Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive 15

uploads by JcHnd (talk · contribs)

Hello all, I believe many uploads of JcHnd are copyvios, he mostly gives some name in the author section and then just puts PD most of the time (& puts pd-self [1]), or unknown or has as source a webiste, where it says " ® 2006 CatrachoWings.com Todos Los Derechos Reservados" [2], or "source:public work", "author:unknown" [3]... Please can someone have a closer look at this, thanks, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 13:42, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Defunct newspapers

What is the copyright policy regarding newspapers that are defunct (no longer in business) and therefore has no entity existing to own copyrights of their past weekly issues? - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 01:44, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Except in extraordinary circumstance, the copyright still exists. The intellectual property of such organizations would generally be sold off in bankruptcy or dissolution proceedings, though you may have to research the cases to figure out who the new copyright holder may be. Dragons flight (talk) 01:50, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

This is an example of the problem of orphaned works, where the copyright owner of a work cannot be located and may not even be aware they hold copyright of the work. Sadly, no legislative solution has yet succeeded in dealing with this problem. Dcoetzee (talk) 02:41, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

So even though the newspaper is defunct and the owner dead, copyright lives on? This was a small town newspaper. We're not talking about a large media corporation here. Just a small town 1-man show so to speak in terms of ownership. - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 05:48, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Most likely, yes. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 05:50, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

In the case of pre-1970s US publications when copyrights still needed to be registered to go into effect, it was common for many small town newspapers not to bother to renew their copyrights, and sometimes they were never registered in the first place. So many may be out of copyright, but research would be needed to determine if so. Also, be aware of {{PD-US-no notice}}, as some didn't even bother to claim to be copyrighted-- if you have an intact issue, you can deterimine that yourself just by looking; if present the copyright notice is most commonly with the publisher info on page 2, sometimes on the front page, occasionally elsewhere. -- Infrogmation (talk) 13:27, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Mac OS copyvios

Hi all! User AzaToth is tagging a lot of Mac OS free software screenshots as copyvios with the mere reason "OS X". Since I don't own a Mac, I don't really understand where the copyvio exactly is. I guess it may be on the window decoration, or on the icons, or... In my opinion this would fall under COM:DM and I began reverting their copyvio notification. Now I'm hesitating, hence this note. First, I'd like you to be cautious before speedy deleting those screenshots. Second, I'd like your opinion on these copyvio notifications: are they abusive or not? — Xavier, 11:44, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe those screenshots are blatant copyvios (I'd say they are ok), so I undid AzaToth's changes (putting {{Copyvio}} for non-obvious cases). Further discussion should be done in a deletion request, not on the Administrators' noticeboard because one's decided those pictures to be copyvios without consensus. →Diti the penguin — 14:32, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, my first concern was to avoid a-possibly arguable-mass deletion. I'll now ask Azartoth to fill a deletion request. — Xavier, 15:03, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Template

I find this template, User:Böhringer/Template:Credits, very pointless and redundant since the same info would be in any image's summary and, as for attribution to the author, would be in the license. I just removed it from File:BallonKathedrale01.JPG. It's in use on well over 500 image pages, and I stopped counting there. Is there a process for deletion of templates on Commons? - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 11:14, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

COM:DR - although I don't see anything wrong with a template where he nicely asks to be informed if his images are used. Wknight94 ^talk 11:20, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

The template I'm reading doesn't ask to be informed if his images are used. The one I'm reading says please mention me as the author and if you want send me a message. as well as This Photo was taken by Böhringer Friedrich. I just find it redundant and useless when he's already being attributed in the Author parameter of the summary and if he wants attribution, he should select the appropriate license for it and it will cover the "please mention me" part.

Take the image File:Melkende Ameise Honigtau.JPG for example. The license says, under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it. The template says This Photo was taken by Böhringer Friedrich. please mention me as the author. Redundant and we could do without the clutter of such a template. - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 11:30, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

The "if you want send me a message" part is his extra part. I don't see why this would be bothersome. My general sense is that people are allowed to put what they want on their images. The image itself is the real subject here, not the text, which is more of a helpful description and fine-print footnote. If you want to concern yourself with the image description pages, Category:Media lacking a description has a nearly endless backlog and any work there would be much appreciated. Wknight94 ^talk 11:56, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

@Allstarecho, if you want to get an impression on how observant re-users are to our usual CC-BY attribution instruction, take a look at File talk:LucMontagnier1995 065.jpg and try to calculate the share of re-uses with proper or any author credit. Any more concerns? --Túrelio (talk) 12:11, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Whether or not someone actually pays attention to the license is another issue. The template is still redundant. - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 12:33, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

May be. But, it's the desperate (and fully justified) attempt to get the re-users' attention. --Túrelio (talk) 12:40, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Allstarecho, a lot of use use this kind of template. You seem to assume that our description pages are easy to read and understand. This is not the case. The GFDL-self template runs: "I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license", blah blah. Who is the copyright holder? Is it the same thing as "the uploader"? Why does this all looks like a puzzle whose pieces have to be put together? This kind of template does provide redundant data, but it's organised in a human-readable way: "this picture was taken by John Doe, please mention me". It also provides an easy way to contact the author. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 13:09, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

In short, it is my personal experience that this kind of templates *are* useful. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 13:09, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd certainly vote no on any deletion. While the template is admittedly redundant, it's hardly unreasonable to put your own template on an image you uploaded - plenty of people do it, and it may help those who are less familiar with wikis. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:13, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

My impression is that reusers welcome such templates. --Kjetil_r 14:23, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, good to know everyone is fine with redundant clutter. Moving on... - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 15:15, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Clutter is in the eye of the beholder. Talking about redundant clutter, you could propose {{Information}} for deletion. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 15:23, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

@Allstarecho, for one thing, there is less need to touch other people's stuff here than there is at en.wp. At en.wp, everyone is scanning people's user pages looking for things to complain about and WP:ANI is abuzz with nonsense that has nothing to do with creating an encyclopedia. We are trying very hard to avoid that same drama-for-the-sake-of-drama here. But moreover, there are simply bigger things to worry about here. Go through uncategorized images and you'll find hundreds of missed copyright violations. You'll find hundreds of people whose only one or two contributions are to store personal images as though this were Facebook. There are tens of thousands of images with no description at all. Making an issue over how good established contributors label their images is simply not done here. It's one of the things that make this community so much more endearing than en.wp's. Wknight94 ^talk 15:39, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Coming back to this issue, I'm assuming the template found at File:Frisbee Throw- Fcb981.jpg, which uses {{Fcb981c}} to promote the sale of the rights to this image and the 75 images it's on, is acceptable? If the rights to an image is sold, wouldn't it need to be removed from Commons? - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 06:04, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

New versions of existing photos uploaded to new files

A new contributor has found and uploaded higher-quality versions of a couple of images that were already in Commons. Unfortunately, the new versions were uploaded as new image files, rather than as new versions of the existing files (and has already changed links on EN, but probably not on other projects). I believe that some files will need to be deleted and some histories need to be merged. The affected files are:

• File:Y-12 Shift Change.jpg is a new version of File:Y12 shift change.jpg
• File:Y12 Calutron Operators.jpg is a new version of File:Calutrons at Oak Ridge.jpg

--Orlady (talk) 15:55, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't actually think anything needs to be done. The old versions are not exact scaled down versions of the new versions - different crop, different reproduction quality. I think it would be interesting to evaluate the differences between the versions, eg any detail airbrushed or cropped out? So definitely no deletions, and no merging needed either. All that is needed is links from each to its other version --Tony Wills (talk) 21:10, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Orlady, should be uploaded as new versions on the existing file names. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 21:24, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Please review image deletion

Per a notice on my talk page I've deleted an image. The source appears to be http://catapa.be/en/north-peru-killings (warning: graphic), and the image is not available under a free license. Will another administrator please review and confirm that I did the right thing? ~MDD4696 03:44, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

The deletion of this file looks correct to me. takiy (talk · contribs) has uploaded three other files that may be copyvios as well. S/he is a new editor on Commons and eswiki; perhaps a Spanish speaking admin could help.[4] I've watchlisted his/her talk page. Walter Siegmund (talk) 15:16, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

animals in captivity

Sadly, we lost Mbz1 (talk · contribs).
In one of her last edits (though deleted by herself) she made a proposal that IMHO merits consideration: "if an image of animals, birds, fishes and/or insects was taken in captivity, it should be specified either in the image description or in the nomination (as Featured picture candidate)"[5]. --Túrelio (talk) 15:17, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

It seems a good proposition. Yann (talk) 17:44, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Making it a requirement would be pointless in most cases: when the animal is obviously in a zoo, cage, aquarium, or other enclosed area. Also for livestock and pets. The only case where it would really make sense is when the subject is in a wildlife park that has no visible signs it's not out in the wild, but still, I'm not sure how much weight this has on whether or not a image becomes a FP (judged more for the image itself than background knowledge). If this info is really that important to voters, wouldn't they simply be opposing images that lack it anyway? OTOH, for valued images, I can see where this would make be a fitting requirement. Rocket000 (talk) 20:03, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it would be useful except in the obvious cases, as you mentioned. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 21:10, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes people should be encouraged to give useful detail about the circumstances of all images supplied, getting any description at all out of some uploaders is difficult though :-). The particular instance of whether the image is of a captive animal seems mainly relevant to people who discount zoo shots as being too easy and don't support them for FP status, it doesn't really have much significance for the value of an image to Commons. The exception to this is if the image implies the behaviour or environment shown is natural, when it isn't. --Tony Wills (talk) 22:14, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

@Tony, to me it seems that you aren't still satisfied that you[6] have contributed to driving away a valued contributor from Commons. --Túrelio (talk) 06:07, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I think as a matter of course it's useful to note the animal's environment, whether or not it's obvious - image search engines can't understand pictures, after all. In fact, if it's in captivity, it really ought to be mentioned precisely what facility or park it is located in. Dcoetzee (talk) 00:14, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, much more emphasis should be given to accurate, precise, and concise descriptions. The old what, when, who, what, where sort of stuff. I'm not quite sure why this discussion has come to this forum though, Village pump, or the talk pages of FP, QI, or VI would get more input and attention. Perhaps move the discussion to Village pump and make proposals under QIC, and VIC that image description pages should include this sort of information (I think VI already does). --Tony Wills (talk) 01:43, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

(We can of course propose that all images must include this information, but there is not much point unless we propose to delete images that don't. --Tony Wills (talk) 01:47, 18 June 2009 (UTC))

To clarify my comment: Of course, we should always encourage as much information about an image as possible. Regardless of whether or not it's nominated as an FP. Or of an animal. I thought we were talking about making it a requirement. Rocket000 (talk) 14:42, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Deletion of User pages

Is speedy deletion of a users user-page and talk page, at the users request (eg when withdrawing from the project) now standard practice? I thought user-page deletion was only done under exceptional circumstances, they do not own those pages, everything is released under GFDL. --Tony Wills (talk) 21:29, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Do we need those user pages? Chaddy (talk) 21:48, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Do we need any user pages ;-) That is not the point :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 21:56, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

But we don't keep things that are of no use. What are you actually talking about, the userpages of Mila? --Túrelio (talk) 21:58, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes the question was spurred by the surprising deletion of Mila's pages. Why do you think history is of no use? --Tony Wills (talk) 22:17, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

GFDL or not (if you really want the page, you can move it somewhere else, so the history will be kept), if the author request deletion if his own pages, we should (must?) accept it, as a courtesy. If you were an administrator and wanted to leave the project removing your user page, you would do it without hesitation, would you? So, why regular users couldn't be free to choose whether they want their pages to be deleted? →Diti the penguin — 23:17, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

A number of points - of course if I wanted a personal copy of the pages, and in particular the histories of discussions of images and other issues, I could have made a copy before they were deleted, but of course can no longer do so. But it is the value to the projects, am I the only one who ever looks at the histories of things, and wants to be able to follow discussions to see what the thinking was for particular decisions? I certainly don't expect administrators to use their access to tools to carry out operations against general Commons policies so that point is irrelevant (and for the record, personally I would not). No one has yet said whether this is current policy though. On your last point - users (or specifically ex-users) should not have the choice to delete material, just because it relates to them, without discussion. Page histories contain lots of discussions, with contributions from lots of people. I don't see why a user request to delete anything would be actioned as 'speedy' unless there are exceptional circumstances. --Tony Wills (talk) 23:39, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

{{Done}}. User talk pages shouldnt be deleted, User pages if requested. Restored the talkpage and placed {{Retired}} on it. --Martin H. (talk) 00:16, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Not done, again a speedy request. I did not know of this meta site meta:Right to vanish, its a good argument. I still think, that keeping the talkpage is the best idea, but i refrain from enforcing this. --Martin H. (talk) 01:44, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, if I need to spell it out, here it is. I left the project because I felt I was unfairly accused by Tony Wills, who might have tried to help, but absolutely unintentionally made the matters much worse. Tony posted the message to my talk page without real understanding of the issue, and the real issue is behavior of User:Lycaon. It is not the first time you hear about Lycaon, and I'm very sure it will not be the last. Back to my talk page. It was second time in the past two and half weeks, that Tony left a message at my talk page, and that I did not feel was helpful at all. First time I let go on it, and even changed my edit to satisfy Tony. I should not have done it. My edit that I removed was absolutely proper! The second time Tony left message at my talk page I felt as it was just a little bit too much. So I left the project, left to remove Tony messages from my talk page. Apparently it was not enough for Tony, who asked to restore my talk page. If my talk page really should stay, and I do not mind it is staying at all (there are quite a few messages that I prize very much including some from Tony :) and even one from Lycaon), may I please ask you to permanently delete two last messages from Tony 1 and 2 together with my responses? I have no hard feeling to anybody, but don't you see that I feel as that bird in captivity. Please let me free! Remember I do have Right to vanish. Thank you.--Mbz1 (talk) 02:19, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I have obviously made a real mess and have badly hurt Mila. For the record I do not accuse Mila of anything. I would like to request that my badly directed posts be permanently deleted, or at least not restored when Mila's pages are restored. I will leave it to Mila to decide if/when to do that. --Tony Wills (talk) 00:02, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

After exchanging few e-mails with Tony, I understood what a terrible mistake I made in my judgment about him. Small part of it was my not very good English, the biggest part was my very bad temper. I'd like to ask Tony to forgive me my groundless accusations. I said I left Commons because of Tony messages. No, I left Commons because of my own stupidity. I also realized that few messages I left at Lycaon talk page could be considered as I was trying to harass him. I am sorry about this, Hans. Now to all of you. I am really sorry for my behavior for the last few days, but you all know me :) May I please ask somebody from administrators to restore my talk and user pages in the full contest? After all there was much work done on them by other users but me. Please do not worry, it does not mean I am coming back. I really believe that it is about time Commons get some rest from me :). I hope you will not be too bored :) Thank you all for everything.--Mbz1 (talk) 00:22, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

As a general rule, I strongly support courtesy blanking instead of deletion for talk pages (and even protecting from bots, automated scripts, and/or enemies if the user is really really permanently gone). Deleting user pages is fine if that's what the user wants, but talk pages should remain, at the very least, in the history. Of course, selective deletion may be justified in certain cases, but still there should be a very good reason for it. (Note this is not about the specific case here. I wasn't really following it, but to quote Mr. Bartz: You can delete a user page but you can't wipe out a friend from our hearts hehe :-) Rocket000 (talk) 14:57, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Problems with the Macedonian Coat of Arms

I want to inform you that there are problems with the image of the Macedonian COA concerning the colours and the design of the details. If there is possibility to be corrected the image I would kindly ask you to do it since I am not quite familiar with creating or editing pictures. More details about the problem and sources that prove that the currently used COA is incorrect the original COA, here. Thanks in advance--MacedonianBoy (talk) 22:49, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Problem with Flickr upload bot

If you take a look the talk page of Bryan (talk · contribs), you will see that complaints of failed image uploads by Flickr upload bot (talk · contribs) are starting to accumulate (from my experience the other day, most times it works fine but occasionally nothing happens). It would seem that Bryan has not been active on Commons since April, and nothing appears to be being actively done to look into/correct this.

Any suggestions? Thanks. --Commons Shaped Box (talk) 00:19, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Based on the bot's contribs history, it seems to be working fine. Are you putting the file extension on the end of the name? .jpg/.png/.gif? It won't upload anything without the file extension at the end of the name you give the file. - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 03:14, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

No, there is an issue with the bot. It randomly just doesn't upload files (most of the time it works fine). What you can do is simply go through the upload process again. Even if the description page is still there, it won't tell you to choose another name. Rocket000 (talk) 19:35, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

User uploading obvious copyright violations

Wolfie14 (talk · contribs) --NE2 (talk) 07:02, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for raising the copyvios. I've deleted the copvios and have warned the uploader. Bidgee (talk) 07:49, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Pikiwikisrael

Hello,

However I support all kinds of ways to find free media I think this project isn't doing a good job with it.

Pikiwikisrael is uploading a lot of images under a free license. But when I review there site there is nothing about some good rules for uploading. It even says that everybody can upload photos if he has the permission from the copyright holder.

I have read back the mailinglist and I can't really find a agreement that this project doesn't need to send OTRS permission, this project uploads photo's by other people we can't check the license like Flickr and we cant check the original uploadform. Do we AGF and just let it go... And there will new projects uploading in the same way or we stick to the policy and need OTRS permission. Using AGF can endanger the pikiwiki project and can be harm for legal actions again Wikimedia.

I would like to hear some opinions about handeling this.. Huib talk 12:43, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

This has been discussed on Commons-l in January, see here and later posts. Commons rules, of course, also apply to Pikiwiki images. If they are not sufficiently documented, delete them. I haven't reviewed the Pikiwiki uploads regularly, but if copyvios from this project should become a major problem, we might consider closing the account. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 22:28, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I've had a quick look at the latest uploads and I think we should close this account _immediately_ until the project finds a way of making users deliver valid source information. The current form of source information consists of a link to the project itself; this is totally insufficient as the Pikiwiki project is not the actual source, but only a vector. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 22:34, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

The user gives a legally binding statement that he owns the copyrights or possesses a written permission from the copyright holder, and that he releases or has written permission to release the images under CC-by or to the public domain. The statement was written in Hebrew by an Israeli lawyer whose expertise is copyright laws. The contributers are Israelis who live in Israel. I can ask the users to send me a film showing them holding the Bible and swearing they own the copyrights, but only few people would be willing to contribute images in such conditions. Drork (talk) 16:20, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Huib and ChrisiPK. These "permissions" are impossible to trace, and in many cases they are quite unlikely. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 16:50, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I would appreciate if Pieter Kuiper won't participate in this discussion. It is hardly news that he is prejudiced against Israelis in general and against me personally. Drork (talk) 16:58, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I am very close in closing this project down. I think you should get OTRS permission first.. You aren't uploading your own work, and our policy says thet you need to give some proof before you can release it.. Since you aren't doing that, you are uploading images without proper permission. Huib talk 17:08, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Huib - close this project down, and you won't have Wikimedia Israel anymore, no donations of neither images nor money from Israel, no more connections with the Israel Internet Association. Your attitude will lead to the extinction of one of the most active Wikimedian community. Is that where you're heading? If so, please say it explicitly and don't hide behind technicalities. Drork (talk) 17:13, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

To make it even worse here you state that you are uploading PD images under a cc-by license (here). I think this project has a malfunction and is doing damage to Commons and all free images.. Placing PD images under a CC-BY license is not done. Huib talk 17:15, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I probably have to take a deep breath right now, but this is way too much. There are people who work hard for the Wikimedia community, and there are people who sit behind the keyboards and try to impede their work in every possible way. This project has been conceived during more than one year. It was published in every possible way. Constructive criticism is welcome, but I see here nothing but punctiliousness to say the least. I have nearly given up on Wikimedia activities due to the lack of discernment I see here. I have to warn you, you are shaking the boat too hard. Drork (talk) 17:25, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe the legal part was cleared with the foundation right? Drork, could you confirm this? So we should be in the clear for that part. The part I don't like is that the bot is malfunctioning since March, so I would agree with blocking this bot until that's fixed. Multichill (talk) 18:24, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

File:PikiWiki Israel 236 Immigration to Israel גלויה עם ציור של אוניה.jpg is a clear example of a false licence. The kibbutz does not have any right to licence this image of an Italian shipping line. There is no reason to believe that the archive of Gan Shmuel understands copyright. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 20:11, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I will strongy ask a uninvolved Adminstrator to block the account so the problems can be fixed before it can upload anything more on Commons. After a conversation with Drork on IRC is still believe this project is malfunctioning and needs to be shut down. Some major problems that need to be fixed before the even upload any more images:

• Project doesn't support the FOP, there are 20 images deleted because the are copyvios.. And that was only in the last 100 uploads.
• PD images are uploaded under a CC-by License and Drork stated on IRC that he will not fix it because Legal rules make it PD and the Template doesn't count.
• Uploading a lot of images that are out of scope
• Users are promised that Wikimedia Commons admins will not delete or edit the page without asking permission on pikiwiki (What is a clear ristriction and a promises that can't be kept.)

All by all I strongly recommend to fix current problems before making it possible to upload new images. Huib talk 18:48, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I am writing a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation informing them that the Israeli chapter is going to dissolve due to lack of cooperation with the Wikimedia Projects. I am not sending this letter yet, but I will send it if the Pikiwiki account is blocked. I will also immediately halt all of my activities in Wikimedia, and advise my colleagues to do the same. Neither I nor my colleagues nor the donors and contributors in Israel are going to tolerate such a shameful treatment. Some of it, I suspect, is motivated by anti-Israeli political approach. We have toiled and worked as hard as we could to make this project happen for the benefit of the Wikimedia movement and the worldwide free knowledge adherent community. Distinguished Israeli NGOs invested thousands of dollars in this project. We consultant the best lawyers, only to encounter a humiliation, which unfortunately has become a habit on the Commons when it comes to Israel and Israelis. I hope people here will come to their senses so I can delete the letter from my Outbox. Having read the dialog above, and recalling the attitude in the past towards Israel-related issues here, I am not too optimistic. Drork (talk) 20:24, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

You're not helping anyone with uploading copyrighted pictures. Not the people who place it on articles and find out after a few weeks the picture has been deleted, and not the foundation itself. There is no use of 'testing the mods of Commons' by uploading copyvio pictures. To protect the foundation and the projects of the foundation, the account should be blocked till the bot works correct again. Sumurai8 (talk) 21:13, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Instead of playing the victim, threatening to dissolve chapters, or overblowing the issues here, let's actually look at the facts, and deal with them in a rational manner.

As far as I can tell, there are real problems with the bot, and the project more generally. However, I don't know that they couldn't be resolved easily enough by those involved with the project. There are many people involved, and multiple people from Pikiwiki could easily enough solve all the issues raised here if they were so inclined. So, it's not clear that blocking the bot is the best immediate solution—though if the bot operator or others involved with the project aren't responsive to community concerns then a temporary block until issues are resolved may become necessary.

I'd urge everyone commenting here to avoid that outcome because this initiative from the Israeli chapter has been a boon for Commons and other Wikimedia projects. It'd be a shame to see this escalate to a point where there is hostility in either direction, or where irreversible actions are taken. We're all here to work on improving Commons, so let's work together towards that end. The content being contributed here is valuable, but we also need to ensure that when legitimate issues arise they can be dealt with in a respectful and timely manner—the Pikiwiki project does not operate in isolation.  — Mike.lifeguard 21:15, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I see you don't take me seriously, and that's regrettable. If this project is blocked, even temporarily, that will be the last activity of Wikimedia Israel, and the last attempt by me and my colleagues to promote any project related to Wikimedia. Furthermore, the press around the world has already reported an anti-Israeli attitude on several projects, and I am getting tired of being the one defending the projects, especially when I have a bad feeling that these press reports might be true. I repeat - any constructive criticism is welcomed. If an image violates copyrights it should be deleted - all I'm asking is a warning, so the localized interface can be updated. Israel has full FOP principle, and a public place is defined as any place accessible to people without special invitation - it can even be private premises as long as people can gather there. In Israel, image taken 50 years ago or more is in the public domain. This principle is always valid. If you see that someone used a CC tag instead of PD tag - you may change it, because in such case the PD principle always prevails. A person cannot, I repeat CANNOT upload a photograph through the Pikiwiki interface, unless registering and confirming a statement in which he announces the release of the images under CC-by or to the public domain. S/he has to assert that s/he is an adult, that s/he owns the copyrights or has a written power of attorney from the copyright holder. S/he has to reconfirm a shorter version of this statement before actually uploading the images. All statements were checked by an copyright expert lawyer who confirmed they are legally binding. Such a statement is valid, even if the person uploaded the image to Flickr or another site with another license. Drork (talk) 21:42, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

PS - Images taken in the British Mandate of Palestine whose copyrights were held by Israelis-to-be, are subject to the very same rules. Drork (talk) 21:45, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec) I agree with Mike.lifeguard. This project seems an interesting collaboration and brings good materials. However threatening won't help to solve the issue. I think part of the problem is misundertanding due to language. I am ready to assume good faith for most images, but some changes to the process would help:

• Could you transliterate the authors' name in the Latin alphabet? This seems the minimum requirement so that Commons admins can follow what's going on. It is also useful for reusers.
• Could you add the English description which is present in the title in the description itself? Most people here can't read Hebrew, so the images are useless for them unless there is a description in English.
• Could you use {{PD-Israel}} instead of {{PD-self}} if the image is in the public domain? It would be more accurate and save work by others who need to correct your tags. Thanks, Yann (talk) 21:48, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

The whole idea here is to localize the process of image contributing. I hope I'll see such projects in many other languages. English is our working language, but it shouldn't be, by no means, the single language of the Commons.

• We cannot supply a Latin transliteration, because Hebrew orthography works differently than the Latin orthography. It is quite easy to tranliterate Hebrew to Arabic and vise versa, and the same goes for Cyrilic-Latin alphabets. It is very hard to transliterate Hebrew/Arabic to Cyrilic/Latin. My name in such transliteration would be "Drwr". Ilana Shkolnik, one of our regular contributors would have her name transliterated as "Aylnh Shkwlnyk", the Israeli president's name would be transliterated as "Shm'n Prs". I doubt if it solves the problem.

Well all names can be written in the Latin alphabet. How you do it is your problem, but Commons admins should be able to know who is the author without using an external translations. Yann (talk) 22:36, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

• This can be done. I'll mail our programmer about it.
• We advise contributors to write their names in Latin Characters, and to supply a short English description. Although English studies are obligatory in Israel, most people don't bother, and it would be unwise to force them to use English. I called upon the Hebrew speaking volunteers on the Commons to translate the descriptions (I myself often add descriptions in Arabic and French when relevant), but this is done slowly. Drork (talk) 22:16, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
• PD-Israel means the copyright period expired in Israel (and in the rest of the world unless there is a local overriding arrangement). PD-self means the copyright holder waives his rights completely and indefinitely. It is not the same thing, hence not the same tag. For example, a person can say that he waived his rights while being intoxicated, and therefor his statement is invalid (I hope that is never going to happen, but there's always a risk). If it is the period of copyright that expired, such a claim is irrelevant. Drork (talk) 22:16, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

If {{PD-self}} is irrelevant, why do you use it?

In addition, I see that images were deleted because "no FOP", however COM:FOP#Israel states that Israel law has a FOP. These images should eventually be undeleted. Yann (talk) 22:36, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

In Israel, there is no FOP for 2D or for text. One other problem with pikiwiki uploads is that there is no direct link to the original page on the Israeli project. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 22:43, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

For the record - what Mr. Kuiper says about the Israeli law is wrong. I doubt if he can read Hebrew or have sufficient knowledge about the Israeli system or similar legal systems around the world. Mr. Kuiper expressed anti-Israeli views on the Commons in the past, and therefor he is biased against this project. I suspect his misleading remarks are merely provocations, and hence I am not going to respond to them in the future. Drork (talk) 04:01, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

The similar legal system is in this case English copyright law, and according to this Israeli lawyer, English precedents used to be authoritative, so FOP-Israel should be quite similar to COM:FOP#United Kingdom. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 06:54, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I have looked though ~20 of the recent uploads, and I don't see the problem. The images are within scope, and there is a copyright holder giving a free license. This is not different from how we allow our pseudonymous users to claim "own work". Sure, some of the uploads are derivative works, and some are probably copyvios, but we should assume good faith. I'm opposed to blocking user:Pikiwikisrael. Regards, --Kjetil_r 22:40, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I think that PikiWiki is an amazing project which brings valuable images to Commons. However, even if we welcome such efforts the raised concerns must be constructively addressed without resorting to threats to dissolve the Israel Wikimedia chapter. I see following points:

• Not just Israel copyright law has to be taken into consideration but also international law, hence we cannot keep images like this.
• As ChrisiPK already pointed out, the source field does not conform yet to our guidelines. A pointer to PikiWiki - Israel free image collection project alone is not sufficient. We have the usual rules: If this is a photograph shot by the uploader, it is "own work", if it is inherited through the family, tell it, if the uploader had a written power of attorney from the copyright holder, elaborate this, and if it has been scanned or photographed from PD material, provide a reference to it. If this gets specified when uploaded at PikiWiki, it can easily transfered to Commons. Please understand that this is important. The copyright status of images cannot just be questioned now but also any time later if we, for example, get a notice through OTRS about a copyright violation. Then we need all relevant informations in the image description. And to be on the safe side, I recommend to document any non-trivial cases which are not the uploaders work nor PD through OTRS. We have fortunately with permissions-commons-he a Hebrew speaking permission queue for Commons.
• I have no problems with descriptions and authors in Hebrew. We are an international project and we accept descriptions in any language. In case of Hebrew we are even in the comfortable situation that Google Translate can process it.
• There must be an understanding that Commons admins do not have to seek consent with the PikiWiki project to perform administrative actions on these images. Usual procedures apply, e.g. notifications will be posted for images filed for speedy or regular deletions but there is no additional process.
• In case like this one we have a derived work. In such cases we have to address also the copyright of the artist or to make explicitly clear that freedom of panorama applies using the {{FoP-Israel}} template. But even then the name of the artist should be given.
• Many uploads (like this one) have a quite recent date in the Date field which seems to be more likely the upload date at PikiWiki. This should rather be the date when a photograph was shot and simply "unknown" if this is no longer known.
• You have some additional fields like OriginalName or Location which do not fit into the {{Information}} template. As it is currently formatted, is looks broken. Couldn't this be integrated into the {{Information}} template or put into a seperate template or in some other way nicely formatted?
• I suggest to suspend further uploading until the concerns have been addressed and we got some consensus how this project can be continued.

--AFBorchert (talk) 06:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

1. The case of a postcard sent from Italy to the British Mandate of Palestine is very unique. This postcard is about 75 years old and is saved in a local small historical archive. I think the archive managers would be quite surprised to learn there are still a possibility of copyright limitations after so many years. We have a policy of handling only images which are subject to the Israeli law, but such a postcard could have been drawn in B.M. Palestine, so that's a very innocent mistake. Once it is here, I think it is worth while checking the Italian law.
2. Why such detailed information is necessary? The uploader's statement says the following (in Hebrew): "I assert that I fully possess the copyrights of the content which I upload to the site - including the rights to copy, publish, publicly perform, broadcast the content or release it to the public; or I have a valid license from the copyright owners to do all of the above without any limitation; or that the content I upload is in the public domain (...) I am aware of the fact that I have full and exclusive responsibility to anything that might result from the content I give away and that the content is legal." Having three different statements for each case will make people run away.
3. If an administrator on the Commons sees a copyright violation, he has no alternative but to delete the image. However, these cases are rare. Most warnings I get are punctilious. If a PD tag should be used instead of CC - anyone can change it. The CC license never overrides the national law, and there is no need to make a big fuss about such errors. If the date happens to be in the wrong place - anyone can fix it, we are working collaboratively. If a picture seems in bad quality or redundant, I would appreciate having a clear notice before deleting the image.
4. Israel has a very liberal FOP principle incorporated in its copyright law and court rulings. Some people, Europeans in particular, find it hard to believe, but this is true. Any creative work which is permanently displayed in a place accessible to the public, can be freely photographed or sketched. People in Israel take this principle for granted, and they often extend it too much, but in most cases I saw here, non-Israelis simply found hard to believe that the Israeli law is so liberal.
5. We cannot place the FOP/derivative work tag automatically, but it is very easy to add it manually. Anyone can do it. Again - we are working collaboratively.
6. I asked the programmer, and he said he can do without the line "OriginalName, Location etc." you may delete it, and he will change the code as soon as possible.
7. I think you don't realize the consequences of suspending such a project. I wasn't exactly threating - such a suspension can and probably will result in the collapse of the Israeli chapter and of many activities in which it is involved. This project was planned about two years, thousand of dollars were spent, several NGOs are involved, the press covered it extensively. A suspension will cause a domino effect. Generally speaking, administrators on the Commons tend to follow rigid rules without considering the consequences of their actions. I say it not as an accusation, but as a constructive criticism. Rigidness is a very bad policy, and you must always remember that a lot of work is done with real flesh and blood. Drork (talk) 07:32, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

PS - there is nothing wrong with the date here. Ilana Shkolnik is a regular contributor and a photographer. She probably took the picture during the holiday (Shavuot) and uploaded it immediately. Drork (talk) 07:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

1. Usually international copyright systems protect works for _at least_ 70 years, so it's not surprising that a 75 year old postcard could still be copyrighted.

2. Basically uploaders have to say the same thing on Commons when uploading things as own work. Fact is that some people don't care about copyright and just upload stuff. You find them everywhere: on Commons, on Flickr, on DeviantArt and so certainly also on your project. This is the reason why we require OTRS confirmation for copyright claims that are not obvious or a bit more complicated. Your project is currently opening a gate in Commons' protection when we blindly accept all images from there without confirmation. We don't even do it for Flickr, so there's no reason why we should do it for Pikiwiki.

7. The project does not conform with Commons guidelines. I have expressed my concern about this before and was not heard (“There is no need for any member of the Commons community to verify the legality of the license statement”). I'm really sorry you are about to learn the hard way, but we simply cannot have a project uploading images without any source information, mainly for the reasons i mentioned above. This is why I really encourage you to fix the issues mentioned here. The images uploaded so far can probably not be corrected, but source information should be made mandatory for future uploads. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 10:52, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

1. is wrong, in Norway it can be as short as 15 years. Jeblad (talk) 17:02, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

There are, of course, exceptions. Note the word usually in my statement. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 22:27, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Why do none of the uploads have EXIF data? Are they stripped? It seems that all uploads have a maximum size of 700 pixels. The process seems to degrade the image quality when one compare to Ilana Shkolnik's uploads on Flickr (where they are "all rights reserved"). Why not transfer to commons the original upload? /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 08:07, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

As promised, no comment to any of Mr. Kuiper's remarks. Drork (talk) 08:51, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

This is a poor excuse. Pieter has valid questions here. Could you answer please? Yann (talk) 11:43, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you scan old documents/photo, you don't get EXIF data (unless you later add them). RE:Ilana Shkolnik's uploads - anybody could ask her directly whether she would grant us the hi-res versions.--Túrelio (talk) 08:55, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Bot blocked pending further approval

I've blocked the bot indefinitely pending permission to run the bot any further, as in accordance with the bot policy. Also per misbehaving. I ask the bot's operator to file a request to run the bot any further at Commons:Bots/Requests. Please follow the instructions and submit the bot request.

As to the block, I understand it may have collateral damages, but the operator has been asked not to run it further til the issues have been resolved. Yet the bot's operator hasn't stopped it, despite the valid concerns about copyright issues and the bot misbehaviour. Commons takes copyright violations very seriously, and so do I. Sorry Drork that it had to end like this for now, but the concerns have to be fixed before it can run any further. Copyright is a serious issue, and I can't let the bot do any further harm til it has been fixed, and the operator seeks permission to run it.

• This block is just temporary til concerns have been fixed.
• The block itself is not some bias on my side, but a protection to prevent any further damage to the project. We appreciate (even I do), the files but the copyright concerns needs to be resolved before the Piwiki can upload further files to this project. This is all done to think of the bigger picture. What if the bot continued, and we later found out it had uploaded thousands of copyright violations. Now wouldn't that be one big mess? Instead we have the opportunity to resolve this now, and prevent such a thing from happening in the near future. AFBorchert makes some valid points, and so does many users above. I understand this is a frustrating issue to you personally Drork, but we're not here to bully contributors. We want the best out of this project, and I want to help you. But for us to do that, you have to help us. Which you have done numerous times too. Take a step back, think about the situation, and come back. A calm head and a relaxed body is always better than the opposite. Despite the hard issue, Drork, help us even further and make the bot run once again. — Kanonkas // talk // e-mail // 13:01, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I am writing a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia chapters informing them that Wikimedia Israel suspends all its activities until this block is removed. We will not tolerate such a treatment. Drork (talk) 13:31, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Drork its really to bad that it ended in a blockade for the bot. I was really hoping that you would adres the concerns raised on this page and fix some little things with the bot. With suspending all activity you will make the wrong signal to the people that donated money to make this project work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Abigor (talk • contribs) 18:21, 3 June 2009 (UTC) (UTC)

Disappointing outcome

The present status of this discussion is dissapointing in that the outcome is contradictory to our goals. PikiWiki is a project designed to collect free, valuable content. The issues between the uploads and how Commons is receiving it should not have culminated to such a point. While Commons is a project in its own right, it also serves the Wikimedia Projects, as well as serves as a free media to the world at large. Presenting barriers to gathering free media is contrary to our goals, and we need to find a way to make it easier to contribute, not more difficult, for people who are trying to work in Commons' interest.

I hope that we can work together going forward, with that in mind. --Bastique ^demandez 17:45, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I will express my support for what Bastique writes, and hopefully it will be possible to find a solution. Jeblad (talk) 18:37, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree that we should make it easier for people to contribute here. However, we still need to focus on collecting free media. Yes, it would be a lot easier if we just dropped all the license checking, OTRS validation etc., but that would endanger our mission just as much as blindly importing unvalidated content from third party sites. There have been discussions about this on Commons-l before the project started and several people (with me among them) mentioned this. However, our advice was not heeded, so this is the outcome. I also support any steps to make this project work with Commons, however some serious changes need to be made to make this possible. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 22:27, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

The sheer bureaucratic obstructionalism expressed by Commons admins above mostly indicates that Commons needs to be severely reined in by the Foundation. It is a service project, not just its own entity. If it fails in that role, it will need severe and prompt adjusting.

Handy hint: if an entire chapter finds it can no longer work with Commons any more, it's Commons that has failed. - David Gerard (talk) 11:35, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

If opinion of one person is automatically translated to position of Chapter, it may indicate something wrong too.

How about addressing Pikiwikisrael issues too? There is two sides of conflict, and it's not wise idea to blame only one of them.

EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:30, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Possible Solution

If have been thinking about a way how we can make sure that the project can work in Commons without being held back by policies or other things that make uploading a bit difficult. Commons is a project full of volunteers and so is the PikiWiki project, If both the volunteers will work together I am pretty sure we could make a great project out of it.

• Source and Permission

  The source link leads to the mainpage of the projects, this could be easily fixed by linking to the photo page. I checked the project site and all uploads have there own direct link, by linking direct to the pictures the source problem will be solved in a very easy way. The permission problem could be solved on the image page also, if we go Flickr style... If the images page on the project site gives a license, it will give the people from Commons a way to check the licensing. This is probably not the best way to go but it is the most easy way to start with. Other big sites like Flickr already uses that system and we on Commons believe that license so that wouldn't be a problem on this project also.

• PD and CC-by

• Drork told in our conversation on IRC that images are uploaded on CC-by by default and PD will overwrite the license when it is needed. On this part I spend the most time thinking how we can fix this, and my idea is to create a special cc-by template for this project. We could mention in this template that the images is uploaded under cc-by but isn't checked yet. If the template will place the images in a category we could have a group of volunteers that check the license and replace it with PD-Israel or PD-self when it is needed. I will volunteer to do this if Drork gives me some info about the rules on PD and stuff, and I am pretty sure some other people will help also.

Not a bad idea. Although since the images are screened (point 3) previous to uploading here, the pikiwiki contributors could as well flag them as PD so they get uploaded as such here. Platonides (talk) 00:42, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

• Broken {{Information}}

• As some people pointed out you are giving more information than the template support, when we know all information that you want to put in the template we could create a template that is special made for this project and will solve this problem also.

The bot is blocked now because of the malfunctions, and I know I raised it (And people on IRC told me I am responsible for all this what is happening). I would suggest to tell your programmer the above information and see if it can be fixed in a short time. I really think it is a good project and a good way to get free media on Commons. I hope that the Israel Chapter can work together with the Commons community to get this project back on track asap. With suspending all activity you will give a bad sign to people that donated money and that would be a bad thing. I rather see that you will pick up and fix and tell the people that give money something like: We are working on a project that is new in his kind, there where some little hick ups but we are getting things back on track now. You have my full support in making this project work. Huib talk 18:21, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Linking to the actual file on Pikiwiki is a step into the right direction, but IMHO not really completely sufficient. What is so difficult about asking people for the source of their images? We require the source when people upload images to Commons. We import Flickr images which often don't have source information, but we delete Flickr images if they are likely not created by the Flickr uploader. Many images on the Pikiwiki project seem to be third party images, not created by the actual uploader himself. Please ask people where they got this image and why they think the are allowed to release it under a free license. Otherwise we open the gate for a huge load of copyvios. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 22:27, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Summary

After a long off-wiki talk we've come up with some solutions. DrorK will contact the operator to fix the issues. I told some of the issues were: the template, source field, FOP, and the bot operator to be more responsive. The operator will probably be able to be more communicative to concerns in the future, and able to fix the template, and the source field that the bot uses. As to the FOP problem, we've come up with a possible solution of a new reviewer group for files uploaded from the Pikiwiki bot. The review process will be such as the PD/Flickr review process. — Kanonkas // talk // e-mail // 18:55, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I fail to see why this couldn't have been achieved without blocking the bot. We have all failed in this instance. I'm very sorry to see that this is the end result for what should have been an easily-resolved problem.  — Mike.lifeguard 21:30, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes I know that the block is an unfortunate outcome, sadly as events were unfolding, I felt that an emergency measure was needed and I resorted to blocking. This was a well thought out block, and was delayed as much as I could. It wasn't some "block" happiness on my side at all, despite the "emergency" bit. I with others, deemed the block necessary to prevent uploading of more of the material that seemed to be potential copyright violation. As it proved difficult to coordinate with the bot's operator, and uploads were proceeding, blocking seemed to me the safest way to interrupt the steam of problematic uploads til issues had been solved. This is why I felt a block was needed. Further, I explained my reasoning to the block #Bot blocked pending further approval above. — Kanonkas // talk // e-mail // 21:22, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Because too many Commons habitues have forgotten the "service project" aspect of the project. Evidence: most of the above text - David Gerard (talk) 11:37, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

David, with all due respect, that's really not helping. People are trying to defuse the situation by finding a solution we can all agree to, so we don't need inflammatory comments like that. howcheng {chat} 16:46, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Post Summery

As this project is in fact based on a donation of many k's of images from various archives, and of about $60k to create, we wish to have it back and running. The scope of the project is to assist people who do not speak english to upload and view pics from the commons. Each picture uploaded is checked by a voulenteer who checks the license and the description before the upload is approved (the servers of the projects hold the pictures for a couple of days prior to the upload by the bot) - I have seen the postcard example from above - it is a mistake done by a voulenteer.

now - I request that the following be taken place in order to proceed.

A. a list of problems to be fixed be listed hereunder:

I know only of the following (please add more if you have any):

1. Source field should include the name of the uploader and the origin (i.e the name of the archive or the person submiting the image) in latin leters - please note that this can not be the officail translation of any name as this will be done by the voulanteer.

2. No fair use image will be uploaded - only PD or CC (including images according to the FOP in Israel - which does allow derative imagaes of 2D works).

3. We will try and have the original size of the photos, however as the images must "await their checking" on a temporary server -their size must be truncated down to 3M (which we hope will expend to mote). The file will include the image data, where available.

4. We will try to have a description field in English and always the correct category for the images. A description in Hebrew will always be added.

5. PD images will be marked as PD Israel (attribution may still be required) and not CC.

The above problems will be fixed prior to further running of the bot.

B. I request that all further probelms be listed in the talk page of the user (to make it easier to find them).

C. The bot be reliesed (due to implications to the project, the failure thereoff may be very damaging to any donation from Israel to the foundation and the use of Hebrew wiki of the commons). Deror avi (talk) 11:52, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks so much for taking this on, Deror avi. I think you've covered all the issues raised, and have a suitable solution for each one. I understand there is a meeting tomorrow of various people involved with this project. Do you know how quickly changes could be made to the upload process after that meeting? I'd like to unblock the bot as soon as possible - the problematic images are a minority (and it seems there are far fewer than was previously thought) and the other issues are comparatively minor.  — Mike.lifeguard 14:48, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

As well, it'd be extremely helpful if you could expand COM:FOP#Israel and COM:L#Israel with references. In particular, the points touched on in several deletion requests should be clarified for the future. There's no rush on that, but you know what you're talking about, so having that information written down in a reliable form and in a central location will greatly benefit both Commons and the Pikiwiki project. Thanks  — Mike.lifeguard 14:52, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

OK. Deror avi (talk) 14:58, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

By Tuesday I will be able to advise when the Bot will be amended, and when we will be ready with regards to the volenteers who will check the picture, so I think that by the end of the week all will be in order. Deror avi (talk) 15:17, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd also like to see a feature implemented that asks people for the image source on upload. Right now, there is basically no source information at all, only that the image was uploaded to Pikiwiki by the person in the author field. Providing source information is vital to understand the licensing of images. This way we will also know when we might need additional permission sent to OTRS, besides the permission by the actual uploader. I think it would be best to implement this as a dropdown box, where you can select "own work" and such or input stuff manually. This way the source information can be localized on upload, if it was selected from the dropdown box. Thank you really much for addressing the issues as such, so far all we talked about were rogue admins, censorship and ubiquitous antisemitism. Best regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 19:56, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

as for your request - the project demands that the person admits to ea decelerations that he is the copyright holder or that he is certain that the image belongs to him and is in the public domain. The name and id are kept in the project's database, so in case of any suit - that person may be reach and he is solely responsible for the violation (and not pikiwiki or wikimedia). Other then declating this - and unless the picture is from a public archive (which is supposed to have the information), the project scope forbids uploading of pictures which origin is unknown.

On a personal note I wish to say that I try to save the project as a lot of money and two years work has been invested in it, and as many images have been donated for upload. The project has been presented in advance to the foundation and recieved its blessing. I think it is safe to assertain that the death of the project may be the end of any cooperation between donating parties in Israel and the foundation, and may also harm greatly the cooperation between Hebrew wikipedia and commons (it has already been recomanded by users, against my opinion, that all users in Hebrew would stop uploading pictures here and keep all their pictures only on Hebrew wiki, and some have requested deletion of all their pictures uploaded here). So far I have always opposed these voices, but having seen the response and rude behaviour of Pieter Kuiper I completely understand them. Deror avi (talk) 20:55, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I understand that users assure that they own the rights to the image, but this is sometime insufficient. Basically, Commons and Flickr do the same thing, they also only allow uploading pictures which the user is entitled to release, but it shows that sometimes users simply don't care. So even if the assure you that they own the rights, there are still cases where we would need additional permission sent to OTRS. The source field provides important information why the user thinks he owns the rights on the image and whether such additional OTRS confirmation is really needed. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 21:54, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

This is what is requested here - and if there are questions - users can always revert to the uploaded and request info. When a person assures he is the owner of rights - this is usually sufficient (and remember - the pictures uploaded are checked by the volunteers). If in doubt - you can ask at the project page and the volunteer may revert to the donator and ask the relevant questions. I see no deference between this and a random user uploading picture and declaring he is the owner of rights (it is even better as each picture will be checked prior to upload. Granted that volunteers may make mistakes, however they will gain experience, and there is an additional buffer which does not exist with other regular users.). Deror avi (talk) 06:14, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

The main scope of the project is not to upload pics from flicker (those who can do that can also handle wiki upload page). The goal is to go tot people who ar enot so handy or do not speak English or to archives and tell them - scan the relevant pictures from your albums and archives - and upload them (we specificaly request pictures older then 1958 so they will be in PD - however also newer pictures are accepted) - so there is no internet page to link to. I believe that the improtent work of the project is to convince all the archives in Israel to digitalize and upload their pictures (so far five archives have sent their pictures and more are waiting). In all such cases - there is no page to link to. Deror avi (talk) 15:30, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I was surprised to find out that when a pikiwiki image gets deleted here, it disappears also from Pikiwiki, see Commons:Undeletion requests/Current requests#File:PikiWiki Israel 2219 Election 2009 night - Kadima_Party for an example. So this is not some separate flickr-like creative commons project from which commons could choose the interesting images. It is even a problem to delete images with doubtful copyright status or images that do not fit in project scope. We get everything. Lots of good stuff, of course, I do not deny that. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 15:18, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

That's the whole point - piki wiki is an interface in Hebrew for the commons. The images are all here, and the info is all here. There is a small database for the picture to be checked by the volonteers prior to their upload here - but it is very small. The piki wiki project is a project of Wikimedia Foundation (through its Israeli chapter) whose all aim is to upload pics to the commons (via a Hebrew interface for people who have dificulties in English) and the make it easy to search the pictures for Hebrew speakes (not all commons pictures- just those uploaded through the project). Another goal of the project is to go to public archives and upload their picture to the commons - and that is why it is importent to amend the problems, realse the bot and continue with the project as soon as possible. As to scope and copyright - the piki wiki project has narrower scope than the commons - so images which are not educational do not fit in piki wiki. Same with regards to copyright. Deror avi (talk) 15:38, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Update

Last night a meeting took place attended by me, the head of the Israeli internet association, the attorney of the association, representatives of Wikimedia Israel and volonteers from Hebrew Wikipedia. The programer of the bot was instracted to ammend the bot in accordance with the above requests (as I understood them), and we expect it to be amended by the end of the week. Following the amendmets, we expect the bot to be released. Deror avi (talk) 06:27, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Unless there are any further objections, I will unblock the bot. --Meno25 (talk) 08:46, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Please wait with the unlock until I update that the amendments are complete (otherwise - the bot, during the upgrade and while it is checked, may upload info according to the old format). Deror avi (talk) 08:58, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

the description and license police was changed according to this talk page. the bot will upload two files to check all is well. please release. Hidro (talk) 13:59, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I've released the bot for the checkup. It should upload 2 pictures in order to make sure everything works. Yuval Y § Chat § 14:18, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

We have fixed the bot - there are still some bugs we are working on but the end result should be like this: File:PikiWiki Israel 2997 Geography of Israel שקיעה במצפה הילה.jpg (with only one language in the file name). Any comments? Deror avi (talk) 15:27, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

There's still a lot of work to do. I've tried to upload an image to pikiwiki, and I'm curious to see what would be written in commons... Yuval Y § Chat § 17:07, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

It's not a lot of work but rather just two bugs to be fixed (these were requested above) - and will be fixed soon. As to the Category - this will always will have to be changed becaus this can not be done by the bot, however all pictures uploaded will be uploaded to a relevant category (as in the example - the best category did not exist yet and had to be created). Deror avi (talk) 07:37, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Final summary

Almost all the bugs have been corrected (see here for example. i hope the project will run smoothly from now onwards. If you have any other comments please approach me at my talk page. Deror avi (talk) 20:04, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Looks much better! Could you add the dates in the {{ISOdate}} form (YYYY-MM-DD)? This way the date will show up in the user's interface language. Multichill (talk) 20:23, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Will be done. Another bug that will be fixed shortly (I hope) is the mixed language in the name - it will be English only in the future. Deror avi (talk) 20:31, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Coat of Arms

Ok mates. Could please anyone restore these coas or at least transfer them to German Wikipedia?

List of files

# 01:44, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Vevey district coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:44, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Saint Helena coa.svg" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:44, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Regensburg district coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:44, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Regen district coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:44, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Pazos de Borben flag.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:44, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Pays-d'Enhaut.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:44, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Paris coa b&w.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:44, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Grand Comore flag.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:44, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Flag of San Diego.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:43, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Flag of Bulgaria 1971-1990.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:43, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Turks and Caicos coa.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:42, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Wapenschild Bergachtig Karabach.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:42, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Western Cape coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:42, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Vietnam coa.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:42, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Togocoa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:42, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Vigo coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:41, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Vanuatu coa.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:41, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Victoria coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:41, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Turks and Caicos coa.svg" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:41, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:St Kitts and Nevis coa.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:41, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:South Australia coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:41, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Seal of baltimore.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:41, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Senegal coa.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:41, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Rodeiro coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:41, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Rolle district coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:41, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Provincia di Salerno-Stemma.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:41, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Suriname coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:41, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Sudan coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:40, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Provincia di Rieti-Stemma.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:40, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Provincia di Reggio Emilia-Stemma.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:40, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:PortailBulgarie2.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:40, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Panama coa.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:40, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Paris coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:40, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Ottawa city coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:40, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Orbe district coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:40, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Oron district coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:39, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:North Korea coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:39, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Northern Cyprus coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:39, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:North West coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:39, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Oberallgaeu coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:39, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Nyon district coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:39, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Northern Cape coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:38, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Limpopo coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:38, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Nigeria coa.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:38, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Mpumalanga coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:38, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Moudoun district coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:38, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Morges district coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:38, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Namibia coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:38, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Malta1975 coa.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:38, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Montreal city coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:38, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:MauritaniaSeal.svg" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:38, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Minneapolis city fl n6217.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:38, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Mali coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:37, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Lida city coa.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:37, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Lavaux district coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:37, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Lenin order.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:37, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Lausanne district coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:37, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:KwaZulu-Natal coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:37, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Grasse city coa n4346.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:37, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Kenya coat of arms.jpg" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:37, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Iceland coa1.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:37, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:India coa.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:37, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Guyana coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:36, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Guateng coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:36, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:France coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:36, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Grandson district coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:36, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Fresno city flag.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:36, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Fresno city fl n6338.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:36, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Free State coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:36, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Flag of the Supreme Head of Malaysia.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:36, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Flag of San Jose, California.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:36, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Flag of the President of Nigeria.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:36, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Flag of Japan Coast Guard.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:35, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Flag of Ethiopia (1987-1991).png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:35, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Flag of Infantry Group (JGSDF).gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:35, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Flag of Composite Forces COS (JGSDF).gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:35, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Flag of Belfast.PNG" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:34, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Estrada flag.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:34, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escut Trentino.PNG" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:34, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escut Surrey.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:34, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Flag of Air Defense Command (JASDF).gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:34, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escut de Garait.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:34, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Estrada coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:34, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escut Dorset.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:34, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escut Durham.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:34, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escut Forli.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:34, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escut Essex.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:34, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escut Montauban.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:34, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escut Somerset.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:34, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escut Privas.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:34, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Edmonton-flag.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:33, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escudo de la Comunidad Vasca (coronado).png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:33, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escudo de la provincia de Pontevedra.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:33, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escudo de la Comunidad Vasca.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:33, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escut Cumbria.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:33, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Sao Tome and Principe.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:33, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Saint Lucia.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:33, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Saint Kitts and Nevis.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:32, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Nigeria.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:32, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Niger.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:32, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Nepal.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:31, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escudo de Cardiff.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:31, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escudo de Andalucía.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:31, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escudo COA Santa Fe province argentina.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:31, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escudo COA Santiago del Estero province argentina.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:30, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escudo COA Misiones province argentina.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:30, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Echallens district coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:30, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escudo COA La Rioja province argentina.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:30, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Edmonton coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:30, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escudo COA Rio Negro province argentina.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:30, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Eritrea coa.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:30, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escudo COA San Juan province argentina.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:29, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escudo COA La Pampa province argentina.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:29, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escudo COA Santa Cruz province argentina.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:29, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Eastern Cape coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:29, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escudo COA Jujuy province argentina.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:29, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Escudo COA San Luis province argentina.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:29, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:EE Koeru coa.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:29, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:DR Congo coa.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:28, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Togo.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:27, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of the Marshall Islands.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:27, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of the Cook Islands.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:27, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of the Central African Republic.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:27, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of the Bahamas.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:27, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Zambia.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:27, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Uganda.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:27, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Cyprus Coat of Arms.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:27, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Colorado seal.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:27, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Cuba coa.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:27, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Dundee coa.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:27, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Columbus city fl n6169.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:27, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Zambia.svg" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:27, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Vanuatu.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:27, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of United Arab Emirates (1973-2008).svg" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:26, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Solomon Islands.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:26, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Sierra Leone.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:26, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Senegal.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:26, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Suriname.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:26, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of San Marino.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:26, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Northern Territory.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:26, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Samoa (1951-1962).svg" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:25, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Mongolia.gif" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:25, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Nauru.svg" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:25, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of North Yemen.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:25, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Nauru.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:25, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of Arms of Samoa.svg" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:25, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Mozambique.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:25, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Mozambique from 1975 to 1982.png" (per DR) (view/restore) 01:25, 24 May 2009 Mike.lifeguard ... deleted "File:Coat of arms of Namibia.svg" (per DR) (view/restore)

See also: Commons:Forum#Gelöschte Wappen

Chaddy (talk) 23:25, 13 June 2009

I hope you don't mind, but I put your list in a collapsible table (and linked the files for convenience). Rocket000 (talk) 03:02, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

All right. Thank you for your effort.

By the way I removed those files which have already been restored and also the talk page links. Now the list is a bit shorter. ;) Chaddy (talk) 04:21, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

{{doing}} — Mike.lifeguard 19:23, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

 Done — Mike.lifeguard 20:28, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Could you please explain why the images where deleted and now restored again? This whole action caused a massive amount of delinks across many Wikipedia's. Multichill (talk) 22:02, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

This is, as indicated in the comments by Mike, just a temporary restoration to give Chaddy the opportunity to move these images to de-wp. --AFBorchert (talk) 23:05, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Multichill, the whole thing is explained right here. You could have figured it out by reading faster than posting a question. Deleted after a DR, but dewiki wants to move them there, thus undeleted temporarily.  — Mike.lifeguard 23:41, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Just want to be sure. Multichill (talk) 11:34, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for restoration. But how should we move them to dewiki? I surely can´t do this alone... Chaddy (talk) 18:58, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe imagetransfer.py in pywikipedia was used in the past on similar cases. Multichill (talk) 20:41, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Chaddy, I would advise against a mass transfer as many of these images are not accepted at de-wp under consideration of the current guidelines. Some particularly problematic examples which are likely to be still copyrighted: File:Malta1975 coa.gif, File:Ottawa city coa.png, File:Coat of arms of Mozambique.png, or File:Coat of arms of the Central African Republic.png — all of them non-trivial recent designs that do not necessarily follow traditional heraldic patterns and which are also likely to hit the threshold of originality even under consideration of German law. --AFBorchert (talk) 21:42, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Most of these coas are in the PD because they do just not hit the threshold of originality according to German law. From your examples maybe only File:Ottawa city coa.png would not be in the PD because of this reason.

But all these coas are also ministerial works by German law as they are official coas. In dewiki, we use German law because of the de:Schutzlandprinzip (=principle of national protection). This may only be problematic if there are special agreements between Germany and some of these countries which has to be veryfied in particular cases. Chaddy (talk) 22:11, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

P. S.: @Multichill: Thank you for your tip! Chaddy (talk) 22:13, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Chaddy, it is not justified to consider anything as „amtliches Werk“ (i.e. official governmental work like laws) unless you provide a bibliographic reference. And I am not convinced that you can apply the Schutzlandprinzip in this case. Yes, this claim is to be found in that article but interestingly without a reference that supports it. And even if this extends to EU laws which apply to Germany as well, it remains doubtful if this can be extended to COAs of foreign countries designed and created by some unknown author where we do not know whether it was ever published in a governmental publication. --AFBorchert (talk) 12:06, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I totaly agree with AFBorchert. The simple transfer is not ok. I think, we can and should mark some of this PD-ineligible, e.g. the 1st, File:Vevey district coa.png is ineligible in my eyes, simple geometric form without copyright. Otherwise nothing should go to Wikipedia or stay on Commons without a clear indication of PD-exempt in the country of origin. --Martin H. (talk) 13:09, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I don´t really share your douts. But I started a discussion about this topic on dewiki. For everyone who is able to understand German here´s the link to the discussion: de:Wikipedia:Urheberrechtsfragen#Wikipedia:Fragen zur Wikipedia#Gelöschte Staatswappen auf Commons. Chaddy (talk) 21:49, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Some of these are probably PD for one reason or another - find them and I'll be sure not to re-delete them. As for transferring them, please do make sure doing so is permitted by dewiki's policies before you begin.  — Mike.lifeguard 14:47, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Have the transfers been completed? It's been a week, so I'll delete them today unless someone speaks up.  — Mike.lifeguard 15:08, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

The transfers are going on. User:Ra'ike said she will delete every single image as soon as its transfer has been completed. As you can see in the list above many images already have been deleted again by her. Chaddy (talk) 15:33, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, as long as it will be taken care of, I'll leave things as-is.  — Mike.lifeguard 21:21, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Template 2

Coming back to this issue from the Template thread further above, I'm assuming the template found at File:Frisbee Throw- Fcb981.jpg, which uses {{Fcb981c}} to promote the sale of the rights to this image and the 75 images it's on, is acceptable? If the rights to an image is sold, wouldn't it need to be removed from Commons? - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 08:56, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

To your last question: no, except exclusive rights would be sold.

The only slight problem I see with the note in this template is that as the note doesn't mention what license is meant, the words "this License" might be wrongly understood as meaning the note itself. Though this is probably not meant by the uploader. Other opinions? --Túrelio (talk) 09:06, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I am surprised that templates like these are allowed at Commons, because it makes it hard (almost like flickr) to follow any licence changes. The author can change the licence without affecting the image description page.--Commander Keane (talk) 02:33, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

In fact it is not allowed to transclude such user defined templates containing the license template itself according to Commons:User-specific galleries, templates and categories policy. They should be substituted for the exact reason you give, such that license changes appears in the file history. For a recent example of this where a user (an admin actually) used this method to mass change all his images from GFDL 1.2 to GFDL 1.2 only, see the discussion User talk:Fir0002#License Templates. --Slaunger (talk) 22:09, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

It is very unfortunate that users such as this one are not prepared to allow use of their images beyond the WMF projects and impose very stringent conditions to try to prevent the reuse of their content. The GFDL licence seems to have been a popular way of doing this in the past due to the onerous conditions but this user also demonstrates how overly restrictive attribution requirements can similarly make their content unavailable for reuse. We should really clamp down on this. I've felt for a long time that we shouldn't allow the GFDL on its own but that situation has been somewhat complicated recently with the licensing decision. For contributors to effectively only allow their work to be displayed on WMF projects is an abuse of those projects and ultimately a violation of the spirit of what we are trying to do; the ability of others to reuse our content is fundamental. We should strongly discourage the practice of users deliberately trying to make their content difficult to reuse. Adambro (talk) 22:27, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

"to effectively only allow their work to be displayed on WMF projects is an abuse of those projects" - sorry, but that's nonsense. In the past when in need of an image that nobody could take by him/herself, we often resorted to recommend to the somewhat unwilling photographer/rights holder to put it under GFDL, because we wanted or needed that image (such as for example the only image of Theo van Gogh) and because the primary focus of Commons, at least then, was to serve the Wikimedia projects. To call that "abuse" and a "violation of the spirit" is rather insulting to those who (first unwillingly) provided their works and to those who undertook the effort to negotiate with them. --Túrelio (talk) 15:17, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Hello, I agree a bit with Adambro here. I think that we should effectively "discourage the practice of users deliberately trying to make their content difficult to reuse". However I understand very well that some people would not allow the commercial use of their work. In that case, I rather like that they license their content "for Wikipedia only" than under "GFDL 1.2 only", which is a big hypocrisy. Yann (talk) 16:54, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

@Yann, but "Wikipedia only" is not an licensing option on Commons as to my knowledge. --Túrelio (talk) 20:46, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

@Túrelio. There is a big difference between situations where WMF contributors make efforts to negotiate the release of content under a free licence and the instances where WMF contributors try to go out of their way to prevent reuse of their content beyond the WMF projects. Part of the whole raison d'etre of the WMF projects is providing freely licensed content. The WMF itself is "dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content". Any efforts to prevent our content from being reused violates the spirit of the WMF projects. The GFDL has never been a very good licence for enabling reuse and this has now been formally recognise by the WM community. I can understand where an outside contributor is involved the GFDL being acceptable, because it is "free" even if it isn't easily reusable, but where we have contributors here uploading in some cases hundreds of images, they should really be more in tune with the project and its aims. Any efforts to licence content only for WMF use should be strongly discouraged. The reason I describe such instances as an abuse of the various projects is because the high profile nature of some of our projects is effectively going to provide individuals with some good advertising, but doesn't actually benefit those who wish to reuse our content in keeping with the whole point of our projects. I would suggest you are wrong to not see a difference here between active participants uploading hundreds of images and complete outsiders. Adambro (talk) 17:22, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I'll just reiterate my position here.. I don't think any image should be uploaded to Commons if said image and its rights are also being offered for sale as is the case with this template and the images it is on. Any notice or template that says To purchase rights to this photo, email me at: [email protected] should be unacceptable. - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 17:54, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Why? Our most used license, CC-BY(-SA), is not exclusive. If I understand you correct, you want photographers give away their works for free and exclusively. Well, how many professional photographers do you want to attract with this model? --Túrelio (talk) 20:43, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Totaly agree to Turelio. In short and to close this dicsussion:

• User templates are allowed,
• User templates with licenses should be used with subst:, this is not done here -> the license should be extracted from the template by bot.
• professional photographers are NOT forbidden to promote theirself on Commons as long as the licensing is free and the promotion is not too much, see Category:User templates. Some people even encourage professionals to publish here and use templates like this.

 Done? --Martin H. (talk) 20:51, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Not  Done until the license templates are actually extracted from the user templates of Fcb981 and Fir0002 and other users who may have done the same thing. In addition the overly restrictive attribution requirements by Fcb981 are simply invalid. --Slaunger (talk) 21:08, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I've left Fcb981 (talk · contribs) a note on his talkpage on :en, as he isn't active on Commons currently. It seems, up to now nobody cared to inform him. --Túrelio (talk) 21:26, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Frankly, nobody ever cared to inform me (initially) of the FOUR OTHER OCCASIONS THAT I HAVE HAD SIMILAR ISSUES HERE.

Thank you Túrelio. Look, the facts are these:

First, everyone who hasn't uploaded any half-decent original photographs and is trying to tell me morally what I should do with mine (Allstarecho, Adambro) should realize that fact and instead, make a useful point, for a change.

Second, Copyright infringement is alive and well. I have spent, collectively thousands of dollars on photography equipment and more than that in time to get the images you are enjoying (or not) and if I so chose, those works can be sold for profit.

Third, People are linking to my licensing archive, awesome, its an archive in the interest of transparency, I was here (or at the deletions page) for the first time for that very reason. It is changed. My philosophy has changed. Most importantly, I now comply with the license.

Fourth, none of you have any idea what I do when I do get emails for licenses. Long ago (a year or more), I thought stock photography had the potential to bring in income of some kind, I slowly became disillusioned of this idea and frankly I wasn't sad about it. Stock (unless you own iStockphoto) is dead. The last maybe 10 people who have approached me about a commercial license I simply said "have at it", "Go ahead and print or display the photo because I have neither the time nor the energy to negotiate a meager price and send a PDF license and cash a check."

Look, I've already wasted enough time defending myself on commons to last the rest of my life. Probably close to 12 hours in total. I'm sick of it. Let me know when they are up for deletion and I'll do something about it. Until then, transcendent this and use template substitution on that, so long as the image pages look like they do I don't care. I, in the mean time, will do like the other photographers with custom templates that link to email accounts (there are plenty!) but probably wont sell any licenses for profit. Have fun debating the spirit of commons, or whatever it is you do in your spare time. -Fcb981 (talk) 22:32, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Coming on here talking shit about other people's downloads as you did about mine and Adambro's sure isn't going to win you Boy Scout of the Year either. All I'm saying is that if you upload an image to be freely used on Commons, it shouldn't include a "For Sale" notice. - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 23:15, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok the above was somewhat unfair. Look, you have your opinion but I generally feel like I'm fairly generous with my photos in general. Like I said, I'm sick of having to defend practices that are pretty charitable to begin with. Plus I never liked my time in the boy scouts much. -Fcb981 (talk) 01:04, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Using Wikipedia/Commons to make money isn't very appealing to me, but I'm willing to look past it if there's a net benefit. However, having things that promise "exclusive or all the rights" is misleading to potential buyers. Transfer of rights will not invalidate the free license. "Exclusive rights" is no longer there to give or sell. "All the rights" needs to be clarified to "All the rights I still retain". Rocket000 (talk) 15:27, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

"Must be in the font type 'Arial Black'. Color: Black with 3pt white boarder." ?!?!?! Rocket000 (talk) 15:34, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

That's an ARCHIVE, that isn't what my license stipulates any longer. In fact it never was because I had just read the dumbed down version two years ago and had figured "attribution in the manner of their choosing" meant just that. After reading the full license, and after being called on this very thing, I changed the license. The archive is there as an archive! The same way the server saves revisions! why are people hung up on the archive!!!! -Fcb981 (talk) 18:27, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I would apologise if I've caused any confusion here by referring to what, as Fcb981 rightly points out, is an archive of previous restrictions rather than current ones. My point though, that this is an example of how some users have and still do go to extraordinary length to prevent content which they apparently release under a free licence from actually being reused, still stands. I am sorry if Fcb981 misinterpreted this to mean I don't respect the time and effort he has put into creating these images though it is a shame he, at least initially, wasn't able to recognise the time and effort both myself and others have also contributed to creating images, even if they don't match the quality of his. Adambro (talk) 18:47, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I all fairness, since I also mentioned that link I would like to apologize to Fcb981 for also mentioning that archived link again. I had overlooked that it was not in active use. Concerning the current transclusion of the license template in Fcb981s user template I am glad that Fcb981 has stated that as long the individual image page looks the same we can move the license template out from the user template (if I understand your statement earlier correct?) I hope you do understand that it makes sense to separate license templates from user templates such that license changes are visible in the history of each image page. --Slaunger (talk) 18:55, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I didn't realize it was an archive. Sorry. Rocket000 (talk) 19:30, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

So 2 days later, I'm guessing this is resolved and everyone is cool with the "for sale" sign on images? - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 22:30, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

User:Erik Baas

Could an administrator please have a word with this user. He seems intent on trying to rename my images, without gaining any consensus to do so and despite the fact that I have repeatedly asked him not to. His motivation seems to be that he does not like usernames in file names, though I can find no guidelines against doing this and I have several good reasons for doing so. He has been queried about this by other users as well, but seems to take the view that he has the right to do what he likes without consultation (see point 2 here). I've tried to assume as much good faith as I can with this user, but I cannot tolerate this behaviour much more. Any help would be greatly appreciated. – Tivedshambo (talk) 21:58, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

My opinion is that filenames should be descriptive of the file's contents, so I prefer that usernames are left out. However I also think it is a waste of time to rename them in situations such as this. There's little to no harm and there are better things we can devote our energy to. ~MDD4696 00:07, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Eriks point that the filename File:Tivedshambo 2002-03-20 Fell rail engine.jpg is not very good, something like "... by Tivedshambo.jpg" is better. But the filename is neither cryptic nor misleading, so renaming is not necessary and its very bad effects should be avoided:

• Renaming breaks the user contributions and upload logs
• It makes the toolserver galleries useless
• Acting against the users wish to include his username in the filename - which can be highly recommended because of bad outside reusers - is offensive in my eyes. We have many very good contributors including their names, thats no problem.
• Without using the search function or the ability to read the deletion logs it is very hard for users to find their own contributions.

Erik ignores this realy worse effects of renaming. Its not the first time I noticed, that he uses the renaming function in an unfavored way. I appreciate parts of his work with the latest files - marking bad files for improvement etc. - but I realy dont like his renaming actions and his cropping of watermarks from copyvios. --Martin H. (talk) 00:23, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I just noted Eriks comment on his talkpage, renames like File:Günther Uecker by Lothar Wolleh.jpg are simply ridiculous and a violation of the renaming policy. Same with Tivedshambos files, the file mentioned above was only an expemtion, normaly he adds his name to the filenames end. --Martin H. (talk) 00:39, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I used to put my username at the front, but chnaged to put it on the end to make filenames in categories clearer. I've considered renaming the early ones, but as Erik is the only user to have objected, I decided not to bother, especially as a number of external uses of my images link to the Commons page. If this was removed, the tracability required for GFDL would be lost. – Tivedshambo (talk) 07:09, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree that Erik Baas ideas about file renaming are a waste of time and resources and breaks so many things (cf. Martins post above) and they are against our policy Commons:File renaming. I think (hope) that Erik is simply not aware of all the negative side-effects of the renames and would be willing to change his mind on reading this thread. I personally think it makes perfectly good sense that part of a file name can be a user-specific substring, such as the user name appended (preferably) in the end. But even if the user name is in front I still think it would a waste of resources. Having a user-specific substring as part of the file name minimizes the risk of name clashes when uploading. It is also a very convenient way for a creator to check how his images are reused elsewhere and check if the license criteria are met as many reusers do not bother to change the file name. I have used this methology on numerous occasions to track down incorrect reuses of own images outside of Wikimedia projects where either attribution requirements or requirements to restate the license under which an image is used has not been complied to. I then usually drop them a friendly note thanking for reusing the image and telling them how they really should have done it, if they should have done it right - in an attempt to educate the reusers. And in cases (< 50%), where licensing conditions have been adhered to perfectly I usually drop them a note appraising them for doing it right;-) --Slaunger (talk) 07:15, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I can totally confirm what Slaunger has written in his fineprint. I've made the same experience though, as of yet, I haven't put my username in the filenames of my images. Many outside copyviolators borrow even the original filename. --Túrelio (talk) 07:52, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

• I think that one thing that we often forget is that commons needs contributors to contribute their time and energy freely. Like any volunteer supported organisation it needs to treat those contributors with consideration if it wants them continue bother donating their time and energy to the project. One of the things that encourages some people is taking pride in their contributions and maintaining those areas they contribute to. I have no need to put my name on images I upload, but some people feel that they need to for various reasons. It is something that costs us nothing (well a few extra micro cents per file?), and has no real effect on the project.
• We do not generally search for files by filename, we find them in categories, galleries, and text searches that include the whole description page not just the filename. Basically filenames are fairly irrelevant - they can be in various languages and include various information about the image (They are usually just in a single language - this is a multi-lingual project, the real information about the image should be in the description and in multiple languages). The only time I have ever found the filename to be significant is when there is no description on the image page and the filename is all there is to go by (which is a plee for better descriptions, not changing filenames).
• So as a guideline, I suggest that we do not rename files other people have uploaded unless the name is either wrong (mis-identified, mis-spelt) or grossly misleading - and in all cases it is worth discussing with the uploader first (if they are still active). --Tony Wills (talk) 08:24, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

• I agree with whats said above, IMHO changing the file names to remove user names is unnecessary and waste of resources. Personally I add my user name to the end the reason being is that most of the time I'll use commonist to upload in batches so adding my user name along with any sequencing (ie flower_gnangarra_01, flower_gngagarra_02) is to ensure no clashes and minimise upload times. There nothing more frustrating than getting a series of error message because file names clashed. Gnangarra 15:37, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Tivedshambo claims the images are his, which they are not, since the license says "Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document [..]" etc.

A filename should describe the image and nothing more; one can write the author's name and the date on the image's description page. I think it's rediculous to put your own (nick)name in the file's title: imagine we'd do the same when writing an article for Wikipedia ??

A large number of files has been renamed for the same reasons, for example File:Günther Uecker by Lothar Wolleh.jpg and a lot more by the same author. I wish I could give you more examples, but they have (of courfse) disappeared from my watchlist.

If you want to "keep an eye" on "your" images, you can put them in a category, just like I did with Category:Files by User:Erik Baas: that's the easiest and most logical way !

Why is renaming an image such a problem ? A redirect is created automatically, and there's no "waste of resources" whatsoever, is there ?

- Erik Baas (talk) 00:17, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Erik, I am amused by your stubbornness - no, actually, I am sad. You are clearly not at all trying to understand the unanymous opinions of a handful of exprienced users. You are completely missing the point with keeping an eye on own images with a user category. We are talking about a convenient way to keep track of use outside of Wikimedia projects. A user category on Commons has nothing to to with that. They are practical for other reasons, and I also use such ones myself. Your radical view on file renaming is scaring valuable contribotors away. It is intolerable. Don't do that. It is just a name for crying out loud. Its main purpose is to be a unique identifier, and then it should not be misleading. Adding a user name or another user-specific substring is just a convenient way to assure uniqueness. It is not to indicate "You must not modify my image". Sigh. --Slaunger (talk) 06:53, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I see that despite all the above, Erik has tagged File:Tivedshambo 2002-03-20 Fell rail engine.jpg‎ for renaming yet again. As I have no desire to get into a pointless revert war, could someone else make a final decision on this.

Incidently Erik, I do have a user category - see Category:Photographs taken by User:Tivedshambo. As Slaunger points out, the user name is to track usage outside Wiki projects, as well as ensuring a unique username. I also think you misunderstand the concept of copyright - yes, under the terms of GFDL (and soon CC) I have given other users the right to modify my images, but I still own the copyright for them. – Tivedshambo (talk) 07:22, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Eriks move is clearly disruptive IMO. Since I am in direct opposition to him, I will not step in and remove the rename request on the particular file. I urge an uninvolved admin to step in and do what is deemed necessary. --Slaunger (talk) 07:38, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Túrelio removed the rename request. I totally agree with Martin H. The renaming of File:Günther Uecker by Lothar Wolleh.jpg, in particular, was in every way wrong. Erik, you are perfectly entitled to have your own opinions of how files should be named, but please do not try to enforce them on others. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 08:10, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

• Even Martin H. and tivedshambo agree that File:Tivedshambo 2002-03-20 Fell rail engine.jpg is a wrong name.
• I requested renaming dozens of files before; it never gave a problem, and I only meant to clean up.
• Question: is "commons" meant to be a resource for Wikipedia's or for other websites ?? Beacause if that's the case, I'd better stop wasting my time here, thinking I'm working on a community project...  :-(

- Erik Baas (talk) 22:09, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

• Answer: If the "community" views your "work" as counterproductive, then stopping the "work" probably wont upset many people in the community. -Fcb981 (talk) 01:57, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

• You obviously didn't even bother to take a look at my other contributions (9630 edits, 819 image uploads), so shut up. :-( - Erik Baas (talk) 09:55, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Commons is not just for the WMF wikis: "The aims of Wikimedia Commons are to provide a media file repository:

• that makes available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content to all, and
• that acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation".

(quote from COM:PS). --MichaelMaggs (talk) 06:09, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

• Right, I see. Goodbye. - Erik Baas (talk)

Template:PD-India

Hi, the Template Template:PD-India needs a correction, the link is broken, but the template is protected. The 1957 copyright act is now found at http://www.education.nic.in/CprAct.pdf I also used the copyright act to upload a sound file that is now in the public domain in India, File:Abdul Wahid Khan - Raga Patdip.ogg, and the template already includes this case, but is there a way to make it refer to all media instead of just pictures then? Otherwise the inclusion seems unnecessary and a seperate template for sound files and other media should be created (or is there one already?). Hekerui (talk) 06:59, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I fixed the link to the PDF document. Sv1xv (talk) 17:29, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Any idea on the media question? Hekerui (talk) 20:27, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Please review my edit.[7] Walter Siegmund (talk) 02:39, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

A good edit! The template still puts everything into Category:Public domain photographs from India, unfortunately. Hekerui (talk) 05:51, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it should rather go to Category:PD India which is a proper name for a license category according to others in Category:Public domain. Any opposite views? --Martin H. (talk) 16:44, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Now see, that images are in both categories, thats redundant. Category:PD India should be the only one this templates sorts to, PD India is a subcategory of PD photographs from India and Public domain. PD Photographs from India can still exists for photographs covered by this category, this are not necessarily photographs with the PD-India license tag. I change this in this context. --Martin H. (talk) 16:52, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

That's better. Thank you. Hekerui (talk) 19:44, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/Kikoolou06

Uploaded another copyright violation after being warned twice to stop. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 21:01, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

 Done. --Martin H. (talk) 21:09, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Photo notes: Beta testers wanted

See Commons:Village pump#Photo notes: Beta testers wanted. Lupo 10:07, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Difficulty using Commons

Re:Pitmilly Law, near Boarhills, Fife, Scotland.jpg.

As a complete neophyte, I finally uploaded the above image.It took many false starts. I appreciated being informed that I had not provided a category, so I fixed that ommission. Does the notice that there is no category remove itself automatically, or do I have to do it? if so, how?

I am puzzled that when I search in Commons for the above page,I am told that there is no such page. Can you explain this?

If you go to Pitmilly in Wikipedia, you will see that I botched uploading this image to the article. I guess I was following an example. How do I get the image to the Wikpedia article?

I am interested in learning the ropes, so would appreciate any help you can give.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Inver471ness (talk • contribs) 21:18, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

File:Pitmilly Law, near Boarhills, Fife, Scotland.JPG exists. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 20:21, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Block request

Per checkuser results it has been stablished that Guaribayo (talk · contribs) is a sockpuppet of Colombianorgulloso (talk · contribs). Please block Guaribayo (talk · contribs) for abusing multiple accounts. Thanks, — df|  22:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

 Done. — Kanonkas // talk // CCD // 22:20, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Deleting incorrect license tags

The license tag {{Attribution-PresidentofIndonesia}} claims that the images it covers are licensed under a "free use, attribution required" license, but the linked "terms and conditions" page (Google translation) says nothing about copyright, and the page footer has a clear "all rights reserved" copyright statement. How do I go about getting the tag deleted? --Carnildo (talk) 22:28, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

COM:DR. -mattbuck (Talk) 22:53, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Could an Admin please delete my User Page history? Thanx

Please just delete my User Page history. I didn't found a userreq template such as on en.wikipedia.org, so I'm trying it this way --Crushinator

 Done. — Kanonkas // talk // CCD // 17:42, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

File:Witch's Rock, Costa Rica.jpg

This image was uploaded in 2006 under PD. Two years later the uploader (Sean davis (talk · contribs), who says he is a commercial photographer) uploaded a blank file over the original file with the description "deleted file", probably having no experience with deletion on Commons. Half a year later, he himself reverted to the original image version and filed an rfd for "It was uploaded by my assistant and it is NOT public domain." that has gone nowhere as of yet. Currently the image is not used on any project. Any objections against courtesy deletion? --Túrelio (talk) 08:47, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

The deletion request was not listed after the request. I listed it. Hekerui (talk) 10:33, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

This rfd has eventually far-reaching implications for Commons and re-users. I would invite all interested to take note or to comment. --Túrelio (talk) 12:49, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

How to recreate a thumbnail ?

Hi. I just uploaded 2 new versions of File:Parachute coupole.svg, and I think I imported the second one when the thumbnails for the first one wasn't finished. The reason why I imported a new version shortly after the previous one is because I uploaded the wrong file. But now the thumbnail which appears on the description page and in the galleries (62px) shows the old version. Is there a way to force this thumbnail to be regenerated ? --PiRK (talk) 12:15, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Regenerated. Please check it. Also use the gadget [Thumbnail Purger]. best regards.--Kwj2772 (msg) 12:36, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Hare Krishna stuff

Hi, I saw File:Lalita Campakalata Citra Tungavidya.jpg and found it was copied from http://mayapur.com/index.php?q=gallery&g2_itemId=5930, then I found that Category:Statues of Hindu deities is full of uploads from this user that are all taken from this website. A quick glance at the user's "Images uploaded" gave three obviously questionable pictures from the 60s of George Harrison and Swami Prabhupada licensed as own work and public domain, like the deity pictures (File:George Harrison Vrindavan.jpg, File:George Harrison Chanting Hare Krishna.jpg, File:Prabhupada with Lal Bahadur Shastri.JPG). Is there a way to get rid of all the copyrighted material without going through everything and tagging a big number of pictures demanding either a OTRS or finding it's a copyvio? And the user uploaded a lot of images, is there a way to make sure without hours of checking whether everything's correctly licensed? Thanks Hekerui (talk) 15:50, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Is this a personal attack? George Harrison pictures are not from the 1960s, but from the 1990s, and are indeed mine.--Gaura (talk) 15:10, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi, unfortunately there is no easy way for checking a user's contributions. I'm afraid you will have to go through alle the files one by one. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 18:22, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

There is certainly precedent for deleting every upload by a given user (see e.g. Commons:Deletion_requests/Series_by_Nyo). If the user appears unconcerned with correct copyright information then it's reasonable to delete everything he's uploaded, even files which in themselves don't appear particularly suspicious. But big deletion requests are time-consuming to do by hand, that much is true. Haukurth (talk) 09:55, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Indeed I have uploaded a few pictures which were not mine releasing it into PD, but that was in the first months after I registered, when I was not yet familiar with the rules. I can point them out.--Gaura (talk) 15:10, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Then why do you revert Template:no permission since instead of sending in an OTRS? Hekerui (talk) 19:00, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Help with copyvio content from enwiki

Hi Folks, I've just finished deleting a list of uploads on enwiki by en:User:Devesh.bhatta who has proved to be a serial copyright violator. Lots of webscraped images from a variety of sources, all claiming "I made it myself" After finding the source of 20-30 of their images, all enwiki uploads have been deleted. Unfortunately 11 have been moved here, 2 are now tagged for speedydeletion as the source has been identified. There are nine remaining which are, clearly to me copyright violations and certainly do not have the claimed provenance. I think these should be shown the door. File:National Highway 57 (India).jpg File:Satellite Map of Bihar.jpg File:History stone Vitramshila.jpg File:Vitramshila pillars.jpg File:Vitramshila Center.jpg File:Rajgir Stupa and Monks.jpg File:Nalanda University.jpg File:Sasaram1.jpg File:Sasaram-tomb2.jpg. Thanks in advance - Peripitus (talk) 10:11, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

File:National Highway 57 (India).jpg - has been deleted as it's from Google Maps

File:History stone Vitramshila.jpg - Could be from WorldWind so NASA licence would apply if it is.

I'm checking the others out (May take some time as I'm busy ATM). Bidgee (talk) 10:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok I've found the other files on Flickr but left File:Satellite Map of Bihar.jpg as I feel (I've not used WorldWind for a few years) that is map is from NASA WorldWind. Bidgee (talk) 10:57, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - you could be correct about the WorldWind image. I havn't been close enough to some of its output to make a call. - Peripitus (talk) 22:12, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Toolserver down

Toolserver is down again since hours; no usage checking possible. --Túrelio (talk) 10:25, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Wie oft passiert sowas? Und warum? 22:32, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

There was a power loss, and now some possible hardware issues. Please see toolserver-l for more info.  — Mike.lifeguard 23:48, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Volcano eruption ISS NASA video

Since I can't find anything close to en.WP's Requests for article creation (no "Files for creation" on Commons?), I'll ask here... The NASA International Space Station video of Sarychev Volcano (Kuril Islands, northeast of Japan) in an early stage of eruption on June 12, 2009 found here. I'd like to request someone turn it into ogg and upload here on Commons. I've tried doing ogg before but it never comes out right. Someone that knows how? - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 03:55, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Nevermind, I figured it out. - ALLST✰R▼^echo _{wuz here @} 06:06, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I am currently trying to clear the category "Panoramics" and to move any pic that I can identify from the file name, other categories it is in, description or geotag into an appropriate subcategory. Many users simply put their files in this parent category although there are subcategories like e.g. "Panoramics by country" etc. available. This happens of course with many other categories and it is an endless work to clear them. Now my question: Is it possible to block a category for new entries? E.g. with a pop-up requesting the user to file his picture in one of the availabe subcategories. I guess such a feature would be a big help for those trying to keep the commons tidy.

Reusing content outside Wikimedia

I have a problem and couldn't find answers neither at Help desk nor anywhere else. Could any admin help me? Quolav (talk) 16:55, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

User:Kieronoldham

I'm a bit concerned about the contributions of Kieronoldham (talk · contribs) - they appear to be confused with regards to licencing, and claiming "fair use", rather than free-to-use. Jza84 (talk) 19:56, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I tagged three of his uploads (the ones with fair use rationales) as coyvios and I filed a DR for one more which is scanned from printed material. Sv1xv (talk) 20:03, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Need an image frag

File:Edwardskids.jpg has a lapsed deletion tag, and is quite clearly a copyright vio. Can an admin delete this? --David Fuchs (talk) 21:40, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

All three images uploaded by this user are similarly unlicensed, two used in one WP article. Probably originally from democrats website, maybe should be uploaded to WP under fair use? Nominate all three in a normal deletion request, don't see this as needing speedy deletion. --Tony Wills (talk) 23:23, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

No license, and the source was Google... I speedy deleted all three of them. –Tryphon^☂ 05:19, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Very efficient, but now the new user User:Samleary has not had any notification that there was a problem, and if they ever come back and look at the article they contributed to, or the pictures they uploaded they will be surprised (and probably a bit bewildered) to find the pictures gone :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 12:20, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I know, but on the other hand, there is a big red warning on the upload page saying that unlicensed images will be deleted on sight (which I just did). If the issue was just missing source or permission, I would have added the appropriate template, warned the user, and waited a week, but in this case, I don't see how the images could have been saved. But you're right about the missing explanation, I've just added a note on the user's talk page. –Tryphon^☂ 12:40, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, a better note than I would have left :-). It seems to be a deficiency in the 'no source' etc templates if they do not notify the uploader. New users probably don't look at their watchlist. --Tony Wills (talk) 13:49, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

User:Producer/MyTag

Shouldn't this tag be backed by an OTRS ticket? Shouldn't the license tags be subst'ed? --Eusebius (talk) 10:25, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes and yes. Multichill (talk) 10:49, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Nominated for deletion. --Eusebius (talk) 21:14, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

The Admins on Commons

Best admin

Hello Guys!

Who is the best Commons-Admin? Who is the worst one? How does one get information about administrators which the community is not content with? 22:36, 3 July 2009 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.199.211.3 (talk • contribs) 4. Juli 2009, 00:36 Uhr (UTC)

I certainly hope the admins are not competing for popularity; that's not what the tools are for. As for admins the community isn't happy with, I think the only way to know is to participate and get a feel for the community dynamic on such matters.  — Mike.lifeguard 23:49, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I am clearly the best, and Mike.lifeguard is just saying that because he's probably the worst :p. -mattbuck (Talk) 10:31, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Me slaps Mattbuck, I am the worst not Mike :P Huib talk 12:31, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Amazing how much I find similarity between me and this cat ;-p --Yuval Y § Chat § 14:53, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Arabic speaker needed

Could someone who speaks Arabic have a word with User:Tvss, please? His uploads seem all to be copyvios. If this doesn't stop, there's no help but blocking him. Lupo 13:22, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

will post.--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 11:21, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Adding Credit Line field in {{Information}} template

In the discussion Commons:Village_pump#Contributors to WC can forget about having their work credited from June 29 2009 I proposed to add an optional field Credit line to {{Information}} template where authors or bots can add text to be used by reusers of commons files. The discussion focused on how confusing it is for reusers to figure out what is the proper or required attribution line. The proposal received a very positive response with no opposing views. The final output of altered template is expected to look like this example. Also Commons:Credit Line page was created where users can discuss/decide on proper form of credit lines (recommended or required) for different licenses, but the first step is to make place for it in the information template. I placed this post in {{Information}} talk page with {{editprotected}} but got no replies. Could someone help? --Jarekt (talk) 16:26, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

It might not be the place and time for discussion, but is adding "Wikimedia Commons" required in some way by the CC licenses, or only suggested/requested by Commons? --Eusebius (talk) 13:30, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

AIUI, Commons is (normally) not an author of the files it hosts, and therefore need not be credited unless the author explicitly designates Commons as an Attribution Party (as per CC-BY 3.0 § 4(b)) or otherwise requests that such credit be provided (e.g. asking to be credited as "J. Random User / Wikimedia Commons"). Indeed, crediting only Commons will generally fail to comply with the attribution requirement of CC-BY or other such licenses, unless of course the author (all of them, if several) explicitly allows their work to be attributed only to Commons. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:56, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Mentioning Commons in connection with the photographers name in the credit line might provide other potential re-users the only possibility to contact the photographer, especially in case where the photo is credited to a username. --Túrelio (talk) 15:20, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

 Comment This is exactly kind of discussion we need and for which Commons:Credit Line was created. --Jarekt (talk) 15:50, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

It also implies that it might be too soon to put it in {{Information}} just yet. There's things to work out yet. For example, the "credit line" for GNU licenses is repeating what the license template says. Also, I'm concerned with adding another field to such a heavily used template that may be only used by a small portion of users. Many people that insist on specific credit lines already do so with custom templates. We need to clarify that to uploaders/reusers that this credit line is only a suggested way to attribute the work. I still would feel better if something was adding to the CC templates instead. That way it'll help prevent it from being misused or misleading. Rocket000 (talk) 23:11, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

If you have a field people will begin using it (I am planning to fill it for all of my images), if you do not add one than there will not be a standard place to put what the credit line should be and nothing will change from current status: reusers will still not be able to find what kind of attribution is required and uploders will be clueless (as I was) that they should provide text of expected attribution. One could add it to all license templates, but that would require small rewrite of all of them and to all their translations. We are talking 100's of templates (~60 CC templates without counting translations) and I really doubt it will happen. That is why adding a optional field to {{Information}} seems like a cleaner solution. Also in case of CC licenses (as far as I understand) after author chooses a credit line it is no longer optional it is required. I am sure there are many things to work out, but mostly with how to fill such a field, which we can discuss afterwords. --Jarekt (talk) 03:05, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

OTRS - How long is too long?

File:Tim Pawlenty official photo.jpg is an obvious copyright violation and the OTRS that was sent was not okay. Yet the OTRS is still somehow "processed". What does that mean, are we waiting for a new OTRS? It should take the office about 10 seconds to write back a correct email template and still the pic waits since June 17. What's up with that? (No offense, but I'm curious why attempts to get the pic deleted are reverted - couldn't the pic be uploaded anew as soon as/if a license approval arrives?) Hekerui (talk) 21:25, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

It's not good to keep copyvio images up too long, but it's also important to keep images being processed by OTRS visible during that process, so that the person giving permission can examine the image and confirm it's the one they intend to give permission for. I'm not sure what the most effective compromise is here, but the status quo is to keep images up as long as OTRS is processing them, even if it takes a while. Dcoetzee (talk) 21:36, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree. As long as it is likely that we get a permission we can wait a couple of weeks (but not months or years). --MGA73 (talk) 21:46, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

There have been bots recently written to help process these OTRS files which previously could stay in limbo for months (or even years in some cases). I know that files that are put in "no OTRS permission" are ready to be deleted after 15 days (and because of backlog, may not be deleted for longer). Last I heard, a bot was being worked on to process the "OTRS received" files as well, but I don't know the details. User:HersfoldOTRSBot#Completed_requests #5 deals with this. Not sure on the timescale though. And it seems like it is up to the agent who processed the ticket to later tag it for deletion. Seems like it would better if the bot could add the image to a deletion category after a set number of days.... -Andrew c (talk) 01:19, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Change of template to inform uploader of bad Flickr upload

Not sure where to start this debate so feel free to move if it is a bad place. But currently the template User:FlickreviewR/reviewed-fail-recent says

"This image recently uploaded image was originally posted to Flickr by {{{1}}} at {{{2}}}. It has been reviewed on {{{3}}} by FlickreviewR, who found it to be licensed under the terms of the {{{4}}}, which isn't compatible with the Commons. It is unknown whether the license above was ever valid. If this image was recently uploaded, it may be speedy deleted."

Should we add a line like this one (just like on other delete-templates):

Please notify the uploader by adding the following to their talk page: {{subst:flickrunfreenote|File:xxx.jpg}} --~~~~

And make a template-note that tells the uploader that he/she should check files before uploading or whatever would be good to inform the uploader?

In my view it would be good to inform uploader of the problems to prevent him/her to do it again. --MGA73 (talk) 20:05, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Can't we have to bot do the notification? Why does this need a human? Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 01:09, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Would be nice if we could. Images without a license should be tagged and the uploader informed. But i noticed that the bot does not always notify uploader so I guess that it is not easy to get a bot to work properly. --MGA73 (talk) 17:56, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, notifying uploaders is not really an overly challenging task for a bot. If the current bot doesn't do it correctly, then that needs to be looked into. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 13:34, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Copyvio images need to be deleted

All four images uploaded by User:Khatibimaroc need to be speedied. This image is a blatant copyvio of this newspaper (and was pointed out as such when the same user requested it be uploaded to en.wiki here). The other three are paintings done by Mr. Hayani that are claimed to be the work of the uploader, which is definitely not Mr. Hayani. Thanks. Parsecboy (talk) 12:38, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

 Comment Why don't you notify the uploader? That way, it will be likely they won't upload copyvios in the future, and as a courtesy to the uploader, it would be nice to do so, so they won't get angry because of the deletion. →Diti the penguin — 13:30, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

In interacting with the user on en.wiki, he has demonstrated that he does not pay attention to what he's been told, and has already been temporarily blocked there for disruption. I don't see how his behavior will change here; it's best to just speedy the copyvios. Parsecboy (talk) 16:21, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Decision

The image File:Rasensport_MGladbach_1920-1921.jpg is nominated for deletion since February. From my point of view the image was taken before 1923 and should be kept (pragmatic rule for images taken before 1923, at least applied in the deWP). Anyway, the image is used in the article about Borussia Monchengladbach in deWP, which is currently in the review process for Good Articles. Before I nominate the article, I would like to get this issue resolved. I would appreciate if someone could take a look at it and take a decision. Thank you. Regards, Linksfuss (talk) 20:34, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Flickr upload bot questions

Please see en:User talk:Leahtwosaints#Upload problems. --Timeshifter (talk) 02:57, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Cross-namespace redirections

See also Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive_7#Cross_namespace_redirects, Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2009Apr#The_Go_button

G.dallorto has created quite a number of redirections from the main namespace to the category namespace (see [8]). I've deleted a few, he re-created them. It looks plain wrong to me to have cross-namespace redirections (and to create redirections out of nothing, even if they were correct category redirects, but in that case I wouldn't have speedied), but I'd like to be sure there isn't a reason that I ignore that could justify that. For now it is just me against him, and it is not fun. Is there a regulation somewhere about that? If not, what's the common opinion? Thanks in advance for your input. --Eusebius (talk) 20:47, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Those cross namespace redirects are ideal to separate external world interfaces from the gallery name domain in all possible languages towards the single name/single language internal category namespace. Moreover, there, the redirects work perfectly. And that way, we could solve our translation problems while isolating our internal categorisation (re-)organisations. I don't see on what grounds you are deleting those redirects on Commons (but which would be legitimate in a normal wikipedia). --Foroa 22:03, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I used to be strongly opposed to cross-namespace redirects because "namespaces were created for a reason" and that, but now I'm the opposite. After lots of work with categories, redirecting mainspace pages to a category is much better than redirecting other categories to a category. Commons is different than other projects; our "mainspace" is largely unnecessary and redundant to categories (except when a gallery is truly a gallery and not just a list of images in gallery tags). Like the anon said, redirecting mainspace pages to categories is kinda like creating a external/multilingual gateway to our internal category structure. We keep our category structure nice and neat while improving access to it. I'm against any other kinds of CNRs (with a couple exceptions like project page shortcuts). Rocket000 (talk) 23:25, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

If there's not enough stuff yet to create a real useful gallery, then a redirect to the category is the best thing to do. --Slomox (talk) 23:34, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

If we had better support for category redirects, this wouldn't be necessary. I create links from other projects to gallery pages here, then redirect the gallery pages to categories. Then, if the category is moved, you can fix the gallery redirects and delete the old category (because {{Category redirect}} is terrible). Wknight94 ^talk 01:09, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I think that is mis-using galleries/categories. It is a work around for a problem involving updating links on external wikis, not much to do with how commons should be organised. My main problem with creating galleries that just point to categories is that it makes it less likely that anyone will ever go to the trouble of creating a proper gallery page. But I would only really object if a gallery is obliterated to create the redirect. --Tony Wills (talk) 02:17, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

That's one of our biggest problems: Few people go to the trouble of creating a proper gallery page. Actually I have never seen a gallery in all my Commons life that looked well-organized and useful and complete. While putting images in categories is a thing done in some few seconds, creating a gallery needs much time looking at all existing images, taking just the most useful ones and arranging them in a meaningful way. It's an editorial process. Most galleries I see are just some random pictures. But for random pictures categories are better.

To give an example: In a gallery about a person I would expect to find images from different decades of the person's life (of course sorted in a timeline). From childhood till retirement age. Perhaps images of the father and mother of the person (and the spouse and children, if it's a top VIP and no personality rights apply). Then of course images of the person doing what the person is known for: a writer writing; a politician in cabinet or with prominent politicians from other countries or holding an important speech; a soccer player playing soccer with images from the different clubs he played for etc.). And of course all of them being high-quality images.

Most galleries have no red line. In a good gallery every image must be placed there with a reason.

What I want to say: Waiting for proper galleries shouldn't stop us from creating redirects in the meantime. --Slomox (talk) 02:51, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

A little edit-conflict there, but I agree completely. Rocket000 (talk) 02:56, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

"makes it less likely that anyone will ever go to the trouble of creating a proper gallery page" That's a good thing. We have way too many useless "galleries" simply because users think there needs to be a gallery for everything (like Wikipedia articles or something). If replacing a redirect with a gallery is seen as too much trouble, then those users probably shouldn't be making a gallery there in the first place. Let me give you an example of where I "obliterated" a gallery: the old page → the new page. Can you honestly tell me that keeping that gallery as it was helps users find content? (And don't say something like "improve the gallery instead" because I disagree that it should have existed in the first place and there's really nothing I could do that the category already does more efficiently). Rocket000 (talk) 02:51, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

No, it's not about "If replacing a redirect with a gallery is seen as too much trouble", it is more about it not being very obvious to someone who hasn't seen that sort of redirect. They go to edit the gallery page, are transparently redirected to the category page, and think that is the current gallery. Maybe they create a gallery at the top of the category page, maybe they go away confused :-). Also deleting fledgling galleries with a redirect because they are in some way inadequate is crazy, things get built upon, very seldom does anyone create a gallery complete in every way. Deleting the gallery by using a redirect just stifles that initial creation. If the category that a gallery is in (one furher click) is hiding content, then maybe galleries need more obvious "Further content" type links --Tony Wills (talk) 13:42, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Especially for galleries, but for large categories too, navigation and jumping from one category to another would be much easier if parent categories would be displayed on top of the page instead of the bottom.

Prosotas nora is a good example. To add additional value I would expect a gallery to show images of embryo, larva, pupa and imago. Both male and female if the species has sexual dimorphism. Then images of all different subspecies (if subspecies exist). Then of course images that show the wing pattern and the wing pattern on the underside in detail. And a gallery with anatomical details (eye, wing close-up, antennae, feet etc.). And a distribution map. With information like that a gallery is useful. But two random pictures are just a accessibility barrier for the category. --Slomox (talk) 13:08, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I would prefer a separate name space that contains all the names of all the articles in all wikipedias, including disambiguation, along with all their interwiki's and potential translations. That namespace would be a buffer (and search) zone towards the real Commons categories, our core job. That way, we have a uniform external interface all managed in one place with working redirects. I guess that this zone could even become the central repository of all interwiki's. As this seems not immediately feasible, the next best solution is to use redirects from the gallery/article main space. --Foroa (talk) 06:00, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

NB: In the light of this discussion I have of course restored the deleted redirection. --Eusebius (talk) 13:24, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

• A lot of the above discussion actually sounds like the old "gallery vs category" discussion re-hashed once again. I thought the consensus was still "galleries" and "categories". I really feel that a large scale creation of cross space redirects will destroy that concept. Maybe that is the new concensus: galleries are a waste of time (because "no one" maintains them properly, but have we had that discussion and reached a new consensus? --Tony Wills (talk) 13:49, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
  • I am a firm believer of proper galleries and there are several jewel galleries here. If parent categories would be displayed at the top of a gallery page, there would be no problems of coexistence of galleries and redirects. --Foroa (talk) 13:59, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
  • There's no problem with galleries if there's a purpose behind them. That is what we (at least most of us from what I can tell) mean when we say they can coexist. We don't mean they should be redundant. Making a gallery that looks exactly like a category is kinda silly and a waste of time. No one maintains them because we have a galleries that maintain themselves called categories. I redirect unmade mainspace pages to categories intentionally to help guide users that might get idea to create a gallery simply because it doesn't exist. That is not a good a reason to create one. Keeping with the butterfly theme here's a couple proper galleries: Papilio & Parnassius. They're useful and serve a purpose. They're also incomplete and work in progress. That's not why I considered Prosotas nora a bad gallery. I don't except gallery makers to make a "finished" gallery at all but there needs to be a purpose behind it (and duplicating the category because we can't let go of our old ways doesn't count). Rocket000 (talk) 23:41, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

• To create redirects "to help guide users that might get idea to create a gallery simply because it doesn't exist" is only valid if you do think there is something inherently inferior in galleries compared to categories. Whereas proponents of galleries would hold that the opposite is true - ie that an organised, select display of images is inherently more useful than a randomly organise category (especially if it is large). If you believed the latter you would of course be finding ways to help people create useful galleries, rather than ways to discourage them from even creating a fledgling gallery in the first place :-). I think we agree that a gallery that is simply a list of the category is of no great use. Also a gallery that is not maintained is not useful if it tends to inhibit users from finding further content. But I disagree that a redirect is appropriate to 'solve' these two problems. But you (and others) have obviously put a great deal of thought into this, is there perhaps a discussion that I have missed - this doesn't quite seem to be the appropriate forum for that more general discussion. --Tony Wills (talk) 04:14, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

• Galleries are inferior when you're trying to make them do exactly what a category automatically does. Putting a couple images on a page without any captions/organization is doing just that. The problem is you (and others in the past) are seeing this as a gallery vs. category issue. None of us are opposing galleries, just the useless ones that make finding content more difficult and were created without purpose. It's not which is "better", it's which is the most appropriate to use for what you're doing. By appropriate I mean common sense, logical, sane. Making it seem like a simple personal preference like saying choosing JPEG or SVG is simply a personal preference. Just because I like SVG doesn't mean I think all our files should be SVG (or "SVG" and "JPEG", in this case ;). The "proper galleries" I pointed out shouldn't (couldn't) ever be categories. But many galleries I come across shouldn't be galleries. A good gallery (or start of one) can not be redirected to a category without losing useful information and that's not something I would never do. It's not so much we put a lot of thought into it (i.e. any recent discussions), it's more that we put a lot of work into the systems in place and understand the purposes of each, what works and what doesn't, what's the most beneficial for the user and what gets in the way. (IMO, experience will get us a lot than any convincing argument will). Anyway, you're right, this discussion has kinda wandered... to my talk page it seems :-) Rocket000 (talk) 06:00, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Hello, A chronological order (see Mohandas K. Gandhi) or subject classification (see John Ruskin) are examples of where galleries bring something which categories don't. On the contrary I create redirects to categories for languages or spelling reasons. Yann (talk) 10:08, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Both of those are excellent examples of the usefulness of galleries. Rocket000 (talk) 21:07, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Cross-namespace redirections - Summary

• Ok it this not really a summary, but my suggestions :-)
• I think there is a broad consensus here that galleries can be useful, but the whole redirection thing wakes us up to the fact that many are marginally useful, or even quite useless :-). So it is up to everyone to improve galleries so that redirects aren't the default. I suggest a few guidelines:

1. ) Redirects of a not yet existing gallery to an existing category are fine.
2. ) Redirects of unstructured galleries (ie galleries which are just a list of images in the category with no sorting or structure) are acceptable (but be gentle with users who have just created such a gallery as there is nothing like being a new user and seeing your work obliterated :-).
3. ) Redirects of unmaintained galleries needs to be done carefully and not done routinely (is the last maintainer still active? maybe just point it out to them). The preference is to update the gallery or add a marker to highlight that it needs updating (suitable template?)
4. ) Redirects of other galleries (to categories) should be seldom, if not at all.

Have I missed anything? --Tony Wills (talk) 11:36, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I really don't agree with the idea that it is ok to delete (replace with a redirection) an unsorted or unstructured gallery. The gallery can be a selection of the media in the category, and even without a structure (even without any caption or summary) it may contain information by this means. Deletion of such a gallery can then mean a loss of information. Some galleries of this kind are often created to point out the valued image of a scope to the reusers, for instance. If the parent cat is precise and narrow enough, maybe the structuration of the gallery isn't as important as the selection among the existing pictures. --Eusebius (talk) 11:48, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok we can define structured/sorted to include deliberately selected. But if it is a deliberate selection then it needs a title/description/caption/heading on the page to describe what it is, or it will only be meaningful to its creator. ie if someone looking at it can not tell it from a random subset of the category then is it useful to others? --Tony Wills (talk) 12:10, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean about the caption. Of course it is always better to have one, but 1) if there is none, it is usually easy to fix and 2) sometimes, it doesn't bring much. Take Category:Neufchâtel (cheese), there's no gallery about that but there's a VI. Imagine there is a gallery, putting a stress on the VI by the means of the standard seal. Even without a caption, this is (in some way) useful for reusers (by pointing the image which is thought to be the most illustrative of the category), and a caption wouldn't bring much more information than the title of the category, especially if one wants to keep it short. --Eusebius (talk) 12:23, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

In relation to this discussion a title/description/caption(etc) will help ward off the redirectors as they will easily see that the gallery has a loving and attentive sponsor, so they should tread carefully :-). (Of course the redirectors will be following these guidelines and look out for such clues ;-). If existing 'useful' galleries are redirected it should be standard practice to revert the redirect and add the title(etc) to 'protect' the gallery. As a by-product the title(etc) will help all users looking at the gallery. :-) (NB I see the Commons:Galleries page has been modified before concensus is reached, my fauly for labelling this as a summary :-( ) --Tony Wills (talk) 13:27, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

A redirect is in fact an empty gallery that brings us directly to the right (and single) category.

Whenever there is something in the gallery, there is no single reason to delete it. Only improvements are encouraged. If we would have deleted all galleries that have been started with one or two images, we would have few galleries left. --Foroa (talk) 14:14, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm against having written guidelines here because I find that people misinterpret what galleries we're talking about. For example, as Eusebius has done. Even a VI seal is enough not to redirect the gallery. It's not being done because they are unsorted/unstructured, but because there's no purpose at all behind it other than to reproduce the category's automatic gallery (even the formatting's the same). I think people tend to oppose on principle rather than the actual pages we're talking about. You can't just apply a blanket rule for all gallery/category combinations. Some terrible galleries can become something useful with a little work. Rocket000 (talk) 20:54, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Also, don't forget categories have pages too (e.g. Category:Neufchâtel (cheese)). Unnecessary separation of information is usually a bad thing. Rocket000 (talk) 21:02, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I think Category:Neufchâtel (cheese) is not a good example of a category - too few members and extraneous info not related to structure. Categories are part of the structure of Commons, the scafolding perhaps. The information content is the structure, the relation between groups of images. They should contain (sub-categories included) all images relating to the subject (including editted revisions, and regardless of quality etc). They are just a repository. If we start putting article info on the category page, then it will duplicate the info on the gallery page and you will end up having to maintain two different versions of the same info - inheriently bad practice. If you really think that info is needed on that page, then perhaps a transcluded subpage that can be included in gallery & category pages would work. One case for creating a gallery on a category page, might be to create a visual index of the sub-categories (eg for subspecies) as this relates directly to the category structure. Another might be to have taxonomic name info as that also relates to structure. --Tony Wills (talk) 22:43, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

NB The category has been transformed gallery-wise only after my remark, I was talking of the plain raw category. However, this last edit is rather consistent with an old community consensus about what the merge between galleries and categories should look like. Plus, Commons:Categories says that categories should contain "a short description text that explains what should be in the category". You cannot just ignore that and say it is bad practice! I'm not sure the duplication issue is serious enough to warrant a systematic transclusion system, which would be more difficult to use for beginners. --Eusebius (talk) 06:39, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I basically agree :-). Although all it needed is text that "explains what should be in the category" - mainly to clarify when the category name is ambiguos or when people are interpreting it in the wrong way. So for this category I would put "Neufchâtel cheeses, made in Haute-Normandie, France". But ok, the existing description is not actually excessive, though it doesn't need the subsequently added VI image (sorry Rocket :-) And yes, transclusion pages for every gallery/category pair would be a pain, which is why I don't actually promote the idea :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 08:09, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I simply added the VI image there to point out that you don't need a gallery to inform users which one is the VI. The alternative would be creating a gallery out of what you agree isn't even enough for a decent category. My point was that you don't need to create a whole new gallery if all you want to do is point out the VI. The description (or anything else) wasn't what I was linking to it for. Personally, I think we can do with a lot less text around here. If you really want to know where Neufchâtel cheese comes from, go to your local Wikipedia and read up on it. Most categories are self-explanatory and don't need anything more (excluding translations of the name itself, of course). Rocket000 (talk) 22:06, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Can... someone with knowledge of Persian (or Arabic) writing

...anyone help with the licencing/permission of this image? --High Contrast (talk) 19:49, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Requires knowledge of Persian (or Arabic) writing. --Túrelio (talk) 06:02, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. Can somebody please help? --High Contrast (talk) 10:11, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

It's Persian.--OsamaK 11:33, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't really read Persian, but the image can be found on the source website as given in the image description [9], and the copyright notice at the bottom (where you can see the string "GFDL") google-translates as "Open publication of this Web site, including all articles, news, sound and image and ... Or completely abstract, it is permitted with mention source. «All subjects under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) are published»". Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:14, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Images from Sajed.ir website are under GFDL and we can use them in commons . btw I am fa-N --Mardetanha ^talk 12:55, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Comment. Please see also the discussion at Category talk:Halabja chemical attack#Sajed.ir. Could we create an image license template for Sajed.ir? All of the images in the following 2 categories are up for deletion, and are from that site:

• Category:Halabja chemical attack
• Category:1987 Sardasht chemical attacks

And is the Sajed.ir site an official government site? Is there a page on that site with info about this? We need a quote from that page, and a link to that page in the template. For translation help see this Persian (Farsi)-to-English Google translation page:

• http://translate.google.com/?sl=fa&tl=en#

--Timeshifter (talk) 19:17, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

See also the weblink search and the english Wikipedia w:en:Wikipedia:Media_copyright_questions/Archive/2008/February#sajed.ir_images and w:en:Wikipedia:Files for deletion/2007 July 20#Image:Imam_in_Mehrabad.jpg. There was some problem with the file w:en:Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images/2008 February 4#Image:Vincennes shot.jpg which was also an issue on Commons Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Vincennes shot.jpg and Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Archives/Attention 4#Speedy deletion candidate?. Any template should express the concern, that maybe the organization The Foundation for the Remembrance of The Holy Defence’s Monument Preservation and Sacred Values Propagation behind sajed.ir is not eligible to license every image - as long as this is not covered by any iranian laws we dont know. Reviewing the site I would personaly copy nothing from it because everything looks grabbed from somewhere else - especially I would stay away from something with 17 TinEye hits. --Martin H. (talk) 04:56, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the links! I did not know of Special:LinkSearch. The weblink search pulls up 167 pages on the Commons. Here is a variation of the URL:

• http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&target=*.sajed.ir&limit=500

This comment below is interesting. It is from this discussion:

• en:Wikipedia:Media copyright questions/Archive/2008/February#sajed.ir images

The GFDL applies to all continents of the site(Photos, sounds and texts). That's a governmental site and all of the press owned Photos in Iran are governmental, because there is no private press agencies in Iran.This Persian text باز نشر کلیه مطالب این سایت شامل مقالات، اخبار، صوت و تصویر و ... به طور کامل و یا چکیده آن، با ذکر منبع بلامانع است.«کلیهٔ مطالب تحت مجوز مستندات آزاد گنو (GFDL) منتشر می‌شوند» means : re-publishing all of the subjects of this site including articles , news , sound and image and ... as a whole or partial , is allowed with mentioning the name of the source. All of the subjects of this site are released under the GFDL licence.--Alborz Fallah (talk) 19:41, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Is this true?: "That's a governmental site and all of the press owned Photos in Iran are governmental, because there is no private press agencies in Iran."

At Category talk:Halabja chemical attack Breathing Dead (see User talk:Breathing Dead) says this: "The pictures in Sajed's website are property of Iran's high council of defence and are published as GNU(GFDL) so you may use all the pictures with a reference to their website (according to their site). Actually the site is running by the very same people who are killing our innocent people in the streets right now (Basi militia members)!"

He is Iranian, and is in Iran now. He is talking about the en:Basij, which is the government militia.

Doesn't 17 TinEye hits for File:Halabja-Iran-8.jpg mean only that the image is being used in 17 places on the web? As far as TinEye has documented so far. That does not say anything about copyright. The Iraqi chemical attacks are a notable topic, and so it is not surprising that the image is used in many places. Another image from that set, File:Chemical weapon2.jpg, says it is taken by an Iranian press photographer, Sayeed Janbozorgi (died in 2002). --Timeshifter (talk) 08:26, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Info box at bottom of IP user talk pages

At the bottom of talk pages of IP users there is an info box which has links to external tools for looking up IPs etc. The links for "IP info", "Traceroute", "Abuse" and "City" and possibly others go to a web-service that asks for $79 to give any useful info. Can all these links be set to somewhere non commercial? or failing that, just deleted? --Tony Wills (talk) 12:33, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Correction should be made in MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext. Does anyone know of good alternative locations for these services? Lupo 13:00, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I have a DNS Stuff account at work so I was able to check into this:

The IP info link can be fixed by changing it to http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ipall/?ip={{PAGENAMEE}}

The traceroute link can be fixed by changing it to http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert/?ip={{PAGENAMEE}}

The abuse link only returns a city and what looks like a broken lookup to whois.abuse.net. Going to http://whois.abuse.net/, brings you to a page that says this is not a web service. So not sure what to do with this link. Perhaps it should be eliminated.

The city is no longer free from DNS Stuff. The IP address tool from DNS Stuff gives a google map so I think the City link is redundant and could be eliminated. --Captain-tucker (talk) 14:49, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I entered an {{Editprotected}} change request for the IP info and traceroute links on MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext. --Captain-tucker (talk) 14:21, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

 fixed Lycaon (talk) 14:41, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

---

Vandalism by an Admin

I have uploaded 5 images related to recent uprising of people in Iran against the government in the Commons then I and other users used them in some English Wikipedia article. There was not any problem till I put some of them in an article in the Persian Wikipedia. Then I noticed that all those images were deleted in the Commons. It sounds like someone who also has administrator's access to the Commons has deleted those pictures to Censor the Wikipedia! Since it is a very big abuse of Administratorship, I demand immediate investigation and punishmet of the faulty person.

Here are the pictures in commons which were deleted and I uploaded them again:

File:Basij Militia members.jpg, File:Basij member with a knife.jpg, File:Mohammad Javad Basirat.jpg, File:A close shot of an armed basij militia.jpg and File:A shot of the demonstration of 18-Tir.JPG --Breathing Dead (talk) 21:51, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Hello , your are not allowed to upload non-free images on commons --Mardetanha ^talk 22:03, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

The images are deleted again, and i agree with this deletion as I trust the deleting administartor. It appears, that this images are not your photos and that also your friend is not the holder of copyrights and therefore you or your friend are not eligible to provide the legal requirements needed on Commons. See e.g. http://tineye.com/search/7fe814fb382599561c8fc8df109972b339b6a02a, see COM:L for the requirements. --Martin H. (talk) 22:06, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Plase note that I PERSONALLY took File:A shot of the demonstration of 18-Tir.JPG and others are aslo have been taken by my friends and are NOT copyrighted. I think the one who has deleted them also knew that what exactly he was doing! It is absolutely clear that your friend who has deleted the picture is lying! Can you show me who owns the copyright?--Breathing Dead (talk) 22:10, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Martin. You wrote: "that also your friend is not the holder of copyrights". The TinEye hits (http://tineye.com/search/7fe814fb382599561c8fc8df109972b339b6a02a ) for this photo:

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/26297293@N04/3639225986/sizes/o/in/photostream/

do not show who owns the copyright. That particular uploader does not seem like the original owner of the photo either. That account has too many classic protest photos to be from one photographer. That photo is also not the one Breathing Dead claimed as his own.

The photo that he shot was uploaded to the Commons the same day that it was shot. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:24, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Mass removal of free User:Breathing Dead Iran protest images. Why?

User:Mardetanha deleted many images uploaded by User:Breathing Dead without discussion. These are timely images about the Iranian protests. Shouldn't there be at least a little discussion and notice?

The edit summary was "Mass removal of pages added by Breathing Dead , your supposed to either upload free images or your images."

All the images were free images. "A friend of mine who gave permission to use this image freely." People are risking their lives sharing these images. The images were being used in an article.

User:Breathing Dead is a trustworthy uploader. For example; File:Grave of Neda.jpg was uploaded to Farsi Wiki by

• http://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/کاربر:Truth_Seeker

Concerning File:Grave of Neda.jpg photo en:User:Breathing Dead wrote the following on his English Wikipedia user page:

"This user took this picture from the grave site of Neda. He was not alone there. Lots of people were comming to put flowers on her grave. We shall never forget our beloved Neda! This user wishes, he was shot dead instead of this innocent young girl."

On his talk page in reply to my sourcing question he wrote:

"Yes I took that picture. Yes my Persian Wikipedia's account name is Truth Seeker. I do have a common's account but I have uploaded that picture in Persian Wikipedia, then a user asked me to allow him to also upload it to the commons and I gave him the permission."

So he is figuring out the commons now, and we should use normal deletion procedures.

See also: File:Continuity IRA 2006.jpg - It is an image uploaded by somebody else. It shows illegal activities. To use a real name to claim ownership of the image risks imprisonment.

According to the Iranian government people sharing protest photos with the outside world are committing illegal terrorist activities.

We don't require real names for other photo owners. For example; the many Commons photos from Flickr accounts with alias names. As long as the account has not claimed copyrighted photos as their own.

User:Breathing Dead has never made any false claims about the images he uploads. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:08, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

If you want to upload images that you didn't take yourself, you have to prove permission from the photographer by having him/her send a mail to OTRS. The admin just did his job. Thanks. Lycaon (talk) 22:11, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Plase note that I PERSONALLY took File:A shot of the demonstration of 18-Tir.JPG and the others are not also copyrighted! The admin who has deleted the pictures is a wiki-fa admin too and it is absolutely clear that his only intention to delete those files were to censor wikipedia to help the Iranian government hide their barbaric acts of murder.--Breathing Dead (talk) 22:19, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Commons is not a venue for political debates , images were deleted merely for being copyright violation --Mardetanha ^talk 22:21, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

• Yes and you are abusing commons to protect your political views. There is absolutely no issue with the copyright of those pictures and you know it. I even took one of them personally!--Breathing Dead (talk) 22:28, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Why didn't you, Mardetanha, not ask for OTRS email confirmation, then? I have seen OTRS pending tags on images. What is the rush? Also, why did you delete the image that clearly said User:Breathing Dead took the photo. Why no assumption of good faith? Common courtesy and common sense would want new uploaders to be given a chance to get the necessary OTRS in line. We do it for others. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:25, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

sure , but i know this user from fawiki whom i already blocked for sockpuppetry . but as matter of fact i have always assumed good faith , but some of those images which were uploaded by the above mentioned user were massivly used in Persian media which proves he is not telling truth by having the permission . working on commons is matter of trust , and when you failed getting people's trust then you are not welcome to upload your falsely-claimed images . --Mardetanha ^talk 22:35, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

If some of those pictures are being used anywhere in the Internet doesn't mean that they are copyrighted and I am lying.

Plus I took File:A shot of the demonstration of 18-Tir.JPG personally. It is absolutely clear that the one who is lying is you. You are clearly abusing your admin rights in commons to protect your beloved regime of murderers in Iran. You mass deleted all those pictures without even notifying me. It was immediately after I used them in a Persian wikipedia article where it was stated that Basij militia have not used arms against people. It is completely clear that you are abusing your rights and other admins should take a serious decision about your administratorship rights!--Breathing Dead (talk) 22:55, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Just because the images have been used elsewhere does not mean Breathing Dead is lying when he says he knows the original photographer.

blocked for sockpuppetry. fawiki: "Yes (on 22:55, 03 July 2009 till infinity by Mardetanha; Reason: sockpuptet or meatpuptet of blocked user [[user:Truth Seeker]]"

Why was Truth Seeker blocked? Is he blocked also for infinity? --Timeshifter (talk) 22:54, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I see farther down that only the sockpuppet, Breathing Dead, is blocked. Truth Seeker is no longer blocked. See the comments down below. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:22, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Please all of you CALM DOWN. We have a rule here - be mellow. Stop accusing each other of lying and/or being fascist/anti-democracy/whatever. Discuss it calmly. Insults get you nowhere. -mattbuck (Talk) 23:01, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

You are absolutely right about being mellow, but this guy User:Mardetanha is clearly working for the Iranian government. His administratorship rights in commons are very dangerous not only for the uploaded files but also for the safety of the users from Iran! He has blocked me in Persian Wikipedia for just opposing the government. Do people in English wikipedia block a user for saying i.e. "George Bush is a murderer"? He and one of his admin friends in Persian Wikipedia have blocked me for saying "Ahmadinejad and Khamenei are murderers" in my own talk page, not in an article! Now he is saying that he knows me and because of that he has deleted ALL the files which I have uploaded. Surprisingly all those pictures were showing brutality of the Iranian regime! Now what do you think?--Breathing Dead (talk) 23:23, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Different-language wikipedias can have different rules for what can be on user pages. So, that does not mean User:Mardetanha is working for the Iranian government. You have to stop making accusations. If all you were blocked for on Farsi Wiki is what is on your user page, then maybe you can agree not to put political statements on your Farsi Wiki user page, and User:Mardetanha can unblock you on Farsi wiki. You have to compromise to get anything done on Wikipedia. By the way, you could be blocked for calling George Bush a murderer on the George Bush article talk page. en:WP:BLP is very strict. User pages are less strict, but there are some things not allowed. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:39, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

There is no need to unblock me in Fa wiki. Someone should just stop this guy from abusing his admin rights in the commons. As you see, he mass deletes whatever he doesn't like, without even contacting the uploader or having a firm reason that the pictures are copyrighted. And who knows if he reveals the IPs to the Iranian government or not?--Breathing Dead (talk) 00:04, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Breathing Dead, I support the fight of the people of Iran and wish I was there to help. I believe you are unfair to admin Mardetanha. Please take a look here, where they talk about Free Iran. I hope you understand now what side Mardetanha is at. --Mbz1 (talk) 00:25, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

The link you have sent has nothing to do with what I said! His actions as an administrator are totally abusive. He has mass deleted all pictures related to the recent events in Iran which I have uploaded with the reason that he knows me and I am an anti government user whom can not be trusted!--Breathing Dead (talk) 00:59, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

The link I provided was in response to this statement of yours: "And who knows if he reveals the IPs to the Iranian government ". The link I provided proves that Mardetanha will never do anything like that.--Mbz1 (talk) 01:17, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

OTRS rules are applied unevenly. See Commons:OTRS. But admins are in their rights to demand permission from the original owner of the photos. You are not helping your situation though when you say things like "who knows if he reveals the IPs to the Iranian government or not." You are not following the en:WP:CIVIL guideline. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:17, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Breathing Dead should be more diplomatic. But he is seeing his friends murdered and beaten, so I think we should approach this more calmly too, and find out why he was initially blocked at Farsi Wiki. If it was just because of his heated remarks, maybe Mardetanha and the admins there can allow him back if he promises to follow Wikipedia:Assume Good Faith, and learn to ask questions, rather than make accusations. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:11, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

FYI , His main account is not blocked atm in fawiki , i only blocked his socks --Mardetanha ^talk 23:47, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh, OK. He still has his Truth Seeker user account? Is that his unblocked user account now? Maybe he was also trying to unify his Breathing Dead name across more wikis. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:25, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Let's all settle down here, and stop making accusations. Mardetanha acted within his rights as an administrator by deleting images which he suspected of being copyright violations. Maybe they should have been marked as missing permission first, but that's by the by. What is certain is that the images were not deleted through malice, or as an attempt of pro-Ahmadinejad censorship. At commons, we only accept media for which we have a paper trail guaranteeing its freedom. If you say you took a photo yourself, in most cases we'll believe you. But if you say your friend took it, we need their assurance that they understand and agree to the terms of a free licence - this is why we have OTRS - we need to have a guarantee that they authorise the use of their images. But the reason all your images were nuked is because a significant number appeared to be uploaded without permission, and a LOT of people claim own work on images which are clearly not their own - it's somewhat guilt by association. We don't know that you took the images, you've shown that you do upload content you have no rights to, so we delete them on the basis that they may well also be copyright violations.

Now, I hope you can understand our position. While admittedly we're a pretty varied bunch, I'm certain that no one you've been talking to is happy that the Iranian people appear to have been disenfranchised with the elections, and we don't want to stop people getting the word out. But at the same time, Commons has a mission to provide educational images which are considered "free", and unless the copyright holder agrees to licence them freely, and we have some form of confirmation of that, we can't host the images. If the friend who took the images could email us (see COM:OTRS for details) confirming they agree to a free licence (and specifying which one(s)), then we would happily restore the images they took, and I expect Mardetanha would be happy to restore the images that YOU took, as this does just seem to be a big misunderstanding. But be aware that we do not treat copyright lightly, as it is a matter of law, and that while we respect you wanting to get the photos out there, if you aren't the copyright holder, you have no authority to release the rights.

I hope this resolves the issues here. -mattbuck (Talk) 02:07, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Page Deletion Request

Please pardon me if I'm posting this is the wrong spot, but I'm not finding the answer anywhere else.

I incorrectly created a page called Glasspar_vehicles - how do I request this page be deleted? I have since created the correct page.

Thank you and sorry for the error.

Theodulf (talk) 04:01, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

 Deleted. Next time, just add {{speedy|your reason goes here}} to the page. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 05:21, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Questionable uploads

Ned1109 (talk · contribs) appears to be an incarnation of en-wp user Wellness21, who has had many copyright violations deleted from Wikipedia and has been blocked in the past for the same. I notice that many of his/her latest uploads have also been uploaded here around the same time. The uploads should probably be reviewed; I've deleted some of the latest wave at en: but cannot ascertain an original source on others. (ESkog)^(Talk) 05:45, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I've deleted some of the uploads. Can someone else review the rest? Thanks, — Kanonkas // talk // CCD // 19:31, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Category:Commons protected edit requests

I can count no less than 18 requests on Category:Commons protected edit requests, so if some admins have time to have a look at them, please do so. Teofilo (talk) 16:43, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I have done the most of them, there are three request left, that are either to difficult for me or I didn't understand the request good enough to handle it, so if there is another admin that can do those three..

Huib talk 18:33, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Backlogs at Commons talk:MediaMoveBot/CheckPage

Hi, could any available admin take a care of the backlogs that have something to do with requests for trusted user status? Thanks.--Caspian blue 17:53, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

 Done - Thanks for the notice - Huib talk 18:37, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the quick action. :)--Caspian blue 18:52, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome offcourse. We are here to serve and protect :) Huib talk 18:53, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Editing system messages

A use caught my attention about a typo in one of MediaWiki's messages, MediaWiki:Fancycaptcha-addurl/fr (it should read "pourriel*s* automatisés"). What is the correct procedure to fix a mistake like this one? Do I just create the message locally? Do I have to send a bug report to MediaWiki developers? Jastrow (Λέγετε) 23:13, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

That page appears to be a redlink. -mattbuck (Talk) 23:52, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Not any more, once it's corrected. ;) →Diti the penguin — 23:57, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

System messages are always red links unless you create a local version even though you see the default message when you go there (Special:AllMessages). I think the correct procedure would be to tell someone at translatewiki.net. I can't imagine the developers would want bug reports for typos. Rocket000 (talk) 00:39, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Done. The modification will be impacted here in a couple of days. →Diti the penguin — 08:42, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

New user right

I just noticed we now have the ability to grant the the user right "confirmed" (admins will see the option on Special:UserRights). This means the user will be able to patrol edits (although it doesn't say their edits get autopatroled...). The upload right is also attached, I guess for when we want to override the four day wait period users have to go through to be auto-confirmed. Rocket000 (talk) 01:22, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

This is mainly for use on local projects like enwiki, where projects like Wikipedia Academy require lots of account creations, and where we don't want to have the autoconfirmed limits in the way of letting people use the wikis normally. I'm not sure if there's much use for it on Commons, since you don't need to be autoconfirmed to upload here (I guess maybe patrolling pages is helpful? ... not really sure on that).  — Mike.lifeguard 02:25, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh, ok. Now it makes more sense. I remembered after posting that the "upload" right on Commons doesn't take 4 days to get anyway (it's the "reupload" right that does). All registered users can upload here. And now that you mentioned what it's mainly used for, I remembered that the "patrol" right is normally given to autoconfirmed users on some projects (like enwiki). That explains why "confirm" and "autoconfirm" are not the same (at least for this project). Rocket000 (talk) 03:48, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Toolserver down again, no longer

In case anybody wanted to work on duplicates or anything else requiring usage checking, forget it: Toolserver is down again.
It might really better to shut down all editing on Commons until all server problems are solved and communicate that to the volunteers. --Túrelio (talk) 07:35, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Toolserver is running now. --Túrelio (talk) 20:47, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Stewart Downing copyright photo issues...

See File:Downing2.JPG and File:Downing_signs.jpg‎. This has been a bit of a problem over at en.wikipedia; it has led to a page protection and is likely being readded by multiple new users, possibly sock or meatpuppets. It looks like they are uploading at commons to avoid scrutiny at Wikipedia, as the image has been deleted several times over there as well. Just a heads up. --Jayron32 (talk) 18:44, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

See also [10] for a full description of the problem at en.wikipedia. --Jayron32 (talk) 18:45, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Deleted the uploads as copyright violations. — Kanonkas // talk // CCD // 18:47, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Deleted a couple & dropped a note on their page. I will keep an eye for possible puppet accounts - thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 18:50, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

By the by, the original seems to be coming from [11], which is Aston Villa's official website. There are several other pics of Downing at the site as well; users at en.Wikipedia seem bent on updating his pic with one of him in an Aston Villa uniform. That is fine as long as the uploading user took the pic themselves and owns the copyright on it. However, these new users are having trouble understanding and navigating the Foundations image use policies, and may keep trying to upload copyright photos of Downing in his Aston Villa kit just because he recently signed with them, without regard for copyright issues. Just take care to double check any such uploaded photo and cross-reference against the website to see if it is really legit. --Jayron32 (talk) 16:29, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Image review - File:HradecKralove14 2004-12-23.jpg

A contributor to Wikimedia Commons has noted that this image is in need of attention, but would prefer a more experienced contributor aids this. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 19:12, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

No, the uploader gives his name and a license with this upload, just be creative and enter them to the empty fields f the info template. --Martin H. (talk) 19:55, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Image review = File:AnnaMaria vanSchurman.jpg

A contributor to Wikimedia Commons has noted that this image is in need of attention, but would prefer a more experienced contributor aids this.

Basic issue: Source listed seems 'dead' :( Sfan00 IMG (talk) 19:31, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

The source is in the internet archive, https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://coopmanshus.syntraks.net/body.php. Regretably the source does also not mention an origin of this file. I cant see anything concerning copyright problems or anything else, ok, it is sad that no author is named and that we dont have a reliable book or archive as source but only an random appearance on a website. --Martin H. (talk) 19:54, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Image review - File:Ille-et-Vilaine-Position.png

A contributor to Wikimedia Commons has noted that this image is in need of attention, but would prefer a more experienced contributor aids or undertakes this.

Issue: Tineye records over 185 hits for simmilar looking images - Re-use of this image? Sfan00 IMG (talk) 00:25, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Can you please stop adding every image you found here? This is the Administrators' noticeboard for problems needing administrators attention. Yust take a look at the TinEye record, this are similar images marking other regions and reused on other sites. --Martin H. (talk) 15:15, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

User:Willian kiwi and copyvios

Willian kiwi (talk · contribs) has uploaded many copyvios, as evidenced from their talk page. I just tagged another one, File:T Lautner.jpg. They've been blocked once, for 24 hours, perhaps another block is in order? Killiondude (talk) 00:56, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

The image has since been deleted, but this user's contributions has only been images that are not appropriate for Commons (from what I can tell from the user's talk page, and the fact that all their contribs have been deleted.) Killiondude (talk) 01:36, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Editor/uploader has been blocked in the past and have been uploading copyrighted images again so I've blocked them for a week but I'll be watching the editor/uploader from now on. Bidgee (talk) 02:29, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Other opinions

Hello!

Can other Admins please have a look at this DR, please? --High Contrast (talk) 07:11, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Cat sync - new bot feature

User:EuseBot has been approved for a new feature that some people might want to use. Basically, it works with an existing category on Commons (target category) and synchronize it with an existing category on en.WP (source category). For each article in the source category, if a category (or if not, a gallery) with the exact same name exists on Commons, it is added (if needed) in the target category. Commands are issued here. The page is protected (because command mistakes could lead to over-categorization, command spam could lead to chaos), so I advertise the feature here rather than on VP. The bot runs every 15 minutes. Obvious improvement would be to allow specification of a custom project for the source category, but If you have some other ideas, I'd be glad to put them on a TODO list and forget to implement them. Comments welcome. --Eusebius (talk) 09:32, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Interesting tool. You could use it to synch birth/death year categories, e.g. Category:2009 deaths with en:Category:2009 deaths. -- User:Docu at 10:42, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Cc-by-sa-all

Based on an earlier discussion here at the administrators' noticeboard, I'd like to return {{Cc-by-sa-all}} (which is currently a redirect to {{Cc-by-sa-3.0,2.5,2.0,1.0}}) back to something like its original state, which said that files tagged with it could also be used under "all future versions [of CC-BY-SA] issued by the Creative Commons". However, as doing so would unfortunately require a rather massive bot run in order to first retag all the 124,000 or so files currently using the template, I'd like to ask if anyone has any objections before starting such a project.

I've started a centralized discussion at Commons talk:Copyright tags#Template:Cc-by-sa-all. Please comment there. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 12:53, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Image review - File:Puzz3dny.JPG

A contributor to Wikimedia Commons has noted that this image is in need of attention, but would prefer a more experienced contributor aids or undertakes this.

Issue: Acceptability of assembled jigsaw/sculpture design for commons Sfan00 IMG (talk) 13:19, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Image review - File:Tom Richards 1908.jpg

A contributor to Wikimedia Commons has noted that this image is in need of attention, but would prefer a more experienced contributor aids or undertakes this.

Issue: Little sourcing and no description

Nominated by User:Sfan00_IMG, who also transferred this image to commons. Same with totally infounded DRs, like Commons:Deletion requests/File:Peloponnesian war alliances 431 BC.png. Iser is wasting other people's time. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 14:29, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I have noticed this problem and contacted Sfan00 IMG. I explained to him on his talk page that his activity constitutes disruptive editing, see User_talk:Sfan00_IMG#Re: Please do not make insults. I also instructed him to discuss the copyright status of images on Commons:PD files. However he continues with this same style of editing and nominating files for deletion. Sv1xv (talk) 15:44, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Sfan00 IMG (talk) 14:32, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

:: Since when is requesting assistance 'disruptive'? Especially given that I am trying to find out how to keep the image. :)

If this unfriendly attitude continues, I might have to reconsider if I recomend Commons to people. 18:09, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

In light of recent events, It's hardly a waste of time to ensure that images on Commons are identifiable and traceable.

If more people checked their back contributions periodically, I'm sure some problems would be found more quickly, and thus be able to be resolved before they become an issue.

The reason why the above nom's were being mentioned here, was because that's what someone on the IRC channel suggested, instead of putting them up as what you so tastefully describe as 'unfounded' deletion requests.

I expect an apology. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 14:38, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Apologies, the above is too strongly worded, and is thus withdrawn.

It seems, I am misunderstanding commons policy somehow, Can someone Please calmly guide me, before there's

another row that will need stronger intervention? Sfan00 IMG (talk) 20:12, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Google Rightssearch considered harmful

This new search option - ok, not realy new but now directly included in the advanced imagesearch - is a harm. it promotes all the trash websites and blogs that select Creative Commons license without any knowledge or in total ignorance of intelectual property rights. Or it uncovers the blogers inability to separate the licensing of text he want to make free and images he grabed from the internet without thinking about this. We should keep an eye on content included in good faith from this websites, I would strongly appreciate if someone can prepare a well verbalized email template that we can use to inform those websites about their wrongdoing. --Martin H. (talk) 20:17, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

(Not Admin) but Support someone able to draft a letter to Google on this doing so. Sites that ignore copyright issues, 'hurt'

those genuinely working for 'free' media, much in the same way every illegal torrent hurts the legitmate use of P2P. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 00:22, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

File:Tony Blair WEF 2008 cropped.jpg

Hi, I did nothing wrong. The image was vandalized, I deleted it and restored everything except the vandal version (a sick foot) and the revert to keep the upload in the original uploaders gallery. How is it possible, that the upload shows something from the lemon party? This is realy impossible without an entry in the log or the page history. I dont understand it. --Martin H. (talk) 13:27, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Needs technical assistance, maybe it is something like File:2001-2002 Holden VX II Commodore Executive sedan 03.jpg added to commons without a log entry or a filepage (no history). --Martin H. (talk) 14:22, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

File:PzSflII-1NA.jpg

This image has been deleted after having tagged as no source by talk. I responded on my talk page that it was indeed properly sourced as a scan from a WW2-era US military intelligence publication and was therefore PD. I got no response and now it's been mistakenly deleted. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:34, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Unsure. The image had a watermark but was sourced to source==National Archives. If you get it from the National Archives it would not contain the watermark and you could provide a NARA link. You claimed it was from a U.S. Gov. publication, whats the name of the publication? No proof that the photo was taken by an U.S. Government employee has been given. --Martin H. (talk) 16:47, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

It was published in the US Military Intelligence Bulletin in 1942. So maybe it should have been classified under US military rather than Archives, but still there was no call to delete it without asking more questions. I'd responded and heard no more about it, so I figured case closed. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 23:10, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Duplicate

Without knowing it, I made a duplicate of an existing image:

• Original - File:Bullet 45acp cartridge.jpg.JPG
• Duplicate - File:700 NE Bullet.JPG

The reason is that such image exist in the english wikipedia, but not in commons, so I decided to move it, unfortunately I noticed late thet it has a duplicate, so shall it be deleted or merged or something? (I need help for this, also, the one in wikipedia should be deleted too because it´s the original duplicate). - ☩Damërung ☩. -- 07:24, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Neither is really the "original", but you can add {{duplicate|700 NE Bullet.JPG}} to the second transfer (File:Bullet 45acp cartridge.jpg.JPG) and it will eventually get deleted. -- User:Docu at 08:03, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Looks like you tagged the enwiki picture with the {{nowcommons}} template, which will let admins know the picture is here now. I just added the duplicate image template to the newest uploaded image, as Docu said. I also managed to spell duplicate wrong in my edit summary in the process. I think its about time to call it a night. Killiondude (talk) 08:21, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, It´s better now here in commons, but the english wikipedia still have a duplicated image: the one here in commons (transcluded there) and the one that I marked as '{{nowcommons}}' and uploaded here (making the duplicate) which now it´s only on the english wikipedia. - ☩Damërung ☩. -- 16:37, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Better now? Wknight94 ^talk 16:41, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Much better, thank you! - ☩Damërung ☩. -- 22:29, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

out of memory at line 108 problem

when I upload a file, I got sometimes error "out of memory at line 108". How we can solve this--Motopark (talk) 15:58, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I made the same observation, but it had no recognizable consequences. --Túrelio (talk) 21:08, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Flickrbot down

This is a note to Admins on Commons. The flickr review bot is malfunctioning. It has not marked images for more than 2 days now and the backlog is more than 100 photos Just to let you know....that some Admins here may have to mark some images.

Regards, --Leoboudv (talk) 21:03, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

About the contribution of users which in block

Pursuit in Russian part of project proceeds here. Offensively, that a compatriot from hostility deleted collection from 42 images of the honoured and praiseworthy deeds. Which I loaded as a gift all contemporaries and descendants. Replacement for them not to find. There was such reason for a delete: when required for illustration of text, then it is possible it will be to load again. However, images can be required and without text. For example, as a prototype for making of new deeds. Not only for schools and for sporting competitions. Along with stars it is possible to hand praiseworthy deeds for encouragement of users. I speak to the administrators which are not afraid of the russian administrators. You will recover, please: Commons:Undeletion requests/Current requests#Files by User:Udacha. Images are public property. It is there threatened me the global blocking. But I am ready to give the virtual life for justice. —участница Udacha (talk) 19:54, 21 July 2009 (UTC).

Just by the way, Commons is a multilingual project: you may write in Russian here if you prefer. (And frankly, you probably should. I find your English very hard to understand.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:47, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I ask to forgive me for my emotions and for my English. I use an automatic translator. Follow, please, here: Commons:Undeletion requests/Current requests#Files by User:Udacha. Thank you. —участница Udacha (talk) 04:21, 22 July 2009 (UTC).

Replacing a photo as a new user

Original

File:Apollo 13 LM with Mailbox corrected 2009-20-07.jpg Corrections applied

As advised, I'm posting here to request File:Apollo 13 LM with Mailbox corrected 2009-20-07.jpg replaces the original File:Apollo 13 LM with Mailbox.jpg (see right). I did attempt to replace the photo myself but an error message informed me that as a new user I could not overwrite images and to seek assistance from an admin (or words to that effect).

Will replacement also update any Wikipedia links to the image, e.g. image seen at Wikipedia's Apollo 13 page?

Or am I going about this totally wrong? Should I upload the derivative work to Commons and replace the Wikipedia image?

Any guidance much appreciated Limawhiskey (talk) 18:43, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi Liam. I'm afraid that you need to have been a user for 4 days or something in order to replace images. It's a standard anti-vandalism thing. If yiou just wait a few days you'll be able to replace it yourself. -mattbuck (Talk) 19:46, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Portuguese speaking Admin needed

Hello!

Can a Portuguese speaking Admin please look on User:Fontela01's uploads? In copyright terms seems everything to be ok, but especially the categories must be reworked. Thanks in advance for your help! --High Contrast (talk) 19:20, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Disclaimer

I just read our disclaimer, and it seems to me like there's no content disclaimer like en.wp's. While I mostly think Wikipedia is a drama with occasional bouts of information, having a proper content disclaimer seems like something we should have. -mattbuck (Talk) 03:17, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree. That seems useful to me. Walter Siegmund (talk) 15:29, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

bot replacing image with non-image

Hi, this bot replacing an image is using an image that does not read in the articles:

06:54, 23 July 2009 CommonsDelinker (talk | contribs) m (13,085 bytes) (Replacing Image:Prince_Ferdinand,_Duke_of_Brunswick,_(1735-1806).jpg with Image:Duke_Ferdinand_of_Brunswick-Wolfenbuettel_(1721–1792).JPG (by AVRS because: Duplicate).) (undo

Can someone either stop it from reverting or fix the image its using so it shows in articles:

• en:Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick
• en:Battle of Corbach
• en:Germans in the American Revolution thanks.69.86.97.75 15:49, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Hello,

I dont understand your request, the bot is replacing a duplicate, so where is the errror?

Best regards,

Huib talk 16:04, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

You can view Image:Duke_Ferdinand_of_Brunswick-Wolfenbuettel_(1721–1792).JPG all right on its own page, but it won't display when embedded in a page, see [12] or [13]. I don't understand why this happens. I've temporarily withdrawn the corresponding request from User:CommonsDelinker/commands. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 16:11, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

It's showing up for me now, all it needed was a purge. If it still won't work for you, try clearing your browser cache. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:17, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, only a temporary problem with the thumbnailing, the image is ok and the thumbnail will so in a few minutes or hours. So not an issue. I re-embedded it in w:en:Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick and it works. --Martin H. (talk) 16:19, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Also, I didn’t request that. Seems like the bot has been confused by the later edits of the commands page (the first edits mention Wknight94 who did add the command). --AVRS (talk) 16:41, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the bot always take the last editor as the requestor. --Martin H. (talk) 18:49, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

File:R1A map.jpg

The uploader states that he owns the copyright to this article. However, the uploader has not detailed how this image was compiled. It seems odd. Muntuwandi (talk) 15:09, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

It is appropriate in such instances to ask the uploader to cite data sources in the file description on his/her talk page. If that is not done or are not satisfactory, then Commons:Deletion_requests#How_to_list_deletion_requests is the next step. Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:35, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

On 21 July, SOPHIAN (talk · contribs) requested that Muntuwandi (talk · contribs) upload of File:Haplogroup E.png be deleted.[14] Muntuwandi has uploaded a number of copyvios/unfree files.[15] His/her alleged sock, Wapondaponda (talk · contribs), has uploaded images which appear to be exact copies of original graphics with color changes that may be copyright violations, e.g., File:Haplogroup_E-M78_Cruciani_2007.png. Walter Siegmund (talk) 18:16, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

If, as seems more than likely, Wapondaponda is a sock of Muntuwandi, then the log for File:Haplogroup E.png is evidence of sock abuse, I think.[16] Walter Siegmund (talk) 18:31, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes those are both my accounts which I acknowledge. We have some issues regarding contour maps on wikipedia. If drawn by individuals, some users say they are original research because they are not accurate representations of the studies they are derived from. Of course we cannot use copyrighted contour maps. So I came up with a compromise, to use the exact contours of a publication, and superimpose them on a unique background which I created in photoshop.In this case, we could maintain the accuracy of the contours but have a different image. Apparently even with this, the owner of the original image still possesses the copyrights over my adaptation. I received some clarification from User talk:Abigor regarding this.

But my concern here is about this particular image. On the Wikipedia page the uploader states where he got the date from on Talk:R1A_map.jpg. But going through the links, there is no evidence in the links that this is where the image is from. Muntuwandi (talk) 20:16, 24 July 2009 (UTC)