Commons:WikiProject Postcards/Upload

Upload postcards

There are four ways that you can upload files.

Replace an existing file

Many postcard files are unfortunately low resolution images. If you have a file with a higher resolution than the SAME existing image, then you can replace the low resolution image by your file. The procedure is as follows :

1. Load the File XXXXXXX.jpg that you wish to replace.
2. In the section "File history" , click : "Upload a new version of this file"
3. In the section "Source filename" give the path and filemane of your replacement file.
4. In the section "File description" Describe the changes that your file brings. For example higher resolution image or better quality image
5. Click Upload file.
6. Your file will replace the existing file.

Uploading a FEW new files

The default way of uploading a few files at the same time is : Commons:Upload.

This is very practical if :

1. All the files have the same author;
2. All the files have the same source;
3. All the files have the same licence.

You can upload up to 50 files at once.

For each file you will have to provide :

1. A title in a a language of your choice (you can give titles in several languages).
2. A short discription in a language of your choice (you can give descriptions in several languages).
3. A publication date of the image
4. The categories that will be assigned to the file.

There is the possibility to copy automatically all the information in the first file to all the other files. (Attention to the checked options before copying !)

Upload MANY new postcards

A set of postcards will usually have different photographers, different sources and probably need different licences. Commons:Upload allows for this possibilty and you must provide the required information for each file individually. This has to be done "online" and is time consuming and very error-prone.

A much better method is to use Commons:Pattypan.

1. This tool scans a folder at your computer that contains all the files you wish to upload and generates a table, which will be saved in a spreadsheet-file.
2. Afterwards, and offline, you can complete the table with all metadata, using your office tools (Libre Office, MS Excel, ...).
3. When this work is completed, Pattypan can be used to load the table and upload all images from your folder together with their metadata.

For example all 590 images of the Category:Postcards by Erwin Spindler were uploaded this way.

If you have more than 3 or 4 files to upload this tool could become your default method!

Pattypan tutorial

Put all the files you wish to upload in a folder.

The files should be correctly named and you should verify that they do not already exist in Commons. If a file does exist, and your file is a better copy, then REPLACE the existing file by your copy.

Load Pattypan :

1. Pattypan will ask for your identity ; this is your Wikipedia user name and password.
2. Click "Generate a spreadsheet" ;
3. Select the path to your folder ;
4. Click "Next".

Pattypan will propose several default templates. In our case the appropriate template is "Photographe"

1. Select the parameters that you will need when uploading to Commons : Source ; Author ; Licence ; Title ; Description ; date. These will be the column titles in the spreadsheet.
2. You can fill in some default values. For example, if you are uploading a set of very old postcards you can put :

{{pd-old-70-1923}} as the default value for "Licence".

If they are all by the same photographer you can put his name as the default value for "Author". If the author has Wikidata information, you can use a Creator script e.g. {{Creator:Marcel Delboy}}

For the title and description, if you are going to use a languages other than English, you can put, say {{fr|1= }} and if you are going to use several langues you can put {{fr|1= }};{{de|1= }}. Note they are separed by a semicolon ( ; ).

Click NEXT. Pattypan will create the spreadsheet in your folder.

Open the spreadsheet. The file paths, file names and the default values have been filled in.

An extra column has been added : Categories. NOTE : when you fill in this colum you can put several categories. 'The category names must be separated by a semicolon ( ; ). For example if your file is in Category:XXX , Category:YYYY and in Category:ABC, then you should write : XXX;YYYY;ABC

Take your time to carefully fill in the details for each file.

IMPORTANT : When you save the spreadsheet ALWAYS save it in th ( .xls ) format. It is the most basic spreadsheet format and the only one that Pattypan recognises.

When you have completed filling in the details, open Pattypan and click VERFY and UPLOAD

Choose the path to your spreadshhet. Pattypan will do somme quick chechs and if everything is OK, will upload all the files to Commons.

Upload a HUGE number of postcards

If you want to upload a huge number of postcards, the tool Commons:VicuñaUploader is very good.

For example over 30.000 images of the Category:Postcards published by Brück & Sohn were uploaded in this way.

Normally, you should start the program and generate a session and upload the files, edit the metadata, and upload the whole work. But you can also save your session as a XML-File. This XML-File can be used as API for a big upload.

If you store all data of your postcards in a database you can generate an XML-file in Vicuña-format and upload a huge number of postcards in Commons.

Category manipulation

In this project we will often have to modify categories. For example, an existing category, which may contain hundreds of files, has a name which does not conform to the international standard of category names. It is not realistic to change the category of each file one by one.

The tool Cat-a-lot exists and lets you easily change or add new categories to all files in a given category.

In your Preferences, section tools, find Cat-a-lot and add it to your toolbox. The online documentation explains how to use Cat-a-lot.