Commons:Village pump

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A village pump in Burkina Faso
Welcome to the Village pump

This Wikimedia Commons page is used for discussions of the operations, technical issues, and policies of Wikimedia Commons. For old discussions, see the Archive. Recent sections with no replies for 7 days may 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

Contents




[edit] November 18

[edit] 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)
Please see Commons:Transition to SVG#Bots--Sadly, there aren't any bots that do this job. Either make one bot or remove that section from Commons:Transition to SVG#Bots.--Gauravjuvekar (talk) 14:51, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] January 31

[edit] 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)
If this is simply a poorly titled tag we can fix it easily at MediaWiki:Tag-manual deletion request by new user. Unfortunately, I am not sure which abuse filter is using this tag because somebody left the description blank. I'd like to know what settings the abuse filter is using prior to making changes to the tag wording. Killiondude (talk) 09:15, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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:

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)

[edit] February 3

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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?

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

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

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit]

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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] February 5

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)
  • 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)
I try to find a few hours per week to assist in reducing the number of uncategorized files, but it's not easy. In many cases, you just have no clue as to what it's about... I don't know whether a bot would be helpful. Perhaps we should consider "weeding out" the collection of uncategorized images: images of poor technical quality, no description, not in use in any project and uploaded months ago if not years ago, could be deleted safely IMHO. Regards, MartinD (talk) 14:33, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] February 6

[edit] 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. Techman224Talk 13:37, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] $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)

[edit] First color image of the earth; Public domain?

First color image of the earth from outer space (Dodge Satellite).png

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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] February 7

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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.

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)

[edit] More eyes helpful at deletion discussion

  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)

[edit] 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)
Commons categories are mostly in English, but place names are a possible exception. I think using English names for bigger towns but local names for smaller towns (or the like) creates confusion that is totally unnecessary. The search engine will find the categories regardless of diacritics. I think more Romanian speakers than English speakers will upload images from Romania, which means correct local spelling will result in fewer red category links having to be corrected. --LPfi (talk) 10:49, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] February 8

[edit] 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)

[edit] February 9

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)
Convenience link to the en-wiki page in question: en:Triggertrap. - Jmabel ! talk 01:39, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Related question copied from Commons:Help desk:
Hi all,
I am facing two problems here on Wikimedia. I have contributed 3 pictures on one topic and 12 other on the other one. Basically, I had contributed 3 pictures on a device called triggertrap. They were deleted from Wikimedia. I had sent the written permission to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org for the three pictures of triggertrap. I created this article on Wikipedia and then asked the owner of the pictures and the inventor of the device for their permission to use those pictures on Wikimedia and Wikipedia. But they have been deleted.

Secondly, I have uploaded 12 pictures on TodiCastle. I have re written the whole page on Wikipedia because it needed a lot of improvement. I have even taken permission from the owner and sent an email of the permission to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org, but still I got the same message. I really don't understand why the pictures are now being deleted even after I have sent the permission to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org for both the topics. I really need help. Can anyone please guide me? I have seen the instructions on the guidelines and have added categories to the pictures but I don't understand why are they being deleted. Help Needed !!! Thank you
Inlandmamba (talk) 07:28, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
END copied from Commons:Help desk - Jmabel ! talk 01:45, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Would someone with access to the OTRS system please weigh in on whether the email has been received and a ticket issued? - Jmabel ! talk 01:47, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Received 1/29 as ticket number 2012012910006273 User:Zscout370 (Return fire) 02:15, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

There was a report of intermittent hardware problems on the Toolserver on 8 February - it was impacting Steward election eligibility checker as well. The notices about that problem seem to have disappeared so I would presume the problem is now fixed QU TalkQu 22:11, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] February 10

[edit] COM:REVDEL

I've threatened it, and here it finally is:

Request for comments on making Commons:Revision deletion (COM:REVDEL) an official policy.

Rd232 (talk) 03:19, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Using translatewiki

Some template like {{information}} and {{creator}} rely on translatewiki for internationalization. This allows to get many translations, but the process is not well documented. It would be convenient if we could add new messages there (for instance for the new "authority control" paramater of {{creator}}) but I dont know how to do it. So two questions:

  1. Who can request translations on interwiki ?
  2. Could we have some documentation about the process on Commons ?--Zolo (talk) 08:35, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
+1 - this would be very helpful. COM:LOC would be the place to either have this info, or have a link to it (if it's somewhere else). Rd232 (talk) 00:27, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Downloading tile sets for very high resolution files

A few dozen of my largest uploads (e.g. File:In the Conservatory.jpg) had to be downscaled in order to upload at Commons, due to the 100 MB limit and due to the fact that the largest size is so huge that it can only be represented (or usefully manipulated) as a set of JPEG tiles, rather than a single image. I'd like to distribute the tile sets too, but there's no way to do that through Commons, so I've set up a seedbox and I'm linking the files on Commons to it using the new template {{Tile set download}}. Here's an example:

Tile set icon.png This image is reduced in resolution from the original. The full-resolution image can be downloaded as a set of JPEG tile images from the links below. Special software is needed to view and process images stored in this form. See Commons:Very high-resolution file downloads for more.

Web download Torrent download | 81887 x 62625 (5.1 gigapixels) | 2.16 GB

English | Français | +/−

I'm also listing them at Commons:Very high-resolution file downloads. I realise this is less than ideal, but don't see an alternative - I'd appreciate any feedback on this approach. Dcoetzee (talk) 10:11, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Interesting. Can you add some documentation please? The template says "Special software is needed to view and process images stored in this form." and implies more info at Commons:Very high-resolution file downloads - but there's none to be found there. And: I'm unconvinced about relying on an external website in this way. Fine as proof of concept, but it's surely not a long-term solution. Rd232 (talk) 02:38, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
I would prefer not to rely on an external website (or pay for it) - what I'd really like is to persuade WMF to host it. I hope if it's established as a useful feature that people use, they'll consider taking them on. I'll add some documentation, but unfortunately the software to process images stored in this form is currently, well, nonexistent. The metadata file info.xml is a (very simple) nonstandard XML format used by Google. I'll paste my notes from README.txt - the most I can say about it is "I have a fairly good idea how it could be done," and I have a prototype of a viewer but it's not ready. Dcoetzee (talk) 02:43, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Hm! I see, thanks. Well I'll have a look in bugzilla tomorrow if there's any existing bugs that are relevant. Clearly this "very high resolution" stuff does fit within the Commons scheme of things; it's just a question of when the 100MB limit will be lifted, which depends on ... something techy (I forget what). Rd232 (talk) 03:06, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Well, even if there were no upload limit, Commons still wouldn't permit upload of ZIP files (for security reasons). So I'd either need some kind of special exemption, or the server would have to open up the ZIP and see that it only contains JPG and XML files. Additionally, it can be quite challenging for people with unreliable connections to download multi-gigabyte files over HTTP, which is why I'm setting up the BitTorrent option (with web seeding). Dcoetzee (talk) 03:40, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Update: all 27 of the very high res images currently in my possession are now linked from Commons:Very high-resolution file downloads and have {{Tile set download}} tags. Dcoetzee (talk) 13:27, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Office hours on the new "Legal and Community Advocacy" department

Hi, guys. Some of you may already know that the WMF is carving out a new department, promoting User:Philippe (WMF) to Director of Community Advocacy working under General Counsel Geoff Brigham. As community liaison, answering to Philippe, I'm tagging along as well. :) As per meta:Legal and Community Advocacy/LCA Announcement, "This new alignment will carry forward the Foundation’s goals of advocating for the community in new ways, ranging from fighting for content online, to facilitating community discussions about critical WMF initiatives that affect the community, to better supporting Wikimedia administrators and functionaries, to providing information about legislative initiatives worldwide that impact online content and censorship."

I understand that there is some confusion about what the department is meant to do, and I wanted to be sure that as many people as possible know that office hours are being held today in about 2 hours on IRC to discuss things. (See meta:IRC office hours if you need to know more about how to participate in that. If you can't participate in it, a transcript will be posted after.) I'd really hope to see good turn out there, because I'm honestly pretty excited about the possibilities. Being still an active editor (at least on weekends!), I'm a shameless cheerleader for community, and I'd love to see high participation in making this department function well to serve community needs. :) Even if you can't participate in the office hours, there are plenty of ways you can help shape this department at its ground level. Please read meta:Legal and Community Advocacy/LCA Announcement and play a part! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:31, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Watermark policy

The Commons policy on watermarks (specifically attribution watermarks) is weak, ambiguous and troublesome. The basic problem is this: an uploader puts a visible credit in the image figuring that's his right of attribution. This however conflicts with the watermark template and Commons:EXIF which says in effect that a visible watermark in the image is "discouraged" and a non-watermarked image should be uploaded in its place. This sets up a conflict between an editor removing the watermark and the original uploader attempting to keep it in. Here is a recent example of such a conflict.

There is a proposed Watermarks policy that attempts to address this issue (along with assorted other topics). While the need for some of it is debatable, the following paragraph would go a long way towards putting the attribution issue to rest...

Authors who are concerned about attribution will often be alarmed when visible watermarks are removed from their images. In the past, some of them have claimed that Creative Commons licenses forbid the removal of these watermarks, since they are a form of attribution. The community has explicitly rejected this interpretation of the license, adopting instead the interpretation that attribution statements can and should be re-located to the image description page and/or image metadata while remaining in compliance with the license. See Commons:Deletion requests/Template:CC-Dont-Remove Watermark.

I would like to add the above statement to Commons:EXIF#Watermark after the bulleted paragraph that begins "Personal tags impede..." We should have a clear guideline that watermarks are an unaccepted form of attribution and may be removed. Use of ambiguous terms like "discouraged" should be avoided.

Opinions? Objections? Jbarta (talk) 23:10, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I wrote that paragraph so of course I'd agree with making it more prominent. :-) I think the deletion request already expresses a consensus on the issue. On the other hand, I would be very careful not to imply that "if your image is watermarked, we will not accept it." Rather the message should be "if you upload a file with a visible watermark, it will be removed - so don't bother." Dcoetzee (talk) 23:23, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Actually, I changed the wording of your paragraph slightly. And I agree with your comment except for "so don't bother". That's a little harsh (even for me). While I'm interested in discouraging the upload of watermarked images, I'm MORE concerned with being able to remove them and having firm ground to stand on while doing so. Jbarta (talk) 23:30, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Neither Commons:Watermarks nor Commons:EXIF look like policy or guideline pages (despite the "draft policy" tag on Commons:Watermarks). I suggest there must be some other policy that could clarify this watermark issue in a paragraph like this, and those pages left as explanatory/info/help pages. Rd232 (talk) 00:57, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I considered that as well. This is how I arrived at my proposed insertion point — A section of official guidelines is Commons:Image guidelines. At the bottom of that page it says "See Commons:EXIF for EXIF metadata guidelines." I would assume that too is part of Commons official guidelines. It's on that page that I would like to add the proposed paragraph. Is that not an official guideline and suitable insertion point? Jbarta (talk) 01:09, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Aha, thanks for the explanation. I've fixed that "see also" - COM:EXIF is just a help page, and I think has never been intended to be more than that. It was just a loose usage of "guideline" by the person who added the see also. So we have to try again to find a policy/guideline to put this paragraph. Rd232 (talk) 02:28, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Jbarta -- The word "discouraged" was used because while watermarks can freely be removed, there's no requirement that they be removed... AnonMoos (talk) 04:36, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] February 11

[edit] Global file usage not working

Global file usage is not working for some files, for example: File:Etobicoke.ogg is linked in w:en:Etobicoke and w:en:Etobicoke Creek but [2] reports "File:Etobicoke.ogg is not used on other wikis." I wonder whether it's stopped working recently, because it works for most .ogg files linked by the IPAc-en template, for example File:En-us-Alabama.ogg ? -84user (talk) 05:13, 11 February 2012 (UTC) File:Mississauga.ogg is another example, uploaded this year, usage in w:en:Mississauga not shown on Commons. -84user (talk) 05:19, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I think it has always been like this. File:En-us-Alabama.ogg is linked with en:Template:IPA-en which is different from en:Template:IPAc-en. In IPA-en a link like
[[:Media:En-us-Alabama.ogg]] (Media:En-us-Alabama.ogg)
is created, which is counted as file usage. But IPAc-en creates links like
[[:File:Etobicoke.ogg]] (File:Etobicoke.ogg),
which is counted as ordinary wiki links (see en:Special:WhatLinksHere/File:Etobicoke.ogg), and another link like
[[Image:Speakerlink.svg|11px|link={{filepath:Etobicoke.ogg}}]] (Speakerlink.svg)
which counts as external links (see en:Special:Linksearch/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Etobicoke.ogg). /Ö 15:29, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, they both look like IPAC-en to me: Alabama has this code: {{IPAc-en|audio=en-us-Alabama.ogg|ˌ|æ|l|ə|ˈ|b|æ|m|ə}} ; Etobicoke has this: {{IPAc-en|audio=etobicoke.ogg|ɛ|ˈ|t|oʊ|b|ɨ|k|oʊ}} . What am I missing? I made a test post at w:en:Template talk:IPAc-en#Global file usage and IPAC-en but the usage for etobicoke.ogg is still showing nothing. -84user (talk) 17:40, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I've been noticing severe delays in the update of global useage, sometimes in hours... maybe it's just that. VolodyA! V Anarhist Beta_M (converse) 17:42, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
But global usage of File:En-us-Alabama.ogg does not include en:Alabama or the test post you made, only en:Outline of Alabama and other pages where other templates than IPAc-en are used. /Ö 18:13, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] How do I request an image be cropped?

This image specifically. Thanks.--Metallurgist (talk) 05:46, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

You don't, you just do it yourself :) If it's a substantial crop, better upload it under a new name, but if you just crop a little bit (to remove a border for instance) without significantly altering the composition, you can upload it over the existing image. Prof. Professorson (talk) 10:45, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
With Cropbot it should be really easy to do it yourself. -- RE rillke questions? 11:17, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Global licensing policy enforcement

In connection with Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by ZogSokoli, it's come to my attention that the Shqip (Albanian) Wikipedia edition is by and large ignoring any and all responsibilities when it comes to image copyrights. The project currently allows local uploads without any copyright information at all, and many users who do add copyright information appear to rely heavily on very liberally applied fair use claims, despite the fact that the project does not have the required Exemption Doctrine Policy in place. I'm sure this is in no way unique. It's probably a common situation at several small Wikimedia projects.

This problem spills over onto Commons when files are transferred here, and large-scale copyright infringement on any Wikimedia project reflects poorly on us all. As a result of this situation, I have a few questions that I have not been able to find answers to:

  1. What processes exist for educating local projects about the global licensing policy?
  2. What procedures exist for enforcing the global licensing policy?
  3. Who has the authority and responsibility to enforce the global licensing policy?
  4. Is it possible to forcibly disable local uploads for projects that are unable or unwilling to adhere to the global licensing policy?
  5. For new Wikimedia projects, what considerations are made to determine whether or not local uploads should be enabled?

What's worse is that I have not been able to find out whom to ask. I've looked around at the Foundation wiki and Meta without success. Any ideas or answers?

—LX (talk, contribs) 17:53, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

  • I believe these these things are up to the local project (and most of that should stay on that level, for example it's the local project should be deciding whether or not to enable local uploads). However, we should have some sort of a transfer policy on Commons, which says that if some source is violating copyrights way too often, it should be excluded. Just like currently some uploaders to Flickr are not mirrored here regardless of the licence they put on some image. VolodyA! V Anarhist Beta_M (converse) 18:13, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
    There is no point in the Foundation enacting global policies if local projects are entirely free to ignore them at their own will. It can't be up to the local projects to inform themselves about policies that they don't know about, nor can local projects be expected to sanction themselves if they fail to live up to their responsibilities as a project. —LX (talk, contribs) 20:41, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I agree with you that several small wikis have a poor record regarding copyright issues. I have seen this on several Indian languages Wikipedia. I don't know what is the solution for existing wikis other than direct forced deletions, but I would suggest to disable local uploads for new wikis until they have a community able to manage copyright issues. Just my 2 Rs. Yann (talk) 18:23, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I have seen issues with this myself too. For example, a few months ago, I remember a discussion on English Wikipedia about a possibly unfree file. It was deleted on English Wikipedia, but I could also find it on many other language versions of Wikipedia, sometimes with nothing on the file information page. I don't think that Commons should block moves from any Wikimedia project entirely, but if a project has bad records, it would definitely be necessary to check things more carefully, unless it is known that the original uploader is reliable. It could maybe also be an idea to block tools such as Commons Helper and en:WP:FTCG from moving files from those projects. --Stefan4 (talk) 20:14, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
    Blocking transfers from the wiki to here shouldn't be used, but restricted so that only users that know what they are doing can do. Ebe123 (talk) 02:02, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] What is this person doing?

Fly01025 - Flickr - NOAA Photo Library.jpg

Does anybody know what this guy is doing? Are they taking air samples? Shooting at whales? Spying on Irak? Thanks for the help. Amada44  talk to me 18:55, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

The direct NOAA source is here, where they just say "Flying With NOAA Collection". The NOAA operates weather planes, so I imagine it has something to do with that type of specialized equipment, but beyond that I don't know. Hm, from this page that would be from one of their WP-3D Orion weather research planes. Not sure which instruments though. By this page, that might be the dropsonde deployment mechanism, but not sure. The photo at the very bottom of this page does show that the item on the right side of this photograph is the dropsonde deployment mechanism, but not necessarily the one showing being used in this photo -- that may be something different. Carl Lindberg (talk) 19:03, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Ooh -- this image shows that same bit of equipment being used to deploy an "air-launched probe". I think that was during operations after the Deepwater Horizon thing to determine where ocean currents might push the oil. So, that may be for probes meant to relay water conditions. Some info on NOAA probes is here; they mention several different types and no clue what this one is. Carl Lindberg (talk) 19:24, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
good work! Tanks allot! Thats definitely it. Now there is one more question remaining: which cat should those pics go to? :) Amada44  talk to me 19:45, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
My guess is similar: He is releasing a probe. On the other photos on flickr you see a NALC (Navy. Ammunitions Logistics Code) 8W59, thats for shallow probes. Produced by Sippican Ocean Systems Inc. Probe is released from the aircraft, drop 300-1000 m to the water surface and transmit data when sinking to the ocean ground. See AXBT Observations or en:Expendable bathythermograph. --Martin H. (talk) 19:50, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Good catch. Presumably the thing in this photo is the same item, just taken out of its case. The cases in the other photos say "sonobuoy" on them, so that is probably what this is. Unless a sonobuoy is just part of the setup. So... perhaps add Category:Sonobuoys, Category:Oceanographical instruments, and Category:WP-3 Hurricane Hunter. Carl Lindberg (talk) 22:07, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Russian Copyright for Government Documents

Can anyone on advise on this image File:Dux Russian ID.jpg please? It was tagged as {{CC-zero}} but the authorship was given as "Russian government" and it's a scan of an identity card from 1989. I can't believe it should be licensed cc-zero, but I'm not sure from the information in Commons:Licensing what is appropriate for Russian stuff of this era... Thanks QU TalkQu 20:50, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

It is {{PD-RU-exempt}}. Have added it to the file page. russavia (talk) 21:07, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Great, thank you! QU TalkQu 21:09, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Help please

Hi, I have cerently uploaded following files. I used the classification Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh How ever all files are showing as unclassified. Can someone please help me to classify?

  • राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ building Nagpur Maharashtra main entrance.JPG
  • Lion icons at राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ Nagpur Maharashtra.JPG
  • Lion icon painting at राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ karyalay Nagpur Maharashtra.JPG
  • राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ international volunteers.JPG
  • Golwalkar Sangha pracarak राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ.JPG
  • Sangha pracarak राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ.JPG
  • Sangha pracarak स्वयंसेवक संघ.JPG
  • राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ sangraha.JPG
  • राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ sangrah.JPG
  • Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ sangraha.JPG
  • Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar home.JPG
  • राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ sangraha painting.JPG
  • Golwalkar Sangha pracarak राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ sangraha wooven carpet.JPG
  • राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ paintings.JPG
  • राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ paintings icons gift.JPG
  • राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ icons gift.JPG
  • राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ icons gift from London Metropolitan police department England.JPG
  • राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ icons gift from Hindu Council of Kenya.JPG
  • Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar and others main stature.JPG
  • Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar figure at the main office in nagpur.JPG
  • राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ icons gifts from Adivasis.JPG
  • राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ gifts from Adivasis.JPG
  • Welcome from City of Milpitas California, USA to K Sudarshan राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ.JPG
  • Icons main gallary at राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ office.JPG
  • Wall paintings main gallary at राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ office.JPG
  • Wall paintings showing lives - main gallary at राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ office.JPG
  • RSS Icons main gallary at राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ office.JPG
  • राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ main office.JPG
  • राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ main office where first meeting took place.JPG
  • Nagpure stature.JPG
Not sure what you did wrong, but I have now categorised all of them. However, I think that you should read COM:FOP#India and COM:DW. For example, photos of other photos don't seem to be allowed. --Stefan4 (talk) 23:46, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] February 12

[edit] PD-USGov-NOAA?

www.nws.noaa.gov >Global Regional Climate Maps > Europe, are theese {{PD-USGov-NOAA}}? W!B: (talk) 04:25, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Anyone else experiencing upload problems today?

Hello,

When using the upload wizard today, I'm getting either "The server did not respond within the expected time.", "http error" or "unknown error". When the upload does occasionally go through, I'm getting a message like "still checking the image for uniqueness" and it just hangs.

Anyone else seeing similar problems? Everthing was OK for me yesterday and also earlier today. This just started happening in the last 10 minutes or so. Thanks for any possible info. Rept0n1x (talk) 08:25, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I have similar problem. Both Commonist and the upload wizard fails. Haros (talk) 08:45, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. Now I know it's not just me then. Best regards Rept0n1x (talk) 08:49, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Also, I noticed in "Latest Files" that images are still being uploaded to commons. I just managed to upload an image myself, using the conventional "upload form" rather than the wizard. Although it was very slow to upload and also I'm finding HotCat.js to be unresponsive with "504 gateway timeout" errors. So I think something is still not right. I will leave it for now, and check the site again sometime later. Rept0n1x (talk) 09:16, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
I just tried it again and the upload wizard is working fine for me now. Although, I'm finding that HotCat remains slow and unresponsive for the time being. Rept0n1x (talk) 10:05, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Everything seems OK again for me now, including HotCat. Rept0n1x (talk) 10:37, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
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