Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2017/12

Plural category names

All of our categories are designed to hold more than one object (including subcategories, pages, and files). Most of them do hold more than one object. For those category names which are not proper names or taxonomic, they should be in plural form. For instance, I would like to see Category:Duplicates rather than Category:Duplicate.   — Jeff G. ツ 15:22, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Well, what you are proposing is already official Commons policy: Commons:Categories#Category_names ;-) Category:Duplicate is a bit different in that it is a maintenance Category that is filled automatically with files tagged with {{Duplicate}}. I'd prefer it to be named Category:Duplicated files, but renaming it might break some things … --El Grafo (talk) 16:52, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

I agree on "Duplicate". Established project categories shouldn't be renamed unless we change their scope or unless the name otherwise would be confusing, since renaming causes "issues" within the project, and as long as we insiders know what they do, that's sufficient. "Duplicate" is a good example of when not to move: anybody who understands "Duplicates" or "Duplicated files" will know what "Duplicate" means. Nyttend (talk) 13:36, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Watch creations by default

The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Consensus to change the configuration. --Steinsplitter (talk) 13:29, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T178750

Should the "Add pages I create and files I upload to my watchlist" preference be checked by default on this wiki? It already is on other wikis. If the consensus is in favor of this proposal, then task T178750 can be approved. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 19:53, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

•  Support This checkbox is in the "Advanced options" section of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist.   — Jeff G. ツ 14:02, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

•  Comment I'm surprised to read that it's not default. I think that would make a lot of sense. --El Grafo (talk) 13:17, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

  So am I.   — Jeff G. ツ 14:02, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

•  Support Enabling this would only make life easier for our new users. Guanaco (talk) 03:05, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support This is already the default on every other wiki. --Donald Trung (Talk 💬) ("The Chinese Coin Troll" 👿) (Articles 📚) 10:10, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Also surprised this wasn't already set. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:45, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
• +1 ok Christian Ferrer ^(talk) 17:01, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
• I do not have a strong opinion on this one, just to remark that for those of us who create a lot of categories this can be pretty annoying.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:19, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support: in general, where a feature is helpful to new or occasional contributors but annoying to ‘power users’ (like Ymblanter immediately above), it should be opt-out because the latter can be presumed savvy enough to turn it off while the former may not even be aware it exists as an opt-in.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 20:40, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Strong support: Some of the watchlist categories seem to be off by default on en.wp, and I have many times helped newbies get watchlisting to work as expected by flipping a toggle in Preferences. It would be a nice thing to have it work the first time. I support setting this ON by default on Commons. -- econterms (talk) 20:21, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

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

processed picture copyright question

Hi, I found the picture (an old postcard's scan) on the Internet and I processed (improved) it. May I upload it to Wikimedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Solymosi (talk • contribs) 13:25, 28 December 2017‎ (UTC)

@Solymosi: What is it's URL? How old is it? How do you know that?   — Jeff G. ツ _{ping or talk} 14:09, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Aren't alterations made to PD images automatically the copyright © of the person that alters the image unless it doesn't fall over the threshold of originality? At least that's the impression I had, if it's a PD image and it's not different enough to be its own image it's probably still PD. --Donald Trung (Talk 💬) ("The Chinese Coin Troll" 👿) (Articles 📚) 13:05, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: Yes, but given the OP's inexperience, my questions stand.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 13:23, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Allow archiving of other users' overlarge talk pages

When user talk pages hit Category:User talk pages where template include size is exceeded, templates no longer function. This includes all deletion alerts and signatures, making those alerts almost useless: the user is given no direct link to any of the deletion discussions, nor even any suggestion that there might be a problem, and there is no working link to the alerter's talk page.

I just noticed this on User talk:Talmoryair, who ironically hit the template limit immediately after a final warning for copyright violations. All subsequent messages, which may or may not be about further copyright violations, just say "Template:Autotranslate", and the user had no option to put things right.

So I suggest that Commons:Talk page guidelines and Category:User talk pages where template include size is exceeded be updated to explicitly allow any user to add {{subst:User:MiszaBot/usertalksetup}} to a user talk page that has hit this limit. --Gapfall (talk) 19:05, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

 Support  — Jeff G. ツ 20:17, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

 Conditional support: I think there should be guidance to the effect that an active user should be alerted to the problem first, and that others should only act if the user fails to address it in a reasonable time. Most people will comply with a polite request, or ask for help, without any feathers being ruffled.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 21:30, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

@Odysseus1479: How much time, a week?   — Jeff G. ツ 21:49, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

I think what’s “reasonable” would depend on the circumstances: if the user is obviously active on the site, after only a few hours I’d start to get the impression a notice was being ignored … but if a firm time-limit is wanted, a week ought to be plenty, even where the user hasn’t edited since being alerted.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 22:09, 10 December 2017 (UTC) P.S. I wouldn’t object to a shorter time: my main point is to say “ask first.” – 22:12, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Could we just subst some of the old templates? Or would archiving still be better? Carl Lindberg (talk) 01:52, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

If someone says no, that should be respected.

I run a notice shrinker on my talk and a few others. If anyone would like this for their page they can drop me a message. Example diff --Fæ (talk) 02:43, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

No, that shouldn't be respected. No user "owns" their talkpage. We need to be able to have proper communications with all users, no user should be able to protect their talk page to disallow any user from editing it, so it should go to reason that transcluding too many templates would do just that. If a user wants to have a "long talk page" that shouldn't matter. Warning about copyright etc are dictated in policy, and the "means" to leave such should be a must for all user talk pages. --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 04:16, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

It's rather a question of whether folks are okay with not turning this into a bureaucratic and provocative argument about you-don't-own-your-own-talk-page. My view is that boiler-plate notices like those for copyvios and DRs are no big deal on a page where the user already has 20 or 50 of the darn things. We can safely presume that they know exactly what they mean and have read the earlier boiler-plate text.

It would be more useful to adapt the javascript of the DR notification gadget to "degrade gracefully", by it noticing when transclusion is going to fail, and instead leave a more basic summary, like "A DR has been raised on <this file>, please see <DR link>" which need no transclusions to do exactly the same job. --Fæ (talk) 11:55, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Well, to be fully i18n we need to transclude that sentence as a template no matter the lenght or design of it, --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 12:01, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Sure, however this proposal is a good example of how we are never going to be i18n compliant in everything, and probably don't want to be. It's a pragmatic decision that harms nobody considering we are talking about a very small number of pages. --Fæ (talk) 12:04, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

The DR notification gadget change is a positive idea and gets to the heart of the problem which is inherently technical. If it notices there are too many notices already and it may hit the template calls limit, then realistically for error fallback behaviour it should just produce a link to the discussion and nothing else. seb26 (talk) 15:34, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

So far as I understand it, {{Autotranslate}} is there on every template (and signature link?) to make the text appear in the native language of the reader, according to their Commons settings. If an English-language editor substs it, it'll become fixed in English at that point. --Gapfall (talk) 11:41, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Returning to basic facts, my search shows there are just 58 main user talk pages where this is an issue, the rest are subpages like archives which should not be touched anyway. Such a small number of pages, many of which are users who are no longer active, should not set a precedent for policy changes. Push comes to shove, I could add the lot to my template shrinker (which simply comments out the most obvious notice transclusions) and this would get solved without forcing archive processes on anyone. --Fæ (talk) 14:36, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

If template shrinkage would be less contentious than archiving, sure, good idea. Your example is efficient but a little on the terse side - would expanding it with a brief explanation ("There is a problem with your upload File:XYZ.jpg. Please see [link].") be a good idea? With an exclamation mark icon to hopefully get the message across to users who don't read English. --Gapfall (talk) 09:28, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

•  Support with an alert and one - two weeks to do it themselves. --Jarekt (talk) 03:30, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

•  Oppose fix your code. rewrite your templates in lua. the fact that you persist in breaking the dysfunctional talk page with your bloated adversive warnings is not the editor's problem. it is yours. stop wasting everyone's time with your inability to collaborate. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 04:22, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

  @Slowking4: How do you suggest we "rewrite ... templates in lua"?   — Jeff G. ツ 05:03, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

  • • apply Commons:Lua to Category:Deletion templates; Template:Autotranslate . the nested calls explode size. over reliance on automated suite of tools that break talk, rather than text which would not. or you could automatically configure use talk with archiving, since the feature appears to be necessary. and you could cleanup this Category:Templates using an unknown approach for internationalisation Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 18:41, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
      • I do not see any evidence that our templates are broken. It is just that MediaWiki software has limitations and does not cope well with very large pages. There is a limit of how many templates you can have on a page and no rewriting or Lua is going to change that hard-wired limit. That is why we use archiving of talk pages or just delete messages which were already received. However if your talk page start showing up in the logs of pages that MediaWiki software can not cope with, than fixing it would be a courtesy to other editors who are trying to fix such issues. If one can not fix the issue than others should, but not allowing to fix the issue to me sounds like behavior discussed in en:Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point essay. --Jarekt (talk) 18:41, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

•  Comment Actually, {{subst:User:MiszaBot/usertalksetup}} isn't great on its default settings ("minthreadsleft = 0") because that could potentially archive the entire talk page in one go, which might be unwanted or confusing. But a variant with the threads-to-keep tweaked to roughly match the template limit (from looking at User talk:Talmoryair, 100 threads?) seems inoffensive. --Gapfall (talk) 11:41, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

•  Strong support it would probably be best to make a bot to archive all discussions older than 365 days automatically, and all IP user talk pages should always be archived after 180 days (archived not blanked, and certainly not deleted), some users have walls and walls of deletion request notices and warnings, these should probably all best be archived for readability's sake. I suggest two simultaneous archiving system, the current opt-in ArchiverBot and SPBot archiving system, and a non-removable auto-archive for posts and/or discussions older than a year (unless otherwise specified). --Donald Trung (Talk 💬) ("The Chinese Coin Troll" 👿) (Articles 📚) 14:27, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

  @Donald Trung: Do you have a source for "180 days"?   — Jeff G. ツ 15:44, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

• When user is asked to archive their talk page, they usually do so. I've seen few people archiving their usertalk when asked. If you want to "force archive other's usertalk", I believe there should be some clause "You must contact the user and give the chance to clean up themselves. You can only forcibly archive the user talk page if the user failed to reply within $month or $week or even $quarter." — regards, Revi 01:29, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

The problem isn't cleaning up, it's that templates stop functioning. You'd have a $month or $quarter of any further alert templates given to that user arriving blank, probably without the templater realising. In cases like User:Talmoryair (who seems to have provided OTRS proof for questioned uploads in the past), we risk losing useful content because the user isn't being clearly told that their images may be deleted (many of these templates don't even mention the filename and just print the words "Template:Autotranslate" when they break), and the user doesn't react to resolve anything. --Gapfall (talk) 09:28, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

I think giving user chance to clean themselves up before doing it outright is mellow-er than just archiving it outright. If you are getting hundreds of talk page notification templates that even cause the template transcluding starts to break, we can assume they are (highly) active on Commons, and would get a talk page notification in reasonable timeframe, and act upon it. Everyone might have different preferences on archiving, and I wouldn't like if somebody did it in the way I don't like. (Of course in this case, no archiving wouldn't be an option here.) — regards, Revi 15:39, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Anecdotal, but I made such an archive request to the user who prompted this proposal, a week ago, and they've ignored it. They've also uploaded 250 more images since then. (They possibly don't read English fluently, and I can't embed an autotranslated version of the archive request template because templates have stopped functioning on their talk page.) --Gapfall (talk) 09:08, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

@Gapfall: I made a similar request to Slowking4, fat lot of good it did. That was after a prior attempt over three years ago.   — Jeff G. ツ 09:30, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

that's right, not my responsibility to fix your broken notification code. do not read them anyway. you want to spam people's talk with broken code, you fix it. shifting the burden for your broken processes to others is a symptom of just how broken this place is. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 09:44, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

• I support that, with an attempt at communication or not, because honestly, in almost such cases I'm wonder if the users even care or watch their talk page... It already happened that I took the freedom to do it, I mean to archive a user talk page. I'm not able to find this talk page, but if I remember well the user seemed not to be active since a few month, (years?), did never answer in DRs or did never try to resolve source/permission issues. I was frustrated to see my notifications no working in the talk page. I was pretty sure that he would not have done it and would not have answered a request in that way. Therefore I did it. Christian Ferrer ^(talk) 18:28, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Oppose The only purpose of user talk pages is for the benefit of the user concerned. It is unfortunate that the wiki software can't cope with a large number of templates, but if templates don't display properly, the user has an easy fix (archiving). It seems like what you are trying to do is force the user to read and care about the message, and I don't think forcibly archiving their page for them will do that. Some people just want to be a little obstinate, and I don't think forcing them to appear to toe the line is a smart way to deal with a perceived problem. That said, if the user complains they weren't notified of something, they of course have no leg to stand on, as long as the notification would have worked had the page been more reasonably maintained. In essence, my position is that while broken talk pages are a mild annoyance, instituting a policy to force compliance to some arbitrary rules is worse for the project than the broken talk pages are. Storkk (talk) 10:42, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Oppose - If an editor doesn't wanna archive their tlakpage then that's up to them - We shouldn't force them!, If long user talkpages are breaking templates then it's the templates that need fixing not the users talkpage. –Davey2010^Talk 14:29, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support We can't "fix" templates without subst'ing them and leaving a bunch of unreadable junk in the wiki text, or removing all the boxes and stuff that's supposed to make it look good. Even if we subst all the templates, you'd still deal with a huge unwieldy page. As per Slowking4, some users just don't care about working with other people in a reasonable way. If the user doesn't care about stuff being added to the talk page, then why should they care about it getting archived?--Prosfilaes (talk) 06:37, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
  • you could care about working with people, and object to the adversive projection of responsibility to fix broken code upon un-involved editors. fix your incompetence, do not make others archive your incompetence. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 02:12, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
    • I do care about working with people, but that doesn't mean when someone is abusive and uncooperative, that I should normalize their behavior. A wiki page that continues to get longer and longer without bounds causes problems beyond the technical.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:43, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Oppose Special rules to fix a display problem on a maximum of 58 user pages is bad policy making. First step is to write to the 58 and ask. --Fæ (talk) 04:03, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

And what's the second step, in a situation other than all 58 voluntarily archiving their talk pages? We already have two above where that's not happened: one user hasn't reacted at all (possibly they're not fluent enough in English to understand the situation), and the other seems content to have a talk page that can't take templates from other users because they "do not read them anyway". What are the second steps in cases where users ignore or refuse the request? --Gapfall (talk) 23:48, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

• After some thoughts and reading others' opinion, I'm with Storkk and Fae. — regards, Revi 12:20, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

•  Support Overly long user pages do not load on slow connections. Talk pages are for communication with users and are not explicitly OWNED by the person in question. If they are overly long archiving seems reasonable. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:33, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

•  Question Am I right in guessing that part of the problem is the presence of too many templates on a talk page? Could this be partially solved by eliminating the need to add {{Autotranslate}} to the section heading? Why not just have the file name without the words "File tagging" and without a link to the filename? It seems an unnecessary aspect, given the file is often linked to in the main body of the warning box. Green Giant (talk) 16:26, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
•  Weak oppose: I don't think there's anything that currently prevents manual archiving of an over-long user talk page, though it ought to be done with tact. I think it would be rude to turn on automatic archiving of another user's talk page, and thus I oppose adding text to the guidance that would endorse such action. --bjh21 (talk) 09:56, 29 January 2018 (UTC)