care of the file. --Rudolph Buch (talk) 10:36, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

It used to be that there was some kind of programming that prevented you from removing all visible categories, I guess now with cat-a-lot you can remove them in their hundreds and it is not so easy to undo, Maybe this should be fixed? The likely result of the files being removed from Category:Israel is that some editor with minimal knowledge of that country will come along and just add Category:Israel to the affected files Oxyman (talk) 10:38, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Agree! --Jwh (talk) 10:43, 26 January 2015 (UTC) Country is a good first categorization step to increase the probability of someone taking further care of the file

I think the biggest problem is that the vast majority of uploaders are not familiar with how the category system works (espectially the fact that they are not tags) and are not familiar with the HUGE range of options of suitable categories. Alan Liefting (talk) 19:08, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

What about adding Category:Unidentified locations in Israel instead? And with this search you can make an educated guess about a lot of uncategorized images in Berlin per year (e.g. 2014). --Herzi Pinki (talk) 12:54, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Not all of the images were of locations. Alan Liefting (talk) 19:08, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Geagea, removing the Israel category from 1,157 files was not a decision I made lightly. I recategorised some, some were already in suitable subcategories, a bot added categories to others, and what remains will be picked up as uncategorised and eventually categorised correctly. Sure, removing the cat was not ideal but neither was having over a thousand files in a category that should have few or no files. I made a pragmatic decision mindful of the cost benefit analysis of my action. Alan Liefting (talk) 19:08, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

The categorisation of images on Commons is an utter mess. I don't know how viewers of Commons find images (and I don't know if any usability surveys have even been done) but if they use the category system they are confronted with one hell of a confusing, jumbled mess. Alan Liefting (talk) 19:16, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree that, in most cases, a branch of Category:Unidentified locations is much to be preferred, I agree that our cat tree in general is a mess often of little value, and that the Mediawiki software, being designed for an encyclopedia and only slightly supplemented with specialized tools, deserves much of the blame. Jim.henderson (talk) 19:20, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Geagea that it is wrong to remove generic category like Category:Israel from files which are not in the subcategories of Category:Israel. In most cases, whoever added that category felt like it belonged to one of the subcategories of Category:Israel. It might have been locations within Israel or people, works (books, movies), crafts (airplanes, ships), etc. related to Israel. Alan Liefting, I agree that the category system is not optimal, but it is better to have some general categories than no categories, and If you are not willing to put effort to improve categorization of those files, at least do not throw away work of others who caried the categorization that far. Of course some files might have nothing to do with any aspects of Israel, but that is hard to decide automatically for 1,157 files. --Jarekt (talk) 19:54, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

I also agree that Alan went the wrong way here. In the last 3 months, I've removed over 3000 photos from Category:New York City, but I've done it by moving them to a more appropriate category (typically a subcategory of Category:New York City, but not always: some were actually in New Jersey).

There is much more chance of a photo getting correctly categorized if it is in a too-vague but accurate category than if it is in no category at all. - Jmabel ! talk 01:32, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

In an ideal wikiworld yes it would be wrong to remove a category from a file that needed moving to a sub category. But we have a far from ideal wikiworld here at Commons. I am now curious to know how many files from which I removed the Israel category. If it is low enough that we can just move on, or is there actually an issue here? Alan Liefting (talk) 05:43, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

You removed it from 1,052 current images. See sandboxL. --Fæ (talk) 11:03, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

But the question is how many were left uncategorised and on how many was information "lost". Alan Liefting (talk) 17:45, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

This is a question you should have been able to answer at the time. I can draw up a query based on the list of 1052 images on the above page and tell you which have no categories after your change, however my programming time is better used elsewhere and you could go through the list by yourself to put this right. --Fæ (talk) 19:02, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

I made a judgement call at the time based on the contents of the cat, (the total number, the degree of categorisation of a sample of the files, etc), the type of category (high level), and based on past experience and concluded that on balance my action was justified. I agree the your programming time, and indeed the time of everyone here, is far better spent elsewhere. It is not as if there is nothing else to do around here!! Alan Liefting (talk) 03:51, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Geagea, it is not true that I "removed all the files from Category:Israel so they left uncategorized." Yes, I removed that category but only some files were left uncategorised. Alan Liefting (talk) 05:55, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

@Alan Liefting I don't know how many files are affected, I'm just gonna take some recent examples here and this one, both (formerly included in Category:Art) are now without any category and also they are NOT in Category:Media needing categories; with the result that there is no chance anymore that anyone finds and properly categorizes it someday. OK, I don't know if that particular files are in scope for Commons, but that are just two examples out of a very big lot, I guess. So, what you did is a blatant misuse of the Cat-a-lot tool and by no means helpful for the project. --A.Savin 07:06, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

The two images you mention, which are almost as far removed as possible from art, are far better off uncategorised than being in such a high level category and, as you say, they may not even be appropriate for Commons. Also, it is not true "that there is no chance anymore that anyone finds and properly categorizes it someday". YaCBot comes around (sometimes after about ten days) to mark files as uncategorised, and I am sure a database report could be made for uncategorised files. Alan Liefting (talk) 07:52, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Wrong. I occasionally do cleanup categories like Russia, Moscow and similar, so I know what I'm saying. Several times I found images having been without any categories (including maintenance ones) for two, three years. Here on Commons, you cannot entirely rely on bots. --A.Savin 08:12, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Point taken on the bots and that looks like yet another problem that needs addressing. I am pretty sure that a database report can be made on uncategorised files. Anyway, given the poor quality and poor documentation of some of the files added to Commons lack of categories is no great loss. I sometimes come across files that makes me think why am I bothering with spending time editing such utter rubbish. Alan Liefting (talk) 08:21, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Concerning two points addressed above, my humble opinion:

Removing all categories from a file and leaving none is something better dealt with in a specific page, and that isn’t this one. (Simply — whoever worries about files being found in a too-general, or even wrong, category should also took the trouble of finding a better one.)
Commons’ categories are a mess they say — this is heard a lot: But never followed by a description of a better system. Please come forward with a proposal for better categorization (something that can cope with millions of disparate formats and subjects); of course proposing better tools for the current system, and/or new features for the current system, and/or better/continued curation within the the current system — all that means that the current system is good enough, just needs some work. (On the other hand, everybody can think of much worse ideas, such as Flickr tags).

-- Tuválkin ✉ 18:35, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't see why removing all categories would be seen as vandalism. There are sometimes files that are up for deletion and the uploader has spammed the image into lots up the upper level categories. Also, since categories are sometimes added by automated means there is nothing wrong with removing them by semi-automated means. And another thing, because of the HUGE workload that we have there is a need for expediency at the expense of thoroughness (but accuracy should never be compromised of course).

The categories are a mess because Commons is under-staffed and it is way to easy for uploaders to add files. Commons:Statistics suggests that it will get worse. Alan Liefting (talk) 19:05, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Someone could probably make an abuse filter rule to find edits which remove the last (non-hidden) category. That would make it easier to track this. As for (un)categorization statistics, see User:Multichill/Categorization stats. Multichill (talk) 18:41, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

That is a good resource. Can you move it over to Commons namespace? I want to link it from Commons:Statistics. The page confirms what I already know - there are too few editors for the amount of work that needs doing. Removing that last non-hidden category will not always be "abuse". Alan Liefting (talk) 19:05, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

@Alan Liefting: even though you disagree you must acknowledge that there is a vast majority that categories shouldn't be removed so the file left uncategorized. So please don't do that. There is more chance that file will be used when he is in general category rather then uncategorized. The only people that work on uncategorized files are Commons users and many times they categorize them in a general category.

I opend this discussion here and did not notify you on AN/U as I saw that your intention is to help and not to harm. I really want that you understand. If you think that it is incorrect please made new proposal, but in my opinion, before you do so try to work more with our understanding. -- Geagea (talk) 07:56, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

The situation here is that I think what I did was an overall improvement to Commons and you are saying that it was not. In actual fact, in the absence of in-depth usability surveys, we really don't know what the best course of action is. But I made a judgement call and you disagreed with my judgement.

I don't agree with you that a file should be left uncategorised. As I have already stated ideally all files should be categorised but there are situations where it is ok to remove categories and leave it uncategorised. One situation where I am sure we can all agree on is a file that has been placed in numerous high usage categories but it is a candidate for speedy deletion. The situation with my edits to files in Category:Israel is a bit more subtle and complex. There were over a thousand assorted files sitting in Category:Israel for a long time. That is of no use to those who use Commons as a resource. Having all the files in one place to be recategorised is of some use to Commons editors but that is not the function of a content category. We use maintenance categories for that sort of thing. If there was a Category:Israel files needing categorisation as a subcat of Category:WikiProject Israel I would have placed them there. But there is no such infrastructure. There is actually a lot of infrastructure missing on Commons but that is another story.

You say that Commons users (editors) add files to general categories. That is the wrong thing to do. Editors should always add files to the most specific category as per COM:CAT. Unfortunately that can be difficult to do but it is made easier with HotCat and systematic category naming.

As for a proposal the problems as I see them go way beyond that. But that is another story as well.

Finally, why would you think I am here to harm Commons? Do my tens of thousands of edits look harmful? Or is it only a few? If the tens of thousands of edits are constructive why would I then do unconstructive edits? Alan Liefting (talk) 10:00, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Looking this and this I can tell only that you have a lot to learn here. All your suggestions may be good and you may propose them, but please understand that the vast majority, of users working here for years, says don't remove category and left the file without category.

Please read again. I did not say you are her to harm. I said the opposite ot that. -- Geagea (talk) 10:14, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

@Alan Liefting: , please stop removing generic categories without replacing them with better ones. Last June user:Martin H. and user:Jmabel requested that you stop the same activity. After all those discussion and the discussion here, you are still doing edits like this, this or this. That is bordering on vandalism. Based on your edits and your proposal to delete template maintenance categories and your request to stop categorizing Institution templates, it is obvious that your ideas about categorization are quite different than of most other users, but you still need to follow the consensus of the community, or get blocked for vandalism. --Jarekt (talk) 20:04, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Alan, I don't think your intentions are bad, but I do think you are editing against consensus. - Jmabel ! talk 23:54, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that does appear to be the case. I am off on holiday and I have an ailing father so I probably wont be doing much editing over the next three weeks. Alan Liefting (talk) 06:31, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I curious to know why my editing would give the impression that they are "bad". Alan Liefting (talk) 06:37, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

If user contribute against the community consensus it considered as a problematic behavior. Call it whatever you want - vandalism, disrespect or harassment. All the users mentioned: Martin H., Jmabel, Jarekt, A.Savin and others including me are experianced users that working with categorys for years, so please take thiere advices. The comunity have the ability to inforce consensus. It starts with warnings in the talk page and then notification in COM:AN/U which may bring to yourblock if necessary. Willingness to help is not enough. Following community consensus and experienced users are necessary as well. So take the opportunity, read the comments above and try to work with the same rational. -- Geagea (talk) 01:59, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I know all that. I have been working on wikis for long enough to know how it works. I like to think my edits are based on sound rationale. With all due respect, I could argue that everyone else here is not being rational. Where is the evidence that my edits are problematic? My editing rationale is based on what is best for those who use Commons and it appears all the other editors commenting in this thread see Commons as something that is used by editors alone.

I have been editing wikis for over ten year but that is not relevant. It is the quality of editing that is important. Alan Liefting (talk) 06:16, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Everyone else can be wrong, but if you start accusing them of being irrational, then you're walking down a deep dark road that certainly leads to nothing productive on a Wiki or any other cooperative environment.--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:39, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: , I did not actually directly accuse other editors of being irrational. Anyway, you highlight yet another problem that we have on wikis - sensitivities and emotions get in the way of good editing. Alan Liefting (talk) 21:16, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

I am slowly sticking the files without useful categories in Category:Israel_files_needing_categorization. If you follow the link cat-a-lot will work even if the category has not been created. It may not be a perfect search for these, but it'll do. --Fæ (talk) 00:16, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much Fae, your work is helpful like always. -- Geagea (talk) 07:45, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. The outcome was that 703 files out of 1052 checked were identified as needing 're-categorization' after removal of their last category. These have now been repaired.

This has been a long discussion over not much, however the resolution seems to be that it is a bad thing to remove the last meaningful category from an image, even if this is a category that needs diffusion. As @Alan Liefting: has kept this going, perhaps you could take the collegiate step of requesting a tick-box/preference to be added to cat-a-lot to prompt the user when removing the last visible category, it seems a realistic improvement? --Fæ (talk) 10:27, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

What about the 350 files? They should be also in this category. If they have extra category it have to check manually. If they have category like plants it should moved to plants in Israel. If they have correct category then it's ok but it have to checked manually not by cat a lot. -- Geagea (talk) 11:02, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Okay, adding the remainder for manual check. This will probably take about an hour. --Fæ (talk) 11:14, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll see about cat-a-lot (not today). It should be a button to undo cases like this. -- Geagea (talk) 11:25, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Done At this point in time the non-created category Israel_files_needing_categorization has 346 files in it to check. --Fæ (talk) 14:51, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Fae. -- Geagea (talk) 01:59, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

That looks like an eminently suitable solution. Alan Liefting (talk) 06:16, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

@Geagea: why have you made the retrograde step of moving 800 odd files back into Category:Israel. Fæ has put forward a solution yet you choose to ignore it? It is good to see that you are recategorising them but it SHOULD' be done from out of the Category:Israel_files_needing_categorization. You are wasting your editing time (your choice) and messing things up for viewers (a concern for all editors). Alan Liefting (talk) 08:03, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Fæ, the removal of the last category is just as important as removing any one of the other categories. It is not the absolute number of categories a file has but it is whether the category is appropriate or not. Removing a completely relevant category is wrong. Removing any category instead of sub-categorising is not the best (which is what I did) but can be a means to an end. Removing a completely irrelevant category is right. Removing all categories can can be right. Etc. Alan Liefting (talk) 06:16, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

All the files should process manually. they should not removed from the category:Israel. I have no more arguments to explain you more then it discussed her. Even that you made a lot of category edits in other projects it is not the same her. Fell free report me in COM/AN. Please do not remove general categoriys from files in cat a lot. It should be manually and only if the file have an apropiet category include. -- Geagea (talk) 08:26, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't agree that all of the files should be processed manually. That is ideal but things are far from ideal here. If there are millions (or more) files that are automatically added along with inappropriate categories I see nothing wrong in using automated methods in removing those categories. We have a huge Commons:Backlog of work, increasing numbers of files being added, and an almost statice number of active editors. This all adds up to the need for expediency in editing.

I also disagree that none of the current files in Category:Israel should be removed. That seems to be a contradiction on your part since you are actually recategorising them at present. (There may be language barrier issues here?) Country categories should have very few, if any files in them.

I also don't fully agree with you when you say that other projects have different methods of categorisation. All wikis are essentially the same in how categorisation works. What does differ is the policies and guidelines. Here on Commons these are poorly developed (along with many others).

I see no reason to report you to COM/AN. I would do but only if it was really necessary but that is not the case. Alan Liefting (talk) 08:56, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

The category of Israel contains files to be processed by somebody that knows where to put them. Sometimes somebody adding a specific category but did not removed the category Israel. In that case it is o.k. to remove it. But many of the files have extra category which category Israel shouldn't be removed. For example. If the extra category is plants than the category Israel shouldn't be removed but both of the categories should move to category plants in Israel. If the file contain extra category December 2012 in Israel the category Israel shouldn't be removed only to move to specific one. The fact that you dont know what is the correct category that not means that you should remove it.

We are adding uncategorized files a general category like Israel and we expect that somebody from Israel will know to which specific category it belongs. It can be general category like maps. In that case we expect that somebody that maps is in his scope will categories the file with specific category.

Files in category Israel should be processed manually in any way. Uncategorised or not. You always find files in this category. That's the way it is working her. It is clear to me that you are not work here regularly. The category system here is definitely different than the other wikis because the aim of the projects is different and I already advised you to work with it before you come to conclusion. So please do not mass remove any general category from files with cat-a-lot or in another way. -- Geagea (talk) 10:42, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

It is clear to me that you do not see the usability of Commons as an important consideration. As an editor you seem to think Commons is for for editors only. This is wrong. Editors should be creating a resource for those who want to use it (rather than edit it).

I will reiterate my opinion that Commons categorisation is essentially the same as other wikis. The software is the same and looking at the difference between Wikipedia and Commons the only difference is the fact that Commons is focused on images and articles. The hierarchical nature of both is EXACTLY the same. You can see it in the systematic naming in the two wikis.

If your stance is the same as what the consensus is then I despair about the future of Commons. Alan Liefting (talk) 20:25, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

I have started a thread at Wikipediocracy about this and some of the comments are harsh. Mind you, Wikipediocracy seems to be very scathing of the Wikimedia projects. Alan Liefting (talk) 20:25, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Your actions are beginning to look like that of a troll's now, I read the forum you link to, It didn't seem to contain much other then the same old arguments about the categorisation system and what content should be kept Oxyman (talk) 23:53, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

I posted to Wikipediocracy to get a second opinion and yes the thread did move off topic. Call me a troll if you like but I have the interests of Commons at heart. However, it seems that creating an easy to use file repository is not what the community here wants to do. Alan Liefting (talk) 21:08, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

January 27

Auschwitz Album

Today, 70 years ago, Auschwitz was liberated. The Auschwitz Album created in 1944 is now in PD. I uploaded 22 pictures of 192 from Yad Vashem (labeled as PD on their website) in the Category:Auschwitz Album. Feel free to upload the other pictures, add them to articles and to help with identify persons --Hannolans (talk) 10:35, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you Hannolans. It's great that you started to do this and thank you for informing other editors here. I would help you but I think this is probably better done by just one editor since it's difficult to tell where one person started and stopped (also I'm not sure what copyright license you are using) and it's not a huge project. I hope it isn't too much work for you but please know that your efforts are sincerely appreciated. CheersMonopoly31121993 (talk) 17:57, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes I can do this coming week. --Hannolans (talk) 11:33, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Those images would be "PD" only if their photographers died the same year the photos were taken (1944), and then only since January 1, 2015. --Rosenzweig τ 00:53, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

In EU countries they seem PD according to EU-law because they seem anonymous, and an institute in Israel and the US publishes them as PD. We have a discussion here Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#URAA_on_WWII_photos_of_Nazi_extermination_camps. --Hannolans (talk) 23:23, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

There are names of potential photographers discussed, so they are not anonymous. And why should a declaration by some institute determine copyright status? --Rosenzweig τ 19:07, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

A Russian library caught fire

A fire has destroyed parts of the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences, which was one of Russia's largest public libraries, containing more than 14 million items. Really wish they had scanned the books.--維基小霸王 (talk) 07:10, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Oh, no. Sad. — SMUconlaw (talk) 08:46, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Actually, most of the items survived, being encapsulated in concrete. But still, aparently, some books were lost.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:18, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Offer of 300+ railway images

Via an OTRS ticket we have been contacted by Ben Brooksbank with an offer of 300+ railway images from outside the UK. Ben has been a prodigous uploader of free images (see Category:Photographs by Ben Brooksbank for the numbers of UK images) to Geograph but the images offered now are from Europe and North America. I'm wondering what is the best way to process the images as many will need checking for Freedom of panorama restrictions before uploading? Nthep (talk) 14:30, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Most railway-themed photos wont pose FoP issues, as they depict mass-produced utility items outdoors. Photos of tickets or signage, maps, and advertisements, though is another matter. -- Tuválkin ✉ 15:52, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Knowing Ben's topics there will probably be quite a few buildings as the subjects. Nthep (talk) 16:27, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Being unable to see the OTRS correspondence, or any details of what /outside the UK/ means, makes it impossible to give a firm answer without reiterating COM:CRT and COM:FOP. You may wish to ask on the OTRSwiki where most readers can see the queue and all are knowledgeable on IP law, or alternatively ask Ben if he actually wants the details to remain limited to OTRS volunteers. --Fæ (talk) 21:26, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

There won't be any copyright issues as the images are all Ben's own images, taken by him over 50 years. but as a number were taken in countries where FOP is an issue then the images need assessing for any potential FOP issues. All I'm asking at the moment is what is a convenient method of getting these images into a forum where this assessment work can be done and any that are suitable subsequently uploaded. Nthep (talk) 22:34, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Considering how a recent offensive email from a leading OTRS volunteer makes it clear in exactly how much contempt some OTRS volunteers hold the Commons community, while at the same time claiming to represent us, "without prejudice", maybe your starting point should be with that person rather than us plebs. I certainly do not feel that my views as a non-OTRS volunteer would be of any importance compared to the grand discussions you have in secret on the otrs-wiki where your decisions are apparently able to bypass the rest of us, or indeed our community agreed policies. --Fæ (talk) 22:46, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

I have no idea what you're on about and don't want to know either. I raised this topic on behalf of someone who wants to donate a load of images but there is some checking needed to ensure they don't fall foul of FOP. All that's wanted is some assistance with that. If you don't want to help because you have some issue with another OTRS agent or OTRS in general then fine but don't jump on me just because I happen to be the next OTRS agent who walks into your path. Nthep (talk) 23:09, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

As the statement claims to speak for all OTRS volunteers and the Foundation has instructed you to act ("As we have been advised by the Foundation to cease working with you immediately, please consider this decision final, and we will not be open to appealing it at this time." and "... agents will be instructed to report any works that they know of that have been uploaded by you for deletion on the appropriate projects." - emphasis added) you should have some idea as you are under instruction to comply with it.

By the way, as I worked with Russavia for a couple of years sorting out avionics related uploads, this instruction appears to encompass around 200,000 images. Please feel free to raise a deletion request for their deletion. --Fæ (talk) 10:35, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

I'd say just upload it all and let us deal with it once it is on-wiki. I don't see why OTRS should bother with issues going beyond the verification of authorship. --Dschwen (talk) 23:09, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Let me second this. Against popular belief, it is railway themed images, not pornography, that get a touhrough scrubbing by regulars here — be it cleanup, categorization, documentation, or solving of copyright issues (just yesterday a Karlsruhe tram was saved from deletion by renaming and cropping off of a rather large, yet incidental, advertisement panel…): Any FoP issues will be promptly detected, reserched, and dealt with. -- Tuválkin ✉ 00:38, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the positive responses, I'll talk to Ben and see if we can work out an upload process as these images aren't already on line e.g. Flickr. Nthep (talk) 15:11, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

February 04

Help:Typing page

I put a DR in for the Help:Typing page (see Commons:Deletion requests/Help:Typing) but it was quickly closed with the comment that it should be discussed here. It is all about Narayam rather than typing, and the extension it uses is disabled. It therefore serves no purpose and should be deleted. Alan Liefting (talk) 04:54, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I've tested {{fact|Appears to be outdated|category=[[category:non-standard deletion requests]]}}, but it's okay now, fixed by Praveenp. –Be..anyone (talk) 11:09, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Upload wizard not working

There seems to be some problem with the upload wizard. It is asking me to "select media files to share" (ie the usual question) or "share images from Flickr" (an option I haven't seen before), but when I click the former option and select a file, the wizard doesn't actually upload the file. I suspect that someone's testing a beta version of the wizard incorporating a new Flickr upload option, and that the beta is malfunctioning. Bahnfrend (talk) 13:20, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

You didn't recently become a licence reviewer, did you? The Flickr upload option is available for licence reviewers. — SMUconlaw (talk) 13:55, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

I just checked it using flickrupload and it seems buggered - I select the files I want to upload and once I press upload it pops up a massive load of script error messages and doesn't actually upload anything. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:06, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

What else is new? Lots of reports on Commons:Upload Wizard feedback and Commons:Upload help. This is getting silly. Commons really cannot be the Mediawiki developers' staging system for smoke testing. —LX (talk, contribs) 14:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

I get the same behavior as described by Bahnfrend since about 14 UTC. UW not working. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 15:26, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

This behavior was already reported some weeks ago. I can't find the original report at Commons anymore, but it I remember correctly, it resulted in phab:T86680 – which was closed as fixed. Try disabling your adblocker – if the problem goes away, we may need to re-open that ticket. --El Grafo (talk) 15:55, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

I do not have an adblocker, just noscript. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 16:32, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

I just tested UploadWizard on Firefox and Chrome, and can confirm that it is still broken. I don't think the problem is related to phab:T86680, as I used UploadWizard earlier today without any issues. Anyway, I've reported the problem as phab:T88576, so feel free to comment there. — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:08, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the bug reports. The problem is getting urgent attention. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Aside from the immediate problem, is the bigger problem of systematically deficient QA processes getting any attention? Given the Upload Wizard's track record, testing, stability, testing, bug fixes, testing, technical debt and testing really needs to be the priority rather than new, untested features. —LX (talk, contribs) 18:36, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the multimedia team has been working pretty heavily on Upload Wizard's technical debt for the past couple of months now and will continue to do so. No new features are being built into it, this outage was related to something much bigger being worked on, as Mark notes below. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 18:43, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Noscript... that's like tying an anchor to your bicycle and complaining it doesn't go faster than 1mph anymore. Well, at least nobody will want to steal it! :-/ --Dschwen (talk) 20:29, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

The noscript issue was recently discussed on the (German) Forum, folks found two workarounds. –Be..anyone (talk) 21:46, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for comment on noscript. Removing noscript will make the UW run like a cheetah? I just keep it for nostalgia to pre-Snowden era. At least my paranoia was cured. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 23:30, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Hier werden digitale Globuli gelutscht :-P --Dschwen (talk) 03:50, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

:-) Immer wenn der UW mal nicht gehen sollte, dann ist die erste Idee immer den adblocker oder noscript zu deaktivieren. Genausogut könnte ich mir ein Loch ins Knie bohren und Milch hineingießen. Oder eine Nadel in meine UW-Puppe stechen. lg --Herzi Pinki (talk) 09:14, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Resolved. I synced everything (some things two or three times) and now it's working again. The ResourceLoader cache was updating while we were deploying a rollback of wmf15, so it got corrupted and the version mismatch caused the bug. Sorry about that. --MarkTraceur (talk) 18:34, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

@MarkTraceur: Could we have known that ResourceLoader cache was updating? Was it easy to spot or will this issue likely happen again? -- Rillke^(q?) 18:49, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

@Rillke: Actually, Roan clarified - when the timestamp for the modules went backwards, RL got confused, and spat out the newer versions. But only for some modules. I think this is going to always be bad luck, and not foreseeable, but next time I won't try to be surgical and we'll just sync the whole kit and kaboodle from the start. --MarkTraceur (talk) 18:58, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like a rock solid solution. Well if I know Roan correctly he'll figure out some kind of solution or notify people of upcoming trouble in future. -- Rillke^(q?) 19:03, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

My thanks to all of those who had a hand in fixing the problem. Bahnfrend (talk) 05:26, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for addressing the issue promptly! — SMUconlaw (talk) 14:21, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Suggestions sought on a category loop

Category:Recording studios and Category:Music recording mutually include each other. Anyone have any clarity about which way it should be? I would think Category:Recording studios should be in Category:Music recording rather than vice versa. - Jmabel ! talk 06:14, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree. I think "Music recording" is the broader concept. "Recording studios" are one way in which music can be recorded. — SMUconlaw (talk) 09:10, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

+1 Every recording studio is related to the activity of "music recording", but not every music recording has to be done in a recording studio. --Sebari (talk) 18:24, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Will do. - Jmabel ! talk 18:29, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Isn't it overcat for Recording studios to be in both Sound recording and Music recording? Recording studios can be used for recording any kind of sound according to w:Recording studio. --ghouston (talk) 21:47, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Results of deletion request

I don't understand, why Administrator kept this file in deletion request with my controversal opinion about this image and tagged it as "In use". Can you help with undersranding this? ← Aléxi̱s Spoudaíos ^talk_rus? 18:23, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

In use means the image is used in Wikipedia articles. As such it should not be deleted. It does not mean that the flag is used by any national entity. If you think the use of the image in those articles is wrong, discuss it there. Commons is not the right place for such decisions. --Sebari (talk) 18:26, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. ← Aléxi̱s Spoudaíos ^talk_rus? 04:52, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Wilfredor → The Photographer

Wilfredor changed his account name to User:The Photographer, and that needed to be fixed in references to the former name, namely in talk pages and file pages. While I’d expect to be taken care of by means of a redirect in the user pages of the former name (as, f.i., was done for the name change Wiebevl → Vunz), apparently User:Lucia Bot has been in the past few days editing most (all?) uses of the string "Wilfredor" to "The Photographer", not only in links but also in text, including archived deletion requests, admin noticeboars, etc., and affecting other people’s comments (see one example). This strikes me as technically unnecessary and prone to cause more confusion than it solves. -- Tuválkin ✉ 20:44, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

I have corrected the above comment and section name so that it doesn't look as weird as it did. I am reverting that bot edits on my talk pages and archive pages, for that sole reason, they are unnecesarily editing historical pages. Diego Grez ^{return fire} 04:23, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

This bot was not approved for such a task. --Dschwen (talk) 00:49, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

I asked to change my name because of a serious problem with the Venezuelan government to I have taken photos in the protests. Appreciate not make any redirection from my old name and too that this section be deleted. Otherwise, I take responsibility for what may happen to me or my family. --The_Photographer (talk) 02:33, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

January 31

Notices

If I have accidentally dismissed the box of notices that pop up at the top of web pages, is there a page I can visit to read such notices? — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:34, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

You mean like Special:Notifications? —LX (talk, contribs) 17:51, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

No, not notifications specifically for me, but the general box of announcements or notices that would normally appear at the top of each web page unless dismissed. The announcements are usually about matters like encouraging editors to take part in GLAM events or invitations to participate in discussions. Just wondering if there is a page I can check for the latest announcements if I have accidentally dismissed the box, because it doesn't "come back" once I've done that. — SMUconlaw (talk) 18:13, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

For local site notices, see the page history of MediaWiki:Sitenotice. For centrally administrated (typically multi-project) notices, see meta:Help:CentralNotice and the pages it links to. —LX (talk, contribs) 18:27, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Funny, the history of MediaWiki:Sitenotice doesn't seem to contain the messages that I can see briefly before they disappear. Also, the last entry in the history is dated 1 February 2015, and I'm sure I saw some new notices today. — SMUconlaw (talk) 18:54, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

@Smuconlaw: Are MediaWiki:Sitenotice-translation and MediaWiki:WatchlistNotice what you are looking for? -- Rillke^(q?) 08:24, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

February 05

Bot job request

I was looking at Category:Vladimir Putin by day, and saw that it's rather inconsistent. Could someone please get a bot to do the following:

Create Category:Vladimir Putin on 1 January (etc) for every day of the year, with the content {{subst:PutinDay|Month as number|Day}}, eg {{subst:PutinDay|2|1}} for 2nd Feb.
Move any files from Category:Vladimir Putin on January 1 (et al) to the new category, delete the old category.
Search through all files in the day category (Category:1 January etc) and move any Putin files into the new category (plus preferably copy into a category of the form Category:Photographs taken on 2015-01-01).

Any takers? @Fae: perhaps? -mattbuck (Talk) 12:56, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Er, no. I try not to play too much with auto-category creation, hard work and fraught with risks of rapidly generating a big mess. the exception being Noaabot's uploads which are *highly* consistent at source. I suggest that an admin do this, as not being able to delete bot created categories makes doing your own housekeeping when needed a real embarrassing drag. --Fæ (talk) 13:03, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Furthermore, I don't see the need to empty and delete present categories - although they are somehow bizarre. I think a bot could use them to make categories like "Vladimir Putin in 1 January 2001" by intersecting those categories with year categories.--Pere prlpz (talk) 15:16, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

A bot?! We already have dynamic category intersection. --Dschwen (talk) 16:12, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

February 07

Notices

If I have accidentally dismissed the box of notices that pop up at the top of web pages, is there a page I can visit to read such notices? — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:34, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

You mean like Special:Notifications? —LX (talk, contribs) 17:51, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

No, not notifications specifically for me, but the general box of announcements or notices that would normally appear at the top of each web page unless dismissed. The announcements are usually about matters like encouraging editors to take part in GLAM events or invitations to participate in discussions. Just wondering if there is a page I can check for the latest announcements if I have accidentally dismissed the box, because it doesn't "come back" once I've done that. — SMUconlaw (talk) 18:13, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

For local site notices, see the page history of MediaWiki:Sitenotice. For centrally administrated (typically multi-project) notices, see meta:Help:CentralNotice and the pages it links to. —LX (talk, contribs) 18:27, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Funny, the history of MediaWiki:Sitenotice doesn't seem to contain the messages that I can see briefly before they disappear. Also, the last entry in the history is dated 1 February 2015, and I'm sure I saw some new notices today. — SMUconlaw (talk) 18:54, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

@Smuconlaw: Are MediaWiki:Sitenotice-translation and MediaWiki:WatchlistNotice what you are looking for? -- Rillke^(q?) 08:24, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

February 05

Bot job request

I was looking at Category:Vladimir Putin by day, and saw that it's rather inconsistent. Could someone please get a bot to do the following:

Create Category:Vladimir Putin on 1 January (etc) for every day of the year, with the content {{subst:PutinDay|Month as number|Day}}, eg {{subst:PutinDay|2|1}} for 2nd Feb.
Move any files from Category:Vladimir Putin on January 1 (et al) to the new category, delete the old category.
Search through all files in the day category (Category:1 January etc) and move any Putin files into the new category (plus preferably copy into a category of the form Category:Photographs taken on 2015-01-01).

Any takers? @Fae: perhaps? -mattbuck (Talk) 12:56, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Er, no. I try not to play too much with auto-category creation, hard work and fraught with risks of rapidly generating a big mess. the exception being Noaabot's uploads which are *highly* consistent at source. I suggest that an admin do this, as not being able to delete bot created categories makes doing your own housekeeping when needed a real embarrassing drag. --Fæ (talk) 13:03, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Furthermore, I don't see the need to empty and delete present categories - although they are somehow bizarre. I think a bot could use them to make categories like "Vladimir Putin in 1 January 2001" by intersecting those categories with year categories.--Pere prlpz (talk) 15:16, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

A bot?! We already have dynamic category intersection. --Dschwen (talk) 16:12, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

February 07

Category:Geology of the Alps

does it make sense to put mountain categories in the geology category? --2A02:810D:1080:23D8:5482:C5EF:2935:47D6 15:22, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Not really. It'd make more sense to put them in Category:Mountains of the Alps by mountain range. Assuming you know what range the mountain is in, of course. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 23:51, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

February 08

جایگذاری جدول محتویات

ئر اموم صفحات در ویکی پدیا جدول محتویات(فهرست مطالب) پس از عنوان و پاراگراف اول قرار می گیرد اما زمانیکه من صفحه خودرا می نویسم در ابتدای صفحه این جدول نمایش داده میشود. چگونه این مشکل را برطرف کنم؟با سپاس

To change the position of the table of contents, you can over-ride the defaults by putting __TOC__ in the exact location you would prefer. For more information see mw:Help:Magic words. Apologies if this is not quite the thing you are asking about, I'm relying on Google translate.

--Fæ (talk) 11:15, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

February 09

Thank you

Hello, I am a longtime Commonist and have uploaded a lot of quality images in the project. As some of you know my whole gear (camera, lenses, filters, cards,...) was stolen in Buenos Aires at the very last day of a trip to South America, after I attended Iberconf 2014, a conference to strenghten the links among the Spanish/Portuguese/Italian speaking WM chapters and chapters-to-be. I also lost my laptop with about 3000 amazing pictures from the Atacama desert (driest in the world), Buenos Aires, the Bolivian-Chilean border and the Uyuni salt lake (biggest in the world). After I told the other participants of the conference what happened to me they took me out of the mailing list and discussed what to do. The result was this crowdfunding campaign that just finished a few days ago. The bar was very high and we couldn't reach it but that isn't really important to me. The glass is definitely half full and not half empty, since I hadn't expected any kind of help after I realized what happened. I just want to thank you all, those who supported me, those who told others or spred it in the social networks, those who offers me their gear, Wikimedia Austria for lending me a camera and lens over Christimas holidays and those who made a donation. I also want to thank the Foundation for studying the posibility of creating a kind of funding project for this kind of topics. I'm grateful from the bottom of my heart.

I hope I don't disappoint anybody (Nikon fans mostly) after telling you that I am planning to invest the gathered money in paying part of the cost of the camera body of the recently announced brand new Canon EOS 5DS R that will be available in June.

I am happy and proud of being part of this movement, Poc o² 11:24, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Remember that my camera can be yours in any moment that you could need it. I am very happy for you, and please, remember never go to Venezuela almost in 30 years. Nice to see like users globally locked by WMF helped you. Its good to know that these users still looking for ways to support the community --The_Photographer (talk) 13:12, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, seems that I have been deleted from the list of supporters; which is as unfriendly as fine with me. ;) --A.Savin 13:32, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

@A.Savin: Matthew 6:3 --The_Photographer (talk) 13:48, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Or the payment just failed :-/ --Dschwen (talk) 13:50, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Wrong. --A.Savin 17:41, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Special restaurant in Taipei

My group took a meal in a restaurant of Taipei. The restaurant is build by an artist wich exposes her creation in het own restaurant. I dont know if freedom of panorama applies in a Taiwanese restaurant. Does anyone know the name of the artist and restaurant?Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:31, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Hm? The first file in this gallery in named File:Five Dime Taipei Store 20090719.jpg, and you added this yourself. Since you evidently do know the name of the restaurant (Five Dime; 伍角船板), why do you ask? According to [2] and [3], the sculptor and owner is Hsieh Li-hsiang. Easy to find via Google... Lupo 14:23, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

And if you look at COM:FOP#Taiwan (Republic of China), you can discover the answer to your implied question yourself. In short: no, neither outside nor inside. Lupo 14:32, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

I didnt know the name for certain. Five Dime Taipei Store did not sound as a restaurant and could be the building behind the restaurant in the first picture. I unfortunately will have to delete. It is frustrating that many interesting images cannot be published. She (artist) probably would have problems with the pictures, but it to much bother to ask permission from the Netherlands. My Chinese is zero.Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:11, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

The COM:FOP#Taiwan (Republic of China) is very interesting reading. This only explicitly forbids 3-d reproduction of the works, not the taking of images (2-d reproduction). With the Commons policy to permit all uses of the work is a bit of a stretch to include the transformation of a whole collection of 2-d pictures into a 3-d reproduction. (By definition you need more than one 2-d image to recreate a 3-d object) By this logic you would interdict technical drawings of an (forbidden) object because it is posible to build a 3-d model of this object. This needs a general discussion.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:53, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

How do you call this?

File:Ama la Vida - Flickr - 20131130 050131 (11179715816).jpg

I'm trying to categorize some uncategorized images, and I'm stuck with this: A wall with a photograph or a painting containing one or more persons/cartoon-characters/whatever, with a hole where face would be. You can stick your head through the hole and have someone take a picture of you with Mickey Mouse's body. We all know these things, but do they have a name? The only thing I found is this Flickr group with some more examples. Any suggestions on how to categorize this image (plus a handful more of this wall with different persons)? --El Grafo (talk) 13:15, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

I doubt there is a single English word for it. The most likely phrase would be a "stand-in cut out".

Unfortunately the example given is a likely copyright violation as it is not a permanently situated work of art, only a transient poster. Similarly even old cut-outs might be a copyright problem, certainly a Mickey Mouse one would be. --Fæ (talk) 14:18, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

The files were kept per Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Ecuador photos from Flickr (check needed), but – now that you say it – it seems the "permanent" part of {{FoP-Ecuador}} wasn't considered then. Mickey Mouse was just the first thing that popped to my mind when trying to explain this – no doubt that would by a copyvio ;-) But I think I've seen these things permanently installed in the public, so there might be cases where copyright wouldn't be an issue. --El Grafo (talk) 14:43, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

This is not a "permanent" installation of an artwork for the public to view. It is very clear in the Commons:FOP#Permanent vs temporary. Some good FoP examples would be artworks in public museums. Here is the thing about "permanent" requirement, "... the image of an architectural work, of a work of fine arts, of a photographic work or of a work of applied art, that is found situated in permanent form in a place open to the public." So this particular cut-out poster is part of a temporary promotion activity which should not be covered under the FoP. Otherwise, all advertising / photographic works that are printed on things like posters and billboards will automatically make copyright law useless to them! Z22 (talk) 17:39, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

→ Taken to Commons:Deletion requests/File:Ama la Vida - Flickr - 20131130 050131 (11179715816).jpg. --Fæ (talk) 11:39, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I've added the other images of the wall to that DR. Unless they are kept, we can probably abandon this discussion. --El Grafo (talk) 13:48, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Why are we hosting intentional manglings of images?

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

The Village Pump is really not a good place to continue a lengthy discussion about a particular image that has since been deleted, nor for a discussion about user behaviour. Should the image be put up for undeletion, it can be discussed there. In the meantime, more argument here is not constructive. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:53, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

File:Anônimo_-_D._Pedro,_Duque_de_Bragança.JPG has been intentionally modified to give it a blue cast, not seen in any reliable source for the image, and based off of one person's interpretation of what the original person might have looked like based on descriptions.

This image is intentionally miseducating people. It's hurting our educational mission.

And it's not even an artistic change: It is rubbish. Utter trash. Adam Cuerden (talk) 14:14, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

The original image in the file history was pretty poor. I agree that we see many "enhancements", unnecessary crops, de-noising, shifting the colour balance, which add doubtful value. People should be encouraged to create separate derived images if they feel enhancement helps the value of the image. I agree that cosmetic changes which overwrite an original sourced upload are a significant problem. The answer is probably better education and on-Commons help pages rather than outlawing changes.

I note that this example has been subject to a *lot* of overwrites. I created User:Fæ/SignificantReverts as a maintained daily report on the most overwritten files on Commons. If anyone is good at helping with these types of dispute, I suggest they add the report to their watchlist.

--Fæ (talk) 14:24, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

I reverted to the HR version. I think that we should merge this with the identical File:Portrait of Dom Pedro, Duke of Bragança - Google Art Project.jpg, i.e. import useful information from the second one, as the first one is used much more. Regards, Yann (talk) 14:49, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

There is a problem with the information though and the google art project file. It's claimed this is the version of this painting in the Pinacoteca, but it isn't. As I said at two of the previous discussions about this image (on wikipedia), you can see the Pinacoteca version is quite different by looking at pictures of it: [4][5][6][7]. (Or even going to the gallery, if you're able.) This is not a matter of different color balance or different cameras or different lighting; it is simply not the picture from the gallery. You can visit the gallery online at google's own site at https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/asset-viewer/pinacoteca-do-estado-de-s%C3%A3o-paulo/ogFzI8ChtO96vg. At the start of the tour, turn around 180° and go down the corridor ahead of you. Go through the first door on the right. The portrait of Pedro is facing you on the opposite wall. It is obviously much lighter than the google art project file and there is very clear contrast between the hair, the uniform and the background that simply is not shown in the google art project file. In particular look at the bottom left corner: the background pigment is clearly tan or light brown against the black of the uniform. That is completely missing in the google art project file. Note also that the google tour of the gallery is supposedly the same source as the google art project file, and to quote Adam, google claims that the video uses "an indoor-version of the Google Street View 360-degree camera system to capture gallery images by pushing the camera 'trolley' through a museum. It also used professional panoramic heads CLAUSS RODEON VR Head HD and CLAUSS VR Head ST to take high resolution photos of the artworks within a gallery. Only this technology allowed to achieve the excellent attention to detail and this highest image resolution. Each partner museum selected one artwork to be captured at ultra-high resolution with approximately 1,000 times more detail than the average digital camera. ... To further maximize image quality, the Google team coordinated with partner museums’ lighting technicians and photography teams." So, the google video of the gallery should be the most accurate of the available sources in terms of color balance. I simply cannot accept that the google art project file is better than the anonimo file, when it is clearly different from the google video, which according to Adam is the best version available. DrKiernan (talk) 18:47, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

An uncalibrated photograph will vary from an uncalibratted one. It also greatly concerns me that explicitly racist reasons were given for the blue version. "There have been attempts in populist revisionism to adjust portrayals of fair-featured popular leaders to make them look more like the general populations of today." - the argument for the change is that it makes him look more white so he won't be mistaken as any other race, accuracy to the actual painting be damned. If it weren't for the racism, I'd probably drop this, but between that and Lecen's outburst when someone said the Google version merely looked tanned here where he accused them of being racist against white people, I have to question whether this is actually just abusing the image files to promote a more white view of the past. And, if it isn't, what the hell is going on? There are many paintings of Pedro I. If there's issues with the painting, many options exist. But what's actually being done is mangling the historical record - the painting - to make him look more white. It's hard to see doing modifications the historical documents themselves in order to make them fit the point of view you wish to espouse anything but an abuse of commons, and, in this case, where the motivation is to make sure peoople perceive him as Caucasian, even if the painting is mangled while doing so, rather racist.

Quite simply, if the purpose of a modification is explicitly to promote a POV, we shouldn't have it on Commons.

However, that all said, there is an incompetence issue at play at well, which may merely be masquerading as racism. Take File:Viscount_of_rio_branco.jpg, where the original image uploaded is small but decent enough, and the final image is utter unusable crap (well, it's used, but it really shouldn't be). There's no racist issues at that image; those edits are simply the edits of someone who doesn't know what paintings look like, and likes posterization of images - though, to be fair, even the original there isn't that good. Still, I don't think we should be letting such mangled images on Commons either way. Adam Cuerden (talk) 00:30, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

I think that Adam Cuerden is right. I changed my closure of the DR. Regards, Yann (talk) 11:54, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Third copy of the image

Was: Lecen is now lying about sources in order to upload a third copy of the image

See File:Dom Pedro, Duque de Bragança.JPG which they just uploaded in the wake of this discussion. Flicking between it and File:Portrait of Dom Pedro, Duke of Bragança - Google Art Project.jpg will show that, other than Lecen having tweaked the colours, they are the same file. However, Lecen claims the source of this new image is "Sousa, Otávio Tarquínio de (1972). A vida de D. Pedro I (in Portuguese) 3. Rio de Janeiro: José Olímpio." - and yet, somehow, Lecen managed to get it from a 1972 book with no evidence whatsoever of half-toning, and the exact same orientation and crop as the Google Art Project scan. You can't just lie about your sources. Adam Cuerden (talk) 02:07, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Then, as I indicated above, why are google art project "lying", or I would prefer to say mistaken, about their source? DrKiernan (talk) 09:00, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

You really have no clue what you're talking about. Look at the street view version - it's obviously created with uncalibrated files, everything is quite dull in colour, and has lots of artefacts - it's clearly a quick mockup, meant to have the Google Art Project site as the main image. As for your claiming that Google are lying, I think that statement is patently ridiculous enough to discredit your participation in this discussion, and does not need a response. Adam Cuerden (talk) 11:18, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Anyone here has only to look for themselves on the google video to see that the google art project painting is close but not identical to the one that is in the gallery. It is a version of the same painting but it is not the specific one. I do not think that google are lying deliberately. I think they are not as careful with attribution as you think, and they are using another version of this very widely reproduced painting from another gallery rather than photographing the one hanging on the wall in the Pinacoteca. DrKiernan (talk) 11:39, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

This no longer seems a matter for the village pump. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:38, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

February 10

Changing map dates

Some maps are regularly updated such as File:HighSpeedSpain.svg. I noticed dat the dates in the descriptions didnt follow. I update these dates, however I dont know all the months names in the different languages. Similar probleem with the png version: File:HighSpeedSpain.png Can we have a system where this is done automaticaly?Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:20, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

In most cases, the date in the summary is the date the file was first uploaded, and the most recent date that a file was updated is available from the upload list. For some photographs, and for some other files, the date in the summary reflects neither date, but instead the date from the EXIF data, or an otherwise obtained date that the file was actually created. There is no system wide method that can be used, nor is a bot of any value. If you wish to adopt a convention for some files that you wish to maintain that the date in the summary reflects the "current as of date" for that file, feel free to do that. I can help you with the month names in a large number of languages (over 100), but by far the easiest way to find a month name in another language is to go to wikidata: and put in the month you want in either English or your own language, and voila, you have a list in over 100 languages. But you can just also enter the date as YYYY-MM-DD, and it is automatically translated. Delphi234 (talk) 17:40, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Date abbreviations

		January	February	March	April	May	June	July	August	September	October	November	December
English	en	Jan.	Feb.	Mar.	Apr.	May	June	July	Aug.	Sept.	Oct.	Nov.	Dec.
Belorussian	be	studz.	liut.	sak.	kras.	mai.	cherv.	lip.	zhniven'	veras	kastr.	list.	snezh.
Bulgarian	bg	ian.	fevr.	mart	april	mai	iuni	iuli	avg.	sept.	okt.	noem.	dek.
Czech	cs	led.	ún.	brez.	dub.	kvet.	cerv.	cerven.	srp.	záríj.	ríj.	list.	pros.
Danish	da	jan.	febr.	marts	april	maj	juni	juli	aug.	sept.	okt.	nov.	dec.
Dutch	nl	jan.	feb.	mrt.	apr.	mei	jun.	jul.	aug.	sept.	oct./okt.	nov.	dec.
Estonian	et	jaan.	veebr.	märts	apr.	mai	juuni	juuli	aug.	sept.	okt.	nov.	dets.
French	fr	janv.	févr.	mars	avril	mai	juin	juil.	août	sept.	oct.	nov.	déc.
German	de	Jan./Jän.	Feb.	März	Apr.	Mai	Juni	Juli	Aug.	Sept.	Okt.	Nov.	Dez.
Greek, Modern	el	Ian.	Phevr.	Mart.	Apr.	Maios	Ioun.	Ioul.	Aug.	Sept.	Okt.	Noem.	Dek.
Hungarian	hu	jan.	feb.	márc.	ápr.	máj.	jun.	jul.	aug.	szept.	okt.	nov.	dec.
Indonesian	id	Jan./Djan.	Peb.	Mrt.	Apr.	Mei/Mai	Juni/Djuni	Juli/Djuli	Ag.	Sept.	Okt.	Nop.	Des.
Italian	it	genn.	febbr.	mar.	apr.	magg.	guigno	luglio	ag.	sett.	ott.	nov.	dic.
Latin	la	Ian.	Febr.	Mart.	Apr	Mai.	Iun.	Iul.	Aug.	Sept.	Oct.	Nov.	Dec.
Latvian	lv	jan.	feb.	marts	apr.	maijs	junijs	julijs	aug.	sept.	okt.	nov.	dec.
Lithuanian	lt	Saus.	vas.	kovas	bal.	geg.	birz	liepa	rugp.	rugs.	spalis	lapkr.	gr.
Malaysian	ms	Jan.	Feb.	Mac	Apr.	Mei	Jun	Julai	Og	Sept.	Okt.	Nov.	Dis.
Norwegian	no	jan.	febr.	mars	april	mai	juni	juli	aug.	sept.	okt.	nov.	des.
Polish	pl	stycz.	luty	mar.	kwiec.	maj	czerw.	lip.	sierp.	wrzes.	pazdz.	listop.	grudz.
Portuguese*	pt	jan.	fev.	mar.	abr.	mai.	jun.	jul.	ago.	set.	out.	nov.	dez.
Romanian	ro	Ian.	Feb.	Mar.	Apr.	Mai	Iunie	Iulie	Aug.	Sept.	Oct.	Noem.	Dec.
Russian	ru	ianv.	fevr.	mart (mart')	apr.	mai	iiun'	iiul'	avg.	sent.	okt.	noiabr'	dek.
Serbo-Croatian	sr hr	jan./sijec.	febr./velj.	mart/ozuj.	april/trav.	maj/svib.	juni/lip.	juli/srp.	aug./kol.	sept./ruj.	okt./list.	nov./stud.	dec./pros.
Slovak	sk	l'ad./jan.	ún./feb.	brez./mar.	dub./apr.	kvet/máj	cerv./jún	cerven./júl	srp./aug.	zári./sept.	ruj./okt.	list./nov.	pros./dec.
Slovenian	sl	jan.	feb.	mar.	apr.	maj.	jun.	jul.	avg.	sept.	okt.	nov.	dec.
Spanish	es	enero	feb.	marzo	abr.	mayo	jun.	jul.	agosto	sept./set.	oct.	nov.	dic.
Swedish	sv	jan.	febr.	mars	april	maj	juni	juli	aug.	sept.	okt.	nov.	dec.
Turkish	tr	Ocak	Subat	mart	Nisan	Mayis	Haziran	Temmuz	Agustos	Eylul	Ekim	Kasim	Aralik
Ukrainian	uk	sich.	liut.	ber.	kvit.	trav.	cher.	lyp.	serp.	ver.	zhovt.	lyst.	hrud.
Welsh	cy	Ion.	Chwef.	Maw.	Ebr.	Mai	Meh.	Gorff.	Awst	Medi	Hyd.	Tach.	Rhag.

* fixed. -- Tuválkin ✉ 08:47, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

You could also replace the date in the description (inside the parentheses) by {{date|2014|12|lang=xx}} with "xx" replaced by the corresponding language code to have it autogenerated. Doesn't give you the abbreviated month name, though. Lupo 20:54, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Where's this table from? Because the Dutch abbreviations are wrong. For all months it should be the first three letters, with the exception of mrt. for maart and a second possibility of sept. besides sep. for september. See this page for official language advice. Mvg, Basvb (talk) 00:20, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

http://web.library.yale.edu/cataloging/months.htm I am not surprised. Another source I have seen is the Microsoft style guide for each language, which includes abbreviations for each month[8] which uses maa for March, and no periods. I have these in a spreadsheet and have updated it from the website you cited, as well as above. I do a lot of SVG translations and while I did not do any (or many) of the ones in File:Ebola_Outbreak_2014.svg, that is what I used to translate the descriptions for File:HighSpeedSpain.svg. Delphi234 (talk) 07:02, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

February 11

Wikidata policy regarding Commons categories

more discussions/info

Village pump

Wikidata

Wikidata decided that categories from Commons should be linked to categories in wikipedia and galleries should be linked to wiki articles. This came to my attention when the implication of this wikidata policy bring to mass reverts of my edits in wikidata. I was discussed it with User Lymantria (admin in wikidata) and intended to raise this before but was bussy and then forgot it. See the anomaly in thos exaples

"Givatayim Theatre". The he.wiki article (תיאטרון גבעתיים) linked to the Category:Givatayim Theatre. But , according to wikidata policy commons category not allowed to direct to the article - her (User_talk:Lymantria).

Category:Chen Liberman --> he:חן ליברמן. No chance that category will be in wiki. No gallery in Commons. If somebody will make a gallery with those two photos it is no better then the category as a gallery. Because if we have new files or her we see them automatically in the category and nobody see the the new file unless they see the category.

en:Tomb of the Matriarchs --> Category:Tomb of the Matriarchs. The common sense says that they should be connected from the article to commons and from commons to the wiki article.

According to wikidata policy wiki articles should be connected to commons galleries and wiki categories should be connected to commons categories. But in most of the cases we don't have galleries. And even if we do have gallery, I'm not sure it is better then category as a gallery. A category with file/s shouldn't be orphaned. There are two main goals for having the left link to wiki articles. First we want that everybody see the file and may use them. Commons want to spread the files among all wiki projects. and the second is that the link to wiki article is describe the topic (person, place etc.). In same cases, without the link to the articles the files may be nominated to DR.

Let's be honest with ourselves. The idea of making galleries in Commons is not working very well. We have very small amount of good galleries. When I'm saying good gallery, I mean to gallery that include links to subdirectories of the subject. I'm working now on a gallery of Tiberias. It not finished but this is a kind of gallery that can be useful for users. Galleries that include 2 files is not very useful. It static, if new files added to the category nobody will know. As a matter of fact the category is quite well gallery. wikipedia user that made an wiki article may follow with a category in Commons. Commons gallery comes, if at all, later on. Anyway making a good gallery takes time that a lot of users prefer to use to other things.

If I understand correctly, the next step of wikidata be to change the links from wiki projects to commons which will make both commons and wiki project un connected. I will ask in he.wiki if they agree with such thing. I can guess the answer of them. I am fully accept user Lymantria's attitude: commons has category: as the main namespace and they should be connected to the main namespace in wiki article. and wikidata should allow linking commons categories and wikipedia articles.

wikidata policy should be based on given situation, not on hypothetical situation of how it should be. The decision about how the link should be is commons decision or at least common decision. Months ago I had primal idea about common pages between projects. My idea was about Commons with others wikis but it can be useful also between commons and wikidata. Place that both parties can discuss.

We can ask wikidata to change this policy. I don't think it would be a problem. As I remember they already changed many things based on requests from he.wiki. We just need to agreed that we want to allow linking commons categories and wikipedia articles and request wikidata to change that policy.

I'll appreciate the involvement of wikidata/commons admins in this discussion @Lymantria: , @Multichill: , @-revi: and @Techman224: . -- Geagea (talk) 14:34, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Damn, that is a long post. This is the administrators' noticeboard. How can an admin help you?

Wikidata policy on this is quite soft. If a category item exist, you connect to that. If none exists, people tend to add it to the normal item. d:Q15744043 doesn't meet d:Wikidata:Notability so the Commons sitelink should probably be moved and the item deleted.

Arbitrary access (phab:T49930) is going to make all our lives a lot easier: We can show description and information from any item. So for example Category:Givatayim could fetch all the data from d:Q152413 (through P301) without being directly connected. Multichill (talk) 06:32, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry about the long thread. Tried to cover the whole subject. But I agree, small threads does better job.

I am not the only one that meets this. User:INeverCry have the same case her. I was mass reverted by User:Cycn (more then 100 reverts) her. I don't think that the policy is soft in those cases. Maybe not uniformity. Anyway my intention is to reach consensus in Commons says that we want to allow linking commons categories and wikipedia articles and afterward to ask WD to accept Commons consensus. -- Geagea (talk) 06:47, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

I think this should be discussed from WD, but my personal opinion (as of now) is connect category to article on WP whether category item exists or not, and abandon gallaries on WD (I have rarely seen useful gallaries...). — Revi 16:41, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

This is the next step. My intention is to reach a consensus in Commons and then to made request in WD. -- Geagea (talk) 06:47, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that Multichill is correct in stating that Wikidata policy is soft and that d:Q15744043 does not meet its notability policy. That policy states quite clear that categories, explicitly those from commons, should be connected to categories and that an item with one valid sitelink (hence for example one category on commons) is notable. The point is that categories here on commons play a somewhat different role than on wikipedia and it seems that language links between a category here and main namespace articles on wikipedia's would be most useful. If such can be arranged through P103 I think that is fine, but a bit weird as well. For instance individual buildings, species, persons rarely have a category on a wikipedia, and often have one here. It seems a bit pointless to make both a wikidata item on the category here and one on the wikipedia articles. In that respect I support Geagea's action here. But I am afraid that it won't work out,. So if accessability through P103 is an inbetween solution I can well live with that. Lymantria (talk) 09:54, 7 February 2015 (UTC) (P.S. This discussion has somewhat the same subject, but then about wikinews).

The current user interface encourages you to link Commons categories to Wikipedia articles. The "In Wikipedia ... Add links" in Tools automates the process and gives the result that you expect (links to all the Wikipedia articles, automatically updated from Wikidata). I've seen some argument from Wikidata that templates should be used instead, but I haven't seen anything that allows the links to be set up automatically (without manually adding Wikidata items, templates etc.)., and which automatically updates the links if Wikidata changes. --ghouston (talk) 10:09, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

My experience in Wikidata is the other way round. I wanted to connect Category:Palm Sunday with Commons Category:Palm Sunday, but it was dismissed, because this Commons category is linked to Wikipedia article Palm Sunday. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 00:46, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

That is exactly the point. I want to ask Wikidata to allow connect wiki articles with Commons categories as it is consensus her that we prefer that way. If they not accept it we can decide not to use Wikidata for that purpose and back to the old system like here. -- Geagea (talk) 06:35, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't like that Wikidata is overwriting our rules here. Absolutely not OK. --Steinsplitter (talk) 06:51, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I am unconvinced that Wikidata is overwriting any rules. It is a truism that anyone using a Wikidata current working practice, to mass revert a Commons contributor in ways that have no existing consensus on this project, will find that any administrator has an excellent reason to block the offending Commons account (or bot). As an admin, Geagea has shown a great deal of patience by not doing so already.

Galleries are a poor default for anything, and there will never be an army of gallery creating volunteers who fancy creating a useful gallery for a half million topics here. Wikidataists are aware it is a problem, so I'm sure that sensible people like Multichill are working for a better solution, as he has alluded to above. --Fæ (talk) 08:06, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

The solution may take time. Yet in the meantime we need solution. Even if the new tool comes still the links between the wiki article and Commons category important. It can help to the new tool to contact between them. Also, the wrong understanding of Wikidata may harm in other unknown ways. And no, I have no intention to made revert wars or using admin tools to revenge. I want to do this in correct way. -- Geagea (talk) 15:11, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that a lot of it is up to the developers (to be fair, there's a lot of other things that are badly needed that they are behind on too). --Rs chen 7754 20:11, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Guys, please don't blame Wikidata for faults of the older system that we can't wean ourselves off, and please understand that Wikidata is a work in progress and it's impossible to get everything working at once. There is quite a lot of reasons why it would be inconvenient to link mainspace articles/galleries and categories as if they were similar entities. Yes, at Commons categories are the primary medium, and galleries will always suck — but no one ushers their creation. All the connections between Wikipedia articles and Commons categories ideally should be handled by Wikidata property d:Property:P373 (or indirectly via d:Property:P910, don't know which would be better). And the links in the sidebar should just be automatically gathered from that. At ru.wp, for example, the language links have been moved a bit lower (under the subheading "На других языках"/"In other languages"), and directly above them there's "В других проектах"/"In other projects", which in most cases contains a link to the Wikidata element and to Commons category – if it's linked via d:Property:P373. The same could an be organised over here: the links to categories at Wikipedias would listed under the second sub-heading, while the first sub-heading would contain links to Wikipedia articles gathered automatically via a chain of connections on Wikidata. So instead of warring with guys from Wikidata, better help creating some gadget like that (and maintain the relevant connections on Wikidata). YLSS (talk) 18:20, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

In order to help wikidata and harmonize the the connection between all projects I added links through Property:P373 but was reverted (her, and her, and her, and her, and her and many more).

It is not thread against Wikidata but about hard implementation of Wikidata policy. We are talking about the cases when there is no gallery for example or the case when there is no wiki category at all etc. Seems that somehow that the policy implementation happens without common sense.

If it cause problem may be it is better that we continue to use the old method until will work properly. -- Geagea (talk) 20:07, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

But in all those cases you added links not via Property:P373, but as a sitelink, and that's the problem. If you had used Property:P373, no one would have reverted you. Apparently that wouldn't have created a sidebar link at en.wp or here, but at ru.wp (any others?), it would have appeared. YLSS (talk) 20:20, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

It is about the links from Commons not fron Wikipedia. -- Geagea (talk) 20:22, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Once again: we should urge the creation of some new gadget that would collect those automatically via Property:373. If ru.wp did that, we also can. YLSS (talk) 20:44, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Any gadget can not work properly as the links removed. Even the new gadget (or phab:T49930) need to take info from somewhere. The links in the so called "sitelink" are useful for the period until we have other solution and will be useful to new gadget as a database which category link to which article. -- Geagea (talk) 21:03, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Geagea, Wikidata should make an exception and treat commons categories as mainspace articles. Since people here aren't eager to tell Wikidata what to do, the discussion should take place in Wikidata itself. Uziel302 (talk) 09:31, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Until there is some kind of consensus at wikidata to change policy and allow namespace mixture (which I don't believe is likely to happen), we can best add categories to wikidata this way (for an example Geagea gave) and wait for gathering possibilities as Multichill suggested above. I think that will work out quite well and it prevents a next problem we should have when we link commons-categories to wikipedia-articles: how do we link galleries then? Lymantria (talk) 13:07, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

But this way does not give us a link in the meantime. Linking in the old way give us a link and we can add the same link to the gallery. From the wiki side they decide to which part to link. To the gallery or to the Category. I am sure that the new tool can gather info from the old fashion style. And I a still going to raise it to Wikidata. Common sense should work. -- Geagea (talk) 13:28, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

If somebody wants to help Wikidata he can add P373 but it give us nothing. Also bot cat add P373 if we have the old style links. -- Geagea (talk) 13:41, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Railway viaducts

I took some special pictures of the new railway viaduct in Southwark. Amazing how the builders integrated the viaduct in the urban area.

Are there galleries for the Thamelink railway works or articles how the planners worked with the local communities to build the viaduct? Where building partialy demolished?Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:20, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't think there are. We could do with a lot of galleries being created for London districts, you should find a relevant category and create one.

I know this area next to the Cathedral very well, we have a lot of photographs of Southwark Market / the old fish market. Amongst other things you were taking photographs next to the house which was used in the Bridget Jones's Diary films and you were next to the Cathedral where you can (for free) see and photograph an excavated Roman wall and pavement. It would be great if someone could get access and take photographs from the flat that overlooks the railway line, as well as features from the flat. If you go past the Cathedral on the train heading into central London, the train goes at a walking pace and you actually look directly into the flat, pretty much the same view of the window and building seen in the films. --Fæ (talk) 14:13, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

@Smiley.toerist: It's called the Borough Market Bridge. I'd suggest a google search to find out more information. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:37, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Category:Borough Market Bridge seems to be the start, then add this to bridges in Southwark and any other category it should fall into. (PS being BOLD I've done the first bit...) Railwayfan2005 (talk) 20:14, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

I suppose "Borough Market Bridge" is for the new bridge? It is created with the Thameslink works but will not actualy carry Thameslink trains but Charing Cross trains. There is actualy a triangle of railway bridges and I dont know if they all have names. These are the other pictures I took.Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:20, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Category:Category:Pages with script errors

Would someone take a look at this badly-named category? It isn't actually defined, but it has quite a few pages and files in it. The name should be "Pages with script errors", but I don't see how to change it. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 11:51, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

special:trackingCategories contains information on what mediawiki namespace page controls the name of this type of tracking category. If that category isnt on the list, its members might just need to be null edited. Bawolff (talk) 12:48, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

hmm. Something weird is going on there. Bawolff (talk) 12:53, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

There actually are Category:Pages with script errors and Category:Category:Pages with script errors, both containing pages. Mediawiki seems to be a little confused here. XenonX3 (talk) 12:56, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

appears to be coming from a bunch of illegally named pages that start with file: but are in main namespace, e.g. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/?curid=38058946 Bawolff (talk) 13:05, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

So all the pages seem to have been in the 2 hour period between 2015-01-27T08:16:08Z to 2015-01-27T10:19:47Z. There's nothing in the server admin log for that date, so I have no idea what the cause is. However, it doesn't appear that any new pages are experiencing the issue. ~~I suppose these fake pages should just be deleted (i.e. via the API using the page id)~~ [Maybe we should wait before doing that, just in case someone wants to investigate further]. Bawolff (talk) 14:54, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Not all pages are in that category - see more at https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NewPages&offset=20150127000000&dir=prev&limit=87 (note that page moves may appear as false positives in that list). Bawolff (talk) 15:13, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Some developers trying to sabotage POTY, known problem.

–Be..anyone (talk) 02:21, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Permission for photos of coins US

Coincidentally, the next ticket I looked at ticket:2015020210013183 is also a coin issue, involving

I think this one is easier, as they are US coins and not listed in the exceptions, but I'll double-check here before accepting.

The template you want is

Public domain

This image depicts a unit of currency issued by the United States of America. If this is an image of paper currency or a coin not listed here, it is solely a work of the United States Government, is ineligible for US copyright, and is therefore in the public domain in the United States.
Fraudulent use of this image is punishable under applicable counterfeiting laws.

As listed by the the U.S. Currency Education Program at money illustrations, the Counterfeit Detection Act of 1992, Public Law 102-550, in Section 411 of Title 31 of the Code of Federal Regulations (31 CFR 411), permits color illustrations of U.S. currency provided:
1. The illustration is of a size less than three-fourths or more than one and one-half, in linear dimension, of each part of the item illustrated;
2. The illustration is one-sided; and
3. All negatives, plates, positives, digitized storage medium, graphic files, magnetic medium, optical storage devices, and any other thing used in the making of the illustration that contain an image of the illustration or any part thereof are destroyed and/or deleted or erased after their final use.
Certain coins contain copyrights licensed to the U.S. Mint and owned by third parties or assigned to and owned by the U.S. Mint [9]. For the United States Mint circulating coin design use policy, see [10]; for the policy on the 50 State Quarters, see [11].

Also: COM:ART #Photograph of an old coin found on the Internet

--Wehwalt (talk) 21:56, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

That template is very similar to the one already on the image in the second request, so I'll assume that one is OK, but my main question is about Swiss coins. I separated the two, to avoid confusion.--Sphilbrick (talk) 22:06, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Permission for photos of coins Swiss

I am trying to work on the 1400 open OTRS permission requests. One ticket:2015020210009723 involves a couple dozen images of coins. Example: File:Zurich3.jpg

I think I recall two relevant issues: 1. Coins are three-dimensional, not two-dimensional, so the rules are different. 2. Coins have varying rules, depending on the country. I vaguely recall that coins of some countries can be freely photographed (US?) but some are not.

Can someone help me figure out whether this can be simply accepted, or if some issues must be investigated?--Sphilbrick (talk) 21:31, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Sphilbrick, for your review of my OTRS ticket. Some coins are protected by copyright law in various nations. In fact, even one U.S. coin is. Specifically, the Sacagawea dollar, the obverse of which is owned by the U.S. Mint as a copyrighted work. All other coin designs are in the public domain, though, as far as I am aware. As for Swiss coins, they are specifically exempted from copyright by the Federal Act on Copyright and Related Rights (1992). Specifically, chapter 2, article 5 declares that all "forms of payment" (coins and banknotes) are expressly exempt from copyright protection. Of course, if there are other opinions, please do discuss them here. I'm the uploader of the Swiss coins mentioned by Sphilbrick, so I have a conflict of interest when it comes to the PD status.-RHM22 (talk) 22:55, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

First search the copyright noticeboard archives, money in most territories has been discussed before. The VP is not the best place to get specific answers. They are hard work, make sure you are certain. If you don't then a copyright wikilawyer like me will bounce them in a few months time and it will probably be some other unpaid OTRS volunteer that will have to research it again. Remember there is no time limit for checking these, and if you find the current guidelines woolly, then think about using your cases to make them more useful for future copyright cases. --Fæ (talk) 23:53, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

SPhilbrick: this is also covered in the Currency of Switzerland page here on Commons.-RHM22 (talk) 04:37, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, that helps.--Sphilbrick (talk) 13:52, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Help with the Upload Wizard

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T89319

Hello everyone,

in the Upload Wizard, when I am about to upload a picture, right after I say that "This file is my own work", I need to fill in my name in the "I, ____, the copyright holder of this work..." part. The wizard automatically fills in my username. I, whowever, always change it to my own name. Is there a way to choose what the wizard will fill in? So I don't have to change it to my name all the time.

Thank you very much. Mateus S. Figueiredo (talk) 22:05, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

User:Mateussf, my best advice is: Copy the wiki text from a file page that’s similar to what you need, and paste it in to Special:Upload, with the necessary changes. Special:UploadWizard is unsuitable for its intended use. -- Tuválkin ✉ 14:31, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Dramatic sky

When I search the Commons for "Dramatic sky" I get quite a few hits, but no underlying category. Should I make a new category or do something under clouds? The purpose is to select the dramatic effect. I started by looking for a good category for File:Clapham Junction with dramatic sky.JPG. Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:46, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Not objective enough for a category. - Jmabel ! talk 00:01, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
Category:Thunderstorms has subcategories by country, your example could fit. –Be..anyone (talk) 01:53, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
Yeah, agree with Jmabel. How would we define a "dramatic sky"? That'd be a bit like an "Awesome mountain" category. --Dschwen (talk) 23:20, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

February 12

How to deal with {{Uncategorized}} and base images for stitches?

Hi, consider File:Julius Meinl Graben Vienna 2007 006.jpg. It was used as a part of a stitch, and uploaded for courtesy, if someone wants to try better. Source images for the stitch have not been categorized, but marked with {{Cleanup image done}}. This leads to a situation where a bot adds {{Uncategorized}}. But this is by intent and removing {{Uncategorized}} will create an endless loop. Moving the parts of the stitch to the category of the stitch will clutter that category with mostly unusable (and unchangeable!) images. Is there a general idea on how to categorize (or otherwise deal with) base images of a stitch? --Herzi Pinki (talk) 11:02, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Normally all the images are added to all relevant categories, and the clutter is ignored. The only exception I know of is Category:NARA TIF images with categorized JPGs, which was created specially to avoid categorizing a set of files. Perhaps you could argue there should be a more general category such as "Images with categorized derivatives". --ghouston (talk) 21:40, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Category:NARA TIF images with categorized JPGs is slightly flawed, because it should be marked as a hidden category, but can't be, because then all the contents would then be considered uncategorized. --ghouston (talk) 21:44, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Wilfredor → The Photographer

Wilfredor changed his account name to User:The Photographer, and that needed to be fixed in references to the former name, namely in talk pages and file pages. While I’d expect to be taken care of by means of a redirect in the user pages of the former name (as, f.i., was done for the name change Wiebevl → Vunz), apparently User:Lucia Bot has been in the past few days editing most (all?) uses of the string "Wilfredor" to "The Photographer", not only in links but also in text, including archived deletion requests, admin noticeboards, etc., and affecting other people’s comments (see one example). This strikes me as technically unnecessary and prone to cause more confusion than it solves. -- Tuválkin ✉ 20:44, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

I have corrected the above comment and section name so that it doesn't look as weird as it did. I am reverting that bot edits on my talk pages and archive pages, for that sole reason, they are unnecesarily editing historical pages. Diego Grez ^{return fire} 04:23, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

This bot was not approved for such a task. --Dschwen (talk) 00:49, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

I asked to change my name because of a serious problem with the Venezuelan government to I have taken photos in the protests. Appreciate not make any redirection from my old name and too that this section be deleted. Otherwise, I take responsibility for what may happen to me or my family. --The_Photographer (talk) 02:33, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

I am sorry to hear about your predicament, but I fail to see how would a renaming of your (now former) nick be of any avail in shaking off even the most naive stalker, let alone a governmental entity: It is trivial to find links between your current nym and your former one. (Implementing the name change via bot-driven textual search-and-replace, especially in a public wiki with available history pages, makes it even more conspicuous and ineffective — on top of messing our records as mentioned above.) You should have simply created a new account and stopped using the old one — that would have made tracing the change and tracking you less easy. -- Tuválkin ✉ 20:44, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

January 31

WLM 2014 winners announced - did anyone notice, or care?

I checked the Wiki Loves Monuments 2014 winners page recently and noticed that the international winners had been announced. An edit on 22 December, with no edit summary, added the results. A WLM blog post on 29 December also published the list. Did anyone notify Commons? I can see no evidence on the "What links here?" list. I have to assume the winners were notified, because there's no evidence on their Commons user talk pages. For every other image-assessment forum on Commons, the photographers/nominators are notified when they get an award. But not WLM.

Why the disconnect? If WLM wants to encourage people to donate freely licensed educational images surely it has to interact with the contest-entrants on Commons as though they were part of the community, and to interact with the Commons community who then have to support these new users. Instead, I see empty user talk pages, some with some deletion notices posted. Of the prize winning entrants who were not already Commons regulars, none have continued here.

Is the jury system working? With every photo contest there will be grumbles over the winning choices. But WLM never seems to satisfy. A basic requirement, surely, is that the prizewinners could be published in a photography magazine or a gallery print displayed with pride. This happens with other major photography competitions at national and international level. But most of the national and the international winning sets on WLM had members with serious technical flaws. For example International winner with 3rd place: File:Jøvik handelssted 04.jpg. This has a heavily posterised sky that is visible even on thumbnail. And the, heavily foreshortened, pier isn't sufficiently in focus. Another concern is whether it is even a valid entry: it is a photo of an abandoned pier. You can see this from other angles here and here. But the Norwegian Listed Building description here is for "Seahouses - Traditional column / beam structure partly on piles in the lake", which can be seen in this photo in the same set by the photographer. Abandoned piers are common, a frequent subject of photography, and this image is a long way from being a remarkable example of the genre.

The only Featured Picture in the international list is File:Iglesia de San Pedro, Teruel, España, 2014-01-10, DD 11-12 HDR.JPG, which was taken by one of our Commons regulars and would probably have been taken, uploaded and nominated without WLM. What does this disconnect between WLM and FP say about whether the two projects are functioning to select the finest images of listed buildings? Since FP regularly reviews and awards listed buildings nearly every single day, is the WLM result and time-consuming jury system, actually of value? The WLM statistics are impressive: "9,000 photographers uploaded over 321,000 freely-licensed photographs of historic buildings, monuments and cultural heritage sites in 41 countries". But is WLM worthwhile as a tool to attract users who stick around, or as a photo competition that produces images we can be fully proud of?

Any constructive opinions on what could be done differently or better? -- Colin (talk) 13:19, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure how much I am at liberty to say, as I was one of the three judges of the UK competition, but I too am fairly disappointed by the quality of the international winners. I agree with Colin that the winners should be presentable in a magazine or gallery and I don't believe many of the winners could comfortably be displayed without drawing derision from an educated public. I won't comment on the artistic merits of the images as I don't want to disrespect the artistic choices of the judges, but technical flaws are not particularly subjective and are, I think, a significant problem amongst many the finalists of the national competition, but even more so the winners of the international competition. As I said, I don't want to be too critical of the judges, but to be honest, I don't even know who judged the international competition, or what criteria was applied. There doesn't seem to be any information whatsoever on how the international WLM competition was judged, and the FAQ for the 2014 competition redirects to the FAQ for the 2013 competition. I know we had some difficulties attracting chapters to participate, and the appropriate skillsets to implement the competition in many of the local chapters, but I do believe that if we're going to continue running WLM in subsequent years, the organisation and quality of the competition does need some improvement - probably with more involvement from a central organising party at Wikimedia Foundation rather than leaving most of the work to the local chapters. This is not a criticism of any individuals, as I know all involved did their best. Diliff (talk) 14:22, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Diliff, the jury is listed here, though that list might not be complete. The criteria are (in no particular order)

Technical quality (sharpness, use of light, perspective etc.);
Originality;
Usefulness of the image for Wikipedia.

as well as the entry requirements

Self taken and self uploaded;
Uploaded in September 2014;
Freely licensed;
Contain an identified monument;
Nominated through a national contest

-- Colin (talk) 15:12, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

I had a similar problem with WLE, when 11 of the 15 winners had no international assessment tag. My mad SoFixIt plan—just nominate the missing 2*5+1 pro forma as QI—did not at all work as expected, so don't try that, unless you really want a full QI review. OTOH some WLE winners are now also QI or even FP, and IIRC the WLE-folks later also added tags to their winners.

I just tried to find the categories or galleries of WLM winners, but all I found was a vintage 2010 COM:WLM, and lots of "by year and country" categories. The WLM-site is no MediaWiki, that's odd from my POV. Somebody with tact (maybe you, certainly not me) could invite them to form a kind of Wiki-project here, with the goal to create categories or galleries for their annual winners, and contribute to assessment templates (or roll their own) as they see fit. They could also nominate the winners as FP. Of course everybody could do all of this, but obviously it didn't happen so far. –Be..anyone (talk) 15:31, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

It might not be a bad idea to say all WLM finalists have to pass QI. There's some... oddities in there, found one that was only 600px wide. Adam Cuerden (talk) 17:05, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

I am entirely satisfied with the result. WLM is still in an experimental state. It hardly has funding. It has made more pictures of monuments available than any other similar project, and in my opinion, its output and impact over the few years it has existed can be discussed on par with the entire output of UNESCO departments for cataloging and raising public awareness of monuments.

It seems obvious to me that the output of this project justifies a lot more financial support, at least on the order of multiple paid staff, when considered in the context of other programs which have similar aims, cost more money, and are less effective. For now I would be happy just to see the project apply for funds to document the extent of participation in it and apply for a grant writer to sustain its future more nuanced outreach into particular regions. It might also be useful to have a staff photography critic to pre-process photos before judging with notes on technical quality, which would both help voting judges and be a part of a fair reward for photographers who contribute photos as they learn their art. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:53, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree that it needs more funding, if funding will attract better photographers and increase exposure. But given it is a photography competition and not simply a project to attract a large volume of bog-standard photos, I don't know how you can say you are satisfied. Are you really concerned only by quantity and not by quality? Can you honestly look at the winning entries and tell me that you're impressed? About half of the winners would be outright rejected by QI or FPC projects for poor image quality. How is then that a 'successful' international competition involving 320,000 photos could feature winning images that I think, honestly, many decently talented photographers would be embarrassed to publish, let alone hang on a wall? I'm sorry this comes across a bit harsh to the winners of the competition, but I think WLM should rightfully aim to feature photography that matches advanced amateur, if not professional standards of excellence such as the Commons POTY competition. If it is not able to do that, and I don't believe it has, I cannot consider it a much of a success, and I cannot imagine that many talented prospective entrants next year will look at the winners and think "wow, that's a competition that I'd love to be involved in". That doesn't mean I think we should scrap it, but I couldn't in good conscience call it a success either. Diliff (talk) 19:03, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Diliff I imagine the event as more of a scavenger hunt than a photography competition, so any picture which presents the location and does not trigger aversion in my untrained eyes meets my expectations. Perhaps 2% of the people in the world can look at the WLM winners and say anything educated about the technical execution of the photograph. While I hope that someday WLM attracts advanced amateurs, in my opinion that is not the target audience in this.

I am sharing my favorite WLM entry, the fort at Chandravati. This is in a rural area hours from any place where tourists go, and not even accessible by roads. Sometime in the past 30 years the fort has been dismantled so that poor people could use the bricks for other projects. WLM is the first time an international audience took interest in the place, and it was because one person in the area made a long trip to its site. Just having this information alone about this one site justifies all cost and expense of the entire WLM project, because now we have valuable information about the upkeep of an international treasure. The entire fort has disappeared since the last time someone checked. I would not care if this were on a camera phone, and in my opinion, this picture is as deserving of a prize as any other in the WLM project.

Photography is only one part of this. The biggest part is promoting pride in people's own cultures. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:18, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

If it is a photo collection project then just say so. Have a big "Donate Images to Wikipedia Month". Encourage talented amateurs and professionals alike to donate a small part of their archives or to go out and take new photos. But WLM claims to be "the world's biggest photo contest". If photography isn't actually the main part of it, as you strangely claim, nor recruiting and celebrating high quality image submissions the focus of it, then it isn't a photo contest at all. We should be honest if that's our aim. There are projects such as the UK's Geograph that aim to document thoroughly without any focus on producing works of art. Those 321,000 images required thousands of hours of study by dozens of reviewers, all of whom thought they were working towards choosing the finest images in a photo contest. We persuaded external judges to aid some national competitions, who also thought they were part of a serious photo competition. I'm sorry but the Chandravati fort story doesn't move me. Buildings disappear and we fail to capture them -- it certainly isn't WMF or Commons responsibility or mission. Nor is encouraging pride in local culture. I'm not impressed with the idea of paying multiple-salaries to achieve countless more bad-quality photographs -- and I'm not talking about the prize winners here, but about the 300,000 images that stood no hope. If WMF have funds to spare on photography, there are people on Commons who would benefit from equipment, software and computers. And there is one I can think of, who for the sake of some petrol money and other minor expenses, has in a few months produced more world-class quality photographs of listed buildings than the whole of WLM ever. There are, I've no doubt, out-of-work pro photographers or photography students, who could be financed to produce images for Commons if that was wanted. Plenty ways of spending money than phoney photo competitions. If we have money, let's at least aim to make photos that are of minimal professional competence, than to be happy with a huge pile of barely usable ones.

Having said that, WLM has produced many photos that illustrate our WP articles, though the laws of diminishing returns mean that the low-hanging-fruit is going. But please don't claim one photo "justifies all cost and expense of the entire WLM project" because you didn't spend it -- those who reviewed and organised the competition spent it with their own time. The church I photographed for WLM 2013 has a dwindling congregation and may also one day be demolished yet is among some of the finest church architecture in Scotland. I would have photographed it regardless of WLM, and my photos of it are the only high quality photographs available online. Plenty other people on Commons take pictures and can tell such stories without dressing it up in a photo competition. -- Colin (talk) 20:25, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Colin I understand why you are not satisfied, and by what you say you indicate that you understand the reasons why I am satisfied. For your sake, I hope something changes about WLM to increase the quality of submissions over time and I hope that for my sake, you will leave the project to continue to generate what benefits me and my community. This project means very different things to different people. Blue Rasberry (talk) 02:57, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

To answer the o.p. title — no, and no. Concerning #3 international winner (indeed a comparatively poor photograph), I have to say only this. -- Tuválkin ✉ 18:30, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

One goal of WLM is that photos are taken of monuments. In certain cities there are thousands of buildings considered as monuments. For example in Leuven, Belgium. That means that there are photos which are not so nice for example this one and other ones are better as that one. It all depends on the time you are there to take the photos. For certain monuments it is in my opinion not worth the effort to come back when the light conditions are better. A good recording is sufficient. Other monuments deserve to come back for example in early spring when there are no leaves on the trees that hide the building and in the early morning because than the sun shines from the right side. Wouter (talk) 20:44, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

- Can I just weigh in with a basic "whatever"? I take a lot of pictures of monuments, and a good number of them have been good enough to end up on calendars or in magazines, and once I saw that I had to go through extra hoops to have them considered for a contest I just didn't bother. - Jmabel ! talk 20:55, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Colin and Rasberry for your remarks, as they were a nice opportunity to rethink why I´ve lost the motivation to take pictures of monuments for Wikipedia and Commons: I admit that I´m one of the bad guys who didn´t know the function of the tiny plus and minus buttons before having done the first 100 uploads (always heavily overexposing from then on) and didn´t start to wonder about falling lines before 200 more. My pictures of west-facing facades tend to look better than those at the other side of the road because I love to sleep long on weekends. And many of my pictures are a study of garbage bins and mid-class cars, because if they stood between me and the registered house, that was how it was (but I eventually learned to focus on the house rather than on the garbage bin). But I really enjoyed filling the empty spaces in the lists of cultural heritage monuments in DE-Wikipedia (and exploring obscure little villages while doing this). Definitely not as the best picture but as a temporary placeholder until someone with more photographic aptitude came along on a non-garbage-bin-collection day. Then came the first WLM-event and it was still fun, WLM being just an additional opportunity to motivate the more ambitious contributors. But in the second round it became clear that bad pictures like mine were seen rather a nuisance than a gain. Of course, I never had tagged more than one image for WLM (and this just to improve the statistics) but I still felt that even the general expectations for contributions in that area were getting higher than I was able (or willing) to fulfill.

In my home state are about 17,000 cultural heritage monuments. The number of Commons contributors who systematically tried to collect them was once 8 and now is around 4 (give or take one or two, I just see the additions in the lists). Your pay-for-better-pictures approach, Colin, will mean paying for around 40 man years to get the job done. Or return to the fun-for-all aspect, expand it and live with what you get until you get something better. --Rudolph Buch (talk) 21:54, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Rudolph I'm not advocating a "paid for better pictures approach" -- just brainstorming ways the money could be spent since BlueRaspberry suggested WLM could use WMF funds. Crowdsourcing is a great way to fill-in-the-gaps with useful but not artistic images. And I agree that 99% of listed buildings are not going to win any photo competitions -- the point is to catalogue them with freely licensed images. But then why pretend it is a photo competition? Do many/most of the thousands of photographers who took ordinary images of awkward-to-photograph listed buildings think they stand a chance in the competition? Surely not. So is there a way to motivate people to do such photography without the dishonesty of a photo competition where producing the highest-quality photographs of significant buildings is not actually the aim? -- Colin (talk) 22:25, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree with you Colin. There are many ways that we can collect simple but effective photography of the countless monuments around the world without having to call it a photo competition. We just run regular banners on Wikipedia that encourages people to go out and shoot historical buildings. But if we're going to call it a photography competition, that means that someone has to go through all the images to find a winner. Perhaps it could be as simple as a dropdown menu on the upload form: "Do you want to enter this photo into the competition?" Two options: "Yes, please enter this image into the competition." and "No, don't worry, I know it has no chance of winning, I just wanted make a token contribution to the 'sum of all human knowledge', thanks anyway.". That would likely significantly reduce the burden on reviewers. It wouldn't necessarily improve the quality of the winners though, but it would at least recognise that quality and quantity are two disparate goals for the WLM project. Diliff (talk) 22:55, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

I'd ask whether the criteria was being that crefully applied, given this is on the finalist page:

That's not a thumbnail, that's the full-size image. Is there any reason why passing as QI or FP (any wiki or commons) can't be a requirement? It would weed things down immensely. Adam Cuerden (talk) 22:59, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Adam Cuerden The reason is that it is an all-inclusive project, and not a celebration for the wealthy. I want pictures taken with mobile phones to be included especially if that continues to get participation from the developing world. I want undocumented things to become documented, rather than documented things to become better documented. After all the monuments in the world are well-photographed then there will be time to start excluding participants. I do not want to reject participants before they even try, and especially not over lack of money to join.

Many people in developing countries upload thumbnails even if they have expensive cameras because they do not have fast Internet. I do not want thumbnails excluded, and the best contributions may not be the technically best pictures. If there were different standards for judging pictures from wealthy countries then I would support that. Blue Rasberry (talk) 03:04, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

There is certainly reason to encourage mobile phone images as useful, but not to make them finalists, particularly given File:Château_d'Aigle.jpg is more or lesss the same view, but not a thumbnail. A finalist should be something Wikipedias are encouraged to use, if there's a half-dozen better choices, it's not finalist material. Further, this is from Switzerland. We're getting far better pictures than this from third world countries. Adam Cuerden (talk) 07:57, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Bluerasberry, last time I checked, Switzerland wasn't a developing nation :-). The Canon EOS 500D that took that photo is capable of fine 15MP images, whereas the above is 0.24MP. Adam, each country had its own review system, and in the UK this year an image below 5MP didn't stand a chance. We chose that figure as it is the kind of resolution you'd need to print A4 to high quality. Setting that in our guidance for the competition, significantly increased the size of this year's entrants compared to previous year. Photographers who aren't at heart free-content hippies will tend to donate the most miserly resolution they think they can get away with. Making QI/FP a requirement wouldn't work (think of the edit conflicts with 300,000 images dumped on QI :-). One might have thought, with 300,000 images entered to a contest, that the winning selection could at least have some technical competence and generous upload dimensions, leaving aside artistic opinions which will vary. Bluerasberry, it is all well and good hoping for an inclusive project but you are mixing your hope for worldwide contributions to a collection project, with the purpose of a photography competition, which this claims to be. Beware the laws of unintended consequences -- we've had some fine multi-megapixel panoramas of India in previous WLMs. Now if you introduce your "Developing nation images will be judged at 200x300px thumbnail to level the game for those with poor cameras and bad internet" rule then those photographers who might have donated a 12MP or 36MP or 50MP image will now only donate 0.1MP thumbs. And then all WLM India would have to show for its efforts would be thousands of thumbnails of very limited utility. And the photographers in developing nations, who are Commons regulars, who understand free-content projects, and who donate high resolution images, will be upset when their generous donations are overlooked in order to praise some little thumbnail. And so they won't take part. And this brings me to the other issue: you assume WLM will somehow function if the motivation to win a prize worth winning is gone. That the teams who reviewed all those images will continue to give their time when the result is no better than an average week at FP. This year many countries did not take part in WLM (many countries do not have that many historical listed monuments compared to Europe). Bluerasberry, you say you don't want thumbnails or cameraphones excluded but by "included" do you mean they stand a serious chance of winning vs a proper high-quality photograph? If so, that is not a competition I would enter, nor would I see any chance of us persuading non-Commons amateur photographers to enter a "thumbnail competition" when there are plenty serious photo competitions. -- Colin (talk) 08:24, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Moreover, this photo of the Chateau d'Aigle needs a release via OTRS as it's been published already in 2011 at [12]. Lupo 09:19, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

And that's the other problem with letting thumbs in. Far easier to grab thumbs off the internet... Adam Cuerden (talk) 09:31, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

@Be..anyone, the winners of previous years can easily be found by replacing 2014 with the relevant year:

Mvg, Basvb (talk) 09:24, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, missed that, and the shortcut is also okay, it doesn't go to the old page. –Be..anyone (talk) 10:47, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

See Category:Highlighted content from Wiki Loves Monuments, an issue might be that the actual quality and FP images are there but don't end up on top. I count around 150-200 FP's and around 5000 QI's there, with this we have to consider that many uploaders don't nominate their images because they are not familiar with the QI and FP processes, thus the number of eligible images could be much higher. In issue which I found while judging was that specifically the professional photographers amongst the judges weighted being artistic way more than being of very high technical quality. It could be a good suggestion for next years that photo's should pass a QI test, however this would have some issues, the QI's are judged by one person and all sorts of bias issues arise from that. Te other issue would be that it would put a high load on the QI process. Another approach could be allowing the persons here who are very critical of the quality to join judging and highligh the importance of technical quality. I agree that a 600 px image shouldn't stand a chance (people should donate their full size photo not just a thumbnail), and I've thrown pictures out for that reason. Mvg, Basvb (talk) 09:24, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Also, I would like to point out the strength of Pakistan and Columbia's contributions. Third-world countries are providing some top-notch work. Some of the images aren't perfect, but they're still pretty damn good. Adam Cuerden (talk) 09:30, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Colin for bringing up WLM to discussion. I was rather involved in all of the WLMs in Austria, so my opinion expressed here is just a local view. Critics from my POV include:

WLM creates much too many images especially of monuments we already do have a lot of images of. It does not help to fill the gaps in the national lists effectively (this was done mainly by Wikipedians uploading images all the year without needing the motivation of a contest). It also provides a lot of stunning bad quality images (an example with worst images already deleted. Too many images are an extraordinary burden for the whole process chain including welcome to new contributors, categorization, checking relevance as a protected monument, adding descriptions and IDs, adding images to lists & articles, doing the jury work etc.
Any proposal about putting this quantity to a QI / FP process would create a supernova there.
Quantity is a quality measure on success for the WMF. Because it can be easily done. Like counting LOCs, which does not say anything about the quality of software, quantity of images can easily be measured and does not say anything about the overall quality. On the contrary, it encourages contributors to upload more and more images. Many of them being an annoyance for the jury without having any chance to get to the final round.
We tried to do something Diliff mentioned above, to allow uploaders to select images for the competition. It was proposed over and over again, but the local organization was not willing nor capable of implementing such stuff. The chapter is measured by sheer quantity, so it is not in the chapter's interest to limit the numbers of nominated images. I implemented a selection based on a special category with was added by default through the UW, but could be removed manually to de-nominate an image. This poor man's solution was accepted by the uploaders, about 10 % of all images have been de-nominated that way. In the end the chapter did not care and put all the images again to the jury. I would strongly support a button to allow de/selection for competition. Although it will not help for mass uploaders during competition time only.
In the backoffice we are running out of resources. Nobody bothers about WLM after all those years. The local organization propagates huge number of images, but they neither do nor do organize the work resulting from those huge numbers (Austrian experience only).
To sum up: Quantity is triggered by WMF, propagated to the local chapters and implemented in their grants. The organization is biased to quantity. So how will you get more quality?
We should welcome every photo showing the monument especially if it is the first and only image of that monuments, especially if it is originating from some lonely areas of the world (in terms of active Wikipedians). Agree with Bluerasberry on that topic. But we should not put every photo to competition. Which also could be done silently, there is no legal right to win. And the process of selection of the finalist images is only transparent from the organization, not from the arguments for non/selection.
see my slides (German, but you will understand the graphics) on this topic, which I presented at the denkmal 2014 at Leipzig. Main points: contributers are going down, number of images per monument is going up, number of images of monuments not already documented (e.g. images that can be used to fill the gaps) is going down dramatically.

regards --Herzi Pinki (talk) 10:05, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Of course the most popular and famous monuments will attract the most attention and be photographed over and over. I don't have a problem with having multiple photos of certain monuments, because if we get a better photo of a monument than we had previously, isn't that just as useful as getting an average photo of a monument that was previously not represented on Commons? I'm not saying one is better than the other, I'm just saying both have genuine benefits for us. The main problem is of course that when we have countless bland images of the same monument, the burden to review them all becomes substantial.
As for my suggestion for reducing the number of entrants, I don't see why it would be such a problem, because they are all still uploaded as part of WLM and we still benefit from the images - they just aren't all entered into the competition. The local chapters can still claim that they received a large number of images as part of the WLM project, even if not all of them are entrants in the competition. I can see that it might prove a problem for the 'marketing' of the competition, where it is touted as being the world's largest photography competition. Reducing the volume of entrants would perhaps jeopardise that. But so what? Are we really basing the credibility of WLM on that sales pitch? "World's largest photography competition" sounds great, but when you see the quality of the average entrants, you quickly realise that quantity does not equate to quality. Perhaps we need to provide feedback to WMF that we don't believe that quantity is an important metric to be measured on, and that it is potentially jeopardising the enthusiasm we have for the project.
Also, you said that you believe not every photo should be entered. I completely agree, but how could that be done except to ask the uploader to decide whether they really feel it is a worthy entrant? To separate the quality images from the poor images, it requires manpower to review them all. Yes, certain things can be automated, we can have a minimum resolution requirements, but that is only one small aspect of what makes a good image. 90% of it is subjective and cannot be identified with metadata. Of course we can assume that many contributors would also not be capable of rationally considering if their photos are really capable of winning, but I think it's the only way we can do it without shifting the burden onto volunteers to review them all (which I think we can agree is a large burden indeed, given the volume of images we receive with WLM).
It sounds like the common experience here is that local chapters don't have the manpower and/or expertise to implement WLM with all the nuances that this project requires. It's a catch-22 situation, because as you say, there wasn't much motivation this year to make it a big success, and that is perhaps reflected in the result we received. To turn it around, I think we need to have a competition in which we can be proud of the winning entries. For this, it makes far more sense to me for the competition to be more centralised by WMF with better advertising to really get the word out to quality photographers and make it something that people want to contribute to. Currently, I don't think this is currently the case, either because photographers are completely unaware of the competition (likely), or because they are aware of it but don't see the incentive of contributing. In the UK, the top three winning entries were actually all by the same professional photographer, which is great, except he has not contributed anything before or since. The result is that we got some nice images (and he got a substantial amount of prize money!), but I don't think there were new contributors who decided to stick around and continue to contribute to Commons. In any case, although I think it would be better for WMF to centrally manage the competition and boost its ability to attract talent, the judging, defining the term 'monument' as it relates to each country and anything else that needs to be decided locally could still, of course, be done by the local chapters, but actually running the competition and implementing the considerable work required for a functional web interface really should be a centrally managed thing IMO. I see that as the only way WLM is going to evolve and mature into a respectable international photography competition. If people are happy for it to remain a high quantity, low quality upload-fest, then that's what it will remain. Diliff (talk) 12:38, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree that maintaining the "worlds largest" adjective isn't important if it requires us to emphasise quantity over quality. I'm not convinced there's much marketing achievement for WLM beyond the banner on projects. Every year we fail to supply magazines with information about contest in time -- in fact we only just got the UK website operational in time. I don't know whether the "[x] don't bother entering this into the competition" upload option would work. I'm not totally convinced enough people would choose it to make a difference. It would need to substantially lighten the load on reviewers. And wouldn't make a lot of difference for those countries where the judges had a filtered shortlist. Some central organisation and money would no doubt help, but the identification of listed buildings/monuments is probably something each country would need to help with. If you add other factors such as the "at risk" register, then I know that England, Wales, Scotland and NI all have separate lists; the Welsh one is not online and the NI one has a seriously broken search function and none of them let you extract the whole list.

But I still have a fundamental doubt over the purpose of this as a competition. It is an extremely expensive competition in terms of volunteer time compared to FP/QI/VI and yet the results in terms of winners-chosen don't achieve more than FP does regularly. We could set some minimum quality threshold similar to FP. I think also the use of external judges has to be questioned, if the experience seems to be they don't share our values. Could the competition be fully judged by the crowd - and if so how? -- Colin (talk) 13:19, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Not being involved in WLM in any kind of way, I'm getting the impression that maybe it would be wise to put the whole thing on hiatus for one year to take some time to figure out where we want it to go. For example, we could still encourage contributors to upload as many images as they like but require them to pick a maximum of – say – five images to be entered in the "competition" part themselves. However, that would require development of an online-interface that guides people through that and keeps an eye on how many pictures one has already nominated etc..

Try to recruit external reviewers from reputable photography magazines (be bold: NatGeo, Outdoor Photographer ;-) and get the winning pictures published there. --El Grafo (talk) 14:36, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

We did something similar in the UK - we had a judge from English Heritage, but as I said already above, I think of those kind of reputable organisations would be embarrassed to be publish and be associated with our WLM winners. It's a catch-22, we can't attract reputable organisations for support if we can't demonstrate that we have a reputable competition with reputable winning photos. Diliff (talk) 16:49, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

@Diliff, I want to clarify the first point. In an economic sense, it is a question of marginal utility. The first image of a monument compared to the 501^st of yet another. While each photo makes the same effort in the process chain, it is different with respect to coverage. We do wanna document the world's cultural heritage, don't we, as complete as possible. All images are welcomed, but some are more useful than others. The headline for the competition should take this into account. In 2014 in Austria the headline was something like: As there are already photos of the vast majority of protected monuments in Austria, and the few unphotographed are difficult to reach or to find, you can contribute with different perspectives, details, different seasons and time of day of already photographed objects. This formulation opens the door for some images that increase the count, but do not increase the coverage. Instead we should direct contributors to the gaps while still allowing every photo of a monument of course. If we can get rid of the stigma of the world's largest photo contest, we could ask the contributors to select your best photos at home and upload only those. Or do you find something like this (not a monument, all superb photos) useful and valuable? So the criteria would be, it must be an image of an object we did not have images before, it must be at least as good as already existing images of the same object we had before (based in your individual judgement as a photographer), or it must demonstrate some special aspect of the object not shown before or not shown that well before. Do not upload a lot of similar perspectives of the same object. We will only get more quality, if we demand it. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 17:40, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

I see an awful lot of elitism here again. Can't we have room for people that just want to have fun making pictures of monuments ? Anyway, I don't see many Commons volunteers to actually run and develop the competition, which I think is part of why you might see some of these 'problems'. I suggest to tackle that problem first, then it might be easier to evolve and make changes to projects like these. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:41, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

TheDJ I have absolutely no problem with a project to collect pictures of monuments. But making it a competition requires a selection process that produces an outcome that can be respected, and sufficient high-quality entries to be worth choosing from. I'd be interested if you can point out any non-elitist international photography competitions that are worth entering -- somebody's got to win and it better be a darn good photograph don't you agree? Many Commons volunteers helped with WLM, myself included for two years, and it is a huge amount of work. I'm trying to consider, as a community, if we can make it a competition that is worth that effort, or if there is another way that goal of encouraging contributions for a worthy topic can be achieved. -- Colin (talk) 18:28, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

All summer 0f 2014 the banner was on top of Wikipedia pages announcing the "contest" US winners HAVE STILL NOT BEEN ANNOUNCED. And incredibly, the reasoning here is that to call attention to winners would subject them to criticism because the entries are so poor? GET REAL this is just stupid.2601:C:6783:8416:D58:4BDD:1584:DEDA 18:32, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

A late reply from my side. As you might know I started Wiki Loves Monuments back in 2010 and organized it for several years. In my opinion WLM should be organized properly or not at all. From my point of view the whole organization for WLM 2014 was makeshift and not the quality I would like to see. The international team was assembled too late and only consisted of three people who were drowning in work. The basic things were In the years I organized WLM we acknowledged that we want to improve quality, but in a way that is in line with the philosophy of the project. So no negative way (minimum requirements or not participate), but in a positive way for example by offering guidance and workshops on how to create better photos. I don't think I've seen any effort in this direction in 2014, but I might be wrong. You can find all the good WLM images in Category:Highlighted content from Wiki Loves Monuments. In the past we did explicitly instruct the jury to follow Commons:Image guidelines.

In the past we also acknowledged that we as the Wikimedia movement are very bad at communicating things, so we invested extra time, effort and money in that. I don't think that happened either in 2014. The lack of proper communication about the winners of WLM and the Summer of Wikipedia is not in line with the philosophy: The project should give give quick and visible results to the people who participate.

Quality is very important, but don't forget the goal for which we started this project in the first place: Get Wikipedia articles illustrated. Since we started this project we added 100.000's of images to Wikipedia. The current counter is a bit over 450.000 image uses. If we add the unused images, we'll probably reach over a half a million images used. That's a shitload of images! Not all images were uploaded as part of WLM, but WLM did help open doors for opening up some collections. We currently have about 2 million images of monuments, that means that roughly 20% is used.

WLM shouldn't have been organized it 2014. It's too much encore or sequel syndrome (doing the same thing again and again, but worse). Most organizations focus on continues improvement, WLM seems to be in continues decline. I'm sure people will push to organize it this year, but I'm afraid it will be slightly worse. That's not very good for the motivation of the people organizing. I would opt in for having a break and than organize it properly. Important part of that is to (re-)evaluate the goals (1 & 2) of the project: What do we want to achieve with WLM?

I don't think Wiki Loves Monuments needs more money. If you organize Wiki Loves Monuments you need a well organized international team with clear roles and responsibilities that sticks to a reasonable timeline and that can provide support and guidance to local organizations. With smart use of money you can make this work very well, just throwing money at it won't improve the quality. I seriously doubt the $20,000 spend on Summer of Monuments 2014 made a big impact. I see about 10.000 images uploaded, that's about the same as 2013, but much less than 2012. Multichill (talk) 10:02, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Categorization question

Dear Village pump,

I'm not native in English language and have problems with Category:Debt collection. May someone define the subcategories better?--Kopiersperre (talk) 19:19, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

"Incasso" is Dutch (and German by the look of it) basically for "payments". I think it should be deleted and its contents moved to English-named categories. "Summons" should perhaps be renamed to "Summonses" and moved to a different parent, since it refers to more than debt collection. --ghouston (talk) 21:49, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Incasso has multiple meanings (in Dutch), main one being a term when payments are late and they send an incasso company to retrieve the payments (first with extra notification, later by going to your house to collect value). The other meaning is "payment by incasso" or automatic incasso this means that you give a company permission to take the money from your bank account (usually you do this for monthly payments). Mvg, Basvb (talk) 15:01, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

February 14

Suggested Mass Rename

From OTRS 2015020710012639 - In Category:US National Archives series: Lewis Hine Photographs for the National Research Project, compiled 1936 - 1937 there are a lot of images that the filename starts "File:Mt. Holyoke, Massachusetts...", and when one checks all the sources at National Archives and Records Administration, the image title is just "Holyoke, Massachusetts..." (No Mt.). The OTRS message states that "Mount Holyoke" is not the same as "Holyoke", and all those files should be renamed. Now I'm happy to rename, if the poster is correct - since I'm in UK, I know little about the area, would just like some confirmation that it's a good idea. Ronhjones ^(Talk) 02:05, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

That works for me, and I would be able to help if you want since I am very familiar with the area. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 17:12, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I've installed User:Legoktm/massrename.js and a new tab has appeared :-) It will be nice to give it a try. Too busy tonight, Will start tomorrow - nothing is ever urgent. Ronhjones ^(Talk) 21:23, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Edit-a-thon at the National Library of Wales

Just a heads-up please to all admires of Philip Jones Griffiths' work. Jason Evans, the new Wikipedian in Resident at the National Library, will host an edit-a-thon of Welsh photographers whose work are held at the Library. More details can be found here. Images not yet available to the public will be available for Wikipedians. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 18:53, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

File:Gyan_Kosh_vol_1.pdf

Yet another file uploaded by me gets deleted, without even a notice! The book File:Gyan_Kosh_vol_1.pdf is being worked on by volunteers of community to be digitized(typed) at wikisource.org and someone from commons, removes it. Someone please help me restore it. --రహ్మానుద్దీన్ (talk) 07:16, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

You have been notified on your talk page about the missing license information of that file, including instructions about how to fix the problem. --Sebari (talk) 08:18, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

And I have fulfilled license information and added a note to remove the no license tag in the talk page. How can that be missed? A new notice wasnt even given. --రహ్మానుద్దీన్ (talk) 08:33, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

@రహ్మానుద్దీన్: Your re-uploaded version of that file still does not have 'correct' license tags. Commons requires that the copyright status in both the country of origin and the United States be stated. It's hard to tell without reading Hindi, but in the case of this work it appears that the author died 10 April 1937, which means the work entered the public domain in India on 1 January 1998. Unfortunately, this possibly means that the book is not in the public domain in the United States (due to the URAA) and should be hosted locally instead of on Commons.

(comment to others) This is not an attempt to stir up the URAA war, so please don't. I haven't checked if the book falls under the URAA, the point here is that it needs a US copyright status tag as well. Revent (talk) 23:15, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Actually, the copyright in India expired on 1st January 1988, before the URAA date. Regards, Yann (talk) 23:45, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

@Yann: I'm not quite sure how you obtained that date (which would be 50 years after the author's death, not 60) but given that I can't even really 'search for' information about a book that's not in Roman script reliably, I'm not going to argue about the copyright. It would be nice if you would clarify just why 1988 would be the applicable expiration date, though, since the template, list of copyright lengths, etc. indicate a 60 year term. Looking at the WIPO text of the Indian law, I don't see a 50 year term for any type of work. Revent (talk) 07:01, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

The old law was 50 years pma, and was not retroactive. So all works which were already in the public domain when the new law was made (1992) use 50 years pma. Regards, Yann (talk) 12:21, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

@Yann: Thanks for clarifying. Revent (talk) 16:35, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Public statement from Ktr101 and OTRS

I would like to make public my serious disappointment with the network of volunteers on OTRS who have used the last two days discussing the email sent to Russavia, yet have made no public statement about it. The email was highly inappropriate in my view, with an OTRS volunteer claiming authority to represent all projects with the power to delete uploads and being "advised by the Foundation" to do so, though no public evidence of this has been provided by the Foundation. Since Ktr101 was asked by a Commons Bureaucrat to account for his actions,[13] the OTRS ranks have visibly closed. There has been further discussion, but this has been in secret. In the days since the question was raised, Ktr101 can be seen to be busy contributing to several other projects, but carefully avoiding this one.[14]

Could we please follow the values of openness and transparency that all Wikimedians believe in, and move the discussion and find a better way forward in the open with our primary concern being accountability to, and engagement with, the whole community affected?

We are unpaid volunteers on an open knowledge project. We are a community first, not employees of the WMF. The Foundation does not exist without our good will, our continued belief in the mission and our decision every week to come back and volunteer more free time. I suggest we start behaving like the the mission to preserve all of human knowledge just might be more important than damaging our mission due to the passionate desire we have seen to punish Russavia for whatever dark unspecified malfeasance has been claimed in secret by a WMF employee, and might just be more important to us than petty internecine politics.

Ktr101, please withdraw your obviously inappropriate misguided email and make a statement we can all read, rather than only to your privileged OTRS peers. I at least, would like you to reconsider taking any further action with regard to handling the repercussions of Russavia's WMF ban, and please reconsider your OTRS access, at least as it relates to Commons especially considering you have so rarely used the facility for this project.[15] If WMF employees as part of their jobs are directing OTRS volunteers to certain actions, it would be ethical for a public statement to be made, rather than politically "influencing" decisions with a cloak of plausible deniability.

Note, I declare a personal interest, as Ktr101's email stated "As such, we will also no longer be accepting images uploaded, solicited by, or respond to e-mails to OTRS regarding permission of images, which are sent by you or someone who has worked with you in any way." as I am someone that has worked with Russavia on literally hundreds of thousands of image uploads, possibly more than any other volunteer.

Thanks. --Fæ (talk) 19:41, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

This seems to be a logical consequence of the ban. Ruslik (talk) 20:39, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Can we please keep this nonsensical drama out of Commons? Thank you. --Sebari (talk) 21:08, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree. Can't believe I wasted five minutes of my life reading such bias drama. Also, we all know Otter is one of many (well handful) Commons Bureaucrats and he doesn't speak for them, so just say his name rather then using 'Commons Bureaucrat'. Bidgee (talk) 21:55, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

… so glad you got my user name right, @Bidgee. Not patronizing at all. odder (talk) 04:58, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, the fact that OTRS volunteers speak on behalf of commons make it inside Commons. This nonsensical drama would be avoided if the OTRS volunteers didn't exceed their competencies. --Discasto _{talk | contr. | es.wiki analysis} 23:04, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Go and have a whinge to the Foundation then. There is nothing we can do. Bidgee (talk) 23:30, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons has 7 Bureaucrats listed, of which 5 can claim to be currently active. Part of the role is leadership, particularly in difficult areas, such as this one when OTRS volunteers, who are not elected by any community process, lay claim to have authority to instruct those who have been elected. I believe it is a good thing to have at least one Bureaucrat that is prepared to ask difficult questions in public. The final decision on how to proceed, is fundamental to how Commons works, and should not be done in secret between unelected and unaccountable people. --Fæ (talk) 23:08, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

but yourself and Odder are friends of Russavia and are doing his proxying for him. Have you contacted the WMF (no doubt have you on the ignore list, and couldn't blame them). Bidgee (talk) 23:28, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Your random allegation of "proxying"/meatpuppetry is defamatory tangential nonsense. Brushing off basic questions about the authority of OTRS volunteers to overturn Commons policies as a "WMF matter" is contradictory. Unpaid OTRS volunteers are not the WMF, as the footer of every email out of OTRS makes clear. --Fæ (talk) 23:37, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I for one find the idea that OTRS volunteers take it upon themselves to email contributors and say that their images are no longer welcome just because the person who solicited them has since been banned to be rather worrisome. -mattbuck (Talk) 00:18, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

There is ongoing discussion on otrs-wiki, which does not have a conclusion yet. (I'm not sure if I am allowed to say more than this...) — Revi 03:05, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

@Fæ: OTRS agents are not representing WMF or Commons; so anything out of their role and authority can be ignored. But if you have a complaint against an agent, the right place is to contact OTRS admins, not wasting ~~your~~ our time here. J e e 03:10, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

@Jkadavoor: In theory, yes; however, the recent discussions on the OTRS wiki, which luckily have been leaked, make it plainly clear that at least some OTRS agents have a different view on the matter. Take these quotes from @Kevin, for example: "Still, when it comes down to it, the WMF is our boss (…) and we are operating on their behalf on the projects.'' and "Based on what Philippe said above, I get the impression we're working for the WMF over the community." To say that such statements are worrying is a great understatement. odder (talk) 04:57, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks odder for the info. I will investigate. I'm a bit busy in the morning; but come back soon. But I repeat, opinions of individuals are just personal POV. And in general, we can't ban any customer who have a genuine complaint, even though not allowed to edit. Regarding permissions, the license is always from authors; not from people help to make it available. For forwarded mails, I always have a habit to contact original author. So I see no scope for this framed issue. (just my initial thoughts; will comment later.) J e e 05:48, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

If it hasn't been highlighted already, OTRS members are volunteers selected by OTRS admins. Some of us are also Commoners so I question the legitimacy of a "them and us" approach. The only reason for secrecy is that emails often contain confidential information. Just so it is clear, the discussion on OTRS was initiated by me and not by an OTRS admin nor even the Holy Foundation. I started it because Russavia was banned and this is the first time we have had such a scenario. There have been plenty of discussions on Commons and Meta. It is appropriate to have a discussion on OTRS wiki because it concerns emails. If anyone is feeling left out and would like to be more involved with emails, please feel free to apply for membership at meta:OTRS/Volunteering. I'm also quite happy to give my opinion whether anybody likes it or not. Russavia needs to communicate with the foundation instead of creating new accounts and uploading files. He is dragging copyright holders into this by insisting on acting as a proxy. If they have an email address and they want to license an image, how difficult is it to ask them to send their license statements to OTRS directly? I handled some of his pre-ban emails and I trusted him enough to not ask for further verification, precisely because he was a Commons admin. In the watermark DR that Russavia started, he vented anger at the system but failed to explain that it was his action of removing the watermark which caused the whole affair. Green Giant (talk) 05:05, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes I agree, this is not a question of us and them, as I originally stated above. I have a few years contributing to Commons as an OTRS volunteer, but I was recently kicked out for unclear reasons that apparently had no basis on any action I had taken,[16] so your response that "feel free to apply for membership" for access does not seem to work for me.

As explained, it is not appropriate to have a closed discussion on the otrs-wiki to make decisions about who represents the Commons community or whether it is appropriate to reject future correspondence about Commons and donations to Commons on the apparent bad-faith view that everyone who ever worked with Russavia must be tainted in some unexplainable way. We have discussions about the future of Commons and who represents our Community here, preferably relying on the help of those elected by the Community, such as our unpaid volunteer administrators and bureaucrats.

It has been three days. There is no reason that Ktr101 cannot speak here for himself and be accountable for his own words, rather than only making comments in secret with his OTRS peers and relying on others to eventually find ways to diffuse discussion rather than giving a real reply. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 09:18, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Hmmm; all I see is Green Giant asked some doubts and some people shared their opinions; so there is nothing like " it is not appropriate to have a closed discussion on the otrs-wiki to make decisions about who represents the Commons community." As I commented above others are not responsible if someone made any mistake. It is quite applicable for Commons admins and other volunteers too. We are following DMCA; so if somebody removed a watermark, they will pay the price, not me. If somebody throw ugly words (very common here), they will pay the price, not me. (Your example to showcase the huge volume of works you had done is quite useless. A single mistake from your side, if any is make you responsible for your fate; no one can help here. I also noticed that you have a good talent to twist words to cover the mistakes of your friends.) J e e 09:32, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

The email in question was a final statement on behalf of OTRS and all Wikimedians, denying the possibility of future OTRS correspondence with anyone about the future of projects that I have been involved on for the last 2 years. Though you are expressing a personal view that that Ktr101 made a mistake, the email has neither been withdrawn, nor has any OTRS administrator made a statement for the Commons community to read in the absence of Ktr101 doing so. --Fæ (talk) 09:43, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Feel free to CC to me the requests need my personal attention as far as I'm an agent. :) J e e 09:56, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I do not understand your reference to the DMCA. If the WMF had received a DMCA compliant take down for Russavia's uploads, then it would be the WMF writing to Russavia, not Ktr101 or any other OTRS volunteer. --Fæ (talk) 09:59, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

That is what I said. It is a matter between publisher/uploader, service provider and copyright holder; not with me or the user in question. J e e 10:06, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Very convenient to blame when a user can not participate or respond. Interesting logic elaborate technique to try to explain the inconceivable, blocking a user without regard to the community. It is running this to separate the community while distracted dogs biting bones I walk slowly to take the filet mignon --The_Photographer (talk) 10:47, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Are you paying back for the unethical favours you received earlier? J e e 12:45, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Jee, you have lost me. As far as I am aware there has been no take down notice and nobody has mentioned the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998), apart from yourself. This appears to be an irrelevant tangent. If Ktr101 wishes to withdraw his email or stand by it, he can say so on this project, we have been waiting for 3 days for him to reply to odder, acting in his elected role as a Commons Bureaucrat. If the Foundation have legal advice to give to Commons and OTRS volunteers, they should make a public statement in the normal way, rather than having secret negotiations or using political influence on closed wikis and closed email lists. --Fæ (talk) 12:30, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I've no idea what you are discussing. This is VP; not AN/U? I allredy said I will forward any ticket I will process to deletion review as I'm alredy doing. Don't waste my time. J e e 12:39, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I am referring to the opening paragraphs at the beginning of this thread, the email referenced has not been withdrawn. Thanks for your offer to process tickets, I am sure that Russavia has your email should he and you wish to act against the instructions given by Ktr101. --Fæ (talk) 12:45, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

This issue is something that should be applied to any user globally blocked by WMF, however, this issue has shifted to a particular problem with Russavia and derived personal situations. I do not agree that such decisions are taken privately in OTRS wiki. --The_Photographer (talk) 12:49, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I want to add my two cents as OTRS member and Commons admin. Fæ noted that the OTRS ranks have visibly closed. Speaking for myself and just for myself, I see this from a different perspective. Firstly, as already mentioned, we are discussing this at otrs-wiki and currently moving towards some consensus how to handle tickets of globally banned users. As long this is still ongoing, I do not find myself in a position where I could talk about a position of the OTRS team. Secondly, OTRS members work in close cooperation with the communities and the WMF. Consequently, all this depends also from the approach the communities (Commons here in particular) are taking and the guidelines the WMF is giving to us. One important question is how to handle contributions by banned users or image donations that were made possible through banned users. Whatever position the Commons community will take here will be considered by the OTRS members. In summary, please do not expect any statement from us before we have discussed this thoroughly but feel free to discuss at Commons how you would like to see this handled. --AFBorchert (talk) 13:49, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts.

There is no legal advice that has been given by the Foundation that would not be made public, indeed for any legal advice to be meaningful it has to be given to Commons volunteers. There is no information being held on the closed wiki of any importance that could not be shared, if necessary with Russavia's permission. Given these facts, I have no idea why (unelected) OTRS volunteers feel they have special authority from the Wikimedia community to decide how to implement Commons policies. If there is to be a discussion or a proposal for policy improvement, then the best ethical approach is to have it openly on this project with our community of volunteers and invite opinions from those directly affected. This includes volunteers like me who have worked with Russavia on excellent content projects and the administrators who will apparently be expected to act on instructions from OTRS volunteers.

Telling the community that we will be told by OTRS volunteers at some indefinite point in the future what the decision taken by undisclosed participants on a closed wiki or closed email list was, in no way satisfies our shared values of openness and collegiate working between unpaid Wikimedia volunteers. --Fæ (talk) 14:08, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I think it should be obvious that OTRS volunteers have no special authority to decide how to implement “Commons” policies. All we do is to consider how to proceed best in particular tickets and this is discussed privately for obvious reasons. --AFBorchert (talk) 14:23, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree it had seemed obvious to me too. OTRS volunteers are chosen for their long term experience and understanding of these principles underpinning OTRS procedures. Unfortunately after Ktr101's "official" email this no longer seems something to rely on. --Fæ (talk) 14:34, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

First of all, let me say that this is not an easy situation for OTRS volunteers. We don't have prior experience with receiving permissions statements from globally banned users. It's also not an easy situation for an individual volunteer because one the one hand, your job is to process permission statements and enhance our collection of free content, on the other hand you do not want to act in a way that the WMF itself would consider a violation of their policies (and potentially risk trouble yourself). Kevin's response was not approved by the "OTRS community," "the OTRS admins" or anyone else, it simply reflects what he thought at the time would be an adequate description of the process, in light of his intepretation of Philippe's statements here and elsewhere. Now, is the response accurate? It isn't. Most importantly it's not because, in reality, we simply do not yet have common ground on this, so it was wrong to give a different impression and, as Fae writes above, make the statement sound like a "final decision." At the moment, the Permissions community is actively seeking to gain consensus on how they want to deal with such issues in future, which ideally should have been the first step before acting on the issue. The solution will be one that takes into account the interests of the Commons community, but also these of the OTRS volunteers, and it will, hopefully, not be a lex Russavia, but something we can work with in similar cases to come. From what I can tell, It's pretty clear from the course of the discussion that the position articulated by Kevin in said email isn't shared by the vast majority of users.
As to Fae's comments on Kevin specifically: Again, let me emphasize that this is nothing we previously had to deal with. The same is true for the Commons community as well: When Russavia was globally banned, all sorts of users here and on Meta started to ask questions about the scope of the ban. It's no surprise that OTRS volunteers--who are, after all, not a destinct species but part of our local communities--face very similar uncertainties. Kevin decided to respond to what he realized was a difficult case. The response, as I said, was wrong. But in such scenarios in particular, we should all be humble enough to admit that sometimes we make mistakes. OTRS volunteers are community members as well. You make mistakes on Commons, OTRS agents make mistakes on OTRS; only in OTRS, there's no one else who immediately gives you feedback, so you can correct yourself, and there's no one outside of OTRS who sees all the things you do well. Kevin is a dedicated volunteer who, I can assure you, is doing great work in both info-en and permissions, and has worked on more than 1,000 tickets. Here he made a mistake. On the one hand, it's essential to look back and realize that. On the other hand, it is, unfortunately, symptomatic for the "conflict resolution" approach of some users on this project that this immediately leads to multiple users pressurizing him on his talk page to answer their questions now now now, selectively quoting from statements he made on a non-public Wiki (OTRS Wiki), publishing his emails etc. I understand that's your way of raising criticism, but I assure everyone else that the OTRS team (and, for that matter, the admin team) takes such issues seriously anyway. We're part of the same community as you are. — Pajz (talk) 15:09, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I second what AFBrochert and Pajz have said above. I would also point out that the email in question was not an official email because of the disclaimer at the end which says:

all mail to this address is answered by volunteers, and responses are not to be considered an official statement of the Wikimedia Foundation. For official correspondence, please contact the Wikimedia Foundation by certified mail at the address listed on https://www.wikimediafoundation.org/

As for Fae's removal from OTRS, it is the same situation as I suggest to Russavia. Nothing, and I repeat nothing, is truly unappealable and there is nothing stopping you from trying again to become a "privileged OTRS agent" just as there is nothing really stopping Russavia from contacting the "Evil Foundation" and trying to get himself unbanned. All this account creating and emailing of OTRS is just him sidestepping what he really ought to be doing. Green Giant (talk) 15:25, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

The handling of emails to OTRS from banned users is under active discussion by the OTRS agents, and I'd suggest in the first instance letting them come up with a mechanism that they can work with. Once a specific proposal has emerged, it should be discussed here as well, as it's of course of the utmost importance that the Commons community has confidence in OTRS agents' conclusions. For what it's worth, my own view is that globally banned users cannot be considered trustworthy, and should not be accorded any formal community channel via OTRS whereby they continue to receive encouragement or recognition. A banned user should not be able to act as proxy or a communications channel for any third party copyright holder, though there is no objection to an OTRS agent communicating directly with a rights holder or other bona fide third party who may have been initially approached privately by the banned user. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:13, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I disagree with the assertion that a banned user cannot be considered trustworthy. You would need to demonstrate why Russavia was considered trustworthy prior to being banned and why he cannot be considered trustworthy after the ban. The permissions e-mails he sends can be verified with the content's copyright owner, if there is any doubts about the legitimacy or accuracy of the e-mails he is forwarding, and as has been said many times, there is no need for any agent to actually e-mail him if they do not want to.

I and I'm sure there will be no shortage of other volunteers stand by, ready and willing to upload material he has secured a release for, thus eliminating the issue of him having to evade this Global Ban, and I am assured by Philippe (WMF) that any user uploading material would not be in breach of the Terms of Use or liable to being banned themselves.

Russavia has done much good for the project and for free content, we don't want to lose that, but we do want to eliminate the needless drama and behavioural problems that became a prominent feature of his later days as a contributor here. That's why I believe working with him on releases and copyright, and providing alternative means to upload this material that doesn't involve the circumvention of this ban would be the ideal solution. Nick (talk) 17:11, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Let's take a typical example: a known banned user forwards an email from a rights holder which states that proper permissions have been given, an email that had it come from a normal trusted user could have been accepted without having to seek further information. What should happen in that case?

To accept the ticket immediately would amount to 'official' community approval of the banned user acting as the rights holder's proxy, which I think should not be allowed. So in such a case the OTRS agent ought to contact the rights holder directly and put the ticket into the rights holder's name so that further correspondence if any will go there and not to the banned user. That would allow banned users to continue sending emails to OTRS, but only for the purpose of making an introduction between the rights holder and the OTRS agent. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:42, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

That's essentially what we want to happen anyway, and it's not drastically different to how things should work with OTRS at present, unless you're suggesting that everything is being done solely on trust and nobody double checks with the content creator to confirm the e-mail is correct, that they understand what will happen with their work and that they're happy with their release. Nick (talk) 18:49, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Michael's example of trust has to be considered as a general conclusion of a global ban, and not influenced by anyone here's previous experience of one user. Look at it from the outside view (and I'm not very familiar with OTRS so forgive me if I misunderstand). Let's say a photographer disputes they gave permission. We have a permission email forwarded via a Commons user. Can we say "This user was in good-standing with the Commons community at the time of the email, and we had no reason to assume it was not genuine." or would instead we have to admit "At the time of the email, this user was globally banned from all WMF sites for serious breach of our Terms of Use. But we trusted the email anyway." No amount of "I trusted him, he's my friend" pleading is going to convince a newspaper that we haven't been completely foolish and naive. We would be rightly mocked and the OTRS system that our re-users rely on for proof of permission would be devalued. -- Colin (talk) 18:20, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

See my above message to Michael. I note there's a plan to try and move away from e-mail submissions and to have the content creators do uploads and releases themselves via an online submission system, so hopefully this should be a relatively short term issue anyway. Nick (talk) 18:49, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Colin. This is a serous matter; relying on COM:AGF alone is not so good. The forwarded mails are less trustworthy if from a gmail/yahoo account compared to direct mails irrespective of who forwarded it. (The only difference is if the proxy is a person disclosed his identity to WMF who is not in their blacklist.) J e e 02:41, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Hey all, I just wanted to comment here on the thread. I would first like to state that I am retracting what I said in the e-mail, as I overstepped my bounds as an agent and made a mistake. I am human, these things are done, and it is in the past. I can echo what the agents said above and state that we have had some very intense discussions at times on the OTRS wiki about what to do about the situation, as we have never encountered the situation before. Anyways, everyone there is trying to find an adequate resolution to the situation, and we look forward to letting you all know in the coming days. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:45, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

I processed all pending tickets. Please be aware that Commons:OTRS#Note #3 is very important for all tickets irrespective of who send them. I don't know whether any OTRS admin will comment here; but I can't talk for the team; nor reveal the content of a private wiki. My response is just as promised to Odder and Fæ. Thanks all. J e e 08:13, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree it's ok for OTRS volunteers to decide together on a process they can work with, as said above: much better than chaotic individual initiatives. However, if the OTRS processes happened to be unable to guarantee the expansion of this free media repository, it would only be natural for Commons to seek alternative processes (which would be unfortunate). On the other hand, in most cases no process is needed at all: nowadays, most copyright owners first publish on a website, so that's where the license statements should live, available for everyone to see, expanding the commons for everyone. --Nemo 08:21, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: Indeed; if people are willing to mark their work properly on their sites, it will helps to save a lot of our time. We have another team, the license reviewers who will take care of such releases. J e e 08:39, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Conclusion

It has been 7 days since this thread started and discussion about the case and policy started before this. Over a week is a fair time for a discussion on the closed otrs-wiki to reach a conclusion and pre-prepare a policy. Could someone confirm whether the privileged otrs-wiki discussion about this has finished, so that the unelected "OTRS community" can tell the "Commons community" what its policies must look like?

There cannot be any protected private data in it, especially as no OTRS volunteer knows more about the reasons for Russavia's ban than the rest of us unpaid volunteers and what is under discussion is a public policy.

For the record, for those of us that were foolish enough to raise public questions and blow the whistle about OTRS and Ktr101's unacceptable misconduct:

I have been accused on the Administrator's noticeboard of being a meatpuppet by two OTRS volunteers and the OTRS volunteer who is also a Commons administrator made public legal threats. The legal threats were redacted (4 hours later) but there were no repercussions whatsoever for the administrator's unacceptable behaviour, nor have I had an apology. Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard/User_problems#Meatpuppetry_allegation
odder has had a blatantly retaliatory thread raised against him on the Administrator's noticeboard by Ktr101. Ktr101 has withdrawn his email as stated above, but has not resigned from OTRS, nor even had his access to the commons-permissions queue removed Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard/User_problems#Odder.27s_recent_behavior
The Photographer was kicked out of OTRS yesterday.[17]

--Fæ (talk) 10:34, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

@Rjd0060: Here another injustice was committed. Not only WMF take important actions back to the community. Now we have a small group of OTRS superusers WMF subordinate doing the same. In order to clarify the situation and stop the secret shit. Can I release the mails to here or the volunteer otrs-list? --The_Photographer (talk) 11:02, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Sure, very simple: Emails from globally banned users will be processed as normal, with the exception that we do not communicate with the globally banned user. The Commons community can effectively end this practice of processing releases solicited by globally banned users by establishing consensus to the effect that files for which permission has been solicited by a globally banned user are not accepted on the site, in which case there is no need to process any emails forwarded by the globally banned user. Most felt this is a sensible solution given that, in general, there is no obvious necessity to not process the emails, and in light of that, it seems to make sense not to employ different standard. Which also means, of course, that emails from globally banned users (solicited by globally banned users) are subject to the same standards as all other emails. — Pajz (talk) 22:06, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Also, just in case a globally banned user is reading along: The above reflects how most of us felt when we discussed the issue. While, in an ideal world, everyone in the Permissions team should know about our consensus, we have to reserve some probability mass for the event that, at some point, some volunteer might process a ticket of yours in a way that is at odds with said consensus approach. This is because we're not a company with people having to fear someone will withhold their paycheck if they make any mistake, but just as Wikimedia Commons, a community of volunteers (much to some peoples' surprise, most OTRS members active in these queues are even active Commons users ...) who do the best they can, but who are, again, volunteers. So if you feel something has been processed in a manner different from what I have described above, I kindly ask you to not immediately turn to insulting the volunteer and ask for their immediate removal from OTRS, etc., but to get in touch with someone else, e.g. me, and ask them to sort it out -- I'll be happy to help. Thanks in advance. — Pajz (talk) 22:31, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Bear observation that anyone who dare touch a russavia ticket will be removed from OTRS wihtout futher due, right? That is not what already happened? Béria L. Rodríguez ^msg 00:33, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

@Pajz: Thanks for your reply. I note there is no proposal being put to the Commons community to change our guidelines or policies. The only tangible outcomes are Ktr101 withdrawing their incompetent email and kicking out of OTRS those suspected of working with Russavia, but without giving that as a reason.

It should be clear to everyone that if the community is to have trust in the competence of OTRS ticket verification then, based on a recent poor Commons track record on these issues, Ktr101 must not respond to the public on copyright questions, nor on any question with respect to Wikimedia Commons policies and guidelines. As of today, they appear to be trusted with access to related queues and be able to represent the Commons community by validating OTRS tickets for images uploaded here. Why? --Fæ (talk) 15:41, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Commons App discontinued

Development on the Commons App has apperently stopped (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Commons and https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T88746). The fact that many people were interested in the app makes me wonder why this hasn't been discussed anywhere. If it was discussed in the past, could somebody reply me the link. Thank you! --Tobias1984 (talk) 22:35, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

It was on the mailing list but I think it was discussed on Commons as well IIRC. Bidgee (talk) 22:43, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. This is really a setback in my opinion for the "Wiki loves [...]"-campaigns, because the app was a good way to guide people to photo spots. A few years ago we still had such an app for Wiki Loves Monuments, but I think it was also discontinued. In my opinion such an app is high priority and, if it had the necessary features, would attract a significant user base. All we really need is a simple map and the data of missing images could be pulled in a similar way to https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikishootme/ . If I understand correctly the app developers are at full capacity, but WMF should really hire another person to do this. An app could potentially motivate a lot of people to take more pictures of their surroundings. Gamification and a seperate database for special requests would be bonus features, but it seems like an easy 6 months job for an experienced app developer. --Tobias1984 (talk) 12:51, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

There is great untapped opportunity in this direction. On a real computer it's easy to jump from article to photo and only modestly harder from article or photo to map and to nearby photos and relevant articles and other resources. On the mobile, only the jump from article to photo is easy. When I'm in a distant place seeking targets, jumping into and out of maps is what I need, and that's where the mobile site or version or app or anything else in the smartphone is terribly weak. There are map apps and Wikipedia apps, but they don't much connect to each other, and when there was a Commons app it didn't much connect with them. These are not separate worlds; these kinds of information need each other. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:04, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

And Wikidata and Wikivoyage. Everything is connected; that's a major part of what wikimedia is about. Those connections are somewhat supported at the desk; hardly at all on the road.

@Jim.henderson, Brion Vibber (WMF), Aschroet, and Krenair: & IP-user - I agree, it would be better to integrate everything in one app. There are in my opinion three spots where new functionality would be required:

Notification area: If a users location is within a 100 m radius of a requested image spot, an alert could be sent to the user asking him to take a picture. 100 m is I think a good compromise between asking for too much walking and the average GPS-precision.
Left black bar in Wikipedia app: Here another menu point could be placed that loads a map that shows users nearby articles and requested images on a map.
Nearby-feature of Wikipedia app: This menu currently shows Wikipedia pages and their distance and compass bearing, but the requested images could also be listed here additionally. Articles with missing images should get a different icon that encourages users to go there and take the picture.

Brion: Can you discuss this with the mobile team and if time permits respond to this discussion? --Tobias1984 (talk) 19:29, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

The WLM app was mostly made by volunteers, but required huge support from paid staff in deployment. For image uploads from the app and the web, there was so much negative feedback from the 'community' with regard to quality of the contributions, that the team is not likely to work on that any time soon as far as I understand. Also they just don't have the people for it to support it long term right now. I personally think, significant changes to the review flow of uploads would be required to really make it work. Which sounds simple but you have to remember that it's not 'just an app', you are talking about the very complex way in which images get contributed to Commons, that cannot break because people are using it. It's a much more complicated and multi-disciplined project than people initially think it to be if you want to make it work and keep it working for more than a year after finishing the project. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:25, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

I was one of the people working on the WLM mobile app. The frontend was build completely by the mobile team (Brion? Jon? Yuvi? Max? Jon? Tomasz?) and the backend was a cooperation. This was in 2012. This was a good learning experience for us all. After that it was decided that the app had too many issues and support by the WMF was discontinued. In 2013 Yuvi (as a volunteer) patched up the app so it could also be used that year. The WLM app is still floating around somewhere and might even work. It's no longer supported at all.

I like the stand alone Commons app a lot. I still have it on my phone. It's basically the only way I use to upload photos I took myself. I would love to see a replacement for that. Multichill (talk) 19:27, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

February 06

Coordinates of object's origin

We have {{Location}} for camera locations, and {{Object location}} for the locatin of the subject when itwa photographed, but what about the coordinates of the place of origin of an object, like a plant specimen, such as that in File:Handwriting of William Ick.jpg (I've used an 'object' template for now)? Andy Mabbett (talk) 12:08, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

We don't have a specific template for that, probably because it's a rather rare situation. The best way to do this without creating a new template would probably be to just add this information to the general description using {{Inline coordinates}}. --El Grafo (talk) 12:57, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Agree with El Grafo. --Jarekt (talk) 13:15, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Agree, just be consistent in the batch. I can think of at least 5 different types of valid dates and locations that might be associated with, say, a digital image of an ancient manuscript; let's not go there in terms of creating families of new templates. --Fæ (talk) 13:28, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

It's not only not rare, but very important in cases such as biological recording and archaeology. I'll try {{Inline coordinates}}, but within a wrapper for such cases. Andy Mabbett (talk) 21:43, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Very rough draft at {{Specimen location}}; examples in documentation. Andy Mabbett (talk) 21:53, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

While you are at it you might extend the concept to deal with what is depicted by a painting (as against the physical location of the painting in a museum, etc.) - Jmabel ! talk 22:46, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

We are opening a can of worms here. What is depicted on a painting should be coded only on reproductions of the painting, and then we should use the object location and location templates, making the assumption that the painting is the "photo/image". In pictures of the painting (i.e. painting hanging on a wall, with context) we should code the location of the photographic camera. --Dschwen (talk) 23:18, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

On de:Velká_Čantoryje I used two locations, one for the page with the dewiki-Version of {{Object location}}, and another for a section on this page only as map-link in the caption for a picture. So far I haven't found a similar "map link only" feature elsewhere (enwiki, commons, etc.) Please add links on {{Object location/doc}} if you invent generally useful variants. –Be..anyone (talk) 20:00, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Styling

What's the parent template of {{Object location}}, so that I can use it to make the new template look similar? Because it's coded in Lua, itls hard to tell. Andy Mabbett (talk) 19:54, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

February 13

CSV files

Hi all. I'm currently working in the organization of Wiki Loves Earth in Spain and besides the actual pictures, I'd like to host also in commons the sites database. I assumed that a plain text file (using CSV) would be acceptable, but I've noticed it's actually the other way around (Commons:File types#Unsupported file types). Would be a way to overcome this limitation? Best regards --Discasto _{talk | contr. | es.wiki analysis} 23:03, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

If they aren't too large, post them on a wiki page and use ?action=raw. Otherwise use the new static file server of tool labs. Commons will only host media files, not databases. -- Rillke^(q?) 23:32, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Just confirmed; the maximum size for text pages is 2048 kilobytes. -- Rillke^(q?) 01:17, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll try on labs :-) --Discasto _{talk | contr. | es.wiki analysis} 23:29, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

February 16

File:The-evil-within.jpg

File was uploaded in July 2013 and was licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported as "own work". Same image, however, was used on this website in June 2013, this website in May 2013, and this website in April 2013. I stopped searching there, but there are probably more examples of it's use before being uploaded to Commons. High quality of the work and previous publication does make it somewhat easy for me to believe that this image is probably not "original work", but that is just speculation on my part. Is, at the very least, OTRS permission required per COMMONS:OTRS#Licensing images: when do I contact OTRS? since image was "published" prior to uploading? Thanks in advance. - Marchjuly (talk) 07:00, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Obvisouly copyvio, promotional image for the video game, I can't believe it's here since 2013. Thibaut120094 (talk) 07:32, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply Thibaut120094. It seem pretty obvious to me that something wasn't right, but just wanted to get the opinions of others before marking the file for deletion. - Marchjuly (talk) 08:01, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Time shift of uploaded images

Frequently I notice that my camera date is incorrect. I dont check this regulary and I dont bother to change from continental time to English time for a few days. This time the time schift is - 1:30 for my recent london pictures. The camera time is taken over automaticaly during uploads. Are there scripts to to schift the times of a selection of uploads?Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:15, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

You can try VisualFileChange.js, after all the date is only text. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 16:44, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I did it manualy for most pictures. Luckily I got acurate times from the context. (File:Thameslink West Hampstead stopping train.jpg). As their is also half an hour difference it is not as simple as only changing the hour time.Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:44, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Still Images from a Video?

I would like to illustrate the article de:da Vinci-Operationssystem by a few more images, and I plan to extract some still images from the video File:Telemedizin.ogv (already on Commons). Do you think that I could upload these extracted images to Commons when I refer to the original video and its license? --Gfis (talk) 20:31, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, you can. The license allows to create derivative works. --Juggler2005 (talk) 06:49, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1940 stamps of Germany

Why have those images not been deleted, but instead been kept, although the conclusion at the end of the deletion request discussion says "deleted because of unsure copyright status"? --Miss-Sophie (talk) 02:01, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

See also this contradictory reasoning. --Miss-Sophie (talk) 02:08, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

There seem to have been some related undeletion requests which were granted (see the related nominations of other years and this. Likely it was just forgotten to note that on the deletion page. Mvg, Basvb (talk) 18:59, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Also many "1940 stamps of Germany" are Polish stamps with German over-prints. --Jarekt (talk) 04:54, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Google Earth Pro available for free

This may be different for other photographers, but I find maps and satellite images to be extremely helpful for photography, especially in unfamiliar cities and places. So I thought it might be relevant for some that Google Earth Pro is available for free right now:

cnet.com: Get Google Earth Pro for free

There aren't too many useful tools for photographers in the pro version, but one thing that I find to be very helpful is being able to export high resolution images for printing or saving. Cheers. :) — Julian H.^✈(talk/files) 09:48, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

It is useful that the tool is free, but keep in mind that the map images are not. --Fæ (talk) 16:26, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I didn't mean to imply that any of this can be uploaded here or anything like that, but for creating and printing a map of places you plan to photograph and for orientation of where the light will fall, it's perfect. — Julian H.^✈(talk/files) 18:25, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

February 18

Wiki Loves Africa 2014

Please vote for Wiki Loves Africa 2014/Community Prize Selection. Ijon (talk) 02:55, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Missing information template links in DB

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T89441

Hello Village pump, while working at Pages using Information template with parsing errors i found a problem in one of the mediawiki database tables, namely the table templatelinks. It is related to several photos as e. g. file:Amsterdam P1080037.JPG, file:GLAMcamp Amsterdam P1080092.JPG, file:Museo de la Naturaleza de Cantabria (1).jpg, file:Wróblik Szlachecki, 006.jpg, file:2011 Dakar Rally Alessandro Zanotti Tucuman.JPG to only list a few. All of them contain a well-formed {{Information}} template, which is however not reflected in the templatelinks table. Even a creation of a new revision of the file does not help. Is there someone who can help or point me somewhere were i can find it? This is important because several tools like Catscan are based on these databases. Thank you, --Arnd (talk) 22:00, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Apparently Jarekt and others already fixed this for all your examples. –Be..anyone (talk) 02:11, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

No it is not fixed since those files files still do not have information template according to the database. Try this query to find files without Information template in some directory and all the files that were found do have Information template. Or try this query looking for files without Information template but with machine-readable data and most files found have Information template. One thing in common for those files was that they were uploaded in Dec 2011. Were there some database issues at that time? --Jarekt (talk) 04:02, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Since this seems not a small thing we perhaps should also create an Phabricator issue. --Arnd (talk) 13:06, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Agree --Jarekt (talk) 13:11, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

See phabricator:T89441 --Jarekt (talk) 19:01, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

About Crimea again

We need the rule what to do with occupied/claimed territories like Crimea. According Ukrainian law there is no FoP, but according Russian law there is FoP for buildings. In COM:FOP#Russia stated that images of Crimea should be deleted according COM:PRP, but we have two different cases: in this case image of building in Simferopol was deleted because of NoFoP in Ukraine, but in this case images of other building in Simferopol were kept because of FoP in Russian. I think there should be similar action here: or both deleted, or both kept, but now it depends of sysop who will make decision.

So, I suggest that we should make rule: There is FoP in Crimea or There is no FoP in Crimea and add it as separate section to COM:FOP.--Anatoliy (talk) 19:01, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Whatever the rules are in Russia, at the moment. Crimea was for two (?) centuries a part of Russia, until a SU government decided to prettify their map, then it was for sixty (?) years a part of Ukraine, and now it's again a part of Russia. Maybe invent a warning tag that Russian FoP is not applicable in Ukraine, Ukrainian Wikipedia users should be aware of the legal issue. –Be..anyone (talk) 10:18, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Who cares how long it was part of Ukraine? Bombay was for two centuries a part of the British Empire, then for 70 years it's been a part of India. Can the UK just ignore all treaties and come in and take it back? Russia signed a treaty acknowledging the Crimea was part of Ukraine; shouldn't that matter a teensy bit?

In any case, the world does not see Crimea as part of Russia. Since part of the reason behind Commons licensing rules is the theory that other countries will care about the legal status in its country of origin, the fact that the international community sees Crimea as being part of Ukraine means that's how we should treat its FoP. (If it were Russia that had the more restrictive FoP, then I might see a PRP argument against keeping it, but in this case the more restrictive laws happen to be in the nation internationally recognized as controlling the territory.)--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:39, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Volunteer Response Team needs volunteers

Hi all. The Volunteer Response Team (aka OTRS) is always looking to expand its volunteer team in all queues. At the moment, there is a particular need for agents to process permissions tickets. There are some backlogs that we would really like to tackle and while our existing agents are working through tickets as they can, dozens and dozens of new tickets continue to pour in on a daily basis. If you've been around for a while and have a knack for image licensing, please consider applying. You do not need to be an administrator to apply. If you know of anybody else who may be suited please pass along the word! You may submit your information at m:OTRS/Volunteering. Thank you. ~ Matthewrbowker ^{Give me a ring!} 23:12, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Not a surprise. --Fæ (talk) 23:19, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Now I think that this is quite an interesting call, given that OTRS administrators kick people out of OTRS without bothering to justify their actions at all. Perhaps changing that particular policy could help you get more volunteers involved in OTRS. odder (talk) 10:20, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

What user:odder said. This needs to be sorted out, before you start asking for more volunteers. Andy Mabbett (talk) 14:03, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

The volunteer in question was inactive; many other accounts have been closed and will be closed for the very same reason. We are looking for active volunteers. Given you recently indicated you have a copy of the email sent to the user, you know about this as well since it was explicitely mentioned there how "many" tickets he processed in what amount of time. Alternatively, I assume Fae can tell you how many permissions tags he added to Commons. I would be surprised if you find more than one, if at all. And he's been a member since 2013. So, yes, it would be in the interest of the Community that more people volunteer, but, no, if you do not plan to get active that's not gonna help. Sorry. — Pajz (talk) 15:08, 17 February 2015 (UTC) [slighly corrected, 17:38, 17 February 2015 (UTC)]

@Pajz: What a load of bollocks. Either provide a proof that I have ever indicated that I have a copy of any e-mail sent to Wilfredor, or just strike this lying comment of yours. Misleading people is disgraceful and doesn't help your case. odder (talk) 06:48, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

This is a carefully worded answer that cherry-picks the facts. The fact is that The_Photographer was kicked out of OTRS just days after he came to attention during the case of Ktr101's incompetent email from OTRS, this timing cannot be brushed off as a coincidence. The fact is that odder raised two examples of long term Commons contributors being kicked out for what appears to everyone who understands the cases to be political reasons rather than evidence based reasons. Those that enjoy trusted positions at the centre of the OTRS system have no interest in improving their transparency or governance of the "system". A system run on secrecy and the network of "trusted" friends is how decisions are actually made, is not a system, nor can it be said to meet the goals of a collegiate set of projects that "anyone can edit" or our fundamental values of openness and transparency.

If over the last year there have been improvements to basic accountability of the power structures in OTRS, apart from general WMF legal directives, please do provide a link to the public information and community consultation. I am happy to be educated where my knowledge is lacking.

With regard to "Fae can tell you", unfortunately I cannot produce any reliable or complete reports about what OTRS volunteers do for Commons as for reasons I cannot be told, I cannot be trusted with access to OTRS, though I was informed this has nothing to do with any action I have taken, nor my long term work in positively contributing to Commons' educational mission with Russavia's help, nor any complaint about me from any party. Examining what happens on-wiki is only a partial shadow of what has happened behind the scenes on OTRS. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 16:19, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I was referring to your search of Commons for permission templates added by the user (which, according to your post below, you have apparently performed on Matthew). — Pajz (talk) 17:38, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

(Responding to the assumption) As Matthew has not been adding his account name to his permissionsOTRS templates this does not work without an extensive/processing expensive user contributions history and image history source search, which is not worth it compared to the ease of reporting the same information from OTRS directly. I "manually" found the date by looking at the top of his 288 edits on the contributions special page, which can show 500 edits at a time and anyone can do without fancy techniques by following the link in the toolbar. --Fæ (talk) 18:27, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

@Matthewrbowker: the last time you contributed a file to Commons was over 2 years ago, and the last time you used your OTRS permissions access for Commons was in April last year.[18] You may want to lend a hand yourself with the backlog. If you are looking to increase your Commons experience beyond the 288 edits over 5 years that you currently have, you will find Commons backlog a useful starting point.

Odd that contributors with many thousands of edits and uploads here are unable to process tickets in permissions-commons due to a unaccountable system of unelected and unnamed people black-balling their membership for unexplained and unspecific reasons, while OTRS volunteers like Ktr101 with demonstrated basic flaws with their understanding of Commons policies and copyright are. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 14:43, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I know they get in the way of sensationalism, so I'll only post them once, but there are these pesky little things called facts which seem to run contrary to assertions like unnamed people black-balling their membership and unexplained and unspecific reasons which, by the way, is self-contradictory—either there was no explanation or the explanation was unspecific and Ktr101 with demonstrated basic flaws with their understanding of Commons policies and copyright. Those "unnamed people" are named at m:OTRS#OTRS_Administrators; how dreadfully unaccountable of them! Those "unexplained and unspecific reasons" which is still self-contradictory... would appear to be related to m:OTRS/Activity_policy, another evasion of accountability no doubt! As for Kevin, he may not have 2.1 million edits to his name, but as an admin I trust his judgement. I'm sure you would too if it weren't his name on the email to Russavia, whose many and varied varied flaws you seem to be able to overlook; perhaps you could extend the same courtesy to Kevin, who in my opinion has far more redeeming qualities. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:29, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Harry, I always enjoy your views, especially when we have worked together on projects. Let's put aside prose style issues, however a minor correction of fact - I do not overlook Russavia's many flaws. Where Russavia was wrong I stayed out of it or just spent my time focused on the positive work we were doing together. Frankly I never did bother to understand Russavia's major conflicts on en.wp, life is too short and they seemed a long way from my core interests.

As for your trusting Ktr101's judgement "as an admin", remember he is not an admin here and removing a copyvio template from one of your own uploads that is a blatant copyright violation is a very clear demonstration of not understanding basic copyright and how processes for respecting the legal rights of the copyright holder are embodied in our policies and systems. You should take a moment to review the notices about deletions and copyvios publicly on Ktr101's user talk page, before reaching a final view about whether Ktr101's redeeming qualities on other projects make up for his poor treatment of this one.

Oh, as for black-balling, it is easy to demonstrate that this is not happening at the core of OTRS, just commit to a system that truly adopts best practices for accountability and governance. As Andy highlights above, pretending that confidentiality means you cannot review the real facts of why someone has been kicked out of OTRS with that person, thereby giving them no chance to respond to an assertion of some malfeasance (even if necessarily redacted), is not a system of natural justice let alone one that is accountable. The documents you have pointed to may be minor elements of that, but they are not the same thing. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 16:46, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

@Fæ: Odd as it may seem, I do contribute to the commons backlog. My activities on OTRS have been and will be gnome-ish activities, so I spend my time cleaning spam and moving tickets into the right places. These activities are not necessarily visible on the outside, however; so I see where you got that impression. ~ Matthewrbowker ^{Give me a ring!} 16:59, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't know why Fæ is kicked out of OTRS (if true as Odder commented above). But interesting to see Fæ staed that he is willing to correct his mistakes. Then first stop attacking Ktr101. Second, avoid comments like "If this turns out to be nonsense to sell more books, then it is a moderately good example of nonsense." Such comments reveal one's attitude to our clients and their works in a negative way. OTRS, Help DEsk, VP and similar pages always expect people who have a friendly attitude towards new customers. Most active contributor has little value here. J e e 17:07, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

This is a tangent in order to have a crack about my questioning your assessment of an OTRS ticket. Jee, your quote is obviously a reply to an earlier statement on another contributor's talk page, partial quotes out of context are unhelpful. It was neither directed to the "customer", nor were they likely to ever see it unless you draw their attention to it. There was repeated misinformation or basic misunderstanding from the apparent expert donating the image, which happens to promote their book, such as failing to understand how the original was published and what the edition number represented. I am pleased that you correctly withdrew your OTRS ticket on the image and when it comes to future Nazi gold hunters writing to OTRS that you treat the cases with a more clinical eye and remain concerned for potential copyright of underpinning works, not just the derivative and a single statement in front of you that fails to provide proper sourcing. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 17:21, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Why you think he will not see your edit? It is on a public page and he is a registered user here. There is no need to point out I corrected the ticket only because of your help. I'm always willing to correct, if anyone pointed something better. All you repeatedly doing here is WP:HOUNDING. It seems a natural weak point in your side; you start tracing people whenever slightly offended. I had pointed it to you several times, even before your last two failed RfAs. But it seems you're falling to the same mistakes, again and again. :( J e e 17:35, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Jee, this is a tangent for having the temerity to ask politely and in good faith about an OTRS ticket that you handled and which then had to be withdrawn. You already had your dramatic and speedy revenge by inappropriately taking me to AN/U for doing it, as well as making a false accusation that I was a meatpuppet. Please follow the advice that you were given there by others (who happen to be admins and OTRS volunteers) before the thread was closed. I shall be ignoring any "advice" you offer me as it is transparently intended as a series of bad faith accusations. As part of this thread we are in danger of making it appear that anyone with negative feedback about the current OTRS system, or your personal verification of copyright, is going to be subject to an unpleasant campaign to ensure that nobody else would dare make any public comment. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 18:34, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

User:Jkadavoor, you just said «our clients»? O_o -- Tuválkin ✉ 17:25, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. :) J e e 17:35, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

It's just that other people are not as quick as you are in asserting someone is totally incapable of everything, as you and others have repeatedly suggested Ktr101 is. You know, people can expect from OTRS admins that they don't follow the loudest voices in the communities and do whatever it takes to please them. I've been told how Russavia insults agents who (allgedly) mishandle a ticket of theirs; I've seen which methods people like Odder use to get through with their will, calling a fellow OTRS admin a "motherfucker" and a "son of a bitch" etc. in public; I've seen how often you post here and elsewhere calling for Kevin to resign (or for the OTRS admins to remove his access) now now now, without knowing in the least bit about all the great contributions he makes to the volunteer-response team, and ultimately to our mission. If mistakes were made, they need to be addressed, but not necessarily in the most extreme fashion just because Fae wants to see someone "punished." // At the end of the day, everyone here must make up their own mind about that style. If you're in for the big drama, I and probably the Permissions team as a whole don't have the means to keep up with Fae, Odder etc. Last year alone, volunteers have processed almost 15,000 permissions-related tickets, and in doing so have greatly contributed to Commons and other Wikimedia projects, enabling them to host more images, more educational content, in line with our mission. I don't see thank-you notes here, the only thing I see is that some users like to turn every discussion, on whatever OTRS-related topic, into some general criticism of the email response team. I think everyone who contributed to handling these tickets can be proud of themselves. Of course, according to the Commons Village Pump everything is broken, everyone incompetent and whoever dares to make a mistake immediately risks to be Fae's and Russavia's next favorite victim, with the OTRS admins the biggest idiots of all. If the Commons community enjoys that, that's your decision. I can only say I don't. If mistakes are made, they need to be addressed at the appropriate place, but that doesn't mean that everytime "OTRS" is mentioned somewhere we need to start a huge "It's all broken and everyone there's a douche" show. — Pajz (talk) 17:16, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Have a look at the OTRS noticeboard, plenty of thanks there from me where due. I like that you lump me with Russavia's behaviour that never involved me, and put my name next to extreme language that I never used. I think that is closer to the truth of your biased perception of me and the real reason I was kicked out of OTRS. --Fæ (talk) 17:27, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

(In resposne to your earlier reply to me, Fae) Well I'm glad to hear you don't endorse everything Russavia has done, but the timing of your scrutiny of Kevin's uploads could lead a reasonable person to conclude otherwise. Certainly at a superficial level it appears to be motivated by disagreement with Kevin's email to Russavia. Unlike Russavia's, I have no doubt as to Kevin's good faith; in my experience he is not the sort of person who would do something just to spite a particular person or project or abuse Wikimedia projects to push an agenda. I'm sure Kevin makes mistakes, as do we all, but overall I trust his judgement, and it was not Kevin but myself I was referring to when I said "as an admin". I've seen no evidence of "black-balling". I agree the process is opaque, and transparency wouldn't hurt, but my experience is that agents who remain active and answer tickets well are not removed, and the removal is not done by a shadowy cabal as you suggest, but by the OTRS admins, the list of whom I linked above. Frankly, I loath these attempts to drive a wedge between OTRS and the community, and make no mistake that is exactly what you are doing. Bear in mind that Commons would be much the poorer without the efforts of OTRS agents to verify licenses, so let's put the petty politics aside. It serves nobody. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:52, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Having volunteered on OTRS and enjoying helping others there for a couple of years I have no doubt as to its value even though it comes with "petty politics" built-in. My experience along with those of others who have been kicked to the curb without a chance of appeal for what appears to be political reasons rather than factual evidence, makes me certain the system needs improvement and doubly sure that privately emailing OTRS admins with polite requests will not deliver improvement or reform. Anyway, I agree that this thread is better closed, it is not going to get anywhere apart from entrenching the polarization that exists due to these fundamental governance problems. --Fæ (talk) 18:06, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

If [this thread] is not going to get anywhere […], why did you start it in the first place? I must admit I'm failing to see any possible good intentions behind that. FDMS 4 18:26, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I did not start the thread, I am suggesting it closes. Thanks for your presumption of good faith. --Fæ (talk) 18:31, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

The purpose of this section was to discuss expanding the OTRS volunteer base, your first reply hardly has anything to do with that. FDMS 4 18:41, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

All I said was "Not a surprise", it is not. After other posts, I responded to the gaps in Pajz's response to odder. Anyway, this too seems tangential, keeping this thread open by making who said what seem like an accusation, when anyone can read the thread, seems peculiar to me. --Fæ (talk) 18:50, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I've uncollapsed the above, and would like my comment - which did not mention Fae - to be addressed, rather than censored. When my comment was included in the collapsed section, it was labelled "spitefulness", which is utterly unjustified. Andy Mabbett (talk) 20:41, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

No, your comment was just as mean spirited as the others. -- Colin (talk) 21:55, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Whether or not my comment, about (my experience of) OTRS' administrators kicking people out of OTRS without bothering to justify their actions, "needs to be sorted out, before you start asking for more volunteers" was "mean spirited" is subjective; and clearly we have different views on that. However, it is certainly true; and it certainly needs to be addressed. Andy Mabbett (talk) 23:25, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank-you to those who currently and previously have helped with this task, both visibly and invisibly. -- Colin (talk) 19:01, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't think dismissing negative feedback as spitefulness [19] is in line with "assume good faith". Multichill (talk) 19:22, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

That discussion left the town of "Good Faith" long ago into the suburbs of "Animosity" along the minor roads of "Wilful Misunderstanding". Does anyone have anything productive and encouraging to contribute to the Village Pump today? -- Colin (talk) 19:45, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Harassment

I would like to state that I have received three separate allegations that I have been involved in harassment of established Wikimedians. These allegations were untrue. I have no doubt that these people have been subject to harassment though I have not seen any details. I neither knew that it had occurred until they made the allegation to me directly, nor did I have any other information to offer about who was behind the harassment.

My response to each of these people was that if I was subject to sustained serious harassment or I felt in danger, I would take my records of the harassment to the police.

I am aware of cyberbullies that pretend to be others when engaging in harassment. If anyone has specific evidence that appears to involve me, then I would very much like to review it. If allegations of this type have been made to OTRS administrators, then again, I would like the opportunity to see the evidence and be able to respond to it rather than being secretly black-balled as a precautionary measure. If I had evidence about cyberbullying of others I would pass them on to the most appropriate authority for action.

Just to reiterate what I had thought would be obvious, I am not Russavia, I am not odder, I am not an anonymous troll. I take no responsibility whatsoever for words or actions in public or private of other accounts, nor am I in secret collusion with them in a grand Machiavellian plan to bring down the establishment. The only Wikimedia accounts I am using is this one and the bot accounts declared on my user page.

Having uploaded over 700,000 educational and good quality images to Commons over the last 3 years, my aim is a million. This is my core interest in Commons. I hope I am not forced off this project by gossip and allegations made in secret before I can achieve it.

Thanks --Fæ (talk) 19:39, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't think I'm part of the "established Wikimedians"; but just sharing my thoughts. I don't want more users get banned; but think it is time to drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass. The "banned user" is banned. We don't know exact reasons; but it must be for a ToU violation. In my knowledge, WMF take actions only in extra ordinary cases; so it must be something more serious than the recent threat against me from the same user. Anyway there is no meaning in flogging a dead horse. The user is already banned. So there is nothing more to do here. Let us move back to the works we are already doing. It can be helping people in Help Desk, making license reviews, taking photos or making batch uploads as the are of interest and expertise. It will be nice if people archive the remaining related discussions in their talk pages too. I desperately wish to go back to photography where I can breath some fresh air and roll in the mud than dipping my feet more in the dirt here. :) J e e 06:21, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Empty categories for Wiki Loves Earth

Hi all, I'm currently working in the organization of WLE in Spain. From my past experience in the categorization of images from WLM I know that one of the main issues when uploading pictures is the lack of categories. It'd be better whether the categories are created beforehand. However, having empty categories goes against the policies in commons. Would it be possible to make an exception with the strong commmitment to have empty categories deleted once the contest is over and the categorization has been carried out? Best regards --Discasto _{talk | contr. | es.wiki analysis} 23:27, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

I think I remember that this was done for WLM in Germany (all municipalities got their Cultural-heritage-Category in advance), so doing it for WLE would not be without precedent. And it was really helpful. You might consider to add an invisible comment in the categories´ descriptions, explaining the use of the cat for WLE, to keep deletion-happy categorizers like me from nominating them for speedy deletion by accident... --Rudolph Buch (talk) 10:34, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Do you think deletion-happy categorizers read hidden comments :-P ? Maybe we could use a explicit template "This category has been created as a support for WLE. It might be empty. Anyway it wouldn't be deleted until XXX, when WLE has finished and all the images have been categorized". Would it be OK? --Discasto _{talk | contr. | es.wiki analysis} 17:03, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

{{EmptyCatGood}} is some nice snakeoil, check it out.

–Be..anyone (talk) 19:52, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

February 17

Enforcing the Commons CSD policy

Hi all. Unfortunately, even though we have an official CSD policy, none of it is actually being followed, when it comes to our deletion summaries. Please see my proposal to change that here. Thanks. Reh man 05:32, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Monument Template for the Archaeological Survey Database of Ireland

I seek support for creating a monument template for the objects of the Archaeological Survey of Ireland (commonly known as the Sites and Monuments Record) which is maintained by the Irish National Monuments Service, Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. This ArcGIS-based database at http://www.archaeology.ie/ stores all recorded monuments of the Republic of Ireland of the period before AD 1700. There exists a different database for newer objects (see NIAH).

All objects in this database have an id. Take ‘DG021-008004-’ as example where ‘DG’ stands for County Donegal, ‘021’ for the map sheet 021 of the old Ordnance Survey Maps of Ireland (see here for a set these maps, sorted by county), ‘008’ for a particular site on a map sheet, and ‘004’ for an individual recorded object on a site. The number combined of the site and the individual object is enclosed in dashes. Each of these objects is classified according to a fixed class list. ‘DG021-008004-’, for example, is classified as Shrine.

The ArcGIS-API is supported and allows to retrieve the stored database entry including its textual description (but without images) by its object id using the find method. Following parameters are required:

Search Text: the object id, e.g. ‘DG021-008004-’
Contains: true
Search Fields: Record Number
Layers: 0
Return Geometry: True

In summary, the URL is fixed with the exception of the object id. Example: The URL to retrieve the record for ‘DG021-008004-’ is http://webservices.archaeology.ie/ArcGIS/rest/services/WebServices/NationalMonumentsService/MapServer/find?searchText=DG021-008004-&contains=true&searchFields=Record+Number&sr=&layers=0&layerdefs=&returnGeometry=true&maxAllowableOffset=&f=HTML

I would like to have a monument template that

requires the specification of the object id (possibly with a check of the trailing dash),
optionally allows to specify its classification,
provides a link to the object description, and
puts the category or file in appropriate monument categories for Ireland, possibly specialized using the classification and per county.

Any comments? Who could help? Thanks for your support, AFBorchert (talk) 21:26, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Looks like the Monuments database already contains some stuff from Ireland. These appear to be national monuments. Would {{Archaeological Survey of Ireland}} be a suitable name for the template AFBorchert? Multichill (talk) 18:43, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your support, Multichill. I hoped you would help :) Last year Ireland participated for the first time in WLM but with a very limited set of monuments that did not even include all national monuments. Monuments are protected in Ireland

if they are national monuments (restricted to the most prominent monuments, nearly 1,000),
if they are registered in the record of monuments and places (RMP) (about 140,000 objects), or
if they are included in the register of historic monuments (RHM) (no information).

The database of the Archaeological Survey of Ireland includes most of the national monuments and all RMP objects. As this database is restricted to objects that existed prior to AD 1700, it does not include national monuments like Patrick Pearse's Cottage which derives its notability just from the fact that Patrick Pearse was born in it. I guess that the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (NIAH) is intended to the fill the gap of to be protected modern structures but these objects are not yet considered protected monuments according to Irish law. I think that the proposed name, i.e. Archaeological Survey of Ireland, is appropriate as it is the official name of the database. It is just important to note that a small amount of objects of this database are not protected monuments but included due to technical or historic reasons. But for all practical means in regard to WLM and identifying Irish monuments in the context of Commons it appears best to rely on this database.

Our heritage database you refer to currently uses for Irish national monuments short ids in the Identifier column. These short ids are sequentially assigned in the order of granting the status of a national monument to an object. Unfortunately these short ids of national monuments do not, to my knowledge, allow to access an object in the database of the Archaeological Survey of Ireland. Take, for example, the fifth object I see in this list with the national monument id 166. Its object id in the database of the Archaeological Survey of Ireland is ‘GA058-004001-’ which gives you this record which does not include the national monument id, nor does it tell anything about its status beyond stating that it is protected. --AFBorchert (talk) 19:49, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I've found another URL that not only allows to access the text in the database but to jump directly into the FlexViewer. FlexViewer is unfortunately based on Flash but shows the map (from the Ordnance Survey of Ireland which is very detailed) and allows to access pictures and objects in the neighborhood. The object id can be fortunately used using the id parameter. Examples:

To access ‘DG021-008004-’: http://webgis.archaeology.ie/NationalMonuments/FlexViewer/?id=DG021-008004-
To access ‘GA058-004001-’: http://webgis.archaeology.ie/NationalMonuments/FlexViewer/?id=GA058-004001-

If you follow these URLs, give it a little bit of time. When the FlexViewer starts, a view of the entire island of Ireland is presented, then the database is automatically queried and the FlexViewer zooms to the designated object. On the right hand side in the FlexViewer you will see the Query data window that can list multiple objects as table consisting of the SMR No (the object id), Class (as described above), and Townland (the smallest geographical division in Ireland, see here). A double-click on the line with the object id pops up a small window that allows you to access the associated text in the database if you click -expand-. Record Details leads you to a downloadable PDF. Perhaps it is best for the template to provide both sorts of links, to the text-based database excerpt (as shown above) that does not need Flash, and to FlexViewer. --AFBorchert (talk) 08:00, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

February 19

Category:Concert photography

This seems counterproductive to me, but since it was done by a bot it may be part of something larger of which I'm unaware. If I were looking for photographs of musical performances, I would not think to go down the hierarchy via Category:Concerts in art. In fact, I'd be very surprised to find any ordinary photographs of musical performances there at all. I'm not sure why Category:Concert photography exists at all (normally the bulk of the content of most categories is photographic, so just how is this distinct from Category:Concerts other than specifically leaving out, say, posters, programs, drawings etc.), but if it is going to have roughly its present content I think it is very foolish to have it only under Category:Concerts in art rather than be reachable directly from Category:Concerts.

Also, can anyone explain what's going on here and what this bot was doing more broadly, because I'm afraid it may have introduced many other similar issues. - Jmabel ! talk 16:31, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

en:Concert photography is its own concept but I agree that everything in these categories on Commons should be under the top level category of Category:Concerts. ButkoBot, what is happening here? Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:40, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

@Butko: Perhaps it would be good to invite Butko to the discussion.

My guess is that the bot removes overcategorizations but Commons:Bots/Requests/ButkoBot is not very specific. If this is indeed the intention, it would be perhaps helpful to refer to COM:OVERCAT in the edit summaries of the bot which currently appear too unspecific. --AFBorchert (talk) 18:24, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, looks like the bot is fixing a simple overcat, but in the wrong direction: it shouldn't have been in "Concerts in art" in the first place. I'll move it to Concerts. I also agree that the category is undesirable and its contents should be merged into subcategories of Category:Concerts, although it would be quite a bit of work. --ghouston (talk) 21:38, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I suggest in the meantime renaming it to "Unclassified concerts" with a description that says "The contents of this category should be added to more specific subcategories of Category:Concerts. --ghouston (talk) 22:04, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Bot removed Category:Concerts because Category:Concert photography was in Category:Concerts in art (per COM:OVERCAT). Now Category:Concert photography has been moved to Category:Concerts. As for me, I don't see sense of this category with current content. It equal to Category:Concerts. Sense will be if category contains specific subcategories such us: awards in genre of concert photography, accreditations for photographers on concerts, famous photographers in this genre, specific equipement, quality/featured/valued photos on Wikimedia Commons, etc --Butko (talk) 07:02, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Butko, as guessed. Could you please adjust the edit comments of your bot, i.e. if your bot edits the categories of a file because of COM:OVERCAT it would be helpful if the bot would refer to COM:OVERCAT in the corresponding edit summary. This allows the users to understand what is happening and to get informed. Regards, AFBorchert (talk)

Malformed cat name "Category:Pages with script errors"

Could someone look at Category:Category:Pages with script errors? It's not defined, but it has entries in it. The problem is that the category name is malformed. I can't tell where it's coming from -- the category doesn't even appear on the image pages. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 08:39, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

See Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2015/02#Category:Category:Pages_with_script_errors -- Rillke^(q?) 08:58, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Duh, my own previous question! --Auntof6 (talk) 09:06, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I totally meant to file a bug last time around. I did that now: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T90442 Bawolff (talk) 14:55, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

آپ لود عکس برای فیلم

سلام بچه ها من یه عکس آپ کردم بعد 30 دقیقه برداشته شد هرچی هم می خوام آپ کنم نمی زاره می گه قبلا بوده حذف کردیم یکی که می دونه چطور می تونه برام انجام بده مرسی . https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%B1%D9%88%DB%8C_%D8%B2%DB%8C%D8%B1%D8%B2%D9%85%DB%8C%D9%86 اینم لینکش لینک پوستر هم یه سرچ کوچیک بزنین پیدا می کنین هم واتس رپ گذاشته هم بیا تو رپ مرسی — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mahan khomamipor (talk • contribs)

Can someone translate? Google translate seems to fail on that one. --Jarekt (talk) 20:50, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

I tried bing, it seems to be about a picture (a movie?) of a rapper deleted 30 minutes after the upload. Maybe about this [20]? Found the movie putting in the title of the article of iran wikipedia, Mahan linked to. Traumrune (talk) 21:08, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

February 24

File:AECS Kaiga Maingate.jpg

File was uploaded in June 2012 as own work. It was the only file uploaded by user Akshay Revankar. It really does seem to me as if it was taken from some kind of official website. Same image is used on what appears to be the school's official YouTube channel. Moreover, same logo in the upper left of the image also appears in the upper left of many of the images listed in the photo gallery page of the school's official website. All of this leads me to suspect that the image in question is really protected by some kind of copyright and is non-free. I say suspect because I'm not 100% sure, so I am interested in hearing what others think. Thanks in advance. - Marchjuly (talk) 01:35, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

It's not 100% sure. However if it's published elsewhere, or if it may be the work of an organization and they don't give a license on an official site, then it should have COM:OTRS confirmation of the license, and it can be nominated for deletion. --ghouston (talk) 01:52, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

ImageUpload template

Whats the function of:

?--Kopiersperre (talk) 07:05, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

It was tracking purposes. Just remove the line when you encounter it. There was some explanation on Template talk:ImageUpload. -- Rillke^(q?) 11:00, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Commons:Deletion requests/File:Laurence Olivier Merle Oberon Wuthering Heights.jpg

Can someone help me tag the other files I mentioned in that? I'm not sure of the proper way to do so. Adam Cuerden (talk) 22:09, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

See Commons:Deletion requests/Mass deletion request. You should be able to follow up from there as easily as anyone else. - Jmabel ! talk 00:41, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

February 25

New offer at Commons:Equipment exchange

FYI: If someone is interested in a M42 telezoom lens, I've got 2 on offer over at Commons:Equipment exchange. --El Grafo (talk) 14:03, 25 February 2015 (UTC):This section was archived on a request by: Everything else over there. El Grafo (talk) 14:03, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Stereoscopic image formats support (.JPS and .MPO)

Hello. What is current situation with stereographic image formats support - JPS and MPO files ? It seems a bit wrong to extract a single frame and upload it separately. Would be nice to have a native support with automatic generation of appropriate preview image and possibility to download original file. --[Tycho] (talk) 12:40, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I have not read of any plans to support them. You could start a request at http://phabricator.wikimedia.org --Fæ (talk) 14:11, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

there are no plans currently that i am aware of,but.. sounds easier than most of the requested formats. What would be an appropriate preview? One of the frames, both frames side by side, red-cyan stero, consider it paged media with 2 pages (i lean towards last one)? One slight issue is that those formats arent supported by image magick. Bawolff (talk) 22:24, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I think that the most meaningful way would be single image preview (so those files can be used as a general purpose images in articles) and switchable between anaglyph, side-by-side, crosseyed, interlaced views on it's details page. Paged media sounds reasonable, but AFAIK one rarely needs to use them separately. For me it's important to have at least ANY way to store stereoscopic files in native format because creating stitched pair in plain JPEG, uploading a separate mono-version and being unable to download it in ready to use form seems way too counterproductive. --- [Tycho] ^talk 23:37, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T90385

Just as an aside, if you change the extension to .jpg, MediaWiki won't realize its a MPO, and just display one frame of the file (probably; haven't tested). Bawolff (talk) 20:43, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

So if this works, then .MPO files can be just allowed without much work on the engine ?
BTW, related: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T90385 --- [Tycho] ^talk 04:20, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

I tried to upload an MPO stereogram as ".JPG" and it worked (but for some reason I had to partially remove EXIF) --- [Tycho] ^talk 21:09, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

For future reference, I added an entry to COM:UNSUPPORTED. Jean-Fred (talk) 11:27, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

February 21

Bg-black-hole.ogg

Hi, any Bulgarian speakers out there? Just wondering if "File:Bg-black-hole.ogg" is correctly categorized. — SMUconlaw (talk) 15:52, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Certainly miscategorized. It is someone reading out an article on black holes, in Bulgarian. - Jmabel ! talk 01:23, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Fixed, by changing Category:Audio files about horses (!?) to Category:Spoken Wikipedia articles about astronomy. -- Tuválkin ✉ 03:21, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you! I thought "Black Hole" might be the name of a famous Bulgarian racehorse or something ... — SMUconlaw (talk) 19:59, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

February 26

Thumbnails

My friend Rob Ketcherside recently remarked on Facebook, "I've noticed issues with thumbnails on some Wikimedia pages [when linked on Facebook]. I think it's a problem with their [that is, our] template. Opengraph thumbnail might not be set properly." I'm not sure we are even using Opengraph on our pages, though I think we should be. Does anyone know more about this? - Jmabel ! talk 06:14, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Only thing related coming to my mind is phab:T33338. --Malyacko (talk) 13:01, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I reported this back in october: Commons:Village pump/Archive/2014/10#Facebook using the smallest thumbnail from Commons for preview. -- Tuválkin ✉ 18:33, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Structured data on Commons update

Greetings,

After a delay in updates to the Structured data on Commons project, I wanted to catch you up with what has been going on over the past three months. In short: The project is on hold, but that doesn't mean nothing is happening.

The meeting in Berlin in October provided the engineering teams with a lot to start on. Unfortunately the Structured Data on Commons project was put on hold not too long after this meeting. Development of the actual Structured data system for Commons will not begin until more resources can be allocated to it.

The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Germany have been working to improve the Wikidata query process on the back-end. This is designed to be a production-grade replacement of WikidataQuery integrated with search. The full project is described at Mediawiki.org.This will benefit the structured data project greatly since developing a high-level search for Commons is a desired goal of this project.

The Wikidata development team is working on the arbitrary access feature. Currently it's only possible to access items that are connected to the current page. So for example on Vincent van Gogh you can access the statements on Q5582, but you can't access these statements on Category:Vincent van Gogh or Creator:Vincent van Gogh. With arbitrary access enabled on Commons we no longer have this limitation. This opens up the possibility to use Wikidata data on Creator, Institution, Authority control and other templates instead of duplicating the data (what we do now). This will greatly enhance the usefulness of Wikidata for Commons.

To use the full potential of arbitrary access the Commons community needs to reimplement several templates in LUA. In LUA it's possible to use the local fields and fallback to Wikidata if it's not locally available. Help with this conversion is greatly appreciated. The different tasks are tracked in phabricator, see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T89594 .

Volunteers are continuing to add data about artworks to Wikidata. Sometimes an institution website is used and sometimes data is being transfered from Commons to Wikidata. Wikidata now has almost 35.000 items about paintings. This is done as part of the WikiProject sum of all paintings. This helps us to learn how to model and refine metadata about artworks. Experience that will of course be very useful for Commons too.

Additionally, the metadata cleanup drive continues to produce results. The drive, which is intended to identify files missing {{Information}} or the like structured data fields and to add such fields when absent, has reduced the number of files missing information by almost 100,000 on Commons. You can help by looking for files with similarly-formatted description pages, and listing them at Commons:Bots/Work requests so that a bot can add the {{Information}} template on them.

At the Amsterdam Hackathon in November 2014, a couple of different models were developed about how artwork can be viewed on the web using structured data from Wikidata. You can browse two examples here and here. These examples can give you an idea of the kind of data that file pages have the potential to display on-wiki in the future.

The Structured Data project is a long-term one, and the volunteers and staff will continue working together to provide the structure and support in the back-end toward front-end development. There are still many things to do to help advance the project, and I hope to have more news for you in the near future. Contact me any time with questions, comments, concerns.

-- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 20:17, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

User:Keegan (WMF) says that «volunteers are continuing to add data about artworks to Wikidata.» This is intriging: Why are Wikidata volunteers entering data instead of building/improving the database functionalities? The task of curating media files, which includes adding data about artworks, belongs to Commons — and it is surely being done. Are these volunteers duplicating Commons’ efforts? That’s bad. Are they merely transfering, or piping-through, data from Commons into Wikidata (which is the right thing to do), and User:Keegan (WMF) is misrepresenting this, causing unaware people who read the above to overestimate Wikidata’s curating efforts and ignore Commons’? That’s also bad. -- Tuválkin ✉ 19:48, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

@Tuvalkin: Nothing new that wikidata is ignoring other projects. Wikidata has also ignored our interwiki link schema (was discussed a while ago on VP). I heard on irc that they like to replace our category system with tags etc. It is verry hard to get informations what they like to do on commons and how many money thy spend for this wikidata stuff. --Steinsplitter (talk) 08:50, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

@Tuvalkin: I don't believe I'm misrepresenting anything. Some volunteers are copying data about artwork from Commons over to Wikidata. Multichill is doing most of the work so he might be able to elaborate better for you, or you could follow the links in the paragraph that you are quoting from to find more information which would likely address your concerns. @Steinsplitter: category systems are not going to be replaced by anything here. As the post that I made states, the process is on hold and even so it's been stated from the beginning that nothing has been set in stone about how this proposed system will work. There's a hub here on Commons with details and ideas about the project if you're looking for information. As to how much money is spent on Wikidata (questioned below), I have no idea. I'm no where near important enough to be involved in that sort of decision making. Wikimedia Deutschland might be able to give you better numbers since they're the primary sponsor. Since the project is on hold, you're not likely to see any changes to Commons anytime in the near future. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 20:38, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

@Steinsplitter: Is there any information available about this proposed "tag system" ? That would be great and much more convenient than categories (but will take a lot of efforts for tagging everything) --- [Tycho] ^talk 17:13, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Hot air, the topic of tags vs. cats has been discussed on and off for several years. Keep in mind that the active Wikidata community is much smaller than the Commons active community. Just because one or two people run around promoting an idea, does not mean that Wikidata is actually going to run after them.

There are a couple of experienced Commonsists involved in pushing wikidata forward. If any approach were potentially damaging for Commons, I'm sure it would be flagged for attention here early on. --Fæ (talk) 17:39, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

@Keegan (WMF): Can you please elaborate how much money the WMF spend for "wikibase for common" and what software changes are coming on commons in the next monts/years. Thanks in advice --Steinsplitter (talk) 08:50, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

February 20

"Unique" license

File:Delta_chelsea_corkscrew706pq.jpg is marked (apparently incorrectly) with multiple copies of {{Copyrighted free use provided that}}, as well as the "Shared Experience License." This appears to be the only image using this license on Commons. The text of the license is here. While it seems intended to be a copyleft license, it has some of the old issues with the GFDL license (such as the requirement to include a complete copy of the license with all copies, with no linking provision). As is, we seem to not actually be in compliance. Do we really want to allow this? Is it worth the effort needed to 'properly' use this for a single image? I'm dubious. Revent (talk) 11:14, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Don't we also keep migration=opt-out GFDL files? FDMS 4 13:11, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

(nods) I wasn't specifically saying that it's GFDL-like-ness makes it incompatible, but for the GFDL we also have a locally hosted copy of the complete license text (so it's part of the 'collective work' of Commons itself). I just wonder about it being worth the effort to 'fix it' for the case of a single file (we would also really need a 'machine readable' template). Revent (talk) 13:19, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Its not a single file, though apparently a single source. If the license is compliant with Commons (which will need someone to read the legal text carefully), then the files should be kept and not deleted on basis of license alone. "Can't be bothered to create license template" is not a deletion reason.

The dual-licensed files need careful checking, to see if the dual licensing is actually valid. I am suspicious as they all say "copyright Steve Mann", but appear to be from multiple different users.--Nilfanion (talk) 13:37, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Nice finding those, I just searched for the name of the license instead of links to it (the one I noticed wasn't 'dual licensed' in that matter). You're completely right that it's not a deletion reason, per se, my 'dubiousness' was based mainly on that I've seen discussion in the past about other unusual licenses that seemed to lean that direction, and that it seems to me as if this license text might itself be a copyright violation of the GFDL (which prohibits modification). There are significantly long verbatim duplications. If that's the case, I don't think we can host the local copy of it we would really need to comply with it... a bit circular. Revent (talk) 14:17, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Revent asked me for my opinion on this. Here it is. The Shared Experience Licence isn't valid and can't be used on Commons. The terms of the licence require us to provide a copy of the licence text, which we're not doing and which we cannot do, this renders the licence invalid. The reason we cannot provide a copy of the licence text, in the way we used to do with the GFDL licence, is because the Shared Experience Licence licence text is itself a pretty blatant copyright violation, being a modified version of the GFDL licence. The GFDL licence text cannot be modified and isn't itself licenced under the GFDL licence (my word, circular referencing there). That may also render the licence invalid in and of itself, but that's probably something that needs Legal's opinions on. Whilst I'm thinking about it, our pages containing the text of the GFDL Licence are also potential copyright problems, since they claim to release the Text of the GFDL Licence under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licence and that isn't the case - see the footer at Commons:GNU_Free_Documentation_License for details of the problem. Nick (talk) 15:00, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Based on my (and Nick's) opinion, it's my intent unless someone objects to DR any images using this license that do not also have a compatible license, and strip to just the compatible license on the rest. Any complaints before I do so? Revent (talk) 12:16, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree. The last thing Commons needs is a home-made GFDL licence, particularly one with copyvio issues itself. It is ironic that the author expects people to respect his work as a photographer without respecting GNU's work as licence drafters -- which can't be cheap or easy to do (even if I think their licence is daft). -- Colin (talk) 13:53, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

February 27

Another weird bot edit

Arrgh. I usually don't check bot edits closely, because I assume they are part of someone's thought-through plan, but lately I'm beginning to wonder. Here's another. How can we have had a batch bot edit to place photos directly into Category:Houses by association in the United States, which is a meta-category that should only contain categories? - Jmabel ! talk 07:41, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

@Jmabel: I've moved this comment as this is unrelated to the other bot. @Steinsplitter: This is about SteinsplitterBot. Could you please comment? --AFBorchert (talk) 09:20, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

@Jmabel: (sorry for the late reply) - Requested by @Sven Manguard: at User:CommonsDelinker/commands (only admins can add requests). Best --Steinsplitter (talk) 17:14, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

@Sven Manguard: Weeks have gone by and we haven't heard from you on this. - Jmabel ! talk 14:19, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Jmabel, @Sven Manguard: is inactive; so you need to contact him through email. J e e 14:56, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Category definition: Object

Why is {{Category definition: Object}} called that, and not simply "{{Object}}"? Would anyone, er, object to it being moved? Andy Mabbett (talk) 12:11, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

In fact, on further examination, I see it's a wrapper for {{Artwork}}. I'm looking for a template for non-artwork objects, such as items in a museum collection, which have some of the same metadata (accession number, Wikidata) and some new parameters/ parameters needing different labels (material, maker). Is it best to adapt {{Artwork}}, or fork it? Is there another template in use already? Andy Mabbett (talk) 12:16, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

I would either use {{Artwork}}, propose to add additional fields to {{Artwork}}, if there is something missing, or write new template which adds fields to {{Artwork}} or other basic infobox template, like the templates in Category:Infobox templates: based on Artwork template. See COM:Infoboxes for comparison of which basic infobox has which fields. --Jarekt (talk) 15:11, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, that petty much covers all the options. Thanks... Andy Mabbett (talk) 16:08, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

For all options I'd pick {{InFi}} (Information Field) and inject whatever I'm missing into {{Information}} at other fields=. Almost always {{Igen}}, sometimes {{Credit line}}, but an "institution" also works (without i18n, {{InFi}} is no crystal ball.) I don't trust {{Artwork}}, it is far too complex for my purposes. –Be..anyone (talk) 21:41, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

I like to think about {{Information Field}} as sort of last resort option mostly used to create templates based on the basic COM:Infoboxes. It makes wikitext less readable and people often do not use it right. I am not sure what is to trust of not to trust in case of {{Artwork}}, as it is mostly straight forward template. --Jarekt (talk) 04:02, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

For now, I've created {{Object}} as a redirect to {{Artwork}} (see also my edit request, on the latter's talk page). I'm not convinced that we don't need a separate template, though. Andy Mabbett (talk) 11:51, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I would be in favour of having a separate {{Object}}, since some collection items (think natural history stuff like meteorites or fossils) have no conceptual overlap with artwork. -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 15:09, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Our most thanked volunteers

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T90486
STALLED

meta:User:Faebot/thanks/commons

A report of the Top Ten most thanked and "most thanking" is on meta above, with the top ten every month over the past 13 months. There was a general discussion about the report on wikimedia-l and an initial set of Wikimedia projects included is shown at meta:User:Faebot/thanks.

A special thank you to the ten valued Commonsists below. --Fæ (talk) 18:00, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

**Most thanked volunteers on Commons in 2015, January**
#	User	Thanks
1	Steinsplitter	47
2	INeverCry	44
3	Thibaut120094	44
4	1989	44
5	Yann	37
6	Medium69	32
7	Be..anyone	27
8	Brackenheim	26
9	ArionEstar	22
10	Marcus Cyron	21

Your welcome, I try to be helpful as much as I can. 1989 18:04, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
Thank you. --Jarekt (talk) 18:23, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
SCNR to add the tracker. Background: With one POTY vote left for two pictures I checked why one was discussed on dewiki talk:Kurier#POTY. Turned out to be boring, but the discussion about the thanks log on this page with so far two privacy bug reports, one dewiki opt-out, jokes on wikimedia-l about how bots abusing the feature would be easier than bots evaluating it, similar stats for meta and dewiki, and the completely unrelated Special:Userprofile/Fæ (example) feature were quite entertaining. I hope the FaceBook=127.0.0.1 fraction still represents the bolshewiki. –Be..anyone (talk) 21:24, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
A statistics about nothing. It is like some people on Wikipedia seriously believe that the most "productive" users are those with most new articles created (including redirects, disambigs,...). Quantity instead of quality. I'm really not sorry to be absent in this table. --A.Savin 08:05, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
I believe it is a harmless statistic, but I acknowledge that a few people feel strongly about it. Some people most appreciate the collegiate and social aspect of contributing to our projects, while others focus content creation or gnomic matters such as tweaking code. However the numbers are used, it should be kept in mind that there are people that work hard for our projects in "real life" or behind the scenes on code and hardly use this feature or are hardly ever noticed on-wiki.

Nobody has to pay much attention to the thanks notification feature if they don't want to. It's just a bit of fun, so I actually agree that they are "a statistics about nothing", but I created these tables as an asset for that part of our community that believe that this form of communication makes our volunteer environment "nicer".

--Fæ (talk) 10:36, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Apparently they plan to "opt out" into a "documented bugs are features" solution.<sigh /> –Be..anyone (talk) 18:55, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Commons:Village pump/Archive/2015/02

Suggestion: create redirects to categories

POTY banner

closed deletion request of teaching materials

Flickr accounts and License laundering

Flickr2Commons

Tram line 4

Something's screwed up about the nomination for deletion script

Uitnodiging Wikimedia Belgium Project Days

February 03

Template edit not transcluding

Removal of a category so the file left uncategorized

January 27

Auschwitz Album

A Russian library caught fire

Offer of 300+ railway images

February 04

Help:Typing page

Upload wizard not working

Suggestions sought on a category loop

Results of deletion request

Wilfredor → The Photographer

January 31

Notices

February 05

Bot job request

February 07

Notices

February 05

Bot job request

February 07

February 08

جایگذاری جدول محتویات

February 09

Thank you

Special restaurant in Taipei

How do you call this?

Why are we hosting intentional manglings of images?

Third copy of the image

February 10

Changing map dates

February 11

Wikidata policy regarding Commons categories

Railway viaducts

Permission for photos of coins US

Permission for photos of coins Swiss

Help with the Upload Wizard

Dramatic sky

February 12

How to deal with {{Uncategorized}} and base images for stitches?

Wilfredor → The Photographer

January 31

WLM 2014 winners announced - did anyone notice, or care?

Categorization question

February 14

Suggested Mass Rename

Edit-a-thon at the National Library of Wales

Public statement from Ktr101 and OTRS

Conclusion

Commons App discontinued

February 06

Coordinates of object's origin

Styling

February 13

CSV files

February 16

Time shift of uploaded images

Still Images from a Video?

Google Earth Pro available for free

February 18

Missing information template links in DB

About Crimea again

Volunteer Response Team needs volunteers

Harassment

Empty categories for Wiki Loves Earth

February 17

Enforcing the Commons CSD policy

Monument Template for the Archaeological Survey Database of Ireland

February 19

Malformed cat name "Category:Pages with script errors"