Commons:Village pump/Archive/2012/12

questions on old Congo

• Does anyone know what "factorerie Hollandaise" means in french? (File:Banana factorerie Hollandaise.jpg)
• What kind of tomb is this? (File:Moanda - tombe Kabinda.jpg)Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:44, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

handelsfactorij, handelspost, what they now would call Dutch business centre or en:Factory (trading post) ? --Foroa (talk) 11:04, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it's a trading post. 80.169.233.234 12:48, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Trading posts

I have added the correct category, however I discover that there is confusion between factory (Trading posts) and factory (industry) in the commons. I have done some changes but a lot more more needs to done.Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:05, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

• "Factory" as trading post is pretty archaic English; "factor", meaning "agent" just slightly less so, revived by John Barth's 20th century novel The Sotweed Factor. - Jmabel ! talk 01:52, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

misleading town flag

As the problem still is not solved, I would like to remind of this this notification. Is this really big problem to fix this? // 149.156.172.74 16:11, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

If you put this request in the Commons:Graphics lab, you're more likely to get a reply. This page is mainly for discussion, not editing files. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 17:49, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

 Done. You could have done this easily by yourself. --McZusatz (talk) 17:53, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Jmabel ! talk 01:53, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

December 1

Pb with sorting Key in Creator template ?

Hello,

I'm wondering what's the use of the compulsory SortKey field in {{Creator}}, since the sorting is obviously by first name in Category:Creator templates without authority control data and other Creator categories ? --Hsarrazin (talk) 14:20, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

The sortkey will only affect categorisation of category items in other categories. I.e. Category:A. L. Westgard will display correctly under 'W' in Category:Photographers from Norway. Category:Creator templates without authority control data is not affected because its items are pages (Pages in category "Creator templates without authority control data"), not categories. Regards, Peter Weis (talk) 14:30, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand the difference, but whatever ;) - if it works correctly, and the non-sorting in "Creator templates without authority control data" is normal, then, it's OK for me --Hsarrazin (talk) 12:55, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Category-Problem

In Category:Der Schatz der Metropolitankirche zu Gran the Category:BDA-Scan from Hungary appears. Vice-versa in the Category:BDA-Scan from Hungary the Subcategory doesn't appear. Who can me. Thanks a lot. K@rl (talk) 09:03, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

With Category:BDA-Scan from Austria it works correctly - I can't see a difference. --K@rl (talk) 10:25, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

it okay, it was a cache problem --K@rl (talk) 10:36, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Software for editing SVG files

Does anyone know a program or software i could use to alter this image? I would like to fill the gaps. Pass a Method (talk) 09:47, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Inkscape? Adelbrecht (talk) 10:39, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Can you think of any more which are easy to use? This is my first time. And can you provide a URL plese? Pass a Method (talk) 11:40, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

You can sometimes edit SVG files with a text editor, but Inkscape does look best for this situation. There is a list of software tools (with URLs) at the Commons:Graphic Lab. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 12:02, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Should i link or embed the image into Inkfile? Pass a Method (talk) 13:11, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Please do neither embed nor link to raster graphics (also referred to as "bitmap"). When you link to the file, other users will of course not see it (because they can't access your hard drive). There is usually no benefit having a SVG with embedded raster graphics over a plain PNG. You have to draw the symbols in Inkscape or you import a path from a SVG, EPS, AI, PS or PDF document. It is worth considering reading Help:SVG when you are totally new. -- Rillke^(q?) 14:40, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Pass a Method -- Inskcape is apparently the only full-featured open-source SVG editing program, but its SVG output can sometimes have incompatibilities with current Wikimedia software (the "flowtext" nonsense, etc. etc.). I don't use Inkscape to edit SVG files, only to test and convert them, but my working methods are rather eccentric by the standards of most SVG uploaders (I use a text editor to fix problems with existing SVG files, often use PostScript to lay out new SVGs containing abstract shapes, and occasionally use FontForge to clean up selected outlines).
With respect to File:Religious symbols-4x4.svg -- don't overwrite this image without the consent of User:Sowlos. Some 4x4 religious symbol graphics containing a full 16 symbols already exist: AnonMoos (talk) 16:23, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

• 
• 

Link or embed?

I hve imported the image mentioned above into Inkfile. Should i embed it or link it? Pass a Method (talk) 13:29, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

embed. Otherwise it wont work after uploading to commons. --McZusatz (talk) 14:25, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

There is a rectangular shape in the middle of the Inkfile document image. Should i get rid of it? If so, how? Pass a Method (talk) 14:31, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I think you should go to a forum devoted specifically to that software program to ask such questions. Do you mean "Inkscape"? -- AnonMoos (talk) 16:28, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry but this way beyond my abilities to help except to suggest posting a link to this thread at Commons:Graphics village pump and asking for help there.--KTo288 (talk) 19:17, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Erase

When i use the eraser on Inkscape it merely leaves a red line, without erasing anything. I think it has a red fill, but i need white one. What can i do to fix that? Pass a Method (talk) 13:18, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

A vector editor doesn't need an "eraser" at all for vector operations (my old version of Inkscape doesn't have an eraser in the toolbar). Anyway, please group your queries together in this section (though your probability of receiving directly useful replies is probably somewhat low). AnonMoos (talk) 02:03, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Pb with dating

I noticed hundreds of artwork, like File:Thomas Gainsborough - Isaac Henrique Sequeira - WGA8422.jpg have a "Error: Invalid time." in the Date field. I don't understand how the template functions, so I don't know what to do to repair it... What is the problem ? and could it be fixed by a bot ? --Hsarrazin (talk) 12:52, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Seems to be working now, was presumably a problem with something invoked by in Template:other date... AnonMoos (talk) 02:15, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Files moved from Assamese wikipedia

I have copied some picture from Assamese wikipedia as.wikipedia using a bot script. If these works are okey then I can delete those pictures from the assamese wikipedia. Please have a look on that. Waiting for your reply. Bishnu_Saikia ^(Talk) 21:17, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

If you mean images uploaded on 26 November, they are ok, in my opinion. Ruslik (talk) 11:30, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Please clear about it, why before 26 November ? I got some puzzle. Here is the category Assamese Wikipedia Photo Competition. Bishnu_Saikia ^(Talk) 17:35, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Why I am not getting any answers from anyone ?? Please guide. Bishnu_Saikia ^(Talk) 14:07, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Images in the category are ok, in my opinion. Ruslik (talk) 09:05, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I think all except one of the photographs are OK, provided they have been licensed under a suitable free licence by the photographers. You should generally pay attention to photographs of modern artworks. In India, photographs of modern architectural works, sculptures and three-dimensional works of artistic craftsmanship can be uploaded under the freedom of panorama principle, but photographs of modern two-dimensional works such as paintings, posters and photographs are not acceptable: see "Commons:Copyright rules by territory#India". Photographs of old artworks that are in the public domain are OK.

The photograph that I think may be a problem is "File:AhomDregon.JPG". The uploader claimed it was his or her own work, but because of the pattern of dots it looks like a scan of a picture from a book or magazine. I am nominating it for deletion. — SMUconlaw (talk) 11:04, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks to all. Now I can delete this photos in my own wiki. And about the "File:AhomDregon.JPG", the uploader "Bitopan Gogoi" may scanned the image and thereafter modified it. Actually this photo was in the scope of Assamese wikipedia photo completion, so I just transferred it to commons. If rules say no then okey. You can delete that. But one thing at last, I guess it may be a public domain photo in India. Because the photo is too old and now it is under public domain. Its derived from a coin in ancient Assam which was used in Ahom kingdom (1228–1826). There are few more free photos in the Assamese wikipedia. I am now busy with to transfer to commons. May be it will be okey to delete directly after transfering to commons. Bishnu_Saikia ^(Talk) 14:04, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

PDF questions

Recently I've been uploading public domain books in PDF format for use on the Spanish Wikisource. There doesn't seem to be a lot of mention of PDF file handling in the help pages on Commons and I have a couple of queries:

• Can you include a PDF in a gallery, and still specify the page to display? At the moment, if I stick a PDF into a gallery only the 1st page displays (usually a Google Books disclaimer); I would far rather display the title page.
• On a similar vein, on the file page itself, is it possible to set the default display page for the preview? Again, the book's title page would be far more meaningful.

Thanks, Simon Burchell (talk) 13:59, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

[[:File:name of the file.pdf|page=xx]] should do the trick :)

also, if you use the {{Book}} template to put informations, the Image page allows to specify the page that can be seen...

see File:Ségur - Les Malheurs de Sophie.djvu (it's a djvu, but the principle is the same) --Hsarrazin (talk) 15:03, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Many thanks for that - I'll give it a try. Best regards, Simon Burchell (talk) 15:31, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

I've not had much luck - I've used the Book template as suggested (see File:Gobierno general, moral y político por Andrés Ferrer de Valdecebro.pdf, and set the page to display as 13, yet the file still displays the Google disclaimer on page 1, and if I look into the category, e.g. Category:Books in Spanish, again all I'm seeing is the first page. Simon Burchell (talk) 15:49, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

[[File:Gobierno general, moral y político por Andrés Ferrer de Valdecebro.pdf|page=13|100px]] gives

is not it what you'd like ? --Hsarrazin (talk) 16:16, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, I can get a particular page to display as a thumb image, but what I was really after was that, when looking at the preview in a category or clicking into the file itself, a predetermined page shows instead of the front page. Simon Burchell (talk) 16:22, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately no to both questions. For the first question that is bugzilla:8480. For the second question - That sounds like a good idea, so I filed an enhancement request for it (bugzilla:42632) Bawolff (talk) 19:57, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, suspected as much. Thanks and all the best, Simon Burchell (talk) 21:51, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

 Question By the way, does anybody know why PDF is rendered to JPEG instead of PNG? — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 07:33, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I think PNG would consume too much resources as PDF is not meant to store things to be rendered in PNG, such as vector data. Use SVG for that purpose. --McZusatz (talk) 09:46, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Some PDFs are vectors fonts only, but it would be rather complicated to render to either PNG or JPEG depending on the data in each individual page. AnonMoos (talk) 02:18, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

JPG would probably be slightly more space efficient, particularly for scans. There is currently a change in gerrit to switch it to be PNG's. However its stalled because reviewers think we should allow both types to be chosen (Like we do with tiff images. Doing so is not super complicated - but still more than the 10 minutes that it would take to change jpg->png). See comments on gerrit:6802 Bawolff (talk) 18:57, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

OK. :-) I think, PNG should be used by default. Scanned PDFs are usually bitonal, and practically all PDFs have a lot of sharp edges, so that JPEG is not much more "efficient" in terms of file size, but produces quite distracting artifacts (especially for scanned PDFs with speckles). Moreover, if you have a "smooth" image in PDF, you can easily convert it to JPEG before uploading — there is no much need to do it in thumbnails. At the same time, creating an SVG image from a "usual" vectors fonts[ rasters] PDF is not that easy (plus, the SVG render here is buggy)... — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk)

CREATING A PORTAL ON WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

We would like to launch a new project on Wikimedia commons, similar to Wiki loves monuments. How does one go about creating a portal? - — Preceding unsigned comment added by MEDASSET (talk • contribs)

• It would help if you would either explain a bit more of what you want to do, or contact the people who've already done something like what you want to do. - Jmabel ! talk 01:54, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

MEDASSET -- Don't think we have "portals" here (unless you count Commons:Community Portal), but we do have projects: Commons:WikiProject Albania, Commons:WikiProject Argentina, Commons:WikiProject Arts, Commons:WikiProject Atlas, Commons:WikiProject Automobiles, Commons:WikiProject Aviation, Commons:WikiProject Birds, Commons:WikiProject Canada, Commons:WikiProject Check Wikipedia, Commons:WikiProject Chemistry, Commons:WikiProject Conservatism, Commons:WikiProject Council, Commons:WikiProject Creator, Commons:WikiProject Dacia, Commons:WikiProject Erotica, Commons:WikiProject Everyday Life, Commons:WikiProject exposing Pollution, Commons:WikiProject Flag-map, Commons:WikiProject Flags, Commons:WikiProject Flickr, Commons:WikiProject Gastropoda, Commons:WikiProject Headgear, Commons:WikiProject Heraldry, Commons:WikiProject Identifiable People, Commons:WikiProject Illustration, Commons:WikiProject India, Commons:WikiProject Insects, Commons:WikiProject Karate, Commons:WikiProject Korea, Commons:WikiProject Mammals, Commons:WikiProject Museums, Commons:WikiProject on open proxies, Commons:WikiProject Permission requests, Commons:WikiProject Peru, Commons:WikiProject Plants, Commons:WikiProject Public Domain, Commons:WikiProject Romania, Commons:WikiProject Rome, Commons:WikiProject Screencast, Commons:WikiProject Templates, Commons:WikiProject Time, Commons:WikiProject Transport, Commons:WikiProject transwiki migration, Commons:WikiProject Tree of Life, Commons:WikiProject United States, Commons:WikiProject Video games, Commons:Project London, Commons:Project Mapmaking Wiki Standards, Commons:Project Nuvola 2.0 -- AnonMoos (talk) 08:30, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

PD-UK-Gov

When I upload a file I select other license and type in PD-UK-Gov with the curly brackets. I preview and it shows the appropriate license. But when I click next it says that this isn't a valid license

Is there a bug or am i doing something wrong? -- 07:00, 4 December 2012‎ User:Gbawden

{{PD-UKGov}} is a valid license; {{PD-UK-Gov}} redirects to it. What upload tool are you using? Rd232 (talk) 12:51, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Erroneous POTD description

The actual POTD description is wrong. Please repair it. Rather than:

Fort du Mont Bart (Bavans ; France) : at the left : underground corridor with its railway between the wall street at the underground gunpowder room ; at the right : stairs to access at the underground gunpowder room.

Should be there:

Fort du Mont Bart (Bavans; France): at the left: underground corridor with its railway between the wall street at the underground gunpowder room; at the right: stairs to access at the underground gunpowder room.

in typography, you dont write a space behind ":" or ";" or "." or ",". --Juandev (talk) 07:26, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

It's presumably French punctuation conventions. The English isn't that great; better would be something like "At left, passageway with rail tracks up to the ramparts from the underground gunpowder room; at right, stairs leading upwards from the underground gunpowder room"... AnonMoos (talk) 08:38, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I fixed the punctuation as well as the translation. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 08:53, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Jmabel ! talk 16:53, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

15M milestone

Tropical Depression Seventeen-W on August 14, 1996

We broke the 15 million milestone. According to a utterly scientific method, File:17W Aug 14 1996 0124Z.png is the milestone file. Jean-Fred (talk) 12:53, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Congrats! Given that a totally scientific method was used, that is actually not a bad image. Bawolff (talk) 19:12, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Wow, it was still shy of the 15,0000,000 this morning, I was wondering when it would break the barrier not thinking it could be today. Off to update the main page.--KTo288 (talk) 20:52, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Categories and interwikis

This is really minor, and probably no big deal, but I'm trying to make sure I'm not missing something that actually matters. Normally, for a category page, I put parent categories next to last, and interwikis dead last. I was under the impression that this is standard practice, though I suppose that ultimately it doesn't matter to the end user. I was kind of surprised to be recently reverted on this. I have a feeling that this is just a nothing, but is there something I did wrong here that I'm missing? - Jmabel ! talk 00:20, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Maybe a new IP user just randomly testing the "undo" feature? -- Asclepias (talk) 00:40, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

User:Juiced_lemon was a vociferous advocate for not putting interwikis last (before he got banned), but I never fully understood why. I think that common practice is on your side... AnonMoos (talk) 00:53, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree. Putting interwikis last is common practice in Commons and in any wikipedia I've ever seen.--Pere prlpz (talk) 08:53, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

1. But there are some users who strongly feel differently. Rd232 (talk) 11:33, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

pdf thumb problem

I uploaded this pdf document but there is problem with the thumb creation. Do you know how we can solve this issue? is it a problem with the source pdf file? Ggia (talk) 08:52, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Twitter link on the main page

We should probably link to the @WikiCommons Twitter account on the main page. Comments? --theMONO 00:57, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

 Oppose — There is enough advertising around the web for them. The twitter account does not and should not provide more contents, help or discussion than you can find at Commons directly. The same is true for the mailing lists. -- Rillke^(q?) 13:39, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

You're not exactly selling it. Why should we do it? Rd232 (talk) 10:55, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

• • Wikimedians are generally opposed to integration of any form with social sites. Rillke has demonstrated this side of the argument. However, placing a link on the project would likely increase participation and subscriptions. This is especially good for our work with other nonprofit institutions that announce stuff over Twitter and new/potential contributors that usually don't subscribe or write on mailing lists. theMONO 20:26, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

 Support different people communicate differently. I think we can advertise that channel. --Jarekt (talk) 13:12, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

I'll echo Rd232 and ask what the benefit is. For that matter, what is the content? If we're going to (what I believe to be) an unofficial feed, I'd like to know whether its content is consistently something that would represent us well. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 17:52, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

• • The account has been around for a while, so there is ample content for a consistent picture of the content. From what I see, it's pretty similar to @Wikipedia content. theMONO 20:26, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
    • See below.

 Oppose The account is not official. It is not managed by community process like everything else in the site, so it should therefore not be promoted by the site itself. It is not a very popular Twitter account so there is no urgency to starting this now, because we are not losing audience by failing to use this service. Even if it were popular I would not support it unless I knew that it was managed or regulated by a community process. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:19, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

• Allow me to clarify: the only Wikimedia Twitter accounts that are considered 'official' are managed by the Wikimedia Foundation staff. The Wikimedia Commons account is managed by a group of Commons editors. However, I am not aware of any Wikimedia Twitter account managed by a 'community process' - it would make sense to have a page with contact information and best practices. However, this does not exist. The content in the account is relevant to happenings on the Commons project and the group of editors is informal and open to newcomers/suggestions. If the idea is to have a discussion with support/oppose for every tweet, I think that is rather silly. As far as I am aware, no one has expressed a concern about community control as it is in fact run by Commons editors interested in representing the community. theMONO 01:06, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
• In response to the comment that "It is not a very popular Twitter account so there is no urgency to starting this now," I am afraid that I see no reason here. The rationale for placing information about this account would be to promote subscriptions to this account. The point is to increase the subscriptions - otherwise, what is the point? theMONO 01:06, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

• would be to promote subscriptions to this account → Commons is not a promoter. Also I don't see how more splitting of information would be beneficial to Commons. There is also no CentralAuth for Twitter. IRC channel is also not on the main page but at Commons:Welcome, where I would not necessarily oppose adding a link to the twitter account as long as responsible persons have control over it and tell the reader that twitter is not hosted by a nonprofit organization (so they must somehow try to make mony with their users either selling their data or by advertising). -- Rillke^(q?) 15:59, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

• I'm sorry, but that is really quite silly. Commons should promote their presence on social media, just like Wikipedia and Wikimedia do. There is a significant difference between an IRC channel and a social account, as social networking is targeted and used heavily by the general public. Wikimedia Commons would like to increase the number of people that use, donate, and contribute to the project. A social presence is a good way to do that and is not an extension of Wikimedia Commons. The intent of social networking for brands is somewhat misunderstood among Wikimedians, who are a vocal minority that seems opposed to it. Twitter is not another interface to access Commons content and even if it was, that is what we are working toward - free use of knowledge. The few people that are opposed to social networking and the profit derived from it are aware of the fashion in which data is collected and the Wikimedia Foundation's TOS and privacy policy cover links to external sites. Twitter has 500 million active users per month, where we have only 27,918 active users (for the last 30 days) - we are not promoting Twitter, Twitter is promoting us. theMONO 18:33, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

• The few people that are opposed to social networking and the profit derived from it are aware of the fashion in which data is collected — sounds like a sneaky way to conceal the truth and is no reason not making other people aware of this use of personal profiles. -- Rillke^(q?) 12:33, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
• would like to increase the number of people that use … — Please prove with comparable tests or reliable literature. Why should we get more contributors when we add a link to Twitter to our Main page. I am sorry but this sounds really silly. -- Rillke^(q?) 12:33, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
• Commons should promote their presence on social media — Why not, but this is no reason adding a link to the main page. -- Rillke^(q?) 12:33, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
• like Wikipedia and Wikimedia do — Please where is the link to twitter at en:Main page, de:Hauptseite? -- Rillke^(q?) 12:33, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
• as social networking is targeted and used heavily by the general public — Know quite a lot people avoiding this. -- Rillke^(q?) 12:33, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

---

• Please contribute to the administration draft at Commons:Social media. theMONO 18:58, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Sounds good. But it is really hard if it will be used for canvassing and if it becomes really popular it must be coordinated properly; I mean it's nice to get lots of opinions but Commons is multilingual and it is quite hard for me reading piles of English text. So I don't like to see RfCs with a length like there are some in English Wikipedia. -- Rillke^(q?) 12:39, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Upload Wizard

How do we get changes made to the Upload Wizard? I want to address the PD-Art problem identified at Commons:Village_pump/Copyright/Archive/2012/11#template:PD-Art, but I don't know how, or who to ask. Rd232 (talk) 15:54, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

In general, file a bug (Product MediaWiki extensions, component Upload Wizard). I believe mw:User:MarkTraceur is one of the primary contributors to UploadWizard - he might be a good person to talk to. Bawolff (talk) 20:07, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I've emailed him. Fingers crossed we can actually get this fixed. Rd232 (talk) 17:30, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Hm, well based on email exchange with Mark I've created Commons:Upload_Wizard/Editing. We need to figure out a new set of related options, and then submit a request for config change. I'm thinking something like

1. The work was first published in the USA, and the copyright has definitely expired in the USA
   • The work was published before 1923 (-> PD-1923)
   • The work's copyright has expired (->PD-US)
2. Faithful reproduction of a painting that is in the public domain
   • The painting is a US painting, put on display or otherwise published before 1923 (->PD-Art|PD-1923)
   • The painting is a non-US painting by an artist who died before 1941, and the painting was put on display or otherwise published before 1923 (-> PD-Art|PD-old-70-1923).

It would be better to ask the deathyear and then plug that into PD-old-auto, but I don't know if we can make that happen. Rd232 (talk) 22:00, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

File copyright question

Hi, I don't know much about copyright issues for images, but I posted a talk message on the issue at en wiki, although I noticed the user is not that active. Could anyone from Commons give their views on my queries about the copyright status of the image? The post in question is at [3], and I don't know if you want to post there or else at my en wiki talk page? Regards. Eldumpo (talk) 22:21, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

• The original source (or close to it) is archived here. I can't see that the current CIA Worldbook has this map, so the original ref may have to suffice, and I'll substitute it into the image page. Rodhullandemu (talk) 00:04, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
• Looking at it again, it seems to be at least derivative of the image here, for which copyright is claimed; if there's no satisfactory explanation, and quickly, I suggest the image should be nominated for deletion. Rodhullandemu (talk) 01:32, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

The link you found is not the same map, so I have struck it out at the description page. The page you found, at which a copyright is claimed, is the same as I referred to in my original post, but agree this is the key point, and suggests a non-free image. Regards. Eldumpo (talk) 21:07, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

• Nominated for deletion as a copyvio. Rodhullandemu (talk) 15:19, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

December 5

PNG

Can you use PNG files on Inkscape? Pass a Method (talk) 21:30, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

You can certainly embed them, as you did multiple times in File:Diverse religions 4×5.svg. In the old version of Inkscape installed on my system, you can't do much with them once you've embedded them, other than make them display within a specified rectangle. Not sure whether that may have changed in more recent versions of Inkscape... AnonMoos (talk) 01:34, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

You could use trace bitmap which leads to patchy results. --McZusatz (talk) 15:23, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

December 6

Author died over 100 years ago but image still copyrighted?

According to this Oxford DNB page, "rights in this image are owned by the rights holder(s) named above. You are not permitted to download or reproduce this image from the Oxford DNB Online web site: see legal notice." However, the author of the image died over 100 years ago. Is it really not in public domain? Surtsicna (talk) 15:03, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

• In this case, I'd say copyfraud. It **is** possible for such a thing to occur if the image was only belatedly published, but this is certainly not an example of that. - Jmabel ! talk 16:33, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

The portrait is in public domain, but the scanned file made from it might be copyrighted in the United Kingdom. Anyway, it can be uploaded to Commons using {{PD-Art}}.--Pere prlpz (talk) 16:35, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

The person mentioned as claiming a copyright on that reproduction is the NPG. For the position of the NPG on reproductions, see this page, for the response, see there and for the position of Commons, see this page. -- Asclepias (talk) 16:42, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you all for your help! I've uploaded the file (File:Henrietta Stanley, Baroness Stanley of Alderley.jpg). It will certainly improve the quality of an article I'm working on. Surtsicna (talk) 17:07, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

December 7

Galleries in Categories

Hi everyone, As some of you may be aware, it is now common to have a category for a single artwork, such as Category:Self-portrait by Van Gogh (1889, Musée d'Orsay) or Category:Musée du Louvre, Ma 1161. The problem is, artworks are visual and thus only giving the inventory number is really not helpful for someone who is looking for a particular kind of sculpture painting. (I guess no one has any idea what a subcategory of Category:Items_displayed_during_L'Image_et_le_Pouvoir might contain before clicking). Thus, I think it is time to use galleries in categories, such as Category:Self-portrait paintings by Vincent van Gogh (you see every painting once. To find other versions, you just have to click on the inventory number. Basic informations (date and museum) are provided). I think the usefulness of having galleries in cat is even better illustrated by Category:La Berceuse, where the paintings are really really close to each other.

Of course, it would be awesome if mediawiki would provide this kind of gallery natively, with automatically displaying value images (or a randomly selected image) from each subcategory of a category. (And only for some kind of categories and not all). Howether, I familiar enougth with the joke "Mediawiki : there is an open bug for it" to know that this kind of feature would not be implemented before having clear US policy on public domain or Freedom of Panorama in France.

Do you have any thoughts on this ? Léna (talk) 18:04, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

We have something the like in Category:Felis silvestris catus and all sorts of animals by colour, but in general the number of options is far more limited. I would suggest as a minimum to:

• Display a clickable category next to each sample
• Make the list collapsed by default using {{Collapse}} as people that use that category the most know what to look for and don't need to scroll through several page. --Foroa (talk) 18:25, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

@Léna : from what you show in Category:Self-portrait paintings by Vincent van Gogh, I understand you mean, using a Gallery as a series of links to subcategories ? - it seems a very good idea - compact AND understandable - the counter-example Category:Items_displayed_during_L'Image_et_le_Pouvoir is unusable for anyone not knowing the numbers of the artwork displayed… --Hsarrazin (talk) 18:54, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

It seems they need renaming unless they are used as secondary category names to hold subcategories only.

e.g. ["Bust of Marcus Aurelius" with some suffix] seems better than Category:Musée du Louvre, Ma 1161. --  Docu  at 19:59, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

The idea could work, but I think galleries should be collapsable. Anyway, this can be used only in some kings of categories - specially in very stable categories that are not going to be divided. The other option is to put categories in galleries, or to make galleries enough to navigate through galleries - with links to categories when needed.--Pere prlpz (talk) 20:02, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't see the point in collapsing : makes it harder for newbies (I know, what would newbies do in a Commons category) while not changing anything for experiences users.

The gallery is clickage (via the inventory number). Léna (talk) 21:23, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

If the gallery is always updated, always showing it can be easier for newbies, but if it is outdated and it hides the category content, it will be harder for newbies.

Anyway, a gallery supported by good tools easing automated updating and manual change of images (maybe something like Hot-cat to change images in the gallery) might work.--Pere prlpz (talk) 21:47, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I did something which might work for this for Mozart sound files, created a gallery which could serve as an index to works which would be hidden in categories and which could not be found unless you knew where to look for them. Such index categories could be created for both institutions and individual authors with large bodies of work, Users will be able to find an artwork by its thumbnail without knowing its name or catalogue number, by embedding the category in the description for each thumbnail the user can click on it and be taken to the right category.--KTo288 (talk) 23:42, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Galleries in Categories: Is there an open bug for it?

"Of course, it would be awesome if mediawiki would provide this kind of gallery natively, with automatically displaying value images (or a randomly selected image) from each subcategory of a category. (And only for some kind of categories and not all)" For the purposes of clarifying (In order to determine if there really is an open bug for it :P), the following things are wanted:

• In the list of subcategories, provide a method (similar to how __NOGALLERY__ alters the images section) to have each subcategory be represented by an image from that subcategory.
  • The representative image can be picked at random? Or would one sometimes want to be able to specify what image represents a subcategory (Or the former is acceptable and the latter would be extra cool?)
• Have a method to specify the caption that an image in the media section of a category has. [This seems unrelated. I don't know how I got that from the above]

Bawolff (talk) 19:11, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

It would be nice indeed if we could associate to each category a reference picture. Another "default" could be the first image in the sorted list (for example with a blanc sort key). --Foroa (talk) 19:25, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

The representative image would be, in that priority order :

1. The Value Image of the subcategory
2. The image of Template:Category definition: Object, for instance File:L'Image et le Pouvoir - Portrait d'Antonin le pieux - MSR inv Ra 60 (1).jpg for Category:Musée Saint-Raymond, Ra 60
3. insert here awesome idea someone will undoubtedly have because this is how Wikimedia works
4. randomly

Hope it is clear :) Léna (talk) 10:45, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I imagine that the easiest way this would work would be to have a parser function, similar to {{DEFAULTSORT:...}} that goes on the category page. Somebody either puts directly, or puts a template [like {{Category definition: Object}}] that contains a new parser function {{REPRESENTITIVEIMAGE:some_file.jpg}} and then that file is used to represent the category. If none is specified then the software would just use the (alphabetically) first image in the category (perhaps if the first image was an audio file, it would look through the first couple media files for one that can be thumbnailed).

The second issue with doing something like this is - from a usability prospective most people would expect clicking on the image would go to the subcategory. But we probably want a way for users to go to the image description page to maintain credit and what not. Perhaps have overlaid that links to the description page or something. Bawolff (talk) 16:37, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Concerning the sort: that sounds good; the debate if Featured, Quality or Valued images come first should stay out of the tools.

code>{{REPRESENTITIVEIMAGE:some_file.jpg}}: OK but could that be equally a parameter in the file display template (like thumb, right) so people can illustrate a category in one go. (Or default to it)

Accessibility of the image sounds less important as the image will be most probably prominent on or in the category.

I doubt if the filtering of audio but not video files is worth the effort. If it displays ogg files, people will be more inclined to define a better top of the list one and the rules are more easy to understand. One day someone will request it to display it anyway and solves the problem when there are only 2000 audio files in the cat. --Foroa (talk) 17:56, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

December 4

Logotypes

Hi!

I am currently supporting a University here in Sweden Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and they are a bit confused (together with myself) about the possibilities for them to upload and use their logo. I know that they will not be able to do it in the Swedish language version but that an old version of their logo is already used in the English language version. They would like to have logos on their userpages as they are on their way to launch a project where their researchers and doctorates are to be asked to contribute with their knowledge to Wikipedia. They will contribute in:

• Arabic
• Bengali
• Chinese
• Danish
• Dutch
• English
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Italian
• Norwegian
• Persian
• Russian
• Spanish
• Swedish

What are the possibilities for them to use a logo on their userpage, apart from the Swedish and English language versions? I would be very grateful for replies. Thank you in advance! --Sophie Österberg (WMSE) (talk) 11:00, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

If it's not PD in the source country ({{PD-ineligible}}) then Commons can't host it. So any Wikipedia uses will be dependent on local uploads according to that project's rules. Some projects don't even have local uploads of course - eg Spanish Wikipedia. Basically, they should just do without, it's probably not worth the hassle. Rd232 (talk) 11:31, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

As the logo is their own work, they can upload and release it under any free licence. --134.60.84.143 13:28, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

True, but it will need OTRS confirmation of official permission to release it under a Commons:Licensing-compatible license. Rd232 (talk) 17:24, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

If they agree to have a PD/free logo, they can upload the logo once on the Commons and have a description in all of these languages. If they want to use a copyrighted logo, they can post the logo to each Wiki that accepts fair use, but I think according to fair use policies they are to be used only in articles. WhisperToMe (talk) 06:07, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

15 million

We reached 15 million files on December 4, 2012. The WMF is planning some announcements; this is quite the milestone. theMONO 00:45, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

See discussion of File:17W Aug 14 1996 0124Z.png above... AnonMoos (talk) 01:38, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

#15M milestone — Who is the WMF in this case? -- Rillke^(q?) 12:14, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

The WMF communications team is responsible for this. They have been contacted and are looking at several options. theMONO 01:06, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Experimental Flickr uploading turned on for admins (again)

If you are an administrator, please help test out the new experimental Flickr uploading. If you go to Special:UploadWizard and click on "Add images from Flickr", you should be able to put in a URL for an image on Flickr or for an entire photoset. If you use a photoset URL you will then get an interface to choose which freely-licensed images from the photoset you want to upload. UploadWizard should then handle verifying the licenses and importing the images and metadata. If you notice any bugs, please file them in Bugzilla. You can also leave feedback on this feature by clicking the 'Leave Feedback' link in UploadWizard. Currently the tool does not suggest categories, but we'll try to add this feature some time in the future. Photoset imports are currently limited to 50 images. Kaldari (talk) 01:09, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

FYI: All the bugs reported last time have been fixed. Kaldari (talk) 05:49, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42827 - Commons files being corrupted

If anyone else knows of examples, please submit them there. Adam Cuerden (talk) 14:51, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Category:Bug 24854 has a list of CYMK images, which is more or less the same issue. 129.173.209.3 16:16, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

December 8

Upload bug

Had a problem with uploads twice now, using the 'It is from somewhere else' form to add pics from Free Images from Bulgaria - the pic and its category uploads, but the rest of the accompanying text doesn't, and has to be pasted in afterwards. See File History here for an example. The problem is intermittent, several others uploaded around the same time haven't had any problem. Any clues what might be happening? - MPF (talk) 14:38, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

If anyone is capable answering this question, it's Lupo. -- Rillke^(q?) 15:37, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

No idea. Maybe something changed server-side? Or maybe there's something special with the descriptions? Since this doesn't happen consistently, it'd be very hard to track down. Best I can suggest is to use Firefox, install Firebug, enable Firebug whenever you want to upload something, click it's "Net" tab, and when the problem occurs examine the last requests made, look for anything that doesn't look quite right, and examine the console to see if there are any error messages there. If and when it re-occurs, I'd need all that data, plus more information about your personal setup: which browser (exact version), which operating system (Windows XP/Vista/7/8, OS X, linux, other), which skin (monobook, vector, ...), which file name, what description text, and all other input data. Lupo 10:04, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm using firefox; never heard of firebug though. To be honest, all that proceedure sounds a lot more complicated than correcting after the occasional bug event (it was very easy to know when it happened, as the pic appeared very quickly, before I even clicked 'Upload'). So I guess I'll leave it be. But thanks for looking in! - MPF (talk) 11:46, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Re: before I even clicked 'Upload' What??! If that happens, it definitely isn't because of MediaWiki:UploadForm.js. What other gadgets do you have enabled? Lupo 12:06, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Other gadgets? Sorry, don't know! 'Fraid I'm a bit clueless when it comes to computers. - MPF (talk) 23:13, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Which entries do have a checkmark in your preferences, Gadgets section? Lupo 23:28, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Looked up, I've got these ticked: Slideshow, ZoomViewer, ImprovedUploadForm, RotateLink, RenameLink, Long Image Names in Categories, ExtraTabs2, WikiMiniAtlas, AjaxQuickDelete, Cat-a-lot, Language select. Several of those I don't remember ever ticking, and several I don't (knowingly) use, but others I do use. - MPF (talk) 19:12, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I don't see anything amiss. However, playing around with form I noticed that the "Destination filename" field submitted the form when the enter/return key was hit. I had never noticed that, and in any case, the form submit was validated and uploaded the file only if everything else was filled out, and the {{Information}} was constructed allright. So that's not the cause of your problem.

Let's try something else: if it ever happens again, click your browser's back button. You should get back to the upload form, with all your inputs still filled in. Then e-mail me your inputs, and, if you can, try to describe what you did in what order. Then I'll try reproducing this once more. Lupo 22:53, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Autosubmitting forms at Commons … sounds scary. -- Rillke^(q?) 12:12, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

You could also try using the UploadWizard and see if you have any similar problems. Kaldari (talk) 22:00, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Length of Copyright

I have here an image from Getty Images taken in 1915. http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/immigrants-view-the-statue-of-liberty-while-entering-new-news-photo/1759162# As you can see, the page claims that the image was copyrighted in 2003 and that Getty still owns it. Is this possible since all works created before 1923 are now in public domain? (the author died in 1929).--Ultimate Roadgeek (talk) 19:16, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

My personal opinion - I doubt that Getty have a leg to stand on with regard to any attempt to claim copyright in this case and I would expect they slap a standard licence on all such images to fulfill their own commercial goals. They include a definition of 'editorial' use rather than commercial use, I have no idea if this has traction with regard to meaningful copyright enforcement. I would be happy to see this image with the {{PD-1923}} licence. --Fæ (talk) 19:31, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

They may be hoping they can get a separate copyright on the digital reproduction, despite court cases indicating otherwise. In the end, they will claim as much as they can to reduce copying and increase the chances you will pay them something (whether they own the copyright or not). They also have archives of old PD publicity photos and that sort of thing, but if you can't find them elsewhere, you may want to pay them for access anyways. However, do note that it is only photos published before 1923 which are public domain, not simply created. If the photo remained unpublished until 2003 until Getty published it, then its term will be 120 years from creation, unless the photographer is known, in which case it would be 70 years after the photographer died. In that case it's credited to Edwin Levick, who died in 1929, though if it was made by an employee, it would not be based on Levick's lifetime. Very good chance of being PD, though it would be best to find an earlier publication than Getty's. Carl Lindberg (talk) 21:37, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

I've decided to go ahead and upload an unwatermarked version of the file. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Immigrants_Approaching_Statue_of_Liberty.jpg with a {{PD-1923}}. It could also be {{PD-US-unpublished}}, I'm not sure. Thanks for your help, although I fear this may not be over yet.--Ultimate Roadgeek (talk) 07:28, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

December 9

Check this

I'd like to promote Commons:WikiProject Check Wikipedia, which is a database of trivial errors found in articles and image descriptions, such as template syntax errors. Click here for errors specific to Commons and help out by fixing them. There are currently 356,261 error reports for Commons. --LA2 (talk) 13:11, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

File:Woldemar_Kernig_(ca._1910).jpg

This work is claimed to be anonymously created.

I don't read Cyrillic, but it's pretty clear this work is not only not anonymous, but that the identification is on the image itself. Can someone who does read Cyrillic fix this? Adam Cuerden (talk) 04:05, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

A. F. Dressler - difficult to read but a quick web search provides evidence of a photographer by that name publishing in the Russian Empire around that time. Man vyi (talk) 06:19, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

And here we have a sadly typical licensing issue: an old photo (c. 1910), published c. 1910, copyright-tagged simply "{{PD-old}}". Two usual problems: 1. PD-old says on it You must also include a United States public domain tag..., but none was included (I've now added {{PD-1923}}). 2. No age of death of the author is available (and I can't find one), so we don't know that PD-old (author died 70 years ago) applies. So I've switched PD-old to {{PD-RusEmpire}}. Rd232 (talk) 15:26, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

New branch Art works by subject and Baptism of Christ

I'm creating a new branch category:Art works by subject I need something like category:Art works of Baptism of Christ but it sounds terrible to me. It is good or it's better category:Art works on Baptism of Christ of category:Art works about the Baptism of Christ. Please I do not want to use category:Baptism of Christ in art because my main scope is to create for example categories like category:art works with Jesus or category:art works with George Washington because finding such similar in category:art it' very difficult--Pierpao.lo (listening) 08:23, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't think we need these new categories. We already have "Category:Art by subject" (with subcategories like "Category:Religion in art") and "Category:Baptism of Christ". Categories like "Art works about the baptism of Christ" and "Baptism of Christ in art" are redundant, because all depictions of the baptism of Christ will be forms of art – no one had a camera at the time of the event. — SMUconlaw (talk) 08:41, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Batch upload of Presidential Library contact sheets

The Ford Presidential Library has over 12,000 contact sheets of photographic images. We are considering uploading them to Commons, but have heard differing opinions as to their usefulness. On one side, they show 260,000 images of President Ford and his time in the White House, as well as key staff, random family and visitors, visiting dignitaries - almost every moment of his and First Lady Betty Ford's life was photographed. There are buildings and locations in the background that might be useful as well. This is a treasure trove of documentation.

On the the hand, these are contact sheets. The 35mm frames on the sheets will not be so useful in an article, as they cannot be enlarged (easily) or separated from the page (easily). At best, they would be a guide as to what to search for on the Ford Library website.

Here is a sample with table information that includes location, time of day, other people in the picture: File:Ford A5397 NLGRF photo contact sheet.jpg. Our institution has an on-going cooperation agreement with Commons.

What say you? Bdcousineau (talk) 01:28, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

From a technical standpoint, it's not a big deal to upload all of them as they share the same format. Additional info can be found at User talk:Bdcousineau. The sheets are at 200dpi so the images could be used, though they'd be low-resolution. A lot of the images are not yet available outside the contact sheet scan.Smallman12q (talk) 01:38, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Most of these 290,000 photos have remained hidden in the open. When the contact sheets are interlinked via categories, tables, and links within Commons to President Ford's Daily Diary that will be brought into Commons and the Contact Sheet Photo Descriptions[4] that will be brought into commons, editors will finally be able to locate particular photos within the 290,000 photos for use within Wikipedia. The photo can be cropped from the contact sheet for use in Wikipedia or the editor can contact the Ford Library to get a larger print if needed. Who knows what are in these 290,000 photos, but we will never know if they and the other Ford Library materials are not brought into and integrated with other Commons material. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 13:03, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree that these will be useful - but have they already been scanned or would it be possible to do it in 600dpi? That way the individual shots could be enlarged in a (more) useful way. mr.choppers (talk)^-en- 06:24, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Javascript problems

Resolved

I'm not getting the Javascript "specials" on Commons -- the autocompletion in the search box, the "purge" link added to image description pages, etc. When I tried to move a file just now, it didn't do it all necessary steps automatically as usual, and I had to do manual cleanups. Search-box autocompletion still works on En.Wikipedia (though the edit form seems to have changed there). AnonMoos (talk) 14:10, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

What is in the error console? Ruslik (talk) 18:56, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

A bunch of junk, but it's hard to copy even a single line at a time, much less the whole thing. Here's one line I did manage to copy: AnonMoos (talk) 19:38, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Warning: Expected 'important' but found 'ie'.
Source File: [5]
Line: 1

Please, report only errors without warnings. Ruslik (talk) 19:42, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

All the white-X on red thingies say "mw not defined", but they don't appear to deal with specific scripts for things that aren't working for me, and I don't feel like trying to copy any of them right now (maybe later). AnonMoos (talk) 19:57, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Please hard purge your browser's cache (possible through some of the menus of your browser, google for "delete cache in <browser>" if you can't find how)/ delete temporary internet files. Recently RL? had some hiccups and if mw is not defined that means one of the "core objects" is missing. BTW, sometimes, you can right click the error message and then a menu allows you to easily copy it.

You are using the standard-skin. Which browser/version are you using? -- Rillke^(q?) 22:30, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, deleting all browser cache fixed the problem, thanks; it's something I rarely do, since it doesn't usually seem to help with being able to see new thumbnails for recent image version uploads... I use the "Classic" skin, because it seems to be more utilitarian than some of the others, and I don't like the gray background. AnonMoos (talk) 23:54, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Error generating thumbnail

GIF thumbnail is not shown. You can see original gif file of this thumbnail at File:Hip bone animation2.gif

After December 6, thumbnail images of GIF files are not shown[6]. When I open thumbnail image url, error message as fallows appears.

• Error generating thumbnail Error creating thumbnail: convert: MemoryAllocationFailed `' @ fatal/cache.c/AcquirePixelCache/190. [7]

Did I do something wrong? or some sort of setting of Commons changed? Thanks.--Was a bee (talk) 09:22, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Not sure why COM:MAXTHUMB (25 MP) does not apply here. (A 12.1 MP version of the file renders fine: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/archive/9/90/20121208102513!Hip_bone_animation.gif/120px-Hip_bone_animation.gif ) --McZusatz (talk) 10:28, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

That sort of error sounds like the memory limit from ulimit is kicking in, instead of the normal limit from $wgMaxAnimatedGifArea which is what COM:MAXTHUMB is referring to (Note: COM:MAXTHUMB seems to be talking about $wgMaxImageArea, which does not apply to gif images only other types of images - and I don't think $wgMaxAnimatedGifArea was raised when $wgMaxImageArea was. but that's a different issue). If this is happening on a lot of images, probably should file a bug - possibly an issue with the servers. Bawolff (talk) 02:16, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps related to Village_pump#Problem with new version of image below?  — Quicksilver^@ 21:55, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Cleveland CycleWerks

The images uploaded by Cleveland CycleWerks (talk · contribs) are either a mass copyvio, or a donation from the company Cleveland CycleWerks. File:2012 Cleveland CycleWerks tha Misfit 02.png has appeared on the Hell for Leather blog, but most of them don't seem to be previously published, according to TinEye. We probably shouldn't keep them without verification from the company, but I'm not sure how to handle it. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 16:34, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd guess copyright violation or spamming. The images all come from the Cleveland CycleWerks site, which has a disclaimer at the bottom of the page, "Copyright & copy; 2013, [Cleveland CycleWerks]. All rights reserved, or we will crush you." — Quicksilver^@ 21:44, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

How much disk space does Commons take up?

Hi, just something I am curious about… We now have over 15 million files, but how much disk space do they (approximately) take up, and how much do we have left? Best regards, MartinD (talk) 20:50, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm… Wikimedia Statistics gives a database size of 8.4 GB − I suppose this is for the text & revisions. Commons:MIME type statistics indicates 21,302,949,313,253 bytes for binaries. Jean-Fred (talk) 21:44, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Which makes 21,3 teraoctets. Jean-Fred (talk) 21:52, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! MartinD (talk) 17:55, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

File:Frank Carson Sacramento mural 1 14.jpg

i confess that i am clueless about licensing. File:Frank Carson Sacramento mural 1 14.jpg is one of a series of snapshots i want to upload, but don't know what license to use. my pix can be public domain, but i don't have any of the rights to his artwork. the mural is outside and visible to the public. Badmachine (talk) 20:55, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

According to Commons:FOP#United_States, if there is no copyright notice in the mural and it has been outside and visible to the public since 1973, it can be {{PD-US-no notice}}. If there is a copyright notice - or there was a copyright notice before 1978 - then it isn't free, despite being outside and visible to the public, and the image should be deleted from Commons.--Pere prlpz (talk) 22:01, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

December 12

File:Kota HistoryMuseum.JPG

File:Kota HistoryMuseum.JPG is displaying rotated both on the file page and in articles ie http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Jakarta - but if the file is viewed at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Kota_HistoryMuseum.JPG then it is in the correct aspect. I am not sure how to fix this, I was intending to download. rotate and re-upload but then when seeking the file it was found to already be in the correct rotational orientation. -- Felix (talk) 14:31, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

This one as well File:Monas_UpClose.JPG. Felix (talk) 14:37, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

We have a bot and a script for this. Simply use RotateLink. If you like to read about the background and the history: COM:ROTATEFIX. -- Rillke^(q?) 14:56, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Download failing

When I try to download the full size version of File:Cirque_de_Gavarnie_-_panorama.jpg the download fails partway every time. It fails on both wifi and wired connections on two different computers. I was able to get it to download a day or two ago. This seems like a technical problem. Can anyone help? --Pine^✉ 04:26, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

• Works fine for me. Anyone else having problems? - Jmabel ! talk 05:27, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Works for me as well, Firefox 17. MKFI (talk) 09:57, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for helping. I was able to download on a different network. --Pine^✉ 19:08, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Jmabel ! talk 01:54, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Image creator vs. subject creator

The creator boxes are a nifty way of adding some structured information in what is generally an unstructured metadata - the file description page. However, that page does not make the difference between the creator of the image, or of the "thing" in the image. So for instance in File:Antoniu - L'Eglise Stavropoleus.jpg the creator template is used to identify the photographer, while in File:Flickr - fusion-of-horizons - Stavropoleos.jpg, the same template is used to identify the architect.

Is there a way to distinguish between the two automatically? The template docs are not very explicit on the subject, even if the "Option" parameter seems appropriate, if used reliably.--Strainu (talk) 22:48, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

This is what my {{Author info}} was supposed to be for; but I couldn't quite get it to work as I wanted. It would be better anyway if {{Information}} was amended to allow multiple authors (eg one of photo, of sculpture, etc). To answer the most basic question of yours: there's no reason why Creator templates can't be used for all kinds of authorship, as long as it's clear what aspect of the authorship each template relates to. (This would be easier if Creator templates could be used inline in a sentence; I don't know why, but they can't, they always force a newline.) Rd232 (talk) 23:15, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

The creator boxes are a tool with some additional informations about a person besides his name. But in respect to the field into which a user chooses to insert a box, basically it's not different than when a user inserts an author name in a description page without using a creator box. The user must make clear what the name (or the box) relates to. When a user writes the description page of a photo of an artwork and he identifies the authors (either simply by inserting their names or by inserting creator boxes), he must distinguish who is the author of the pictured work and who is the author of the photo. That can be done in different ways, as long as the result is clear. For example, one way to do it is using the Template:Art Photo and inserting the author names (or creator boxes) in the proper respective fields. The important thing is how and where the information is presented in the description page, not if a creator box is used or not. -- Asclepias (talk) 23:32, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Asclepias. We seem to all agree that it is very important to capture roles of each creator, however Creator templates is not the place to do it. For example a person can be an author of one book but an illustrator of another, so those roles should not be "frozen" for each person. --Jarekt (talk) 14:06, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

December 13

Keyboard download...

Hi:

On this page I found the keyboard I want to install, though there's NO link to download, only a gif of it. Does anyone know where (and maybe how) I find this keyboard and can download it there (free ware)??

Thank you,

Chris.

• I have no idea what you are trying to say. For starters, what page are you talking about? - Jmabel ! talk 01:59, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
  • I suppose Chris is trying to get the keyboard configuration associated with our image of a certain keyboard configuration. We only have the images. To install the configuration you need operating system specific tools. The image name or description may of course give a hint about the name of the specific configuration. --LPfi (talk) 11:47, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Template:Building address

About Template:Building address I tried to add an additional "notes" section (i.e. the building has one address but the entrance to the building is on a different street) - But am I inserting it properly?

The entrance of File:AframLibGregSchool.JPG is on Cleveland Street but the building address is Victor Street...

WhisperToMe (talk) 06:25, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I think you added it correctly, but I do not think I like the resulting layout. I do not think "Notes" should be part of the template. You can place them in the file description. --Jarekt (talk) 13:56, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

The reason why I wanted it as part of the address is because it's something specific in consideration to the address. For instance http://www.thegregoryschool.org/about.html states the address but adds "(Building entrance on Cleveland St.)" - It would seem jarring to put "(Building entrance on Cleveland St.)" in the description instead of as part of the address. Also, I would include something like "(Building entrance on Cleveland St.)" in all photos of the building, whether the photos are from the Victor Street side or from the Cleveland Street side WhisperToMe (talk) 17:11, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

9/11 Photos

• 9/11 photos
• cliff1066™

Why all these september eleventh attacks photos under cc-by-2.0 license are not here on wikicommons?--SunOfErat (talk) 07:58, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Please read Commons:Flickr files. These Flickr users are obviously not the copyright holders of those photos. Only the legitimate copyright holder can issue a valid copyright license. The first set of photos clearly come from various unspecified sources. The source for the second set of photos is http://www.billbiggart.com/911.html, which clearly states "All photographs Copyright © 2007 Estate of Bill Biggart All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited." —LX (talk, contribs) 14:54, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

"Commons:License laundering" is also worth a read. — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:36, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Template Location damaged

There is something wrong with the template {{Location}}. The template displays nonsensical coordinates. --ŠJů (talk) 11:33, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Actually the coordinates are perfectly sensible, just badly formatted. For instance,

52.951394444444° 57.083666666667' 5.0199999999895.2? N, 1.1873694444444° 11.242166666667' 14.53.53? W

The correct location would be 52° 57' 5.2" N; which, you will notice, is exactly 52.951394444444°; and 57.083666666667' is 57' 5.2". But yes, this is fucked up and needs fixing. -mattbuck (Talk) 12:16, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Adding the following code to your css page will cause all coordinates to display in dms format:

.geo-default { display: inline }
.geo-nondefault { display: inline }
.geo-dec { display: none }
.geo-dms { display: inline }


See en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates#Display preferences for more details.  An optimist on the run! 13:02, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Forget that - it doesn't seem to cure the problem.  An optimist on the run! 13:07, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Looks like {{Location/deg2dms}} doesn't give the good result. Mediawiki was updated recently ? --PierreSelim (talk) 13:24, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I've just been looking at that - the only way it could give results like that is if the #expr:purge expression wasn't giving integer results. However it does seem to be behaving correctly now.  An optimist on the run! 13:32, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

It was fixed here. I'm a bit suprised the mod function behaviour was changed without any notification to the community. --PierreSelim (talk) 13:35, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

So it was. The fix must have been added between me viewing the history of the template, and viewing the source to see how it worked.  An optimist on the run! 13:45, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

It seems like that {{Location/deg2dms}} was relying on MOD function always returning integers, which must have been the case so far. That definition of the function did not match the usual implementation a - (n * int(a/n)), and someone must have changed it. Even if we had heads-up, I doubt anybody would be able to find all the places where the function is used. So there might be more... --Jarekt (talk) 13:50, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

It comes from this bug fix. I doubt they'll change it back, so it may just be a case of adding trunc to expressions when and if other problems arise.  An optimist on the run! 14:22, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

... sorry but it's a huge facepalm, like changing mod will not have impact on the wikis. --PierreSelim (talk) 15:25, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Panoramics vs Panoramas

Anyone know why we have a category tree of panoramics instead of the normal English term panoramas ? --Tony Wills (talk) 11:18, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

"Panoramics" isn't unheard of, e.g. http://www.flickr.com/groups/panoramics/. It does seem a bit casual, and gets 20 times fewer Google hits than "panoramas". But I'd prefer "panoramic images" to either of the single word titles. It seems more specific than "panoramas". --Avenue (talk) 14:27, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I did notice a few people (mistakenly ;-) use it, the main flickr group is of course http://www.flickr.com/groups/panoramas/ --Tony Wills (talk) 20:25, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Seems to be a technical photography term: see "wikt:panoramic", particularly the 2003 quotation. However, I would also be happy if it was renamed to "Panoramic images" as proposed. — SMUconlaw (talk) 16:04, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

As "panorama" can also refer to the view itself, rather than just a visual recording of the view, I agree "Panoramic images" is a clearer title. Powers (talk) 19:16, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I think it goes without saying (but I will say it ;-) that Commons does not actually contain any panoramas see This is not a pipe. So we have category:Landscapes not category:Landscape images. Category:Panoramic images might be fine for the main category, but it just makes the subcategories (Panoramic images of XYZ, Panoramic images by technique, Panoramic images in New Zealand‎) more wordy. Panoramas is concise.--Tony Wills (talk) 20:25, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

There is a distinction to be made here. A panorama is "an unbroken view of an entire surrounding area", and photographs of such views need not be taken using panoramic techniques (a wide angle lens and a little cropping is quite sufficient). Conversely, it's not unusual to take pictures of e.g. building interiors or even high-resolution macro photos using panoramic techniques (stitching together multiple shots), but these certainly do not depict panoramas. I'm not sure if we want to be that pedantic, because the two categories would constantly get confused. Adding to the confusion is that modern photographers commonly refer to any image produced using stitching software as a "panorama" or a "panoramic" interchangably. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:46, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

An interior photo that I would call panoramic - Jmabel ! talk 01:54, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

:-) I was going to bring up the subject of whether we are considering all stitched images to be panoramas (even interiors etc), and that some images of panoramic landscapes haven't been stitched, but thought these a details needn't be part of this discussion. I don't think 'panoramics' means anything other than 'panoramas', 'panoramic' does not imply images stitched together any more than 'panorama' does. Our category tree has the usual structural confusion - are all stitched images panoramas or are all panoramas stitched images? The answer to both is no, neither is a subset of the other. But that really is a side issue, the term 'panoramics' is still in the minority going by googled results. I agree that some people use 'panoramic' to refer to any image produced by stitching software, I don't see any evidence that 'modern photographers' (whoever they are) in general use it let alone the majority of them, nor the majority of wikipedia and wikimedia users. --Tony Wills (talk) 23:43, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I may be mistaken about that. Perhaps the most prudent thing to do is to have a separate Category:Panoramas and Category:Stitched images and leave it at that. Although we have the issue that Category:Stitched images is in Category:Panoramics by technology... Dcoetzee (talk) 23:51, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Dcoetzee, I'm not sure of your distinction at all. Are you saying that the image I've thumbnailed here might not be called "panoramic" because it is an interior? I understand that, of course, not everything stitched is "panoramic". For example, if I stitch two images and then to a rectilinear projection, to deal with not being able to step far enough back from a building to get it all in one shot, I probably would not call that panoramic. - Jmabel ! talk 01:54, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

There is one older sense of panorama that implies a full 360 degree view. Panoramic or panoramic image may be a more general or inclusive form. Dankarl (talk) 03:38, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I frankly have no idea how to properly use these terms. Dcoetzee (talk) 10:37, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

OED defines panoramic as "[c]ommanding or allowing a view of the whole surrounding region or area", and does not record any noun form. Panorama is defined, among other things, as "any pictorial representation of a panoramic view" and as "[a]n unbroken view of the whole region surrounding an observer". A panoramic camera is "a camera that is able to take wide-angle, high-aspect-ratio photographs, spec. one that rotates in synchronism with the gradual exposure of the film or plate so as to extend its field of view". It may be that panoramic is used by some people to mean a photograph taken with a panoramic camera, but having read the foregoing I think most people are just going to assume that the images in "Category:Panoramics" are wide-angle shots, regardless of how they are produced (using a panoramic camera, stitching, or otherwise). Thus, I agree it's probably better to just rename the category "Category:Panoramas". — SMUconlaw (talk) 12:08, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

As noted though, the meaning of that category name would be ambiguous: would it mean pictures taken of panoramic views, or images constructed in a panoramic style (either through stitching or wide-angle lensing)? Powers (talk) 22:53, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Trap templates

The following templates are, quite frankly, appalling ideas.

• Template:PD-Bulgaria
• Template:PD-Germany
• Template:PD-Ireland
• Template:PD-Lithuania
• Template:PD-Netherlands
• Template:PD-Spain
• Template:PD-UK

Why on earth would we create a standardised format, e.g Template:PD-Russia covers works that are out of copyright under Russian law - then make random members of that set cause files to be speedy deleted?

All these countries are EU, and all follow the Template:PD-old-70. They should either redirect to there, or be deleted completely.

There is no possible excuse for letting people put a template up that says that the thing is out of copyright under that country's laws, then nominate their file for deletion because we can't follow our own standards. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:24, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

They certainly shouldn't redirect. All PD-country templates should be abolished, as should PD-old itself - the more general the template, the more it is misunderstood and abused. Case in point: clearing out the remnants of {{PD}} is hard work, four years after it was deprecated, because it was all too often slapped on without enough info to even understand the PD claim, never mind be able to verify it. It would be nice if we could prevent these deprecated templates showing up in searches - AFAIR there's a bug for that... But invalid over-general templates can't redirect to other valid ones, in which case, it's a "trap" for them to exist at all - but deletion is not better: by keeping them as deprecated templates, we can more easily point people to where to look for valid tags. Rd232 (talk) 01:31, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

First of all, you realise that not every country fits into a standard mode. You are never going to delete Template:PD-Russia, Template:PD-Canada, or a host of others, because not every country fits under life 70. In some cases it's longer, and we'll need to specify. In some cases it's shorter, and then we may need to look at how that fits in with the Uruguay roundtable agreements. But in none of those cases is it so simple that we could simply delete every country template.

And that's why general templates are a problem: If we pretend all countries have the same laws, people are going to use Template:PD-Old-70 for Russian works in copyright (for example). If we got them to use a specific country template from the start, we'd be less likely to violate copyright because we're attempting to act as if everything's the same. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:38, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Further, Rd232, you made them into trap templates without any discussion that I can see, and when I objected to this, because I actually remember that last time this came up, the fact that trap templates were a bad idea, brought up at an actual commons process, resulted in the trap template being deleted, and it now serves as a convenient redirect. You reverted and full protected the templates, to make sure they would remain as traps. Why do you consider this appropriate? Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:51, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

First, it's wrong to describe them as "trap" templates; the intention is that the existence of these templates as deprecated templates pointing to relevant help is more useful to users than deleting them. But to prevent misuse of the deprecated templates, speedy deletion templates are transcluded. It's expected that either the user or the admin(s) processing speedy deletions will do something to fix the situation, if it's fixable. Second, we've already discussed elsewhere why I reverted your actions and protected the templates (to ensure that any changes to these templates are based on community discussion) so it seems award-winningly pointless to do so again here. If you want to make an issue out of it for some reason, COM:AN is the place. Third, {{PD-Canada}} is an excellent example of why we should get rid of all PD-country templates. It mixes 3 completely different PD rationales in a way that makes it very often unclear which is supposed to be the one that applies to a given file, which therefore makes it difficult to verify. It should be split into {{PD-Canada-Crown}}, {{PD-Canada-photo-1949}} and {{PD-old-50}}. (Though while we're on the subject of bad templates: PD-old should never have been called "PD-old", it should have been something that conveyed "PD because author died a long time ago".) Rd232 (talk) 11:35, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Another thing: once mw:Lua is available, we need to think about how to make use of it to radically overhaul the entire PD licensing template infrastructure to be much more helpful to both people applying tags and people trying to understand where and how they can use a given file. Things like {{COML compliance}} become feasible with Lua (though by no means easy, well worth while). Rd232 (talk) 11:39, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Despite repeated requests, you have still not provided any evidence of any community discussion before you turned (most of, admittedly. Some of them were redirects, etc) these templates from a simple warning window that tells people which templates might be suitable to use instead into a trap template. Please provide this evidence. Further, we already have structures for dealing with something without a license tag that are applied automatically, and which don't encourage instant speedy deletion without any thought on the admin's part. Adam Cuerden (talk) 15:00, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, since despite repeated requests you won't drop the issue of what was done in the past, and persist in adopting an accusatory tone I find quite unhelpful, well, fine, let's focus on the past. As I already told you elsewhere, there were previous examples and I followed the same approach. Those examples were

• {{PD-Cyprus}}
• {{PD-Czech-Republic}}
• {{PD-Estonia}}
• {{PD-Ireland}}
• {{PD-Lithuania}}
• {{PD-Malta}}

All were converted to redirects to {{No license since}} in August 2011 by User:Cwbm (commons). This approach was established for a year before I saw it. I adopted it for other cases, and I improved on it by making the templates more than a mere redirect, ultimately creating {{PD-generic-country-template}} so that users would get some (standardised, translatable) help about where to find more info, and not just be left hanging with an unexpected speedy delete notice on a file. This is better, I think, but even the previous approach was not seriously challenged or debated as far as I know. Rd232 (talk) 22:07, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Except you've changed it from No license since to Speedy delete. Adam Cuerden (talk) 23:39, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

There's little point waiting 7 days for an uploader applying such a template to do something about the "this file will be deleted if you don't fix this problem" message. Either they notice the problem more or less immediately, and follow up the links and come up with a better tag quite quickly, or they're not going to fix it. There's no real problem here unless you have a quite optimistic view of how quickly speedy delete queues are handled on Commons. That said, if people want to go back to No license since, I don't really mind, because I don't think it happens very often anyway. Rd232 (talk) 00:03, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

So, you're saying that the template that represents the official policy on what happens if there isn't a tag shouldn't be applied for your trap templates? Please stop creating ways to get around policy and revert yourself. Adam Cuerden (talk) 05:16, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Cute, but a glance at either the template {{No license since}} or the deletion policy would show you that it's intended for tagging by third parties - hence the emphasis on notifying the uploader, and why the uploader gets 7 days grace period (so they have some time to notice the issue). It's not intended for users applying tags they shouldn't, which we can expect them to notice immediately. Rd232 (talk) 14:26, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Incorrect. Read the policy: Commons:Deletion policy#Missing_legal_information. "you should not list such files for deletion or speedy deletion". Indeed, since we have bots to tag files without licenses - which also notify the uploader automatically, as policy says should be done - the tags shouldn't do anything but flag the bot to deal with them. Adam Cuerden (talk) 19:20, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

The warning you quote is again directed at third parties. Incidentally, no-one else seems to care either way. Since you seem more interested in wikilawyering than substantive argument, I guess I'll have to do that myself. So: the aim is to be helpful to people accidentally applying these old/bad tags - so isn't {{No license since}} substantially more helpful and less confusing than the {{Speedy delete}} note? Even with the "deprecated tag" notice of {{PD-generic-country-template}}, yes, I think so. I would replace it with a transclusion of {{Nld}}, but that needs to be subst:ed which I don't think can work unless the user subst:s the country template, which of course they wouldn't. So I'll just take it out and rely on the {{PD-generic-country-template}} notice plus the license-checking bots. Rd232 (talk) 20:07, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

 Done. Rd232 (talk) 20:11, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Do we have a translation request category/template for non-English text on images?

I finished a limping attempt to translate some simple (though obsolete) Japanese on a woodblock print and would like to have the translation looked over by someone more confident in Japanese. So, do we have such categories to request this? --Pitke (talk) 12:27, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure if we have such a category or a template - I would simply ask at Commons:井戸端 (VP in Japanese). If you are talking about File:1914_Santa_Claus.jpg, I can look over this. --whym (talk) 15:21, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Commons:Requests for translation is the main translation hub; we could improve on this I think. See also Commons:Localization. Rd232 (talk) 15:39, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I get a lot of help at "en:Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language". — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:40, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Rd232 (talk) 20:41, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Strange railway vehicles

I come across this

advertisement

. Should it be classified as electric locomotive? A battery locomotive? Has it ever been build? In the english article the company ends at 1880. Does somebody know something more about it?Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:19, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

As en-wiki says, the company became en:Hawthorn Leslie and Company, and this one is the company in the advertisement. The vehicle seems to be a battery driven locomotive with regenerative braking. Did you read the French text?--Pere prlpz (talk) 01:00, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I didnt read it fully. I will place the picture under the category: Hawthorn Leslie and Company. Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:03, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I put it under: Hawthorn, Leslie locomotives.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:12, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

December 14

Malfunctioning JarektBot and rewriting interwiki links to redirects

I have relocated this ongoing discussion to User_talk:JarektBot#Rewriting interwiki links to redirects (Hope you don't mind, Andy) GrahamN (talk) 02:06, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Still a problem with {{Other date}}

Resolved

 Thank you.

Since there has been no real answer to my previous request, I re-ask :

How can I correct the "invalid time" in the use of {{Other date}} in File:Thomas Gainsborough - Isaac Henrique Sequeira - WGA8422.jpg or File:Varotari Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery.jpg (or hundreds of other pages) - there seems to be a "Page expansion depth" problem (see categories) - due to the use of 2 {{Other date}} included.

What would be the good solution for indicating "first half of 17th century" or "2nd half or 18th century" (for examples) - is it a bug ? or a case not anticipated (or not documented) in the template ?

Thank you for a "real solution" answer, as I would gladly correct all those that I encounter, if I only new "how to do it" --Hsarrazin (talk) 09:23, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Dude, I gave you my best answer, but if I can't see an actual problem, then it's hard to diagnose it. I simply do not see the text "Page expansion depth" on either of those two pages now, and did not see the text "Error: Invalid time" on page File:Thomas Gainsborough - Isaac Henrique Sequeira - WGA8422.jpg last time you asked. Sometimes on some pages (but neither of the two you've mentioned) I've seen excessive template recursion errors, but they're generally highlighted in large red text, and very hard to miss... AnonMoos (talk) 16:05, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

I can very clearly see the category "Page expansion depth exceeded" and a very red and big warning "Error:Invalid time" on both those pictures, as you may see on this screen capture and this one (sorry - I'm not sure if this is the right way to show... if not, just tell me how to show it - I'm used to Dropbox on IRC-chat, but I did not dare here )

could it be cause by my prefered language (french instead of english) ?

thanx for helping me solve it (oh, and I'm no "dude", I'm "gal" )--Hsarrazin (talk) 18:03, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Correct, switching from English to French produces the error: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Gainsborough_-_Isaac_Henrique_Sequeira_-_WGA8422.jpg?uselang=fr. Don't know why. Rd232 (talk) 18:14, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

No, posting screencaptures is a good method to show inconsistent problems. All I see is "first half of 17th century" on the Christ image, and "second half of 18th century" on the Gainsborough, with no red text, and no "Pages where expansion depth is exceeded" category. I looked at the source of Template:Otherdate, and didn't see anything about the French-relevant lines fr=2^e moitié de {{ISOdate|1={{{2|}}}|2=fr}} and fr=1^re moitié de {{ISOdate|1={{{2|}}}|2=fr}} which looked different from the corresponding code for other languages. Of course, the problem could be in Template:ISOdate (which I have no idea how it works), or something called by Template:ISOdate... AnonMoos (talk) 18:23, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

@Rd232 thank you for giving me an easy way to switch language on a page - I did not know the trick

@AnonMoos : I tried a few other languages and it seems that the problem is quite specific to French (at least, es, de, it and a few others did not show the pb) - that should help to diagnose the origin - should I post my request on a specific "technical questions" page, or is it OK here ? --Hsarrazin (talk) 20:18, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not a real template-hacker, and would not have admin privileges to edit protected templates even if I could diagnose a problem, so you should certainly seek help wherever you can find it. AnonMoos (talk) 00:29, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Fixed The problem you noticed is quite common when nesting {{Other date}} templates. We struggle with it for years and usually there is no easy solution. See here for more info. The problem with {{other date|secondhalf|{{other date|century|18}}}} used in File:Thomas Gainsborough - Isaac Henrique Sequeira - WGA8422.jpg is that:

• {{other date|secondhalf|...}} uses 20 "expansions" in en and fr languages
• {{other date|century|18}} used 27 expansions in French language and 22 in English. I simplified French version a bit so they are both at 22 now.

Nesting those 2 templates used 36 expansions in English and 41 expansions in French, while the limit is 40. It is even worse if the nested {{Other date}} templates are used inside creator page which is then used in the information template. The only way to fix it is to do a rewrite of simplification of {{Other date}} template. I am hoping that mw:Lua scripting might allow simplification of some of the templates, so we are bumping into that limit all the time. --Jarekt (talk) 05:22, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Sandy Hook map

There are two issues with File:Map of Sandy Hook shooting.png:

• It seems to be taken from OSM, without attribution, but is claimed as "own work"
• It has accessibility issues, because it relies on colour differentiate the two "dots" - a better solution would be, say, a square and a diamond.

Andy Mabbett (talk) 20:49, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Maybe you should ask the uploader directly or make a request at en:Map workshop. However, I have strong doubts about the usefulness of this map. Seems to me like a case of l'art pour l'art (or making a fancy map just to have a fancy map). Specific locations can be better embedded as coordinates into the article. --Alexrk2 (talk) 00:04, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

When should you subdivide categorise?

Do we have any guidelines as to how many images can be in one category before it makes sense to subdivide it? WereSpielChequers (talk) 23:57, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

With some categories (especially maintenance categories), they're simply not going to be split based on how many images are contained in them. I don't think that there's any one number which applies to all situations. AnonMoos (talk) 00:25, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

OK I can see how maintenance caegories can get big. but for normal categories is there a logical splitting point? I'd been assuming that we don't usually want more than 200 images in a category. WereSpielChequers (talk) 01:16, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't think there's really a limit on how many images we can have in a category, but if you can find coherent subcategories, don't hesitate to do so. A concrete example would be much easier to discuss. - Jmabel ! talk 08:26, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

December 16

Commons:Categories for discussion/2012/12/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard

Just bringing Commons:Categories for discussion/2012/12/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard to the attention of editors. Please make comments at the CfD, not here. Cheers, russavia (talk) 09:03, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Painting

Is this a paiting or photograph? Pass a Method (talk) 15:43, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Sure looks like a photograph to me; it's conspicuously without any of the softening or "romanticizing" touches which would have commonly been applied to a middle-class portrait painting... AnonMoos (talk)

Photo—the motion blur on the flower basket, due to the painfully long exposure time needed in 1849, would never have been painted in. --Fæ (talk) 15:59, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Off topic pissing contest

(Troll: 2 Commons: 0) Delicious carbuncle (talk) 17:04, 15 December 2012 (UTC) There's no reason for such comments. Not everyone knows what a daguerrotype is. Rd232 (talk) 17:24, 15 December 2012 (UTC) I'm sure many people are unfamiliar with early photographic processes. A couple of admins here have in the past labelled me a "troll" when I have pointed out systemic problems here. I think it is useful for those admins to become familiar with a real troll like Pass a Method. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 17:50, 15 December 2012 (UTC) I'm not a troll, i was simply curious whether such resolution existed in that decade. Commons sure seems like a hostile place. Pass a Method (talk) 17:54, 15 December 2012 (UTC) (Edit conflict) Either explain your accusation or retract it, please. Rd232 (talk) 17:55, 15 December 2012 (UTC) Rd232, I hope you will be equally aggressive the next time Russavia refers to me as a troll. I am familiar with Pass a Method from en.wp. If you wish to confirm that he is a trolling here, just take a look at his contributions here, including his deleted uploads. I don't think you need me to draw you a diagram for this one, but here's a hint: Is Raelianism worthy of inclusion in a depiction of world religions, or does the Star of David entwined with a swastika have some trolling appeal? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 18:18, 15 December 2012 (UTC) Absolute nonsense. I chose Raelianism because other religions were unsuitable and i tried to fill 20 slots. Scientology symbol is too similar to christianity. CFR has no agreed symbol. Some other religions had symbols in a difficult format. And the other religions were too native (not geographically spread enough, hence unnotable).Pass a Method (talk) 18:43, 15 December 2012 (UTC) It might have given rise to fewer suspicions if you had been able to find a religion under any of the letters K, L, M, N, O, P, or Q (over a quarter of the letters of the alphabet)... AnonMoos (talk) 00:14, 16 December 2012 (UTC) I guess we're talking about File:Religions 4x5.png... I'm not sure how easy it is to find religions for those letters with established icon-type symbols... anyone for en:Pastafarianism (File:FSM Logo.svg)? :) Rd232 (talk) 00:45, 16 December 2012 (UTC) Lol Rd. I bet you're an atheist.Pass a Method (talk) 17:40, 16 December 2012 (UTC) I don't see how the inclusion of the Star of David entwined with a swastika can be blamed on the editor. It is Raelianism that has chosen this as a symbol (ostensibly to "reclaim" the historically peaceful connotations of the swastika). BD2412 T 21:24, 16 December 2012 (UTC) It was the editor who chose to include the symbol in a depiction of world religions, while leaving out others. Raelianism is not generally considered a mainstream religion. No sensible project will ever include this diagram (although Simple already does). Delicious carbuncle (talk) 21:43, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Nominated for deletion as source asserts photo is copyrighted and no evidence of prior publication. Rd232 (talk) 17:24, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Large number of moves needed

Does anyone have a way to rename several hundred files? Also, they're part of a numbering scheme so you can't just move 1 into 2 before moving 2 into 3, etc. -mattbuck (Talk) 22:41, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Use synchronous AJAX requests to the mw-API. -- Rillke^(q?) 11:23, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

And this might already be obvious, but: As long as you have at least one file that will be renamed to a name that isn't already in use, the whole set can be arranged into some order that only requires one rename per file. --Closeapple (talk) 11:30, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Legoktm did it for me, and yes, I am aware that there is only 1 rearrangement needed. -mattbuck (Talk) 11:43, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

December 17

Moved image and links no longer show up on the redirect page

I moved File:Brinton.jpg to File:Daniel Garrison Brinton.jpg, leaving the first as the redirect until I replace all links. But the redirect doesn't list any of the old links. How can I correct the wiki pages to point to the new image name? — Ineuw 02:18, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

use Special:GlobalUsage or User:CommonsDelinker. Rd232 (talk) 02:39, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Rd232, Thanks for the link. I found all the links and correcting them now. — Ineuw 02:53, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Please stop asking for deletion of redirects at Commons if there is no pressing need to delte them. I suggest reading {{FilemoverWelcome}} and meta:Don't delete redirects. Thanks in advance. -- Rillke^(q?) 11:20, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

A Barnstar For You

This is for everyone who engineered the amazing upload wizard. It's fantastic! A huge leap forward from the old system a few years back, and new improvements and features keep making this one even better. Thank you all or your great work! Anna Frodesiak (talk) 11:54, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

File:PALESTINE-ISRAEL.png

Hi! File:PALESTINE-ISRAEL.png seems like a projection or wish by a user, but it doesn't seem to be educational in nature WhisperToMe (talk) 13:20, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Its in use in the arabic wikipedia, again we only host files here it is up to local editors to debate the merits of its use.14:10, 6 December 2012 (UTC)--KTo288 (talk) 00:51, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Still, very questionable. The "crossing out" of Israel in 2012 is nonsense (nothing in the granting of non-member state status to the Palestinian Authority negates the statehood of Israel, a UN member), and the 2020 image is pure fantasy. - Jmabel ! talk 16:31, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

"If you feel strongly that a map, emblem, flag or other file hosted here is “wrong” in some way, please try to persuade your local wiki community to make use of the version you prefer instead." (quoted from Commons:Project scope/Neutral point of view).--Pere prlpz (talk) 16:55, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

If it was marked as an image that would be a form of opinion or clearly a wish, that would be one thing. But I saw this image inserted in the Acehnese Wikipedia article on Israel - I promptly removed it from there. Commons does stipulate that images need to be educational. The line quoted by pere prlpz may be better applied in case where there is a territorial dispute with a country or something ambiguous. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:30, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

To me it is educational, in that it illustrates the ultimate desired ambition of at least one segment of the Palestinian people even if it is unlikeky. In 1912 a map of the Levant which included the nation of Israel would be considered utter fantasy. That such a state exists in 2012 shows that nations and borders are not inviolate to time and man but are and can be changed.--KTo288 (talk) 00:51, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

That doesn't consider the big red "x" over the name Israel in 2012, nor does it consider the 2020 UN land labeled "Palestine" - This was created to express a personal viewpoint and to soapbox, not an educational image. If it was the first four without the "x" there would be no problem. WhisperToMe (talk) 06:00, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

If it were not in use we could argue like that. But who are we to tell Wikipedia editors what is educational and what is not? They are the experts and we are here to serve them. If they think it is useful, then it must be kept. That is policy and indeed a good policy. You may, of course, disagree with any decision over there - but then do tell them, not us. --LPfi (talk) 14:10, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Commons has its own policies. Commons has its own standards. It deletes penis pictures that are "too low quality" and I haven't thought of serious circumstances where a proper application Commons policy has intruded on a Wikipedia's need to host images. I don't see any encyclopedic use of File:PALESTINE-ISRAEL.png as it is now - It is at most a userpage image. If it was modified so that only the first four maps were there, then it would be okay. WhisperToMe (talk) 14:54, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

 Comment it's in use on projects, and that means we shouldn't delete it. We can edit the description. We can even try to have it removed from some or all project uses. But as long as it's in use, we shouldn't delete it, and it doesn't matter if it's educational or not. Rd232 (talk) 15:33, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

• The very criterion of being included on here is whether it is educational. In any case I found it had been used on the Arabic "Palestine" article, so I removed it myself from there. In terms of use in user pages/userboxes I will not remove them. WhisperToMe (talk) 06:38, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

"Threat to Iran" - a similar case(?)

 Comment I'm sure we have also lots of other (historical) propaganda maps and illustrations on Commons. I would classify this map into the same category. It is exemplary for similar Israel/Palestine propagandastic maps that rife on the web. So IMO it can certainly have an educational purpose as well. It is another question, whether such material is used in a propagandistic or educational context - but this is up to the Wikipedia's to cope with. Another problem with this map might be, that it could be either a derivative work or direct copy vio (e.g. look here) .. but hard to tell --Alexrk2 (talk) 16:11, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

• This is a propaganda map made by a Wikipedia user for himself/herself and not, say, a propaganda map that is a part of a historical record. If it was something used for an educational purpose, such as scan of a Nazi Germany propaganda map or a map showing what, say, maps of Kashmir look like in Pakistani textbooks, I would have no problem with it WhisperToMe (talk) 06:35, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Maybe. But since it is used in a Wikimedia Foundation project it must be kept in Commons according to Commons:Scope. If you think it shouldn't be used there, you should go to the local project and ask there to delete it according to local rules. Once deleted in other projects, we will be able to start a discussion to delete it from Commons or keep it for its potential educative value, if any.--Pere prlpz (talk) 10:06, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

@WhisperToMe: Yes, but where do you want to draw a line against censorship? On the other hand, if the image is solely created for the purpose of vandalism, than it might fall outside the scope of commons (See Aim of Wikimedia Commons - Examples). A DR might be possible with the reason "Self-promotion or vandalism/attack". --Alexrk2 (talk) 11:12, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

"Self-promotion or vandalism/attack" would be a good reason to start a DR, but I don't see anything vandalical in the map itself. I agree that it's politically biassed, and not very useful for several reasons, and this might be a reason not to use it in other projects, but it's not a reason to delete it if used. The fact that an image (or even a userbox) is perceived negatively by some people is not a reason enough to see it as an attack. I'm quite sure that some users in some projects have userboxes supporting US troops "agaist terrorism" in Afghanistan, and some others support local resistance "against US invaders" in Afghanistan. Our projects are not political forums, but our communities are diverse, so I see no problem in keeping such images (and even using it in some places) while they are not used in personal attacks or cause similar disruptions. And again, it's basically a matter of projects, not of Commons.--Pere prlpz (talk) 13:36, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

The second to last image has an "X" over Israel, as if Israel had been negated by the UN ruling that upgraded the standing of the Palestinian authority. 2020 shows Israel non-existant. If it was a case of a third party (say Hamas) releasing a map like this, and a Wikipedian then transcribing what the source said, that's one thing. But this page seems to be a fantasy of a particular Wikipedian. "Self promotion" is probably the closest I could think of. In the case of File:Bedrohungirans.png I would ask korosaspa where he got the data and analysis from. WhisperToMe (talk) 07:27, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

This is a good question to do in the projects that use the images.--Pere prlpz (talk) 15:43, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

If nothing else, it seems that the image needs a description that indicates what it is. - Jmabel ! talk 18:08, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I added "Category:Irredentism" right after its upload to provide a limited partial explanation, but this was removed. I may re-add it. AnonMoos (talk) 19:41, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Obviously the only purpose of this image is to spam it obstinately over as much as Wiki talk pages as possible. IMO clearly "Out of scope / Files apparently created and/or uploaded for the purpose of vandalism or attack.". Most if not all Wikis have a explicit policy like Wikipedia is not [..] vehicle for propaganda. --Alexrk2 (talk) 14:51, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

A DR has been opened for this file at Commons:Deletion requests/File:PALESTINE-ISRAEL.png.--KTo288 (talk) 17:56, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Is Commons a monarchy?

As a significant contributor to Wikipedia, I am surprised at the authority that apparently rests with admins here to shut down discussion and squelch dissent, as just happened here Commons:Deletion requests/Template:Dont remove warnings. It was my understanding that all of the WMF wikis operated on an open system of discussion and consensus, so as to create the best possible environment for creating free content.

This, combined with my recent experiences trying to have my username changed, and the poor handling by an admin, has left me wondering why I should bother contributing here at all. Is there no community governance here? I can just as easily upload files to Wikipedia, without fear of having my userpage templated with threatening notices. What is the up side of contributing here? - MrX 23:56, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I vote for completely anarchy. -- ΠЄΡΉΛΙΟ ℗ 00:29, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

As a Wikipedia user you know en:WP:POINT. In this case the template isn't broken, but the user applying it. He clearly didn't read the documentation ("This template can be used to notify users not to remove warnings from their discussion page and instead use the archiving features offered by User:MiszaBot. Archiving is not demanded by policy and removing warnings is not explicitly discouraged. So, please use this template only, if you know what you are doing."). As pointed out by the closing admin: This template is for persistent copyright violation uploaders, something that you're clearly not. User:Motopark should have never put this on your talk page. Multichill (talk) 00:33, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

I appreciate your response, but I'm not as fond of the implication that I was being pointy by nominating the template for deletion. After it was used to whack me over the head, I went to the template's talk page and saw that other contributors had also voiced concern. Based on that, it seemed reasonable to open it up for community discussion. Of course, I wasn't expecting that discussion to be immediately shut down by an admin. As to the proper application of the template (if there is any), that can be addressed by re-titling the template, making the language of the template clear and focused, and revising the guidelines to reflect the appropriate use of such templates. - MrX 01:38, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

One upside is that you occasionally you get to see some nice photos, and then reuse them. I vote for a Kleptocracy, it may as well be enshrined in the governance system as I'm constantly accused of it anyway. --Fæ (talk) 00:35, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Fæ, this focusing the attention to your problems in every discussion is getting tiring, please stop doing it. Multichill (talk) 00:37, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Fae, I'm not sure how to interpret your comments, nor am I sure they have anything to do with the concerns I raised, but thank you for playing! - MrX 01:52, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Commons:Deletion requests doesn't actually provide for any Speedy Keep outcome. Requests that are not obviously frivolous or malicious should be left open for 7 days, end of story. I've converted the closing comment to a comment, and re-opened the DR. Rd232 (talk) 00:56, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

@Rd232 - I appreciate that you stepped in to facilitate the correct process. - MrX 01:43, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh, and <snark>it's not a monarchy. It's more of an oligarchy or aristocracy.</snark> - Jmabel ! talk 17:31, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Oligarchy was going to be my next guess. - MrX 02:13, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Can I vote for a bureaucracy? russavia (talk) 03:21, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Russavia, the nature of a bureaucracy is that you don't get to vote for or against it. - Jmabel ! talk 08:24, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Ok, Bureaucratships for all!! russavia (talk) 13:33, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Ah but you can. However you need to fill in the voting form in triplicate and get it approved by someone who cannot be contacted except on alternate Tuesdays... Rd232 (talk) 14:40, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Another voice in support of anarchism, though I will not allow myself to be bound or bind others to voting for it.--KTo288 (talk) 18:16, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

December 15

Vote for the best Wiki Loves Public Art logotype!

Hello everybody,

You are all invited to help us take a decision on which logotype should be used for the Commons:Wiki Loves Public Art photo contest! We have a few great suggestions and we welcome you all to vote for one of them. The voting page is found here.

The vote will:

• Start on Tuesday 18^th, 00.01 o'clock CET.
• End at Friday 28^th, 23.59 o'clock CET.

Please let us know what you think!

Cheers,

John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 19:23, 17 December 2012 (UTC) minor change 19:29, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

December 18

UK consent requirements

There is a discussion underway at Commons talk:Country specific consent requirements on UK consent requirements for photos taken in a public place. Input from knowledgeable editors would be welcomed. russavia (talk) 03:42, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Taking a break for some MELLOW time

I'm taking a break from recent drama for some COM:MELLOW time.

I'll defer to the judgment of other admins with regards to admin actions.

Please feel free to change what you wish on prior admin actions — no worries, either way. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 05:38, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Flickr notifications for batch uploads

I have kicked off a proposal at Commons:Bots/Work_requests#Request for a Flickr notification bot for Flickr2Commons and other batch upload methods, in order to discuss the technical issues involved in creating a bot to notify Flickr users that their photographs are being currently uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. The bot would provide a link to the images here and explain how they can raise any questions (or objections) they might have. The bot might do useful things like notify a Commons uploader that images they recently uploaded have been deleted from Flickr by official action. There may be more general ethical and high level policy issues that make such an automated process unrealistic or undesirable, and I suggest such issues are discussed here rather than on the bot request page. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 14:59, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

From memory, Flickr usage guidelines may bar that type of automated messages from being posted there. I'm pretty sure it has been discussed before. Getting some notification here of images that Flickr deletes by official action may be a very good idea though. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:37, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I have suggested bots inform the flickr uploader. As I recall, it was suggested that flickr users might regard comments left by a bot as spam. I don't remember anyone saying flickr policy prohibited it. But maybe a flickr policy was mentioned, and I didn't notice. Personally, I would favor leaving a comment on each image we uploaded. Geo Swan (talk) 23:34, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

It might be an issue, something to test out and perhaps ask Flickr development about. Certainly for Flickrstream owners who have a yahoo or other email address in their public profile (or an archived past profile ;-) ), there would nothing to stop a bot sending them a summary email as a helpful notice. Though this is not marketing spam, the bot could even suggest they add their name to an opt-out list if that is what they want, keeping us fully compliant with law and best practice. --Fæ (talk) 12:49, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I was under the impression that there was no way to know whether a Flickr image was deleted by "official action" or the Flickr user. If there is, we should certainly try and use that information. Rd232 (talk) 17:18, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Related -- a frequent claim in discussions over the deletion of images related to human sexuality is -- "this image should be deleted because flickr management decided to remove the contributor." In fact the flickr documents are clear that they never say whether a contributor who is "no longer active on flickr" was removed by management, or whether they chose to resign for reasons of their own.

By extrapolation, I think this would make it unlikely that they would say who chose to delete an image. Geo Swan (talk) 23:34, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

This is a lot more complex than that - it's about being able to obtain evidence of copyright status in a case where there's doubt (since Flickrwashing is always a possibility), as well as the possibility that they may have removed the image or their account due to privacy concerns. Dcoetzee (talk) 10:39, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

We don't have to make it complex. The bot can be "conservative" as we are only talking notifications, whether to the uploader or the Flickr user. It is up to them to take the initiative. If a Flickrstream that I recently uploaded portrait photos from is suddenly deleted, I would appreciate the notification and would take a very careful second look at that batch to see if there was anything doubtful that I missed when batch uploading. There need be no automatic assumption by the bot that there is a copyvio or personal rights issue, though helpful notifications might prompt the uploader (or other Commonists) to think about writing to the photographer to confirm details or even raise the image for community deletion review if they are concerned, for example if a subject in the image appears to be a minor. --Fæ (talk) 12:44, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

• With regard to flickr-washing, and flickr-copyvio (which I think is a more serious problem), to what extent should we extend the assumption of good faith to individuals who upload to sites like flickr... In practice we trust other WMF contributors, unless there are strong reasons in their previous history to have doubts. I have uploaded hundreds of maps and photos I made myself over the last seven years. The only person to initiate a deletion discussion based on doubts that I was the copyright holder of the images I uploaded was a newbie. Other than my record I couldn`t prove I was the copyright holder. The same holds true for flickr contributors, only rarely could they prove they were the copyright holder. Yes, in general, flickr contributors are less clueful about intellectual property rights than commons contributors, but I don`t think this clue deficit is severe enough to not extend the assumption of good faith to most flickr contributors. Geo Swan (talk) 13:51, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

• On my wishlist -- that functionality be added to the tools that help add flickr images. When we first enter the URL of a flickr image, our tools could check to see whether the image had already been uploaded here. As things stand now, one can spend time populating the {{Information}} template, figuring out which categories were appropriate, and then only finding out that the image had already been uploaded, when one clicks "upload". Geo Swan (talk) 23:34, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

There's so many reasons why we should let people know that we use their photos, I'm surprised this isn't done already. Anyhow, great idea, we should definitely do this. --Conti|✉ 11:09, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

But there are also reasons to not do it. I already met Flickr users who changed everything to "all rights reserved" after my first uploads to Commons. -- Herby (Vienna) (talk) 08:05, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Sure, that'll happen. However, the most ethical‡ interpretation of the aims of this project is to find the best way to be as open and transparent as possible with copyright holders, and whenever there is a reasonable policy-based case that their personal rights, or the rights of models, may not be seen to be respected by Commons hosting a media file, we have an effective means for them to be able to present a rationale for deletion, without the process itself being likely to cause them distress, damage or apparent disrespect. There can be no harm in communicating more effectively, part of which must be to educate and inform copyright holders and models of their rights, and the meaning of the licences that have been applied to their photographs and media, on Flickr, on social networks, on unintended internet archives, on well known abusive websites, or elsewhere on the internet.

[‡ I draw a personal distinction between ethical behaviour and moral belief, hopefully dear reader, you grasp my intended meaning without making a big thing out of it.] --Fæ (talk) 17:54, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

That's not a reason not to do it. Educating people about copyright is at least part of our educational mission - and a highly practical one at that since it's such an important part of running Commons. Flickr users tagging things with licenses they don't really understand is a perennial problem, and us bringing this to their intention is not a bad thing. Rd232 (talk) 18:04, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

That's one of the biggest reasons why we should do it. If someone reacts like that, that clearly shows that they do not want their pictures uploaded here (or anywhere else, for that matter), and they've chosen the wrong license for their pictures for whatever reason. If that happens, we delete their pictures on Commons and educate them about what free licenses mean and move on. It's not our job to go "Nyah nyah! You carelessly licensed your pictures under CC so now we gonna keep them forever!" --Conti|✉ 12:50, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

• I decided in November 2009 to do my best to remember to always leave a brief friendly comment on each image I have uploaded. Herby wrote above that they had encountered some flickr contributors who changed all their images to all rights reserved, when they were advised how their images were being re-used.

Actually, it was someone with uploader`s remorse that made me decide to leave that heads-up on every image. In the long run it is a mistake to exploit a flickr contributor`s misunderstanding of the liscenses they chose.

I have left several thousand notes, and have only had three flickr contributors decide to change their liscensing.

About eighty percent of the flickr contributors don`t respond at all. But a small but substantial fraction -- a fraction orders of magnitude larger than those who weren`t happy, have thanked me for telling me where their image was re-used.

As to whether the flickr contributor should be informed via email, or via a comment on the image`s flickr page, I would prefer the note being left on the image`s comment page, as: (1) a visible comment helps prevent another WMF contributor trying to upload a good flickr image multiple times; (2) other flickr contributors, who see someone being thanked for using a CC liscense, may consider starting to use CC liscenses themselves. Geo Swan (talk) 19:05, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I see the concerns, but I agree that telling photographers (in Flickr, in Commons or anywhere else) when their images are being reused, is a very good idea.--Pere prlpz (talk) 18:54, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

From my perspective as a Flickr user, I would really appreciate getting a message about my images being reused (even if by bot).--ragesoss (talk) 14:33, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Good idea. It will deal with 3 problems:- (1) Genuine mistakes of various sorts by FlickR users, a free license accidentally and temporarily granted is unlikely to stand up in court and also they often stick found pictures and friend's pictures in amongst their own routinely licensed sets; (2) It provides further evidence against those commercial photographers who decide to revoke the license on one or more of their free sample after these get exposure on the Wikipedia (I can think of 2 examples); (3) It will provide further evidence against the inevitable attacks and insinuations against any image used or useful on sexuality projects! However, I do think there are issues with the whole of FlickR, (and no not particularly with sexuality images on FlickR!!!), it's not a source it's a whole mass of sources with the main link being that they don't treat such things as copyright as seriously as we do on the Commons. --Simonxag (talk) 10:56, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

December 10

Problem with new version of image

NOTE: Parallel discussion in progress at en:Village pump (technical)#No purging on newer version of images

I uploaded new versions of File:Double parked car with diplomatic tags.jpg that blurred-out the license plates used but for some reason the latest copy always shows the original non-blurred image. I have purged the page. I have "shift-reloaded" every image multiple times to purge my browser's catch but things are still not displaying correctly. I even waited for a while thinking that perhaps some server needed to catch up. I've also tried in multiple browsers to make sure it isn't a local cache issue. It's not. Any ideas what's wrong? I'm currently baffled. Jason Quinn (talk) 05:04, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

It is ok for me. Ruslik (talk) 07:37, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Nope, I can see the licence plates. — SMUconlaw (talk) 08:43, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

---

Possibly related: File:Obama_and_Duke_Duchess_of_Cambridge.jpg seems to fail to generate thumbnails from the recently-uploaded larger version. AnonMoos (talk) 11:33, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Both files work for me. --McZusatz (talk) 12:04, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

It really does not work for me -- clicking on the "Full resolution" link at File:Obama_and_Duke_Duchess_of_Cambridge.jpg I get the 656×436 image (definitely not 4,096×2,731), while clicking on the "800×533 pixels" link I get no image and the message: Error generating thumbnail
Error creating thumbnail: Image was not scaled, is the requested width bigger than the source? -- AnonMoos (talk) 12:15, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Ah ok. I can reproduce this if I choose an US-Proxy. (Actually wiki serves users from different continents with different servers). --McZusatz (talk) 12:42, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, finally managed to generate an 800px thumbnail for the Obama file, so the problem seems to be fixed from my perspective (have no idea about other continents). AnonMoos (talk) 00:20, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

There is also some issue with the Obama file for me. It just doesn't generate the image on the File's page. There's just a transparent box with the file's name in the upper-left corner. When I click on that name, it does load and display the image. I have no idea what's causing the two problems but probably separate issues. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:29, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

That's the same as the issue described above. On the image page you're viewing the scaled version, but that errors out so you just get the box. If you click the image you go to the original, which doesn't have any scaling issues since its just the original image. Bawolff (talk) 00:08, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

It appears the thumbnail caching bug of several months ago mid-2011 is back again. I just uploaded a new version of File:Vibram Carrarmato sole.png with improved contrast in the logo area, but it's showing the old low-contrast version thumbnails, even after the browser cache is cleared and the page is purged. Thinking I might have inadvertently re-uploaded the unedited image, I tried a couple of reverts and new uploads, but nothing works. If I go to one of the articles where the image is used and change the thumbnail size even by one pixel and preview the change, it generates a new thumbnail with the correct appearance, but the original size thumbnail remains unchanged, as it was before I uploaded the edited image. Oh, well, perhaps it will catch up and show the correct version in a few days. — Quicksilver^@ 21:29, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

That was exactly my experience. I re-uploaded and reverted while being puzzled. Could you wikilink to the bug that you are referring? PS Your "@"-sign is set-up to send you e-mail, but you apparently also have chosen not to receive e-mail. Perhaps you want your talk page again? Jason Quinn (talk) 22:30, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I've enabled email now; don't know why it was turned off. The bug I referred to was plaguing the Commons and Wikipedia around mid-May through June 2011 and beyond. I don't have a bug tracker link to it, but I know it affected several image edits I uploaded around that time. It was discussed in the Technical section of the English Wikipedia Village Pump over several weeks. Wikipedia in general had gotten extremely sluggish, even for people with broadband connections, and thumbnail updates were taking 24-36 hours. The problem lingered to a greater or lesser degree throughout the summer of 2011. Maybe the root cause was never fixed. — Quicksilver^@ 00:25, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Bugzilla: 28613, I think. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:41, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

That's it! Thanks for digging up the reference. — Quicksilver^@ 03:50, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

---

I don't know if it's the same issue, but a new version of File:LucienMuratP.jpg shows up correctly thumbnailed in the file history, but both the main preview and clicking on the new version thumbnail give the previous version. (I purged, obviously, without effect.) Rd232 (talk) 22:40, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

fixed now. Rd232 (talk) 00:52, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

So what about "File:Double parked car with diplomatic tags.jpg"? I can still see the licence plates. — SMUconlaw (talk) 18:26, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I re-uploaded the file, and that seems to have fixed the problem for me. — SMUconlaw (talk) 09:26, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Call for a !VOTE: Should copyright paranoia be the official policy of Commons?

Do the rights of the public to works that ARE free deserve at least some respect?

Call for a !VOTE: Should copyright paranoia be the official policy of Commons? Should policy not be balanced such that legitimate content isn't deleted if the law and the evidence indicate it's probably free content.

Should copyright paranoia be the official policy of Commons? I say NO! Policy must be balanced so that legitimate content isn't deleted if the law and the evidence indicate it's probably free content.

This is a call to the community to override administrator action that I believe is contrary to the consensus views of the community, not required by prudence or law, and very harmful to the Wikimedia Commons!

Does the idea that copyright paranoia is appropriate really "have wide acceptance among editors" and is it really "considered a standard that all users should follow?" I say NO!

I believe that the consensus of the community of commons editors is CONTRARY to the view which is reflected by this edit to the precautionary principle policy and this edit of a license template, and similar edits which reflect a copyright paranoia that is not appropriate for the project. These two edits have been made irreversible by the admin-editors - who made them, and then blocked editing of them by non-admins. So the time for an appeal to the community has come, as the admins feel so strongly that they are acting in accord with views that "have wide acceptance among editors" that these admins even ignore efforts to discuss matters reasonably. I waited weeks to see if there was any disagreement and only then make changes, but these two admins blocked further editing by non-admins, and reverted the pages to their preferred versions.

On the main English Wikipedia, administrators are not allowed to use their admin tools in this way -- to force their views in content disputes. (Article protection is done by un-involved admins.) I'm not proposing de-adminship but is that sort of action appropriate? Certainly, where copyright law or well-established policy has clearly been seriously violated, action by even involved admins may be needed. But this is far from such a case. There are a great many editors who are appalled at the unjustified paranoia. Note: I in no way support the violation of copyright; what I do not support is overreaching paranoia, where the word of respected editors is considered worthless, in violation of AGF, and outrageous claims to copyright that have no clear basis in law are assumed true. This is a BIG DEAL because LOTS of valuable free images, etc. are being deleted from Commons regularly, without proper scrutiny. It's pissing off and discouraging lots of users. There's lots of stuff that has been uploaded in clear violation of copyright, and users who identify and/or delete such content do commendable work. The WMF is not in danger of a disastrous legal claim if every file that has even a remote chance of being unfree is not deleted on sight. I'm not proposing that we disrespect copyright or see what we can get away with! The rights of the public to free works, the efforts of uploaders acting in good faith and the rights of copyright holders need to be respected by policy and administrator action, not JUST the latter, at any cost.

OK, so please vote - do you AGREE or DISAGREE? Before voting begins, I'd like to give folks a chance to suggest clarifications, provide examples, ask questions, move this to a separate page, etc. I plan to open the vote by Monday. --Elvey (talk) 11:11, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

As a non-admin, I agree with the admins "In dubio abstinere", and not only at a 50-50% doubt, so "where there is significant doubt about the freedom of a particular file it should be deleted" is the better formulation in the quoted edit. --Havang(nl) (talk) 11:40, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Why? What is "significant" "In dubio abstinere"? This was brought up, and no useful answer was given. Is there significant doubt if there is reasonable doubt? Clearly some admins are deleting content on the basis of claims that this is the case. --Elvey (talk) 19:16, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

The WMF is not in danger of a disastrous legal claim - indeed it isn't, since it isn't responsible for either the content or most of the policies or their enforcement. As long as it responds to DMCA requests, the legal liability problem is for reusers and uploaders. Rd232 (talk) 12:12, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

The legal liability problem may be for re-users, but wikipedia guarantees the reuse by its licences system. We must not throw away that guarantee and keep the licence policy trustworthy. --Havang(nl) (talk) 14:50, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Of course I'm not suggesting that we throw anything away, actually. Wikipedia guarantees the reuse by its licences system? Uh, really? Where can I find a copy of this guarantee? Deletion of work that IS free does nothing to improve the reusability of our content. It is that deletion that I have a problem with, and that many users have a problem with. --Elvey (talk) 19:16, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Rd232 did nothing wrong when he undid a policy change for what I can't see enough consensus. Personally I upload only few art-photos and stuff that is not my own work without OTRS confirmation because the risk it is getting deleted or getting complaints is high enough. -- Rillke^(q?) 15:03, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

We'll see what consensus is. When the law places a work in the public domain (irrespective of the desires of the creator), no OTRS confirmation is possible, as it's the law that does so, not a person who can do so by using OTRS templates - or choose not to. This largely about policy around deletions where OTRS confirmation is inherently impossible for that reason.--Elvey (talk) 19:16, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

TL;DR, but does not Commons:Precautionary_principle answer you? Jean-Fred (talk) 11:59, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

The issue is that Elvey edited Commons:Precautionary_principle, making a major policy change, and is complaining that it was reverted. Much of his complaint here has nothing to do with the wording of the policy, but its application in practice. Rd232 (talk) 12:09, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

NO. This IS about policy. I edited the page of that policy to REFLECT then-current policy expressed elsewhere, but you are ignoring that point. The wording of Commons:Precautionary_principle is so fucked up now that administrators are deleting work on the basis that there is Wikipedia:reasonable doubt that an image is allowed. (example - and note that the deleting admin uses unauthorized bots and calls a user a dick and ignores the point that so-called dick (whose native language is clearly not English) has made. [http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Fastily&diff=69776161&oldid=69772351#File:St._Georg_1804.JPG_and_File:Leipzig_1804_Das_Hospital_St._Georg.jpg here too; same file, but I was slightly involved and myself insulted for reasons I can't fathom. WTF?) is the extremely high standard of a criminal court - beyond even the standard of a preponderance of the evidence! I fixed that, and you reverted me.--Elvey (talk) 19:16, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

1. I edited the page to REFLECT then-current policy - nonsensical in itself, and if you mean "consensus" rather than "policy", wrong.
2. administrators are deleting work on the basis that there is Wikipedia:reasonable doubt that an image is allowed. - I guess you mean en:reasonable doubt (article) as there is no en:Wikipedia:reasonable doubt. In any case, the Commons policy says "significant doubt", with "significant" in italics for emphasis.
3. I see nothing wrong with Commons:Deletion_requests/NASA_images_of_User:Huntster. I'm not aware of User:Fastily using unauthorized bots, but true or not, it's impressively irrelevant.
4. I don't know what your point is about this exchange, but complaining about "dickish messages" (linking to en:WP:DICK) is not "call[ing] a user a dick".
5. the extremely high standard of a criminal court - beyond even the standard of a preponderance of the evidence - I don't know what you're saying here. FWIW, to my mind COM:PRP is (comparing with an Anglo-Saxon legal framework) certainly a higher standard than civil courts (balance of evidence) and less than criminal courts ("no reasonable doubt" required for conviction). Rd232 (talk) 20:30, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

→RD232: I meant to link to what I linked to. Please address the fact that administrators are deleting work on the basis that there is reasonable doubt that an image is allowed! I note that their doing so is inconsistent with the policy as it stood after I fixed it, but is consistent with policy since my fix was reverted. Please address that.--Elvey (talk) 06:53, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Now you're ignoring the point I made earlier. It's quite clear from the above link to content here what I mean when I say I edited the page to REFLECT then-current policy - it references a WHOLE DISCUSSION which you dismiss as nonsensical. Perhaps you have yet to read it? Your dismissal is nonsensical, LOL. Or perhaps simply a sign of poor comprehension.
WHAT PART OF «The "significant doubt" term needs to be removed, defined, or replaced with something with some precision to it» and «Again, it is current policy that files should NOT be deleted for licensing reasons if 'to the best of our knowledge' they are free» and «""best of our knowledge are free" is often completely ignored while "significant doubt" has become "Any doubt at all""», etc DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND or CLAIM IS NONSENSICAL? (Go back and read them in context to most easily understand them!) STOP ignoring the point. The wording of Commons:Precautionary_principle is so fucked up now that administrators are deleting work on the basis that there is W:reasonable doubt that an image is allowed. There's a problem with the policy I linked to, but there's no problem with MY links to the Reasonable Doubt article, your insistence and your own broken link notwithstanding. --Elvey (talk) 06:53, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Are you seriously expecting a reply to a post composed in this manner? I suggest you rethink how you're communicating in this thread. Rd232 (talk) 12:28, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

You're doing a great job showing why this vote needs to happen. I raise substantive points about the need for the policy edits I made in a relatively cool manner pointing out your inaccurate characterizations of my contributions (as nonsense), and guiding you toward a better understanding of them and you avoid responding them. You basically ignored every substantial justification I presented, and the questions I just asked and I expect you to continue to ignore, them, per Wikipedia:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. --Elvey (talk) 17:26, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Let's recap what actually happened re COM:PRP:

1. 13 April 2012: you propose changing PRP at Commons talk:Project scope/Precautionary principle
2. 18 June: Discussion runs out about this, with a pretty clear consensus against; certainly none for.
3. 9 July: You propose a completely new concept based on where the balance of the evidence indicates that the work is likely (as in 50% odds) non-free.
4. 20 August: although no-one has commented either way on your proposal, you implement it
5. 28 September: I notice this undiscussed major change and revert it
6. 15 December: you start this COM:VP thread, attacking me for not listening etc etc, repeatedly linking to en:WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to judge your behaviour. Maybe you should think about it too. Rd232 (talk) 18:21, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh, and I didn't "characterize your contributions as nonsense"; I was talking about the statement you made I edited the page to REFLECT then-current policy, which doesn't make any sense since we're talking about the only policy page that addresses this issue. And I added (because I assumed you did not intend to make a nonsensical statement) that if you meant "reflect consensus" that was wrong. Rd232 (talk) 18:27, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

On the substantive issue: you seem to see a massive difference between the current policy's "significant doubt" and the phrasing you assert is used in practice in DR closures, "reasonable doubt". Perhaps you could (a) explain the difference and (b) provide evidence that the latter is used. That would be a start for making this discussion ever have any substantive content. Rd232 (talk) 18:34, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

HOW ABOUT YOU ANSWER MY QUESTIONS, WHICH ARE PILING UP UNANSWERED? TO REITERATE:

1. Please address the fact that administrators are deleting work on the basis that there is reasonable doubt that an image is allowed! I note that their doing so is inconsistent with the policy as it stood after I fixed it, but is consistent with policy since my fix was reverted. Please address that.
2. Perhaps you have yet to read it[?]
3. WHAT PART OF «The "significant doubt" term needs to be removed, defined, or replaced with something with some precision to it» DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND or CLAIM IS NONSENSICAL?
4. WHAT PART OF «Again, it is current policy that files should NOT be deleted for licensing reasons if 'to the best of our knowledge' they are free» DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND or CLAIM IS NONSENSICAL?
5. WHAT PART OF «""best of our knowledge are free" is often completely ignored while "significant doubt" has become "Any doubt at all""», etc DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND or CLAIM IS NONSENSICAL?

The wording of Commons:Precautionary_principle is so fucked up now that administrators are deleting work on the basis that there is W:reasonable doubt that an image is allowed. Your 'recap' is a distraction (and wild distortion).--Elvey (talk) 19:18, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Site Banner

I hereby request a site banner, once the vote starts, so that this !vote reaches a wider audience.--Elvey (talk) 11:11, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

You are welcome to set up a neutrally worded Request for comment. Try to be very clear about exactly which policy changes you want, including which words you want to use in the new version. The section above is nowhere near clear enough to direct a site banner toward. But to be honest, given the feedback you've received so far, I'd suggest that perhaps the community is not really with you on this issue? --99of9 (talk) 08:57, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, it needs to be shorter and sweeter, but I recall tons of feedback elsewhere that showed broad support for this kind of change.
Looking at the feedback so far, I see: Havang, who hasn't replied to my request for clarification of what it the language he supports means, or my note pointing out that he's said stuff that I think is counterfactual. Rillke says more consensus is needed, which the vote would obtain. Rd232 has said Wikipedia:IDIDNTHEARTHAT in 10 different ways. And there's a TL;DR hint. So lots of comments, but not a single --Elvey (talk) 17:26, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

RFC

Well, I think if this thread can achieve anything at this point it's creating the terms of reference for an RFC (Commons:Requests for comment/precautionary principle I suppose). Some suggestions:

1. How does the current policy influence actual practice in deletion discussions (especially in closing them)? How do interpretations of the policy differ between people and situations?
2. What is the policy trying to achieve, and to what extent does it succeed? How can it be improved?

On point 2 I would point out that changing the policy isn't the only way to clarify it. Whilst I'm reluctant to complexify our simplest policy, Commons:OVERWRITE#Examples shows one way to help contributors understand how a policy is and should be applied.

In addition, talking about these definitional issues in abstract terms can quickly get difficult. So we should also talk about specific situations, and how PRP is and should be applied in them. For instance

1. Doubts about whether an uploader is really the creator of a work
2. Doubts about the authorship of a work (eg whether a work is genuinely anonymous, or whether X is the author)
3. Doubts about author details (especially year of death)
4. Doubts about when an old work was published
5. Doubts about what the relevant legal situation is

A related issue is reliability of sourcing. This is something we tend not to worry about much (eg taking at face value a deathyear from Wikipedia), but maybe we should.

Anyway, to reiterate, the above is a suggestion for terms of reference for an RFC, not for detailed discussion here. Rd232 (talk) 21:57, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

HOW ABOUT YOU ANSWER MY QUESTIONS, WHICH ARE PILING UP UNANSWERED? TO REITERATE:

1. Please address the fact that administrators are deleting work on the basis that there is reasonable doubt that an image is allowed! I note that their doing so is inconsistent with the policy as it stood after I fixed it, but is consistent with policy since my fix was reverted. Please address that.
2. Perhaps you have yet to read it[?]
3. WHAT PART OF «The "significant doubt" term needs to be removed, defined, or replaced with something with some precision to it» DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND or CLAIM IS NONSENSICAL?
4. WHAT PART OF «Again, it is current policy that files should NOT be deleted for licensing reasons if 'to the best of our knowledge' they are free» DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND or CLAIM IS NONSENSICAL?
5. WHAT PART OF «""best of our knowledge are free" is often completely ignored while "significant doubt" has become "Any doubt at all""», etc DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND or CLAIM IS NONSENSICAL?

The wording of Commons:Precautionary_principle is so fucked up now that administrators are deleting work on the basis that there is W:reasonable doubt that an image is allowed. Your 'recap' is a distraction (and wild distortion).--Elvey (talk) 22:47, 16 December 2012 (UTC)--Elvey (talk) 19:18, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, fine, if you're this intent on disrupting any serious attempt to discuss the matter, then I cede the field. Over and out. Rd232 (talk) 22:51, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

GIve me a break. Let's recap what actually happened:

1. I asked Rd232 questions.
2. Rd232 didn't answer them.
3. I asked Rd232 to answer the questions.
4. Rd232 didn't answer them, but made distracting comments and distracting edits to my words. Yes, Rd232 went so far as to insist on edit war editing MY WORDS ON A TALK PAGE to make them appear as HE wanted. I manage to steer clear of the distraction.
5. Rd232 threatens me. (Even though your actions were clear violations of en policy and mine violated no policy.)
6. I avoid the distraction.
7. I asked Rd232 again, using a little ALL CAPS text to bring attention to the unanswered questions.
8. Rd232 didn't answer, but posted a distracting so-called 'recap'.
9. I asked Rd232 again using more ALL CAPS text to address the unanswered questions.
10. Rd232 doesn't answer. Incredibly, Rd232 is the one who is disrupting any serious attempt to discuss the matter, by refusing do respond to questions, or in any other way engage in substantive discussion, but says that it's me disrupting any serious attempt to discuss the matter. Shame. It's just incredible. I complained about "reasonable doubt". Rd232 wrote, ":::#I see nothing wrong with Commons:Deletion_requests/NASA_images_of_User:Huntster." How can one possibly follow that link and see the use of the phrase "reasonable doubt" and still see nothing wrong? It's incredible.--Elvey (talk) 04:27, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

 Comment Elvey you should read Commons:Mellow --PierreSelim (talk) 10:02, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your advice. I've been there. Would you please quote a particular sentence on that page that you can point to as being apropos? I would get it if you suggested I read this, or just said "stay mellow"... Note the text now in yellow, above. Perhaps you'd care to answer that question, since Rd232 is insisting on ignoring it, STILL. Do you not think Rd232's actions warrant advice?--Elvey (talk) 02:10, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Well since you've specifically asked me to reply again, fine, I will. Numbering refers to the numbers used in the SHOUTY QUESTIONS REPEATED TWICE IN THIS THREAD.

1. I did "address the fact that administrators are deleting work on the basis that there is reasonable doubt", by asking you to prove that they were, and to distinguish "reasonable doubt" from the policy phrasing of "significant doubt". You ignored those two questions.
2. Perhaps you have yet to read it[?] - no idea what you're talking about. Best guess is that you mean the talkpage discussion at COM:PRP, in which case, obviously yes, I did read it.
3. WHAT PART OF «The "significant doubt" term needs to be removed, defined, or replaced with something with some precision to it» DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND or CLAIM IS NONSENSICAL? - No part, and it should be clear by now that I am (was, anyway) happy to discuss how to clarify the interpretation and application of the policy, and potentially to reword it. The proposed terms of reference of the RFC were intended to move that forward.
4. WHAT PART OF «Again, it is current policy that files should NOT be deleted for licensing reasons if 'to the best of our knowledge' they are free» DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND or CLAIM IS NONSENSICAL? the part where that statement is policy. Read COM:PRP again: the "best of our knowledge" phrase is part of an introduction sentence about the aim of Commons and says nothing about deletion. The definition of precautionary principle follows in the next sentence and it is this sentence which mentions deletion.
5. WHAT PART OF «""best of our knowledge are free" is often completely ignored while "significant doubt" has become "Any doubt at all""», etc DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND or CLAIM IS NONSENSICAL? - no part. Though as an abstract claim without evidence or examples, this doesn't get us anywhere. Again, the RFC terms I proposed were clearly intended to move that forward.

Replies to your numbered replies (you could have simply answered the questions the first or second time I asked 'em, instead of the (!) sixth, there wouldn't be the redundant "WHAT PART OF..." stuff :

1. I did provide "proof" that that they were. See the big yellow highlighted text in #10, above.
2. Then you haven't answered the question. The link (to "it") is right here in this thread next to the sentence that refers to it, a Ctrl-F or Cmd-F away, where I asked the question for the first time. So you have no excuse. What ARTEST4ECHO (two important comments) and others say there in addition to what I say (particularly at the end) there is on point. Good, but no, wrong.
3. Great. RD, I have been trying to communicate with you - express myself and hear what you're trying to say. I am frustrated. I feel that everything you've written so far shows no understanding of what it is that I'm concerned about. (See #1 - which is at the core of the whole thing) Every time I guide the conversation toward enlightening content or questions that will lead you to such an understanding, you look the other way - you don't look at the content (AFAICT) and you don't respond to the questions. So it's not surprising that you were unable to put together an RFC that is relevant to my actual concerns.
4. Well, I and others have read the policy,and seen that («files should NOT be deleted for licensing reasons if 'to the best of our knowledge' they are free»)IS in it. Your interpretation is a misinterpretation. Jim/James|woodward says, e.g. "We keep files that to the best of our knowledge are free", and Avenue agrees. I read that as being in opposition to your claim that the "best of our knowledge" phrase (despite it being in a policy whose topic is deletion) is not about deletion. I read that as support for a change like the one I made and you reverted.
5. If its a claim that you dispute, then how do you define "significant doubt"? It must have a definition to be meaningful.--Elvey (talk) 02:10, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Also re Commons:Deletion_requests/NASA_images_of_User:Huntster - the reasoning and sourcing given for the reasoning is solid. Based on that, it seems nearly certain that the images are CC-BY-NC and therefore not allowed on Commons. This is just not a DR where there is an issue about how much doubt we can live with, so the phrasing used to label it is irrelevant. Possibly you picked that one because the phrasing "reasonable doubt" has been used in less than 100 DRs in the entire history of Commons, and for some reason you've picked up on this phrase as the source of all PRP-related evil. (And that's raw mentions of the phrase - I'm not about to go through them to look at context of the phrase use.) Rd232 (talk) 11:40, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

• As I suggested several times at Commons talk:Project scope/Precautionary principle, it appears to me that Elvey's problem is not with the precautionary principle itself or even necessarily how it's worded, but with how it's being interpreted. Toward that end, I've started an essay to clarify PRP (Commons:Project scope/Precautionary principle/Explanation), modeled on the example of the English Wikipedia policy Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria and the supporting guideline Wikipedia:Non-free content. Feel free to jump in and help. cmadler (talk) 16:11, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

AGAIN: NO. This IS about that policy. I edited the page of that policy to REFLECT then-current policy expressed elsewhere, but you are ignoring that point. The wording of Commons:Precautionary_principle is so fucked up now that administrators are deleting work on the basis that there is Wikipedia:reasonable doubt that an image is allowed. (example ; [http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Fastily&diff=69776161&oldid=69772351#File:St._Georg_1804.JPG_and_File:Leipzig_1804_Das_Hospital_St._Georg.jpg here too; same file, but I was slightly involved and myself insulted for reasons I can't fathom. WTF?) is the extremely high standard of a criminal court - beyond even the standard of a preponderance of the evidence! I fixed that, and Rd232 reverted me. But I repeat myself. --Elvey (talk) 02:10, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Again, it is current policy that files should NOT be deleted for licensing reasons if "to the best of our knowledge" they are free." That fact does not rely on an interpretation of what is or is not "significant doubt", or what the term means. "Significant doubt" is an extremely vague term (much like "material", as in "material adverse effect on earnings") that doesn't really have a generally agreed upon definition and doesn't really belong in policy. It's exactly that vagueness that is causing much of the common, and problematic friction. So a policy change to improve clarity is needed and will reduce friction!!! The "significant doubt" term needs to be removed, defined, or replaced with something with some precision to it, e.g. "where the balance of the evidence indicates that the work is likely (as in 50% odds) non-free, or there is equally strong but conflicting evidence, it should be deleted.--Elvey (talk) 02:10, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Woooo.......ow. We are so very done here. If you choose to Drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass, let me know, and we'll see if we can't construct an RFC on this. (Otherwise, I'll put it on the back burner, along with a vaguely similar RFC about the COM:SCOPE definition of "realistically useful for an educational purpose" I hope to get to at some point next year.) Rd232 (talk) 02:47, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Translation for the Flickrreview template doesn't work?

Hi, the Swedish translation of the Flickrreview template doesn't seem to work when used inside the Information template. An exemple can be seen here (Swedish version of a file page) compared to the (French version of a file page) right above the file history section. Can someone fix it? // WikiPhoenix ^[Talk] 15:13, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

The page contains {{User:FlickreviewR/reviewed-pass}} where {{LangSwitch}} is used but sv is missing. -- Rillke^(q?) 15:18, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the help! // WikiPhoenix ^[Talk] 16:49, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

 Done Translation added. --Stefan4 (talk) 16:55, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to limit creating Deletion Requests to users who are not currently blocked

I would like to get a feel for the community view on a proposal that the policy Deletion requests should be changed so that currently blocked users are unable to successfully and openly sockpuppet using anon IP addresses to create Deletion requests, unless they raise a request on their user talk page for an administrator to consider. As an example, over the last 12 months I have been actively stalked on-wiki and hounded off-wiki by Pieter Kuiper (talk · contribs) who was blocked indefinitely on 10 June 2012. You can find an archive of his activities on Commons in relation to me personally at User talk:Fæ/Pieter Kuiper, though I am not his only target. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 12:26, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

A sockpuppet of a blocked user should be blocked for sockpuppeting to avoid a block. It works this way in most wikipedias, and it doesn't matter what kinds of edits the sockpuppet does. Is it different in Commons?--Pere prlpz (talk) 13:14, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

At the moment yes, Commons is different. You can be blocked and, as Pieter Kuiper demonstrates, you can continue to openly use a series of anonymous IP addresses to create Deletion requests against your targets rather than ensuring that you are restricted to raising questions on the talk page of your blocked user account. It is a loophole in Commons policy, in my view. --Fæ (talk) 13:22, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Not support Commons is different to other projects in that we are a media repository, and one of the main tenets of Commons is that media must be free to use by anyone for any purpose; meaning that copyrights and the like shouldn't be hosted on this project at all. That a blocked user is filing DR's is helping us to remove problematic files from the project. If Pieter Kuiper, for example, is filing disruptive DR's which are not grounded in policy (whether rightly or wrongly interpreted), then I would support the immediate closure and deletion of such DRs. In Kuiper's case, there is an issue of being filing vindictive DRs and the like, and whilst there might be some vindictiveness in it, overall it is helping us as a project. Whilst I wouldn't necessarily support an immediate unblock of Pieter Kuiper, but I would support him posting an unblock request. russavia (talk) 14:01, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

• Sorry, you may be misinterpreting the proposal. This is to stop the use of sockpuppets, not to stop blocked users from requesting deletion reviews. Pieter Kuiper has previously been advised to raise requests on his talk page, I see no benefit in obliging him to use sockpuppet accounts to create DRs. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 14:39, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
•  Support, but this is self-evident because the sockpuppets should be blocked as sockpuppets, per comment by Pere prlpz (talk · contribs), above. But yes, strongly agree with this proposal by Fæ (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 14:44, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
•  Oppose Not worth the difficulty associated with enforcement (identifying IPs as a blocked user); not worth breaching the general principle that what matters is the DR substance, not who raises it. Rd232 (talk) 15:18, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

• I'm not clear what the issue is. Commons:Blocking policy says, "User accounts or IP addresses used to evade a block may and should also be blocked." What about that is unclear? If you're just asking for that, there's no need to come here to VP, and if you're asking for something else, it's not clear to me what you want. Thanks, cmadler (talk) 17:13, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

  Cmadler what is unclear, is what admins are supposed to do with edits made by sockpuppet IP addresses once they are blocked. On en.wp, all edits made by the blocked user are liable to be reverted by an admin, on Commons that does not happen, so there is an enormous incentive for a blocked user to by-pass their block in this way by openly using an unlimited number of dynamic IP addresses. As Pieter Kuiper is actively doing, and has done successfully for more than half of this year; this is probably the main reason that he has not bothered to appeal his indefinite block. --Fæ (talk) 17:46, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

 NeutralThe issue is to stop harassing by sockpuppets, which is a nuisance to the wikimedia project. --Havang(nl) (talk) 17:31, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

•  Oppose We have policies in place to deal with identified sock puppets, regardless if they are IP or not. If there is copyright issues, another user is welcome to bring those requests up or an admin can deal with them. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return fire)} 17:43, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

  Er, Zscout370, that is precisely what I am proposing. You should be supporting it. --Fæ (talk) 17:47, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

  Actually it's not really clear what you exactly are proposing. I assumed you meant that DRs launched by blocked users could be summarily deleted regardless of merit; any other action is probably already possible under current policy. Rd232 (talk) 17:52, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

  Okay, let's clarify. I would hope that sockpuppeteers like Pieter Kuiper, do not get satisfaction from using socks to create DRs. I would envisage a better system to be to delete the DR, but then take it back to the puppeteer's user talk page and discuss the merits of the case there. If any admin agrees, then the admin is free to re-create or craft a similar DR based on sound reasoning. This takes the vindictive nature of such DRs out of the process, slows it down a little (no harm in that) and encourage the blocked user to comply with the Blocking policy rather than being rewarded for finding 'clever' ways of by-passing it. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 18:04, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

  Agree with this rationale by Fæ (talk · contribs), most logical. -- Cirt (talk) 18:06, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

  It's not really logical unless the DRs are not founded on substantive reasoning, highlight easily and obviously fixable problems, or are worded in an insulting way. I think we can give free rein to replace a DR nomination with better wording if a blocked user does it in an insulting way but basically has a correct point (with a note so people know it happened), but otherwise, there's not really much point in creating a vague and messy procedure to basically go round in circles. Rd232 (talk) 00:45, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

•  Oppose Discussions about sockpuppets should be held at COM:CU, not at individual deletion requests. This proposal would move these discussions to individual DRs which is not helpful. --AFBorchert (talk) 08:41, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
•  Oppose per AFBorchert/Zscout370 --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:49, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
•  Comment - I can certainly agree with the thrust of the comment by AFBorchert (talk · contribs), above, and in this particular case, that would help to ameliorate the problem, more action over at COM:CU could help with additional rangeblocks to prevent the socking from occurring in the first place. -- Cirt (talk) 15:37, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
•  Support STRONGLY - Admins should never take action on the banned users DRs; to do otherwise violates policy of ignoring trolls/denying recognition. More importantly, a valued user (I assume) is being abused (clearly), and we bloody well MUST NOT condone it. How shameful! Shame, seriously! Cirt's suggestion is the least we could do.--Elvey (talk) 20:14, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
•  Oppose Users evading a block should be blocked. Valid deletion requests should not be closed because that IP made it or they should be refilled if this helps to pour oil on troubled waters (this is a machine translation); the deletion request should be treated without a lot of fuss as this is the nominator's sole intention. -- Rillke^(q?) 23:00, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
•  OpposeNo need to create red tape for the sake of it, there are already policies wrt to socks.--KTo288 (talk) 18:01, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
• Unnecessary. Socks of blocked users should be blocked and their edits reverted - including the creation of DRs. Dcoetzee (talk) 20:52, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Username Change

Is is possible to change your Wikimedia Commons username, like in Wikipedia (Wikipedia:Changing username)? BBODO (talk) 21:32, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes. See Commons:Changing username. INeverCry 21:38, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

If you're trying to see if there's an equivalent page on different wikis, it's often a good idea to try [[Project:name]], where name is the pagename you are checking for. Project:Changing username here will lead to Commons:Changing username and w:Project:Changing username will lead to w:Wikipedia:Changing username. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 19:34, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Misleading PD wording

I have just dealt with an OTRS query from someone interested in using File:Anders Andersen-Lundby Sonniger Wintertag im Englischen Garten.jpg on their website. That page includes the text "You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States", and they - not unreasonably - thought this applied to their reuse. Can we find a way to make our meaning more clear? Andy Mabbett (talk) 09:55, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

If the image is in public domain it is in public domain. So, nobody can require you to include any tags, statements etc. In this case the phrase "You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States" simply means that if you use {{Pd-old}} tag, you must also add a specific US template. In other words this is a purely internal wikiCommons requirement, which does not affect its external use. Ruslik (talk) 10:42, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Which was my point. So, how do you suggest we change the wording, to make that clear to people who want to reuse our content, but are not familiar with our internal workings? Andy Mabbett (talk) 11:37, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Well I made the notice on that file go away by giving a better license tag. As for the general problem of this notice on the {{PD-old}} license tag (some others have it too, but this is by far the most common) - I don't know. Maybe sometime next year we'll get somewhere with mw:Lua, which has the potential to change everything. Rd232 (talk) 12:02, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

This very real problem was mentioned before. The solution is obvious: comments adressed to Commons users about the usage of templates belong in the documentation sections (or documentation pages) of the templates. The problem originated when a user inserted those domestic comments into the public part of the template, which is intended for the reusers and where the domestic comments have nothing to do. If the template is protected, you need a sysop who will move the comment to its proper location in the documentation section. -- Asclepias (talk) 17:33, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

The reason it was put there, I'm sure, is because approximately 0% of uploaders read the template documentation. The percentage may not be much higher who pay attention to that message in the template output on the file page, but it's got to be higher. So definitely reword rather than remove. Rd232 (talk) 18:41, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

I am also quite unhappy about proliferation of all kind of warnings and instructions in the license templates. Those can become quite confusing especially in files that use many licenses. I am also not convinced that more users read details of each of the templates they use than thair documentation. May be a better solution would be to add a well marked section for such instructions to templates that are most often misused. Such section can have different color (so it is harder to confuse with license text) and maybe use collapsible structure so we can fit more there. We can call it something like "use guidelines". --Jarekt (talk) 03:01, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Do you want to try sandboxing something? Rd232 (talk) 03:08, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Sure --Jarekt (talk) 03:10, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Although I myself added this text to {{PD-old}}, this was based on emulation of an unfortunate precedent. Not including US tags on PD-old-tagged images remains a huge problem, and one that is encouraged by the Upload Wizard, but there is no reason to believe the small text in the template would be more effective than some very loud text on the template documentation page. Dcoetzee (talk) 19:18, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

template help

Resolved

I am looking for help on adjusting a commons template. Probably not difficult for the experts. Before I go into details, I want to see if this board is responsive. Simple version: if parameter length is 1 rather than the usual 2, change the category sort in one of the template's included categories to "0{{{1}}}" rather than "{{{1}}}". I want to learn where I'm going wrong, misuse of functions, syntax, or bracket blindness. Please contact me on my talk page if ya like. Boo-Boo Baroo (talk) 01:09, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I can help. I was looking at some of the things you were trying at Template:BustsDecade and I see you are trying to use {{#len:}} parser function. Unfortunately we do not have such functions, although it might exist in other wikis. What you need is probably {{str ≤ len|{{{1}}}|1|0}}{{{1}}} or since {{{1}}} is numeric than {{#ifexp:{{{1}}}<9|0}}}{{{1}}}. I would also suggest using Template:BustsDecade/sandbox for testing new code. --Jarekt (talk) 02:44, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

mw:Help:Magic words always better if available. Here: {{padleft:42|2}} gives 42 and {{padleft:4|2}} gives 04. Rd232 (talk) 02:57, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

That is better solution. --Jarekt (talk) 03:05, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks - "padleft" was good enough for this one. Adding to my confusion was that the categories added by the template were already ON the categories directly, with different sorts, and making think the logic wasn't working. Boo-Boo Baroo (talk) 05:23, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

In general templates should not be adding context categories. It is often confusing to the users, who have to be studying the source code of undocumented templates to figure out how to change a category. It is also not compatible with Cat-a-lot and HotCat gadgets. Templates should only be adding hidden maintenance categories. --Jarekt (talk) 13:24, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh come on, for highly repetitive and rarely changing category frameworks (like date-oriented categories) it is a good practice, design patterns 101. You don't want people using category gadgets on those basic category frameworks anyway. And I see no evidence that what you say is actually practiced; Category:Works-by-year templates. Boo-Boo Baroo (talk) 16:51, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I did not work much with the templates used for category navigation, so may be that is a norm with those. However with {{Creator}} templates, monument templates and several other sets, we were running into a lot of issues with such categories and we were spending a lot of effort switching to regular categories. --Jarekt (talk) 21:06, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

"Move and Replace" - request to add "Use CommonsDelinker" function

Note: I'm indefinitely blocked on English Wikipedia, so I can't automatically replace files on other wikis - so can a "Use CommonsDelinker" function be added to the "Move and Replace" script ASAP? Thanks, Hurricanefan24 (talk) 23:22, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

• Comment: nothing personal, but is it a good idea to let indef blocked users on other projects edit those projects through a bot? Also, is it a good idea to let them have access to a powerful bot? These comments aren't directed at you, but just in general. Cheers, Mono 23:52, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Only admins can instruct CommonsDelinker - other users make requests for admins to process. Automatically making CommonsDelinker suggestions is not necessarily a good idea, but it shouldn't be dangerous. Rd232 (talk) 00:28, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

What happens if you use Move & Replace while you are blocked? In theory, a request to User:CommonsDelinker/commands/filemovers should be added automatically (this is the case since one year and before they were automatically added to User talk:CommonsDelinker/commands) if something went wrong while replacing usage with your account. Anyway, you can untick the option try to replace usage immediately using your account of AjaxQuickDelete by default by setting window.aqdCORSOptOut = true; in your common.js. This way it should add the request to User:CommonsDelinker/commands/filemovers if the file was in use. -- Rillke^(q?) 09:08, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

December 20

move request from http://sq.wikipedia.org

Is it possible to move http://sq.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeda:Pëllumbi_ilir.jpg and http://sq.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeda:Pëllumbi_ilir2.jpg to commons (Category:Archangel (pigeon))? I can't see a license. --PigeonIP (talk) 09:26, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

File:Bob Barker.jpg

Hey there.

The resolution of the file is suspiciously low, so I tried to check for a possible copyvio. Via google image search, I found this video, which seems to show something very similar. Unfortunately, the video is blocked in Germany, so I can't watch it myself (thanks, GEMA!). Could someone else please check if File:Bob Barker.jpg appears to be a screen shot from the video? Thanks, --El Grafo (talk) 13:44, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it is a screenshot from 1:04 in the video. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 13:59, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks alot for that (and the DR). --El Grafo (talk) 14:09, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

{{SourceNPGLondon}}

This template automatically adds the information about the legal threat against Dcoetzee

Should it be used on other files imported from NPG, by other users, or is there another linkg to this site, that does not display the message ?

--Hsarrazin (talk) 16:57, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

While we're on the subject, is anyone aware of the current status of this? en:National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation copyright dispute, User:Dcoetzee/NPG legal threat, and User:Dcoetzee/NPG legal threat/Coverage have nothing after 2010. Is it still an ongoing dispute, or was there some resolution? Thanks, cmadler (talk) 17:39, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

There was no resolution. They decided to pursue no action and also admit no wrongdoing. Since it has been so long since that action occurred, I suggest that the warning should be replaced with the following template instead, which is not as strongly worded but still represents the risk reasonably:

National Portrait Gallery, London claims copyright in United Kingdom on this digital reproduction. For use there and in other restricted jurisdictions, see licensing information. See Commons:Reuse of PD-Art photographs for information on restricted jurisdictions.

Such a template is already in use on works by Tate Britan (see {{PD-Art-copyright-notice-Tate-Britain}}). Dcoetzee (talk) 19:29, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

to be efficient, this template should be linked to the "institution" template, or better, to the "source link" template or am I wrong ? I saw many "Tate" artworks, where I put the "institution" template in place, but I had no idea there was a special "Tate PD" template - in those cases, I think information should be put in the "Institution", so that good will but uncompletely informed users (like me) would not put wrong informations on the artworks -

In fact, as a "new" contributor concerning PD infos, Jarekt gave me very good and synthetic advice on what license to use on book scans and on "old" artwork - that kind of info should be put on a "quick license help" page to explain the basics - the number of licenses is so big and they are so complex that it is very difficult to understand, especially when you are not american --Hsarrazin (talk) 19:23, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

{{Authority control}} templates

Last year or two both English and German Wikipedia was busy adding interwiki links to their articles, with both having more than 250k articles tagged. Here on Commons we also embraced {{Authority control}} templates, especially as part of Creator templates. Recent addition of Help:Gadget-VIAFDataImporter made addition of those templates much easier. I was recently running a script which follows interwiki links from subcategories of Category:People by name and copies {{Authority control}} templates from linked articles. See Special:Contributions/JarektBot. That approach boosted the number of Categories with authority control data from 38k to 73k (out of 157k). So we have much more of them now, but there is a still a lot of biographical articles on English and German wikipedias that have {{Authority control}} templates, but there are no commons categories linking to them and there is a lot of commons categories (related to people) that have no interwiki links. --Jarekt (talk) 14:37, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Is there a mean to list them (I mean "commons categories" without wikilinks" in a "maintenance" list, and is there a way to look for someone in "all" pedias, instead of one by one…

sometimes, I try to add a link to a wiki, but it is very frustrating to search on "which" wiki it is, when the person is not on his/her "logical" (i.e. language corresponding to the nationality - I recently worked on an Dutch painter that was only found on en, no and dk) ?

with the creation of wikidata, do you think it could be a solution to "that" problem, by allowing to find on wikidata the links that are so difficult to find otherwise ? - could a link to data in the {{Creator}} be a good idea ? --Hsarrazin (talk) 10:34, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Pb with Google Art Projet links

while testing a link on File:Thomas Gainsborough - The Mall in St. James's Park - Google Art Project.jpg, I found that the direct link to the painting does NOT point to the painting, but to the Museum instead…

Did GAP change the syntax of its links since this import ? if it's the case, I guess many artworks are concerned :( --Hsarrazin (talk) 19:54, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Category:Creator template home categories

All categories in Category:Creator template home categories should also be in category:People by name, but it is not the case.

Is there a way to automatically list all of the first cat. that are NOT in the 2nd one - I really don't understand how to use CatScan2

Thanks for any help, or automatic fix --Hsarrazin (talk) 11:55, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

In ideal world you are right; however among thousands of our creator templates there are many oddballs, like Category:Corporate creator templates or Category:Group creator templates, home categories for those would not be in category:People by name. There are also home categories like Category:Engravings by Théodore Meyer-Heine, but the rest should be in category:People by name. I will add some. And here is the CatScan2 link to see which Category:Creator template home categories are not in category:People by name. --Jarekt (talk) 14:39, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

 Thank you. Jarekt, I see that your bot has done quite a work, since now, all the "real" persons are categorized - I'll keep the link for further control :) --Hsarrazin (talk) 16:25, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

volume

Can you turn up the volume of the file File:Qc-crêpe.ogg please ? Fête (talk) 15:23, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

CC books on Saylor.org

I want to share with you this news: Saylor.org now hosts free and open versions of Flat World Knowledge texts, which share these books under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license. They're too big for me to upload, because of my Internet connection, hope you can upload them here! --Viscontino (talk) 17:20, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Maybe books like How to Use Microsoft Excel can be used on Wikisource? --Viscontino (talk) 17:25, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

CC NC is not allowed on commons. --McZusatz (talk) 17:44, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Which, I'm afraid, is the end of the story. - Jmabel ! talk 17:47, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

December 22

{{SourceNPGLondon}}

This template automatically adds the information about the legal threat against Dcoetzee

Should it be used on other files imported from NPG, by other users, or is there another linkg to this site, that does not display the message ?

--Hsarrazin (talk) 16:57, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

While we're on the subject, is anyone aware of the current status of this? en:National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation copyright dispute, User:Dcoetzee/NPG legal threat, and User:Dcoetzee/NPG legal threat/Coverage have nothing after 2010. Is it still an ongoing dispute, or was there some resolution? Thanks, cmadler (talk) 17:39, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

There was no resolution. They decided to pursue no action and also admit no wrongdoing. Since it has been so long since that action occurred, I suggest that the warning should be replaced with the following template instead, which is not as strongly worded but still represents the risk reasonably:

National Portrait Gallery, London claims copyright in United Kingdom on this digital reproduction. For use there and in other restricted jurisdictions, see licensing information. See Commons:Reuse of PD-Art photographs for information on restricted jurisdictions.

Such a template is already in use on works by Tate Britan (see {{PD-Art-copyright-notice-Tate-Britain}}). Dcoetzee (talk) 19:29, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

to be efficient, this template should be linked to the "institution" template, or better, to the "source link" template or am I wrong ? I saw many "Tate" artworks, where I put the "institution" template in place, but I had no idea there was a special "Tate PD" template - in those cases, I think information should be put in the "Institution", so that good will but uncompletely informed users (like me) would not put wrong informations on the artworks -

In fact, as a "new" contributor concerning PD infos, Jarekt gave me very good and synthetic advice on what license to use on book scans and on "old" artwork - that kind of info should be put on a "quick license help" page to explain the basics - the number of licenses is so big and they are so complex that it is very difficult to understand, especially when you are not american --Hsarrazin (talk) 19:23, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

{{Authority control}} templates

Last year or two both English and German Wikipedia was busy adding interwiki links to their articles, with both having more than 250k articles tagged. Here on Commons we also embraced {{Authority control}} templates, especially as part of Creator templates. Recent addition of Help:Gadget-VIAFDataImporter made addition of those templates much easier. I was recently running a script which follows interwiki links from subcategories of Category:People by name and copies {{Authority control}} templates from linked articles. See Special:Contributions/JarektBot. That approach boosted the number of Categories with authority control data from 38k to 73k (out of 157k). So we have much more of them now, but there is a still a lot of biographical articles on English and German wikipedias that have {{Authority control}} templates, but there are no commons categories linking to them and there is a lot of commons categories (related to people) that have no interwiki links. --Jarekt (talk) 14:37, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Is there a mean to list them (I mean "commons categories" without wikilinks" in a "maintenance" list, and is there a way to look for someone in "all" pedias, instead of one by one…

sometimes, I try to add a link to a wiki, but it is very frustrating to search on "which" wiki it is, when the person is not on his/her "logical" (i.e. language corresponding to the nationality - I recently worked on an Dutch painter that was only found on en, no and dk) ?

with the creation of wikidata, do you think it could be a solution to "that" problem, by allowing to find on wikidata the links that are so difficult to find otherwise ? - could a link to data in the {{Creator}} be a good idea ? --Hsarrazin (talk) 10:34, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Pb with Google Art Projet links

while testing a link on File:Thomas Gainsborough - The Mall in St. James's Park - Google Art Project.jpg, I found that the direct link to the painting does NOT point to the painting, but to the Museum instead…

Did GAP change the syntax of its links since this import ? if it's the case, I guess many artworks are concerned :( --Hsarrazin (talk) 19:54, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Bug for EXIF category?

Hello,

Is there already a bug reported for issues regarding EXIF categories? (i.e. Category:Taken with Nikon D200 (exif) is empty, although File:Larry Flynt Wheelchair.jpg should be shown. See User talk:Yann#Exif category?). Yann (talk) 20:18, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

I do not know what happen in this case but I see behavior like that with categories added by a template. Without any knowledge of the system inner-working, it seems like you need some "event" to trigger update of file and category information. If category is added by a template when some condition is met, and template is used on a lot of pages than it usually times-out during save, and that results in some pages updated and some not. Same things with template transclusion counters - they often do not update properly if ad template to a template. In case of this image I have no idea what mechanism adds the category, but it is not added directly to the file. --Jarekt (talk) 04:26, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

The exif box is not part of the page text, it is a system message. Hence any category added to it will not categorize the relavent page. This is no different then if somebody tried to add a category to say the mediawiki:sidebar. For reference there is an enhancement request for this to work - bugzilla:21795. The request is unlikely to be fixed in its current state. (Possibilities that are more likely is adding exif data to search (bugzilla:21061), having a parser function that returns data from the exif info which people could work into template, or even hard coding to have categories for camera models auto inserted into page [Not super likely, but more likely then having it work off the system msg]) Bawolff (talk) 00:54, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

p.s. In regards to Jarekt's comment. There are two operations - linksupdates and page renders. A page render re-renders the page, including the list of categories at the bottom. A linksupdate operation updates the links tables, which includes categories, special:whatlinkshere, etc. Page renders run a lot more often then linksupdate, which only run when someone edits a page, or a template used in that page. Bawolff (talk) 00:54, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

December 21

Pb with {{Gartenlaube (1883)}}

Many times, when inserting creator templates, I stumbled upon files with that template… (or similar ones, not sure if it was "this one" in particular)

How is it possible to put the {{Creator}} in that kind of images ? Is it, at all, possible ? I find that kind of "automatic unchangeable description" very disturbing, and frustrating :((

Can someone help me, please ? --Hsarrazin (talk) 10:28, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

--> User talk:Joergens.mi

de:Die Gartenlaube was a German magazin. --PigeonIP (talk) 17:26, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

or:

{{Information
|description=
|date=
|source={{Gartenlaube (1883)}}
|author={{creator}}
|permission=
|other_versions=
}}

I haven't, tried it so far. --PigeonIP (talk) 17:33, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks PigeonIP, but I don't read/speak German, so I can't understand User talk:Joergens.mi

as for the code you propose, it does not work properly… :(

it's not the first time I have difficulties with scans from the german ws… well, I'll let them in peace (don't want to run into a wall) unless one of them is kind enough to help me in English --Hsarrazin (talk) 20:54, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Added an optional "author" parameter, so you can do for instance {{Gartenlaube (1883)|author={{Creator:Martin Luther}}}}. Rd232 (talk) 21:00, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

woaoh ! neat !! thanx a lot Rd232 --Hsarrazin (talk) 22:26, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Category:Creator template home categories

All categories in Category:Creator template home categories should also be in category:People by name, but it is not the case.

Is there a way to automatically list all of the first cat. that are NOT in the 2nd one - I really don't understand how to use CatScan2

Thanks for any help, or automatic fix --Hsarrazin (talk) 11:55, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

In ideal world you are right; however among thousands of our creator templates there are many oddballs, like Category:Corporate creator templates or Category:Group creator templates, home categories for those would not be in category:People by name. There are also home categories like Category:Engravings by Théodore Meyer-Heine, but the rest should be in category:People by name. I will add some. And here is the CatScan2 link to see which Category:Creator template home categories are not in category:People by name. --Jarekt (talk) 14:39, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

 Thank you. Jarekt, I see that your bot has done quite a work, since now, all the "real" persons are categorized - I'll keep the link for further control :) --Hsarrazin (talk) 16:25, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

volume

Can you turn up the volume of the file File:Qc-crêpe.ogg please ? Fête (talk) 15:23, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

CC books on Saylor.org

I want to share with you this news: Saylor.org now hosts free and open versions of Flat World Knowledge texts, which share these books under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license. They're too big for me to upload, because of my Internet connection, hope you can upload them here! --Viscontino (talk) 17:20, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Maybe books like How to Use Microsoft Excel can be used on Wikisource? --Viscontino (talk) 17:25, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

CC NC is not allowed on commons. --McZusatz (talk) 17:44, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Which, I'm afraid, is the end of the story. - Jmabel ! talk 17:47, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

December 22

Annotations not showing

Re Siege of Leith map Is anyone able to tell me why annotations which I added to this image (and were showing normally) are no longer showing? There are 45 in all, still showing in edit mode, but not displaying in normal view mode. Kim Traynor (talk) 02:42, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Empty your Browser cache and/or force a page reload and/or try and alternative Browser. They are showing for me with FF. --Denniss (talk) 03:01, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for that suggestion. I've done that, but am seeing no difference. Other images I have annotated are behaving as normal, but not this one. Glad to know you can see the annotations. Kim Traynor (talk) 11:11, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

This is a well known issue, and it happens with annotations, and far more commonly with new versions of images. I'm not sure what the solution is; purging should work, but doesn't. Try checking it in another browser, or on another PC. Either way, you should see the change in 48 hours or so. Sven Manguard Wha? 16:28, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Permission for using Commons logo on an external wiki

Hello. I'm setting up a new site on the Referata network, and I wonder if I can use the Commons logo for one of the system messages there. (Referata itself allows usage of files from the Commons, as explained on the front page of its Scratchpad.) --Slgrandson (talk) 08:13, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

This isn't the place to ask. Start at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Trademark_policy ... -- AnonMoos (talk) 09:42, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

A problem

I can't see this picture. Does anyone know what's the problem?--Rapsar (talk) 15:05, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I think this goes to Category:Files with 404 errors. --McZusatz (talk) 15:10, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

CommonsDelinker and File:Ww28.gif

CommonsDelinker seems to have problems replacing files which changed file extension. (e.g. File:Ww28.gif: On some wikis it got replaced (Special:GlobalUsage/Ww28.jpg) on others it did not (Special:GlobalUsage/Ww28.gif). --McZusatz (talk) 15:39, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

PDF does not show correctly

The file File:Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari.pdf can be downloaded and viewed without issues however does not display properly on Commons. Is there anything that can be done about it? --Jarekt (talk) 14:20, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

I had this problem with some BL-sourced PDFs; I think it's something to do with the text layer in the files. (I keep meaning to file a bug). If you want to view it easily within MediaWiki, converting it to a DjVu file works in my experience. Andrew Gray (talk) 14:22, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Maybe it has to do sth. with the different sizes of the pages (first page is wider than the second one). --McZusatz (talk) 14:11, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

A Opposition of attempt to strengthen Commons:Photographs of identifiable people enforcement

Hello, I'm a user of English Wikipedia, and I mainly find and import celebrity images. recently I have seen "Commons:Photographs of identifiable people" guideline is quite strengthened, but I'm concerned the stringent enforcement is currently very problematic. because that may significantly affect the first of WP:NFC#UUI(Pictures of people still alive, groups still active, and buildings still standing; provided that taking a new free picture as a replacement (which is almost always considered possible) would serve the same encyclopedic purpose as the non-free image. This includes non-free promotional images.). Actually finding and/or creating free replacement images of notable people is very difficult just respect copyrights, especially these examples : (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Jong-un). Please Commons administrators consider this issues. Best regards. Puramyun31 (talk) 11:20, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Commons:Photographs of identifiable people aims to respect local laws. Most laws where consent is sometimes required for photographs taken in public make exceptions for public figures. Those exceptions may not be total (ie still some respect for public figures' private lives), but they're generally enough to allow ordinary photographs needed for illustrating Wikipedia articles. Rd232 (talk) 12:17, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

COM:IDENT is a Commons policy. English Wikipedia may choose to host images which aren't acceptable on Commons and still refer to the images as "free". For example, English Wikipedia has templates such as en:Template:PD-US-1923-abroad, en:Template:PD-ineligible-USonly and en:Template:FoP-USonly which are used for images which are very often not acceptable on Commons. English Wikipedia could easily also get some en:Template:No personality issues-USonly (or whatever) for images which violate COM:IDENT but still are acceptable under en:WP:BLP (if such images exist). --Stefan4 (talk) 13:14, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Only by looking at "what links here" did I work out that the main discussion of all of this is at Commons:Requests for comment/images of identifiable people. - Jmabel ! talk 18:17, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

FOP in Indonesia?

According to COM:FOP#Indonesia, Indonesia FOP is not OK, but I think the law supporting it isn't clear enough for restricting or not restricting FOP. I have read the Copyright Act of Republic of Indonesia (on Wikisource) and found out that the law comes with an official explanation (on Indonesian Wikisource; but not on English Wikisource).

Part Four
Works Protected under Copyright

Article 12

(1) In this Law, a work that is protected shall be the work in the field of science, arts and literature which includes:

[...]

f. all forms of art, such as paintings, drawings, engravings, calligraphy, carvings, sculptures, collage, and applied arts;

g. architecture;

[...]

(2) Works as referred to in item l are protected as a work of its own without prejudice to the Copyright over the original work.

(3) The protection as referred to in paragraphs (1) and (2) includes all works that are not or have not yet been published but have already been in an obvious form, which would enable its reproduction.

The following are Indonesian Wikisource's explanation on Article 12, paragraph (1), letter f. and g. (translated by me):

Letter f

What is meant by paintings include: motive, diagram, sketch, logo and artistic letter shapes, and those paintings are made not on industrial design purpose.

What is meant by collage is artistic composition which are made from various materials (e.g. cloth, paper, wood) which are attached on the surface of the picture.

Applied arts which are handcrafts as long as the purpose of making is not for mass-production are considered as a Work.

Letter g

What is meant by architecture include: building drawing arts, miniature drawing arts, and building mockup arts.

Before reading this, I was thinking about the freedom of taking building photographs, but now, I think the law refers to the buildings design. Hence, there is no FOP restriction in Indonesia.

P.S. Maybe you will come up with Article 10

Article 10, Copyright to Works of Unknown Authors

(2) The State shall hold the Copyright for folklores and works of popular culture that are commonly owned, such as stories, legends, folk tales, epics, songs, handicrafts, choreography, dances, calligraphies and other artistic works.

The following are the explanation of Article 10, paragraph (2) (translated by me):

In order to protect folklores and other people's culture, the Government can restrict any monopoly or commercialization also other acts which destroy or commercial-use without the permission of Republic of Indonesia as Copyright Holder. This provision is intended to avoud any foreign actions which could destroy the culture's value.

Folklores are defined as collections of traditional creations, whether made by groups or individuals in society, which show the social identity and its culture based on the standards and values which are spoken or followed for generations, including:

a. folk tales, folk poetry;

b. folk songs and traditional musical instruments;

c. folk dances, traditional games;

d. artworks such as: paintings, drawings, carvings, sculptures, mosaics, jewelry, handcrafts, clothings, musical instruments and traditional weaving.

Hence, this article purpose is to protect works of unknown authors so it could not be destroyed (or maybe claimed) by other nations.

In conclusion, in my opinion based on the explanations of that law, there is no FOP restrictions in Indonesia. Thank you. ...Kenrick95 16:23, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Sure, they include other things in architecture. I don't see where that excludes architecture from being included as architecture.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:55, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

December 23

Interwiki to WikiVoyage

Has there been any interwiki code created to link to a page in the new travel guide WikiVoyage? If not, one needs to be created. Gamweb (talk) 03:27, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

I think ":voy"... AnonMoos (talk) 03:57, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Yep, e.g. voy:Main Page, voy:de:Hauptseite.--Eloquence (talk) 05:39, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

How can I link to the most recent version of dumpInterwiki.php? -- Rillke^(q?) 10:11, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Interwiki_linking isn't sufficient? --Malyacko (talk) 11:58, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Since it's not the primary source, it isn't for me. -- Rillke^(q?) 14:22, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I believe https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/gitweb?p=mediawiki/extensions/WikimediaMaintenance.git;a=blob;f=dumpInterwiki.php;hb=HEAD#l80 is the url you are looking for. However, if you are looking for an authoritative source - https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&meta=siteinfo&siprop=interwikimap is probably the best choice since it should work directly off what the interwikis for commons are defined as. Bawolff (talk) 02:29, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. -- Rillke^(q?) 08:42, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Redirect

Hello, I am a new filemover. Is there a way to avoid leaving a redirect behind ? Thanks, — Racconish ^Tk 16:11, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

No, I think this is an admin-only right. --McZusatz (talk) 16:26, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Nor, nor there should be one − see Commons:File redirects for the reasons why. Jean-Fred (talk) 16:32, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Happy holidays, — Racconish ^Tk 07:27, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Proposed Deletion

Please excuse me if this is an inappropriate avenue to take for the process of deletion. File:I Own You school sign.jpg

I put this up and claimed it as property of someone else. This person has brought it to my attention and would like it taken down - they find it embarrassing and do not wish to be associated with it. I have tried to propose its deletion by adding tags but I am unsure if this is the correct way to do this.

In any event, I am now reaching out to the Wiki community for assistance of the removal of this image and page from Wikipedia.

Thank you.

-JT

• I've taken the liberty of fixing the file reference. To ask for deletion, put {{Speedy|uploader request}} on the file's page and it will disappear quite quickly. Cheers. Rodhullandemu (talk) 21:27, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

No Rodhullandemu, that's not the case. The file was uploaded several years ago so that's not a valid reason for speedy deletion. Multichill (talk) 21:39, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

My mistake, I thought it was a recent upload. It will have to go through a normal deletion process. Rodhullandemu (talk) 21:55, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the help. So what exactly do I need to do?

Also, the main problem is not the file itself, but it is property of a different person, and the person named in the "Comments" is not the owner; they do not wish to be associated with it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Justtryingtomakealiving (talk • contribs)

User figured out how to create a DR - Commons:Deletion requests/File:I Own You school sign.jpg. Rd232 (talk) 23:41, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

December 24

Strange filename

The name of File:ＩｃｈｉｋａｗａＭｉｓａｔｏＴｏｗｎｏｆｆｉｃｅ.JPG is composed of "fullwidth" letters intended for mixing with Chinese characters, rather than ordinary basic Latin letters. This should probably be caught in the upload process... AnonMoos (talk) 05:21, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. I've renamed the file, by the way. — SMUconlaw (talk) 08:03, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Spam filter?

Hello,

Adding the source in this file (File:Orange juice.jpg) trigers a spam filter. So 1) why is this site in the spam filter? I notice that it not listed either in m:Help:Public domain image resources or in w:Wikipedia:Public domain image resources. If this site is bad, why adding a link in the license does not triger the spam filter? No problem either here: File:Rose-on-white-background.jpg or here: File:Popcorn popped.jpg. 2) What the proper license for this file? Thanks, Yann (talk) 16:09, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

• I'm not sure why that site would be considered spam, and perhaps someone else can elucidate, but I am sure you've credited it wrong. Your source attributes the image to Scott Bauer, U.S. Department of Agriculture (which would presumably place it in the public domain). However, you have incorrectly said that public-domain-image.com is the author and has released it into the public domain. - Jmabel ! talk 16:59, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Right, I didn't find the information. Fixed now. However, the spam filter issue remains. Yann (talk) 17:24, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
• What happened is that the site is on the global blacklist for some reason, so previously someone made a complaint about it. The admin who responded accidentally put it on MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist rather than MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist. I've fixed it. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:53, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
  • OK, thanks a lot! And Merry Christmas! Yann (talk) 18:57, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

No Original Research

Can someone do some "original research" and identify this frog?

I am in a discussion with [User_talk:Churchh] about his additions to file descriptions, which he admits are not based on sources but on his personal findings. His final argument is that the "No Original Research" policy is on English Wikipedia, not Wikimedia Commons. But how far does our freedom in adding anything to file descriptions actually go? Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 17:23, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

According to an official policy, NOR does not apply on Commons. See Commons:Project scope/Neutral point of view and also Commons:What Commons is not#Commons is not Wikipedia. cmadler (talk) 17:48, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

In fact, I will go even farther and add that in some cases, original research is strongly encouraged at Commons (e.g., determining copyright status can often involve quite a bit of original research!). Thanks, cmadler (talk) 17:50, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Other "original research" which is strongly encouraged can be determining content of the images: identifying animals, vehicles, weapons, people or locations. There are usually no sources you can quote when you try to identify what kind of frog is pictured in your or someone else image. --Jarekt (talk) 19:08, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

• FYI, common courtesy usually dictates letting a user know when you start a discussion such as this about them. I've left a note for Churchh. cmadler (talk) 19:16, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I was going to do that, but I was called away. Thanks anyway. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 20:36, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Commons:What Commons is not#Commons is not an encyclopedia, dictionary, guide, or book. says it all: "While we can help supply images for one, Commons itself is not an encyclopedia, dictionary, or any sort of written work. Content within these categories should normally go to an appropriate Wikimedia site, such as Wikipedia or Wiktionary for example". Commons is a repository of image and multimedia files - the descriptions will undoubtedly lead to this content being included in Wikipedia, unsourced, by unquestioning editors. Descriptions should be limited to describing factual details about the file (persons, places, artists, metadata, etc). Interpretation of the content is out of place and out of scope here. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 19:40, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

"[T]he descriptions will undoubtedly lead to this content being included in Wikipedia, unsourced, by unquestioning editors." Unfortunately, we can only do the best we can here. Wikipedia editors should be aware that, by its nature, a wiki -- whether Wikipedia itself, Commons, or an unrelated project -- can not be a reliable source. cmadler (talk) 19:49, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes - if "unquestioning editors" rely too heavily on an unsourced description here, the problem lies more with them than with the description. They should instead be confirming and if necessary correcting the description. --Avenue (talk) 14:45, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Delicious carbuncle -- it really depends on what you mean by "interpretation". We certainly would not want lengthily-prolonged exegesis of an image, such as an ultra-elaborate symbolic interpretation of every tiny detail, or a tangential disquisition which starts with the image, but then leaves it far behind to launch into a general essay. However, text which conveys helpful information about who or what is depicted in the image, and what is going on in the image, should always be welcomed. For example, if you see a statue or painting or stained-glass window of a winged figure holding a shield with the words Quis Ut Deus, then it's automatically a depiction of St. Michael archangel. People who are aware of this convention should be free to share this information with those who aren't. AnonMoos (talk) 03:38, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't want to enter into a prolonged discussion about any particular example, but saying it is a depiction of a particular figure is one thing, commenting on the societal relevance of the clothing worn in the depiction is quite another. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 13:14, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

The basic thing about "no original research" and images is that the exact charts, maps, graphs, and illustrations which are used in external sources often cannot be used at Wikipedia because to do so would be to violate copyrights -- so that we need functionally equivalent charts, maps, graphs, and illustrations for our own articles which would not be directly "derived" (in the copyright sense) from copyrighted images. By its very nature, the making of such functionally-equivalent images will very often involve a considerable element of "original synthesis", which in a significant number of cases will shade off into "original research". For that matter, if you take a photo of a horse, and you label it "Foal, Saginaw Michigan, 2003", then that's blatant original research right there -- there's no external reliable source you could look at to prove that this photo shows a foal in Saginaw Michigan in 2003... AnonMoos (talk) 19:34, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

But how far can contributors go in introducing original research? There must be a limit somewhere? Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 20:44, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

"Blatant nonsense" would be not to be accepted, but from the diff you provided for User talk:Churchh at the beginning his additions could be quite useful. Lack of context and too short descriptions in general on image files are all too common here. Perhaps Churchh could separate his additions from the original description in some cases (or use image notes), but from a quick check they seem to be positive. Jan, do you have any examples as to (in your opinion) particulary jarring additions by Churchh? MKFI (talk) 21:54, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

No, it has nothing to do with Churchh. Reading his additions they all seem to make perfect sense. But I am not knowledgeable in that area, and I don't know how knowledgeable he is. And that is the problem. I/we can not verify whether his additions make sense. And we should because the additions are not expanding the description, but explaining the image, something that really should be done in Wikipedia. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 22:15, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

No, we can't count on Wikipedia to explain the images we host. For one thing, Wikipedia doesn't even use all our images. For another, Wikipedia has no particular interest in explaining non-notable images, and will usually at best only note a particularly salient feature of the image in its caption there. Even in the rare cases where Wikipedia does thoroughly explain an image in a certain article, it would still be useful to add this explanation into the file information page, to help explain the image to people reaching it from somewhere else (such as other Wikipedia articles, other language Wikipedias, other Wikimedia projects, and external uses).

Having said that, citing sources supporting the description/explanation could sometimes be helpful, and I wouldn't object to gently encouraging this somewhere. Identifying sources may be difficult, however, so I don't think they should generally be required. --Avenue (talk) 14:36, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes references are always good and should be more encouraged. Templates {{Artwork}}, {{Photograph}} and {{Creator}} have reference fields right in the template where one can add them, see for example File:Stroop_Report_-_Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising_06b.jpg. In {{Information}} template we often add references in "Source" field, see for example File:Stroop_Report_-_Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising_09.jpg, but in many cases those should be probably changed to {{Photograph}} templates. --Jarekt (talk) 15:02, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Allow me to quote this part again, because it seems to have not sunk in: "Commons itself is not an encyclopedia, dictionary, or any sort of written work". What part of that is not clear? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 03:52, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

You should pay attention to what is written just below that - a reference to Commons:PS#Excluded_educational_content which helps clarify what is meant. It should also be read in conjunction with Commons:SCOPE#Aim_of_Wikimedia_Commons. Basically, if other projects can better do it, they should. But if they can't, and it's educationally useful, then Commons should. Rd232 (talk) 04:22, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I see absolutely no evidence for what you suggest. The aim of Wikimedia Commons is to provide a media file repository. That's it. You may want it to be something different, but that is why Commons exists. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 12:28, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

True, but part of providing a good media file repository is being able to tell users and potential reusers what the file contains. cmadler (talk) 17:33, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

I do not disagree, but we are talking about Commons here, not a theoretical good media repository. Without editorial oversight or curation, this is very unwise. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 15:52, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I feel there should be a clear difference between the description of the file, as taken from the source, and information added later by our contributors. The first should be if possible a copy from the source, provided no copyright is violated. The second field should be as much as possible provided with references. It must be clear what is what. We are not alone in such a differentiation, many musea and archival institutions allow visitors to contribute nowadays, but it is always clear whether one is reading a description by the institution or a contribution by a layman. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 16:03, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

{{Photograph}} has "original description" field we also have such differentiation for Category:Bundesarchiv images, which sometimes result in quite conflicting descriptions like in here where wikipedia laymen identified an unknown church in Warsaw Uprising photo to be their neighborhood church in Hrodna. However that practice was so far mainly used with historical images, not snapshots by Commons users. --Jarekt (talk) 16:28, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

That's a nice thought, and where applicable we should certainly differentiate between an original or "canonical" description and a later user-supplied description, but not all files will have a single canonical description. Some will have different descriptions/captions from different sources and some will have no description. cmadler (talk) 16:51, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

I forgot about {{Original caption}} which is used sometimed inside {{Information}} template. --Jarekt (talk) 03:14, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

And what about signing? Could we ask contributors to sign their additions if they are based on their own unsourced knowledge? Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 10:25, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

These days I rarely come to Commons more than twice a week, so you should not expect me to give quick replies. Don't you think that signing small amounts of descriptive text would be understood as rather egocentric? As for the "societal relevance of the clothing", that sounds pompous, but all it means is things that were obvious to the original viewers of the images, but that are not clear to most people who see the images today. Artists take for granted things that "everybody knows", but what everybody knows changes with the passage of time. Today, if we see a man wearing sandals, Bermuda shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and a floppy hat, we know he's not presenting himself as a serious businessman, and if we see a woman walking down the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue in central Manhattan wearing a bikini, then we know that what she's wearing is out of place in the situation where she's wearing it, which "creates a certain dissonance". There were many similar customs and conventions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which would not be understood by most people now. You can ask User:PKM (whom I formerly worked with on some of the Wikipedia historical fashion articles) to vouch for my general knowledge about such matters. For another example, deleting the explanation of the central motto "I pay for all" which I just added to File:Gift for the grangers ppmsca02956u.jpg would not help people understand the image better, and such an explanation will not be included in the Wikipedia article on "The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry". Churchh (talk) 14:57, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree that descriptions taken from a third party should be clearly marked - e.g. with quotation marks. I have extremely rarely seen irrelevant or speculative content being added by Commons users to a file description, and as such, there is no point in speculating about what to do in such a case. We should simply treat them as they arise on a case-by-case basis. Dcoetzee (talk) 20:55, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, in the event that someone needs to determine who contributed a description, the page history is alway there. cmadler (talk) 21:01, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

File:Confederate 5 and 100 Dollars.jpg

One of my images is going to be Picture of the Day on Wikipedia tomorrow and I made an edit while not logged in. Could an admin delete that edit or blank the IP address? -- Swtpc6800 (talk) 20:28, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

This edit?  Done – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 22:21, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

December 26

Proposed uploads

This may be a crazy idea, but what if we had a help page, Commons:proposed uploads, intended specifically for users to ask licensing-related questions before they upload files, or simply to ask others to do it for them because it seems too hard? Such a page can be pointed to from the upload locations, so people who don't know what to do can ask help. I realise the page might get overrun, but if it did, at least we'd learn something about the unfulfilled demand for more help for users... Rd232 (talk) 23:33, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

It seems like a good idea to me. We do get a little bit of this already here and at COM:VPC, but a dedicated page could be less intimidating. --Avenue (talk) 07:34, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Commons:Help Desk gets some too. Being focussed on the one issue a new board could also have a helpful introductory header and preload with standard questions, and can be promoted vigorously in a different way. Potential benefits in terms of educating and assisting uploaders and reducing copyvios probably don't need to be spelled out... I think this is a really good idea! :) Rd232 (talk) 10:20, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

The downside of this is that we can't generally see the image before upload, which is often needed to evaluate it. Of course there are tons of places to upload images temporarily (imgur, Flickr, etc.) but for people with limited bandwidth double uploading is pretty painful. Might I suggest that the proposed page also allow people to upload first before asking if the image is okay? Dcoetzee (talk) 19:15, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, in many cases the image is online anyway, or a simple description suffices. But there's no reason or (way) to exclude people from uploading files if it's necessary to understand the issues. I suppose we could consider a slightly different name - maybe Commons:Upload help? Rd232 (talk) 19:44, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

So, here's Commons:Upload help, now linked from Commons:Upload and Special:Upload. Editing the Special:UploadWizard is of course its own special nightmare... Rd232 (talk) 14:35, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

ooh, ooh MediaWiki:Uploadwizard-summary! In your face, UploadWizard! :P Rd232 (talk) 14:39, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

In your face indeed. I worry about the creeping tendency to uglify and clutter our user interfaces with incremental well-intentioned bits like that. How about refactoring the top header instead (with the "feedback" and "help with translations" link)? The "help with translations" is no longer urgently needed now that UW's been in operation for a long time. We could replace it with "Ask for upload help" or something similar.--Eloquence (talk) 21:22, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Personally I'm happy with the prominence of the message. We could add an easier way to hide it (it has a CSS ID, so it can be hidden that way, but that's not that easy for most), but for the sort of first-time uploaders whose attention we want to get - well a small grey text link as you suggest will be too easily ignored. However I'm open to compromise designs, if you want to suggest or draft something. Rd232 (talk) 21:57, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

The page is getting traffic, so the message is working. That's the main thing that matters. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:48, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

December 19

colash template

Is there a template for putting multiple images together? Thank you Sara goth (talk) 15:59, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

First, I think you mean "collage"... I'm not aware of a multiple-source template, but there are various templates indicating that one image is derived from another specific image, and it's good practice to indicate all the source images (and also to make sure that they have compatible licenses, and your image is licensed appropriately). See File:Austin-Catholic-diocese-shield-CoA.svg for one example... AnonMoos (talk) 22:30, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

No template, but it should be placed somewhere under Category:Montages, Category:Photomontages, or Category:Collages. See text at Category:Montages for an explanation of the distinction. - Jmabel ! talk 19:17, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but if you are asking about how to arrange more than one file in a Wikipedia article, you might find the discussion of the template "en:Template:Multiple image" at "en:Wikipedia:Picture tutorial#Co-aligning" useful. — SMUconlaw (talk) 15:24, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Salting deleted filenames?

There's a problem I've noticed several times, where someone uploads a file with the same name as a deleted file. For example, File:Stalin3.jpg‎ seems to have reappeared as a new upload. It's an awful file name, and now it's appearing on several pages because no one removed the old one. (I noticed this because two files I had to replace in File:Civilization 1 leaders.jpg are now back, but the case of File:Julius caesar.jpg is more complex; I'll note that it's an even worse filename, generic and improperly capitalized.) Should we salt these things so we don't get files fading into and out of existence?--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:10, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I think that this mainly is a problem with very generic file names, such as File:Building.jpg or File:House.jpg. If a file has a generic file name, then the name is going to be reused by someone else if deleted (and sometimes even if not yet deleted when the other file is uploaded - see w:Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files/2012 September 13#File:Stadium.jpg). I support salting names for deleted files, at least if the name is very generic. --Stefan4 (talk) 23:25, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm kind of confused by this. Deleted files can only be indirectly accessed. Salting the name of the "deleted" file would not have any effect. Is this what happened:

• User created image that was spam/whatever
• Image gets deleted
• Another user uploads a different image under the recently deleted name. Old thumbnails show up for the deleted image.

This probably occurred because varnish caches weren't being purged properly, which means when the image was re-uploaded, old cached thumbnails were still being served. Adding salt to the filename once the image is deleted wouldn't help anything because the filename is already changed (and inaccesible) just the old cache is still there. Sine bugzilla:41130 was recently (like an hour ago) fixed, the situation described should no longer happen. Bawolff (talk) 02:10, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

What happens is that someone uploads a file under a bad name, it gets deleted, and someone accidentally or otherwise uploads a new file under that name, meaning that appears to return to life and can appear several places it wasn't deliberately added. They're often bad files; someone who crosses their t's and dots their i's tends to also provide a good filename.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:18, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh sorry, I misunderstood before. You're referring to the red-links to files coming back to life. (At the moment I'm imaging there being caching issues everywhere I look). Cheers. Bawolff (talk) 05:27, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

December 27

Distorted photo after cropping with Cropbot

Teotihuacán mask

-- compare this to what appears at en:Teotihuacan#Collapse -- compressed side-to-side. Help? TIA, Pete Tillman (talk) 03:23, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Such "distortion" is caused by a thumbnail generated from the old version of the file being displayed at an aspect ratio appropriate for the new version of the file. Such errors can be transient and temporary (sometimes merely caused by the local browser cache on your own computer), or they can be due to somewhat persistent server problems (as discussed in the "Return of thumbnail generation errors" section above, and in another section that was just recently moved to the archive). AnonMoos (talk) 04:33, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

This is bugzilla:22390 (Separate issue from 41120. Much more long standing). It can be fixed by ?action=purge 'ing w:Teotihuacan [which I just did] (I assume you meant the wikipedia page, not the commons category you linked to). For the curious, what happened here is:

• Image on commons changed dimensions
• In mediawiki, we only specify an image by its width. So all the urls stayed the same.
• Since the image inclusion is cross wiki (image on commons, article on 'pedia), the page that uses the image does not get refreshed. (bugzilla:22390)
  • So the page on wikipedia still says to use the image //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Teotihuacán_mask.jpg/220px-Teotihuacán_mask.jpg and tells the browser that the width is 220px and the height is 228px.
  • However, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Teotihuacán_mask.jpg/220px-Teotihuacán_mask.jpg now refers to the new image with different dimensions (specifically 220x198 px). So the browser scales it to be a distorted 220x228 px.
  • If the page using the image was local (aka on the same wiki as the image was uploaded to), then uploading a new version would trigger an HTMLCacheUpdate job, and in a couple hours the page would be marked as needing to be re-rendered, (which would make the dimensions being told to the browser be correct, so no more distortion). This would fix it for logged in users. Logged out users would still be broken due to bugzilla:38879/bugzilla:43341. (Don't you love all the caching issues)

tl;dr: If after uploading a new version of an image, that has different dimensions then the former version, and in some places it looks distorted, this can be fixed by ?action=purge 'ing pages where the image is used in. Bawolff (talk) 05:23, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Quite a story.... Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 18:52, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Plans to create (hidden) user categories for significant batch uploaders

For some time I have thought it good practice to use my own upload category for files that I have batch uploaded using various tools. I recently created the category Uploads by MaybeMaybeMaybe which was quite helpful for highlighting some problem files, such as accidental duplicates created by the upload tool, and also demonstrated that there was no significant pattern of problem uploads from the same user which quelled some unnecessary drama at the time.

I am thinking of creating these categories for the top 10, or more, most significant users of the Flickr2Commons tool. The images are categorized in Flickr images reviewed by File Upload Bot. I have had one complaint from a user where I have started this process. I thought this would be clearly good practice and would like to stick to analysing any problems transparently, but perhaps I am overlooking some issues of user's expectations for privacy, or other problems that another less public method of analysis might avoid. Do people have strong opinions? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 23:27, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I can't see why anyone should mind. Any of us can view any user's uploads at any time now. If a category makes it easier to do anything that improves the project then let them whine all they want. then use the method mentioned below.--Canoe1967 (talk) 00:04, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

A slight clarification that may not be obvious to those not experienced with these types of tools—it is not always easy to view a user's uploads when they use an upload tool. For example, in the case of my uploads using Flickr2Commons, I am named as the uploader on the image page, but you will not see these images in my listed uploads or my edit history, hence why I believe it is good practice to add my own user category when using such tools, so that I am more openly accountable for any large batch uploads that I am responsible for, should anyone want to check through them. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 00:17, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I say just do it, if you run into someone who complains explain, address their concern, if that doesnt work just delete the category and work with those that want to. Over time its success will bring them to use it as well. Gnangarra 00:31, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

 Support --Jarekt (talk) 05:49, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm running an offline analysis by Faebot at the moment to check which are to top uploader accounts using Flickr2Commons. I will contact those that have a few thousand images, and sort out a hidden user upload category for them, if one does not already exist. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 01:05, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

• I support this idea, but it should be something that any Flickr upload mechanism adds automatically rather than running a bot to tag files after the fact. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:03, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
• Strong support. On occasion, I have been unable to locate (!) files I uploaded using Flickr2Commons, resorting to Google site search to try to track them down. This was so frustrating that I ended up forking Flickr2Commons solely to upload under my own account. I'm sure others have had the same issue. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:46, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Why don't we do that more generally? Have users upload under their own account (or an appropriately linked alternate upload account) rather than the generic Flickr Upload Bot account? It might require TUSC identification, but that's not that high a hurdle, and frankly maybe the hurdle for Flickr imports should be at least that high. Rd232 (talk) 23:55, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

• Not really convinced by this. It's a good thing to have a category for each significant batch upload or for each photographer, but a general one by uploader? Especially if the uploader doesn't request it or even opposes it? --  Docu  at 23:14, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

December 25

Bot for DR filing needed

Can someone please task a bot to populate Commons:Deletion requests/File:Jo-Wilfried Tsonga Doha Champion (cropped).jpg with all files from here and here, and add the delete tag {{delete|reason=Several of [http://www.flickr.com/people/66463488@N06 flickr user]'s images have Reuters EXIF, and others specify ''photo by (person)'' without any evidence that that person grants permission. Some photos may be ok, but most likely need deleting under [[COM:PRP]].|subpage=File:Jo-Wilfried Tsonga Doha Champion (cropped).jpg|year=2012|month=December|day=27}} to those files? It's a few hundred images. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:50, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

You don't actually need a bot for that. You can use cat-a-lot to categorise the search-results into a temporary custom category (which can stay redlinked), then use visual file change ("perform batch task" in the toolbox on the custom category page) to add the DR tag and remove the custom category. Rd232 (talk) 23:47, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Yep, temporary category, or make a gallery of all the images in your userspace and fire up Help:VisualFileChange from there. Jean-Fred (talk) 12:54, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, sorted. -mattbuck (Talk) 18:48, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

December 28

Commons:Meet our Users

To make Commons go round we need enthusiastic used specialized in a number of work areas

• Administration
• Photographers
• Categorizers
• Tool/gadget developers
• Illustrators
• Project organizers (like POTY)
• Negotiators with Museums and others
• Template coders
• License experts/reviewers
• Topical domain experts
• Graphists
• OTRS reviewers
• Repository users
• ....

Why not highlight the most enthusiatic/valuable users here in a dedicated page linked to from the main page?

Today we have Commons:Meet our illustrators and Commons:Meet our photographers, but I do no think these pages work as intended, and they give the impression that these particular user groups are more "important" than others. The purpose of the page would be to introduce users of Commons to the large plethora of skills and work area needed on Commons, and also be a way to appreciate all those users doing a lot of "behind the scenes" work for which they are seldomly being appreciated. So I would propose retiring the existing Meet our... pages and generate a new merged page, showing that we are one community.

It could be a dynamic "users of the Month" type of page, highlighting those users, who have done extraordinary work the last month, accomplished something spetacular. (Organized the categorization structure for all ships, uploaded 100 FPs, launched a cool new bot, solved a major conflict, made an agreement with an institution to donate x images, etc., launched POTY 2012 on time). It does not have to be single users being highlighted. It can also be groups, like the POTY committee. --Slaunger (talk) 09:17, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

• What is the purpose of these pages. I think the idea behind the Commons:Meet our illustrators and Commons:Meet our photographers was a sort of PR excercise to give a credible face to our often anonymous contributors, and I think it does that - I think all the contributors who have managed to get themselves profiled there are good ambassadors for Commons. But of course it is a bit of a self selected group (on my bucket list ;-) and there are a lot of other very good contributors of illustrations/photographs, and contributors in all the fields you mentioned. It sounds as though you want a system of acknowledging contribution to the project, rather than something that was really set up just to promote Commons a little? --Tony Wills (talk) 12:10, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

• In my eyes not a sophisticated proposal. Meet our photographs/ illustrators is a clearly defined subset of all users. To make "meet our users" will stay a very fragmentary selection. I think just a small percentage of all users will take part in a profiling like this. So what's the benefit for the reader of this side? Every user can present his work on his user page by himself. --Wladyslaw (talk) 14:04, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Agree for part with Wladyslaw. I think we must refresh for sure the COM:MOP page, maybe include the MOI page, but MOU will be a bit complicated, IMO.

Anyway, the (necessary, IMO) improvement of the MOP page (I'm not a member, but I started this discussion in the MOP talk page) is something really different, a window open over the outside world, an advertisement for "Commons" in the Web, through the showcase of "the best of the best" we can produce.

As for me, I feel here mostly a photographer. But I'm a categorizer too, and a geocoder, and etc... "Commons" is a community (?) not only made by photographers/illustrators, I agree, but as I've said somewhere else, botmanagers, geocoders, administrators, organizers, license experts, bureaucrats, OTRS reviewers etc... exist only because of...our pictures !

But I've no opposition in creating something special in order to recognize and celebrate the great job done by "non-pictural users", of course. But I think it should be, by nature, something more "internal".

My opinion is that we have here two separate projects.--Jebulon (talk) 14:43, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

There's also Commons:Meet_our_restorationists but that was back when photography was kinda cliquish, and Durova deleted her entry when she left (or was there some trolling?), so it's just me now. I honestly don't remember half of what happened involving that, nor do I want to. Adam Cuerden (talk) 19:08, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Proposal redacted. Thanks for your insightful comments. Just a few remarks though. --Slaunger (talk) 23:19, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

@Tony: Yes, you are entirely correct that my proposal is fuzzy regarding its purpose. Is it internal nursery/community binding/appreciation, or is it as an external showcase? This is not clear, and that is the main reason I redact this proposal. The reason why I suggested it, was because I was browsing the Wikimedia Blog, which I guess serves both an external showcase and internal binding glue purpose. In that blog, the topics also resolve around those people doing the anonymous work of doing, e.g., internationalization, as well as POTD contributors, (way too many) WLM finalists. However, that is a blog and not the same form of media as a Wikimedia page. Thus, not necessarily suitable for the same kind of topics. :Regarding your statement I think all the contributors who have managed to get themselves profiled there are good ambassadors for Commons. I do not agree. I agree all have at a given point in time been good ambassadors, and some are currently good ambassadors. However, on especially MOP, the page is cluttered by many inactive contributors. Contributors who do not respond on their talk pages or even on mails (two years ago). I know, because I have tried. But this is an entirely different matter which is currently being discussed constructively on Commons talk:Meet our photographers, at it appears that the editors involved in the discussion all agree something needs to be done about requiring some signs of current activity to be kept on the page. --Slaunger (talk) 23:19, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

@Wladyslaw. Yes, after reading the response here, I think you are probably right, that users will not be engaged in such an endevour. -- Slaunger (talk) 23:19, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

@Jebulon. Agreed except for one thing. You state that all other roles only exist because of our pictures. Well if the other roles were not there, there would be no Commons to host our pictures. It is a mutualism. But, for external showcase reasons, it is probably true, that it will be the content creators, who most naturally gets highlighted standing on the shoulders of the busy worker ants. Thus, it probably makes sense to keep MOP/MOI in some form for showcase reasons. --Slaunger (talk) 23:19, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

@Adam. Yes, you are right. As I recall that page was also controversial, because there was no community consensus for its establishment at the time. But that is history and hardly so relevant now. I would support though an effort to merge MOP/MOI and MOR into one Meet our featured contributors (or something like that). --Slaunger (talk) 23:19, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

What's the use of all those Meet the xxx pages anyway? If you can add yourself, then it is only a vanity exercise in self promotion... Looking at the contributors there, apart from uploading (admittedly often worthy images) the main other thing they get involved in is self-promotion. The hardest workers are never seen...  B.p. 23:40, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Gothic type check

The image in question. More to come! May look at the levels in the morning, and see if I want to lighten the paper a touch more.

Hey, all. I have a book with some lovely illustrations, but it's in the old Germanic blackletter. Can I just check this makes sense?

Götter und Helden der alten Germanen

Der Edda nadjerzähft

von

Fr. Amerlan

Mit Bildern von

Johannes Gehrts

Meidinger's Jugendschriffen Verlag G.m.b.H.

Berlin

Does that look right? "nadjerzähft" and "Jugendschriffen" are the two words I'm least sure about. If needed, I'll scan the title page. Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:12, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Checking a German library catalogue, there's a few editions of Götter und Helden der alten Germanen : der Edda nacherzählt (eg here), so you were right on all but the last word. The publisher's just given as Meidinger, so can't say either way on the second bit. Andrew Gray (talk) 16:19, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Checking de-wiki, it might be Jugendschriften. Anyway, this is why I wanted to check - Blackletter can be a bit hard to read. Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:46, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Definitely "Jugendschriften", as seen here. --rimshot^talk 19:07, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll get the image uploaded, then. Adam Cuerden (talk) 19:12, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

It's de:Frieda Amerlan, btw. --rimshot^talk 20:57, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Did I get that wrong? I honestly had thought I had made that typo, caught it, and fixed it. Adam Cuerden (talk) 21:01, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Nothing wrong there: http://www.zvab.com/advancedSearch.do?author=Amerlan, Fr. PigeonIP (talk) 20:14, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Picture of the Day for December 29

I like today's Picture of the Day! Best regards, MartinD (talk) 08:34, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

It's a very nice image. However, this is an extremely bad idea, to lock automatically description pages of the pictures and files of the day. Such highlighting draws attention to any interesting image, it is an opportunity to improve the description (add more languages, more information, correct possible errors or inaccuracy, improve categorization etc.). As I remember, this problem was discussed here several times, but nobody was able to rectify this absurdity. --ŠJů (talk) 23:20, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

December 30

Rename account

I've been renamed on en.Wikipedia. Can you tell me where I make the same request here?Svanslyck (talk) 03:22, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Commons:Changing username --A.Savin 08:39, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Return of thumbnail generation errors

Have been noticing some minor hiccups for a little while, and just now on image page File:Jonna Doolittle Moody AFB 2011 111018-F-HF135-100.jpg, requesting http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Jonna_Doolittle_Moody_AFB_2011_111018-F-HF135-100.jpg/800px-Jonna_Doolittle_Moody_AFB_2011_111018-F-HF135-100.jpg returns Error generating thumbnail
Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination... -- AnonMoos (talk) 22:22, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Jonna_Doolittle_Moody_AFB_2011_111018-F-HF135-100.jpg/800px-Jonna_Doolittle_Moody_AFB_2011_111018-F-HF135-100.jpg?changeurltobypassvarnish Works fine, which means that it was a temporary situation that is now fixed. If it wasn't for the fact that squid/varnish purges for images are totally broken (unless you're in europe; see bugzilla:41130), doing ?action=purge on the image description page would fix this. Bawolff (talk) 22:40, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

It may be fixed for somebody, but it's not fixed for me, and last time around it took at least five days to get fixed (see discussion of File:Obama_and_Duke_Duchess_of_Cambridge.jpg above)... AnonMoos (talk) 22:58, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

by "now fixed" I mean that the issue you see was caused by something that is not currently occurring. I don't mean to suggest that the fact the active cause is not still happening makes the issue any less real. (And furthermore I think the fact that the cache servers are not having their caches purged properly is a very serious issue). Bawolff (talk) 03:40, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

bug 41130 was fixed, so ?action=purge on the image description page now works (which I just did), and you should be seeing the correct version of the image now. Bawolff (talk) 02:11, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, seems to be better now, thanks... AnonMoos (talk) 13:48, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Working for me too in the United States. Thanks! Skeet Shooter (talk) 17:45, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

There are several on and off thumbnailer issues, listed under "Depends on" in https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41371 plus thumbnail cache issues with North American servers according to https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41130 --Malyacko (talk) 13:50, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Date field in Upload Wizard

My understanding is that the date field for an image should be the creation date where determinable, not the upload date which Upload Wizard inserts. This behavior by the default upload tool suggests to new users that the upload date is the correct entry and may suggest to more experienced users that the consensus on image dating has changed or that efforts to ensure authentic dates are a losing battle. Upload date can be determined from other fields, so I would suggest that when the original image date cannot be determined from EXIF data, the field should be blank or templated as needing a date. Dates of published images are sometimes determinable from other sources, and dates of Flickr images can sometimes be determined from the set description, in both cases probably requiring human effort. It might also be worthwhile to flag EXIF dates added by scanners but that would probably be a more complex effort. Dankarl (talk) 17:08, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. The date automatically inserted by Upload Wizard is only going to be correct in the rarest circumstances. Perhaps if it defaulted to the current year alone, it might at least have a chance of being right sometimes. Adam Cuerden (talk) 17:48, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

I think it would be better to default to blank. Better to have no information and know it than wrong information that we might not realize is wrong. cmadler (talk) 18:42, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

I think (like most things ;-) its exact purpose was not documented, and it is certainly used for a variety of dates - creation date of the original work, digitisation date (either photograph or scanning), date of first publication, date of upload (and perhaps others). Date of first publication corresponds with the upload date for many photos. I sometimes enter multiple dates in that field (eg date of creation, date of publication, date of modification). For copyright purposes the publication date was often the critical thing. --Tony Wills (talk) 20:35, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree completely : for months, I've been uploading images and scans of books without knowing that this date was "to be corrected" - It would be much better to be left blank, of insert a template "missing date" - thousands of images have to be corrected because of that… and not very easy to detect (as far as I can see) - a category would be useful.--Hsarrazin (talk) 10:03, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

For the specific issue, yes, this is absolutely better left blank; it's useless at best (that info is always available elsewhere on the page) and dangerous at worst (obscuring what data is actually needed there). But it's partly a symptom of the bigger issue that the "date" field in {{Information}} and similar templates is ambiguous. Very often we need to know whether publication or creation date is meant, and there can easily be multiple publication or creation dates when derivative works (eg photo of a sculpture) are involved. This often ends up messy or confusing. We really ought to find a way to handle this better. Rd232 (talk) 21:09, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

So do you have a general proposal that would address this and the broader issue, or should we focus on solving this particular issue. In either case, what would it take to get a change in place? Dankarl (talk) 03:49, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

December 29

PD videos with copyrighted content within them

I noticed Voice of America has many interesting selfmade PD videos on Youtube, but some include some copyrighted content from elsewhere. What do do? Black out those segments? FunkMonk (talk) 01:47, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes. I will say that without seeing sample links. PD is PD and without the protected material they should be fine. If you could find original PD versions they may be better quality than youtube. You can upload and then ask for help finding better versions. If you have a video editor you may wish to remove those sections to a shorter film with no blank time.--Canoe1967 (talk) 01:53, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I can't post links here since Youtube is blocked for some reason (search Jane Goodall and VOA on Youtube, for example). But I was suggesting blank images because sometimes there is voiceover while copyrighted images are shown. FunkMonk (talk) 02:43, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Only youtu.be links are blocked. youtube.com should work fine. --McZusatz (talk) 03:07, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh. What's the difference? Can I just replace .be with .com in a link? FunkMonk (talk) 03:17, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Youtu.be is a link redirecting/url shortening system run by Google/Youtube. The underlaying link is always the youtube.com one so either (a) copy it directly from the url bar or (b) take http://youtu.be/LJiWs_iMm4I and convert it to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJiWs_iMm4I that is, you take the ID and put it as the argument for v= parameter. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 13:11, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Search faulty?

I can't seem to get the search function (either using the top right search box or advanced search page) to find any files unless I search for an exact filename. ie comes up with 'nothing found' for words from a file's description page or even partial filename matches. So the function is precisely useless :-(. Maybe it's just me, anyone else having problems? --Tony Wills (talk) 09:32, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

same here too Holger1959 (talk) 15:13, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Happens every now and then without generating error messages, nobody seems to care about it, has been reported many times without result. See Commons:Requests for comment/improving search. --Foroa (talk) 18:19, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Is it a server load issue? Dankarl (talk) 21:42, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

It looks as if the search is done on other servers and that those sometimes drop out for hours before staff notice it. Seemed to have improved last months (well drop outs where taking only 10 or 20 seconds) but the behaviour seems to be reverted as some months ago. --Foroa (talk) 22:14, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Foroa: If it has been reported before, is there an entry in the bugtracker at bugzilla.wikimedia.org so that developers will see it? Link highly welcome. --Malyacko (talk) 13:46, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

See reference above and here, one of the several ones. --Foroa (talk) 20:47, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Is the problem described above a problem now? I haven't been able to reproduce a problem this afternoon. We're aware of general reliability issues with search, and we're in the process of hiring engineers (see our jobs page, specifically "Software Engineer (Search)" and "RFP-Lucene Search Operations Engineer") that can focus on solving these issues (and generally improve search). In the meantime, please be patient. Thanks! -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 21:52, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

File:PikiWiki Israel 1507 Rehovot חייל בריטי.jpg

I used the {{Multilingual description}} template to add the English translation of the original Hebrew, but now the original is not showing up. Can someone in the know please check what I was doing wrong? Thanks. — Ineuw 17:01, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I see both english and hebrew descriptions. Do you have "show all" selected in the language select box? MKFI (talk) 17:17, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

In this version, the closing curly brackets for en were missing. -- Rillke^(q?) 20:20, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Happy new year!

With Thanks in the (usurped) name of the others and of the re-users, I wish all the best in the new year to all who have contributed by own works or by working in the meta area to improve this project. --Túrelio (talk) 20:49, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I would like to stick my head above the parapet along with Túrelio to wish all those that quietly get on with preserving media for the benefit of open knowledge, a great 2013.

The more I learn about this project, the more astonished I am to discover out how very few trusted users and administrators it has taken over the last few years to make Commons a world wide success, and with comparatively few rules or bureaucracy. I hope to see the coming year bring massive growth and volunteer engagement, but at the same time staying a great example to other Wikimedia projects of how to keep a multi-lingual global community successfully working, without tying ourselves up in knots on a treadmill of policy creation and endless bureaucratic wiki-lawyering. I know all too well that keeping discussion mellow whilst being trolled (Commons' head penis defender indeed!) can be a big pain in the you-know-what, but supporting public knowledge seems a mighty good way to spend our volunteer time. --Fæ (talk) 23:18, 31 December 2012 (UTC)