Commons:Village pump/Archive/2007/10

Village Pump archives

+	J	F	M	A	M	J	J	A	S	O	N	D
2004	Not available								09	10	11	12
2005	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2006	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2007	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2008	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2009	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2010	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2011	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2012	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2013	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2014	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2015	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2016	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2017	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2018	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2019	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2020	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2021	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2022	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2023	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12
2024	01	02	03	04	Not available yet

DjVu documentation needed

I see that I can upload a DjVu image. But I can't find information in Commons on how to use it. DjVu and Commons:DjVu are empty. There is a page selector on the image page, so can I upload an entire document? How do I address each image in a wikilink? (SEWilco 03:44, 22 September 2007 (UTC))

Incidentally, other images are working but Image:BathhouseRow Fordyce skylight NPS 1985.djvu is emitting a DjVu icon. (SEWilco 04:39, 22 September 2007 (UTC))

Hm.... how odd that we have so little information about it.

AFAIK it is mostly used by people for Wikisource. And I think the German Wikisource project uses it the most. So perhaps there is some documentation at de.ws that we could get translated... --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 07:14, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Nothing I can find there. We should probably write it from scratch. -- Bryan (talk to me) 09:10, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Damn.

OK, so we should get someone with server-y type access to find out who are some people who upload a lot of these files. Then we need to ask those people how it all works. :) pfctdayelise (说什么?) 04:44, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Just look at Category:Djvu files. Take a file from there and look into the version history, the uploader is linked there. --32X 06:58, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure there is a little documentation in the MediaWiki release notes which added the feature, which I can't find at the moment. The image pages themselves have a nice viewer which lets the user pick any page at random, and for use in articles, I think the standard Image: links can include a "page=45" parameter to pick a particular page to display. Carl Lindberg 16:11, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

We now have some basic documentation thanks to a translation from a French Wikisource page: Help:Creating a DjVu file. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:43, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

ID this flower

Discussion moved to Image talk:Urbana Illinois park 20070928 img 2123.jpg. Dori - Talk 19:14, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Accepted method for repairing scans of old photographs

Moved to COM:GVP#Accepted_method_for_repairing_scans_of_old_photographs Siebrand 06:07, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
If you want to follow what is going on on COM:GVP#Accepted_method_for_repairing_scans_of_old_photographs, you have to click the watch tab on it. --Foroa 07:52, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

POTY 2007 preparation

Hello,

Commons:Picture of the Year/2007 preparation should begin in earnest soon. If you are interested in getting involved, please check out Commons:Picture of the Year/2007/Preparation and share your thoughts. thanks, pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:42, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Template and category

Templates create category links like the red arrow!

Hello, I stumbled on a big problem: categories included in templates are quite general causes for overloaded supercategories. As an exemple the template {{Norwegian coat of arms}}, which includes category: Norwegian coats of arms. Now all Coa's of municipalities of Norway (and other Coa's as well) go also in the supercategory Norwegian coats of arms, overcharging this supercategory. There are several templates having this problem of fixed categorisation. The same goes for the tmplate {{Insignia}} which is often included in copyright templates. There are even user templates, including category templates as well as copyright templates which contain category templates. Who is able to analyse such templates and adapt them properly, so they do not overrule individuel items categorisation? Havang 19:13, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I think that you will find many places here where you have overlapping categories (which are a red arrow on your drawings). This is unavoidable if you have several category systems in parallel or that overlap. Moreover, the categories are used for rapid browsing too, which, most of the time need a category system that is as flat as possible. I am preparing an article on that subject which I should issue in a couple of weeks. --Foroa 07:57, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, overlapping is unavoidable, but should be reduced towards an optimum, eliminating real redundancies, I think. The classification system should be user-friendly (gebruikersvriendelijk) both for classifiers and for searchers. In this respect templates with semi-automatic categorisations gives problems to later users trying to improve and refine classifications and for users searching in a too big browserensemble. You know that surcategories which contain several times 200 items, do not permit easy browsing. The Search function and the category tree are of good help, and I discovered recently the Catscanbrowser [1] which allows good browsing. It is good you write an article on all this. We all must think about a system that works for the fastgrowing system of millions of items and thousands of categories handled by thousands of users, most of them untrained. See the time it took me to search and regroup just the mills items. Can you give me a signal once your article is ready? Havang 10:12, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that we will find a simple "absolute" rule. But my first position is already: the categorisation system is already difficult enough for users with no or little wiki experience. Templates, although easing sometimes some maintenance aspects, make it completeley uncomprehensible for most image providers. I'll keep you informed about my article; I am still searching some "difficult" to find cases: input is welcome. --Foroa 10:34, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean such a case: a user template interesting to study: User:Odejea/Blason following his user page. Or the discussion at Template talk:Blason-fr-en-it? Havang 11:32, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

No, I have several cases in the defense of so called supercategories. (By the way, I am pretty much sure that categories, even very large ones, take neglectible computing resources and memory space). At first sight, User:Odejea/Blason seems to be a documenting template only, so this is no real problem (unless someone changes it to autogenerate categories in the template or nested templates). The problem cases I am looking for are:

• templates that are invoked associated with all sorts of parameters, that generate all sorts of categories in function of the parameters in the templates, possibly through a complex set of nested templates. (such as Template talk:Blason-fr-en-it; in short, all things you would never ask to an average user)
• templates which cannot be understood by an average wiki user without studying more than 5 minutes
• experiences with wiki objects (cats, galleries, documents, images) that took major time and efforts to find or locate in the commons

--Foroa 14:20, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Concerning Experiences: I used mills as an experience in classifying items, but it turned into an experience of finding items. There were no complications by template classification. Some observations:

• I first went over the category tree, sorting images by location categories and mill type categories, applying downward refinements and upward dichotomies (or trichotomies). This was fast going and very clarifying about which categories were appropriate.
• Limitations arose from the restricted number of represented items in the extended category tree.
• I searched items not in the millscategory with the wikimenu at the left, using searchterms in different languages: (mill, moulin, molino, molen muehle, wassermühle, windmühle etc. - there is a multi-language problem worth looking at). This was the most time-consuming part but rich in discoveries of gallerypages and individual items which were not in the mills category tree. This way I found over 100 items not yet mill-classified.
• Initially, I tried a catscan search, but at that time I had not the right catscan parameters. Later, I found some 10 more items by using catscan search on mills, windmills, watermills depth 3 to 5. But the catscan search turned out to be limited by the maximum of 1000 items.
• Once the item is in the right category tree, downward refinemend of classification is possible and permits faster searching. Reactions of other users show that they are pleased by the refinement of the mills category and some have joined in improving classifications.

With what I had learned, I tried classifying Coats of arms. That's were the template problems came.

• Concerning Template talk:Blason-fr-en-it, I fully agree.
• Concerning User:Odejea/Blason, I tried to remove at the item page the automatic Insignia category, that was only possible by eliminating /blason from the template, but that changed the applied template in another user template - not wanted - so his contributions remain going into the insignia supercategorie. This is a minor problem, however.
• There is a category which contains several of the most problematic ones: Commons:Copyright tags. Havang 11:54, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Havang, this is great input for me and confirms several of my lines of thinking. Could you be more precise on:

• Limitations arose from the restricted number of represented items in the extended category tree
• Catscan: does it accept substrings (E.g. mill if you want to catch mills, watermill(s) and windmills), limit of 1000 items: in searched items or found items ? Search depth 3 to 5: meaning you can only search in an existing tree to a certain level, not for lost "sheep" ?
• what is problematic on Commons:Copyright tags (besides de hundreds of different ones) ?

Thank you. --Foroa 12:36, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

• At 1): Look for instance the Category:Coats of arms to be classified. This is overcrowded and nobody starts attacking the category: by the time you arrive at K or O, you are occupied 3 to 5 mintues passing the pages one by one, and if you have done a categorisation, you have to start over from the first page, not funny. Category:Insignia at least has an alphabetic index, but that category doesn't work either, because the index is on picture names, which is a big mess as well: compare first letters Arms, Berlin, Blason, Coa of, COAUtrecht, mpt123.png, wapen van Utrecht, wappenberlin, wappen of mixed with military insignia etc, etc.: impossible to browse and a hard job to refine categories.
• At 2)Catscan takes it al to the depth asked (Mills-windmills-windmillsbycountry-windmills of province-windmill in Berlin plus -watermills-watermillsbycountry-xxx-xxx- etc, (depth 5), but aborts at 1000 images. May-be there are possibilities in Catscan I do not know/did not use.
• several Commons copyright tags contain an automatic categorisation template, (I gave the arbitrary exemple Norway). If so, they are a source of problems; and even more a problem when inserted in user templates. Most often included is {{Insignia}} which contains includeCategory:Insignia. {{PD-Coa-Germany}} contains also includeCategory:Insignia. Is it of some utility to change this to nonincludeCategory:Insignia?
• A complication is that people tend to stick to their so genially constructed template, and get easely angry about critical remarks on it. Havang 16:29, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

There is some real use case to have large cats because we cannot categorise every dimension or detail of an image. I'm working on that, but as a quick example: this insignia cat is great if you are trying to find for example a coat of arms that contains a green cat on a blue background. Don't forget that we are building a media wiki that should allow to visually find things along a criteria that cannot be necessarily expressed in words (for example an insignia that matches nicely with the one of the my grandfather). I think that we have to find workarounds and solutions that allow to handle correctly that volume of information.

Since I made the little addition to Category:Coats of arms to be classified, is it more usable in your opinion ? --Foroa 16:58, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

• In fact, categories fail partly in visual search. I did some visual search on mills too. For that, the catscan allows better visual browsing. For one main categorie, itself with not so much images, but having well-defined 10 subcategories with subsub- and subsubsubcategories, jou can make 10 catscans depth 3 for 10x maximally 1000 images you can scroll. For visual search, no category search can do that as fast. But because of the limit of 1000, any too big category overlap blocks catscans searches. A good category tree permits good searching using a series of catscans. And... happely, catscans also search images which lack the categorie but contain the searchitem in texte. Archives are not easily build. I realise more and more we need to look to both sides: which combination of search system and categorisation system gives the best results.
• Your alphabet is a real gain of time for changing pages, but it doesnt change the basic problem: not knowing what comes up, it is is pure hasard if you find a non-classified coat-item you are able to classify, and there are too many items to categorise. But already the geographic classification of some countries, notably the bigger ones, is a partial chaos; and that should be the easiest to do. (I tried two weeks ago a temporary pre-classifiction by country -see the subcategories at the first page of the cat- very few persons have done further classifications since).
• As a side remark: I did not yet mention I used google image search as well, combining wikimedia commons with all sort of terms related to mills; I use to make several language choices in google search programs: different languages give really different search results. Often the results were similar to earlier results, but I found a few not mill-classified wiki-items.

Havang 17:49, 2 October 2007 (UTC) I think that we are quite in line in de sense that we see many problems coming together that need be adressed as a whole, such as search, navigate, naming and categorisation. Where I disagree with you (in a hurry, little time now):

• there will be always need for real visual (optical) search, as the two examples I gave are not foreseeable, even with the best category system in the world. Even the next generation google will not find oil mills from the beginning of previous century with a red roof and stone feet. sure
• you should not adapt your organisation because you have relatively tiny technology constraints: this catscan tool and the category display can be significantly improved in a couple of hours (or two days) of work. I hope so
• If users want to stick absolutely to their templates that costed them a lot of energy, then they most probably a very good and valid reason. I think we have to make more efforts to understand their logic (visual search maybe ?). Yes
• I've been always completely against the logic that you build only categories if you have sufficient members, for many reasons. For the current Category:Coats of arms to be classified, the job becomes almost hopeless, but is one of the bad consequences of the policy. But for now, we have to live with a system where each overflowed cat is pushed in other subscats that overflow again, and again till you reach the end of a tree. You see, still a lot of work to do. --Foroa 18:24, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

• I too don't follow that logic, even a (nearly) empty category can be a good category; and huge categories which have an obvious function are wishfull (like PD-coats of arms); but then this should remain a isolated category as a growing list, not to be mixed with the active group of branching and linking growing trees.
• I have learned to go from the bottom category to the upper one, my attempt is not so much to empty higher categories, but to start with a correct bottom category: it rises up evidently if choices about dichotomies, trichotomies are clear and easily understandable. Unclassified items in huge numbers is the most worrying time-consuming thing and if they are mixed with classsified items it's chaos. That's why higher categories should not be a mix of well-classified and unclassified items. The number of items is not my first concern. That's what is expressed by the red line in the diagram above, that's the policy.
• I am thinking about a system of two picture names: the name which has been used for uploading and will be used in galleries, not adjustable afterwards; and a name for classification and search purposes, adjustable afterwards, the two names coupled one-to-one. The upload name may be the same as the adjustable name, but may also be different. That should make the system much more versatile, permit alphabetically sortable naming and solve many problems, including language problems. (It will probably generate new but hopefully smaller problems). Good evening Havang 19:10, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

The insignia template is intended to be used on images that have some official status, and therefor have restrictions of how they can be used. I don't think the included categorisation is intended to put all insignia in the supercategory of all images of insignia. Instead, I think, the purpose is to collect all images with that kind of restrictions directly in one category. It may be a good idea to have that restriction category separate from the category that sorts insignia into subcategories based on various criteria. The Norwegian CoA template is similar to the insignia template, it categorises all Norwegian CoAs in one category based on the license of the images. /81.231.248.36 19:19, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation above. So this cat is another dimension of the cats: its license restrictions where you basically want the names of the files, not necessarily the thumbnails. Right ? That's a good one!Havang 07:50, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Some short replies:

• Havangs disappointment and loneliness with the category splits in Category:Coats of arms to be classified. We have a major community communication problem here on the commons that I want to adress. I am sure that many people would love to help you with the job but they don't know that you are working on that. For now, I would suggest to hang the temp subcats on the right cats in the concerned country categories and set a message on the relevant cat talk pages. When you have done that, I would launch a general help call in village pump. People tend to be very happy if they have the opportunity to expand and organise their collection. (It's a small scale experiment, I now wait and see what happens next, do not expand the experiment yet, svp. Havang 07:10, 3 October 2007 (UTC) )
• Concerning the image names, I am thinking in the same line as you. I am preparing a proposal to add to the images a field called Title or so, that inherits by default the file name but can be changed easily and will be used for all primary displays and sorting.
• Concerning the supercats, I am still trying to find a workaround to decrease the need of it, such as special search or display function. Need more time to investigate.

--Foroa 07:03, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

October 1

CheckUsage tool out of order

hist Toolserver status

The Toolserver shut down on July 1, 2014.

More information...

Does anybody know when the CheckUsage tool for images will work again instead of producing error mesages? -- Túrelio 10:27, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The tools seem to go in and out of service all the time. If you really want to complain, the best place to do it is probably at meta:User_talk:Duesentrieb/Tools, but in most cases he's probably already aware of the situation, and doing his best. AnonMoos 11:14, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Toolserver has a bad disk again. They are working on it. -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:22, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Mostly, it's not the tool that is out of service, but the database - CheckUsage is especially sensitive to this, since it needs all wiki databases. All I can do is make the error message less ugly and more informative in the next version :) -- Duesentrieb ⇌ 09:33, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

It's back. Or at least an old version. -- Bryan (talk to me) 16:21, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your efforts. -- Túrelio 19:20, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Image Metadata

Metadata for images taken by Canon cameras link to Canon, not Canon. Two examples of images with the wrong tags are here and here. I brought this issue up on Wikipedia and it was fixed back in August. An admin here may want to update it if they get a chance. Thanks. ♫ Bitch and Complain Sooner ♫ 02:08, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I tried to copy what enwp has done to fix it, but it didn't work. I created template:exif-make-value, and in mediaWiki:Exif-make-value I put {{Exif-make-value}}, but it was trying to transclude exif-make-value which naturally doesn't exist. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:37, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks to Platonides :) pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:05, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Very nice. Thanks a lot! ♫ Bitch and Complain Sooner ♫ 00:03, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

October 2

Image:Stratovarius parche.jpg

Apparently this is a picture of a patch or bracelet with the Stratovarius logo on it (you know, like the ones you sew on stuff). However, since it fully focuses on the logo and not the bracelet itself, I think it may not be suitable for Commons. Any advice on it? Thanks. -- ReyBrujo 02:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Thumbnail problem

Hello I just uploaded Image:Afghanistan admin.svg, the thumbnail is all messed up, it's nothing like what it looks like when you click on the image. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/thumb.php?f=Afghanistan_admin.svg&w=200 didn't help Any help is appreciated thanks Jackaranga 11:20, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Someone else has the same problem at Commons:Graphics village pump#Chemical structure SVG files not rendering properly?, is the commons broken ? Jackaranga 11:31, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

This SVG has one error according to the W3C validation service. But I'm not an expert for SVGs. You might get better help here. Regards, AFBorchert

I reverted back to the previous version, which is valid. Jackaranga 12:08, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

This problem is caused by this element in the SVG: width="100%" height="100%"

Change the width and height values to actual values and it will work. This is a known bug: "Aspect ratio broken for SVG images without size attributes" bugzilla:2691. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:12, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your help pfctdayelise, the bug you mentioned is bugzilla:3691, I didn't know about it. I entered absolute size values in pixels, but unfortunately it doesn't help, the thumbnail is still screwed up. Jackaranga 13:25, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Freedom of panorama in Italy

A question time was asked yesterday by Member of Parliament Franco Grillini to the Italian Minister of Culture, Francesco Rutelli, to discuss about the urgent creation in the Italian legislation of a norm about "freedom of panorama", following the problems experienced by Wikipedia in illustrating works of architects from Italy in Italy, unless they have been dead for at least 70 years. Wikipedia and WikiCommons are openly named in the request as the main reason to ask the question. If you can read Italian, you can find the text on this sub-page of the it:Wikipedia. http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Alcuni_Wikipediani/Libert%C3%A0_di_panorama#Interrogazione_parlamentare --User:G.dallorto 11:36, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I've only skimmed through the text, but this is awesome! How do paliamentary questions work in Italy? Has the minister already answered? Jastrow (Λέγετε) 16:26, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually I can find it on the Italian Low House Parliament (la camera) web page. Perhaps it has not been registered yet. By the way the only document I have been able in which the name wikipedia appears in text is on the same exactly argument but filled by a deputy of a party that is definitively very different from the one of the deputy cited above. Interrogazione a risposta scritta (in Italian) -- AnyFile 20:26, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Hello, in fact it may take a few days to be registered. I gave the info on the very day the request had been filed. I shall keep you posted. It may take a few weeks to get anwser from the Minister. The other document deals with another problem: the prohibition to take pictures INSIDE museums (which is another serious problem for the Italian Wikipedia indeed), whereas the new question deals with works of art on a public display, for instance buildings and monuments in the open air. However, they are both problems troubling the Italian Wikipedia...

For Jastrow: we are dealing with a "question time", not with a law, therefore with just a first step. We will see what the minister answers. It will be a very long struggle, especially for the fact that Italian wikipedians do not seem very willing to engage in a political action :-( . --User:G.dallorto 12:13, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, it seams that the word "exact" in my previous post was not the correct one to be used. -- AnyFile 19:13, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

October 4

"Religious art print"

Devi bhakta (talk · contribs) had uploaded Image:Lalita sm.JPG & Image:Tridevi.png which are both images (reproductions, probably) of "Undated version of ancient, oft-rendered religious imagery". If the original images are indeed "in the public domain because its copyright has expired." - does it mean that I can scan such pictures from a book I have about Krishna? Or both images might be a copyvio? Can I upload to Commons an old image, even from a website with copyright mark? Yuval Y § Chat § 23:55, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I would actually put those up for deletion as copyvio. They look like the small modern posters you see in homes all over India. To use an example from another religion, if a church commissions a painting of Madonna and Child to give out in flyer form, the church owns the copyright to the image, despite the fact that that motif has been done and redone for centuries. This is of course entirely different from an image that is actually old, in that it was created so long ago that the author's rights have expired, aka {{PD-old}}. - BanyanTree 05:23, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

LOL technically, the church owns no copyright on the Madonna, but essentially it is correct: the author rendering of the picture prevails on the "PD-Old" of the model, if the image has been created recently it is covered by author's rights. Michelet-密是力 20:00, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, in the case postulated by BanyanTree, the church would own the copyright to the particular painting under the "work-for-hire" provisions of U.S. copyright law, unless some other arrangement was explicitly specified in a legal document. AnonMoos 21:55, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

BanyanTree -- There are several devotional images of the Virgin Mary (often with her Immaculate Heart) which have been reprinted in countless Catholic publications in many countries for many decades (at least since the 1920's, I would think), usually without much apparent concern for copyright or attributions. I wonder if these would effectively be considered to have entered into the public domain? AnonMoos 21:55, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Sure, the key word being "reprint". That is entirely different from a "undated version of ancient, oft-rendered religious imagery", which appears to me to be a modern piece of art based on traditional iconography. Like I said, a deletion discussion so people can try to figure out the date of the "undated" work would appear to be the best option. - BanyanTree 22:54, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I've now downloaded the full-size version of Tridevi.png, and notice that it has a signature "V.V. Sapar" at lower left, which would seem to indicate that it's not really in the same situation as the anonymous Catholic devotional images I mentioned... AnonMoos 07:55, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Decisions regarding Argentine money

OK, I was going through nominating a large swath of clearly improperly marked licenses for Argentine money. Imagine my surprise,then, when I came across Commons:Deletion requests/Argentina money (2007-03-03) to find that the discussion already happened. So I looked through the results on the page Commons:Deletion requests/Archive/2007/03, and it appears that the moneys with the wrong licenses (e.g., Brazil) were deleted, but ones with correct licenses (e.g., Albania) were kept. However, this page was completely passed over. As such, we have a ton of images in Category:Money of Argentina which are improperly marked pd-old or pd-self. At best, someone needs to find a proper license for this. But, I think this discussion was improperly closed. It was decided that although there was a copyright on these images, we should just ignore it in the name of information. But this is directly contrary to the spirit of commons. Patstuart 20:22, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I think will be good idea to open new deletion request if you could make necessary citations from Argentinian law. Previous deletion request are definitely lacked them. --EugeneZelenko 15:30, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

October 6

Help request on licensing, permissions and author.

I am a bit doubtful on the licensing, permissions and author of Image:Wojtaszek_Radoslaw2.jpg. I made this image from a PD image found on here (Image:Wojtaszek_Radoslaw.jpg). I would be very grateful if someone could check these for me. Thanks a lot. Voorlandt 15:57, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

My understanding is that all derivative works (such as a cropped image) must hold the same licensing as the original work. In this case, it would be released into public domain under the name of Paweł Suwarski; not Pjahr. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 17:13, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your help, i have changed the tags appropriately.Voorlandt 17:30, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

October 7

Uploads by User:Easyplex

I already addressed this three weeks ago at #Strange filenames and licenses. 20+ of these strange uploads are still here, and Easyplex has not offered any satisfactory explanation since. What to do? Delete them all? Regards --Rosenzweig 11:05, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I think we've given it enough time, and favor deleting any and all images uploaded by Easyplex with dubious names, licences, or sources. -- Infrogmation 13:45, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I'll start deleting/reuploading then, I'll remove EVERYTHING that does not have a waterproof external source, and I'm not going to spend time googling for sources.Finn Rindahl 20:20, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. --Rosenzweig 21:12, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Time to really deprecate {{PD}}?

The two-year anniversary of this template becoming deprecated is coming up, and yet it still keeps getting added to new uploads. I think it's time to prevent its use in new uploads so that we can get a chance to clean up the backlog. I'm making a proposal for how this could be done at Template talk:PD#Time_to_really_deprecate_this_template.3F. Please comment there. —LX (talk, contribs) 12:06, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree -- Jarekt 12:41, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

reloading sound file

I inadvertently uploaded a mono sound file in stereo format. How can I re-upload it in mono? —the preceding unsigned comment was added by Keoka (talk • contribs)

Just click Upload a new version of this file link on file description page. Probably you need to wait for awhile if your account too new. --EugeneZelenko 15:35, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

New users can replace their own files instantly now :) That was fixed quite a while ago. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:51, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Please help the newcomer

For me as a newcomer to Wikimedia, making a contribution to the content is complicated and unclear.

I therefore ask an experienced Wikipedian to write a short - at the utmost two page - paper that describes in clear and distinct words how a contribution shall be made. Describe for instance the contribution of a self-made photo.

Show how the photograph can best be named so that it can be found back later. How to deal with categories; is it possible to add "tags" to the photo and how should that be done?

Clear and simple proza with a clear beginning and a simple end. The way Wikipedia is now introduced, as well as its instructions for contributing are fuzzy and full of terms that are not in use in the world outside Wikipedia.

Please do us, newcomers, a favour.

Primasz

Commons:First steps :) If anything is not clear from there, please let us know so that we can improve the page. -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:19, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Try also Commons:Contributing your own work. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:43, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

October 8

Can't upload files

I'm frustrated with uploading files to Commons. I have been experiencing problems all weekend. Part of the problem might be my internet service (Verizon BroadbandAccess), which I never had a problem with before. I am also trying to upload from public wi-fi networks [I'm in a park], with limited success. I got one photo uploaded now, and one yesterday (took a very long time).

I have been able to upload to Flickr this weekend, though photos are reduced resolution. Because they are less than optimal resolution, I'm not tagging them there as Creative Commons. Right now, I am transferring a file, via FTP, to my own website. [success - here, and proof that it's my site here) At this point, I hope someone can tell me how to get it from there onto commons. I want it to be multi-licensed (GFDL-CC-BY-SA). It is approximately 3600px x 4900 px -- multiple photos stitched together with PtGUI. It's a large file. Maybe too large for commons? (With PtGUI, I have potential to stitch something with twice that resolution, but the file size would be super huge). I try with Special:Upload, but it times out. I try with commonist, and this is what happens. I'm also not sure what I could possibly do to reduce file size, without compromising quality.

If anyone has ideas about why I'm having problems, please let me know. There are a bunch more photos on Flickr, going back to August. I would like to get more of these (full resolution) on commons, but if I have technical problems, then I give up. -Aude (talk | contribs) 20:50, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Are you using anything to automatically upload? A filename prefix blacklist went into effect in September, which managed to break Commonist (among other auto-upload programs) unless you remove the blacklisted text out of your photo's filename. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 21:41, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The filename blacklist should not cause any problems unless the name begins with one of the prefixes in MediaWiki:Filename-prefix-blacklist. In this case it is much more likely that the problems is the file size. There is a size limit for uploads, so the file may just be to big. I think the limit is 20 MB, but I'm not sure. Commons has only a few files larger than that, but they seem to have been uploaded in some special way. /81.231.248.36 23:08, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Both filesize and name restrictions may be reasons contributing to problems I have experienced. When I tried uploading Image:Dancetheatre.jpg the first time, it was named "IMG_xxxx" on my computer and in the upload form, I was renaming it there. I guess I can't do that? With Image:Freedomtower-oct2007.jpg which I can't upload, file size is likely an issue. And if commonist is broken, that's also part of my problems. I have also experienced problems using Commons:Tools#Commonplace. I will think about this more. My ISP sent me some suggestions to try to improve my uploading speed. I will work on those. Also, I looked at the stitched image and think I need to restitch it, since the seams are visible in some spots. Will work on all this in the next few days. -Aude (talk | contribs) 05:08, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I'll just add that back in September (Sept 16-19), I tried multiple times to upload a cropped version of the featured picture candidate, but it failed each time. - w:Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/WTC (23 September 2001). For working with images, I have Photoshop 6.0 at home (7.0 at work). Sometimes use GIMP, with no difference in file sizes. For the stitched photo above, I brought the files directly into PtGUI and did everything there. (no Photoshop) The results came out to be larger than 20 MB (file is 24.5 mb). I think it ought to be saved with smaller file size, but not sure how to do that without reducing quality. -Aude (talk | contribs) 05:27, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

October 9

Template problem

Can anyone see why the Information template on Image:Extrait toccata kapsberger.png isn't working right? - Jmabel | talk 05:47, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Fixed it. I always try such things by a method of elimination. Remove a small part and then press on 'preview'. If it works it's in the now missing part else put the removed text back in and try something else. -- Cecil 05:54, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Users editing the file upload description box so as to produce an invalid {{information}} template on the description page after image upload is rather frequent; I've fixed a number of such problems. (Of course, the situation is made worse by the fact that there's no real way to preview the rendering of the text you've added to the upload description box until the image has been actually uploaded.) It might be nice to have a version of the upload box where each separate field (i.e. Author, Date, Source, etc.) is a separate HTML form field, which would probably cut down significantly on invalid {{information}} templates. AnonMoos 15:44, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

For an example of the kind of thing which might be avoided by having separate form boxes, see this edit which I just now made. 16:31, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Explicit image uploads by User:Taric25‎

User:Taric25‎ has uploaded a number of professionally-taken explicit images which he claims to be of himself. I originally tagged them as lacking permisison, however I am told that a valid permission is now logged with OTR (ticket #2007100810005154). The images are:

• Image:Taric Alani Barn light.jpg‎
• Image:Taric Alani Innocence.jpg‎
• Image:Taric Alani Chaise ass.jpg‎
• Image:Taric Alani Hard on couch.jpg‎
• Image:Taric Alani Relaxing.jpg
• Image:Taric Alani Fully hard.jpg‎
• Image:Taric Alani Cumming.jpg‎
• Image:Taric Alani Cum shot.jpg‎
• Image:Taric Alani Self sucker.jpg‎
• Image:Taric Alani Self suck tonguing it.jpg‎

Much as I recognise that Commons is not censored, some of those images are fairly extreme (and go beyond any content we currently host in their explicitness). They are not taken as education images but as pornography. I'm not entirely sure whether a deletion request should be made or whether these photos are acceptable. Input from the rest of the Community is appreciated. WjBscribe 09:51, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

As per Commons:Deletion_guidelines#Regular_deletion, I see no reason as to keep this image. The image falls into the case where "the file/page is not potentially usable by any current or future Wikimedia project" as it is more of a vanity image than anything. --D_arkF_alls ^talk 09:59, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Oh goody this should be fun.....

I invariably delete new "cock shots" based on the message on that page which reads something like "we have enough of these so your contribution may be deleted" IIRC. To me it is the likely rationale for the upload that would interest me and the possible usage on Foundation projects. These seem to add little to the current stock of pictures and seem uploaded for "gratification" in some form. I would delete them.

However there will now be an influx of "Commons is not censored" folk leading ultimately to the foundation hosting a world class porn site! --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Why not? The founder happens to have some experience with that... --Fb78 10:16, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

(multiple edit conflict)Since we're bringing Jimbo into it... Note that Jimbo has deleted explicit images in the past with the summary, "Image would trigger 2257 record keeping requirements." This refers to the enforcement guidelines for the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act, which require the "publisher" of sexually explicit material, the WMF in this case, to obtain and maintain records proving that the model is of legal age. At least some of these images appear enough to bring 2257 into it and speedyable per argumentum ad Jimbonem. At the least a deletion discussion should be started. - BanyanTree 10:31, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

User claims to be born in 1985, which means he supposedly is of legal age. Can anyone with an OTRS account tell us what the ticket covers? Is it only about the photographer's authorisation or do we have data concerning the model as well? We should assume good faith as always, but I'm uneasy at the possibility that the model would not be Mr. Taric Alani. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 10:39, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

A claim by the user is worthless once the Act's record-keeping requirements are triggered. An image triggering 2257 legally requires (not suggests) that the Foundation obtain documentation that the model is of legal age and then maintain that documentation in case the Feds come looking. Can you imagine the owner of a porn site replying to query from law enforcement about the age of a model by shrugging and saying, "Well, she said she was 18 and it would have been rude to question further"? 2257 record-keeping is obviously a huge administrative hassle, which is one reason such images are deleted, amidst others like those stated in this discussion. In this case, assuming I am correct that some of these images fall under 2257 (those last two in particular), we cannot assume good faith. U.S. federal law trumps website conduct standards. - BanyanTree 11:20, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

My point was precisely: is all this stuff covered by the OTRS ticket? The guy could have sent a written model agreement stating his age. Lar states that it does not. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 13:02, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) We have actually content that is (IMO) much more offensive than this (including BDSM and so on). However, a good reason for deletion is project scope. Some pictures just show this guy posing in the nude. How is that informational or educational? As for the rest, we have already more than our fair share of pictures showing people ejaculating and autofellating. This pictures seem to be only vanity, as the classification of category:Taric Alani under category:Porn actors from the United States shows. Btw, the "Rationale for Attribution" section (eg in Image:Taric Alani Barn light.jpg) is a bit surprising. I don't understand what it's supposed to mean.

User:Taric25 seems to be a decent contributor on en:, so the subject should be dealt with some caution. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 10:21, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

All in all I agree completely with Jastrow (including the fact that we do have other "borderline" material). Many thanks to the user indeed but I think delete would be correct --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:26, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Jastrow and Herby. Even if an educational spin is put on this, we don't need so *many* - it looks like vanity material indeed. Another point is that regardless of the subject's true age -- which let's face it is impossible to be sure of over the internet -- we should act with extreme caution when showing someone so youthful (and identifiable). Any educational argument for these images, can be met by someone another decade older. So my conclusion is definitely: delete. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:45, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Adding my support here, delete pr Herby, Jastrow, Pfctdayelise! Finn Rindahl 12:24, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

delete -- Jarekt 12:37, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

{edit conflict - nothing like a bit of porn to bring folks out!) Were it not for the fact that I have had my share of trouble this month I think Pfctdayelise's view on identifiability would probably make me delete right away (& always interesting to know she prefers older people too :)) --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:38, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Ahem, for the purposes of protecting the Foundation from PR if not legal nightmares -- all it takes is one screenshot or one cache. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:06, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I have OTRS access and reviewed the ticket. It covers authorization (it includes an email chain in which the subject requested the photographer to release the images, under the license stated on the images, and the photographer did that) but does not make any assertions about the subject's age. The ticket was "close successful"ed by Krimpet. I agree with others, the rationale for attribution is odd. I think, as others do, that we should politely thank the user, but I don't think we need all of the images, and potentially don't need any of them at all. ++Lar: t/c 12:51, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I just checked the Rationale for Attribution of the "Barn Light" picture. It is weird in ways that suggest a prank, but most unambiguously, it does claim the picture to be copyrighted. It even includes a link to an image ("NOT GFDL.svg") that was apparently patterned after the regular license pictures of Commons. Quite frankly, I think someone got hold of User Taric's password and is playing a practical joke on him. I suggest someone contacts him and asks for his stand on the matter. Luis Dantas 13:16, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

A pretty elaborate prank: see this blog, in particular the entry for Friday, June 16th, 2006 William Avery 21:43, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Delete them all as spam. I view this as an attempt to get free publicity/advertisement for this JWJ photo studio and/or for Tarik Alani. The license is in my view not free as it requires a link to the photographer's site. "Proper attribution" is maintained by just giving the photographer's name; requiring a link goes way beyond that and makes the image unusable for offline uses. This, BTW, also applies to Image:Free Subtitles.PNG (work-safe, for once). Lupo 22:40, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Per the consensus here and with my own gut, I've deleted these as images that did not follow COM:L and that they are out of project scope. The associated category and gallery have also been deleted as empty. O₂ (息 • 吹) 23:18, 08 October 2007 (GMT)

Valid permission is logged with OTR (ticket #2007100810005154), so I see no reason why the licensing is a problem. Also, if you look at Template:Attribution, you'll see that it is regular practice for Attribution. That is acceptable by Commons:Licensing. If you like, I can remove the part about the images not being GFDL licensed. In addition, I also use {tl|Attribution}} for all my Wikimedia Commons contributions, such as Image:Majel Barrett in 2007 cropped.png. Also, the images do benefit another Wikimedia project, Wikipedia. We use Image:Free Subtitles.PNG as the main image in Subtitle (captioning). Also, the article Autofellatio uses {{Template:Commons}} to linking to Category:Autofellatio. As I said on the image description page, I use these images to illiustrate the form in which the artwork takes place. The images of autofellatio help the reader visualize the subject. :Image:Autofellatio_2.jpg used the same license, asking "We want it noted that the image is provided by Hornyboy.com and copyrighted by RudeBox Media, Inc., but it can be used freely with this mention." That is exactly the same as the notice with the images I have provided. Plus, I don't see how Autofellatio_2.jpg is so different from any of the images I uploaded in form or license. Autofellatio_2.jpg uses the same license and also asks that the be attributed to "Hornyboy.com and copyrighted by RudeBox Media". Furthermore, neither 2257 nor age is an acceptable cause for deletion, since we have plenty of other images of Category:Males and Category:Nude men. We do not require any of them to supply their birthdates. Also, I consider photos like Image:Taric Alani Barn light.jpg‎ and Image:Taric Alani Innocence.jpg‎ acceptable for Category:Male nude in photography, because they are totally artistic photos with no sexual context whatsoever. Thus, I could consider if you wanted to delete some of the pictures, simply because we have plenty of images in whatever category, but not all of them. Taric25 00:41, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

What about Image:Keeani Lei 6.jpg? Another pornographic promotional image of a porn star that is not potentially usable by any Wikimedia project. --88.134.232.95 00:44, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Is that picture acceptable, or should we delete it? Taric25 00:49, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

For the original images, even though it was archived in OTRS, it is still considered unacceptable by means of COM:L since it requires a link to the blog. Even more, derivative works and commercial usage must be declared explicitly in plain sight, or else they are non-free for Commons. In the case of Image:Keeani Lei 6.jpg, someone needs to give a brief summary of what the OTRS ticket contains before a decision can be made about its licensing. O₂ (息 • 吹) 01:32, 09 October 2007 (GMT)

The e-mail sent to OTRS did not require that we link to his website. I did that as a courtesy. Please undelete and I will remove the requirement to link to his website. Taric25 02:54, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I reviewed the permission sent to OTRS and I too can confirm that the licensing is sound; the permissions granted by the photographer were equivalent to CC-BY and consistent with our licensing guidelines (and did not require a link to the blog as O has suggested).

However while the images are properly licensed, I agree with the sentiment above that these images probably don't belong on Commons. Commons is not censored, of course, but these photos seem excessively gratuitous and seem like vanity material. --krimpet⟲ 07:26, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for commenting, however, because the license is sound, users of Wikimedia Commons should not make deletion requests in the village pump, and we should use the relevant process for it instead. Also, you said, "but these photos seem excessively gratuitous and seem like vanity material." I do not understand how an image like Image:Free Subtitles.PNG is either "overly gratuitous" or "vanity material". We use it in the articles for Subtitle (captioning) on both the English and Chinese Wikipedia. Please undelete the images, and follow deletion per Commons:Deltion requests to decide whether to delete the images or not because of their content, since license is no longer an issue. Taric25 01:10, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Image:Free Subtitles.PNG has been undeleted, but the rest will stay deleted because they are out of project scope. We already have an ample supply of nude males. O₂ (息 • 吹) 01:18, 10 October 2007 (GMT)

In my opinion these images would be appropriate in Commons, were it not for the server location in the US and 2257. One does face outside restrictions, different ones in different places, lack of "Freedom of Panorama" in France and Italy for instance. Regarding the images, I have to judge from descriptions as the links are red. -- Klaus with K 08:46, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Modern reproduction Hokusai's "superceding" genuine originals

This modern reproduction (using the original techniques) has superceded this original. All these points were made in a featured pic debate on the Great Wave from the same series. We should NOT be doing this. They are NOT the same picture. Since people seem to have trouble grasping the difference, I would explain that the genuine one would be worth about 1,000 times more than the reproduction, though that has value also. In addition, the copyright status of the recut versions must be regarded as dubious, as they are said to date from the 1930s, and the cutters are likely to have copyright, even though they copied Hokusai's design, now PD. I expect this has happened to other prints in the series (of 36) but have not checked. Johnbod 01:55, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree to an extent. Without losing sight that a print based on a Hokusai work is obviously a Hokusai, prints by different carvers and printers should be separate uploads, not overwriting other images.

For those unfamiliar with the process of ukiyo-e woodblock prints, a description may be in order: an artist would make a master drawing, an assistant would do a tracing, the tracing would be used to carve woodblocks in negative relief (each color requiring a different block) and the blocks used by a printer to lay down each layer of color in sequence to mass produce prints. If one ignores the assistant like everyone does and the publisher, a "Hokusai print" would involve two other people, the carver and the printer. Sometimes one person would do more than one step. The more a block is used, the less sharp its edges, so a second run of a given set of blocks has noticeably fuzzier lines. For an example of excellent attribution, see this.

If I remember correctly from a Hokusai exhibit, Hokusai had established a working relationship with only a few carvers over his long life. That said, there have been a number of extremely skilled carvers and printers who have redone Hokusai, and I have no particular preference for the "original" print, given how many intermediaries there are in the process, as long as each print details its provenance, especially the carver. Note this gets extremely confusing as museums will state the date of the master drawing as "date of creation", and not specify the cut or print date. - BanyanTree 03:34, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

The crucial difference is that the originals can be presumed to have been supervised and approved by Hokusai before being sold, where the modern ones clearly have not been. The same issue applies to Rembrandt etchings, which have both been nearly all copied from scratch in the C19, and in many cases entirely reworked on the original worn-out plates. The art trade, and publishers of art books, recognise there is an enormous difference between the two, and you would never find say Thames & Hudson casually using a later copy of either a Hokusai or a Rembrandt just because it is a better image, even when it is hard to tell the original and copy apart. We should apply the same standards to ourselves. The modern copies should always clearly be described as eg: "Modern copy after Hokusai". Johnbod 15:07, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

User:AGSV

User:AGSV has been uploading a steady stream of copyvios for over a year now, each time having to get it deleted. Could someone either block him or template him with a final warning or something? Patstuart 16:03, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Deleted & warned. (Though, as these things go, it's a fairly small steady stream.) --Davepape 16:28, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

reusing part of image

how (and can I even?) can I use a part of an image? I mean, if there is a picture here, released into Public Domain, does that mean, that I can, say, upload that image into my PC, and, say, that its a picture of a person, so I would just cut out a arm ;p and than I would like to upload it (the arm only) into Commons for further use. Can I do that? and if I can, what do I put as "author" and what kind of license do I give it? thanks. 02:32, 1 October 2007

You can do whatever you want with public domain images. That's the whole point. The best thing would be to link directly to the image so that you establish the source of your image is public domain and to let anyone find the source for whatever reason they want. You can license however you please, since it's public domain, including putting it back into the public domain. You are the author of the derivative work but you, obviously, can't claim authorship on the public domain image or portion thereof. Cburnett 05:19, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

However, specifically images of persons are subject to personality rights and it is up to you to decide whether or not you can use the image for your purposes. -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:24, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I read the personality rights, but I'm not really understanding it... so what does it mean? Can I take a pic of a person, and cut the head only and upload it back, or do I have to ask the author, or what? ;/ by the way, is PD the only license that lets me reuse pictures?, I think all of them do, right?... I dont know how to write the license after reusing a pic,, say the person put the pic under {{self|cc-by-sa-2.5}}, so after using a part of the pic, what license do I put (the same kind?), or more importantly how do I write it? I found something thats says to write {{PD-user|...something}}, but that seems to work only with PD, so how do I do it? Frizabela 17:36, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

If you take a part of an image that is in the Public Domain and you are not adding anything special to it, you can not license the image with anything but PD (which is not a license). That is, the image stays in the Public Domain. Samulili 18:26, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

The image is forever in the public domain, it's the question of the derivative work. The threshold for claiming a copyright is the same as creating any other copyrighted work. Cburnett 00:28, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

but what if the image is not in PD? but in something else? Frizabela 18:36, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

• In such case, you look on the license. Generally speaking, there are two types of free licenses: copyleft and non-copyleft. Copyleft licenses are all Creative Commons licenses which have SA (share-alike) in name, GFDL license, GPL, LGPL, FAL. Non-copyleft licenses are pure Attribution Creative Commons licenses (CC-BY) and BSD license. If the license is copyleft, you have to mention the author and give your derivative work exactly the same license and no other. With a non-copyleft license, you still have to mention the author and the original, but you can change license, for example from CC-BY to CC-BY-SA, or multi-license your work. Generally, in all cases if you mention the author, give link to the original and give your work exactly the same license, everything will always be fine. --Derbeth ^talk 20:37, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

The point is that the work is still copyrighted and you can only do what the license says you can do. Otherwise, you're dealing with a copyrighted work. For example, you can just as easily claim fair use on a GFDL or CC image as a work who's author reserves any and all rights. You could also buy the rights. Cburnett 00:28, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

• Unfortunatly, you can't just blindly use parts of an image and assume that the license still applies. The image may contain parts which are not licensed but which are still allowed as being quotes, de minimis, etc. If you single out that part, the rules that allowed them may no longer apply and you will infringe on copyright. So, you actually have to check that the part is not covered by other copyrights than that of the person who is listed as an author on Wikimedia Commons. This can be tricky with photos of real-world objects and especially with panoramas. -- ３２４７ (talk) 22:25, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Moving a Category: page to the Gallery namespace

...probably can't be done. Still, there is a page, Category:Louisville Zoo, which is in fact a gallery. It is possible to move it to the right namespace? Simply copying and pasting it will deprive it of its page history. Itai 12:34, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Last I knew you couldn't move categories in anyway. So the best bet, IMO, is to copy/paste the content of that page into Louisville Zoo with the edit summary of "Copied from Category:Louisville Zoo" and every image should then be categoriezed with that category. This way anyone researching the history will see that it was copied and can go to the category for further history information. Cburnett 13:11, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Since this category was created by me.. i went ahead and copied it to a gallery page and now i just put a link to it from the category page with a only a few select pics on the category page, sorry for the trouble.... I have a few more zoo categories that i did that i will also fix as time allows me. i thought i had done it right since i had copied the way i did it from other zoo category pages that were already in existance and apparently it was wrong.. sorry.. thanks --Ltshears 22:52, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Category:Coats of arms of cities of Britain

I cannot display any of the 3 images in this category: Category:Coats of arms of cities of Britain. Why? --Juiced lemon 18:23, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

What happened is that you created SVG files from tiff files on your hard disk (C:\Documents and Settings\Garry\Desktop\arms\Borough_of_Sunderland_COA.tif) however Inkscape did not converted from the tiff image to a vector format. Instead SVG is just a 60 line shell around your tiff file. The file displays just fine on your machine at home because image location can be found, but it can not display on other machines. You will have to do another tiff to SVG conversion, but this time use a text editor to look at the resulting file to ensure that you do not have <image> statements. --Jarekt 20:36, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

When looking at the source code you quickly can see the problem: Those "svg" images only include a tif image from "C:\Documents and Settings\..." So the thumbnails cannot be generated, the images should be deleted and one should explain to the uploader why the images cannot be displayed the way they were created. --Matt314 20:40, 10 October 2007 (UTC) (How come I was not shown the edit conflict warning?! --Matt314 20:46, 10 October 2007 (UTC))

See previously User talk:Barliner... AnonMoos 22:20, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Newbie Uploads Photo, Finds Description Missing, Is not allowed to fix the problem ???

Ok, so I read an article on cable cars, find that they are lacking pictures, so I make my first attempt at uploading one. I follow instructions, but a box appears that appears to already be populated with info, and so I let it pass. Now the picture is up there, it is described as needing fixing, SF_CableCarClimbingHydeStreetHill.jpg, but I can't get at it to fix the problem. The instructions for starting a photo gallery are also really obtuse, as is a lot of this site. Somebody got a Dummies or Idiots Guide to this yet ???

The photo looks fine to me. --Matt314 20:46, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Nice photo, but please crop the date on the bottom. --Jarekt 12:47, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

October 11

village

i think wat u guys was grat so i think u guys should do it again keep up the good work —the preceding unsigned comment was added by Veckins101 (talk • contribs) 12:44, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

thank you :) --rimshot^talk 15:22, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Non-English categories names

What about non-English categories names (for example, Category:Единороги (гаубицы)? Can they exist? --Flrn 12:32, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

No. Speedy delete them. --Juiced lemon 13:36, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Slow down a bit - read this discussion first. --BerndH 13:59, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Nice. This is "Speak english or go away" wich one I talk early. I DO NOT WANT TO LEARN ENGLISH. DIXI. You can replace russian categories with english ones (and keep russian redirects), but just remove all (well fited) categories is not good idea. Note. At my opinion this is a perfect sample of english language discrimination. Talk english or speedy delete. Perfect. Is commons really commons or it slavery for others wiki to serve english one? #!George Shuklin 14:10, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

My EUR 0.02, as a Dutchman: although English is the working language on Commons, I think it would be wrong to accept only English category names. It would mean making the whole "search structure" in Commons much less accessible to non-English speakers. Having categroy structures in more than one language will not greatly encumber the system, I trust. MartinD 14:23, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Please, chill out. We need a software solution here. Recreating the category structure in 30+ languages is definitely not a solution. Also, English is lingua franca on Commons. It's like latin in the middle ages - you want to talk to the rest of the world, you learn it. --Fb78 15:02, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

See Commons:Language for categories for one of several past discussions. While I think it *should* be possible to categorize using one's preferred language, at the moment it's beyond the technical capabilities of the Mediawiki software, and it would be chaos to have multiple categories, one for each language, each with only a handful of the total collection of images relating to the category's subject. So my apologies to Shuklin and others, English-language categorization is the best compromise option available to us at the moment. And please make the feature request to Mediawiki developers, so they know it's wanted. Stan Shebs 15:10, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Best opinion for people, who can freely speak and write english? I have tried to use english categories but found them absolutly imposible to use. I must understand a thousands words, witch one I barrely understand in russian (f.e. {{ru:Брадкугель}} (image:Пудовые_ядра.jpg), гаубица, мортира, единорог, лафет, передок, etc. Now I just copy a main part to categories. If museum description says that it is a Брадкугель, so let it be a Category:Брадкугели. Simple and rich. For 15-word museum description I easily make a 5-7 meanful categories: type, material (steel, bronze, etc), age, size. For equivalent english desription I lost about hour with translator (without any warranty to get a corrent translation for antique war phrase) - this time I can make 10-15 corretly categorized images with full russian description (for information: ~20Gb museum photos till yet not uploaded, and at this sunday about 4-6Gb will be added). #!George Shuklin 16:05, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

We have a main category tree almost exclusively using English names, but we also have a number of non-English category names, most importantly when it comes to images of specific books. E.g. take a look at Category:Scanned German texts, those names shouldn't be translated. On the other hand, the database system won't work with duplicate category trees. I don't care about which writing system that is used when it comes to the actual file names or what language that is used on the image description pages. Both are minor issues. Mr. Shuklin wishes to donate a large amount of images to this project, and we should be thankful. On the other hand, it is an honest matter saying that you don't understand fluent English. I see two possible solutions: Solution No. 1) : either he simply uploads his images using Russian category names and somebody fluent in Russian (User:EugeneZelenko?) can then go through the contributions list later translating the names into English. This job can be done by bot. Solution No. 2) : Mr. Shuklin, could you give us a list of any words that you find difficult translating into English? Somebody fluent in Russian could then make a translation of this list for you to use. Valentinian ^(talk) 16:37, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Great Valentinian. At least someone talking with a real commonist attitude. If George is ready and give a sign, translations can be made and the bots can move cats to keep everybody happy. And maybe, in the translation process, this can be documented in English/Russian, so that it can serve other users. --Foroa 18:15, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

• I can make another proposion. I continue to put a russian category. You can freely add an english one. (I'm not sure about removing, but adding simulationally russian and english category do noting bad (at my point of view)). I begin use a template {{Англ}} (shorcut for английский == english). You can add category to this template and simply remove template when works finished. I'm think this is optimal solution. If no one do anything, at least a russian caterogy exists. If someone add an english category - all ok. Image could be found by category. #!George Shuklin 18:53, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The topics structure is the main tool to browse through the Commons database: it is not intended for maintenance. Therefore, if you need categories (in Russian), create them in other Commons structures. However, I think it would be better for you to create galleries in Russian, since that comply with Commons policy. Galleries can be easily renamed, that is not the case with categories, and categories have to be in English. --Juiced lemon 19:17, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Agree. So, I use the topic structure to helps find an images. If you do not like russian categories, there is two ways: a) non categorized images b) continue russian categories. Simple, isn't it? #!George Shuklin 08:38, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

As simple as it is: b. Non-categorized images aren't the way to go. I don't understand how someone, who keeps moving categories on a regular base (as it seems) suggests to avoid categories because they aren't intended for maintenance. Of course, they are. Maybe that's not their #1 purpose, but is is within the top 10 purposes. --32X 10:47, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I think galleries with Russian names could be used in this case, and of course the allow redirects from different languages. {{Category redirect}} is temporary solution for Russian categories which duplicate already existed English ones. BTW Category:Орудия XIX века іs not single right variant. What we will do if other user who not agree with George Shuklin will decide to create Category:Орудия 19 века, Category:Орудия XIX столетия or Category:Орудия 19 столетия?

Sure, multi-language issues are one of important technical problem, but unfortunately MediaWiki developers time is not infinite resource.

In some cases (like message templates translation on Russian) George Shuklin could help to improve situation.

EugeneZelenko 14:48, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't like Russian categories in the Topics structure, because the classification process is unworkable when several languages are simultaneously used, and because the accepted language (for most of categories in the topics structure) in Commons is the English language, not the Russian language. Therefore, every category in the topics structure with a Russian name must be deleted.

“Every media file must be categorized” doesn't mean “every media file is categorized anywhere and any old how”. Categorize files in inapproprate category(ies) is worse than no categorization at all, since you'll have to clean all the wrong stuff on top of the correct classification process.

Therefore, if you are unable to find or create the suitable categories to categorize your media files, you have different alternatives:

1. ask another Commons user to show you or create for you the needed categories (English language) in the topics structure
2. create a gallery in Russian language (Russian title, Russian descriptions); this gallery can be as well a user subpage or a page categorized in the topics structure
3. create a category with a Russian title and categorize it in a Commons structure where the Russian language is allowed (that is NOT in the topics structure); this alternative is not recommended. --Juiced lemon 18:41, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Fresh example of problem. I definitely don't have anything against Indo-Aryan languages, but I wish to understand what this category about. --EugeneZelenko 14:32, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Is there someone capable to hang this Category:Артиллерия loose category three somewhere in the right english cat till we find someone that can translate the associated cats. It seems to be a nice media collection. --Foroa 14:47, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Category:Numérisation de livres en français, Category:Livre en français au format DjVu, Category:Littérature française, Category:Brandade de morue, Category:Opéra de Strasbourg, Category:Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure.... How do Anglophones feel about categories in French? Man vyi 12:01, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I'll try to make {{Category redirect}} from Russian categories.

Is it principal question to use Category:Littérature française instead of Category:Literature of France? Will you understand Category:Русская литература and Category:Беларуская літаратура?

EugeneZelenko 14:53, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

And Category:Drapeaux de Bretagne. Man vyi 05:52, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Man vyi, there should be a difference between proper nouns and common nouns. I don't understand what "Rijksmuseum" exactly means in Dutch, but it would be very confusing if the category about this museum was named other than "Rijksmuseum". "Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure" is the official name of France's foreign intelligence agency. I don't know what "Mossad" or "Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti" mean, yet I recognize these names when I see them.

"Brandade de morue" is a traditional French recipe from the area of Nîmes. Does it exist outside of France? If not, why should it be translated? Would you translate "osso buco"? Jastrow (Λέγετε) 12:02, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

English names Vs National names

I have an issue about the anglicization of geographic names.

Let's take an example: Category:Santa_Croce_(Florence) The town name is written in the English form, Florence, but the correct spelling IMHO should be the local one, Firenze.

Since Commons is (or at least should be) a multilingual project, not an anglo-centered one, I can't see the necessity to translate those names in a "wrong" language. Let's stick to local ones, eventually adding the anglicized form if they are in non-latin characters.

Having the name in the english form doesn't add much to understandability, and anyway we could always provide redirects if needed: Santa Croce (Florence) could redirect to Santa Croce (Firenze), and we will be all using the correct spelling without much pain. --Jollyroger 10:34, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

This issue is not going to disappear. There are three problems:

• places referred to in two languages- Firenze, Mailand (Milano, Milan)
• places whose name has changed- St Petersburg, Pekin/Peking, Burma/Myanmar
• places who have two official local names Tolosa/Toulouse, Aberteifi/Cardigan, Bruges/Brugge even Brügge.

The advice above is a bit woolly. How do we use the test of understandability in each of these three cases? Whose understandability? I am of the opinion in the short term the priorities must be set, but in the long term we need something stronger than redirection which will have to be hard coded.

If it helps I would use the rule: use the name that the local highway authorities places first on the entry signpost to the village/town/region/land.

Then in the longer term, the category needs a template where additional names are put. A bot will lift these synonyms and create the redirect pages- so as far as the user is concerned they will always see the page in the one of the local languages they are logged in to, or by default English. This has the advantage that for example German users will see the Category Dom Kirche Mailand, if and only if that has been entered in the synonym template, while the default Il Duomo di Milano, will be seen by the rest of the world. ClemRutter 13:43, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Categories are in English, and that includes geographic names. These are the ones which are most commonly used in the English language, and the English Wikipedia is the custom reference to determine the correct usage. Assuming that the subject of Category:Santa Croce (Florence) is this basilica: Basilica di Santa Croce, a correct name for this category would be:

• Category:Basilica di Santa Croce, since there is apparently no need for disambiguation in the “Italian version”.

Otherwise:

• Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence, or
• Basilica of the Holy Cross, Florence --Juiced lemon 13:53, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

As the English language article is at en:Basilica_di_Santa_Croce_di_Firenze, (IMHO) the category should be at Category:Basilica_di_Santa_Croce_di_Firenze. -- User:Docu

No. The English Wikipedia is our reference, but we are not bound to use the names of its articles or categories. Besides, you can often find in the English Wikipedia an article and a category with different names, though about the same subject. More, sometimes, an article name don't comply with the naming conventions.

Wikimedia Commons can have different naming rules, since we have no articles: in particular, we can have different disambiguation rules, because the matching rules in the English Wikipedia seem confused.

The Italian name of the basilica is Basilica di Santa Croce. If disambiguation is needed, the custom method for buildings is to add a suffix, a comma followed by the English name of the location, which is Category:Florence in the current case. --Juiced lemon 19:05, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Category names for general terms are in English, yes but that is merely a means to avoid duplicate categories ("coins" / "Münzen" / "moneta"). But it is ridiculous to try to exterminate native forms in cases like this. Nobody can be in two minds that we are talking about the same building and this is an international project, not "international" in the meaning that all users must be assimilated into Americans. This is a depository for files to be used on *all* wikipedias, not just the English one and according to Meta's description, this project is multilingual. Valentinian ^(talk) 22:31, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Valentinian: Commons is multilingual, why does it have to follow en.wiki?

Using the real local name with redirects from english language would be a good compromise to make the page easy to find and to respect the multilingualisms of the project.

I see no good reason to translate all local names in english, and if there is a policy to do so, I would like to propose a debate and change that since is quite out of the project spirit.

P.S: when speaking of italian churches is always a good thing to add the placename, since you can be sure that there are almost a dozen of churches with the same name. Often, the placename is included in the official name of the church. A Basilica di Santa Croce exist in Jerusalem and in Lecce, while churches are in Verona, Bari and in other cities. So it is strongly advised to add placename in advance. --Jollyroger 08:42, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Category names don't have to be in English. Any lingua franca will do. If you oppose to English being the only lingua franca in the world, you may launch a political campaign against the state of affairs but don't misuse Commons for your political purposes. Samulili 06:12, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

what political purpose?

I oppose the fact that Commons is using a "lingua franca" in names where it could easily use the right names thus respecting its own guidelines (multilingualism instead of anglocentrism). No problem with the English for discussion and descriptions, but can't understand why do we have all to use english placenames instead of the right ones.

Please keep these idiocies out of this discussion, we are trying to find an agreement, not a flame. --Jollyroger 07:59, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

If we adopt native names for categories, how can we choose the "right" one in places that have multiple official languages? (That is probably more likely than having a single official language)

How about subcategories, such as "buildings in X"? Should we have "Buildings in Firenze", or make it "Buildings in Florence" or maybe "Monumenti di Firenze"? Either way it will be inconsistent with parent categories, and reduce the very little predictability that the category structure currently has, thus making it even harder to use. (By predictability I mean that if you have some knowledge about the category system, you can guess what the proper category should be. So for buildings in Shanghai you can guess Category:buildings in Shanghai and you are right.)

You also said anglicized form if they are in non-latin characters but why are non-latin-character-using-languages any different case to those that use latin characters? That would basically just be pro-European language discrimination. So maybe we should have "上海建筑" for buildings in Shanghai. I hope you can see how quickly this would destroy the usability of the category system.

It annoys me that Commons is so restricted in using categories, but the wiki software just doesn't have the support that we need, i.e. proper category redirects, or even better a full-on alias system. I really hope we will get a better system one day, but until that happens, I think we should try to make the current system as use-able as possible. Being use-able means being consistent and predictable. I can't think of another system that can incorporate local names but keep at least the current level of predictability. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 09:31, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree that since categories can't be in more than one language, it is best to have them in English and be consistant about it. / Fred J 10:38, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

The language of categories is not a problem. I am speaking just of geographic names, so "Buildings in Firenze" is ok. Usually, there is one official predominant language, and other secondary, so the problem is not so relevant.

Predictability: redirects are enough, and are needed. Using them, the cat's name is correct with the "official" name, but you can guess. You may guess in your language too with a little effort, so a german user could just guess "Buildings in Mailand" instead of "buildings in Milan". This adds predictability!

Non-latin: simply most browsers screws up using non-latin, and most non-latin languages have also a parallel and official latin charset. Let's avoid tech problems.

Alternative system: That's what I am speaking.

• "real" cat page -> Buildings in Firenze
• redirects from most used languages, or from any languages an user bother to create the redirect from -> Buildings in Florence, Buildings in 建筑上上建海, Buildings in that-city-with-chianti-and-chianina-beef...
• if needed, a bot to update redirects to real page, to reduce server load

I am not trying to start a religion war: simply there is a huge gap between project "spirit" (multilingual) and project "facts" (anglocentric). I am proposing a way to fix that easily. --Jollyroger 11:17, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I know that the discussion here is from a slightly different point of view. But please also have a look at the discussion I started on the status of other languages on Commons. I really seems that there should be a consensus on the language issue. --ALE! ¿…? 11:31, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Many buildings and streets have no established translations and many are impossible to translate into something meaningful. A square in Copenhagen, Denmark is named "Kongens Nytorv" which could hypothetically be translated into "King's New Square" but this is irrelevant since nobody uses such a translated name, and nobody will be able to find such a location on a map. (Google for "King's New Square: 842 hits, Google for "Kongens Nytorv": 444,000 hits). This example was a name where a translation was technically possible but what about "Vimmelskaftet", "Kattesundet" or "Fiolstræde"? Same deal with monuments: "Den Lille Hornblæser": 503 hits, "The Little Bugler": 963 hits but none seem to be about the Copenhagen monument (' "The little bugler" +copenhagen' gives a total of 6 google hits). Constructions: Category:Funkturm Colonius in Köln, Category:Hessisches Staatstheater, Category:Heroldsmühle; at least two of these can't be translated and the last one would be a waste of time. The most problematic case is titles for books, where category names like Category:Buchstabier- und Lese-Büchlein og Category:Hamborger Janmooten shouldn't be "translated" into something home-made nonsense. Valentinian ^(talk) 20:08, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Valentian, AFAIK no one is proposing that non-English names should be translated when in fact the non-English name is the one that is used by English speakers (as in the examples you gave). The problem is only for entities that have an English name and non-English name(s). If the non-English name is used in English, for that purpose it 'is English.

Jollyroger, you said (category redirects) from any languages an user bother to create the redirect from... this is part of the problem. Creating redirects is slow and tedious and thus most people don't bother. And they WON'T bother.

I also disagree that Buildings in Firenze (ie mixing languages) is not problematic. And the problem of multiple official languages is a major concern that can't be dismissed so easily as "not that relevant". pfctdayelise (说什么?) 06:27, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

It is also important that people are able to type and compare category names. In other words, they should be in ASCII (i.e. the basic latin alphabet without diacritics). Many people can't type "München", "東京" or "北京" and they might not be able to see the differences between the later two at all, especially when their computer shows them as "��" and "��". (The same is true for other non-Latin scripts.) Without ASCII, one is not even able to type "http://commons.wikimedia.org", so it can be assumed that everyone on Wikimedia Commons has at least a basic understanding of the latin alphabet.

The advantage of English (and Latin) category names is that you automatically get the ASCII-only feature. Furthermore, English is de facto the lingua franca of the Web and on Wikimedia Commons. It's not the language spoken by most people worldwide (that would be Mandarin) but it's the language in which most people on the Web and Wikimedia Commons are able to communicate.

However, if a category has a natural language (e.g. it is the title of a book in a certain language) or if a different name is used internationally (e.g. Latin names for diseases of species/varieties), that language should be used (in a romanised form).

I'm not sure whether to use English exonyms or romanised endonyms for geographical names. If English is used, the English name closer to the endonym (or its usual romanisation) should be chosen, i.e. "Beijing" instead of "Peking", "Tokyo" instead of "Tokio".

In bilingual areas, using English avoids having to choose from multiple languages (e.g. "Brussel" vs. "Bruxelles", "Ibiza" vs. "Eivissa") but I think that's the only advantage over romanised endonyms. (Using English has advantages when two localities have the same name in English, e.g. "Munich, North Dakota, USA" and "Munich, Germany" but it creates problems if two localities share the endonym but not the exonym, e.g. "Munich, Germany" and several smaller "München"s in Germany.)

-- ３２４７ (talk) 08:55, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Interesting thoughts. I think that if we can find solutions for latin charactersets with diacritics, we can make it much more universal. I am thinking on better copy/paste and category selection/paste methods. --Foroa 11:57, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

#REDIRECT on category pages

Commons:Rename_a_category#Should_the_old_category_be_deleted? states that #REDIRECT should be used on category pages. I think this is a very bad idea. I have written some more about it at Commons_talk:Rename_a_category#.23REDIRECT_for_categories.3F. -- Duesentrieb ⇌ 09:30, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Surely it depends on whether it is desirable to retain the old category name.--Londoneye 17:36, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Question about fair use

Is there a page somewhere where it is explained why Commons doesn't allow the "fair use" of copyrighted material? Some users at the Afrikaans Wikipedia want to allow it (a voting on whether or not it should be allowed ended in their favour, but now they've been squabbling about how the actual EDP should read for a month). I've already managed to convince some of the original supporters for such a policy that it'd be a Bad Thing, but I'd like to learn more about it and why it isn't allowed here.

I've mentioned that, if we ever created a booklet with some of our featured articles and these included such "fair use" pictures, it might fail "fair use" if we sell the book. Another user reiterated that magazines like "Rolling Stone" constantly uses copyrighted images (cd covers, etc.) and get away with it. Why should a booklet with articles from Wikipedia not do the same? Anrie 06:39, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Hello new person. Please read the FAQ. Cheers --Fb78 10:21, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Besides the fact that the Wikimedia projects have to goal to use material that is licensed under a free license, it is legally not possible to host fair use material on Commons. When using material claiming fair use, the media needs some content that goes with it and is also possible only on certain legislations (e.g. not possible in Germany). In articles in the English Wikipedia, the image goes with the article so it is not a single works that stands by itself. Since Commons is "only" an image repository, its content must also stand for itself, without going with an article. See also en:fair use and en:Wikipedia:Non-free content for more information. --Matt314 10:31, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

The question why Commons doesn't allow fair use and why a local project does or doesn't allow fair use, are two very different questions. Commons simply can't for the reasons that Fb78 and Matt314 explained. Local projects have made different decisions as you can see from m:Images_on_Wikipedia and m:Fair use. If fair use is allowed, it is usually allowed only in some restricted cases. For example en:WP allows some fair use and has a picture of en:Guernica (painting) while the de:WP doesn't allow any fair use and explains the painting in 1000 extra words: de:Guernica (Bild). Samulili 10:44, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the legal problem is that Commons is technically-legally speaking a publication. If Commons had a "secret archive" back-room used to store pictures reserved for wikipedia projects, but not available for public use, it would be legal to store fair-use images, citations, logos,... without relation to a context, as long as it is not legally a publication. The legal solution might therefore be a private.wikimedia.org site with restricted access to registered users (or is it possible to restrict access to registered users only for specific pages?). Michelet-密是力 06:56, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Wikimedia projects are for FREE content only... free as in speech, not free as in beer. --Fb78 07:51, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

There is non-free material on commons, though. This is not absolute. Michelet-密是力 20:02, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

The only non-free material, though, are logos of the foundation and projects. It is a specific exception, rather than a general one. Morven 07:10, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Drawings infered from copyrighted photograph

In the case of a famous person not having a free picture, if I draw a picture of him/her with physical features observed from copyrighted photographs (while not drawing a picture entirely based on a photograph), is it a copyright infringement? Wooyi 18:18, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I would say, no. Copyright does not protect facts, themes or ideas. Samulili 19:30, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Not an idea but the specific expression of that idea. If Wooyi's point is to reproduce the photo them I'd call that a derivative work: it's the same idea (subject, angle, lighting, etc.) re-expressed as a drawing. If Wooyi's point is to draw the subject, thus adding his own angle, lighting, etc. based upon the facts of the individuals physical characteristics, then I'd call that a new work. Safest bet, Wooyi, is to seek a lawyer. Cburnett 21:12, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Image:OFaubus.jpg, the image I drew of a former Arkansan politician, with inference from [2], [3], [4]. Is this picture ok to be here? Wooyi 21:19, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

It is safer to make a composite from several photos, if possible.--Londoneye 17:46, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Unidentified bot

I hate mentioning this; I always feel like I'm tattling for no good reason. But, I do not know commons' policy on using bots; if it is illegal, then maybe someone should have a word with a user who appears to have uploaded over 400 images in about 12 minutes: [5]. Or maybe we should just realize he's doing good work and ignore it. Please advise, thanks. Patstuart 04:15, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

The user is likely using a tool such as Commonist, which provides for mass-uploading (I actually just started a series of uploads, myself). So long as the bot is not disruptive and aids in contributing to the Project, I don't see why there should be a problem with it; nor am I aware of any such issue with uploading tools in the first place. Wikimedia Commons itself hosts or provides easy access to a whole range of handy tools. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 04:45, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

It is information about the 443 municipalities of the Netherlands, the information has directly been integrated in the dutch municipalities infoboxes also. A well-prepared project. Compliments to the maker. Havang 19:56, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

A nice job indeed. Some minor comments:

• sorting and jumping in the images would be easier/handier if the filename would start with the municipality name (general recommendation for all geo-related images, now only the first part of the file name, which is identical for all files, is visible )
• the Dutch community might possibly prefer to have each graph equally in the category of its respective town

--Foroa 20:58, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedians in the name space?

A moment ago I found Category:Wikimedians from the Netherlands as a sub-category of Category:People of the Netherlands. I don't see a problem with the cat itself but with the sub-categorization. At least in wikipedia such a categorization in the name space would not be allowed. Any opinions? -- Túrelio 08:16, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I have seen that one too, and as a dutch wikipedian I was astonished; for me the cat-line may be cut:no autopromotion in the encyclopedy part. Havang 16:02, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Done. -- Túrelio 08:02, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Audio files in Category:Hörbeispiel

Can anyone here something? I can only hear a bombinate noise, thats for all files in this category. --GeorgHH 20:03, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

October 12

SVG

How to convert images in other formats (jpg, png, etc.) to SVG format? Please respond, then I can convert my future images into SVG. Thanks --♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ ^{walkie-talkie} 04:51, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

You can't convert raster images into vector. The best you can do is to A) redraw the image in a vector program like Inkscape; or B) find a tracer program that will trace a raster image in vector form. Cburnett 04:59, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Can you give me some examples for above mentioned tracer and vector softwares? Cheers --♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ ^{walkie-talkie} 05:03, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I use Inkscape for all my SVG needs. You can import a raster image and trace it yourself. I don't know of a tracer program but I do know they exist. Unless the image is extremely tedious you may be better off tracing yourself. Cburnett 05:29, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much :) --♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ ^{walkie-talkie} 07:48, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Inkscape has a very good tracer built in: Path > Trace bitmap. 24.89.233.235 14:29, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

In case of mathematical graphs, if underlaying data is available, I would recommend recreating plots in gnuplot, matlab, R, etc. and saving them as SVG. In Matlab I have done that using plot2svg functions from Matlab file exchange, see Image:Photon Mass Attenuation Coefficients.svg. Similarly one can use gnuplot (for example for Image:Butterworth orders.png image). Drawings creates in excel can be copied to MS Visio and than saved as SVG. In R language one can use RSVGTipsDevice Package. -- Jarekt 17:21, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

And, for what it's worth, I have converted that to SVG by changing the gnuplot terminal to SVG: Image:Butterworth orders.svg.

Hasn't anyone bothered to write a tutorial or something for this question showing how to do basically what you just said? Cburnett 23:19, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, in my opinion, the term convert is somehow misleading. Recreate would be more appropriate. Often there is not an automated system that can be applied, it is not just like to resize an image or change the format. Often what you should do is just to create the image as it were new in order to obtain the same image but in svg format. Sometimes to do that you just have to do the exactly same thing done for the png with just a little change, this is the case for example of image created by gnuplot. In some other case some automate or semi-automated system of conversion may exist. It is the case of ps image for example or you can use the trace bitmap function cited above. But usually this semi-automated system can not be able to understand the meaning of the image and so are not usually able to group the svg "command" in a neat way as if the image were create new from scratch. -- AnyFile 19:10, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Nitpick much? Cburnett 05:01, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much for all you guys :) --♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ ^{walkie-talkie} 14:37, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Some images really need citations

A great example is Image:Wicca numbers by country.png. This image effectively makes factual claims, but the claims in question are entirely uncited. - Jmabel | talk 02:53, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

•  Support - for the same reasons that citations are important in the other wikis. Walter Siegmund (talk) 04:09, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
• One example of citations built into the image is Image:IDP's in Northern Uganda.png, though I'm not sure if that's what Jmabel has in mind. I would think that a Template:Needs citation, perhaps modeled after Template:Remove caption with an associated category, would be useful. - BanyanTree 10:04, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Or alternatively Template:Needs a reference. Currently one may use {{Description missing}}, but that is too unspecific. -- Túrelio 12:58, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Now, the uploader has added references to the above mentioned image. -- Túrelio 18:30, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

---

User Patstuart uploaded a version of the map which made the dubious claim that there are more Wiccans in either Australia or Canada than there are in the U.S.! AnonMoos 18:17, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I can lower the sources for those places too, if you'd like, as I said on my talk page. Patstuart 19:01, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Category:Maps of counties in Kansas

I'm wondering if this email is enough proof for public domain status. I started tagging the images as obvious copyvios, but then noticed this and reverted. --NE2 04:49, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Assuming all those images are in public domain I think they should use a license tag saying something along the lines of " PD because created by Kansas Department of Transportation ..." instead of template:PD-US --Jarekt 12:15, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

 Support Jarekt: the template implies that there was copyright that has now lapsed, which is not the case here.--Londoneye 17:56, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

 Support Create its own template, or use {{PD-because}}. Patstuart 21:13, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Forward to permissions-commons at wikimedia dot org please. -- Bryan (talk to me) 08:36, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I investigated a bit more, and it seems KDOT might be confused. On the full map (large PDF), it says:

FOR FREE DISTRIBUTION

This map is published by the Kansas Department of Transportation and is distributed to the public free of charge.

If you paid for this map, please contact us at 785-296-3585, or email publicinfo@ksdot.org

Now, this is not strictly contradictory to public domain, but it appears they don't want people paying for it; if so, why would they release it into the public domain? I'm going to email KDOT and ask for clarification.

(By the way, the template would not be "because KDOT created it"; they do copyright stuff.) --NE2 08:42, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Template:Userpageimage

What do you think: {{Userpageimage}}, [6]. I'm not jealous about the text, so feel free to change it. Samulili 06:45, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea. How does one determine that the "image has no educational purpose and it is not directly useful for any Wikimedia project"? I guess "Private image collections" as described in Commons:Project scope. Are there any other categories where this template would be used? If not than may be it should just be a "Private image collection" tag.--Jarekt 12:38, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Hm... do we need this? I thought from checkusage -> image on user page, would be enough?

I would hate to see this leading to people putting all kinds of crap on their user page as an excuse for it not to be deleted. How about something like "a limited number of user portraits"? --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:59, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I think that the text could easily be changed, but it's a great idea. I see a lot of uncategorized images, and this could add to a category of something like Category:User images; currently, there a lot of images which are erroneously under Category:User. I have modified the text a bit, and added the category. Patstuart 21:15, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I am concerned that people will upload stuff that is useful, but tag it with this template as not being useful. I am reminded of when I first came across fr:Modèle:Image personnelle, examined a few of the images, and realized that they could totally be used elsewhere.  :-( --Iamunknown 21:34, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I've slightly reworded it to deal with your concern. Patstuart 19:04, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

That is a good reminder to all admins not to delete blindly just because an image has some tag. Samulili 08:00, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Category:Lazio

To my knowledge [7], nobody requested the renaming of Category:Lazio to Category:Latium:[8].

This renaming is unconsensual and nonsense: Lazio, Lazio. I have requested the reversion of the process, but the important issue is that the commands in User:CommonsDelinker/commands are not checked.

I am tired to note the damage due to numberous mistakes in this page. Therefore, I ask for:

• forbid any category renaming with a bot, unless prior announcement or discussion.
• do not process the commands in User:CommonsDelinker/commands, unless a reference (link) to an announcement or discussion (and each link must be checked before processing). --Juiced lemon 09:28, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I have no opinion on the Lazio cat. But I agree that the whole renaming and deletion process must be reworked. I am working on a proposition. --Foroa 10:49, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

The vast majority of bot assisted renames is correct and they can only be issued by admins. No need to add (more) bureaucracy that cannot be fixed by reverts. Tiredness can be taken care of by wikibreak and wikations. Siebrand 12:05, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't go to recruit an users' team in order to watch all the mistakes made by administrators. Therefore, we can assert that many mistakes will not be reverted (it is no more possible when users have edited the files). That you call bureaucraty, I call it method and organization. Administrator abilities don't grant more decisional power to administrators about classification, though you are claiming such privilege. --Juiced lemon 20:53, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

The I guess you just have to design the air tight process and write the bots accordingly, because I will not be able to facilitate. I wish you luck, wisdom and progress. And please do not read more in my words than can be read from them. I claim nothing. Cheers! Siebrand 10:28, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Redirect from page to cat

Are redirects from a page to a category to be welcomed or to be avoided? There are for instance two such redirects to Category:Kaarma vald, which in turn says that "There are 2 pages in this category." Which is not the case: these are empty redirects. For some reason Category:Tartu doesn't have this statement, though here too we have a redirect from a page to a cat: Tartu. Fransvannes 10:58, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know redirects from the main namespace to the category namespace are acceptable, as there will be no loss of information. Redirects inside the category namespace are a problem, because the objects inside the redirected category become invisible. So: go ahead as long as you are not removing any val[id|uable] galeries. Cheers! Siebrand 12:29, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Another thing: if you don't want the redirect page to appear as part of the category, put ":" before the link. --rimshot^talk 09:06, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

October 13

FLOWERS

Hi, I gotta question. What's the point of having Flowers, and Category:Flowers? isn't it pointless?? its almost a duplicate. Frizabela 03:08, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

can't we just move everything from Flowers into the category? Frizabela 03:09, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I would have to say "absolutely not." :) Flowers is selective and have descriptions. The category is all flowers, regardless, and is sorted only by file name. Two entirely different purposes. Cburnett 03:48, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I understand, the flowers is a gallery, but it seems like waste of space to me...well, but ok, whatever you say :) Frizabela 15:18, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

This is a frequently asked question. See Commons:Categories#Categories_and.2For_galleries.3F. —LX (talk, contribs) 11:04, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

ok, I dont get it know, I guess you voted to use mixed system for now? but at the same time, in the bottom it says that if an image is in a gallery, than its ok if you delete it from the category? Does that mean that instead if wasting my time adding [[Category:Pink flowers]] to pink flowers I should rather make a gallery of pink flowers? Frizabela 02:59, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

One has to see the commons as a very large museum that holds millions of photographs all piled up in its warehouses. The categories are the thousands of wires that connect the pictures together in some sort of logical fashion. If you follow for example the "rozes" wire, you will end up in the warehouse were most wires of the roses species come together, so you can try to follow specific wires, some might possibly lead to even roses in the Sahara or greenhouses in Alaska.

A gallery is an exhibition room of the commons museum. A gallery tends to be a nice exhibition of certain themes or subjects. An example could be, all the species of traditional (or wild) garden flowers that are pink and that have pins (or contain poison). In most galleries, the pictures that are exhibited are a selection of the best photographs that are properly labeled and possibly ordered following some logic, for example country of origin. Often, from the several pictures available around a comparable subject, only one or two handpicked pictures are shown in the gallery. Bigger galleries might be divided in several sections and might contain a table of contents to provide to the visitor an overview of the organisation of the exhibition. Because a gallery is often a nice overviewing exhibition organised by a person, dropping images in it by a third party might lead to conflicts.

In a large category organisation, a category is like a thick cable containing many wires. As the category is deeper organised, the cable is split into several sub-cables, which are in their turn split again and again in sub-cables. At the end, one has only a bunch of wires, each of them holding together the basic category, or what one could call an end node. Here a simple example: World --> Continents --> Countries --> Cities --> Towns.

An image that represents this well is a tree: trunk --> branches --> twigs --> leaves , why technical people speak of a node, end-nodes and leafs.

One of the major difficulties with category systems is that in fact, there are several category systems running in parallel. For example a painting can belong to many category organisations pertaining to the painting itself, its artist and the subject of the painting: period in time, geographical place, styles, techniques and materials, historical information, ... From that example can be seen that only category systems belonging on each image are capable of expressing all its relations; a gallery is a collection of images, each of them with many different characteristics. --Foroa 05:51, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

yes, I understand the difference between those two. So basicly if the image is in a gallery, that does not mean that Im supposed to delete it from category (like someone else said), it still needs to be in a category to link inbetween other similar topics, right? Frizabela 16:31, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

You are right. If the image is not in the category system, we cannot find it back in the commons warehouse unless we search in all the galleries. Some images are in several category systems, such as species, country, author, color, ... so categories are the basic organisation system. --Foroa 16:44, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

What an excellent description, Foroa! That's exactly how categories and galleries should work. --Ranveig 17:13, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Perfect, Thank you :) Frizabela 17:46, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. The more we have "human" descriptions for all Wiki things, the less we have recurring questions and the more we attract "basic" users. This is another dimension of a good encyclopedia: accessibility for mere mortals with basic technology and English language knowledge. --Foroa 18:01, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

@Foroa, how about integrating your nice explanation gal/cat into Commons:Categories? -- Túrelio 13:09, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I tried to summarise a cat/gal view in the text above, as I extracted it here on the commons through the hundreds of discussions. I did that because I noticed that fragmentary discussions are useful, but at some point in time, one has to summarise to avoid ever recurring discussions. It's not up to me to decide what is representative for the whole community, so personally, I will never place it as a community text. The fact that I put my text here, and expanded upon, means that it is now owned by the community that can do with it whatever it deems useful. --Foroa 13:50, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I forgot to warn you. The little text seems innocent, but if you read it carefully, then it implies:

1. that an image MUST be properly categorised
2. potentially even a step further: an image that is not properly categorised is not a proper member of the commons
3. that a gallery is somehow the private domain of a group of its editors, that can, just like in an article, reject additions for all sorts of documented reasons

To me, there is nothing wrong with that but it might be controversial and it constitutes another reason why I don't want to publish it myself as something that ressembles something like a commons policy. But in the end, we have to call a cat, a cat. I have several other texts in preparation as a prelude to discussions on commons rules which I feel are quite misunderstood or plain wrong. --Foroa 14:37, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Geotagging

Is there are a category to use when uploading a geotagged image? For those who don't know, geotagged images have lat/long coordinates encoded in the EXIF date for the image. Also, it would be neat if Commons were changed so that the extended image info would actually display the coords as a clickable link rather than simply state whether it is north/south/east/western hemispheres. --Cheesy mike 15:06, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Category:Media with locations category is added automatically when using template:location or template:location dec templates. For example check out Arches National Park: {{location dec|38.633064|-109.60095}}

--Jarekt 15:48, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Ups. Village pump page is now tagged as located in the middle of Utah ;).--Jarekt 15:57, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Above template wrapped in nowiki to stop marking the location of the Village Pump, now that the example has been viewed. (SEWilco 04:32, 14 October 2007 (UTC))

Nice. Any chance that the location could be taken directly from the image EXIF data? e.g. Image:SS Nornen wreck.jpg --Cheesy mike 15:59, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Ask Magnus Manske. He may or may not have time to create such a tool :) -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:13, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Hm. Interestingly, the example image mentioned (Image:SS Nornen wreck.jpg) does have the GPS coordinates in the EXIF (N 51°16'18.24", E 3°1'22.92"), but the EXIF data displayed on our image description page shows only the fields GPSLatitudeRef/GPSLongitudeRef (N / E), but not the GPSLatitude/GPSLongitude itself. From a cursory glance at the MediaWiki sources, methinks the problem is that the Exif 2.2 specification defines these values as three rational numbers (degrees, minutes, seconds), but that Exif.php expects only one, and consequently treats the GPSLatitude/GPSLongitude as erroneous and excludes them from the metadata that can be displayed. As a result, the info is not in the XML served for the image description page, and thus it might be very hard indeed to write an external tool to automatically generate {{Location}} from the meta data unless this problem be fixed first. Lupo 07:15, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

New image format djvu?

Image Image:Witten ost bf laderampe.djvu seems to be a single photo in djvu file format. Is this a new supported file format for images, or a misuse of a format meant for books and documents?--Jarekt 15:40, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Help needed by Featured Pictures Candidate

I try to put this file Commons:Featured picture candidates/Image:City harbor of Goes, the Netherlands.jpg on the top of Commons:Featured picture candidates list but then the auto numbering is messed up. Who can help me? Dz 21:02, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. O₂ (息 • 吹) 22:03, 13 October 2007 (GMT)

October 14

WANTED: Image of Theo van Gogh

As the Dutch-language Commons:De Kroeg seems to attract little attention currently, I hope it will be more effective here. Couldn't somebody from The Netherlands (or anywhere) try to obtain a free image of Theo van Gogh (ideally a portrait or an image with van Gogh behind a camera) ? On Commons (Category:Theo van Gogh) we have only images about reactions to his murder, but none of himself. Even in the Dutch Wikipedia (nl:Moord op Theo van Gogh and nl:Theo van Gogh (regisseur)) currently there is no portrait of van Gogh. -- Túrelio 21:03, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

{{Image source}}

Why {{Image source}} recommends cc-by-sa-3.0 instead copyleft-multilicense like {{self|GFDL|cc-by-sa-3.0,2.5,2.0,1.0}} ? Sanbec ✉ 21:54, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Good question. The only answer I can think of is that cc-by-sa-2.5 was recommended before and it was just updated to cc-by-sa-3.0. The same was done in all the MediaWiki:Licenses pages. I guess it can't hurt to do a search and bring some consistency in this matter. Any volunteers? ;) Have fun... Cheers! Siebrand 22:21, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

October 15

Is there freedom of panorama in Greece?

Can anyone help in settling this doubt? --> Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Georgakis monument in Corfu.JPG. The page in Freedom of Panorama does not list Greece at all. --User:G.dallorto 13:01, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Almost certainly a copyright violation. There are so many on the commons though it's just ridiculous, good luck getting this deleted. Generally people here take the attitude of: "well it seems reasonable to me so lets keep it", or they think "If we delete this it will create a precedent for other images, I had better try to steer the discussion in a different direction, and make it too long for anyone to be bothered reading". If the uploader wants to keep this image it should be up to him to prove there is a Freedom of panorama in Greece not the opposite. But you will find people here like to keep photos unless they violate an American Company's copyrights. If you look at Image:Mona Lisa.jpg and follow the link to the source, it says on it: "© Musée du Louvre/A. Dequier - M. Bard" because in France photos of PD works attract copyright, yet the license on the commons is PD-Art lol. Yet not a single person voted to delete on the deletion discussion. I have similar problems with images, people think like the uploader of the image you are talking about: "And what does it have to do with the freedom of taking any picture you want and releasing it under the GFDL?". Also people think that US law applies all over the world. There is nothing you can do, try to do anything here that could create a precedent and result in more than 10 images being deleted and everyone will just form a mob and vote against you, with the most incorrect justifications, and without even reading the policy. I would like to do something about it and try to make people read the policies, but they just don't and the people who know the policies ignore the discussion, because they don't want to cause loads of images to be deleted. Jackaranga 13:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

>Jackaranga: Don't be excessive in your judgments. Image:Mona Lisa.jpg may have a copyright notice, but the "2D-rendering" rule is applied in France, and there is a specific law that states that copying from a database may be OK (under some conditions). So in that case there is IMHO no problem. Michelet-密是力 19:57, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Clarification: When I was first informed of the copyright issue I reacted with incredulity because I had never heard of this panorama problem before. When I became more enlightened concerning the minutiae of this obscure problem I had a rather pleasant and civilised discussion with all the people involved and we reached at least an understanding of each other's position. To quote verbatim my words when I was in a state of surprise and hold me as an example of the intransigence and ignorance of people paints an unfairly bad picture and is completely uncalled for. It also ignores the subsequent civilised discussion and the related developments that demonstrate a marked departure from my initial position of extreme surprise toward an understanding and acceptance of the issues involved. Further it ignores the human factors involved because it demands, unreasonably, that we are supposed to be instant copyright experts and react with a two second legal soundbite rather than genuine human surprise. Dr.K. 01:25, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

• It does now at COM:FOP#Greece. Lupo 12:02, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

October 5

Relicensing my work

Hi, I have been contacted by a person who is asking me to release this drawing into the public domain. I was the original creator of the image and when I uploaded it to Wikipedia I released it under "GFDL 1.2 or later". If I am the sole copyright owner of the work, I would think that I would be free to relicense my work (or am I wrong?). However the file that I created was in PNG format and apparently someone converted it into SVG format. So does that mean I am not the sole copyright owner anymore and I would not be able to release the work into PD? It would be a shame because the drawing is so simple and thinking back it doesn't make sense to use GFDL for it. Thanks in advance for your help! --Lorenzarius 18:25, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

You can license the original image (png) again, but as you are not the sole owner of the copyrights on the derivative work (svg), you cannot relicense that without the OK of the other copyright owner(s). If you think it would be a good idea to relicense the svg, the best advice I can give you is to contact the person that converted the work to svg and ask him the same question you were asked. If you both agree, the derivative can be relicensed. Cheers! Siebrand 18:44, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

i have a question, what is the difference between gfdl an pd?, I thought both of them give people the right to use the image for their own purposes..Frizabela 14:33, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

See w:Public domain and w:GFDL. If you donate to the public domain, you release *all* your rights. If you license GFDL, you remain the copyright holder. Cheers! Siebrand 16:06, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

My major concern about using GFDL for an image is that GFDL "requires that licensees, when printing a document covered by the license, must also include 'this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document' (en:GFDL#Burdens_when_printing). Which basically means whenever you distribute a hardcopy of the GFDL'd image, you need to attach also the hardcopy of the full bulky GFDL document. Quite troublesome in practice. Anyway thanks for all the answers, I'll try to see if I can contact the person who produced the SVG version of my drawing. --Lorenzarius 16:19, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

October 16

And when someone copies from us, without honouring the terms of GFDL?

I read the publications put out for guards and interrogators at Guantanamo. The most recent issue of the w:Guantanamo Bay Gazette contained this picture, Image:Capromys pilorides -- aka the Cuban Hutia.png‎ I uploaded it, only to find that the commons already had this picture, for two years. Image:Capromys pilorides.jpg

Am I missing something? Doesn't the {{Gfdl}} mean they can use it, but they are obliged to make clear it is distributed under the {{Gfdl}}?

So, either:

1. The Guantanamo Bay Gazette used a picture from the commons without honoring the GFDL; or
2. Both our uploader and the Guantanamo Bay Gazette are using a picture from somewhere else, without proper attribution.
3. Our uploader is stationed at Guantanamo, took the original picture, and is therefore not obliged to credit the commons when they wrote an article for the Guantanamo Bay Gazette.

I am going to assume our uploader really did take the photo.

So, what do we do when someone copies from us, without attribution?

Cheers! Geo Swan 15:38, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Send the black helicopters. Sorry, couldn't resist ;-)
On :de we have the page Wikipedia:Weiternutzung/Mängel (cave: large page) where everybody can notify any doubtful re-use of articles outside of Wikipedia. But I'm not sure we have something similar on Commons. -- Túrelio 16:25, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

This happens lots of times with both GFDL and CC-BY(-SA) images. However, there is nothing similar to Wikipedia:Weiternutzung/Mängel here. I don't even know if they have it on English Wikipedia?

Fred J 17:12, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:Wikipedia:GFDL Compliance and Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks however they focus on mirrors and forks not single violations, probably because we have a hard enough time enforcing GFDL compliance with large scale violators (mirrors and forks) without going after the single instance violations unfortunately. In any case, perhaps jensflorian will be interested in persuing this matter personally. He/she has a website [9] which you could try using for contacting him/her if there is no response from de:wikipedia Nil Einne 12:57, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

This also illustrates the danger of assuming that uncredited material in publications of US federal government bodies is necessarily the work of federal government employees. William Avery 17:43, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

User:Xmas

This user has received many warnings, but I decided to give him a last warning anyway. After that, he uploaded Image:INDIA.PNG. Please block. Patstuart 18:07, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

 Done, blocked for one week. --GeorgHH 21:25, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Please use COM:AN for this next time. Thanks. Siebrand 21:33, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

User:Szczepan1990 totally out of line in threatening me

Moved to COM:AN/U. Siebrand 21:35, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Where can I find a specific deletion discussion?

Hi, I had two of my images deleted recently, and I suspect there may have been a deletion discussion about them, but I have no idea where to find it. (Deleted by User:David.Monniaux) No one left a note on my talk page about these images, and there doesn't seem to be any explanation. I'm upset because I didn't have a chance to participate in a deletion discussion or address the issues. The first image is Image:Papyrus of Ani Weighing of the Heart.jpg. Thanks, Jeff Dahl 21:37, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

There doesn't appear to be a discussion in an obvious location. You have already queried the deleting admin, so waiting to see what he has to say is probably the best course. - BanyanTree 21:42, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

The given explanation for the deletion was: "image has been reconstructed and is not a verbatim copy". Jastrow (Λέγετε) 07:40, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Richard Stallman image

This image appears to be incorrectly licensed Image:Richard Stallman sign ATI.jpg and does not appear to be released under a free license. The copyright notice only allows verbatim transmission and therefore does not allow derivatives. Rather then nominating it for deletion, I thought I'd just mention it here since hopefully it shouldn't be hard to persuade the copyright owner to release it under a free license. Nil Einne 13:01, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Image deletion

Would I do the right thing if I delete Image:Namibie Himba 0707a.jpg?
reason: cp
I deleted it first. but than I remembert that not admins can't have a look at it.
--D-Kuru 22:55, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I certainly do not think so. There is no indication that the photo has any pornographic context or intention.

That said there is a massive problem in that each of these images is a duplicate of that found on a website, apparently the uploader's, which are fully copyrighted. See here for the same image as above. I have informed the uploader that his 95 or so images will be deleted unless the licensing on the website matches that here. - BanyanTree 08:51, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I translated you message in French. However, is a simple © incompatible with the GFDL/CC-BY-SA? IIRC, one can license one's pictures under different licenses if one chooses so. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 09:04, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your help.

You're right in that the owner of a copyright can state the same image is under different licenses in different locations, though obviously the most free license would be the one you have to obey. The fundamental problem is that there is no proof that the uploader is the site owner. The simplest way to resolve this is by making all the licenses the same, which should be relatively easy if he owns the site. And it shouldn't really matter to him, since he's already released the images under free licenses here (assuming it is actually him), so he's not losing anything. If he can't or won't do this, an alternative method of providing proof is for him to send a message to OTRS with an email address from the site domain stating that the Commons account is his, so a note can be left on his user talk page. A more roundabout way is for him to list an email on the site and have an admin here send an email to it asking for confirmation of the Commons account. Obviously these get more and more involved, and more and more easy to challenge. Without confirmation that the uploader and site owner are the same, it is impossible to defend the presence here of the images when they are sitting on an website under a standard copyright notice. - BanyanTree 11:06, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I think writing to OTRS with permission is the best here. This gives us a permenent record of the permission, in case the web site closes. FloNight♥♥♥ 11:37, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

That's a very good point. I have left a note informing the uploader of how to go about doing this on his talk page. Thanks, BanyanTree 12:01, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Translated. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 12:20, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I've send him a letter few weeks ago, quoting the "no permission" message, and he replyed:
Bonjour
je suis l'auteur des photos que je charge sur Wiki commun, je ne sais pas comment je dois completer pour que tout soit en ordre
dans l'attente
salutations
PICQ
But since it's not a 'valid' OTRS letter, I've asked him to read the pages about OTRS. I guess now that you've wrote the messages, it would be better...
Yuval Y § Chat § 23:07, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

October 17

JCU Cairns Picture

Could someone that have a nice picture of the Cairns campus of JCU (in Australia) please upload it - currently there are only pictures of the Townsville and Singapore campuses. Thanks! Nielg 02:21, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi. You should put your request on Commons:Picture requests. — Xavier, 19:33, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Murals

This image, Image:Mill Creek mural.jpg, was recently tagged for deletion. Does this really mean that most of the 24 images in Category:Murals in the United States, and Category:Murals for that matter, should get deleted in some sort of mass purge? Just curious. Evrik 19:06, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

See Commons:Freedom of panorama. If it is really a modern artwork and there is no release from the author, and it is is in a country without FOP for artworks, such as the US, it is probably not OK. William Avery 20:51, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

• So, pretty much everything in Category:Murals in the United States has got to go.Evrik 00:29, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

See related discussion about graffiti and street murals in an archive and Commons talk:Derivative works. (And by "discussion", I mean "me demanding to know why everything is so unclear".) - BanyanTree 04:35, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Missing {{Information}} template

There's no Information template in the Upload work from a government source. It would be easier to add one than adding the template to all the images uploaded that way... Yuval Y § Chat § 11:36, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Done. Apparently this was an oversight in MediaWiki:Upload.js. Lupo 12:43, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Done? I just checked and there's still no template built in there. Akradecki 13:56, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I knew that would come. Force a reload. Javascripts are cached client-side. Lupo 18:50, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Creative Commons License retracted?

In December 2005, I have uploaded Image:Seeing Moon.gif. At that time, the source indicated that the image was under a Creative Commons License (see snapthos of the page at archive.org from 2005-10-25 and 2007-05-10). In the current version of this page, the note about the Creative Commons License has been removed. Now, is that a problem for the image I have uploaded? As I understand it, the Creative Commons License can not be retracted. Right? --Vesta 11:36, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Right. Furthermore, it looks as if the vanishing of the CC license might not have been intentional; he still has the CC-BY-SA notice on many other of his pages, e.g. [10]. Lupo 11:45, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I think you should contact him, and ask for his reply... Yuval Y § Chat § 12:25, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Commons:General_disclaimer

The page states "...Designated Agent according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is Jimmy Wales (president).". I guess this needs an update (I'm referring to the "President" bit of the sentence)... See also foundation:Board of Trustees --Mbimmler 11:42, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Done, and linked to Designated agent. Lupo 11:49, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! --Mbimmler 11:55, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Poposed Extension: Editing of SVG files within Wiki

I would like to propose an extension to current Wiki Commons software that would allow editing of SVG xml code without need for downloading, editing and uploading. I would imagine an edit button that would start a standard Wiki edit window and would allow user to tweak SVG files and save results. That would allow to see history and reverting of the changes. Show Preview button would rerender the image. --Jarekt 13:36, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea. --rimshot^talk 13:44, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't know that it's really such a great idea, since SVG files must obey a strict syntax, and sometimes have complex internal cross-referencing, so that a careless edit could easily create an invalid and/or non-rendering file. The ability to directly edit SVG files would have great potential for causing problems, unless the full panoply of edit-management tools (history listings, diffs, etc.) were available. In any case, the main purpose of SVGs is to encode vector outline data, and useful hand-editing of vector data represented in a non-visual textual form is only rarely feasible. AnonMoos 17:04, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I was imagine that such SVG editor would just use the regular Wiki text editor with all the regular history listings, diffs, etc. And the danger of breaking perfectly good files can be mitigated by "show preview" button that in this case would render the image. If someone still decided to save a bad version than there is always revert to previous version option. I was imagining that such capability would be useful to correct labels, adjust image sizes, translate labels, etc.--Jarekt 12:02, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Images set for deletion akin to burning books

(comment moved to Commons:Deletion requests/Images of Jorunn (uploaders request) Patstuart 23:55, 18 October 2007 (UTC))

Proposal for redefinition of photographers skill level in User ph template

Hi, I just wanted to bring to your attention, that I have written a proposal regarding a clearer definition for the different photographer skill levels required for adding the {{User PH-0}}, .... , {{User PH-3}} templates on a user page. I also propose introducing a new {{User PH-4}} level. Join the discussion if you like. Feedback, improvements and suggestions are appreciated. -- Slaunger 07:28, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Encouraged by many contructive comments I have written an alternative proposal with more focus on volume. Feel free to comment/adjust the new proposal. -- Slaunger 08:42, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

For those interested, voting is on-going. -- Slaunger 20:32, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Interesting debate, searching for amateur photographer's opinion --Foroa 06:40, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I can't upload files

I just can't work this out at all. I do everything the wizard says, but when I click on the "Upload" button, nothing whatever happens. I have noticed that when I try to type into the "destination filename" gadget a funny red "light" flicks on and off next to the gadget, but I have no idea what this means.

Re-reading the instructions again, it sounds like I have to download the file from the website in question to my computer, and then upload the file from there. Is that what I have to do? I don't really want to have my PC address stamped on the uploaded file, will that happen if I try to upload a file from my PC? Thanks

Nope, tried uploading a file direct from my PC, and I still get the same problem - the flashing red light next to the "destination filename" gadget, and no response when I hit the "Upload" button. Can somebody please help me with this, I left the same question at wp:images a couple of weeks ago and got no response there either. Gatoclass 03:39, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Gatoclass,

The "light" flicking on and off is checking if there is already a file that has that filename. If there is, it will show you a notice (placed awkwardly below the check boxes and above the "Upload file" button). It shouldn't affect whether or not you can actually upload the thing.

What type of file are you trying to upload? What browser are you using? --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 04:59, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Image:File deletion icon.svg

Hello,

I have found this picture used on quite a number of pages through templates. I am shocked by what I see : somebody is trying to smash somebodyelse's eye using a drill machine ? Are we on a horror film or on Wikipedia ? Couldn't we find something more gentle ? Teofilo 14:05, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it's a science-fiction ray-gun, and it's not directly aimed at the eye-ball.. AnonMoos 16:53, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

It looks more like a drill than a ray gun to me as well, and it's dangerously close to the eye. --rimshot^talk 09:10, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Image:File deletion icon.png

I have created Image:File deletion icon.png, to make it look less agressive. (I don't have an svg editor on my computer, so I had to make it "png" instead). Teofilo 10:05, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I like the original one. --Steinninn ♨ 02:10, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

What citation should I use if I want to place a photo from Wikimedia on my website?

Hi everyone,

I am new to using Wikimedia files and I hope someone can help me.

I want to place a photo of Green Anaconda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Eunectes_murinus.jpg on my site.

I am quite happy to quote it as "Courtesy of Wikimeda Project" and acknowledge the author of the photo as well. But I could not see the author's profile and his / her contact details as his / her page is in Hebrew.

Could anyone please give me a sample of the exact citation (with links etc) to put on my site when I use this photo?

I will greatly appreciate that.

Thank you very much in advance.

Irina —the preceding unsigned comment was added by Solaris955 (talk • contribs)

Hi Irina. That particular image might pose some problems, because it's licensed under GFDL (GFDL is a viral license, so you'd need to actually release the contents of the page you're using it on under GFDL in order to use it). For a CC license, you would just need to note that the image is released under whichever license it is, and leave a link to the uploader's userpage (or to whatever page the uploader got it from (e.g. Flickr or a similar site), or just using their name if they've provided that on their userpage). For public domain, you can just use it without attributing. Mileage may vary with the various other licenses used here :). --SB_Johnny | ^PA! 12:38, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

October 21

MediaWiki:Large-file and largest size of files

MediaWiki:Large-file (It is recommended that files are no larger than $1; this file is $2) is the warning message you receive when trying to upload a large file. According to Markus3, speaking today on the French speaking village pump, the current value of $1 is 4.7 megabytes.

If this really is the current situation, the truth should be said to the reader on help pages such as Commons:Project scope instead of statements like "the quality of files should be as high as possible", or "the highest resolution available for images is more than welcome", on Commons:FAQ#Technical questions.

Is there a reliable way to know the value of $1 apart from trying experimentally to upload various sizes of files until MediaWiki:Large-file pops up ? Teofilo 14:16, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Instead of changing the guide I would like to see the warning go away. You should upload the highest resolution. --Steinninn ♨ 02:06, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

However, there's an absolute hard limit of ca. 20 megabytes on the size of media files which can be uploaded, and PNG and GIF images with overall dimensions greater than about 12 megapixels are intentionally not resized. AnonMoos 10:08, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons now hosts over 2,000,000 media files

On 8 October 2007 Wikimedia Commons has reached a total of 2,000,000 media files (currently 104,860,111).

Growth is still rising. On 11 August 2007 the project reached 1,750,000 media files (~4,200 files/day to 2M). On 25 May 2007 the project reached 1,500,000 media files (~3,200 files/day to 1,75M). I expect a daily growth of 5000/day for the next million - in 200 days, on 26 May 2008 - and of 6500 for the million after that. This means that we will reach 4,000,000 media files on 26 October 2008.

Congratulations. Let's try and keep up with the maintenace :)

Cheers! Siebrand 23:22, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations everyone! This is the list of authors by upload size, which may be of interest. -- Bryan (talk to me) 09:23, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

What do you think about the current use of files? Are there many useless photos? Are they sorted? In general terms. --Emijrp 09:57, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that Commons is badly sorted and we have quite some of crap here. But hey! We also have almost 1000 Featured pictures and very many Quality images, and people working very hard on organizing them. -- Bryan (talk to me) 10:28, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Agree with Bryan. IMO volume and quality both have a high importance. With volume, the pile of crap will also grow. However, we have many users that are succesfully finding ways to dig into the crap with semi-automated tools to reduce it. Orphan media without any description and/or category and/or a descriptive name are a problem: they will most probably never ever be used. IMO they should be hunted down, looked at and metadata should be added, or, if it has been assessed so, nominated for deletion.

Search, rename, internationalisation, integration of Commons outside Wikimedia, and newbie handling are IMO currently the main issue keeping Commons from even growing faster:

• if we could have a search quality equal to that of the larger commercial image sites, more media from Commons would be used, not only in Wikimedia projects, but also outside of Wikimedia.
• users often upload media files with non-descriptive names. Renaming is a lot of work, because the object has to be re-uploaded, objcet links have to be changed - everywhere - and the original object has to be deleted. The image name is very important in search. There have been rumours of media backend rewrites enabling transparant renaming, but I have not seen anything tangiable so far.
• Current categorisation, very important in search, is in English. It is our lingua Franca. However, out of the 6 billion and a few more people on this earth, less than a third has basic understanding of the English language, let alone that they are able to search effectively in the language. We need a way to localise to a users' language. Using multi-language dictionaries for categories would be the way forward.
• Wikimedia uses MediaWiki as software for their platform. MediaWiki is used a lot outside Wikimedia, and those installations cannot easily tap into the Wikimedia Commons resources. An extension has been written for it, InstantCommons, that would make a copy of Commons media to a local MediaWiki installation, including metadata, source, author and licensing information. Activating this functionality would drive locale Wikimedia image stores to Wikimedia Commons and fule use of Wikimedia Commons media outside Wikimedia projects, increasing Commons expose and pulling new free media in.
• Last, but not least, we need to help our users as soon as possible in their Commons carreers. We get hundreds of new users every day that upload media, and sadly, they add a lot of crap to the pile. Not because they act in bad faith, they just do not know any better. Tools like automatically checking new uploads, MediaWiki:UserMessages.js and COM:WL give us the opportunity to quickly identify who the new users are, which errors they made and easily inform them of ways for improvement. Most important though, is that manpower has to be put in to manually check contributions by new users. Help them early on to get experienced and more satisfied users.

Feel free to comment. :) Siebrand 11:25, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

We mere users have the most control over the social aspects. The one you mentioned above is "newbie handling". I think we could safely extend it to general "community handling".

I think we definitely don't have it quite right yet. The situation where people receive dozens of automated messages but no one manually intervenes to say, "hey, you're missing some vital piece of the puzzle here", worries me. And I have a feeling sometimes we are just too abrasive and that turns some contributors off. Musing... --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:33, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

IMO it's all about manpower in this area. We get 300-400 new contributing users/day. Taking care of 10 of those in a personal way can be done. That means that 30-40 users should do 10 of those *every* day. On a good day, there are currently 2-3 users checking COM:WL and they do 20-70 users. Personally I do not worry about 'non personal' at the moment. I would only start worrying about that once we actually have the manpower to write personal messages (although we could argue what personal messages add to well written templates; maybe we need more precise templates). Cheers! Siebrand 14:55, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

• Re: search, has anyone thought about tagging? It wouldn't be too hard to make a tool on Toolserver for the purpose.
• Re: renaming, renaming of images is something desired since times ancient, and I don't recall I have ever heard why couldn't it be done. The first step towards this could be support for redirects in image namespace. This would of course be useful for all wikis.
• Multilingual categories will be hard to do. But as a first step, multilingual text should not be so hard. In fact, I have a demo at [11] which needs only a finishing touch. Nikola Smolenski 20:00, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

• Technically, multi-language is no real major problem, the real problem is the organisation, efficiency and coherency of it. I don't know how many hundreds of languages we should support. --Foroa 08:01, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

If multilanguage support would be seamless, with ability to browse Commons in any language of both page and interface text, there would be greater interest in the project as well as greater interest in localizing a bigger part of it. I don't think that there would be more languages than currently on the main page (77). Even now, wherever it is possible, multilingual support is quite strong. Nikola Smolenski 19:35, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Agree completely, we are only a small notch away from multilanguage. Wiki is still in its infancy, so a more realistic language count might be in the order of 200 (in 2008) and a potential of 1000+.

First of all, my congratulations! Second, if I may add to this discussion. I think there is a steady if uneven;) progression as to quality of the pictures. Just compare Image:ING House Amsterdam.JPG to the collection now in ING House, ING and Category:ING. Originally, the first picture was used in the article on the Dutch Wikipedia, but is has been superseded later by a better one, quite correctly. I think that it might be useful to think of a way to delete the lesser-quality pictures, if there are later ones of the same object and purpose. Of course, one would also have to find a way of easily substituting those better ones on perhaps dozens of Wikipedias. I know it's not something to be undertaken lightly, but the alternative would be to have Commons grow to a size that endangers its ussefulness. Best regards, MartinD 12:16, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Also do we have any idea what the 2M image was? --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:35, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

No idea. I noticed it when we were 6000 over already. Almost impossible to reconstruct... Siebrand 15:15, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I have a hunch that it is a pronunciation of a village in Serbia :) Nikola Smolenski 20:00, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I think will be good idea to write press-release. Late is better then never :-) --EugeneZelenko 14:26, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Let's make it a press release about passing en.wp in content items. That at least makes it 'on time' instead of late :) Siebrand 14:50, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I have written Commons:Press releases/2M and it mostly concentrates on interesting tools and things that we have acquired lately. It's suitable for Wikimedia release rather than the general public (which I see as a kind of useless exercise anyway, based on the past one/s no one cares). So any additions or thoughts on that are welcome. Many of the things I wrote about are things I have been involved in. Naturally other people should please add things they have been involved in. :)

I don't think comparions with enwp are that useful. They only have one article per topic, we could have dozens of images per topic. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 15:23, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Stats: Total uploads; Uploads per month. -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:28, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Any more major input on this? I suggest we "release" it on Tuesday, that's a week since the milestone. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 14:16, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

A small aside: Could some-one please update the "Upload your own work" template? In Step 2. Help people find this file it is stated in the heading that Commons has over one million files. This is correct, but why not write over two million files? -- Slaunger 20:53, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

October 10

Faroese Upload

Hello! I have recently redirect traffic for uploading photos from the fo.wikipedia.org (Faroese) wiki to Commons, to the site I translated. The problem is, when you click on:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload?uselang=fo this doesn't redirect to Commons:Upload/fo. Can someone change that please? I'd hate to bother bugzilla again about this, then again it should work when you have uselang=fo, right? Thanks --Girdi 02:21, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Eh forget it, I will just ask the guys at bugzilla, ignore this post. --Girdi 02:40, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

What you see here is the content of MediaWiki:Uploadtext/fo, not Commons:Upload/fo. --Matt314 12:11, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I updated MediaWiki:Upload-url/fo, so you are getting the right form on upload, bu the links from there are English again. You might want to ask User:Pfctdayelise what other steps are to be taken to completely work the interface into Faroese. --Matt314 12:26, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Girdi, Bugzilla can't help you, but we can.

Have you seen Commons:Redesigning the upload form? In particular it looks like the elements for the special forms (ie "foownwork" "fofromflickr" "fofromwikimedia") haven't been completed and for some reason they link to "daownwork" etc. Also Commons:Upload/Unknown author or license should be translated. Let me know if something in the redesign page is not clear. It is not as simple as just translating Commons:Upload! --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:45, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I guess they those links were supposed to be to a Danish template ("da") because according to German Wikipedia's article about the Faroese language most people there also understand Danish. The problem however is, those pages are not existing in Danish, either. --Matt314 21:43, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

(Faroese people indeed understand Danish since 1/3 of all Faroese work in Denmark proper and schools teach both Faroese and Danish). Matt, do you have a list of the pages that lack a Danish translation? Valentinian ^{T / C} 10:31, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

There is a list of pages and messages that need to be localized here. You can also start from here and follow the links. The first links goes here at the moment, but that would be Swedish, I guess. So a danish translation of this message would be needed at MediaWiki:Uploadtext/daownwork and so on.

To make those messy sentences a little bit clear:

• MediaWiki:Uploadtext/ownwork -> MediaWiki:Uploadtext/daownwork
• MediaWiki:Uploadtext/fromflickr -> MediaWiki:Uploadtext/dafromflickr
• MediaWiki:Uploadtext/fromgov -> MediaWiki:Uploadtext/dafromgov
• MediaWiki:Uploadtext/fromwikimedia -> MediaWiki:Uploadtext/dafromwikimedia
• Commons:Upload/Unknown author or license -> Commons:Upload/da/Okänd upphovsman eller licens

If you are looking for other stuff that needs translation: Commons:Help page maintenance... --Matt314 14:38, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

The name of the last link is Swedish. A correct Danish name would be : Commons:Upload/da/Ukendt ophavsmand eller licens. I'll try to see if I can find the time to take a look. Valentinian ^{T / C} 21:25, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Mayflower searches out of date

The excellent press release at Commons:Press releases/2M talks about how good Mayflower is. I hope no-one from the press has tried to find anything uploaded in the last 3 months, as every Mayflower search includes the small-print disclaimer "Index last updated July 20 2007". Based on Byan's statistics of total uploads, Mayflower can't reach around 400,000 of our files. --MichaelMaggs 18:14, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I was away from the Wikimedia world and wasn't able to update the index. I'm currently in the process of updating the index to the latest available dump, and will remind myself to do this periodically. Cheers, Tangotango 03:55, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Uploading 36MB .ogg sound file

I'm having trouble uploading this which is an audio version of a wikipedia article. Is there a size limit of 20MB? If there is, how can I split an .ogg file in the middle and make two files of it? When I try to upload it either times out or immediately comes to 'page not found'. V.frustrating. Could I email it to someone to do the uploading for me? Whatever works.Yuendumu 03:14, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, it's seems there is a 20 MB limit, see above discussion. You can split your OGG file with ogmsplit (if you are using Debian/Ubuntu Linux, it is in the ogmtools package). — Xavier, 08:18, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Or you need to contact somebody with shell access, such as Eloquence to upload the file for you. -- Bryan (talk to me) 09:29, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

A few newbie questions about categories

This is perhaps a bit of a newbie question, but just to be sure... How do category templates and individual categories relatie to each other? I have uploaded a number of pictures of Dutch scenes (my home town Uithoorn, for instance). I have put them in the category "Landscapes of the Netherlands". Some time ago a found that someone had added a template "Landscapes of the Netherlands" that apparently leads to the inclusion of a number of categories, most of which seem appropriate. (Though not all of them in all cases.) I'm quite willing to add this category to my uploaded files (where applicable), but please tell me whether I should do so. A second question: there is also a "structure" of categories that has nodes from "Netherlands" to "Subdivisions of the Netherlands" to "Provinces of the Netherlands" to "Province X" down to "municipality X". Should I remove the category "Landscapes of the Netherlands" and add "municipality X"? A third question: if the picture relates to a particular "theme" (say, canals or locks -we've got quite a fw of the in the Netherlands), should I add such a category too? I understand that having a clear structure of categories is essential to the usefulness of Commons, it's just that I'm not sure when I would be adding too many categories. Best regards, MartinD 14:18, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about the template, but regarding multiple categories: you can add the image to all categories that seem suitable, as long as you take care that the specific category does not include the general category already. For example, if you add Category:Canal locks in the Netherlands, you do not need to add either Category:Canal locks or Category:Netherlands. You may still add a category for the municipality, however, as that information is not included by adding Category:Canal locks in the Netherlands. You will find a lot more information here. --rimshot^talk 15:16, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

If you see {{Category:Landscapes of the Netherlands}} in a file, this is not a template, but somebody who has clicked on the wrong button. So, the standard processing is to replace the embraces with square brackets.

The improved processing is to remove the whole thing and to categorize properly the image, in particular according to the location or according to special features of the image. --Juiced lemon 15:29, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

The template {{Category:Landscapes of the Netherlands}} was meant for documentation only to be used in subcategories, not images. It wrongly included all sorts of unnecessary categories which is corrected by now. Anyawy, this template should not be used by images. --Foroa 15:56, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

My thanks to all of you, this is quite helpful! I'm going to check my contributions, will remove this incorrect category (where used), and recategory, using the most detailed category. Best regards, MartinD 16:07, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Category:Cleavage (breasts) or Category:Decolleté ?

I've just created the first one when I realized the second one existed. Which one to keep? There's a problem with the second one since the correct spelling is "Décolleté". (I don't know how to proceed) --TwoWings (jraf) * Wanna talk? ;-) 06:45, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

The two words "Décolleté" and "Cleavage" actually have somewhat different meanings (though I'm not sure that this means we need two separate categories). AnonMoos 08:43, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Having read the English article en:Cleavage (breasts) I suppose we can delete the new one I created... but the pre-existing one has to be renamed Category:Décolleté. I don't know how to do that. --TwoWings (jraf) * Wanna talk? ;-) 11:08, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree with AnonMoos: "décolleté" and "cleavage" (about breasts) have different meanings. In my opinion, “décolleté” is a clothing term which specifies how much you can see the cleavage through a piece of clothing. And “cleavage” is an anatomical arrangement of the breasts: that doesn't imply that you can see the breasts, nor the shape of the breasts. --Juiced lemon 09:31, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons is a semanticist's heaven. :) --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:32, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

October 22, 2007

How to close a deletion request?

Some of my images from en:Wikipedia have been moved to the commons and one was tagged for copyright violation. Image:FloppyRom Magazine.jpg It appears to be stuck in Commons:Deletion requests/Image:FloppyRom Magazine.jpg The claim of copyright violation was unfounded and the comments support a keep. How do I get the process closed? -- Swtpc6800 04:04, 23 October 2007 (UTC) -- en:User:Swtpc6800

Don't worry, it will be done some time. Unfortunately we are have a 4 month backlog so it might take some time. -- Bryan (talk to me) 09:34, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I have closed it. / Fred J 11:13, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Can we also close deletion request of Image:Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński - Maturzysta.jpg?--Jarekt 13:03, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

What to do with 800 watermarked images by Wojciechowscy

According to mayflower search [12] there are about 800 images contributed by many users made by Marek & Ewa Wojciechowscy. The images seem to be valuable. All uploaded images have the same large watermark with photographers web page address, and most are not labeled as watermarked. Some images were already cropped by other users and reuploded. Are there any tools to assist with tagging all those images that were not cropped yet with {{Watermark}} tag? Also are there any ways of speeding up the watermark removal? Other ideas of dealing with those images?--Jarekt 12:49, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Top 50 Mediterranean Island Plants Campaign

I'd like to inform you that I've obtained permission for reproduction of images related to the above cited IUCN campaign (see here).

If somebody is interested in uploading some image please use this box:

DescriptionVillage pump/Archive/2007/10	species name According to IUCN/SSC specialists these is one of the most endangered species of island floras in the Mediterranean area.
Source	http://www.iucn.org/themes/sgs/mipsg (see authorization here)
Author	MIPSG/SSC/IUCN uploaded by xxx
Permission (Reusing this file)	Attribution ShareAlike 2.5

--Esculapio 13:13, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Let me propose another version:

DescriptionVillage pump/Archive/2007/10	species name English: According to IUCN/SSC specialists this is one of the most endangered species of island floras in the Mediterranean area. Français : D'après les spécialistes de l'IUCN/SSC, c'est l'une des espèces les plus menacées de la flore insulaire méditerranéenne.
Source	http://www.iucn.org/themes/sgs/mipsg/ (see authorization here)
Author	MIPSG/SSC/IUCN
Permission (Reusing this file)	Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5

Besides the french translation (to be checked), I slightly corrected the english description (these -> this, please check too), I deleted the "uploaded by" text since this is in the file history and I gave the full license name.

This said, I wonder if the text "According to IUCN/SSC specialists..." wouldn't have a better place on the gallery and/or category page, instead of on each image description. Or, better, all those required information could be gathered in a template similar to {{PD-USGov-NOAA}} — Xavier, 13:36, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for correcting the mistake ! :-(

I propose a third version that you can see here: {{Top50}} --Esculapio 20:24, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I started inserting the template in a few pages and it seems to work properly. --Esculapio 13:36, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Rotating Images

I have uploaded a picture to the Wikimedia Commons (under an Attribution ShareAlike licence), but the orientation of the picture is sideways.

Is there any way I can rotate the picture to make it upright, or is this something I have to do before uploading the picture, in which case I would have to re-upload it. However, if I do that, I am worried about losing the metadata or degrading the quality of the image.

Any help/suggestions would be much appreciated!

Here's the image that's sideways.

JD Fan 17:34, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Please tag it {{Rotate}}. Someone will pick it up. Cheers! Siebrand 19:59, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

P.s. {{Please name images}}! Siebrand 19:59, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Use a lossless JPEG manipulation tool such as Jpegtran to avoid "generation loss". AnonMoos 20:12, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

It would be a really good idea to implement in Commons 90 degrees rotations as a tool for admins. --ALE! ¿…? 12:53, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I guess this could botted... Siebrand 10:01, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

1000FP

Pull out the champagne, we currently have 1013 Featured pictures. It actually already happened last week, but as far as I know, nobody noticed. -- Bryan (talk to me) 14:23, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Which one was the 100th?--MichaelMaggs 16:02, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I knew I forgot something ;) It was Image:Neuschwanstein_Castle_LOC_print_rotated.jpg. See User:Bryan/1000FP. -- Bryan (talk to me) 22:03, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Commons:Press releases/1000FP edit please! --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 10:47, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Flickr experience needed

Could someone experienced in evaluating Flickr images check whether some of the following images (all related to Theo van Gogh) are really "free" and could be copied to Commons:

[13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22]

Thanks. -- Túrelio 14:47, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Not free. They're paintings of someone who died recently, so they're not public domain due to age. Also the photographs are marked copyright. Why would you think they would be free? --AnonEMouse 15:19, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I did not think so, I only hoped so. And most of them carry a "public" tag. However, today I got one free portait of Theo van Gogh, so that must be sufficient for Commons. -- Túrelio 15:39, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

The public tag means that everybody is allowed to see the image. For a free license, see the very small "Some rights reserved" box. -- Bryan (talk to me) 10:09, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Someone with OTRS permission

Could you please verify that this is OTRS permission is correct for the image: Image:NowThatYouGotItEdit.jpg. Patstuart 21:01, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

The uploader asked:

I've been working on some of the Wikipedia articles about her, and there are a
bunch of pictures from the Harajuku Lovers Tour but none from the current
one, so I was wondering if I could use the pictures you took of her tour.
Wikipedia lets people reuse its content, so you'd have to agree to let the pictures
be used under a free license like the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ , which lets people share or
modify the picture as long as they attribute it to you. Would you be
willing to do that?

The photographer answered:

Okay, as long as I get an attribution, I'm cool with the use of
the photos

Thanks for asking!

--Kjetil r 23:51, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Which is, in my opinion, not a valid release for the CC-BY. -- Bryan (talk to me) 09:27, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

agreed, we need something a bit more explicit. Best to ask again restating that you need an explicit "I license this under CC By 2.5" from them... Also you need someone with OTRS permission, not OFFICE :) so I changed the heading. ++Lar: t/c 11:11, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

October 25

PD Newspapers

see [23], "British Newspapers 1800-1900" is PD?--Shizhao 08:07, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

While individual scans might be PD, the database as a whole might be subject to database rights. For single pages, you'd still have to figure out when the copyrights of the individual texts and images expired. Lupo 09:13, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

A proposal at Category talk:Commons photographers that needs wider input

There is a proposal afoot (actually several variants) that needs wider input. Some users have suggested redefining the meaning of the PH user boxes, the currently self selected photographer quality ratings, in various ways. I've opposed changing the status quo partly because I feel that they have not sought broad enough input. I was surprised not to be able to find a link to this discussion here, so I'm now mentioning it. It will take some reading as there are a fair number of proposals, some of which may now be obsoleted by succeeding proposals farther down. ++Lar: t/c 11:09, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

It has been posted and notifications have been given along the way and it is still here. So it is not something which is happening in the dark. I just wanted to point that out... Having said that, I agree that input from a wider audience would still be of benefit to the process. So join the discussion if you like! -- Slaunger 12:38, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Ah. the reason I didn't find it when searching is that the link to the discussion isn't given in cleartext (if you just do a find while not in edit mode, the "here" pipedlink masks the real link). As I said on your talk, I'd even be willing to do an AWB run for you if we could craft a message that wouldn't be perceived as spam. Redefining userboxes to mean something else is rather a drastic step and one that needs wide consensus, I feel, especially ones like these that put people in self selected categories... I am not opposed to the notion of introducing additional ways of finding folk, but not the way that it was initially proposed. I'll make further points at the main discussion. I too encourage others to go pop in and say what they think. ++Lar: t/c 13:23, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Just checking...

... images taken from Google Earth aren't free, are they? In that case, someone has to delete Image:Dom Aquino Vista google earth.png and contact the uploader (I'm not sure his other 2 uploads are free actually). Thank you. --TwoWings (jraf) * Wanna talk? ;-) 08:48, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Oh and that one doesn't seem right either. --TwoWings (jraf) * Wanna talk? ;-) 08:51, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Google Earth images are not free. Image:Dom Aquino Vista google earth.png and Image:Googleearth1.jpg was deleted. --GeorgHH 09:04, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

GEarth images are not permitted within the Wikimedia Foundation, but it's not because of copyrights: Google Earth permits users to upload their photos to the internet, but they're not permitted because of the non-commercial clause. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 22:50, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Something else: Template:PD-US-no notice says "published (...) without a copyright notice". How can we know there wasn't any copyright notice with a work? For instance: Cleopatra had no copyright notice? --TwoWings (jraf) * Wanna talk? ;-) 09:13, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

In the end the source material would have to be examined. For many films, such as Cleopatra, the images on Commons are from the movie trailers, which were distributed without copyright notices. Sometimes an oversight was made and a whole film was released without a copyright notice. See for instance Category:Night of the Living Dead. William Avery 10:59, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Derivative works? Copyright violations? Non commercial?

User:Iconshock web icons has uploaded a lot of icons. Like...

• "Finding Nemo" based icon
  "Finding Nemo" based icon
• "Finding Nemo" based icon
  "Finding Nemo" based icon
• "Finding Nemo" based icon
  "Finding Nemo" based icon
• "Mortal Kombat" character based icon
  "Mortal Kombat" character based icon
• "Mortal Kombat" character based icon
  "Mortal Kombat" character based icon
• "Mortal Kombat" logo based icon
  "Mortal Kombat" logo based icon
• "Alien vs Predator" based icon
  "Alien vs Predator" based icon
• "Alien vs Predator" based icon
  "Alien vs Predator" based icon

They seem to me derivative works of copyrghted characters. Moreover, in ALL of his icons (not only in the movie based ones), he adds as source

self-made ( non for re-sale)

which seems to me it's implying that commercial use is forbidden, which contradicts the GFDL license. What's the right thing to do? -- Drini 22:16, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Oops... Empty gallery all of a sudden... Cheers! Siebrand 23:32, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

And waht abotut he ones I didn't put in the gallery? what about the "not for sale" others? -- Drini 23:35, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Internationalization of galleries

So far, I have seen just a couple of internationalized meta pages (like this one) but no internationalized galleries in the sense that each language version gets its own dedicated page. I tried to implement this now for the galleries Molana Priory (English) and Kloster Molana (German), both belonging to Category:Molana Priory by setting up an internationalization template Template:Molana Priory/lang and referencing this template from both galleries. Is this an acceptable practice or are there any objections? Thanks for your thoughts. --AFBorchert 22:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

At first, I think there is no Molana Priory, but a Molana Abbey.

Regarding to multiple uses of the same media file in galleries, I agree as long as the media file remains in appropriate categories, according to its own features.

However, I am opposed to:

• the cluttering of a category with different galleries about the same subject, but in various languages.
• the multiplication of gallery names, which can lead to inextricable disambiguation cases.

Therefore, I suggest to use only one gallery page with an English or local language name, and subpages for galleries about the same subject in other languages. The subpages will be not categorized, but would be linked. --Juiced lemon 23:24, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

This is a great initiative. I think that we have to consider this issue very carefully as we can have potentially everything in more than 100 languages. Major issues to be addressed are maintenance, proliferation of gallery and category names, later potential automatic version selection in function of the user language, ... Maybe there can be an integrated (template-like) backbone that lists all sections and images, so that the localised versions only have to provide the adequate titels and caption texts. A nice maintenance problem: when you have the gallery in 20 different languages, how can you add media (=major goal of the commons) without having to edit 20 different galleries or subpages. --Foroa 06:42, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

October 27

British English licences

Could somebody please make some licences in British English for contributers who use this language (licence rather than license). It would be appriciated as us Brits don't like having to post all our images using Americanised templates. --GW Simulations 15:01, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

If you want to create redirects as appropriate, knock yourself out. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:06, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I've created versions of the ones that I commonly use, I'll do the rest later. Thanks. --GW Simulations 20:04, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Please use the language code en-GB to name your files, not BrE. Thanks. — Xavier, 07:59, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Er, I said create redirects, not templates. Did you not notice this line at the bottom of the templates you created? "NOTE: Please do not use this template directly! This is just for translation." You shouldn't use any license template except for the base one (eg {{GFDL}}) on image pages. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 09:01, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Now I'm confused. --GW Simulations 09:21, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Soccer

Why are so many things named after soccer, even though the name is used only in the US, Australia an ZA and countries over there, even german football clubs are named soccer clubs here. That can't be right. The English wikipedia settled for association football a long time ago, even though most people would prefer the name football. Association football is an acceptable compromise, soccer is not. Can we change the category names, to fit to the worldwide name of the biggest sport in the universe? Migdejong 14:58, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

See Soccer discussions --Foroa 15:20, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, no answer is given there, except that 5 people took the time to vote, and then no answer was given at all. This should be resolved. Migdejong 15:35, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I think going ahead and making over 200 edits to create an inconsistent mess is not the way to go. Please revert your recategorisations. Cheers! Siebrand 16:46, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, football is the name most people use. The clubs are not called AFC (except for Amsterdam Football Club (Ajax)) or SC (sometimes, but then they are called sports club, not soccer club) but FC so categorizing them as football seems the best solution. I will change the names to an overall solution if we can find an overall solution, which does not include categorising European football clubs to an American name. Especially not in football, where the Americans play only a minor role. Migdejong 16:51, 25 October 2007 (UTC) (BTW, I have been very consistent in renaming everything from the Netherlands Migdejong 16:54, 25 October 2007 (UTC))

You have created something that is not globally consistent. You have also re-ambiguated 'football'. Not good. Please revert, discuss at the location pointed out above. Cheers! Siebrand 17:07, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, there are lots of different names at commons right now, I see soccer, I see soccer (football), Football, Association football and all of them are not very consistent. It makes no sense in changing it back to soccer if this is not an overall solution. Migdejong 17:10, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

If you think it is too much work to revert, would you mind me doing it? Please discuss things at the location Foroa pointed out. Cheers! Siebrand 17:25, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I would indeed. It makes no sense turning it back, that is what I said. Not that it is too much work. There is no point in reverting as long as there is no overall solution. Migdejong 17:33, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Why is nobody answering his question? Both of you ignore his question and refer to a page where a decision is made after a poll where only 5 users voted... Rubietje88 17:47, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Then I think you are forcing the issue. You have hardly waited for a response. Not very community-like. Even though you have pointed out that there is a consensus on en.wp, you start changing to something different (association football vs. football). Please reflect on your own attitude; the usual approach is to come to a (broad) consensus first. Cheers! Siebrand 17:52, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

If you are going to change a few of them, you need to change them all. And to do so, you should be getting community consensus first. As it stands, this change is inappropriate simply because it's torn apart the fabric that was settled a while ago. For example, we now have these under Category:Soccer, with a name that might be agreed upon, but is inconsistent, both with American titles (e.g., Category:American football venues in Alabama), and other soccer names. Patstuart 18:21, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

What I did was changing names from soccer to football, not from ass football to football. Soccer is not a term used in the countries which it applied to. I will change it all back once there is a consensus, and I'll stop changing any more cats. Migdejong 18:40, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

The issue has comed to a decision as a result of this Commons:Categories for discussion/Current requests/2007/07/Category:Soccer in England & Category:Soccer in Scotland#poll. Exceptionally, this poll was annouced in the Village pump, and its French, German and Spanish versions. Six users take part to this poll (high participation for a categories issue), and neither the result, nor the organization were questionned.

Therefore, the decision to move the “soccer” categories to “association football” categories is applicable since 19:20, 17 September 2007. Any user may implement this decision, and nobody have to take care of any consistency with any “soccer” category: the “soccer” structure is dead (I don't think there is a single chance to put it back on the rails).

Most of the requested moves are listed here. --Juiced lemon 19:06, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Honestly, 6 voters is not a lot, for any issue, especially not for changing over 200 categories. Let's have another vote, and stop voting only when we have 20 voters. That could clarify the issue. We'll count all the earlier votes as well, and make the vote acceptable to all. Migdejong 19:15, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

6 voters for only 200 categories is far more than necessary. The issue is perfectly clear: the approved root category for association football is currently Category:Association football.

You can organize any vote you want, but you cannot cancel previous valid votes (except with a “cancellation” vote). However, I am opposed to any vote without a given reasonnable duration. --Juiced lemon 22:14, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

It is only a poll, you can have any poll any time for any reason. We could fix the duration, perhaps at 1 month, to allow for a large vote. Migdejong 06:40, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

No. We cannot have any poll any time for any reason. Wikimedia Commons is not a polling institute. A poll is only an optional part of a decision process. A decision process involves different users who develop an argumentation about an issue. When there is no obvious consensus, a poll can be useful to clarify the alternatives and complete the process.

Now, the decision process about “association football” is finished. Commons users are not ready to waste their time in doing again the same tasks, without any justification. You don't agree the result of this process: what a pity! You missed the train. The next time, you will try to wake up sooner. But, this train will not come back specially for you. --Juiced lemon 11:22, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

That's not a very helpful comment (too late, try to wake up sooner). But anyway, what's the whole issue here? There's a poll which decided upon "association football" as a compromise, Migdejong says he can live with that... NielsF ^{? (en, nl, fr, it)} 12:32, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes I can. But the poll is not implemented because people disagree over the relevance of the poll, with only 6 voters. To implement the results we can have a bigger poll, which can result in a more clear definte result. Migdejong 21:59, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

The result of poll is not yet implemented because I expected goodwills to finalize what I had initiated, and I didn't care of that. In Commons, users are volunteers, and I cannot force somebody to do something he or her dislikes. That doesn't mean the thing cannot be done.

Look at this discussion. I have started it 11 weeks ago: 2 answers. Though, the issue concerns the move of hundred of categories. Probably, a decision will occur, but without poll. --Juiced lemon 00:01, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Set my favorite License in my User Preferences ??

Is it possible to set my favorite License in my User Preferences ?? Most users choice a license, and them alway (90% of the time) upload their images under this license.

When uplaoding, we have to choice each time which license we want. If an user can set up his favorite License in his User Preferences page, then we can have by default this license when we upload a file.

210.203.52.175 12:38, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

It is not possible to set this via "user preferences" but I think this somehow could be done by a javascript. --Matt314 12:55, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. The commonist saves that type of information. --Foroa 13:24, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Hey :)

Making it happen via the preferences would mean getting an extension accepted and enabled, which is long and slow. I suggest writing on the mailing list to try and get a JavaScript guru to code something up, so that whenever you visit the upload form your favourite template is already chosen or written in the form. That would not be that hard, I think.

Someone may him lead this issue ? pfctdayelise (说什么?) 09:33, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Finnish speaker requested

User:Shalvydor has uploaded several images from http://www.mil.fi. If there are is anyone proficient in Finnish who could check the copyright status and provide a better tag, it would be appreciated. :) Patstuart 16:33, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Try contacting users located here, either on the page or with a proficiency of 3 or N. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 16:41, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Please see Commons:Deletion requests/Template:FinnishDefenceForces. Samulili 19:23, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

October 28

Encouraging authors to give names?

I recently used an image (licensed CC-by-sa) on my organization's home page. The author didn't give her name at all, so I had to look at the history. Even then, she has no description on her user page, so I had to attribute it using her username (e.g. "mary_01")

That's not a disaster, but it doesn't look very professional. From the outside perspective of someone wondering if I'm using the image under license, it probably doesn't look very trustworthy -- I'm claiming to attribute the image to an obviously fake name!

I know the new-image template contains a space for the author's name, but do they need to be encouraged more strongly to actually give one?

I wouldn't go so far as to require a real name (and we couldn't verify that, anyway), but it seems awkward to use pseudonyms. Would you want your workplace to have "copyright 'Spider In Khakis'" on its home page?

Please fill me in on the best practices. I didn't see this detail already discussed.

Office-bound Webmaster 15:29, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Hm. My real name is not a secret, but I only ask for attribution under my username.

It is just as awkward as using an image from Flickr, isn't it? Just say "Wikimedia Commons user 'foo'" and then maybe it is more clear that it is probably a psuedonym. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 05:02, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I do not think encouraging editors to use their real name (or reveal it on other sites related to uploads here) is a good idea due to unfortunate issues related to harassment that happen enough to cause some editors to regret using their real name on Wikimedia sites. Pen names and other stage names are common enough among authors and other public figures so as to not seem out of line for our editors to have a user name, I think. FloNight♥♥♥ 15:43, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I certainly have no wish to use my real name here. I have seen people identifiabl ein real life get their names dragged through the mud.--Londoneye 13:02, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

You're right; we shouldn't require the use of real names; I am still wondering about the best practices given the reality that people will be using usernames that don't even look like names (e.g. "Spider in Khakis" instead of "Spider Jones"), and the special cases that someone might use a name that might send a message contrary to your business practices (perhaps "Spiders Suck").

Along those lines, pfctdayelise's suggestion to describe the username ("Wikimedia Commons user 'foo'") is a good answer. And the obvious answer to business-contrary usernames is to not use the material, and such is life.Office-bound Webmaster

Template:Watermark encourages GFDL violation?

pfctdayelise's question about removing EXIF data brought up this question in my mind regarding {{Watermark}}.

The template clearly states that the watermark should be removed. Specifically for GFDL images then removal of a watermark with a copyright notice constitutes a breech of license, does it not? The GFDL clearly states (4D) that copyright notices should be preserved. Cburnett 07:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Retype the text in the watermark into a text editor. Remove the watermark from the image, either by cropping or by airbrushing. Upload the image. Copy the text from the text editor into the image description page. Not only does this procedure remove the watermark from the image while preserving the attribution that the GFDL requires, but it also makes the watermark more accessible. Specifically see {{Attribution metadata from licensed image}}. --Damian Yerrick (☎) 15:29, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Obviously depends on your definition of "preserve". I'm thinking it means "keep in place" while you think it (and is most favorable here) means "without loss". Cburnett 16:38, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Surely removing the watermark (even if you preserve the information) constitutes a significant alteration to the image.--Londoneye 13:11, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

What are the digital camera manufacturers most used in Commons?

I am a Digital Camera expert and i want to know the digital camera manufacturers most used in Commons. guerreritoboy 00:18, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

From what I have seen, the most popular brands would seem to be Canon and Nikon, but don't quote me. Luis Dantas 00:23, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Not sure anyone's ever really checked into it, though a tool could conceivably be written to scan all images to see what metadata they have and what camera was used. I'd wager that Canon takes #1 and I'm sure Nikon is in the running for 2nd place. Olympia might put up a decent showing. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 01:05, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Not to imply that it is a representative amostrage of Commons' pictures, but you may want to have a look at Category:Photographs by camera. —the preceding unsigned comment was added by Luis Dantas (talk • contribs) 01:35, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

It is impossible to find out the exact figure without iterating over all 2M images... -- Bryan (talk to me) 09:25, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

True enough, but it _is_ fairly easy to make pseudo-random samplings and check (even visually) the camera identification that Commons displays among the picture EXIF attributes. Of course, not all pictures have that information, but most do. Luis Dantas 09:38, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

It might be a biased result if people with some types of camera are more likely to add the info than others are.--Londoneye 13:14, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Redundancy in categories

I would like to ask the community about having redundant categories. for example, Template:No source since categorizes images in both the "Month Year" system, as in the "Day Month Year" format. The code:

[[Category:Unknown - {{{month|No timestamp given}}} {{{year|}}}|{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Unknown as of {{{day|}}} {{{month}}} {{{year}}}]]

A simple #if:{{{day}}} would resolve this problem. To me redundancy in categories is to be avoided, but I'd like the community to express their opinion here.

Also, there's another issue, which is more serious: Template:Description missing categorizes images in the Category:Media lacking a description. I think, as expressed in the talk page, that when an image does have a description but no author information, for instance, they should be kept in a separate category, as it is misleading to have them in the "description lacking" category. Waldir 01:38, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm in favour of less redundancy. Samulili 06:05, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

If we want to become serious about cleaning up here, we need more precise /less redundant maintenance categories. It looks as if those maintenance categories fill faster than they can be sorted out. --Foroa 08:01, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

empty categories

I have a question. I found these:

1. Category:Cab signalling of Belgium
2. Category:Cab signalling of France
3. Category:Cab signalling of Germany
4. Category:Cab signalling of Great Britain
5. Category:Cab signalling of Poland
6. Category:Cab signalling of Russia
7. Category:Cab signalling of the Netherlands

are those needed, or should they be deleted, since they're empty... Frizabela 00:50, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Looks like somebody may have been intending to add some content into them, but it seems their motivation died out. It looks like they'd be fit for deletion unless someone throws in some content and readds the "Cab signalling" category. I left a message with the categories' creator to consider providing some input. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 01:14, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

by the way, if you go to special pages:uncategeorised categories, there is plenty of categories that are empty, some of them made recently, but some've been there for months, someone should go through it and delete the unneeded ones.. Frizabela 01:50, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Bear in mind that categories may be created before the user has a chance to upload the photos. I would not recommend deleting anything that has been created relatively recently. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 04:20, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

There are two types of empty categories:

• The ones that are empty but connected to other categories, indeed very often in preparation for uploads: I would not touch them unless they are clearly redundant with others or faulty (E.g. the typical of/in and singular/plural mistakes).
• The complete empty and unconnected ones, in my opinion in most of the cases because of a bad name or when a better cat has been identified. Because of the hassle (and heavy unclear procedure) to delete them, a lot of people make them empty. I would delete such categories whenever they are older than a couple of hours. Recreation of such a unconnected category takes only a couple of seconds anyway. --Foroa 07:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

In the case of cab signalling, there has been a person that has another idea of the needed cats and uses, in place of country related cats, technical (functional or system) categorisation such as Category:Punktförmige Zugbeeinflussung, Category:Integra-Signum and Category:Transmission balise-locomotive, for which it is not necessarily easy to find the right wording in English. --Foroa 07:26, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, more than one week I have had no possibility to continue in this work - to categorize cab signalling by country. I think that there is a good reason for this categories, because each state has own system of railway signalling and also own system of cab signalling. I hoped that somebody else would categorize pictures of components of cab signalling according to countries of origin. What to do? I try to do it myself.--PetrS. 12:24, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Individual language noticeboards

What do people think of creating individual language noticeboards where we can notify people of a request for something? My purpose in this is that often I need someone with a specific language skill to say something, and I might post to Village pump, only to be told to just look through the list. This would create a list of people who are ready and willing to do some sort of translation work if necessary and handle problems with users who speak a specific language. What do people think? Patstuart 17:03, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

You have my support--Jarekt 17:26, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree. support. Frizabela 21:50, 29 October 2007 (UTC) ps.but maybe we should just create one site which would be divided into seperate sections for different languages, and thatn you would just write under the section of language you need.

I don't oppose, but most active Commons users are also Commons admins. So you could use (or improve or base your list on) the list at Commons:Administrators. Of course, not quite every active user is an admin and not many of the admins are active. There is also this tool which tells you which admins are active at the moment. I can't remember where that tool is, however. Samulili 20:49, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Why don't you use the VP of that language? I don't quite understand...but mostly, I don't think people will bother to keep checking a board to see if they have requests for work (most people have more than enough to do!), so I am not sure it would work. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:00, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I had no idea they had VP's in individual languages. I guess this answers my question. :) Patstuart 16:04, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

CC-by-nc question

A picture on flickr is tagged as CC-by-nc (without sa). Is it allowed to upload a derevative work of that picture without nc to Wikipedia?
--D-Kuru 22:30, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

The "nc" will be the problem. -- Túrelio 22:32, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

And why?

If it's tagged as sa you have to tag it as nc. But why should it be a problem to upload it with a different (free) licence?

--D-Kuru 09:07, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Read section 4b of the full license. It places limits on the right to create and distribute derivative works granted in section 3. Lupo 09:30, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

If the "original" was nc (= no commercial use), I fear, a derivative will also need to have the same tag, and nc is not allowed on Commons (Commons:Licensing#Acceptable licenses). -- Túrelio 09:33, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

help

how do i get my name on wikepedia so when im search for it itll show a picture of me ad my definition —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.77.99.240 (talk) 23:17, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like you just need to create an account. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 00:04, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

October 30

Right Coypyright status?

Has this picture a correct copyright status? Image:Fuente reus.jpg. Havang 09:35, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I think will be good idea to send e-mail on provided address to verify that author and Jgvillar are same person. --EugeneZelenko 14:17, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

It would be also a good idea to remove the watermark--Jarekt 15:20, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

There are more of these: [24]. Could an administrator look at these items and their history? Havang 16:09, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

requests

is there a page here somewhere where you can write requests for photographs? Frizabela 00:17, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

On the English Wikipedia, there is Category:Wikipedia requested photographs and the Wikipedia:Photo Matching Service. The former lists articles which have the {{reqphoto}} tag, representing articles which are lacking photos. The latter provides a listing of photographers by location. I cannot recall, offhand, any such services on Commons. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 00:29, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

hmm, well shouldnt commons have a site like that? I went through that Wikipedia site and most of those images are of mostly events or people which pictures are copyrighted around the net. I wish for a site that we could put simple requests for pictures that are not here yet, or that are here, but not of good quality, for example: I was looking for a good picture of beets, but couldnt find one, only one that was acceptable is Image:Beets produce-1.jpg, but I need a pic of a singe beet; there is plenty of stuff that doesnt have nice pictures and that every person with a camera can snap a picture of. All they need is a list of whats needed. If I could I would do it myself, but I dont even own a camera :(, well thats just something to think about Frizabela 00:41, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

But we do have such a board already: Commons:Picture requests/Requests -- Túrelio 07:13, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Recent Vandalism

A recent vandal has taken to uploading "new versions" of image files- a wide range of subjects. One of these is at [25]

I have fixed one that related to the Michelangelo article but there are about a dozen more listed in the user's contributions. Mandy 07:22, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Resolved by now. Lupo 14:52, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I helped deal with this and blocked the vandal account indefinitely. I would have left a note about it, but had to rush to work. Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Vandalism is generally a better place to bring it to the attention of people who can actually do something about it. Cheers! —LX (talk, contribs) 21:45, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Interesting problem from the Spanish village pump

User has uploaded the same file (under a few different names): here. Nothing appears... until you click on the large version, when something does appear: [26]. Suggestions? Patstuart 16:09, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Have a look at the source code of the image: Images like "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrador\Escritorio\Wikipedia\Corona Real Abierta Libre.png" are included which obviously connot be done. This is not a valid svg file for commons. --Matt314 16:25, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I do not know how to look at the source code. Patstuart 16:28, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Download it as a file to your local hard drive, then open it in a text editor... AnonMoos 17:04, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Or just press "view source code" in your browser, when you have the large view open. --rimshot^talk 17:40, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

However, not all web-browsers directly render SVG code. It's completely dependent on one's local software configuration whether SVG code is handled directly by a browser, by a plugin, handed off to an external program, or not rendered at all... AnonMoos 18:44, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

At least if it's not rendered at all, you'll automatically see the source code ;) --rimshot^talk 10:25, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Another way is to use the integrated thumbnail generator which tells us (in quite a cryptic manner, I admit), that an external file is missing to render the SVG: "librsvg-ERROR **: _rsvg_acquire_xlink_href_resource called for external resource: Para hacer.png". Unfortunately, there are two issues: 1. you have to build the URL yourself to check this; and 2. the error message is not always the same as sometimes we get "/usr/local/bin/rsvg: No such file or directory" which looks like a mediawiki misconfiguration. — Xavier, 00:54, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Derivative work?

I think COM:DW implies Image:Hulk Up Close And Personal 09 10 06 (268740653).jpg is a derivative work of a copyright item. I may be wrong, can anyone enlighten me? HOw's this different from photographing an action figure doll? -- Drini 16:52, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I would have already deleted in most cases, but this was uplaoded by magnus' bot, so I wonder, are those uploads monitored for copyvios or not? -- Drini 16:54, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Speedy delete seems appropriate to me. The bot just checks the licensing on Flickr which alas may not be right and which we need to keep an eye out for. In the future I think just tagging or listing this sort of thing on deletion requests should cover it? -- Infrogmation 17:26, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

What's more, the flickr person appears to be have taken it down from his site. I looked through all his images, and oddly, this one did not appear; nor did anything appear under the very tags it had ascribed to it. I think he took it down, and we best delete it (for that matter, given the author's uploads, I'm not sure this isn't actually just a screenshot, although, if it's not, it would probably be kosher). Patstuart 23:26, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

If the flickr user took it down, it's since gone back up. flickr --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 23:34, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

No, I mean it's up at flickr, but try clicking one of the categories, or going through the user's tags. You will find it gone. Patstuart 23:45, 31 October 2007 (UTC)