Jump to content

Commons:Village pump/Archive/2009/08

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository

Bad license on presumably good image

I pretty routinely recategorize images that are placed in the much-too-general Category:Architecture. I recently ran across File:A serie des prix front 05139.jpg and File:A serie des prix frontismice 05142.jpg, which I recategorized more appropriately, but I notice that these are dubiously described as "own work" and given clearly bogus license releases. (It's also hard to see why we would want both of these images, but I leave that matter entirely to others.)

Since this was a collective work published in 1897, I'm guessing it is likely to be public domain. But it also tells me that the (presumably French-speaking) user who uploaded it has a poor understanding of rights issues. (I've crossed paths with him already on his poor understanding of categorization.)

I'm not sure how best to follow up here; would someone else care to do so?

Also, Category:Architecture currently contains quite a few French-captioned images that could use better categories. I'm sure I'll eventually get to these if no one else does, but if someone with good French would like to take these on, it would probably be a lot quicker. - Jmabel ! talk 18:13, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The description might not be technically wrong: it's quite possible that the photographs are the uploader's own work, and he's certainly free to license them under GFDL/CC-BY-SA. Since any copyright to the subject has presumably expired (or has it — who's "G. Delarue" and when did he die?), the photographer is the only one with any copyright claim to the image, tenuous as their claim may be.
That said, I'd say the description certainly goes against recommended Commons practice: if the main subject of an image is a work that ever was or could've been copyrighted, that should generally be noted and some explanation (e.g. "copyright expired", "U.S. government work", etc.) provided for the absence of copyright. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:28, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
"G. Delarue" is a publishing company. It does not matter when its eponymous founder died any more than it matters for a Doubleday book when Frank Nelson Doubleday died. - Jmabel ! talk 01:30, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Too much incomprehensible guidance

I wish to report several images that have been placed on your pages. I would like to have found the proper place to do that, however, your instructions are overwhelming.

Three photos: I found these under the image search "camping"

1) a nude man with his legs spread apart, under "nudist camping" 2 and 3) 2 pictures under "camping: nude" of a woman's vulva spread apart exposing all sexual aspects

I've never seen explicitly sexual pictures on Wikimedia before, and wonder if these are legit entries.

thank you. for God's sake, what is this????????? No "send message" button? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.97.173.176 (talk • contribs)

We have no rule against sexually explicit pictures (although most sexually explicit pictures don't fit the project scope); since you don't indicate precisely what images these were, it's hard to tell whether there is a problem.
As for how to send a message to participants in general, you've found the correct way to do that. - Jmabel ! talk 04:03, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Ah, I see. NSFW content, for sure, especially the latter two. The images in question are apparently File:Naturist Camping.jpg, File:Camping Nudes 066.jpg, and File:Camping Nudes 063.jpg. I personally have no idea whether these should be kept, but at least the last two should be renamed: there is no way someone searching for "camping" should be finding these. I also suspect that they are very redundant (both to each other and to plenty of other, more appropriately named images). The first one at least has the merit of being an interestingly composed photo. - Jmabel ! talk 04:09, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Many people enjoy uploading nude photos of themselves, for whatever reason. Often, these images are considered either not in scope because they are not useful for educational purposes, or redundant with existing images that illustrate the same topic better (see for example Category:Penis). We have no rule regarding sexually explicit material in particular. Dcoetzee (talk) 04:11, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
FWIW, the first is the sole contribution by the user who uploaded it, and the latter two are from someone who has uploaded nothing but poorly named closeups of vaginas. - Jmabel ! talk 04:12, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
I've nominated the latter two files for deletion at Commons:Deletion requests/Images of Dmar6065. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:00, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Royalty free high-resolution photos from Eurovision

hello,

I have just seen this photo on Commons, but for me, royalty free pictures are free like free beer, not free speech. I could delete it directly, but that would be a good idea that somebody who speaks English better than me contact them to see if they would agree to use a real free licence for their photos. Okki (talk) 10:15, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

"Royalty free" doesn't necessarily even mean free beer, just "pay once to drink as much beer as you want", although in this case the price does seem to be zero. I doubt they'd be likely to switch to a real free license, especially since they'd probably have to get permission for that from all the original photo agencies, but it can't hurt to try if someone wants to compose a nice e-mail to them. Still, in the mean time I've tagged the image as lacking permission. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 12:21, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Category:Animated GIF is too heavy to load

Category:Animated GIF always makes my browser freeze. How to decrease the quantity per page? 200 animated GIFs per page is too many to load! --百楽兎 (talk) 05:08, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I just disabled the thumbnails. ViperSnake151 (talk) 15:18, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
But now it becomes INCONVENIENT to browse those GIFs... --百楽兎 (talk) 02:27, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
The problem is that GIF thumbnailing is currently broken. (It used to be broken in a different way, but that put too much load on the servers, so it got changed so that GIFs aren't thumbnailed on the server side at all. So now it just overloads users' browsers.) I'm starting to think that the best solution, at least for the time being, would be to generate static PNG thumbnails of GIFs (showing only the first frame, if the GIF is animated) and only serving the original GIF if the full size is requested. That should sidestep the server load issue. One more item for my "to do as soon as I get around to it" list... —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:12, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
That wouldn't solve the problem that the GIF thumbnailing procedure used to be better than the PNG thumbnailing procedure (which still has significant inefficiencies), and back in the old days many people uploaded static GIFs instead of PNGs specifically for that reason. AnonMoos (talk) 20:22, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Some files do not generate thumbnails, like music, PDF, large PNG, large JPG, SVG with embedded images, etc. Other files like GIF do not produce separate thumbnail files and relay on the browser to scale them. I think that it might be useful to add capability to upload thumbnails, just as we can upload new version of a file. That way users or bots can create our own thumbnails, like static PNG thumbnails of GIFs (showing only the first frame, if the GIF is animated) Ilmari Karonen mentioned and upload them somehow. We can activate this feature only for some MIME types and files without thumbnails. Also we might want to migrate by a bot all non-animated GIFs to PNG format. --Jarekt (talk) 15:11, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Hmm, I don't know what's wrong with File:Vernal Fall pano.jpg, but large JPEGs work just fine; see File:Deepest View Ever of the Universe.jpg for example. –Tryphon 15:17, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
File:Vernal Fall pano.jpg is a progressive JPEG: the image is encoded in a way that you can get a general idea of what the image looks like before downloading all of it, but generating a thumbnail requires decompressing the entire image (and using 72 MB of RAM). File:Deepest View Ever of the Universe.jpg is a standard JPEG: you can decompress it one batch of eight lines at a time, and generating a thumbnail only takes 150 KB of RAM. --Carnildo (talk) 22:22, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
A smart thumbnailing algorithm would not need that much RAM at all. You don't need to progressively decode the file all the way to generate a thumbnail. --Dschwen (talk) 13:19, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
You are right, that was the reason why this image could not be rendered. I uploaded a new version converted to a regular JPEG, and it works now. Thanks for the explanation. –Tryphon 12:38, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
Custom thumbnails wouldn't work too well, since people tend to want different size thumbnails for different purposes (120ps, 180px, 800px etc.). AnonMoos (talk) 20:22, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
If your browser cannot handle it, don't look at the page! It's that simple. Why inconvenience the rest of us for who it displayed just fine? It is a maintenance category in any case. Why would you even want to look at a page with hundreds of moving little images. Want to self-induce a stroke? --Dschwen (talk) 15:27, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
It would only be that simple if one knew it would break ones browser before looking at it :-). If it is truely a maintenance category, shouldn't it be a hidden cat? If it is not a true maintenance category then just break it down into sub-cats. :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 02:17, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Ahrgh! No! This is driving me nuts. No more subcategories. Hide it, alright, but this categorization-madness has to stop here. There is no meaningful way to subcategorize this category. --Dschwen (talk) 13:26, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
I use Firefox with adblockplus and "upload.wikimedia.org/*.gif" as filter, so that all gif files from all wikimedia projects are removed. And this works fine. Teofilo (talk) 12:06, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
Yea, why don't you just browse with lynx while you're at it ;-) --Dschwen (talk) 13:26, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Federal Judicial Center database of federal courthouses with public domain images

The Federal Judicial Center maintains a database of historic courthouses, complete with images that are in the public domain because they were produced by the U.S. government (the agency responsible for generating each image is listed in the entry). Here is a typical example of such a page - note that each entry is accompanied by a separate moderately sized JPG file (like this one) which is larger than the image on the page with the description, and also a very large TIFF file (in the order of 15-20 MB); I'm only interested in getting the larger JPG files and the information on the entry page. If someone has the wiki-fu to scrape those images and stick them in Category:United States federal courthouses, along with the information on the description page, I will be absolutely delighted to go through them and subcategorize them by state, and then add those images to the appropriate Wikipedia articles. Cheers! BD2412 T 17:43, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I uploaded the high resolution version of this one: File:AL-Birmingham_RG121-C_1_A_8.jpg. I will upload more. I created a category to contain these images: Category:Images from the US Federal Judicial Center database. Yann (talk) 18:01, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
Fantastic - I take it that will be a permanent category? BD2412 T 22:14, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
I suggest creating a template for the site explaining why the images are PD, showing some kind of icon and having a maintenance category. (Category:Images from the US Federal Judicial Center database).
They are not in the public domain for any special reason other than being the product of the United States government. I would observe however that the author of the image is not the same as the architect who designed the courthouse (indeed, the "author" is not a person at all). BD2412 T 23:27, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
Yes, please make a template. Yann (talk) 10:54, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Please fill the "Author=" field of the information template at least with the photographer's name, or with both the phographer's name and the architect's name. Likewise, the date field should be filled with the photography's date, or with both the photography's date and the architecture's completion date. In the case of File:AL-Birmingham_RG121-C_1_A_8.jpg, the photographer's name or the photo agency's name seems to be written in difficult to read white letters on the picture itself, while missing on the fjc.gov website's description. For each picture, write down why you believe the photographer is a federal employee, or why you believe he died more than 70 years ago, or why you believe the picture was first published before 1923, or why you believe it has been published with a lack of copyright notice, at a time when the US copyright law required copyrighted publications to display a copyright notice. Teofilo (talk) 18:22, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
For example, the first picture on fjc.gov website's Shreveport, Louisiana page is described with Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Historic American Buildings Survey, Reproduction Number HABS,LA,9-SHREV,1-9. If you enter that number in the "search in number fied" in the Library of Congress' database search engine, you find for picture #9 of that collection "Historic American Buildings Survey Unknown Photographer May 31, 1912 CONSTRUCTION OF BUILDING, 1912, FROM EAST CORNER From the Collection of Alex Campbell, Jr. Photocopy by Thurman C. Smith". So we have no indication that this photographer was a federal employee or that he died more than 70 years ago. So I don't think this picture should be uploaded on Wikimedia Commons. The Library of Congress says the following about the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscape Survey Collection :
Publication and other forms of distribution: The original measured drawings and most of the photographs and data pages in HABS/HAER/HALS were created for the U.S. Government and are considered to be in the public domain. However, occasionally material from a historical society or other source is included in the photographs or data pages. These materials are noted by the presence of a line crediting the original source, and it may be necessary to receive permission from the owner of such material before it can be published. In all cases the courtesy of an acknowledgment is requested if material is used in a publication. Privacy and publicity rights may also apply. Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscape Survey Collection - Rights and Restrictions Information
Teofilo (talk) 19:13, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
See the FJC page describing the origin of these images, which states:
The largest group of photographs is from Record Group 121 at the National Archives, the records of the Public Building Service and its predecessor agencies. Most of the images drawn from RG 121 were collected by the Office of the Supervising Architect in the Department of the Treasury, which was responsible for the construction of most civilian federal buildings until 1939. The images from RG 121 are largely a photographic record of completed federal construction projects, but the records include some photographs of the construction and alteration of these buildings. The selected images show the best available views of finished buildings, as well as extensions that significantly alter the look or footprint of the original structure. In 1901, the Office of the Supervising Architect compiled a book of photos and text, A History of Public Buildings, describing all the public buildings under the control of the Treasury Department. Some of the photographs that were not available in other locations are included here.
Other images in this site are from the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), a project of the National Park Service available through the Library of Congress, and the Annual Report of the Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department (1869-1920). The General Services Administration provided additional images and information for historic buildings under their care. The National Register of Historic Places, which is administered by the National Park Service, provided further information and images not found at other repositories.
These are in the public domain at least two different ways. Photographs taken for either the National Archives or HABS would be a government product. Moreover, these are publications dating before 1922, meaning that they are in the public domain under United States law irrespective of who the author is. BD2412 T 03:28, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Hello, I upload JPEG files after a few basic corrections (cropped, white balance, grayscale, etc.). Do we need the TIF files on Commons? I feel we don't because we can't use them directly on the projects, and anyone who wants them can get them from their original source, which won't disappear any time soon. But may be there are other uses I don't know? Yann (talk) 23:20, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I have no use for the TIFF files, and I don't see how anyone else will. I plan to make individual articles on each of the courthouses, if enough information exists (which only requires the JPG image), and if not to at least include all of them on the w:List of United States federal courthouses (which could do with just a thumbnail even). BD2412 T 01:30, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

July 27

Prototype for alternative to Special:NewFiles

As I wanted a way to see new files and their relationship regarding uploaded, I've made an prototype implementation for an Latest File viewer onto toolserver. What it will do it do show the N latest images, and group them according to uploaded. Also it only shows images over or below a certain size threshold.

Examples:

At the moment it's pretty ugly and unrobust, but if you think it's an idea to go further with, I'm up for some more fine art :) AzaToth 01:35, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Would it be possible (and useful) do you think, to included in the ‘Latest File viewer’ the number of different editors who have clicked on and viewed the actual image page to check the details? This addition would offer as quick way of seeing which images have been ignored. Also, a small short hand version of the licence below the image would help to highlight possible bad licence choice, copyvios etc. Just a thought. --P.g.champion (talk) 10:27, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps an indication in the ‘Latest File viewer’ as to whether it has also been flagged as a possible copyvio would help draw in second opinions. My thinking is that the sooner an newbie uploader gets feedback on how s/he is doing, the easier s/he can learn, (and the sooner upload vandals will give up). It would only need some thing like a two letter code CV (copyvio) or WL (wrong licence), ML (missing licence), and so on, to indicate what is presumed to be wrong. Those images with high view rates and no flags will be judged to be ‘probably’ OK. This will, I think, save the Village Pump from being used so often to bring peoples attention to problem images rather than just general issues and chit chat. This would streamline any deletion process (if it comes to that) as all the information and consensus of views would be in one place on the image’s discussion page.
If the number of uploads that editor has done or the first date of first upload can be included in ‘Latest File viewer’, it would alert editors, as to who are the newbies and less experienced uploaders and thus make self evident, those who may need a helping hand to make sense of it all.
I think this would also make checking images much quicker for those on dial up, as it would require less clicking to find images that need attention.--P.g.champion (talk) 11:36, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
On the first one, there is no way to see how many times an image or pages has been loaded/viewed (no counts are hold). Tags can be looked up per categorylinks. Upload count and first upload date is doable. AzaToth 19:18, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
Will be good idea to add links to possible actions: delete, marking no source, etc. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:00, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
unless it gets too cluttered :) AzaToth 19:18, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

An new version is available at http://toolserver.org/~azatoth/latest_files/?maxsize=-1&minsize=1.00+MiB&count=60 It's all fully rewritten and I've added the two user data as of yet. AzaToth 23:13, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The latest version looks more informative than the existing strictly chronological ‘latest files’.
In my part of the world, most sensible people are on vacation at present, so I wonder if that is why there has been so little feedback so far. It would be interesting to hear if anybody searches systematically through the latests file pages or whether they just use their ‘gut instincts’ to investigate images that ‘look’ as if they might have issues. If so, what extra info would they find most helpful. Your right that we don’t want it cluttered, because I think it would be easier to scanning lots of images at a time, without getting information overload. --P.g.champion (talk) 17:07, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
I only occasionally scan new files; I never look at all files systematically, but rather look for possible copyvios. I find the presentation by uploader, rather than by time, to be very useful, as well as the extra information about the uploader. A couple of comments: 1. I don't think you need to include the upload time. All these images have been uploaded in the last few minutes. If you're afraid it will get to cluttered, that's something you could remove (this would not be true on smaller wikis, of course). 2. Could you maybe include direct links to the user talk page and contribution list? 3. The gallery tool has a useful feature you might want to include: it lists all templates on an image page, and highlights in green the licence tags and in red the "bad" tags, such as {{Uncat}}. 4. Is it possible to indicate that an image has no metadata? That's often a useful clue when looking for copyvios. 5. Some indication as to how long the description is would also be useful, but I don't know how to do that well.
These are just random thoughts; I'm sure people who spend more time on Special:Newfiles will have more comments and will disagree with some of what I wrote. Pruneautalk 17:31, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Added support for all wikis, though it will bork on enwiki as s1 is down, and on eswiki as they don't have any images. Example: http://toolserver.org/~azatoth/latest_files/?maxsize=-1&minsize=1.00+MiB&count=50&domain=ja.wikipedia.org AzaToth 00:05, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

  1. When a file name is very long, like File:Sudbury_River_Conduit,_B.W.W.,_div._4,_sec._15, Nov._13,_1876._South side_of_bridge_from_Newton_side (centerings_of arches_"F"_and_"G"_removed), from_Robert_N._Dennis collection_of stereoscopic_views.jpg, the whole tool becomes extra large and no longer fits my screen, so that I must use the horizontal scroll bar, and this is not very convenient.
  2. Is it possible to see all files of any size (not only those below 1000000 bytes (default) or any maximum value) ?
  3. It would be great if you could add the file's categories, as the "gallery tool" on user pages is doing, with a colour marking of maintenance categories (especially deletion related cats), so that you would know if somebody else has already marked a given file as a candidate for deletion. Teofilo (talk) 11:32, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Cat-a-lot, what happened?

It's been a while since the Cat-a-lot function is somehow changed worse. At the beginning it used to list just categories, sub-categories and so on, but now it also lists all the files in a category. Why? The problem is that now, if I open the cat-a-lot function in an overfilled category I just cant'use it, because the list is too long and it covers more than half of the page, so I cannot select files to move somewhere else. Sometimes the Cat-a-lot menu is so high that I can't even press the botton "Go". Is it possible to reset the function to its previous version? I don't even understand any suitable purpouse of listing the files in that menu, I am not supposed to move an image from a category "to a file". Thanks for help. --Sailko (talk) 10:05, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, a very recent change I think, and a right pain! --Tony Wills (talk) 01:28, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
I reported this problem on MediaWiki talk:Cat-a-lot.js#Problem with the_list of subcategories. After a few days, I simply removed Cat-a-lot from my gadget preferences. I try to use Hotcats, instead, although Hotcats is not as powerful when many files are concerned. Teofilo (talk) 10:22, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Check Usage Isn't Working

I have tried using check usage on several images and it is giving me this right now: Database Error: Unknown database 'enwiki_p' (sql-s1) on sql-s1/enwiki_p

Failed to connect to DB enwiki_p!

Failed to connect to database for en.wikipedia.org

--Jorfer (talk) 01:57, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

The toolserver's S1is having some issues at the moment because a reimport is in progress. Hopefully it'll be fixed soon; see here for updates on status. Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 02:05, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

August 2

Categories of commons images in wikipedia's

What happens with categories of commons images, given to images in wikipedias? Do they show up in commons and in wikipedia? Or only in wikipedia? or only in commons? Or does it depend on the wikipedia? --Havang(nl) (talk) 09:04, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I assume you mean an image arrived at via a wikipedia, on commons. The categories show up only on commons. I'm not sure what would happen if you created the image page on wikipedia with categories, it might prevent the image from showing at all. -mattbuck (Talk) 09:10, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
IIRC, if a Commons image has a local description page on another project, the local description is simply prepended to the Commons description. This allows other projects to e.g. tag Commons images as featured pictures locally. It could indeed also be used for categorization, but I'm not aware of any Wikimedia project doing so in any systematical fashion. After all, we have a hard enough time getting all our images categorized here on Commons — just imagine how much harder it would be to repeat all that work across hundreds of projects. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:36, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
we have a hard enough time getting all our images categorized here on Commons. Yes, and don't you think it's a pity that this huge work remains hidden from most Wikipedia readers ? I guess that most Wikipedia readers either do not know, or can't afford to spend the time to
1) click on the link to commons,
2) scroll the page down and
3) at long last, watch which related Commons' parent categories might be interesting to explore.
Shouldn't links to Commons' parent categories of a picture be available at least on the English Wikipedia? For other languages, the language issue makes things a bit more difficult (although the animals and plant's latin named categories would be useful for most language versions)... Teofilo (talk) 10:40, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
Another advantage of making commons' categories more visible could be that more volunteers would come to help when they see that a picture is not categorized in a suitable category. Teofilo (talk) 16:26, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

What happened to old versions' thumbnails ?

Hello,

Do you have any info on what happened to old versions' thumbnails, usually displayed in the "history" sections of file description pages ?

  • Is it a bug ?
  • Has it been turned off intentionally (for example to ease the server's load) ?
  • Will they never be displayed again in the future ?

Teofilo (talk) 10:16, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

They went during the server problem and as yet have not come back... Arriva436talk/contribs 10:53, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
According to http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Projektneuheiten#12._Juli, they were turned off (not only on Commons) on July 12th intentionally, but only temporarily for performance reasons. Now you can take a guess when temporarily will be over … --Rosenzweig δ 11:40, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. It is good to know that it is not a bug. Teofilo (talk) 19:47, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

License Policy Recommendations

Outsource your copyright policing to the copyright holders. Force them to issue takedown notices. The argument against that is: "then we'll be like YouTube and have to take down everything." That is not true. Wikis differ from YouTube in a very important way: they are participatory. This is what can save Wikimedia Commons. There are enough wikimedians to pay attention to individual takedown notices and, crucially, defend the content against them.

Such a policy would be a huge service to humanity and Free Culture. It would generate more data on how many frivolous takedown notices are issued. Copyfrauders would think twice about issuing takedown notices to Wikimedia Commons, knowing that unlike YouTube, the community has the manpower to defend against each one. And because Wikimedia Commons can publish documentation about takedown notice conflicts, others can point to that data if they get harassed for using the same content. Any contested media will develop a publicly-accessible record, a huge asset for anyone who builds on content.

As long as content is uploaded with the appropriate Free Culture license, accept it according to community standards (notability, relevance, usefulness), not according to its license verifiability. Much content will obviously be mis-tagged as Free. Instead of deleting this, add a clear "LICENSE WARNING" label. This label may be disputed. The argument against allowing possibly-mislicensed content is "what if someone builds on it, and then it gets taken away?" I argue that risk is far preferable to accepting the burden of being copyright police. Also, a "LICENSE WARNING" label will alert the remixer/builder to the risk. Again, the warning label can and should be contested and removed when appropriate.

This policy would improve the health of the community. The energies of adrenaline-seeking users could be directed towards defending content against external takedown notices. They would gain status (in my mind at least) as heroes. That really could be a game - "conquer the frivolous takedown notice." Fun!

It would also vastly improve relations with content creators. If my content had been tagged with a "LICENSE WARNING" label, I might have been flattered. I wouldn't have been totally enraged, as I was when my user page was deleted (guided by the Commons' "Precautionary Principle": http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:PS#Precautionary_principle - which I dearly hope y'all radically change or eliminate). You'll still hurt feelings with the (mis)application of other criteria like "notable" or "educational," but that's a different problem.

Some wikimedians (especially law students) could specialize in reviewing "LICENSE WARNING" content, adding information about what the rights really are. That would yield immensely useful information, since there's no reliable government copyright registry. They could go totally crazy and actually contact the ©holder, inform them of its relevance to Wikipedia/the Commons, and ask them to free it. If the ©holder says no, then remove the content. If the ©holder says yes: more verified Free content! You could in fact have 3 license statuses: LICENSE WARNING, for suspected mislicensed content; UNLABELED, for most content; and VERIFIED, for content with lawyer-quality verification - so squeaky-clean even an Errors & Omission Insurer would accept it. (But if you only accept VERIFIED content, you will die of irrelevance and tininess. I, for example, am unwilling to provide that much verification for my own works - it's way too much hassle.)

The big benefit would be Wikimedia Commons could focus on its mission (sharing educational knowledge freely, with a sense of neutrality and balance), allowing it to survive and grow and fulfill its promise. Nina Paley (talk) 18:12, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Comments

Well, we do get takedown requests - we comply with those that have a basis in law and we don't comply with those that don't. We also try to proactively get rid of material falsely labeled as free - we want reusers to have some confidence in our material (though prudent reusers will try to verify the copyright status for themselves). But we're really not super-strict on what proof we require for material being free. You really have nothing but my own say-so that e.g. this picture is something I took by myself and didn't yank from some website without permission. In my case you can at least know my full name and try to hold me accountable if I mess up - but we also accept contributions from anonymous people. Haukurth (talk) 18:47, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

How exactly does the takedown process work here? When Wikimedia receives takedown requests, who exactly receives them (the Foundation?) and what do they do next? Are pending takedown notices publicized? Is the community encouraged to defend the content in question? I entered "takedown notice" in the search box and got no results.
Meanwhile, you do have this troublesome official policy: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:PS#Precautionary_principle Nina Paley (talk) 19:02, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
I think you and I are fairly close ideologically - I think copyright does more harm and good and should be abolished. It's possible that someone can come up with a copyright system that's not tyrannical and harmful but none of the proposals I've seen seem particularly convincing to me. The question then becomes what we can do to get rid of copyright or diminish the harm it does. That conflict is being fought on multiple fronts and Commons cannot fight on them all. It's quite possible that the tactic of aggressively violating/ignoring copyright law is the one that'll ultimately topple the system and that's fine by me. But Wikimedia is not fighting on that front - we're trying to build things that allow you to be free from copyright restrictions without having to violate any laws. We do this by building a collection of verifiably free materials (hence the precautionary principle). It's not that what you're suggesting is a wrong way to go about things - it's just that it's not our battle. Haukurth (talk) 19:11, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
It would be nice if Wikimedia could stay out of copyright altogether, as current policy attempts to do. But you can't. In order to be "free" you have to vigilantly police the licensing status of content, and even that battle you aren't winning. As you and others point out, reusers must verify the copyright status themselves. The Precautionary Principle strongly encourages users to err on the side of eliminating content - the wrong side, in my opinion. I really wish this weren't Wikimedia's battle, and hopefully someday it won't be. But under the current copyright regime and its attendant untenable laws, you have to respond somehow. Right now that response is to block meaningful, useful content when in any doubt at all about its liscense status. I recommend erring on the other side - that the precaution should be against eliminating useful content. Under the current policy, you'll stay "safe," but impoverished and emaciated. Content is your "vital nutrient"; eat, eat. Nina Paley (talk) 19:35, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Well, we aren't doing so badly in my opinion. And it's not about staying safe - it's about staying free. Lots of other sites are out there eating, eating, and that's great. As for takedown requests the most recent high-profile one is this. Haukurth (talk) 19:50, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm familiar with that case. Dcoetzee's and the Wikimedia Foundation's response is excellent and inspiring. But as far as I can tell it's not a DMCA takedown notice, which is what I was asking about. Nina Paley (talk) 22:16, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
"it's not about staying safe - it's about staying free" reminds me of this: "There is more than one kind of freedom. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it."— from The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Nina Paley (talk) 22:23, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
And I would still like to know what happens with the takedown notices. Nina Paley (talk) 19:35, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
I believe they are usually received via a public contact email, copied to the Foundation's counsel, and dealt with by a small group. I don't believe the current process encourages public archiving of the takedown request itself. +sj +
Normaly users search for unfree content and mark it according to Commons:Deletion Guidelines#Detailed guidelines. Every user, even IP users, can mark images for deletion easy using the Nominate for deletion link in the toolbox on the left side - deactivate your pop-up blocker first. Thats the normal way, in 99,9% of cases someone else with no relation to the copyright holder requests deletion. Pending requests related to copyrights are in Category:Copyright violations, Category:Unknown and some in Category:Deletion requests. The option you mentioned, Wikimedia receives a takedown request, is possible but not very common I think. See the Disclaimer for this option. --Martin H. (talk) 19:30, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

This is alarming: Commons:How to detect copyright violations

"Photographs by professional photographers"? "Modern Art"? These guidelines assume professional photography and modern art can't be Free licensed. That assumption is increasingly wrong. That's good news - it means there's Free Content out there. But the bad news is you assume it's poison, when in reality it's a vital nutrient. Nina Paley (talk) 20:35, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Well, they assume that uploaders interested in violating (c) are more likely to upload those sorts of works. I think this is true. But I take your point. +sj +

We've been through this. The reason we can't use the YouTube model is simple: Wikimedia Commons content is not solely intended for online use, nor only in the United States. The moment you print it in a book, DMCA's OCILLA is no protection against subsequent claims of copyright infringement, and the cost of modifying a book already sent to the presses is prohibitive. We cannot achieve our mission while eschewing responsibility for policing copyright status. We don't delete any image whose free status can be confirmed; factors like the professional appearance of an image are only considered in ambiguous cases. Dcoetzee (talk) 20:07, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Anyone who uses a Commons image in a textbook already has to verify the copyright status on their own. Standards for confirmation remain prohibitive and discouraging; I'm still supposed to get my close friend Ian, who took my official photographs, to send written permission that yes, I can put it here. I'm not going to. Technically, that photo should be deleted from the Commons. I appreciate that it hasn't been deleted due to courtesy and increasing familiarity, but I wouldn't ask other content contributors to spend several days focusing on Wikimedia as I have, just for that privilege. Nina Paley (talk) 20:35, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
That's quite true; any serious publisher would seek an explicit written and signed contract. That's why specifying the source/author is so important. However, we still don't want to construct an encyclopedia that depends heavily on images that we know would not be approved by their copyright holders for use in print. The process of obtaining that permission, and replacing images that turn out to be unusable, should be as straightforward as possible. Dcoetzee (talk) 20:45, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
I agree - and I'm calling into question how you know. Because current policy says, "when in doubt, delete." Which is going to turn away all kinds of nutritious Free content you need. And put you on the bad side of many content creators, who will not just run away, but actively denounce the whole project. Nina Paley (talk) 20:55, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Dcoetzee - I don't know how I feel about allowing an image to stay until it is challenged (the Commons equivalent would be setting the default upload license to CC-SA), there are very nice things about Commons's insistence on getting uploaders to think about where their material is coming from which I hope survive the proposed upload redesign. But 'offline use' is a red herring: identifying different levels of image license verification is superior to any thumbs-up/thumbs-down model of inclusion. At present, almost no images on Commons have been license-verified to a degree that a major publisher would accept, and every one would need confirmation. A better system would support both less-certain and more-certain license statements, all the way up to officially badged media whose status is affirmed by a media licensing group. +sj + 07:46, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Well, if you pick some specific examples of deletion requests you think are unreasonable we'll have something to talk about. You could start here, for example. Haukurth (talk) 21:47, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the link. Is there a way to search deletions and deletion requests by reason? Then a whole section of suspected copyvios could be examined. Nina Paley (talk) 22:11, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm afraid it's mostly just one big lump. The major reason for deletion is copyright problems. More rarely, images are deleted because they're considered out of scope. Our scope is huge, though. Haukurth (talk) 23:02, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
To chime in, I have uploaded a number of images that I had from my own or a friend's camera, which we took and were certainly available for free reuse. Because they were uploaded before the modern standards for licensing, most of them were proposed for deletion later on. Many databases become available for bulk upload, but have questions about some of their licenses -- these are other cases in which a quarantine-style license would be valuable : something that says "assumed free content, details not known; source: uploader: known metadata:". We could decide how to let these uploads be used : only in user-space galleries and talk pages? only with a warning notice that they may not be free for reuse? +sj + 07:36, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Of the first 16 images up for deletion, 4 are for suspected copyright reasons. Search-ability and reason classifications would be a big help in analyzing this problem.
But really, I'm more concerned with a scenario like mine: my images weren't deleted, my user page was, with no review. Understandably so, considering the guidelines. The admin who did it was clearly trying to help, and was in fact following guidelines. He had more than one reason to delete my page: not only were the images I uploaded highly suspicious according to "How to detect copyright violations," but also they looked "commercial," making my page look like shameless promotion. He gave "out of scope" as his reason, but further explained he suspected copyright violation and self-promotion. The admin made a mistake, but it's a mistake anyone could easily make - probably would make, given formal policy guidelines. You have a better review process in place for deleting images than for user pages. Unless admins can also delete images at will? Can they? Nina Paley (talk) 23:27, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
I don't think your page fulfilled any of the speedy deletion criteria and I think the admin made a mistake deleting it. If this type of false positive is common then maybe we have some sort of systemic problem - but I'm not convinced it is. Wikipedia and its sister projects gets a lot of self-promotion type material that we genuinely do not want. Non-notable people, bands, companies etc. post laudatory biographies about themselves accompanied with images with inadequate licencing information all the time. Watching new articles over on Wikipedia is like swimming through a sewer. It's not surprising that admins get trigger happy. Haukurth (talk) 00:06, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
If that type of false positive is common, you wouldn't know about it, because the victims are unlikely to stick around and tell you. It's easier to leave and bitch about it, than to stay and give feedback. Most artists and authors - content creators - are even more sensitive about rejection than average, while (I believe) most Wikimedians are tougher than average. Nina Paley (talk) 00:43, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Also note that we often take ourselves hostage in order to procure free content. Lots of people want some of their stuff to be on Wikipedia - but many of them would prefer to grant only a non-commercial licence for it or a Wikipedia-only licence. We insist on free content or nothing and this often leads to the other party relenting and publishing the material under a free licence. Haukurth (talk) 20:11, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
I hugely admire your no non-commercial licenses policy! Really I do. Rock on! Nina Paley (talk) 21:15, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
I just have to disagree with the basis of this. What you are suggesting is that we essentially allow Commons to be a dumping ground for stuff which may or may not be free, and we just pretend it's all ok unless someone argues. That's just wrong-headed. As someone who takes photographs, I would be bloody pissed off if someone uploaded my stuff here without me publishing it under a free licence. Now, imagine if you're someone who makes their living from photography, and suddenly people can just take your photos for free without your say so. That's just wrong. The point of commons is to promote free media, by providing a repository of stuff which is, to the best of our ability, clean. We don't want to be a Youtube, where people routinely ignore copyright. It's not helpful for what we do. Say someone uses an image on wikipedia, then someone complains it's a copyvio and it gets taken down after a year say. That means that Wikipedia is violating the copyright, and that's not good for business. We are not Pirate Bay, we respect people's copyrights (PD-ART excepted). Why do we want proof that your friend allows publication of those photos? Because we respect his copyright, something which you may not. You make a good argument, but I'd rather be involved with an organisation which respects the law than one which allows people to flagrantly break it. -mattbuck (Talk) 01:05, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Oh, and deleting copyvios is fun. -mattbuck (Talk) 01:40, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
I would also rather be involved with an organisation which respects the law, but there are still the borderline cases. Take a picture more than 70 years old, photographer unknown, possibly unknowable. Whith this proposal we could have a policy where these pictures could stay, but with a notice to reusers that they must be cautious because the free status has not been thoroughly verified. That could be possible without turning commons into Youtube or something similar. Haros (talk) 04:05, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Also, if there are excellent images which would make great replacements for what is currently available, they need to be available somehow on the projects for an army of license-seekers to reach out to the author or publisher to get clearance. The addition of some sort of quarantine to support this would be helpful, and less offensive to uploaders who are told they have to do more work to make their uploads fully-approved members of the Commons repository. +sj + 07:36, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Agreed (with Mattbuck, that is). I place my works under a copyleft license for a reason. I want my works and any derivatives to stay free, and I'd like to be attributed for my donation. I get annoyed when I find my works on other web sites without licensing and authorship information, and when I do, I get in touch with their maintainers to correct the information or (as a last resort, if they are not willing or able to do that) take it down. The only thing that allows me to do that is copyright. It would be rather hard to encourage those who take copyleft donations without preserving the licensing and authorship information to pay attention to those details if Commons itself threw the precautionary principle to the wind and projected an image of copyright carelessness. It would also make it harder to appear as a serious party in negotiations with museums and other potential media sources. In addition to copyright concerns, source information is also vital for many images in the same way that it is vital for factual statements in Wikipedia articles (i.e. to verify that it is what it claims to be). LX (talk, contribs) 12:53, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
It would be great if copyright law simply ceases to exist, and all kind of creative works could be shared freely. The quality of Wikipedia would be even greater if we could choose and use the best images, rather than the best free images. But... it's just a nice dream. Copyright law exists, and while it does, the precautory principle should stay. The problem is simple: there are free files, that we can keep, unfree files that we don't. In the middle of both options we have a grey area of files with unknown copyright status: we decide to delete them. What would happen if the inclusion criteria is moved, and we keep both free files and "nobody cares" files around? The gray area between "it must be deleted" and "it must be kept" would not dissapear, it would simply be moved. But, if the side of kept images does not have strict and specific rules, and any image can be kept simply because the uploader "thinks" nobody cares or because he doesn't know it's source (even if it's known with a little investigation), then the deletion criteria would be weak: any image could, with just a little speech to justify it, be kept. Belgrano (talk) 13:13, 28 July 2009 (UTC) By the way, if copyright ceases to exist, and anyone could copy and redistribute a work for free even if it wasn't, then say goodbye to most mainstream creative industry. Would would spend millions to shot a movie full of stars and effects, if there were no profits to be had?
That's easy: just reverse the order of things. Instead of spending $32 million to make Star Wars VI and hope you make a profit on ticket sales, announce that if you get paid $50 million in the next two years, you'll make Star Wars VI and release it to the public; if you don't reach the funding goal, the money is returned. --Carnildo (talk) 22:34, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

My only comment on this debate is that I agree with Nina 100%. I have always marveled at the willingness of many members to actively police the content. One should think that, on a platform dedicated to providing free content (with its members presumably dedicated to free content as well), policing copyright is the one undesirable task that needs to be delegated in order to get it done. But au contraire, there are literally thousands of members who do it voluntarily and in a highly aggressive manner. Just last week, in the Featured Picture nominations section where I work, this picture was nominated for speedy deletion. The reason given? "Sydney Opera is copyrighted", just about the biggest pile of bull I've ever heard. To be perfectly honest, I believe that there should be strict requirements (i.e. a law degree or equivalent) for people to place copyvio notices on Wikimedia. It's the same as in the real world. We don't want just anyone to police our streets either, just because they can and may be right. Too many nonsense notices are hurting the community itself, from within. -- JovanCormac 15:58, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

  • I also think that Nina's idea of creating a publicly accessible database of takedown notices received is excellent. I really would love to see that implemented. It might quite possibly have a "chilling effect" on people who like to send bogus takedown notices. -- JovanCormac 16:02, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
So we're trusting everyone to know the law enough to upload the pictures, but we can't trust anyone without a law degree to mention that they think an image is a copyright violation? That's absurd. It's not the same as in the real world; you don't have to have a law degree to call the police on someone. If "Sydney Opera is copyrighted" is the biggest pile of bull you've ever heard, you must not be experienced in copyright law; the Sydney Opera House is almost certainly copyrighted, and if it were in France, for one example, our page on the law says that the picture would have to be deleted.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:44, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Well, it's not. And the subject of Freedom of Panorama has been discussed over and over again. Surely anyone who takes the time to post a copyvio notice can also be expected to take the time to check a simple page like the one you mentioned, where he would instantly find that his objections are unfounded. If he isn't willing to do this, I believe he has no business posting the notice either. Copyright is obviously an incredibly complex subject, and in its entirety way beyond the understanding of a layman. Any copyvio deletions (other than the most obvious ones) on Commons are therefore to some degree based on guesswork and assumptions (with a large margin of safety), not knowledge. It is inevitable that a lot of works get deleted which could have stayed; and arguments such as "this looks too professional (to be free)" (see discussion, as well as post below) as a basis for deletion requests are downright ridiculous and shameful. The actual copyright holders (if they exist) are more than willing to let people know that they are using stuff they believe they shouldn't. I don't see how self-policing could possibly help us in any way - I see a thousand ways it could hurt us, though. -- JovanCormac 06:53, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

July 28

Professional looking Cartoon

Here is another cartoon that looks too professional to be on WC (cough, cough). File:Decottopia Conservanti.jpg. Think the sheet reads: “List of additives.” Does any one recognise the artist as someone other that the uploader? All but one of the the uploader’s images look as if they have any camera exif info and they are of a very mixed style (but concern the same topic). All images uploaded on same day. I think there is enough doubt about ALL the licences provided by this uploader, that I intend to add the list below to the ‘delete’ file. It is also unlikely that he is currently monitoring his talk page and so will not be able to appeal with more info. If I had to guess, I would say they were uploaded by a trainee who had been given the job (plus images) to design a pamphlet for a herbalist.
File:Decottopia Conservanti.jpg
File:Decottopia Depurazione.jpg
File:Decottopia zucchero.jpg
File:Decottopia Alcool.jpg
File:Decottopia famiglia1.jpg
File:Decottopia Decottopia.jpg
--P.g.champion (talk) 08:19, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

All but the first two are confirmed copyvios, now tagged. I'd say the first two also are copyvios. Lupo 11:34, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
The Cartoon File:Decottopia Conservanti.jpg is from liceotedone.it which appears to be an Italian academic science site. No details of copyright status, but unless the uploader created the cartoon and the others on that site, the existence of the site flatly refutes the uploaders authorship, and come on source as "my camera" is not that convincing.KTo288 (talk) 18:03, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks everyone. That’s reduced the uncategorised images by half a dozen. Just a few thousand left to do now. Looks like I wont be able to find the time to cut the grass again this year – what a same;-)--P.g.champion (talk) 10:34, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Bulk license changes from {{GFDL}} to {{GFDL-1.2}}

Is it OK to bulk change the license on image pages from GFDL 1.2 or later to GFDL 1.2?

Some background:

We have a policy concerning user templates:

which explicitly states that user templates with embedded license templates must not be transcluded onto files pages.

However, long before this became official policy many users did this, and still a lot of users do, and I think most of them are not even aware of the policy. Many of these templates are to be found in Category:User custom license tags.

There is not really much harm in having these templates as long as the license templates are not changed (as such changes are not visible on the file histories), but some users do change the license this way. It would not be so bad if they mere added other licenses, but there are also cases where the license has been done more restrictive.

In particular I am familiar with two users who have changed from {{GFDL}} (ver 1.2 or later) to {{GFDL-1.2}} (ver. 1.2 only):

The license changes by these two users have changed the license condition for more than 1500 images from GFDL 1.2 or later to GFDL 1.2.

There has been some lengthy discussions about this already, see

Especially the later discussion are rather "laywerish" and quite frankly they are beyond my understanding. However, it seems like the discussion have never lead to a firm conclusion. I think the concurrent license migration added some extra dimension to this making it a difficult problem. However, now the details about the license migration are settled (as far as I understand), and I think it is important to reach consensus and perhaps modify our licensing policies such that it is clarified for future similar events, whether such changes are OK or not?

--Slaunger (talk) 19:53, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I think there is no problem so long as the contributors are only doing with their own images. The net result for Commons is pretty much identical to the migration=opt-out which is allowed. Some editors consider the involuntary migration to cc-by-sa-3.0 to be dramatically different from or contrary to the spirit of earlier editions of GFDL, hence this is basically a clarification of the conditions under which the authors allow their work to be shared. Infrogmation (talk) 20:59, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
  • (edit confict)As I understand the argument for doing this (though I haven't read all the above discussions ;-), is that the terms of the later GFDL's are claimed to not conform with the spirit of GFDL 1.2, therefore the interest in back tracking to GFDL-1.2-only. If the later GFDLs breach the letter or spirit of GFDL 1.2 then that is an argument they have with whoever writes GFDLs.
The basis of our policy of not allowing changes to more restrictive licenses is quite simple: whatever the author would like to now license those works as, they have already been licensed with a wider license. Anyone who has taken a copy of the image under the old license is quite at liberty to use it under those terms, including re-uploading it here under those terms.
I am in favour of allowing people to 'correct' their licenses when they are new here and did not understand the ramifications of the license they chose for their first few uploads (ie the license was clearly a mistake and the correction would probably be upheld by a court). But after that they should have been much more careful and understood they are making a legal contract with the re-users, they can't uni-laterally back out.
Trying to revoke the licenses here has no meaning. The license was not with us, it is with the world of re-users. We do not actually have the ability to withdraw the wider licenses and are mis-representing re-users rights if we do.
I appreciate the great contibutions of the users who want to do this, but I think it is far too late to try and change license terms. --Tony Wills (talk) 21:15, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
  • It might be seen as a 'clarification', but it is in fact a restriction. The difference with the migration is that the migration widens the license terms (with the agreement of the authors as they haven't opted out), where as this trys to narrow terms - which can't be done as the works are already out there under a wider license. --Tony Wills (talk) 21:18, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Tony here. I think that files uploaded before a certain date (April 2009?) can't be licensed under a license more strict than the previous one. Yann (talk) 21:31, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Your contractual analysis I think is correct, but if you read the discussion on MM's talkpage that means that a contributor is free to modify the license. If I make a unilateral contract, eg a reward for $200 to anyone who brings me a four leaf clover, I'm free to modify the terms of that unilateral contract (to say $150 reward) to anyone who hasn't yet accepted the offer. So the original re-user would continue to have it under the GFDL license, but the new offer (on commons) would be for a 1.2 only license. --Fir0002 www 14:11, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

We don't need a policy, we just need to point out the logic here to those that don't get it. Tony summed it up. "Anyone who has taken a copy of the image under the old license is quite at liberty to use it under those terms, including re-uploading it here under those terms." It's impossible to revoke a free license. Period. Not because some policy or license says this but because it's logically impossible. And saying "some people can use this license, while others have to use this other one" doesn't work with free licenses. This is not a legal issue, but a moral one. Personally, I have no problem with Fir0002's change from GFDL to GFDL-1.2. The important thing here is to point out that we allowed this and he didn't exercise any legal right he doesn't have. This isn't the same as a user simply changing their mind and revoking any kind of free license. If people really need that newer version of the GFDL, there's always the history. Rocket000 (talk) 00:34, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Well actually not so (on the last part anyway). A person can only use the image under the license in the image description page - if the copyright owner has specified a certain license then that is the license the image must be used under. But you're quite right - the issue was ultimately decided on the moral implications of the migration rather than the legal ones. --Fir0002 www 14:11, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
"A person can only use the image under the license in the image description page" because...? A person can use any license the material was released under. This applies to any license change. (For example, do we delete Flickr images because their description pages list a different license? No. Does Commons description pages have more authority than Flickr's? No.) Moreover, what happens if they are using an archived version of Commons (the image description page will be of the older license)? Rocket000 (talk) 14:42, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
The user may only use the license according to what it is currently released under. That's pretty obvious. With your flickr example, say Person A initially uploads under a CC license but then changes it to All Rights Reserved, but say Person B knew it had already been licensed under CC (or was using a google cached version of the page) Person B cannot download the image from flickr and use it under the previous CC license. The IP owner is no longer offering the image under that license. --Fir0002 www 13:54, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
No, that's not obvious at all. If you install Windows, and a EULA comes up on the screen, it doesn't matter what edits Microsoft has made to the license back in Seattle; you're agreeing to the license on your screen. Likewise, any validly given license a file can be found under, whether it's in the file history or the Google cache, can still be used. Furthermore, Wikimedia Commons is not a hosting site for your IP; it's a collection of free media that you agreed to license your works to when you uploaded them. Not only that, even under your theory, since the GFDL is transitive, anyone who downloaded it could upload it under the exact same license. It could even be bot-automated; take a backup of the Wikimedia Commons, and reupload the images under the license that the IP owner agreed to give the creator of the backup and agreed to let him or her extend to others.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:24, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Your EULA analogy is not strictly accurate - if Microsoft tells its customer that it is no longer licensing Windows under EULA v1 before the user clicks "I accept" then the user cannot use the license under EULA v1, they would need to use it under EULA v2 (or whatever). It's a basic proposition of contract law - the offeror is at liberty to revoke or modify the offer upto and until the offeree accepts the offer (see for example Goldsbrough Mort & Co Ltd v Quinn). So here anyone downloading my images would be faced with EULA v2. Old licenses are implicitly revoked by any new license - you can't use the image under it's old license simply because you can access the old license. Well by definition commons is a free repositry of images so in many ways it may be thought of as a hosting site - its analogous to flickr in many ways. You're last point has been discussed elsewhere (I do wish you'd read the previous discussion before jumping in), and yes in theory a person could re-upload under GFDL but they would have to prove that they downloaded the copy prior to the license change (so no doing a server dump now would not be acceptable) and it would probably be necessary to retain my originals (for source information) and it would be extraordinarily disrespectful towards the contributor (ie me) and an excellent way to discourage me from hitting the "upload" button in the future. --Fir0002 www 13:05, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
I did not follow the relicensing discussions at all, but if I understand Tony Wills correctly CC license was added with the agreement of the authors as they haven't opted out. This just sounds wrong. For example, I noticed that someone changed license of {{Photo-by-Wojciechowscy-GFDL}}. Authors of the images released them on their website under GFDL and as I understand were contacted by Commons and approved {{Photo-by-Wojciechowscy-GFDL}}. When I saw the template changed I assumed that someone contacted the authors and they agreed to widen the license to CC. But now I suspect that the license was changed without their permission and we are waiting for them to notice the change and opt out if they do not want their license widen beyond what their website uses. That does not sound right. --Jarekt (talk) 04:15, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
I do understand these contributors original argument, where they felt that the change in the GFDL from 1.2 to 1.3 opening up to make it effectively equivalent with CC-BY-SA here was not in the spirit of GFDL 1.2 or later. However, now that the community has agreed to have an opt-out option on the migration to CC-BY-SA should they then not really change their license from {{GFDL}} to {{GFDL|migration=opt-out}} instead as the opt-out effectively eliminates the issue with the GFDL that they found is not in the spirit of the GFDL 1.2 or later? Unless, of course, the contributors now do not longer trust any later version of the GFDL. ("If they could make the GFDL equivalent with CC-BY-SA, then what is next? Public Domain?") Although I can undertsand that concern, I really think it is a mess to make such a license change in a way where it is not clear from the file page history that such a license change has happened. The everday re-user has no chance of unravelling and understanding that they should really be looking at the history of an embedded template and not the file page history. It is really confusing. I therefore suggest that in these two cases, the creators should change the license in their transcluded user templates to {{GFDL|migration=opt-out}}. Next, the license should be extracted from the user template and added explicitly to each file page. I have already discussed this part of it in detail with Fir0002 and this is something I can do with SlaungerBot. --Slaunger (talk) 06:36, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
I think you are right (I have finally read some of those long discussions), the opt-out-clause should be sufficient. We do not want to set a precedent of allowing and slippage in license terms. So leaving the license at GFDL+, with the opt-out for migration effectively leaves the image at staus quo. If future GFDL licenses add other 'objectionable' features then that can be argued at the time.
The point made by Jarekt is a good one, if the contributor isn't from this community (ie it is not a "self") license, then effort should be made to contact the author, or opt-out should be assumed? Has this issue been addressed in the migration discussions? --Tony Wills (talk) 10:23, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
I really don't see the need for going through the pain of this migration issue again. 1.2 only is a commons accepted license and this change should be honoured. As an aside I briefly noticed this a while ago and I suspect that such instances are relatively common and feel that common-sense and good will should prevail in dealing with contributors in such matters - it's the only way a community such as commons can survive. Also I'm not even sure how the GFDL|opt out is meant to work - it will just add confusion because the typical reuser will think they can use it under 1.3 which contains clause 11 dealing with the migration. How does the opt out become part of the license? It just doesn't make sense. --Fir0002 www 14:11, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
The opt-out keeps the license "1.2 or any later" BUT without the CC-BY-SA option. Keep in mind the limitations on when reusers can choose that option (e.g. the August 1, 2009 deadline, "We do not want to grant people this permission for any and all works released under the FDL. We also do not want people gaming the system by adding FDLed materials to a wiki, and then using them under CC-BY-SA afterwards."[1]). Rocket000 (talk) 14:33, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Here's the thing: Both sides are right. The GFDL and CC-BY-SA are in the same spirit as far as the licenses' original intent goes (how can you argue with the people who wrote them?) The GFDL wasn't made for something like an encyclopedia, let alone media files, but we used it anyway. Now we're trying to make the license appropriate for what it is most used for (thanks to us abusing it so much). It's not "What's next? PD?" because I think everyone can see that the change wasn't to make it less restrictive, but to make it as restrictive as it was meant to be (this can be seen in the fact that the change doesn't affect those people who use the license for software as it was meant to be used). The problem arises when users of those licenses did so not entirely by choice or because they shared a similar ideology. They were choosing the GFDL because of the unintended consequences it happened to have. It made reuse, specifically commercial reuse, a lot harder (because we were using a software documentation license for something that wasn't software documentation, not because of the spirit). This was an issue that we "solved" by adding CC-BY-SA, but now those users that chose the GFDL for the wrong reasons (i.e. making reuse harder—the exact opposite goal of *any* free license) are left with something that isn't in the same spirit as they intended.
That aside, here's something the FSF has said:
Normally, these sorts of licensing decisions can and should be handled by the copyright holder(s) of a particular work. However, because Wikipedia has many copyright holders, the project needed some alternative way to accomplish this, and we've worked with them to provide that.[2]
This doesn't apply to files. They usually have one author. The copyright holder should be the one deciding these things when possible, and it's definitely possible here. We shouldn't be changing third-party files like Jarekt brought up, even if we technically can. It's just not what they agree to (the "spirit" is irrelevant since that not why they used the license). Rocket000 (talk) 10:47, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
I agree with all points. Talk about not being in the spirit is bogus, the opt out allows for people who relied on the restrictive effects of the license (and who don't wish to truely freely license their images). And third party licenses are a seperate case. --Tony Wills (talk) 11:30, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
And to make it crystal clear for the mind-weak user here (me ): Does that imply that we all agree that going from {{GFDL}} to {{GFDL-1.2}} is not OK. Rather these users should change it to {{GFDL|migration=opt-out}} (for files uploaded prior to their license changes)? --Slaunger (talk) 12:08, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
✓[OK] (I don't know about all though ;-) --Tony Wills (talk) 12:36, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Changing GFDL to GFDL-1.2 has never been allowed; this has nothing to do with the licensing update. Our opt-out clause is a courtesy to people who feel strongly about the relicensing process; this is completely unreladted to this discussion. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 21:08, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
And the courtesy clearly extended to permitting my license change. I quite disagree that "we all agree going from {{GFDL}} to {{GFDL-1.2}} is not OK" - seems that it's just you and Tony saying that. To bring us a complete circle to when you first brought up this issue, there was never any policy regarding license changes; after extensive discussion in which it was attempted to force my images into the migration the community decided to respect my decision not to take part in the migration by allowing the reversion to 1.2. This was a one-off case in light of exceptional circumstances, it's not policy. --Fir0002 www 14:11, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
{{GFDL|migration=opt-out}} is not license change. It's simply keeping it the same (no added CC option). Rocket000 (talk) 14:49, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
We all know that free licenses are irrevocable and that removing licenses from images is _not_ accepted. This has been Commons policy for ages, there's no need to go over this again. I really cannot see the community consensus going into the direction of allowing you to go from 1.2+ to 1.2-only. Many other people have tried to go this path, nobody was allowed to. I can't see why these are exceptional circumstances. We have had this discussion over and over again; there's no need to once again explain why revoking licenses is not tolerated. To clean up the mess you created by including a license template and then altering it: Just have a bot go over all the images you tagged with this template. If it was tagged before 30 January, mark it with {{GFDL}}, otherwise mark it {{GFDL-1.2}}. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 16:40, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Licenses are irrevocable? Fine, then is also the Re-licensing from GFDL to CC also a Joke?`When the Foundation can relicense my work, then i also can do this. --Ralf Roletschek (talk) 17:43, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Note the term "irrevocable". You can add new licenses but you can't remove. So you are free to add {{PD-self}} or a {{Cc-by-whatever}} to your GDFL-images. --MGA73 (talk) 17:59, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
"This has been commons policy for ages" - an interesting claim considering that after an extensive debate no such policy has emerged. Your claim that no one has been allowed to relicense is quite incorrect; the diff I mentioned above is but one example of where this has happened. And yes these are exceptional circumstances - how often does commons have a migration? Finally, it seems pretty clear from the discussion here that a relicence to 1.2 only was an acceptable way to opt out. Obviously you wouldn't agree, but then you were in favour of forcing users into the migration! Your insensitive approach to people's intellectual property is quite inappropriate. --Fir0002 www 04:53, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
Please stop questioning my morals. The community has decided to give creators the possibility to opt out of the licensing update without revoking a license. We don't need a policy page saying that free licenses are irrevocable because this is just fact - check any of the licenses and you will find it. BTW, COM:L says The license must be perpetual (non-expiring) and non-revocable. The case you cited was _one_ user deciding he wouldn't take further action against another user changing the licensing of a file against policy; on the other page there are _two_ users saying that going to 1.2-only might be okay. Is that how we define consensus now, with only 3 people? Is that how we override licenses? -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 07:58, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
I see no reason not to - if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then call it a duck. Anyway, you seem to be failing to realise that relicensing the image does not revoke the license. As I've already mentioned to Tony above, people who have downloaded the image under GFDL+ will still be able to use it under that license. It is only new downloaders who will be confined to 1.2. Furthermore it seems ridiculous to get all concerned about those users because at the time they downloaded the images they were using them according to ver 1.2 and so were clearly happy with those terms. Version 1.2 is obviously acceptable to them and the modification should cause no concern at all. Not that it's important, but AFAIK the GFDL doesn't, in fact, contain a "irrevocable" term as you claim.
That was only one case that I happened to stumble upon - I'm not some kind of watchdog over these matters so I don't have a definitive reference list. I'm just saying that I suspect this sort of thing is quite common. It's a courtesy to the contributor and good for the long term interests of the commons. Because if you stopped and thought about it you'd see that commons suffers no loss - the images are still licensed according to a commons-accepted license and available to the world. --Fir0002 www 13:49, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
License your work under a license that implements an "any later version" clause and specifies that later versions can be published by you, then yes, you can relicense your work. We just won't accept such a license here. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 17:53, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Basically, yes. I was more or less recapping the license change in general, but you are correct, the opt-out ({{GFDL|migration=opt-out}}) is the method the community has chosen to deal with these issues, not any method that lets users change the license to something else. Rocket000 (talk) 14:02, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Section break: How late can one opt out?

There is another point I am confused about. So let say I have some GFDL images than someone adds CC license to my images, I decide to opt-out and use opt out flag, which removes CC license. But why is opting out allowed - it removes "irrevocable" CC license from the images that someone gave to my pictures. Is there going to be a time period it is allowed? Days? Months? Years? --Jarekt (talk) 19:09, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Yes, tomorrow is the last day. This is a license migration not a permanent feature add to the GFDL. Rocket000 (talk) 06:27, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
Actually, the August 1 deadline is pretty much irrelevant for the opt-out, and, IMHO, as a matter of courtesy we should keep the opt-out option open until everyone who wants to exercise it has had time to do so (which will probably take a few more months at least). But no, we can't keep the opt-out open forever — at some point we'll indeed have to decide that everyone's had their chance to opt out, and that if they haven't, it's their own fault.
The whole thing is something of a mess: ideally, those who wished to opt out should've done it before the WMF resolution took effect on June 15, but in practice I don't think we even had the mechanism for doing so in place yet at that time. Also, it's probably best not to delve too deeply into the legal validity of the whole opt-out scheme if we can avoid it, given the vagueness of the actual WMF resolution regarding media files in general. Better to just treat it as a courtesy, and hope that nobody will in fact be discourteous enough to try and weasel their way into using an opted-out file under CC-BY-SA on a technicality; whatever the outcome, that would likely get extremely awkward for everyone involved. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:16, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
Yes, it is a mess, which is exactly why we should not prolong it any more than neccessary. Opting out can be done until August 1st (you have a few hours to go), after that it's no longer possible. As soon as the rest of the migration candidates are processed, we will have a bot go over all the images anyway and replace the current parameter system with actual license templates, those can then no longer be removed. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 22:01, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
August 1 deadline is pretty much irrelevant for the opt-out It seems that way so what is the deadline for then? I thought it was the end of the migration period. Of course, it should have been opt-in but that would defeat the purpose. There's no (technical) legal issue because their licenses explicitly said "or later" (the enforceability of that is a different matter; what would happen in a courtroom is anyone's guess), but morally, as even the FSF has stated, we shouldn't be making that choice for copyright holders where we can avoid it. You can't avoid it with encyclopedia articles that have 1000s of authors, many anonymous, but you can with files that have one or two authors and the authors are active users. So do we need a new deadline? I would give it a couple more months at least. Rocket000 (talk) 22:50, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Photography strictly forboden!

This suggestion might be better appreciated here rather than on one of the WPs so here goes: What with the current National Portrait Gallery kerfuffle and the vacation season being upon us. Would it not be helpful, to indicate on the relevant WP articles, which museums and galleries are camera friendly and which are not (e.g., NPG). You know how disappointing it is for the kids (both big and small), when you arrive at some place they have been looking forward visiting to for ages, only to find they can't take photos, not even of each other standing next to any of the exhibits, not even with their camera-phones. How many would bother going to Disney Land if they imposed that restriction? We might be able to included a little prohibition sign in the articles, featuring (say) a red circle with a diagonal across a camera. Perhaps also, a new category Category: Photography strictly forboden. It would certainly make planning that big day out a little easier. --P.g.champion (talk) 15:43, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Commons:WikiProject Arts/Museum photography. Man vyi (talk) 17:11, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, I have now added the National Portrait Gallery to the project's list.--P.g.champion (talk) 07:16, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
What the...? Kids looking forward for ages to visit museums? Has the world gone mad? Belgrano (talk) 02:48, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Here in the UK it is the museums that have gone mad. They are so popular with the kids that if I had my way I would have the children banned rather than the cameras! I could then look around and play with all the interactive exhibits myself - in peace ! Example--P.g.champion (talk) 10:35, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

August 3

Questioning recently uploaded image

Regarding File:John_F._Kennedy.jpg, shouldn't there be proof other than the word of the uploader that the image is originally from the Executive Office of the President of the United States? The source is listed as "allposters.com", and I don't see the U.S. government source listed there. Sswonk (talk) 22:29, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Dunno, but if it is PD, there's a much higher-quality version on this page (courtesy of TinEye). —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:45, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
I still have questions about this. The photograph is the work of Alfred Eisenstaedt who was an employee of Life Magazine, however according to a source [3], the photo was used as the "Official Portrait of President John F. Kennedy". This is as far as I have been able to get in terms of finding whether the photo's copyright is or was owned by the U.S. Government. It could have been called the "Official Portrait of President John F. Kennedy" but the copyright still owned by Eisenstaedt. Is there some way of tagging this image which will then bring this issue to the attention of administrators? I would rather have this issue cleared up before the photo gains significant use on other projects. Sswonk (talk) 04:55, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Is there an explicit claim of copyright somewhere? In those days (before 1978), in the U.S., the copyright to commissioned work was often held by the commissioner, not necessarily the photographer (today it is different though). Obviously, there could have been a contract which spelled things out, but usually official portraits were/are meant to be copied far and wide, pretty much defeating the purpose of copyright. Carl Lindberg (talk) 18:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

August 4

How to delete my own photos

How do I delete my own photos? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gloverepp (talk • contribs) 14:32, 2009 August 4 (UTC)

You may nominate them for deletion. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:56, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Be aware though that if you uploaded them here, then you released them under an irrevocable licence. However, we generally allow deletion of own uploads as long as they're not in use. -mattbuck (Talk) 15:49, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Licence selector

In the upload form there is a licence selector that allows to select from a set of the most typical licences (own work, flickr, pd-old, pd-art, etc), and another field where I can employ less common ones if needed. However, I frequently use some of the not so typical ones (such as {{CC-AR-Presidency}}, a must for politicians of Argentina) and a number of the ones available in the selector I haven't ever used (like the complex Pd-self ones, or United States before 1923 wich is hardly among my usual editing topics, or the "taken from Google", pointless for me as I'm well aware of the need to know a right source and licence before uploading). Is there a way to customize this selector, and have it provide in this manner some licences of my own choosing? Belgrano (talk) 02:38, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Should be doable with user JavaScript, I think. I'm too tired to try it myself right now, though. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:49, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Managing Picture Sets

I think we need a consistent and user-friendly way to track and manage picture sets, i.e. sets of pictures which only make sense (or gain value) when seen together, and possibly in a particular order. Wikipedia has a special template for Featured Picture sets (can be seen on w:File:Early flight 02562u.jpg, along with a fantastic custom-made template indexing this specific set). An example that shows the dire need for a similar system on Commons is this picture, which is featured as part of a complete and very valuable set (nomination here) but looks plain and uninteresting (i.e. everything but featured) by itself. It simply must be seen in the context of the entire series to be appreciated.

Probably the best way to accomplish a consistent handling of picture sets would be by using a template on each of the pictures' pages which is given as parameters the names of all the pictures in the set and lists them in some manner (could be a simple gallery). The current state however (no set handling at all) robs set pictures of their much-needed context and diminishes their value. -- JovanCormac 09:05, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Hey, don't diss the Bellman's map (it's a truly classic illustration)... -- AnonMoos (talk) 07:22, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

An incorrect visualization of an image

I notice that File:Zlataninter.jpg appears when loaded on a Wikipedia page with a bad version (that is a copyvio from there): see for example the current version of the article about Ibrahimovic on the Spanish Wikipedia. Is it possibile to delete all the versions of the image, except the first one, in order to recover it correctly? Thanks, --Mess (talk) 17:52, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

✓ Done -mattbuck (Talk) 18:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Note that issues like this are often caused by stale caches, either on the Wikimedia servers or in your own browser. Following the instructions at w:WP:PURGE and w:WP:BYPASS usually resolves them. (That said, deleting the copyvio version was of course a good thing too.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:45, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello all!

About the Board of trustees election, see the notice here. You will find the candidates presentations here and if you wish to vote you go here and click the button "Go to the voting server". --Zyephyrus (talk) 06:15, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Bundesarchiv

Hi up until recently I was able to access the 100,000 or so pictures you had online from the bundesarchiv. easily searchable by year. this access seems to have gone,I certainly cannot search pictures as they were a month or so ago. Have they been removed? Steve — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.66.182.78 (talk • contribs)

Images are here but categories are gone. See Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2009Jul#Bundesarchiv_categories discussion. --Jarekt (talk) 11:42, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Possible copyvio - no evidence

I'm sufficiently unfamiliar with processes on Commons to bring the following here: if anyone wants to pick it up. User:Ztglare has uploaded a couple of images, claiming they are his own - File:Rickeywiththebase.Jpg and File:EckCelebrating.Jpg. They look in every respect like professional photos of ball players - notably in terms of depth of field. Copies have not been found on the internet, so there's no proof. On en.wikipedia they'd probably be taken to Possibly Unfree Images. I have left a note for the user. I grant they may in fact be fine, but felt a concern should be raised. --Tagishsimon (talk) 10:00, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The clear image and shallow depth of field only indicates that the photographer has the right equipment for this kind of assignment. The only similar picture I can find are shot from a different position. Would be nice to know if the licence is correct, as it probable means he has quite a few more photos that he could upload. --P.g.champion (talk) 12:06, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
File:Rickeywiththebase.Jpg was taken in 1982, and File:EckCelebrating.Jpg was taken in 1989. If User:Ztglare is the same as the 31-year-old Youtube user with the same name (who happens to have uploaded a professionally produced baseball related video there), they would have been around 4 years old at the time the first one was taken and around 10 at the time of the second one. LX (talk, contribs) 14:03, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
File:Rickeywiththebase.Jpg was taken on May 1, 1991, but otherwise your argument is correct. Lupo 14:07, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Let's give him a couple more days to respond to the question on his talk page (he does not have e-mail enabled) and if no credible story shows up I say we delete without any further ado. Haukurth (talk) 22:57, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
(Thanks for the correction, Lupo. I misread the article.) It's been a couple of days and then some. I've reverted Ztglare's edits on the English Wikipedia, where he replaced free images with these ones. LX (talk, contribs) 10:28, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Image upload no preview, won't show on wiki

I just uploaded this image and it just simply won't work. File:Lottestarcityexterior.JPG. I've never had an issue with any uploaded images before but there is no preview (it claims there is) and linking to it on en.wiki generates nothing. if I click the full version it is there.--Crossmr (talk) 03:37, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I reuploaded this as a PNG and its working fine. if someone could delete the broken image I'd appreciate it.--Crossmr (talk) 04:06, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Probably just a corrupted version in the cache, it looks fine to me now. The original JPG upload would be fine. Could someone perhaps delete the 3 later, smaller versions? (save re-uploading it). --Tony Wills (talk) 05:58, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Why didn't it show up as soon as I uploaded it? It shouldn't have been showing anything from cache right after I uploaded it.--Crossmr (talk) 06:48, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
I can see the JPEG just fine. I guess you're using an ad-blocking software, and the image path is http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Lottestarcityexterior.JPG (notice the letters ad in the path, that probably triggers one of your filtering rules). –Tryphon 06:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Wow it does. I never would have thought that would have done that. I wonder why I've never come across it before..--Crossmr (talk) 08:45, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Just out of interest, which ad-blocking software (and which version) are you using? Seems like someone ought to whack the authors of that ruleset with the clue stick send them a polite note suggesting an exception for upload.wikimedia.org. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:52, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Adblock plus for firefox of course. I think I'm using corset + easylist. I set my own exceptions for commons.wikipedia and en.wikipedia. If anyone knows how to submit bugs or something to them they might want to.--Crossmr (talk) 03:10, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
I have fixed this issue in Corset. For future reference, people can report false positives to the appropriate maintainer listed here: http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions 24.17.247.103 23:55, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

What's Wrong with this Picture? (Literally)

I tired to upload this file. The page simulataneously says

  • No file by this name exists
  • THis file was uploaded by Noloop....

HUH? http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Western_and_Arab_Women.jpg

The Flickr upload bot can sometimes take hours to upload the image. Not sure why. They almost always show up eventually though. Carl Lindberg (talk) 05:15, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
It still says, simultaneously:

"No file by this name exists, but you can upload it.

...This image, which was originally posted to Flickr, was uploaded to Commons using Flickr upload bot on 04:08, 5 August 2009 (UTC) by Noloop (talk). On that date it was licensed under the license below." Noloop (talk) 15:40, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

It says so because the bot has added the tag, so the file page will already be tagged as license-reviewed by the time the image is actually uploaded (if the Flickr user changes the license, the bot’s proof will still be on the page). You don’t have a TUSC account, do you? So you probably have not asked the bot to upload the image (i.a. it is not in Category:Image pages created for Flickr upload bot without files), and you should upload the image under that name manually (make sure you upload the largest version). The bot just helped you create a description page and confirmed that the license is acceptable. --AVRS (talk) 16:45, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
On a side note, File:Fourniéjulien6.jpg is suffering the same symptoms, "No file by this name exists, but you can upload it." This file is supposed to be deleted (see DR), which the image is, but the page for the image still remains. Jappalang (talk) 22:22, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
I don't understand. I uploaed it. I followed the steps. I was told I had uploaded it. The page says: "This image... was uploaded to Commons..." It says it was uploaded even though it wasn't uploaded? Noloop (talk) 22:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
When I click on "upload it" I jsut get the same page I already filled out. What is a TUSC account? Noloop (talk) 16:04, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
The Flickr upload bot doesn't require a TUSC account. I'm not sure what happened here. Maybe there was one step missed (did you click on the link in the template, which can still be seen in the original version?), or maybe there was an odd error. But it sure looks like the steps were followed, but Flickr upload bot didn't come back to actually perform the upload. Maybe view the original version, and click on the link again, to see if that triggers anything. Or, upload this one manually. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:35, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Disambiguation in a category

There are two categories for two different lakes named "Lake of Sant'Anna": I made this, but I know it's not the right thing. What should I do? Can someone please fix it? --Superchilum(talk to me!) 13:40, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Looks ok. I would say you should add interwiki links to both subcategories, but neither has articles in Wikipedia. I will add interwikis to the locality categories instead. The two disambiguators aren't ideal unless there are other lakes with the same name in each province or the one you used is the one usually applied to these lakes in Italy. As I'm not sure about this I left it as is for now. -- User:Docu at 13:56, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
According to my experience, such a construct eventually fills up with images that are categorised with what I call "lazy categorisation". One can see a subset of that problem in Category:Non-empty disambiguation categories. Basically, most persons that search a category that start with "Lago di Sant'Anna" suppose that it is theirs, the one they need.
For disambiguation, I would certainly suggest a Category:Lago di Sant'Anna (disambiguation) as such a category tend not to fill up with lazy categorisations. --Foroa (talk) 07:07, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
If we are sure that it gets placed into one or the other instead, that is a good solution. If people don't categorize them at all or the images end up in an inexisiting category instead, it's preferable to have them in a "lazy" category. BTW HotCat doesn't allow you to pick Category:Lago di Sant'Anna. -- User:Docu at 17:49, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

User name in category ?

Hi all,
Is there any reason this category and its under-categories all have their creator's user name in their titles? If not, could an administrator change the names of categories by removing the user name and advising Borodun not to do this for the future? Regards Moumou82 (talk) 16:21, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi. If they have the user's name in it, they are a set of user categories. As such, they shouldn't be a subcategory of Category:Ribbons, but hidden categories, subcategories of Category:User categories (use {{User category}}). You might want to discuss this directly with Borodum. Move requests can be made at User talk:CommonsDelinker/commands. -- User:Docu at 16:34, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
User talk:CommonsDelinker/commands is only for uncontroversial move requests. Multichill (talk) 20:03, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Description of PD-licensing

When I uploaded File:Brev från Mikael Agricola till Nils Bielke 1549.jpg, a photograph of a 16th century letter, I could choose a public domain-licensing, but none of them seem very carefully formulated to me. The best alternatives was "Author died more than seventy years ago", but in the form I filled out, author refers to the person who created the file, that is, who took the photograph of the letter. There is also the alternative "Reproduction of a painting that is in the public domain because of its age", but this refers explicitly to paintings.

Is it possible to change the second alternative so it includes old letters, documents, seals etc.? --Årvasbåo (talk) 22:53, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Taking a photo of a two-dimensional object (like a letter) does not create a new copyright. {{PD-old}} is OK. Sv1xv (talk) 04:49, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
PD-Art is appropriate for photographs of any two-dimensional artifact, if you are not the photographer. It says "painting" mainly to distinguish it from {{PD-scan}}, since non-painting documents are usually scanned rather than photographed. Dcoetzee (talk) 09:28, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

This category does not show anything except 2 words Override this function. Is it just me? --Jarekt (talk) 02:38, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, had this error already on several Wikis in several namespaces, temporary problem. --Martin H. (talk) 02:59, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
(ec)It happened in a lot of places as a new version of the Mediawiki software was put in. See en:Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) for more. Clearing your cache should fix it. - BanyanTree 03:03, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

"Override this function" Error message

The link File:Dublovice, hřbitovní kaple (márnice).jpg returns error message "Override this function". What is the matter? --ŠJů (talk) 03:08, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

All right allready. --ŠJů (talk) 03:09, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
Same for File:Serac.jpg. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 06:28, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
I had the same message a couple of times with "edit" and "history" tabs of different files. [F5] does not solve this. I needed to use [Ctrl]+[shift]+R (on Firefox). Teofilo (talk) 07:00, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

No_tag_message_whitetemplate, and newbies.

In case someone is interested (it seems that user:filnik is still on holidays) User_talk:Filnik#Improving_on_text_of_"Template:No_tag_message_whitetemplate" -- [w.] 05:55, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Re: Messages translation

On a message I sent on the village pump in July '09 (link) I asked for help regarding about how to translate certain Commons tabs. I had done as I was instructed (by creating a subpage of MediaWiki:Extra-tabs.js for the Maltese translation. It has been now more than a week since I created this page, but nothing happened to the tabs. If you go to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cu-Scheibe.JPG?uselang=mt the tabs "check usage", "find categories" etc. are still with in English (and not in Maltese). Is this a type of bug or what? Thanks. —Chrisportelli 15:27, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

"Original caption" template

I am looking for a template to add to image pages to show their original verbatim captions. This is for use on images from a collection or publication where there is a specific printed caption underneath (or otherwise adjacent). This is not for translated versions of those captions but to simply document how the original image was described and to indicate that this part of the description does not need "improving" or "correcting" or "editing" in any way apart from correcting any mistakes in the copying of the caption from the original. There also would be a parameter to indicate the publication name/ISBN or collection that this caption was from. If the image was published in multiple books etc, then I would envisage just using multiple {{Original caption}} templates. I expect that this template would also be useful where caption material or 'watermarks' have been removed from an image to indicate exactly what has been removed. Anyone know of any such template or are there any comments about the creation of such a template? --Tony Wills (talk) 01:25, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

The Bundesarchiv images use {{BArch-description}}, but that's not really a general-purpose template. Still, if it resembles what you want, you could perhaps use it at least as a base for a new template. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 10:42, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I have created a very simple template {{Original caption}}, you can see an example of its use on File:Huia Buller.jpg. The template needs the text "Original caption" translated into various languages to be useful - insert the translations into {{Original caption}}. I suppose that {{Original caption/doc}} could be translated too. Any comments, corrections or translations appreciated :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 12:08, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
French translation added. Great idea! However, I have a request: would it be possible to also modify the type of the quotation marks used? French quotations use the « and » symbols, any other symbol is typographically incorrect. Diti the penguin 12:44, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for that. I could think of two ways of doing that, one is to move the '''{{{1}}}''' parameter up into the LangSwitch box, the other was to add two more LangSwitch options. ✓ Done I did the latter on the assumption that most people will use the " symbol, if I'm wrong then I'll change it to the former method :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 21:02, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
Added another example of its use File:USS Abatan (AW-4).jpg - have added caption template in readyness for removal of all text from photograph, and also a caption template for the title on source website. --Tony Wills (talk) 21:29, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
This is a good idea. I've always included an "Original caption states..." line in my uploads, and a multilingual template makes sense. - BanyanTree 09:05, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Massive batch job

I've stumbled upon a massive batch of illustrative images that are (largely) licensed under CC-BY and CC-BY-SA. Due to the sheer quantity of them, I'd like to request the assistance of any willing person(s) capable of processing hundreds or thousands of image files spanning across several websites.

The complete lists of files may be seen at all-silhouettes.com, hongkiat.com, and vector4free.com; but here is a small list of examples:

This batch job will inevitably require some manual labor. All three sites include imagesets of various licenses, so it is imperative to discern which sets are in fact CC-BY or CC-BY-SA. Additionally, many of the images are clustered into a single SVG or EPS file, and will need to be split up into individual images.

All-in-all, most of these images seem to be of high quality, and I believe that they could be beneficial for a multitude of uses (especially templates) across all Wikimedia projects.   — C M B J   23:03, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Commons:Batch uploads may be able to help with this. Personally I'm occupied with currently ongoing batch upload projects, but someone else might take a stab. Dcoetzee (talk) 23:48, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
{{Oppose}} out of COM:SCOPE. Teofilo (talk) 07:07, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
I checked the guidelines of COM:SCOPE, and I don't quite see where you're coming from. The commons already has dozens of categories containing similar images, and they're used extensively throughout Wikipedia.   — C M B J   08:29, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
"The expression “educational” is to be understood according to its broad meaning of “providing knowledge; instructional or informative”." How about uploading one or two from each category, insert them on Wikipedia or other project's pages, wait for a few days to see if nobody there objects or reverts, and if the icons are accepted there, go on with uploading a larger quantity ? Teofilo (talk) 08:52, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
"Self-created artwork without obvious educational use" is not allowed by COM:SCOPE. Art is allowed when the art can illustrate an artist's article, when the artist is notable-enough to have an article on Wikipedia. Teofilo (talk) 09:14, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
The websites can be added on Commons:Free media resources/Drawing so that people looking for such icons can find them. Teofilo (talk) 09:24, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
I have to agree in this case that these images are out of scope if not actually in use, and should only be uploaded if and when they are needed, but I also view it as unfortunate that there is no place for gathering together disparate small collections of freely licensed works that may have some utility for creative reuse and may become undiscoverable or lost if left to themselves. Perhaps this is a job for a new media archive. Dcoetzee (talk) 09:26, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
On the other hand, I guess some whole collections of clipart have been uploaded without checking what percentage of the collection is actually used. So it is difficult to say that whole collections can never be uploaded. That would mean restricting the choice to the present collections and never change. Some kind of nuanced rule is needed, but I don't have any idea of the criteria which could be used. I change my "oppose" into "neutral". Teofilo (talk) 16:43, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Graphics like these are welcomed in moderation. Take those Tango icons for example. The majority of them have found uses somewhere on Wikimedia, not to mention elsewhere. I'm always looking for nice looking icons to use in templates and such. Even the clipart that was batch uploaded from OpenClipart comes in handy once in awhile, especially the flags and heraldry. You just have to use common sense and not be indiscriminate. For example, uploading 212 Awesome SEXY girls would be a bad idea. But I see many things on those sites that could be useful. A lot of it seems to be vector resources for purely artistic work, but a little of that here is ok, I think. You never know when vector elements like that might come in handy for educational purposes. Or more likely for administrative/operational purposes. High-quality images regardless of their internal use, can attract more people to use Commons. I don't think COM:SCOPE was meant to limit our artistic side, as much as it is to limit our personal image side. There's a big difference between those, and it's not the educational thing, but the reusability. Clipart is made for people to reuse it and people will find uses for it. They probably won't for personal photos of your family on vacation. I asked a similar question here awhile ago because I wasn't sure where we stood on the issue, but the general impression I got is that unless storage capacity becomes an issue, we shouldn't worry about it too much. Rocket000 (talk) 02:38, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Well said. Also, don't forget that Wikimedia is more than Wikipedia. Many of the business-related vectors would be useful in presentation material within the scope of Wikiversity courses, for example. LX (talk, contribs) 09:27, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

August 6

German speaker help needed!

I had tagged images of user MaxtorNP as "missing permission", a link on the source website says using their images needs permission: (http://www.airport-nuernberg.de/unternehmen/presse/faq/;art186,1203) but it seems there is another page which I didn't saw at first place which say "All photos available for private and commercial purposes, specifying the copyright Airport Nuremberg used freely" (http://www.airport-nuernberg.de/unternehmen/presse/fotomedia/) can someone who understand German language please take a look at this pages, Thank you very much. (I used Google Translate, to translate pages to english.)   ■ MMXXtalk  17:52, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I would "translate" the linked declaration into {{Attribution}} "Airport Nürnberg". --Túrelio (talk) 18:02, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks a lot   ■ MMXXtalk  18:11, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
I agree. The first site says that you need permission to make photos for publication purposes. The second link is a free file archive with the attribution requirement like Turelio said. --Martin H. (talk) 22:41, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Our very own barnstars!

Maybe this isn't right place for this kind of announcements but as we don't have "Commons Award project", here I am, introducing two barnstars specially designed for Commons!   ■ MMXXtalk  18:56, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Cool, they look nice. But what do you mean we don't have a "Commons Award project"? We give out barnstars here (but not overdoing it like some projects). See Commons:Barnstars. ;) Rocket000 (talk) 02:48, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
Oops, I was completely unaware of Commons:Barnstars, I was looking for something like Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia Awards :)   ■ MMXXtalk  06:03, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
Oh, you meant a whole WikiProject devoted to it. Anyway, I'm sure these will be finding their way to user talk pages soon. Thanks for making them (a few of the others look in need of a makeover next to these). :) Rocket000 (talk) 06:37, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Difference between ogv and ogg video filetypes? Which to use?

I am trying to get a video on a WikiPedia page. I understand that I need to convert to an Ogg Theora filetype. I downloaded and used ffmpeg2theora-0.24.exe to convert a .wmv file. The output file was a .ogv filetype. In the Wiki help pages, I see that of the types that can be used, .ogg is mentioned, but not .ogv.

Question: Can I use .ogv? If not, how can I get an .ogg?

I started an upload, using Firefox, some 45 minutes ago, and the 150,907KB file has yet to complete. Should I be surprised, shooooooot, I bet there is a max filesize? thanks

I answered one of my questions myself. Max filesize if 100MG. Gloverepp (talk) 19:42, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

You seem to be confusing file-type and file-extension here. You can get a .ogg file by simply renaming your .ogv file :-) --Dschwen (talk) 19:47, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
.ogv is preferable to use in upload filenames, I'm pretty sure. .ogg is more often used for Ogg audio (Vorbis codec or other) files, however it was/is also commonly used for Ogg Theora video files, and so both are used. But whichever extension you use, an Ogg Theora file is an Ogg Theora file. Also note that the Mediawiki software cannot scale videos on its own; if you intend to use one on a Wikipedia article it is better to also upload a smaller version, close to the size you want to display in the article. (Large videos will appear to be scaled, but the full size will be downloaded and web browsers would need to do the scaling.) The larger videos (if they are under the size limit) are still a good idea; someday the software will get better I'm sure. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:59, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

August 7

Could a en wiki admin check this file for the original sources? Thx.--Sanandros (talk) 09:10, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Original image description page was, in its entirety, the {{PD-self}} template. No other source besides the claim to be the photographer was provided. - BanyanTree 11:43, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
OK, thx, but the User isn't active any more :(--Sanandros (talk) 13:15, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
Which means the "no source" tag was incorrectly applied -- it was claimed as "self work". That is dubious, but it is a source. Those types of things should go through a regular deletion request instead, unless original (unlicensed) sources are explicitly found first. In this case, there is a very similar picture File:SlovenianSoldiers.jpg (also marked "no source") which shows up on an older website here, and credited to Bruno Toič/SI MOD. That photographer has a personal website here. I'd have to guess that this photo was taken by the same person, and we would need permission. So, both files should probably be deleted. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:13, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

How to change photographer name on a picture?

I inadvertently loaded a photo taken by a friend of mine and claimed it as taken by myself. I need to change the photographer name (assume that is author) from mine to his. He is not a member of wiki commons. What is the syntax for changing the name? If it can't be changed, then I need to delete it, would the syntax for that be "speedy|Picture is not mine" with double braces on each end? Gloverepp (talk) 16:58, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know which image is this but you certainly need permission from your friend to publish her/his work here on commons, But changing the name of author is very easy, in the image page click on edit, you will see this code:
== Summary ==
{{Information
|Description={{en|1=The Anjodi tied in dock in Capstang for lunch.}}
|Source=Own work by uploader
|Author=[[User:Gloverepp|Gloverepp]]
|Date=2009-06-16
|Permission=
|other_versions=
}}
Just change the bold text with Author's name, but I must say again, you need permission from original photographer.   ■ MMXXtalk  19:05, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I stumbled across Category:Video game logos, and found a dramatic number of possibly unfree images were uploaded by this user. As evidenced by Commons:Deletion requests/File:Guitar hero logo.png, he/she evidently believes that because they can find a font online that replicates the logo, it is somehow free. Threshold of originality in US copyright is very low, and the vast majority of images currently in the above category need to be fragged as copyright vios. --David Fuchs (talk) 01:57, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Some are already under review. The shapes of letters are not copyrightable under U.S. law -- even if it is a funky custom font, or hand-drawn -- so most of them look fine to me. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:37, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
It'll be tough. There are a lot of clear copyvios, a lot of clear okays, and a lot of ambiguous cases in that category. All we can do is review them one by one. Dcoetzee (talk) 03:50, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
Most of the obvious-looking ones have an Ubisoft license, GPL license, or an OTRS ticket. A couple have been appropriately tagged with npd. The bad ones I saw were not User:Mizunoryu's uploads, which have already been gone over recently. Carl Lindberg (talk) 04:05, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
Woops, right you are. I didn't inspect them closely enough. Dcoetzee (talk) 04:43, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
A lot of them don't look "simple geometric shapes" to me. --MK (talk) 20:03, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Most of the ones that aren't don't use the PD-textlogo tag. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:01, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Images of, and taken from, the CN Tower

A notice near the entrance of the CN Tower states that images of the tower -- and images taken from it -- may not be used for commercial purposes. If enforceable, this restriction would make such images unsuitable for inclusion at the Commons. I presume it's not enforceable, and can be ignored. That right? Rrburke (talk) 15:01, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

{{FoP-Canada}} indicates that such a provision is unenforceable. It's private property, so they can kick you out if they want, but any pictures you take prior to being removed from the premises remain under your own to do with as you will. Powers (talk) 15:11, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
And if they sue you for breach of contract ? Teofilo (talk) 14:48, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
We do not advise users to take action in contravention of house rules or legal contracts - however, any such conflict would be between them and the CN Tower and would have no bearing on Wikimedia Commons' ability to republish these images. See Commons:Non-copyright_restrictions#.22House_rules.22. Dcoetzee (talk) 00:54, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Guidance needed!

I want make something for wikipedia using Photoshop actions but the action's license says: "The digital images of the free actions can be used with non-commercial projects only." this is about a free jigsaws puzzle action which is also available for purchasing. could they actually limit users, like this?   ■ MMXXtalk  04:21, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Aren't Photoshop actions just a series of filter effects? If so, that would be like Adobe trying to claim copyright to everything you make because you used their filters and stuff. On the other hand, non-trivial patterns and brushes can be copyrighted by the original creators. If it's like the simple default jigsaw texture, I would say it's fine. If it does anything more than that for you, it may be a problem. The question is, is there any originality in the finished product that's not yours? Rocket000 (talk) 08:12, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
Why nbot use a free software, like The Gimp instead of Photoshop ? Please note that graphics related questions might receive better answers on Commons:Graphic Village Pump than here. Teofilo (talk) 13:58, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
I think this is a copyright related questions! BTW the action is from (http://www.panosfx.com/pro-actions/puzzle-effects.html) But I use the free version, This action, first make jigsaws paths and then cut the picture and add bevel and emboss, do you think it is original enough to be copyrighted ?   ■ MMXXtalk  18:41, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
No, the shapes are not original at all since almost all puzzles look like that (we have a nice vector template, btw). The .atn files themselves are copyrighted of course, but not what you create with them. It is just a tool. The effects—automated beveling, embossing, slicing—are common in practically every graphic editor. They are computer generated and lack original authorship. Also, it doesn't look like there's any license (i.e. EULA) at all to the free version which could make you agree to things not protected by copyright (those may or may not be enforceable, but still, they could use it to say you agreed to not use it in certain ways). Rocket000 (talk) 19:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
@Teofilo: Free software wouldn't make a difference because GIMP is no different than Photoshop in that anyone can create free or non-free things for both of them. And this isn't a COM:GVP issue but more of a CT:L (not that posting here instead was wrong). Rocket000 (talk) 19:43, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
Yes I can alos use this file, it is very useful becuase it have individual pieces, Thanks.   ■ MMXXtalk  17:35, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Murals and Wall paintings

Hello. Could anyone documentate the following categories: Category:Murals, Category:Wall paintings and Category:Wall paintings on houses (I can hardly see the differences). Where would you place Category:Wall painting in Angoulême - they all deal with "blind" walls of houses ? (I will correct the name: paintings, not painting). Category:Murals in France is a bit messy . Jack ma (talk) 10:51, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Whoever does it, please be aware of freedom of panorama restrictions, for instance, in the UK, 2D works in public spaces are not automatically PD, even though 3D ones are. -mattbuck (Talk) 11:27, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
I have added a {{speedy|no freedom of Panorama in France : see [[COM:FOP#France]]. It is OK if someone else wants to convert this into into a Deletion Request, but I don't have much time to do it today}} on all France mural categories. I hope people understand I don't realy mean "speedy delete", but let's have a kind of warning so that people don't add more pictures... Teofilo (talk) 14:30, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
So you can add it to Italy as well... And the lack of time is not an excuse, sorry. Or we strictly obey to this (stupid and non common sense) Freedom of Panorama and you add "speedy delete" (or rather "delete") to all these categories - but I won't. Maybe there is another better banner which says not to upload more photgraphs into those categories ? Jack ma (talk) 06:22, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
Some 10 months ago, I already integrated category:Wall paintings by country into category:Murals by country and I see that "they" are coming back with a slightly different name. So far, I did not manage to understand the differences.
This COM:FOP#France issue is a bit quick: what if the paintings or pictures are very old ? --Foroa (talk) 14:46, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
Before 1960, when de Gaulle's ministry of culture André Malraux started a program to clean the walls, Paris' walls were all black because of pollution, coal smoke, etc... Teofilo (talk) 14:56, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
But Paris isn't the only town in France, is it? –Tryphon 15:02, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
User:Yann, instead of improving what I had started doing (for example by changing the speedy delete tags into formal deletion requests) and who apparently does not know many other patterns of communication than threat, is using threat (diff). So let's have Wikimedia Commons become a repository of free media and copyrighted French murals ! Teofilo (talk) 15:22, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
...and Italian ;-) Jack ma (talk) 15:47, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

How to change my userid?

What would be the syntax, or process, for changing my userid spelling e.g., it is presently a combination of first and last name, but I would like to capitalize the first letter of my last name. e.g. Gloverepp to GloverEpp. I would not want to lose connection to anything I have already contributed to wiki commons or pedia. Gloverepp (talk) 17:04, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello,
You should go to Commons:Changing username/Current requests, here you can ask for the rename of your account.
But you should think about it good, because you should request a rename on every project where you have edits, it can be a lot of work.
Best regards,
Huib talk 17:50, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
Alternatively (and I think it's a good option for a simple cosmetic change), you could just customize your signature. It wouldn't change how your username is printed in logs, or histories, but you could use it in author fields and to sign your contributions. –Tryphon 18:11, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
For example just put this code in "My preferences>User profile>Signature" text box:
[[User:Gloverepp|GloverEpp]] ([[User talk:Gloverepp|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]])
Which will produce:GloverEpp (talk)
Just rememmber to tick the check box in signature field "Treat signature as wikitext"
Happy editing!   ■ MMXXtalk  19:29, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Change name

Is it possible to change my wikimedia name? Rvk41 (talk) 19:45, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello,
You should go to Commons:Changing username/Current requests, here you can ask for the rename of your account.
But you should think about it good, because you should request a rename on every project where you have edits, it can be a lot of work.
Best regards,
Huib talk 20:07, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

"released by the family"?

The caption to File:Ahmed Al Darbi.jpg says "released by the family". It says the image was taken by employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Nevertheless, the first version I uploaded has a grainy sideways caption on the lower right that seems to be crediting the AP/Leuktokei. And it may have a poorly rendered copyright symbol on it.

In this instance, where the caption and the embedded slug disagree I think we should go with the caption.

If we do, what does "released by the family" mean? Omar Khadr's family released family photos of him. And by "released by the family" they meant released into the public domain.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 21:34, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

August 8

Thumbnail and image page not working?

This image File:Eurasiantreesparrow.jpg shows up with a blank thumbnail, and image dimensions of '0 × 0' pixels; click on the thumbnail and the image does not show, but click on the image name, and you can see the photo full size. I tried re-uploading the photo but that made no difference. Can anyone solve it? - MPF (talk) 08:34, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I fixed it. There was indeed a small error in this file, that apparently was big enough for the Wikimedia servers to give up creating a thumbnail, whereas web browsers would just happily ignore it. I closed the associated DR too. –Tryphon 09:16, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks! Was the image uploadable under another name after fixing? It is a good pic, worth having here. - MPF (talk) 12:42, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
Actually, after fixing it I noticed that the author had already uploaded a working version under File:Eurasian Tree Sparrow.jpg, so I deleted File:Eurasiantreesparrow.jpg as a duplicate. –Tryphon 12:52, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

copyvio?

Is this File:Pira poster2009.jpg copyvio? --Havang(nl) (talk) 12:59, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

It's possible, No source + Watermark, I nominated the file for deletion   ■ MMXXtalk  17:53, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, I shall not vote, anyhow. --Havang(nl) (talk) 17:55, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Request for assistance

Hello Fellow Wikinians:

I just uploaded 104 bird images to the Commons. They are of a very high quality. I did the cover and 19 full page images in the 2005 edition of National Geographic Guide To The Birds Of Florida. Before 2000 I was a gallery photographer in NYC as well as teacher of World Cultures.

I will ask if a few of you can put the images into the actual Wiki pages of articles and their galleries. A few of you experienced and trusted Wiki people should make these decisons and actions. Let me know of your response to this request.

I would think 10 days would be the point at which I should delete all 104 bird images NOT PLACED IN THE WIKI ACTUAL PAGES BY THEN now in the Commons Watch under Peter Wallack. By then I hope they have all gone to where all of you think they belong.

I do have Microsoft Works Word articles on my bio, bird photo mission, and my photo process but I cannot attach anything.

I am used to direct email and places that are central post boards. If you can connect me to who I will be team members with, I am sure I can do this. But, I DO NEED THE HELP DESCRIBED HEREIN !!!!

Dr. Peter l. wallack, Ed. D. Columbia University 1981

See User:Peter Wallack,contr --Havang(nl) (talk) 14:20, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
All these images can be found on http://birdsofsanibel.free.fr, and contrary to what you say, they are not "very high quality". Take File:Yellow-crowned Night Heron.jpg for example; at full size it is clear that it has no more details than this 400×600px image (it looks like you just increased the image size, based on this small-sized version). Also, all the images you have uploaded are lacking metadata, which would be surprising if they were the original files. Under these circumstances, I think you should send an email to OTRS to prove that you're the copyright holder; otherwise, I think the files should be deleted as copyright violations. –Tryphon 14:40, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

These images appear to have been uploaded by a single purpose account. [4] Some are being used on the Spanish WP article for rum – not surprisingly. [5] Wrong licences almost certainly but as the origin may be Cuban, is it really a copyvio? Also possible, is that the work could have been sub-contracted out abroad and so be under different copyright laws from those of Havana -if Cuba has any photographic copyright laws that is. Has it? It’s enough to make one toss a pineapple in the liquidiser and mix a large piña colada. --P.g.champion (talk) 18:19, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

The copyright for photographs in Cuba is 25 years I believe. See Template_talk:PD-Cuba. Kaldari (talk) 22:40, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
{{PD-Cuba}} can work for images under 4 different possible legal backgrouds. Shouldn't it be split into 4 different licence tags, each one for a specific given situation? Belgrano (talk) 22:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
Maybe it should be edited to accept a parameter indicating which legal situation applies. It probably isn't necessary to split it into 4 different templates though. Kaldari (talk) 21:16, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
Yes, that maybe be the easiest option. Perhaps four tick boxes to make it clear that one option has to be selected. --P.g.champion (talk) 16:53, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Paternity License

That we can upload a picture from Flickr under Creative Commons that have the by License?-- A2 supersonique 20:59, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

ANYTHING CC LICENSED...as long as its not non-commercial or no derivatives, is allowed. ViperSnake151 (talk) 17:20, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
Ok, thank you.-- A2 supersonique 20:59, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Wrong name

I upload a new image but I made a mistake and I call my image File:BackLotec Sirius.jpg when it will be File:BackSpyker D12.jpg. That someone can change it because I'm not able. Thank you. -- A2 supersonique 21:25, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Image renames aren't easily possible -- the best would be to upload it again with the correct name, then mark File:BackLotec Sirius.jpg with {{badname|File:BackSpyker D12.jpg}}, (i.e. it is a bad name, and reference the correctly-named image) which will cause it to be deleted. Carl Lindberg (talk) 22:44, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Photograph?

I need help could someone put the right licease tag on my photograph i uploaded. thanks. --BeauPics09 (talk) 00:56, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but we only accept images under a free licence. In the case of your upload, the artist is Pablo Picasso. He died in 1973, his work is in public domain with January 1st, 2044. Until then it can't be uploaded here, unless you would be able to get his heirs to release the image under a free licence, which I highly doubt. More information you can find at COM:PDART. -- Cecil (talk) 01:07, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Searching by file size

It would be useful to me to be able to search for high resolution pictures. Any way to define a file size range when searching would be great. This is a feature request. --Anon (talk) 09:23, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Mayflower Advanced Search allows restricting the results to files larger (or smaller) than the specified file size. LX (talk, contribs) 10:44, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

User:Bryan

Since User:Bryan is no longer an active wiki member, as per User talk:Bryan, will some other member etc, take care of bryan Flickr Upload bots, and its responses/problems? Many Uploadbot failure reports are piling up on his talk page, without any one to respond to them! Otherwise, users be forewarned, before using bryan tools, and alternatives suggested.

Also Magnus upload tool, also has a warning message, that it may not function properly! Thanks! --Ekabhishek (talk) 10:49, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

More bird images

I would like to thak the Wiki people who put the scientific names with my 104 bird images.

I spent time after that improving and/or editing the DESCRIPTIONS of thos posts.

I hope you can email me or this site automatically emails me as these images are posted to the Wiki Encylopedia where all yo Wikinians decide they belong.

Let me know when this process of placing these images will take place and if there is a need for me to keep my 104 Commons posts after that.

Best,

Peter wallack

I'm not sure you understand the point of Wikimedia Commons. We serve as a collection of free media for more than just the Wikipedias. Users may add or remove these images from the Wikipedias at their will and leisure; if you want to know where they're used, your best bet is to go to the image and choose Check Usage on the top bar. In any case, Wikimedia Commons will keep these images indefinitely, for the use of all the Wikimedia projects and any one looking for free educational media.--Prosfilaes (talk) 13:48, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Commons thanks you for your donation. If the images are superior to the other images in their respective categories, you can be assured that, over time, they will find automatically their way in several of the hundreds wikipedia's Commons is serving. --Foroa (talk) 14:01, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

biographie.net

I need some advice on how to proceed with a French-language web site making infringing use of my freely licensed work, passing it off as their own non-free work. I suspect they are also making massive infringing use of other Wikimedia content.

Back in January, I became aware that Biographie.net was using File:Petter Solberg 2006 Rally Australia Dwellingup.jpg and File:Lennart meri 2004-07-03 02.jpg without crediting me as the author and with the patently false and fraudulent statement "© Copyrights Crialto - Tous droits réservés" instead of stating the license they are actually under.

I made several attempts to contact them about this, requesting that they complete and correct the information and informing them that if they were unwilling or unable to abide by the licensing terms, they must immediately cease the use of the images. Unfortunately, their mail server doesn't recognize either the common convention info@biographie.net or the required postmaster@biographie.net.

The mail server bounces originated from gunther.lixium.fr, so I then contacted postmaster@gunther.lixium.fr to alert them of the misconfiguration of their mail server and request that the message be passed on to the correct person. I never received a reply, but it seems to have gotten through, because I received no bounce message, and the images disappeared from several of the pages. However, File:Lennart meri 2004-07-03 02.jpg still appears on at least six pages [6][7][8][9][10][11], and since then, File:Chris Atkinson 2006 Rally Australia Dwellingup.jpg has appeared on http://www.biographie.net/Chris-Atkinson.

It appears that, in addition to infringing use of mine and probably other Wikimedia users' images, the site is publishing verbatim copies of large portions of Wikipedia articles, citing Wikipedia only as a "source", but without crediting its contributors or acknowledging that the copied text and any derivative works are under a free license. I know authors' rights in France are quite strong, so I find it a bit surprising that such blatant infringements have been able to stay up for so long.

I don't read French very well, but the site seems to have been discussed at fr:Wikipédia:Respect de la GFDL à vérifier/En cours#biographie.net copie les biographies de Wikipédia, fr:Wikipédia:Legifer/octobre 2008#Pompage "en règle" de Wikipedia, fr:Wikipédia:Le Bistro/24 janvier 2009#Copyright et cetera, fr:Wikipédia:Le Bistro/19 mars 2009#Photos pompées sans respect des licences and is listed at fr:Wikipédia:Liste de sites réutilisant le contenu de Wikipédia en français#Sites en lecture seule. Still, the French language edition has happily provided a link to Biographie.net from fr:Biographie since January, 2005. The site also appears as an external link or source in fr:Daniel Leduc, fr:Histoire de la géostratégie russe de 1991 à 2008, fr:Armorial de la noblesse d'Empire and fr:Jean Balmino.

Could someone who understands French sum up the discussions and the current status of the case? Has anyone managed to get a comment out of them or their service providers? And as I originally asked, what's the best way forward here? LX (talk, contribs) 17:09, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

For a start, I removed the links in "external links" sections of French Wikipedia: [12], [13]. Yann (talk) 17:18, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Did you try to contact them through their web interface? Yann (talk) 17:28, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I did. I notice the images are actually not copied, but just hotlinked without credit. Since hotlinking is explicitly discouraged and since they appear to have no desire to respect the copyleft nature of our work, can we get our techies to block requests with biographie.net in the HTTP refer(r)er header? It doesn't address their textual copying, but at least we'd stop contributing server power to their infringement. LX (talk, contribs) 17:43, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Some research shows that this site is made by http://www.rlagency.fr/ if it can help, and "whois biographie.net" gives a mail @gmail.com and a mobile phone number in Paris. Yann (talk) 17:47, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
I think they're just the domain name registrar (unless you got that from somewhere other than the whois record for the domain), not the host, so I don't think they're responsible for the content. However, the domain name resolves to 195.246.231.199, which belongs to europeanservers.net, which would appear to be the same as Lixium, which I already contacted. LX (talk, contribs) 17:57, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
RL Agency is not a registrar, but a company making and hosting web sites, and this company and the web site belong to the same persons. Yann (talk) 18:33, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Can we have a tool like picasa2commons to directly upload images from picasa?

http://toolserver.org/~magnus/flickr2commons.php

Hi, since I found very good images from picasaweb, which is affiliated with Google, I have manually uploaded about more than 300 images from Picasaweb with free license. However, I wonder why we do not have a tool like picasa2commons? I tried to use the Commonist tool, but it only effective for those who upload their own images from computers.. Since there are many useful and good images on picasa, I hope somebody who knowledgeable of making tools would heed my request. Any though?--Caspian blue 18:26, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I just skimmed the Picasa API documentation, and doesn't seem to support retrieving the licensing status (or else I just missed it). This means that, while it would be relatively simple to make a script to transfer files from Picasa to Commons, it's not so easy to automatically verify their license. Although I suppose it would be possible to just screen-scrape it. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Like most things, screenscraping it ought to be a trivial regexp match. This sort of tool has been requested before. I would work on it myself, but I don't have a toolserver account. Dcoetzee (talk) 06:05, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
Thank you for the inputs.--Caspian blue 22:36, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Lots of useful free images - User:Joi's flickr stream

I don't have the time right now, and I guess neither does User:Joi (w:Joi Ito) - but he has a lot of free use images on his flickr stream which would be of use to Wikimedia projects. Such as photos of w:Om Malik[14], w:Violet Blue[15], w:Steven Levy[16], w:Jimmy Wales[17] and more.

Joi is the CEO of Creative Commons, so the social circle represented by his photostream include lots of notable free culture advocates, journalists and technologists - many of whom are notable. If anyone has time to work through these, it'd be a worthwhile project and the output would definitely benefit Wikimedia projects.

ps - It'd probably be useful to drop all those photos into a Category:Photographs by Joi Ito, as his work is quite fragmented across Commons, some having been uploaded by other users already. 94.194.23.112 22:17, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

August 10

Can I Upload Public Domain Images From Internet Archive Org

Hi. I'm doing some work on another Wiki project about country music. I found this image of the Carter Family at Internet Archive Org and I was wondering what license should I use to upload to Wikimedia Commons. The Internet Archive Org has a public domain license displayed on the Carter Family page and has made the photo available for download. If anyone can help that would be great.

thanks --Sluffs (talk) 20:00, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Not all images marked public domain at Archive.org are suitable for upload to Wikimedia Commons, because they accept anything that's public domain in the US regardless of the license in its source nation. The copyright status has to be independently verified. Dcoetzee (talk) 21:19, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
They also accept material that is public domain in Canada regardless of its copyright status in the source country (e.g. UK publications). Therefore, like what Dcoetzee said, take care with materials from archive.org. Jappalang (talk) 02:46, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
What is the URL of the page? If it is a U.S. work, the tags there are *usually* correct. (However, note that sound recordings made prior to 1972 have a very very messy copyright situation in the U.S., so be careful of those). Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:14, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Here's the link: [18]

thanks --Sluffs (talk) 22:51, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Hmmmm. Apparently a photo of two musicians (related to the Carters) posing with the Carter sisters in 1944ish, with a "courtesy from" tag from someone who sounds like a relative of one of the musicians. Hard to be completely confident about that one, especially as the tag is probably more meant for the music. Maybe it is a personal photo, or maybe a (copyrighted) photo by someone else where the family had a print, or other possibilities -- it was not uploaded to archive.org by that person, from the sounds of it, either. The original appears to be here, where there is a copyright notice. Most likely it was a promotional photo and published at the time, which the relatives had a copy of -- in which case the copyright was owned by someone else. Odds are high that the copyright was never renewed, but that is hard to prove. As an unrelated aside, I would also be careful about any "public domain" tag on any sound recording made in the United States before 1972... those are extremely tangled, copyright-wise. Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:24, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

August 5

HotCat bug

HotCat addings are not working right now:

See

I don't even have a German interface on Commons... --Mattes (talk) 19:28, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, User:Magnus Manske inadvertently edited the wrong file on the wrong project. You'll have to reload your browser's cache to get it to work again. Lupo 19:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

August 11

Who wants to look at the category tree Category:Government ministers by country? I have already proposed several moves from Category:Ministers of ... to Category:Government ministers of..., reason:to avoid that ministers end in Category:Government ministers by country}}. Also, I am not sure that Category:Prime ministers should be there - and that should probably be Category:Prime ministers by country. And one has to look also at Category:Minister of Defence by country. And may-be there are more anomalies. --Havang(nl) (talk) 17:05, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Motifs of national interest

How are the general rules about "motifs of national interest", such as motorway bridges, hydroelectric powerplants or airports? Even though some of the sites have photo restrictions or camera prohibition many have not any signs or information boards. There are of course differences in different counties, but how is the general rule? This or this seems pretty harmless to me, but could one get caught for espionage (in democratic countries) by uploading pictures to Commons? V-wolf (talk) 08:21, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Just getting a chance to get as far as uploading would be nice. Here in the UK you can get harassed and even arrested just because you were seen walking down a street with a camera. London seems worse. Not a Crime You’ll just have to use your common sense and inquire about local laws and practices. --P.g.champion (talk) 09:49, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
In Sweden, where the second image you list as an example is taken, a structure or area may be designated as protected with or without photography restrictions. Protected areas with photography restrictions have this sign posted. If you take photos inside an area where such signs have been posted, you could indeed find yourself in a Swedish maximum security hotel, but if you haven't passed any signs, you should be safe to snap away. LX (talk, contribs) 10:36, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
As V-wolf asks for a general rule and this is a case where over generalization might end up extending your vacation by many many years, perhaps it would help to have a project page about this. A bit like Commons:WikiProject Arts/Museum photography but with a world map, and examples of signs that one can expect to see. Links to relevant web pages etc., etc. There is the useful Sirimo guide called UK Photographers Rights Guide version 2 but Simon asks not to directly link to it, so here is the introductory page which contains the PDF link. uk-photographers-rights-v2. Other countries must have similar guides because professional photographers the world over will have similar concerns. Photographer's Rights. New South Wales, Australia.Direito de Fotografar em PortugalPhotography Laws in Canada Wikimedians could do with all this info in one place. --P.g.champion (talk) 14:21, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the answers and the guide. An international project would be nice, but very extensive and tricky, not for non-lawyers at a first glance. In Sweden we have some old signs from WW2 with restrictions of trespassing and photographing, particulary at the sites of hydroelectric powerplants. Are they to ignore, if the sign LX showed is the one to obey? What are generally the rules for photgraphing an object from "outside the fence"? V-wolf (talk) 20:22, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

The scaled svg versions don't display correctly. (The numbers mess up and do not scale along in the smallest version, used in articles. An SVG problem i think. Can anybody fix this? Maybe there are more pictures like these? Regards, 217.121.6.68 21:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Odd. The SVG software is not scaling some of those font sizes. The numbers at the bottom are fine though, and they use the same CSS class internally. It works when I render it directly in the browser (Safari) and scale... Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:59, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
Probably the same problem discussed above at "SVG to PNG conversion failures..." under August 8. AnonMoos (talk) 16:04, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

category paragliding: help request for sub-sections names

Hi. I first put that request on the french Bistro but I didn't get any answer. I would like to create a few sub-sections to arrange the paragliding category. My problem is that I'm not a native english speaker, I don't konw iin details the naming conventions on commons and I know how difficult it is to rename a category when you have a mistake in the name. So I would like to ask for some help to find the correct names. I want to create the following categories:

  • landing (should I name this "Landing paragliders" or "paraglider landing" or "paragliding landing"...)
  • take-off
  • flying paraglider
  • ground handling
  • regulations
  • paragliding by countries (I want to put all the sub-categories paragliding in France, paragliding in Germany...etc in there)

Could someone please help me to determine the correct category names ? --PiRK (talk) 00:54, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

For take offs in general Commons has Category:Starts in aviation (which is not the an immediately obvious title.) so for take off
Category:Paragliding in France are all okay, if you make them subcats of Category:Aviation in France and Category:Paragliding by countryKTo288 (talk) 18:47, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
I can put the category "paraglider starts" in "starts in aviation", but using the word "aviation" in a category name that focuses only on paragliders doesn't seem very helpful for people who are going to look for this category. I see that there is a sub category called " Aircraft carrier take offs" so I will use that as a template and create category:Paraglider take offs. Thanks anyway.

Brastel Telecom

What is going on over at en:WP ? Have they gone commercial. This looks more like blatant advertising rather than a encyclopaedia article.[19] And the images are being uploaded here on WC, all done from the same single purpose account. --P.g.champion (talk) 09:01, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

A new article at Wikipedia made by one user not being the most neutral thing in the world. Surprise, surprise. The only thing that's an issue here is the images, and the Village Pump isn't really the best place to deal with them either. There's always Commons:Deletion requests if you think they should be deleted.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:15, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
The images have already been flagged. What I am querying is the growing number of advertorial looking articles that are appearing on WP in resent times that don’t get tagged COI. If this was done sooner, so that the editor was made aware of permitted images, there would be less cleaning up do do here. --P.g.champion (talk) 16:51, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Very high high res images available and on the verge of extinction

This is a call of duty to anyone who cares about the digitization of the world paintings treasures. There is a torrent floating on the web (http://www.mininova.org/det/1199752) containing 118 files, 14.85 GB of very high res images. Some of the images have already been uploaded: Category:Hermitage hi-res from a .torrent (only 22). The torrent has only 7 seeders which make it very unstable and could become inaccessible at some point. Please anyone with a fast connection or has some way of making these available on the net, help!--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 15:10, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Some of those look like they're actually from a different torrent (there's [20] but that can't be the original since they're all JPEGs). For example, I don't see File:Owl-Flying-against-a-Moonlit-Sky.jpg in the list. Anyway, I'll help seed at least. Rocket000 (talk) 05:38, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

The files are mostly over 100MB which poses a problem to our limit. Is it possible that a dev would import the files? The seeds are very good and downloading is very fast.--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 09:44, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

JPEGs over 100MB? Seriously? Those much be high-resolution scans of full-size paintings, or something. If they're TIFFs try re-encoding as PNG. If they're really JPEGs, then I must agree regarding uploading the full-size images, and hopefully we can get help. Dcoetzee (talk) 11:41, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
  • All of the torrent files are TIFFs.
  • I have now one of the seeders, so they are not on the verge of extinction anymore.
  • At least some of the files at Category:Hermitage_hi-res_from_a_.torrent are not in the 25C90FC3 7BA4EAF5 4184BCCC 2E1EE5F5 43C8FE6B .torrent
Platonides (talk) 15:12, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
They're TIFFs, ranging in size from 13.8 to 432 MiB. I'll have to wait for the download to complete to say anything more about them. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:56, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Well I already downloaded the first five files but can't upload them because I have a really slow connection with only 10 kilo bytes upload rate. The files range from 4,000 to 10,000 pixels on the short side (at least for the largest I have (170MB)). I converted that one to jpg and it became 80MB which shows that the larger files wouldn't be possible to upload even as jpgs. These are files that aren't to be found anywhere else. Maybe the Wikimedia blog can write an article on how they saved the masterpieces :) .--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 16:13, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
    • If they're TIFFs take a close look at them and see if they have JPEG artifacts (sometimes TIFFs are converted from JPEGs - dumb but true!) If they do not have artifacts, we want the full resolution images, but please convert them to PNG - it's unlikely they contain enough useful metadata to justify the extra bytes. Also, it will be very important to carefully identify the pieces and their provenance - the last thing we want to do is pass off a copy as the original piece. Dcoetzee (talk) 01:27, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Did someone get the whole torrent? I could download it for preservation if need be.  — Mike.lifeguard 00:22, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I couldn't download the whole file. I am at about 50 %. Yann (talk) 13:44, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
I've got the whole thing, and I'm seeding it now (though not very fast). I see no reason why I couldn't keep seeding it for quite some time. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:39, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Are we OK as long as >0 people have it? Not sure I want to bother downloading it if someone else has it covered, which I guess I should have made clearer in my initial comment.  — Mike.lifeguard 19:05, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Many of them are by now in Category:Hermitage_hi-res_from_a_.torrent. Platonides has been uploading file by file as he got them (or so it seems). There are a few Picassos and Kandiskys in the torrent; these are still under copyright. Lupo 20:34, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
At least one file File:Gogh, Vincent van - Memory of the Garden at Etten (Ladies of Arles).jpg might have lost a few bits here and there. --Jarekt (talk) 21:01, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
There are still very few seeds (only 2 currently seeding). Yann (talk) 11:15, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I finally got a few files. I uploaded some which are public domain in Canada only here: wikilivres:Category:From Hermitage torrent. Yann (talk) 13:54, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

You seem to have got the color space wrong when you converted those TIFF files to JPEG: they're really not supposed to look like garish neon graffiti. GIMP seems to do a reasonably good job of the conversion, even if its support for the TIFF format and non-RGB color spaces is otherwise somewhat lacking. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:24, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
Could someone upload the Tiffs or PNGs so that they would be worked on by restoration artists? And also for archival purposes? Some files can't be uploaded because of their too big size. These would later be important by devs, if possible. For now though, could someone upload the ones that are under 100MB?--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 12:36, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
I converted them with Imagemagick (convert). Gimp slows down my PC quite a lot for such big files. Yann (talk) 18:57, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
It seems ImageMagick doesn't correctly handle TIFF files in CIE Lab color. You might try running "nice gimp filename.tif &" from the command line, and maybe closing other programs first (to minimize swapping) and getting a cup of coffee while it's loading. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:20, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) I just used freeware Irfanview (with its free plugin pack) to convert some Commons tiff images to png. Took 4 seconds for a 5 megabyte tiff image, and 30 seconds for a 30 megabyte tiff image. I set the conversion for the highest, lossless compression during the tiff to png conversion.

Using Pngout (part of Irfanview plugin pack) during the conversion takes longer, and it will only reduce the png size a little bit more. So it is not necessary to use with these photos.

IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com) installs instantly. As does the plugin pack. No need to restart one's PC. It is a very popular image editor, and it is extremely easy to use. It doesn't do everything, but what it does, it does well.

I found the tiff images by using Special:Search to search files for "tiff". --Timeshifter (talk) 09:27, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

I generally use ImageMagick's convert at the command line to do this type of conversion. Dcoetzee (talk) 11:20, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
Ilmari Karonen, higher up, wrote: "It seems ImageMagick doesn't correctly handle TIFF files in CIE Lab color. You might try running "nice gimp filename.tif &" from the command line,..."
Does that fix the ImageMagick problem Ilmari was talking about? Does IrfanView have this problem? --Timeshifter (talk) 09:14, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Could someone please post the original TIFF files somewhere permanent? Some of the converted JPEGs are severely clipped (especially on the black side). I wanted to see if this problem was also present in the original TIFFs as well. Kaldari (talk) 19:36, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I have the whole thing (since July 10 actually), have been seeding, and plan to keep seeding until the peers (downloaders) go to 0. There were 6 when I was downloading and now it's 13; the seeders have stayed at roughly 4-5. Given the size, that makes sense. I don't leave my computer on all the time, but it's on a lot. Upload speed for me usually maxes out at ~55 kBytes/s but I have to cap it at 45-50 kB/s for browsing and stuff. I wasn't planning on uploading since I suck when it comes to editing files of this nature. If it's not something I can do with a simple ImageMagick command, I'm afraid I'm not much help. I know nothing about color spaces or profiles or any of that. I can upload the TIFFs directly. Since I'm also not one that wants to be adding the descriptions, categorizing them, etc. I won't batch upload them all, but I'll take any requests. That said, this torrent ain't going anywhere so no rush. Rocket000 (talk) 03:57, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I also have it, nearly complete now (91.6%). The best would be to have a copy of the toolserver. I will try to upload them there. Yann (talk) 20:29, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I also have the torrent completely downloaded. Kaldari, I can send you some file you may want. The problem with sending or storing is that the TIFFs are quite huge. It's not easy to find a place happily willing to allocate you more than 14GB. Most TIFFs are bigger than commons file size limit. On the other hand, I think I have all uploadable files uploaded. Platonides (talk) 21:57, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

No more seed now. Still a few files missing. Do we need the TIFF files on Commons? Or PNG versions? I think it could be useful because there are not available elsewhere, but we would need help from someone with a shell account, because there are over the size limit. Yann (talk) 11:48, 1 August 2009 (UTC) Yann (talk) 11:48, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
That's odd — I'm still seeding, and my BT client shows four other seeds. Mininova reports 6 seeds and 17 leechers. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 12:09, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Me too. Right now I see 6 seeds and 16 leechers. Check your torrent client and connections settings. If you're still having trouble getting the last little bit I can upload some files to file dropper (it's like RapidShare minus the suck). There's a 5GB limit without signing up. Rocket000 (talk) 21:39, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps getting them up to www.legaltorrents.com might help. AzaToth 23:04, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I've got a whole torrent long long time ago if anyone need some files. Though I cannot help with seeding because of my ISP. 4649 02:12, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I got the whole torrent now. I asked Erik Moeller about uploading files over the 100 MB limit to Commons. His answer was negative. I am uploading smaller files to Category:Hermitage hi-res TIFF files from a .torrent, permitting that people don't delete them... Commons:Deletion requests/File:Gogh, Vincent van - Memory of the Garden at Etten (Ladies of Arles).jpg‎ :( I will upload the big files to Internet Archive for now. Yann (talk) 10:50, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I uploaded the complete collection to Internet Archive. It will appear as soon as the scheduled task is finished. Yann (talk) 23:06, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I've uploaded File:Boucher, Francois - Landscape Near Beauvais.jpg now, though I had to crop it and reduce quality to 99% to make it under 100MiB (also made minor color correction). AzaToth 02:43, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I was looking at some porn on the internet this afternoon, and came across something interesting. A few years ago, there was a user here called User:Ti mi uploaded a few images of herself which were soon removed because of worries that they were being uploaded by someone other than the subject of the photographs. Today, I saw a photograph (not safe for work, of course), which you can see at http society.pichunter.com php/photo.php?id=145477 (I can't post the link because of the spam filter), and I recognised it instantly; File:Masturbation.jpg is almost certainly traced from this original image. So I'm here to ask a couple of questions: 1) is it legitimite for us to have a tracing of an image without permission to have the original image, and 2) does it make a difference that the apparent copyright holder of the original image uploaded other pictures herself to Commons a few years ago? thanks. Just a comment (talk) 03:50, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

The resemblance may be a coincidence. If however the tracing was directly based on a photograph and the person who drew it was not the copyright holder of that photo, we may have a derivative work which would justify deletion. I've seen at least one image deletion of such a derivative drawing (a user-created drawing based closely on a work of modern art). Dcoetzee (talk) 03:58, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
That's quite a coincidence; having looked at both the photograph and the drawing, I'd have a hard time believing it wasn't traced. Dcoetzee, was that statement based on looking at the photograph, or was it meant in general? First thing I would do in this situation is ask the artist of the drawing, especially since User:Rama is an active editor.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:16, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
I didn't look (I'm at work) - if Rama uploaded it I kind of doubt there's an issue, but we should check it out. Dcoetzee (talk) 17:21, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
It's indeed the same, only the mouth is a little different. I agree that it looks as if the line drawing was traced from that photo. I'm sorry to say, but I do have problems with other of Rama's line drawings, too: compare, for instance, Image:Philippe_Kieffer_portrait.jpg with this photo. Is that photo PD? If so, why not use the photo? If it isn't, then the drawing is not OK either. I do wonder about the other drawings at User:Rama/Personalities_drawings, one of which (File:DeGaulle-BBC.jpg) was already deleted as a derivative of a famous photo (the one shown e.g. here). Good drawings, but what were they based on? (Notified Rama on his talk page, too.) Lupo 21:46, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
None of these images are traced, because doing so would be trivially a derivative work. All these images are free-hand drawings, using various numbers of photographs for documentation. Problems arise when the number of available photographs is 1 (as in Kieffer) or if similarity to a particular photograph is desired (as for De Gaulle at the BBC or for User:Ti mi). It is difficult to make convincing portraits without having a view of the subject seen under same the angle as in the drawing, though I have tried this for French generals of the Alger Coup.
In the particular case of User:Ti mi, if I remember correctly, we had trouble both deleting the photograph (because somebody was complaining) and keeping it (for privacy reasons etc.), so it was suggested to defuse the situation by producing a closely resembling drawing that would have the main information but not the problems associated with the original photograph.
In any case, the presence of these drawings on Commons is in now way a statement that I believe that they are acceptable. Of course I do not upload deliberately illegal material, but I realise that it is very difficult to judge one's own drawings after spending hours on them; this is a difficulty to judge artistic merit, and it is also a difficulty to decide whether the resemblance goes too far. If some of these drawings are deleted, I will regard this as a danger averted. Do not be worried about upsetting me if that happens.
Cheers! Rama (talk) 22:11, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
Rama, I had used "traced" in the sense of "was drawn after that photo and the result is very close". It doesn't matter whether you actually traced or did a freehand drawing, in either case the Kieffer and the Ti Mi drawings are derivatives of the base photos IMO. Lupo 06:36, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Well, the drawings will always take something from the photographs used as documentation. The problem is to judge where the limit is between taking abstract information, which is not copyrightable, and doing a servile reproduction of the original. For instance:
  • File:Jean Moulin.jpg is designed to look like a known photograph, by the choice of attitude and clothing.
  • File:Hissene Habre 2066.jpg is a composite of several photographs showing Habré under different angles; one of these photographs had a larger influence than the others in the sense that its angle is closer to that of the drawing
  • File:Edmond Jouhaud-portrait.jpg is a drawing showing the subject under and arbitrary angle, different from the only photograph I had. The result is that it shows the main features of the subject (man, 50s, bald, no facial hair, etc.), but as a composite of how I draw these features, by default. In this sense, this drawing tells more about me than about its subject, a little bit like cartoon characters.
I might try to retrieve the images that I have used for documentation, see whether I can match them to the drawings, and delete those where the original photograph is recognisable. I think that we should strictly go on a "better safe than sorry" basis, even if I have to redo some of the sketches with increased precautions later. Cheers! Rama (talk) 12:35, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Preserving fysical image materiaal

I have a lot of old (1979-2000) slides of railway subjects. I have uploaded some interesting ones to the commons and wil keep doing it. (example file:FCL railcar 3.jpg) However it wil take forever to upload and comment them all. I estimate at least 5000 slides or more. I worry that in the event of my death, all this material wil disapear as I have no descendants. And even for uploaded and scanned pictures it is usefull to keep te originals for a posible rescan.

I could pas them on to railwayenthousiast organisation. But these organisations tend to keep the copyrigths and not make the images freely available as they want to publish books and periodicals or put them on their websites. I suspect I can only give the wikipedia foundation virtual things in my wil and no physical things such as slides and negatives. The foundation is not set upp to keep physical material and maintain then. Is there a way I could give them to the foundation and that the foundation gives them in trust to a private wikipedian, museum or library? This way the foundation wil keep acces to the originals. The legal constructions will be different for many countries so it wil best to keep it local.

Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:51, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know how long Wikimedia Commons will last. There are other image uploading services on the internet, but these are not as likely to last as long as Wikipedia or its sister projects like Commons. I think the most important thing on your mind right now is to let these images be freely available to anyone. Commons is a good choice, but it is convoluted right now. Websites and web servers are likely to erase files when they no longer get paid, and even then, it's volatile. I know that there are various small, private libraries throughout the country who collect items of a particular nature. There's probably one for railcars somewhere in the country. Usually they stick to local history. I imagine that there is a program that you can use to more easily upload your collection here. It would be nearly automatic. I'm sorry I don't know any specifics, but I wanted to help somehow. Cyborg Ninja (talk) 22:26, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
Well, I imagine the WMF is here to stay, and if it ever should disappear, it'll take care to hand over its physical assets to an appropriate organisation. (The on-line assets—the projects such as Commons and the WPs—would likely survive a demise of the WMF anyway, as they'd surely be "forked" by some successor: yay for free licensing.)
In any case, the WMF already has at least once accepted a physical donation of images: the illustrations donated by Pearson Scott Foresman (16 boxes). I suggest you contact the WMF office directly about this. Lupo 06:48, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

August 13

Possible autopublicity

Is this possibly a set of autopublicity images: [21] ? --Havang(nl) (talk) 13:10, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Four copies of the same paintings

Hello, While uploading a photo of a unknown painting, I found that this painting had already 3 copies on Commons, but not linked to each other, with different names, different descriptions in different languages, different sizes and ratio, and different colors. :( Yann (talk) 19:41, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

This leads me to several questions:

  1. What is the proper complete name of this painting?
  2. What is the good ratio?
  3. What are the good colors?
  4. If I believe the information in the descriptions, the painting I took is a reproduction. Is it worth making a good picture of it? With what information? Yann (talk) 19:41, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
The Prado museum has a page about this painting. According to that page:
  1. The correct name is La Inmaculada Concepción de los Venerables o de "Soult"
  2. The dimensions are 274x127cm. I don't believe this is correct. The 172x285cm stated on the description of File:Murillo immaculate conception.jpg seems closer to the true ratio.
    This page gives a size of 274 x 190 cm. Yann (talk) 15:40, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
  3. Clicking on the magnifying glass gives a good photo of the painting. File:Murillo immaculate conception.jpg has the closest colours.
    Well, this image comes from the museum, that's why the colors are the same. Yann (talk) 15:11, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
  4. Yours is definitely not the same painting. For example, it is missing an angel at the very top of the painting, towards the centre. Pruneautalk 20:14, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Often copies of old paintings are as notable in their own right as the original, depending on the artist and their age. Try to document the source carefully, and maybe someone can later determine if it's a notable copy. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:15, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Prototype for alternative to Special:NewFiles (take 2)

Have done some more work on it, listing current features below:

Specifier
  • Maximum file size (can be unspecified)
  • Minimum file size (can be unspecified)
  • Maximum x resolution (can be unspecified)
  • Minimum x resolution (can be unspecified)
  • Maximum y resolution (can be unspecified)
  • Minimum y resolution (can be unspecified)
  • Which wiki
  • What file types (multiselect)
  • How many to return
Returns
  • User name
  • Total uploads for user
  • First upload date
  • Image name
  • Image date
  • Image size
  • Image resolution
  • Image (yea!!)
  • Categories

Example: http://toolserver.org/~azatoth/latest_files/?maxsize=400+KiB&maxresx=1024&maxresy=1000&mime%5B%5D=jpeg&minsize=30+KiB&minresx=100&minresy=100&count=200&domain=commons.wikimedia.org

The 200 latest jpegs above 30 KiB and below 400 KiB, with an resolution between 100x100 and 1024x1000 and from commons

Hope this is sufficient for you folks (at the moment toolserver is a bit kinky, so commons data inst updated). AzaToth 22:58, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Pretty. Do you think you can compress some of the extra spacing? Just a tad? And maybe use less absolute length units? I made my browser window 1280x960px (WebDeveloper extension) and got a horizontal scrollbar. Rocket000 (talk) 23:15, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
Does anyone think it would be fair to included whether the user had ever been banned for copyvios? It makes them appear guilty until proven innocent from then on, so might be considered unfair. Yet it would reduce their belief that they might be able to successfully upload the same image again when nobodies watching. It looks good.Having the first upload date helps to identifies the newbies that might need help in understanding the licences.--P.g.champion (talk) 08:11, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
I don't think it's unfair to treat users with a track record of violating copyright and ignoring warnings (and you don't get blocked unless you do both) with a heightened degree of watchfulness. It might be nice if such a flag could be dropped after a certain number of OK uploads over a certain time. It would also be useful to highlight uploads using the same name as a previously deleted file. LX (talk, contribs) 10:56, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
That would require an rather subjective algoritm. AzaToth 15:00, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Not necessarily. I'm thinking something like "if the block expired less than one month ago or problem notifications have been posted on their user talk page for images uploaded in the last month, raise a flag." LX (talk, contribs) 18:24, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
I meant that specify an month is rather subjective. Also the entity "problem notifications" are rather wiki-specific, and thus would need some major engineering to make generic. AzaToth 19:19, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
I am thinking, that: if a 'block flag' could be indicated on just one Wiki, it would serve to demonstrate how useful this flag can be. If it is proven to be useful (as I think it will be) then it will help to focus the attention of other software geeks to look at how the other wiki's can be brought into line. The beta version does not have to be perfect, (and it is all ready better than what we had). Do please, continue to inform us as to what the problems are, as most of us are naïve to the workings of WC but we would like to learn more.--P.g.champion (talk) 21:53, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
The visual design might need someone good in web design :) AzaToth 15:00, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
I think you have done an excellent job AzaToth. I am using it in preference to the original ‘latest files.’ I wonder if there is any way we can get this added to the left hand side ‘Participate’ menu, just below the existing ‘latest files’ - as a beta option. This would bring it to the attention of a wider number of users. Some maybe able to help with the more difficult to do improvements. Does anyone else think it is ready for wider adoption? Would it create a heavy load on the servers if it was used as it is by a large number of users?--P.g.champion (talk) 16:45, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Cool! Maybe you could try to figure out the real uploader for bot uploads (some ways to do this for the bots commonly used here at the Commons can be found in MediaWiki:Notifier.js, function get_user_from_json). Links to the talk and upload log pages of the so-determined uploader might be useful, too. Maybe take a look at MediaWiki:Gadget-GalleryDetails.js to see if there's other stuff that might be useful to include. Lupo 11:02, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

One problem is that uploaded bots are pretty much commons specific, and thus the app isn't commons specific, it would require some strange special rules. AzaToth 22:43, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

August 9

Archaeological records

Are images depicting the process of archaeological digs, such as drawings of trench grids, eligible for copyright?

Peter Isotalo 09:56, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, of course. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 10:00, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
What about re-making them similar to some of our historical maps (compare with File:Monte Alban archaeological site.png)? I was asking because I thought they could fall under roughly the same category as vowel charts (for example File:California English vowel chart.svg), ie as information rather than original artworks.
Peter Isotalo 11:09, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
If one draws upon just one source for anything like this, then it will almost certainly be a copyvio. However, much archaeology is financed out of the public purse ( i.e. the tax payer). In some countries this information may be public domain or have a sorter than normal copyright period. The Monte Alban map may -for all I know- be a technical copyvio or it may not.--P.g.champion (talk) 13:23, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification, even if all sounds very iffy. How about archaeological drawings of designs on wooden objects, such as carvings? Can these be copied and used here if they are illustrated with both drawings and photographs?
Peter Isotalo 15:28, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
We have in the past accepted photos of cave paintings without the permission of the photographer. This was somewhat contentious, but it's believed to fall under our PD-Art policy. Dcoetzee (talk) 23:19, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

August 10

Need help uploading image

Some of the administrators (or just one) have run wild rather than attempting to help other users. I basically want to avoid them and get my file uploaded as quickly as possible. My image is derived from eight separate files on Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia. The original images are available here: [22], as part of the picture box to the right of the page. The image I created is here: [23]. I have cropped the images and combined them into one. I did not want to do so, because it prohibits others from easily changing those represented, but an administrator here gave me little choice. I have tried using the upload feature "a derivative work of a file from Commons," but it continues to give me just my IP address rather than showing my username, even though I am signed in. Some of the original images do not have necessary tags, and often this site does not accept the same tags even. Cyborg Ninja (talk) 22:34, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

  1. The Imageshack image you link is very low-resolution. Is that your intent?
  2. I'm not sure at all what you mean by "tags". Do you mean templates? Categories?
  3. For at least one of the images you've used (File:JuditPolgar85.jpg), I don't see the basis to say that it is appropriately licensed. The stated source ("Template:RCF") seems meaningless. The author is given as "RCF, 1999", which is also quite unclear. There doesn't seem to be any statement about licensing on the page. The image is described as "resized for Ashkenazi Jews", but it doesn't say resized from what appropriately licensed image.
If you can clarify this, great, and if not, perhaps someone can work with you to sort this out. But I hesitate to upload your image from Imageshack while this is not sorted out, especially while at least one licensing issue appears not to be sorted out. - Jmabel ! talk 06:08, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Jmabel, I'm not sure why you didn't click on the links to the pictures from the sandbox article - instead you went through the history and clicked on an older version of it. I was talking about the licenses and procedure for the original images, which are the ones currently on my sandbox page. Clearly, the image I created is to be used for the picture box of the Ashkenazim article. There are several similar images on Wikipedia.
The other images were wrongfully removed literally a few minutes after uploading them; I remember the Albert Einstein one having the exact same license information and relevant infobox as the original image. But I just want to upload my image without any of the red tape. Cyborg Ninja (talk) 22:26, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm kind of curious why, after all the other images were obviously deleted, you'd pick the one that wasn't and say: "Here, why isn't the tag for this fixed?" But nevermind that. I would like to have help in uploading this image. That's pretty clear considering the title of this section. It's strange how I haven't received any help so far when the issue seems relatively easy for those who have been here for a long time. Cyborg Ninja (talk) 16:41, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm not entirely sure I understand everything you're trying to do, but I'll still give a shot at an explanation. The issue with File:JuditPolgar85.jpg is that there is no indication as to why it is available under a free licence. When you upload your image, you will need to provide a source for each image you have used. If you are looking for free images of Judit Polgár, we have a few in Category:Judit_Polgár. Right now, if you were to upload your image, it would be deleted because of the unclear status of File:JuditPolgar85.jpg. Pruneautalk 16:52, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Cycling teams' jerseys drawing

Hello, I'm thinking about starting to draw with Gimp or Inkscape the jerseys of a bunch of cycling teams, but I wonder where the limits of copyright and trademarks are. I assume that logos and similar stuff has to be avoided, but what about just basic figures replacing the logos? What about text for the name of sponsors?

Following is an example:

  1. This is the jersey for the Banesto cycling team in 1994: [24]
  2. This is a drawing found in Internet with great details: [25]
  3. This is a stub drawn by myself: [26]
  4. This is the same stub by myself, without text: [27]

The best option would be a pic of the jersey or maybe a cyclist wearing it, but that's too difficult to obtain, especially in defunct teams. My understanding about the limits of drawing is the following, correct me as necessary please:

  1. Real picture, own work
  2. Real picture, others work
  3. Drawing like number 2, own work
  4. Drawing like number 3, own work I doubt
    1. If the answer is yes, can it be the font the same or similar to the original, or must be a neutral one?
  5. Drawing like number 4, own work

Thanks! Gothmog (talk) 18:43, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


Can't really help you in detail, but two things I can say are: 1) Trademark issues do not constrain whether images can be hosted on Wikimedia Commons (they only constrain how people can legitimately make use of images with trademarks taken from Commons). 2) The soccer people have confronted somewhat similar issues, and came up with the solution (for their needs) of "fake flags" (see Template:Fake flag, Category:Fake flags). AnonMoos (talk) 02:05, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
P.S. Also, clothing as it is actually being worn by a person is generally considered functional or "utilitarian" under U.S. copyright law, so that a photograph of clothing being worn usually does not raise copyright issues under U.S. law... AnonMoos (talk) 02:10, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Not exactly the same topic, but what I get from that case is that I can achieve this task if I don't put recognizable logos or copyrighted images. Also in soccer category, the equipment often is drawn in the articles through CSS. In the other hand, I don't think I understand your 1st statement about trademarks. Everything uploaded to Commons must satisfy the freedom to distribute, modify and use, right? So, by definition, it can't be any constrain. Although maybe I'm wrong about that. Regards, and thanks for the answer! 84.123.220.102 14:04, 14 August 2009 (UTC) Forgot to login, sorry. Gothmog (talk) 14:06, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Everything uploaded to Commons must be sufficiently free with respect to copyright, but trademark (and also certain trademark-like restrictions, see Template:Insignia) is a completely separate thing from copyright. That's why we have ca. 1900 Coca-Cola and NY Yankees logos... AnonMoos (talk) 23:17, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Ok, thanks again for the clarification. Gothmog (talk) 01:09, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Is there any (written down) policy or recommendation on Commons about the interwiki link sorting order? At the moment some of the categories and galleries have them are sorted by the ISO 639 language code (e.g. de(Deutch) – en(English) – et(Eesti) – fi(Suomi) – fr(Français) – sv(Svenska)), and some of them by the native language name (the same way as on the English Wikipedia; e.g. Deutch(de) – Eesti(et) – English(en) – Français(fr) – Suomi(fi) – Svenska(sv)). The Interwiki sorting order page on Meta says that Commons sorts them by the language code but is that a policy on Commons, or is that just the default value for bots? If there is no policy, I think we should have one, and I vote for the English Wikipedia way. The same policy could also be applied to image/gallery/category descriptions and links to template translations. (The latter was briefly discussed in July.) --Apalsola tc 22:25, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

The problem is we can't get enough people to comment all at once in the same place. If you look above, you'll see I'm also trying to figure out the consensus. Everyone has an opinion on this matter. I know this because I run into it all the time. Yet when someone tries to establish a formal policy, only a few comment. I don't know. Rocket000 (talk) 08:13, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't notice you had already started the discussion on this. So, I think we should just forget this discussion (that I started) and comment on the one you started. --Apalsola tc 08:57, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
No problem. I overlook messages on the VP all the time. :) Rocket000 (talk) 16:28, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

August 14

Changing thumbnails for videos

Hi everyone. Please take a look at File:Wikilovesart_tropenmuseum_interview.ogv, which is an interview a taped with Susanne Ton from the Tropenmuseum for the Dutch Wiki loves art project. As you can see, the thumbnail for the video is taken at a rather unfortunate moment. I'm wondering: how can i change this thumbnail to something nicer? The original thumbnail (a JPEG file) seems to be located here, but afaik there's no way to change that. Suggestions anyone? Husky (talk to me) 12:53, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

For use in articles, you can use the "thumbtime" parameter to a normal File link to pick the thumbnail (e.g. [[File:Wikilovesart_tropenmuseum_interview.ogv|thumb|thumbtime=50|description]]. I'm not sure what can be done about the image page itself. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:04, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
I don't think there's currently any way to set the "thumbtime" value for the image page itself (though I could well be mistaken). It would be nice to have such a feature, perhaps using a special keyword on the image page such as {{FILEDEFAULTS:thumbtime=50}}. (We could use it to set defaults for a bunch of other parameters as well.) While waiting for someone to code this feature, though, a possible workaround in this case could be to crop, say, a second off the beginning of the video (which just shows a still image anyway) so that the thumbnail (which is by default taken from the middle of the video) will show a less inopportune frame. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:36, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

August 15

Seeking opinions on Afghan images again

I found a document that contained several dozen pictures from the Afghan elections in 2005. The pictures were taken in Afghanistan, a country with no copyright protection. It seemed the pictures were being published without credit. But on the last page of that document the photographers are credited -- people with European names, who seem to believe that their images were protected by ordinary copyright.

Here is the document: http://www.jemb.org/pdf/catalogue2.pdf

I am considering requesting deletion -- as a courtesy, and to save hassles. I welcome opinions.

I assumed the wikimedia foundations lawyer was an intellectual property lawyer. But I have been informed that his specialty lies elsewhere. I had been hoping that the wikimedia foundation could get the opinion of a real specialist in international property law to weigh in on the copyright status of images made in countries with no copyright protection.

Here are the images:

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 04:19, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Flower identification

Any help would be welcome! Thanks in advance. --Eusebius (talk) 10:41, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Apparently the fruit of a Pulsatilla alpina. --Eusebius (talk) 14:43, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Copyvio?

I hate copyright paranoia but File:New NBC film ratings.jpg which I came across today is too obvious to ignore. It's a picture of all NBC film rating labels, has absolutely no description, and the "License" section actually claims: "I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses: [GFD, CC-BY-SA 3.0]". Since the copyright holder is presumably NBC, this seems hard to believe. -- JovanCormac 15:35, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

I filed a deletion request. However, this image is possibly {{PD-ineligible}}; in this case it could be kept with a change in license tagging. Sv1xv (talk) 15:50, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

credit

Is it possible to require people to credit me as "Rastaman3000" rather than using my real name (which I haven't revealed here) when using my images? (CC-by-sa-3.0)? Rastaman3000 (talk) 17:33, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello,
If you didn't give your real name for a credit people need to credit you by your username when they re-use your or our content.
Some people place there real name on a image so they can get the credit on there real name, haven't you done that people will just user Rastaman3000 as credit line.
Best regards,
Huib talk 17:37, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
OK, Thanks. Rastaman3000 (talk) 18:02, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Why not WAV? Or AIFF?

Why doesn't the commons allow files of the format .WAV? If size is the issue, then the Commons should allow small .WAV files, and later editors could convert them to .ogg. Are there patent issues with .WAV files? Creating audio files in an obscure format is unnecessarily difficult. None of the industry standard tools can produce this format. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 07:58, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

WAV, in its most common form, is a completely uncompressed raw format, making it impractical for online use. The Ogg container format is capable of encapsulating losslessly compressed formats such as FLAC, which is approved here. This is similar to how BMP is not approved while PNG is. However, TIFF, while strongly discouraged, is accepted, so I guess it's not entirely out of the question. I'm not sure what you mean by "industry standard tools," but there are plenty of Free, lightweight and easy to use (drag and drop) tools for converting WAV files to Ogg-encapsulated FLAC or Vorbis audio. LX (talk, contribs) 11:47, 14 August 2009 (UTC)