This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

strange category: Category:Prosopis pallida

Here are 1400 files uploaded from a hawaian page about plants in Hawaii - does it make sense in this form??? Cholo Aleman (talk) 23:46, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

The categorization and description of some pictures is plainly wrong: for example, see

-- IANEZZ (talk) 07:48, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

It is part of this batch upload. Many images can use additional categories and some files need renaming. -- User:Docu at 08:15, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

December 1

File:Pollock-green.jpg is my unauthorized photo

I took this photo in 2006 and uploaded it to Wikipedia with a creative commons share alike license. It was uploaded to commons in 2007 by another party and all mention of me and my requirement to share alike and attribution is gone. You can see the history of the Wikipedia article w:Green River Cemetery in which I used it on the creation article in 2006. The camera is taken with a Minolta Dimage Z3 which is somewhat of an exotic camera and you will see that I have taken numerous photos with it. Please remove the photo. I will reupload with the attribution to me. Americasroof (talk) 13:30, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I corrected the attribution and notified the administrator who deleted the version at en.wp by error. Is it ok this way? -- User:Docu at 13:44, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

That was quick. That will work. Thanks. I've kind of learned the hard way that I should have always uploaded to commons. Thank you.Americasroof (talk) 14:15, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Uploading image from Library of Congress

Hi I am trying to upload an image from the Library of Congress http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/I?fsaall:1:./temp/~pp_h34R::displayType=1:m856sd=fsa:m856sf=8d21145:@@@fsaal

I do not know what to put in the Licensing and other info blocks. I have looked at examples and thought I was doing this correctly. Please help!

First, here's the permalink to that image. Second, see e.g. File:GreenbeltDentistDrMcCarl.jpg for an example. Step-by-step:

Author is Marjory Collins
Source is {{LOC-image|fsa.8d21145}}
Date is 1942 May-June
License is {{PD-USGov-FSA}}

Useful categories to add would be Category:Memorial Day, Category:Greenbelt, Maryland, and Category:Marjory Collins.

HTH, Lupo 16:21, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Toolserver

hist Toolserver status
The Toolserver shut down on July 1, 2014.
More information...

Database lag is increasing. It's currently 1 day and 21 hours. Is this likely to increase further or can this be fixed shortly? I couldn't find anything on the mailing list. Some tools work much better with up-to-date data. -- User:Docu at 05:55, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I tried to ask in #wikimedia-tech, but the people who were around at the time weren't the friendliest, and almost seemed upset that I was asking. :-/ Killiondude (talk) 07:36, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

So I guess it's "likely to increase further". Thanks for checking. It helps deciding if I should switch tools or just wait a moment. -- User:Docu at 07:42, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Killiondude I guess thats because you are in the wrong channel, you should #wikimedia-toolserver instead. Huib talk 14:39, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Based on this, it looks like it's improving: lag still increases, but the rate of increase reduces slightly. -- User:Docu at 14:55, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

River did a fix this morning, but they still don't know why its lagging so they don't know how to fix it. Huib talk 15:01, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

40 hours after putting a geotag on File:Halsey St BMT jeh.JPG and others, they still don't appear on Google Maps or Google Earth. Am I correct to assume it's because of the toolserver lag? Jim.henderson (talk) 23:58, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes. The most recent ones appearing are now from 08:08, 2009 November 24. It seems that all tools are on the same server. -- User:Docu at 10:33, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

And today after 47 hours I noticed that the EXIF bot had still not extracted the coordinates of File:Dyre Av Associates 420 W42 jeh.jpg. It usually runs every morning. I thought this bot was separate from the congested toolserver, but perhaps it is dependent. Anyway the problem suggests we've got too many tools in one overloaded server. Jim.henderson (talk) 17:10, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

It's improving (or maybe just nobody is editing right now ..)!

For info, I added {{Toolserver}} to the beginning of this thread. It should be removed once this thread is archived. BTW there is also https://jira.toolserver.org/browse/MNT-11 -- User:Docu at 09:06, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I've certainly been making use of it. Fortunately the backlog declined yesterday to less than two days, which allowed me to make some timely location corrections, and now it's only half a day. To my suggestible mind it suggests that the work capacity is only about twice the load, thus any surge in editor use or interruption in toolserver work can again cause a long backlog. I hope someone is working on strengthening this service; it isn't as critical as the Website servers but it is important to many pictures. Jim.henderson (talk) 01:06, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Probably I shouldn't be saying it, but the lag seems to be gone! (Each time I thought it was improving during the last two days it went back up;). Anyways, thanks for fixing it. -- User:Docu at 08:03, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Delightful. A few hours after you said that, I adjusted the heading on File:Michael-Mena Coptic Ch jeh.JPG, looked at another few Wikipix then zoomed-out Google Earth and, before I could to move to a nearby location, "snap!" the pointer arrow rotated to the east. It's been working perfectly ever since. Delightful. Jim.henderson (talk) 18:27, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

November 27

BBC Micro logo

File:BBC owl.svg

This is the badge used on all BBC Micros until the Archimedes.

Isn't it a trademark, and thus at most fair use, and so shouldn't be here? Or am I missing something? Marnanel (talk) 18:10, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

We have no policy against posting images whose use is limited by trademarks, only by copyrights. But of course the page should warn of this. This doesn't seem to me to be much more creative than a text-only logo (which we host all the time), but someone else may view the matter differently. - Jmabel ! talk 01:52, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Seems eligible for copyright to me (at least in the UK), so I've nominated it for deletion. –Tryphon ^☂ 10:58, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, have to agree with Tryphon. Kaldari (talk) 17:36, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

December 2

Obligations if creating a new page

I went to add a picture of a pudding to the "pudding" page and noticed there isn't one. There are, however, more than 250 images of puddings. If I create a pudding page, does etiquette oblige me to add all those pictures to the page? Is there a fast way to do that? Many thanks. Akina (talk) 01:28, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Categories are better for hosting all the images of a given topic. Pages should be used for that which categories can not do, use only the better or more representative images, order them by specific details, explain each one, add related wikilinks, etc. Belgrano (talk) 01:34, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

In other words: God, no, don't add them all! Add only reasonably good images, and annotate them if at all possible. - Jmabel ! talk 01:53, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

For ideas on starting a good gallery, have a look at Commons_talk:Featured_galleries and Commons:Galleries. Man vyi (talk) 12:46, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much; I will proceed accordingly and look at those references first. Akina (talk) 13:11, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Is it an arcade?

Is there a name for a structure like this one that covers a portion of a street in downtown Seattle? Would this be considered a type of arcade or something else? Any suggestions for appropriate architecturally-related categories? - Jmabel ! talk 01:56, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Since this projects from a bridge connecting two buildings, and is not especially large, I'd say projecting roof is the proper description, though canopy would fit, too. If it's more extensive, I'd go for canopy as in Fremont Street. The German word for that is Straßenüberdachung, I think. Paradoctor (talk) 02:24, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Canopy sounds right. Good call. - Jmabel ! talk 03:34, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

File:Haji Abdul rehman Kaloo in 1930.jpg

What should we do with such pictures where someone claims to be the author while it's too old to be true? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 12:27, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

We can mark as "No permission". I assume the the user thinks he has copyrights to stuff he has scanned. However he could own copyrights to the image as a heir of the photographer. --Jarekt (talk) 14:12, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Don't jump to conclusions. If Zamoon was born 1915, he'd be 94 by now. That's pretty old, but w:en:Johannes Heesters will celebrate his 106. birthday in a few days. On stage, no less. My very own grandmother was able to care for herself up to shortly after her 90th birthday. (She would never have touched a computer, though ;).) I advise asking first, methinks w:en:WP:AGF is a Commons policy, or is it?. Of course, if you have conclusive proof that Zamoon is too young, please consider the aforementioned as never having been uttered. Regards, Paradoctor (talk) 15:27, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Facebook and Commons

In the spanish cafe, an IP is asking about upload pictures from facebook. There are compatible license between commons and facebook? --Arcibel (talk) 00:44, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Only if the user posts a license along with his image. AFAIK there is no way to specify an image license on Facebook, so most if not all content would be All Rights Reserved. -Nard the Bard 01:39, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

There IS way to specify an image license on Facebook. — Jagro (talk) 23:06, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

- Additionally, pictures uploaded on Facebook are scaled down (probably to save storage and bandwidth), so it would be nicer if the author uploaded the hires version on Commons by himself. -- IANEZZ (talk) 10:33, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the info and best regards to all! --Arcibel (talk) 20:51, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

November 28

Quahadi gallery undeleted. Please take a look

Per this undeletion request, around 200 images by Quahadi (talk · contribs) have been undeleted so the community can take a closer look. All of these were deleted for poor quality, not for any copyright issues. I have created a gallery at User:Wknight94/Quahadi gallery and everyone is invited to take a look. Please compile lists of ones you think should be re-deleted or however you would like to manage them. For a few, I noted that a blurry portion of the image should probably be cropped (my comments here). Quahadi has agreed (I think) to try to give better descriptions and more detail about where the pictures were taken and what they are. Thank you. Wknight94 ^talk 18:42, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep, annotate and categorize. Multichill (talk) 20:21, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

several seem to have the same motiv and only slight differences - one can be kept, the other ones deleted Cholo Aleman (talk) 23:50, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

But how would we know which would be preferred by people? I often take pictures of the same subject from different angles with the idea that some may like angle 1 while others may like angle 2. Wknight94 ^talk 01:00, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

And what's the point in deleting them? It's not like it saves disk spaces or anything. Multichill (talk) 05:30, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Keep I agree with Multichill on this. Frequently an image from a slightly different angle allows to see a detail isn't in other pictures. -- User:Docu at 06:58, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

this might be correct for churches and other objects, but not for streets - in parts you think you are in a road movie if you look to similar categories, see Category:Orebić municipality - this municipality is obviously built not with buildings but with streets :) - but I see that this is a general feature of the commons "try to collect all possible fotos to reach 6 million or 10 million files"... Cholo Aleman (talk) 05:58, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Getting too deep in the pudding?

I'm looking into standing up a pudding page, and this has engendered a question about categories. "Pudding" currently is listed as a subcategory for two parent categories - Desserts and Dairy. The thing is, while many puddings are desserts, others are savory dishes intended as a side dish or main course. Similarly, while many puddings are dairy-based, many are not. I would consider, for this reason, Dairy and Desserts to be subcategories (and not parent categories) of puddings - i.e. Pudding - Dairy-based and Pudding - Dessert, respectively.

Also, people seem to be creating subcategories for individual items, which I'm not sure is right. For example "Mango Pudding" is a whole subcategory. Should I create a category of Puddings - Fruit-based (or something like that) so that all images of fruit-based puddings can go there, with "Mango Pudding" as a sub-sub category if there are sufficient images to warrant?

Sorry to post two questions in one thread. Guidance on both or either is appreciated. Akina (talk) 15:12, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

For topics like this, the number of files usually determines whether or not there should be a subcategory. Category:Mango pudding has 18 images which is a good amount to start a new category for, especially if the main category is overcrowded. Category:Pudim de leite on the other hand shouldn't be a category (1 image). The issue isn't the pudding category but the parent and parent-parent categories, so those should be fixed instead of creating a (IMHO) unnecessary division of Category:Pudding. I remember when I was categorizing a few images in this area a while back, it's a mess at the top. Start at Category:Food and drink and navigate a round a little to see what I mean. The whole thing needs to be overhauled. But it is a challenging area due to being a multicultural site. Rocket000 (talk) 03:12, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I have no constructive advice beyond what Rocket said, but may I saw that is a truly awesome section title. -mattbuck (Talk) 03:20, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Rocket. I poked around a bit and you're absolutely right - the category "structure" in Food and drink is more of a hopeless tangle. I think I'll just be really judicious about things rather than randomly pulling on or tying off threads, since that usually just makes a tangle worse. Oh, and thanks for the props, Mattbuck! Akina (talk) 15:22, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

10 Volumes of Photographic History of the Civil War

Hi guys, I found on the Internet Archive 10 Volumes of Photographic History of the Civil War. Each one of these books contains old Civil War photographs. All of the photographs should be public domain because the books were published in 1911 and published in New York. I was thinking of taking the raw jpeg2000 images and converting these images to jpegs and uploading this to the commons. Once these pages were uploaded to the commons we could crop them and add them to the Commons accordingly. Here is a list of links to the volumes:

The Photographic History of the Civil War Volume 1

The Photographic History of the Civil War Volume 2

The Photographic History of the Civil War Volume 3

The Photographic History of the Civil War Volume 4

The Photographic History of the Civil War Volume 5

The Photographic History of the Civil War Volume 6

The Photographic History of the Civil War Volume 7

The Photographic History of the Civil War Volume 8

The Photographic History of the Civil War Volume 9

The Photographic History of the Civil War Volume 10

What do you guys think? Would you guys mind all the extra images? Would you mind each page uploaded as a jpeg image? Please let me know. --Mattwj2002 (talk) 06:53, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I looked at a few pages briefly. Some of the images are of people that enwiki has articles of, so I think it would be beneficial to somehow get these imgages onto Commons. The left side image is of Kate Chase Sprague for instance. Killiondude (talk) 06:57, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Nice images. Might be worth checking out the library of congress site first (they tend to have high res scans). Multichill (talk) 09:24, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I noticed you came by at irc when I was out. You should take a look at Commons:Batch uploading and create a page for your project. Multichill (talk) 12:03, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Upload photos from Photos8

Hello.

I have found this site [1] where there are some images under "public domain". But the terms of use are more restrictive than the public domain statute. Question : is it legal to upload some photos from this site. --ComputerHotline (talk) 09:52, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

The photos found here can be used for any purpose with some conditions, without these conditions the photos are not in the public domain, and you are violating my copyrights, its very simple .. my photos, my terms, and before the photos is released to the public domain you must agree with my terms : Hmm - someone doesn't understand the idea of the public domain. I say no, they're not ok to upload. Sent him an email to check though. -mattbuck (Talk) 10:59, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that one is interesting. They say "public domain" several times, and use the Creative Commons Public Domain image tag, but then don't appear to understand that "public domain" means "lack of copyright protection", and they can no longer use copyright to control reproduction and use of the images (i.e. can't have any "copyright license"). The terms... are mostly common sense, saying you can't violate other laws, and they do appear to want to protect the collective work (which has a separate copyright, even if every photo is PD) by saying you can't copy everything as a collection. That is not necessarily inconsistent, but some of the language there indicates confusion -- it may be best to check. They do want a hyperlink back to their site, which indicates a desire for some sort of attribution. It is generally best to err on the side of caution, and make sure authors truly understand what they are licensing. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:14, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Unseen photo

Can someone see this file File:2008 Septembre-25ans.jpg (and add a category?) - I cannot see it at my screen. Cholo Aleman (talk) 15:17, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Category would be "missing permission". It's the logo of http://www.septembre.com/ -- User:Docu at 15:21, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Determining language in templates

Is there a way for a template to determine the language to be used? I'd like to i18lize the navbox in this template, displaying all languages at once doesn't seem overly practical here. Paradoctor (talk) 22:16, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Template:LangSwitch? -84user (talk) 12:02, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Template:LangSwitch! Thx, Paradoctor (talk) 11:11, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

User based categories?

Hi There!

I just came across somebody making categories to sort his files. I haven't seen this before,... Category:User:Melburnian/gallery/plants and Category:User:Melburnian/gallery/plants/Australian and I guess some more. --Amada44 (talk) 15:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

If you search by prefix in the "Category" namespace, there are some more examples of this. The guildeline Commons:User-specific galleries, templates and categories policy allows this. My only concern is that such categories should belong to Category:User categories, while the ones you cited apparentely do not. -- IANEZZ (talk) 16:37, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

On the last point, they do seem to be in that category via the parent category Category:User:Melburnian/gallery. Adambro (talk) 16:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I added {{User category}} to them to make them hidden. That way they don't count as real categories as far as the categorization bots/tools are concerned. Rocket000 (talk) 20:10, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

December 4

Speedy deletion of clearly out of scope files

Please see Commons_talk:Deletion_policy#Out_of_scope_files for a suggestion to amend Commons:Deletion policy so that files which are clearly out of scope can be speedy deleted. Pruneau^talk 08:25, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Do we have an information template for books?

Do we have something like Template:DE_Wikisource_Book, but for all books not just the german wikisource books?--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 12:00, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Maybe {{BookNaviBar}}? --The Evil IP address (talk) 12:59, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Maybe {{DE Wikisource Book}} can be altered to become a general template suitable for books? Multichill (talk) 13:15, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I would propose to create a new template {{Book}} by generalizing {{DE Wikisource Book}} and rewrite {{DE Wikisource Book}} as a specialization of that template. --Jarekt (talk) 14:11, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I have created {{Book}} which is almost identical to {{DE Wikisource Book}} except for lack of DE Wikisource categories. At the moment {{Book}} is using {{DE Wikisource Book}} subpages, but those should be probably moved. Example of use can be found here. --Jarekt (talk) 14:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I guess after that a bot should go through all books we have replacing the information templates...--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 16:29, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

There is no harm in leaving {{DE Wikisource Book}} as it is now. Most of the relevant code is in the {{DE Wikisource Book/layout}} and {{DE Wikisource Book/lang}} templates and those are shared. The difference between {{DE Wikisource Book}} and {{Book}} is a bunch of DE Wikisource specific maintenance categories. --Jarekt (talk) 20:26, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Bug/configuration error: Email to watchlisters when a file is deleted

A file in my watchlist was deleted.

The email I got said "The Wikimedia Commons page File:-redacted- has been created (emphasis added) on -redacted- by -redacted-, see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/-redacted- for the current revision."

It should've said the image was deleted.

Where do I report this? Davidwr (talk) 14:28, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

bugzilla: is best place. Please search in existing reports, may be this problem habd been reported already. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 16:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

This is a known bug. For more info, look here. |-/ Paradoctor (talk) 19:44, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Commonist could not update gallery

I just uploaded File:Phila frankford00.png with Commonist, and I received a message that Commonist "could not update gallery (cannot use template:jar... etc.).

First, do I post questions here or elsewhere about Commonist?

Second, can someone tell me what I did wrong?--Davidt8 (talk) 16:05, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Call me paranoid, but I think that's the same problem that I had. Try recompressing with different settings or another program. For information about Commonist go here. If that doesn't do it for you, spam the talkpage. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 16:33, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I posted this question again on the Commonist talk page. However, what do you mean by "...recompressing with different settings...?" Do you mean changing the source images? I must say that I like Commonist, and as long as I am very careful with all those fields to fill out, I find that I can add multiple images quickly. I have already added three of the photos I uploaded to an article on Wikipedia, but they don't show up here right away. --Davidt8 (talk) 18:34, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, sometimes I forget not everybody is interested in such things. I use w:en:XnView, and when I save PNGs, I can click on Options, and set the compression level. If it's not on maximum, set it to maximum, otherwise a notch lower, that should do the trick. If you use something else, you may not have settings you can change. If you don't, try saving the file with your usual program as BMP of TIFF, then open in another program (like XnView) and save as PNG again, that usually works, too. Paradoctor (talk) 19:52, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

How place Commons photo.jpg on relevant Wikipedia page? RSVP.

How do I place, or upload, a Commons, free use, public domain image, that I just uploaded on Commons, to a particular biographical page when Wiki told me the photo named with the biographee's name does not match any pages, when it does? The biographee is accomplished U.S. author Daniela Gioseffi who does appear in Biography (English) on Wikipedia and the jpg is named "Daniela Gioseffi.jpg" The bio on this author had no photo and since I had one I donated it to Commons to put it up on the biography page for this author. I find it difficult to find any directives of how to do this at Wikipedia, English, Biography URL as follows: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniela_Gioseffi Commons photo as follows: Daniela Gioseffi. jpg Please give help or do this for me. Thanks if you will. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dorothy Dani (talk • contribs) 19:13, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your picture. You insert it by enclosing the filename with square brackets, like this: [[File:Daniela Gioseffi.jpg|thumbnail]] including the "|" character and "thumbnail" to control the size. Jim.henderson (talk) 19:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Just [[File:Daniela Gioseffi.jpg|thumb]] does the same. - Jmabel ! talk 22:12, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Please always see the FAQ first and see related help sites en:Wikipedia:Picture tutorial. --Martin H. (talk) 20:48, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

SVG Map Problem

Something is wrong with File:Venues of Rio.svg. A black tarjet appeared in the file but everything looks good on Inkscape. How can I solve this problem? Felipe Menegaz 23:57, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

A lot of Inkscape specific errors. When saving to svg file choose Plain SVG and use SVG validator. Now looks like it renders ok --Justass (talk) 00:16, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much Justass! :) Felipe Menegaz 00:44, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

December 5

Geoscience Australia data licensed as CC-BY

I do not know how much this is relevant to Commons, but you might be interested in that : Geoscience Australia announced that the now publish their data under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia Licence ({{Cc-by-2.5-au}}). Source.

Geoscience Australia properties include data, maps, images, videos and 3D models. The website now states « Unless otherwise noted, all Geoscience Australia material on this website is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia Licence. » But I find it unclear which parts are licensed as such (eg in this picture gallery)...

Maybe someone could look into that? Jean-Fred (talk) 13:31, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Please look to GA Copyright page, with © mark Geoscience Australia asserts the right to be recognised as author but all media is released under CC-BY-2.5 AU, besides they clearly states that "copyright is owned by a third party will be clearly labelled", so good luck uploading any valuable media that don't have any 3'rd parties notices --Justass (talk) 13:41, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Hm, interesting find. As they only a few weeks ago made the switch to CC-BY, I think it will take them a little while to convert over pages on their website. But more interestingly, it seems to me that a lot of their data you can only get "on request", perhaps because the data sets are huge, and they used to sell a lot of stuff. I wonder if they are phasing out selling stuff and it will all eventually become available freely. Here's hoping. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Any special exception for Korean War Veterans Memorial?

Isn't the en:Korean War Veterans Memorial as a contemporary work of art still copyrighted? As there is no freedom of panorama for non-buildings in the US, why is Category:Korean War Veterans Memorial full of images? --Túrelio (talk) 22:42, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It was designed by a committee paid for by the U.S. government and is property of the U.S. government. Do I have to make the logical connection for you? -Nard the Bard 01:31, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Seems to be a US peculiarity. In most other countries the sculptors/architects would still hold the copyright, though it would be covered by FOP in many countries, contrary to the US. --Túrelio (talk) 09:42, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

In some cases the copyright would be owned by the government, although I don't think that is the case here. I believe Frank Gaylord was the sculptor. However, it is now owned/managed by the National Park Service, and is on the National Mall in the middle of Washington D.C. Sculptures like these are pretty touchy for deletion requests; maybe it is more a de facto fair use exemption which goes a lot further than usual, due to its nature, rather than an actual PD-USGov situation. The Vietnam Women's Memorial, also on the Mall, is owned and operated by a private group though and that has had some litigation surrounding it on derivative works (settled out of court I believe). Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:06, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to delete them, if not necessary. Actually, I've some own photos of this memorial, but never uploaded them due to the buildings-only-FOP of the US. --Túrelio (talk) 18:37, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I believe this counts as a work for hire by the U.S. government. Whether this is actually so depends on a few things, like the original contract and whatnot. I'm sorry about my original answer, feel free to nominate these for deletion. I'm sure we could get a lively debate going. -Nard the Bard 13:48, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Global file usage delay

Hello,

Do you know how long it takes after inserting a picture in a Wikipedia article, for that article to show-up in the new "Global file usage" section on the file description page ? It seems to take longer than the "checkusage" tool. Is that the reason why the checkusage tool has not been removed ? Teofilo (talk) 19:51, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Global file usage extension is experiencing some sort of performance and database related problems [2], don't know are they resolved --Justass (talk) 20:10, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. Teofilo (talk) 12:09, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm also not sure that tool checks wikisource and other non-encyclopedia projects like checkusage does. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:59, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

group of uncategorized files - "VC"

Here is a group of files with missing categories from user Sumeethpai, see [3] - did anybod now what VC means? - Is there a better category than "Screenshots"? Cholo Aleman (talk) 21:12, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Visual C++?, although I am not sure --Justass (talk) 21:25, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

December 6

Renaming

There are over 750 files awaiting renaming atm. That is a rather large backlog, for an easy admin task. BTW, did we ever decide if all rename should go trough commonsdelinker ? (I personally think that would be optimal). I also point out en:User:Splarka/ajaxfilemove.js, which might simplify this task for admins. It might need some adaptations to make it's use on Commons optimal however. 82.75.135.94 13:42, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that some started using renames for mere cosmetics. More files are renamed, more requests one will get. -- User:Docu at 13:44, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I've culled the number from over 790 images to just over 750 (no doubt I wasn't the only person renaming so hard to say how many I did). It's not that easy however! Bidgee (talk) 15:10, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I have renamed hundreds of images. But everytime I rename 100 there is 50 ned files to rename. And if I work at some other backlog then 75 new suggestions arise. We had around 400 i think when CommonsDelinker stopped working and a few days later it was more than 1,000. But I agree that images should be renamed (or rejected) within a few days. A problem is that when someone suggest that a bird or a flower is renamed how can I or other admins know that the new name is better? I'm not an expert in birds or flowers. --MGA73 (talk) 16:00, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Pro-active improvement of others' uploads

I guess this falls mostly under the umbrella of etiquette. Is there any guidance to be had concerning the unrequested improvement of images? I've patroled the Latest files page a bit lately and have touched-up a handful of images without contacting the uploader. (Does the "Watch this page" function work for media changes?) The licenses clearly allow this, but I'm wondering what the community thinks of the practice. I don't want to upset anyone.

The types of images and the types of improvements fall into a few classes. Here are some examples:

Dull low-contrast: File:Bridge at Castlegar, BC.jpg was like a picture taken through a dirty window with the sun shining ont it -- very low contrast and easy to greatly improve. A monochrome example is File:Le dépouillement des votes.jpg -- there are a lot of pictures like that original.
Dim low-contrast: File:Sutton Scarsdale Hall 5.jpg, File:ForsythiaFlower.png, and File:BruggeTower.JPG. These can be improved by brightening and adjusting the contrast on the main subject at the expense of unimportant parts of the photograph -- what the camera would do anyway if the exposure was properly adjusted when photographed. (I masked the sky in the Brugge Tower image to keep from totally whitewashing it, though.)
Discolored low-contrast: File:Vedlikehold på Omegaantennen.jpg is a scan of an old color photograph that time has been unkind to -- a danger to almost all old color photographs -- and the touch-up makes it more true, not less so.
Tinted low-contrast monochrome: File:Nuernberg Ansichtskarte 019.jpg. Also File:DuMoulinEckart.jpg for which I haven't uploaded the fix yet; the retouched version can be viewed here.

Obviously there are many pictures that can be greatly improved. But is doing so unbiden accepted practice? I try to avoid doing anything beyond making the image better at what it was presumably trying to accomplish in the first place. I resist the urge to crop. I only adjust color if it's obviously wrong, and I try not to loose details in the shadows or highlights unless such an adjustement greatly enhances the main subject.

One big concern of mine is those sepia-toned or otherwise tinted monochrome images. The information content of the image can be enormously enhanced after going purely grayscale, as witnessed by that Du Moulin Eckart picture. But how likely is it that the original condition of an image is actually an important part of what it conveys. That is, is a poor quality sepia photograph important as is as an historic artifact? Maybe I should have left the Nuernberg Ansichtskarte photo unmolested? These thoughts are what stopped me from uploading the Eckart picture and asking about such things here.

I could stick to Images to improve, and that might be more productive in the sense that those images are actually likely to be used by other projects. Its just that there is so much raw material that could be improved in the daily uploads.

Thanks. Kbh3rd (talk) 04:35, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't see a userbox for "Please improve my pictures" but yes, please improve any picture of mine you think worth it. I'm a mediocre photographer and downright poor retoucher; the only reason some of my pix are worth something is, I go places better photograhers don't. I don't put all my fixable pix in the request bin because they are too many. Retouching someone's picture and uploading the improved doesn't lose the old one at all, since we can revert to the old version. If you want to be absolutely sure, change the filename so both versions will be equally convenient. Add, for example, your initials to the improved version. Jim.henderson (talk) 05:58, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

If somebody contributes to Commons (or Wikipedia, or other Foundation project) they've already agreed to having you improve on their work. The only thing you need to be careful about, is that you should save your changed version, to a new file name (preserving all authorship and other information in the new description), if there's any potential the change would be objected to, or there's any potential use for the old version. I think cropping or sepia-to-greyscale, should require you to save your change under a new file. It's then up to each Wikipedia (or other project) to decide which version they prefer. It's a mistake to do something on Commons, that alters content elsewhere (bypassing local discussions). The only time a significant change should be uploaded "on top" of the old version, is if the uploader made a mistake, and corrects it shortly after the first upload. --Rob (talk) 07:14, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi Kbh3rd, you might find this template useful as it makes the situation clear to re-users. {{RetouchedPicture|CHANGES|editor=MODIFIER|orig=LOCATIONOFORIGINALIMAGE|origoff=LOCATIONOFORIGINALIMAGEIFOFFWIKI}} Here is an example of it in use:File:13th century Ganesha statue cleaned and colour adjusted.jpg. There is a discussion about when to use it on Template talk:Retouched picture.What they have not mentioned there (and perhaps they should), is the importance of historical images together with present day images that ‘may’ serve to be highly valued historical documentary images of the future. In other words, WC is a library of world heritage, and leaving good paper trail back to the raw original like this is important.--P.g.champion (talk) 10:23, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

The greatest disadvantage of someone uploading an improved version is that it makes the original uploads disappear from the uploader's gallery that is generated by the toolserver. I regard that as a bug that should be fixed (but I have no idea how difficult that would be). /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 10:46, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

In the case of File:Le dépouillement des votes.jpg the boundary between the standing bow tie wearing man's shoulder and the man behind is disappearing in what looks like saturated black on my computer screen (I know it is not saturated but it looks so). The same goes with the boundary between people's hair and behind person's coat in the series of standing people on the right side of the picture. I had not guessed that the bow tie man's suit had stripes until I brightened the picture back to lighter shades of grey on my picture retouching software.

The new version of File:Sutton Scarsdale Hall 5.jpg looks good, and File:Vedlikehold på Omegaantennen.jpg is amazing! Who would have thought these colours were hidden behind this sepia looking original ? On File:Nuernberg Ansichtskarte 019.jpg, the right hand block of buildings is too dark : I can't see the boundaries between buildings nor count the number of windows. You may want to know why I want to be able to count the number of windows : for example, when we found File:Liberation of Marseille, August 1944.jpg we had no idea which city this was. Only after comparing with modern pictures of the city and identifying buildings using details like numbers of windows could we make sure that this is Marseille and reject the source website's wrong assertion that this is Normandy. Teofilo (talk) 13:06, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Now what would you say if someone "straightened up" File:Sutton Scarsdale Hall 5.jpg to their understanding of perfect straight verticals? Although I do some benign (I hope) perspective adjustments, sometimes they are plain evil (see history of File:Plotnikov 4-5 09.jpg). NVO (talk) 13:12, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, with some improvements, it's not entirely clear if this is an improvement. The other day, someone uploaded a series of "improved" versions of featured and quality images of Commons .. -- User:Docu at 13:17, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

The only pic of mine that was ever improved by another editor is File:Islamic Cultural Center E96 jeh.JPG. The improved version was uploaded over mine, without asking me, and it was done well. I hope someone thinks some of my other pix are worth this kind of effort, and this is the correct way to go for this kind of small adjustment of geometry, contrast, scratch removal, etc. For antique pictures or for substantial cropping or other major improvements a separate filename, with the various templates and other connections as outlined above, would be better. Which is to say, it's a matter of editorial judgement, though perhaps some of these questions should be codified into a guideline. Jim.henderson (talk) 17:22, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment About Cropping: When it comes to cropping, it is worth thinking about how a re-user may wish to use your image. If you read the following, you may agree that it is worth uploading the original first and then upload a cropped pretty/artistic version after it -if you wish. See this discussion on pages 1 & 2 to see what I mean. [4] Then look through some magazines an see how photos are actually used to add interest to articles and the odd cropping styles employed.Also the original image will have more information and that may be important for preparing it, to make the best of the type printing process being used (so that the blacks greys and whites have the optimum values etc.). Also, the lay-out artist will be doing all these adjustments on a calibrated monitor and may be happier working with the original anyway.--P.g.champion (talk) 19:12, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

This discussion is helpful and educational. Thanks everyone. Concerning cropping, I've cropped a snapshot used as the portrait of the subject of an article before. In that case, the result was so obviouly more in line with the intent of the picture that it didn't feel like it needed to be renamed. It's much less clear in other cases, especially landscapes. Sometimes I love to dive into a high-resolution image and study all the details. In certain pictures the surroundings and background can contain a lot of information about olden or foreign places, peoples, and ways besides the main subject. It may be important to keep in mind that all our pictures will be old someday. Of course, "Wiki[pm]edia never forgets", and the original is always there if needs be.

My experience with perspective adjustement makes me much more hesitant to overload the original. It's seems to be a very subjective adjustment that risks distorting the original reality while actually trying to restore it. I conciously decided to not do anything along those lines with File:BruggeTower.JPG even though it suffers from the want of it. If I had done so, I probably would have uploaded under a different name.

Good points about considering an image's use in other wikis & pages &c. That's going to be of greatest concern with cropping and the like, I think, than with minor improvements to the exposure that make the picure all around more valuable whatever the use.

Teofilo, you might want to check your monitor gamma. There's a test image around here somewhere for doing that. My monitor still shows detail in those areas that you called out as too dark. That's not to say that I've adjusted the image perfectly, but the information is still there. File:Le dépouillement des votes.jpg was a tough one, in the fun sort of way, because it proved impossible to find a single adjustement that worked for both sides without loss of detail. I adjusted both sides separately and blended them together with a seamless gradient layer mask.

Kbh3rd (talk) 23:20, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

There are some calibration images in a category called err... Category:Calibration. Can not comment on them now, as I'm on a lap top and these type of screens do not have good colour rendition, but I guess their better than nothing on a good desk top monitor, (if one doesn't have have a 'Spider' or anything like that). Ones camera's technical manual/website should give the gamma value, etc. Ufraw works as good as Photoshop for most things, so one doesn't need to spend money (£400 plus) on fancy apps. My Diamond Pro was a very good monitor – but you could only appreciate it if you were viewing the photographs on another Diamond Pro. So much for progress; bring back vinyl records I say! --P.g.champion (talk) 23:52, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Remember we are pitching to diverse audiences. The largest and most important audience read Wikipedia articles, never heard of Commons, and have no idea how crappy their displays are. We must provide pix that they can see. Posterity is a secondary audience, who will take interest in only a few of the crude works of early 21st century technology. For generations not yet born we should provide authenticity, that is something close to raw camera output, at least for our best products. If we had unlimited time and resources, we would do this for every pic, on the theory that anything might turn out to be important, but realistically at least 99% of everything published is crap and of no interest after the people who made it grow old and die. Jim.henderson (talk) 03:23, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

From this section: there appears then, to be many aspects that are not immediately obvious or perhaps seldom considered by the average up-loader, so that maybe we ought to think about adding these points to the Commons:Contributing your own work page. Then making that page a little more predominant by placing a link on the main page; perhaps between “Featured pictures & Quality images” and “Content.” There is no need to go to the extent of Alamy’s guide to prepare images for upload to their site. [5] instead, just a list of things and options (as mentioned above) to consider, both before and after uploading. Together with the reasoning behind the tips, contributors can make their own minds up. --P.g.champion (talk) 10:12, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

License in the upload file

(moved from Commons talk:Upload, since no one was answering)

It is possible to mention in the upload file two or more categories. Wouldn't it be possible to change the upload file to mention two licenses ? I'm thinking of a combination of e.g. Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution and as a second license PD-Old (in case one uploads a photo made by the uploader of an old painting). This would save the trouble afterwards of editing and adding a second license. JoJan (talk) JoJan (talk) 15:09, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Something sounds wrong to me here: if the painting is PD-old and the photo is a faithful reproduction of it, how can the photo then be licensed under CC-BY (~~for the argument that~~ the rationale being that a faithful reproduction of a 2D work cannot have a separate copyright by itself)? And if it was not a faithful reproduction, or if it was some other kind of 3D work (for example, a statue or a building), why the photo should be licensed also under PD-Old? -- IANEZZ (talk) 18:38, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Because in some jurisdictions, potential users require assurance that both the reproduction and the original are free for use. For example, Commons chooses to dispute the UK government's interpretation of UK copyright law, but potential UK users of UK photos of PD works can not be sure of having the defence of being based in a jurisdiction that does not recognise the claims of photographers in such cases. Man vyi (talk) 07:21, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Fine, but how can one tell when PD-old applies only to the subject being depicted instead the photo? I shot and uploaded some pictures of PD-old-70 3D subjects, released under CC-BY-SA-3.0. I thought the PD-old status of the subject being depicted should be evinced by the description. Is there a better way? -- IANEZZ (talk) 08:38, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

"Fine, but how can one tell when PD-old applies only to the subject being depicted instead of the photo? " Well, you have to look at the description. If it says that the painter lived from 1825 to 1890, then clearly the PD-Old license applies. However, the uploader, who made the photo of the painting, is entitled to attribution, whenever his photo is used elsewhere. So, the two licenses can apply. A more difficult case is when the uploader made a photo, not of the painting, but of a photo (made by somebody else) of the painting. According to US law the PD-Old license applies. But it may be different in other countries. I have made more than 100 photos of photos of paintings. But I do not dare to upload them, lest I may run foul of the legislation in my country. Therefore, a combination of CC attribution and PD-Old clearly states that the uploader is also the photographer of the painting. JoJan (talk) 09:12, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

New files "extended view" tool

Hello,

Am I the only one experiencing difficulties with the "extended view" tool available from the header of Special:NewFiles ?

Instead of providing truly small thumbnails (like 120px-Nissan_X-Trail_von_Sixt_und_Gilly.jpg, 4.3 Kb), the tool provides me with full size files (like Nissan_X-Trail_von_Sixt_und_Gilly.jpg, 370 Kb), asking my computer to resize them. So it nearly freezes my computer when many files over 1 Mb show up.

As an experiment, I typed [Alt] [F] [S] and saved that tool page to my hard disk. When I opened the resulting files folder after 5 minutes, it contained a dozen full size files, including several 6Mb files and a few "120px-<name>.jpg" thumbnails. I interrupted the saving before all 50 files were downloaded.

So in fact instead of a viewing tool providing thumbnails, this looks more like a "batch download" tool, providing full size files.

Do you know how to get in touch with the tool developer ? Teofilo (talk) 16:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I believe it is created by AzaToth, or at least he is involved in some way, because it runs on his toolserver account --Justass (talk)17:19, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I left a message on his English Wikipedia talk page. Teofilo (talk) 19:03, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Oops, had typed "&& $row->img_minor_mime == 'gif'" instead of "&& $row->img_minor_mime != 'gif'"; fixed (I hope). _→AzaToth 19:36, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes I think it is OK now. Thank you for the fix. Teofilo (talk) 22:30, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Israel and FOP

I've been studying a dispute relating to Israeli Freedom of Panorama for some time and have posted my summary of the facts of the matter. I have also provided by interpretation of what it means for Commons - I'd appreciate people voting on this matter at Commons talk:Freedom of panorama#Outside view, December 2009. Thanks.--Nilfanion (talk) 21:18, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Google-hosted Life images

Is there any reason to believe that these or these can't be used on Commons? Otherwise I volunteer to upload them. Paradoctor (talk) 17:08, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Looks good to me, except for 3 of the last 4 in the Sherlock Holmes set. Kaldari (talk) 17:34, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I didn't scan the entire hitlist. No problem, I'll sort out the doubtful cases before I upload. Thx, Paradoctor (talk) 19:26, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest uploding only images by known authors who died more than 70 years ago. Create and use {{Creator}} page for them. --Jarekt (talk) 20:11, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Why "died more than 70 years ago"? Life was an American magazine! It's all about publication date for anything published prior to 1978. It's possible that some of these images were first published outside the US, maybe in Mexico (life + 100) or Canada (life + 50), but life + 70 isn't relevant in those countries, either.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:05, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes there is a huge problem uploading these! Most of these are works that LIFE created but never published! Unpublished U.S. works from before 1923 are not necessarily public domain! Use caution. -Nard the Bard 01:40, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

- I love it when they squeal. ;) Relax, we're talking about 17th century engravings and and illustrations by Sidney Paget, who switched from composing to decomposing more than a century ago. Paradoctor (talk) 08:05, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

LIFE magazine did not start until well after these particular works were made; they were not unpublished creations by the magazine. Almost by definition, they had to be published in order for TIME to have copies of them. They are PD in the U.S. by virtue of being published before 1923, but I think they were first done in countries which require the PD-old tag (i.e. 70 pma) today. Carl Lindberg (talk) 08:32, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh sure, the Sherlock Holmes pics are fine, I'm talking about the LIFE collection in general. -Nard the Bard 02:11, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, of course. The question though was on two specific sets of pictures -- the Sherlock Holmes ones, and another set published in 1692. No issues there, but yes, most images in that collection are authored by LIFE and are still copyrighted. They obviously did collect a bunch of works from other sources though, which became part of that online collection and slapped with a (bogus) copyright notice along with all the rest. Carl Lindberg (talk) 04:40, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

December 3

Categorizing pictures of people by age

Hello.

I want to create categories to sort pictures of persons by age. For example, the category "28-year-old men" would contain pictures, each of which depicts 1 (or more, but same-aged) male person known to be 28 years old at the time when the picture was taken.

I have started creating the categories, but Martin H. deleted them. He thinks it would worsen the mess of categories Commons already has, and fail to provide educational use.

My reason to create such categories is to make it easy to create "age-guessing games" (look it up), freely licensed and maybe even free of the personality rights burden (because the images can be old). Such games could be generated automatically, and (or) fetch images from Commons automatically (if there are many images, filtering by topic may be possible).

For an age-guessing game, the categories should (must) not contain images with persons not fit for the category. So in that example, "Category:28-year-old men" must not contain images which show women or 26-year-old men.

It is OK if the category does not contain all the images eligible for it. Categorizing even four or five people of each age would be useful.

Should all kinds of categories include everything that fits, or can some be like galleries?

I recognize that the tree will not be simple if "28-year-old-men" is put into both "Men by age" and "28-year-old people", and if people add subcategories by race and similar properties.

Martin H. suggested adding descriptions to images instead.

Do you have any suggestions?

Regards, Ageguessinggames (talk) 15:03, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

This cannot work: the age changes every year and is redundant with the birth information. Better start a way of extracting data (catscan, bots) from a xxx birth categories so at least we don't have additional categories that need plenty of maintenance. --Foroa (talk) 21:21, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

The age of a person in a photograph does not change every year, and is redundant only if you have both the day of the photograph and of the person.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:36, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

He doesn't want to categorize biographies, but images. And the age of a person in a photograph doesn't change. I have no general problem with categorizing people by age. Although I certainly do not approve of designing Commons categories to fit the rules of some game. If there are several people in the image the persons should still be categorized each. Personally I would design it in a different way: Instead of using categories I would rather use image annotations. Drag a box over the person and put a template in the box. The template contains information such as name, link to gallery of the person (if one exists), age, sex. That's much more flexible and add's actual contextual value to the image instead of just being a helper tool for some game. --Slomox (talk) 21:45, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I created an example with File:Monrose - Senna Guemmour - Mandy Capristo - Bahar Kızıl (2972).jpg. I put boxes in the images and inserted the template {{Person in image}}. It provides some basic info on the depicted person and the values can be analyzed with the TemplateTiger tool (this will work only after the tool starts to operate on the newest dump).

It's just a quick example. The template can be improved for sure. --Slomox (talk) 22:08, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

(reset indent) The name of the category is misleading as it concerns not people by age, but pictures of persons by age. This means that the date of the picture shot and the birth date of the person need be known. Problem is that such categories tend to grow unwieldy (by sex, by color, by race, with/without beard, moustache, hear, glasses, ...) It is certainly a good idea of Slomox that deserves further development. With some further expansions, it could be useful to unblock the Commons:Categories for discussion/2009/12/Some of categories "by alphabet" discussion. --Foroa (talk) 07:53, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

If the note would be over the whole image, do you think it should be in the description instead? ~~Slomox, does the TemplateTiger tool ignore templates used fewer than 10 times?~~ Thanks. --Ageguessinggames (talk) 12:49, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

DATE OF DUMP: 2009-05-31. --Ageguessinggames (talk) 13:25, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

If there's only one person in the image, then, I'd say, it's better to put it in the description. --Slomox (talk) 18:22, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

category:Wikipedia self-reference

When categorizing images I came across several that existed only because they were "temporary" files uploaded to show a point in an archived discussion. People have in the past nominated these for deletion, but I feel they form an important part of the discussion archives and are thus in scope. I can imagine if you asked people at member projects if they wanted us defacing their discussion archives they'd say no. So I created this category for images that meet this definition. -Nard the Bard 20:51, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I found a category that fits quite well for the same purpose: Category:Image detail for discussion

--Amada44 (talk) 10:55, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

December 7

Closed captioning file type

Some days ago I recall seeing a Commons Theora video linked to a .srt file that contained closed captioning text in the SubRip format, a bit like this:

1
00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:27,000
I'll teach thee Bugology, Ignatzes
 
2 
00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:43,000 
Something tells me
3 
00:00:58,000 --> 00:00:64,000 
Look, Ignatz, a sleeping bee

Did I dream this? I *thought* I saw two examples, one from Category:Richard Stallman videos and a short test example. I also searched this pump's talk archives, meta and mediawiki for ".srt" and "closed caption". Was it a temporary experiment? -84user (talk) 18:36, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Nope, it's permanent. The full list of captions available presently is at http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:PrefixIndex&prefix=&namespace=102 Jarry1250 (talk) 19:11, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I had also just noticed the TimedText namespace before coming back here. I have just created TimedText:Krazy Kat Bugolist 1916 silent.ogv.en.srt for File:Krazy Kat Bugolist 1916 silent.ogv. Is there a better way to connect these namespaces together, such as an automatic link, or tab, to the associated timed text? -84user (talk) 19:32, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I created {{Closed captions}}, which provides automatic links to all existing closed captioning files when inserted in the file description.

To connect the captioning with the video is harder, cause we cannot alter the page's source. But it would be possible to link the file with a little Javascript. --Slomox (talk) 21:39, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

For a simple script to link the captioning to the base file, see: User:Slomox/monobook.js. --Slomox (talk) 22:04, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I have never heard of this namespace. I added a stub about it in Help:Namespaces, but if someone knows more than please correct/add more. Also to think of it most, of the namespaces on that page could use a fresh look ;) --Jarekt (talk) 22:14, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Category question

There is a Category:Quiscalus quiscula. Yet when I add it to an uploaded image (File:Baby grackle - Quiscalus quiscula.jpg), it shows as a red link, and the photo does not appear in the category. Why is this? Regards, Mattisse (talk) 20:28, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Fixed I tried to add the category and it worked. I am not sure what was the problem. --Jarekt (talk) 22:08, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

December 9

Credit line: "(c) Albrecht Dürer / CC-BY-SA-3.0 (DE)‎"

If I read the CC-BY-SA law correctly anybody using File:Fotothek df tg 0000798 Geometrie ^ Perspektive ^ Instrument.jpg or 9k other Fotothek images from 1500s and 1600s need to use above credit line. I assume that most authors from 1500s and 1600s are dead for more than 100 years and that the files should be re-licensed to {{PD-old-100}}. Am I correct? --Jarekt (talk) 21:05, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, clearly this could be relicensed PD-Art. I might consider also keeping the Fotothek license as well: users have their choice of license, and there might be some jurisdiction where some sort of "sweat of brow" argument makes this non-PD. - Jmabel ! talk 22:10, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Just add "|license=foo" to the photothek template to change the licensing to the correct one if an image is old enough to be PD. -Nard the Bard 02:25, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Done I added "|license=PD-old-100" to 9k files in Category:Old Manuscripts from the Deutsche Fotothek--Jarekt (talk) 03:03, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

How is camera type categorization done?

While categorization by camera type is controversial, it is nevertheless taking place.

How is it currently being done? The relatively low number of images thus far categorized by camera leads me to believe that it is done by looking at the EXIF data and then manually adding the relevant categories. Can anyone confirm this? -- JovanCormac 09:52, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Probably. If someone would take the time to set up a mapping table between camera type in exif data and the corresponding categories, we could set up a bot do add some of them.

Alternatively, maybe there is a way to change mediawiki to add them directly. -- User:Docu at 10:18, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

To some extent, automatic categorization is possible by editing Template:Exif-model-value. It seems like it isn't possible to use #switch based on the camera model though. Thus, the current camera model string needs to be part of the category name. We could have a subcategory "Category:Taken with NIKON D200 (exif)" (note the caps) in Category:Taken with Nikon D200 -- User:Docu at 10:53, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Apparently, this doesn't work. The category displays on the file description page, but the image doesn't get added to the category (table). A change in Mediawiki would be needed for this to work. -- User:Docu at 11:33, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

From Template:Exif-make-value and its history, it looks like it "#switch" used to work. BTW a list of different values for camera models can be found in en:Category:Redirects from EXIF information. -- User:Docu at 11:57, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Please look at Commons:Help_desk#Is the upload form working ok?, there is some complain about disappearing categories in upload form. May it be related in some way? --Justass (talk) 12:03, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Not sure. I filed a bug about the camera categories, see Bugzilla:21795. -- User:Docu at 12:28, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Good idea, once the bug is fixed this will be a much better way of categorizing by camery type than a bot could ever be. -- JovanCormac 19:23, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I have never seen anybody adding camera info to other peoples images, but many users (including me) add camera categories to their photographs at the upload time. --Jarekt (talk) 13:54, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I do. Now you have

. Jean-Fred (talk) 22:38, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Apalsola does quite a few too. -- User:Docu at 08:24, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

IAlex reviewed Bugzilla:21795. -- User:Docu at 08:24, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

How to nominate Picture of the Day

I would like to nominate File:Baby grackle - Quiscalus quiscula.jpg for Picture of the Day, but the page is protected and only allows editing by administrators. Is there a way for the rest of us to nominate pictures? Regards, Mattisse (talk) 23:11, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Hello, Pictures of the day are chosen among Featured pictures, so first your image needs promotion to FP, after follow Commons:Picture of the day/Instructions guide --Justass (talk) 23:17, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Hello, could you explain more clearly. The instructions make absoluately no sense at all. I want to nominae File:Baby grackle - Quiscalus quiscula.jpg but there is not a clue where to start. I added : {{picture of the day}} as instructed but that did not seem to work out very well. I gather the picture of the day is not for newbies on the commons. I seems that it will not be work thrying as I am not a technocrat.I think I am not cut out for the commons and will not be upleading pictures here. Regards, Mattisse (talk) 23:53, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I will do my best to be clear :-)

As the Picture of the Day is displayed on the main page and all, I am sure you understand the choice is very strict. So, as Justass said, Pictures of the Day are chosen among Featured pictures. So, you cannot just make a file Picture of the Day: it has to go first through the Featured pictures process. Its aim is to highlight the very finest media we have.

Before nominating a picture to PC, please read Commons:Featured picture candidates, and follow the instructions.

There are lots of things to do here, apart from FP nominations. If you need help for uploading pictures, feel free to ask for help at the Commons:Help desk (or the equivalent in your language, if not english). We know it can be indeed difficult to find your way on Commons, so we will gladly help. Cheers, Jean-Fred (talk) 00:38, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

December 10

File incorrectly named

File:Adriaen van der Donck 2.jpg appears to be incorrectly named for Adriaen van der Donck, as the National Gallery of Art where it is located says it is a portrait of a man without identifying who it is.[6] The link on the file to its origin is a 404. Regards, Mattisse (talk) 19:01, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

By doing a casual Google search, it appears to be a commonly held view that this portrait is of Adriaen van der Donck. -Nard the Bard 01:37, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Commonly held views can be wrong, and if fact often are. If the owner of the portrait says it is an unidentified man, and if the source of the picture is a dysfuctional 404 link, what over rides the sourced link? Commonly held beliefs is not a good enough sourch on Wikipedia. Is there a lesser standard here? (If so, I will not unload pictures here and I will oppose transfer of images to this site in an attempt to retain the core principle of "reliable sources". Regard, Mattisse (talk) 23:19, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

This isn't Wikipedia. The analogy isn't even very good. There's enough space on the image page to clearly state what we do and don't know about the picture. I think that trying to stuff everything in the filename is unreasonable; it's good enough as it is.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:40, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

As mentioned, no, Commons does not have the same rules as Wikipedia. Our requirements for keeping an image are a) if it is in scope, which this clearly is, and if the copyright status is either public domain or freely licensed (and this is public domain). So, we will keep the image. That said, the image descriptions should be as accurate and neutral as possible, so that should probably be expanded to note the above situation, that while it is commonly thought to depict the named person the original source does not actually say that. Given your source though, it was labeled as being of that person in 1928, so there is a decent reason to name the file that way. File renaming is still (for technical reasons) quite aggravating so it is not frequently done. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:12, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

john's pizza pictures from Tudokin

Hi!

I came across these [[7]] pictures as a lot of them are uncategorised.

Some pictures are also published on the homepage of john's pizza.
Quite a few pictures look professional
the user has only uploaded john's pizza pics.

Therefor I am not sure, if Tudokin is really the copyright holder. Tudokin may be the copyright holder as quite a few of those pic's are published on en.WP. How can one check?

There are also three huge! tif files:

can they be deleted?

--Amada44 (talk) 11:04, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I looked at the first one, what screwed up sort of family is that. The dad seems so proud his kid can lift a slice of pizza... frankly it's damn creepy. I suggest a DR. -mattbuck (Talk) 12:53, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Contributor appears to be a single purpose account, both here and on WP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Tudokin. Could be a COI issue as well as copyvio because the article sure looks like and advert and the text reads like marketing script. If one looks at Tudokin’s File:Johns inc Logo.pdf one will see that the author of the PDF document is given as James Vuong. --P.g.champion (talk) 13:18, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I remember when these were being uploaded originally. I didn't have the time at that point to do anything about it. I have suspicions that the uploader works for or is in some way connected to Incredible John's. Personally, if we could get OTRS permission for these works (they look like a professional photographer took them), I'd be fine with keeping the lot of them. If others don't feel that way, maybe we could have a discussion about which images other people don't feel fall into our scope. Killiondude (talk) 00:54, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

"professional": I doubt that. Looking and at the father and son pic, I don't see any self-respecting pro allowing such a shot escaping from his or her shop. I'd say anything professional in these pics is owed to the camera. Looks more like the boss trying out his newest toy. Paradoctor (talk) 13:44, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

yea, I agree. But I meant this one for example: File:John's_Inc_Pizza_Spaghetti.jpg (I did say some pictures,...) --Amada44 (talk) 16:42, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Gee, I dunno. In that case, I'll call myself a pro, too. That is, if someone gives me a Nikon D300 for Christmas. ^_^ Paradoctor (talk) 10:45, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I guess I was just comparing it to my photographic abilities (not much ability, tbh). :-p Killiondude (talk) 19:36, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Judging from this, you have nothing to be shy about. :) Paradoctor (talk) 20:09, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

December 8

Obviously I need a life...what constitutes "incidental"?

...Ok, I've gone through the Pudding category and am having trouble with one file, File:Eating pudding.jpg. It's a snapshot of a little girl with some brown stuff on her face, and you can see an empty plastic pudding container at the very edge of the photo. So that and the photo title does make it seem like pudding plays some part in the picture. But aside from a Plum Pudding editorial cartoon, it's the only image where the central subject is a person, and aside from the little smears on the child's face, there is no pudding in the image at all. I'm trying to figure out if someone looking under Pudding would benefit from finding this image, or is the pudding itself just incidental to the child's messy face? In all likelihood I am just a hopeless misanthrope who should suck it up and deal and leave it where it is, but I'd welcome another opinion. Akina (talk) 15:34, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Harmless. The picture, that is, not necessarily the question. - Jmabel ! talk 21:06, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

If I read COM:CAT correctly, categories are topics, not necessarily just sets of category name-things, so a picture showing a typical application of pudding would be right at home in category:pudding. It would not be right in category:puddings, IMHO, at least as long as there is no Commons project or category scheme covering jiggly foodstuffs. When there is enough material, make a subcategory category:Pudding in culture or somesuch. The main principle is: It can be found by browsing. Paradoctor (talk) 22:03, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Paradoctor - "A typical application of X" is it in a nutshell and brings me peace with the image/category association, and especially makes sense with the "Pudding" versus "Puddings" distinction. Akina (talk) 01:25, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

December 11

PD-Ireland on Wikipedia-en

Is there a reason why PD-Ireland images shouldn't be uploaded to commons? The license doesn't indicate any conflict with Ireland's or US copyright.--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 07:21, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Generally there is no problem, but some of these works may fall under URAA in the USA. See also {{Not-PD-US-URAA}}. Sv1xv (talk) 07:41, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Etiquette when deleting POV

Came across a picture of a pudding (I've decided to learn by specializing) and the description included a review of what the person liked and didn't about the dish, how much the pudding cost at the restaurant, etc. Can I just delete stuff like this when I find it and leave the factual description, or does etiquette dictate that I send a note to the contributor before deleting or changing something? And is there an FAQ or help section someplace addressing editing etiquette? I've found info on image/description/category standards and some how-tos but not so much on the rules of the playground, so to speak. Thanks all. Akina (talk) 02:15, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Etiquette doesn't prevent you from improving the encyclopedia like you did, but it may require you to notify the user in a way that would make Emily Post proud. This may mean with discretion. Davidwr (talk) 05:39, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

For me it depends on the source of the image, this kind of description is especially prevalent with images sourced from Flickr, some are POV and others are just plain inaccurate. In such a case I would put the description in italics and add the note along the lines of photographer's original notes.KTo288 (talk) 01:23, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Abridgment of namespace names

When you look for categories, it takes much time and is annoying always to write "Category:" before the category you want to check. It would be much easier if it sufficed with "Cat:" or, better still, with "c:". Namespace "Commons:" could also be "Com:". Is it possible to facilitate the procedure in this way? --Jonund (talk) 16:19, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

If you want to save keystrokes, you might want to look into something like AutoHotkey. Regards, Paradoctor (talk) 16:35, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes I wonder if it would not be more efficient to have categories as the main space, and put galleries in a "Gallery:" namespace. Teofilo (talk) 01:32, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

This might help:

<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
  <ShortName>Commons Cats</ShortName>
  <Description>Wikimedia Commons, the free educational media repository</Description>
  <InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
  <Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/category:{searchTerms}">
  </Url>
</SearchPlugin>

Save as .XML and drop into searchplugins directory of your Firefox, restart browser, and you should see "Commons Cats" added to your list of search engines. Paradoctor (talk) 02:21, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

You could of course simply bookmark this link. Paradoctor (talk) 11:15, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

It's possible to define aliases for namespaces, just like "WP:X" on en.wp that directly leads you to "Wikipedia:X" (X being any page in the namespace). It would be meaningful to add aliases for our "Commons:" and "Category:" namespaces. --Slomox (talk) 11:54, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

We cannot use "COM:" as an alias for "Commons:", due to a clash with the ISO code for Comanche the techs will not implement it (and if a Comanche WP ever happens our links will break). Not sure if anyone has really asked about CAT, personally think it would be helpful.--Nilfanion (talk) 12:08, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

CAT is ISO 639-2 too. For Catalan. Catalan projects already exist and use ISO 639-1 code ca, but I don't know whether we need to keep free the three-letter code for any future developments. But we could still use two-letter shortcuts CT for Category and CM for Commons. They are no valid language codes and they are even shorter than COM and CAT. --Slomox (talk) 13:56, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I say we invent a language and give it the ISO code WP... -mattbuck (Talk) 14:45, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

ISO doesn't accept any new ISO 639-1 codes. --Slomox (talk) 16:19, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Ok, now I'm confused. Does that mean we'll lose COM:SCOPE when the Comanche rise again? Paradoctor (talk) 20:19, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

If the Comanche start a Wikipedia in their language, yes, then COM:SCOPE will become a interwiki to the SCOPE article on the Comanche Wikipedia. --Slomox (talk) 13:18, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

The two-letter namespace or namespace abbreviation "CM:" / "cm:" was once sort of ruled to be OK in theory, since it does not conflict with any existing ISO 639-1 language code and the set of ISO 639-1 codes will not be expanded in future, so there's no possibility of conflict with a language code (as is the case for "COM:"), but for some reason "CM:" has not been implemented (see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14277 etc.) -- AnonMoos (talk) 08:30, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Special pre/postfixes might solve the conflict, such as (for categories) >c: c> |c: ?c: .c: µc: ,c: {c: c} °c: .c: &c: [c: c] c.. ... --Foroa (talk) 08:57, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

My first computing experiences were with CP/M and lookalikes, so I object to this solution for religious reasons. And most of these are problematic for technical reasons anyway: "?" would have to be escaped under all circumstances, ">", "|", "{", "}", "[", "]" are part of HTML or wikisyntax, and Americans probably prefer °f: over °c: ;) Paradoctor (talk) 10:07, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

CM is perfectly good, no reason to search for any further alternatives. COM was rejected cause of the Comanche ISO 639 code. C was rejected as an interwiki for Commons, not as a namespace alias! C would be acceptable too. CM was only rejected in bug 14277 cause there was no proof of community consensus. With proven community consensus there should be no problem creating it. I like CM most, cause unlike C it is clear that it's not "Category". --Slomox (talk) 13:18, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

How about ☭:SCOPE ? Paradoctor (talk) 16:38, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Cute! Anyway, previous discussions are at Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2009Jun#Pseudo_namespaces and Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2008Jun#CM_prefix ... -- AnonMoos (talk) 19:06, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Not really related to what you're talking, but it would be great if namespaces from other languages would work here. For example "Kategorie:Foo" automatically redirecting to "Category:Foo", "Vorlage:Foo" to "Template:Foo"

and the like. There are people who create such pages, and more probably give this into the search. As the Commons is multilingual, I think we should redirect these namespaces to the English ones for convinience of our users and readers. --The Evil IP address (talk) 09:18, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Large SVG files

Hi there, I recently run into a problem trying to edit a 20 MB SVG file in Inkscape - the program crashed :(. The file was originally a PDF GSM world coverage map (2005A one) converted to SVG with pdf2svg trial. I tried both Inkscape on Win XP and Ubuntu.--Kozuch (talk) 19:48, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Isn't that map copyrighted? Paradoctor (talk) 20:30, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I thought I could alter it enough in order to create a non-derivative. Basically I want the coverage data only. Am not sure how much legal this is though...--Kozuch (talk) 16:47, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

You might want to check that first. ;) Anyway, assuming there are no legal problems, you could try converting into an image format first. w:en:ImageMagick should do it. If extracting the image doesn't work, just display the map at a suitable zoom factor in a viewer, and make screen shots which you can stitch together. You'll probably want to get an image with 7..20 Mpixel. I just vectorized a 60MB TIFF screenshot in InkScape. Took awhile, but worked. Now I have a 43 MB SVG I don't need of a screenshot I'm not interested in. Paradoctor (talk) 20:00, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Public information upload question

Hi, I'm Hunter Kahn. I've never used the village pump before, so please forgive me if I've done it wrong. Over at the English Wikipedia, I've been working on the article Maurice Clemmons, the suspected shooter in the recent police officer shooting in Washington. I sent a public information request to the Arkansas Parole Board seeking a copy of the one-page proclamation document that Mike Huckabee issued in 2000 that essentially set Clemmons free. They did me one better and sent me all 27-pages worth of clemency/parole-related documents. I now have those on PDF, and I'd like to incorporate them into the Clemmons article. Basically what I'm looking to do is exactly what has been done with this surreply on the article Beck v. Eiland-Hall, which shows an image of one of the PDFs like a picture, then shows the entire document when you click on it. I assume you can do this by uploading it to Wikimedia Commons, but I don't have any idea which license to choose in this case or exactly how to do it. Can anyone give me some direction here? Thanks in advance! — Hunter Kahn _(c) 06:41, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest requesting a CC-by-SA permission from the board using Commons:OTRS and sending the declaration of consent to OTRS with the ticket on the file. I'm not sure if this is an official government work though. If it is then you can use {{PD-USGov}}. --Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 07:30, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

It's an official government work, but not from the US federal government, so PD-USGov does not apply. As far as I can tell, works of the Arkansas state government remain copyrighted as normal, so I would not upload this file unless the copyright status can be conclusively determined. Powers (talk) 14:04, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Yep. A public record is not the same thing as a public domain copyright, and most state governments claim copyright. Carl Lindberg (talk) 20:37, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Finjan blocks uploads & other stuff

I'm editing from behind a university firewall which uses Finjan software to block "malicious software" and various websites (such as torrenting sites). This normally isn't an issue, except for some reason it keeps seeing things on Commons as threats. Things such as whatever page it goes through after you hit upload, (usually) after the image uploads, but before you're sent to the new page. It also (sometimes) happens when using Hotcat (eg removing a cat from File:HunsletDolbadarn.jpg or adding to File:Polish War Memorial 1.jpg) or editing VP. I've tried contacting the sysadmin, and they're being singularly unhelpful - anyone know what exactly may be causing it? -mattbuck (Talk) 19:26, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

December 12

File:Bibiane Thiffault.jpg

it should be deleted, but it is kept ?? please look at the discussion Cholo Aleman (talk) 07:57, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Julian must have forgotten about it, just drop him a note on his talk page. -- User:Docu at 10:47, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, done Cholo Aleman (talk) 17:15, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Automatically add link WP:media help in header of media file

Currently, when opening a media file (*.ogg), one sees at the top of the page a button to play this file. However, for readers who have not yet installed *.ogg support this will not work. It would be useful to automatically always add a link to Wikipedia:media help as well, so they can find out how to install it. −Woodstone (talk) 14:58, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

December 13

Image description editing problem

Hey folks, I recently uploaded an image, and prior to completing the information for the image I hit the wrong key or something and the image was uploaded without description, copyright information and all the other bells and whistles. I have tried to go back to the image and edit these but nothing seems to get me there, apparently all attempts to edit the other fields don't get me to a page where I can do this. Can we do something that makes post-upload editing a little more apparent and user friendly, this is hair-pullingly frustrating.Pdeitiker (talk) 17:37, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

The last file you uploaded appears to be: File:Scheme for MRCA.PNG. Is this the one? Man vyi (talk) 19:06, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I finally managed to fix it by finding an edit link in the article, but I would also like to add comments. My point is that the process for adding stuff after picture is uploaded is not intuitive, its counter-intuitive.Pdeitiker (talk) 16:53, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Was the problem that you couldn't find the file or that you couldn't find the edit tab? Man vyi (talk) 17:07, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Is there a tag for "please categorize this better"?

I've been categorizing uncategorized media, and sometimes I have to overcategorize it or skip one of the relevant categories. Is there a tag I can use that says "Please help by adding a category for (the tree in this picture)"?

Also, is there a tag for images that says "too small to be worthwhile"? A lot of the uncategorized images are just worthless - small, fuzzy and unnotable. Downtowngal (talk) 00:18, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

For your second question, {{Low quality}} might be what you are looking for. Jean-Fred (talk) 00:26, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. My impression was that {{Low quality}} was for Wikipedia pages where the illustration of an article could be improved. I'm talking here about bad quality snapshots, usually, that the uploader probably has forgotten about already, and will not be able to replace. They're not worth my time to categorize (and in some cases can't be categorized at all). They will sit in the Uncategorized Media pages forever unless they are categorized, or tagged with a reason that they are not useful. Downtowngal (talk) 00:30, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

OK, I see I can tag them with just {{Low quality}} which sends them to the Category:Images of low quality, and that moves them away from the Uncategorized Media pages. Downtowngal (talk) 00:39, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

For your first question, in this particular case, Category:Unidentified trees. There are many similar categories under Category:Unidentified subjects, and feel free to add more as needed. - Jmabel ! talk 05:56, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I also spend much time in categorizing uncategorized media. For uncategorized images that are just worthless just do nothing. They are invisible for the user looking for specific images. Adding {{Low quality}} costs time and I expect that never somebody will be happy that you did that because he/she can now use that image. It is better to spend your time for good images. For very good images I spend more time to find the right category and even if it is very difficult to find the right category I use Google translate to find out the language of the description and add as category also the name of the country; for example Bulgaria. Hoping that somebody in Bulgeria will give it the right place. Wouter (talk) 10:12, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

As an aside: I would really like to see some sort of holding corral introduced as discussed in Paris recently.[8]. It would help stop bad and pointless images filling up disk space and also see to it that useful images get categorised before they get lost amongst all the other homeless uploads.--P.g.champion (talk) 11:17, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I just came across {{Use sub-categories}} which might be what you were looking for. Jean-Fred (talk) 21:13, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually everyone's being too kind to the software. The upload menu's categorizer stinks. It demands that the uploader know the name of a relevant category. Clicking "what's this" doesn't say how to pick a category; it goes into a long disquisition about why we have categories and how to create them. Alternative to any of this, there should be a category clicker. Click on a button and get a list of broad cats. Click on one of them to go down the category tree. Keep clicking until you've hit the correct level for the picture. Click to insert it.

Yes, for experienced cat wranglers like me it would take longer than typing a known catname or pasting it, which is why we would continue to use the current system, but a cat clicker would convert the daily flood of totally uncategorized files into a more manageable flood of roughly categorized ones. Especially if click-categorized files were automatically listed as wishing for catcheck. Jim.henderson (talk) 21:42, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Here is a link to the list of broad cats, but I don't know how to include it in the uploads page. Paradoctor (talk) 23:39, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Very funny. You suckered me on that one. Perhaps you should have suggested that User:Jim.henderson get a "Cat Wrangler" t-shirt.[9] Estillbham (talk) 00:18, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I would not say that the image is invisible if it is not categorized. Type "19th century knowledge" into the Search box and you will get 147 images that all begin with those words and, at least the ones I checked, are not categorized.

I wish someone could get User:Jonp154 to add a few categories to the dozen of these images he uploads most days. Estillbham (talk) 00:33, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I would proudly wear a cat wrangler T-shirt while bicycling on summer photographic expeditions. Better yet, a sticker on my helmet in all weathers. What design? Round red fat cat at the center, lassoed by a long thin blue cat with an angled tail?

More seriously, yes, we are trying to run a photo archive, with software designed for an encyclopedia. Wikipedia features, such as links among artices, do not avail here, and descriptions are seldom complete enough to serve for a text search, so most things are relatively invisible unless they get the right category. The right cat is difficult for a newbie to find and insert, thus we fail to collect pictures from sophisticated amateur photographers who are not sophisticated with our methods. So, unless our software gets improvements appropriate for photos and other media, I figure newcomers who find difficulties here ought to be referred to Flikr, which they are likely to understand quickly. Jim.henderson (talk) 03:14, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

"we are trying to run a photo archive, with software designed for an encyclopedia.". Well-said. We really need some thought about the user's experience. I recently came across the perfect example. "Tamarindo" is "tamarind" in Spanish and Portuguese, and close enough to the English and Latin names that one would think a search on "Tamarindo" would produce, near the top, a link to the tree/fruit. Not so. The tree/fruit is a category at the very BOTTOM of the list, because the page only contains the WORD "Tamarindo", which is not in the descriptions or file names. Yes, I know the search results say, "Do you mean tamarind?" But a person who is monolingual or assumes that the word is the same in many languages (not an unreasonable assumption - the plant is tropical, after all), will not click on that link. They will never find the gallery for the tree/fruit and will quit using Commons. It seems to me that the software could be modified so that all categories that fit the word in any way come up at the top of the search. Downtowngal (talk) 18:16, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Searching for "tamarind" yields Tamarindus indica as first hit, searching for "tamarindo" yields category:tamarindo as first hit. Going advanced and searching only categories yields both in both cases, with "tamarind" additionally listing category:Tamarind Falls. Are you sure you spelled your search term right? Paradoctor (talk) 19:20, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

My point is that a person who searches for "tamarindo", who thinks that's the correct spelling for the tree/fruit, will never find it unless they scroll down to the bottom of the results list. They don't know that they need to go advanced and search for "tamarind".Downtowngal (talk) 23:36, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

That's not correct, this search for "tamarindo" will get you the desired gallery as second hit, and works exactly as you suggested. If you want to improve the default search path from tamarindo to Tamarindus indica, why don't you include a disambiguation link in category:tamarindo? Judging from w:en:Tamarindo (disambiguation), you can probably even make a good case for moving the current content to category:Tamarindo, Costa Rica, and putting a disambiguation category at category:Tamarindo. Paradoctor (talk) 01:16, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

When I type "Tamarindo" in the search bar in the left column, this is what results: [10]. This search does not yield what your search does. I AM NOT TRYING TO FIX THIS SEARCH. As an illustration of the previous poster's point, I AM PROVIDING THIS SEARCH AS A DEMONSTRATION THAT THE INTERFACE IS NOT FRIENDLY TO NEWBIES/USERS IN OTHER LANGUAGES. I think this kind of problem is at the heart of why Commons is underutilized. Downtowngal (talk) 02:31, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Easy, gal, easy. I'm trying to help here, but if you start screeching into my eyes, that's not going to work. Please do not case CAPS for emphasis, use italics.

Our searches yield the exact same results, and they work just as described in my first reply. The search you mentioned is the second of these cases.

The problem you describe has nothing to do with the search interface, and everything with search results. The way you make it out, you seem to expect every search to yield all the best results on the first page. A Google search of Commons gives you the tamarind at 15th place, which means you won't see it on the first page either, if you use Google's default search settings. Search algorithms simply are not that smart.

Changing the search interface may be an improvement, but what is it you are suggesting? That all categories that fit in any way come up first is already implemented, it's available in advanced searches. Regards, Paradoctor (talk) 14:46, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

"Nominate for deletion" button

As people use Popup blockers (which is more than understandable, I think) lot of requests don't inform the uploader and add the request to the log. Would it be possible to change this button to something better, maybe a commonified nomination window similar to the AfD window with Twinkle on the English language Wikipedia. This would still be pretty simple, but wouldn't require to have popups disabled. --The Evil IP address (talk) 09:28, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

What about using a bot? It seems that the popup blocker never prevents the file description page from being edited and categorized into Category:Deletion requests December 2009. Perhaps a bot could explore that category, and finish the job whenever people have left their request unfinished ? Teofilo (talk) 02:56, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I like Evil IP address' idea better. From observing such bots on enwiki (they warn users who have pages that are nominated for deletion where the deletion nominator never warned them), the bots don't always get everyone. But I had been wanting to bring up the idea of a bot closing DRs where the file is deleted, but the discussion is still open. There's a bot on enwiki that does that for the "Files for Deletion" page. It just uses the deletion log summary and admin who deleted it as the closing rationale (the bot also signs the closure). This would work well for when files are deleted and the deleting admin didn't notice a DR was open for it (I've been guilty of that on several occasions). Killiondude (talk) 07:12, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

AFAIR we already have a bot closing DRs of deleted files. I don't know its name right now, but I've seen it do that several times. Regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 14:15, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps Evil IP's idea is good. I have never used Twinkle, so I can't say. Teofilo (talk) 17:55, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

ChrisiPK: You're probably talking about the DRBot. --The Evil IP address (talk) 19:44, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of that bot, thank you. However, there's been instances where it hasn't closed DRs within an hour after they were deleted (like it says on its userpage). I guess I shouldn't complain, it seems to be a helpful bot. :-) Killiondude (talk) 20:25, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I second the Twinkle idea, if a subset of it can be built somehow to handle this, it'd be great. ViperSnake151 (talk) 22:33, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

What we would need to do this would be rewriting the IFD/FFD part to fit Commons conventions of the Twinkle XFD script and removing the useless rest. Probably not too difficult for someone with JavaScript knowledge, but I as a n00b in this failed in my trial to rewrite it properly. --The Evil IP address (talk) 17:09, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Adding photos of famous actors, musicians, etc?

Hello all - I have been looking around trying to get a clear explaination as to the most legal way of adding photos of actors, musicians, etc. I've some across a few folks who do not have a photo attached to their pages. Are screen shots from movies or other online-videos legal to upload? I have seen some in use here. Otherwise, how do you know a photo is legal to use? This may be too big a question to ask, but I can't find a simple answer, and don't want to make a mistake that will upset the Senior Wikis! ;-) Any info would be appreciated.

For your questions see the Commons:Image casebook and Commons:First steps for some basics. e.g. license selection basics. No, screenshots are not ok as long as the movie or video is in copyright and the copyright holder not agreed to free reuse. See Commons:Licensing for copyright expiration, see Commons:Project scope#required licensing terms for what free means. If you saw a screenshot maybe of a recent music video on the english Wikipedia please consider, that en.wikipedia allows for fair use, thats not allowed on Commons because Commons is really free, all files on Commons are free to use by everyone for every purpose because it is the copyright holders wish or the copyright has been expired. --Martin H. (talk) 23:32, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

If you saw such a non-free image in use on a biography page, please consider removing it, as fair use images are not generally allowed on en.wp biographies. But in short, no, don't post screenshots. Generally, photos of famous people that we have are ones which people took when they saw the celebrity out somewhere or at a signing. -mattbuck (Talk) 00:39, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, as long as they're dead, a fair use image can be used on en.wp biographies.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:57, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

December 14

Rewording the PD-USGov templates?

Many of our PD-USGov templates say something like "This image is a work of a _____ employee, taken or made during the course of an employee's official duties." Could "taken or made" be changed to "created", for purposes of simplicity? I'm proposing this here rather than on talk pages because there are so many such templates. Nyttend (talk) 01:00, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Seems a reasonable idea to me. Doesn't affect the meaning of the message as far as I can see. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 01:13, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

The exact wording is taken from the actual law, so I think it should be kept like that for consistency. ViperSnake151 (talk) 01:31, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Really...well, I can't argue with the original text. If we change the wording away from the original text, it would seem to me that we were ever so slightly weakening an argument that they're really PD. Thanks for the explanation, Viper. Nyttend (talk) 04:10, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Bundesarchive "by year" category

This was brought up twice in November - see under http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2009Nov#Bundesarchiv_Categorization_status and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2009Nov#Bundesarchiv_photo_categories. I've asked twice about this, and twice been told something would be done, and yet nothing is happening. Several users have remarked how useful it is to have the Bundesarchiv photos categorized by year. Example:

I would definitely support them being permanent categories. Before the categories were deleted I was using the Bundesarchiv year categories to find photographs of various European cars. I would find a car article that needed an image, look up the model years for car, look through those years in the Bundesarchiv categories and quite often I would find a free license image of the car I was looking for. Once the year categories were deleted, I gave up on my little project, to the detriment of both Wikipedia and the Bundesarchiv. Kaldari (talk) 17:31, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I concur; my own experience was reported as:

Anyone wanting to actually use the archive is pretty much hamstrung from finding anything useful with the useless captions (many of which don't have accurate dates in them) and the archive is useless for many purposes. Having them categorized by year, on the other hand, made it very handy for "flipping" through, for example, the war years and finding military photos specific to individual fronts. Enormously useful. You've removed the point of having access to these photos if no one can find them easily.

There is no point in adding simple "categories" to these photos since you can't possibly predict what categories people will be searching the photos for; for example one photo of a soldier in uniform could conceivably contain a necessary glimpse of a set of binoculars, an insignia type, be representative of the year 1942, represent the Eastern Front, a specific battle in Romania, the fighting in a town, be a named individual, a military unit, a type of military unit (i.e. infantry, panzergrenadier, etc.), a type of soldier (infantryman), a specific rank (private, sergeant), a type of status (officer, non-commissioned officer) - the variety of things the photo could represent are endless. You couldn't possibly categorize them all in a meaningful way that would make them easy to find. When will we see the "by date" categories returned?68.144.162.78 04:54, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Have you made any efforts in the meantime to look for alternatives? Have you checked Category:World War II by time and Category:World War II by location (I think thats your main interest), our content categories not source categories? --Martin H. (talk) 05:51, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I am still planing to create Category:Images from the German Federal Archive by year assuming nobody beets me to it. Lately I was working on Category:Images from the Deutsche Fotothek by year and Category:Images from the Deutsche Fotothek by author and I am not done with that set yet. One has to remember that since all the categorization work is done on commons by small group of volunteers, it does not happen very fast. As for Category:World War II by time category, it is a new category tree someone created without adding hardly any content and at the moment containing mostly images from Canada. --Jarekt (talk) 15:20, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I could recreate the year categories right now, but I'm afraid Multichill would revert me. I would like to know if Multichill has warmed to the idea of the year categories yet. Kaldari (talk) 16:17, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Seems to me, nobody's objecting to the existing Category:1941 in Ukraine or Category:1944 automobiles which already have photos from Bundesarchiv, or hypothetical Wehrmacht in 1943 which certainly would. The objection is to bundesarchiv by year categories, an objection I think reasonable. "By year" cats should be about subjects, not suppliers. Jim.henderson (talk) 16:34, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Why? Do you have any logic behind this other than adherance to some sort of categorization dogma? Kaldari (talk) 16:35, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Feature request: Camera meta data

I'd like to propose a software feature update - the ability to use the camera meta data (attached to the images) in searches - information such as camera type, date, lens etc. This would supercede any manual category tagging. Is this the right place to propose such a thing?Shortfatlad (talk) 13:28, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

The right place for feature requests would be bugzilla, and what you're asking for has already been reported. Doesn't seem to have made much progress though. –Tryphon ^☂ 13:42, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Resolved

Shortfatlad (talk) 13:43, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Info: There is an alternate proposal that would add some of the camera data to categories at bugzilla:21795. If it would be implemented, the information would also be available in searches. If I could write the necessary patch, it might be more likely that it is implemented. But as I can't, maybe someone else will. -- User:Docu at 18:31, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Copyvio?

Don't Category:Black Mac Style Icons violate the copyrights? --百楽兎 (talk) 12:29, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

At least some are under GPL. Which does look like a copyvio for you ? - Zil (d) 13:12, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

A lot of these logos are derivative works (of possibly free logos such as File:Ff Mac.png, File:Gimp 0.png or File:Transmission Mac.png), and their original author is not attributed, which is a violation of whichever free license was used. Others seem (if memory serves me right) to be derivatives of the Mac OS X icon set (such as File:User-trash Mac.png, File:Addressbook.png and File:Automator Mac.png) and are simply copyright violations, no matter what. –Tryphon ^☂ 13:25, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

So should we delete some of them? --百楽兎 (talk) 01:30, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Please upload an audio corrected version of File:Elephants Dream.ogg

The file File:Elephants Dream.ogg has now subtitles and is one of the first that has such. Could someone please upload a version of the film where the audio matches the video ?--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 08:46, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Viewing it, it looks to me as if it's dubbed, probably from Dutch. I don't think there's much that can be done to correct that. Powers (talk) 14:06, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

The full film with correct audio is freely available under cc-by. Unfortunately the file size limit is too low for the full movie. So we can only host a downsampled version. But I'm sure we can do better than that. The quality of the file is quite bad. --Slomox (talk) 17:36, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Uploaded. Please see File:Elephants Dream 1024.avi.w400vbr180abr48c2two-pass.ogv. It is slightly smaller than the old video but is clearer and has audio in sync. I also uploaded the start and end sequences at higher bandwidth. -84user (talk) 03:47, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Nice work! I had just grabbed the video today and had begun converting it when I noticed your upload. My output is at 50mb, though with slightly better quality. Yours is a better compromise between filesize and quality. I've added it to the wiki article. I'll upload my conversion in case any wants that. mahanga (talk) 04:28, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Robots tagging Flickr Commons images

For the cause of this, see Template talk:Flickr-no known copyright restrictions. Rigjt now there are 310 files in Category:Media without a license as of 14 December 2009, and their number is rapidly increasing. I have reverted the change, hopefully this will stop the bot. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 12:43, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I have well over 50 of mine tagged now... Yes please stop it. — raeky ^{(talk | edits)} 13:19, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Pieter reverted the template back to its previous state, so the bot should stop tagging those images once the change propagates to all image pages. If it doesn't, it might be necessary to block it, although it would prevent legitimate tagging too. –Tryphon ^☂ 13:27, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Filnik just told me that his bot would stopp tagging Flickr Commons files. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 13:30, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree this is extremely disruptive. When the Flickr Commons template was originally created it was created as a license tag (Indeed, it is still categorized as such). For Multichill to change that without also organizing some sort of effort to re-tag the affected photos is irresponsible. We now have hundreds of rare historically important public domain images in danger of being speedy deleted from Commons. Kaldari (talk) 16:21, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I've set up a straw poll on the template talk page to see if there is consensus for restoring this tag as a licensing tag. Kaldari (talk) 16:40, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

However, these files do need review. Most are evidently PD: Nationaal Archief for instance claims that either the copyrights are expired, or they owned the copyrights, so it's either PD-old or {{PD-author|Nationaal Archief}} for Dutch photos from the Nationaal Archief. The Smithsonian photos with Smithsonian photographers as authors are likewise {{PD-author|Smithsonian Institution}}. Many Australian photos fall under {{PD-Australia}}. But some are unclear:

File:'Frosche in Bauch und Ruckenlage' (Frog on Back and Front).jpg: why would a UK museum own a copyright on a German work by a German author? The author died in 1945, so the work isn't PD-old yet.
File:'Le Sphinx Armachis, Caire' (The Sphinx Armachis, Cairo).jpg: while it is likely that Henri Béchard died before 1939, can we prove it? (Earliest mention of him is "active 1869".)
File with a riculously long name: do we just assume that the State Archive of New South Wales bought the copyrights from Jack Hickson?

Lupo 16:52, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Sure, just like all CC-BY Flickr images need review too. There are undoubtedly some of those images which may be be PD in the country of the institution which uploaded them to Flickr but not the country of origin of the author, but I don't see a need to do better than our regular deletion process for those. Images contributed there have already gone through some actual copyright review by the contributing institutions; that is better than most of our images. Many times an institution will acquire rights from authors, in which case reasons #3 or #4 on the tag would apply -- in some countries, and I believe often in the U.S. before 1978, selling photographic negatives was also assumed to transfer copyright. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:59, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I too agree that any notices recently added to such images should be reverted. There is no reason to delete them; and I would also agree that making that change with no effort to properly keep/re-tag all the images is irresponsible. The fundamental issue is that there is no reason whatsoever to block semi-automated uploads from Flickr Commons when we allow semi-automated uploads from regular Flickr accounts for CC-BY etc. images (which are several orders of magnitude more likely to be copyright violations than Flickr Commons images are), which is effectively what removing this as a license tag will do. There may be a better solution, but in the end it still needs to allow images from Flickr Commons to be uploaded via the bots in my opinion. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:52, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Tagging those files as {{PD-author}} is incorrect. The institutions that have uploaded them to Commons are not the authors. If you feel like you have to tag them with something besides {{Flickr-no known copyright restrictions}}, use {{PD-because|there are no known copyright restrictions on this image according to the Smithsonian Institute}} or whoever uploaded them to Flickr. Kaldari (talk) 18:40, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

@Lupo: It is not necessary or even possible in most cases for us to independently verify the copyright status of these images. The fact that a respected organization such as the Smithsonian Institute has vetted the copyright status is good enough for Commons. If we can't trust the assurances of these organizations, how can we trust the word of any uploader? This increasing level of wiki-lawyering regarding Commons images is not helping the project whatsoever. It should also be noted that Commons hosts hundreds of images from the Library of Congress that have the exact same status: "no known copyright restrictions". We don't need to start deleting images just because of copyright paranoia. Kaldari (talk) 18:45, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Did I say these files should be deleted? AFAIK, I only said they should be reviewed. Most of these files are probably OK, but there are occasional slip-ups among them, too. BTW, we do review the LoC images, and IIRC a few were deleted because evidently not U.S. works and still copyrighted in their country of origin. We don't blindly trust any odd uploader's word either. Furthermore, as you can see with the frog image, there's no guarantee whatsoever that these "respected organizations" always get it right. (Mostly they do, but sometimes they goof—just as we do...) Even some Bundesarchive files were deleted, not only here but also at the Bundesarchiv site, after we asked questions. Frankly said, I had expected better of you than the age-old accusation of wikilawyering and copyright paranoia. Lupo 20:06, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

No one has suggested the files should not be reviewed. The issue here is that hundreds of files are now tagged for speedy deletion in 7 days. It should not be required that people review the images in order for them to not be deleted. Such action is disruptive and heavy-handed. Kaldari (talk) 20:31, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Also, it should be noted that many of the images now tagged for deletion were reviewed and given very detailed permission explanations on their description pages. See, for example File:John t scopes.jpg and File:Leonard_Nimoy_1972.jpg. Kaldari (talk) 20:38, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

There is a straw poll at Template talk:Flickr-no known copyright restrictions#Straw poll to restore this as a licensing template - not looking good. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 20:49, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Now we have bots uploading files, bots confirming flickr licenses on the same files, bots informing the first bot that the "license tag" really isn't one. Not too much of a stretch to have bots also deleting the files after 14 days. What a merry go round. -Nard the Bard 21:34, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Better them than us. :-)) Paradoctor (talk) 21:55, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Toolserver

What's going on with the gallery on Toolserver? Instead of the images, I'm seeing placeholders with the "image missing" icon.--199.245.156.254 18:41, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Some additional info about the problem - when I open the actual file for a Toolserver image thumbnail, I get an "internal server error" message.--199.245.156.254 18:53, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

What page? Jarry1250 (talk) 21:39, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

It affects the "display user uploaded images gallery" function: http://toolserver.org/%7Edaniel/WikiSense/Gallery.php?wikifam=commons.wikimedia.org&format=html&img_user_text=YOUR_USERNAME_HERE&order=-img_timestamp . However, most of the time when there are such problems, the toolserver people already know about it and are working on it... AnonMoos (talk) 05:15, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Dumping

I've got problems with Category:Steam locomotives of the United Kingdom. 1 week ago there were over 500 images in this category, reduced to ~100, today another 30 were dropped into it despite the fact that all the photos have relevent subcategories that they can go in. This 'top-level' category shouldn't even have any images in, just sub-cats. (Additionally the images added already have very similar versions already present eg compare this new image [11] with all the images present in Category:LMS Stanier Class 8F locomotive 48305 I appreciate that it's a good photo but there already are 36 and no sign of this stopping? Can anyone give advice?Shortfatlad (talk) 19:54, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Better they turn up in Category:Steam locomotives of the United Kingdom than languish in the myriad files needing categories, (four more turned up today), I think the images are being categorised into Category:Steam locomotives of the United Kingdom by an ip trying to be helpful. One advantage I can see of having the images together at the top level category (especially with the way they have been titled) is that they self sort into groups that makes creating relevant sub-categories easy once you discover the make and history of the loco.KTo288 (talk) 21:44, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

One problem was that due to their being over 200 images the cats didn't display on a single page. Is it ok to make a "UK steam locomotives for categorisation" category - and ask that images are 'dumped' there. Does this for-sorting category need special markup??Shortfatlad (talk) 21:47, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

We have Category:Unidentified rolling stock still a bit of a limbo but better I guess than Category:Media needing categories. However given that the files were being loaded by engine number perhaps we can convince Oxyman to make the transfers of to an appropriate Category:4xxxx with a holding cat of Category:Steam locomotives of the United Kingdom by engine number, something along the lines of Category:Ships by IMO number and Category:Aircraft by registration.KTo288 (talk) 22:13, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I've created Category:British steam locomotives (unidentified) - but this is for locos that are difficult to label, rather than ones that need attention. Locomotives by engine number sounds like a great idea (though not all have that info.) - I don't want to complain too much - placing them in "UK steam locomotives" is helpful, but I'm scared that it's a never ending process (and I'm getting saddle sore sat in this chair categorising them..)Shortfatlad (talk) 22:30, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I've put a little message at the top of the page, hopefully I won't be overwhelmed with new images..Shortfatlad (talk) 22:39, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I know the feeling, sometimes keeping a lid of things seems to be an uphill struggle, just remember one of the reasons we do this is for fun, if it starts to become a grind and you're not enjoying it have a break, try categorising a different area, and the second thing is you don't have to do it all by yourself.KTo288 (talk) 22:48, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

December 15

Photoworkshop Nyköping 2010

The registration for the Photoworkshop in Nyköping 2010 is now opened. --Prolineserver (talk) 00:02, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Defunct UK company

Instead of sending out Christmas cards to fellow wikipedians can I set a puzzle instead. I have scanned a set of 52 valuable historical images published in a promotional book in 1951, by the Lancashire Cotton Corporation Ltd. They were taken over in 1964 by Courtaulds. Who owns the copyright after such a take over? Now Courtaulds is defunct and was split into two companies; the successor companies are Sara Lee and Akzo Nobel. Both are not UK companies. Who owns the copyright? Under what legislation? To whom do I write, to enquire whether they will place these images under a PD or CC license so we can use them?--ClemRutter (talk) 22:41, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

You'd have to find out who bought the assets of the defunct Courtaulds company. Assuming all remaining assets were bought either by Sara Lee or by Akzo Nobel, one or both of these companies may now own the copyrights. Or maybe the rights on these images were sold to some other entity. Or maybe they were already sold to someone else in 1964 and never became a property of Courtaulds. You have quite some investigation looking at you, and it may even turn out that you cannot locate a rights holder: then you'd have an orphan work. On orphan works, check out the due diligence criteria proposed by the Digital Libraries Initiative of the European Commission. Lupo 23:03, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

If these photographs are historic, then maybe some had already been published before said date. Photos taken in the UK before 31 December 1945 failed to get their copyright reinstated by the Berne agreement. Maybe the front or back of the book has a page with extra back ground information on these ‘plates.’--P.g.champion (talk) 07:58, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Says who? Reinstated where? Please note that EU directive 93/98/EEC became effective on July 1, 1995. It mandates a general copyright term of 70 years throughout the EU, re-copyrighting works on which an earlier copyright had already expired, if such works were copyrighted in at least one EU country. Spain, as a EU member and a signatory of the Berne Convention, had a copyright of 80 years and a low threshold of originality, hence nearly all works from EU countries were copyrighted there when the directive entered in force, and thus nearly all such works were recopyrighted throughout the EU. Because this happened before January 1, 1996, such works also had their copyrights restored in the U.S. Lupo 08:18, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

You confusing ‘EU Directives’ with an individual countries sovereign laws. This puts some of the current copyright law in the UK in easy to grasp language [12] Also note, that 31 December 1945 is not the cut off for commissioned works which comes later. So if the photos after this date have just a company name credit then some of those maybe out of copyright too. For those out of copyright in the UK then ergo, they are out of copyright in the US too.--P.g.champion (talk) 08:43, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

No, I'm not. That EU directive was mandatory, and the UK implemented it in Statutory Instrument 1995 No. 3297: Duration of Copyright and Rights in Performance Regulations 1995 in 1995, entry in force on 1996-01-01. See in particular Part III, paragraph 16(d). Hence on 1996-01-01, the copyrights were restored in the UK, and thus also in the U.S. Lupo 09:30, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

That backs up what I am saying also! So why doesn’t any publisher in the UK take notice of your imaginative interpretations? Why doesn’t the UK parliament either? Why aren't publishers getting sued? By the way, those are rhetorical questions, as there is little point in carrying this further if your interpreting thing to conform with what you want to believe rather than how industry and the judiciary seeks guidance from these missives. Also, what I take notice of, is what arrives on a solicitors headed notepaper, not what I read on Wikipedia.--P.g.champion (talk) 10:26, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

You are free to close your eyes. It's your choice to ignore the sources provided. BTW, the IPO did use to acknowledge these facts here (archived link). C.f. also User talk:MichaelMaggs/Archive/2008#The EU and historic copyright terms. Lupo 10:47, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Are you kidding me? That’s already stated in the afore said Statutory Instrument 1995 No. 3297: Duration of Copyright and Rights in Performance Regulations 1995 Sec 16 (d). The IPO makes it clearer by using the conditional ‘if.’ Also, directive are just that. They are interpreted by each member state in a way that fits into their existing law structure. You seem to have got yourself mightily confused. Try using a good dictionary when you read these documents. If you learnt this by attending a course in the UK, maybe you could see a solicitor with a view to getting your course fees reimbursed. OK, you may answer my previous rhetorical questions now (if you can), as I think you proved my point that your just arguing for the sake of it. --P.g.champion (talk) 11:39, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Useless arguing with you. Check out the ECJ cases mentioned in the linked post. Besides, if you can't say it politely, then better shut up. Lupo 11:58, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Out of copyright images but held/ displayed by Museum imposing copyright

There are a number of images on Commons from the Natural History Museum, London web-site. These images are from the 19th century or earlier and so would logically be out of copyright for the artists or publishers but are held, often as a unique copy by the museum. The museum doesn't allow photography but many images are from their website -Example image and the website claims a copyright date (in the case of the example 2007). For most of these images the only known source is the museum archive as they have not been published into the public domain at any time in the past. In some countries government documents are automatically in the public domain but not in the UK. What copyright provision takes precedent in such cases? Any help much appreciated. Velela (talk) 14:50, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

It is the position of the Wikimedia Foundation that such images have no valid copyright claim, as long as the photographic reproductions are faithful to the original artworks. The UK government disagrees, and I believe there are some pending legal cases regarding this. But for the time being, you are free to upload such images if the original artwork is in the public domain, and you're willing to risk being sued by the museum under UK law. Powers (talk) 15:07, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Did you already come across Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag? Multichill (talk) 15:08, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks ; both comments are helpful and provides clarification. Velela (talk) 15:18, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

PDF files

Are PDF files a "free" format actually? Is there a list of allowed filetypes on commons?--Kozuch (talk) 18:18, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, they are. See Commons:File types and Commons:Project_scope/Allowable_file_types mahanga (talk) 18:36, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

"files stored non-locally" : what's that?

Good evening guys (and guysesses).

In Help:Gadget-ImageAnnotator#User rights I can read « On files stored non-locally... ». But I have no idea of what could be a file on Commons which would be « non-locally stored ». If you could lighten my lantern... (I'm currently translating this page to Help:Gadget-ImageAnnotator/fr, that's the reason for my question).

Thanks in advance. --Clown triste (talk) 19:52, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I could be wrong, but I believe that refers to annotated files when displayed not on the page where the annotations were created. Hover the mouse over the thumbnail in section Inline display of annotations, and you'll see annotations, but you can't edit them. If I'm wrong, the cabal will know how to deal with me. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 20:15, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I postpone my translation, because several things like this one are not clear for me. But thanks for this answers, which helped (more answers would help more, please). Really, there is also a Cabal on Commons ?--Clown triste (talk) 20:40, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I think this part refers to annotations which at some point will be available in wikipedias. Then the annotations will be visible to the users but users will not be able to edit them. From wikipedia point of view "files are stored non-locally". --Jarekt (talk) 20:52, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. Lupo 21:53, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

ImageAnnotator can be installed at other WMF projects (or, in fact, at any other MediaWiki-wiki). Any MediaWiki-wiki (that is, a wiki that uses the MediaWiki software) can be configured to include images from elsewhere, typically a central shared image repository. There's even a simple switch to switch on "InstantCommons", which makes available images stored here at the Commons at any wiki that has this feature switched on. Not necessarily a WMF wiki; I use it on my private wiki, too, and I can include Commons files directly there. Images that come from such a shared repository are what I called "files stored non-locally". Of course, here at the Commons we do not have any such images, but at other (WMF) wikis, any image from the Commons would be a "file stored non-locally". I avoided the term "files from Commons" because I know that ImageAnnotator has also been installed at some Wikia wikis, and AFAIK their central repository is not the Commons. Besides, Clown triste, feel free to ask me directly any such question you may have. I wrote that tool, and the English help page, too, so I should know what I meant :-) Lupo 21:53, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much, I think I can now try a translation. --Clown triste (talk) 22:09, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Happy translating, and don't worry about the cabal, there is no cabal. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 22:34, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Language policy of category names

The current language policy states: "Category names should generally be in English. See Commons:Categories for the exact policy." The exact policy about it wasn't elaborated yet. There exists fundamental controversy. Some users (especially Foroa) interpret the word "generally" as "always" and sorely tend to anglicization of local names and other names of individual subjects (including official proper names) and to use new-coined English-language expository labellings. Many other users prefer to use original (i. e. most used) names in some cases (in various approaches). This controversy is related to categories of indivudial subjects (streets, squares, buildings, organizations, settlements, nature reserves etc.) only, not to categories of groups of subjects. The fact is that the current guidelines don't take respect to the fundamental distinction between categories for individual subjects and categories for general themes or groups of subjects. We should formulate some choice criteria and consistently resolve on the most frequent types of names and subjets. (Generally, there are relevant arguments for both, original names and English exonyms or endonyms if they exist. Some users prefer even to create new exonyms if the original name is translatable.) We need to take into consideration that many stable names have a character of proper noun (proprium) only partly and many proper nouns are composed from common nouns (apelativa). We should investigate what name is commonly used in the original form, what name is commonly translated and what form of name is used as stable form in maps, lists and similar documents. Many original names have a character of an exact identifier and the official or stable stated form is more relevant than their eventual translantable meaning (names of some transport stations, squares, streets, organizations etc.).

The second problem are terms and concepts which don't exist in English language (categories of themes relating to non-English-speaking countries etc.) or which have special name in some non-English-speaking country. The current practice is that we have categories like Category:Marshrutka and Category:Umgebindehaus which have un-English names but those names are named (or transliterated) in singular depite of the policy that such category names should be in plural. Should we keep such category names in singular, or should we create the plural form after the grammar of source language or we should to create some mixed-language form (English plural form of un-English word)? Of course, the existence of such cases has to be mentioned in relevant policy guidelines, even though Foroa deletes perseveringly such mentions.

The present discussion started and is summarized at Commons talk:Naming categories (contributions since 12 Dezember 2009). Hinherto, only cca 5 users joined the discussion. IMHO this policy relates to large part of Commons and needs far more thoughtfulness. For the discussion, join to Commons talk:Naming categories. --ŠJů (talk) 22:12, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

There is a proposal for multilingual categories already, I think it is more of a technical issue though... file a feature request to bugzilla and I will support you with a vote. ;)--Kozuch (talk) 11:29, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it'll help. Bugzilla contains quite a lot of unimplemented ideas.

Actual development or financing of development is much more realistic way of resolve this issue.

EugeneZelenko (talk) 16:08, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

December 17

Wellcome Trust (UK) making films freely available

Editors may be interested in the following news article: Feature: A moving sight. Wellcome Trust (6 November 2009). Retrieved on 2009-12-14. Some pertinent extracts:

As part of its digitisation programme, the Wellcome Library is making over 450 films and videos on 20th-century healthcare and medicine freely available online. ...

[The Wellcome Film YouTube channel] is one way to watch the videos and films made available through Wellcome Film - the Wellcome Library's film digitisation project. Eventually, over 450 of the most frequently requested films and videos from the Library's Moving Image and Sound Collection will be made freely available online, under Creative Commons licences and in a number of digital formats. So far, around 360 films are available, and the full complement is expected to be online by spring 2010.

The Moving Image and Sound Collection includes material from a variety of sources: broadcast television programmes, departmental collections from universities, professional associations, charities and individuals.

Possibly next in line for digitisation are some of the 1500 or so audio titles held in the Moving Image and Sound Collection. Stand-out items in the collection, which contains broadcast and non-broadcast material, include 1890 recordings of Florence Nightingale's appeal on behalf of the veterans of Balaclava, and a short audio interview with Alexander Fleming broadcast by the BBC in 1945 where he speaks prophetically about the dangers of overexposure to antibiotics.

This may be an opportunity to increase the Commons' holdings of historic films relating to healthcare and medicine. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:47, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, they're not all in the public domain. This one for instance is cc-by-nc. Is there a way to search for free content only? –Tryphon ^☂ 14:56, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see. That's a pity. Looks like "freely available online" may mean "freely available for non-commercial purposes". I wonder if there is any scope for Wikimedia UK to enter into negotiations with the Wellcome Trust to release some videos under a less restrictive licence? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:23, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, most of the time, freely available means you don't have to pay to watch it (so it doesn't cost you money, but you're not free at all to do anything with it). As for obtaining a less restrictive license, I'm not even sure they would have the authority to re-license these movies; are they really the copyright holder? –Tryphon ^☂ 15:35, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I guess this depends on whether the Wellcome Trust actually owns the copyrights in the videos or has merely been licensed them. Even in the second case, the Wellcome Trust may be able to negotiate for the videos to be released under less restrictive licences. Anyhow, interested editors might still want to look out for older videos (perhaps those published in the 19th or early 20th century) that may be in the public domain anyway. I don't know whether work done by the Trust to convert the original films into a digital format suitable for the Internet suffices to give the Trust copyright over films the copyrights in which have already expired; perhaps someone would like to comment on this. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 17:33, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Digitalization might give you a new copyright in the US UK, but following Corel, in the US, making a copy of a public domain work doesn't give you a new copyright, no matter how much work you put into making it a faithful copy, and I don't think that the fact that you're attempting to make a maximally faithful copy under the constraints of resolution and bitstream rate would make any difference.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:03, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I might be able convert and upload a few videos but the license issue needs to be resolved first. Are they permitted on Commons? mahanga (talk) 15:39, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Our best bet is to select the older videos that are definitely out of copyright according to US law, but first we'll need to find out whether the process undertaken in the United Kingdom by the Wellcome Trust to convert the videos into a form suitable for Internet use is sufficient to give it copyright in UK law over the resulting digital files (see Prosfilaes' comment). Can someone shed some light on this? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 18:27, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

'Own' in upload form

The {{Own}} improves the localization, standardization and language appearance of Commons metadata. No question. If you upload a file with the default settings, go to Upload a file and select the 'It is entirely my own work' upload form there is the {{Own}} already prepared. From watching the new uploads it appears that the {{Own}} in the upload form is an unreasonable technical demand for some users. Very often I find {{http://externallink.com}} in the source field. Also there is a growing number of new (or one time) contributors placing everything in curly braces because they think they must use curley braces on Commons. I think the use of the template in the standard upload form is bad and we must improve it. We possibly can change this either back to the antique variant with 'Own work' (or something more accentuated using 'entirely') written in the field in the language of the selected uploadform (see the language bar in Commons:Upload) or we can develope something new. The script can translate the text into {{Own}} during upload, but I suggest not to use visible verbatim template text in the standard upload form. Any opinions? --Martin H. (talk) 21:44, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree; I would find that confusing as a new user. Powers (talk) 21:55, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, I said all along—even before it was implemented—that placing "{{own}}" with the curly braces in the upload form would be confusing to new users. No surprise to me. If the upload script is to recognize certain inputs as meaning "my own work" and shall replace that with "{{own}}" internally before submitting the upload, we face some problems, though:

If there's any warning, and the MediaWiki software redirects again to a (simple) upload form, the user will see "{{own}}" in that simple form instead of whatever he or she had entered. That may be even more confusing to a new user. OTOH, s/he will see the "{{Information" template then anyway (because that form is a simple form), which already doesn't look like what s/he's seen and entered initially...
After the upload, the user is shown the image description page, where s/he'll see whatever {{Own}} expands to, which is unlikely to be what s/he entered. More potential for confusion...
Which inputs shall be recognized as meaning "own"? You can express that concept in oh-so-many ways in English alone, let alone in other languages. Just recognizing "~~~" and "~~~~" is no good either, because new users are unlikely to know about that.
One possible solution to this conundrum would be to use the text to which {{Own}} itself expands to show to the user in the form, and replace that by "{{own}}" again before submitting the upload. If the user changes that text, however, no replacement will be made. It's a bit of an ugly hack.

Finally, if you find "{{http://externallink.com}}" in the source field where you would have expected to see "{{own}}", isn't that an indication that the file is not the uploader's own work? Lupo 22:51, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Of course, bad example. Look for Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:My_own, Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Own_photo, Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Photo there is a growing number of uploads using Template:Own work - a remaining from older times? Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Own work is a teribble and growing mess of a very old not longer used problem tag and of recent upload using this stupid template resulting in files like File:FOSS4G 2009 pgis bof.jpg. Regretably Special:WantedTemplates is useless on Commons because of the POTD templates. You will find a lot of {{Xyz}} templates too in the author fileds. Its a mess. --Martin H. (talk) 23:40, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

OK. Here's a suggestion: on the "ownwork" upload forms, we don't show an author field at all. We show instead a checkbox with the label either from {{Own}} or with some new text (with the semantics "I created this work"). The box is checked initially. A second checkbox, initially unchecked, with a label "this work has additional authors", is also shown. If the first box is unchecked or the second box is checked, an empty author field is displayed. If upon submit the first box is checked, we insert "{{own}}" in the resulting {{Information}} before sending the submit to the server. In that way we could avoid ever showing "{{own}}" with squiggly braces in the form, and still allow people to specify additional authors (for instance, for own photos of statues—although I have yet to see the new user who cares about telling us the sculptor of a sculpture s/he photographed...) Of course all that would apply only to the elaborate form. On the simple form with only one description field, we cannot really do much, but there people do see the curly braces from the "{{Information" template anyway, and new users should normally arrive at the elaborate form. Opinions? Lupo 07:54, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I think that would work. I was not sure why we needed source and author fields in the upload form accessed after clicking "It is entirely my own work" but I guess ability of providing additional authors is important. May be another possibility would be to have "It is entirely my own work" and "The work is a collaboration between me and other authors" options. The first would show simple form with filled in and unchangeable source and author (or maybe prefill author to the username but allow changing it to real name) and the second one would show both source and author without prefilling it.--Jarekt (talk) 19:15, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Oops, you're right; I was confused. It's the source field where {{Own}} goes. Yes, that makes it even simpler. Just one checkbox instead of the source field; checked initially; if unchecked, it is replaced by an empty source input field. The author field would remain unchanged. Lupo 07:58, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. --Jarekt (talk) 13:57, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Are declared alternative accounts permitted?

As an en:wp admin, I operate an alternate account (en:User:Nyttend backup) for use on public computers, so that I'll be at less risk of having the password stolen to my admin account. Since I have unified login for my main account, the password is necessarily the same for my account here; therefore, I can't upload pictures or do anything else here at Commons without running the risk of having the password stolen. Would I be permitted to register "Nyttend backup" for the sake of keeping my main account's password safe? If I am, I'll post a statement on the userpage similar to the one I already have at the en:wp page — "this is an alternate account of Nyttend" — to ensure that there can't be accusations that I'm trying to abuse multiple accounts. I've looked for a policy statement on this subject, but Commons:Sockpuppetry, Commons:Sockpuppets, and Commons:Alternative accounts are all redlinks. Nyttend (talk) 00:23, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Having a second account is not a problem, as long as you don't abuse it (use it to vote twice or to promote your own images etc). Sv1xv (talk) 05:35, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Using account named that clearly indicate that 2 accounts belong to the same user, as you do, is also very helpful. May be mention it as well at the user pages. --Jarekt (talk) 13:52, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Literature by genre

hello,

I've a problem with categories tree. For fantasy, horror and science-fiction, we have :

Category:Literature, Category:Fiction, Category:Fiction by genre, Category:Fantasy fiction, Category:Fantasy writers
Category:Literature, Category:Fiction, Category:Fiction by genre, Category:Horror, Category:Horror writers
Category:Literature, Category:Fiction, Category:Fiction by genre, Category:Science fiction, Category:Science fiction writers

But, for romance, we have :

Category:Literature, Category:Novels, Category:Romance... and that's all.

Wouldn't it be better if we standardized everything ? Also, in the category Fiction by genre, we have a red link for Categories by genre, but I don't know what to put in place. Thank you for your help. Okki (talk) 07:18, 18 December 2009 (UTC) ps: sorry for my really poor english

On Commons categorisation tends to follow the interests and concerns of its users (I know it does with me) hence things we find important have finer detail in their categoristion, it would fit the profile of an average netizen to be more of a fan of horror and science fiction than of romantic fiction hence the finer detail. The other thing is that because we tend to have more files in those area which we are interested in hence the need for extra sub-categories for diffusion. If there are enough files to justify the extra sub-categories I think the advice would be by all means create them, this is a collabrative wiki after all.KTo288 (talk) 10:01, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Humphrey B. Bear costume, to upload or not?

I originally posted this in Commons talk:Licensing‎ but feel it would get a more widespread view here. I understand that there is no consensus on whether photographs of costumes can be uploaded but (Commons:Image casebook#Costumes and cosplay I have read this however I'm after people's views) after opinions if I should or should not upload a photograph of w:Humphrey B. Bear. Bidgee (talk) 14:27, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

The -SupersededSVG- Topic (again?)

Hi!

Sometimes I don't quite understand the policy around a picture replacement by an svg. I have done quite a bit of vectorising before and I think I know if a replaced svg is better than the original. Take this one for example:

It is actually quite obvious, that the svg version was not made from the the original jpeg. At the time I did them (there a lots more of them), I had just removed the category of the jpeg files so they were lying around without category. Recently I thought that this would clog up the "please categorise" categorys so I tried deleting them without success. So I stuffed them in a category called -Useless Stuff-. Some very kind person now has removed that category and placed them all into the old category again. Even if I was wrong to place them in a category called -Useless Stuff-. I think it would have been nice of that person to ask me before undoing all that work I did,.......

There are other examples. This svg File: has three files () pointing to it as -SupersededSVG- and none of them can be deleted because: We don't delete superseded images.

I know that hard disk space isn't a problem but why keep images which have evidently no use at all and leave them hanging round in the original category totally messing it up? (There are lots more examples,...)

Thanks for replies and ideas. --Amada44 (talk) 08:09, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

In your sample above, you used [[File:Dgrd_asb.noe.jpg|200px]]. This doesn't display correctly as the image is 50 × 49 pixels. Try [[File:Dgrd_asb.noe.jpg|50px]] -- User:Docu at 08:19, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I know, I zoomed the image to make my point. --Amada44 (talk) 08:30, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

We don't speedy delete superseded images, but feel free to nominate them for deletion. If they're unused and there is no license issue (like GFDL with derivative works, where the attribution path could get broken) they probably will be deleted. –Tryphon ^☂ 08:41, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

yea, I tried that without success. Check out this File:Dgrd bfarzt.noe.jpg and this File:Dgrd_asb.noe.jpg image. --Amada44 (talk) 08:56, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

No, you marked them as duplicates (which they're not); I meant a regular deletion request, which allows for discussion. –Tryphon ^☂ 09:08, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

okay, I'll give that a try,... --Amada44 (talk) 09:42, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

There was some discussion on these images here before. It's now at /Archive/2009Nov. -- User:Docu at 10:03, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I see. How about -asking- the person who created it about it and inviting that person to the discussion?? It's actually not true that the jpeg files are still in use (except for OsamaK's userpage, and no! they where not the reference files for creating the svg's --Amada44 (talk) 10:17, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

If the images *were* used, then keeping them is always at least helpful to see the historical versions of pages. Images generally do not become "useless" once they are superseded -- rather we usually prefer to keep all (validly-licensed) versions, and let other users decide what is best for them. Obviously, most of the time that would be the SVGs but you can never tell for sure. At most, they should be moved into a sub-category, not have their categorization deleted -- that is always a mistake. If you would like to see a page with just the SVGs, then perhaps it would be better to make a gallery page with them. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:02, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Bear in mind that SVGs are not always superior to raster files in all contexts. With respect to the circles, File:Red 1.gif has a transparent background while File:Small red circle.png has a solid white background, transparency is generally but not always preferred. Also remember that Mediawiki renders SVGs as PNGs for actual display, and may produce an inferior image (both in terms of quality and filesize) than a PNG at a specific resolution, such as 150 or 200 px across. Basically the issues are complex and so deletion needs to be through a normal deletion request. That said if there are no issues, then there is no reason why the file will not be deleted.--Nilfanion (talk) 11:27, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

If the problem is clogging up of category:XYZ, why don't you create category:XYZ - superseded, and put your unwanteds there? Paradoctor (talk) 12:58, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Don't think anyone mentioned the Superseded images policy. Don't move images to stupid categories, just create galleries if you want to show a subset. Multichill (talk) 17:19, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Stupid categories. yea, thaks for that compliment and thanks for not asking me. It's not GFDL, its not inferior,... so,.... What is the problem with this policy? --Amada44 (talk) 17:26, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

While I don't care much for Multichill's tone, he made a good point. If you need a particular subset of a category, just create a category category:High quality images from category XYZ and add the "useful" files there. That seems a workable and fully backwards-compatible solution. Paradoctor (talk) 18:54, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I would not recommend special high-quality categories. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 20:24, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity: What's the problem with that? Paradoctor (talk) 21:33, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

It would be subjective. The quality threshold would depend very much on the range of images available. I agree with Multichill - better to create a gallery. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 21:59, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

On the other hand, a subcategory of SVG images is objective.

Amada44, I don't see why you really want to delete these. They are marked as superseded, so anyone who is looking for an image to use will almost certainly find themselves directed to the better one. But we keep the history intact, including the ability to look at old versions of Wikipedia articles. What exactly is the downside? - Jmabel ! talk 01:49, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Because I don't really see the point of keeping them. The only acceptable point to me is, that one can look at old versions of wikipedia pages. In this case, I really, really doubt that anyone will,.. but it is a valid argument. The downside of keeping such images is, that they will be used again because some people won't get it. That was my original thought to move them into a separate category. I just had an idea: could one create a category which basically says, don't use these images they are only kept for archive purposes?? --Amada44 (talk) 08:25, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

o.k. I got it. They will never be deletet ;-) I will create a superseded category. Thanxs everybody --Amada44 (talk) 20:01, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I have just read the diskussion on the Superseded images policy and there it says:

This basically means that "superseded" only applies as a reason for deletion if they have become completely useless - basically only if they are of very bad quality and the "better" version was not derived from it.

As one can see on the images above, the are of bad quality and as one can also see, they are not derived from it,... well, I have given up anyhow. --Amada44 (talk) 20:49, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

The rest of us did a long time ago. The problem is some people have very bad judgement when it comes to deleting superseded files (something no written policy can fix). A few (ok, a lot of) bad deletions later, backlash and policy, and here we are at our current all-or-nothing status. Quality control went out the window and you feel like you're wasting your time arguing to bring a little back. It's impossible to explain in words the effect all this redundant poor-quality junk has on Commons to those too busy doing admin/meta/bot/template stuff (myself previously included) to see the site in the same way a visitor or a content-oriented editor would. They have to witness the degradation themselves. Honestly, I think we've gotten to the point where we will some new technology to fix this.. some way to hide certain files. Something like "semi-deletion" which would work just like deletion but won't hide stuff from non-admins. Rocket000 (talk) 02:50, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

As I understood it, that is exactly what we have now. No image is ever truly deleted, just hidden. Sandpiper (talk) 11:01, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I said not hidden. Non-admins would be able to view the "deleted" material. Rocket000 (talk) 17:59, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

You mean something like in Windows' "hidden files"? With default settings you do not see them, but you can make them display for you in your accounts display settings. -- Quork QTar (talk) 00:54, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it would be best to create superseded subcats. That way you can keep the images and at the same time keep the main cat from clogging up. --Cwbm (commons) (talk) 13:42, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

If the svg file is not a derivative of the superseded unused jpg, would it not be possible to delete the jpg and replace it with a redirect to the svg? That way, old versions of articles would still work. Pruneau^talk 14:00, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Personally I am pro deletion of superseded files (of course only if the superseding file is clearly superior). Users will still use superseded files, even when they are clearly marked as superseded. Just marking doesn't work well: I once requested deletion of a file argueing that the file was factually inaccurate (inaccurate in the sense of plain wrong). It was rejected with the argument that the inaccuracy should instead be noted in the description. Well, despite being marked as inaccurate, the file still is newly put in articles from time to time. Most people just look at the image and if it shows what they want to have, they will use it without reading the description.

Or let's think about a user who browses a category in search for a specific file. The superseded file maybe comes first in alphabet and the superseding file is only visible after clicking "next 200". There's a good chance the user will find the superseded info in the description for the first image, but it's also not unlikely that the user will just stick to the file found first.

About the red dots: I don't think File:Polish tv rating system18.png is a case of superseding. The images are visually the same: red dots. But "Polish tv rating system18.png" has a specific meaning. They should be separate files. (Of course "Polish tv rating system18.png" can still be superseded by e.g. "Polish tv rating system18.svg" as long as it is kept apart from the plain red dot.) --Slomox (talk) 15:08, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

What I think is that they shouldn't be kept but also not deleted. It should be like this that superseded material doesn't show up in searches or categories by default, but that users can set in the preferences something like "Show superseded material". A bit like the Abuse Filter where you can see the deleted filters, but only when you want to see them. But probably this isn't easily doable. --The Evil IP address (talk) 09:09, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that people want an easy rule to go by rather than having to use their brains — either always delete superseded image or never delete them. People can't seem to comprehend the idea of judging things on their merits. This is why the image deletion process on Commons is completely broken. Kaldari (talk) 03:18, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Hm??

Around the rings. Any opinion? Rastrojo _(D•ES) 22:52, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The page seems to be out of scope. The images are not categorized well. All images I looked at are "own work" and seem to be taken with the same camera, but they are either copyvios or the user has some extraordinary access to Olympic officials. --Jarekt (talk) 23:19, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Ask here for confirmation and an official ORTS release of the images, and remove the adspeak on the page. Lupo 23:26, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

File:Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.jpg is at [13], in this gallery. It appears that ATR does have access to Olympic officials, but there's no proof that User:Atr1992 is acting with permission from ATR or is in fact in any way related to/connected with them. Lupo 23:36, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

A pointer to the version history and User talk:ATR1992. I agree with Lupo. --Martin H. (talk) 00:07, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I've sent their "Publications & New Media Director" an e-mail asking for a confirmation of the CC-BY-3.0 release of these images. Lupo 08:11, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
- Is it an American company where the "work for hire" doctrine applies or is it pretty much anywhere else in the world where the photographer owns the rights to his photos? If it's a non American company their Publications Director may not have the authority to say the photographer can't release images under a free license. -Nard the Bard 11:16, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
  - If the uploader wants to claim that ATR's terms of use were incorrect, he or she shall take it up with ATR and make them take down that statement. Lupo 11:55, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Confirmation received; the account User:Atr1992 is operated by the copyright owner, Around the Rings. OTRS ticket 2009121710065851. They know what they're doing. A big "thank you" to "Around the Rings" for releasing these images under a free license! Now going to confirm this for the other account ATR1992 (talk · contribs), too. Lupo 07:10, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Account User:ATR1992 is now also confirmed. Lupo 00:23, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

December 16

Statistics on licences used

Hi there, are there some stats on what licences are used on all files here? Might be interesging to know...--Kozuch (talk) 11:30, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Special:MostLinkedCategories , and Special:MostLinkedTemplates (20th onwards) give a clue, probably quite accurate figures.Shortfatlad (talk) 14:44, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Within the first hundred categories of Special:MostLinkedCategories I see Category:Images from the German Federal Archive from 1950s. This should be convincing proof that the year categories for the Bundesarchiv images are in fact, incredibly useful and need to be restored. Kaldari (talk) 00:49, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

5.5 Million pics on wikimedia

... and I have found out who uploaded them. Here a small selection I collected.

no, they are not exact dupilcates,... but pretty close to it.

I guess the best thing to do would be to ask Fale to make a better selection when uploading? --Amada44 (talk) 15:52, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Having such a range of almost-identical images isn't helpful — any one of them is as equally useful, informational, and educational as the entire group is, so the collection as a whole is out of scope. Therefore, I'd advise a deletion request — pick the one that you think best and nominate the rest for deletion. Nyttend (talk) 00:26, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Or just leave it up to the users to decide which one they want to use. What do you want to accomplish by deleting these images? Save disk space? Multichill (talk) 10:53, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

How about make it somewhat easier to navigate without having reams of near-duplicates clogging up the categories? There is absolutely no need for this many virtually identical photographs. Ease of use for the end user is the issue here, in my opinion. Thus, I agree with Nyttend: determine the best image (or have Fale do so), then get rid of the rest. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:08, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I have just seen, that some of his images hve been mass deleted before: [14] I will ask him what he thinks. --Amada44 (talk) 17:31, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

December 18

Video available under cc-by-sa-3.0/no

There was a rather remarkable TV-program on the Norwegian public broadcaster in prime time October 27. It was in celebration of the completion of the rail-road between Oslo and Bergen 100 years ago. Someone had the insane idea to make a program that showed a complete journey from Bergen to Oslo, minute by minute. The third airing will be during Christmas at exactly the same time the train leaves Bergen. The first airing reached a remarkable number of viewers, far more than the channel (nrk2) usually has.

They filmed it in HD quality using 4 cameras on October 9. One of these fixed mounted through the front window of the train. It is this video that has now been released for download under cc-by-sa-3.0/no license. All 7 hours and 16 minutes of the film. It even includes a 10 minutes wait in the tunnel under Oslo due to a signalling error.

This is an opportunity for someone with knowledge of video. The link to the downloadsite is here. Category:Bergensbanen does not have any video yet. There is a 10 minute teaser on Youtube. Haros (talk) 14:08, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Website link in English. The entire HD video is 22gb... I might be able to do the 10 min YouTube video. For video-related posts, you may have better luck posting at Commons:Video. mahanga (talk) 14:51, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Uploaded at File:Bergensbanen 1280x720.ogv (I had to convert down from ~150mb down to under the maximum upload size of 100mb. A low quality version is here: File:Bergensbanen 320x180.ogv mahanga (talk) 01:50, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

CAD files

Hey there, what about upload of CAD data? I am not an expert in this field, but I can imagine there would be some free file formats that could do this work...--Kozuch (talk) 17:25, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

December 20

Pov Pushing on Korean history

A Korean user user:Historiographer is trying to pov push through commons (modification of historical maps of the region) about the history of the Korean empire. After a warning and a demonstration of his work of pov pushing he continues to explain that others try to pov push against the Koreans, and so he is right. He doesn't provide any sources, and as you can see in his talk page I've provided with some evidence that he is pov pushing. You can add as evidence : w:Mongol invasions of Korea w:Mongol Empire and w:Yuan Dynasty which provides extensive information, and File:Mongol dominions1.jpg... And due to such attitude, commons was hosting 3 "identical" maps with 2 antagonist information File:Mongol Empire map 2.gif (that was the one created to pov push based on File:Mongol Empire map.gif), and File:Mongol Empire map 3.gif. On the File:Mongol Empire History.jpg, it was even more ridiculous because he only changed the big map and let the 2 small one entering in contradiction with the big map ... This had been identified by an English user on French Wikipedia and that was causing some doubt on which one was the right one... We should be taking care of such attitude that has an impact on lots of Wikipedia, and wp lost in credibility by using those maps... Loreleil (talk) 21:57, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Generally we consider POV issues to be an issue of which images your local Wikipedia chooses to use. If you believe these images uploaded by Historiographer have an incorrect description you can update the description; if you believe they have no educational value, you can nominate them for deletion. If you think they are titled misleadingly, consider using the {{Rename}} tag - you may consider, for example, a rename to a title that reflects that the point of view of the map's designer. Otherwise, Commons is not particularly concerned. Dcoetzee (talk) 23:21, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

It does concern commons, because by changing them in commons it implies that all the articles that were using in wikipedia those image before those changed are biaised. For example : [15] was using the image way before it was changed on april 2009, when the pov was first introduced in File:Mongol Empire History.jpg(and just the same for File:Mongolia 1500 AD.jpg). This does implicate that the article was forced to show through a modification not controlled in the articles a point of view that was contrary of the reason why the image was in the article (and in contradiction of what the article says). It's a new way of pov-pushing using commons as base for having to do just a few changes to modify hundreds of articles in various language... Loreleil (talk) 23:54, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Feel free to revert back to the original; in cases like these, we should protect them from having new images uploaded and force him to upload to his own files. --Prosfilaes (talk) 03:12, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps it's high time to do something... Loreleil (talk) 05:50, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

"Goryeo" lost the war, but Goryeo was not merged to Mongolian Empire, but influenced by Mongol politically. Maybe we should have more discussion about the maps. Best regards. Kwj2772 (msg) 04:15, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

As explained by your own history books "Goryeo" was vasal of the Khan, they had their autonomy, but not independency... Loreleil (talk) 16:02, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Additional versions of the same map should be uploaded under different names, not the same one. It's up to the local Wikipedias to decide which one to use. -- User:Docu at 07:32, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

December 19

categorisation of 600+ images

Hi!

could someone with a bot move about 600 images (they all have the name: WLA brooklynmuseum *****.jgp) from uncategorised to the category: Category:Brooklyn Museum (or any better category?) Thank you! --Amada44 (talk) 09:29, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

They are already in Category:Wikipedia Loves Art at the Brooklyn Museum so any better category would be different for each image. -- User:Docu at 09:39, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, okay. But they are all in the category uncategoriezed media. --Amada44 (talk) 10:26, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

You got to love these template hacks (Category:Wikipedia Loves Art at the Brooklyn Museum is a hidden category added by {{WLA}}). Multichill (talk) 11:10, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I think this template is really bad and should be substituted on each page, with only the information of the image displayed.--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 11:26, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Flight Global PDF archive permission

I've raised a query here about permission to used images grabbed from the Flight Global pdf archive, so any views about this would be welcome on that thread. Thanks. --TraceyR (talk) 12:48, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Maluku Islands vs Maluku (province)

Category:Maluku Islands or Category:Maluku (province), why do we have both ? What's the difference ?--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 13:52, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

The Maluku Province does not cover all of the Maluku Islands. --Slomox (talk) 14:30, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Book covers

Don't you think those covers are copyrighted?

--TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 14:11, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

If that's modern artwork, then yes. -Nard the Bard 14:45, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
- Modern author, so I would assume modern artwork. I think the uploader took photographs of the books, which were later cropped. Should be speedy deletes. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:44, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Warning and no SVG upload

When trying to upload a perfectly harmless SVG file, I get the Upload Warning page, saying This file contains HTML or script code that may be erroneously interpreted by a web browser. While strictly speaking, this is true with any SVG, I don't think it's intended here. What to do except converting? --Ayacop (talk) 16:16, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

That usually happens if there is any embedded Javascript or non-SVG tags (which look like HTML) embedded inside, often in a comment. Sometimes it is a false positive though. Usually it is possible to upload by removing the scripts, comments, or making a tweak. The false positives, if that is what this is, are pretty aggravating, no question. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:47, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the hint. There was a line

  contentScriptType="text/ecmascript"

in the header, that was all. Hope it triggers when there really is a script. --Ayacop (talk) 18:10, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

December 21

User's "home arvhives"

Is there a policy about old (public domain) photos from user's "home archives" that are not published in other sources? A.J. (talk) 10:47, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

They're unpublished works, and subject to the copyright laws thereof. Assuming, of course, we're really talking about works that are at least 50 years old, depending on the country.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:39, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Curious category

Can somebody help with this category. I think it is a personal cat by User:Gharaibeh. If this is really the case, this category must be removed. Thanks in advance for helping! --High Contrast (talk) 11:44, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

There is a WP article with the same name that includes some of the images. -- User:Docu at 11:51, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

The category is probably fine. The user is, by my understanding, just using his last name as his username, since family members of that tribe almost all have that surname. In fact, I'm sure that category can be populated with most of the images from that article, though the watercolour must go. That en.wiki article was, ahem, fun to clean up o.O — Huntster (t @ c) 12:50, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Template for Picasa Web Albums?

Is there an existing template scheme for marking images taken from Picasa Web Albums? I couldn't find anything and I'll create something if there isn't. They support Creative Commons licenses in pretty much the same way as Flickr, except it's a single setting for all of a user's photos. The canonical URL appears to be the one accessed from the album (e.g. http://picasaweb.google.com/dotarrowman/TESTAlbum#5220543957694271762). Dcoetzee (talk) 17:17, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

We don't, please create one and if you have some time Commons:Picasa files like Commons:Flickr files...--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 17:31, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

We have a general {{LicenseReview}} which can be used also for Picasa images. Lupo 17:38, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

National Science Foundation grantee: copyvio?

I noticed that we have a number of photos that the botanist Pieter Pelser took when he was supported by a U. S. National Science Foundation grant. They have the license

This image is a work of a National Science Foundation employee, taken or made as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.

I believe this is incorrect. At the time he took these pictures, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Miami University (Ohio), according to his Web page. When I worked for a university and was supported by NSF and DOE grants, I was an employee of the university, not the federal government. I signed contracts with the university, got my paychecks from it, and was subject to its rules. I imagine the same is true still. We have no reason to think he was an employee of the NSF; they're the people in Washington who hand out the money. So I'm afraid all these pictures—including those from him that aren't in the category I linked to above—are copyvios. If so, there may be other copyvios uploaded from U. S. Government grantees rather than employees. —JerryFriedman (talk) 05:40, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I concur. I have had grants from the National Science Foundation in the past, and still work with individuals who have grants. Almost without exception, grants are to institutions rather than to individuals. Grant recipients are ordinarily employed by the institution (or in the case of public universities, sometimes a non-profit auxiliary) and never by the Federal Government.

The National Science Foundation has specific rules about intellectual property created by grant-funded activities. I am not familiar with the current rules, but they used to be that the US Government had a license to use the IP at no cost (the copyright is not otherwise affected). Many universities have intellectual property guidelines that cover faculty and post-docs, with the two commonest cases being that the intellectual property belongs to the individual or to the university.

So unless Dr. Pelser or his institution (whichever owns copyright) is willing to license the photos appropriately, they are copyvios.--Curtis Clark (talk) 19:45, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I've e-mailed him asking who owns the copyright and asking him to release the pictures by OTRS if he owns it. —JerryFriedman (talk) 21:25, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Indonesian disaster

Please stop merging the subcategories of Category:Images from KIT, Voorstelling with the existing supercatgories about modern Indonesia! I disagree with User:Multichill in his/her talk archive: For people who want to use e.g. Category:Bali right now, the comparatively few recent pictures turn into a needle in a haystack of old stuff from Netherlands East India. As User:Keith D said in the discussion, the KIT categories should remain subcategories, maybe renamed to "history of <province>", "old pictures of <cultural item>" or "<city> – images from KIT".

Reaally nice to have would be intersection categories like "historical headgear of Bali" instead of the pictures categorised in "(old pictures of) Bali" and "(historical) headgear of Indonesia".

I think the mergers should be reverted, if not by the bot logs, the files are readily identifiable by the beginning of their file name: "COLLECTIE_TROPENMUSEUM_...". -- Hämbörger (talk) 09:30, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Many of the pictures are red-categorised as "sieraad", which often consists of strings of beads, teeth etc. and, therefore, doesn't quite fit in the Category:Jewellery – on the other hand, many – in German we say Schmuckstücke – of that kind already are categorised in subcategories of "Jewellery", e.g. Category:Necklaces, Category:Bracelets. There is also a Category:Images from KIT, Voorstelling Object - hoofdsieraden ("head ornaments"), which I preliminarily put in Category:Headgear of Indonesia. -- Hämbörger (talk) 10:02, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Military of Indonesia is now packed with images of the KNIL which given that we have an existing appropriate category and that it was considered an army of occupation is both lazy and insensitive.KTo288 (talk) 10:19, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Next time you decide you want to start bashing me, you might want to get your facts straight.

You're implying I merged the contents of temporary geography categories to categories higher up in the tree. That's absolute nonsense. I just moved a couple of temp categories to topic categories where the topic category already existed. For most of the temp categories at User:Multichill/KIT/geografie a topic category still has to be created (or found). If you think some categories get too crowded, move some images to subcategories. That's how categorization works.

You're refering to a topic about the East Riding of Yorkshire, so I fail to see the connection with Indonesia.

Multichill (talk) 12:00, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm guessing the reference was to User talk:Multichill/Archives/2009/December#Thinking about category. As for a temporary solution to this: Could the Tropenmuseum imagery have a sort key applied? If you give them a sortkey of "z" (or something later still in unicode), then they won't be "polluting" the categories as existing content will be listed first. Of course, once subcats are established that problem goes away, but my suggestion would work as a stopgap.--Nilfanion (talk) 12:14, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I added the sortkey (~). Will take a while for it to propagate.

Turns out that creating the temporary categories screws up my ability to filter out overcategorization with a bot. Currently moving temp categories to topic categories and doing intersections of categories to get the number of images per category to an acceptable level. Multichill (talk) 15:27, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes it is hard to know how many images will end up where and therefore if subcategories are relevant. As I understand it it is only temporary that categories will be "messy". Once relevant subcategories are created images could be pushed down. --MGA73 (talk) 15:39, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I hope you didn'd really think I wanted to "bash" you. I was shocked (although no very surprised) by the state of Category:Indonesia when I saw it 2 days ago, thus my rather polemical headline. The only discussion of that subject that I found was on two user pages, so I wanted to make it more public – User:KTo288's comment shows that the matter deserves some broader discussion (and it's good to learn about your agenda pages right here). And I admit my phrasing "merging ... with supercategories" doesn't express what I meant: merging with existing categories about modern Indonesia instead of making them subcategories of them.

I think in some cases (Indonesia is one of them, Netherlands East India isn't Indonesia) it is really necessary and not only a temporary feature to create a historical subcategory, in other cases, as small islands and mountains, contemporary and hisrtorical pictures can be merged without hesitation.

And, after all, I haven't got the point of the technical problems yet: How do you define "overcategorization"? Can your bot really identify redundant categories without being told which are redundant? And how does the creation of a subcategory "old..." affect that ability? -- Hämbörger (talk) 20:41, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Over-categorization is explained at Commons:Categories#Over-categorization. A lot of images in Category:Indonesia are over-categorized at the moment, that's why that category is so full of images (currently 2750 images). I'll have my bot run over it. We'll see tomorrow how much is left. Multichill (talk) 23:01, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, 432 of the 2750 left. Seriously reduced User:Multichill/KIT/geografie this weekend. Now the only big chunks left are at User:Multichill/KIT/categories. Multichill (talk) 19:49, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Black rectangle rubbish in displayed SVG

I've just uploaded File:Boolean functions like 1110 1000.svg, and in the displayed PNG graphics like ...500px-Boolean_functions_like_1110_1000.svg.png appear black rectangles, which are not part of the original SVG file ...Boolean_functions_like_1110_1000.svg.

I've already made a second upload. Does anyone know what to do? Boolean Algebra (talk) 21:53, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Haven't looked at the SVG file, but this symptom is usually due to Inkscape "flow text" nonsense... AnonMoos (talk) 23:22, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

+1. You have help on fr:Wikipédia:Atelier_graphique/FAQ SVG#Un carré noir est visible sur l'image (in french, but solutions are universal ;-). Jean-Fred (talk) 23:57, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Well ... this seems to be the right place to ask. Boolean Algebra (talk) 00:55, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Next step in translations

At Commons talk:Template i18n#Next step in translations I put a proposal about which way we should go with the translation effort here at Commons. Feedback is appreciated. Multichill (talk) 17:52, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Drive towards a Countries categorization scheme

We currently only have Commons:Category scheme countries and subdivisions which uses Nicaragua as an example, don't know why... Could we all collaborate on creating a consistent scheme for a hierarchy of a country ? I see the United States as a better example since it has more categories, or Germany, which has lots because of the great donations...--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 15:56, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea of creating recomended scheme for a hierarchy of a country. Diaa abdelmoneim would you like to have a initial pass at it? --Jarekt (talk) 18:37, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Well I'm trying User:Diaa abdelmoneim/Country scheme and am already stuck at Architecture... should it contain Education or how would Education stand alone? What about culture, do we need that category or is it a main category and under it Cinema, Architecture and so on... Help..--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 19:26, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

May be the easiest way to start it is to start small by creating a minimal schema first, with categories most countries are meeting already. You can look at CatScan of category:Countries_by_continent 4 levels deep to see what category structure is the most common. We can start with identyfying 20-30 countries whith the highest number of images and listing all the categories they have in common. That can be "by country" schema 1.0, which we impose on all the other countries. Than we can add other categories and expand the schema. Another approach is to look at English Wikipedia and see what schema they use. --Jarekt (talk) 20:31, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Whoever takes this on might want to consider the tricky case of the comarcas of Spain. - Jmabel ! talk 21:14, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

PD-Art

Should I use {{PD-Art}} for photos of frescos? Ex. the fresco File:Kostel Nejsvětější Trojice (Fulnek) – frs-012.jpg is painted on a cupola, thus it isn't 2D, nevertheless it is a painting. The photograph would give only the permission {{Cc-by-sa-3.0-cz}}. --Petrus Adamus (talk) 15:36, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you use {{Cc-by-sa-3.0-cz}} then, which is a perfectly acceptable license. You'd just have to send the permission to OTRS (also if you could clarify why the source and author are not the same person, it would help attributing it correctly). –Tryphon ^☂ 15:48, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Of course I can use {{Cc-by-sa-3.0-cz}}, but if {{PD-Art}} is applicable, I would prefere it, it's a freer license. --Petrus Adamus (talk) 16:05, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

But {{PD-Art}} might not be applicable in all countries, so if an alternative free license is offered by the photographer, I don't really see the point of not using it. As a matter of fact, even if {{PD-Art}} was deemed applicable in this case, I would still mention the cc-by-sa license (as a courtesy to the photographer, and for those countries where PD-Art is not valid). –Tryphon ^☂ 16:40, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Use them both :) -- Avi (talk) 16:46, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

That's what I meant, if {{PD-Art}} applies (which I'm not sure). –Tryphon ^☂ 16:56, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Per immediately below, I believe it does. -- Avi (talk) 18:55, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, paintings on a flat canvas, despite having a small relief, are certainly considered 2D. However, the situation is completely different here; the painting is on a spherical canvas, which gives the photographer much more freedom (creativity) when taking his picture. –Tryphon ^☂ 10:50, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

That is a good point which I missed. Hmmm… -- Avi (talk) 15:23, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Paintings are considered 2D works notwithstanding the fact that paint has some minimal depth. The original case, w:en:Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. was about digitized paintings, for what it is worth. -- Avi (talk) 16:38, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, this is just a 2D painting projected onto a 3D cupola. --Aqwis (talk) 16:58, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

No, thats a photographic work of a cupola that bears a painting on it. Consider a photo of the same cupola without the painting, a plain white cupola, that photograph is eligible for copyright. So a photo of it with painting is also not a simple reproduction but eligible for copyright. The same question I have with File:Paleo ptg lascaux unicorn.jpg - that photo of cave art is in fact a photo of a caves wall (=inner side of a dome) and is creative work, no matter there is a painting on the wall or not. The coresponding deletion request Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Paleo ptg lascaux unicorn.jpg is absurde to me. How can one declare a photograph of a 3D background a slavish reproduction of 2D artwork? --Martin H. (talk) 11:58, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree, and have nominated it for deletion again. -Nard the Bard 06:48, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

What went wrong with this DR?

When I look at Commons:Deletion_requests/2009/12/22#File:PA_k.jaspers_bl.jpg, I see a comment by Peter17 directly after my request that belongs to a different request: Commons:Deletion_requests/File:DanielBalavoineRDC.jpg. Peter's request doesn't appear in its own section as it should. However, when I look at the page source, I don't see a difference between Peter's request and mine:

So, what's wrong? Gestumblindi (talk) 20:28, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. Commons:Deletion requests/File:DanielBalavoineRDC.jpg needed a section header. Adambro (talk) 20:30, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

December 23

Flood flag?

I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but on a few projects I'm active at, admins and bureaucrats are able to assign a 'flood flag' to users who are making large-scale changes that would render RC useless for the most part. It's the same as the bot flag in that it hides the user's edits from RC, watchlists, and other pages. Basically, I've undertaken a few projects lately which require hundreds or thousands of edits made in rapid succession, and the flood flag would be enormously useful in such situations where a bureaucrat is not available to assign a temporary bot flag. Any thoughts? Cheers, –Juliancolton | ^Talk 05:52, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

For a project such as commons, which often requires its administrators to undertake large scale actions at once I think this would be a good idea. Obviously, before such a flag is implemented it would be nice to have something formally written up about it. Tiptoety ^talk 07:19, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

- RC at Commons isn't that much an issue. In general, I think it's preferable when bots and scripts are operated under separate accounts. -- User:Docu at 11:32, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

- - I'm not sure I agree, but regardless, what about watchlists and new files lists? –Juliancolton | ^Talk 14:19, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

- - - I don't think the effect on watchlists is important. At commons most edits are on file description pages not in article namespace. I'm not sure how or if it would affect new files. What would be the effect there? -- User:Docu at 05:24, 2009 December 30

Question What is the difference between this and the bot flag? --The Evil IP address (talk) 14:25, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

The flood flag would be granted by any administrator when there's no bureaucrat around to grant the bot flag, which is most of the time... :) –Juliancolton | ^Talk 14:43, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

For more info, people might be interested in Meta's informational page about the flood flag here. Right now, I'm somewhat neutral about this. It might be a good thing in the future, but I don't really see a huge need for it at the moment. Killiondude (talk) 00:13, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I can't really see any drawbacks, though. Even if it's just an insignificant convenience, it'll be a good thing... –Juliancolton | ^Talk 03:31, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I would support the flood flag here but only if the person was preapproved (to have it turned on as needed) via a community discussion. I don't think I want just any admin granting and removing it. Mostly I think repetitive tasks should be done by bots on separate accounts. ++Lar: t/c 03:40, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Seems reasonable, I think. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 03:42, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment: I'd rather reprogramm the MediaWiki software so that also admins can give bot flags when necessary. Creating a new userright which is just redundant to another one is redundant IMO and only makes things more complicated. I support keeping things easier. --The Evil IP address (talk) 17:18, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

It's not redundant at all. Bot flags are generally for bots, and can only be assigned by bureaucrats; it would be impossible for the software to know what kind of account an admin wants to assign rights to. It's worked well on countless projects, not sure why it wouldn't work here. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 01:49, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I think this should be implemented. I don't think we need to community approve every admin or user when granting the flood flag. Admins assigning this is perfectly OK with me. — Kanonkas // talk // e-mail // 17:11, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment. After reading this discussion I feel I need to clarify that Flood flag can only be granted (and removed) by an administrator to himself/herself. It can not be granted to anyone else. So there is no need for any pre-approval, and also there is no need to create any new user groups. Ruslik (talk) 20:32, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Not necessarily.... –Juliancolton | ^Talk 22:02, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

What would be the use cases for the flag? -- User:Docu at 05:24, 2009 December 30

Proposed proposal for major category reorganisation

I've recently noticed that there is no single standard naming convention for categories that cover individual British steam locomotives, there are several schemes but also categories that do not apparently fit in any scheme. Additionally, some categories have images only from pre-preservation with post-preservation images in a subcategory; in other cases both types of image are at the same level. In some cases where a subcategory is used the parent is empty as there are no pre-preservation images of that locomotive. There are lots of categories containing a sub category for each individual loco many with just a single image, and others where images of a dozen or so locomotives are in the same category with only those locos we have several photos of getting their own subcat. I would not be surprised if the same issues affect other types of British loco and locos of other nationality, but I haven't looked.

I would like to propose that we standardise on one scheme, but I'd like to get agreement on what it should be first. Where should this discussion happen? How do I go about getting input from interested editors? Would a message on the talk page of every person to have edited any subcategory of Category:Preserved British steam locomotives be overkill?

It is not unlikely that any changes agreed could affect several hundred categories, with deletions, mergers, upmergers and renamings all probable. This is too big a task for one human to even tag all the affected categories for bots to deal with. What are the options? Thryduulf (talk) 22:47, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

The quasi-official place is COM:CFD, but I'll concede that not enough eyes see that. Maybe post there with notes in various places like this and maybe even w:WT:RR and/or w:WT:UKRAIL and/or w:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains/Images task force. And tag a few of the categories with {{Move}} so category specialists will see. Wknight94 ^talk 15:59, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I suggest that overkill is better then the alternative.KTo288 (talk) 10:08, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

File:Haagen_Dazs.gif

Could someone take a look at File:Haagen_Dazs.gif? It is my opinion that a) we would need permission from the blog owner to use their photo and b) this is a derivative work that contains a logo with some non-text elements so the pd-ineligible claim isn't valid, and thus should be speedy deleted from the Commons. In most instances, I would probably just delete this myself, but I don't want to use the tools as I have reverted some edits by this user on en.wiki and want to be completely impartial when I use the tools. So I am seeking more opinions on whether such an image is actually ineligible for copyright, and whether we would need permission from the person who took the photo (and thus if this image qualifies for immediate speedy or whether it needs NPD tag, or whether it is completely fine). That said, I wouldn't oppose it being moved to en.wiki and retagged as non-free.-Andrew c (talk) 14:53, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Freedom of panorama covers this advertising poster located in India so no problem with the photo itself. But from permission giver via Twitter[16] and conversation [17] it is clear that author allowed only use of image in the specific English wikipedia article and didn't release photo under free license --Justass (talk) 15:13, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

FOP is irrelevant, the poster is not permanently located there (and it's a graphic work, which is not covered by Indian FOP either). But you're right, the photographer has a copyright over the picture anyway, and did not give permission to release it under a free license. –Tryphon ^☂ 21:37, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome to comment on this DR. –Tryphon ^☂ 21:43, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Translation help for Hong Kong categories

Please take a look at Category:Hollywood Road Police R & F Married Quarters. I was going to fix up the subcategory names a bit but wasn't 100% sure how. I gather it was a housing building for married police officers? What is "R & F" in the names? What is meant by the name Category:Detour 2009 @ Hollywood Road Police R & F Married? Was that supposed to be "December" instead of "Detour"? Thanks. Wknight94 ^talk 01:48, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

R & F means "rank & file", initially, only high ranking officers were provided with quarters (section 2.4). "Detour" is correct, check this image. Paradoctor (talk) 02:33, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, is Detour 2009 an art convention of some kind? And a proper English name for the building would be "Hollywood Road Police Rank and File Married Quarters"? That's a mouthful. Is there an accepted shortcut of some kind? Wknight94 ^talk 02:52, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Top Google hit for "Detour 2009", and the obvious shortcut would be HRPRFMQ, pronounced as Hfuhruhurr. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 03:34, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Well that deserves a big Harumph! Okay, thanks for the help - I'll move them somewhere and if someone complains, I'll move it somewhere else. Wknight94 ^talk 03:51, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry I don't want to come across as a phillistine , (I'm not really a modern art fan and the whole "its art because we're told its art" ethos), but are File:HK SW Hollywood Road Police HQ Art Demo 12-2009 interior Chair and Visitors name cards Plastic floor.JPG and File:HK SW Hollywood Road Police HQ Art Demo 12-2009 bed and pillows in white.JPG actual modern art installations? If they are given that they are not permanently installed in a public place and are the work of I take it living artists would these two files not be considered to be derivative works and therefore copyvios. Do we have a committee to decide what actually is art?KTo288 (talk) 09:50, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The point about whether the installation art works are permanently displayed at the venue and thus subject to freedom of panorama principles is well taken. On the other hand, I shudder at the thought of a Wikimedia "committee to decide what actually is art". That sounds like a recipe for interminable shouting matches. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 11:45, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, we already have an area for that - COM:DR. Wknight94 ^talk 15:10, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The horns of a dilemma there for some, open a DR and yes it is art therefore we have to delete it, no it's not art and therefore what logical purpose does it serve being here?KTo288 (talk) 16:35, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

If I understand you correctly, what you are saying is that if the photograph of a chair with business cards strewn all over it is to be regarded as a piece of installation art, then it is akin to a sculpture. However, because it is only temporarily displayed in the venue, freedom of panorama does not apply and so the photograph ought to be deleted. On the other hand, if the photograph is regarded simply as a photograph of, well, a chair with business cards strewn over it, there is no reason why it cannot stay in the Commons, but then what is the purpose of having it? That is indeed a bit of a dilemma and a problem that particularly arises in relation to modern art consisting of found objects. I suppose I'd say that as long as the artwork consists of an intentional selection and arrangement of objects it should be regarded as a sculpture. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 19:53, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Just came across this at deletion requests.KTo288 (talk) 10:31, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree that these images don't seem to be free. Yes, the chair may be just a chair and the pillows just pillows, but in the process of turning these separate components into an installation the artist has clearly made specific creative choices of composition and lighting. It's worth noting here that "composition and lighting" are precisely what the creativity in a normal photograph consists of (assuming no creative post-processing). Thus, these installations would seem to be at least as creative and copyrightable as the photographs of them are. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:00, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

December 20

Multiple template layout chanded

Hi, I noticed today that layout of multiple templates have changed, for example {{Painting}} and {{Creator}}. In the past row names were left alligned instead of centered and there were visible dividers between cells. As far as I can tell the templates themselves or their layout subpages did not change. So I suspect changes to wiki table definition. Both templates use "class=toccolours", so may be that changed. Does anybody know how to bring back the old look? --Jarekt (talk) 18:56, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't seem to be able to reproduce the problem: the row names look left-aligned for me and I see borders between cells. Does it still look wrong to you, and, if so, does clearing your cache help? (If it does, it may be something skin- or browser-dependent, so it'd help to know which ones you're using. I'm on FF 3.0 right now, and have tried both the Vector and MonoBook skins.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:17, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

I figured it out, I got the different layout when using IE as compared to the Firefox I usually use. I did not expect it. --Jarekt (talk) 05:23, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

December 24

Problem with Tineye search link.

There is different result when clicking on Tineye search link in image page and using Firefox TinEye plugin.
If you have TinEye plugin for firefox check it by yourself.
Image: File:MissVietnamSouthernCalifornia2006.jpg
Result by TinEye plugin: http://www.tineye.com/search/787a4c69af8d79159539ea908e540d8b2ae40f57
Result by Commons search link: http://www.tineye.com/search/4d24f3a81a5ea95f07a5e33196433d995e0528a2
■ MMXX ^talk 05:59, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Tineye gives different results depending on whether the input image is the original size (plugin) or a 300px thumbnail (our tineye-link). Sometimes the original size gives better results, sometimes 300px is better. Lupo 08:05, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanation. ■ MMXX ^talk 08:07, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

December 25

Another collection of photos about the Romanian Communism

I recently found a new website that offers pictures from the Romanian National History Museum's archives about Communist Romania. They can be used as long as the source is quoted as "www.comunismulinromania.ro/". The pictures are not very hi-res, but they still represent a good source. For Hi-res pictures, one can contact the site owners.

Inspired by this discussion, I created a new template ({{ComInRo}}) to be used for pictures coming from this website. I would like some feedback on whether the template is correct and complete or it should be improved. Thanks.--Strainu (talk) 17:19, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Are they the actual authors or copyright owners? Romania has retroactive 70 pma copyright terms now I do believe... Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:38, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

At a quick skim, these may all be government photos, so I presume the government would have the copyright; the museum is also a government-run museum, and they probably are in a position to release rights. (They may not be the only entity that could release the rights, but that's not required.) I suppose this would require some care in case some of the images had other sources, though. - Jmabel ! talk 18:20, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Since "they" are a Museum, they are obviously not the authors. On the "about" page of the site, there is the following text: "Most of the images are from albums created with different ocasions [...] and entered during the years in the patrimony of the MNIR. Along with those, we present pictures bought by the MNIR during the era from the Central Committee's photo archive [the one used in the Romanian Communism Archive - see {{FOCR}}] and Agerpres [the Romanian News Agency] and made by the official photographers of the era.". Parts in square brackets are my own comments. I dug further and found that the patrimony of the MNIR (which is a National Museum) is in the public ownership of the state(from this law - in Romanian). I guess this confirms what Jmabel said above.

My real problem was whether I was sufficiently explicit in the template or I should reformulate.--Strainu (talk) 18:40, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

I tweaked the template to autotranslate. Hope you don't mind

. Jean-Fred (talk) 20:12, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

en:File:Companioncubesfuzzydice.jpg

Would a free picture of this object be free for Commons? While the idea is certainly unique, the shapes aren't and may qualify for {{PD-shape}}. The idea of getting a free picture for Commons isn't my only concern, it's the fact they are using a copyrighted picture of an allegedly copyrighted item on Wikipedia, it seems like they could at least try to replace it with a free picture (yes I know that this isn't the forum for that discussion). -Nard the Bard 22:07, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Dunno, it seems to me the design of the weighted companion cube may be sufficiently distinct to pass the threshold of originality under most jurisdictions. Unfortunately, there's no unambiguous bright-line test one could apply to determine exactly when a work becomes original enough to be eligible for copyright, but given the uncertainty it would seem prudent to err on the side of caution. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:35, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

December 26

Need help composing an email for license

Here the problem. A while ago I uploaded a lot of images from www.krg.org. The site administrator told me I could use the images on his site freely and emailed me an permission for OTRS. The permission was approved and I continued to upload more images. However a few weeks ago I was informed by Multichill that the email was not enough to confirm the license and that I needed a new permission, main reason being that krg.org uses images from Reuters,AFP and other places that are copyrighted. I emailed the site admin about this and he said that he did not own the rights of these images(most of them being flora,fauna and landscapes). However he did own the rights of a lot of other images on the site such as maps, pictures taken at events and of politicians.

What I need now is an email, written in a way that asks permission for the images that we're taken by krg.org but excludes the images that are copyrighted. I tried WP:BRP but it doesn't have anything. Can some here help? Thanks ~ Zirguezi 10:46, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment: Maybe Commons:Email templates can help. --The Evil IP address (talk) 13:15, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Location link does not work

I experience that the link of the coordination link (for example in File:Tenerife Adeje promenade B.jpg gives for me the result "Failed to open http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:GeoTemplate.". When I change in the URL "&language=nl" into "&language=en" it works. What to do to have it corrected? Thanks. Wouter (talk) 08:55, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

You should create nl:Sjabloon:GeoTemplate first on nlwiki. Best regards. Kwj2772 (msg) 10:33, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I just created it by copying the English version and using a few Dutch words. Now no error message is generated. Wouter (talk) 19:37, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Suddenly none of my references to files in wikimedia.commons work!!!

Not even files I have uploaded myself. This is obviously quite disastrous. What can the reason for this be, and what can I do about it.Harlekin96 (talk) 20:08, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. You don't have any deleted contributions. Maybe you're typing the URL in wrong for the file pages? The header brought that to my mind. It is actually commons.wikimedia.org. :-) Killiondude (talk) 20:17, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

I've noticed that there are sometimes problems with the Commons servers, which can cause transient display issues. The problem usually goes away after a few minutes or hours. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 06:32, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

December 27

Opinions please...

I just uploaded w:File:Mass grave from the Dasht-e-Leili massacre.jpg to the English language wikipedia. This is an alleged massacre of great notoriety.

FWIW the photo is not gruesome.

I uploaded it to the English language, under "fair use". But, since it was taken in Afghanistan I think it may qualify as {{PD-Afghanistan}}. I welcome other's opinions. Geo Swan (talk) 00:52, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

The Berne Convention defines "country of origin" as basically the country of first publication. So it doesn't necessarily matter where it was taken. If this was by the Physicians for Human Rights, or the UN, it would likely be treated as copyrighted under some other country's law. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:38, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Potentially confusing categories: writings vs inscriptions

I was looking at Category:Inscriptions by language, and there are several problems:

it contains both inscription and some writing categories, ex: Category:English inscriptions and Category:Hebrew writing.
inscriptions is not the same as writing, it is a more narrow term then writing (see wiktionary:inscription)

Suggested solution: create Category:Writing by language (as a subcat of Category:Writing and Category:Categories by language), recategorize "X-language writing" categories into it, make "X-language inscriptions" categories into subcategories of "X-language writing" categories. And over time, we need refine a lot of images categorized as writing into inscriptions and the other way around, but that's not the major issue here. Thoughts? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 13:25, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't Category:Writing systems cover the "X-language writing" categories already? The Hebrew writing and Cyrillic writing categories wouldn't be covered by Category:Writing by language as they contain text in various languages. But non-inscribed texts could be clearly separated from inscriptions (although much of the confusion comes from languages not making as clear as distinction about the words inscription and sign as English does). Man vyi (talk) 15:53, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

December 28

Commons:What Commons is not

I am interested in getting this promoted to an official policy. Please comment at the talk page to develop a consensus for this. -Nard the Bard 19:33, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

there appears to be discussion about whether to make it a guideline at that talk page. For the record I oppose making it policy, as Commons:Project scope covers this area sufficiently, but guideline? perhaps. Which did you mean? ++Lar: t/c 14:55, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

High Quality Movie Scans Upload Request

Hello fellow wikipedians,

I recently found this website [18] which contains a collection of, as the name of the section already mentions, high quality movie scans. For I think this collection might improve some wikipedia articles, I contacted the author of the website, Mr. Jerry Murbach. As he says he has already provided photos to Wikipedia and other websites in need of images and seems willing to do so again in the future. So the idea arose to my mind that it would be a good thing to have a commons gallery of Mr. Murbach's scans.

The problem: I am new to wikipedia and wikicommons, therefore I would need support from within the community to realise my idea. If anyone is willing to share his time and experience in questions of copyright, creating an appropriate gallery, etc. please contact me via mail.

Peter Weis (talk) 19:34, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

I tentatively like this idea, but without adequate sourcing and information as to *why* the works are public domain (no copyright notice, etc) Commons generally has a hard time accepting files like this. -Nard the Bard 19:36, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Speaking of licence - what would count as a reasonable proof of a certain licence? Also relating to this field - documenting the origin of those pictures and the metadata - is there a policy/standard/whatsoever which to follow? Peter Weis (talk) 19:44, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Peter. I am rather doubtful about whether the photographs on Mr. Murbach's website can be used on Commons. The following would have to be satisfied:

Mr. Murbach would have to provide satisfactory evidence that the photographs are in the public domain. We would need to know who the last copyright holders were (some agency or film studio, or the photographers?) and when the copyright lapsed, or when the photographs were released by the copyright holders into the public domain. Otherwise, by scanning the photographs, Mr. Murbach was merely creating derivative works in breach of copyright.
Provided Mr. Murbach is able to provide the above evidence, it would be best to have him inform you by e-mail that he agrees to license the scans of the images to the Commons under a free licence such as a Creative Commons licence or the GFDL. See "Commons:Email templates". You would then need to forward the e-mail conversation to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org for verification by the OTRS. Note that you cannot just download the images from Mr. Murbach's website and upload them on to the Commons. At the moment, the website's Visitor Agreement states: "We've spent a lot of time preparing these scans, so please don't use them for personal gain. You're free to download them, but that's it. Please send us an email if you would like to use any photos or other content on our site for commercial purposes." (Emphasis added.) These restrictions are currently not compatible with the Commons, because content on the Commons must be usable for all purposes, including commercial purposes.

See "Commons:Licensing" for more information. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 06:30, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot JackLee. I have already contacted Mr. Murbach in question of copyright holding and hope that he obtains suitable licences of the imagery he provided. If given so I shall write it here. Peter Weis (talk) 18:20, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

New Category

I created a Category called "Power pop groups and/or musicians", since I was surprised that the genre was otherwise left out. Does this seem like a good idea, or is it too broad and already overlapping with existing categories? Any thoughts?

Also, it is 3:23 am here and I will not sleep. Why is that? Cousin Kevin (talk) 09:24, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Too much coffee? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 17:54, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

City, Town or Village?

When is somthing a City a Town or Village? And how should the category tree be? I have trouble finding out what the structure is.

I suppose we should have a topcat "Category:Populated places"? And under that the different types of "cities" in some sort of logic structure. But it seems that it is not the case. We have:

And under that we have different sorts of combinations like Category:Towns and villages in the United Kingdom. Does anyone have a good idea how the structure should be? --MGA73 (talk) 10:24, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I guess this differs per country. In some countries cities are formally defined, other countries it's just used for the big places. If it's not defined it's very hard to make the distinction. And even if it is, it might be useful to have all of them in the same structure. Multichill (talk) 10:29, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

My personal POV is: Don't make any distinctions at all. As Multichill said there is no general way how to assign these designations globally. And even if there is a way in some states they are often still quite arbitrary. I think it's unnecessary to request from the user that he knows the legal status of a populated place. Just provide the full list. --Slomox (talk) 11:45, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, such distinctions make little sense across jurisdictional lines; Boroughs of New York City are very different things than Category:Boroughs in New Jersey, a short bicycle ride away. However, they have some importance internally, and should be applied in local tree building. As for a worldwide category for such a concept, well, it does little good or harm. Picture uploaders need not know about these distinctions; they should name the place and leave such abstruse questions to users who have a taste for cat wrangling. Jim.henderson (talk) 18:48, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Possibly unfree?

Isn't File:Mozilla Firefox 3.5.png copyrighted since it has the Wiki.png logo on it? Not sure where this goes, as I'm new to the commons. TheWeakWilled (talk) 18:39, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

December 29

Improved Close Captions Support

I have updated the mwEmbed gadget so it now has improved timed text support including:

Dynamic language switching,
text video overlay support,
they are now actually "subtitles" instead of "side-titles"

So I recommend more people turn on the Commons:mwEmbed gadget ;) and give me some more feedback ;) I hope to have an update the text edit interface shortly. You can check out any of the files on Files_with_closed_captioning category and or see the raw subtitles file listing — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mdale (talk • contribs) 02:38, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Okay, some feedback. I tested the gadget on a larger video and it worked just fine. Looks very good! But then I tried it on one of the thumbnail videos at Category:Files_with_closed_captioning and the result is quite repulsing: for some reason the captions blink and they are much bigger than the actual video. Perhaps the captions should be deactivated on thumbnail videos. --Slomox (talk) 02:15, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree should disable subtitles for anything less than 250px wide ... Maybe have a system where you click on small thumbs it light-boxes the browser window and displays the clip at its native resolution instead of trying squeeze it into a little frame. --Mdale (talk) 22:06, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Eek! I hate lightboxing; I think it's the user interface feature from hell. Open the video clip in a new browser tab or window, if you must, or display it in somewhat larger format in a non-modal overlayed <div> that doesn't cover the whole page and that doesn't prevent me from clicking other links on the page. Lupo 08:56, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Yea .. I am not that big a fan of lightboxes either.. maybe a "new window" but people have pop-up blockers... or just have it at a resonable size to begin with and only use thumbs to link to a dedicated page ~ like most other video site on the internet ~

See User:84user/Video tests#MwEmbed Calibration tests for some quick feedback from me. I first tested the subtitles worked on File:Krazy Kat Bugolist 1916 silent.ogv. The rest of my tests used very small test videos that Firefox plays fine, but that cause problems for most other players. -84user (talk) 15:23, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed test and review. I will try and fix some of the seeking issues. Some features or are driven by the limitations of the player. For example firefox native video playback does not always work so well with constant seek requests being issued to update the frame on playhead scrubbing. -Mdale (talk) 02:31, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

mwEmbed is out of work on my browser, IE8. After I turned on mwEmbed, contents on TimedText namespace are invisible, only showing Ajax loader, and mwEmbed player is gone on file namespace. Regards. Kwj2772 (msg) 13:07, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Upload SRT file Support

Just pushed out revision 60353 which features upload srt support and improved performance. ( people using the gadget should get the new version on shift-reload ). This makes it really easy to upload srt files. I uploaded a few files from elephants_dream for Elephants_Dream pretty quickly.

Also starting to sketch out a transcribe -> sync | translate interface in collaboration with some PCF folks. ( The gadget will feature this as soon as its stable ) -Mdale (talk) 02:16, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

I think, the upload script is broken: TimedText:Elephants Dream.ogg.bn.srt. Unicode-broken. --Slomox (talk) 03:01, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

This was caused by me choosing the wrong file locally. Once I chose the utf-8 encoded file locally it seems to work. --Mdale (talk) 07:02, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

SRT wikiText Support

Another quick one-off feature that was requested was to grab the timed-text through the parser so that people could put wikitext into the SRT's. That feature was pushed out a few hours ago in r60370. So now you can use wikitext in titles ie in the Yochai_Benkler clip links to Yochai_Benkler in the English subtitles ( as seen in the wiki-text here )

This will mean we need a SRT html stripper for the api ( so that non html subtitle desktop players could grab the srts without html in a predictable way)
We will also want to be careful not to get out of hand ( like inserting lots of images, excessive formatting and colors )
Longer term it would be nifty to adopt some "pop-up-video-info" thing similar to youtube and mediaWiki image annotations.
- But we should put temporal spacial data in a more adaptable XML markup Like CMML with percentage positioned divs per "clip". ( We don't want to put non-subtitle metadata into SRT's )

-Mdale (talk) 22:54, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. I did a quick retest of my earlier tests of this gadget and there are some differences. See User:84user/Video tests#MwEmbed retests for details. I suspect the gadget confuses subtitle text from other videos on the same page. I did not test any html or adding new text. -84user (talk) 14:47, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

What browser are you using? I am getting the correct subtitles for multiple videos on a sample page -Mdale (talk) 07:00, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Firefox 3.5.5, MonoBook skin. I have just now retested all the tests from User:84user/Video tests#MwEmbed retests and subtitles play as expected, ie all correctly play no subtitles except File:cal_2flip2click8khzvbr_vlc.ogv which plays French or German depending on which I select. I tested these on Firefox 3.5.5 on Windows Vista. On Chrome version 3.0.195.38, the video and subtitles play but sometimes with glitches: for File:cal_2flip2click8khzvbr_vlc.ogv subtitles numbered 2 3 and 4 are skipped and sometimes the mwEmbed interface does not appear at all. On Opera version 10.10, build 1893, only the subtitles text plays, no video. User:Mdale/multipleEmbeds has a display problem: the lower video overlaps the upper such that the controls and the subtitles are covered, on Firefox and Chrome. -84user (talk) 13:16, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

So addressed some of this in r60439 ( and was pushed out in r60439 to the gadget script-server )

File:cal_2flip2click8khzvbr_vlc.ogv should default to "de" now
I did some chrome testing. Fixed the no-interface "sometimes" issue ( chrome has 0 while firefox has -1 for height/width attributes for unloaded media )
Chrome seems to work ( aside from seeking issues that are upstream issues )
Does Opera 10.10 support ogg video? It
I fixed the overlap issue as part of a re-factor of player layout. ( it should now make space for -itself if the text is not displayed as a player overlay.
Also did some IE testing / fixes. Should work via the cortado player with below player subtitles now.

--Mdale (talk) 21:57, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

December 22

Hudong Encyclopedia Image Center

Recently, a wiki encyclopedia site in Mainland China, Hudong, launched a new site [19] for publishing images created by its users under CC-by-2.5 (Mainland China) license. This may become a new source of our files. Although users have to state that they created those images themselves and they agree to release those images under CC-by-2.5 when registering, copyright status can be still not so sure due to that bad copyright environment in Mainland China. Is it OK to make a tool like [20] for convenient uploading from there? --Liangent (talk) 12:34, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

If the repository doesn't seem to do a good job of ensuring valid copyright, a tool to mass transfer from there may not be a good use of our community resources, as we have backlogs of images needing checking as it is. ++Lar: t/c 15:07, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not so sure whether the repository does a good job of ensuring valid copyright, and I don't have an account on it yet, because a realname registration system is applied on it, and what is required even includes users' ID card numbers. --Liangent (talk) 05:50, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Category:Biographies and Multichill-Bot

The BotMultichill is adding the category "Biographies" to all portrait-photos he is finding. This cat is crowded with over 1100 photos, see for instance diff-link [21] - is this appropriate??? (Perhaps I should ask Multichill directly.) Cholo Aleman (talk) 11:46, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that this is good idea. I think subcategories of Category:Portraits is more appropriate place. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 16:11, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you should have. I would have blacklisted the category for you and would have fired up a bot to recheck the files in Category:Biographies tagged with {{Check categories}}. Multichill (talk) 17:04, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

I took a closer look. Looks like a lot of these files are automatically categorized based on information from itwp, about 657 of 1123 (see here). Most Wikipedia's have lot's of Commonscat template added to give more information to the bots (stats at User:Multichill/Commonscat stats). This is not the case for the Italian Wikipedia. As a result the automagicly suggested categories are not that good. This is something we should solve at the Italian Wikipedia. Multichill (talk) 17:18, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes because using bots to automagically edit files is obviously never a stupid thing to do. -Nard the Bard 17:22, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, what are you trying to say exactly Nard the Bard? Multichill (talk) 17:33, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Maybe the problem isn't the Italian Wikipedia, and using a bot to add categories to an image that already has adequate categories is stupid. Your solution, asking the user to fire up yet another bot to check your bot's contributions and then get a system going on the Italian Wikipedia to compensate for your bot's edits is redundant double work that shouldn't have to be done. -Nard the Bard 19:00, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

I think a problem is that the interwiki links from the italian biography category are wrong. The Italian category is more like Category:People by alphabet. Some sort of maintenance category to keep track of all biographical articles on it.wikipedia. /Ö 19:09, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah. And unless someone voulenteer to check all (new) images and finding the right category manually I think using a bot is the best alternative. --MGA73 (talk) 10:28, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

similar seems to be the cat DAYS, there are 300 files in this cat, I think many of them from the multichill bot, for instance [22] - by the way: I am glad that the bot is working, these are minor problems compared to all the other problems here (as far as I see) Cholo Aleman (talk) 20:20, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

File:Pale Blue Dot.png

I was wondering if anyone could added the POTD template for April 22, 2010 to this page. I have used it for POTD on the English Wikipedia, and I'm having a hard time placing the template there. Thanks. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 00:26, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean this file: File:Pale Blue Dot.png? What template are you asking about? (remember, for files and templates you can put a leading colon before the name so you get a link, not an imbed) This one: Template:POTD is a red link. Do you have an example of another image that has the right template on it already? ++Lar: t/c 14:50, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Nevermind, I just got it to work correctly on the English page. Sorry for that. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:49, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Template:I18n month

Template:I18n month misses a documentation. --89.217.145.139 07:28, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Added. --Slomox (talk) 11:56, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

New sandbox needed?

Don't you think that there should be created a new sandbox for some bots? See the December edits here. -jkb- (talk) 15:05, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

It's better to create a sandbox for the users who keep moving around Leon Trotsky. Multichill (talk) 16:21, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

It was a category redirect loop, no ones mistake or intent. --Martin H. (talk) 16:55, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

:-) -jkb- (talk) 18:57, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

New uploads over old photos

Hi, I uploaded a new photo over an old photo File:WWIIBunkALaPeruseNSW0046.JPG. I am just wondering why it is not showing yet. Also, this image File:WWIIBunkALaPeruseNSW0022.JPG seems to have updated here on commons but it in the Wikipedia article the old photo still appears and it is distorted. Can someone please explain why this is happening. Thanks Adam.J.W.C. 21:04, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Clear your browser's cache and the problem should be fixed. -Nard the Bard 03:10, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

These appear to be totally different images. Why didn't you upload them under a new name? You should overwrite existing photo's like this. Multichill (talk) 09:37, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

He's the original uploader and he probably intended to totally replace the old versions in the articles they're in. I don't consider it improper to reupload in a case like that. -Nard the Bard 22:09, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Well I do. As you say it will replace the versions in the articles they are in. How do we know if the wikies using the image agrees that new image is better than the old one? If there is a major difference I think the best is to upload a new version. --MGA73 (talk) 10:33, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

The image is completely different. It shouldn't be uploaded over a two year old image that way. -- User:Docu at 05:19, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Sidebar interwiki links only work to Wikipedia, not Wikisource

Can I ask why sidebar interwiki links only work to Wikipedia. I went to set up a link at Highways and Byways in Sussex to s:en:Highways and Byways in Sussex and you will see that it just puts a link at the bottom, not in the sidebar. Is there a trick that I am missing for Commons? Thx. Billinghurst (talk) 21:08, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

From what I gather from m:Help:Interwiki_linking, the interwiki links added to the sidebar are for different languages of the same project. I think there must be some coding that defaults interwiki links that only contain languages (such as [[en:hello]]) to default point to Wikipedia (since Commons is only in one language, and not a multi-language project like some other WMF wikis). To solve this, you would have to write [[en:s:Highways and Byways in Sussex]]. It would point in the sidebar to en.wikipedia.org/s:Highways_and_Byways_in_Sussex, which is sort of a hack. That is, it probably wasn't exactly built for this, but doing it this way will get the desired result. It will, however, still say "in wikipedia" above the interwiki sidebar. Killiondude (talk) 21:20, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

How debatable it can be, the sidebar is intended to link to Wikipedia. For other projects, you might want to look into Category:Interwiki link templates, and {{Wikisource}} is probably what you are looking for. Jean-Fred (talk) 00:58, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

It is possible (though it doesn't look that brilliant), by using {{InterProject/Wikisource|Pagename on Wikisource}}. Same applies to other sister projects. Commons has many very nice templates, but most of them aren't documented anywhere. --The Evil IP address (talk) 09:16, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

{{Wikisource}} has to be modified to work with Swedish Wikisource. I tested the template at Category:Fjellstedts bibel med kommentarer.

The problem is that the link from Swedish Wikipedia to Swedish Wikisource is not "s:". Instead we are using "src:". The correct link is sv:src:Bibeln (Fjellstedts förklaringar).

Another possibility is via the English Wikisource: s:sv:Bibeln (Fjellstedts förklaringar)-- Lavallen (talk) 13:32, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

CommonsHelper2 Bot tool

I think that this upload bot has many problems. Please check Special:Contributions/CommonsHelper2_Bot as soon as possible: no true uploader indication (who is the user that use the tool?), upload despite non-existent copyright tag (example), link in the "Original upload history" doesn't work, no {{Information}}, and so on.--Trixt (talk) 22:27, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

I took a look at some random uploads and it is one big mess. I blocked the bot to prevent it from causing more damage. Please discus the issues with the owner(s) of the bot at User talk:CommonsHelper2 Bot. Multichill (talk) 22:43, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

December 30

File:Japanese Wosite E.svg

I has upload to new version of the SVG file...Why don't change PNG thumbnail? I uploaded a new version of SVG. The thumbnail images will not be updated. I don't understand how multiple causes. I've no ideas...--MOTOI Kenkichi (talk) 06:11, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean this file: File:Japanese Wosite E.svg? the PNG thumbnail for an SVG is cached and I seem to recall technical issues with regeneration from time to time but I don't remember details. Did you purge your cache? Sometimes the problem is transient, are you still having the issue? ++Lar: t/c 14:48, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh sorry,I seem to that problems are browser cache ,I not cleared　it...that No problem.Thank you.

I'm afraid in a totally different problems(Another.. my upload images) -> default font problem are image rendered(text Overlapped characters) 500px or upper .--MOTOI Kenkichi (talk) 00:45, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Commons consensus is that there is sufficient distinction between all the images that each one adds something educational to the project and thus they are all in scope. -- Avi (talk) 14:23, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Latuff repository

I am wondering, why do we need 40+ images of Carlos Latuff's work? Per COM:PS#Must_be_realistically_useful_for_an_educational_purpose, we are not to have files that "…add nothing educationally distinct to the collection of images we already hold covering the same subject." I would think that ten or so Latuff images would convey the breadth and depth of his political commentary. If we have one comparing Jews to Nazis, one about his perceived dichotomy between Jews and Palestinians, one showing a US-Israel relationship, etc. that is sufficient. We do not need 4 examples of each motif, and that appears to be against the project's scope as described above. I agree that basic representation of his work is undoubtedly within the project's scope, but I believe what we have now is more like free webhosting for Mr. Latuff, or am I misunderstanding that part of the scope? If a case can be made that we need the 40-some-odd images and that each is in scope, then I respect that. If not, then I suggest we identify 10 or so of Latuff's works that span his repertoire, and prune the remainder. Thoughts? -- Avi (talk) 07:19, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

My opinion about this issue is well-known. I've been engaged in endless discussions about it. I think assuming good faith is something crucial in the Wikimedia projects, and yet judging by the way these images were originally uploaded, categorized, embedded in other pages, and eventually received a special "gallery", I think this was an attempt to use Wikimedia Commons as a platform for spreading this caricaturist's controversial an polemic views. I am glad to see that these images are not categorized anymore in the inappropriate way they used to be categorized, and yet every now and then someone tries to add an irrelevant category for them in order to make them more visible. This huge collection of contemporary polemic political caricatures opens a huge door for the introduction of hardcore politics into this site which is meant to follow the Wikimedia general policy of providing knowledge and education in a neutral objective way. Drork (talk) 07:42, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Drork. Commons must not be a free host to the "Artistic" work, especially since it is so anti-semitic and in some cases disgraces the memory of the 6 million who were murdered in the Holocaust. Kooritza (talk) 07:53, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

You know what is common between Category:Penis and category latuff or whatever name it has? They both have too many images. Do you know what is two differences between the two? One difference is that penis is called penis, while latuff's racist and anti-Semitic cartoons are not added to the category Antisemitic pictures. The other difference is that penis cannot kill, latuff's racist and anti-Semitic cartoons could. I could easily see how young Muslims could be radicalized by looking at those cartoons, and then what? Have you, dear liberals, forgotten bombing in London and Madrid, riots in Paris and 9/11?--Mbz1 (talk) 09:33, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh no, there we go again. Is it that time of the year again? Please do something useful. This is going to waste so much time and no, we are not going to delete this images, so stop trying. Multichill (talk) 10:18, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, there is a point here that have never been raised in previous discussions about this issue: 40 images of the same controversial caricaturist, all of them political and most of them about the same subject? Even those who supported keeping these images here should say what is so special about him that Wikimedia Commons chose to give him such a tribute. Drork (talk) 11:12, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

"ten or so Latuff images would convey the breadth and depth of his political commentary": I don't know if hat is true, but even if it was, what about the artistic merits of the caricatures? The development of this artist's technique? I'd say that is enough to consider only the complete collection as "providing knowledge; instructional or informative". The other arguments raised here all fail COM:NPOV. Paradoctor (talk) 12:20, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Since it is political cartoons new categories covering new events would be added. // Liftarn (talk) 12:33, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not familiar with the previous history of this debate, could you please explain how that is an objection? Paradoctor (talk) 12:40, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

The previous history should be quite obvious. Some people dislike the content of some political cartoons and have for quite some time tried to have them deleted, hidden away, removed from valid categories and/or classified as racistic and/or antisemitic. This is just their latest effort. As for my comment it was about that as political cartoons covers current events there will be new cartoons about new subjects and over time it can of course build up to quite many images, but this is really a good thing. // Liftarn (talk) 13:08, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Latuff, arbitrary break 1

Here we go again... Political cartoons are not always nice and some people will disagree with the content, but that you don't like it is no reason to a) delete the image, 2) remove valid categories or 3) add irrelevant categories. // Liftarn (talk) 11:31, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I can appreciate Avi's point but think such a pruning would be an impossible task. We are always going to host content some find offensive and those people are always going to moan about it. I just don't know how we'd be able to reduce the number of images whilst avoiding the task being turned into an attempt to remove those which some dislike the most. I very much doubt we'd ever reach anything resembling a consensus, the pathetic inability of some users to refer to Latuff without putting his name in small, wild suggestions that in some way our hosting of these images is going to have any tangible risk of increased violence, and that hosting these images is some kind of "tribute" to Latuff are all good illustrations of the difficulties here.

A better solution could be to only categorise these images in the Latuff categories. It would be an awful compromise to satisfy those who try to pretend every category is an attempt to promote this work but it might be less harmful than trying to prune the Latuff images. Despite how much I dislike considering compromising our usual categorisation structure to keep people who don't like certain images happy, it could turn out in the long run to be the least disruptive.

Let us not go into yet another year still wasting great amounts of time regarding such a relativity insignificant cartoonist and a relativity small number of images. Let us agree to adopt this unconventional categorisation scheme and be done with it. Those who dislike these images would no longer be able to make accusations that the categorisation was intended to promote them and those who are able to appreciate the necessity for Commons to host content some dislike will at least see a reduction in the never ending campaign against Latuff and his cartoons. Then, anyone who wants to continue arguments about these images can get blocked. Simples. Adambro (talk) 12:17, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I would disagree. Doing that would be giving in to threats and it would create a very real risk of other extremists resorting to the same disruption tactic to hide away images they find offensive. We already have Muslims removing images of Muhammed and we have Mormons removing images of underwear. // Liftarn (talk) 12:33, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I think that not much progress on this issue will be made without clarification from the Wikimedia Foundation on BLP issues as they apply to Commons. Commons does not, apparently, have a BLP policy, but needs one. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 12:42, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

?!? What has w:en:WP:BLP to do with the issue at hand, namely whether there are too many works by Latuff or not? Paradoctor (talk)

This Latuff image has been removed from the WP article about Dershowitz a number of times. I do not see why Commons should be storing a file which is considered a BLP violation on WP, and probably would be considered a BLP violation here too if Commons had the BLP policy it should have. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 13:06, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Whether or not that image violates BLP depends completely on the context in which it is used. Adambro (talk) 13:15, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Most of our files are not fit for en.Wikipedia. Should we delete them, too? Commons is much more inclusive than any encyclopedia, even more inclusive than any WMF project. The name is Commons, not Special Interests. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 13:23, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Commons collect free images for the world to use. We do not decide if the cartoons are good or bad. Unless we have or make a rule "max 10 images of/by same subject" then discussing this over and over seems like a waste of time. Deleting images does not free space so why not just host the images and let users decide which of the images they will use. --MGA73 (talk) 12:57, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Commons has a notion of scope. If we were talking of thousands of images all substantially identical, it would be pretty clear that we didn't need all of them. (and we make that argument all the time) If we were talking of images that had absolutely no conceivable educational (or other WMF project related) value, it would be pretty clear we didn't need to keep all of them. If we were talking about images that were licensed in incompatible ways, it would be pretty clear we didn't need to keep them. (and in fact couldn't). I'm not seeing that any of those arguments apply, (the images appear to be licensed, different, and have some value to projects. Those all seem to be red herrings to me. HOWEVER we do from time to time pass value judgments on images, even when they pass these filters.

The question really turns, to me, on whether, and how, we would do so in this case. I'm not convinced at this time that we can, or should. Excess stridency won't convince me either way. Note that how to classify images is a different question from whether to retain them at all. It is possible to retain, but classify differently than other images, if valid reason exists to do so. I'm not convinced we've explored the classification question sufficiently. ++Lar: t/c 14:24, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

As an aside, as much as people may be disgusted by the Dershowitz image, consensus was that it was in the project's scope, and should be retained, and we all must respect that. remember, Commons is NOT EnWiki, and EnWiki is not the commons, and we have different policies and guidelines here. -- Avi (talk) 15:27, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

On BLP policy

Commons has a BLP policy. Every WMF wiki has a BLP policy. It's the default one of the foundation. It's just not a very good BLP policy (in some ways) in that it's much harder to apply usefully than, say, the one at en:wp. (harder to apply because it's harder to find, for one thing... and because it consists of a series of exhortations and urgings to individual projects rather than mandates) Giving Commons a more explicit BLP policy sounds like a good idea, but might be somewhat challenging to actually do. That's not to say it's not worth trying to do, I very much think it is... But it's probably not something to do in this thread. If someone wants to start an effort, I'd happily participate, as I agree we need a better, crisper, easier to apply, easier to find policy. Please canvass me :)

From the en:wp policy at w:en:WP:BLP:

"A statement of principles on this matter was resolved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board on 21 April 2009. The full text is at Foundation:Resolution:Biographies of living people."

Hopefully that's some help in understanding what exists... ++Lar: t/c 13:40, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah except why this relevant in this discussion perhaps? Has Latuff perhaps made "complaint about how [he is] described in our projects"? --MGA73 (talk) 14:09, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Let me help you. ;)

Commons is not WMF, and WMF has no authority over Commons. We will of course consider WMF opinions in a collegial and friendly manner, but whether we act upon them is up to us, the Commons community, not anybody else.
The WMF statement refers to "articles", which we don't have. Any biographical content produced by us is restricted to the barest essentials, as in dates of birth and death, and maybe the main claim to fame, e. g. Adolf Hitler and Gandhi. That is the extent of our "BLP". I'll write up a proposal, give me a couple of hours. Paradoctor (talk) 14:11, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

If you think WMF has "no authority" over Commons, you're confused. If you think that because the term "articles" was used, the policy doesn't apply to images in any way, you're confused. It may not be useful to further dialog until that confusion is cleared up. ++Lar: t/c 14:16, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

We don't need a BLP policy. Foundation:Resolution:Biographies of living people doesn't require such a policy, only that we consider the issue. As has been noted, we don't host biographies of living people, only very limited similar content. We already have COM:SCOPE which excludes "Files apparently created and/or uploaded for the purpose of vandalism or attack". What more do we need? Adambro (talk) 14:21, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

We need a statement of policy that's clear, easy to find, in accordance with WMF overall policy, and that we can agree on or at least reach consensus on. We don't have that. ++Lar: t/c 14:29, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

If an image is an attack on a living person, then there is a BLP violation. If that is the case on WP, why is it not the case on Commons? Also note, BLP applies also to noticeboard and user space discussion, of which there is plenty on Commons. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 14:20, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Just as on Wikipedia, a quote attacking someone in isolation could violate BLP but in a proper context with an explanation of its significance it wouldn't violate BLP. Images are just the same. They might attack individuals but when used in a proper context be a perfectly appropriate inclusion. Barring those images already excluded by COM:SCOPE, we can't really say whether or not an image violates the BLP principle in isolation. Adambro (talk) 14:24, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I can easily provide counterexamples (of images that violate BLP regardless of context) that disprove that assertion. ++Lar: t/c 14:29, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

In that case we have for example Commons:Photographs_of_identifiable_people#Moral_issues. We do not delete everything that someone finds "offending". --MGA73 (talk) 14:27, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Adambro, that is complete nonsense. This image is a smear [23] of a living person, there is no context in which it would not be a smear, and it is therefore obviously a BLP violation by Wikimedia Foundation standards. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 14:29, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Dershowitz is a public figure and subject to satirical and political commentary. I don't think that's the best example of a BLP violation you could come up with. ++Lar: t/c 14:33, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

If the person in the image ask for a deletion I'm sure we will concider it :-) --MGA73 (talk) 14:31, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

It is not required that the victim be the one requesting it. Also, you need to work on your approach to constructive contribution to discussions, by dialing the snark down.++Lar: t/c 14:33, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I never said "it would not be a smear", only that in not every context will it violate BLP. There is a big difference. BLP doesn't and should never simply protect individuals from criticism. If Lar has examples of images which could never not violate BLP then I'd be interested in learning about them. This portrayal of Dershowitz isn't one. Adambro (talk) 14:36, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

An image that was clearly false when examined closely (but not at first glance) and made a libelous assertion about a figure not subject to public scrutiny by a person not ordinarily engaged in satire or public criticism, or one of a non public subject that was taken against their will (taking against will means the image is also not eligible for commons on other grounds, as it's not validly licensed) that put them in a derogatory light. (merely "smearing" a public figure, as with the Alan D cartoon, isn't in and of itself a BLP violation, THAT's an image that depends on context) ++Lar: t/c 14:44, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

This is not the first time we have disagreed, is it? I think your framing of the issue is almost as misguided as Adambro's clueless opinion. If it is a smear of a living person it is a BLP violation, although not all BLP violations go as far as being smears. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 14:51, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

But is the image a biography? We have editorial/political carttons of other living persons. Examples are File:VictoryIsACoolBreeze.jpg, File:Khamenei.jpg, File:Gayparade.jpg, File:Freetrade.jpg and many more. // Liftarn (talk) 15:08, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you will be able to show that any smear of any person, however newsworthy that person is, is a BLP violation, by any reasonable interpretation of either the en:wp or the WMF policies. Adambro and I apparently differ about images that could always be violations regardless of context (although I hope I just convinced him) but I would not go so far as to call him clueless. That level of discourse adds more heat than light. This is a contentious topic area and we should all try to remain as calm as possible to further the discussion and get to the right outcome. I would hope that most of us, even those I might chastise for the manner of their approach to this discussion, want to get to the right outcome, whatever that is. My view is we need a better statement of our BLP policy here than we have currently, and that it should, and can, exclude some images (as well as other materials hosted here, discussions, and whatever else it needs to apply to) ++Lar: t/c 15:05, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

BLP applies to any content in the entire Project that smears a living person. I applies also to insulting comments about a living person on noticeboards and user talk pages. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 15:14, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

@Lar Not beeing a native English I have no idea what "the snark down" means. Since it has allready been discussed if image should be deleted and result was "no" - even if you disagree. But if you read the link I gave you you can see that we can delete if subject makes a request. If subject did then it would new and a reason to discuss the image again. --MGA73 (talk) 15:29, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

OT: snark (n., 1); "to dial down" = reduce, cut back (opp.: "to dial up" = increase). Lupo 12:59, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Commons:Living persons

Commons:Living persons First one to click gets to defile a virgin talkpage! ;) Paradoctor (talk) 15:18, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Back to volume

OK, while I agree that having a clearer BLP policy on the commons is a good thing, I'd like to get some closure as to the original question. Adambro had a good point in that how would we prune down the images to an consensus-acceptable subset. Is the consensus on the commons that having all the images we have now is considered in scope? -- Avi (talk) 20:24, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Support (I'm not sure, but this sounded like you asked for a straw poll.) Paradoctor (talk) 20:45, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Straw, hay, I don't care

, but I would like to get an understanding of the consensus of the commons, and if we can get one, we all need to respect it :) -- Avi (talk) 20:59, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

There is no such thing as "consensus-acceptable subset". We had/have votes for deletion for every and all images - and afaik there was no consensus that they should be deleted. If some individual pictures haven't been discussed for deletion in the past, or you feel that now the community will reach consensus about deleting them, feel free to nominate them individually. --5ko (talk) 22:04, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

No, 5ko, you misunderstand. I'm asking if it makes sense to start 30 of the 40 nominating images for deletion for being out of scope after we informally work out which 10 -12 may best represent Latuff's work, or are all 40 in scope. Am I correct in presuming that you believe all 40 images are in scope even according to COM:PS:"…add nothing educationally distinct to the collection of images we already hold covering the same subject."? -- Avi (talk) 22:12, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Many contributors already said (vfd...) that the cartoons are in scope, and arguably there is something educationally distinct in any two -- otherwise the artist wouldn't have created them and wikipedians wouldn't have uploaded them. Again, if you consider 28-30 out of scope, and you feel the community will reach consensus about this, nominate them for deletion. I don't feel that you will succeed, but I may be wrong. --5ko (talk) 22:30, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not certain either, which is why instead of nominating 30 or so images for deletion, I asked for a centralized discussion first; less disruptive this way. -- Avi (talk) 22:31, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not seeing how we possibly could pick 10 to keep out of 40. So I'm not in favor of even trying. I think we would better spend energy in categorizing them in ways that cause less upset, and in ensuring they aren't used to attack folk here. ++Lar: t/c 22:34, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

On and off, I upload PD-Art paintings to Commons. Should I worry about uploading too many of Arthur Clifton Goodwin's paintings? Unlike Latuff, Goodwin isn't notable enough that a Wikipedia page has been created on him. If he is a notable artist, then we should have everything he's done that we can.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:12, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

We've discussed this over and over. While the use of the images in particular articles, categories, galleries may violate the spirit of the BLP policy of the WMF, and a subsequent policy on Commons needs to be addressed, the fact that the images are here on Commons has nothing to do with the BLP policy. I.e., the Dershowitz cartoon in Category:Latuff is acceptable. The Dershowitz cartoon in Category:Alan Dershowitz is unacceptable. Use the images appropriately but there is no reason to delete them. Bastique ^demandez 17:10, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Bastique, the question is solely one of volume per COM:PS, but I think the matter pretty well decided that the consensus is that there is enough added by each image that they do not fall into the out-of-scope criterion of "…add nothing educationally distinct to the collection of images we already hold covering the same subject.". Personally, I can, and have, now argued that the Dershowitz article is in the current scope of the Commons (as Commons <> Enwiki). -- Avi (talk) 17:14, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Avi. In short - no. You want to delete these images because you don't like them. Further debate is a pointless waste of server transaction cycles. You are never going to tire of arguing that they are outside scope, other editors are never going to tire of arguing that they are inside scope (and rightly so). Megapixie (talk) 01:27, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused. Hasn't Avi just acknowledged the the consensus is against deletion? I admit I had started to formulate a reply before I had read the entire sentence, though. A clearer formulation would have been "... consensus is that the individual images add enough educationally distinct to fall into scope ...". Paradoctor (talk) 03:14, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Paradoctor, you should be confused; I did say it's pretty clear :). I just haven't closed this yet as I like to have a day or so without substantive comments before I close so I don't accidentally cut someone off. Megapixie seems a bit confused, oh well. Two month holidays do leave a lot to catch up on, I understand. Also, by wording it as a negated negative, instead of a positive, I may have contributed to that confusion, so mea culpa as well. -- Avi (talk) 06:00, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

NP, as you might guess from my name, and confirm from my en.userpage, confusion is a way of life for me. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 07:08, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Main articles and categories of same names

Hello. I've asked this question at wiki:fr, but I doubt to get a clear answer. Here is the problem: if an article A is in category A (same name), then it seems evident to me that this article should have no other categories but this one, and all included categories should be added to category A, not article A. Am I right ? If yes, where can I find it in the help pages (I've searched through "main article", ...) But here is a counter-example: en:France, which is in en:Category:France. They both are in parent categories (not quite the same ones); so I'm a bit confused. Isn't there any rule ? Thanks, Jack ma (talk) 14:31, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedias have their own guidelines... any answers here really don't apply to any other project. As a guess though, some articles probably feel as though they should be directly in parent categories so they can be found faster, rather than requiring a user to click through one more level. If you are going to Category:France, you are probably looking for some more specific information related to France rather than the overview article, so maybe it still makes sense to have the overview article in some of the parent categories as well. I can see the counterargument too, but the end goal is to allow people to find information faster, so it may make sense for major, commonly-accessed articles to also be at the same level as their category. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:04, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

In regards to articles, you would have to ask this at Wikipedia. At Commons, that are only galleries, no articles. ;)

While there is generally a category for each gallery at Commons, the situation at Wikipedia is different: only rarely an article has a corresponding category. Thus we generally include the gallery only in one category, not in parent categories of that category.

Even, a gallery can have sections that match subcategories of the category that has the same title as the gallery. Rather than including the gallery in that subcategory, personally I use {{Cat see also}}.

-- User:Docu at 15:47, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there is any easy answer to this. It has been discussed in many places at English Wikipedia, for example at en:Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Eponymous RFC. But I have not seen any clear conclusions about how the categorisatio should be. /Ö 16:53, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Commons:Village pump/Archive/2009/12

strange category: Category:Prosopis pallida

December 1

File:Pollock-green.jpg is my unauthorized photo

Uploading image from Library of Congress

Toolserver

November 27

BBC Micro logo

December 2

Obligations if creating a new page

Is it an arcade?

File:Haji Abdul rehman Kaloo in 1930.jpg

Facebook and Commons

November 28

Quahadi gallery undeleted. Please take a look

Getting too deep in the pudding?

10 Volumes of Photographic History of the Civil War

Upload photos from Photos8

Unseen photo

Determining language in templates

User based categories?

December 4

Speedy deletion of clearly out of scope files

Do we have an information template for books?

Bug/configuration error: Email to watchlisters when a file is deleted

Commonist could not update gallery

How place Commons photo.jpg on relevant Wikipedia page? RSVP.

SVG Map Problem

December 5

Geoscience Australia data licensed as CC-BY

Any special exception for Korean War Veterans Memorial?

Global file usage delay

group of uncategorized files - "VC"

December 6

Renaming

Pro-active improvement of others' uploads

License in the upload file

New files "extended view" tool

Israel and FOP

Google-hosted Life images

December 3

Categorizing pictures of people by age

category:Wikipedia self-reference

December 7

Closed captioning file type

Category question

December 9

Credit line: "(c) Albrecht Dürer / CC-BY-SA-3.0 (DE)‎"

How is camera type categorization done?

How to nominate Picture of the Day

Categories

December 10

File incorrectly named

john's pizza pictures from Tudokin

December 8

Obviously I need a life...what constitutes "incidental"?

December 11

PD-Ireland on Wikipedia-en

Etiquette when deleting POV

Abridgment of namespace names

Large SVG files

Public information upload question

Finjan blocks uploads & other stuff

December 12

File:Bibiane Thiffault.jpg

Automatically add link WP:media help in header of media file

December 13

Image description editing problem

Is there a tag for "please categorize this better"?

"Nominate for deletion" button

Adding photos of famous actors, musicians, etc?

December 14

Rewording the PD-USGov templates?

Bundesarchive "by year" category

Feature request: Camera meta data

Copyvio?

Please upload an audio corrected version of File:Elephants Dream.ogg

Robots tagging Flickr Commons images

Toolserver

Dumping