User talk:Dodger67

Welcome to Wikimedia Commons, Dodger67!

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A suggestion

I saw User:Fastily deleted your comment.

In my experience Fastily is well intentioned. They seem to genuinely believe all their acts are in the best interests of the project. Sadly, I have found that their interpretation of policy can be, well, narrow.

Other administrators are likely to have different interpretations, and I encourage you initiate a request at Commons:REFUND. It is probably best to hold back from explicitly stating or strongly implying bad motives -- rather write as if a busy person overlooked details and made an honest mistake.

So:

1. List all the files Fastily deleted.
2. If you can explain why you are sure the images are all too old to qualify for copyright, offer that explanation. If it is obvious to fair-minded consideration that the images really are too old qualify for copyright it should be open and shut.
3. Don't complain Fastily acted in a way "tantamount to vandalism". Do say you contacted the deleting administrator, but they didn't offer any help or advice.

Good luck! Geo Swan (talk) 05:46, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Geo Swan, thanks for responding to the matter. I'm afraid my knowledge of how Commons works is very limited - I actually thought Fastily was possibly a bot that dealt with Speedy deletions and I was also rather upset about the sudden disappearance of obviously PD images from articles I care about, hence my response was rather too sharp - apologies to User:Fastily.

The images concerned are all book illustrations by en:John Tenniel, a British artist who died more than 100 years ago (in 1914). The illustrations were first published in England in 1865 (Alice in Wonderland) or 1871 (Through the Looking Glass). By even the most restrictive copyright standard that I am aware of, life of artist plus 100 years, they clearly qualify as PD. As I said, my Commons skills are very limited so I do not know how to go about compiling a list of the deleted images (I only noticed those that were removed from the en.WP articles about the artist and the two books (there may be others) so I would appreciate some help with that. Thanks. Dodger67 (talk) 08:00, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

• Died one hundred years ago? Well, that is convincing to me, and I believe reasonable and cooperative administrators should consider this an open and shut case. All that is needed to start the restoration process is a list of the names of the deleted images. Do you have that list?

If you don't, but they were deleted recently, they would probably be on your "watchlist". I you click on the "watchlist" button you should get a list of files and discussions you have shown you are interested in, that have had some change to them. If you visually scan that list the deleted files will really stand out, because they will be listed in red. The watchlist page has buttons to let you select how far it looks back. It can't look back farther than 30 days, or more than a certain number of events, so do this as soon as possible. Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 12:34, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

• Was File:Alice in Arm-Chair.jpg one of the images you uploaded? When you upload images over 100 years old you can place a {{PD-Old}} tag in their description. Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 14:10, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

(ec)@Geo Swan I'm afraid my watchlist here at Commons includes only the few pages that I have directly edited. I have looked at the histories of the affected en.WP articles and found the following: File:The Pool of Tears.png, File:Alice in Arm-Chair.jpg and File:Alice and Chesire.gif - there may be others that I can't trace as they might not have been used in relevant articles on en.WP but I suspect they may appear grouped together in a deletion log somewhere. Dodger67 (talk) 14:24, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

I didn't upload them or in any way, shape or form edit them at all - they are just some of my favourite illustrations and seeing them disapear was rather upsetting. Dodger67 (talk) 14:26, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

• I am a fan of Lewis Carroll too. This link should take you to a spot in User:Fastily's deletion log just before April 8th, the day he deleted File:Alice in Arm-Chair.jpg. Do you have the patience to scan over the names of a couple of hundred images Fastily deleted on 2015-04-08?

The deletion log entry Fastily left was "No license since 30 March 2015". That is very odd if these images had been in use on en.wiki for a long time. It implies they were validly licensed prior to 2015-03-30.

It makes me wonder whether a vandal had recently removed the images' valid licenses. In my opinion a responsible administrator should engage in some simple sanity checking before deleting files or categories. In particular, I think they should check the image or category's revision history to see if the problem was triggered by vandalism. I am very sorry to say some administrators do not feel obliged to engage in simple sanity checking prior to deleting material. Geo Swan (talk) 01:23, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

@Geo Swan REFUND request posted, thanks for all the help. Dodger67 (talk) 11:51, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

• Confirming the above comment by Geo Swan, the appearance of incivility in the post to User talk:Fastily led him to just blank the request. That was not "best practice," on his part, my opinion, though it is not surprising.

• I know what you were doing, you were working on maintaining Wikipedia content, a noble purpose.

• However, you did not understand what Fastily did. It is totally routine. When a file is missing proper license information, someone will tag it for that. If the information is not supplied within a certain number of days, it is routinely deleted. Those are speedy deletions, and speedy deletion is designed for efficiency, not full depth of investigation. If the license information is missing, the user will be notified when the page is tagged. From history of w:John Tenniel I find the links were added by User:Nfuerth, and, on User talk:Nfuerth, the user was notified of missing license information, for the three files, March 30. No response. Thus, on April 7, Fastily deleted, with the routine edit summary: (No license since 30 March 2015: you may re-upload the file, but please include a license tag)

• That was a clear instruction. That instruction was repeated in the bot removals from en.wiki.

• However, the user does not have email enabled and has not edited since March 27. Probably the user has not even seen any of this. But you saw it, apparently. You have an expectation about Commons, from your user page. I only come to Commons when I really have to, because this place is a scary minefield of Wikilawyering. So you came and found what you expected. That's routine, you know that, right? Essentially, you created the response.

• Commons can be a "minefield," I'll agree with that, but there is a difference: I'm working to do something about it. How about joining us? One little bit at a time, as you find time, get involved, learn how Commons works -- and how it doesn't work. The problem that makes Commons a minefield is not "wikilawyers," but lack of structure and guidance. Commons is, for better or worse, dependent for its mission upon a very difficult set of decisions, about copyright, where lawyers disagree and common knowledge is often incorrect. So you will see arcane discussions here. Hey, we don't know if there is FOP in Fandanistan, so PRP requires deletion.

• You did ping Fastily here with an apology, which was great. Instead of going to the undeletion request page, you could have apologized on his talk page, and then sought help. People like to help, they dislike being told they are wrong. But there is nothing more for you to do, now, here, I think. That ping may have been enough. Fastily has not banned you from his Talk page. So next time you have an occasion to ping Fastily, you might start with a brief apology, that's all.

• Good luck. One more comment: "kill all the lawyers" has never helped any society. Lawyers serve a function. One of the most dangerous Wikipedia tropes is the idea that wiki problems are caused by Bad Users, and therefore the solution is to get rid of the Bad Users. This doesn't work in the real world -- ever -- and it doesn't work on-wiki. While yes, societies protect themselves from dangerous people, and such exist, social problems are a result of something missing. Often it is support and guidance. Hence what I'm doing. This is aimed toward supporting you, so that the next time you come to Commons, you will be more successful. The result here wasn't bad, you should now know what to do on en.wiki, just replace those files with better copies. Look in Category:John Tenniel's illustrations of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. If there aren't any, come back and ask about it.

• Meanwhile, I love Carroll/Dodgson. I read Martin Gardner's edition of the two Alice books to my daughter, so far, five times aloud, and Dodgson described what was later called w:Asset voting, probably the most advanced voting system ever invented, and simple, and revolutionary if implemented, which has only been done once to my knowledge, by the Election Science Foundation (later named the Center for Election Science). It worked spectacularly. --Abd (talk) 19:01, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

File:2016 South African municipal election posters in Cape Town.jpg

File:2016 South African municipal election posters in Cape Town.jpg has been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether it should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this file, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it, such as a copyright issue. Please see Commons:But it's my own work! for a guide on how to address these issues. Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

Patrick Rogel (talk) 11:48, 1 April 2019 (UTC)