Commons:Village pump/Archive/2018/12

Missing archives at the Administrators' noticeboards? Why are these links red?

It concerns the first links, as I don't have Microsoft Paint 🎨 I didn't place giant red arrows like I usually do.

For whatever reason there seem to be some missing archives at Wikimedia Commons' Administrators' noticeboards that are red links, if one would click on one of these red links they wouldn't be promoted with a message that they are re-creating a previously deleted page which causes me to think that they were simply "skipped", does this have any reason in particular? Was there an error with the archiving bot that caused it to skip these specific numbers? Incidentally all of these red links are the first number in these series, so why is this? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:30, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

What red links are you talking about? Exact numbers? The only red links I see are the next archives that have yet to be created since the current number has not hit their respective caps yet. I'm also not seeing the message that says you are recreating a previously deleted page on any of the red links in your image. --Majora (talk) 21:51, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

That's my question, why weren't these archives ever created? Why is there an Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Blocks and protections/Archive 24? My bad, I see that these are individual archives for each sub-noticeboard, I thought that all sections were archived to the same archive because when you search the archives all pop up.

This section was archived on a request by: --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:58, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

"→" links from edit summaries

The recent version of MediaWiki brought an “improvement” which floods history, watchlist, and recent changes pages with numerous distracting blue hyperlinked things. Everyone discomfortable with it can now see old good hyperlinked → with this script. It can be enabled with

importScript("User:Incnis_Mrsi/short-section-links.js");

in the appropriate .js.

But note that visual result of the script currently relies on class="autocomment"; we are not protected from a random interface editor doing “optimisation” of some .css (where is it defined), as MediaWiki apparently doesn’t require the class anymore. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:43, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Or you could just recolor all links in edit summaries to a different color by putting .mw-changeslist-line-inner .comment a { color: #006400; } into your CSS preferences. This particular code will change them all to green so at least there is some color differentiation between the things. Both options are available. Note: I did not write this and I know no CSS so if there are issues I'm not the one to ask. --Majora (talk) 02:26, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

@Majora: Thanks. What is the color code for the previous dimmed gray?   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 02:19, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Luckily wikia is still on the old version so I could extract the hex code. It appears to be #808080, Jeff G. --Majora (talk) 02:36, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

SVGs now render in wiki language by default

Hello everyone. As part of the wishlist project to build an SVG translation tool, my team has also worked on making it possible to render SVGs in other languages instead of always rendering them in English. Now you no longer need to specify the lang parameter to render the SVG in the wiki language. If the file is available in the wiki language, it automatically gets displayed in that language. Otherwise it defaults to English. This is especially useful in cases when files are added to pages first and translated later. Once the translation becomes available, the image automatically renders in the wiki language. This holds for switch-translated SVG files, of course.
As an example, you can look this file -

• On German wiki
• On Russian wiki
• On Hindi wiki

This was a long standing task with several technical challenges. I am grateful for the support and input I received from Waldir, Strainu, Ruthven, Dvorapa, Glrx and JoKalliauer in this work. Thank you all. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 22:02, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

• This is a fantastic development. Thanks to everyone who worked hard on this. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:38, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
• This is excellent! Many thanks to all you wizards! -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 19:02, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
• Wow! It works even for RTL scripts :-) See fa:بحث راهنما:ویکی‌انبار برای کاربر فارسی‌زبان#ترجمهٔ SVG for Persian and Arabic. 4nn1l2 (talk) 11:28, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

November 30

Suggestion to amend CSD F10 to include other personal images

COM:CSD F10 says that personal photos of non-contributors can be speedied. I'd like to suggest amending that to include media other than photos. Of late, I have noticed a LOT of fake "alternate history" files that have been uploaded by people using Commons and Wikipedia to host their walled garden of fiction. All of these are plenty of examples of fake maps and the like that should be deleted. Nearly all of these users have few or no contributions outside of making up fake maps and charts. So my suggestion is that F10 be updated to say "files", not just "photos". --B (talk) 19:18, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

given the lack of trust of adversive use of speedy including Commons_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Speedy_deletion_of_**empty**_categories, do not know why you think this would be an improvement. is deletion requests not working? Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 00:59, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

For once, I'm with User:Slowking4. I'd rather see normal deletion, though at some point if someone keeps uploading this sort of crap after having had a bunch deleted, they should simply be blocked. - Jmabel ! talk 16:25, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

In particular, I don't trust one individual to speedily distinguish frivolous personal fiction from notable fiction. - Jmabel ! talk 16:27, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree with Slowking4 and Jmabel. See also Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/User problems/Archive 72#BevinKacon and CSD F10. F10 is problematic enough as it is. Just file a DR. Creating more and more exceptions to direct DR cases to speedy will only result in having not only a DR backlog but also a speedy backlog. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 16:32, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

yeah, this is particularly egregious: "All tagged files were tagged correctly, but policy isn't perfect. Scope is subjective, F10 & G10 less so" - it is this kind of summary attitude, which tends to make the problem worse. if we do not see some responsible curation of images, and listening to negative feedback, then you should expect no more speedy rationales. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 16:55, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree with the others. I don't think we should expand what can go into speedy deletion at this point especially when F10 is badly used by some (some files that were quite wrongfully deleted had to be restored). Abzeronow (talk) 01:13, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

December 01

splitting a postcard category ?

Dear all,

I have a request for a bot task, but this may not be feasible. I would like the category Category:Curt Teich Postcard Archives to be split into two, according to the side of the postcard. So one category for the picture side (front side), and one category for the text side (back side). I wonder if this can be done using the parity of the number in the title..

Thanks,

F (talk) 08:57, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

• @Kilom691: It should take about 30-60 minutes for someone to do this in a semi-automated way with VFC. - Jmabel ! talk 16:29, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
• Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be consistent whether the backs are even or odd numbers. I think it may have to be done manually with Hotcat Cat-a-lot. A custom bot could probably also do it by moving images that are mostly paper white. BMacZero (talk) 21:50, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, the parity seems to be inconsistent, alas . There remains the possibility to move white-paper images as suggested. Is there any bot around that could do that ? F (talk) 08:22, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

December 02

Basic information without going to “File:”

Not a long time ago, things strongly advised for sysops were discussed; specifically defence against errors related to redirects. Now I propose to develop a more radical thing – a script which adds to each File: link a special widget which can fetch essential information from the server and show it on the current page. For example, let us have:

• File:Mohajer 4.png
• File:Nasr1.PNG

First, the script transforms it to:

• File:Mohajer 4.pngⓘ
• File:Nasr1.PNGⓘ

After pressing to the first widget some API queries are submitted and we soon obtain:

• File:Mohajer 4.pngⓘ2012/06/22 {{Own}} by Aspahbod — {{self|cc-by-3.0}}
  undeleted 6h ago by 4nn1l2×
• File:Nasr1.PNGⓘ

Pressing the ⓘ thing another time will result in another query and overwriting the present information area with updated data.

Opinions? Of course, it’s impossible to expect—in present conditions—that every Commons sysop will look at each file processed, but some network of “advanced smart sysops”—skilled in the use of such tools—can be created to look after complex (or important) tasks. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:57, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Is there something you need to create this? - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 21:07, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-49

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• Admins will not be able to unblock themselves if they are blocked by someone other than themselves. This is because it can cause damage if someone else takes over an admin account and other admins can't block them. If this is a problem for your community you can report it on Phabricator. You can also ask questions on Meta. There is a discussion on Phabricator about how to solve this if two admins fight with each other on a small wiki. [1]
• Small SVG images are now bigger when you see them in MediaViewer. [2]
• You can go to a section from the edit summary by clicking on the section name. Before this you had to click on the arrow. [3]
• When you jumped to a footnote that was referenced several times in an article it could be difficult to see where you were in the text. Now there are jump marks and highlights to help you find your way back. [4][5]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 5 December at 16:00 (UTC) and at 23:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:12, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Re: Help:Gadget-Stockphoto

It would be nice to have option to export to bibtex, in case I am using several images in my file to which I pasted several images from Commons, and the list of references would serve the attribution purposes. Where do I request such feature? What other export formats would you suggest? --Gryllida (chat) 03:32, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Gryllida in the sidebar on the left there is an entry “Cite this page” – apparently in Russian this is “

Цитировать страницу

” – it opens a special page where you can find the requested BibTeX entry. — Speravir – 01:50, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Normalize file extensions for new uploads

Suggestion: automatically normalize file extensions for new uploads. For example, ".JPG", ".Jpg", ".JPEG" and ".jpeg" all become ".jpg". For TIFF, ".TIF", ".tiff", ".TIFF" all become ".tif". (of all the TIFF files on Commons, 83.5% has the ".tif" extension)

A related proposal from enwiki can be found at w:Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 74#Several changes to file naming.

Some statistics on current use (stats from July, includes redirects, current percentages may vary slightly. data provided as is):

Total jpg	.jpg	.JPG	.Jpg	.jPG	.JPg	.jpG	.JpG	.jPg
42453481	35229847 (83.0%)	7222882 (17.0%)	649	50	26	20	4	3
Total jpeg	.jpeg	.JPEG	.Jpeg	.JPeG	.jPeG	.JpEg	.jpEg	.jpeG
585411	576892 (98.5%)	7605 (1.3%)	891 (0.2%)	8	8	5	1	1
Total png	.png	.PNG	.Png	.pnG	.pNG	.pNg	.PNg	.PnG
2528817	2397286 (94.8%)	131488 (5.2%)	37	2	1	1	1	1
Total svg	.svg	.SVG	.Svg	.SVg	.SvG
1377496	1376872 (100.0%)	618	4	1	1
Total tif	.tif	.TIF	.Tif
1030310	1026794 (99.7%)	3515 (0.3%)	1
Total tiff	.tiff	.TIFF
199233	199213 (100.0%)	20

Any suggested adjustments before I create a proposal? - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 20:58, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

No, but good suggestion. --oSeveno (talk) 11:34, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

File extensions should be all upper or al lower case. I don't support forcing to either way, but the mixed variants should be discouraged and the files should be renamed. --Krd 11:45, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Is there a widely adopted external standard to reference? --Fæ (talk) 12:03, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

The Library of Congress has some guidelines on digital file formats: TIFF, JPEG/Exif, SVG, PNG. I'm not sure what the JPEG standards organization recommends regarding the file extension (and I'm not about to pay ISO's fee to find out), but the TIFF standard (see Appendix B) recommends .tif, probably due to the 8.3 filename restriction of MS-DOS and older versions of Windows, since that document dates from 1992. clpo13_(talk) 18:46, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

•  Question, wouldn't this create a ton of duplicates? I've seen plenty of files that had titles like File:Example.jpg, File:Example.Jpg, and File:Example.JPG, and in a lot of cases all of these files were used in different pages so how would we make sure that File:Example.JPG doesn't start to render as File:Example.jpg here and on other Wikimedia projects? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:51, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
  • From what I read, this only concerns new uploads. --HyperGaruda (talk) 17:07, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Good proposal. To keep it simple I would suggest to enforce it only to new files and leave the old ones. Renaming those would just create a ton of work, lots of duplicates for no major benefit. And lower case would be my preference by far. Amada44  ^{talk to me} 18:13, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

• I also don't know what official standards say (I suspect also lower case), but lower case is easily the de facto standard for everything. Upper case would also not be aesthetically pleasing in any way, because it's the equivalent of SHOUTING. Existing files will be left alone by this proposal, only new uploads. They may be dealt with by another proposal - something for another day. @Amada44: there is a benefit to renaming older files as well. For example, I've seen a mixup in attribution where someone gave the filename File:Dedekind.jpg, but meant File:Dedekind.jpeg. For files without conflicts, moving or creating redirects will provide the benefit that scripts and bots can safely assume any JPEG has the .jpg extension. See {{Tmlogo}} for an example where additional wikicode was needed to correct the case. But that's something for another day. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 22:49, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
• @OSeveno, Krd, Fæ, Clpo13, and Donald Trung: @HyperGaruda and Amada44: Commons:Village pump/Proposals#Normalize file extensions for new uploads. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 23:29, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• I think jpg and JPG should be allowed, however jPg, Jpg, jPG ect should be corrected to upper or lower case but at the end of the day, is this really a major issue or just a minor one. Bidgee (talk) 23:49, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

@Bidgee: what is the advantage of allowing both jpg and JPG, other than allowing confusion by having completely different files for example.jpg and example.JPG? (which isn't exactly an advantage) - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 00:52, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Please do not ping me, I will comment in my own time and not on demand. Some photo editing tools (typically those used by non-tech knowledgeable) will only save in capitals and I see no reason why jpg and JPG can go exist. Also some smart phones and digital cameras save photographs using capitals in the file type. While mix lower/upper case (e.g. JpG, Jpg) can be problematic. I have had programs in the past that look for jgp, jpeg, JPG and JPEG but was unable how to treat an odd mix of lower/upper case. Bidgee (talk) 01:05, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

A ping is not an order to respond. Please do ping me, I can't follow all the noticeboards all the time and may not even notice your reply otherwise. There's no problem if a user tries to upload image.JPG (or image.jPeG), but the extension would automatically be changed to jpg. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 06:01, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Just to note, moving a .tif file (with standard filemover tools) forcibly and unavoidably changes the extention to .tiff, for some ungodly reason. Adam Cuerden (talk) 23:57, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

December 03

Commons:Photo challenge October Results

Pink: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Glass sphere in front of a pink tree	Pig in the French Alps	Pink bookshelf
Author	Tetzemann	Ibex73	Sally V
Score	14	13	12

Balconies: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Balconies, Podolsk, Russia	Celebration X Reflection cruise ship balconies.	Balconies of a cruise ship in
Author	DILIN	Gillfoto	Kyriondaniel
Score	16	14	12

Congratulations to Tetzemann, Ibex73, Sally V, DILIN, Gillfoto and Kyriondaniel. -- Jarekt (talk) 04:28, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Wanted picture

I appreciate picture of the follwing-:

• Tryggve Gran stamp
• Svalbard-stamp
• commeorative stamp Amundsen polar flight 1925

Brukar:nn:F.bendik — Preceding unsigned comment added by F.bendik (talk • contribs) 11:58, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

You could be bold and add them yourself if you find a picture that is properly licensed. (Also replying so this section can be archived.) Abzeronow (talk) 23:21, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Interesting question about handling archival materials

I've been going through some roughly century-old photos uploaded from the University of Washington libraries. The short of it is: I'm finding a crazy number of errors in the descriptions, etc. I'd say that for Asahel Curtis's photos of Seattle, about one in five has at least one moderately serious error; for the most part, the Frank Nowell material is a bit better described.

I know we try to keep descriptions from institutional sources intact, so for the most part I'm just adding to the descriptions: for example, here. Each time I do something like this I write to them; occasionally they make a change, so I know my emails are being read, but for the most part they seem to be ignoring them, so their site remains wrong.

Sometimes they appear to be so far off that I don't know what to do: even the title is almost certainly radically mistaken. A great example is File:Japan Building, Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition, Seattle, September 1909 (AYP 431).jpeg: I'm almost certain this is not only not the Japan Building, it's not the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific-Exposition, and it's not even Seattle! The "Hall of the Doges" is presumably the one in the Davenport Hotel in Spokane. I wrote to them over two weeks ago; no acknowledgement of my email, no change to their description. What do we do with something like this, where it came from an institution, but even the title is almost certainly wrong? - Jmabel ! talk 01:02, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

It is a sad reality that in many developed countries we have seen museum and fine arts as an easy target for Governments* to reduce investment and defer or cancel creative projects. Our uploads have continued longer than some institutions have existed, so our projects must be able to stand on their own, so if metadata is wrong, or source links vanish, these may well be issues we have to solve without help from the source institution.

Informing the museum or archive that their records appear incorrect is always a good thing to do, but the reality is that the institution may have no staff budget to reply to public queries of this type, or even to fix existing catalogue errors in the short term. Keep in mind that having a list of bugs and errors will help the institution with future improvement project funding, it may even help future Commons volunteers come up with helpful maintenance projects or get their own funding for improvements.

If the changes is not controversial, I suggest just changing everything that is wrong and leaving a note somewhere in the description that the source link or catalogue page appears incorrect. If the source goes offline, the original text/metadata will be in the old page revisions. Even better is to keep a Commons category where all these buggy images can be added, so future volunteers or employees of the institute can easily find problematic images again.

As an example, the British Museum were interested in my list of bugs on User:Fæ/Project list/PAS, and we had a very positive meeting discussing them and my approach to batch uploading from the Finds database back in 2016.

* See how well I did there, not mentioning Trump. --Fæ (talk) 14:08, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't think the UW Libraries particularly lack budget, I just think they probably initially handed this project to a student intern or maybe someone just past that, who was clearly out of his/her depth. They responded to my first half dozen corrections and occasionally to one since where it was a matter of near-illiteracy, but clearly they just haven't been making this a priority.

You say "If the changes [are] not controversial…" but can it ever be uncontroversial for me to say "I know this topic better than the person who was assigned by the leading research library in the state to handle it, and I'm saying he/she was dead wrong"? On a misspelling, maybe, because it is so easy to demonstrate who is right, but on a misidentification like this? - Jmabel ! talk 17:00, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

** The egregious Mr. Trump has virtually nothing to do with the budget of Washington state, which is determined by our state legislature and governor. Jmabel ! talk 17:02, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

you might try a m:Cascadia Wikimedians meetup for some metadata correction. we do that all the time. start with a to do list or maintenance category. normally the GLAM is happy to host us (we are free, and will buy lunch). there is also wiki art depiction explorer [6] Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 00:05, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

In fact, we (Cascadia Wikimedians) discussed this at our meeting last night. But my question here, and the reason I'm bringing it to the Village Pump, is the question of to what extent it is OK to correct (on Commons) content from a GLAM if the GLAM itself doesn't make the correction when requested. How sacrosanct are the descriptions that come from a GLAM? - Jmabel ! talk 00:21, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't see any reason we shouldn't correct obvious errors for the benefit of readers and reusers, no matter what the source. The original description can always be kept with a notice like {{Inaccurate description}}. clpo13_(talk) 00:30, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

i tend to bracket archival descriptions, with a sic. you can show the original description, with your corrected description. "GLAM itself doesn't make the correction", most GLAMs do not find error correcting as easy as a wiki; they have a hard enough time with generation. that's why it is important to build partnerships. see also [7] Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 02:08, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't know if the University of Washington archives are any more prone to errors than any other archive, but anecdotally I've also run into an error with this image and this image from the Freswater and Marine Image Bank, which had their information swapped (they have consecutive accession numbers, so it was probably a simple inversion error). Any biology student would be able to tell a horseshoe crab from an isopod, so I just uploaded the correct image to match the correct description, rather than do complex moving/renaming. --Animalparty (talk) 00:42, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm sure this is something simple....

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T123381

File:Betty_Friedan_1960.png is showing up much, much lighter than its corresponding JPEG. Is this a colour space issue? I'm pretty sure I used to know how to fix this... Adam Cuerden (talk) 14:25, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

@Adam Cuerden: is probably a greyscale png. In articles, use the jpg file. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 20:01, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

@Adam Cuerden: @Alexis Jazz: I purged the page, looks fine now. -Amada44  ^{talk to me} 18:15, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Permissible Uploads

Other than photo's you take yourself, items from which you obtain a permission,or something from an old manuscript or book. What is permissible to upload. Upload wizard says everything on the internet is copyrighted. Yet WP has tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of images on their paes, and I find it hard to believe that all of those were taken by the article creator, or that they went out and had the organization or person sign a permission slip. I ain't buying that bridge in Brooklyn. For instance, the pictures of Elvis Presley. Copyright free? Permission given by Sun Records? Or all of those images of John F Kennedy? Or those images on Anime? And that is just a sample. Are they all copyright free, and did the owners provide permission slips? Oldperson (talk) 15:27, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

En.wiki has different rules than Commons. They can allow Fair Use, while Commons doesn't. If you have specific examples on Commons of files you think are unfree, please give an example of a file. Abzeronow (talk) 15:48, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

[[reply to}Abzeronow]] I just checked en.wiki. I see no difference because when you try to paste an image you get this: "I attest that I own the copyright on this file, and agree to irrevocably release this file to Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license, and I agree to the Terms of Use.", Same rules as the commons. As regards an example try every image on AnimeOldperson (talk) 17:39, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

That's the wrong uploader then. There is an uploader to just locally upload to English Wikipedia. Also checked Anime category. A few of the fan arts look like COM:DW but I cannot tell if it is an original character or a fan art of an existing character from an anime. Abzeronow (talk) 17:52, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Each file has a description page with authorship and licensing information, or an explanation for why it is in the public domain. If you see a suspicious image on Wikipedia, you can click the image, then "More details" to view this description. If the rationale doesn't make sense, you can nominate it for deletion. The most common copyright violations are claimed to be the uploader's "own work". Guanaco (talk) 16:54, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

@Guanaco: I just read Commons:Hirtle chartIt covers reproduction of the whole object (book, record) but I believe that the fair use doctrine will permit the reproduction of a portion, just as a page or illustration, so long as credit is given to the source. And I don't mean snagging it off the internet, I mean using a scanner or other device to obtain an image.Am I wrong?Oldperson (talk) 17:39, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

1. How you get it (scanning, off the Internet) is completely irrelevant.
2. Fair use, in this sense, is not allowed on Commons.
3. While the portion of a work you use is a factor in fair use (in places where it is allowed) it is not the only factor. This is mostly a matter of case law rather than statute law. In the various WMF projects, it is also a matter of the projects' various policies. All WMF projects have rules that are stricter than simply "what is legal". For example, en-wiki allows some non-free photographic portraits of deceased people, but not of living people, even though the fair use case is the same in a legal sense. - Jmabel ! talk 20:16, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

the elvis photo is public domain, not renewed File:Elvis Presley promoting Jailhouse Rock.jpg (welcome to US copyright rules), with a fair use album cover w:File:Elvis Presley LPM-1254 Album Cover.jpg; John F Kennedy photos are public domain, work of the US government File:John F. Kennedy, White House photo portrait, looking up.jpg. nothing extraordinary at all. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 14:09, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Advice needed please

Someone has contacted me with this request:
Hello, I have a client who supplied the hydraulic cylinder within the Hatfield House Sculpture. I have just put a case study live on the website that included one of your images for the purpose of sharing this with you to confirm that you are happy with the attribution. We also intend to share the case study on Facebook and Twitter and use the same attribution. Please could you confirm that you are happy for us to proceed on this basis?
I assume he means this one: [8]. Everything seems fine for it to go on a web site, in fact I'm pleased, but my query is this: what about them adding it their Facebook and Twitter pages ? I know that we are not allowed to take pics from these sites as their licencing terms are not compatable. However, what is the situation spun the other way round. The contact says the post will add an attribution, but does this cut it. Does giving permission for our CC-BY-SA 4.0 pics to go on Facebook and Twitter invalidate our licence on Wikimedia and elsewhere, even with added attribution and link to CC, (perhaps making it public domain or owned by Facebook and Twitter ?). Be grateful for insight on this. Many thanks. Acabashi (talk) 20:22, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• No it does not make the original license invalid.
• If the upload to Facebook rather than link, they are violating Facebook's terms of service, which say that you should upload images only if you own the copyright or it is in the public domain. (Of course, Facebook users violate this pretty much all the time.) In theory, the uploader just gave Facebook unlimited rights to the photo by uploading it there, but of course those rights weren't theirs to give, so it has no legal meaning.
• I don't know about Twitter... - Jmabel ! talk 04:51, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for that clarification. If they do credit and/or link me on Facebook then that is all to my advantage, and to their possible detriment. Many thanks. Acabashi (talk) 09:38, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

December 05

Unusual question

Sorry for poor English, this is not my native tongue.

Hi to all.

I read (of course not all) Commons guidelines,FAQs, etc but failed to find something relevant to this question. I'm newbie to Commons so maybe this type of issue was answered somewhere.

Accidentally I found image that show (of course if description is not a fiction/weird joke) uploader self-harm cuts.

[- may be mildly gruesome for some people]

My questions is: Did should (and how?) average user reacts to this kind of media? Not only in policy but also ethical aspects? Many social platforms if I'm not wrong have some guidelines how user should react to this and similar categories of content (anyone can easy imagine more drastic examples).

Of course, someone can say that image don't seems to violate any guidelines. It can have even use on some projects. It is why simply I don't nominated it for deletion. But for some people this (and similar) type of images is at least improper. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Otsaim (talk • contribs) 14:14, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

--Otsaim (talk) 14:21, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

@Otsaim: You are welcome to denounce self-harm as I do or report it to emergencywikimedia.org, but photos of it as an encyclopedic subject may remain here.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 15:09, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Figured I'd provide an unbroken link to that image for anyone who wants to see it: File:Self-injury_cuts_and_scars_on_forearm.jpg. - Jmabel ! talk 17:52, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I'd say that is about as innocuous an image of its subject as we are likely to get: not at all sensational. Entirely appropriate. - Jmabel ! talk 17:54, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

December 06

Why doesn't Wikimedia Commons have its own technical wishlist?

Why doesn't Wikimedia Commons have its own technical wish list akin to w:de:Wikipedia:Umfragen/Technische Wünsche 2017? Most technical wish lists are very Wikipedia-centric and will exclude most suggestions that mostly affect Wikimedia Commons on the virtue of their simply being way more Wikipedians than Commonists, I mean having a separate technical wish list would probably be best for Wikidata too, but it's just odd that technical wishes for Wikimedia Commons aren't taken that seriously, in fact most of our tools aren't even being actively maintained (almost all most-used tools are zombie tools, meanwhile even obscure things in a Wikipedia that only a user and a half use are maintained on a daily basis, why is the MediaWiki Upload Wizard still rubbish for importing files from Flickr? Or even Flickr2Commons doesn't seem to work as expected). --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:21, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: there is meta:Community_Wishlist_Survey_2019/Multimedia_and_Commons … --El Grafo (talk) 09:38, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

not the same thing. note the lack on the list, of addressing the technical debt, and maintenance of tools which are breaking. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 15:27, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: What's wrong with the Flickr importing feature in UploadWizard? I just used it to import about 350 images from Flickr at once the other day. Seemed to work OK. Kaldari (talk) 21:57, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

user:kaldari see also Commons_talk:Abuse_filter/Archive_2018#Report_by_Slowking4_2 and User_talk:Slowking4/Archive_5#Warning and https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T100062 . the opaque interaction with abuse filter, tends to send uploaders to flickr2commons. i've stopped using UW. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 14:26, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: Note though that the local project in dewiki has been abandoned in favour of the Community Wishlist. — Speravir – 19:15, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: For the record, UploadWizard was broken by an AbuseFilter created by Commons admins, not by anything the WMF did. It's been fixed now. Kaldari (talk) 22:30, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Combination of old postcard license and Flicker license

This file is obviously an old postcard. That it comes from Flicker is largely irrelevant. I have added the PD-France license and the postcard template. Should the Flicker license be kept? In most cases with old postcards, I keep the mention of 'private collection' and other supplementary information to keep the uploader happy. What is the advice?Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:01, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

There are other Privas images from Flicker:

• Privas (Ardèche). - Le Pont du Petit Tournon et Village du Petit Tournon (34441867421).jpg
• Privas (Ardèche). - Nouvelle Caisse d'Epargne (33729506714).jpg
• Privas - Av. de la Gare et Ecole Normale de Garçons (33729506414).jpg
• Privas - Avenue de la Gare - Ecole Normale (33729507454).jpg
• Privas - Le Petit Tournon (33729508224).jpg
• Privas - Rocher des Sorcières (33729505504).jpg

Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:00, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

I finished checking the licences of the Category:Postcards of Ardèche.Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:57, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

New Wikimedia password policy and requirements

Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation security team is implementing a new password policy and requirements. You can learn more about the project on MediaWiki.org.

These new requirements will apply to new accounts and privileged accounts. New accounts will be required to create a password with a minimum length of 8 characters. Privileged accounts will be prompted to update their password to one that is at least 10 characters in length.

These changes are planned to be in effect on December 13th. If you think your work or tools will be affected by this change, please let us know on the talk page.

Thank you!

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:02, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Image with effects

File:View To The Castle Of Sanssouci (218943547).jpeg Do you have an idea how else this image which obviously has undergone some photo editing could be categorised (apart from the obvious category already added)? — Speravir – 02:24, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Speravir: just add {{Retouched}}. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 09:44, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Oh, so simple. I thought there could be a category. — Speravir – 19:12, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Speravir: {{Retouched}} actually adds Category:Retouched pictures, but images should not be manually (without the template) added to that category. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 02:20, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

@Alexis Jazz: THX, but I know, I should have phrased it differently. I thought of other categories. — Speravir – 02:34, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: --Speravir 02:06, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Commons:File types is out of date

Hi all

I've been trying to find information about the Data: namespace and what kind of files are allowed under different licenses (e.g tabular data and maps) but I can't find any information, even on Commons:File types, does someone know where I can find this?

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 09:12, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

John, the data namespace is generally sparsely documented here. As far as I know only *.map and *.tab are allowed. See Commons:Data leading you consequentially to pages on Mediawiki.org: mw:Help:Map Data and mw:Help:Tabular Data. BTW ping @Yurik.

Yes, Commons:File types should be updated. — Speravir – 19:36, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks @Speravir: , I have just updated the page to with a bit more info about STL, but I don't really understand the data namespace so not sure what to say about it, I guess it needs its own section. John Cummings (talk) 19:42, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

John, I’ve moved some content into an own section and enhanced this with info from Mediawiki pages: Data files. Would be great if you’d take a look. BTW there is some contradiction in regards to licenses between MW pages and practice in Commons. In regarding 3D files: I had to alter info in Unsupported free file formats; I hope this is now correct, too. — Speravir – 02:10, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks very much @Speravir: , this is much better, note the licenses allowed for data on Wikidata are very likely to change soon (the CC0 restriction is based on a technical issue of no ability to credit the data), I'll keep an eye out and change the documentation when it does, here is some more information. John Cummings (talk) 17:05, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I’ve seen this, too. When this officially changes the edit mask has to be changed. — Speravir – 18:56, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Virginia Historical Highway Markers

I just received the following. This means that anyone can without trepidation use images of VA Historical Marker Hiway signs

Highway markers are not memorials. No copyright applies in regards to the contents of the signs and their view (and photos) from the public ROW .

What is the sign? We may be able to use it for our online marker database and search, if the photo is missing.

Randy

Randall Jones

Public Information Officer

Dept. of Historic Resources

(540) 578-3031

Follow DHR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VADHR/

Oldperson (talk) 00:08, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

@Oldperson: dumb question, what's ROW? I remember this was about File:Farrar's Island Marker K199.jpg. In that particular example, the photo itself was also not own work. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 23:55, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

"right of way" it is a call out to freedom of panaroma, which elides the concern about the text. see also Commons:Deletion requests/PAHMC; Commons:Deletion requests/File:FerryPlantationHouseVirginiaHistoricalMarker.jpg; but proceed with the com:OTRS permission about the virginia signs. virginia is not florida, and state officials do not understand the persnickety culture here. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 14:13, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

@Slowking4 and Alexis Jazz: Given the above, would it be permissible then to use the image that VADHR has on it's website, rather than my own, it is of much better quality. https://vcris.dhr.virginia.gov/HistoricMarkers/ alas, one must search, by name, for the historical marker. If so then how does one cite the permission when uploading. Please ping me if you replyOldperson (talk) 23:45, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

i would not bother, without a confirmed OTRS email. it will get deleted. and the DHR will need to get their photographers' permission. might be worth having an meetup, to wiki'splain commons' view of copyright. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 03:33, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

December 04

flight Zagreb-Stuttgart

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Flight_Zagreb_(Croatia)-Stuttgart_(Germany) Hello!

For the wikimedia members from Slovenia, AUstria and South Germany:

I recently uploaded pics from my flight. I would like to aks if you could Identify more accurately locations and add desciptions. yes, they have gps coordinates but they are not sometimes very accurate. also the videos:

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iznad_Bavarske_141934.webm
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iznad_Podveže,_Slovenija_140512.webm
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Above_Untertauern,_Austria_141458.webm
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Above_Muhlbach_AT_141215.webm

thanks!

Quahadi Añtó 16:58, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Not all pictures are worth uploading. The first 5 during takeoff are not very interesting, because they are more or less groundlevel pictures. There are buildings but is from a long distance and not very scharp. Airplane pictures can be interesting when they are top down and reveal the pattern of streets and structures wich you cant see from groundlevel.Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:58, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

use a commons file that I modified

I downloaded a graphics file from Commons and modified it in AI for use in another article.

What is the procedure to upload it back to WM Commons? How do I identify the source? I assume there is not a copyright issue as I changed a file that was on it. BrucePL (talk) 22:38, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• @BrucePL: Pretty simple if you want to offer an equivalent license to the original image; a lot trickier if you don't. So let's presume you do. The main thing is to connect them with {{Derivative versions}} and {{Derived from}}. If the original image wasn't a self-upload I've seen some people state the original source as their new source, others state the Commons image. I think either is clear and acceptable. (You might want to hold on a day or so to see if someone has a different understanding of this than I do.) - Jmabel ! talk 23:32, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

@Jmabel: I don't see how to use the derivative notices using the Upload Wizard. I have not uploaded an image using source editing either. Where do I learn? Thanks. BrucePL (talk) 17:41, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

@BrucePL: If the Upload Wizard is what is comfortable for you, just upload with the Upload Wizard, get as much as you can right (especially the license), then edit to add the rest, just like you'd edit on any other wiki page. - Jmabel ! talk 23:25, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

December 07

Structured Data on Commons Newsletter - Fall 2018 edition

Welcome to the newsletter for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons! You can update your subscription to the newsletter. Do inform others who you think will want to be involved in the project!

Community updates

• Multilingual Captions, the first feature release for Structured Data, is coming in January of 2019
  • Be on the lookout for the beta testing announcement
  • Help using captions has been set up, if you'd like to go ahead and see the workflow
• Two IRC office hours were held since the last newsletter
  • Log for 4 October
  • Log for 1 November
• Our dedicated IRC channel: wikimedia-commons-sd ^webchat

Things to do / input and feedback requests

Current:

• Help determine and propose properties on Wikidata for Commons
• Review designs for structured licensing and copyright
• Join the community focus group!

Since the last newsletter:

• Review a prototype for searching structured Commons (October 2018)
• "Good coverage" for depicts tagging (Sept. 2018)
• Review and discuss mockups for displaying the new metadata section of the file page (18 September - 9 October 2018)
• Depicts statements draft requirements (14 August - 31 August 2018)
• Identify Wikidata properties that Commons will need (26 June - 14 August 2018)

Presentations / Press / Events

• Presentation by Keegan on the first features to be released for Structured Data, presented at Wikiconference North America, Columbus, Ohio, October 2018.
• Sandra presented a project update at the GLAM-Wiki conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, November 2018, as part of an update and panel discussion.
• Structured Data on Commons was the subject of a keynote presentation by Sandra (see slides) at the Baltic Audiovisual Archives Council conference in Tallinn, Estonia, November 2018.

Partners and allies

• The info portal on Structured Commons now includes a section on GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums).
• We are currently planning the first GLAM pilot projects that will use structured data on Wikimedia Commons. One project has already started: the Swedish Heritage Board researches and develops a prototype tool to provide improved metadata (translations, data additions...) from Wikimedia Commons back to the source institution. Read the project brief.
• The documentation for batch uploads of files to Wikimedia Commons will be improved in 2019, as part of preparing for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons. To prepare, the GLAM team at the Wikimedia Foundation wants to understand better which types of documentation you already use, and how you like to learn new GLAM-Wiki skills and knowledge. Fill in a short survey to provide input!

Stay up to date!

• Follow the Structured Data on Commons project on Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/34/
• Subscribe to this newsletter to receive it on a talk page of your own choice.

-- Keegan (WMF) (talk)

Message sent by MediaWiki message delivery - 17:58, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

December 08

Test passed. How to delete?

How do I delte this edit of mine from page history. I think the test is taking too much room on Wikimedia Commons server for a single page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aceing Winter Snows Harsh Cold (talk • contribs) 04:39, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Forgot to put link to that edit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Sandbox&oldid=330739007 . Aceing Winter Snows Harsh Cold (talk) 04:41, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

You can't. No one can. Even admins can't actually delete something from the server. "Deletion" to us is actually just hiding edits from the vast majority of people. In any case, the storage space on the server is fine. The Foundation has plenty of space to work with. --Majora (talk) 05:17, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

@Aceing Winter Snows Harsh Cold: your test (without compression) takes up slightly less space than File:Cat Briciola with pretty and different colour of eyes.jpg. So the Commons server will be fine. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 05:48, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

December 10

Splitting a building in half...

Can anyone think of an appropriate category for the rather remarkable construction project shown here: splitting a building in two and moving part of it as a means of expanding it? - Jmabel ! talk 08:52, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I've added Category:Building jacking, which doesn't cover the splitting, but the moving. --rimshot^talk 22:53, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Undue influence of en.Wikipedia

Look here, please – an en.Wikipedian came and declared: “there is a sock puppet of certain our contributor, and the sock uploaded copyvio”, citing some en.Wikipedia edit. No explicit proof of copyvio was presented, and now only sysops can check whether was it copyvio because one Commons sysop deleted the file early applying a perverse interpretation of Commons:CSD #G7. Moreover, evidence of purported sock puppetry was rather weak. But yet another Commons sysop—and also an en.Wikipedian—blocked both accounts and now fails to respond to criticism. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:02, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

You know, it is highly suspicious if one account uploads a file at 06:38 and then another inserts it into a Wikipedia page at 06:42. That is a 4 minute time difference! The accounts seem to be at least related. --HyperGaruda (talk) 16:14, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

It was a copyvio. Clear and unambiguous. --Majora (talk) 17:12, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Can Majora add the link then? Not here, but onto Commons:Deletion requests/File:Air_conditioner_compressor_inside.jpg currently making impression that a random Commons sysop doesn’t understand policy enough to make deletions for any case but simplest. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:21, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Fine. Will you please stop posting this to every board now? --Majora (talk) 17:38, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Unless my “forum shopping” there wouldn’t be Majora’s notice at the delreq. Whereas without this notice (and accordingly to findings of a CheckUser) there would be no reason for Akajones12 (talk • contribs • block log • filter log) to stay blocked at all. Admit, at the end, that I was right where two Commons sysops—who blindly relied on en.Wikipedian allegations—were not. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:21, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

yeah, not a surprise that the vindictive summary process is infecting projects, other than english. should not expect much accountability from people who are always right. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 13:17, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

December 09

It is now possible to undo edits using the mobile editing interface

This was copied from the Technical Village Pump as more people watch this village pump and this new feature probably deserves more eyes than a few watchers of a nascent sub-pump.

• 
  The “Undo” button is visible for all edits (including your own).
• 
  Although the “Undo” button also appears for both edits that can't be undone and those that already have been undone.
• 
  When dealing with registered users this button is below the “Thank” button so if you like me have sausage 🌭 fingers be careful!
• 
  When attempting to undo an edit your web browser should prompt you to give a reason (for context I use Microsoft Edge on Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile so this screen may look different for someone using the Ecosia browser on Google Android.
• 
  If successful your browser will then inform you of this and then automatically reload the page within a second.
• 
  This is how a successfully reverted edit looks.
• 
  If an edit was already undone you get this message.
• 
  Note 📝: You can still undo changes that happen to certain sections as this edit was older.

It is now possible to undo edits if you use the mobile editing interface, “User:FR30799386” has enabled this and the result here on Wikimedia Commons is as the images above demonstrate you can add an edit summary and the undo will automatically reload the page.

If any of y'all want to have this feature for yourself then please follow the instructions from W:EN:User:FR30799386/undo by copying

mw.loader.load('https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:FR30799386/undo.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');

, clicking on this link, and then pasting the code. WARNING ⚠: As of writing this this code is still beta software, so each and every revert should be checked after saving. In case there is a bug, its creator requests its users to report it to w:en:User talk:FR30799386. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 14:34, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-50

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 December. It will be on all wikis from 13 December (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 12 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• New accounts will need passwords that are at least 8 characters long. Admins, interface admins, bureaucrats, oversighters, CentralNotice admins, global renamers, check users, stewards and some other user groups will need passwords that are at least 10 characters long. This is because an attacker could cause damage to the wikis if they took over these accounts. [9][10]
• When you hover over a footnote it will show you the reference as a pop-up. This is so you don't have to jump down to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will happen in 2019. Some wikis already have gadgets that do this. You will be able to turn it off. [11]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:33, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Error while uploading images

I'm getting an error that states none of the uploads were successful. I do got the screen-record and can send it to an email if provided, which can help in understanding the error.--IM3847 (talk) 05:22, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

@IM3847: , you could report it to the Phabrocator, alternatively you could upload the screenshot here and show us how the error looks... But as your error seems to relate to an inability to upload images, have you tried using either different web browsers or different devices or a different Wikimedia SUL-account to Test and see if the issue still affects you? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 14:49, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: It just shows None of the uploads were successful just beside retry failed uploads link on safari browser. --IM3847 (talk) 15:03, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

empty area in category page (set by template ?)

Hi, may i ask for assistance to solve the issue.
Category page contain big area of empty space.
Somehow this this designed by Book Template, however I cannot find how to control this.
Grybukas (talk) 21:25, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Grybukas (talk) 12:59, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Adobe Flash & Illustrator content queries

I can't stop watching the "In Shadow" animation I recently discovered. One particular scene in it with US flag draped coffins vanishing into a single perspective reminded me of something I'd done, a little anti-war activist music video I'd animated for a friend I'd worked on a Burning Man art book with. I have it backed up somewhere but the old 2005 Adobe Flash doesn't play on my 2018 Brave browser. I hated Flash then, and I hate it now. I only did it in Flash because he wanted to stream it, and back then it was still a big file despite my efforts at getting it tight. So here's one of the few things I ever (painfully) animated in Flash (not up to my preferred standards), an anti-war music video for Ian Rhett's "(I Know Why You're) Semper Fi" dedicated to his sister who was serving in Okanawa.

I always intended to share all the vectors with Wikimedia Commons but after that project was done I'd had enough of looking at guns and war machines and wanted nothing more to do with it for a while. One day I'll convert all the Illustrator files to SVGs and upload them somewhere for anyone to use.

Ian gave our co-production a Creative Commons by-nc-nd 2.0 licence when he put it on the SharedVoice.org site a dozen years ago. I thought nothing of it at the time.

So now I have a few questions:

Can I upload that Flash video? And/or should I convert it to another preferred video format? I would just do it and see what happens, but I don't want to be "that" guy, well meaning or not, who has a lot of upload issues (like I've already done). Also, now that I'm learning more about this stuff, I'd rather try to do things properly, including this.

The music was Ian. The images and animation were me. We collaborated on the concept. He published the results.

So it seems to me that I could publish all of the vector images I used to make the video. I'd like to do this, but I'd like to include the animation in this "collection". I don't mind if some Marines or gun enthusiasts use my vectors but I'd rather this video be right along side that vector collection.

I'd be happier if I didn't have to hand convert the Illustrator files into SVGs. Are Illustrator files allowed?

There are quite a few images that are similar, though I don't expect it would be a problem.

I haven't been in California for over a decade so I haven't seen Ian either. Will I have to contact him about this stuff? Maybe to change the copyright? Or is that even possible?

I have a new much bigger project that I intend to open source too, but from the get go. Much of what I learn here will guide me through decisions I'll have to make on it. Ideally I'd like to publish it all on this Commons.

I look forward to hearing what anyone has to say about this stuff.

Thanks in advance. I'll check back soon. ~ JasonCarswell (talk) 06:13, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

ND licenses are not allowed. Plus, we do not accept Flash files because it is a proprietary format (which is not free content) ViperSnake151 (talk) 15:13, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Ya. I figured that Non-Derivative thing was an issue. Also the Share-Alike. I understand his wanting credit but I don't understand why he put ND on it.

I hadn't thought the Flash thing was an issue. Good to know thanks.

If I convert it from a Flash file into a another video format (recommendations for conversion tools and formats?) and get him to change his licence would that be good?

I'm assuming if/when I get around to converting the Illustrator files into SVGs (unless something else is preferred) I can upload them with a note that they were used to create that project with a link.

I don't know if that would be considered promotional or just information. While I don't object to promoting the anti-war tribute to Marines, that is free and profits no-one, I find it ironic that back then the Iraq War was new and since then we've added at least a half dozen more countries to our "enemies" list. ~ JasonCarswell (talk) 15:24, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

NL description problems

I wanted to add a more complete (Dutch) description, but it does not seem to work. The filename will have to be changed, as this tram has nothing to do with The Hague trams.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:26, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

@Smiley.toerist: I fixed it for you in met PCC tram in Brussel, Bestanddeelnr 902-5659.jpg&diff=prev&oldid=331043206 this edit.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 10:41, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

please use template:photograph, or File:Ernest Victor von Leyden. Photogravure by Fritz Leyde (?). Wellcome V0026707.jpg, or a custom one like File:Market-Garden - Landings.jpg, not information template, it is better for the metadata. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 15:05, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

December 13

Breach of copyright of living painter

I would like some action on this deletion request: Commons:Deletion requests/File:New York, the harbor 1827.png. Its a breach of copyright of a living painter, and should be handled with some speed. Its been inactive since nomination 29 August 2018. Creuzbourg (talk) 21:05, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

@Creuzbourg:  deleted. Thanks for your edits! Strakhov (talk) 21:54, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Speravir 04:38, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Files from Lies Thru a Lens Flickr stream

Can please someone explain to me as to how is it possible to Yann to speedy delete 600/700 images without a single evidence of copyright violation, that all before deletion request is opened. Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Files from Lies Thru a Lens Flickr stream being opened Yann showed zero evidence of copyright violations and only showed links of photographers that either had zero photos published or to photographers that had different styles.

As i´ve shown this images were properly licensed and all were taken by the same photographer (except an old family photo and a single image that displayed a nikon camera and 3 images of that displayed sony cameras). But the fact that 4 images ir around 1200/1300 is not proof of systematic copyright violations.

After showing irrefutable evidence that all images were taken by the same photographer and that same photographer was the one that licensed this images, and being supported by all the commented in that deletion request that the files should be kept. Besides that in this edit even @BevinKacon, the one that asked Yann to delete this images, thinks that the images in this DR should be kept and the ones deleted by Yann should be undeleted (BevinKacon, please correct me if i´am wrong).

Well, after almost half year, knowing that this image would be kept and the others undeleted, today JCB, as some times happen, didn't read the DR, and closed te dr as "deleted: per nomination - uploader has given convincing arguments why files from this Flickr stream cannot be trusted". Yann was not an uploader of a single of this images, i´am was a uploader of a great part of this images, if not the majority.

What i get from this? Proofs serve of nothing in DR´s, the fact that all users that commented think that this images should have been kept also are zero, the body of irrefutable evidence value zero. That is valued is some random links and hearsay, as shown by the fact of the deletion of 601 images today and 600/700 in July. Time of volunteers wasted, just because some users think TL:DR but delete and zero proofs are enough to delete 1200/1300 images. And then some wonder why some many people dont contribute at all to Commons, when the show is run the users that make this kind of primary mistakes and still insist in pushing it further.

If there is still some decency in Commons, please comment in Commons:Undeletion_requests/Current_requests#Files_from_Lies_Thru_a_Lens_Flickr_stream, where all the evidence is abridged from the original DR. Tm (talk) 01:29, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• We actually did learn what matters:

Please note that in the five months this DR was open, not a single administrator has stated that these files could be kept.

— Jcb on the UDR

Not proof, not arguments, not what regular users think, not what the original spotter (BevinKacon) thinks, not what the uploader thinks (Tm), not what license reviewers think (Tm, Tuvalkin, Gone Postal) and most certainly not the opinion of mere extended uploaders rollbackers like myself and Incnis Mrsi.

Oh no.

Administrators.

Their opinion is what matters. The rest of us can go home. Jcb tried to retract his statement later, but seemingly forgot mid-sentence what he was saying and didn't really take it back. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 02:59, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

not a surprise. since we have admins who will sock, or block uploaders, in order to delete files. since they are always right, they have nothing to take back. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 03:37, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

"…we have admins who will sock…": is that an accusation against someone in particular, or just a random aspersion? - Jmabel ! talk 04:25, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

surprised you would not know about User:INeverCry. and no systemic change to avoid such admin misbehavior in the future. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 13:29, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

You didn't say "we have had admins who will sock…". You said "…we have admins who will sock…". That is a statement that some current admin is guilty of this conduct. But you don't indicate any individual against whom you have such an accusation, so this effectively counts a blanket aspersion against an entire class of people including myself, and I resent it. I don't complain when you bring forward actual complaints about the conduct of individuals, but vague accusations like this do nothing but create a negative atmosphere. - Jmabel ! talk 17:16, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

past cases of admin socking strongly indicate future admin socking. that is not a personal attack, that is a fact. it is not vague, it is very specific. and the low opinion of the admin class here is widely held, among my peer group. resent it all you want, we are way beyond "bad apples"; if you do nothing to improve admin behavior, then you are complicit in the bad admin behavior. not interested in "bringing actual complaints"; i have no confidence in a fair discussion of bad admin behavior here. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 03:01, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

We had INC, Daphne Lantier (same person but hey, both admins!), Russavia, PumpkinSky with HalfGig, High Contrast, Florent Pécassou.. Some cases are old, but these are the ones that were actually caught and I somehow know about. Statistically, there's a good chance we have a socking admin right now. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 07:28, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

 Comment Slowking4 and Jmabel, some administrators had, have and will have an history of abuse of tools for whatever reason. From memory, there are 2 1 ex-administrators blocked indefinitely for sockpuppetry, but i´ve also fail to see the relevance of sockpuppetry it in this particular case. Tm (talk) 05:02, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

given the history, we desperately needs some admin leadership, with some "coaching" and "behavior change"; and it will have to be admin to admin, given the admin super-vote mentality in evidence in this case. until then, we will continue to have a battleground of resentment, and assumption of bad faith. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 21:39, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Putin's Stasi card

What's the copyright status of Vladimir Putin's Stasi ID card, as discussed at [12]? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:42, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

The ard itself is {{PD-text}} but the photo might be copyrighted. I do not think it falls under {{PD-GermanGov}}, so it might have to wait for {{PD-anon-70-EU}}. --Jarekt (talk) 15:46, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

 Info Without water marks in some German publications, for instance in Wladimir Putin: Stasi-Ausweis von Ex-KGB-Offizier in Dresden gefunden - SPIEGEL ONLINE. — Speravir – 02:14, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Jarekt and Pigsonthewing: For {{PD-anon-70-EU}}, there are some restrictions by the copyright law of Germany (for German readers see de:Anonymes Werk (Urheberrecht)#Rechtslage in Deutschland, so for this, it is very likely, that you have wait a bit longer. but you could remove the photo and the problem is solved. Habitator terrae 🌍 13:21, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

December 12

I'm thinking of creating a Category:PD-People

What say you? Thanks.DMBFFF (talk) 01:05, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

What would they do? - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 02:23, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

It'd be a subcat of Category:Public domain and Category:People. My reason was somewhat lame—to access pictures I could use for forum avatars of a site where the profile pages can't (at least currently) be edited and thus attribution-by-linking back to WC can't be done. If I understand correctly, most images in WC are CC or some variants, and thus use of them requires a link back to WC; whereas with PD such is not the case. My proposed category might help those who can't link back, or easily do so, to find images where such is (I presume) not required. I would also likely have as its subcats Category:PD-women, Category:PD-men (maybe capitalize "men: and "women" ) and Category:Images of people created in the 3rd Millennium in the public domain.DMBFFF (talk) 03:31, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

It's a bad idea, although I'm amazed nobody has done it yet, the way date categories get subdivided. Try a category intersection tool, like petscan. Creating intersection categories in the category system itself actually breaks such tools. --ghouston (talk) 03:44, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

502 Bad Gatway, but you gave me an idea. I'll try Google: Category:People, Category:Public domain, commons.wikimedia—or something like it.DMBFFF (talk) 03:56, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Press the Commons button to the right to fix the bad gateway, but I don't really know how to use the thing. --ghouston (talk) 04:06, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

a bit better

Google: "people" "public domain" "commons.wikimedia" "File:"
About 51 results (0.58 seconds)

Click Commons as you said
People
Public domain
4 results

I'll try Google images, people, public domain.DMBFFF (talk) 04:16, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• Here's a query that gives 30 results [13]. Selecting the depth of scan makes the difference (1 level of subcategories for public domain, 2 for people, in that case. Increasing the depth makes it slower. --ghouston (talk) 04:24, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

"people" "public domain" "commons.wikimedia" "File:" was unsatisfactory.

Yours got the 30, which lead to this: File:NZ7Y5789.JPG, which lead to Category:CC-Zero: (I think "This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.")
"The following 200 files are in this category, out of 2,869,847 total."

Pf and Ma.

I'll keep trying.

This might do, at least for now.

Thank you.  DMBFFF (talk) 05:42, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

I found this: Help:FastCCI. I can intersect the categories, but I get a gallery that when I click a picture and click back, I have to start the search all over again. Given that I already wanted to do a number of intersections, this has become quite frustrating. So here's how I figure it. Given that these tools aren't helping much and I'm not getting support for my category proposal, I can try to manually search each page of Category:CC-Zero. That'd be about 10 000 pages to view. Another possibility is to pay people to pose while I take their pictures and use them. There is the temptation is to simply disregard CC rules—like most people would do—and just upload CC images and use without linking back—I'm going to have to reduce the size of them anyway. But first, I'm doing to lie down for a while.   :/   DMBFFF (talk) 07:50, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Assuming you are on a PC and using either Firefox or Chrome (and I'm sure this applies to many other browsers) you can right-click on the photo and open in a new tab, so you won't have the click-back problem. - Jmabel ! talk 08:00, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Your suggestion works. Thank you, Jmabel (and all who tried to help).  DMBFFF (talk) 09:01, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Very changed geography

It seems like it would be a bit odd to categorize a picture like File:Driving the first piling for the Seattle & Walla Walla Railroad, Seattle, May 4, 1874 (CURTIS 356).jpeg in Category:Sodo, Seattle, Washington. That is, indeed the neighborhood that is there now, but as you can see in 1874 it was open water!

Until recent work in the Persian Gulf region, Seattle had the most engineered landscape in the world, so there are a lot of cases like these as I work on old photographs of Seattle. For example, an entire hill, Denny Hill, larger than Russian Hill in San Francisco, was completely leveled in a series of regrades between the late 19th Century and about 1930. Any thoughts on adding categories for geographic features that no longer exist? In this case, I'm not even sure what I'd call it: this was simply part of Elliott Bay at the time; I don't think this was even shallow enough qualify as "the Tideflats" (which were farther east). - Jmabel ! talk 02:50, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't see the problem of adding categories of the place, or even better "History of" the place.--Pere prlpz (talk) 20:07, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

private collection template

I use the template with postcards. Quite often there is the mention of 'private collection' as the source. I also add the template postcard to the source. In the Dutch NL version the template links to nl:Kunstverzameling, wich is an art-collection. However a private collection of postcard is not a art collection. Is there the same link in other languages?Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:21, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Norwegian had the same problem. Fixed that and removed the erroneously used compound dash in the Dutch translation. --HyperGaruda (talk) 07:35, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

File:Ida M. Tarbell.jpg

It probably doesn't matter, but I accidentally uploaded a copy of File:Ida Husted Harper photograph by Aime Dupont.jpg - for fairly obvious reasons (the filenames on my computer are rather shorter than the ones here) - into the file history. Does anything need done about this? Adam Cuerden (talk) 06:38, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

To make the revision history look pretty, I was at first thinking of revision deletion, but no: COM:REVDEL#Revision deletion is used sparingly. Just keep calm and carry on. --HyperGaruda (talk) 07:16, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

December 16

Original original

I refer to File:Guangzhou trolleybuses from behind, 150 and another (1991).jpg. I find it weird when the uploader had touched the image but implied that it was the original from Flickr, especially so when he had also uploaded a retouched and cropped version at File:Guangzhou trolleybuses from behind, cropped (1991).jpg. Why touch the original then? Personally I don't like altering anything that's supposed to be original. In my opinion this case is even worse, that the aspect ratio was greatly altered, and the JPG file became 80% larger, yet the improvement was cutting away nothing intrusive but the top of the utility pole and some stains on the yellow building. @Steve Morgan: your response will be appreciated. Thanks! --Roy17 (talk) 02:25, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• Even on my own photos, unless already published elsewhere, if I want to edit them I typically first upload the version straight from the camera, then my edit. E.g. File:SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention - interior 58 - first coiled telephone cord c. 1935.jpg, File:SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention - interior 66- Pointer-Dial Philharmonic Console Radio Model 20A - E.H. Scott Radio Laboratories, Inc., Chicago, 1937.jpg. - Jmabel ! talk 02:42, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Who says it's "supposed to be the original"? Not me. There's no rule or guideline that says Flickr images copied to Wikimedia Commons should remain unaltered, and, to the contrary, I believe they should be altered whenever the Flickr version has flaws such as underexposure, dirt specks picked up by a scanner, or being tilted. I also cleaned a blemish from the sky. Regarding Roy17's comment, specifically, I never "implied that it was the original from Flickr"; I uploaded two versions in 2012, one cropped and one relatively uncropped, but I cleaned up both of them before uploading to Commons (e.g. correcting for underexposure), to make them better on Commons. There's no reason that the exact, original Flickr version of this image needs to be on Commons, in my opinion; if someone wants that (less good) version, they can still obtain it at Flickr. On my computer, the aspect ratio and overall dimensions look virtually the same in my version as in the Flickr version. The file size in MB ended up larger only because the software I used for the improvements, iPhoto, gave me only the choice of either greatly reducing the size or increasing it (an annoying oddity of iPhoto, but I had no control over it), so I chose the latter. The main reason I cropped even the less-cropped version before uploading here in 2012 is that I felt it was too unbalanced, in that there was too much sky at the top for a shot in which the main subject (the two vehicles) are very close to the bottom of the frame. But that's in the eye of the beholder. I could go back and upload a version that is completed uncropped (instead of slightly cropped at top) but retains my improvements for underexposure (etc.) if you really feel it's warranted, but I don't see a strong case for that, and I'd rather not spend the time. Steve Morgan (talk) 10:57, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

@Steve Morgan: , in the entire description and your initial upload log, you made no mention of touching the image, credited it solely to the Flickr author lindsaybridge, and linked another cropped version, which would make anyone think that this one is not cropped. So everything tells me that I'm seeing an original from Flickr. An original should not be touched!

I'm neutral to adjusting photos, but I dislike making any changes to sth and implying that it's not changed. Your touching and cropping are not what the author intended and should not be credited to him. I don't care if you touch your own work anyhow because it's all yours, but other people's creativity and discretion should be respected and I would never make changes without revealing them. Undisclosed changes are very bad for archival purposes. And no, it may NOT be available at Flickr forever.

If anyone wants the image focusing on trolleybuses only, they would certainly go for the most cropped version. If they want an original, they should take the author's. What is the purpose of this piece of work in progress? It was roughly 3:5, but became 5:9.

I would like to propose three solutions. 1. Reverting to the original, 2. leaving a note in the description referring people to the original I uploaded, or 3. upload the original separately and link these two as derivatives.--Roy17 (talk) 02:20, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

here would be a guideline about original versions: Commons:Overwriting_existing_files#Unedited_versions. i see there are a lot of users photoshopping without showing originals, but you would not want to be the next Jan Arkesteijn, i.e. File:Odet de Coligny, Cardinal de Chatillon, ca 1552, by Léonard Limousin.jpg. -- Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 03:31, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

(Edit conflict)

@Roy17: I do not know what you mean by "sth". I am fine with your options 2 or 3 (if you are willing to carry it out), but I disagree with most of what you have written here. As I stated before, I do not believe Commons users have any obligation to leave Flickr photos completely unaltered ('untouched', to use your word), and I do not believe that my original description and upload log implied that the photo was an unaltered original from Flickr. That is your interpretation, but I disagree with your assertion that everyone would infer that; the vast majority of Commons users likely don't think about it at all. I have copied hundreds of images from Flickr to Commons over the last 10 years, and I have made alterations (to correct what I see as defects or flaws in composition) to probably about three-fourths of them, either before uploading or immediately afterward – and I intend to continue doing so, as I see nothing wrong with it.

You appear to assume that all Flickr users view the version they posted on Flickr as the best version of their photo, and thus would prefer that it not modified, whereas it is very clear to me that many Flickr users simply have lower standards than me — or lack the software needed to clean up their photos – and are willing to upload photos that are very unexposed, badly tilted, littered with dust specks, etc. On this basis, it's reasonable to suppose that they welcome my improvements, or at least do not object to them. However, since April 2017, I have begun uploading Flickr images completely unaltered initially in almost every case, and then immediately overwriting (as soon as the license is verified) with a corrected, improved version if the original had defects – something I began doing 99% of the time only so that the Flickr license review could be carried out by a bot and not require a human review, not for the reasons you have given. Because of this change of practice, the Commons page now always includes a log of any changes I made to the original, and the unaltered original exists on Commons (and thus can be still accessed even if the Flickr account disappears); it's just not the "current" version of the file. Steve Morgan (talk) 03:48, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

@Steve Morgan: Many thanks for your sharing, but I am afraid I did not make myself clear.

1. I do not object alteration.
2. I object your past practice of not stating that you touched the photos.
3. Your judgement might not be welcomed by everybody. For these images of trolleybuses from Canton, I don't like your edits at all. Coz I care about the city. Every single detail matters. The more the merrier. You only focused on buses.
4. The same applies to people from other places who are interested in other things.
5. Your later practice is exactly what I'd expect and fully accept, so that users who might prefer the original can jump straight to the original at the bottom of file histories, instead of sth you handpick for them.
6. Unless the photos had been taken by you. That would be all your own work. But not others' Flickr collections!
7. For all images, I see them as historical documents of reality. Any changes to their colours, light, sizes and so on distort the reality. Not to mention the disrespect of photographers' own discretion. Note that these photos digitized from negatives might have well been processed, then that would exactly be the photographers' intention. Some might just like it darker.
8. Jpegs are vulnerable to alteration. I prefer as little tempering as possible. Commons is not just for wikis. Many people would choose images from here, especially when people are aware of copyright and want to choose sth CC/PD. When they do so, they would apply alteration according to their needs. So I'd say your preprocessing might sometimes be redundant and in case of jpegs not always good for image quality, contrary to your belief.
9. I am aware of Commons' rules. I repeat, I find it ok that other users do minor improvements and overwrite (I myself would never overwrite). But to me minor refers to cutting insignificant borders (which do not belong to the photos per se) and the like. For these buses, your edits went far beyond minor—cutting a small to medium portion OF THE PHOTOS (because YOU only wanted buses) and changing exposure.
10. I checked all Lindsay's photos of Canton. I plan to change the current versions by you as derivatives (by replacing the flickr templates etc with derivative templates, which must be done so that I could use flickr2commons) of flickr files that I would transfer again.--Roy17 (talk) 05:02, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

If you alter someone's work and then attribute the result entirely to them, not indicating that it is a derivative work with a contribution from yourself, that is potentially misleading. In these cases it may be harmless, but it is certainly not good practice. - Jmabel ! talk 05:13, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Interesting comments. I was trying to be selfless. Too many people online post other people's photos and fail to give any attribution to the photographer, allowing their readers/viewers to mistakenly infer that they took the photo, whereas I was trying to do the opposite: Allow the photographer to get full credit while I try to remain humbly in the background. Although I still do not agree with all of the comments above, I will try to use my 2017 practice for Flickr transfers every time in the future. By the way, I will just say that a significantly underexposed photo is not "a document of reality", but rather a distortion of reality (caused by the camera's limitations or and perhaps an inexperienced photographer). And, Roy17, you still have not explained what "sth" is short for, and a Google search did not help me. Steve Morgan (talk) 06:00, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

'sth' is short for 'something'. Second google result for "what is sth short for" (without the quotes.) -- Begoon 07:12, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Begoon. I have a college degree, and yet I had never encountered that abbreviation. Has to be a generational thing (in other words, I am 'old'), used by people who do a lot of texting. Such abbreviations are not appropriate for use on general talk pages here, in my opinion, only in discussions among users who already know one another pretty well. Steve Morgan (talk) 01:48, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Category:Images that should use vector graphics

I want to be a SVG.

I go crazy with this category: Why I could found so many exelent photographs in this category (here a few example: [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]). PS: I also found an exelent SVG in the cat. Habitator terrae 🌍 19:54, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• The first one of these I checked, File:African bush elephants (Loxodonta africana) female with six-week-old baby.jpg is not and apparently never has been in Category:Images that should use vector graphics. How are you determining that they are in that category? - Jmabel ! talk 22:35, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
• For that matter, ditto for the one you use as an illustration here. - Jmabel ! talk 22:37, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

* The images weren't directly in the SVG category, but Category:Kinship was, so by inheritance any image in a child category of that very general category was. I removed the convert tag from that category and added it to the appropriate images in the category instead. BMacZero (talk) 22:59, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• I guess this was because the majority of the kinship category are Category:Relationship diagrams but many are not. This calls for expanding the diagrammatic category tree, though my own interest is not great enough. Jim.henderson (talk) 21:03, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

December 15

VICbot

Anyone else experiencing issues with this bot? They've now notified me five times about the same COM:VI. The operator User:Dschwen seems to be on a break at the moment. GMG^talk 13:58, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Personality rights for shots of "uncontacted" people

Though it's unusual to notify about a deletion-discussion on VP, I do so 1) due the potential broader relevance of the question whether photos showing "uncontacted" people do/do not violate their personality rights and consequently should/should not remain on Commons, and 2) as up to now all participants in Commons:Deletion requests/File:Índios Isolados 4.jpg are from the same language version/Wikipedia, which is not identical to the language/country (Brazil) where the image File:Índios Isolados 4.jpg had been shot. A broader spectrum of participation might be justified. --Túrelio (talk) 15:00, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

PD in Argentina

If a photograph is PD in Argentina (20 years after publication), it is still copyrighted in the US if it was first published before 1976, right? A lot of this user's contributions might be copyright violations (in the US), and they were previously blocked for three months in 2012 for uploading fair use files. Jc86035 (talk) 18:29, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

See Commons:Hirtle chart. If published in Argentine before 1976 without compliance with US formalities then it is in public domain in USA as Commons:URAA will not apply to them. Ruslik (talk) 20:47, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

you are talking about 27 uploads this year and 3 in 2012, correct? hard to see what the risk of disruption might be. i would hope that engaging with the editor, would be the standard of practice. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 21:57, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Slowking4: I have done so. Nevertheless, the user was still uploading copyvios in 2012, five years after they were first notified that they weren't supposed to do that. Jc86035 (talk) 16:45, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

yeah, nice engagement: "are you sure that the images you're uploading are public domain in the United States as well as in Argentina?", after a wall of warning templates. hammering people for not understanding (respecting) URAA is perverse. and 2012 was before URAA was settled business, and you are of course aware of the Commons:Massive restoration of deleted images by the URAA? Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 21:41, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

@Slowking4: None of those warnings were posted by me; I haven't nominated any of their uploads for deletion yet, although I'll probably be doing that soon since they seem to have ignored that I posted on their talk page. The only replies the user has posted to their Commons talk page are all from 2007 and 2008; three of them are in all capitals and contain several Spanish curse words. The user is still active on the Spanish Wikipedia (blocked twice in 2013, for a total duration of six weeks, and still getting templated after 11 years of editing) and edited there earlier today. Jc86035 (talk) 13:30, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

i see you are intent on continuing the adversive directive form of "communication" with newbies. it is a miniscule fraction of problematic uploads. would you consider writing a message in a helpful way? or is that a waste of your time? i wonder why newbies do not want to engage in such a "dialogue". Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 13:36, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

@Slowking4: The user has been here for eleven years. Am I missing something? Jc86035 (talk) 13:57, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

you can imagine what the reputation of commons is on spanish wikipedia, when you delete files in use about Argentina, "because URAA", despite advice from WMF legal to the contrary. what part of "don't be a Vogon", don't you understand? and see also Commons:Village_pump#Why_is_this_image_not_on_the_Commons?, proliferation of local images, harming the encyclopedic project. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 14:00, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

December 14

Why is this image not on the Commons?

German Wikipedia image Smiley.toerist (talk) 20:43, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Likely because the author is unknown und the image might be deleted here on Commons. (so, the tag on :de is just a protection against losing the image) --Túrelio (talk) 20:46, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

@Túrelio: Please do yourself a favor and compare wikt:loosing to wikt:losing.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 21:00, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

These files should be OK on Commons. Regards, Yann (talk) 14:06, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

1880 is nearly 140 years ago. Taking a minimum working age of 20 years, the photografer would have to die at a age of more than 128 years old (1948) for the picture to be non-PD. Get real.Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:03, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

I have another one: de:Datei:Tafel_Recklinghausen.jpg. We are translating the excellent German de:Geschichte der Eisenbahn in Deutschland in to Dutch.Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:07, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

{{PD-old-assumed}} could be applied for the image you mentioned first, I think. But, Smiley.toerist, I think you should check your math again ;-) (if we assume that the photographer was 20 years old in 1880, they would be 88 years old in 1948, not 128 - not an impossible age). Gestumblindi (talk) 00:34, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

wikipedias are keeping their uploads local, because they do not trust commons not to delete them. that is the reality. you should expect more images to remain local, until trust is restored by a standard of practice, not a random deletion-fest. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 13:44, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

December 17

Crop tool

Anyone else having problems getting Crop Tool to load? Usually works fine for me, but right now it doesn't. - Jmabel ! talk 00:51, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it seems to have been down for much of the last 12 hours, for me at least. --Animalparty (talk) 05:09, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

@Jmabel, Animalparty, and Danmichaelo: It is working now. In the window from 15:27 on the 16th to 12:03 on the 17th (UTC), no images were uploaded with CropTool [1.4] (tagfilter=OAuth CID: 593). The issue was reported at Commons talk:CropTool#Time out: 502 Bad Gateway.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 15:29, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Personal categories

Are categories like Category:Quality images of Egypt (Choosen by Muhammad Adel)‎ allowed at all? Apart from being grammatically wrong, this category and its subcategories contain no official quality images according to a PetScan query. --HyperGaruda (talk) 05:55, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

No, according to Commons:User-specific galleries, templates and categories: Categories shouldn't be created to collect files based on a user's personal opinion (e.g. User:Example's favourite pictures); user galleries may be used for such purposes instead as described above. --ghouston (talk) 06:23, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Also, the parent category Category:Quality images of Egypt suggest that the images contained in the subcategories are COM:QI – which they are not. --El Grafo (talk) 09:48, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Sounds clear to me. I have started a CfD. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:40, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-51

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 7 January 2019.

Recent changes

• Some templates that show notices about the content of the page will now be shown on the mobile website. In many cases they were hidden before. [28][29]
• Admins can no longer unblock themselves, except for self-blocks. A blocked admin can block the user who blocked them but no one else. This is so no one can block all admins on a wiki without being stopped. [30]
• The ParserMigration extension has been removed. It compared the result of two versions of the MediaWiki wikitext parsing pipeline. It was used when we moved to the Remex parsing library instead of Tidy.

Problems

• <ref> tags can use parameters such as "name" or "group". For example <ref name="adams" group="books">. If a <ref> tag has more than two parameters all parameters are ignored. You don't get a warning that they don't work. This will soon be fixed. [31]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 December. It will be on all wikis from 20 December (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 19 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation Android app team are working on making it easier to edit on mobile phones. You can read more about these plans. If you have an Android phone and speak at least two languages you can help testing in English. Tell Dchen (WMF) you want to be part of the testing by writing on her talk page or email her.
• tiles.wmflabs.org and wma.wmflabs.org will stop working. They have no maintainers and run an old operating system. Tools which use it could stop working. This includes the mapnik gadget, hill shading, and hike and bike layers. New maintainers could help out and keep it going. [32]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:34, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Structured data - Multilingual captions beta testing

Please help spread the word wherever you see fit. I'll be sending this message to mailing lists as well.

The Structured Data on Commons team has begun beta testing of the first feature, multilingual file captions, and all community members are invited to test it out. Captions is based on designs discussed with the community[33][34] and the team is looking forward to hearing about testing. If all goes well during testing, captions will be turned on for Commons around the second week of January, 2019.

Multilingual captions are plain text fields that provide brief, easily translatable details of a file in a way that is easy to create, edit, and curate. Captions are added during the upload process using the UploadWizard, or they can be added directly on any file page on Commons. Adding captions in multiple languages is a simple process that requires only a few steps.

The details:

• There is a help page available on how to use multilingual file captions.
• Testing will take place on Beta Commons. If you don’t yet have an account set up there, you’ll need one.
• Beta Commons is a testbed, and not configured exactly like the real Commons site, so expect to see some discrepancies with user interface (UI) elements like search.
• Structured Data introduces the potential for many important page changes to happen at once, which could flood the recent changes list. Because of this, Enhanced Recent Changes is enabled as it currently is at Commons, but with some UI changes.
• Feedback and commentary on the file caption functionality are welcome and encouraged on the discussion page for this post.
• Some testing has already taken place and the team are aware of some issues. A list of known issues can be seen below.
• If you discover a bug/issue that is not covered in the known issues, please file a ticket on Phabricator and tag it with the “Multimedia” tag. Use this link to file a new task already tagged with "Multimedia."

Known issues:

• Search is not currently working on Beta Commons. Search is not needed for testing captions, but service should be restored soon.
• Language name display inconsistencies in multilingual file captions
• Language names for multilingual File captions can run into the caption value in the mobile view
• Deleting a caption field that has text that exceeds the limit does not re-enable the "publish" button
• "Edit" tab for past revisions should be "restore"
• When using the back button, recently added captions sometimes don't display in Chrome
• File Captions can't be edited on mobile browsers
• Wrong font weight for some language labels on SDC captions box

Thanks!

-- Keegan (WMF) (talk), for the Structured Data on Commons Team 20:39, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Overwriting and file extension

I found a better JPG of File:Tyg8Xbv.gif. What should I do? (License: PD-Myanmar. Photo made before 1900. Ship dismantled in 1914.)--Roy17 (talk) 23:49, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

1. Clear up the copyright status. 1900 is actually not quite long enough to presume public domain (though it's close). File:Tyg8Xbv.gif has a clearly false claim of "own work", which does not help to sort this out.
2. Assuming the copyright status is OK, upload the JPEG (preferably under a much better name)!
3. Add appropriate categories to both files, which it looks like the uploader of File:Tyg8Xbv.gif neglected to do.
4. Link the two file pages, using the "other versions" parameter of {{Information}}. I'd use {{Other version}} to link them to one another, but there are several other acceptable ways to do that.

• In any case, you cannot overwrite a GIF with a JPEG. - Jmabel ! talk 01:24, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

In addition: Add {{BadGIF}} to the GIF version. But this file has apparently some issues with author, source and date and could therefore be deleted (and the filename is unmeaning, too). Do you have better, valuable source information? — Speravir – 04:47, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

December 18

Paper pattern

Is this copyrightable, or are we OK to upload it? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:31, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

I think so as {{Pd-shape}} Ruslik (talk) 20:55, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Uncategorized and unidentified categories

I was told by Auntof6 during this discussion on Turelio's talk page that there have been a few inconclusive debates so far regarding categories which are named "Uncategorized images of <subject>" and "Unidentified images of <subject>".

I suggest having these "uncategorized images of...." categories because:
1. Having main categories that are "clean" (showing only/mainly subcategories) encourages uploaders to actually categorise their uploads into more correct subcategories themselves instead of just piling them onto the multitudes of files that are already there in the main category.
2. Uncategorized images can then also be found via the category system so people who enjoy categorizing media can get to them easier. (See Category:Media needing categories by subject)
3. Having vast amounts of uncategorized media in main categories can bring problems for computers that are slow or create long waits for people who have slow internet connections
4. Having many uncategorized images in the main category can be confusing for new users when they try to search for media via the category system as it can be unclear if the media is in a subcategory or in the main category, or even in both
5. Uploaders who place media into main categories tend to be newbies, placing their uploads in (too many) main categories. The files are often also over-categorized or just incorrectly categorized, i.e. in the wrong category.

I also suggest keeping the "unidentified" categories as these, for me at least, are there for files which can not be identified due to not enough information being provided by the uploader. One can then only hope that someone comes along who actually knows the subject when they see the image, and can then categorise it.

I have noticed that Taterian has placed {{Empty category}} templates into a few "uncategorized images of ..." categories which results in the following text being shown on the category page: "Administrators: Please do not delete this category even if it is empty. This category may be empty occasionally or even most of the time." I can only assume that user Taterian agrees with having these categories. I also noticed that Allforrous has helped in streamlining these "uncategorized..." categories.

The fact that these "uncategorized images of...." categories haven't been formalised, sometimes results in some users taking offence for reasons only known to them and just empty these categories out by shoving the media back into the main category (or even worse by shoving them into an "unidentified" category) so they can put the now emptied "uncategorized" category up for deletion.

Thanks for reading the above and I hope that this time the community can come up with a clear consensus. - Takeaway (talk) 20:57, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

You misquoted me. I said discussions, not debates. I also didn't say that those previous discussions were inconclusive. On the contrary: I said "the consensus was to leave uncategorized or unidentified things in a main category". --Auntof6 (talk) 21:22, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

While I agree that there is a consensus to keep things that are simply awaiting precise categorization in the main category, there is no such consensus about things that have been examined and cannot be identified. See, for example Category:Unidentified locations in Seattle, Washington. The presence of such a category is certainly in accord with consensus. - Jmabel ! talk 00:12, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

That's a good point: thanks for pointing out the distinction. How can we enforce such use? Maybe change the naming to "unidentifiable" instead of "uncategorized" or "unidentified"? --Auntof6 (talk) 00:47, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Oops, sorry Auntof6. My mistake. - Takeaway (talk) 12:11, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Auntof6: There's a big difference between "uncategorized" and "unidentified". The first contains files that need correct categorization, the second should only contain files that are, as you write, unidentifiable. -Takeaway (talk) 12:21, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

We have a similar situation that should perhaps be handled the same as these: certain categories whose names start with "Other". There are at least four CFDs for these: you can see them at:

• Commons:Categories for discussion/2017/03/Category:Other_Commodore_64_clones
• Commons:Categories for discussion/2017/03/Category:Other_Protestant_churches_in_the_United_Kingdom
• Commons:Categories for discussion/2017/03/Category:Other_IPT_or_TIG_domains
• Commons:Categories for discussion/2017/03/Category:Other_buildings_related_to_The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints

Note that some "Other" categories were eliminated already. Not all categories specifying other should be included, but some seem to be along the same lines as this discussion. --Auntof6 (talk) 00:47, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

• Categories like "Uncategorized images of <subject>" and "Unidentified images of <subject>" seem like logical contradictions, since images in the first category are categorized to some extent, and images in the second are identified to some extent. --ghouston (talk) 01:21, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

• That's true. I suspect those mean that all we know about them is that they depict <subject>, but they aren't categorized by any of the other things that <subject> is usually categorized by. I've also seen some categories with names like "<Foo> to be categorized by country". That's probably more accurate, but if we go that route we're likely to have .ultiple such categories on individual images. --Auntof6 (talk) 01:59, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm surprised there is not a clear consensus for Unidentified subjects categories because Category:Unidentified subjects is linked to from the main page, it must be among the most prominent categories on this site. Oxyman (talk) 02:07, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

I wonder why there's an apparent consensus to leave files that really need further categorization (and often other category corrections) in the main category? What advantage does that give to users of Wikimedia Commons? To have them in "uncategorized..." categories does actually have advantages as I wrote at the start of this discussion. - Takeaway (talk) 12:16, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

You can always add an additional maintenance category like Category:Images from the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition Collection to check, but don't remove them from the corresponding main category like Category:Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. - Jmabel ! talk 16:35, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

 Comment There is a strong precedence and existing practice for Category:Unidentified subjects. Auntof6 (talk · contribs) is correct about "uncategorized ..." but that is a lot different from "unidentified ...". If a file has not been categorized, then it rightly belongs in the main category: since an item cannot be both in the main category and a subcategory (COM:OVERCAT), it stands to reason that any file in the main category must be 'uncategorized', so no need for a seperate 'uncategorized' category. I think 'uncategorized...' and 'unidentified...' are two very different cases and warrant seperate discussion, lest the consensus on one be overzealously applied to the other. Josh (talk) 01:25, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree that Uncategorized or miscellaneous cats are redundant to their parents, and also that a few different ideas are getting conflated. IME many Unidentified categories get worked on by users with subject-specific knowledge; although they doubtless tend to accumulate unidentifiable images, I don’t recall seeing any such subcats. To me unidentified reflects a deficiency in the description (and filename) that happens to present an obstacle to categorization, rather than being a matter of categorization per se. OTOH I take uncategorized or similar to mean that somebody thought the main cat was looking cluttered. (I’ve also occasionally seen views of subcats used for the same purpose.)—Odysseus1479 (talk) 03:13, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

I ask again what advantage is there for users of Wikimedia Commons to have uncategorized media in a main category and why is it a problem having them in an "uncategorized images of ..." or "images of <subject> in need of further categorization" category? If there are just a few dozen uncategorized images in a main category, I don't see much of a problem and mostly just leave them there or I categorise them. But if there are hundreds, or even thousands of images (this happens whenever there's some image drive going on, or mass uploads occur such as what happened with panoramio, or just uncared for main categories which eventually turn into dumping grounds) it only creates problems as I wrote at the very beginning of this discussion. - Takeaway (talk) 17:26, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

The only advantage would be the the main category is for two different things: (1) images for which no subcategory exists (we have one photo of Building XYZ on College Campus ABC and College Campus ABC doesn't have a subcategory for Building XYZ) and (2) images that need further identification (I can tell this is College Campus ABC from the EXIF location, but have no idea what building it is and whether it should be put into a subcategory). So moving #2 out of the main category is potentially useful because it highlights the things that need identification rather than things that are only in the main category because no child category exists. --B (talk) 17:58, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

B, I agree with you if there are a limited number of files left "semi-uncategorized" in this type of main category. In most cases, this would be the "the most specific category that fits the file you uploaded" as advised in COM:CAT. But the problem lies with very major categories which tend to get flooded and which are hardly ever the most specific category for a file. Category:Nature at this moment has 3000-5000 files that need further categorization as you can see at Category:Uncategorized images of nature. It used to be much more but many of the files in its sub-categories have been processed in the meantime . What advantage is there to be had for Wikimedia Commons users in having these 3000-over files placed on to the main Category:Nature? No one will ever go through them to look for a specific file as they'll be spread out over 15 pages of 200 files each. And it being such a broad category, most of these files have no relation to one another whatsoever. Many people worldwide also have limited internet speeds and/or packages, so for them it would be painfully slow or even impossible to navigate. - Takeaway (talk) 18:59, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Can no one come up with why keeping uncategorized files in a main category is advantageous for Wikimedia Commons users other than that it is the way it is done? - Takeaway (talk) 14:13, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Absolutely:

1. End users are unlikely to look in what appears to be a technical category, so a typical user drilling down the category system to find images is unlikely ever to find them if that's where we move them.
2. Commons contributors are a lot more likely to categorize them if it is a matter of cleaning cruft out of a category they care about than if they are placed off to the side. - Jmabel ! talk 17:06, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Jmabel, Please read my message of 17:58, 12 December 2018 (UTC) why this "ideal" situation that you describe, doesn't work with certain major categories. Please read the start of this discussion for why a "clean" major category actually encourages uploaders to further categorize their uploads themselves, and hopefully discover that it isn't a tag system like on Flickr and other image sites, but a true category system. It has also been my experience that "clean" categories are monitored more often by users while they process the files in the separate "uncategorized" section. - Takeaway (talk) 19:32, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Jmabel. Also, it is easier for those who use gadgets to categorise: it takes one straight line down to more specific categories if you can start in the main category, rather than having to move up first and then back down when you have to start from a maintenance subcat. I realise it is a minor inconvenience but still... --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:02, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

@Takeaway: Please don't presume that the fact that I disagree with you means I didn't read what you said. It's as if you are saying your arguments are so persuasive that any disagreement means you weren't heard. If you feel that way, why bother soliciting responses ("Can no one come up with…?"). It's as if you are asking "Can no one come up with [a view I can dismiss out of hand]?".

In any case, I don't see where I asserted that the current situation is "ideal" (you put that word in quotes, although I didn't use it). No, it is not ideal. Ideal would be to get things well categorized. But I think the current situation is better than what you are proposing. - Jmabel ! talk 21:41, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

@Jmabel: I did put the word "ideal" in quotes as an emphasis, and indeed, you did not use it. It was how I viewed what you described. Was that not clear?

I did indeed presume that you did not read what I had written (or at least not read it carefully) because none of the concerns that I had raised were addressed other than stating the opposite view of only two of the points that I had mentioned.

@HyperGaruda: If these "uncategorised" categories can be formalised, the gadgets that you use for categorising files can be made to be the same as if you were working in the main category. It will save you that one extra tedious click.

I'm a bit busy at the moment but will try to find some time soon for one last plea as I do really believe that having these "uncategorised" categories formalised will actually make the Wikimedia Commons category system easier to navigate for many of its users. I hope that people who do agree with me, will show some support. If not, then I'll go back to doing my usual stuff because being here on this page just isn't my kind of thing at all. - Takeaway (talk) 08:11, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

@Takeaway: In case it is unclear: immediately above my comments you asked, "Can no one come up with why keeping uncategorized files in a main category is advantageous for Wikimedia Commons users other than that it is the way it is done?" My comments replied to that question, not necessarily to the discussion in general. - Jmabel ! talk 17:22, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

December 11

My thoughts of "Questionable Flickr"

I would like to draw your attention to COM:QFI.

1. It is hard to find out why a user was listed, when no exact evidence was given. (I had to first figure out where the list was located, because the table was moved from the page to a subpage.) I suggest that all requests be launched at one designated page (right now there are two or maybe more), and properly archived. The list can also include a column of date added (for future addition) so that it will be easier to locate the archived verdict.
2. The user in question was added without exact evidence. I had to dig up nominator's contribs to find out that it was a not yet conclusive DR, which I just debunked. (Debunking also took me 20 mins to flip thru hundreds of flickr and instagram pages.)

I had spent an hour selecting that flickr user's photos for transfer. Flickr2commons trashed all that effort with a plaintext line Flinfo says 'bad user' . I was lucky to spot the link blacklist quickly on User:Flominator/Flinfo which I found by googling Flinfo. The Flinfo part and the blacklist part could well consume more time to find out. Maybe f2commons could have told me he's a bad user when it ran the scan initially (or I should have been more street smart :/). Another hour was spent to arrive at the two points above, which could be avoided if inclusion was more cautious and the records were better archived. Thanks for reading. --Roy17 (talk) 22:57, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

@Roy17: , you could always request the user in question to be removed from the blacklist, if accepted then your time and effort will not have been wasted. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 14:30, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

December 19

Mosaic the car plate

Can anybody do this for File:SJK_(C)_Kai_Chee.jpg while keeping the resolution, TQ.*angys* (talk) 11:33, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

 Done Rodhullandemu (talk) 12:08, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

 Thank you.*angys* (talk) 17:40, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

December 20

Is this image poorly edited hoax?

Prince Charles and Diana, The Princess of Wales returning from photo session on Uluru, March 1983

I come across this image while reading w:en:Uluru. This image looks poorly edited image because the legs of the people are cut. The person on right side corner seem later addition as well. Quality of image is also poor to make out the fine details. At first, it look hoax to me. The editor is experienced so it deceased my suspicion. I request others to look into it. Pinging uploader User:John Hill with apologies if my judgement is poor. Regards,-Nizil Shah (talk) 04:50, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

I could verify that they did visit Uluru in March 1983.-Nizil Shah (talk)

It is overly saturated and bright, but most of the uploader's images are the same. The lower legs of some of the people are hidden behind a ridge of rock. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 05:06, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

The clothing also seems correct - see [35]. It was 1983, and the technology we have become accustomed to where everything including low end phones can take professional looking, hi-res photos did not exist in the same way for personal 'snapshots', which this is described as. The 'cut-off' legs do look odd at first glance - Charles in particular looks like he is sinking in quicksand, but I think WLC is correct about that. -- Begoon 05:18, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

FWIW, I can't see anything wrong with this. World's Lamest Critic is correct about the missing feet: despite the bad quality you can see the terrain feature hiding them quite clearly. The typical telltale signs of a poor copy&paste job are missing, especially the color of light as well as direction and quality of the shadows are absolutely consistent across the image. The overly punchy colors, blown highlights and crushed shadows can easily be explained as well: Slide film typically produces this kind of over-saturated look and has what we would nowadays call a low dynamic range. Your common minilab around the corner might have done similar things when they printed your holiday snaps … The person at the right is covered in the same kind of grey-blueish gunk as other parts of the picture, so I don't believe he was added digitally. --El Grafo (talk) 13:59, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

I was really surprised to come across these notes questioning the authenticity of the photo. It is one that I took years ago when I and my wife were working for the Mutitjulu Aboriginal Community at Uluru. Unfortunately, I only have an old copy of it which I scanned to make a digital copy. Because of this, the resolution is poor and it is somewhat difficult to see that the rock formations have made the legs of some of the people look like they have been chopped off. However, I can vouch that the photo was an original - and I took it. Season's greetings and best wishes for 2019. Cheers, John E. Hill (talk) 05:51, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Every single one of my restoration uploads from the Library of Congress is being or is going to be (accidentally) vandalised by User:Fæ

....Fæ has a bot that checks for copies of images from the same Library of Congress file and links them together. This is good.

Fæ's bot does not check whether there's well-described text links before adding the same images as an undocumented, badly-described gallery, which makes no distinction between restorations and originals. This is bad.

Take https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Dresden._Zwinger_&_Sophienkirche._-_Detroit_Publishing_Co.jpg&oldid=328601209 - Is adding an undocumented gallery above the well-documented text helpful here? I really doubt that. And by putting the galleries above the text links, it gives priority to the much worse documented listing. Admittedly, it did find one additional image (not that one can readily tell: As mentioned, undocumented). But that image it found is a low-res copy, ripe for speedy deletion.

This is bad enough in simple cases. Consider the mess that would be created in a more complicated file, like File:John Lorimer Worden - Mathew Brady - right photograph.jpg, where there were two images on one plate. Frankly, it's creating a mess. If it's going to be run anyway, can I opt out? Adam Cuerden (talk) 06:23, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Please report vandalism at COM:AN/V.

In the meantime it would be great as a long term contributor, if you stopped forum-shopping in bad faith, rather than collegiality taking on the feedback you have already received. As you are the person creating duplicates and derivatives, you are the one that is best placed to handle improving cross-links or galleries. My helpful well designed housekeeping task, which can discover identical images, crops and close derivatives that would otherwise remain hidden in the hundreds of thousands of photographs from the Library of Congress, is correctly explained at User:Fæ/LOC#Adding_and_updating_other_version_galleries and is highly reliable considering the huge number of galleries it has created without any incident or issue.

The current housekeeping is pretty robust and caters for {{Extracted from}} {{Image extracted}} {{DerivativeVersions}}, will skip files with complex combinations of templates under other versions and will add to existing use of the gallery tag rather than duplicating any entries. The unique way that you are choosing to add links for derivatives has not been catered for, as there is no standard for it.

Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:00, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Please exclude my uploads from your housekeeping bot, then. Further, why are you bringing up unrelated issues here, and using me commenting on considering completely different as evidence of forumshopping.

More importantly, are you seriously making the arguement that 'links to a file, a.k.a. [[:File:foo.jpg]] under "other versions" is such weird syntax that it cannot possibly be supported. That the most basic wiki functionality is "unique" and there is "no standard". That you can tell when a file is linked in a gallery, but not check for File:Foo.jpg in any other text. How do you even write that bad of a bot check? Adam Cuerden (talk) 14:05, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Frankly, you are being argumentative rather than attempting to work collegiality, especially you started raising issues on my talk page in exactly the same accusatory way, now misleadingly accusing me of policy violations and vandalism. As a result of your approach, you are going to remain low on my priority list of things to analyse. This is not unreasonable, it is how I can retain a non-hostile environment on this project and avoid rushing into retirement from it. See you in January. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 14:59, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Fæ running unapproved bots on his main account, in violation of policy

As seen above Fæ is running an unapproved bot from his main account, and refuses to deal with issues it's causing. Commons:Bots/Requests/Faebot makes no mention of this LoC crosslinking, and Commons:Bots says using your main account for bot editing is explicitly forbidden: Bots must be run from a separate user account from that used for general editing by the bot operator. In order to identify the account as a bot account, the username should normally include the word "Bot".

I really don't want to be at war with people, but when someone is not interested in taking any feedback about problems with their bots, is actively vandalising file pages with the bots, and haughtiily announces that they refuse to deal with issues their bots are causing, they should be banned from having bots. Fæ, if you have any evidence you have gone through the necessary permissions for these bots, I apologise, but you're still not allowed to run them on your main account, you know. Adam Cuerden (talk) 14:30, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Oh - and while I'm at it, I've only mentioned this directly to Fæ before. Fæ's uploads from the Library of Congress - which were done with a bot - have loads and loads of problems. Here's an example: File:Jeannette_Rankin_LCCN2014704010.tif. In descending order of weirdness:

• The permission field is instead filled with what should properly be in the "source" field.
• The date on http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014704010/ is given as "[1917 Feb. 27]" - for some reason, information was deleted, changing this to 1917.
• Both "Subject" and "Genre" are given as "glass negative". On http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014704010/ this text only appears in the "Format" field.
• Capitalisation is random.

There's also a raft of rather important information that wasn't copied over, and others had to step in to categorise the file ([36]). --Fæ (talk) 14:54, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

The same problems exist in every Fæ bot upload from the Library of Congress I've seen. It's clear the bot was either not tested to see if it was getting all the information properly formatted, or was not tested enough to catch problems from variant Library of Congress layouts.

The trouble is, Fæ apparently likes running unapproved, improperly tested bots, and aggressively attacks criticism of them. One expects at least a bit of humility when one is actively violating policy in the things you're being criticised for. Adam Cuerden (talk) 14:45, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Forum shopping.

Upload projects are not bots. Customized semi-automated housekeeping tasks is not bots, otherwise nobody would be able to use cat-a-lot.

Take on board the feedback you have already received. Mounting attacks is not a sensible way to examine alleged issues, especially as I have already taken your ranting seriously and responding in a lot of detail, hardly "refuses to deal with issues".

You are correct that Faebot is not specified to do these things, and guess what, Faebot is not the account doing these things, because they are not fully automated, they do not run unattended, and that is not the scope of the bot. Hardly a reason to block Faebot or ban my account.

Right now, I am wrapping some Christmas presents. If you continue this campaign, be aware I am unlikely to examine any evidence until January. Christmas is not "refuses to deal with issues" nor does this mean "at war with people", unlike yourself based on your explicit own words above. Back down, read COM:Mellow rather than going further down a rabbit hole. --Fæ (talk) 14:54, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I've been absent for two years, more or less. I have literally hundreds of featured pictures, a large proportion of which are based on the LoC files.

Frankly, the idea of having hundreds of files I uploaded basically vandalised with badly-documented galleries that take priority above my very carefully documented interlinking terrifies me. It's something I'll literally never be able to properly fix, unless I spend months on a project to do so.

And it's continuing. It may even be that if I do fix things, the fixes will be undone.

This is my legacy on Commons, and it's damaged. That literally hurts me, Fæ. Admittedly, I may have overactive emotions after a lot of off-Commons stress of late. But I can't handlee having everything I've done for Commons broken. Adam Cuerden (talk) 15:16, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Other readers may wish to note that I am not uploading any new Library of Congress files at this time, though the project has run for around 5 years. In fact, I think the last time I uploaded a new file was several months ago. The first time that Adam raised a complaint with me was 6 days ago, and I have responded fully and carefully, going back and examining the relevant housekeeping code for adding galleries. As has already been spelt out, I am rebuilding the Library of Congress batch upload script as the library has been swapping over to JSON based metadata, which has renamed some types of data and appears to have added some fields that were not in the old catalogue. Due to Adam's disruptive behaviour, I will focus on other projects now, there are plenty of them which are just as interesting for me, and defer the LOC code rebuilding for some time or indefinitely.

Anyone interested in detail can read the project page at User:Fæ/LOC. --Fæ (talk) 15:18, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I asked you to simply exclude me from tyour changes. If you had done that, I could have coped. Instead, you doubled down, meanbing that if I try to fix things, it's incredibly likely it'll be broken again. Did you read what I just wrote? I'm trying to explain why this upsets me this much. Adam Cuerden (talk) 15:24, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I have limited volunteer time, being Christmas, so I have spent about 30 seconds reading your thread. I will probably look again in January, giving you plenty of time to specify any issues in a neutral and less judgemental way, and for you to consider the advice you have already been given to avoid uploading identical duplicates and take the built in upload warnings more seriously. You may wish to examine the conventionally applied templates and way galleries have been used on (literally) hundreds of thousands of Library of Congress photographs, compared to the custom way you are linking your derivatives to other files. --Fæ (talk) 15:32, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Fæ.. Um... I'm not trying to upload duplicates. Having accidentally done so a couple times, I was hoping to avoid having to redo a lot of documentation work that wasn't in the older TIFFs. You keep bringing it up, but that was only ever relevant to a specific deletion discussion, and I'm not sure why the idea that "This file was carefully documented, the older file has a lot of errors created by the bot misreading fields; if we keep the older one, it'll just have to be made back into the one deleted" is such a controversial issue. You yourself admit there's problems with those TIFF uploads. Your uploads were, apparently, around 6 months ago, I'ver been gone two years, and two years ago, if you uploaded a TIFF, you were almost certainly the first to do so.

This conversation is frustrating because I keep discovering new problems, but you keep responding as if I'm saying the same thing. That's kind of escalsting things, by making sure Ihave to deal wwith every issue I have with your - let's call them tools - every post.

So. You say that my method is unique. This is somewhat true, but only because I actually simplified the method that was being taught, to make it more user-friendly over time. Here is one of User:Durova's uploads: File:French_mutilé_with_mask2.jpg. As you can see, that is... basically a somewhat more chatty version of what I do. I believe literally everyone Durova brought into image editing used that form. It's at worst a bit old-fashioned now, but I'd suspect 90% of LoC uploads from that era would use something similar, and adding galleries to them is unhelpful, as the description explains how the files are linked. It may not be your standard, but it is one of the variants of a widely-used standard. A long-term restorationist using a refinement of one of Durova's standards should hardly be considered surprising. There aren't... many of us left, admittedly. Poking through images at en:WP:FP, it seems fairly common to use links to files. Using different uploaders every time, and skipping Durova and me, since we've already been mentioned:

• File:RIAN archive 543 A battalion commander.jpg
• File:Ntozake Shange, Reid Lecture, Women Issues Luncheon, Women's Center, November 1978 Crisco edit.jpg (this one puts it in the source)
• File:EdwardTeller1958_fewer_smudges.jpg (again, in source)
• File:Solvay conference 1927.jpg (this one is actually VERY close to mine)
• File:Thomas Edison2.jpg (before you added the gallery)

I mean, I am finding ones that use galleries, but I wouldn't say they're more than half, and I suspect that some of those might have galleries because you added them (quite rightly in a few cases). I haven't found one that uses templates. That may be due to the age of a lot of the ones I'm checking, though. Adam Cuerden (talk) 15:59, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

TLDR

Can someone (preferably not one of the involved parties) please summarize the above in as neutral a manner as possible? I really don't feel like slogging through the arguments, but I'd appreciate a clue what is going on here. - Jmabel ! talk 17:27, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I stopped reading at the false and malicious accusation of vandalism (that was in the OP's subject heading). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:33, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: I included the word "accidentally" for a reason. I'm not accusing Fæ of malicious vandalism. I do think Fæ's tools are accidentally messing up pages, which is accidental vandalism. There's a bit of hyperbole there, perhaps, insofar as it's not like they're adding swear words to the page, but they are making the other versions section go from useful to a confused mess. I might be a little bit... fussy about useability, making sure that people wanting to find things know exactly where to click, and it's really frustrating to have a gallery in random order with no documentation, including files long superseded, low resolution, or otherwise not useful, placed above the actual work done. For all Fæ saying this is tool-assisted edit, It's kind of clear - and I don't see how Fæ's statements above can be read as anything else - that Fæ isn't looking at the files first to see if they are documented, just running the tool over and over again, with no concern as to whether it's helping or hurting things. Fæ even says that his tool cannot handle links, only check galleries. This really sounds awfully like a bot to me, as there's no apparent human review being done. I don't necessarily want Fæ to have consequences, but I really wish that my uploads weren't being, well, call it what you want, but it sure feels like vandalism to me. Maybe that's just that I have extremely high standards for useability. Adam Cuerden (talk) 19:40, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Accidental Vandalism seems like an oxymoron to me Oxyman (talk) 20:08, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough. Accidentally ruining the layout of files. I don't think the words matter, it's the effect.

Look, Here's an example of what's being done: [37] - in this edit, a gallery, in random order, is being placed above the same list of files, with text descriptions. I can't see the gallery as adding anything but confusion.

I'm not trying to find things Fæ did. It's kind of being forced upon me, as he's doing said things to the files I've been working on for a decade now.

But Fæ seems to do a lot of odd things. The latest... odd thing I found, and this quite by accident (While cleaning up one of those linkages, a low-resolution copy of the file was pointed out, so I suggested it be deleted as a scaled down duplicate. It was deleted, Fæ got... very upset, and talked about consensus for keeping such files.

That's fine. The weird thing is Fæ seems to be going around creating JPEG versions of TIFFs literal years after the fact, while naming them with very odd conventions that don't relate to the TIFFs in question... and not even attempting to crosslink them to the respective TIFFs until months or years later. I don't know what that means. I don't think it's malicious, but it is very odd. See Commons:Deletion requests/File:The Royal Prison and the St. Sophie Church, Altstadt, Dresden, Saxony, Germany-LCCN2002720568.jpg, for example, and that's the more normal of these. File:Train_in_station_LCCN2016820305.jpg, for instance, was created this year, four years after the TIFF in question - File:William Crooks at station - Original scan.tiff - and ignores all the research that made the TIFF actually be valuable.

I don't know what that means.

Fæ is very hard to communicate with, honestly. Here's my first communication to Fæ, after I realised I had accidentally created a duplicate TIFF, but couldn't easily do anything about it without damaging the naming scheme. [38]

Fæ's response was... confusing, and doesn't seem to deal with the issue much. [39].

Fæ's next action was Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Ida_M._Tarbell,_No._1_LCCN97509168.tif which... massively escalated the situation. It starts out with a direct attack on me, and asking for me to be punished. It also makes claims about Fæ's actions - copying over every scrap of metadata - that simply aren't true. Quite a bit was left out, and I made sure all of it was put into the version I was advocating for. Which Fæ got deleted. And then I had to redo literally all the work again.

And, I guess that's what I find most frustrating about Fæ. You can put in all the work to address the complaints. You can work to make sure that what's said to be important is preserved, but it doesn't seem to actually matter. As discussed in that deletion request, literally the most important field of metadata - the description of the file - was left out. The date was given wrong, the permissions field was incorrect, the author of the photo was listed incorrectly - it was given as "Miscellaneous Items in High Demand, PPOC, Library of Congress" instead of J.E. Purdy & Co. If the point was to improve our files, Fæ's tool had messed up badly, but apparently, doing it carefully by hand can never be as good.

So, yeah, I have issues with Fæ. I don't understand why they do what they do, and it regularly seems counterproductive to what they say is their goal. And I guess that's why I'd rather Fæ wasn't allowed to run the... tools, bots, whatever you want to call them that produce literally thousands of edits on their behalf a day, unless they get approval first. Because it doesn't seem like they care that much when their work starts going wrong, and they seem ridiculously defensive of that work, even in the face of having the problems with it detailed to them at length. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe either Fæ or I am just stressed out, maybe it'll all blow over. But that, as neutrally as I can manage it, is my problem here. Adam Cuerden (talk) 20:28, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

And even satying all of that, I admire a ton of stuff Fæ has done. I just... don't know how to deal with Fæ when there's an isu with something they're doing. Because it seems to escalate very quickly, and when things are going wrong, they seem likekly to be going very wrong. Adam Cuerden (talk) 20:41, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't even know anymore. F´'s probably a net good to the project. I just wish he'd stay away from stuff I've worked on, because I spend literal hours sometimes trying to get all the documentation for files perfect. So when there's massive - I really don't want to use the word vasndalism here - to them, on an unknown but likely frighteningly large scale, it upsets me. It damages literal years of work in a few hundred button presses. And I don't like that I'm pretty sure it will never be propely fixed. Adam Cuerden (talk) 20:43, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

You are missing the point of "TLDR". --HyperGaruda (talk) 21:05, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

@Jmabel: Adam Cuerden has an issue with how Fae is linking related files to each other in a way that conflicts with how he does it (see "Other Versions" of [40]).

I'd suggest that the conflicting Other Versions styles are a problem and that the task shouldn't be run for the time being until it can be addressed. I think probably the task should respect and match the style already in use on the file (where reasonable), or the community should decide which style is preferable and everybody should start using that one. BMacZero (talk) 21:39, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Commons is not a place where we need lots of rules about how to format text in a parameter field. Batch uploads in particular may have their own local project layouts, templates and necessary interpretations and odd fields (like 'findspot' or 'lithographer'); this is why the LOC batch upload project page exists.

The LOC housekeeping routine is at item 566,241/614,159 and has been running for something like 8 months almost continuously. What it does is quite complex and slow as it is 'looking' at files related to the main 'seed' photograph, which can be discovered by ID numbers through Commons standard search even if not in a normal LOC category, and will only create a gallery for images which look like image matches while ignoring reasonable crops, minor damage or minor enhancements. Without automation, there is not a snowball's chance in hell that the equivalent human unpaid volunteer time would be found to look through over half a million photographs.

As Adam is so vocal, I have customized the routine and restarted where it left off, to exempt any file where their account appears in the edit history, something similar was happening so that files only get 'touched' once by the routine even if it is rerun:

		comments = " ".join([v.comment for v in p.getVersionHistory()])
		if re.search("LOC housekeeping", comments):
			print Fore.MAGENTA, "Previously touched", Fore.WHITE
			continue
		userhistory = " ".join([v.user for v in p.getVersionHistory()])
		if re.search("Cuerden", userhistory):
			print Fore.MAGENTA, "Touched by Cuerden", Fore.WHITE
			continue

Doing things consistently is extremely important with such a large collection, and using the gallery tag is the best way we know for reusers and viewers to understand visual relationships between alternative copies and crops, rather than textual links or adding textual descriptions in English.

P.s. my preferred pronoun on Commons is they, declared at User:Fæ#pronoun.

--Fæ (talk) 22:16, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

@Fæ: Noted, though I was referring to Adam in this case. BMacZero (talk) 02:17, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

meh. wish the old bulls would stop the drama. wish editors would upload using photograph template not information template, which allows wikidata link. will you now edit war, to prevent that change? uploaders do not get a veto on the presentation of metadata. we need to link duplicate files, and the bot is doing an ok job. galleries are a quick way to check duplicates, that a blue link alone cannot do. just count your blessings, they are not deleting duplicates. but a little consensus about formatting metadata would be nice. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 01:59, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

The worst case scenario, though, is multiple styles, redundant to each other, one done well, one done badly, 'in the same file. Adam Cuerden (talk) 03:39, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

This may be a bit inconvenient but it's not vandalism, nor does Fæ edit in bad faith. It's not collegial to accuse fellow editors of vandalism unless it's clearly done in contempt. If you pollute your message with insults it might not be received in the same way as the exact same argument but made in a civil manner. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:51, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

i need an answer to the "edit warring about photograph template" question, because i am about ready to sweep through and change all the LOC image metadata to include such things, along with medium=glass plate, and separate photographer from author, and include the LOC date. i take it you would have no objection? Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 14:34, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

TLDR again

For anyone looking for the actual TLDR above, it came from User:BMacZero. Thanks. The rest appears to be a general continuation of the discussion which makes his useful summary hard to find. - Jmabel ! talk 16:50, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

"task shouldn't be run for the time being until it can be addressed." i'm ok with Fæ's work, let them proceed. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 22:56, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

TimedText not displaying on English Wikipedia

Dear colleagues,
I was wondering why the TimedText that I recently uploaded for a video works on Commons, but does not show up in the Wikipedia article when I play it there. Refreshing the contents using ctrl F5 doesn't work either. I do not experience this problem with other TimedTexts that I added to videos, e.g. this one and this one; the subtitles function properly there. Does anyone know what's going on? Greetings, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 09:19, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

@Nederlandse Leeuw: At w:en:Asia_Bibi_blasphemy_case#Supreme_Court_acquittal, if I start the video and click on "CC", I can pull up English-language captions. At w:en:Flanders_Campaign#Fall_of_the_Dutch_Republic, I can choose Dutch and English. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:25, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I purged the page en:Asia Bibi blasphemy case and that seems to have fixed it. --ghouston (talk) 06:46, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

This media file has been nominated for deletion

Hello! I really need your help. The images I uploaded today were mined for deletion. Many of them are used in various wiki projects. For example: File:Gambling - dependence on gambling.jpg File:Depression - a lonely alcoholic in fear covers his face with his hands.jpg and many others... Please explain the reason! I really want to follow the rules of the Wikimedia Commons. I really need your help, I want to fix it!--Rebcenter-moscow (talk) 18:04, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Hey Rebcenter-moscow. We need to be able to verify that the images are legitimately released under the free license indicated. Assuming you are affiliated with the organization (given your username), if the copyright to the images is truly owned by them, then you or someone else who is authorized to make legal decisions on their behalf can confirm this by following the directions at COM:CONSENT. GMG^talk 18:50, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the comprehensive answer! Please specify two points вid I understand correctly: 1. the letter should be sent from the mail domain mail@rebcenter-moscow-dot-ru? 2. Signature in the letter - this is my name in Wikipedia? (I myself am the head of http://rebcenter-moscow.ru/ and the author of the photos, and independently try to replenish wikimedia) 3. Do I need to install on the page where the photos are loaded, template OTRS pending? ....Thank you for talking to me..... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pirog1980 (talk • contribs) 19:24, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Hey Rebcenter-moscow. We've got the email. Just to be clear, since you sent a pretty big list. Does this cover all the images you've uploaded from this account? (That would make things easier on my end to fix them all.) Does that list cover images uploaded by any other account, or does it cover any of the images that were deleted in November of 2017 following the discussion at Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Rebcenter-moscow? (Courtesy pings for User:A.Savin and User:Christian Ferrer, since I can't see any of the deleted images.) GMG^talk 14:07, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Hey GMG The situation concerns all of the photos uploaded from the account Pirog1980 and Rebcenter-moscow. Images that were deleted in November of 2017 following the discussion at Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Rebcenter-moscow was closed as "out of scope"....--Rebcenter-moscow (talk) 08:45, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

• Note that the first deletion was closed as "out of scope", not for lacks of permission. Christian Ferrer ^(talk) 14:50, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

These are terrible deletions. There's nothing wrong with posed stock photos (though they should be labelled/ categorised as such) and they are certainly not out-of-scope. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:39, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Is there a Brazil press agency named "PR"?

There are a large number of Flickr photos from Michel Temer that credit "Marcos Corrêa/PR" and a decent number have been uploaded here. I'm not 100% sure whether the license is valid or not. --B (talk) 20:33, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

PR stands for "Presidência da República". Michel Temer is the President of Brazil. I think it would be wise to contact the office for the President to ensure the CC-BY license is correct and it is an offical Flickr account. Bidgee (talk) 04:29, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

The Flickr account gives http://micheltemer.com.br/ as the owner's website. That site appears blank to me. Can anyone see content, and if so, does it in turn link back to the Flickr account? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:47, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Renaming declined, user reverts it

Hi, I declined the renaming of this file: File:Scythe grinding in Sheffield; interior view. Wood engraving. Wellcome V0023646.jpg. The new must be only "saw grinding", without a capital letter and without Sheffield. Now the user just reverted my action. Can another filemover or moderator take a look at this, I'm not gonna rename that with the requested name. Thanks, regards, - Richardkiwi (talk) (talk) 12:59, 20 December 2018 (UTC) (NL-Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons)

Yes, This is not OK. The user should give a better name as per COM:RENAME. --Steinsplitter (talk) 13:45, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi guys. Why do you act in such a counterproductive way? Calling a saw a scythe will not help Commons' mission one iota, in fact it makes things worse. The very template I added requests "rename to [...] OR ANOTHER SUITABLE NAME"! Why cannot you move to a name where you use the name of proper tool pictured? --Palosirkka (talk) 17:32, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

There, happy now? @Richardkiwi and Steinsplitter: it was obvious what Palosirkka wanted, you could have just moved it to a better name instead of being wikilawyeristic and wait for Palosirkka to come up with another. @Palosirkka: next time use the "Move" button at the top to suggest a new name and minimise the changes in the title to what is strictly necessary. --HyperGaruda (talk) 19:16, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. --Palosirkka (talk) 19:54, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

What, thank you?? Don't ever revert my decision again. PS: HyperGaruda: What? He (Palossirkka) has to do that, I sometimes do it, if I know a better name, but he should not do a renaming, hoping the filemover will have enough fantasy. Mind your own business, HyperGaruda. - Richardkiwi (talk) (talk) 19:58, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

yeah, we seem to have a renaming clique, who want to put all the metadata in the file name. if the description is machine readable, you do not need to expand every file name to the maximum. if you do it to my file, I will move war with you, as you are not following the policy: "renaming should be used with caution"; "Please consider creating file redirects instead"... we need to stop the format warring, and go outside and take some photos of notable living people, you will like the vitamin D. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 20:29, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Your edits are no more immune from reverting than anyone else's. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:59, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Categorization

I'm categorizing photos of Nasir-ol-molk Mosque. Is there any way to find photos of Nasir-ol-molk Mosque which are not in Category:Nasir-ol-molk Mosque and its subcategories? Hanooz 20:02, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

You can do a search. For instance, I just found: File:12-106BA259-1954838-800.jpg. Ruslik (talk) 20:48, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

I searched in a regular way; but it includes photos from the subcategories (like Category:Nasir-ol-molk Mosque in 2015, etc.) Hanooz 09:35, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Add -deepcat:"Nasir-ol-molk Mosque" onto your search query and it will exclude subcategories (up to 5 deep), see mw:Help:CirrusSearch#Deepcategory for more info. That category is horribly overcategorised though, do you really need "by year" categories for only 2 images? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:11, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. I didn't create those categories. Most of them are populated and others could be populated in the next Wiki loves monuments. Hanooz 11:54, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

The overdiffusion was discussed earlier this year in Commons:Village pump/Archive/2018/08#Overdiffused categories. Conclusion was to stop creating such categories in most cases, but we did not follow up on what to do with categories where the harm was already done. --HyperGaruda (talk) 12:09, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

December 21

Template:UsersSpeak

Is there a problem with Template:UsersSpeak? It seems like since this edit (the subsequent one doesn't help either) every page I can find using the template is an error. See Category:User en-3, Category:User bar and dozens of others. I'd help fix it but I can't figure out what the code changes did or how they work. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 18:35, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

I reverted changes to the template. Ruslik (talk) 20:46, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

1983 in Iceland

I have uploaded images of a cross-country skiing trip in 1983 in the highlands of Iceland. However I dont remember the location. We travelled with a jeep from Rejavik to a dropoff point, from where we had to ski with bagage sledges to a refuge. From there we made day trips on ski's. The refuge is visible in File:Iceland winter 1983 10.jpg. Close by there was hot water source where we could take a bath. The refuse was unmanned and there where no facilities. In 1983 the tourist industry was not developed and this place could have been expanded later. Any idea where this is? Al pictures are in Category:1983 in Iceland.Smiley.toerist (talk) 20:53, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

refuse => refuge? - Jmabel ! talk 04:30, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

December 22

Remove background

This is tool: https://www.remove.bg/ may be of use. It removes backgrounds from images of people, and seems to work well and quickly. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:18, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Pretty cool. Two limitations I see:

1. The resulting images are pretty low-res, regardless of how high-res the input file.
2. It does poorly on things like someone wearing headphones, standing behind a console, holding something, etc.

But if your intent is something in the maybe 300x400px range, it's a quick way to get rid of a distracting background. - Jmabel ! talk 21:19, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

December 23

...the better template is?

Is it OK using {{Watermark}} here? Or there is an alternative template for {{Unnecesary text should be removed}}? Strakhov (talk) 15:55, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

• {{Watermark}} is fine. - Jmabel ! talk 16:54, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
• Strakhov, I went ahead and removed the watermark. It was easy and unrelated to copyright. — Huntster (t @ c) 19:26, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. It didn't seemed difficult, but experience has teached me waiting a week before doing any modification to valuable images uploaded by others may be a wise move. Just in case. Strakhov (talk) 19:34, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Project grant request

Dear all

I've submitted a grant application to the Wikimedia Foundation to continue to work at UNESCO in 2019 and would really appreciate it if you would consider endorsing it (the blue button at the bottom of the infobox). In 2019 we want to focus on:

1. Helping UN agencies adopt open licensing and share content on Wikimedia projects
2. Share UNESCO content at large scale (100,000s of images)
3. Build the relationships between UN agencies and Wikimedia organisations to run projects
4. Continue to write and improve instructions on Wikimedia projects (list of previous documentation on my user page) to make it easier for everyone to run projects

This will be the last time we ask WMF for funding, we have a grant proposal outlined for a large external grant for 2020 but without this year's funding we won’t get to where we need to be.

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 10:11, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

•  Support, as for obvious reasons I can't support it there so I morally support it here, even though it does nothing maybe the Wikimedia Foundation will count it or not. You could link to it as an endorsement (if that is allowed), I'm not trying to actively evade any sanctions, I just morally support this proposal, but since symbolic voting is what disallowed me from supporting it I'm not sure if this will be received in good taste. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 06:18, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

Fast Wikidata Infobox adding tool

Is there any tool, except an bot, for fast adding some (around 100) Wikidata Infoboxes to category pages. A one-click button on the page or VFC for categories? --GPSLeo (talk) 02:21, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

@GPSLeo: If you add the commons sitelinks on Wikidata, then either User:Pi bot or User:RudolphousBot should come along shortly afterwards to add the infobox (normally within a day or two at the moment). I can also run the bot through a list/category tree if you want them adding more quickly than that. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 06:45, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

I thought the bots are a bit overloaded. But one or two days sounds okay. Thanks. --GPSLeo (talk) 10:27, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

The bots are actually underloaded at the moment - the limit right now is getting more sitelinks added to Wikidata. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:53, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Enhancing colors

Perhaps this is discussed before. My question is, what is the (official) policy about enhancing colors of images? The reason for asking is that I found several images with enhanced colors, for instance this one: File:Telemann 4.jpg. I personally do not like it, because it severely changes the appearance from the original artwork. Kind regards, Elly (talk) 10:53, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Elly: We are not supposed to per guideline COM:OVERWRITE. However, is there not enough variety in Category:Paintings of Georg Philipp Telemann?   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 12:27, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

I do not think these were "minor edits", which is my POV .... Yes, in this case there are alternatives, however the revised image is used on several Wikipedia articles. I reverted another one, which had no alternative, so reverting in this case also would not be a problem, thanks, Elly (talk) 12:56, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

there is a policy at overwrite, which is widely flouted. we have a cadre of photo fiddlers who are "improving" colors, and not maintaining a clear provenance of where the image came from. here is a backlog to work on, if you want to cleanup some of the mess. Category:Uploads by Jan Arkesteijn with EXIF claim of Public Domain Mark Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 22:49, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

December 24

Carole Raddato (is anyone interested in importing images of museums and historical sites?)

I used to import Flickr images from Flickr user Carole Raddato last year who is a Latinophile and often makes photographs of ancient Roman sites and many museums across Europe, however somewhere during either late 2017 or early 2018 Flickr2Commons stopped working on my mobile device and I haven't been able to import anything from Flickr, however photographers keep photographing and many more museums and historical sites have been photographed by users I used to import from, in case anyone would be interested, could someone add this user to "their Flickr favourites" and import free images uploaded by her? Be sure to watch out for derivative works and note that she visits different countries with different freedoms of panorama, but most of her images are of ancient architecture so they should probably no longer be copyrighted (always consult "COM:FOP" first, just in case). --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:45, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: You may have to give some indication of where you stopped, since F2C is notoriously bad at detecting duplicates. GMG^talk 12:06, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

@GreenMeansGo: here, odd because it always detected duplicates when I used it, it probably sorts by content ID and nothing else. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 08:18, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Ah. Good point. I hadn't considered that. I'd just learned not to trust it. GMG^talk 11:31, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

ignore all rules?

Already 2 weeks ago, Renamed user TG9qYmFuaXN0 (talk · contribs) has created the essay page Commons:Ignore all rules (and the redir-page Commons:IAR) with

• If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Commons, ignore it.

as its main content, as copied from w:Wikipedia:IAR, where this is policy, but AFAIK without any prior discussion here on Commons. As many of our "rules" are law-driven, contrary to Wikipedia, creation of such a page merits prior discussion IMO. --Túrelio (talk) 08:16, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

•  Oppose this essay. Our rules are mostly based in existing copyright law.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 18:02, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
•  Oppose as above. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 18:24, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
• An essay putting forward a reasonable opinion would be fine, but this is just a sentence, isn't really much to discuss and can just be deleted I'd think. Even on English Wikipedia 'IAR' is rather misleading, I'd like it if it were changed to 'rules are not set in stone'. Which is true here and there; Commons rules extend far, far beyond enforcing copyright via community. —innotata 19:47, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
•  Keep, Wikimedia projects are based on underlying principles rather than just "rules" there are policies and guidelines, IAR doesn't state that one should ignore all rules to disrupt the project or upload copyright violations, it states that these should be ignored to improve the project. A good example would be a previously deleted file in 2010 because it would only enter the public domain in 2013, would you today in 2018 request an undeletion or re-upload the file? Especially if you're unaware that the file was previously deleted because someone else uploaded it, should an admin then delete this PD file because it was previously deleted for being in copyright? IAR exists to adhere to common sense rather than just to policy for the sake of following policy, this article explains that very well. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:46, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
• comment it is a pillar w:Wikipedia:Five pillars, and best to acknowledge that people ignore rules here all the time, especially admins. "Our rules are mostly based in existing copyright law" as the lightning bug is based on the lightning. the spirit of doing what is right for the project, which cannot be encompassed in a rules set, is taken from w:Kurt Gödel. not to worry, the top down, block first and ask questions later, has taken over there, so that pillar has been deprecated. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 11:48, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
• Created a deletion request Commons:Deletion requests/Commons:Ignore all rules. --Steinsplitter (talk) 11:57, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
•  Oppose the essay. Vulphere 13:54, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

December 25

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to my Christian friends! Have a good time. 4nn1l2 (talk) 02:28, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Amir. Hope all is well with you and yours. GMG^talk 02:38, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

• Enjoy the first day of Christmas too, Amir. 🎄🎅🏻❄ --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:48, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

I wish the same!   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 11:57, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

• Happy Holiday Commons. Vulphere 13:55, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
• A very merry Christmas and a happy and healthy 2019! nl:Gebruiker:Richardkiwi - Commmons: Richardkiwi (talk) (talk) 14:06, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

licenses

What would i do to become a license owner?

How would i knew my picture is licensed?

I have taken photos does it requires a license to upload it and what should i do to upload it to wikimedia as legitimate? Biafrango (talk) 16:42, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

When you take a photograph you own the copyright in that photograph, and the licence is the permission you give to others to use it. Probably a good start for how to do this is COMMONS:LICENSING. Rodhullandemu (talk) 16:50, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

See also COM:CLIC for a rundown of the options and a little background on their motivation.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 21:13, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Jane Shackleton

Does anyone have tool that will extract (and, preferably, upload) all the large images from this album, by pioneering photographer Jane Shackleton (d. 1909). DownThemAll won't do it. There are other albums on the same site that may be out-of-copyright, also. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:33, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: That's probably not so much that it can't be done manually. I'll try to give it a go later today if no one else does. GMG^talk 12:12, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Working GMG^talk 12:44, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: See Category:Photographs by Jane Shackleton GMG^talk 13:56, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm still interested in finding a tool that can do the job. As I said, "There are other albums on the same site that may be out-of-copyright, also.". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:10, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Reviewing Commons:Hirtle chart, we might want to add {{PD-US-unpublished}} along with {{PD-old-100}} to more conclusively establish US public domain status. --Animalparty (talk) 22:58, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

File:VSS Unity roll-out 20 February 2016.jpg

Why was this deleted? It says "Bad Flickr owner" and proceeds to say that the owner is Jaguar Land Rover, with a link to Jaguar Land Rover, but the Flickr account is owned by Jaguar Land Rover [41][42]. Flickr image [43]. There's a category for this stuff on Commons already. Category:Photographs by Land Rover MENA

-- 67.70.34.69 01:51, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Please see #Uploading "Land Rover MENA"? below.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 18:25, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Watchlist no longer showing categorization of pages?

My watchlist seems to no longer be showing me categorization of pages in categories I watch. I hadn't changed my preferences, and it's still working on at least one Wikipedia. Is anyone else having this problem? --Auntof6 (talk) 15:33, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

I see no categorisation changes in my watchlist since 21 December, and I've got enough categories on my watchlist that are entries for every day from 5 December up until then when filtered appropriately, so something seems to be broken. —LX (talk, contribs) 15:42, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. Upon checking again, it doesn't appear to be working correctly on the Wikipedia, either. --Auntof6 (talk) 15:57, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

I have the same problem. Wouter (talk) 20:16, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

It seems to be working again today. --Auntof6 (talk) 20:56, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Categorization of book images

I feel that categorization of images derived from book scans (illustrations, pictures, illuminated letters....) is very difficult and I find different strategies and uses to solve such an issue. Is there some good guideline, or a good discussion about this topic? --Alex_brollo Talk|Contrib 07:15, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

@Alex brollo: Try Commons:British Library/Mechanical Curator collection. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:11, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: Thanks! But terribly tricky. Presently my doubt is simply this one: how categorize a good category like this one: Category:Di M. Camillo Agrippa Trattato di scienza d'arme, that collects both the multipage djvu file (the "book") and many cropped images from its pages (engravings, illuminated initials, ....)? It is wrong to categorize such a category as "Book" like Category:1568 books, since many images are not books but images from a book; but it is wrong too to categorize it as "Illustrations", like Category:Illustrations from djvu files in Italian, since main djvu file is a book and isn't an illustration (initials too are not "illustrations"). How to categorize croppedimages one by one it's another issue - but I feel that a {{Artwork}} template is needed dealing with engraving, pictures, drawing and similar contents. --Alex_brollo Talk|Contrib 14:46, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

@Alex brollo: A suggestion here. For cropped images of a (virtual) book "Il Libro", in category Category:Il Libro (1800), create a subcategory of the latter called [[Category:Illustrations from Il Libro (1800)|Il Libro]] and place your cropped images there. --Ruthven (msg) 07:36, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Invitation from Wiki Loves Love 2019

Please help translate to your language

Love is an important subject for humanity and it is expressed in different cultures and regions in different ways across the world through different gestures, ceremonies, festivals and to document expression of this rich and beautiful emotion, we need your help so we can share and spread the depth of cultures that each region has, the best of how people of that region, celebrate love.

Wiki Loves Love (WLL) is an international photography competition of Wikimedia Commons with the subject love testimonials happening in the month of February.

The primary goal of the competition is to document love testimonials through human cultural diversity such as monuments, ceremonies, snapshot of tender gesture, and miscellaneous objects used as symbol of love; to illustrate articles in the worldwide free encyclopedia Wikipedia, and other Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) projects.

The theme of 2019 iteration is Celebrations, Festivals, Ceremonies and rituals of love.

Sign up your affiliate or individually at Participants page.

To know more about the contest, check out our Commons Page and FAQs

There are several prizes to grab. Hope to see you spreading love this February with Wiki Loves Love!

Kind regards,

Wiki Loves Love Team

Imagine... the sum of all love!

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:12, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Incorrect locations in infoboxes.

Many locations on maps in Wikidata infoboxes are incorrect. It's strange because locations on Wikidata are OK. Examples: Category:Saint Mark church from Rzochów, Category:Church of Holy Spirit in Mielec, Category:Saint Matthew church in Mielec, Category:Church of St. Mark in Mielec, Category:23 Market Square in Mielec, Category:25 Kościuszki Street in Mielec. Kroton (talk) 11:58, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

@Kroton: That normally means that there is an issue with the coordinate precision that has been defined on Wikidata. Try changing the precision (e.g., to automatic rather than a manually defined value), or remove the coordinates from Wikidata and add them back again. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 12:07, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

December 28

Wooden sidewalks

I see that Category:Boardwalks specifies (at least in English), "A Boardwalk (board walk, boarded path) is a constructed pedestrian walkway along or overlooking beaches; or as walking paths and trails over bogs and wetlands and above fragile ecosystems - usually built with wood." So that would seem not to cover wooden sidewalks such as the one I've thumbed at right, but I don't see any subcategory of Category:Sidewalks that would apply. I'd expect a Category:Wooden sidewalks. Is this sitting there under some other name I'm not thinking of, or do we lack it? - Jmabel ! talk 23:37, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

It’s unclear to me what the difference between Boardwalks and Duckboards is supposed to be with their present descriptions; the latter seems to fit the definition you quote for the former. Personally, I understand boardwalk to refer to any wooden walkway—including urban sidewalks running along roadways—while duckboards are for negotiating muddy obstacles in such locations as construction sites and hiking trails, more or less improvised, usually lacking handrails, sometimes made from rough timber rather than finished boards, and often temporary. I don’t see any other cats than Boardwalks for wooden structures under Walkways or its subcat Sidewalks.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 22:50, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

duckboard

I don't think most of the images in Duckboards are actually duckboards. I've thumbed one of the few that is, and I imagine looking at that will make the difference clear. - Jmabel ! talk 00:23, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

My guess is that wooden sidewalks are rare enough that no one has yet needed to create a suitable subcat for them. Would seem like a good idea to go ahead and create one to me Oxyman (talk) 04:18, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

And I thought the Seattle installations complied exactly with the boardwalk definition on Category:Boardwalks. Is there a Seattle historian available to confirm this? Eddaido (talk) 07:11, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

1. @Eddaido: They don't conform to that definition because they were nowhere near any beach, nor anything that would normally be called a bog, wetland, or fragile ecosystem. These were the normal sidewalks of much of Downtown Seattle (and a good number of other towns in the western U.S.) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before concrete sidewalks became common. I think the definition of Category:Boardwalks should be changed, eliminating the statement about where they are located, and Category:Wooden sidewalks should be added as a subcat of that and of Category:Sidewalks. Also, some of what are in Category:Duckboards really ought to be in Category:Boardwalks instead.
2. Not sure exactly what would qualify in your eyes as a "Seattle historian", if I don't qualify. Could you clarify? - Jmabel ! talk 08:55, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Duckboards (Crymlyn Bog)

My eyes once read that Seattle's waterfront was built over boggy beach / marsh on stilts so that all one saw were nice clean boardwalks and there was a great deal of trouble and expense in getting rid of them - I suppose by fill. Look at the photo in light of that (unsubstantiated claim now made by me). Have you lived in Seattle for the last 180 years? Regards, Eddaido (talk) 09:11, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

{JmbaelThat was a ridiculous, childish and snarky statement, asking "have you lived in Seattle the last 180 years" One does not have to be a historian of anything to have lived through it. If that were the case there would be no history or historians. Does a Civil War historian have had to live through the Civil War? Does a WWII historian have had to fight every battle, every campaign, every island or town much less lived through WWII?15:06, 27 December 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oldperson (talk • contribs) 15:06, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

• @Oldperson: Signing your posts on talk pages is required by Commons:Signatures policy. To do so, simply add four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your comments. Your user name or IP address (if you are not logged in) and a timestamp will then automatically be added when you save your comment. Signing your comments helps people to find out who said something and provides them with a link to your user/talk page (for further discussion). Thank you.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 16:11, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Good Kiwi Duckboards with tank, gun and lots of sandbags (in case of attack)

Duckboard def.: "In the war of 1914–18, a slatted timber path laid down on wet or muddy ground in the trenches or in camps; also in wider use". Eddaido (talk) 09:19, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

@EddaodoJmabel: Did you fight in the trenches? Live through WWI? By your definition you must have to even talk about anything WWI, by the way your link below is invisibleOldperson (talk) 15:32, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Pinging @Eddaido, Jmabel as a courtesy.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 16:11, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

See here. Eddaido (talk) 09:25, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

This looks to me like an ENGVAR issue, the definition of boardwalk is a very British description of what we call a boardwalk and the third image thumbed of Crymlyn Bog is an archetypal UK boardwalk (I've built enough of them in my career) and I've never heard of substantial constructions like this referred to as duckboards. Nthep (talk) 16:45, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

@Nthep: I agree that I would call the Crymlyn Bog example a boardwalk not a duckboard. As I said, most of the photos in Category:Duckboards are miscategorized. - Jmabel ! talk 18:34, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

@Eddaido: Where do I begin? Normally I wouldn't go into the following, but since you seem to be questioning my ability to speak knowledgeably on the matter at hand, no, obviously, having a normal human lifespan, I have not lived here 180 years (which, by the way would mean arriving more than a decade before the first European settlers). I first visited Seattle in 1962, and it has been my primary residence since May 1977. I have taken somewhere over 20,000 pictures of the city myself that I have put online, written a number of seriously researched Wikipedia articles on the city's early history (e.g. Chin Gee Hee), and I have in my living room a collection of about 300 books on Seattle and vicinity, about half of which I've read beginning-to-end, and pretty much all of which I've at least skimmed so I have a fair idea what they cover. I've also read several dozen other mostly older books on Seattle history that I don't own because copies would cost anywhere from $50 to $1000, and I don't have that kind of budget, and have at times consulted several dozen others as reference (e.g. the downtown public library has a complete collection of Polk's Seattle Directories, and quite a collection of highly detailed insurance maps, some of which are now online but were not until recently. E.g. http://cdm15015.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16118coll2). I've been credited in the acknowledgments of about half a dozen Seattle history books, received an award from DoCoMoMo WeWa (Western Washington) for my documentation of Mid-century Modern churches in and around Seattle, and repeatedly been thanked by University of Washington Special Collections for helping them identify the subject matter in early 20th-century photos that either had them stumped or that they have gotten wrong. I'm in regular contact with Rob Ketcherside, Ben Lukoff, and Clark Humphrey, all of whom have written books about Seattle history (Clark has written several), and there are several others, especially Paul Dorpat, who they and I can get hold when really stumped. So, while I haven't lived here "180 years", I'm believe I'm about as qualified as you are likely to get here working for free. If your expertise on the topics you work on here matches or exceeds that, hats off to you. If it doesn't, then please consider that there is at least a fair chance that I know what I'm talking about here more than you do.

Back to the substance: On my user talk page you reference Seattle Underground and say "Pioneer Square had originally been built mostly on filled-in tidelands and, as a consequence, it often flooded." That is an accurate statement about an area extending west roughly from Second Avenue to the waterfront and from perhaps Cherry Street south to what were then the tideflats. The picture in question is described as "5th Ave between Terrace St and Alder St", about 250 yards from that and, even now after some downward regrading, about 80 to 100 feet higher. While it may have occasionally been muddy after a rainstorm, so was pretty much everywhere in the Old West, where virtually all roads were dirt roads. It was certainly not a "boggy wetland".

Look, because there was the danger of the reaction that has actually eventuated I made a very small note of my contradiction on this page. Then in case it was missed made the more pointed note on your talk page. Success to all your endeavours. Eddaido (talk) 21:31, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Now, can we get back to the substance of the matter? Does anyone object to changing the definition of Category:Boardwalks, eliminating the statement about where they are located, and adding Category:Wooden sidewalks as a subcat of that and of Category:Sidewalks? Does anyone disagree that many images in Category:Duckboards actually belong in Category:Boardwalks instead?- Jmabel ! talk 19:13, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

It looks fine. Category:Duckboards only needs to exist if its a separate type of thing, not just another name for boardwalks. The "parallel split log" definition achieves that. --ghouston (talk) 22:21, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

@Jmabel: I live in Redmond, and loved your history lesson. Did the underground tour more than two decades ago.

Watched them sell the bubblelator. I wonder what they chewed up digging the tunnel to replace the Alaska way viaduct. Do you have a page where your photo's are posted? Various offices around the area have photo's of Old Seattle and the area. I love it. If I were younger, smarter and better technically equipped I would take on some article projects. By the way I was living in Pt Neches, Texas during WWII, Mom worked for Gulf Oil refinery. The streets were dirt, but the sidewalks were wood. Like you see in the old Western Movies.Oldperson (talk) 22:29, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree with the duckboards>boardwalks issue. But creating Category:Wooden sidewalks under Category:Boardwalks and consequently moving nearly all boardwalk images to "wooden sidewalks" would likely result in even more confusion and seems wrong to me:

a) "board" in boardwalk already includes the meaning of "wooden" (dimensional lumber as traditional building material; cf board, plank …),

b) in contrast, the term sidewalk may have the connotation "besides a street/road" for many international/non-AE users, whereas most boardwalk images actually show "footpath structures" in landscapes without any accompanying street/road,

c) Category:Wooden pavements exists (BE pavement = AE sidewalk); it could be used or extended for more urban sidewalks made of wood,

d) a subcategory of Category:Beach promenades could also be created to cover specific AE meanings of boardwalk.

--Te750iv (talk) 22:34, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

* I don't think the intention is to move a large number of boardwalk images to "wooden sidewalks". The sidewalk category would only be used where the boardwalk was beside a street. --ghouston (talk) 23:04, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

• • Precisely. - Jmabel ! talk 01:26, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

* There's potential confusion between Category:Boardwalks and Category:Wooden pavements, as File:Call of Heroes 2016 (010).jpg shows (it seems to be a boardwalk?). But they do seem to be different concepts. --ghouston (talk) 23:08, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

• • I agree that is a boardwalk, though (for example) File:Call of Heroes 2016 (013).jpg is, indeed a wooden pavement. - Jmabel ! talk 01:29, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Trouble with the BE term pavement is it can mean both a sidewalk or any paved area or surface. In AE apparently it means the hard surface of a road or street. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pavement It may be better to use the AE term here as it is more precise. (I say that as a Brit so am going against my national bias here) Oxyman (talk) 02:28, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

English variants are conflicting and confused about just about anything related to footpaths. Every such category needs a description, regardless of how its named. --ghouston ([[User talk:Ghouston|

It is best practice and always preferable to use the most concise category name available and only rely on awkward descriptions when absolutely necessary. Hotcat users and mass upload bots will not even see the descriptions. The real world result of relying on descriptions is that some user has to sort out the resulting confusing mess at a later point in time. Oxyman (talk) 15:04, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

talk]]) 02:43, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

• People interested in this discussion may also be interested in Commons:Categories for discussion/2018/11/Category:Walking paths. --ghouston (talk) 23:04, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
• By the way, my cousin informs me that "duckboards" are also used in the kitchens of some fast food restaurants, an indoor use I'd never thought of. - Jmabel ! talk 01:35, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
• Let me give you my perspective from New Jersey and New York. We have boardwalks built over sand, but only adjacent to beaches or sand dunes that are adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean, and the other side is always businesses, fences, or ramps/stairs to the streets. I have seen them in Atlantic City, Wildwood, Seaside Heights, and Coney Island. The same type of wooden planking construction is also used on piers that extend over the ocean to accommodate ships. Our sidewalks are typically concrete, which can last but can also crack under stress from tree roots. Our roads are typically asphalt, which usually doesn't last very long and can develop potholes in the winter. Our shortsighted elected officials usually choose short-life asphalt (cheaper in the short run) over long-life asphalt (cheaper in the long run). Tire, rim, and alignment businesses benefit from this shortsightedness (rather than taxpayers and vehicle owners). I had never heard of duckboards. I have seen wooden sidewalks in old Westerns, I guess they make sense if wood is in plentiful supply or if you are building a movie set in the desert and want to minimize costs and maximize reuse.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 03:24, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
  • @Jeff G.: Nothing there seems to contradict any of what I proposed. Are you agreeing with me or disagreeing? - Jmabel ! talk 05:32, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
    • @Jmabel: I agree with you, and also with Ghouston's statement "Every such category needs a description, regardless of how its named."   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 12:54, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

OK. I will follow through on implementation. Category:Boardwalks has German, Czech, and Portuguese descriptions as well as the English I will edit, so if someone could bring those other three in line, that would be good. - Jmabel ! talk 18:38, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Duckboards

Looking closer at that File:Crymlyn Bog.jpg: I don't honestly know whether that is better classified as "boardwalk" or "duckboard". It doesn't have the classic "duckboard" construction where the boards run parallel to the direction of the walk, but it seems more crude than I'd normally call a "boardwalk". Thoughts? - Jmabel ! talk 18:47, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

File:Caillebotis pressé acbi.jpg, on the other hand, doesn't seem to me to be a duckboard at all, or even a boardwalk, but it's in Category:Duckboards. Ditto File:Caillebotis chemin de circulation KeeWalk.jpg.- Jmabel ! talk 18:53, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

December 27

Different

Hello. Can anyone explain me the different between Category:Agia Napa and Ayia Napa? Xaris333 (talk) 18:41, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

They're connected to the same pages on multiple Wikipedias, so they're probably synonyms and should be merged. BMacZero (talk) 19:17, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

OK. But what are those pages that are not categories? So many years in Commons, I never saw a page like Ayia Napa. Xaris333 (talk) 22:18, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

It's just a gallery, see Commons:Galleries. --ghouston (talk) 23:50, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. It's clear now. Xaris333 (talk) 00:15, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

December 29

1924

Hello. 2019 is next week. Is there a plan in place to update the many PD templates whose name includes 1923 ? Will the templates be renamed (or new ones created ?) and how is it implemented in the items which use these templates ? Thanks. Hektor (talk) 07:11, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

@Hektor: Thank you for your concern. Please see COM:PDD.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 13:26, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: Fine, thanks. I read a lot of discussion, till a few weeks ago. But nothing conclusive. What is exactly the plan ? Hektor (talk) 10:05, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

@Hektor: My plan is to get more eyes on that discussion, hopefully resulting in more input and a decision.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 13:33, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Mixup in Category:Márcio França

There seems to be a mixup in Category:Márcio França. It is showing two different people. Can someone familiar with Brazilian politics take a look? Thanks. // sikander { talk } 03:27, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

@Sikander: Hi there. As far as I could tell the pics on this category look legit. Márcio França underwent a bariatric surgery in 2017. Here is a link to what he looked like before and after the surgery: [44]. Or are there pics I didn't find that are not covered by this explanation? Cheers. --Joalpe (talk) 10:31, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

@Joalpe: Ah, got it. You're right, the photos are of the same person. I had looked at 2016 and 2018 and wasn't sure, but his tweets from 2014 also confirm it. Thanks. // sikander { talk } 16:10, 29 December 2018 (UTC)