Commons:Village pump

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Centralized discussion
Proposals	Discussions	Recurring proposals
Proposal to forbid image-reviewers from reviewing their own uploads. (9 February 2012(2012-02-09)) Request for comment about a copyright review process for public domain images (URAA related) (5 February 2012(2012-02-05)) Request for comment about some changes in Template:Information (3 February 2012(2012-02-03)) Request for comment on renaming Category:Hidden categories and possibly associated labels. (29 January 2012(2012-01-29)) Deletion request for at least 3475 (by far more affected in total) files because of URAA (free in the source country but not in USA). (18 January 2012(2012-01-18)) Request for Comments on the OTRS system. (9 January 2012(2012-01-09)) RFC on amending the Privacy section of the Deletion Policy (8 January 2012(2012-01-08)) RFC on how votes are counted in elections (7 January 2012(2012-01-07)) Proposal to amend the official guideline Commons:Nudity to account for nudity subcategories in non-nudity categories (1 December 2011(2011-12-01)) Please help by translating these messages into other languages. Note: inactive discussions, closed or not, should be archived.
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Village Pump Archives

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2012	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12

November 18

Is there a bot that could help?

I'm wondering if there's a bot that can search out file usage, but instead of deleting the reference (like CommonsDelinker), it simply changes it to a new filename, useful for vector versions of files (and for updating names of SVGs). If so, assuming this would be an admin privilege, are there any admins willing to perform this action regularly for the Graphics Lab? It'd be a great help if this was semi-automated. NikNaks _{talk - gallery - wikipedia} 16:17, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Changing .png/.jpg/.gif files to .svg is rather controversial and should not be automated. Technically the replace could do this, but we disabled this on purpose. Multichill (talk) 16:36, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Where the image is a faithful recreation of a raster, or even a superior version of a simple diagram, most uploaders (like myself) routinely make the changes manually. I understand that with something like this, where the vector is highly simplified and stylised, a routine bot change would be controversial. However, with a little discretion, I don't see why using a bot would be a problem. NikNaks _{talk - gallery - wikipedia} 17:40, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Bots don't do it to avoid getting blamed in the event of a dispute. I think the right solution is an automatic or semiautomatic tool that a user can run under their own global account that does the same thing. Dcoetzee (talk) 01:23, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

It would be even more helpful if it were possible to know all the independent wikis which use any given file, so that if a file is renamed or deleted then a message can be sent to that wiki or a bot triggered. You could not expect an independent wiki to put a note on every file it uses (there would be many millions) but if Commons held a list of frequent external users, on which list a wiki could lodge its contact details, then it might be possible to detect a listed wiki's use of any Commons file as we do WP usage and send a message. I do not know the technical requirements to have such a system or if it is at all possible. Hogweard (talk) 13:56, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Files on Commons already list the global usage, but whether a bot could parse that, I don't know. Either way, some kind of tool would be excellent. NikNaks _{talk - gallery - wikipedia} 15:40, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Interwiki

COM:Interwiki is redlink, "interwiki" search found nothing, so I will ask here - is it OK to add interwiki to category? Bulwersator (talk) 08:52, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, adding an interwiki to a Wikipedia category is abviously okay. Adding an interwiki to a Wikipedia article is also convenient and seems to be standard practice. The more controversial case seems to be adding the same links in both the article page and the gallery page (see for example Taipei and category:Taipei). (as far as I am concerned I like to have interwikis in categories as often as possible, just because I use categories much more often than galleries (many galleries are badly maintained and not really useful).--Zolo (talk) 11:58, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't give the answer to your question, but there is actually Help:Interwiki linking. I've made a redirect. Rd232 (talk) 23:40, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I added Help:Interlanguage links which is a proper name to what most people call Interwiki links. --Jarekt (talk) 19:12, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

It's not always a perfect match but where it is it s best to pair galleries here with articles, and categories with categories. So for example with Taipei. The article en:Taipei at wikipedia should be paired with the gallery Taipei here, and the Category Category: Taipei here with en:category:Taipei there. Where there isn't an exact match I add the interwiki to which ever seems the most appropriate, be that the article or category.--KTo288 (talk) 14:57, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Video Thumbnail Image

Is it possible to change the video thumbnail image by users? If not is there any way to change the thumbnail image of this video? --Vaikoovery (talk) 09:08, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

"thumbtime=2.1"

Still yet there is no way to select another thumbnail on file pages. However on other pages (on commons or wikipedia) you may create your preferred thumbnail by using the thumbtime parameter. --Pristurus (talk) 23:24, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you :) --Vaikoovery (talk) 04:51, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Advert: you may like to use User:Saibo/thumbtimefinder for finding nice stills. --Saibo (Δ) 23:42, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Request for comments about some changes in template:Information

A few days ago, some changes were made to {{information}} and they were reverted due to a lack of consensus. Some of the proposed changes have already been discussed before, but I sum it up here so that we can get a clear community view. --Zolo (talk) 11:46, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Have announced this request section at Template:Centralized discussion. --Saibo (Δ) 23:40, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Do not display the "permission: "see below") when the information field is blanked

 One objection for that was that we lost the link to the "reusing content page that is displayed next to "permission".

 Support permission: "see below" looks pretty strange. MediaWiki:Gadget-Stockphoto.js adds a more prominent link to the "reusing content" page. --Zolo (talk) 11:46, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

 Support The "see below" notification is barely useful, rather senseless and unsightly. Whatever location of the link to Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia is better. --Petrus Adamus (talk) 13:35, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

 Support I agree with Zolo and Petrus. --Leyo 16:20, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

 Support I do not like "see below" - I thinks is not necessary and it clutters the screen. If "permission" is used than the template works as it does now. --Jarekt (talk) 03:40, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

 Comment See previous discussions: 1 2 and 3. --Jarekt (talk) 04:06, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

 Support never liked the "see below" approach. Rd232 (talk) 11:06, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

 Support Useless. Rocket000 (talk) 12:11, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

 Support Never liked it. --Sreejith K (talk) 12:34, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

 Question Will the field be hidden, or show no-license-warning? If hidden,  Support, but if we show warning I  Oppose. – Kwj2772 (msg) 07:19, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

 Info It would be hidden, like other versions now. --Petrus Adamus (talk) 10:25, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

 Support - maybe the Commons:Reuse link can be shown in the "author" field if permission is empty? --Saibo (Δ) 23:44, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Add an option "other fields 1" between description and date

 This parameter will probably not be used very often? It adds a new customizable field to the template just like the already existing "other fields" , but at a different place: between description and date rather that at the end of the template. A similar result can be achieved by directly adding {{information field}} to the "description" field.

 Support As I said here the new proposed parameter Other_field_1 similar to Other_field and the same as {{Artwork}}'s Other_field_1. The purpose of it would be to allow adding other fields below Description field rather than the bottom of the template. See the code in {{Information/sandbox}} and test in Template:Information/testcases#Test_Other_field_1. This would allow us to rewrite {{Infobox aircraft image}}, {{Bus-Information}}, {{Rolling Stock-Information}} and possibly many others to use {{Information}} as their basis and simplify maintenance of those templates. It would also allow users to add additional description fields in more logical location. See for example File:Kyushu Electric tram 3.jpg with additional "location" field located on the bottom. The change will not affect any files currently using the template. Finally this proposed change is mostly meant to make wiki code more clear since once achieve the same effect without this field, see here. --Jarekt (talk) 04:17, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

 Support I don't understand all the details of this issue, but from Jarekt's description, it sounds sensible. Rd232 (talk) 11:06, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

 Support I think it is useful. --Petrus Adamus (talk) 13:15, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Did not dive in deeply, but that sounds useful and not hurting. --Saibo (Δ) 23:47, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Remove {{parse source}} from the source field

 Parse source automatically converts texts like "Obra pròpia (own work)" to {{own work}}.

 Weak support. {{information}} was designed to appear simple and without much "magic" feel, the automatic conversion of exotic strings may be a bit confusing (all the more as it works for " Eigenes Werk (own work)" but not for "eigenes Werk". Hopefully, more and more uploading tools will use the correct {{own}} making {{parse source}} unnecessary. On the other hand, a bot should convert existing pages so that internationalization is not lost.--Zolo (talk) 11:46, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

 Support Quite cryptic, I would prefer a robotic substitution of the texts to {{own work}}. --Petrus Adamus (talk) 13:35, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

 Oppose I did not notice that template before, and did not see that this edit removed it. Although I would prefer a robotic substitution of the texts to {{own work}}, I do not see the reason to change current version. --Jarekt (talk) 03:44, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

 Support removing fancyness. That is very unobvious that the info template does that. It should display what the user put in - nothing more or less. Could lead to confusion at this important info field. --Saibo (Δ) 23:49, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Align the content to the same line as the headers (now it is lower)

 Description is now lower than the title Description, proper date lower than the title date etc.

 Support The present different alignment looks ugly and should be improved. --Petrus Adamus (talk) 13:35, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

 Support This alignment was a side-effect of switching from quite confusing mix of wiki-tables and html-tables to plain html-tables used by all the other major infobox templates ({{Artwork}}, {{Book}}, {{Creator}} and {{Institution}}). It also was meant to fix incorrect template rendering shown here. --Jarekt (talk) 04:24, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

 Support per Petrus Adamus and Jarekt. Rd232 (talk) 11:06, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

 Support - Everything should be bottom aligned. --Sreejith K (talk) 12:36, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

To be able to use Wikipedia as an acredited source....

I'm enrolled in a class in my local community college( don't really know if that makes a difference).My professor makes it very clear that we are not to use this site as a basis of any knowledge for our paper that we wil have to turn in at the end of March. I personally, go on here for a lot of different info. Is there any way to make a case in which to provide necceasry information to use this site as being accredited. —Preceding unsigned comment was added by 169.139.222.5 (talk) 17:47, 30 January 2012‎ (UTC)

As you mention "Wikipedia" in your header, are you even aware that here you are NOT at Wikipedia? Try this. --Túrelio (talk) 17:52, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Encyclopaedias, Wikipedia or any other, are not a basis of knowledge. They merely digest and organize the information that is available from many sources. So, your professor may tell you not to use encyclopaedias "as a basis of knowledge", to force you to dig more deeply into the sources and read them directly. Then the idea would be to verify where the information came from in the first place, instead of using only the encyclopaedias where the information is reused. You can use Wikipedia or other encyclopaedias to get a personal overview of the topic and to find a list of sources that were used to write the article and other references. Then you can select and read directly the sources and references that you consider relevant for your paper and cite those readings in your paper. -- Asclepias (talk) 21:37, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Recommended further reading on this: en:Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia. - Jmabel ! talk 03:08, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

How do you even got here? O.o (seriusly) --Sistemx (talk) 13:02, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

help needed

can someone edit out the first few seconds in my file File:Burping.ogg so there is one second before the burping starts —Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.172.30.3 (talk • contribs) 30 January 2012 19:20 (UTC)

 Done Also cleaned noise, normalized, etc. Dcoetzee (talk) 10:22, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. --01:17, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Language mix in category naming

I know that it is OK to have file names in many languages on Commons, but what is the recommended approach for naming categories? I've been working a lot to organize media around the Romanian history and archaeology topics and noticed for example that Category:Museums in Romania by city has a big mix of Romanian and English names for the sub-categories. For example Category:Muzeul Național al Hărților și Cărții Vechi vs Category:History and Archeology Museum Piatra Neamț. Looking at institutions, most of them are in English (not all) and point ideally to categories with the same name. A similar situation happens with Category:Fortresses in Romania and many such similar categories. Now I understand Romanian but I would imagine that it would be hard for someone who doesn't to either properly categorize their own contributions (say they took a picture of the Alba Carolina Fortress while visiting Alba Iulia) or to find media related to a certain topic/category if there is no English name for it. Ideally, it would be great to have both categories, one in English and one in Romanian, and possibly redirect the Romanian-named category to the English one, but I know there are issues with the redirects in Commons. My approach would be to have everything in English (acknowledging that this is a multilingual project), to increase exposure and achieve consistency. What are your suggestions and opinions about this? Thanks--Codrin.B (talk) 21:35, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

The real category names should usually be in English (see Commons:Language policy, and Commons:Categories#Category_names). If there is no real English alternative, the foreign names are often fine I'd guess, if in a Latin script. It's unfortunate as a multilingual project, but the actual category name used in the File: pages has to be all the same so that users of all languages can find the content; category redirects do not work on that level. You can certainly leave a category soft redirect (i.e. use {{category redirect}}) with the existing Romanian name, which should cause bots to move images placed in the Romanian one, to the English one. Putting the Romanian name in the category description is also a good idea. Carl Lindberg (talk) 22:30, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

As Carl mentioned all the category names should be in English, or should be in form most commonly used in English literature (if any exist). In practice it is a challenge with no good solution, since often in case of places little known outside their country local language names are used, which often creates disastrous names using mix of English and local language which is not readable by neither English speaking nor local users. I sometimes use counts of Google hits to try different possible variants of English names which can be used. Also EN wiki is a good guide if they have an article. Finally {{category redirect}}s, interwiki links and native spelling listed in the category will help native speakers find the category. --Jarekt (talk) 14:23, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks guys, that is my view as well but wondering what is the general idea. I think there are English names at least for all those museums and castles that I used in the example, even though not all of them have corresponding en WP article yet. I am actually actively involved in creating such articles but will take time. To alleviate multilingual issues and have the categories searchable in multiple languages, I've been using Sum-it-up to add descriptions and interwiki links to categories (see for example Category:Dacia). But I find the task terribly redundant and repetitive. Can bots like User:MerlIwBot do this for each category and gallery, since articles and their leads in multiple languages appear/change all the time? It currently does it for interwiki links which are also followed and generated by Sum-it-up.--Codrin.B (talk) 15:53, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

I personally find this guidance to be a major problem in making Commons truly multilingual. We have several contributors on ro.wp which say they don't use commons for pictures because they don't speak English. When you try to open up to more people, like it happened for Wiki Loves Monuments, this problem becomes much more visible.

I believe that each user should be free to use whatever language he wants for categories, just like it happens for galleries, with the local language prefered. The category-redirect method Carl described should work just as well from English to Romanian as it does the other way around.

I urge you to consider changing this guidance even before MediaWiki has support for this (as fixing that bug could take years)--Strainu (talk) 11:05, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

But that doesn't work. There are many cases where languages use the same word to mean different things; is Category:Magazine about supermarkets or periodicals? what about Category:Cat?--Prosfilaes (talk) 12:43, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Strainu, I wish we could, but as Prosfilaes said, that is not feasible on the large scale. To some degree we already do it on a small scale: we do have about 60k category redirects, and many of them contain alternative spelling often used in different counties. However we can not mix all the languages and be able to maintain our category system, it is hard enough in English alone. As for people who do not speak English: we put a lot of effort into internationalization of our templates and ideally all categories would have interwikis and description in many languages. That way people without English skills can at least use search to identify existing categories. They can also use Galleries written in their language and they can find links from their wikipedias to Commons categories. It is unfortunate that although Commons have interwiki links to Wikipedia, wikipedia do not have interwiki links to Commons, and have to rely on templates like en:template:Commons category. The problem with those templates is that each section of an article can have such template (so there is no guarantee of 1 to 1 relationship) and that those templates are not maintained by the mw:Manual:Pywikipediabot/interwiki.py which is used for maintaining interwiki links. --Jarekt (talk) 03:02, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Chinese Wikipedia displays category names in either Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese depending on settings. For example, zh:分類:美國 and zh:分类:美国 both mean the same thing and so they go to the same page. How they are displayed depends on your choice in a dropdown list. Wouldn't it be possible to do something similar with Commons? I assume that many categories would have overlapping names, but wouldn't it still be possible to fix something with the categories which don't overlap? Chinese Wikipedia mainly converts things algorithmically, but I think that there also is some way to specify a variant manually if the automatic handling doesn't work. --Stefan4 (talk) 12:50, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Strainu -- I agree with Prosfilaes. Allowing multilingual categories (other than limited endonym use) without a very radical and fundamental change in the basic software setup would be far more likely to cause numerous disputes such as that which resulted in Category:Mélusines in heraldry being set up in opposition to Category:Melusines in heraldry, rather than leading to some utopia of internationalization. AnonMoos (talk) 17:09, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

And don't forget that for the many cities, border areas and countries that have 2 to 4 languages, the English rule is a blessing. --Foroa (talk) 06:55, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

To this end, I tried in the past to suggest the move of Category:Traianus to Category:Trajan but someone reverted this. Now we have subcats like Category:Arch of Trajan (Benevento)‎ and Category:Arch of Traianus (Ancona)‎. Or Category:Trajan's Bridge but Category:Gate of Traianus‎.--Codrin.B (talk) 19:17, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

For popes, emperors, gods, saints and some rulers, we tend to use the original latin name as the root category as those are more "international universal". --Foroa (talk) 06:53, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to add a comment on choice of forum:

The question is about the most controversial category of language choices on Commons. This village pump is read mostly by those that have no problem working in English (others use village pumps in other languages) and I think answers here will be somewhat biased.

If the question had been asked on Commons talk:Language policy, on the other hand, it would have been answered by people interested in language use of Commons, and support for using local names would probably have been stronger (still with a bias, as policy is mainly written and discussed in English).

For categories about things, yes we use English when there is an established English word. For local names, especially less known places, some use a local language, some use English. There is no policy or even guideline discussing the border line cases - because there is no consensus.

--LPfi (talk) 08:34, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

The arguments Prosfilaes put up do not sound insurmountable. First of all, the number of conflicts does not seem that big. Even then, I think that keeping just a few hundred generic categories in English and naming all the rest (like names of places, names of people) in the local language would work just fine. Only when several official names exist for a place and there is no consensus should English be used.--Strainu (talk) 15:10, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

LPfi, that is a good point. I didn't know about the Commons talk:Language policy. I will make a note about this conversation. I also found the Commons:Naming categories proposal and Commons:Categories#Category names. But suggest English for most usage but also mention exceptions and that consensus was not reached. I think we do have to find the best compromise and finalize the proposal. Above all, I think that consistency and search-ability are the most important aspects.--Codrin.B (talk) 20:41, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

January 31

I've been tagged

I just noticed that an edit I made was tagged with "manual deletion request by new user" as if that is something to be alarmed about. I have a couple questions about this:

• Do I meet the definition of a new user here? I registered nearly two years ago and have made several hundred edits and uploads.

• There was a speedy deletion tag on the image, I followed the directions on the tag itself for how to contest a deletion, and found that the software tried to get me to do it the automatic way anyway, and then I got tagged as if it was a problem. Shouldn't that be fixed? Isn't there some way to integrate that functionality into the template so it is more user friendly and doing what it says to do doesn't bring up all these bells and whistles?

Beeblebrox (talk) 03:09, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

It is something to be alarmed about. You did it wrong; you failed to list the DR properly on the deletion request page. It's not something to be ashamed about, but it's the reason the automated procedure was made and doesn't happen when it's used.--Prosfilaes (talk) 06:04, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

But it didn't tag it as "manual deletion not done correctly" it tagged it as "manual deletion request by new user." Beeblebrox (talk) 04:48, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

That's because we don't have filters that can detect a manual deletion not done correctly. We apparently have filters that can detect a manual deletion request by a new user. I'm not sure we can always trust an old user to do it correctly, but manual deletion is frequently used in mass deletions, and flooding this message was probably not considered wise.--Prosfilaes (talk) 06:22, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't know what you mean by "flooding this message." And if manually adding deletion notices is a bad thing (I readily admit I screwed it up, I got called into work in the middle and of doing it and didn't follow through with some of the steps) then why does the speedy deletion template tell you to do it? I may not be new, but I admit I don't edit here that often other than just making uploads, so I don't know all the jargon used here. As a matter of fact, the image in question has now been deleted with the rationale that it was "clearly DW." I don't know what that is supposed to mean either so it's not very helpful. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:31, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Hotcat and Category:Media needing category review

I think that it may be a good idea to add "categories are OK" next to list of categories (the same as "Check them now!" on Template:Check categories) - it is inefficient to change categories using hotcat, scroll to Template:Check categories, hit "Check them now!", scroll to save, hit save Bulwersator (talk) 14:07, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

• Something like this Bulwersator (talk) 21:33, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
• I would appreciate such an option. --Funfood ␌ 20:03, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I would recommend against adding such a thing to HotCat: the functionality desired is completely different, and Commons-specific. HotCat is for changing and adding categories, and it's being used on many wikis, even on non-WMF projects. This new functionality is a special-purpose hack for one template existing only here at the Commons, and the desired functionality is just removing the template in one click. That's completely unrelated to what HotCat does; the desired functionality could be implemented easily in a completely separate script. Lupo 20:13, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

And I implemented it (in ugly & hackish way) Bulwersator (talk) 20:26, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

User:Rillke/checkCat.js for your special needs.

1. Adds a cats are ok - link to the category-section
2. Removes the "check categories template" from the file-page when categorizing with HotCat.

-- RE rillke questions? 20:18, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Terraces category

What category should images as File:Markt Brussel Zuid.jpg and File:Terras op Plein.jpg be placed? There must a lot other pictures of street terraces. This has nothing to do with architecture.Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:25, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Hard to tell without knowing more about them than I can discern from the images. Maybe en:Sidewalk cafe? They don't look like en:Beer gardens from the photos, although there's certainly beer drinking happening. Could be en:Patio, although in the US at least that tends to carry more of a residential connotation. cmadler (talk) 15:00, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

It is very common on the continent and certainly in warmer countries for restaurants, bar and other drinking places to have seats and tables on the street. On warm sunny days, clients dont want to be inside. In most countries such places have pay extra taxes to use the street for tables and chairs. Smiley.toerist (talk) 19:15, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Try Category:Open air restaurant and café areas or a subcategory under that? cmadler (talk) 20:39, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I wil use this last one.Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:39, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Language issue on Special:Upload&uselang=daownwork (and others) and auto-add category on upload from Danish language upload form

On the Danish Wikipedia there currently is a suggestion to replace the current 'Upload file'-link in the sidebar with a link to either Commons:Upload/da or Danish language own work. This has thrown off two issues, which I'm not quite sure where to address:

1. Uploads using Danish language own work or Swedish language own work (and possible also others) doesn't show allowed filetypes but just '$1'. Is this a bug for bugzilla or a translation-issue I can't figure the source for (I would have assumed MediaWiki:UploadForm.js/Documentation#Localization but no dice there...)?
2. It has been proposed that files uploaded using the Commons:Upload/da, the Danish language own work or a new custom form, have a special category (alternatively a template - i.e. similar to {{ImageUpload|basic}} when using the basic upload form previously) added. I would have assumed Commons:Redesigning the upload form or User:Pfctdayelise/Manual:Uselang hack would describe that - but again I didn't manage to find anything :( Is this possible somehow?

Ind kind regards heb [T C E] 13:57, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

The first was a wrong configuration; I have fixed it now. It may take up to 24h until the fix becomes effective due to the way the MediaWiki software caches its interface texts. The second is currently not possible. However, why would you want to have such a marker category at all? Maybe an alternative approach might be a specially configured upload wizard? Maybe it's possible to use the "upload campaign" feature to customize the wizard in ways that might be acceptable to your needs? Lupo 20:41, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

First: Thank you for fixing the configuration-error :)

Second: As I'm not an administrator on Commons, I don't know if upload campaign could work, but I'll encourage someone on DaWiki, who is also an administrator on Commons, to look into this so thank you for the suggestion :) The reasoning for this, is that most of the files uploaded "vetted" by someone with Danish language-skills, as they have a high error-rate (lack of license, copyvio's etc.). Of the current last 20 uploads (covering the time back to 17 January 2012(2012-01-17), 11 have been deleted for being clear copyright violations, and of the remain 9, for 3 of the files, the uploaders are currently being "helped" so that they have correct and sufficient information. By adding them to a special category, it would be easier for Danish speaking wikipedians to identify and correct the issues in a helpful and leaning manner. In kind regards heb [T C E] 07:53, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Adding multilingual descriptions to categories/galleries automatically

To alleviate multilingual issues and have the categories searchable in multiple languages, I've been using Sum-it-up to add descriptions and interwiki links to categories (see for example Category:Dacia). But I find the task terribly redundant and repetitive. Can bots like User:MerlIwBot and User:JarektBot do this for each category and gallery, since articles and their leads in multiple languages appear/change all the time? It currently does it for interwiki links which are also followed and generated by Sum-it-up. I think it would be a tremendous feature, and should be basically part of the same process. Note that I started initially this conversation at User talk:MerlIwBot#Adding also multilingual descriptions but then I realized that JarektBot also has similar capabilities, and this is more of a global discussion.--Codrin.B (talk) 19:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I see that more and more people start to see the interest and are following. Before adding text descriptions by bot, we have to define a collapse rule. Categories with an intro in 270 languages is not very practical. A more elegant and maintenance-free solution would be the display of the initial paragraphs(s) when hovering over the interwiki links on the left. It would be great if the search engine would include the category IWs in its search, which it doesn't for the moment. --Foroa (talk) 07:09, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I am not sure based on which settings, but in my system Category:Dacia displays a pull down box for the languages using Meta:Language select. It doesn't display descriptions in all languages unless you select "Show all" in the pull down box. This seems sufficient to me. I am missing something? --Codrin.B (talk) 15:17, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

For me is the main purpose of the explaining text to know what subject is covered by the category. I don't need all the links in the often long text generated by Sum-it-up. Without shows a "cleaner" text. If people want more information they can use the interwiki links on the left. Wouter (talk) 16:09, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

To me, Category:Dacia shows all texts in all languages, which is probably a bug or maybe related to a show all that I used on a previous selection and that stays on. Anyway, I think that in all cases, the English reference text should always be displayed for reference and the description in the local languages(s) where applicable. Nowadays, I bother rarely to include texts in more than 2 or 3 languages, except where there are many terms in many languages, such as in Category:Mbira and Category:Pedal cars so that they are included in the search engine database (category interwikis are never included in the search). --Foroa (talk) 18:19, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I am curious to know what setting enables/disables (or rather collapses) the other languages. If you find out, please let us know. I looked in my preferences but couldn't find it. For me it is always collapsed, showing English. Sum-it-up can indeed sometimes generate longer descriptions, but id depends on the leads that people create. Over time, the source articles get copy edited and end up with better leads. A reason why we need a bot to run this on a schedule. And yes, sometimes I had to shorten the generated descriptions myself. But overall, I think it is highly valuable to have that multilingual text since it empowers users to find the information with search engines. You can click on the links to the left, but someone searching in Japanese will never find an English named category, unless these descriptions are added. And if we can reliably collapse all languages and show English by default, it is all we need for a nice solution.--Codrin.B (talk) 18:03, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I've been using sum-it-up for quite some time (do check out the gadget). I even used it for batch created categories. Some improvements:

• It should use {{Multilingual description}}
• A bit more cleaning up should happen (like removing reference templates)

I doubt Magnus will fix it, so someone might want to fork the tool. Multichill (talk) 12:37, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Such improvements would be nice - as would fixing the annoyance that the tl.wp doesn't translate to template:tl, but to template:tgl, which sum-it-up doesn't know! But really, if we're going for improvements, one thing which would be worth thinking about is whether we couldn't persuade the source Wikipedias to provide a custom 1 or 2 line summary (like persondata), stripped of ref tags and images which don't translate to the Commons summary, and hopefully more stable. (If the custom summary isn't available, the bot/script can always fall back to the status quo.) Rd232 (talk) 18:18, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, perhaps that's not worth the complexity. Just a script that does better cleanup (stripping ref tags and images) would do. Rd232 (talk) 02:14, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

February 3

Miscoded Region locations in Geocoding templates

My mistake, I didn't realise that the "region" field used ISO-3166 in these templates, so some of them have "region:UK" instead of the correct "region:GB". There may be a few hundred but is there a bot that could go though and substitute these for the correct version? Cheers. Rodhullandemu (talk) 00:19, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Maybe I'm being dense, but how would the bot distinguish your errors from places that are actually in Ukraine? - Jmabel ! talk 01:15, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Because the ISO 3166 code for Ukraine is UA, not UK. I've classified very few images from Ukraine, in fact none that I can remember. Rodhullandemu (talk) 01:43, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Commons:Bots/Work requests - though it's probably an AWB job, processing your uploads. Rd232 (talk) 01:55, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

They aren't my uploads, they are category maintainance. Paradoxically, when I was an Admin on en:WP, I probably considered more requests for AWB use than any other admin over a year or so, without using AWB myself- it looks like I may now have to look at that as an option. Thanks. Rodhullandemu (talk) 02:31, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

upload protection doesn't work for reverts

Tracked in Bugzilla (?)
Bug 34209

Does somebody know if that is a bug or a feature? http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:AaatestSonnepalmenstrand-portrait_new.jpg&action=history The page is upload=sysop protected and it works (I cannot upload with my test account). But the testaccount can revert to another file version. This is pretty stupid since I thought it isn't enough at upload edit wars to upload protect (COM:P should be adjusted then)... Also that is a bad choice for high-visibility files which have more than one version. Mediawiki displays the reverts as "uploads" - but apparently doesn't apply the protection status. I would have assumed that it protects against that reverts. First because it is useful, second because mediawiki titles the reverts as uploads in the logs Asked in Wikimedia tech channel on IRC but got no answer. --Saibo (Δ) 00:54, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Try reverting File:Testfile-bidgee.jpg in your test account. If it allows you to move it in the test account, try the Edit protection. If all fails then someone needs to fix it as it is a rather big problem that revert wars can continue. Bidgee (talk) 01:18, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Your test file is deleted now - however I tried again at "my" file: File:AaatestSonnepalmenstrand-portrait_new.jpg#filehistory Of, course - still the same. Have filed it in bugzilla since you seem to agree that that is a bug. Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 14:00, 5 February 2012 (UTC) Also have mentioned it in COM:P. --Saibo (Δ) 14:05, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Help

Help me somebody is it legal to put a picture from this website on my book cover? Or will I have to get permission?

• "will I have to get permission" - almost certainly yes, but it depends on picture (is it from commons?) Bulwersator (talk) 08:03, 3 February 2012 (UTC) - this website, *facepalm* Bulwersator (talk) 11:41, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
• See Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia. cmadler (talk) 11:04, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
• In short, yes, if you just comply with the license conditions. You will not have to get permission. Dcoetzee (talk) 10:31, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

In your opinion, does this image violate law under the Dost test?

Discussion moved to Commons:Deletion requests/File:Tasting a condom.jpg

Preclearance

I uploaded http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:D._W._Reeves.jpg to en, and tagged it PD, as it was a lithograph from a photo of someone who died in 1900. The source I got it from, though, doesn't indicate the actual publication date. It's since been tagged as a candidate to transfer here -- should I untag it, or is it likely ok? Thanks. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:49, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

It's U.S. and obviously published pre-1923, so I can't imagine an issue. Just use {{PD-1923}}. - Jmabel ! talk 02:43, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

February 4

Categories such as "Category:December 1814" marked as metacategories -- why?

There are a lot of categories like this that are in Category:Meta categories. This is apparently done by template {{Monthbyyear}}. To me, these don't seem to fit the definition of metacategories. Am I missing something? --Auntof6 (talk) 06:53, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I think you are correct, so I removed the metatemplate from Template:Monthbyyear. Month categories can be further divided by date, by country, or by something else. But it is not neccessary to always do that. And I think there may be files that does not fit into such subdivisions. /Ö 10:24, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good -- thanks! --Auntof6 (talk) 19:09, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Medical school or School of Medicine

Hi Categorizers! There is a problem about school of medicines nomenclature between Wikipedia and Commons. See en:Category:Schools of medicine by country and Category:Medical schools by country. I think School of medicine is more official and correct. What must be do? غلامرضا باقری (talk)

As a native speaker, they are exactly equally correct. There is one subtle difference, in that when one is talking about the structure of a particular American university, one speaks of its "school of arts and sciences", "school of engineering", etc. and in that context one would almost always say "school of medicine" because of the parallelism. Conversely, one would say "he went to medical school at the University of Washington", but not "he went to the school of medicine at..." (though this doesn't apply to "he graduated from" or "he attended", which can use either). But that's about it. Equally valid article/category names. - Jmabel ! talk 09:20, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Your rights. Finally, what must be do? We should use a unique format in Wikimedia project. غلامرضا باقری (talk) 21:25, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

American Dialect Society organization logo

• http://www.americandialect.org/

Is the logo (top left of this webpage) creative enough that it is copyrighted, or simple enough that it is able to be uploaded here?

Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 15:17, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Right on the borderline, anyone's guess what a court would say. - Jmabel ! talk 18:35, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Three characters, a comma, and an inverted comma - highly unlikely that the Copyright Office would register it, if one compares with decisions in Threshold of originality#United States. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 18:50, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

So ... what's the consensus? To upload or not to upload? :) -- Cirt (talk) 03:56, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I'd lean towards PD-textlogo. Carl Lindberg (talk) 04:04, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

 Done, thank you for the input, -- Cirt (talk) 04:28, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Noteworthy deletion discussion

I came across a very interesting template at {{AlbanyNY}}. From what I can tell, this is a novel use of templates to create a specially curated category of Albany, New York-themed images in Category:Albany, New York Collection. I think this duplicates the purpose of the Category:Albany, New York and the gallery at Albany, New York. Because of the novelty of this issue, DR could use a broad discussion at Commons:Deletion requests/Template:AlbanyNY..--GrapedApe (talk) 17:31, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Is there any category we can give to either smaller versions or alternate formats of the same file? I know it's a derivative, but that's not very specific.

I recently needed a PNG thumbnail for a JPEG so that the white background could be removed, as is typical usage on the English Wikipedia--said images are usually tagged {{Should Be PNG}}.
--Trlkly (talk) 18:26, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

WebApp for Picture of the day / POTD

I developed a Webapplication which displays the current POTD from commons in a (imho) bautifull way. I designed it especially for tablets, it supports iPad, Android and any other recent browser. It tries to embedd nicely into the browsers on these devices by supporting swiping. The whole application is open source and non commercial. I wrote it mainly for myself, but is there a place where such applications can be promoted? URL is http://potd.dbruhn.de. On the IRC-Channel someone suggested adding it next to our current "by email"/"RSS feed". Perhaps someone wants to discuss this issue! Thanks! -- Theomega (talk) 19:30, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps you could drop a note on the talk pages at en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost or de:Wikipedia:Kurier? MKFI (talk) 22:08, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Very nice! :-)

A few remarks, if I may:

• There is a small typo « Wikipedia Commons » instead of « Wikimedia Commons ».
• It would be awesome if you could display the author name too (not critical since the app links to the file description page, but always nice to have)
• Any way to have it internationalised – having it display the description in different languages?

Thanks for your work! Jean-Fred (talk) 23:36, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

February 5

Commons is fast today

.. "slow", I meant. What is happening? --  Docu  at 09:51, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

...slow as in pages are loading slowly, or slow as in not much going on? Dcoetzee (talk) 10:27, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

the first, the second is kind of normal for this time of the week. ;) --  Docu  at 10:31, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

No problems for me, it's quite zippy. Dcoetzee (talk) 10:40, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Uncategorized drive?

Hi everyone, the the number of uncategorized files seems to have increased over the last couple of months. Who would be interested in doing a drive to lower this number? Multichill (talk) 12:43, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

• I would help, but I do not have a bot.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:52, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I think Cat-a-lot and HotCat are the tools of choice. The bot stuff is already taken care of by the CategorizationBot. I am playing around with image recognition bot, not sure what kind of results we can get from this. Multichill (talk) 13:31, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
• There are some people trying to categorize old uncat files (including me), but it's a long way. There are thousands of images with unclear rights and sources, not to talk about all those pics and diagrams and portraits which only the uploader may know details about. I guess most of them could go to DR without bothering, but that would also mean a big overhead and admins work. And there are always some pearls in the trash that can be used in wp articles, worth to be sorted out manually. OK, you can go the fast way and do one category per image, like "Unidentified ..." or "Diagrams in ..." to get it categorized, but that's not really satisfying at all, because those categories should also be cleaned, not filled up. I really don't know what the best solution should look like, to get rid of those uncat images. I did about 10k old files in the last months, but with each stone you take away from the bottom, 10 new grow on top.--Funfood ␌ 08:44, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

It would be already a great help if a bot could categorise them per subject or country. It is much more efficient to categorise in a limited context and people tend to be more motivated to discover images pertaining to their country or area of interest. Even categorisation per language would already help. Frankly, if I have to process tens of images described in Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, ..., it takes much more time and one gives up quicker. --Foroa (talk) 11:44, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Commons:Requests for comment/PD review

This RfC proposes a specific copyright review process for public domain works, in order to ensure our works are in the public domain in both the US and their source country as required by Commons:Licensing. Feedback welcome - please respond at the RfC. Dcoetzee (talk) 14:03, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

February 6

Videos from WMF

Hello,

I have seen that WMF posted a video (File:Monthly Metrics Meeting February 2, 2012.theora.ogv). That's very interesting, but much too big to download. Would it be possible to create a smaller derivative? Thanks, Yann (talk) 11:23, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Maybe make a 720p version so that we can still see what happens on the screen, and would be easier to download. Techman224^Talk 13:37, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

HotCat — Remove Template:Check categories

Triggered by #Hotcat and Category:Media needing category review, I wrote some lines of code doing the following:

1. Removing {{check categories}} from files when changing categories with HotCat on this page
2. Adding a link "Categories are OK!" to the category-section that removes the template.

I would like to add this to our Gadget-Definition of HotCat. Technically no problem. Are there any objections? -- RE rillke questions? 14:55, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

1. That one category is changed with hotcat does not mean that all the categories are checked. So Template:Check categories should not be removed just because of that.
2. A "categories are ok" link is better, since one can look at all the categories together and can say that thery are OK. /Ö 19:47, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

We have such a big backlog of check-categories files that I thought it might be ok removing the template if someone had a look at them. -- RE rillke questions? 20:09, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good, be bold and see what happens.

The usage of {{Check categories}} got a bit out of hand and the suggestions get better over time. I'm thinking of just removing the template from Category:Media needing category review with 1 suggested category (69.000 items) and Category:Media needing category review with 2 suggested categories (48.000 items) as these suggestions are generally quite good compared to Category:Media needing category review with 10 or more suggested categories. What do you think about that? Multichill (talk) 21:04, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

That looks a good idea provided one can filter out the ones with only generic categories such as men, woman, people, people by name, paintings, art, ... Same for the HotCat check removal. We might need a template to indicate "generic" categories. --Foroa (talk) 07:12, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

It least there are no or very few "wrong" categories. -- RE rillke questions? 10:56, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

If you want to remove it from all categories, you could add

.checkcategories {display: none;}

to Special:MyPage/common.css. --  Docu  at 06:26, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

That's just hiding from the display, not removing. -- RE rillke questions? 10:56, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I'd go with option 2 as an easy way to remove the template; option 1 doesn't sound quite right. I'd also suggest an option 3: on pages where the template exists, if you use the "edit multiple categories" option of HotCat, then by default the template is struck through, and if the user saves, it's removed. That way, the user can prevent the template removal by clicking the little X to cancel the template change; but the assumption is that usually when editing multiple categories, template removal will be reasonable. Makes sense? Rd232 (talk) 02:10, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree that "the usage of {{Check categories}} got a bit out of hand", to reduce the backlog it's ok to delete the template after using HotCat by default. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 05:36, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

$10,000 Donation to the WMF, if ...

File:Donation to the WMF.PNG File deleted as an emergency request on the Admin Noticeboard by me. I got worried about banking laws on copying checks! Better safe than sorry. Doug youvan (talk) 19:25, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

anyone can prove that the attribution of "File:Deep water wave.gif" as "own work" is true. See discussion here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kraaiennest: and what happened simultaneously: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Pi.tif Doug youvan (talk) 16:13, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

I resent any implication that there's a connection. I don't know who Kraaiennest is, nor have I been influenced by him at all. I haven't asked for source code at Pi.tif.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:28, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I am sorry; it was a coincidence. I was very upset that File:Tasting_a_condom.jpg survives deletion, while I am being deleted here at Commons, and Kraaiennest/Crowsnest has erased the past 10 years of my work (3 e-books) in my biography at .en, while there, I am banned from editing, indefinitely. Doug youvan (talk) 16:47, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

The economic potential is enormous, see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/business/global/21iht-renwave.html?pagewanted=all, and I think the main point of my comment is that Commons needs to set policy for depositing images that have no source code in the PD. We are not talking Photoshop, folks. These are custom programs designed to produce one (possibly a few) images, and it is the programmers, not the Uploader, whose work has been used without attribution. Worse yet, without source code the image (simulation) might be completely wrong. It then goes into the encyclopedia and evades NOR. Doug youvan (talk) 16:41, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

This seems to be a dispute that has spilled over from en.wiki. Please see en:Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive734#Legal_threats_and_spamming_by_Noncanonical. en:User:Crowsnest is User:Kraaiennest. Doug youvan, if you wish to contribute constructively to Commons, you are welcome. But, you are well-advised to avoid engendering drama and conflict here. Anyone may review File:Deep water wave.gif and nominate it for deletion. But because of your history of involvement with Crowsnest/Kraaiennest, it may be unwise for you to do so. Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:32, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Walter. Thank you. I will do exactly as you say. Would you please start the discussion as to what we should do with images (simulations) that lack computer code? One explanation from some of these Uploaders is that the equations are published and referenced. However, if you have ever coded to simulate a physical system, it is almost always the case that parameters arise which must be set in a logical, but somewhat arbitrary, manner. I've started to recode the simulation in question, and such parameters have arisen immediately. (I can outline those problems somewhere else if anyone is interested.) But the upshot is that the current image / simulation is irreproducible. I do similar work and I always put the code into the PD. I see no other way to show that the image is correct - or at least check it and improve it. So, I will place my efforts into re-coding File:Deep water wave.gif. That image is, in fact, beautiful and informative for people interested in such things. However, if you look deeper, you begin wondering how it was done and how particular parameters were set. This is quite analogous to a "trade secret". BTW, you will be hard pressed to find any legal threat from Noncanonical, a colleague of mine using this same IP address.. That's just a gang that wants us off the encyclopedia because of my religious views. After all, Wikipedia is the atheist's bible, and I need to learn how to show proper respect to this other religion. That is my fault, and as a Christian, I do recognized that I have sinned, and I ask for forgiveness from anyone I might have hurt.

That was not the incident that got me kicked off (a long time ago). That was Hrafn, Aunt Entropy, and Filll over the Young Earth Creationist Article. Some guy in Australia made a physical threat in an edit tag and I reacted. Doug youvan (talk) 19:55, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

I for one don't think Doug youvan has $25000, much less is willing to donate it. He's upset that User_talk:Kraaiennest would not release the source code used to produce File:Deep water wave.gif. The user is under no obligation to do so. If you believe that an image derived from source code not owned by the uploader could make this an illegal derivative work, then by all means nominate it for deletion, but there's no need to dramatically call attention to it here. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:30, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

100KDoug youvan (talk) 23:15, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

The graphic image is not derivative of the source code; they are independent works. Depending on the circumstances, the graphic image may or may not be copyrightable (if it is purely the result of an algorithm, with no human authorship of the actual graphic part, it may not be copyrightable at all). But the computer program copyright is in how the program is structured, its actual text, and that kind of thing, none of which is present in the resulting graphic. They are unrelated copyright-wise (no shared expression at all). Even if an author does make two works, one of which is derivative of the other, it is entirely up to an author whether they want to license the original, the derivative, or both. Even if they released the original under a CC-BY-SA license, they are not under any obligation to release their own derivative work that way. Obviously, we'd appreciate as much material as the author would like to license, but it's the author's prerogative in the end. If you think it would be more appropriate to only use illustrations like this on en-wiki which also have backing source code, then discuss it there -- that is a project policy decision. When you bring up something on Commons though, we are mostly concerned about copyright only. Carl Lindberg (talk) 23:33, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Carl, Thank you. Do you mean Commons will use an image that has violated a license agreement for the use of the underlying program? Or do you mean that if a team of people write some code that produces an image, it is OK for one of them to donate the image here as "author's own work"? Can't be! What about the Industrial Espionage Act of 1996? Has it expired?Doug youvan (talk) 23:58, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

In the case of multiple authors, yes, any one author can do what they want, usually. The other authors are entitled to their share of money made, but beyond that not much. This is spelled out in the copyright law. That would only apply though if some other people were responsible for the appearance of the resulting image itself -- it would not matter if some other code author supplied utility routines which were merely used for the image; I don't think they are an author of the image itself. If someone violated a license agreement by simply using such code, that is their problem. I'm sure we'd delete upon request from the uploader/author if it turned out such an image got them into unexpected legal trouble.

I don't believe that they're independent works. XPM is a image file format that is also valid C code. Surely that must be a derivative of the image. When I'm working on a POV-Ray file, the artistic description that goes into the code is what comes out in the image. It strikes me as like the book/movie divide, where literary expression can be infringed by the visual images.

You say that "if it is purely the result of an algorithm, with no human authorship of the actual graphic part". If what you mean is post-processing, then I disagree as above. Senso stricto, it's false; all images can be produced algorithmically. In reality, I can see a judge using that rule of thumb, but I can also see a judge granting copyright to a CG tornado if it was used in Twister 2, but denying it to the exact same tornado if the meteorology department that produced the simulation sued. I'm not sure where the line is.

I agree that we don't need the source code, that we can just take the derivative.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:31, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't think a book can be infringed by visual images -- can you point to a case? Obviously, a movie can be derivative if it makes use of dialogue, the plot, or characters from a book. The visual images are added expression, unique to the movie. XPM is probably a special case -- since there is really only one or limited ways to write the program to generate a specific image, I'm not sure there is a separate copyright in that type of program. In any event, the image comes first in that case, and the C program would be derivative (or a copy, really). But I'm sure in many cases such as the one under discussion, you could write a completely different program (separate copyright) which produces the same, or very similar, output image. If the program source contains graphics themselves which get placed in the output, that is when you might get into derivative works for me. But if an author is using a program as a tool to generate their desired output image... of course the output should be their own copyrightable work (which I think is the case here, easily). The result is still human authorship, no matter how they went about it. Just not derivative, copyright-wise, of the actual code, which is utterly different expression. You have to identify the actual expression from the original in a derivative work. If you can't, it's not derivative. What I meant by algorithm is... say, take an arbitrary input image and apply some algorithmic transformation to it, like scaling, or slanting. I don't see how there is human authorship in the result, since all expression is really coming from the input image. I don't think the program author can claim any copyright ownership of such images -- it's a mechanical processing of other images, with no human decision-making with regards to a specific image. They may have a terms of use which may act like a contract, but I don't think they could use copyright to enforce it. I suppose there may be examples along those lines which are different, if the processing adds some identifiable expression. But I'm more thinking of these sections from the Compendium: The term "authorship" implies that, for a work to be copyrightable, it must owe its origin to a human being. Materials produced solely by nature, by plants, or by animals are not copyrightable. [...] To be an original work of authorship, the work must not be a mere computation based upon a concept or formula, or be the mere extrapolation or application of an idea or system, which would always produce substantially the same result whenever done correctly by anyone. For example, the computation of interest based upon a particular rate is not copyrightable, nor is the mere transposition of music from one key to another. In the current case, I have no doubt the resulting image is copyrightable, but I'm guessing it does not contain any expression from the source code (the text, or at least program structure, etc.), so I think there are two separate copyrights. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:04, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Let me inject some ethics to see if it copesthetic with copyright law: If you touch it in a significant manner, your name goes on it. As a staffer at LBNL and Cold Spring Harbor Lab, as a Professor at MIT, and as the CEO and CSO of a Silicon Valley company, I put everyone's name on scientific papers and patents. There is a caveat on patents, but I was generous so that the criterion of writing at least one claim was fulfilled. Now, if I see an image on Commons, I expect that everyone who contributed to that image receives attribution. If we are talking software, that would be a programmer, not someone using Photoshop. Do you get my point? Always make all attributions to all that helped with the final product, in this case, an image. How do these ethics fit into your discussion of copyright law? Do we have the same ethical standards? Doug youvan (talk) 03:21, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I think we are (probably all) in agreement with your ethical principal that if you touch it in a significant manner, your name goes on it; the question is what constitutes a "significant manner". We now have on Commons a finished work, but there were many steps that went into creating it. You (Doug youvan) seem to be asserting (forgive me if I misunderstand the technical aspects, which is not my area of expertise) that the creator of a program that is used to make an image has some degree of ownership/creatorship in that image. It seems to me that is analagous to suggesting that a weaver who makes a canvas is a co-creater with the actual painter? cmadler (talk) 14:24, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

"Credit" is not the same thing as "authorship" or "copyright ownership". Everyone appreciates credit, of course, so your ethical approach is sound. For a scientific paper, I'm sure anyone involved in the research would want some credit. In general, I would follow that approach. However, a website which scans old public domain photos and makes them available online also wants credit -- they put forth effort and spent money to make things available -- but they are not an author. They are a source, but have no ownership interest in the copyright, and cannot use copyright to enforce licenses or anything like that. We are especially interested in the author for a couple reasons. First, many countries require the author, specifically, to be named via their "moral rights" laws (which often last longer than the economic rights, sometimes being of infinite duration, and usually cannot be transferred or waived). Second, the author is usually the copyright owner, and they are the only entity which has the authority to license the copyright, and we are heavily concerned about that license -- so we want a clear indication of who has the rights to make the license. I.e., the same person or entity which would be named in a U.S. copyright notice. For a corporate work, this would be the company, even if they may or may not separately give credit to individual employees. For your more general "credit", sure, we want to mention any relevant information like that if we can, but really only the uploader really has an idea of who really touched it "in a significant manner", so almost always we will just let the uploader decide. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:32, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I can't point to a case where an image infringed on a book, but I can imagine it for a sufficiently complex word-picture. I'm having trouble with your distinction between the code and the output of the code. An MP3 or JPEG are in some sense just code for a specialized interpreter. I can't imagine a program that played a copyrighted song or displayed copyrighted artwork would get treated as contributory infringement; they would treat it is a direct copy. I don't know how someone could have a copyright on the output of a program and yet have no copyright on the program, so that anyone can pass it around.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:30, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

An MP3 or JPEG is really just data, at that level -- there are no instructions in the sense of it being a computer program, and no real human authorship. Two programmers can write separate programs to perform the same task; the copyright is not based on the task it performs but rather each programmer's expression in the way they did it -- it's tied to the actual text, or slightly more abstractly in how they order and group the instructions, i.e. the structure of the program. The BSD Unix systems were able to be released under their license because they gradually rewrote the entire codebase of the original, proprietary Unix system they started with -- even though it performed the exact same function, the code itself had been completely re-written, such that Berkeley was now the sole author and copyright owner, despite the fact that AT&T wrote the original code. To me, graphic images and a literary-based copyright are utterly different types of expression, and it's difficult to me to think of a situation where one could be derivative of the other -- a paragraph can describe an idea, but someone else can write a different paragraph to describe the same idea, and that second paragraph is not derivative of the first. The copyright is in the expression, i.e. the specific words and phrases chosen. Someone making an image depicting the same idea would seem to be even more removed from the original copyright than someone writing a different paragraph. I'm really not familiar with how much coding goes into an image like this, but it sounds like it's enough to carry its own copyright. Someone else could write their own program to generate the same image, and that program would not infringe the copyright on the first (unless they copied the actual text of the code, or something very close to it). But, if the output is also copyrightable (the choice of colors, the specific way they illustrated the idea), the output image of the second program could still infringe on the output image of the first program -- the second person is at that point copying the expression seen in the first image, when they make theirs. If there is really only one way or limited ways to write a program to generate a particular output image, then the program itself may not be separately copyrightable -- that may be a merger doctrine issue. In your example above, you would have to copy the data/expression from the song or artwork in order to embed it into your program in the first place. Image viewer software has its own copyright, of course, and other people can write other image viewers without infringing the first. An image viewer to display a particular, copyrighted image is substantially the same program, except of course they would have to copy the image data into the program instead of being given an arbitrary source, and that part would be infringement, of course. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:32, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I would state the analogy as being more like a painter and a photographer. You spend months painting a beautiful picture (the software) and I walk in one day and photograph your work with a digital camera (the image). I upload on Commons as "my own work". Obviously, that is very unfair to you. And again, this software is not Photoshop. It might be called "sole-purpose" software. It was written to produce a few images, perhaps even just one, or a single animation. This is often the case when we write programs to simulate a physical phenomenon. I think I would be correct in saying that most of the examples on www.youvan.com are "sole-purpose" programs - so, I am incredibly sensitive to this issue of attribution when I think I see a photographer ripping off an artist. Thanks for making me think in understandable terms. I am often terse and get people mad! Doug youvan (talk) 14:40, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

That is a straightforward derivative work (at best) and copyright infringement -- the photograph is subject to the copyright of the painting, as it uses the painting's expression, and we would delete such a photo unless 1) we also had permission from the painter, or 2) the copyright in the painting has expired. It's even possible, if the photo is basically a reproduction of the painting (i.e. a {{PD-Art}} situation), that the photographer is not even an author -- it amounts to a copy of the painting, so they added no copyrightable expression to the end result. Someone writing a separate program to perform the same general task as one of yours is not necessarily the same thing, at all. You may have given them the idea, or maybe both were inspired by a third source, but unless they copied some specific, identifiable, expression, there is no issue under copyright law, which does not protect ideas. If you are saying someone took your program to produce an animation, tweaked it a bit to produce a similar but slightly different output, maybe there is an issue -- it wound depend on many specific details, and I'm not familiar with the level of coding in this area, so I really can't say. But if you are writing a program to reproduce a physical phenomenon, you have no ownership over the phenomenon itself, and it stands to reason that an independent program would produce a somewhat similar image to illustrate the same phenomenon. There have even been cases, I'm pretty sure, where completely independent creation which resulted in substantially the same work were deemed separate, independent, non-derivative copyrights. If other people contributed code to their program, the program itself would be a derivative work and would need permission from that other person to post the source code, but I'd think only if that other person contributed code which directly resulted in creating part of the expression seen in the eventual image (and the code was supplied with that intention), would that person also be considered an "author" of the produced image. If someone supplied utility code which, while helpful, has no bearing on the actual expression in the eventual output image, then no, I would not consider them an author of the image, and maybe not deserving of credit (otherwise, why wouldn't you credit all the authors of Photoshop, if you used that program to help produce an image?). The authorship of the program itself, that's different. Thus, posting the source code may require a different set of permissions than the image alone. There are a lot of fuzzy boundary issues in copyright law, and this gets into some of them to be sure. But either way, it would be incumbent on the people whose actual work is involved to make the complaint. Are you saying that some of your work is infringed by this other image? Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:34, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Carl, No I am not being infringed, but you did hit on one of the scenarios: "If other people contributed code to their program, the program itself would be a derivative work and would need permission from that other person to post the source code, but I'd think only if that other person contributed code which directly resulted in creating part of the expression seen in the eventual image (and the code was supplied with that intention), would that person also be considered an "author" of the produced image." Quoting from from User_talk:Kraaiennest / Crowsnest: "Dear Doug Youvan, I do not intent to make the code available, since it is (in part) the property of others." Now, let me try to reduce your sentence to a shorter one for this specific situation:

If other people contributed code which directly resulted in creating part of the expression seen in the eventual image that person also (must) be considered an "author" of the produced image. Carl - Please tell me if I got that right.

Hypothetically, consider that shorter italic sentence to be true in the case of Kraaiennest for File:Deep water wave.gif, so my questions is now: Did he need permission from the other authors to deposit this file?

Also, I seriously doubt that we are complying with all of this: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/ or other contractual agreements that authors have with their employer or research granting agency. Doug youvan (talk) 01:53, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

If there were more than one person working on producing the final image, then yes, there are probably multiple authors, and it's a joint work. I think they had to intend to produce the image together. Any one of the authors usually can license the work (at least on a non-exclusive basis) without asking any of the other authors, I'm pretty sure, at least in the U.S. Some info from William Patry here. Also, contributions to the computer program itself do not necessarily mean they are an author of the eventual image -- that would depend very much on the nature of their contributions. Really, the only case where he may have needed someone else's permission is if the image contains copyrightable expression present in some pre-existing work (i.e. another image or graphic work), and is therefore derivative. It seems rather unlikely that such an image would be derivative of another. The computer program is a separate copyright, and if chunks of code from other programs were used, then indeed that may not be able to be uploaded without additional permission. I don't see any reason at all to think there's any kind of an issue here. Carl Lindberg (talk) 04:36, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I do not understand why this all creates such a fuzz. The physics behind the animation are computed with a program I am licensed to use, but of which I am not the copyright holder (and so cannot place it in the PD). There are many programs and methods around which can produce effectively the same physics data for the wave dynamics. Further, the software to create the images underlying the animation I programmed myself, and I used a series of open-source tools to create the animation from the images. So all the "creative work" in making the animation as it looks is my own.
Why not ask me first, instead of starting this section at the VP (without informing me) insinuating the animation is not my own work, and waving with money? -- Kraaiennest (talk) 07:49, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Quite funny, given the discussion above, that User:Doug youvan marks the check (File:Donation to the WMF.PNG) as "own work" and being the "author", without any further attributions. -- Kraaiennest (talk) 15:24, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Dear Crow, Even funnier: I put up the first image without voiding the check and then had to ask for an emergency deletion! I don't know how to attribute the check, and now that it is in the mail to the WMF its even more complicated.

In reply to your other comments: Your Talk Page has a 3-week long discussion on this topic that ended the day before this discussion started when you said: "Hello Doug, good luck and fun with your project! Regards, Kraaiennest (talk) 14:25, 5 February 2012 (UTC)".However, I will now give you credit for anything good that has come of our interactions, and I will take the full blame for everything else. I ask you to forgive me for my bad behavior, and let's move on. The parameters I need to re-do File:Deep water wave.gif will themselves be redone and all code will be published. If I am in gross error, you can point it out if you want.

I think the main point of the current discussion here on the Pump is how we should be depositing graphics (particularly animations) that are generated by customized programs of the type you and I use. The WMF has stomped on the toe of the giant textbook industry, and I am afraid some of what we are doing is going to come under attack. We just saw law change extending the copyright of certain materials that caused hundreds of images here on Commons to be threatened with deletion. I can see how the textbook industry could cry foul over over a 5+ million article encyclopedia with figures of questionable origin. You know that I have been through rough litigation on intellectual property. I have an idea of what kind of attack they would mount. I trust the GC / Foundation is aware of this potential problem and some new plan for graphics deposition is being made. What you have deposited would be some of the easiest to attack, while my contributions would be difficult to attack. You use a pseudonym, and I use a real name. You maintain code as secret, and I publish code. You have no contact information (email), but I do. We are relying on your reading of an undisclosed "open software" license, while I clearly use Mathematica and its well known license for nonprofit work. My resume is published, yours is not. Please be aware that I am not criticizing you, I am just pointing out our weak spots if an attempt is made to shut us down. Doug youvan (talk) 15:43, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

First color image of the earth; Public domain?

Are all military images of the United States PD? The first color image of the earth by a military satelite would be great to have on commmons. cheers, Amada44  ^{talk to me} 18:53, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

I understand that it was a US military satellite. So yes, it is a work of the US government, and therefore, in the public domain. Regards, Yann (talk) 19:47, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

yea, just wanted to make sure. Here it is. Amada44  ^{talk to me} 20:47, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

List view as an optional alternative to the default thumbnail view of categories?

Would it be possible to have an alternative list view for categories? For instance, some categories consist almost entirely of audio files, so the thumbnails are all the same, and the file names are often truncated, omitting important distinguishing information (for an example, see Category:Audio files of classical music by Martha Goldstein). If there were a list view without thumbnails which did not truncate file names, I think it would be an improvement. (Actually, I think this might be a useful option for all image categories.) I am thinking of something like the different views available in Apple Macintosh Finder windows, where one can easily switch between viewing a file directory as icons or as names in a list. --Robert.Allen (talk) 20:55, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

You could use the API :-) But I agree, would be great to have such an option for the user. There is only __NOGALLERY__ which affects all users. There is also a gadget for full file-names. -- RE rillke questions? 22:59, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

I see an editor added __NOGALLERY__ to the example I mentioned, but obviously that only solves the problem for this one particular category. And not many users will know about "gadgets". --Robert.Allen (talk) 00:55, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Deploying Swift for thumbnails this week (Feb6-9)

This week (Monday through Thursday), I will be switching over the backend system that hosts thumbnails (scaled images) for all wikis from our existing server to Swift, a clustered object store. This move gets us ready to be able to dramatically increase the amount of data we can hold in Commons and the other wiki projects.

As with all new systems, though it has been tested, the possibility exists that something will go wrong. I would like your help testing and reporting any issues. There are two main methods available to report issues:

• IRC: join #wikimedia-tech and ping maplebed
• Wiki: add a section to the Issues page on mediawiki.org.

Today, only files that contain "/a/a2/" in the URL are be affected. More files will be affected throughout the week following a gradual rollout schedule. Though I will take bug reports on other issues, they're less likely to be related to the change I'm making.

More detail is available on the wikitech-l mailing list post I wrote last week.

Thanks for your help, Bhartshorne (talk) 21:50, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

February 7

Category:Created with Adobe Photoshop should be hidden

Shouldn't this category be "hidden" as other categories of the same sort, for example Category:Taken with Canon PowerShot A620? Opinions? --Túrelio (talk) 07:24, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Like Category:Created with Inkscape, yes. -- RE rillke questions? 11:53, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

 Done already. Dcoetzee (talk) 12:43, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

common category for images to be deleted?

Is there a common category for all images that will be deleted? That contains all images from cats like 'Deletion requests November 2011', 'Media without a license as of 26 January 2012', 'Media missing permission as of 23 January 2012', etc.

So that it would be easier to generate list of images that will be deleted from Commons and are used in local Wikipedia [1]. --WikedKentaur (talk) 09:46, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

This would be Category:Candidates for deletion, though "being requested for deletion" does not absolutely equal "being/becoming deleted". --Túrelio (talk) 11:52, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Allowed

Is there a list of thing which are not allowed to be uploaded? If so, can you give me a link please? Pass a Method (talk) 11:14, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

You are allowed to upload anything which is within our project scope (ie is educational), and which is freely licensed. If you want a more exact answer, you'll have to provide more information on exactly what you mean. -mattbuck (Talk) 11:23, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Are you looking for Commons:Image casebook? -- RE rillke questions? 11:51, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Youtube cc license

Hey guys, i would like to add the following video to the Pat Condell as it is currently licensed under CC Attribution. However, it is not specifically mentioned as to which license it was released and so i would like to know whether it can be uploaded on Commons and if so, then under which license must it be uploaded. Thanks.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPAC_cGVnUg

Joyson Prabhu ^{Holla at me!} 13:31, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

According to this page, it's {{cc-by-3.0}}. Prof. Professorson (talk) 13:40, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

More eyes helpful at deletion discussion

• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Rick santorum caricature satire made with frothy santorum pic 1.jpg

1. More eyes would be helpful at this deletion discussion.
2. Pieter Kuiper (talk · contribs) has apparently canvassed offsite at Wikipedia Review.
3. Subsequently one user has showed up to deliver inappropriate rhetoric, likening the uploader (myself) to: "lunatic fringe".
4. Would appreciate additional input from the community at this deletion discussion, to hopefully help to tone down the rhetoric.

Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 15:58, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I think this commons deletion request and other like it are likely to be filled with rhetoric, as the guidelines at COM:SCOPE contain too many exceptions - you could drive a wagon and horses through this policy. Following on from the debate about what is and what is not within Commons' scope at Commons:Deletion requests/File:British lion and Union flag.jpg, my complaint is that there isn't any clear defintion as to what images fall within the scope of Commons or outside, whether they be education, political or otherwise. Current policy is too wishy-washy, and provides no clear guidance, so participating in debates is almost pointless, as you are sure to come up against another editors whose views are entirely opposed to yours, yet they can still point to the same policy for justification of their views as you can. --Gavin Collins (talk) 17:19, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Commons:WikiProject Romania

For those already contributing content related to Romania or who might be interested to, I created Commons:WikiProject Romania to better collaborate and organize the content. In addition to actual images, the project aims to help coordinate all aspects of Romania-related content on Commons, including categories, galleries, templates, licenses, Wiki Loves Monuments, transfers from Flickr and other sites, etc.. Any help or feedback would be appreciated. --Codrin.B (talk) 21:25, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Good luck with this. One thing to do is to correct the spellings for places. eg Category:Reșița not Category:Night in Reşiţa. Railwayfan2005 (talk) 23:32, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. If you refer to the diacritics issue, i.e. Ș and Ț vs Ş and Ţ that indeed is a problem. It is addressed on ro Wiki but not on en Wiki and probably not on Commons. I will take this item and work with those involved on ro Wiki to figure out some guidelines and solutions. Thanks for pointing it out.--Codrin.B (talk) 21:49, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

As Commons uses English names first, then falls back to local names I recommend use of Ș and Ț for categories with Romanian names. None of Ș, Ț, Ş or Ţ appear in English, AFAIK. Just my 2p though. There was mention on en wiki of a bot for making the change over, but the author is taking a wikibreak. Railwayfan2005 (talk) 20:30, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

February 8

Automated category adds?

Is there a way to do this? The specific case is the new Category:Photographs by Doc Searls, and the files I'm trying to add this category to are here. 57 down, 213 to go, pretty tedious by hand! TIA, Tillman (talk) 04:45, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

There are some batch task tools. I'm not sure about whether they are available to everyone (I'm an admin, & I have these for myself, but it's not something I know a lot about). Rillke (talk · contribs) maintains them, so he'd know the details. - Jmabel ! talk 05:01, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Use Help:Cat-a-lot. These tools are available to everyone; however IPs encounter problems due to API restrictions. -- RE rillke questions? 08:59, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Cat-a-lot did the trick. Cheers, Tillman (talk) 01:57, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Be more careful with automated tools. You now added Category:Photographers from the United States to many images that just happen to be taken by someone from the US. Please revert. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 06:58, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Oops, my bad. Will do. Thanks, Tillman (talk) 17:08, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

February 9

Ta-dam! Come help rename

Hallo all,
Following the blessed spree of category-cleanup sessions around Commons we started about a month ago, it would be great if you find the spare moment to come - as many of you as poss - to voice your support or dissupport for the rename proposals all made with much sense & vital care for the consistancy across Wiki's cats (meow!). The pages you may want to start with are, to date, Category talk:Victims of war (Proposed: War fatalities) and Category talk:Slavic people (Slavic people by country or Slavic people by region). So... See you there loud! ;) Orrlingtalk 13:03, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

See also:

Category talk:Cities and villages.

Category talk:Palestinian culture

Category talk:Culture of Palestine --Timeshifter (talk) 17:07, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Undiscussed Siebot move initiated by User:Foroa. Category:Palestinian culture. Foroa moved categories via the Siebot bot without discussion first. See User talk:SieBot which points to User talk:Siebrand which points to the edit history of User:CommonsDelinker/commands. That edit history shows his initiation of the bot move. See this diff from there. It lists this:

{{Move cat|Palestinian culture|Culture of Palestine}}

See: Category talk:Palestinian culture. Foroa has not yet commented there on the move. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:22, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Triggertrap

Hi,

I uploaded three pictures on Wikimedia to use on a Wikipedia page named Triggertrap. They were not my work, but the author and designer of those pictures and the inventor of the device gave me permission to publish them in written. I e-mailed the written permission to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org. Now all the three pictures have been deleted. May I ask what is the problem now?
Inlandmamba (talk) 19:18, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Did you receive a ticket-number, yet? What is it? If you've sent permission, you can add {{subst:OP}} to your images in future preventing their immediate deletion before the e-Mail is processed. -- RE rillke questions? 23:11, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

BTW, File:TodiCastle behind.JPG (did you send a permission for this file?) is in CMYK. In order to get a proper thumb, you have to save it in RGB. Help:JPEG#Color model. -- RE rillke questions? 23:11, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Problems with upload tools? Toolserver?

I've noticed that the Flickr2Commons upload tool has been unusually unreliable and slow in the past several days. Magnus has posted a note there: "Some of my tools are currently not fully operational due to a broken database server (affecting commons and ru.wp, amongst others)."

Is there a guesstimate of when this problem might be fixed?

Bryan's upload tool is working, though it is also running pretty slow.

Is there a long-term problem with the Toolserver? Both upload tools run slow (or stop dead) pretty regularly. TIA, Tillman (talk) 23:39, 9 February 2012 (UTC)