Content deleted Content added

Inline

Revision as of 05:09, 11 September 2007

↓ Skip to table of contents ↓ ↓ Skip to discussions ↓ ↓ Skip to the last discussion ↓

Welcome to the Village pump

This page is used for discussions of the operations, technical issues, and policies of Wikimedia Commons. Recent sections with no replies for 7 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; the latest archive is Commons:Village pump/Archive/2025/01.

Please note:

If you want to ask why unfree/non-commercial material is not allowed at Wikimedia Commons or if you want to suggest that allowing it would be a good thing, please do not comment here. It is probably pointless. One of Wikimedia Commons’ core principles is: "Only free content is allowed." This is a basic rule of the place, as inherent as the NPOV requirement on all Wikipedias.
Have you read our FAQ?
For changing the name of a file, see Commons:File renaming.
Any answers you receive here are not legal advice and the responder cannot be held liable for them. If you have legal questions, we can try to help but our answers cannot replace those of a qualified professional (i.e. a lawyer).
Your question will be answered here; please check back regularly. Please do not leave your email address or other contact information, as this page is widely visible across the internet and you are liable to receive spam.

Purposes which do not meet the scope of this page:

Please do not make deletion requests here: use the relevant process for it instead.
For technical support and graphics talks (PNG, SVG, GIF, etc.), please post on the Graphics village pump.
To ask for image improvement, see:
- Graphic Lab/Photography workshop for photographs.
- Graphic Lab/Map workshop for maps.
- Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop for other illustrations.
To ask for video or audio improvement, see Commons:Graphic Lab/Video and sound workshop.
For translation requests, please post at Commons:Requests for translation.
For media requests, please post at Commons:File requests.

Search archives:

Start a new discussion

#	💭 Title	💬	👥	🙋 Last editor	🕒 (UTC)
1	Syrian flag	38	9	Rudolph Buch	2025-01-06 02:02
2	Video transcoding maintenance in File:Night of the Living Dead (1968).webm	34	7	TheDJ	2025-01-02 14:48
3	Need help with a non-legitimate deletion	9	5	JBouchez	2025-01-02 18:56
4	A healthy new year!	4	3	PantheraLeo1359531	2025-01-02 12:30
5	Mirroring request	6	4	Bertux	2025-01-04 22:11
6	Discrepancy	10	5	Ymblanter	2025-01-04 19:08
7	To-do list created	10	6	Adamant1	2025-01-09 06:28
8	Importing files from de-wikipedia	8	5	Joostik	2025-01-08 13:40
9	Would this picture dated to 1954 have copyright under URAA?	3	3	Ymblanter	2025-01-05 18:40
10	No thumbnail	3	2	ReneeWrites	2025-01-06 02:14
11	Category:Deletion requests/pending	4	3	GPSLeo	2025-01-07 10:12
12	License change at source	2	2	Jmabel	2025-01-06 18:30
13	Magic word for SDC date of creation	3	2	トトト	2025-01-06 22:49
14	Upcoming Commons conversation about tool investment priority on January 15	1	1	Sannita (WMF)	2025-01-06 14:56
15	FIDE logo	2	2	Glrx	2025-01-06 21:24
16	Wikidata Infobox	2	2	Jeff G.	2025-01-07 11:01
17	How do I create a playlist	4	4	Adamant1	2025-01-08 22:11
18	Which station in France?	1	1	Smiley.toerist	2025-01-08 11:24
19	help needed from Spanish speaker	1	1	Jarekt	2025-01-08 18:34
20	Steps to getting three images undeleted	2	2	Adamant1	2025-01-09 06:31
21	Problems with Double MetaCat template	1	1	Adamant1	2025-01-09 07:34

Legend
In the last hour
In the last day
In the last week
In the last month
More than one month
Manual settings
When exceptions occur, please check the setting first.

Centralized discussion

See also: Village pump/Proposals ■ Archive
RfC: Should Commons ban AI-generated images? (3 January 2025) Costumed character files (14 October 2024) Third-party images published by the National Weather Service (26 August 2024) Commons:Requests for comment/Hosting of free fonts in Commons (18 July 2024) How do we organize categories by date (14 May 2024) Should PD-CQ Roll Call be used for recent images? (5 January 2024) Technical needs survey (17 December 2023) When does PDART apply to textile works? (15 November 2023) Does this image contain "love hearts"? (17 August 2023) Definition of country (19 June 2023) Overhaul of categories by period (5 December 2022) Version of Saudi flag to use (11 July 2022) Concern regarding revocability of KOGL licenses (22 December 2021) Should deleting content from your own talk page be forbidden? (11 November 2021) Revise the COM:FOP Sweden section (1 February 2021) Change technical name of LRs to license-reviewer from image-reviewer(2 November 2023) Was the closure of the deletion discussion concerning the current lede image for Philippe Pétain proper under Commons policy? (22 September 2024)
Template: View ■ Discuss ■ Edit ■ Watch

June 17

Problems with a deleted picture

Shortcut:
The Problem is that user Template:Us uploaded Image:Konohagakure Symbol.svg, set {{Duplicate}} to Image:Workgroup Naruto.svg. I deleted his picture, because (as an admin told me when I started contributing on commons) it is/was the smaller one.
They don't look very different, but user spider says that his picture is nearer to the series.
However, it could be a derivative work (close to Commons:Village_pump#Copyvios.3F_.28derivative_works.29)
See User talk:D-Kuru#Image removal for the whole story...
thx for helping --D-Kuru 23:22, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I should probably add that there are actually three problems, not just one. These three problems should be treated and discussed separately:

Template:Us deleting the image for all the wrong reasons. He clearly stated he didn't know that an SVG can be scaled (that's what "S" in SVG stands for), and during a discussion he was editing my comments [1] and forgetting to sign his [2], calling someone else's (Kmattheis's) work "stupid", etc. I wonder if admins with this level of competence and attitude will do good to Wikimedia Commons, especially in the area of deletions. Sorry if it sounds impolite, this is not personal bashing, this is about competent actions.
Image:Workgroup Naruto.svg being kept with Image:Konohagakure Symbol.svg being deleted. As I stated on D-Kuru's talk page, the deleted image is of cleaner and better quality than the alternative, it is simpler, closer to the original (perceived much, much less derivative), it is almost four times smaller in bytes, and just as infinitely scalable (SVG) as the alternative, it has a name that makes more sense and reflects the image contents better than the alternative, and it was created by me who is willing to release it as copyleft, while the source of the kept image is unknown. Whatever the outcome of the whole discussion might be, ths source must be found or the image must be deleted. Tertium non datur.
Proper licensing to all village logos and other possible images for Naruto universe. Personally, I am not aware if the symbol now known as Konohagakure symbol has been known and used before Naruto manga, but it is possible and I can do some inquiring (for example, a symbol now known as One Piece pirate crew logo was depicted first several years before that in Rurouni Kenshin manga). Yet I remember other mangaka (people who draw manga professionally) using the same symbol in their work without legal consequences, and I can post at least one proof (manga scan from Hunter x Hunter). However, if it's really a trademarked logo, it should be labelled as such (there are other vectorised logos at Wikimedia Commons). It is important that we attach proper license tags to all images, not just to those the admins don't want to undelete.

Thank you for your attention. --spider 07:46, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

add 1) i edited your entry before I answered you, because I don't like big pictures on my talk page. So why is it a probelm that I set : to your 800px image?
I agree that I forgot to sign my entry, because of wrinting in the village pump etc. but why is this also a 'problem' which which should be included in a discussion about a deleted picture?
Why is it a problem that I didn't know yet that svg files are scapable?
add "calling someone else's (Kmattheis's) work "stupid"": I wrote: "Also Image:14-segment.png drew somebody, but it is {{PD-ineligible}}, because you only see some stupid lines hanging around somewhere in the picture." I just wanted to point out that it really is {{PD-ineligible}} - moreover I called the lines stupid not the work as such.
We already had the discussion about commons admins with Drakorobot -> I don't think that this is usefull to discuss.

You said that you're "an admin on six different wiki sites" but I wonder why you have to use the bad admin vs. inocent user-play. You tell me that I'm not a good andmin, because I don't take "competent actions", but you behave as you say that I do.

add 3) "there are other vectorised logos at Wikimedia Commons": Logos are allowed if they are {{PD-textlogo}} or {{PD-ineligible}} - logos aren't allowed if they have to be tagged as {{Fair use}} or something like that.

--D-Kuru

(on#1) The point of setting image width to 800px was to show you how it scales. If you don't like to see the image, you could've ask me to remove it, or cut it out with HTML comments, probably adding some remark that you got my point. Instead, you changed my text to something that looks silly (a link with "800px" text) and that still looks like I wrote it, making people who read it believe that I'm retarded enough to think that by making such a link I'd show a resized image. I don't quite get what do you mean by saying "you behave as you say that I do" - when did I edit your comments to make them look sillier?

(on#1) If you don't know about SVG, you shouldn't make decisions on SVG files' quality and have the rights to remove them. That doesn't immediately make you a bad admin - perhaps you're very competent in some other areas like photography, or template coding, or running bots, etc. Usually I don't read discussions on Wikimedia Commons, so I don't know how many times you have already been accused of something like this, rightfully or otherwise, and frankly I don't care that much to start researching. It's just that some other people might notice my remarks and do something like distributing responsibilities better.

(on#3) I started a parallel discussion on Russian Wikipedia Anime Portal, and had a few comments already. People think that the work is definitely not trivial but don't yet have a steady proof of it being free or copyrighted (and by whom). I'll keep you posted on any useful input I'm gonna get there. If it's deemed to be fair use, all images in Category:Naruto should be removed from Wikimedia Commons. --spider 16:49, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Since no-one has responded with a steady claim that the work isn't copyrighted, a week passed, and people at ru.wikipedia almost unanimously think such pictures are fair use, I think the case is closed and quite clear. Thus, I nominated all derivative and fair use images in Category:Naruto for speedy deletion due to copyvio. They can later be re-uploaded to local Wikipedias, but cannot be stored on Wikimedia Commons. --spider 22:54, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

regrets to excessive policing

What I was given to understand and that what I impression I still hold about various wiki projects is that various projects and pages/gallaries become slowly operational over a period of time .I am a active member from Marathi Language Wikipedia before few months I had created a gallery that would slowly develop in Marathi language main page here in Wikimedia commons along with proper notice for and links for marathi language wikipedians unfortunately some of you came deleted the page afterword some gentleman came deleted talk page of the gallery and both the pages that the prospective gallery and its talk page were extensively linked in various marathi language co-projects like marathi wikipedia wiktionary etc.

I always felt uncomfortable and displeased with excess in policing in the name of clean up.I had invested considerable time to see that good no. of Marathi language people get diverted here . I do regret what happened to my good efforts.

Mahitgar 15:56, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The contents is still here, and has alwayd been, as Template:Portal notice-mr. But I have restored the deleted page मुखपृष्ठ for you. It was probably deleted because it only contained the template. / Fred J 20:51, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Fred very nice of you, Just yesterday some of the editors at Marathi Language wikipedia have come up assuring support for Marathi Language main page at commons. Mahitgar 15:50, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I give up. Deletion requests much too complicated - so keep the copyvios.

Dear formidable members of this wonderful community. Get real, you can't change the ridiculously complicated procedure for a deletion request all the time. Obviously a degree is not enough anymore to deal with your procedures, one needs a post-graduate program. I'm here to fill out deletion requests for two copyvios (derivative works) and I don't understand the new procedure anymore. You don't want copyvios to get deleted, right? Well, keep them. I don't care anymore. I will remove them from articles on de whenever I find some, but I won't report them here. May they stay forever. --h-stt !? 21:32, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Would you be willing to add MediaWiki:Quick-delete.js to your JavaScript file, which significantly simplifies the deletion process? (Check out the MediaWiki talk:Quick-delete.jsfor how-to instructions.) --Iamunknown 21:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is a button "Nominate for deletion" in your left sidebar. If you click it everything should go automatically. If it doesn't, we would like to hear your comments. -- Bryan (talk to me) 21:51, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, I'm surprised - and in a good way. Please include a note about this new function in the toolbox into the template {{delete}}, the version shown if one tries to put it into an article by hand. Oh and a short explanation in the popup-window would be nice. Something along the line of: "Your entry will be given as reason in the listing" --h-stt !? 22:11, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, {{Delete}} says If this template was added because you clicked "Nominate for deletion" in the left menu, which implies the existence of a "Nominate for deletion" button in the sidebar. But maybe we should make it more clear by bolding it? -- Bryan (talk to me) 09:53, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can't we add this function to the standard monobook? --Jollyroger 08:28, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

বাংলাদেশ or Bangladesh?

The Bangladesh page has been moved to the বাংলাদেশ page, while a category was named বাংলাদেশ alongside the category named Bangladesh. All very nice. But, isn't Wikimedia a global project? Doesn't the use of vernaculars scripts, especially non-international scripts, make it difficult for most people? Is there a policy on this? If yes, why it is not being applied in this case? If no, why it has not been thought of yet? This particular script is my native script. But, for me a global repository of knowledge sounds bigger than nationalistic fervor and zeal. Cheers. Aditya Kabir 17:17, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can see the proposals on titles of articles at Commons:Language policy. I think it's not very clear, and it may deserve some discussion. I don't know what is the best answer, though. If you see that people don't discuss here, you might try at the talk page there. - Keta 18:13, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I can't support this kidn of move for a second. Being an international project, we mustn't have galleries or categories named in some minor obscure language, eg. w:Finnish. The only reasonable thing to do is to use the lingua franca of the current day. Samulili 14:16, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I support articles being in native language, for consistancy. There is Sverige, so what is wrong with Россия (with a redirect from Russia)? But -- as per our policy -- the categories should be in English. Fred J 14:53, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Create redirect, people! They work for galleries! --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 10:55, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Don't more people speak Chinese than English? Should we change everything to Chinese? --Londoneye 11:44, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong image name

Hi, I found an image with a wrong name: Image:Rigugio Bertagnoli.jpg should be renamed as "Rifugio Bertagnoli.jpg" (as you can read in the image itself), "Rigugio" is clearly a mistake. Can anybody do this? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.15.251.194 (talk • contribs) 21:33, 26. Aug. 2007 (UTC)

Hi, due to software limitations, images cannot be automatically moved/renamed. The only way to do it is to upload it again with the right name, and mark the bad one for deletion with {{bad name|better name.jpg}}. thanks --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:35, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, I don't know how to upload an image, I never worked on Commons before. Can anybody do it for me, please? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.56.191.161 (talk • contribs) 19:27, 27. Aug. 2007 (UTC)

OK, I've done it.--Londoneye 11:54, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Categorizing non-english pages

I have started translating some Commons and Help pages into Basque, but I have some doubts. When categorizing, I don't know if I should include them all into Category:Commons-eu, or start doing sub-categories and copy the style of Category:Commons-en. In other languages, most pages are within the main category "commons-xx", but not all, since for example in the German category there is sub-category Category:Commons Hilfe, which is equivalent to Category:Commons help. Also, at the top of Category:Commons-en it says All articles with the exception of Main Page and Commons:Community Portal get sorted in appropriate sub categories. But why don't the other languages follow this?

And what about pages like Commons:Featured pictures? In other languages, some are categorized under their main "commons-xx" category and others under Category:Commons projects. Shouldn't there be a category about projects for each language?

I have seen Commons:Category scheme Commons maintenance but I understand nothing. The sub-pages are identical to the English sub-page, and they all link to the English categories... I'm confused, and I'm afraid I'm confusing you too ;) Please, I need some advice on how to do this. Thanks in advance! - Keta 16:11, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The categorising is very haphazard, even for English, let alone the other languages. So I think do whatever makes sense to you... if you want to put all the Basque pages in a single category, go for it. Or otherwise divide up like Help pages/Policy pages. Just not too many different categories. Thanks for translating :) --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:18, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

29 August 2007

Discussion / deletion

I see that over the past few months Commons:Categories for discussion has acquired some instructions (rather hard to follow, as far as I can tell, and with some links along the way to nonexistent instruction pages). These instructions seem to presume that "discussing" category is tantamount to a proposal to delete it (which I don't think should be the case: it should be possible, for example, tostart a discussion on how to split up a large category, or whether a category's contents are generally approprate to the category name.

Could someone who is more of a "player" here at Commons than I am please look into this? It came up for me because I wanted to propose renaming Category:Greece Orthodox churches as Category:Greek Orthodox churches; I'm proposing a rename, not a deletion. - Jmabel | talk 02:00, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can use the move template to propose the renaming of a category. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 04:46, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Picture of (alleged) criminals/offenders

Dear all,

Is it possible to use pictures of criminals arrested in the United States? (The type of picture with the guy in prison uniform holding a plate with his name.)

I don't know what is the legal status of those images. Are they eligible for PD-USGov?
Is is ethically acceptable to depict people this way on the Foundation's wikis?

I already saw that we have a page named convicts, but everything there is PD-old so the problem is different.

Thanks for your answer. Jérôme 07:50, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Check out Category:Mug shots and Template:PD-US-mugshot. --Fb78 08:23, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks you very much. however there are now some conflicting information.

The model PD-US-mugshot redirects to copyvio, probably meaning that those images are not acceptable as a general rule;
Some older images Image:Bill Gates mugshot.png are published as public domain because taken between 1923 and 1977 without copyright notice, confirming the idea that except in some specific case, these images are not acceptables.
But some more recent images like Image:Jack Kevorkian.jpg simply display PD-USGov as if it was all ok, and apparently nobody cared to suppress them, so it must be ok in a way...

That's why I still have no idea whether these images are or not compatible with Commons' policy. If you have some complementaty information to give me, I thank you. Have a nice day. Jérôme 10:04, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, perhaps there is just no rule that covers all cases. Perhaps you'd like to tell us which pictures you want to use. --Fb78 10:33, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to add a picture to the article w:Hans Reiser. There are many of them on the internet, but none under a suitable licence. So I wondered about the picture of him taken by the police. (I put a link to a press article in XML comments just here ). Jérôme 13:31, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why not ask someone to put their image under a CC-BY license? That seems more humane than showing a mugshot --Fb78 14:29, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, the personality rights (template: {{personality rights}} ) of those depicted might be considered. -- Túrelio 10:26, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Locked page

Please, could you explain me why is this image page locked? I would like to edit it. Thanks.--sevela.p 09:44, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

done - it was locked because it has been used on the main page. Two years ago. --Fb78 10:31, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Question about font copyright

According to [3], the font used for the "Alberta" in en:Image:AB-provincial highway.png is "restricted to provincial government departments and agencies". I know that fonts are generally not copyrightable in the U.S. (is that true in Canada?); what exactly does that mean here? Can I create an SVG version, or do I have to use a publicly available font that looks similar? --NE2 11:13, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can't really answer your question, but in the U.S. it's really only abstract font glyph shapes which are uncopyrightable. Computer font programs are copyrightable, and font names can be trademarked. AnonMoos 02:20, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Interwiki links for categories and galleries

Has there been any consesus on how interwiki links for categories and galleries should be made? If both a category and a gallery exist in Commons for the same topic, should they both have interwiki links to the article pages on the Wikipedias? Or should the category have interwiki links to the Wikipedia categories and the gallery have interwiki links to the Wikipedia articles? What should be done if there is only a category in Commons? I've tried to search for relevant discussion about this, but I can't seem to find any. YooChung 12:49, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The standard practice seems to be that galleries have interwiki links to galleries and categories have interwiki links to categories. Samulili 14:00, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is no such standard practice. The images you can find in Commons categories are there for illustrating Wikipedia articles, not Wikipedia categories. More, in order to properly organize the topics structure in Commons, we need informations which we find in Wikipedia articles first.

You have to understand that Wikimedia Commons is not an encyclopedia project, and therefore many things you have learnt in the Wikipedia projects are irrelevant here. --Juiced lemon 13:46, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I mustn't have really thought about the whole of what I wrote. Naturally there aren't interwiki links between galleries because other projects don't have galleries as separate pages. D'oh!

@YooChung: There are regular interwiki links between categories. From a Wikipedia article, there are usually links to commons with en:Template:Commons template or similar. Commons galleries, on the other hand, have links to Wikipedia articles at the top of the gallery page. Samulili 15:34, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

... or from Wikipedia articles to commons categories using the en:Template:Commonscat template. --Foroa 16:39, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

and above all Template:W article.

The same subject (Interwiki links for categories and galleries) have been previously discussed on June 2007. I apply the only system which was proposed: Commons:Village pump/Archive/2007Jun#Proposals (by myself). --Juiced lemon 18:23, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I had only thought of asking about interwiki links from Commons to Wikipedia (so is it the consesus that Commons categories should be interwiki linked to Wikipedia articles? or is it the other way around? I can't quite tell ...), but the Wikipedia templates above made me wonder about interwiki links from Wikipedia to Commons. I have been interwiki linking categories with categories and articles with galleries (and vice versa) in both Commons and Wikipedia (actually using templates in WP, though), but has this been a good idea? If Commons categories should always be interwiki linked to WIkipedia articles instead of categories, it occurs to me that Wikipedia articles should also be linked to Commons categories instead of galleries ... YooChung 00:30, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

IMO it doesn't make sense for anyone to say "should" or "always" because Wikipedia doesn't always have a category where we have a category, and Commons doesn't always have a gallery where Wikipedia has an article. I think just link to the most useful thing. Sometimes it is a gallery, sometimes it is a category. It's not something I would lose sleep over. :) --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 00:51, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Logos

Can someone maybe point me to the Commons' policy on logos and heraldry? (If there are policies on those.) I'm not clear on why logo's like en:Image:Airbus_Logo.svg are copyrightable, or why an image of the flag of Nova Scotia isn't in the public domain, even though it was created in 1858? Anrie 18:45, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Roughly speaking, if you make a heraldic image from scratch based on the original text description or "blazon", then you have the copyright over that particular image, and can assign it whatever license you want (though there may be separate, non-copyright, restrictions on the use of official insignia). If you download a heraldic emblem from a government website, then that's a completely separate issue, which depends on individual national laws. Corporate logos are only allowed to be hosted at Wikimedia Commons if they consist of simple text in a font. (More eleaborate logos can be hosted at English Wikipedia under "fair use" provisions, but not here.) AnonMoos 02:11, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

License help

I need some help with a license issue... We've got a user (User:Theeuro) who works for the ECB and as such can influence under which license the ECB releases their national euro coin face pictures, with which we've had problems a few times up to now. Under what license would they have to release it so that we can upload their pictures here on the Commons without running into any trouble? Thanks! —Nightstallion (?) 23:51, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

CC 2.5 should be the safest, although it appears we are ok with 3.0 too (but there are better experts then me to discuss the 3.0 issue).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 01:22, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest that they require attribution. That's almost always a good thing for commercial organizations. Putting Share Alike (meaning the license carries to any derivative works) is also often good, so the best license to use would then be {{Cc-by-sa-2.5}} ... or {{Cc-by-sa-3.0}} see Category:License tags ++Lar: t/c 10:16, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Or {{GFDL-1.2}} to make use in print difficult. -- Bryan (talk to me) 12:01, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I fail to see where "to make use in print difficult" is located within the project scope and free content idea. --32X 23:25, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

About derivative works

There are wikipedians from Chinese Wikipedia concern about the copyright of (1) Image:BOCHK passbooks cards.jpg, (2a) Image:Tvb-weekly-special.JPG ver.A, (2b) Image:Tvb-weekly-special.JPG ver.B, (2c) Image:Zeitschriften.JPG and (3) Image:Wii Wiimotea.png. I just take a look on Commons:Derivative works, but still not quite sure about the clear status on each piece of work. Could anyone answer that if they are suitable to be placed on Wikimedia Commons or not?! Stewart~惡龍 06:57, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

(1) yes (2a)(2b) no (2c) yes (3) yes. --Fb78 10:01, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Could you please give reason as well? Many thank. Stewart~惡龍 16:29, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

The reasons are laid out pretty thoroughly on Commons:Derivative works. Photographs on magazine covers are protected, so you can't reproduce them here. Simple designs, such as the credit cards and the Wii console (which basically is just a box at an angle) are not protected by copyright. --Fb78 07:37, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

would you like to further explain why Image:BOCHK passbooks cards.jpg are not copyrighted? Bank notes and Credit cards maybe utilitarian objects, but the logo of BOCHK and the graphic design on the credit card sould be copyrighted. Is "simple design" not an "art"?--Srr 06:17, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The image (1) Image:BOCHK passbooks cards.jpg clearly, in my view, does reach the threshold for copyrightability - indeed, even the pictorial logo down the right side of two of the cards does that. I'm afraid it and the others mentioned cannot remain here. (3) Image:Wii Wiimotea.png is OK, though, as it shows little more than a 3d box which will not attract copyright. I've tagged the problem files on Commons for speedy deletion. --MichaelMaggs 06:28, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm sorry but as those images are still in argument. It's not that good to put them in speedy deletion. I'd prefer Commons:Deletion_requests rather than that. And, I'm worried about images like this are deleted without any notice, it's because, some of them probably still can be used on Wikipedia (or other projects) under fairuse.Stewart~惡龍 11:04, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

30 August 2007

Poll about association football

I have set up a new poll about the naming of categories which regard association football here, in order to resolve the issue which has been discussed in Commons:Categories for discussion/Current requests/2007/07/Category:Soccer in England & Category:Soccer in Scotland.

The voting will begin on September, 1st, 0:00 am. --Juiced lemon 10:23, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Blurry images

Simple question: is it possible to 'unblurry' images, and if so - how? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 18:57, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Images can be sharpened to some extent, but there is a limit to what extent. See en:Unsharp masking. If this is in relation to a wikipedia image try asking en:User:MIckStephenson

86.145.179.212 21:05, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

why does th e link not work?

86.145.179.212 21:10, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Works OK for me.--Londoneye 11:57, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Commons user accounts, by choice of interface language

Some of the folks at Wiktionary asked me to report on the user interface settings used by Wiktionary users. I thought the results might be interesting for commons as well. Enjoy. --Gmaxwell 02:02, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Users	Interface language user preference
108864	en
31821	es
12487	fr
11552	de
5367	pt
3655	ja
2664	pl
2423	it
2065	nl
1625	sv
1621	pt-br
1235	no
1223	ar
1012	ru
830	zh
501	ca
488	cs
349	fi
233	zh-tw
231	hu
219	bg
204	zh-cn
174	zh-hk
166	he
165	da
123	tr
101	zh-yue
89	fa
77	id
59	sl
55	ko
54	ro
48	eu
47	vi
44	el
39	lt
38	hr
37	nn
32	th
31	eo
29	uk
23	sr
17	et
11	is
10	ms
8	gu
7	ast
6	gsw
5	be
4	br
3	be-tarask
2	af
1	ab

Cool, thankyou. I copied this table and put some notes about it at Commons:Registered users by language preference. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 09:13, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also if you could copy the SQL query on that page, it would be useful for in the future, so we can reproduce the stats consistently.

I wonder what proportion of users in any given non-English wiki use the English interface? pfctdayelise (说什么?) 09:21, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Most accounts are not used, and I assume that the English interface is the ‘by default’ one. So, in my opinion, these stats are of little interest. The number of edits with a given interface would be more significant. --Juiced lemon 09:42, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely the English figure will be grossly inflated, but it seems to me that you wouldn't bother registering and changing your language if you weren't going to edit, so I think the non-English numbers must be good. Of course they will be under-represented, because some users will keep using English or won't even realise it's possible to change it, but they are a useful estimate hopefully. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 08:09, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

1 September 2007

Advertising in the main page

Some users have decided to advertise in the main page here.

I thing such advertising is against Commons policy (see also Talk:Main Page#Edit by User:Juiced lemon): a minority of users cannot decide to seize the main page for themselves. Therefore, I request the cleaning of the main page. --Juiced lemon 09:57, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would not characterise "meet our photographers" as advertising anything. Rather, it is showcasing some of our best work. I think we ought to be encouraging good photographers to contribute more, and some recognition is a good way of furthering this. Thanks for bringing this up here to discuss it, but can we please keep the discussion in one place? See also Commons_talk:Meet_our_photographers#Main_Page and Talk:Main_Page#Edit_by_User:Juiced_lemon ++Lar: t/c 10:26, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't criticize Commons:Meet our photographers, but this page is only a Commons project amongst many others. The Community has not decided to promote more particularly this project and the related activities. Therefore, it's fine to link it in Commons:Community Portal and Commons:Featured pictures, but not in the main page, which is intended to the access to Commons database at first. --Juiced lemon 07:23, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You are the one who says the main page is (only?)/first intended to access the Commons database. This change is not impeding anyone to access the Commons database anyway. Displaying the POTD doesn't exactly "provide access" to the database, but it serves a useful purpose nonetheless. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 07:37, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I commented on Talk:Main_Page#Edit_by_User:Juiced_lemon, let's keep the discussion there Finn Rindahl 07:41, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Now, the place for accessing the Commons database is only 1/8th of the displayed part of the main page. Any addition above this place obviously impedes access to the media files. Quote (author: Juiced lemon):

Tasks which are useful to Commons project:
* before an upload to Commons:
  * draw an image
  * take a picture
  * record an audio file
  * find an existing media file with a free licence (possibly, negociate for it)
* upload a media file which is:
  1. in the scope of the project (that is with a free licence)
  2. not already in the database
  3. not obviously superseded by another file
* classify media files of the Commons database
* organize the Commons project
* write documents in order to help people to concur to the project goals
* check the compliance of people actions with Commons goals, rules, methods and customs
Perform a particular task, like “upload an media file”, don't grant you any privilege, or any skill you don't already own.

Take a photograph is only a particular task amongst other ones. --Juiced lemon 08:09, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. It would be great to have more users classifying images. What about creaeting Featured Galleries, that show a featured collection of images? This will probably draw more users into organizing media. -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:23, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Necessary to OTRS this info?

The flag and coat of arms of Nova Scotia keeps getting deleted because the government of Nova Scotia website says "use of the Nova Scotia flag in a respectful manner as a symbol of the Province of Nova Scotia is permitted".

I have however contacted the the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and asked them if the flags and coats of arms of the provinces of Canada (and Nova Scotia in particular) are protected by copyright. I got an email back stating that "the arms, crest or flag adopted and used at any time by Canada or by any province or municipal corporation in Canada" are only protected by section 9 of the Trademarks Act.

Can I just add this to the image summary template, or do I need to forward this email to OTRS? Anrie 09:04, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Judging from meta:User_talk:Anthere#Licensing_policy, the question on whether coats of arms are "free cultural works" or not is still an open one. Teofilo 12:11, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Anrie, please forward the email to OTRS and also mention the template. -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:20, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

some easy use guidelines please

Not all of us are able to understand how we are supposed to go about uploading photos and other things. I've spent most of the morning jumping from here to there looking at various instructions and guidelines and as a newbie what I would really like would be "How to upload your work in X easy steps" or similar. I want to contribute photos, which I have, but I do not want to spend hours trying to find out how to do it. Can someone give me a linear A to F? westvidalWestvidal 10:15, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Westvidal, have you tried to the Commons:First steps? Let us know if there's anything that's not covered in there. cheers --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 10:42, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Where can I find a dump of the Wikimedia Commons' database ?

Actually this is not my question but a question asked by someone else on the French Wikipedia's Bistro : fr:Wikipédia:Le_Bistro/2_septembre_2007#Dump_wikimedia_commons. If you know the answer, would you mind answering there ?

Teofilo 10:44, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The raw text databases are here: http://download.wikipedia.org/backup-index.html. The image database is not publicly available yet. However, the developers are making efforts to run an rsync3 server that will allow the replication of Commons' images. -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:19, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Are you making that comment on the basis of the wikitech-l discussion a few weeks ago, or do you have some more information since then? pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:37, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, this was only a few days ago. There is no official information yet though. -- Bryan (talk to me) 13:04, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Bryan, for your answer. Teofilo 13:53, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

-Joseph William Burzynski

I am looking for family of Joseph William Burzynski,born 1894 in Sterdyn,Poland. I now vey little about his family. His mothers maiden name was Boltoze. I do not know her given name. I believe he had a brother John and maybe a sister Helen. Joseph left Poland at age 14, landed in the US then later went to Canada. In Canada he married Pauline Winczura, out of that union a family of 6 girls. Joseph lost contact of his family during the second world war. I do not have the knowlege of reading Polish. I would appreciate any knowlege that may be out there about my father.

Louise O Burzynski Gilley loubeanie2@msn.com

This is a site for hosting images and other media for use on WMF projects. It's probably not the best place for your query. There are a lot of resources on the web. Try the Geneology article on Wikipedia for some possible starting points, or you might try asking your question in the right subsection of the Wikipedia:Reference desk. ++Lar: t/c 11:06, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Image:Dp logo bw.jpg

and Image:Dp logo cmyk.jpg both posted as PD. I am not really sure if that is true. Any ideas. --Tarawneh 02:05, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Some letters and a (simple) post horn, nothing that can be copyrighted. Only the use of the images is limited but still within Wikipedia's project scope. --32X 23:36, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Favicon for Wikimedia Commons

I've been uploading Favicons from all Wikimedia projects I could think of and Commons is the only one that didn't have one. Anyone up for the task of making one? --Steinninn 02:59, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Er, Commons has a favicon in my browser...? pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:45, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And you can see that as easily as all browsers do… [4] --Mormegil 13:20, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Funny. I don't see it. Could you upload it with the rest of the images --Steinninn 14:48, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I can see it, but it has bugged me for a while that it appears on a white background. A version with a transparent background would be better. Any idea how to change it? the wub "?!" 18:03, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, uploading a new version of Wikimedia#Favicon and reporting it at bugzilla should work. The only Wikimedia favicon that looks transparent to me is the Meta on. --Steinninn 05:08, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Cities by the Oder River

User:Sebastian Wallroth has just created this category, but this name makes me think about floating cities. I should like rather Category:Cities along the Oder River, or something like that.

However, as I am not expert in English language, I ask for other opinions. --Juiced lemon 14:41, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't river be with a small r and not a capital? (It's not German ;)) -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:23, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Capital is usual in such case: Template:W article. --Juiced lemon 19:42, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure what is the better name, I'm no native English speaker either ;) Whatever the outcome it would also affect category:Cities by the Rhine and category:Cities by the Vistula, the top category Category:Cities by river I take it is more like Rivers by continent, writers by nationality and so forth. Finn Rindahl 21:31, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Categories “by criterion” are not concerned (see Commons:Naming categories#Categories by CRITERION).

Google test:

“cities by the Rhine”: 6 (2 from Wikipedia Commons)
“cities on the Rhine”: 3890
“cities along the Rhine”: 3990

--Juiced lemon 23:04, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Seems a close call between on the and along the, either is fine with me. The google test should effectively disqualify by the Rhine. But this seem to have been discussed before, with the opposite result: see Category:Cities and villages on the Rhine which has been made a cat redir to category:cities by the Rhine. Anyone remembering this? Finn Rindahl 23:38, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd have thought "by the River" is better; after all, we say "Sussex by the Sea", not on or along the sea!Londoneye 12:03, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why the Oder River? The Oder is a small important German river- say like the Spee or the Sieg. European convention is to place the word river before the name. With larger rivers- such as the Rhein (Rhine) or Donau (Danube)the word river is often omitted. So we have the River Oder, the River Sieg, the River Spee. I think that this then has a knock on effect with the 'by' and 'along'. To my thinking, a city by a river is one where the river does not pass through or along the borders, where a city is along a river, the river passes through the city. If we group together those cities- then the river almost certainly will pass through a piece if the landmass. Now Brighton is on a sea not a river- but one could have a category: Holiday resorts along the Sussex Coast.ClemRutter 12:57, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hogarth on Wheels!

I've turned up a book showing, in extreme detail, all of the works that were ever reliably attributed to Hogarth. I'm going to scan all of them in and claim PD-art/PD-100 (He died in 17something); will anyone upload them for me? 68.39.174.238 01:21, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's fantastic, but can't you get an account and upload them yourself? --Fb78 07:48, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alright look for them this weekend. 68.39.174.238 17:02, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User:Mr. Krabs

This user keeps vandalizing. Can somebody block him? —Squidward 02:58, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can somebody block SpongeBob, too? He's getting annoying! —Squidward 03:08, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Annoying vandal indeed! Give him the boot! —Sandy Cheeks 03:17, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The place is here, the time is now...

A strange thing was reported on the French-speaking Bistro concerning Image:Shinhwa07.5B.jpg‎, which appears in Category:Copyright violation. Following the link will get you to Image:Shinhwa07.jpg, which was deleted some time ago and is definitely not the same picture. Yet it's perfectly possible to view diffs, such as this one, or to view this picture from one of the Wikipedias, see for instance en:Image:Shinhwa07.5B.jpg. Any idea what's going on? Jastrow (Λέγετε) 09:03, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like the “.5B” part of the name is ignored: Image:Shinhwa07.5B.jpg. Possibly a bug. --Juiced lemon 09:33, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, looks like a bug. The software doesn't like multiple dots in the file name. Using "Shinhwa07%2E5B.jpg", I was able to delete it. (It was an album cover. %2E is the encoding for a period.) Lupo 09:41, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We have a number of pictures with multiple dots in the file name (e.g. pictures from the British Museum with accession number in the file name) and they don't pose any problem for now. I'm not sure I understand how this bug works: why was the ".5B" part was just ignored? Jastrow (Λέγετε) 09:50, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Don't know. "%5B" is "[". File a bug report! Lupo 10:26, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's caused by our MediaWiki:Monobook.js. See Commons:Bistro#Bug ?. Do we really need these lines? They unconditionally remove any ".5B" ("[") and ".5D" ("]") from the href, which gives interesting behaviour for .5B: that goes to the main page (open for editing)! At the very least do the removal only after a "#"! Lupo 12:32, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For a fix, see MediaWiki talk:Monobook.js. Lupo 15:27, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

RSS feed

Hi everybody, is it possible to use a RSS feed for images of a special topic? What I need are random images from the plant species 'Solanacea' on my website and there are a lot of nice images available in wikimedia. It would be nice to have these images on my website included through a RSS feed. Does anyone have experience with that?

You can get an RSS feed for a category like this. Or you could, if the toolserver would be working. Should be back in a day or two... Note: This will not show random images, but the last ones uploaded in that category. --Magnus Manske 15:09, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot. Sounds useful in my case. I will try this approach.

We now have Commons:Feeds. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:33, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Non-photograph images

Could you point me to policies on who holds copyrights to non-photographic images? For example in case of medical x-ray images (for example http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Xray_empty_dental_space.jpg) are they copyrighted and if so who has right to release them to public domain: a patient in the image (most likely), a technician or doctor who pressed the button (less likely), or hardware owner (very unlikely). How about x-ray images of cargo containers (like http://www.cargolaw.com/images/Singles06.Co-Loading2.GIF) who has copyrights to those: owner of the container, person in the image (if any), hardware operator, organization that owns the hardware? Does wikicommons have any guidelines on this type of images? Thanks in advance -- Jarekt

There's nothing special, per se, about non-visible-light photographs. There's no difference of paying a dentist to photograph a tooth vs. paying someone to take a standard 35mm film picture of a whole person. The photographer generally holds the copyright. Cburnett 04:01, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's correct. The person who sets up/operates the photomechanical device holds the copyright. In the US, this can also be a corporation or government body. The person who is being depicted never holds the copyright. --Fb78 11:24, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, if you pay the dentist, does that make it a work for hire? :) pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:33, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Likely not (at least in the US where I know the law). IIRC, health care providers are generally considered the owner of the records. Laws say that you have the right to a copy only if you make a request and you are required to pay a reasonable fee for copying them. FloNight ♥♥♥ 16:10, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If copyrights of medical images are held by technicians that operate the machine than all the medical images donated to wiki commons by patients do not have proper licenses. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Chest.png or http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Cdm_hip_fracture_343.jpg or http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:LCA-RX1.jpg as examples. Some uploaders stated that they took the photos of x-ray images so they are the authors. I believe that patients should be able to upload their own medical images, but that does not seem like a proper justification. If they have such legal right than there should be license choice that fits that scenario. If thy have no such right than it should be added to FAQ or some other easy to find place. Jarekt 19:31, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The radiologist has no rights when he can't prove it:

non-digital techniques: either the radiologist don't keep a copy of the images, either he keep them during a short time
digital techniques: lenght of storage?

--Juiced lemon 22:09, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's simpler than that. The radiologist has no ownership because they are the employee. A creative work done during the course of employment is, by default, ownership of the employer (unless you have specific arrangements to the contrary).

As for ownership by the patient, that has to be evaluated on a per-image basis because you don't know if they were granted copyright ownership. Cburnett 03:08, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

YLMV, your legislation may vary. One shouldn't say that a work done during the course of employment is, by default, ownership of the employer because that is not the case everywhere. Samulili 07:30, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it should be considered the default unless otherwise stated. On the copyright status, I think that most of these images (if not all?) lack originality, so no copyright claim can be made. There are simply the work of a machine, like a scanner. The radiologist is there to interpret the images, not to create artistic content. Yann 14:50, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Samulili: touche. That is the US's take on the employer/employee-copyright position.

Yann: the originality is there to the same extent of photographing any specific object. Just because I take a long-exposure of a waterfall (hardly original) doesn't mean I don't get a copyright to my photo. And simply because a radiologist has an ancillary job of interpreting doesn't mean the work in making the photo is for naught in terms of copyright. Cburnett 05:06, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

6 September 2007

Tagging

I have recieved permission to upload images from a website. I got the confimation via email. I would like to find out what tags need to be used before i upload and how do i prove that i have permissionAdam.J.W.C.

And how are we supposed to help you if we don't know what that permission says? (Forward your whole E-Mail exchange it to permissions-commons AT wikimedia DOT org and make clear in your E-Mail to which images from which website it applies and also mention that you need help to figure out the right tag.) Lupo 06:48, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Check out Commons:OTRS for some more details about "proving" permissions, and until the images get processed you can tag them with {{Otrs pending}}. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:32, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the info, I have sent an email to the above address, It contains my request and his reply. I will upload one of the images and tag it as instructed above. The image is of a man inside an operations bunker standing on a ladder in front of a map of the south west pacific theater of war. ThanksAdam.J.W.C. 04:44, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fundraising buttons

Copied from the mailing lists. Those of you with graphic skills should take note:

From Sabine Cretella

Hi, some of you probably already noted that we are starting to work on the fundraiser. Over time you will see some requests for help here and I hope you will do so :-)

At this stage there are two active tasks and one of it is the creation of the Buttons for the fundraiser.

Description: meta:Fundraising 2007/Buttons and banners to be translated

First examples and translations: meta:Fundraising 2007/web buttons

So if you have ideas to create buttons, banners etc: just do it :-)

Wishing you a creative and wonderful day!

Sabine

Cary Bass ^demandez 12:43, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Image to rename

The image Image:Catilina lors de la conjuration.jpg should be renamed because it does not depict Catilina but Jugurtha. I've explained in the relevant page what should be done and why. But I don't know how to rename images. If anybody knows how, please do it in my place. Thanks in advance. --Vermondo 00:48, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that when I'm uploading for example my own work, the side bar is missleading. Where it normally sais Upload file it now sais Upload your own work. That is because the system message MediaWiki:Upload/ownwork has been changed. I see four things we can do.

nothing
Not my choice, you think you will go to the same form again, but instead you go to Commons:Upload, sure, you are still only one click away from your destination, but we are professionals, we shouldn't have it like this.
delete MediaWiki:Upload/ownwork
The only thing I know this will change is that the title of my own work will change from Upload your own work into Upload file.
change MediaWiki:Upload-url/ownwork into [5]
When you are at my own work and click on Upload your own work at the sidebar, then you will actually be taken to that form.
change upload-url|upload at MediaWiki:Sidebar into upload-url|Upload file
Now the sidebar will still say Upload file no matter what form you are in. The downside is, when you set your language into something els then English, you will still see Upload file. Maybe we could create a new system message.

The same goes for the other fictional languages (fromflickr, fromwikimedia, fromgov, more?). I'll go with number 4, but number 2 is tempting. --Steinninn 03:42, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. I didn't notice that before. It's a side effect of the fact that the label on the sidebar is reused as the heading for the upload form in question. I think the custom headings are useful, so I don't think there's anything we can do about the sidebar links. They are only "wrong" for one page. We can't do option 4 because it will break multilinguality. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:31, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What if we use uploadbtn instead of upload in the sidebar? Do you have any idea what that system message is used for? --Steinninn 15:56, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mayflower

I almost died of old age waiting for a response from Mayflower. I may have a couple keystrokes left... they may be my last... ....gurgle!

The toolserverdatabase has problems. s2 is currently unavailable, see tools.wikimedia.de/status_s2. The database for Commons is on that cluster.--Erwin85 11:43, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Commonswiki appears to be up to date on Yarrow. Maybe we should poke around with Tango. -- Bryan (talk to me) 18:10, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

EXIF problem

Recently, I uploaded my photos to Commons and chose Dual Free License, but in the EXIF showed "Copyright holder" tag with "Copyright 2007" (like this), did this camera "BenQ C1050" has any problem? If this problem still continued, what should I do and did anyone have idea about changing EXIF data? Rico Shen ^contact... 17:37, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What's the problem? Your photo is copyrighted, and you licensed it under both the GFDL and CC-BY-SA-2.5. So everything is fine. GFDL/CC-BY-SA-2.5 does not mean you'd give up copyright! You do keep the copyright, but you grant a non-revokeable liberal license to use the image to anyone else. Choosing a license tag on Commons does not change the EXIF data of the image. ... Or wait... is your problem that the EXIF shows "Copyright 2007" instead of your name? I don't know how to fix that on your camera. To fix it in the JPEG, use an EXIF editor. Lupo 19:38, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Rico Shen, have a look at Commons:Manipulating meta data. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 05:43, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I asked for this question because someone may misunderstand that the picture is "All rights reserved", but the EXIF information of BenQ C1050 shows just "Copyright 2007", not include "All rights reserved", it means that the license of photos is still decided by users freely. If still have the problem, I'll contact BenQ Taiwan for solving this problem. Rico Shen ^contact... 06:45, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The default for any picture is "all rights reserved" unless mentioned otherwise. Someone seeing "Copyright 2007" is more likely to assume "all rights reserved" than dream up his own. The type of person who does interpret this too freely is the type who have little regard for licenses anyway and they'll copy the picture no matter what it says.

I don't think you need to worry about this: clearly all rights aren't reserved, as is made clear by the extremely big licenses in the summary section, which people will see long before scrolling down to squint at "Copyright 2007". And as Lupo has said: "Copyright 2007" isn't wrong, that's still the year in which you created a work to which some copyrights belong only to the you.

New upload warning message

May I point to the new upload warning message MediaWiki:Filename-bad-prefix? It was activated today and warns the users when they use file names typically assigned by digital cameras. The list of prefixes can be edited here: MediaWiki:Filename-prefix-blacklist. I hope this new warning helps a bit to get more descriptive filenames in the future. --Raymond ^Disc. 20:26, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think "IM" should be added to the list (HP C618 and other cams). - Erik Baas 20:37, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dose this mean they are simply not able to upload these names or are just warned? Anyway, great idea. --Steinninn 20:46, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's a warning only like previous existing warnings too (e.g. for an already existing image). --Raymond ^Disc. 20:50, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

AWESOME thankyou!! pfctdayelise (说什么?) 22:14, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

8 September 2007

Duplication

I found this feature image Image:Along the River 7-119-3.jpg is a duplicate of Image:QingMingShangHeTu Big.jpg. They are both exactly a copy of http://www.npm.gov.tw/masterpiece/enlargement.jsp?pic=K2A001110, but used different compression ratio to reproduce. After some sampling and comparing, I can say the color of Image:QingMingShangHeTu Big.jpg is closer to http://www.npm.gov.tw/masterpiece/enlargement.jsp?pic=K2A001110 than Image:Along the River 7-119-3.jpg. It means Image:QingMingShangHeTu Big.jpg is closer to original version of NPM than Image:Along the River 7-119-3.jpg.--

百楽兎

02:26, 8 September 2007 (UTC) A deletion request of featured picture: Image:Along the River 7-119-3.jpg was made. Please DON'T write your opinion here.--

百楽兎

05:38, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Attitudes to Admin activity & Community policy

I've re-written this a few times mentally and abandoned it, for those of you who may not realise it I am quite annoyed. The community worked on, discussed and then voted on a policy to de-admin those users who were inactive, the process ending in June. This was as a result of concerns expressed on various community pages prior to this. Considerable work has been put into this by various users over that time culminating in contacting those who were inactive and asking them if they still required the tools - an almost overly reasonable approach in my view.

Many of the comments there are perfectly reasonable. Some of us were in discussion on Commons-l about comments such as this and this. It appears that some of these Admins feel unable to spend the time watching community pages. However the last straw to me is this. I am sure this user will have given valuable assistance to Commons in the past, personally I have no idea who they are as I've seen no log entries I am aware of here or elsewhere but the complete disregard for the communities views I find very offensive. If anyone were to RfA with the fact that they might be inactive and disinterested to this degree in policy I sincerely doubt anyone would vote for them. I fail to see why they should be allowed to take this stance after gaining these rights here.

I'd appreciate the views of the community, thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:43, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Some people see adminship as a reward for "all" they have done for Commons and do not like to lose it. I don't want admins who have no interest in the community and see adminship as a status. Adminship is a tool for people who who want to serve the community by doing the dirty jobs, not a status to show off your contributions on Commons. -- Bryan (talk to me) 11:13, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

+1 --Polarlys 12:26, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

+2 --Digon3 ^talk 13:42, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Try not to take it personally Herby... I'm sure the vast majority of the friction is caused by the fact we are trying to implement this policy after the fact. If we had had a policy like this from the start, I doubt it would have caused any problems.

Some of our inactive admins are people who, once upon a time, were very active. I don't think they only want to keep their admin flag to "show off". It must be either for convenience (to delete their own mistakes) or because of a belief about what the admin flag signifies (only trustworthiness to use the tools for the good of the project, or something also about being part of the active community here?) --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 14:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If I were taking it personally I assure you that you and everyone else would know. To call a debated, voted on policy "fatuous" is at the very best uncivil and disrespectful of the community in my opinion. It would appear from the comments above yours that I may not be the only one --Herby ^{talk thyme} 14:30, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's not worth getting yourself annoyed by comments like that. There are always one or two people who kick up a fuss when something gets changed and who feel that they can trash with five second's thought carefully designed procedures that others have spent many hours diligently working on. We appreciate all the effort that has gone into this, Herby, even if that user doesn't. --MichaelMaggs 15:35, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

++ -- Bryan (talk to me) 16:29, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Herby is doing no more than reiterating what many people think.--Londoneye 12:02, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have no interest in seeking status or being rewarded for my contributions. I did in fact gain this community's trust when it was quite young, and I have in fact contributed a few photos in the past. I have lately been less active because I have not had the opportunity to travel far and wide and take more pictures since I made my earlier contributions. I have not disappeared; I intend to contribute more whenever I can (in fact I have a few photos from the past summer which I will upload soon); I do not pretend my past contributions give me the right to permanent adminship.

However, I do "still need my adminship", and I do find a policy fatuous (i.e. foolish, ill-thought-out, unnecessary) which talks about adminship in terms of "need". Whenever I'm active, I use my adminship regularly. I've done maintenance in the past; perhaps I'll find time to do more. If someone wishes to call my trustworthiness into question, let him do so; meanwhile I wish to retain the convenience of being able to clean up after myself and do the occasional bit of maintenance when I run across some rubbish. This would cause no trouble to anybody but myself. My password is strong so security is not an issue. I missed my chance to comment on the policy when it was being made, so I am doing so now (in expanded form because the succint summary of my opinion has been taken amiss). I am not disdaining the effort that went into this policy (I'm sure it was a lot); I simply find the outcome of that effort grievously misguided. In other words, I'm sure you thought hard about this, but I still think you're wrong.

To my disbelief, you question whether I "should be allowed to take this stance" as an administrator. I am not part of some ruling party which requires its members all to think and speak the same (though the several above 'me-too' comments are far from encouraging). Surely I can take what stance I please? Evidently I disagree with the community's views; but voicing my disagreement is not equivalent to "complete disregard" -- just as criticism of the law is not the same as civil disobedience. Does this make sense? — Dan | Talk 05:05, 11 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

I could use some help identifying some of the actors in Category:It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and categorizing them. Would someone like to lend a hand? Thanks!... -- Yekrats 10:58, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

see http://imdb.com/title/tt0057193/

--Juiced lemon 12:42, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hogarth images (Large)

http://68.39.174.238/WH.zip — A load of free engravings of Hogarthery, including the long missing (From WpA) "w:Industry and Idleness", as I promised above that I would scan and make available. Licence should be PD-Art|PD-100, given that he died in the 1700s. 68.39.174.238 17:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I will upload them, if you can provide some more information about the book you scanned it. Thank you for the work! -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:56, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They come from two books, 1st of which was "The genius of William Hogarth", the second, "Hogarth's Graphical Works". 68.39.174.238 01:03, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. Uploading. To everybody: The images are here [6]. Some of them need rotation and or cropping; you're help would be appreciated. -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:30, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also, all the old uploaded engravings need to be marked as redundant and replaced providing they aren't better (Which isn't likely, all the one's I've checked thus far were all at low enough a resolution you couldn't read the verses at the bottom. 68.39.174.238 01:42, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Image:Mulroney Memoirs.jpg

What is the proper licensing for a book cover ? Canuck 19:41, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

{{Fair use}}. :-) Since we don't allow fair use, this will be deleted. Lupo 19:47, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, where does Image:Muhammeds Great Gun.jpg come from? Scanned from a book? Which book? Who is this "John Bachelor"? Lupo 19:53, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

JavaScript PNG transparency fix

The English Wikipedia now employs a JavaScript fix to make transparent PNG images display correctly on Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6. I propose that we add this bit of JavaScript to the Commons as well. The full code, for those technically inclined, is:

/*

Correctly handle PNG transparency in Win IE 5.5 & 6.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola. Updated 18-Jan-2006.

Tweaked 9 Sep 2007 (UTC) by Remember_the_dot so that it works properly inside Common.js

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola/pnginfo.htm states "This page contains more information for the curious or those who wish to amend the script for special needs", which I take as permission to modify or adapt this script freely. I release my changes into the public domain.

*/

function PngFix()
{
   if (document.body.filters)
   {
       for(var i=0; i<document.images.length; i++)
       {
          var img = document.images[i]
          var imgName = img.src.toUpperCase()
          if (imgName.substring(imgName.length-3, imgName.length) == "PNG")
          {
             var imgID = (img.id) ? "id='" + img.id + "' " : ""
             var imgClass = (img.className) ? "class='" + img.className + "' " : ""
             var imgTitle = (img.title) ? "title='" + img.title + "' " : "title='" + img.alt + "' "
             var imgStyle = "display:inline-block; vertical-align:middle;" + img.style.cssText 
             if (img.align == "left") imgStyle = "float:left;" + imgStyle
             if (img.align == "right") imgStyle = "float:right;" + imgStyle
             if (img.parentElement.href) imgStyle = "cursor:hand;" + imgStyle
             var strNewHTML = "<span " + imgID + imgClass + imgTitle
             + " style=\"" + "width:" + img.width + "px; height:" + img.height + "px;" + imgStyle + ";"
             + "filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader"
             + "(src=\'" + img.src + "\', sizingMethod='scale');\"></span>" 
             img.outerHTML = strNewHTML
             i = i-1
          }
       }
   }
}

if (navigator.appName == "Microsoft Internet Explorer")
{
    var version = parseFloat(navigator.appVersion.split("MSIE")[1])
    if (version <= 6 && version >= 5.5)
    {
        window.addOnloadHook(PngFix)
    }
}

The only downside is that IE 5.5 and 6 users will no longer be able to right-click and save thumbnails of images. However, this isn't a big issue because users do not typically want to download thumbnails; they usually want to download the full-resolution image. And, of course, the problem does not affect users who upgrade to IE7.

Any thoughts? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 03:04, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why should this another code be needed? Isn't this (or an equivalent code) already in the IEFixes which adds Mediawiki? Platonides 13:45, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure IEFixes.js only fixes transparency on the Commons logo. This would fix transparency issues on nearly all PNG images. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 19:05, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

9 September 2007

Google Pdf Scan

I found this at Image:Germania_32_1887.pdf, but should be treated as a general matter. The conflicting page is the first one, which i reproduce below. Warning: It's a big file (16,51 MB), full of embedded images.

[Google logo]

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world’s books discoverable online. It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that’s often difficult to discover. Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book’s long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. We also ask that you:

Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes.
Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google’s system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.
Maintain attribution The Google “watermark” you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.
Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can’t offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book’s appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world’s books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at http://books.google.com/

Now, #1 is against Commons licensing guidelines. #2 not applicable. I'm happy with #3, but we may want to remove the Google logo, as it's copyrighted, to avoid giving it with a PD book. As they're asking us to keep the notice, there wouldn't be any copyright infigement, though. We're already aware of #4.

Due to #1 we would need to reject it. However, it's a scan of PD so we can decide to use it as Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.. IANAL but i understand #4 as abiding them under US rules. Also, i prefer to read it as kindly asking us to comply with it instead of requiring to do it (and IMHO they can't do otherwise) but i would appreciate the opinion of a native US speaker.

What do we do? Platonides 14:20, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest that we ignore Google's fraudulent claims. The book is in the public domain, and Google's use of a photoscanner does not give them any copyrights. --Kjetil r 18:45, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Fraudulent"? That's a bit strong. They're politely asking the user to do certain things and not do others. They don't claim copyright, as they darn well known that they don't have a copyright on it. That's way better than the large majority of other archives, who just slap a copyright notice on everything. I would, like Platonides proposed, ignore #1. If it's not too much work to remove the Google logo from the PDF, then do it, but if it's left in there, I don't think it's a problem. I don't quite understand why de-WS needs to upload these PDFs here (or anywhere else), though. (But I've got nothing against it, either.) Why can't they just link to the Google page instead? Do they fear that it might disappear there? Lupo 07:41, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they fear it might disappear there. Does Google commit to leaving these scanned pages where they are for the next five months, or five years, or forever? I'm sure they don't. If they're gone from Google, they're gone forever. That's one thing. The other thing is: Google politely asking for usage is nice, but I think we can ignore that. What are they going to do? They're offering material which is in the public domain, and people use it. So? --Fb78 07:48, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think having Google's logo on Commons is a pretty big policy violation. It should be cut out. -- Bryan (talk to me) 14:19, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Am I the only one not wanting to have this material on Commons? :-/

I think it would just be better for everyone to have it at google... the only reason why not is because google might delete them, and is that likely to happen? I don't think so..

Fred J 14:47, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This material is 1. free and 2. useful for one or more Wikimedia projects. So it's not against Commons:Project scope. The friggin Google logo can be cropped out, if anyone actually believes that it should not be there. @Fred J: Google is a company, a company's goal is to make money. If at one point they feel that offering free book scans doesn't work for them anymore, they can just cut it off. Noone can keep them from doing so. When editing Wikipedia, there are so many links you have to pull from archive.org because the original site took them down. Why let this happen to these books? It's not like Google owes us to keep them in place. --Fb78 16:48, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

requesting correct edit to Category:Commons-mr

Dear SantaClaus you seems to have made an edit to Category:Commons-mr This Category is supposed to be for Marathi Language (This language is used in western parts of India).Your edit dated 19:39, 3 March 2007 states * This category contains French articles only.

For your info This category has nothing to do with French per say .Secondly part of Marathi speaking people do understand english but not French. So Undersigned requests to correct the edit made by you, apropriately.

Since I am not fully aware of all rules at commons I hope you will help us in correcting above mentioned edit.

Mahitgar 16:48, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

He already fixed it. Remember that this is a wiki, and you do not have to request from anybody to fix such a thing. -- Bryan (talk to me) 18:45, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 671: / Line 671: @@
 :I have no interest in seeking status or being rewarded for my contributions. I did in fact gain this community's trust when it was quite young, and I have in fact contributed a few photos in the past. I have lately been less active because I have not had the opportunity to travel far and wide and take more pictures since I made my earlier contributions. I have not disappeared; I intend to contribute more whenever I can (in fact I have a few photos from the past summer which I will upload soon); I do not pretend my past contributions give me the right to permanent adminship.
-:However, I do "still need my adminship", and I do find a policy fatuous (i.e. foolish, ill-thought-out, unnecessary) which talks about adminship in terms of "need". Whenever I'm active, I use my adminship regularly. I've done maintenance in the past; perhaps I'll find time to do more. If someone wishes to call my trustworthiness into question, let him do so; meanwhile I wish to retain the convenience of being able to clean up after myself and do the occasional bit of maintenance when I run across some rubbish. This would cause no trouble to anybody but myself. My password is strong so security is not an issue. I missed my chance to comment on the policy when it was being made, so I am doing so now (in expanded form because the succint summary of my opinion has been taken amiss).
+:However, I do "still need my adminship", and I do find a policy fatuous (i.e. foolish, ill-thought-out, unnecessary) which talks about adminship in terms of "need". Whenever I'm active, I use my adminship regularly. I've done maintenance in the past; perhaps I'll find time to do more. If someone wishes to call my trustworthiness into question, let him do so; meanwhile I wish to retain the convenience of being able to clean up after myself and do the occasional bit of maintenance when I run across some rubbish. This would cause no trouble to anybody but myself. My password is strong so security is not an issue. I missed my chance to comment on the policy when it was being made, so I am doing so now (in expanded form because the succint summary of my opinion has been taken amiss). I am not disdaining the effort that went into this policy (I'm sure it was a lot); I simply find the outcome of that effort grievously misguided. In other words, I'm sure you thought hard about this, but I still think you're wrong.
 :To my disbelief, you question whether I "should be allowed to take this stance" as an administrator. I am not part of some ruling party which requires its members all to think and speak the same (though the several above 'me-too' comments are far from encouraging). Surely I can take what stance I please? Evidently I disagree with the community's views; but voicing my disagreement is not equivalent to "complete disregard" -- just as criticism of the law is not the same as civil disobedience. Does this make sense? &mdash; [[User:Rdsmith4|Dan]] | [[User talk:Rdsmith4|Talk]] 05:05, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Commons:Village pump: Difference between revisions