Commons talk:Featured picture candidates/Archive 19

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User:FPCBot issues

I've seen some strange behavior from the bot over the last week or so. I've had to close some FPCs by hand that the bot should normally have already processed fully. Here's an example: Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Polar bear (Ursus maritimus) in the drift ice region north of Svalbard.jpg. This FPC was within 1 day of the voting period being over, but it has 29 supports and 0 opposes! The bot should've closed this early days ago. Same with Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:South Shetland-2016-Deception Island–Chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarctica) 04 on iceberg.jpg which is also within 1 day of vote close with 20/0. Then we have some where the bot has partially processed the FPC to show that the voting period was over, and yet 2 days later there was still no featured/not featured close: Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Sõmeri tuletorn.jpg. I can't remember seeing FPCBot miss snowball closes (29/0) before or go 2 days past the voting period ending without processing the FPC for review. I don't know who to ask about this since the operator has been inactive for 10 months, and KTC, who's mentioned on the bot's page, looks to be taking a break (hasn't edited in 2 weeks). lNeverCry 05:40, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

"Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes." is not a bot action; it is by Template:FPVotingPeriodFlag. I checked the three nominations and in list; didn't find any particular reason for a possibility why the bot skipped them. Hope someone else can find it. Jee 06:16, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
I don't know my asshole from my elbow when it comes to bots. I've seen a couple FPCs closed early in the last few days that were 10/0, while the above 29/0 and 20/0 were skipped. I just hope the bot processes the ones I've closed by hand, archives them, etc. lNeverCry 07:21, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
INeverCry, Daniel, the bot operator, usually restarts the bot when it crashes. He said that he won't do any coding, but he welcomes patches. But I think the bot has multiple issues, and needs a generally code review, or even a rewrite from scratch. Regards, Yann (talk) 11:04, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
*Wave hands around* I'm here, but all I do around here is turn things off and back on again. Yann is right though, the bot could do with adoption by someone who actually knows Py or a rewrite from scratch. -- KTC (talk) 13:23, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
@KTC: Is there something in the error logs (tail jobname.err)? maybe the bot just needs more mem allocated or a simple fix. --Steinsplitter (talk) 13:43, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
Hmm, the only thing that's jumping out at me is the bot doesn't like the Korean characters in {{Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:161112 파고슈즈 구구단 팬사인회 (2).jpg}} and is not closing any nominations under that one. -- KTC (talk) 19:16, 22 December 2016 (UTC) (Just to clarify, that's a guess from the operation log, there's no error saying that's what's happening that I can quickly see.) -- KTC (talk) 19:21, 22 December 2016 (UTC))

FYI

There is a discussion at Commons talk:Picture of the day which is related to FPC. Feel free to participate there. Jee 06:00, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

New gallery

 Info Hello, I just created a new gallery wich is Gallery of Accipitriformes (hawks, eagles, vultures and relatives). Best wishes, Christian Ferrer (talk) 06:34, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Christian Ferrer Nice work, as usual, Christian. One question. As you were making the gallery, I think this picture was promoted - a picture of a vulture. Should it not have been in your new gallery? (I can add it myself, I just want to be sure I am not misunderstanding something). -- Slaunger (talk) 08:02, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
Slaunger Thanks you, yes indeed, but it is already in the gallery in the family : Accipitridae. I try to sort the images alphabetically inside each family, and this image is near the end of the familly. Christian Ferrer (talk) 08:44, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
See [1] Christian Ferrer (talk) 09:03, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
Ah, you are right Christian! Sorry for the confusion. (I am not thinking clear today - I have the flu). -- Slaunger (talk) 10:01, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Unsorted

The unsorted sections in featured pictures galleries (eg: Commons:Featured_pictures/Plants#Unsorted) is growing rapidly. It will be helpful if everyone can spend sometime to move one or two to relevant sections. Jee 05:07, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Now I understand why you thanked me for sorting Jee!:) I had no idea you had posted this request. If I get an FP in some section and I see that there is a bunch of unsorted files, I usually take some time to tidy it up some. I thought everyone did that. cart-Talk 20:49, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks Cart. The problem is not all FPC regulars watching this talk page or FP related galleries. There are a lot of background works we need to complete to keep this project efficient and useful. As 2016 is ended, the COM:POTY works will start soon. So we need to finish the works in galleries soon. Hymenoptera also have a lot of unsorted items; so pinging Iifar too. Jee 02:02, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
I just spend an hour sorting the unsorted entries in Commons:Featured_pictures/Historical, but there are so many more galleries with a lot of unsorted FPs!
Here I just ping some of the users, that I have noticed have one or more unsorted entries in the FP galleries. I urge you all to help with the sorting. If every FP user does his small share of the work, it should be done fast:
Users with many unsorted entries:
@Poco a poco, Charlesjsharp, Laitche, and Llez:
User with one or a few unsorted entries (list incomplete):
@Vaido Otsar, Johann Jaritz, Moroder, Benh, and Ori~:
@ArildV, Taxiarchos228, Kreuzschnabel, Halavar, and Rbrechko:
@SvartKat, Мирослав Видрак, Jane3030, Martin Falbisoner, and Cccefalon:
@Jacek Halicki, A.Savin, Livioandronico2013, The Photographer, and Sturm:
@Laitche, Frank Schulenburg, Artemy Voikhansky, Michael Gäbler, and Diliff:
@Haytem93, AWeith, Rhododendrites, Tomfriede, and Aljabakphoto:
@Bgag, Joalpe, Jkadavoor, Tiithunt, and XRay:
@Anatoly Mikhaltsov, Famberhorst, Uoaei1, Bernie Kohl, and Hubertl:
@Wiedehopf20, Дмитро Леонтьєв, Pigsonthewing, and PetarM:
@Cedomir Zarkovic, NMaia, Black Sickle, Pudelek, and Яна Сычикова:
@Ppm61, C messier, Acroterion, Smial, and Medium69:
-- Slaunger (talk) 12:11, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

I just found photo which was sorted in 2 categories, since its BW shot. So asking again, do we put BW shot into 2 cat, first is BW shot, and then up to subject on the shot ?! Jee !? I was aksing that before. I say we put them in 2. --Mile (talk) 09:51, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Mile, I'm not sure about how this is handled now. Earlier all old restored photos went to Historical; but now it seems many in people too. Black and white seems strictly for modern black and white photography. If it is also a nature or people photo, it is in scope for that galleries too. But I don't know whether they can (or need to be) included there too. (The bot will add images in only one gallery. The other addition will be by someone else to provide more visibility to the works which is not bad.) Jee 05:07, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

FYI

User:Der Wolf im Wald is reported here and escalated to Commons:Deletion requests/File:Schloss Neuschwanstein 2013.jpg. You may express their opinion there/not here. Jee 12:27, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Define "wow"?

As many of you know I've spent a bit of time participating here, and its come to my attention that I don't fully understand exactly why we promote what we promote. I understand it intuitively, but in my capacity as a reviewer I need to be able to word things, so I can help others improve their photography. Briefly, I want some informed opinions about whether we are here to judge:

  • The subject? (novelty/photographic difficulty/encyclopedic value)
  • The representation of the subject? (technical quality/composition/lighting/processing)
  • A combination of the two?

As it currently stands we seem to be promoting based on a "combination of the two". I understand that "wow", as stated in the guidelines, is explicitly subjective. I'm just interested, both as a reviewer and as a photographer, in what exactly "wow" is, and it's my wish that the guidelines would elucidate this further as well. My issue with our current practice is that this is a place to judge photography, and not the world represented through it: almost everything has EV after all. So I don't know that I support judging the subject. I think that what separates an FP from a QI is mainly the lighting, composition and processing, which together can make a really "wow" image of a "boring" subject. We have deserving FPs of bus stops, for example. If someone takes a really nice picture of, say, a garbage bin, I still think that should be promoted, providing it's really well composed, high-resolution, and (most importantly for FPC) really well-processed. I don't see a problem if we have 50 different FPs of, say, bricks, providing they're all of an extremely high technical quality and therefore interesting (though I support not having too many FPs of the exact same subject obviously). Similarly, I wouldn't have a problem if Llez's whole shell gallery was promoted (though not all at once obviously). We have nearly that many FPs of church interiors, after all. Anyway, what are your opinions? -- Thennicke (talk) 07:07, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

  • "...the very question of whether photography is or is not an art is essentially a misleading one. Although photography generates works that can be called art – it requires subjectivity, it can lie, it gives aesthetic pleasure -- photography is not, to begin with, an art form at all. Like language, it is a medium in which works of art (among other things) are made. Out of language, one can make scientific discourse, bureaucratic memoranda, love letters, grocery lists, and Balzac’s Paris. Out of photography, one can make passport pictures, weather photographs, pornographic pictures, X-rays, wedding pictures, and Atget’s Paris." - Susan Sontag. In my own words: Not everything demands a clear definition. Not every definition turns out to be universal. To me FPC is a place to cherish photographs that are special in one way or the other. What makes them special is up to each and every one of us and our respective - always individual - approach. --Martin Falbisoner (talk) 07:31, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
"wow" for me is something very subjective and change in each culture because what is "wow" for me could be different for people from different country, social status and in culture in general. FP on commons are coming from photographers of occidental developed countries because it's easy for this people buy a overpriced camera and have the time to take pictures. People from latinamerica, africa, india and china are a very small percentage of users here and the result is a group of FPs that are not being representative of the world knowledge and there is another problem, the women taking FP can be counted only in a hand and what is "wow" for a woman change in comparison with a man. --The Photographer 10:36, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
I agree 100% with that. ;) Yann (talk) 11:44, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
While Martin has a point, I'm not really sure Sontag's argument is relevant at all. She's answering a different question. We have tended on Commons to value documentary photography and less frequently an interpretive approach. Both are valid ways to illustrate and inform for an educational purpose. "Illustrating Wikipedia" is still a mindset that prevails and even though that was what Commons was setup to do, it is not its complete focus. I would like to see less support/promotion of images that are merely "nice photos" but actually demonstrate nothing much more than a photographer with a decent camera stood in front of something fairly interesting/attractive and pressed a button. That is also why I think nominators should generally indicate why they think their photo choice is an FP. That might also make some nominators think again and realise that in fact their "nice" photo isn't really that special. FP is supposed to be about "the finest on Commons" rather than just "nice". Partly that defines "wow" because if you realise that an image is among the finest we have for whatever reason (technical merit or subject matter or great lighting, etc) then one can be impressed. While our backgrounds/finances/genders might influence the pictures we want to take, are able to take, and to some degree the pictures we like to look at, I'm not actually convinced there's more of a difference in interpretation of "wow" between a Scot and an Indian, or between a man or a woman, than there is between any two men or any two Scots, say. Under the skin, we are varied and alike in ways that ignore such groupings. -- Colin (talk) 12:03, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Which nominations should go into the log?

I find the FPC guidelines not 100% clear for someone trying to help the cleanup. It's logical that featured and declined FP candidates should be moved to the log page, but what about withdrawn, FPDed and FPXed nominations? For the two latter ones, the guide says they can be removed from the "list", I suppose this means moving to the log is not required/wanted? What about widthdrawn nominations? There's no info about them. I could figure this out myself by going through the logs, but I also would like this to be spelled out a bit more in the guidelines. Thanks – LucasT 13:21, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi, AFAIK every good faith nominations (i.e. exclusing vandalism) whould go into the log. Regards, Yann (talk) 13:29, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Biased voting from canvassing on Slovenian WP

Agree. Mile takes good photos and many achieve FP with support from the regulars here. So I don't see why it is necessary to inflate one's FPC count by canvassing among friends. I suggest you withdraw that image, stop canvassing, and ask your biased friends to either vote neutrally at FPC or not vote at all. -- Colin (talk) 12:46, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
There is another point of view of this situation. Maybe someone (not the author) is doing conchupancia here with the aim of messing up someone's reputation, however, this is too conspiratorial theory --The Photographer 13:46, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
The canvass was done by Mile. And I wouldn't be surprised if there were similar posts for many of the previous FPC where his mates turn up to support him. -- Colin (talk) 13:48, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
I can see now. I'm sorry --The Photographer 13:49, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
I have looked at several previous FP nominations at Slovenian WP and they all include a link and request by Mile to come to Commons to vote. -- Colin (talk) 14:16, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Sorry guys, this isnt your home, its Wikimedia Commons. Dont make it Wikicomedia. I dont have much time, i spent it for last time. --Mile (talk) 14:01, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Christian: why should i remove, I think its perfect shot. I dont make friends here like others, i did know Poco and Case will come after Colin minus vote. I am reading between the lines. I also doubt poeple here know more than custos in a museum, who is qualified and prof in lighting. Especially per-pering votes, which tells nothing, and are made by one who doesnt put any picture, and one who make daily touristy panoramas. I havent saw nothing similar of them in a museum. --Mile (talk) 14:09, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

  • Mile: If it a perfect shot, then why canvas so obviously on the Slovenian wiki? You are a good enough photographer to make FPs without cheating. You are just making defensive reactions avoiding to acknowledge the real problem. -- Slaunger (talk) 14:12, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Here is why i know Case will come out. Can you vote like this !? I give you plus, because one gave you minus ? "Support Per Martin and cart; also for the same reason Mile opposes. Daniel Case (talk)". I dont have problem at Year finals, because many 1000 are voting, i have more problem with some here. And i like to be more critical at voting, since a lot of "waste" come out as FP here. --Mile (talk) 14:20, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Mile: If you have an issue with a specific user and how they vote, discuss it with them. You are again avoiding the actual problem here, which is your biased canvassing. In what way should canvassing help on the problem of the FPC generating a lot of waste? Do you think there is less waste, when you canvas for support votes? -- Slaunger (talk) 14:23, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Slaunger: we will see that with time, since i havent seen one Venera which would look so good and photogenic like here. People will tell, not few medicore per-perers. So i think this shot had biased negative voting. I try to correct that. --Mile (talk) 14:31, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I think Mile has interpreted the phrase "per Colin" as meaning that these people were inclined or encouraged to vote the same way as me, rather than just randomly happening to agree with me. I'm certainly not in communication with either Daniel or Poco, and both of them vote differently to me regularly / I oppose their nominations regularly. Mile clearly thinks that his (wrong) assumption of bias needs to be corrected by blatant abuse of the voting. This isn't just one image, but many nominations get canvassed at Slovenian WP, which gives him a 2-3 support advantage on Commons. I think that if Mile does not accept he has made a misjudgement here, and agree to stop canvassing his Commons nominations, then some kind of FPC ban for a period is going to be called for. -- Colin (talk) 15:05, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

FPC is not a competition and for this raison Mile haven't any "advantage" over others commonists. FPC is a section to learn and improve the individual photoquality while we are filling commons of hight quality images, however, the Mile's problem is that we are filling Commons with a number of images wrong evaluated beyond the nonsense of this game. I think all Mile's FP and poty finalists should be withdrawn and re-evaluated. I am sure the story would have been different without these votes. --The Photographer 15:25, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
I agree it is not a competition, that's not what I meant by "advantage". I don't really support the idea of removing existing candidates. But this game has to stop now. -- Colin (talk) 16:13, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Colin, so who is checking objectivity ? Oppose votes and pers ? Who is protecting me against it ? I've told before, unless we get anonymus voting this a no-go. Objectivness, friendship, e-mail friends... Photographer i cant speak with you, since you are now sponsored with Colin help. Thats is good, but just take care what you write. --Mile (talk) 15:46, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Mile, you make a lot of bad faith allegations without any evidence. That's really not allowed and will lead to a full block unless you stop. I oppose plenty of The Photographer's nominations and he opposes quite a lot of mine. There's no cosy support-support relationship there as there appears to be with your Slovenian FP friends. -- Colin (talk) 16:13, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Colin: This isn't just one image, but many nominations get canvassed at Slovenian WP, which gives him a 2-3 support advantage on Commons. /.../ There appears to be /a relationship/ with your Slovenian FP friends. — The Photographer: I am sure the story would have been different without these votes.
Please explain in detail how many nominations "get canvassed" and how much "different" would "the story" (POTY, I presume) would be without Slovene voters. Because I found many PetarM's FPCs from 2016 without any votes coming from Slovenia:
And there are quite a few 2016 nominations with only one (mine) "Slovene" vote:
I believe you should really stop spreading this from this FPC to other Mile's nominations. Yes, PetarM was pinging few user at SL:WP to inform them about the Venus from Milo voting and this was wrong. But for his previous FPCs, you exaggerate a lot. M★Zaplotnik (edits) 17:07, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
@MZaplotnik: Please, Could you show only a vote  Oppose of you in all PetarM's FPCs? --The Photographer 18:04, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
MZaplotnik, I'm not interested in whether there are some nominations where Mile didn't canvass or where sometimes canvassing didn't add many votes, or working out whether this changed the Pass/Fail. What matters is that he's canvassing regularly on Slovenian FP and this is bringing voters to Commons who (like yourself) pretty much only vote support for Mile and don't generally vote on others. Yours, romanm and Sporti's votes are obviously biased, and Verde78 are suspicious but may have another explanation. -- Colin (talk) 18:15, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Three examples:

In regard to my votes on these pages, yes, they were brought to my attention due to their mention elsewhere, but I voted only for those that I considered of a high enough quality to merit the designation of a FP. If that helps the process in any way, I don't mind having my votes stricken at the mentioned votings. --Eleassar (t/p) 20:39, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Eleassar, while your participation at FPC does seem limited only to Mile's nominations, and to just a few votes, you are also one to vote oppose: Commons:Featured picture candidates/Set/Ljubljana Cathedral Altar and Cupola ceiling. This, together with your comment about striking votes, makes me believe you wish not only to be fair but to be seen to be fair. And that is an honourable thing. -- Colin (talk) 21:35, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Colin, what are you saing ? They must not vote ? They should not vote all together ? Picture is failry FP, and i wasnt 2014 member on SL.Wiki, but since 2015. --Mile (talk) 18:41, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Colin i think you are hunting a ghost, year or two ago you were connecting me with user from Serbian Wikipedia. --Mile (talk) 18:56, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Colin: I think there is a difference between the case that triggered this and the three previous cases you refer to directly above. The case triggering this discussion was a case where a clear pre-bias was made in the solicitng of votes. Assuming the machine translated "The picture is very good, the lighting is good and gives expression sculpture. Mal support to Commons would be good." is just approximately correct. Mile is not only trying to recruit unbiased voters here, but he is seeding such voters with a pre-defined opinion. That is completely unacceptable!!! And I am appaled he does not realize so himself. In contrast in the three cases you mention above, the canvassing consists in the two first cases of a very neutral informative note that there is a vote at Commons on the same picture more or less. There are no explictly biased or appraising words from PetarM in these two cases. And for the third, I cannot see any canvassing taking place. So, I think you are trying to make this worse than it actually is. Obviously, once all the Slovenian users support the nominations on the Slovenian wiki, it is of course to be expected that most solicited votes from there will also vote support here on Commons. I do not think we have a policy on Commons that explicitly prohibits unbiased soliting of opinions from sister projects - we are interconnected after all, but in any event you risk it will backfire, and if the canvassing is biased, it will backfire severely.
Recently we discussed on this very page if this page should be used to place a notification if FPC users were reported on any of the drama boards. It was agreed that it was OK, if the referring note was made in a completely neutral language to avoid pre-bias. That is also canvassing. The FPC community members have a highler likelihood of wanting to defend a fellow FPC user on the drama boards than to go against them. If we still stand by that decision, I do not see the big difference and the big problem as long as the canvassing is done with a 100% unbiased wording.
Biased wording was an issue in the FPC triggering this, but I fail to see a similar past pattern. -- Slaunger (talk) 19:16, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
I agree this one case was worse in explicitly asking for support. (btw, the third example contains a link back to the active Commons FP). And Mile admits he did this because of some perceived bad faith voting here on Commons, for which there is no evidence. But the previous canvassing is resulting in voters who nearly universally come here to support Mile and are not interested in determining "the finest on Commons" but on supporting Mile (or Slovenian photographers). It is clear therefore that linking to the Commons nomination while making a Slovenian one is giving Mile some easy votes from his fellow Slovenian Wikipedians. There is no need for this. Mile can gain his FPs without this by his own talent. I don't accept the "We have no policy against this on Commons" argument, Slaunger, because that doesn't really have any weight. We have no policy against a lot of undesirable things. Commons tends to avoid making policy and for good reason as it is very hard to come up with a rule that is fair/useful in all cases. Here the pattern is clearly undesirable. It is not desirable to have users at FP who's purpose turning up that day is to support a friend or a nation's photographers. I think the solution here (aside from any block/ban) is to require Mile to nominate FPs on both sites at separate, non-overlapping periods, and for there to be no cross linking. This removes the doubt that votes have been encouraged from the other site. I cannot think of a good reason why this should not be acceptable to Mile, nor can I think of any other user who actually does this kind of cross promotion on other FPs. And his Slovenian voters reminded that FP here is for all of Commons, and that bias towards or against individuals, nationalities, genders, etc, etc, is not acceptable. By all means have a preference for birds, or castles, or portraits, but not this. -- Colin (talk) 20:03, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Colin. You are right, there was a link in the third nomination, sorry about that. Also a fair thing to bring up that there are many aspects of Commons life we do not have policies for. But I still quite do not get, is it then not also canvassing to put a neutral note on this talk page if an FPC user is reported on one of the drama boards. And why is that OK, if a neutral note from one wiki to another is not OK? -- Slaunger (talk) 20:17, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
I think this is why it is so hard to determine a policy/rule that covers all situation. Canvassing per se isn't always bad. But I note that the proposal you mentioned was not supported by me (though I acknowledged the problem of FPC-regulars not being aware of other Commons issues that may affect them) nor was it supported by a large number. The "proof of the pudding is in the eating". I'm sure if Jee's proposal resulted in a lot of biased votes/comments at AN/U then it would be called into question too. en:Wikipedia:Canvassing (although not policy here) has some good advice/definitions. It isn't just about whether the note is neutral but whether the audience of your note is likely to vote one way or another. Since we know that posting links at Slovenian FP encourages only support votes at Commons FP from Slovenian FP participants, it is clear that this form of canvassing is unacceptable and should stop. -- Colin (talk) 21:23, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

It is really sad to me finding out that you, Mile, have to call for help this way to try at any cost to get the FP star. While you are a talented photographer you are also a cheater. And please, don't try to deviate the attention affirming things like Daniel, Colin or me are targeting you. On the other side it is really curious to see that in my last 3 FPCs that were or are going to be promoted all supported but you. I'd like to keep assuming good faith but that's really hard after seeing the set of tools you put in place here. Poco2 20:20, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Poc; Poco, you are there top on the list of Unsorted, i wish you spent more time with this, stop nominating each minute when last is over, and more to work on software to improve your shots. Most od 10-12am point and shoot panos are far from FP for me. Improve your skills. --Mile (talk) 20:32, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Again, we are here discussing about what to do with your cheating, it is not about me, Colin, Daniel or Jimbo! Poco2 21:15, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
  • @PetarM: You asked me "why should i remove?", don't you see the reaction of all regulars? You can decide yourself to go in the same direction of the community, we search the finest images. Are you sure your image is? If you do not trust us maybe you should not participate here.
    As far I see with the links provided by Colin, the canvassing has been done not only by Mile but by at least 3 or 4 other users, one may thought that Mile simply followed an established and current practice. It alleviates things a little regarding Mile, but it is still a problem. And I also saw that the canvassings were every times during nominations in an other project, maybe should we demand in our rules that the images nominated here to to be not nominated anywhere else during the process. Christian Ferrer (talk) 21:42, 9 January 2017 (UTC) this is unfeasible as we can not watch all projects! Christian Ferrer (talk) 21:44, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
It will be hard for us to not suspect the votes of some users in the future nominations of Mile. How to deal with this? not count the votes of thoses users during 6 month when they votes on Mile's nominations? That could be a solution, but we have to decide precisely here who are thoses users and to notify them about that. Christian Ferrer (talk) 22:10, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Christian Ferrer A valid requirement to vote in FPC could be that the user has obtained at least a quality image and uploaded at least 5 images (quality or not) in the last month. --The Photographer 22:23, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
QIC is different, and some people might not be interested in it. I think requiring at least 2 submissions to either FPC, QIC or VIC would be sufficient, though I'll note that would have made me ineligible to vote for a while. That might not have been a bad thing, though. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:18, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, activity requirements don't make sense. For admins we want to make sure they keep up to date with policies, but here we just need to make sure voters are qualified to judge a photo on its merits, which doesn't go away with time. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:12, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
Yes indeed, and as a two-thirds majority of supports is needed, the next potential votes the Slovene community on Mile's nominations will be a heavy handicap to bear for Mile. Christian Ferrer (talk) 05:47, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Solution: make it anonymus. Nothing other will be good enough. --Mile (talk) 07:02, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Action?

I know it's disagreeable to renew discussion of this incident, but has any action been proposed? If so, please link the thread here. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:59, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

  • In my opinion, no I don't think an action is needed, or that it have been proposed , I think Mile well understood the community don't appreciate this "canvassing", and that supports coming from Slovene community will attract now too much attention, and will be sanctioned in a way (oppose votes) or another. We are all happy to see Mile's photos, nominations and contributions. Now let's see the future. Christian Ferrer (talk) 17:12, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Commons to my is a familiar like environment and it's difficult see people lying and cheating with nonsense. If no action is taken, quite possibly this situation will be repeated. He has not only given signs of the least repentance and especially for his disrespect and mockery towards some members here. I think FPC temporal banning to Mile could work --The Photographer 18:43, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • This discussion is a kind of "warning", if the problem is repeated with Mile's nominations it will be time to think at about potential reactions on our part. Christian Ferrer (talk) 18:55, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Earlier, I had detected many similar unexpected voting patterns and warned (friendly) those involved. Sometimes, these can be a flow of votes from a particular language community, sometimes an unexpected over-activity from a group from IRC or list where probably a nomination is discussed. If the votes are invalid (from new login or less than 50 edits), we can disqualify such edits. In other cases, it is difficult to take an action due to lack of solid evidence. But we can be alert and use this talk page to attract more eyes. And an oppose vote will well serve as it is double weighted. (I was away when this happened and wondered why I missed those early incidents. I usually scrutiny all votes from newcomers when I've enough time. Request more people to do so.) Jee 03:44, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
  • I agree with The Photographer that Mille has not indicated any acceptance of wrongdoing, coupled with a lot of bad faith assumptions about the oppose votes he gets. To me this suggests Mille has not learned and may well continue canvassing some of his nominations (he didn't canvass them all). I don't think there is any reason why Mille should nominate images at Solvenian WP FP and at Commons at the same time, with cross links, therefore I request he stops this practice. It has clearly led to extra support from his home wiki. In future he should nominate separately with no advertisement. This isn't much of a limitation since nobody else at Commons FP does that. Where this isn't followed, then a notice can be placed on the FPC nomination and we can decide if action is required then. Mille is a good photographer and deserves to get FPs, and can do so fairly like everyone else. -- Colin (talk) 10:59, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Further games

Sadly, Mile has not learned a lesson and continues to play games on Commons. This time over copyright. At Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Bankote portrait pattern (Intaglio printing).jpg several users asked him to name the country/currency in order to determine the copyright status. He refused, saying "who told you i had to name the money, thats is why de minimis exist. Name it." Challenging users to identify the country first. He eventually relented and added a category. However, on the Deletion request his throwing insults with "Are you OK ?" (which is not concern for my health and happiness, but a claim that I've lost my mind). Opinions? Cheating at FPC and then obstructing copyright investigations... time for AN/U and a block? -- Colin (talk) 15:33, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

His English is very poor (as far as I know); and in my experience, people having language difficulty always run into troubles compared to others. So better ignore the tone to some extend. (A DR is not a vote like FPC; the closing admin only care the merits of arguments. So better leave it after expressing our opinion.) Jee 16:06, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
I don't think English language difficulties are to blame here. There's no need for rudeness and obstruction. -- Colin (talk) 16:49, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
See for example his comments here. It is very difficult to follow. Jee 16:59, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
I can understand rudeness in any language, and so can Mile. -- Colin (talk) 17:13, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

My edit at 08:16, before you came in : p.S. Its not American, its Chinese rinminbi. I was more answer to INeverCry, since you werent there yet. After what i ask Help desk, reply was its de minimis. I wasnt sure if something which goes under de minimis should be Categorized as whole money. Since "not identifiable" statement. So question; can i identify money if i go de minimis is normal. I didnt get the answer but now find out its not de minimis, so deletation can be done. I also removed FP nominee before i know that, since some doubts were there. I dont want to loose time with you. And you would like to block. For me, all fine. You keep with blocking procedure. --Mile (talk) 17:30, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Mile, I wrote "You still haven't categorised the image to indicate what banknote and what country it is from" and this was true when I wrote it. Stop playing this game, it just makes you look bad. At FPC you are required, on the File Description Page, to identify the subject (you still haven't said it is a One Yuan note) and to properly categorise it. This information is also required for the DR. The "de minis" argument does not require you to be secretive about the identification, nor for you to be rude to me about timestamps and who said what when. A "PS" comment on FPC does not count for FPC or DR. You seem to know what "categorised" means, so Jee's argument that you don't understand doesn't hold. You are simply being insulting, and obstructive. -- Colin (talk) 18:45, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I will take some semi-pause, removed from comments etc, since some was already problematic there with comments on other FP nominee, become to spamming photo for nonsense there... so, will stay out of comments for some time. Come and go once per week-two will be enough. --Mile (talk) 19:18, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I can't understand how it happens. If not action is taken to fix this issue, the user will continue playing games here. My English level is not excellent, however, I can see how he is playing and shielding using how an argument his English broken. --The Photographer 16:41, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Bias is normal in voting

I don't get why there is such an outrage. I personally don't like the picture we are discussing about out of aesthetic reasons and had I seen that before I would have voted against it (and I would probably be challenged to provide less subjective explanation for that). Nevertheless, Petar's pictures are of good technical quality, have good composition and fulfil other objective FP's standards. We are voting about whether or not the picture fulfils FP standards here. I am sure that my fellow Slovenian Wikipedians, who supported the picture, are experienced users - romanm for example is with us since 2004 - and sincerely considered whether or not the picture complies with the standards.

On the other side, some of the oppose votes were blaming that the vote is unfair. How is voting "oppose" because there are unfair "support" votes any better? All of the "cascading" users have voting right and there is no rule that would prohibit one from recruiting voters. Just have a look at elections - Trump won because he recruited greater mass of people in the crucial states that believed he would make a better president and he had all right to do that. In Austria, Van der Bellen won the election because he recruited enough people that were afraid of what would have happened if a far-right politician would won the election.

Please keep Wikimedia Commons a friendly space. Mile is contributing valuable material and such debates surely do not motivate him for further contributions. I, Rude and others already stopped sharing our pictures on Wikimedia Commons for similar reasons. --Miha (talk) 11:10, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

I have to point out the irony (or appropriateness?) of comparing Mile to Trump, if you would have a look at Consensual Review in COM:QIC. I think it's incumbent upon all of us to overlook anything we know about someone's politics or even bigotry when voting on their photos, and I believe I have done so, but voting against a photo on the basis of bigotry, if that's what's happening in this instance (and it wouldn't be the first time; his user talk page discusses but does not name the reasons for a block, but many of us remember and drew conclusions from his scurrilous and baseless attack on an African-American athlete) surely cannot be accepted. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:57, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Possible new FP section or... ?

Photo that brought about these thoughts.

This idea started at Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Lezyne Carbon 10 collage.jpg so I'm copying the first part of it here since this is a better place for such discussions:

"Your photos of hardware and mine are at the opposite ends of a spectrum. Yours are precise, tight and almost clinical while mine are all about mood, space and light. We need both. I would say these exact representations are sort of the 3D equivalent of all the photographs of "Static non-photographic media". Photos of those need to be exact and depict the artwork in a objective manner. With all the new possibilities that focus stacking and better cameras bring, we are seeing more and more of these outstanding photos. It would be unproductive to say no to all of these contributions just because it is hard to make them artistically pleasing and we don't know where to put them. I think it is time for a new sub-section of FP:COM, something like "Commons:Featured pictures/Technical". I would be very happy to review photos of things the same way I review a photo of a painting to see if it is perfectly true to the original artwork. --cart-Talk 10:03, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

@W.carter: Thanks for your thoughts. I was thinking about bringing your suggestion to the FPC talk page, but then I went through the FP categories again and these solid color BG product shots just don't look out of place to me, they just belong next to the "more natural background" shots. What I think is happening as well is that my subjects aren't very rare or special (the old discussion about criticising the subject together with the photographic qualities) so some people don't feel much when looking at these familiar objects regardless of the quality—in comparison to a vintage camera which might evoke memories or some other cool or unusual thing. And my lighting can never have a wow factor because it is there to light the subject evenly, accentuate features, but never more than that. I don't have a good solution, maybe new FP categories, maybe some comments on this type of photography in the FPC guidelines, or new "RQI"–reference-quality-images ;) – LucasT 14:42, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
This idea occurred to me while I was reviewing this image and I think this needs some more comments and more discussions, so I'm going to copy our conversation from this page to the more appropriate FPC talk page where such discussions belong. Hope that's ok with you. --cart-Talk 15:43, 8 February 2017 (UTC)"
  • So Lucas, here we are. :) I think that there are many of the older photos of objects that could be more accurate to have in a section with technically flawless photos. When the subsections of FP were chosen, it was probably not so common with focus stacked pictures so any such photo gave people a "wow" experience. Not that this is more common, we are not as wowed by just a super-sharp image, we crave something more. This is not just about what background to use, it is also a way to have objects that are not so spectacular by themselves photographed in an extremely good way. Once again I draw the parallel to the reproductions of paintings and such. I think we should at least start to talk about this and see where we end up. --cart-Talk 15:58, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
  • I'd like to add another part of that nomination linked at the top, where I listed other examples and argued against Martin Falbisoner who originally opposed my nomination: – LucasT 16:43, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
"The meticulously stacked photograph of that weird looking tool has an outstanding image quality - but I really can't come to terms with this kind of totally artificial background. Yes, it's much cleaner, smoother, and thus far more perfect than any real sheet of black paper/carton/cloth could ever be. But it also lacks character, sorry. This could easily be fixed, however... ;-) --Martin Falbisoner (talk) 16:06, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
Please be aware—if you aren't already—that my solid color backgrounds can be achieved in the studio rather easily and without any reflections or shadows (I can explain how). Just to clarify that what I do here doesn't need to be made in editing. Also there are a lot of existing FPs with such backgrounds, not from me. The shells by Llez, coins, sculptures, computers, a whole engine, watches, musical instruments, jewelry, stones, crystals and some more. The background of many of those is equally character-less than this one. Obviously I like these backgrounds as they allow maximum attention to the main subject. I chose dark grey here because the object has black and white areas that need to stand out. If you would require shadows to "fix" the image, I couldn't add them, because the way I shot this I don't have shadows or reflections:  – LucasT 16:28, 7 February 2017 (UTC)"
  •  Comment The images can be in several different galleries/categories, I mean a photo of an object can be in the relevant object gallery and also in a potential new gallery, technical or what you want. It is a bit as I did with Commons:Featured pictures/Black and white, all the images in this gallery are also in another relavant gallery (natural, people....). The only thing is to have enough images, I mean 30-40 images is enough, 3 images is not enough IMO, and also that the topic/subject is worth it. If these two criteria are met this can be a good idea. Christian Ferrer (talk) 17:05, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
@Christian Ferrer: Depending on the rules for images to enter such a new category, we have quite a bunch of them. 30 should be achieveable. I've created a new gallery on my user page to show some examples of what I might add into such a category, there are many more of similar images: User:Lucasbosch#FP_Category:_No_shadows.2C_no_reflections.2C_all_in_focus.2C_uniform_background.2C_separation_from_background and the name is terribly long, but these were my rules and couldn't think of a short name to encompass the spirit. What I would want from that category is:
  • even lighting
  • good resolution (hard to draw a line here, but there are FPs of good subjects but they are a bit mushy)
  • all parts of the object in focus
  • no shadows or reflections on background and solid color background
  • appropriate background color to provide enough contrast to the subject
  • transparent background allowed (though I couldn't find any FPs and it feels weird to nominate transparent bg photographs).
  • good separation from the background (you woud be able to draw the edge without having to guess at any point). – LucasT 22:35, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
  • @Lucasbosch: I'm very busy due to my real life job today, and likely tomorrow too, but I will look at this with you as soon as possible. Christian Ferrer (talk) 05:34, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
  • @Lucasbosch: I looked to your User:Lucasbosch#FP_Category:_No_shadows.2C_no_reflections.2C_all_in_focus.2C_uniform_background.2C_separation_from_background, the title (and then the category) IMO is far too much restrictive "Images with removed backgrounds", which is also a a popular category is likely better. In a general way a FP gallery which represents the best of our content must have something in common with our ranking system, with our category tree. But nothing prevent the creation of subsection with the kind of criteria you're talking about if there are relevant enough. Christian Ferrer (talk) 14:52, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
    @Christian Ferrer and W.carter: Your proposed FP category name is fine by me, it's better suited than my long name. The "rules" I suggested are very specific, but let me explain why. If an image shows exceptional detail with even lighting, focus stacked, with "removed background" AKA solid colors or transparency, it might become FP, but maybe not, just because people miss the wow factor that is inherent to such accurate images. My wish would be to change the FP guidelines in a way to explain this category of images (maybe with the rules outlined above) and enable them the FP status more easily. This is the question: Are these images special enough to become FP, if they show (possibly) boring subjects extremely well and thus do have a value after all. I have nominated a few of such images and I encounter valid comments that the wow is missing (recent example – "I'm not wowed", "too technical", "this can't be FP in any case"). If you say that VI is where these images belong instead, then I would counter that VI rules are too restrictive on the content and they miss the quality aspect. Thanks for your thoughts and time.– LucasT 17:45, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
I don't think we generally have rigorous entry criteria for specific categories. It's more an informal way of grouping the results of our votes in a way that is useful to those browsing the FPs, than a way of determining what is permitted. The categories can be useful to see what's been featured before (though standards do change) and it is also useful to look at the general image topic categories for other quality images.
I have for a long time been concerned that our pixel peeping, combined with the with our stale and pretty awful formal image guidelines (e.g., "every important object in the picture should normally be sharp") mean that product photos are being pushed towards making focusing stacking a requirement not just for small items but for large ones like cameras. Photographically, product photos can be grouped into four:
  • The kind of photos we have here from Lucas are what I believe is called "catalogue photography". It requires some of the qualities he lists above (though I would not encourage transparent backgrounds from photographic images -- leave them for SVGs). The aim is to clearly describe the produce in a neutral environment (white, black or out of focus background). Saying "all parts" need to be in focus is too strict imo. For example, photo of a watch might require the face to be fully in focus, but the strap loops back and can go out of focus as it does so. Focus can be a natural effect to indicate the 3D nature of a product, or to aim the eye at the important area. User:Evan-Amos has generated lots of great computer-related photographs of this kind. They are meticulously clean, with white background. The front-to-back sharpness is good but I'm not sure he focus stacks, instead relying on good DoF. This kind of photography certainly has a place on Commons, as it is naturally useful for educational purposes. There is a lot of skill required to setup the studio for it, and possibly to clean the product if not new. But once setup, one can rapidly fire off dozens of similar images. That might get fatiguing for both photographer and for reviewers here (see this article for comments about that line of work). The "wow" is generated from the technical standards displayed, as well as perhaps an interesting product. (If I never see another e-cigarette on FPC it will be too soon.)
  • Another kind of product photography is the "hero shot" or advertising/marketing. While this might have a plain background of the object in isolation, that is not always required and the surface may form part of the image, going all the way to a photo with the object being used or worn. The Tag Heuer watch photos in this article describe the difference. The lighting is less about making every component clearly visible to be scrutinised than about making the product desirable. It's what I was aiming for in my photo of the Sony A77ii. Compare this photo of a vintage camera with this photo of a vintage camera. In the latter photo, I want to pick it up and feel the camera in my hand; I can almost smell the leather case. The lighting looks like daylight from a window rather than some studio flash. I think generally we have not seen enough of this kind of artistic photography of products at FPC, and are often too technically harsh on them rather than judging the image on artistic merits too.
  • A third kind of photography is one where the subject is in place in its location where you saw it. For example, in a museum or shop or workplace. We often have to accept the lighting is not as great as in the studio, and the background might not be our first choice either.
  • The final kind is not a photograph at all. Increasingly, the "photos" we see of the latest camera, electric shaver or of the furniture in the Ikea catalogue are in fact just computer generated images. The cleanliness, perfection and front-to-back sharpness are because the product is not in fact real.
The problem with category grouping for the FPC page is that an image (I understand) has to be in one category or another. I think the current method of grouping by type of object (clothes, tools, photographic equipment, etc) is better than grouping by type of photography on display. So I would not suggest we change the category and opposed to that suggestion. Wrt Lucas comment about about changing the criteria, I think that (re)viewer fatigue is a real issue that you can't eliminate simply by making rules that mean "if these technical standards are met => featured". Even Diliff got viewer fatigue for his constant nominations of technically perfect (ignoring our differences on wide-angle perspective for now) cathedrals -- and his subjects were some of the most beautiful and wow-inducing building interiors in the country. If you rely on technical excellence for generating "wow" then unfortunately that will diminish as we see more examples of your work, and as the general standard of work increases. If someone were to donate the contents of the Ikea catalogue or Canon's lens catalogue in 36MP glory onto Commons, would we feature all the photos? -- Colin (talk) 18:24, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
@Colin: Thank you for reminding of the reviewer fatigue problem and your thoughts about product photography. This dampened my wishes to enable more catalogue shots to be featured. – LucasT 18:38, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
(Edit conflict)I totally agree with Colin that an endless parade of these perfect product photos could lead to viewer fatigue, but I started this discussion because I think these photos do have a place on Commons. Of course, they could go into the normal categories just like all the rest of the uploaded photos, but we have seen that some sort of recognition for the photos' excellence and the work involved producing them, do encourage people to continue contributing. That is why I floated the idea of a new FP section. Although, I don't think having specific rules for a section is a good idea. What goes into FP sections should be more or less intuitive. If there are other suggestions, I'm very interested in hearing them. --cart-Talk 18:42, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
Maybe a "beyond QI" would be a better way to see these photos. A super-QI, which we could call a "Flawless image"? FP is FP. You need wow for FP. Even boring everyday objects can be presented in a manner which is interesting and has wow. Here are some examples. And a flawless technically perfect image can be very boring and have an unimaginative composition. -- Slaunger (talk) 19:59, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
Lucas, I hope I haven't "dampened" your wish to take more such photos and upload them. One technique for dealing with reviewer fatigue is to nominate such images less frequently. For example, the shell collection photos are nominated infrequently and do well even though they are all much like each other. If they were nominated constantly, then we'd get tired. I wonder if you would be willing to produce a guide on macro focus stacking? It is something I have tried and occasionally successful but other times it just produces a mush of artefacts. Also your lighting technique could be helpful. -- Colin (talk) 17:00, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
Colin, I'm currently strapped on time because of other tasks, so you could use this for now: http://www.heliconsoft.com/helicon-focus-tutorials/. I use Helicon Focus for my stacks, but it does definitely not produce perfect results and requires retouching every time, with specific issues, which I plan to report to the developer sometime in the future. Regarding technique, I make markings on my macro lens and turn the focus ring a tiny amount (barely visible) for each step. Lighting is another topic and post processing is involved as well to make the results close to perfect. If you need more help, we could move this to my or your talk page. – LucasT 17:22, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
Lucas, thanks. There's no rush. I think that this is one of those topics (like panoramic photos and HDR) where perhaps the folk at FPC could prepare some tutorial pages to help others and share their knowledge. -- Colin (talk) 17:26, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

[Unindent] This is a very interesting discussion. I just want to say that Slaunger's comment about composition above is very important. The reason I didn't vote on the heatsinks photo is that the diagonal composition didn't work for me. I think a vertical composition or a horizontal one would work better. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:46, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Commons:Illustrating Women, Filling the Gaps

Hi, This is a new project which also concerns COM:FP. BTW I created and filled up Category:Featured pictures of women. Regards, Yann (talk) 14:12, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Different image as alt

In Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Bergtocht van parkeerplaats bij centrale Malga Mare naar Lago Lungo 11.jpg, there has been a discussion about the nominated image and a similar image taken around the same time. In my opinion, they are too similar to feature both. I feel that in such circumstances, alts should be permitted to be different photos of the same view (more or less) taken within minutes of each other. Otherwise, we risk denying a feature to the more worthy image if the other image happens to be nominated first. Having the two run side by side allows voters to decide which one is superior. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 08:15, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not too crazy about the whole alt pic thing. They are sometimes necessary, but should be avoided as far as possible IMO. Allowing for even more options in this will open a whole new mess. Will we also get alt crops of alt scene? If a nominator isn't sure which photo should be entered, I think it is better to do it the old fashion way and ask some of the FPC Regulars for an opinion before nominating. Like Colin did on my talk page for an previous nom. --cart-Talk 10:51, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
… or ask for opinions on Commons:Photography critiques (which I am pleased to see has been growing more popular again during the last months). --El Grafo (talk) 12:02, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
That too is very good! --cart-Talk 12:37, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
I think this is a discussion about the principle of entering an alt of a scene to a nom, not just about the nom given as an example above. --cart-Talk 13:06, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
True. And I agree in principle with the proposal, but it calls for a difficult judgment, and so I come back to this example, which I think is not a total slam-dunk in terms of not being able to feature both. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:15, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
I guess it's a tough call. But this is only an example; my inquiry is about what we should do in the general case. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:47, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

How to handle immediate renominations and misplaced votes

Regarding the situation of Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:128 Balconies of 1390 Market Street, San Francisco.jpg, I'd like some clarification/thoughts on the following situations:
1a. The nominator, not image author, withdraws his nomination, but below another person declares to nominate the picture instead. Should the old votes be counted as well or just the new ones after the renomination?
1b. The author of the image, who is the nominator, withdraws the nomination (e.g. for moral reasons), but again another person renominates. Is this allowed or rude? How do votes count?
1c. The author who is not nominating is using the withdraw template (e.g. for moral reasons), but again another person renominates. Is this allowed or rude? Would the author need to safeguard his creation for all future FP nominations? How do votes count?
2. There are votes placed after a withdraw but before the renomination. Do these votes count? [in my view, they shouldn't, as there was nothing to vote on at the moment]
3. People might assume that older votes carry over for the renomination, so they won't vote again to avoid placing dublicate votes. But if the renomination would hava taken place a few weeks later, under a new nomination page, this would be a non-issue. Should we treat immediate renominations differently to that and if so, why? – LucasT 17:04, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

First: The photographer has the absolute right to withdraw any nomination of his/her photograph. If s/he doesn't want his/her photograph to be voted on, I think that his/her will is in force, and that's that.
Second: If someone takes over the nomination without its having been closed, all previous votes, pro and con, need to be counted, because everyone will interpret this as a continuation of the voting, not as a completely new nomination.
Third: I think that in the case of a takeover of a nomination without the nomination having been closed in the interim, votes that took place when there was in theory nothing under consideration should count, too, again because since the nomination was never closed, people will be most likely to interpret the nomination with changed nominators as one event. But such votes shouldn't be encouraged because votes after a nomination is over are never counted in any other situation, except perhaps if someone withdrew their own nomination and then reconsidered.
I think the most important principle is for people to be able to have their votes count when they reasonably expect them to count. I am sure that if the people who voted for the photo of the highrise building in San Francisco thought their votes wouldn't count when the nomination was taken over by another person, they would have revoted.
All that said, I'm not sure if the procedure followed was optimal, because I think the "nominated by" slot should have been filled in by User:Lmbuga in place of me. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:40, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Withdrawing one's own image for moral reasons is extremely rare -- generally one would not have uploaded it / made it free if one had a problem with it being published. We've seen the odd case where someone is required to withdraw an image because they nominated too many, and someone else swiftly took over the nomination. That's probably for the best and especially if there are votes, rather than the hassle of creating a new nomination. More often a creator withdraws an image because they want to work on it to improve it, or to go back and take a better one, or because they are convinced that it is not featurable. I think that should generally be respected and no re-nomination made against their wishes. Sometimes a nomination can get bogged down in issues such as copyright, or become complicated if edits have been made to the image, and then it may be for the best to re-nominate rather than continue with existing votes, and perhaps ping those who previously voted. I can see some extreme case possible where a creator gets frustrated with FPC and bans his images from nomination here, and in that case IMO they are being disruptive to the project and their wishes could be overruled. But I mention that merely to show there are many reasons and it is hard to in-advance lay down rules for them all. -- Colin (talk) 09:02, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
  • The rules are made for the good functioning of the commons, therefore they exist. When a rule only generates bureaucracy (like creating a new nomination), it's time to break it. Always starting from the common sense and the good faith of the users. In this case, I think the ideal would have been to talk to each other and resume the nomination. The renomination could have been a bit impolite, however, it does not stop being valid. That is just my opinion. --The Photographer 13:57, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Removed bot closing

Just a question, is this really ok? --cart-Talk 08:24, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I don't think so, so I confirmed the bot closing. Regards, Yann (talk) 09:30, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
Ok, thanks! I wasn't really sure since there are always exceptions to rules here and I might have missed something. --cart-Talk 09:41, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Does an oppose vote really require a reason?

Hi, I have replied to the user User:Golden Bosnian Lily now three times because he voted oppose without giving a reason (and there is at least one more vote from him). I saw many times before that opposing without reason is not allowed/or strongly discouraged, but going through the rules, there is no part that explicitly says so or says that a oppose vote without comment is invalid. So, is it right to inform these users and is it fair to strike these votes when confirming the FPCbot? – LucasT 14:21, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Just a quick pointer to previous discussions on this topic to show previous arguments regarding this (may not be exhaustive, feel free to add more): 1, 2, 3. — Julian H.✈ 14:50, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for digging them up. – LucasT 15:06, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
I read through the previous discussions. I think it might be a good idea to require - no [editing here], rather, ask - every nominator to state why they think a photograph should be featured, and for people making positive votes to give a reason, too. But I think it should be made clear that you can give a reason in any language (except maybe Klingon). Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:53, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
 Support (just in case this turns into a vote again). Everyone has a reason for promoting or opposing, and writing it down is the least a voter can do to honour the photographer's work, be it in any common language. – LucasT 16:31, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

I think that failing to give a good image-based reason for an oppose is simply rude. The two votes are not symmetrical. With a support, you are saying that you have checked the technical qualities and considered the artistic qualities and are sufficiently wowed and believe this to be among our finest images. It wouldn't help to require people merely to repeat that when supporting. But with an oppose, you are saying there are serious technical or artistic flaws, that the image does not wow, and/or that there are better images on Commons. In the latter case, it is unhelpful to the nominator to keep quiet about why their image failed the test, and unhelpful to other reviewers who may wish to agree or disagree with any negative. I'm not sure that making this a requirement will succeed as some people are determined to either remain unhelpful or to supply a non-image-based reason. We already state that giving no reason, or "empty" reasons are "unhelpful" but perhaps that could be strengthend to "and rude" or some stronger criticism. However, there's also this: "Better to keep quiet and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." -- Colin (talk) 17:13, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek and Lucasbosch: : It is already stated clearly in the Voting section that reviews can be given in any language. I do not see any reason for clarifications there. And in the same section, it is stated that giving no oppose reason is 'unhelpful' as Colin also notes above. Even though such votes are considered unhelpful I am opposed to disregarding them, because although it is stated that any language is accepted, the de facto tacitly applied standard is that English is used. And that implies that if you cannot express yourself well in that language you would be inclined to abstain from explaining your oppose reason rather than giving an explanation in broken English missing the finer nuances and making you appear rude or dumb.
Hvis jeg kun kunne skrive på dansk ville jeg også være tilbøjelig til slet ikke at skrive en kommentar fordi jeg simpelthen ville synes det var alt for pinligt at jeg som den eneste i et review skrev på et andet sprog end engelsk.
Now, and my language is even close to English, in Malayalam:
പ്രതീകങ്ങൾ ഏത് FPC നിയമമാണ് റോമൻ അക്ഷരമാല നിന്ന് വ്യത്യസ്തമായിരിക്കും കാരണം മലയാള റിവ്യു ബന്ധിപ്പിക്കുക കൂടുതൽ ബുദ്ധിമുട്ടാണ് (machine translated, but I hope you get the point)
the barrier would be even higher for using your own language as you do not want to deviate too much from the norm. It would be embarassing to demonstrate if you could not write in English. Thus, no required comment on any vote, please. -- Slaunger (talk) 20:17, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
In practice, comments on voting are in English something over 95% of the time, and I recall that when a member from Vietnam made comments in Vietnamese, he was criticized for that and told to put his comments through Google Translate into English. For that reason, I guess I ultimately agree with Slaunger, even though ideally, I would want votes to be explained, etc. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:25, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
Exactly, being asked to put a comment in Vietnamese through Google translate is nothing but a subtle humiliation of the reviewer although it is probably not intended to be, as those proficient in English does not give this language asymmetry much thought. I certainly agree that it should be strongly encouraged to provide reasons for your votes. I personally comment most of my votes, also the support votes to try and give helpful feedback, and I think the best way is to try and lead by example. -- Slaunger (talk) 20:32, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
+1. Yann (talk) 22:07, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
I appreciate that as an English native speaker I am privileged enough to not comprehend all the difficulties of having that communication barrier. However, our nominators also vary in their ability with English and yet they find a way to navigate the UI, assign an English category or two, a geolocation, follow the FPC instructions, and indicate an English FPC topic. They are expected to respond to English-language queries about crops and CA and noise and other complaints. They face all these hurdles and overcome them in order to get a fair review here. And it is a review I expect, not just a vote. Not merely a Facebook Like!. But a considered judgement against several criteria and project goals. So I still think our reviewers should show the nominator the courtesy of justifying a negative review. Perhaps more reviews should be done in the reviewer's native language. I hope your Vietnamese example was a long while ago, and that the criticism was itself criticised? On an international project like Commons, surely we should aim to respect each other's languages as first-class communications, rather than to accept that non-English speakers shouldn't be expected to interact with us to any more advanced degree than writing {{o}} or {{s}}. -- Colin (talk) 22:54, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
My example was very recent. I can't remember the guy's moniker offhand. Good-something. He was expelled for copyright violation but was here on FPC for a few weeks, I think. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:46, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
I can think of a number of oppose-without-reasons (and similar negative votes) made by certain individuals against other individuals, where it was clear the vote had nothing to do with the image and was revenge, personal dispute, national dislike, etc, etc. The reason for the oppose is left implicit, and demanding one just results in nonsense filler. I think that unless it is clear the vote is in bad faith (and we often know who such voters are) then a polite request for a reason is fair. If there are language problems, we should try to overcome them, rather than admit defeat. Those of us who do give reasons and read other people's reasons, learn a lot about photography and reviewing as a result, so simply voting negatively without a comment is not really participating fully. -- Colin (talk) 08:31, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

By the way, another example of a language barrier issue is that Ercé, the user who posts a lot of photos of Akan gold weights and flowers-and-seed photos to QIC and VIC, got a lot of reviews of his photos in English on QIC that increasingly strongly urged him to do some of his own reviewing. When I tried to organize a campaign to deny review to some of his photos, he finally posted a Google-translated message to my user talk page, showing that he didn't understand what was being asked of him and also felt a lack of ability to participate because of a lack of knowledge of English. Once I replied to him in French explaining what was being asked of him and assuring him that he didn't need to engage in English-language commentary, but only to post "Good quality" for images that were clearly of good quality to him, he began to review on QIC and VIC and has continued to do so. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:18, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, that's the beauty of this project. There is almost always someone around who can help out with translations, or knows enough about cross-wiki + translations programs to help users understand each other. I've seen reviews at QIC done totally in German or French since both parties knew these languages. Sure, I could review other Swedish user's photos in Swedish too and provide translations of it if requested. This is an international site, and I don't think we take as full advantage of that here at Commons as is done on Wikipedia. Language should not be a problem here. --cart-Talk 13:12, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

User Group: Commons Photographers

Please note (and sign up!): User Group Commons Photographers! --Martin Falbisoner (talk) 08:33, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Making things easier

A proposal is made on Commons talk:Quality images candidates#Making things easier. --cart-Talk 17:43, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Update. We need Abbreviations of Photography Terms and External links please add what you know/can. --cart-Talk 10:23, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Photo contest Art and Feminism

Hi, Please see the details here: Commons talk:Illustrating Women and Girls, Filling the Gaps#Photo contest Art and Feminism. Comments and suggestions welcome. Yann (talk) 19:52, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Submission to Wikimania with the aim to improve things for the photographer's community here

Hello, if you agree that things need to get better for photographers, especially photographers worried about contributing HQ content, you make support this submission for Wikimania in Montreal where I'd like to address the issues I am concerned about and moved me to stop uploading. I hope you forgive me this spam wedge but as my purpose is to improve the life of HQ Commons photographers, I thought this may be interesting for you. Thank you. Poco2 11:21, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, a concern for improving things is what brought me to this page, but I'm thinking in an entirely different direction. Beating other photo share sites for the highest quality pictures? Why care about winning or losing that competition? The main benefit done to the world by Wikimedia Commons is illustrating the various Wikipedias. We have no competition in that field. Other considerations can somewhat help with illustration, and other considerations can be good even when they make little difference to that job, but the main thrust should be towards greater relevance. Well illustrated subjects don't need slightly better illustrations, as much as badly or unillustrated ones do. Jim.henderson (talk) 18:29, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone; not limited to Wikipedia. The use of our works in Wikipedia is just tip of the iceberg. We do have a conception with any other site that too provide freely licensed works. Well illustrated subjects do need better illustrations, even if the improvement is too marginal. We can't even predict the use in Wikipedia in future. Earlier Wikipedia only needed 250px images. Now, after implementing media-viewer, they can display a larger view. Who knows what the future is. Jee 03:43, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
I am well aware that WP is not the only consumer of our products. Of the thousands of my pictures in Wikipedia, I have seen several repeated in newspapers (with credit) and in an architectural website. One appeared in the site of a small travel agency, and another in the background of a scene the movie "Sully" last year. However, I think such uses are the small tip, and the big iceberg is WP, Wikivoyage, and the other products of Wikimedia Foundation. They use hundreds of thousands of pictures and could use more if we provided the ones they need.
To this end, I propose changes to the advice given in the candidates page. First, trim the several paragraphs about how to make a good picture down to one paragraph. A single sentence can mention "rule of thirds" and link to appropriate detail articles. Second, I propose adding to the paragraph about usefulness. Pretty sunsets are not the only uselessly beautiful class of photos; it needs to be more general. I would include links to Commons:Picture requests and to WP categories of requested photos. Third, I propose paying more attention to considerations of usefulness in choosing winners. Perhaps someone has better ideas than mine about how to choose useful pictures.
Of course, this discussion started with Poco_a_poco proposing to make things better for photographers. Perhaps he can tell me why my idea is going in the wrong direction, or provide details of his ideas. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:56, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
Hello Jim.henderson, sorry for the late response. I've been busy in real time in the last days and right I'm actually traveling. I think that you are actually totally wrong with your assumptions and I can easily prove that. My pictures (about 16,500) are used 21,800 times in the movement and about 600,000 times (120,000 legally -this is a fact- and 4 times more without mentioning the author, this is a good estimate base on spot checks). When I talked about creating a real community I do it with the purpose to have a bunch of skilled and talented photographers here that donate tones of material with free licenses, but unfortunately as I want to expose in the submission, HQ photograhers have a hard life here. The community of HQ photographers here is very limited and the frustration pretty high among many of them. I've been around for 10 years and can sing a song about that... Poco2 21:08, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
Ah. Now I am getting some information, thank you. Incidentally I too have been slow sometimes, with much less excuse. Anyway, clearly the problem is not with how many of your excellent pictures you have been able to publish. Your pictures are very much used, here in the Wiki-complex and even more in the world. Yes, I am surprised that, with many larger Image sharing websites in the world, Wikimedia Commons is a major player in that market. Do you know why the using websites want to use this one? And is there a reason why Wikimedians ought to care?
More important, what is the problem? What are the limits, and what is hard about this life? In what way would a "real community" be different? Can it be created as easily as a WP:Wikiproject, or would it require something more difficult? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jim.henderson (talk • contribs) Poco2 09:01, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
Jim, in my opinion Wikimedia Commons is and stays as an important player because all works here can be used freely even for commercial purposes. That's definitely no the case in most sites. IMHO the ultimate target of the movement is spreading the free knowledge in the world. Therefore, yes, we should care that Wikimedia Commons is a top site in terms of usage. What I am just pointing out here is that we also need a Wikimedia Commons with HQ material and for that we need to help or even attract those guys who can and want to deliver that content. You can get a feeling about he issues I see in the banner of my user page, the range is diverse and we'd need different actions. Poco2 09:01, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
Ah yes... "those guys", not "those people". Be careful you don't attract any more women... (yes, I joke) --cart-Talk 09:27, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
cart, you can contribute some ideas here. Clin Jee 04:09, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Jee, I would if I could only figure out what the problem was. I've been following this thread plus the links in it and I can't really understand what it is all about. Thing are always hard on the Internet and you need a very thick skin to survive anywhere out there. I come from the writing side (WP) of this project so I know that good HQ photos in general and good illustrations for a subject are not always the same. I'm also aware of how many pics are usually acceptable in an article and that just adding pics can be seen as spamming. Of course this way of judging photos can be frustrating for photographers. I'm usually surprised when one of my more artistic photos make it to an article.
As for making things better for HQ photographers, if I read this in a certain way it looks like the proposal is to make them into an elite force and to give them some special privileges or perhaps secretaries to place their photos in articles. Some things are also contradictory, like saying that your photos get deleted/reverted/removed from articles and then stating that they are used 21,800 times on the project. I honestly don't know what to make of this and until I do, I can't make any real suggestions or comments. Right now I'm just scratching my head. Maybe I got it all wrong. --cart-Talk 08:01, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

cart I am not asking for special rights over other users or even over the policies, just for some help to tackle different problems and make out of this place a project where not just free-knowledge driven people are drawn but other photographers wo just want to share their works with the world and wouldn't care too much using a free license. I don't know how solutions to the problems I listed would look like but we need for sure legal help outside the movement and maybe some inbox in the WPs where we can pour HQ images. I'm aware that a great image is not always encyclopaedic, but the fact that it has been the author of the images who give them use in the projects is per se a problem or at least it looks like one (spammer!). Poco2 09:17, 17 April 2017 (UTC) PD: With guys I meant both genders of course :), that's not unsual at least in the States.
cart, I too not very clear on what we are discussing here. Poco provided a link to his user page as the issues he is concerned about which contains four bulleted points. For #1, I share the same opinion of you, Wikipedia(s) has a different priority on the encyclopedic value of an image compared to Commons. So we have no guarantee that out work should be used in Wikipedia articles. #2 is a COM:FOP issue; it is a pain, but Commons need to follow both the laws of the source and hosting (USA) country. For #3, I again agree with you; thicken our skin is the only solution. For #4, I respect the stand of Poco; but I've different stand. I don't care even if my works are overused. Jee 11:57, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

FPCBot may be broken

Proof. FPCBot registered this nomination, with 5 votes in favour and 1 opposed, as opposed. I have not seen any other instances of this happening, though. -- PhilipTerryGraham (talk) 13:48, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

@PhilipTerryGraham: The bot is not broken. A pic must have: 2. At least seven Support votes at the end of nine days. See Commons:Featured picture candidates#Featuring and delisting rules. That pic only got support from 5 voters, two short of the minimum, so it was not featured. (This is why some voters add the "- and 7" if they are the 7th voter to cast a support vote.) I suggest you read up on the rules a bit, there is more "fineprint" like this. ;) --cart-Talk 14:00, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Pride featured picture drive

Those who don't closely monitor the Commons:Village pump may wish to know that Commons Featured Pictures forum is hosting a competition in May. Here's the post from the VP:

Comments and feedback on the planned international LGBT+ Wiki Loves Pride featured picture drive are welcome on the meta discussion page, see link. The drive will be promoted on 31 different language Wikipedias.

The drive encourages high quality photographs from Pride events and other LGBT+ cultural related images to be released to Commons. The goal is to see a jump in the numbers of LGBT+ cultural related photographs nominated for Featured Picture status on all Wikimedia projects.

Help is needed to prepare a banner in your language! See banner translations.

Thank you! --Fæ (talk) 12:43, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

For background, this Featured Picture Drive is the result of a grant proposal on Meta: Grants:Project/Rapid/LGBT/Wiki Loves Pride Featured Picture drive 2016 (+ talk page). Note also the Rules of the competition. Some photographers here may be affected by the "conflict of interest" restriction that does not permit photographers to enter "where there is existing Wikimedia related funding for their work or its production". In addition to being "visually of an LGBT+ theme", photographs "should be new to Wikimedia projects and not part of a previously uploaded series or released as part of an existing public archive". Entries are approved by a panel (who?) before being eligible to enter. A prize of $200 goes to the first eligible FP and $100 to the second. There are also $100 prizes for Wikipedia Featured Pictures. Since this competition is going to be advertised widely on Wikimedia projects as well as social media, it is likely that we may see some considerable activity in May. Participants on this FPC forum are therefore encouraged to give feedback and comments here. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not associated with the running of this competition, I'm just passing on the information. -- Colin (talk) 10:59, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Using FPC as a mechanism to win a prize could bring negative results in the future. People should contribute here because they are passionate about it, for altruistic thinking or for the interest of continuously improving free content. People should not compete for a monetary value because money kills altruism and in the long run we would be creating a vice of contributing only for a monetary interest. --The Photographer 12:05, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
Issues with a cash prize at FPC were raised at the [[grant talk page. This is not really a "photo competition" (where images in the contest are judged against each other) and more like a "race to be first to claim the prize money". -- Colin (talk) 12:41, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up Colin. I also agree with The Photographer that money prizes in Wikimedia projects is a bad idea, the honor of being first or whatever should be enough. But challanges and competitions can be a bit of fun and I hope that there is also the option of declining the money and letting it go to say a charity organization if anyone wishes so. --cart-Talk 07:25, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

I think money prizes can have a place on Wikimedia projects, particularly those that aim to attract entries from serious photographers who aren't currently Wikimedians. Wiki Loves Monuments 2016 attracted over 277,406 images, 85 featured images and a very large number of Quality Images. Many serious/pro photographers would not forfeit their rights without the hope of some reward -- it is expected for every other big photo competition. For an internal forum like Photo Challenge and Featured Images, I agree that monetary reward is a bad fit and not necessary anyway. -- Colin (talk) 08:35, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for informing about other photo competitions, I didn't know that since I've never competed in any. So prize money is foremost to get good pictures from "outsiders". If they need monetary compensation to give up their copyright, I doubt they will stick around and continue to contribute. For Wiki-projects I think the best prize is still a T-shirt or a coffee mug. I also suppose that we can contribute with LGBT-related photos at FPC during the competition or at any time, but not enter into the competition. --cart-Talk 08:48, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
+1. I too like t-shirts or coffee mugs with my photos printed on them. :) Jee 13:59, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
Mmmh, to me mugs and t-shirts sound a bit … I dunno … cliché? If there's a bit more money to spend, something like a large high-quality print made by a professional could be attractive to both amateurs and pros. --El Grafo (talk) 08:12, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Picture of the Year 2016 Results


The 2016 Picture of the Year. View all results »

Dear Wikimedians,

The 2016 Picture of the Year competition has ended and we are pleased to announce the results:

In both rounds, people voted for their favorite media files.

  • In the first round, there were 1475 candidate images.
  • In the second round, people voted for the 58 finalists (the R1 top 30 overall and top 2 in each category).

In the second round – the “three votes” was used – eligible users could vote for up to 3 finalists – each of these 3 votes counted equal.

There were 4765 people who voted in total (R1 and R2).

  • In the first round, 2553 people voted for all 1475 candidates.
  • In the second round, 3625 people voted for all 58 finalists.

We congratulate the winners of the contest and thank them for creating these beautiful media files and sharing them as freely licensed content:

  1. 615 people voted for the winner, File:Jubilee and Munin, Ravens, Tower of London 2016-04-30.jpg.
  2. In second place, 443 people voted for File:Khaoyai 06.jpg.
  3. In third place, 352 people voted for File:Polar bear (Ursus maritimus) in the drift ice region north of Svalbard.jpg.

Click here to view the top images »

We also sincerely thank to all voters for participating. We invite you to continue to participate in the Commons community by sharing your work.

Thanks,
the Picture of the Year committee

15:35, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

The POTY voters have very different tastes than FPC voters. Some photos that had a significant amount of opposition at FPC or even barely passed scored high in these results, including the winner. What do you all think about the results? Were they about what you expected or not? And congratulations to Colin for the winning photo, which really has character! -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:30, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
I missed the first round, but the top 12 are pretty much what I expected from the final round. Not necessarily in that order, though, and I didn't really expect the ravens to win – congrats to Colin!
Commons FPC is different from VI, QI and the Wikipedia FPs I know in that it requires some amount of WOW. POTY takes that to the extreme, as it seems to favour WOW over everything else. I guess people assume that technical quality is not an issue for the candidates, as they are already FP, and thus focus (perhaps subconsciously) on picking good images in terms of composition, mood, wow, etc. Personally, I also tend to follow different voting patterns at POTY vs. FP. And I think these different approach at POTY is fine, as it represents what the average person (i.e. non-photographer, non-QIC/VIC/FPC-regular) sees in an image. But it would be very interesting to see what a) FPC regulars alone and b) an independent external jury of professional photographers, editors, etc. would pick. --El Grafo (talk) 08:36, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
A good analysis. Jee 08:46, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
Agree with El Grafo. If you look at the numbers, only 1/6 of the people voting in the final picked the ravens as among their top three. So 5/6ths thought other pictures were better. I think it is particularly hard to expect consensus on such a variety of image topics. Some people will love the cathedrals, or space photos, or birds, and that will influence their favourites most. Also at a certain point, all the images are great and really hard to pick one or three. Could anyone here pick their favourite Diliff? Too much choice, and in fact I think Diliff's cathedral photos suffer at POTY because votes for them are spread among them all. The variety of opinion is exaggerated when you have a jury of only a few. IIRC an earlier WLM national competition ended up with each of the three jury members picking totally distinct groups of their top 10 photos -- how would they then pick a winner from that? At least with having thousands of voters, it becomes a little less arbitrary than the opinion of three people. I think some of the WLM national results over the years have demonstrated what an "external jury of professional photographers" pick, and the results are sometimes pretty shockingly bad IMO. Btw, See Commons:Picture of the Year/2016/Results/All for all the numbers. The 3rd, 4th, 5th... were all quite close. -- Colin (talk) 09:42, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
Although I already expected the ravens would win the first place because of the numbers of votes in the first and second round, I am also surprised that the ravens which has significant opposition on its FPC (due to technical quality) won the first place at POTY. I think POTY voters is a bit more concerned in artistic quality (which is the advantage of these ravens) than technical quality. So yes, I agree with El Grafo's analysis. ★ Poké95 09:54, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
Everything all of you are saying makes sense to me. I actually found it too hard to pick my favorite photos in the opening round this year and gave up, then in the final round, I felt as I did last year that it would have been a lot easier to pick the top 6-7, because when you get to that point, it's somewhat arbitrary what you choose to distinguish one great photo from another. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:16, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
Hi, I often think that FPC focus too much on quality alone, and not enough on educational value and other factors. So I am quite happy with POTY result. Regards, Yann (talk) 17:21, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

CA and the failure of FPC

Two photos were nominated by User:Thennicke today:

  • File:Покинута обсерваторія.JPG, a 4.5 megapixel photo (downsized from 12 megapixels, corresponding to a 60% linear reduction in size) grabs over 17 supports in 12 hours.
  • File:Paxzcasso1.jpg, 24 megapixel photo (at out-of-camera resolution) grabs a couple of supports before being absolutely killed over CA and withdrawn in less than 12 hours.

Both are excellent photos with lots of wow. The first is significantly limited in its applications by small size -- it might fill the top half of one page in an A4 magazine. The second could fill a double spread in an A4 magazine at 300dpi and you would not see the CA. At the 200DPI of a highDPI display, the CA is visible only on very close inspection. There's some cyan lateral CA on the far left, but the red lateral CA is not so obtrusive because the backlit trees have a warm glow anyway, and there are some red leaves. But apparently the CA is so bad at FPC, that the nomination doesn't survive half a day. If you want, you can enjoy the second photo at 4 megapixels and I don't think it would have received the same level of complaint. So we killed the second FPC, imo, because the photographer was generous enough to upload an out-of-camera JPG.

On a technical note, I have an 8mm fisheye that is also prone to CA with some high contrast scenes, and in the corners this can exceed several pixels. The lens here is an ultra-wide 8-16mm that is a good-quality consumer optic ($700) but can produce CA especially at 8mm. This sort of lateral (red/blue) CA is usually fixed by ticking the "Remove Chromatic Aberration" checkbox in Lightroom. Either that wasn't done here, or it was too high to fix. In the end, we have the picture we have, whether you or I might have processed it differently, or some can afford better optics.

IMO we should demote CA to be something you kindly suggest a fellow photographer see if perhaps they can improve it a bit, but really should never be a reason to oppose at FPC. Nobody ever defined a "great picture" by first saying "must have zero CA". I don't think FPC worked today. -- Colin (talk) 19:01, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

I had the exact same thought, when I saw the opposes due to CA on Thennicke's photo today; that when seen in its entirety no ordinary viewer would care or notice. -- Slaunger (talk) 19:09, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
+1 --Martin Falbisoner (talk) 19:15, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
+1 chromatic aberration and any fixable factor should be a oppose raison --The Photographer 19:17, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
How is that a '+1'? Seems more like a '-1' to me?? Colin's point is that the CA in this full res image is irrelevant for the overall impression of the image and that opposing it encourages uploaders to downsample as ridiculously much as the snow image. It gives the wrong drivers. -- Slaunger (talk) 19:23, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
I have spent a lot of time removing CA from other photographers photos at FPC just because I thought they deserved a better chance and after that they have usually been promoted. In both the case of File:Paxzcasso1.jpg and earlier File:Chandelier of the Palais Garnier, Paris 6 July 2015.jpg, I checked if the CA could be removed and still leave the photo intact. Removing CA "the easy way" can be done in Lightroom, unfortunately that only reduce the CA to neutral grey areas. in both these instances the amount of CA was so great that such a method would have severely harmed the photo. The only way to remove it and still keep the quality of the photos would have to be done with color substitution and taken many hours to do. So I don't oppose lightly to a photo with CA, but in these cases I thought it did detract from the quality of the pictures. Maybe I'm too picky... --cart-Talk 19:26, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
The standard "Remove Chromatic Aberration" checkbox is cleverer than just desaturating the CA. It knows the CA is lateral and can adjust the spread of colours. As such, it is always worth ticking (it's part of my default import settings). On modern cameras, it is largely removed if one produces a JPG, and many compact enthusiast cameras also enforce it's removal as part of the lens profiling. But an ultra-wide like this, unless one wants to pay $$$$, is prone to the problem, and it can't always be removed. The green/magenta longitudinal CA removal tool in Lightroom/ACR, is not so clever, and just desaturates the fringes in the selected colour ranges. The brush defringing tool is a mix of both, but does tend towards desaturating.
I think that for us regulars at FPC, it is helpful to share guidance on how one can improve a photo a tiny bit by better processing techniques and tools. But there is a danger we then regard all "fixable" issues (whether fixable without harm or not, for agressive NR makes things worse, and CA removal can just produce ugly grey outlines) as a reason to oppose until fixed. This photo was uploaded by a user in 2015 and that's their only edit here. If we had the RAW, we might be able to fix it a little more. The point really, though, is that 100% view at 100DPI is a daft way to judge a large image. Above 6 or 8 megapixels, it really starts to become irrelevant what you can see at 100DPI. You need a 5K monitor to see 8 megapixels, and they are typically at 220DPI. Any bigger a photo than that, and nobody is really looking at the whole picture at 100%, and often as little as 1/12th. When we moved from 10MP cameras to 40MP cameras, the linear resolution more than doubled. But our monitors are still mostly FullHD 100DPI and so all the defects become 2x magnified. Have the images got 2x worse? No. We need a better way to judge FP than with a magnifying glass looking for irrelevant problems. You all know this photo. Dreadful quality, ruined by the lab, but in the 100 most influential photos of all time. I wonder how many in the top 100 would pass FP. -- Colin (talk) 21:02, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Yes, there are always ways to improve a photo if we get hold of the raw/the right post processing technique/have enough time and I agree that we should not go too far in picking on CA. In some cases it really doesn't matter, like this photo I just promoted at QIC. It is a fantastic shot that has a bit of purple CA, but that blends in with the waves so it doesn't bother the photo one bit. In the case of "Paxzcasso1" there is so much red CA that at normal viewing size it actually gives the photo a more red hue since the CA are colored pixels contributing to the overall color of the picture. So IMO CA is not an absolute but rather something that can be ignored in some photos but not in others. --cart-Talk 21:27, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
CA is fair to oppose over, just like unsharpness and noise. But all these technical defects should always be considered in the context of the resolution. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:21, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
KoH, is it fair at this resolution, 24 MP, when a 1 or 2 pixel CA would not show up when printed A3 at 300DPI, yet if we blow the image up to be 1.5 metres wide and look at it at 100DPI from 50cm, we can see the CA. And yet if this was submitted at 4MP nobody would be noticing. I bet the noise on the snow photo was probably objectionable, or the unsharpness objectionable if it had been 24MP rather than 4.5. -- Colin (talk) 07:03, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
@Colin: Thanks for opening this discussion, and I agree with your points. I really didn't think there was much CA on the image, compared to a lot of lenses I've used (the Canon EF-S 24mm was so bad in those types of situations I had to sell it). I can't see very much green or blue fringing at all, which in my eyes is excellent for a wide lens. But ultimately I nominated it knowing that its technical quality would cause oppose votes; I just wanted to see what people thought. -- Thennicke (talk) 03:10, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
Thennicke, the CA you see here isn't the usual purple/green longitudinal CA but the less common red/blue (or cyan) lateral CA that is usually fixed automatically in camera JPGs or by ticking the "Remove Chromatic Aberration" checkbox. I didn't spot it to begin with because I was looking for purple. There is only a little cyan on the left side, though it is quite strong there. The red is hard to tell sometimes how much is the foliage and how much is CA. I think there is red/brown foliage and bright red foliage. -- Colin (talk) 07:03, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
@Colin: Sorry if I wasn't clear - this one is fine. I'm saying that CA in general is a reason to oppose. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:03, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

I think the question at hand is: what do we value more? aesthetics or technical perfection? I for my part value aesthetic quality higher than technical perfection. At the same time, I have learned over the past couple of years that Commons is an ideal – although somewhat harsh – place for photographers who'd like to improve their skills through feedback that mostly focuses on the technical aspects of taking images. That being said, I supported the nomination of the picture from Carpathian National Nature Park because I find it truly awesome and breathtaking. I disagree that "a failure of FPC" is what we're facing here. --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 03:56, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree with KoH and Frank here. I think the failure of this nom is also relevant here. There are many things beyond just photography make a photo wowable. Jee 04:02, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
And it's partly my doing that this nom failed, rather than FPC's, for closing the nomination so early, thereby denying the usual evaluation process (Colin would have had a chance to comment on it for example, swaying the votes) -- Thennicke (talk) 04:50, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
I agree, I wish you had left it open longer. But my main point is the photographer let us pixel peep their image by uploading at 24MP and we took the opportunity to trash the pixels, and ignore the photo. Yet when we see a 4.5 MP image, we rush to support and leave a little moan that we wish it was bigger. That, imo, is a failure of FPC. -- Colin (talk) 07:03, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Honestly I don't really understand the problem. Generally I think we all should agree that CA is a technical shortcoming that should be fixed if possible. At the same time it's always possible to promote a photo regardless of such defects if we accept mitigating reasons in the respective case. From my point of view there are always defects that are more distracting and defects that are less distracting. CA often is very distracting and at the same time easy to fix in most cases so that I don't see any reason to support a nomination that suffers of CA. But that's of course my own opinion and I don't expect anyone to share it. FPC and QIC can be very painful for photographers due to harsh reviews and extreme pixelpeeping. But I have to say that I learned most of what I know about photography here and after participating for some years I'm very thankful that I got this kind of feedback even if it was very hard sometimes. I think we should consider both aesthetics and technical excellence. That's what makes FPC special and distinguishes Commons from Flickr and other photographic communities out there. However, we should always see the picture as a whole. Is there some CA? Maybe, but who cares if it's not distracting and the picture is great otherwise? Is there a slight unsharpness? Who cares if the picture has 50MPix? On the other hand I'll never support a 4MPix picture full of CA (nor would I normally support any 4 MPix picture at all. It's 2017!). --Code (talk) 07:25, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Code, you contradict yourself a bit by saying "I don't see any reason to support a nomination that suffers of CA" and then "Is there some CA? Maybe, but who cares if it's not distracting and the picture is great otherwise?" So on the one hand you are unforgiving of a technical issue you think is "easy to fix" and on the other hand display a willingness to overlook technical shortcomings in a great picture that we simply did not see here. We also saw huge support (over 20 supports) for a 60% downsized 4.5 megapixel image that you say you'd "never support". So it seems FPC is happy to support 4.5MP downsized images but unhappy to overlook shortcomings in out-of-camera 24MP images that are otherwise great.
Btw, Code you have excellent equipment but I don't think you have an ultrawide lens like this. So perhaps you haven't seen CA that is not easy to fix. Also, the attitude that it should be fixed only really works for images nominated by an FPC regular. Sure we all learn to improve our game by getting nit picking comments, but if the nit picking becomes a reason to oppose, and if the photographer isn't here to respond, then it just becomes a failure to promote, recognise and encourage great images. It then marks FPC out as a "nit picking community who wouldn't know a great image when they see one". I think this sort of nitpicking of 24MP images is really discouraging to photographers who might join us, who haven't already conformed. I agree I don't want to become Flickr where a 1024x768 image gets lots of favs. But surely if an image can be printed to fill a double-spread of a magazine, and the noise/sharpness/CA issues wouldn't be noticeable, then that's technically good enough. Magnifying the image to see the defects, is harmful, especially as camera resolution increases 12-24-36-42... we just end up being more nit picking but the image quality hasn't got worse. I recall someone on QI a while back, a major reviewer/contributor at the time, saying that they not only looked for and demanded technical perfection at 100% but often also enlarged the image further. That made me give up on QI. -- Colin (talk) 08:30, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
@Colin: Your're right, sorry. What I wanted to say is that I normally would expect CA to be removed if easily possible. If CA can't be removed for whatever reason (e.g. no RAW file is accessible, the author can't be contacted or something like that) and the CA isn't distracting or we have other mitigating reasons I would consider supporting the nomination even if there's CA in the picture. Regarding size: The reason I didn't (and won't) support this nomination is that the size of the picture is so small that I find it nearly ridiculous. I don't oppose either because I don't want to spoil the party but I don't think we should encourage people uploading landscapes in thumbnail size, even if there may be a huge "WOW". I remember that I got lots of critizism for noise and other things on pictures with 50MPix or more. Look at this nomination where there are complaints about an unsharp foreground at the size of round about 250MPix! How would this picture look at 4.5Mpix? On the other hand, a picture that has more or less the size of a stamp in comparison gets 20 or more support votes and no opposes at all. I think things are getting out of proportion here (don't know if that's how you say it in English, in German we would say "die Maßstäbe sind außer Verhältnis geraten"). --Code (talk) 09:23, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
Code the Grand Canyon photo looks like this at 4.5MP. The foreground is still unsharp, but I don't consider it a major portion of the image and isn't the subject anyway. I got similar complaints with File:Mealt Waterfall with Kilt Rock, Isle of Skye.jpg. There are times when your composition demands front-to-back sharpness and times when the foreground is so irrelevant that it being blurred is not an issue. We have plenty images where nobody complained about a blurred foreground. I wonder if at times, someone makes a complaint and others repeat it without really thinking whether that issue is all that important. The grand canyon image is awesome, well deserving FP, and the oppose voter's own panoramas have extreme vertical crop so rather an outlier opinion in my view. Someone can find a fault in any image, if they are motivated to do so. -- Colin (talk) 11:09, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
Colin I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on my most recent nomination. I'm tempted to withdraw it but left it up to see what you think. If you look at it at the same size as the other nomination I think the quality is perfectly acceptable. I'm making an effort to nominate images from parts of the world we don't see here often, but that often comes at a cost of quality (as you said, cameras are expensive).
By the way Code, I don't disagree that this is very small (wouldn't even be close to filling a 4K monitor screen), but I'd like to draw your attention to the camera it was shot on. It's not that bad when you factor that in, IMO. -- Thennicke (talk) 03:32, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
@Thennicke: The D300 provides 12MPix. The picture size of the nomination is less than a half of this. As long as the author doesn't provide a reason (such as cropping) I won't accept such a small size for a landscape photograph. --Code (talk) 07:18, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
Thennicke, I had a look at it last night, also experimenting with some vertical perspective changes or cropping, but ran out of time before watching the election debate on TV. I'll comment over at the FPC. -- Colin (talk) 07:35, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Margaret Hamilton.gif

Hi, I am a bit surprised that I was the only one to support the restored JPEG instead of the GIF version. I propose to delist File:Margaret Hamilton.gif and replace it with File:Margaret Hamilton restaured.jpg (I added more light, so that it looks similar to the original). Opinions? Regards, Yann (talk) 22:33, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

It looks like you and Ikan (and perhaps The Photographer himself) support the restored version, while I prefer the original, and nobody else expressed a preference. Note that I would support replacing it with a version that removed the scratches and used less destructive NR. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:51, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't support the replacement. The edit has removed marks and holes on the walls (i.e. reality) and the "noise reduction" has eliminated the film grain along with any detail at fine levels. That isn't, to me, restoration. -- Colin (talk) 07:29, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
+1. Film grain is not a defect. --El Grafo (talk) 09:09, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
I removed it because IMHO it's just photo marks and not wall marks (maybe we need the original raw film). BTW, I create it like a alternative version and not a alternative nomination version. Maybe somebody could do a better work, however, IMHO derivated version is better. The size of the grains in the film varies depending on the film sensetivity as it consist mostly of luminance difference, and this grain doesn't have any banding or patterns, so it's seen as pure noise. Noise reduction is used on digital noise, but it can also be used to reduce film grain that will make the details harder to distinguish, but they don't eat details in the manner that noise reduction does. --The Photographer 13:22, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
I've always been uncomfortable with removing film grain. Adam Cuerden (talk) 13:38, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
OK, thanks for the answers. I will try some time later to do another restoration without removing the film grain. Regards, Yann (talk) 15:09, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
I just saw that Adam made a new version. @Adam Cuerden: I think the best is to do a delist and replace. I don't think we need 2 FP of the same picture. Regards, Yann (talk) 15:14, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
Ay. Sorry for doing so; just got excited to see it, and given I haven't done anything in 6 months, figgered I really shoudl do something that excites. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:47, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Bot error

Understandable, but I think that D&R votes really confuse the bot. See [2]. Given that effectively has 12 supports, Rule of the 5th day is trivially switched from fail to pass, but that could be a problem of early closing if it's under 10 sometime. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:08, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

No worries; the D & R should be done manually. I'll take care of it. Jee 10:49, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
Done everything else except marking File:Margaret Hamilton.gif with {{Assessments|featured=2}}. That parameter is showing error due to some unknown reasons. Jee 11:19, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
The Assessments template is kind of terribly coded in their efforts to force all FPCs into a pattern. It breaks at the slightest push, and is terribly documented. I'm going to guess it's some error in the handling of former FPs that (for instance) checks in a different way than current FPs. Adam Cuerden (talk) 21:17, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
Okay. Found it. Template:FPCR/ is the culprit - it's set up to outright reject anything that doesn't begin Commons:Featured picture candidates/removal/ - and thus cannot handle delist and replaces. I'll tell it to allow limited links to a FPC candidate page. Adam Cuerden (talk) 21:31, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
Done and documented. Adam Cuerden (talk) 22:07, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
Thanks! Jee 00:56, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Sort

Galleries like mammals have a lot of unsorted images. Please help. Pinging Charles too,considering his expertise on mammals. Jee 14:11, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

away in Estonia at the moment. Will have a look in 10 days + Charles (talk) 20:02, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Aerial views

We've a small discussion about creating a new gallery for photos taken using drones. Then A.Savin suggested about a gallery like "Aerial views" which include photos taken in air using any technology. As we don't have a gallery for aerial photos taken using air-crafts, it seems a good idea. Posting here for a better discussion. Jee 12:10, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Having a common gallery for all air-to-ground images (but not air-to-air) totally makes sense to me. We don't have separate galleries for images created using DSLRs, MILCs, compact cameras or smartphones, so I don't see why we would need a "Drones" category that excludes normal aerial photography. --El Grafo (talk) 12:52, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Consensus

PLEASE IGNORE The rules say five reviewers in support and the consensus of two-third in support. This produces a mathematical anomaly where an image with 4-0 in support (see my damselfly) is rejected whereas an image with 5-2 or 6-3 would have been promoted. This should, in my opinion, be changed. Charles (talk) 17:15, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

@Charlesjsharp: Not sure which rules you are referring to here, Commons:Featured_picture_candidates#Featured_picture_candidate_policy sets a minimum of 7, not 5, supports? --El Grafo (talk) 17:34, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
Sorry, meant to post this on English Wikipedia. Charles (talk)

FYI

User:A.Savin is reported here. You may express your opinion there/not here. Jee 02:39, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

FYI: INC / Daphne Lantier

Strange things going on... --Martin Falbisoner (talk) 06:10, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Monuments UK is looking for volunteers

Hi all. Wiki Loves Monuments UK is looking for some volunteers to help with reviewing this year’s entries and identifying a long list of images that are worthy to be submitted to the three judges who will pick the final winners. You don't need to be a top photographer to volunteer for this, but you should have a good understanding of what makes an exceptional photograph and be able to distinguish good from mediocre images. You'd need to be able to commit to something like four or five hours work, mostly during October but perhaps during September as well.

If you are able to help, please leave a note on my talk page, or alternatively contact me using the "email this user" feature. More details can be found here. MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:02, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Insects Unlocked

There are now over 1000 images (example above) in Category:Photographs by Insects Unlocked, with more being added regularly. The vast majority are suitable for Featured Image status (perhaps after the text caption is cropped). How may we best deal with such quantities? Andy Mabbett (talk) 20:15, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

I'd say: examine them closely and just nominate the very best. While they are indeed pretty good, most of the ones I had a closer look at had some issues that would prevent me from supporting them as being marked as one of the very finest images Commons has to offer. The one on the right, for example, shows some inconsistencies in sharpness on the eye, possibly due to focus-stacking issues. Some have an unnecessarily tight crop or parts cut off, others are not as sharp as we'd like them to be, have awkward compositions or just a gerneral lack of WOW-effect. There'll probably still be plenty candidates left after that, but I think for many of them COM:VIC would be much better suited than FPC. Cheers, --El Grafo (talk) 07:12, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Closing FPCs

You want your FP? - Get busy closing FPs!
Looking at the FPC August 2017 Log so far, the only persons closing FPCs have been me, PumpkinSky and Daphne. After 'INC Gate' we are now down to two closers. This is a task any FPC regular can do and should be familiar with; if not there are instructions at Commons:Featured picture candidates/What to do after voting is finished. Some of the process is done by a bot, but it still needs a human user to close it or there will be no FP messages on any talk pages. Please help out with this from time to time. --cart-Talk 18:52, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

@W.carter: Thanks for the heads up. I might be able to do some closures every once in a while, but from the page you linked it's not quite clear to me which parts of the procedure can be left to the bot. Could someone with some experience maybe edit the "The bot" section and make clear what exactly needs to be done manually? Thanks, --El Grafo (talk) 08:29, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

You are right, those pages are a bit outdated since they were written pre-Bot. Also thanks for being willing to lend a hand. There are other users who do closings, like Yann, Jee, A.Savin to name a few, but closers come and go and the job is always there. So here are a few pointers:

The Bot always close noms that reach one of the criteria stated on the FPC page and puts a grey tag on the file.

  • If the file is marked 'Featured' you only need to check that the votes are counted right and replace the Bot message with the manual tag:
  • {{FPC-results-reviewed|support=X|oppose=X|neutral=X|featured=yes|category=X|sig=--~~~~}}
After that the Bot will take care of everything. Those are the easiest to close.
  • If the file is marked 'Not Featured' you need to check the votes and replace the grey Bot message with the manual tag:
  • {{FPC-results-reviewed|support=X|oppose=X|neutral=X|featured=no|sig=--~~~~}}
If the file is at the bottom of the list and the pre-set voting period has expired, the Bot will move the nom to the current Log page.
If the file is closed early as 'Not featured', the Bot will not move it to Log until the pre-set voting period has expired. For the sake of keeping the FPC list tidy, you can move the nom manually to the Log.
  • If the file is 'Withdrawn' you need to do the counting and closing manually.
Add , not featured to the nomination's title. Look at an old nomination for how this is written. Count the votes and place the not-featured-tag at the bottom of the nom, just like with any 'Not Featured' nom. You can then move the nom to Log, or wait for the pre-set voting period to expire and let the Bot move it. Clearing out all the 'Withdrawn' noms is usually the most frequent and tedious task.
  • If a file is marked with {{FPX}} you close it the same way as a 'Withdrawn' 24 hours after the tag has been placed on the nom.
  • If a file is marked with {{FPD}} you can wait a while since users often withdraw another nom and the tagged nom can be re-opened, otherwise (AFAIK) you close these the same way as a 'Withdrawn'.
  • If you can't find these manual tags, you can always copy one from an old closed FPC and make sure the parameters are ok. FYI, the Logs are here. In keeping with Wiki-etiquette, you don't close your own noms. You can however move your own 'Withdrawn' nom from the FPC list to Log and hopefully some other user will see it there and close it.

Please let me know if anything is unclear (or if I got something wrong) in all of this. If you are worried about making mistakes, I'll keep an eye on the logs and closings to see that things are done right. --cart-Talk 09:22, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Hi W.carter,
IMO there is no problem closing one's own FPC, and several people have said so. Closing a candidate doesn't include making a decision, it is just a technical confirmation that the bot didn't mess up. Regards, Yann (talk) 15:26, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
Ok Yann, fair enough. Things are different here than on WP where people can be very itchy about you closing something you have started yourself. All in the name of neutrality and to make sure there is no funny business. I have seen longtime users here closing everything but their own noms so I thought that was common practice. --cart-Talk 15:36, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
If it's straightforward, which almost all are, it's not a problem. If you feel like waiting for someone else, you are of course welcome to do that as well. -- KTC (talk) 17:23, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
Not so scary as at first sight! Please check I've done it correctly though (2 not featureds), I wasn't sure if I needed to move them too. DeFacto (talk). 08:55, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
Looks fine to me, DeFacto. :) The beetle will be tucked away to Log very soon by the Bot but the Boston skyline will linger on the list until the pre-set voting period expirers. If you feel like having a tidy list, you can move it manually now. Thanks for your help! --cart-Talk 10:40, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
OK, so I gave this one a try - did I miss anything? --El Grafo (talk) 13:31, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
El Grafo, looks ok too. Usually only the alt with most votes is included in the closing, if it is 'not featured'. If a nom with two alternatives is featured, you also need to state which alt is featured. Like in this case. Thanks! :) --cart-Talk 13:54, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
Thanks to you! Could you (or someone else) also have a look at Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:"The woman of my life doesn’t yet love me" (1999) by Daniel Knorr.jpg? The file was deleted so I closed it and moved it to the log. The FPX was probably unnecessary, but I wanted to include a link to the DR somewhere … --El Grafo (talk) 12:50, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
You are getting the hang of this. :) The FPX or FPD template is replaced by the closing template. I have removed that remnant for you. DRs are always accessible via Commons:Deletion requests so a link is not necessary. Thanks again! --cart-Talk 13:18, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Another question: Is it OK to review a nomination where the voting period has ended but the bot hasn't been there yet (i.e. place {{FPC-results-reviewed}} without waiting for the bot to place {{FPC-results-ready-for-review}} first)? Or should I wait because of "four-eyes-principle"? --El Grafo (talk) 13:16, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Bots don't have eyes. Yes OK definitely. --A.Savin 13:29, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
  • IMO it makes sense to close noms as soon as the voting period has ended, but I have seen users reprimanded for doing so, so now I actually don't know. I think it is safest to wait for the bot, it does its sweap three times a day and I don't see what the rush is. --cart-Talk 13:46, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
In case of bot failures, all has to be done by hand anyway. And even when the bot is working fine, set nominations always have to be processed by hand. That means, there is no obligation to wait for the bot (but I'd prefer to wait). --A.Savin 14:21, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
A bot is there to reduce the burden on editors to carry out repetitive tasks. It's not there to prevent an editor from doing it manually if they so choose. -- KTC (talk) 14:34, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

How to close this properly

This delisting request (Commons:Featured picture candidates/removal/File:Plan de Paris vers 1550 color.jpg) was not closed quite properly. Mile is new to the closing procedure, so I will not hold this against him. For an example of how a delisting closure should look, see the first time it was up for delisting: Commons:Featured picture candidates/removal/File:Plan de Paris vers 1550 color.jpg/1.

BUT, I'm not entirely 100% sure how to close this. The guidelines at Commons:Featured picture candidates/What to do after voting is finished#Closing a delisting request only mention the 'delist' vs 'keep' and here we also have the 'replace' involved. No one voted for a 'keep' and we only have 6 "clean" 'delist' votes (7 are required, I think). I think it's clear that the new map should not be featured, but should the 'delist and replace' votes be counted among the normal 'delist' votes so that the end-result will be:

  • '''Result:''' 10 delist, 0 keep, 0 neutral => delisted. ~~~~?

Mile has already changed the assessment of the map. Some input would be appreciated. Thanks, --cart-Talk 09:00, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Category:Images from Unsplash

I'm wondering what you people think of these images in terms of being FP material. A lot of them are processed in the latest fashion of lifting the black point and just look like any other commercial image, but some of them are really beautiful, and potentially POTY winners, e.g. this one, which we promoted earlier. Though I do realise there's an emphasis here on promoting the hard work of Commons photographers. Thoughts? -- Thennicke (talk) 03:29, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Thennicke Each image in commons need a commercial use licence which makes them a posible "commercial image". BTW, We accumulate FP to improve our technical level and with the hope that the image will be used on wp, however, the last word come from wikipedia editors generally with zero photography quality knowledge. Additionally, anothers commons photographers collect FPs for competition purposes and in the beginning it is work fine making a positive environment of continuous quality improvement on media content, however, friendship circles are created where for example, users who vote less negatively (first vote negative in the FPC) receive also less negative votes in retaliation, I presume in good faith but I'm not stupid. I think this section has been flawed and now we only have users who nominate their own photos, groups of friends who vote each other, quality and creativity has been relegated to the background to give way to the ego. Over time FPs begin to resemble each other and yes the result is promoting the work of Commons photographers more than promote the best free licensed work from Flickr, a University or photo library, no matter where it comes from. --The Photographer 04:03, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
I share your concern, but I'm optimistic about the future. I'm hoping that we can make our quality standards more objective and integrate the FP process with structured data and cross-wiki collaboration to try and ameliorate these problems. The FP star would have more authority then, and wikipedia editors would seek to integrate commons' highest quality content into their own work.
But also I don't think it's fair to be too pessimistic about the extent of ego-driven work here. My own list of potential FPs contains only a single image by me, for example. And users such as Ikan Kekek, Yann and Fae often nominate others' images as well.
Anyway, back to the topic, I've collected a few of the images I like from the category in question here -- Thennicke (talk) 04:45, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
I generally only nominate my own photos, but I don't think that is a bad thing any more than that I only upload my own photos. Everyone has their own interests and talents on this site, and if some people like to browse our photo collection looking for potential FPs, then that's a fine way to spend an evening, but not my hobby. Others like to browse websites like Unsplash or Flickr looking for photos to upload, and we certainly want to reward the finding of great images and great educational images, because quite a lot of what is hoovered up from the web is not great and not educational.
Wrt friends/groups voting for each other, the trick is to piss everyone off equally without fear or favour :-). Too many nominator-voters simply only support, or worse, one or two here basically support almost every nomination -- we all know who they are. I don't think that helps in any way whatsoever.
Thennicke, I'm curious what images you accuse of "lifting the black point", and where this fashion is encouraged? I agree with you about some images being rather "commercial". The Photographer this word, "commercial" is ambiguous in English and used differently on Commons to e.g. stock photo websites. The license must permit commercial use but a photos of an identifiable person, without the necessary model release, would not be usable for promotional purposes, which is what stock photo agencies mean by "commercial". Additionally, a photo that is a montage of fake sky and colour-tinted foreground might be commercially useful, but educationally worthless.
I think this is where we get become unstuck when nominating an image from Unsplash and similar. The image is often relatively small (<5MP), highly processed, retain some pixel-level flaws, and lack supporting information like location, description, date-taken, etc. When the photographer is not around to fix these issues, we have a problem with the nomination, and few end up entirely happy with the promotion. Better, I think to contact the photographer and try to encourage them onto Commons. I contacted the photographer behind this image and he was happy to upload a larger version of the work. He created an account but then discovered new accounts are blocked from uploading new versions of photos! I must get in touch again with him. Anyway, I think this is an opportunity to encourage new photographers to Commons, rather than simply to admire their work and nominate some nice images at FPC. -- Colin (talk) 07:37, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
Black point lifted
Hi Colin. Sorry, I wasn't intending to moralise about who nominates what - we should all be free to nominate what we please. As Diego said here: "The main reason why we all take our cameras and go out is because it is fun. I cannot agree that anybody takes away my freedom to take the pictures the way, when and how I want." We're all doing this in a volunteer capacity, and we've all got our own motives, and that's fine.
WRT the black point, the image on the right is a typical example. The shadows are grey, not black. I'm calling it a fashion because it's kind of artsy and hipster, and I believe it came out of the colour grading world, where you can use your lift-gamma-gain adjustments tools to achieve the effect by "lifting the blacks". Here's a reddit thread asking about the trend. Even better, here's a blog "dissecting the hipster look", which appropriately enough uses an unsplash image to make its point.
On the topic of the Matterhorn image, this image by the same author is one of my all-time favourites on the site. I enthusiastically agree that we should be encouraging people - especially such high-level photographers - to participate here, and I'm glad you reached out to Sam. But I know a lot of very good photographers myself (some of them world-class professionals), and I'm very hesitant to recommend that they contribute to Commons, even if they are happy to donate a few images. Mainly because I know they'll find it tedious working with wikimarkup and our desperately-in-need-of-ergonomics-improvements uploading system, amongst other usability issues that are essentially legacies of Wikipedia. The community here is great but until we have better software there's no point reaching out to these kinds of people, as far as I am concerned. The people who are here and contributing would probably be doing so regardless of whether it required plain html scripting, but this community isn't going to grow to include the kinds of people who are really good at photography until the site is easier to use, because frankly they're too busy taking photos to have the time to work their way around wikimarkup (or new user restrictions perhaps). That's just my two cents worth; hopefully my reasoning makes sense. And of course that's not to say we shouldn't be trying to spread the commons word; I take every opportunity I can get. -- Thennicke (talk) 10:32, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
I was more responding to The Photographer, wrt nominating others' images. Interesting articles. Don't know if we are generally seeing people using complex precise software adjustments to emulate a look, or just lots of people clicking on presets until they find something they like or is fashionable. Colouring scenes in films seems to be extremely popular and now accessible even to TV series. See the 3rd and 5th photo in this article. I found the TV film to be rather over-the-top colour-wise, like someone had discovered the presets in their Adobe software, and was determined to use them all like a 12-year-old might use every font when designing a poster's text. Saw "Blade Runner 2049" at the weekend, and some scenes were like this -- mono-orange or desaturated blue, etc.
I agree wrt image being great, but at 100% it is very noisy. I think partly that's due to doing too much global sharpening, and that could be improved on by being more selective or using masks (there's really no reason to sharpen the sky, for example), but also perhaps less concern with the forty-four million pixels than with the image. I think it would be a controversial nomination, with some reviewers unable to accept the noise. And could be avoided if the photographer joined and made a few tweaks to keep the pixel-peepers happy.
I also agree our wiki software is a barrier. I think it is also one reason why newbies at WLM manage to use the upload wizard but don't take it further because the learning curve is so steep. Unfortunately, there are many who hang out at the Village Pump who actively sabotage any attempt by WMF to improve things. I honestly think some people here would rather their phones had a Unix command line. Anyone invited here would need careful hand-holding. But I think it is worth it if you can. Particularly if they have already released their work with a free licence, and so you don't have that argument. -- Colin (talk) 11:52, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
The way new photographers who actually show up here, eager to contribute with photos and be part of the community, are treated could also be improved IMO. Getting whacked with our harsh jargon as soon as they hit QIC or FPC is generally not a good way to make them want to stick around. --cart-Talk 11:01, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
Hahaha Colin! The remark about the unix command line had me in stitches - it's a thing I've seen too, particularly around media viewer and flow (now structured discussions). Every time some new beta feature comes out it's "Stop wasting WMF funds! Why fix what ain't broke!?"
And totally agreed W. Carter - Commons:Photography terms is a good start, but there's a way to go on that front. And there are certainly steps we can take to reject peoples' images more constructively. Nobody likes negative criticism, and that's certainly something I struggled with at first, but I also think it's a real asset that this community has in comparison with other photographic communities where it's an echo chamber of "omg so pretty". Yes, rejection has to be done constructively and helpfully, instead of whacking people in the face with jargon. -- Thennicke (talk) 12:27, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
One thing/idea that would soften the blow of rejection, is to also make it clearer what we expect from a nomination. This is the hard part since most of the info is already there but it's ignored most of the time. We would have to "package" it so that people actually read the instructions before nominating. --cart-Talk 12:48, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
Personally, I'd chuck the "complete guidelines" in the bin. One difficulty with "what we expect from a nomination" is that we do still not have everyone agreeing on pixel-peeping and the Complete Guidelines have the conflicting requirement of forbidding downsizing while supporting critical assessment at 100%. Perhaps the best we can do is advise newbies of the sort of complaints they might get (both healthy and unhealthy) and what they can do to avoid them where reasonable without damaging their work. And also advise of the sorts of things that are welcome, such as EXIF & colour profiles, descriptions, categories and geotags. -- Colin (talk) 13:07, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
Yes, it certainly needs updating. One idea (I'm brainstorming here!) would be to make the "Add a nomination" into something like 'UploadWizard' so that a nominator gets guided through the process and have to check some criteria and help pages along the way to make sure some boxes are ticked, if possible/known/avaliable. --cart-Talk 14:01, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
  • A striking image is always a striking image regardless of who shot it. We always need "fresh blood" and new ideas here to keep this site moving forward. If I come across a photo that makes me stop in my tracks and if the quality is good, I usually nominate it. However, many of the uploads from Unsplash have really bad names wiki-wise since they are named after the photographer who took it rather than the subject in the pic. Please make sure such photos are renamed before nominating them to make the procedure easier. --cart-Talk 22:50, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for the advice, W.carter. I'll make sure to do that. -- Thennicke (talk) 03:09, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Educational value

In this thread, Thennicke has asserted that "Educational value is totally irrelevant at FPC" and elaborated that this is "Because that's what Wikipedia's FPC is for. Besides, every shot is educational in its own way." It's true that I am not finding the words "educational" or "encyclopedic" in the directions at the top of FPC, nor at Commons:Image guidelines. So is educational value truly irrelevant at FPC? I've seen many of you state that it is either a subsidiary value or a central one here. Please discuss. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:51, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Actually en:wp doesn't mention "educational value" either. On en:wp, the term "EV" refers to "encyclopaedic value", and an FP must "Add significant encyclopaedic value to an article" -- so it needs to be in an article and actually contributing to it in an important way. Commons FP mentions "Value", though doesn't determine what value that is, and to be honest the section is a bit confusing. It seems to be pointing out that a picture doesn't need to be beautiful to be valuable to the project, nor does a beautiful picture (of a sunset, say) have a lot of value just because it is pretty. I think the fundamental for FP is that we are choosing images that are "among the finest on Commons", and for me that means all the attributes that are important on a free-content educational media repository. Educational value is one aspect to weigh up along side beauty and technical merit and artistic merit and so on. For example, we tend to look down on over-processed images with unreal colours or contrast or with fake skies or other montage creations. Such image could be beautiful and technically excellent -- they have little educational value. Part of the educational value is making sure an image is well described and categorised. Some unsplash images have weak educational value because the authors didn't bother to say where they were taken or what it is a photo of. -- Colin (talk) 16:03, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
Obviously not. For me, "Educational value" is an essential criteria for an image to be FP. Regards, Yann (talk) 22:08, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
@Colin: I get what you're saying but I think educational value and encyclopedic value are similar enough to be used interchangably here, because if it's worth learning about, it will most likely have a Wikipedia page (or deserve one).
All: According to COM:SCOPE, Commons is for "educational media content". According to FPC, featured pictures are meant to represent the "finest images on Commons". I see two ways to interpret this:
1: Images that are not deleted from Commons are automatically within project scope and therefore educational. Therefore any image on this site that is taken well and that is beautiful ("wow") should be eligible for featuring.
2. The "finest images on commons" are those with the highest educational value, all other things being equal. We should include this as a requirement for voting.
I think we can all agree that a beautiful image of an educational subject is an FP. But some of our users regularly nominate very abstract images that, all other things being equal, have very low educational value (to my eyes), and I find these hard to review because of the ambiguity of the guidelines regarding this. I see an image such as [1] as having low EV, and yet it could still probably be used to illustrate an article - "bark" or "raking light" for example. Regarding the Bishan Interchange image, this image has low EV as well, although slightly higher than [1] - I can imagine it as an illustration for an article on the interchange itself (significant enough to have its own page). Colin has mentioned above that educational value to him is partly about well-categorised and well-described images, and whilst I would agree that is important, such metadata can often be filled in by us without issue (which we should of course do before a nomination closes).
What I'm trying to say is that yes - at this time, the guidelines are ambiguous. I welcome any attempts to clear up this ambiguity (so thanks for starting this discussion Ikan), and despite my comment about wikipedia's FPC, personally I think that the second interpretation is probably more in line with aim of FPC and with the aim of Commons more broadly. I'll be interested to hear what others think. -- Thennicke (talk) 04:08, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
Thennicke, I don' think our (application of) the guidelines is too awful, because I can't really recall anyone else claiming EV has no place in Commons FP. Educational and encyclopaedic value are two very different things, though the latter requires the former, the former is vast in scope but the latter extremely limited. An encyclopaedic photograph is typically a cliched view of a highly notable subject. That the photos here are typically also of encyclopaedic value reflects a desire to take photos for Wikipedia, tradition, and a lack of imagination, talent and acceptance to go much beyond that. A photograph of my dentist's surgery may be totally educational, and used in a local paper to illustrate the town's medical facilities, but unless my dentist starts murdering his patients there, it is never going to be in an encyclopaedia. My point about the text surrounding an image is that it is not just the photograph that matters at FP. We need to identify the species of butterfly or location of a landscape to give it educational value, and a nomination may actually fail (or be opposed until this is fixed) without such. I don't think either 1 or 2 are quite what FP is about. The threshold for deletion (out of scope) is so extreme on Commons to be fairly useless at FP. The "all other things being equal" part of #2 is very difficult to quantify and so I suspect also useless. I don't think EV is the most important characteristic, but nor is "wow". We weigh all these things up, and the balance is likely to be subjective: hence we vote. -- Colin (talk) 11:28, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
I'd vote for an image of your dentists' surgery anyday if it was of the quality that I've come to expect of you. And such a subject is very much in the spirit of this site and educational. It could even illustrate articles on dentistry. And if there's a murdered patient in the chair, all the more wow! (although then it might be better for wiki articles on homocide)
But seriously, I feel as though I'm being lambasted here for saying what I did. Fair enough, but the fact that I made the interpretation of the guidelines that I did is itself enough evidence that they need clarifying/disambiguating. I'm just one user; if I did it, others can and will sometimes also make the same interpretation. -- Thennicke (talk) 12:45, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
It is worth skimming through the archives of this page, as it gives a flavour of what's been discussed and consensus (then). I keep saying (but never doing) I think the FPC guidelines are crap and need redone. My point about the destist is that it wouldn't illustrate an article on dentistry in an encyclopaedia unless it could stand alone as a characteristic and obvious example of a dentists that was widely recognised by readers. It really needs to be a cliche photo. And for people articles, a photo with all the charm of a passport photo might be acceptable as the lead in an encyclopaedia, yet if your quality newspaper pays for a photographer to shoot a photo of someone for an interview, you'd expect great studio lighting or some environmental portrait. Think about animals -- we often take "species identification" images that have the whole subject in focus and lit and nothing cropped, in typical habitat or no identifiable habitat, etc. That's encyclopdaedic as it really helps you identify the animal. But if you were to buy a coffee table natural history book and it just had that sort of photo in it, you'd be quickly bored. The real talent is in taking photos of the animals eating, grooming, mating, hunting, hiding, etc. Same for a book on a historic building -- you'd expect photos of chairs, lamps, and quirky areas not seen by the public. So, I'd encourage you to not think so much about Wikipedia articles, as that will only limit your creativity and photographic expression. -- Colin (talk) 14:19, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
Hi Colin, could you post a proposal to change the rules on FPC?. I'm really hopping the moment to change it. There are many gaps in information that people misinterpret --The Photographer 15:39, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
Well maybe over Christmas I may find time. But so many other jobs to be doing... -- Colin (talk) 19:03, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

FP galleries

Looking at the FP galleries, I don't think it is a good idea to cover up the images with their titles.

Please can we use a style where the name does not cover the photo. -- Colin (talk) 11:36, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi, For me, it is only covered when moving the mouse over the pictures. Regards, Yann (talk) 23:46, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
Yann, it is working like that for me on the computer I'm using now. Need to test on the laptop again. Perhaps there was/is a brower-specific issue, or a bug on mediawiki the other day. Still, the second gallery above (and some like it) have repeated text in the title box. It really isn't necessary to have an extra link to the JPG in the title, as you get there if you click the picture. Also the images in that second gallery are rather small, vertically, compared to others, so the images don't look so great. -- Colin (talk) 09:49, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
Wiki-code always comes out differently on different combinations of operating systems and browsers. I've looked at this with several combinations of Explorer/Chrome/W7/W10 and it all works the way Yann says. Works fine on a tablet with W10/Edge/Explorer too but there are probably combos that makes the page behave the way Colin says. I remember that my old phone didn't accept any such slide-over gadgets or roll-up/collapse features; every page looked a mess. --cart-Talk 10:58, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Thanks you Colin for sharing your impressions.

It's me who did that, it was because this kind of gallery display panoramas. I explain : if you compare with this gallery where we have <gallery mode="packed-hover" heights=200px>, the images are nice and big but when you have a very wide pano and if you fix the height to 200px the pano may be wider than the screen, however without the "height" parameter then the image adapt to the size of the screen but are indeed lower. For the second point, the mode "packed-hover" display only the description, but the issue was with files with big description, when you fly over the image with the mouse, the description sometimes cover the whole photo and you were not able to open it any more, therefore I had the idea to put the "showfilename=1" parameter that add with the description a weblink to the file page.

Nothing is fixed or finished and you can bring idea or edit the pages. I sometimes do good things but others are less good, and are more or less experimentation. My choices are purely arbitrary and other choices are possible [3].

(Note than in Commons:Featured pictures/Places/Interiors 1/4 of the image is "not" covered up by the filename, but in fact by the description which is actually indeed the title added as a description by default by the BOT). Christian Ferrer (talk) 12:09, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Meta voting on Commons features

2017 Community Wishlist Survey.

Of particular interest to folks here could be the request to "Support 360 photo viewing". @Benh, Martin Kraft, Code, and Diliff: . -- Colin (talk) 16:40, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

@Colin: Thanks for the hint! --Code (talk) 04:49, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Help an FPC-newbie

Could some German-speaking users please take a look at this and try to help this new FPC nominator get things sorted out? They have tried before to make this nom only to be removed. There seems to be some mistake with the file name/spelling since the file shows up in red. Just talk to the user and see what's going on. Thanks! --cart-Talk 17:15, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

✓ Done. --A.Savin 18:24, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Other versions of FPs in FP categories?

Hi all,

I've noticed that our categories of FPs often include the pictures that were promoted and derivatives, crops, mirrors, etc. that did not go through the process. My impression is that only the one that was formally reviewed should go on an FP category, but is this not the case? Examples: this and this mirror, this and this crop. — Rhododendrites talk |  00:37, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

People who create derivatives, do it with automated tools that copy all templates and categories to the new page, and (surprise!) almost never care about cleaning up afterwards. If you find a derivative with FP marks, remove them. --A.Savin 01:25, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Nigerian e-mail ?

Today i received this e-mail. If someone will get same...I just erased name and surname (H.S.) out of the text. --Mile (talk) 18:54, 8 December 2017 (UTC) 


Hello There,
My name is "NAME SURNAME"  from Washington Dc  I actually observed my wife has been viewing your website on my laptop and i guess she likes your piece of work. I'm also impressed and amazed to have seen your various works too,  You are doing a great job. I would like to purchase one of your piece as a surprise to my wife on our  anniversary. kindly send pics and prices of some of your art which are ready for immediate  sale within price range $500- $5000.i hope to hear a lot more about any available piece in your inventory ready for immediate sale. Also, let me know if you accept check as mode of Payment.
Thanks and best regards.

I know, I didn't answer, just to share for others. Yesterday they hacked bitcoin firm in Slovenia, around 65 million is gone, poor owners. Nothing is safe. --Mile (talk) 20:37, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Sorry for the Off-topic, but I can see that you know this matter. Where I should buy bitcoins? --The Photographer 21:07, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
Dont know about Bitcoins much, i wouldnt put any penny into it. Got feeling will goes as Lehman Bros. --Mile (talk) 13:03, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Europe tour

Hello friends!

I´ve know some of you through this page and it has been a pretty neat experience.

I will be travelling in Europe this coming february, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Viena, Prague, Venice... if any of you live along that area and wanto to go take pictures, email me!

--Tomascastelazo (talk) 01:19, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Jeffrey's Image Metadata Viewer

For those who would be interested, I hijacked (I modified/copied) existing codes (example this one) to write this one that you can add to your common.js, the result will be that when you are in a File page here on Wikipedia Commons, then you will a tab on File pages which links to the Jeffrey's Image Metadata Viewer for the image you are currently looking for. 

////////// tab with Jeffrey's Image Metadata Viewer //////////
/*global mw, $*/
/*jshint curly:false */

$(document).ready(function() {
	if (mw.config.get('wgNamespaceNumber') !== 6 || mw.config.get('wgAction') !== "view" || !document.getElementById('file')) return;
	var $link = $('.fullImageLink a[class!="mw-thumbnail-link"]'),
		$image = $link.find('img'),
		imageurl = $link.attr('href');

	if (imageurl === undefined || $image.length < 1) return; // No preview image, e.g. for large PNGs or video

	if (imageurl.substring(0, 2) == '//') 
		imageurl = 'https:' + imageurl;
	mw.util.addPortletLink('p-cactions', 'http://exif.regex.info/exif.cgi?url=' + encodeURIComponent(imageurl), 'Jeffrey s Image Metadata Viewer', 'ca-Jeffrey', null);
});

@Colin: I ping you as I know you sometimes use Jeffrey's Image Metadata Viewer.

Christian Ferrer (talk) 10:49, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank's. I've installed it. It appears under the "More v" menu for me. If you use it lots, consider sending Jeffrey a PayPal donation to pay for the bandwidth. It would be nice if someone added something like this to Commons or Wikimedia tools and hosted here. Jeffrey Friedl has written a number of tools for Lightroom that are useful:
  • Creative Commons to add copyright, creator, and choice of CC licence to your images metadata.
  • Flickr tool to upload to Flickr.
  • Metadata Wrangler should you wish to limit what metadata gets exported from your camera.
And on the subject of Lightroom plugins, I recommend
Thank's Colin, for those who would be interested I also wrote a similar thing for imgops, that also allow to go to Jeffrey's tool and to other tools, it is available in my common.js where it is called "tab with ImgOps full resolution" (the section just bellow in my common.js and called "tab with ImgOps 300px" is intended for reverse search image, useful for tracking publications in the web but the EXIFs are not available) Christian Ferrer (talk) 13:58, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Creating guidelines for videos.

Well, after the recent events, it's for the best we create standards to evaluate a video. The Mpix, for example, don't makes sense in videos.

We have a draft about it:Commons:Featured media candidates (saw it after wrote most of it here), but lacks some items.

Small initial suggestions:

  • Lowest fps for a video 23,976, the limit of human brain process images as video.
  • For animation, there is no limit.
  • 720p the lowest resolution accepted. Lower than this will be bad in most of modern computers, tvs, mobiles.
  • For me, credit at the end is not an issue. We are used to see that, and do not interfere in the main content.
  • Watermarks at the corners for me is an issue, as this difficult some editions, and can open room for bizarre.
  • WEBM compression follows JPEG orientation.
  • All criteria around composition in photos:
Noise, Exposure, Colour, Focus and depth of field, Motion Blur, Lighting, Editing, Distortions..
In a case of video, we should be a little bit more untied, we can have small passages with some flaws, if this complements the history. Exposure and depth of field, for exemple, are much more complex in videos to adjust, as we can't do HDR (as we do in photos) and focus stacking. And we could lose the focus a little, and do not affect the video.
  • And we need to add rolling shutter, audio quality, coherent narrative (start, middle, and end), in a case of in looping videos we could discard it.
  • We should accept jump cuts, if this is part of the style established by the authors.
  • Shaky videos shouldn't be accepted, unless it's a stylistic choice or it's part of the narrative (a bomb exploding near the camera, for example).
If our users decide to browse the lists of featured pictures, or to vote in the POTY fun contest, it isn't because the image, at 100%, is free of noise or chromatic aberration. It isn't because the Nikon engineers have done a good job with the exposure, or the Sony engineers got the colour temperature just right, or the Canon engineers optimised the focus motor speed, or even that the Sigma engineers designed a super sharp lens. It isn't because the compression is low or the resolution is outrageously high. It isn't because the building's walls are absolutely vertical or the stitched panoramas are free of twins or a couple of ghosts. It isn't even that the image has a free licence. It is because the pictures are among the finest on Commons and make you go "wow". I want a featured video to be one that I play again so my wife and daughter can watch it. Or share with a friend.
For some topics, we take and promote photographs that are among the best you might see anywhere. They reach and in some cases exceed professional standards. We are not there with video. We have only a handful of video FPs, so no body of works with which to compare against. And no community of videographers who might peer-review candidates like we have with photographers. The best we can perhaps hope for is that it meets current professional standards and is engaging and educational enough that we wish to watch it again and share it. Anything more specific is probably, at this point, just personal preferences. My 2p. -- Colin (talk) 22:51, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Missing star on FP

  • The missing star had nothing to do with the PumpkinSky debacle. If you look in the history of that file, the star was simply not added to that file. This occurred because you moved the file after you created the nomination, but you didn't move the nomination to the new name so when the bot did its post-closing task, it put the star on what was now just a redirect. If you move a file during a nomination, you have to see to that everything moves with it. It's usually best to wait until after the closing to change the name/move the file if you are not used to all the code and process. I have added the star to the right file now. It is already in all the right galleries and such. --cart-Talk 00:18, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Micrographs without scaled markets

"Value – our main goal is to feature most valuable pictures from all others."

If, so, why micrographs without scale markers? ~~//// — Preceding unsigned comment was added by 2600:387:6:805:0:0:0:C4 (talk) 22:58, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Commons:Picture of the Year

The PoTY competition needs a bit of help to get off the ground this year. The committee are currently discussing the possible categories to group the images for round 1 voting.

People here are familiar with our FP categories and may know how the images collected this year might best be evenly grouped. Could you participate at the above discussion and see what help they need on this and other matters? -- Colin (talk) 20:18, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

User:PumpkinSky and User:HalfGig

Please see the announcement at Commons:Village pump# Administrator User:PumpkinSky has engaged in sockpuppetry by User:Magog the Ogre.

Magog lists 99 96 Feature Picture Candidates that should have the second vote removed, since users are not permitted two votes. Magog has highlighted six candidates where this would result in demotion of the feature picture. Two of these are PumpkinSky's own photos. Nominators are always permitted to re-nominate a candidate which has failed and for which there is good reason (rather than simply spinning the roulette wheel a second time) and this should count as good reason -- once a candidate reaches seven supports, some "on the fence" reviewers may not bother to vote, so who knows if it would have reached seven without HalfGig's extra vote. I think it should be up to the nominators if they wish to try again. -- Colin (talk) 10:14, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

  • Seems like we have some cleaning up to do, correcting the voting on all those pictures and removing the stars and all FP-related things from the photos that didn't make it. Should everyone clean up some or should one user take the list and get on with the fixing? --cart-Talk 10:33, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm not really involved anymore, but I would just delist and renom the borderline cases. Voting patterns depend much on the previous votes in my opinion (if it was for me alone, I would delist all Pumpkin's FP...) - Benh (talk) 11:33, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I don't think we can do a 'batch re-nom' of the six FPs that will lose their star. It will be up to each nominator if they want to re-nom it. I for one, have an FP among those that will be demoted, and if I decide to re-nom it, I would like to fix it up a bit before doing that. If I do it. --cart-Talk 11:46, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
I have notified three users who will have their FP's demoted. The other two users already know ;-). Colin (talk) 11:57, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
Ok, thanks that's good and all, but my initial question was how this fixing process would actually be done. I'm familiar with closing FPCs and all so it wouldn't be any problem for me to fix it, but shouldn't this be done by some admin or something? --cart-Talk 12:09, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
Admins are just the same as us, but with a few more tools, none of which are needed here. I'll start working through the list, but would prefer if someone familiar with the promotion process could do the six demotions. Btw, I think Special:Permalink/285160421#Administrator_User:PumpkinSky_has_engaged_in_sockpuppetry is the best tag to use for mentioning why the vote is struck. It is the central discussion, and the permalink means it will work in future. -- Colin (talk) 12:19, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
Ok, thanks for the help. I'll get right on the six demotions. The tagging is exactly like I've already done on the current FPCs. Example, I'll just adjust it to permalink. --cart-Talk 12:28, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Colin IMO, it's the same for 'o' or 's'. One vote is ok, regardless of the outcome, so that one will stay 'not featured'. We have to do this as much by the book as possible. --cart-Talk 14:01, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for taking care of this, guys. Very sad that an admin behaves like this... Poco2 13:57, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
Oh! But it's not a problem. I'll nominate my photograph ... or not. (It is Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Dülmen, St.-Viktor-Kirche, Innenansicht -- 2018 -- 0580.jpg.) --XRay talk 15:39, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Full agree with Benh -- this is, btw, the reason why me no longer participating on QIC -- it has become a private party of some few "star collectors" who otherwise don't give a shit about real quality content, and anyone who dares to say the truth immediately will be bullied and insulted by them. Regarding the work by PumpkinSky, I often wondered that even some of our trustable colleagues voted support on many of their nominations, despite the fact that the uttermost uploads by this user are actually nothing but boring average. In any case, I'm glad to see this account (+sock) blocked. And many thanks W.carter for cleanup. (I cannot help out in any way at the moment, because on travel with limited time+internet.) --A.Savin 20:07, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Oh! Just now took notice of that. I should think about renominating (somewhat later, not instantly) one of my recently self-withdrawn FP-nominations since it was double-opposed by PumpkinSky and HalfGig. --Granada (talk) 12:50, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Part 2: MOP

No as long as he has at least 10 FP, nobody else than him can remove his profile in this list. Christian Ferrer (talk) 18:04, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
Surely a banned editor cannot remain "one of our photographers"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Charlesjsharp (talk • contribs)
+1. Despite not being myself part of COM:MOP, I don't consider it appropriate to let such users stay on a page named "Meet our [Commons] photographers". They are not "our" photographer, they are a cheater and liar at the very least, and I wouldn't be any surprised if the uploads they have submitted would be all revealed as stolen. Strong  Support removing PumpkinSky from COM:MOP. --A.Savin 06:06, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Absolutely not, in the extend he stay at the credit of 10 FPs then he won this right. There are no such rules, I mean to delete the "good contributions" of a blocked or banned user. A lot of other user are listed there and are not active any more. It will be a lynching totally unnecessary, and I'm strongly opposed to that. Do not beat the horse when he's dead. Christian Ferrer (talk) 06:23, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
I agree with Christian. That page's description doesn't present any requirement other than 10 FPs taken by Commons users. It's about people releasing their photos with a free license on Commons, not about participation in community processes (i.e. based on uploading one's own pictures the community deems valuable, not about other aspects of interactions with the community/site). Regardless of the extent to which PumpkinSky betrayed the community, I've not seen any reasons to conclude that his/her uploads were illegitimate. If someone would like to propose an additional criterion which requires being "in good standing" to remain on the list, that's another thing. — Rhododendrites talk |  07:00, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
I thought MOP was dead. Nobody much added to it for years. Some of our best photographers aren't on the list (cough cough :-) !). Don't see any reason to remove him. Btw, Charles, he isn't "banned", just blocked. There may be some merit in indicating on that page which photographers are no longer active, in case anyone uses it to contact a photographer to take a pic for Wikipedia or something. But I would just list PS as "no longer active" if we did that. If his photos were stolen, say, then I'd be much more inclined to downplay/discredit his "work", but I think his photos are his and part of our collection and that makes him one of Commons' photographers. -- Colin (talk) 07:56, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Sounds like you've caught a nasty chough there Colin, you should get some drops or pills for it. ;-) If you want to be on that list, you have to make your spot yourself. It's not some "Hall of fame" that others put together for you. :) --cart-Talk 09:48, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
It was just a little joke. As others point out, the page isn't well known. My user page is enough. -- Colin (talk) 11:45, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
I did not even know that page exists until today. I like the idea to learn a bit more about the background of each photographer regularly contributing to Commons and Wikipedia. --Granada (talk) 08:08, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  •  Comment Btw, I really think that those photographers who have at least 10 FPs should make a presentation on MOP. MOP is presented right there on the main page along with FP and QI and we should try to at least keep it up to date with photographers who are active. I'm all for adding some "inactive" tag to those who are, but it will look strange if the list isn't updated with new photographers. --cart-Talk 10:20, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
    That is the big problem about pages like COM:MOP, or about the "ratings" at the top of Category:Featured pictures by creator / Category:Quality images by user etc.: as long as we maintain such pages, there always will be some dishonest users for whom it's not about high quality / high EV content whatsoever, but only about positions on such pages and "stars" on own user page, regardless of what methods have been used to achieve it. Livioandronico is indef'ed, but there for sure will be an other "Livioandronico" some day, and on QIC there are several other "Livioandronicos" still active and considering QIC their private party, just they are somewhat smarter not to scream too loud so that it's close to impossible to get them blocked. That's why QIC (let alone VIC) is not to take serious any more. So, in short, just remove PS from COM:MOP, or better -- close this page entirely, do not link on it anymore on Main Page. Do not provide egoshooters a playground. --A.Savin 11:10, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • So following your reasoning that since there are some bad apples, we should remove the whole fruit basket? And if we close down MOP, and perhaps QIC and VIC too since they are corrupt, should we also skip FPC? It's always like this when an event has recently occured: If we lose someone good, we want to build shrines for them and if we lose someone bad, everything that person has touched should be removed. Cool down and try to think of some good, constructive solotions. --cart-Talk 11:33, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • No, you said that QIC and VIC was a "private party... not to take serious any more", so I asked if that suggested that those should also be closed and if you included FPC among the no longer functioning things here on Commons. --cart-Talk 11:56, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes, some egoshooters are seeing QIC their private party. They use dishonest methods to gain stars, they believe that everyone should promote any of their nominations regardless of quality standards, and in case someone does not, they are bullying him. So, what's the consequence? Closing QIC completely, or maybe better throw out some cheaters and take them their playground? I wish some day QIC would again be what it should be about -- quality, skillshare for photography and postprocessing. --A.Savin 12:15, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • The QIC-evaluation should be done exclusively by users (photographers?) that don't contribute to QIC themselves. I'm also not a friend of the current state, but I (or at least WM-AT to the Foundation) needs some kind of measurement for why they supported my costs for accommodation and travel expenses and therefore the amount of QI is a measure (no need to tell me that this is no good). --Granada (talk) 12:42, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I honestly have no idea where you would find competent voloters to just evaluate photos at QIC. It's hard enough to get/motivate users to do any more work there than absolutelty necessary for getting their own photos evaluated. --cart-Talk 12:56, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • That's the problem I know and have no solution for. But I have a hope: some AI is already very good at recognizing image content. Maybe in a not so far future we can automate QIC. --Granada (talk) 13:01, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I do not share your enthusiasm for AIs checking photos! Photos are taken by humans, reflecting human emotions and should be evaluated by humans. Colin, where is the link tho those awful AI photo rating programs you found some time ago? --cart-Talk 13:31, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
I don't think the ratings or any other pages fuels people's egos any more than they do so for themselves. And if an ego boost encourages someone to take great pictures for Commons and to try to take better pictures next time, then I have no problem with that. Livo certainly played the numbers game only and wasn't at all interested in improving the quality of his images. He openly boasted of having more FPs than others, as if that is a measure to judge anyone, but he's the only person I can think who ever did that (other than in jest).
I don't understand QI. Technically it focuses on pixel peeping so requires a DSLR or expensive compact/bridge to get anywhere. It is too ready to reject images that would look fine downsized to 6MP. Yet photographically/artistically, it doesn't set any bar to aim for much further than holding the camera level while pressing the button. Our users aren't fully served since images created by others aren't accepted, so it focuses only on our own efforts. With all the rubbish that gets uploaded to Commons (bulk or otherwise) it would be useful to have some mechanism to tag images as having "good quality". It would need a rapid UI, though, and QI's UI is awful. But I agree with Cart that non-photographers don't, in my experience, make good reviewers. There's an awful lot of people on Wikipedia who think a good 220px thumbnail is all that is required. I'll try to find the AI page later. Wrt Granada's comment about bots -- yes the measures currently used at QI are wrong. -- Colin (talk) 13:49, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
I'll have to agree with pretty much all of that. Specifically, I still don't understand why we can't – for example – mark an image from the Hubble space telescope that is high-quality, but not WOW-y enough for FP, as a Quality Image. That alone shows that the "make ourselves feel good" part is valued much higher than the "is useful for re-users" part at QI. --El Grafo (talk) 14:44, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Agree, but with non-commoner's photos it is usually very hard to communicate with the photographer and ask them to do tweaks and corrections. I wonder if that was one of the reasons that QIC was established as limited to commons users. --cart-Talk 14:49, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
I don't know. But I don't see why not being able to improve "bad" candidates should keep us from tagging good ones. We're already doing this all the time at FPC: If a nominated NASA image is good and wow-y it gets the star. If it's not we don't complain that we can't ask whoever took it for improvements – we just reject it. --El Grafo (talk) 14:58, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Good summary. --cart-Talk 15:01, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
I think that comes from the idea of the Wikimedia Foundation that Wikipedia has to grow as everything else in capitalism. QIC is a measure for the amount of good images produced by the community and we have to produce more quality images every year. --Granada (talk) 15:03, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
This seems the first edit that restricted COM:QIC only to Commoners. It also says "Quality images don't have to be particulary extraordinary, impressive or outstanding among pictures Commons. All they have to do is to meet certain mostly technical quality standards, and be valuable for Wikimedia projects." Jee 04:04, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
Perhaps QI could be improved by a) tightening up criterion on composition, b) tightening up on the requirement valuable for Wikimedia and other projects, c) requiring 2 positive votes (or a majority of 2) d) reducing the daily maximum nominations to 3. 23:03, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

[unindent] I'm just seeing this. I agree that there's no really good reason not to mark photos by non-Commoners as QIs. I also like the idea of requiring 2 Support votes for a QIC nominee to be promoted. More importantly, we need a procedure to de-list QI designations that shouldn't have been given. I'm unsure about limiting nominations to less than 5 per day per user. Maybe 4? -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:19, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

  • Link fixed. Shortcuts like all-caps abbreviations are only for the page itself, there are no similar shotcuts for the talk pages. You have to spell it out then. --cart-Talk 20:45, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Picky FPCbot

Some time ago I posted a small How To guide for closing FPCs here. I have since discovered a small errors in one of the codes I wrote there. If you close an FPC as "not featured" and move the nom to the log manually, the old code example {{FPC-results-reviewed|support=X|oppose=X|neutral=X|featured=no|sig=--~~~~}} is ok. However, If you want FPCbot to move the closed "not featured" nom to log, you need to include all parameters in the code, even the redundant and empty "|category=", otherwise the bot will not recognize the code and simply skip moving it. Picky bot... So the correct code to use for closing is:

  • {{FPC-results-reviewed|support=X|oppose=X|neutral=X|featured=no|category=|sig=--~~~~}}

I don't think I should go back and correct this in the archive though. Great thanks to you who help out with closing FPCs! Without you, the whole thing would clog up and stop. Nothing here happens by magic. --cart-Talk 21:41, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

One-day-nomination

Just noticed: Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Lake Louise 2018-03 ski.jpg, started on 21 March, but added on FPC on 29 March. After that, quickly got 10 supports and now closed by the bot. But I think, even though the ten supporters are fellow Commoners, the nomination should run at least 5 days anyway, so that there is a possibility to contest the support if you have a reason for that and you are not 24/7 online on FPC. So, IMO, the nomination should be restarted. @Pierre5018: --A.Savin 21:27, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

OK to restart, Please doPierre5018 (talk) 01:53, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
I now tried to fix it less complicated way (otherwise all previous supporters had to be pinged), the nom should stay on candidate list max 9 days since you added it to the list. For unknown reasons, there is still the red "Voting period is over" notice, though. --A.Savin 09:08, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
A.Savin, I fixed that. Please see this edit. You have to monitor this manually now. --cart-Talk 09:12, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Indeed, thanks. --A.Savin 09:14, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Archiving 'Withdrawn' FPC

If you move Withdrawn FPCs to the Log, please remember to close them too. Mark them as ", not featured" and place the "no" template on them. If they are not closed manually, the nomination will continue to run for 5-9 days after which the FPCbot will mark them with a "to be reviewed" template and put them in Category:Featured picture candidates awaiting closure review just like if they were on the usual list. Here is the "no" template:

  • {{FPC-results-reviewed|support=X|oppose=X|neutral=X|featured=no|category=|sig=--~~~~}}

Thank you for helping out with the FPC work. -- Cart (talk) 08:25, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Cleaning lens

Dear Friends,

Yashica Mat 124 G lens 80mm 3.5, before (left) and after (right) to clean 30 years of oil

I recently received a camera in excellent condition, however, the lens is stained by something (maybe oil). I spent a day trying to clean it using hot water, alchool and continuous polishing, however, the result is not totally clean.

My specific question is, what could I do to clean this lens?. Thanks --The Photographer 13:38, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Not all kinds of substances/dirt are soluble in water and alcohol, there are those that can only be dissolved in organic solvents like chemically clean gasoline (not sure what name that is sold under in Canada). You should use something like that too. Also see: Solvent. -- Cart (talk) 14:08, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Cart What do you think about Naphta Coleman?. Thanks --The Photographer 16:13, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
That doesn't look like it's pure enough. The Naphta (petroleum) I'm thinking of is highly purified and comes in small bottles sold in hobby stores or pharmacies. It's sometimes used by stamp collectors to clean stamps since it doesn't harm the stamps. Maybe someone living in the US or Canada knows a brand. -- Cart (talk) 16:38, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
If it's greasy acetone might do the trick. That's the stuff nail polish remover formerly consisted of. You should be able to get a small bottle of it at the pharmacy (you won't need much). But be careful, as it easily dissolves most kinds of plastic and paint as well. And wear gloves. --El Grafo (talk) 12:51, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
I wouldn't let acetone near any of my lenses. The fumes alone can damage the plastic parts surrounding the lens. One drop or splatter in the wrong place and the threads (hilos?) might be ruined. -- Cart (talk) 14:26, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
ACK. Given the age of the Yashica Mat, I was assuming that what we see on the picture is pure glass and metal. If the black parts are plastic, acetone is probably not a good idea. Also no idea what it would do to lens coatings if there were any. That's really a last resort option – acetone is nasty stuff. --El Grafo (talk) 15:17, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
The black part is Metal and I have Acetone with me in this moment, Gasoline pure or Gasoline light (whatever) is very difficult to find. I want wait to read anothers opinions because there is no way back. Please guys help me with this issue. --The Photographer 00:30, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Looking at the photo again: Are you sure that it's actually dirt on the surface of the lens? Sometimes lens elements that were glued together to form a lens group start separating decades later (google e.g. "balsam separation"). If that's the case, you might be out of luck … --El Grafo (talk) 15:29, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
El Grafo, This looks at least partly like fungus which has destroyed either the cement (probably en:Canada balsam) between lenses or the coating or both. I am in Canada, maybe it is easy to find this Canada balsam, please, could you guide me in some method to fix it, it is a camera that also has a sentimental value. Thanks --The Photographer 00:25, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
The Photographer, from what I've read, if it's really the cement that has the problems I'd recommend to either give up (and maybe find a replacement part) or hand it over to a professional. In order to re-cement the elements you would have to get them apart first, and that seems to require a heavy-duty solvent. You may or may not want to read this thread on Pentaxforums – acetone is like honeyed milk compared to some of the stuff they're talking about there :-( --El Grafo (talk) 12:08, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
El Grafo I was carefully reading the forum link that you sent me and I have managed to buy all the ingredients including the Canadian balsam. Finally, I'm a little afraid of damaging this lens, however, lens repair is absurdly expensive and nobody sell this lens on ebay/amazon/kijiji/etc. I will try to do it with this manual, what do you think? --The Photographer 02:14, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

You withdraw your nomination, then could you archive it too ?

Hello everyone,

About 25% of the FP nominations here are withdrawn. One candidature out of four is interrupted by their nominator. But for now the FPC bot isn't programmed to archive any withdrawn FPC (perhaps because a few of them get reconsidered to finally follow the normal voting period).

As a consequence of these frequent abandons, the list can become crowded with a lot of unused templates remaining active on the main page.

To get rid of a withdrawal, the only way is to manually close the FPC in 4 simple steps : Commons:Featured_picture_candidates#Archiving_a_withdrawn_nomination.

Closing one of them is not a hard work, but if everyone entrust this task to the few volunteers, then the quantity makes a lot of repetitive work for those who are not responsible for these failures.

Thus, I would suggest that each participant takes their responsibility, and once the verdict of a necessary withdrawal is taken, then closes + archives their own nomination.

This will make tasks more balanced in the group. Thanks ! -- Basile Morin (talk) 03:56, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi Basile! Thanks for that hint! I always feel just not eligible closing FPC bot results regarding my own images no matter of the result be it a withdrawal, a "featured" or a "not featured. --Granada (talk) 05:57, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Basile! Granada, closing noms is not something you need to be "eligible" for. Learning/reading about how to close noms and also sorting your photos in the right place in the FP gallery and the right FP caregories is in fact much easier than figuring out how to make a nomination. Should you make a mistake, it's no big deal, the Usual Cleanup Crew will take care of it. You'll soon get the hang of it. On this site, I sometimes think it is like living with a bunch of teenagers who are very happy to pull out and use everything, but less good at cleaning and picking up after themselves. --Cart (talk) 06:52, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
There are so many different people nominating and withdrawing that I don't think it reasonable for them all to have to learn the procedure. And I don't think the teenager criticism is entirely fair either. I don't expect those who run the Main Page to come along and complain that us photographers don't help out enough. When I ran the process at Photo Challenge, nobody ever volunteered to help until I took a wikibreak, and I don't have a problem with that -- I never asked for help. Most Featured X processes on wiki are administered by a few who either self-volunteer or else are elected by the community. It is pretty rare that everyone helps out.
It sounds like the FP bot needs an overhaul. I know I get frustrated that it screws up the file-description page by inserting the award before the geotag, which messes up the appearance. It doesn't sound hard to get it to spot a withdrawn template. Perhaps we can list the defects here and make a request on the VP for someone to volunteer to fix it, or write a better one. That's the better solution than doing repetitive work and complaining about it. -- Colin (talk) 09:49, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
Yes, an overhaul of the FP bot is long overdue. Closing and archiving withdrawn nominations is one of the missing features. The current maintainer said that he won't do any change, but he welcomes patches. Or would it better to rewrite from scratch? Anyway we need a coder... Regards, Yann (talk) 10:16, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
Agree that a better Bot would be the best thing, but until that happens I don't see why people can't help out and I don't think it's wrong to ask for it. Of course we don't expect every newbie and casual FPC visitor to know everything, but there are plenty of regulars who know how things work. I like this site, I care for it and about it and I like it to function. --Cart (talk) 10:41, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
I had a look at the archive, curious about all the withdrawn noms to see if there was anyone frequently withdrawing. But I had to give up listing all the totally different names. So for 20 withdrawn candidates to be self-cleared up you'd need nearly 20 people familiar with the process and who need supervising and cleaning up when they screw up. Sounds like a terrible rate-of-return, and having folk who only do it once in a blue moon is asking also for more issues. Of course it isn't wrong to ask for help in a positive way. I think this is similar to the nonsense at QIC where nominations are heavily limited solely because reviewing is such a joyless PITA that they can't get through the quantity. Encouraged that The Photographer might be able to help with both. -- Colin (talk) 12:35, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
I have faith in that people can read and learn. --Cart (talk) 13:10, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
FYI, I'm working on a user script to archivate automatically the nomination. Also, I allready created a plugin to hide your Flickr2commons uploads and to vote on QIC. --The Photographer 10:58, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
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