Commons:Village pump/Negative news

Negative news

Hello, I've basically gotten two negative reports on wikinews in the last um, 48 hours. Can you help me? Shall I make my report?

Basically, nl.wikipedia is going "*&@#(*@#!@(#!@(*#&!@(*#&(*Q@#&(@*#&(!@*#&!@# commons! We're about to give up on these *@#&@*#&*@#" , Ok, that's not good. This was after they went whac-a-mole trying to fix thousands of broken image links across hundreds of pages, as a result of the great flags to SVG conversion. At times they also lost high quality pngs and were left with basically stick figure drawings. That's ... kinda bad. Perhaps communication with nl could be improved.

But the position of Amgine, one of the top editors at wikinews is more chilling. "Commons does not support wikinews" he states. An utter vote of no confidence. "Commons deletes images used in old articles, thus destroying our historic record, we simply cannot accept that. We plan to avoid commons for any new articles.", also he says "We're considering using a bot to download all images used on Wikinews from commons and uploading them to wikinews."

Oh dear. What's going on? Why are people so negative?

Kim Bruning 20:24, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Because there's absoluteley no communication between Commons and the local Wikipedia's (certainly not the NL wiki). This is our point of view: suddenly, someone on Commons decided to convert all png-flags to svg-versions, which then happened. Right after that, all correct png's were marked redundant, and replaced with those dreadfull red crosses: the result: a few thousand pages on our wikipedia (nl) with red crosses on them, without us even knowing why. Furthermore, all other flags were also marked redundant, and that was it: no warning, no explanation, no help for the local wikipedia's at all: we on wiki nl had to find all possible flags, tag them to put them all in a category, and then replace them with correct images: this required a huge amount of manpower, and many more hours of bot-work, and all of this racing against the clock, because th images on commons seemed to change with the hour. Well, i'm actually not very good in explaining, but User:Quistnix made a nice analysis on Pfctdayelises talk page. To summarize: we're fed up with the fact that images on Commons appear to be deleted randomly, and we don't understand why images must be converted to svg, and why quality is a lesser issue than file formats. Oh, did I mention the absolute lack of communication? --Tuvic 20:52, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Several answers: For sure there were and are problems in Commons. And they were mostly related to flags (conversion from PNG to SVG). This complain with respect to the red corssed flags that were still in use is now quite some time ago and the admin that did that got a very distinct message. Most other complains are (indirect) complains about our image policy that we use free images only. For example we delete unfree image and do not upload them to the local wiki where they might be allowed simply because we don't have the time for that and because it is not our problem but the problem of the uploader to correct it if he did upload unfree images to Commons. Another point is that we edit the database itself. E.g. there are a lot of duplicate images (exactly bitwise the same or same image in lower resulution) so we relink every usage to the new one and delete the other image afterwards. Or someone did upload an image with a cryptic name like 12345GFTJ.jpg which is also very often. So occasionally we reupload it under a more resonable name and relink the usage. So it is impossible to claim that old wikinews articles won't get edited anymore at all. It is technically not possible at the moment (lack of feature in MediaWiki) until we have image redirects and image move (and even then there would be cases were you need to edit an old Wikinews article). We Commoners have created quite some tools in order to keep track of the images everywhere and in order to manage them to bypass the lack of features in MediaWiki but we cannot do magic and we cannot code everything by ourselves. With respect to communication. We Commoners are all coming from local projects and communicate a lot with these local projects we are coming from. So it is the responsibility of every project that wants Wikimedia Commons acting in a certain way to jump in and starting communication and not to wait and complain if something happened they did not agree on (apart from clear failures like the red crossing thing). So please do not complain about lack of communication and jump in, we are already full of work with the communication with our own projects. Arnomane 22:04, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Please do not dictate to the projects how images can and will be dealt with. Instead, please work with us, and support us, as your mission requires.

Wikinews is also creating tools, to work around Commons. We will make sure our tools are available to all projects on Meta.

I would request, again on this page, that Commons not delete any image unless it specifically violates copyright and is not used. I would again request that commons not edit the projects to remove image use, but instead communicate with the project how best to approach Commons's goals. I know I am not the only person who has tried to communicate with Commons; I have done so on at least 5 occasions, as well as many IRC, Skype communications with Commons admins. - Amgine 22:36, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that I dictate. Look there are several active Commoners like User:Duesentrieb, User:Dbenbenn, User:Avatar, User:Bastique, User:Arnomane and many more that put a large effort in enhancing Wikimedia Commons (see e.g. Commons:Tools and Commons:Tool integration) in order to organize images better and to let those bad things not happen. But we need more helping hands. Really. Please do not alienate us. We do our very best. Wikimedia Commons is a large and great challenge. It would be boring if there were no problems. Let's come together solving them and please do not make such things like duplicated bot uploads in Wikinews. Arnomane 23:04, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Copyright problems must be dealt with, regardless of whether or not the image is being used. If it were possible to remove non-free images from old wikinews articles, I'd do it, but I can't because the pages are protected. It's your responsibility to make sure that images you use in your articles are free use. If they aren't and I can't remove them from the articles, I'm going to delete them anyway. It's illegal to use copyrighted images, whereas it's only inconvenient to have an empty box on the article. As for png vs. svg, I don't see any problem with leaving the png files here on commons. --Spangineer^en es (háblame) 03:24, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think wikinews uses all that many copyrighted images, actually, but perhaps you've looked into it, and know a lot more about it than I do. If so, please share your findings!

Note that wikinews is a news source, it provides day to day news , while its old pages are an historic record. So for wikinews, a blank box where once there was an image is not an inconvenience, it's a disaster. Every lost image in history is damaging to the project, and damaging to the reputation of the project and the morale of its contributors.

A blank box on a real time news article is actually worse. That's a total loss of face in public *news*. I think your own imagination can give you a better idea of such a faux pas than my own words ever can. If wikinews is to compete with the likes of cnn or bbc, or other professional news services, we're going to have to figure out means to prevent such incidents.

If wikinews reporters are incompetent and provide non-free images, then that is certainly also an issue that needs to be addressed.

I think the problem can be put down to lack of communications between different wikimedia projects. Different projects have different needs, and we need to get them across between the different people. Where there's no communication, there's a lack of understanding.

Let's try to figure out ways to improve understanding! :-)

Kim Bruning 08:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Can anyone show where Wikinews is "considering using a bot to download all images used on Wikinews from commons and uploading them to wikinews"? Actually, if Wikinews needs to have a "historic record", with a guarantee that images used in old articles will never change, perhaps they really shouldn't be using the Commons. Presumably they shouldn't be using a wiki, either. Wiki software just isn't well suited for preserving historic records.

Anyway, I'd like to see some evidence that "Commons deletes images used in old articles". It's against policy to delete free images that are used. If it's been done, the person responsible should be reprimanded. User:dbenbenn 09:06, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I've probably deleted a few hundred files over the last week that were languishing in Category:Unknown, and I remember one of them was used on a wikinews article. Another one I just found that doesn't seem to have a free license is Image:IS2004-2140a copy.jpg. Its license seems to exclude commercial reproduction, which makes it unacceptable for Commons. But it appears on this wikinews article. Am I supposed to let it go, or enforce Wikicommons policy? --Spangineer^en es (háblame) 16:26, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

The PNG/SVG transition was certainly done in an inconsiderate manner which led to lots of problems and hard feelings. As for Wikinews, I'd like to see some concrete examples of images that have been deleted. We cannot keep copyrighted media under non-free licensing on Commons, regardless of whether they are being used. Moving these images to Wikinews doesn't solve the problem, it is equally questionable whether they would be allowed there, as the English Wikinews only allows very limited fair use. Double-uploading only creates a maintenance nightmare when you're dealing with real copyright issues.

Commons admins do not delete images because they like to wreck havoc, but because they must exercise due diligence in removing copyright violations. We receive uploads from clueless users every day who clearly just grab whatever they find on the web and don't bother for a second to try to read and understand the many warnings about the images having to be free. In many cases, the uploader is contacted beforehand and given an opportunity to remedy the situation. But when that doesn't happen, we have no choice but to delete the image. And no, the fact that it is being used does not alter our responsibility.

The now nicely integrated "check usage" tab should reduce the incidents of images in use being deleted without notice. Beyond that, there are people like myself who are admins on both projects. If there's an issue on Commons that needs to be resolved, you can talk to me. We should also discuss ways to get more "project representatives" among our administrators. Finally, if we had image undeletion capabilities, all these issues would be far less critical. This is a development project the German chapter could pay for, for example.--Eloquence 09:57, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Kim Bruning for bringing this to our attention.

As the situation currently is, I'd recommend local users to upload images to their local wikipedias instead of the Commons, and to ask their admins not to delete local images with the NowCommons tag. That is the safest way to ensure their images will be kept.

Until Wikimedia Commons administrators has a substantial base in Wikipedia-project administrators, I'll not trust it will serve the projects well enough. / Fred Chess 10:10, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes the PNG/SVG flag conversion was not done good and if you read Commons:transition to SVG and its talk page (I created it after the first severe incident in order to avoid such problems) you see that there were probably people from all sides that did not really understand what this page was about. :-(

The second point is: Some Wikinews people like Amgine want us to provide permanent image links. This is something Commons is technically unable to provide and this is something some (of course not all) Wikinews people need to realize that we cannot fullfill technical impossible demands. Even if there is no copyright violation in the image we need to sort the images, remove exact duplicates, change cryptic file names and so forth. Commons is no image dump. We Commoners hate it that people consider Commons as a image dump as this leads to nonexistant image descriptions with no valid source given and in many cases to bad filenames, wrongly categorized images and uploaders that do not react to our requests...: In short regarding Commons as image dump is just very hostile towards the hard working people that maintain Commons.

However and this should be now clear for every Commons admin: If you remove a redundant image you have to change it's usage first. In case of copyvios we cannot change the usage everywhere as it is way to much work. That's also why I enabled this check usage button inside Commons among others.

So my aim is twofold: On the one side we Commoners look after the other projects and be carfully on the other side the other projects that need need to realize that we address these issues very seriously (like we did with Check Usage). Arnomane 12:22, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't agree with all this; to some extent Commons is an image dump, and it's a service. It's kind of pointless to have a Commons that is pleasingly-organized for local admins, but not used by anybody. (Aside from the Wikinews situation, the daily volume of good free-license pictures still being uploaded to en: is a hint that Commons is not getting as much adoption as it should.) Stan Shebs 14:21, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry but you are wrong. Do you know e.g de.wikipedia? Do you know how much attention Commons get from the second largest Wikipedia? Do you know how much Commons is beeing used there? Very much. Beside that en.wikipedia just recently started improving their image licensing hell and still has a very long way to go compared to other Wikipedias within that respect. And Commons is no image dump, Commons is an image repository that's a large difference: Everyone that is unable to provide good image descriptions and does not care about sorting the own images right does harm Commons seriously. Arnomane 15:42, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I know all about de:, and I'm sure there are many who would be perfectly happy if commons were de:'s repository and nobody else used it. But Commons' official mission is to serve all Wikimedia projects, even the ones you don't care about. Stan Shebs 20:02, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's too much to ask, to ask people to provide information that they would be required to provide in their local project anyway. I don't know of any project where it is officially OK to just upload anything you find anywhere, with no thought as to copyright or licensing. All the other things are just niceties, requests, (description, categories, good file name)that uploaders don't have to comply with, but we'd really appreciate it if they did. So I don't know how anyone could be "turned off" Commons by our requests. pfctdayelise (translate?) 01:41, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I've said it a great many times, but again: PLEASE DO NOT DELETE STUFF UNILATERALLY even if you think we have "better stuff". Just mark the images as "obsolete" and wait for people in other projects to make the change.

Seriously, what do you think you're helping with by deleting stuff (outside of copyvios and other similar issues)? Disk space? David.Monniaux 11:19, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Just as a general observation, it would be very helpful if projects were to create commons pages briefly describing how they use commons' media, and any specific requirements. While I have personal knowledge of w:en: policy for images, I have no idea about wikinews, wikibooks, etc, and I don't read Chinese at all, so without a page written in English I don't have much chance of helping Chinese-language projects. Commons should be the repository of choice for images, so let's get more info about what would make it "choice". Stan Shebs 14:13, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

That's an excellent plan Stan Shebs, I'll second that! :-) It's a good start. Would nl and wikinews be interested in making such pages? Kim Bruning 16:46, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

After reading a lot of text on several pages:

• Commons:Transition to SVG: this page is good: it's a good summary of what to do. Let's hope the procedures are being followed in the future, to avoid thing like the flags.
• Copyvio's and junk should be deleted, no doubt about that.
• Replacing images with red crosses should be avoided at all times. Although the flags were replaced months ago, we only just recovered from that on NL wiki.
• Explanation pages about commons: I'm afraid I don't really get the idea.
• I don't think removing images should be abandoned, but it shoult happen with the uppermost care, and not taken lightly.
• ...

--Tuvic 21:11, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes the page Commons:Transition to SVG exists for quite a while now (much longer than this current problem) and is prominently linked for ages. But what can we do if there are still people involved in the matter that do not read it? :-( I don't know. Hopefully Commons:CommonsProject Insignia will improve the situation. Arnomane 02:09, 24 February 2006 (UTC)