User talk:Alden Loveshade

English: Welcome to the Commons, Alden Loveshade!

First steps tutorial Our first steps help file and our FAQ will help you a lot after registration. They explain how to customize the interface (for example the language), how to upload files and our basic licensing policy. You don't need technical skills in order to contribute here. Be bold contributing here and assume good faith for the intentions of others. This is a wiki ‒ it is really easy. Getting help More information is available at the Community Portal. You may ask questions at the Help desk, Village Pump or on IRC channel #wikimedia-commons (direct access). You can also contact an administrator on their talk page. If you have a specific copyright question, ask at Commons talk:Licensing.		Goodies, tips and tricks Put Babel boxes on your user page so others know what languages you can speak and indicate your Graphics abilities. All your uploads are stored in your personal Gallery Please sign your name on Talk pages by typing ~~~~ Use the CommonSense tool to find good categories for your files (then other people can find them too!) To link to an image page, write this: [[:Image:Foo.jpg]], it makes this: Image:Foo.jpg If you're copying files from another project, be sure to use the CommonsHelper Made a mistake? Did you want to rename or move a file? Simply upload the file again and mark the old one like this: {{bad name|Correct name}} For more information read the full Deletion guidelines
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--SieBot 18:47, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

File:English Teacher band 2024.png

Hi Alden Lovenshade. Since you're claiming File:English Teacher band 2024.png as your "own work", I'm wondering whether you could provide a little more detail about it. There have recently been several other files of the band uploaded to Commons/Wikipedia which have had licensing/permission related issues that ended up leading to their deletion. So, if you can provide a link, EXIF data or even perhaps email COM:VRT per COM:EMAIL to help verify your copyright ownership, then that would go a long way in helping to avoid this file being deleted from Commons. The image kind of looks like a composite of other images taken of the band's members, and might therefore be a COM:DW. If that's the case, not only would the licensing of the derivative, but also the licensing of any other works used to create the derivative would need to be verified. So, if it's a derivative created using other photos, providing links or other information about their en:provenance would also aid in the verification process. -- Marchjuly (talk) 20:46, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate your concern. Please forgive me for this, but....

I've done writing/graphic design/photography/art used by the Associated Press, Yahoo! (including Yahoo! News), Society for Creative Anachronism, scifi.radio, Steve Jackson Games, NBC Sports Network, etc. I can provide proof if you want it. That's in addition to having been employed by one of the 50 largest circulation newspapers in the United States.

Partially due to years of experience, I can easily understand their regulations. I have never once had anything I did for any media service successfully legally challenged. And I've even successfully filed DMCA take-down orders by myself through five different countries. (Although that was tricky, and I failed with China.)

But Wikimedia...no. I have not been able to fathom its requirements.

English Teacher has been very busy with concerts related to their first album, but they are currently "taking a break." They may have time to respond. So if you want to check with them to verify this is OK, their website is at https://www.englishteacherband.com/

Maybe these links on legal decisions will help.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40319-023-01297-9

https://legalbeagle.com/copyright-laws-on-screenshots.html

Alden Loveshade (talk) 23:16, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the response. Probably the easiest thing for you to do here would be to go to Commons:Email templates/Consent, click on "Use the Interactive Release Generator!", and verify your copyright authorship over the image. Nobody is going to check with the band itself since the burden of providing sufficent means of verifying the file's license and your copyright authorship falls entirely upon you as explained in Commons:Project scope/Evidence. If left as is, there's no guarantee that the file's licensing will be challenge by someone and possibly tagged/nominated for deletion at some point. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:37, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the link and info--that made it a lot easier! So I just did the email.

And I apologize for my long-winded rant. It's just that, over just short of 25 years, I think Wikipedia/Wikicommons has fallen into what I call the "Anti-Establishment Paradox." Things here used to be "unlike establishment publications, anyone can edit here!" Now it's, "If you're going to edit here, you have to understand and follow these dozens and dozens of regulations--and then deal with administrators who disagree with other administrators' interpretation of those regulations--which by the way may have changed from what they were a couple months ago." Alden Loveshade (talk) 03:07, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

By doing the email, I'm assuming that you meant you emailed VRT. If that's the case, what you can now do is go to the file's page, click edit, and add the syntax {{Permission pending}} (Template:Permission pending). This will let those looking at the file's page know that an email has been sent to VRT and is in the process of being verified. Once a VRT member reviews the email, they will either replace the "Permission pending" template with Template:Permission received or Template:Permission ticket. The "Permission recieved" templates confirms that VRT received an email but there were issues with it that still need to be resolved. The VRT member who reviewed the email should contact you by email and let you know what those issues are and what you need to do to resolve them. The "Permission ticket" template means a VRT member reviewed the email and found everything to be in order;in other words, everything checks out and the image is considered OK for Commons. After you email VRT, you should receive an automated reply which contains a VRT ticket number. You should keep this number on hand for reference because it's like a case file number that you can refer to in any additional exchanges with VRT. You can ask general questions about your ticket at COM:VRTN, but VRT members are prohibited from discussing details with anyone other than the persons sending then emails and they won't discuss details even with those persons on any Commons pages. So, detialed questions should probably be asked by email.

Some other things you might want to look at are COM:ENFORCE and COM:LRV. Most of the free licenses that Commons accepts are non-revocable and pretty much allow anyone anywhere in the world to download the file and reuse for any purpose (including commercial and derivative uses). If, as the file's copyright holder, you don't want to allow others to do that, it's probably better you try and get the file deleted from Commons sooner than later because the longer it's on Commons the greater the chance that it'ends up being used by someone somewhere (including ways not related to the band or Wikipedia) that you might not like, and you won't really be able to stop them (at least not for copyright infringement reasons) as long as the reusers comply with the terms of the file's licensing. If, by chance, you do find someone reusing the file in a way that violates its licensing, you will need to be the one who seeks redress since you're the copyright holder. Given what you've posted above, you most likely understand most of these, but I'm providing links to those Commons pages just in case you don't.

As for your other comments, I'm sure others feel similarly; however, I'll just say that a lot of things can change in 25 years and the Wikipedia/Commons today is not really the same as the Wikipedia/Commons from 25 years ago. Both are still projects that anyone who wants to can freely edit, but they're not free-for-all projects where anything goes. Each project has its own policies and guidelines that have been developed over the years and everyone is expected to do their best to follow. Those are unhappy with the current iterations of each project can, after all, seek other alternative outlets if they find the set up to be too restrictive. They can even use the Wikipedia software to create their own "pedia" is they want. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:28, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate the info. After reading your information, I think I see that the increasing regulations may be at least partly due to this being an "anyone who wants to can freely edit" site. When a professional publisher is working with a professional that's worked for them before, the assumption is largely things are going to be done right unless proved otherwise.

And I remember the first time I wrote for Yahoo. It was more-or-less, "We saw your professional credentials, we want an article on this which you said you can write, so send it to us by this deadline." I actually fully kept the copyright, just gave Yahoo the right to use it first (and probably exclusively for a specified period of time. The time's long over, so I don't remember.)

The regulations here have apparently changed, though, so that a contributor has less rights over their own work than they used to. Alden Loveshade (talk) 15:46, 3 June 2024 (UTC)