Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2022/02

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Something which I've seen popping up from time to time is that when a copyright violation gets deleted here that users want to export it to other Wikimedia websites which can use them under the Fair Use system. I know that such a request is wholly technological and simply "voting to get one here" won't make one actually appear, but it seems like that multiple other Wikimedia websites would benefit from having a simple way to get fair use images which aren't acceptable here.

While seeing a recent village pump post I thought of this.

This discussion is simply to show any potential developers and / or the WMF that such an option has consensus, of course if there are good arguments against this it's good to voice those as well. My idea for such an "Export to another Wikimedia website" button would be that during the export process the image would automatically be reduced in size (as is standard at Wikipedia's, not sure if this also applies to Wikisource and others) and users could be prompted with a message asking them if they would wish to nominate the original file for deletion (in case this hasn't happened yet). By default I think that such a button should probably be dependent on a user's edit count, but I'm not sure if these edits should be here, there, or both (preferably the latter option). Note that I'm not making this proposal into a "support" "oppose" discussion of simple votes, I would prefer to discuss what the benefits or drawbacks of such a system would be before seriously proposing it.

Discussion (Export from Commons)

Obviously an issue I see with such a tool is that new users might not deal well with it, but I'm not sure if the current "Export to Wikimedia Commons" took is limited by edit count, preferably such a tool would have some sort of way to not let users frivolously export things.

It might also be handy for main page images on other Wikimedia websites to prevent them from being abused here, but as far as I know we already have a system for that for the most highly visible files. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:58, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: I think this is an excellent idea, and I have been wanting something like this for a long time.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 22:46, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: , Yes, but there must be some reasons why this isn't a thing yet, so when we're going to propose it we need to have worked out a system that minimises abuse and bad good faith moves while maximises usefulness. The "Export to Commons" button has issues when a file has previously deleted revisions, so the "Export to Wikipedia", "Export to Wikisource", Etc. button should have built in software features to make sure that the exported file will have minimal issues. This would be automatically making it a small file if it's too large to comply with fair use for the English-language Wikipedia, for example. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 23:41, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Proposal for three new public domain templates for the UK

Hi - I just wanted to put forward a proposal for three new UK public domain licensing templates, as we currently only have {{PD-UKGov}}. This covers the general rule of Crown Copyright under the section 163 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, which is the date of publication + 50 years, starting on 1 January of the next year, up to a maximum of 125 years. However, there are three areas of Crown Copyright that diverge from this, which it's important we cover as they're explicitly excluded from the general rule. Given that we have files that are covered by each, we probably want to have proper templates for them:

  • Acts of Parliament (and similar), where the key date is the date they receive Royal Assent (i.e. become law) + 50 years, starting on 1 Jan. See section 164 of the 1988 Act.
  • Parliamentary copyright, which is any work made by or under the direction of Parliament, where the key date is always the date of creation + 50 years, starting on 1 Jan, irrespective of publication. This covers the bulk of other legislation. See section 165.
    • There are also specific copyrights for the three devolved legislatures which operate similarly, which also cover a lot of legislation.
  • Bills, where copyright expires if they receive Royal Assent, get withdrawn, or when the Parliamentary session ends. This is therefore a significant divergence from the norm, as sessions usually only last around a year. See section 166.
    • Likewise, there are specific provisions that apply in a similar fashion to each of the devolved legislatures, as they otherwise hold the respective copyrights.

I'm happy to draw up wording for these, but I wanted to put these here because licensing seems like something I should get consensus on before I start doing this, as these potentially apply to a large number of files already uploaded to Commons. Theknightwho (talk) 17:00, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho: For Acts of Parliament (and other legislatures), I think it might be better to just add another case to the existing {{PD-UKGov}}, along the lines of "It is an Act of Parliament that received Royal Assent prior to XXXX". The fine distinction between publication and Royal Assent is unlikely to be important in most cases, so it makes like easier if people don't have to think about it. I think a template for Parliamentary copyright is sensible because it's officially a different kind of copyright, and one for Bills would be reasonable if we're taking advantage of their special rules. You say that Parliamentary copyright covers "the bulk of other legislation", but I don't think that's correct. Secondary legislation is prepared by government departments and Parliament just gets to approve it, so I think it comes under Crown copyright. --bjh21 (talk) 20:51, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
I'm happy with that. The difference for Acts does become relevant when they're passed right towards the end of the year (looking at you, Brexit), but my impression is that most people assume that as the publication date anyway. For some reason I had thought that SIs fell under Parliamentary copyright due to a large bulk of them being drafted by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, but they do seem to be Crown copyrighted if you look at the instruments themselves. Theknightwho (talk) 21:09, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Implementing support for asciinema cast files

I think it would be great to implement support for asciinema cast files so the command captions can be interactive and lightweight at the same time.

For anyone that doesn't know what asciinema is; its an open source text-based terminal recorder that records sessions in a lightweight text format. The asciinema casts have their own file format which is based on json.

If this asciinema cast support is implemented, people can upload their own casts which can serve as screenshots for commands on Wikipedia. -Comrade-yutyo (talk) 06:31, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Changing the colours on Commons:First steps/Account

green/red often implies permission/prohibition. we dont actually want to discourage new users with the red button, so i suggest the colours be changed. meanwhile we could use something that might be a bit more colourblind friendly.

i found some colour pairs on https://davidmathlogic.com/colorblind/ , and this tool to simulate colourblindness https://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/ . (i'm not colour blind so i dont know how correct they are.) RZuo (talk) 19:03, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Am I missing something? Unless you mean the translation navbox on top of the page with those tiny indicators, I only get gray buttons there. De728631 (talk) 17:20, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
@De728631: There are 2 buttons under "Do you already have an account on Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons?". One red and one green. --Minorax«¦talk¦» 11:19, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
@Minorax: I'm not colour blind either but both of those buttons are gray for me when I'm logged in. Apparently this has something to do with my preferences because when I'm not logged in, I do see the red and green buttons. That said, I have worked with that colourblindness simulator before while doing maps and other graphics for Commons, and I did get positive feedback. Here is also another tool for colourblind safe palettes. De728631 (talk) 13:29, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
it turns out the colours are controlled by rather specific codes {{Clickable button}}. to change it is not as easy as using different hex colour codes. RZuo (talk) 13:05, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
I suggest to replace it with {{Clickable button 3}}, an OOUI style; like we have changed the button style of "photo challenge" on the main page. Stang★ 00:35, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Category:Buildings by year

Is Category:Buildings by year of photographing that useful? We have a separate Category:Buildings by year which actually doesn't have buildings by year subcategories. The year of photography one limits everything to photographs so it's limited to the last 200 or so years. It doesn't include diagrams or drawings which are quite related and doesn't seem connected to the architecture subcategories. Remove it or would it make more sense to create actual separate buildings by year categories and (for example), Category:Buildings in 2011 would be under Category:2010s architecture with categories like Category:Buildings destroyed in 2011 (split from Category:Destroyed in 2011), photographed (if we keep it), Category:Buildings built in 2011 (split from Category:Built in 2011), etc. Does this category structure make sense? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:29, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

I'd say redirect "Category:Buildings by year of photographing" to "Category:Buildings by year" and place all sub-categories underneath it, as it's a far more useful category, then make the separate categories for buildings by year. At least that would make more sense to me. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:33, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
Redirecting "Category:Buildings by year of photographing" to "Category:Buildings by year"; why? They are two entirely different animals.
Before photographs there was engraving, and concurrent with it, and before that even, there was good old fashioned drawing.
Question was Category:Buildings by year of photographing is it useful, answer No it's not.
It's difficult to think of cats more stupid than Buildings by year of photographing or Structures by year of photographing. Aside from researchers, never using them to find images, they are sinkholes of effort. Once created they require buckets of maintenance.
This notion of filing by year is already more usefully captured by Built in Washington (state) in 1881, or 1896 in London etc. Even that is unnecessary as we already capture the date of creation with the date field.
Adding cats like Category:Buildings by year and putting sub cats under it would hide files from view, it's destructive. It leads to rubbish like Category:Buildings in Main-Tauber-Kreis by year of completion by municipality. It leads to too many folders containing one file each. Human beings are intelligent enough to see relative age by looking.
The art of the image is already covered by several descritive cats, painting, engraving, print, etc. In any case these modes are self evident.
I'm here to uncover files, and make them useful by making them accessible, not burying them away in useless, obfuscating cats. Hiding files, makes them useless and encourages duplicates.
My proposal is to delete Structures by year of photographing because it's already covered by numerous different by year cats, including Category:Photographs by date, Paintings by date, place by date, etc.
If i'm looking for an image, I'm looking by city, by building. Once there I know the relative date of the image by simply looking at it.
I wouldn't mind if people who file at this kind of micro level, were to offset the damage done by putting in a useful cat, like, subject, or event ; but they dont.
Look at this randomly chosen file File:Great Temple at Bode Gyah by William Daniell, 1834.jpg. Two useful cats, and four useless ones. Added to which it's an engraving not a photograph. Wait, it's a photograph of an engraving!!! I'm waiting for a new cat to be assigned. Engraving, pinned to a wall in Bihar, and photographed in 2019, perhaps. This is so sad it took us a year to cat the building and 5 years to cat the artist. Meanwhile were catting by age ad infinitum.
Having captured the date of creation with the date field. Why are we then going over old ground with a multitude of spurious date cats? Broichmore (talk) 12:46, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
I don't understand. The name sounds like the subcategories should contain buildings, not photos. (No category description anywhere.) And I'd suppose most existing buildings have been photographed in 2021, and most in the year they were built, and in many years in-between, so most buildings would be in most by-year categories. I tried to find examples of files categorised in this tree, but the leaf categories are mostly empty.
The buildings by year are hopefully about year of inauguration, so separate from years when the building has been photographed and from year an individual photograph was taken.
An X-town in the 2010s would be a useful category, but we get the a-million-leaves problem. With Petscan one could use a flat year category and combine that with any desired categories (X-city, Louvre, nature of X). We don't have that flat year category though. And if you want to see X-city in the 1920s, you don't necessarily want photos taken that year, you'd want also modern photos of paintings from that time and modern paintings made from photos from that time. I suppose the by year categories require a lot of thinking and clear instructions.
–LPfi (talk) 16:51, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Changing the edit comment left by the Cross-wiki media upload tool

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T305303

The Cross-wiki media upload tool is a tool on other Wikimedia wikis (such as Wikipedia) that allows editors to upload files to Commons from within the editor on those wikis, without the need to visit Commons at all. At the moment its uploads have a comment of "Cross-wiki upload from $SITE", where "$SITE" is the domain name of the site that the user is using. This message leads to confusion because people often interpret it as meaning that the file was originally uploaded to the site in question and then transferred to Commons. The most recent instance of this confusion was at Commons:Village pump/Technical#"Cross-wiki upload from en.wikipedia.org" and is what has prompted me to make this proposal.

My proposal is that the message should be changed to something that better explains the nature of the upload. My suggested text would be:

Uploaded own work while editing "$PAGENAME" on $SITE

This is modelled after the Upload Wizard message, "Uploaded own work with UploadWizard", but with some information to allow us some idea of what the uploader was doing. $PAGENAME would be replaced by the name of the page the contributor invoked the upload form from. I'd like to make $PAGENAME into a link to the page, but I don't think that's practical. The cross-wiki upload tool only allows for uploading own works at the moment, so we don't yet need to support anything else.

This would not make any difference to the cross-wiki-upload tag that appears on each upload, which would continue to appear as "Cross-wiki upload" in histories.

Any system that's trying to detect uploads using the cross-wiki upload tool should be doing so by looking for the cross-wiki-upload tag, but it's possible that some are inspecting the edit summary. In particular, several abuse filters do so, apparently because abuse filters can't see tags. Such systems are likely to need updating if this message changes.

To make this change we need to establish a consensus here and then request a change to $wgUploadDialog based on that consensus. --bjh21 (talk) 22:20, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

 Support pending Abuse Filter Manager approval.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 22:27, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
 Support Thanks for clarifying this Andy Dingley (talk) 22:45, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
 Support That looks like a very good idea to me. A link for $PAGENAME --El Grafo (talk) 14:21, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
 Support Assuming "own work" might be presumptuous (or is that a requirement to use the tool?) but anything to improve the current message would be very very welcome. The rest of that text looks significantly better than what we have. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:07, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
@Clindberg: Sorry for not replying earlier. Yes, as explained below the cross-wiki upload tool only currently support uploads by the creator of a work, and then only with a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. --bjh21 (talk) bjh21 (talk) 12:46, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Since we seem to have a consensus here, I've requested a change to the relevant abuse filters at Commons talk:Abuse filter#Proposed change of cross-wiki upload edit summaries. --bjh21 (talk) 02:01, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry by I felt I had to object to the "own work" bit, but I left another proposal at Commons talk:Abuse filter#Proposed change of cross-wiki upload edit summaries. De728631 (talk) 14:32, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
@De728631: I think it would be most helpful to keep this conversation in one place since we need to be able to present a clear consensus to the WMF sysadmins. Would you mind putting your objection here instead? I'll withdraw the request at Commons talk:Abuse filter since it's apparent that we don't have a consensus after all. --bjh21 (talk) 15:31, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
Alright. I do think we have consensus for changing the current wording but the details should still be discussed. So here is my objection:
 Oppose The "own work" is too narrow because you can easily upload works through the Wikipedia interface that are not your own as long as they come with an appropriate licence. See the Wikipedia:File_Upload_Wizard: "Upload your own work or a freely licensed file" (my emphasis). Therefore I suggest that we use the following:
  • Special:AbuseFilter/153 "Cross-wiki upload from" in summary → ("Cross-wiki upload from" in summary | "Uploaded a freely licensed work while editing" in summary)
  • Special:AbuseFilter/156 summary irlike "(Cross-wiki upload from|logo|cropped)" → summary irlike "(Cross-wiki upload from|Uploaded a freely licensed work while editing|logo|cropped)"
After all, also your own works need to come with a free licence. De728631 (talk) 15:41, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
@De728631: The "Upload your own or a freely licensed file" link on en:Wikipedia:File Upload Wizard goes to Special:UploadWizard on Commons, and I'm not proposing any change to how the Upload Wizard works. This proposal only affects the Cross-wiki media upload tool, which is the tool that allows one to upload files to Commons without leaving the editing page on another project. mw:Upload dialog explains how to access it. That page claims that On Wikimedia wikis, it is configured to only allow self-made files under the CC BY-SA license. It's possible that that's incorrect: I've only tested it briefly on English Wikipedia. Do you know of a way to get the cross-wiki upload tool to allow uploads that aren't marked as "own work"? --bjh21 (talk) 16:07, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
@Bjh21: Oh, I see. This must have been a misunderstanding in my side. I just checked it on Wikipedia and the cross-wiki media upload tool does have an interface which says "If you do not own the copyright on this file, or you wish to release it under a different license, consider using the Commons Upload Wizard", and you need to confirm that it is your own work to enable the upload button. So the cross-wiki message is in fact related to "own work" only. Please feel free to reopen your proposal at Commons talk:Abuse filter. De728631 (talk) 19:01, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
@De728631: I'll give it another week in case this flurry of activity prompts anyone else to give their opinion. --bjh21 (talk) 22:38, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Since there have been no further objections, I've requested the abuse filter changes again at Commons talk:Abuse filter#Proposed change of cross-wiki upload edit summaries (second attempt). --bjh21 (talk) 11:50, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@Bjh21: Sorry to be late, but do we need to say "own work" or "freely licensed"? Wouldn't "a file" suffice? I assume a lot of those files are neither own work nor free, while any uploaded file should be, so the statement doesn't differentiate them from anything – and automatised systems making possibly untrue statements is a nuisance. –LPfi (talk) 15:43, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
@LPfi: "Freely licensed" is not part of any live proposal and would indeed be pointless to mention in an edit summary. The reason why I think that it's worth mentioning "own work" is that it provides the information that the uploader has asserted the file to be their own work. Making this claim visible in places like Special:RecentChanges and Special:ListFiles makes it easier to spot files that may be incorrectly licensed. Of course, contributors can lie to the cross-wiki upload tool, in which case it will generate untrue edit summaries, but users can lie to other tools as well. If you upload something using the Upload Wizard claiming that it's your own work, you'll get a summary that says "Uploaded own work with UploadWizard", even though the Upload Wizard doesn't (and can't) be certain about that. The edit summary is a statement on behalf of the contributor, and hence it's perfectly reasonable for it to paraphrase what the contributor has asserted by choosing the "This is my own work" checkbox. I suppose we could have it use the precise text of that checkbox, but this could only work for one language (because the edit summary can't depend on the contributor's language) and would be needlessly inconsistent with the phrasing used by the Upload Wizard. bjh21 (talk) 17:31, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
The paraphrasing is a huge problem. I haven't used the cross wiki upload tool, but the Wizard does not ask whether the work is my own, but whether the file is my own work (at least in Swedish; to paraphrase something the uploader assured, we should make sure that really was what they assured, regardless of their user interface language). It is very common for uploaders to assert the file they created by taking a photograph to be their own work, so pretending we should trust that claim is in fact – I am not blaming any person, this is a systematic fault – pure hypocrisy. The less we repeat it, the better. –LPfi (talk) 17:41, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
@LPfi: The cross-wiki upload tool does use different phrasing from the Upload Wizard. Where the Wizard has "This file is my own work" or "These files are my own work" (translations here), the cross-wiki upload tool has "This is my own work" (translations here). But if you object to paraphrasing and translation per se then this doesn't really help (and I presume you have similar objections to the use of {{Own}} and {{Self}} by these tools). I would suggest that we drop "own work" from the summary and not replace it with "a file" because that's redundant: there's nothing you can upload that isn't a file. That would leave "Uploaded while editing $PAGE on $SITE", which I don't think can misrepresent what the uploader has done. --bjh21 (talk) 21:02, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Nice. I don't have any objections to that wording. For the {{Own}}, {{Self}} etc. I think they are needed. What is unfortunate is that our tools seem to make people use those designations where they shouldn't. I cannot believe people lie that often by purpose, so "own work" about 16th century artwork is a failure of our tools. People are used to click anything to make a tool work, which isn't our fault, but a result of a more general problem. We should do our best to provide better guidance – but walls of text won't help, and I have no real solution. –LPfi (talk) 21:39, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Revised proposal

Based on comments from LPfi above, I'd like to revise the proposed edit summary text. My new proposed edit summary is:

Uploaded while editing "$PAGENAME" on $SITE

This avoids making any assumption about what the uploader meant when they chose "This is my own work" or one of its many translations. It also allows for the possibility that the cross-wiki upload tool might gain support for uploading other kinds of file in the future. @Jeff G., Andy Dingley, El Grafo, Clindberg, and De728631: since you've expressed opinions above, it would be helpful to know if you're OK with the revised proposal. --bjh21 (talk) 22:12, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Yep, that looks good to me. Carl Lindberg (talk) 22:57, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
+1 El Grafo (talk) 07:36, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
 Support That's a good one. De728631 (talk) 14:20, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
 Support.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 15:19, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Right. I think we have a new consensus to change the message to Uploaded while editing "$PAGENAME" on $SITE, but given what happened the last two times I requested the required changes to abuse filters, I think I should allow one more opportunity for objections. So if you have any objections to this proposal, please post them now! --bjh21 (talk) 21:45, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Abuse filter update requested: Commons talk:Abuse filter#Proposed change of cross-wiki upload edit summaries (third attempt). --bjh21 (talk) 14:16, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

This proposal was implemented at 20:47 UTC yesterday, and the new edit summary is now appearing on Special:RecentChanges. Thanks everyone! --bjh21 (talk) 10:47, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

@Bjh21: Thanks, but there are underscores in the article names, rather than spaces.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 12:13, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: Yes, the documentation at mw:Manual:$wgUploadDialog says "wiki page name from which an upload originates", so I was expecting the human-readable form rather than the internal version with underscores. Still, I think everywhere you can use a name with spaces you can also use a name with underscores, so this should be a purely aesthetic problem and is definitely an improvement over not having this information. --bjh21 (talk) 12:35, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Purely mechanical scans of coins

  •  Photocopy.
    ✓ Photocopy.
  •  Photograph.
     Photograph.

In this Village Pump thread I raised a question if a scan of a thin metal plate could be considered a 3D work or not, a number of users (@BMacZero: and @King of Hearts: ) noted that scans of coins were not eligible for additional copyright as they didn't make any creative choices. For half a decade now I have e-mailed countless of websites to receive OTRS / VRTS permissions to get access to such scans, but if these scans were never copyrighted to begin with then I know of at least half a million images that can be uploaded right now. So if the interpretations of the aforementioned users are correct and purely mechanical scans of coins aren't eligible for new copyright this means that such scans of public domain coins could be uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons with no issue.

Therefore I would like to propose the creation of a new template "{{PD-Coin scan}}" (see below) for such images. Also, this template must be explicitly mentioned at "Commons:Currency" as it will open up a whole new world of images if accepted. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:43, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Purely mechanical scans of coins (votes)

  •  Support, as proposer. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:43, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
  •  Support the creation of a license template that explicitly deals with images of coins that faithfully reproduce the likeness of the coin with no additional creativity that would receive a copyright. However, I have some thoughts about the implementation of the template that I will place in the discussion section. – BMacZero (🗩) 06:36, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
  •  Support See my comment below. --Yann (talk) 10:11, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
  •  Support an explicit carveout for mechanical reproductions of coins from the general blanket prohibition(caveats apply) on 3D objects. Like KoH and Clindberg in the discussion section I believe {{PD-scan}} can already be used for this, but would support some sensible clarifications to template wording, usage instructions in docs, and COM:COIN. I also believe the carveout should be equally applicable to reproductions using imaging equipment other than a flatbed scanner (e.g. a DSLR or similar) so long as they are being used in essentially the same way, but as practical guidance it may be necessary to say "flatbed scanner" and anything else needs individual determination of whether the reproduction is "mechanical" or "creative". Such a carveout makes sense for coins specifically—due to their inherent physical properties, and due to common practice in numismatics and adjacent communities—but not necessarily for other classes of 3D objects. --Xover (talk) 08:13, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
    • I guess I really don't see the need for a new license tag, since the licensing logic is exactly the same as PD-scan. Certainly the currency project pages should point out that tag for a flatbad scanner situation. I don't know what you mean about other types of equipment; once you use a DSLR camera you lose the purely mechanical part of this, as you start to involve lighting and other factors that can make photographs copyrightable, so absolutely disagree with that. It may be for "essentially the same purpose" but the mechanism used is more likely to generate a copyright, so they are not equivalent from a licensing standpoint. You would also need the same wrapped-license situation that PD-scan already has, and duplicating the tag would mean more maintenance (of updating that type of template) when parameters (like "deathyear") need to be added to pass through to the interior licensing templates. Plus we have the documentation page Commons:When to use the PD-scan tag; are we really going duplicate all of that with a particular focus on coins? When I'm not sure there are specific court cases about that? Coins are indeed a common situation where flatbed scanners can be used for a 3D-ish object, but seems to me it simply needs calling out on the project pages more than a special licensing template, that's all. Carl Lindberg (talk) 09:07, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Purely mechanical scans of coins (discussion)

I have my doubts whether or not this is true for 3D objects as one can determine how such an item lies in the scanner, but as that is simply the shape of the object I'm not sure if that is a creative decision or not. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:43, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm wondering if it might be better to structure the template like {{PD-Art}}. PD-Art makes it absolutely clear a valid template must be provided for the work itself and PD-Art only applies to the scan/photo (you have a bullet for this, but it's easier to overlook). It also links to Commons:Reuse_of_PD-Art_photographs, which importantly notes that this PD rationale is not accepted in some countries that have a "sweat of the brow" doctrine or an extremely low bar for creativity. – BMacZero (🗩) 06:36, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

@BMacZero: , feel free to edit the above proposed template however you see fit. Its goal is to be as accurate as possible and the proposal isn't for that version of the template but for the underlying principle. But as coins are a uniquely commonly scanned item I think that they should have their own separate template and category. Of course the country of origin of the scan should also be mentioned, as I'm very sure that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland would give simple scans new copyright because they basically have no threshold of originality yonder. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 08:59, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
Hi, I am OK with the idea, however how are we going to differentiate between a photograph and a scan? Practically there isn't much of a difference, and if there is no metadata, we can't know how the image is made. Regards, Yann (talk) 09:53, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
@Yann: , that has to be done on an individual case-by-case basis, but as a 3D object a photograph allows for creative choices. The template itself is very deliberately designed to exclude photographs and only be used for photocopies, but I can see your argument here. One thing I noticed is that scans in general lack metadata, but one can also manually remove these from photographs so I can see that there exists a risk of misuse, but this risk isn't any different from existing templates and as far as I'm aware of is rarely abused.
I think that in this case sourcing remains to be the most important, but legally speaking there is a difference as photocopies are entirely mechanical and photographs have direct human input. Obvious cases like the images above will be an easy benchmark, but in other cases I think that people should probably look at the shadows as and lighting. It is basically how we look at scans of documents and old photographs today, both of which are acceptable as photocopies but unacceptable as photographs (though I believe that the latter are already acceptable in the USA). --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 10:07, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
I broadly support this proposal. However would prefer all references therein to be Scans and or images, as opposed to photographs if that's possible. Surely , the rules for stamps and coins should be the same? Why cant we use the existing licenses for postage stamps? Broichmore (talk) 11:26, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
Postage stamps are 2D works, like paintings, so we can use PD-Art for these reproductions of stamps. Yann (talk) 12:46, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
We already have {{PD-Scan}}, which should apply to this situation. {{PD-Art}} is specifically for photographs, not scans, of 2-D items. Do we need something specific for coins? Carl Lindberg (talk) 13:05, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
I also think {{PD-Scan}} is already applicable to the situation, as it does not require that the scanned object be 2D. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 14:45, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
This request is also because of the current wording of "Commons:Currency" which makes it seem like scans of banknotes (2D objects) are acceptable, but scans of coins aren't, as this is a long-standing part of that page and I've seen scans of coins being deleted because they came from unfree sources I think that a specialised template would be handy, it also diffuses scans of coins specifically and would be handier for both re-users and uploaders as it would make it clear that simple mechanical reproductions of public domain coins don't create new copyright, something which the current currency page seems to disallow. As the amount of images that can be imported with this template are easily in the millions I think that a detailed explanation of why they specifically could be imported is wise as PD-scan seems to be mostly used for 2D objects (pages of books, documents, postage stamps, banknotes, Etc.). --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:13, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
Scans should not be copyrightable anywhere (I guess some countries may have treated them as "simple photos", though I think the recent EU directive made sure those were not copyrighable). Normally it is photos, not scans, which are the issue -- photos of bills would fall under {{PD-Art}} in most cases, since photos of a 2-D work are basically just copies, whereas photos of coins would likely have a thin copyright. Mechanical scans of either should be fine (provided the coin/banknote itself doesn't have a copyright). Carl Lindberg (talk) 21:44, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
@Carl Lindberg: , @Clindberg: , alright. Reading the room in general I don't see anyone oppose the underlying principle rather the fact that a separate template would have to be created, I personally prefer to want to use the separate template because almost all relevant pages currently tell users that such images are copyrighted and the fact that a hidden maintenance category of coin scans would be easier to maintain for people interested in numismatic subjects such as myself who can differentiate between an actual photocopy and wrongly tagged photograph, if these were all categorised as "PD-art" and / or "PD-scans" it's much more difficult to locate them. That's the main reason why I want to create a separate template for them, the template would also be handy for re-users as in my years of contacting people for OTRS / VRTS permission one thing I noticed is that the entire online numismatic community is convinced that such mechanical scans are copyrightable and copyrighted and some have paid large sums of money to use scans of centuries old coins, the template would also clarify that for re-users.
So in brief, the main reasons for wanting the separate template is for maintenance and copyvio detection specifically related to coins and for re-users to be informative. The main idea behind this proposal is to explicitly note that purely mechanical scans (photocopies) aren't copyrightable in themselves and shouldn't be excluded in all relevant pages that currently state that such images of coins are disallowed. If I had known this half a decade ago I could have saved myself years of work, in fact I've spent hundreds of Euro's buying coins to scan for the Wikimedia Commons despite there already being scans of them online...
Note that we already have specialised templates for clarification, this isn't a "separate" license template, rather a clarification template for deletion discussions. Also remember that for years people have nominated and speedied scans of coins because of the current wording on relevant pages. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 09:19, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
I would like to request that this template is expanded for purely mechanical scans of objects, which could list coins as an example of difference between them and thin documents. This is because i have often used my scanner to capture images of seeds and other plant parts, preserved insects, and other small things like that. I would very much like to have a template to clarify these kinds of situations. What do you think about this? YuriNikolai (talk) 04:09, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Proposed template

Commons:Currency
Public domain
This file is a scan of a coin of which its design is otherwise not restricted by copyright. This is a photocopy of a coin produced using an entirely mechanical method with no creative input.

Please only use this template if the following conditions are met:

  • The file is a mere mechanical reproduction of the coin and not a handmade illustration.
  • The design of the coin itself is not copyrighted, please see Commons:Currency for its copyright status.
  • The scan has not been sufficiently altered to generate new copyright, such as by colouring it in using intricate graphic designs.

Please include a license tag for the original design of the coin from its country of origin; and if its country of origin is not the United States then:

You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States. Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Jamaica has 95 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years. This image may not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the rule of the shorter term. Honduras has a general copyright term of 75 years, but it does implement the rule of the shorter term. Copyright may extend on works created by French who died for France in World War II (more information), Russians who served in the Eastern Front of World War II (known as the Great Patriotic War in Russia) and posthumously rehabilitated victims of Soviet repressions (more information).

This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.


This template will categorize into Category:PD-Coin scan.
Documentation[ create · purge ]
This documentation is transcluded from Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2022/02/doc.

Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2022/02/doc

Coin scan


  •  Comment, because of the fact that once images from eBay disappear forever I decided to create this template for a few images from eBay before they would be gone, personally I hope to use it more like the "{{Trademarked}}" or "{{PD-textlogo}}" templates why they are explanatory for why this category of images aren't specifically protected by copyright despite common practice often treating it as such (as is common in today's online numismatic communities). Feel free to make any changes to the template on the launched page, I am not sure if I should nominate it for deletion to await the outcome of this debate, but I primarily created it to use it for eBay imports as these tend to expire rather quickly. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 06:31, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
    • Trademarked is an informational tag, not a license tag. PD-textlogo is a license tag, big difference. Doing this as a non-wrapper tag may not be the best approach. It mentions the need for a separate tag for the U.S. copyright... but it also needs a separate tag for the country of origin copyright. The whole U.S. tag spiel probably is not appropriate. This tag represents the license for the digital scan itself I guess, but not the pictured object, which still needs their own tags. This is why PD-Art and PD-Scan are wrapper tags, to force this. Those are more complicated to set up, for sure, but that is one of the reasons I preferred simply using PD-Scan, since that is already translated, already has that set up, and serves the purpose. And there is the {{PD-Scan-two}} template, when providing a license tag for the U.S. status, plus the country of origin. Possibly those issues are handled at the category level of coins, with mass DRs for images in a category when the coins themselves are non-free with the page itself only having the license for the photo -- is that more often the case currently? Also, if we are going to be specific to coins, it really should mention that this cannot be used for camera photographs of coins -- that type of photo needs its own license, and we should make those more obvious to spot if someone uses this on photographic works. Carl Lindberg (talk) 23:22, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Regarding the necessity of a separate template for coins; this is partially because of the industry standard that claims to assign copyright to mechanical scans. It is currently standard practise in the world of numismatics to claim copyright on mechanical scans and this even applies to scans of older works (more often than not this involves copyfraud by claiming copyright on either someone else's work or works from the public domain), having a copyright template that explains why this common practice isn't legally backed up will greatly help re-users. This is because of the fact that copyright is always assumed, it's like how many cultural institutions add watermarks that state "Copyright: Museum of Stuff" on scans of paintings made by people that died centuries ago. Specifically in the field of Vietnamese numismatics there is this big resentment among a lot of experts in the field because of a series of events where the top expert in Vietnamese and Chinese numismatics from France refused to let the top expert in Vietnamese numismatics in Asia use his images for a book that is now the standard work for pre-1945 coins from Vietnam. These images were all scans and rubbings and are insufficient for copyright protection, but because of this copyright-based refusal for knowledge-sharing there now is a lot of resentment in this community and experts are often divided into camps based on whether or not the refusal was justifiable for educating people about the topic. This whole stupid "silent feud" that these people had because of some "arrogant Frenchman" wouldn't even have been an issue if the writer had known about the legal rights people actually have when re-using mechanical scans with no creative input. Copyright trolls abuse the ignorance of their victims. A few weeks ago I saw a VICE-made documentary about the creation of the "Thong Song" from Sisqó's (of Drew Hill fame) "Unleash the Dragon" album in 2000, in which it was claimed that that the single sentence " 'Cuz she was livin la vida loca!" cost Tim Kelley, Bob Robinson, and Sisqó most of the royalties to this famous song to Desmond Child (the writer of the song "Livin' la Vida Loca"). According to this article about these events the lawyers of Child reached out to Def Jam, the owner of Def Soul which unleashed "Unleash the Dragon" and the case was settled out of court. The phrase is only mentioned three (3) times throughout the song and simple words and phrases like this are not copyrightable, I believe that if this actually went to court that Def Jam would have won, but because in the world of music lots of myths surrounding copyright exist where simply using a short phrase requires hundreds of thousands of Dollars in upfront payments and you can lose literally magnitudes of millions of Dollars because of 4 (four) 福'ing words. Similarly, at the Wikimedia Commons "we" do not accept images by known copyright troll Marko Verch, this person's actions are enabled by Germany's horrible petty court copyright system where ridiculous copyright claims can lead to direct payments of hundreds of Euro's per alleged "violators" because of the fact that actually fighting these claims require lawyers and time that can cost a lot more money. Why do I bring these things up? Because I established before that such behaviour is already the industry standard in the field of numismatics, there are rare coins of which only single specimens exist and auction houses can make scans of these and if they find out that some catalogue includes their scan they can also "settle out of court" like Desmond Child or Marko Verch, we can never know how often "Copyright predators" do this to their "copyprey" and the reason why this entire environment is even possible is due to a combination of widespread ignorance of what is actually copyrightable (see bull💩 examples like this) and myths making copyright protections to be a lot stronger than they actually are. At the Wikimedia Commons we need more information to dispel these myths and educate re-users of their rights and responsibilities.
It doesn't have to be a wrapped template, the reason I want to have a separate template for coins is (A) coins and numismatics in general (including exonumismatics) is a very wide and diverse topic of commonly scanned 3D objects, in fact I have trouble naming any other 3D objects that even get scanned like this; and (B) currently "{{PD-art}}" reads "This is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art. The work of art itself is in the public domain for the following reason:" followed by the local license, it further states "The official position taken by the Wikimedia Foundation is that "faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain"." Which very, very specifically only talks about 2D works of art. "{{PD-scan}}" and the page "When to use the PD-scan tag" seem a lot more ambiguous and don't outright exclude coins, but as I've seen scans / photocopies of PD coins being tagged as "missing permission" and being even "outright copyright violations" for speedy deletions here for years I highly doubt that this behaviour will change here unless it gets sufficiently explained. I do think that the PD-art tag page should be uploaded when coins should be allowed because in the many years that it has been there it has prevented the import of an unknown (but certainly large) amount of images of coins. Kind of an issue I have in general with Wikimedia Commons guidelines and policies is that they tend to heavily focus on what isn't allowed but rarely discussing what is allowed, this often leads to good public domain or freely licensed images being deleted because the correct information was simply missing.
Over 5.000 (five-thousand) high quality scans of coins here at the Wikimedia Commons come from CNG coins, these images are used in tonnes of Wikipedia articles about the ancient world told through illustrations from coins, this was made possible only through OTRS verification of a free license, all these images are scans. Likewise, through a special corporation by Wikimedia Russia and the International Numismatic Club (INC) images like this can be hosted here with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International and OTRS permission likely costing donors to Wikimedia Russia a lot of money to spend the resources to get these scans. Meanwhile lots of other museums and auction houses have images of scans online that our fellow volunteers aren't importing because they believe that these are copyrighted.
This template is therefore for both Wikimedians dealing with uploads and re-users dealing with potential copyright threats. The current copyfraud culture basically allows people to get many millions of United States Dollars every year by abusing the ignorance of their victims for uncreative works they have contributed nothing to, this is basically if you make a work and someone else makes lots of cash because of it, that is essentially what the copyright system was designed to prevent yet ironically enabled it. This is why I compared it with the "Trademarked" template. So yes, I do believe that the current template should be re-worded to also include a non-US template for public domain non-US coins, but a wrapper generally contains less information and the template should be some form of "disclaimer" to explain to re-users where such mechanical reproductions aren't protected by copyright. I expect that the importing of scans of coins will attract a large number of DMCA takedown requests and I believe that we can prevent such requests with a template that makes it clear to Numismatic website owners and Auction Houses why their claims will fail will discourage such a waste of Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) resources and time, thus will bring the donations from "donors to Wikipedia" in better use than combatting ignorant copyright trolls. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 22:27, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
You say "scans of paintings" -- no such thing, usually. There are usually photographs of paintings instead. Those get the {{PD-Art}} tag, for the reasons you mention, and explicitly do refer to 2-D works for a reason. The WMF position is that photos of anything else are usually copyrightable, and that includes photos of coins, so PD-Art is not valid for coin photos. So be absolutely sure you do not use this new tag for photographs of coins, and make absolutely sure to limit it to flatbed scans, and nothing else. Yes, museums do try to claim copyright on photographs of old paintings -- that is one of their revenue streams, photographs of their collections, so they will try to protect it. The court case on which PD-Art is based involved a museum (Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.). That ruling is only valid for the U.S., though a recent EU copyright directive also strongly implied the same there. The UK is less sure, and some EU countries may have formerly protected them with "simple photo" copyrights (less than regular copyright but still having teeth) -- but Commons chooses to use the PD-Art court ruling no matter the law elsewhere, for that specific 2-D only case, which coins are not. We don't even allow photographs of paintings which include the frame, as that is a 3-D aspect. Photographs of picture frames (without paintings in them) have been validly registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Any photograph of a coin, even though it has seemingly little expression, is likely a valid copyright, and is not "mechanical". It is only the flatbed scanner situation which is deemed to not have any originality, i.e. the PD-scan tag. If that tag is actually used, any deletion request would need to explain why it does not apply. But, you also need to be absolutely sure the work was generated from a flatbed scanner. If you are not sure, then yes they could still be deleted out of caution (same with this new tag). The current wording is not really sufficient, for me -- it should be very explicit about flatbed scanners, and not being valid at all for photographs. And as a derivative work, strictly speaking you also need a copyright tag for the coin itself. Your proposed tag does not mention that -- just need for a U.S. tag which is not enough (it needs both U.S. and country of origin reasons). And lastly, it's always better if you can get a free license on the digital image as well, if you can (such as the cooperation project you mention) -- that is why there is a {{Licensed-PD-Art}} tag as well (and some related ones). We have the more generic {{Licensed-PD}} I guess for 3-D objects like coins, so you could use that with your new tag as the photographic license part. There is always an element of gray area -- laws in individual countries can differ on this matter -- so explicit licenses instead are always welcome. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:31, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
My bad, I wasn't aware that paintings aren't typically scanned as the art I tend to look at (numismatic art) tends to be more often scanned when they're being presented for auction. "So be absolutely sure you do not use this new tag for photographs of coins, and make absolutely sure to limit it to flatbed scans, and nothing else." for jpeg, PNG, Etc. sure, but as I had noted here a 3D scan would be closer in legal terms to a photocopy than a photograph so the template would be useful for 3D scans of coins so limiting it to only flatbed scanners and not 3D scanners seems odd as you can't add creative input to 3D scans unless you edit it. Also I had already updated the template to require a non-U.S. country-specific template for non-United States coins, if you feel like the current wording doesn't make that clear then please feel free to update it as this is supposed to be a public project that anyone is supposed to edit. Of course the Precautionary Principle still applies to this template, in fact it is very explicitly clear that it's only about scans and the word "scan" is even in its name to explicitly exclude photographs and only include photocopies so it won't be abused or misidentified. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:28, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
I might change the wording to "This file is a scan (not photograph)" to emphasize that point, if this is going to specifically be about coins. The entire spiel about other non-U.S. countries having longer terms seems to take up a lot of room and isn't really necessary -- that is usually used on country-of-origin templates, not things like this. It might be best to use that space to emphasize that other tags are always required, both for the U.S. and the country of origin. Also, I would probably recommend in your documentation that this always be used in conjunction with {{Licensed-PD}}. If you have a separate license for the digitization, don't use this new tag, or at least use both. As for 3D, you are likely correct -- there was one court case (s:Meshwerks, Inc. v. Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., Inc.) where a 3-D model generated by mechanical measurement was deemed uncopyrightable. Does seem likely that 3-D scanning would be the same, but I don't know enough about it to know if there is any possibility of creativity in the process of doing that, or the result, which could generate a copyright. For example, vectorizing a 2-D image has been ruled copyrightable, if the choice of all the control points etc. was done by humans (court case around a company vectorizing a bunch of PD property maps). And photographs sometimes can take into account the posing of a subject, and its lighting. But if there was no human involvement, and the settings of the 3-D scanner are perfunctory, you are probably right. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:24, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
3-D scanners are complex. On the simpler side, if you have something you can stick in a box and a scanner that automatically loops around it, it would be pretty clearly PD. On the other hand, I've photographed a rock in the wild for future photogrammetry and especially with current photogrammetry tools, I'd have a hard time justifying the photos as copyrighted and the 3-d model not; it's far from a simple mechanical process or an exact reproduction.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:02, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
The proposed template is really beating around the bush about its main point. Should probably contain the words "this file/image is in the public domain because" or something along the lines ... --El Grafo (talk) 13:36, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Village_pump/Proposals/Archive/2022/02&oldid=654407965"