File talk:Annam - Hué - Empereur d'Annam en Costume de Ville.jpg

This is not the same image

@Đại Việt quốc: , please read "COM:OVERWRITE", while the image you replaced the original one with is based on the same photograph it's not the same image. The title of the Emperor is written using black characters and there's writing on it. The different colour of the characters by itself means that this is a different postcards, it's not usual for the same company to issue different variants based on the same photograph. This doesn't mean that it's the same postcard, it means that it's a different one from the same series. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:32, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

The size of the characters is also different. This is a separate postcard. Even the title (which is the same) below is formatted differently. Similar files ≠ the same file. -- — Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:35, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

If it's the exact same postcard but in higher resolution you should overwrite the existing file, but if there are actual style differences then it would be better to create a separate file. Remember that re-users also use the Wikimedia Commons and if someone would want to make a catalogue of French Indo-Chinese postcards then different variants would be important. It's not up to us to decide which version "deserves" to be its own file, similar but different postcards are different files and shouldn't occupy the same file name. — Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 07:38, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: I disagree with your statement that "those are different postcards". I would rather say those are different editions of the same postcard because they have the same publisher and name. It is very usual to adjust the text's size, color and font in a new edition of a postcard, book... The main object in this picture is the Emperor, and the purpose of these files is to illustrate the Emperor in the articles related to him, so I don't see such differences as major differences. However, since you disagreed, this counts as "Controversial or contested changes" in COM:OVERWRITE so I will make a note of this and will not be uploading such files.

Speaking of colors, it is worth noting that these postcards are scanned, so it is completely dependent of the camera/app that scanned it. Therefore, the color theme may be slightly different and it would be weird to take that difference into account. Additionally, the postcards of French Indochina in the early 1900s are B&W (except for texts), none of them are colored. The colored photographs in the postcards that you found are reimagined. In other words, those colors are recreated and may not be the same as the original color of the object at the time the photograph was taken. Đại Việt quốc (留言) 09:28, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Đại Việt quốc, you're right when you said "different editions of the same postcard", so they're different editions. Different editions of the same books are different files, different editions of the same collectible cards are different files. Yes, the postcard is of the Emperor, but it's a different edition of the same series. When working with images such as banknotes a different series, for example "Series A", "Series B", Etc. would be cause enough to be uploaded as separate files. Why would this be different for postcards?
Here we have to think of the possible re-use cases outside of the Wikimedia Commons, if your only goal is to illustrate the Emperor on Wikipedia then it would make sense to overwrite it like that, but if someone would want to write about the different postcards of French Indo-China from this period and would want to include different editions then the overwrite would make little sense. These subtle differences might not matter much when you're illustrated the photographed person, but they do matter when you're illustrating the postcard series as a whole. — Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 09:40, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: So you are talking about the possible re-use cases, which means assumptions. Unfortunately, I don't take assumptions into consideration, I take reality into consideration. I can see that you took the banknotes as an example. It is obvious that people do conduct researches on banknotes from different periods, and of course some may do the same to French Indochina postcards. First of all, the actual "file" I am working with is the base photograph of the Emperor, that's the main content of the file, so I don't see how I am uploading a different file. Secondly, all of these postcards are in public domain, and if the postcard researchers are really looking for postcards, they will probably look directly into postcard websites (like delcampe, ebay.fr) first. Thirdly, the difference in text sizes, colors, fonts are too minor, even for postcard researchers. What is the point of writing about or researching these differences? Those are the realities I am seeing.

You may still think that those are different files, and I totally respect that. In fact, I think I made it clear above that since this is a controversial change, and the difference is indeed too noticeable, I will not overwrite in such cases (the differences are too noticeable) in the future. So why can't we just make a compromise and be done with this? After all, this is just a voluntary project, so I don't see the point of discussing and arguing this further. Đại Việt quốc (留言) 11:13, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Đại Việt quốc, I don't see how postcards are somehow exempt from every other nearly identical but slightly different image. Flags with slightly different colours are also considered to be different variants of the same flag, as are minor inscriptions being changed on them. It is not our place to state which one is more important than the other. If the photograph on the postcard is more important than the file then you wouldn't have changed the name of the which (which was only the photographed subject) to the title of the postcard.
Also, the only reason researchers go to eBay.fr, Delcampe, Etc. is precisely because nobody fanatically imports postcards from various sources here and organises them into easy to find categories. At least not to the extend that the Wikimedia Commons could be useful for cataloguing, but this is definitely not true for other concepts like many old paintings, Notgeld, Etc. Just because the Wikimedia Commons isn't this today doesn't mean that it won't be that tomorrow. I've seen users edit war over very minor changes on coats of arms, so why would postcards be different? That isn't an assumption, that's an actual use case, an image of a postcard could already be used for a postcard catalogue today. — Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 12:36, 6 September 2023 (UTC)