Commons:Village pump/Archive/2008/02

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Which countries laws do we choose not to offend?

In light of User:Rocket000's examples from above:

"BTW, I thought I should point out, we already allow material that is against local laws outside the U.S. For example,

Nazi propaganda or Holocaust denial related images are banned in Germany.

Tienanmen Square protests, Tibetan and Taiwan independence, and democracy promoting material (and more!) in China (I'm mean, they blocked Google).

Pictures of Mohammad and tons of other stuff in Iran and other Middle Eastern countries (they blocked Wikipedia in the past).

Criticism of the Thai royal family or Buddhism in Thailand.

"Terrorist" sympathizing in Israel.

Tons of stuff in North Korea...

Basically, many of our images aren't free at all in certain countries (not even under "fair-use"). Just like with photos of people, official insignia, trademarks, etc., I think it should be users' responsibility to know their country's laws and use our images accordingly. Rocket000 07:15, 9 January 2008 (UTC)"

Why do we think this image, Commons:Featured picture candidates/Image:Twenty pounds sterling banknote holograms.jpg, should be deleted? Does UK law still have some sway in ex-colonies ;-) --Tony Wills 10:42, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Tony. You got why I brought up the censorship thing. The image you mentioned is completely not-free in the U.K. (not a potential copyright issue, but an all-out illegal act). But like you said, since our severs are in the U.S., it's not a legal issue, but an offense issue. The same thing with what I was taking about with "photographer's rights". It's not a legal issue, but a question of whether or not we respect those photographers. We can not cater to all these countries. Image what we would have to delete if we respected North Korea's and Iran's laws. Rocket000 10:55, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Stop confounding copyright and other laws. When it comes to copyright, we do honor North Korean or Iranian laws for North Korean or Iranian works. Or at least, we try to. Lupo 11:04, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not confounding them - I'm saying, what's the difference? The rationale for respecting copyright in other countries is to make sure are images are free for everyone. We would have to respect censorship laws too if that was our goal. Legally it's the same. Both place restrictions on images. Both limit or outlaw free-use. Why treat it differently? Because one's a policy and one's not? Rocket000 11:23, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

The difference is simply that intellectual property laws are internationally regulated, and censorship laws aren't. There are several cases where courts of one country did consider the copyright laws of another country in copyright disputes, and rights holders can sue in other countries. I have yet to see a single "free speech" case where one country decided something was not allowed based on the (censorship) law of another country, or a single case where someone sued in a foreign country based on censorship laws of his own country (he'd be laughed out of court, I guess). As to patents and trademarks, we generally do ignore those based on our licensing resolution, which encourages us to look only at copyright, and because neither patent nor trademark issues are typically of any concern for us. In cases where there is a direct complaint, we do act all the same. An example was the removal of "Hilti" as a generic term for a heavy power drill at en-WP. That was even a textual removal! (Though that edit was a bit nonsensical, as it only removed it from the "Germany" section, but left it in the "Turkey" section. It's also mentioned in List of non-English generic and genericized trademarks (twice, even). :-) Lupo 12:15, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Off-topic: that "Hilti" edit was even sillier than I thought. It's been mentioned all the time at de:Liste der Begriffsmonopole! (See e.g. the version from Aug 15, 2006, before the removal by Brad at en-WP.) :-) Lupo 12:26, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, fair enough. But in the specific case stated above, the U.S. does not uphold other countries' copyright laws. Rocket000 12:40, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

"I have yet to see a single "free speech" case where one country decided something was not allowed based on the (censorship) law of another country"

Well here you go: LICRA v. Yahoo!. Rama 17:18, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Not at all Tony. The criminal offence rationale is not actually needed. Regardless of the criminal position, the UK Government claims copyright on images of UK currency, and it's inconceivable that such UK copyright would not be enforceable before a US court. In this example it actually doesn't matter where the image was taken: copyright-infringing banknote images can't be hosted here. --MichaelMaggs 10:59, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, if it's copyrighted, then that's something else, but the question (in general) should be discussed as some do think we should delete illegal (not-copyright related) material even if it's ok in the U.S. BTW, that image would not be allowed with my proposal. Rocket000 11:32, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, if it was a copyright problem why was that not the reason cited in the deletion log? But ok, is there a special copyright for banknotes, or does that right expire as per normal ... are 100 year old UK notes ok?

Do we only bend to 'foreign' laws that might be enforced in the US? Does this answer Rocket000's question about the difference between other country's copyright laws and other laws ... the connection is that, via international copyright treaties, the US agrees to uphold other countries copyright?, similarly other foreign laws (eg counterfeiting) would be enforceable in the US ? --Tony Wills 12:00, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if there are any special provisions for old banknotes in the UK, I'd have to look it up, but my guess is that a 100-year old note would be fine. On criminal liability I agree that we don't as a general rule police activities that may be criminal in one country but not in the US. A copyright justification for my deletion might have been better.

On your other point, we respect other countries' copyright laws as best we can - and not only those copyright laws that we think might be agreed with by a US court. Guessing as to whether and under what circumstances a US court would be prepared to uphold a particular foreign copyright law would be a completely impossible task. --MichaelMaggs 12:37, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

But we have case law (Bridgeman) to go by for my proposal. We know the U.S. doesn't uphold these specific copyrights, at least as much as we know about any other U.S. ruling. Rocket000 12:51, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) We don't know very much, actually. Bridgeman tells us that the New York District Court had two tries at the issue, decided in a first decision that UK law should prevail (but got that law wrong); then in a second decision decided that US law should prevail. That helps us very little as it's not a Federal Court decision and has little or no value as precedent in the Federal courts so far as these 'conflict of law' issues are concerned. In any event, there is no reason to suppose a US court would on the basis of Bridgeman alone ignore the 'simple photograph' protection rules which exist in many European countries. They are a distinct species of copyright which has no direct parallel in either US or in UK law. For Norwegian photos it's not simply a case of the US preferring a different level of originality, as in Bridegeman. I agree with Lupo that although existing policy is by no means perfect it's as good as we can reasonably make it (in this area, anyway). I wouldn't favour a policy change that would require us to be conflict-of-laws specialists as well as copyright specialists. --MichaelMaggs 13:57, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

*Slightly off-topic tangent*

And Bridgeman applies only in the U.S. Even if an image would be fine in the U.S. under that ruling, if that image is a non-U.S. work and copyrighted in its non-U.S. source country, we don't host it. See the discussion above. Lupo 13:11, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I know! :) I'm responding to MichaelMaggs who said it's impossible to know what the U.S. would do. And didn't you notice I'm currently taking part in the discussion above? :-) Please avoid the "because it's policy" argument. I'm well aware of that, I want to discuss why it's policy. lol. Rocket000 13:23, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Fair 'nuff. :-) I thought I had already hinted in the discussion above at the reason for our current "PD in the U.S. and in the source country". Which of the other five possibilities (of the six I've shown) do you think might work better? Or do you have a seventh option? One that is workable, simple enough to apply, broad enough to find consensus, yet narrow enough so as not to get us into trouble big time, and useful for a wide variety of local projects, not just U.S.-centric en-WP? There appears to be consensus that the current rule fits these criteria, and therefore it is our policy. Lupo 13:40, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, my option would be what I've been trying to explain here. It's not really a whole brand new policy - just a little redefining. Consensus has seem to be against the specific rule I'm talking about. Actually, it's more of a long-standing practice instead of a policy. (I couldn't find any real community debate about it.) I'm not talking about what's ok for the U.S. but the majority of countries. To sum up my whole view on the way things should be:

"As long as the media is free, as defined by Commons:Licensing, to the majority of the global population including the U.S. (for legal reasons), it shall be allowed." Rocket000 13:53, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Difficult to apply, I should say. Are you going to consider for each image the copyright laws of all countries, and then sum up their population to figure out whether you have a majority? And you might find that suddenly Commons would be ruled by a combination of Chinese, Russian, and Indian copyright law. :-) Even if you just went for a majority of countries, you might get into trouble. About half the world still uses 50 years p.m.a. By your proposal, that would become the main criterion. But in the largest WikiMedia projects, we couldn't use such images, as these projects operate under U.S. law or 70 years p.m.a. laws. Lupo 14:02, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

If it's allowed the majority of Wikimedia projects then. Bigger sites get more weight. This would work if we could make it more complicated somehow. Rocket000 14:05, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

"This would work if we could make it more complicated somehow" ... even more complicated? Really? Already looking at the laws of the U.S. and the source country is difficult. Now you add to the mix the German, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, and maybe other laws. If it ever comes to that, I'll stop caring. Lupo 14:10, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, c'mon. All we got to do is check if the image is allowed on each project based on either the project's policies or local laws. Count up all the projects that allow the image while giving each one a weighted factor, based on the amount of users, to determine if they hold the majority. If they do we keep it, if not we delete. How hard can that be? Rocket000 14:15, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I'm just joking here. But seriously, I still don't think I expressed my point clearly enough based on these responses, but I tried. Oh well. Rocket000 14:30, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict, and I'm glad to see you were joking, but let me point out the following all the same:) How do you count number of users? Accounts? Active contributors? Do IPs counts? Minimum number of contributions? Are readers also users? How to count those? What when the numbers change (and they do)? What policy does the French Wikisource have? (Hint: it was self-contradictory last time I looked.) And there goes Category:Arthur Dove, assuming that the German, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese projects together outweigh the purely English ones. (Artist died 1946, works copyrighted in many countries for 70 years after the artist's death.) Lupo 14:34, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't know! Sorry, I should have been quicker with the "I'm joking" part. :) Rocket000 14:39, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

The first obvious step is to host the servers in Afghanistan, so we don't have to worry about strange US laws, ... then go for the more complicated approach :-) --Tony Wills 22:30, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, once Wikimedia controls all the world's information, maybe we can start making our own laws. That way our policy would simply be "follow The Law". Or maybe in the future we can move our servers to the moon and/or Mars... hmmm.. that's a idea for P2P/file-sharing sites. Better than Sealand, anyway. :) Rocket000 03:57, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Way off topic, but won't the moon be covered by US laws after the unopposed landing of Apollo 11, and can we be sure that it is not covered by an extra territoriality clause in French or Italian law? We need to know! ClemRutter 10:26, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

(lol. Off-topic can be fun.) That's why the Wikimedia Foundation needs all our donations—so we can put the fist man on Mars and proudly plant our own flag. The U.S. may own the moon, but there plenty of other rocks to use. I wonder if we would respect other intelligent life forms' equivalent of copyright. Would PD-art works need to be PD in the U.S. and the source planet? Although, I'm sure if they are more advanced than us, there wouldn't be any equivalent. ;) Rocket000 07:11, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

w:Outer Space Treaty ;) -- Bryan (talk to me) 14:58, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Tabs not working

Hope this is the right place. The tabs at the top of the pages, such as "find categories", "what links here", "Gallery", etc., are not working for me. They were working fine a couple of weeks ago, or even as soon as a little over a week ago. At first, I thought it was a temp glich, but it happens all the time now. The tabs bring me to a "500" error page. Is it my settings, a bug, or some code I can use to make them work again? TIA. GeeAlice 23:38, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the tool server is having problems -- all the tools are down. Give it a couple days; this happens once in awhile. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 01:15, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

For the record, still no joy. R. Baley 01:47, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but they're still not working. Brings me to a 500 server error. It's really affecting my work. Mostly because it is frustrating, and I do not know all the ins-and-outs...yet. I see you say "give it a couple of days", but this has been happening, for me, about 2 weeks now. Grrr. GeeAlice 23:58, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

While I'm getting the same 500 error, it's only been happening to me since the start of this week. It may be possible that you are running into additional errors? --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 00:55, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

January 30

popups

Does this project have popups like the enwikipediaAdam.J.W.C. 12:02, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, just add this to your .js page:

document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="'
            + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/popups.js'
            + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');

→Яocket°°° 10:53, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Derivative

Is Image:Current event clock.svg copyrightable? IMHO it is, and if so, even if it was created from scratch it was still based (as the description attests) on Image:Current event marker.svg and therefore has the same copyright status as the latter. Yonatan ^talk 17:46, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

No, the only "copyrightable" thing in that image is the Wikinews logo. The rest is common property and can be licensed under any license. Vipersnake151 20:28, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Commons in other languages

Can I simply create a page for an Afrikaans Commons front page, or are there certain rules/guidelines one has to abide by? Are any other pages translated as a rule? As you can see, I have no idea how this would work, so if anyone can point me in the right direction, I'd really appreciate it. Anrie 19:36, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

It seems that you just take main page and translate all English to Afrikaans while preserving all template calls, etc. Then save it under name "Main Page" translated to Afrikaans, and add this page to template:Lang-mp list. --Jarekt 20:20, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

wallpaper

what happen to this Category:Computer wallpaper category?, there was so many pics there, and half of them is missing?? Frizabela^spk2me 23:10, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Check out Category:Commons featured desktop backgrounds. Rocket000 23:19, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Copyright violations

I've recently been informed that the images from Descent of Man are subject to copyright and have requested they be deleted. However, it looks like a lot more images have been uploaded under the same assumption ('book is out of copyright, therefore scans of it are out of copyright'). Apparently this is not the case, and the scans from Darwin Online are definitely not eligible to be uploaded here (they are non-commercial). Try searching for 'Darwin-online' and you'll see what I mean. This is probably very widespread, and I think we need some sort of crackdown on it. At minimum we need to find all images from Darwin Online and delete them. But I hardly think this is going to be a one off case. Richard001 23:54, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Just because someone claims copyright on the images, it doesn't mean that party is right. It is quite improbable that anything from a book printed in 1871 is still copyrighted. Scans that someone other than the uploader made (for example those from Darwin online), should be ok as well, as they generally do not attract new copyright. That being said: what is the reasoning behind the copyright claim? --rimshot^talk 00:17, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's what the director of the project tells me. His PhD isn't in law, but I doubt he's making it up. A fellow Wikipedian told me this was the case prior to this as well. Richard001 02:44, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the director is making anything up. To have the images deleted, though, it would be useful to be able to follow the reasoning. We could then go over to deciding which images will have to go.

To put the deletion discussion in a more appropriate place, I have opened a regular deletion request. Feel free to add any images from Darwin Online that I might have forgotten. Best regards, --rimshot^talk 03:04, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

There are loads of them... Searching for Darwin-online should locate them all, I hope. I'll list the rest at the deletion request page. Richard001 07:06, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

February 2

Stillman Wiki Wall Photo Contest

Hi folks, I just announced the Stillman Wiki Wall contest on Foundation-l and Commons-l. Wanted to share the news here. Visit http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stillman_Wiki_Wall_Photo_Contest for more details.

Thanks, Jay Walsh
JayWalsh 00:15, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Alhambra

I am wondering why the name Alhambra is used for many movie theatres.

Thanks,

Stefan

Please try en:Wikipedia:Reference desk. --EugeneZelenko 15:55, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

February 3

Which countries laws do we choose not to offend?

In light of User:Rocket000's examples from above:

"BTW, I thought I should point out, we already allow material that is against local laws outside the U.S. For example,

Nazi propaganda or Holocaust denial related images are banned in Germany.

Tienanmen Square protests, Tibetan and Taiwan independence, and democracy promoting material (and more!) in China (I'm mean, they blocked Google).

Pictures of Mohammad and tons of other stuff in Iran and other Middle Eastern countries (they blocked Wikipedia in the past).

Criticism of the Thai royal family or Buddhism in Thailand.

"Terrorist" sympathizing in Israel.

Tons of stuff in North Korea...

Basically, many of our images aren't free at all in certain countries (not even under "fair-use"). Just like with photos of people, official insignia, trademarks, etc., I think it should be users' responsibility to know their country's laws and use our images accordingly. Rocket000 07:15, 9 January 2008 (UTC)"

Why do we think this image, Commons:Featured picture candidates/Image:Twenty pounds sterling banknote holograms.jpg, should be deleted? Does UK law still have some sway in ex-colonies ;-) --Tony Wills 10:42, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Tony. You got why I brought up the censorship thing. The image you mentioned is completely not-free in the U.K. (not a potential copyright issue, but an all-out illegal act). But like you said, since our severs are in the U.S., it's not a legal issue, but an offense issue. The same thing with what I was taking about with "photographer's rights". It's not a legal issue, but a question of whether or not we respect those photographers. We can not cater to all these countries. Image what we would have to delete if we respected North Korea's and Iran's laws. Rocket000 10:55, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Stop confounding copyright and other laws. When it comes to copyright, we do honor North Korean or Iranian laws for North Korean or Iranian works. Or at least, we try to. Lupo 11:04, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not confounding them - I'm saying, what's the difference? The rationale for respecting copyright in other countries is to make sure are images are free for everyone. We would have to respect censorship laws too if that was our goal. Legally it's the same. Both place restrictions on images. Both limit or outlaw free-use. Why treat it differently? Because one's a policy and one's not? Rocket000 11:23, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

The difference is simply that intellectual property laws are internationally regulated, and censorship laws aren't. There are several cases where courts of one country did consider the copyright laws of another country in copyright disputes, and rights holders can sue in other countries. I have yet to see a single "free speech" case where one country decided something was not allowed based on the (censorship) law of another country, or a single case where someone sued in a foreign country based on censorship laws of his own country (he'd be laughed out of court, I guess). As to patents and trademarks, we generally do ignore those based on our licensing resolution, which encourages us to look only at copyright, and because neither patent nor trademark issues are typically of any concern for us. In cases where there is a direct complaint, we do act all the same. An example was the removal of "Hilti" as a generic term for a heavy power drill at en-WP. That was even a textual removal! (Though that edit was a bit nonsensical, as it only removed it from the "Germany" section, but left it in the "Turkey" section. It's also mentioned in List of non-English generic and genericized trademarks (twice, even). :-) Lupo 12:15, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Off-topic: that "Hilti" edit was even sillier than I thought. It's been mentioned all the time at de:Liste der Begriffsmonopole! (See e.g. the version from Aug 15, 2006, before the removal by Brad at en-WP.) :-) Lupo 12:26, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, fair enough. But in the specific case stated above, the U.S. does not uphold other countries' copyright laws. Rocket000 12:40, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

"I have yet to see a single "free speech" case where one country decided something was not allowed based on the (censorship) law of another country"

Well here you go: LICRA v. Yahoo!. Rama 17:18, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Not at all Tony. The criminal offence rationale is not actually needed. Regardless of the criminal position, the UK Government claims copyright on images of UK currency, and it's inconceivable that such UK copyright would not be enforceable before a US court. In this example it actually doesn't matter where the image was taken: copyright-infringing banknote images can't be hosted here. --MichaelMaggs 10:59, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, if it's copyrighted, then that's something else, but the question (in general) should be discussed as some do think we should delete illegal (not-copyright related) material even if it's ok in the U.S. BTW, that image would not be allowed with my proposal. Rocket000 11:32, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, if it was a copyright problem why was that not the reason cited in the deletion log? But ok, is there a special copyright for banknotes, or does that right expire as per normal ... are 100 year old UK notes ok?

Do we only bend to 'foreign' laws that might be enforced in the US? Does this answer Rocket000's question about the difference between other country's copyright laws and other laws ... the connection is that, via international copyright treaties, the US agrees to uphold other countries copyright?, similarly other foreign laws (eg counterfeiting) would be enforceable in the US ? --Tony Wills 12:00, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if there are any special provisions for old banknotes in the UK, I'd have to look it up, but my guess is that a 100-year old note would be fine. On criminal liability I agree that we don't as a general rule police activities that may be criminal in one country but not in the US. A copyright justification for my deletion might have been better.

On your other point, we respect other countries' copyright laws as best we can - and not only those copyright laws that we think might be agreed with by a US court. Guessing as to whether and under what circumstances a US court would be prepared to uphold a particular foreign copyright law would be a completely impossible task. --MichaelMaggs 12:37, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

But we have case law (Bridgeman) to go by for my proposal. We know the U.S. doesn't uphold these specific copyrights, at least as much as we know about any other U.S. ruling. Rocket000 12:51, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) We don't know very much, actually. Bridgeman tells us that the New York District Court had two tries at the issue, decided in a first decision that UK law should prevail (but got that law wrong); then in a second decision decided that US law should prevail. That helps us very little as it's not a Federal Court decision and has little or no value as precedent in the Federal courts so far as these 'conflict of law' issues are concerned. In any event, there is no reason to suppose a US court would on the basis of Bridgeman alone ignore the 'simple photograph' protection rules which exist in many European countries. They are a distinct species of copyright which has no direct parallel in either US or in UK law. For Norwegian photos it's not simply a case of the US preferring a different level of originality, as in Bridegeman. I agree with Lupo that although existing policy is by no means perfect it's as good as we can reasonably make it (in this area, anyway). I wouldn't favour a policy change that would require us to be conflict-of-laws specialists as well as copyright specialists. --MichaelMaggs 13:57, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

*Slightly off-topic tangent*

And Bridgeman applies only in the U.S. Even if an image would be fine in the U.S. under that ruling, if that image is a non-U.S. work and copyrighted in its non-U.S. source country, we don't host it. See the discussion above. Lupo 13:11, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I know! :) I'm responding to MichaelMaggs who said it's impossible to know what the U.S. would do. And didn't you notice I'm currently taking part in the discussion above? :-) Please avoid the "because it's policy" argument. I'm well aware of that, I want to discuss why it's policy. lol. Rocket000 13:23, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Fair 'nuff. :-) I thought I had already hinted in the discussion above at the reason for our current "PD in the U.S. and in the source country". Which of the other five possibilities (of the six I've shown) do you think might work better? Or do you have a seventh option? One that is workable, simple enough to apply, broad enough to find consensus, yet narrow enough so as not to get us into trouble big time, and useful for a wide variety of local projects, not just U.S.-centric en-WP? There appears to be consensus that the current rule fits these criteria, and therefore it is our policy. Lupo 13:40, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, my option would be what I've been trying to explain here. It's not really a whole brand new policy - just a little redefining. Consensus has seem to be against the specific rule I'm talking about. Actually, it's more of a long-standing practice instead of a policy. (I couldn't find any real community debate about it.) I'm not talking about what's ok for the U.S. but the majority of countries. To sum up my whole view on the way things should be:

"As long as the media is free, as defined by Commons:Licensing, to the majority of the global population including the U.S. (for legal reasons), it shall be allowed." Rocket000 13:53, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Difficult to apply, I should say. Are you going to consider for each image the copyright laws of all countries, and then sum up their population to figure out whether you have a majority? And you might find that suddenly Commons would be ruled by a combination of Chinese, Russian, and Indian copyright law. :-) Even if you just went for a majority of countries, you might get into trouble. About half the world still uses 50 years p.m.a. By your proposal, that would become the main criterion. But in the largest WikiMedia projects, we couldn't use such images, as these projects operate under U.S. law or 70 years p.m.a. laws. Lupo 14:02, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

If it's allowed the majority of Wikimedia projects then. Bigger sites get more weight. This would work if we could make it more complicated somehow. Rocket000 14:05, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

"This would work if we could make it more complicated somehow" ... even more complicated? Really? Already looking at the laws of the U.S. and the source country is difficult. Now you add to the mix the German, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, and maybe other laws. If it ever comes to that, I'll stop caring. Lupo 14:10, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, c'mon. All we got to do is check if the image is allowed on each project based on either the project's policies or local laws. Count up all the projects that allow the image while giving each one a weighted factor, based on the amount of users, to determine if they hold the majority. If they do we keep it, if not we delete. How hard can that be? Rocket000 14:15, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I'm just joking here. But seriously, I still don't think I expressed my point clearly enough based on these responses, but I tried. Oh well. Rocket000 14:30, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict, and I'm glad to see you were joking, but let me point out the following all the same:) How do you count number of users? Accounts? Active contributors? Do IPs counts? Minimum number of contributions? Are readers also users? How to count those? What when the numbers change (and they do)? What policy does the French Wikisource have? (Hint: it was self-contradictory last time I looked.) And there goes Category:Arthur Dove, assuming that the German, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese projects together outweigh the purely English ones. (Artist died 1946, works copyrighted in many countries for 70 years after the artist's death.) Lupo 14:34, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't know! Sorry, I should have been quicker with the "I'm joking" part. :) Rocket000 14:39, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

The first obvious step is to host the servers in Afghanistan, so we don't have to worry about strange US laws, ... then go for the more complicated approach :-) --Tony Wills 22:30, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, once Wikimedia controls all the world's information, maybe we can start making our own laws. That way our policy would simply be "follow The Law". Or maybe in the future we can move our servers to the moon and/or Mars... hmmm.. that's a idea for P2P/file-sharing sites. Better than Sealand, anyway. :) Rocket000 03:57, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Way off topic, but won't the moon be covered by US laws after the unopposed landing of Apollo 11, and can we be sure that it is not covered by an extra territoriality clause in French or Italian law? We need to know! ClemRutter 10:26, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

(lol. Off-topic can be fun.) That's why the Wikimedia Foundation needs all our donations—so we can put the fist man on Mars and proudly plant our own flag. The U.S. may own the moon, but there plenty of other rocks to use. I wonder if we would respect other intelligent life forms' equivalent of copyright. Would PD-art works need to be PD in the U.S. and the source planet? Although, I'm sure if they are more advanced than us, there wouldn't be any equivalent. ;) Rocket000 07:11, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

w:Outer Space Treaty ;) -- Bryan (talk to me) 14:58, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Tabs not working

Hope this is the right place. The tabs at the top of the pages, such as "find categories", "what links here", "Gallery", etc., are not working for me. They were working fine a couple of weeks ago, or even as soon as a little over a week ago. At first, I thought it was a temp glich, but it happens all the time now. The tabs bring me to a "500" error page. Is it my settings, a bug, or some code I can use to make them work again? TIA. GeeAlice 23:38, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the tool server is having problems -- all the tools are down. Give it a couple days; this happens once in awhile. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 01:15, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

For the record, still no joy. R. Baley 01:47, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but they're still not working. Brings me to a 500 server error. It's really affecting my work. Mostly because it is frustrating, and I do not know all the ins-and-outs...yet. I see you say "give it a couple of days", but this has been happening, for me, about 2 weeks now. Grrr. GeeAlice 23:58, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

While I'm getting the same 500 error, it's only been happening to me since the start of this week. It may be possible that you are running into additional errors? --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 00:55, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

January 30

Move/Rename function in Commons

Hi, The images Image:Bridge_over_Hanmer_River.jpg and Image:Hanmer_River.jpg both actually depict the Waiau River (one of three rivers with that name in New Zealand).

I know the area well, and the vantage point for both photographs is the hairpin bend on Highway 7a north of the bridge - see this map. The Hanmer river is the small tributary which enters the Waiau immediately north of the vantage point (and which follows Medway Road). Therefore, both images should be renamed, but I can't see a mechanism for that on commons. Dramatic 08:49, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

there is no simple way to rename. download them to your computer, upload them again with the new name, and tag the old versions with the {{Duplicate}} tag.---- Fernando Estel ☆ · 星 ^{(Talk: here- es- en)} 10:54, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, check out Commons:MediaMoveBot/CheckPage ~Kylu (u|t) 10:21, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

popups

Does this project have popups like the enwikipediaAdam.J.W.C. 12:02, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, just add this to your .js page:

document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="'
            + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/popups.js'
            + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');

→Яocket°°° 10:53, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Derivative

Is Image:Current event clock.svg copyrightable? IMHO it is, and if so, even if it was created from scratch it was still based (as the description attests) on Image:Current event marker.svg and therefore has the same copyright status as the latter. Yonatan ^talk 17:46, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

No, the only "copyrightable" thing in that image is the Wikinews logo. The rest is common property and can be licensed under any license. Vipersnake151 20:28, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Commons in other languages

Can I simply create a page for an Afrikaans Commons front page, or are there certain rules/guidelines one has to abide by? Are any other pages translated as a rule? As you can see, I have no idea how this would work, so if anyone can point me in the right direction, I'd really appreciate it. Anrie 19:36, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

It seems that you just take main page and translate all English to Afrikaans while preserving all template calls, etc. Then save it under name "Main Page" translated to Afrikaans, and add this page to template:Lang-mp list. --Jarekt 20:20, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

wallpaper

what happen to this Category:Computer wallpaper category?, there was so many pics there, and half of them is missing?? Frizabela^spk2me 23:10, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Check out Category:Commons featured desktop backgrounds. Rocket000 23:19, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Copyright violations

I've recently been informed that the images from Descent of Man are subject to copyright and have requested they be deleted. However, it looks like a lot more images have been uploaded under the same assumption ('book is out of copyright, therefore scans of it are out of copyright'). Apparently this is not the case, and the scans from Darwin Online are definitely not eligible to be uploaded here (they are non-commercial). Try searching for 'Darwin-online' and you'll see what I mean. This is probably very widespread, and I think we need some sort of crackdown on it. At minimum we need to find all images from Darwin Online and delete them. But I hardly think this is going to be a one off case. Richard001 23:54, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Just because someone claims copyright on the images, it doesn't mean that party is right. It is quite improbable that anything from a book printed in 1871 is still copyrighted. Scans that someone other than the uploader made (for example those from Darwin online), should be ok as well, as they generally do not attract new copyright. That being said: what is the reasoning behind the copyright claim? --rimshot^talk 00:17, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's what the director of the project tells me. His PhD isn't in law, but I doubt he's making it up. A fellow Wikipedian told me this was the case prior to this as well. Richard001 02:44, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the director is making anything up. To have the images deleted, though, it would be useful to be able to follow the reasoning. We could then go over to deciding which images will have to go.

To put the deletion discussion in a more appropriate place, I have opened a regular deletion request. Feel free to add any images from Darwin Online that I might have forgotten. Best regards, --rimshot^talk 03:04, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

There are loads of them... Searching for Darwin-online should locate them all, I hope. I'll list the rest at the deletion request page. Richard001 07:06, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

February 2

Stillman Wiki Wall Photo Contest

Hi folks, I just announced the Stillman Wiki Wall contest on Foundation-l and Commons-l. Wanted to share the news here. Visit http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stillman_Wiki_Wall_Photo_Contest for more details.

Thanks, Jay Walsh
JayWalsh 00:15, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Alhambra

I am wondering why the name Alhambra is used for many movie theatres.

Thanks,

Stefan

Please try en:Wikipedia:Reference desk. --EugeneZelenko 15:55, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

February 3

Derivative work from video game?

What do you think of that picture? Screenshot of a video game? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 10:02, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Certainly not the uploader's own work. --MichaelMaggs 10:14, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Going by the comments and tags on flickr, this is a still from the movie 300 with the flickr user photoshopped in. It is probably unencyclopedic unless you count it as a showcase for photoshopping. However, it is definitely a copyvio. What might be the source image is used under fair use on EnWP. --rimshot^talk 10:28, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Definitely a copyvio. (deleted) →Яocket°°° 17:12, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

thumbnail problem

I moved Image:Otaru-overview.JPG here from the Japanese Wikipedia yesterday. The thumbnail on the image page is empty. The smaller thumbnail in Category:Otaru, Hokkaido does work. Arthena 11:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

It's working on my computer look at this thumbnail like.--OsamaK 12:10, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

It works for me now as well. Arthena 12:16, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Puma

I'm having prolems with the subcategories of Puma showing up on the page. Jaguarundi has been moved to the genus. I copied a file with the subcategories showing and added to genus, but doesn't seem to translate.....can anyone help?......Pvmoutside 14:45, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Puma is an empty gallery, while Category:Puma is a category that cointains two genera. What effect is it that you wanted to achieve? --rimshot^talk 14:55, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

PHIL image templat-ization

I came across a re-formatting/categorization job for folks, if anyone is interested: We have about 600 images from the PHIL (an image collection at the CDC). It'd be nice if there was a template for them, which linked to the ID search page (http://phil.cdc.gov/phil/imageidsearch.asp ) and made the links back consistent (right now they are pretty varied, as you can see: linksearch. Maybe we could use the name {{US-CDC-PHIL}}. -- 75.215.136.13 (really, w:en:User:JesseW/not logged in) 09:47, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

{{CDC-PHIL}} already excists here. --GeorgHH • talk   10:03, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Great, I'm glad to hear it. Now we just need to go through that linksearch page and make sure all the links there use the template... I've done some, only ~500 to go... JesseW 03:17, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Legal check

Before I may upload other pictures of the same kind I prefer checking and asking everyone if I correctly understood the authorization of use for that picture. Regards. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 17:32, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Good resource. Rocket000 01:59, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it isn't fine. There needs to be explicit permission concerning derivatives. I believe these images aren't allowed, though I may be thinking of the EU website. --Tom (talk - email) 04:34, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I didn't see where it said that... Rocket000 06:04, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

It only mentions reproduction. With reproduction is in such cases generally meant that the image can be used without charge in some work. It does not say that you are free to modify the image. Also an explicit permission regarding commercial use is missing. -- Bryan (talk to me) 13:41, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

You're actually right, those 2 informations are not mentionned. But can we consider them implicit? Should we contact the EU Commission website to ask them? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 18:52, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Why do assume that the EU legal notice for their website (1995 - 2008) applied to an image from 1953 that you found on some other website? I don't see the connection. The EU commission's legal notice doesn't say it applied to all their materials, does it? At the top it says clearly "The information on this site..."; there's no mention at all of other information. Lupo 23:29, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Well the picture is labelled © European Commission, Brussels so I guessed it was the same case... And their notice says "save where otherwise stated" so I thought the picture would have such a statement in that case. I think I should send an e-mail to ask them directly. It will save us some useless talks! I'll do it when I have enough time (next Monday or Tuesday). If you want, we can delete it and we will restore it later if I have a confirmation of the authorization. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 10:43, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

 Comment I've sent an e-mail to the European Commission webmasters. I'm waiting for an answer. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 22:55, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Also, any confirmation from them must clearly state in some way or another that anyone can use the image for any reason at any time, and do anything they want to it. It isn't simply enough to ask for permission for this site to use the image. Lastly, if you do get an email reply from them, be sure to forward it to OTRS (permissions-commons at wikimedia.org). Thanks. --Tom (talk - email) 01:07, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes I'm aware of that. I'll see what they'll answer (IF they answer!). Until then I think we can delete the picture. We'll restore it later if we have the permission. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 09:54, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Press conference ECSC 1953 Esch-sur-Alzette.jpg --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 11:51, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Image page message standardization

I though perhaps the messages on all image pages could be some sort of standardized. I've created the template Template:Image message box as a first idea. What do you think? _→AzaToth 17:42, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Whoa, that's a pretty huge proposal there. :) It reminds me of en:WP:AMBOX. It's not bad, but I'm not sure about the different size side-bars and I kinda like our traditional look (vs. WP). I am totally for standardization, though. Rocket000 01:40, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Looks fine for me. --GeorgHH • talk   16:58, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

And while we're busy changing the license templates, it's good opportunity to fully implement Commons:Tag categories. -- Bryan (talk to me) 17:45, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I like it, too. Samulili 20:05, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Looks very interesting.

I would like to see examples for the FP/QI templates, and what about custom user templates? pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:26, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

January 31

Gallery

Hi I would like to find out what is wrong with the personal gallery, I hasn't worked for a while. Also how do I nominate a pic for peer review without making a fool out of myselfAdam.J.W.C. 05:39, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Personal galleries aren't appropriate for the mainspace just like personal articles aren't ok on Wikipedia. They're not very helpful to users and others can't really contribute (also, COM:OWN), but you're welcome to make a personal gallery in your userspace (e.g. User:Adam.J.W.C./My Gallery). As for the peer review thing, you can make requests on Commons:Photography critiques. Rocket000 06:03, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I was actually talking about the gallery tab that appears at the top of your user page that lists everything that you have uploaded Also thanks for the tip about the peer review thanks Adam.J.W.C. 06:09, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh sorry, I read that too fast XD. Yeah, there's some MySQL bug and the databases and tools are offline. Rocket000 06:43, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

• ThanksAdam.J.W.C. 12:02, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Public domain if the author is unknow

Hi. I want to move this image to Commons under public domain. I don't know the author of the photograph nor the date it was taken, but I may find the last thing. Is it possible to know if a photograph is in public domain when you only have the date it was taken? Regards, Ffahm 17:00, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Mr. Morley lived until 1924 and this appears to have been taken near the end of his life. So per British law If the work is a photograph with an unknown author taken before 1 June 1957 then copyright expires 70 years after creation or if during that period the work is made available to the public 70 years after that., it would appear that this is public domain. Durova 19:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Then it is{{PD-UK-unknown}} as far as we know? ---- Fernando Estel ☆ · 星 ^{(Talk: here- es- en)} 19:36, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Unless the photographer can be identified, that's what it appears. Durova 21:55, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Image restoration workshop

As some of you know, I've been doing a lot of image restorations for featured picture candidacy. A lot of important historical images will never become featured pictures but are still worth restoring. So I've opened a workshop where Wikimedians are welcome to submit restoration requests and get restored images for use as illustrations in other projects. User:Durova/Encyclopedic image restoration Durova 22:00, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Plaques

A question has come up about the copyright status of government informational-type plaques. One example is Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Moundsplaque.jpg. I'm wondering if a general answer could be determined one way or another. Since there are a lot of pictures of plaques on Commons, if it's decided they're copyright-infringing, most would have to be deleted. I think they fall into public domain, but I hope there are those more expert here, who'd know better. Thanks all. -Ebyabe 22:40, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I am no expert but many plaques will fall under Freedom of Panorama protection for countries that have it. In US many will be Template:PD-USGov, some of them might be template:PD-ineligible and a lot of them are template:PD-Old. So it is hard to generalize about plaques, based on a discussion about a single image. --Jarekt 03:39, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Information on image pages

Are there any recommendations about the placement of information on image pages? I see templates placed in different order on different images.

For me, the main purpose of image pages is author and license information, and a description of what is shown. So Template:Information (or equivalent information using other templates) should usually be on top. Exceptions are different temporary maintenance templates (most importantly delete templates). Other less important templates, like Template:Featured picture or Template:QualityImage, are not really needed but still useful, so they are better placed below the information template. /Ö 23:44, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with your order, basically. Why don't you start a guideline, Commons:The perfect image page? :) --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 10:13, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

February 4

Emergency

• Image:Andrefoto.jpg‎
• Image:Phalacrocorax aristotelis desmarestii.jpg
• Image:Almeida Garrett por Guglielmi.jpg

Ataque dos usuários do site think Finance devido ao apagamento do artigo do site deles. Ver: w:pt:Wikipedia:Páginas para eliminar/Think Finance, w:pt:Wikipedia:CheckUser/Pedidos de verificação/Fabiano Prata e inúmeras outras sabotagens.---- OS2Warp ^discussão 03:02, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Este usuário é o usuário de nome Thorn Gilts do site Think Finance. ---- OS2Warp ^discussão 03:08, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Deverão haver inúmeros ataques.---- OS2Warp ^discussão 03:10, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Mediawiki

I recently discovered MediaWiki and am very enthusiastic to make use of it. I would be helped the most if anyone could help me out with the following:

I'd like to use MediaWiki as a knowledge system, where people can upload documents with commentary and maintain the powerful search engine in both system and in documents, including office docs and PDF.

My guess is that allready somebody had built a system and could help me to achieve the objective?

Marc.

MediaWiki has its own site: [1]. You may have more luck asking there. This site is a good example of how to use it, though. --rimshot^talk 12:04, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons and anti-logos

Hello! I'm not sure if were there any discussions about this subject before. Wikimedia Commons has many images with a "cross" include countries flags and logos, religions, beliefs and cultures. I think we need a specific and clear policy, isn't required to be in writing; agreeing is too enough. Firstly, I have uploaded an image called "Image:No Israel.svg" I saw many people don't agree with it, and it was deleted per a requesting. But it still, there are many anti images. I'm not sure when and why should the images be deleted, and when and why it shouldn't. If you ask me about my view I agree that we shouldn't allow any images to avoid any problems unless if used in an article (Namespace 0). before reply please, be civil it's unneeded to get more personal attack, assume good faith and remember that we aren't in a war place! Thanks all! --OsamaK 18:27, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I have deleted Image:Uncle bush.jpg before and it was after that deleted 4 more times ("Anti-Bush"). I think these anti-logos are stupid, useless, not within Commons:Project scope and inivetably inflammatory, and I would prefer to have them all deleted except those that have encyclopaedic value.

Fred J (talk) 18:49, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Correction: I didn't delete Image:Uncle bush.jpg , I only protected it. But I deleted a similar image once. / Fred J (talk) 18:52, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with Osama here. While it's sometimes helpful to know an editor's biases, we don't need inflammatory images like these. There are much better ways of saying the same things which don't piss people off quite as much. My objection doesn't apply to images of encyclopedic value, only those used on user pages, in userboxes etc. Lewis Collard! (talk, contribs, en.wp) 21:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, we don't piss or spammers (Image:No-spam.svg), smokers (Image:No smoking symbol.svg) or nazis (Image:Anti-Nazi-Symbol.svg). // Liftarn

No smoking definitely has encyclopaedic value here. Not sure about the others 哦，是吗？(O-person) 00:26, 18 January 2008 (GMT)

Being useless is one thing, but picking and choosing what anti signs to delete because they offend someone is not a good practice, IMHO. Rocket000 05:48, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Rly? So you don't see the difference between, say, a picture of a black man crossed out (a "No Blacks" one) and an "No Spam" one? Refusing to make that sort of judgment is absurd. There comes a point where we can and should make judgments about what "antis" are appropriate here.

Sometimes that will be a simple moral judgment that no decent person would refuse to make (as in my "No Blacks" example). In other cases (like "No Israel", and I'd say exactly the same about a "No Palestinians" one or whatever, FYI) such images are just divisive and I think we have the right to judge those as inappropriate as well. There are much more appropriate and less inflammatory ways to state the same thing (why not a picture of Edmund Burke or Friedrich Hayek, for example, rather than a "No Liberals.svg"?). I'd say the same thing for the images recently nominated for deletion by you, Osama (bold text! getting your attention here!), and I suspect a good few in the community would agree with me were it not for the fact that nominating it looked a lot like point-making.

And there are other cases where keeping them is entirely appropriate, such as "No Spam", since no decent person supports spam and we shouldn't be afraid to say so. And there are ones which some people will be offended by and yet, really should be taught to get over themselves. I'd put "No Smoking" in this category, even when it's used in a "I hate cigarette smoke" sense (I'm a heavy smoker, by the way, and have seen enough of these signs slapped all over the place even before the fascist nanny-state legislation came into force here that I simply DGAF anymore ;)).

Yes, there will be difficult cases. The boundaries are fuzzy, of course; likely some stuff will end up being deleted which shouldn't have been, and some will be kept which shouldn't be here. Judgment is messy like that, just as it is in the real world.

As it is, I think the existing system works fine, and that there's probably no need to change the rules on this count. The way things are handled now is fundamentally good: the community discusses such images on a case-by-case basis. Making hard-and-fast rules would not be a good thing to do. It's kind of like a territory you know something about, and have had reports from, but you still don't know all that much about it. Drawing up rules on cases like this would be a lot like going and drawing a detailed map of the island. You know where that territory is, you know the rough shape and size of it, but you're still not sure where the borders lie, and lots of people claim different things about it. What you really need to do is get everyone together, discuss it over, work out where the boundaries are and only then, maybe, think about drawing a map -- though you may well find that's not really necessary.

TL;DR: recognising when judgment is appropriate is a civilised adult thing to do and saying "we should condemn all opinions or permit them all to be expressed in any way" is childish, not clever. Lewis Collard! (talk, contribs, en.wp) 06:56, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

The thing is we all make moral judgments about the images here (this is human) but we still have a choice of whether or not to act on those feelings. The reason why we say things like "Commons is not censored" is because we shouldn't decide what's best for everyone. If everyone deleted things they were offended by we wouldn't have much left. Just because a majority of people feel the same way, that does not justify it. It's still unfair to the minorities that have to put up with the images they find offensive. You might think it's childish, but by treating all images equal we are indirectly treating all people equal. Rocket000 08:15, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I feel you've missed my point somewhat: sometimes it is appropriate to act on moral judgments (even in a community that values neutrality in these sorts of matters), and sometimes it is necessary to treat some people unequally, "fairness" be damned. Moreover, I never suggested that we delete stuff just because someone is offended by it. I gave a clear counter-example to that (see the "No Smoking" one). What's more, I'm opposed to all hard guidelines like that, simply because simple solutions don't work for complex problems, and that's especially so when you don't quite know what the problem is. Let's take this case-by-case, rather than using the blunt instrument of policy to pound everything into shape

On a mostly unrelated note, you get two points for working out my political biases from what I've said above. ;) Lewis Collard! (talk, contribs, en.wp) 08:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I think I got your point—it may just be how we view the situation. Now let me loosely address it again. ;) I agree with your reasoning, however, I disagree with the suggested application. Currently, we do make opinionated judgments on images (granted they aren't copyvios). Not necessarily based on moral reasons but in the same boat, nonetheless. Pretty much everything that's deleted because "it's out of our scope" is based on our opinions. Sure, everyone agrees that things like pornography, shock images, excessive personal images, extremely poor quality images, etc. don't belong here, but in order to label things as such we need to make image-specific judgment calls. I'm not saying this is a bad thing—it's very necessary or Commons would be a completely different kind of place. Furthermore, if judgment wasn't necessary, everything could be speedied one way or another; no reason for COM:DEL. However, in this particular case, it doesn't seem like it was deleted because it wasn't useful (aka "out of project's scope"), but because it is more offensive than similar images. This to me, that isn't a valid reason since we already have established what Commons is—not censored. A small consensus (skewed, IMO) on a single DR page shouldn't change that, even if they only wanted to make an exception instead of changing the policy itself. Now some did mention it was useless for Wikimedia projects, which is a valid reason. It's also a debatable and a opinionated reason, so we try to form a consensus through a DR discussion. This is where the "case-by-case basis" comes in. The reason itself isn't being contested, just the labeling of a certain image is (e.g. "porn", "spam", or "useless"). However, "offensive" isn't something we can really effectively establish a consensus over. We can form a majority but a consensus is practically impossible as we're dealing with feelings and discussing in a practical and logical way doesn't really make sense. We would be left with votes like "I like it" and "I don't like it". How could you argue with "delete because it offends me"? You can't, that's why we do need some hard guidelines in place, and "no censorship" seems to have a consensus here.

I may be biased because I find censorship offensive, even of content that offends me. I guess it really is picking and choosing who to offend, but we need to look at what our project's purpose is, and allow that to be the deciding factor. Rocket000 11:49, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not so sure that "offensive" isn't something we can really effectively establish a consensus over. My hypothetical "No Blacks" example is a good illustration of that. Other than that, you've given me some food for thought here. I might get back to you if I have a response to any of it. Lewis Collard! (talk, contribs, en.wp) 13:11, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, even in the "no blacks" example, those can be used to illustrate racism. Now if these images are being created only for personal use (i.e. a userpage) or for the sole purpose of offending (like attack images or images uploaded for vandalism) then I agree they should be deleted per COM:SCOPE. Userpage images are allowed in moderation, but shouldn't be offensive as per many project's userpage and user behavior guidelines. Is the useful? That's the main question. (As for the no-Israel image, I don't know; that's why I didn't vote.) But the reasoning behind the deletion is why we're comparing it to other anti images. If you look at the rationales on the other images very few had anything to do with the images' "offensiveness" and whether or not they were offensive to enough people to justify deletion. Also, the rationale's for keeping the images (including Image:No Israel.svg) were largely the same suggesting we do do things based previous decisions (kinda like case law - one sets the guideline for future situations). They are user-created and express opposition to a certain group of people or ideologies. I do agree that "no smoking" and "no spam" are different issues, but what about anti-religion, anti-God, anti-UN, anti-ACLU, anti-Nazism, anti-EU, anti-Japan... and so on. It's reasonable to believe they can cause offense to large groups of people unlike "no smoking". Rocket000 13:56, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Compare Commons:Deletion requests/Image:No Israel.svg and Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Anti-Nazi-Symbol.svg. Rocket000 05:51, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I will basically reiterate what I've said on all of these deletion nominations: Personally, I'd say we keep them all, including the No Israel image, assuming it was just a crossed-out image of Israel (I didn't see it before it was deleted). Either that or delete them all. I just cannot see an adequate standard to differentiate between what, to me, appears to be similar subject & usage among anti-logos. I'd think they could all be handy on Wikinews, which tends to have more use of clip-art-ish images such as these. On another note, however, I am not particularly fond of OsamaK's apparent disregard for WP:POINT. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 06:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. By the way, the image was of the flag with a "anti" sign over it, which represents the views of some just like the anti Nazi image that I pointed out above. They should share the same fate. Rocket000 08:30, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

They should subject to the same rules, but the Image:No_Israel.svg has already been deleted while Image:Anti-Nazi-Symbol.svg haven't. No point in crying over spillt milk. // Liftarn

That we must either keep them all or delete them all is an absurd statement. Please carefully consider Lewis Collard's argument. As long as something doesn't offend yourself, your friends or any important interest group, you might not care, but more sensitive images – such as "no blacks", "no gays", "no USA" – would surely get deleted.

There's currently an anti-Gay image on Commons: Image:Anty_LGBT.png -- AnonMoos 14:29, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

The censorship argument is valid for material that is encyclopaedic. How can a self-made image with Israel crossed out be encyclopaedical?

Fred J (talk) 12:23, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

That last point I can agree with. Censoring because something is out of our scope is a valid reason (I say "out of our scope" because we're not here just for Wikipedia and so images don't need to be "encyclopaedic".) What I meant by "censorship", as it's commonly used, is the censoring of offensive material, not useless material. Rocket000 13:03, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

BTW, we do have racist, homophobic, and anti-American material. It doesn't "surely get deleted". IMO, anything anti-Israel, antisemitic, or related is more sensitive of an issue. This based on how much this material is contested. It's up there with images of Mohammad. If we decide to censor based on offensiveness, they would be the first to go. Rocket000 13:16, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Commons has racist, homophobic, and anti-American userboxes? / Fred J (talk) 10:25, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

En Wikipedia has (had?) an anti-american userbox. It used Image:Flag of the United States (upside down).svg. We even have Category:Anti-Americanism. // Liftarn

Not that I know of. I thought we were taking about images here. What people do with them is up to them. If the images are being used in a userboxes, delete them - not the images. Rocket000 02:55, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, in its particular context (with the known views of its uploader and the specific name which he chose), image "No Israel.svg" was seen as easily being interpreted as incitement for the complete extirpation and obliteration of the State of Israel, and therefore was considered by some to be a pro-hate symbol (as opposed to an anti-hate symbol such as "Anti-Nazi-Symbol.svg"). And Wikimedia commons is under no obligation whatsoever to host pro-hate images without special historical value or current newsworthiness... AnonMoos 14:22, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, "pro/anti hate" is a POV - it depends on what you believe. Labeling some as that is an insult itself. Forgive me if I'm interpreting this wrong, but all I see is an expression of opposition to existence of the state of Israel. I'm not saying it's not offensive, I'm just saying why it any different from the other ones I pointed out above (ignore the Nazi one for now). Of course we have no obligation to host these images, but we also have no obligation to delete them. Rocket000 14:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

However, there's nothing to prevent Wikimedia Commons users from voting to delete an image based on their personal perception that it is a hate image, and there's no principle or policy requiring Wikimedia Commons to host images without specific special historical value or current newsworthiness which have been voted to be deleted by a near-consensus of interested Wikimedia Commons users on such grounds. So you can call making distinctions between pro-hate and anti-hate images "POV" all you want, but it won't affect the fact that perceived pro-hate images have been (and probably will continue to be) deleted partially for that reason... AnonMoos 19:25, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Usually, they're not. Most are speedy closed as kept. I see users nominate offensive images all the time; only a few get this kind of treatment. I'm not the only one that feels this way; NPOV is a Foundation issue, not censoring in this respect has a community-wide consensus (at least I thought). But when people feel strongly about something their voices are the ones that are heard, which is why you don't see the other side being argued as strongly - they're not being offended. Other projects don't seem to suffer the same problem - users there are often more vocal about defending the project's principles. Commons lacks this for better or for worse. Rocket000 22:36, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

However, the category of "images which may be potentially offensive to somebody" is quite a bit more broad and general than that of hate images without special historical value or current newsworthiness... AnonMoos 11:30, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Just a note about the above. The nazi symbol is banned in Germany, but German courts have recently upheld an exemption for anti-nazi symbols. Ok, well another note. Middle Eastern peoples have a very good reason to dislike the existence of Israel. Modern Israel was created as a feel-good move by the West in 1948 to kind of atone for the Holocaust. Jews had not had a homeland in Palestine since Bible times and instead the area was populated by Arabic and Muslim peoples who resented being forced from their homes and who are still being forced from their homes, to make way for Jewish settlements. Ironically, the word Palestine derives from the Latinization of Philistia. -Nard 13:13, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for importing blatant subjective personal political views into this thread (somthing which had been avoided until now). I'll just say that images like "No Israel.svg" unfortunately seem to express an indiscriminate "throw all the Jews into the sea" obstructionist attitude which doesn't seem to have ever done the Arabs much good in the past (and in fact has had far more negative effects than positive for them in the modern history of the middle-east). AnonMoos 15:09, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I guess both images have a use then. They're not just something made to be offensive. Rocket000 13:52, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I was told there is the anti-gay logo Image:Anty LGBT.png. I could have created and uploaded something more offensive than that. If we open the door to all anti-logos, someone will do just that. Eventually, persisting in keeping all anti-logos will lead to serious problems and a hate-atmosphere. I can't prove it to you because I am not psychic but that is my opinion and I stand by it. / Fred J (talk) 16:18, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I certainly degree, but defining what is acceptable and what is taboo is the trick, especially when each icon has similar meaning and usage. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 17:01, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Furthermore, the exact meaning of "No Israel.svg" is not clear. AnonMoos's has provided an extreme interpretation of it, but I can imagine several others:

• "I do not condone the present policy of the present government of Israel"
• "I do not condone the general direction that the policies taken by the Israeli government have taken in the past"
• "I do no think that the existence of the State of Israel is a good thing".

The later does not automatically involve "throw all the Jews into the sea". For instance, several Israeli governments have pushed a "no Palestinian State" policy, but only a tiny minority of Israelis openly support "throw all the Palestinians into the sea".

The meaning is dependant on the context. Without a context, there is no meaning other than that of the beholder. Like always when the subject of Israel is brought up, some people express irrationally strident opinions towards anything remotely controversial and push a policy of taboo that is good for no-one. Rama 16:39, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, such symbols often seem to be deliberately intended to be ambiguous between an "extreme" interpretation and a less extreme interpretation. That way some people who use such a symbol can have the satisfaction (from their own point of view) of fully expressing their contempt and hatreds openly by means of the symbol -- but if someone attempts to call them on this, then they can defend themselves by alleging that the symbol is ambiguous. In light of the many threats to obliterate and extirpate Israel by means of force and violence made by many Arabs (including prominent political leaders) over many decades -- not to mention by the current President of Iran! -- I'm afraid that I don't feel inclined to give much leeway for the alleged "ambiguity" of "No Israel.svg". AnonMoos 17:45, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

In the light of the many condemnations and criticism that the Israeli policies have recieved from international organisations, NGO, democratic governments and public opinion of democratic countries, I am quite inclined to do so.

Furthermore, in any case, you are not preventing supposed Israel haters from proclaiming their hatred of Israel, which they can easily do by writing. You are, on the other hand, handing them a convenient tool to proclaim themselves discriminated. Rama 18:38, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

There's a saying about the world's smallest violin -- and that about expresses the depth of my sympathy for those poor widdle individuals who, for some odd reason, are completely unable to clearly distinguish between voicing criticism of specific Israeli policies, and calling for the obliteration and extirpation of Israel by means of force and violence. AnonMoos 20:35, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Amen to that, but these people are a very small fringe. And it is certainly not the case here.

I would go as far as to say that brandishing extremes in the way you do does little to help have a rational and measured understanding of the problem -- be it in the general case about the discussion of international policies, or, in the specific case, about this image. Rama 11:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

AnonMoos, you have on several occations demonstrated that you yourself is "completely unable to clearly distinguish between voicing criticism of specific Israeli policies, and calling for the obliteration and extirpation of Israel by means of force and violence". // Liftarn

In my opinion, anti-logo should stay only if they are not aimed at a specific person, group of people or a country. For example, a crossed dish of meal as a symbol of vegetarianism is okay, but not a crossed flag to show objection to a country's policy. There is an exception though: if the image demonstrates a previously known symbol and is meant to use in an article, e.g. an image of a sign taken in a demonstration, or a reconstruction of such a sign. Drork 16:44, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

What about any-god logos?--OsamaK 16:50, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, in my opinion it is directed against believers, and therefore should go unless it has any informative value to an article. Drork 16:57, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I think we should get rid of anti-"single entity" images (eg: Anti-Israel, Anti-Islam, Anti-Christianity, .etc..) but keep the anti-"collective noun of distinct entities" (eg: Anti-religion, Anti-war, Anti-Nazism). So in that scenario, it is valid to get rid of Osama's image, but we can keep the Anti-Euro. --Lord Anubis 17:09, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

How is the Euro any less a "single entity" than Israel, Islam or Christianity ? The Euro strikes me as much more cleanly defined than "Islam" of "Christianity", in fact. Rama 11:20, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Summary

After 5 days. Let's try to get the summary of your opinions and try to apply it..--OsamaK 17:09, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Users who support keeping all anti-logos

• Basic rule: equal treatment for all; we are a media repositary for all minorities. Only (exceptionally) overruled when there is massive protest, and not only from the offended group. --Foroa 19:46, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Users who support keeping anti-logos which are used in articles

• To avoid any problems.--OsamaK 17:09, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Users who support deleting hate images without special historical value or current newsworthiness, and keeping all other anti-logos

• AnonMoos 17:33, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

That's including anti-god religion, which are very hated. Isn't it?--OsamaK 10:30, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

An image such as Image:No_god.PNG, with the word "God" crossed out by a red prohibition slash-in-circle symbol would not ordinarily be understood as an incitement to kill theists or religious believers -- whereas due to a certain unfortunate concatenation of specific historical circumstances, an image with a star of David crossed out by a red prohibition slash-in-circle symbol could only be too easily understood as an incitement to kill Jews. It's quite possible that you never had the smallest intention of killing any Jew, or of calling on anybody else to kill any Jew -- but it's still the case that if you want to devise an anti-Zionism logo, then the burden is on you to create a graphic which is clearly and unambiguously against the ideology of Zionism specifically; because if you create an ambiguous graphic which opens itself to a wide range of interpretations, then some people will take objection to it as an unencyclopedic hate image (as was seen).

I would favor the deletion of Image:Allahno.jpg , Image:Anty_LGBT.png , and Image:Anti-LGBT.svg since they're images without special historical value or current newsworthiness which only too easily lend themselves to a hate interpretation, but I would not support the deletion of Image:No_god.PNG until and unless someone makes a plausible case that it is intended (or can be easily interpreted) as a message of hate against religious believers. Some might see it as a paraphrase of John Lennon's Imagine, which has been widely embraced as a peace anthem -- even (for some reason) in the United States (which does not ordinarily give much public space to atheism). AnonMoos 13:38, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

• --Túrelio 11:27, 31 January 2008 (UTC

Other opinions

• A user who refuses to cast a simple black-and-white/yes-or-no vote in such a complicated issue at such an early stage of the discussion. Samulili 17:18, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
• Ack Samulili. -- Bryan (talk to me) 21:44, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
• A user who is against any policy change on the matter. While judgment does have its place here, Commons should remain officially uncensored with community discussion and consensus to take care of a very few fringe cases. This is how the system works now, and it works very well IMO. Lewis Collard! (talk, contribs, en.wp) 09:02, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
• What we're really talking about is should Commons delete offensive/hate/racist/whatever you it images based solely on that reasoning. I agree many images that are created to simply offend people should be deleted—but not because they are offensive. Because they are out of our scope. These images serve no use for Wikimedia purposes and are usually used in vandalism or attack pages. However, many images that are equally offensive belong here because they are useful in illustrating specific point of views. The people are saying we need a black-and-white/yes-or-no policy on this are thinking about it wrong. Unless they are saying we should get rid of our "no censorship" policy. We exist for many many projects that aren't censored, by deciding that Commons is, we are changing our role and narrowing our scope, yet maybe this is what the people want... Rocket000 19:23, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
• Not all, but on a case by case basis. If they are potentially useful (user boxes, stub icons, wikinews, talk pages...) they stay. Rather keep than delete. Attacks on living persons (as individuals) probably not OK. // Liftarn

Censorship policy

Right now we are practicing double standards. We have some admins deleting offensive material for that very reason and some closing DRs early (and even protecting the pages) saying "we are not censored". This is something we need a black-and-white policy for. Users need to know what is acceptable on Commons. Admins (myself included) need to know how they should handle situations. Other projects need to know if they should keep some material locally uploaded. I was always under the impression that "offensiveness" itself was never a valid reason, however, recent events have showed me this is not the case. I have stepped back from dealing with these issues as others seem to have also. We just don't know what the consensus is anymore. Is it ok to censor images because they offend many people? Is "I'm offended" still considered an invalid reason to delete? Or should every case be allow it's time on COM:DEL? Censorship/no censorship is not a "it depends" type of policy. Either we do it or we don't. That is why it is black-and-white. If the consensus is that it ok to censor occasionally, then it does become a case-by-case gray area and left up to whoever happens to be passing by the deletion discussion. Right now, we're talking about a specific type of images, when we should be discussing if "no censorship" is really what we want. This isn't about "anti" logos, this is about one of our deepest fundamental and characteristic ideals.

Wikimedia Commons wasn't set up to decide on what is or isn't appropriate or "correct" for other projects. We were created simply to host the media and allow the projects to decide for themselves. But times change. We need a policy to reflect this. We need to know what's acceptable here. What ever the case, we owe it to our users and the other projects to let them know. Rocket000 19:23, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

"Offensiveness" is a broad general overarching metaphysical issue which could be debated in great depth and detail, but which people are rather unlikely to arrive at a clear and final consensus about, ever. That's why I've tried to focus the current discussion on "hate images without special historical value or current newsworthiness" -- which is a much more narrow and specific class of image, and which presents a much smaller and more manageable topic for discussion. AnonMoos 15:29, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

True, but the underlying reason for deleting them is it's offensiveness, right? And it's still censorship. I don't mean to use that word to imply a negative context, I just mean it goes against the current "no censorship" policy. Rocket000 19:41, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

If one side accuses the other side of "gratuitous censorship", and the other side accuses the first of "providing a platform for the spreading of unencyclopedic hate", then I really don't see how such a polarized dichotomy does much to advance discussion, or to arive at any conclusion on this subject. That's why confining the discussion to hate images without special historical value or current newsworthiness might clarify things by limiting the discusion to images which firm opponents of censorship might grudgingly admit are the weakest link, and which firm opponents of using Wikimedia to spread hate-imagery would consider to be the most essential to be deleted. Keeping the discussion broadly open to cover every media file which might conceivably theoretically hypothetically cause "offense" of some nature to somebody is a recipe for endless discussion without any final conclusion... AnonMoos 20:12, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

That's why both policies can't exist. "No censorship" needs to be renamed as "No censorship unless it's unencyclopedic hate images". Rocket000 09:03, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can determine, the majority of individuals whom you would consider to be "pro-censorship" are not actually demanding broad pro-censorship policies, but rather reserve the discretionary right to use individual judgement when recommending that certain problematic images be deleted (in a deletion discussion, etc.). AnonMoos 18:48, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Of course not. Everyone only wants to delete what they find offensive. With everyone having different beliefs and POVs, it becomes pretty broad. If we want to fulfill our central role as Wikimedia's media provider we must be the most tolerant of all projects. Rocket000 01:32, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Commons is not Wikipedia, nor Wiktionary, nor Wikibooks, or any other concept of another Wikimedia project. It is a free media repository that aims to serve all projects in all languages. Therefore, even though there will be users who may be offended by certain content, we still cannot afford to delete media that may even be of use to a project. 哦，是吗？(O-person) 02:36, 31 January 2008 (GMT)

You said earlier that you wanted a quick concrete policy clarification, and I've tried to explain (just about every way I know how) that the only likelihood of obtaining any kind of quasi-consensus any time soon is to limit the problem so that it is of manageable size, by confining our attention to the most essential core of the matter. Since you resist every such attempt to narrow the focus, and instead insist on dragging in broad general multifarious philosophical and metaphysical issues in all their intractable complexity, therefore it's hard to resist concluding that you don't really want a quick concrete policy clarification after all... AnonMoos 02:33, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it's really that hard. It's a "yes" or "no". After that, we can work out the details of what to censor. Rocket000 02:59, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

If your idea of "reaffirming an anti-censorship policy" is to deny other people the right to exercise individual broad discretionary judgement when recommending that certain problematic images be deleted (in a deletion discussion, etc.), then your "easy" anti-censorship affirmation becomes a diminishing of their freedom to act as they see best in each case. If it were really easy (in the sense of all the issues being crystal clear to everybody), then a firm decision would have already been made... 21:39, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I think O has excactly the point of this: Therefore, even though there will be users who may be offended by certain content, we still cannot afford to delete media that may even be of use to a project. Commons is not censored. Regardless however of whether or not an image is offensive to somebody, we should judge its usefulness. Is a specific image useful for other projects? -- Bryan (talk to me) 21:46, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

It's certainly unfortunate that you insist on dragging in broad philosophical metaphysical issues such as "offense", with all their multifarious ramifications (which will never be settled to everyone's satisfaction), instead of keeping a narrow focus on specific limited issues where agreement might actually be arrived at... AnonMoos 13:50, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

So you are saying we should discuss censoring images you find offensive. Not the censorship of images in general? // Liftarn

I did not participate in any way in the deletion discussion of Image:No Israel.svg, so obviously I'm not the only one concerned about this issue, and I've already said that I would support the deletion of Image:Allahno.jpg, even though it doesn't personally offend me. If you have any useful comments to offer on this topic, then feel free to offer them -- while if your comments would conspicuously fail to advance discussion in any useful way, then it might be better to keep silent and refrain from exposing yourself. AnonMoos 16:50, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

January 18

OggSearch: Search in Ogg files

Hello,

Some days ago I was looking for video files on Commons. I then noticed Commons not only lacked a proper image search, but does not have anything to search specifically for video and audio. So I created one:

http://tools.wikimedia.org/~bryan/ogg/

It allows searching in video and audio files, by length, y category, by resolution and by audio format. It embeds Wikimedia's ogg player, so you can directly view the videos in your web browser.

Regards, -- Bryan (talk to me) 10:25, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Nice tool. Should be added to Commons:Tools#Search.--Jarekt 13:57, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Short update: If you're using a non IE browser and have JavaScript enabled, it also works via Commons:OggSearch. If you are using IE, your browser will explode :( ANybody have a solution to this? -- Bryan (talk to me) 11:30, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Large files

I wish to upload a large medieval map. Unfortunately the map is sort of big and because it's a map with lots of little detail that would otherwise be lost completely, a decent resolution is needed. Also, the file probably still needs some postpocessing by someone who is good at that kind of thing, so I dare not save it as a JPEG. So what is Commons' policy on large files? Shinobu 22:09, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

The system usually asks me for manual confirmation of files larger than 5mb. Above 10mb it simply refuses to upload. If you'd like help, my e-mail is enabled. Ping me and I'll reply from an address where you can send the image file. Durova 22:38, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

If it's a PNG or GIF with pixel dimensions greater than 12.5 megapixels, then it won't be sized down (thumbnailed). If it has file length greater than 5 megabytes, you'll get a warning message (which you can choose to ignore). If it has file length greater than 20 megabytes, then it can't be uploaded in the ordinary way, and you'll have to ask special permission... AnonMoos 22:45, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

It's just under 10.000 x 5000 pixels and while pngcrush is still busy, the way it's going doesn't leave much room for optimism. I guess I'll have to scale it down after all. I'll let people know that a much larger version is available. Should people be interested in enlarged details, I could upload cropped images for them to work with. Shinobu 23:03, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Or I could try to create a torrent for them so they can do the necessary cropping themselves. Shinobu 23:08, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I would say upload a downsampled version, and 2 or 4 cropped pieces at full resolution. --Dori - Talk 19:57, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Bot Requests

It seems that this page is not used as it should... --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 21:03, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

There are too few bot operators, and the bot operators that we have are always busy... And that page could use some archivation. -- Bryan (talk to me) 10:27, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

convert template

The {{convert}} template on Wikipedia:en is very useful. Can it be copied to here? -- RHaworth 01:16, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea--Jarekt 13:30, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

{{Convert}} get it to work, and we'll have a party. Vipersnake151 20:13, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Email confirmation issues

I keep trying to get my email address confirmed for my account here, but I never got an email from here. I click on the "Confirm Email Address" button on my preferences page, and I get a screen with red words, "A confirmation code has already been e-mailed to you; if you recently created your account, you may wish to wait a few minutes for it to arrive before trying to request a new code." I've used that button a few times in the past few days and I still haven't received anything. I'd like to get my address confirmed so I could communicate with other members in case using this site isn't feasible. Thanks in advance to those who can help! Mr. Matté 02:29, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I've had exactly the same problem. But I did not realise until today that an email address is optional and required only if one needs to use the email tools. Martin Evans 13:46, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

The first step would be to be very sure that your spam filter hasn't caught the mail. --rimshot^talk 14:51, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope, no wiki emails in there. ——Mr. Matté — 'pedia talk 19:08, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Please block this IP!

70.57.161.134 (talk • contribs) I've spent hours reverting 99% of his/her contributions! S/He was adding parent cat everywhere, creating duplicate cat, etc, etc... It's a real pain in the ass! Thanks a lot! --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 13:54, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

You might get a faster reaction here or here. -- Túrelio 14:39, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

OK I move this message to the vandalism page. Thanks. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 14:50, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

SVG translating tool

I have just made a tool for translating SVG files at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~nikola/svgtranslate.php

You can use it by giving it the URL to the SVG file you want to translate (NOT to its page; for example, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Planetary_transit.svg is a valid URL, and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Planetary_transit.svg is not). It will then analyse the file, and pick up translatable strings which you can translate. After you translate them, select the language and submit the translation, you should be able to download the translated SVG file.

The tool is mostly untested, so report any bugs here. Very large files (on the order of megabytes) will probably not work. I would prefer if something like this would be a MediaWiki extension, but for now, let's do it this way.

Note that you may encounter some files that seemingly contain text, but nothing of it could be translated. That is probably because the text is vectorised. You have to hunt their authors for a non-vectorised version...

I hope that this will prove useful, and appreciate any comments and suggestions :) Nikola 22:27, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Nikola, this is fantastic. Thank you so much!

I think it is necessary to display a preview of the original image. Couldn't it be made to accept a Commons image page URL rather than just a file URL? --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 01:58, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. Both things are possible, in principle. Nikola 20:28, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Also please put a link (on the tool) to where users should provide feedback, bugs etc pfctdayelise (说什么?) 02:00, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Will do! :) Nikola 20:28, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Is there a word for this job?

this job... --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 09:17, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

According to en:Human billboard, this is called a human directional. Here's another one. --rimshot^talk 09:29, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Couldn't we create a category for all the images of human advertising? But how to call it? Because it's not only human directional. See also Image:Human billboard Atlanta.jpg, Image:Advertisingman.jpg, Image:Clock boy.jpg, Image:Chindonya Okubo Tokyo.jpg, Image:Chindon takadanobaba.JPG, Image:Chindon daiko takadanobaba.JPG. That already makes 8 pictures with the same theme but without any category for that theme. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 09:59, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Category:Human billboards encompasses all of these, I think, so that should be a good choice. --rimshot^talk 10:24, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

 Done. Thanks for your help. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 16:33, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

February 6

Victory for the Copyfraud-Lobby: UK-Scans were deleted

The decision to delete mere scans at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Images_from_Darwin_Online is a great victory for the Copyfraud-Lobby here. I do not think it was appropriate to decide so quickly. The US decision Bridgeman v. Corel has very diligently discussed UK law in 1999. --Historiograf 00:28, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

@Historiograf, though I agree the deletion case was closed a little bit early and the question should be checked in general (i.e., for all identical cases of scans of PD-originals in the UK), I strongly suggest to change the wording of the paragraph heading "...Copyfraud-Lobby" as it sounds like a personal attack against those who voted for deletion in this case (I did not). -- Túrelio 06:48, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I generally agree, and I suggest to discuss this at Commons talk:Deletion requests/Images from Darwin Online. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 03:14, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Sez u. It's entirely appropriate to close deletion requests early when the facts of a case are clear enough. I don't need to rehash the arguments for deletion again; read the DR towards the end. TL;DR we are not talking "mere scans" and Bridgeman v. Corel is completely irrelevant here. Somehow the existence of a "copyfraud lobby" completely eluded me until now. Lewis Collard! (hai thar, wut u doin) 06:16, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I too have to weigh in on the side of "Copyfraud-lobby may not be the most mellow term to use here". :) ++Lar: t/c 12:21, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Of course we should respect each other as we do love our stock of media.

Fast deletions to avoid discussions is not corresponding to mellow.

It is driving users away. Simplicius 04:29, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Will you guys please give people a chance to comment? The Deletion Request was opened on 4th and closed a day later before I saw it. It was then re-opened today and closed almost immediately with a different result. In both cases the subtleties of UK law have been misunderstood or glossed over, mostly in favour of a slanging match. There is relevant and binding UK law which may help us here, and if anyone is prepared to wait for a day or two I will put something together. I suggest that further discussion should be kept together at Commons:Deletion requests/Images from Darwin Online . --MichaelMaggs 19:35, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

History bug

I initially passed this as a browser cache bug, but it appears to be something else. An image I uploaded Image:SalsetteBanyan.jpg shows an incorrect image, but the history link shows the correct (intended) current image [2]. Hope this a transient bug. Shyamal 15:19, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

You purged the cache, e.g., http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image:SalsetteBanyan.jpg&action=purge, and your browser buffer, e.g., ctrl+F5 on Internet Explorer?[3] Walter Siegmund (talk) 23:02, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah ok !... this time it seems ok. thanks. Shyamal 01:20, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Images

I don't know if it's only me, but I can't see any image in here. I have the same problem in Wikipedia. Eacz12 04:20, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

It is either you, or it was a temporary server hiccup (they seem to not happen as often as before). If the problem is not fixed, tell us what browser you're using, we might be able to help. Patstuart (talk) 04:57, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Copyright problems with video displays?

Category:Video displays. Are there any copyvios there? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 11:54, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Taking photographs of products

I found a lot of photos here where the main theme of the photo is a product, like a Coca Cola can. They were uploaded as freely distributable images. What is the regulation for this type of images? I ask this because when I uploaded a picture about a pack of pickwick tea put on a table, it was deleted with the explanation that it is violating coypright. Then why are the coca cola and other beverage cans NOT violating the regulations? I can't get this, really. Can someone explain under what circumstances I can take such photos of what products and when it is prohibited? Thank you. --Teemeah 12:07, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Presumably, coke cans fall under simple design, while the pickwick packaging doesn't. It is not trivial to determine where the treshold is between designs ineligible and eligible for copyright protection. In the Coca Cola case, the logo is also old enough to not be copyrighted anymore. In general, if you can see anything artistic in the design of the packaging it can be and probably is copyrighted. --rimshot^talk 12:20, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. Relating to this: someone told me that if I take a photo of a CD (with the original cover sleeve on it, like a Britney Spears CD) when the cd is on a table or in my hands, I can upload it as my work under any free licence I choose because the PHOTO is my own work. What's the case with photos of cds dvds books? (When it is not simply the cover, but you see the object as a whole, from an angle, on a table, on a chair, on the lawn, whatever.... so when you are not solely take photo of the cover itself.) --Teemeah 12:30, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Whoever told you that was wrong. There is something called freedom of panorama for objects in public view, it is different for different countries, but applies only to objects that are permanently installed somewhere, like sculptures. A photo of a CD sleeve on the lawn would be ok if it was a picture of a lawn which incidentally included the CD sleeve as well. It is definitely a violation of the copyright on the CD sleeve when the CD sleeve is the whole point of the photograph. --rimshot^talk 13:21, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Have a look also at Commons:Image casebook. Generally, packaging images are not allowed here, as what is prionted on the packagting is copyright-protected. That applies whether or not you took the photograph yourself. --MichaelMaggs 18:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Flag of Serbia

Could someone, anyone, please, drop by Image talk:Flag of Serbia.svg? There is one user, Rainman, who... I no longer can understand what does he want, why, and how does he plan to achieve it. Meanwhile, current flag of Serbia, used in thousand pages throughout all Wikipedias, is in a shade of purple-blue-white which is not liked by anyone.

I wrote major portions of en:Flag of Serbia and would be willing to offer any help necessary so that this is resolved satisfactorily - if only there would be anyone who wants to resolve this. Thanks. Nikola 20:35, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Oi. See also Image talk:Flag of Croatia.svg. This is spreading and needs to be stopped. Lupo 20:45, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

There was a long dispute on Commons over white vs. gray in national symbols of Poland... AnonMoos 17:32, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

See also Image talk:Flag of Italy.svg--Jarekt 14:18, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

February 7

Renaming a category

Hello, I need to rename a category, I want to change Category:Bankstown to Category:City of Bankstown. This would allow a lot more to be add into the category. I also created that cat and now realise what a mistake I made. Adam.J.W.C. 06:50, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

HELLO HELLO HELLO, IS THERE ANYONE THERE —the preceding unsigned comment was added by Adam.J.W.C. (talk • contribs) 12:52, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

You can't rename a category as such; you create a new category with the corrected name, and then request a bot to move all the images and subcategories from the old category to the new one (or do it manually if the category memebership is small). AnonMoos 18:37, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your help Adam.J.W.C. 22:59, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Old deletion debate started 10/07 but still open - Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Old Korea-Keith-BRIDE.JPG

Stumbled across this by accident. Image in question was nominated in late October, however the uploader only responded in late January. Would like to get some additional input on it. Several other images from the same source and author were uploaded that this nom may apply to. Thanks. --BrokenSphere 16:53, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, we have some stuff that urgently needs to be dealt with... -- Bryan (talk to me) 21:52, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Specific and non specific categories.

Beneath the unspific category "farms" there are more specific categories like "farm buildings" as "farmhouses" (each also specified by country). Due to the historical stratification of agricultural societies, and the different architectures of these classes, there are also categories like "manors" for farm buildings of the gentry. User:Limowreck again and again moves photos from the more specific categories to the non-specifi categories "farm in XX-land", which can include all aspects of agriculture.--Ulamm 21:16, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Vague, unwanted, not user-friendly, badly defined, categorizations. Discussed months ago. Category talk:Farmhouses by country, Commons:Categories for discussion/Current requests/2007/11/Category:Farms by Country and Commons:Deletion_requests/Category:Farms_by_country by different users. The outcome is clear. Let the cobbler stick to his last.

The recategorization or redirect form "farmhouses in …" to "farms in …" found no majority, too. So the maintaining of the "farms"-categories is no reason or legitimation to neglect and destroy the more specific subcategories.--Ulamm 21:31, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

February 8

Test reviews of Valued Image Candidates

Since the beginning on January work has been done on a Valued Images proposal (previously known as Valuable Images) intended as a supplement to the existing Featured Pictures and Quality Images. The proposal has been mentioned here a few times earlier already. The proposal has been discussed quite thoroughly during the last month and it is my feeling that a consensus has been reached on many important aspects of the proposal and there seems to an overall support to launching the project.

Based on this debate a Valued Images Candidates guide and candidate list has been drafted and some images are currently nominated there in a test review to stress test the guideline and make the final adjustments.

I urge users interested in valued images to participate in the discussion about the proposal and the test reviews. Feel free to test nominate further images, if there are aspects of the proposal, which needs clarification by example.

We could also need some help from users knowledgeable in native English, MediaWiki, Templates, vector graphics artists, and bots to finetune the implementation such that the VIC process is as automated and efficient as possible. See the discussions for open tasks. For instance, we really need a Valued Image logo in SVG format to identify the project and for tagging Valued Images. Anyone up for that challenge? -- Slaunger 09:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Duplicate cat?

What do you think of Category:Street music and Category:Street musicians? Which one would you transform in a cat redirect? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 14:18, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Street musicians should remain, as a subcat: of Category:Musicians. Personally, I'd redirect Street music to Category:Busking, but not all may agree... Man vyi 16:49, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikibooks and Wikijunior Logo Selection

(sorry in advance if this is the wrong place to post such an announcement. Feel free to move it to a better venue if so).

The Wikibooks and Wikijunior logo discussions are reaching the end of the open submissions phase. A firm deadline has not yet been set, but we are looking at a deadline in mid-march or early april. Wikibooks currently has 26 logo submissions, Wikijunior only has 7. Of the 26 Wikibooks submissions, only about 17 are "unique" and the remainder represent variations on theme.

I would like to put out an open call to graphics designers of all levels for submissions. Designers may submit as many logos as they would like, it is not limited to one per person. There are few restrictions on logos: Should not use red-green-blue WMF-style color scheme, and should eventually be in SVG format. Beyond this, the sky is the limit, and designers should feel free to get very creative if they want.

The deadline could be in as little as 1 month, so this should be considered a "last call" for submissions. Please spread the word to graphics designers or other artists, so that we can get a lot of really great submissions. Thanks in advance! --Whiteknight (talk) (books) 16:28, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Uploading flickr images just got a whole lot harder

So now that the new file-upload script went live, uploading flickr images has become extremely difficult. No longer can I copy-and-paste from the Flinfo tool, I must hack the output to pieces to fill in each field. The script really should be disabled for now, at least for flickr images. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 16:38, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

'Scuse me... which script went live? Mine isn't live yet. Special:Upload still gives me the plain old form. Lupo 17:11, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

And Bryan's flickr auto-uploader also lets you put anything you wish in the description. 86.21.74.40 17:13, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see. User:Remember the dot has included MediaWiki:UploadForm.js in his monobook.js! Well, thanks for testing, but you're doing so at your own risk. This script is not live yet! We'll have to make sure that from Commons:Upload there will be a link Upload Flickr Image using the Flinfo tool or some such. Probably the script would need to provide a degraded mode, in which it only checks that the destination filename makes sense. Lupo 17:29, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Here's a degraded mode that checks the filename (plus tries to fiigure out whether the description contains source, author, and a description). Lupo 17:47, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Will the new script (with separate fields for everything) still allow everything to be pasted into description? Superm401 - Talk 00:03, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope. Can't have both at the same time. The script is designed to cure the most common errors made by newbies and inexperienced users: not giving source, author, and license, botching the information template, choosing a poor filename, etc. Trying to parse an information-template is too error-prone, except in cases where we may reasonably assume that the information-template itself is correct. That would be the case if external tools like Flinfo are used.

For such uses, and for experienced users, we'll have to make sure that the bottom link at Commons:Upload goes to a form with only minimal additional support, for instance "Already know the license, and its copyright tag? Go directly to the upload form." Maybe add another one as "Upload from Flickr using the Flinfo tool". I think that should take care of these cases. And in any case, the plain unadorned upload form will remain accessible at this link.

It would, of course, be possible to check whether the description starts with "{{Information" and disable all checks if that is the case, but that would kinda defeat the whole purpose of the new form. Much better IMO to have a few extra links at Commons:Upload.

A mock-up of how the new upload page could look like is here: User:Lupo/upload. Lupo 10:51, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Apologies, everyone. For some reason, including the script in my monobook.js wasn't working, and then when it suddenly started working I figured that it must have gone live site-wide. I'm truly sorry for the misunderstanding. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 00:34, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

WyabdcRealPeopleTTS?

This file contains many English pronunciations. It is freely distributed accompanying StarDict but because it is recorded by a lot of people, I think no one can be the true owner of it. So, it belongs to public domain, isn't it? Can I convert it to ogg and upload to Commons? Cumeo89 17:27, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Unless we have some sort of confirmation on the status, we have to assume it's copyrighted. However, those specific files may be be fine since they're distributed with GPL software, and this site claims it to be GPL, yet it seems like StarDict doesn't claim to be the author or even know who is. According to the site: "As the dictionaries are collected from the internet, we can't make sure of each dictionary's license, if you find your dictionaries are downloadable here, which is not allowed, please mail me, i will remove it soon." It doesn't seem like they have permission to be licensing this stuff. →Яocket°°° 07:41, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm a bit skeptical about the package. There's a readme.txt in there that I can't read, since it's in Chinese, but it contains a URL to the "China Shareware Registration Centre". If it's shareware, there's no way it's free content. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 09:01, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Help on Copyright

On the front page there should be under "navigation" some guide for dummies to copyright questions.

Imagine: I have a copy of something, produced by someone (living) who has a page in the wikipedia. Can I take a picture or can I scan it and put the result in Wikimedia commons?

Case 1: It is a painting, and I own the only existing copy. Case 2: It is a series of prints, with a limited number of copies (say < 200). Case 3: I took a picture in a museum.

What is the right thing to do?

No you can't upload this at the Commons. Owning a physical copy, even if it's the only one, does not mean you also owned the copyright on the thing. And you're right, we should advertise Help:Contents more prominently. Lupo 23:07, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I never even noticed that wasn't linked from the main page. It's in the side bar, but we can also put under the "Participating" section where more new users are likely to find it. →Яocket°°° 06:55, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

February 9

Category:Fête des lumières

I have to admit there are several pictures I took among this cat or its sub-cat but I wondered if there was a problem of copyright. I don't know the law about that kind of shots of free public light events! (Caution: if you think there's a problem, be careful with a DR of the whole cat since there's no problem for some pictures like Image:Lumignons.jpg or Image:TCL-crowd.JPG!) Thanks for your comments. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 16:23, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

The Library of Congress on Flickr

For your information : http://www.loc.gov/blog/?p=233 The Library of Congress' Flickr photostream is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/ They are asking Flickr users to help tag and put notes on photos. Interestingly, they have a license tag I've not seen before on Flickr: "No known copyright restrictions." Does this mean we can upload to our hearts' content? Arria Belli | parlami 23:27, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

For most of the LoC images, yes. They are in the Public Domain because their copyright expired for instance. See also {{LOC-image}} and Category:Images from the Library of Congress TheDJ 00:49, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Did anyone else have the feeling when they found out about this, that should have been us? Let's hope one day we may be in a position to make such partnerships. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 08:27, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. What ever became of en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-07-17/Library_of_Congress? Lupo 12:19, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Man, you have a good memory Lupo. thanks. (I wrote a bit about it.) pfctdayelise (说什么?) 01:46, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, sometimes I feel like an elephant. If I only could remember the names of people I meet... Anyway, it was mentioned even a little earlier here at the VP: Commons:Village_pump_archive-33#Great_news! WMF does content deal with LoC, US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Guess by whom. :-)) Lupo 09:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and "Schade" means "A pity" or "What a shame!" in German. Lupo 10:11, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

It's not a competition. We can both use free images. Superm401 - Talk 04:58, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Of course, we can (and we will!), but it's disappointing we weren't considered a suitable partner for whatever reason, since I think we should be in a stronger position than a commercial company like Flickr. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 09:58, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Good blog entry. It is disappointing it's not us, but LoC's decision is understandable given Flickr's set-up and popularity. I agree completely we need more software developers (that actually care) to improve our site's usability. Rocket000 16:20, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to Flickr for introducing a new "license" tag while not updating their software API. Images using this copyright tag can not be uploaded or verified using my Flickr tools until Flickr updates its API. -- Bryan (talk to me) 13:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Is there a page to coordinate these imports? Superm401 - Talk 02:52, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Note that the FAQ states that high-quality TIFFs are available, so it many not make sense to copy directly from Flickr. Superm401 - Talk 17:36, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

January 17

Overwriting original file

I'm having a small dispute with User:Ferrylodge. Basically, is it acceptable to upload a black and white version of a color image over the original file, or should a new image file for the black and white edit of the original be created? The relevant guideline I found was If you modify an image of others, please upload it under a different filename and add a link from the original. see here. Thanks.-Andrew c 16:42, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Fully correct, especially if someone objects to the image being modified. TheDJ 18:03, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I tend to use my judgement. In the case of removing obvious image defects - i.e. scratches and dust, I would tend to overwrite the original, especially if it is a PD photo from a scanned source (i.e. LoC, etc). If it's someone's personal photo then I would tend to upload a originalfilename-mod.jpg version of the file and cross link. Megapixie 21:54, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Any opinion on the specific example I gave? I think I draw the conclusion that since being in color isn't an obvious image defect, it wouldn't be appropriate to upload B&W over a color image. Thanks both of you for your time in replying to my query.-Andrew c 01:42, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I just stumbled on this discussion. Yes, I have an opinion. The guideline you cited here pertains at least primarily to a situation where "you try to upload a different file type." Changing from color to B&W is not changing to a different file type. Additionally, in this instance, both the original uploader, as well as the image donor, agreed to change from color to black and white, which seems highly relevant.Ferrylodge 02:01, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

• What file are we talking about? --Jarekt 02:38, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

This is the file we’re talking about. There is a duplicate black and white image here, and I have requested that the duplicate be deleted. There is also a color image here. Deleting that black and white duplicate would be basically the same as what was done here and here.Ferrylodge 02:43, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

For those following along, please look closer. The "original file" which is now black and white was originally in color, hence my question. Look at the file history of Image:40_weeks_pregnant.jpg. This shouldn't be about the deletion or duplicate images. Those issues can be addressed in their appropriate forum. This is only a question of whether it was ok for me to tell FL in the future, please don't upload significantly edited images over the originals. Please, let's stay on topic.-Andrew c 04:07, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

If anyone does provide an authoritative answer to your question, Andrew c, I hope the answer will also address whether it's okay to upload a cropped version of an original image. I crop images all the time that I first transferred from Flickr.Ferrylodge 04:45, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I think this sums it up: {{Do not overwrite}}. Samulili 08:03, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Samulili, when someone attempts to overwrite an existing image, they get this warning: "Files should only be replaced by the original uploader, or by other users in cases of obvious quality improvements which cannot be disputed (better ask first!). In many cases, it is better to upload the file under a different name." Doesn't it make a difference that I am the original uploader?Ferrylodge 08:53, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

In my book original uploders should be allowed to modify and improve their images as they seem fit. If other parties prefer the older edits or other improvements, they can make a separate image out of it, and they should not revert changes of the original uploder. Also in this case, the original image was not "color" it was BW computer generated image with pink tint. I also prefer the pink version over BW version.--Jarekt 14:05, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Technically, the original uploader was 3dpregnancy over at wikipedia. I don't believe just because FL copied the image over to the commons means that he "owns" the image more than anyone else. But really, I think matters are basically settled, and hopefully we can all agree that edits of images that reduce the information should almost always go into new files. Are we all good here?-Andrew c 18:16, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Andrew c, if you want to argue that the original uploader at Wikimedia Commons is not the original uploader at Wikimedia Commons, that seems a bit odd. In any event, as you know, the people who created this image specifically approved overwriting it with the Black and White version (see here: "The black and white version as currently online, are fine! Thnx for the change. With kind regards, Wouter").

In addition, I never said anything about "owning" the image. You are attempting to convert the image to color over the objections of the original Wikimedia uploader, and over the objections of the people who made the image in the first place, so it seems you are no less susceptible to a charge of trying to "own" the image than I am.

And, no, I do not agree "that edits of images that reduce the information should almost always go into new files." As Jarekt said above, "original uploders should be allowed to modify and improve their images as they seem fit." If I see an image at Flickr, and only a small portion of it seems worthy of uploading to Wikimedia, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with me uploading the whole image, then cropping it, and overwriting the uploaded image with the cropped version. I have done this many times, and it's 100% consistent with Wikimedia rules: "Files should only be replaced by the original uploader, or by other users in cases of obvious quality improvements which cannot be disputed (better ask first!)."Ferrylodge 19:27, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

You are not the original uploader. 3dpregnancy is. Moreover, that fact that there's a controversy demonstrates that both versions should be kept, with separate file names. Superm401 - Talk 02:27, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree that both a black and white as well as a color version should be kept, with separate file names. This is the black and white file we’re talking about, and it should be kept (3dpregnancy has approved it). There is also a color image here, and it should be kept too. The problem is that there is also another black and white image here, and I have requested that this third file be deleted because it is duplicative. Superm401, do you mean that we should keep the third file instead of deleting it?Ferrylodge 03:44, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

FL, in the future, please don't upload significantly edited images over the originals. Ok? No one is arguing that we keep duplicate files. I asked before to please stay on topic, and that this was not the place to discuss deletion. (and if we are going to do that, I'll ask everyone: what file name is better for these images "Image:40 weeks pregnant.jpg" or "Image:Human fetus - 40 weeks - B&W.jpg").-Andrew c 14:23, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Andrew c, but I do not see consensus here for your position. As Jarekt said above, "original uploaders should be allowed to modify and improve their images as they see fit." Wikimedia rules say that, "Files should only be replaced by the original uploader, or by other users in cases of obvious quality improvements which cannot be disputed (better ask first!)." If I see an image at Flickr, and only a small portion of it seems worthy of uploading to Wikimedia, then there is nothing wrong with me uploading the whole image, then cropping it, and overwriting the uploaded image with the cropped version. I have done this many times, and it's 100% consistent with Wikimedia policy. Just because you say it's not proper does not make it so. If I am shown to be mistaken about this, then of course I will change course.Ferrylodge 21:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

You're not the original uploader, and no amount of quoting "Wikimedia rules" would convince me otherwise; this is blatant wiki-lawyering. Superm401 - Talk 17:20, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I think every user, also original uploaders or authors of images, should be careful when overwriting images. It is probably OK for the original uploader to overwrite an image with a significantly edited version soon after the original upload. But if the original image was uploaded a long time ago, the image can be in use on many Wikipedias or other projects. Then it should not be the uploader at commons who should decide that all projects should use a much different version of the image. It is better to upload the edited version with a new name, and let the projects decide for themselves if they want the new image. /Ö 22:36, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I pretty much agree with what you said, Ö. In this particular case, the color-tinted image was in use at Wikipedia. There was a consensus at Wikipedia that the color-tinted image should be replaced by a black-and-white image.[4] I disagreed with that consensus, but I was in the minority. Therefore, I desaturated the image at Wikimedia, over-wrote the color-tinted image with the desaturated (i.e. black and white) image with the approval of the image donor, and created a new Wikimedia file for the color-tinted image. Then Andrew c kindly created a better desaturated (i.e. black and white) image that did not have jpeg artifacts, and so I replaced the B&W image having the artifacts with the B&W image without the artifacts. I don't understand why there is any controversy about it.Ferrylodge 23:47, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

The Library of Congress

Following a unprecedented upload of public pictures from the United States' Library of Congress to Flickr [5], I think it would be useful to develop a script to upload to Commons all the collection, or a similar more manual tool. Some pictures are truly magnificent. Moez ^talk 00:49, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

We discussed it further up the page: Commons:Village_pump#The_Library_of_Congress_on_Flickr

When Flickr update their API, we can develop a tool that can easily "import" whatever images we want. I suppose a question is, should we just take them all?

It would be quite interesting if we did and could show ourselves to be better curators than the Flickr community :) --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 02:23, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Or create a hack in my scripts :) I'm planning to pick up Flickr stuff again in some weeks, so I'll see what I can do with LOC. -- Bryan (talk to me) 11:34, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I disagree that we should take them all. First, we won't show ourselves to be better curators than the Flickr community, and that'll be true for as long as we have limited resources and are using MediaWiki. Secondly, not all of them are going to be useful for Wikimedia projects. Finally, that just seems like a lot of duplicated effort. Suck down the ones we need, as we need them. Lewis Collard! (hai thar, wut u doin) 13:23, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

And we should be especially cautious about works that are PD-US but not PD in country of origin. -Nard 13:44, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I looked on few random pages. They were great pre-WWII images of photographers which are either still alive or very recently dead. And there were no clues if they did or did not work for US government, if photos were ever published, and no claims that they were PD. The prospect of determining copyright status of those images seems quite daunting and might suck-up most of our time we will spend on the project. That is one of the problems with having higher standards for inclusion than United States' Library of Congress and Flickr. --Jarekt 13:57, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

The Library of Congress was careful about which images it picked; they were either from a US federal government collection (Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information) and thus {{PD-USGov-FSA}}, and the others were from the George Grantham Bain Collection, which were works for hire, then purchased by the Library of Congress and placed into the public domain (and so are {{PD-Bain}}). In neither case does the date of the photographer's death matter. You can see more information on the project FAQ. Carl Lindberg 06:57, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

That is a good news.--Jarekt 02:45, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Rather than get these images from Flickr may I suggest getting them directly from LoC. They make an OAI-PMH interface available for about 150,000 photos in their online digital collection. I've used it before and it works well. --Enotty 18:41, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Updating CC-by-*-older

As I have updated info on my images, I now have some images which are licensed with cc-by-2.0, cc-by-2.5 and cc-by-3.0. That seems kind of silly. Is it possible to drop some of them? I don't quite understand the CC licences in this respect. Samulili 07:16, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

You can always use one of those multi-license tags. Like {{Cc-by-sa-any}}, but you don't really need that because if you're talking CC-BY, there's no share-alike restriction so there shouldn't be any compatibility issues. I say go head and ditch the older versions if you want. They're all pretty much the same. Attribution's attribution. Having unnecessary (IMO) license text can make it inconvenient for future uses of your work because they'll have to include all of it. Rocket000 07:40, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

It's incorrect that "they'll have to include all of it". If you, say, triple license under cc-by-sa 2.0, cc-by-sa 2.5, cc-by-sa 3.0, the reuser can choose to keep only one. Superm401 - Talk 16:30, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

The first image at Commons?

Is this the first image uploaded to commons:

1st?

2nd

3rd?

? --Tony Wills 11:56, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope. The first image was Special:Undelete/Image:80px-Wiki-meta.png. Commons:Upload log-archive - September 2004, details the earliest uploads. Quail1 is the oldest surviving image, and you have the 1st, 2nd and 4th extant images (3rd is this one.--Nilfanion 13:06, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Seems to be fairly typical - pictures of people with no clothes on, followed not long afterwards by a photo of a station ;-)  – Tivedshambo (talk) 17:52, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I expected that a few wiki logos and such would have been here from the start, it is interesting that wiki-meta was the only image of any description before the first photo was uploaded. Ok, so the quail gets the credit for being the first photo to be uploaded :-). A few firsts: Image:The_Death_of_Hyacinthos.gif is probably the oldest photo actually in focus. Image:Kane_QC.png is the oldest image still needing meaningful categorization. Image:Sun.jpg is the first of a long tradition of sunsets. Bangkoktransportmap.jpg is probably the first to be deleted because of copyvio. Image:DSCF0365.JPG is probably the oldest photo with a completely useless filename :-) --Tony Wills 11:47, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I categorized Image:Kane_QC.png... :) Superm401 - Talk 17:30, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Flags

Yesterday, GaAs asked an interessant question concerning the licence of the flags. (The question was asked in french in Le Bistro.) I try to translate it into english.

Is there a recommandation or a request for comment concerning the flags ? Indeed, we want to upload the flags from Commons to Vikidia. We are surprised to find different licences : DP-self, CC-BY-SA, GFDL, PD-ineligible, ... Moreover, we see that some licences have been modified.

In a few words, can we trust the licences given in Commons ?

Octozor 22:53, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Commons has a de facto policy that images of all basic national flags can be hosted here (since you could hardly have an encyclopedia without them), but sometimes the formal legalities of this are dubious, and there's some flailing around with the copyright tags. PD-Ineligible refers to the copyright status of the design itself, GFDL or CC-BY-SA refers to the copyright status of the particular image which some user made, while {{Insignia}} refers to non-copyright restrictions which apply to the use of official insignia in certain cases. AnonMoos 01:29, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for this answer. :) Octozor 13:44, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Many of them are in fact {{PD-1923}}, regardless of what the country happens to think about it. However, there are most likely some that should not be here. Superm401 - Talk 17:31, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

You may be interested in Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Flag of Nicaragua.svg →Rocket°°° 17:39, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Patstuart has reminded me at Template talk:PD-1923 that Commons requires that the work be public domain in the source country. I'm not sure how enforced this is, but it kind of moots my above comments. Superm401 - Talk 17:47, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

It's pretty enforced but we're also big on double standards. ;) →Rocket°°° 19:02, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

February 5

Another copyright doubt in my own works.

Does FOP apply on this? I suppose it doesn't... Does anyone know how I could contact Ron Mueck or his agents in order to ask permission? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 16:35, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that posters are installed permanently. See also Commons:Freedom of panorama#United Kingdom. --EugeneZelenko 17:08, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

No they're not. I forgot about that! So of course FOP doesn't apply. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 18:48, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Both the posters and the columns themselves (I'm assuming those are real columns, and he's not just a ridiculously good poster-maker) are likely copyrighted, so I doubt freedom of panorama is applicable (you're only showing copyrighted works). Superm401 - Talk 17:17, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

No the columns are not copyrighted. The National Gallery of Scotland has opened in 1859! --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 18:48, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Category:WikiProjects

Ok, this category has a little issue (which I made worse). It contains both Commons WikiProject pages (like WikiProject Flickr and Project Nuvola 2.0+) and images, along with sub-cats, related to WikiProjects on other projects. I was just going to move Commons related stuff to the parent cat: Category:Commons projects, but that might makes things even more disorganized. Any ideas on how to split these up? While avoiding future confusion? →Rocket°°° 14:24, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good and according to other Category:Commons subcats. Code·is·poetry 15:09, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Superseded images

Commons_talk:Deletion_requests/Superseded#This_policy_is_ridiculous --Rschen7754 04:41, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

bad featured picture links

i noticed that the template {{Featured picture}} produces dead links for the older featured pictures nominations. I worked out the reason is the in the past they were called "Featured pictures candidates" and now they are called "Featured picture candidates".. the template doesn't take this into account. So, two possible solutions are: (1) change the template to take this into account (i don't know how to do that), or (2) make a ton of redirects (not something i'm willing to do).

in any case, i'm not sure whether this had been noticed - i'm just letting you know. thanks, 131.111.8.96 16:34, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

There is no way to fix that as there is no way to know which notation was meant. Many broken links are as a result of edits or other versions being placed in the same nomination. I've been creating redirects as I run across them, but I haven't looked for them. --Dori - Talk 05:46, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I think I will run a bot to correct this. -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:31, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

citations

How do I give citation to an image I found here? I need to know ASAP for my school project.

Depends on the image and the license it is released under. You usually only have to write the author's name, but, as I said, it depends. --Boricuæddie 20:37, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

See also Commons:Reuse. -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:27, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

February 10

Cuddling or hugging?

Hi. As a Frenchman I don't see any particular difference. If there is, could we say that a cuddle is a kind of "big hug"? In that case would that mean "cuddling" should be a sub-cat of "hugging"? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 11:16, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Hugging refers to enfolding with the arms, while cuddling is a broader term which could refer to many activities. AnonMoos 13:06, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

So hugging is a sub-cat of cuddling. But I still don't get it: could you give me an example of a "non-hugging cuddle" please? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 13:11, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Anything which is other than enfolding with the arms alone, like Spooning. Of course, some might call that "snuggling"... AnonMoos 13:18, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry but I don't understand spooning. Can you just tell me if there's any picture in the cuddling cat that is not hugging? Or photos in the hugging cat that shouldn't be called hugging? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 13:23, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Spooning (work-safe). I would not call this hugging, as the girl doesn't really have her arms around the cat. --rimshot^talk 14:20, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

But that seems like a hug to me. On the contrary can we really say that, that or that are hugs? And is that spooning? BTW AnonMoos said non-hugging cuddling was when anything other than enfolding with the arms so why spooning isn't hugging?! Sorry to annoy you - I just want to understand! --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 16:34, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Cuddle = câlin, câliner, se blottir; hug = serrer dans les bras. Cuddle like câliner can suggest an affectionate or sexual motivation; hug can be quite formal or even forceful and definitely presupposes arm embrace. Man vyi 16:41, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

So your explanation is different than the previous one! I'm more and more confused! --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 17:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

lol. When it comes to static images, there's not much of a difference I guess, but maybe this will help you understand "cuddle". →Rocket°°° 18:03, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Upload form redesign: beta-testers needed

Re Commons:Village pump/Archive/2008Jan#The design of our upload form:

After the generally favorable responses to my initial announcement, there have been several enhancements made to this script. It is basically finished now. I would like to have some beta-testers try out these new upload forms, especially people not using Firefox/IE6 on Windows. Could you spare 15 minutes to half an hour and beta-test the redesigned upload forms? Then please see MediaWiki talk:UploadForm.js#Beta-testing. Thank you, Lupo 15:59, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

P.S.: I also would like to encourage new or inexperienced users to help testing these forms! Lupo 17:23, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Questions about the OTRS

Hi. I have a few questions. If I make a photo of an artwork and if I want to ask permission to use it, what should I ask exactly? Should I mention Wikimedia? How do I prove the permission is not a fake? Is there a model of letters for that? And finally what would be the correct licensing for those two-authors pictures (one for the photo - me - and the other one for the artwork)? (this would seem weird to me to have a personal picture mentioning a copyright as if the artwork copyright holder also owned my photo!) Thanks for your help. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 10:32, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

There are some suggestions at en:Wikipedia:Boilerplate_request_for_permission. And yes, sometimes one copyright license applies to the phtograph itself (declared by the photographer), while other copyright conditions apply to the content of what is photographed (and the copyright-holder of the content photographed is a different person from the photographer). I'm not sure that the Wikipedia/Wikimedia copyright template system is good at capturing this... AnonMoos 13:15, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

OK thanks. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 00:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Is there any category "press by theme" or equivalent?

I dn't find anything. I wanted to create it but it seems that there's actually no press category. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 13:30, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

What do mean by "press"? Like newspapers and stuff? →Rocket°°° 18:06, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Category:Printed media, Category:Printed matter, Category:Mass media and Category:Serials, periodicals and journals could do with some rationalization. Man vyi 19:02, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I guess that's quite messy for those categories... --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 00:47, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

bot?

The images used in http://it.wikibooks.org/wiki/Elementi_di_Euclide are not categorized. However, as all begin with the prefix "EuclidB", a bot could put them in the Category:Elements of Euclid and Category: Euclidean geometry. Who could do this? Thanks Helder 19:51, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

February 12

Another difficult duplicate case!

Category:Naturism and Category:Nudism. If I'm right nudism is a part of naturism, which can't be summed up as only nudism. The problem is: can we actually illustrate other aspects of naturism? I guess we can't. Therefore it would mean that any picture showing naturism would show its nudist aspect. So I thint we can keep the nudism cat only and redirect the other. What do you think? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 13:10, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Is there a name for those clothing?

Is there a name for t-shirts that show the navel? Like this for instance. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 18:14, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

en:Crop top or halfshirt, belly shirt and so on, not to be confounded with a en:Tube top ;) --rimshot^talk 18:37, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Interface problem

Hi, there

In both Afrikaans and Dutch, the "Community portal" translates as "Gebruikersportaal" (well, actually "Gemeenskapsportaal", but the other term is used her). My preferences have been set so that I have the Afrikaans interface, but now clicking on "Gebruikersportaal" takes me to the Dutch community portal! How can this be fixed to either go to the English one (a language with which Afrikaans users will be more familiar) or, if I create an Afrikaans one, how can I redirect it to go there (and would it be necessary to call the Afrikaans page something other than "Gebruikersportaal"?).

Any help or advice will be appreciated. Anrie 20:57, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I think you could disambiguate this name by adding language name. For example Commons:Gebruikersportaal (Dutch) and Commons:Gebruikersportaal (Afrikaans). --EugeneZelenko 16:10, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

That is a possibility. My main concern is, though, how do I get the link in the navigation menu on the left to link to the Afrikaans page, regardless of the name? (I have similar problems with the Welcome link, which links to the English page, even though there is an Afrikaans version available.) Anrie 14:29, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

You get an admin to put the correct page name in MediaWiki:Portal-url/af (and in MediaWiki:Welcome-url/af for the welcome page). /90.229.135.159 09:25, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

What exactly should MediaWiki:Portal-url/af link to? giggy _(:O) 09:56, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Giggy, if you could MediaWiki:Portal-url/af link to Commons:Gemeenskapsportaal (it is red now, I will create it as soon as I finish this message) and let MediaWiki:Welcome-url/af link to Commons:Hartlik_welkom I will appreciate it very much. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Anrie 13:11, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

PDF rendering

I am noticing an increasing amount of pdf uploads these days. No problem in itself, and indeed a welcome sign that we are expanding out with picture areas, but they are a lot less open to immediate scrutiny. Frankly someone could upload the latest Harry Potter e-book, name it with some obscure academic title and it might well survive for quite some time. Some procedures may be in place that I not aware of, but if they aren't then is there any though being put into the usage of an in-wiki pdf rendering extension? A quick browse of mediawiki brings up [6] which seems to be along the right lines. Effectively the pdf equivalent of Category:Djvu_files would fit the bill perfectly (which is indeed what the linked extension is designed to do). Thoughts welcomed, SFC9394 23:43, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

bugzilla:11215 :) --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 10:23, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

February 13

Screenshot of GPL v2 program okay?

On the Upload File page, it says that screenshots of software is considered a derivative work. What if the software is licensed under the GPL v2? Is there any problem uploading a screenshot of it? Jason Quinn 00:33, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

There's a {{GPL}} template... AnonMoos 02:40, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. 64.25.200.120 02:49, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

{{Free screenshot}} is better choice. Please note that screenshot must not contain any unfree work. More details in Commons:Screenshots. --EugeneZelenko 15:35, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

mapping

How do i create a free map for my own file showing certain countries of a region in color?

Is there an existing map you want to base it on? Marnanel 05:29, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Empty Categories

While improving the info in categories by searching for images that are not categorized properly, I found many "empty" categories. For example in the category http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tielt-Winge you find the empty categories Houwaart, Sint-Joris-Winge and Tielt (Tielt-Winge). The category Meensel-Kiezegem contains one subcategory Eddy Merckx and that sub category contains one page Eddy Merkx.
In my opinion a new category should (in general) not be created when there are no pictures for.
As soon as there are many pictures, one can create a page if it concerns one subject or a subcategory that takes many pictures from the main category.
Any different opinions? Wouter 08:56, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. You better can have an organised structure in advance than a chaos afterwards. By the way, the category:Sint-Joris-Winge is not empty anymore. The link between Eddy Merckx and Meensel-Kiezegem is indeed not correct. He has always lived near Brussels (youth in Woluwe, now in Meise) but was only born in Meensel-Kiezegem (due to the war??). Sonuwe 11:09, 13 February 2008 (UTC) (alias Zonneschijn)

I disagree, for several reasons

• I start with the assumption that for about 80 to 90 % of the villages of Belgium, we do have pictures, within a couple of months we will have images for all of them
• It is much more efficient to create a series of categories in the same family in one go, instead of having to create each of them separately on a "as need" basis. Moreover, experience shows that after creation of a block of categories, they contain much less errors and are more consistent
• When uploading and categorising images, it is much more efficient if the referred villages do exist. Initially, when the villages where not existing, my uplaod/categorisation went 50 % slower. Now a red link means a mistake, which is quicker to detect spelling errors too. For efficiency reasons, I often create subcategories one or more days before I start uploading a series with commonist.
• For a novice user that does not know his way in the categories, he knows that at least the village will exist, so he does not have to understand the details of the category organisation. After all, the majority of the images are referencing a village. And even if categorising in a village is not sufficient, it is still a lot better than no categorisation at all while there is a better chance that the image gets deeper categorised by people working in that "area". --Foroa 12:13, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

And yes, I oppose completely the general thinking (from the english wikipedia) that one should only deeper categorise if a category becomes full. If you know where you are going to, you should not recat over and over again each time a bucket is full. In the end, more than half of that work is a waste of time. By following that logic, one could create first a cat for a new country, when it becomes populated, spread the images over departements/provinces, when those are full, spread them over municipatities, ... etc. --Foroa 12:18, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I generally agree with Foroa - empty categories which are part of a logical category tree structure should be fine; however, there should be a way of removing old and no longer used categories that are disconnected from the tree. Leftovers from unfinished attempts of categories renaming, etc. --Jarekt 14:02, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I almost completely agree with Jarekt. There is a difference between empty categories (not containing images) and "empty unconnected" categories. My experience shows that 5 to 10 % of the categories have a wrong name (spelling, capitalisation, underscore, space, ...) and end up being completely empty. The latter should disappear which I believe, they do (the unseen hand of busy background administrators I suppose). --Foroa 14:28, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

IMO, you shouldn't make categories if you have nothing to put in them. You should only sub-divide if and when there's a need for it. Most users (myself included) don't like going three or four empty categories just to get to main selection of images. This happens a lot in area where it's obvious someone with a special interest and knowledge about the subject structured it that way. That's all good if we had something to put in it, but if the person who made it doesn't want to fill it, someone without that special interest and knowledge will be a lot less likely to make use of them. The thing is, it doesn't really help users find stuff. It tucks files away deeper and deeper without needing to. I think the point of galleries is to do the final divisions (like how many genus-species are done). Another good idea is to sketch out a category structure for a given area (see Category:Commons category schemes). →Rocket°°° 15:00, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, as this discussion is mainly about Belgian municipalities and Belgian villages': Personally, I usually only make empty categories for those Belgian municipalities (gemeenten) and their subdivisions (deelgemeenten). Nothing else I think. Reason:

1. It's a well-defined defined structure, and its a limited set. No risk to create a random structure of ad hoc empty categories that are rather useless or ill-defined.
2. See e.g. my uploads: I continuously add pictures of Belgian municipalities, so do User:Foroa, User:Sonuwe, User:Jean-Pol GRANDMONT, User:Spotter2, User:Friedrich Tellberg and many others....
3. Finally, the bots moving images to Commons are a disaster in categorization. See a topic I opened here Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2008Jan#Bot_move_to_commons_.2C_CommonsHelper_.2C_etc... last month. From the nl:Dutch wikipedia, bots regularly move images from places and buildings Belgium. The CommonsHelper seems to work MUCH better if the municipality/village category already exists, then it often drops the picture right in the right category. Otherwise, they almost always get lost, or it adds plain nonsense. The same goes for less experienced (new) users by the way, who seem to categorize their images easier (or learn easier how to do so) when the municipality category exists.

Of course, making empty categories based on more arbitrary criteria isn't really that useful... Making categories for all possible companies in the world, all the roads in a country, all famous people of a country doesn't make that much sense. Those aren't that well-defined, and they do not define an easy countable and small set, contrary to the municipalities. --LimoWreck 19:03, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

TfL (London Underground) roundels

Could a copyright expert look at the images in Category:Transport for London roundels and decided whether they are copyright or not please. Many thanks. (Sorry if I've raise this in the wrong place - I looked for a page about copyright queries but couldn't find one).  – Tivedshambo (talk) 13:22, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Commons talk:Licensing would be a good place. In this case, I think, it is quite clear that the design is ineligible for copyright, as it is very simple. --rimshot^talk 13:41, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Rimshot, the design is too simple to claim copyright on such images. Patrícia ^msg 13:58, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Way too simple. {{PD-ineligible}} or {{PD-textlogo}} if they're trademarked. →Rocket°°° 15:08, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

So what's the difference between copyright and trademark, and are trademark logos allowed on Commons? – Tivedshambo (talk) 15:45, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, trademarks are allowed. Images only have to be free in the copyright sense. (They can be both.) Trademarks are not generally not internationally respected unlike copyrights. Their use is only restricted in countries where the trademark is being used. I suggest taking a look at w:trademark (and w:copyright) to see the difference between the two. →Rocket°°° 01:09, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

international language support via special:Gadgets

special:Preferences w:yi:special:Gadgets w:yi:special:Preferences
m:wikt:yi:special:Gadgets m:wikt:yi:special:Preferences
m:commons:user:I18n m:wikt:yi:user:I18n w:yi:user:I18n

Dear friends; Please add copies of w:yi:MediaWiki:Gadget-BiDiEditing, w:yi:MediaWiki:Gadget-BiDiEditing.js, w:yi:MediaWiki:Gadget-ShortLink and w:yi:MediaWiki:Gadget-ShortLink.js to this wiki. Please copy the relevant parts of w:yi:MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition to MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition.
In the image you will see some language tabs. Neither gadgets nor user scripts are active at special:Preferences. The language tabs can be defined with a code similar to m:s:yi:MediaWiki:Common.js. Good luck and best regards
‫·‏לערי ריינהארט‏·‏T‏·‏m‏:‏Th‏·‏T‏·‏email me‏·‏‬ 23:49, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Esperanto keyboard support via special:Gadgets

m:wikt:yi:MediaWiki:Gadget-EoMagicalConversion and m:wikt:yi:MediaWiki:Gadget-EoMagicalConversion.js support the Esperanto magical conversion to the editor. (source 1 → source 2). Such an option would be very useful in order to be able to edit Esperanto texts at this projects from any device even without Esperanto keyboard. It is working also at w:ps:special:Gadgets. Please install the EoMagicalConversion gadget at this project.
‫·‏לערי ריינהארט‏·‏T‏·‏m‏:‏Th‏·‏T‏·‏email me‏·‏‬ 23:49, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

---

 Done The new gadgets are up and running. :) -- Editor at Large • talk 03:49, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Editor at Large thank you very much for the implementation! Greatings from Munich

‫·‏לערי ריינהארט‏·‏T‏·‏m‏:‏Th‏·‏T‏·‏email me‏·‏‬ 01:03, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

February 14

Image:Paris Night.jpg

This image has been featured on en:Digg, a high-traffic website. Please review the image page after a while, thanks. ~Kylu (u|t) 07:15, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Watchlisted, hopefully nothing will need to be done though. giggy _(:O) 07:54, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

O.O !!! it is a Comete on the right of the Eiffel Tower ! 210.203.61.15 16:37, 15 February 2008 (UTC) should we notice the French autorities that this cometes is targeting their National Tower...

Is it possible to change username?

:) Thanks! —the preceding unsigned comment was added by Fontanatheater (talk • contribs)

Yes, please see COM:CHU. --Boricuæddie 21:53, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

List of Commoners by uploads?

Is there any means of tracking Commons users by the net number of uploads that they've made, not counting deletions, similar to the en:WP:WBE? --BrokenSphere 23:22, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you can request someone query it on the toolserver. See the query service for information. Majorly (talk) 01:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

February 15

EU Commissioner Proposes 95 year Copyright

from slshdot: The European Union Commissioner for the Internal Market has today proposed extending the copyright term for musical recordings to 95 years.--Shizhao 08:27, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I just read the same thing in the paper this morning. Note that for reasons explained by one commentator, this would only affect us to the extent that we are hosting recordings of performances made less than 95 years ago of works written by an author who died more than 70 years ago. So if it were effective now, we'd be talking about works by authors who died before 1938, where the performance we host was (a) made by performers that are still alive today and (b) recorded after 1912 but before 1938. (More recent recordings would already be out of bounds to us, and older recordings would still be safe.) This is not an extension of the 70 years post-mortem protection for authors. —LX (talk, contribs) 13:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Furthermore, it's just an EU commissioner's opinion. The recording industry's lobbying has been successful so far, but it's not clear at all whether this will indeed be implemented. The UK recently considered a proposal (also brought forward by the recording industry) to extend the neighbouring rights from 50 to 70 years. The UK decided against doing so. And the UK is an EU member... Lupo 16:38, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Redirect COM: to Commons:

And while we are discussing configuration changes, is there a reason not to redirect COM: to the Commons: namespace? Currently all COM: shortcuts reside in the main space. -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:28, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

See bugzilla:12600. --EugeneZelenko 19:44, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

May be we can rename all shortcuts to C: (like M: for meta)? Is C: prefix used for any wiki? --EugeneZelenko 16:17, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

February 11

Sex and love?

I was wondering if it would be logical to add Category:Love to Category:Sex... Since people can have sexual relations without any love feelings I guess we shouldn't. And it might also be a problem for animal sex. What do you think? (yeah I know, it's not that important!) --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 10:33, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

No, it wouldn't. Lewis Collard! (hai thar, wut u doin) 09:02, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Commons:Deletion requests/Category:Stroop Report

Can Commons:Deletion requests/Category:Stroop Report be closed? It's been open for a month and little was added in last 2 weeks.--Jarekt 14:00, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Yup, I've kept it, since opinion was pretty overwhelming. Love backlogs. :\ Lewis Collard! (hai thar, wut u doin) 08:43, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Bot request

Hi I would like to request a bot to transfer all images from Category:Bankstown to Category:City of Bankstown and then delete the first category. I created the first category and now realize that this was a mistake. Cheers Adam.J.W.C. 00:46, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

You may wish to try Commons:Bots/Requests --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 04:40, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

This kind of thing is done by CommonsDelinker. --rimshot^talk 08:47, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Ahh yes, you may wish to add {{categoryredirect|City of Bankstown}} ... I believe that's what the bot looks for? It also helps get other uploaders to put them into the new category. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 13:24, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for this, looking into it now Adam.J.W.C. 06:54, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Antiquities laws et al.

Could you please help searching laws and legal rules which control the use of pictures of objects which should be in the public domain (PD-old).

• editio princeps in the European Union (25 years after first publication) [7]

• Egypt antiquities [8]

• Greece antiquities [9]

• Italian antiquities (Legge Urbani) [10]

Further suggestions? --Historiograf 20:35, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Image deletion and related deletion in common galleries

I am a bit surprised that when deleting an image, it can be deleted in 750 wiki's allover the world but not in the galleries of the commons (Example here). Galleries with non-existing images are quite ugly and not a real promotion for the commons.

To detect/correct galleries containing images with spelling errors, would there be no bot that checks once a week or so for non-existing images in the galleries ? --Foroa 21:35, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

That particular image was caused by toolserver downtime, which caused CommonsDelinker to not work at all at any wiki. It should just delink from Commons as from other wikis. -- Bryan (talk to me) 22:04, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

February 16

Personal right in Japan....

It's a major problem that I ever took photos for a Japanese author, but the free-licensed image was removed by Japanese Wikipedia User due to "Personal Right" issue, If it's not suitable for Japanese language version, should any images related to Japanese must be removed due to personal right issue? Look this first to know about the problem. If Wikimedia Foundation don't mentioned on this, should it be added in image reuse policy? Rico Shen ^contact... 06:26, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the usual English translation is "personality rights". The Wikimedia Commons solution is to add {{Personality rights}}, but not usually to delete the image... AnonMoos 11:51, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

By the way, the main issue for whether such an image will be deleted from Commons is whether it potentially violates the privacy of individuals who are not well-known public figures, and not technical personality rights legalities -- personality rights are really more of a constraint on how people can make use of some images on Commons, rather than on what images can be uploaded to Commons. AnonMoos 22:56, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Message to tell user about SVG format?

I think will be good idea to create template message that SVG format is preferable for some files. Of course translations of this message will be great. Definitely could be added to MediaWiki:UserMessages.js. --EugeneZelenko 16:20, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think that's a good idea. It'll be more effective than simply tagging the image. I see so many images that were obviously made with vector-editing software, yet the upload is a PNG (or GIF!) →Rocket°°° 05:06, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

What to do about Image:Dorchester Pot Artifact June 1851.jpeg

Image:Dorchester Pot Artifact June 1851.jpeg does have a claimed source (Scientific American 1851) and licence (PD due to age), but six months ago another editor has pointed out in its description that the claimed source is incorrect. I can't work out from the deletion guidelines whether I should put a speedy deletion template on it (no/incomplete source information), or go through the normal deletion process. Could someone clarify for me? --86.143.69.190 21:03, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

• The dispute appears legitimate but it probably IMHO doesn't qualify for speedy deletion, as it's not an outright copyright violation and needs research to determine the facts. I nominated it for regular deletion to stimulate discussion. -Nard 00:26, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

February 17

wikimedia and java

Java has been open source so, we can use some tools and media written in Java, right? I'm planning to write a tool to speak wiktionary pronunciation on web browser. Cumeo89 05:07, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

NARA site redesigned, template broken

Anyone noticed that NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) has redesigned its website so that the NARA-image {{NARA-image}} template links don't work? I have yet to figure out the new site structure and can't yet fix the template. If any one can help, that'd be great. — Rlevse • Talk • 19:38, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Looks like it was temp down. — Rlevse • Talk • 04:01, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Help putting a picture on a page

Help putting a picture on a page

I have upload a file called Howard Dully.jpg and I want to place it on the page Howard Dully how do I do that? I am new at this so be gentle ok

Howard Dully [Email addr removed]

Go to the page and add [[Image:Howard Dully.jpg]] about where you want the image. 68.39.174.238 21:33, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Is this a technical issue or just a defective CoA?

Image:Zimbabwe coa.png seems to have been exactly split into 4 quarters and each one shifted so that they're all "off". (Look at the wavy lines in the upper part of the coat). Is this a problem with MWs image renderer, or just a bad CoA? 68.39.174.238 21:32, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem seems to be with the image itself, and only with the second upload, the original version did not have this problem. It seems like it was created by trying to rotate this low resolution image left by few degrees, in order to correct the tilt in the original version. --Jarekt 13:15, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Image Localization

I was wondering if anyone has given the issue of image localization any thought. Given that many images utilize the .SVG vector format would it be possible to quickly generate localized images such as this_one into many languages without having to edit it with a graphics application? --Renier Maritz 23:08, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry just noticed there is such a discussion higher up on this page! How did the search function miss that one? --Renier Maritz 23:12, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

February 18

FIFA's "Rules of the house"

I have seen at the page FIFA World Cup Germany 2006 matches a warning telling that someone who enters the stadium can not take photos and licence them for commercial purposes. No "freedom of panorama", "ineligible" or whatever, the match itself would have copyright or something like that. A user that may have sneaked a camera into the stadium can not licence the photos he could have taken, period.

But what about the photos used by newspapers or magazines? They do use them for commercial purposes. In most cases such an image can not be used except with a fair use provision, making it unusable in commons, but at some countries there are laws (and corresponding licence tags in Commons, like Template:PD-AR-Photo) that put a published image in the public domain if some conditions are met, such as a given number of years since publication.

What happens with those cases? Does the copyright of the photo of a World Cup match taken by a press source belong to that source, as to expire and become public domain, or did it belong to the FIFA all the time? Thialfi 01:43, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if FIFA can claim copyrights to the matches and pictures people take. Or is it more of a situation described in Commons:Image_casebook#Museum_photography: "If the museum's house rules forbid photography, a breach of that rule is a problem between the photographer and the museum, but doesn't affect the copyright status of an image."--Jarekt 13:08, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

It would be ludicrous if FIFA claimed copyright to the matches themselves - it's not some kind of choreography designed by the FIFA. There are parts of the game that may be copyrighted, though: the stadium, the football kits, the advertising, to name but a few. If these are incidental to the picture, that is to say: not the main part of the picture, that should not be a problem. Also, the copyright in these things is probably not owned by FIFA but by the respective architect, advertising company, the company that paid for the advertisement, the football kit's designers and so on.

This means that a photo that you take yourself may be ok, copyright-wise. The copyright to the photo belongs to you. As you broke the house-rules, to which you agreed when buying the ticket and entering the venue, the FIFA may take legal action against you. I don't know whether that is enforceable, but I'd rather be careful.

Press photos are a different thing. The copyright in these pictures is owned by the photographer or the news agency (or both). It will expire in 70 years or 70 years after the photographer's death. After that time, they will be public domain.

In either case, the FIFA never held the copyright to the photos. FIFA might hold the copyright to photos by photographers employed by them, but that, too, will expire. You just have to wait long enough. --rimshot^talk 13:49, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I think discussions about "copyrights vs. breech of contract" were discussed on Commons talk:Licensing. At least about concert photos. --EugeneZelenko 16:51, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Links with Wikipedia

Hiya, is there a robot which will look for {{commonscat}} links on Wikipedia, and then add the appropriate back links from Commons? I've been doing this by hand when I start a page/category on Commons (now I've realised how to do it) but it's very time consuming updating then after translations have taken place. Railwayfan2005 21:20, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

February 19

Possibly nonfree content

I looked in the FAQ but there didn't seem to be anything about what to do if you find content where you have a fair idea it's not free. Maybe I missed it. The painting Image:Day dorothy1 2006-07-07.jpg is the same one as here: [11]; the Commons page doesn't even mention the artist's name, let alone say that they gave permission. The uploader uploaded an enormous amount of stuff in summer 2006, all but three of which have been deleted. What should we do now? Marnanel 03:30, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Delete it, of course. The artist is still alive. Lupo 08:17, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Jamendo

There is quite a bit of cc-by-sa content on jamendo.com (a music site) [12]. Cheers. --Emesee 10:56, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Careless {{Dupe}} tagging?

My simplest question first.
Someone has tagged a bunch of images I uploaded as {{Dupe}}s. I disagree that the images I uploaded should be the ones to be deleted. I put a {{Hangon}} tag on some of those images, and learned there is no hangon tag for disputing speedy deletion here. So, what is the equivalent procedure for disputing a speedy deletion?

More details:
I went to a lot of effort to make sure the images I uploaded had good names -- names that included the full name of the individuals. The rival images have bad names. It wasn't that much effort, per image. But I uploaded dozens, so this took hours.

The images I uploaded use the modern headers, and, more particularly, include the URL to the page where the image was published. The rival images don't give the source.

The rival images incorrectly assert the images, which were published in "most wanted" posters, were published by the FBI. These posters were for international readers, and the FBI only has domestic authority, so they were published by the State Department.

Is there no obligation for nominators for speedy deletion to leave a courtesy "heads-up" on the uploader's talk page?

Cheers! Geo Swan 08:08, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Stick the {{Dupe}} tag on the other image instead. The process of tagging dupes is semi-automated, so plenty of mistakes are going to happen.. :\ Lewis Collard! (hai thar, wut u doin) 09:35, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. I did that -- with the ones that hadn't yet been speedy deleted.

I see that. Siebrand, Collard and I have tagged many dupes in last month, I was noticed about two wrong tagging only, I'm not sure if you meant our tagging?--OsamaK 15:57, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I left a note on the nominator's talk page.

What is the recommendation on giving heads-ups to the uploaders? I only come to commons to upload images. Which I do in fits and starts. Uploading maybe a dozen images, all at once, maybe once a month. I don't always check my watchlist during that monthly session.

If I am understanding the nominator's note above, they think that their policy of continuing to avoid telling uploaders that they nominated their image for deletion is not a problem because only two people complained last month. They don't seem to realize that this could be a sign that those uploaders still aren't aware the images they uploaded have been deleted -- not that not bothering to tell the uploaders was okay.

I would still like clarification as to whether the deleted images end up being redirected to the image that remains. If so, is that automated? If it is not automated whose responsibility is the redirection?

In my comment to the nominator I suggested that, when judging which duplicate should be deleted, they should look to see which image has the source URL, and which had the more meaningful name. Does that make sense?

Cheers! Geo Swan 21:02, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

To avoid the situation where the "wrong one" gets deleted, you should tag the images you're wanting to replace with {{Badname}}. This lets the deleting admin know which one is preferred. There's a lot to delete around here so it's understandable if an admin is too in a hurry to fully examine all the images details (although they should always double check licensing/source info). Unless it's obvious which one is to be kept, it usually comes down to the one that was uploaded last because it's likely to be used the least. So if you let people know that your renaming the image instead of just unknowingly uploading a duplicate. And keep in mind not everyone speaks your language so without the "badname" tag they would never know. →Rocket°°° 04:41, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I just looked at a few of yours, and it's definitely not obvious which is better. For one thing, you're using a non-existent template. I think the info is better on the old ones and the history is fully recorded. Compare the image descriptions for Image:Ibrahim Salih Mohammed al-Yacoub 2.jpg: "Picture of Ibrahim Salih Mohammed Al-Yacoub, updated on his FBI wanted poster by about 2005" vs. "Wanted -- Ibrahim Salih Mohammed al-Yacoub -- Up to $5 Million Reward". Yours doesn't tell me anything about the image itself. →Rocket°°° 04:56, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Without regard to whether or not someone nominating one of a pair of duplicate images thinks it is obvious that one version of the image is better than the other, I think it is a serious lapse for those nominating images for deletion to fail to leave a heads-up on the uploader's talk page.

I think you may be overlooking the fact that the other images are missing the URL to the source where the image was first published. Without the URL of the source where it was published how can anyone else verify that the liscense is valid?

You praised the other image, for the phrase: "updated on his FBI wanted poster by about 2005". I think you may be overlooking that the assertion that the image was an FBI image is (1) unreferenced; (2) demonstrably incorrect; (3) probably original research. Check the URL. The images were published by the State Department.

Cheers! Geo Swan 06:31, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I am still hoping someone can explain to me whether some kind of redirection sends links from the deleted image to the image that remains.

And, if my expectation that nominators should explain their reasoning, and show others the courtesy of letting them know that images they uploaded were nominated for deletion, I'd appreciate being set straight. Geo Swan 07:42, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't "praising" the other one, it's not that great either. And you're right, at least you gave a source (and used the info temp.). I never really considered notifying the uploader when it comes to duplicates. The thing is there is no ownership. A duplicate is a duplicate, who cares who uploaded it. As long as we got one copy that's the important part. We got tons of duplicates. Check out this tool. Right now we have "Only 13315 doubles left." If I upload a duplicate, I don't want pages of bot spam telling me my file isn't needed. Just delete it. No big deal. I wasted my time, but it's my fault for not checking Commons first. And as a duplicate, it's going to be deleted regardless, unlike any other deletion where we give you time to contest it. Maybe I'm missing something. If the wrong one gets deleted (like the one without the source) than it's the admin's fault and shouldn't be something you need to worry about because that's not the way things normally are done (a heads-up doesn't change that). And there's always COM:UNDEL. →Rocket°°° 09:44, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Why tell people when you have nominated an article for deletion? Education, and openness and transparency.

• if the nominator sees a valid reason for deleting or renaming material, telling the contributor is part of teaching the nominator how to be a better contributor, and avoid that mistake in future.
• alternatively, if the reasoning behind the nominator's justification is flawed, the open-ness and transparency of informing the uploader makes it much more likely the nominator will have an opportunity to amend their reasoning flaws in future.

You suggest that we should trust that administrators check which images contain links to the image's source. Sure, we have a process where we pick administrators to whom we entrust extra powers. Administrators remain fallible. You are the first commons administrator I have interacted with. My experience with the wikipedia's administrators is that they are surprisingly fallible. My experience is that a significant fraction of the wikipedia's administrators routinely skip exactly the kinds of steps you are suggesting we trust the commons administrators to perform flawlessly with no audit trail available to the rest of us.

You write: "Just delete it. No big deal. I wasted my time, but it's my fault for not checking Commons first."

You write this as if there was some well-known, sure-fire, obvious technique for knowing whether an image we want to upload has already been uploaded under a different name. If you know some way to determine whether an image has already been uploaded please fill us in. I've been uploading images for two years, and have uploaded several hundred. I haven't come across any procedure for checking for the prior existence of an image. Forgive me, if there really is no reliable method then I am going to disagree that it is uploader's fault.

FWIW, I think there is a technical step that could be taken.

1. Checksum each existing image.
   1. Use several checksum algorithms to produce multiple checksums for each file.
   2. If multiple file produce the same checksums then a human should check to see if they are duplicates.
2. Part of the upload process could involve computing the checksum for the new file.
   1. If the checksum(s) for the new file matches those in the database(s) show the uploader thumbnails of the collisions.
   2. Ask the uploader to confirm their new image is not a duplicate of file(s) with the same checksum(s).

This would not, of course, eliminate all new duplicates.

• When I snip an image from a PD .pdf, I paste it into irfanview. Then I have to choose the file-type, and how much compression to use. Someone else could use a different filetype, or a different amount of compression, so two versions would have different checksums.
• Uploaders might have innocently modified images metadata.

Okay. I looked at http://tools.wikimedia.de/finddoubleimages/index tool. I used it to check out its suggestion of several dozen suspected duplicates. I am guessing that its list of candidates was produced by a robot computing checksums.

At the risk of stating something obvious, that insiders are well aware of... Most duplicates -- maybe 80% were uploaded by the same contributor. Over half of the duplicates were uploaded within an hour of the uploader uploading an earlier image under a slightly different name. we maintain lots of bookkeeping information about users. If checking the checksum of new images against a system wide database poses insurmountable difficulties, would maintaining a database of the checksums for each contributor be simpler. Computing a checksum of each new image, and warning the contributor they already uploaded an image with the same checksum, would eliminate most of the new duplicates.

Are those of you trimming duplicates aware of how many duplicates are uploaded by a single contributors, within minutes of the original? Are you discussing that the scale of the duplicate problem is multiplied, by an order of magnitude, by a design choice in the current human interface?

Why not rewrite the robot, and have it check to see if all the copies of files that share a checksum were uploaded by a sole individual -- then, for each set of possible duplicates, leave a note on the uploader's talk page?

Why not automatically ask those sole uploaders who caused the problem to tag which image should be deleted?

Currently this tool you asked to look at has a "delete it" button for each image. From a human factors viewpoint may I suggest it would be better if, instead of a "delete it" button for each image, the tool presented the user with the choice to skip to the next set of candidates, or to "tag all but one for deletion". If the user clicked on that choice the tool should automatically present a new page to the user, with summaries for each image, telling the user whether uploader used an {{information}} template, and whether it was missing fields. It should check to see whether the source field was still online.

The current design trusts that the tool's users will know, and can be trusted, to perform a bunch of tests manually. But, from a human factors point of view, this design encourages skipping those steps. You didn't direct me to the manual for this tool. Is there a well-written tutorial. Does it tell users which manual checks they should perform?

Trimming duplicates inescapably requires human judgment. But the tool could unload more of the cognitive burden from its users.

I am still hoping someone can explain to me whether some kind of redirection sends links from the deleted image to the image that remains.

Cheers! Geo Swan 17:31, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Using redirects ("#REDIRECT [[Image:X]]") for images in the same way as ordinary pages can be done but does not work very well. But for renamed or duplicate images that was uploaded long ago and has been in use it is preferrable to use redirects instead of deleting them. Because that prevents permanent links to old revisions of pages in Wikipedias or other projects to contain "red image links". It also makes sure that external links to images at Commons are not broken. Newly uploaded duplicates can still be deleted, if it is done soon after upload, before they have been in use. The developers are working on better handling for image redirects. A working example can be seen at test.wikipedia. Hopefully it will soon be good enough to be used at all Wikimedia projects. Duplicates makes no harm to Commons so it is better to wait until they can be correctly redirected that to delete them. /Ö 19:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

But, if it is automated...

But, if it is automated, or semi-automated, why isn't a robot leaving a heads-up on the uploader's talk-page?

Over the last couple of years I have uploaded over hundreds of images. I find it really disturbing to think hasty contributors, or poorly controlled robots, have been deleting images without leaving any record, once they are gone.

Why can't the robot automatically add a note on the uploader's talk page? Geo Swan 15:43, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

States and city sources in the public domain - which are and which aren't?

Is there a list anywhere of what states and cities in the US (and even around the world) put government published documents in the public domain? Much thanks. --Emesee 07:19, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

It's a pretty short list: as far as I'm aware, the US federal government is the only government in the world that puts all their works in the public domain. --Carnildo 00:26, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Image:State-of-EXIT1.jpg

No licence. Uploaded from English Wikipedia, where it is tagged as fair use. --BokicaK 20:44, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Deleted. Thank you for help! --EugeneZelenko 15:34, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

February 20

Graduated scales / Stationing

Do we have any sort of graduated scales or stationing which I can add beside the photo on an image page? For example, with this image showing a number of mountain peaks, a graduated scale along the top/bottom and left/right would allow me to reference each peak in the description by a numerical point. This would certainly assist with identifying which peak is which; and could also assist with translating. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 17:38, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I think your best option would be to create separate, scaled-down version of the image, with annotation on top of it. See Image:Haeckel Thalamphora.jpg as an example. SVG also provides very good way of annotating images, but is not supported by Wiki software (see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12818).--Jarekt 13:34, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

There is always more than one way to do these things: Another option is to create an image map, eg see 'other versions' in Image:Asteracea_poster.jpg. This does not require an edited version of the image, you just define areas of the image, and then when you move you mouse over the image it can show helper info about what is under the mouse and links so that you can click on the image to take you to more pictures/articles etc. It does not provide a numbered key though so you may still want to create a small version of the image with numbered keys to use with an image map. You can define areas by squares, or circles or by defining the corners of a more complicated area (I think :-). There is an application here (that I have not actually used) to help you create suitable image maps. --Tony Wills 01:03, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Euh... he can do that ?

This man (gallery) upload ugly pic [only], need to stop him. 小禹 His images are free but he play with us... He upload ONLY such pics. 小禹

He's just uploading SVG versions of PNG files that we already have... Lupo 11:58, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Let's activate the HotCat gadget by default

I'd like to propose the default activation of HotCat (screenshot). HotCat is a tremendous help for categorizing images (which is what we want to make them locatable), works pretty well, does not consume lot's of additional resources, and if the client does not support AJAX does not break anything. Opinions? --Dschwen 17:18, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

It no longer works for me, I get thrown into the editor. (obviously my byzantine js is broken somehow) So I am not against it being default selected, but I would want us to not disable turning it off in prefs. ++Lar: t/c 18:37, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Shift reload. Yesterday I reactivated autocommit. In the weeks before it would stop at the edit view instead of automatically saving. But in any case I'd create a DisableHotCat Gadget which would suppress the loading of hotcat. --Dschwen 18:46, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Can it be made so that it is only "auto saving" for admins and confirmed users? Cause it looks like one hell of a vandal tool if it auto saves. TheDJ 09:42, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Agree I think with TheDJ & grateful to hear that it wasn't me what broke it..:) I wondered why it had stopped working --Herby ^{talk thyme} 09:46, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Agree with TheDJ, and no objections to this being done. giggy _(:O) 10:06, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

How is this more of a vandal tool than regular editing? The proposed change is no problem, but note that HotCat just remotecontrols your browser to submit the edit form under your name. --Dschwen 13:12, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

 Support pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:40, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't HotCat, when active on an page already open for editing, be changed to either be disabled or to work the way it does on the upload form? If you already have an edit window open, you probably don't want HotCat to open that page for editing a second time. Also, are XHRs still timing out so often? Lupo 11:56, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Good idea! The XHRs subjectively seem to be getting better. I made a change which makes the insertion of the XHR result into the textbox less annoying (if you typed stuff since the XHR was fired). I'm sure we can make further improvements, maybe use a rotating array of XHRs.. --Dschwen 13:12, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Commons' page of Flag of Brazil

At Common's page of the flag of Brazil (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Flag_of_Brazil.svg) there is a strange section named "Garoto de Programa" Is that some kind of joke or is it necessary for that section to be included therein? Actually when looking at the page under EDIT, the beginning of the page also lists a bold section head by the same words(Garoto de Programa). I am new to the commons area, but I am very inclined to delete that section, but not sure if I should at this point. That line(section) seems like a prank to me since its meaning is controversial. Kerrio ^talk 06:51, February 21, 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that was just some vandalism. I removed it. If you see something like that again feel free to change it. Don't worry about making a mistake - it's easily fixed. And if you do do something wrong, at least you'll find out why something is the way it is :) - Rocket000 07:45, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and you may want to change your talk link to User talk:Kerrio. Right now it's going to the gallery namespace. - Rocket000 07:47, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

captcha

Can you add a page "clear captcha status" for registred users? If i missprint (once!) password in commonist, i can not log in (via commonist) a certan time. If this page exits, I can log in (use captcha) and clean status for commonist. Thanx and sorry to en-1. #!George Shuklin 08:10, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Gallery is down

The Gallery tool is not working again. --Jarekt 13:26, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Valued Images Candidates Tests

Tests are still ongoing regarding the guidelines and review procedure for Commons:Valued Images Candidates (COM:VIC). The candidate list page has just been updated such that the Commons:Valued images candidates/candidate list overview display of candidate images is bandwidth efficient and informative (I hope) and I have recently added an assisted procedure for adding a new nomination quite similar to the procedure at COM:FPC. I have been staring at these things for too long though, and would appreciate if others could test that it actually works, and if anything could be improved. It would also be nice to get some more involvement of reviewers for our current test candidates. Templates are used extensively, throughout, which gives some flexibility in how we display the information, which is contained in the nominations. If you feel something should be done differently, do tell me. -- Slaunger 13:57, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Demonstrations

Category:Protests in Category:Demonstrations in Category:Demonstrations and strikes in Category:Protests in … You got the point. Some good idea? Code·is·poetry 16:12, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Serbia-Kossovo Edit war

I don't se a place devoted to requests of this type, so I guess here will be OK. I'm in edit war with User:Kosov over guess what. Specific cases:

• Kosovë - Косово. I attempted to make a compromise text, also put a rename request, he reverts.
• Image:Prishtina-Kosovo.jpg. Sorry, even if Kosovo would be a country, it does not have a copyright law.
• Kosovo-related categories (see my or his contributions for details). Based on the fact that Serbia does not recognise independence of Kosovo, on the current practice in English Wikipedia, and on common sense, I think that each of these categories should be in appropriate Serbian category. Nikola 19:53, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Kosovo is an independent state from February 17. It does not recognize it Serbia, Spain, Russia, Greece, Slovakia, Romania, and not more. Kosov 21:14, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, all countries that have not recognised Kosovo have not recognised it. That is some 90% of countries. Nikola 21:20, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Kossovo has enough backing. Denying it declared it's independence is just wishful thinking. Sorry, deal with it. Recognition by a majority of states is by no means a preriquisite to getting its own categories on commons. Commons does not do politics (please chant this mantra a few times to help memorizing it). After all we even have a Category:Taiwan! What a shocker!! --Dschwen 21:42, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem is not that Kosovo has categories. The categories have existed for years without problems. The problem is that the categories should (also) be subcategories of appropriate Serbian categories. Or would you deny that Serbia does not recognise Kosovo's independence?

Oh, and, Category:Taiwan should probably be renamed to Category:Republic of China. Taiwan is the island, Republic of China is the state. Nikola 05:45, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

---

After some thinking, I'd suggest this for a compromise: we could have a category "Unrecognized countries", "Partially-recognised countries" or similar, and main Kosovo category could be in it (together with Northern Cyprus and whatnot.) Subcategories would belong to the Kosovo category and also remain in appropriate Serbian category (for example "Cities in Kosovo" is a subcategory of "Cities in Serbia", "Churches in Kosovo" a subcategory of "Churches in Serbia" etc.) Subcategories could also be subcategories of appropriate categories of the "Unrecognised countries"/whatever category, if these are made, for example "Cities of Kosovo" could also be a subcategory of "Cities in unrecognised countries". I hope no one would have a problem with that. Nikola 22:01, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

February 21

Tour de France 2008

Does anyone want to create profiles of the stages of the next Tour de France like this one of the 10th stage?? Rubietje88 17:27, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

No not really. If you want something done you might have to do it yourself. ;) --Jarekt 21:24, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

February 22

3D Models - The RepRap project - Google 3D Warehouse.

(Sorry for the long introduction - I'll get to the point eventually - I promise!)

I've been helping out over at the 'RepRap' project - this is an OpenSourced effort to make a machine that can produce three-dimensional objects out of plastic entirely from data supplied by computer. These machines are capable of making copies of most of their parts - so the owner of such a machine can easily make another and give it to a friend. http://blog.reprap.org/ is their home.

If such machines become as commonplace as (say) a computer printer - then this could be a truly revolutionary thing. If you need a toy for a child - you can download it from the Internet and "print" it out on your RepRap machine. If you need a larger dish than you have in the house - you download and print it.

The assumption is that somewhere out on the Internet there is a large repository of 3D designs for toys, dishes, car parts, anything you could imagine that could be manufactured inside the space of a few cubic feet.

People upload their designs to the repository - ideally people find flaws in the design and fix them - perhaps improve on the object in some clever ways - and contribute the fixed-up object back to the community. It's a Wiki for 3D objects.

The RepRap team have attempted to set up a MediaWiki for this very purpose - but lacking sufficient membership (yet!) and the administrative structures to run it, the thing has been buried under vandalism and spam.

The nearest alternatives to the RepRap "object Wiki" is Google's "3D warehouse" - but that's a commercial enterprise and it doesn't have the "open/free" mentality that we need.

So - how appropriate would it be to upload 3D object descriptions to WikiCommons? The files can be ASCII text in a format called 'STL' - or they could perhaps be binary files such as might be produced by 'blender' or other OpenSourced 3D model makers.

Thoughts?

SteveBaker 01:37, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

• I think that is a great idea; assuming that this uses public domain file format and that there is an open source viewer for those files. The real benefit would come from being able to embed those files in Wiki pages. That would probably require extensions to the current MediaWiki software, for example to render thumbnails, and you would get much wider support if the 3D objects were not limited to in size, for example Eiffel tower page might have a 3D model of the tower to look at. --Jarekt 14:25, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

United style of templates

Why do you think about this template:sandbox-1 (in use: User:Wailer/Sandbox)? (original template is painting)--Wailer 14:23, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Quicktime to OGG

I have converted a short quicktime movie to OGG format using a couple of different methods, but when I upload either version I get "(Invalid ogg file: )" showing on its image page, see Image:Stoat visiting KWS fence.ogg. Anyone got any ideas of what the problem is? I have got the original .MOV file if anyone has expertise in doing these conversions. (to make it easier, there is no sound track to worry about) --Tony Wills 01:43, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify, both revisions play fine with VLC on Ubuntu. --Tony Wills 09:19, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Discussion (or lack there of) moved to Commons:Graphics_village_pump#Quicktime_to_OGG --Tony Wills 22:26, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Goofed up language template

Is it just me, or are the language templates goofed up? I've now seen it on several pages on two separate computers, both Firefox 2. See, for example, User talk:Nadaquever or User_talk:Splashview#Speedy_deletion. Yet I can't find anywhere where a template was changed recently which would explain the errors. Patstuart (talk) 16:40, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Remove commented out languages because they cause a paragraph break in the new parser. See diff. -- Bryan (talk to me) 22:24, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

NATO flag

hi there, is there a reason, why there is no nato flag in the nato category? --92.228.154.250 19:50, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

See Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Flag of NATO.svg. —LX (talk, contribs) 19:55, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

and why are these files not deleted? Image:NATO Flag Wavy.jpg, Image:NATO compass rose.svg --92.228.154.250 20:14, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

my picture did not appear

excuse me for a newbie question:

I wanted to add a picture to an entry in Wikipedia

I went to Wikimedia commons and uploaded the picture.

it was renamed as Arjuna.ardagh.jpg

I then went to the page for Arjuna Ardagh in Wikipedia, and created an infobox like this.

As you can see, the uploaded image is referenced in the infobox

but.... it does not appear

any ideas?

thank you

garrett stanley

• Seems to be showing up on en:Arjuna_Ardagh now. I note that the image doesn't specify a license and the en:w page says it is used with permission, and it is from a website. The image page doesn't state this. Those things need to be sorted out or the image will be deleted. --Tony Wills 08:20, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Character copyright on PD cartoons...

More community input is requested at this deletion request; anyone who is clueful about case law regarding this matter would be greatly welcomed. Lewis Collard! (hai thar, wut u doin) 02:06, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I second that call for more input. - Rocket000 09:56, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Category browsing issue

In this category: Category:Louisiana Highway shields, I cannot browse more than 200 pictures at a time. The small hyperlinks that say either "Next 200" or "Previous 200" are not there (at least on my machine). Is there anyone who can fix this problem? Thanks in advance! ——Mr. Matté — 'pedia talk 04:32, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, it says "There are 200 files in this category." If that is true, than that's why you can't browse further. --rimshot^talk 09:42, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I've added a TOC, and navigating seems to bring back the next and previous. Perhaps it's something to do with the way the images are all sorted? Man vyi 10:21, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Catscan shows there is at least 1000 images in that category. You can manually get to see other pages, eg [13], database corruption?, too many images with almost identical names? Bug in latest software update? The ordering within the pages is strange (sequential but with large groups of images missing) --Tony Wills 10:26, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I just submitted this bug. Regards, Code·is·poetry 10:44, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Stamps

Are stamps regarded as "meaning of payment"? Moreover, if a country's copyright law (like this one) sais that means of payment are in public domain, are stamps regarded as PD? --Alex:D 11:32, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

• I'd consider them official symbols of state under that law (unless done by a third party artist and containing work that was otherwise copyrighted). -Nard 14:42, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Autoconfirmed uploads

bugzilla:12556 requests that upload be an autoconfirmed permission on all WMF wikis. Any wiki can opt-out if consensus is shown. Discussion took place at m:Metapub#Set upload to autoconfirmed Wikimedia-wide. – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:01, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

It's like disabling editting for non-autoconfirmed users on Wikipedia. It goes against anything what a wiki stands for. Was this discussed on Commons somewhere? -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:02, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Not that I know of. This was discussed at meta since it affects all WMF wikis. Commons was apparently notified at the time, but the local community chose not to discuss it here. Furthermore, those who commented at meta were inclined to include Commons for various reasons, though the original proposal was to exclude this wiki. As I said, any wiki can opt out, provided consensus is shown. Start a discussion, gain consensus, file a configuration request. – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 19:08, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

This was not discussed on Commons, because it would not affect us: see Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2008Jan#Proposal:_m:Metapub.23Set_upload_to_autoconfirmed_Wikimedia-wide. -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:18, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Thogo: "Commons should be opt-out for obvious reasons". --Jaqen 19:14, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

• As I said over on Meta: yes, opt-out for the time being, but be prepared to opt-in quickly if the result should be that we get more "fair use" and other "wrong" uploads. (Or be prepared to take other technical countermeasures quickly.) Lupo 19:37, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

It is true that the original proposal was to exclude Commons, but I think discussion quickly turned the other way, and the configuration request was made as such. – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 19:43, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Bryan, take a look at some of the concerns expressed there by Commons admins (Herby, Majorly, Lupo, Lar, myself). I believe this is why Commons wasn't going to be excluded. We were representing Commons. Accurately? Let's discuss now. (And let's keep it here.) →Rocket°°° 23:15, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I understand the concerns. And of course limitting the uploaders will reduce he number of copyright violations. However Commons is still a wiki. A wiki where anybody can contribute, after all that is the core value of a wiki. It is in my opinion a basic principle that wikis are edittable by anybody as far as practicably possible. -- Bryan (talk to me) 18:48, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I would leave it the way it is on all wikis, but obviously this isn't wanted. If the other projects weren't doing this then there wouldn't be an issue. Uploading is different then editing. One takes admin powers to fix most of the time.. Those other projects could handle the work load much better. Well, we'll see how it goes. - Rocket000 05:36, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I think many if not most users actually sign up to Commons in order to immediately upload free content, usually free content they created themselves. The risk of frustrating new contributors is not worth it. Superm401 - Talk 06:05, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

SVG highlighting

Hello people. I am currently working on vectorising the maps of Wales. Now it turns out that we have a large number of bitmap maps where the image is identical except for one region being highlighted:

...

In my SVG maps I've used identifiers that represent the names of the regions. Therefore, I am thinking that what would be dead useful here is a way of creating a page, writing {{SVGhighlight|map=Map Cymru heb enwau.svg|highlight=powys}} and then having a bot come in and upload a version of that file which was different only in that all the regions in that group were recoloured. It wouldn't be hard to write, but has anyone done it already?

(Ideally, Mediawiki would be able to do this itself, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.) Marnanel 17:34, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I have in fact made a (still unpublished) MediaWiki extension that does something very similar: [14]. Do tell me your impressions :) Nikola 17:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I think that's a wonderful thing, and we should ask for it to be included. Marnanel 20:00, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

More generally, what if SVG files could have parameters? You could have a file called Image:Column_tricolor.svg (code based on Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg), with:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1" width="1500" height="1000" viewBox="0 0 3 2">
<rect width="1" height="2" fill="#{{{left}}}"/>
<rect width="1" height="2" x="1" fill="#{{{middle}}}"/>
<rect width="1" height="2" x="2" fill="#{{{right}}}"/>
</svg>

Then, you could have have Image:Flag of France.svg, which contained, {{Image:Column_tricolor.svg|left=0055A4|middle=FFFFFF|right=EF4135}}. [[Image:Flag of France.svg|500px]] could be called normally. Of course, this could be used for maps too. Either way, it could eliminate a lot of inefficiency. How is locationmap implemented, if you don't mind my asking? Superm401 - Talk 06:28, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Watercraft

The categories under Category:Watercraft seem a bit of a mess. We don't explain anywhere what distinguishes a "boat" from a "ship"; I'm not even sure how many languages make this distinction, so an explanation is doubtless in order. There are definitely watercraft under "ships" that are a lot smaller than others that are under "boats". Also, there are some very odd categories like Category:Historical boats. How old does a boat have to be in order to be "historical"?

I came across this when trying to categorize Image:Seattle waterfront - Royal Argosy.jpg. It's on the borderline of whether I'd call it a boat or a ship; also, I found no category related to excursion boats, which is what I'd normally call it, although I'm sure we have many other images of these.

If someone who works in this area could help sort this out, it would be appreciated. - Jmabel | talk 19:03, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Wrong name

I uploaded an image under the wrong name. How do I change the name or get rid of the image? There doesn't seem to be a "move" button as there is on wp:en. Thanks, Gatoclass 10:24, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Add {{rename|new name|reason for renaming}} to the image page. A trusted user will review the name, and the image will be moved by a bot. --rimshot^talk 10:31, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

There's no "move" function for renaming images on Wikipedia, either... AnonMoos 11:14, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Surely he was talking about the button to rename articles Thialfi 12:16, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that guys, I'll do that now :) Gatoclass 12:05, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

• Since you are the one that uploaded the image with wrong name, a better way to fix it is to upload it again with the correct name and replace the description of the original image with {{bad name|new name}} template. --Jarekt 19:25, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Names good to read on gravestones. What policy?

I have made several photos in Belgium of churches with cemeteries, for example http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Maleizen_church_B.jpg My question is what policy to use if on the full size photo one can read very well the names of the persons on the stones? I am thinking on the situation that others may use such a photo for commercial purposes. Wouter 22:31, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the dead have any Personality rights, and neither is there - usually - any copyright problem. --MichaelMaggs 22:55, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

The recently deceased do have personality rights, for different time spans in different countries, usually a few years. If you only photographs simple or/and old graves, as Foroa writes below, that shouldn't be a problem, however. --rimshot^talk 08:40, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

If you're not comfortable with the images being used commercially I suggest not uploading them. I don't know your purpose for uploading them, maybe blurring the names would be better? pfctdayelise (说什么?) 06:39, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I only avoid recent graves in close up, especially if they have pictures on them. I don't see a real problem with the picture you reference. --Foroa 06:58, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

file with similar name already exists

I am considering putting my rainforest photo catalog http://www.peakoil.org.au/dave.kimble/rainforest/catalog.htm onto WikiCommons in the hope that these images will be available to individual plant pages in Wikipedia.

When I do a trial upload of one image, I get an error "a file with a similar name already exists, choose another filename". Unfortunately the file that already exists is "drosera.jpg" (not my picture) and that blocks my "drosera.spatulata.flower.x16.jpg" and it will block all other Drosera images too.

Am I uploading into my own folder on Commons, or into one big public space ? How do I get around having lots of files with very similar names - there is absolutely no avoiding this?

Dave

Hi Dave, I think you have come across a bug. I entered it as bugzilla:13143.

Please feel free to ignore this warning and upload the image anyway. (Below the warning you will still find the "Upload" button.)

cheers, pfctdayelise (说什么?) 06:23, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I think that if you avoid the dot's and use spaces instead, the problem will go away. --Foroa 07:00, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks. I changed dots to spaces and the software converted the spaces to underlines for the destination filename. That worked OK. How long before the image material is indexed ? --DaveKimble 10:40, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Foroa was right (incidentally, the bug has now been fixed, and will be updated on the site soon). It can take up to 3 weeks or so for stuff to be indexed. Have you added categories to your files? That helps them be findable. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:44, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

February 25

Default summary text when uploading files.

Is there a way to change the default contents of the Summary field on the upload form? I would like to use {{User|username}} by default instead of [[User:User|User]], have a default license chosen and have today's date as the default date, since I'm usually uploading my own stuff pretty close to the date it is created.

That would mean that all I'd need to do most of the time is, type in a description and choose a category or two. (It would be nice to have a default category [[Works by User/year/month]] added too). In relation to this last point is it better to use the gallery feature or to create a gallery of my own work in my user pages as a way o quickly find stuff I uploaded? --Inkwina 11:02, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

You could write some JavaScript at your user JS to overwrite the default stuff every time you load Special:Upload. Maybe have a look at MediaWiki:UploadForm.js for some tips.

As for using the gallery tool (I guess that's what you mean by "the gallery feature"? the tab link on your user page?) vs creating your own galleries, that's up to you, whichever you prefer. I think people often create their own userspace galleries to showcase their best or favourite works. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:39, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the tips. I was hoping there was a simpler way than Javascript. I guess others might want such a feature as default license. Anyway if I get round to doing it I'll try and document it too :-). As for the gallery tool, I find it very convenient but was a tad concerned about server load on the tool server etc. especially since there is a notice that says that some of the data is a Year out of date! --Inkwina 12:23, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Special:Mass delete (Special:Nuke)

I think it'd be a good idea if we could ask the devs to get Special:Nuke (commonly known as "the Flamethrower" :P) on to Commons. I think it would prove useful, especially when deleting all the files uploaded by a problematic uploader. --- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 22:49, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Excellent idea. This feature exists over on Meta-wiki, and while I only used it once so far I believe, it was extremely useful in removing spam pages added by a user that would have taken me several minutes to do, but instead took seconds [15]. Majorly (talk) 23:18, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I too  Support this idea. --Boricuæddie 22:00, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Speaking as a Meta-admin as well as on commons (not that I probably deserve either...) I quite support this! I'd also like to import special:electrocute, for those users who insist on uploading "fair use" pictures to commons... ~Kylu (u|t) 10:19, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

In order for me to perform mass deletions, I would have to utilise pywikipedia's delete.py (which is glitchy at times). If Special:Nuke is implemented, it would make lots of admins' jobs easier, especially mass deletion requests and cleaning spam. 哦，是吗？(O-person) 03:20, 7 February 2008 (UTC) 03:20, 07 February 2008 (GMT)

Definitely supporting this. Would help with those people who upload stacks of image before the banhammer catches up with them. giggy _(:O) 09:07, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Seems a good idea to me. ++Lar: t/c 21:32, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

If actually implemented here, this should definitely require a deletion request. Superm401 - Talk 16:55, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

 Support - I think all wikis should have this enabled, but Commons especially should have it. – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 19:09, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

But there is no need for a deletion request. The cases where it will be useful are when many images are speedy deletion candidates; saving time is the whole point, and requiring a discussion beforehand defeats it. Enabling this will only make such cases faster, and the deletions are subject to the same level of review as any other ones. Admins must use it responsibly, like any other button, and will be subject to a de-sysop if it's abused. – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 14:35, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

If it's done without a discussion, it should only be done for clear speedy cases. It's okay to be a bit liberal in deleting single images, but not for a mass deletion. Superm401 - Talk 03:25, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

How's progress on this? giggy _(:O) 09:14, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, there seems to be consensus to enable the extension here. Somebody needs to file a bug at Bugzilla. --Boricuæddie 22:10, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

bugzilla:13145. giggy _(:O) 10:50, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Done. -- JeLuF 21:06, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

February 7

whitespace in comments is suddenly significant

The /lang subpages usually have some unused languages commented out. With the new parser, I guess, these lines lead to new lines in the output. The result is unpleasant. Is this a bug or should we change the templates? --rimshot^talk 12:47, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I brought this up a few days ago. Maybe someone should drop a line at w:WP:VP/T, but I've taken a pragmatic approach, and I'm just changing them: [16]. Patstuart (talk) 13:41, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

See bugzilla:13109. Lupo 13:58, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Here's all you need to remove to fix it: [17]. - Rocket000 14:09, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

That's a hack feeding malformed data to the parser. Such hacks may break anytime. Better to remove just remove all non-existent links. -- Bryan (talk to me) 21:54, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Really? That's not good if comments like <!-- <!-- --> can break it. - Rocket000 10:37, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

(ec w/Rimshot below) But that is a malformed (X)HTML comment. The comment end is not "-->"! The comment stops at the first "--" after the initial "<!--". After that, there may be only whitespace until the markup declaration close delimiter ">". See the HTML 4.01 specs. Lupo 10:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Hm, I'm reading this a little late. The bug description says that lines with multiple comments are not ignored anymore, lines with single comments still are. Something like <!-- es [[Template:Please describe images/es|{{#language:es}}]] |--> still works. It's not a dirty hack either. --rimshot^talk 10:42, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Kosovo issues

User:Hoshie updated a number of maps of the world, Europe and so on with the borders of Kosovo (as I interpret it, following the precedent set by Palestine and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic -- both states or state-like entites recognised by only ~40 or ~100 UN member states, but shown on all world and regional maps nonetheless). User:Cp6 keeps reverting these map updates (and other map and site updates, too) and doesn't really seem to be inclined to rational discussion (see User talk:Cp6). Help? —Nightstallion (?) 20:20, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

February 19

Delete image

I am new here and I have a problem. Image: Image:Croatian municipalities in B&H.PNG exist on croatian wikipedia. Can you delete (this is question for administrators) this Image:Croatian municipalities in B&H? Then I will displace Image:Hrvatske općine u BiH.PNG on Wikimedia commons! —the preceding unsigned comment was added by Mostarac (talk • contribs) 20:49, 15. Feb. 2008

Hi Mostarac, there's imo no reason to delete that outdated version (admins have more important stuff to do, as I occasionally hear ;) -- the filename is not "terribly wrong" (or is it?), therefore it would be better to just overwrite your file with your improved version (you'll find some link like "Upload new version" near the bottom of the file's page). ←And, please, sign your edits in talk pages by four tildes, as it is to be done everywhere in WP. ;) — Preceding unsigned comment added by WeHaWoe (talk • contribs) 09:54, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

February 26

Removing the POTY

I suggest we remove the POTY from the Main Page; it's been there long enough, IMO. Thoughts? --Boricuæddie 01:03, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Or at the least swap its place with the POTD. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 01:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Be bold :) It would be nice if you remove it from other language main pages too. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 05:40, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

 Done Now to get the other language pages. - Rocket000 10:13, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm surprised - only five main pages had the POTY result displayed.... Next year we should add it to all main pages, at least in english. --GeorgHH • talk   11:16, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, more than that had it. I removed it from seven or eight myself, but it's true, most didn't have it at all. :( - Rocket000 11:27, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Hot cat.js

Not working again? or is it just me - when you get used to something so useful it is a pain when it is not available --Herby ^{talk thyme} 09:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Yep, it is. The problem seems to be caused by the new __HIDDEN_CATEGORY__ feature; the (X)HTML for the category line has changed... Note that we're apparently running a new software release again (now 1.13alpha, yesterday, it was still 1.12alpha). Should be fixed now. (Remember to force a reload.) Lupo 10:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the info Lupo - working fine now - I came across a batch of uncat'd uploads - I'll do them later, cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:56, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Errors with thumbnails

Error generating thumbnail

Error creating thumbnail:
(process:27665): libgnomevfs-WARNING **: Unable to create ~/.gnome directory: No such file or directory

librsvg-ERROR **: _rsvg_acquire_xlink_href_resource called for external resource: WWIchartX.png base: (null)

aborting...

—Random832 14:40, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Found the error - there was an external link to a local file on the author's drive - still, shouldn't it fail more cleanly than that? —Random832 14:46, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

2.5 million files

As I noted at Commons talk:Milestones, Commons will soon have 2.5 million files. Do we want to plan something (press release, etc.)? It could be an opportunity for some good publicity. Superm401 - Talk 19:21, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Hm, 2.5 is not that special :) Even 2M was not that big a deal. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 06:43, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, they certainly made a big deal of it. Anyway, too late now for 2.5M . Superm401 - Talk 02:36, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Bad Name template mod

Hi everyone! I modified the template to hide the image param value and show error when isn't available. I hope this helps. Check it at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Enc_Company_Agent/sandbox

Best regards,

--Enc Company Agent 01:47, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Note, you've modified only the spanish version of the template. --GeorgHH • talk   17:58, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

And your modification makes the template less useful. The parameter is used to show the correct name. I've reverted the change. Superm401 - Talk 19:14, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Though currently the parameters aren't much use on translated templates (the substitution isn't done for the translation), this could be fixed later with software improvements. I think the consensus is to keep the parameters included in general. If we were going to remove the parameter, it should be done for all the translations, not just Spanish for this template. Superm401 - Talk 19:16, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, don't worry. I'll try to help to pass the param to the translated versions. But first I need the approbation of this one. --Enc Company Agent 00:39, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Parameters can actually be used when the user's language is known. In that case, you can use the message in the appropriate language. I have repeatedly gotten the impression that English-language messages are not read, and the links to other languages not used. --rimshot^talk 22:07, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean. Policy is that you use, e.g. {{Bad name}}, not {{Bad name/es}}. However, if they then click the Español link, the parameters won't show up, which is a deficiency. Superm401 - Talk 03:22, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking of template messages in general. On images pages, of course, the English version should be used. --rimshot^talk 10:26, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

No, no, I'm talking about this modification. I need an admin to implement it. Of course the spanish and other languages templates must be improved too. --Enc Company Agent 00:36, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Well, the place to discuss this is Template talk:Bad name. I see you've mentioned it there. Superm401 - Talk 03:22, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

In the Wikimedia Commons IRC Channel they told me to bring the discussion here. --Enc Company Agent 03:33, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Which is to say, I did, since it's such a widely-used template, and thought that a note on the talk page would not have gotten the attention it deserved. Lewis Collard! (hai thar, wut u doin) 17:38, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

You see Superm401? --Enc Company Agent 04:28, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

It was correct to mention it here, but it's better for the actual discussion to take place at Template talk:Bad name. Superm401 - Talk 04:12, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I updated template:bad name now. Sorry for the slow attention. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 05:41, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Brilliant. Thanks a lot. --Enc Company Agent 13:01, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

February 24

Removing delete tag

Dearl all,

I regularly find pictures whose delete tag hasn't been removed. Basically, these pictures were nominated for deletion but kept and tags are still in place a few months after the nomination. Aren't tags supposed to be automatically removed ? Thanks. Poppy 17:11, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Could you please give an example? --GeorgHH • talk   21:38, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Why noncommercial use is bad?

I have tried to find an official explanation for it, but neither {{Noncommercial}} nor the FAQ nor any of our policies I looked at goes into any details. FAQ links discussion (Commons_talk:Licensing/Explaining_why_Derivative_Work_and_Commercial_Use_must_be_allowed) in a footnote but it is hardly a proper explanation, with the second poster stating "This is exactly the wrong explanation" and part of the discussion being in non-English :) So: did I miss some (apparently well-hidden) official explanation of why Commons does not allow non-commercial images, or are we in need of writing one? PS. Crossposted to HD.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 17:15, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Commercial use is not bad. So what is the question? We decided to allow commercial use to facilitate the spread of Wikimedia content. If it were forbidden projects like the WikiReader, where the printing costs covered through the sales price (of the order of $5-$10) would be impossible. --Dschwen 17:30, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Ops, my bad; I mislabeled the heading. It is "why non-commercial use is bad" :) I.e. why don't we allow CC-NC and so on. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 18:42, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Check this out. I think it delivers a good explanation :-). --Dschwen 18:50, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Just to be a devil's advocate... if I read the sketch correctly, it's basically because NC limits the Wiki Foundation's ability to share free knowledge -- the very essence of what Wiki is all about. However, I thought the Wiki Foundation was an NPO... would that still be considered "commercial" if they used the imagery? It seems to me that an NPO might still be permitted to use NC items, or alternatively perhaps a new license might want to consider restricting use by for-profit ventures. For-profit ventures seem to contradict the concept of freely sharing knowledge. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 22:54, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The WikiReader is not made by the WikiMedia Foundation, but by WikiPress. The argument neglects the point, that your work stays free. If any of those organizations is not-fot-profit or for profit doesn't matter at all. If a for-profit entity provides a service such as making Wikipedia available on paper or some other non-online medium then fine. I don't expect from anyone to work for free. But if you deem a certain service, which uses the freely licensed data unworthy of its money, then the logical move would not be to forbit its commercial actions, but provide a free alternative service. If nobody is willing to step up to the plate, buy a printing press, invest time in layouting etc. all for free, then don't complain. For that matter, don't complain at all. I had numerous commercial entities use my pictures, the latest I know of was the BBC. Use of images on high profile sites spreads the idea of free licenses (when they appear in the attribution). I've had several cases where I explicitly requested the attribution to mention "Wikimedia Commons" as well. This PR is a good thing. Why should we banish it? --Dschwen 23:13, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Indeed the cartoon is quite helpful. But I'd assume it summarizes something that was discussed in a more official format. I again restate that we should have a place - page or a section on one - that clarifies (with the cartoon, too, why not) why non-commercial use is not allowed on Commons. I have had many people ask me that, and I have had trouble explaining it properly to them.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 23:17, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Dschwen, though I was hoping you'd reply with another cartoon rather than lots of text :) It made me think... ideally, I wouldn't prefer somebody potentially turning my photos into postcards and earning a direct profit off them; but on the other hand, it'd be neat to see my photos on the BBC. Has there ever been a license which permitted use so long as the image isn't the primary subject of whatever the revenue generator is? In the BBC's case, for example, their interest is in advertisement; not my image. Sort of like taking a photo of a copyrighted work so long as it's a minor part of a greater, non-copyrighted, image. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 23:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Why not? Where is your loss? It's not like you are selling postcards with your pictures and that this hypothetical guy or girl is competition for you. If your interest were making money rather than contribute to a free media library then of course you are doing something wrong :-). Making money is not a bad thing, and as I stated above, the remedy is creating a free alternative. But at least I can say for myself that I'm not going to print postcards of my own pics to distribute them for zero money. Try to see it from a karma standpoint, give a little and be happy if someone can even get a dime out of it. --Dschwen 00:04, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

It is rights that there isn't here a list of good arguments not to exclude commercial use. But there are such arguments, see e.g.:

• http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/3493112/
• http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC --Historiograf 00:53, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

about using GFDL and sharealike licensed images in a commercial primary school text book

Hello!

I have tried to understand the licence formulations, but I haven't been able to form a clear idea of the following procedure:

I'd like to use images which are attributed under the licenses of GFDL (general) and GFDL sharealike in a primary school biology and geography text book. In order to do it properly, must I attribute the whole book (the lay-out, the text, the other images which are bought from different picture sources) under GFDL license (which I can't do) or can I continue to attribute the precise images (attributed under GFDL + sharealike) under those licenses but reserve all the other rights for all the other elements in the book? If that is possible, how should I mark this? Is simple "this image is licensed under GFDL/sharealike" enough?

Thanks!

Probably Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia will answer your question. --EugeneZelenko 15:15, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

February 28

Translations

Hi, Special:Upload does not have proper instructions in Korean. What steps do I need to follow to get it fixed, where can I get some pointers, and who should I talk to to make it happen? Thanks. --Kjoonlee 09:59, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Please click this link and fill in all Korean translations for the English texts given. Then please translate the following pages:

English page	Your Korean translation
Commons:Upload	Commons:Upload/ko
MediaWiki:Uploadtext	MediaWiki talk:Uploadtext/ko (start with ko:MediaWiki:Uploadtext)
MediaWiki:Uploadtext/ownwork	MediaWiki talk:Uploadtext/koownwork
MediaWiki:Uploadtext/fromflickr	MediaWiki talk:Uploadtext/kofromflickr
MediaWiki:Uploadtext/fromwikimedia	MediaWiki talk:Uploadtext/kofromwikimedia
MediaWiki:Uploadtext/fromgov	MediaWiki talk:Uploadtext/kofromgov
MediaWiki:Licenses	MediaWiki talk:Licenses/ko (see also ko:MediaWiki:Licenses)
MediaWiki:Licenses/ownwork	MediaWiki talk:Licenses/koownwork
MediaWiki:Licenses/fromflickr	MediaWiki talk:Licenses/kofromflickr
MediaWiki:Licenses/fromwikimedia	MediaWiki talk:Licenses/kofromwikimedia
MediaWiki:Licenses/fromgov	MediaWiki talk:Licenses/kofromgov

At the very least, you must translate MediaWiki:Uploadtext to MediaWiki talk:Uploadtext/ko and MediaWiki:Licenses to MediaWiki talk:Licenses/ko. If you also could do the others, that'd be great. For further information, see Commons:Redesigning the upload form. Once you're done, ask here or at the administrators' noticeboard or on my talk page to have your translations enabled. Thank you. Lupo 10:34, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

changing the name of a file

I uploaded the picture "image:Indian Panckace.jpg" and only later I found out that the name of teh dish is "Utapam". how can I change the name of the pic? Yosarian 14:58, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

You need to re-upload file under new name and place {{Bad name}} on old one. --EugeneZelenko 15:22, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

sigs in galleries not working

Do we have a software update that prevents signatures (~~~~) within gallery descriptions from working? This has major repercussions in QIC.

• 
  ~~~~ signed?

--Tony Wills 22:19, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

We do have a software update - the new parser was put live yesterday [18]. I encourage you to write a bug report. --Dschwen 22:25, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Submitted as bugzilla:13120. --Dschwen 23:02, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

So far only the suggestion to use this syntax came up:

but it is weird and not exactly newbiefriendly. --Dschwen 13:09, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

With all due respect to Tim, whom I respect very much for all his great software work, but the work-around {{#tag:gallery|... {{!}} ..}} is most certainly not a "decent long-term solution". For the software maybe, but not for people. It's a hack. Lupo 13:32, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

We can sign and date with {{#tag:gallery|... {{!}} ..}} indeed, but can QI Bot go on a work? _Fukutaro 15:24, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

By all means comment on the bug report, comments on this page might as well be saved to /dev/null ;-) --Dschwen 15:49, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I know, but I won't do bugzilla reporting until that software is changed not to display peoples' e-mail addresses. Lupo 16:15, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

What about creating a trash email account for bugzilla? But yeah, it is an annoying thing about bugzilla. --Dschwen 16:22, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Too risky. I would need to forget only once to use the throwaway address, and poof, there's my real e-mail address for anyone to see. No thanks. Lupo 16:25, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Bugzilla only works with registered email addresses, no? -- Bryan (talk to me) 21:40, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

February 23

uploading collection of protein structures

Hello, I just uploaded Image:PDB_1bh5_EBI.jpg, which is a schematic representation of a protein structure. This type of visualization is pretty useful for biologists, and figures like it are commonly used in gene pages over at WP (e.g., [19] [20] [21]). Any comments on a bot-automated effort to load a few thousand of these images en masse to Wikicommons? Possible scenarios include 1) loading all ~50,000 structures available, 2) loading all ~12,000 structures that correspond to human proteins, or 3) loading one representative image for ~4,000 unique proteins which have structures. Obviously it would be easiest for the biologists at WP if all 50K were on hand, but I suggest the other two options in case that number is too prohibitive. Thoughts? AndrewGNF 01:20, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to upload them, however I would suggest batching them up, as it's going to hammer the Latest files page and thumbnail generation. Maybe batches of 40 images at a rate of 200 images an hour. That would be done in 10 days or so. Any sysop level people care to comment ? Megapixie 09:17, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

• Sounds like a good addition to the collection. However since we are talking about such a large numbers, it will be very hard to change any metadata after upload. Categorizing is going to be a challenge. I assume the images should end up in some sub-categories of the Category:Proteins. It would be good if you found a way to split your 50k images into categories no bigger than 50-150 images. I do not know what division make sense here. Hopefully there are some natural biochemical subcategories, but if not than alphabetic should do. Ideally you should categorize them based on different criteria, for example: Name, function and OMIM, MGI, Homologene ID's, that would make the collection more manageable and easier to find the image you need, without help of wikipedia. The worse thing you can do is to upload 50k images without any categories or into a single category. --Jarekt 13:40, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

We need to say "Author Jawahar Swaminathan at EBI", since that's the guy who generated them. TimVickers 19:52, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Super... We will definitely batch the uploads so as not tax the servers, and 200 per hour certainly sounds reasonable. Based on feedback over at WP:MCB, I've categorized Image:PDB_1bh5_EBI.jpg according to the SCOP clasification. The eventual head of this hierarchy will be at Category:SCOP. I've also changed the author and attribution statement as indicated. If anyone has more feedback, please let me know. And just FYI, it's not clear who will actually do this work, so the exact timeline of this project is still up in the air. Thanks! AndrewGNF 21:52, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

It's pretty sad that they have used jpg for those image. Perhaps it could be possible to batch-create all those diagrams in for example pymol, would require some processing power, but I think the result would look better; made for example Image:Molecular structure - 1bh5.png right now. _→AzaToth 23:40, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Dang, that's a pretty slick image. If what you did to generate that image is able to be automated, then I've got access to the processing power to do it in batch. But I digress... The main advantage of using the EBI's images is that I'm sure image generation is part of their pipeline. That way we can assume that images will show up immediately and not have to worry about individuals starting up jobs for perpetuity. (Even better if EBI will integrate the upload to wikicommons as part of their pipeline. We'll see...) So that explains the rationale for going with EBI over some individual's handiwork (as was also discussed extensively). I suppose we can also ask if EBI will switch to PNGs... (Naive question, advantage of PNG over JPG is primarily transparency?) AndrewGNF 23:57, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Pymol can be automated, the only that that would be difficult is to decide of an good angle. The problem I see with EBI's images is that they are rather small, and have excessive artifacts due to JPEG compression. _→AzaToth 00:01, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

One minor thing about the EBI uploads is that it would make it somewhat easier to search for proteins if there a little more description of each could be included in the text describing the protein, rather than just the systemic classification code, e.g. Human Glyoxalase I Q33E, E172Q double mutant (source for name: http://www.imb-jena.de/cgi-bin/ImgLib.pl?CODE=1bh5 ) for the one uploaded already.

Certainly, having these available will be very useful in writing about biology and probably teaching as well, but it's slightly awkward to have to cross-reference to get the description. Adam Cuerden 00:09, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, I was actually thinking it was an advantage to have filenames that were only dependent on knowing the PDB ID. At least I think that's true from the perspective of WP users. For example, if I come to any gene page like w:Bruton's_tyrosine_kinase I can quickly see that there are eight PDB structures for this gene (1aww, 1awx, 1b55, 1btk, 1bwn, 1k2p, 1qly, 2ge9). It would be cool as an author if I knew exactly how to include those images just based on that PDB code. Understand how it might be more difficult for people coming to wikicommons to search. I added the title line to the body of Image:PDB_1bh5_EBI.jpg; does that solve the searching issue? AndrewGNF 00:32, 29 February 2008 (UTC) Aaack, that's exactly what you were suggesting. Anyway, yup, any sort of automated upload process should definitely include that feature... AndrewGNF 00:33, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Templates for dummies

Hi Dschwen, you have helped me before. I have a problem with the rendering of VIC thumbnail images on COM:VIC. I think the problem is related to {{VIC-candidate-images}}. Currently there are 19 nominations, so argument {{{1}}} to {{{19}}} should be defined, which means that three images should be displayed on the last row, but they don't! I can't figure out why. Can you? The template also produces a lot of extra linefeeds. I can understand why that is when I look at the template as a new line is added for each unused argument. I have tried to get rid of those newlines in the template definition, but then it ceases to work as intended. Hmmm... -- Slaunger 19:51, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

They are being displayed in one row. It's just that the last one has some 56 empty paragraphs, all containing <p><br /></p>, in its table cell after the nested table for the candidate display. As a result, that last row is rather tall, and the first two entries, which don't have these empty paragraphs, are vertically centered within the row. Now, where do these empty paragraphs come from?? Lupo 08:24, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Looks like a problem with the new parser, which adds spurious linefeeds. Lupo 08:42, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining me that. I do not undertsnad why there is exactly 56 empty paragraphs. Maybe it has to do with the translation of the wikitable syntax into html table elements in {{VIC-candidate-images}} and the linebreaks in that template? Maybe I should abadon the wikitable syntax and just use raw html syntax in the template? It is already cluttered by the use of {{!}} due to the embedded wikitable syntax within the {{#if: }}special function statements. -- Slaunger 08:42, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Inappropriate conduct (falsifying reality) on Commons by experienced user (administrator of another Wikimedia project)

Hello. This concerns:

• Image:Kosovo relations.png
• Image:Kosovo relations.svg
• edits outside Commons in related content (at least English Wikipedia)

What follows is a brown-colored copy of what the user in question posted on the talk page of one of the above pages [22], and on a talk page of a related article on the English Wikipedia [23], with my reply on the English Wikipedia. I respectfully request an intervention of a Commons adminstrator. Both maps may need undoing multiple falsifications; I no longer can vouch for their integrity. --Mareklug ^talk 19:40, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

::Decision might not be formalised on paper but judging from this statement it's pretty obvious what will it say. Foreign Minister of Armenia Vartan Oskanian, stated that Armenia has no intention to recognize independence of Kosovo and that "Granting independence to Kosovo, the international community violated the legal norms but forgot Karabakh". It's not a neutral position, regardless of mythomania here where some are trying to repeat that Armenia is neutral so many times that other would start to believe it. --Avala 14:15, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Just read what you wrote: Decision might not be formalised on paper but judging from this statement it's pretty obvious what will it say. Let me translate that for you: There is no formal decision. I think I know which way it will go, so I am engaing in original research by pre-deciding for Armenia in an extrapolation purely my own. And you are a Serbian Wiki administrator? These are dangerous, unscurpulous wikiedits, falsifying facts while claiming to be factual. Dear community, this editor, not only altered the article (again, after being corrected), but on the same flimsy basis, altered (doctored up) the SVG and PNG maps to display Armenia red. He also moved Bosnia into the same officially unrecognizing category, only because an internal constituent portion of Bosnia's political make-up went on record as opposing recognition. This editor then concluded for the whole of Bosnia, that this means "red color of no recognition", again, jumping the gun prejudicially on the Bosnian government's own official pronouncement. IMHO all these edits taken as a sum are unsubstantiated and hurt Wikipedia by skewing reality, and deserve censure, becaue they are being systematically made by a Wikimedia project administrator, not some anonynymous newbie. Furthermore, the editor is not amenable to persuassion on the matter, and has made other falsifying edits to the maps (removed onece Northern Cyprus altogether from SVG without any annotation). Please see user talk:Avala. --Mareklug ^talk 19:40, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

As you can see on my talk page this user has some kind of personal thing against me where he yelled at me (caps) and tried to insult me. All of my edits were sourced as you can see in history and on relevant wikipedia pages. There are currently a 2-3 users who disagree with truth (I am not sure how else to describe this blanking of sourced information). I have tried to warn them but they removed my warnings and kept on going. This is the continuation of these attacks and page blankings by registered users. I hope someone will react and stop this constant vandalism, removal of content. For an example this user has asked me to find the source of Sarajevo reaction from the federal government and I have supplied source which gives the member of tripartite presidency of Bosnia stating "Bosnia and Herzegovina will not recognise Kosovo". What happened? User:Mareklug blanked it, removing the whole edit, all information, everything for no reason (though this user from what I see does say he supports censure on Wikipedia). And how is this my fault? --Avala 00:08, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

That thing you quoted of me here, where you are trying to prove how I lie and make things up. Well here is the full statement of the Armenian minister of foreign affaires "Granting independence to Kosovo, the international community violated the legal norms but forgot Karabakh. Unlike Kosovo, no one granted independence to Nagorno Karabakh. It was the republic’s achievement. This is the major difference between the conflicts" again from the source I gave.--Avala 00:21, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Also User:Mareklug keeps calling me names and my nationality seems to bother him. He called me Mr.Serb. I feel awful I have to spend time here explaining myself on accusations of a user who is involved in blanking of sourced information, the activity that is by wikipedia definition of vandalism in first place on the list what is considered vandalism. But I feel like I have to answer these accusations because this user needs to stop with disruptive behavior. --Avala 00:46, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I see a lot of accusations being thrown around here, and lot a lot in the way of formal discussion. At this point, it's essentially impossible to make heads from tails. Please engage in discussion on the proper talk pages, avoid climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spiderman, and editing along lines of the plague. 21:04, 29 February 2008 (UTC)