Commons:Village pump/Archive/2018/11

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Structured data - IRC office hours, 1 November

A reminder that the Structured Data team will be hold in an IRC office hour Thursday (tomorrow), 1 November, from 17:00-18:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office. Links to date and time conversion, as well as a way to participate on IRC without a client, are available on Meta. I'll post a followup reminder here tomorrow about an hour before we begin, and if you've signed up for the Structured Commons Focus Group you'll get a reminder around the same time as well. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 16:15, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

a Pontiff (deceased) of a Hindu Monastery

I am planning to write a biographical sketch of a Pontiff (deceased) of a Hindu Monastery on the Wikipedia for which I'd like to use a few texts and images from books on the Pontiff that are available for free download online as pdf. Is such use of texts or images allowed on the Wikipedia/media commons as the books are available for free download? Or, should I request the publisher to grant me exclusive licence for the use of select texts and images? Could you please guide me here? (Scknld (talk) 11:37, 1 November 2018 (UTC))

If you give a link, someone can take a look at the details. --Fæ (talk) 12:03, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
But, in general, "available for free download" has nothing to do with whether something can be on Commons. The issue is copyright status and licensing: is it in the public domain, and if not is a sufficiently free license offered? - Jmabel ! talk
Also note: we do not as a rule allow "citations" of pdfs or other alleged images of text, due to the potential of programs like Photoshop for falsifying images. There is not and probably never will be a requirement that cited texts must be available online. Simply cite the underlying text and the volume in which it appears. --Orange Mike | Talk 00:13, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Proposal to remove P373 property on Wikidata

Please comment on Wikidata:Wikidata:Properties for deletion#Commons category (P373) discussion (the section link is functional only when you have English set as your user language on Wikidata). I proposed to eliminate the double-trackness to link Commons by interproject links as well as by properties from Wikidata item-pages. This unresolved problem was caused by the rash and premature start of ill-conceived Wikidata in 2013. The relation Wikipedias – Commons and the relation articles - categories (of identical items) are the main and most weighty problems. My proposal can be one of small steps to solve them. (For the future, item page for article links and item page for category links should be IMHO merged to fulfil the original idea, that a Wikidata item page should represent its item (1 item = 1 item page). --ŠJů (talk) 16:11, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Structured data - copyright and licensing statements designs

I've posted a second round of designs for modeling copyright and licensing in structured data. These redesigns are based off the feedback received in the first round of designs, and the development team is looking for more discussion. I can't emphasize this enough, so here comes the bold: these designs are extremely important for the Commons community to review, as they deal with how copyright and licensing is translated from templates into structured form. I'll be posting a message to commons-l about this, as well as requesting a watchlist notice and the normal message to those signed up for the focus group. If you participate on another language village pump here on Commons, I'd greatly appreciate a note there about the copyright and licensing designs. The consultation is posted in English, but feedback is welcome in any language. Thanks all, I look forward to seeing you over there. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 16:12, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

This page appears broken

Seemingly by this edit. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:52, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

What do you mean by "broken"? Ruslik (talk) 20:20, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Look at the diff. The problem persists. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:57, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: Please be more specific.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 22:26, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: Nothing appears broken to me (nor apparently to Jeff G.). What looks wrong to you? - Jmabel ! talk 04:39, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

October 31

Open Benches batch upload

Batch upload project page
Home category
20,092 R Photographs from Open Benches

Good news everyone!

After some discussion with @Edent: , the co-creator of the Open Benches project, thousands of photographs of benches with suitable licenses are being gradually uploaded to Commons. The Open Benches project is an open knowledge site where photographs of dedicated benches from around the world can be uploaded and shared, along with their geolocations.

  • Sample of bench photographs

Some benches will relate to Wikipedia articles of notable people, others may be useful to illustrate park areas and viewing points, the majority will be just mildly interesting... The photographs include closeups of inscriptions, but also generic views of benches and views from benches. Enjoy browsing them and you can help out by categorizing any in areas you know.

Thanks :-) --Fæ (talk) 12:52, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

@Fæ: Great to see this, but is the author of (for example) File:Photograph of a bench (OpenBenches 310).jpg really Flickr Importer, or has attribution been lost along the way? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:31, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Here's an example image from OpenBenches. Here's the same image on Flickr. The OpenBenches project website does not import the necessary imformation from Flickr to comply with the CC licenses. Anything from the "Flickr importer" needs to be deleted. Perhaps the origin of the other iamges should be clarified with the site owners? World's Lamest Critic (talk) 21:48, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
The API includes the URL of the original image. For example https://openbenches.org/data.json/?bench=164&format=raw&media=true - if that's not sufficient attribution let me know and I'll regenerate the data. The link is also on the photo on OpenBenches. Terence (sorry, don't know how to reply properly on a wiki) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Edent (talk • contribs) 12:36, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

(ec with Terence, but we seem to have the same conclusions) The relevent module for Flickr imports is here on github. This automatically respects the Flickr licenses, based on the mapping in the programme, though it seems that imports have failed to name the photographer in an obvious way (which could me fixed by housekeeping, but it's a bit of a drag). The link to the source photograph and hence photographer is in the licensing link in the image popup data. This was missed as an issue by me when creating the batch upload programme. I have flagged Terence on twitter.

This can be fixed retrospectively, and considering the number of uploads so far, I'll probably get around to it retrospectively rather than changing the ongoing batch upload process to Commons. Because I link to the OpenBenches source, and that source displays the license link, and that license link goes to the true original source which names the photographer, ... , we are literally not breaking a required moral right of attribution, but that's too around the houses to be happy with.

Thanks for raising the bug :-) --Fæ (talk) 12:36, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

It didn't occur to me that the license text ("CC-BY-SA 2.0") was a link to the Flickr source. My mistake. Thanks for clarifying. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 22:40, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

@Edent: The fix here on Commons looks fairly straight forward. Thanks for putting the attribution text in the metadata so I can pick it up with easy JSON calls. It's not a bug that causes me to stop the upload, but I'll look at housekeeping within the next day or two. --Fæ (talk) 12:40, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Between folding dough sessions, I have tweaked the upload script to notice importURL and if these are Flickr urls, it expands any flickr short url (I think these redirects are blacklisted), then works out the Flickr account name and adds this information, which gives an easy to read attribution. The importURL is given as an extra information field where it exists. Phew, the one-off re-run is going, but will then do new uploads already fixed this way and I'll stub out the housekeeping check. The OpenBenches 164 example image above has been done this way. --Fæ (talk) 16:01, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

As an aside, expanding Flickr short URLs is what I've been asking for the Flickr2Commons tool to do, for ages. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:59, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
I think that tool needs to be taken over or replaced by a responsive developer.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 22:23, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

flickr2wiki - Can I still use it

Can I still use flickr2wiki for batch uploads from flickr to Wikimedia commons. If so, where can I find it ? Bengt Nyman (talk) 21:52, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

License review for own uploads

Hi,

Long story short: I am a license reviewer since 2011, I have reviewed more than a thousand of my own uploads mostly from Picasa and Panoramio, and I was just told today that I should not have done that (link). What should I do now?

To make things more complicated, I assume two thirds of my uploads are dead now (Panoramio, Picasa, YouTube videos that were deleted etc.). They were uploaded a few years ago, and it is not strange many of them are not available now (and well, that is why we needed license review). Re-reviewing these uploads might be extremely difficult and in some cases next to impossible.

I do understand now that I should not review my new uploads, but what should be done with the old ones? Thanks — NickK (talk) 16:26, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

I agree. Gestumblindi (talk) 22:50, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Me too. Strakhov (talk) 22:57, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Considering new reviews are out of the question, I was thinking the same thing. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 05:10, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

November 05

Backlogging of Deletion requests

Right now, Commons:Deletion requests has ongoing, open nominations, including ones from five months. I raised an issue in March 2018; there, more admins are suggested. I suggested a PROD-equivalent, but it was unanimously opposed. Since then, six people have been promoted admins; the DR process is still backlogged. If PROD-equivalent idea is still going to be opposed, besides suggesting more admins, how else is DR backlogging to be solved? I could take this to AN, but I'm unsure whether enough admins will be interested in this. George Ho (talk) 21:59, 28 October 2018 (UTC); edited, 02:45, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

I think moderating COM:AN/U differently could help a lot. Currently a couple of trolls is able to consume a huge amount of energy of admins and other productive users all the time, by starting and maintaining ridiculous discussions, with disruption as their apparent motive. Jcb (talk) 22:28, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
you do not have any evidence to support such a thesis. rather you might consider recruiting and training admins, and redesigning your "soul-crushing" backlogs. we have the Prod equivalent at "Source missing" -- until you take steps to redesign your deletion process, you should expect no improvement of backlogs, regardless of how many you block or ban. -- Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 01:32, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for proving Jcb's point better than I possibly could have. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 00:19, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
thanks for the ceaseless praise. double down with even more block tools, and study block effectiveness, see what little it gets you. rhetoric is not proof. we have a fundamental difference in how to manage and lead projects. i don't think your approach is healthy. and Jcb has a longer drama board history than even me. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 00:46, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

I see we're back to bashing Slowking4. How sad. Jcb's complaints about AN/U are merely distracting from the real issues. Jcb chased multiple productive users away from Commons. To the degree that there is some clutter in AN/U, that is not even one friggin' percent of the reason we have a DR backlog. Some real issues:

  • Cross-wiki uploads and to a lesser degree the upload wizard. While some users are hell-bent on uploading copyvios, a lot of users simply don't know. They leave everything at default and click upload. They don't even realize it when they license their own work as Creative Commons. (unfortunately this one is barely within our control, WMF does this against our wishes)
  • We waste time deleting personal images when we could just as well simply categorize them. Nobody is holding a gun to our head to delete them and some may even turn out to be educationally useful after all.
  • We should consistently nuke all sock nominations. Don't even look at their merit, just nuke. As long as some of their nominations result in deletion, they will continue. Zero tolerance DENY.
  • ..and do the same with any DRs from users who seem to register for no reason but to nominate files for deletion, per PRP. Unable to contribute? Don't need your nominations. Exceptions only for authors and people who are depicted in nominated photos, but they rarely mass-nominate.
Example: artwork (1) with graffiti (2) outside (3) on grass (4), tree (5) in corner (6).
  • Require users (especially those who are not autopatrolled) to describe what a photo shows using at least 6 meaningful words or aspects. Unable to accurately describe what is in the photo? DR can be procedurally closed by anyone. If you can't see what is in the picture, you are obviously not qualified to nominate it. Or you're a bot. In case of gadget-assisted mass nominations, describe the first 10 or groups of similar images.
  • Take a look at our checkuser team. I suspect they are also understaffed, leaving socks to screw with us for way too long.
  • And the lack of technical users. For a long time (maybe still?) we were plagued by files that weren't deleted despite an admin closing the DR as delete. And the duplicate detection for Flickr2Commons is broken, and the maintainer won't fix it. This also causes a lot of unnecessary work for admins.
  • You know what's funny? Only admins can delete files. And who can be trusted to become admin? Only our most trusted users, plus some idiots who got their mop for free with a bag of Skittles in 2004. They must be trusted with the ability to block users and also the trust that a license reviewer needs, because that's included in adminship. I think there are several users we would not trust to handle user disputes, blocks or even license reviews while they could perfectly be trusted to handle DRs. Sadly, those users will never be given a mop and because there is no separate right to handle file deletion they can't help with the DR backlog.

For the description thing, the description doesn't even have to be useful, we just want to verify you have eyes. Other possible description words for the example: rounded (1) sculpture (2) curb (3) bus stop (4) flood light (5) letter M (6) in all black (7) graffiti, leaves on tree (8), sunny (9), buildings (10), sign (11) with heart on it (12), poop (13) in bottom right corner (14), strangely corrupted ghost (15) woman (16). woman sitting (17) on bus bench (18), tree casts shade on sculpture (19), some clouds (20). Not hard. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 04:26, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm not thrilled with the "require users" idea (point #5). It can be either bureaucratic or burdensome, especially to newcomers, to describe what a work, e.g. a photo or an artwork, looks like. I can see your points on other factors, but isn't that another way to ask for more rights for non-admins? I can agree about sock noms, but can non-admins procedurally close such noms? George Ho (talk) 06:46, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
It's not just bureaucratic or burdensome, it is also useful. If "DSC 4012-2 Panorama.jpg" gets deleted with the rationale "unused personal photo" and the admin deletes it "per nomination", what was it? If the nominator had described the picture, we would know (more or less) what was deleted. And what "newcomers" think about a description requirement, I couldn't care less. If you register here, not to contribute or improve media but just to delete things (which is not very common anyway), I'd rather you didn't register at all. Users who do that are usually socks or they cause trouble. They are unable to create which typically also makes them incapable of understanding things like scope.
"I can see your points on other factors, but isn't that another way to ask for more rights for non-admins?" Well file (un)deletion would anyway be a right one has to apply for. Admin-lite?
"I can agree about sock noms, but can non-admins procedurally close such noms?" A few things: technically non-admins can close any nomination, although non-admins lack the buttons to do this conveniently (I'm not sure if/how these buttons could be enabled for regular users. I'd think it's a gadget?). But this would only apply for the description requirement, if we would do that. Sock noms however should be nuked, regardless of merit. All their edits (adding deletion tags, notifying users of DR) should also be nuked. Nuke it and don't look back. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 07:08, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
+1. we need to develop professional standards of practice. escalation of battleground is a distraction from working backlogs. need to develop scaleable methods. backlogs stem from reliance on non-scaleable methods. commons has historically not done checkuser enough to nuke socks, and sock chasing can be a distraction as well. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 22:12, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Something less related to our admin problems: there are quite a few DRed images that could have actually been PROD-ed or speedy deleted, especially after COM:CSD#F10 came into force. Might be worthwile to go through the DR backlog and renominate for speedy deletion or "no permission" PRODs where possible. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:34, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

That's brilliant. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 21:56, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Speedy deletion do not really help against admin workload. Easy DR cases are usually deleted after a week, it's only more complicated or disputed issues that take longer. In my experience, extensive use of speedy deletion tags increases the workload by often having to second guess what the tagger meant and by converting unclear/non-justified speedy DRs to regular ones. Sebari – aka Srittau (talk) 11:29, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Maybe there's not that much wrong with the process and it's more the technical side that's an issue. Without the help of DelReqHandler, processing deletion requests is cumbersome and time-consuming. Would be interesting to know how many admins have enabled that tool. Myself, I hadn't enabled it for a long time although I knew it existed (don't really know why, probably some basic reluctance to activate any tools, a tendency to keep "default" settings), and became much more active in processing DRs as soon as I began to use it. Or maybe we should start a survey where admins can give their reasons why they don't process more DRs or what could help/motivate them to do more. Gestumblindi (talk) 16:16, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

  • When trying (really) to solve an issue, we have to find the levers we can operate, or the levers on which we must give ourselves the opportunity to act.
The minimum requirement of activity (question already discussed here, no need to surrender IMO)
The recruitment
End of the RFA? and give the possibility to out bureaucrats to promote the users as administrators on their own initiative. In absolute terms not a bad idea, but when we see the results when a judgment mistake is done inside our project, there is no chance that our community accept that, and no chance that our bureaucrats accept such responsibility. Therefore we can forgot that.
Send mass messages (and not only notices in the watchlist) to our experimented users (number of contributions?) about the fact that we need more administrators. Why not?
Send mass messages to the administrators about the fact that we need active administrators in some specific backlogs
Make the vote requirement less high in the RFA (currently 75% of support)?
Abandon the practice of acceptance by the candidate, e.g. if someone is nominated then they can be elected even if they don't want that? and why not finally? feel free to them not to use the tool.
The working conditions
As well pointed by Gestumblindi maybe we can regullary advertise our tools by mass messages (and not only notices in the watchlist) to our administrators. Maybe on the same occasion that the messages I just referred to above.
development of new tools?
creation by BOTs of galleries pages from the kind of pages that we currently use. In order to create an ever more pleasant (and therefore more efficient) work platform
The obligation to chose kind of categories (not in the sense of our Commons categories, but in the literal sense). E.g. FOP, derivative work, ToO, ect, ect... and then the DRs will be sorted by those categories inside our current kind of pages.

Notes that all those ideas are not necessarily ideas that I defend (or even feasibly teaknically) but simply tracks, in order to be constructive. Do not hesitate to propose ideas, at worst it does not do anything wrong and at best it can generate good initiatives. Regards, Christian Ferrer (talk) 18:16, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Just as a note, my goal is to be done with June's DR by the 10th and July's by the end of the month. I've been working through June's pretty much every free moment for the last couple of days. Some of them are quite complex though so they might be left till last. A great deal of the ones currently sitting there are quick, read, verify, delete, type DRs that were just never looked at. --Majora (talk) 18:38, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Another thought: Somewhat paradoxically, it's much easier for users to nominate images for the "full" DR procedure using the "Nominate for deletion" tool than to file a speedy deletion request or marking outright duplicates, both of which require the use of templates with appropriate parameters many users are not familiar with, so we get quite a lot of deletion requests that, for admins, would have been easier to manage and much quicker processed if they used, for example, {{SD|G7}} or {{Duplicate}}. Fairly often, I come across uploader's deletion requests that would have qualified as COM:CSD#G7 but waited for weeks without any comment for processing in the DR queue... Gestumblindi (talk) 20:45, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

October 29

Blog post: interview with George Oates about Wikimedia Commons

A useful pie chart showing a breakdown of Commons admins. (Uploaded by Fæ, as WMF blog post images no longer seem to get uploaded by the WMF)

George Oates, designer behind Flickr, Flickr: The Commons and Open Library (among other things) has looked at Wikimedia Commons, and she gives tips on how it can be improved from her perspective. Here's an interview about her thoughts: https://wikimediafoundation.org/2018/10/29/george-oates-conversation/ SandraF (WMF) (talk) 09:01, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

@SandraF (WMF): , thank you for sharing it with us. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 09:06, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Two observations based on the WMF post:
"the category system used to organize and tag media files on Commons is confusing..." Yes, the Wikimedia Commons community has regularly talked about tags versus categories. The key obstacle to fixing this, by creating a tagging system in addition to categories, is the WMF being uninterested. It seems contradictory that the WMF chose to make this part of the leading summary. The later example of "Nothing like myth, stories, night, spirits, stars, or the night sky" is precisely a usability bug down to the absence of a Wikimedia Commons tag system. (Ironically, the Community Wishlist Survey has been posted below this thread, while I was writing. Yet again we can add "tags please" to this list, but experience shows it will never be a priority and will stay far below the waterline compared to "mobile stuff", "wikipedia good for PR" and "Visual Editor, or whatever else feels more exciting for developers". </ironic tone>)
"Oates noted that the group of administrators on Wikimedia Commons is internationally diverse, but not so much in terms of gender..." Nobody knows the gender of all of our active administrators. Later in the blog post the summary of declared gender on user pages was a useful pie chart. This gave women/men as 4.4%/38.7% with the majority as unknown. This may be a reasonable observation, but there is no link to what happens at Featured Pictures and the gender of admins, because admins do not control Featured Pictures. This appears to have been a link that the WMF wanted to push as it was not a direct quote from Oates, but there is no general data about the diversity of participants at FP. If someone wants to ensure measurably diverse participation at FP (which would be great), proposals should be based on firmer foundations. BTW "diversity" is not simply "men vs. women", please be a bit more aware of other issues of unconscious bias. The fact that I don't even want to put a name on the other types of bias on the Village Pump, because I would immediately be a target of personal attacks, shows this is a serious community problem.
--Fæ (talk) 11:19, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Tags, via depicts statements, are a major feature we're working on as part of Structured Data on Commons, and we're targeting a release in just a few months. Early versions of designs and functionality (including search via depicts statements) are up and available via the project page. We started with prototyping search because it's a truly new system that we wanted feedback on as quickly as possible. Early usable versions of adding/editing depicts tags will be available before end of year. There has been extensive work and conversation done on tags over the past year, with more to come. RIsler (WMF) (talk) 15:42, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
That is not on-wiki user created tags, in the same common-sense way they are user created on Flickr.
What appears to be described are not thematic tags for Commons, but more features on Wikidata. What I see there is automated tags forced on Commons from Wikidata, for which Commons contributors are unlikely to have any control, unless they go and learn how to unpick Wikidata problems and effectively stop helping Commons by spending their valuable volunteer time editing Wikidata properties. Ugh, imagining that gives me a headache from the avoidable mess it creates.
Look, if you want to completely reshape Wikimedia Commons, do it here on Commons with the community rather than using a back door. An obscure wikidata-based discussion on talk pages about structured data is not where the community votes on a fundamental Commons tags proposal. --Fæ (talk) 15:58, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
The tag system as envisioned is a.) purely for the sake of Commons, b.) not automated (although there may eventually be a tool for *suggesting* tags that can be added if the user wants to do so), c.) under the control of Commons editors. If you don't think a tag should be on a particular image, you can simply remove it, d.) an effort to help improve translations on Commons by utilizing the translations that exist on Wikidata so instead of having monolingual tags, we have multilingual ones. RIsler (WMF) (talk) 16:26, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
That was not the discussion I read. If this is the proposal, please make an actual proposal. Before implementing it. --Fæ (talk) 16:36, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
I hope the intent of "depicts" is not equivalent to Flickr tags. Taking several common sorts of thing I've seen as tags on Flickr (though not following their pattern of "no spaces"), I don't believe we'd want the following as depicts values:
  • "spooky", "happy", "beautiful", etc.
  • "pretty girls", "hot hot hot", "naked guys", etc.
  • On a single photo "Alki", "Alki Beach", "West Seattle", "Seattle", "Washington", "Washington State", "beaches", "beaches in Washington", "urban beaches", "sunny day at the beach", etc.
Or is someone saying we do want this? - Jmabel ! talk 17:12, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Subjective tags would be fine. I would not want to over-control the user options, their usage would evolve and we can imagine ways of connecting related themes. Plus in my view "spooky" and "naked guys" are natural user themes for tags, the sort of thing that reusers actually want to search on. --Fæ (talk) 17:19, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
I don't want Commons (or WMF projects generally) to become an acceptable forum to comment on the perceived sexual attractiveness (or lack thereof) of the people I photograph and whose pictures I upload here. (Nor, really, to gather any other comparable subjective data about the subjects of our images.) There's enough objectification and "hot or not" crap already on the web. I don't think that is part of our mission or scope. - Jmabel ! talk 23:12, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
I understand the point you are making, though on this project I would hope that users would find good ways to nudge towards less 'loaded' tags. Just because someone searches for "sexy guys", does not mean you have to accept tags on images of this type, or that an associated context aware search method would not return, say, "homoeroticism". --Fæ (talk) 09:22, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
"diversity" is not simply "men vs. women" I've been beating that horse for a while now. I don't expect anyone to listen any time soon. GMGtalk 12:48, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Diversity of thought is more important than any other form of diversity, we're not counting the number of people with spectacles either even though they might also bring in a different perspective from those that aren't visually challenged. Simply looking at what's between someone's legs and not what's between their ears tells nothing about a person other than that. If you see a person and the only thing you're looking at is what demographic they belong to and not to what they can bring to the project then you're looking all wrong at it. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 16:29, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
I disagree. People who are gay, or black, or Mormon, or what have you are going to have interests that are going to vary broadly based on their experiences, and they're going to have a perspective that a member of an out-group is not going to have. Currently, the WMF doesn't collect data on sexual orientation, ethnicity, or religion at all. GMGtalk 17:31, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

In the hope that it might get somewhere this time, now created m:Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Multimedia and Commons/Create a tag file system in addition to conventional categories. Please add evidence and observations for a tagging system there. --Fæ (talk) 12:15, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

feedback from an expert in image repositories should be taken on board and acted upon by the community.
important for the community to understand how newbies continue to be astonished by the nudity as featured picture, Commons:Help_desk/Archive/2018/06#Why_is_it_OK_to_have_a_picture_of_a_nude_woman_on_the_home_page?.-- Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 13:57, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
I think that there are many interesting points to consider when we think about the demographics of Commons editors. But even more interesting is how the demographics is perceived when it is not known. Here we have an editor clearly stating that only males are somehow able to deal with nudity in an adult manner while females would automatically get scared of it. I find that not having to disclose my sex/gender is actually a benefit of this community over many others. However, I do think that 4.4%/38.7% statistic is disturbing. Yes, we do have most people who are not identified, but statistically there is very little chance that enough of them are not men. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 15:48, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Pinch of salt. The blog post reads like the analysis was done to support an existing thesis, and it was done by someone apparently relatively new to Commons who for all we know may just have looked for userboxes. There are several ways to declare a gender or preferred pronoun, and the method(s) used to calculate 4% was not published. It would be great if a long term contributor were to examine the admin group's user pages and pronoun preferences (which can be done with SQL) and arrive at an open and repeatable analysis. --Fæ (talk) 16:18, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Correction, finding preferred pronoun from user_properties used to be available (it is public data as the API must be able to return it), but I believe this was suppressed by the WMF in an unexplained development change. The change protects nobody, it just gets in the way of this sort of analysis. --Fæ (talk) 16:34, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Diversity is more than Male & Female, we need to stop measuring people just by their sexual organs if we truly seek diversity then we need to look beyond that one dimension. Gnangarra 15:19, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
many interesting points in there … --El Grafo (talk) 15:14, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Diversity. Oats suggests that "Meet our Photographers" should have a 50/50 women/men split to encourage women. I fully agree with the research that shows this helps encourage women to believe they can join in, and that an "all male" crowd has the opposite effect. However, in practical terms, not all users here identify their gender, very few users upload photographs of themselves which would visually confirm "there are women here", and I'm only aware of a handful of female photographers at FP level. So the result would be that a 50/50 "Meet our Photographers" would list perhaps 10 photographers, with no pictures of female photographers, and give a rather strange impression that actually we don't have many people photographing for Commons. That particularly page isn't in a very healthy state, with most of the photographers listed no longer active, and many highly active photographers not listed. Our problem really is that despite the apparently large size of Commons, the number of active and talented photographers is quite small. Oats suggests "requiring" the FP voters to be more "representative", but doesn't offer any way that, on a wiki, we could achieve that? Would we require voters to declare their gender, ethnicity, sexuality, income bracket, age, political views? And the idea of limiting users to only have 10 featured photographers -- I don't see what problem that is trying to solve? I think perhaps Oats thinks most users on Commons are like users on Flickr -- that they take the photos on the site. The vast majority of photos on Commons are not take by users on Commons. Would a churn of new users at FP improve quality and diversity? I suggest that it would absolutely not, and well, there simply aren't the numbers to contemplate that -- it would die out. There is better diversity at Commons:Photo challenge, and a better inflow of new users too.
Categories Oh yes, categories actually help hide our media, buried 10 levels deep in some obscure mix of unrelated attributes. We very much need to get away from a strict single hierarchy. The subject, the date, the time of day, the weather, all get mashed up into one category. I think categories are the single biggest problem with finding images on Commons. However tags aren't perfect and Flickr isn't perfect.
Nudity. I took a photo of the wife of Finn the Giant. Apparently she's turned to stone holding the pillar of the cathedral. When I posted this on Flickr, it got lots of hits, many more than my photos normally get. When I looked at the stats, most were coming from a Flickr search for "wife". So I follow the link for "wife" search results and ... oh dear, way too much intimate stuff going on there. At this point I learn my Flickr account settings allow me to choose three levels of "Safe search". I had it "off" "You're over 18, and take full responsibility that you're comfortable to see whatever turns up". The next level is "moderate" "You're OK seeing the odd "artistic nude" here or there, but that's the limit.". Top level is "On" "You'd prefer to see photos and video that is safe for a global, public audience" which is what you get if you search without an account.
Glammmur the Feature Picture process does not choose images for the Main Page. That is down to a very small team who I feel don't apply sufficient editorial restraint to appreciate that the Main Page should be like Flickr's default "safe global public audience" who do not want to be shocked and upset at finding an image they do not wish to see at this point in time (or ever). The FP process evaluates the quality of an image, not its suitability for "Main Page". I raised this point at the discussion you link, but it appears you were more interested in doing research than engaging with the community on that issue and following it through. Additionally, I think Commons would benefit from a similar "safe search" feature to Flickr, but there has been a lot of resistance in the past to that, perceiving it to be a form of censorship. I don't really know how to get the community to take that issue seriously, but I think the lack of diversity here is preventing a grown-up world view of this. There is for example, very little argument from a feminist position. Nor is their any pressure from WMF to implement a safe search feature, so you might want to ask WMF why not.
Being part of the problem as noted, we can influence future participation and content by what we show or highlight about current participation and content. Oats chooses to highlight glamour nudity on the Main Page, which is hardly going to encourage any feminists, for example, to join the project. Yet there have only been a handful of nude/partial-nude photos promoted to FP, in contrast with the eleven thousand other featured images. Indeed, any serious analysis of Commons Photographers would conclude that they enjoy the outdoors and wildlife, appreciate great architecture, and seem to spend an awful lot of time inside a church. So if WMF are serious about promoting diversity on their projects, then I would encourage them to ensure blog posts are fairly researched wrt diversity issues and actually represent the community. I think the biggest problem with the article is Oats not appreciating that Commons is not Flickr and the community is different. Most folk on Commons are not photographers or here to contribute photographs as their main activity, and most images here are not in fact taken by users. -- Colin (talk) 12:17, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Colin states that «categories actually help hide our media», which is a puzzling statement. You can either use Commons categories for your searching needs, or not. Even if it’s meant that categories, used the way they are, hide our media — that’s still false, since so called “flat” categories in practice work more or less as the chimeric “tags” everyone’s talking about as if it’s 1993 and the future looks like a battle between Altavista and Dmoz. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 16:26, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Adding: Of course for flat cats to behave as the tags category-haters want, someone needs to create and populate them. And, of course, this being a wiki — you can, and should, do what you want done. Most people who work in categorization here do it the way they (actually: we) think it’s better — namely with typically many, very detailed categories whose pages show at most a couple hundred media files each. Whoever wants to add to this a whole set of relatively few flat categories with thousands of hits (see this scarse example) will need to work for it. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 16:39, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
  • It isn't puzzling at all, Tuválkin. Take Category:Tower Bridge, one of the worlds most important photographic subjects, well photographed and often sought out as an iconic feature of London. I am presented with a couple of hundred tiny icons 120x80 in size from which I am assumed to try to guess which might be good quality images. Of course, Commons' categorisers don't really want any images at that level at all, as it is too large. So they push images down and down and down till they get a small number. My two good quality FP photographs of this bridge have been pushed down inside Category:History of Tower Bridge, despite being nothing about "history", and down again inside Category:Tower Bridge in 2015. Quite why anyone, looking for a good photo of Tower Bridge would think to look by date in order to find what they want, is beyond me. While the date may well be important for a tiny minority of usages, that is information that could be readily extracting from the file page and the image EXIF and thus added to a search criteria. There is no reason why, in 2018, humans are wasting their short lives, adding that sort of random arbitrary machine-derivable noise into a category in order to make it small. The year the photo was taken is a quite separate attribute from the subject of the photo and should never be mixed. Only on Commons does anyone think to categorise things that way, by combining unrelated attributes. The date is no more important than the viewpoint, the weather, the time of day, or the size of the image. Arguably the most important attribute is whether it is a decent photo or not, and for that we only have a few forums with their own imperfections, and no reliable and straightforward way of ranking results by quality. Ranking by quality (part human, part machine AI) is probably the most important way to improve our search results. Finding images that match the search terms isn't the hard part and isn't why Altavista and Dmoz failed compared go Google -- all could do that. What Google did was return the pages you wanted to see as the first results, sometimes even the "I'm feeling lucky" first result. All that categories, as we have them, do, is absolutely guarantee that if you look for something by category, then you will not quickly find it in the first page of results, and will give up second-guessing which sub category someone has hidden it in. -- Colin (talk) 17:06, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

A lot of George's interview rang very true for me, especially that Wikipedia is incredibly intimidating for the beginner user. Help files are overly technical, confusing, and nearly impossible to re-find. Coding is difficult to understand. Categories do not follow any understandable logic or controlled vocabulary, and it's not possible to add a new category or find out how to get someone to do that for you. Despite the fact that I am a librarian with a background in cataloguing, I have resigned myself to uploading images and adding the single institutional "Images from..." category for each. The Raven's Librarian (talk) 12:39, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

I humbly submit for your consideration that perhaps the perspective of a librarian, used to very specific ways of doing things, is not representative of the typical new user. Let me know if you need suggestions on how to let your library/institution integrate better in Commons! As someone who works for a library too, Nemo 13:15, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Nemo! I do agree that libraries have specific ways of doing things, and I am not suggesting that Wikipedia move to a library-ish model. However, years in the library world have exposed me to many databases, help files, and online communities, so I have some ability to navigate in most online environments. But Wikipedia is beyond me...and if I am not a "typical new user", then how must those more typical people feel? But yes, I would welcome any suggestions on how to contribute more effectively to Commons. The Raven's Librarian (talk) 14:47, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
yet I'd dispute that, the way libraries "do things" is developed from many generations of practical experience, there are very good reason why libraries work at helping people find knowledge. Libraries are also the main way many people first experience any coordinated form of cataloging. We need to listen more those who hold the experience and learn from what makes them so universal. I'm not a librarian the fact that I can go into a library anywhere in the world in any language and readily find what I'm looking for is an indicator they are doing something effectively that we arent. Gnangarra 15:07, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
  • The Raven's Librarian says that «Categories do not follow any understandable logic or controlled vocabulary», which is not true. Surely it’s possible to find inconsistencies in category nomenclature and lacks in categorization of many (indeed most) files, but a wiki is a work in progress. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 16:18, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
  • To educate oneself is always a good advice and things worth using have “learning curves” — needlessly steep?, maybe: Let’s discuss specific issues — this user posed a few concrete questions, which I addressed. Indeed, unlike yours, my so-called personal attack did address actual matters — what’s yours? It’s always an extra effort to read your contributions, with their quirky capitalization; please make it worth and make your point. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 20:31, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Tuválkin Thank you so much for your sarcastic comments and the personal attack. Yes, I have heard of bookmarks, however, internal logic and wayfinding within the help files should allow users to navigate without resorting to bookmarking. Another thing that would be really useful is a non-technical quick-start guide to adding and editing content, linking out to the more technical help pages. I spent several days reading pages in the help files before I gave up attempting to navigate the labyrinth or search for a help page. Searching the Help Centre for "add category" gave the top result as "Help:Editnotices/Namespace/Category/doc". I changed my query to "how to add category" and the top result was "Help:Autotranslate". Neither result provided any help whatsoever. Your comments have served only in further alienating a newbie female contributor. Might I recommend that you re-read the article Please do not bite the newcomers The Raven's Librarian (talk) 14:47, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
  • @The Raven's Librarian: I always want to help people genuinely interested in doing good work (which is not the subject of this thread, rather being one more attempt to erradicate the use of categories in Commons), so here’s a little bit of basic advice whose “spirit” is valid for any wiki editing (not just adding cats) and indeed for most anything that uses any form of markup language (wikitext, HTML, SVG a.s.o.), including even basic interpreted programming:
When you see a file or cat page that includes one category So-and-so and you wanna add to it also category This-or-that, you can click "edit" (this being "edit source" or "edit wiki text" and not VisualEditor, which do not I recommend) and then locate (using you browser’s page search function) [[Category:So-and-so]]; copy the whole thing, paste and overtype to have [[Category:This-or-that]]; preview and save. There, you have added a new category to that cat or file page. Unilke most things in wikitext, categories can but put anywhere in the page source — although it is nicer to keep them in a block at the end. (For more powerful results see also Help:Gadget-HotCat and, later on, Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.)
-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 17:09, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Tuválkin thanks for the advice. I wholeheartedly support categories, as subject categorization is super useful for gathering like with like, and subject hierarchies can help a user broaden or narrow their search. I have been reading up on categories and applying them to my uploads, hopefully making them more visible. Thanks again The Raven's Librarian (talk) 18:54, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Having internal description text in Commons categories?

Please see this discussion (Category talk:Lion Air Flight 610) regarding whether there should be descriptive text (which may include links to Wikipedia articles or commons pages in additions to the ones automatically added to Wikidata and/or present in the infobox templates to the right)

Some editors argue the text is now superflous because descriptions of subjects and translations are being automated through Wikidata. I am still interested in keeping these internal description texts because I want the topics to show up in internal Wikimedia Commons search queries, which do not read text on Wikidata.

@Jérémy-Günther-Heinz Jähnick: @Jmh2o: WhisperToMe (talk) 22:42, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata is going to rule Commons over my dead body. Description text here should remain as it is, since it is maintainable locally without having to learn whole new arcane ways of fixing things (which I've had to do several times recently). Whereas we shouldn't supplant Wikipedia, there's no reason why we can't explain tnings to our users, assuming we have any left. Rodhullandemu (talk) 22:50, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
As far as I know, there is no consensus to remove these, just because something similar can be obtained from Wikidata. Among other things, at least at the moment Wikidata is far more vulnerable to vandalism than Commons, and there is no easy way for Commons users to detect if a relevant Wikidata item has been vandalized. If we want to be able to make sure particular content is not lost, we need control of it within this project. Also, there are many Commons categories containing useful explanatory text that is in no way redundant to any Wikidata content.
If you are satisfied with what you are getting from Wikidata, and don't want to add things like this, fine. But please don't remove things content from category pages that is in accord with Commons standards and guidelines, just because you don't personally find it useful. - Jmabel ! talk 23:09, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
"we need control of it within this project" Perhaps you might like to reflect on the irony of saying that on a project whose content is reused in over 300 others. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:23, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Not at all. We've been good at finding vandalism and fixing it promptly, far better than Wikidata and any but the largest of the Wikipedias. My point is that when things propagate, it's crucial that the source be on a well-monitored project. - Jmabel ! talk 15:45, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
"Wikidata is going to rule Commons over my dead body" Please avoid such hysterical hyperbole. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:23, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Yes, we keep descriptive wikitext on category pages. It's straightforward and easy for everyone to understand how to change it. We are one of the projects that everyone can edit, not just wikidata wizards. --Fæ (talk) 14:26, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
  • @Mike Peel: In particular I'm trying the search in languages other than English, such as Indonesian et al - Without the Indonesian text on the actual page, it won't show up. WhisperToMe (talk) 10:38, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
    • @WhisperToMe: @RexxS: has written some new functions that output all labels/aliases/descriptions, and I've just added that to {{Wikidata Infobox/sandbox}} and used that in the category. It's wrapped with with display:none in the css - so it won't actually appear on the page, but it acts as search engine optimisation. It seems to have significantly improved search, e.g. "Lion Air Penerbangan 610" now finds the category. How does that look? (with apologies to @CParle (WMF): who probably won't like this...) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:04, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
      • Hehe - that's actually kind of similar to how searching multi-lingual labels works in SDoC, @Mike Peel: so I think it's fair enough (though obvs I hope when we start releasing SDoC functionality people will find it easier to use that instead) CParle (WMF) (talk) 11:22, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
      • @Mike Peel: Wow! I tried the Indonesian text as a search query and it works! Thank you! I'm wondering if it might be good to consider having a template that puts the Wikidata text in the center of the page so people can see the label in the center. WhisperToMe (talk) 12:29, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
        • OK, I've now deployed that in the main version of the infobox, let's see how it goes. Please let me know if you spot any issues with it, or if there are any significant improvements to search queries that you spot. ;-) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:10, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
  • The search is supposed to operate on the page text after the templates have been resolved, I think, so it should find text in the infobox. However, I assume it works on a cached version, and only seems to find English text. I only tested it on a few pages. --ghouston (talk) 22:51, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm unclear about whether Wikidata is so hard to understand, that nobody can figure out how to change descriptions etc, or so easy to understand that vandals prefer changing data there than in wikitext. --ghouston (talk) 22:53, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
    • @Ghouston: I'm wondering if vandals would prefer changing on Wikidata not due to ease, but because it would affect many projects at once? (I haven't seen any usage stats) WhisperToMe (talk) 10:44, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
      • Changing data in one place is easier and less work. Anything that's easier for genuine users is also easier for vandals. You can also vandalise other projects from Commons by uploading a new version of a file, but Commons makes it harder by restricting it for new users. I doubt that the majority of vandals are criminal masterminds, experienced wiki users, or willing to make much effort at all: they just see an edit button, type some nonsense, and leave: they probably aren't calculating where it will have the maximum impact. --ghouston (talk) 20:51, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
        A current theory of increased Wikidata vandalism is that it is coming from Spanish-speaking countries because of the prevalence of "edit on Wikidata" links on Spanish Wikipedia infoboxes. Indeed, it is probably very easy to just click a link and change the label that you see, etc. --RexxS (talk) 23:44, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

November 04

Tech News: 2018-45

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

Changes later this week

  • You can choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. The interface for the two-column edit conflict will change. You can read more.
  • When you edit with the visual editor you can use the "Automatic" citation tab. This helps you generate citations. You will now be able to write plain text citations or the title of a journal article or a book in this tab. This will search the Crossref and WorldCat databases and add the top result. [2]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 November. It will be on all wikis from 8 November (calendar).

Meetings

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

17:29, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Ehm Stupid Auto Numbering Mistake. Help, please?

Hi, I used autonumbering for the titles in this category. It changed the "sixth birthday" bit. I just need to change the names to have an additional number to the end. I hope this makes sense.--Reem Al-Kashif (talk) 19:01, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Working GMGtalk 19:03, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
✓ Done GMGtalk 19:07, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Open call for Project Grants

Greetings! The Project Grants program is accepting proposals until November 30 to fund both experimental and proven ideas such as research, offline outreach (including editathon series, workshops, etc), online organizing (including contests), or providing other support for community building for Wikimedia projects.

We offer the following resources to help you plan your project and complete a grant proposal:

Also accepting candidates to join the Project Grants Committee through November 15.

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) 19:46, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

November 06

File:Bromine vial in acrylic cube.jpg license

This file has many license templates:

This file had GFDL and CC-BY-SA 3.0 licenses in time of first file upload.

Can the author try to limit (NC-ND, no facebook) the rights to the file in this way? In the end, everyone can apply CC-BY-SA licenses, so NC-ND and "no fecebook" doas not matter. Malarz pl (talk) 08:34, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

No-facebook warning is there as a helpful message to reusers. The problem here is the facebook, not the file. Technically majority of files on Commons are not reuseable on Facebook due to Facebook's terms of service agreement (you are required to be an author of the image or the copyright holder to post to FB). You can also combine as many non-free licences as you want as long as you provide at least one free licence (given, of course, that you are the copyright holder). This file is available under FAL, which is a free licence (in fact it is my licence of choice and the licence that I like the most). Therefore there is no problem with licencing here. Now, the only (slight) problem that I see here is that the user has removed GFDL licence, and because that licence is non-revocable that is questionable. However, the removal of GFDL was done within seconds of upload and normally we consider that as a simple fixing of a mistake. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 09:02, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
it is paradoxical but par for the course, see also Commons:Multi-licensing. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 22:58, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

SS bolts

I am sure, that File:UI 199Fo30141702210003 "Norges SS. Edsavleggelsen" 1941-05-22 (NTBs krigsarkiv, Riksarkivet).jpg needs to be tagged with {{Nazi symbol}}, since the SS bolts are clearly visible. But what about File:UI 199Fo30141702210007 "Norges SS. Edsavleggelsen" 1941-05-22 (NTBs krigsarkiv, Riksarkivet).jpg, where the SS bolts are heavily distorted? I don't know, whether the Hirden emblem is banned in Germany or any other country. --92.216.164.225 20:29, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

And I don't know whether the slogan on File:Armband-ot-arbeitet.jpg is banned in Germany or any other country. --92.216.164.225 20:32, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
A further question is, whether File:Hitler-Jugend (1933).jpg and File:HJ-Armband-Sanitäter.jpg need also be tagged. --92.216.164.225 20:31, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Graffiti of swastikas

I am not sure, whether graffiti of swastikas in a trashcan or crossed-out swastikas need to be tagged with {{Swastika}}. I am also not sure whether File:2011-11-11 15-38-50-Puits Arthur-de-Buyer.jpg (a graffito of a Buddhist sauwastika in France) should be tagged. I also don't know whether France has an anti-Swastika law as strict as Germany or Austria. --92.216.164.225 20:38, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

{{Nazi symbol}} (to which {{Swastika}} redirects) is problematic more generally. It refers to a "symbol ... which has been banned by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany." But there is no blanket ban on such symbols; only on their use in certain contexts (otherwise, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Berlin, for example, would be breaking the law by displaying them). Furthermore the template claims that "The use of insignia of organizations that have been banned in Germany... are [sic] also illegal in Austria, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, France, Brazil, Israel, Ukraine, Russia and other countries...", but I doubt very much that that is true; both for the aforesaid reason, and because use of such symbols is controlled in those countries by the laws of those countries, not by virtue of their being "banned in Germany". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:28, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Watchlist bot filter issue

If I filter bot edits from my watchlist, most disappear, but those by User:ArndBot - which has a bot flag - are still shown. Is there a bug? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:40, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

In addition to having the bot flag, bots have to pass a 'bot' parameter when they make edits for the edits to be "bot edits". See [3]. @Aschroet: BMacZero (talk) 19:59, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
I am using a rather old bot framework ([4]). I guess this is the reason for it. I am planning to move pywikibot for the next bot run. --Arnd (talk) 20:37, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Using tabular data for keeping statistics of subscription and views number of some YouTube channels.

I want to move from ruwiki to Commons wiki work of my bot that updates data of number of subscribers and views of YouTube channels. In Wikidata forum users suggested me to using tabular data in Commons for keeping statistics. Is this correct solution?

P.S. I think that number of subscriptions and views of YouTube channel could not be copyrighted because this is trivial data what uses for informing users.

P.P.S. Those tabular data will be look like this. -- IEPCBM (talk) 20:42, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Main page does not exist on Commons

Hello, if I click on the Commons logo in the upper left corner, it takes me to the non-existing Hlavní stránka page. I think this could be caused by the interface language chosen in my preferences, but it should not redirect the Main page to some non-existing page. Does anybody know how to fix this issue? --Dvorapa (talk) 22:50, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

It most likely has to do with MediaWiki:Mainpage/cs defaulting to the translation for main page in, what I assumed due to your global contribs, is your selected language. I'm guessing that is wrong. Is Hlavní strana the correctly translated page for your language, Dvorapa? --Majora (talk) 04:38, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Yes, it is. I see, someone changed it last week on translatewiki.net. Thank you for your help. --Dvorapa (talk) 07:43, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Maybe this should be somehow banned not happen again once someone will change a word on translatewiki again? --Dvorapa (talk) 07:44, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
✓ Done I recreated the local page in question here. That will override any changes made to translatewiki. Although such system related things should go through that project this seems like something that we should handle locally to avoid this happening in the future. Other main page translations also have local copies so this isn't completely out of the ordinary. Dvorapa, please confirm that this change has taken affect (you may need to clear your cache and/or wait a second for the system to catch up with the changes as mediawiki namespace changes aren't necessarily instantaneous as I've found out). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Majora (talk • contribs) 21:25, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

November 08

submitting a tool

hello,
hope to be in the right place. I am new in Wikimedia Commons, and I've wandered in the website before landing here.
I've signed in, and my username is Rcecinati. I live in Italy.
My small contribution to Wikimedia Commons would like to be sharing a new tool of mine, I am going to introduce.
It is essentially a chatbot development platform , whose name is Telegram Road, and which can be used to create mobile applications for Telegram Messenger (like the name suggests).
The reason why I'm here is that one of the very first developped apps is Telegram Tour, which can show the nearest monuments around you (golocalized), and those monuments can also come from WikiLovesMonuments archive. The Wiki source is clearly declared and shown, and visitors are soon redirected to the WikiLovesMonuments website.
I have read that a mobile Android app was developed with this aim , but it seems to be any longer neither available nor supported. What's more, having chosen the Telegram Messenger base app, we get important side effects, such as :

- no new app is required for installation on the smartphone, only Telegram which is widespread and shared for several apps (chat, bots, ...)
- its UI is known to the user, no learning curve is required
- it's available on Android and iPhone platforms, as well as on desktop
- it's supported and debugged by a large team , granting high security standards

At current time, here are the coordinates to get in touch with Telegram Road and Telegram Tour are

- Telegram Road website : https://telegramroad.com
- Telegram Road bot : https://t.me/Troadbot
- Telegram Tour bot : https://t.me/TroadGeo_bot

Nowadays, only the italian monuments are registered, but the app is ready to import other worldwide contents, should an OK be received and some technical issues be solved.
I hope this can be somehow useful to Wikimedia Commons , and ready to go further steps.

yours
Riccardo Cecinati

—Preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.147.109.29 (talk) 10:21, 21 October 2018‎ (UTC)

  • Signing your posts on talk pages is required and it is a Commons guideline to sign your posts on deletion requests, undeletion requests, and noticeboards. To do so, simply add four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your comments. Your user name or IP address (if you are not logged in) and a timestamp will then automatically be added when you save your comment. Signing your comments helps people to find out who said something and provides them with a link to your user/talk page (for further discussion). Thank you.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 08:40, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

October 28

Free Music Archive

Hello.

This wonderful website Free Music Archive will be closing down. The future of the archive is uncertain, but we have done everything we can to ensure that our files will not disappear from the web forever.

I've started to upload free licensed files from FMA to this category : [5].

This link makes an access to free musics (PD, CC-by and CC-by-sa licenses).

--ComputerHotline (talk) 09:39, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Some of these files are CC-BY-NC. Please add {{LicenseReview}} to your uploads. I wonder if all these files are in scope. What about original creations of unknown artists ? What is their educational value ? — Racconish 💬 10:41, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
You mean like File:The Zombie Dandies - Halloween Again.ogg? en:Electric guitar does not have a single sound sample. en:Rhythm guitar does have some MIDI files but not a single real-world sample. en:Guitar riff, en:Introduction (music), … and that's only the first few seconds of the song. We're seriously low on examples for modern genres of music as well. --El Grafo (talk) 11:12, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
It may be problem of article themselves. See Category:Audio files of guitar music. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:23, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
Update : Closing Date Pushed to Nov 16 : [6] --ComputerHotline (talk) 13:17, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

"Derived work" button

I'd like to crop or mirror a file which is already at Commons, without needing to go through the pain of filling in its description and categories and licensing and author and source again. Is this possible? How can it be done? Gryllida (chat) 10:11, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

If you discover or upload an incorrectly oriented image, don’t forget about category: Flopped images and related categories. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 10:16, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. How does the latter link clone anything -- by copy/pasting the respective codes from the source page manually? I understand that this is better than filling in the fields in the upload wizard one by one. But is there not a script for doing this? Gryllida (chat) 10:21, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
@Gryllida: {{Rotate}}, rotation by 90, 180 and 270 degrees is done right away by a bot. Mirroring is something we hardly ever need here. Don't mirror images of people. Commons aims to be educational, a mirrored image is "false" in a way. The mirroring of File:Great British Swim Finish 2.jpg for example is not really desirable. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 19:21, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
I am using it in a page where it floats left. I had mirrored it for the person to 'face' the page. I would be glad to make a mirrored copy. Gryllida (chat) 23:52, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
@Gryllida: it's also used on Wikipedia. I've uploaded File:Ross Edgley (31843832508).jpg and File:Ross Edgley (31843832508) (cropped).jpg. But even for other projects (like wikinews), I wouldn't recommend it. Someone who is left-handed may appear to be right-handed and vice versa.
@Pigsonthewing: I didn't understand how you could revert it. Turns out I can too. Bug? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 03:57, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
You are right, we need two files if we really want.
It would be nice if when making a copy I also left a note at the original file, saying 'here is my derivative'. I guess it is not scripted yet and may be scripted in the future. Gryllida (chat) 04:07, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
@Gryllida: Maybe you would like Commons:derivativeFX. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 04:17, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
We should very rarely, if ever, mirror images of people. It goes against the spirit of our BLP guidelines to misrepresent them in such a manner. (Obviously this does not apply to fixing mirrored images uploaded from elsewhere). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:10, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing and Gryllida: I guess etwiki wasn't happy with it either: w:et:Fail:20181106100604!Great British Swim Finish 2.jpg. They took the old revision and uploaded it locally. Don't see that every day. They are using it now on w:et:Ross Edgley, I'll replace it. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 09:28, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

One photo, two attributions

Clearly the second image is a colorization of the first, but the second image is attributed to Asahel Curtis and the first to Frank H. Nowell, who was the official photographer of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. Both images (and attributions) come from the same institution, the University of Washington Library. I know we normally have a rule about not changing content that comes from "authoritative" third-party databases, but is there some appropriate way to add a note to these to the effect that one of these attributions has to be wrong? I've already written to the relevant person at the library pointing out the contradiction, but based on extensive experience I don't expect any explicit response (although they may silently correct their database). - Jmabel ! talk 02:48, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

i would put the attribution in brackets, "[ ]" , link the two image in other versions, and await institution metadata correction. maybe we need a "metadata disputed" maintenance category? Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 17:10, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
I'd already linked them. Bracketing is possible; if I do that, I'm inclined to do that only on the one I think is wrong. And, yes, a "metadata disputed" maintenance category might be a good idea. I'd be interested in hearing from some of the people who do a lot of uploading from GLAMs think about that. - Jmabel ! talk 22:21, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Photo challenge September results

Emotions: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 2
image
Title Euphoria with excitement Tears of joy after winning the Climbing World Championships a childs disgust
Author Basile Morin Simon04 Masse.media
Score 15 11 11
Schools: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image
Title Classroom with children in a primary school in Laos Nursery school children in Kyoto Kids rehearsing for school festival, Cusco Peru
Author Basile Morin MichaelMaggs Konalouisa
Score 34 12 9

Congratulations to Basile Morin, Simon04, Masse.media, MichaelMaggs and Konalouisa. -- Jarekt (talk) 03:28, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

I think that is the first time someone got, two first prizes in one month. --Jarekt (talk) 13:19, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

File:Ukraine activist Kateryna Handzyuk placard Sorry, so who ordered Handzyuk?.jpg was uploaded by me but other user wants to delete

Commons:Deletion requests/File:Ukraine activist Kateryna Handzyuk placard Sorry, so who ordered Handzyuk?.jpg — Preceding unsigned comment added by PoetVeches (talk • contribs) 12:08, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Can I ask some admins to join and help in voting of deletion a photo uploaded by me from the Voice of America. User @Ymblanter: nominated the photo for deletion; but I am against deletion; and now we are voting. @Ymblanter: says as if there is a panorama of art, slogan, that is subject to be copyrighted object, but description on the Voice of America reads there are protesters demand to find assassins (see source, there in Ukrainian language written below of the photo: "Protesters demand investigation of attacks on Ukrainian activists" https://ukrainian.voanews.com/a/freedom-house-%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8-%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%B0%D0%BA%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%B2%D1%96%D1%81%D1%82%D1%96%D0%B2-%D1%81%D1%83%D1%82%D1%82%D1%94%D0%B2%D0%B0-%D0%B7%D0%B0%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%B0-%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%96%D1%97-%D0%B2-%D1%83%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%97%D0%BD%D1%96/4597808.html). So, I think this is just photo of a demonstration on street, that has no copyright obvious, every one can photo this (otherwise the Voice of America would put author courtesy obviously on the photo, but there is nothing about it, only "VOA").PoetVeches (talk) 11:56, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Poster is clearly temporary display. So reason for deletion is valid. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:26, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
why nominator is randomly choosing this image of banner, and not the one in use is an illustration of "deletion before collaboration". Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 13:28, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
I nominated this one when it was still in use. The other one is arguably de minimis.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:16, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
i agree with you there. you of course understand why the uploader is upset when they are greeted with a deletion template? why should we bother covering protests, when all the photos with banner art will get nominated? it is a malignant assiduity that harms the encyclopedic mission. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 02:46, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

German translation behind "use this file"

The German translation behind the link "use this file" ("Herunterladen") is wrong. It says "vom Wikimedia Commons" but should say "von Wikimedia Commons". I don't know where to change it. --Seewolf (talk) 21:04, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

It is coming from MediaWiki:Gadget-Stockphoto.js/de. Whether or not vom, "from the Wikimedia Commons", von, "from Wikimedia Commons", or even "von der", "from the Wikimedia Commons" if Commons is considered a feminine noun is debatable (I know zero German so I got my information from Huon on this matter). However, the German article on Commons, de:Wikimedia Commons, uses von and I would assume they are the authoritative voice on such things. So...✓ Done. It might take a second for the system to catch up to the changes as modifications to the mediawiki namespace aren't immediate. --Majora (talk) 21:33, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

November 11

Files within Category:Wikimedia in Brazil GLAM initiative with Arquivo Nacional

Moved to Commons:Village pump/Copyright#Files within Category:Wikimedia in Brazil GLAM initiative with Arquivo Nacional
This section was archived on a request by: --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 17:25, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Want to play a game?

Hi all. I've added a new game to @Magnus Manske's distributed game: you can now match Commons categories to Wikidata items. It's based on searching Wikidata for the names of categories that are not yet linked to a Wikidata item. Please be careful when playing it, though - around 35% of the suggested matches so far have been accepted (so 65% rejected). Please let me know if you have any feedback/suggestions for improving it! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:47, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Nice made. Maybe a few more lines explanation in the intro would be nice. Rudolphous (talk) 10:50, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
@Rudolphous: If you can suggest a few lines, then I'd be happy to add some. ;-) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 15:42, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Great tool. It would be nice if a P373 (Commons category) property were also added to the Wikidata entry upon matching. Einstein2 (talk) 13:11, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

November 07

Files about to enter public domain

According to Commons:Hirtle chart, works published in the U.S. in 1923 with a copyright notice and with that copyright notice renewed will enter the public domain in 2019, which is now less than two months away. What tag will be appropriate for them? We don't seem to have a Template:PD-US-expired or anything similar. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 09:04, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

It was being discussed at Commons talk:Public Domain Day. I think PD-US-expired is a good 1923 and after license as works begin to become PD in the US in 2019. Abzeronow (talk) 16:16, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

November 12

Art Institute of Chicago

Good stuff

Just a heads up to these new CC0 high resolution images. --Izno (talk) 01:01, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

see also Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2018/10#Art_Institute_of_Chicago. maybe we should ping user:multichill. need to evaluate artwork for artist copyright. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 01:35, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Already uploaded quite a few of the paintings, see d:Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings/Collection/Art Institute of Chicago and Category:Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago. Some other collections are incoming too. Multichill (talk) 10:21, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Fanciful 1861 Japanese illustrated book of the US Revolutionary War

High quality scans here. The book is Osanaetoki Bankokubanashi (童絵解万国噺) by w:Kanagaki Robun. Not sure if it should be uploaded here or Wikisource or both.にこねこ (talk) 04:33, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Upload it to Wikisource, and probably you should crop to content for better readability. Vulphere 10:49, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
nope. first create multi-page pdf with a publisher program, upload to internet archive, and then upload here with IAuploader. then create wikisource index page from here. see also s:Help:Beginner's_guide_to_adding_texts (sorry not in Japanese, a much smaller project [7]) Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 15:27, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

How to deal with HREFs

Hi all, i see alot of pictures (mostly probably imported from Flickr) that contain HTML HREF elements which are not rendered by Wiki. Could we just convert them into Wiki external link syntax or should those be revmoved? --Arnd (talk) 11:45, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

@Aschroet: From what I have seen, most of them are advertising, such that we better serve our users by either leaving them alone or removing them.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:40, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-46

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

  • Some old mobile browsers can use the watchlist again. This has not worked for a while. These browsers are called grade C browsers. This helps for example Windows Phone 8.1 with Internet Explorer and Lumia 535 with Windows 10. [8]

Problems

  • You can choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. Users who use this view saw the edit conflict resolution page when they wanted to see a preview. This has been fixed. [9][10][11]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 November. It will be on all wikis from 15 November (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • You can use the content translation tool to translate articles. The developers are working on a new version. One of the changes will be a maintenance category. Articles where users add a lot of text from machine translation without changing it will be in that category. This is so the community can review it. The users will also have been warned before they publish the article that it has a lot of unchanged text from machine translations. [12]

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

19:21, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

November 13

Free pro wrestling photos from LyleCWilliams.net and WildcatBelts.com?

Apparently, LyleCWilliams.net released its extensive photo gallery into the public domain a few years ago ("Feel Free To Use These Pics (Except Direct-Linking to Message Boards, etc.) Please Just Put A Link to My Site From Yours!!!"). A detailed listing of these photos are available on this page over at Wikipedia. Also, Wikipedia may have permission to use championship belt photos from WildcatBelts.com according to this discussion on its pro wrestling WikiProject. It doesn't look like any photos from either website were ever uploaded though. 173.162.220.17 22:13, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm not confident that the statement from Lyle C. Williams is a release into the public domain. It looks to me like an {{Attribution}}-style licence. The only question is whether "use" includes redistribution and creation of derivative works, and whether the licence is irrevocable. As for WildcatBelts.com, the discussion is quite clear that the release isn't adequate for Commons, being only for non-commercial use in relevant articles on English Wikipedia. --bjh21 (talk) 00:02, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

November 09

w:Category:Characters created by Stan Lee

Hello.After the death of the person, I think we should add a lot of pages to Category:Undelete in 2089.How do we collect all the targeted pages? Thank you ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 07:47, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

I don't see it as all that productive; we'll probably have much better sources in 2089. Also, I can't think of a single work for which that is clearly the right year. He's an American author, so copyright lasts for 95 years from publication for pre-1978 works; he works for Marvel, so most of his works are corporate and thus 95 years from publication, and very little of his work was solo, so we'd have to worry about copyrights of coauthors.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:14, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Deletion of PDF files of Wikibooks

Commons:Deletion requests/File:Communication Theory.pdf

PDF is a very different format with different uses. As a community, do we support this [clarification: this nomination for deletion]? (clarification added after Leaderboard's reply) Should we encourage Wikibooks to upload those PDF files locally and re-enable uploads for all their users? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 10:34, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

I don't see why support should be removed. One reason why upload has been restricted on Wikibooks to uploaders is to encourage free material to be uploaded here. It may be different, but there isn't any copyright reason to do this... Leaderboard (talk) 10:50, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
out of consensus nomination: "Converting pdf files to djvu is not generally necessary and depending on file size and image content, may reduce quality unnecessarily" Help:Creating a DjVu file; per Commons:File types pdf is allowed. need to have a broad consensus before deleting files like this. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 14:19, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
The wikisource beginner's guide starts with the instruction to upload the scanned copy to commons in DjVu or PDF formats. See wikisource:Help:Beginner's guide to sources Thincat (talk) 21:36, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

[Update] Free Music Archive

Hello.

This wonderful website Free Music Archive will be shut down.

I've started to upload here [13] musics under free licenses.

This link permitt to access at free licensed musics (PD, CC-by, CC-by-sa).

Update : shut down at Nov 16th : [14].

--ComputerHotline (talk) 20:30, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Maybe someone could arrange for a systematic import from this website? Hopefully as it would be sad to see so much music get lost, also it would wise to contact the Internet Archive. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:44, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Correction, all the content will be made available through the Internet Archive, however having "an extra back-up" on Wikimedia Commons would be preferable too. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:50, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
ComputerHotline - When you upload these does anything need to be filled out or is it done automatically ?, I've never uploaded MP3s before - I have a select tool that basically means I can download all of these with a click of a button but I didn't know if come uploading I would need to fill anything out, Thanks, –Davey2010Talk 20:46, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Also agreeing with Donald Trung 『徵國單』 an import tool would be a lot easier and probably quicker. –Davey2010Talk 20:47, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
I use this tool : [15] but I uncheck "video" and "subtitles" box. I use it for each music. --ComputerHotline (talk) 20:56, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
ComputerHotline - Just found out before you answered :), Only problem is that you can't select multiple files ?, Unless that's changed I can't see how this method is viable ? –Davey2010Talk 21:01, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
"Only problem is that you can't select multiple files ?" : Exact. --ComputerHotline (talk) 06:52, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

November 14

Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web

Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web

Please help translate to your language

Example of improvements

Hello,

In a few weeks the Readers web team will be changing how some templates look on the mobile web site. We will make these templates more noticeable when viewing the article. We ask for your help in updating any templates that don't look correct.

What kind of templates? Specifically templates that notify readers and contributors about issues with the content of an article – the text and information in the article. Examples like Template:Unreferenced or Template:More citations needed. Right now these notifications are hidden behind a link under the title of an article. We will format templates like these (mostly those that use Template:Ambox or message box templates in general) to show a short summary under the page title. You can tap on the "Learn more" link to get more information.

For template editors we have some recommendations on how to make templates that are mobile-friendly and also further documentation on our work so far.

If you have questions about formatting templates for mobile, please leave a note on the project talk page or file a task in Phabricator and we will help you.

Thank you!

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 19:34, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

This has actually appeared like this on my mobile telephone and phablet for a couple of weeks now. So maybe this message is a bit late? Although I haven't read anything about it in Tech News, anyhow this is a major improvement as "Page issues" was extremely misleading, in fact things like WikiProjects were listed as "Page issues". --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:12, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
You may have been part of the A/B test that recently happened. The work has been mentioned in past issues of Tech News. [16] [17] It's easy to miss. I have added a new note to Tech News. It will be in the issue that comes out on Monday. I'm glad to see you like the improvements. Here's to more to come. :) CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
  • It really speaks volumes that a WMF staffer uploads a JPEG screenshot to Commons with an incorrect copyright status statement and leaves it uncategorized: Bad at tech stuff, bad at legal stuff, and bad at curation staff — and yet this is one of our «User Experience Designer»s… -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 21:32, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Tuválkin - Oh boy, I'm definitely guilty of not making a substantial enough effort to review the policies regarding the various types of copyright. I appreciate you calling me out — it's a good learning opportunity, and I would welcome any guidance from you : ) As a newcomer to this community I've definitely still got a lot to learn and will aim to better follow best practices going forward. AHollender (WMF) (talk) 18:02, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
Concerning categories, I’d be delighted to help a genuine newbie, but you’re not one, are you? You’re an WMF empolyeee. If they think it’s a good idea to hire people who don’t know the basics of wiki editing (adding cats is pretty basic), let them make sure you get properly trained by paid specialists before you start, instead of relying on volunteers to prod you along.
As for the file format you chose for this screenshot, I’m struck speechless: This is not about specific Commons’ or WMF’s habits and policies; JPEG should be used only for photos and scans, while PNG is the correct option for screenshots. What kind of professional training on web design fails to hammer that down in lesson 001?
-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 19:13, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
As Alex mentioned, he's new to Commons and we're all helping to get him up-to-speed on everything. As anyone who was once new knows, it's complicated. If you're going to be disappointed at someone, let it be me for not catching it sooner and helping Alex. I've been around longer. :) Thanks to Slowking4 for taking a moment to add the licensing and category information. The help is appreciated. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
it's all good. turns out there is a template for screenshots. the WMF does complicate things for use of logos, with trademark. special case, for which they should have a learning pattern. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 19:10, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
We do have a learning pattern! Thanks for the healthy reminder, I just sent it to Alex. :). CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
  • @CKoerner (WMF): So, when a genuine noob makes a mistake, s/he risks to be eviscerated by any random admin or other user and that’s business as usual, but when a WMF employee makes a mistake (or three mistakes in one single edit as in the case at hand), we’re to back off and let him find his ropes? I think it should not be like that: The WMF is a very rich employer, thanks to donations recieved due to unpaid and often unthanked volunteer work; WMF employees better be professionals above any reproach. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 19:13, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
don't know why you have become so solicitous of newbies, in order to attack the WMF? is it any wonder why employees choose not to interact or learn intricate special license cases? take him to AN/U, it would be par for the course. or you could demonstrate your newbie solicitude, by tutoring some newbies. can't wait. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 23:22, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

The Motd/2018-11-14 (en) has mistake.

In the template {{Motd/2018-11-14 (en)}} is written "International Space Sation" (without "T" after "S" in the word "Sation"). More correct is "International Space Station". Could you fix it? -- IEPCBM (talk) 10:29, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

✓ Done Yann (talk) 10:46, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Sourcing puzzle left by Jan Arkesteijn

JA upload, scanned from print #73

Could anyone help out with sourcing the original high resolution scan of this Toulouse-Loutrec poster? The quoted source at MMFA has a maximum 763x1030 image and no EXIF data. It could be that there is a zoomable image somewhere on unlinked pages, but I have yet to find it. The high resolution photograph, 4,417 × 5,910 pixels, is credited to Peter Schälchi, who appears to be a professional photographer for galleries, though the EXIF data on the Commons version is not original, including a claim of Public Domain Mark, and is worth overwriting to correct back to a verifiable version. Unfortunately, as with many of Jan Arkesteijn's uploads, this high quality photograph has been tampered with, shifting yellow to become more orange, visibly different from the smaller version of the same photograph of the same print at the MMFA quoted source.

If this one can be tracked down, there are several other photographs in the same collection that could be "refreshed" from a verifiable source.

Thanks --Fæ (talk) 12:13, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Is this useful ? — Racconish 💬 12:33, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi,
There are quite a lot of copies on the Net of this work of art:

Regards, Yann (talk) 12:33, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

These are interesting sources, we probably should upload some of these alternatives, though some will need stitching so will have no true EXIF data. In terms of the JA source, that may take more digging. Easiest comparison is EXIF + max resolution:
  1. LOC, no remote access to full digital copy (may be worth further checking, this is not always technically true)
  2. Van Gogh Museum, 1,482 × 2,000, EXIF says Hasselblad H5D-50c MS, which is a different camera
  3. NGA, 3,019 × 4,000, so research quality but a different crop and the EXIF data is very different
  4. INHA, 3,965 × 5,000, zoomable behind IIIP, so a research quality image worth uploading, but it is restitched so no EXIF and not the JA version
  5. Christies 2,378 × 3,200, no meaningful EXIF so though JA has downloaded from this source this is not the same photograph
So, none is a match so far, though at least two are excellent alternates to upload that can be verified for correct colour and EXIF data.
Perhaps we have to write off the JA version as unverifiable as the source is dead, and so just presume the colours are false and clearly mark it as such? I hesitate to put it up for deletion due to being misleading, especially misrepresenting the professional and named photographer, but this may still be an option when the alternatives are hosted and it will be arguably redundant. --Fæ (talk) 13:08, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Alternatives, none digitally matching the JA upload
  • MMA 2,992 × 3,793, scanned from print #45
    MMA
    2,992 × 3,793, scanned from print #45
  • INHA 3,965 × 5,000, scanned from print #26
    INHA
    3,965 × 5,000, scanned from print #26
  • NGA 3,019 × 4,000, scanned from print #9
    NGA
    3,019 × 4,000, scanned from print #9

--Fæ (talk) 13:33, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

apparently the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal is distributing photos via google drive https://www.mbam.qc.ca/salle-de-presse/ [18] (here is another example from the exhibition in 2016 File:Ambassadeurs - Aristide Bruant, by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.jpg), perhaps you could contact them presse@mbamtl.org -- Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 13:39, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
  •  Comment before you dig through EXIF data and resolution, there's a simple method of excluding some candidates. All these scans have been made from different original prints: Check the red number in the bottom left corner! The print number is 73 in the JA upload. --El Grafo (talk) 13:41, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
    Excellent observation. If this apparently tampered with copy of print 73 is the only photograph we have of that print (as it seems to be), then it should not be deleted. However the misleading EXIF data needs fixing and the photographer should be named on the image page along with a notice that our version does not match the photographer's original. --Fæ (talk) 13:45, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
There is quite a significant colour variation among the versions at these different institutions. Compare the coat of the man on the left, which varies from blue to green or to pale blue. The prints are differently numbered so there may be some real life variation, separate from the variation in photography, processing and presentation. Perhaps some prints have faded. For this image, there may be no "correct colour". This is part of the reason why we discourage overwriting art images just because the happen to be the same "work of art". Perhaps we should include the source institution in the file name? The INHA image is actually only 2636x3451 when you compare the actual print size, vs 3987x5286 in Jan's photo.
Wrt the colours of Jan's version, it does look like he has enhanced the saturation and contrast, but without the source image, we can't tell what degree. Depressing to see he continues to attempt to shift the colour of cream-coloured paper to make it look like a Xerox photocopy sheet. Perhaps {{Inaccurate}} is sufficient? I wouldn't suggest overwriting unless we can find another copy of that photograph of that print. Btw, what is the "misleading EXIF that needs fixing"? If you are meaning the PD Mark, then that doesn't seem to be "misleading" anyone except Fae.
Most JPGs downloaded from these zoom viewing apps have no or little EXIF. This is a shame and can mean the photographer or scanner goes uncredited. But also it often means the JPG lacks a colour profile. Although it can be assumed to be sRGB, there is significant benefit in embedding this in the JPG, so that all viewers see the correct colours. The EXIFTOOL can extract sRGB profiles from one JPG and embed in another, though in fact most such profiles are copyright. Ha! Hidden inside all our free images are chunks of copyright belonging to Adobe or Microsoft, etc. You can get a very high quality and totally free sRGB profile by downloading Argyll CMS. -- Colin (talk) 13:53, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
I have to fully agree with Colin here, additionally although Jan Arkesteijn’s uploads are in fact a manipulation of these works of art many of them actually do illustrate interesting alternative colour schemes which in many cases make the depicted scenes look more realistically. Alternative variants of existing art works are well within scope as they illustrate an alternative style and/or interpretation of existing works, it’s almost ironic that Fæ suddenly acts as if we now have years of “Jan Arkesteijn backlog” that will cost volunteers time and creates whole category trees filled with various categories completely based on Jan Arkesteijn uploads we need to “fix”, I’m not against these maintenance categories, per se, in fact I’d welcome them as Jan Arkesteijn has done quite a lot of “damage” with Adone PhotoShop, but the template Colin suggested is probably enough and it beats the deletion of educational content simply because Fæ only perceives the EXIF data to be false, but even in that case the creation of a potential template like {{Inaccurate EXIF}} or {{Possibly inaccurate EXIF}} would be more beneficial than outright deletion. In fact a couple of months ago I uploaded illustrations of banknotes from a 19th (nineteenth) century book from the Manchu Qing Dynasty which someone on the English-language Wikipedia pointed out to me were fantasies created by historians to sell fake banknotes for high prices to Chinese collectors and unfortunately many today still believe these lies, eventually I just added the information that the depicted banknote was of a fantasy, but the fantasies themselves (though inaccurate) can still be used to illustrate fraudulent ways that collectors were being scammed in purchasing fake banknotes in Imperial China, I don't see Jan Arkesteijn’s works as much different and personally find his versions created with Adobe PhotoShop to look more pleasing, but do agree that the original should be uploaded and used when illustrating the referenced works. It’s better to upload the originals with correct EXIF data as separate files and tag the inaccurate ones than waste all of our time with deletion discussions and unnecessary removal of EXIF data. Whenever I see people use our files they usually link to Wikimedia Commons or even a version of that page on the Meta-Wiki or the English-language Wikipedia and almost always use the license specified in the description. Also EXIF data often isn't accurate as a book that’s digitised in 2016 but published in 1766 will state that the book is from “2016”, would anyone suppose that reusers will think that the book was published in the year that it was digitised? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:16, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
Can I be quite clear that, AFAIK, the only thing wrong with Jan's JPG is the white/colour/saturation. It is that aspect which I think warrants an {{Inaccurate}} that would discourage use on projects or by others -- for those images where we don't have alternatives that are as high resolution/quality. There is no consensus that there is anything wrong with the EXIF. In another JPG, there was a query about licence version, but in this, all I can see is Fae upset that Jan tagged the image as PD in BOTH the file description template AND in the EXIF. Jan also may have added some other tags concerning title/author/source, and only Fae seems upset about this additional embedded metadata information. He has this idea that EXIF is "official" and represents a statement by the "source". Nobody else shares this view. So let's not go down the route of {{Inaccurate EXIF}} nonsense. I care very much that artworks on Commons that are sourced from professional institutions are visually identical to their sources, because that's just being respectful and honest, and any edited versions must be clearly indicated in their filename. Nobody gave two hoots about EXIF tags till Fae started gravedancing on Jan's uploads. -- Colin (talk) 21:35, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand - Müller piano

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#Müller piano Thank you! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

November 15

Flickr will start deleting photos in 2019-02

See also: Commons_talk:Flickr_files#Flickr_paid_plans_and_deletions.

Flickr today announced changes to its pricing structure. I think this part is highly relevant to Commons:

*Free members with more than 1,000 photos or videos uploaded to Flickr have until Tuesday, January 8, 2019, to upgrade to Pro or download content over the limit. After January 8, 2019, members over the limit will no longer be able to upload new photos to Flickr. After February 5, 2019, free accounts that contain over 1,000 photos or videos will have content actively deleted -- starting from oldest to newest date uploaded -- to meet the new limit.

This means that in just over three months, Flickr will start deleting photos, including ones that might be useful for us.

We should try to preserve as many useful (freely licensed and in scope) photos as we can here on Commons over the next three months. Does anybody reading this have any experience with the Flickr API? Is it possible to automatically generate a list of non-Pro users with more than 1000 photos that have at least one freely licensed image that is not yet on Commons? It should, ideally, contain information on how many such images the user has and when the account was last active. I think manually searching for random search terms is going to miss many good photos, so I propose this automated approach; obviously the photos still need to be manually checked for COM:SCOPE compliance, flickrwashing, etc. Tokfo (talk) 17:40, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

User:Fæ maybe knows. But this is a job for https://www.archiveteam.org/. They probably know. This is a huge operation though.. They could probably use our help in terms of bandwidth. Hell, they could use WMF's help. And damnit, Slowking4 said we are too dependent on Flickr and now this happens. Slowking4 deserves way more credit. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 23:00, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
The total number of (public) photos for any account can be found using an API call like https://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.people.getInfo.html. The same call shows the date of the first photo uploaded and if they are a Pro account.
I would not be sure of the best way of finding a list of the most interesting users. Intuitively I would look at the accounts which contribute to groups which are most likely to have high educational value content.
Note that any search and test pattern would have to stick to the 3600 queries/hour limit, which is probably fine with a bit of thought.
In terms of my volunteer time, I would be most interested in running batch uploads for a few highly valuable accounts, preferably where there are more than 10,000 photographs to upload. I would presume that whatever Flickr's new strategy for driving people to subscribe is, any accounts on 'the commons' will be exempt. Sadly I have two free accounts with large batches of archive images in them which I will probably let go. For me, Flickr was a good alternative to Wikimedia Commons where non-commercial photographs could be parked, even "secretly", for future projects. I guess the alternative is my hard disk, and if that goes "pop", hard luck. --Fæ (talk) 23:16, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
"I would not be sure of the best way of finding a list of the most interesting users."
One way (which will not be sufficient) is to look at accounts of which (some) photos were already imported here. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 23:54, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I assume the change will affect organisations as well as individuals. I'm curious about how long it will take before "pro" accounts that aren't renewed will have photos deleted: all accounts with over 1000 photos should be considered at risk. Some Flickr accounts were created by people now deceased or organisations now defunct. (e.g., Phillip_Capper or Hone Morihana who was apparently John Clarke.) --ghouston (talk) 00:01, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
it did not take a genius to anticipate this: it is the monetization cycle of life. we might want to talk to our friends at internet archive. they will take them all. https://archive.org/details/image our flickr tools will be less effective as the prolific photographers are driven off, so we need better tools to upload from IA. -- Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 01:30, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Maybe we should proactively archive (with InternetArchiveBot?) those we use as {{Flickrreview}}, so we don't have future dispute over whether it was actually marked CCL or not? — regards, Revi 04:45, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
IABot doesn't actually archive pages, to my knowledge; it just searches through the existing archives. (I run a Toolforge tool which does [send requests to] archive pages, but it only archives the same pages over and over again.) Jc86035 (talk) 05:22, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Then we probably should consider doing such thing with other stuff or... making IAbot do it? — regards, Revi 05:31, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
IA bot does archive pages in use as sources, see also w:User:InternetArchiveBot. we need it for image sources here, anyone want to ask cyberpower to bring it over? problem with "no crawlers" remains, maybe need archive.is for those. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 19:52, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Good to know. Beside missing new images this is also problematic for missing source and further categorization existing images. Rudolphous (talk) 07:37, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
I just realized we must clear CAT:FLICKR till the deadline or we might lose valid CC image. — regards, Revi 13:04, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Here's a suggestion, although it won't be a popular one, we could mass import all free licensed images and place them all into "provisional categories" where editors can pick files that are out of scope and/or copyright violations for removals, these categories could be organised per account so if one account tends to be mostly out of scope or non-compatible with COM:LICENSE then we could just empty the whole category. The current way Wikimedia Commons is organised with tools like Flickr2Commons is to be completely dependent on imports from there, heck I can't remember how often I inserted pictures from Flickr into Wikipedia articles simply because no photographer from Wikimedia Commons itself bothered to take it. Maybe we could also try to contact Flickr to run a banner atop pages to invite photographers to Wikimedia Commons and explain what the project scope is so rather than being dependent on Flickr we could actually have a large number of original content. I can't think of a single other website that Wikimedia Commons is so dependent on and we should salvage what we can and it might be a better long-term plan to import everything and then delete a large number of files before the content is lost. Honestly I was expecting this to happen ever since Verizon gave Flickr away to some small company no-one every heard of, it's no wonder that Flickr can't sustain itself because without Yahoo!'s/Verizon's servers there are simply too much images to store.

Maybe we could ask the Wikimedia Foundation for help with a mass-import or to try and make a deal with Flickr. Getting the Internet Archives involved is also a great (and necessary idea). Importing everything that's freely licensed and then sorting through it might be the best long-term plan, most copyright © violation-hunters go through Flickr images most of the time now anyhow and having maintenence categories that could take a couple of years to go through is better than perhaps losing the internet's biggest source of free images.

By the way, is all of Flickr The Commons already on Wikimedia Commons? I think it would also be a good idea to import all of the public domain images from there and add them into a few maintenance categories. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:56, 2 November 2018 (UTC)


See this comment by Flickr "All of our institutional Flickr Commons accounts are already exempted. Further, we've been talking with the E.D. at Creative Commons generally about the changes and they have shared their concerns and priorities with us. There's lots more that we'll be working through and detailing in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!". Also this comment by CC. When they talk about "the Commons" they mean this, not us nor CC images in general.

I've said before that our strategy of treating Flickr as photo resource to mine, but not engaging with the photographers, is wrong. Rather than uploading people's photos by bot, we should have been inviting them here. Both Flickr and Wikimedia Commons only survive by being communities of people. Neither would survive if just an accumulation of photos that nobody sought to grow, improve, curate, manage, and discuss. The new Flickr owners know what matters is their active users, not the JPGs on a server, and I support their attitude that they don't want to see users as "the product" like Facebook does, but wants to generate income in a more transparent honest way.

I don't think the suggestion to relax our "educational scope" requirement has any chance whatsoever. That's a core part of this project. There are other websites that seek to archive the web. There are 400 million CC photos on Flickr (though many will be -NC). -- Colin (talk) 18:02, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Dump a million files and expect someone to review them later seems like the normal thing to do here.--BevinKacon (talk) 16:23, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I've done some quick numbers on this (independent of the discussion here so there may be some overlap). I was surprised by how much of a source Flickr seems to be - around 15% of image description pages, 7.5 million of them, have a link to a Flickr page (which presumably almost always indicates it was sourced from there.)
Looking at 5000 randomly-sampled Flickr accounts which have been used to source pictures on Commons, and weighting the result by the number of images on Commons which appear to be linked to those accounts, approximately 1/3 of our Flickr-sourced images were sourced from accounts which may now be at risk. The majority were sourced from pro accounts (or Flickr Commons accounts, which per Colin's note above seem to be be safe); images sourced from "smaller" free accounts are a relatively negligible share of the whole, perhaps around 5%. The numbers were similar with a sample based on the most frequently used source accounts, once Flickr Commons was taken into consideration. These numbers are all a bit rough but I suspect they do broadly reflect reality.
These numbers do seem to suggest that "at risk" accounts make up a fairly large chunk of what we source from Flickr, but not the overwhelming majority. And, of course, a fair chunk of the most active accounts may well switch back over to being pro (it's quite likely that many were in previous years and have let it lapse because, well, it became essentially a free service!) Andrew Gray (talk) 18:23, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
I forgot to add the useful bit! What I'll try and do is put together a list of accounts which seem most likely to be of interest to us - ones we've used as a source reasonably often already (so they're likely to have Commons-relevant material and licensing), where there are a substantially larger number of images on Flickr than we seem to have here (so there's scope for import work), and where they are potentially at-risk (large, not Pro). I don't have the capacity to analyse the license of those accounts' images and do any importing, but hopefully this is something that might help support manual review of the situation. I'll try and get it posted tomorrow. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:00, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Andrew. Useful analysis here and on your blog. There may also be a small proportion of users here who upload their own Flickr photos and who we can hope would carry on uploading their new photos here. Flickr plan to delete the oldest photos first, which are also the ones perhaps most likely to have been hoovered up here already, leaving the new material. Wrt Flickr userbase, there appear to be a number of people treating it simply as a free cloud backup (1TB was a huge backup for JPGs). They will likely have dumped their photo shoots largely unedited, and any good photos are mixed among the rubbish. At the other end are the pro photographers who only used Flickr to show off a portfolio, which itself will be substantially smaller than 1000 images -- if you don't realise how great they are after a few dozen photos, then you never will. In between are photographers with a following who upload new interesting photos regularly to keep their profile high, or amateurs sharing their lives with friends and family without any Facebook hassle. Even though the 1000 image deadline is months away, there may be some who decide now is the time to trim their portfolios or to simply delete an unused account. Those using it for backup may delete the account once they have backed up to Amazon or elsewhere. -- Colin (talk) 10:46, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
I just thought of something.
We're already losing images.
No joke. Once people read the announcement, some would have started deleting their own pictures themselves, the ones they care least about, to get under 1000. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 17:20, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Well, I am deleting my Flickr images every day. I have around 7000 there, which I used to illustrate my blog posts, and I am slowly taking them elsewhere (the main work is to update the blog posts). I am not going to stay on Flickr in any case, because now I do not have any respect for them. They are mostly landscape photos, and my estimate is that only about 30-50% are worthwhile to upload on Commons (of which many already are here). The rest are not suitable: Freedom of panorama issues, scope issues, and many are taken from points where we already have Commons images of superior quality.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:00, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Just a quick remark without having read the whole discussion: There are also many, many pictures on flickr that are of no use for Commons whatsoever (of the personal photo type, lots of duplicates and near-duplicates etc.), so I'm opposed to any kind of automated blanket upload from flickr, creating an additional huge pile of not very satisfying work for Commons volunteers. But the approach mentioned by Alexis Jazz ("look at accounts of which (some) photos were already imported here") might work. Gestumblindi (talk) 17:50, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

I've taken a look at the infobox pictures for the first 10 actors from the 70s, 80s and 90s on w:List of African-American actors. And the first 10 for the main ceremony on w:60th Annual Grammy Awards. This seemed sort-of random for mostly American celebrities, although I'm not sure it really is. Results: 5/40 no image. 22/35 Flickr, 4/35 by Gage, 11/35 Commons, 2/35 other, 4/35 at risk. I am mostly surprised so many actually have a pro account. Please note I haven't been cherry-picking here, if I had done that I would just list Jennifer Lopez and Morgan Freeman.. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 18:59, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Extended content

7/10 from Flickr, but none at immediate risk. 3/10 Commons users. Let's look at the first 10 from the 80s..

7/10 from Flickr again, 2 Commons users, 1 other. Two at risk. What about the 90s?

Let's try the first 10 for the main ceremony on w:60th Annual Grammy Awards.

List of heavily used at-risk accounts

Okay, here we go. These are the top 50 "at risk" flickr accounts, as ranked by to the number of existing pages which have at least one link containing their flickrID - this isn't perfect but it's a decent first approximation to "number of files sourced from there". (This omits any links using the human-readable labels rather than the 97499887@N06 type flickrIDs, but it's a decent approximation - 96% of pages with a Flickr link have a flickrID identifiable somewhere.)

I've started leaving some notes matching them up to Commons categories - please feel free to expand these. Andrew Gray (talk) 21:04, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Extended content
Flickr user Linking pages Total images Category Notes
97499887@N06 145067 166130 Category:Images from Forest & Kim Starr hard to count with subcategorisation but we may have the vast majority of these already. Petscan reports 203259 images in the category tree below it which is more than were posted to Flickr (perhaps some duplication?)
31582298@N08 124895 196750 Category:Photographs by the National Assembly of Ecuador ~65% on Commons
72739078@N00 69870 103499 Category:Photographs by S. Pakhrin 57k images so incomplete (personal account - perhaps not all under a free license?). May be some not in tracking category.
133821783@N02 26440 79512 photos appear to be filed as "US Army" and not attributed to the institution, so not easy to count, but ~30% on Commons
22539273@N00 23927 153395 Category:Files from Guilhem Vellut Flickr stream just 5k images so very incomplete, <5%. Not clear why the mismatch between images in the category & inbound links; perhaps not all are properly categorised? (personal account - perhaps not all under a free license?)
40561337@N07 20330 19127 Category:Photographs by Peerapat Wimolrungkarat more or less complete
10021639@N05 20044 32768 Category:Photographs by the Ecuador Chancellery 60% on Commons
48776503@N05 17975 32735 Category:Images from US Naval Forces Central Command Not all images appear to be in the category; others may be filed as just "US Navy". About 50% on Commons
58927646@N02 17244 19415 Category:Photographs by IngolfBLN 85% on Commons (personal account - perhaps not all under a free license?)
40948266@N04 16592 27217 Category:Photographs by Björn S. about 75% on Commons (personal account - perhaps not all under a free license?)
122521784@N04 14710 37058 Category:Images by Valder137 about 40% on Commons (personal account - perhaps not all under a free license?)
75302333@N02 14584 23832 Category:Files from Texas Army ROTC Flickr stream about 60% on Commons (note apparent lack of filenames/descriptions though)
30084118@N00 14443 24982 apparently no tracker category, probably only ~60% on Commons (personal account - perhaps not all under a free license?) – Flickr account deleted!
42130586@N02 14118 40552 Category:Photographs by the Saeima Administration probably <40% on Commons
126433814@N04 13779 24661 Category:Photographs by jeremyg3030 probably ~60% on Commons (personal account - perhaps not all under a free license?)
64337707@N07 13319 14320 apparently no tracker category, probably ~90% on Commons (personal account - perhaps not all under a free license?)
133711121@N07 13043 18273 apparently no tracker category, probably ~80% on Commons. (Confusingly, while images seem to be CC-BY, the overall profile seems to have a generic non-commercial-use restriction. Not quite sure how that works.)
14583963@N00 12832 35864 Category:Photographs by David Short probably ~35% on Commons (personal account - perhaps not all under a free license?)
133200397@N03 12204 135892 Category:Photographs by Sergei Gussev probably ~10% on Commons (personal account - perhaps not all under a free license?)
61765479@N08 11832 15486 Category:Photographs by the African Union Mission to Somalia (may be other categories, numbers in this one seem a little low). Perhaps 50-75% on Commons.
130251635@N03 11581 163204 Category:Photographs by Miguel Discart Category shared with other Flickr accounts - probably <10% on Commons (personal account - perhaps not all under a free license?)
79383703@N08 10755 11393 No clear tracker category. Probably about 90% on Commons.
60393599@N03 10548 18772 Category:Photographs by the National Police of Colombia With lots of subcategorisation. ~50% on Commons.
33398884@N03 10224 13501 Category:Photographs by Ben Sale ~75% on Commons (personal account - perhaps not all under a free license?)
50415738@N04 9768 16822 Category:Photographs by sv1ambo ~60% on Commons (personal account - perhaps not all under a free license?)
21612624@N00 9722 16417
10352740@N03 9474 64836
37691369@N08 9381 18548
77712181@N07 9295 10812
74711243@N06 8861 21930
49251707@N07 8666 38325
99279135@N05 8641 15343
130961247@N06 8601 7539
75116651@N03 8178 46243
51811543@N08 8126 12499
23690396@N02 8060 12193
96396586@N07 7815 11763
55426027@N03 7509 11942
140656059@N03 7426 33037
63368911@N00 7315 11754
65581273@N05 7298 16107
122801678@N03 7164 148873 Category:Photographs by Miguel Discart Category only has some images; others unclear (possibly no tracking category?). Probably <10% on Commons (personal account - perhaps not all under a free license?)
78404784@N07 6965 15343
135812973@N04 6836 26818
24415554@N04 6656 15466
17364971@N00 6531 6552
55289779@N00 6421 50799
35591378@N03 6279 6668
92793865@N07 6188 16691
22147358@N04 6149 6434

I am probably the most likely currently available uploader for many of these accounts due to custom methods like Fæ/Flickr API detail. Where I appear as uploader, please drop me a note if any appears to need a refresh. For some accounts there are very good reasons to avoid updates, or uploading at all. For example Category:Images from US Naval Forces Central Command are better uploaded from the official DVIDS site, where all photographs with the official VIRINs should appear; uploading from Flickr is certain to create duplicates as the two different versions are not digitally identical as they vary by EXIF data, hence the API does not flag up the duplicate error. In the example of Category:Photographs by the National Assembly of Ecuador, uploading all photographs becomes controversial, as there have been many deletions due to limited educational value and many are near duplicates.

Rather than a panicky rush upload by January, I suggest a wget type grab and put the dump on a server, which volunteers can pick over for the next couple of years until we feel all the value has been sucked out of it. I'm sure the WMF can allow a 10TB dump on Labs, and all the above are probably less than that. Perhaps a friendly WMF person could be asked to do it, based on this volunteer generated list? --Fæ (talk) 10:24, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

  • You know, how important is the original Flickr file to copyright reviewers? When I do make copyvio checks I only need a) the uploader's identity, b) the EXIF, c) the upload date and d) the image content as other information does not contribute anything. All this info is usually passed on when Flickr image is uploaded on Commons, so I wouldn't think that the original image disappearing would create any doubts about the copyright status of the file uploaded here. I think the main concern are files which are on Flickr but aren't on Commons yet. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:18, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Categorizing files for curation

If you're uploading a large number of files from a flickr stream and don't have the time to completely curate them all (finding derivative works, adding categories, adding descriptions, useful filenames, etc), please add them to a category like Category:Files from XYZ Flickr stream needing cleanup, then add {{Flickr mass upload needing cleanup}} to the category. This will place the category into Category:Files from Flickr needing cleanup, which will make it easier to track what flickr imports need curation. Thanks! Pi.1415926535 (talk) 07:48, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm working in an adaptation of the script in User:Fæ/Flickr API detail to upload from Flickr accounts dealing with Spain. I was wondering whether there was a specific category or template to state they must be curated. --Discasto talk 10:25, 6 November 2018 (UTC)


Flickr will not delete CC photos

See also: Commons_talk:Flickr_files#Flickr_paid_plans_and_deletions.

[19] Just announced. --Masem (talk) 18:03, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Official blog post. The caveat is that users with >1000 images will not have their CC images deleted but will be blocked from uploading any more photos. So they have a choice: stop uploading, start deleting photos themselves, or upgrade to Pro. Flickr have said that charities and similar organizations are likely to be offered free Pro accounts. But this still means that ordinary users who have maxed out their account, may start deleting CC images on their on accord. And the deadline for uploading a CC photo that stays past the deadline was 1 November, so we won't be seeing anyone converting their photos to CC to escape the axe. -- Colin (talk) 19:51, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I think this significantly reduces the problem (and prevents disused accounts from collapsing) but it does mean that some reductions are still likely. Andrew Gray (talk) 18:47, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Very good news. I would frame it like this: users with CC-BY-NC photos will be able to change to license to CC-BY-SA so we can import before they delete. If they refuse to change the license, it's not our problem and we shouldn't care about those photos. Therefore, we should import as many compatible photos as we can, somehow get as many Flickr users as possible, as quickly as possible, to release non-CC photos, and we don't have to hurry to get non-commercial photos released under a non-NC license for inactive Flickr users. Wumbolo (talk) 15:19, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
I just deleted the >1000 photos from my account just to discover I hadn't to. When you read the e-Mail Flickr has sent, you do not read any CC exception and because they announced to start deletion with the oldest (and probably most linked) photos, as a user, you will start deleting probably those that haven't been heavily linked. Expect some people manually deleting photos due to Flickr's mal-information. -- 131.173.213.170 13:10, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

November 02

Baptism (denomination)

We have a well-populated Category:Methodism, but I can't find a corresponding category for Baptism. (I suspect this may be because of the other meaning of the word baptism, the act rather than the denomination.) Is there something out there I'm missing, or should I create it? If the latter, Category:Baptism (denomination) or something else? - Jmabel ! talk 17:10, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Are not methodists also baptists? Ruslik (talk) 20:41, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
@Ruslik0: No, they are not: some points of doctrine in common, but quite distinct, especially from an institutional point of view. Among other things, Baptists have no hierarchy: there is no such thing as a Baptist bishop. - Jmabel ! talk 22:27, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Found it: Category:Baptist. Seems misnamed. What do others think? - Jmabel ! talk 22:28, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
here you go https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q93191 ; https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8289318 -- Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 13:26, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
How does that in any way address whether it is a poorly chosen name? - 17:31, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
Rename it to "Category:Baptist Christianity" like suggested at d:Q8289318? --ghouston (talk) 20:41, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
you are making a nomenclature argument. you might want to look at the ontology at wikidata, and use a theological dictionary as a source to cleanup the categories to reflect the consensus of scholars. do not know what you mean by "Baptism"; that is not a consensus useage. 98.169.251.154 01:45, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Ontology at Wikidata? If this is an attempt at comedy, it fails, and badly. I've seen category mistakes all over Wikimedia projects but Wikidata is sometimes indiscriminate in its usages, whereas it should be trying to unify. By failing to resolve discrepancies between even en:WP and Commons, to cite a relevant example, before seeking to be an authority, it fails in any sense of usefulness and merely becomes a maintenance burden for anyone who cares for accuracy. Look at the history of Wikidata:Q4834920 as regards to geocoodws for an example of failure to take sufficient care. I've long thought that Commons is wrongly obsessed with quantity over quality, but when "service" projects of dubious usefulness take the same position, we are ultimately doomed. I see our ideal customer as, e.g. a picture editor of a newpspaper, broadcaster or reputable website, and we should be offering a different, if not better service than Alamy or Getty Images. We are failing at even aspiring to do that. </rant> Rodhullandemu (talk) 02:19, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
not much hope of displacing Alamy or Getty. we lost that battle. their entrenched power in a trusted distribution channel will not be displaced by a free alternative. rather, by the non-leader gatekeeping activity here, we drive away creative photographers; we are settling to be a walled garden in support of an encyclopedia only. the category nomenclature debates without an ontological structure, as at wikidata, limits support of that project. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 16:06, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
If you are referring to the branch of Christianity to which 15% of Americans belong, it's the Baptists. "Baptism (denomination)" is just wrong, and as a former Baptist I didn't even recognize that as referring to the Baptists, instead probably referring to some tiny group of Christians I had never heard of.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:03, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
_@Prosfilaes: So what would be an acceptable category name? The current Catagory:Baptist is certainly not parallel to how we designate any other denomination. Is Ghouston's suggestion of Category:Baptist Christianity likely to be acceptable to Baptists? - Jmabel ! talk 01:12, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
As a decidedly former Baptist, I hate to speak for them. But I don't see why that would be a problem.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:38, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

@Ghouston: (and anyone else): Do you think I should just change the weirdly named Category:Baptist to Category:Baptist Christianity, or does this call for a CFD first? - Jmabel ! talk 04:32, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

It's the best I can suggest, but I'm hardly an expert. It's confusing because Category:Baptists has already been created for individual Baptists, and although that's also the title of the enwiki page en:Baptists, it uses the word to refer to individuals. So if you want a category to group the individual Baptists plus their other stuff like churches and cemeteries and organizations then it seems like a term like "Baptist Christianity" is needed. That's what enwiki uses at en:Category:Baptist Christianity, which seems to be how it got into Wikidata. Grammatically you can ask "What is Protestantism?" but asking "What is Baptists?" sounds wrong, and apparently "What is Baptism?" is also wrong. There are also Commons categories Category:Baptist churches and Category:Baptists by country but no by-country category for the entire movement. However, the reason your original search failed was because you were searching for "Baptism", and the proposed renaming wouldn't help with that. Mentioning "baptism" in the category description may help more. --ghouston (talk) 05:02, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
Renaming Category:Baptist to Category:Baptist Christianity. No one here seems to have an objection, and it is hard to see how it could be anything but a plus. - Jmabel ! talk 00:37, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

November 10

Free Music Archive will be shut down tomorrow

Hello.

This wonderful website Free Music Archive will be shut down tomorrow (it's writted here).

I've started to upload here [20] musics under free licenses.

This link permitt to access at free licensed musics (PD, CC-by, CC-by-sa).

--ComputerHotline (talk) 10:07, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Although it would be wise to import now, they've stated that "nothing will be lost" and that everything will be migrated to the Internet Archive so thankfully we could import for there, but is there a tool to import Audio files from the Internet Archive? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 12:33, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
As me and Donald said above we really need an importing tool ..... whilst Video2Commons is great it's not practical to upload one file at a time, Unless a tool is built then I'm afraid it's more than likely you'll be left to it on your own, Thanks for your work in uploading these though it is appreciated. –Davey2010Talk 13:42, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
Ok. --ComputerHotline (talk) 14:08, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Art Institute of Chicago has 50,000 images on their website designated as CC-ZERO or free of copyright restrictions - should they be uploaded here?

Hello, apologies if this is the wrong place to post this, I've squirreled away in the background across various Wikimedia wikis over the years but have had little interaction with the community on Commons.

I've recently been doing some work improving image descriptions of pieces at the Art Institute of Chicago. Most of this has consisted of finding pieces in their catalog and copying back the relevant information here. While working on some of the ancient Greek pottery (as good a place to start as any), I noticed that the image for the piece was CC0 licensed. Clicking through, I discovered this license notice which states that the Art Institute provides, on their website, fifty thousand images which they offer licensed under a CC0 license (or images of two-dimensional works they believe to be in the public domain.)

As best I can tell, there hasn't really been a large-scale effort on Commons to upload and categorize these images. This collection may be particularly helpful for their 3-dimensional objects (such as the Greek pottery I was exploring above), where photographs of ancient sculptures aren't in the public domain under US copyright law. Most of the images they provide are high-resolution and high-quality, since they also exist as the Art Institute's internal references.

Should I help kickstart an effort to get these images onto Commons? elektrikSHOOS (talk) 17:43, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

  • We discussed this (VP?) recently. There's an issue where they claim CC0, but annotate this as "accreditation required", so it's not a valid licence. We shouldn't upload such images until that's resolved (Using CC-by would be fine, but we'd need some traceable agreement on that first). Andy Dingley (talk) 18:53, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Isn't that backward? If they license the image under CC0, and then say that some additional this-or-that is required, doesn't that invalidate the additional this-or-that, and not the CC0? GMGtalk 19:59, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
  • If I'm interpreting their license page correctly, they have it licensed as CC0 with the attribution as more of a suggested "please give us credit" than as a legally binding requirement. Either that or someone on their web portal doesn't understand CC licensing. I can probably email someone at the Art Institute and get clarification. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 22:03, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I do not see a demand for AIC credit. https://www.artic.edu/image-licensing states the images are CC0. (In the T&C linked page, they state "Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license". There is no doubt about which license.) The image licensing page then states, "The museum requests that you include the following caption with reproductions of the images: Artist. Title, Date. The Art Institute of Chicago. This information, which is available on the object page for each work, is also made available under Creative Commons Zero (CC0)." I do not see a conflict. The images are CC0; there is a request but not a demand for AIC attribution. They only request the caption information, and they make it clear the requested addition is also CC0. Commons is free to ignore the request, but in the normal course of copying the files, we would identify the source as the AIC website. Glrx (talk) 20:51, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
see also Commons:Village_pump#Art_Institute_of_Chicago; Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2018/10#Art_Institute_of_Chicago, and Category:Collections of the Art Institute of Chicago. if you want to do a mass upload, you will need to Python, or GWtoolset, or request here Commons:Batch uploading after evaluating artist copyright. -- Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 22:41, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
Given that there are a lot of these, I think we'd want to do a special license template that both indicates the CC-0 and passes along the request for attribution. - Jmabel ! talk 23:05, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
They do state on their own licensing page that while they believe all of the images are free of additional copyright restrictions they can't guarantee they are copyright free internationally for some of the more recent works. (Both Nighthawks and American Gothic, for instance, are not copyrighted in the US due to lack of renewal but may still be copyrighted in other countries.) A batch upload would have to (obviously) include human review to verify all of the images are in fact free to upload. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 01:40, 16 November 2018 (UTC) (actually, both of those paintings are already on Commons so my point here is a bit moot, but you get the idea elektrikSHOOS (talk) 01:45, 16 November 2018 (UTC))

Request for protection

I am an administrator on the English Wikipedia. I would like to request that my user talk page be protected from edits by IP users; there is a block evader(Vincent9000)on Wikipedia who, when detected, comes here and vandalizes my user talk page here(since they can't there). They did so today both as an IP and by registering a vulgar username attacking me. 331dot (talk) 09:23, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

✓ Done Semi-protected for 3 months. --jdx Re: 10:13, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Voltaire

So I was looking for a particular portrait (not this one) of Voltaire. It wasn't on the Wikipedia page, but I figured all of those were likely hosted at Commons where I'd likely find my goal via categories. I got distracted. Looking at the first WP image I saw this "This file has been reviewed by a human, (User:Diannaa), who has confirmed that it is suitable for Commons." Seeing that, I thought I'd do a good deed and download the WP image and upload it to Commons. It was only when I was typing in the details that I noticed: "Immediate source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nicolas_de_Largilli%C3%A8re,_Fran%C3%A7ois-Marie_Arouet_dit_Voltaire_(vers_1724-1725)_-001.jpg"

So not only is the image on both WP and Commons, but it makes me wonder how many are similarly duplicated, or at the very least are labeled "confirmed that it is suitable for Commons." I don't know if this means the WP image should be deleted or what.

I'm not a coder but I suspect this could easily be remedied by some kind of bot script thing, perhaps doing hash-verifications and/or adding an "inbox"-type category (list) to verify the confirmation again upon "relocation", and perhaps a WP deletion of the "relocated" confirmed and verified images (assuming that's what policy calls for) and/or the "confirmed that it is suitable for Commons" tags.

Ultimately this may or may not affect the Wikipedia:Moving files to Commons#Backlog Status, hopefully for the better.

As for this particular image, the history is strange. The "original" colours are poor and the "repaired" colours are terrible, and then the oval "borders" are ridiculous. There must be a better medium.

The image I was looking for is almost this: File:D'après Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Portrait de Voltaire (c. 1737, musée Antoine Lécuyer).jpg However there is an almost identical copy of it emphasizing the mischievous smirk. portrait-de-voltaire-copie-1800-1850-.-.jpg, a slightly lighter version of File:D'après Maurice Quentin de La Tour, François-Marie Arouet, dit Voltaire (château de Versailles).jpg.

I don't know if anyone wants to address this, comment, or educate, but I'm grateful in advance for any feedback. I'll check back soon. ~ JasonCarswell (talk) 04:43, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

@JasonCarswell: The portrait of Voltaire you linked to above isn't on Wikipedia at all. If you go to w:File:Nicolas de Largillière, François-Marie Arouet dit Voltaire (vers 1724-1725) -001.jpg all you'll see is a mirror of the Commons page. You can tell the difference because the WP page doesn't have "Edit" or "History" buttons, but it has "View on Commons" and "Add local description" buttons. It does have its own Wikipedia talk page, however. This is the standard state of affairs for images on Commons: they're mirrored on all the individual projects, but aren't actually hosted there. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 09:12, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for responding, but that's not what I was asking about. I would improve my questions if I knew how to pose them with a better vocabulary and insight into Commons. Please reconsider my queries and comments above. ~ JasonCarswell (talk) 11:06, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Free Music Archive : Update: Closing Date Pushed to Dec 1

Due to a few very generous donations, we are able to keep the site up, as-is, through the end of this month. We will still not be adding any more new uploads to the collection and are proceeding with our plans to back up the entire current MP3 collection at archive.org.

We are in talks with a few organizations who have very substantial interest and whose values align with ours. As negotiations continue, I may write more updates here as we move along and may be able to announce a new parent org for FMA in the coming weeks. Nothing is set in stone though so we still face shutdown, and if you have questions or want to help, please contact us using the Closure Comment form (below).

In the meantime, donations large and small do keep the lights on here, and we are so thankful for your support!

source

--ComputerHotline (talk) 22:51, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

This is great news! Too bad that the Wikimedia Foundation doesn't spend any of its endowments on creating a team that "adopts content" and helps with batch uploads, it's sad that we don't have a taskfoce + noticeboard to deal with these types of things, I know that people like Fæ can do mass-imports but I really don't know of any other contributor here that does anything at their level, I'm just glad that there's a bigger chance now that the Free Music Archive will be saved. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 17:23, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

November 16

Category page with categories (how to)

Hi, re Category page [21] If I include three categories, it is listed under last category letter only. How to categorize, to assign three categories in order to appear the item in three categories on the page [22] Under letters K S and M thx (Grybukas (talk) 09:52, 18 November 2018 (UTC)) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grybukas (talk • contribs) 10:33, 17 November 2018‎ (UTC)

  • @Grybukas: Signing your posts on talk pages is required and it is a Commons guideline to sign your posts on deletion requests, undeletion requests, and noticeboards. To do so, simply add four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your comments. Your user name or IP address (if you are not logged in) and a timestamp will then automatically be added when you save your comment. Signing your comments helps people to find out who said something and provides them with a link to your user/talk page (for further discussion). Thank you.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 17:51, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, pages can only appear in a category once.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 17:51, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

November 18

Suggestion for witing and running old postcard scripts

Out of the discussion in Commons talk:Structured data/Get involved/Feedback requests/Statements 2#Garbage in garbage out:

I agree that we can also do the clean up of bad metadata after the convertion, but some actions dont have to wait and can facilitate the convertion. It would help if we can relialably identify the old post card files. All such files should use the 'postcard' template in the source text.
  • One should run and create scripts that convert all mention of 'carte postal', 'briefkaart', 'postal cart', etc into the template in a similar way as the date scripts that convert the diverse inputted date formats.
  • In principle if a post card category is used, their should be a 'postcard' template in the source text. However there are exceptions: For example a picture of a post card stand at a tourist shop. In reverse a 'postcard' template in the source text should always require the inclusion of minimall one postcard category.
  • Many checklists are posible: 'Post card' in the file description but not in the source, etc.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:51, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

It would if one old postcard example is used in the projectpage with an postcard editor such as Nels. In Wikidata the postcard property would be very usefull in searches.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:51, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

An typical example of a usefull file needing licence cleanup: File:Concarneau 028 L'arrière-port et le quai d'Aiguillon dans les premières années du XXème siècle.JPGSmiley.toerist (talk) 11:52, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Darker version

The older version looks darker and seems to be more correct in tone. This carriages where dark and not well ligthed. However if I look at the size of the file the new one is significantly bigger. What happened?Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:12, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

@Wmpearl: Where did you get your version of File:Third Class Carriage (1856-1858) by Honore Daumier.jpg?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 11:35, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
maybe we should suspend overwriting, since we seem to have a cadre of overwriters, who appear to photoshop with minimal documentation, and a new upload would require a source. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 15:25, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
I suspect that with the new upload picture was taken of the painting without the optimal ligthing conditions. If extra stray ligth comes in it creates a kind of mist effect. The same picture with adjusted levels: File:Third Class Carriage (1856-1858) by Honore Daumier.adjusted levels.jpg.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:14, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
Limiting overwriting is problematic as there files wich need regular updating such as metro maps. If needed the older version can be given a new naam. For example: File:AVE.png. Most articles always need the latest version.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:24, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Uploading images of which the copyright expires end 2018, 2019, etc.

I want to upload images of stamps of which the copyright expires 31-12-2018, 2019, etc. Instead of waiting each year till the first of January, I want to upload them all now, adding all the required categories and the category "undelete in 2019", "undelete in 2020", etc. Should I then nominate each file for deletion or is there an easier way to achieve that? Wouter (talk) 16:50, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

I think attaching the category to the deleted file won't work, since deleted files don't show up in categories. You can either file a mass DR and put the DR page in the right category, or ask for speedy deletion (criterion G7) and list the files on the Category:Undelete in 2019 or whatever category page. --bjh21 (talk)
Please do not do this, Wouterhagens. What you are purposing is that the already overworked admin corp of Commons spend a whole bunch of time deleting and undeleting your images because you don't want to wait? That is nothing short of disruptive behavior. Deleting and undeleting large batches of images takes time, a lot of time. If you were a new account that knowingly uploaded copyright violations you would be blocked on the spot. And please do not DR copyvios or G7 requests. DRs are currently months behind schedule and while we (at least I hope it is more than just me) are working through them doing so just leave clearly deleteable images hanging around for way way too long. Please do not knowingly upload copyright violations. --Majora (talk) 21:16, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Yes, for content in the public domain in 2019, please wait for a few weeks. For content which will be in the public domain in 20 years or longer, AND that can't be hosted anywhere else, then it should be OK, but Commons should only be used as a least resort. Regards, Yann (talk) 07:12, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the answers. The "easier way to achieve that" was just to avoid the deleting and undeleting by humans. My thought was to put them in a "waiting room" and that a bot checks each beginning of a year whether they could be released. I will wait till the beginning of each year to upload the images that just became free of copyright. Wouter (talk) 08:28, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
I would appreciate such a waiting room system. (suggestion: files only visible to the uploader and administrators) I have some files waiting for many years for a legal upload and I cant anticipate when I will die. It is not something you can leave instructions for in your will. By the way: Some files involve research for dating and authorship. As much as posible I do my own research before uploading a file. However it is not always posible to date and determine if it is realy anonymous. This can best be discussed on Wikipemedia forums with knowledge about the subject, but in cases where no source links can be supplied (for example some scans of old postcards), it is necessary that discussion participants get a look a the file. The risk is very low but I cannot totaly exclude temporary copyright violations.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:05, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Alvan Holmes Corner

I recently had three images deleted and have not had a satisfactory explanation as to why. I now understand that EVERYTHING FOUND on the Internet is copyrighted, but don't understand that especially when the source is something like https://archive.org/details/visitationoflond01stge/page/n9. a book that is 138 years old, and obviously from a public source.

So does that mean that the only images that can be posted are ones that are produced by the user? The upload wizard choices for source aren't clear, they all point to a copyright license. How does one prove that a file, not found on the internet, is eligible for uploading? If I take a picture of something and want to upload it then how can I prove that I am the author?

Similarly I have a cousin who takes a picture of something, sends it to me for publication in an article. How do I cite them? How to I prove that they are the source?

I posted an image Farrar's Island Today.jpg, it was removed. The source is in the upper left hand corner of the jpg. Chesterfield County Department of Parks and Recreation and Virginia Department of Game and Insland Fisheries. How is a drawing produced at taxpayers expense not in the public domain. I know that the Upload Wizard says US Government, but I am a taxpayer and anythng produced by using my taxes is in the public domain, as I have paid for it through my taxes.

Similarly someone deleted File:Farrar_Coat_of_Arms.jpg|thumb|This is a picture of the Farrer Coat of Arms, from the Visitation of London. Farrar CoA is same sans the Gorget]] I anticipate the answer that the file was found on the internet and EVERYTHING ON THE INTERNET IS COPYRIGHTED, even though the source is 138 years old like https://archive.org/details/visitationoflond01stge/page/n9 .

When I compare that innocent offering to something like https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Coats_of_Arms_of_the_Crown_of_Castile I am aghast. Those colorful and beautiful examples of coats of arms were surely not drawn by the person(s) who posted them, they obtained them from somewhere, if not on the internet, then from a book. How can they be lgit and mine not? What do I have to do to post my own CoA? Pay someone to draw it? And then how do I prove that I am the source or that my cousin who is the source, has given me permission to use it?

Alvanhholmes (talk) 18:10, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

@Alvanhholmes: File:Farrar Coat of Arms.jpg is not deleted.. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 18:13, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, I can see a few versions of that file, and both joint editors of that book have been dead for more than 70 years so I don't see that being deleted. Abzeronow (talk) 18:50, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
@Alvanhholmes: The US Federal Government has carved out an exception in Federal copyright law for works by Federal employees doing official duties, documented directly in Category:PD-USGov license tags. That does not apply to works by State or Municipal employees or anyone else in the US, except in half a dozen States etc. as documented in Category:PD-USGov license tags (non-federal). You are certainly free to lobby your County and Commonwealth legislators to exempt County and Commonwealth employees' official works from Federal copyright law, preferably retroactively.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 18:27, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

I guess it is back. Just before I wrote the above. I was editing a draft on John Farrar and noticed that my link to the Coat of arms had a <nowiki> in it I would guess it was undeleted.

I still don't have an acceptable answer as to why the Westwood Letter from Lord Farrer is not acceptable. Not that I need it as their is an acceptable citation about it on the internet and in my draft.Alvanhholmes (talk) 19:41, 18 November 2018 (UTC)


I would also like to have an explanation of how image https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nicolas_de_Largilli%C3%A8re,_Fran%C3%A7ois-Marie_Arouet_dit_Voltaire_(vers_1724-1725)_-001.jpg Is in the public domain, when there is this image on the internet https://www.mcsimonwrites.com/13-voltaires-quotes-that-lighthoused-my-life/

Am I to believe that someone went to the museum, took the photograph and then uploaded it to commons? Next thing I am suppose to believe is that the msimmonwrites image was downloaded from Wiki. I can’t accept that explanation if offered, too much difference in the two.

The point is that there appears to be clever users that know how to successfully upload images otherwise found on the internet. An example of Historical markers used by the various states, especially Virginia. They put these markers there to attract tourists, and in that regard they are not only public domain, but the state benefits financially from as much advertising as possible, and Wikipedia is a source of advertising. A person reading a wiki page because they are personally or emotionally related to the subject and sees a marker sign is motivated to visit that site, knowing that they have found it when they see the sign.

A Virginia Historical marker Farrar’s Island K199 was deleted. So I have joined waymarer to get the email address of the person that uploaded it. Sent email asking permission to use their photo.

I am sure that I will get it, but the question is how can I upload it after I get their permission? There does not seem to be a suitable option at uploader. Finally I visited the Guilford Court House page. There are a lot of great images, some from the US government thus apparently in the public domain,but there were a couple of questionable origin. One of them “The Battle of Guilford Courthouse” came from either history.com or battlefields.org There are most certainly hundreds of more images like these and I am going to search them out. As I don’t understand how one user’s uploads are permissible and anothers aren’t and both came from the internet. What technique was used by the user to upload images that were not in the public domain. Alvanhholmes (talk) 19:31, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

File:Farrar Coat of Arms.jpg has never been deleted, otherwise there would be an entry in its deletion log. File:Nicolas de Largillière, François-Marie Arouet dit Voltaire (vers 1724-1725) -001.jpg was apparently scanned from a book when it was first uploaded. This is perfectly acceptable when the original painting is out of copyright, which is the case here. The information template on that file page referring to the museum was added after the first upload and describes in detail where you may find the original work. It does not mean that someone went to the museum and took a photo of the painting (which would also be allowed).
As to the Virginia marker, File:Farrar's Island Marker K199.jpg was deleted because you took the file from the internet seemingly without permission from the original photographer. At Commons, we have a whole Category:Historical markers in the United States by state with hundreds of images, but all these were either taken by the uploaders themselves or have been explicitely licensed for free use elsewhere.
Finally, you might not believe it but as far as I can see, the images in Coats of Arms of the Crown of Castile were all made by users of Wikimedia Commons either by drawing the images themselves or by combining existing heraldic elements from our collection of free files. Commons:WikiProject Heraldry has a number of very skilled contributors. Some of them may even be professional graphic artists dedicating their free time to the Commons. De728631 (talk) 20:08, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
Alvanhholmes asked several more questions on my talk page. Anyone who can answer, please, do. Usually I would mentor a new user in cases like this, but I have way, way too much to deal with right now. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 20:46, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

De72863 Thank you for your precise and detailed explanation. I really needed that. I am beginning to understand all that is involved and required now.

One more question: I have contacted the the person at waymarker that posted the Farrar's Island Marker, asking for permission to use it. I can find no other source for it on the internet. Her name is Donna Skinner. She is also the source of the file "Farrar's Island Today". If she gives me permission how do I indicate that? I can't upload it again, so I would have to notify some administrator would I not?

Thanks Alvanhholmes (talk) 22:16, 18 November 2018 (UTC) Correction to the above. My relative at www.farrarinc.net is the owner of Farrar's Island today I just sent him a copyright request. The owner of Farrar's Islnd marker is talluswm and I sent them an email as well, awaiting their reply before I send a copy of the copyright authorization. Alvanhholmes (talk) 23:27, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

@Alvanhholmes: ask the copyright holder to send their permission to OTRS. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 00:04, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
@Alvanhholmes: And make sure that when they send permission as described at COM:OTRS they are clear about what license they are offering. - Jmabel ! talk 05:56, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

November 19

Flickr images

Hello, I think the feature of direct transfer of files from Flickr using UploadWizard should be extended to autoconfirmed users also because I don't know why users need to be "trusted" to upload images that will automatically go through a review process. See more information about this at this link.--√Tæ√ 07:21, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

@Tæ: , pardon, I probably should've specified Commons:Village pump/Proposals, but if we had a technical village pump that would've been more appropriate. But before this could become a proposal we could debate the pro's and con's here. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 16:35, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
As far as I'm aware this would not be a simple change. Provided you are talking about the upload_by_url right that is given to image reviewers, extended uploaders, etc. This is because that right works off of this list which in turn is part of the core settings for the project. Obviously the list includes a lot more than just Flickr. As for the upload wizard this would necessitate a rewrite of that section on mw:Extension:UploadWizard which of course is doable but not exactly a straightforward objective. Not saying I disagree with this request. Just that it will not be as simple as flipping a few switches here and there to make it work. --Majora (talk) 05:37, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
@Majora: You are right that it would not be easy but at beta-commons the feature is enable for all users.--√Tæ√ 11:15, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
Right. As stated on the user rights for beta upload_by_url is included in the general users group. If the proposal here is to do that but with autoconfirmed I would have to oppose that as not everything on that list is checked by another process. Upload by URL is restricted because it is super easy to upload files that way so, here, it is granted to people that have shown that they know what they are doing. Like I said, I wouldn't mind allowing upload_by_url for flickr uploads since they are all rechecked anyways but I would have a problem with that right, and all the urls that it allows, being given to all autoconfirmed users. --Majora (talk) 21:14, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

@Majora: Right, but note that the same risk is in URL2COMMOMNS tool also.--√Tæ√ 07:29, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-47

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 vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can vote until 30 November.
  • Advanced item There is an A/B test for sameAs data. This is to make it easier to find the right information with a search engine. This changes the metadata for a wiki page. It doesn't change how the page looks. [23]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

Future changes

  • The Wikimedia wikis use templates to show readers there are problems with the content on some pages. For example if there are no sources or the page needs to be rewritten. The mobile website will soon show more information when you use these templates. Some templates may need to be updated. [24]
  • The Education Program extension was removed from all Wikimedia projects. The database tables used by the extension will be archived. This will happen in a month. If you want the information on your wiki you should move it to a normal wiki page. [25]

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

23:28, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

November 20

Florence anyone?

There is no detail on the postcard of what is pictured. There is a confusing mention of 'CASA EDITRICE BALLERINI & FRATINI - FIRENZE (125)' on the backside wich seems to be a publisher, but mostly of artists. The website http://www.rosspostcards.com/Casa_Editrice_Ballerini_and_Fratini_Firenze_31.html confuses me. Looking at the taxis I suspect it is between the two WW's, but can a more precise dating be given.Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:51, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

This is the location (Google streetview), nl:Piazza della Signoria. Picture taken from the nl:Loggia dei Lanzi at the right, showing The Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna. On the background the towers of the en:Badia Fiorentina (left) and the en:Bargello. Jürgen Eissink (talk) 00:31, 20 November 2018 (UTC).
1938, according to this page. Of course, that could be a printing date, rather than the date of the photograph itself. -- Begoon 08:11, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
The date of the photograph itself is most cases never known, unless it is a specific dated event or the photographer mentions it. However for the purpose of licences only the first publishing date counts. If the two dates are known, both should be mentioned.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:16, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Indeed, which is why I said "a printing date", since it could have been photographed and first published prior to that. 1938 seems fair enough as the date we 'know about' unless/until any other info is discovered though, imo. -- Begoon 09:26, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata Infobox

Trying to organize this page: Category:Lady Saw and the wikidata infobox won't work. I can't figure out why because Wikidata has an extensive page with citations. Am I blind? Help?--Heathart (talk) 15:58, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

The wikidata page was missing a connection to the Commons Category. Fixed! // sikander { talk } 18:14, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Changing license from Anonymous-EU to PD-France for French old postcards

In cleaning upp French old postcards I am changing the license from Anonymous-EU to PD-France. This the Anonymous + 70 years is included in the PD-France. Is this correct, before I continue?Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:52, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

I have started working on the files in the Category:Postcards of Ardèche. I will daily do some work on this category.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:38, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Question

Iam still trying to understand this copyright business. I am trying to publish a copy of a letter written by Lord Farrer (2nd Baron, Thomas Farrer).The letter is in the possession of the Normandy Historical Society. They simply own the letter, and as I understand it not the copyright. I sent a copyright permission request to my cousin in Surrey , England who photographed the letter. He said that he can't sign the permission as the copyright belongs to the Normandy Historical Society. From the information that I have, the copyright does not belong to the owner of the letter. Letters like paintings can be sold or donated. The problem is that Lord Farrer died in 1940, his letter was written in 1930. How can I obtain a postmortem authorization from a dead man?

Does this mean that no correspondence can be photoographed and published until the person that wrote it is a couple of hundred years old? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alvanhholmes (talk • contribs) 18:44, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Has the letter been published before? Ruslik (talk) 20:22, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
put on Template:PD-old. but for yanks it would be "welcome to orphan works", and publication without renewal would entail some research. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 00:37, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
It's genuinely complicated. It does matter whether this was published (and when, and in what country). We try to conform both to the laws of the country of origin (presumably UK) and of the U.S., where our servers are located. In this case the two are rather different, and need to be considered separately.
If the letter was published around the time it was written, then there is a good chance it is public domain in the U.S. (lack of copyright notice or lack of renewal, in an era where those were required) and I believe in the UK copyright should be no issue for anyone more that 70 years dead. But if not published, then probably some much more complicated issues come in, and I suspect that you'd need to go to Commons:Village pump/Copyright to find the relevant expertise.
And, of course, you do not need the permission of the dead person: if the work is still in copyright, then you need the permission of the living person or institution who has inherited that person's intellectual property rights. Most often, this will be the person named in a will as inheriting the bulk of an estate after specific bequests have been dealt with, though after this time if that was an individual then you probably have at least two separate inheritances to deal with, and the work could, indeed, be more or less orphaned. - Jmabel ! talk 02:02, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
For my interest: does the fact that a letter (or any personal work) is not published really affect the expiration of the copyright? How is that? Jürgen Eissink (talk) 20:11, 20 November 2018 (UTC).
There are several situations in pre-1978 U.S. copyright law where the clock doesn't start ticking until the publication date. I'm not sure if this matters in any circumstances in post-1978 U.S. copyright law or in any other country (I'd guess maybe the Philippines, whose laws are historically based on those of the U.S.). - Jmabel ! talk 21:13, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
So should in this case the deletion request be continued, or would adding a certain template do? Jürgen Eissink (talk) 21:15, 20 November 2018 (UTC).
I requested removal of the Deletion request, since the copyright expired in 2011. This is nothing but harassment. Jürgen Eissink (talk) 02:02, 20 November 2018 (UTC).
  • Not sure what you're saying, but Alexis Jazz knows for days the the author died in 1940 (he managed to ask again after the answer was provided already, obviously not reading the replies), and the uploader goes around asking for advice, so I say Alexis Jazz is just harassing the new user. Jürgen Eissink (talk) 02:43, 20 November 2018 (UTC).
  • Bitey, seriously? Your innocent outsider found it appropriate to accuse the DR nominator of «attention whoring» — how’s that for a bite? Of course it amuses me most the fact that Jürgen Eissink refuses to comprehend that it was the DR that has kept this file from vanishing (read his But I am right! fantasies in the DR and here, seriously — epic convergence of smug and wrong), but the pearl clutchers on duty might want to have a say about his untempered aspersions. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 16:35, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
Maybe I should have, especially for you, spelled out what I do and do not comprehend. Main thing is, the file should not have been speedy deleted to begin with, and the requester's anticipation on a negative decision by a moderator might not be considered but actually is pretty absurd, showing a lack of trust in Commons moderation. Please next time if you think you are not sure what I am saying: just ask, instead of ruminating on an already closed case. Jürgen Eissink (talk) 17:05, 22 November 2018 (UTC).
when you upload without a license, you should expect a speedy deletion. i see the bot was deployed, "because no-license backlog"; i.e. the admins here have moved on from actually discussing deletions to just automatically clearing out backlogs. because "why waste time talking" when i'm always right; and burden is on the uploader. that's what i mean by bitey; and you should expect a response in kind. nothing invokes a defensive response, like a talk page wall of deletion notices. but no need to impute malice, when a broken process with incompetence explains it all. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 23:15, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
If the process is broken, it should be fixed. If a bot flags speedy deletion and moderators remove the flagged files blindly, why not let the bot delete it immediately? Maybe files should not be allowed to de uploaded without any license. Besides, calling moderators incompetent is imputing the same kind of malice.
Not following this page anymore, so this is my last word on this thread. Jürgen Eissink (talk) 00:15, 23 November 2018 (UTC).

Permission request

I sent a permission request to Chesterfield County, VA asking that they please sign it and attach a copy of the Dutch Conservation Gap Today, that I tried to use.And I asked them to attach a copy of the image. I have no idea what the name of the image will be, if they comply with my request, that being the case then how can I find the image so I can use it. This is a problem that would occur with virtually all image permission requests sent via email.

If a person or organization sends a permission with an image, how can the user then locate and use it. I know the names of the images that I upload, but not the images others send or upload.Alvanhholmes (talk) 12:49, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

No it is not online, it is in a collection of papers in the possession of the http://www.normandyhistorians.co.uk/, along with many other documents of interest to the Society.Alvanhholmes (talk) 03:32, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

@Alvanhholmes: In such a situation, I typically ask a user like you to ask the copyright holder to "send permission via OTRS with a carbon copy to you". In this way, a user like you can stay informed about the progress of the ticket, including the uploaded file's URL.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 06:09, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

November 21

Identity cards and passports

Is it ok to have photos of identity cards and passports on Commons? For example:

Should these be removed or censored? No indication that the person gave permission to post these. // sikander { talk } 12:44, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

The source has vanished. These should be removed as a precaution as being intrusive unless the release by the subject is given. --Fæ (talk) 16:03, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
Commons:Oversight is best way to solve such problems. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 13:57, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey vote

The Community Wishlist Survey. Please help translate to your language.

Hey everyone,

The Community Wishlist Survey is the process when the Wikimedia communities decide what the Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech should work on over the next year.

The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. The communities have now posted a long list of technical proposals. You can vote on the proposals from now until 30 November. You can read more on the wishlist survey page.

/User:Johan (WMF)

18:13, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

November 23

Category for special effects

This is an evening ligth. The lith comes from beneath the clouds.Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:12, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

sharing with attribution

When I right click an image in media viewer it shows a reminder that attribution is required. However when I need to copy a large number of images to my file copying them one by one is unproductive.

I have opened two tickets about this.

  • T210220 keep history of copied images - I propose to keep a history of images which I right clicked, so that I can copy-paste it into 'credits' section of my document after I have completed my work.
  • T210219 add easier export with attribution - I propose to have the ability to bookmark images and export a set of images into a .doc or .pdf file with attribution, where I can select how many images are included per page. Also export as a .zip where attribution is either in exif metadata or in .png.txt file in the same directory as the image.

Please share your thoughts or codes.

--Gryllida (chat) 06:36, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Removing obvious category error

Category:Cattle in in Ardèche is misnamed and I created the correct one Category:Cattle in Ardèche and moved all the files to it. I use the move template, but then you get a discussion page. That is overkill. If there some way to just ask for a fast delete?Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:06, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it's called {{Bad name}}. --HyperGaruda (talk) 13:16, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
@Smiley.toerist: ... and it's gone.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:35, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

November 24

EU copyright reform, Commons and sports events

On a different note, and totally diverse from the question above, I would like to call this community attention to the potentially catastrophic effects of Article 12a, if approved, as it would totally ruin the photo/video coverage of all sports events on the EU space. They would be covered by a copyright (or rather a "neighboring right") which, if I well understood, would block the upload of any sport events (regattas, gymnastics, football matches, etc.) content to Commons unless the uploader is authorized by whoever is organizing that event. See more here. Though there seems to be a great hope that this provision would not pass, I strongly recommend we Commoners to follow this very carefully, as the successful approval of this article would be quite tragic for Wikimedia Commons, specially for those of us here in the EU space, who would then be affected by a kind of sports no-FoP policy :(.-- Darwin Ahoy! 12:08, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

In the US, such an article could be decried as "unconscionable prior restraint" against the public interest.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 11:34, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
or contract law - license on your ticket stub. it won't do to play holier, when there are plenty of US hijinks to consider. i.e. URAA. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 12:30, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
It's weird to talk about US hijinks and mention changes to US copyright law that only happened because the rest of the world demanded it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:31, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
this is how we talk inside the beltway. you may sanctify law, we view the sausage. the URAA is a cluster, and the world did not demand it, rather the copyright industry, captor of the congress did. the retroactive portions putting the lie to the incentive argument, rather it was all about the profit. it is an industry that would destroy commons if it could, as we see in SOPA, USMCA, and in the EU. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 05:05, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

RE: Deletion of my contributions.

What is the meaning of my files being deleted if i have given where the sources have been found?? please rsvp me ASAP. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ceray1270 (talk • contribs)

Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Ceray1270
{{PD-CAGov}} possibly. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 02:40, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
  • @Ceray1270: As far as I can see, you claimed these as your own work (which they obviously are not), gave the license as {{self|cc-by-sa-4.0}} (saying that you as the author were granting a cc-by-sa-4.0 license), and when this was discussed at Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Ceray1270 you didn't say anything there. While some valid license may be possible for these, it makes sense that incorrect attribution + incorrect license + not responding when the issue is open for discussion over a period of weeks => deletion. This can probably all be fixed up if there are valid sources and licenses, but at this point the place to discuss it would be Commons:Undeletion requests. - Jmabel ! talk 03:55, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Deletions of files i had uploaded previously.

I had uploaded images for some california cities that were deleted even though some of them were crecreations or my own work or even found images with the url links attached to them. I am requesting that these files be restored immediately. Thanks for your concern in this matter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ceray1270 (talk • contribs) 02:47, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

How does this question differ from the one you had asked a few minutes earlier, and which appears immediately above? -- Hoary (talk) 08:40, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
It doesn't, so I moved it down a level.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 11:14, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Lua coordinate module error

In my file, File:Râmnicul Sărat in Râmnicu Sărat.jpg, the location coordinates (which I added myself at the same time I uploaded the file) do not show up, instead it says that there is a Lua error. Does anybody know what it is? Thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:02, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

See User talk:Jarekt#Module:Coordinates Bidgee (talk) 09:03, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Bidgee.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:07, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
Yes there is a major problem here! every file I have uploaded with co-ordinates appears to have now been corrupted, both for 'object' and 'location' templatesKolforn (talk) 09:11, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
I am an interface administrator, and can edit the module if there is a clear instruction such as "in line 825, replace xxx with yyy".--Ymblanter (talk) 10:08, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
Fixed, thanks Zhuyifei1999--Ymblanter (talk) 10:10, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Pi bot

Contributions/Pi bot: “Adding {{Wikidata Infobox}}, current Wikidata ID is…”, but differences in bytes are negative. Can anybody (except myself) guess what’s going on without looking at actual diffs? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 15:17, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

For background information, see Commons:Deletion requests/Template:Wikidata person and User_talk:JuTa#Commons:Deletion_requests/Template:Wikidata_person. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 15:32, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Mike Peel misses the main point – an edit summary having only the verb “to add” but for an edit with replacement is clearly a deception. How about trust of the community to this bot operator who also holds the sysop privilege? Of course, I know that a mob demands extermination of {{Wikidata person}}, and Mike Peel knows that I oppose it, but it is a secondary thing. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:39, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

What would you like the edit summary to say? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:53, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
“Replacing {{Wikidata person}} with {{Wikidata Infobox}}, …” Incnis Mrsi (talk) 18:09, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
OK, I'll use that for the rest of this set of edits. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:13, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

To all the poker players

Lynn Gilmartin

I just uploaded File:Lynn Gilmartin Previews WPT Montreal at Playground Poker Club.webm and File:World Poker Tour asks players which country is the best.webm from which I've extracted a bunch of images, including images of Lynn Gilmartin and Fedor Holz who didn't have a picture yet.

The channel has much more to offer. Note: not every video is Creative Commons. Use COM:V2C to import whole videos. @Philip J Fry: perhaps also interesting for you? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 15:20, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the tool.--Philip J Fry (talk) 15:54, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
You're welcome. @M-B: I've uploaded screenshots for Dario Sammartino and cropped Ole Schemion from one of the screenshots I had already uploaded, also added them to their articles. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 15:59, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Gender

At the risk of beating a dead horse: I want to once again register my strenuous objection to splitting categories by gender in areas that have nothing to do with gender. Recent example: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:David_Goldstein_(blogger)&diff=328668478&oldid=256272413. Pinging User:GT1976 as the person who made this edit. - Jmabel ! talk 17:49, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

yeah, i wish category editors would review the history. i.e. Commons:Categories for discussion/2013/01/Category:Female writers from the United States you do not need to add detail to categories, when you have wikidata. rather, need to have a consensus before making sweeping changes to categories. you might find your category work featured in a news article near you. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 18:49, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
Hello! Thanks for the information, I did not know this discussion. The category was not created by me, but 2014 by someone else. I just filled up the already well filled category. If this category and others are not wanted then this should be marked. How should anyone else know that? These categorizations and eliminations of redundancies are normal jobs that make a lot of users here. - GT1976 (talk) 20:29, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
I agree. Category:People by gender has categories for several different gender identities, including male and female. I wouldn't want to have to mirror that for categories where it doesn't matter.
The other thing we need to do is standardize the use of female(s) vs. women, and male(s) vs. men. Right now there is a mix, so we end up with things like Category:Female writers categorized under Category:Women by occupation: if you were looking for girls or boys (some of whom do have occupations: actors/actresses, dancers, writers, to name a few), you wouldn't find them by scanning the category tree. If we don't want to distinguish between girls/boys and women/men, then these categories should just say males or females. --Auntof6 (talk) 21:00, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

My question is: the way we work, how do we prevent the "splitters" from always winning out over the "lumpers"? If seems to me that the "splitters" almost inevitably end up winning out. - Jmabel ! talk 05:11, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

The more media in a category, the greater the pressure to split. Anyway ISTM a “win-win” would be software that let the user lump at will / to taste for browsing purposes. If there were CatScan-like features in the category-page UI (perhaps checkboxes beside subcats to show their contents or not, and optional fields for depth?) then detailed sub-categorization wouldn’t have so much an effect of burying files. Another approach, using what we have, might be to make more use of the “mainspace” for curated collections of representative images that cross or combine subcats.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 05:44, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
i do not care who wins in the category cul-de-sac. the fun kids have moved on to wikidata, which has all the robust query capability, that categories cannot deliver. categories are not a functional way to find images; (feel free to keep trying); but you should not imagine that your "filled up the already well filled category" is uncontroversial, i.e. What's In A Category? 'Women Novelists' Sparks Wiki-Controversy. -- Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 16:06, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

And this continues. Yes there can be reasons to split up a category, but a split into exactly two groups doesn't do much about the size of the category, and a split along an irrelevant factor like this can be a liability. Splitting engineers by gender is no more relevant than splitting them by hair color, height, or whether they have owned a dog. - Jmabel ! talk 17:31, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

The example that you cite is enlightening. Fernando Perdomo was incorrectly added to Category:Male engineers from the United States as a male audio engineer (although he isn't known for that). So there's still a chance for someone to make Category:Male audio engineers! World's Lamest Critic (talk) 20:56, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

And it continues. - Jmabel ! talk 17:03, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

well - do you want me to roll back those in my watchlist? Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 03:18, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure about rollbacks. I'd really like to get consensus. I keep seeing several of these a day: here's another recent one. It seems like the splitters keep changing things with no consensus; I'd really like to see some kind of agreement about where this is and isn't appropriate, rather than start reverting people and probably trigger an edit war. - Jmabel ! talk 17:26, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

November 22

Commons and "fair use" / education exceptions

Hello, after reading in the WMF blog this article proposing that "allow[ing] our communities to use copyrighted images, short and longer excerpts, in the course of creating material for educational and research purposes, including copying; distributing; translating; illustrating; adapting or altering the works; hosting it; comment and critique it ... [would] without a doubt, facilitate inputs in some of our projects like Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.", and being specifically interested in this question of the EU copyright reform from the perspective of the Wikimedia projects, I would like to ask your opinions/comments on the proposed use of the said exceptions here in Commons.-- Darwin Ahoy! 11:52, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

@DarwIn: Although it appears to be a step forward, we cannot permit uploads under educational and research fair use unless the treaty passes and such use is allowable under US law and a Foundation resolution.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:42, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: Reading you backwards, I infer that it would be possible to have such content here if the treaty passes and such use is allowable under US law and a Foundation resolution. That is interesting, as I was under the belief that Commons was designed to be free at all costs. As a disclaimer, I've not an opinion on this myself (at least a clear one).-- Darwin Ahoy! 14:49, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
Proposals to create shared media project for non-free content were made long time ago. I think it's much better solution because of media usage requirements. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:21, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
@DarwIn: The treaty might need to pass everywhere but the US in order for the Foundation to reconsider the fair use restrictions in Foundation:Resolution:Licensing policy.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 15:36, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
Interesting the idea of that shared media project for non-free content, kind of a "fair use Commons". Thanks a lot for your input. In two weeks we're going to have a debate here in Portugal over the copyright reform going on in the EU, including article 4, which deals with those education exceptions, and it's good to have an idea of the impact it could have (or not have) in Commons (and media content in general in Wikimedia projects).-- Darwin Ahoy! 16:01, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
Such exemptions exist for a long time in copyrights laws of ex-USSR countries, most likely since introductions of that laws. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:10, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
Commons as a "free at all costs" collection of media is a great idea. In practice though.. We see users uploading fair use content here, and they get (understandably) angry when we delete it. Because they don't understand the difference between Commons and Wikipedia. And some go even further, falsifying information to prevent their fair use content from being deleted. In its most innocent form they just claim "own work". But faking license reviews or OTRS fraud also happens. And then we have projects who have chosen not to implement any Exemption Doctrine Policy. Because they have nothing else, they upload photos of artworks from countries without FoP, upload graffiti of whatever they want to illustrate or abuse {{De minimis}}. For an example of the latter, File:GT2 - Flickr - CarSpotter.jpg shouldn't be used to illustrate Batman. But 7 wikis do exactly that. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 20:13, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
see also w:History of fair use proposals in Australia. the attempt to expand fair use has been resisted by the copyright fee collectors as piracy, and by the free only ideologues as piracy. fair use is allowed on pt.wikipedia m:Non-free_content. fair use may be allowed on English, but you will be blocked for uploading too many fair use images. and that is not a WMF decision, that is a community decision. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 03:09, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
@Slowking4: do you have some more information about that? What is the limit? Can you be blocked for uploading too much even if all your uploads have a valid fair use rationale? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 17:34, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
well, that would be my summary of my block. (a cautionary of any uploading fair use on english) all my fair use uploads had a rationale, but i needed to try harder "to find a free alternative". a hundred images and you would think freedom was dead. they essentially moved the goal post on english from pure fair use, to "minimize means zero" fair use.[26] and you had sock banned users or ip's removing images with rationales from articles without comment.[27] the admin conduct does not inspire much confidence that real curation of fair use images can occur in this community. yrmv. [28]. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 18:34, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Successive requests for renaming

The history of what's currently File:Claudio Lee Smith.jpg shows that User:CAPTAIN RAJU, User:Gereon K., User:Krassotkin and User:Marcus Cyron have, no doubt with the best of intentions, successively played along with the whims of User:Hilltoptc, renaming and renaming this humdrum file (a photograph of somebody whose significance is not obvious).

I don't suppose that this will continue to be a problem for this file: a few minutes ago I protected the (probably doomed) article against further page moves. But I note that Hilltoptc never had to make any explanation. Of course having to grill people for their reasons for requesting any change would be onerous, but I wonder if it would be possible to automate some warning flag -- perhaps when a third or subsequent request is made, or when a second request is made within one week -- so that the user making the request would then be grilled for reasons. -- Hoary (talk) 23:33, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

For such request I have to trust the requester. It's nearly impossible to check such things, when there's a request for renaming thats sound reasonable, I rename with AGF. And as far as I can say, mostly those requests are correct. Sadly it can alwys happen, that there are mistakes. Marcus Cyron (talk) 04:01, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
Just as I thought. I'm not blaming you, User:Marcus Cyron -- or User:CAPTAIN RAJU, User:Gereon K. or User:Krassotkin. But for any attempt at a second rename, it would have been good if a warning had popped up: "This file has already been renamed: X hours/days ago (from XYZ). Are you sure you want to proceed?" -- Hoary (talk) 08:34, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I don't understand what you are saying. What does not contradict what? I can do what? -- Hoary (talk) 08:42, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
I moved from "Crow Washington" to "Brownley Watson". Made sense to me at the moment. A request for moving has only to be rejected once to trigger an automatic warning for every successive move. Now again the file name does not correspond with the category. And the homepoage of this guy we find on Wikidata does not exist. I would recommend to delete the Wikidata item and both pictures in the category Crowley Baldwin, unless we can ascertain who this guy really is. --Gereon K. (talk) 10:05, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
The person who has successively asked for renaming here, and who has successively moved the article within en:WP, has each time linked from the en:WP article to the domain name of a website that doesn't exist. (See the AfD, now in progress.) -- Hoary (talk) 11:04, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
WP:Articles for deletion/Crowley Baldwin shows that the article in which this photo was used has been deleted and the artile's creator and manic renamer has been indefinitely blocked. I note that its creator has also had renamed their sole other contribution to Commons, File:BB_Bronx.jpg. Perhaps that too is better deleted. -- Hoary (talk) 10:10, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

November 25

Naming policy for Italian churches categories

Hello! I've been working lately on Italian churches and so far, for the categories, I've always used the format "Chiesa di San XXX" (= "Saint XXX Church" in Italian). I know the categories' naming policy says names should be in english, but that's troublesome because not all church names can be easily translated in english, especially the ones referring to various specifically italian titles of the Virgin Mary (and, to be fussy, most of the other churches are never mentioned in english sources, so they don't have any "official" english name and direct translation would be a little bit OR). Anyway, at some point I noticed that most of the pre-existing categories used a different format, not "Chiesa di San XXX" but only "San XXX" -the name of the titular saint alone, but still in italian; this is a common, mostly colloquial shortening for church names in Italy, which would never be used as the title for a page on it.wiki, but possibly here is a compromise towards the general naming policy (this seems to be the format used on en.wiki too). Which is better? (in both cases, I think I could use a bot to move the categories). -- Syrio posso aiutare? 12:57, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

It's much more important to have one category per church than what that category is named. Names can easily be changed if needed. - Jmabel ! talk 17:29, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
The current standard is "Name of the saint in Italian (Name of the city)". In case of ambiguity we can add "chuch" after the saint name. This is the standard used mostly in en.wiki too, and I would like to keep it as it is. --Sailko (talk) 18:40, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
@Jmabel Uuuh, yes, but if we can agree on a standard to avoid changing names later is better, isn't it? -- Syrio posso aiutare? 20:15, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Vector PDF maps, graphs, and charts should be welcomed in the Project scope

Please see: Commons talk:Project scope#Vector PDF maps, graphs, and charts should be welcomed in the Project scope.

I am linking to it from here in hopes of attracting some discussion there. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:34, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Why does this SVG thumbnail not show up in the right color?

I recently created a batch of edited versions of the file File:Red pog.svg to change the color to match the "official" colors of the periods of geologic time to use as map markers pointing out fossil discoveries of those ages. However, for some reason after uploading the thumbnail shows up as the original red color rather than the modified colors (example: File:Silurian pog.svg should be light blue) while viewing the actual file looks correct. Even worse is that when using the file as a map marker on Wikipedia it shows up as the original red like in the thumbnail rather than the file's real color. Does anyone know how to fix this? Abyssal (talk) 15:35, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

I seem to have fixed it. The problem (at least with the most recent revision) was that you had this:
      <stop
         offset="75%"
         stop-color="#990000"
         id="stop6"
         style="stop-color:#bfe0cd;stop-opacity:1" />
Note the two conflicting specifications for "stop-color", one in an attribute and one in an inline style. The one in the style should take precedence, but it looks like Commons' SVG renderer gets that wrong (among other things), so I simply removed that attribute and now it all seems to be fine. --bjh21 (talk) 19:12, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. I didn't know you could mess around with these things in a text editor. Abyssal (talk) 19:38, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Community Health Metrics Kit consultation

This message is also available in other languages.

The Community Health Metrics Kit is a new project to measure more aspects of our communities. If you are interested in metrics, statistics, and measurement of editing and contributing, please join us on Meta to discuss how and what the new project should measure! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 19:21, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-48

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

  • On wikis with translatable pages you could create a mess when you moved a page that had translatable subpages. A subpage is when you use / to create a new page: /wiki/Page/Subpage. The subpages would be moved but not the translations. The subpages are no longer automatically be moved. This is to make it safer to move pages. [29]

Changes later this week

  • The advanced search interface will be available by default on all Wikimedia wikis. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It's already active on German, Farsi, Arabic and Hungarian Wikipedia. [30]
  • Special:UnusedCategories show empty categories with no files or other categories. You can soon choose to not show soft redirect categories or some maintenance categories there. You can do this with the magic word __EXPECTUNUSEDCATEGORY__. [31]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 November. It will be on all wikis from 29 November (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • Advanced item The mw.util.jsMessage() function was deprecated in 2012. It will be removed next week. Look for the warning Use of "mw.util.jsMessage" is deprecated in the JavaScript console to know if you use an affected script or gadget. If you are a gadget maintainer you should check if your JavaScript code contains mw.util.jsMessage. There is a migration guide. It explains how to use mw.notify instead. [32]

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

22:21, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

November 27

URGENT request for file review

I have just transferred five youtube videos, all contained in Category:He Jiankui. I ask for anyone's help to review them to confirm that they are released under Youtube CC licenses. They are related to the alleged world's first GM babies. I fear that the CC licenses might be retracted or the videos pulled from the net.

I am not a fan of editing humans' genes at all. I transferred the videos because I believe they are of great importance.--Roy17 (talk) 01:44, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

@Roy17: ✓ Done, please create the category.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 02:29, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Should we request license reviews for PD works?

I just noticed how a map that's over 300 years old got tagged "no source". Indeed it didn't have one, but what if it would have had a source that's now dead and wasn't archived? That's hardly any better than no source at all, is it? Which is why I'm asking: should we request license reviews for everything from external sites, including works in the public domain? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 16:49, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Kept the file, the link to the Rijksmuseum at the other file is good enough. In the future please convert to regular DR instead of creating a Village Pump topic over the proposed deletion of a single file. Jcb (talk) 17:02, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
It is a general question. This won't be the last time I run into an image of something antique without a (useful) source. And yes, in this case I was able to find a source and even upload a better quality copy. But that doesn't always work. And although there is a link to the Rijksmuseum now, what if that link doesn't work anymore 2 years from now? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 18:24, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
Every external link added to Wikim/pedia is archived within a few minutes. See this blog post.
For example, see the source of File:Ushtibin (51368 25-1).jpg, and check it here. 4nn1l2 (talk) 18:55, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
@4nn1l2: not true. File:Dabke dancing in Al Matit, Aitaroun -16 April 1995.webm wasn't saved. File:GIANT PUSS ABCESS DRAINED ON HORSE'S NECK VERY GRAPHIC.webm wasn't saved. InternetArchiveBot has 0 edits on Commons. But even if/when our links get archived, archive.org sometimes doesn't succeed to also save the image on a page. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 20:03, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
no, i think we need a village pump discussion of each and every misuse of the "license review". the propensity of a few to delete, rather than fix the license or source, is an open scandal. it is unprofessional, and drives away good faith contributors. why don't you stop. and stop warning people about what is an appropriate topic for village pump. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 15:19, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
+1 It is an open scandal, as is seeing an administrator attempting to suppress reasonable discussion from the community VP. --Fæ (talk) 15:23, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Have noticed a few DRs where a simple fix of the license & description would be all that was needed. Those DRs tend to stay open quite a while too sometimes. Might also be contributing in a small way to long backlogs. Abzeronow (talk) 16:49, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Rotated. Watermark removed. Adjusted levels. Removed borders

There is certain population of Commons users who mostly “improve” existing images. Some representatives are:

As most of images requiring rotation or cropping on Commons are in JPEG, they mostly edit JPEGs. What do they know about techniques? At best, CropTool which has an option “lossless” but falls to “precise” by default (and not every user even understands what the word “lossless” means). In other cases they use tools like Gimp and advice other people of their ilk to do the same. It would be a bit reasonable if—for each image—they do all their stuff at once and then JPEG-encode; but who knows, do they even understand why is it important. Moreover. One user comes and wants to remove some border. Then another makes the image lighter or darker. The third sees a watermark and edits the latest version instead of digging into #filehistory – and grateful consumers see a thick generation loss eventually.

What can we do with it? First of all, awareness of #filehistory should be promulgated (I thought about such feature request for CropTool, but didn’t write yet). Next, some group of JPEG editing experts can be formed; it could disseminate good practices. Another possible solution is to warn about JPEG editing in general and history (or sources) of the file specifically in the upload form. We possibly can even block some clueless overwrites technically, namely on detection of derivatives of an already degraded derivative. Other proposals?

And please, don’t point me to Commons:OVERWRITE – it permits for technical changes. Generation loss is mostly a technical problem. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 19:38, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Commons talk:CropTool#Precise/lossless mode. I usually save JPEG files with the same amount of compression as the original if I didn't crop or rotate but only adjusted levels for example. This way there is (virtually) no generation loss. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 01:10, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
yeah, we need to develop a standard of practice, for image editing, and maintaining metadata, and then enforce it. it would make it easier to avoid the Jan Arkesteijn mess. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 15:33, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
SOFIXIT.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:14, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
here is another example Commons:Deletion requests/File:Désirs SAAM-1974.45 1.jpg i would humbly suggest that editors that practice photo editing should produce their consensus; that will not be produced by exhortation, which may be counterproductive, but by leadership. perpetually waiting for that. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 02:40, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Ballot papers in Andalusia

Next sunday a regional election will be held in Andalusia, Spain. Efforts are being done in order to pick up images of ballot papers of all candidacies in all provinces. It has been done in previous elections, as can be seen in Category:Ballot papers in Andalusia.

In Spain you can walk into any colegio electoral and take some papeletas electorales and sobres. It's legal. You don't have to be a voter, or an Andalusian, or even Spanish to do so.

As we just need the images scanned and uploaded to Commons, you can keep your ballot papers as souvenirs from Seville, Costa del Sol or wherever you find them. We are coordinating the ballot compilation with the epa2018 tool.

Your help will be greatly appreciated!

B25es (talk) 18:57, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

November 28

Hieroglyphs

Hi. Someone has complained in my talkpage about hieroglyphs not being displayed as they did in the past. In the past they were displayed in an horizontal string, now... vertical. Does anybody know why is this happening? Strakhov (talk) 23:13, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

@Strakhov: my ancient Egyptian is a bit rusty. Exactly what is being displayed differently? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 23:28, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
@Strakhov: Oooh, I think I get it, this is about the insertion of newlines. Or tables, more accurately.. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 23:37, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz: I don't have the slightest idea, today is my first encounter with a hieroglyph here. According to what I've been told, it may be related to the <hiero> tag:
(↓↓rough translation↓↓)
Before they were displayed horizontal, ("left-to-right"), this way:
text (Hieroglyph) text (Hieroglyph)
Now they are displayed vertical ("one-below-the-other"), this way:
text
S5
text
S6
Strakhov (talk) 23:49, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
mw:Extension:WikiHiero "Hieroglyph pictures are copyrighted S. Rosmorduc, G. Watson and J. Hirst and released under GNU Free Documentation License." that's one license that is not being respected here..
I don't have enough Tylenol to comprehend mw:Extension:WikiHiero/Syntax. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 00:02, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Well. This somehow.. works:

text text
S5S6

I guess at some point... a line break was included in the </hiero> closing tag, completely out-of-the-blue. Some hieroglyphers are not going to be happy. The license issue is a thing, too. Strakhov (talk) 00:15, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

S5textS6text
sorta works. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 00:30, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
Maybe MaxSem would know what happened. Kaldari (talk) 22:02, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
phab:T210695. Max Semenik (talk) 04:07, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

November 26

Permission of files in Category: Lu Gi-Zen

Hi all, I'm staff of Wikimedia Taiwan. We hold several workshops to upload files which are donated by Taiwanese artist this year. We asked volunteers uploaded the files and add Template:OTRS pending first, then taught the copyright owner sent the permission to OTRS group.

Last week, I hold another workshop with Lu Gi-Zen's family on the same way. User:Patrick Rogel add Template:No permission since on every files soon, that means if we can't finish the process of OTRS in 7 days, all files will be deleted. Though we will ask the donater mail the permission ASAP, but we can't be sure it would be done on time.

I left message on Rogel's talk page but haven't got any reply yet. May I remove the "No permission since" template in case they're deleted too early?

All files:

--Reke (talk) 09:04, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

welcome to the automatic deletion that is commons. they will delete the files, until the OTRS is confirmed in about 60 days, baring a friendly OTRS reviewer, which would be miraculous. interacting with the editor will not work; removing the template will not work, they will delete in 7 days since it is in their queue. apologies to the GLAM, but his mind is made up. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 15:49, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
@Reke: I removed {{Npd}} tags from the files listed above. {{Npd}} tag should not be applied when the file has already been tagged with {{OTRS pending}}. However, please note that {{OTRS pending}} should be added only after a permission statement has been sent to the OTRS team by the copyright holder. 4nn1l2 (talk) 16:10, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Thank you 4nn1l2. There reason why we add the template before copyright holder sent the mail is beacause, if we do this after the mail, the warning message will come faster, the organizer not only need to explain again and again, but also need to find every files to add the template. It may brings us more work to do. I hope there is some way to help us do the project easlier.--Reke (talk) 08:23, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Scripts not loading

Though I'm fortunate to have a high-spec laptop (Dell XPS, running Win 10), I find that sometimes user scripts do not load; for example I use User:Samwilson's GoogleOCR.js, but cannot get it to show on this image. I have similar issues with user scripts on Wikidata. Is there a way to debug this, or to force scripts to load? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:21, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: Do you get the same results with &debug=1 on the end of the URL? I find sometimes that forces a different load order and things work correctly. Also worth looking in your browser's Javascript console to see if there's any obvious errors (although, it's hard to see why a script would be intermittently loading with errors). — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 23:52, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
@Samwilson: Thank you. this URL gives me a "No file by this name exists..." error. Have I misunderstood? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:37, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
@Samwilson: On this page, I get these errors. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:42, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: Oh yes, sorry I meant in the editing page. I seem to sometimes get "jQuery(window).on('load'...) called after load event occurred", but the OCR button is loading anyway (most of the time) so that's coming from a different gadget. I've been trying to figure out what the issue is, but have svgtranslate things to play with for today :) so shall try to experiment on the weekend. — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 02:02, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Category:Facial expressions of humans

I understand the value of some of the subcategories of Category:Facial expressions of humans, but what on earth does it mean to put an image directly in Category:Facial expressions of humans? Doesn't every picture of a human face show one facial expression or another? If the intent is to provide examples of particular facial expressions, wouldn't this better be served by a gallery page than a category? - Jmabel ! talk 17:35, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

"Doesn't every picture of a human face show one facial expression or another?" The internet meme community may disagree. --HyperGaruda (talk) 21:45, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
I hope you don't mean that last seriously. Yes, some people have a narrow range of expression. I don't think that addresses my point. - Jmabel ! talk 22:12, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Of course I'm joking ;) But more on topic: I would say it is probably best to turn the category into a {{MetaCat}}. --HyperGaruda (talk) 09:18, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
I'd have no problem with it as a meta-cat, but what do we then do with the many photos that have been placed in the category? I only even became aware of this category because someone else saw fit to place some photos I'd taken in the category. - Jmabel ! talk 16:44, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
Either remove them or put them in subcategories. Kaldari (talk) 21:52, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Questions about the Taken with categories...

  1. How useful are the categories "taken with" intended to specify what model of camera with which an image was captured?
  2. How much effort should be spend on maintaining these categories?
  3. I've encountered a handful of energetic contributors who devoted a lot of time to merging images whose exif data says they were taken with one kind of camera into categories for images taken with a different model of camera, when they think the two models of camera are, essentially, identical.

    I've explained my interpretation, that we should rely solely on the model number the camera's firmware embedded in the image. It has been my impression that none of those enthusiastic experts have ever offered a good justification for ignoring the model number embeddeded in the exif data.

    Is there anyone out there who thinks they have a good justification for ignoring the model number embeddeded in the exif data?

  4. If these categories are useful enough to maintain, has anyone written a bot to read the model number from the exif data from a list of images, and then add the appropriate "taken with" category to the image?
  5. If these categories are useful enough to maintain, has anyone written a bot to read the model number from the exif data from a list of images, and compare it with the images' "taken with" category, to make sure they match? Geo Swan (talk) 18:26, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
My view:
  1. They might be useful to someone; I personally don't care. I cannot imagine looking up images by camera body (especially since on almost anything high-end, the lens is independent of this and at least equally important). Of course, it might be really convenient for someone who's trying to break into someone's house to steal a camera…
  2. None, but only because I don't see a way to expend less than that.
  3. Insofar as these categories might be useful, that seems like a liability: can't they group together what they think is synonymous in parent categories instead? Insofar as these categories are, indeed, useless, then all they are doing is wasting their own time.
  4. N/A
  5. N/A
- Jmabel ! talk 22:19, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
  • 4) is done by User:BotAdventures, which can also do 5) if desired. I think people still do it manually because the bot doesn't do every image. The camera model will be included in Commons structured data, so perhaps the categories will become obsolete at that point. 3) is an issue especially for mobile phones, e.g., Category:Taken with Samsung Galaxy S4: should there be a category for the model, or one for each of it's 20+ variants? That will also be an issue for structured data, where the value will likely need to be linked with a Wikidata item. --ghouston (talk) 03:45, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
Personally I would suggest adding "Deprecated" to all of these categories once Structured Data for Wikimedia Commons is implemented, a simple note saying "this category exists for historical purposes only, please see (the successor)" would probably be sufficient. It would be a disservice for future WikiHistorians to delete them and their functionality will be a part of SDWC anyhow so there won't be much use for them anyhow. I like them, but dislike that they only include like a fixed number of images, it's because of these images that I even heard of SDWC. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 11:28, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Donald Trung - um "structured data"? Where should I go to learn about this initiative?
  • Yes, if robots make this information more available to humans, and other robots, deprecation sounds like the right choice. Probably premature though, if the robots aren't ready and tested.
  • If robots will be handling this, I'll stop bothering to manually add this information, and ignore those energetic contributors who want to over-ride what the exif data says.
  • ghouston should devices that appear identical, and yet embed different model numbers into the exif data of the images they take be classified strictly according to that exif data? Yeah, I think they should. Why? A manufacturer might manufacture multiple cameras that are apparently identical, but embed different model numbers, for at least two reasons.

    First, apparently identical models might actually be identical, and the different names might solely have been chosen because different markets have different lucky numbers. I've read, for instance, that in traditional Chinese culture 4 and 8 are numbers that are lucky, or unlucky. Seven is lucky in the anglosphere, and thirteen unlucky.

  1. A manufacturer might distribute a new device that looks identical to an earlier model, which however is distributed with firmware that has had serious bugs fixed, or has had additional impressive features added.
  2. A manufacturer might distribute a new device that looks essentially identical to an earlier model, but which is more capable than the other model(s), because its memory is twice as fast, or it comes with twice as much memory, enabling it to offer features that require more or better memory.
  3. A manufacturer might distribute a new device that looks essentially identical to an earlier model, but which offers more features in its firmware because a competitor offered those features, and they proved popular, and they wanted to compete.
  4. Price point... manufacturers like to offer devices for every budget. Those of us old enough to remember the intel processors that preceded the Pentiums remember the hilarious problems when other chip manufacturers started to market CPUs that were pin compatible with intel's CPUs. They marketed the 8088/8086, the 80188/80186, the 80188/80186, the 386sx/386dx, and finally the 486sx/486dx.

    One hilarious aspect was that some of their competitors, when intel's release of its 486 was imminent, introduced their own CPUs like the 486slc, which really only comparable to a 386, with some relatively minor improvements. The 486slc and other non-intel CPUs could use a 386 motherboard, where an intel 486 required a new much more expensive motherboard. This is why intel named its next processor Pentium, Pentium could be trademarked, where numbers like 386, 486 couldn't.

    Wiseguys joked that the 386dx was the "deluxe" model, while the significantly cheaper, but less capable 386sx version "sucked". In the CPUs that preceded the 486, the hobbling consisted of artificially reducing the width of the data bus. Well, for the 486, the hobbling involved how floating point arithmetic was handled. For previous CPUs floating point arithmetic could be handled by a coprocessor, the 8087, or 80187, 80287 or 80387, cheaper motherboards didn't ship with floating point coprocessor, so floating point arithmetic had to be emulated in software, not handled by hardware....

    Well, when they introduced the 486sx, 486dx, and 487, they told customers these were three different chips, with the 486dx being the deluxe version, which finally did not require a floating point coprocessor, and the 487 being the floating point coprocessor someone who initially bought the cheaper 486sx could later add to their motherboard. Motherboards for 486sx and 486dx were different, and incompatible.

    The hilarious aspect was that there was only one 486 chip. About half the silicon real estate of a 486 was devoted to handling floating point operations. When chips were tested, in the factory, a considerable fraction could execute all their instruction, except for their floating point arithmetic instructions. Those chips weren't thrown out, they were packaged as 486sx CPUs. The 486dx and 487 chips were CPUs that passed their floating point tests, but they were packaged with different pinouts. If you had purchased the cheaper 486sx, and later decided you really needed the expensive 487, and installed one in your empty 487 socket, you thought it was a coprocessor, which would only be called upon for floating point operations.

    But what actually happened, when a 487 was installed, was that the motherboard simply bypassed the original 486sx. The 487 completely replaced the original CPU. This is so sneaky and disreputable, and yet to complicated that intel never really had to wear any shame for this deception.

  • I don't think there is any reliable way for anyone but the manufacturer to know whether models with essentially identical hardware offer genuinely different feature sets, or have different model names solely for marketing reasons. So, I think distinct model names should not be conflated.
Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 00:54, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
The categories are generally 1 per model, unless somebody has created additional categories for variants (as in the Samsung model I linked above). Creating a category for every variant would mean a lot more categories, e.g., Canon like to produce three variants for each of their camera models, e.g., EOS 400D, Digital Rebel XTi, and EOS Kiss Digital X. The problem on the Wikidata side is that if someone created items for each of these variants, then most likely somebody else would come along and merge them as duplicates (since they are basically the same thing with different names). Even if that can be avoided, which item would you link with the Wikipedia article en:Canon_EOS_400D? You'd probably need to create a 4th Wikidata item which would be the "parent" to represent the model, which would then have three model variants. It'd be the same in a Commons category, but what would the parent category be called? something like "Taken with Canon EOS 400D / Digital Rebel XTi / EOS Kiss Digital X, presumably. But then the images are split into three, making queries more complicated when you don't care about the variants. --ghouston (talk) 02:05, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Urgent - Help with changing copyright on NASA image from CC to PD-USGov-NASA

It was brought to my attention that when I recently uploaded a NASA image, I had used an incorrect license. It should be {{PD-USGov-NASA}} and that only two categories were appropriate for this image: Category:Atmospheric rivers Category:Satellite pictures of mid-latitude storms

This can only be done by an administrator. The image is already in use in it has already been used in the Wikipedia article and the WikiNews item on the Fourth National Climate Assessment so I am hoping the changes can be made soon.

I have made a call out for this on different places as this is my first time using Pump and Administrators's Noticeboard.

Thanks so much.Oceanflynn (talk) 17:47, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

  • @Oceanflynn: I see nothing here that specifically needs to be done by an administrator. Why can't you make these changes yourself?
  • If I'm missing something, and there is something that specifically needs to be done by an administrator, please be specific as to what that is, and ask at COM:AN, the correct place to as for administrative help. - Jmabel ! talk 20:20, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
The license has to be changed to {{PD-USGov-NASA}} and any other categories except these need to be removed:Category:Atmospheric rivers, Category:Satellite pictures of mid-latitude storms It would not let me make changes. ThanksOceanflynn (talk) 20:31, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
@Jmabel: It is cascade protected due to presence on Commons:Auto-protected files/wikinews/en.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 22:05, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
Done. Sorry, no one had said anything about protection. - Jmabel ! talk 23:56, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
@Jmabel: Thanks!   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 01:40, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Copyright Office accepting comments on noncommercial uses of pre-1972 sound recordings

I just posted a note to the Public Policy and Commons-l lists about this, but the US Copyright Office is accepting comments on rules that it will set that can make it easier to make non-commercial uses of sound recordings made before 1972. The Music Modernization Act lets people make non-commercial uses of pre-72 recordings if they conduct a good faith, reasonable search to make sure that the sound recording isn't being commercially exploited and give 90 days' notice for a rightsholder to object. The Copyright Office is asking about what exactly that reasonable search should look like. It's received and published initial comments, which were due on November 26, and will accept reply comments until December 11. More details in the linked email. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SSiy (WMF) (talk • contribs) 18:17, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

this will be of interest to Internet Archive, and wikipedias with an EDP. they could make extensive use of fair use music files for notable artists. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 18:55, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
@Slowking4: without having looked at the details, no, they can't. "reasonable search to make sure that the sound recording isn't being commercially exploited" seems to mean, to me, that if you can buy it/listen to it on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, YouTube Vevo (or some other ad-supported YT channel), the website of the artist, etc.. you can't use it. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 19:26, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
without having looked at the details, yes. it is the mainstreaming of ubu. for orphans not in use, this will allow a safe-harbor, and we will use it. there will be no getty claim jumping here. but then, this will be a discussion for the EDP sites. this will be a good place to start https://great78.archive.org/ Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 19:31, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

November 29

What does "partially nude" mean?

Commons has many categories of "nude or partially nude" people in various situations. I removed several images from such categories because I believed it was obvious that the people pictured were neither nude nor partially nude. For example, in File:Crissy_Moran.jpg the subject is wearing some kind of lingerie. Or in File:Jean and Sea 2.jpg the subject is wearing a shirt and panties. All of my changes were all reverted by User:Tm who apparently believes that people are "partially nude" even if they are wearing underwear or semi-transparent clothing. I believe that the common definition of "partially nude" is that the person is either topless or bottomless. To get a sense of the general opinion here, I think the simplest question would be to ask if a woman is wearing only a bikini or underwear, is she partially nude? World's Lamest Critic (talk) 00:19, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

All people except this one must be classified as partially nude! :) Sneeuwschaap (talk) 05:38, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
Am I only the only one who sees an elephant trunk in this? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 00:22, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
@World's Lamest Critic and Tm: No, there is a difference between Category:Partially nude women and Category:Women wearing transparent clothing, and I think that difference should be maintained.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 06:18, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
I think there should be no categories named "partially nude". It's about as meaningful as "partially green butterflies" or "partially illuminated buildings". Either there is nudity in the picture or not (and COM:Nudity actually means visible genitalia, but not necessarily nakedness i.e. full absence of clothes). So it's sufficient to have categories on "nude", "topless", or "wearing transparent clothing". If someone really needs categories for special cases like "bottomless but not topless" or something, they should be bold and create them, but not name them "partially nude". --A.Savin 00:14, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
I don't think COM:NUDITY is trying to define what "nude" means, but that's a different discussion. If someone is wearing pants pulled down to expose their genitals, they aren't "nude", but there is "nudity". Some might call this "partially nude". Wearing a bikini is not the same thing. They are not nude. They are not topless. They are not bottomless. This is the case that seems to be causing conflict. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 04:18, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
Topless women go into Category:Topless women‎. Bottomless women go into Category:Female bottomlessness‎. Bottomless men go into Category:Nude males. Topless men usually go into Category:Men at beaches, Category:Sadness, Category:Presidents of Russia or all of the above. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 00:22, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
OK, but is a woman wearing a bikini "partially nude"? Both User:Tm and User:Jcb say that a woman in a bikini i;s partially nude. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 04:23, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi, looking at this conversation, I was wondering which category this image belongs to. Thank you for your time. Lotje (talk) 06:01, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
@Lotje: Category:Black and white photographs of women wearing bikinis is probably the closest fit. I can't see through all the beads.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 06:16, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
Except that isn't a bikini. But to answer the implied question, I don't consider the woman in this image to be "partially nude". World's Lamest Critic (talk) 18:52, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
@World's Lamest Critic: Category:Women wearing bikinis, Category:Males wearing mankini (don't click that), Category:Women with exposed buttocks, Category:Men with exposed buttocks, Category:Men with partially exposed genitalia, Category:Women with partially exposed genitalia and so on.. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 17:25, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
You haven't answered the question. This is a discussion about what belongs in the many, many "nude or partially nude" categories that exist. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 18:52, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
I was asked to comment here. Actually I don't care so much about the exact choices of categorization, as long as you try to come to a consensus. Moving files back and forward repeatedly is counterproductive. Jcb (talk) 17:45, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
I generally agree that "parially nude" is an unhelpful category. But to play devil's advocate (for the sake of clarity), would a picture of someone wearing just one sock, or just a scarf go in Category:Nude people? Do we define "nude" strictly, and then anything else can go in Category:Toplessness and Category:Bottomlessness? On a similar note, the category description at Category:Bottomlessness says something about exposed genitalia, yet the category contains Category:No Pants Subway Ride where everyone is wearing underpants. Is that a miscategorization or not? I'd hate to get rid of "partially nude" but end up with "partial bottomlessness" =) - Themightyquill (talk) 11:42, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
The way that category is defined, they are miscategorized. I'm not trying to get rid of the "partially nude" categories. I just want to use them correctly and there doesn't seem to be consensus on what they mean. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 22:26, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Surely Nude means Nude, as in Naked. ANY item of clothing means they are NOT nude!!--Petebutt (talk) 08:00, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Commons Android app PG proposal, and v2.9 beta release

Hi folks,

We (the Commons app team) are applying for a Project Grant to fund the development of v3.0 of the Commons Android app. At the moment, we're approaching completion of our 2nd Individual Engagement Grant, having implemented several major new features, e.g. a revamped map of "nearby places that need photos" with direct uploads and Wikidata integration, user talk notifications, browsing of other Commons pictures with focus on featured images, and 2FA logins. We currently have 4000+ active installs, and 15,000+ distinct images uploaded via our app have been used in Wikimedia articles. In the last 6 months alone, 21,241 files were uploaded via our app, and only 1738 (8.2%) of those files required deletion. We are also proud to report that we have a vibrant, diverse community of volunteers on our GitHub repository, and that we have increased our global user coverage since our first grant.

It has been a rocky road this year, however. One of the major issues we faced was that a large portion of our codebase is based on sparsely-documented legacy code from the very first incarnation of the app 5 years ago (a long time in the Android development world), leading to unpredictable behavior and bugs. We eventually found ourselves in a position where new features built on top of legacy code were causing other features to not work correctly, and even fixes to those problems sometimes had side effects that caused other problems. (My sincerest apologies to users for the inconveniences that they were caused!)

In view of that, our Project Grant proposal focuses on these areas:

  • Increasing app stability and code quality: We plan to overhaul our legacy backend to adhere to modern best practices, reduce complexity and dependencies in our codebase, and introduce test-driven development for the first time.
  • Targeted acquisition of photos for places that need them: The "Nearby places that need photos" feature has come a long way, but there is still plenty of room for improvement. We plan to introduce new quality-of-life features (e.g. by implementing filters and bookmarks) and fix a few outstanding bugs to make it more user-friendly and convenient to use. We will also complete the final link in the chain of collecting photos for Wikipedia articles that lack them by prompting users to add their recently-uploaded photo to the relevant Wikipedia article.
  • Increasing user acquisition in the Global South: We plan to implement a "limited connectivity" mode, allow pausing and resuming of uploads, and put more time and effort into outreach and socializing the app, especially to underrepresented communities.
  • We also wish to continue to assist the Commons community to reduce vandalism and improve usability of images uploaded. This will be done by implementing selfie detection, and a "to-do" system that reminds users if an image lacks a description/categories.

Your feedback is important to us! Please do take a look, and feel free to let us know what you think on the Discussion page, and/or endorse the proposal if you see fit. If you would like to be part of the project, new volunteers and additions to our diverse team are always welcome - please visit our GitHub repository and say "Hi". :)

Also, we have just released v2.9 for beta testing on the Play Store! \o/ v2.9 features a new main screen UI, a new upload UI with multiple uploads enabled, and major bugfixes for image dates and the Nearby map default zoom level. More information and screenshots can be found on our blog. If you would like to help test the new release, you can sign up for beta testing here.

Finally, we want to thank everyone who has cheered us on and supported us throughout the years. As a community-maintained app, we wouldn't be here without you.

Misaochan (talk) 09:52, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

@Misaochan: the Commons app can only be used to edit Wikimedia Commons then why aren't any comments or feedback of it allowed on Wikimedia Commons? It seems very dishonest to direct people off this project. It's clear that the developers of this app don't have much intent of engaging with the Commons community if they want to place discussions about it outside of this project. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 17:28, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi Donald Trung 『徵國單』, feedback is absolutely allowed here! Has anyone been saying otherwise? I am required to direct people to the proposal page for proposal discussion, as per WMF's requirements ("You are responsible for notifying relevant communities of your proposal, so that they can help you! Depending on your project, notification may be most appropriate on a Village Pump, talk page, mailing list, etc.--> Please paste links below to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions. Need notification tips?"). That does not mean that discussion/feedback cannot also happen elsewhere, of course. Misaochan (talk) 17:30, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
@Misaochan: , ahhh, my bad. But where would I be able to provide feedback for this app and suggest features? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 17:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
Donald Trung 『徵國單』 For general feedback/suggestions, Commons talk:Mobile app is good. Misaochan (talk) 17:35, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Advanced Search

Advanced Search will become a default feature on your wiki on November 28. This new interface allows you to perform specialized searches on the search page, even if you don’t know any search syntax. Advanced Search originates from the German Community’s Technical Wishes project. It's already a default feature on German, Arabic, Farsi and Hungarian Wikipedia. Besides, more than 40.000 users across all wikis have tested the beta version. Feedback is welcome on the central feedback page.

Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:57, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Update: FMA's Future

Friends, something wonderful is happening here at FMA, but we can’t give you all the details just yet.

For the time being, we are still suspending new uploads and backing up our MP3 collection at archive.org/details/freemusicarchive, but we’re thrilled that service will NOT be suspended on December 1 as previously indicated.

Thanks for sticking with us during this time of transition, and we can’t wait to tell you all about what’s in store for our beloved Archive!

Expect to hear our big news by the end of December.

source

--ComputerHotline (talk) 14:27, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

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