Commons:Village pump/Archive/2018/03

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File description changes after renaming?

I feel some kind of p*ssed off.)
Yesterday Zcarstvnz requested the renaming of some images. I followed the requests, and this ended up with about 70 files. I left a notice on their userpage to fix also the file descriptions, and then things escalated a bit – full copy (Special:Diff/290783192/290786950 and Special:Diff/290804270/290906449):

Please, fix all the file descriptions. You can use VisualFileChange categorywise. — Speravir – 03:51, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

@Speravir: Hi! I believe that I was fixing most of the file descriptions as I worked, but I will go back and check. Note that I have only been fixing the Wikimedia Commons file Description and that I leave the original Flickr descriptions alone. If I am supposed to fix the Flickr file description, please let me know. Also, thanks for letting me know about the VisualFileChange tool. I will try it out later today. I hope you have a great week! Zcarstvnz (talk) 08:38, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
@~riley: Do I have a responsibility for updating the file description of the files I rename? Speravir seems to imply that I do above, but this is the first I have heard that it is possibly a requirement. On the "LaSalle" renaming requests that I just did, as well as others I have recently done, I fixed the spelling of LaSalle (or whatever the car name was), in the description, but I left the rest alone unless I found a typo or other error. So should I for example in this file, File:LaSalle 1939 Hearse Hot Rod Billetproof (4794459916).jpg go back and change the file description from "I've seen this one on flickr before." to something better that more closely follows the file name? If the file uploader leaves a question mark in the description, I will correct it, but generally speaking its the key words that I fix.
One possibility I thought about is using the Information Field to capture the original information so that it is not lost. For instance the file description for File:LaSalle 1939 Two-Door Touring Sedan - detail (5049467340).jpg tells about the car show, but not what is shown in the photo. Do I just delete the car show info, and put in a better description and thereby lose all of the show details? Maybe there is a policy or a help file on this topic? Thanks for your clarification and assistance. Zcarstvnz (talk) 11:23, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
Go, and ask this at the Village Pump. But: Yes: I am convinced that also the description has to be adjusted after this kind of file name change, and, of course not on the source side unless its your own Flickr (or whatever) account. — Speravir – 19:00, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
As clarified before, no policy on it and no requirement to retain the Flickr descriptions. Give the template a try but if it is too tedious, rewrite the description to how you see appropriate. Our goal is to direct people to pictures appropriately and that can be done using the search bar. ~riley (talk) 23:46, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
  • @Speravir: Instead of pushing someone to do something because "you're convinced", perhaps you should yourself be going to Village Pump to propose it become a rule. Zcarstvnz has no obligation as a file mover to adjust the file descriptions and if he chooses to do so, that is based on his own initiative. That said, Zcarstvnz, you are allowed to change the descriptions however you want to without having to have concern that it may be different than the author originally intended on Flickr (or elsewhere) if you feel it describes the photo better. Commons is based on the principle of change what you can, when you can. If it doesn't happen now, it will happen later. ~riley (talk) 20:02, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
Riley I think you mix up something here: The one who requested about 50 (or so) 70 files to be renamed because of mistakes was Zcarstvnz, the file mover who did these renamings was me. When there are less of these requests I usually do the description fixes myself. — Speravir – 21:42, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
:Ping went wrong, so again: @~riley: . — Speravir – 21:44, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
@Speravir: I don't think there is any mixup here; I am informing you the advice you are providing is without substance. ~riley (talk) 23:46, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

I still hope there is some misunderstanding on one side, perhaps because there is at least one contributor not being a native English speaker (me). I never had the intention to force Zcarstvnz to make the changes (the message was thought as pointer for necessary fixes), but I am still convinced that these kind of changes should be made after file renamings, otherwise in the end we wouldn’t need any information.

So, what do you think?

  • If there are changes because of mistakes and these mistakes are slo in the file description should these be fixed there, too?
  • Who is in your opinion responsible for this, especially if it is a large amount of files?

And then:

  • Was I too harsh? This was not my intention.
  • Is Riley too harsh? I feel so. Why should I not point out what my conviction (right word?) is? Riley‘s last sentence above looks to me almost like an interdiction/proscription (again: right word?).

— Speravir – 00:54, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

I do not know why it did not work, so separate ping to Zcarstvnz and ~riley. — Speravir – 00:57, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

  • I'm not interested in throwing around blame but, ultimately, accurate descriptions (and categories) are of more importance than filenames. While it is good that the latter have tended to become increasingly mnemonic over time, ultimately they are rather arbitrary identifiers. The description is effectively a caption, and the categories are a means of finding the photo, and as I said both are ultimately more important than the file name. - Jmabel ! talk 01:04, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Hey @Speravir: , I'm not sure why you feel some kind of pissed off, but I appreciate you expressing your frustrations! I don't think anyone here was too harsh (perhaps thats a defense mechanism on my behalf), interpretation of written word may always just have that negative effect when things are written neutrally (neither positive or negative). Responsibility in a Wikimedia sense is not something we should try to pin on anyone, especially in the volunteer sense. Officially, it is not the responsibility of anyone (except maybe an admin?) to make the changes you've brought up. I attempted to emphasize in my last message that none of these files are in their final stage, it's hard to even argue there is a final form except when files have gone through the quality or featured image process. Files, upon being updated, will slowly but surely be improved by a number of users with many different user rights. While it is encouraged that user's attempt to improve files to the best of their ability (ideally in one go), that is an unreal expectation. I appreciate that you are encouraging a user to improve files but if you came to my talk page telling me to "fix all the file descriptions", without giving any context to which files need to be fixed, what specifically is wrong with them and how to go about fixing them, I'm probably going to respond with "Excuse me?..". You did this to a new filemover, who had just done his due diligence to read up on the applicable guidelines for file moving, leaving him with several questions that are not answered by any available document; hence why I was pinged. Then, instead of answering the user's questions directly, you redirect them here while asserting your conviction instead of answering their questions? I personally, as a human being, am not going to tell someone they are doing something incorrectly without providing them with the appropriate feedback necessary to correct or improve their actions. This is an example of how I would have properly handled this situation if I were approaching Zcarstvnz about how to best move forward. ~riley (talk) 01:37, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
Riley, OK! Remarks:
  • Without any context is not true (see section title). From the first reaction it is also clear that the context has been understood.
  • Once again: The file mover was me. Where should I tell from the requests that Zcarstvnz has got this right, too? Well, now, knowing this, I see the message on the talk page.
  • “Then, instead of answering the user's questions directly, you redirect them here while asserting your conviction instead of answering their questions?” Yes I noticed this myself in the meantime, but once again this was not my intention. I already left another message in the talk page. — Speravir – 01:59, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Since February 2, Zcarstvnz has requested 1119 file renames. Specifying context in the section title alone is not adequate and by not giving specific examples of issues, you are not giving him the information needed to properly improve the files. Hence, why he is left with questions with how to proceed because you have not informed him what is right and what is wrong. I'm well aware the file mover was you, there has been no question of that like you are implying. If you weren't aware that he was also a file mover, shouldn't you have then explained in further detail the best way to go about filing rename requests for incorrect file names in your original message?
  • What are you looking to get out of this thread? Yes, file descriptions should be fixed if there are errors (before, after, later, whenever). No, there is no person solely responsible for doing this except perhaps the uploader. Were you harsh? Who knows. Was I harsh? Who knows, it doesn't change the answers to the first two questions. It seems by asking the last two questions you are looking to have your feelings validated and well, this is not the place for that. All the best! :) ~riley (talk) 02:47, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
When I went to cat. ”Media requiring renaming”, how should I notice from there, that the one who requested these about 70 files, all with car topic, has requested about 1000 other files? And In my eyes we got useful contributions from other people here. And: Sometimes someone notes oneself a possible reason upon writing or short after it, so this could be useful in a different way. — Speravir – 19:32, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
  • I think it's better dealt on a case-by-case basis. Each file has different renaming rationales, and they may or may not require description adjustment. (If it needs to be changed, I think it's burden of the "those who request {{Rename}} (if user can't filemove)" or "the renamer (if they are renaming without {{Rename}} request)". The one who request rename knows better than the renamer.) — regards, Revi 06:29, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
  • +1. File descriptions and categories should be corrected prior to make a rename request, if there is obvious mistakes. Other-vice the file mover can do it themselves or decline the request. Jee 13:17, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks to all contributors. I will close this now.

This section was archived on a request by: --Speravir 19:32, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Deletion empty categories

If can we wait a little longer (for example a week) with empty category deletion? Yesterday I created a category to add photos today. Today I look and the category removed... Tournasol7 (talk) 22:12, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

  • Some admins play that game: They delete obviously relevant categories which would be populated sooner rather than later, which adds +1 to their admin edit count. Then someone who’s actually doing real work here asks them to undelete and/or reinstate the deleted cat once it’s populated — and they do it, adding +1 to their admin edit count. Win-win. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 00:08, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
  • This is utter nonsense. No one cares about admin edit count, except for the six month renewal. But five admin edits are very easy to achieve, even without resorting to nonsense stuff like this. Please go play your hate games somewhere else. Sebari – aka Srittau (talk) 00:46, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

February 26

Commons:Picture of the Year

None this year? Artix Kreiger 2 (talk) 16:54, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

@Artix Kreiger and Artix Kreiger 2: @Odisha1 set last year's up last February, but has not edited here since.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 17:35, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: , well that is kind of disappointing. Artix Kreiger (talk) 17:36, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Yes.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 17:38, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Are there instructions for how to set it up anywhere? Anyone could just copy what's in Odisha1's contribution history, but the use of a Lua module gives me pause (i.e. I don't know how it works). — Rhododendrites talk |  14:26, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

I'll look into it. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 16:28, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
I set up most pages semi-automated with User:Zhuyifei1999/poty/new poty setup.py. Re-organizing the categories may happen this year, and categorizing the images will happen both automatically and manually (thanks Uğurkent); after which we will merge and check the two categorizations.
Steiny told me that CentralNotice banners take a long time (like a month) to approve, so POTY is likely to not start within a month. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 04:22, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Google Image search results

I've noticed that Commons images rank low in Google Image search. Will it matter if more interwikilinks are added in the descriptions, or is that just a waste of time? Vivo (talk) 18:55, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

The wikidata infobox added to image categories is meant to address that issue by adding in more image descriptions and sub categories. Most older images in Commons have non descriptive names and the categories need to be more descriptive. RAN (talk) 20:42, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Commons:Structured data should improve matters. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:06, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for input! Vivo (talk) 20:20, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Wrong mime type and Flickr2Commons

I've just had a large batch of file uploads (from https://www.flickr.com/photos/30703260@N08/ ) fail, in Flickr2Commons, with the error:

Transfer failed [1] : /File extension ".jpg" does not match the detected MIME type of the file (image/png).

Is there a tool that can handle that, and perform the uploads? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:03, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

February 28

Upload automatically adding section headings

A few days ago, I noticed that Special:Upload had suddenly started adding the "summary" header to images, regardless of whether it's desired or appropriate. This is forcing me to edit every image after upload, just to get rid of this pointless header. Where was the consensus for this significant change, and if there were no consensus, what needs to be tweaked to revert it? Nyttend (talk) 03:21, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

It's a rather annoying, known bug (phab:T187302), apparently. You might want to look at that ticket, though, because the solution they appear to be going for is "Only add header when description not already has it", rather than not automatically adding it at all, which seems to be what you'd prefer (and I think I might agree - does every file description always need to begin with that line? I'm not certain.)... -- Begoon 04:35, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
@Nyttend and Begoon: I commented there about even needing that line if there is no other section.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 08:03, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
This needs a hotfix, not a month wait. :-/ It seems the UploadWizard should be more promoted. I've got a count of last 20 days for classic new uploads of ~380000 which are 19000 uploads/day. So we can estimate the number of crap edits (in fact much lesser as they are mass upload tools and cross-wiki). -- User: Perhelion 11:15, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
I saw the discussion about it getting added twice, but thank you for pointing me there, in case I'd not; you're correct in seeing that my opposition is to the idea of always having it at least once. It makes sense to have it if you have a specific "Licensing" section, and even more if you have another section with other stuff (e.g. you moved a GFDL image from en:wp, so you have to have an original upload log), but if you put your license in the description's Permission parameter, and if you have nothing after the description except for categories, there's no reason to have it. Nyttend (talk) 12:00, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
I have started COM:VPP#Proposal to stop Special:Upload and Special:UploadWizard from adding headers to file description pages automatically to address this issue.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:01, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
why do you persist in using upload wizard? use Pattypan or Vicuna. they have better support. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 02:25, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
@Slowking4: I don't.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 03:17, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
VisualFileChange works well also to delete or edit text. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 03:36, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

An ancient book to upload

It's some months now I've been working on "Euclides Danicus" by Georg Mohr, where the author explains how to do geometric drawings using che compass alone, without the use of the strighedge. The book has been printed both in danish and dutch on 1672. Mohr preceded Lorenzo Macheroni who wrote his Compass Geometry (La geometria del compasso): both the authors are joined in the "Mohr-Mascheroni theorem".

At the moment the online sources of Euclides Danicus (which is divided in two parts) are the following:

  • The (ancient) danish version of the first part only, which includes the related drawings;
  • The (ancient) dutch version of the two parts, without the drawings of the first part, and with some incomplete paragraphs (incomplete pages scan);
  • A complete google ebook;
  • ABE books sells copies of the original dutch version, with the same defects I found on the online version, but has the advantage is printed on white paper, without the yellow/brown background of the other sources.

So I bougth a printed copy of the book, scanned it, cleaned from dots and scrathes, added the missing drawings (from the danish version) and paragraphs (from the ebook), so that I'm working now on a really complete file. I'm going to start the OCR, refinish it by hand, and output to a 48 pages PDF and DJVU files. I'll next use it to write my own article about Euclids Danicus, to publish on the italian version or wikipedia: I'd like to put a link to a complete source file, and this is the reason I'd like to upload it to wikicommons.

So the questions are:

  • Does my work fit wikicommons specs?
  • May I upload it as a whole, or is it better to upload 48 separate pages?
  • Should I upload it as pdf, djvu, or both?
  • It would be a good idea to upload the cover as a PNG, to add the image into the wiki articles?

Thanks in advance --Aldoaldoz (talk) 08:23, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi Aldoaldoz,
If it is a reprint of an old edition, no copyright issue, so good. Please upload the highest quality possible (probably PDF, as DjVu is highly compressed), and a DjVu version with OCR. Nice work. I think it is better to have all in one file. Regards, Yann (talk) 09:17, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) @Aldoaldoz: Commons:Project_scope#PDF_and_DjVu_formats is the relevant section of our policy – if that doesn't answer your questions please don't hesitate to ask here, though. I think a single file for the whole book would probably be better than single pages. It might still make sense to additionally upload the drawings as single png files in case someone would like to use them for something. Same goes for the cover, if you intend to use it in an article. You'll probably want to create a category like Category:Euclides Danicus to keep all those files. Just make sure the different editions you use are all out of copyright, as editorial decisions taken when preparing the source text for print may introduce new copyrights. --El Grafo (talk) 09:22, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks you all! The sources are all copies of the original book printed on 1672, without any kind of editing. The printed version has the same errors the online pdf file has. Mohr dead on 1697, so I think 300+ years are enough to extinguish any copyright... am I wrong? So, having done a scan of a reprint of an ancient book, and worked on it on myself, I'll upload this to wiki commmons with a cc0 license (public domain). Hope not breaking any law... --Aldoaldoz (talk) 09:49, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
I'd suggest, instead of just cc0, {{Licensed-PD-Art|PD-old-auto-1923|cc-zero|deathyear=1697}}. --ghouston (talk) 09:58, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
I agree in general, but I think personally I would go for {{PD-scan |PD-old-auto-1923|deathyear=1697}} for the pdf/djvu – I don't think the book as a whole would be considered "Art". Unless you want to explicitly mark your work on the scans as CC-0, of course. Unforunately, we don't seem to have {{Licensed-PD-Scan}} … --El Grafo (talk) 12:20, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
@Aldoaldoz: This certainly seems in scope as an educational resource. You might also consider transcribing it to Danish Wikisource. If you are skilled in Danish translation, you could even publish a new translation in your language of choice. -Animalparty (talk) 03:06, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
Unfortunaely I don't understand neither ancient nor modern danish or dutch! I translated it partially, just to somehow understand its contents (mainly with google translator). The book is of some world-wide scientific interest, so I'd prefer to upload it to commons. Once I upload it here, I'll tell wiki dutch guys this file exists, and hope they work on it on their own. --Aldoaldoz (talk) 05:05, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Improving a template

Yann created the needed template for Albania's new FoP, {{FoP-Albania}}, but it seems to have some issues, e.g. it categorizes images into Category:Templates related to Albania and Category:FoP templates (added by me), I think only the template itself should be categorized there). I'm not a template experte myself, maybe someone could have a look and improve the template? Gestumblindi (talk) 12:22, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Images themselves shouldn't be organised into a category for templates so you could change it yourself if you think that it shouldn't be there, also templates usually only add hidden categories si maybe it was provisional before the template becomes popular. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (Talk 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 14:25, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
Looks like User:Incnis Mrsi has fixed this. - Jmabel ! talk 16:42, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 16:42, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Micronation, world building and alternative history files

For years I've been on and off categorizing files from Category:Flags. Very often I find flags that I deem out of scope – someone invents a micronation, uploads a flag, coat of arms, map... puts it in their userpage as a mock-up article about a country only to never be seen on any wikimedia project again. I sometimes nominated such files for deletion – which IIRC always went through – because I see no educational purpose in them. But yesterday I've stumbled upon a discussion (@AnonMoos: @Fry1989: ) that mentions it's customary to leave such files up. The most recent example I've found are files by user @DuceSpoon: used in his enwiki sandbox. I don't want to ruin anyone's pet project, but I think this would be better suited for https://micronations.wiki/wiki/Main_Page.

To sum it up: are flags (and other files), that are own design, relating to entities that are uploader's creation to be kept? And if yes, how to categorize them? They clutter the mother category Flags, Category:Special or fictional flags and Category:Flags of micronations, which contain many otherwise useful flags.

PS: I have glanced through every discussion in the archive containing "flag" (over 200 results, some false flags) and didn't find anything relevant but the aforementioned discussion.--TFerenczy (talk) 12:14, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

First off, if a micronation achieves a certain real-world notability (e.g. Hutt River Principality), then its flag is unquestionably within scope. Personal "user page images" are also allowable under certain conditions (see Template:User page image). Beyond that, there has been an implicit practice for many years now that "special or fictional flags" are not usually deleted solely because they are "special or fictional", but only if there is some additional aggravating factor (such as being hoaxing or hatemongering). We have "special or fictional flag" categories that contain hundreds of images. To overturn this would require an explicit policy discussion -- and not just sniping at individual files. User:Kephir eventually got himself blocked basically because of refusing to adjust his particular method (which some objected to) of sniping at individual "special or fictional flag" files in the slightest degree, while not participating in more general policy discussion, as you can read about in more detail than you probably want to know at User talk:Kephir and related pages. User:Antemister gets partial credit for at least making some effort to hold a policy discussion, however, he made several unfortunate choices which ensured that his particular discussion got off to a wrong start and petered out inconclusively. Any attempt at a new discussion should avoid those errors. AnonMoos (talk) 15:08, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
Commons:Project scope should probably be clarified, since in "small numbers of images (e.g. of yourself) for use on a personal user page" it's not clear what "small number" means. Does en:User:DuceSpoon/sandbox, which seems to have over 30 fictional flags, qualify? Most numbers are small compared to en:Graham's number. --ghouston (talk) 03:03, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
Wow, that user page is a blatant violation of what Wikipedia is not. I have tagged it for deletion under en:w:Wikipedia:U5. Once it gets deleted, the files will be no longer in use and thus will be out of scope here too. --HyperGaruda (talk) 05:36, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

March 03

Commons:Photo challenge January results

Trash and waste management: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image
Title Trycicle transport in Shanghai Fruit crates ready to be disposed of - Caserta, Italy Cows feeding of the refuse of a vegetable market
in Chittagong (Bangladesh)
Author Ermell Aleco86 Xopolino
Score 43 20 17
Blue: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image
Title Summit photo Zugspitze, Germany Blue facade of a house in Tokyo Karneval, Italien, Venedig
Author CatalpaSpirit Ermell Anna Saini
Score 22 18 12

Congratulations to Ermell, Aleco86, Xopolino, CatalpaSpirit, and Anna Saini. -- Colin (talk) 18:14, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Category:Balclutha

Category:Balclutha is category about town in Otago, on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. However, we can find here some species of insect in subcategories. Someone can fix it? Tournasol7 (talk) 22:14, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Just needed moving to Category:Balclutha (genus). --ghouston (talk) 22:24, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

March 04

Is there a way to create a url link to the Upload wizard that will automatically add images to a category?

Hi

Is there a way to create a url link to the Upload wizard that will automatically add images to a category? For example if I wanted to give people a link that would upload images in Category:VisibleWikiWomen without them manually having to add it themselves (both to cut down on complexity for new users and also to make sure it dones't get missed off).

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 16:41, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

@John Cummings: I think you are looking for upload campaigns. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:48, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
@John Cummings: You may also find this link or a similar one useful.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 12:25, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
@John Cummings: This definitely is a job for Upload campaigns − happy to help with that :)
(To answer the original question, you should be able to do that without campaigns, just with the `categories` URL parameter (example) − I had done some similar experiments at some point with {{Upload picture from category}}.
Jean-Fred (talk) 12:39, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks @TheDJ: and @Jeff G.: , I think a campaign is the way to go, I'll try and work out how to do it. Thanks again. John Cummings (talk) 12:38, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

@Jean-Frédéric: , perfect, thanks, I may come back to you about the campaign :) John Cummings (talk) 12:55, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Looks like it’s ✓ Done at Campaign:VisibleWikiWomen :) Jean-Fred (talk) 10:17, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Speravir 02:16, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

What "browsing" features should we implement in the Commons mobile app?

The Commons Android app currently allows to upload pictures to Commons.

Now we want to add browsing, because many Google Play reviews ask for it.

What kind of browsing would you need most from the mobile app?

  • Search for media by entering some text?
  • Search for categories by entering some text, then see all pictures in that category?
  • Search for categories by entering some text, then see good (featured/quality/valued) pictures in that category?
  • Browse by categories, from the top-level categories?
  • Show a list of recently featured media?
  • Show a list of random media?
  • Something else? (feel free to propose many other ideas)

A student will try to implement this during a few months, so we can not implement everything, actually probably only one or two of the bullets above.

So, what kind of browsing do you need most? Your feedback would be very appreciated so that the implemented feature gets actually used, thanks! :-)

Feel free to join our discussion directly on Github: https://github.com/commons-app/apps-android-commons/issues/1221 or comment below.

Syced (talk) 07:00, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Tuválkin: That's an idea :-) Commons and smartphones have existed for 10 years and yet "the industry" has not developed such a thing (or did I miss it?). Do you have any theory on why? Syced (talk) 04:49, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
  • I like the idea, since the current mobile app is crap (I've noticed crapp exists!).
Searching categories by entering text would be too English-biased unless Wikidata-driven-approach is introduced in the mix (and I guess that's a long-shot).
The possibility of opening categories with the mobile app would be very welcomed (at this moment when you touch them you're redirected to the Desktop version).
I guess combining "searching media by entering text" and "being able to see what's inside of a category when you see one without leaving the app" ...is a start. strakhov (talk) 20:25, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
  • By thy way, in the past the app allowed people to see a list of their own (latest) uploads. I restarted the app and now I can't even do that. strakhov (talk) 20:37, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
Strakhov: Thanks for the feedback! You don't see your own uploaded pictures? That's very strange, most probably a bug, could you please report it at https://github.com/commons-app/apps-android-commons/issues/new ? Please create more issues about any problem or inconvenience you can spot, thanks! :-) You are right about language bias, looking forward to Structured Commons to partially solve that. When you say "being able to see what's inside of a category when you see one without leaving the app", are you talking about the step where you have to choose categories for an image you have just uploaded? Syced (talk) 04:49, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
Nop. Before I logged out, I saw my uploads ("desktop uploads", in fact I never uploaded a picture with this mobile app). Now I get an empty grey screen (grey or white, it depends on the interface/theme I select), no idea how that could be ...updated? Maybe there should only appear my "future" mobile uploads, but I'm not interested in doing mobile uploads right now.
Those images were "clickable/touchable". I was able to display their already-attached-categories by spreading a menu, but when I clicked those categories ('click' in a "tactile environment", I mean), the 'default internet navigator' was opened, leaving the app. I do not have a GitHub account and I'm not planning on registering there. Thanks! strakhov (talk) 14:20, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
Slowking4: Not related to browsing I guess, but it is a good idea! Do you have any estimation of the number of templates that need matching, and how many new ones are created each day? Thanks! Syced (talk) 04:49, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
well - i was hoping they would add a menu button for mix and match (a different kind of browsing by maintenance category). but it would have to be flexible since as the matches are made, you will have to find more work. don't know how or who would do the queuing or time to complete. would need to collaborate with Magnus or the sum of all painting folks. i imagine that a simple UX via app would increase matches 10x. and we could push it for drives. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 01:22, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
Here I was hoping for an antivandalism FPS interface. :)   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 01:30, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Please just keep updating the mobile website, as someone who edits Wikimedia Commonss and other Wikimedia projects exclusively on a cell.-phone the current "mobile experience" is seriously harming my ability to upload and edit, I can't even view categories, talk pages are a mess, and don't even get me started on the lack of tools. Just please make the mobile browser almost equal to the desktop variant, categories are important for images but if we can't view them we can't improve them. And the mobile UploadWizard doesn't even allow for the removal of images and constantly crashes. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (Talk 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:21, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Seeking assistance contact info below

Ellemariemai@gmail.com Will register at sandbox as well. Information personal privacy ancestors and global impact on copyright laws and infringement details will be provided after proper legal counsel is provided.

Mr. LAMAAR ODOM for Ms. Danielle McCartney Mai — Preceding unsigned comment was added by 2607:FB90:48B5:8915:0:16:BA67:5001 (talk) 08:37, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, we do not provide legal counsel.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 09:18, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
@Odomfordanielle: What exactly do you want? If you want us to stop all deletions, sorry, that's not going to happen. Is there something specific you want restored?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 09:30, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
I'll state the obvious, the question is incoherent. She needs a new lawyer. --BeckenhamBear (talk) 11:13, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
Actually, bless. The penny dropped. They are offering their services as Legal Advisers on Copyright to us! --BeckenhamBear (talk) 15:34, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Image notes

Is anybody else having troubles adding notes to images? I keep getting a Java Script error when I try to save the annotation: Exception ReferenceError: ajaxSubmit is not defined File https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:LAPI.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript (1377) De728631 (talk) 16:22, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Bizarre… neither saw it with Mozilla or its likeness PaleMoon nor have it now, and do not see recent changes in MediaWiki:LAPI.js. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:42, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

User name

Hi, how can I change my username (signature) just in Commons (not globally)? Many thanks, --Felipe Restrepo Acosta (talk) 14:55, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

@Pedro Felipe: You could establish an alternative account with a new name, but the two accounts would need to be linked to each other via their user pages.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 15:00, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
Many thanks @Jeff G.: . How can I the change my signature in the pictures I've already uploaded? I mean, retroactively, so the my name (Felipe Restrepo Acosta) appears as the author, and not my username (Pedro Felipe). --Felipe Restrepo Acosta (talk) 15:35, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
Felipe Restrepo Acosta, do you care of an account name or of a visible text in the source= ? You may use the [[…|…]] wiki syntax in file description pages. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 15:53, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
Good. But, do I have to do it manually or is there a function to change it at once in all the images I've already uploaded? --Felipe Restrepo Acosta (talk) 16:12, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
Should be pretty straightforward with VisualFileChange. - Jmabel ! talk 17:01, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
@Jmabel: I tried to set it up on multiple browsers & systems, but could not avoid the error I described at MediaWiki talk:VisualFileChange.js#Error: -- NO TASK DESCR. FOR mdFormattNumber PLEASE ADD IT -- ##### TypeError: Cannot set property 'content' of undefined.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 17:30, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: I'm not one of the people who supports it technically, so I can't help you with that. - Jmabel ! talk 19:18, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
I tried to help the thread starter, as well, but must confirm Jeff’s observation (more on VFC talk page linked above by Jeff). — Speravir – 02:26, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Guys, many thanks to all. It sounds promising... but I must confess I'm lost. Is there any tutorial or a step-by-step instructions? --Felipe Restrepo Acosta (talk) 12:35, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
I've been trying to launch it, but I can't find... my toolbox? Thanks, come help needed...--Felipe Restrepo Acosta (talk) 12:44, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Pedro Felipe, do you know Help:VFC? Once activated you should see it (in default Vector skin) in sidebar on the left. The English word toolbox may be translated into your active language. For what you want you quite probably need some RegEx knowledge, as I see it. We could try to help, though. — Speravir – 17:21, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
@Pedro Felipe: This appears to be done now.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 18:06, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Sure @Jeff G.: ! Thanks @Speravir: I've finally figured out how it worked. Best, --Felipe Restrepo Acosta (talk) 22:14, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Speravir 22:43, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

flickr2Commons - rate limit

I have another error with Flickr2Commons, "Transfer failed [1] : /You've exceeded your rate limit. Please wait some time and try again." Is this a general thing, or because I've switched to using my secondary account, User:Pigsonthewing-bot? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:59, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

All non-admin accounts have a ratelimit for 380 images (per 70 (seventy) minutes... I think), but some groups are also exempt such as account creators. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (Talk 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 06:18, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
That's going to be a serious impediment to my work here Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:14, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: So ask for the Account creator right at COM:RFR.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 17:17, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
That's not one of the options listed there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:34, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
Your bot is not flagged as bot and has no other flag at all (such as autopatrolled). --Steinsplitter (talk) 19:42, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
I have never claimed that it is. Not least because I have never operated it as a bot on this project. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:20, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
Account Creator must be asked @ BN since only crat can assign/revoke them, for now. — regards, Revi 06:33, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

March 02

Files with too big wikitext

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T188852

Hello everyone, during my cleanup i found a bunch of files which i am not able to edit. When i try to i just get an empty screen. [2]. (but maybe this is due to some firewall rule here). On my mobile device i get an error message that is saying that the file (wikitext) is bigger than the allowed max of 2.048 kB and that i cannot edit it. For the concrete case: Can anyone fix these files (removing an endless repetition of categories)? In general: Are there other files like this that should be cleaned up? Can't we avoid such uploads? Is it a bug that i just get an empty edit page and that the description page is not displayed properly? Tahnks in advance, --Arnd (talk) 11:45, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

@Aschroet: That page File:Mc Laren SLR Brabus Silver (6352614317).jpg is 4,901,848 bytes long, and Popups tells me that it has "118584 wikiLinks, 0 images, 118584 categories". That is too large for multiple browsers to edit, and is in fact above the limit for the size of a page. The issue of the creation of that page and ones like it is being tracked at phab:T188852.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 13:10, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
This upload of files with 4+MB accompanying wikitext happened 12 times over the course of 6 minutes preceding 2018-02-16 15:16 (UTC) using Commons:Flickr2Commons by Magnus Manske. I think it is a bug in that tool and whatever allowed it to post.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:18, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
Pages all fixed, licence reviews undertaken at the same time. Nick (talk) 14:26, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

I would also ask @Artix Kreiger 2: and @Artix Kreiger: what it is they are doing when they import files to Commons - the standard of their imports is decidedly sub-optimal - aircraft with automobile tracking categories etc. This is ongoing, so I have blocked the account for 2 hours but will unblock (or anybody else is free to unblock immediately) if an unblock request is placed etc. Nick (talk) 14:32, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

@Nick: I agree. 39,528 copies of the same 124 bytes of categories is unacceptable spam.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:37, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
Hello all. Upon Nick's talk page message and looking at some of the criticism, I'm going back to correct some of them. Now, that I realize, it seems I am creating more of a mess than actual benefit to the project. I will be here to answer any + all questions. Artix Kreiger (talk) 14:45, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
@Artix Kreiger: You created a mess, you got multiple warnings, but you still continue and continue. You have to correct everything, not just some of them. --Steinsplitter (talk) 14:46, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-10

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • You can now make longer edit summaries. [3]

Changes later this week

  • You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. [4]
  • On Special:AbuseLog you can now choose to list only actions that actually made an edit. Other actions are when the filter warned the editor or blocked the edit from being made. There are also more search options. [5][6]
  • Advanced item Wikis can enable Citoid to provide automatic reference look-up in the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor, but it is complex. The tool will now warn in the JavaScript console if the configuration isn't correct. Soon Citoid will disable itself if the configuration isn't correct. Check that your wiki is configured correctly. You can ask for help if you need it. [7]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 March. It will be on all wikis from 8 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 March at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:12, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Finding speakers of other languages

Hey, does anyone know a good way to find a multi-lingual user to help with an issue in a language I don't speak (which is any language besides English)? I patrol new uploads and whatnot, and often find stuff that I think needs review/tagging/deletion/etc, but can't move forward with any action due to a language barrier. For example, after I just tagged File:Dominique MOUILLOT.jpg for deletion, I noticed that the Wikipedia article it was used on (fr:Dominique Mouillot) seemed rather promotional and in need of cleanup. However, I don't trust Google Translate enough to be sure that the article has issues, and even if I did, I don't think I'd be able to find the appropriate maintenance template on French Wikipedia.

I have little issues like this regularly, involving many different languages. Are there noticeboards for stuff like this, or do I just need to build up a network of multi-lingual friends that I can pester about things like this? -IagoQnsi (talk) 19:41, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Some people, including me, have a box on their userpage listing their language proficiencies; see Commons:Babel. You could try browsing through the associated language level categories, although it will be probably difficult to find someone who speaks both a language of interest and is actively editing Commons. Another option is to drop a comment at language-specific versions of Village Pump as shown at Template:Lang-VP. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:34, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
Also, Commons:Administrators lists languages for admins. - Jmabel ! talk 21:34, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
Thank you both for the help -- I didn't realize we had village pumps for so many languages! I posted my issue over at Commons:Bistro in this case (hopefully they can understand me through Google Translate) and will remember both of these links for the future. Cheers, IagoQnsi (talk) 22:43, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

March 06

Special:Upload in languages other than English

Special:Upload is heavily customized in Commons. Among other things, the "Licensing" dropdown must be translated to a language to make it actually usable. If MediaWiki:Licenses is not translated to a language, then the form is unusable in that language because you cannot upload a file without specifying a license explicitly.

Is it possible to make it at least basically usable without an explicit translation? For example, to make it fall back to English? --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 16:16, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Can it not pull labels from Wikidata? We've just stared doing that on Wikispecies, for some items. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:08, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
There should be indeed a fallback, so this seems a bug by MW and should be report on Phab:. (We could made locally a fix as hack per JS but I mean this is a native problem by MW.) -- User: Perhelion 21:25, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T188983 --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 09:50, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Germaine Dermoz

I need some help, as usual.

I've found this file File:Btv1b85969601-p009.jpg that includes six pictures. I think that the Dermoz mentioned in the first two is Germaine Dermoz (compare with [8] for instance). But I'm no expert in French cinema. In addition I don't know how to properly crop a couple of pictures from the original.

Can you help me?

B25es (talk) 08:07, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

You can use any software with image editing capabilities to crop the image. See Commons:Software. Ruslik (talk) 19:36, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
  • In particular, if all you want to do is crop, you can use Commons:CropTool, but unlike downloading and loading it into (say) GIMP, CropTool won't let you correct the slight warp in this particular image that you linked. - Jmabel ! talk 00:27, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
I see the crop part, thanks!. But I'm trying to identify the actress. All six pictures look like they could be her. B25es (talk) 19:14, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
The second lady is Germaine Fréville, a French actress. Apparently (actual source not given) she appeared in The Better Ole, in the Oxford Theatre, London in 1910. The play was based on the cartoons of Bruce Bairnsfather in The Bystander magazine. The play was written by Bairnsfather and Arthur Eliot. Mlle Freville played the part of one of the French girls at the cabaret. @Kürschner: created the categories for her and indicated that her name was Germaine. Can he confirm her christian name? Otherwise I guess you will have to confirm Freville's Christian name by looking through the Bystander for her. Dermoz is also found here File:Btv1b85969601-p008.jpg and File:Btv1b85969601-p007.jpg. Jean Reutlinger kept meticulous records but only? seems to record surnames. The French and German Wikis both have articles and sources on him, so that would be a good starting place. --BeckenhamBear (talk) 19:27, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, I cannot help. I have no special information about it, I think I found the Christian name somewhere at the pictures, or at Wikipedia. I cannot remember it.-- Kürschner (talk) 19:59, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Batch downloading of multiple images from within a pdf

If I wanted to download multiple images from within a pdf file or a website into Commons, what Wikimedia tool COM:UT (or other from the net) should I use? --BeckenhamBear (talk) 10:56, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

You will need first to extract all images from the pdf file. You can read this. Ruslik (talk) 19:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
That was helpful. All of the images I want to download need cropping, nearly all some degree of rotation, and occasional transforming perspective. I was using the Windows snipping tool but its very tedious, and Windows tools have poor lossless performance. Then I dug out my old copy of Photoshop 7.0, however it cant cherry pick images. It has an option for downloading the entire document, however when attempting to download a Generic pdf file it stops when reaching 13 images giving out an error message "Could not complete the import command because of a disk error". Any ideas? --BeckenhamBear (talk) 16:01, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
@BeckenhamBear: I have found system performance to be suboptimal when a system disk is >90% full or there are undiagnosed bad sectors on a disk; I recommend you check for both.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:41, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
Jeff G. Disk 366 GB free of 462 GB. CHKDSK found no bad sectors. --BeckenhamBear (talk) 17:20, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
@BeckenhamBear: That wasn't a ping, but a link (please read Template:Ping). In any case, this appears to be a problem with your Photoshop software. Have you tried using GIMP or reporting the problem to Adobe?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 22:17, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: All I want to do is download multiple images from a pdf into separate files for cropping, possibly some degree of rotation, and occasional transforming perspective. Obviously to the degree of excellence demanded by Admins here, who have criticized me in the past of falling short of their demanding standards. I was using Windows tools and got criticized for it. Grateful for your thoughts on the matter? Are the standard windows tools sufficient, if used with care? BeckenhamBear (talk) 22:32, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
If the Windows tools are working for you then, of course, feel free to use them! But above you complained, " I was using the Windows snipping tool but its very tedious, and Windows tools have poor lossless performance" etc. I've generally done this sort of thing (successfully) with GIMP (which is free software); the only Windows graphic tool I ever actually use is Paint (which does certain simple things remarkably well) but of course you can use any offline tool that suits you. - Jmabel ! talk 23:40, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Photos by Francesco Veronesi

This category includes pictures shot by Francesco Veronesi that were uploaded into Flickr. They all have a (light) watermark in the middle of each picture.--Carnby (talk) 11:08, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

@Carnby: You are welcome to fix them yourself, or tag them with {{Watermark}} and let someone else fix them.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 12:49, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
I have written to the (Flickr) photographer, today. Don't hold your breath, he has 12,716 images on Flickr, we have over 4000 of them and nearly all have discernible watermarks. This come from Admins chasing stats by uploading images in bulk, without any quality control, to ensure they follow Policy guidelines. I.E. No watermarks are allowed. What to do? --BeckenhamBear (talk) 17:20, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
Commons:Watermarks (which only has the status of a proposed guideline/policy) states that "Visible watermarks are discouraged, as they detract from the usability of a work." "Discouraged" and "not allowed" are not synonymous. The two specified types of unacceptable watermarks are "Destructive watermarks, which significantly obstruct use of a work" (clearly not the case here, the watermarks are barely visible) and "Promotional watermarks, which go significantly beyond asserting authorship/copyright, for example to promote a website" (which does not appear to me to be the case here). @BeckenhamBear: Is there some adopted policy/guideline that sets an even stricter rule? As I understood it, the rule proposed at Commons:Watermarks would be a tightening of existing policy, not a loosening. The discussion on Commons talk:Watermarks certainly does not suggest otherwise. - Jmabel ! talk 00:38, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
As someone who often imports PD-scans of banknotes watermarks can be a hindrance but as they're sometimes the only images to be found online they're a better alternative to not having an image at all, though I avoid importing any images with large watermarks, having images with small watermarks can still be helpful as in some cases people won't even notice that there's a watermark unless they really look for one, for that reason I would oppose any new policy that would prohibit the uploading of files with "spammy" watermarks simply because oftentimes there's no other alternative available online. I don't think that anyone wants destructive watermarks but if you really can't find any better image than one with a minor watermark then it's best to take that one as having something is always better than having nothing. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (Talk 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:09, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
We only want to delete WMs for aesthetic reasons. Bank notes are an exception, we're used to seeing their images defaced. Uploading of files with watermarks is discouraged by policy. The photographer put them there (as a minimum) to discourage commercial usage without payment and or re-attribution by others; the creator is seeking to control the image after its PD release. IMO if the CC license granted by the owner allows any changes to be made to the image then clearly that means a WM can be deleted, and its detail transferred to the file page. It has to be said, if they assigned a suitable CC license then they should also hand over the original unblemished image at the same time. These days with the power of Photoshop it's hard to conceive that any watermark is impossible to remove, provided you have the skill, the equipment, and patience to get rid. A decision would have to be made on a case by case basis on whether or not the image is worth the time required to do so. @Jmabel: I largely agree with Jmabel. The project is likely to tighten its policy. Hopefully this will be confined only to extra checks that ensure the declared owner of the image is in fact "the" owner, and that he has agreed to WM deletion. These days with such tools as Google image the need for WMs are largely redundant. In summary I would avoid these images, and certainly wouldn't upload images with watermarks, without careful checking and unless I deleted the WM first. Ultimately some Court in the USA will take the final decision out of our hands. If you want to upload images with watermarks IMO you should either get a confirmation from the photographer that his CC license was not assigned in error or at the very least you MUST ensure that every image has a watermark cat assigned to it. I have some sympathy with the idea of having one image (even with a WM) at least for everything, but is it really necessary? BeckenhamBear (talk) 15:32, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Those watermarks are rather discreet, there is no urgency to mass remove them. --Nemo 18:26, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

The photos are fine and are with a free license, meaning that anymone can remove the watermarks if he/she wants. --Ruthven (msg) 22:43, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

This is Commons; not Wikipedia where images with watermark highly discouraged. We upload such files when not enough other images available. We use them in Wikipedia pages too when no other image available. Those pages can be updated with other images when we get a better one. The image with watermark remain in Commons as unused. Does it a serious problem to any? In this case, Francesco Veronesi travel around the world and has a good collection of fauna. many of them are very rare too. Jee 12:22, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Copyright Lithuania

I am working on a licensing issue involving this image: File:Paulius.Matusevičius.jpg (ticket:2018030610169733)

I responded with the usual comment that the subject is not necessarily the copyright holder. The response is that in copyright law in Lithuania, the person being photographed (in the case of a portrait), acquires all the permissions.

Can anyone confirm or deny this assertion?--Sphilbrick (talk) 21:40, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Sphilbrick: It is up to the person making such claims to point to the specific provision in the law or legal precedent. I see nothing in http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/text.jsp?file_id=191200 that would support it. Side note: the photo in question appears in higher resolution with intact metadata at https://www.versvugimnazija.lt/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Paulius_Matusevicius.jpg. —LX (talk, contribs) 06:51, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
I agree with LX that there is no such provision in the law. The closest thing is Article 20.1 where a single copy for personal use only is permitted, but that would not include the right to relicence another party's work for anybody else. De728631 (talk) 15:33, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks--Sphilbrick (talk) 16:20, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

March 07

About Flickr uploading

Hi, Is there is a way like Beta-Commons UploadWizard by which we can directly transfer files from Flickr through real Commons UploadWizard?--√Jæ√ 06:38, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean with "direct transfer"? The Upload Wizard already allows for uploading Flickr files by entering the source url without downloading the file yourself. De728631 (talk) 15:37, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
The trouble with Flickr is that the bulk have been incorrectly licensed and therfore, each needs a human to review each one carefully. Automation makes up-loaders even more lazy. --P.g.champion (talk) 15:53, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
there is Commons:Flickr2Commons, but you would need to get OAuth from Magnus. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 22:42, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
When using Flickr2Commons you can authenticate through the interface, it then gives and error message and you can upload, it's really easy. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (Talk 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:39, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

@De728631: When I open UW it doesn't shows the option. Please tell me what I have to do for enabling it.--√Jæ√ 03:44, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

"(only administrators, image-reviewers and extended uploaders can import from Flickr)" Commons:Flickr_files#Uploading_images Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 04:28, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
Many Flickr images are categorized with tags Can these “Tags” be used to assign Categories within Commons at the point of download? BeckenhamBear (talk) 10:50, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
They make good hints, but nothing more. They rarely correspond 1-1, and even when they do there is usually a lot of COM:OVERCAT. - Jmabel ! talk 16:39, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
Agreed: one has to be selective because tags are generally non-hierarchical. Usually some will need to be discarded as parent cats of others (e.g. district, region, & country where the town is given) and some will need to be combined into intersection cats. A lot of bot uploads use them as a starting point—better than leaving images uncategorized—but these almost always require human evaluation & cleanup.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 21:49, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

March 08

Public Domain 2018 Russia

Dear colleagues, please comment on CentralNotice banner proposal for Public Domain 2018 Russia uploads & article contest. (18 March - 30 June, all IPs from Russia, Wp/Ws/Commons, 1 banner impression per two weeks). Thank you.--Frhdkazan (talk) 17:44, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Please test pings in edit summary

1. Read this:

"You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. phab:T32750"-- meta:Tech/News/2018/10

2. Sign up at https://commons.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org/ using a different user name and password (not the one you use here). You may create multiple accounts if you like, just put a note on their user pages.

3. Edit a page and put a username link in edit summary. Confirm that you are receiving the notification correctly.

4. Test at different pages and in different ways.

5. Report bugs to Phabricator.

6. Share this comment with other people on other wikis, in different languages.

--Gryllida (talk) 23:52, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

March 09

Commons categories and Wikidata notability

There's a RfC currently open at d:Wikidata talk:Notability as to whether the rules there for potential Wikidata items corresponding to Commons categories.

On the old question of where sitelinks should go, I think there's now broad acceptance on Wikidata of the position that Commons categories should normally link to main (article-type) Wikidata items -- unless either there is a gallery here, in which case the gallery should link to the article-type item, and the category should link to a category-type item; or if there is already a category-type item at Wikidata, linking eg to categories on various Wikipedias. In those cases the category here should link to a category-type item there; but otherwise a category here should link to an article-type item there. (It's worth noting that current templates, like {{Interwiki from wikidata}} or {{Wikidata infobox}} don't really mind which sort of Wikidata item they sitelink to, though linking direct to the article-type item is slightly more efficient).

As I said, although it's generated a lot of heat in the past, I think that part of things now seems broadly settled and accepted.

There's a further aspect to the RfC though, which is whether Wikidata's notability rules should be revised, to more explicitly approve or otherwise encourage more actively the creation of new (article-type) items for Commons categories.

Wikidata's default notability rule is that it is appropriate to create a new item if (2) It refers to an instance of a clearly identifiable conceptual or material entity. The entity must be notable, in the sense that it can be described using serious and publicly available references.

There's traditionally been no great desire there to see lots of items created for so-called Commons "intersection" categories, eg (made-up example) "Category:Green sled pulled by girl", a category combining the ideas of sledges, green objects, girls and people pulling things. There was also, in the most recent previous discussion back in November, some resistance expressed to the idea of Wikidata items for some types of individual thing that we may have categories for here on Commons, eg individual aircraft airframes, or individual Wikimedians.

But beyond cases like those, are there any concrete cases of Commons categories that could usefully have Wikidata items, that Rule 2 above would not already be sufficient to permit? Subjects that have Wikipedia articles are automatically allowed Wikidata items (WD Notability Rule 1). Would there be any benefit in widening that to include at least some Commons categories; or are all the Commons categories that could benefit already covered by Rule 2 ? Are there any that might not be?

Any thoughts or follow-ups please, to d:Wikidata_talk:Notability#RfC:_Notability_and_Commons.

...

There is also a separate thread, at d:Wikidata:Project_chat#Things_covered_by_Commons_categories,_but_not_by_Wikidata, considering how practically to get more Commons categories connected to Wikidata items (existing items and/or new items); including whether people have good experiences or methods or workflows or queries to share, that have helped build up more systematic linking; and whether there are current difficulties or barriers making this difficult, that it would be worth working on to try to ease. All thoughts or tips or input on this very much sought. Jheald (talk) 23:42, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

There are many individual rooms in Wikidata (I found ~2300 “instances” but some of these are likely errors). Still, many museums, palaces, etc. have notable rooms. - PKM (talk) 03:30, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Just to point out, there are categories like Category:Am Hedtberg that only cover one street, sometimes categories cover a specific number in that street, that doesn't make them less notable, Wikidata solely exists to add more structure to Wikimedia projects, by deliberately excluding Wikimedia Commons it would make integrating structured data for Wikimedia Commons more difficult, and having instances solely for Wikimedia Commons categories can be fixed by simply calling it "Commonswiki statement" unless linked to another project which could be a class by themselves. I don't see why Wikimedia Commons should be excluded as eventually articles about some street or some subject might be written. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (Talk 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:19, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Category:University of Pavia

I think that the most part of the files in this category are private photographs without encyclopedic interest. Out of scope. --DenghiùComm (talk) 14:29, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

They seem to come from a University-run contest, but apart from this they can be useful to illustrate the people of the University in question. One might debate whether it's more useful to depict daily work (inside the labs, offices etc.) or events. Photos of students are often used to illustrate texts about a university. --Nemo 14:47, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
Not going to win any awards, but I see no reason to delete them. - Jmabel ! talk 16:44, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
Some are selfies. More than a few have Twitter addresses for those in the photos. COM:NOTWP, COM:NOTHOST, COM:NOTSOCIAL. You still think they should be retained.? BeckenhamBear (talk) 16:19, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
Self-portrait doesn't automatically translate to low quality and social handles don't automatically make a description self-promotional. --Nemo 18:14, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
Interesting. So you think these Year Book items are not subject to the policy of: "Commons is not your personal free web host", "Commons is not a social network"? BeckenhamBear (talk) 13:02, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
Precisely because we have this extensive set of them, they are of more possible interest/use. - Jmabel ! talk 16:59, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
OK, we can set aside the issue of do we have permission to broadcast/publish internationally this personal information outside of the University website, or the fact that they are of zero educational interest. Perhaps you could set in train a motion to delete all project policy except that for copyright infringement, so we don't waste any more time and resources on such as this?. BeckenhamBear (talk) 18:17, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Problem uploading using Geograph2Commons tool

I made a report on a specific image upload problem with Geograph2Commons, see here (the talk page on meta). I am also asking here in case that page on meta isn't much-watched (also am not sure how to use BitBucket), and in case anyone here is willing to do the upload manually. Carcharoth (talk) 11:10, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Despite repeated attempts (including clearing cookies and resetting various things and reauthorising the tool and trying different images) I can't seem to use this tool any more, which is very frustrating. Does anyone else who uses this tool have this problem? Carcharoth (talk) 13:30, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
I don't use this tool myself, but as a test I tried your upload (2639448) yesterday when you first posted, and again just now - both times it did nothing when I pressed the "run" button - just sat there. So, just for fun, I tried 2639447, and it worked. So I guess there might be something odd about 2639448 that's causing it to fail on that one. (We now have File:Shelter between Norbreck and Bispham (geograph 2639447).jpg from my "test", though...) -- Begoon 14:27, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
I occasionally run into this kind of problem with the tool, and it seems to be caused by the PHP component that fetches the image metadata from Geograph. I've never got around to investigating more deeply, since manual uploads are only slightly more trouble. On which subject, I've uploaded File:Tomb of Mary Sumner (geograph 2639448).jpg now. --bjh21 (talk) 14:33, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

March 10

March 11

Postcard editor/photographer from Belfast

I have two Belfast postcards where on the backside is mentioned: J. Johnson, 24 William St. South, Belfast. The pictures are from 1905 to 1914? Is this a postcard editor using local photographers or are this is own pictures. When did J. Johnson die?Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:33, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

J. Johnson appears to be a publisher, and probably not the author. (For example this card on eBay appears to be an etching or similar reproduction of a painting.) If there‘s no signature or anything else to identify the photographer, we might be able to call them anonymous. That would make them PD in the UK 70 years after publication, and of course in the USA as published pre-1923.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 03:28, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

New Gadget Larger Galleries

As the request for such feature appears occasionally, and for normal thumbs, there exists already such feature (from Wikimedia for Wikipedia), there is now a new gadget option in the user settings. Based on a JS snipped by Bawolff (@B222, LX, Orchi, and MKFI: involved in old discussion). Suggestions and feedback are welcome. There is also a hover zoom effect which could work only on "modern" browsers (could be improved on request). PS: The feature starts first on change of the drop-down select or starts automatically if you have defined a custom window.largerGallery = 1.5; in your js-setting. Have fun. -- User: Perhelion 13:35, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Perhelion: First impression is that this is an obvious improvement, and I'll keep the gadget activated. I've checked with Monobook (which I normally use) and Vector. A few observations:
  • With a mix of portrait and landscape oriented files on the same row, the boxes containing the thumbnails vary in height, so the file names get displaced, which looks a bit messy. Could probably be addressed with a little bit of CSS.
  • The larger thumbnails really make it obvious how much space is wasted by the enormous amount of whitespace around the thumbnails. Just a CSS issue, and it's not strictly related to the gadget.
  • I haven't decided if I like the zoom feature. I have a feeling it might get in the way sometimes, but at least the fact that it isn't triggered by hovering over the file name seems like a good decision.
  • The zoomed images are quite pixelated; it might make sense to use higher-resolution thumbnails.
—LX (talk, contribs) 16:49, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
In the archived thread LX pointed to phab:T3340. Add a notice there and set it to closed? — Speravir – 23:19, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
@LX: Many thanks for the feedback, you are very right, I've now fixed several bloopers. Concrete on your feedback:
  • @Mixed portrait and landscape: I slightly harmonized the height proportionally.
  • I've narrowed the hover-box to the minimum of the thumb size (so it possible lesser triggered on the fly).
  • The zoomed images are loaded but sometimes quite late (mostly 1-2s later). In Bawolff's snipped version, he preloaded the zoomed images with factor 3 (and downscaled with factor 2, so the display result was 1.5), which I mean is a waste of load time and resources.
@Speravir: thanks for pointing this out, I'll do this too.
-- User: Perhelion 23:56, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
Perhelion: I'm still getting boxes of different heights and file names that don't line up as a result. Another thing I noticed is that the floated dropdown can cause the last thumbnail in the first row to be pushed down. One way to address this would be to give the containing p element a bigger margin-bottom (about 1em). —LX (talk, contribs) 17:09, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
@LX: "margin" I can't reproduce this on different skins but I'll tweak this with the next change.
Perhelion: As for the margin issue, I should add that it is only seen in categories without pagination links.
As for the box height issue, with window.largerGallery = 1.5; in my js settings, I would prefer the look resulting from adding the following CSS rules:
li.gallerybox div.thumb { height: 215px; }
li.gallerybox div.thumb > div:first-child { line-height: 215px; margin: 0 !important; }
li.gallerybox div.thumb img { display: inline; vertical-align: middle; }
(Note: The rules are hardcoded for that scaling setting and don't play nicely with the zoom function.)
One more thought: I'm personally still not sold on the hover zoom. Sorry! Would it be possible to make that feature optional with a js setting, so I can keep enjoying the other functionality of the gadget? —LX (talk, contribs) 20:00, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
@LX and Speravir: ✓ Done You can now set window.largerGalleryZoom = 1; and there will be no event set. PS: I made also the zoom factor relative to the scale factor (so larger scale get lesser zoom). -- User: Perhelion 01:06, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

How to achieve it, Perhelion, that the zoom is not applied on one (or potentially more → array?) page(s). Namely I do not want active zoom in Category:Media requiring renaming. I’ve added this to my common.js, but apparently this does not work: 

var ns = mw.config.get('wgNamespaceNumber'),
	title = mw.config.get('wgTitle');
if (ns === 14 && title === "Media requiring renaming") // [[:Category:Media requiring renaming]]
	window.largerGalleryZoom = 1;

Or do I just need an else branch here? If it would not be possible or not that simple I could live with it, though. — Speravir – 00:13, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

@Speravir: Are you sure?? Your code should be 100% work, if window.largerGallery = 1.5; works (autorun)!? Or you mean disable the magnification scale? -- User: Perhelion 07:01, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
@Perhelion: Yes, unfortunately I am, even no mistake, because it was C&P (cf. also Special:PermanentLink/291421528). Eehm, yes, I am interested in disabling the zoom in this category, and in fact also in all subcategories (and later perhaps more, I assume I would need some regex – this try didn't work: 2 steps, Special:Diff/291554979/291566558), but, you’re right, actually the magnification could also be disabled there. Seems that the file is already loaded with default values. — Speravir – 01:14, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
@Speravir: So window.largerGallery is not working too? I also C&P your code and it works for me. If yes, we need a better config load with mw.hook probably... -- User: Perhelion 07:38, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
It is working now as long as I added it according to your description. It did not with in my trial to add the RegEx exception, in fact nothing worked afterwards, but I wasn’t really sure whether the code is right (or guessed it was wrong). May it be that there are other scripts interfering (commons or global)? — Speravir – 00:07, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Oh, it’s even worse today in Category:Media requiring renaming: I see the files for parts of a second, but then all disappear (luckily the slideshow does work). But after deactivating my commons.js (ha, I knew I would need it sometime) and reloading I could see them all. So there must be some interfering – must I really deactivate script by script? Speaking of this also others reported problems with scripts (at least de:FZW and here below #User name, a VFC issue, I noticed that you made a change for it). Related: My VFC localization does not work in the beginning. — Speravir – 02:24, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
OMG, Perhelion, sorry for all the noise, I have to be angry about myself: It was essentially a brace mistake: I had the variables defined inside of the loading function, but used them for LargerGalleries outside of it! (Update: And even the RegEx syntax works now.) — Speravir – 23:54, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Perhelion: Thanks for adding the zoom setting! Another thing (give them a finger, and they'll take the whole hand): Is it possible to get the larger thumbnail size to apply to VisualFileChange as well? —LX (talk, contribs) 17:04, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
@LX: That's exactly what I'm currently on (at tomorrow). ;-) Do you think I should load the gadget there automatically? -- User: Perhelion 17:18, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Perhelion: Fantastic! It might make sense to have it on by default there. One concern might be that unless the hover zoom is disabled, it could be triggered accidentally and get in the way when ticking boxes to select images. —LX (talk, contribs) 18:21, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
@LX and Perhelion: I share that concern, along with a concern that the filenames might be unsearchable or unclickable.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 19:45, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Strange behaviour of Cat-a-lot

I tried to add the category Parikia to a selection of a few files. This resulted in the message: The following 6 pages were skipped, because the page was already in the category:
File:GR-paros-parikia-gasse-ven.jpg
File:GR-paros-parikia-platz-1.jpg
File:GR-paros-parikia-gemueseverk.jpg
File:GR-paros-parikia-kastell-2.jpg
File:GR-paros-parikia-platia.jpg
File:GR-paros-parikia-gasse-v.jpg

When I add manually the category to one file there is no problem. Why does the cat-a-lot behave in this case so strange? Wouter (talk) 07:38, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

@Wouterhagens: in the couple of files I looked at I saw two ‘ineffective‘ references to the category: one covered by nowiki in the upload-log section (presumably referring to a WV category) and one that was missing the final bracket to make a link. Either of those might have made Cat-a-lot think the cat was already there—I’m not sure which, but my first guess would be the latter.
Thanks for the info. I solved the problem. Wouter (talk) 12:14, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Roller skating competitions

I dont seem to get a good category for this kind of competition. There are 'Roller Derbys' but this seems to be something else (a teamsport).Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:27, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Make a new category, then. It could include Category:2007 Pan American Games roller skating and probably other things. --Auntof6 (talk) 11:02, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Created Category:Roller skating street races.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:20, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

File:Nkchar-euht.svg

Can somebody create this file? It should have a circle at the top, a equals sign in the middle, and another circle at the bottom. --92.216.180.230 11:40, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

This definitely has relation to the bizarre category: Languages of North Korea. If it is a special variant of hangŭl syllabary, then it should be labelled as such. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:23, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Did you mean the character: 읗? --HyperGaruda (talk) 12:58, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
(That category by Incnis Mrsi needs cleanup: I’ll do it by weekend. — regards, Revi 13:00, 11 March 2018 (UTC))

What are the rules concerning non-photographic medias to become QIs ?

Hello,

Reading the Image guidelines, there's nothing concerning SVGs, PNGs or animated Gifs. It's all about resolution, JPG compression, noise, exposure, focus, lighting, distorsions, and so on. Although we can find several QIs in this category Commons:Quality_images/Subject/Non_photographic_media. I wondered what are the valid criteria on which we can legitimately support or oppose a QIC. For example why is this logo a QI, and this hieroglyph too ? What kind of materials have great chances of success ? Which ones less ? What should we accept / reject / discuss ? -- Basile Morin (talk) 11:09, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

One thing you might want to check for SVG files is that the code is valid. E.g., after checking with this tool or other means, {{Valid SVG}} should have been added to the file before it gets reviewed for QI. This is just my 2 cents though. De728631 (talk) 17:48, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks @De728631: But then, I don't understand why some SVGs like File:GDP_PPP_2017_Selection_EN.svg and File:GDP_PPP_2017_Selection_DE.svg (now nominated as Quality Images) are marked as valid on commons, whereas they contain errors with https://validator.w3.org -- Basile Morin (talk) 01:19, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
@Basile Morin: Apparently this happened because the {{Igen}} template had been used on these files without checking the actual number of errors. I have now adjusted the two file descriptions. De728631 (talk) 01:31, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Public domain for an author of unknown date of decease?

Good evening,

I ran accross this map of en:Cuevas del Drach, which could be a great addition to the article. The map has been drawn by a certain José Ygnacio Moragues in 1880, but I can’t find more information about him. Imagining the case where he plotted the map at the early age of 20 and died at the late age of 100, the map will be in the public domain in many juridictions in twelve years. But if he worked on it at 30 and died at 90, the map is already available since 2010. Is there a generally accepted practice in these cases where no precise information is available about the author?

Simulateously, the digital archive where the map is placed releases the file under the non-free CC by-nc-nd. So unless they acquired the rights for it from a donation or other, could it mean that it is already in the public domain and that either they license their scan of it (can they do this?), or they mislabelled the file?

~ nicolas (talk) 19:34, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

1880 is over 120 years ago, so is within the scope of {{PD-old-assumed}}. If it was published before 1923 then {{PD-1923}} can also be added. The digital archive doesn't seem to be revealing its grounds for claiming copyright over the work, but there's also {{PD-Art}} in case it's just for digitizing it. --ghouston (talk) 21:57, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
If it's from Spain, please use {{PD-old-assumed|duration=80}}, because Spain has a PMA+80 term. Jcb (talk) 22:08, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
Actually it was not drawn by Moragues himself but by a German named F. Will. There is a note printed on the map in the lower right corner: "Fecit F. Will de München (Alemanna) Mayo 1880" (F. Will from Munich, Germany, made it, May 1880). I can't find anything about this Will person, but we're still good in terms of {{PD-old-assumed}} without additional duration. De728631 (talk) 02:40, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
PD-old-assumed is not an agreed template as a RFC is still needed along with supporting policy and guidelines for usage, nor is it supported by any copyright law, specifically the 1879 Act. The file may be subject to deletion under Spanish copyright law. --Fæ (talk) 10:29, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
Actually it is supported by copyright law; works by authors of unknown death date that were created 120 years ago and not published in 1923-2002 are PD in the US. Which, funny enough, is exactly the copyright law that is binding on the WMF. PD-old-assumed was created based on discussion on VP/C and general consensus, so feel free to use it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:32, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
You are implicitly claiming that Spanish copyright law does not apply or can be ignored. Why?
As for the template, please actually read how the discussion closed, a RFC and changes to policy and guidelines are required before the template is used. --Fæ (talk) 23:35, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
Spanish law does not apply to the WMF. Commons policy requires us to use Spanish law in certain cases, and tells us we can ignore it in others--cf. PD-Art. In this case, we're asserting that 120 years is long enough for us to reasonably assume that Spanish law is satisfied.
As for the template, it's being used. There's always been lines where a file has been old enough to not be deleted; this is merely clarifying the exact line based on consensus. If you want further bureaucracy, then go ahead, but I think the rule is clearly in effect in practice.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:05, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
No, with respect to the draft template it is used on just 200 files (out of our 43+ million) mistakenly. A RFC is required as was stated at the time of closing by a Bureaucrat. Despite Jcb's campaign about their template and their original proposal, the use of the draft template is not supported by law or policy or a credible consensus. It is wrong and misleading to use this template on files which are going to be reused by members of the public as the details of when and how it should apply have yet to be worked out.
With regard to ignoring non-US law, that is not what Commons:Licensing requires. According to that policy to be public domain this image must be "in the public domain in at least the United States and in the source country of the work." Please do not mislead this uploader by confusing policy with your personal views about copyright law, they will be disappointed when it has to go through a DR process after upload. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 00:14, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
while i salute the thumbing nose at spanish copyright law, a consensus would be helpful, but some will not budge from 130, so not much hope of achieving that. noting the impasse, and warning about spanish law would be forthright. (especially given the german case with gutenburg [9]). Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 01:52, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
Since Commons begin, we've been uploading files without secure death dates; the theory that the Greek gods authored part of the Homeric Hymns seems not to have stopped anyone from uploading them. At some point in the 19th century, it stops being okay to just assume the creators have been dead long enough. The general consensus is 120 years ago; if you don't want to use the template, feel free to take a guess and use the appropriate PD-Old template. Fæ is not DRing those 200 files, and they probably won't DR your file, because likely as not, all it will do is establish that the consensus went against them.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:33, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
*Cough*, your evidence of being "right" is that I am not DR-ing 200 old files? That's because I'm not a dick, rather than because there is a credible consensus or policy or copyright law that supports hosting these files on Commons. Plus, of course, on reasonable investigation many of these can be kept because proper license releases can be used, such as those that were published without any named artist or photographer.
The previous discussion was closed with the action that policies had to be written explaining detail, and a RFC should be run once the detailed guidelines were ready. If you want to start enforcing the 120 years "rule", get your finger out and write some usable guidelines and redesign the template to avoid misleading reusers, get them agreed and then run a full RFC.
Until then, there is no credible consensus to use the "120 years" template instead of having deletion requests, the associated images are effectively being hosted without a proper license and volunteers are being badly advised by encouraging them to use the template. --Fæ (talk) 12:00, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you think should be done with the map that's at issue here. Do you want it deleted, or is there some other template that can be used? --ghouston (talk) 21:12, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
Well, not deleted, since it hasn't been uploaded, but not uploaded at least? --ghouston (talk) 21:14, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
There's enough to do with files we host, thanks. --Fæ (talk) 21:15, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
If there's not copyright law that supports hosting these files on Commons, then they should be DRed. So should all the works we have on Commons that have a named author and no death date, like the Iliad. We assume all the time that the authors of works have been dead long enough; all this does is draw a line in the sand and mark those with a template besides PD-old. I've seen enough of these go to DR to know that this wouldn't get deleted, given its age, even before discussion.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:04, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
The legally meaningful answer varies by country, pretending otherwise is to have your head in the sand. In all cases, volunteers should be able to point to evidence of "reasonable" efforts to determine copyright, in practice this is a very low bar. --Fæ (talk) 11:15, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
And in this case, Spanish law is effectively ten years longer than the life+70 120 years was mostly based on, and conveniently the file under question was published over 130 years ago.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:41, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
@Nclm: Some days ago I wrote Commons:Assuming worst case copyright while in a funny mood. Didn't put it up yet and forgot about it. Your question reminded me, you may or may not find it useful. - Alexis Jazz 07:51, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

March 05

Tech News: 2018-11

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • 3D models can now be uploaded to Commons. [10]
  • Page Previews has been updated to use HTML for previews. This has fixed many issues. An A/B test was done on English and German Wikipedia to measure how it is used. Other changes were also made. [11]
  • Some edits have to be checked against too many conditions before they can trigger an abuse filter. If that is the reason no filter is triggered the edit will be tagged for review. [12]
  • Auto-saving has been added to the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. Right now it is meant to help if your browser crashes or if you accidentally close a tab. [13]

Problems

  • The abuse filter did not tag all edits that should have been tagged after last week's MediaWiki version had come to the wikis. It was fixed on 9 March (UTC). [14]

Changes later this week

  • You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. This was originally planned to happen last week. [15]
  • It is now possible to specify the block parameters for each filter in Special:AbuseFilter. The parameters include block duration and if the user should be blocked from editing their own talk page. The block duration is separate for anonymous and registered users. [16][17]
  • Advanced item A hundred Wikimedia wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 13 and 14 March. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [18][19][20]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 March. It will be on all wikis from 15 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 March at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 14 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:44, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Microsoft Sketchfab models

Okay, so we have 3D models support on Commons. Now, by all means I don't expect these models to be ridiculously detailed (though some are); the format for them originates in 3D printing after all. However, the files sourced from Microsoft on Sketchfab have major issues with fidelity in my opinion. For example, the Empire State Building looks quite different from its model, with more prominent setbacks and a tapered spire. The Space Needle is supposed to have gaps inside as well as an antenna. The proportions for the White House are all wrong. While these models are fine for a representation or interpretation of these structures, by no means do they accurately represent them, which does not align with Wikimedia's goal of education (see also, Template:Factual accuracy). What's more, they're actually being used in articles and added as items in Wikidata. If these models are to stay, there must be clear identification that they're oversimplified and inaccurate models. Again, let me make it clear that it's not the level of detail that I'm taking issue with here. Opencooper (talk) 08:24, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

(Tangentially: this prompted me to make {{Sketchfab}}. More often than not the indication of provenance of STL files could be better. :/ Jean-Fred (talk) 08:02, 13 March 2018 (UTC))

Non existing file

In the Category:Ciriè train station there is a non-existing file. What has happened?Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:54, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

It looks like it got moved to File:Ciriè station 2016.jpg, and then an anon tried to hand-revert the redirect. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ACiri%C3%A9_station_2016.jpg&type=revision&diff=291912431&oldid=238180820 Bawolff (talk) 12:12, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
I fixed it to the proper redirect. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 15:29, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Categorization of louvered windows

Discuss here.--Carnby (talk) 19:37, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

March 14

Stained glass windows

Ester and Artaxerxes
Rose window

If we regard photographic reproductions of out-of-copyright two-dimensional artworks as public domain, why not do the same for images which are reproductions of ooc stained glass windows? By which I mean images like the 'Ester and Artaxerxes' one above, rather than those showing the window in a setting, like the rose window picture. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:10, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

I would think modern stained-glass windows are covered by Freedom of Panorama as "works of artistic craftsmanship"; older windows, e.g. by William Morris must be out of copyright. I think the presence of absence or context is irrelevant. Rodhullandemu (talk) 16:22, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
Indeed, but that's not the question. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:25, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
You can photograph a traditional painting today or tomorrow, it can be illuminated from above or left or right or below – the photograph will be practically the same. But a stained glass can be illuminated by direct sun (in morning or afternoon), or by sky, or by reflected sun, or by luminescent lamp, or by LEDs, and you will obtain different pictures. Too many uncertainties. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:37, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Consider, for example the images at http://www.holywellglass.com/work/pauline-boty-panel/ - why is the paint-on-glass less freely useable than, say, paint-on-canvass or paint-on-paper (the artist's death date notwithstanding)? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:44, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Why is it? Rodhullandemu (talk) 18:07, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
Never thought about this before. If the window is ooc then it dosen't matter if the photographer had to wait for a time when s/he thought the sun was at the right angle or whether s/he used fill-in flash. It is still a slavish copy that does not add one iota to the creativity of the original subject. --P.g.champion (talk) 18:58, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
I agree with P.g.champion, however that "Pauline Boty" stained glass is very definitely not OOC. Panorama depends on the country; stating the obvious most stained glass photos are taken (indoors) from within buildings. BeckenhamBear (talk) 16:34, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
Hence "the artist's death date notwithstanding". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:21, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: For reference, here's the policy on photos of "old" stained glass windows. - PKM (talk) 02:51, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
That says nothing about using others' images, as we do for paintings. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:21, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
well, the section heading is “Photograph of an old stained glass window or tapestry found on the Internet or in a book”. - PKM (talk) 04:17, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
So it does - I only read the body text. Apologies. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:58, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Creator templates for Commons contributors

Sich ein eigenes Wikidata-Objekt kreieren und eine Creator-Vorlage?

Ein Commons-Benutzer+A hat sich einen Wikidata-Datensatz sowie eine Creator-Vorlage gebastelt. Ist so etwas gern gesehen oder überhaupt zulässig?

Wikidata has entry Diego Delso (Q28147777) with data related to this item.
Diego Delso  (1974–)  wikidata:Q28147777
 
Diego Delso
Alternative names
Poco a poco
Description Spanish free-license photographer and Wikimedian
Date of birth 19 May 1974 Edit this at Wikidata
Location of birth Alicante, Spain
Authority file
creator QS:P170,Q28147777

--Mattes (talk) 20:34, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Can a Commons user create their own Wikidata item and creator template? I suppose anybody can create their own creator template on Commons, I'm not really sure. On the Wikidata side, they should follow d:Wikidata:Notability. At present it seems that creating a non-Category Wikidata item with a sitelink to a Commons category is permitted, but the wording on Commons has changed recently and may change again. --ghouston (talk) 22:37, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
For the creator template, see Commons:Creator, section "Who should have creator page". --ghouston (talk) 22:50, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Mattes, die Vorlage ist schon gerechtfertigt, das Datenobjekt kann ich nicht einschätzen, aber ghouston hat ja auf die die Wikidata-Relevanzkriterien hingewiesen. Diego/Poco a poco hat über 18 000 Fotografien auf Commons hochgeladen, siehe auch die Kat. Images by User:Poco a poco. (Die Village Pump ist eigentlich der Treffpunkt der Englisch Plappernden. Deutschsprachige unterhalten sich ganz klassisch auf dem Forum). — Speravir – 03:02, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
So does this mean that with nearly 3 times that number of photos on Commons (but not having bothered to create a category for them), I should have a Creator template? - Jmabel ! talk 05:24, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
I don't see why not. According to Commons:Creator, you can have one if you meet the notability requirement for categories, among other things. But there isn't any notability requirement for categories, according to Commons:Requests for comment/User categories. --ghouston (talk) 05:48, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
About the original question "Can a Commons user create their own Wikidata item and creator template?", I would argue yes if the Commons user is a prominent creator enough to deserve one. It shouldn't be a problem unless it is made to be one. -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 15:40, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
Hi, I haven't created that template as you can see in the file history, but rather User:Sergkarman, whom I didn't know before that. He contacted me after he created the entry because he thought it should be fine with the project policies, and I improved the data entered. At the same time I discussed the topic in a Telegram group with members of Wikimedia Spain as some of them know Wikidata better than me, as I was actually unsured about the requirements in terms of notability. I entered 2 or 3 references and they considered it good to go (I just recovered one of those references, that was removed for some reason I cannot understand). I've made quite a bunch of achievements within the movement, most FPs, most QIs, placing 2 images among the top 12 in the Picture of the Year contest, or placing images among those highlighted (top 10 or top 25 depending on the year) in the last 4 editions of Wiki Loves Monuments (in WLE I was also second worldwide in 2016). I agree that only items over a threshold of notability should be accepted. I don't know if I pass the bar, and therefore I've no problem if the item is deleted, no hurt feelings there, your call. Poco2 19:08, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 Comment Poco's template is fine for me, but I foresee major disagreements about who meet the notability criteria. I have mentioned that in the Structured Data discussion, but it doesn't seem to have gathered attention. See Commons talk:Structured data/Get involved/Feedback requests/Ontology#Notability of Commons creators. Regards, Yann (talk) 08:58, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
Following up on my comment above: I'd be glad to have one of these for my contributions, but at least up to now have presumed it would be considered inappropriate. It's certainly not something I want a fight over, so I still hesitate to do it. - 19:40, 16 March 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmabel (talk • contribs) 19:40, 16 March 2018 (UTC) (UTC)

March 12

Uploading new version of file.

Most of the images I upload to Wikimedia are images of emblems of United States Air Force units. On occasion, I will upload an improved (for resolution, accuracy, etc.) version of an image already on Wikimedia. This most commonly occurs when I replace an image of a patch displaying the emblem with the official emblem itself. An example is 13 Military Airlift Squadron.

Sometimes the change on the pages where the image displays occur quickly, but sometimes there is a long delay in the change showing up on pages where it is used. I presume the delays are due to some review process to prevent vandalism. Is that accurate? If it is, is there a permission/right that I can apply for that would avoid the delay?

Hi, I think the delay is simply due to cache issues. Regards, Yann (talk) 13:53, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Encouraging payment for photos

Not really sure how to raise this. I was looking for a photo to illustrate a Wikipedia article, and the one I found (File:London March 2018. See profile for image use.IMG 0655.jpg) urged me to check the user's profile in its name and description. Checking it, User:Øyvind Holmstad's profile says I appreciate very much a payment of 250 N.Kr for my images for volunteer organizations and 500 N.Kr for commercial use., and perhaps I'm reading a level of intent that isn't there, but this made me feel like it would be rude for me to use their image on Wikipedia without paying the 250 Kroner. So I didn't use it. But that's not what CC-Attribution and Wikimedia Commons should be about, is it? --Lord Belbury (talk) 15:09, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

  • Seems awfully commercial to me (and also potentially confusing). At the very least, it should make clear that any such payment would be entirely voluntary, and that the images are free-licensed. - Jmabel ! talk 15:48, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Wow! Sorry my encouragement for Wikipedia, students and bloggers to feel free to use my images for some reason disappeared when I edited my profile last time. I added it again:

"Wikipedia, students and bloggers are encouraged to use my images for free!"

Anyway I sold two images to an advertising company recently, and I think they felt happy to pay a little for the images.

By the way, that was my best image for our short visit to Borough Market. Very happy if you can use it in an Wikipedia-article!

Øyvind Holmstad

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Øyvind Holmstad (talk • contribs)

I don't know how to sign, but as I made the change to my profile it's obvious it's me.

I will anyway continue to add full resolution images until I get my new camera. But if I can't continue commercial businesses and organizations to pay a little, if they feel for it, I must add small resolution images, probably 1024 pixel only, when I get my new camera, and encourage to contact me personally for a larger resolution if needed. I see some contributors do it this way.

I though prefer to contribute with full resolution images for Wikimedia, stressing that the content can be used for free for Wikipedia articles, students and personal bloggers. While encouraging a volunteer payment from businesses and organizations. My next camera will cost me a lot, and the quality with full resolution should be very valuable for Wikimedia and Wikipedia-articles. So I hope you can let me contribute my images the way I suggest?

Øyvind Holmstad

 Comment No problem for me as long as it is clear that the payment is only voluntary. Free software developers do this a lot, so I don't see an issue for photographers. Regards, Yann (talk) 07:49, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Removal of invalid PD templates

File:Guantanamo disposition - Final Dispositions as of January 22, 2010.pdf was tagged with the PD-USGov-Military-Navy template. Since this is the work of the ODNI and not the US Navy, I removed the template. I noted the problem in my edit summary. As expected, a bot soon came along and tagged it as needing a license. For some reason, User:Jcb restored the original incorrect license template and left me a message on my talk page telling me not to remove licenses. When questioned, Jcb intimated that they would block me if I continued to remove invalid license templates (or maybe just for questioning them, it's not clear).

Is it ok to remove a demonstrably invalid license template? It seems like this would be beneficial rather than harmful. Jcb's suggestion that a deletion discussion for such files is less work for volunteers seems questionable. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 17:14, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

I have given you clear instructions and I have also provided the correct license at your user talk page in my first respons. Don't remove licenses, or you will get blocked. If you disagree with a license, fix it or nominate the file for deletion. Jcb (talk) 17:18, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
I don't want to be blocked, but I don't want files here to have invalid templates either. You seem to know what the correct template for that file is, but it still has an incorrect PD claim. It seems like you are more interested in blocking users than fixing file problems. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 17:24, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
Jcb is known to wage wars over it, alongside other possible pretexts. It is his personal preference, not community consensus. Recommended actions: avoid edit wars in the File: space but do what you deem necessary. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:20, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
Do what you deem necessary? That's dangerous advice. Be bold isn't always a common Commons practice as with other wiki's. World's Lamest Critic You were wrong. Jcb was technicially correct. You many have changed the author (correct or not is immaterial) but removed the permission template. Jcb also linked on your user page a general {{PD-USGov}} template. Jcb wasn't wrong, this isn't a big deal, and Incnis Mrsi you don't need to look for a fight with Jcb over this. -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 19:28, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
Oops… now I see this diff – it is not a good thing to remove a PD template from a public-domain work. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 20:35, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
That's what this discussion is about. The options are leave an invalid PD license or remove it so it gets tagged by the bot and someone can investigate the correct license. Why does it make sense to leave an incorrect PD template? World's Lamest Critic (talk) 03:40, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
  • I hadn’t yet seen this discussion when I reverted another one of these removals; sorry if that seemed un-mellow to anyone. If anything in my comment at this DR is overly procedure-focused or otherwise out of line with practice, I’m open to being trouted for it, but it struck me at the time that removing the disputed permission template amounted to an end-run around the DR.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 00:18, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
    @Odysseus1479: could you clarify with diffs which removals do you deem objectionable? Quibbles over specific choice of a licensing template where the file has evidences to lie in public domain anyway – I agree, are disruptive. But I now wary that this discussion may be seen as encouragement for disparagement and harassment of volunteers who alert the community about files with completely forged licenses. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:33, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
@Incnis Mrsi: the whole story is in the brief history of File:U. S. Coast Guard- Small Cutters and Patrol Boats 1915 - 2012.pdf. If nothing else, the licence‘s removal would be inconvenient to participants in the DR, making them look over the history to see what was originally claimed. Or likewise to whichever admin processes the speedy tag, if taking that route; it just obfuscates the question in either case.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 07:56, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
apparently, there is not a PD-USGov template for the w:Director of National Intelligence. this is not a military command. why don't you all fix the licenses instead of edit warring like a child? Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 01:24, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
If I had known the right template, I would simply have replaced it. For the record, there is no edit war going on. I don't know why Jcb would knowing replace an invalid PD claim or why they did not fix it after we had discussed it. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 03:40, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

This discussion hasn't answered the question of what do I do the next time I find a file with an incorrect PD license? Is there a template to flag that? Nominating a file that is probably PD for deletion because it has the wrong template seems like a very poor solution. At least removing the template gets the file noticed by a bot which will get someone to fix the missing license correctly. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 14:22, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

@World's Lamest Critic: You would have the following valid options:
  1. Investigate and fix it yourself.
  2. Discuss it on the talk page.
  3. Discuss it with the user who tagged it as such or the uploader.
  4. Discuss it on COM:VPC.
  5. Ignore it.
Making a mess by removing the tag entirely is not a valid option.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:58, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
If I had known the correct template (and apparently there is no ODNI PD template) of course I would have just fixed it myself, but what "mess" did I create? A template saying that there's no license? If we are trying to reduce the waste of "precious time" surely it is more efficient to deal with a missing license than have a multi-party discussion? World's Lamest Critic (talk) 19:40, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
World's Lamest Critic do not remove license templates, doing so only alerts the original uploader who might no longer be active. Without license template image might get deleted, often without further investigation. If you can not fix the license, than a better way is to nominate file for deletion and state your reasons. --Jarekt (talk) 19:51, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
Ok, from now on I will nominate such files for deletion. It might be helpful if this subject was addressed in a guideline. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 19:54, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
FWIW, I got chewed out by a fellow admin a few weeks back for dealing with a licensing mess by nominating for deletion. It was a supposedly PD assemblage that didn't credit any of its sources, and which included a photo of mine that was not PD. I still think that if you can't readily fix it, nominating for deletion is a perfectly appropriate step. - Jmabel ! talk 20:23, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
please do not nominate for deletion, just use the generic "PD-USGov" all the custom ones by agency are purely decorative. and stop warning the good faith editor, sofixit. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 01:37, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Hybrid PDF/ODF

Some time ago, I uploaded successfully hybrid PDF/ODF files, it was useful for example for templates of various documents. Now it is not possible, the upload form doesn't allow such files, it writes the file is a wrong ZIP format. What can I do? --Petrus Adamus (talk) 16:54, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

See Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2013/09#PDF-ODF_files_cannot_be_uploaded. Ruslik (talk) 17:34, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Layout of file pages

Where might I go within the project to suggest structural changes in the way file pages are laid out ? I believe there are certain ways to be more user-friendly for the chance-by and non-registered visitor, while improving the possibility of our Wikimedia files being searched and thereby used when within the project. Acabashi (talk) 21:32, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

March 15

Structured licensing and copyright discussion

Hi all,

I've posted the first discussion around structured licensing and copyright on Commons. If you get some time, please head over to the page to learn more and participate in the discussion. I'll be spreading the word to some mailing lists shortly. Thanks, happy editing. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 16:07, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

onlyinclude in categories etc.

Good evening, i have a question: What sense it makes to use onlyinclude in categories, galleries, files? [21] Can we remove at least some of them? --Arnd (talk) 18:25, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

That's the {{Category definition: Object}} setup. Someone thought it would be a good idea to transclude categories as templates on files. Technically possible, but utterly confusing. Fits into the Commons technical history of trying to build things with tools that weren't intended to be used like that. Should be gracefully deprecated and replaced with Wikidata. Work is being done by Jarek on {{Artwork}} so it can be switched to LUA and grab data from Wikidata. When that's all up and running, data can be migrated and template usage replaced. Multichill (talk) 19:47, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

March 16

__(NO)TOC__

Hello, can it be that these magic words are disabled for Commons? Therefore, they can be removed without any hurt? --Arnd (talk) 17:50, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

@Aschroet: TOC is working fine for me at the bottom of User:Jeff G.#Introduction and I've never seen a good explanation for use of NOTOC. Do you have examples or statements that indicate they are disabled for Commons?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 18:40, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

See Commons:Photo challenge/2018 - January - Blue/Voting. A TOC would be a pest on that page. -- Colin (talk) 18:58, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

I see no TOC here: CenaF-U.jpg. --Arnd (talk) 19:10, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
Shouldn't this discussion run for a while before bot removing them? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:51, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
__NOTOC__ is the default for the file namespace. So it can be removed from all files with no effect. They still work for the Gallery namespace. So to come back to Arnd's question, I would not touch them outside the file namespace. Some users use __NOTOC__ for galleries with many headings and only a couple of pictures. --Schlurcher (talk) 22:22, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
BTW: OgreBot 2 does remove this while doing some cleanup on imported files for years now - 2 examples from images where I prompted the import: Special:Diff/289323650/289663727 and Special:Diff/289324840/289663802. — Speravir – 00:55, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
BTW 2: It seems there are not that much files containing it – search links: search for __NOTOC__ and search for __notoc__ (update: fixed all 12 appearances of the latter). — Speravir – 00:55, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
Arnd, is everything clear and could the thread thwerefore be closed? — Speravir – 23:21, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
It is. Thanks, --Arnd (talk) 06:18, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Speravir 03:33, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Discussion on supporting the upload of MPEG-2 videos

Hello, Recently the US patents on MPEG-2 video compression expired. [22] A few weeks ago Lead Software Architect Brion Vibber put forth a discussion on the multimedia-l mailing list regarding the merits and concerns of supporting MPEG-2 uploads on Commons. [23]

Quoting Brion, "I expect this to be most useful for importing old videos from scientific papers and web sites (small files), and for archival footage from GLAM institutions such as digitizations of old SD broadcasts and tips of modern HD broadcasts (large files) -- importing the original files would avoid recompression artifacts and save time and effort re-encoding."

Wikimedia legal has discussed this support with the Multimedia team and it is OK from their perspective. It is worth noting that there are still patents open in the Philippines and Malaysia. [24]

Given that supporting new file formats is a community decision, I wanted to broach the subject with you all here. So, what do folks think about supporting this file format for uploads here on Commons? As Brion notes, most browsers don't display MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 natively, so playback will rely on the WebM transcodes. Comments, questions, and feedback are welcome. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 17:33, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

EU only? or for everyone? Not sure, but anyway in general I think it is fine to have it. — regards, Revi 13:13, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
You may wish to have a nicely written Phab ticket and then raise the yay nay vote at Commons:Village pump/Proposals. It appears entirely non-controversial. --Fæ (talk) 13:26, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

About F2C

Hello, why in Flickr2Commons auto-detecting category tool isn't working?--√Jæ√ 11:19, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

You have to check cats always by hand, there is no way to automatically detect all cats. Probably F2C should be restricted to extended uploader, we had multiple issues with this mass import tool in the past. --Steinsplitter (talk) 12:13, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
The Flickr2Commons tool never detected categories for me, other than for importing images I don't think that It's usable, but restricting it to certain "trusted users" would be a major disservice as there are many great images of archeological sites and museums on Verizon's Flickr that need importing that can't simply be imported with another tool in the current repertoire. It needs more users, not less. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (Talk 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 13:00, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

It would be useful for all users experiencing problems with F2C, or other tools, to log into Phabricator and raise a ticket. You can find related existing tickets with an easy search like this. Though volunteer tool tickets are less likely to gain attention from WMF development, long term issues described on Phabricator are ideal to help prioritize a development related grant or for one of the hackathon/summer of code type projects and events. Even if that does not happen, it's great to have a ticket and be able to quote it and add to it, rather than having circular discussion and complaints that evaporate without action. --Fæ (talk) 13:08, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

+1 - we need some tool migration for WMF to onboard the best ones in mediawiki functionality; but in the meantime, we will have to give feedback at phabricator. User:Magnus Manske is pretty responsive, maybe drop him a line also at https://bitbucket.org/magnusmanske/. quality of category import is dependent on metadata at flickr, which is not good in my experience. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 00:42, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

March 17

Picture that uploaded first on Facebook

Hello. A picture have uploaded first on Facebook page. I communicate with the administrator of the page and said it is ok to use the picture on commons (it is his/her picture). I used to be an OTRS member some years ago but never faced a Facebook picture situation. I know that if they add ticket number in picture decription on Facebook they OTRS member can confirm it. But what must happen before that? Should they send an email to create the ticket? If they don't have an email as a page? Can I send the email to create the ticket? But then, how OTRS member can really know that the creator really know all the informations of the email? Xaris333 (talk) 14:06, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

  • The simplest way would be for them to (1) make the picture public on Facebook. (2) Assert the license there, and that they are the copyright holder of the photo. Then you can link that as a source & use the same license. - Jmabel ! talk 16:58, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
Ok. For (1) the picture is already public on Facebook. For (2) what exactly they must write? And if they remove it after a period how someone will know if they had approved publication under the terms mentioned? Xaris333 (talk) 17:13, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
I suggest that they write that the image is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en so it is clear they know what that means, and indicate how they want it attributed.
If you are really concerned about them later taking it down, then I suggest screenshotting the facebook page and sending that screenshot to to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org. - Jmabel ! talk 01:04, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

March 18

Images with unidentified locations

Hello, I have a lot of images from different European countries, but the problem is I don't remember the exact location of most of them. Should I still upload these? If yes, in what categories should I put them?

Sincerely, NeoMeesje (talk) 20:07, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: --Sincerely, NeoMeesje (talk) 14:00, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Locations

When I am categorizing pictures of people, should I also put the picture in the category of the location where they are?

For example: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boy_and_Girl_on_Motorbike_-_Tecolutla_-_Veracruz_-_Mexico_(15844299018).jpg#file — Preceding unsigned comment added by NeoMeesje (talk • contribs)

This section was archived on a request by: --Sincerely, NeoMeesje (talk) 21:35, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Woordenboem

Hi, anybody hanging around with a bot who is willing to correct this typo? the correct spelling is "wikiwoordenboek". Thank you for your time. Lotje (talk) 11:56, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

@Lotje: ✓ Done   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 12:49, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Thank you Jeff G., y're always so helpful! Lotje (talk) 13:41, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
@Lotje: You're welcome!   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 13:44, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 17:28, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Media without source or author

What should I do with media that has no source or author? Sincerely, NeoMeesje (talk) 00:05, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

@NeoMeesje: Tag it {{subst:nsd}} or assume the author is the uploader.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 01:00, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
@NeoMeesje: Go to preferences, gadgets, enable "Quick Delete" to make some useful links appear on file pages. - Alexis Jazz 07:30, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: --Sincerely, NeoMeesje (talk) 18:54, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-12

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems

  • On March 12 early morning UTC, the number of 503 error messages increased due to an issue on esams datacenter. It has been fixed. [25]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 March. It will be on all wikis from 22 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item There is no Editing team meeting this week.
  • Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • From April 4, the autopatrol status of edits will only be accessible in the Recent Changes database table, so only for 30 days. [26][27]
  • In-Context Help and Onboarding is a new project, aiming to improve retention of new wiki editors. The goal is to give them short tutorials and other training experiences based on their activity. Collaboration team is expecting feedback and comments on the project talk page, especially from people working with newcomers.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:03, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

WMF response to proposal to uninstall Flow

Hi everyone, I'm posting the WMF's response to the Proposal to uninstall Flow RfC from January. I'm sorry that it took us so long to respond; it was a busy month for us. Sorry that we left you hanging for so long.

The RfC is asking for Flow to be removed from Commons. There are currently two Flow pages on Commons -- Commons talk:Flow and Commons talk:Flow/tests -- and they're essentially inactive. There are some conversations on those pages which will be lost, but (in my opinion) they're not that important, and if folks on this wiki want them gone, that's okay with us.

What we propose to do: Delete all of the Flow pages and conversations on Commons, and then make it impossible for anyone to create any more Flow pages or conversations. The Collaboration team is finishing up this ticket -- phab:T188577 -- which is essentially a "kill switch" for Flow on this wiki. Once the kill switch is finished and turned on for Commons, nobody will be able to create a Flow page or post, regardless of user rights or global user membership. Flow pages will be deleted from Commons and deactivated.

There was some discussion in the RfC about whether it's better on the back end to completely uninstall the extension, and a desire to confer with the tech staff on the impact of that. We talked with the Collaboration team about it. They say that uninstalling Flow would make things less stable than leaving it "installed" but completely disabled, as described above. There are log entries for the existing Flow posts in people's contributions, and other logs. With the pages deleted and disabled with the kill switch, those entries will be red links, and if you click on one of those links, you'll get a message saying that it's been deleted. If the extension was completely uninstalled, then there's no software that recognizes what those links are, so clicking on them would cause a fatal exception error, and attempting to undelete them could cause a serious error. It's more stable to delete and use the kill switch.

So that's what we think is the best way to remove Flow from Commons. We expect that the "kill switch" will be deployed next week, or the week after, and we'll be able to take care of it then.

As I said above, this will delete some existing content, but we agree with the community assessment that it's not particularly important content. For the wikis where people have been actively using Flow on talk and user talk pages, we wouldn't want to handle things in this way, but for these two pages, it's okay with us. What do you all think? -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 02:28, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

@DannyH (WMF):  Oppose 'leaving it "installed" but completely disabled'. Which part of "uninstall" do you not understand? Perhaps those two pages or their individual topics and responses could be deleted normally, or a shim could be developed that could handle those pesky red links. If those pages and their individual topics and responses could not be deleted normally, that is another reason Flow shouldn't have been here in the first place. Perfect reversibility of end-user actions is necessary on all Mediawiki wikis, or the vandals will win. I have nominated them, Commons:Structured Discussions, and redirect Commons:Flow to the latter for deletion.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:48, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Ping to supporters of the RFC: Jeff_G., MarcoAurelio, Fæ, Krd, Steinsplitter, Storkk, Tuválkin, Rschen7754, Gestumblindi, Train2104, Nemo_bis, Wikimandia, Davey2010, Jc86035, Nyttend, Begoon, DarwIn, no ping to IP contributor 2001:2003:54FA:2751:0:0:0:1, and no ping to me. Also ping DannyH (WMF). Alsee (talk) 04:21, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

  • OPPOSE. No. Consensus was Uninstall Flow, as was done on English Wikipedia and Meta wiki.[28]. Alsee (talk) 04:11, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
    Note: A volunteer developer has already done the work of writing and submitting the patch uninstall Flow. (See Phabricator task T186463.) The WMF is actively blocking deployment of the work that has already been done. Alsee (talk) 04:28, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
    I am having trouble seeing the patch on the page you linked. Please show me where it is. --Gryllida (talk) 05:07, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
    Gryllida the patch itself is here at Gerrit. Alsee (talk) 05:29, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Created https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T188806 - create a Flow uninstall script --Gryllida (talk) 05:05, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Note: The WMF has opened a Phab task to build a superprotect level for Flow. Alsee (talk) 06:12, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
  •  Comment I oppose removing Flow from Commons. This RFC was a tentative to play politics and dividing the community because of past grievances against the WMF. The WMF should simply close the request as irrelevant. Regards, Yann (talk) 06:35, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
    Yann there are reasonable arguments on both sides of the issue, and I respect your position is to keep Flow. You well expressed your position in the RFC. I merely ask you to consider what advice you would give to anyone else who disliked any other consensus result, after participating in an RFC. Alsee (talk) 07:24, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
  • If this needs to be done on Commons, this should also be done on enwiki and other wikis where ‘flow’ is gone. Why Commons is treated differently from other wikis? (enwiki is even bigger than Commons in size, so...) — regards, Revi 06:39, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Danny's response is technically incorrect and will not stand. That said, the users have never asked for Flow's leftovers to be kept pretty. Wikimedia Commons is perfectly fine with losing a dozen topics and related logs. --Nemo 06:51, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
  • I fail to see any reason not to remove this weak forum impersonation completely, it's just useless clutter that should be removed. The "technical reasons" are just straw-men by the collaboration team, that doesn't want to loose one of it's favourite pets completely on one more big project, there is no valid technical reason not to uninstall this unwanted intrusion. Sänger (talk) 08:57, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
  • DannyH (WMF) With all due respect, the WMF response is against community consensus as enacted in the RfC so I reject your proposal and ask Collab to implement the results of the RfC as closed; which is the same as was done on enwiki and metawiki; both of them happily working without Flow and nothing broken. It bugs me that each and every time a community has asked for this problematic software to be removed from one site, the WMF Collab team has always been putting spooks in the wheels and raising a different argument each time not to do this. Sorry, but I'm not buying that. If Flow is so problematic that once enabled cannot be removed without causing havoc it shouldn't have been installed at all, less thrown upon wikis without asking for community consensus in the first time. Flow is not a core wiki function, it is not CentralAuth, SpamBlacklist or other critical MediaWiki extensions. Flow can be removed and should be removed as requested by this community. —MarcoAurelio 11:38, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
  • The WMF Dev's objective of "break everything" (yes, this was stated in writing) seems broken as well as being a fundamental misreading of Agile best practice. This was installed as a trial, now that trial has finished, it gets uninstalled. As was said above, no competent programmer installs software that cannot be uninstalled; that's something unethical hackers do. --Fæ (talk) 11:45, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

DannyH (WMF) I'd like to draw attention to a communication problem:

  • Feb 5th the WMF effectively halted the uninstall patch at Gerrit with a -2 code review. The text was "Under discussion by the team. Do not merge at this time."
  • For weeks the WMF refused explain what was being discussed, despite multiple requests from multiple people.[29] It's clear that there was an active decision to keep the discussions secret.
  • After excluding the community from discussions for weeks, the WMF spent the last five days (Feb 28 - Mar 2) deliberately building code in secret. (The superprotection for Flow.)

Do I even need to say that we shouldn't be working like this? The WMF actively locks us out of the conversation for weeks, builds code in secret, disregards consensus, and you thought this was going to get a positive reception? If this were a good-faith proposal you would have talked to us before building the code. Whoever wrote the code, or whoever ordered it to be written, clearly expected that it was going to be deployed in disregard of consensus. Alsee (talk) 12:22, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

hey, it's all good - send your ultimatum to WMF again. maybe you could send a check as well, since you seem to want to micro-manage code development. "we shouldn't be working like this?" who is working? why do you imagine that direction by temper tantrum will work? why don't you change you method of giving feedback to WMF, and expectations? Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 15:08, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
Alsee, re: the communication problem. I do apologize for taking so long to respond, it was rude on my part. The explanation (not a good excuse) is that there was a change in leadership in the Product team in late January, and then we jumped into annual planning and budgets, which took my eye off this response. But, yeah, that was rude of me, and not your problem. Sorry again.
However -- that ticket is not "superprotect for Flow". That is the ticket -- phab:T188577 --which I referred to in my response above as the "kill switch", which will completely disable Flow on this wiki. Our proposal is to delete the existing Flow pages, and then use that "kill switch" config change to make sure that nobody can create a new Flow page or post. We're not stopping you from deleting Flow pages, we're stopping anyone from re-creating the pages after they're deleted.
The reason why Roan started working on that ticket before I posted the response is that we decided how we wanted to respond on Monday, and then I went on vacation for a few days. I didn't want to post here on Monday, and then not be around to read everybody's replies for three days. So I posted on your Phabricator ticket that we'd have an answer by the end of the week, and when I got back to work yesterday, I posted my answer. Meanwhile, Roan got started on that ticket, because not starting on it would just create more unnecessary delays later, after we'd all talked about it here. Yes, that means we assumed that we'll need it, because we think it's a practical solution to the problem here.
Now, I know all this personal behind-the-scenes stuff doesn't matter to you -- the important thing is that it took me a month to get back to you in the first place, which I know was frustrating for everyone here. I'm only bringing up the backstory of this week to say that there wasn't a secret plot to keep you in the dark, just the normal ups and downs of daily life. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 20:45, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
DannyH (WMF) I'm not sure if you thought my "communication problem" was directed at you, or if you're trying to take the heat for others. However the communication issue was primarily before you showed up, and I definitely didn't consider you to be rude. The task was halted because of "discussions", however the discussions were nonpublic and there was a systematic refusal to even say what the issue was. It was frustrating that you also wouldn't say what the issue was, but at least you made it clear that there would be an answer in a concrete and reasonable time frame. That was a big improvement. If anyone had simply said the issue was logs we could have avoided drama. We could have avoided jumping to build an undiscussed superprotect_for_flow/kill_switch. We could have started sooner on looking at solving the log issue. Alsee (talk) 23:12, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
Alsee: No, I'm just taking responsibility for the stuff that I was responsible for. :) I recently (mid-January) became the Director of Product Management for the Contributors team, so I'm responsible for the Collaboration team, which is part of Contributors. I think the opaque "team discussions" reason that you're referring to was early February, so under my watch. Those discussions took a long time because the team was waiting for me to actually focus on this problem and figure out a response, and I just had too many things to learn about and catch up on to properly focus on this specific issue. That's not a good excuse at all -- you're correctly saying that I didn't take responding to this RfC seriously enough to put other stuff aside and deal with this earlier. I'm just saying that's what happened. So I'm taking responsibility for that, sorry again, and that's why I'm here talking about it. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 02:40, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
  • I don't see what causes the big fuzz. Danny & team think along, come up with an alternative and more efficient solution to achieve the same end as what you request (or rather, demand). With this kind of attitude, you make it harder for the WMF to grant your requests in the long run. Please show some flexibility, and focus on the big picture :) Effeietsanders (talk) 18:18, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
    @Effeietsanders: It's not the same end for this wiki that enwiki and meta got.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 19:12, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi everyone, general response to all the comments: Folks are asking why the plan for Commons is different from enwiki and Meta. I'll talk to the team some more, and I'll let you know what I find out. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 20:57, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

DannyH (WMF) a volunteer was working on the original uninstall task, and now it appears that Nemo bis is willing to work on the log issue in T188806. The question now is whether the WMF is going to actively prevent the log issue from being addressed? (And subsequent uninstall.)
If the WMF were willing to discuss the issue in public, it might have avoided the perception that logs were just an excuse. Alsee (talk) 22:16, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
  • OPPOSE - Sorry I'm late to the party haven't been on Commons all that much, In short I expect the exact same treatment as what EN and Meta got (IE remove the whole fucking thing), None of this "It will be installed but disabled" bullshit ..... We as a community don't want it so you WMF should honour the consensus here and remove it WHOLE from this site. –Davey2010Talk 21:15, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Meh - +1 to Jmabel basically. What we're seeing here is people objecting at the fact of WMF noncompliance with the community, and not to the substance of the matter. I.e. I'm not seeing any compelling technical reason that Flow, completely disabled/deleted but not uninstalled, will have any negative impact on Commons or its users apart from exacerbated pre-existing WMF-related resentment. If someone can provide a concrete reason why uninstalling provides a benefit that you can articulate apart from "because we said so" or abstract appeals to best practices, that would be another thing. But otherwise: meh. — Rhododendrites talk |  01:48, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
  •  Keep "As I said above, this will delete some existing content, but we agree with the community assessment that it's not particularly important content. " deleting content is always bad, why not just disable flow and add {{historic}} to the pages? What is the WMF's obsession with making sure that future generations forget about what happened in the past on Wikimedia projects? To document and not to serve, and to archive and not to destroy. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (Talk 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:17, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Don't care about the issue, do care about Alsee using polemic language to stir the pot. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:17, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
  • I must say the I find the helpful and collaborative attitude off DannyH very refreshing. Therefor it’s regretful that the first response in this conversation is a direct attack at him. This said, I also find it regretful that there is chosen for a course of action that contradicts the communities wishes. Whilst I can’t say much about the technical aspect I do believe that this is a poor choice. When you have a continues relationship trust is one of the most important factors to keep this relationship healthy. It’s no secret that the relationship between Commons and the WMF is still fragile and doing something that harms this relationship is a pretty bad move in my opinion. (The same applies to the persons making harsh and flaming comments.) Hopefully the WMF will reconsider. The social aspect is in the end much more important than the technical aspect. Natuur12 (talk) 13:18, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I talked to Roan from the Collaboration team, to get more info on the question: why can't you just do what you did on Meta and Enwiki? The answer is that doing the uninstall on Meta and Enwiki showed the team what a bad idea it is. On Meta, there was only one active Flow page -- a Research talk page that had conversations the Research team wanted to keep -- so the team ported that page and history to mediawiki.org, and then uninstalled from Meta with no history links to worry about. On English, there were lots of Flow pages, and uninstalling created a lot of errors that we had to fix -- broken history, lost history and fatal exception errors. The team made it work okay, but in a "duct tape and bubble gum" way -- a lot of hacks built on hacks, to keep it from causing errors that would negatively impact site stability. That's why the team doesn't want to do that again.

From the end-user point of view, the two options -- "uninstall Flow" vs "delete and disable Flow" -- are essentially the same thing. All Flow content will be gone from Commons. It won't be possible for anyone to create any more Flow content. The Commons community has made it clear that Flow isn't welcome on this wiki, and Flow is not going to be on this wiki.

But the history of Flow development at the Foundation includes quite a few mistakes and empty promises, and as folks have said here, there's a lot of mistrust around the way that the Foundation tested and deployed the feature that goes back to 2013. The people who are saying that Flow must be uninstalled want to draw a line in the sand. I understand that point of view. It doesn't make me want to do something that could risk site stability, so we're still planning on doing the "delete and disable" version, but I understand the frustration and mistrust, and we can keep talking about it if you want to. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 02:24, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

DannyH (WMF) perhaps this is the first time you are you having this discussion, however this is the THIRD time the WMF re-arguing 'delete and disable'. We went through it on EnWiki, and the result was yes we really wanted it uninstalled. We went through it with Meta, the result was yes we really wanted it uninstalled. One of the reasons for distrust and animosity is that we keep having to have the same arguments over and over and over again. If Flow is a threat to site stability then it needs to be uninstalled. Leaving it installed and continuing development only increases the technical debt and increases the threat.
You also did not answer my question. The question is no longer whether the WMF is willing to uninstall. A volunteer was working on the original uninstall task, and now it appears that Nemo bis is willing to work on the log issue in T188806. The question now is whether the WMF is going to actively prevent the log issue from being solved? (And subsequent uninstall.)
I try really hard to assume good faith. I try to remember that the WMF is made of individuals, and they shouldn't all be automatically distrusted because of actions in the past by others at the WMF. However if there's no answer to the question, or if the answer is that the WMF is going to actively obstruct fixing the log issue & uninstall, then I can see no good faith explanation. It would pretty well establish that the log issue is a bad faith smokescreen. Is the WMF drawing a battle line in the sand, fighting a fix to the logs & uninstall? Alsee (talk) 07:27, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
Re "showed the team what a bad idea it is", I'll note that the "bad idea" was largely the team's own making. For instance, nobody had asked for the test discussions under Flow to be preserved, but the team insisted that they absolutely had to be converted to wikitext. The community has consistently asked for the simplest solution, for years. --Nemo 12:48, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
Nicely put. Do not expect to get a hero firefighter award if you started the fire - old Agile developer's motto. :-) --Fæ (talk) 12:59, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
Alsee, I understand that you want Flow uninstalled, and that there is a community consensus that says that. However, if your interpretation of my response is that Flow is a threat to site stability, then there must be a misunderstanding, because that's not what I said. What I said was that the most stable and least risky course of action is "delete and disable", and it provides the same result as uninstalling. On technical matters, like questions about site stability and code quality, I rely on the judgment of the senior developers that I work with -- in this case, Roan. He says that uninstalling Flow on English caused problems that he doesn't want to repeat.
But I've also been talking about Nemo's patches with Roan and with Ryan Kaldari (Sr Eng Manager), including both T188806 (create a Flow uninstall script) and T188812 (uninstall Flow from wikis that don't have any Flow content). So far, Ryan says that there's no particular reason to block the second ticket, but we need to talk about it with Roan and the rest of the team some more. We're planning to get together and talk about it tomorrow, and I'll be able to report back here on Thursday. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 01:39, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
DannyH (WMF):
  • T188812 uninstall Flow from wikis that don't have any Flow content: That would be excellent. I hope to hear a positive result on that.
  • T188806 create a Flow uninstall script: Specifically in regards to fixing the log issue to allow uninstall, your post was unclear. I will assume you meant it will be part of the internal discussions you mentioned. When you return, please answer the question I asked.
  • T188577 Add a config setting making all Flow boards read-only: That would be worse than doing nothing. It's bad enough that the WMF yet again built undiscussed&unwanted software, please do not take the next step of trying to force out undiscussed&unwanted software. Exactly no one raised the issue of somebody creating a Flow page. In past discussions community members have told the WMF we're not worried about that. If that were the concern, and if it did happen, we would trivially resolve it with a speedy-delete tag and Admin tapping the delete button within minutes or hours. Whoever at the WMF cooked up that plotline is off in imaginary-land. The WMF spun off into imaginary-land because you insisted on non-public discussions. If the discussions were on-Wiki or on Phab, someone could killed that misunderstanding before you wasted time and money building this useless code. And trying to force out the code as a supposed answer to the community would make it worse than useless... it would be received as insulting and malicious. Alsee (talk) 05:14, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I talked to my senior engineers (Roan and Kaldari) about the Phabricator tickets. Here's what we think:

  • T188812: Uninstall Flow on all wikis where it has zero topics. Nemo has written the code for this. This won't have any visible impact, but Nemo's already written the patch, and there's no reason to block it. We'll do code review, and assuming that goes well, we'll deploy it.
  • T188577: Add a config setting making all Flow boards read-only. This is the kill switch that will allow us to follow the "delete and disable" plan -- we'll delete all of the existing Flow pages and posts, and then keep anyone from creating any more Flow content here, even if they have advanced rights. This will accomplish the goal of the RfC, which is to take Flow off of Commons.
  • T188806: Create a Flow uninstall script. This would deal with all of the log issues, and any technical challenges that came up when we uninstalled Flow from English WP. We are not going to work on this. It would be very complicated and expensive to write and test, and it would have no visible impact. It involves modifying the database, and you need to be very careful when you do that, because an error can cause problems in a lot of places. Working on this ticket would derail the project that the Collaboration team is currently working on, which is improvements to the Maps extension. If there's a volunteer developer who wants to work on this, we have no objections to that, but the team is not going to spend time working on this ticket, when the same goal can be achieved using the ticket described above.

Now, I understand that that plan is not what many people on this page are asking us to do. To explain why we think this is the correct course of action, there are two parts of the community consensus:

  • Goal: Remove Flow from Commons so that it can't be and won't be used here.
  • Implementation: Uninstall Extension:Flow, using the script proposed in phab:T188806.

The goal established in the RfC is a completely reasonable request, and that's what we're going to do. Nobody working on Commons will need to see or interact with Flow in any way. We're happy to follow consensus on that.

However, the specific technical implementation of how the Collaboration team achieves that goal is not up for community consensus. Choosing the best technical solution for a problem is a job for the experienced developers on the team. I look to them for information and judgment on how to implement a solution; that's what they're for.

So that's what's going on for us. I'm happy to talk more with folks about what you think. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 19:23, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

DannyH (WMF) {{citation needed}} on your fictional goal. I trust the WMF not to create new Flow pages, and if one is inadvertently created it can be Speedy Deleted per existing consensus. Do I need to start a new proposal explicitly to block deployment of the undiscussed, unwanted, unrequested, utterly useless T188577? Alsee (talk) 12:43, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
Hi Alsee: As I said above, the backend technical implementation isn't up for community consensus, so I don't think an RfC to stop a developer from creating a new config setting is going to do much good. But I'm interested in the "citation needed" on the goal. Leaving aside the specific backend implementation, I think "Remove Flow from Commons so that it can't be and won't be used here" is the goal. If that's not the goal of this discussion, then what is the goal? -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 21:28, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
You just want to insert a line of code or two, to make it harder to create a Flow page. Yes, there is some mumbo-jumbo about completely disabled, but that's just the surface, not the real thing. To get it back all that has to be done by those who want Flow is to change a line of code or two, not to re-install the whole extension. And especially with projects like Flow, VE and MV (and superprotect as the always looming companion) there is not that much trust left towards those, who push such stuff down the throats of unwilling communities. Getting completely rid of that unwanted and never asked for piece of software would make it at least much harder for the anti-community guys to re-enable it. It should not be here ar all, it should be a very hard task for those who want it back against the community wishes to do their anti-community work. Sänger (talk) 22:02, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
DannyH (WMF) I definitely did not say I was going to run "an RfC to stop a developer from creating a new config setting". The RFC would be whether Commons should change to the new mode. The WMF may have started work on the new mode with good intentions, and based upon misunderstanding. If an RFC result is against applying the new mode, it would no longer be an issue of good faith or misunderstanding. A bad-faith forcible deployment of the new mode here would be a pointless assault. It would be worse than doing nothing.
As for "goals", you are attempting to discuss the goals of a collective-community-voice. That consensus is the result of many people with varied concerns and rationales. An RFC provides an answer on the question being debated. Sometimes reviewing that discussion can provide an uncontested implicit consensus on surrounding questions. Sometimes post-RFC discussion provides uncontested implicit consensus on surrounding questions. Enough supporters of the RFC have explicitly rejected your interpretation to sink it as a viable interpretation that consensus. Whether to set Commons to T188577 read-only-Flow would require an RFC actually addressing that new question. If the new mode is unwanted, and the WMF is unwilling to uninstall Flow, then that leaves us with a consensus to uninstall Flow and the WMF unwilling to do anything constructive. Alsee (talk) 10:14, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Folks: it is clear that several years ago, when Flow was added here, WMF was a mess from the top down (especially at the top) and was acting in a very imperious manner. I don't see a good reason to hold that against those who are trying to clear up the mess now. There isn't even a snowball's chance in hell that Commons will have consensus to re-enable Flow, and there is about a snowball's chance in hell that WMF will again be run by people who care that little about community consensus. I understand what people are angry about, but I don't understand why they are nursing that anger and directing it at people who are basically solving the actual functional problem. - Jmabel ! talk 22:12, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

The above echoes my thoughts; there seems to be a lot of ABF in some of the previous comments. It’s the devs who are charged with keeping the project running, so I agree with Danny that we should respect their judgment as to the most workable solution, as long as the outcome is that no user need use Flow to communicate anywhere on the site. The harder the machinery is to maintain, the less likely improvements can be made: we don’t want a situation where nobody wants to touch the program for fear of breaking something. Sure, on general principle the idea of leaving disabled code in the system may seem questionable, but if its removal will make the site’s codebase problematic to work with going forward, this practical consideration should trump the theory.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 23:00, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

I just opened Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Flow_-_WMF's_proposal asking Is there a desire to convert Commons-Flow to the new mode? Ping for DannyH (WMF). Alsee (talk) 14:38, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi everyone, we're going to deploy the Flow "kill switch" and the "uninstall Flow from wikis that aren't using it" patches early next week; these are two of the tickets discussed above. There are deletion requests for the two existing Flow pages -- Commons:Deletion requests/Commons talk:Flow and Commons:Deletion requests/Commons:Flow -- were resolved as Keep, so I'm not sure if the proposed deletion of those pages is going to happen. I've posted wikitext archives of both pages as subpages of my user page, if they're useful: User:DannyH (WMF)/Commons Flow export and User:DannyH (WMF)/Flow tests export. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 00:00, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
Hi everyone, the two tickets that I mentioned above are now live -- the Flow "kill switch" and "uninstall Flow from wikis that aren't using it". The kill switch is part of the plan to remove Flow from Commons; the other part is deleting the two existing Flow pages -- Commons talk:Flow and Commons talk:Flow/tests. The deletion requests were resolved as Keep, so I'm not sure what to do. Pinging Jeff G., who opened those deletion nominations, and Yann, who closed them. Do we need to renominate those, or can we just delete them and replace them with the wikitext archives? -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 18:49, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
@DannyH (WMF): They should be terminated with extreme prejudice (kill -15).   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 18:58, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: How would that not constitute a deletion against explicit consensus? (I happen to agree with you as to what is desirable, but don't we at least have to got through another DR?) - Jmabel ! talk 19:36, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
@DannyH (WMF): I deleted these 2 pages. I hope this closes the issue. Regards, Yann (talk) 06:55, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Great, thank you. I replaced the two Flow pages with the wikitext export, as an archive. They're at Commons talk:Flow and Commons talk:Flow/tests. Flow has now been removed from Commons. I think that's all we need to do here, but I'm happy to continue discussing this if people want to. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 14:56, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

User replacing image instead of posting

The File:Nizhny Novgorod ISS view.jpg was replaced with totally another image by user:AlexTref871, and it was afterwards renamed. I feel this is wrong, he should create new file instead. I have asked him to fix this, and asked the renaming user for assistance. No fix was made since, so I write here. Am I correct? --ssr (talk) 13:32, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

(All 13 uses, I said? No, only in 12 and not in the Arabic Wikipedia. Why so? Because, unlike all other Wikipedias mostly in languages I likewise do not understand but in which I easily replaced one filename with another, Arabic Wikipedia doesn’t seem to have an option to edit the wiki text of its pages and VisualEditor is mandatory in practice. Since I cannot read Arabic, VE’s interface is not something I can use to replace one image with the other. This is one of the many reasons why VE is a bad idea, and not just merely a good idea poorly developed and implemented.)
-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 01:34, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Information about the Wikimedia Foundation global survey starting soon

Hello!

My name is Edward Galvez and I work for the Wikimedia Foundation. For those of you who do not know, the Wikimedia Foundation supports you by working on the software and technology to keep the sites fast, secure, and accessible, plus providing programs and initiatives to support free knowledge globally.

In about one week, the Foundation is starting a global survey to learn about the experiences and feedback of Wikimedians. I am writing here, because I wanted to share with you a bit more about the project. The survey is called "Wikimedia Communities and Contributors survey" and is conducted annually. We will send the survey to editors across all the Wikimedia projects, as well as Wikimedia affiliates and volunteer developers. This survey is going to be our way of making sure that we can hear feedback from a significant number of users from across the projects. This research supports editors and Wikipedia’s mission. This is our second annual CE Insights survey, and we look forward to improving it every year.

You can sign up to be notified about the results of the survey, or to learn how you can help with planning the survey next year. If you have any questions or concerns about this project, please feel free to send them to my talk page on meta or email me directly at surveys@wikimedia.org in any language. To see the results of last year’s survey, and to see how your feedback helps the Wikimedia Foundation support communities, you can learn more about this project, or read about frequently asked questions. You can also share your feedback on meta. Thank you! --EGalvez (WMF) (talk)

14:05, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

What single instructional video would best serve Commons?

My fellow volunteers,

I am thinking about investing some funds in some professionally-produced short (3 to 10 minutes) training videos. I am very keen on making sure that if I go ahead with it at all, it is to be a useful video, answering a real need in an effective and accurate way. Ideally, the video would be maximally useful across languages, i.e. could be easily dubbed or subtitled without significant changes to content. Also, I'd want the video to teach one thing well, rather than to try to cover multiple topics or techniques.

So I am interested in your thoughts on possible topics for such a video. If you think no such video should be invested in, that's also valuable feedback, and please say so! Asaf (WMF) (talk) 14:05, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi, Nice idea! By far, the single point misunderstood on Commons is copyright. However making a video about that seems quite a challenge... Regards, Yann (talk) 16:30, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

I'll start with one idea I've had:

Option #1: "How to contribute a photo to Wikipedia?"

Target audience
general public (i.e. non-Wikimedians, copyright newbies)
Objective
Describe the process of granting permission for photos via OTRS, but/thereby encourage direct uploads to Commons
Scenario of use
1. someone asks a Wikimedian "how can I contribute a photo without too much effort?"; Wikipedian refers someone to this video. 2. Someone writes to OTRS naively just attaching a photo; OTRS volunteer responds including a link to the video.
Sketch of content
1. rudiments of copyright, including the surprising idea that your physically owning the photo doesn't mean you own the copyright. 2. easiest way if you do own the copyright is to directly upload to Commons. 3. explain granting permission via OTRS e-mail.

Option #2: "How to use Commons content without violating someone's copyright"

Target audience
general public (i.e. non-Wikimedians, copyright newbies)
Objective
Describe the process of starting from a photo (probably in Wikipedia), getting to the rights info, and writing an attribution that conforms to the license. Also explain that it is considered good practice to indicate the origin (insofar as it's known) of PD content.
Scenario of use
1. someone asks a Wikimedian "how can I use a photo in Wikipedia/Commons?"; Wikipedian refers someone to this video. 2. Someone is a lot more likely to reuse the image in a conformant manner.
Sketch of content
1. rudiments of copyright, including the surprising idea that not everything on Wikipedia and Commons is in the public domain, and that crediting Wikipedia or Commons is not enough. 2. easiest way to navigate to license information. 3. explain writing a conformant attribution.

Option #3: "What kind of content is it allowed to upload into Wikimedia Commons?"

Target audience
potential future users and not experienced users
Objective
insist on the notion of what is really "own work", and for why all is not uploadable into Wikimedia Commons, or in what conditions
Scenario of use
automatic opening of the video at the first(s) each upload(s) of a new account or of users not yet autopatrolled (possible??). Or it can be linked in our policies, in various help pages. A link can be given by any users to another users who need to understand the topic. And IMO very important a link should be given with speedy deletions notifications for educational purposes.
Sketch of content
1/ to create a file in Commons is not your necessarily "own work" 2/ what can be called an "own work"? usually a photo that you took, yourself, with a camera, and in no way a photo that you found in the web 3/ why is it important to distinguish "own works" and other works? because it is the base of the protection by copyright laws 4/ quick explanation about copyright protection 5/ if it is your own work then you can give the license of your choice, otherwise we need the permission from the copyright holder (link to a legitimate source with a compatible license or an OTRS permission), or the specific reason for why the work is exempted of copyright protection. 6/ quick explanations about allowed license terms, about OTRS, about public domain 7/ introduction of the "derivative work notion : while a photo of a CD cover is indeed your "own work" the CD cover has its own copyright protection, in the same way that you own your photo 7/ if you are not the photographer and if you do not fully understood the video, then better to ask advice into our help forums or to experienced users.

There are of course things in common with the things stated above Christian Ferrer (talk) 18:26, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

  • Remark: If I have a site start automatically opening videos without my requesting it, unless it's something like Youtube where the video is why I go to that site, I stop using that site. - Jmabel ! talk 20:23, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
This was an idea among others. A good/better idea can be a link in the Upload Wizard at the step "This file is my own work", to put a link to the video with a little sentence in the kind "Make you sure that you understood what means own work".
And if the Option #3 has too many notions, IMO it's important to focus on the concept "own work" and on the fact that everything that is not "own work" can be uploaded only under specific conditions (free licenses at sources, OTRS permission, PD...). And to suggest to the uploader, in case the they are not able to determine if the work don't meet the criteria, to read our various guidelines/policies, or/and to ask in various help pages or discussion pages. And also by making the person aware that when he ticks this box "This file is my own work", in case this is not accurate then it will give us maintenance work and/or it will give potential issues for re-users of the images. In summary this choice "own work" is very important in many ways. Christian Ferrer (talk) 12:00, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
  •  Comment #1 is very misleading, Wikimedia Commons isn't the only way to upload images to Wikipedia('s) as several (especially large) Wikipedia's have their own native UploadWizards for fair use images (something which isn't allowed on Wikimedia Commons) and might give users free wrong idea that an illustrative image that belongs in an article can't be uploaded anywhere, it might also give people the wrong impression that their images may/can/will only be used for Wikipedia. Personally I would prefer that an instructional video will also note that images that aren't allowed here usually are allowed with a local language Wikipedia's UploadWizard (if applicable) as a very common problem here on Wikimedia Commons is people uploading fair use images. Any video that properly explains Commons:Scope and Commons:Licensing is welcome, but not one that excludes other possibilities for adding images to Wikipedia articles. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (Talk 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 02:10, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
I do not see how #1 is misleading, and I do not think we should be explaining fair use issues. Too confusing and possibly changing too much. I would make option #1 only about OTRS. So if someone, tells you you need to send permit to OTRS you can point to the video to explain the concept. I like options #2 and #3 as well.--Jarekt (talk) 03:02, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
instruction video is a good idea for editathons. now we tend to say "it's complicated, see us for personal upload help" would need to be customized by jurisdiction, or US / EU + commonwealth. i would not make it for incorporation in upload wizard. tl;dr will not be listened to. the upload process is so arcane and bitey, we need some video explication. funny, i explain fair use all the time, especially for contemporary art articles. and the 4 factor test does not change, merely the "non-free policy" which seems to ratchet up from time to time. but a video for that would be of lesser interest. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 20:05, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Option #4: ?

Linkrot on Wikimedia Commons

On Wikipedia if sources are online the ArchiverBot will automatically add links from the last access date to the Internet Archive and will add an archived version of the link, since here on Wikimedia Commons many images are imported public domain or otherwise free images from a variety of sources such as Verizon's Flickr and museum websites, wouldn't it be wise to let an ArchiverBot run on Wikimedia Commons and use the upload date as the "access-date"? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (Talk 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 13:30, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes. If you need examples, take a look at Uploads by Fæ with linkrot. --Fæ (talk) 13:34, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
So are there any plans to deploy the ArchiverBot on Wikimedia Commons? If not, then why not? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (Talk 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 18:49, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

It is a minor problem, compared to rampant deletion of redirects (especially in the File space) on Commons itself. With current deletionist practices, Commons does not serve a reliable storage of media which could permit to see images when browsing some two-years-old histories of, say, Wikipedia articles. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 18:55, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

it is a major problem, in that the provenance rots, and no one can assess what the source is. depending on source links remaining stable is like depending on people not changing flickr licensing. commons is not a reliable storage of media or media metadata. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 03:09, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

March 19

Adding sites to URL-upload whitelist

Some Ukrainian government sites used now CC-BY-4.0 licenses. I made request to add them to URL-upload whitelist. But developers asked to discuss here.--Anatoliy (talk) 20:56, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

National Portrait Gallery images

I'd like to use an 1856 image for the article John Doubleday (restorer), which is on the National Portrait Gallery's website (link). Just wanted to make sure that consensus is that such images are out of copyright? Also, does anyone know of a good way to download the full resolution image? --Usernameunique (talk) 22:26, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Doubleday was born in 1947. Are you sure that figures "1856" are the year and not some code? If you visit this page, you will see that will have to pay to get a copy of this print (except for a 800 x 900 pixel PNG copy non-commercial purposes). Martinvl (talk) 22:52, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Whoops, Martinvl, wrong link (now corrected). Linked to John Doubleday, when I meant to link to John Doubleday (restorer), who died in 1856. --Usernameunique (talk) 23:01, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
If one looks closely at the signature/date on the drawing, this looks more like 1846 than 1856 to me. In both cases it is unlikely that Henry Corbould (1787–1844) has drawn this image. Did his son Edward Henry Corbould (1815-1905) sign his drawings with HC? In any case the image is in the public domain. Vysotsky (talk) 09:20, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Good point, Vysotsky. I think it may actually be 1836, as it appears to have been presented to the British Museum by Doubleday himself between 1836 and 1839 (British Museum acquisitions). --Usernameunique (talk) 17:35, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Good find, Usernameunique. Thanks. I uploaded a lowres JPG version of the Doubleday portrait. Vysotsky (talk) 20:18, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Fantastic, thanks Vysotsky (and Fæ for the larger image). Just added it to the Doubleday article. --Usernameunique (talk) 21:48, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Urdu help needed

At page File talk:Shield-Trinity-Scutum-Fidei-English.svg, myself and another user have been at a three-month standstill about a requested Urdu-language version of this graphic, because some of the Urdu words do not display properly joined in my browser. For the word بیٹا I can kind of guess how it should look, but about the first word of نہیں ہے (which displays totally unjoined in my browser) I have no frigging idea. If someone can upload a small (but clear) screenshot showing how these words (or even just the word نہیں) should look when properly joined, then it would help cut through all the discussion at File talk:Shield-Trinity-Scutum-Fidei-English.svg. Thanks... AnonMoos (talk) 16:44, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

@AnonMoos: have you already tried displaying the page on another device, like a tablet or smartphone? --HyperGaruda (talk) 04:58, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Discolouration correction

This is a typical slide where no colour correction was applied. When I scan my own slides I can easily correct this during the scan. However in photoshop I seem to find the rigth tool, for this.Smiley.toerist (talk) 18:14, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

It’s not a trivial task, but I find Photoshop’s Color Balance and Hue/Saturation adjustments the easiest to experiment with. You can apply separate corrections to highlights, midtones, & shadows (which may or may not correspond to the effective ‘break points’ in a given image). Use Adjustment Layers rather than applying corrections directly, so you can go back and tweak the settings without losing any of the original data, and so you can ‘stack’ different kinds of corrections. Where the fading is uneven, as it often is on prints exposed to sunlight or air, the layers can be given graduated or vignetted masks to vary their strength. Successively more powerful, but trickier to use, are the Levels and Curves adjustments.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 18:42, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
I use Adobe elements 10 and this probably does not have the full scale of the photoshop set.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:45, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Help identifying this newt, please.

I took Unidentified newt at Hakone Gardens in Saratoga.jpg, a picture of a newt. There appear to be two very similar kinds of newt that live in this area, the en:California newt and the en:Sierra newt. Is there any way for me to tell which kind this was? Thanks in advance! grendel|khan 23:00, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Try http://www.californiaherps.com/identification/salamandersid/newts.html. If it can't be identified, you could put it in Category:Taricha and list the possible species in the description. --ghouston (talk) 23:27, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Done; thank you! grendel|khan 00:58, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

March 21

File rename?

Hi again, File:A man and a woman are selling old staff in the street.jpg and File:A man and his beefs.jpg should these files be renamed? Lotje (talk) 16:55, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

@Jmabel: ✓ Done :) Lotje (talk) 05:59, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
@Lotje: your variant is overly verbose and did not fix some grammatical awkwardness of the uploader. Can we agree on “… are selling old stuff on a street in Yangshuo”? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 06:53, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
@Lotje: I didn't even see the issue before clicking the link, a man and a woman sell old employees in the street, that has been perfectly normal for a long time. Now I see it's a typo. And the man with his beefs, I can guess where they are headed but those are obviously not beef yet. - Alexis Jazz 07:28, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

March 25

Cine Metropol, València

This building by Javier Goerlich is in serious danger of being demolished.[30] And there's only one photo in Commons, reflecting a small part of it. I will try to go end take some more but I'm not sure to be able to. So, please, in you happen to live in València, try to take some too. It's in Hernán Cortés 9.

Aquest edifici, obra de Javier Goerlich, està en perill seriós d'enderrocament. Només hi ha que una foto a Commons, i tractaré de fer-ne més, però no sé si tindré possibilitat d'acostar-me prompte. Per favor, els que sou a València, tracteu de fer-ho també. Està al carrer Hernán Cortés 9.

Este edificio, obra de Javier Goerlich, está en peligro serio de derribo. Y sólo hay una foto en Commons. Voy a intentar acercarme a a hacer más, pero no sé cuando y temo que sea tarde. Por favor, si estáis en Valencia y podéis, intentarlo vosotros también. Está en C/ Hernán Cortés 9.

B25es (talk) 06:23, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

A concern about UK Traffic Signs Content, pursuant to a recent news item on the BBC website

It has been noted in a BBC News item (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-43470241) that there was a suspect in an ongoing investigation that had defaced a number of actual road signs, Whilst there is absolutely no evidence to suggest they obtained any material from Wikimedia Commons, a "public safety concern" arises about the potential misuse of traffic sign related material on commons, and thus it seems sensible to have a wider discussion about whether Commons should be actively hosting UK traffic sign related material as extensively as it currently does so. (especially the sub-categories of Category:Traffic_Signs_Manual_(UK) and Category:Working_Drawings_for_Traffic_Signs_in_the_United_Kingdom which provide detailed technical data in PDF/SVG format).

Currently some of the UK traffic signs content on Wikimedia Commons includes this disclaimer:- Traffic signs are Crown copyright. You may reproduce traffic signs free of charge and without having to seek permission, but you must reproduce them accurately and not in a misleading context (e.g. not on roadside billboards where they could mislead drivers). (ref [31])

However this may have not been universally applied to all media in Category:Diagrams_of_road_signs_of_the_United_Kingdom and all the various sub-categories. Would it be possible for someone with a suitable tool to apply this or suitably updated disclaimer across all the relevant media, if a decision is reached to retain it?

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 21:14, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

In the linked article, it's apparently modification of existing signs, and if the perpetrator was prosecuted I doubt that copyright would be a factor. The disclaimer on certain files (like File:UK traffic sign CW701.svg) is consistent with the statement in the Open Government License that you must "ensure that you do not mislead others or misrepresent the Information or its source;" Files on Commons are supposed to be free for all purposes, but does that include misleading others, about aspects not related to attribution? The extra disclaimer specifically about traffic signs presumably doesn't need to be legally included: the OGL license itself should be sufficient. Simple traffic signs may also be considered public domain. --ghouston (talk) 23:13, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
The English Wikipedia contains sufficient information for a number of nefarious activities. One such article is Gunpowder. I personally regard the illegal manufacture of gunpowder as being more serious than some relatively harmless defacing of road signs. I therefore suggest that User:ShakespeareFan00 does not get over-excited about the traffic-sign issue. Martinvl (talk) 22:41, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
+1 we see that SF is forum shopping again Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:SVG road signs in the UK. -- Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 21:52, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
5 days and no concerns raised. I think we can consider this resolved. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:51, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

User custom license tags forbidden?

Not on the user’s talk page, but here, because I think this is of fundamental importance.

Are user custom license tags forbidden on Commons? If so, why is there an own category User custom license tags with over 400 of these license tags in it? Also, I know for sure that there are even more of these. (I admit that’s slightly provocative.)

Background:
User Code wanted to relicense his photos who he had originally published in Flickr after uploading to Commons: In Flickr only CC-by-2.0 is possible, however, he intended to relicense to CC-by-4.0 (it shouldn’t matter, but believe me he knows why). He started to add both {{Cc-by-2.0}} and {{Cc-by-4.0}} (cf. Special:Diff/288918945/288920522), but didn’t like the appearance. So he asked in (German) Commons:Forum for an individual license template (now archived in Commons:Forum/Archiv/2018/February#Lizenz-Template erstellen. Note that the question is not for a user license, but I knowing about the existence of custom user license tags suggested to create another one while De728631 pointed to {{Cc-by-all}}, but this includes cc-by-1.0 which is inacceptable for Code. I made a first suggestion in this thread before we moved to Code’s talk page (User talk:Code#Individueller Lizenzbaustein). My proposition I presented there was then copied by Code to User:Code/FlickrCommonsLicenseBY and used for the same file, cf. Special:Diff/288920522/289843174. But then came Jcb along and reverted Code’s license update claiming “file must have at least one official license” (Special:Diff/289843174/291947045).

Though I think Jcb is totally in error here – I do not see his claim in Commons:Licensing, and especially the file is for me properly licensed to both cc license versions – I’m interested in other opinions about the general topic behind this. Following Jcb we had to change the license tags of lots and lots of files now using an apparently illegal custom license alone. — Speravir – 23:44, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
PS: For technical advices regarding the license in question perhaps better answer on the user talk page.

Oh, some special kind of edit conflict: While I wrote this here, what took sooome time Jcb answered on Code’s talk page (Special:Diff/291956222/291984200). — Speravir – 23:54, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
Some remark for this: We also have lots of files without a machine readable license. Should all of these be edited? — Speravir – 00:12, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

@Speravir: The official answer here is yes, transcluded userspace custom license tags are forbidden per guideline COM:USER, a part of policy COM:PSP. The goal is to ensure that any change to actual licensing of a file will show up in the history of the file. On the other hand, transcluded templatespace custom license tags seem to be allowed if they meet the project's needs, have a good reason to exist, and contain COM:L standard licenses (for instance, if they refer to OTRS tickets and thus reduce future OTRS member workload). The latter tags tend to attract more watchers than the former, and the referred OTRS tickets can also be watched.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 01:48, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, Jeff, could you, please, exactly cite the part of COM:USER, because I do not see such a prohibition there, too. Otherwise I wonder why all the other custom user licenses have not been an issue for years. In regards to machine readability I know that the template has an issue, and I will deal with it later. — Speravir – 02:05, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
Jeff. — Speravir – 02:06, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
@Speravir: COM:USER#Regarding licenses and its subsection COM:USER#Examples. Also, I have for many years relied on this edit.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 02:19, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
No, Jeff, I’ve already read this part and I still do not get it. Instead I read explicitly “If the user-specific template does not incorporate a standard license template, then it can be subst:ed or not as the user prefers.” Or is it for you the next sentence “Templates such as "CC-BY-SA-UserExample" (which combines the standard license template with file author information) should not be used. Use of such custom templates reduces machine readability about file licenses. (It becomes impossible to tell by parsing the wikitext which license applies, if there are potentially as many license templates as there are users.)”? I see a should not be used, not a must not be used. (About the lacking of machine readability I already wrote myself above.) — Speravir – 02:50, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
@Speravir: I tried to harden "should"s to "must"s over 10 years ago in these edits, but I was rebuffed.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 03:13, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I agree with user:Jcb, User custom license tags are not forbidden as long as there is at least one official license tag present in the image. We do not want to evaluate user written license texts in order to find if they do or do not meet commons requirements. So at the moment the practice is that each official license template gets machine-readable marking and only licenses discussed at the Commons:Village pump/Copyright which got consensus. Images without machine-readable marking can be detected and placed in problem categories. --Jarekt (talk) 02:09, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
Speravir yes we still have many custom user templates which seem to cross, in my opinion the line into counter productive self promotion. I agree we should clean them up. --Jarekt (talk) 02:26, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

(I will be out for hours after this.) Jcb, Jarekt, according to which policy do you act? I cannot see any prohibition on the pages linked as of now, though I have to admit that I understand the reasons. (In case of Code I presume the fears are not justified, because a template change introducing inappropriate licenses would endanger his profession.) — Speravir – 02:50, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Com:Lic says "The license that applies to an image or media file must be indicated clearly on the file description page using a copyright tag." For years all allowed copyright licenses were explicitly listed on Commons:Copyright tags, but at some point whoever was maintaining that must have retired or list got too big, so now we use machine readable marking. --Jarekt (talk) 03:00, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Even if Jcb was right (I'm still not convinced about that) he could and should have a) talked to me before just reverting my own edit on my own file b) helped Speravir and me to find a solution for the problem. Everybody can see that I just want to license my file under two licenses which are perfectly acceptable on Commons. It's nothing but upsetting to just revert my edit under these conditions. --Code (talk) 05:06, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

 Comment That's typically an issue which should disappear with Structured Data. Then we will simply have "license 1" + "license 2" + "credit". The display can be customized at will, but the information would be machine readable. Regards, Yann (talk) 08:47, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 Comment Seconding Jarekt and Jeff. Custom license/attribution templates on Commons are an interesting story ; but the main reason user-space licence-templates are not allowed is to avoid non-transparent relicensing − in the same way that Source templates should generally not include/transclude licence templates − examples of issues with that approach are {{PLOS}} or {{Agência Brasil}} (source changes its licensing, templates is updated in good faith, previously uploaded files are mistagged).
License templates should be somehow-vetted by a community process, and indef-protected. A licence in user-space typically is not watched but by a few users (for example, User:Code/FlickrCommonsLicenseBY is on the watchlist of exactly one user) − vandalism on that template could go easily go unnoticed, all the files would have their licensing implicitly changed. If that happens after the photographer had moved on from Commons, it’s not likely anyone would notice (or at the very least not rapidly).
Also, the sheer count pagecount of Category:User custom license tags is a bit misleading because many of these tags are more custom attribution templates − I have started to move some to Category:User custom attribution tags‎ accordingly. Jean-Fred (talk) 09:57, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
With respect to should be somehow-vetted, the topic is wooly in policies and guidelines. The process for creating a new license, or significantly adapting an existing one, could be made usefully clearer. The current process means that someone could create a new license and a discussion on the talk page might be sufficient to tick a box for "consensus".
Credit and attribution templates are at the don't care level, and should remain easy to create and apply. In the past these have rarely become an issue, so informal seems a good place for these to stay though guidelines could improve if anyone recalls past problem cases to learn from. --Fæ (talk) 10:44, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
I have no idea what is going on here (as in what the user is trying to achieve) and I don't particularly care, but we have templates for a reason, and if people start copy pasting stuff around etc, then it all becomes terribly hard to maintain (translate, detect with software, style, etc etc). We should be presenting a consistent and UNIFORM experience, whenever possible, now and into the future, so everyone can make the right assumptions. That's why we have license templates, and that's why you shouldn't fork them. And note the respect that I saw mentioned somewhere by someone goes both ways. Those who put effort into making and licensing their images, but equally there should be shown respect to those who try to manage all existing content. Uploader, curator, developer, downloader. All require respect, it's not a one way street. There is a place for user custom licenses perhaps (adding categories is a good one as far as I'm concerned), but you can reuse an existing template FROM your user template, instead of copy pasting one. That is SO MUCH MORE future proof. I hope that with commons data, we can soon leave some of this behind... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:36, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
To end this: The user had been surprised – and by the way also most users in German Forum – and was interested in reactions which he got, and most of them surprised him, too. — Speravir – 21:37, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
welcome to commons, where you have admins who would rather edit war, than collaborate and fix licenses. as we know custom licenses are allowed, (Commons:Requests for comment/AppropriatelyLicensed) and you might want to seek a consensus before making sweeping statements about why you are edit warring. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 13:00, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

March 13

Technical considerations for very large images

A 95,450px wide image
A 65,500px wide image

I am wondering what the best practices for uploading large images are. Specifically, I am talking about images exceeding 100,000 pixels wide. Examples of large images I've uploaded include File:Line scan photo of Shinkansen N700A Series Set G13 in 2017.png, which is 95,450 pixels wide. Although PNG works fine for such a large file (four bytes are used to store height and four for width, so you can theoretically have images billions of pixels in width), some PNG libraries tend to crash when loading PNG images greater than 32767 pixels wide (as individual PNG chunks are limited to 32767 px wide). Moreover, at the time of upload, the thumbnail generation wasn't working for the image (it seems to work now, albeit very slowly). As such, I split the image into 16 slices (one per car), available at User:Dllu/N700A. However, the PNG format is considered by many to be unsuitable for photographs, since its lossless compression algorithm is based on run-length encoding, which results in large file sizes for noisy photographic media.

The JPEG format stores the image dimensions in two bytes for width and two for height, so the maximum width is limited to 65,535 pixels (in practice, many JPEG encoders, such as ImageMagick, refuse to encode images greater than 65,500 px wide). For example, I've downsampled File:Line scan photo of nine car BART C1 train in 2017.jpg (shown above) to fit within 65,500 px, even though Commons:Image guidelines says, "Images should not be downsampled". Even then, some users are complaining about the large size (see Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Line scan photo of nine car BART C1 train in 2017.jpg). In fact, this image should really be around 180,000 px wide and 4096 px tall.

For future images like the ones mentioned, should I...

  • Downsample images to 65,500 px wide to fit in a JPEG (loss of data), or
  • Use a single PNG image (crashes certain viewers; slow thumbnail generation), or
  • Use a single TIFF image with LZW compression (large file; poor browser support), or
  • Use a single XCF image (no browser support), or
  • Split the image into multiple PNG images (annoying to use, e.g in template:Wide image), or
  • Split the image into multiple JPG images (annoying to use), or
  • something else?

Advice would be appreciated! By the way, it's fun to read old discussions on the topic, e.g. Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2004/10#Size_of_images? "A good guideline is to have pictures of an absolute maximum of ~1000 pixels in the longest dimension. Anything beyond that is probably too expansive." dllu (t,c) 00:35, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi,
Best would be to have several options. We need at last one complete JPEG. Then we could have several pieces in higher resolution. See what is done for Gigapixel images from Google Art Project. Regards, Yann (talk) 04:01, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Good idea. I think the interactive viewer already does this automatically. I think automatic JPEG thumbnails of any size can be generated for TIFF files, although it may be slow and I haven't tested this with very large images. For example, this JPEG image was automatically generated for File:Ebola Virus - Electron Micrograph.tiff. dllu (t,c) 04:19, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Those pictures are great and I'd love to see more of them on Commons. I think you may have to accept that you need to use more than one format. There should be one file that's the master version (full resolution, full width), and if that's not usable for everything because of shortcomings in MediaWiki then you could upload other versions (lower-resolution or split images). I think the ideal format for the full-resolution picture would be tiled, JPEG-compressed TIFF. I tried converting the Shinkansen photo to this format using these commands on Linux:
  • pngtopnm Line_scan_photo_of_Shinkansen_N700A_Series_Set_G13_in_2017.png > lsp.ppm
  • pnmtotiff -color -truecolor lsp.ppm > lsp.tiff
  • tiffcp -t -c jpeg lsp.tiff lspj.tiff
This produces an 11MB TIFF (versus 187MB PNG), which I've uploaded to File:Line scan photo of Shinkansen N700A Series Set G13 in 2017.tiff as a demonstration. MediaWiki seems to handle it perfectly well, and it's small enough that even a 4096-pixel version should be acceptable. --bjh21 (talk) 18:31, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Media missing infobox templates

Hi, is there any particular reason why so many files that are missing infobox templates also have no source or author? Sincerely, NeoMeesje (talk) 18:54, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

@NeoMeesje: Careless uploaders tend to be consistent in their carelessness.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 19:02, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
historically, when files were transferred from wikipedia, templates were not required or added. and old source links are rotting, or incorrect. and deletionists would rather delete current uploads. than fix metadata of legacy files. before the metadata cleanup drive, it was over a million. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 23:22, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
Which is exactly why @InternetArchiveBot: should be deployed on Wikimedia Commons, linkrot is a major problem here on Wikimedia Commons and texts with linkrot are a lot less likely to be deleted than images with linkrot. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (Talk 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 04:18, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
  • @NeoMeesje: The maintenance category for media with missing templates hosts mainly old media files. Only occasionally some new uploads appear there. The number of listed files is steadily but slowly decreasing. (I can tell this because I regurarly check out this category.)
One advantage of infobox templates is increased machine-readability of the media description because relevant information is provided in variable fields (description, author, source, ...) defined in these templates. This can improve the quality of search results and also makes this files easier to maintain with automated or semi-automated scripts or tools. Media files without such templates have a lack of machine readability. This is why most files without an infobox are automatically also listed in Category:Files with no machine-readable author and Category:Files with no machine-readable source. These categories don't mean that the files have no such information at all, they are just a marker for lacking machine-readability.
(For comparison: Files which have a machine-readable infobox but no author information are listed in a different category. Category:Media lacking author information and there a similar one for media missing source information.) --Zaccarias (talk) 05:56, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-13

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

  • Some of the interface icons and text sizes will change slightly, as part of the updates for improved accessibility and consistency. These icons are used in many features, including Notifications, Recent Changes, Beta Features, Visual Editor, 2017 Wikitext Editor, Code Editor, and others. While editor toolbars, dialogs, and menus will appear slightly bigger; elements on special pages will be slightly smaller. Functionality will not change. [32] [33]
  • Advanced item The deprecated #toc and #toctitle CSS ids have been removed. If your wiki was still using these for fake Tables of Content (ToC) then these might lose their styling. They can be replaced with .toc and .toctitle classes where appropriate. [34]
  • TemplateStyles will be deployed to the Wikivoyages on 28 March 2018. [35]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 March. It will be on all wikis from 29 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 27 March at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be one hour earlier than usual on 28 March at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • From 9 April, the sort order of categories will be distorted for a short time. We are upgrading versions of an internationalisation library (ICU) and using a maintenance script to update existing database entries. This will last anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on wiki size. Read more details. [36]
  • Changes are coming to search for Serbian projects. Cyrillic and Latin variants of a word and different grammatical forms of a word will be able to find each other. Read more on MediaWiki in Serbian or English.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:03, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand - Interno chiesa bedero valcuvia

In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the WMF office which should not be undone. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me. The takedown can be read here.

Affected file(s):

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Interno chiesa bedero valcuvia Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 23:13, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

It was the only internal photo of Category:Sant'Ilario di Poitiers (Bedero Valcuvia) that we had. Looking at the Flickr page, it had all rights reserved, so the deletion seems to be right, but it's a shame that we don't have any other photos of the interior of that church. Maybe an editor in Mexico could go take one? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:52, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Mike, it’s pointless to write this here. Go as stated in Joe’s notification to COM:DMCA#Interno chiesa bedero valcuvia. — Speravir – 03:47, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
@Mike Peel and Speravir: The remaining uploads of Davide9191 (talk · contributions · Move log · block log · uploads · Abuse filter log)  are now subjects of DRs.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 08:36, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Mike, this is an Italian church. AFAICT it's a church like thousands of others of the same age or earlier (65k in total). Rather impossible to chase them all individually. --Nemo 13:29, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Hmm, you're right, no idea where I got Mexico from. :-/ Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 15:47, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

March 23

Is there a way of showing all the pages and files in one category (and its subcategories) but not in the subcategory of another?

Hi all

I'm working on something on Wikidata that will use a lot of categories and I think its probably best to ask the question on Commons because there is so much work on categories done here. I want to create links that will show:

  • All pages in the subcategories of Category A but NOT in the subcategories of Category B
  • All pages in the subcategories of Category A but AND in the subcategories of Category B
  • All pages in the subcategories of Category A + Category B but NOT in the subcategories of Category C
  • All pages in the subcategories of Category A, Category B AND Category C

Any suggestions? It would be great to be able to do this without relying on extensions. I know there is the incategory: command but I can't work out if its possible.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 17:28, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

The advanced interface of Help:FastCCI? Not sure if it realy works as you want, because I've never actually used it, but it has always been there in the top corner of my category views. --HyperGaruda (talk) 17:53, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I would think PetScan is a good choice especially for that kind of logic and the variety of filtering options it gives. It supports searches on all Wikimedia projects. You can permalink to its results as well. seb26 (talk) 02:59, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi John Cummings, here are Petscan queries for the first three bullets of your question above:

Perhaps this ist helpful... --Rudolph Buch (talk) 14:30, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Bug in video player?

Since some time, I can't use the progress bar / time slider in the embedded video player to navigate in videos. I'm always getting an error message (red box in the upper right corner of the browser) ending in "... at line 122: TypeError: embedPlayer.pc is undefined" when I click on the slider. A random example for this behavior is File:Report from the Aleutians (1943).webm currently linked from the main page. Apart from this issue, the player works and the videos play well. I'm using Firefox (current version, i.e. currently 59.0.2) under Windows 10. Maybe there is a better place to report this issue than VP? Gestumblindi (talk) 20:40, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T188878
Same issue as T188878? --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 06:11, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
@Josve05a: Thank you! Looks very similar, though the report quotes an error "at line 171" and I'm consistently getting an error "at line 122", also for the example from the report, and the error message is somewhat different (not "undefined is not an object (evaluating 'embedPlayer.pc.pp')" but " TypeError: embedPlayer.pc is undefined""). Gestumblindi (talk) 21:06, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Using a scan of an old newspaper article, and adding a translation.

I uploaded a number of scans of newspaper articles that are not available anywhere else online. I am wondering about their usage in general, but I also would like to add a translation to the articles that are in German. I'm not sure how to add a translation to the existing file, or where it should go. Thanks for any help! Here's a couple of the files:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABochum_%26_Wattenscheid_Zeitung_1-15-1980_Marlis-Jermutus.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neiderrhein_Nachrichten_1-1-1981_Marlis_Jermutus.jpg — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rasadeva (talk • contribs) 23:25, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

  • @Rasadeva: You say that is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Who granted the license? What evidence is there that they granted it? (Until we get that sorted out, there is no point in answering your original question, because these seem likely to be deleted.) - Jmabel ! talk 01:57, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

March 27

Helping

I was wondering what the main things are I can do to help Commons, except for uploading files? I'm open to almost anything. Sincerely, NeoMeesje (talk) 19:18, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

  • For Commons specifically: I'd focus on category work. Either hit a lot of random files & see if you can improve their categories (especially adding categories to things that are under-categorized), or find an area in which you have some expertise & see if you can do the same (e.g. at this moment there are 377 files directly in Category:New York City, few if any of which belong directly in that category; someone who knows NYC moderately well could probably do a good job of categorizing most of these, and someone who knows the city very well could probably take a shot at images in [[:Category:Unidentified locations in New York City].) While you are in there, you are likely to notice things that could use a better description, or language tags on the description, or where you can translate a description into an additional language, or even some things that there may be a reason to delete (especially copyvios).
  • More broadly: it's also really useful to look for articles in any Wikipedia that need images and where the appropriate image is already on Commons. - Jmabel ! talk 22:31, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
  • A place to bookmark if you want to occasionally spend 30 minutes fiddling with some categorization, adding descriptions or doing more complex maintenance is Category:Commons backlog. It's a good way to learn more about templates and best practices. --Fæ (talk) 05:42, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Reminder: structured copyright and licensing

Greetings all,

There are only a couple of days left to formally participate in the first discussion about modeling copyright and licensing in structured data. To participate in the conversation, visit the talk page after reading over the brief presentation.

This conversation is very "high-level" as there is nothing built yet to show. It is informing the first round of what will be built for structured copyright and licensing, coming at some point later on this year. There will be more discussions in the near future once we all have something to developed, and take next steps from there based on feedback.

Thanks all, happy editing. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:30, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

March 28

http://www.picswiss.ch/

It says here that (correct me if I'm wrong) images from http://www.picswiss.ch/ can be uploaded to Commons. Is it okay if I do this and if I do, under what license should I upload them? Lastly, is there anything else I should pay attention to when uploading these pictures? Sincerely, NeoMeesje (talk) 19:09, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

This site appears to be dead. Ruslik (talk) 19:27, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
@Ruslik0: Not for me.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 19:37, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
@NeoMeesje: Make sure you have "author=picswiss.ch / Roland Zumbühl" and "permission={{GFDL|migration=not-eligible}}", and don't use photos from the guest forums.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 19:37, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: Thank you, but what do you mean by not using photo’s from the guest forums? Sincerely, NeoMeesje (talk) 20:13, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
@NeoMeesje: "Allerdings dürfen Sie keine Bilder von Fremdautoren in picswiss.ch (z.B. Gast-Galerien) verwenden, da ich keine Urheberrechte für jene Bilder besitze." or "However, you may not use images from third-party authors in picswiss.ch (eg Guest galleries), because I have no copyright for those pictures."   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 20:35, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
… and this can be read in Commons:Picswiss/Permission (German only) – which is a subpage of Commons:Picswiss. — Speravir – 00:08, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
@Speravir: Right, I'm sorry I neglected to mention that. Thank you for doing it.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 00:13, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
(EC) Oh, Roland Zumbühl himself does meanwhile upload files with CC-by-SA 4.0.You’re welcome, Jeff. — Speravir – 00:18, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Ehem, I mean Roland Zumbühl. — Speravir – 00:20, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
No, I don’t, because I mean Roland Zumbuehl. — Speravir – 00:22, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
@Roland Zumbuehl: Consistent typography in the attribution vs. the username would be helpful. Eine konsistente Typografie in der Attribution gegen den Benutzernamen wäre hilfreich.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 00:40, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Roland Zumbuehl say:
Right. Pictures from picswiss.ch may be uploaded to wikimedia.
As picture source Roland Zumbuehl or picswiss.ch is considered. License CC BY-SA 4.0.
There are no more pictures of third parties on picswiss.ch.
Da ich nicht englisch spreche, ist es für mich schwierig, an solchen Diskussionen teilzunehmen.
Bilder von picswiss.ch dürfen bei wikimedia/wikipedia hochgeladen werden. Als Bildquelle dient Roland Zumbuehl oder eben picswiss.ch. Lizenz CC BY-SA 4.0. Es gibt keine Bilder mehr von Drittanbietern auf picswiss.ch. Die Gastgalerien sind seit Jahren gelöscht. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Roland Zumbuehl (talk • contribs) 05:57, 27 March 2018 (UTC) (UTC) (with further edits, cf. Special:Diff/293906511/293906876)
I have changed the license of the uploaded pictures from http://www.picswiss.ch/ from {{GFDL}} to {{Cc-by-sa-4.0}}, is this okay? Sincerely, NeoMeesje (talk) 19:22, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
According to Roland’s note above: Yes. — Speravir – 02:53, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
@Roland Zumbuehl: Thank you, but who is the photographer of the photos at Uebersicht der nostagischen Bilder in picswiss?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 05:07, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Jeff, I clearly see © Peter Forster for every photo series. There is also a note on the bottom “The copyright is on the guest photographer.” I guess Roland has forgotten this part of his site. — Speravir – 18:46, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Roland Zumbuehl: Yes, sorry, I've forgotten this part of my site.

March 26

Strange links

On page Depression (geology) is a link to Commons category Kotliny. I could not find in the edit text a link to Commons. The Commons Category Depression (geology) links to the right Wikipedia pages. The Commons category Kotiny has no links to Wikipedia pages and I don’t know to which Wikipedia page it should link. The Wikipedia page Kotliny is a disambiguation page with no link to Commons.
What I want is that all the Wikipedia pages about Depression (geology) give the right link to Commons. That the existing Commons category Kotliny is replaced by a new Kotliny “with a longer name” category and that the present Kotlini category is changed to a disambiguation category with links to the Wikipedia pages. How to do that all? Wouter (talk) 11:09, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

File:Nadia Schadlow.jpg

I'm a bit sceptical about the statement of this official White House photo (This photograph is provided by THE WHITE HOUSE as a courtesy and may be printed by the subject(s) in the photograph for personal use only. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not otherwise be reproduced, disseminated or broadcast, without the written permission of the White House Photo Office. This photograph may not be used in any commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House), thinking that this US Government material is public domain, like it used to be. Thanks, --Patrick Rogel (talk) 22:08, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

well - now you have conflicting exif terms. does "official White House photo" mean she is an employee or contractor? do you have any evidence to decide photographer status? an NC ND would not be honored if she were an employee, which has been done. there are going to be more like this - see also File:Robert E. Lighthizer official portrait.jpg; [40]; Commons:Deletion requests/File:Melania Trump Official White House Portrait.jpg; Commons:Village_pump/Copyright/Archive/2012/06#White_House_photostream. here is a white house flickr that says "public domain" [41] Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 11:45, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

"Taken on"

Is there some sort of consensus whether to use {{Taken on}} or not? I started using it on my uploads because other people were adding it to my photos. Now I have yet other people removing it and putting things like Category:United States photographs taken on 2018-02-11. I personally don't much care, but I'm really not pleased to constantly get notifications in my watchlist about these changes (I have over 40,000 photos on here) and would sure prefer if there is some way I can do this that is considered correct and will be left alone. - Jmabel ! talk 05:18, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

  • I’m pretty sure that the info tagged with template {{Taken on}} in filepages should not be removed and replaced with categorization, regardless of all else. Of course the template {{Taken on}} may be modified to offer something other than merely transcluding a date category (as it does now), even scripted to yield variant country/date cats (if that’s a good idea…), and/or modified to accept additional parameters such as location (and implicitly country). But probably the simplest approach is to keep the use and code of {{Taken on}}, as it is, letting it go on transcluding a simple date-taken cat, but make those date-taken cats flat. Categorization by date by country in single cats will be allowed to flourish or wilt, but not at the cost of removing data from each file page’s info template. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 15:25, 27 March 2018 (UTC) (clarified on 18:51, 29 March 2018 (UTC))

File not updated

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T191028

I can not understand why, by accessing this page, a non-updated image appears (recognizable by the presence of a cloud in the sky). The strange thing is that if I go instead to view the file (or if I insert it in another page) regularly appears the updated version (with a sky clear of clouds)--3knolls (talk) 12:05, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Try Ctrl+F5. Nardog (talk) 13:20, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
@3knolls: See also WP:BYPASS.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 13:37, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
@Nardog and Jeff G.: Then you don't see the cloud, do you?--3knolls (talk) 13:43, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
@3knolls: I do, every time on the main image and its thumbnail. Something is wrong behind the scenes.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:14, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Category:Portal Stories: Mel

Hi all. Just noticed that someone (ping User:Lofhi, User:4nn1l2) has received a permission from the developers to publish these screenshots under a free licence. This is really cool, but, as far as I understood, he/she contacts Prism Studio (developers of the mod), but not Valve (developers of the original Portal 2). There is a violation against Valve, isn't it?

Idk for screenshots with new models and textures (that still uses Valve's engine and, for example, shaders), but this one, for example, obviously uses original models and textures of button, door and some enviroment objects. Is it ok? Facenapalm (talk) 12:56, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

"forced developers to " ? that's kinda rude. DarkoNeko 14:38, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
@Darkoneko: I'm sorry. I'm very bad at English and it sometimes hard for me to choose the correct words. Feel free to fix my messages, I don't want to hurt anybody. Facenapalm (talk) 15:01, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
Tried to fix. Sorry again. Facenapalm (talk) 00:40, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
@Facenapalm: No problem. I was the one who contacted the developers to see if they could publish screenshots of their game. I don't know if the engine used for the game makes their authorization obsolete, some screenshots are kinematics made by the developers of the mod. I can understand that the elements created by Valve (elements of the maps) and reused by the mod team can be problematic, but if they were allowed to use the files as they wanted by Valve as long as they didn't sell the game, then their permission is valid? I can try to email Valve in the worst cases... Lofhi (talk) 11:24, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
@Lofhi: I'm pretty sure there is no violations in mod (some Portal mods aren't even free — Aperture Tag, for example), but that doesn't mean that there is no Valve IP we should consider. If screenshot is distributed under Creative Commons, it means that I can modify (for instance, crop) screenshot and use it whenever I want. So I can use Valve's button image while not even mention Valve — the only thing I should do is to mention that the developer is Prism Studios. I can even illustrate the article about Portal 2 with this screenshot. I see some problems here.
I'm not sure about other screenshots as well, for example, this one probably uses re-textured original model.
P.S: if there is an opportunity to make screenshots free after all, is it possible to make free this one or another screenshot with Mel as well? I use it in my ruwiki article. This would be really cool. But, again, the problem is that the model of Mel was made by Valve. Facenapalm (talk) 12:47, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
@Facenapalm: The company also sent me a copy of the email, they did not give permission for specific files, but for Category:Portal Stories: Mel. Some of the files I uploaded are totally theirs, I think, because they're kinematics made by the game team. It is true that the point you raise seems to be problematic. But when you think of a video game point: all youtubers who played Portal 2 for example monetize their videos by playing the game, it is an implicit permission... Which is not enough for Commons. In any case, at least a third of the files are not targeted by these problems, they are images that I took of the kinematics, which are real videos. I'll try to send an email to Valve, if they don't reply, I won't look for an excuse to keep them: I'll ask for the files to be deleted. PS: Mel's model belongs to the company, they created it, they just replaced Chell's files to display her in game. The Mel created by Valve is blonde and has blue clothes [43] and not the same face. Lofhi (talk) 20:30, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
@Lofhi: thank you. I do not really believe that Valve will reply you, but I hope so. You did awesome job anyway. Wow, I haven't heard about Mel's alteration. If you found this information in reliable source, can you please give me a link? I want to add this information to ruwiki article. Facenapalm (talk) 23:29, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
@Facenapalm: I just sent an email to Valve, hoping to get an answer. What kind of information from a source do you want? About Chell with blond hair? Lofhi (talk) 17:41, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

flickr

Is there any way I can see which images from Flickr I can upload to Commons? Sincerely, NeoMeesje (talk) 21:42, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

When searching on Flickr, you'll want to search for "Commercial use & mods allowed" (CC-BY-2.0). Bidgee (talk) 23:46, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
See Commons:Flickr_files for further discussion. - Jmabel ! talk 00:24, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

March 30

Filter for cross-wiki upload?

The Wuu Wikipedia was hit pretty hard by spammers in 2016 and there were a lot of cross-wiki upload whose copyright status are questionable at best. Is there a way to look for cross-wiki uploads from a particular wiki? -Mys_721tx (talk) 02:19, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

It's identified by text in a table of the "File history" section of the file page, but that text doesn't seem to be accessible to CirrusSearch. You can find a few if you search on Google for "Cross-wiki upload from wuu.wikipedia.org" site:commons.wikimedia.org. --ghouston (talk) 03:25, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
There may be a way to do it using Quarry. --ghouston (talk) 03:28, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Maybe like this: [44]. Scanning the entire database to find the wuu records could take a while. --ghouston (talk) 03:55, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
The list
  1. File:20160528_173406_mh1464428323740.jpg
  2. File:517na.jpg
  3. File:56eccef3tce3ad306d1e7&690.jpg
  4. File:CPP_logo.jpg
  5. File:IMAST应用模式.jpg
  6. File:IMIX报文结构.jpg
  7. File:IMIX报文覆盖范围.jpg
  8. File:JP_CONNECT_1.png
  9. File:JP_CONNECT_2.png
  10. File:JP_CONNECT_3.png
  11. File:JP_CONNECT_4.png
  12. File:JP_CONNECT_5.png
  13. File:JP_CONNECT_6.png
  14. File:JP_CONNECT_7.png
  15. File:JP_CONNECT_8.png
  16. File:JP_CONNECT_9.png
  17. File:JP_GC.png
  18. File:JP_INDEX.png
  19. File:JP_PERSON.png
  20. File:JP_PERSON_CONSTRUCTOR.png
  21. File:JP_RESULT-1.png
  22. File:JP_RESULT-2.png
  23. File:JP_RESULT-3.png
  24. File:Jackleo-logo-web.jpg
  25. File:Jamescycle中国商标证书.jpg
  26. File:Keyuduoxiedajia.jpg
  27. File:Logo512.jpg
  28. File:REACH标志.jpg
  29. File:Rebolaoren.jpeg
  30. File:S60108-153918.jpg
  31. File:T01fad62855dae41bca.png
  32. File:丁单垒.png
  33. File:东方设界Logo.png
  34. File:关淇元廖墨香李书有会议合影.jpg
  35. File:关淇元老师与张志哲教授合影.jpg
  36. File:关淇元老师与易学北廖之称的廖墨香老师合影.jpg
  37. File:关淇元老师与易学泰斗邵伟华老师合影.jpg
  38. File:关淇元老师与李书有教授合影.jpg
  39. File:关淇元老师号启元居士.jpg
  40. File:华阳中学东大门.jpg
  41. File:华阳中学运动场.jpg
  42. File:华阳中学鼎华楼.jpg
  43. File:厕泡泡.png
  44. File:厕泡泡七种香型.jpg
  45. File:厕泡泡便携装.png
  46. File:吕海林.jpg
  47. File:吴谢冈.jpg
  48. File:吴谢冈童年.jpg
  49. File:周肃清.jpg
  50. File:尝试.jpg
  51. File:德松模具钢材logo.jpg
  52. File:报文的组成.jpg
  53. File:擎天助LOGO.png
  54. File:时十便利拇指哥.png
  55. File:最小二乘线性回归示例图.png
  56. File:李剑浩.jpg
  57. File:极米.jpg
  58. File:汇天下.jpg
  59. File:沟达旅行.jpg
  60. File:浴室柜8004A.jpg
  61. File:浴室柜8213.jpg
  62. File:清联设计机构.jpg
  63. File:清联设计机构明星设计师.jpg
  64. File:电影周vi系统2016.eps-44.jpg
  65. File:盛家齐.jpg
  66. File:移动的修理小店.jpg
  67. File:芽麦青汁.jpg
  68. File:车亦达.jpg
  69. File:钟.jpg
  70. File:陈迟恩.jpg
  71. File:青年时期的吴谢冈.jpg

Not too long --Majora (talk) 03:58, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Ghouston and Majora! -Mys_721tx (talk) 05:39, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Intersection categories

@Halavar: Didn't we have an explicit consensus against "intersection categories" as narrow as a geographic location on a single day? Or has this changed? I ask because of the recent re-ccategorization of a bunch of my photos into Category:Romania photographs taken on 2014-12-17. At the risk of absurdity, are we headed toward explicitly intersecting all categories, to the point where will have things like Category:Black and white photographs of black Chevrolet automobiles taken in Winesburg, Ohio on the afternoon of 2014-12-17? Isn't there a point in having multiple, independent categories? And isn't multiple, independent categories exactly the direction we are more likely to go when we switch over to WikiBase? - Jmabel ! talk 19:44, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I do not see a problem. "Country photographs taken on date" categories are widely used by lots of Commons users, since about a year even more widely. --Halavar (talk) 19:55, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with "Country photographs taken on date" as a countries usually cover large areas and so could generate reasonable amounts of files, I can accept "County photographs taken on date" for similar reasons. But there are "Village photographs taken on date" categories. No reason to pick on this particular category but people will be wanting an example Category:Worlaby photographs taken on 2006-05-13. Oxyman (talk) 20:41, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
That category that you present is a ridiculous. These kind of categories (village ones) should be delete. We should use only "Country photographs taken on date" categories. --Halavar (talk) 21:56, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
There was a proposal to ban the country / date combinations at Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2017/02, but it failed (thanks to a bunch of sudden oppose votes by accounts that rarely edit on Commons). There's also a silly duplication at Category:Switzerland by day and Category:Photographs of Switzerland by date. --ghouston (talk) 01:14, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Intersection categories of all kinds are stupid, and reflect a failure of Commons/WMF to offer some decent software/UI. Databases intersect -- it is what they are good at. People, on the other hand, have short lives and should spend them doing something computers can't. -- Colin (talk) 08:12, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
I'm going to ignore the debate below which I've separate out as a separate issue, and which I feel isn't worth my time. As for the issue of intersecting date/location categories, I'm just going to repost what I wrote in the last discussion, linked by Ghouston above: I have always worked by the principle that, in terms of categorization (and with a few specific exceptions), the narrower the time frame is, the wider the the geographical area should be. Thus, categories by specific date should generally be global in reach. Categorizing countries by year and even month is often justifiable, but not by date. Categorizing national sub-divisions like states and provinces is rarely justifiable beyond year or decade. More specific locations should, generally, be categorized by century at most.
Exceptions can be made, of course, for locations that are very heavily photographed, but "by century" should always be created before "by decade", and "by decade" should always be created before "by date". This relies on the idea that categories should not be any narrower than is required to keep the number of files manageable, unless there is a specific wikidata item for a category.
If we don't accept that as an important principle, then anyone can categorize by the most specific schema possible, down to the minute the photograph was taken. File:Queens Boulevard at 57th Avenue.jpg could be placed in Category:Photographs taken at the corner of Queens Boulevard and 57th Avenue, New York City, on 22 March 2005 and no one would have any right to complain. We need some kind of basic rule or principle to fall back onto when someone makes that kind of category. - Themightyquill (talk) 10:05, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Definitions "by list" vs "by giving a property"

Now: Category:Romania photographs taken on 2014-12-17 -> Category:Photographs of Romania by date -> Category:Photographs of Romania -> Category:Romania -> Category:Countries by name -> Category:Countries -> Category:Nations Category:Places -> Category:Space -> Category:Dimensions -> Category:Geometry -> (loop) Category:Space -> Category:Places -> Category:Geography ->Category:Earth sciences:
To display all parents click on the "▶":
Romania photographs taken on 2014-12-17

So, "Romania photographs taken on 2014-12-17" is "Earth sciences"? The same for "Photographs of Switzerland by date":

To display all parents click on the "▶":
Photographs of Switzerland by date

--Fractaler (talk) 11:23, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

@Fractaler: Category:Countries was put in Category:Nations by a troll 5+ years ago, since blocked. I have just undone that edit.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 13:18, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: , thanks, updated statement --Fractaler (talk) 13:30, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
@Fractaler: Ok, Category:Places -> Category:Topics as it should instead of Category:Space now, and I broke the loop by also taking Category:Geometry out of Category:Space.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 13:54, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: , ok, updated! --Fractaler (talk) 14:05, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
@Fractaler: For what it's worth, not every parent category is and is-a relationship, so the "Earth Sciences" issue is kind of bogus. - Jmabel ! talk 14:49, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
@Jmabel: Wikidata, for example, said: country is administrative territorial entity, no "Earth Sciences"Fractaler (talk) 16:57, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
And what is "photography"? For example, "Photographs taken with mobile phones"? Category:Photographs taken with mobile phones -> Category:Photographs by camera -> Category:Photographs -> Category:Photography -> Category:Printed objects. "Photographs taken with mobile phones" is "Printed objects"?
To display all parents click on the "▶":
Photographs taken with mobile phones

Also (where taxonomy is not respected), for example, 1, 2, 3. Fractaler (talk) 11:13, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

@Fractaler: Not every category child-parent relationship is a direct subset-set relationship. The traditional end product of photography has been printed photographic objects, commonly referred to today as photographs, photos, fotos, prints, pics, and pix, but if you disagree, you are welcome to address the categorization of Category:Photography at Category talk:Photography.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 11:53, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: , thanks, I asked there who thinks that "Photographs taken with mobile phones" is "Printed objects". --Fractaler (talk) 12:37, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Things only have to relate directly to the immediate parent category, not all the way to the source category, in reality things don't always work out so neatly for example File:Land Rover brand bicycle hired in Wexford - geograph.org.uk - 1294248.jpg shows a Land Rover Branded bicycle, it relates to Category:Land Rover vehicles even though it is not a Category:4×4 automobiles Oxyman (talk) 14:20, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
"Automobile" is "vehicle", but "vehicle" is not "automobile". Commons:Categories: "Each category should itself be in more general categories, forming a hierarchical structure.". Category:Land Rover vehicles -> Category:Land Rover -> Category:British Leyland Motor Corporation.
To display all parents click on the "▶":
Land Rover vehicles
"Land Rover vehicles" is "manufacturer"? --Fractaler (talk) 09:47, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Guy, if you want to use snark, at least address the actual matter, not some strawman you propped up: The practice I mean doesn’t construe the hierarchical relationship between two related categories as "child cat is parent cat" but rather the much wider "child cat is somehow related to parent cat". This means that any non-immediate category relationship will not necessarily make sense without following the crumbthread linking them. In the case you mention it is to be interpreted in three steps:
    • manufacturers include automobile manufacturers
      • automobile manufacturers include Land Rover company/factory
        • Land Rover company/factory produces Land Rover vehicles
This is what we do. What you guys are doing is a poor attemp at follwoing the same old route from Leibnitz’ pre-computing what-ifs to the overestimated Dewey Decimal Classification — it’s amusing per se, but keep your misguided, primitive outlook away from Commons’ categories. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 23:56, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
I don't understand. A category tree has "include", "produces"? Not only "is"? Where, for example, "produces" (Land Rover company/factory produces Land Rover vehicles)? I see only "is". For example, Land Rover is British Leyland Motor Corporation. And "Land Rover" = "Land Rover company/factory"? --Fractaler (talk) 18:22, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
You are correct to say that you don't understand. As I've tried to say to you before, not every relationship between a category and its parent is necessarily an is-a relationship. For example, it should be pretty clear that a person from New York is not somehow "a New York" or that the Park Avenue Railroad Tunnel and Viaduct isn't a Metro-North Railroad line. Nonetheless, those category inclusions are correct. If is-a were the only possible relationship, it would be literally impossible to narrow a geographic category to a more specific place or a temporal category to a more specific time.- Jmabel ! talk 19:31, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
Each category should itself be in more general categories, forming a hierarchical structure.
To display all parents click on the "▶":
People of New York (state)
Category:People of New York (state) "should itself be in more general categories, forming a hierarchical structure". Category:New York (state) is "more general category, forming a hierarchical structure"? --Fractaler (talk) 08:44, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Is New York more general than People of New York? Yes. Is it hierarchical to have People of New York under New York? Yes. Where's the issue?--Nilfanion (talk) 18:50, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Seems we need a definition of terms 1) "New York", 2) "People of New York". --Fractaler (talk) 19:26, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
The definitions of both are surely pretty plain. How would you define them? Why do your definitions mean there is a problem?--Nilfanion (talk) 19:48, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
I agree, it's very simple. "People of New York (state)": part of people (of the United States by state). "New York": state of the United States of America. Problem: People are not an administrative territorial entity. --Fractaler (talk) 07:03, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
That's not a problem with Commons categories. That's a problem with your understanding. There is NOTHING wrong with having one as a subcategory of the other.--Nilfanion (talk) 13:12, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
May be. It remains only to read your definitions and make sure that you are right. Fractaler (talk) 16:27, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Refer to my original comment. New York is clearly related to and broader than People of New York. Therefore it can be a valid parent category. It doesn't matter that people aren't states. I'm not going to comment further, but I note everyone else here is telling you that your interpretation is nonsense.--Nilfanion (talk) 16:36, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm not going to comment further, but I note everyone else here is telling you that your interpretation is nonsense: this is not the answer of a human of science. So, as you wish. --Fractaler (talk) 18:47, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Oh no, now that he's banned at WD, he tries his nonsense here with categories: trying to press everything in boxes according to his personal understanding of the world. Any bets how long it will take him to get banned here as well for his absurd behavior? Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk) 11:56, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Oh, Sänger, hello! As you noticed with the ban, people who are far from science are very afraid of me, I for them am a litmus test, an indicator of their essence. I see you again got bored on the wikidata and you got here too....Ok, we can continue to the Commons. You are still saying that "The real world is that, what you see, once you get up from your chair in front of a monitor and open your eyes"? Or, closer to the topic topic, how do you think, should the indication of meta:Help:Category be observed here: "The category structure should reflect a hierarchy of concepts, from the most generic one down to the very specific"? Fractaler (talk) 12:26, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
  • A slightly off-topic question: is there a maintenance list or category of commons category loops, or an existing way to auto-detect them, so that they can be fixed? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 11:18, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure category loops are avoidable and some are inevitable unless we ban certain category trees outright. As an example of a plausible loop: Place -> person from place -> film directed by person -> filming locations of film -> place. Being able to identify them would be great, especially if tools could use that data and avoid unnecessary time spent on queries (or getting stuck in an infinite loop).--Nilfanion (talk) 18:50, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
    • As long as we are in our current folksonomy, that is inevitable. When we move to wikibase, we should be able to mitigate this by distinguishing refinement of a property (subcategory represents a more specific place) from having a property (subcategory represents a person living in the place, or being born in the place, or whatever other relation we might track). - Jmabel ! talk 01:51, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
    • "Person from place" is "person", "film directed by person" is "film". --Fractaler (talk) 07:17, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Possible cause for violation of rules (meta:Help:Category/Commons:Categories): lack of scientific approach. Proof: there is either 1) extensional definition (by list), or 2) intensional definition (by giving a property). Here we have: 1+2 (=chaos). --Fractaler (talk) 07:06, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
@Fractaler: Please note the very large difference between "imperfect organizational structures limited by technology" and "chaos". Your alternative to the current system would require, among other things, a very long list of "See also" links at the top of most categories. I don't see why that would be more useful than our current system (including the use of sort keys starting with space, *, etc.). The work required to impose your idealized and unworkable version of our categorization system is currently way beyond our means, so I don't see the point in debating this further. - Themightyquill (talk) 11:21, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
@Themightyquill: "Your alternative to the current system would"? Which "my alternative"? Where? I don't understand. I have not yet offered any "See also" here. I just said about "chaos". I mean, when used definitions "by list" + "by giving a property". --Fractaler (talk) 11:49, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Perhaps I misunderstood (in which case I apologize). My understanding was that you were proposing we should restrict category usage to "is a". If every subcategory was to be "is a" then Category:Cities in New York could contain Category:New York City but what would that category contain? Not Category:Buildings in New York City because those are buildings not cities. Not Category:People of New York City, beacuse those are people not cities. Not culture, not government, not economy, not transport, not organizations in New York City, because none of those categories are cities in New York state. So at best, they'd be linked in "See also" templates at the top of Category:New York City. Repeat for every city in New York state, plus Category:Cities in New York couldn't be in Category:New York (state). Repeat for the whole world and almost every possible category on commons. - Themightyquill (talk) 12:33, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
I'm here recently, and so for now I'm just trying to find out: is there any scientific theory, rules that are used here when building a category tree. As far as I understand, no one uses any theory. --Fractaler (talk) 13:06, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
I think there are different theories used in different places. The formalisation I use in most cases is that every file in a subcategory must also be able to be appear in its parents. For instance, any picture of Church of St Mary the Great, Cambridge is necessarily a photo of an Anglican church in Cambridgeshire, so those categories have a parent-child relationship. On the other hand, even though the church has a tower, a photo of the church could omit the tower, so Category:Church of St Mary the Great, Cambridge is not a subcategory of Category:Church towers in Cambridgeshire. However, this formalisation must be treated with care. Firstly, it's not as transitive as it looks: each layer of the "tree" is a bit fuzzy and the fuzziness can add up to outright inaccuracy. Secondly, some category relationships mean something else entirely, especially in the more general categories. It's possible that this could all be formalised further, but I think effort would be better applied to linking Commons categories to Wikidata items and describing the relationships between items in Wikidata where more subtlety is possible. --bjh21 (talk) 14:05, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Yes, all projects try to create their own model of the world in the form of a category tree (in the case of WD - the tree of elements). Only the world we have one, and the trees for some reason all have different. --Fractaler (talk) 14:29, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
@Fractaler: The trees grew organically, like real-world trees. How Commons trees are represented in Wikidata is not your problem any more. Please stop being so pedantic.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:40, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
  • @Bjh21: It's a bit more complicated than that. We definitely have something looser than what you describe. For one thing, metacategories (ones that can contain only categories) are in the same space as regular categories. For another, sometimes the parent-child relationship is rather tricky, such as a city that is partly in two different counties (so the city category is placed in both county categories, but any given picture probably only fits one county or the other) or something like Category:Subcultures being a parent of Category:LGBT: certainly not every LGBT person considers themself "subcultural" and, furthermore, Category:Homophobia is a child of Category:LGBT, and I would not normally call homophobia "subcultural", any more than racism or sexism. This is a folksonomy: it's loose, it's unscientific, and it is more useful as a means of navigation than of classification. - Jmabel ! talk 15:54, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: real-world trees grow according to the laws that are described in the sciences. Where can we read about the laws by which "the trees grew organically"? How do you define when grew organically and when non-organically? By what criteria? And where I talked about the problem of "How Commons trees are represented in Wikidata". I said that the world is one, and the trees are all different. By WD Church of St Mary the Great is church -> ... "artificial entity". Here: Category:Churches in Cambridge -> Category:Culture of Cambridge -> Category:Cambridge
To display all parents click on the "▶":
Church of St Mary the Great, Cambridge
"Church of St Mary the Great, Cambridge" is "Cambridge" - is it organically and non-organically? --Fractaler (talk) 16:25, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
@Fractaler: Again, not every category represents is an is-a relationship. Obviously a church in a city isn't an example of that city. Neither is a neighborhood an example of a city, or a precise date an example of the month or year it is in. These are narrowings of geographical or temporal scope.
When we began having exchanges related to this a week or two ago, I assumed you were basically competent, acting in good faith, and merely slightly confused about the meaning of some terms in set theory. It is becoming very difficult to reconcile the first two premises with your remarks here. From here on out, I no longer feel that I owe you the courtesy of further responses. - Jmabel ! talk 00:17, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, of course, for your answers, but I was asking about the scientific theory that is guided here when creating a category tree. --Fractaler (talk) 06:44, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
I think it's fair to say after this discussion that you will fail to find such a theory. Parent-child category relationships can mean different things, and different people have different opinions about what they should mean. --bjh21 (talk) 09:37, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
We will fail to find a theory for creating taxonomy? --Fractaler (talk) 10:51, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

March 20

Maximum number of categories?

Hi, is there a resource / tool that can give me the maximum number of categories a single on commons has? --Schlurcher (talk) 05:55, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

@Schlurcher: I'm not sure whether you meant a single file or something else, but there's Special:MostCategories. The page heading says galleries, but it lists files. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:28, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
@Auntof6: That's exactly the information I was looking for. I was simply not aware that there is a special page on this. --Schlurcher (talk) 20:46, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

What's your preferred method of extracting images from pdf files?

What's your preferred method of extracting images from pdf files? There weren't any specific recommendation on the software page. Abyssal (talk) 13:43, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

@Abyssal: Please see Commons:Extracting images from PDF, and improve it with your experiences.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:10, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, @Jeff G.: , I'll give Nitro PDF a try. Abyssal (talk) 14:37, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Similar activities to adding infobox templates

Are there any things comparable to adding infobox templates that I can do? The thing is, I quite enjoyed adding these templates, but there seemed to be a lot of trouble and people asking me to stop: all very confusing. But is there anything else that I can do that is similar to that? Sincerely, NeoMeesje (talk) 23:10, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

no - adding empty infoboxes is not counterproductive: it is merely early, before wikidata is ready. there are far more counter-productive behaviors such as adding "no license" when it is really a license dispute requiring consensus. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 21:53, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

March 31

April 01

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