Commons:Village pump/Archive/2015/03

Pictures of pigeons that might be copyvio

one example

Hallo, is there someone able to read these pages (from April 2007)?

• http://sh2wh.ahlamontada.biz/t2956-topic
• http://www.startimes.com/?t=7829131

Here on Commons are some pictures uploaded 2007-06-19 that might be copyvios (same user uploaded other pics as "own" from different sources, like Alex Sell[1] and a french(?) page[2]). My question is: is there a licens given for these pictures? Or might they be copyvios by themselves (there are also pics from featherside). It would be a loss to delete them all, they are also used to illustrate articles.

Thanks for your help, --PigeonIP (talk) 16:19, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Eight years ago, too late for simple TinEye researchs. The uploader sticked to two camera models and some images without Exif, all about your Pigeon topic. And you already invested time for the Konigsberg Morehead. I'd assume good faith and vote keep for INUSE. –Be..anyone (talk) 04:58, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

March 01

"Female humans"

There are no pictures directly in Category:Male humans. There are (at this moment) 556 photos directly in Category:Female humans. Recently, someone added the latter category to some of my photos, which is how I became aware of it.

I really dislike this. It seems like a reduction of women to their gender rather than seeing them as fully human. I particularly dislike this when it is done to photos I took, because it feels like reduction of the subjects of my photos to their gender.

I think that the correct solution to this is that neither Category:Male humans nor Category:Female humans should directly contain individual images. - Jmabel ! talk 16:25, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree with above. I warned this user, but he continue editing nevertheless, so I blocked him for 2 hours. And I removed this category with VFC. Regards, Yann (talk) 16:36, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Yann. Even though I'm an admin, I always hesitate to do something like this without having some sort of indication it's not just my solo view. I've suggested to him that if this is (as he now says on his talk page) part of a process of classifying more deeply that he use a hidden category as his temporary holder. - Jmabel ! talk 18:07, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Being 'bold' about this (since it seems obvious) I added {{Categorize}} to both, which might help in the future. Revent (talk) 18:33, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry about the mess - I agree that there is no need for a lot of pictures in this category. It was intended to be only a temporary stage. Jmabel suggested a great idea of Hidden categories under my username. If this is acceptable to you would be happy if you pass to Category:Temporary categories for User:Chenspec Cat-a-lot - Female humans all the pictures that were in Category:Female humans. What do you think? Chenspec (talk) 18:56, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

@Chenspec: Use {{User category}} instead of {{Hiddencat}} for this, please. Other than that, don't know why anyone would complain about it as a temporary manrker. Revent (talk) 19:12, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

@Revent: Excellent - done. Now, how do I pass the pictures to the new category? Need to restore ... Chenspec (talk) 19:25, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, a user category is more appropriate, sorry I didn't think of that. And I'm not sure what you mean by "passing" pictures to a category. You can place them in a user category or hidden category exactly like any other category. - Jmabel ! talk 01:25, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

@Jmabel: All the pictures were removed from the category "Female humans" and it took me a long time to collect them. Do I have to find them again manually So I can categorize them in "Category:Temporary categories for User:Chenspec Cat-a-lot - Female human", or there is a way to restore them more effectively? Chenspec (talk) 07:36, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

If you know who removed them, they are probably all more or less in a row in his/her contributions list. Failing that, your own contributions list would probably have them reasonably close together. And, yes, that categorization seems appropriate to me. Sorry you got blocked on this, I didn't mean to take it to that level but I guess that happened before we had time to discuss it calmly. - Jmabel ! talk 17:51, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

@Jmabel: It's OK - The main thing is that everything worked out for the better. I will try to restore the pictures. Thanks for the help and guidance for the new category! Chenspec (talk) 20:30, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Just noting here for the record, just added (per a request on Yann's talk page) 583 images previously added by Chenspec to 'Female humans' to his user tracking category. More useful than would be apparent at first glance, nearly all are images of Wikipedians in various contexts with no categorization other than 'this is a Wikipedian'. Revent (talk) 22:28, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

@Chenspec: I am sorry, but what is the befenit of copying pictures from Category:Females with birds. Where do you want to pass this pictures? other than "with birds"? --PigeonIP (talk) 11:03, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

I understood that it does not matter what pictures I put my user category. Regarding your question - there are pictures that fit more than one category, according to what you see in them. If there are more categories they will be eligible to I'll put them, if not then do not. I hope this answers your question Chenspec (talk) 17:19, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

February 22

Smithsonian copyright claims

I came across this image of a wartime radar system in Europe. This is clearly taken by Army personal, the only people who would have seen one in the field. Yet the Smithsonian claims copyright on it. Do we, as in the case of other examples, ignore their claim for these cases? Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:30, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

• I probably would, while noting the dubious claim of copyright. - Jmabel ! talk 17:03, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

From what I see, they don't seem to be explicitly claiming a copyright in this particular image (they credit it to the National Archives). The Smithsonian's Terms of Use make it clear the 'general' copyright claim on their website is to "the compilation of content that is posted on the SI Websites, which consists of text, images, audio, video, databases, design, codes and software" and that "the Smithsonian does not necessarily own each component of the compilation." They just seem to engage in the (highly questionable, but common) practice of telling users they must license anything obtained from their website regardless of if they actually own the copyright in the particular work. Revent (talk) 18:34, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

• The institution is free to make whatever claims they wish, even if they are not legally enforceable. If they have added value in the metadata, such as writing descriptions or adding lots of structured detail, then they can make a valid claim of creative ownership for that metadata. Automatically created metadata, such as what the source was, details copied from elsewhere, or basic facts like a date or the original author/photographer, are not creative enough to make a claim for.

If anyone wished to scrape information and images from the si.edu, it would be a smart move to first write to the website contact and explain what the plan was, and give them a chance to object to it and explain if they have a legally valid claim that you may be unaware of. Putting aside this specific case, as I expect the Smithsonian to encourage open knowledge, if an institution were to issue take-down notices or legal challenges against a Commons uploader, having a previous good faith correspondence on record would be a great way of dismissing such actions. --Fæ (talk) 19:10, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Anyway, the Smithsonian is part of the U.S. Federal Government, so it's questionable whether they can have copyright. {{PDUSGov}}. Adam Cuerden (talk) 00:26, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Adam, I believe the Smithsonian is actually something of a special case (though I'm not sure of the details and it wouldn't apply to this photo). As I understand it, a lot of their work is created by contractors who are not technically federal government employees, and so it can be copyrighted. - Jmabel ! talk 00:37, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

The US Government can not (in most cases) claim copyright in it's own works, but can own copyrights transferred to it by others (this is explicitly stated in 17 USC § 105). Not that this applies here, but to state that the US Government cannot own a copyright is mistaken. Revent (talk) 04:30, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

i do not see a copyright claim here. you are making a guess about who took the photo. having had conversations with smithsonian people: they have a legal department, and practice of trying to pay for digitzation with fees. they tend to put NC on PD images. however, they do not issue takedown notices for PD claims over their NC. the smithsonian institution is a hybrid with federal support and private money. they are a repository of government and private collections, i.e. you cannot know what the copyright of an item is, but with research of the metadata on a case by case basis. we can go to the National Archives, who is the repository of the Naval Photographic Center, and find this item, or related film [3] but it does not appear to be digitized there yet. see also [4] Slowking4 ♡ Farmbrough's revenge 01:31, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

The Smithsonian Institution is not the US Government. It publishes copyrighted materials on a regular basis, and actually pays photographers itself for its publications. Trying to say "you are the government so you do not own what bears your copyright notice" is unwise. [5] is clear. If they assert copyright, then you must abide by their terms of use. Collect (talk) 21:29, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

@Collect: I do not think anyone is trying to say that copyright is not a 'real and valid concern', as you put it in your edit summary. It's simply that, with experience, Commons editors have learned that assertions of copyright from certain sources, including the Smithsonian, need to be evaluated critically (hence the discussion). This image, for example, is on the same website, with exactly as much of a 'copyright assertion' made. Are you going to claim that it's not usable on Commons because the Smithsonian asserts a copyright? Revent (talk) 22:17, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I am saying that folks who conflate the Smithsonian and the US Government are making an exceedingly grave error. The proper procedure is to contact the Smithsonian as they ask, and ask whether that particular image is covered under any copyright, not to assert "the Smithsonian can not assert copyright on anything" because that position will fail the second a lawyer sees it. Cheers. Collect (talk) 00:37, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

not very grave at all: nobody died from wishful thinking. and since they have not issued a DMCA, you would have a greater chance of federal court with a FOP german statue photo, where we have cases of a DMCA. in this case the metadata is pretty clear PD-USGov, but lets go scanning at Archives II where the original is. Slowking4 ♡ Farmbrough's revenge 00:21, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Okay; if I assert copyright on that picture, then must you abide by my terms of use? A bullshit assertion is bullshit coming from me or them. Wikipedia says "More than two-thirds of the Smithsonian's workforce of some 6,300 persons are employees of the federal government" and by law, anything those employees create as part of their employment is not covered by copyright. It's true that the Smithsonian is the effective origin of a lot of copyrighted work, and it's rather unfortunate that it's a waste of time to try and contact them to get the correct legal copyright status of much of their work.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:37, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

welcome to the internet. this is a common institutional attitude, that the researchers will come to them. the institutions tend not to have drunken the "free" kool-aid of license purity. the world does not exist to give you clear licenses. beware, you cannot separate the employees into fed and non-fed. they work on both fed and non-fed funded projects. and they are not going to share their time sheets for your convenience. you also have institutions sending nasty notices asserting "sweat of the brow"; and institutions not partnering with commons because admins don't like their name. it will take a long time hand holding, to change institutions. Slowking4 ♡ Farmbrough's revenge 14:38, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

How to perform complex file searches in Commons

Hello, I am wondering if there is a way in Commons to carry out advanced search of files such as the following (I list them separately just in case one is feasible while another one is not):

1.-"Files with extension X (say .png)" & "Linked from Wikipedia Y (say, French) more than Z times"

2.-"Files with extension X (say .svg)" & "uploaded in the last Y days"

3.-"Files with extension X (say .svg)" & "uploaded in the last Y days" & "Uploaded by user Z"

4.-"Files with extension X (say .svg)" & "Belonging to category Y"

Are the above and similar complex searches feasible in Commons? If so, how?

Thank you!--Rowanwindwhistler (talk) 06:26, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

4 can be achieved to a large extend by simply searching for "svg incategory:Y" (link) this will also catch some extra stuff you don't want but in the results you can do "ctrl-f" and then search for ".svg" another way (for categories with up to 200 files) is to go to the category you want to search (link) and above the media files (below the header) you can select the filetype, however I've found this to only work for small categories as it only filters the 200 results on the current page. For point 3 you can simply use the user uploads page and search again with ctrl-f for .svg (only works for up to 500 files). There are likely other and better ways to achieve this (for example using API-queries), these are however some quick and easy ones to start with. Basvb (talk) 16:16, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestions. For the first one, I found the category has to be quoted if its name contains more than 1 word (svg incategory:"Historical SVG maps in Greek"). For the second, I am afraid I have not been able to see where to select the filetype yet... I have tried searching for it in a small category] but I did not find where to filter by filetype within it... Maybe I need to enable some configuration option to see it?--Rowanwindwhistler (talk) 20:43, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Ow I forgot you can also use catscan, that scales up better. I've looked it up and you indeed have to enable a configuration, namely the "GalleryFilterExtension". Mvg, Basvb (talk) 00:46, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Aha, I can see the extension menu now! Good indeed for quick filtering... Thank you for the tip on catscan. It seems to be more complex than I expected or else I am doing something wrong, though. If I try something simple like "Categories=Maps of the Battle of the Nile+Last change Max age=24" I should be getting a couple of maps I have uploaded a moment ago but I get nothing... I guess I need to check somthing else in the form to make it work...--Rowanwindwhistler (talk) 11:08, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

When using the search on commons, I find doing intitle:svg can be a good (not perfect) way for finding things with a specific file type. You may also be interested in fr:Spécial:Fichiers_les_plus_liés. All four of these queries can be done via sql access (For example: #1 [6], #2 [7], the last two can also be pretty easily done as well), but that's probably two complex to be usable by average commons user. Bawolff (talk) 16:57, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

I will keep that in mind too. About the URL, I did not know the tool but, though relatively complex for me I think I could manage to create the queries I need by comparing with others and it does look very flexible... However, I wonder where we can find the different fields and variables available to build the query. Is there a list somewhere or does it have to be deduced from the output of a query to a file? Thank you again for all your suggestions.--Rowanwindwhistler (talk) 09:08, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Just one quick question related to the SQL syntax to use: would it be possible to filter also by category name text? For instance, would this be feasible:

1. SVG files with "map" in at least one of its categories, linked 5k-10k times from the French Wikipedia & uploaded during the last month.

Playing around with the tool, I got as far as this (searching for "map" in the file name but not in the category as I do not know how to search the categories or whether this is possible at all). I think I would be able to add the time condition using the above examples but I have no clue how to check the categories...--Rowanwindwhistler (talk) 10:50, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

the schema (list of available variables) is available at https://tools.wmflabs.org/tools-info/schemas.php?schema=commonswiki and specificly the public parts you are allowed to use at https://tools.wmflabs.org/tools-info/schemas.php?schema=views (note its even possible to do crosswiki queries which combine fields from separate wikis. See for example the collapsible section on the bottom of [8]) the mediawiki wiki also has some information, e.g. mw:manual:categorylinks table. For your question about categories try something like (untested): use commonswiki_p;Select img_name, cl_to, count(*) from image inner join globalimagelinks on gil_to = img_name

inner join page on page_namespace=6 and page_title = img_name inner join categorylinks on cl_from = page_id where img_media_type = 'DRAWING' and img_major_mime="image" and img_minor_mime = 'svg+xml' and cl_to like '%map%' and gil_wiki = 'frwiki' and img_timestamp > 20150200000000 group by img_name , cl_to, having count(*) < 10000 and count(*)>5000;. Bawolff (talk) 19:56, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

File:Visualisation_1_Trillion.svg

To me the first four powers of 10 in this SVG appear as identical blobs in any browser window I can create. Is it possible to fix this file? Otherwise I doubt it's utility for illustrating the Powers of ten article on en:WP and elsewhere. Rich Farmbrough, 02:26 1 March 2015 (GMT).

The utility is up to editors at "en:WP and elsewhere", as they are the one deciding which graphics to use. But I agree that the creators of this graphics failed at show first 4 powers of 10 and I doubt that anybody will be able to show objects differing at 12 orders of magnitude on one graph. --Jarekt (talk) 04:09, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

It can be done as a video (a surf on Youtube will find a few that go from sub-atomic particles and zoom out to the entire known universe with a powers-of-ten countdown) however unless you show a logarithmic scale, it cannot be done in a static graph as the resolution would have to be 10¹² pixels wide. --Fæ (talk) 11:37, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Wouldn't that be the cube route of 10^12, or 10,000 pixels? But still way too big to fit within a 2000 pixel image. Delphi234 (talk) 07:18, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

March 02

Crowdfunding campaign for a macro lens for Jee

Hi all,
this is just a short note to let you know that a small group of Commons contributors have started a crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo to fund a new macro lens for our very own @Jee.

The campaign was coordinated at User talk:Jkadavoor/campaign and will end on March 24, 2015. Please have a look at the campaign page to see if this is something that you're willing to support. Thanks, odder (talk) 14:08, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the announcement, odder. We in the campaign team were not sure if it was appripriate to announce a campaign run on a commercial website for a specific user here. -- Slaunger (talk) 20:41, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Cool! :) Rehman 14:30, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Nice campaign. It is better done than previous ones. Maybe too much figures, I would have emphasise the description of the volunteer and his work (with a quote or an example of a photo report). Some remarks for the next campaigns: i) for a commonist, we should see his work on the main page, ii) avoid specific terms commonly used on Wikimedia (FP, QI) or explain them, iii) don't forget to create an hashtag to make a viral campaign. Pyb (talk) 15:14, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

@Pyb: : Thank you for your feedback.

• You may be right about the balance between facts about Jee and the campaign and slides with pretty pics. In a previous version of the promotional video for the campaign, there were many more pretty pics, so at least that aspect has improved, and I think the balance depends on the target audience - which was actually a bit hard for us to establish. Should we target Wikimedians or a completely different audience? We tried to do a bit of both, but it appears, so far that the the vast majority of donations is from Wikimedians with a high concentration of active Commons users. Maybe, as the campaign progress, it will attract a wider audience. Anyway, it seems like we are not doing too bad as 93% of the pledged amount have been sponsored already here on the launch day and there is still a month to go . (This should not keep people from donating though, as there is plenty of other useful gear, which could be of use for Jee (macro flash, bag, tripod, remote control, wildlife lens, spare battery, ...)). --Slaunger (talk) 20:41, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
• i) I am not sure I understand what you mean about seeing his work on the main page? Do you mean the Main Page of Commons? Do you mean today? I am sure several of Jees pics have been picture of the day previously. I do not think it would be appropriate to try and coordinate a campaign done on a private web page for a single user with the Commons Main page.
• ii) I am not sure I understand this thing about avoiding specific terms either. We do not mention the acronyms FP or QI anywhere. We mention featured pictures in the campain text explaining they are among the finest and linking to the actual Commons page. In the campaign video featured pictures is mentioned, but I do not think it necessarily needs further explanation at this stage. I think most people would understand that featured is something that somehow stands out as being especially good (which is sufficient).
• iii) A hashtag is probably a good idea. I have no experience when it comes to hashtags and how that can aid the campaign. You mean something like #MacroLensForJee ?

Again, thanks for your comments. -- Slaunger (talk) 20:41, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I wonder if Pyb's comments refer to the Commons page where we planned the campaign, rather than the Indiegogo campaign itself? I can't really match the comments up with either the video or campaign page. I (and I suspect Slaunger) are too old for this hashtag stuff, but if anyone here is more social-media-aware and wants to help make this viral, please do so or offer suggestions on the User talk:Jkadavoor/campaign page. We set a modest target for the campaign but there's plenty very useful equipment that could be purchased if the goal is exceeded. -- Colin (talk) 21:21, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I refer to the previous campaigns which didn't succeed or didn't succeed very well (Poco a poco, Tony the Tiger and Ryan Hodnett). I've nothing to say about Jkadavoor campaign because I like it ;) Pyb (talk) 21:57, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

So, we do have clients, like a for-profit outfit, yet we fund expenses on goodwill, like a non-profit. Sweet. What could ever go wrong…? -- Tuválkin ✉ 19:16, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

• Hi Tuválkin, as I don't speak very well english, can you precise please, is it a question or is there an issue for Commons maybe? -- Christian Ferrer 21:36, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

People who send eMails to Wikimedia eMail addresses are called "customers" (English→Malayalam→English translation might have made this "clients") in OTRS, by the software. Regarding the lens, I think it's WMIN's job to fund its purchase (and lend it the WMUK Mac mini way).    FDMS  4    20:34, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

FDMS4 It would be nice if WMIN sponsored such projects, but from browsing their site it does not appear to me that they have any kind of grant program. They have a lot of information about how to donate to WMIN, not the other way around AFAICT. -- Slaunger (talk) 20:59, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

It would be nice if WMF + regional groups did more grant making for things like this. But it doesn't seem very high priority to fund individuals or they want to attach all sorts of strings (a loan rather than gift). -- Colin (talk) 21:33, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

In regards to grants, WM-AU has a camera equpment program. I got the large equipment support grant ($1000) which covered half the cost of my camera but I did reinvest the $1000 for a 50mm lens, more SD cards and a flash unit a few years ago. Bidgee (talk) 22:11, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

@Slaunger: There is a Grants page, which redirects to a page called "Microgrants". However, no matter matter whether they would, I just think they should fund such projects.    FDMS  4    22:13, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

That grants page seems a bit dead, with nothing listed as "approved" for ages. There are differences between Australia and other developed nations, and India and other developing nations -- camera equipment costs about the same yet wages and labour and local costs are hugely different. This may influence whether it is more cost effective to locally-fund activities such as training or hiring rooms vs purchasing equipment. And anyway, the money comes from donations whether via WMF or our own efforts. But I would like WMF to consider funding such grants, which are cheap compared to the cost of organising a conference or paying US salaries. -- Colin (talk) 10:01, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Btw, in case anyone where Jee is, he's had to go away for a short while for family reasons, so doesn't have wiki access. I'm sure he's very touched, as I am, by the generosity and goodwill shown. -- Colin (talk) 21:33, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm very happy to report that the modest target of $750 has been met in one day. Clearly we underestimated the generosity of the Commons community. We were encouraged to set a low target since failure to meet the target incurs hefty penalty fees from Indiegogo. But there is more equipment that will be very useful for Jee, from the essential components of every serious photographer's kit (good camera bag, tripod) to the specialist equipment to take the best macro pictures in poor light (a macro flash). So further donations are very very welcome and will be wisely used. Of the 1000-odd photographs Jee has uploaded to Commons so far, more than half are illustrating Wikipedia articles, which is a strong measure of high quality educational photography. -- Colin (talk) 23:28, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

$1.635 now :). --Steinsplitter (talk) 12:21, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

2.000$ now :).  Awesome! -- Slaunger (talk) 20:44, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks all for your helps and supports. I was away for a few days to to some unexpected personal matters. Back now and catching up. Jee 08:25, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Fantastic work. Congratulations to everyone involved. --99of9 (talk) 00:03, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, this is Ravi from Wikimedia India. I am happy to know about Jeevan Jose's excellent work and the support he has been receiving from the community both on-wiki and off-wiki. Wikimedia India is well aware of needs like these and has put a Infrastructure Scholarship program in place for providing equipments and services that enable more and better contributions from already active community members. Wikimedia India is working under a limited budget. But, we will try our best to meet such needs. This is done under a FDC grant from WMF. So, in principle, the larger movement recognizes and supports needs like these.

As Bidgee points out, there are also precedents in the Wikimedia World.

Wikimedia Australia once had give a scholarship for the purchase of camera to User:99of9.

WMAU has documented their learning for the wider movement here.

<quote>

The most recent innovation that is beneficial to the broader Wikimedia movement is our wmau:Proposal:Camera equipment program, which supports volunteers and improves Wikimedia Commons. Before the WMAU program was approved in January 2012, the committee had approved one small grant for camera equipment in July 2011 (wmau:Resolution:Toby Hudson's Small Grant). With the program in place, we have approved reimbursement for camera equipment purchases of $1600, and are currently reviewing another application for reimbursement of $500.

</quote>

Having said these, I would also like to highlight that grants for equipments like these have to be properly accounted by each organization according to the laws of the countries they have been registered. Some times, it can be impossible or may involve lot of paper work (especiallywhen foreign grant money is involved) and risk in case of damage or loss of the equipment. So, it is up to each organization to figure out how to support these needs. But, there is no second opinion that movement funds should be used for meeting such needs. Thanks.--Ravidreams (WMIN) (talk) 07:08, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

The precedents aren't particularly impressive or indicative of a healthy regular grant support for Wikimedians. The one for 99of9 (Toby Hudson) wasn't (from what I read) a "scholarship for the purchase of camera" but a grant of $200 towards a $900 macro lens he was buying. In return he promised a certain number of usable images, which has been achieved. The Australian program page looks fairly dusty (is there another page where applications are discussed/approved?) and seems to have rather stiff requirements (such as 1000 images in 1000 categories). It seems more concerned with quantity than quality (size requirements of 1000px are ridiculously meager and indicative of a history by some of only donating small size images to Commons while retaining full-size images for commercial sale). The India program has offered $79 towards the loan of a scanner. I understand the limited budget, which is why I think this is something WMF should be looking at, for whom $79 is small change. -- Colin (talk) 08:20, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

From what I know of WM-AU, it is almost a zombie chapter, slowly eating its way through funding and offering very little back to the community or Wiki projects, arguably with the exception of those photography grants I suppose. I have a feeling that it's largely down to the lack of interest of its members, and partly due to the large geographical distances making it hard for members to meet and organise... I recently asked why WM-AU hasn't been involved in Wiki Loves Monuments, and the response was that nobody was interested in organising it. It's a shame. Australia is a relatively 'new' country but it has plenty of interesting 19th century monuments, and certainly not devoid of talented Wikipedian photographers (although history shows that the wildlife and landscapes are more of an interest than buildings!). Diliff (talk) 12:11, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

@Diliff: I don't think that's a fair characterization. I'd say it's simply a small chapter in comparison to some of the behemoths we know and love. I'm not on the committee but am a happy member. There is very significant support from WMAU for activities in the GLAM sector (see the GLAMWIKI newsletter for month-by-month details, including stacks of library training and engagement). It's not always financial (because as you say we haven't applied for major central funding, apart from the country-based fundraiser). The committee networked with Wikibomb + and Wikimedia in Higher Education organizers to provide volunteer support. The photography equipment grant scheme discussed above is still in operation, and although the numbers sound low, there are not that many of us contributing high volumes on Commons. Commons also benefits from the GLAM relationships: I now have ~monthly contact with State Librarians in my state who are now established Wikipedians in their own right, and have managed to convince their institution to properly acknowledge the permission status of out-of-copyright works, enabling mass uploads of 12,000 items of historic media so far. And that's just the stuff I've benefitted from... There's also been a lot of work on wikitowns, and I believe there is a standing offer to support meetups (which is sometimes taken up in Melbourne). @Gnangarra: and @Kerry Raymond: are both Commons contributors on the current committee and may have more to add (sorry if I left out others). To find out more, please consider attending Wikiconference Australia 2015, another event they are organizing. --99of9 (talk) 23:40, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm happy to stand corrected then! I'd like to see the chapters more involved, but I guess we can't magic interested participants out of thin air, and it has to happen organically. Australia used to contribute a lot more active photographers in the past than seems to be the case now. I know that the images we see on QI and FPC are just the tip of the iceberg, but there used to be more active participation from Aussies than seems to be the case now. For what it's worth, I will one day soon (this year or perhaps next) be returning to Australia, so I suppose I shouldn't upset my future local chapter. :-) Diliff (talk) 00:16, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

This probably isn't the place to have a conversation about WMAU and WLM, but the problem is not the organisation of it. The problem is that that we must upload datasets of monuments to the WLMdatabase. In most cases the datasets (which are maintained by a number of govt agencies plus some non-govt ones) are not avaialable to us. For example, we could do it for Queensland because I have negotiated access to that dataset, but we could not do it for most other states. To collect and enter all that data manually is a massive task, which understandably nobody is very keen to do. Also we wanted to include war memorials, which are very important culturally in Australia and particularly significant with the Gallipoli cententary approaching, yet we were told our war memorials were not acceptable for inclusion in WLM. If WLM would be more flexible about its requirements for participation, then we would probably be taking part. Also, our chapter is very active in outreach with programs of edit training and public talks (for any group or individual that asks us) at no cost (see our Past events page for details). We are rolling out hundreds of new articles using content that we have negotiated CC-BY access, we have the two WikiTowns projects running, etc. We have the camera scheme as previously mentioned. Where we have not been so successful is in organising local meet-ups, as turn-out has been pretty discouraging and we really don't know what we can do to improve that. So I am really not sure why people might think us inactive; perhaps we are just too busy doing things to have time to blow our own trumpet. Kerry Raymond (talk)

@Colin: I agree that the WMF should (centrally or via chapters) expand something like the WMAU Photography equipment scheme more broadly. Contributing photos to Wiki*edia can be much more costly than contributing words to Wikipedia. IMO it was good to start with requirements on the stiff side, and small co-contributions ($200 of $900) to ensure the system is not gamed, and goes to genuine contributors rather than those in it for the $$$. Maybe other schemes could set a lower bar but achieve this with a strong oversight and screening process instead. Like you, I argued for quality (specifically the QI process) as a metric when the scheme was being set up, but it was considered complex as it is, and Wikipedia often values images that fill an important niche more than super high quality that we snobs on Commons look for. --99of9 (talk) 23:50, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

. Although it's great that we're a repository for the world's media, we have to keep in mind that most of it gets very little traffic. One great image that is used in multiple articles on multiple language Wikipedia articles is (IMO) much more valuable than ten or one hundred sub-par images of some obscure object or building, only a couple of which could ever conceivably be used on Wikipedia. Both ends of the spectrum have their place and I'm certainly not saying we should sacrifice one for the other, but the potential utility of an image should be a factor in valuing it and I think those super high quality 'trophy images' of the sort that feature in POTY should be a strategic goal of Wikimedia chapters just as much as bulk dumps of images from GLAMs. Diliff (talk) 00:16, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

On the other hand, I took a series of photos at the Harvard Natural History Museum, e.g. File:Epomophorus labiatus Harvard.jpg. As you can see, that's not going to win any POTY competition, but it happens to be our best only photo of the Ethiopian epauletted fruit bat. OTOH, File:Swallow flying drinking.jpg is a striking photo, but the descriptions don't agree on what species it is, and the mainspace pages it's actually in use on have a good selection of alternate images for whatever species it is.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:36, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

The way I see it: ultimately we want quality reader experience, which is roughly: eyeballs * quality. Eyeballs is roughly: project_usage * coreness. Project usage depends either on identified nicheness/rareness (eg Prosfilaes) or best-in-class quality (eg Diliff). So both are obviously good targets. GLAM is mainly useful because it's a fast way to get a *lot* of diverse/rare images (and it's also a place where the officialness of chapter backing reaps credibility rewards). It's interesting to compare two straightforward sets: modern quality mostly identified CSIRO images, 603 used + low quality but historic QSA images, 204 used which are roughly on par with my total QI contributions, 1246 used but about 500 of those are Jesus. Obviously I spent a lot more time getting the photographs! --99of9 (talk) 01:19, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

That's interesting analysis, I haven't seen Glamtools before. OK, but lets break the numbers down:

QSA media. 4572 images, 204 total image uses and 156 distinct images used across the Wiki projects, meaning 3.7% of them are used at least once.

CSIRO media. 3527 images, 603 total image uses and 314 distinct images used across the Wiki projects, with 8.9% of them used at least once.

99of9's QI media. 143 images, 1246 total image uses and 139 distinct images used across the Wiki projects, with 97.2% of them used at least once.

Diliff's FP media. 156 images, 11685 total image uses and 154 distinct images used across the Wiki projects, with 98.72% of them used at least once.

This is not an attempt to toot my own horn (but toot toot!)... It just goes to show that user-generated content, particularly the 'best-in-class' images are orders of magnitude more useful to the Wiki projects. Whether this is because they are genuinely more useful images, or whether they are used more simply because the users who created them have more of an incentive to find appropriate homes for them, I don't know. I suppose there is the relative obscurity of QSA and CSIRO's images compared to the more commonly referenced subjects that most of us tend to photograph. Either way, it seems like a strong case for the Wikimedia chapters valuing user-generated content. Diliff (talk) 02:10, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

I think that someone who is going out and photographing content that they know is needed in existing articles is always the most valuable contribution, because those people both upload to Commmons and then use the photo in articles. But we have plenty of people just uploading photos for which we don't yet have articles, just as we have people writing articles for which we don't have photos, but slowly the two do converge. I write a lot of new articles and I am often amazed at how often I find a photo on Commons uploaded many years earlier, so a photo unused today isn't a never-used photo, just a not-yet used photo. And collections like QSA (which I know intimately as I categorised most of it) which are bulk uploaded will also slowly start to get used more as time passes, but of course I would never expect them to be as heavily used for two reasons: being out-of-copyright means they are mostly old low-res black-and-white images - of course we'd prefer high-res colour images where we have them. Secondly, bulk uploads tend to have a particular collection focus and possibly have too much on niche topics. For example, the QSA has hundreds of images of the construction of the Story Bridge. OK, we will never need all of them for Wikipedia articles, but we can and do include the Commons Categories in the article for anyone wanting more images that don't get included in the GLAM tools reporting. As I mostly write historical articles, I do draw on those collections. Can any Commons contributor take a photo for me of a 19th century politican? For historical people and historical events, we do depend on GLAM uploads to a large extent as our only source. Wikipedia's coverage is currently strongly skewed to the present day. We need both kinds of contributions. Kerry Raymond (talk) 02:34, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

@Diliff: GLAMorous is a super-useful resource. To make the case you are suggesting, you first should tick "Main namespace only", whereupon my percentage drops to 70.63%... but more importantly it's worth notionally dividing the usage by the effort+expenses. For me the effort required to upload the entire QSA database was roughly equivalent to obtaining one Featured Picture! or about 20 QIs. Anyway, I don't think we're really arguing - I totally agree that Chapters should continue to value and support user-generated content. But they should also continue to support GLAM content. --99of9 (talk) 06:16, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

@Ravidreams (WMIN): What do you mean by "there is no second opinion that movement funds should be used for meeting such needs"? Are you looking for a second chapter to set up a similar scheme (cf Wikimedia CH have a lending scheme that seems quite productive)? Do you take the absence of a second scheme as an indication that the chapters/communities disapprove of using movement funds this way? --99of9 (talk) 23:58, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

If I were to offer advice to another chapter or similar thinking of running a Camera Scheme, I would say "don't have too many rules, instead trust the judgement of your own people". It's tempting to add lots of rules about quality, quantity etc, but as the conversation above demonstrates, different images are useful in different ways. And you can over-worry about people gaming the system. The rules should never be "tick these boxes and you get funded". They should be more guidelines of "these are what are likely to make your application successful". If you pick a small group of people in your chapter who are active on Commons to make the decisions, they will easily be able to assess if the person is making a good faith effort to contribute useful photos or just gaming the system. The "quality trap" is that past contributions may be made in low-res because the person is using old equipment, but, if you helped them upgrade to newer equipment, then their future contributions would be higher quality. The scheme should always be focussed on what they will do in the future with the camera, not what they did in the past (other than as a demonstration of their commitment to good faith contributions to Commons). I note as well as the Camera Scheme, WMAU also has a general Volunteer Support Scheme to assist financially with any reasonable expense needed to contribute to Wikipedia in some way (again, using past contributions as an indicator of good faith applications). This includes things like reference books and travel to specific locations and events relevant to the person's normal areas of contribution.Kerry Raymond (talk) 02:50, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree with you. Local or on-wiki knowledge plus AGF is more important that 1000 images in 1000 categories (I'm struggling to think who might qualify for that and who I also regard as a great photographer?). And yes, local travel expenses might be one way to help a photographer rather than equipment, particularly if the local expenses are cheap vs imported electronics. Please do away with low-res thresholds. There hasn't been a camera made in the last 10 years that can't do a decent 6MP image. -- Colin (talk) 08:46, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Several chapters have some kind of Equipment lending scheme − Wikimedia CH was mentionned, but also Wikimedia Österreich, Wikimédia France, Wikimedia Sverige or Wikimedia UK (and maybe others). Jean-Fred (talk) 13:19, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

and also the biggest one, WMDE: Wikipedia:Technikpool, Wikipedia:Festivalsommer/Technik. See also the specific projets that intensively use lending programs to cover sports events (fr:Projet:Sport/Photo) or music events (de:Wikipedia:Festivalsommer. Pyb (talk) 14:06, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

February 23

Video quality fixed incorrectly

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T91431

File:Diamond Trust of London - Kickstarter.webm defaults to a shit quality transcode in the player. There is no setting to change the version being played back in the default viewer. The only way to get the original quality is to open up the file manually in the browser, bypassing TimedMediaHandler. Fairly sure this is a bug. - hahnchen 21:39, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, it really should be choosing the original file as the source on browsers supporting webm. (The reason it only does crappy transcodes is because the height of the video is less than 314px high, and the smallest webm transcode we do is 360 px high. But in these cases its supposed to use original webm). Problem appears to be in player javascript. It works correctly with js disabled. Bawolff (talk) 18:51, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Silly TimedMediaHandler. It detects the video as video/webm; codecs="vorbis, vp8", but refuses to play it because it thinks it only supports video/webm; codecs="vp8, vorbis". This is definitely a bug. Bawolff (talk) 19:11, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Filed phab:T91431. Bawolff (talk) 19:11, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

FFmpeg log on the talk page JFTR, but obviously encoding one MP4 bit in four WebM bits did not really help. –Be..anyone (talk) 20:15, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

March 03

Licencing query

Not sure what to do with this file - File:SoutheastAustralia MapLocator.png. It is good for using for ranges for southeastern Australian organisms but is the licencing a problem...also...does Tasmania look a little big on this? Do we think it is fixable? Casliber (talk) 04:08, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

No. It looks just right. --Dschwen (talk) 18:40, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

25k PD-old photos by Pedro II of Brazil

…where are they in Commons? Here the tantalizing catalogue in Brazil’s National Library, but I could not find a single entry among Common’s photos credited to Pedro II of Brazil (1825-1891), let alone the mentioned 25 thousand. Any ideas? -- Tuválkin ✉ 00:24, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

• Any better link on that Brazil National Library thing? Because that one comes up empty for me. - Jmabel ! talk 23:34, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

It is a quaint weird thing: I didn’t noticed it before, but you need to click on the button with a big bold ">" on it, next to the search box where there’s already pre-filled the search term "colecao|d.|teresa|cristina|maria". The search lists items which are mostly photos or photo collections and links to their descriptions (the book icon), but is shows no photos, not even a tiny thumbnail. It is like they don’t want to have it online at all (maybe because they know it would be impossible to enforce an exclusive copyright?). -- Tuválkin ✉ 02:07, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Its the online version of a en:library catalog, not an online copy of the content registered in that catalog. --Martin H. (talk) 20:21, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Pages with no revisions

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T91679

The following pages seem to exist but have no revisions:

• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Pjy 2014-02-21 14-32.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Office outfit for ladies -) 2014-02-21 18-17.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Sltung-FB.png
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:My 8G Prince Albert Piercing 1.JPG

Instead of seeing any revisions, I see an error message:

The revision #0 of the page named "Commons:Village pump/Archive/2015/03" does not exist.

This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted. Details can be found in the deletion log.

What is this caused by? --Stefan4 (talk) 17:46, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Strange, must be some broken database, page from first link is at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Pjy 2014-02-21 14-32.jpg a --Denniss (talk) 18:50, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I deleted Commons:Deletion requests/File:Sltung-FB.png (sometimes deleting & restoring is crating page id in database). But now all revisions seems completely lost :/ --> https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=Commons%3ADeletion_requests%2FFile%3ASltung-FB.png --Steinsplitter (talk) 19:11, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Created a bugreport: phabricator:T91679 --Steinsplitter (talk) 19:13, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Category:James B. Weaver

This is a strange one: Category:James B. Weaver is an uncategorized and recent category that is a duplicate to the older Category:James Weaver. All files but one can be moved to the other category. But the one picture (File:James Weaver - Brady-Handy.jpg) leads to a warning message and seems to generate an automatic subcategorization of Category:James B. Weaver under Category:James Weaver. Is there any template sorcery involved or am I just to dumb to do it the right way? --Rudolph Buch (talk) 14:28, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

like that? Mvg, Basvb (talk) 14:41, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Errr - yes, exactly like that. When I tried this (and I did try several times) I got strange error messages about transcluded blocked templates and such. But thanks... --Rudolph Buch (talk) 15:14, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: --Rudolph Buch (talk) 15:17, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Non-Latin-script page titles

Browsing around pages like 東京 and Улаанбаатар, I take it there must be some kind of policy that city/country/similar pages' names be in the language that the place that they are describing uses. This is fair enough, and I understand that pages like Tokyo do redirect, but, if you came upon a page like ላሊበላ by some means other than typing in the English/Spanish/... redirect, then you may have no idea what the page is about.

As a proposal, for logged-in users, at least, could the Commons software: (a) take your user language (say, Spanish), (b) if it isn't the same as the language the page's title is in, check Wikidata whether that wiki (i.e., es.wp) has a name for the Commons page you are on, (c), display the page title for you as something like "東京 [Tokio]" or "ላሊበላ [Lalibela]", so that you had a better chance of understanding it? Note that not all articles have translation-boxes (e.g. 東京 does, but ላሊበላ currently doesn't), so these aren't always availalble for users. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 20:34, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't know if there's any policy which requires galleries to be in native script, but some of the users who are speakers of such languages prefer it (especially since categories are currently required to be in Latin alphabet). AnonMoos (talk) 16:40, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

New York City help sought

Last October there were over 4000 images in Category:New York City. I've been able to assign a more specific location category to the vast bulk of them (usually with a precise location such as a street address, particular building, etc., except for those which are, for example, a general Lower Manhattan skyline). I haven't lived in New York since the 1970s, but in some ways that was an advantage because many of these were historical photos of now-demolished buildings.

Somewhere under 200 images remain in Category:Unidentified locations in New York City and Category:Unidentified locations in Manhattan. Perhaps half of these are hopeless (simply not enough visible to place them) but I suspect that someone who knows the city -- especially the present-day city -- better than I do could pin down another 50-100. - Jmabel ! talk 17:12, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Nice work Jmabel! I think that for some of the images, such as portrait images or buses without any background, the location is not a relevant property of the image (and they are near impossible to find). I would suggest removing such images from the unidentified location cats. Other files such as File:Verkoopakte Manhattan.jpg are relevant for Manhattan, but don't have a location (It's the sale document of Manhattan from the Dutch). Mvg, Basvb (talk) 22:18, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

For the most part, I agree. User:Epicgenius placed that particular Verkoopakte file in that "unidentified location" category, not me. As for bus and taxi photos, in general I'm not the one who put them in "unidentified location" categories (although in some cases I may have moved files from Category:Unidentified locations in New York City to Category:Unidentified locations in Manhattan because I could tell exactly that much), but it's remarkable what little details of locations are sometimes enough to tell the tale. I got some out of photos like that (e.g. File:Academy MCI D4500 8950.jpg, which even shows one major building that has since been demolished) and I bet there are still a few that can be pinned down by someone else. For example, [:File:Orion hybrid bus in New York city-3.JPG]] and File:Orion hybrid bus in New York city-4.JPG are clearly the same location as each other, and I'd be almost certain they are on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, but I don't know quite where. - Jmabel ! talk 03:28, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

There are definitely many images that I can easily identify, since I live in NYC, so I'll be cleaning out Category:Unidentified locations in New York City and Category:Unidentified locations in Manhattan in the next few weeks or so. Epic Genius (talk) 03:32, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

@Epicgenius: Wonderful! - Jmabel ! talk 19:04, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Inspire Campaign: Improving diversity, improving content

This March, we’re organizing an Inspire Campaign to encourage and support new ideas for improving gender diversity on Wikimedia projects. Less than 20% of Wikimedia contributors are women, and many important topics are still missing in our content. We invite all Wikimedians to participate. If you have an idea that could help address this problem, please get involved today! The campaign runs until March 31.

All proposals are welcome - research projects, technical solutions, community organizing and outreach initiatives, or something completely new! Funding is available from the Wikimedia Foundation for projects that need financial support. Constructive, positive feedback on ideas is appreciated, and collaboration is encouraged - your skills and experience may help bring someone else’s project to life. Join us at the Inspire Campaign and help this project better represent the world’s knowledge!

• Inspire Campaign main page

(Sorry for the English - please translate this message!) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:01, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

This is a very important and very needed outreach and I wish it full success. I have however a question about a minor point — one that is stated above and often repeated elsewhere: How can it be said that «less than 20% of Wikimedia contributors are women», or any other such exact value, when so many of us chose not to disclose any information about their gender?… -- Tuválkin ✉ 00:22, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

All I can see is the Wikimedia Foundation/UNU-MERIT survey and a couple of papers listed at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Gender_gap. It looks like it's all based on opt-in data from 2011 or earlier. --ghouston (talk) 08:40, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Besides that, even perfect data about the number of contributors wouldn't be the whole story. A wiki with one male contributor with 10,000 edits and one female contributor with 1 edit would still be male-dominated. --ghouston (talk) 09:41, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

It is based on a survey they did a while ago. Really there is no way to know exactly what the percentage is for certain. I would pose this though. For any of you who have ever seen the pictures from the meetups or from Wikimania, just scan those photos for women. There sure seems to be an awful lot in those pictures to me. Not as many as men I admit, but still a lot. For example, I just looked at 3 different Wikimania group photos and there are approximately 63 women in each one. Using File:Wikimania 2012 Group Photograph-0001.jpg as an example, it appears that women make up at least 20% of the crowd. Reguyla (talk) 20:14, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Some Alaskans here? We need to photograph the Iditarod

Hello, I hope to contact some Alaskan editors here. I work on sled dog racing on several wikiprojects (Wikidata, Commons and several Wikipedias) and I need photographs of, well, about anyone, actually. So if some of you are in Anchorage on Saturday, in Fairbanks on Monday or on any of the checkpoints of the 2015 Iditarod, could you please go and photograph them? We have actually photos of several mushers but most of the participants this year doesn't have any free pictures (and when we have free pictures they are several years old most of the time). So any new photo, at all, would be pretty good. We need photos of every musher, even rookies, if possible. There are several categories on Commons, like Category:Mushers and subcategories, but you can just import on Category:2015 Iditarod (it doesn't exist right now but I'll create it once we have some photos) and I'll clean them up. Thank you very much. --Harmonia Amanda (talk) 23:39, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

@Harmonia Amanda: Not that I am a Twitter person at all, but this seems like something where there is probably a relevant hashtag that could be poked at. Revent (talk) 10:27, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Actually, I also did this announcement on twitter, and on Wikipedia. No one has yet responded to me but I still hope! --Harmonia Amanda (talk) 13:14, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Upload error

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T91761
RESOLVED

Getting repeated message An unknown error occurred in storage backend "local-swift-eqiad". Will try again... AnonMoos (talk) 16:36, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Same here, glad it's not just me. mr.choppers (talk)^-en- 16:38, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Uploading broken, reported to techs: phabricator:T91761 --Steinsplitter (talk) 16:44, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

People are looking into the issue. Current theory is a recent config change broke things. They're going to try and revert it to see if that fixes it. Bawolff (talk) 16:49, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Should be fixed now (Thanks to Reedy). Bawolff (talk) 17:02, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Worked for me, thanks!!! mr.choppers (talk)^-en- 17:19, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Proposal for Main Page migration into new translation system

Hi! I propose migration of Main Page into new translation system. This will simplify the centralized maintenance of all language versions, it will be easier to add new translations and all versions will be generally synchronous. Current scheme with localized page names will be saved. Any objections? --Kaganer (talk) 23:04, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Oppose. Some mainpages like to add individual notices/style. And it is also a problem with all the individual protections. And it is creating /subpages like /de /fr but mainpages have a own naming here on commons, like /de = Hauptseite. Not a good idea imho. --Steinsplitter (talk) 10:22, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

User:Kaganer said that the «Current scheme with localized page names will be saved»; I assume that means that Hauptseite will become a redirect of Main_Page/de, or one will be transcluded in the other. It should be transparent for users who access it, I think. -- Tuválkin ✉ 04:45, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, trancluded, as in Meta. See explanation. --Kaganer (talk) 00:38, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Weird behaviour of MediaWiki message delivery

It just posted some notification at discussion page of my template in my userspace:User_talk:Pbm/Credits? Why it posted it to template page instead my user page discussion? And how it's targeted - why I'm getting messages in Ukrainian? Paweł 'pbm' Szubert (talk) 17:08, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Because you are listed on Commons talk:Wiki Loves Monuments in Ukraine/3 years total number of objects pictured by uploader. Sent by @Ahonc: . Looks like a list generator error by the WLM Ukraine team. --Steinsplitter (talk) 17:12, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

That list was generated by user:Ilya, I only sent message.--Anatoliy (talk) 17:17, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Ok, I think I know how I got into the list - I have some photos from Ukraine. And recenly I had User_talk:Pbm/Credits as template in Author field (it's now fixed and moved to some other field). Thanks for explanation. Paweł 'pbm' Szubert (talk) 19:07, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Upload from Google Art Project

Hi! Can someone upload the new best version from same source of this file, please? --Micione (talk) 13:44, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

 Done by Shansov.net. Yann (talk) 16:50, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, but why the other version? --Micione (talk) 17:19, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

I tried to create manually a better version with the FireShot plugin, but it doesn't work as advertised. Yann (talk) 17:56, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Sorry for my English. I wanted to say, why it is uploaded in this file, instead in this? Is from Google Art Project? --Micione (talk) 22:44, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Manually upload Geograph images?

What's the route for doing this these days?

I've been trying to use http://tools.wmflabs.org/geograph2commons/ but had no joy from it today. Tried re-registering TUSC (which has been known to fix it in the past). Now can't login to TUSC.

Does any of this still work? Has it been replaced by something else?

I'm after http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2682446 if anyone fancies a useful import test image!

Thanks Andy Dingley (talk) 12:26, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

I have uploaded the file at File:Leawood Pump (geograph 2682446).jpg. I agree the geograph2commons tool does not appear to be working correctly at present. I just got it to work as far generating the file information which I then copied and pasted in to the basic upload form and manually uploaded it that way. There may well be a better or at least more convenient way of doing it that I am not aware of. Rept0n1x (talk) 13:15, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Andy Dingley (talk) 00:27, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

French translator needed

Hi friends. There's an ongoing discussion regarding some emblems from France in Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Oursmili. @Oursmili: has referred to a discussion in the French Wikipedia that, if I've understood it correctly, supports that this kind of emblems is in the public domain. However, I'm not being able to completely verify it, as I can't speak French at all. It would be helpful if some French speaker with some knowledge of the English language translated (or at least summarized) said discussion. Best regards --Discasto _{talk | contr. | es.wiki analysis} 20:40, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia Takes Manhattan project

Why do a bunch of categories have in their main page, "This category has been improved by the Wikipedia Takes Manhattan project"? I would think that, at most, if any thing like this is tracked it would belong on the talk page. I've improved literally thousands of category pages, but I don't go leaving marks like this on them. - Jmabel ! talk 15:40, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Pinging @Pharos: the organizer of the project. --El Grafo (talk) 13:57, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, this project was from 7 years ago (!), so standards were not quite established then, and I agree it would be better to put it on the talk pages now. The reason for the effort is this was a large collective project with dozens of photographers participating.--Pharos (talk) 14:58, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Slow uploading?

Myself and a few others have found uploading to Commons to be rather slow, not sure if anyone else is experiencing the slowness but it is painful to just upload one 2 Meg file (in some cases it takes up to 10 minutes). Bidgee (talk) 06:58, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

• I'm supposed to be getting 40kb/s uploading, but Commons is not giving me that either. I had thought it was just my connection. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 16:23, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

I Origins

I recognised a Commons picture in this film (00:11:50) as I edited the related article once upon a time and I have an aptitude for facial recognition. They had special thanks to everyone at the finishing credits for permissions but not a mention of us even though User:che specifically says "Please credit as "Petr Novák, Wikipedia" in case you use this outside Wikimedia projects." Naughty millionaire producers who download and use random pictures of the Internet!

Here is a still image from the film. I guess it is fair usage now.--Abuk SABUK (talk) 01:15, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Creationists being dishonest? Why am I not surprised…? -- Tuválkin ✉ 05:18, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Woww, you have a good eye for an eye :)!! As this is notable for the image I added the information. See File:Eye iris.jpg#Usage. Sander.v.Ginkel (talk) 14:00, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Note that you can also use {{Published}} on a file talk page to indicate the usage of a file. — SMUconlaw (talk) 14:13, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Commons:Photo challenge: Anybody interested in a challenge for analog (film) photography?

Lifeguard making sure film won't die while it's enjoying its autumn years at the beach (together with vinyl records and handwritten letters). By Christopher Crouzet, taken with a Hasselblad 500.

Dear all, most of you probably have heard of (or already participated in) our monthly Photo challenges. Recently, the idea has come up to do a special challenge that doesn't have a fixed subject picture-content wise, but would be restricted to photos taken with analog equipment. The challenge in a nutshell (see proposal for how it might look like + discussion):

De-dust whatever old analog photography equipment you can get your hands on, shoot whatever you like (must fit COM:SCOPE of course), digitize the results and enter them in the challenge.

The photo challenges were always intended to encourage people a) go shooting, b) try something new/different and c) have fun doing it, and I think this challenge would fit this spirit perfectly. However, analog photography takes a lot of time: You need to finish a roll of film (unless you're shooting polaroid – which would be fine!), have it developed and digitize it. We would probably account for that by letting the challenge run longer than the usual month, but we are still a bit concerned that this may deter people from participating, so:

What do you think? Could you imagine shooting some film in order to participate?

Thanks for your input, --El Grafo (talk) 15:07, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

• Might sound odd, but I quite frankly can't think of a single place where I live that develops film. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:16, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
• No I can't imagine shooting some film, but I can imagine dusting off some old photographs and scanning them. --Jarekt (talk) 15:22, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
• Most argentic pictures I have which have some educational value are already uploaded here. I don't have an an analog camera anymore, and I won't buy one, even for a contest. ;oD But otherwise, why not?... Yann (talk) 15:25, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
• This would encourage shooting lower quality images than with digital equipment. Not to mention that majority of users already don't have film cameras. It would be surely better to ask for scanning of existing analog images --- [Tycho] ^talk 15:27, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Existing analog images taken by the uploaders, naturally (as that is part of what the photo challenge is about). — Crisco 1492 (talk) 16:22, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

2D photo releases of 3D artworks

Are there any good examples we can point to of 2D photo releases of 3D artworks? I.e., the underlying three dimensional artwork remains copyrighted, but the artist has agreed to copyleft a particular 2D photographic view of it. This is for a partnership project with a museum, fwiw.--Pharos (talk) 16:37, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

I can not think of an example of a single photograph of a sculpture being approved for by the sculptor of still copyrighted sculpture, but I do not see an issue with it. I would suggest using {{Art photo}} template for description where you can most clearly separate 2 works (the sculpture and the photograph) and the 2 authors. We would need OTRS letter from the sculptor and possibly the photographer. --Jarekt (talk) 16:50, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

How do I upload a non-free company logo?

I've searched all the village pump, and archives and help for specific instructions about non-free company logo images, and how (specifically) to upload them. The last time I tried to upload one, it was removed with speedy deletion because I'm sure I just filled out the information wrong. If someone can clearly explain step-by-step like say for example the Starbucks logo got put into Wikimedia Commons, I'd like to upload one just like that (same process). Thanks! Zul32 (talk) 20:26, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Commons doesn't accept non-free files. You'd need to convert it to a free logo by getting the company to officially release it under a free license. Alternatively you could try to upload it to a Wikipedia project instead using a fair-use rationale. --ghouston (talk) 23:31, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

If the Starbucks logo is accepted here, it means either it's not considered to be a non-free logo, or nobody got around to deleting it yet. --ghouston (talk) 23:36, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

If you are talking about this file, it's on Wikipedia, not Commons. --ghouston (talk) 00:00, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

There is a Category:Starbucks_logos here, but that's a logo I wouldn't upload here, the usual excuses like {{PD-textlogo}}, {{PD-shape}}, etc. aren't applicable for a seriously complex logo. As Ghouston already said, "fair use" with an upload on a Wikipedia (not commons) permitting "fair use" is a different story. –Be..anyone (talk) 00:29, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Christmas crossword

EFF Crossword Puzzle 2014: The Year in Copyright News

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published this (copyright related) crossword which you can play online at http://thedod.github.io/eff-crossword-2014/. It makes a nice break from feeding yourself with Christmas treats. Happy holidays everyone. Fæ (talk)   16:57, 25 December 2014‎ (UTC)

Can be archived, I guess. --McZusatz (talk) 21:23, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Turning an individual djvu-page

Hello, I need to have turned this djvu-page [9]]. Can someone do that? --Havang(nl) (talk) 12:51, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

• Probably you can just make this request on the page with {{Rotate}}, but if you don't think anyone will follow through on that for a djvu document, you could bring this to Commons:Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop. Not exactly an illustration, but I think that's where you'd be most likely to find someone who knows djvu. - Jmabel ! talk 01:35, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

My understanding is that you have to 'decompile' the djvu to individual images, rotate the particular one, and then convert it back to a djvu... major pain. Hopefully someone knows an easier way. Revent (talk) 03:37, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions. I couldn't put rotate on the page, which should rotate all pages of the File. I finally choosed to download this one page, turn rotate and type the texte on my computer, and publish. --Havang(nl) (talk) 10:27, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Fake claim of origin

The uploader claims that this image comes from a "Offical Military Newspaper 1923". It is however taken from the Andrew Mollo's book The Armed Forcds of World War II. Uniforms, insignia and organizations (Crown Publishers, New York) 1981.

Creuzbourg (talk) 21:09, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

See: Royal Yugoslavian Air Force Rank Chart Creuzbourg (talk) 21:33, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Creuzbourg, this belongs in a deletion request, then. (And I think you’re wrong, by the way.) -- Tuválkin ✉ 06:40, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

And where would I find that? You Wiki-guys are really not weary user friendly, acting more like stereotype DMV bureaucrats. Creuzbourg (talk) 11:43, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

You’re as much of a “Wiki-guy” as anyone else here (including the bad temper and the creative rudeness, present at least in some of us). You nominate a file for deletion by clicking a link on its filepage that reads "Nominate for deletion" (it shows on the left side column on my screen, probably also in yours). That will open a separate discussion page where people can chime in to discuss the deletion request, present arguments, and support or oppose the request; after a week, give or take, an administrator will close the matter and delete, or keep, the file. (I guess a DMV bureaucrat would tell you to look it up…) -- Tuválkin ✉ 12:26, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

SVG- and Commons-related travel grant (endorsements welcome)

Example image drawn by Kevin

Hi community,
it has come to my attention that there is quite an interesting Commons-related grant that's just been submitted as part of the Travel & Participation Grants programme on Meta (jointly organised by the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Deutschland and WMCH).

In short, Kelvin Song (@Kelvinsong) — whom some of you might recognize as a top-class creator of educational (and in, my opinion as a basic SVG creator, absolutely mind-blowing) SVG images — is asking for a grant to represent the Wikimedia community, and Commons in particular, at the Libre Graphics Meeting, which is due to take place in Toronto, Canada, at the end of April/beginning of May this year.

I don't usually follow TPS grant or advertise them in such a manner, but as a huge fan of Kelvin's outstanding work, and a SVG creator myself, I think this is an excellent way of at least attempting to bring new skills and people to an under-discovered area of Commons.

The grant page is on Meta; any help with copy-editing of the text as well as endorsements will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks! odder (talk) 22:47, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes; Kelvinsong's illustrations are mind-blowing! Thanks for the info. Jee 12:24, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Always positively delighted when I see these wonderful educative and artistic works. Especially because my attempts to draw SVGs hopelessly failed. -- Rillke^(q?) 21:05, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

WMF to file suit against the NSA

Hi, I first checked that we were not on April 1st, but no, this is real. So the WMF decided to file suit against the NSA, the United States Department of Justice, and the United States Attorney General. I don't know which practical results that would bring, but bravo to the legal team to take up such a challenge.

• Mailing list
• Wikimedia Blog
• New York Times

Regards, Yann (talk) 13:42, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Reuters, The Independent, PC World. -- Cirt (talk) 14:16, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Templates "by year" leading categories to show up as uncategorized

Hi, there are some categories "by year" that are listed at Special:UncategorizedCategories although they are categorized automatically by a template. Examples are

• Category:Akihabara in the 2000s
• Category:Churches in Ireland photographed in 2012
• Category:Introductions of the 1560s
• Category:July 2012 in Lviv Oblast
• Category:1822 maps of Russia
• Category:1852 drawings by country
• Category:1860s works in Norway
• Category:1861 works in Norway
• Category:1900s works in Wiesbaden
• Category:1910s works in Wiesbaden
• Category:1917 works in Poland
• Category:1991 events in Russia

Can this be fixed? Thanks, --Rudolph Buch (talk) 13:23, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

This has been a problem for a while not just for the categories but even for the files themselves. I think the only way to Fix this, because of the way that report is generated by the software, would be to create a sort of tracking category to account for it. Maybe something like Category:Categories with only template categories and Category:Articles with only template categories for the articles just so they will stop showing on the list. Adding the category to the ones that have any of those templates (or others) would be trivial to do with AWB or through any number of other methods and would greatly reduce the backlog of files in the Files with missing categories categories. Reguyla (talk) 13:59, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

moved from COM:AN --Steinsplitter (talk) 14:28, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Its because the categories for the page wasn't regenerated when the template changed (They are supposed to be regenerated whenever a template changes, but sometimes the job queue barfs). I've forced the categories for everything the first 545 entries on that list to be re-evaluated. In three days the list should be updated with such entries removed. Bawolff (talk) 19:21, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

That´s great, thank you. There are about a dozen categories with the same problem that I didn´t list above, please allow me to make you aware of them on your talk page after the next refresh of Special:UncategorizedCategories (but please don´t feel obliged, it surely is a low priority issue) --Rudolph Buch (talk) 19:39, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm basically just clicking to https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=purge&generator=querypage&gqppage=Uncategorizedcategories&gqplimit=30&forcelinkupdate=true&gqpoffset=0 , waiting about 30 seconds and then increasing the last number (gqpoffset=0) by 30, and repeating (Stupid rate limiters are making me only do about 30 at a time). So far I'm up to 305. This will force mediawiki to re-evaluate categories of everything on special:uncategorizedcategories (That's the gqppage=Uncategorizedcategories part of the url). Anyone should be able to do this. If you are in the admin group or the bot group then you could probably do all 5000 things on Special:Uncategorizedcategories at once. Bawolff (talk) 20:06, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good, I´ll try this. I guess it´s going to be easier as soon as the special page has fewer entries which should be the case in a week or two. --Rudolph Buch (talk) 20:14, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

I did up to 545 as well as the numeric section, but I've stopped for now (sorry, but it was getting tedious). Bawolff (talk) 20:23, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Proposal: Hashtag for Twitter images

Many people share images of what they see on Twitter, including images of notable current events (sport events, airplane crashes, etc.). As people want to show to the world what is happening, many of these people wouldn't care (or would be even proud) if these pictures are used by others. However it's not allowed to upload these pictures to Wiki Commons. Because of that I propose that an official hashtag would be created, that if people write this hashtag while posting the original image on Twitter, that it is allowed to upload the image to Wiki Commons. As there are several regularly used licenses Creative Commons licenses I would propose #CC-BY and #CC-BY-SA. Sander.v.Ginkel (talk) 13:37, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

While I’m all for social media pictures (on WP we desperately need images of taylor swift on her 1989 tour for example) I would be very surprised if “#CC-BY-SA” ever gains any usage outside the open source fandom. It simply contributes no meaning to your tweets (even though it might carry a lot of meaning commons-wise and legally). Also there’s the issue of people tagging that who don’t actually know what CC is—♥ Kelvinsong talk 23:28, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

March 10

Untangling the Web

• File:Untangling the Web.pdf

Fascinating publication, if anyone hasn't come across this yet. -- Cirt (talk) 18:46, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

, I didn't know that a copy made it to commons. Related: WMF to file suit against the NSA. –Be..anyone (talk) 20:15, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Finding the rigth Berlin S-Bahn station

I took some fascinating pictures of Murals in an Berlin S-Bahn station in 2008. Unfortunatly I dont remember wich station. Same station in pictures (Wall paintings S-Bahn Berlin 2008 2) and (... 2008 3).Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:17, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

These murals at Bahnhof Berlin Savignyplatz are indeed fascinating. -- Rillke^(q?) 01:38, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:36, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

We have a winner (25M)

Main courtyard of the Mevlid-i Halil Mosque, Şanlıurfa, Turkey

We reached a nice milestone today! Multichill (talk) 20:29, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Nice! (How was the counting done?) -- Tuválkin ✉ 20:39, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Counting backwards and selecting the only file that didn't seem to be uploaded by a banned user. Multichill (talk) 21:02, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Nice, I was so hoping that the 25M image wasn't porn related!. Great job, congrats. Reguyla (talk) 21:16, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Why? Is there a lot of porn in Commons’, however loosely defined? No there isn’t. There are more photos of trams in Commons’ than there are of naked people. You’re watching too much Fox News if you think otherwise. (Not sure how Fox News feels about trams though, but I bet they aren’t too hot on mosques, either…) -- Tuválkin ✉ 22:02, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Looks like I was the first one to use this file to illustrate an article (on the English Wikipedia). I am sure we can improve this usage.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:44, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

25 millionth file

The 25th millionth file will soon be uploaded, it'd be nice to mark the mile stone, is anyone thinking of doing something ? I was thinking of maybe doing an article on Wikinews, any other ideas?--KTo288 (talk) 22:17, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Twenty-five is a nice “round” number (in base 10, anyway), but the not less nice number 24 million went apparently unnoticed (*), and before that the 23-millionth file uploaded merited but a brief mention in this village pump… The problem is that the 25-millionth file may be an unremarklable item, as the 22-millionth was. -- Tuválkin ✉ 23:34, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

(*) The (first) 24-millionth file was uploaded between November 30th and December 7th, 2014, yet no mention of it in Commons:Village pump/Archive/2014/12. -- Tuválkin ✉ 05:02, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, we can estimate when it will be close to 25M and upload a lot of remarkable files in that minute/hour/day --- [Tycho] ^talk 09:59, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

The last time this was discussed, I found it distasteful in the results to see there was deliberate engineering of batch uploads as a form of carpetbagging. I would like to see those with special bot accounts and funded equipment refrain from this temptation and leave it as happen chance.

Let's not let this become just a "brand marketing opportunity". Thanks --Fæ (talk) 12:39, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Are you a bot, parent, guardian or dependent of a bot or an employee of a bot. Sadly, you are not eligible for this contest. This promotion void in New York, Oregon and Massachusetts! :-)Reguyla (talk) 21:08, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

The last milestone to be marked on the community page was the 20 millionth file, last January. That's 5 million in just over a year. The difference between 24 and 25 doesn't seem to be that great, unless you work in base 12. There's always a number of files that the xth file can be, I guess we can try and pick the most "likely" candidate.--KTo288 (talk) 07:45, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

24M was noted on Commons:Milestones. Jean-Fred (talk) 10:49, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

See #We have a winner (25M). Multichill (talk) 20:32, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Blinked and we're over already.--KTo288 (talk) 06:40, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

March 09

Help correcting image

Could someone upload a new version of the following image. The nitrogen that's floating free isn't supposed to be there, there's supposed to be, where the 'N' is, a line going up to the 'R'. Other than that it's good. Nagelfar (talk) 16:51, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:219a-b.svg

I’m not sure what you’re asking & I not a chemist but I did my best. BTW idk what app generated it but that the file is extremely poorly coded but whatevs—♥ Kelvinsong talk 23:24, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, *almost* perfect. I suppose the line on the other side should be closer 'up' toward the "R" but otherwise it is exactly what I requested so you have my thanks. (the other guy who made it for me dropped off the map upon finishing and never corrected the error) Nagelfar (talk) 01:16, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

 Done && np!!—♥ Kelvinsong talk 02:03, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Upload Wizard can't handle files with the same names but different file extensions?

It's common to have two files with the same name but different file extensions: File:Example.png and File:Example.jpg. I often upload large PNGs and accompany them with smaller JPGs, but the Upload Wizard doesn't allow this if they have the same file name. This sis a serious hassle, especially when uploading a large number of files. It's not Commons that disallows this—it's Upload Wizard. Can Upload Wizard be altered to allow this? Curly Turkey (talk) 01:11, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

This is one of the ways phab:T48741 manifests. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 04:07, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

So it's a bug? And one that not much progress has been made on from the looks of it. What a hassle. Curly Turkey (talk) 05:04, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

You can always ignore Upload Wizard and upload files using other tools. I, for one, have barely used it, if at all. -- Tuválkin ✉ 02:05, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

March 13

Upgrade of image rendering servers

Hi all,

Its planned to upgrade the image rendering servers to Ubuntu trusty. This will hopefully fix some issues with some images. In particular:

• Certain XCF files may render "better" (But they probably still won't be exactly the same as in GIMP)
• JPEG2000 formatted images in PDFs will render (This includes many pdf's from internet archived (e.g. file:John_Stuart_Mill,_Considerations_on_Representative_Government_(1st_ed,_1861).pdf
• Certain other pdfs that just didn't work previously might work now (e.g. File:WorldAviation.198409.BackCover.pdf
• JPEG in tiff weird colour casts will hopefully go away ( file:Zentralbibliothek_Solothurn_S_I_498_Kosciuszko_Inventarium_02.tif)
• Maybe the 16bit tiff file not rendering issue will go away
• And possibly other things

This is also an important step towards making Opus audio tracks on video work.

The downside, is some large animated GIF files that were on the edge of rendering previously might stop rendering

The new image scalars will only be used for uncached renders (That is if nobody has looked at the particular image at that particular size, or if somebody has ?action=purge 'd the image recently). Additionally, at first (starting Thursday) only one server will be changed to make sure that there is no problems, so you will have a 1 in 9 chance of getting the new server.

Anyways, in the unlikely event that you encounter any image not working, especially if it used to work, please report it here (or at phabricator). For the technically curious, the upgrade is tracked by phab:T84842. Bawolff (talk) 19:43, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

That's excellent news. Do you think it's feasible to code/implement upload-through-stream? Like something sending an Opus-encoded stream (with or without container) but doesn't know its final (file) size while it is sending. -- Rillke^(q?) 21:02, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure. In principle I don't see why not (particularly if its not true streaming, but chunked upload that doesn't know the final size until the end). Bawolff (talk) 14:24, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

March 11

File:Shotokan Karate Union Logo Rising-sun-enso.gif

Image was uploaded as "own work" using the "CC 4.0 International" license. Same image is also being used as the official logo of the Shotokan Karate Union. Uploader (Rachael reiko murakami) has stated here that she has no affiliation to the SKU. I opened a thread on here on user's Wikipedia user talk page to try and find out what is what, but I'm not sure what to do in the meantime. Should the file be tagged as COM:CSD#File? Should a license review request be made? Should a request for OTRS permission be made? Should I just wait to see how the uploader responds to my talk page post? - Thanks in advance. - Marchjuly (talk) 01:11, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Right, DR created: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Shotokan Karate Union Logo Rising-sun-enso.gif‎. Regards, Yann (talk) 08:56, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Reply

The image was being used as the official logo of the Shotokan Karate Union. Uploader (Rachael reiko murakami) and my reply was "The SKU website says "Copyright MCMLXXXV All Rights Reserved" and i have fallen foul of placing the image in the wrong wiki area, but i would never be so presumptuous as to assume that i could just use the image without asking permission therefore my personal standards of courtesy led me to asking for that permission prior to downloading it and then uploading it to the wiki site, albeit in the wrong section. I may relocate it to the non free area as i wouldnt wish to breach the Wikipedia policies regarding images. But there again i may decide to delete it altogether in fear of making yet another mistake in the process of relocating it." But in the meantime as you were perplexed being "not sure what to do in the meantime" I have taken the uncertainty out of it for you and have opted for the later option and "decided to delete it altogether in fear of making yet another mistake in the process of relocating it" now you have waited "to see how the uploader responds" I hope that my decision sets your mind at rest. I am struggling though to see how and where to upload it so that i can use it and "satisfy all the criteria for non-free content" Regards Rachael (Rachael reiko murakami)

Thank you for the clarification Rachael. Basically, even if the SKU told you it was OK to use their image, Wikipedia Commons has no way of verifying such a thing. What the SKU needs to do is clearly let Wikipedia Commons know that they [SKU] intend to release the image for use under a free license. They can do this by email. Everything is explained at "Licensing images: when do I contact OTRS?" and "If you are not the copyright holder". Finally, when you sign your talk page posts please use four tilde (~~~~) and not {{u|Rachael reiko murakami}}. The four tilde not only add your username, but it also adds a time stamp to your posts. The template you used is not for signing posts. - Marchjuly (talk) 02:09, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Reply for Marchjuly

Thanks Marchjuly I have read your recent comment above several times and i think that i understand it now, and i will endeavour to retain your current input of information for future projects, as i have no need of it on this current project because as i stated above i have deleted it form the current project and i intend on replacing it at my convenience with an image that i personally have complete copyright over. Therefore I am also requesting its immediate deletion form wiki commons. What do i need to put a request in to do so ? or as you instigated the enquiry in the first instance then will that deletion request deal with it ?

This current faux pas of mine just goes to highlight my need for immediate assistance, and I refer you to the request for help that i sent you on my userpage.

"Its reassuring to find out that someone with your skills and knowledge of the wiki ways was once a green novice such as I. And No; under different circumstances your enthusiasm would be a breath of fresh air but its just that I am making so many mistakes and offending the delicate nature of so many unknown new friends that I never knew i had, that makes me to reiterate that i was 100% serious when i asked you to tidy up my draft page to suit yours and wikis standards of compliance. Having looked back upon the numerous comments that you have left me all with good intentions im sure, as no one would spend as much time trying to prove to other how much they know by humiliating others while stating that they are trying to help others, would they! After reviewing your many contributions to my failing project i can appreciate the time and effort that you have given to familiarising your self with my project, it could almost be said that the sum total of your contributions are a master class in the wiki ways that are aimed at the complete novice such as I, and in total sincerity for that I am very grateful. But when one compares the inordinate amount of time that you must have spent on producing the master class i guess that you could have if you had redirected that effort into tidying up my page, then could have got it in to shape several times over by now and not attracted the numerous humiliating comments that are serving to highlight my short coming as a contributor to this site. That is why again i am seriously asking you to tidy up my page and help a struggling damsel in distress and then i will have something reliable to work from for any future pages that i submit and i will always be grateful to you for your help"

Regards Rachael Rachael reiko murakami (talk) 08:57, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Template:Зображення

Hi, I don't think it is a good idea to use such template. Could someone with a bot replace it by {{Information}}? Thanks, Yann (talk) 13:36, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree. It seems that this template was mostly used by User:UWCTransferBot, used to transfer images from the Ukrainian Wikipedia. I guess this template allows/allowed to transfer the files easily, without the need to transcribe the Ukrainian information template. Nevertheless we should use the standard {{Information}} template here. --Sebari (talk) 18:13, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Detrimental bot move

Can anyone explain to me why File:Indu amerika rebuild-plant.jpg and File:Sarah Anderson Weiss.jpg were recently bot-moved from Category:Unidentified locations to Category:Unidentified countries? Both are clearly in the United States; the former even has a category saying as much. I'm not so much worried about these two files as that if this was a bot move probably the same incorrect move was made on a lot of other files, and I suspect that the activities of this bot in that time period should be investigated. - Jmabel ! talk 16:21, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

I just noticed the same as a couple dozen files from of my (small) mass uploads were recategorized by ButkoBot away from Category:Unidentified locations arbitrarily to Category:Unidentified countries, and from there by user:Butko into an equaly arbitrary subcat — often slightly incorrect, some times grossly incorrect.

I’d say that Category:Unidentified locations is a legitimate categorization and the only unproblematic dissimination would be further into Category:Unidentified locations in Country (and still excluding international waters and off-Earth locations).

-- Tuválkin ✉ 16:44, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Some contrasting examples:

• File:CoarseBrickWall.jpg was
  • moved from Category:Unidentified locations to Category:Unidentified countries
  • and then moved from Category:Unidentified countries to Category:Brick walls in unidentified countries

Although one wonders why the quirky fixation on countries, this is not wrong, as brick walls are seldom found on international waters or in outer space. Still, Category:Unidentified locations would still be a good categorization and these two moves did not add anything to Commons.

• File:ClaraPaulista+MariaFumaça.jpg was also
  • moved from Category:Unidentified countries to Category:Brick walls in unidentified countries
  • and then moved from Category:Unidentified countries to Category:People of unidentified countries

Now that’s a problem because people (unlike brick walls) are known to move about and it is unclear if the photographed subject is abroad or in her home country (which is known, trusting the description, and was already clearly identified as Category:Women of São Paulo (state), itself a subcat of Category:Women of Brazil).

In short, user:Butko should perhaps stop this bot and bring the matter of Category:Unidentified locations to discussion. -- Tuválkin ✉ 18:07, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

SUL finalization update

Hi all, please read this page for important information and an update involving SUL finalization, scheduled to take place in one month. Thanks. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:46, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Someone with ChemDraw help please?

I need a lot of images for the ton of work I've put into my page to go with the tables I've added: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cocaine_analogues

I just need someone to remake the following images, with suggested names (BME standing for Benzoyl Methyl Ecgonine, the numbers being S. Singh's alphanumeric for the compound, etc.):

[10] BME401a-f
[11] BMEnoncatalyticHapten394, BMEnoncatalyticHapten395, BMEnoncatalyticHapten396
[12] 3alphaModifiedBenztropine
[13] 3alphaDiphenylmethoxyBenztropine

I need a ton more, but this would be a start! Thanks Nagelfar (talk) 20:58, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

I guess you need help from Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry, Commons:Graphic Lab or Commons:WikiProject Chemistry. -- Rillke^(q?) 21:06, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

File:Frederic_and_Irene_Joliot-Curie.jpg

I think there's good reason to think this is out of copyright, but can anyone figure out the exact rationale behind the Smithsonian's otherwise unelaborated statement that it is? Adam Cuerden (talk) 21:36, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Why do you think it is out of copyright? Ruslik (talk) 07:27, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm guessing it'll be instrument of gift. I'm presuming the Smithsonian isn't just guessing. Which, while it could happen, seems unlikely. Adam Cuerden (talk) 03:33, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

File:Saturn diagram.svg tutorial on VectorTuts!

If anyone was wondering how I made my Saturn diagram, I’ve written a tutorial on VectorTuts! —♥ Kelvinsong talk 23:41, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Terrific image, many thanks! -- Tuválkin ✉ 01:48, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Brilliant. In your very last step please check if a slightly less dark grey for the irrelevant labels also works, they were hard to read on my laptop in a position not tuned for maximal contrast. –Be..anyone (talk) 04:28, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Don't know if you notice that already, but the aurorae disappear when the SVG is opened by Firefox natively. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.)

March 14

President Obama Delivers Remarks on the 50th Anniversary of the Selma Marches

• File:President Obama Delivers Remarks on the 50th Anniversary of the Selma Marches.ogv

There are higher quality versions at YouTube, and also at www.whitehouse.gov.

But I wasn't sure if we still have a 100 MB upload limit these days.

Would it be possible to upload a higher quality version?

Or should we leave it as is for now?

Thank you,

-- Cirt (talk) 04:14, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Also, there's an audio file version in MP3 linked at http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2015/03/07/president-obama-delivers-remarks-50th-anniversary-selma-marches specifically at http://www.whitehouse.gov/videos/2015/March/030715_SelmaAL.mp3 -- but I was unable to convert it from MP3 to OGG. Can someone else upload that MP3 as an OGG file separately? Thank you, -- Cirt (talk) 04:25, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

@Cirt: Technically the upload limit was raised to a 1000 MiB, but from my experience, it is rarely possible to upload files bigger than 250 MiB due to issues with server time outs and response times (it might even be 150 MiB if you're unlucky). The easiest way to avoid this limit is to try upload-by-url which you should be able to use, being an administrator. That said, however, the video of this speech at the highest quality provided by the White House is slightly above 1.1 GiB, so any method other than server-side uploads (requested through Phabricator) is unlikely to work. I'm currently downloading the file from the White House (and it's taking extremely long at a speed of around 56 KB/s), and will convert it to WebM tonight and see what happens then. I can definitely upload an audio Ogg of the speech later today if you can wait :-) odder (talk) 05:17, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

What about using a chunked upload? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 05:27, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Using the Youtube API, you can find it already has the video transcoded as "webm 1280x720 video 1648k , 30fps, video only, 272.07MiB" and audio as "webm audio only audio 99k , audio@128k (44100Hz), 20.45MiB". I am having a go at converting it to vp8 rather than vp9 to make it "Commons compatible". --Fæ (talk) 11:12, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

High resolution version of Obama's Selma Marches speech in webm format. 499MB, taking around 9 hours to transcode on a volunteer's home desktop. Click here for 1,280×720 px playback.

Thanks for your help, Odder, Jacklee, and Fæ! Yes, Odder, OGG audio of the speech would be awesome, at your convenience! I originally added the lowest-quality version of the file to Commons for the video because it was large, the FLV version at about 70 MB. So really anything more than that would be higher video quality. -- Cirt (talk) 14:14, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

BTW, as an illustration of how bad things are when having to transcode files due to Commons not taking the most recent open standard codecs, I am now less than 30% done and it has been around 3 hours since I started the transcoding as a background task. To reiterate, I am actually having to transcode an already available webm file that I downloaded from Youtube in about a minute, as Commons cannot play the most current open standards that Youtube makes available.

I could do a lot more in batch uploading video, but these problems make it an almost pointless and unsatisfying time-sink both for my processing time and volunteer time.

We have discussed this at length previously, and the way things are both with how the viewer front-end works and how the uploader back-end is problematic, I do not currently recommend institutions consider Commons as a video file repository. --Fæ (talk) 14:26, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Transcoding from mp4 -> VP8 will probably be faster than VP9 -> VP8 (im not sure why i thought that. Encoding vp9 tends to be slow relative to other codecs in my experiance, but i dont imagine decoding for transcode will make much of a difference). I'm hopeful for a future where we support VP9. Bawolff (talk) 21:04, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

 Done New video uploaded, click the thumbnail above to see it. (Warning: It may take an hour or two after upload for Commons to transcode different sizes, this means that immediately after upload, the video may play back in at poor quality, try again later.)

I got cold feet after about 4 hours of transcoding vp9 → vp8, thinking that Youtube probably already transcoded from mp4 → vp9 and "double transcoding" was probably a bad thing for size and quality reasons. I started again, and went direct from mp4 → webm (vp8). Considering this is a 30 minute video, it takes a ridiculously long time to process.

The path for doing all this was all free and open source:

1. Youtube's API is free to tap into, https://developers.google.com/youtube/
2. I used FFmpeg http://www.ffmpeg.org and free downloadable open source codecs with a bit of a Python wrapper script for convenience (which I have to hand from other Commons projects) http://www.python.org to make running the transcode from a command-line a bit easier,
3. and thanks to Rillke's excellent User:Rillke/bigChunkedUpload.js, pushing the 499 MB webm file onto Commons is pain free; I saw that the uploader handled a 503 error in the middle of the 120 upload chunks needed, pretty cool.

It is less fortunate that the reality is that number of unpaid volunteers that can grapple with how to meet the arbitrary restrictions on Commons to old codecs must be an eye-wateringly small proportion of those that would be potentially interested in contributing video. Even with my background of a couple of years playing with large uploads, I certainly found it hard to understand and slightly mind-numbingly complex to tease out how to set up FFmpeg to run a successful transcode to do this the first time around. It is no wonder that we see so few video related mass uploads on Commons, this project is just ready for them. --Fæ (talk) 04:35, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for all of your help, everyone above, this is most appreciated! -- Cirt (talk) 06:37, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm not so sure how good FFmpeg VP9 actually is (for 2.5, haven't tested 2.6 yet), but I think if you can get the best available MP4 from whitehouse.gov instead of YouTube, and convert it to OGV, where FFmpeg achieved perfection years ago, it should be as good as WebM, only the compression will be worse. Please correct me if that's completely wrong. Or slightly wrong. Or kind of correct missing the point. –Be..anyone (talk) 16:11, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

You may be missing a key point, Commons cannot play VP9 video, only VP8. As for mpeg vs. ogv, I am not sure that the "wrapper" makes much difference if the underpinning codec is identical. Note that to create the video thumbnailed above, the best mp4 available from Youtube was used as the source to transcode to VP8. (Addendum I see that the White House video is larger in file size that the mp4 from Youtube, but I doubt that anyone would find any appreciable difference; especially as the video was taken at long zoom and suffers from noticeable chromatic aberration at full screen size.) --Fæ (talk) 16:28, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I know its little consolation for the rather bad video support, but if converting the video on your local computer is problematic, you can always convert it on tools-dev.wmflabs.org (In a detached screen session perhaps, although perhaps tool labs folks would prefer it as a "job") and come back to the file when its done. As bonus points the upload would probably be a lot faster from tool labs as its going to have a better internet connection to wmf servers (being a wmf server) then your computer will have. Bawolff (talk) 14:14, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Going on a slight tangent, but I would be happy to try something like this out, so long as chunked uploading were part of the pywikibot modules. Is it available now? Also is ffmpeg available? (it is). I found it a drag to sort out the codecs locally, so I would hesitate to start installing this all on my bit of labs. At the moment I'm parking two videos at a time to a USB stick and transcoding, but it is incredibly slow (right now I have a 500MB and a 800MB mp4 file on the go, I would expect them to take a few hours and these are part of a batch of a couple of hundred I hope to add to Category:Ebolavirus DoD videos). --Fæ (talk) 12:28, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia video playback problem?

This probably has a technical cause, so I'm raising it as a sub-thread.

I can playback the above video perfectly well from Commons, but when I launch it from the English Wikipedia article en:Selma_to_Montgomery_marches#Aftermath_and_historical_impact it takes around 5 seconds to start (I am faced with a black box where the video should be during those 5 seconds) and then "stutters" with a false start, pausing for 25 more seconds, before payback starts. This is using the standard pop-up video player defaulting to WebM 480P from within Firefox. I suspect that the ordinary public reader might not wait for 5 seconds or the following 25 seconds for the video to start. Is this a problem already identified or something limited to very large videos? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 14:02, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

For me it doesn't play at all:

Error: cannot call methods on slider prior to initialization; attempted to call method 'value'
https://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=de&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki&only=scripts&skin=vector&version=20150312T210258Z
Line 3

-- Rillke^(q?) 00:19, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

For me, I get non-smooth playback on both commons and wikipedia. One odd thing is it seems to be both loading the webm and ogg 480p transcodes when launched from the pop-up dialog (It should only be loading the webm afaik). Opening https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/1/1a/President_Obama_Delivers_Remarks_on_the_50th_Anniversary_of_the_Selma_Marches.webm/President_Obama_Delivers_Remarks_on_the_50th_Anniversary_of_the_Selma_Marches.webm.480p.webm directly also takes a long time before starting (but no stuttering). Perhaps firefox issue? VLC seems to be able to open that url almost immediately. Google chrome also seems to be able to open almost immediately. Bawolff (talk) 14:11, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

I am unsure what a next step looks like. It strikes me that:

1. We could benefit if the guidance of COM:Video were to include recommendations for what the practical best sizes are for video, both in terms of file size and resolution. At least a case book of examples might help people have an idea of what the issues are if they expect to include video in articles.
2. It might help if the various codecs and formats were formally tested by the WMF so that we can make a firm recommendation as to which are "technically" the most likely to have good results.
3. If video is going to remain problematic with various browsers having mixed results, again COM:Video could benefit by explaining the issues and any recommended work-arounds (even if it boils down to "use a different browser").

--Fæ (talk) 14:49, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

We have some recommendation over at Help:Converting_video#General_conversion_tips which is linked from com:video.

Also, it's 2015 and we should stop figuring out work-arounds for displaying video. If there is a bug in firefox or mediawiki, they should be fixed instead. --McZusatz (talk) 20:55, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Help needed with fixing files in Category:Pages using Information template with parsing errors

As a side effort related to m:File metadata cleanup drive we are tracking now files that do not have any of the standard infobox templates or templates derived from them, in Category:Media missing infobox template. A subset of those are files that seem to have parts of the {{Information}} template: those were placed in Category:Pages using Information template with parsing errors. Many files in that category started with a valid {{Information}} template but some edit to the wikitext broke it, for example this edit 7 year ago, and they just need a minor syntax correction. However since this is the first time we compiled such list there are a lot of files to fix and we could use some help with them. --Jarekt (talk) 18:55, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Upload Wizard getting worse and worse

Hi! According to Commons stats I am the #3 uploader of Wikimedia Commons of all the times, appearantly the #1 for self-produced images. This is just to introduce my self and let you know that I know what I'm talking about. After WikiLovesMonuments last year I had a problem to my PC and I did not upload anything for some months, until December. Since that time Upload Wizard is getting every month worse and worse, taking so much more time to upload images for errors and disfuncioning. The process of uploading is getting more difficult and frustrating:

1. Preview images do not show anymore, unless I add 3-by-3 images per time (or less). If I can't see the preview I cant' correctly describe the file and put proper categories.
2. When I select images they do not come listed in alphabetical order anymore. For instance, if I upload 10 images named "File 01.jpg, File 02.jpg, ... File 10.jpg", during the passages of the wizard they come out all mixed up ("File 10.jpg, File 07.jpg, File 02.jpg, File 09.jpg...). This makes much harder to write the correct descriptions and categories. If I have to copy and paste the same category to a serie of files that I named from 1 to 5, they come splitted among all the 50 files I am uploading, making it all extremely complicated and boring.
3. In the very last week I am getting more trouble, since wizard gets error messages for 20% to 40% of the files I'm trying to upload. So I have to try and try again. Sometimes it also gets blocked for 1 or 2 files at the very last passage (pubblication), I wait and wait, but all I can finally do is just remove the file from the list and upload it manually with the basic form.

I tried to upload from different computers, different Windows systems, and different connections with the same result, I have Adblock disabled, my camera is the same. Also, months ago I requested some easy impovements (like an alert, an extra button, an "undo" option for the dangerous "Copy the title with automathic numeration" button, which to my opinion should never be automatically checked). Nobody cared. Where are those programmers when you need them? Thanks for your attention. --Sailko (talk) 16:27, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Worrying. Thanks for highlighting the problem. My personal impression was that there was a healthy amount of interest from the WMF for improving the new user upload experience 2 and 3 years ago, but Commons has since then dropped down the "food-chain" or become less of a "brand priority" for the WMF. I don't really know how to change that perception, perhaps we should have a formally recognized place (on Commons rather than Phabricator) to collect problems that users experience and discuss how urgent they are for attention?

Due to the clumsiness of the upload wizard for larger uploads, I never use it. When I'm not uploading using scripts accessing the API, I tend to use the chunked uploader and by-pass the need to fill in boxes on forms. I find it strange that the incredibly useful service of chunked uploading has not yet been integrated into the standard wizard (though my next largest gripe would be the lack of in-built video transcoding, discussed several times before on the Village pump). BTW I speak as the #1 uploader of all time, though mainly of batch uploads from interesting public domain archives... sadly the #2 uploader of all time has been banned by a WMF employee for unexplained "reasons". --Fæ (talk) 16:43, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

I've experienced some of these problems too. I've filed a bug at the Phabricator (T92734). Feel free to add further comments there. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 16:47, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Please report undesired changes like these in Phabricator. They are here, because people are actively trying to rework the extension to something that is measurable, performs better and more reliable. This is VERY complex work, but is required before any improvements to it can be added. As you can see, there has been quite a bit of activity lately. If you experience any regressions due to this, please report them, NOW is the best time to bring them forward. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:16, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I never use upload wizard, because I have a bad internet connection, so I can only upload a maximum of 4 images at a time, taking up to 10 minutes. But since yesterday evening it is impossible to upload anything with the basic upload formular. I uploaded 2 images, since then I click "upload", connexion starts and 2 minutes later I am back to the upload formular. Traumrune (talk) 21:45, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, after the basic upload somehow disappeared I may have used the wizard a couple of times - urgh. Switched over to Commonist, left it after some months to use Vicuña- very happy with. --Jwh (talk) 15:18, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Jwh, you mean this — Special:Upload? -- Tuválkin ✉ 14:02, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes I think so, if I remember well there was a time it was more hidden and it was difficult to avoid the wizard. I tried the wizard several times as it allowed to upload multiple files in one transaction, but got often error messages and had to start all over. But that's tempi passati - as I mentioned I'm very happy now with Vicuña. --Jwh (talk) 16:05, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear about these problems. Might be helpful to run UploadWizard with the debug option enabled by adding "?debug=true" at the end of the web address (after "Special:UploadWizard") and performing those steps again and checking if anything appears in your browser's JavaScript console when loading the page (more information: Firefox ≥24, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Opera). If the problem is reproducible, it would be great if somebody who faces this issue could report the bug in 'Phabricator' by following the instructions How to report a bug (only one problem per ticket please), in this case under the project 'MediaWiki-Extensions-UploadWizard' (direct link; see the Phabricator help for account information). --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 07:27, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

So, the Upload Wizard was created because all other tools were too geeky — it dumbed down uploading so that even the village idiot could use it (and they did!), and now it has problems that need the user to manually add quearies to the url and to file in phab tickets. That makes sense. -- Tuválkin ✉ 07:44, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes yes, we all know it was very badly written, and that we are still paying the price for it so many years on, reiterating that isn't going to help in getting anything fixed. Getting those few people who know how to open a web inspector to use the debug flag MIGHT help however. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:28, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Actually, I had another idea: Nuke it all from orbit, reinstate the previously offered tools, find out who decided it was needed and worked on it and who kept pushing it to be funded and developed instead of useful tools — and fire, block, office-ban them all, bury the key and and superprotect its grave. And then we can go back to work. -- Tuválkin ✉ 13:15, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

I can confirm issues #1 and #2 from Sailkos post. These problems have been there for months now, especially the missing preview images are a big nuisance. I've had problem #3 a while ago, but the lastest uploads didn't produce such errors. --Magnus (talk) 08:38, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

March 15

File:Las mozas del cántaro.jpg

What happened here, the picture is bluish on the Commons page and on the French and Spanish WP pages about the painting, but when downloaded the file has perfectly normal colours? Oliv0 (talk) 09:18, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

The file has an embedded colour profile, probably from the Imacon Flextight Precision scanner used to create the image. Most browsers will just ignore this. I'll apply the profile, if anyone really needs the original, it's still available in the file history. — Julian H.^✈ 10:17, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

@Julian Herzog: Thank you ! Could the bad rendering of the original file be due to m:Tech/News/2015/12 / Recent changes "The servers that resize images are using new software. phab:T84842"? Oliv0 (talk) 16:01, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't know if anything was different before. But the thumbnail generation definitely doesn't do anything wrong, it keeps the colour profile from the original file. So technically, everything is correct, it's just not helpful because browsers don't use the profile. — Julian H.^✈ 16:14, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

most (not all. Especially not mobile phone) browsers use colour profiles. I dont think it has anything to do with image render upgrades. Probably either original had wrong colour profile, or there was something weird/obscure with the profile and it got damaged during the shrinking of the image (ive heard of that happening on files with multiple conflicting colour info). This is speculation though, i havent looked at original file. Bawolff (talk) 23:43, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Collapsing in-line text

I know that we have templates to collapse cells inside of tables, but is there any way to collapse text that's in-line with non-hidden text? --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 17:11, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Can you give an example? Ruslik (talk) 20:00, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Click me! Have a look at mw:ResourceLoader/Default_modules#jquery.makeCollapsible and build a template from it. Note that ID attributes must be, surprisingly, unique per page! Mind transclusion and other Wiki-magic. -- Rillke^(q?) 12:14, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Attention: new file moving errors

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T93009

i had 2 cases in the last hours where file moving produced two bad "pages" instead of one "good page" and a redirect. for further inspection i leave the following pages without a deletion request:

• old name File:Sauerland-Landchaft im Sommer (14652091457).jpg – there's now a redirect and an image placeholder, but the image isn't displayed (broken)
• new name File:Sauerland-Landschaft im Sommer (14652091457).jpg – there's the information, but no image

in the move log there are more examples moved by other users, eg. see File:The Soviet Union 1971 CPA 4061 stamp (Order of the October Revolution and Building Construction) cancelled.jpg

can someone please take care? maybe also a sitenotice so that no further files are moved until the problem is solved? Holger1959 (talk) 03:23, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

This is phabricator:T93009. --Didym (talk) 03:28, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

thank you, so manual purging the new page seems to help. good, i know now. Holger1959 (talk) 03:31, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Not only the file moves are affected, deletion without manual purging also does not hide files and pages. --Didym (talk) 03:32, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Even worse: When restoring deleted file, apparently only the description text versions get restored, not the actual file. At least that's what happened with File:H Steiner zug. - Entwurf zum Denkmal Heinrichs vom Mömpelgard FedZeich.aquar. ca1578 (ZaWH08).jpg. Prior to restoring, the file was still accessible; I still had it in an open browser tab und could re-upload from that. Can anybody else confirm such problems with restoring files? --Rosenzweig τ 18:39, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

In my watchlist it says, among other things the file is not shown after undeletion. -- Rillke^(q?) 18:41, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

OK, the original file version is now back. Apparently some kind of delay. --Rosenzweig τ 18:44, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

March 19

New file renaming criteria in place

Community, I am here to notify you that the works around implementing Commons:Requests_for_comment/File_renaming_criterion_2 are finished; a lot of translations are missing. Although I am not opposing development of policies and guidelines, the volume of work required due to multilingualism and integration into software was enormous and even the new criteria are image-centric. For the future, before starting up RfCs, please make sure there are sufficient resources for putting their results into place. Thank you. -- Rillke^(q?) 01:51, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

• Is there somewhere we have the definitive English text and a list either of what languages need translation or what languages have been translated? - Jmabel ! talk 05:17, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Please confer to and translate Template:File renaming reasons/i18n. Some of the former translations might be of help. -- Rillke^(q?) 09:47, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Why does Commons host so few Public Library of Science PDFs?

The Public Library of Science is an open access collection of scientific journals. So far as I know, all of its contents are under Creative Commons attribution licenses that are compatible with being hosted on Wikimedia Commons. Naturally we host hundreds if not thousands of images and videos that were first published in a PLoS journal. I know Wikimedia Commons also hosts PDFs of freely license publications because Wikisource has transcribed some of them. However, we don't seem to have many, if any PDFs of actual PLoS articles and I was curious as to why. It doesn't seem to be lack of interest or awareness because as I mentioned earlier we host hundreds and hundreds of pictures and videos. Why not copies of the PDFs? Abyssal (talk) 20:55, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Yes, the license allows these files to be hosted here, but what would be the objective to host them in quantity? Regards, Yann (talk) 21:00, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

@Abyssal: @Yann: This is an excellent idea with lots of applications. There is a pilot of it at en:Wikisource:Wikisource:WikiProject Open Access/Programmatic import from PubMed Central and related ideas at en:Wikisource:Wikisource:WikiProject Open Access. Wikimedia Commons may or may not be the right place to put PDFs; if the content where put into Wikisource then parts of it could be deconstructed and tagged with metadata, whereas an entire PDF file could not be easily taken apart and remixed. Some people have called for source content on Wikisource to be matched with a PDF upload on Commons but that may not make sense for digitally-born documents. I would be happy to talk this through with anyone. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:35, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I can see the use of these files if they are transcribed on Wikisource, or used on Wikipedia (or Wikibooks, etc.), but I am not sure uploading thousands of them without any prior use in any Wikimedia projects is useful. I am ready to be proved otherwise. Regards, Yann (talk) 09:52, 17 March 2015 media

Yann When Wikipedia cites an open access paper there could be a bot which automatically migrates the paper to Wikisource and uploads all files from the paper to Commons. Getting the papers here means that the works can be more easily remixed, either with reuse of the files, translation, applying wikilinks to technical terms in the papers, packaging the papers in a way that the remix easier with wiki-content, placing papers in the web of citations to and from that paper, and otherwise further integrating them with other works.

There still is no leading contender for hosting commentary on all papers published. Some commentary can be objective, like "this paper was retracted", and a Wikimedia project could apply that metadata to all paper citations. Along with that open access papers could be heavily marked up on Wikipedia, such that a citation in Wikipedia could lead directly to a particular sentence in the cited paper rather than the entire work. Also someone could say how a paper is cited - like "this paper confirms the result of that paper" or "this paper was only citing the methodology in that one, and not commenting on its results". It is not inconceivable that Wikipedia, with better integration of open access papers, could pilot a project to set the standard for how metadata is used to remix other publishers CC-licensed works. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:16, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

While surely most if not all image and video files from PLOS publications are within COM:SCOPE, I question the utility and benefit of hosting complete PDFs on Commons and/or transcribing them to Wikisource. For all practical purposes, the complete text of PLOS and other online open access journals are already fully digitized and completely machine searchable, unlike say old PD books and journals on archive.org, which while they may have minimal OCR scans, these often contain significant amounts of typos, poor formatting, electronic gibberish, and other impediments to easy online utilization. So rather than asking why Commons doesnt have PLOS PDFs, I'd ask why should Commons host PLOS PDFs?-Animalparty (talk) 04:43, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Animalparty I do not think Commons should unless the text is in WikiSource. If the text is in Wikisource, a copy of the native form of publication (assuming that is an exported PDF) is warranted on Commons to back up the derivative form on Wikisource. The content on PLOS is not wiki-remixable, which it would be if it were exported here. I made some notes about why wiki-integration matters above.

We are soon coming to the day (almost certainly within 10 years) when it would be trivial to copy all open access papers to Wikimedia projects, if there would be any use in doing so. If it is useful in 1 of 1000 papers, then it might be easier to migrate all the papers, or it might be useful to migrate any paper as soon as any Wikimedia project cites or references it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:16, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

March 17

SUL finalization: Commons and usernames that are redirects

Hi all,

I started contacting users that are slated to be renamed for single-user login finalization. Unfortunately the way the script was set out it followed redirects from old usernames to new usernames in some cases and warned users that they were to be renamed even if they were not scheduled to be but the old username is. The script was stopped the moment this was first reported and has been fixed. However, there are still a lot of messages in the queue following the old script that need cleared out before the new one starts. There will still be some more users that will be contacted that are not actually going to be renamed. My sincere apologies in advance for the confusion this is causing some affected users, please spread the word. Thanks, and again sorry for the trouble. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:35, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I am one of the people who got this kind of message, which led me to make a suboptimal choice at Special:GlobalRenameRequest, and now I can't change it anymore. It would be nice if someone could stop this renaming process (Mate2code to WatchDuck) for me, or tell me how to do it. mate2code 13:59, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Dammit. Now I have a new name because this fucked up notification made me choose one, and because this new kind of renaming request is not an edit that can be undone. mate2code 22:08, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I also got several such messages. Could you send a message to all these cases please? That would make sure that the issue is fixed. Thanks, Yann (talk) 14:03, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Replied at phab:T90820#1130742. --Ricordisamoa 23:55, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

March 18

What are Commons' weirdest photographs?

Category:Commons' weirdest photographs

If anyone remembers the weirdest photographs they have noticed on Commons, please add it to the above subjective category. Let's not fill it with genitals on the first day though. If there is an existing category that does the same job, feel free to move the contents.

As a project we tend to be literal in categorization, however I believe that some subjective categorization is usefully within our educational scope. Certainly Ripley's Believe It or Not! has never stopped being both popular and educational. --Fæ (talk) 13:26, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

As a project we tend to be literal in categorization – says who? This sets a very bad precedent for a mess of other Commons' […]est […] categories and does not make any use of sub-/parentcategorisation, so why don't you just use projectspace for your project?    FDMS  4    13:48, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

I often use hidden categories for projects, never a problem and a lot easier for the newer contributor to use than editing a gallery. My views on literalism is based on Commons category debates that have run for several years, excellent examples of taxonomy wars. I have been looking around for a parent category, that's tricky, suggestions appreciated. BTW, I tend to use the term Commons for the project space, the latter gets confused with being some sort of other namespace for wikiprojects. --Fæ (talk) 13:58, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

I read liberal, although the sentence makes far more sense with literal in it.    FDMS  4    14:50, 19 March 2015 (UTC

Sounds like a bit of lighthearted fun, thanks. [though can I request we also avoid making it a people freak show]. Added one :-) No, it's not a huge spurting penis. -- Colin (talk) 14:25, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Categorize it as a {{user category|Fæ}} and everything is fine - there are quite a lot of user categories where someone has made his own collection. --Rudolph Buch (talk) 14:38, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

I would actually prefer this to be a gallery - so I could watch(list) it for new entries ;-) --El Grafo (talk) 14:43, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

I like the idea and added some of the photographs I find strange, although "Commons' weirdest photographs" seems to be quite subjective. --Jarekt (talk) 15:00, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

I would also prefer a gallery. - Jmabel ! talk 15:44, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

A gallery would have two further benefits. The icon size for categories is ridiculously small, making it hard to enjoy the collection. The rather random nature of what people find funny is also likely to lead to a huge list where the nuggets of gold are hard to spot among the stones. What it needs is the ability to !like an image. Or perhaps up/down vote. Then a bot (could there be someone who writes bots anywhere around, by any chance???) could regularly move the most popular weird images to the top. Or have the ability to sort by date or popularity (separate pages?). More interaction would make it more fun. It may also help shift the really not very weird images off the bottom of the page, without anyone complaining they are censoring what they personally find weird. -- Colin (talk) 16:01, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

I have created the gallery Commons' weirdest photographs, where images from the category are sorted by total views on Commons (since upload). This is probably the simplest measurement related to popularity. Obviously the gallery needs the category to generate itself. The top ten are currently:

• Top 10 most popular weird images by total views
• 
  Drill sergeant screams.jpg
  21,235 total views
  peak on 2010 Nov
• 
  Joshua Tree yoga - handstand.jpg
  3,034 total views
  peak on 2012 May
• 
  Joshua Tree - Love car.jpg
  2,615 total views
  peak on 2009 Oct
• 
  Azorella compacta Phil. 001.jpg
  1,722 total views
  peak on 2014 Apr
• 
  Panopea generosa.JPG
  1,693 total views
  peak on 2012 Sep
• 
  Tyvek Suits.jpg
  1,238 total views
  peak on 2012 Sep
• 
  Hemlock Overlook - Peanut Butter Pit - 04.jpg
  393 total views
  peak on 2014 Sep
• 
  Ole Man.jpg
  360 total views
  peak on 2012 Jul
• 
  Street Acrobats in DC - 2013-06-07 - 02.JPG
  352 total views
  peak on 2014 Sep
• 
  Dai Andrews - Sword Swallower, Escape artist, Fakir.jpg
  339 total views
  peak on 2013 Apr

To have an image move up the ranking, just start reusing it so that the public view it more often. I have set Faebot to update the gallery once a week. Tip: barnstars, userboxes and odd templates where readers are likely to click on an image to see it better, have a big impact on the number of image views. --Fæ (talk) 12:23, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Trains categories upper tree discussion

Running across an 'upside down scheme' circumstance, some of us have begun discussing how to reorganize the upper categories involving Trains under parent Rail transport. This is a mild long standing issue, first discussed in 2009... Apparently some terms (e.g. 'traincar') which would alleviate organizational grouping translate badly. In the interest of fixing things sensibly for the benefit of non-railfans, and to satisfy as many rail cultural backgrounds as possible—your two-cents are welcome so come put them in!

• Overall category tree structure discussion begun again here Category_talk:Rolling_stock#Answers_and_Propositions. // FrankB 16:35, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

March 21

Russavia related stuff

Illustration of drama at Western College for Women, 1933. Uploaded to Commons today, Russavia claimed to be uninvolved.

I know the whole Russavia topic is an open wound around here and I don't want to seem like I am grave-dancing here because I always liked the guy (I thought his prank on Jimbo was Epic personally) but I noticed a couple things related to him that I think might need some attention. First, there are a number of subpages under his username and since he is permabanned by the WMF and not likely to be returning anytime soon, I think it might be a good idea to browse those, clean them out and remove the subpages if they are no longer needed. Secondly, there are a couple categories directly associated to him. Of the ones I can find, Category:Files needing category checks (Russavia), Category:Files uploaded by Russavia (Eva Rinaldi), Category:Files uploaded by Russavia (cleanup). I was planning on fixing these cats myself but I do not nor will I be likely to get AWB rights here due to my standing on ENWP. I just wanted to mention these things so someone could address these issues. Reguyla (talk) 21:16, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

How about adding the subcategories to Category:Media needing categories and removing the notes from Russavia that he is still working on them? --ghouston (talk) 21:40, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

The subpages are these ones? [14]. I have no idea why they were created, I'd say just leave them there. --ghouston (talk) 21:48, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I see no reason to stir things up, or a need to wipe Russavia from Commons. Seek your LOLs on something more productive. --Fæ (talk) 21:57, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

@Fæ: , I appreciate your loyalty to your friend but I am not attempting to seek LOL's on anyone so can you assume some good faith please. I have been the target of severe harrassment on Wiki myself so I know how it feels and I am also not trying to wipe him from commons and if he were merely blocked or banned by an arbcom or some block happy admin I wouldn't even touch them. But Russavia is in fact blocked permanently by the WMF, an extremely rare fate that I have never seen anyone return from. As such, I really do not see any point in keeping to do categories with his name in them. The same is true of his subpages. I'm not trying to be a jerk, it just isn't necessary and is potentially confusing. Reguyla (talk) 01:04, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Files that were uploaded by Russavia will always have been uploaded by Russavia. Nobody needs to be confused by that, and the actions recorded in the public logs should never be changed. --Fæ (talk) 10:04, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree and that's not what I am saying. What I am saying is that I don't think we need a category that says Category:Files needing category checks (Russavia) or Category:Files uploaded by Russavia (cleanup). Reguyla (talk) 13:26, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Both are populated. When project check/clean-up categories are empty, then they can be considered for deletion. I suggest you work on meaningfully checking the files rather than fomenting a debate about the name. --Fæ (talk) 13:37, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Fae, please stop trying to turn this into a hurt feelings report about Russavia. It isn't and if you bothered to read the discussion I started at all rather than just scanning it fir keywords, which you clearly did not, you would see where I specifically said I think it might be a good idea to browse those, clean them out and remove the subpages if they are no longer needed. This applies to the Subpages and to the aforementioned categories. This isn't personal so please stop being so dramatic. Reguyla (talk) 19:12, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Meh, if there was never any drama here, it would be a very dull project. Doing the gardening would suddenly seem much more appealing. --Fæ (talk) 19:30, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Comment: Agree with Fæ (talk · contribs), the categories seem useful and helpful for tracking purposes. They are a valuable organization metric, and should be retained for the future. Thank you, -- Cirt (talk) 20:59, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

FWIW I sort of agree with Reguyla (although it's not a huge issue now the user is banned) but I think that the best way to deal with this is to categorise all the images that were uploaded but not properly categorised, then deprecate the categories. Out of interest, what is the difference between "Category:Images uploaded by X" and the list provided by Special:Uploads? Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 20:30, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

@Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry: I have always viewed the category to be more of an easy way to view uploads by a user because it not only provides a more condensed version of Special:Upload, but it lists them alphabetically (useful if you are looking for something that begins with a name). While I find it odd that there are essentially two categories that both state that Russavia uploaded those images (but only because one could be renamed, "Photographs by X"), that's probably a discussion for another venue, since some of his categories have thousands of images within them and would require some work to rename them. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 23:34, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Yann (talk) 12:41, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Can anyone use free licence for a lower resolution of his work but copyright the higher one?

The question is about a real scenario that came up during the firsts conversations with an institution that has thousands of photographs. They ask me that because they usually sell the higher resolution ones and restrict the usage for only one publication, etc. They are afraid that once they release the lower resolution photos, that would mean that anyone that come across the higher resolution ones, can act as if they are released as well. Any ideas, thoughts or links to similar questions would be highly apreciated.--Zeroth (talk) 00:11, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

There was a discussion about this last year. Eventually somebody asked the Creative Commons people, and their opinion was that the high and low resolution versions may represent the same work under copyright law, so that anybody could potentially apply the low resolution license to the high resolution version.[15] --ghouston (talk) 02:54, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

This was also more recently raised by me on the OTRS noticeboard, under "OTRS tickets for thumbnail versions of images" on 13 Feb 2015. The response was that anyone releasing images on a free licence should understand that if you release a lower resolution image, you have legally released all resolutions. Secondly that OTRS volunteers take no responsibility to advise an uploader/source donor of this fact, nor is there any expectation on them to do so. --Fæ (talk) 12:47, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

See also this FAQ answer. The key thing is whether the different resolutions are considered the same "work of copyright" and this may vary from country to country. There is risk to both the licensor and licensee. If the low-resolution copy was created merely by clicking "Save As" and choosing a smaller resolution in the Lightroom/Photoshop dialog box, then it is extremely unlikely that any creative act would be considered. So the smaller copy would likely be considered the same Work of Copyright as their larger copy and the institution would not be able to prevent the larger image being used [Though they may place contractual restrictions on the individuals they give the larger copies to, but that is little help once the image escapes]. After all, MediaWiki resizes images all the time no credit is required to be given to anyone for that mechanical act. But there is also significant risk to potential licensees (re-users, uploaders to Commons) who think they can use/upload the larger file. Because given any two random files you find on the internet, you really don't know for sure what process led to their creation. The larger file may have undergone additional post-processing sufficient to be considered a creative act -- that's up to a judge to decide. Also, the larger file could have some meta data added in the EXIF such as a couple of paragraphs describing the image, which would be copyrightable itself. And the larger file might not even be from the same source image - but another taken at a slightly different time and perhaps different camera settings. There's even the risk they aren't by the same person!

Fae is right that we can't give legal advice. Pointing the institution at the CC FAQ pages would seem a helpful thing to do if they ask about it. If they are considering a large donation of images to Commons, then perhaps WMF Legal could give them specific advice.

One ongoing problem is that both CC and WMF heavily promoted for years, in official glossy literature, the idea that institutions and professional photographers/videographers could release small low-quality copies as CC but retain larger high-quality versions for their paying clients. That was stupid, but don't hold your breath waiting for an apology. If I recall the discussions correctly, many people on Commons were uncomfortable to take advantage of naivety shown by people who followed this advice, or who thought (like many did) that CC applied to the File and not the Work of Copyright. Therefore, there was a strong reluctance to accept/keep high-resolution files if they appeared to be "all rights reserved" and only a low-resolution file had an explicit CC licence. This was on both a ethical and possible-risk basis. -- Colin (talk) 13:44, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your answers.--Zeroth (talk) 23:51, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Yann (talk) 12:42, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Portuguese Wikipedians

File:20$00(r-GarciaOrta)1971.jpg

File:20$00(v-Goa)1971.jpg

If there is someone who can add a 20 Escudo bank note from 1971 showing Garcia d'Orta, it would be very helpful for me as I am working on . We do not seem to have this one on Commons.

Google Translation: (I hope this works) - Se há alguém que pode adicionar uma nota de 20 Escudo banco desde 1971 mostrando Garcia d'Orta, seria muito útil para mim como eu estou trabalhando em . Nós não parecem ter este em Commons.

Shyamal (talk) 05:32, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

There you go. However, the licensing of all images at Category:Banknotes of Portugal is a mess (including of these two I just added), probably as a result of Portugal not being listed in Commons:Currency. Maybe the whole needs to be deleted as copyright violation — I await experts’ input. -- Tuválkin ✉ 11:15, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

 Info Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Banknotes of Portugal. Gunnex (talk) 11:55, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

What a pity! I thought the rest of the images were standing on firm ground after it was replaced by the Euro. Shyamal (talk) 17:37, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Yann (talk) 12:43, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Brianboru100

I've had a whole load of files marked for possible deletion by someone calle mattbuck and before I've had time to comment, the deletion debate has been closed. No reason for the possible deletion has been given. No indication of whether the possibility has been translated into a definite has been given either. I have an application that depends on the urls of these images. Not very friendly to a novice user who doesn't login every day and doesn't know how to follow any policy debates that are going on - just wants to share images. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brianboru100 (talk • contribs)

@Brianboru100: Hi,

It seems that the deletion request is here: Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Mattbuck's temporary category. The last part is not closed yet, so you can answer there. Regards, Yann (talk) 20:26, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

@Brianboru100: The reason for the deletion is that these are photographs of 2D graphic works (such as murals) in the UK. Various countries have rules which we refer to as "freedom of panorama", which generally means that if an artwork is permanently in a public space then it cannot be copyrighted. Unfortunately the UK version does not apply to 2-dimensional "graphic works" such as murals. This means that whoever created the mural holds copyright, and so we cannot accept images which show it. It seems a bit silly, but legally it's no different than taking a photo of a photo in a magazine. You have made a mistake that many many other people have made over the years, myself included. Copyright law is a web of confusion, mostly counterintuitive, and freedom of panorama laws vary wildly from country to country. -mattbuck (Talk) 23:34, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

So why couldn't this explanation be included in the first place? Still not a friendly process. When are the deletions due? I need time to get the images mmoved and my app to point to the new urls.

March 23

Cat-a-lot

In Category:Ancient Roman bronzes in the Museo archeologico nazionale (Florence) I created the sub-cat of bronze statuettes. Using Cat-a-lot I could move only 15 files; all others are rejected, unrecognized ("they were skipped because the old category could not be found"). Momentary disservice as it happens every now and then? Apparently not. After four days still it do not work. I should move them one by one. I wonder and ask: what have these files differently than other that prevents the action? These files are uploaded by the same user, and opening them in edit I do not see anything strange or different between the two groups. It's possible that they have some hidden element or sign that blocks the passage? Thanks for your answer, or the solution of the problem. Best regards, --DenghiùComm (talk) 09:08, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't know why Cat-a-lot doesn't work, but alternatively you may try it with VisualFileChange: go to Category:Ancient Roman bronzes in the Museo archeologico nazionale (Florence), then left-hand side toolbar "Perform batch task", choose "custom replace", select files you want to move, and replace [[Category:Ancient Roman bronzes in the Museo archeologico nazionale (Florence)]] by [[Category:Ancient Roman bronze statuettes in the Museo archeologico nazionale (Florence)]] in the source text. --A.Savin 10:14, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

• I fixed File:Arte romana con restauri moderni, testa di moro antico con corpo di restauro 01.JPG by removing an invisible Unicode character (w:Left-to-right mark) from the category name. It may be possible to remove it from the rest using VisualFileChange.js. --ghouston (talk) 10:34, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

• I think I've fixed the rest. I also moved File:Arte greca, fanciulla adormentata (gorgone o menade), 400 ac ca..JPG. Please undo those two moves if you don't want them. --ghouston (talk) 10:47, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Now it has unblocket ! Now it works, it has succeeded. Wonderful ! Thank you so much at all for your advices and for the solution of the problem ! Best regards, --DenghiùComm (talk) 13:29, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Just in case you are wondering whether there is or not ... paste the text in question into that tool. -- Rillke^(q?) 21:32, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Renaming files

Can I ask to rename file:1971. V летняя спартакиада народов СССР. Борьба.jpg to the name "The Soviet Union 1971 CPA 4016 stamp (Greco-Roman wrestling) cancelled.jpg" for the following reasonː "To harmonize the file names of a set of images (so that only one part of all names differs)"? --Matsievsky (talk) 10:48, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

• Please read the attached clause at Commons:File renaming#cite note-4; the harmonisation reason is to help in templates and to give a unified naming structure to all pages of books and such. I would decline that request based on Commons:File renaming#Which_files should not be renamed? reasons #1 and #2. ColonialGrid (talk) 11:18, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

  1 Commons:File renaming#cite note-4: "Second, files that form parts of a whole". There is file:The Soviet Union 1971 CPA 4016 stamp (Greco-Roman wrestling).jpg with scan the same mint stamp
  

  2 Commons:File renaming#Which_files should not be renamed? reasons #1: "Files should NOT be renamed only because the new name looks a bit better." it here at what? I don't understand.
  

  3 Commons:File renaming#Which_files should not be renamed? reasons ˧: "Files should NOT be renamed ONLY because the filename is not English and/or is not correctly capitalized (Remember, Commons is a multilingual project, so there's no reason to favor English over other languages)." You passed the word "only". --Matsievsky (talk) 11:37, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Parts that form a whole is explained as "scans from the same book or large images that are divided into smaller portions due to Commons' upload size restriction" (emphasis mine); this is not the case with these stamps, they are not pages from a book, or parts of an image that fit together to show a single image. They are single, complete, discrete, entities and therefore not eligible for harmonisation (each can be understood by themselves and do not need others to be understood). You may disagree with my reasons to decline, but without a valid reason to rename the default position is to decline. ColonialGrid (talk) 14:13, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

(Edit conflict)

Matsievsky, §4 of COM:FR aims for generic filename schemas called up by templates. The mere contrastative use of these two filenames

• The Soviet Union 1971 CPA 4016 stamp (Greco-Roman wrestling) cancelled.jpg
• The Soviet Union 1971 CPA 4016 stamp (Greco-Roman wrestling).jpg

, while helpful for human reading, doesn’t qualify. Lacking support for §4 what’s left is a request to rename a file to a new name that is, as ColonialGrid correctly analysed,

• just «a bit better» (§1), as it includes the CPA number (this should be in the description, anyway, and maybe in categories, not necessarily in the filename — and not sufficiently, too!). It is also a bit worse, as it lacks mention of the 5th Summer Spartakiad, and spells out the country name too verbosely («The Soviet Union »« stamp», seriously, as opposed to trimmer and clearer «Soviet »« stamp»?)…
• a replacement of Russian with English — clearly against that clause §2. Please note that even if this Soviet stamp image was filenamed in, say, Bengali, for any reason or no reason at all, changing it to Russian would still be against policy. In thsi case, moving it from the official language of the country the scanned object is an official document of — that’s twice a bad idea, regardless of the prestige Shakespeare’s Tongue may have in Mother Russia (I always observe with mirth how said prestige tends to be locally inversely proportional to actual command of English).

In terms of formal logic, one of the criteria being fulfilled would be enough for renaming, as they are disjunctive, but no criteria being fulfilled means no renaming per policy. -- Tuválkin ✉ 14:31, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Tuválkin, my purpose - not transition from Russian into English, it isn't necessary to impose me your desires. The bad knowledge of language logically doesn't attract a mistake in reasonings, and the good knowledge of language logically doesn't attract permissiveness. I transfer Soviet stamp image names to the certain standard reached as the result of the compromise: "The Soviet Union (Year) CPA (Number) stamp (Short description)". --Matsievsky (talk) 16:53, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Use your standard for your own uploads, that’s cool, but do not try to impose it on other files — COM:FR forbids it very clearly. That’s all there is to the matter, really. -- Tuválkin ✉ 17:35, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank's, it is news to me. Please, specify the concrete quote, I didn't find your information. --Matsievsky (talk) 19:15, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

I see. By the way the both files are versions of the same stamp, therefore, it is two parts of a single whole - a stamp in its versions. §4 perfectly works. --Matsievsky (talk) 09:34, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

No, you are wrong, they are not two parts of the one object, they are two versions of the same style of object, there is a difference. Think about is like pages in a street directory, each page is part of a single, whole map; individually they are without greater context, and should therefore be named in harmony. Please read the clause again in its entirety: "Second, files that form parts of a whole (such as scans from the same book or large images that are divided into smaller portions due to Commons' upload size restriction) should follow the same naming convention so that they appear together, in order, in categories and lists." This explicitly states that to be parts of a whole they must be smaller portions that fit together to make a larger image (as a jigsaw puzzle does). The case you have provided has no valid rational for renaming under the current rename guidelines at Commons:File renaming, in fact, they fall under the first sentence of clause four: "Just because images share a category or a subject does not mean that they are part of a set." They share a subject, but do not form a set under our definitions of being either pages in a book, or parts that combine to show a larger image. ColonialGrid (talk) 13:37, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Stamps can also be considered as part of the catalog of stamps, as its increased images. --Matsievsky (talk) 16:51, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Sure, they could, but in this context they aren't; you simply have to accept that your propsed rename isn't supported by policy. ColonialGrid (talk) 17:01, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

If it and so (what I doubt), change policy. --Matsievsky (talk) 22:59, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

March 24

New user edit-warring about a digitized audio clip from 1917

Could someone help out at File:Tamo Daleko.ogg (File_talk:Tamo Daleko.ogg)? I was unsuccessful in trying to explain why it couldn't be attributed to him only, just because he digitized the song and put it through some filtering and general audio cleanup. - Anonimski (talk) 00:26, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

@Anonimski: I left a long comment talking about the copyright issues. I also used one of my favorite underused templates, {{Infosplit}}, to make it clear there are (at least potentially) two different copyright statuses involved. BTW, as I mentioned, pre-1972 sound recordings should use {{PD-US-record}}, not {{PD-US}}. Revent (talk) 01:51, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Flickr upload broken

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T93181

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T89012

Every time I try to use the "Share images from Flickr" option on the Upload Wizard, I get the message "Unknown error: 'permissiondenied'." This would be a great option in lieu of uploading manually, but it simply does not work. Conifer (talk) 01:49, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

That option should only be visible to administrators and license reviewers for now. It looks like someone broke something again. —LX (talk, contribs) 07:22, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

 Comment There are other tools (Commons:Flickr files#Tools) that can upload from Flickr, such as the reasonably straightforward Flickr-2-Commons tool. ColonialGrid (talk) 15:53, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I used to have license reviewer permissions on my old account, User:David1217. However, when I got renamed on en.wp [16], I neglected to have the same rename here on Commons (I believe this was before global rename). Then when I created an SUL, it automatically made me this new account here, so now I have split accounts. Apparently I've had the right removed due to inactivity, but if there's some way to restore it on this account, I'd be very pleased, because it would make uploading much easier. Thanks, Conifer (talk) 19:26, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

It is more than 2 years since you last used the right and it was removed from your old account on 24 February, after notification, for this reason. You should raise a request formally on Commons:Requests_for_rights#Filemover. --Fæ (talk) 19:47, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Commons:License review/requests is probably the place Fæ wanted to send you to. -- Rillke^(q?) 20:23, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

@Conifer: The license reviewer userright is irrelevant to uploading, as you are not allowed to review your own uploads (it does not make you 'exempt' from having them flagged for review). Revent (talk) 21:18, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I know that they still have to be reviewed; I meant that I could use the direct Flickr URL uploading instead of the manual method. Anyway, thanks to everyone for the help, since I'm now using Flickr2Commons, which works just as well. Conifer (talk) 21:25, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

@Revent: We grant image reviewers the upload_by_url user right. With these rights, it is possible to transfer files from Flickr using Upload Wizard and issue uploads server side from several other sources. -- Rillke^(q?) 23:07, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I was aware, but that slipped my mind when it came to the context of requesting the (group, not 'right', indeed), since it's not really the main 'purpose'. I was thinking he meant 'easier to upload from Flickr' in that sense, tho... my mistake. Revent (talk) 23:25, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Panoramio upload bot

Hi all, is there a way to order tasks to Panoramio Upload Bot? I asked its operator and didn't receive any answer... Thanks --Discasto _{talk | contr. | es.wiki analysis} 23:22, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

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

This thread was started by someone who said that he had uploaded a 'child porn image'. The image was quickly removed and the uploader permanently blocked from all Wikimedia websites. End of story so far as we are concerned. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:52, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Blurred child porn image

I uploaded one such image. It was taken originally from a public criminal trial document in Norway which in its physical form (as released by the courts) displays the images not blurred, however, the copy available online through Scribd.com has all applicable images thoroughly blurred. The file was deleted speedily by User:Reinhard Kraasch with the explanation "Out of project scope". I consequently requested undeletion. This was turned down by User:Steinsplitter with a new rationale: "we can't host blurred content as defined in U.S. Code Title 18 Section 2256 - included are retouched images. I have filed a report to the Wikimedia Foundation's legal team for further investigation if needed". Having read the referenced section of United States Code not being able to corroborate Steinsplitter's reading, I requested undeletion anew. This was again turned down by Steinsplitter who simply restated their previous position with no further comment. I should also note that I was threatened on my user talk page by same Steinsplitter that [n]ext time you will be blocked. It is unclear to me whether this threat pertains to an attempted re-upload of the deleted image or simply requesting a community inspection of the process surrounding this media upload. In the latter case I realize the present post may cause my expulsion from the project, however unsupported by rules and guidelines this would be by my assessment.

Now, Steinsplitter mentioned in the first undeletion denial that "I have filed a report to the Wikimedia Foundation's legal team for further investigation if needed". Perhaps this is something that could have an additional bearing on the present request for clarification/discussion. __meco (talk) 13:02, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

@Steinsplitter: perhaps a simple explanation would clear this up? I can imagine reasons as to why the image should be deleted, but this would be guesswork. Note that in some countries (including the one I am in right now), visiting a website and viewing images which the police consider to be child pornography (and their definitions are hard to understand) is a crime. This is a good incentive for me not to try to find the image even if legitimately published on a public website in other countries. --Fæ (talk) 13:15, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

See Commons:Administrators' noticeboard#Illegal_content - The file in question has been oversighted and can't be restored. --Steinsplitter (talk) 13:20, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

I think Steinsplitter is right here. This is either illegal or out of scope. Regards, Yann (talk) 13:21, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. It's part of what we rely on oversight for. --Fæ (talk) 13:22, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

http://wikipediocracy.com/2013/03/25/meet-the-editors-meco/ – We've known about Meco and his behavior since 2013: two years and we still haven't done anything about him! We shouldn't tolerate his presence here. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 13:39, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

• Uploading this is such an egregious lack of judgment, ethics and decency that it should be grounds for an immediate indefinite project wide ban on the uploader.--Maunus (talk) 16:19, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
  • WMF has globally banned/locked this user--Stemoc 09:32, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

@Maunus: I wasn't paying attention while this happened, but the archived AN conversation doesn't make any sense. If the image was "thoroughly blurred" and originated not merely legally but from an actual court publication, why would it be illegal? (Also, what was the point of posting it to begin with?) And it sounds like someone deleted a photo of an adult because he was 'involved with' child pornography, to keep it from being "used inadvertently" - say what? And what does British law have to do with anything, shouldn't we be talking American? I understand of course that WMF is serious about keeping illegal content off the servers, but this sounds like people are starting to believe in witchcraft. I feel like this case is supposed to set some sort of precedent, but ... what precedent? Wnt (talk) 12:12, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

The WMF have taken responsibility by taking office action, so this now has nothing to do with volunteers. It makes logical sense to remove the Commons block at it only muddies the water. --Fæ (talk) 12:22, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, given the (totally dissimilar) situation with Russavia who was WMF-locked recently for possibly political reasons [not child porn!] but who the community sympathizes with, I think it's important to retain a note of whether the community wants a given editor blocked even if they are WMF-locked also. I haven't gone diving into Wikipediocracy to see what all reasons people had for blocking Meco, but I just get appalled when every time people add 2 and 2 it comes out as 13 or 71 or 169. What was File:Mesol15.jpg and why was it considered so bad that Commons had to delete it as "out of scope" while it was being used in an article on the Italian Wikipedia? Wnt (talk) 12:51, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I've already explained the reason why it should be deleted, and I removed it from the Italian Wikipedia prior to the deletion, so it wasn't deleted "while it was being used" as you claim. No one at itwiki reverted me or complained about my actions. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 14:58, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

See Commons:Contact_us/Problems/en: Inappropriate images of children. It is advised community members stay away from such contents. Jee 12:37, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, here's the thing: I haven't seen the explanation why the image was inappropriate. I didn't see any dispute that it was blurred beyond recognition, and doesn't a court posting it mean that it is legally appropriate at least in the source country? (Admittedly that doesn't mean legal in the U.S.; but the criteria there should be established). We ought to be able to provide useful guidance to future editors about what the relevant issues are. Wnt (talk) 12:51, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't know exact reasons; but it seems downloading such contents even for reviewing is not safe if you are living in USA. Fortunately I'm from other place. :) Jee 13:01, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I understand we have some bad laws, and indeed I did not rush to find the source and see how blurred it really is. But that's why I'm asking you and the others: was this a case where someone in the U.S. would say that this is child porn because it was not blurred enough? I find it hard to believe since Meco is the one who started the admin consideration, believing his content to be legitimate here, and above all because the deletion of that other image because nobody even claimed it was child porn, just that it was somehow "associated" with it (I don't know who was portrayed; was he someone who took such images?) Wnt (talk) 13:09, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes; that law seems bad indeed to force a deletion even if that image is of a monkey but with that file-name. :) Jee 13:15, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm removing "section resolved|1=Yann (talk) 12:42, 28 March 2015 (UTC)}}" because it isn't usual procedure to archive old content because people want to talk about it. Wnt (talk) 12:47, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Suppression seems to be accepted behavior from some administrators. --Fæ (talk) 12:49, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Again stupid comment by the same user. Wnt's comment was not signed, so I thought this thread was dead. Yann (talk) 12:57, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

OK, sorry for assuming the worst. Commons has a nasty feel to it nowadays and I shouldn't make it worse. Wnt (talk) 13:03, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Yann, your recent hate campaign against me will be clear to anyone who bothers to look through what you have been writing about me, "stupid comment" now being typical of your tedious personal attacks verging on hostile trolling. The fact that you have been pre-emptively closing discussion on UNDEL and now on the VP is again obvious. You closed down this thread at 12:42 when the last signed comment was at 12:37. --Fæ (talk) 13:53, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Fae, in case you didn't notice, YOU are attacking me. It was a mistake of me. I don't see the need for your paranoid post of a conspiracy to suppress discussion. Yann (talk) 14:14, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

But he attacked me first! This crap has to stop somewhere, let the most mature and responsible user stop, how about that? The closure and re-opening is actually off-topic here, it is just normal wiki process, any close may be reversed, in good faith, right? Will all agree on that? --Abd (talk) 20:03, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

@Wnt: You ask, "Also, what was the point of posting it to begin with?" Meco claims to be "Halvor Raknes Johansen" on his Meta userpage, and that's the name that appeared on those court documents that Meco links to in his post above. I can only assume that Meco uploaded a photo from his own trial, especially given what we already know. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 15:11, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I've researched this. Meco complained about an "out of scope" deletion. This was not the page for that. Michaeldsuarez pointed to a Wikipediocracy page, which could be argued was a privacy policy violation, bringing in non-neutral off-wiki polemic aimed at the user, asserting it as fact, and he just repeated it. Michael also went cross wiki, going after this user: [17], which he cited above and nobody seems to have noticed the implications. That edit should probably have been oversighted, and much of what is here, the same. The community has never endorsed m:Child protection; enwiki has a policy, though, and Michaeldsuarez would be blocked there, were he not already blocked, for making an edit as he made on itwiki. So that edit then allowed deletion of a photo of the user's butt here, that had been in actual use. Terrible danger to children, I assume.

The "blurred" photo here was probably not illegal. Obviously, without seeing it, I can't be sure, but Meco came here in the belief that it was not illegal, and I suspect he'd know the law.

I've studied this issue for years, common opinion and actual law and legal practice are very different, and if Meco wants to create some educational resource using that image, he could have possibly done it on en.wikiversity. The community there monitors things like this, and won't allow illegal material, but will allow study of almost anything that could be studied in a university, which could include social, psychological, and legal issues around age of consent, etc. If anyone wants to do that, consult with me. Ethical guidelines must be developed, or it will all be too disruptive. This topic can turn normally sane users into reactive jellyfish.

I have seven children, and have been involved in counselling sex addicts, including persons charged with child molestation (who are often suicidal, and often were molested themselves), and I know much more than the usual person what is actually dangerous and what is not. I will act to protect my children and other children, but much "antipedophile" advocacy and action actually harms children.

Meco was globally banned by the WMF, 05:43, 24 March 2015. The WMF does not state reasons for WMF Global Bans, but there is an obvious one here, and in another case a similar reason is known. In the Meco case, the Wikipediocracy page shows allegations -- I'd call them "insinuations" -- and the WMF probably accepted those. In the other case, the user, known very well to Michaeldsuarez, was famous for off-wiki challenge to traditional norms, which was so unpopular that wikis that allowed him to edit were attacked by highly disruptive vigilantes, DOS attacks were threatened, violence was threatened.

Neither of these users violated the TOU globally. Rather, the bans would be issued under when the trust or safety of our users or employees is otherwise in danger or has been significantly compromised or threatened. So the argument would be that users who are children are threatened in some way, by allowing the user to edit? There is nothing in that about protecting readers, and, of course, much WMF content is inappropriate for children.

The claim of abuse or danger to children was false. Meco was not alleged to be using the wikis to groom children, etc. However, the community could change m:Child protection to include off-wiki advocacy (as with w:WP:Child protection) and then it is possible Meco could have been bannable, and the other user as well. However, what Wikipediocracy pointed to was not advocacy, at all.

Both the enwiki policy and the draft meta policy require handling these issues off-wiki. Meco was blocked on enwiki with no discussion, and an instruction to contact ArbCom before unblocking. That is how "child protection" blocks are handled there. There are Wikipediocracy users who, instead, attempt to expose "pedophiles," making it a crusade, and who have been indeffed on enwiki as a result.

One mystery remains for me: Meco called this image "blurred child porn." There was no child porn involved in his trial, per his comment quoted on Wikipedia, where he acknowledged that he had hosted child pornography in a private FTP site, and this would have been many years ago. It was not his interest. So where did this image come from?

Meco did not, there, make any statements of advocacy. On Wikipediocracy, Meco's comments are presented and the writer closes with:

I don’t think that there’s much more that needs to be said about this particular case. Meco has said it all for me. He continues to be an editor in good standing on the English-language Wikipedia. [Editor’s note: shortly after the publication of this article, Meco was blocked at Wikipedia.]

This is very common in cases like this. There is no sober analysis of what has been written. It is very clear that the writer is so horrified by what he has read that he cannot make sophisticated distinctions. I was banned on Wikipediocracy for pointing these things out, the users who do this "work" are popular there, because they are attacking Wikipedia and the Wikipedia community for allowing porn to be hosted, and Commons is a frequent target.

Meco, however, is not a pedophile, never was a pedophile, never advocated pedophilia, but hosted some illegal files on an FTP site, which technically made him a pornographer, he wasn't caught and convicted of that, and that all shut down almost twenty years ago. The WPO page cites a source, which then has a date: March 31, 2008. It looks like, there, he simply told the truth. There is no clue there that he is a pedophile, but anti-pedophile vigilantes often confuse w:hebephilia and w:ephebophilia with w:pedophilia. Ephebophilia is quite common, even normal. Obviously, acting upon ephebophilic urges can be very illegal, which varies from place to place. The 'philias, as well, refer to "primary or exclusive" sexual interest, which is an additional issue. Meco, 8 years ago, was discussing his sexuality from a decade earlier than that, and it's development. He does not address his current sexuality, beyond noting that he had generally lost sexual interest.

The kind of disclosure Meco made in that discussion that WPO cited is diagnostic of someone who has moved on, he shows detachment in it, i.e., "This is what happened." He does not justify what he did, nor does he dissolve in shame. Having seen a lot of people go through recovery from sexual addiction (and I don't know that he could have been described as a sexual addict at any point), he'd be one whom I would expect to not offend, to not break laws. From my point of view, though, he's better off not editing in a highly intolerant community that will condemn him for what he did twenty years earlier, that has no balance and no capacity for forgiveness. The WMF, my opinion, is setting itself up for lawsuit, for no particularly good purpose. Meco is unlikely to sue. This discussion may have been better off closed, but since it was re-opened, and since Michael repeated his claims here -- which were moot and useless for Commons purposes, I decided to address the structural problem, that Commons allows these kinds of accusations, and has not developed policy that would shut something like this down immediately.

Here is what should have been done. This topic should have been immediately closed. If that were missed, and accusations of pedophilia or the like were made, they should have been rev-del'd and the topic shut down, and users warned about making such claims on-wiki. If a user insisted on discussing this, the user should have been short-blocked. Any accusations of harm or risk for children should be handled off-wiki, through e-mail, not IRC. When a user here goes cross-wiki and yanks a file on a wiki where the user has no other edits, it is obviously gaming the system, to make the file "out of scope." The user should be warned, etc. Policy on this should be developed. We tend to keep sweeping these things under the carpet, hoping they will just go away. They won't. --Abd (talk) 20:03, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I was never a fan of the revdeling part of the en.wikipedia policy, and I have at times resorted to calling it a "pedophile protection provision" - though at the same time, they almost never actually use it (though they won't consider changing it) even when called out on the inconsistency. I also don't believe in that policy's idea of banning editors who self-identify as pedophiles (or "advocates") despite otherwise acting in a responsible manner, because I think it's simply deceptive to run a worldwide site full of anonymous editors while pretending that there are no such people here; it would be easier to watch people we know about than to wonder about those who stay hidden.

That said, I can see that the WMF would have been stinging after the Wikipediocracy "expose" and wouldn't need a big excuse to get rid of a person - though their discomfort shouldn't be a reason to act in that way. When the Terms and Conditions came out I had quite a few parts that I critiqued, even with some success, but I have to admit I never spotted an ambiguity in "Posting child pornography or any other content that violates applicable law concerning child pornography;" -- but looking at it now, I see that someone might be trying to make the first portion independent of the part about "violates applicable law". So they might be counting totally blurred out, legally sanitized child pornography nonetheless as child pornography. If so, I imagine that there will be some anime fans and even history buffs in for a bad day as they branch out to include various other material that Commons previously had discussed and determined to be legal, even notable artwork. In the end, Terms of Use only mean what the person interpreting them wants them to. What is frustrating about this for me politically is that Commons' long-term decision to host some pages that are definitely "legal child pornography" (I'm not talking about anything mentioned here), even throughout Sanger's well-publicized calls for FBI investigation which effectively confirms their legality, puts a hole in the censorship narrative. If challenged, a U.S. court should at least apply the Miller Test to such content, repudiating the notion that an arbitrary line can be drawn to close off constitutional considerations. And we should all know how in the UK right now, a system of BAE and/or Lockheed "black boxes" nominally set up for child porn censorship have been rapidly and readily repurposed to prohibit Britons from reading the opposing point of view in ongoing wars in the Middle East, so the merit of blockading this slippery slope should be clearer than ever before.

But even considering all that, I still don't understand User:Michaeldsuarez's 'logic' arguing for deletion of File:Mesol15.jpg. I haven't seen it, but obviously it's not child porn or someone would say so. I don't understand how the subject is supposed to be 'associated' with it, but how can that make any sense at all? Either it is or it ain't, no? Wnt (talk) 22:43, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

En.wiki arbitrators, shanghaied into a job they didn't want by the community that wrote the enwiki policy, are probably happy that the WMF took this over. I argued that the WMF should establish a child protection desk to handle the issues, either with an expert on board or available for consultation. I also suggested that they make their process clear, and, as well, for all global ban issues, that a community review process be created, that would be confidential, to allow private appeals, with trusted representatives from the communities on board.

Still, Michael's position is understandable. It comes from a common opinion that the world is full of child predators, dangerous, and that we must stamp out this evil. That danger was invisible when I was young. Yes, children were molested, and that this is now addressed is a great thing. However, it also turned into a witch hunt, and lives have been ruined, and an entire generation of children have been raised with the idea that they can never be alone. Michael obviously believes that Meco is a "pedophile," or he would not have written that it.wiki revert summary. From evidence I've seen, the image was of Meco, on a beach, nude, seen from behind. So if Meco is a "pedophile," the thinking would be, an image of him must be a very dangerous thing.

It is certainly not that children should not be protected! Rather, the witch hunt, the insane urgency that is developed, the willingness to violate normal free-speech protections, and the politics of it all, do not protect children, and they create an impression of a very dangerous world. In reality, the world is dangerous, all right, but lurking pedophiles is way down the list.

Michael's edit on it.wiki referred to a person whose real name is known, as Michael has pointed out. It was libelous (see the meta draft policy cited below). I'm not going to go into the legal theories here, but the WMF could also be held liable. A lawsuit is not likely, with each case, for practical reasons, but if these practices continue, sooner or later someone who is injured is going to take the matter to court. The WMF has deep pockets and could be included as a defendant if it were involved.

But this is Commons, not the Community Advice to the WMF Wiki. I'm suggesting we develop Commons policy for handling "child protection issues," which could protect children, and reduce on-wiki disruption over accusations. It could be like the draft meta policy, which does not refer to "off-wiki" advocacy, a slippery slope if I ever saw one. Meta has:

Reports of editors engaged in such conduct should be made to the WMF at: legal-reports@wikimedia.org

Email reports are preferred, as public comments suggesting a contributor is engaging in such conduct may be considered libel, or may involve unacceptable privacy issues for the editor or for a minor. Such comments can be removed by any editor, and may be deleted.

I have handled these matters on other wikis, where claims of "pedophile" were revision-deleted promptly, at my request (by email, of course!). The user was informed that they could report to the WMF. --Abd (talk) 00:21, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

I actually see the situation very differently here. To begin with, the past couple of decades have shown us like never before just how common the sexual abuse of children really is, much more than I ever would have imagined, and I don't want to minimize that in any way. But although we are always being told that these issues have to be considered in private, by Responsible People, behind closed doors, the outcome of such considerations is always corrupt, no matter whether it is the church, the university, or the highest levels of government. Only public discussion has any chance of leading to an appropriate result. But knowing how common it is, we should therefore not try to pretend that a site anyone can edit is 100% pedophile-free. We know better! We should focus any policy and administrative effort on the accomplishable goal of securing the children from harm, rather than the unaccomplishable goal of, without taking IDs, purging every last person with any kind of child-related conviction who edits.

At this point I'm not going to try to argue further over Mesol15.jpg; if it's just a self nude, well, Commons has deleted so many of those in such an arbitrary way, and can say that it's simply very replaceable. I doubt any paranoid scenario meaningfully applies but I can't issue a guarantee. I should however observe that this photo has a higher calling - we are just not going to reach it. Namely, my understanding from w:nude beach is that many such beaches are a family affair, and parents who go to that beach might be interested to hear the story of this photo, and make a note that someone who had had this kind of legal issue does indeed share it with them. But Wikipedia is far too timid and straight-laced for such exposes.

I also know that it is well-nigh futile to argue with WMF over their global locks under the best of circumstances, which this isn't. It seems impossible even to know what the "real policy" is except by guesswork. The overall issue is that they are forming an entirely separate and essentially secret layer of administration over the administrators, and it is not clear how far they are going with that. In the end we need to understand that the medium is the message and if we want a truly public resource that is free of censorship from a central authority, then we cannot keep it on a server controlled by a central point. This lesson, that the existing structure of the internet inevitably leads to undemocratic practices and beliefs, is one that may be written far more bloodily on society at large. Wnt (talk) 12:01, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

• Above is pretty much the POV shown on Wikipediocracy, that the only way to protect the children from pedophiles is public exposure by vigilantes. It is a popular view, because, after all, "pedophiles" are so horrible that they don't deserve normal civil rights and protection. However, fact and experience:

• The pedophiles you can see and identify this way are a small percentage of those who would actually harm children, and most harm to children, the sexual abuse that is, in fact, more common than was known back then, is not from "pedophiles." It is from family and friends and neighbors who have never been convicted or accused of anything, and who may not be pedophiles, but rather opportunists.

• Contrary to the knee-jerk "authorities will protect the abuser," many jurisdictions, including where I live, now have mandated reporting laws. As I have raised seven children, including two who were adopted, and often as a single parent, I have seen the effect of these laws. I've been reported to child protective agencies, over about thirty years, maybe a half-dozen times, once to the police. So I have seen what they do. Had there been any abuse, I'd have been in serious trouble. They investigate every report, carefully. With the report to the local police, I got a phone call from an officer, and that was all the information they had about me, my first name and phone number; I was asked for an interview, and it was not said what it was about. I gave my address and met the officer in my apartment.

• I fully support the mandated reporting laws. It is possible that abuse still escapes attention, because children will lie to protect parents, for example. I have always told my children to tell the truth to investigators, even when it might be inconvenient.

• However, child protective agencies will not investigate a report based on a hysterical claim that so-and-so is a "danger to children," when no children are involved!

• In the Meco case, what was reported by Wikipediocracy did not indicate danger to children, at all. It did indicate illegal activity involving child pornography, almost twenty years earlier, with no conviction, but, later, one might say, a confession. Nothing in that confession indicated pedophilia. It did indicate marginal behavior with respect to teenage boys, when Meco was a teenager or not much older. Common, I expect. And also long ago.

• Much later, Meco became a Wikipedia editor. He had some interests in editing related to his life experience, that is certainly not uncommon. However, he was not disruptive and there was no sign that he used Wikipedia for illegal purpose. So, probably seeing some editing that indicated "deviant opinions," as someone might think, someone researched him and found the old material, which was then reported on Wikipediocracy as part of the anti-Wikipedia campaign there, or the anti-pedophile campaign, which gets completely mixed up, there, as more or less the same thing.

• Public exposure is a terrible way to handle child abuse. Private mandated investigation avoids harm from false reports, and there are many false reports. Unfortunately, if the private investigation reveals illegal activity, there is then public prosecution, and the welfare of the child is not an issue in deciding on this. It can cause enormous damage to the child, sometimes more damage than the original abuse. But that's a public policy issue. I don't have magic answers.

• Meco's admitted crimes (which are vague) are age-of-consent issues, and the illegality would vary greatly with jurisdiction. Even discussing the age-of-consent issue is so hot that a professor was pilloried in the media and by the legislature of his state for writing an academic article, the state legislature voted to cut $50,000 from the state university budget, but the university stood behind him, and he died a decade later, head of his department. Public opinion and academic knowledge -- on these issues can be widely divergent. The article simply reported fact and a fairly obvious analysis. It did not advocate anything, it studied the movement of social response to various issues over time. There are many who go ballistic if you tell them the truth.

• On Wikiversity, I've acted to discourage discussion of the topic, because it can be so disruptive. Essentially, I required that guidelines for such study be written first, and that has not happened yet. For not joining in the effort to ban the editor who wanted to examine it -- who had cooperated, was not disruptive, though not thrilled by being halted -- I was then attacked as a supporter of a "pedophile-advocate," something like that, by an admin. There was cross-wiki disruption over this, with revision deletion on meta and Wikiversity. The admin was desysopped, to make a long story short. No children were harmed in the making of this movie. There were no children involved, and no pedophile, just a libertarian activist-troll and a hysterical and ignorant user who happened to be an admin.

• As a parent, I encourage parents everywhere to realize that hysteria does not protect children, except maybe from a tiger about to eat them, when one might need the adrenalin. If higher-brain responses are needed, calm is essential. Children should know how to recognize danger and handle it, without becoming terrified of society. Trying to protect children by keeping them under observation at all times will start to fail as they become teenagers. They will demand autonomy, I think it is programmed. As well, I've trained my children to talk about what's happening to them, not to hide it. As part of that training, I've had to suppress my own protective responses, because if I react, knee-jerk, with protectiveness when Daughter shares some issue with me, some problem she is having, say some kid is bullying her, or an adult is "mean," she will stop telling me. So I'll only respond that way if there is immanent danger. She also doesn't want advice, at 13, unless she asks.

• Very typical teenager, in fact.

• The "danger of Meco on a beach" is illusory. On a nude beach, there may be some gay men. Surprise! Some may be w:ephebopiles or w:hebophiles. Surprise? It shouldn't be. These are within common range. Pedophiles are rarer, much rarer, and won't have an opportunity at the beach (unless you live at the beach and let your kid roam at will, and don't train them about candy from strangers!). Wikipedia is a terrible place to look for kids, if you are a pedophile. Instagram would be more productive, I'd think, and other sites with lots of young users.

• I'm afraid that the WMF ban indicates, most likely, a lack of mature, professional response, and more likely knee-jerk, feel-good by looking-good response, thinking that this will please those who want pedophiles banned. Maybe, or maybe that is also, simply, the thinking of those who handle WMF bans, since they have no expertise on this, nor staff to consult, AFAIK. We have set all this up by allowing the WMF to have no community supervision, not really. The board election process will not create a representative board, the method used can't do that. STV could, if there are many members elected at once. If it is only one at a time, STV is a terrible method. And we have not figured out how to sanely govern the wikis, much less the WMF! --Abd (talk) 19:29, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Meco responds

[18]. This response is typical for user like Meco. He had long Wikipedian experience, and expected due process. He did not understand that "pedophiles" have no rights. He did not understand that, once accused of pedophilia, if there is any evidence that, examined shallowly, could support that conclusion, that is the end of the topic. The mob will awaken and he will be treated as a dangerous pedophile and banned, and even talking to him will be seen as disgusting. He did not expect this, obviously. He imagined that he'd have a chance to respond to charges. Surely, before the WMF banned him (if he had any clue that this was a possibility), they would ask for his side of the story, and he could explain the history.

Meco does not respond as a pedophile would respond. An advocate for "boylove," as it's called by "boylovers," would claim that "boylove is a wonderful thing and [that] society is wrong about it." Instead, he reacts as one accused but not guilty. It's a coherent picture. This is not a request that Meco be unblocked or unbanned. This is simply a discussion of what happened, and the possible value here is setting up policy for Commons for handling accusations of pedophilia or other disabilities or reprehensibilities. --Abd (talk) 20:17, 29 March 2015 (UTC) added quotes around "boylovers" and in the rest of the sentence to make it clear that this is what some pedophiles may call themselves, or may say, not my terminology, per complaint from a user below. --Abd (talk) 05:05, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it's important to remember, as we discuss many more general issues, that there is nothing but a simple statement that Meco was involved in running a website, and we don't know the circumstances. The court documents he uploaded probably explained the circumstances much better, but ... they're deleted. Wnt (talk) 20:52, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Meco goes on, on his blog, in Norwegian, which I've reviewed in translation. He is socially dysfunctional, a recognizable syndrome. He is likely high intelligence, associated with that. He shares his personal past inappropriately with people who are not his friends. Like the police or the entire internet. However, the actual police, the senior officers who last interviewed him, have apparently concluded he is harmless. His habits would get him in a lot of trouble if he were engaged in illegal activity, like talking about w:Wilhelm Reich with the clueless, who will misinterpret it. The habits will get him in trouble with "normies" who are morally outraged by reality. Meco does not hide what most will hide. He also has "principles," i.e., about not showing identification to police or not signing statements. But blah, blah, blah, on his blog. His story, in great detail. Notice that the police became involved because of what he'd written on Facebook, and the reaction of football league officials to that. How did they know about it? Very likely, someone involved with his ban from en.wiki tracked him and informed them. This is completely unsurprising. The same has happened with another banned user. Useless reports to the FBI and to the police, wasting the time of officials who actually are involved with real child abuse, hence damaging actual protection of children.

In the material quoted on Wikipediocracy, which he also confirms on his blog, he gives much detail about that history. It was not a "website," it was an FTP archive, and he allowed it to be used for child porn (he calls it that) twenty years ago or more. From his "confession," we know much more than could have been shown in that court case. He's anomic, I'd say, he doesn't have normal emotional responses. That freaks some people out, but it does not make him dangerous. It does mean that he probably did not think about the moral implications of what he was doing, at the time. There is no sign that he continued any illegal activity, after then, beyond some drug abuse, perhaps, it's unclear. I would guess that he'd think of it as wrong, now, to the extent that he thinks that way.

Come to think of it, should users who have been convicted or charged with illegal drug possession or sale be banned? Hmm.... How about any unlawful sex? Like of an 18-year-old with a younger person, or whatever locally crosses the line? If they ever confessed it, anywhere? Let me put it this way: the number of people who have actually done all these things, especially when young, is far, far larger than the number of those who are convicted and/or who will talk about it. --Abd (talk) 21:55, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Abd I thank you for having such an open mind about these things. People who are sexually interested in male children are commonly called "pedophiles" not "boylovers". You are adopted the disguising terms they use. Mr Muffler (talk) 22:49, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, they are. Called that. However, Meco is neither a "boylover" nor a pedophile. What I wrote is that pedophiles call themselves that, which is simply the truth. And I have also written that anyone who points out the truth on this will be attacked. Q.E.D.

I have not "adopted" that term. In fact, I call the hypothetical person a "pedophile," then I point out that Meco does not respond as an actual pedophile would respond, i.e., with justification and defense and promotion of "boylove." I.e., pedophilia, though if I go into details to be more accurate, it will also be attacked, as academics are attacked when they publish in this field. I thought I'd cite here the Wikipedia article on the late professor, Harris Merkin, since he was truly famous for a time, national radio interview, etc. Surely Wikipedia would have an article. No. Here is a New Yorker story. The guy was notable (there are many more sources). I don't see any sign that an article was attempted. It takes guts to raise these issues, with any position other than "Look! A pedophile! Get the tar and feathers, quick!" -- and anyone who raises them in another way better be spotless, because there will be many hostile eyes on them. There is a discussion of Merkin on Wikipedia: [19]. And this is definitely not the place to debate Merkin, and my point has been that discussions of this topic lead to disruption. This request should have been immediately shut down. It was closed, to be archived, and that was reverted as if it were censorship, with more accusations being added.

Merkin, ironically, wrote about phases in society's acceptance of what was previously rejected with horror, like homosexuality. He did not advocate changes, and he placed "adult-child sex," as I recall, into the phase where even discussion of the topic is repressed and attacked. (And many have misrepresented what Mirkin actually wrote, and the attack on Mirkin demonstrated the reality of what he wrote.) What is missed is that the definition of adult-child sex has, in fact, been shifting, it used to include what is now routinely accepted, and homosexual activity used to have different ages as defining age of consent than for heterosexual activity, there is a famous case of a Dutch politician who went to prison for activity that is now legal. He then worked to change the law, and succeeded. Standards "are" shifting. It will never shift, I would predict, to allow "pedophilic activity" as legal, not in any modern society, and I think Merkin would have agreed.

For a more sober take on actual pedophilia, see [20] and disregard the lurid headline. It's misleading. The law professor does not imply that "active pedophilia" is not a crime, not at all, it is a crime and she believes it should stay that way. And "being a pedophile" has never been a crime. Talking about it, however, can get you in lots of trouble. And talking about anything that any shallow thinker imagines resembles pedophilia or "pedophile advocacy," can, as well. --Abd (talk) 23:41, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

You said "as it's called by boylovers" not "as it is called by pedophiles who are sexually attracted to male children". You do not know that Meco is not a pedophile. You assume he is not. Please do not present your assumptions as facts. Mr Muffler (talk) 02:35, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

You are correct about the technical expression, but you have taken it out of context. I clearly called them "pedophiles," and noted what they call themselves, to point out that Meco didn't do this, did not defend "boylove," as a "boylover" would. My error was in omitting a later set of quote marks, so I'll correct that above, and OMG, this is crazy, exactly what I'm talking about.

As to assumptions, I don't know that you are not a pedophile. How could I? I don't know anything about your sexuality. From your username, I'd suspect you of being male. Not "know." What percentage of the male population is pedophilic? Do you know the research on this? I do. There are also female child sexual abusers, and I'm not talking about teachers who have sex with a 16-year old student, I'm talking about children.

I say that Meco is not a pedophile, because I have seen is that there has been no evidence presented that Meco is a pedophile. None. And there is plenty of evidence as to his real sexuality. And I have counseled real pedophiles; I was extensively, for many years, involved in supporting sex addicts in recovery, in general, so I know a great deal about it (and about the harm if there is no treatment or support or protection). I know the realities. I don't just shoot my mouth off without knowledge.

And whether or not Meco is a pedophile or not, ought to be none of our business. That is settled policy on en.wiki. It ought to be so here, as well. --Abd (talk) 05:05, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

We agree. Neither of us know if Meco is a pedophile or not a pedophile. So please stop saying that he should not be banned because he is not a pedophile. You do not know what the deleted "blurred child porn" picture was so please stop saying that there was no problem with it. Maybe your experience can be used to work on the policy instead? Mr Muffler (talk) 06:05, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

---

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

This section was archived on a request by:    FDMS  4    14:18, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Request for help regarding an oversight issue & the Wikimedia Foundation

This section was archived on a request by:    FDMS  4    14:18, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Commons talk:We miss you#Should the people doing the missing be listed for each entry?

I'll looking for people who are interested in having a discussion about the format of the Commons:We miss you page. If anyone is interested, please join in. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 16:06, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm personally wondering about the inclusion criteria, because I saw someone add Penyulap the other day, and I don't think anyone missed them. -mattbuck (Talk) 12:29, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

That someone was me, and another user endorsed the entry via "thanks". I think that we should work out what the page should display before we work on the inclusion criteria for new entries. Abd suggested that entries should be seconded. I like that idea, but that's a discussion for another time. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 14:18, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

The page is untenable if it is necessary to establish consensus for inclusion. Hence "we miss you" could simply be interpreted to mean that more than one user misses the person, thus "we," and the first one as shown by an addition to the page, and the second, or more, as shown by listing additional users. If one person nominates, anyone may revert that, but then if another brings it back in, it should be accepted. Unless socking is shown, of course! The same person might have been seen as a PITA by nearly everyone else, might be blocked, banned, or excommunicated. Michael is correct that inclusion standards should be established, so that disruption is not caused by dispute over who is missed and who is not. The page should not become a debate. We can see a hint of this above, where clearly one person misses, and it was asserted as unlikely that anyone would miss that user. Obviously false, already known as such if anyone is paying attention. I don't know Pennylap from a HoleInTheWall, and don't need to. Let's keep it simple. --Abd (talk) 19:26, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

March 20

File:Cholula_Hot_Sauce.jpg

Are personal photos taken of commercial products located on shelves in grocery stores OK to upload to Commons? I checked the archives and find quite a few threads about Coke bottles/cans which say that the images are OK because the logo is no longer copyrighted and because of the simple design of the bottle/can. COM:PACKAGING, however, seems to say that if the packaging of the product contains a printed design then it cannot be uploaded to Commons. Would that reasoning be applicable to this picture of these hot sauce bottles? Thanks in advance. - Marchjuly (talk) 02:25, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

• Unless the picture of the woman is in the public domain (e.g. it's very old), File:Cholula_Hot_Sauce.jpg is derivative work of a copyrighted work, and we should not have this image on Commons. - Jmabel ! talk 04:55, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Jmabel. What do you think is the best course of action. Tag it for speedy deletion per "Apparent copyright violation" or nominate it for deletion per COM:DR? -Marchjuly (talk) 05:53, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Either. No big deal which. - Jmabel ! talk 16:14, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Here's another photo which has been uploaded but does not seem to satisfy the criteria of COM:PACKAGING - Marchjuly (talk) 04:46, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

• The Sriracha one is almost entirely text and simple shapes. The two tiny peppers on that are probably a small enough portion of the image to be de minimis. - Jmabel ! talk 04:57, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Understood. This image then does satisfy the exceptions of "COM:PACKAGING". Thanks for clarifying. - Marchjuly (talk) 05:54, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Category:Files from the San Diego Museum of Art to be checked

Hi, Experts in Japanese and Chinese art needed. ;o) Thanks for your help, Yann (talk) 13:08, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Ingrown trees

I encountered this unusual tree + pole combination in Budapest. (also File:Ingrown tree close to Budafok kocsiszin tram depot (2).JPG and File:Ingrown tree close to Budafok kocsiszin tram depot (3).JPG. Can the tree species be determined?Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:10, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Not from that image; we'd need to see leaves and, ideally, flowers and/or fruit. Then try Category:Unidentified trees in Hungary. Andy Mabbett (talk) 10:24, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

On reflection, the green bark suggests a dogwood, Cornus species. Andy Mabbett (talk) 10:26, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

No need for leaves etc. (though that would certainly make it easier). If you can make some good close-ups of the buds, someone with access to the right literature could probably identify it quite easily. From what I can see, it looks like it might have differently shaped buds for flowers and sprouts, which would fit the Cornus theory. --El Grafo (talk) 10:45, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Type of metal?

Is my guess that this is a cupronickel coin correct?Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:58, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

@Smiley.toerist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coins_of_Madagascar says it's stainless steel. If so, it's led a very hard life to get that banged up. Revent (talk) 05:22, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

There are very few coins in circulation so the few in use get a lot of use even with such a marginal value because people are very poor. As a tourist you get spend millions of Arials on consumptions, fees and souvenirs, but practicaly nothing in hard currency terms. This is in lots of banknotes wich everybody folds in bundels of ten. Only on the last days did I see any coins.Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:48, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Are there any other Septagonal coins? I had to create a new category.Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:53, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

@Smiley.toerist: en:Fifty pence (British coin). Andy Mabbett (talk) 13:14, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

OK:But these UK cannot be uploaded on the Commons.Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:08, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

March 27

Commons talk:We miss you#Should the people doing the missing be listed for each entry.3F 2

We have more or less finished discussing the structure and format of the page and have now moved onto discussing principles regarding how new entries will be handled, including their removal. We haven't created a solid proposal yet. We're still throwing around ideas and discussing them, and I like to hear from others. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 14:31, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Review request [derivative work?]

Hi. I'd like to request if you could assist me in determining if the following images are considered as derivative works?

• File:Mikumi National Park sign.jpg
• File:Kenya tea Caine Brothers.jpg
• File:Bwiru Secondary School.jpg
• File:Zanzibar referendum Yes vote poster.jpg
• File:Bahrain first oil well plaque.jpg
• File:The Spiritual Tree of Katabi.jpg
• File:Costco membership rationale.JPG
• File:Gambia Ministry signboard.jpg
• File:Mafia Island Marine Park welcome sign.jpg
• File:Yahya Jammeh election billboard.jpg

If yes, i can then proceed with the deletion. Thanks. Ali Fazal (talk) 23:16, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Most of these are fine to be on Commons per {{PD-text}} and COM:FOP. Josve05a (talk) 23:33, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

March 28

Creating a free and open source typeface

Hi, I know this isn’t the typical business of Commons, but I am currently designing a typeface and would like to release it as a free and open source font with help from the Commons community. I’ve written a rationale for this font project that you can read at File:A proposed free and open source typeface.pdf (use pdf reader; pdf may not display with Firefox pdf.js). Typefaces are resources much like the images and video that Commons currently produces, and expanding into font creation I believe is a logical expansion of its mission. Please take a moment to take a look at my proposal, and perhaps test my font which lives on GitHub!

It is critical that we do not ignore the importance of type in the development of libre ecosystems. Typography has always been a stubborn holdout in this regard, and to this day there remain few free high-quality comprehensive text typefaces. Free type is mainly concentrated in a handful of flagship “superfonts” that contain a staggering catalog of glyphs, but lack greatly in the quality of design and typographic styles and features seen in professional type. To my knowledge, there are currently just two great open source text families—Gentium, which is still incomplete, and Linux Libertine, in addition to a few corporate gifts such as Adobe Source Serif and Bitstream Charter. To help fill the gap, I present my own original type design and ask for the Wikimedia projects’ help in finishing and releasing my font to provide a quality free font choice…

—♥ Kelvinsong talk 15:59, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

This font looks really lovely texts are convenient to read in it - thus I hope I can read Wikipedia articles in that font one day - including mathematical formulae of course. ${\frac {-4\pm {\sqrt {6^{2}-4\times ac}}}{2a}}$ -- Rillke^(q?) 23:39, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

I love it, except for the crossbar in the capital A, which is very distracting to me. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:23, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I’m not sure exactly what you mean. It's right where crossbars on A’s usually go. Is it too high? too low?—♥ Kelvinsong talk 02:47, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

The crossbar in the A also looks messed up to me (using MacOS X). Kaldari (talk) 06:25, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

I checked the PDF in Windows and iOS and fail to see any glitch of the capital A. Maybe a screen cap from MacOS would explain the issue better. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 07:43, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

You can see my problem in this screenshot. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:23, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

I noticed that in the small f: phab:F97280 - installed the otf font files under Windows. -- Rillke^(q?) 11:59, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

That is very strange, I have never seen it do that! It usually happens when there is a contradicting intersection, but shouldn’t be happening there considering both contours are clockwise—♥ Kelvinsong talk 22:32, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

@Kaldari Rillke & User:TheDJ, I’ve fused the A crossbar and the f crossbar & pushed updated font files to github. Pls download & check to see if the problem is still there on ur computers—♥ Kelvinsong talk 22:55, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Yeah looks like expected now. Although not that eye-catching the "t" glyph is also affected; interestingly only with smaller font sizes: phab:F99875 -- Rillke^(q?) 13:36, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

@Rillke Fixed—♥ Kelvinsong talk 22:14, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm no font expert, but your font looks elegant and classy. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 02:14, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks sm!!—♥ Kelvinsong talk 02:47, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

@Kelvinsong: Sounds like a great idea. I'm going to let the WMF designers know about it in case they want to contribute. One thing to keep in mind: The SIL Open Font License (which is one of the most popular free font licenses) covers use and distribution of the font as a whole, not the individual glyphs. If you want to make sure that your font is completely free (both the software and the design elements), I would suggest using a CC0 or CC-BY license (or dual-licensing with both CC and SIL licenses). Kaldari (talk) 06:24, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

@User:Kaldari idk I was going to use GPL font license to avoid the whole Charter parallel design mess—♥ Kelvinsong talk 22:48, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

@Kelvinsong: GPL+FE works too. Don't be afraid to multi-license though :) Kaldari (talk) 23:08, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

This is a very nice font and well-designed. I hope I'll see this on Wikimedia projects at some point, and maybe even elsewhere on the web. Definitely my favorite custom serif font for paragraph texts. --GeorgeBarnick (talk) 07:00, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Very interesting and good-looking to my uneducated eye, but I guess that's up to the real font experts to judge (would it be possible to get feedback from a professional?). Just out of curiosity: What's wrong with Computer Modern/BlueSky/Latin Modern? --El Grafo (talk) 08:32, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

"It is critical that we do not ignore the importance of type in the development of libre ecosystems." YES! We discussed a lot about this topic and I'm personally very happy to see that you have stepped in so decidedly. Besides, I have seen several of your works without knowing that they came from the same designer. Congratulations for your skills, and thank you very much for your contributions.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 18:47, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

@User:Kaldari & @User:GeorgeBarnick thank you sm for saying that!! ☺️

@User:El Grafo I’m not sure yet. All the major type designers communities went into strange decline in the past year but I’ll send some samples out. && I don’t want to get into a rant but Computer/Latin Modern is jsut a dreadfully designed font. It was not even created by a human; it was made by a computer with only a rudimentary sense of curve aesthetics. The italics are half-decent but unstandard & so hard to read for long stretches. It is a decorative font at best, and is very illegible for body text. If you want a didone font; use Didot or New caledonia. It also gives off an impression of laziness on the part of the author, and a tone of dreary technicality on the content. The only thing it does well is it works well with TeX (I heard, since I don’t use TeX).

@Qgil-WMF Thanks sm!! & any hint if this is something WMF will be taking a lasting interest in?—♥ Kelvinsong talk 22:44, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

@Kelvinsong: , Vibhabamba is UX designer at the WMF, and I recommend you to follow up with her. She has posted some advice below already.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:54, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

I read about Google's w:Noto fonts recently (Noto = "No tofu") - that already has 98 fonts completed. Is that (code, main site, Apache licence) something that would be compatible with our needs, and your (fantastic, as always) efforts? I hope we can avoid competing standards and mass-duplication of labour, as well as getting the largest possible global installation-base. It might be ideal to collaborate on this existing effort? Quiddity (talk) 22:49, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

@Quiddity you are confusing fonts with apps. Fonts are in a way software. But they are not built nor used in the same way apps are. If I went out and built a new open source word processor, you might be justified in asking me why I didn’t just contribute to LibreOffice (though if u ask me, LibreOffice is a mess, not as bad as GIMP but approaching). That’s bc you only ever need one open source word processor & it’s better to have one really good Libreoffice than two lesser rival apps that do the same thing. But fonts are not apps. For one I cannot contribute to an existing font project in a meaningful way. I do not know who designed Noto (it seems to be credited to one “Google”) but only that designer can make more Noto glyphs. I, with my typographical experience can offer suggestions and critiques on his (or her) typeface & fix bugs. But I cannot directly contribute to it. Only Noto’s designer can design Noto Serif.

More importantly, diversity is a pro in type design, not a con. There is no such thing as “duplication of labor” or redundancy in type design, only lost potential. This is an extremely big issue & I could write a whole article about it. but anyway—specific reasons why it makes sense to create a new font:

• I don’t really like Noto Serif : This might be a bit subjective, but personally I am not a fan of its design (largely lifted from Droid serif). Droid serif is at perfunctory glance a more polished interpretation of the “computer type” families. In essence gluing serifs onto sans fonts. Sometimes that works, some people like that, but to me it makes a font that’s uncomfortable to read. Don’t get me wrong. Droid serif is not a bad font—in fact it’s better than the professional fonts some of my textbooks are set in—just not my taste. It’s not exactly a design I am enthusiastic to contribute to, uk? ofc that could just be my own typographer’s bias
• I couldn’t contribute to if I wanted to : basically see what I said before. Only Noto’s designer can design Noto Serif. I have done such a thing before, contributing IPA glyphs & stuff to existing fonts. You can get a decent grip on what the original designer meant but it’s difficult & basically what I would truly call wasted energy. —♥ Kelvinsong talk 23:31, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
• It wouldn’t be “our own” : Typefaces, even libre ones, have “owners”. Usually this is the company or organization that uses it the most. Google “owns” Roboto; Mozilla (w Google) “owns” Open Sans; Apple “owns” Helvetica, and big surprise, Google “owns” Droid/Noto. It’s a hard concept to put into words, but you get what I mean. Fira, Gentium, and Libertine don’t have this problem. You can just kind of smell it.
• Noto isn’t really free : No typeface is (or should be) free as in gratis, but you could argue that Google’s superfonts aren’t even free as in speech. They’re more like legally-irrevocable gifts that we are allowed to use at Google’s grace. && Google has a poor track record with its treatment of the type design craft & I’m reluctant to give my labor to them. && see [22]
• We still need new fonts : Even if Google was the most angelic company in the world; even if Noto was the best designed font in the history of the planet; even if its designer’s vision of the typeface was magically transferred to my heart, we would still need more choice in type. We’re starting to reach saturation with Linux distributions. Fonts still have a long way to go. Feel free to google “why we need new fonts”, because every type designer on the planet has been asked this question at some point, and some have written extensively on it.

I hope this makes sense I didn’t want to spend too long writing a long explanation of this topic—♥ Kelvinsong talk 23:31, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

@Kelvinsong: That helps immensely, thank you for the details. This proposed project is intriguing, and I wish it great success.

(Ramble: I adore the vast diversity of typefaces, and have spent many an hour browsing typography blogs/libraries/articles, and learning some of the nuances of the basics [Foundry:Family:Face:Font! But I still mix them up like a philistine, all too often >.< ], but most of my online font-usage-knowledge is still from circa '98-'02, when kottke's silkscreen was all the rage, hence I have somewhat outdated views particularly regarding embedded webfonts! Again, best of wishes for this proposal. I look forward to this elegant and accessible work of science and art. :) Quiddity (talk) 06:05, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

@User:Quiddity Thanks!! && btw a foundry is the font publisher (usually a company or artist collective; sometimes an individual). Family & face are the same thing; Font can either mean the same as Family or refer to a single instance of a family.—♥ Kelvinsong talk 13:07, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

@Kelvinsong: Hi! While I am taking a look at your typeface, it would be a good idea for you to submit it to Typographica. I could help connect you with Stephen Coles. Is there an email address where I can reach you? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vibhabamba (talk • contribs) 08:03, 19 March 2015‎ (UTC)

@User:Vibhabamba Yes, thank you! I just sent you a message —♥ Kelvinsong talk 00:59, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Problems uploading photographs from SpaceX which are available under a Wikipedia compatible licence

Hi all

I'm trying to upload images from SpaceX which are available on their official Flickr account under a WIkipedia compatible licence. The images were uploaded to Commons but then deleted (see discussion here), I then opened an undeletion request which has been refused and was told that the images would need to be uploaded again, however my attempts at uploading them are not working. Flickr2Commons doesn't work, it rejects uploading the files because they have previously been deleted, I have also tried the Commons Upload Wizard but it has rejected them because they have previously been deleted. Please can someone tell me how I can upload them? Bare in mind there are over 100.

Thanks very much

Mrjohncummings (talk) 22:41, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

I suggest anyone tempted read up on Russavia's case first. I was recently falsely accused of being Russavia's meatpuppet, so I would not touch these with a barge pole. The images are being used as a political beach-ball where established Commons policies, such as the deletion policies, appear to be ignored in order to prove a point. --Fæ (talk) 22:57, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

It appears that User:Huntster manually restored all 105 images of Category:Photographs by SpaceX by uploading them one by one - without using any "wizards" because apparently some control freaks in charge decided it would be good policy to prohibit people from re-uploading photos automatically if they've been deleted. Huntster's work is commendable, but at the rate things are going it sounds like we may need a new upload wizard - one written in Python to be easily run on users' PCs, intentionally designed not to be detectable as a bot, and distributed offsite. The existing architecture simply doesn't take into account that a file may be deleted not because it is a bad thing to have, but out of administrative pique. Wnt (talk) 12:27, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

March 22

MUTYALAPALEM-UPDATED FILE UPLOAD PROBLEMS -REG

DEAR SIR,

I UPLOADED A BROCHURE ABOUT MUTYALAPALEM VILLEAGE. AFTER THAT I DELETED THE SAME AND TRYING TO UPLOAD UPDATE FILE. BUT I AM UNABLE TO UPLOAD UPADTED FILE... REQUEST YOUR HELP TO UPLOAD THE NEW FILE.....

REGARDS A SWAMY NAIDU — Preceding unsigned comment added by Naidu.a2014 (talk • contribs) 2015-03-23T03:44:10‎ (UTC)

Locate the key that looks like this

or like this

and press it once until the little light turns off.

1. Please stop SCREAMING in our eyes.
2. You didn't delete anything. Only administrators can delete content, and you're not an administrator.
3. As noted on File:MUTYALAPALEM.pdf and File:Mutyalapalem 2 side brochure.pdf, they were deleted as a result of Commons:Deletion requests/File:MUTYALAPALEM.pdf and Commons:Deletion requests/File:Mutyalapalem 2 side brochure.pdf.
4. You should not recreate previously deleted content. If you can explain how this content fits within Commons' project scope, you can request undeletion.

—LX (talk, contribs) 18:42, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

User:LX: I find this kind of snide response to be unwarranted. Caps Lock is not literal screaming; it doesn't damage your ears. I have no idea what kind of equipment the OP has. Are there old phones out there that can access Internet but can't do lowercase, or do it with too much trouble? Myself, I remember the days of the APPLE ][, so I can handle uppercase. Trust me, you can get used to it with just a little effort. Wnt (talk) 00:17, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

User:Naidu.a2014: You can access your contributions by the "contributions" tab that should be at the top of the page by your username (at least for me... it can vary depending on settings, I think). In your case this is https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Naidu.a2014 . You can click on each of the files you uploaded. Just under the section titled "File History" you can click on a link to "Upload a new version of this file". If you have further trouble let us know. Wnt (talk) 00:23, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

You may call my response snide if you like, but at least I addressed the actual question. The question was about a deleted brochure. That won't be listed in Special:Contributions/Naidu.a2014, but in Special:Log/Naidu.a2014, and you can't "Upload a new version of this file" for files that have been deleted. —LX (talk, contribs) 07:11, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

User:LX: Alright, that's a good point! Wnt (talk) 12:14, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Possibility? Viewing images in sub-categories at the same time as viewing parent categories

In a discussion on EN an editor argued that one should be able to "make an option to view all the images of a category and all its sub-categories at one time." - To expand on that I can see how it can be difficult to view every single one of the subcategories at the same time, but one can pick and choose by "expanding" or "collapsing" the subcategories.

Is there a system being developed that is like this?

WhisperToMe (talk) 07:20, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Such a system could be problematic if for instance there is a loop in the category tree. I don't know of such an item, but it is possible to create lists of images in categories and subcategories using AWB or catscan. -mattbuck (Talk) 16:30, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, there are some loops, but it wouldn't be that hard for the JavaScript to check for loops (and for two or more paths down to the same subcat) and fail to open any category twice on the same page. - Jmabel ! talk 16:41, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is working on it, but I think that having categories returns results in BFS order would be both feasible (mostly. Worst case of hundreds of empty sub-categories would perhaps have to be excluded), and give results more in tune with expectations than the current system of only the current category. Bawolff (talk) 18:56, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

FastCCI can make a list of images from subcategories. --ghouston (talk) 04:30, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Link within langauge text and Valenciennes region

I try to add the map link [23] but this doesnt work while in Category:Trams in the Valenciennes region the link works. I am proposing the create the Category (Buses in the Valenciennes region). The Tranvilles public transport network is much wider than Valenciennes city. Unfortunatly there is no wel defined area. The department Nord is to large and the Arrondissement de Valenciennes is to small, as there are some communities served wich are outside the arrondisement. We dont do much with the arrondissement in the Commons anyway.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:04, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Fixed with 1= for the 1st and only parameter, your external link contained a critical = in its ?name=value query part. The same trick also often helps with {{tlx|template|param1|3=foo=bar}} etc. –Be..anyone (talk) 21:46, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

30,000 New York crime scenes

I hope someone is looking into this. [24] Jim.henderson (talk) 14:17, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Amazing pictures, but I am not sure about the copyright. These were presumably never published, so are still probably under copyright. Regards, Yann (talk) 14:31, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I hope you don't mean the ones from the 1920s-1930s. The photo of the 1935 New York book-burning is indeed disturbing... I hope we can do better than that. Wnt (talk) 23:51, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Have these been published before? Who are the authors? In the US, anonymous hurts us almost invariably, life+70 versus 120 years, but I suspect the NYPD has the names of the authors. If we assume they are anonymous and this is the first publication, then those before 2014 - 120 = 1894 are public domain.--Prosfilaes (talk) 10:42, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Now hold on a minute! This is absurd. To begin with, they're crime scene photos. That means (a) it probably wouldn't fly to tell a court you don't know who, where, when the picture came from, and (b) it would probably be taken askance if the photographer said hold on, this is my photo, you have to pay a copyright fee if you want to use this in the trial. I would suggest this is a "work for hire", and the image therefore was copyrighted by the police department from the beginning, but if not they know who held it. Also, we know that the police department felt comfortable publishing the digitized photos, which either means that they are Outrageous Pirates or else they were not taking material copyrighted by unknown authors. Also, I would assume that these have been published in court proceedings, which is what they were taken for - doesn't that count for something? Wnt (talk) 12:13, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

I think some of these could fall under {{PD-NYCGov}} Yann (talk) 12:34, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Splendid. So, nevermind dates and previous publication, as these are works for hire with all rights released by the employer / owner, right? Jim.henderson (talk) 12:57, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Actually, it is probably not so simple. Terms and Conditions from the NYPD clearly say that all documents are not automatically in the public domain. BTW did he get a fine for parking in the wrong place? ;oD Yann (talk) 13:05, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Ah. Too bad, though the terms link is not linking for me. And wow, I bicycle up Sterling Place a dozen times most years. At least that link works. Jim.henderson (talk) 20:53, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

March 29

Help, please, re categorizing North America, South America, the Americas

I noticed that North America and South America had disappeared from many continent categories, and "the Americas" had appeared as a continent in their place. Templates were also changed to follow this method. My understanding is that North and South America are continents, and "the Americas", if anything, is a region (similar to Eurasia). After doing some work to change some of this back, I noticed that a lot of these changes seemed to have been made by the same user, User:Verdy p. I left a message here on his/her talk page, asking that he/she not make such changes. The user left a lengthy reply. Not all the reply is clear, such as the talk about axes (plural of axis, not axe), but I believe the upshot is that he/she disagrees, sees a great need to continue, and plans to do more.

So I'd appreciate input/clarification from the community as to which is right. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:28, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

English is not my native languages so excuse if I use "axis" as a plural.

And I have said thgat only a few major topics need to reconciliate other axis than just North/South (there are at least 4 major regions in the Americas, plus 2 with Nature topics and sometimes they need cross-references, but not below the political level of countries and dependencies). And this is NOT for a lot of topics.

Also the term "continent" taken strictly is geological (and geologically, Americas are not divided exactly like in political, natural, historical, and cultural topics). It's impossible to decide just one North/South division for every topic.

I have not removed any one of the North/South categories they are still all there even if there are a few others using also Latin and Caribbean.

Also don't make false assumptions: the Caribbean is NOT just in North America (I've seen false categorisations such as sorting files about Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Guianas (sometimes also Colombia) besing sorted incorrectly "North America". This is even more important for historical and natural topics. verdy_p (talk) 05:35, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

First, "axes" can be the plural of either "axe" or "axis": I was clarifying which I meant. I wasn't saying that you spelled it wrong. What isn't clear to me is what you mean by "axis". I think you are probably not using it the way we would normally use it.

You are right that "the Caribbean" is not just North America, if you're talking about the region. However, the islands and nations in the Caribbean (as opposed to those on the edge of it) are categorized here as part of North America. That includes Trinidad and Tobago, even though it's very close to mainland South America. Sometimes we have to agree to categorize some things a certain way, even if it's arguable. That is why I mentioned that I know there are systems where "the Americas" is considered a continent. It's just that, in the Wikimedia projects I work on, North and South America are considered the continents.

I know that you didn't remove the North America/South America categories. You put them under "the Americas". However, they also need to be under continents.

You should have noticed that I have North/South categories as direct members of continents. This is not a critical problem. Though we still have lots of medias that cannot be sorted that way (nature, culture, people, history and all related politics topics touching these domains).

Even if you like it or not, there already existed categories for Caribbean and Latin America. But sorting them as direct children of North and South repectively is wrong and we get many files incorrectly categorized due to this confusion, or already sorted only in Caribbean or in Latin America that cannot be reached by looking them first by country and their history/nature/people/culture subtopics. All I wanted to do was to do standard cross-categorization so that all of them are precisely categoprized geographically instead of remaining in "limbos" (far way in parent or children topics, for another American cultural or natural subregion unrelated to the North/South division). verdy_p (talk) 18:00, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Not everything needs to have separate categories under the Americas. There are some things that make sense to group there, such as some geographical things and certain nature categories. "The Americas" is a region, just like Eurasia, and not that much different from a hemisphere. We don't have so many categories for those, and we don't need so many for the Americas. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:51, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

I believe Auntof6 is entirely correct here. And, similarly, we do not want to turn Europe + Asia into Eurasia just because the boundary is unclear in several places. Please, Verdry p, do not continue farther in this direction except in the unlikely event that you can develop a consensus to do this. This is not a situation in which to be unilaterally "bold". Take it to COM:CFD or such if you want to try to develop such a consensus. - Jmabel ! talk 17:36, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Auntof6 "Americans" (funny), better, people from United Estates of America, "study" Geographic like "USA and the rest", in reflection of that, Central America do not exist and South America is a different continent. America is the continent for many geographers, and South/North and Central Americas plus Caribbean islands are the subcontinent.

This is not Eurasia, this is what people outside USA study...

Again America, not Americas...

But I will not go further than this, this is a cultural issue way bigger than a simple category. -- RTA 06:25, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

I realize that there are other ways of defining continents. en:Continent#Number of continents describes several methods. The issue is that Wikimedia Commons chose one method that everyone needs to follow, and that method uses the 7 continents that are shown at Category:Continents. That doesn't mean other methods are wrong, just that they aren't the method used here. Other things that are sometimes considered continents include the Americas, Eurasia, and Afro-Eurasia. Here on Commons, those are considered regions (intercontinental regions, to be exact), not continents.

The area that consists of North America and South America combined can be called either America or the Americas. Calling it America can be confusing because the United States is sometimes called "America" as well. Because of that, the Americas is clearer.

There are few categories that are meaningful at the continent level, even fewer if we start categorizing by something even bigger than the continents that we use now. --Auntof6 (talk) 07:20, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Derivative work?

What's the extend of the definition of "derivative work"? If a painter paints a picture after a (copyrighted) picture, does the painter need permission of the original copyright holder? Case in point: File:Jack Sels by Jules Grandgagnage.jpg is painting by a Wikimedia resident painter (the source link doesn't work for me; ymmv). But the real source of the image seems to be a Jack Sels record from 1961. Whaledad (talk) 21:14, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Brief answer, yes. If a work was inspired by, or based upon, some other work, then it is a derivative work. I suggest reading en:Derivative work, which is a not bad explanation. A derivative work cannot be 'more freely licensed' than the work it is based upon, and must give attribution to the original. Revent (talk) 05:49, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

As a further note, I'm strongly tempted to DR the work you linked on that basis, and would probably support deletion if it was well-reasoned... I didn't look at the copyright status of the original, but it seems to be an obvious DW, and should be attributed thus. Revent (talk) 05:52, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Formally, "A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a “derivative work”." 17 U.S.C. § 101 Revent (talk) 05:54, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

March 31

First concrete bridge and Budapest metro line 1

depicts a footbridge over an metro line. My guide told me this was the first bridge build with concrete in the world. This metroline construction was finished in 1896. Could a date be found for the bridge. On the en:Line 1 (Budapest Metro) I could not find any mention of the new aligment (straither line and underground) by the renovation in the 1970s?Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:56, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I also uploaded an excursion with the old metro car: File:Museum metro line 1 Budapest 01.JPG to File:Museum metro line 1 Budapest 04.JPG.Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:20, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Smiley.toerist It appears as though the Alvord Lake Bridge predates it by a few years, and that does not include Roman viaducts and infrastructure in that equation, as they also were made from concrete. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:13, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

March 25

Classifying hot steel transport

I cant seem to find an adapted category for this kind of rail transport.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:18, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

I tried a few categories, none particularly relevant. It is incomplete, but sooner or later it will be improved. -- Tuválkin ✉ 19:06, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

So create one. They're obscure (but notable) so we probably don't have one as yet. I think they're generally called "torpedo ladles". The ones shaped like buckets are generally different as they're "slag ladles" for waste.

BTW, it's unusual, but they have at times been used for long distances along main lines. [25] Andy Dingley (talk) 15:56, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Already here at Category:Torpedo wagons Andy Dingley (talk) 16:03, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Unifying emojis filenames

Hi! There are four different sets of emojis uploaded on Commons, each with its own naming scheme. I believe it would be good to rename them all so that the names are consistent across the different sets (and futures freely licensed sets that will appear one day!).

Here’s an instance of how the four styles of the smiling face emoji are named today:

U+263A

Emoji u263a.svg

Twemoji 263a.svg

Emojione 263A.svg

PEO-white smiling face.svg

And here are some proposed new names using the system Emoji <Name of the set> <uppercase Unicode number>.svg:

U+263A

Emoji Noto 263A.svg

Emoji Twitter 263A.svg

Emoji One 263A.svg

Emoji Phantom 263A.svg

More about this on Talk:Emoji.

How can this happen? Are there tools for massive renaming following some pattern, or should a bot be programmed for this? What’s your advice for situations like this?

(Beyond the archiving peace of mind reason for this, one of the practical use of uniform names for these is making templates displaying emojis in any style with a Unicode number variable.)

Thank you, ~ nicolas (talk) 20:42, 31 March 2015 (UTC)