Commons:Village pump/Archive/2015/12

Wiki is not educational based it is money oriented.

Here is how it is done, if your educational based. From the Internet Archives / Wayback Machine. They offer a simple choice for licensing an image.

Allow commercial uses of your work?

Yes No

Allow modifications of your work?

Yes Yes, as long as others share alike (more info more information) No

Jurisdiction of your license

Note: To license a work, you must be its copyright holder or have express authorization from its copyright holder to do so.

Pick your license:

You have selected: Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International License.

If Wiki was educational based you would take images licensed for educational / editorial only. Model releases cannot be obtained for every photo as such, images without a release can only be used for non commercial uses.

Get with the program Wiki and stop calling yourself education based when your commercial based.

Dan

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Danielteolijr (talk • contribs)

You are entitled to your opinion. I personally wish Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation had made a different decision on this matter and allowed a way to include content that lacks a commercial license, but if you apply your standard generally you'd have to say that no published encyclopedia has ever been educational and (without much extrapolation) that virtually no college or university is educational. - Jmabel ! talk 23:44, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

yes, sorry, lost this argument to the free software people, who say free to profit is true freedom. the open access librarians take a different view. and the difference between NC and SA is instructive. Slowking4♡Richard Arthur Norton's revenge 00:53, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

And I think that you all need to study more about license... [1], do not matters what you think, non commercial it's not free, and that's it! -- RTA 16:43, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

And he is just a troll for me: :This section was archived on a request by: -- RTA 16:43, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Deutschland urge Reiss Engelhorn Museum to reconsider suit over public domain works of art

Wikimedia Blog reports on some litigation relating to images held on Commons: [2] --MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:07, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

The blog speaks about generalities, but no real information about what the suit says. Commons provides a warning, too timid perhaps, to the effect that such images are probably not freely usable in Germany. Does anyone know what the Museum is complaining about exactly? Is it that some of the pages on Commons were missing the PD-Art tag? Is it that the warning is not prominent enough or that its wording is misleading? Is it that the help page omits to mention some countries where the images are not free? Is it another National Portrait type of complaint (from 2009, how did that end, btw)? Or is the Museum saying that the law of Germany should rule what people do in the United States? -- Asclepias (talk) 19:56, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

They say that the files in question are photographs taken by their photographers and that the photographs, even though they show public domain paintings, are of sufficient originality to enjoy copyright protection. And that they own the rights to those photographs. Which of course is completely contrary to our PD-Art concept. I'm not sure where they are actually suing. --Rosenzweig τ 20:10, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. My question was not clear. I get that they say they own rights to the photographs. Which may be "contrary" to the way the WMF would wish the laws to evolve, but it is not "contrary" to what Commons does. Commons never said that the Museum doesn't own the rights on the photographs in Germany. So, what I don't get is what, if anything, they are saying that the WMF, or Commons, or individual users, may be doing wrong, or what they are asking the WMF to do and by what rationale. -- Asclepias (talk) 20:23, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

It's not clear what is actually the subject of the suit. From earlier press reports like this one (in German) I guess that the museum and the city of Mannheim, which is behind the museum, want the files in question deleted from Commons. They apparently want to control how the photos of "their" paintings are used, forbidding some kinds of commercial use and charging reproduction fees for others. --Rosenzweig τ 05:45, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I suppose the paintings are included in Category:Collections of the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen. Yann (talk) 21:09, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

The blog speaks of 17 images. I guess probably some of those in Category:Paintings in the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen. -- Asclepias (talk) 21:15, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Someone has now grouped the files in Category:Images subject to Reiss Engelhorn Museum lawsuit. -- Asclepias (talk) 21:52, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Some of us (at least on :de) actually (sort of) welcome the suit as an opportunity to get a real court ruling about the fundamental question whether reproductions of 2D works which are clearly in the PD due to age, are also in the PD. --Túrelio (talk) 09:57, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Yep, so far all we had was "The official position taken by the Wikimedia Foundation". Now we might get some real world answers, at least for Germany. --El Grafo (talk) 11:02, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I also am happy about this. I would love to see a statement from Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen and look forward to the clarification that this discussion will bring. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:21, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Dutch blogpost regarding this topic. Charlotte is a well-known Dutch lawyer specialised in intellectual property law and some related topics. She believes the chances the museum will win are slim. Natuur12 (talk) 15:47, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Our searches are stripping credit from authors who follow our directions.

Template:Self says that the author should not be listed in the template if they are the uploader. For example, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=Grant+appomattox++cuerden&fulltext=Search will not show File:Ulysses_S._Grant_from_West_Point_to_Appomattox.jpg despite being one of my earliest high-level restorations, because, at the time, I was following the bad advice then current that I shouldn't explicitly credit myself. (I shall fix this in a few days for that image, but there's lots of images like that.

However, our searches ignore anything in the upload information. How to fix this? The obvious thing is to add the uploader(s) to the search text, but that may require a bug report. Adam Cuerden (talk) 08:27, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

• I totally agree that this is bad advice. In particular, the author field is the easiest way to indicate how you want to be credited on reuse. - Jmabel ! talk 16:35, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

The reason the {{Self}} tag says not to set the "author" field of the Self template when the uploader is the author is because when the uploader is the author they should put their name in the author field of the infobox template (i.e. {{Information}}, {{Artwork}}, etc.). In this case, I assume the problem is that you are not the author of the image but want to be searchable as the restorer of the image. The {{Retouched picture}} template (which you used via the {{Retouched}} redirect) does accept an "editor" parameter to credit the restorer of an image, The name of the restorer will be found by the search function if you add it in this manner. I went ahead and added your name to File:Ulysses_S._Grant_from_West_Point_to_Appomattox.jpg using that method and now your search is successful.—RP88 (talk) 18:52, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

In the years I laboured under the misstaken advice, I provided hundreds of such images, as did many other people. There were, as I recall, rules at the time basically forbidding such attempts to ask credit for restorations as best practice; we now have a nightmare on the back of this. Adam Cuerden (talk) 08:54, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

The "editor" parameter has been a supported feature of the {{Retouched picture}} template since 2006. I looked through the history of the relevant policy pages, and I couldn't find anywhere that either currently or in the past has discouaged the use of the "editor" parameter, so I agree, sometime in the past you must mave gotten some poor advice. Visual File Change could be used to fix the relevant files fairly quickly if you are comfortable with regular expressions and you already know which files need to have their {{Retouched picture}} template updated. If you'd like my help, feel free to drop me a note on my talk page. —RP88 (talk) 12:25, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Comment I wonder whether I fully understand the concern raised by Adam Cuerden and the replies above. Just mentioning my thoughts.

{{Self}} has a wording "I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license:" when author is not mentioned which is a "release". But when "author name" is mentioned, it is just a statement that "<name of author>, the copyright holder of this work, published this work under the following license:" It means that the work had published some where else with the said license. Some people override it by mentioning author=I, <name of author> and attribution=<name of author>.

I just checked File:Ulysses S. Grant from West Point to Appomattox.jpg. You may add your name under author as "author= Thure de Thulstrup; restored by Adam Cuerden".

I don't know whether RP88's suggestion to use {{Retouched picture}} works as people expect credit info at "author" field. At least, Media Viewer will neglect {{Retouched picture}}. Jee 15:19, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Category:Bain copyright notice

I had created "Category:Bain copyright notice" for historic images taken by Bain in which they placed "© Bain" on the images, there are less than a dozen so far in the hundreds I have examined. The category was deleted and I think it should be restored. A large tranche of the Bain collection is owned by Corbis which claims a copyright for the unpublished images and post 1923 published images. The Library of Congress which has duplicates, lists them as "no known restrictions". Knowing which ones were stamped "© Bain" helps determine which ones may still be under copyright and which ones are completely free of copyright by Corbis. What are your thoughts? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 22:24, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

• Maybe some sort of maintenance category? Or a distinct license tag? - Jmabel ! talk 17:00, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

• the library of congress ones are public domain regardless of notice. i see the Capt. Franz von Papen is a duplicate. can't find the Charles Lindbergh one at LOC [3] could use a source link. i.e. LOC purchased the negatives and states "public domain" i don't see any reason to credit corbis' claims, for images at LOC. Slowking4♡Richard Arthur Norton's revenge 00:58, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

station location in Switserland

and

. There are several other Nina train images without location information.Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:26, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Strange. The Lyss - Büren an der Aare train only stops at w:en:Lyss, w:en:Dotzigen, w:en:Busswil bei Büren, and w:en:Büren an der Aare (I'm not sure how stable this link will be, and it probably won't work for you, but see here, or just search the sbb/cff site for the lyss-buren train). I tried street viewing, and none look particularly likely. None look built up enough for File:NINA BLS train I.jpg, but there are stretches that are not covered by street view. It's just possible that that photo is approximately at {{Coord|47|8|15.5|N|7|22|9.9|E}}. Any hints? You've labeled them as {{Own work}}. Storkk (talk) 10:43, 1 December 2015 (UTC) ... On third look, I'd guess they're both in Lyss, and that construction over the past 9 years has changed the landscape. Storkk (talk) 10:49, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Solved. I looked at the pictures taken about the same time and uploaded them. File:Kerzers seinhuis.jpg, File:Lyss station 2006.jpg, File:Lyss station 2006 and Doubledekker train.jpg. The timing is off (these are not taken around midnigth) but the sequence is clear and matches a round trip: Chemins de fer de Jura, Neuchatel trough to Solothurn and back to Basel. So the conclusion is Kerzers and Lyss.Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:11, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Community Wishlist

FYI: See m:2015 Community Wishlist Survey/Commons. You can support and oppose proposals. Best. --Steinsplitter (talk) 11:23, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey

Hi everyone!

We're beginning the second part of the Community Tech team's Community Wishlist Survey, and we're inviting all active contributors to vote on the proposals that have been submitted.

Thanks to you and other Wikimedia contributors, 111 proposals were submitted to the team. We've split the proposals into categories, and now it's time to vote! You can vote for any proposal listed on the pages, using the {{Support}} tag. Feel free to add comments pro or con, but only support votes will be counted. The voting period will be 2 weeks, ending on December 14.

The proposals with the most support votes will be the team's top priority backlog to investigate and address. Thank you for participating, and we're looking forward to hearing what you think!

/Johan (WMF) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:41, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Improving categorization in Upload to Commons Android App

Hi,

I'm working on a project to improve the categorization of pictures in the Upload to Commons Android app with Nicolas_Raoul and Niedzielski as part of the Outreachy Dec '15 program. I'm very much just starting out, so I'd love any feedback or suggestions that anyone might have.

We are planning on two major phases/releases for app updates, with Phase 1 enabling category suggestions based on the picture's location, and Phase 2 enabling more flexible category search results. It would be a huge help if we had some volunteers to test these releases (planned for Jan and Feb respectively), so it would be great if anyone could download the app and try it out. The source code and issues are stored on GitHub

Many thanks! :)

Misaochaaan (talk) 04:36, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Swap categories

There is a taxonomic update that requires Category:Eurybrachidae and Category:Eurybrachyidae to be swapped - the situation is that Eurybrachidae is the correct spelling and Eurybrachyidae should be a redirect. Shyamal (talk) 17:13, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

• I'll do this, it's pretty easy. - Jmabel ! talk 17:47, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
• Done. You'll want to look through he descriptions in images and subcats to see if anything needs to be changed in text that I missed. - Jmabel ! talk 17:53, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 17:47, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you! Shyamal (talk) 01:44, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Ten images related to Visby, Sweden that lack descriptions

The following ten files lack descriptions. From what one understands, the depicted objects and structures relate to the city of Visby in Sweden. If anyone is familiar with the city or the subjects shown, it might be useful to add descriptions or descriptive details.

• File:Visby 042.JPG
• File:Visby 031.JPG
• File:Visby 025.JPG
• File:Visby 020.JPG
• File:Visby 017.JPG
• File:Visby 013.JPG
• File:Visby 011.JPG
• File:Visby 006.JPG
• File:Visby 004.JPG
• File:Visby 001.JPG

--Gazebo (talk) 10:49, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

@Dmitry G: These images were created by Dmitry G. I have pinged him. Martinvl (talk) 05:28, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

December 03

recover my deleted page UbrosKart and Ubroskart

My page Ubroskart and UbrosKart has been deleted by different users. I want to file a complain against them and I want to recover my page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr.suaro (talk • contribs) 12:21, 9 December 2015‎ (UTC)

Dr.suaro, neither of those pages has ever existed. Did you make a typo? I checked your deleted contributions (as an administrator, I can see deleted pages), but it says that you've never had a page deleted; you've never edited Commons, except to make this request and similar ones at two other pages. Nyttend (talk) 13:16, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Ah, I just found your English Wikipedia talk page. This is Wikimedia Commons, a website related to but not identical with the English Wikipedia. Decisions we make here don't have authority over Wikipedia's actions, and users here can't do anything at Wikipedia unless they're also active at Wikipedia. Nyttend (talk) 13:19, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Responded at Commons:Help desk#help. Please don't crosspost. Marking as resolved to avoid further forking of the discussion. —LX (talk, contribs) 14:40, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: —LX (talk, contribs) 14:40, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Template:Kopimi

Dear Commons community,

I would like to bring up two points.

Is Template:Kopimi a free content license?
In my opinion: no, it is not. A while back, I rewrote a paragraph about Kopimi on the English Wikipedia, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piratbyrån#Kopimi. I've read several sources and saw no evidence that Kopimi is a copyright license. After finding out that Commons had its own Kopimi template, I added a notification to let people know that if they use Kopimi, they should also use an actual license. I was reverted by User:Jarekt and discussed the issue with him on his talk page (see here), which let to the creation of this topic.

Are there files which use only Kopimi, without anything else?
Yes there are, but not a lot. Jarekt provided me with this link, which produces 59 results.

Piratebay conference pictures: (UPDATE: All the Tpb files below have been fixed.)

• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (1).jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (2).jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (3).jpg
  • File:Anakata.jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (4).jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (5).jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (6).jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (8).jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (9).jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (11).jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (12).jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (15).jpg
  • File:Peter sunde close up.jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (16).jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (17).jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (20).jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (22).jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (23).jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (28).jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (30).jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (31).jpg
• File:Tpb pressconference 20090215 (32).jpg

The site where the above images came from is tpbtrialimages.blogspot.nl. A text on that site reads: "Free to use for everyone. Both for press and blog." And: "Images are completely free to use. CC licence." The author didn't care to specify which CC license he meant, but it's obvious that he wanted the pictures to be distributed freely. I suggest tagging them with {{Copyrighted free use}}.

---

Piratbyrån and Kopimi logos:

• File:Piratbyrån.gif (fixed)
• File:Piratbyrån.svg (fixed)
• File:Kopimi rainbow.png (fixed)

"Allt material på Piratbyrån är befriat från copyright." (source) Translation: "All material on Piratbyrån is free of copyright." {{PD-author}}?

---

Pirate Bay images: (Update: now all tagged.)

• File:ThePirateBay.jpg
• File:Piratebayfronpage.png
• File:The Pirate Bay logo.svg (tagged with {{Copyrighted free use}})
• File:The Pirate Bay logo bw.svg (tagged with {{Copyrighted free use}})
• File:Persianbay.jpg
• File:TBP The Persian Bay 20 June 09 front page.jpg (tagged with {{Copyrighted free use}})
• File:TBP The Persian Bay 20 June 09 front page.png (tagged with {{Copyrighted free use}})
• File:TBP Pirate Independence Day - 31 May, 2008.gif (tagged with {{Copyrighted free use}})
• File:The Pirate Bay 2004.png
• File:The Hydra Bay logo.png (tagged with {{Copyrighted free use}})
• File:The Pirate Bay hydra logo.jpg (tagged with {{Copyrighted free use}})
• File:Thepiratebay.se 2015.png

The Pirate Bay is an anti-copyright website so I can't imagine they will mind those images being up here. They never explicitly stated their images are free of copyright, however. Shall we apply {{Copyrighted free use}}?

---

Other images, unrelated to the Pirate Bay or Piratbyran:

• File:Digha Marine Aquarium - Photography Prohibited.jpg (has OTSR ticket) file also licensed under {{CC-BY-3.0|attribution=God}}
• File:MRIH School Children.jpg (has OTSR ticket) file also licensed under {{CC-BY-3.0|attribution=God}}
• File:Library of Congress NPAI 1.jpg (has OTSR ticket) file also licensed under {{CC-BY-3.0|attribution=God}}
• File:Library of Congress NPAI 2.jpg (has OTSR ticket) file also licensed under {{CC-BY-3.0|attribution=God}}
• File:Blackrhino.jpg - tagged with {{No permission}} (deleted)
• File:Breeding transgenesis cisgenesis.svg (has been fixed now)
• File:Ipredator-beta.png added {{PD-text}}
• File:KartBurnRightArm.JPG (user emailed, tagged with {{Copyrighted free use}}) (changed to {{Cc-by-2.0}} by the uploader)
• File:Village najed.JPG (user emailed, tagged with {{Copyrighted free use}})
• File:Old-dollar-symbol.jpg (ineligible for copyright?) (tagged with {{PD-text}})
• File:ManhassetCinemas.jpg (tagged with {{Copyrighted free use}})
• File:Stoa F at Kalaureia.jpg restored {{CC-Zero}} originally used by the uploader
• File:Sanctuary of Poseidon.jpg restored {{CC-Zero}} originally used by the uploader
• File:Bernard Brunhes Memorial Plate.jpg relicensed by the uploader to {{CC-Zero}}
• File:Schnitzel Records logo.jpg (possibly non-free, might be nominated for deletion) - tagged with {{No permission}} (deleted)
• File:Director Appu k.sami.jpg (possibly non-notable, might be nominated for deletion) - tagged with {{No permission}} (deleted)

I guess we have to contact the uploaders and/or the creators of the above files to ask them which license they would like. I don't think these files should be deleted, because if someone tags their pictures with Kopimi, it is reasonable to assume that they want their content to be free. Still, in the long term, it would be good if these files get an actual license. As for those OTSR tickets, I can't see them, so someone with access should review those.

---

False positives, were also provided but probably need no action:

• Tagged with {{Copyrighted free use}}:
  • File:5044D A02.jpg
  • File:Fifth estate 387 cover.jpg
  • File:Serious Tubes Networks logo 3.png
• Tagged with {{FAL}}:
  • File:Ipredator-logo-2013.png
  • File:Macra Come view.jpg
  • File:Pictogramme of disenfranchisement.jpg

---

Cheers, Manifestation (talk) 19:27, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

User:Smartse, creator of the aforementioned File:Breeding transgenesis cisgenesis.svg, has been notified on en.wp. - Manifestation (talk) 19:48, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Also notified User:Ariel Provost at French WP and User:Kinee123 right here at Commons. That's all for the recently active users. The remaining users should be e-mailed. - Manifestation (talk) 20:29, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

@Manifestation: Thanks for the note. I've added a CC licence as well. Not sure how I ever found the template to start with back in the distant past of 2009! Smartse (talk) 13:40, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

He thanks Smartse! I've struck through the entry. Cheers! Manifestation (talk) 14:36, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

@Manifestation: Hi,

You omit at least 2 important points. First that this was already discussed in 2009, and that the community decided that this license is indeed OK. Second, you don't mention why this would not be a valid license. This should be established before doing anything else. Regards, Yann (talk) 20:52, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Hello Yann. Yes, I've read that discussion. It had no consensus. The Kopimi template was created on 24 October 2007 and the original author explicitly stated that it was not a license. On 22 February 2009, another user came by and basically turned it into a license, complete with PD icon (letter C with a line struck through it). That icon was later taken out and the wording was changed, but a lot of people still think it's a license. No one has given a definitive answer to this. So what is it? The truth is: Kopimi is *not* a license. It's a symbol, representing certain ideas. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piratbyrån#Kopimi . Cheers, Manifestation (talk) 02:33, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Manifestation, I agree that {{Kopimi}} should not be a license, but since 22 February 2009 it is a license and it was used by uploaders who thought it was a license. All those files will need to be relicensed or deleted before we can convert it back to "symbol, representing certain ideas" template. I liked your plan of action above and will try to help. --Jarekt (talk) 16:25, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

May be we should just tagg all the remaining files with {{Copyrighted free use}} since that is clearly the intend of the template. --Jarekt (talk) 16:52, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Jarekt, much obliged. I agree with your statement about Copyrighted free use. - Manifestation (talk) 19:34, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

PS: I didn't knew God contributed to Commons?? :-) Manifestation (talk) 19:36, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Attribution "God" was the requested attribution by the copyright holder. I believe they can pick any attribution they want. --Jarekt (talk) 19:39, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I have emailed User:WunderkindSA (File:KartBurnRightArm.JPG) and User:MaorM (File:Village najed.JPG) about this. There's also File:ManhassetCinemas.jpg by User:Jsc07302~commonswiki (nee User:Jsc07302), but this account has no email. I think these files can be kept.

So that means there are three files remaining. File:Director Appu k.sami.jpg which has correctly been tagged with {{No permission}}. File:Schnitzel Records logo.jpg, which the uploader tried to use on the English Wikipedia, but his draft was not approved (see en:Draft:Schnitzel Records Ltd.). The uploader claims the file was tagged with Kopimi, but I see no such logo on the website it stems from. Lastly: File:Blackrhino.jpg, an unnotable painting. These three files can be deleted. Cheers, Manifestation (talk) 19:42, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

User:WunderkindSA has responded to me by mail and added CC-BY. Great! - Manifestation (talk) 21:11, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Template:Kopimi is no longer a license template. --Jarekt (talk) 16:48, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

November 22

Marjorie ship

Link: [4]. I could not find the TS or IMO number. There are other Marjorie II ships in the Commons, but not this one.Smiley.toerist (talk) 00:37, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

• You can still make a category for it. Plenty of ships on here with categories that don't have an IMO. - Jmabel ! talk 04:17, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
  •  Done There are still lose ends. Make a category for al ships built by en:Nobiskrug? From the Nobiskrug article it looks like the original rigging was as a schooner and not a Barkentine. Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:18, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

December 04

Paying for portrait drawings for articles

Do you think WMF would put up a teeny amount of the millions we have toward paying for some portrait drawings for articles?

Please see:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Donated_artwork
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Donated_artwork/List_of_articles_needing_images

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:58, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

It's easier for us "photograph" this articles Anna, :), and no, paid contribution is a bad idea. -- RTA 14:37, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

It wouldn't be unprecedented (See for example: meta:Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project). Whether or not WMF would do it I think depends on how likely it would be that it would overlap with what volunteers are doing. If it looks like this won't overlap with the sort of things volunteers do, you might have a chance. It sort of sounds like it would fit in with meta:Grants:PEG, and sometimes individual chapters have grant programs too. The Grant people at WMF are generally very friendly, I'd recommend talking it over with them and seeing what they think. Bawolff (talk) 20:14, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Bawolff!!!! You've pointed me in the right direction. I was at the WMF site and couldn't even find a village pump. Many thanks! :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 20:23, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi RTA. Thank you for the feedback. We are talking, of course, about high-traffic articles where no photograph has been found for a long time. And I disagree. Paid contributions can sometimes be a good idea. There are exceptions to rules. After all, we are not talking about some COI pharmaceutical public relations person is trying to whitewash an article. We are talking about paying some starving artists for a few drawings. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 20:23, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Anna, I work for a long time with volunteers, I can affirm to you that paid contribution in a volunteer environment could seriously damage the community, I'm in short time to find papers, but a quick look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg it will summarize practically all the arguments, researches...

And we are a Movement based in collaborative work...

Moreover, we have another ways to acquire photos of most of them, Kim Jong-un gonna be difficult, but not impossible.

Just a concern, it is very probable that illustrations will be a derivative work, copyright violations I see in a future... -- RTA 20:52, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi RTA. I'm afraid I cannot access Youtube from here in China.

Your concern about derivatives is valid. Whether artists could make a drawing based on other images without it being a derivative, remains to be seen.

Anyway, about funding, I am still trying to find artists to do free works by looking for users who use their real name as their username. They could be helpful in posting at Facebook and Flickr artist groups providing the link to the Donated artwork project page. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 21:23, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

(See also: the recently archived related discussion at Commons:Village pump/Archive/2015/11#Donated portraits.) -- Asclepias (talk) 21:07, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

[5] [6] try one of those.

I like the idea, but change the focus, maybe it's interesting for the illustrators just know some of them, and this we can fund. -- RTA 12:14, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi RTA. Thank you for the videos. I remember it from somewhere.

I am not clear on what you mean by "...I like the idea, but change the focus...". I am sorry. Could you explain further? Many thanks. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 20:10, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Responding in the middle of the conversation creates a mess... well, it's very simple, image that you are a illustrator, and you really want to be in person to draw some personality, if some one provide you this opportunity? This values more than any kind of money for a bunch of people, and we can use our power to establish this meetings, and this 10 k could be used to made all the logistic necessary. Got it Annna? So you don't pay to artist, you provide a unique experience, and the money is going to more acceptable used. -- RTA 16:35, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi RTA. Are you saying organize a gathering somewhere and use the 10k to fund it? That artists will show up and work for free because the experience of the gathering is the reward? I must be misunderstanding. I am so sorry. I just do not understand that. Best, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 03:48, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

No, for example, imagine that you a artist that have a work devote to illustrate dictatorships, and I gave you the opportunity to meet Kim Jong-un, the only request is that you gave me 2 images to bring here to Commons. And I'll pay the transportation to go there. This kind of thing, no money can buy, this are unique opportunities that maybe we could provide.

This is not a simple meeting, this a unique thing, and the Wikipedia brand can open some doors to this experiences. Did you got it Annna? -- RTA 04:31, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi RTA. I am sorry. You must think I am stupid for not understanding. Are you saying we should request a 10k grant, find a single artists, arrange a meeting with Kim Jong-un, fly the artist there, he draws a picture, and we upload it? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 05:40, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Annna kind of, "find a single artists", do not need to be a single, it's last expansive, but don't bring the community sense. And I would not start by Kim... -- RTA 06:39, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi RTA. But the basic idea is still to fly an artist to a subject for a portrait, right? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 07:29, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Yep, then you eliminate the copyright problem, you may have more artists keen on be evolved, don't pay for the contribution, let the person illustrate know the work, could generate media, probably paying the project bring more donations, became a sustainable project.

You seems to be resistant to the idea. -- RTA 07:48, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Not at all, RTA. I am just trying to understand what you mean. I think I do understand here. And all ideas are appreciated. We are just brainstorming here and that is where good ideas come from. :) Actually, it is such a different idea that I do not know where to begin commenting. Perhaps others could give their views. Best, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:18, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Okay Annna, I'm more off-line volunteer than on-line, and by experience, this unique activities, generates more enthusiastic, and reliable contributors. They are there by the values and the experience, not by the money, this show up in the final result. -- RTA 08:29, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

---

Jashodaben Narendrabhai Modi

Hello Anna Frodesiak. I commissioned an artist to make a portrait of Jashodaben Narendrabhai Modi because I wanted an illustration and I thought a drawing was the best way to get one. I wrote about why I wanted this.

I understand why others would want to do this. I do not think either the Wikimedia Foundation or the Wikimedia community would support community funding going directly to content creators for the purpose of making content. However, I do think that it would be interesting if someone applied for a grant at meta:Grants:Start to do something like fund an art collective to present Wikimedia projects to its members, and call for contributions. Other fundable projects might be organizing a contest for contributions, funding a community center to host Wikipedia art creation events, or otherwise making a social community activity out of the call for drawn art.

At en:DeviantArt and other online art communities there is little understanding of Wikimedia community values like copyright licensing or free culture. There probably also would be grants to fund anyone doing outreach or creating social infrastructure to invite online art communities to consider contributing to Wikimedia projects. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:38, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the good feedback, Bluerasberry. I feel very alone working on this at Wikipedia. A few editors have kindly helped put it together, but that has diminished. Do you think, if I moved it to commons, it could be developed here? Would others join in and help work on some sort of grant for prizes? I think, as soon as some money were on the table, it could get some results. Best, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 20:10, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Anna Frodesiak I am not sure if I can help. I care about this too, obviously, because I went through this myself, and I was thinking about what it would mean to organize exactly the project you designed. What you have compiled at en:Wikipedia:Donated artwork/List of articles needing images/Holding pen is spot-on. Prioritizing pictures by article traffic is the ideal way to demonstrate demand.

I do think this is bigger than English Wikipedia, and should be managed on Wikimedia Commons. Suppose this were to go further and we wanted to organize an outreach event (contest, institutional partnership, whatever) that needed funding. For that to happen, these are the stakeholders-

• Wikimedia Commons community has to give a few more comments on the usefulness of drawn portraits - this is not well established
• Someone has to manage the on-wiki project page. You have been doing this.
• Someone has to apply for a WMF grant. I could help with this.
• Someone has to administer the grant. Typically this would be an existing organization, not an individual. This could be someone on or off-wiki, and an artist's group might be the most likely to be enthusiastic about organizing this.
• In addition to administering the grant, there has to be good outreach to reach and support artists who would contribute. Perhaps the organization administering the grant would do this, or perhaps this could require another partnership.

Probably getting a partnership with some Wikimedia chapter or affiliate would be ideal, regardless of whether they administer the grant or engage deeply in this project as a chapter.

At the end of the project when art is donated, it needs to be assessed by the Wikimedia community. There are existing processes for community review of art on Commons. Probably this project's outcomes could go through one of those processes.

If you like, we could talk by Skype, Google Hangout, or phone to consider options for all of this. I like the idea but this is bigger than just the two of us, and we definitely need another organizational partner. Lots of artists groups are eager to give a lot for even small grants, so I think that matching our available money to an artist group's demands would not be a problem. Possible candidates for art partners include online forums like DeviantArt or offline community art groups at any nonprofit or university, or even a consortium of such groups. Perhaps email me and let's think about how much work it would be to advance this. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:56, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

arbitrary break

RTA's reasons convince me that it wouldn't be a good idea to have a centralized funding of some images. In addition, I can see some other complications: If several artists create pictures for the same person, who's to decide on who will get paid? Will WMF form a committee of judges or do we trust the community to !!vote on such matters where money is involved? What if someone provides a photography for one of the requested images; will that also be eligible for remuneration? (These problems would not be an issue with private funding, as Philip Greenspun and Bluerasberry did.)

As for whether this project should be on en:WP or here; logically it should be here, but it may be more visible on en:WP, so it may be advisable to leave it there for a while until it gains traction. SebastianHelm (talk) 04:01, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

SebastianHelm You are correct - there would never be centralized funding of images, just like there is no centralized funding for anything in the Wikimedia community, and there is nothing centralized in the Wikimedia community generally. That is not the proposal.

The proposal would be to use the existing grants process at meta:grants:start to request funding for some private group to oversee an outreach effort to develop Wikimedia projects. This already happens through groups at meta:Wikimedia movement affiliates/Portal. Local private Wikimedia groups request funding and form their own committees of judges to decide what to support and what to not support using their share of Wikimedia community funds.

As things stand right now, the WMF purports that about 25% of funding collected by the WMF is for the community of contributors. We collected USD 75 million this year and will collect more next year, and because the money went from almost nothing to a huge amount in a short period of time, the pace of grant requests has not kept pace with the funding available. There is a lot of room for community members to request funds through the grants process and administer it privately with the oversight of the larger Wikimedia community. This has happened a thousand times already. Anna's idea for a project is a a great one to consider because Wikimedia projects definitely need more clarity and contributions about drawn art, and also because readers are demanding more and better media that Wikimedia projects are currently unable to provide. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:15, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

User:Bluerasberry, User:Anna Frodesiak well i'm interested, i've been thinking of some expense / beer money for photographers of living people; perhaps you should contact WMDC for a grant? or m:Grants:IdeaLab we can't wait around for the other volunteers to get the job done. Slowking4♡Richard Arthur Norton's revenge 20:43, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

@Slowking4 and Anna Frodesiak: My proposal -

1. Chat by voice (optional but it helps)
2. meta:Grants:PEG/Submit_request
3. Get a few people on-wiki to work the request after starting - Anna, would you start there?
4. Find organizational partners
5. Make grant request

I agree, we cannot wait around, but also, we should not rush into this. Success means having enough stakeholders to divide the work. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:39, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

This sounds like it could be good. However, I am honestly reluctant to invest more time. I wasted 4 hours or so on Donated artwork. I may contact some English Wikipedians who use their real name to see if they can post at Facebook and Flickr as a final shot at Donated artwork. I am concerned that the grant will be rejected in the end on the grounds that a photo may eventually replace the artwork and so be a waste of money. I also do not like asking people for money, especially from those people with 82 million dollars who may reject a 10k request. Also, a grant request is a gamble. They could just say no and all the time is lost. I don't want to lose twice. I'd prefer others take the chance of losing once instead. Share the risk. Also, I see only a handful of people here willing to move this forward. It needs a dozen or so, in my opinion. Plus, my Donated artwork experience showed that nobody gives a hoot. So few joined in. Sorry to be so pessimistic. If others wish to pursue this, fine. I posted here with the idea that if lots and lots of people show enthusiasm, I would consider going further. Thank you all kindly for the responses. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:30, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Anna Frodesiak Again, I care about this because I already did a pilot of this program, so I want this to happen eventually. I am unable to write a grant request at this time because just now I am overseeing 7+ other grant requests including meta:Grants:PEG/Wikimedia New York City/2016 plan. Obviously you know the WMF budget, and you know times are changing with regard to funding. For the future stay aware of who would want to manage such a grant request. 10k could go a long way in a community nonprofit for the arts and staff at such an organization are the most likely candidates for wanting to write and request a grant like this. To put the burden of labor for grant writing, accounting, metrics reporting, and project administration all on Wikipedia volunteers is not a viable way forward so we do need external partners.

I would talk with you by phone anytime. For sure - a 10k grant will take a lot of hours from the Wikipedia community, and it would only be funded with support and participation. Historically the volunteering in Wikimedia projects has not included grant writing but as time passes, we need to find more people in the world who enjoy doing that. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:47, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi Bluerasberry. "A lot of hours" of our time just to get 10k out of 75 million? I will not invest more time out of principle.

Why did people donate 75 million? So it could sit in the bank? They donated because they like Wikipedia/Commons etc because we built it with our "lot of hours". They donated it help support and improve the encyclopedia. They donated it to be used, not to be accumulated like the 36.4 billion dollar tax exempt Harvard endowment.

Marjorie Nickerson of Seattle would be furious knowing she donated $10 just for it to be thrown on the pile.

I will not jump through hoops. WMF should be taking and evaluating suggestions and using their own salaried people to develop them.

Please do not feel like I am shooting the messenger. You are a good egg. :) I am just irked. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:32, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Relevant links

• Donated artwork - the above-discussed, new initiaive to aquire portraits, currently at Wikipedia
• List of some articles needing portrait images at Wikipedia
• Project and Event Grants page at WMF
• Query about possible grant
• Philip Greenspun illustration project - circa 2013, funding illustrations with a donation from Philip Greenspun
• WikiArS - a project to involve art and design schools in Wikimedia

Couple of issues

I bring couple of issues due to its heavy. Your feedback and comments are welcome. They may updated in relevant areas/guidelines.

• Commons talk:Deletion policy#Derivative works vs Duplicate, relevant discussion Commons:Deletion requests/File:Rocket prolant.jpg

• Commons talk:Freedom of panorama#A Sri Lankan issue

--AntanO 09:51, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Many pictures from Flickr

Hello.Can I transfer many pictures from Flickr on a particular topic lump sum?Thank you --ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 12:01, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

• I recommend http://tools.wmflabs.org/flickr2commons/. You'll need an OAuth account. - Jmabel ! talk 18:06, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
  • @Jmabel: I use this tool in the transfer of images, one by one, can I transfer multiple images at the same time?Thank you --ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 07:29, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
    • As long as they are from a single user's stream or from a single album/set, yes. - Jmabel ! talk 22:49, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

I usualy use the default Upload Wizard, as discussed at Commons:Upload Wizard/Flickr. It seems like for last 3 years it was "accessible to administrators and image-reviewers only for the testing phase". Maybe we should be done with testing now and should allow everybody to use it? --Jarekt (talk) 21:22, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

That's phab:T90004 --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 17:14, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

SVG doesn't render correctly online

Empty map of the Binnenhof, The Hague, the Netherlands. Rendered correctly in this example.

I created a map, which tested successfully at the SVG Markup Validation Service. Then I discovered a building was missing, so I added it. After testing again, and the file was O.K. again, I uploaded, but the added building doesn't show correctly on Commons Wikimedia on the filepage. The building is not showing. When rendering in 2000px the building doesn't show, but when rendered (on Commons) as PNG in 200px, 500px or 1000px it does show. At the filehistory section, it is showing in the thumbnails. Also in MediaViewer the render is correct. Is this a case caused by slow webservers, or is there something wrong with the SVG file ? --OSeveno (talk) 16:02, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Server cache issue. Purge can help a bit but don't feel betrayed if it does not work immediately. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 16:47, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the info, I can see it's fixed now. --OSeveno (talk) 18:55, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

December 05

Server lag

I’m getting this:

Due to high database server lag, changes newer than 161 seconds may not be shown in this list.

That’s exactly 161 seconds too many. What the heck’s going on? Other outfits, like Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg, don’t seem to run into this sort of recurrent trouble — especially if you consider both the computational requirements and the available funds… -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 06:39, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Um, calm down. Ops are actively looking into the issue. It's not "exactly 161 seconds too many", if the notice didn't show up, you'd never notice anything was behind. We regularly have 5-10 seconds of slave lag, and the world keeps spinning. I don't really get your "computational requirements" funds comment, but I'd encourage you to encourage people to know to apply for the open DBA job posting. Legoktm (talk) 09:11, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Exactly, just because other organizations don't actually TELL you about these kinds of lags, doesn't mean they don't exist. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:05, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

It doesn’t need to be (self-)reported: Before I saw that error message (and it was the first time I ever saw such) I had noticed category pages not reflecting recent categorization changes and other delays — I’m sure I was not the only one. That’s also not normal, although has been happening on and off for the last couple weeks. The WMF has more than enough money to make sure none of these glitches ever happens, and yet they do. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 11:16, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Another angry and useless comment from Tuvalkin who use the Village pump as a personnal blog against WMF. I'm really tired to read the comments from Fae and you. It's a pity that those good editors act like this. Pyb (talk) 12:52, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

• Since when it is forbidden to complain about a problem? His complains seems to be fair... Fact is that there are hunderts of commons related bugs open on phabricator - high prio bugs included. The number of bugs is speaking for itself. --Steinsplitter (talk) 13:05, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
• What? If we’re having repeated infrastructure failures, whom should I complain about? It’s obviously the WMF’s responsability and they have no excuse for it. It is not bad luck nor lack of resources, it is sheer mismanagement of priorities, stemming from lack of interest and of love for the project. And that’s worth ranting against every time, useless as it may feel. (But keep playing whack-a-mole when users complain against the WMF, admin Pyb: It looks great on your resumé should they need to pick a replacement when one of the current employees leaves for a “better” position at 9gag or Reddit…) -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 14:15, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Category:Old people, Category:Drunken people

This kind of categories may harm feelings of the depicted people or their families. In my opinion the only files that may included in that kind of categories are artworks of old men or old women which are not identified persons. There is no one definition of an old person and it may depend of cultural view. young wikipedian may said that 30 years old woman is old woman and we can't even argue with him. old person can be defined in a diverse ways: age, person with wrinkles, people with a gray or white hair or other ways. I started this discussion but realize that it is larger issue. -- Geagea (talk) 23:13, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Please add your opinion Commons:Categories for discussion/2015/12/Category:Old women by country. -- Geagea (talk) 20:33, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Hard big wooden fungi

I took several pictures of this big hard lump wich was fallen of a beach tree. I am not certain it belongs to the Trametes family as these are much flatter.Smiley.toerist (talk) 13:40, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

In German Wikipedia I would send you to the own portal for species determination; whether you have something in Dutch WP I do not know at all. But to me – I’m not an expert, as well – this looks like en:Fomes fomentarius upside down. Here in Commons there is Category:Fomes fomentarius, too. --Speravir (Talk) 00:16, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

This looks like it.Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:49, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

I’ve seen you’ve already listed the files into this category, so I could take a look on the other 5 images. ;-) --Speravir (Talk) 18:34, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Speravir (Talk) 18:34, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

LMS

Historic England have a large collection of images attributed to the United Kingdom's London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS). The LMS was nationalised in 1948, so I wonder whether these images then became Crown Copyright, which would expire after 50 years?

The images are currently labelled "Not to be reproduced without permission; Reproduced by permission of Historic England", but they have past history of doing this with other images that are known to be out of copyright. Andy Mabbett (talk) 16:30, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

My guess is that since the person who took the photos was not working for the Crown, ordinary copyright, not Crown copyright applies. The rules are here. Martinvl (talk) 21:30, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

If a UK company were nationalized today, Martinvl is correct, the copyright term for copyrights owned by the nationalized company would have the standard life+70 term, not the Crown term, since they would not be works that were created by an officer or servant of the Crown in the course of his or her duties. However, in the past the UK law was different. The National Archives has a nice summary in Copyright and related rights. A UK work is Crown copyright if it was:

• created or published at any date before 1 June 1957 by or under the direction or control of the UK Crown, or
• created or first published between 1 June 1957 and 31 July 1989 by or under the direction or control of the Crown, or
• created on or after 1 August 1989 by an officer or servant of the Crown in the course of his or her duties.

So, it is possible that some of the LMS photos are Crown copyright, but determining this may require tracking down the individual publication history of the photos. Photos in the archive created by LMS employees after LMS was nationalised in 1948 are presumably Crown copyright. In addition, photos created by LMS employees before LMS was nationalized that you can demonstrate were published by the Crown before 1 June 1957 are also Crown copyright. In addition, photos created by LMS employees before LMS was nationalized that you can show were published between 1 June 1957 and 31 July 1989 by the Crown and you can show that this was the first publication of the photo, are also Crown copyright. —RP88 (talk) 22:30, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, both, for your replies. For these images (all taken before 1948, some taken in the 1800s, for a later-nationalised, private company) none of the bullet-pointed criteria given by RP88 are applicable. However, following the flowchart in section 11 of the National Archives' PDF to which they link:

1. Author unknown
2. Work created before 1 January 1969
3. Photograph created before 1 June 1957

suggests that the applicable rule is "copyright expires 70 years after creation or 70 years after the work was made available to the public if within 70 years of creation". So any of the images taken before 1875 must be out if copyright; and possibly some of the later ones - if we can determine when (or whether) they were first published? Andy Mabbett (talk) 17:05, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

December 02

American license by the PD-old-100 licence

Recently the license of File:Journal de Bruxelles nr 131 1800 (326, 327).jpg and lots of other Journal de Bruxelles files where changed from Pd-old to PD-old-100. As these are from the year 1799 or 1800 no problem. What is the use however that an American license is stil needed? Are there cases where an PD-old-100 licensed file is stil not automaticaly also PD in the US? 1923 seem to be cutof date for a lot of cases and 100 years old means at least before 1915.Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:47, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

The point is, PD-old-100 means the author died more than 100 years ago, while PD-1923 means the work was published before 1923. It is still possible that the former is true, but the latter is not, if the work was published long after the author's death after 1923. There's a related discussion at Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2015/10#Template:PD-old-100_and_US_copyrights --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 03:21, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

This is only for very special cases. The bot should have changed the license to PD-old-100-1923. I have corrected the files.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:56, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

I think we need to some up with some clear description of what is expected for US license for PD-old-100 cases or have some cut off date where works older than: x number of years automatically get {{PD-1923}} or some other US license. I can not imagine a situation when a Renaissance painting is still copyrighted in the US, buy {{PD-old-100}} shows a warning that even very old works need US license. If we are going to have such a warning than we need some guidance of how to figure out which US license to use, since Commons:Hirtle chart is often very confusing when trying to apply to very old artworks. --Jarekt (talk) 14:51, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

December 06

Georges Stein

Hello, I uploaded two pictures from artiste Georges Stein,Category:Georges Stein (1811-1890) but then discovered an ambiguity about that artist : en:Georges Stein (1870-1955). Can someone help to clarifie? --Havang(nl) (talk) 15:07, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

I know it doesn't help, but many art sales websites seem remarkably confused about the life dates of this artist. I've seen the same painting attributed to Georges Stein on different websites which give four very different life dates. It's possible that they confuse this artist with other people of the same name. The dates most commonly given seem to be 1870-1955, maybe because they're the dates in the BNF notice and many websites just copy each other. I also found a short mention in a January 1918 review mentioning the death of painter Georges Stein in December 1917. If that's the right person, the bio on this website could seem better than others. It is a little surprising that no entry about this artist is found in general people dictionaries. I suppose you could just repeat the dates 1870-1955 like a lot of websites. If works are found made in the 1920s to 1950s, that would clarify things. Works attributed to Stein that are clearly dated seem dated before 1918. To be certain, more research is needed in specialized art dictionaries or credible specialized blog websites. -- Asclepias (talk) 17:42, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Georges Stein + Genève: that results in : Hotel des ventes Genève, 1870-1955 http://hoteldesventes.ch/1308-41. Quid for the copyright of my three uploads? --Havang(nl) (talk) 18:37, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

That linked webpage doesn't mention the date of the work and the life dates mentioned are probably just copied from somewhere else. About the copyright, it depends if you go with the flock and you opt for attributing to the author a 1955 death, then the works are not in the public domain and the files should be deleted. Or you could research more and hope to find solid information, which may turn out to be another year or the same year. -- Asclepias (talk) 19:11, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikigallery gives all her works as PD http://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/painting_165953/Georges-Stein/The-Champs-Elysees%2C-Paris and she was actif 1890-1910, but that are not proofs. Feel free to ask for deletion; and for the moment, I will not upload more of her works.--Havang(nl) (talk) 19:37, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

This book has an entry about Georges Stein. But Google shows only a part of the entry, which has the usual "born circa 1870". Maybe you can find a copy of the book and see if it has useful information. -- Asclepias (talk) 20:21, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Many conflicting data [8] [9] [10] --Havang(nl) (talk) 20:27, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Closing in towards 1 million links between Commons categories and Wikidata article-type items

We are now less than 8,000 away from reaching the one-millionth Commons category <--> Wikidata article-type item link.

The following table shows the number of connections provided by direct sitelinks, and via the Wikidata properties P373 (Commons category) and P935 (Commons gallery), as the numbers stood earlier this afternoon:

	Commons categories (4,587,397)		Commons galleries (111,792)		total linked
Wikidata articles (12,870,172)	992,272		94,446		1,026,391
	sitelinks: 254,200	P373: 992,254	sitelinks: 93,500	P935: 90,774	sitelinks: 347,700	props: 1,023,184
Wikidata categories (2,507,314)	353,717		249		353,749
	sitelinks: 340,384	P373: 353,259	sitelinks: 65	P935: 188	sitelinks: 340,449	props: 353,263
total linked	n/a		n/a		n/a
	sitelinks: 594,584	P373: 1,107,676	sitelinks: 93,565	P935: 90,323	sitelinks: 688,149	props: 1,376,447 items / 1,197,999 pages

(Numerical note: the column-totals and row-totals typically won't match the sums of the corresponding rows or columns, because e.g. the same Commons category can have a P373 "Commons category" link from both an article-type and a category-type Wikidata item. Each Commons page has only been counted once towards the column totals; and each distinct Wikidata item only counted once towards the row totals).

Breaking out the links gives the following leading classes for the million article-type item <--> commonscat links so far:

• people: 222,874; biological taxons: 88,069; churches: 31,691; railway stations: 15,027 ... -- extended list: tinyurl.com/jjy3un6
• administrative territorial entities: 191,407 -- breakdown: tinyurl.com/jgrpq3h
• items with heritage status: 74,316 -- breakdown: tinyurl.com/jfbgq4a

(Load the query links in a browser, then scroll down and hit 'execute', for the breakdown details).

Getting more of these Wikidata links into place should make it significantly easier for external programs to find the right Commons categories to put images into. The identifications should also become particularly valuable for Commons templates from early next year, when Commons templates will become able to systematically draw information from all Wikidata items.

The user-script wdcat.js may also be of interest, which looks up whether a Commons category page is the target of one of these Wikidata article-item links. If it is, the script then shows a link on the category page to the Reasonator tool, which summarises all the information about the item on Wikidata, with links to known external resources etc, and to all available articles on corresponding Wikipedias -- so quite a good way to see what Wikidata knows about the subject of a particular category (if there is an identifying link that has been made). Jheald (talk) 22:31, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

1) The best part is this: "Getting more of these Wikidata links into place should make it significantly easier for external programs to find the right Commons categories to put images into." Halleluja! Please give us a category suggestion wizard for File Uploads!

template by wdcat.js

2) The template by wdcat.js is a start, but frankly I'd expect much better default features for interlinking commons and wikidata. There is a "Other projects sidebar" in beta, which should provide a similar functionality. See feedback Regrettably, quite unusable yet @Talk:Wikibase/Beta Features/Other projects sidebar and T85971 Enable "Other projects sidebar" by default on frwiki and look at "Autres projets" with icons on the left sidebar at fr:Jimmy_Wales!

3) Great stats. Thank you! --Atlasowa (talk) 11:54, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Jheald thank you for the report. I guess wikidata interacts with Commons a lot but so far Commons did not utilize wikidata at all since we are still waiting for "random access" to wikidata data. If we have almost a million links from wikidata to commons categories, than probably within the next year we might need a million templates in those categories that link back. We do have Template:On Wikidata but it was so far used on only ~5k pages. I assume we will have a single template used on Category pages that will be given a Q-number to wikidata article (and maybe one for wikidata category), than such template could handle:

1. visible link to wikidata, the way Template:On Wikidata does it
2. interwiki links separating interwiki links to category pages from interwiki links to article pages. I did not look at "Other projects sidebar" but that might be what we need here.
3. links to Reasonator tool or other tools.
4. Maybe even category suggestions.

--Jarekt (talk) 15:55, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

• 
  Other projects sidebar Beta icon
• 
  The "Other projects" sidebar as already displayed on the French Wikisource main page
• 
  Sidebar sister links - ruwiki
• 
  Sidebar sister links - ru - icons (commons, source)
• 
  Sidebar sister links - ruwiki - icons (commons, voyage)
• 
  Other projects block with icons - ruwiki

"2. interwiki links separating interwiki links to category pages from interwiki links to article pages." Yes! Why not have both a commonscat-link and a commonsgallery-link at the Sitelinks Sidebar of Wikipedia? --Atlasowa (talk) 22:17, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

December 07

Wiki Loves Folk

In line with the diffusion of free knowledge, in recent years Wikimedia Spain has celebrated Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth, photographic contests that serve to value the historical, artistic and natural heritage. In that sense, we believe that another important aspect of the culture of a country is its folklore and, within this, its festivals and traditions.

Along with its monumental or natural wealth, Spain has a rich and varied folklore worth to value: religious celebrations, festivals, food festivals... For that reason we´ll organize a new contest in 2016, Wiki Loves Folk, focusing on this type of cultural heritage. While in the past we have based on Sites of Cultural Interest and Sites of Community Importance, in this case we propose the promotion of those celebrations that have any of the following statements: International Touristic Interest, National Touristic Interest, Regional Touristic Interest and Provincial Touristic Interest.

At this moment we are immersed in preparations but very soon we´ll publish details of the competition: celebration dates, rules for participation, awards, etc. We invite you to participate in their organization and preparations. Best regards.--Rodelar (talk) 12:18, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Dual geolocation

I just created Category:Rua Paz dos Reis (Lisbon), which is for a street — a short straight street. I added two sets of geocoordinates, one for each end of the street, and now I wonder whether we have, or should have, a handy manner, akin to {{Location}}, to give two geolocation points instead of one, for those items that would be better indicated as a line segment on a map, instead of a single point or disc. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 19:00, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

I'd just represent it with a single point, somewhere in the centre of the street. Sure you can describe a line segment better with two points, but what would you do with a curving street, a circle, or an arbitrary shape like a city or country? --ghouston (talk) 23:39, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Merge categories

The categories Category:Biserica Înălțarea Domnului din Nucșoara and Category:Church of the Ascension in Nucșoara, Hunedoara should be merged: their names have the same meaning and a part of their content is identical. --Hkoala (talk) 18:12, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

• Done. - Jmabel ! talk 07:56, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 07:56, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Deleting thousands of Flickr images over faulty PD marking

Commons:Requests for comment/Flickr and PD images was open in April and stuff was discussed therein (mea culpa: I didn't even noticed it); as the result of that discussion/analysis, thousands of admittedly good files from Flickr are now under Deletion Request discussion and risk dully deletion within a week. I think this is the wrong way to deal with the matter and feel that leaving scattered {{vk}}s in a few of those DRs (as in here, here, and here) is not the best way to stop it.

I appeal to Revent and Josve05a and whoever is doing this to stop now — withdraw those Deletion Requests, mark all affected files with a suitable hidden category, and lead (or allow others to lead) an effort to check each case and, when appropriate, contact those Flickr creators and suggest they change their licensing to something we can use. Of course such effort should not be done under the Damocles’ sword of imminent deletions, not in a matter like this where there’s no external pressure one Commons to have these mislicensed files removed. It will take many hours of our work, but will have a net positive result, more satisfying (for me at least) than playing lawyer and deleting files over minutiæ…

-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 16:30, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Deletion nominations in question as of right now (20:22, 22 November 2015 (UTC)):

• Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Bioparque de Convivencia en Pachuca, Hidalgo (4 files)
• Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Chaeng Watthana Government Complex (5 files)
• Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Euphydryas chalcedona anicia (2 files)
• Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Halifax Rainmen players (3 files)
• Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:James Horner (3 files)
• Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Photographs by Automotive Space (6 files)
• Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Photographs by the African Union Mission to Somalia (5729 files)
• Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Photographs taken by Ljubljana Kaos (59 files)

-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 20:22, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

@Tuvalkin: If we are aware that there is a copyright issue, or a potential copyright issue, with an image, then it needs to be marked in a way that is 'visible' to potential reusers while the issue is discussed, not just flagged with some hidden category so that people can continue to not notice for the next six months. The odds that some admin is going to close these as deleted as soon as they time out, unless a clear consensus has been established (which would presumably include an indication that they were not going to be relicensed) is minimal, but 'opening the discussion' about the specific files, after the discussion of the issue itself had been pending for months, was appropriate. The issue of making 'legally binding statements' with regard to licenses in the name of authors who did not themselves agree to those statements is not a trivial concern, and I'm sorry, but "I wasn't paying attention" isn't really a reason to deal with the matter in some other way that people will not notice. Revent (talk) 03:44, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Or be more productive by mailing (via Flickr) the users of the files in question? or we could just waste time going back and forth over what to do. Bidgee (talk) 04:48, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

By using the same logic, we should contact architects in FoP-cases. We can't wait around for someone to contact the authors. Josve05a (talk) 09:16, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

More directed at those who think the RfDs should be withdrawn. Bidgee (talk) 10:05, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

And may I ask you users who are relicensing from Flickrs (inapropriate) PD Mark 1.0 to cc0 to cease and desist. The do not have the same legal text or meaning, and the author has not explicitly agreed to those terms, nor allowed others to relicense rhem how they want. Josve05a (talk) 09:16, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

@Josve05a: Hopefully that wasn't referring to the 30-or-so I changed... they were ones where the tag on Flickr had itself been changed from the PD Mark to CC-0 since the image was uploaded... if someone is indeed marking images as CC-0 when the author did not agree to that license, they need to stop, now, and revert themselves before they end up at AN/U for fraudulently licensing images. Revent (talk) 09:31, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

@Revent: Not it wasn't you, it was Leoboudv on at least 4-5 DRs I noticed and reverted. Josve05a (talk) 09:33, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

 Comment Just noticed Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard#59_image_DR. Josve05a (talk) 09:35, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I think there is a mixed up of two issues here. 1. In the case of African Union Mission to Somalia, these are probably by several photographers, and we don't know if they agree with releasing the copyright of their images. So the DR is justified. 2. In cases of individual photographers, I don't see any issue. This PD Mark 1.0 is in practice equivalent to releasing their images into the public domain. Regards, Yann (talk) 10:06, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

@Yann: No, it explicitly is not. Please read the PDM FAQ. Attaching the "PD Mark" to a work has absolutely no legal effect. It is not a license, or a release of an author's work to the public domain. Revent (talk) 10:14, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

The tools also differ in terms of their effect when applied to a work. CC0 is legally operative in the sense that when it is applied, it changes the copyright status of the work, effectively relinquishing all copyright and related or neighboring rights worldwide. PDM is not legally operative in any respect – it is intended to function as a label, marking a work that is already free of known copyright restrictions worldwide.

— Creative Commons, in: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/PDM_FAQ

Although the usage of PDM on Flickr by image authors is probably a very poor choice, I don't agree that it means nothing in general. PDM in the case of a very new work means that the person considers the work out of copyright ab origine, or what we'd call PD-ineligible. A declaration on the threshold of originality, when made by the work author, does carry some weight. As for what constitutes a contract or not, we certainly must point people towards CC0, stressing how «CC0 is legally operative», but PDM is hardly worse than PD-Self templates (some of them do include a language resembling that of a waiver, but none of them is a verified or tested legal tool for the purpose). Nemo 10:27, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: You can interpret that a creator who applied the PDM to their own work intended to freely license it, or release it to the public domain, but they simply have not in fact done so. The PRP, and the licensing policy, do not let us assume the copyright owners intent. License grants must be explicit. {{PD-self}}, and other such templates, actually include the statement that the creator is either granting a license in the work, or releasing it to the public domain. The PDM does not... if you actually read it, it is simply not a license, and Creative Commons makes a point of stating that their FAQ, repeatedly and at length. If the Commons community wants to modify the site policies to allow us to keep such works (and WMF Legal would let us, which I seriously doubt) that would be different, but as it stands COM:L specifically requires material to be explicitly freely licensed. The PDM clearly does not meet that criteria. Revent (talk) 00:39, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

• One question. Do many flickr users (who don't use cc-by or cc-by sa) use this Flickr cc0 license on flickr as this person actually did? Sadly, most people see a cc-pd license and use it since they think they are licensing their images freely. If it was a person like me, I would not use cc0 and consider either cc-pd or cc-by or cc-by-sa....only because I never heard of this cc0 license. Thank You and this informative discussion. Best, --Leoboudv (talk) 01:35, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

@Leoboudv: https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ indicates that over 400,000 images have been licensed as CC-0.. it's not as common as the others, but people do use it, yes. Revent (talk) 01:45, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

•  Comment: Thank you Revent for that statistic table from flickr. The use of the PD tag for images outnumbers cc-zero by 3:1 on flickr which is a problem for its use on Commons. As I said, it would have been better if flickr had just created a cc-zero template but now they have created this problem and it will likely grow as many uploaders upload images with the cc-pd license sadly. Best Regards, --Leoboudv (talk) 02:13, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

@Leoboudv: Indeed. Please don't think I like the idea of deleting things that were placed under the PD Mark... I really do not, I think it rather sucks, and I hope that we can get enough awareness of this that Commons editors will ask people to relicense such works on a regular basis. The simple fact, though, is that even under US law it's highly debatable is it is truly possible to 'release a work to the public domain'.... we, really, need that fallback clause. Even CC-0 doesn't actually 'release a work into the PD', and does not even attempt to do so, if you read it.... it is a 'dedication' of a work to the public domain by explicitly and irrevocably waiving all rights in the work. Even a work under CC-0 is still technically copyrighted... it's only 'effectively' in the the PD because the copyright owner has made an irrevocable promise to not enforce their copyright.

I am, however, highly disturbed to discover that people, including multiple license reviewers, have been marking works as under the CC-0 when the creator has not agreed to that specific license. This is something that absolutely must stop, it is completely and totally wrong, no less so than claiming an ARR work is under CC-BY. Revent (talk) 02:39, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

• @Revent: I won't be marking anymore any {{Cc-pd}} images on flickr and changing the license to {{Cc0}}. Someone on Commons suggested this apparently simple solution sometime ago and I just followed that idea...because it seemed logical. The problem one faces now is that there will be many more cc-pd images on flickr because some good intentioned flickr account users naively think this license means they are putting their images into the public domain when they are not. I guess flickr did not consult a lawyer when they created the cc-pd license sadly. Thanks for all your help. Best Regards, --Leoboudv (talk) 02:59, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

{@Leoboudv: Flickr does indicate, a few different places, that the PDM is for marking things that are 'already' in the public domain, but it is indeed quite unfortunate that they don't make it clear on the actual license selection page. I think it is quite reasonable to hold off on actually deleting these (other than the particular cases where images have been specifically changed to incompatible terms on Flickr since they were uploaded here) until people have had a chance to try to get them relicensed, or until enough time has passed after them being flagged that it's clear it's not going to happen. I don't think this is a case of 'bad faith' on anyones part, really, but it's not something that we can just ignore. Revent (talk) 03:16, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

•  Question: Does anyone asked the Flickr users to use CC-0 instead of PD-mark (specially Revent and Josve05a? I think that is a good idea to register any contact to Flickr users (and their affected files) instead of forcing their deletion. If the Flickr user does not change the license in a reasonable ammount of time (two weeks at least) after contacting they, the affected files may be nominated for deletion... but them should be analized case by case instead of making mass DRs. --Amitie 10g (talk) 08:09, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

An important consideration: Category:Flickr_public_domain_images_needing_specific_licenses contains old files where PD-mark does not actually apply; these files should be tagged with {{PD-art}} or {{PD-scan}} with the correspondient PD-old tag, and removing from that category. --Amitie 10g (talk) 08:36, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

@Amitie 10g: Please, please, fix as many as possible... the {{Flickr-public domain mark}} template actually asks you to, if you notice. It doesn't say 'these are copyvios', it says they need a specific license. I have not, personally, contacted anyone on Flickr (and am not going to, as I do not use that website because of privacy concerns), but I don't intend to start deleting anything out of that category unless it becomes blatantly clear that both 1) it's not PD, and 2) it's not going to be changed to a compatible license, because we have tried and failed. I know some people seem to hate the idea of DRs, but I do think they are going to be the most reasonable way to deal with these, though, at least in the cases where there are 'sets' of images from a single account... there is no reason that a DR can not sit open for a prolonged period until the situation becomes clear, and the images do need to be marked, in the meantime, as having a problematic copyright status. For images that are not, actually, already PD for an identifiable reason, and need to be changed on Flickr, a DR page is probably going to be the most 'efficient' way to both get any discussion about images from a particular Flickr account in one place, and to let someone fix them as a group with VFC if the issue is fixed.

The images I personally have added to that category are this point at are specifically only ones where a Commons contributor overrode the FlickrReviewer bot, after it failed an image for being PD-Mark, and marked them as CC-0 when the account on Flickr had not, and has not since, indicated that license. I've also 'fixed' quite a few... I'm really not just trying to delete stuff. Some of the images ending up there, though, would be new uploads added to it by the bot itself. Revent (talk) 09:17, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

 Comment: Dear Revent, I just hope that the flickr images needing human review category doesn't get so backlogged by this cc-pd images problem that legitimately licensed photos like this file which I have not marked don't get lost in this category. I think this file was forgotten...and no one has marked it for 15 hours since it is stuck in this category Maybe Revent can create a new category as an Adminitrator or contact User:Zhuyifei1999 to create a separate category for cc-pd images? Anther solution is to redirect them to different place. The present situation is not good. Best, --Leoboudv (talk) 03:30, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I think exactly the same. We need also move these files away from Category:Flickr images needing human review. Should be correct to remove {{User:FlickreviewR/reviewed-error}} and add {{Flickrreview}} when the Flickr user updated the license? --Amitie 10g (talk) 04:15, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

• Maybe Josve05a has a solution to this difficulty if Revent is away? I don't know since he is not an Admin like me. Best, --Leoboudv (talk) 02:04, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
• PS: This image also has the right license but has been missed for more than 2 days. because of the cc-pd problem, I'm afraid. Thank You, --Leoboudv (talk) 02:11, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, there are many solutions to get them away from the manually review needed, since they already are in the "needing specific license cat". We could re-code the template to have it not categorize in this category if it was failed for PD Mark, and instead categorize it in the "Specific licecense needed"-cat. Or we could comment-out the flickr-review template, pending the "specific license"-review. Josve05a (talk) 11:15, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

• I hope a solution can be found soon because if the human review images is full of cc-pd images, then many legitimate images will be missed by reviewers. Please feel free to implement a solution or to ask Revent to create a solution with flickrbot's operator Zhuyifei1999 Best, --Leoboudv (talk) 19:15, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
• I disagree with Yann that "This PD Mark 1.0 is in practice equivalent to releasing their images into the public domain." It absolutely isn't. These images are under copyright (ignoring the edge cases where someone photographs a 200-year-old map or something) and so the PD mark is simply incorrect. Anyone on Flickr applying such a mark to a photograph they have taken doesn't understand what they are doing. That automatically makes them an "unreliable source", to use Wikipedia terminology, and so I can't trust that. As far as these images hosted on external sites are concerned then (a) This is a mess that Flickr made and Flickr should fix -- I will be sending them a mail and (b) these are not our images so we can't go around second-guessing what the author's intent was. I think the images should be deleted. And the Flickr2Commons should not permit such images. Anyone wanting those images on Commons simply has to do the hard work of asking the Flickr user to correct their licence option or (better) to join Commons and upload the images directly with an appropriate licence or CC0 declaration. This change by User:Fæ is legally incorrect and needs to be admin reverted (along with any others doing so). There's a degree of willful misunderstanding combined with wishful thinking going on here -- the difference between PD mark and CC0 has already been explained during this discussion and on CC's own FAQ pages. The Flickr user almost certainly has made a mistake and probably intended to pick CC0 instead, but we simply can't declare with any authority that an image is PD or has been released when it is clear the image is copyright (it's a recent photo) and there is no such release. -- Colin (talk) 13:18, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Colin, I understand that PD Mark 1.0 is not exactly or legally equivalent to PD-self. However, as Jee said on the BN, if A creates a picture P, and says that P doesn't have a copyright, how is it different that "I release the copyright of P"? Regards, Yann (talk) 13:37, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
    • Because when A says "P doesn't have a copyright" he is wrong. Legally wrong. So what he said is worthless. He's been careless enough to pick the wrong Flickr option (though the blame lies firmly with Flickr making it too easy get it wrong) that we can't trust him. In two mouse clicks he can pick CC0 instead, so it isn't rocket science to fix this. It isn't as though Flickr doesn't have a CC0 option to pick, and this is a "poor man's equivalent", or a work-around. I don't really understand why we are jumping through hoops to second-guess the user's intentions, when it is straightforward for them to make their intentions explicit by choosing another option in the drop-down. If the effort spent here was spent instead writing to Flickr users and Flickr themselves, we might have a long-term solution. -- Colin (talk) 14:09, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
      • @Colin: May be I didn't express myself correctly. I mostly agree with Asclepias here. And I didn't see any convincing refutation yet. Regards, Yann (talk) 10:30, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
        • I see that (though repeat that it is very unhelpful to discuss this in two places). His argument partly amounts to "other crap exists" and a fallacious argument that in order to solve this PD dilemma we must create new legislation that fixes all the other dubious tags and declarations. There is a reason why CC created CC0 because simple amateur declarations or statements are probably not legally sound in all jurisdictions. I haven't seen any convincing argument against the clear statement "The PDM is not a legal instrument like CC0 or our licenses; there is no accompanying legal code or agreement. It should only be used to label a work that is already free of known copyright restrictions around the world, typically very old works. It should not be used to attempt to change a work’s current status under copyright law, or affect any person’s rights in a work.". They go on to say "Again, please keep in mind that the PDM does not affect the legal status of the work or the legal rights of the author, the person identifying it or others. The PDM serves a marking and labeling function only.". To be blunt, which part of "the PDM does not affect the legal status of the work or the legal rights of the author" do people have a problem understanding? If you think, as Natuur12 does, that the text does legally change the status of the work and does affect the legal rights of the creator, then perhaps you should have a word with CC about their FAQ being incorrect and misleading. While I understand Asclepias point that Josve05a repeating the same argument doesn't make it stronger, nor does it help to have a handful of complete amateurs (who are naturally biased towards wanting more content to be free on Commons) try to rationalise copyright law for themselves. I've seen it before over the debate on x-rays (and I was in the wrong, wishful thinking). I strongly believe in bowing to the opinion of professionals who are trained and experienced in copyright law, rather than to users who think their arguments are stronger because they've uploaded many thousands of images, say. I guess we've exhausted this discussion without convincing each other. Perhaps it is time to ask WMF legal? My money is they say the same thing as CC: that PD mark (on an image that would otherwise be in-copyright) is worthless, even if applied by the creator. And all this fuss over something that is easily fixed -- ask the Flickr user to apply the CC0 tag instead. It isn't as though we are paid by the upload (or if we are, nobody told me :-). -- Colin (talk) 12:52, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
          • Three things, I talked about how it could be interpertated in my home country. Secondly some reversed argumentum ad verecundiam isn't helpfull. I don't believe a work will become PD (it is not even possible in a lot of country's) but I do believe we could hoste this under some kind of attribution template if we stop reading it by the letter since the copyright holder stated that it can be used etc etc. If we follow this interpertation it would be perfectly in line with the FAQ since nobody claims that the legal status of the work has changed. Natuur12 (talk) 14:26, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

(outdent)Natuur12, I appreciate it is just your home country you are considering. Nevertheless, that is relevant to Commons which has to consider lots of countries. As for the logical fallacies, I think it important we realise we cannot determine copyright law by our own best amateur efforts. It's as useful as a bunch of Wikipedia editors debating global warming on a talk page. Unless we have a reliable source or an expert opinion, then there's no good mechanism for coming to a conclusion. We seem to have two distinct and incompatible options being suggested: that we treat a PD mark (applied by the creator) as

(a) a release into PD albeit using the wrong tool per User:Asclepias

(b) a free licence per User:Natuur12

Commons policy will only accept either PD or free licence (that meets certain criteria, including being irrevocable). If option (a) is true then I think WMF legal could give us some general advice that we can apply to all images. In the absence of better advice, we currently have a reliable source (CC FAQ) that says that this is not true, that applying the PD mark does not change the legal status of the work or affect the creator's rights. If option (b) is acceptable then we'll need to have a community discussion on that specific suggestion. But having a free licence does change the legal status of the work and certainly affects a person’s rights in a work -- because they've given up some rights. So again, we have a reliable source saying that isn't true either. And we'd have the additional problem that this so-called licence claims something (that the image is "free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights") which is patently not true unless you accept option (a). So you'd be asking the community to accept as a licence a text that the creator (CC) doesn't wish to be considered a licence, believes isn't a licence and has written a FAQ advising nobody to use it as such (or as a PD release). So to go against all that is a fair bit of stubborn determination to fight the stated policy/belief/opinion of the organisation who created the bloody thing in the first place. And why? Only because Flickr made a big mistake in their UI to let people pick the wrong option for their photographs. A mistake that is easily rectified by the creator of the image. And longer-term, rectified by Flickr sorting out their UI. -- Colin (talk) 16:42, 1 December 2015 (UTC)'

Hi Colin, my viewpoint is not based upon US law but merely meant as an alternative view knowing it is not well enough motivated or established enough to keep the files under this rational. When I claim that something could work this way under the law of a European country you cannot counter it with stating oh yes but my sources explains it wrong when the source has a viewpoint based upon US law. Not sure if google translate will do any good but I do have a source stating that agreements should not be taken by the letter under Dutch law. I thought that mentioning local case law could be a possible inspiration for exploring new scenario's. When it comes to the meaning of "changing the legal status". I just meant that you don't forfeit any rights by granting some kind of non-exclusive license. You merely give them permission to use it under certain conditions but I guess this is the downside of being a non-native speaker. But I am curious. Would you consider {{Attribution}} to be a free license? I do reject the viewpoint that PD-mark is some kind of PD-release per this. We do have some users that have a legal background. Perhaps we could invite some of those to join the discussion? I did follow some legal courses at my university of applied sciences but those are not related to intellectual property law. I hope this clarrifies my message since you seem to have misunderstood my intentions. Natuur12 (talk) 22:36, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Natuur12, your source seems to cover contract law. I recall from other issues with licences that it is important to note that a licence isn't a contract and so contract law doesn't apply. Some countries have rules that mean that unclear or unfair contracts might be decided in favour of the weaker party who didn't draw up the contract. I'm no lawyer so others might explain that better. It seems similar to your country rules of going by the spirit rather than letter. I believe the distinction is important since a bad licence simply disappears and one is left to fall back on copyright law. With a licence the onus is really on the user to make sure it applies for them. What excuse do we have for not asking the Flickr user to clarify their intentions? Are they dead? Is the account inactive? Are they unable to change the setting? I don't think anything applies other than a "couldn't be bothered". That's a poor reason to bend over backwards in order to accept these images. I don't understand your argument that the user doesn't "forfeit any rights". If you are correct, they clearly have forfeited their right to sue you for using their image without permission.

Wrt the attribution template: we could probably do with improving or culling a few amateur templates. That one could benefit from a clearer statement that it is irrevocable, per the Definition. But it does explicitly state "The copyright holder of this file allows", which is an active grant of permission, so worded like a licence. In contrast the PD mark is completely passive and I would argue that the second sentence "You can .." is merely a logical consequence of the first "This work has been identified as..." But since the first sentence is false, then the consequential sentence cannot be inferred. Both sentences are deliberately passive since it is a "mark" - a statement of belief rather than active - an offer by the copyright holder towards others. -- Colin (talk) 23:14, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

@Colin: A license is a contract in at least one country. (I know it is a blog post but this men is a well known lawyer). I didn't though of forfeiting the right to sue. My bad, overlooked that. I merely meant that (most of) your copyright and moral rights don’t disappear into thin air because you granted a non-exclusive license. It is just that the people who use the file under the license you granted don’t have to obey some of them if the license states they don't have to. Like the right to be attributed. After all, even if I release something under a cc-zero license I can still make a different agreement with another party when I can't release the work in the public domain because of local laws. (They would be nuts to do so but if I understood the license correctly it is technically possible)Bad example, besides the point and only makes the discussion more complex I do agree that we should just ask Flickr users to relicense. Rather a good license than a doubtfull one. But if a license isn't a contract under US law this scenario seems to be moot. (My source states that it is questionable if a license is a contract under US law). Natuur12 (talk) 23:32, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

After doing some more research: rechtsverwerking seems to be an escape under Dutch law. If someone gives you the impression that he/she doesn't enforce some rights it can be considered unreasonable to enforce it. Like placing a file under a PD-mark gives the impression that you are not interested in enforcing your copyright. This could make it unreasonable to sue/start enforcing at a later date. This claim seems to be supported in the book Auteursrecht: auteursrecht, naburige rechten en databankenrecht written by Spoor, Verkade and Visser (2005 edition). who refer to the principles rechtsverwerking and Abuse of rights when someone made the impression that he/she isn't interested in enforcing his/her copyright. Well, this is still not US law but perhaps the judicial estoppel is a similar escape. Perhaps someone familiar with US law wants to comment on this? Or perhaps we can ask legal this question if we dedice to ask them for their viewpoint? Natuur12 (talk) 00:49, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Natuur12, thanks for the research -- this is the sort of contribution that is useful imo rather than just lay editors looking at the text and making guesses about what it might mean (which we can all do, of course, but it is really difficult to reach any conclusion as everyone's opinion is equal and equally weak). It is complex. As you say, in some countries the CC licences might be considered contracts. The CCBY 4.0 legal code even says "To the extent this Public License may be interpreted as a contract...". So CC want the CCBY to act like a licence but if that's not possible then there are contract terms. Similarly the CC0 legal code has a "Public License Fallback" where a very permissive licence is used if the PD grant isn't acceptable. It is all very messy and makes one realise how problematic our homemade licence tags are for any serious organisation to trust. This source is one that states that for a licence (not a contract) then property law applies rather than contract law, and in property law, the law favours the owner of the property if there is any doubt. However, that's an old article and goes on to say that it was contested whether the software licence was in fact a contract. So really, how are any of us mortals supposed to know !!

I think that as long as the Flickr user keeps the PD mark on their image, then it could well be difficult for them to sue anyone. Legal advice may be that they have given the impression that the work could be reused without permission. But legal advice for the re-user would also be that they were stupid to use the work when the terms are unclear. Truly the lawyers would want to bang everyone's heads together when they could so easily have avoided the issue. However, I think there is a problem should the Flickr user change their tag to "All rights reserved" and someone used the work after that date. They may well be able to make a claim that the previous tag was obviously a mistake, that CC FAQ assured them the PD Mark could not affect the legal status of the work or affect their rights, and that the text anyhow made no claim to be perpetual and irrevocable. Indeed, the text makes no explicit offer at all, if one takes the view that it is a passive statement that one fact follows from another fact, and that first "fact" is clearly false. Since we cannot possibly monitor the Flickr page for changes, we need a clear explicit irrevocable licence that meets the Definition, and I don't think the PD mark tag (which has clearly been incorrectly applied) fits that. I mean, we know they chose they wrong licence option. So we're already on shaky ground making any claims about it. -- Colin (talk) 08:29, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Suggest Flickr fix their mess

• I hope you all will join with me in writing to Flickr about this. They need to do better to educate their user about what the licence options mean, and to avoid mistakes. For example, if the image has EXIF data that suggests it was taken by a digital camera/phone (rather than scanned from flim, say) then a big warning should pop up to suggest that the image almost certainly isn't public domain and if you want it to be released into the public domain then CC0 is the way to go. That would be a trivial amount of programming effort on their part. Having read the PD mark faq, I have to say that few people will truly be confident enough to be able to certify a given image really is PD in all jurisdictions, which is what the mark requires, so wonder if Flickr should abandon the tag altogether. Given that Flickr doesn't have anything approaching the review process we have here, I fail to see how selecting that option could be wise for anyone other than a corporate account of some museum who has access to legal advice. -- Colin (talk) 13:18, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

• Colin, I searched the Flickr helps and forums to find anything related to this; but no results. All I saw is their announcement. From Rajiv Vaidyanathan's statement there, I assume only CC can help. So better you write to Diane Peters or Sarah Hinchliff Pearson. Jee 14:45, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Why? CC explain quite well what to use when. The problem is with Flickr's UI both on a per-image basis and also user defaults. They make it too easy to pick PD mark incorrectly. Really, choosing the option the first time should probably pop up a page that explains what you are declaring. Either that you think the image is already PD worldwide (due to age or ineligible) or you are prepared to irrevocably release your own copyright. These are big questions that should require an affirmative step by the user, rather than simply being a change in a drop down option. Once users understand the option, then they could tick the "Don't show this again" box perhaps. Also Flickr can easily detect that an image is almost certainly not already-PD, because it is a modern photo based on EXIF. These things are Flickr's responsibility. Possibly CC could have a word with Flickr and help point out that so many of their users are making mistakes and how unhelpful this is, but CC can't change Flickr's software. Is there something CC should do to clarify their existing FAQs on this? Unlike some of the other CC FAQ entries, these ones seem fairly clear. -- Colin (talk) 15:48, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

No; Flicker is acting on the advise of CC, especially the counsel team. "We’d like to give special thanks to Ryan Merkley and the Creative Commons team for their counsel and advice through this process." So they need to re advise Flickr further, if there is any unforeseen mistakes. I think Flickr need not enable this license option for general users. It may only suitable for institutions participating under Flickr, The Commons. Jee 16:00, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Restricting this option so that amateurs can't select it is certainly one option. Perhaps someone can produce stats on how many Flickr users have correctly applied this tag. Ultimately, what options that Flickr offer to their users is their choice, and communities don't often like having options taken away from them. -- Colin (talk) 18:12, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

What to do now?

Hi, I agree with Colin above that professional opinion is better than amateur advice. So writing to legal is a sensible thing to do. Meanwhile, I suggest we do the following below. Regards, Yann (talk) 20:40, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

1. Stop uploading any image with PDM from Flickr.
2. Put on hold on deletion request for that reason until we get an anwser from legal (or Flickr, or any other expert).

The second suggestion goes against all COM:PRP there is. We need to delete them, and when we have clear evidence that it is ok, we cna undelete them. As Wikipedia says, we have no deadline (but copyright law does). Josve05a (talk) 09:23, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure it is a classic PRP otherwise we wouldn't be so divided on what to do. There are differences of opinion about how to interpret the legal status of the images. But I do think that those who regard PD mark as a legally valid release into PD or a legally valid free licence [in the jurisdictions that matter to Commons] are engaging in little more than wishful thinking. But perhaps I'm wrong. I also think that the argument that what the Flickr user did makes it hard for them to sue is similar to the first PRP example. But I also think the majority of Flickr users mistakenly tagging their images with PD mark really did intend to release them into PD and would consider using CC0 if educated about this + motivated to change it. In contrast, many of the PRP examples are immoral -- trying to take advantage of someone else's mistake or weakness in order to acquire their images -- or ignorant about how copyright works. Josve05a, I don't think you've established a community consensus to delete the images yet, though the argument for a moratorium on uploads (particularly via tools) is much stronger IMO. Have you asked WMF legal about this? If several of us write, it may help. This has been going on since April and the community is no closer to consensus. -- Colin (talk) 10:08, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

I think this is the definition of the PRP-deletion rationale "unclear copyright status", and should therefore be deleted until the "unclarity" has been resolved. Josve05a (talk) 10:13, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

I did write an email to a WMF-person, and CC:d legal, and asked for a public comment. Nothing yet. Josve05a (talk) 10:18, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

We could create some kind of standard license appeal letter specially for PD-mark files. Natuur12 (talk) 21:41, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea. And for files which are deleted, we could perhaps crreate a monitor-bot/project and check if any files on FLickr changes license and undelete those which has already been deleted. Feel free to start such letter. Josve05a (talk) 22:08, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

I sent a mail to Diane Peters; but no replies. Hope they noticed the importance of this issue. Jee 03:06, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Response from WMF Legal

Hi everyone. Before I start, the standard legal disclaimer that this is not legal advice, only the Foundation's perspective on the issue.

That said, it's true that public domain can be difficult because the only way to prove something is PD is to prove the absence of any rights over it. CC0 is a license that tries to do this and has some fallback language, but there are a great many PD images that aren't made PD by CC0 or an equivalent and are simply PD for one reason or another such as age. Whenever someone uploads an image like that anywhere, they're making a good faith statement that they believe the image to be PD. And from WMF's perspective, that's fine. We're okay with hosting public domain images that people have said in good faith are in the public domain. If a mistake is discovered for a particular image, that image can be removed. And of course, if someone is intentionally mislabeling copyrighted images, that would be a problem we'd have to deal with when we found out about it. But in general, we're okay with hosting photos that people believe to be in the public domain and have marked as such as long as it's not obviously wrong for an individual photo. If you all want to set a stricter policy on Commons, you're always free to do so, and it's great if we're able to improve the information that comes from Flickr or anyone else about their photos. But from our side, we're fine having all these images while you decide how you want to sort things out. --Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Just for inqury, if someone changed their 'license' from PDM to ARR on Flickr and sent a DMCA-takedown notice to WMF, would the WMF comply? Is that because we do not have any standing when it comes to that this assumtion that they are PD is neither backed up by case law, Creative Commons, nor that it doesn't say that it is non-revoable. Josve05a (talk) 22:00, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Great question, if I change the 'license' from PDM to ARR and sent a DMCA-takedown notice to WMF, would the WMF comply? --WPPilot (talk) 16:11, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

WMF certainly should comply. There is nothing in the PDM label that makes it irrevocable, so if the copyright holder changes it, there is nothing WMF can do but comply. That's why I strongly oppose accepting PDM labelled images. 95% of them will be fine, but a fraction will be put on by photographers who will want to change them later, which is both a nuisance and a legal exposure for WMF and all of our outside users. .     Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 22:30, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

This is more of a matter of rational reasoning than a legal issue. If I said something, and somebody quoted it, can I sue him for that? Not possible. We're only quoting what that user said in Flickr. As far as the copyright-holder of that work is the same Flickr user at the time of that statement made, he can't sue us.

There is indeed a confusion in that statement. It doesn't say the work displayed there is/was "own work" of them earlier. Flickr guidelines (point #2) gives us some assurance; but this PDM mark adds some confusion. Earlier, we can safely believe all works in Flickr other than in commons are "own works". I think they need to update their "community guidelines" too to reflect this change. Jee 02:37, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

What now?

I see that User:Josve05a lists files with CC's PD mark as having no licence (Special:Diff/180625555) while User:Fæ removes the tag (Special:Diff/180626730). User:Pokéfan95 changed the tag to CC-zero (Special:Diff/181154568), which seems to be the result of a request for a {{Flickr-change-of-license}} by Fæ, as I see that he has posted comments on the file information page on Flickr. In another case (Special:Diff/181479375), User:Magog the Ogre changed the copyright tag to {{PD-author}}, which seems incorrect as the Flickr user hasn't agreed to the {{PD-author}} template's fallback licence.

Under Swedish law, I think that it is unclear how a court would rule. If it is obvious that the Flickr user meant to license something, then the court would probably rule that the author has licensed something, but how would the court establish if it is obvious that something has been licensed, and what are the licensing terms?

Since Josve05a seems to have an opinion about the PD mark, let's take a look at a somewhat similar problem in one of his uploads. File:Kungslena kyrka2.jpg has a statement saying that that 'I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide.' It also says that 'I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.' So Josve05a licensed 'this work' under the {{PD-self}} licence. But what exactly is 'this work', I wonder? I see two things:

• sv:Kungslena kyrka, an architectural work. OK, so this is a work, but is it 'this work'? It seems that the church is from the 12th century, so User:Josve05a can impossibly be the author of the church. The church is obviously not 'this work'.
• A photograph, taken by Josve05a. A photograph is not a work under Swedish law. Photos typically fall under a different part of the copyright law and are normally referred to as photographic images. If we use the information from the PD mark problem, a corollary is that a licence for 'this work' only covers something which is legally defined as a 'work' in the copyright law. As the photograph is not a work, the photograph can't be what Josve05a denotes 'this work'. Accordingly, the file should be tagged with {{subst:nsd}} as there is no licence for the photograph, only for some unspotted 'this work'.

Someone might note that creativecommonswiki:PDM FAQ states that Creative Commons thinks that a file's copyright status doesn't change when the public domain mark is added to a file and counter with saying that there is no one suggesting that photos are unlicensed if you mark it with 'PD-self'. Unfortunately, this is precisely what Creative Commons states at creativecommonswiki:4.0/Sui generis database rights. The Swedish right to photographic images (created in 1919) contains exactly the same problem as the Swedish right to databases (created in 1961). If Creative Commons thinks that Creative Commons 3.0 and below don't cover databases (thus making it impossible to license, for example, maps and phone directories), then it is also impossible to license photographs. The fix in Creative Commons 4.0 appears to be a change of the word 'work' into the word 'material' at several places in the licences. CC Zero also uses the word 'material', if I remember correctly.

Is the outcome therefore that all Swedish (or possibly Nordic) photographs licensed under CC-BY or CC-BY-SA with version number less than 4.0 are to be tagged as having 'no licence'? This seems to be the natural corollary of the public domain mark discussion. The 'no licence' tag would also be added to Swedish photographs licensed under a number of other licences, such as PD-self, or any GNU licence.

I note that the message from WMF Legal essentially says that files which are in the public domain are fine, without providing any actual advice on whether we should accept these Flickr files as 'public domain' files or not. --Stefan2 (talk) 01:33, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Problems in new file version

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T119038

A few hours ago I loaded a new version in this file. However, the file page continues to exhibit the original version in some computers with diferent browsers, even though I have emptied the cache in these cases. What happens and how to fix? --HVL talk 10:55, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

It has been happening to me a lot these last few days. I guess that the WMF people are working on something more important than smooth background operation, like finding even more preposterous ways of squandering all the donated money. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 13:29, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

In all fairness, it looks in Phabricator like people are trying to fix it, but having trouble because the cause is not obvious. - Jmabel ! talk 16:42, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

I have the same problem, the problem is already two days in this file and this file. Wikipedia and sometimes file page on Wikimedia continues to exhibit the original version. I don't know what to do. --Jan CZ (talk) 18:23, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Tuválkin, have you evidence for your accusations? You're talking nonsense honestly - the WMF *is* working on it, and they have already reverted some changes that could be the cause of this issue. Southparkfan 19:19, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Do I have evidence that the WMF management completely lost sight of the goals that make us work? Sure I have, every day a basketful… Why?, you cannot see it? -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 00:59, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

If you go to the direct link to the file, add ?<random number here> to the end of the url, go to that url, and then go to the image description page, and add ?action=purge to the end of the image description page's url, sometimes that will fix the file. If you want to report a particular file is broken, please include which size is broken (Also note, whether or not the file appears broken, may depend on your geographic location, and if you have a high-dpi browser). Bawolff (talk) 19:47, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Tried it for this one and didn’t work, sorry. The error is in the full size image (which is only 688×389 px) — the 120×68 px thumbnail in the file history updated immediately after upload. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 03:02, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Is this still happening? I tried today, and the correct version of https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/CCFL173%28set2011%29.jpg seems to be returned from all 4 of Wikimedia's caching data centres. Bawolff (talk) 20:21, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

If you monitor User:SteinsplitterBot/Recently overwritten files you'll find a mix of updating images like this and non-updating ones like this. The latter was overwritten with a copyvio which has been deleted but still shows. AFAIR the copyvio also had an exact duplicate upload which was deleted as well.--Denniss (talk) 23:40, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

File:Jennifer Winget at the launch of Watch Time's magazine 11.jpg at 388px was returning the wrong version in my testing for requests routed through the esams (europe) data center. That particular thumbnail should be fixed now. Bawolff (talk) 20:21, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Bump to prevent archiving, issue still present in multiple files. If this issue is finally fixed (and confirmed to be so) it may requie purging of thumbs if those were changed during the last month. --Denniss (talk) 14:43, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

I believe there is a hard limit of max 30 day cache, so after a month thumbs will fix themselves (Obviously, that doesn't make this issue ok, just stating for reference). Bawolff (talk) 21:53, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

---

Operations has reverted things to the way they were previously. Its unclear if that will fix things. If you encounter any new examples please say so. Bawolff (talk) 21:53, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

November 29

Add EXIF date

Hi all, there are many thousand images that have a {{Information}} template with an empty date parameter. However, several of them have a date in the EXIF metadata. After a test run made by ArndBot i saw that the majority of EXIF dates is plausible. However, RP88 found this case where the EXIF date is not correct since they do not belong to the first uploaded file but for a modified version. To minimized such cases i would suggest to check if the EXIF date is before the date of the first upload of the file. Furthermore, i would also suggest to use {{According to EXIF data}} to make clear where the date comes from. Before doing a full run, i ask for comments and maybe later for permission to do this task for all files. --Arnd (talk) 13:37, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Maybe you can check for editing software in the exif ("photoshop") and exclude these? Basvb (talk) 14:06, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Checking for signs of editing software is a good idea. Skipping files with "Photoshop", "Picasa", etc. in Exif fields like "Creator Tool", "History Software Agent", "Creator", "Software", etc. would help to reduce the amount of noisy data. —RP88 (talk) 14:44, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, is there a source i can create such a blacklist from? --Arnd (talk) 16:31, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Do these programs actually change the original time stamp from the camera ("Date and time of data generation", I guess)? Neither Rawtherapee nor Lightzone seem to do that. You could also look out for timestamps from GPS devices, which should have the most accurate time. → Example file with GPS data and time in the EXIF (here the times are all identical because I set my camera to update its internal clock from the hot-shoe mounted GPS-device). --El Grafo (talk) 17:08, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

No, image editors typically do not change the original time stamps from a camera (although they may add an additional date). However, they frequently add a time stamp to files that originally had no time stamp. So, for example, you'll often see older PD-Art files on Commons that are edited scans of very old paintings, but with a recent Exif date added by an image editor. Typically you wouldn't want to add one of these recent dates (even with {{According to EXIF data}}) to an image of an 18th century painting that lacks a date in its information box. —RP88 (talk) 17:26, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

In some cases, {{Before}} may be more appropriate. For example, if someone made a panorama with Hugin, it definitely creates a new timestamp. - Jmabel ! talk 18:01, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Actually, for all images without any serious hint about the creation date we could assume "before upload date". However, for now the most practical starting point would be to only add EXIF when it is not connected to a software like photoshop etc. About other files we may think about later. --Arnd (talk) 14:15, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Instead of creating a blacklist of image editors, maybe just checking for the existence of Exif fields typically set by image editors, irrespective of their value, might a good way to go? While undoubtedly there will be some false negatives, in my opinion that is preferable to false positives (and easy to fix later with a second, smarter, pass). The bot could even record the Exif values it finds in these fields of the files it skips, which could then be reviewed by a human to create smarter rules (maybe rules for a whitelist instead of a blackist?). —RP88 (talk) 12:49, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

But what are typical fields for such editors? And isn't that again a blacklist? In any case i agree with this suggestion. Do we use {{According to EXIF data}} then? --Arnd (talk) 15:04, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Arnd, I don't know what are the typical fields, you might have to examine the Exif of some known edited files to get a good idea. And yes, this would also be a blacklist. The idea would be that a pass with a bot using a very aggressive blacklist that recorded the Exif values it skipped, might allow you to, after human review of the results, create a smarter whitelist that did not skip as many files. You might also consider looking for the presence of certain categories that would suggest you should skip adding a date from Exif. For example, I'd definitely skip adding a date from Exif on any file that is categorized into Category:Public domain due to copyright expiration (or any one of its many subcategories) or Category:PD Art (or any one of its many subcategories as well). —RP88 (talk) 17:39, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

November 30

Deleting unused logos

What about deleting all unused files in Category:Unidentified logos? IMHO the precautionary principle demands this.--Kopiersperre (talk) 14:39, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Many of them are out of Commons:Project scope. Trivial ones may be already converted to SVG or should be in SVG if notable. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:20, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Many of these could easily be identified if someone puts in a little work. I immediately see things like TV stations and well-known websites. - Jmabel ! talk 17:01, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

I would agree with the deletion (except for a few with OTRS permission) for those with an own work claim. If there's an own work claim the logos fall into one of two categories: Either it is truly own work, and they are likely out of scope (as they are unused). Or they are not own work and their attribution is incorrect, some might be below the COM:TOO some might be above. However for those below we still have improper attribution. For all the logos which would be in scope and below the TOO it is very easy to reupload them (they can easily be picked from a company's website) with proper attribution when somebody wants to use them (this is easier than finding them in our lost logos categories). For this reason I think it would be good to delete unused logos with an own work claim. Which I believe is the bulk of the logos. Also don't forget about the Category:Logos, and the uncategorised ones (I can move these into unidentified logos with some easy searches and cat-a-lot). Basvb (talk) 17:56, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Some people have a different understanding of "own work". If they vectorized a raster image, then the vectorization is their own work, even though the image as a whole is derivative of a previous image under copyright law. Also, for some open-source software project logos, the uploader might in fact be the author... AnonMoos (talk) 17:14, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Vectorised logos may need permission both from the logo designer and from the person who created the vectorised version. Unfortunately, many SVG logos are uploaded as {{PD-textlogo}} although it may be necessary to obtain a licence from the person who wrote the SVG code (often the original uploader). It is not difficult to find copyright violations in Category:Logos and Category:Unidentified logos, and I assume that many logos in both categories are out of scope. --Stefan2 (talk) 01:51, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata & links

Wikipedia <-> Wikidata <-> Commons interwiki links

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3388921 correctly shows Category:Pioneer Square, Seattle, Washington as its Commons Category, but on that category page there are no links to the corresponding articles in the various language Wikipedias. What's missing? - Jmabel ! talk 21:34, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Just add the missing information. Wikidata filling is not totally automated (some bots do the work, but humans can also add information). --Amitie 10g (talk) 22:07, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

The problem is that Wikidata has two ways of linking to Commons. In the example above you have it at the properties, which is fine for infoboxes but doesn't works with Interwiki links for articles. For that you have to use the function "other sites" at the right on the Wikidata page. A link to the commons category there, will connect it with the articles. For instance, I have just created https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21683522 for the street Rigensgade in Copenhagen, which links to Category:Rigensgade in both ways. It should give you an idea about how it works. --Dannebrog Spy (talk) 22:59, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Very counterintuitive. - Jmabel ! talk

Wikidata and Commons is currently an utter mess. Mostly down to the fact that an RFC on Wikidata came to a useful conclusion two years ago: Basically, the ability to link multiple pages per project to a Wikidata item. So you could link both Wikipedia articles and categories as well as Commons galleries and categories to the same item. Unfortunately the conclusion of that RFC would require software changes. And you know about Wikimedia's development priorities ... --Sebari (talk) 03:24, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Dannebrog Spy and Jmabel you can not add cross namespace interwiki links and hope that they will stay. Current policy is that galleries link to articles and categories link to categories, please see the diagram. If you want your regular links from commons category to wikipedia article (as I usually like them) than you still have to do it the old fashion way and add the links to wikitext at commons category. Hopefully we will be able to fix this situation once wikidata team roll out "random access" feature to Commons. Please see the discussion above. --Jarekt (talk) 03:48, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

So is there at least a tool that will sanely generate such text from wikidata? - Jmabel ! talk 03:57, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I found such a tool before but lost it and did not feel like looking for it again. What I have been doing for a while now was to just add a single link to one of the major wikipedia, than I can always find the rest of the links. --Jarekt (talk) 04:07, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

see Commons:Village pump/Archive/2015/02#Wikidata policy regarding Commons categories. Seems that nothing new since. -- Geagea (talk) 05:17, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

@Jarekt: As indicated above in the the discussion that you linked to, there are now over a quarter of a million "cross-namespace" sitelinks, up from just 100,000 a mere 15 months ago; so I am not sure that anybody on Wikidata seems to be actively reverting them any more, plus a lot of people have questioned whether the discussion that supposedly set the policy actually has much authority or validity, in particular given that a) Commons wasn't consulted about it; and b) the whole process seems to have been very confused and contradictory.

The "cross-namespace" sitelinks don't appear to do any apparent harm, except from blocking sitelinks between a Commons category and Wikipedia categories when sitelinks have instead been chosen to be to/from Wikipedia articles -- which is probably a set of positives and negatives that Commons people are better placed to weigh up and come to a case-by-case choice about, rather than Wikidata people.

In particular, there seems to be no longer any long-term appetite to create a mass of additional category-type items to exist alongside existing article-type items, just for Commons categories to link to. So if there is already an obvious Wikidata article-type item to link to, and no Wikidata category-type item, I see very little harm in going ahead and sitelinking to the article-type item. It's what everybody else is doing; and the important thing (IMO) is to make some connection of whatever kind, that can then be picked up and also turned into a P373. Jheald (talk) 16:06, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

My information might be stale. I just remember that in the discussions where different options were argued the winning argument was that wikidata is mostly a database and databases rely on being predictable. So when I am querying properties of some item on database I know what it is going to be. What we do not want is logic that checks some property and if it is not set or is not correctly set than check some other property. That makes databases much harder to use and templates using them much less dependable. But it seems like someone lost this argument. --Jarekt (talk) 16:33, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

@Jarekt: I do have some sympathy with that view -- indeed if you look at Commons:Structured_data/Short_introduction_to_Wikidata#Commons-Wikidata_sitelinks, particularly the last couple of sentences, I did try to put it over as strongly as I could.

However, in reality, I think the "unpredictability" case is probably overdone. In particular:

• for arbitrary-access templates on Commons, the "logic that has to check whether some property is set or not" is likely to be to look at whether the sitelinked item has a property P301 (category's main topic) set, and if so then for the template to get its information from the item the P301 points to, rather than the item sitelinked. This will be needed if a Commons category is sitelinked to a Wikidata category. But if the Commonscat is sitelinked to a Wikidata item, most of the time in fact that will probably make most things easier, by making the above indirection unnecessary. However, in any case, a lot of the time templates on Commons will be likely to have a Q-number given expressly as a parameter to indicate where they should pull their information from, rather than relying on sitelinks to navigate to the right place.
• for queries on Wikidata, eg in SPARQL, queries using P373 actually run more efficiently, so as long as there as P373s in place (which it is easy enough to keep up to date), on the Wikidata side I am not sure that it matters very much where the sitelinks go. (One set of exceptions to this are Magnus's Autolist tools, which use sitelinks to usefully translate pages, eg from a category tree, to corresponding Q-numbers. It would be quite nice if variants of such tools existed that could use P373 instead).

The reality, though, I think, is that if there ever was such a policy, there seems to be no great will to its enforcement. (And the developers have so far stayed well away from what they probably see as a content issue). When three months ago I posted a similar set of numbers to the above at Wikidata's Project Chat page (and also to the mailing list), highlighting the number of cross-namespace links, and asking whether some action should be taken about them, the response was a resounding "Meh", and indeed in the mailing list thread some Commons users questioned me quite sharply for suggesting guidance against cross-namespace links even validly existed.

Also, as I wrote above, there seems to be no current great wish to see a mass of Wikidata category items created, in parallel to Wikidata article items, simply so that Commons links can go category-category.

The majority preference of Commons users seems to be to create Commons category <-> Wikidata article links: that is certainly the most common type of link that has been created in the last 12 months. There may be some users on Wikidata who will occasionally revert such sitelinks. But for the most part, it seems to me that any guidance there might or might not at one point have been against such links seems now to have become pretty much inoperative. Jheald (talk) 18:26, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I think you are right and the result of the Commons links RFC hasn't been implemented or enforced, so far. There is also Category commons P373 and "Other sites" RFC open at present. --ghouston (talk) 06:18, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

December 08

Is there a list of Wikimedia photography competitions and prizes？

Hi

Is there a central list of all the various photography (and possibly other kinds of content) competitions and prizes somewhere? I'm thinking about things like Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Monuments, Picture of the Year etc. It would be useful to have a central list for people interested in entering photography competitions and for those looking for high quality images on a specific subject.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 16:04, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

The Caption Challenge

OK People This weeks caption challange is up at: Commons:Silly things#Week Ending (Sunday December 13th 2015)

Please feel free to participate. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:56, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

To help someone is not the meaningless. For example in education? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.59.123.31 (talk • contribs)

• ...and...? - Jmabel ! talk 21:45, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

December 09

request by HMFS

I would like to delete three image files, for which I own the copyright.

• File:Aparados_da_Serra_em_Praia_Grande,_SC.jpg
• File:Vale_de_Araucarias_em_São_Joaquim.jpg
• File:Rio_Pelotas.jpg

I know there are the CC licenses, but I wish to have these removed. They were uploaded without my consent, by a family member. Could you please help me do this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by HMFS (talk • contribs)

See related DRs:

• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Aparados da Serra em Praia Grande, SC.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Vale de Araucarias em São Joaquim.jpg
• Commons:Deletion requests/File:Rio Pelotas.jpg. Yann (talk) 11:44, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

The files were uploaded by user:HMFS. You edit while signed into the same account. That is confusing since to us it look like a one person. Are you saying that a family member uploaded them while logged in as user:HMFS and now you, the real photographer using the same account want them removed? Usually we do not automatically grant requests when people change their minds, see Commons:License revocation, but we also make exceptions in special cases. --Jarekt (talk) 13:55, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Folk logo contest

Hello, continuing preparations for Wiki Loves Folk, we propose a contest for choosing the logo; the dates for submitting proposals are between December 10, 2015 and January 31, 2016, and the voting period between February 1 and February 10, 2016. More information and rules on this page. Regards. --Rodelar (talk) 12:18, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Attract content creators on Pintrest to contribute to Commons

Hi folks, I've been reviewing a old proposal on IdeaLab to attract Pintrest contributors to Wikimedia projects, in particular Commons. An older version of the idea can be found here, with the understanding that a newer proposal would focus specifically on Step 3 under the activities. The idea creator, Hahahammond, is interested in applying for a WMF grant, and is seeking someone active on Commons who can help her navigate through best practices when it comes to submitting content on Commons and developing appropriate messaging given that the target audience would come from a space operating under very different rules around uploading content. Feel free to get in touch with me or Hahahammond if you're interested. Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 18:09, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

@I JethroBT (WMF): imho $20,000 is too much for this project. And a grantee with only 91 edits and a dev with 6 edits. --Steinsplitter (talk) 18:17, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

@Steinsplitter: Agreed; this was an older proposal and only part of it is relevant for a future proposal. Steps #1 and #2 would likely be cut from any a future proposal, so the amount requested is likely to be drastically less. As with all grant proposals, the review process will also take into account the background and experience of those involved. I'm simply inviting contributors here to check out the proposal and see if they are interested in getting involved so that the project could be more viable. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

To be sure: derivative work

Hello,
just to be sure: I just added several images which are croped out from an existing file (which itself is under CC from its authors).
Can you just confirm me that the way I fill data while importing (using import wizard) is the right way? Please check my contributions today here. My goal is to improve that kind of process (which is the most common I perform).

Thanks. Regards, Hexasoft (talk) 18:36, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

• Convenience links for a few examples of the pages Hexasoft is presumably talking about: File:Strongylocentrotus purpuratus.png, File:Mespilia globulus.png, File:Eucidaris metularia.png. - Jmabel ! talk 18:52, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. It is relevant examples :) Hexasoft (talk) 20:10, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

I have two suggestions. First, rather than using "Derivative work from", use {{Derived from}}, which will internationalize the text. Second, either add {{Derivative versions}} to the other_versions field in the {{Information}} infobox of the source file (if you are making complex edits to the original) or, if you are mostly just cropping, consider instead adding {{Extracted from}} to the other_versions field in the {{Information}} infobox of the new derivative file and using {{Image extracted}} in in the other_versions field of the source file. —RP88 (talk) 21:37, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

December 10

wikiradio

Hello! Listening several audio files in Commons is exhausting. You need to click on "play" button one after another. That is why I launched this tool: a wikiradio. It is not really a radio streaming, but a synchronized (with UTC time) set of tracks, so all listeners hear the same snippet at the same time, simulating a radio.

Some ideas for channels include the spoken Wikipedia audios, music by genre and topics like ambient audio. But we can do it better. Hourly, a signal is heard to warn about o'clock hours, like a real radio :p. Even better we could add a "You are listening wikiradio, the free radio" spoken message every half hour, and other stuff.

Finally, the main channel could use music to fill the gaps of a daily radio programming based on Wikimania conferences, wiki podcasts, etc. So, what do you think? Your help is welcome, picking new tracks for any channel or suggesting your ideas. Thanks. (Code is here) --emijrp (talk) 11:47, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I like it! -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 16:36, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Ideed, very nice. I wonder how do you select files to play? Regards, Yann (talk) 17:51, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

They are added to the tracks-*.js files, as an array. Example for English channel. The format is: track name, track file, md5, length in seconds. I am not sure if you prefer to send suggestions to GitHub (pull&request) or create a coordination page here in Commons. emijrp (talk) 14:16, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

@Emijrp: Excellent, I remember talk about this in Wikiencuentro Venezuela 2010. Very nice work. I have severals ideas, we could make the programation a open process, the community could let a program already saved. Extenses files should be avoided, My recommendation to create a tool to make the process of creating radio programming, dynamically, and it is the community who take care of the matter. Please involve me in this project.--The Photographer (talk) 14:22, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

@The Photographer: I think we should open a coordination page. Here? In meta? emijrp (talk) 13:44, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

@Emijrp: IMHO meta is the right place and yes, you're welcome --The Photographer (talk) 16:28, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

@The Photographer: Done! meta:Wikiradio (tool). emijrp (talk) 15:22, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I missed that. Since the files are hosted on Commons, I think it would much easier to have the coordination page here. I suggest Commons:Wikiradio, and [[Commons:Wikiradio/<channel>]]. And yes, as The Photographer said, this could be managed by the community, as the PotD and MotD are done. Regards, Yann (talk) 11:12, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

@Emijrp: ^ Yann (talk) 08:24, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Mass description edit

Hi,

is there any gadget for mass changes of a file description, like Cat-a-lot for categories?--Art Jarka (talk) 10:20, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes: VisualFileChange.js can perform batch tasks on lots of images (from one user or category). Basvb (talk) 10:33, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

How is called the Gadget?--Art Jarka (talk) 08:44, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

No gadget in the sense, that you can activate it in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, see Help:VisualFileChange.js. --Speravir (Talk) 17:55, 11 December 2015 (UTC) (Pro tip: I found this by using the internal search form provided on every page.)

Is there a way of finding all the red category links within a category and it's subcategory on Commons?

Hi all

Is there a way of finding all the red category links within a category and it's subcategory on Commons?

Thanks John Cummings (talk) 10:36, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

• That's a bit ambiguous. Could you give an example of a specific category and the return you would want? - Jmabel ! talk 16:53, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Probably wants to find those images in a category which are also categorized into non-existent categories on their description pages. AnonMoos (talk) 07:14, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, this is exactly right, thanks AnonMoos. It would be very helpful for doing after mass upload cleaning up of categorisation e.g US vs UK spelling, typos etc. John Cummings (talk) 21:06, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

December 11

Help with some file cleanup / copyvio detection

There are around 500 photos in Category:Mattbuck's temporary category which need to be gone through for potential copyvios. These are all from a flickr stream by Leonard Bentley, who seems to take old postcards and photos and scan them, then upload under a free licence. Some are probably PD-old, but certainly far from all. Some are legitimately own work, but again, far from all. Any help is appreciated. Please remove images from the category once they've been looked at. -mattbuck (Talk) 22:34, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

December 12

Deleting file history and changing file content when using Dememorixer

I'm a somewhat astonished about the lack of respect for the work of others, when using the tool Dememorixer. I uploaded a PNG file which I had edited. Without any form of communication or consultation it was deleted and replaced by a JPG file that wasn't edited as specified by myself. All file history was lost and the results of my decisions too. Only thing that remaines is my descriptions written in several languages. I think it's unacceptable if on the one hand you should respect the work by others, but when using Dememorixer this rule suddenly doesn't appear to apply. I can not link to the original files since they where deleted, so here are the new files: File:Johan Sippo van Harinxma Thoe Slooten (1848-1904), burgemeester van Den Haag 1898-1904.jpg and File:1767, Adriaan van der Goes (1722-1797), Burgemeester van Den Haag.jpg
--OSeveno (talk) 19:08, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

(Convenience links: logs for the deleted files [11] and [12]. -- Asclepias (talk) 19:33, 6 December 2015 (UTC))

• Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks to me as if the descriptions there are simple enough to be below the level of being copyrightable. If that were not the case then, yes, there would probably be a need to merge the histories or some such to preserve authorship information. Can you point at anything there that is copyrightable content? Certainly the fact that someone was mayor of a particular city and when he was born is not copyrightable. - Jmabel ! talk 05:02, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

• Read COM:Dupe: it begins by saying "If the file is the same file type..." Anyone who's been here long enough to become an administrator knows that JPG and PNG are not the same file format and that the black background of File:Johan Sippo van Harinxma Thoe Slooten (1848-1904), burgemeester van Den Haag 1898-1904.jpg is not the same as the transparent background of File:Johan Sippo van Harinxma Thoe Slooten (1848-1904), burgemeester van Den Haag 1898-1904.png. Under no circumstance should these two have been deleted as duplicates; they're different enough that deletion would require unrelated problems (e.g. copyvio, which of course they're not) or a deletion request. Nyttend (talk) 03:35, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
  • I wasn't really commenting on the issue of whether they should have been deleted, just on the claim of OSeveno's copyrights having been violated. I don't see where OSeveno had any copyrightable content involved. - Jmabel ! talk 17:48, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

I am not concerned about my possible copyright, since I didn't claim any, purposely. I did not apply CC-BY to the original files, since I believed my editing of the files didn't add originality. It's more like the thought behind PD-scan|PD-old-auto-1923 :

This tag is designed for use where there may be a need to assert that any enhancements (eg brightness, contrast, colour-matching, sharpening) are in themselves insufficiently creative to generate a new copyright. It can be used where it is unknown whether any enhancements have been made, as well as when the enhancements are clear but insufficient.

Also I wasn't talking about copyright to the descriptions, I merely mentioned that because I wasn't convinced someone might not contest that I am the uploader of the original files. It's a matter of proof, not copyright. Please understand, this is my first encounter with a deletion connected to usage of Dememorixer. My point though lies in the aspect of respecting the efforts of others, nothing more, nothing less. And I am trying to do this in a constructive way. In my contributions for Wikipedia and Commons Wikimedia I always try to consider that behind any edit lies an individual person, weather he or she claims any rights to it or not, including whoever applied Dememorixer to the files I uploaded. We're a large community and only with respect it can last a long time. My concern with the files deleted is that I edited them for a reason, and because of the deletion and replacement they are now used in unedited state on Wikipedia. (so in public view) I do not even know weather I am still considered the original uploader and therefor am entitled to restore the original edits to the newly uploaded JPG's. Also, like Nyttend explained correctly:

"JPG and PNG are not the same file format and that the black background of File:Johan Sippo van Harinxma Thoe Slooten (1848-1904), burgemeester van Den Haag 1898-1904.jpg is not the same as the transparent background of File:Johan Sippo van Harinxma Thoe Slooten (1848-1904), burgemeester van Den Haag 1898-1904.png. Under no circumstance should these two have been deleted as duplicates; they're different enough that deletion would require unrelated problems (e.g. copyvio, which of course they're not) or a deletion request."

In stead of demanding the original files should be restored, of which I feel I am entitled to do, I am asking clarification (for the questions I asked) and a solution for the future. Since I believe scripts or templates are being applied in the process of Dememorixer, it might be possible to add a feature where the original uploader would be informed. Ofcourse this would be most necessary when the original files: a) are a different file format and/or b) the original file was edited. --OSeveno (talk) 16:48, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Corsham-middlewick-house-1907 57816.jpg

A while ago, I uploaded File:Corsham-middlewick-house-1907 57816.jpg, thinking it was by Francis Frith (died 1898), and so out of copyright. I was mistaken, as it was taken in 1907, after Frith's death, so I tagged it for speedy deletion. Another editor, User:Amitie 10g, has removed my tag, replacing it with a deletion nomination, and then "voting" keep, claiming it - with no rationale - to be "PD anyway". Is that allowable? Andy Mabbett (talk) 16:39, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

• Yes, and even, the picture does not meet the Criteria for Speedy deletion; the Freedom of Panorama cases should be addressed via normal DRs. But, The UK has FOP for buildings, so the only authorship applicable is to the photographer.

• Who is the actual photographer? The photographer obviously is not Francis Frith, but the copyright holder is Francis Frith Collection so the picture was taken by another person, or effectively taken by Frith and published in 1907. Then,

• If the photographer is known, What is the date of death of the author? If died before 1945, the picture is in the PD.
• If the photographer is unknown, it is already in the PD due it was taken/published before 1945.

And finally, remember that the scans of photographs already in the PD does not give new copyright. --Amitie 10g (talk) 18:22, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

This is not a FoP issue. There is no evidence that the picture is PD. Andy Mabbett (talk) 21:13, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

• (Edit conflict) It is allowable, even desirable, that the exact copyright status of the photo is ascertained. I think we all agree that it should be kept if indeed in public domanin, and deleted if not. But a DR is the best way to give the community time to find it out — discussion page is here: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Corsham-middlewick-house-1907 57816.jpg. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 18:31, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

We should not be speculatively keeping images when there is no evidence and no argument that they are PD. Andy Mabbett (talk) 21:13, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

• There is a good chance that it is in the public domain, so a speedy deletion is not appropriate here. Yann (talk) 21:24, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
• Andy, a DR is always a good idea, even in open-and-shut cases. With an archived discussion its conclusion can be refered to — for either confirmation or challenge, and also, there’s something called Category:Undelete in 2076 (or whichever date), which is appended to DR pages, not (only) to deleted filepages. Being a non-admin as myself, unable to snoop on deleted content, you surely appreciate the value of archived, consultable deletion requests’ discussion pages. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 22:07, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

• Hm, guys — you want to be discussing this on the DR page instead: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Corsham-middlewick-house-1907 57816.jpg. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 22:02, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

So apparently any picture taken in or before 1907 is now fair game, so long as nobody bothers to find out who the photographer is. Andy Mabbett (talk) 16:25, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Images on page

How to count images on page? Thx.--Juandev (talk) 17:42, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

In what context? For Wikipedia pages, you can go to "Edit source" mode, use your browser's Ctrl+F to find "[[File:" and if it's clever enough it will give you the amount of occurrences. If not, you can copy the page's source to an external program like Word (or a text editor like Gedit, not sure if Windows' Notepad can count occurrences) and do Ctrl+F there. --BurritoBazooka (talk) 18:50, 12 December 2015 (UTC) PS: Forgot to ping. @Juandev: --BurritoBazooka (talk) 18:50, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

And for categories: http://i.imgur.com/GG0hFnR.png --BurritoBazooka (talk) 18:55, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

If this is about programming it, the "action" API can give you a list of images on the page, which you can count. - Jmabel ! talk 20:31, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

December 14

Caption Challenge

For those that are interested this weeks caption challange is up for suggestions at Commons:Silly things ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 15:38, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Carl Zeiss Microscopy images

I met someone from Carl Zeiss Microscopy while speaking (in my capacity as Wikimedian in Residence at the Royal Society of Chemistry) at a science conference in this summer, and discussed with them the possibility of using some of the images from their slides, on Wikipedia.

After further discussion, the company have now open-licensed a number of images, with the promise of more to follow.

I've uploaded most of the images to Category:Images donated by Carl Zeiss Microscopy and they include modern and vintage Zeiss microscopes, as well as portraits of people associated with Zeiss, educational posters, and more. Please make use of them. Andy Mabbett (talk) 16:15, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Great! Yann (talk) 19:43, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Obvious watermarks?

Just came across an uploader who has contributed a lot of pictures of his own work with a huge blue copyright watermark across the middle of each image, such as File:Dazzling Alesia Raut in Ritu Kumar's ensemble at Lakme Fashion Week at Grand Hyatt Mumbai, by SouBoyy, Sourendra Kumar Das..jpg. Just wondering whether such images are of any use considering that it would effectively be impossible to crop or remove the watermark, and it does seem to be advertising for the uploader's website. I do notice he's also uploaded alternative versions of the images without the blue text. Just wondering if there is any reason why we would need the defaced files? Mabalu (talk) 19:10, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. See Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Sou Boyy. Yann (talk) 19:42, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

December 15

"Convert to DR" button

Two different issues here.

Can't cancel everything immediately

When you're looking at a file that's been tagged for speedy deletion, you'll see a "Convert to DR" button that, when clicked, gives you a window where you can type a rationale for deletion, and if you click "Proceed", your rationale will be that of the DR. Very nice, but only as long as you proceed; if you click the "Cancel" button, you'll find that the speedy deletion template is gone, because the script removes the template before you make the nomination. See [13] for an example; someone tagged it for speedy, but it didn't qualify, so I started to convert it to a DR but cancelled upon finding that one already existed, but forgetting that the script starts by removing the template, I accidentally removed the DR template because I was thinking that {{Delete}} was a speedy template, like en:template:delete. Why shouldn't the script remove the template after you click proceed? I don't see this impairing users too much, because next to the "Convert to DR" button is another that allows you merely to remove the template. As far as I've seen, every other function on Commons (and other WMF projects) is completely cancelled when you hit "Cancel"; the only other buttons that perform actions immediately are quick-use ones like rollback links, and they're meant to be act-upon-clicking, while this isn't. Nyttend (talk) 13:15, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Duplicate being processed wrongly

See Commons:Deletion requests/File:Wp-schaffhausen-finkl3.png. When you click "Convert to DR", presumably it should reproduce the rationale accurately, but when the speedy tag is {{Duplicate}}, it mangles the situation. For example, the code {{duplicate|1=DEU Schaffhausen (Saar) COA.png}}, when converted to a DR, produces the text This file was initially tagged by [username] as duplicate (dup) and the most recent rationale was: licate|1=DEU Schaffhausen (Saar) COA.png. Shouldn't it say This file was initially tagged by [username] as duplicate and the most recent rationale was: duplicate|1=DEU Schaffhausen (Saar) COA.png? And how can this be fixed? Nyttend (talk) 13:15, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Both buttons are provided by MediaWiki:Gadget-AjaxQuickDelete.js. Some of the data the gadget read might come from the deletion template itself, such as the rationale/reason. -- Rillke^(q?) 23:43, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

UK IPO updates advice on copyright in digitised public domain works

There are at long last indications that UK copyright law is moving in the direction of our PD-Art policy that "faithful copies of public domain works are themselves in the public domain" - in other words that faithful photographic reproductions of old, out of copyright artworks such as paintings do not create an enforceable new copyright for the photographer. The UK Intellectual Property Office has recently updated its copyright advice notice to include the following:

Are digitised copies of older images protected by copyright?

Simply creating a copy of an image won’t result in a new copyright in the new item. However, there is a degree of uncertainty regarding whether copyright can exist in digitised copies of older images for which copyright has expired. Some people argue that a new copyright may arise in such copies if specialist skills have been used to optimise detail, and/or the original image has been touched up to remove blemishes, stains or creases.

However, according to the Court of Justice of the European Union which has effect in UK law, copyright can only subsist in subject matter that is original in the sense that it is the author’s own ‘intellectual creation’. Given this criteria, it seems unlikely that what is merely a retouched, digitised image of an older work can be considered as ‘original’. This is because there will generally be minimal scope for a creator to exercise free and creative choices if their aim is simply to make a faithful reproduction of an existing work.

This official advice from a UK Government agency is useful as it recommends a strikingly different approach from the one that has been taken over many years by the UK courts, namely that a new copyright can very easily be created merely by the 'skill and labour' involved in taking any sort of photograph (the copyright practitioner's text, Copinger & Skone James, says that "in terms of what is original for the purpose of determining whether copyright subsists in a photograph, the requirement of originality is low and may be satisfied by little more than the opportunistic pointing of the camera and the pressing of the shutter button."

Although the IPO advice is not binding on the UK courts, it will be of useful persuasive value. It's interesting that the official view being taken is that the European Court of Justice has effectively replaced the very low bar of "Was sufficient skill and labour applied?" with the higher one of "Is it the author’s own intellectual creation?". The 2009 CJEU decision in Infopaq is gaining traction. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:05, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

• <snark>Of course, all this came from a presumably native speaker who doesn't know that criteria is plural.</snark> - Jmabel ! talk 17:47, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Edit2015

Edit2015 - please translate the captions!

Hi everyone, above is Edit2015 the second Wikipedia year-in-review video. I'm writing this to ask to please help to translate the captions, we will be migrating them to the Wikimedia Foundation YouTube and Vimeo accounts as soon as we can. Thank you! VGrigas (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

December 16

Question

Through the last few years I have created over 800 Wikivoyage banners. These banners are mostly used on the Hebrew Wikioyage, although many of them are also used in other Wikivoyage editions. In many instances I will also look for new Wikivoyage banners created by other users from other Wikivoyage editions (which were also uploaded to wikicommons) in hopes that I will find new (to me) beautiful banners which I would end up using in the Hebrew Wikivoyage articles as well.

Is there any tool I could use that would help me easily locate new files added to one of the sub-categories of the parent category Category:Wikivoyage banners ? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 02:46, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

You can request User:OgreBot to automatically list new files in Wikivoyage banners category tree. Alternatively Catscan2 can sort files by update date which you could use to check for recently uploaded files. MKFI (talk) 07:41, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Get involved in Wikipedia 15!

This is a message from the Wikimedia Foundation. Translations are available.

As many of you know, January 15 is Wikipedia’s 15th Birthday!

People around the world are getting involved in the celebration and have started adding their events on Meta Page. While we are celebrating Wikipedia's birthday, we hope that all projects and affiliates will be able to utilize this celebration to raise awareness of our community's efforts.

Haven’t started planning? Don’t worry, there’s lots of ways to get involved. Here are some ideas:

• Join/host an event. We already have more than 80, and hope to have many more.
• Talk to local press. In the past 15 years, Wikipedia has accomplished extraordinary things. We’ve made a handy summary of milestones and encourage you to add your own. More resources, including a press release template and resources on working with the media, are also available.
• Design a Wikipedia 15 logo. In place of a single icon for Wikipedia 15, we’re making dozens. Add your own with something fun and representative of your community. Just use the visual guide so they share a common sensibility.
• Share a message on social media. Tell the world what Wikipedia means to you, and add #wikipedia15 to the post. We might re-tweet or share your message!

Everything is linked on the Wikipedia 15 Meta page. You’ll find a set of ten data visualization works that you can show at your events, and a list of all the Wikipedia 15 logos that community members have already designed.

If you have any questions, please contact Zachary McCune or Joe Sutherland.

Thanks and Happy nearly Wikipedia 15!
-The Wikimedia Foundation Communications team

Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery, 20:58, 18 December 2015 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Help center

December 19

Google Code-in 2015

Google Code-in 2015 was announced last month by User:AKlapper (WMF). I volunteered as mentor last year which lead to creation of Module:Complex date and rewrite of {{Other date}}. This year I set up several tasks as candidate projects:

1. phabricator:T120273 (Write python bot to add Creator templates to the files on Wikimedia Commons)
2. phabricator:T120366 (Add documentation to most used undocumented pages on Commons)
3. phabricator:T120090 (Update Commons Template:City)
4. phabricator:T118875 (Tool to automatically categorize "Category:Media with geo-coordinates needing categories" on Wikimedia Commons based on location)
5. phabricator:T89598 (Convert Template:Authority_control to Lua and use Wikidata)

Some of those tasks will be co-mentored by User:Zhuyifei1999. I will try to keep discussion related to the tasks at the phabricator pages and if anybody is interested in any of those tasks please subscribe to them, ask questions is something is not clear or incorrect and feel free to participate with the future discussions and to answer any questions contest participants might have. Also please be aware that during the contest (Dec 7, 2015 - Jan 25, 2016) there might be some activity here by often very capable users that might not have much presence on Commons before. Finally it is not too late to propose your own tasks if you have some ideas and can guide other on how to do them. --Jarekt (talk) 15:14, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

See also Commons:Bots/Requests/BMacZeroBot 4 for first task. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:24, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Good catch EugeneZelenko. I will withdraw this task from competition. --Jarekt (talk) 15:30, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks everybody (and Jarekt for bringing this up again). I can only repeat that more tasks and mentors (if you enjoy working with young contributors who are new to free software projects) are very welcome! From my past experience, Google Code-in can sometimes be a bit stressful but it definitely is a lot of fun and that's why we (the Wikimedia community) take part in it for the third time. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 18:46, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

For task 5, please bear in mind that the template is also used on user pages (such as mine). Andy Mabbett (talk) 10:38, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

@Jarekt: Suggestion for a further project:

Thanks to the work of User:Dschwen, there is now an experimental IIIF endpoint available, which allows cropped parts of Commons images to be displayed. Making use of this, I have now proposed a Wikidata property to use the IIIF syntax to record where inside the larger image a detail occurs -- which in turn in future should make it possible to e.g. produce a slideshow showing just these details, for example just the clocks from a set of Dutch interiors, etc. (See link just given for proposed property syntax and some examples).

According to this query: tinyurl.com/og7nu5s we currently have just under 66,000 wikidata items for paintings on Commons that include at least one P180 "depicts" statement -- typically for things that are details within the broader canvas.

I think this creates an opportunity for something I think could make for quite a fun and satisfying Code-in project -- namely to create a little visual tool, using Widar authentication, for the critical stage of capturing this position information from users, and adding it to Wikidata. I could imagine something a little like the present Commons crop-tool to draw a rectangle on the image around the detail, which would then be added in the relevant form to the statement about the detail in the wikidata item. Like a treasure hunt, users might then be challenged to find all the known details in a particular picture, or (e.g.) all the clocks in a set of pictures, with the results written to wikidata. The key requirement would be this quick tool to be able to rapidly identify a part of an image. This I think could be very achievable for a code-in project, and also rather satisfying -- both because of its intrinsically visual nature; and because the author would then have the knowledge of their creation going on to (with luck) gain massive use.

So if somebody is interested to find a project, this might appeal. Jheald (talk) 15:18, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Query about AWOL image of person who seems like he definitely ought to have one.

OK - without getting into the controversy about him, is there a particular reason we don't appear to have any pictures of the artist/sculptor Eric Gill on Commons? He died in 1940, and it's odd that there isn't even one of his self portraits on Commons or any pictures of him in his article. It does seem odd that such a famous artist is so absent but given that he's a bit contentious as a person, I wondered if there was more to it... Mabalu (talk) 16:18, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

There is now: File:Eric Gill - self portrait.jpg. For future reference, this applies ;-) Andy Mabbett (talk) 17:23, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Andy, could you clarify the evidence for your assertion (via the license template) that this was published prior to 1923? Storkk (talk) 17:27, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you Andy - I would have indeed SOFIXIT-ed it for anyone else, but given Eric Gill's rather unusual situation, I wondered if there was a particular reason for it. Mabalu (talk) 10:31, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons facebook page suggestions

Dudes, I'm fixing the house, and I want suggestion of post to the Wikimedia Commons page at Facebook, I left a section here: Commons:Social_media/Facebook#Suggestions, and if you could give some likes to promote the page, because now it's practically dead. -- RTA 15:52, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Question on copyright of pictures of objects

I was under the impression of the picture of an object in isolation, which itself is subject to copyright, was still encumbered by the copyright on the original object, i.e. Commons:Copyright_rules_by_subject_matter#3D_art_.28sculptures_etc..29. What is the status of pictures like File:UFC Title Belt.jpg which is just a picture of the work itself, and not showing the item in the context of a picture like at File:José Aldo (30 de dezembro de 2010).jpg. What is the status of File:UFC Title Belt.jpg and is it a valid picture for copyright purposes? --Jayron32 (talk) 16:14, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi, File:UFC Title Belt.jpg is most probably not OK. For the other one, one might consider that the main the subject is the people, and the detail of the belt is not very apparent as the it is overexposed, so it might be OK. Yann (talk) 17:00, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Metropolitan Museum of Art: over 400,000 high-res digital images

A friend has pointed out this article from April this year, titled "The Metropolitan Museum of Art is giving you over 400,000 high-res digital images for free". Has anyone been working on uploading the images? I can't see anything about the initiative in the archives, nor does there seem to be a specific category or template.

Sadly, the Met seeks to apply a "non-commercial" restriction to images of PD artworks. Andy Mabbett (talk) 17:39, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Pigsonthewing I have "stolen" some of their public domain artwork against their wishes and uploaded it myself, but I know of no one systematically sharing all of their files in Wikimedia Commons. WilliamDigiCol is their librarian and a Wikipedian - he gave an interview in November 2013.

In general, the Met keeps itself distant from the Wikimedia community and other kinds of community engagement in New York City. It is bigger than all other NYC museums put together so it acts as a class of its own. Wikipedians in NYC have not managed to keep steady communication with this museum as we have with most others in the area. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:09, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

JBD09’s photo

Hi, I had a photo up that belongs to me. I believe the first time someone uploaded it it was done incorrectly. When I reloaded it I filled out the necessary answers to the question about ownership and it has now been deleted again. How can I go about getting my own photo back up? Thank you very much — Preceding unsigned comment added by JBD09 (talk • contribs) 21:55, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

• I presume this is about File:Jeff Dahlgren.jpg, the only photo you've uploaded here. As indicated at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Jeff Dahlgren.jpg, the same photo is indicated as copyrighted at https://vk.com/album-6309164_94879829, with no indication of any release of rights. You had a notification about the deletion on your talk page, and didn't respond, so the image was deleted on the precautionary principle that it was likely to be a copyright violation. If, indeed, you are the photographer, you might still be able to clarify things with the deleting administrator, Ellin Beltz, but at this point it may be too late for that, especially since your account has no other history here at Commons, so there isn't any track record here to go by. See COM:OTRS for how to send a clear permission explicitly stating that you are the copyright holder and that you are issuing a cc-by-sa-4.0 license. An alternative would be if you have control of the text at https://vk.com/album-6309164_94879829, and can explicitly indicate the license there. I presume you can understand why we have to do this so that we don't allow someone else to release rights to your work published elsewhere. - Jmabel ! talk 22:58, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

December 17

Munsell renotation data

I created an image that uses this data (which was published recently) to determine the colors. Is that okay to do or are there copyright issues? SharkD  Talk  19:29, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

• I think it's fine (facts can't be copyrighted, only the expression of them), but if you want to minimize the chance of an argument about the file in the future you might try asking at Commons:Village pump/Copyright, where experts are more likely to weigh in. - Jmabel ! talk 16:09, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 16:09, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Most likely representing an undescribed species! (published)

Finally, Pjotr Oosterbroek included two of my photos as an undescribed Megistocera species. The details can be viewed by searching "Megistocera" at http://ccw.naturalis.nl/search.php. I would like to thank Pjotr for including them in the Catalogue of the Craneflies of the World and Pristurus for the help he offered. Thanks all. Jee 09:07, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

• Congratulations Jee! It's not one of your most beautiful photos but it's a good candidate the most useful! Diliff (talk) 10:31, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks Diliff. Yes; I came to understand that the works of mine mostly used off-wiki are not my beautiful photos. They are plant profiles, behavioral shots of animals, and some difficult to reproduce moments! Jee 10:59, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

SVG versions of Wikipedia puzzle piece trophies

Could anybody create SVG version of Silverwiki.png and its derivatives from here? There already was a nice try here, but there was a problem with Wikipedia internal SVG interpreter, which is still not resolved yet (see T112421). Is anybody able to do that? Could anybody also make versions without stand (like Goldenwiki nostand.png from Category:Wikipedia puzzle piece trophies without stand? And could anybody fix a problem with incorrect "W" letter there (see File talk:Goldenwiki.png)? --Dvorapa (talk) 10:52, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

@Dvorapa: I’ve uploaded a trophy with the proper W at File:Silverwiki crossed W.svg. The existing PNG has snazzier shading, but painting out its W to make room for a replacement is way over my ‘threshold of laziness‘. Unfortunately the smallest thumbnail still fails to render properly (although all the others are OK); it must have something to do with the complexity of the overlapping transparency effects in the stand. (Oddly, while my Safari renders that part just fine, it seems to ignore all the blurred edges in the puzzle piece & in the shadow under the W. Adobe Illustrator doesn’t handle them properly either, displaying cryptic error messages whenever asked to display these objects.) I’ve prepared a 960×1280 PNG rendered direct from Inkscape, but I thought I’d make sure you were satisfied with the modification before uploading that file and the standless version. (A lower-resolution rendering might actually make for a clearer thumbnail, if that’s your main concern. But it’s easy to create any desired size of image from the vector art.) Alternatively, I could try eliminating the woodgrain from the stand, to see if that works around the thumbnailing bug.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 08:56, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

@Odysseus1479: First of all thank you for the work, you've done. The main problem I want to eliminate, isn't that thumbnail bug of stand displayed incorrectly in SVG version. It looks like it will be resolved soon. There are two other major problems. At first these puzzle piece trophies are still in PNG format and secondly all of these contain incorrect W. I think your preview's W is actually too wide. Could you make it thinner, just like on the PNGs? Then it will be ok to convert it into gold and bronze ones and create no-stand versions of them as well. --Dvorapa (talk) 11:34, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

@Dvorapa: OK, I’ve reduced the W a bit; since the glyph was designed with a much wider ‘aspect ratio’ than the default form I‘m reluctant to make it a lot smaller, let alone squeeze it horizontally, as IMO it starts to look somewhat weak & spindly. I won’t insist on imposing my tastes, but is it small enough for you now? The other five versions will be pretty easy to derive from this one, once it’s settled.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 01:46, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

@Odysseus1479: It looks much better after this minor change, thank you. I think you are right, smaller looks better than it would look if it was thinner. It is a shame, that the bug of stand is still not resolved yet. As we discussed with original creator of Silverwiki Hires.svg and with devs on Phabricator, it looks like the problem in visibility of some parts of a stand is inside of the 3rd party library used by MediaWiki. It doesn't interpret correctly some gaussian blurs (like these on the stand). There are two solutions: Find, what part of gaussian blurs on stand is interpreted incorrectly and redraw it in another way (although the SVG file is 100% correct and the bug is inside of MediaWiki interpreter) or wait until the issue will be resolved by updating a new fixed version of that 3rd party library in MW (it seems to be finally resolved in nearby future). I vote for the second solution, but if you want to try to fix it inside of the file, you definitely can.

Could you rename it to "Silverwiki.svg" and create also gold and bronze derivations? We'll see, how it will look and if everything will be ok, then I'll ask you for nostand versions. --Dvorapa (talk) 04:58, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

@Dvorapa: Please see File:Goldenwiki.svg and File:Bronzewiki.svg. I‘ve submitted a move request for the silver one.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 08:35, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

@Odysseus1479: I don't like these color shades of gold and bronze. I think gold one doesn't look like gold at all and bronze one looks more gold, than bronze :/ Could you recolor these two? I suggest these things in a Google search for an inspiration of a gold shade and these things in a Google search for an inspiration of a bronze shade. Is it possible to recolor them to be closer to these colors? --Dvorapa (talk) 18:53, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

@Odysseus1479: But overall I must thank you for your previous work. --Dvorapa (talk) 09:54, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Many categories lacking latitude/longitude

CONTEXT: Let's say a Commons app user wants to upload a picture, the app takes the latitude/longitude from the picture's metadata, and suggests nearby Commons categories.

PROBLEM: Most Commons geographical categories don't have a latitude/longitude. If all had, the app's suggestions would be much more useful, and thus pictures get much more appropriate categories.

QUESTION: I have started add latitude/longitude to categories, but there are so many. Is there a team working on this, or at least a backlog, or a page talking about that? Thanks! Syced (talk) 10:03, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

The coordinates may be actually available on Wikidata. Ruslik (talk) 13:13, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Syced, on Commons on a first step i would like to see a similar template like {{Object location}} without any parameter that that adds coordinates from Wikidata. Having this, we then would start a simple bot run adding the template to geographical categories. --Arnd (talk) 16:42, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

• All geography-related categories should have either {{object location}} or {{location possible}}. This should be possible to implement and check by bot, I think. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 18:58, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

How specific has the location to be? The centre of a city? This has considerable latitude for interpretation.Smiley.toerist (talk) 08:25, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

The template {{object location}} may include the |prec= argument, where you can determine a sort of radius of precision, given the coordinates. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 10:38, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Notification of DMCA takedown demand - Etna.png

In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the WMF office which should not be undone. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me.The takedown can be read here.

Affected file(s):

• File:Etna.png (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Etna.png Thank you! Jalexander--WMF 02:29, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Image reuse by Facebook

I notice that Facebook.com is using CC-BY-SA images from Commons, without any attribution that I can find. Is it up to the creator to pursue these violations or can the WMF get involved? --Stepheng3 (talk) 03:02, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

I find my photos being reused on fb too, and any attribution related to the Commons was the link to Wikipedia article related to that, which has my photo in infobox. — regards, Revi 03:05, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

They are actually "mirror"ing the wikipedia site, not directly using our images and even then, i recently notice they do licence it under cc-by-sa--Stemoc 10:11, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

I have the same issue with them. My photo are all over the site (facebook) and it strips any attribution from the photo. This is not mirror'ing this is a violation of the license that is granted to this site for the work and its a violation of copyright law. While I would really STILL rather remove my photos from commons as user Diannaa has found a way to cause me harm in my personal life by first outing me then being abusive with tags on the EN site, it looks like it would require a court order to have them removed, and that's not something I am going to waste my time with. I have for the most part dis continued contributing unless by specific request (see picture below) and I truly wish I had never contributed them here in the first place. --WPPilot (talk) 20:21, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't get what WPPilot is saying, anyway stemoc: They fail to credit me (which is part of license -- do you mean "Source: Wikipedia" word is enough for credit? No, I don't think so.) and it alone is a clear indication of copyvio. — regards, Revi 02:55, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Go on to Facebook. Search for Newport Beach. Up come a icon that is also the current lead photo on the EN Wikipedia page about Newport Beach, CA. Its a photo I took. Facebook has it on its site, it is named "safe_image.jpg" It has been rescaled, and is used on the Facebook site without any attribution what so ever, Its not a mirror as is suggested above, sure you see mirrors as well, but as I have a lot of my photos on the lead images on EN, then I guess that allows FB to just take them and use them as icons for what ever it wants to have a sub section on. The image I am speaking of here has, I have witness over time been used by FB in a number of ways and its current use as a Icon is just the current iteration.--WPPilot (talk) 04:59, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Golden Gate Bridge Dec 15 2015 as pre request of Jameslwoodward

you can always file a DMCA takedown using forms like this https://nppa.org/page/5617 , or not [14] Slowking4♡Richard Arthur Norton's revenge 00:30, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikimania 2016: call for proposals is open!

Dear Wikimedians,
the call for proposals for Wikimania 2016 is open! All the members of the Wikimedia projects, researchers and observers are invited to propose a critical issue to be included in the programme of the conference, which will be held in Italy, in Esino Lario, from June 21 to 28.
Through this call we only accept what we call critical issues, i.e. proposals aiming at presenting problems, possible solutions and critical analysis about Wikimedia projects and activities in 18 minutes. These proposals do not need to target newbies, and they can assume attendees to already have a background knowledge on a topic (community, tech, outreach, policies...).
To submit a presentation, please refer to the Submissions page on the Wikimania 2016 website. Deadline for submitting proposals is 7th January 2016 and the selection of these proposals will be through a blind peer-reviewed process. Looking forward to your proposals. --Yiyi (Dimmi!) 09:05, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Community appeal: Prints from the Peace Palace Library

Peace Palace

The Peace Palace Library, a library specializing in international law, connected to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, has been graciously sharing big amounts of images at Commons Wikimedia. They are mostly very high quality prints from their unique collection, which is the result of donations by many of the member states, in time since 1913. Many of the uploaded individual prints, though, have generic titles, and no text in the description field at all. This makes finding them, when searching for specific topics, nearly impossible. I am calling upon our community to help correct this and give the files more descriptive titles, fill in the description forms and correctly classify each one of them, not just by commonly shared categories, but also on their individual particularities.
Please take a look at Category:Prints from the Peace Palace Library - Regards & bon voyage, --OSeveno (talk) 15:15, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

December 20

Problems with categories in Content page

Hi

It feels a bit weird, but maybe I'm just doing some silly misstake. Why do the categories that I added to Parts of a sailing yacht not show up? I can neither see them on the page nor is the page shown in the categories it should belong to. Purging doesn't seem to help. --PaterMcFly (talk) 17:41, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

• Because you started a gallery (<gallery>) and never closed it (</gallery>). I've fixed that. - Jmabel ! talk 18:19, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: Jmabel ! talk 18:19, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Upload wizard countdown

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T121885

Where is it gone? How can I know how much time is missing? How to trace how many pictures left to upload in a long waitlist? And most important, countdown was a sign to see when everything is getting blocked (it started to raise to infinity, instead of going gradually down), so... Why is it gone? Can we have it back? Thanks. BTW, would it be ever possible to have a blink, a sound or any notification to remind when all the pictures are uploaded (especially when you are on another window)? Thanks a lot. --Sailko (talk) 14:13, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Whoops, it seems we accidentally disappeared it, see phab:T121885. Thanks for reporting this. This issue has been fixed now and the fix will be deployed to Commons with MediaWiki version 1.27.0-wmf.10, on Wednesday, 13 January 2016, per mw:MediaWiki_1.27/Roadmap. (There are no scheduled deployments for the next month or so due to Christmas, developer meetings and generally people taking lots of vacations, and I don't think this is severe enough to deploy outside of standard schedule.) Matma Rex (talk) 19:19, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you a lot! :) --Sailko (talk) 12:17, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

December 18

Password Strength RFC

Hello

We have started an RFC on meta to increase password requirements for users that have accounts which can edit MediaWiki:Common.js, have access to checkuser or have access to Oversight.

These types of accounts have sensitive access to our sites, and can cause real harm if they fall into malicious hands. Currently the only requirement is the password is at least 1 letter long. We would like to make the minimum be 8 letters (bytes) long and also ban certain really common passwords.

By increasing requirements on passwords for accounts with high levels of access, we hope to make Wikimedia wikis more secure for everyone. Please read the full text of the proposal here, and make your voice heard at the RFC.

Thank you

(On behalf of the WMF security team) BWolff (WMF) (talk) 07:22, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Delivered using the distribution list

There was/is a requirement for a password «at least 1 letter long»? Now that is an interesting UI design challenge: «The password you just typed is shorter than one character. Please try again.» Fun! -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 20:10, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Files from Morguefile

In discussion of one DR, it was found out that the text in COM:Bad sources#Morguefile.com is incorrect due to being based on wrong understanding of license of this website. Also, it was cleared out that this license allows commercial use of modified files, but says nothing about non-commercial. Due to this lack of clarity, the files were deleted. I wrote to administrator of Morguefile and got an answer that non-commercial use is allowed too. For proof of this, the administrator pointed me to http://www.morguefile.com/about . I want to call attention of the community to the possibility of excluding Morguefile from COM:Bad sources and the following restoring of the images. Stas (talk) 15:19, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Two audio related questions

1) I renamed an .ogg file, and it is now shown as an .oga file. Why is that?

2) The file File:Roderic Page voice.oga is also available, via [15], in flac format. Would that be preferable? If so, given the file extension, do I have to make a new upload, rather than overwriting? Andy Mabbett (talk) 16:48, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

.ogg identifies videos as well as audio files. To make it easier to distinguish without looking into the file, we rename them automatically to .oga, although most software still suggests the .ogg file extension when saving pure audio files. Probably because it doesn't make any different for those. But it makes a difference to applications that enumerate directory contents etc.

Generally, we prefer lossless audio, FLAC. In this particular example, a) the speaker used a microphone that's not that high quality and b) it isn't obvious to me whether the FLAC perhaps has been created from the OGG file, thus not providing any further advantage over the OGG version. If you want to upload a FLAC version, you should do it at a separate file as the file formats are entirely different. Note, though that you can package lossless FLAC samples in OGG containers. In the provided case the OGG file contains the audio encoded with the Vorbis audio codec. You can see this just below the preview: Ogg Vorbis sound file, length 9.9 s, 96 kbps HTH -- Rillke^(q?) 21:22, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

This weeks caption challenge

The caption challenge is up at Commons:Silly things ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:57, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey results

Hi everyone,

The 2015 Community Wishlist Survey is over, and now the Community Tech team's work begins on the top 10 features and fixes.

In November and December 2015, we invited contributors from all Wikimedia projects to submit proposals for what they would like the Community Tech team to work on, for the purpose of improving or producing curation and moderation tools for active contributors.

634 people participated in the survey, where they proposed, discussed and voted on 107 ideas. There was a two-week period in November to submit and endorse proposals, followed by two weeks of voting. The top 10 proposals with the most support votes now become the Community Tech team's backlog of projects to evaluate and address.

You can see the whole list with links to all the proposals and Phabricator tickets on this page: 2015 Community Wishlist Survey.

For everybody who proposed, endorsed, discussed, debated and voted in the survey, as well as everyone who said nice things to us recently: thank you very much for coming out and supporting live feature development. We're excited about the work ahead of us. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 21:02, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Media server down?

Hello, I can'¡t watch most images and no videos. Is the media files server down? --186.50.117.81 22:31, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Files seem to be loading for me. Do you have any examples?  Hazard SJ  04:24, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

December 22

Problems with playing File:ReactOS printing for the first time.webm

Resolved

I uploaded this file. When the player is set to a random point in time, it crashes and goes to the beginning. Is this an issue with file or the player? No idea. --Rezonansowy (talk) 00:17, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

It also crashes on generating a video's thumbnail. --Rezonansowy (talk) 00:18, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

The problem occurs also with the original file, not just Mediawiki video player. Something with the file causes the problem. MKFI (talk) 07:08, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

It works well on YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNzePucTOLY .--Rezonansowy (talk) 14:30, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Fixed that. I downloaded to MP4 using youtube-dl with -f 137+140 param and converted it to WebM using XMedia Recode. WebM is a new thing and not all program convert to it well yet. Now it's OK. --Rezonansowy (talk) 01:45, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

December 21

DEFAULTSORT in cooperation templates

There are a number of templates like {{NARA-cooperation}} that insert DEFAULTSORT directives into pages that transclude them. The sortkey they use is just ~{{PAGENAME}}. This is causing some pages that use these templates and use DEFAULTSORT to categorize into Category:Pages with DEFAULTSORT conflicts. Anyone know what the point of these DEFAULTSORTs is? @Christoph Braun: BMacZero (talk) 21:50, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi @BMacZero: , thanks for pointing out this issue. It seems the error occurs whenever someone tries to manually override the defaultsort by using {{DEFAULTSORT}}. I don't recall why I used pagename for the defaultsort. Maybe there was an important reason behind this, but maybe this is just a leftover from some other template I used to create {{NARA-cooperation}}. If you chose to remove the code, please make sure it doesn't cause any problems. @Dominic: who initiated the cooperation might know more. The Regards, Christoph Braun (talk) 07:24, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

December 23

Template fixes needed

Would someone please look at Template:North Americaestablishmentyear and Template:South Americaestablishmentyear? These should be adding categories such as "nnnn establishments by continent", but they aren't. I believe this is fallout from when a user had changed things to include "The Americas" as a continent instead of including North and South America separately. For examples of categories where the needed category isn't included, see the following:

• Category:1974 establishments in North America (missing Category:1974 establishments by continent)
• Category:1893 establishments in South America (missing Category:1893 establishments by continent)

If anyone happens to know of any other similar templates that might have gotten changed like this, it would be worth checking those, too. Not everything got cleaned up after the continent changes mentioned above. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 04:41, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

• I tried fiddling it, but didn't get it quite right. At least Category:1974 establishments in North America is now in Category:1970s establishments by continent, but it's still not in the more specific Category:1974 establishments by continent; someone more used to esoteric template coding should have a look. - Jmabel ! talk 01:22, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

World Heritage Sites photographs from UNESCO available on Commons

Hi all

I'm very happy to say the first 750 images of World Heritage sites from UNESCO have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. I've set up a group of pages on Meta to help people see what content from UNESCO is available and which files are not used for each language and each Wikimedia project. The files include descriptions in several languages, typically the six official UN languages.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 09:55, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

This is really great stuff, thank you! One minor thing, concerning the way coordinates were added to each photo’s filepage. I just run a search-and-replace to have {{Inline coordinates| changed to {{object location dec|. Maybe this could be changed in the uploading queue. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 04:46, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Tuválkin, I'll make a note for the next batch :) John Cummings (talk) 08:55, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Dating postcard

I suspect its 1920s or even earlier.Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:45, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

The girls clothes (to the knees) indicatie 1920s. Before WWI it would be full length. This type of automobile was common at this time.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:11, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

December 24

Multi-bot problem

If File:A.jpg is redirected to File:B.jpg, the deletion of B causes an odd set of problems if A isn't also deleted: because B got deleted, CommonsDelinker will remove the link to B, leaving the page with nothing except

#REDIRECT

This, in turn, will prompt a visit from YiFeiBot: its job is tagging images without licenses, so it will add a no-license category, turning the code into

#REDIRECT [[Category:Media without a license: needs history check]]

The end result is that the old redirect is merely retargeted to Category:Media without a license: needs history check, becoming one of several such redirects. Since we admins will occasionally forget to check for redirects when deleting an image, is there something that can be done to prevent this situation when we forget? Nyttend (talk) 13:53, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand CommonsDelinker's action. Neither #REDIRECT [[File:B.jpg]] nor #REDIRECT [[:File:B.jpg]] should be a valid image link, and should not qualify for removal. This way the redirect would go to the Special:BrokenRedirects and get deleted. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 04:19, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Grant request

Hello,

I've made a grant request to go to the Youth Olympic Games who will take place in Lillehammer in February 2016. I will be accredited as a media photographer and will be able to take high quality pictures for Commons and the Wikimedia projects. You can endorse this request here.

Happy holidays to all.

Pleclown (talk) 17:45, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

December 26

Image cropping using code

Hi

Is it possible to crop images without having to have a border (when using Template:Annotated image) or uploading cropped version of files to Commons?

Many thanks

John Cummings (talk) 08:55, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

• I can't understand what you are asking. In particular, I can't understand what you want to do if you don't want to upload the end result. Could you be specific about what you are trying to do, including linking the photo in question? - Jmabel ! talk 16:51, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
• You can crop it using HTML. See example above or the banner of the Wikivoyage logo election 2013. Note that the full image is still loaded. -- Rillke^(q?) 23:31, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Rillke and Jmabel, sorry not to be clear, I want to be able to crop images in the code rather than uploading new versions of the file, Template:Annotated image without the border. Thanks John Cummings (talk) 23:07, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

There is no Template:Annotated image or Template:Annotated image without the border, so this is still confusing. - Jmabel ! talk 23:26, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

John's Rillke's approach certainly gives a way to display part of an image on a web page. - Jmabel ! talk 23:28, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

He is talking about en:Template:Annotated image. The answer to the OP's question is yes, I even provided example markup. To be strict, it is markup, not code but since the OP is referring to Template:Annotated image, we can safely assume so. If the OP wants to know how this cropping works, then I suggest, he asks that instead.

Jmabel, which John are you referring to in "John's approach", especially if you don't understand the question? -- Rillke^(q?) 00:23, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Typo (or brain-o), meant to write "Rillke's approach". - Jmabel ! talk 07:57, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, I've followed the link back the page where the image is being cropped but can't work out markup. My assumption is there is a page somewhere with simple instructions on how to crop images using markup in Mediawiki but can't find it anywhere.... John Cummings (talk) 10:22, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, there might not be one explaining that, that's true. Sorry for you. This StackOverflow answer shows how to do it in HTML. Much like the example on top of this section. Perhaps asking straight forward the questions, including working links, you want to have solved will be more fruitful. Perhaps asking on a Q&A page like COM:Help desk or Q&A site... Did you actually realize that you're at Wikimedia Commons here, and that we do not have the same set of templates here as on the English Wikipedia? Just asking because you assume that we know the template you are referring to. It is always important to be specific and not to assume that those you ask for help will do all the work for you. -- Rillke^(q?) 22:54, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

December 25

Fonts

Which fonts are appropriate for images like this? Is there a particular font license to aim for? SharkD  Talk  20:21, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

There is no copyright issue with use of typefaces in graphics (at least not in the U.S.) for descriptions but there are internationalization issues. If you upload a raster image, no one can easily translate the file, hence it can be only used by speakers of one language. SVG is certainly the better choice for graphics, especially with descriptions in them that need translation. And it allows doing minor fixes later. The trade-off is that you have to learn about Vector Graphics, SVG and which of the subset of SVG works well at Commons. -- Rillke^(q?) 23:02, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Rillke's comments; there's nothing wrong with an easily-read font like here, and since text in PNG files is just pixels that happen to be arranged in the shape of letters, fonts don't matter unless you're working with one that wouldn't be accessible to OCR or to humans. Nyttend (talk) 05:06, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

December 27

Romantic postcard

I found a interesting postcard. I was confused of the language on the backside (Breton). Is the date 6 mai 1901? Do we have any other Breton text in the Commons?Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:47, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

The language looks like French to me, not Breton. Martinvl (talk) 13:24, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

This is a plain French description of a traveling Breton poet, reciting poems and singing with a warm and vibrating voice to the public, and his graceful daughter with sweet eyes. It says further that they're not living ordinary lives. JoJan (talk) 14:35, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

The printed text on the backside of the postcard is in Breton. It is his wife, not his daughter, see de reference Mm and mister Botrel, who where famous enough to haven their on categories in the Commons.Smiley.toerist (talk) 15:05, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Classified documents on Commons

Is there any reason at all why this file is hosted on Commons, despite being from WikiLeaks. Seeing as WikiLeaks's mission is posting illegally classified documents, then how is this possibly legal? It's also not our mission to leak government documents, so it (and all other files like it, which is why I'm bringing it here) should be deleted. --Jakob (talk) 03:24, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

It is US Government work so there are no copyright problems. The file contains mostly text but a Wikileaks file might be something that Wikisource would like to keep in original format. Classified information falls under Commons:Not censored unless there is an office action. I lean towards keeping it. MKFI (talk) 08:49, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

We aren't here to post everything that isn't copyrighted, we're here to post things that are conceivably useful. I see no reason that any law-abiding person would have any use for leaked government documents. And Commons' mission is not anything like that of WikiLeaks, whose aims are frankly loathsome and immoral (and illegal). We're here to collect pictures, not destroy governments. --Jakob (talk) 13:07, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

And I also don't exactly see where policy permits us to illegally post classified information. All it says is that removing files solely because they're offensive is not allowed. --Jakob (talk) 13:10, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Something that is legal in one country might not be legal in another. Some countries try to hide the truth. For example, the book en:Spycatcher was banned in England (until the courts overturned the ban), but was freely available in Scotland, Australia and the United States. The reason for the ban being overturned in the English courts was that the book was freely available elsewhere. The courts did not elaborate on the content of the book. Martinvl (talk) 14:19, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

• Jakec I had to laugh at "I see no reason that any law-abiding person would have any use for leaked government documents.". Seriously, the file is in use on a project so it already has instant scope for Commons. Nothing more to say on the matter I think 106.68.153.3 16:15, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
  • what makes you think it is illegal to publish classified information? <citation needed> unlike the British official secrets act, there is a legal tradition of free speech. see also the pentagon papers which was a published book, even as it remained classified for decades. we are here to collect images and texts. if you delete it here, it will be uploaded at wikisource. we leave the self-destruction of governments to themselves. Slowking4♡Richard Arthur Norton's revenge 00:37, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
    • If the government is okay with people posting such documents, why don't they make them public in the first place? --Jakob (talk) 14:26, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
      • At least in the U.S., there is a difference between the government of the moment wanting something and it being legal. - Jmabel ! talk 17:59, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
        • The very act of leaking classified documents is illegal. By posting them here, we are enabling and encouraging unlawful behavior. And whether it's legal or not, I still believe that the ethical thing to do would be to at the very least try and get permission from the relevant agency, as this is obviously highly sensitive material (why else would it be classified?). --Jakob (talk) 00:36, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
          • Do we have a policy of taking down documents or images that might encourage bad behavior? Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:55, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
            • Let's post all the nuclear launch codes & the names and identities of all our undercover agents while we're at it! --Jakob (talk) 13:40, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

• Commons policies do not say anything about not allowing classified documents (which are otherwise in Public Domain) and unless we change out policies we have no basis for the deletion. However just like with trademarked content, currency, government symbols or even swastika the files be restricted by the laws of some countries, and users should be warned that accessing or distributing them might be illegal in some jurisdictions. For example accessing this wikileaks file from US government computer might trigger automatic "containment procedures" which start with erasing the content of the machine and all the machines and devices where the document was send, and those containment procedures do not have exclusion for already leaked documents. On the other hand, Commons does not have a way to tell is this or that file is still classified and in which jurisdiction. For example this is scan of Polish Top Secret document from 1930's, which likely is no longer classified. I think we need to create at least create Non-copyright restriction template explaining the issues. Other alternative would be to treat it in similar manner to child pornography, which I am not sure if we have any specific policies against (other than Commons:Child protection or Commons:Sexual content/Child pornography proposals), but which we do not host. May be we have (or should have) policy against hosing illegal content of any kind. It is possible that there is a US law against hosting classified US files, if so than we should not be hosting them. Of at least not hosting them without checking with foundation legal department. --Jarekt (talk) 19:30, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I check and our treatment of child pornography is govern by meta:Legal/Legal_Policies#Office_Actions. There is mention there of Trade Secrets but not National Secrets. So it is still unclear. Also per meta:Legal/Legal_Policies#Applicable_Law we do not host content illegal in the US. --Jarekt (talk) 19:38, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

@Jarekt: Thanks for your advice. I will check with the WMF and see what their opinion is on Commons hosting these kinds of files. --Jakob (talk) 18:52, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

From WMF Legal Hi all, this discussion was flagged to us and I wanted to offer a comment. To begin with I need to remind everyone of our disclaimer that we can’t give legal advice, only share WMF’s perspective on an issue and some background material on the topic. In the case of classified documents, the area can be a legally complex one. Christopher Markham has written a good background article called Punishing the Publication of Classified Material: Wikileaks and the Espionage Act (Heinonline link, unfortunately paywalled at present, I wasn’t able to find a free source). In general, courts have held that simply publishing classified information is not enough to be a crime, there must also be some knowledge that the information will cause harm and that it is published with bad intent. See U.S. v. Rosen 445 F.Supp.2d 602 (E.D.Va. 2006). This means that it can be okay to publish leaked classified documents in some cases, but it’s possible to get in trouble for it if one knew that the document was particularly harmful and did it anyway without a good reason. Within that context, we think that it’s a user policy decision what documents you think are appropriate to accept on the various projects and we’ll review specific things if we ever receive a request to remove them. In the case of the document at issue in this discussion, WMF has not received any requests to review or remove it at this time. In addition, let us know if there’s continued interest in this topic (either here or by contacting legal@) and we could, with some time and research, put together a wikilegal posting on the topic of classified info that would go into more detail than what I’ve said here. Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 23:57, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

 Keep. First, it is perfectly clear that the file falls within Commons' Scope and is 'useful for an educational purpose' as it is in use on the English Wikipedia (see the policy definition at Commons:Project scope#File in use in another Wikimedia project. Our wider policies do not prohibit documents that have been classified by the US government (which are otherwise in the public domain) and unless we change our policies we have no basis for deletion. 'Classified' does not mean 'illegal to host'. If the file were obviously illegal for the WMF to host under US law we ought to delete anyway to comply with the WMF's Foundation:Terms of Use, but the file has been brought to the Foundation's notice and the comments from Jrogers (WMF) clarify that - at least at present - no Office Action is called for. In those circumstances I see no reason for us to delete outside policy. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 05:40, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

 Comment I haven't looked at this file, but sometimes the very fact that something is "leaked" from a government or similar source is a strong indicator of its educational value or its educational value in the context of something bigger (that is, the document's very existence and/or the very fact that it was classified may be educational in that it may prove that the government was involved in some line of research at some point in the past and/or that it wanted to keep that fact quiet, even if the specific things in the document are in and of themselves not educational/out of scope). For this reason, when such documents are presented for a deletion discussion, I am going to go in with strong presumption that the document serves as an educational purpose and any person nominating the file for deletion on the grounds that it is "out of scope" will have a heavy burden to convince me of that fact even if the media itself appears to be educationally worthless outside of the larger context of its being a leaked document. Davidwr (talk) 05:01, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

 Comment Regarding legal issues - I would generally support the foundation if their legal team said to remove an image, provided either

• 1) it was a clear-cut case where the foundation would get into trouble if the image were not taken down, or
• 2) (on a temporary basis only) it was a borderline case where it was too legally risky to leave the image up PROVIDED that the Foundation was actively asking a court to resolve the issue one way or the other AND it was doing its best to convince the court that the image was not illegal to host (however, if the Commons community voted to remove the image anyway, then I would no longer recommend that the Foundation continue perusing the matter).

Davidwr (talk) 05:01, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Issue with uploader

I had been struggling uploading a SVG file to Commons. The uploader was just giving This file might be corrupt, or have the wrong extension. as an error message. The file was 2M but I was on a flaky Internet connection so I put it on upload problems. When on a more stable Internet connection I tried again and got the same error message. Then I switched to the old Uploader that gave a more detailed error message: This file contains HTML or script code that may be erroneously interpreted by a web browser. See the FAQ for more information. From there I looked in my file. It turned out the entry contentScriptType="text/ecmascript" under the svg tag was the issue. Would it be possible to have more meaningful error messages with the new uploader wizard? That would have saved me quite some time. Thanks. Soisyc Croisic (talk) 09:54, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Please either report Upload Wizard issues directly to Phabricator or on Commons:Upload Wizard feedback. This is because no volunteer can help you getting any Upload Wizard issue fixed. And for what it's worth, I support getting more precise error messages in Upload Wizard. -- Rillke^(q?) 00:28, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Will do. Thanks. Soisyc Croisic (talk) 09:10, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Already a reported issue. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:45, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

SVG files with javascript in them are not allowed, but that particular attribute by itself should be fine. Would you be able to upload the image somewhere else so we could look at the file in question? (phabricator should let you upload files). Bawolff (talk) 01:38, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Template not properly displaying

Template:Translation_table On (e.g.) Category:Jesus Christ, Template:ha is not displaying the Hausa text. I even did a quick test with Template:Translation_table and had only a few lines, figuring that maybe it can only display x number of languages but it won't display any Hausa text no matter how many other options there are. Can anyone fix this? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:58, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

The template in the current form does not support Hausa language (with 'ha' code). Ruslik (talk) 12:08, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Why not? Isn’t just a matter of existence of the relevant subpage for the template to pick it up? What else is needed? -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 22:19, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Freedom of Panorama - an idea

I am sorry if this has been discussed before, independently of my attention. There are certain countries that lack freedom of panorama, and images that are afflicted are nominated for deletion. However this totally deletes the file, and the uploader may have deleted his / her original image long ago so that the image gets totally lost (as in my case, I always delete files on my hard disc after having uploaded them to Commons). Then, if the country introduces freedom of panorama, we will miss all those images that were consecutively deleted. Would it be possible instead to save such images for later use, or give them some tag which means they are still there, but not possible to present at the Wikipedia until the country in question introduces FOP? Bjoertvedt (talk) 02:16, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

• WMF never actually loses the images. They stay on our server and are visible to administrators, as long as they know the filename; also findable from the deletion logs. Specifically tagging them in a way that would make them easier to find later is probably a good idea; does anyone have any concrete plan for how that would best be done (I don't know what ability we have to search in deleted content).
• Also, if you have had images you shot deleted on this basis, any admin can find them in a list of your deleted contributions. If you would like a copy of something you shot and regret losing, then as long as you at least approximately know the names, it's pretty easy for us to recover them for you, and in general many of us will do so on a courtesy basis as long as it's not too many images. - Jmabel ! talk 04:37, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, we have Category:FOP-related deletion requests with subcats by country. This does also mean that files never should be speedily deleted due to lack of FoP, even in very clear cases they should be nominated for regular RfD. --A.Savin 08:20, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

• Successful deletion requests, and the deleted files’s pages themselves, can be tagged with subcategories akin to Category:Undelete in 2044 or under Category:FOP-related deletion requests. This can be used to identify files which can be undeleted; dully for dates, but also casuistically on event of change in FOP-legislation in any given country. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 22:03, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Last version

I think the last version is to dark: File:Adriaen Brouwer - Peasants playing cards in a tavern.jpg. --Jean11 (talk) 16:02, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

 Done Reverted. Yann (talk) 17:32, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

For reference, I reverted several more uploads of that user for the same reason: smaller, worse quality uploads. Seems to be a genuine mistake, though. I think the user does not really understand the different preview sizes vs. original image size. --Sebari (talk) 18:43, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Caption Challange

This weeks offering is at Commons:Silly things.

Sorry for the delay this week. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:13, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

December 31

Image not loading right into Wikipedia articles

I make a small edit to this picture, and now when I look at it in the two Wikipedia articles it's used on, the picture is all distorted. Any idea why? Thanks. Magnolia677 (talk) 01:16, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Needed to be purged. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Indianapolis&action=purge. Also you should've looked at uploading as a new file (see COM:OVERWRITE) as it wasn't a minor crop. Bidgee (talk) 01:28, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Copyright of Xanadu house photos from the Florida Memory Project

Would this photo and this other photo be allowable under the provisions indicated in {{PD-FLGov}}? The information pages for the photos indicate that they were taken in 1985 by Randall G. Prophet and are part of the Department of Commerce collection. {{PD-FLGov}} lists agencies in Florida that can claim copyright; as of now, there is no mention of the Department of Commerce (which was abolished in 1996, not sure how this affects things) though it is not clear as to how up-to-date the list of agencies is.

In addition, these two photos were included in the Florida Memory Project, and {{Attribution-FLGov-PhotoColl}} seems to indicate that any material that was deposited in the Florida Photographic Collection can be freely reused if attribution is given. (To be sure, the template talks about a work being "released into the public domain," but it seems to actually be a case of a copyright license that basically allows all reuse with the attribution requirement being the only restriction.) Also, in 2011, there was a deletion request concerning the copyright of material in the Florida Photographic Collection though the result seemed to indicate that such material was OK with regard to copyright. --Gazebo (talk) 23:56, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

We have no reason to doubt the copyright status of FPC-hosted works in general, the law being nice and clear about it (I don't understand why the template says PD, but the legal statement is a clear {{Attribution}}), and while of course there could be exceptions, we'd have to see crystal-clear evidence to say that the professionals made a mistake with any individual image. Nyttend (talk) 05:11, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. The first of the two photos has been uploaded. For the second photo, would the depicted "Welcome to Xanadu Home of the Future..." sign (which appears to have something like a star or a compass over the word "Xanadu") be a copyright issue or would it be a case of {{PD-ineligible}}? --Gazebo (talk) 09:31, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

The discussion has been moved to Village pump/Copyright. --Gazebo (talk) 08:25, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

December 28

Cool, Gadget usage statistics!

See Special:GadgetUsage. Quite a lot of Cat-a-lot users :-) BTW, how many "gadgets enabled for everyone by default" on commons? --Atlasowa (talk) 09:22, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Special:Gadgets shows 16 "Enabled for everyone by default." I wonder why cat-a-lot isn't a default gadget, though. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 10:45, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Cat-a-lot as a default gadget? No, thanks. I had to rollback more than 10000 edits as a result of abuse of cat-a-lot this week, and I remember we even had to delete hundreds of edits from a cat-a-lot batch task. So facilitating access is not really a good idea. --Didym (talk) 14:12, 31 December 2015 (UTC)