Commons:Village pump/Archive/7

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Village pump (Archives)

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This is an archive. Do NOT post here.
If you want to restart an old topic, copy the entire topic to the Village pump and add your post like you would normally.

Contents


inlude image namespace in default search on commons

this would seem like a good idea to me as the whole perpose of the commons is files Plugwash 23:02, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You can change that in your preferences -- Chris 73 23:32, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
sure, but think of people that have no account here, that are just looking for an image to use in an article.
While we are at it: I would also suggest to include the categories in the default search - especially because categories will serve as automatic galeries in the next version of mediawiki, which is due in the next weeks. I would even go so far as to suggest to implement an automatic fallback from the article namespace to the category namespace: if an article is not found, the categorie with the same name should be shown automatically, if it exists. This would be very useful, because we can expect that only few "real" pages will prevail when we get automatic galeries. -- Duesentrieb 00:40, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
True. Can this be done with the default CSS style sheet? Sorry, but the CSS is still a bit of a mistery to me -- Chris 73 01:06, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
No, this has nothing to do with CSS. CSS ist for applying layout, colors etc. to "raw" HTML or XML, it has nothing to do with content, and it can not do redirects or alias namespaces. The default-namespaces for searches can probably be set in some (PHP) configuration file by someon with server access. My other suggestion (namespace-fallback) would probably require changes in the Mediawiki-Software. -- Duesentrieb 01:12, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Does the search actually work. I've switched on searching in Main, Commons, Commons talk, Image, Image talk, MediaWiki and MediaWiki talk in my preferences. Searched for 'Panda' and got nothing. But there is actually a page on the giant panda at Ailuropoda_melanoleuca with three images each of which include the word 'panda' on their image pages. -- Solipsist 10:54, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The 'panda' search seems to work for me now. -- Solipsist 20:53, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I support this suggestion, I'm using commons for 2 weeks and only today I noted that commons doesn't search in image namespace by default. Gbiten 18:59, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Fundamental Question

I hope this question doesn't sound stupid but after reading the FAQ and other documents I have a question about the commons. Are users encouraged to move images from other wikis to here if they think they might be used later in another wiki? Is the commons only for new images or images that are already used in multiple wikis? Basically what I want to know is...should I continue uploading most of my images to wikipedia or should I switch to the commons? (I understand that the commons doesn't accept fair use images) Thanks! BrokenSegue 02:44, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

(1) There are no stupid questions. (2) I would upload new and free images to the commons, and new and unfree images to the respective Wiki. I also started copying my own free images to the commons. -- Chris 73 03:22, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
In the german WP, we have a big hint on the upload page stating that most images should be uploaded to the commons - I would like to encourage others to do the same. IMHO only images that are very specific to a single Wikipedia (user portraits for example) should be put into the WP, everything else should go here. I think it would even be worth considering to put all images uploaded to any wikipedia into the commons... but that would require some changes in the infrastructure, i guess. -- Duesentrieb 17:30, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
new uploading of FREE images should be done here on the commons. Transfering images here should for the moment be done on an as needed basis until such time as we get support for doing transfers server side with full preservation of history (this may have to wait until after single login is implemented). The commons basically has an upload policy as strict as the strictest individual projects. Therefore individual projeccts will keep thier own upload spaces for non-free images that the individual prject finds acceptable (for example fair use images on en) Plugwash 00:16, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Am I right, that pictures like en:Image:Barbados.OwenArthur.01.jpg can't be uploaded to commons? The license informations given there look like "fair use" to me. --Jailbird 20:13, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, it would be okay to include that image, as far as I can see. We may use the image because the copyrightholder allows us to do so, not because of fair use clauses in the law. - Andre Engels 17:46, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Copyright in 2D Reproduction of PD workd

Hi! As already discussed here, a photograph of a public domain painting (pre-1923, author died before 1934) shouldn't be eligible for copyright. However, after submitting one such photograph to Wikimedia Commons, I've discovered that the original web site doesn't permit reproductions which, of course, goes against the notion of the work not being copyrightable:

"The contents of this site, including all images and text, are for personal, educational, non-commercial use only. The contents of this site may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form without the written permission of the State Hermitage Museum. Images on this web site have been invisibly watermarked; any attempt to remove the watermarks from these images is expressly forbidden."

Does anybody know what merit such claims have?

As far as i know: none. If the material is PD, they can claim and watermark whatever they want, the conditions do not apply because they don't have any rights to the material. But IMNAL -- Duesentrieb 16:28, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Thanks - I just wanted to make sure. Lots more Bouguereau paintings to come then :-)
The photograph itself is a copyrighted work, even if the content within isn't; correct me if I'm wrong but I think that's right. -- Sarcasticninja 08:58, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
from what i have read i think if the photo is in any way creative it is seperately copyrightable if its an uncreative reproduction it is not.


paintings

User 'Thebrid' is uploading images of paintings, with (lots of) public domain messages. However, I found that very hard to believe. Dub 21:39, 9 dec 2004 (UTC)

Looks to me like all the images are from before 1920, so they would be PD in the US because of expired copyright. The images are tagged both as PD and PD-US. I think the copyright is OK. Also, you may have asked User:Thebrid on his talk page. I just left him a note about this discussion. -- Chris 73 00:20, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
In Europe, the copyright expires 70 years after the death of the author, so most of those images are not PD in Europe! Thus, i would say they are PD-US, but not PD(-Worldwide) and the respective Templates should be rremoved from the images. This should also be brought to Thebirds attention.
The real question ist now: are images that are free in part of the world, but unfree in others, allowed on the commons? I am inclined to say no, because that would brake the policy at least of the german wikipedia to make sure that all images in the wikipedia can be reused by anyone, for any purpose. -- Duesentrieb 10:54, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I would say yes and let each wikipedia choose whether to include an image or not according to its own policy. Imagine if something this free for the majority of wikipedias except a handful. It would be a shame not use the commons because of that handful. -- Kowey 12:15, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Hi all! Thanks for posting about my images. I _have_ read the copyright-related pages and am only uploading images which fall under one/both of two categories: a) pre-1923 (should be U.S. public domain) and/or b) painter(s) died before 1934 (should be E.U. public domain).
I am tagging images PD where they are in the public domain _somewhere_, PD-US where they are in the U.S. public domain (pre-1923), and PD-Art and PD-Old where they are in the E.U. public domain (i.e. where the author / all authors died before the start of the 70th year before this).
I am checking the year of creation and artist(s) death date(s) before I post and adding the PD templates I believe are appropriate. If what I am doing is incorrect, please let me know because I currently believe it to be correct. -- Thebrid 19:18, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
It sounds like you know what you are doing, but I would suggest a change in the tagging PD where they are public domain _everywhere_ (or don't use it because the more specific PD tags will be better), PD-US when the image has been published in U.S. pre-1923 but the artist died later, PD-Old when the artist died pre-1934, and PD-Art when the artist died pre-1934 but the photograph of the work is more recent and that photographer might try to claim copyright. -- Solipsist 11:04, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Furthermore there is sometimes more subtilities : In France, the years of war (during which the right could not been enforced) shall be postponed (eg heirs of someone dead in 1933 have rights until 1933 + 70 + 6 (WWII) = 2009) though it's maybe more complex : IANL. And as Solipsist said, there is some rights for the photographer either is or is not the subject of the snapshot in PD. FoeNyx 13:52, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
My opinion is to go with the location of origin - if the work is American, go with American copyright, if it is European, with European, etcetera. - Andre Engels 20:22, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Andre Engels that the PD status should be determined according to the laws of the origin of the image. IMNAL, but i belive this also the way it is handeled by the courts. This would mean that most of the many Images of european artists that Thebird uploaded are copyright violations.
Furthermore, the simple PD tag is misleading, as it is usually interpretet to mean the the image is in the public domain everywhere - if that is not the case, a more specific PD-Tag should be used by itself, as Solipsist suggested. Alternatively, there could be regional tags like "Nonfree in Europe" or something, but i fear that we would need a great many of those.
It may indeed make sense to allow images here that are unfree in some place, but free in most places, as Kowey said. But I can agree to that only if two things are kept in mind: a) this fact must be made very clear my both the copyright policy page and the individual copyright tags, and b) please remember that the US ist not "most places". If we just count wikis, disregarding the number of pages in each, i would guess (i have not checked this) that most wikipedias are in Europe. But that's hard to tell, as the wikipedias are not structured by nations, but by language - which poses more problems with "free in some places"-images (for the english wikipedia, the smallest common denominator of US and UK law would have to be applied, etc - i have no idea how this is currently handeled, as for instance AFAIK a "fair use right" does simply not exist in the UK).
I'm afraid we have to think about those issues some more... -- Duesentrieb 14:22, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
We definitely do. For now, I have changed the {{PD-US}} tag and added "and may not be in the public domain in other jurisdictions." rather than "and possibly other jursidictions", which is very misleading. notafish }<';> 18:47, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Template:Languages for local wikipedia articles

I'm thinking about a template to be uses in the local wikipedia articles stored on commons to replace the language lists like: {{commons:Template:Language_Ukraine}}. This template link would be stored in the local wikipedia. The template on commons would store all language versions so you only need to update this if anything has to be added or if a link changes. Is this possible? --Steschke 13:11, 10 Dez 2004 (UTC)

v1.4

1.4 looks great! Thanks, all. Quadell (talk) 18:57, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How to modify interface language options

Just for your information.

One of the new features introduced with Mediawiki 1.4 is to override the interface language using user prerecence. I checked how Japanese interface works, and noticed it contains a fair amount of errors, invalid links, etc. I guess that is for other languages, too. Problems include:

  • Navigation and announcement using Commons:Recentchanges, for example, is not visible when some language is selected.
  • Legal texts such as Mediawiki:copyrightwarning, which asks contributors to agree to certain terms, is now replaced with that of Japanese Wikipedia. (And this has legal consequences, as I understand).

If you want to fix those things, I think you can go to the page meta:Locales for the Wikimedia projectsLocales for the Wikimedia projects, and submit a fixed version for use.

Tomos 11:57, 11 12月 2004 (UTC)

Screenshot of a movie

For illustration purposes I'd like to upload an image that contains a screenshot from a quite recent movie. The image is downscaled to a ninth of the normal size and a little distorted.

1. Is it allowed to use a one frame screenshot from a movie changed only in size? I'd see this as the equivalent of citing a small portion of text from a book.
2. Is it allowed to modify that screenshot a little (scaling unproportional or mirroring)?
3. Does it make a difference whether the screenshot was taken with the snapshot feature of a software DVD-Player or with a camera from the TV screen?

--Jailbird 20:29, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

IANAL - but I am rather sure that a shot from a movie can only be fair use (of course except the movie is PD due of age already, or was released as a free movie), and thus not acceptable here. andy 20:46, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

progressive JPEG

In the Commens context, whit the MediaWiki software that does the resampling resampling. Is it good to use progressive JPEG's? --Walter 23:47, 11 dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm (almost) certain, that the software reads a complete jpeg file before converting, so it doesn't matter. Dub
If, as I see it, Commons is not only for wikimedia projects, but also destined to be a free media files repository for anyone needing such files, I believe progressive jpgs should not be recommended, as they require specific software to be transformed into baseline jpgs and therefore suited for all kinds of printing jobs. notafish }<';> 01:42, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
There's a difference between something that's only a problem for ten year old software, and something that's an unsupported feature in the most popular browser of the day (like PNG alpha channels). If we're to take your proposal seriously, we'd have to turn off 'Optimize' when we saved JPGs, thus blowing up the file size significantly. Web browsers support progressive JPGs, and the software to make them baseline is free for anyone who needs specialized use. Grendelkhan 15:22, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
To commons itself baseline vs progressive for uploaded images makes no difference whatsoever since the resized images which are used on pages will be baseline regarless of the status of the source image. Making the scaled images progressive might be an idea but that is something to be discussed between modem users and mediawiki developers not an issue for uploaders. DO NOT introduce another layer of generation loss by using normal software (rather than lossless conversion tools) to convert from baseline<-->progressive for no other reason.
btw Grendelkhan do you know of any pc software for lossless baseline<-->progressive conversion in my searches i only uncovered a peice of software for the mac that could do it. Plugwash 17:25, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Categories or 'normal' pages: A new proposal

Regarding the discussion whether images should go to 'normal' pages or categories, I would like to bring in the following idea:

Category pages have the possibility to have content on them just like normal pages. Can't we use that to get a compromise between the two - we move the existing pages to the Category namespace, and build up our galleries there. It will have the advantage of showing images in articles and categorized images in the same place, improving the interusability of the two systems greatly. - Andre Engels 11:16, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Do you mean an image would be listed twice, once in the category body and once in the category text? I personally favor abandoning the image pages in favor of the categories. The cats should have a brief descriptive text (english?), but the images should be linked only through the category. If there is the need for two or more subsections, then just make two categories instead. In any case, my vote goes for the categiories. -- Chris 73 11:53, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
No, the idea would be to have the images on one of the two places, not both. But it could be the case that some images are in the text, others in the body. The disadvantage of your method is, in my opinion, that there can be no further description of the images. - Andre Engels 12:02, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
It does'n cost anything to have the photo's twice, it's only confusing. However, an item like London is typically a normal page I would say. On the other hand, if there is something common between the type of picture (not the contents of the picture) a category seems to me the more likely choice. Like Category:Stereo card, Category:Photochrom pictures. Can the wikimedia software be changed, so there is no more difference between the two? (That's wat Andre suggested, right?) Dub 00:31, 13 dec 2004 (UTC)
No, I was not talking about software changes, that's Duesentrieb's idea. It would be a good way to implement this, but software changes take quite a bit of time usually. Trying to restate my ideas:
Some people will create a page London and put their images there. Others will put [[Category:London]] in the description and use the automated gallery-making possibilities that have been added in 1.4. My proposal was to move the first page to Category:London as well, so that, even though two methods have been used, people can see both at the same time. - Andre Engels 13:36, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think what Andre is saying is that all text in a page (but not the gallery) be copied over to a category page (which will have the gallery automatically). For instance, why not use Category:Tibet instead of Tibet? I think it's a great idea. (Though it would be better if the software were altered to make this less clumsy, in my opinion. This could be done by placing the lists of subcategories and articles below the images, and making all Tibet links go to Category:Tibet, etc.) Quadell (talk) 23:36, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes, also in my opinion Commons would get a better structure based on pictures galleries in categories. (And sometimes additional text pages) Michiel1972 00:10, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Why not take this one step further? I would suggest to simply treat every page as a category - or, to put the same thing differently, to drop the categories from the "Category:" to the main namespace. Think about it this way: if you but [[category:Foo]] in the article "Bar", "Bar" would be shown at the Bottom of page "Foo". Structured content would be at the top as needed, an unstructured list would be at the bottom. One could use those pages just as "normal" pages now, or as categories, or as a combination, as seems fit in a particular case. Also, finding the gallery would be much easier for people from the wikis, because the "normal" page would not obstruct the view at the category when doing a simple search. What do you think? -- Duesentrieb 01:02, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • That sounds great! I'm not sure how hard it would be for the developers, though. Quadell (talk) 02:14, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Image credits

I saw that, when images on commons are included in a national wikipedia, the corresponding page will copyright/credit/source/etc information is not displayed, instead a local page is searched. 99% of the times this page is of course empty. It seems that each wikipedia should copy the information in a local page, and of course it will not happen except for a small subset of the most popular images. Are there any ideas on how to solve this problem? Or is this the intended behaviour? Alfio 16:32, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

See "interwiki links" below. Quadell (talk) 23:15, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
One thing that could be done to at least improve this, is changing MediaWiki:Sharedupload on the local Wikipedias. It is the text that is shown on an image description page with no text. On the English Wikipedia it has a link to the corresponding image description page on Commons. Unfortunately, this is not the case on most other languages. I have asked to make it standard, but that was refused by development because it would be wrong when used on a non-Wikimedia Wiki. Please change this text on your local Wikipedias if it has not been done already, copying or translating the text on the English Wikipedia. - Andre Engels 10:17, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I did, thank for the suggestion. It's still not ideal, but definately better than before. Alfio 13:43, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Fatal error

When trying to create the page Szeged I get the error

Fatal error [host=<diderot.wikimedia.org>]: Call to a member function on a non-object
 in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.4/includes/Image.php on line 124

anybody know how to fix that? --Lennert B 18:14, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

figured it out. For future reference: if you use the <gallery></gallery> - tags, you can't put the link-brackets around the Image-Link. Else the above error shows up. Just in case anybody else in the future is as unable as I to rtfm ;) --Lennert B 21:23, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Also, if you accidently use a <gallery> tag to close a gallery (instead of a </gallery> tag), you get the same error. Quadell (talk) 23:15, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This feature is absolutely useful because it prevents damaged edits. But perhaps the error notice could be formulated clearer. --:Bdk: 06:10, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

THIS IS NOT A FEATURE. It is a a php error message. In other words its a lack of proper error checking and it is not impossible that it may also be a security hole. I don't have my mediazilla password with me right now but when i do then a bug report is going in Plugwash 16:05, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Inter-wiki links

As an experiment I put a picture I took for an article on Wikipedia here, to link it in there. It was easier than I expected to include the image in the article, but now that image seems to have been copied to Wikipedia, minus the description I gave it. So I readded the description (and copyright tag) there. This seems less than ideal. Now there are two places for description, with separate histories, etc. Also the commons image says that it isn't used anywhere, when in fact it is.

image:Three-pens-six-nibs.jpg used in W:dip pen

--Eli the Bearded 21:03, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • For now, that's what it looks like, yes. Hopefully there will at some point be an integrated system. I imagine something like this: No matter what wiki you're on (English Wikipedia, German Wikiquote, etc.), if you click an image, you go straight to the Commons page. That page would have to have a working and expanded "What Links Here" section to include all wikis and languages. The Wikicode would also know that since you are using English, the text for the GFDL tag would be in English. But this would all take some work, so for now it looks kinda make-shift. Quadell (talk) 23:13, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Interwiki links

I notice that w:Adam Smith works but Wikipedia:Adam Smith doesn't. Shouldn't it? Quadell (talk) 00:03, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You should not use "w" to link to the English Wikipedia. That is a legacy solution like using wikipedia.com or www.wikipedia.org for the English. Use w:en:Adam Smith w = wikipedia, en = language
I have noticed it also about [[wikipedia: ... I am told that I should use "w". I have done some tests
Wikipedia:Adam Smith points on a non-wikipedia to w:en:Adam Smith On a Wikipedia it does not work.
w:Adam Smith points to w:en:Adam Smith on all Wikipedia's. w = the Engelish wikipedia But if you use it on a non-wikipedia in a other language then English it points to the wikipedia in that language
Bottom line; always use w:xx:name of article to point to a article in a Wikipedia. Walter 17:51, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)


Side note; I see some users create links like [[w:wikipedia:image description page|wikipedia:image description page]]. Please do not do this. All Wiki's look the same. Use <nowki>w:en:wikipedia:image description page </nowiki> so it is clear that it is a link to the English Wikipedia and that you are leaving commons. For commons it is more important to be clear instead of making nice hyperlinks. Walter 17:51, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

SVG images

When I try to upload an SVG file, I get the error message:

".svg" is not a recommended image file format.

Shouldn't this work? Even if there's not much in the way of SVG support in the MediaWiki Software (though I've read that 1.4 supports rudimentary rasterization), it would be swell if one could at least link to SVG sources for PNG images. -- Sebastian Koppehel 03:36, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Problems with Thomas7 - general question

Alternative title: User Bdk and User paddy trying to delete a picture as soon as possible (wanted by Thomas7)

de:Benutzer:Thomas7 or here: User:Thomas7 is an user who´s involved in different conflicts in german wikipedia. In the last days he has uploaded some (already and repeatedly deleted) images that were only used to illustrate a current and dreadful discussion between different users in talk pages on de.wikipedia. The content of these screenshots (of article versions) can also and better be displayed by using the normal versions feature. Thomas7 seems to hope that such an upload will not be found and deleted on commons as fast as on de.wikipedia. IMO commons are not a place to store such personal images in principle and the user should be warned with emphasis. --:Bdk: 06:04, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Bdk is devastating articles and this picture shows a screenshot-diff of another user paddy, trying to manipulate an article about Rudolf Slansky. Please do not delete this picture until 14th Januare 2005. Thanks a lot, Thomas7 06:37, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
As I said before, such things could easily and proper be shown by using diff-links. And I´m not devastating any articles (I wonder if you could prove this statement with a link). It´s quite the contrary: I even supported Thomas7 in the named article by importing his bibliographical reference which was removed by paddy before. If we start to tolerate such special and personal images in commons, the international quality and usability of "the free repository of good media" will become doubtful IMO ... please compare Image talk:Paddy.jpg. --:Bdk: 07:11, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Thomas7 removed my above statement which he apparently dislikes [1] ... --:Bdk: 07:25, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
And he also multiple reverted the title of this thread example which originally was Problems with Thomas7 - general question ... a stupid edit-war because he doesn´t like to be named as a problem.
Also he has changed the deletion-tag in the screenshot to a disspelled delite [2]. --:Bdk: 07:53, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Speedy deleted the screenshot. The contained info can be shown much easier in a "diff", and is also only of interest to the german wiki. Whatever differences there are between users on the german wiki do not need to be dragged onto the commons. -- Chris 73 08:27, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Speedy deleted the screenshot ... again. -- Chris 73 02:36, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
and now for the third time. Please stop uploading this diff screenshot, and keep the german edit war on the german wiki. -- Chris 73 00:25, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
No doubt, that's our Thomas7 with his usual behaviour ;-) -- Srbauer 11:10, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
, when thomas7 is trying to prevent and document abusing and devasting of different articles by users Bdk and Paddy. Thomas7 11:50, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

More on categories

This may be the wrong place to post this "request", but seeing as Commons has a vocation to be used by all wikipedias, and further by anyone from anywhere, has anything been thought out to "translate" categories? As a matter of fact, I find it terribly restraining to have to use English for categories. *I* can do it, since I speak English, but I see Commons as a repository not only for those of us who speak many languages but for anyone looking for a media file on a particular subject. Does it sound crazy to think that maybe the software would be developped so as to accept "interwikis" categories. I do not mind English being the "main language" (or default language) for categories, but redirects do not work for categories, and I feel it'd be grand if we could imagine something such as the interwikis in articles for categories.

ie. in the [[:Category:Animals]] page, we could add interlanguages links in every language and those would appear on the left hand side just as interwikis appear for articles. Those categories would be named [[Category_fr:Animaux]], [[Category_de:Tiere]] etc. and would appear to those having chosen a specific language for the main interface. Default language could be English if the interwiki link does not exist in one specific language.

I have no technical competences whatsoever, so I have no clue if this could be implemented, but maybe it's a thought ? notafish }<';> 11:01, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The most simple thing (from a users point of view, not necessary from a developers point of view) would be to have working article -> category redirects. We should wait for those. -- Peter_Aut 11:52, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Sorry, I am not sure I get your point here. Do you mean the possibility of redirecting articles to categories? If that is so, yes, that would be great, but I believe the cohabitation (or not) of articles and categories has not been finalized yet (or has it ?), hence the problem is not addressed. The use of categories in Commons is definitely a great thing, and should be conveninent for all users. notafish }<';> 12:33, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Yes that is exactly what I mean. We could have Category:Felinae and articles Cats, Katzen etc redirected to this category. It already works to some extent - the category-ARTICLE is displayed after the redirect but not the categorie's content. --Peter_Aut 06:05, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I would suggest to do away with the difference between pages and categories all together. See my proposal in the discussion above: #Categories or 'normal' pages: A new proposal -- Duesentrieb 17:20, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have seen that, but I do not see how this actually helps with the multilingualism. Could you explain further ? notafish }<';> 08:30, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
What I said was directed at the proposed redirect from pages to categories, etc. About this, have a look at bugzilla:710, and vote.
About multi-language categories, i would preffer a different approach: It was much discussed that it would be good to show the link-title with is placed after the "|" in the category link in the category listing/as the thumbnail label. Also, as of 1.4 people can choose their preferred interface languag. We could combine those two features with the concept of named parameters (...|foo=bar|...) as used with templates:
Allow a category-link to look like this: [[category:something|Something|de=Irgendwas|jp=....]], giving a default label and labels for specific languages. Then, when building the category listing, use the label corresponding to the users interface language, if it is given. If not, use the default label. The label should be used for sorting, and should be shown as the link text/thumbnail label respectively.
what do you think? -- Duesentrieb 20:55, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I find this an excellent compromise for the use of multilingual categories indeed ! notafish }<';> 07:55, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How to upload existing article in HTML

I have two articles allready complete in HTML and on my web site. Can I transfer them to Wilinews and keep them updated there? No information seems to be given on how to upload existing articles. Edwardhfd@aol.com

whilst wikicode borrows hevily freom html it is not a superset of html and has its own ways of doing things.
you will have to copy the main body of your html (stuff inside the body tags only not anything from the head section) into the edit box then preview it to find out what the wiki doesn't like. Plugwash 19:14, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Normally it´s requested that you use html in articles on all wikimedia-projects as little as possible. Better use copied plain text and work it out afterwards with wiki-syntax ... and by the way the present code is xhtml ... :-) --:Bdk: 05:59, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Suggestion for Special:Upload

One thing I've noticed is that the filename the user has for an image (eg) is retained when the image is uploaded. For my own files I use descriptive names in either the file or the directory. If it is the latter, I don't want wiki to use my file name, because the interesting bit is in the directory.

If the upload page had a text box to specify a file name to save as, then I wouldn't have to rename my file before uploading it, and then rename it back (for my own archival purposes). It also might prompt some people who upload files named DSC12345.jpg to specify a better name at upload time.

--Eli the Bearded 20:07, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've submitted a Bugzilla entry for this suggestion.--Eloquence 04:24, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I would say it may be better to give ALL files generic numerical names - to which you could attach an "English title", a "German title" etc. So, 00000001.png is the generic name, Dog.png is the English assigned name (during or after upload), "Hund.png" is the German name, "Canis.png" is the latin name, etc.

Wikipedia Dumps - Problems with the GFDL

I just had a lengthy discussion with some of the developers on IRC. This brought some problems to my attention, concerning the current practice of providing wikipedia-dumps for downloading. Please keep in mind that each project offers two files, a database-dump and an image-bundle, separately. So here goes:

  • The image-bundles of the wikipedias do not contain images from the commons. Thus, one has to download the image-bundle from the commons too, to have all images. That would include a lot of images that are not even used by the wikipedia. So it would be good to include the commons-images used be a specific wikipedia in the image-bundle of that wikipedia.
  • But: the copyright-information for the images from the commons is (usually) not in the wikipedia, but on the description page here on the commons. Thus, providing those images without the respective dump from the commons violates the GFDL.
  • Also: the image-bundle is available for download as a separate file. The copyright-information for each image is not included in that file. This violates the GNU-FDL, no matter if the images are from the commons or not.
But we can argue that the same problem applies to the cur database dump as it doesn't contain the list of authors. Greatpatton 11:05, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The only workaround to this would be to put a copy of the image on every wikipedia that uses it. That ist a lot of useless work, makes it hard to delete and replace images, etc. It basically contradicts the very reason the commons have been created in the first place.

So, what do you think? What can and should be done about this? -- Duesentrieb 01:35, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I already wrote a script for extracting those Commons images used by a particular wiki; dumps are currently available for English and French, and more can be created on request. To build further on that, we could extract the associated image description pages from the commons and bundle them, too; that should be sufficient.--Eloquence 04:13, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Moin Eloquence, it would be great if you could create such a dump for de soon (unhasty) :-) We already wondered how to resolve the problem of still missing possibility to compare the stored images on de and commons (to get a number and a list of used commons-images on de) ... Thanx a lot for your work --:Bdk: 05:30, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)


This sounds excelent already! It would be perfect if you could extend the script some more and advertise its use on the different projects - maybe post to the wikitech mailing list? Please forgive me when i shamelessly list a few features i'd like to have in that script:

  • allow to just create a list of commons-images used by a specific wiki. Even more importantly, allow it to create a list of images present on a specific wiki and the commons, so redundant images can be found and, in time, removed.
  • extract the image description pages for all images, local and from commons, to be included in the image-bundle. To offer the image-bundles without the description pages is IMHO a violation of the GFDL, and always has been. If you script could fix that, that would be excelent.
  • Please publish your script prominently and advertise its use. Please talk to the folks that create the dumps of the individual projects (i have no idea who does this). It would IMHO be a good idea to make this the standard way to create dumps. A good place to start would be wikitech-l, as i said; also, writing something about this on meta: would probably be a good idea.

many thanks, no matter if you implement the stuff i want or not. You did a great job already;) -- Duesentrieb 21:13, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Everything you're saying makes sense, it's just a matter of time at the moment. The script is currently at /home/erik/extractdb.pl, perhaps you can find another developer who can work with it right away. Otherwise I'll be hacking on it a bit more after Christmas to at least get the image pages included and make the process of generating these dumps somewhat automated.--Eloquence

Retrieved from "http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/7"
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