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Given that a non-free images of certain North Korean leaders were not considered to be NFCCP compliant for the longest time while they were still living, I'm wondering how non-free images of current Taliban government officials like File:Muhammad Yousuf Wafa.jpg should be treated per WP:FREER. I'm not sure you could argue that these people are any more reclusive or difficult to photograph that perhaps some other world leaders who might in some way be considered pariahs. Given that photos of them do seem to popping up in media reports every now and then doesn't seem to indicate that anyone approaching them with a camera ends up being shot in their tracks. If, for example, you do a Google Image search of Muhammad Yousuf Wafa, several different images of him seem to show up. Unless the argument here is that these persons are terrorists and thus near impossible to photograph, it's not totally clear (at least to me) whether non-free images of them are truly non-replaceable non-free use. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:55, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's hard to say. Now that the civil war is over and more people have cameras than in 2001 (or 1996, or 1989...) I think it's possible we'd start seeing the governors of provinces like Herat (important guy for the Iranians to talk to) showing up for meetings and summits abroad. Remsense诉07:50, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
All fair points here. I'd offer that a photo-free and reclusive life as a provincial governor is more socially/politically normal in Afghanistan today than nearly anywhere else in the world. Few if any provincial offices have a (generously-named) media office which will see various appointments/removals by the Supreme Leader and not publish an image of the governor. While phones are certainly more prevalent than in previous periods of Taliban rule, within the last year Taliban have cracked down with laws against any/all media depicting human beings. Perhaps most relevant to this discussion, one of the best known Taliban commanders and now provincial governor, Mullah Shirin Akhund of Kandahar, has issued a directive prohibiting the taking of photos and filming of Taliban meetings, grossly reducing the likelihood of any free alternatives from arising.[1] The opportunities for freely photographing the vast majority of governors who are not invited to meet with foreign (Pakistani or Iranian) officials are next to none.
Put shortly, go through the list of provincial governors and count how many have had a free photo ever published. Then count how many free photos have been published since the 2021 declaration of the IEA (I've yet to find one). The restrictions on already rare photographing of officials are only tightening. RightQuark (talk) 00:39, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Quite; I was thinking about this again a few weeks after posting it, and I realized then that there was really another country less likely to get photographed, even in the new phase in Afghan history. I'll put it this way: better than it was since 1979, still doesn't look good, wouldn't hold my breath. Remsense诉00:41, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely. The proliferation of smartphones certainly offered the 2021 Taliban a chance to join the rest of the world in integrating technology and media with public governance but it seems they're very much doubling down on times and policies of old. RightQuark (talk) 00:48, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I bet we can slip a few into the shipment to see if they find a use for them when we start selling them Stinger missiles again somewhere down the line. Remsense诉00:56, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per WMF:Licensing policy, we can not allow these non-free images just because it's "difficult". Kim Jong-un was difficult, and now we have a number of free license option images of him. These are living, notable individuals. We have two images in question; File:Muhammad Yousuf Wafa.jpg and File:Mohammad Ayub Khalid.png. In the former case, the justification that it is not replaceable with a free image is that we can't create a derivative work of this image. We know that. That doesn't preclude the possibility of another image of him being created to serve the same purpose. In the latter case, the justification is "m". Umm...? "M"? These images have to go. Sorry. --Hammersoft (talk) 12:56, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have tagged both of these images for deletion as replaceable, non-free use images, notified the uploader, and added appropriate captions to the articles in question. I'm sorry, but there's really no wiggle room on this. These are public, living, notable figures. There's no plausible justification for using non-free images in this case, per the WMF's licensing policy noted above and WP:NFCC #1. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:33, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:FREER has to do with WP:NFCC#1. Wikipedia's non-free content use policy doesn't allow the use of non-free images to be used when a free image either already exists or there's a reasonable expectation that one can be created or found to serve the essentially the same encyclopedic purpose as any non-free. This the primary reason why a non-free image is pretty much never allowed for a living person. A non-commercial or non-derivative Creative Commons license is freer than an "All Rights reserved" type of license, but it's still not free enough per WP:COPY#Guidelines for images and other media files or c:COM:LJ. So, it's treated as non-free content, which means a freely licensed or public domain image such as File:King Charles III (July 2023).jpg, which was being used in the Monarchy of Australia before you replaced with the non-free one discussed here, is more than sufficient for Wikipedia's purposes per relevant Wikipedia policy. In addition, the fact that something is released under a NC or ND license doesn't mean it isn't required (i.e. isn't subject to being reduced) to comply with WP:NFCC#3.The image File:The Queen of Australia.jpg was not uploaded locally to Wikipedia as non-free content; it was uploaded to Commons. Moreover, there's nothing in the file's description that implies its subject to the same non-commercial restrictions as the file you uploaded. If there were, it mostly would've never be kept on Comons. So, those are two big differences between the files. The file you uploaded, however, is specifically not allowed to be used for commercial purposes according to www.pmc.gov.au/government/official-australian-portraits-king-and-queen despite the more general copyright notice found at www.pmc.gov.au/copyright-and-disclaimer per the description you provided for the file. If the website seems contradictory regarding this, that's the an issue for the website, not Wikipedia, to sort out. You might want to ask about this at c:COM:VPC to see whether the file you want to upload is OK for Commons and really equivalent to the "Queen of Australia" photo because that's where it should be hosted if it is. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:44, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I feel like I understand what you're getting at, but you've got a lot of unclear policy there. So the CIIIR image would just need to be moved to commons in a derivative manner? I believe it isn't easily replaceable as its the official portrait for Australia, as just like the QEII portrait, it wasn't authored by the QLD government (official portraits are administered by the Federal government not the states), it was the official portrait for Australia produced at/by Buckingham Palace, so quite reasonable to assume its just as unfree. Nford24 (PE121 Personnel Request Form) 03:24, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Item 9 of WP:NFC#UUI states that "cover art shouldn't used to illustrate the article on the person whose photograph is on the cover", but non-free images of deceased individuals are allowed for this purpose if all of the NFCCP are met. How does policy, therefore, treat non-free cover art when it's being used for primary identification purposes at the top of or in the main infobox of a stand-alone biography about a deceased individual? For example, File:The Life and Work of Dennis Potter (cover art).jpg and File:Album cover of Nephi the Polynesian man.jpg are being used for said purpose. There are probably more examples of this out there, but these two are the only ones I can remember at the moment. Neither of these is really the subject of any sourced critical commentary in their respective articles, and they appear to have been simply added because the subjects of the articles are dead. Does policy justallow such files be used in such way for that reason, or does it require different non-free images be used instead? -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:35, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given that Amalija Knavs was the mother of Melania Trump it would seem that there's a very good chance that a free image could be found to use instead of File:Amalija Knavs.png or any non-free one. If Knavs appeared at any official White House events, there's a really good possibility she would've been photographed by an official White House photographer. There also seems to be a good chance that a photo of her was posted on an official social media account. The article was created back in January and appears to have gone without an image until the other day, but there's no indication on the article's talk page of any discussion related to an image search. -- Marchjuly (talk) 03:30, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I thought so too. I was unable to find any but maybe someone else may have better luck. The vast majority of images I found were Getty/AP. TJMSmith (talk) 03:39, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While looking at some newly uploaded images, I came across File:Oscar S. Adams, 1933.jpg and saw that it was tagged with {{Non-free no reduce}}. It seems a bit odd that an image used in a biography article like Oscar S. Adams needs to be so large given that default width for most infobox images is much smaller. So, I replaced the "non-free no reduce" template with a "non-free reduce" template. I then decided to take a look at some of the other images uploaded by the same uploader to see whether this was just a one off type of thing. It seems that two other files uploaded by the same uploader (File:Aage Gerhardt Drachmann.jpg and File:Яглом Исаак Моисеевич.jpg) have been tagged with "Non-free no reduce" as well. FWIW, I'm quite happy to go back and self-revert my edit to the first file if the consensus here is that particular file doesn't need to be reduced. However, if that's the case, I think some more guidance on when it's OK to use this template should be added to WP:IMAGERES and perhaps even Template:Non-free no reduce/doc, perhaps even an example or two of when it's not OK to use this template. It appears someone attempted to try and start a discussion about adding a |reason= parameter to the template at Template talk:Non-free no reduce back in 2018, but never got a response. Perhaps this should be something worth discussing now. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:59, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I added these because these images are portraits of long-dead people with zero commercial value, for which it isn't too easy to find any portrait at all, and the auto reducer is absurdly aggressive in making everything gratuitously tiny and then hard deleting the originals. I don't think there's much chance the original photographers or publishing organizations even remember these portraits exist, let alone care that someone distributes them in the context of biographies, and there's no reasonable challenge to the claim that they are fair use, even at full size. Perhaps there should be some better middle-ground option(s) between "preserve the original upload" vs. "turn this into an unrecognizable thumbnail". –jacobolus(t)07:38, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The specific very bad experience I had with an image I added was with File:Blackboard bold in typewritten notes from Narasimhan (1966).png which was turned into such a ridiculously tiny thumbnail that the indicated feature (the shapes of the symbols and ) wasn't remotely visible anymore, even after I had tried to make it as small as possible before the bot came through. (Frankly the size I left it still doesn't properly demonstrate the letter shapes as intended.) But I have also seen plenty of other pages where standard biographical portraits of long-dead people of zero commercial value with unenforced sometimes nearly expired copyright, sometimes fairly hard to find better copies of, were made into thumbnails where the person could barely be recognized. As a reader, I always find these images extremely frustrating. I basically don't believe in adding images at all which aren't either free or far, far on the no-brainer side of the fair use line, but for the latter, I feel like making the images tiny mostly defeats the point of having them at all. –jacobolus(t)07:58, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Images in which lots of intricate detail is going to be lost due to reduction probably don't need to reduced to the same degree as a "portrait photo" or "logo". Moreover, images which themselves are the subjects of articles in which certain apects of the image are critcally discussed in the article might also benefit from not being reduced or reduced as much. How much detail is really lost, though, when it comes to portrait photos being used in main infoboxes or at the tops of biography articles? For example, you also uploaded File:Nathan Altshiller Court.jpeg which also seems to have zero commercial value, but is much smaller than the other three mentioned above; yet, it seems to be serving it's encylopedic purpose of identifying Nathan Altshiller Court. How much detail will be lost if the other three imges are reduced to that size? -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:18, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Quite to the contrary, the image at Nathan Altshiller Court is an incredibly bad image which does a horrible job at fulfilling the purpose of illustrating the subject, only very marginally better than nothing at all, and frustrating and disappointing for many if not most readers. Unfortunately I don't have anything else, but if I had a nice high-resolution photo I certainly would love to add it there, in or out of copyright, where it would undoubtedly be fair use under US law. Edit: I will certainly agree with you that File:Nathan Altshiller Court.jpeg also has no commercial value whatsoever, and is clearly fair use. How much detail will be lost if the other three imges are reduced to that size? Most of the detail would be lost, for no benefit whatsoever. File:Oscar S. Adams, 1933.jpg is an image only a few years away from entering the public domain, whose subject is dead, whose photographer is dead, published in a journal which ended over 60 years ago, and which probably hasn't even been looked at by any human in the past three decades (before I hunted it up), with the possible exceptions of (1) whoever scanned the image, and (2) Mark Monmonier, the only person to ever cite the paper where this image appeared. It's possible there's a better copy somewhere in the archives at NOAA, and it's even entirely possible this image was in the public domain at its origin (I don't have more details). Down-sizing it serves no purpose beyond ticking some kind of out-of-context bureaucratic checkbox. –jacobolus(t) –jacobolus(t)08:47, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Now the bot has come through and turned these images to emoji-sized blobs, at readers' expense. I don't really see the benefit, and may revert at some point. –jacobolus(t)00:38, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As a rule, it is better to let the bot reduce the image rather than attempting it yourself. Do it yourself and you usually wind up with the bot reducing it again. I often have free images and tagging them with {{Non-free no reduce}} would be a good option because they literally have zero commercial value and there is no valid reason to reduce them. Hawkeye7(discuss)09:04, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand what your second paragraph is trying to say. Are you agreeing with me that this type of image should have {{non-free no reduce}} added so that the bot doesn't come scrunch images to emoji size? –jacobolus(t)09:08, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'll note that our WP:NFCC policy does not say it's ok to use a larger non-free image than we normally allow if we take a guess that the copyright holder isn't going to care. Copyright law is copyright law. There is no allowance in it for chances of someone suing. Neither should there be such leniency in our own policy. --Hammersoft (talk) 01:25, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The policy page doesn't actually say anything concrete or specific about what "minimal" resolution/quality means, other than that logos should be insufficient for counterfeiting, and for historical photographs copies "will be of very inferior quality". The image in question here is a poor quality scan of a photograph which was printed as a mediocre black-and-white picture accompanying a journal article. The highest available resolution copy of the digital image as it currently exists doesn't come anywhere close to being suitable for commercial printing of an ordinary glossy photograph, as you might obtain from a portrait studio. There's no way to turn this image into something that won't be "of very inferior quality", irrespective of resolution; the amount of detail in the image is significantly lower than you would get from a bad 2-inch passport photo obtained from your local pharmacy. –jacobolus(t)06:05, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The vast majority of images from that period will not meet your standard of commercial printing from a modern portrait studio. Are all such images from that period therefore unencumbered by copyright? Prior debate on the size of images has resulted in the practice that non-free images generally aren't much larger than the place (usually an infobox) where they are used. --Hammersoft (talk) 10:18, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ya know how it goes. Not Bureau, IAR. If an editor in good standing vouches for the need to keep a slightly larger image, bet they have a good reason. We're so far from actual line of what US Fair Use actually permits, we have total editorial freedom to accommodate gray cases. Feoffer (talk) 11:01, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Because the line we use is not fair use, it is about reducing the quantity and net content of non-free images to promote more free media for WP so that it can be reused and redistributed. Its nice to have pictures of long-dead persons, but if they were not in the public eye at any point and their appearance contributed no factors towards their notability or importance, these images tend to be simply decorative, not to where they have to be removed but we're not going to necessarily allow NFC to be thrown out the window to allow larger than needed sizes. Masem (t) 12:21, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree entirely that portaits on biographies, or images more generally, are "simply decorative". By a similar standard a significant majority of the text of Wikipedia is "simply decorative", especially on our longer articles, detail embellishment of a story that does not "contribute factors towards notability" (whatever that is supposed to mean). A significant proportion of human mental capacity is devoted to processing of human faces, and attaching clear pictures of people to their names and accomplishments creates an emotional connection, anchors memory, and provides significant context used to assess the person. –jacobolus(t)15:16, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am not arguing g that such images should be removed, but they are general of very low value in terms of NFCC#8 for comprehension of a person who did not have a public presence as to merit an exemption of NFCC#3 on minimal size. Masem (t) 16:02, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Are all such images from that period therefore unencumbered by copyright?" – This image is still (possibly, nominally) copyrighted. What we are talking about is whether including it in Wikipedia is fair use under US copyright law, which it clearly is: This is a 91 year old image which was intended to be distributed as a portrait of a public figure rather than sold as art, and certainly has zero commercial value today; it is being used for an educational purpose, for which it is clearly relevant; our use is limited to just this photograph, which we are including on just one page; the image is quite mediocre, and there's really no chance someone is going to start selling prints of it taken off Wikipedia.
There are many hypothetical scenarios where "images from that period" could still run into copyright claims (whether or not they were pursued in court). For example, if Wikipedia scanned a whole book of some portrait photographer's work and reproduced it in its entirety on a page, that would no longer be a limited use. If Wikipedia included a high-quality scan of a fine-art photograph, that could (conceivably) impinge on the photograph's commercial resale value. For example, File:Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.jpg is a pretty clearly detailed scan of a famous art photograph, and Wikipedia is publishing a portion that could be used to print postcards or something, in a way that could conceivably affect the profits of Ansel Adams's estate.
For a image that likely might fall into copyright due to its publication date, we need proof position that the factors that limit its copyright term and can be made into a free image be expressed and demonstrated. That's done in a satisfactory way for the Adam's photograph, so it can be uploaded at full scale on commons because it is no longer covered by copyright. We have no idea if this image here as similar ability to be marked free, so we have to go with the default of assuming non free. Also to stress, we do not care about fair use aspects because NFCC is purposely stronger than those to encourage free media and minimize nonfree use. While the commercial value factor is just one part of fair use, NFCC is more than that, and even a freely distributed copyrighted piece that limits reuse is a problem for us. — Masem (t) 16:11, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the non free bot is often ridiculously stingy (treating the 0.1 megapixel rule of thumb as absolute instead of a guide) and specifically upload content in a low resolution that preserves the relevant info based on context (video game screenshots, for example, can get scrunched to the point where even reasonably large on-screen details become impossible to grok, and thus it's not a useful image at all.) But I think there's a bit of a difference here between "I tag an image I shrunk down to a reasonable size that readers can still see a slightly larger and clearer image for" and "I'm uploading 1.7-megapixel non free images", jacobolus, which is what you're doing. If you want to argue for loosening WP:NFCC, you can start an RfC. But right now you're absolutely abusing the template to stop these from being reduced (especially for the Oscar Adams shot, the original scan is so bad all the high-resolution image is really getting you is an appreciation for dot patterns anyhow.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchstalk13:24, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Concur. Frankly, looking at the larger image vs. the smaller image of File:Oscar S. Adams, 1933.jpg I fail to see what the larger brings to the table that isn't apparent from the smaller. It's a man, in a suit, wearing glasses. Even the 94x120 thumbnails on the image description page tell you the same thing. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:27, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Part of the problem is that "number of megapixels" is an incredibly poor guide for the actual resolution of an image, i.e. how much detail it contains, but is easily substituted by people who don't have a basic understanding of how human vision and images work (which is most people).
This image could certainly be reduced in pixel dimensions (hopefully by a less shitty process than whatever the bot is doing) without losing too much detail, because, again it's a mediocre scan of a mediocre black and white print. I uploaded the version I did because this image doesn't need further degradation, and carefully reducing the pixel count takes time and work that is better spent on something else. –jacobolus(t)15:10, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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