Commons talk:License review/Archive 1

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Proposal

A proposal for Commons:License review has been made here. ZooFari 04:08, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Review of other files

Perhaps we should create a review template for files that do not come from one of the places we have a "review wanted" template for? We could add a link in that template to a full list of review templates it is possible to add. Just so that reviewer (and requester) can check if there was a template for that file. What made me suggest this is this file File:Amazona albifrons -upper body-8a.jpg and this notice [1]. --MGA73 (talk) 08:13, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

For piqs.de we should probably create a template like {{Geograph}}. --MGA73 (talk) 21:10, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
Here is a suggestion Category:Images from the piqs.de project. --MGA73 (talk) 21:52, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
By the way. That way we should not need a review? --MGA73 (talk) 21:53, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
For piqs.de, we could just use {{Piqs}}. Agree we should create the "review wanted" template for {{LicenseReview}} that can link to available templates like {{Piqs}}. ZooFari 00:17, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. Yes lets create a "LicenseReview". Perhaps if it is blank (like {{LicenseReview}}) it could be a "review wanted". --MGA73 (talk) 17:19, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Admins and reviewers

I just noticed that some admins are marked as Image-reviewers. Are all admins not trusted to review files? And if so admins should automatically be a Image-reviewer (and File-mover and whatever admins should be able to do...). --MGA73 (talk) 17:19, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Both image-reviewers and sysops will be allowed to execute the script (unless we decide otherwise) so image-reviewers flag is redundant for sysops. ZooFari 15:22, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
It looks like abusefilter was set up instead and accepts the admin usergroup as well. Thus admin image-reviewers can be just admins. ZooFari 02:15, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

See also User talk:Kwj2772#Reviewers. ZooFari 02:28, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Flickr Images deleted

I just had several Flickr images deleted that I put on Wikimedia. I cited the license and copyright information correctly -- and it appeared to me that the photos were eligible for uploading to Wikimedia. Now I am told they were not. Why is that Wikimedia allows images from Flickr to be uploaded and then later decides that they are not eligible for uploading? Wouldn't it be the simplest sort of fix to program the software to reject Flickr photos which do not cite a license that permits their upload to Wikimedia? Smallchief (talk) 13:22, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi Smallchief. If you notice at Commons:Flickr files, you cannot upload files under the license cc-by-nd or cc-by-nc as they do not allow commercial use or derivative works. Only Flickr images tagged as BY (CC-BY) or BY SA (CC-BY-SA) are allowed on Commons. --ZooFari 17:56, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Freedom of Panorama

If the copyright status of an image is unsure due to an Freedom of Panorama concern, should the image be tagged as passing the review in addition to being tagged for regular deletion? MorganKevinJ(talk) 19:34, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, as long as the license and author still match, you treat it as if there was no concern (while you still tag it for deletion accordingly). --ZooFari 21:53, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

unfree flickr note like templates for different sites

Is there any reason why unfree licensed images do not have a template for a seven day wait period, but instead are tagged for immediate speedy deletion? Should a template and cats be made for the other sites? MorganKevinJ(talk) 00:16, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

The template used to be a seven day wait period but was changed because it was not in correspondence with the speedy deletion policy. If we know it's a copyvio, it should immediately be deleted. We could change it back to the way it was, but we would need consensus from a large part of the community. As for other sites, it'll be done sooner or later once we are comfortable with how the flickrvio template should work. --ZooFari 01:20, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Images incorrectly reviewed

I've noticed two cases of images where reviewers didn't notice some details were incorrect. First, images from Bugwood.org websites not marked as being released under the ported Creative Commons United States licenses (such as File:Paranthrene simulans2.jpg, which I corrected without retagging for review). Also, images from BOLD Systems which were marked as "No rights reserved" by "Unspecified" authors, which were tagged here as released into the public domain (not necessarily true, I assume) by BOLD Systems (the website, not the author). I changed File:Schinia diffusa.jpg, File:Schinia grandimedia.jpg, and File:Schinia deserticola.jpg to {{Copyrighted free use}}, like most such images from BOLD Systems, and resubmitted it for review. Any opinions on what I should do here? And what do these errors mean for the license review system? —innotata 15:03, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

List of reviewers

Please, create a list of the reviewers according to language spoken. I needed to find some one speaking Czech but had to surrender and ask an administrator (whose list exists), as it would take hours to view the profiles of all the reviewers. Petrus Adamus (talk) 18:39, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Catscan works fine for this task: There are none - at least none with a user page in the relevant categories. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 19:19, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Youtube

Do we do license review for the Creative Commons licenced videos on Youtube? See my upload for an example File:Falkirk Wheel.ogg.--Natl1 (talk) 21:04, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd say so - like we do for all external image sources: {{License review}}. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 00:06, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Scripts to ease the task

Recently I suggested a "wizard" for license-review. Feel free to comment on User talk:ZooFari/licensereviewer.js#Rewrite coming soon. I already added some features like an auto-generated thanks-message for copy&paste for the flickr-uploader. -- RE rillke questions? 16:46, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Validity of reviews

There are certain events in which reviews could be considered invalid but no standards have been implemented yet. I believe that it should be done as soon as possible so that we have disclaimers whenever such a situation is raised. I propose the following circumstances in which reviews should lose their validity:

  • Abuse of image-reviewer status: New image-reviewers who have had their right for less than a month and abuse their status should be considered invalid reviewers (and demoted) and their reviews should be re-reviewed by another reviewer. A bot could assist in the process.
  • For older reviewers (the "experienced" users), using this revocation could become extreme especially if they've made thousands of reviews (which is why it is a good thing that the requests process has become stricter). I suggest that the community determines whether all reviews or only certain ones should be considered invalid via talk page of the requests page.
  • Also, there is no mention of how a user should be demoted. I suggest that any admin could demote, but they should report it to the reviewing community on the talk page of the requests page. Perhaps adding this as a note on the user rights management (admin-only) would be a good idea?
  • Reviews by image-reviewers who did not get their right via requests page - In the past, their have been admins who were have been completely unaware of the process for obtaining the flag and granted it to users who had not gone through the Commons:License review/requests page. Such users should have their right removed and their reviews invalidated.

These are the only circumstances I could think of at the moment. Suggestions, feedback? --ZooFari 01:24, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Prohibit self-reviewing

I think we should do more than just discourage reviewing own uploads. Maybe it is time to prohibit self-reviewing and declare self-reviewed files invalid from now and on? There are plenty of reviewers to go around, and there are no advantages nor reasons for having to review own uploads. --ZooFari 02:33, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Agree. Please add a bot-exception. Yes, they just ensure the images and licenses match but you cannot expect more from them. I don't want such a situation again we had with Indafotó. -- RE rillke questions? 10:02, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
Agree. Anyone requesting license review rights who suggests an intent to review their uploads won't pass these days, so this shouldn't too much of a jump. CT Cooper · talk 12:37, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

 Info This change will go in effect on 20 February 2012 (one month after proposal) if no objections are raised until then. --ZooFari 21:57, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Wasn't there the clause? – Kwj2772 (msg) 09:58, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I think that this is a reasonable proposal. In the same way that users can't patrol their own edits, it makes sense that image reviewers should be discouraged from reviewing their own uploads. Ajraddatz (talk) 00:43, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

✓ Implemented. If there are any objections, feel free to discuss. --ZooFari 18:56, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

License in some Picasa images

How to find the license (on their original page) for images like File:Legia_stadium_store.JPG? -- 01:33, 19 March 2012‎ Materialscientist

append ?banner=pwa to the URL. Then a yellow box will be shown on top of the page. I will integrate this into my license-reviewer script.
https://plus.google.com/photos/112786620216057883629/albums/5669369294864506001/5688683528693703010?banner=pwa
→https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=112786620216057883629&target=PHOTO&id=5688683528693703010&noredirect=1

-- RE rillke questions? 11:36, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Such images pop up from time to time, and while usually flinfo can extract information from them, it could not do that for this series. Materialscientist (talk) 11:54, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Now Flinfo can also handle the Google+ link.[2] In the future, if you find links that Flinfo should but cannot handle, please notify me. Lupo 13:58, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Mit Flinfo habt ihr wirklich Großartiges geleistet. Does Flinfo output jsonp? If you fear too much abuse, you may check whether the referrer is set to Commons. -- RE rillke questions? 15:16, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Yes, it does. Try "&format=json&callback=yourFunction". Other formats are php, jsonfm, phpfm. Also interesting for scripts may be "&filter=raw,wiki" (default is wiki only; adding raw gives you the raw server output, in the case discussed here from the Picasa queries; for screen-scraping handlers, such as panoramio, raw output is faked (synthesized from basic screen scraping).) Documentation is in the README.TXT in the sources. (Just noticed that the latest, currently running version isn't there. Hm. I'll have to build a V2.6 zip some of these days...) About the field wiki.status see User talk:Magnus Manske/Archive 8#File:An Italian Renaissance villa.jpg. Lupo 15:51, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
P.S.:if you're thinking about calling Flinfo from JavaScript, please bear in mind that the server it runs on doesn't do https. That's one of the reasons why I abandoned the original project that led to my rewriting it in the first place: making the fromflickr upload forms query Flinfo and fill in the data automatically once the user had entered a URL. Lupo 16:01, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Are these really Creative Commons-licensed content?

I was going through Flickr to find suitably licensed images of Jayne Mansfield. I found a lot, but are any of those licenses reliable? Can someone check? I am posting a few links. If the licenses are real, I'd probably upload them. Here goes: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17. Please, forgive me for posting this long series of links. I am not familiar with the process of uploading images from Flickr and getting them reviewed. Aditya (talk) 20:11, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Not all of them are free licensed. Please, take a look on Commons:Flickr files to know which Creative Commons licenses are accepted on Commons. Ralgis 16:22, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
If it's marked as BY ND SA then what do I take it to be? Usable or non-free? Aditya (talk) 03:49, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
P.S. These following images look okay to me: 01, 02, 03, 04, and 05. Should I go ahead and upload them? Aditya (talk) 03:55, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
If it's marked as BY ND SA then it can't be uploaded to Commons.
And the licenses of the last images are okay, but it clearly is a case of license laundering. Ralgis 21:41, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Where do I get these reviewed?

Will {{Cc-by-3.0-BollywoodHungama}} apply to the following images: 01, 02, 03, 04, and 05? Aditya (talk) 04:51, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it will. Ralgis 21:43, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

License review not functioning

Can somone tell me why the usuall license review tools at the drop down menu (next to the star) do not apear any more?. Btw I use the Rillke review java script.--Sanandros (talk) 07:31, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Situations where licensing self-uploads is okay

I propose amending the guidance of this page to allow self verification of planned batch uploads, where licence checking has been done for the source systematically, such as via an automated filter but are not open-ended projects that might be suitable for long term bot approval. This is the situation for the 1000+ Picasa uploads in Category:Photographs_by_the_Japan_Ground_Self-Defense_Force which was one of my batch uploads by special request from Russavia.

In these circumstance adding all images to a backlog for manual review would create unnecessary work when the verification has happened at the 'system' level. --Fæ (talk) 11:31, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. And what about transfers from a user's own Flickr stream? Those should be made a painless as possible as well. --Dschwen (talk) 02:52, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
I am glad to see a bureaucrat helping with this discussion. I do not understand your example, this already happens by bot, though the exact same principle is the basis of my proposal. --Fæ (talk) 09:24, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
Right, we do have the FlickreviewR bot. So let me get this straight (as I seem to be a bit confused about this). You would like to include a filled out review template with the file description at time of the mass upload? This does seem sensible to me if the upload comes from a homogeneous source of files that can easily be verified to be under a given free license. (my aside was about people transferring files from their personal Flickr account to commons. These files do not necessarily have to be freely licensed on Flickr, about which a reviewer (human or bot) could get fussy) --Dschwen (talk) 19:52, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
That is right, per "licence checking has been done for the source systematically". This means that the batch uploader has verified all images as having a suitable licence. This is possible on Panoramio, Flickr, etc. as they use a standard bit of html code that an upload script can check or filter on. There is a separate issue of the credibility of the source, and mistakes can happen on that front regardless of whether a Flickrbot, Panoramiobot or a person running semi-handrollic Google spreadsheet is doing the checking. In order that the community can feel there is sufficient accountability and transparency, we could ask anyone that does this to explain their verification procedure or tools on a project page, in the same way we do at COM:BATCH, this gives others the chance to point out possible risks, question the source reliability etc. Someone verifying their own photostream, or one that they had some direct conflict of interest in, would be excluded for obvious reasons. --Fæ (talk) 20:14, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

License review

I discovered that reviewers has enabled Commons:Upload Wizard/Flickr. I'm a member of Amical Wikimedia. We are working in a pilot project to engage members of Flickr's Community to take useful free licensed images for Wikimedia Commons. We sent two photographers (Angela Llop and Maria Rosa) to take photos of Can Papiol Romanticism Museum. It's a first phase with this GLAM agent. They uploaded these images by CC-BY-SA in Flickr. The next step is upload these images to Wikimedia Commons. We would like to use this special "Upload Wizard/Flickr" to upload these photos. Probably, we will use it in projects coming, too. For that reason, I would like to become a reviewer.--KRLS (talk) 13:55, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

@KRLS: You're in the wrong page; See the main page. — revi^ 03:00, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
Nevermind; user is already a reviewer. — revi^ 03:02, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Add guidance to uploader

When using Special:UploadWizard the uploader can chose "This file is not my own work" and then say "It was published with a Creative Commons license". In such case, and if the source added is a URL, it would be great to make the suggestion for the user to also add the License Review template (and perhaps provide a button or dropdown to add it). This would mean that a lot more images would have the template on them from the start and, with a nice explaining help text, that users understand why it should be added. I believe this would improve the process, but I might be missing something. Any thoughts? Ainali (talk) 07:37, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Adding to the workload

So, following this confusing exchange, I'm posting here. I reacted to lr-tagging by Josve05a of images I had taken from Mynewsdesk. All were very uncomplicated CC-BY affairs and some were of PD-licensed images.[3][4] This was the first time I ever noticed it and my reaction as a long-time user was "oh, that's okay, they're fine". Apparently, I'm not qualified to make that decision, which to me seems very odd. I'm sure there are tons of people who know more about licensing than me, but I would assume that several years of uploading without any major snafus would lead to a modicum of trust.

I have trouble understanding the reason for adding "this image license needs to be verified"-tags like this. Just like with PD images, the presence of an external link, print reference or other metadata is what adds credibility. Without that, the review system is really just a way of saying you don't trust the ability of either uploaders or readers to click links or... well... read. Adding visible assurances for the sake of administrative purposes is all fine and well. But if you go around tagging files indiscriminately you're implying that something needs to be fixed. What's the point of that? Are they scheduled for deletion? Will they be excluded from being featured on other projects?

Peter Isotalo 14:05, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Since the licenses can be changes on external websites such as Flickr and MyNewsdesk (they can have -ND and ©, not just -BY) or deleted from their website, we need to have a trusted user to do a "check" that they have at least at some point in time been the given licnese, in case of a future law suit or other legal problems. If a trusted user, who has been "vetted" can say " it was under the given license on "x date", then that is asurance. If no such check has been done and it has been taken down from their website or if they have changed the license to an uncompatible license, then per Commons:Precautionary principle. Josve05a (talk) 14:27, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
@Peter Isotalo: What Josve said. A Creative Commons license cannot be revoked, but the copyright holder can choose at any time to stop distributing the material under that license. An 'example' would be the Voice Of America, whose material was all PD for many years, but now claims copyright. The old information is still on their website at different URLs, but they don't 'point out' what is PD and what is not... an uninformed reuser would merely look at their current terms and be led to the assumption that everything was have from them is a copyvio. Though license review does detect a certain amount of copyright problems, the point really is to give reusers a 'verification' that the license is correct in the absence of being able to directly verify it from the source, whether because the site went down, has been rearranged, or changed their terms. Revent (talk) 17:04, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I understand the reason for having license reviews overall. But why tag files that someone else uploaded when you're a reviewer yourself? Josve, was this you being exceptionally cautious or is this common practice?
And I'm at a loss as to how we came to the conclusion that not even reviewers themselves are trusted to confirm their own uploads. I mean, the brief discussion at #Prohibit self-reviewing above is literally based on the strange assumption that autopatrolling does not exist. Is there some background to this that isn't evident here?
Peter Isotalo 17:14, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
Given what he's done in the past, I's strongly suspect the 'additions' were done with Visual File Change without 'looking' at the individual files. The problem with 'self review', though, would be that the entire point is to provide an 'independent' verification for reusers. "I verified myself" is meaningless. Revent (talk) 17:34, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
Josve is and has been following guidelines that appear to be supported by consensus. So I'm rather hesitant to turn this into an issue of problematic enforcement from any particular reviewers. If anything, maybe the guidelines need to be clarified.
But I really don't understand how two trusted Commons users would satisfy any kind of independent verification for outside parties. It all comes down to saying "trust us", whether it be one, two or ten users vouching for it. When one or both users are anonymous, it seems even less meaningful. At least Josve and I are open about our offline identities. No offense, Revent, but you are just a random nickname to any reuser, and the same goes for Steinsplitter, Alan or Yann, who commented on my review request. In what way would that make you trustworthy assurances to anyone who isn't part of the project?
So this seems very much like an internal administrative procedure. If there are genuine doubts about externally specified licenses, those files should be scheduled for deletion. I don't see what either license review tags or review notification add to people outside the project. Is there no background to this? Like reviewers okaying stuff they shouldn't have. Because I'm wondering how any of this will help us, or reusers, in the event of a nasty lawsuit.
Peter Isotalo 19:27, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
Four eyes see more than two eyes. The one and only time I tested the Flickr upload mechanism I removed the review request manually as obviously redundant, bot got it right. Somebody fixed my error later, even an upload bot needs supervision by another review bot, just in case. –Be..anyone (talk) 05:13, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
I agree that it is a good idea to review images from non-wiki websites. But the examples mentioned were images covered by PD-art so it would not be relevant what the license claim was on the website. So a license review there would not be relevant. --MGA73 (talk) 21:41, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
Apparently, there's already disagreement[5] about the relevance of PD "reviews".
So either exclude PD licenses from source categories or actually point out on this page that PD is not relevant for reviewing. Because once we start doing "reviews" of PD material just because they came from Mynewsdesk or whatever, information veracity will be judged by purely technical standards. Determining what should be PD-old/PD-art/whatever is about evaluating information about the history of the image itself. In cases like File:Suecia 1-013 ; Stockholm från öster-right side detail.jpg, the metadata is supplied[6] by Maritime Museum in Stockholm, not Mynewsdesk.
Compare this with File:AnthonyRoll-56 Rose Slip.jpg, which was scanned from paper. Any suggestion that this is inherently more trustworthy is completely arbitrary. And that's why we don't have Category:Scans from books.
Peter Isotalo 13:51, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
PD review is is long-standing process, and a subject of 'license review' just like 'flickr review' is, though it has a far larger backlog. The only 'technical standard' is that certain sources get specifically flagged, that does not mean that 'everything' that it not specifically 'own work' should not get eventually checked by a second pair of eyes. There is a massive amount of 'supposedly' PD material on Commons that is not verifiably PD, usually due to lack of attribution or publication information (and a common 'assumption' that old material grabbed from some website must be PD). Saying 'this has been double checked' is not a pointless process, it's not that unusual to find the 'correct' attribution that the uploader didn't give because they just grabbed it from some random website (which sometimes means it is PD, and sometimes not). And Category:PD-scan exists for book scans that are using the correct templates. Revent (talk) 00:00, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
Wow. So there's a whole separate category of license reviewing that isn't even mentioned on the main instruction page that reviewers are expected to read? No wait... It's linked once under "other reviews" which doesn't link to Commons:PD review (how silly of me to think such a page actually existed). How the Hell do we expect users to know, let alone understand, what reviewers are up to? Review flagging seems to be fairly random and on top of that, any kind of autopatrol function is viewed with suspicion. Reviewer suitability seems to be defined by purely administrative competence, not experience with actual contributions. And the overarching argument for all of this is "not all edits are correct"? It's a recipe for a Sisyphean task.
Peter Isotalo 10:09, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
Try looking at COM:PD files, which is linked in the "Wikimedia Commons policies and guidelines" footer on the license review page. 'Review flagging is somewhat random' because it's a massive task, and most people get burned out, but that does not mean that it is not a worthwhile project (there is a ton of 'supposedly' PD material that is not), or that you should be removing license review templates. As far as the 'license review' page itself, 'to become a reviewer, one needs to be familiar with the general licensing policy of Commons' somewhat implies you should have read the various policies. Revent (talk) 13:29, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
I am quite familiar with COM:L in terms of the applying licnese. It's a necessity if you want to avoid repeated copyright violations as a long-time user. Even with automated tools and Upload Wizard, Commons isn't all that forgiving. For example, when you apply {{PD-art}} and specify the year of publication to anything before the 1800s in the infobox, you're still required you to "motivate" why the image is public domain. As if just about anything bublished before c. 1850 could be under copyright. This is a feature that forces users to adapt to bureaucracy instead of the other way around. If reviewers get burned out just flagging material, I'd call that a pretty good indication there's something not quite right about current adminstrative procedures.
Btw, you seem to be referring to fairly arcane procedural policies and practices as your main concern. Like having separate application processes for PD reviewing. All I can say is: improve the clarity of this type of information. I've had almost a decade of fully functional activitiy here without running into any of this. I'd love to help out with PD reviewing, but it seems this task is primarily geared towards technical formalities, not experience with licensing.
Peter Isotalo 15:47, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
No, my concern is with you deciding to remove license review templates for no particular reason. Policy says that any editor can request a license review, not that the uploader can then remove the template, or edit war about it, because they have some complaint about the process.
And yes, doing a 'PD review' can be somewhat 'technical', because it should be based on obtainable evidence and various laws instead of the (often incorrect, or not legally 'assumable') things assumed by many uploaders. There are many 'PD' images that are not demonstrably PD, or use an incorrect rationale (often because the source used by the uploader didn't attribute it, when the author is actually known). Even for a post-1923 US work with no copyright notice, you should still check to see if the work was later registered (a creator could 'fix' the original omission by registering the work within five years). Revent (talk) 17:16, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

How to report suspicious cases?

May be I am lazy, but I failed to find a link where to report suspected copyright,... say, sloppiness; neither here nor in "Licensing" page.

Anyway, here it is: File:Rtb House Picture.jpg a company logo. The uploader may or may not be speaking for the company to release the image. Also, the logo itself just a bunch of letters and lines, i.e., may be not copyrightable.

For the future, which policy page describes how to report such cases? Staszek Lem (talk) 04:27, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

  1. The project page suggests {{subst:Lrw|site=http://example.com/img/87912/descpage}}.
  2. The project page mentions CAT:License review needed, populated by {{subst:Lrw}}.
  3. I add {{License review}} when I want a review, redirected to {{LicenseReview}}. Allegedly {{subst:Lrw}} is a shorthand—they populate the same categories, {{subst:Lrw}} adds a timestamp.
  4. CAT:License review needed contains CAT:Possibly unfree images, created in 2014 by a user with a "SoFixIt" answer for your question. IIRC you could add images manually to this sub-category. Meanwhile it also has a backlog.
  5. I fear that this talk page here is unsuited for specific cases, it's only about the project page COM:LR, for specific cases check out the Village pump/Copyright. IANAL: Be..anyone (talk) 05:35, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Crops and modifications

Is there any special procedure for handling images/videos that have been cropped or otherwise modified from the original? Say an upload is sourced to a larger Flickr image, but is cropped down before its Commons upload. Review it as having the license of the original and move on? Or note the derivative nature of the upload somewhere? – czar 00:46, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Usually we do not consider cropping images creating a new copyright on them, but it might be confusing if this isn't mentioned. -- Rillke(q?) 15:45, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

When license review fails

I'm a new license reviewer. The License review page says "Are they really the copyright holder? Consider whether the picture on the album site was really made by that user." but isn't specific for what to do when it's pretty clear they aren't. There doesn't seem be an obvious choice in the dropdown in the License- script. Do I use a certain one of those, or just nominate the file for deletion as if I weren't a license reviewer and write that reason in that form? --GRuban (talk) 13:59, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Yep, you'd handle it as if you weren't there to review the license. If missing legal info (source/permission), mark as such, or if it is more complicated, make a case based in the deletion policy and list it for deletion. – czar 17:15, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Notice: Public Domain Mark 1.0

Listen up all Flickrreviewers. The "public domain"-tag on Flickr is not compatible with Commons for multiple reasons.

  1. It's not a release of copyright.
  2. It's a tag, not a license agreement.
  3. It's revocable.

Please read Commons:Requests for comment/Flickr and PD images to understand the reasoning behind this, and what should be done. (Such as tagging them with {{susbt:Flickr-public domain mark/subst}} etc.

Notice Notice: Public Domain Mark 1.0. What is it, and what are the legal implications?

The tools also differ in terms of their effect when applied to a work. CC0 is legally operative in the sense that when it is applied, it changes the copyright status of the work, effectively relinquishing all copyright and related or neighboring rights worldwide. PDM is not legally operative in any respect – it is intended to function as a label, marking a work that is already free of known copyright restrictions worldwide.

— Creative Commons, https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/PDM_FAQ
Comments by users

It is a statement without any legal effect. The creator [Flickr user] can at any point change their mind and remove the PDM, and that it was previously applied means nothing, since they have not actually given up their rights, or licensed the work. PDM is not a legaly binding release which is non-revocable, which is needed to be stored on Commons. If someone changes a work from PDM to ARR, any use of it by us, or anyone else, is a blatant copyright violation.

— Revent

It is a label. I think so, Creative Commons think so and it clearly says so. It s not a release of copyright. Our discussions if it is similar to other licenses or {{PD-author}} or not, is a non-question, since it is a revocable label. That's it.

— Josve05a

With this announcement Flickr users will be able to choose from among our six standard licenses, our public domain dedication, and they will also be able to mark others’ works that are in the public domain.

— Creative Commons, https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/45355

Josve05a (talk) 12:16, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

NUMINGROUP

What's the name of Special:ListUsers/Image-reviewer for magic word NUMINGROUP? Example, there are 184 sysops on Special:ListUsers/Sysop, that's a simple case and documented on mw:MediaWikiWiki, but it's not always simple, and License review is a special group on commons not documented elsewhere. Also see Special:ListGroupRights, it's not something obvious consisting of License OR Image space OR hyphen R OR r eviewer OR eviewers, let alone upload-by-url, test:

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 330 0 330 0 0 0 330 0 0 –Be..anyone 💩 11:00, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Something wrong with ZooFari/licensereviewer.js?

I keep reading Commons:Deletion requests/File:Black Eyed Peas @ Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena 01.jpg and cannot understand what’s the lesson there, in spite of two experienced admins having poured their wisdom in it: So we are to trust the FR bot, and yet User:The_Photographer did the correct choice while using User:ZooFari/licensereviewer.js to tag as unfree an image previously found by the FR bot to be CC-by-sa…?

I don’t use User:ZooFari/licensereviewer.js and I don’t know what it does, but maybe it should be reworked to avoid such false positives in the future somehow?

Either way, the following sentance by User:The_Photographer is unsatisfactory: «It was reviewed by a bot, the source show a "non comercial" licence, I did not know the inner workings of the robot and I thought the robot could have been wrong». I don’t know its inner workings either, but my immediate conclusion would be that the author had meanwhile changed the license shown in Flickr, what, as we (should) know, doesn’t affect its copyright status as released per CC-by-sa, due to the irrevocability of that license.

-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 02:58, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

If the file has been reviewed by bot, then there is no need to review it by hand again. It is unlikely that the bot is tagging unfree files as free.
The script is just for adding the template, of course the user must check license on flickr with his own eyes. --Steinsplitter (talk) 06:38, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
@Tuvalkin, use User:Rillke/LicenseReview.js instead. The ZooFari script hasn't been updated since 2011. czar 20:29, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, User:Czar, but (as clearly stated above) I never used anything else than User:Rillke/LicenseReview.js. The matter here is how to interpret admins’ advice in this DR: Either the bot tagging was unreliable and User:The_Photographer was correct to file the DR, or the bot tagging is reliable and User:The_Photographer should get a slap on the wrist, not a slap on the back. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 22:19, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
Right, I'm suggesting that we deprecate the tool last updated in 2011, especially if you think it's causing errors. @The Photographer should only use one tool, in case they conflict. As for the DR, I'd read it as affirming the Flickr bot's first pass, thus the license says irrevocably cc-by and the image is kept. czar 22:38, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Category:License review needed by language

Would it be useful to divide Category:License review needed by language? I'm sometimes hesitant to verify media in another language and it would be easier if I could mark those videos to be addressed by someone who speaks Russian/Polish/etc. czar 13:56, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Funny, I just came here to ask this same question, but forgot I had already asked. I'm going to move ahead with this if there are no objections. Alternatively, more subcategories by source could be useful if everything that would normally go into one subcategory of "License review needed (in Korean)" would otherwise fit in "Tistory review needed", etc. czar 15:44, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

On the picture, not taked by license reviews

Hi! I have a problem. The pictures in the Category:Tibor Végh and an photo, what is a cutting from one them, are all from Tibor Véghs Picasa-albums - so these are not taken by Vegh, but he is in the pictures... he use by all pictures on his album the Picasa cc-by licence, so the reviewers have the licencs confirmed, but i'm not sure that that's okay. Could someone look at this? Fauvirt (talk) 16:38, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Files uploaded by admins

Files uploaded by admins don´t need license review process? Can an admin review yours own uploads? I think it´s not clear in instructions. Rodrigolopes (talk) 10:31, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

No, an external review is needed to prove that the uploader was correct about the license (otherwise it's not much of a review) czar 21:48, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the answer. Rodrigolopes (talk) 23:29, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

License changed from pd to cc-by-sa

I reviewed File:House_of_Abbud.jpg as PD-self a few months ago, because it was marked that way at the source. [7] Now, however, someone is changing it to CC-BY-SA-3.0 because it changed to that at the source.[8] Should I change it back to PD-self, because the license was non-revocable, or should I leave it as cc-by-sa because that's good enough for our purposes? --GRuban (talk) 13:59, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

I reverted the edit, it is a license revocation. The file can be licensed under both licenses if needed. --Steinsplitter (talk) 14:22, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

PDreview template tweak

I've edited the PD review template {{PDreview}} so it shows passed files in the same green color as {{License review}}. Previously it was an annoying tan color. Reventtalk 15:35, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Name

"License review" should really be called "license verification" or something similar. While the intent of this page is to verify licenses at their source, especially to note when an irrevocable license has been declared (for posterity), many times items are tagged for this page just to get a second opinion on the license (read: to have someone "review" the truth claims of a license). There are other forums for that. Changing the name of this page should help avoid those misunderstandings. czar 16:33, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Or "license confirmation". Thoughts? czar 20:42, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Adding the ability to mark others' edits as patrolled to license reviewers

I noticed that license reviewers without the patrol right cannot patrol others' edits. Since patrolling new files is now possible, I think it would be good to add the patrol right to the "image-reviewer" group. This is necessary because LRs reviews files from external sources, and mostly they are uploaded by non-autopatrolled users. Having the ability to patrol would help reduce the patrol backlog and let other patrollers know that the image is already reviewed. There are some LRs who are "technically" not patrollers, like BU Rob13. What do you think? ★ Poké95 00:53, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

How many LRs who are not patrollers are there? Ruslik (talk) 19:28, 25 December 2016 (UTC)
Currently there are 233 license reviewers; 93 of them have also "patroller" right, 140 not (including 9 bot accounts).<DB query results> --XXN, 22:50, 25 December 2016 (UTC)
Ok, I have nothing against this proposal. Ruslik (talk) 20:13, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
This seems sensible to me, but will have to be done via a Phab ticket (as it's a server configuration change). Reventtalk 22:43, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, of course, but I want to gain consensus first before filing a Phab task. Well, I can file a task now if you want. ★ Poké95 01:30, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
I'd hope to see a few more responses (a wider consensus) so I'd suggest giving it a few more days. Hopefully most LRs are watching this page. Reventtalk 00:11, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Notice

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T177161

A discussion about an aspect of license reviewing is ongoing at Commons:Village pump#Purpose of Template:Custom license marker.   — Jeff G. ツ 01:22, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

The discussion is archived at Commons:Village pump/Archive/2017/07#Purpose of Template:Custom license marker. Verbcatcher (talk) 01:16, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
@Verbcatcher and Speravir: Thanks for the reminder.   — Jeff G. ツ 05:47, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Reviewing my own files

I have uploaded videos from Vimeo via video2commons (for instance) and they are tagged to be reviewed. I don't feel comfortable on raising the workload for reviewers and wonder if I could mark them as reviewed, instead of waiting for others to review. Is it fine to review those files or should I leave it to others?—Teles «Talk to me ˱C L @ S˲» 00:29, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

@Teles: No, it is not fine. You can reduce the workload in another way, by reviewing others' uploads.   — Jeff G. ツ 15:04, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
No problem. It is weird because it would be automatically reviewed if they were uploaded directly by me and not through video2commons... but, ok, I will leave it to somebody else. Thanks for answering.—Teles «Talk to me ˱C L @ S˲» 15:06, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
@Teles: perhaps a wider discussion should be held by on whether video2commons uploads by Admins should be automatically reviewed and how that should be implemented; I think you're right that they should.   — Jeff G. ツ 16:47, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Unsplash images

Category:Images from Unsplash (review needed) contains nearly 30,000 images needing review. Instead of a license review template, these images are simply added to the category. As you can imagine, this would take an enormous amount of manual work, which will likely be taken up by no one. Is it possible to create an Unsplash-specific review template (similar to the one for Flickr) and have a bot replace the category with this template? This would reduce the labor in reviewing these specific files, and the backlog can at least get chipped at bit by bit. ℯxplicit 01:22, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Two Questions

I have been working away at LR’s in Flickr PD Images Needing Review needing to be done and there are many from this flicker account such as File:240th Anniversary of the U.S. Army Chaplains Corps commemorated in Arlington National Cemetery (20121795295).jpg and many others. Everything about the description and the metadata leads me to believe this was made by a US gov employee and would be in the public domain but this flicker account isn’t linked to any .gov or .mil sites as most are. Any second opinions?

Another issue is there have been a lot of uploads such as File:2016 Greeley Unexpected Kickoff Concert (27824763496).jpg. I can almost always find information about states but cities I don’t know. I also can’t tell if this is a legitimate account although it does appear to be at first glance. Regardless I don’t know how a city in Colorado releases something into a public domain. Should these all be rejected? This could amount to a lot of files. Thank you for your opinions. -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 20:19, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

  • @Sixflashphoto: For the first point: the Arlington National Cemetery is under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army: see https://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/about, so photographs taken by employees during their official duties are in the Public Domain. Note that the Flickr feed is linked at the bottom of the official website, along with other social media accounts. As to the city of Greeley, any copyright holders are free to release items into public domain if they choose, be they private citizens, government agencies, or corporations. Unless evidence points to the contrary, it can reasonably assumed that photographs posted by the City of Greeley are taken by city employees, and thus are works for hire. From that US Copyright circular, "If a work is made for hire, an employer is considered the author even if an employee actually created the work. The employer can be a firm, an organization, or an individual." Also, note that the Flickr feed is linked at the bottom of the City of Greeley website: https://greeleygov.com/. --Animalparty (talk) 22:04, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
@Animalparty: Thank you very much. I just wanted a second opinion on the Arlington photos since there are so many and the other US gov accounts looked a bit different. As to the city of Greeley ones I am glad that is cleared up. They should be alright as long as they are not violating anything else such as FoP or anything else as I've found a few have. Thank you for the quick reply. -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 22:23, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
@Sixflashphoto: No problem, and thanks for helping to chip away at the backlog. Every little bit helps! --Animalparty (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 22:32, 28 February 2018‎ (UTC)

Files from Finna for review

Do any other reviewers have any issue with me putting all the files from finna.fi into their own category? Right now that is 732 images but will soon be about 2,000 per this thread. This will be much in the same vein as any of the other "image from X" categories that are out of the main license review queue. --Majora (talk) 23:00, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

  • No issues here. -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 00:16, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
    I created it. {{FinnaReview}} and Category:Finna review needed. There are 1,000 images in there right now and from a search there are about 1,800 other Finna images without any license review at all. Not quite sure if it is worth it putting all of those in this category. --Majora (talk) 02:28, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
    I'm not sure if it is worth putting all of the images into that category either but as someone who does a lot of license reviews with PD images I appreciate your work (and help in the past to the project and myself) to keep some order. Also I took a quick look at some of those files and while I don't know that they are not PD images, I would not jump into approving them. I am not saying there is anything wrong with the images, we very well may be able to host them, I just wouldn't be the one to mark them approved under that license at this moment. @Majora: if they were marked {{PD-Finland50}} would you approve them? Is the date of the authors death correct? -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 14:59, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
    Most of them, I believe, are PD-Finland50, Sixflashphoto. From what we have on Finland's copyright laws what matters here is if the photo is a "work of art". If it is a normal "everyday" photo then it falls out of copyright 50 or 25 years after creation depending on the date. Taking that into account, every photo taken prior to 1966 that is not a work of art is in the public domain. Assuming that the dates on the photos are correct then the author is irrelevant for most of these. If the photograph is a work of art then it is 70 years pma. I'm pretty sure we can keep these images regardless. It matters about the correct licensing. We don't want to call something that is public domain "Creative Commons" when it isn't as that would be attaching copyright terms to something that isn't in copyright (something that personally irks me quite a lot when people do so). --Majora (talk) 15:53, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Batch Flickr reviewing?

Is there any way to do a good Flickr review of batches of files in Category:Flickr public domain images needing human review with the "Public Domain Mark 1.0" that are obviously freely licensed, such as US government works, such as many of the 106th infantry images in Category:New York National Guard (maybe 100), or many of these Category:John Fairbairn Anderson Collection (about 400) pre-1923 Canadian images released freely, or several 16th century book images? Doing them manually will take a long time and be a pain for any reviewer unless there is a quicker way. Ww2censor (talk) 11:10, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

@Ww2censor: Special:Search/incategory:"New York National Guard" AND incategory:"Flickr public domain images needing human review". Then VFC them with "Perform batch task". Then load them all and select them (inverse selection with none selected is the same as select all). Then go to custom replace. Under edit summary at the top put "[[COM:LR|License review]] passed". Select the first /R/ box and put the following under "Pattern to match": /\{\{FlickreviewR.+?}}/ and in the "Text to insert instead" box put {{Flickrreview|Ww2censor|2018-05-16}} (or whatever the current date is UTC time).

Always examine scheduled changes when doing this and render the page to make sure it is replacing correctly. Examine scheduled changes -> 1 -> Diff -> Render preview. You can do a lot of damage really quickly here if you type something in wrong.

Rinse and repeat for any other categories you like to do. --Majora (talk) 20:55, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

But to be clear--You do not have to examine every photo individually? I've been working on keeping that category under somewhat control, but lately with over 17,000 photos in it, it's becoming larger and larger despite efforts to keep it down. Not to mention many pictures in there that I am not convinced belong in there, but if we could just get control over US government works and others that are easy to verify that would help a lot. -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 21:05, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
You should still look at them all individually. The batch processing just automates the last step. When I do this for tistory related images I verify all the images are correct then do the actual license review template last with visual file changer. See the top of my contribs here. I can imagine you scrolling through the flickr feed of the Guard, verifying that the thumbnail that VFC loads is on the feed, then checking it off and doing the "confirm" replace once you scroll though. But yeah, you should still verify the image is on the feed of the Guard. --Majora (talk) 21:14, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
@Majora and Sixflashphoto: : that looks like a rather nifty solution in any attemmpt to reduce the category but when I ran a test using the above instructions, on examining scheduled changes all I see in the preview is exactly the same entry with no changes showing. What am I doing wrong? I do know that "Perform batch tasks" can create terrible problem if used improperly and I do use it for some tasks but I would be happy to help out on some of the obvious reviews if I can get it to work for me. It might be preferable to move any further detailed advise discussion to a use talk page. Thanks Ww2censor (talk) 10:55, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
Did you run it using the same category in the example or a different one? 1 refers to the first image in that VFC loads regardless of whether or not the image is selected or if the image actually has the correct syntax it is looking for. It works for me when I do it. Can you walk me through exactly what steps you are doing? If you want to move this to my talk page you are welcome to do so. --Majora (talk) 20:16, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

User or admin

"If there are not, the user will close the request and add the candidate to the Image-reviewers user group."

Am I misreading this or should it say "an administrator"? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 00:19, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

@Alexis Jazz: Those who are trusted license reviewers can promote another to be a license reviewer. Community consensus is of course expected. -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 00:35, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
@Sixflashphoto: Right. So "the user" could be replaced with "they" so it becomes "After a few days, a reviewer or administrator determines whether there are no severe objections to the candidate. If there are not, they will close the request and add the candidate to the Image-reviewers user group." ? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 00:43, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

How to review a self-uploaded video?

I have a problem understanding what to do with File:2018 super typhoon Mangkhut in Shenzhen 16.ogv. All the things point to it being a valid licence. It's a self upload, but how do I review it? After all there is no source that I can go to in order to check that the licence is correct except the page itself. Do I leave the field for the source blank? Do I simply remove the {{LicenseReview}}? How should I approach this? ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 05:09, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

You remove the LicenseReview tag, unfortunately. "License reviewing is a necessary process for files from Flickr, Picasa, Panoramio, YouTube and other external websites that provide images under different licenses." So if this file isn't from an external website, we can't review the license. We're not a magic bullet, we just look to confirm that, yes, the site the file came from said it was licensed this way (with some exceptions if we have reason to doubt the site's say-so, see COM:QFI, for example). But if there isn't a site for us to review, we can't do anything as license reviewers. If you looked at the file and thought it wasn't a self-created video you could nominate it for deletion, but since you seem to believe it is, there isn't anything for you to do, just leave the file. If there is something not obvious that you worry about someone else missing, you could add text to the file description ("see at 4:37, where the creator says 'I'm releasing this under Creative Commons Share-Alike'" or something), but otherwise, just remove the tag, leave it uploaded, and go on with the next file. --GRuban (talk) 17:19, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

License reviewer script takeover

For those of you that use Rillke's license review script, due to Rillke being effectively retired I have taken over the maintenance of that script. I have ported it over to User:Majora/LicenseReview.js and have added functionality for reviewing images in Category:Finna review needed and Category:Unreviewed photos of GODL-India. Eventually I will also clean up the script to remove obsolete Panoramio and add other functionality. Any other suggestions are welcome as I go through the script and see what's there is to work with. In addition, those that have the Rillke import in their personal .js file may want to update to have this added functionality. --Majora (talk) 04:19, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

@Majora: Could you please advise me how I may make the script work with my Monobook skin? I cannot find the needed functions for reviewing and I do not see what's wrong here... Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 18:55, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
@Grand-Duc: I just switched over to Monobook and it is working for me. The tabs should be along the top and say license + and license -. Plus for pass, minus for negative. Do you not see those? --Majora (talk) 22:37, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
@Majora: Yes, that's exactly the issue. I do not have any review tabs in Monobook. Of course, I cleared the browser cache (Ctrl+Shift+R) several times... Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 16:16, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
@Grand-Duc: What browser are you using and what operating system? Can you take a screenshot of what you see please and upload it? I may need you to find your javascript console in whatever browser you are using too to see if there are any errors popping up. --Majora (talk) 21:25, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
Actually I think I figured it out. Deleted everything in User:Grand-Duc/common.js. You have two different LR scripts trying to do the same thing and that installation method for VFC was depreciated a long time ago and is known to cause problems. You can reinstall VFC via your gadgets tab in your preferences. --Majora (talk) 22:20, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
@Majora: Thanks a lot, your advice helped in solving my issue. :-) The script works now. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 20:17, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Take snapshots of the source when transferring files?

One commonly cited problem is that there is no way to verify that an image was ever free if the author later changes the license. However, this can probably be solved by taking a snapshot of the original photo page upon transferring the file. I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to modify Flickr2Commons et al. to create a snapshot using archive.today or WebCite. Thoughts? Ixfd64 (talk) 05:38, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

I believe this has been brought up a few times before at the Village Pumps, Ixfd64. Especially with the recent purges of Flickr and other file hosting sites. I would support such a thing. --Majora (talk) 21:33, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Using this page as a noticeboard?

OTRS has their noticeboard to deal with requests. Maybe we could have one here? Sometimes one may wish to jump the long queues (currently standing at 4.6k photos and 12k videos) because the files may be at risk for website shutdown, censorship or whatever reasons, then they could place special requests. I think this could serve as a noticeboard.--Roy17 (talk) 21:02, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

@Roy17: 1.2k from those are bogus. Elisfkc wasted your time, Rodrigo.Argenton asked for something to be done about it and in response Jcb blocked Rodrigo, because logic. And yes, LR needs a noticeboard. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 21:17, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
I actually proposed something like that here (for smaller screens), quoting it here for convenience.
Wouldn't it be wise to create noticeboards for every user group (except for "Autopatrolled") such as "Commons:Template editors' noticeboard" to request edits to be made to certain templates? Well, maybe not a separate noticeboard for every group, but maybe a page named "Commons:Maintenance noticeboard" with a special section like "Commons:Maintenance noticeboard#Template editors"? This way new people or users without advanced rights can bring light issues to their attention and help fight backlog. And copyright issues related to certain templates or perhaps proposals for mass-implementing templates could also be discussed here. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 11:13, 11 June 2019 (UTC)"
I often license review related issues being brought up at the Village pump, Copyright village pump, and various Administrators' noticeboards as well as the help desk but having a single organised noticeboard for this would probably bring these issues to the attention of the users interested in fixing them, mostly as while every sysop has the ability to review not all are interested in doing so and I imagine that many license reviewers check maintenance categories more often than any village pimp of the help desk, so a dedicated noticeboard would fix these issues. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 00:27, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
@Roy17: Leoboudv had reviewed 59 files from 500px, Christian Ferrer had reviewed 23 files and Discasto 2. Elisfkc initially added 1336 files to the category, 1208 were still there so 128 files are unaccounted for. They may have been reviewed and removed from the category. Category:Files from 500px needing review‎ is now empty and the 4.6k in Category:License review needed has been reduced by 1.2k by this action. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 09:02, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
213 files were reviewed at Elisfkc's request. Pretty much pointless..
Extended content
Waste of time. And this story will continue on COM:ANU because Jcb is responsible. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 09:37, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Videos of 2019 from Hong Kong

Could you please help review files in Category:Videos of 2019 from Hong Kong? Many are related to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong. Please stand with Hong Kong! Review files so that they can be kept and used in all other wiki projects! Thank you!--Roy17 (talk) 21:02, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Placement of {{LicenseReview}}

Should the placement of the template on the file page be synced? Minorax (talk) 11:03, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

@Minorax: what do you mean by syncing?--Roy17 (talk) 15:32, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
@Roy17: As in the {{LicenseReview}} will be placed at a specific place (e.g. under the license) instead of it being at random places. Minoraxtalk (formerly 大诺史) 15:40, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
Oh... there's no fixed rule AFAIK. They usually appear right on top or below the licence template, but sometimes the LR script appends the LR template at the bottom of the page. I had suggested to script developer to consider inserting the script before the first line that begins with [[Category:, but we've been busy and this is not the most urgent issue...--Roy17 (talk) 15:45, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
Ah yes. Was just wondering about it since it looks kinda messy. Minoraxtalk (formerly 大诺史) 16:05, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, it looks. IMO it is logical that the LR template should be placed under the licence template(s). --jdx Re: 20:41, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Date needed

Similar to [citation needed since June 2017], could we get hidden categories to show how long each of these images has been waiting for a review? It would make cleaning out the backlog much more efficient and allow us to identify bottlenecks. (On that note, since five major Iranian news agencies use CC-BY and represent 5 categories and a substantial percentage of the backlog, I have created Category:Unreviewed files from Iran). FaNoFtHeAiRiCeLaNd (talk) 02:30, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree. See below. --MGA73 (talk) 16:01, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Pixabay

Hi! I thought I would start with files in Category:Unreviewed files from Pixabay. Before I start I would like to make sure what a review should include. For example: File:A curious kitten (Pixabay).jpg. It is uploaded to Commons after 9 January 2019 so per the text in the license template it need a review. So what we should check is when the file was uploaded to Pixabay and if the author is correct. If both are correct we can mark it as passed. (If its a derivative work or we suspect its a copyvio we should start a DR.) --MGA73 (talk) 18:14, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

@MGA73: That's pretty much it. You also usually will want to do a reverse-image search to make sure it wasn't copied from somewhere else to Pixabay (or wherever). Stock image sites can make this difficult because the endemic poor metadata quality and unattributed copying increase the noise in the search results. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 18:19, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
@AntiCompositeNumber: Thank you! --MGA73 (talk) 18:22, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Flickr files and PD - What to do?

I picked a random file in Category:Flickr images not found: File:Edwin Thomas Roberts 031 (27498855639).jpg and the file was reviewed by Flickrreview bot and later a new review was requested and now bot could not find the file.

I put back the original review because I think it is better to have half a review than no review. But to fix this file and files like it we need to do more.

Har do you think the best solution is? To remove the template? To replace it with a Template:PDreview? --MGA73 (talk) 14:20, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

@MGA73: I didn't know about {{PDreview}}, but that sounds fine. A manual Flickr review would also be possible, but in this case the account ("Leonid Ll") doesn't mean anything. So I also see no reason to care about "Leonid Ll" marking this as PD. (it'd be different if the Flickr account belonged to a museum or archive) - Alexis Jazz ping plz 14:59, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz: True we don’t really need the Flickr Review. Perhaps a bot could clean up Category:Edwin Thomas Roberts and add the correct PD-tag, author (the painter) and remove the Flickr Review template. --MGA73 (talk) 15:29, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
Naaa I did it by hand. Lol. --MGA73 (talk) 17:26, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Old files and broken links

Category:License review needed have +10,000 files. I checked a few and

  • File:IL ambulance.jpg was uploaded in 2006. Later someone requested a review. 2 links are broken and the third leads to a site where the file is not visible.
  • File:25052006 lula chirac.jpg as uploaded in 2007. Later someone requested a review. The link is broken.

My guess is that many files have the same problem.

I think we can all agree that the best is that all files are reviewed right after they are uploaded. But that does not help us with old files.

Skipping the file or remove the review template will not solve the problem. Failing the review will usually result in a speedy deletion and I don't think that's the best solution for old uploads. Nominating the file for deletion will add to another backlog but at least it will make an admin decide.

Another option is to make a special template or add a feature "old=yes" that will result in that the files goes in Category:License review needed - old upload (or we could make "year=2007" etc.). The benefit of removing the old files from the category is that it hopefully will make it easier for reviewers to spot and review new uploads. The chance for success is better when the upload is new.

We could perhaps also add a feature "review=broken" that would place files in Category:License review not possible and change the text in the template to "This file was uploaded long ago. The license reviewer could not verify the license as the link was broken. Concider nominating the file for deletion etc.". That will not force reviewer to nominate the file for deletion but place it in a category where all users (not only reviewers) can help look and decide what to do. Hopefully it will make it easer for reviewers to check the old files.

We did something similar years ago when there was a lot of old flickr images that was not reviewed. --MGA73 (talk) 18:03, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes we need to treat old files differently than recent uploads. If it is possible we should always review a file even if it is 15 yrs old. But we should focus on the new uploads and take the old ones when we have spare time. Personally I do not have strong feelings about if we use the LicenseReview template with a "Grandfathered" or a new template. --MGA73 (talk) 16:11, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
How do we go about making sure that it's not just two of us? After all we need an honest community concensus. My proposal is to use the creation of this process of Licence review as a cut off date, create a separate template, maybe {{Grandfathered licence review}}, where we do state, and it the actual review is possible, then by all means follow the regular process, but lack of regular style review is not a reason for deletion in and of itself. Such files should be removed from Review needed queue. Of course, there will be trigger happy admins who still delete, but hopefully community will stop that in most cases. Should we advertise on COM:VP/Copyright? Are there other places to draw discussion from? ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 04:01, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
@Gone Postal: I think we need 2 things: 1) A template or parameter for old files that need a review. I think active reviewers can decide that because it is meant to help reviewers and it will only put the files in another category until the file is reviewed. 2) A template for old files where the review failed. I agree we need wide concensus for this. We can wait a few days and see if more users comment. If not we can poke the admins or on Copyright. --MGA73 (talk) 17:55, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

I suggest that categorizing by language would be better. License reviewer must be able to read copyright notice on the source pages to review files. Reviewer should concentrate on files that can be reviewed by them. – Kwj2772 (talk) 15:32, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes that could perhaps be helpful too. But sometimes google translate can help. :-)
But I still think we need to find out what to do with old files. New files should be speedied if there is a problem. --MGA73 (talk) 17:07, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/41782 is a rough breakdown of files currently needing LR by year and https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/41781 is a list of files needing review by date of first upload. Both only consider the main category, not subcategories. The first query shows that the number of images in the category from 2019-2020 (~10,500 files) is two orders of magnitude greater than in the 10 years between 2008 and 2018 (~160 files). Considering these numbers, I think it would be best to have reviewers coordinate to review and pass what can be passed and then mass-DR what's left. Nothing in the category now is older than COM:GOF, so I don't think we should be grandfathering any of them in. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 19:51, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

I've put the list of pre-2019 files needing LR on User:AntiCompositeNumber/OldLR. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 19:04, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
@AntiCompositeNumber: It looks great! I thought most of them were oldies. But it seems it is not that many after all. Hopefully we can take more at once (like those from Ukraine, those from YouTube etc.). --MGA73 (talk) 16:14, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
@MGA73: Adding in subcategories only brings in a few thousand URAA files and nothing from other sites. Since that's a completely different type of review, I don't really count it as part of this backlog. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 20:46, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

There is a similar problem in Category:Flickr images not found and some old files are nominated for deletion because license can't be confirmed. If we wanna add a {{Grandfathered old file}} template variant I think we should make comments about it in DR's. --MGA73 (talk) 18:23, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

@AntiCompositeNumber: picasaweb is dead. Can you make a list of all files from picasa? I'm afraid we have no choice but to nominate all for deletion. --MGA73 (talk) 11:54, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

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