Commons:Village pump/Archive/2005/07

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tag licensing {{By-nc-nd-2.5}}

I want to upload an image under this licence : by-nc-nd-2.5 How can I do ? should I create a new template ?...

thanks, Poleta33 1 July 2005 14:14 (UTC)

The best would be not to upload them at all because they would get deleted. For licences accepted on common see Commons:Licensing. -guety July 1, 2005 14:55 (UTC)

How should I do ? Poleta33 1 July 2005 15:05 (UTC)

If the image is yours and you are willing to change the licence to an aceptable licence, then you can upload it. Only images with licences that allow commercial use and derivated products are allowed. --OsvaldoGago 1 July 2005 21:39 (UTC)

I advise you to multilicense your image by putting {{CC|by-nc-nd-2.5|http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/}} {{GFDL}} on it.

but when there are two licences ,which of them applies ?... 160.53.250.103 4 July 2005 10:43 (UTC)

The use can choose under which he wants to use and distribute the image. A license does allow something, so a choice isn't a contradiction. --Ikar.us July 4, 2005 11:16 (UTC)

What file formats should be allowed?

As of Mediawiki 1.5, it is now possible and reasonably safe to allow more formats to be uploaded. I would like to request some more formats to be enabled, but would like some feedback about this first. As I don't like votes too much, I hope we don't have to do this formally. I just want to have an overview of opinions.

I'll list some formats that may IMHO be useful - feel free to comment or add formats to the list. -- Duesentrieb 3 July 2005 17:42 (UTC)

Update: I have just been given a full list of all formats currently allowed - i have updated Commons:File types accordingly. Please have a look there, it's quite interresting - I did not know for example that we already allow the OpenOffice formats. -- Duesentrieb 6 July 2005 00:26 (UTC)

SVG

This is the most important one - we really need to be able to store grafics in vector format, so they can easily be edited without any loss of quality. MediaWiki also supports converting SVG on the fly, so they can be used like "normal" images, without requireing the browser to support SVG.

Yes, we absolutely need SVG. Now we have to go replacing all those flags with SVG versions ... dbenbenn | talk 3 July 2005 19:20 (UTC)

There's a small problem with the India flag, its acceptable but not 100% accurate. I'm working on it. Nichalp July 4, 2005 09:59 (UTC)

We really need svg. --E2m 7 July 2005 06:40 (UTC)

We really need SVG. Even just the ability to upload it as a source would be helpful. - Omegatron 17:58, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

• ahem* we really need SVG!!!!  :-D Anyone know when this might happen? I've got a number of maps that I want to upload as soon as we have SVG ready. --Quasipalm 13:54, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

We really need svg. What is with simple SVG-Animation without javascript [1]? Kolossos 17:38, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

SVG is needed BADLY. Is there any reason, why it is currently not allowed? - Peter_Aut 11:17, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

TIFF

TIFF is a widely supported standard for images - it's much bigger than PNG, but provides full control over color space, etc, which makes it the preferred image format for professional publishing. I think it would be good to allow TIFF files.

Indeed. E.g. NASA-pictures are often stored in full poster resolution as TIFF and it would be cool to have them as well. Arnomane 3 July 2005 19:00 (UTC)

As far as I know, TIFF is almost always losslessly convertible to PNG, and the result is vastly smaller. Does anyone have an example of a TIFF that isn't losslessly convertible? dbenbenn | talk 3 July 2005 19:22 (UTC)

Professional publishing, especially printing, is much easier with TIFFs, because they (can) contain much more detaild info about color correction, etc - at least as far as I understand it. A quote from a page [2] about Scribus (a GNU Desktop Publishing program): For high-level postscript printing there are three kinds of file formats that work well for images like photos and anything that is made up of pixels and have been time tested: TIFF, tif and Tiff. That sais it all, don't you think? -- Duesentrieb 3 July 2005 20:47 (UTC)

Perhaps you're right. Web browsers generally don't display TIFF, so we'd need MediaWiki software support for generating thumbnails as PNG or JPG (preferably we could choose for each image what type of thumbnail to make). dbenbenn | talk 3 July 2005 21:38 (UTC)

Tiff allows to be losslessly compressed itself. Ii it is, it won't be more compressible. --Ikar.us July 3, 2005 21:42 (UTC)

PNG certainly can store color space information though this function is rarely used. TIFF does support CMYK which may be usefull for final output images to a commercial printer but images would probablly have to be tweaked by someone who new what they were doing for a professional print edition anyway and original source images are unlikely to be in CMYK format (scanners and cameras are rgb devices), diagrams drawn by wikipedians will be drawn in low end image editing software which is always RGB. Plugwash 3 July 2005 22:06 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting people should upload their diagrams or photos as TIFF (SVG would be best for diagrams, btw). But we should allow TIFF for images from sources like NASA, who know what they are doing. -- Duesentrieb 3 July 2005 23:11 (UTC)

NASA is just doing that to please the printed media folks, who have a tough time modernizing sometimes. AlbertCahalan 00:54, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and btw: Mediawiki dowes support converting TIFF automatically for display in a browser, just as it automatically renderes SVG (at least I hope that works, I wrote part of the code). -- Duesentrieb 4 July 2005 09:44 (UTC)

TIFF can be smaller than PNG when using the full file format, etc.. We definitely allow it. James F. (talk) 4 July 2005 13:45 (UTC)

TIFF is basically a disaster of a format. It supports many different but redundant ways to store the data. The format has been extended many times by many different people for many different incompatible purposes. The end result is that you can not rely on a "TIFF viewer" to view any random TIFF file. TIFF does compress 1-bit-per-pixel (black and white only) images better than PNG, but other than that TIFF is generally less effective. TIFF can be lossless or lossy; users might not be aware of this. You can not use the CYMK feature for high-quality printing because CYMK is a device-specific colorspace. You'd need a different TIFF for each brand of printer. Wide-gamut PNG with ICC data does much better, allowing the printer driver to do an accurate conversion. TIFF is a file format that needs to be taken out and shot, along with BMP and Targa. AlbertCahalan 00:54, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Image Source Files (PhotoShop, Gimp, OO-Draw)

I belive it would be a good idea to allow source files of images to be uploaded, so they can easily be modified. Note that files in those formats can not be displayed directly, a corresponding bitmap (PNG) files would still be needed.

Non-Free MultiMedia formats (MP3, MPEG, etc)

We could allow audio in video to be uploaded in formats like MP3, MPEG, etc. Those formats are very widely supported, much better than the OGG family of formats, especially regarding video.

No we would get into license payment trouble. Arnomane 3 July 2005 19:00 (UTC)

Untrue, because we do not develop/distribute codecs, just content. Also, AFAIK decoding algorithems are free (as in beer), it's just the encoders that need a license. That being said, I want to stress that i'm all for encouraging the use of open, free formats and to preferr ogg over mp3/mpeg. But those formats are very whidely used and have been requested quite frequently. MPEG (and MP3) is an open standard, so I think it's not that bad. -- Duesentrieb 3 July 2005 20:43 (UTC)

I am afraid it is true: [3]. --Elgaard 02:57:36, 2005-07-13 (UTC)

Other formats like the RealPlayer-Family, AVI, etc could also be considered, but those are not as well-supported on all platforms as MPEG, for example.

• We cannot host Real, AVI, MP3, MPEG, or various other file format files. Sorry. James F. (talk) 4 July 2005 13:45 (UTC)
  • well, we could, the question is if we want to. If you feel we shouldn't, please tell us why you think so. -- Duesentrieb 4 July 2005 15:23 (UTC)
    • This is debated since long on the mailing lists, and AFAIK, it was decided that these formats are not suitable because there are not free. See [4] Yann 4 July 2005 17:57 (UTC)

Jimbo has decreed on wikitech-l that we can't allow "file formats that can not be used by legal free software". So no, we can't host MP3, etc. dbenbenn | talk 07:14, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Also, we shouldn't use Realplayer, because it sucks. - Omegatron 14:37, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

• I agree. 213.228.0.12 18:09, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Flash/Shockwave

Flash and shockwave files are nice for animations, but embedding them is not supported by MediaWiki. But maybe it would be nice to be able to upload them as simple "files", so they can be downloaded and played?

Flash sucks and there is no good free software implementation.

true, but there is not good free alternative, either. -- Duesentrieb 3 July 2005 20:39 (UTC)

The problem with flash is that its irreplaceble. Openoffice can make flash files, but without links or animations. SVG can suport animations, but wich software does it? --OsvaldoGago 3 July 2005 22:26 (UTC)

Furthermore, SVG animations rely on javascript. Anything containing javascript is blocked for security reasons, so only static SVG is supported. -- Duesentrieb 3 July 2005 23:12 (UTC)

I disagree with the statement, Flash would be bad. I think, Flash is a good file format for vector graphics. And yes, there are free software implementations available (for example MTASC, Ming or OpenOffice) to generate flash files. Of course the commercial implementations are better or more comfortable, but that's the same with SVG software. --Remi 19:38, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

MediaWiki should be extended in such a way, that Flash files can be embedded. That's not really heavy. --Remi 22:35, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

btw: The Flash format (SWF file) is free. Only the Flash editor of Macromedia is a commercial product. But there are no license fees necessary, if a software liked to create SWF files (see Macromedia Licensing). That's the same as with Graphic editors, which would like to produce SVG files (Adobe Illustrator is a commercial editor and it produces free SVG files). If you need infos about the Flash open source community, look at http://osflash.org. --Remi 22:47, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

"Gnuplot" and "R" plot source code files

We have lots of diagrams here created with Gnuplot and R but you're currently unable to upload the source file. As a workaround you can currently paste the relevant commands in the image description but that is not that nice as you can't simply execute the file and create the diagram. So it would be nice if we can upload Gnuplot "plt" and R "r" files too. (in the header they have a clear hint what they are for like a Bash shell script).

I like that... maybe we should allow TeX-Sources, too, especially for molecule markup. -- Duesentrieb 3 July 2005 20:50 (UTC)

TeX with Xy-pic support would be very helpful for commutative diagrams, assuming that MediaWiki could automatically generate properly-cropped PNGs. dbenbenn | talk 4 July 2005 18:18 (UTC)

Hm, rendering TeX automatically may require some work on the software, but should not be to hard - we already have it for math, this would just have to be generalized. -- Duesentrieb 4 July 2005 22:56 (UTC)

There exists (for quite a while) a new full featured LaTex-engine for MediaWiki with incredible possibilities that will be included in the next version as far as I know; have a look at http://www.wikisophia.org. The only reason why it is not currently included are security concerns because of possible bad code insertions in latex-code of the various LaTex extensions (a macro calling additional stuff AFAIK). Arnomane 6 July 2005 10:31 (UTC)

Cool! I hope we'll get that, too. The question would then be if we wnat those features for inline LaTeX code only, or for uploaded TeX files, too? -- Duesentrieb 6 July 2005 11:40 (UTC)

allow all formats

MediaWiki also allows us to accept almost any file format, and restrict using a "blacklist" of "bad" formats. In this case, thers would still see the "not a recommeded format" warning when uploading files in "obscure" formats, but would be able to override it. This would give users maximum freedom, but may also lead to files being uploaded in "bad" formats like Word, etc.

Allow upload for anything, but crummy formats are only available for download. Clicking on a Word document would cause the web browser to offer a "save file" dialog instead of starting up OpenOffice or whatever. This way the originals can always be saved, but we discourage their use and reduce security problems. AlbertCahalan 01:01, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

This seems like a good comprimise to me and can be achived by setting the web server to send a mime type of application/octet-stream for those file types. Plugwash 01:41, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Chose one format for a specific purpose

Please don´t make the Commons a messy place, in which we need a bunch of software to use each format. Lets chose one, maximum two formats for each category: These are the most important, as they are art-related:

• Image lossless format = png
• Image lossy format = jpeg
• Animated bitmap = gif (or is there something better? See also Animated Vector graphics below...)
• 3D scenes and objects = ? (Wich one is the best and most compatible one?)
• 3d animations = ?
  • I would suggest VRML for all 3D stuff - it's the only real standard I know of, even if it is not very wide spread. -- Duesentrieb 7 July 2005 10:37 (UTC)
  • X3D seems to have several advantages towards VRML97. --Avatar 7 July 2005 12:21 (UTC)
  • I would suggest VRML. (Back to the future.) Kolossos 17:43, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
• Vector Based Graphics = svg
• Animated Vector Graphics = Flash (the Flash format is free, animated SVG needs JavaScript and will thus not be allowed...)

The Flash format (SWF file) is free. Only the Flash editor of Macromedia is a commercial product. But there are no license fees necessary, if a software liked to create SWF files (see Macromedia Licensing). That's the same as with Graphic editors, which would like to produce SVG files (Adobe Illustrator is a commercial editor and it produces free SVG files). --Remi 22:28, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

• Sound compressed = Ogg Vorbis
• Sound lossless compressed Ogg FLAC (see http://flac.sourceforge.net/)
• Midi = mid
• Video compressed = Ogg Theora, avi with xVid Codec
  • avi/xVid could be allowed, but, as someone stated below, xVid is not free (even though it's open source?) I think the preferred format for compress video should be ogg theora (which we already allow and recommend). MPEG should IMHO be allowed too, because it's the most widely supported video format.
  • Video formats are nearly all lossy. Video should always be uploaded in the original format, no matter what that format may be. Patents expire; we can not restore lost quality if the video was converted. 24.170.177.130 01:40, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
• Print ready documents = pdf (or postscript or encapsulated postscript?)
• Office = All Openoffice.org formats (Its a free excellent office suit, available for Windows,
  • hmm openoffice can read and write ms office documents but ms office can't handle openoffice documents so maybe ms office formats are more sensible.

Mac and Linux)

• • see Commons_talk:File_types#do_not_allow_OpenOffice_file_format
  • Spreadsheet = Openoffice.org
  • Most openoffice formats are already allowed, see COmmons:File types. -- Duesentrieb 6 July 2005 11:49 (UTC)
• Database = (Openoffice.org database, mysql, Kexi ?)
• Mindmaping = Freemind ".mm"

--OsvaldoGago 3 July 2005 22:16 (UTC)

I like this list as a set of recommended formats. On the other hand, the Wiki idea is to be open, i.e. everything that is not forbidden should be allowed - I belive this should be the same with file formats: Users should see a warning when uploading files in "strange" formats, but should be able to overwrite it (the software already offers that feature). -- Duesentrieb 4 July 2005 10:25 (UTC)

I agree with Duesentrieb, but note that (amongst others) Micrsoft Office file formats, the AVI container format, and XVID codec aren't free (in some cases -as-in-libre, in all cases -as-in-speech) and so unsuitable for Commons.

James F. (talk) 4 July 2005 13:41 (UTC)

Are you sure xvid is not free? It's a GPL project, see [5]... -- Duesentrieb 6 July 2005 11:49 (UTC)

Xvid's source code itself is free but it uses patented MPEG-technology. So if you use Xvid you have to pay royalties to the MPEG consortium. It's the same as with the LAME MP3 encoder. It is the best MP3 encoder ever and the source code is free but the technology is patented and Thomson and Fraunhofer want money for using code they didn't create... That's why we have to fight the patent threat with all our possibilities... Arnomane 6 July 2005 12:26 (UTC)

Please note that for Video, Dirac [6] from the BBC which is GNU/GPL licensed and 'patent free' like theora will be available by the end of the year (2005). Dirac (possibly moreso than current codecs) is an advanced wavelet codec which can be used with an .OGG wrapper and Vorbis audio.

yes but like theora it may take a while to catch on. Also using ogg as a wrapper sucks because it means you can't set up a different player for different ogg based formats. Plugwash 14:11, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Software Patents rejected by EU parliament

On a related note, the parliament of the EU has today rejected the proposed guideline for software patents. In this context, this is interresting because it may mean that patents like the one the Fraunhofer Society has on MP3, may be not enforcable or even void.

This guideline would effectively have allowed software to be patented in the EU. However, the current practice of the patent offices in the EU is rather liberal with respect to software patent, it would probably require another guideline to change that. It is expected that after the guideline has be rejected, the practice of the patent offices will be inspected more closely. -- Duesentrieb 6 July 2005 19:02 (UTC)

Is it possible to rename files?

For instance, I would like to move Image:Moth-001.jpg to Idaea aversata, since the species is now identified. How to do that? — Monedula July 4, 2005 07:44 (UTC)

• This is not possible. Please upload the picture again with the new name and insert {{delete}} together with the new name in the old image description page. -- aka 4 July 2005 09:39 (UTC)

It would sure be nice if it was possible. Why isn't it? - Omegatron 14:52, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Good call, Omegatron. A lot of the picture names I've run into are inappropriate or may become inappropriate as more images in that category are uploaded (mine might suck, too). It would be great if people could fix them. Kjkolb 08:09, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

Isn't renaming/deleting images in the commons a problem as they may get linked to from many pages in many projects? There is no record of links in from other projects. Unless there is a bot to go out there and fix all the pages in all of wikimedia, deleting/renaming images in the commons is a problem. Maybe an image redirect would work... --SV Resolution 04:35, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Picture names are all a kind of hollow words. You can give the pictures good descriptions and assign them to worthy categories and bind them in useful galleries. Fow now, you never know if a picture is used by a certain wikipedia. A name is just an identification, but a detailed description is more worth then a significant name. --Huebi 05:23, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

We'd just have image redirects, too. You could say the same thing about moving articles. — Omegatron 13:52, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Personal files

Image:WN full 200507020330.ogg is a recording made by someone who just sat down and recorded whatever he felt like, then uploaded it. None of it is related to Wikinews. Is that allowable? Dan100 4 July 2005 12:38 (UTC)

I would say Delete. Yann 4 July 2005 17:53 (UTC)

See Commons:Criteria for inclusion#Relevance, which says that files should be potentially usable by some Wikimedia project. dbenbenn | talk 4 July 2005 18:08 (UTC)

The file is a collection of news from that day in the style of a radio newscast.

Why shouldn't Wikinews provide news in audible form?

--Ikar.us July 4, 2005 18:20 (UTC)

The guy wasn't actually reading Wikinews articles - he was just reading his own thing. A few people have been trying to turn his 'script' into news articles afterwards. Dan100 5 July 2005 11:05 (UTC)

Ill-phrased error message.

I just tried to upload a machine-language quine, in order to link to it from en:Quine; it seemed desirable to have the file itself available rather than just a hex listing. I got the following message:

Upload warning

".com" is not a recommended file format. See Commons:File types for more information.

This phrasing probably stems from a desire to be polite, but it's an insultingly transparent untruth. In the long run it is probably better to use a straightforward message such as:

Upload error

".com" is not a permitted file format. See Commons:File types for more information.

Uploading to Wikipedia itself produced roughly the same error message, too. DanielCristofani 4 July 2005 22:22 (UTC)

This is because the servers are set to deny uploads of files in non-recommended formats, which is not the default. Normally, the user would be able to overwrite that warning. For discussion on that, please see #allow all formats above. -- Duesentrieb 4 July 2005 22:55 (UTC)

Oh, btw: even if we would no longer restric uploads to recommended formats, "com" would not be allowed. Everything that could be executed by accident will still be blocked, because it may contain malicious code (trojans). For a machine language quine, you are stuck with a hex dump, i guess - or you could use an exeternal link. Hmmm... the file type is checked by file extension, by mime-magic, and, in some cases, by looking at the file contents. But com is not easy to detect, so maybe it would be enough to give the file an extension like "data". But that's all hypothetic, the discussion above looks like we will keep most restrictions.-- Duesentrieb 4 July 2005 23:03 (UTC)

I think what DanielCristofani means, is that the word "permitted" would be more suitable than the word "recommended". Jon Harald Søby\^{no na} 17:29, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Map in a specific language

Can someone explain me the goal for uploading map in a specific language on commons? If I go to Category:Maps of Switzerland about all the map with text are only usable on the de: wiki. What the current commons position on this point ? fr:utilisateur:greatpatton

Well maps and other images annotated in a specific language are welcome on the commons - however, it would be best to always upload a "blank" version, too, so others can adapt the image to their local language. I.e., maps annotated in german do not have to be deleted, but the uploader should be asked to provide blank versions, too. However, this may not always be possible: often, those are older images that are simply copied from a local wikipedia, and no blank version exists.

Ideally, the maps should be uploaded in SVG format, as soon as this becomes possible - see #SVG above. That way, they could be adapted easily, without needing a blank version. -- Duesentrieb 5 July 2005 11:08 (UTC)

Moving Images and Honoring the GFDL

A lot of images get moved to commons from other Wikimedia projects. If a person contributes an image to Wikipedia, for example, and releases it under the GFDL, then the GFDL requires that they be attributed for it as well as any users making modifications to it before it reached Commons. How does Commons handle this?

Does that mean that the original page on the other wiki ought to be perserved to maintain the history of uploaders, versions, etc.?

Your FAQ seems to indicate that a link to the image on the original wikipedia should be included. However, there is presently a proposal to make the existence of a duplicated image on Commons a criteria for speedy deletion on en.wikipedia. w:en:Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Proposal#I1-B (images on WikiCommons)

w:en:User:Dragons flight 5 July 2005 15:12 (UTC)

Preserving the image page doesn't contradict deleting the image file.

(In theory. The current software doesn't allow this, but I've read instructions for admins saying they should recreate the image page with old version history, if appropriate.)

--Ikar.us 5 July 2005 15:25 (UTC)

So to be clear, do people here accept the contention that the contribution history and previous versions must be preserved somewhere in order to comply with the GFDL? -DF 5 July 2005 16:06 (UTC)

No, I think it should suffice to copy the list of people who have contributed to the image. dbenbenn | talk 7 July 2005 15:11 (UTC)

Exactly how much detail is required to comply with the gfdl is somewhat open to interpretation. The main argument for keeping full image history here is its the only easy way to know precisely who is responsible for what in the future. While proper attribution could probablly be done without full history it would require extreme care and would be open to interpretation on exactly what to keep. Furthermore from a practical point of view almost all tweaks made to an image degrade quality so keeping the originals is a very very good thing. Plugwash 7 July 2005 15:21 (UTC)

Yes, especially with photographs, one should always upload the original first. I wish everyone knew that. dbenbenn | talk 7 July 2005 18:16 (UTC)

It would be really great if we had a clear, consistent procedure for this (or a tool that migrated information automatically so the old page could be completely deleted). The method I heard (and used, even though my images were PD), is to delete the image and then undelete it, which keeps the image itself deleted but resurrects the image description page. - Omegatron 7 July 2005 15:25 (UTC)

What we really need is the ability to move images the way we move pages. That shouldn't be too hard. Plenty of Wikipedia editors are hackers; why don't more editors participate in coding? dbenbenn | talk 8 July 2005 15:25 (UTC)

That would be great. Currently there are dozens of plants images with wrong name (they were initially misidentified). Last time I asked the devs about this feature, I got the answer that there are no plans to be done in the foreseeable future. :-( Bogdan 9 July 2005 11:59 (UTC)

Ah, the Tyranny of the Developers. See my comments at the bottom of Commons:Images_on_normal_pages_or_categories:Vote#End_date. I thought we should start a prize fund (with actual money) for developers who complete features that we really need. Is this a stupid idea? - Omegatron 15:34, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

image:AsimovOnThrone.png

Hi, here's something I've been wondering about: I noticed that image:AsimovOnThrone.png is labelled as {{GFDL}}, which says: "Permission is granted to copy [...] under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License [...] with no Invariant Sections [...]". However, the image's description says "I, Rowena Morrill, license this image under the GFDL, with an Invariant Section consisting of the words 'Rowena Morrill'. I am the creator of this derivative work, based on an original work of which I am the creator."

What does this mean for the image? Can images which are GFDL-licensed with Invariant Sections (or Front-Cover or Back-Cover texts) be uploaded to the Commons at all? Even if they can, the copyright notice on that image is wrong ATM and should definitely be changed.

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I'm not usually active on the Commons (I'm typically only found on en). :) Thanks. -- Schnee 5 July 2005 23:20 (UTC)

This is silly anyway, because the GFDL requires the author to be mentioned anyway. No need to make this an invariant section. Also, the GFDL tag applies to the image, and that "section" is not part of the image... -- Duesentrieb 5 July 2005 23:48 (UTC)

The image can definitely be kept. Perhaps the tag should be subst'ed and fixed. I don't know what it means for an image to have an invariant section, though. dbenbenn | talk 7 July 2005 15:08 (UTC)

It means that that part of the image cannot be modified, to quote the GFDL:

You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document [...] provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License, [...] In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:

[...]

Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their text and in their titles.

Seems pretty unambiguous to me. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 03:00, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

"Unaltered in their text"? What about pixels? dbenbenn | talk 23:25, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

The GFDL is a documentation licence, not an image (or any other content) licence, and it shows. An invarient section must be a secondary section (by the plain definition in the GFDL). And a secondary section is, to quote: a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject. (Thus, if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them. His name is not a "named appendix" or "front-matter section." The GFDL has been mis-applied. Derobert 06:34, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm probably the one to speak to this issue, since I'm the editor who negotiated the license from the artist. In short, Ms. Morrill was quite happy to license the image, but wished to be sure she got credit for it. While GFDL does provide for attribution, I notice that many GFDL-licensed images are used all over Wikipedia without attribution where used. I believe that would be contrary to Ms. Morrill's wishes, so I attempted to put the matter of attribution more strongly, and whenever I affix the image, I'm always careful to see she is credited there and then.

Note that Ms. Morrill is a visual artist, and for her, legal issues are as remote as the back side of the Moon -- important, but not within her area of expertise. I had to explain to her that, for legal purposes, I wanted an email that explicitly gave permission for inclusion, with the specific license she desired to apply. Before that, I got an email from her stating, in part, "I would be happy to grant you permission, in return for credit to me and a link back to my website." I negotiated that link request out of the final license, but did include the link in the image description page itself. I say all this to point up the fact that Ms. Morrill is a highly respected professional in her field, and I think we should all be willing to go the extra mile to accomodate her wishes.

It's true; GFDL itself is a makeshift license, not really suitable for images. All the more annoying, then, that it is the default license for WikiMedia. I don't know where to go with that, though. I apologize for any conflict between the template's text and the amendment of an Invariant Section. It seems to me to be a pretty commonplace desire among copyright holders.

Note that the reference to "derivative work" is intended to restrict the license to the PNG as uploaded. The PNG is derivative of the original painting, to which Ms. Morrill retains all rights, so far as I know. Thus, if one were to stumble across a bootleg (of which there are many), it would not be acceptable to assume this license applied.

Anyone who feels the need may request an archive of the entire email exchange between myself and Ms. Morrill. Xiong 08:50, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Renaming files

There are photos of unknown flowers, plants or animals that have been uploaded to the Commons. Some of them eventually are identified by knowledgeable experts and they get properly categorised and placed in right pages. But they still are named something like Unknownflower.jpg, Unknownplant.jpg or Unknownanimal.jpg. How can they be renamed ? Kpjas 6 July 2005 07:25 (UTC)

They can't. The only way is to upload it again with the new name and insert a {{delete}} tag with reason in the old one. (Having made sure that it isn't used anywhere.)--Ikar.us 6 July 2005 10:08 (UTC)

This is not a very elegant solution and we definitely could do with a renaming feature. Kpjas 6 July 2005 16:52 (UTC)

File a bug on http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org ? -- Schnee 7 July 2005 00:53 (UTC)

See bug 709. dbenbenn | talk 7 July 2005 15:04 (UTC)

"Having made sure that it isn't used anywhere" could be a problem when the image is used in multiple wikis, surely? LoopZilla 15:03:40, 2005-08-31 (UTC)

Not if there are image redirects.

This section should be merged with #Is it possible to rename files? — Omegatron 18:39, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Please don't delete logos anymore

Please don't remove logo, even they seem to you redundant. A haste decision erase Wikisource logo from the Foundation site(see Wikimedia:Our projects). It could be fixed someday but I have no time currently. Supposingly other editors would, and I know many WMF editors are active on Commons too. Unless some of them assure a logo is not linked from the WMF and safely removable, please don't delete those logos. And in my opinion redundancy of logos are not so a big problem and you have no necessary to delete them. All of them are not bulky. Thank you for your consideration. And for Wikisource logo I hope some of you improve the situation as soon as possible. --Aphaia 7 July 2005 03:13 (UTC)

And now WikiThanks ;( Please don't delete or rename the images shared by many project without any causion. Please please please. Thank you. --Aphaia 9 July 2005 05:14 (UTC)

The editor who deleted thsoe files said to me it is your speedy policy and not personal. So I would like you to alter your speedy deletion policy, and not to delete those frequently used files merely because of redanduncy. In my opinion consistency over reducing of redundancy of some not so huge but important files. Because of your speedy deletion of Wikisouce.png it was missing from the Foundation site for several days. I hope it won't happen again. NO logo should be candidate of speedy in my opinion. Thank you for your consideration. --Aphaia 20:38, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

We had recently some trouble with a person that did not fully understand why there are logos of Wikimedia in different types. (User:Schaengel89). He changed the logos to poor resolution and put the old (better ones onto speedy deletion) and caused us quite some large work. :-( Hope this now doesn't happen again. Arnomane 22:58, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Hm, who said that this is policy? It is true that redundant images can be speedy-deleted if they are not used, but it is also policy to check the usage of images before deleting. Luckily, we have a nice tool for this now: [7]. Please use it, especially for things that may be used on many projects, like wikimedia logos. -- Duesentrieb 23:52, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, in this case, check-usage was used. But originally the foundation wiki was not included into the checks. I have added it after this incident. See also User talk:Avatar/Check-Usage#Checking_Wikimediafoundation_.28fixed.29. --Avatar 00:14, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Does the tool also check meta? These deletions have removed the logos from all the portals, like wikimedia.org. Angela 19:54, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

First, let me admit: I'm the one who deleted WikiThanks.png (redundant to Image:Tournesol.png) and Wikisource.jpg (redundant to Image:Wikisource-logo.jpg). I've put a huge amount of work into keeping Category:Redundant clean. Two mistakes is not a bad ratio. Anyway, I'm sorry.

To address Angela's question: Yes, the tool checks Meta. m:Image:WikiThanks.png is a local duplicate, so it isn't using the Commons version. And the 10 uses of m:Image:Wikisource.jpg did not exist when I deleted that logo. (I fixed them to use Wikisource-logo.jpg, deleted Wikisource.jpg, and then Aphaia reverted me.) I don't know how the Portals work, or how they can be fixed. Probably if an image is being secretly used in that way, it would be a good idea to put a note on the image description page as a warning. dbenbenn | talk 03:05, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Additional report, Wikisource.png is used on Japanese Wikiquote, and it lacks images. Apparently your checking tools failed to find this usage. Before fixing bugs it seems to be better to suspend all deletions because of redundancy, avoiding further troubles. In my opinion any image must not be speedy deleted for avoiding such troubles. --Aphaia 09:12, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Aphaia please have a look at the page of the tool for a list of projects that get checked http://www.juelich.de/avatar/check-usage/ and read User:Avatar/Check-Usage and User talk:Avatar/Check-Usage why not all projects get checked (jp.wikiquote is intentionally not checked). As this tool creates a lot of requests on the database in short time only the largests projects get checked in order not to harm the Wikimedia servers. And of course this hacky tool already made the situation regarding proper image deletion much more better compared to the previous one. If you want to have all projects checked plase say the devs that they implement a direct solution. Arnomane 11:03, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Your policy ignores small projects and thus seems harmful for us, editors on those projects. I know the remaining file by chance, but for Japanese Wikquote there was no info about deletion nor new files. In many cases people on small projects are not familiar how the entire Wikimedia project goes on, and your current deletion policy ingnore and force us to fix it without giving any sufficient information. In my opinion, if you don't check the all project in any reasons, you need to inform them in a proper way and suddenly suspend your current speedy procedure. It sounds very unfrinedly to ignore the potential visual flaws and inconvinience of editors on those projects. Moreover, it is not consistent with your policy mentioned by Duesentrieb, those images can be deleted if they are not used. And I think it is not a proper attitude to ignore small projects in that way. --Aphaia 11:45, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Aphaia, please stay serious. What was the situation previous to this tool (people should be lucky that there is a "third party" solution already existing at all)? Images in Commons were deleted and there was no real chance in checking a large number of projects (and believe me most people don't know how to make a clever manual check). People were complaining about "image holes" left over in articles due to the dead link. And by the way internally in en.wikipedia people are very lazy removing the dead links for local images that were deleted although the have the technical possibility (whilst in de.wikipedia people do care about that on local images). So people were constantly wining and demanding (we on Commons really can't care about others if we don't have the right tools for that) but not solving the problem by themselves (e.g. with putting the images onto their watchlist in Commons). And this problem can also not be solved in general with yet another policy (except for the point that speedy deletion needs to be checked more carefully). So I was creating the first version of this dirty hack solution to the image usage problem. I quickly noticed there was a strong technical need for restriction to larger projects (see above links why) - so I don't care about policy $Foobar if there is a severe technical limitation against it (compare the film "Life of Brian" - where a man wants a policy for getting children...). As my tool was recieved quite good and there was need to create a better and easier to use one Avatar wrote a completely new and far better version (still with the same basic principle) that now helps many people at Commons a lot in reducing the "image hole" problem. But this tool was never aimed at completly solving it.

I'm aware of the problem of small wikimedia projects and believe me: The current restriction of this tool has nothing to to with cultural ignorance.

Apart from that current technical limitation there might be the possibility to solve them in the next two months. Inside Wikimedia there is a server planed with quick access to a local live copy of the whole database for all the external tools around Wikipedia that have been created. So Check-Usage could then safely make a full check as it would run on a local database. If you're interested in this idea push this tool-server inside Wikimedia or ask the developers for implementing this Check-Usage feature directly into MediaWiki. But until then we cannot be forced by policies to check everything. Arnomane 14:38, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

I actually agree with Aphaia now. I won't be deleting any more redundancies until check-usage can actually check all projects. By the way, the redundancy problem is going to get much much worse when we enable SVG uploads. I hope check-usage is fixed by then. dbenbenn | talk 03:04, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Em Check-Usage does not do magic. And regarding redundancies: They always need to be looked at twice by a human beeing with a brain but everyone makes a failure. Let's not mix up different things. What is Check-Usage for?

1. Looking for local usage of a picture which needs to be deleted because of license issues in Wikimedia Commons. Thus this tool helps you removing these dead links.
2. Looking for local duplicates of a image that you then can mark with the NowCommons template. As Check-Usage's only criteria is the file name this always needs to be looked at carfully.

So I don't see how this tool is anyhow connected to Aphaias original problem. The logos were deleted as someone thought they are irrelevant and based that assumption on a check via Check-Usage. If a picture does not get used this is no reason on its own to delete it. Arnomane 06:40, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

If the images were a) properly categorized (and therefore easy to find) and b) the second uploader had checked for their existance, we wouldn't have this problem, ofcourse ;) -- Joolz 01:05, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Arnomane: if an image is unused and a duplicate of another image here then it definitely should be deleted. It doesn't require magic for Check-Usage to check all Wikimedia projects, though it is inefficient. dbenbenn | talk 13:43, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Dear User:Dbenbenn, since you have no reliable way currently of determining if an image is used, you (the royal you - wikicommons) you have now reasonable way of justifying deleting *any* image simply because it is a duplicate. The fact that Avatar's (very impressive, BTW) tool can not check all sites without bringing servers to their knees, IS A GOOD REASON TO NEVER DELETE DUPLICATES.

Is there a mediawiki bug reported already, to allow for a file-redirect? Somehow effect a linux "ln -s correct-file old-bad-filename"??? The premise that I've heard is that you want to reduce disk space usage. By leaving behind such a redirect, you'd get the best of both worlds.

But until the Wiki* software has such a feature, I feel very strongly that you should stop deleting content whether it be good, bad, sloppy or just miss-named. The delete function should only be used against vandalism.

--Connel MacKenzie 04:50, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Templates

I understand that pictures etc, placed here are available to all projects. That seems not to work with Templates. Am I wrong? Especially with the Babel templates it would be handy to create once and use several times.

Alas, templates on the Commons can't be used by other projects. dbenbenn | talk 7 July 2005 15:03 (UTC)

File a bug on http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org ? --Eleassar my talk 8 July 2005 16:40 (UTC)

Commons multilingualism

I don't know for other languages, but the new navigation boxes are not translated into French. It seems they're hard coded into the system files too, which means we have no means to change either their destination (ex. Village Pump to Le Bistro) or their names ex. random file stays in English. Apparently, the german interface seems to take those changes into account, but not the French one, and I suppose not many of the others. Anything we can do? Couldn't we change those different navigation boxes so that they can be changed as other MediaWiki messages? Any help appreciated. notafish }<';> 8 July 2005 20:22 (UTC)

OK, wait, I finally found some of them. I'm still looking. :-) notafish }<';> 8 July 2005 20:33 (UTC)

• MediaWiki:Mainpage/fr
• MediaWiki:Village_pump/fr

Find all of them at [8] or Special:Allmessages (in one page). --Mayhem 8 July 2005 21:07 (UTC)

Disallow images that start with 600px-

I suggest we should disallow images with titles that match the regular expression

[[:digit:]]+px-.*

That is, images that start with 600px-, or 800px-, etc. I have never ever seen an image that intentionally had a title of this form. Instead, people tend to save a thumbnail from a Wikipedia image description page, then upload it here. See, for example, the first 8 entries in Category:Images for cleanup, which I've just added. dbenbenn | talk 8 July 2005 22:15 (UTC)

I'm all for it. If we get a consensus about that, I may even write the patch. As an alternative to denying the upload, we could show a big fat warning message. -- Duesentrieb 8 July 2005 22:45 (UTC)

Definitely. - Omegatron 8 July 2005 23:00 (UTC)

i think a warning is better. also i tend to like to keep a name when replacing an image even if that image has the innane 800px- or similar in the filename. Especilly as we still don't have a way of checking usage accross ALL wikimedia wikis.

there is way to checking usage of commons files in all other wikis, there is perl (if i remember correctly) script written by Daniel Arnold which can do this, don't have the address right in hand but I can look it out --TarmoK 07:27, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

I support a warning. I fixed too many of those, to count. --Avatar 9 July 2005 12:19 (UTC)

Opposing as principle.

One source of having this kind of image names can be from saving wikipedia, but it can be done also intentionally, in cases when there is serie of pictures and these are done in two (or more) different sizes. Like thumbnails (e.g. 100px), preview (e.g. 400px) and final print quality (e.g. 1600px). In these cases all variations of same picture have same name and preceding number shows the size. This way these are easy to group (all thumbnails are "together" and so on) + if needed it is easy to manipulate by code just using regular expression one can select needed ones and show file "real" name or do other actions. (One can argue is there's need for "px" but this is more cosmetical queestion

Probably best example what I'm sure everybody have seen are wallpapers, though you may not relised it :o) and there are other places as well where it is used.

Especially in cases of flags, location maps, coat of arms, graphs etc. and why not portraits of people, I think is good to have this kind of series of different sizes. For example for flags: 100px (thumbnail), 300-400px to use in web page and 1600-2000px for print.

main point is to have all of them to use unified sizes, not that one is 300px and other 500px and third 890px. So I think we should get some consensus of image sizes in these cases and after it change the images if there is need. (for image maps there is already big "serie" in sizes of 250px and for flags 300px serie)

(In cases where it is obviously can be seen that photo is saved from wiki preview, file here is 10-20% from "original" etc then overwriting it with "original" is justified)

And before someone starts argue that we don't need image in different sizes, because wiki software "resizes" automatically, remember that human resized images are in most case better and (way) better optimised. --TarmoK 07:27, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Well this case doesn't happen so often compared to the whole database. But why are you e.g oppoising a small warning for the user (like on image upload to the same file name) if he really wants to uploa this image. That way you can upload those few cases where it really makes sense and on the other hand reduce the mistakes. Arnomane 10:30, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm opposing disallowing/later renaming of images in certain cases just because it has certain pattern in the beginning.

If I understand now correctly your point, then what you (and some other earlier here) want is to have additional text on upload page saying that don't upload images which name starts "XXXpx-". See file uplaod page, it says:

Use a descriptive and concise filename (my highlighting).

...and this is answer for it. What is needed is to make user understanding what is descriptive name. There are many other naming "mistakes" what users are doing, when uploading the files, we could point them out, but I don't think that cluttering upoad page will make much diffeence, these who are reading these, will read, thoe who are not, will not. So if to put this note somewhere, then it should be probably separate page about suggestions of file namings. --TarmoK 09:45, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

This feature request has been submitted as bug 3089. dbenbenn | talk 20:36, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

The new OpenOffice 2 formats

The new OpenOffice 2 formats have diff extensions to OOo 1 files. And they are much better! I hope to have OOo 2 files upload-able soon. Xiaodai 9 July 2005 09:57 (UTC)

New project proposal: wikicurrency

New project proposal: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicurrency .A place for community currency directories, discussions and information.

links...

wouln't it be cool to have a direct link back to Wikipedia from Wikispecies and all of the other Wiki areas, or even a search box at the bottom or side of every page, so that as a person learns about something at Wikiversity or wherever he or she can access Wikipedia more directly?

Vote for this bug. --Avatar 9 July 2005 14:10 (UTC)

"Boite déroulante" , commons {{Box}}

Hello, On the french wikipedia I seen and use the french template fr:Template:Boîte déroulante because I think that can be really convenient to "hide/show" some big galleries or other things. So I copied it into commons : {{Box}} , but I see it don't work fine on commons and I learned that's because some CSS and JavaScript pages of commons have to be modified by some autorized people.

Then, I asked to A☮ineko, whom agree to do this if everybody agree to this add.

To understand what is this box : fr:Template_Talk:Boîte déroulante, then please to say your opinion. Yug talk 12:24, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

User by capacity

Project ok, see Category:Graphics abilities

Graphics abilities

Category	interrested	« basic/beginner»	« good »	« Hight/Master »	Tutorial
Category:Bitmap graphics editors	not usefull	{{User BG-1}}	{{User BG-2}}	{{User BG-3}}	BG Basic Tutorial
Category:Animation editors	{{User ANI-0}}	{{User ANI-1}}	{{User ANI-2}}	{{User ANI-3}}	ANI Basic Tutorial
Category:Vector graphics editors	{{User VG-0}}	{{User VG-1}}	{{User VG-2}}	{{User VG-3}}	VG Basic Tutorial
Category:Commons photographers	/	everyone	almost everyone	{{User PH-3}}	A good camera

Audio file abilities

Category	interrested	« basic/beginner»	« good »	« Hight/Master »	Tutorial
Category:Audio file editors [.ogg]	not usefull now	not usefull now	{{User AF-2}}	{{User AF-3}}	AF Basic Tutorial

Commons have or haven't some categories for user capacity such as...

1. Category:Photographer
2. Category:Able to draw on graphic softs
3. Category:Able to do GIF animation
4. Category:Able to do SVG draw

My question is not close to "one format", but if you need someone able to do animation : where can you find help !? I try to find a solution for this. If some Wikipedians have competences in some kind of illustration (image, animation, vector), other have to know.

This can be useful, exactly like the Babel categories are useful to search help in one human language, template like this allow to find precise graphic help. Levels can be useful too ( {{User SVG-1}}, {{User SVG-2}}, {{User SVG-3}}; {{User GIF-1}}, ... )

Like see on the right, I started to make 2 exemples. I think that will be need and helpfull.

Yug talk

Please say your opinion, keeping in mind than I did this just in 5 minutes and still have to be improve.

I encourage this, can be useful :

1. Yug talk
2. PioM _EN DE PL 21:16, 10 July 2005 (UTC) I propose those categories: VectorGrafx/Animation/BitmapGrafx; The idea is very usefull
3. Dake 21:58, 10 July 2005 (UTC) Looks better the way you modified it.
   1. Category:Photographer
   2. Category:Able to operate on bitmap grafix
   3. Category:Able to do animation
   4. Category:Able to do illustration in vector grafx
4. Plugwash 22:42, 10 July 2005 (UTC) Seems a good idea. of course it would be good to have some resources pages (presumablly in the commons namespace) sugesting tools for different formats.
5. Sure, why not? dbenbenn | talk 02:46, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
6. It is a good idea, but it should not use the {{Babel-X}} template (though one exactly alike wouldn't be harmful; it's just that Babel is for languages) nor the colours of the language templates (but using their design with a different colour seems to be ideal). Jon Harald Søby\^{no na} 17:44, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
7. Aoineko 05:15, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree. It needs improvement, then it should be announced in the Vilage Pump. The model used for User categories by language seems nice. How about Category:User skills subcategories? --OsvaldoGago 07:05, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't see the need, not usefull :

1. Dake 19:39, 10 July 2005 (UTC) formats can be converted, one does not have "skills" in a format, it's rather skills in a given software (has been corrupted :)
2. Ikar.us 09:06, 11 July 2005 (UTC) Information can be icluded in en:Wikipedia:Wikipedians#Skills-based_listings or something like that.

Need a clear article about File types on commons !

I think we really need to work to a clear article Commons:File types showing accepted formats and hope formats on commons. I encourage administrators to organise this work (by an annonce on the main page), work which is really need, and which can be make by the community using the talk of Commons:Village_pump#What file formats should be allowed?. Yug talk 12:46, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

WeatherBot : NOT the right way

(copy of a discussion on User_talk:WeatherBot)

While the idea is good, I think that the way it is done should be modified. Imagine a bot that generates pictures of all quotes from all companies worldwide with graphs for 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year, etc... It would be a complete waste of ressources. Wouldn't it be better to store the statistics and generate the needed picture on the fly when requested in an article. This would be much more flexible (changing the maps, putting it on top of other maps such as satellite, average temperature, height, etc...). Moreover, they are in English and would not fit in other Wikis. It would be better to include this bot in Commons and generate the localized maps in the proper language (with some caching if speed is a concern). What do you think ?

Oh I forgot, when you press "random file", you have 50% of chance of getting one of these weather maps, I find this quite annoying because I liked to pick a picture at random and add it in the articles... Dake 30 June 2005 17:56 (UTC)

That's right, I also think the weather maps are kind of annoying since they flood Commons (see "Latest files"...) and are of not much use in any of the wikipedias, only for a very limited time on the wikinews site. I think being a global weather archive is clearly out of scope of Commons, and a separate weather wiki project should be started. --AndreasPraefcke 6 July 2005 07:41 (UTC)

I agree with you Dake 19:37, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree too. Each map has only a dozen or so temperatures; this data would be much better stored as a list of numbers. dbenbenn | talk 02:28, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Also agree, those things should be deleted -- Chris 73 07:45, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

The weather map bot is a rediculous waste of resourcs. Maybe if it had more information and was better compressed, but honestly, this thing is not suitable for the commons at all. --Komencanto 11:24, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Could an admin enlighten us on that point and share his view ? Dake 11:38, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

well, not sure why you want an admin, being an admin does not make the oppinion more official - but anyway, here are my few cents: the weather maps are extremely annoying and consist mainly of redundant data. It would make much more sense to generate them only the fly from a terse set of weather data, possible contained on a wiki page, or in a separate database. This could be done relatively easily by writing an extension module for mediawiki.

Alternatively, those images should be moved to a separate wiki, dedicated to weather data. Either way, deleting/moving such a large number of files (and database entries) is going to be quite difficult - it should best be done by a script on the server. -- Duesentrieb 14:58, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, the call to an admin was meant as a way to remove the bot or fix the situation :) Should we start a vote ? Dake 09:57, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Vote

I created an article for voting about WeatherBot, please have a look there : WeatherBot:Vote -- Dake 10:14, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I've left a note at Wikinews:Talk:Weather#WeatherBot might be blocked. Let's see what they have to say. There's no hurry to resolve the problem. I think it's a bit premature to be having a vote. I would support blocking the bot in a couple weeks if no one from Wikinews comments, though. dbenbenn | talk 14:39, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I keep the vote open just in case of.. Dake 15:53, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

As one of the authors of the code behind the weatherbot (though not the guy who runs it on a regular basis), I would like to point out that the functionality for server-side weather map generation does not exist, yet. When it does, believe me that the WeatherBot will not be required at all. I have already gotten a general OK from some developers to work on something like this. In the meanwhile, the WeatherBot is used by almost all Wikinews projects, and is the only way of getting weather information onto web sites. Please contact me at Wikinews to continue this discussion, if need be. -- IlyaHaykinson 05:36, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Here's an idea. You could have a "blank" weather map, and little pictures for each temperature. Then use CSS to put the temperatures on the right place on the map. See w:Template:GBthumb for an example of the same kind of thing. I'll try implementing this idea on Saturday. dbenbenn | talk 00:36, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like an elegant temporary workaround Dake 20:27, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Content should not rely on CSS, so that sounds like a really bad idea to me. --CSamulili 08:50, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Commons is the the common image repository for Wikimedia project media. Wikinews is a Wikimedia project that uses images - and some of them are weather images, provided by WeatherBot. You may not like it, but that is actually the purpose of this place. Dan100 20:45, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

But not even Wikinews still uses the old weather maps. No one objects to having the current ones around. It's just the 12 maps per hour going back months, that will never ever be used again, that we object to. dbenbenn | talk 13:52, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Please give an example of each. - Omegatron 16:33, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "example of each". Category:Weather maps is filled with thousands of these old maps, and odds are quite good that whenever you check Special:Newimages you'll see some new maps in there somewhere. I just checked Special:Random/Image 20 times, and got 3 WeatherBot maps.

Yeah, I've seen that, and they should all be deleted.  :-) But you said "But not even Wikinews still uses the old weather maps" "No one objects to having the current ones around." What is the difference between the old style and the current style? - Omegatron 21:11, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

By "old" I simply mean any weather map uploaded more than an hour ago. They haven't changed style. The six current maps are used at Wikinews:Weather, but once a map is more than an hour old, it is replaced and no longer used anywhere. dbenbenn | talk 21:36, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Why can't the images be uploaded over each other each time? That way there would be dozens/hundreds of image revisions, which is inefficient, but they'd only be one "page" per map view...

James F. (talk) 23:38, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I think that would cause cache problems. People would see old maps until they did a hard refresh (and most people don't know to do that). Possibly that's a MediaWiki bug. dbenbenn | talk 15:33, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Would it be possible to use the same file name (and thus overwrite the old version of the file)? That way it wouldn't waste so much resources and it would also be easier to include in an article (just add the picture and you always get the latest weater). // Liftarn

• I agree, WikiEarth -- comprising weather and maps in general -- is a need. Steal from, then kill, Google Earth, MSN Earth, MapQuest, and NASA Mission to Earth. Virtual Earth everything.

• Until then, I don't object to WeatherBot so long as it cleans up after itself. Simple enough to have it delete every upload it makes after 24 hours or so. A notice should be put one each image description page, warning users to grab and copy, and not merely link, in the rare case that Somebody decides to use a weather map Somewhere. — Xiong熊talk* 18:09, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

One of the complaints was that random page and newest files was flooded with weather images. Is it possible to put them in a different namespace (not sure if you can do that for images) or something so that random page and newest file doesn't go through the weather images (I have no clue if this is possible at all, just an idea). If number of images is a concern I don't see whats wrong with making an admin-privilidged bot that speedily deletes any old weather image after a certain period of time, like Xiong said. Bawolff 01:47, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Template for soft redirects to categories

iS there a template for making soft redirects from article space 218.128.116.57 23:36, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

{{Seecat|catname}} isn't limited to redirects from one category to another, is it? --Ikar.us 11:28, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

I copied w:Template:CategoryRedirect to Template:Category redirect. dbenbenn | talk 20:32, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Copyright suspicion

I suspect the following images to be copyrighted, it seems to be a photograph of a book :

• File:Kind of chinese stroke 1.JPG
• File:Kind of chinese stroke 2.JPG

By the way, I can't find a copyright suspicion template, only the copyvio one, which is quite... hard :) NoJhan 07:47, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. The "suspicion" template would be {{Unknown}} - if applied in addition to an existing license template, just add a short comment about why you don't belive the original license is valid. In any case, you should ask the uploader for further information. Thansk! -- Duesentrieb 07:59, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Files disappeared

I uploaded 4 piccys of child art the other day, but only 2 remain. I'm sure I put the same copyright tag in all of them. Given they were pictures by a 2.5 year old, maybe someone deleted them thinking they were rubbish?

• Image:Child_Art_Aged_4.5_Person_1.png remains
• Image:Child_Art_Aged_4.5_Person_2.png remains
• Image:Child_Art_Aged_2.5_Blue_Fish_Large_and_Small.png has disappeared
• Image:Smiley_Face_with_Writing_Underneath.png has disappeared.

I'm receiving 'No file by this name exists, you can upload it' for the deleted images.

What gives? Barefootguru 08:45, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Hm, the log sais:

10:20, 10 July 2005 Paddy deleted "Image:Child Art Aged 2.5 Blue Fish Large and Small.png" (unused)

10:20, 10 July 2005 Paddy deleted "Image:Smiley Face with Writing Underneath.png" (unused)

I'm not sure why he did that, there was no deletion request up - Paddy seems to be a bit rash with the delete button sometimes: "Unused" is not a creterium for speedy deletion (or any deletion, for that matter), and the image was linked inside the commons via Category:Child art. Ask paddy about it - and tell him I sent you;)

Btw: images on the commons should be at least potentially useful to mediawiki projects. If not, they may be put up for deletion (with a regular request, giving you 7 days to respond). I can imagine that such images could be useful in an article about the development of children, about creativity or some such. Maybe you could documents this on the description page. For what where they intended when you uploaded them?

IMHO you can re-upload the images, if you like (well, I have not seen them, but I see no reason not to give it another try). Oh, and thanks for contributing! -- Duesentrieb 10:40, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt reply, have hassled Paddy. The images are potentially useful (there's currently none by children in that age group), and the whole category is linked from the Child Art page on Wikipedia. — Barefootguru 08:02, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I must admit I noticed a couple of these myself at the weekend, and thought the file size was surprisingly large (~1Mb) for the information content. I also wondered whether the copyright holder was old enough to understand CC-by-SA licensing, but in the end I decided it wasn't worth worrying about ;-) -- Solipsist 15:53, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Hey, only one is 1 Meg! Then 340 K and smaller. I'd actually like to tidy the colour ones up, but spent a fruitless hour in GIMP before deciding I had other things I should be doing. There must be a threshold function I can use to drop the background. Any clues, let me know. As for the copyright, he's under age, way under age, so his dad gets to make the decision ;-) Barefootguru 05:33, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

HELP! (major booboo)

Having all proudly made my first upload to the Wikimedia Commons - of Image:Flag of Lithuania 2.png - I now find to my consternation that I had a major brainstorm when naming it... It should have been Image:Flag of Latvia 2.png. There does not appear to be in Wikipedia Commons a move function which will allow me to cover my embarrassment easily. What do I do now (apart from shoot myself?). Any help will be much appreciated... Picapica 19:41, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Reupload the file with the correct filename and request speedy deletion by writing "{{delete}} reason --~~~~" on top of the image description page of the wrongly named one. --20:16, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Mille grazie. -- Picapica 20:38, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Photos of illegal substances

Hello.

File:Heroin smoking-dokbob.jpg

An incriminating photo of a young woman smoking heroine, freely available on Wikimedia until the end of times

Having just uploaded two mugshots of Hashish, a drug that is illegal in many countries, I was thinking of whether there is some guideline on uploading photos of illegal substances. In a way we are endorsing people to take photos of illegal drugs if we gladly accept them on wikipedia.

And what about anonymity? Suppose a drug agency requests Wikipedia to extract information about the original uploader? Hashish is perhaps not the most serious drug, but there are other drugs more serious. --Fred Chess 10:46, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

We certainly want pictures of drugs, drug paraphernalia, etc. I don't think you can rely on Wikimedia protecting your anonymity. If you're worried about getting arrested, find an open proxy somewhere, and upload the pictures with a new anonymous account. dbenbenn | talk 14:25, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Ok. I am mostly concerned about teenagers uploading lots of photos of drugs because they think that would impress people, something which might come back and haunt them later. At the Category:Drugs there is for instance a not too flattering photo of a young woman. But since you are affirmative that's no responsibility of Wikimedia, I'll take it, the policy of Wikimedia is to accept it? --Fred Chess 16:41, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, it is essential that she agrees to the photo being published like that. If she does not, the picture has to be deleted. If she does, it should stay. The fact that she could get in trouble, should be considered by her, not by us. On a related note: wikipedia has a lot of text and pictures about illegal/evil/nasty things - and that's a good thing, I think, as long as it adhers to the NPOV policy. -- Duesentrieb 23:03, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

What about masking her face ? (mosaic or large gaussian blur). This would solve at least one problem. For the ethic point of view about drugs, I don't know, this must be closely related to the legislation of each country. For example in France, pictures of cannabis or logos with a joint were not allowed (I do not know if the legislation has changed but this was the case 10 years ago) Dake 20:30, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Inexact. What French law prohibits is incitation to the consumption or traffic of illegal drugs. A picture of a drug item is not, per se, incitating, only if it portrays consumption of it in a favorable light. David.Monniaux 06:19, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the input, everyone.

I have been hesitant to move images to wikimedia commons when they look like this, and will probably still be. I certainly wouldn't want to be the parent and see such a picture.

I can hardly image the agreement of a minor to count as much as the agreement of an adult. If the person in question is clearly over 18, it would be no problem -- but I am worried that pictures of minors doing evil/nasty things might get us in trouble... this young woman could perhaps be 17. --Fred Chess 06:57, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Overdoing it

I've gone crazy with a digital camera on all the Digitalis purpurea in my garden. I've uploaded 25 pictures so far, and I feel maybe that's quite a bit over the top – that many will not be needed. However, I've since taken lots more, at least a few of which I think are worthy of being on commons. See http://www-und.ida.liu.se/~phija362/album/ for the new batch. So this is my question: Since these images are rather large (1-2 MB each) and rather many (33), what is the proper thing to do? Is it possible to remove some of the less impressive from the old batch to not overflow the viewer with mediocre stuff or should I just upload another 33 images or something other altogether? Another option may be to remove some of the old, add some new and have an external link to the full collection which I intend to keep (maybe on archive.org so that it doesn't disappear when I for some reason do) Advice? Foolip 12:54, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Personally what I would do is upload the particularly good ones, and not the lesser ones. If there's some ones which you've uploaded and you've found/taken a better version, or if it's just not very good, you can request it's deletion with Commons:Deletion requests. Remember though, hard drives are cheap! -- Joolz 13:26, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I recommend uploading all of them. Create Category:Digitalis purpurea to put them all in, and only put the best ones at Digitalis purpurea. In my opinion, that is the biggest strength of gallery pages as opposed to categories: you can exercise editorial control over the content of the gallery. dbenbenn | talk 14:19, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

That's not a bad idea, I think I'll do that. Foolip 20:21, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Discussion happening on Category talk:Digitalis purpurea. Foolip 08:39, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Interwiki linking

Can anyone help me with the correct way of doing interwiki linking to a german wikipedia user site? On Image:Digitalis_Purpurea.jpg (sorry, don't know how to link to it without the image appearing here...) I temporarily hacked it by using a http-link, but surely there's another way. Foolip 12:54, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Hey, you can do it like this: [[:de:Bild:Digitalis_Pupurea.jpg]], or if you want it to just appear in the sidebar like some other interwiki links, remove the starting :

Hope this helps, Joolz 13:22, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I suggest that this be added to the Help system somewhere it is easily found. I tried looking a while... I didn't dare add it myself since the Help system is full of warnings about it.

--Leif Arne Storset 05:48, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

I fixed your link already. You can insert a link to an image this way: image:Digitalis_Purpurea.jpg. -- aka 13:23, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Image:Prokudin-Gorskii-22.jpg

Please, feel free to direct me to the correct page to ask this question.

Image:Prokudin-Gorskii-22.jpg has a PD-Old tag on it, but Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii only died in 1944, which is of course not more than 100 years ago.

So what's the correct licence tag for this image? Can it be used at all?

Thanks, nyenyec ☎ 16:44, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Most of the Prokudin-Gorskii photos were uploaded by User:Eloquence, so you could ask him directly, or by putting a note on the image's discussion page.

However, I think {{PD-Old}} also applies in the US for images published before 1923. My impression is that most of these photographs were taken between 1909 – 1915 and published around the same time. -- Solipsist 17:01, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Image:Turkmen man with camel.jpg (by Prokudin-Gorskii) has thorough copyright info. The Library of Congress explains:

There are no known restrictions on the use of these images. The issue of copyright was not addressed during the purchase of the collection from Prokudin-Gorskii's heirs in France in 1948. French law is unclear as to whether the heirs own any rights.

So the case isn't 100% clear, but the images are probably PD. dbenbenn | talk 22:55, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Using of Commons

Take a look at Category:Sevilla, I agree than lot of this pic are nice, etc. but I don't understand clearly the need. The most are unusable on wikipédia because just show nice but unfamous things and not clearly. What have we to do ? Yug talk 18:51, 12 July

I think most of the pics are too heavy and not really usable by the wikipedia project to be keep on commons. I asked Dubaduba to tag the less usefull pic with a {{Deletebecause|Not really usable by the wikipedia project}}. Otherwise I think we will have to decide if we have to keep or not each one. Yug talk 19:32, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Let's keep them all. Hard drives are cheap. They are "usable on Wikipedia" in the sense that they are photographs of an encyclopedic location. Anyone reading w:Sevilla can go to Category:Sevilla (via a link at the end of that article) and see lots of free pictures of the town. dbenbenn | talk 22:45, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

(Actually, there are a couple "me on my vacation" type photos of people that don't belong. dbenbenn | talk 22:47, 12 July 2005 (UTC))

Please do not marke those images with {{Delete}} or {{Deletebecause}}! If you feel they are unfit for the commons, file a regular deletion request, using {{Deletion request}} and an entry on Commons:Deletion requests. Thanks! -- Duesentrieb 23:08, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Ok, we keep all this and travel in Sevilla ! :] Yug talk 00:07, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Finish « User by capacity »

Now avalable, see Category:Graphics abilities Yug (talk) 00:00, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Graphics abilities

Category	interrested	« basic/beginner»	« good »	« Hight/Master »	Tutorial
Category:Bitmap graphics editors	not usefull	{{User BG-1}}	{{User BG-2}}	{{User BG-3}}	BG Basic Tutorial
Category:Animation editors	{{User ANI-0}}	{{User ANI-1}}	{{User ANI-2}}	{{User ANI-3}}	ANI Basic Tutorial
Category:Vector graphics editors	{{User VG-0}}	{{User VG-1}}	{{User VG-2}}	{{User VG-3}}	VG Basic Tutorial
Category:Commons photographers	/	everyone	almost everyone	{{User PH-3}}	A good camera

Audio file abilities

Category	interrested	« basic/beginner»	« good »	« Hight/Master »	Tutorial
Category:Audio file editors [.ogg]	not usefull now	not usefull now	{{User AF-2}}	{{User AF-3}}	AF Basic Tutorial

Following a favorable vote some days before on the Commons:Village pump...

On commons, know « who is able to do what » can be useful, exactly like the Babel categories are useful to search help in one human language, template like this allow to find precise graphic help. Here for images, animations, and vector graphism. If some Wikipedians have competences in some kind of illustration, other have to know. And now, other will be able to know.

Like see on the right, I started to make 4 first exemples : {{User PH}} and {{User BG-1}} {{User ANI-1}} and {{User VG-1}}. I think that will be need and helpfull.

User Capacity 2 : So....

You can add your abilities to {{Babel-4|en|BG-3|ANI-2|SG-0}} or {{Babel-7|en|es-2|fr-1|de-1|BG-3|ANI-2|SG-0}}.

Or, to put together your 3 graphics abilities you can use {{Graf-3|BG-1|ANI-1|SG-1}} : {{Graf-3|BG-1|ANI-1|VG-1}}. {{Graf-3|BG-3|ANI-1|VG-0}}.

Please, keeping in mind than I did quickly with an approximative english and that still can be improve.

---

I did this work by coping : {{User en-1}}, {{User en-2}}, {{User en-3}} and {{User en}}. Yug talk

I modified your categories above slightly (Graphix -> graphics, and pluralize). dbenbenn | talk 16:23, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

It's a great idea to categorize people based on their talents, is there an overview of all these templates somewhere? —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 00:08, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Image:ICC-cricket-member-nations.png

This image is now featured on the main page of the English Wikipedia. Could an administrator temporarily protect it with {en main page}? - 131.211.210.15 11:46, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Done. dbenbenn | talk 16:18, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Picture: Image:Paulskirche1.jpg is disappeared ?

Hallo , I just registred, that my photo of the Paulskirche in Frankfurt Image:Paulskirche1.jpg has disappeared. Who can help me , finding it and tell me what happened ? Thanks in advance. --Peng 11:40, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

What's wrong with it? I can see it, a photo of a brownish-red building with a tower. Thuresson 10:48, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Excuse me for making such trouble. It was my firewall, which regarded only this image as advertising, very strange. . Thank you Thuresson, thank you. --Peng 15:50, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Thumbnails disappearing

Please look at my user page Akumiszcza. Most of the thumbnails of my pictures has just disappeared. These thumbnails are also not present on wiki pages using those photos. The photos alone are present. What has happened? --Akumiszcza 11:54, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Both are present now. Probably a transient database problem. --Ikar.us 12:45, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

User:Beethoven

Please, revise all contributions of that user. I suspect that all of them are copyrighted. We had had problems with his copyrighted contributions in Spanish wiki. It's a guy very young, 12 years, and very newbie and is commiting very much errors--Caiser 14:27, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

He just said that all his images had been taken from google in this conversation. So, delete them please--Caiser 14:34, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

PD-ineligible?

I recently created and uploaded Image:Map of Colorado counties, blank.png. Before I go and create 64 derivative works to fill up Category:Colorado county locator maps, I want to make sure this image can actually be kept here. To make the image, I took a copyrighted map and extracted coordinate data for the county boundaries. In my opinion it is PD-ineligible. Can anyone else back me up on this? Thanks, dbenbenn | talk 16:15, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

You could have gotten the raw data from http://www.nationalatlas.gov/ (PD). But surely that's not half as exciting as decompiling a PDF :) --Mayhem 20:12, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Holy crap! You just made my week! Now I'm going to have to give up all other Wiki related activities, and devote all my time to producing maps. Thanks so much for the link! dbenbenn | talk 00:39, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Btw., it could be your PDF map is actually the same as (or derived from) the one on [9] (haven't checked this, but infering from preview and description). --Mayhem 13:09, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Interwiki to Wikiquote

I made an attempt to put interwiki links from Commons to Wikiquote. Possibly there might be article(s) on Sources too, but Wikiquote link would be helpful for readers who are difficult to read French originals (if exist). I think it as improvement, but would like to listen to others' opinions, before put similar links to other articles. --Aphaia 04:45, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Most-perfect magic squares - Jain squares

16 9 4 5 2 7 14 11 13 12 1 8 3 6 15 10	15 1 -9 -7 -13 -3 11 5 9 7 -15 -1 -11 -5 13 3	-15 -1 9 7 13 3 -11 -5 -9 -7 15 1 11 5 -13 -3	15 8 3 4 1 6 13 10 12 11 0 7 2 5 14 9
Halló! I created some templates to ilustrate some special properties of the 4x4 type en:Most-perfect magic squares. With the availability of <inputbox> (meta:Help:inputbox) and its expected improuvments "one click previews" for these properties could be generated without overloding the page. The 384 4x4 squares are known as Jain squares originating in India from the 11th - 12th centuary. Please let me know if you will have some time to generate more of the required templates. The template is available at commons:, de:, en:, eo:, fr:, he:, hi:, ro:, "FiverAlpha", "Golem – מוסטער". All examples are different. Please drop a note at meta:examples. Thanks in advance. Best regards Gangleri Gangleri | Th | T 13:16, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Upload?

How do you upload a picture? Copyright information? --Wimtennis2005 17:42, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Visit Special:Upload and follow the directions given there. You need at least to give a good description and copyright-information by using a template like {{PD}} or {{GFDL}}. Just make sure to include it in a category or link to it on a suitable article in wikimedia, or it will be an orphaned image noone will see. Foolip 17:49, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Actually, pleae always add images to categories or articles here on the commons, otherwise people looking for pictures would have to look at all relevant articles in all projects and all languages. People should be able to find everything on the commons by navigation the category structure hre. -- Duesentrieb 10:37, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

An Idea Categorise by Text

Hello, just an idea. If someone were looking for an icon of the letter "T" or the word "Home" at the moment they would have to search and then they would find pictures of homes and presumably model T fords etc. I am suggesting a new categorisation (for images) which would solve this problem. An icon of the letter "T" would be categorised under Category:Text:T and an icon of the word "home" would be categorised under category:Text:Home. This is not a very well formed idea, but, let me know what you think. I have started category Text:T as an example. This is easiest enough to delete if necessary.

Original Post (on a talk page)John Cross 14:42, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

New date/time stamp: John Cross 13:51, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Flags and their file names

One thing that has annoyed me a lot is the way flag files are named. Some are named [English name] flag large.png (ex.: Norway flag large.png), some [English name] flag 300.png (ex.: Norway flag 300.png), some Flag of [English name].png (ex.: Flag of Norway.png). Not only is it annoying that there is no standard file name for these flags, it is also annoying that the name of the file is the English name.

Therefore, I have a proposition. The largest flag file that is on Commons today is to be uploaded with the name [three-letter ISO 3166-1 code] flag.png (ex.: NOR flag.png). I believe the w:en:ISO 3166-1 codes is the closest thing we can get to a unified international name of a state, and having the flag files using those code would be very idealistic; that way, any author on any Wikimedia project can easily insert the flag of the country he/she is writing about, without having to spend five (valuable, as we all know) minutes (often also more than five minutes, if the author doesn't know the English name of the country) of his/her time scanning the Commons to find out what the file name of this specific country's flag is.

I hope nobody minds if this process is started ASAP? Jon Harald Søby\^{no na} 17:40, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

If there are no serious complaints by tomorrow, I will start doing this then. Jon Harald Søby\^{no na} 19:34, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

I just need to clear one thing up: The old files will not be deleted, as that would affect literaly hundreds of pages on Wikipedias "around the world". This will simply provide a new standard for authors to use, and perhaps change old flags to the new standard. Jon Harald Søby\^{no na} 19:53, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't believe for a second that this would save time for people, eg. there are likely more people that know the English name of a country than people who know its ISO country code. For example; Algerias ISO code is DZA. Also, "Norway flag large.png" and "Norway flag 300.png" have become somewhat of a standard.

And finally, a lot of countries already have three versions of its flag, I don't see the need for a fourth version. Thuresson 19:59, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Very much agree with Thuresson. ISO codes are way harder to know/remember and English name can be quite easily sneaked from interwiki link :o) (there is thing called reality, English is more "multilingual" than ISO standards, in everyday life)

What we need, in my opinion, is to agree what the large means, is it 800px or 3200px. File names with 300 are luckily done properly: file name says what the file is. ... And I think it is good to have some common place to discuss this kind of things, file (pixel) sizes, naming convention, etc. as now this kind of proposals will go to many unnoticed and then one can only wonder what is going on --TarmoK 11:51, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Please don't start doing this. SVG will be enabled "soon", at which point we'll have to start replacing all the flags anyway. It would be good if we could decide on a naming standard for these new flags in advance. But there's no point uploading a bunch of new PNG flags now.

Personally I prefer "Flag of Norway.svg", but I also like your suggestion of "NO flag.svg". dbenbenn | talk 20:13, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

SVG are vector images, right? When they come, they should at least use the international ISO code instead of the English name. Commons being a multilingual project.

Anyways, I'll wait till SVG is enabled, then. Jon Harald Søby\^{no na} 20:16, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

That's right, see w:SVG. MediaWiki will be able to automatically make a PNG image of any desired size from the SVG flags. As long as we don't have "large" or "300" in the SVG flag names (which in a sense are infinitely large) I'll be happy. dbenbenn | talk 21:00, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Dbenbenn, please point me out the place where is info about this SVG implementation. As far I have searched haven't found info that it (SVG support and SVG->PNG conversion) will be implemented (soon). --TarmoK 11:51, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

You could try looking in the MediaWiki source code, I guess. User:Duesentrieb implemented some of the feature, apparently. He might be able to tell you more. That's all I know. dbenbenn | talk 20:21, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

(oops, noone asked me...) well, I did not write the conversion code as such, but I implemented the JavaScript-detection code that would make it safe (or safer) to have SVG on the commons, and I smoothed out the way mediawiki handles files other than jpg/png. I can assert that the code is there, we just need to get someone with server access to install sodiposi or inkskape and enable the respective features.... -- Duesentrieb 10:11, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

What is commons ?

Hello, I received this message from dbenbenn about the Adoptfirefox.jpg :

Hi Yug. CC-by-sa doesn't allow the author to require that "the red mark "Shari" have to stay on the pic". Unless Shari is willing to drop that condition and allow unrestricted modification, the image will have to be deleted. dbenbenn | talk 16:30, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

I already asked myself to Shari to obtain his permission to share his pic on common : he totaly agree and made it to be share, and just want keep his name on the pic.

I was already thinking about this strange things on commons, In an other case, I sent to commons the french Arianes.png, which is note :

Most images have been released publicly from ESA. You may use ESA images or videos for educational or informational purposes. The publicly released ESA images may be reproduced without fee (…)

This image was deleted because restrited to « eductionnal use only »

I ask to the wikipedian and commons community : What is commons ?

This two kind of files are share-one and accept in All wikipedias except on commons.

Commons policy don't seem to be accepting « all file freely usable for knowledge » but more accepting all files « freely usable for business ».

That seem to be a fact. Now I need a solution to share with other wikipedias pic like Arianes.png, which have a clear educative use.
I don't agree to work only for « commercial use » and to be forbiden to work for and educative use. Regards to others wikipedians~~ Yug talk 19:14, 15 July 2005 (UTC) <english still improving>

Images uploaded here should be reusable for any purpose, not only for education, not only for business. Anything else would not be a free image. Angela 19:24, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Please read Commons:Licensing - like Angela said, images must be free for use for any purpose by anyone - this is true on many other projects, too, for example the german wp. Otherwise, things like Wikipedia-on-DVD would not be possible. The request that the name must be in the image is silly, anyway, because the GFDL and CC-by licenses already require that the creator be named - not in the image, but easily accessible. ESA images are a problem, because most of the pictures published by ESA may be used in a education/non-commercial way only. Please read meta:ESA images, there are talk with the ESA under way, Jimmy Wales is involved directly. -- Duesentrieb 19:42, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Ok, thank for all this informations : I understand this possition even if I don't agree (Wikipedias have an educational goal and their CD too, so ESA images should be allowed; and keep the mark is a tiny thing). I hope ESA and wikipedia will find a solution~~ Yug talk 21:31, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

I will ask to Shari to convert the « the red mark "Shari" have to stay on the pic » into « please, let the red mark "Shari" on the pic.» Yug talk 21:46, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

WIKIMANIA call for entries

CLICK HERE TO NOMINATE ARTICLES

In less than a month, the first WIKIMANIA wiki convention will be held. During the convention, they will award "best of" prizes for the diffeerent projects. Be sure to click the above link to nominate Wikicommon contributions you think are worthy of consideration. Deadline is Aug 1, 2005 Davodd 18:07, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Langage templates

I am aware that a vote has already decide that langages templates should use ISO text.

But, is it possible to use some colors to detach this template from the text ? Something like :

(fr)

Or :

((en))

Or simply:

ar

It's still plain text, but it is more visible on description pages, which is not the case with the current templates. NoJhan 21:37, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Sure, sounds like a good idea to me. dbenbenn | talk 06:56, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Sounds cool. Go ahead and create a voting. — Richie 16:54, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

en main page image

Hello, Image:ASNLF Aceh Indonesien.PNG has been placed on the front page of en. Could an admin plese protect it. Thanks, BanyanTree 16:33, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Protected for a few days. Thuresson 17:38, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Wikimania and July media contest

There is a media competition which will conclude at Wikimania next month; with a number of categories for excellent images, sketches, video, etc. Please nominate the best in each category that you have seen, on Commons or any other project (for those rare cases where a great bit of content wasn't suitable for the commons). Sj 18:07, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

aikido.at

saluton at all, this concern an information about a web-site where...there are not any copyright! I've met the webmaster of aikido.at last week during a seminary where he said to me that the web-site do not content any copyright on the image...consequently the aikido.at at the bottom right is just one indication from the origin of the picture and no more. Is that not great? jonathaneo

Well, it depends - the copyright (Urheberrecht) is always with the photographer, the license is up to him. The webmaster does not really have a word in that. If he is absolutely sure that none of the authors of the images claim any rights, that would be excelent - it would be even better if the photographer(s) would license the images explicitely, though. -- Duesentrieb 12:23, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Did he even ask the photographers for a proper authorization to redistribute their content? Many webmasters don't know anything about intellectual property. David.Monniaux 18:08, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Permission to use images, okay for Commons?

Hi, I've gotten permission to use photos for Wikipedia from the webmaster and photographer of http://cornishchurches.com, a person named Ian Self. See the permission here. Mr Self specifically states that his photos are not copyrighted and can be reproduced even for commercial purposes (although he prefers to be notified in either case). Is this "free" enough for Commons? Would his pictures count as {{PD-self}}, or what? QuartierLatin1968 00:00, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Where does he say that his photos are not copyrighted? All I see is that "you would be very welcome to use any of my images", which isn't good enough.

The best solution would be to get him to release his content under some free Creative Commons license. Then there's no ambiguity about what he permits. dbenbenn | talk 01:42, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Note that even GFDL/CC works are copyrighted but they are released under a free license. Saying that "Wikipedia..is a free, non-copyrighted, non-commercial online collaborative encyclopedia" is wrong as the GFDL does not imply non-copyrighted and non-commercial. I agree that a statement about the license (or specifically saying that they are public domain) would be best. Dori | Talk 02:54, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

GFDL is still copyrighted? Grrr, just when I thought I was starting to get a handle on this. Wasn't that what copyleft / free license meant? Anyway, we are non-commercial – Wikipedia doesn't have ads or try to sell anything.

He does say his photos aren't copyrighted. On http://cornishchurches.com/The%20author.htm, about three quarters of the way down the page, Mr Self writes, "Please also note that all of the images contained here are not copyrighted and are therefore avaiable on a free issue basis, if they are to be used for publication or commercial purposes, I would appreciate an email request in order that I may know what they are being used for."

I suggested free licensing to him in a follow-up email. No word back yet, but I suspect the whole licensing thing is just going to confuse him, and frankly I can't say I blame him. QuartierLatin1968 16:01, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, I didn't create the copyright mess. I'd just as well have no copyrights at all. Also, Wikipedia may not be commercial, but many legitimate mirrors are. Dori | Talk 06:56, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

QuartierLatin: you obviously are extremely confused about copyright. Commons does not allow content not licensed for commercial use, and we discourage or forbid such content on Wikipedia. GFDL and other contents are copyrighted (or, rather, fall under copyright or laws similar to copyright, depending on the jurisdictions); it's just that this content is licensed to users on rather permissive terms. (See the difference between "this thing is not owned by anybody" and "this is owned by this person, but this person grants you a permanent right to use it for such and such purposes".) David.Monniaux 18:06, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Photos of Famous Paintings: What file type is best?

Hi, I'm a newcomer to Wikimedia and I have a question concerning image file types: On the Commons File Types page it says that JPG is better for photos and PNG is better fro drawings and diagrams. Well, what if the photograph is of a famous public domain painting such as Renoir's "Girl with a Watering Can" or Klimt's "The Kiss?" What file type would be best to use for pictures such as these, that, it seems, the highest quality possible would be desired?

Thank you

kherf

Probably jpeg. Just use a high quality setting in your software. PNG is more for diagrams that have solid colors and sharp lines. - Omegatron 21:06, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

from an archival point of view png is better because its lossless BUT unfortunately mediawiki can't change the format as part of a rescaling operation so uploading a png image results in png images for the scaled versions placed in articles which is not a good thing due to the filesize. It may be best to upload both for now and link them together and then if and when the thumbnailing system is fixed get rid of the jpeg version Plugwash 22:18, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Are you talking about using a digital camera to photograph a painting? Digital cameras store pictures as JPG. Converting the photo to PNG won't improve the quality. If you're going to modify the picture in any way after it comes out of your camera, make sure to upload the original first. That way you haven't lost any information. dbenbenn | talk 17:43, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Dbenbenn: I think what I'm asking is what is the file type to use to take a photo when image quality is vitally important? For example, when a museum takes a photograph of a painting that they own, and then sells items printed with that photo (such as a Van Gogh "Starry Night" coffee mug), what file type do they use to take the photo with? Does this make sense?!

well if you are using a professional digital camera you would take the picture using raw mode and keep the ccd raw file for archival purposes (you may convert to other formats for actually using the image in various appliacations). If you are stuck with a consumer grade camera you may be stuck with jpegs coming out of the camera but the same principle applies keep the file as it came out of the camera almost any modification and some format conversions imply irreversable loss so always keep the ORIGINAL. Plugwash 01:34, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I see, w:camera raw. I guess that if you have access to that format, then you know how to deal with it. I wonder if the Commons should allow raw file uploads. Can those files be converted losslessly to PNG? dbenbenn | talk 15:08, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

If you only think of the final image: yes. PNG can handle 16 bit images as well and of course, PNG can store the image uncompressed. If you really mean lossless, then: no. A RAW file contains the CCD data and the information about how the final image can be build from this data. If you change a setting within the RAW file, only these processing information gets changed, not the CCD data itself. Therefore you can change the white balance (and many other things) many times without quality loss, even if you save the image between these steps and load it again. This is not possible with PNG. -- aka 15:37, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Note that the museum in which Klimt's The Kiss is shown, in Schloß Belvedere in Vienna, does not allow photography. David.Monniaux 15:52, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

on a related not: uploading TIFFs should really be allowed. It would be the right choice in a case like this. -- Duesentrieb 22:23, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Well a person needs to have acess to a primary source photo in order to upload a high quality TIFF image and the museums and/or rights managed stock photo houses seem to have those all wrapped up

When does an image enter the Public Domain?

Does a painting enter P.D. if the artist died before 1923 or if the work was published before 1923 (1922 for France, I think)?

Following the Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection most (all?) European Union countries protect the work of an artist/author/creator for 70 years after his/her death. Creative works by people who died in 1934 or earlier are in the public domain. Thuresson 01:27, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Except that French law added extra time for the duration of the World Wars (counted in a weird way), and supplemental time for authors died for France (which, for instance, would concern Antoine de Saint-Exupéry). David.Monniaux 15:50, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Does that mean that a drawing of the Moon made by Galileo Galilei (published in his Nuncius Sidereus in 1610) scanned by me off a book that appeared last year is PD? --ECeDee 16:00, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 16:15, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Some companies and individuals having reproduced old works of art, dictionaries, encyclopedias etc. try to claim copyright over the reproductions. However, it seems that courts, whether in France or in the United States, consistently refuse such claims regarding reproductions of a purely technical kind (say, putting the work of art in a scanner or copy machine). Of course, the problem is whether some kind of "artistic" character may be found in certain reproductions; thus, for instance, photographs of tridimensional objects (statues etc.) are generally found to be artistic, for they involve a choice of lighting, angle of vision, focal length, aperture etc. One possibly murky area in some jurisdictions are photos of bidimensional objects. David.Monniaux 13:18, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

New Creative Commons licenses

I have a bunch of images tagged with cc-by-sa-2.0. Now that cc-by-sa-2.5 is available, should I replace all of the 2.0 tags with the 2.5 tags? or should I dual-license and use both tags on the images? Thanks for the advice! --bdesham 03:46, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

You could use {{Cc-by-sa-2.5,2.0,1.0}} for multi-licensing with all versions of cc-by-sa. This tag is much more compact than using all three tags. dbenbenn | talk 17:34, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

See also {{SelfBSA}} - Omegatron 19:22, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Use of GFDL / CC images

I used a few images from Rio de Janeiro as backgrounds for logos on my (more-or-less-commercial) website. ([10] [11] ) Both are licensed under the GFDL. I need to know what information I need to include in order for my use of the images to be correct, but some cursory research didn't help me out. (Unfortunately, the wikipedia article on the GFDL doesn't mention its restrictions for image licensing!) If it were text, I could very easily tack a GFDL notice onto it, but since these are navigational images for a larger web page it wouldn't work to slap a bunch of licensing text at the bottom. What's the very least I have to do to conform to the GFDL, and what method would you recommend to include the information in as small a footprint on my site as possible? (For example, could I reference the GFDL in the image's ALT tag on the page?) Thanks -- 69.112.251.14 21:53, 19 July 2005 (UTC) Adam Conover

This is one of the reasons why the GFDL is no good for images - it would probably be best to ask the creator of the image to put it under CC-by-sa, or to give you some special permission. In the mean time, I would suggest to include "image by XYZ, GFDL" in the alt tag and a (small but readable) footnote on every page that uses the image. "GFDL" should be linked to an online copy of the GFDL. I'm not sure if this is legaly compliant with the GFDL, but it's probably acceptable. Thanks for asking back and taking the licensing thinks seriously! -- Duesentrieb 22:19, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Unhelpful demand for cleanup

The notice posted on some pages (minus the brackets) cleanup contains a link to a non-existant page. 4.152.93.110 08:31, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

What do you mean? Which link? dbenbenn | talk 20:00, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

You, or somebody else, already took out the link. Thanks. The same cleanup notice is now working right. By the way, I was a little offended by the officious tone of the person who installed that cleanup demand. (Not you, someone else.) It looks to me like "Don't bite the newby" doesn't fly here. I was a little astonished, especially because what turned out to be that individual's personal esthetic criteria were not mentioned nor were/are they inferrable from the cleanum notice and linked items. The objection may have been valid, but failure to figure out what it was should not be the cause of a sarcastic rebuke. 4.152.93.80 22:12, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Book cover

Hi, I placed a {{Bookcover}} tag on Image:Psychological Warfare Linebarger.jpg that redirects to {{Fairuse}}, which rather alarmingly declares that the image "will be" subject to speedy deletion with all manner of thick red lines and large exclamation marks. This is altogether different in tone from en:template:bookcover, which soothingly states that fair use is usually alright. Are book covers not accepted on Commons? Thanks, BanyanTree 15:52, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Not unless the book publisher makes it available a free license (which does happen, although extremely rarely). Commons adopts a more restrictive rule than en:, to be compatible with all the wikiprojects; see Commons:Licensing. Stan Shebs 16:53, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I'll re-upload it to en in light of its imminent annihilation. :) - BanyanTree 18:00, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Permitted use of Wikipedia-logo.png

What is the permitted use of Image:Wikipedia-logo.png? Can this Image:Wikipedia mug.jpg image (a derivative work) be licensed under the GFDL? Is free distribution of derivative works permitted at all?

Where can I find more information about this?

Thanks, nyenyec ☎ 00:00, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

See meta:Logo and its talk page, please. --:Bdk: 03:04, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Create a subcategory

Hi, I added my first picture Scandiano1 I would like to put it in a new subcategory of the category:Reggio Emilia. I would like to call it Category:Scandiano as we have the subcategory Category:Castelnovo Monti. How can I do it? Thanks! Maxo 07:44, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Click on the (still red) category link above, add the mother category tag (and explaining text or interlanguage links) to the new category page. --Ikar.us 07:56, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Pictures from NL-Wikipedia

Can I use images like this (Link) here in Commons. It's an image from NL-Wikipedia with a special license. Jonaslange 17:36, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Sure. It appears the appropriate tag would be

{{copyrighted free use provided that | http://www.BeeldbankVenW.nl, Rijkswaterstaat is mentioned as the source.}}

dbenbenn | talk 21:35, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Where are these files being used?

Is there a technical way to know on which Wikimedia projects these files are being used? I think this would be a useful feature to implement, as it would show exactly how widely or narrowly these files are utilized throughout the different projects. I guess this would be something like a Wikimedia-wide 'What links here'.--Pharos 04:18, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

At the moment there sadly is no such feature in MediaWiki. You can play around with Check-Usage - have fun. --Avatar 07:57, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup notices useful?

I have seen several cleanup notices posted here and on English Wikipedia. They are sometimes added by vandals. They give a broadside attack suggesting that somebody else figure out why the person who added the notice was irritated by the article, but typically the notice is not accompanied by anything specific in the discussion page. I think these notices are counterproductive and create ill will. Patrick Edwin Moran 15:25, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Specific example? Category:Images for cleanup contains a lot of images that really do need to be fixed (mostly images where an auto-generated thumbnail was pushed here from Wikipedia, instead of the full size image). dbenbenn | talk 14:46, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

How to handle "shadowing"

What is the procedure for handling the following (quite common, I guess) scenario:

1. Say I'm working on an article on en.wikipedia. I notice that ja.wikipedia has an image that I'd like to use.
2. So I copy it to commons and refer to it from en.wikipedia
3. But now ja.wikipedia and commons have the same image. It would be nice if ja.wikipedia deleted their copy, but I don't speak japanese and can't navigate their IFD process.

This happens a lot (I ask because I found one of my own en.wikipedia image had been shadowed like this for some time), so I guess the solution has been discussed or implemented before? Perhaps:

• have the same template on each wiki, so I just put a {{nowcommons}} or whatever on the ja.wikipedia page, and it takes care of adding things to the correct deletion category there
• have a table on commons that lists each wiki's equivalent of the nowcommons
• have a bot which periodically spots cases where commons and another wiki have copies, and generates a "stuff to be deleted" page, e.g. on ja.wikipedia

Does any solution exist? -- Finlay McWalter 20:17, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

The "NowCommons" template exist in all the large Wikipedias. You can take a look at en:Category:NowCommons and you'd find loads of images that exist on both English wikipedia and on WikiCommos. It is up to the administrators of the various Wikipedias to go through the photos and delete the local copy. A real living administrator is still necessary to check that no information is lost in the process. In some Wikipedias, images simply pile up, in others administrators act quickly. Thuresson 03:34, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, that's perfect (and the check usage thing above is great too). -- Finlay McWalter 16:30, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Protection

Since images here can be used for all the project Main Pages, how do people request protection of images here? Is there a Template:Protect-request and Category:Protection requests system, and if not, wouldnt it be a good idea to have one? -Stevertigo 00:39, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Protecting main page photos is still quite new, but there is Template:en main page, for photos on the English Wikipedia main page. You need also to ask an administrator to protect the page, I myself often receive requests like that. Thuresson 01:20, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Currently the easiest way is to leave a message on the village pump, because that's where the greatest chance of people seeing it will be, you can't have a category on a watchlist and see new items appear in it (hate edit conflicts!)-- Joolz 01:23, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

OK I suppose this process should be almost automated, since requests for temp-protection cant really be evaluated on merit, for example, for foreign languages - would someone please protect Image:Shuttle Discovery July 25 pre-launch-crop.jpg? Sinreg, --Stevertigo 07:12, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Louvre pyramid : legal threat

Pictures representing the Louvre pyramid may cause legal troubles. Pei, the architect of the pyramid and so beneficiary, forbid to take photos of it. It should exist a solution : It's impossible to take pictures of the Louvre under some angles without having the pyramid on the picture, but some pictures of Commons still are poblematic : http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Paris_Louvre_Pyramid_Sunset.jpg and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:LouvrePyramide.jpg These pictures contain almost no architectural elements of the old parts of the Louvre. Traroth 08:36, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

So far i know there is an relative new european directive that makes this impossible. All contructions who are put in public space you can take photos of whitout to pay for it. --Walter 08:10, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Very interesting. But I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know if this directive is already transposed in french law (european directives must firstly transposed in national laws before they can be applied). Traroth

That's inexact. A recent decision by the Court of Cassation (I don't have the reference here, but I linked to it from the page on commons explaining copyright issues) stated that architects and other artists cannot claim copyright on a photograph just because one of their work appears as part of a scene (the case was about Daniel Buren's so-called work of art in the Place des Terreaux in Lyons). Thus, pictures of the pyramid only may be a problem, but there is no need to take specific angles of the Louvre to avoid the Pyramid, for the architect of the Pyramid cannot claim copyright on a full shot of the Louvre in which the Pyramid appears. David.Monniaux 13:12, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

I have understood that there should be no legal risks if the object in question (this Louvre pyramid, for instance) is only part of a wider scene pictured. So a picture of the entire Louvre, with the pyramid taking up only a minor part of the area covered, would be OK. Of course there is a lovely grey area in terms of proportion... I think that by this standard, the second picture would be problematic. The first one would probably "just OK", but a court might find otherwise. Of course, it would be possible to take a picture of one's significant other, and, accidentally, the Louvre, including the pyramid, somewhere on the edge of the picture. A user might find that, given the size of the picture, it would be possible to crop the picture to the extent that he has only the pyramid left, but that is something that is outside our control. (I must admit that tis is one of the occasions where one is tempted to regret the existence of lawyers...) MartinD 14:41, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Invisible images

Since the beginning, I had trouble in seeing images, specifically in galleries I had created. There seemed to be no logical reason to this : some of the images were just not to be seen in the gallery, although they existed.

Khardan, a user in the french speaking wikipedia pointed me to the right direction : Norton firewall. The publicity filter of that nice utility blocks images that have a certain size and also some adresses.

You cannot fine tune the filter for the images. It would block images that are 120 x 90 pixels or 88 x 31 or 60 x 80). SO the only solution is to disable the publicity filter of Norton (but let the publicity page filter on).

Hope this can help. Maybe someboy could put this somewhere in the general help. Alex lbh 19:45, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Official media plugin

Please discuss at meta:Media plugin -- Kowey 20:13, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

How do I place an image (that I have uploaded) in a particular category?

How do I place an image (that I have uploaded) in a particular category in Wikimedia? Regards, Dennis. Dennis Nilsson 03:58, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Click 'edit' on the image description page, add the category you like, eg. [[Category:US Supreme court justices]] and save. Thuresson 04:23, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Where to question a license of an image?

I would like to know, where I should post my comment, if I doubt the license of an image? In this case, I don't feel comfortable with the PD-labelling of this image. -CSamulili 07:22, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

I can't find that photo on WikiCommons but it is available at en: (en:Image:Letter to Russia with krokozyabry.jpg). If you have doubts you should contact the person who uploaded it. It might also be well worth it to check the history of the image description page to see who has made edits. Thuresson 09:49, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

My mistake. I thought I was looking at a commons page... Say, in theory, if I find an image labelled as PD but I disagree, then what should I do? -CSamulili 16:47, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

I usually stick an additional template like {{Unknown}}, {{Incomplete license}} or even {{Copyvio}} on there, with a short note why I have doubts. Then I contact the uploader and ask for clarification. If nothing comes of that, you may put the image up for deletion, using the {{Deletion request}} template and adding an entry on this page here. -- Duesentrieb 11:28, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

You can also put a querry on the discussion page for the image - there's a recent good example on the English Wiki at en:Image talk:Glowing tobacco plant.jpg.

However, on the whole, only the original uploader is likely to be watching the image page and notice any comments you put there. In fact it is quite possible that even the original uploader isn't watching the image discussion page. Now that the upload form has a fairly large box for comments, many people will fill out a complete image description and never edit the image page directly. As a result the image doesn't automatically get added to their watchlist. -- Solipsist 15:51, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

delete

List of victims of the 1913 Great Lakes storm is a article to delete ?
~~ Renardeau ~~ 11:47, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

It seems that the page indeed does not fit to Commons, it has already been moved to w:en:, I have only deleted the remaining empty page (+talk page). Generally, to nominate a page for speedy deletion, add {{delete}} into it. --Mormegil 21:29, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

The Main Page does say that

The Wikimedia Commons is a project that provides a central repository for free images, music, sound & video clips and, possibly, texts and spoken texts.

Anyway, the list is currently at Wikisource:List of victims of the 1913 Great Lakes storm, so I won't dispute the speedy deletion here. dbenbenn | talk 22:44, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Umm, in case you didn't notice, the page is up for deletion at Wikisource. How can you delete this page without even a VFD????? I'm readding it. Wikisource is not the place for it because it is not a source text but a compilation of data from source text... I compiled it. Commons is obviously the place for it, as the Main Page states. --Brian0918 14:51, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Move to Wikipedia as a part of w:Great Lakes Storm of 1913. This list is an encyclopedia article; it has no business on Commons. The only sort of text that I can imagine really belongs on Commons is the transcript of an audio file. --Tysto 05:32, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Copyrights on monuments and landmarks

I read the discussion above on Louvre pyramid and began to wonder if my pics of Great Pyramyd of Cheops which I uploaded just now are copyright-free. Moreover, what is the general rule for great monuments and masterpieces? Can everyone shoot photos at them and distribute it freely or not? Moreover, if in the photos are depicted people too (casual commoners, crowd, tourists, the occasional cat... nobody of them the subject or by any mean an important part of the image but only "background") the image could still be distributed freely or need permission by the peoples in it? --Kormoran 16:22, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

The copyright protection generally lasts 70 years after the author's death. So the pyramids are really copyright-free (as is the Eiffel tower, but the problem there is the new lighting design). In some countries, the law explicitly allows to take pictures of (otherwise copyrighted) things shown in publicly accessible places (e.g. Panoramafreiheit in Germany, there is no such article in the French copyright law). I believe that if the people on the image make obviously only a background, there is no need to ask their permission. (IANAL) --Mormegil 21:29, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

(IANAL), but I think you are right, these Images are fine. -guety 01:37, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

In fact, in many cases I think it is alright to publish pictures depicting people, even famous people, as long as they are taken from a public place. This is after all how the paparazzi make their (somewhat dubious) living. Laws other than copyright, such as rights to privacy and defamation of character may come into play, depending on the nature of the picture. Again, the specific laws tend to vary from one country to the next. -- Solipsist 16:08, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the situation with respect to monuments etc. in France was recently made somewhat more complex: the supreme court for such matters (the Court of Cassation) basically said that architects and other artists cannot claim copyright over photographs of buildings and works of art shown in public places provided that these photographs do not show specifically the building or work of art, but a whole scene. Thus, a photo of the Paris night skyline with the lighted Eiffel Tower would be no problem, but a photo singling out the Tower might (I say might because I'm unsure whether their copyright claims actually would hold legal water). Similar jurisprudence holds for pictures of people: persons cannot claim right to their own image if they were shot as part of a crowd appearing in public (as opposed to being singled out in private settings). David.Monniaux 13:04, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Template:cc-by-sa-2.5,2.0,1.0

I've created I new Template for CC-BY-SA that I want to use. I'm not really interested in the different matters of 1.0, 2.0 and 2.5, and want to release all my images according to all three licenses, including upcoming versions. Now, is it legally possible to use it? Väsk 17:15, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

See also Template talk:SelfBSA - Omegatron 17:56, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it's legally possible to release your work under a license that doesn't exist yet. You can release under 1.0, 2.0, and 2.5, but that won't apply to 3.0 whenever it comes out. Annoying, isn't it? dbenbenn | talk 22:39, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

But you can allow anyone to publish derivative work under new licenses that you don't yet know, like the GFDL does. The effect is pretty much the same. -- Duesentrieb 01:47, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Ah! Even though it's painful, it pays to read the actual legal code sometimes. cc-by-sa-2.5 says:

You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform a Derivative Work only under the terms of this License, a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License, or a Creative Commons iCommons license that contains the same License Elements as this License (e.g. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Japan).

Hence, if you release under cc-by-sa-2.5, you automatically release under all future versions! Yay! dbenbenn | talk 03:07, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Nice! The reason that I wanted this license was that on en:Wikipedia:Copyrights it says Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. and I wondered if you could do the same for CC-BY-SA. But if releasing into CC-BY-SA 2.5 automatically means that you release it to upcoming versions (3.0 etc.) that's good news! Väsk 11:11, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

New image versions

I have uploaded a new version of Image:Ngc2392.jpg, but the new version doesn't appear in the history list. The image however is replaced with my version. Is this a known bug? -startaq 19:34, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

Click your browsers reload button, maybe several times needed. Seems to be a small page cache problem. --Denniss 21:12, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

I see your version (13:34, 28. 7. 2005 . . Startaq (1219813 B)) fine, such behaviour is usually caused by some caching, try to reload the page in your browser, or add ?action=purge at the end of the URL. --Mormegil 21:29, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

To bypass your browser's cache, try Shift-Reload or Ctrl-Reload. dbenbenn | talk 22:35, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the help, ?action=purge did the trick. However, my upload is still not listed on my contributions page. -startaq 23:45, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

AFAIK you'll only see newly uploaded images there or if you changed the text belonging to this image. --Denniss 19:26, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

... or manually click on the watch tab at the top of the image page. If it says 'unwatch' then the page is already on your watchlist. -- Solipsist 19:48, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Welcome template

Either I am missing something, or it is just that folks rarely join Commons as their first Wikimedia project, but I was surprised to find there wasn't an existing Template:Welcome. I've just created one (heavily cribbing for the one on en:), but if you can think of some more useful links to offer, please improve it. -- Solipsist 21:27, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

The first message many new users get is {{Please tag images}} (or occasionally {{Please link images}}) which aren't as friendly as the welcome message but the tag/categorize message is important, so if we could refactor welcome to include them that'd be great -- Joolz 18:38, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Commons administrator starting a conflict

Dbenbenn has starte a conflict, and is making things worse all the time. The way he is behaving, is defnitely not like an administrator should act. Can he be stopped? Valuated contributers are being chased away by people like him. -- Quistnix 17:48, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

ehm, he has uploaded a cropped version which is fine. I think everything is cool right now. GerardM 18:28, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Wow. I'm curious what Quistnix is referring to exactly. I'm surprised that user didn't simply address me at my talk page. Anyway, thanks for the support, Gerard. dbenbenn | talk 19:22, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

*If* the lady wants to come back, she'll explain it herself. Both of you obviously lack social skills to understand how upset she is. -- Quistnix 20:33, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Hm, if I followed this correctly, this is what happened:

• User:Noorse created and uploaded Image:Dumper Truck.JPG under CC-by. She has put a small note "2005 cc-by Noors" on the image.
• User:Dbenbenn has uploaded a cropped version of that image, Image:Dumper Truck, cropped.JPG, which does not contain that note. On the image description page it sais This is a cropped version of Image:Dumper Truck.JPG by User:Noorse.
• Noors is upset about this, because she feels she is not propperly attributed. Dbenbenn sees nothing wrong with what he did.

Ok, now my two cents: CC-by grants anyone the right to use and modify the image, the only condition is the attribution of the original creator. I belive what Dbenbenn did is compliant with that license. If the image is under CC-by, she can only ask to have the watermark on the image, it is not required.

The note Noorse does not permit the destruction of this orignial publication, which is on the description page of Image:Dumper Truck.JPG, is a real problem, however: as I read that, this would effectively forbid derivative work - which is not compliant with the CC-by license and of the Commons licensing policy, which required the freedom to create and publish modified versions. To forbid derivative work, CC-by-nd (or CC-by-sa-nd) would be a good license - but not on the commons.

chears -- Duesentrieb 20:55, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Well actually you are wrong. It is allowed to create derivative work. The difference is that she does not allow the original to be replaced by modifications. That is absolutely reasonable. It is not reasonable to have an original picture replaced by a derivative. It is within the license that the author has the right to be credited for her work. By destroying the original this is made impossible. GerardM 22:30, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Oh, the cropped version was uploaded over the original picture? Hm, that seems quite rude to me, but as long as credit is given in some way, it conforms to the license - I don't see how it would make attribution "impossible". It should be noted btw. that no one has a right to have his/her images on the commons. I would not support random deletion/overwriting of images, but it would be legal in any case. -- Duesentrieb 23:05, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

I didn't mean to be rude. It certainly is a judgement call whether to upload a new version with the same title or a different title. In this case, I saw no reason to use a different title. Anyway, if Noorse had asked me not to do that, I certainly wouldn't have. (I also find Gerard's language, "destroying the original", curious. I didn't delete Noorse's image. I modified it. That's kind of the point of the Wiki philosophy, isn't it?) dbenbenn | talk 23:37, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

A text is different from a picture. Besides it is against the rules of attribution. You CANNOT atribute when you delete the original. It is one reason why we should upload the best quality image with the highest resolution; anyone can change a picture and it does require atribution to the original. As to judgment call, propably but if you change original content it is faulty judgment. As to wiki philosophy no it is not. In a wiki we maintain history in Media we do not therefore the result of overwritting is exactly against wiki-philosophy and it is illegal to boot.

For you information it has also greatly upset a great number of people in the nl.wikipedia crowd several among them have decided to forego the priviledge of uploading to Commons because of this tiff. GerardM 09:31, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok now, let me get that streight - did dbenbenn upload the cropped version over the original, thus keeping the history, or did he delete the original and then uploaded the cropped version? While I belive both are compliant with the license, the latter would clearly be against wiki policy.

As to the attribution: Either I or you, Gerard, is confused about what attribution means. To me, it simply means to credit the creator of the original - the CC license does not require the original version to be made available (the GFDL does to some extent, I belive, but i'm not sure). Anyway, the attribution should happen in a way that makes it possible to contact the original author, who could/should have a copy of the original - so it is at least available on request.

What I don't understand is this: what reason, besides removing the watermark, was there for creating the cropped version? While I think that it is legally ok to remove it, it seems rude, and I understand that Noorse does not like it - although I personally don't think watermakrs are a good idea. Anyway, this is getting far out of proportion... who are the great number of people from the nl:wp? Are they really so touchy that thy give up just because of one querrel? Or have there been similar problems before? -- Duesentrieb 10:45, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Attribution means that you give credit to the original contributor. According to the license it is up to the author to decide how this is to be done. Noorse does not allow the removal of the original. As to the deletions (there have been multiple. The original was overwritten by two persons including dbenbenn for no other reason that the removal of the watermark.

As to Commons there are people on nl who do not contribute to Commons for various reasons, the lack of localisation is one important factor. One of these is even a steward. There is a chance that Noorse may continue uploading, if she does it is because I champion her cause. I genuinly want Commons to be a success that is why I work on a localisation project for Commons and why I take a stand for certain issues. People can be touchy and it is important to heed these warnings. GerardM 11:22, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Hm, i'm not sure it is up to the author how credit is to be given. Here is a full quote of the relevant section of CC-by-2.0 section 4b for your convenience, emphasis mine:

If you distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work or any Derivative Works or Collective Works, You must keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and give the Original Author credit reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing by conveying the name (or pseudonym if applicable) of the Original Author if supplied; the title of the Work if supplied; to the extent reasonably practicable, the Uniform Resource Identifier, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work; and in the case of a Derivative Work, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Derivative Work (e.g., "French translation of the Work by Original Author," or "Screenplay based on original Work by Original Author"). Such credit may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such credit will appear where any other comparable authorship credit appears and in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit.

make of the legalese what you will... -- Duesentrieb 11:53, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

To answer Duesentrieb's question, "did dbenbenn upload the cropped version over the original, thus keeping the history, or did he delete the original and then uploaded the cropped version?" See the log. I did upload the cropped version over the original at Image:Dumper Truck.JPG, then Gerard deleted the entire image page saying "this is vandalism". (I admit the image was protected when I modified it. If I had known that, I wouldn't have.)

Hence, it's curious that Gerard asserts "You CANNOT atribute when you delete the original." Also, I find it strange that Gerard thinks "In a wiki we maintain history in Media we do not": perhaps he has never noticed the "File history" section that appears on every image description page?

To answer Duesentrieb's other question, "what reason, besides removing the watermark, was there for creating the cropped version?" That was the only reason. I wanted to make a version that would be usable by Wikipedia, for example at sv:Dumper. dbenbenn | talk 14:26, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I think issues are becoming confused. If the image was uploaded to the same location and then the old version was deleted, then yes the history wouldn't be maintained. The previous image wasn't deleted when the new version was uploaded, so the history was maintained. I think there was a little confusion (above) over what happened. -- Joolz 14:37, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

By uploading over an existing image the previous version is not available anymore. It is to all intends and purposes deleted. The fact that there is an indication that something went before is irrelevant. You may find it strange but the legalese is clear to me; it is reasonable that you leave the original work in tact when you have to give credit to the original author. GerardM 21:05, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Uhm, the previous version *is* available, in the file history, so I don't think you can say that it's deleted :) -- Joolz 23:02, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Of course, the previous versions are available if not deleted by an admin. --Avatar 01:23, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm just going to jump into this debate and say that Quistnix is being a crybaby. Here are some guidelines:

1. Don't like people modifying your work? Then wikimedia is not for you.
2. Want your photos to be unmodifiable and forever bear your name? Then wikimedia is not for you.

My two cents. --Quasipalm 14:54, 5 August 2005 (UTC)