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COMMONS DISCUSSION PAGES Commons Help desk Village pump (general discussion) Copyright Proposals Technical Graphics and photography discussion Photography critiques Image improvement Illustration workshop Map workshop Photography workshop Video and sound workshop Categories for discussion Undeletion requests Deletion requests Volunteer Response Team/Noticeboard Translators' noticeboard Work requests for bots Contact administrators Vandalism User problems (Dispute resolution) Blocks and protections Bureaucrats' noticeboard CheckUser requests Oversight requests Telegram IRC webchat Commons mailing list (archive) Commons' bugs on Phabricator Welcome to the Village pump This page is used for discussions of the operations, technical issues, and policies of Wikimedia Commons. Recent sections with no replies for 7 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; the latest archive is Commons:Village pump/Archive/2024/11. Please note: If you want to ask why unfree/non-commercial material is not allowed at Wikimedia Commons or if you want to suggest that allowing it would be a good thing, please do not comment here. It is probably pointless. One of Wikimedia Commons’ core principles is: "Only free content is allowed." This is a basic rule of the place, as inherent as the NPOV requirement on all Wikipedias. Have you read our FAQ? For changing the name of a file, see Commons:File renaming. Any answers you receive here are not legal advice and the responder cannot be held liable for them. If you have legal questions, we can try to help but our answers cannot replace those of a qualified professional (i.e. a lawyer). Your question will be answered here; please check back regularly. Please do not leave your email address or other contact information, as this page is widely visible across the internet and you are liable to receive spam. Purposes which do not meet the scope of this page: Please do not make deletion requests here: use the relevant process for it instead. For technical support and graphics talks (PNG, SVG, GIF, etc.), please post on the Graphics village pump. To ask for image improvement, see: Graphic Lab/Photography workshop for photographs. Graphic Lab/Map workshop for maps. Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop for other illustrations. To ask for video or audio improvement, see Commons:Graphic Lab/Video and sound workshop. For translation requests, please post at Commons:Requests for translation. For media requests, please post at Commons:File requests. Search archives:     Start a new discussion

#	💭 Title	💬	👥	🙋 Last editor	🕒 (UTC)
1	Long-term disputes on various wikis involving a cross-wiki IP author	16	3	MicBy67	2024-12-06 01:03
2	Flag of France	17	4	Matrix	2024-11-29 18:24
3	New calendar templates	2	2	TheDJ	2024-11-30 12:32
4	Defective old files	7	3	RoyZuo	2024-12-01 18:54
5	Odd categorisation by user	27	6	Enhancing999	2024-12-01 17:39
6	iOS Commons app is no more	11	5	Prototyperspective	2024-12-02 11:45
7	Category:Snow tires vs. Category:Winter tires	5	4	Jmabel	2024-12-02 01:13
8	Invitation to the upcoming Commons Community Calls -- December 12, 2024	1	1	Sannita (WMF)	2024-11-29 10:00
9	Template:DeepcatSearch	10	3	Prototyperspective	2024-12-01 19:56
10	Tmbox improvments	3	2	Matrix	2024-11-30 12:04
11	Broken upload?	3	2	Pigsonthewing	2024-11-29 21:45
12	Commons Gazette 2024-12	1	1	RoyZuo	2024-12-01 08:56
13	I found a really strangely formatted file	4	3	RadioKAOS	2024-12-01 22:49
14	CropTool not working again	1	1	RadioKAOS	2024-12-01 23:13
15	A type of monument that needs a category	11	4	Donald Trung	2024-12-04 20:51
16	Brakes	12	6	Thgoiter	2024-12-02 20:14
17	Search for image orientation and similar parameters	1	1	Grin	2024-12-02 16:22
18	RIP JarrahTree	4	4	Abzeronow	2024-12-03 18:03
19	Clarification Regarding the Appearance of the "Infobox" Template	3	3	Mike Peel	2024-12-04 08:17
20	Cooked food in supermarkets	7	6	Jeff G.	2024-12-06 13:04
21	Similar images with very different licences	5	2	Chipmunkdavis	2024-12-04 15:06
22	Commons:What is this? (Get help with file categorization)	9	4	Prototyperspective	2024-12-05 11:52
23	Minor changes coming to UploadWizard	1	1	Sannita (WMF)	2024-12-04 11:38
24	Conflicting info on sculptures	4	3	ReneeWrites	2024-12-05 15:05
25	Temporary Accounts - introduction to the project	1	1	SGrabarczuk (WMF)	2024-12-05 02:10
26	Admin as supervoter	11	4	GPSLeo	2024-12-05 18:28
27	to flip or not to flip	3	2	Herzi Pinki	2024-12-06 08:31
28	Unneeded bloated category tree	9	3	Well very well	2024-12-06 13:04

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

Broadwick St, Soho, London: a water pump with its handle removed commemorates Dr. John Snow's tracing of an 1854 cholera epidemic to the pump. [add]

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

November 4

Wikidata - translating categories and file descriptions

I started a discussion on the Wikidata mailing list about possible use of some Wikidata software to help make Commons better by allowing multilingual categories or structured data about images. Please feel free to help create a proposal here: User:Kozuch/Wikidata.

Cologne tram maps

I updated File:Netzplan Köln technisch english.jpg. It is clearly an jpeg export of a vector image. Can someone upload the original image, or update the image and render a new jpeg image? - unsigned

Commons mobile uploads testing week

Uploading pictures from mobile devices to Commons must be simple for everybody! The Wikimedia Mobile engineering team has fresh software and you can help testing it.

WHEN

• Kick-off on Monday February 25 at 17:30 UTC (9:30 PST - 23:00 IST).
• The testing focus will continue during the rest of the week until Sunday March 3.

WHERE

• Online: for details see & watch mw:Mobile QA/Commons uploads.

images used in a category

Given a category of images, is there a way to determine which (if any) of those images are being used? (other than checking each individually) – JBarta (talk) 19:53, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

In your preferences, enable the gadget "GLAMorous". This will add a link to the toolbox menu on the left ("GLAMorous"). Click this link while looking at a category to see the file usage. --rimshot^talk 00:11, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

It's like I walk into a bar and ask "Is the beer free around here?" and the bartender says "Why yes, yes it is." Thanks bartender! – JBarta (talk) 00:30, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Help:Gadget-GlobalUsageUI - in some rare cases it seems to fail but generally it does it. Or simply click Usage of all files in the tool box (sidebar) which is part of the default extraTabs2 gadget. -- Rillke^(q?) 23:41, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Good to know this. Thanks! §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 12:14, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

indicating file description language

I know descriptions can be and often are multilingual, but I'm wondering if there's any way to group or indicate images (template or category, maybe?) that are described in a particular language? I'm thinking this might be useful for maintenance, particularly for smaller languages -- for instance indicating uncategorized images that could benefit from review by someone who reads the language that they are described in; and perhaps for translation. Is there anything like this? Thanks, sorry if this is an old issue. -- Phoebe (talk) 02:55, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing... you need to be reasonably fluent in the language in question AND English to categorize things. Uploads in minority languages are pretty rare, people generally don't upload in African languages if they can do it in French/English/etc. The last images to be categorized are often in something like Malayalam, which is far from a minority language, but seems to lack good translation tools into non-Indic languages. Chinese text is also notoriously difficult to machine-translate. I think filenames and descriptions are pretty good targets for automatic translation, they often involve proper nouns and aren't complicated. Unless you are doing English ↔ German translation with Google, which is still shockingly bad :) --moogsi (blah) 04:45, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and the actual answer to the question, if I'd remember that, is "no", there is nothing set up to find "Media needing categorization with descriptions in [language]" or even "Media with descriptions in [language]", "Media with filenames in [language]" --moogsi (blah) 05:23, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

We do have Category:Categories by language and all her daughters, but probably not as comprehensive as described by Phœbe. Jean-Fred (talk) 08:38, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Sending it to the right category inside Category:Unidentified subjects by country might already help. --Foroa (talk) 14:28, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. I was thinking about this because I came across a group of uncategorized images described in Hebrew, which is also notoriously bad with machine translation. It would be nice to have those in a place that we could point Hebrew speakers to in order to help out with! -- Phoebe (talk) 16:03, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

{{Description insufficient}} does this, categorising into eg Category:Media with insufficient description (mr). It's not widely used, but it's there. Rd232 (talk) 12:41, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

That's useful, but doesn't seem quite right for files that are described perfectly adequately but in a language that is not widely read. Phoebe (talk) 18:08, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

no, it's intended for such files: The description for this file does not provide enough information to adequately identify the subject to a broad audience. Please provide enough detail so that the subject can be identified by readers of at least some major language (from which others can translate further). A description in English should be added if possible. {{Description insufficient|he}} would be for Hebrew. Rd232 (talk) 21:34, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

It's certainly a much better idea than Commons:Requests for translation, which is a mess. {{Description insufficient}} is a fine idea, but the name isn't too great. Also what constitutes a "major language" is a problem - if I think it would be helpful for something to be translated from Chinese into English, there's no point in saying the description is insufficient because hundreds of millions of people already understand it. Unfortunately, English is kind of the de facto default language on Commons. (Of course I am saying that I should be able to tag stuff for translation into English (I'm too lazy to learn anything else :P). Or to specify a target language. --moogsi (blah) 09:55, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

If you have an idea for a better template name, let's hear it - we can rename it easily enough, or create a redirect. I'm not sure about requesting target language; I think that may be unnecessary complexification, at this stage anyway. Rd232 (talk) 23:36, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Agree, it's no good because you may as well consider every image on commons to be in that category, and therefore you don't need a tag. Penyulap ☏ 18:31, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

The most "natural" translation will be there when the file is properly categorised by all its aspects. Don't count on all sorts of special templates and categories to get a translation going. If people find the file in a category that they feel concerned with, such as "unidentified things in yyy", they will notice that there is language problem and we have a good chance that they will improve the description. --Foroa (talk) 10:45, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Video file size limit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T48432

Is there a maximum file size for ogv-files? I am aware of the maximum file size policy of 100 MB, on the other hand I saw videos here that are larger. Currently I am preparing a video of sled dogs which is (in ogv format) as big as 778 MB - at 6:23 minutes and 1920x1080. Eliminating the audio (wind and sounds of the sliding sled) does not reduce the size significantly. I could shorten it or reduze the dimensions, but that would contradict the policy of loading up the best possible quality. --Tsui (talk) 20:48, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

You may go up to 500MB using Chunked uploads. Bigger videos were uploaded through a Server-side upload − you are welcome to request one. :) Jean-Fred (talk) 22:42, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! I will edit the film, cutting it a bit to a size under 500 MB (it's no cineastic masterpiece, so this won't hurt too much), and try the chunked upload. --Tsui (talk) 23:20, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

You’re welcome. Note that if cutting to 500MB turns out too damaging for the video there is really no problem with requesting a server-side upload − folks here may help with the request if needed. Cheers, Jean-Fred (talk) 23:28, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Problem with requesting a server-side upload is that it requires a bugzilla-account. When beginning to create one, there appears the warning "Activity on most bugs, including email addresses, will be visible to the public", which keeps me from progressing. I don't want to make my e-mail public and I do not have a secondary or tertiary e-mail adress for which I don't care about spam.

So, after quite a lot of cutting, editing and re-editing I ended up with a film reduced to 1280x720 and 421 MB, which is sufficient for its contents. I tried - respectively am currently trying again - to load it up with the chunked upload feature. First time the progress bar increased for less than a tenth of the full bar, then stopped, while the estimated upload time kept growing steadily until I broke off the upload at "9 hours 3 minutes and 56 seconds remaining". Currently the progress bar stopped increasing at about a fifth of the full length and the counter for the remaining time started going up again, predicting 46 minutes and 33 seconds at the moment but still increasing rapidly. A bug report won't be filed for the above reason.

I didn't expect uploading larger movies to be that complicated. --Tsui (talk) 22:12, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I'd suggest splitting the movie into three parts (~250-300Mb) and using my my upload tool, Commons:Up!, to get the job done. Chunked uploading (and especially so with Upload Wizard) is still a broken little piece of shit, and I get the impression that the devs really couldn't give more of a flying fuck. Good luck mate. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 22:38, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I've seen that tool. But if I understand it right the movie (at 421 MB) would have to be splitted and we would end up with two or three separate files instead of one. Or is there a misunderstanding on my side? --Tsui (talk) 22:47, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, yeah, as Fastily says, chunked uploads can be a little shaky. It’s still an experimental feature. :-/

I understand the reasons you are not willing to create an account on Bugzilla. I can make the request for you, if you pass me along the requirements (mostly the file location on some accessible server). The upload will be credited to your username. Jean-Fred (talk) 23:35, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Getting complicated, I didn't want to make so much fuss about a "little" movie that is far from being a masterpiece, rather made of some wiggly impressions. But I will try to get some webspace somewhere that is accessible publicly and without password, where I can put the files (ogv, txt). Currently I do not maintain any webspace, but that should be no problem. When the files are online I will contact you. Thank you for the offer! --Tsui (talk) 23:57, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Sure :) Jean-Fred (talk) 00:08, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Just install Dropbox, upload the video there and let me know — I can help with the rest of the details, since I have requested server-side-uploads a lot of times already. odder (talk) 01:48, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

For a file as large as 778MB, I highly recommend using bittorrent software for efficient, reliable transfer. Modern bittorrent programs such as Deluge have support for DHT (AKA ‘trackerless’) and magnet links, which make this sort of task easy. So that means the process for transferring a file is to just create a ‘.torrent’ file or a magnet link, send that to the receiver, and leave your computer and torrent software running while they download the file. If anything interrupts the connection, the transfer will continue from where it left off (unlike HTTP, FTP, etc.), and when the transfer completes, the BTIH verifies that the files are 100% bit-for-bit identical. Files this large are what bittorrent was made for! —James Haigh (talk) 2013-03-21T07:50:17Z

I'd recommend uploading them to Archive.org. It's a rather convenient place for files like this. I don't know if it's one of your concerns, but Archive.org also has I believe a larger body of remixers who like to do cool things with uploaded Free files.--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:05, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you all! Yesterday, before the hints to Dropbox, BitTorrent and Archive.org (I like the idea of creative remixing; have to take a look since I just started film making), I wrote in Jean-Fred's discussion that the files are available at (my) Google Drive for now. I don't know yet if this is a sufficient way of making them available. --Tsui (talk) 17:36, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

 Done at bugzilla:46432. No idea either if Google Drive is okay for that − we’ll see what the devs say :) Jean-Fred (talk) 20:14, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

We need a multiple-uploading option with licensing in the Commons APP.

I've written here Why We need that. I asked for help some days ago, but no-one replied.--Coentor (talk) 21:34, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

You might want to comment at mw:Wikimedia Apps/Commons or enter a bug / request a feature. Regards, Christoph Braun (talk) 22:34, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Fund for collecting images?

The State Library of New South Wales has an old public domain photograph (PD in Australia, PD in the US) that I'd like to obtain, and they've confirmed by email that they're happy to oblige—if I pay. So I'm going to give up my efforts, but before I do, I wanted to ask if Wikimedia has run into this before and if there are either ways around this or if there is even a fund that allows for certain photographs to be purchased, perhaps if I can prove its worth in both encyclopedic value and whatnot. I thought I'd ask. Thanks. (Also, apparently I'd have to obtain permission to upload the file here, but there'd be no fee.) – Kerαunoςcopia^◁galaxies 01:24, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

You don't want to know how much I pay for old books and old newspapers while on disability pay. Adam Cuerden (talk) 15:09, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Did I see a notice from the Wikimedia Foundation inviting applications for funding a while ago, or was that just my imagination? — SMUconlaw (talk) 11:03, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. I contacted WMF and they agree that (to use my words) the image shouldn't be held hostage. I've ordered the image from the library at zero cost to me (hehe) with an explanation and am fully expecting either a rejection email or no response at all. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁galaxies 20:08, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Watermarks

Some need to be kept, some need to be stored and removed later, and too many people have been blocked for uploading watermarked images. Some images are supposed to be watermarked. I would be high time there was a consensus on this contentious issue, because the confusion is, and knee-JERK reactions are, causing damage. Penyulap ☏ 07:35, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

The proposal is Commons:Watermarks. Do you see any glaring issues with it? --moogsi (blah) 08:14, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Well one glaring issue is that at least half of it is not guideline material - it's "how to" stuff which should be moved to a separate page. It's also not clear enough; the approach of COM:OVERWRITE is a lot clearer. Rd232 (talk) 13:16, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I did notice that :) How-to content is now at Help:Removing watermarks --moogsi (blah) 17:31, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Not enough community input, it's dragging on and destroying contributors unnecessarily. Penyulap ☏ 08:34, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Can you provide any example? --Ecemaml ^{talk to me/habla conmigo} 08:56, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

There are two examples at the moment at blocks and protections and they are scattered everywhere else too. We should find some example pics as well, so we know what we are talking about. Penyulap ☏ 09:57, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

examples

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discussion

I think it needs to be put into text somewhere for the people who can only follow text, and it needs to be done quickly. Wherever the spam rules are, they have to be clarified as well, because a lot of spamming or advertising, which is supposed to mean like a page that is nothing but advertising was taken to mean that an acceptable, even trivial, link on a massive amount of uploads equated to massive spamming, resulting in tragedy. Penyulap ☏ 10:14, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Watermarks should be clearly against policy (not just "discouraged"). While timestamps and occasional watermarks from 3rd parties are unavoidable, an uploader believed to be deliberately uploading (especially mass uploading) images with watermarks should risk a block and have those files deleted on sight. It's harsh, yes, and we might lose some decent images, yes, but unless the policy is clear and consequences are firm, we'll just continue to have the same sort of unclear willy-nilly "enforcement" we've been having thus far. The alternative is to continue with the policy that watermarks are "discouraged" and take no action against watermark uploaders and continue to put those images in the ever growing "images with watermarks" category and collectively stop complaining about it. – JBarta (talk) 16:27, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

•  Support The alternative. The only determination should be whether the media can be useful for any educational purpose. Most watermarks do not actually invalidate the educational value of the image/video. Of course, there is a problem if the watermark is unfree (thus making the aggregate work containing it and some free media non-distributable), but that is the problem with the specific case, not with watermarks in general. Sinnamon (talk) 19:08, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

The general problem with watermarks is twofold... 1) Commons should not be an advertising vehicle for every shutterbug trying to advertise his website. Attribution yes, watermarks no. Not to mention watermarked images look quite unencyclopedic. And 2) Watermark removal is normally a time consuming process. I should know, I've spent a LOT of time removing watermarks. Graphists here in general have spent a HUGE LOT of time removing watermarks. And the watermarks keep coming... and coming... and coming... much faster than we can get rid of them. – JBarta (talk) 19:23, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

I too have experience, and it's a trivial matter which becomes more trivial by the day. Penyulap ☏ 04:23, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

@Penyulap: I've now seen some of your work, and am truly amazed at some of the watermarks that you managed to remove, where I would have said: impossible without pixel-by-pixel editing. I would sure like to know how you do it. If we can duplicate your skills, we can work on our backlog faster. Whaledad (talk) 04:31, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for you kind words. On the subject of the guidance pages on commons, they are incomplete or archaic to the point it harms the project. Software advances make it ever faster and ever easier to do this work, and I found myself looking at ways to automate the process and I can clearly see this can be done to the point where the casual observer cannot notice the removal in most circumstances. The idea that we should block people over this may have been an idea long ago, but it's as much sense today as blocking people for uploading Jpg images, which is just as trivial. Writing a bot is not useful if the current blocking continues, or if people cannot be educated about modern techniques, because there will be no images to work on. The Graphics lab exists to do this work, and if we have enough of this work to do, then tools can be found to do it faster than the very short time it takes now. Penyulap ☏ 04:55, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

The practical reality is that Commons has over 55,000 watermarked images (more if you count those that are not templated) and the number is going up. This is where idealism is run over dead by practical reality. Until that number goes down dramatically, we still have a problem and all the talk about software advances and what you can clearly see etc etc is just ethereal chit chat. In other words, like many things in life, if it was really that easy someone would have done it already. – JBarta (talk) 05:30, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

'etheral chit-chat' ? show me any image that can't have the watermark removed, and I'll show you 10 fast and easy completed requests at the GFX lab. If we have 55,000 then it's obviously not enough of a proportion to inspire people to write full automation tools is it ? We just take requests as they come and are not in the least bit overloaded. There are other factors involved in the 55k, how many are time-stamps that make no difference ? how many are in articles that everyone is fine with ? how many watermark templates have a link to the Graphics lab written on them ? You can't claim convincingly there is some burgeoning waiting list when there is no list and the Graphics lab is running smooth and fast.

If there is a policy established against watermarks then there is no point in writing automation tools. If there was a policy saying 'timestamps are welcome' then that would be first cab-off-the-rank for automation.

"if it was really that easy someone would have done it already" sheesh, that's harsh, I'd picture you as the guy in the office with a sign on the door 'research and development grants' for a company that is serious about not doing any research and development at all. Penyulap ☏ 06:01, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm reminded of a quote by Ross Perot... "The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river." I suppose that fits in here somewhere. – JBarta (talk) 06:20, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

@JBarta: I understand you desire to stop advertisement. If I would run a personal project sharing some images I might decide to state that there are no advertisements allowed, but Commons is not my personal project. Commons exists to provide freely licenced educational media, it also has created community consensus that advertisement should not stay here, but as I see it, this consensus exists within the scope of the project. Thus if we have two media files, both showing something, and one of them has some advertisement in it, it's quite appropriate to remove the "damaged" one. However, if we will stop new educational content because of advertisement through watermarking, then we are forgetting our original goals. It sort of reminds me of some ecological groups, which got so worked up about burning oil, that they began to support atomic power stations. The single issue can often seem very important, but isn't it important to stand back every so often and ask oneself "Why do I find this issue even worth thinking about?" Now, I will not claim to know for sure why you feel so passionate about this, but my guess (assuming good faith) would be that you want to maximise educational value of every media on this project, and when you see somebody adding watermark you get angry at that person, because they've taken something away from the whole world by doing so. However, you then propose to completely disallow watermarking. In a sense you are saying "If we can't have a perfect image/video, we should have nothing at all." I, on the other hand, see it a little differently. In the past those, who wanted to advertise on a popular site, looked at the way to post a banner or a pop-up ad on there, today some of those groups/individuals are forced to create freely licenced educational content. (P.S. I have tried to see what you are saying from your perspective, sometimes such an attempt may seem dishonest or patronising, please be assured that this is not my intention, and if I put something into your keyboard that you wouldn't typed, I do apologise) Sinnamon (talk) 05:49, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

My reasons for opposing watermarks are:

Watermarks demean the project... a photo with some promotional blurb or url scrawled across it looks unencyclopedic, unprofessional and juvenile.

The Wikiproject does not exist to promote any and every dope with a camera phone who takes pictures of bridges and buses.

Watermarks waste a LOT of other editor's time. Remove a few, and I promise you'll get sick of doing it after a while. Is it everyone else's job to clean up what arguably shouldn't be there in the first place?

As far as making watermarks acceptable, is that what you really want? Even MORE people uploading watermarked images? Quite often not even their own images? Even more users from Whateverstan plugging articles with his images not because they add anything useful to the article but because he put a watermark on the botton of those images and in his delusion he thinks that will be the road to his fame and fortune?

Most people are uploading watermarked images because they think they can, and they see that we don't have the backbone to simply say NO because we're so worried about losing their precious images. On this point we're pathetic. If we made watermarking against policy and were clear, consistent and firm about it, most of those people would stop doing it. Many (if not most) would instead upload UNwatermarked images and use more suitable attribution... because if they want their images used here, they would have no other choice.

We're like weak pitiful parents who are afraid to be firm with their children... so their children run all over them.

– JBarta (talk) 20:48, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

•  Support "against policy" and thus a "clear policy". At this time, we give the "watermarkers" the illusion that they can effectively advertise for free on Wikimedia. While the end result (after countless hours on our end) is that their pictures are only used after watermark removal. The only hope they have is that they will enjoy a period of free exposure through the "commons cat sister links" under many Wikipedia and Wikiquote articles (this goal is sometimes reflected in over-catting). I think having a clear policy is in everybody's interest as it avoids any kind of unjustified expectation by the advertiser. Obviously an exception must be made for archival material of which no watermark-free copies exist. And we could and should spend our editing time, skills and resources on those. Whaledad (talk) 01:29, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

what about camera time-stamps ? seems if something is written into the image, it doesn't automatically make the image worthless, if it is spam, there is a spam policy, if the images were ruined, why do camera manufacturers have timestamped images ? Penyulap ☏ 04:23, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, I think camera manufacturers added that at the request of users. In the digital camera age it is of course utter nonsense to "burn" the date/time into the image, rather than using file date/time and exif. Anyway, again, if the original has the date/time "burned in" and no clean original is available, it should be accepted (and cleaned), provided the picture is worthwhile. Whaledad (talk) 04:31, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

•  Comment I see people supporting here. But can someone please highlight the proposal that is being supported? Maybe in some different colour? This is difficult to understand exactly which statement is being supported. Its just a matter of one "no" and the whole statement turns opposite and then its a whole mess. Please! §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 12:07, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying, and this is not just a problem here, but is rather indicative of the chaos of blocking that is going on over watermarks in general. I shall need to restructure this whole thing, because 'discussion' is not clear enough for some. Penyulap ☏ 12:21, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

policy proposal:time-stamp watermarks

May be easier to go type by type so that the watermark page can be cleaned up sooner rather than never.

typical example

Propose that time-stamp watermarked images are welcome on commons. Penyulap ☏ 05:27, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Propose instead that timestamp watermarks are not the issue, and while not "welcomed", they are a minority of watermarks and no one really has a problem with them as they are different (and largely accidental) than the attribution watermarks causing all the uproar. – JBarta (talk) 05:38, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Claims that policy is too obvious to write is fine when nobody is arguing and blocking people. In this case, each block becomes a defacto policy discussion page. You say it's ok and everyone should be smart enough to think like you, then 5 minutes from now you'll be wanting to block someone over an issue equally trivial as a timestamp. So it needs to be written AS policy, and to do that we need something to LINK to, a discussion, a consensus. Or just argue forever more, whatever is good for you. Penyulap ☏ 05:46, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Nobody is arguing and blocking over timestamp watermarks (well, other than you... and now me thank you very much). So let's not make an issue where none exists. Concentrate the discussion on attribution watermarks. Preferrably the ones where some dear sweet soul uploads a thousand images with "Eat at Joe's" scrawled across each one. – JBarta (talk) 06:49, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, they are, and just answer the question with support or not if you want to help. Spam has it's own policy page, it should have a link to it from the watermark pages. Penyulap ☏ 06:54, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

New guideline draft

I thought the old guideline draft was really rather poor - far too wordy, far too unclear. So I made a new one, at Commons:Watermarks (the old one is at Commons:Watermarks/old draft). What do people think of that?

Incidentally, I can't find any reference to spamming or promotion in policy or guideline, including COM:BLOCK, which seems a bit odd. Am I missing something? Rd232 (talk) 15:50, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

re spam, (facepalm) people are getting blocked for more policies that don't even exist. The draft is great, however, it still has too many harsh and unrealistic ideas in it. The word 'discouraged' equates to 'blockable' in many admin's minds, and the draft clearly links datestamps with 'discouraged'. I can't see Juliette Average uploading good pics to commons and getting herself blocked as a good outcome.

The most important thrust of the argument here, is what effect if any do watermarks have on education ? I would say in the case of timestamps none whatsoever and so they should be welcomed with open arms. What is the worst case scenario here ? that someone intentionally uploads tens of thousands of images after adding timestamps ? 'oh the humanity' of tens of thousands of good quality educational images. Penyulap ☏ 16:38, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

The other problem is an operational problem, there are watermarked images out there that exist in no other form or will never be available unwatermarked. Those images can easily have the marks removed. That can't happen if they can't ever make it to the graphics lab and the person can't do it themselves. Penyulap ☏ 16:52, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

• Rd232's latest draft says "uploading of files with visible but relatively unobtrusive watermarks is merely discouraged, not prohibited" but this is in a section called "Unacceptable watermarks" and in the summary at the top, this type of watermark is listed as "not acceptable". Something that is not prohibited is accepted, hence it is acceptable. At least, that's how I'd interpret it. Where it says "continuing to upload media with these watermarks after warnings may be treated as a form of spam, which may lead to contributors being blocked from editing" it is clear and it's an improvement over ad hoc blocking. However, I think further improvement is possible. I'll write up a different proposal. Rybec (talk) 23:54, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I like the question mark icon and the "discouraged watermarks" section Stuart.Jamieson just added. Rybec (talk) 23:58, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

March 21

Userboxes - Languages

I noticed an anomaly in the languages last year and made a note on the discussion page. But nobody reads the discussion pages so nothing will ever be done and the anomaly will continue. The thing is, I do most of my editing here in Commons, adding blazons to existing coats of arms. I would like to add a babel userbox (like I have on my Wikipedia user page), which says that I speak Blazon. Over there the code is blz (as in blazon), but here blz produces Balantak, which sharp eyed readers will note, doesn't have many Zs in it. Is there any way to get this sorted out? It seems that an Administrator is required. Is it important? No, of course not. But it would be nice when I add blazons, people could check my userpage and see that I know what I am talking about. Kiltpin (talk) 15:25, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

blz actually is the ISO 639-3 code for the Balantak language. For Blazon (I think, am I correct?) you need to "invent" a new abbreviation. Rbrausse (talk) 16:05, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

So is it Wikipedia that is wrong? Which makes the anomaly even worse, because it works over there, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kiltpin Kiltpin (talk) 16:18, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

[second conflict] define "wrong"... Normally babel boxes are based on the ISO codes, using the standardized abbreviations for something different is IMHO a Bad Idea (tm). Rbrausse (talk) 16:26, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

On en:User:Kiltpin you use {{Babel|en|de-1|blz-3}}, while here you used {{#babel:en|de-1|blz-3}}. if you try {{#babel:en|de-1|blz-3}} on en wiki page than you will get the same result as here. Template {{Babel}} is older than {{#babel}} parser function, and they differ in order of execution: {{#babel}} first checks the list of languages and than goes through local templates, while {{Babel}} does it the other way around. It is quite a mess since both systems are being used and they are 99% compatible. Some years ago there was a push to switch to new {{#babel}} system, but a lot of people were attached to the old template. --Jarekt (talk) 16:54, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I see what you mean on your en:User:Kiltpin page. However I have to say that I do not like this kind of mixing of language userboxes with other skills userboxes. There is enough of exotic languages (like Balantak) to keep us confused without need to decipher if "Blazon" is a language or not. We do have template {{User blazon-2}}, which I moved from {{User blz-2}} due to conflicts with Balantak. I do not like the idea of adding more blazon templates, and find {{User Heraldry}}, much more informative. --Jarekt (talk) 16:21, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks All, for the input and information. I believe that Blazon is on a par with Morse Code and sign language for the deaf, if not a language in itself, then certainly a dialect. I speak it equal to, or above -3, so thanks all the same but I won't be using {{User blazon-2}}. I'll stick with {{User Heraldry}}. Thanks again. Kiltpin (talk) 19:43, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Suggested move for image

Commons has a picture File:Scrotum.JPG (warning, contains an image of a scrotum that has been inflated to much more than normal size) which most definitely does not show the normal appearance of a scrotum, and is therefore misleading. I suggest that it should be renamed to something like File:Inflated scrotum, and any links to it on Wikipedia changed, leaving the original name free for a more normal depiction of a scrotum, thus fulfilling the w:principle of least surprise. -- Karada (talk) 17:34, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

just the sort of thing we throw overboard the professional photographers to make room for. Penyulap ☏ 17:43, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Moving files breaks hotlinks (see Help:File redirect). Until this and some other renaming bugs are fixed, renaming should be done to old files only when really necessary. Rd232 (talk) 23:30, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

See also Commons talk:File renaming/Archive/2012#Policy on very short filenames. The file can't be moved simply because the name is very short. It does display what the file name suggests. --Stefan4 (talk) 19:21, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

3D models as a file type

Geometry-related media are better expressed with a 3D model you can rotate and move around.. polyhedra or anything with a particular shape.. types of buildings, molecules...

Depending on the filetype it may be easy to embed a viewer in wiki pages. This is pie-sky stuff - I recognise the cost of enabling such a thing may far outweigh the benefit, but I'm curious if anyone can think of any more uses for this. Are there anywhere near enough to make it worthwhile, or would it be gimmicky? --moogsi (blah) 23:26, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

a 3D filetype is on the wishlist: Commons:File_types#Unsupported_file_types. Don't hold your breath... Rd232 (talk) 23:32, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Ah, sorry. Clearly this has already been discussed many times in many contexts. If I were holding my breath for it I'd be dead 9 years by now.. --moogsi (blah) 23:59, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

This would be easier if there were a 3D type widely understood by web browsers, but there doesn't seem to be. Around 1996-1997, VRML plugins were available for a number of browsers, sometimes preinstalled in standard software distributions, and VRML seemed to be the wave of the future, but then somehow the wheels quickly fell off... AnonMoos (talk) 00:41, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

My understanding was that en:X3D was the one. If I understood correctly, through X3DOM, it is natively supported by any browser with WebGL support (ie any modern Firefox, Chrome or Safari), or with Flash 11, ou using a browser plugin (source). Jean-Fred (talk) 01:26, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

X3D support is being considered (on bugzilla:1790) for a mw:Google Summer of Code, given a project mentor steps in and there is community support. So two questions:

Would we, the Commons community, support the activation of this feature if it would be developped?

Do we already have concrete use cases?

Jean-Fred (talk) 15:08, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your help!--Qgil (talk) 02:05, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

March 22

Seeking opinions

I am seeking opinions on a couple of images I recently uploaded from flickr. [1], [2], [3]. Lots of different agencies of the US Federal government use flickr, facebook, and other social media to document their activities. Most of those images were also taken by employees of US Federal agenies, so they are in the public domain. Unfortunately some of the US employees who manage the images publish them as "all rights reserved". The images I am asking about today are:

1. marked as released under a CC liccense that does not allow derivative works.
2. explicitly credited to "Musadeq Sadeq/US State Department"

If Mr Sadeq was a full time State Department employee these image would clearly be in the public domain.

If Mr Sadeq was hired by the State Department for a week or a month or a weekend, just to record the Kajaki Dam when State Department officials visited it, would that be sufficient to make him an "employee" whose work was in the public domain?

I always try to leave a thank you note every time I upload an image from flickr. I didn't leave my standard thank you message in this case, as they didn't use a fully free license.

Since I uploaded these images I googled "Musadeq Sadeq". The Associated Press has employed a photographer with that name in Afghanistan. I think if there is just one photographer named "Musadeq Sadeq", who was being paid by AP, who provided these images to State as a courtesy, then I think the credit line should have said something like "Courtesy Musadeq Sadeq/AP".

Initially I thought it most likely that Sadeq was either an American State Department employee. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Geo Swan (talk • contribs) 22:03, 21 March 2013‎ (UTC)

There is a small profile page of Sadeq here. Sounds like he is an independent photographer who has licensed his work to AP and others. Definitely not a full-time State Department employee; as for the other possibility it may depend on the details of the contract. It's possible but I'm not sure it's something we can assume. The photographer appears to be on facebook and twitter; perhaps he could be contacted and asked. Carl Lindberg (talk) 05:05, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

The credit line is for credit - it doesn't always imply part-ownership. It's a little counterintuitive, but a credit line of "NAME/Organisation" is often used where the organisation is a distributor for the author; they don't claim rights, but want to get their name in.

We had similar problems with the US Antarctic Program image library a few months back - every image in it was provided by private contributors, but their recommended credit line of "NAME/National Science Foundation" was mistakenly read as implying NSF were the authors/copyright holders. We ended up deleting several hundred images including a few FPs.

Given this experience, I would be very very careful in cases like this, especially if it's a known freelance photographer. Andrew Gray (talk) 13:00, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

fundraising

I would like to request wikimedia to allow vertical strips af advertisements at any one side of the page to raise the fund and meet expenses. no professional activity can exist in long run based only on donation. allowing advertiements need not nesseciate to compromise on quality.... -117.201.100.60

there are staff getting $4,000 a week, free air tickets and gravy-trains galore, there is by some accounts far too much money already. $30,000,000 USD in the bank accounts and they are looking for new ways to waste it all the time. Penyulap ☏ 05:41, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

WHAT?!?!? They should probably start paying all us editors maybe a half a cent per month at least. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 06:39, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

well, if I replaced wikipedia, I'd build a monastery in a distant (from everywhere? i guess) land, so people who do nought but improve the project can concentrate on it alone, with room and board free. Seems better than buying people SLR cameras, airfares, and tickets to concerts so that they can photograph the concerts, or paying people thousands to 'study editing'. Penyulap ☏ 06:48, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, as long as they're also planning on buying me an SLR camera (and perhaps a stripper + lap dance too), I really can't complain ;) -FASTILY ^(TALK) 08:05, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Well I had been thinking a for a long time that some admins need hookers so that they don't demand textual hand-relief from editors they block as a condition of unblocking, it is far too common. Come to think of it, it's about as common as the admin phrase "I'm not satisfied with the editors response", which has little, nothing, or even less to do with future disruption. Penyulap ☏ 09:48, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Patrolling

Is there a way to see patrolled and unpatrolled edits without being granted the patroller flag?

Or to have the ability to patrol edits without being autopatrolled myself? --Ricordisamoa 06:58, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

2nd question: No, see Special:ListGroupRights. Why don't you want to get patroller rights? --Leyo 07:51, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm terrified to be automatically patrolled, while on it.wiki I can see and patrol unpatrolled edits, but my edits aren't patrolled themselves. --Ricordisamoa 07:55, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

That's because on it.wiki everyone has "patrol" right. There's no need to see what's patrolled and what not if you don't want to/can't patrol. --Nemo 08:34, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Unexpected response from server iipsrv.fcgi

I put this up a few weeks ago, but received no response.

I've been trying to use the non-Flash image viewer that works with large images like File:El Tres de Mayo, by Francisco de Goya, from Prado in Google Earth-x0-y1.jpg, but I've only been getting the error message "Unexpected response from server iipsrv.fcgi"

The Flash image viewer never loads the image, either. Can anyone help? -- Veggies (talk) 15:36, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

I notified Daniel Schwen. He, as a volunteer, made this great tool available at Toolserver, a project by Wikimedia Germany that will be dropped in the near future. -- Rillke^(q?) 17:40, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

This is an issue with the VIPS version installed on the toolserver, which can run out of memory for certain large images. I have converted this particular image and manually uploaded it to the IIP cache. I'll open a ticked and request an update of VIPS. --Dschwen (talk) 19:23, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Hmmmm, seems to be a different issue. Requesting tiles from this partiular image causes a core dump (crash) of the iip server. --Dschwen (talk) 19:34, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, the error message is gone, but it still doesn't come up. -- Veggies (talk) 07:26, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Commons:Categories for discussion/2013/03/Category:Trams in Prague

I'm sorry for the cross posting both on the administrators' noticeboard and here, but I don't really know where to go with this (en.wiki has much more defined procedures and many more noticeboards than commons, here I feel a little lost). The discussion at Commons:Categories for discussion/2013/03/Category:Trams in Prague has been going on for about a week now, and I don't see a solution in the future without the input from others.

The problem comes down to the way the photos of Trams in Prague are categorised. Currently there are categories within Category:Trams in Prague for specific tram models such as: Category:Škoda 15T in Prague, but that category doesn't have any pictures, instead it just has one category for each individual vehicle (listed by number, a complete list is at: Category:Trams in Prague by registration number) this makes finding pictures incredibly hard. There are over 1000 categories containing 2000 pictures, most categories contain only one or two pictures, with many containing only other categories - another tram number that that vehicle has been renumbered as, but no explanation to that.

When I raised a proposal to upmerge all pictures it was opposed, I have tried to bring up numerous solutions where the categorisation by number system could sit side by side with a "all Tatra T3 photos in ONE category" system, but it is opposed no end. And all possible solutions I've brought up have been called "incorrect nor nonsensical" and "fundamentally incompatible with categorization principles". I don't feel that the editors in question want any change, and as such will argue tooth and nail against any change. This is why I would appreciate outside voices to weigh in, there has to be a solution in there somewhere, I just don't feel I can get one by myself. Can some admins have a look and maybe make a proposal or decision to solve this quandary? I hope that this dispute can be solved in a way that makes all happy, but don't see it happening without the input from others. I would also ask what precedent this highly detailed level of categorisation sets for the commons as a project (it really does make it unworkable trying to find pictures unless you are looking for a picture of a specific tram, which I'm not), it could/would apply to all rail vehicles by number as well as aircraft, ships etc, it is about on par with sub-categorising cars by colour ("Blue BMW M3s" etc) or by registration number. Liamdavies (talk) 16:00, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Some category templates on en.wiki and their equivalents here:

• w:Template:Category diffuse → {{CatDiffuse}}
• w:Template:Container category → {{Metacat}} or {{CatCat}}
• w:Template:Distinguished subcategory → ????????????????
• w:Template:All included → ????????????????

Please look at the definitions of the last two and imagine if they solve this particular problem. I'd argue it's a problem all over the category tree: people like to categorize things as deep as possible without considering how different types of keys cross over (age, location, whatever other attribute), so it's possible for media to disappear down one particular diffusing branch, never to be seen again unless you follow it --moogsi (blah) 20:57, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, but you've lost me a little, could you elaborate a little. Are the bottom templates ways of automatically loading a file into a parent category from a child? If so is there a template like that for commons? Liamdavies (talk) 05:00, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry if this wasn't clear. These templates don't automatically do anything, unless there is a bot patrolling them and making sure they are enforced. They are simply a way to mark a category as non-diffusing, i.e. images in that subcategory can also be found in the parent category. This makes it easy to browse for and find images in both a general and more specific way, without spreading them out everywhere by making every category a diffusing subcategory. In this example it would allow you to go to Category:Tatra T3 in Prague and see images of that vehicle, without having to flip through all the subcats. w:Wikipedia:Categorization#Non-diffusing_subcategories explains it better than I could. As far as I'm aware there is no equivalent to "all included" or "distinguished subcategory" on Commons. Someone has at least recognized the overzealousness of the categorization here, because there do exist Category:Quality images of trams in Prague and Trams in Prague, acting as sort of best-of lists --moogsi (blah) 13:42, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

March 23

[RenameLink] modification aborted by an extension hook

Just after uploading a file, I see sometimes the filename is not correct. Last week, I successfully used the RenameLink tool.

But today I did a major change: I changed many options within my preferences. And I cannot rename File:Vaut_mieux_un_mariage_GAY_qu'un_mariage_triste.jpeg. I got the following error message:

API request failed (hookaborted): The modification you tried to make was aborted by an extension hook

I have even restored all default settings, but still cannot use RenameLink!
I have not found the extension causing this issue :-(

Please answer this topic on MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-AjaxQuickDelete.js (I guess this is the right place to talk about that)

I have also explained the issue here: MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-AjaxQuickDelete.js/auto-errors#Autoreport_by_AjaxQuickDelete_179284447703

This is a copy-paste :

I had changed my preferences just before renaming the file.

When I saw the error, then I disabled gadgets and other settings and attempted again and again.

Until disabling almost all my settings! (I also empty the Firefox cache and restarted it)

I wanted to rename from

Vaut_mieux_un_mariage_GAY_qu'un_mariage_triste.jpeg to

Mieux_vaut_un_mariage_GAY_qu_un_mariage_triste.jpeg

in order to be more consistent with the panel text of the picture.

(I made the mistake while uploading the file)

Oliver H (talk) 09:45, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Replied at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-AjaxQuickDelete.js#RenameLink - modification aborted by an extension hook. Unfortunately I even can't improve the error message a lot because there are many different extensions that may prevent edits. It would be great if this could be improved in MediaWiki and Hexmode (Mark) was aware of this issue but I doubt the new Bugwrangler (Andre Klapper) is. One reason why I dislike this discontinuation at Wikimedia. -- Rillke^(q?) 10:04, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

A load of potentially out of scope uploads

Could someone take a look at this list. There are over 50 uploads of personal snapshots of this person and his wife, PDFs and scans of his CV, letters of recommendation, diplomas, etc. This person does not have an article on the English Wikipedia, and from a cursory check, not on any other Wikipedias either. Note that one of them, File:Open Journal of Optimization, Scientific Research Publishing,USA-Published Paper ID-2730005 of Dr. V. N. Maurya.pdf, is from a journal clearly marked "Copyright © 2006-2013 Scientific Research Publishing Inc. All rights reserved." [4]. More about that publisher at en:Scientific Research Publishing. - Voceditenore (talk) 11:42, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

The Pdf is ok because he is the author of the work, unless his is under contract and they ownz all Ur work. An OTRS ticket would help, and/or contacting him and/or them.

The images of people are brilliant for anthropological study, just great and right in scope if he's the photographer.

The diplomas are either nice examples of diplomas around the world or have the fastest educational content a printer can generate :D

I'd educate him about the OTRS system, it helps a lot, and categorising the images so they are useful are great, and the last few dregs he could use on his userpages if he wanted them or just delete. Penyulap ☏ 13:48, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

The people pictures go in Category:People of India it's not as spares as some similar categories in Asia, but it can use some more. The academic record is most likely out, and a bad idea either way, identity theft and so on. Penyulap ☏ 16:17, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

To quote COM:SCOPE about when PDF files are not considered within scope, "The content is essentially raw text (such files are not considered media files). Note that scans of existing books, reports, newspapers etc of historic or other external significance are not excluded on this ground, even if they contain no images". Unless there is some indication that these are historically important, they are out of scope. The personal snapshots could be considered personal images for a userpage, but if they aren't in use, they aren't in scope. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 17:04, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

No, the PDF is not magically okay because he is the author of the work. Publishers like that frequently demand copyright before publishing; just because someone is the author doesn't mean they have the rights to freely license the work they've already transferred the rights to.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:05, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

The next winner of China's got talent ?

There is a request here six months old, all images of the performer that are on commons have to be deleted because they are not free. I could make a portrait to complete the request, but if you want to describe a Mongolian child visually for an article, you can't. What do Mongolians look like ? Category:People of Inner Mongolia there is not even one woman or child. So as for warping an existing image into a portrait to complete the request and illustrate the article, well, we can't. Maybe there are some 'personal' pictures out there over-zealously deleted, maybe not. These 'personal pictures' as you say are going to be on the server whether they are deleted or not, so what is the point of deleting them so they can't be used ? There are many singers, dancers, actors, for whom you wouldn't immediately recognise just by the name of their article without their face to go with it, in many cases no free images will ever be made available. So in my case, nothing to work with to complete the request, and as for the countless geography articles, well, how can they be illustrated properly, what is a land without it's people. Penyulap ☏ 17:40, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are trying to say here, but please stop littering discussions with unnecessary images. Thanks. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 20:48, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

That's quite ok, you're not the only one in the chat here. I'd like to show a typical example of why we so totally need these 'personal' images. We need them to illustrate articles about the different peoples of the world, and I want to show just how empty our categories are. The picture is as close to a teenage Mongolian boy as we can get afaik. Not exactly close, I don't think I could convert that the way I can convert other peoples pics. Penyulap ☏ 04:09, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

We advertise for Getty Images now?

I was just scanning the watermarks discussion above yesterday about watermarks being used to advertise, and then today someone comes along and adds Getty Images links in the discussion page of two images I uploaded: here for example. It seemed to ring a familiar bell—are we advertising for Getty images now? – Kerαunoςcopia^◁galaxies 20:15, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

I would have said "well that's regular ole advertisement spam if I ever saw me some" but then I saw the username, a well-known contributor to Commons. My second thought was "wow, that's a sophisticated Trojan"... but then it seems the user has only two such edits. I.e. Trojan infestation not so likely. What's going on?? --Pitke (talk) 20:53, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Pitke, for notifying me, which Keraunoscopia seems to have forgotten.

Both edits were a note for later action, as these original Getty-Images-photos were uploaded from Flickr (allegedly) under a CC-BY license, while at the same time they are offered per regular paid-for-license by Getty agency. Though formally the license on Flickr seems to be o.k., I wonder whether there is really no risk for re-users of our image version to be sued for litigation by Getty Images. In 2 similar cases, I have therefore filed DRs, Commons:Deletion requests/File:Nicholas Gonzalez.jpg and Commons:Deletion requests/File:Nicholas Gonzalez 2.jpg, in order to get this potential risk evaluated. So, Zero advertising. --Túrelio (talk) 22:29, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

"which Keraunoscopia seems to have forgotten" How about forgetting to write in the edit summary that would've have explained what the heck you're doing. How about forgetting to sign the talk page? I've never seen someone put advertising in a talk page before, so I am completely free to ask about it here. Then you go and put in the edit summary of your follow-up edits that you're keeping "keraunoscopia from getting nervous"—are you seriously this immature? I'm not nervous, and I don't mind what you're doing. But because you can't properly explain yourself in the edit summary, like a seasoned pro would be expected to do, I asked my question here, and I wanted unaffiliated responses. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁galaxies 23:36, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

The normal way if you have a question about what another user, admin or no admin, is doing, is to ask him directly on his talkpage. --Túrelio (talk)

Fine. And next time, please leave an edit summary. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁galaxies 01:33, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

March 24

گلدشت

گلدشت یکی از خیابانهای کرمان است که به موازات خیابان میرزا آقاخان و عمود بر خیابان بهزاد قرار گرفته است.محمد رفیعی و س.خ از ارازل این خیابان بوده اند. -- 00:00, 24 March 2013‎ 37.98.101.214

Translation: Goldasht a street parallel to the street, Mirza Aqa Khan of Kerman, which is perpendicular to B Street. M. and S. Rafii. St. Arazl of the streets were. - 00:00, 24 March 2013 37.98.101.214

Uhm... what? -mattbuck (Talk) 16:50, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, you lost me at گلدشت یکی, (my Persian is so rusty!)KDS444 (talk) 06:36, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

There is no download link

This particular photo I want to download has no download link File:Jeff Porcaro Toto Fahrenheit World Tour 1986.jpg How can I use this photo?— Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:|]] ([[User talk:|talk]] • contribs)

I've added a download link. If it still does not work you could click on any smaller thumbnail on the file page. Those are linked to the full resolution image. --McZusatz (talk) 10:21, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

[7] -FASTILY ^(TALK) 22:43, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Strange problem with CSS

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T48575

Bizzaro strikes again

When I went to search for a template in the searchbox, at first I thought the drop-down with options to choose from based on what you've typed was missing...then I realised it was displaying, but way down at the bottom of the page. And, as I type this, I realise that the buttons that should be across the top of the edit box are text instead: "BoldItalic", "Signature and timestampLinkEmbedded fileReference" "AdvancedSpecial charactersHelpEdittools" in three rows. Seems the scripts might be choking? - The Bushranger (talk)

Checking shows the same behavior in Vector as in MonoBook - and Classic is showing no page formatting at all. - The Bushranger (talk) 06:13, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

And the "your edit was saved" notice is not correctly formatted as well, leaving a big white space between the tabs and the rest of the page, with small text in the upper left, when it appears. I think somebody borked a script somewhere... - The Bushranger (talk) 08:06, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I've been noticing this as well recently. Or similar things anyway. The edit box yes, edit notification too, and also problems with UploadWizard formatting. -mattbuck (Talk) 16:49, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

And it's started happening at en.wiki today. Apparently it's something to do with CSS? - The Bushranger (talk) 21:25, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

A similar report is at COM:FORUM#komprimiertes JavaScript kaputt?. Do you have errors (and only errors are important) in your JavaScript error console (if you don't know how to open it, search the web for open javascript error console+your_browser_name). -- Rillke^(q?) 21:41, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I am getting 'cssText.indexOf is not a function' errors, 16 of them just on one refresh on this page. - The Bushranger (talk) 00:56, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks folks. This is tracked as Bugzilla: 46401 now. -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 05:14, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Looks like Kringle on en.wiki fixed it. - The Bushranger (talk) 21:58, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

"Summary" header missing

Is there a reason the == {{int:filedesc}} == header is not added automatically with the basic upload form? The "license" header is added, so what's the issue? -- Orionist ★ talk 07:25, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I remember seeing this being asked for a while back, but nothing seemed to come of it. No idea why. I would support this change being made. — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:13, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I hope we get an answer before this gets buried under the heap. It's a simple change that will save a lot of avoidable maintenance. -- Orionist ★ talk 10:16, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, these headers are basically useless. I, for one, wouldn't sweat it. - 15:40, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Well it adds an edit link, and it's always useful to know by looking at the watchlist if someone edited the summary or the license. It also spaces out the info template from the image links so they don't look like a bunch of random stuff thrown at the page. Yeah I know it's not a big deal, it's just one of these small niggles, a niggle I hope is easy to fix. -- Orionist ★ talk 04:55, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Request for help for User:Microtoerisme to express the facts of their donation to Commons, without accusations of spamming

Hi, this following text has been deleted (along with similar attempts to express the facts) from the user page at User:Microtoerisme:

Microtoerisme has kindly donated thousands of educational images from microtoerisme.nl, and it would be of great benefit to this Wikiproject if there were a consensus of how they can express the facts on their user page, without a remorseless bad faith series of accusations of being a spammer. I have attempted to intervene, but have been accused of being so ignorant of the Dutch language that I am not qualified to express an opinion on what is spam and what is not on Commons, so I have brought the matter here to build a wider and positive consensus of how best to handle this. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 12:55, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Jan contacted me through e-mail after I voiced my disdain from the whole blocking debacle on his talk page. I've offered to create a template similar to the one used by the Tropenmuseum (see for example here). He is considering resuming uploading of watermark-free photographs if there is some sort of peace gesture from the community. I can't remember how I came across this issue, but I'm glad I did. We might find occasion to meet at a WikiZaterdat. I'm coordinating an OTRS ticket with Edo --Vera (talk) 14:43, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

So if I'm not mistaken, Microtoerisme won't stop uploading, but will stop adding watermarks to their files? There are some great files so that's perfectly fine, but adding watermarks saying: gratis stadswandelingen & fietsroutes - www.microtoerisme.nl (meaning: free city walks and bicycle routes - www.microtoerisme.nl is indeed pure advertisement. Dqfn13 (talk) 21:16, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't see this userpage as spam, although I'm less sure about watermarks. I think we need a clearer policy about userpages, because problems of this kind arise quite often - for example, we had a similar issue with a professional photographer a few weeks ago.--Pere prlpz (talk) 21:55, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I think such issues are influenced by a sense of "piling on". That is, a simple blurb on a userpage by itself seems tolerable. But then add a similar blurb on image description pages. Then add a watermark on all the images. Then tell the community you only uploaded images to advertise your web site. Then tell the community "screw you, I'm going to upload even more". By then the blurb on the userpage doesn't seem so tolerable anymore. – JBarta (talk) 12:29, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I think that's perfectly reasonable on a user page if they are being a substantial contributor. It would not be alright to put that amount of promotional text on every image page they upload. - Jmabel ! talk 15:42, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

His intention was not to say "screw you, I'm going to upload even more", his intention was to point out that he has still lots of more valuable photographs, and that he wasn't being treated like he was making a substation contribution to the project, which he was. If you had to choose between having 12.000 useful photographs that have the nuisance of having to crop/blur out a watermark or not having 12.000 photographs, would you really prefer not having that? Because that is what you're doing and it's not helping.--Vera (talk) 19:42, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I would prefer not to have to remove 12,000 watermarks. I would prefer to say to people either upload unwatermarked images or don't upload at all. Believe me, if they want their images here, most will comply. The reason we even have this problem is because people are afraid to be firm. People want to be everyone's buddy instead of trying to do what's good for the project. – JBarta (talk) 20:27, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I attempted positive and encouraging discussion with Microtoerisme, as they wish to freely share educational content for the public benefit, and have chosen to work with Wikimedia Commons to achieve this. This is not because I am desperate to be everyone's buddy, as many of my critics will willingly attest. I understand the aims of this project, and anyone who wishes to support that, should be welcomed here. The problem of watermarks is not insurmountable, and if Microtoerisme were to help out, it could be a straight-forward job for a bot to replace the current images with non-watermarked versions, whilst at the same time adding a legally enforceable attribution that fits with Microtoerisme's expectations, the same expectations that they were trying to satisfy using image watermarks which unfortunately got them blocked and repeatedly accused of being a spammer. An unnecessarily adversarial and hostile welcome to this project in my view. Anyway, if this works itself out, perhaps you will let me say "I told you so" a couple of times. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 21:00, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

The logic escapes me. "Supporters" of Microtoerisme's upload of 12000 pictures with watermarks will accept the 12000 pictures of this company with the watermarks added but immediately state that these will somehow (how?) have to be removed before usage because the watermarks are not acceptable. When this company is so keen to upload these pictures when they know that these watermarks will be removed immediately why then even bother to watermark them? --VanBuren (talk) 21:40, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I've been e-mailing with Microtoerisme and he is willing to upload watermark free images. Especially since I tried to draft a custom license. His technical skills however, are limited. If you check his contributions you will see that he uploaded all of his photographs so far using the UploadWizard. He suggested starting all over again, uploading 50 pictures at a time, but that's not ideal either. What I'm lamenting is how the whole discussion leaded to him being blocked so quickly. He isn't unreasonable or unaproachable. It seems that one statement by him has been misinterpreted, leading some people to still not move forward.--Vera (talk) 22:02, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

It seems like everyone may be satisfied with this solution (or the I told you so outcome). I would be happy to help if a simple bot can help upgrade watermarked images and add the credit template. I have a few things going on, so if this relies on me, it may take a few weeks, perhaps until May; until that's done, I hope everyone can stay mellow. In particular it would help if the current images are not deleted, as I would like new images uploaded to benefit from whatever categories and detail has been added by the community. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 22:21, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, congrats guys, he left. He is looking for a community where his pictures are welcomed. --Vera (talk) 16:19, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

If you are saying here that Microtoerisme is not interested anymore in uploading and wikipedia is thus missing out on many good pictures, then why the "congrats"? Meant as a cynical remark to all those that were involved in discussions? Uncalled for. Rather blame the unclear acceptance policy of Commons with reference to advertising in watermarks or blame the mistake not addressing the watermark issue right from the start, blame lots of other issues but not those who expressed their honest opinion on this issue. --VanBuren (talk) 21:46, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I understood the remark, and it was obvious sarcasm in a way. The frustration is that it is perfectly perfectly obvious what the result of the hounding of editors in the most irrational manner will be. It is perfectly obvious to some what an irrational dislike of great images with trivial watermarks does for the project. I personally have only seen ONE watermark which I thought was too time-consuming to remove, I challenge anyone to find another.

There is a 'scientific thinking' position that is this: Clear, rational evidence and reasoning all points towards watermarked images being good for the project and welcome. Once those clear rational arguments are subtracted from people's dislike of the watermarks, the only thing left is a desire to hound people. To simply play cops and robbers for nothing but the sake of playing cops and robbers. Blocking people simply because you can, not because it in any way relates to anything that is good or bad for the project. Following misinterpretations of non-existent or muddled rubbish because it gives someone a trip to block someone else. So the phrase 'congrads' makes perfect sense as an alternative to 'I told you so' or 'is that what you call a good result ?'.

I understand this viewpoint, and I understand your viewpoint as well. You say it's the fault of the rabble that they haven't made up their minds and written it down yet. Makes sense. But how do you shout over the top of people who have no interest whatsoever in the project and an unwavering interest in hitting that adorable block button ? Why on earth would they a) listen or b) give up a reason to hit the button ? That's part of the game, so just like polly who wants a cracker, no matter how many times you ask, you're always going to get the same frikkin response that 'watermarks are no good because watermarks are discouraged because watermarks are no good because they are discouraged' ad infinitum. How would you get people to switch on their minds and go one step past repeating the existing muddled crap and say why they are discouraged, rather than parroting 'because it's policy' ? No, I think a short 'well congratulations' is in order here. Give them a barnstar for protecting the project against thousands of high quality images that a bot would have de-watermarked. Phew, what a close call that was, lucky they have gone, watch out for socks eh? gotta play the wack-a-mole game next.

Sorry, how's my version of the cynicism, a bit too thick ? Penyulap ☏ 23:30, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

It is perfectly obvious what the result hounding of editors will do, and yet you do it to admins. Lovely.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:34, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I am human and I do make mistakes I admit, but I do my best to fix mistakes, make apologies and will always try to speak up polite if I can, or gruff if people aren't listening, to protect the project, and protect the editors. I know it is perfectly normal, acceptable, and even safe in the literal sense for people in the United states to watch or look away from an innocent person getting the shit beaten out of them, gitmo, the lynching traditions, prisons over there are full of innocent people as well as others and y'all do nothing (not you personally, the wiki systemic bias generally). That's not the same as people in the rest of the world. So I hope I will be forgiven for asking if it is really necessary, or objecting to, anyone getting the sh*t kicked out of them when I see it happen. I surely ask nice as I can, but when it is very very clear someone doesn't listen, well, I don't talk to myself, I'll speak to us all. I raise the frikkin alarm. Penyulap ☏ 08:42, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

@1Veertje/Vera: "I'm taking my ball and going home" is the oldest and lamest attempt at control and punishment in the book. Try not be so affected by it. From my perspective I welcome his unwatermarked uploads, properly attributed/categoried and hope they get used and he gets the recognition he wants. And I hope Commons once and for all gets firm and clear about NO watermarks so we don't have go through this sort of asinine crap, and uploaders will be clear on the rules and admins will stop embarassing themselves with eratic and arbitrary blocks and deletions. – JBarta (talk) 08:20, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Don't you think it would be more enjoyable for you to troll them by writing a bot that rips all the watermarks out ? that'd both teach them, and it would not f**k up the project by blocking people who upload 100 good images and then upload one watermarked image and get a mark on their blocklog for it. Of course, people need both the time and the smart to write such a bot and not everyone has both, I don't.

Calling good contributors leaving the project may be something 'lame' in your book, but enough people leave and you'll be here alone. But you know, I'll still make insect porn so you all have something to look at and categorise.

People leaving, regardless of how you write it off, is NEVER a good outcome in any dispute. Penyulap ☏ 08:42, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Know that all he asked was a rectification (via e-mail) for the tribunal that was started. --Vera (talk) 12:04, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

• I've downloaded and cropped the photos contributed by Microtoerisme. Looking for feedback for use of a bot to re-upload them. Rybec (talk) 05:12, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

File:Final Challenge international de Paris 2013-01-26 193155.jpg

Is this really taggable as {{Personalityrights}}? --Ricordisamoa 13:48, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I would call it "not necessary" in this case. --Túrelio (talk) 14:47, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

No way. No how. Penyulap ☏ 14:51, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

You are probably right, I think You probably should discuss it with Jastrow, she takes pictures for the fencing world cup events in France (near Paris) and she will probably continue. I guess it would not be the same for podiums and picture with glass masks (where we can see people's eyes). --PierreSelim (talk) 13:53, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

According to the text in the template, {{Personalityrights}} means that you can identify one or more of the people on the photo. In this case, you can clearly see the surname and nationality of one of the people by reading the text on the back of that person, so that person is presumably identifiable. --Stefan4 (talk) 19:38, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Floating buttons on editing bar?

So I was editing just now (well, sort of) and used Alt+⇧ Shift+e, which, upon going to the edit page, showed the toolbar which is seen at right, with a floating redirect and table button. I doubt that was intentional...so...could this be looked into, please? (@devs) Thanks, HF (talk) 16:46, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

This happens to me sometimes, but can you reproduce the error after a hard refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R)? —Mono 16:50, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I've noticed it reappearing several times on two different machines in the past day, but never before - both times using Chromium on Linux, and going to the edit page as normal. (In fact, I'm seeing it now...). Closing the "advanced" tab and reopening it again puts them back in place. It seems to persist after purging/refreshing. Andrew Gray (talk) 17:00, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Strange, I'd guess it's resource loader but I really have no idea. —Mono 17:08, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

March 25

InstantCommons file usage from non-Wikimedia wikis, 3D files

The Wikimedia Foundation is planning to participate again at Google Summer of Code. The deadline is March 29. We have several possible projects, but so far we have found only 3 in good shape to be listed as GSOC project ideas. We are working to include more, and you can help. We need more feedback, concretion and mentors. There are some candidates related to Commons / media e.g. Add support for x3d 3D files to MediaWiki or Build an interwiki notifications framework and implement it for InstantCommons.--Qgil (talk) 01:59, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

What about having a catch-all entry at mw:Summer_of_Code_2013 for unsupported file types in Commons/MediaWiki? We could explicitly point to KML, x3d and link to the full list here at Commons. Are there other formats that we should highlight there?--Qgil (talk) 01:14, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

There are tons already filed and discussed on bugzilla, plus several ideas on strategy: and in some pages here. --Nemo 13:25, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposal: add link to Wikimedia Shop in sidebar

Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikimedia Shop

I propose we link to the Wikimedia Shop in the Commons sidebar like the English Wikipedia. Currently the shop sells a Wiki Loves Monuments calendar and will offer a Picture of the Year calendar (and more products) later this year. It'd be a nice way to promote the shop; proceeds from the products are earmarked for the community. —Mono 05:31, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Where do you have such a link on :en? I don't see it. Besides, what do you mean by "proceeds from the products are earmarked for the community"? I am not aware of ever getting even a simple "thank you" email from Sue or alike. --Túrelio (talk) 10:38, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

In the sidebar (navigation) like to the right. The money is used for merchandise giveaways through a peer nomination process; the WMF is planning to expand this past ENWP later this year. It has nothing to do with legal defense and the WMF's policy on whatever is irrelevant. —Mono 15:45, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks; though it doesn't appear on my :en userpage or the :en mainpage, when I visit it. Does one need to activate or change something in the user settings? --Túrelio (talk) 15:59, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

As users or other people eventually may search on Commons for WMF merchandise, we should discuss/consider whether to put on 1 Commons page a minimal information about WMF merchandise and a link to the WMF shop. However, I would prefer not to have it in the sidebar, i.e. on every page. Besides, we have already sort of catalogue pages: Wikimedia Foundation/Merchandise gallery and Category:Wikimedia Foundation merchandise. --Túrelio (talk) 19:13, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

hidden|1=(hidden) Good grief, this is absurd. —Mono 15:45, 25 March 2013 (UTC)|2=

for the community my arse! (excuse my language) since when does anyone except the WMF employees and everyone who gets a seat on the gravy train get a piece of the cake ? The cash is being spent in the most appalling places, with no safeguards in place. There is no screening process to keep garden variety sociopaths and sadists from using sockfarms to get themselves onto arbcom or the WMF, and anyone can get an admin position. The cash is to be diverted from paying from servers (which it doesn't actually, they are donated) into paying for lawyers if anyone gets sued for their misdeeds. Like that girl who committed suicide from Internet bullying recently, people who do things like cause that kind of grief have no hindrance whatsoever to stop them joining up, and the donations are soon to be used to support and indemnify them in court if they are ever sued which makes the whole process of bullying a whole lot more attractive. The overwhelming consensus to deal with the problem is reminiscent of the car companies before they were forced to introduce seat belts in cars, they didn't want to talk about it and actively suppressed all frank discussion of it. Adding a shop button would make more people wonder where all the tens of millions of dollars raised is actually heading.. Penyulap ☏ 05:50, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I think everyone knows you are banned from the English Wikipedia. You can stop trolling on the village pump. We are not here to read your story each day. ~Pyb (talk) 08:03, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

What do you have against people knowing where their money could be going ? if we put a link at the side of the page to collect cash, then 'expenses' for the program, which are deducted from proceeds before profits, can easily go into the proposed Legal Fees Assistance Program. So pick any case in which any admin or arb has misbehaved, someone can't take it and kills themself like that recent case on the news, and presto. You've got your donations which are meant to help spread knowledge and light used to enable and indemnify sadism and bullying on the Internet because nobody paid a professional to evaluate the psychological health of these people before forking out serious cash on legal professionals to back them up. I know what servers cost, and I know what lawyers cost, and you can buy a s*load of servers for the same price as one legal case. Keep in mind that WM doesn't pay for servers generally, a lot of the infrastructure is donated.

I am not, and never have been, banned anywhere. fail. Attacking people who want to promote a safe working environment for everyone on the project by calling them a troll, especially when I've already given the classic example of the car companies resistance to seat belts is another fail. The car companies did all they could to cover up harass stalk and discredit the people promoting safety and where did it get them ? The only difference is I for some reason hope that some safeguards might be put in place PRIOR to a suicide or suicides (I don't think just one will motivate the WMF). So it's a fail to change the subject which is collecting money from the work that we do on here. Penyulap ☏ 10:23, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Yup, that's user:Penyulap for you. Every Village (Pump) has one. --Jarekt (talk) 15:56, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

A magician ? :)

Not wanting to know where the money is going ? I don't think that's it. Could it be a classic example of 'don't talk about bullying on the Internet when it comes to wiki ?' ah, why does this not surprise me. How about this for a deal, I'll try not to comment further if you try not to provide more 'oh it doesn't happen' hiding actions. Because putting in another link for money raises the question why is more money needed. enough said. Penyulap ☏ 16:42, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

•  Oppose There are already permanent 'Contact us' and 'Donate' links (I am looking at them now, taking up real estate in my browser), the shop can be advertised on those pages if needs be. I support the above question with regard to how "proceeds from the products are earmarked for the community", it would be great to see how that works, so that purchases originally coming from Wikimedia Commons can get earmarked for Commons related community projects (or the equivalent in proportion). I am unaware of any such system, but it sounds like a good idea. --Fæ (talk) 16:09, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Notes about shop

Hey guys, to answer a couple things that got brought up from my side at the shop (feel free to ask if you have other questions):

• There is in fact a sidebar link (under the donation link) on enWikipedia but it's currently geo targeted towards only North America (Canada, US and Mexico), most of the caribbean and Japan. I've been slowly increasing who sees it mostly because of shipping costs (we heavily subsidize shipping beyond the US) but would be happy to have it for all or some countries on commons if the community wanted it.
• The current store makes no 'profits' at all, it's all in the store and it will be a fair bit before it could actually see anything there. What profits it does make (and some of what it doesn't) isn't just earmarked 'for the community' but is very specifically earmarked for merchandise giveaways to the community. I have a giveaway page set up on enWiki that has been hampered by my availability to process the giveaways but have wanted very strongly to work out a good way to get volunteers to do most of the processing so that I can send out a lot more. At this point there is no limit to the amount of nominations I'd take to give away things. I would be very excited to work with commons to set up one of those pages where volunteers can help me process (whether you want a shop link or not). Right now the merchandise is very Wikipedia centric other then the lapel pins (which are really pretty actually I love the commons lapel pins), buttons/stickers and calendar. However we're working on a new theme now and one of the things I really want to get in place is at the very least a really nice WM general shirt and hopefully one that we can do batches of for projects. Jalexander (talk) 19:45, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I've got to say I don't like the manner in which the give-aways occur, 'all the usual suspects' equates to a simple animalfarm style gravy-train and no doubt others will also see it this way once you get away from the usual systemic bias. A lottery system or contributions-based system would be less repulsive. Penyulap ☏ 19:58, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata and interwiki links

Wikidata for interwiki are not implemented on Commons and probably will not be implemented in near future (and due to page/category dichotomy maybe never). However interwiki links to categories are still being added, as they are usefull mainly if lack of non-english category description. But with wikidata it is not possible to simply cut+pase interwiki from wiki article. Any workround to this (i would welcome tool, that will produce "old" interwiki code from wikidata)? --Jklamo (talk) 11:30, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Why not link to the relevant wikidata page? People can follow the interwiki links from there. We can make a template for that, and/or do something (script?) to allow the wikidata link to be placed into the Toolbox. Rd232 (talk) 11:41, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Wouldn't it be easier if the project Wikidata itself somehow makes it possible to get the info in data format, like how Wikipedias make available the text of fully protected pages when you click on "view source" tab? (sample of East Germany article, fully protected.) They should do that. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 11:47, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

As it evolves, the sum-it-up gadget will become useless. What are the plans in that respect ? We don't only need links, but texts too to help the search and to find alternate/related/multi-language names. --Foroa (talk) 11:50, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, tools:~legoktm/cgi-bin/wikidata/copypaste.py was specifically created to handle this situation, and is self explanatory and dead simple to use. — Huntster (t @ c) 12:02, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for link, that is exaclty tool what i was looking for (though i can imagine integration straight to wikidata ui). I added the link to the Commons:Wikidata as well. --Jklamo (talk) 12:37, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

ffmpeg used for ogg thumbnails

I've switched ogg thumbnail generation from oggThumb back to ffmpeg for better performance for large files (e.g. most videos) and to reduce the occurence of 504/503 errors. Internally, the former requires downloading the whole file from object storage to render each thumbnail whereas the later uses RANGE requests with the file's object storage URL. Performance could still use a great deal of improvement (a small though significant portion due to file storage being in a different data center). For the files I sampled, ffmpeg was as fast or faster (except for File:¿Qué_es_Wikipedia?.ogv). Two of the files gave 503s with oggThumb that didn't with ffmpeg (though the client gets an error, the generation usually finishes server-side).

There might be some reduction in quality though. Any problems can go in bugzilla.wikimedia.org (TimedMediaHandler component). If there are quality issues, the change can be reverted or perhaps oggThumb can be used for smaller files but not for larger ones. One could also scale thumbnails from a pre-made large thumbnail. Aaron Schulz (talk) 23:47, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

March 26

Linked projects in Wikieducator

Hi folks, I run several projects over in Wikieducator. Using some inter-wiki magic, the folks at Wikieducator can use Wikimedia images simply by using the file names that are used here. My digital coyote project: http://wikieducator.org/Digital_Coyote and my streams project: http://wikieducator.org/Streams/home are both critically dependent on images that are hosted on Wikimedia Commons. The system has not failed me yet, but I do have questions: Other than pointless pornography being removed, are there criteria for removing images that I should be aware of? For example, my students have uploaded literally hundreds of images of coyote and dog skulls; different angles; different specimens from different locations and breeds. Are there administrators looking at the collection of images and deciding that perhaps Wikimedia Commons does not need 320 coyote skull images? Or can I happily continue to build these OERs secure in the knowledge that the images will be hosted here? ThanksDmccabe (talk) 02:18, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

If they are not copyright violations, your dog skull images will be safe. Ruslik (talk) 07:49, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

In my personal experience with a new wiki called www.thewik.net the feed from commons was cut at commons without warning, explanation or notification (still to this day). The images all went dead one day and the reason turned out to be here on commons behind the scenes someone decided to stop the images being used there. It was rather confusing as the site had only half a dozen pages and users and I though couldn't pose any credible threat to wikipedia's market share. (shrug)

Images can be enabled in the localsettings.php file so that flickr images can be used in the same way, otherwise it's a bit of a fiddling on the server to allow images to be stored locally, which is the ultimate safe option because only you can delete them. Penyulap ☏ 08:39, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Assuming a) these images are in scope for Commons; b) the licenses are fine, and c) everything works technically, this sounds to me like there won't be any problems. Direct hotlinking can pose some issues (it's fragile and breaks easily) but if wikieducator is using something like InstantCommons, that won't be a concern. Andrew Gray (talk) 09:52, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Seconding Andrew and Ruslik0. Unless there are copyvios, your files will be safe, given they fit our scope − and your dog skulls sure are educational. Thanks for using InstantCommons − this is precisely what it was made for − and for contributing to Commons :) Jean-Fred (talk) 10:22, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for the replies. There are no copyright issues. All students taking photos in my lab are informed that their photos will be placed here and have the right to decline to share. We negotiated with a blogger for some insect images and he agreed to share them under licensing that is compatible with Commons and Wikieducator. We also felt that this use was exactly what Commons was for and that placed here they might find use more broadly than if we put them only in Wikieducator (as I did with my earlier project: http://wikieducator.org/Biology_in_elementary_schools [cheap lesson plans for science in schools]). Thanks again; WC is a great resource for educators everywhere. Cheers! Dmccabe (talk) 14:35, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

It would be nice if they used proper and existing categories for their Category:Dog skulls see history of File:Specimen_12103115_left.JPG and File:12041222 Right Side.JPG, 0, and not all sorts of capitalisation variations. I had to move hundreds of them. It might be a good idea to read COM:OVERCAT. --Foroa (talk) 14:56, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree! I took a look at the suggested link...dense! I'll make some cheat sheets for the students working on my projects. Thanks for all of your efforts on this. Try messaging me or my students and we can handle this sort of thing with less aggravation for you. I typically recruit a student for a few years so it's worth the effort to have them doing things as well as can be done. Cheers 23:58, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Image name and text needing clarification...

The image name "File:Henry, Prince of Wales, presenting this book to John Mowbray. Thomas Hoccleve, Regement of Princes, London, c. 1411-1413, Arundel 38, f. 37detail.jpg" does not agree with the Description: "English: Detail of miniature of Henry, Prince of Wales, receiving a book from Thomas Hoccleve. Thomas Hoccleve, Regement of Princes, London, c. 1411-1413, Arundel 38, f. 37."

On top of that the Author is given as "medieval miniaturists" instead of a wiki identity, so I don't know who is responsible or how to clarify the discrepancies. Cheers! Shir-El too (talk) 15:54, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

• Convenience link: File:Henry, Prince of Wales, presenting this book to John Mowbray. Thomas Hoccleve, Regement of Princes, London, c. 1411-1413, Arundel 38, f. 37detail.jpg. - Jmabel ! talk 16:17, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
• For the author, "medieval miniaturists" is simply correct. It would be a lie for a Wikipedia contributor to claim to be the author. If you want to contact the uploader, that would be Johnbod (talk · contribs), as you can see from the file history further down the page. He's active on the Commons, so it should be pretty easy to get hold of him and ask. However, the page history shows an anonymous change of the description, and I doubt you'll be able to track down who made that or on what basis.
• All of the information in the preceding bullet point is as fully available to you as it was to me. It did not, for example, require administrative privileges for me to look that up. - Jmabel ! talk 16:23, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

• This is a surprisingly complicated case; according to the BL's catalogue, the miniature shows "Prince Henry offering or receiving the book (the kneeling man is perhaps John Mowbray, 2nd Duke of Norfolk)"; they don't seem to see it as likely that it's Hoccleve. I've updated the metadata accordingly. There is no known artist, so John's "medieval miniaturists" note was reasonable. (Hoccleve is the author of the text, but very unlikely to be the miniaturist) Andrew Gray (talk) 16:52, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Can't we have just one correct picture of something? (Coat of arms of Pope Francis)

Copied to Graphic Lab, Sentausa would also like it discussed here. Penyulap ☏ 16:13, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if we can have only one correct representative of the coat of arms of Pope Francis. There are now 10 images in the category, and now none of them look exactly like the one in the official Vatican page. Previously, there were 3 files (this, this, and this) which looked very similar to the first released coat of arms, and all the file creators seemed to want their pictures present in Commons and try to change the pictures to be very similar to one another. I mean, why can't we have just one file for this? Sentausa (talk) 16:04, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

We always want more :-) It's not Commons' position to edit down to a "best" one, as that can be different ones depending on the situation. So, we try to provide as many alternatives as possible. Besides, when it comes to coats of arms, it's not like logos -- any drawing which conforms to the en:blazon is a "correct" drawing. There are usually going to be many valid versions. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:33, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

But the problem is that at the end they would look very similar to one another, meaning that as if we have image duplications. Is it not redundant and a waste of storage space? Sentausa (talk) 08:51, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

To answer just the storage space question, it makes no difference because deleted images are still on the hard drive, they are stored and you can make un-deletion requests. The only things that get erased from the hard drives are illegal pictures like childporn and so on. Alternative images, duplicate images, different versions, they are all still there on the drives just a click away. Penyulap ☏ 09:28, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

As I said on the other page, in traditional European heraldry, there's not necessarily only "one correct picture" of a coat of arms -- many different artistic renderings based on the authoritative textual blazon may all be acceptable. In any case, there is a poorly-timed and poorly-supported deletion nomination which complicates clean-up until it's resolved... AnonMoos (talk) 06:57, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Signature bot on Commons

Hi, I propose we use a signature bot on Commons to sign unsigned posts and notify users who repeatedly post on talk pages without a signature. On the English Wikipedia, this is done by w:User:SineBot. That bot's source code is not public, but I think this would be helpful rather than manually adding {{Unsigned}}. Thoughts? Mono 02:56, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

I wonder why it's never been implemented here. Barring a good reason not to do so, I think it's a fine idea. – JBarta (talk) 03:15, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

 Support. --Túrelio (talk) 07:22, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

 Support §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 11:00, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

 Support provided someone is willing to procure and administer such a bot. —Psychonaut (talk) 11:46, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

 Support. Sounds like a good idea. — SMUconlaw (talk) 12:18, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

 Support. — Ralgis [mantis Religiosa] — 14:34, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

 Comment It should be set up with a reasonable delay to allow those who forgot to sign time to look over their posts and correct, otherwise it gets annoying. Dankarl (talk) 02:17, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

 Support and according to Commons talk:Counter Vandalism Unit other users support this as well. -- Rillke^(q?) 18:48, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

+1 --Nemo 08:33, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

 Neutral I find such things annoying, but I do understand that the level of my annoyance is significantly less than annoyance of those who want it, but don't have it here. Sinnamon (talk) 09:50, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

 Strong oppose I'm strongly opposed to the use of SineBot while it remains non-Free. However, if the source code was released, preferably under a GPL-compatible license, then I'd be ok with it. I hope Slakr kindly releases the source code. —James Haigh (talk) 2013-03-21T03:39:17Z

Why does it matter? -FASTILY ^(TALK) 06:21, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why another project based on the philosophy of openness should become reliant on a proprietary component. I find it bad enough that Wikipedia seems to rely on it. I only found out that SineBot wasn't open about a week ago, when I went looking for the code to see if I could track down and fix a bug, to then offer a patch. Without the code, all bug fixes are down to Slakr—not even Wikipedia admins can fix or change SineBot. —James Haigh (talk) 2013-03-21T08:18:17Z

Because we can't make fixes? Because we can't port it to a new project? Because it could break or the owner could shut it off without any notice, and there's nothing anyone could do about it?--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:34, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Luxo could shut down all his tools and I am sure there is no one who will run his tools despite they are open source, useful and used. Looks like the ivony tower. -- Rillke^(q?) 17:47, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I would feel weird if someone else ran Palz instead of me, and although I could run sinebot, I really don't want to. It's like the running it and writing it are connected (Z wrote palz, but I did his pages, and tinker with his code). The person who wants to run the bot might like to write it, and even if you have the code, it's still a task to find a willing operator. Need to find an operator. Penyulap ☏ 18:22, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Building the bot

The ENWP bot is run by one user and the source code is not public. In general, I have been unable to contact the user. I think it's safe to say that their chance of responding is unlikely, so we should consider building our own. Mono 02:55, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Not public! That's strange. I thought everything on Wikipedias should be publicly available, just like articles. Is this not applicable for codes? Would we require their permission to use? Can some admin get in and bring the code here? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 04:56, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Nope, not bot programs, which are run out of private servers or on wmlabs. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 05:37, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

In de.wikipedia, there is CopperBot that does a similar job (contribs, config). --Leyo 14:28, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Can someone contact him for the code? I don't speak German? Mono 16:41, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I left a note on his talk page. – JBarta (talk) 16:51, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I guess Mono meant the other bot. The operator does understand English. --Leyo 23:10, 17 March 2013 (UTC) PS. I asked him.

Yes, I mean CopperBot. —Mono 20:29, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't know anything about bots, but I saw this conversation. SineBot took over for HagermanBot, so that might be a starting point as well. Again, no clue about bots, so if this is pointless, sorry 'bout that. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁galaxies 08:31, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Actually doing something

Has anyone contacted the op of CopperBot on dewiki? —Mono 19:55, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Report a file (feedback) tool

Hi,
I proposed an alternative soluton to the ArticleFeedbackTool that is currently being discussed in an RFC. In fact, I forgot that AFT was proposed there (even though I read the discussion a few days ago), but I guess we can use this opportunity to discuss this lightweight alternative to AFT. Comments are welcome at /Proposals#Report a file (feedback) tool. Thanks, odder (talk) 17:06, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer! I think they could happily coexist - they seem to be solving subtly different problems. Andrew Gray (talk) 23:02, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Wrong link to main page in Quechua

For Quechua, there is the main page Qhapaq p'anqa, but clicking onto the Wikimedia Commons logo (with Quechua as user language) leads to the Spanish Portada and not to Qhapaq p'anqa, though the Quechua main page was added in 2009, see Template_talk:Lang-mp#Please_add_Quechua. -- AlimanRuna (talk) 17:16, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Leon, and ThatPeskyCommoner

For anyone who know her and may not have heard the news, ThatPeskyCommoner's grandson Leon lost his battle to live. Penyulap ☏ 23:30, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

March 27

Replacing files

Is there a protocol for simply replacing a file? As we QC our images and subject them to measuring and testing we are finding that in some cases measurements taken from the calibrated images are off by a few millimeters. Our preferred option would be to replace the offending images with retakes that pass our calibration tests. But I also understand that there may be a preference to just keep the duplicate image and if it's simpler we'll go with that. I'm working on a project where teachers and students can measure from images like this one: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:12041222_Right_Side.JPG. CheersDmccabe (talk) 01:47, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

If they are substantially different photos such that each may be interesting, they should be different uploads. But if it's virtually the same photo just better, then I would upload over the original. The uploader of the original probably has a lot more leeway on that kind of thing -- I don't think anyone would question someone uploading an improved photo as a new version of their own existing image. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:28, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Dmccabe (talk) 00:02, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Canis stew

There are multiple ways to say 'coyote'. Three of those ways have been turned into categories: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Canis_skulls any suggestions for resolving this? Keep them all and cross reference? -- 01:52, 27 March 2013‎ Dmccabe

In this situation, we redirect (using {{Category redirect}}) alternate names into any one single category. Be sure to recategorize any files in the categories you're redirecting to the main category. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 07:33, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I've put instructions on Commons Delinker to move them all into Category:Canis latrans skulls - MPF (talk) 17:59, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks!Dmccabe (talk) 00:01, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

OK! I think just one more thing is needed. Although the wolves and the domestic dogs are technically one species, it would be very useful to have an easy way to locate actual wolf skulls without wading through all of the domestic dog skulls that my students and I uploaded. I propose a sub category "Wolf skulls" to go along with the existing sub category "Dog skulls". If there are no objections I'll work on that. I started but it was reverted so some brief discussion is needed. If there is a compelling reason not to do it please let me know. Cheers 00:42, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Doing this by subspecies (or subspecies group, so "dog", "wolf", & perhaps "dingo" rather than "dog", all 37 wolf subspecies, etc) seems perfectly reasonable to me; C. latrans skulls could then be kept for unidentified or ambiguous cases. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:01, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes! We need C latrans for the coyotes and there are no sub species that I'm aware of to worry about. I'll set up the "Wolf skulls" category if no one beat me too it. "Dog skulls" already exists. I don't know enough to mess with additional wolf sub species and I doubt we'll ever get enough dog skulls of known breed to mess with breeds.22:36, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Actually it's great as is. The wolves fall out in the root category; domestic dogs are in their own category and it looks fine.Dmccabe (talk) 22:44, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Assistance with No Source tag on File:Scallop Diagram.jpg

Am hoping for a little guidance here. A couple of days ago I uploaded an image I created and titled Scallop Diagram.jpg. Not long after, another editor tagged it with the {{no source since}} tag, even though I had marked |source={{own}}} in the image's information template. Two things: the other editor (User:Moros y Christianos) was certainly correct to doubt the image as having been created by me, as it is really a very nice picture-- I want to be clear that I am flattered to have my work doubted. Having said this, I am hesitant to remove the no-source-since tag myself as this seems obviously inappropriate. I have tried to contact the other editor through his/ her talk page, but so far have gotten no response. What is the policy/ procedure when someone uploads an image and another editor responds with, "That can't really be YOURS"? How do I handle this? Please advise. Thank you! KDS444 (talk) 06:51, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Just curious, is the diagram based off of any existing diagram? Or did you use a pre-existing diagram/template image which you then modified to create the final product? -FASTILY ^(TALK) 07:29, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I studied a set of 5 or 6 different photographs and drawings before beginning my own. I did not use any parts of those photos or drawings in generating this image-- I occasionally referred them to make sure I was putting the correct organ in the correct place, but nothing more than this.KDS444 (talk) 01:55, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

As long as it's your own original interpretation it's not a problem. I removed the tag from your file. I'd advice that you put a list or a gallery of all the diagrams you've done on your user page, this way anyone checking your files will be less inclined to think you just grabbed them off the web, as they will see that a) you have the skills to do this and other diagrams and b) these diagrams have a similar style. By the way, your account on enwiki (KDS4444) is not unified. You should get it unified, as there's no point of logging in with another account each time you come to Commons. -- Orionist ★ talk 00:19, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Smaller dr notifications

The templates for DR's are pretty big, can a switch be placed on the talkpage or on a sub-page that the template detects and just leaves the name and the link to the discussion ? Is there support for something like this if it can be done ? Penyulap ☏ 09:43, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

They're intentionally prominent, so that they won't be overlooked... AnonMoos (talk) 12:09, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

That's what the switch is for, the templates are the same except for the few of us who don't like to remove so many from our talkpages, we'd just add something on a subpage and be done with it once and for all. Penyulap ☏ 12:27, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Urgent: Italicisation fix needed on main page

Please see Talk:Main Page#Urgent: Italicisation. Andy Mabbett (talk) 12:05, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Hopefully it will get fixed soon. I'd not normally describe a formatting improvement urgent in the same vein as defamation or copyright violations, but perhaps the relative importance of correct taxonomies falls into the same difficult area of religion, sex and politics. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 12:22, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

 Done by ~Pyb Penyulap ☏ 12:35, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Costumes vs. clothing

Potentially this is a very politically weighted issue, so I am bringing it here rather than the less-attended Categories for Discussion.

I notice that Category:Native American costumes includes many pictures of what appear to be Native Americans in traditional dress. I believe these should all be moved to Category:Native American clothing, and that the term "costumes" should be reserved, in this context at least," for people who are not Native Americans in traditional dress; e.g. File:Dedication of Chief Seattle statue, 1912.jpg where Seattle civic boosters are dressed as Chinook natives. The two categories should be cross-linked with text explaining this distinction.

There may well be other similar pairs of categories that deserve similar treatment.

Note also Category:Native American dance regalia for the stylized regalia of Native American dance, which may have certain aspects in common with "costumes" but which most Native Americans would consider it an insult to call "costumes". - Jmabel ! talk 14:34, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I'd think that native and non-native is a problematic distinction, for example, if you are Japanese and goto Britain and wear ordinary clothes, you'd be wearing a British costume.

I'd suggest that costumes are worn on special occasions or for special purposes and clothing is an everyday thing. That may make it easier to categorise. So the Japanese man would be wearing British clothing, unless it was a special occasion and he and his British hosts all wore traditional clothing, and then they'd all be in costume. That way where there is a crowd you don't need to know who is in the crowd and their ethnic origins, nor make a distinction between the same item being a costume or a piece of clothing depending on who wears it, if it is on a coat hanger, not being worn, what is it ? Penyulap ☏ 15:26, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Jmabel -- I think the word "costume" is meant as in Category:National costumes, and not in the sense of Batman outfits... AnonMoos (talk) 15:58, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I think that category is poorly defined in it's blurb as well, just mixing up the two in a random fashion (get it, fashion?)

Costume better defines something you wear to make you look like something you're not. Dress doesn't, but people (especially men) might avoid using the word 'dress' to describe what they wear everyday, to avoid the ambiguity of being a transvestite. I don't think there is a need to avoid it when referring to mixed groups of people, as it's the dictionary definition. 'national dress' would be less derogatory than 'national costumes', it avoids the transvestite thing by referring to a whole population, and avoids labelling that population as 'silly' which often goes with the concept of 'costume'. Should ask for opinions of grammar and language experts, or consult the best references available. Penyulap ☏ 17:02, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

However, "national costume" seems to be the established standard term. AnonMoos (talk) 18:47, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Maybe we should go with it then, but if confusion is the standard, time to open the big books and work it out. 'national costume' vs 'national dress' might have different popularity in different parts of the world. I'm definitely more familiar with the latter as the standard everyday dress, national costumes are something schoolchildren might wear on a special occasion. Penyulap ☏ 19:15, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

What about Category:Native American clothing and costumes?? Then an assimilated native American photographed in 1889 dressing up in his old indian clothes for a party won't be argued over which category he belongs in (because he could belong in either). Maybe the key is to not draw such a fine distinction category-wise and instead concentrate on clear image descriptions. Just a thought. – JBarta (talk) 17:20, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

• AnonMoos (and others): the thing is, in the specific case of Native Americans / American Indians, as I noted above, the term "costume" has enormous potential to give offense, and while "national" works north of the US-Canadian border (where the term "First Nations" is prevalent) it's a bit confusing in the US, where quite a few prefer the term "tribe" (just to make it complicated, a few, such as the Cherokee, definitely prefer "nation"). Whatever we do, I think it is very important that traditional clothing and modern regalia of Native Americans worn by Native Americans not be called "costume", because the term is considered insulting by the people wearing that clothing. It is similar to why we don't use the term "Gypsies" even though it is probably more widely understood than "Roma people": the people it refers to generally find it insulting.

I had no idea Gypsies find the term "Gypsies" offensive. There's just no end to what people will get offended over. Me, I'm offended by being called "really hot" and anything that refers to my unusually high intelligence. Just burns me up to no end. – JBarta (talk) 02:49, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

• Jbarta, I agree that there is always a bit of a tricky mater in separating "costume" from "clothing", especially in the case of people assimilated to a culture wearing clothing of a culture identified with their past. And maybe the "clothing and costumes" category is the solution, though I'm not sure how it fits our existing hierarchy, and I'm not sure it avoids the issue of offense. I'd really love to have a few Native Americans in this discussion; I am guessing that none of the people who have chimed in are Native American, but correct me if I'm wrong. - Jmabel ! talk 00:04, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Using the term "costume" for Indigenous clothing worn by Indigenous Americans is offensive. The term might have different connotations outside of the US, but within the US, it's not appropriate for traditional Indigenous clothing, especially ceremonial clothing. Category:Native American dance regalia and Category:Native American clothing are sufficient for Native American dress. Category:Clothing of indigenous peoples of the Americas covers all non-US indigenous peoples of the Americas. Other members of WikiProject Greenland could probably speak to the category Category:National costumes of Greenland. -Uyvsdi (talk) 00:35, 28 March 2013 (UTC)Uyvsdi

• "Garments"? Rybec (talk) 05:58, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Garments sounds like clothing which no-one is wearing, like laid out in a museum case or table. Penyulap ☏ 07:39, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

• "Traditional dress"?--Canoe1967 (talk) 12:08, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

• Native American traditional dress,

-Native American clothing

-Native American theatrical costumes

-Native American ceremonial dress

Penyulap ☏ 12:59, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

• Agree with Uyvsdi: To REPEAT: To call Native American traditional clothing a "costume" is VERY Insulting. At pow wows and such, the term "regalia" is the correct word. Otherwise, "clothing" will do just fine. To distinguish what is "traditional" from what is "ceremonial" is a fine line and one that has too much variation from one culture to the next; the information in each individual photo or image can do that bit. This is really a rather critical point; when we are discussing the clothing of Native people of the Americas, at least North America, don't say "costume," period. Now, what to do with junk like File:MGD06JesusSaysBuyMoreArt.jpg where we have white people wearing a dime store headdress and thinking they are dressing up like an Indian, sheesh... can we have for that?  ;-) Montanabw (talk) 20:29, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Looks like a harmless not-planning any mass-murders kind of a person. People who don't bottle it up can be trusted a lot more than those who do, or those who hide it (and divert it) well.

agree, I think it applies to any real people, not just native americans. When I say real people, I mean it's perfectly ok to say 'zombie costumes' or elf/leprechaun/storm trooper costumes. I think the idea that costumes covers a lot of scope including silly and whimsical things produces the effect that the word costume can be used as a derogatory description for the dress of a real people.

I think we could propose not using the word 'costume(s)' to describe the dress of any real people and just use any of the more agreeable alternatives. Penyulap ☏ 20:56, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

On the right general track, maybe instead of "real people" say, "authentic regalia/dress/clothing of a culture group" or something. But yeah, you get the point that's trying to be made here. Zombie costumes or even say, me dressing up like a football player (I'm so not) is a "costume" - someone pretending to be what they aren't. People dressing to emphasize who they ARE (or were, or once were or whatever along those lines) are not in a "costume." yes. Montanabw (talk) 21:22, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Blocked template page to move

Hello, I presently need to move {{Translation possible}} to {{Translate}}, where should I ask for that ? Yug (talk) 19:03, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Redirect deleted. Go for it -FASTILY ^(TALK) 05:59, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I'am not an admin for years, can you move it from {Translation possible} to {translate} Yug (talk) 17:49, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

March 28

Sue Gardner to leave the WMF

Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, has announced she will leave. More at [8] —Mono 00:54, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Flickr Commons

There's an overview article in the British Journal of Photography talking about Flickr Commons, which is of course a major sources of PD images: Shared history: The Commons initiative celebrates its fifth anniversary. Perhaps of some interest! Andrew Gray (talk) 13:35, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Emmy award question

I started to process the permission statement for Brian Keane, but I see Stefan is questioning the status, given the award in the photo.

However, I recall there being a debate about the copyright status of someone receiving the award. In the case of the Oscar award, here uploaded as a non-free image. That rationale includes language indicating that photos of the statue are limited with respect to licensing, but that language does not seem clear whether it refers to a stand alone picture of the statuette or of someone holding one.

The more relevant award Emmy, is less clear.

I tried searching the Village pump, and found this, but the implied restriction may apply to a photo of the statuette by itself.

I see File:Ernest Borgnine-oscar.jpg, File:Dana Delany 1992 Emmys retouch.jpg and File:Bruce Kennedy.jpg which do not constitute proof, but suggest that a photo of an award recipient and the award, as opposed to only the award, may be acceptable. Many others at Category:Emmy Award statuettes

Are such photos acceptable?--Sphilbrick (talk) 18:53, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I would say acceptable on commons as Commons:De minimis. It would be a bad thing if we delete images of people receiving awards. We have Template:De minimis for such images.--Canoe1967 (talk) 19:23, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

NB: The image is on Wikipedia, not Commons, so perhaps I should have asked at MCQ, but I assumed a bot would be along to move it to commons, if acceptable, and this is where the image experts hang out. I cannot add the the de minimus template now, as it is a commons only template.--Sphilbrick (talk) 19:53, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Someone should just upload it here and add the correct tags. It should survive DR if anyone wants to try that route. We should also create a tag that images like this can only be used in performer articles and not award articles. That would violate the rights that copyright on 3D images is trying to protect.--Canoe1967 (talk) 20:15, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I think that the status of the image is unclear. It all depends on how de minimis is defined in US law. In my country, this screenshot was found to be a copyright violation when the photographer who took two of the photos in the list to the right sued a person who placed that screenshot on his homepage. The Swedish supreme court finally decided that the photos on the screenshot weren't de minimis. In this case, the statuette seems to be even more prominent than the two photos, so the photo with the statuette photo would presumably not be OK in Sweden. Other countries might define de minimis differently, though. The same problem also exists with w:File:Brian Keane and son at Emmy Awards.jpg. In this case, the purpose is to show the people together with the statuette, so the statuette is a lot more prominent than in for example File:Grammy and Multiple Emmy Award Winning Composer Brian Keane.jpg where the statuettes are unimportant details in the background. Although I can't remember what the outcome was, I think that we once had a deletion request for one or more similar images of people with statuettes.

Another problem: Both photos credit Brian Keane as photographer, but he appears on both photos, so he is unlikely the photographer. Wouldn't photos like this usually be taken by a person employed by whoever arranges the award ceremony? Is the permission from the award ceremony organiser? --Stefan4 (talk) 21:01, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

A curious problem

There are dozens of pictures here that have been released by the National Archives in the UK to Flickr with a relaxed license. I usually load pictures in from Flickr using Bryan's tool, FLINFO or the standard Wizard but they are all complaining when they are directed at these particuar pictures. I guess that the pictures are corrupt in some way, but its a bit subtle as the pictures display OK. Are there any budding Digital CSI experts? So for example if I load in this from Flickr then I get this ... which lacks the actual picture. There are 183 interesting pictures here. Can can anyone suggest whats wrong? Victuallers (talk) 22:11, 28 March 2013 (UTC)