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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

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It can only be speculated that, like the modern office water cooler, the village pump must have been a gathering place where dwellers discussed ideas for the improvement of their locale. [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

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March 07

25 millionth file

The 25th millionth file will soon be uploaded, it'd be nice to mark the mile stone, is anyone thinking of doing something ? I was thinking of maybe doing an article on Wikinews, any other ideas?--KTo288 (talk) 22:17, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Twenty-five is a nice “round” number (in base 10, anyway), but the not less nice number 24 million went apparently unnoticed (*), and before that the 23-millionth file uploaded merited but a brief mention in this village pump… The problem is that the 25-millionth file may be an unremarklable item, as the 22-millionth was. -- Tuválkin ✉ 23:34, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

(*) The (first) 24-millionth file was uploaded between November 30th and December 7th, 2014, yet no mention of it in Commons:Village pump/Archive/2014/12. -- Tuválkin ✉ 05:02, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, we can estimate when it will be close to 25M and upload a lot of remarkable files in that minute/hour/day --- [Tycho] ^talk 09:59, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

The last time this was discussed, I found it distasteful in the results to see there was deliberate engineering of batch uploads as a form of carpetbagging. I would like to see those with special bot accounts and funded equipment refrain from this temptation and leave it as happen chance.

Let's not let this become just a "brand marketing opportunity". Thanks --Fæ (talk) 12:39, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Are you a bot, parent, guardian or dependent of a bot or an employee of a bot. Sadly, you are not eligible for this contest. This promotion void in New York, Oregon and Massachusetts! :-)Reguyla (talk) 21:08, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

The last milestone to be marked on the community page was the 20 millionth file, last January. That's 5 million in just over a year. The difference between 24 and 25 doesn't seem to be that great, unless you work in base 12. There's always a number of files that the xth file can be, I guess we can try and pick the most "likely" candidate.--KTo288 (talk) 07:45, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

24M was noted on Commons:Milestones. Jean-Fred (talk) 10:49, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

See #We have a winner (25M). Multichill (talk) 20:32, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Blinked and we're over already.--KTo288 (talk) 06:40, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

March 09

President Obama Delivers Remarks on the 50th Anniversary of the Selma Marches

• File:President Obama Delivers Remarks on the 50th Anniversary of the Selma Marches.ogv

There are higher quality versions at YouTube, and also at www.whitehouse.gov.

But I wasn't sure if we still have a 100 MB upload limit these days.

Would it be possible to upload a higher quality version?

Or should we leave it as is for now?

Thank you,

-- Cirt (talk) 04:14, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Also, there's an audio file version in MP3 linked at http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2015/03/07/president-obama-delivers-remarks-50th-anniversary-selma-marches specifically at http://www.whitehouse.gov/videos/2015/March/030715_SelmaAL.mp3 -- but I was unable to convert it from MP3 to OGG. Can someone else upload that MP3 as an OGG file separately? Thank you, -- Cirt (talk) 04:25, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

@Cirt: Technically the upload limit was raised to a 1000 MiB, but from my experience, it is rarely possible to upload files bigger than 250 MiB due to issues with server time outs and response times (it might even be 150 MiB if you're unlucky). The easiest way to avoid this limit is to try upload-by-url which you should be able to use, being an administrator. That said, however, the video of this speech at the highest quality provided by the White House is slightly above 1.1 GiB, so any method other than server-side uploads (requested through Phabricator) is unlikely to work. I'm currently downloading the file from the White House (and it's taking extremely long at a speed of around 56 KB/s), and will convert it to WebM tonight and see what happens then. I can definitely upload an audio Ogg of the speech later today if you can wait :-) odder (talk) 05:17, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

What about using a chunked upload? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 05:27, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Using the Youtube API, you can find it already has the video transcoded as "webm 1280x720 video 1648k , 30fps, video only, 272.07MiB" and audio as "webm audio only audio 99k , audio@128k (44100Hz), 20.45MiB". I am having a go at converting it to vp8 rather than vp9 to make it "Commons compatible". --Fæ (talk) 11:12, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

High resolution version of Obama's Selma Marches speech in webm format. 499MB, taking around 9 hours to transcode on a volunteer's home desktop. Click here for 1,280×720 px playback.

Thanks for your help, Odder, Jacklee, and Fæ! Yes, Odder, OGG audio of the speech would be awesome, at your convenience! I originally added the lowest-quality version of the file to Commons for the video because it was large, the FLV version at about 70 MB. So really anything more than that would be higher video quality. -- Cirt (talk) 14:14, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

BTW, as an illustration of how bad things are when having to transcode files due to Commons not taking the most recent open standard codecs, I am now less than 30% done and it has been around 3 hours since I started the transcoding as a background task. To reiterate, I am actually having to transcode an already available webm file that I downloaded from Youtube in about a minute, as Commons cannot play the most current open standards that Youtube makes available.

I could do a lot more in batch uploading video, but these problems make it an almost pointless and unsatisfying time-sink both for my processing time and volunteer time.

We have discussed this at length previously, and the way things are both with how the viewer front-end works and how the uploader back-end is problematic, I do not currently recommend institutions consider Commons as a video file repository. --Fæ (talk) 14:26, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Transcoding from mp4 -> VP8 will probably be faster than VP9 -> VP8 (im not sure why i thought that. Encoding vp9 tends to be slow relative to other codecs in my experiance, but i dont imagine decoding for transcode will make much of a difference). I'm hopeful for a future where we support VP9. Bawolff (talk) 21:04, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

 Done New video uploaded, click the thumbnail above to see it. (Warning: It may take an hour or two after upload for Commons to transcode different sizes, this means that immediately after upload, the video may play back in at poor quality, try again later.)

I got cold feet after about 4 hours of transcoding vp9 → vp8, thinking that Youtube probably already transcoded from mp4 → vp9 and "double transcoding" was probably a bad thing for size and quality reasons. I started again, and went direct from mp4 → webm (vp8). Considering this is a 30 minute video, it takes a ridiculously long time to process.

The path for doing all this was all free and open source:

1. Youtube's API is free to tap into, https://developers.google.com/youtube/
2. I used FFmpeg http://www.ffmpeg.org and free downloadable open source codecs with a bit of a Python wrapper script for convenience (which I have to hand from other Commons projects) http://www.python.org to make running the transcode from a command-line a bit easier,
3. and thanks to Rillke's excellent User:Rillke/bigChunkedUpload.js, pushing the 499 MB webm file onto Commons is pain free; I saw that the uploader handled a 503 error in the middle of the 120 upload chunks needed, pretty cool.

It is less fortunate that the reality is that number of unpaid volunteers that can grapple with how to meet the arbitrary restrictions on Commons to old codecs must be an eye-wateringly small proportion of those that would be potentially interested in contributing video. Even with my background of a couple of years playing with large uploads, I certainly found it hard to understand and slightly mind-numbingly complex to tease out how to set up FFmpeg to run a successful transcode to do this the first time around. It is no wonder that we see so few video related mass uploads on Commons, this project is just ready for them. --Fæ (talk) 04:35, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for all of your help, everyone above, this is most appreciated! -- Cirt (talk) 06:37, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm not so sure how good FFmpeg VP9 actually is (for 2.5, haven't tested 2.6 yet), but I think if you can get the best available MP4 from whitehouse.gov instead of YouTube, and convert it to OGV, where FFmpeg achieved perfection years ago, it should be as good as WebM, only the compression will be worse. Please correct me if that's completely wrong. Or slightly wrong. Or kind of correct missing the point. –Be..anyone (talk) 16:11, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

You may be missing a key point, Commons cannot play VP9 video, only VP8. As for mpeg vs. ogv, I am not sure that the "wrapper" makes much difference if the underpinning codec is identical. Note that to create the video thumbnailed above, the best mp4 available from Youtube was used as the source to transcode to VP8. (Addendum I see that the White House video is larger in file size that the mp4 from Youtube, but I doubt that anyone would find any appreciable difference; especially as the video was taken at long zoom and suffers from noticeable chromatic aberration at full screen size.) --Fæ (talk) 16:28, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I know its little consolation for the rather bad video support, but if converting the video on your local computer is problematic, you can always convert it on tools-dev.wmflabs.org (In a detached screen session perhaps, although perhaps tool labs folks would prefer it as a "job") and come back to the file when its done. As bonus points the upload would probably be a lot faster from tool labs as its going to have a better internet connection to wmf servers (being a wmf server) then your computer will have. Bawolff (talk) 14:14, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Going on a slight tangent, but I would be happy to try something like this out, so long as chunked uploading were part of the pywikibot modules. Is it available now? Also is ffmpeg available? (it is). I found it a drag to sort out the codecs locally, so I would hesitate to start installing this all on my bit of labs. At the moment I'm parking two videos at a time to a USB stick and transcoding, but it is incredibly slow (right now I have a 500MB and a 800MB mp4 file on the go, I would expect them to take a few hours and these are part of a batch of a couple of hundred I hope to add to Category:Ebolavirus DoD videos). --Fæ (talk) 12:28, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia video playback problem?

This probably has a technical cause, so I'm raising it as a sub-thread.

I can playback the above video perfectly well from Commons, but when I launch it from the English Wikipedia article en:Selma_to_Montgomery_marches#Aftermath_and_historical_impact it takes around 5 seconds to start (I am faced with a black box where the video should be during those 5 seconds) and then "stutters" with a false start, pausing for 25 more seconds, before payback starts. This is using the standard pop-up video player defaulting to WebM 480P from within Firefox. I suspect that the ordinary public reader might not wait for 5 seconds or the following 25 seconds for the video to start. Is this a problem already identified or something limited to very large videos? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 14:02, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

For me it doesn't play at all:

Error: cannot call methods on slider prior to initialization; attempted to call method 'value'
https://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=de&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki&only=scripts&skin=vector&version=20150312T210258Z
Line 3

-- Rillke^(q?) 00:19, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

For me, I get non-smooth playback on both commons and wikipedia. One odd thing is it seems to be both loading the webm and ogg 480p transcodes when launched from the pop-up dialog (It should only be loading the webm afaik). Opening https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/1/1a/President_Obama_Delivers_Remarks_on_the_50th_Anniversary_of_the_Selma_Marches.webm/President_Obama_Delivers_Remarks_on_the_50th_Anniversary_of_the_Selma_Marches.webm.480p.webm directly also takes a long time before starting (but no stuttering). Perhaps firefox issue? VLC seems to be able to open that url almost immediately. Google chrome also seems to be able to open almost immediately. Bawolff (talk) 14:11, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

I am unsure what a next step looks like. It strikes me that:

1. We could benefit if the guidance of COM:Video were to include recommendations for what the practical best sizes are for video, both in terms of file size and resolution. At least a case book of examples might help people have an idea of what the issues are if they expect to include video in articles.
2. It might help if the various codecs and formats were formally tested by the WMF so that we can make a firm recommendation as to which are "technically" the most likely to have good results.
3. If video is going to remain problematic with various browsers having mixed results, again COM:Video could benefit by explaining the issues and any recommended work-arounds (even if it boils down to "use a different browser").

--Fæ (talk) 14:49, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

We have some recommendation over at Help:Converting_video#General_conversion_tips which is linked from com:video.

Also, it's 2015 and we should stop figuring out work-arounds for displaying video. If there is a bug in firefox or mediawiki, they should be fixed instead. --McZusatz (talk) 20:55, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Upgrade of image rendering servers

Hi all,

Its planned to upgrade the image rendering servers to Ubuntu trusty. This will hopefully fix some issues with some images. In particular:

• Certain XCF files may render "better" (But they probably still won't be exactly the same as in GIMP)
• JPEG2000 formatted images in PDFs will render (This includes many pdf's from internet archived (e.g. file:John_Stuart_Mill,_Considerations_on_Representative_Government_(1st_ed,_1861).pdf
• Certain other pdfs that just didn't work previously might work now (e.g. File:WorldAviation.198409.BackCover.pdf
• JPEG in tiff weird colour casts will hopefully go away ( file:Zentralbibliothek_Solothurn_S_I_498_Kosciuszko_Inventarium_02.tif)
• Maybe the 16bit tiff file not rendering issue will go away
• And possibly other things

This is also an important step towards making Opus audio tracks on video work.

The downside, is some large animated GIF files that were on the edge of rendering previously might stop rendering

The new image scalars will only be used for uncached renders (That is if nobody has looked at the particular image at that particular size, or if somebody has ?action=purge 'd the image recently). Additionally, at first (starting Thursday) only one server will be changed to make sure that there is no problems, so you will have a 1 in 9 chance of getting the new server.

Anyways, in the unlikely event that you encounter any image not working, especially if it used to work, please report it here (or at phabricator). For the technically curious, the upgrade is tracked by phab:T84842. Bawolff (talk) 19:43, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

That's excellent news. Do you think it's feasible to code/implement upload-through-stream? Like something sending an Opus-encoded stream (with or without container) but doesn't know its final (file) size while it is sending. -- Rillke^(q?) 21:02, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure. In principle I don't see why not (particularly if its not true streaming, but chunked upload that doesn't know the final size until the end). Bawolff (talk) 14:24, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

March 11

Help correcting image

Could someone upload a new version of the following image. The nitrogen that's floating free isn't supposed to be there, there's supposed to be, where the 'N' is, a line going up to the 'R'. Other than that it's good. Nagelfar (talk) 16:51, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:219a-b.svg

I’m not sure what you’re asking & I not a chemist but I did my best. BTW idk what app generated it but that the file is extremely poorly coded but whatevs—♥ Kelvinsong talk 23:24, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, *almost* perfect. I suppose the line on the other side should be closer 'up' toward the "R" but otherwise it is exactly what I requested so you have my thanks. (the other guy who made it for me dropped off the map upon finishing and never corrected the error) Nagelfar (talk) 01:16, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

 Done && np!!—♥ Kelvinsong talk 02:03, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Russavia related stuff

Illustration of drama at Western College for Women, 1933. Uploaded to Commons today, Russavia claimed to be uninvolved.

I know the whole Russavia topic is an open wound around here and I don't want to seem like I am grave-dancing here because I always liked the guy (I thought his prank on Jimbo was Epic personally) but I noticed a couple things related to him that I think might need some attention. First, there are a number of subpages under his username and since he is permabanned by the WMF and not likely to be returning anytime soon, I think it might be a good idea to browse those, clean them out and remove the subpages if they are no longer needed. Secondly, there are a couple categories directly associated to him. Of the ones I can find, Category:Files needing category checks (Russavia), Category:Files uploaded by Russavia (Eva Rinaldi), Category:Files uploaded by Russavia (cleanup). I was planning on fixing these cats myself but I do not nor will I be likely to get AWB rights here due to my standing on ENWP. I just wanted to mention these things so someone could address these issues. Reguyla (talk) 21:16, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

How about adding the subcategories to Category:Media needing categories and removing the notes from Russavia that he is still working on them? --ghouston (talk) 21:40, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

The subpages are these ones? [1]. I have no idea why they were created, I'd say just leave them there. --ghouston (talk) 21:48, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I see no reason to stir things up, or a need to wipe Russavia from Commons. Seek your LOLs on something more productive. --Fæ (talk) 21:57, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

@Fæ: , I appreciate your loyalty to your friend but I am not attempting to seek LOL's on anyone so can you assume some good faith please. I have been the target of severe harrassment on Wiki myself so I know how it feels and I am also not trying to wipe him from commons and if he were merely blocked or banned by an arbcom or some block happy admin I wouldn't even touch them. But Russavia is in fact blocked permanently by the WMF, an extremely rare fate that I have never seen anyone return from. As such, I really do not see any point in keeping to do categories with his name in them. The same is true of his subpages. I'm not trying to be a jerk, it just isn't necessary and is potentially confusing. Reguyla (talk) 01:04, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Files that were uploaded by Russavia will always have been uploaded by Russavia. Nobody needs to be confused by that, and the actions recorded in the public logs should never be changed. --Fæ (talk) 10:04, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree and that's not what I am saying. What I am saying is that I don't think we need a category that says Category:Files needing category checks (Russavia) or Category:Files uploaded by Russavia (cleanup). Reguyla (talk) 13:26, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Both are populated. When project check/clean-up categories are empty, then they can be considered for deletion. I suggest you work on meaningfully checking the files rather than fomenting a debate about the name. --Fæ (talk) 13:37, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Fae, please stop trying to turn this into a hurt feelings report about Russavia. It isn't and if you bothered to read the discussion I started at all rather than just scanning it fir keywords, which you clearly did not, you would see where I specifically said I think it might be a good idea to browse those, clean them out and remove the subpages if they are no longer needed. This applies to the Subpages and to the aforementioned categories. This isn't personal so please stop being so dramatic. Reguyla (talk) 19:12, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Meh, if there was never any drama here, it would be a very dull project. Doing the gardening would suddenly seem much more appealing. --Fæ (talk) 19:30, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Comment: Agree with Fæ (talk · contribs), the categories seem useful and helpful for tracking purposes. They are a valuable organization metric, and should be retained for the future. Thank you, -- Cirt (talk) 20:59, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

FWIW I sort of agree with Reguyla (although it's not a huge issue now the user is banned) but I think that the best way to deal with this is to categorise all the images that were uploaded but not properly categorised, then deprecate the categories. Out of interest, what is the difference between "Category:Images uploaded by X" and the list provided by Special:Uploads? Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 20:30, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

March 12

Upload Wizard can't handle files with the same names but different file extensions?

It's common to have two files with the same name but different file extensions: File:Example.png and File:Example.jpg. I often upload large PNGs and accompany them with smaller JPGs, but the Upload Wizard doesn't allow this if they have the same file name. This sis a serious hassle, especially when uploading a large number of files. It's not Commons that disallows this—it's Upload Wizard. Can Upload Wizard be altered to allow this? Curly Turkey (talk) 01:11, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

This is one of the ways phab:T48741 manifests. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 04:07, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

So it's a bug? And one that not much progress has been made on from the looks of it. What a hassle. Curly Turkey (talk) 05:04, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

You can always ignore Upload Wizard and upload files using other tools. I, for one, have barely used it, if at all. -- Tuválkin ✉ 02:05, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

March 13

File:Shotokan Karate Union Logo Rising-sun-enso.gif

Image was uploaded as "own work" using the "CC 4.0 International" license. Same image is also being used as the official logo of the Shotokan Karate Union. Uploader (Rachael reiko murakami) has stated here that she has no affiliation to the SKU. I opened a thread on here on user's Wikipedia user talk page to try and find out what is what, but I'm not sure what to do in the meantime. Should the file be tagged as COM:CSD#File? Should a license review request be made? Should a request for OTRS permission be made? Should I just wait to see how the uploader responds to my talk page post? - Thanks in advance. - Marchjuly (talk) 01:11, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Right, DR created: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Shotokan Karate Union Logo Rising-sun-enso.gif‎. Regards, Yann (talk) 08:56, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Reply

The image was being used as the official logo of the Shotokan Karate Union. Uploader (Rachael reiko murakami) and my reply was "The SKU website says "Copyright MCMLXXXV All Rights Reserved" and i have fallen foul of placing the image in the wrong wiki area, but i would never be so presumptuous as to assume that i could just use the image without asking permission therefore my personal standards of courtesy led me to asking for that permission prior to downloading it and then uploading it to the wiki site, albeit in the wrong section. I may relocate it to the non free area as i wouldnt wish to breach the Wikipedia policies regarding images. But there again i may decide to delete it altogether in fear of making yet another mistake in the process of relocating it." But in the meantime as you were perplexed being "not sure what to do in the meantime" I have taken the uncertainty out of it for you and have opted for the later option and "decided to delete it altogether in fear of making yet another mistake in the process of relocating it" now you have waited "to see how the uploader responds" I hope that my decision sets your mind at rest. I am struggling though to see how and where to upload it so that i can use it and "satisfy all the criteria for non-free content" Regards Rachael (Rachael reiko murakami)

Thank you for the clarification Rachael. Basically, even if the SKU told you it was OK to use their image, Wikipedia Commons has no way of verifying such a thing. What the SKU needs to do is clearly let Wikipedia Commons know that they [SKU] intend to release the image for use under a free license. They can do this by email. Everything is explained at "Licensing images: when do I contact OTRS?" and "If you are not the copyright holder". Finally, when you sign your talk page posts please use four tilde (~~~~) and not {{u|Rachael reiko murakami}}. The four tilde not only add your username, but it also adds a time stamp to your posts. The template you used is not for signing posts. - Marchjuly (talk) 02:09, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Reply for Marchjuly

Thanks Marchjuly I have read your recent comment above several times and i think that i understand it now, and i will endeavour to retain your current input of information for future projects, as i have no need of it on this current project because as i stated above i have deleted it form the current project and i intend on replacing it at my convenience with an image that i personally have complete copyright over. Therefore I am also requesting its immediate deletion form wiki commons. What do i need to put a request in to do so ? or as you instigated the enquiry in the first instance then will that deletion request deal with it ?

This current faux pas of mine just goes to highlight my need for immediate assistance, and I refer you to the request for help that i sent you on my userpage.

"Its reassuring to find out that someone with your skills and knowledge of the wiki ways was once a green novice such as I. And No; under different circumstances your enthusiasm would be a breath of fresh air but its just that I am making so many mistakes and offending the delicate nature of so many unknown new friends that I never knew i had, that makes me to reiterate that i was 100% serious when i asked you to tidy up my draft page to suit yours and wikis standards of compliance. Having looked back upon the numerous comments that you have left me all with good intentions im sure, as no one would spend as much time trying to prove to other how much they know by humiliating others while stating that they are trying to help others, would they! After reviewing your many contributions to my failing project i can appreciate the time and effort that you have given to familiarising your self with my project, it could almost be said that the sum total of your contributions are a master class in the wiki ways that are aimed at the complete novice such as I, and in total sincerity for that I am very grateful. But when one compares the inordinate amount of time that you must have spent on producing the master class i guess that you could have if you had redirected that effort into tidying up my page, then could have got it in to shape several times over by now and not attracted the numerous humiliating comments that are serving to highlight my short coming as a contributor to this site. That is why again i am seriously asking you to tidy up my page and help a struggling damsel in distress and then i will have something reliable to work from for any future pages that i submit and i will always be grateful to you for your help"

Regards Rachael Rachael reiko murakami (talk) 08:57, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Template:Зображення

Hi, I don't think it is a good idea to use such template. Could someone with a bot replace it by {{Information}}? Thanks, Yann (talk) 13:36, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree. It seems that this template was mostly used by User:UWCTransferBot, used to transfer images from the Ukrainian Wikipedia. I guess this template allows/allowed to transfer the files easily, without the need to transcribe the Ukrainian information template. Nevertheless we should use the standard {{Information}} template here. --Sebari (talk) 18:13, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Detrimental bot move

Can anyone explain to me why File:Indu amerika rebuild-plant.jpg and File:Sarah Anderson Weiss.jpg were recently bot-moved from Category:Unidentified locations to Category:Unidentified countries? Both are clearly in the United States; the former even has a category saying as much. I'm not so much worried about these two files as that if this was a bot move probably the same incorrect move was made on a lot of other files, and I suspect that the activities of this bot in that time period should be investigated. - Jmabel ! talk 16:21, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

I just noticed the same as a couple dozen files from of my (small) mass uploads were recategorized by ButkoBot away from Category:Unidentified locations arbitrarily to Category:Unidentified countries, and from there by user:Butko into an equaly arbitrary subcat — often slightly incorrect, some times grossly incorrect.

I’d say that Category:Unidentified locations is a legitimate categorization and the only unproblematic dissimination would be further into Category:Unidentified locations in Country (and still excluding international waters and off-Earth locations).

-- Tuválkin ✉ 16:44, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Some contrasting examples:

• File:CoarseBrickWall.jpg was
  • moved from Category:Unidentified locations to Category:Unidentified countries
  • and then moved from Category:Unidentified countries to Category:Brick walls in unidentified countries

Although one wonders why the quirky fixation on countries, this is not wrong, as brick walls are seldom found on international waters or in outer space. Still, Category:Unidentified locations would still be a good categorization and these two moves did not add anything to Commons.

• File:ClaraPaulista+MariaFumaça.jpg was also
  • moved from Category:Unidentified countries to Category:Brick walls in unidentified countries
  • and then moved from Category:Unidentified countries to Category:People of unidentified countries

Now that’s a problem because people (unlike brick walls) are known to move about and it is unclear if the photographed subject is abroad or in her home country (which is known, trusting the description, and was already clearly identified as Category:Women of São Paulo (state), itself a subcat of Category:Women of Brazil).

In short, user:Butko should perhaps stop this bot and bring the matter of Category:Unidentified locations to discussion. -- Tuválkin ✉ 18:07, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

SUL finalization update

Hi all, please read this page for important information and an update involving SUL finalization, scheduled to take place in one month. Thanks. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:46, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Someone with ChemDraw help please?

I need a lot of images for the ton of work I've put into my page to go with the tables I've added: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cocaine_analogues

I just need someone to remake the following images, with suggested names (BME standing for Benzoyl Methyl Ecgonine, the numbers being S. Singh's alphanumeric for the compound, etc.):

[2] BME401a-f
[3] BMEnoncatalyticHapten394, BMEnoncatalyticHapten395, BMEnoncatalyticHapten396
[4] 3alphaModifiedBenztropine
[5] 3alphaDiphenylmethoxyBenztropine

I need a ton more, but this would be a start! Thanks Nagelfar (talk) 20:58, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

I guess you need help from Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry, Commons:Graphic Lab or Commons:WikiProject Chemistry. -- Rillke^(q?) 21:06, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

File:Frederic_and_Irene_Joliot-Curie.jpg

I think there's good reason to think this is out of copyright, but can anyone figure out the exact rationale behind the Smithsonian's otherwise unelaborated statement that it is? Adam Cuerden (talk) 21:36, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Why do you think it is out of copyright? Ruslik (talk) 07:27, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm guessing it'll be instrument of gift. I'm presuming the Smithsonian isn't just guessing. Which, while it could happen, seems unlikely. Adam Cuerden (talk) 03:33, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

File:Saturn diagram.svg tutorial on VectorTuts!

If anyone was wondering how I made my Saturn diagram, I’ve written a tutorial on VectorTuts! —♥ Kelvinsong talk 23:41, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Terrific image, many thanks! -- Tuválkin ✉ 01:48, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Brilliant. In your very last step please check if a slightly less dark grey for the irrelevant labels also works, they were hard to read on my laptop in a position not tuned for maximal contrast. –Be..anyone (talk) 04:28, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Don't know if you notice that already, but the aurorae disappear when the SVG is opened by Firefox natively. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.)

March 14

Upload Wizard getting worse and worse

Hi! According to Commons stats I am the #3 uploader of Wikimedia Commons of all the times, appearantly the #1 for self-produced images. This is just to introduce my self and let you know that I know what I'm talking about. After WikiLovesMonuments last year I had a problem to my PC and I did not upload anything for some months, until December. Since that time Upload Wizard is getting every month worse and worse, taking so much more time to upload images for errors and disfuncioning. The process of uploading is getting more difficult and frustrating:

1. Preview images do not show anymore, unless I add 3-by-3 images per time (or less). If I can't see the preview I cant' correctly describe the file and put proper categories.
2. When I select images they do not come listed in alphabetical order anymore. For instance, if I upload 10 images named "File 01.jpg, File 02.jpg, ... File 10.jpg", during the passages of the wizard they come out all mixed up ("File 10.jpg, File 07.jpg, File 02.jpg, File 09.jpg...). This makes much harder to write the correct descriptions and categories. If I have to copy and paste the same category to a serie of files that I named from 1 to 5, they come splitted among all the 50 files I am uploading, making it all extremely complicated and boring.
3. In the very last week I am getting more trouble, since wizard gets error messages for 20% to 40% of the files I'm trying to upload. So I have to try and try again. Sometimes it also gets blocked for 1 or 2 files at the very last passage (pubblication), I wait and wait, but all I can finally do is just remove the file from the list and upload it manually with the basic form.

I tried to upload from different computers, different Windows systems, and different connections with the same result, I have Adblock disabled, my camera is the same. Also, months ago I requested some easy impovements (like an alert, an extra button, an "undo" option for the dangerous "Copy the title with automathic numeration" button, which to my opinion should never be automatically checked). Nobody cared. Where are those programmers when you need them? Thanks for your attention. --Sailko (talk) 16:27, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Worrying. Thanks for highlighting the problem. My personal impression was that there was a healthy amount of interest from the WMF for improving the new user upload experience 2 and 3 years ago, but Commons has since then dropped down the "food-chain" or become less of a "brand priority" for the WMF. I don't really know how to change that perception, perhaps we should have a formally recognized place (on Commons rather than Phabricator) to collect problems that users experience and discuss how urgent they are for attention?

Due to the clumsiness of the upload wizard for larger uploads, I never use it. When I'm not uploading using scripts accessing the API, I tend to use the chunked uploader and by-pass the need to fill in boxes on forms. I find it strange that the incredibly useful service of chunked uploading has not yet been integrated into the standard wizard (though my next largest gripe would be the lack of in-built video transcoding, discussed several times before on the Village pump). BTW I speak as the #1 uploader of all time, though mainly of batch uploads from interesting public domain archives... sadly the #2 uploader of all time has been banned by a WMF employee for unexplained "reasons". --Fæ (talk) 16:43, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

I've experienced some of these problems too. I've filed a bug at the Phabricator (T92734). Feel free to add further comments there. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 16:47, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Please report undesired changes like these in Phabricator. They are here, because people are actively trying to rework the extension to something that is measurable, performs better and more reliable. This is VERY complex work, but is required before any improvements to it can be added. As you can see, there has been quite a bit of activity lately. If you experience any regressions due to this, please report them, NOW is the best time to bring them forward. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:16, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I never use upload wizard, because I have a bad internet connection, so I can only upload a maximum of 4 images at a time, taking up to 10 minutes. But since yesterday evening it is impossible to upload anything with the basic upload formular. I uploaded 2 images, since then I click "upload", connexion starts and 2 minutes later I am back to the upload formular. Traumrune (talk) 21:45, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, after the basic upload somehow disappeared I may have used the wizard a couple of times - urgh. Switched over to Commonist, left it after some months to use Vicuña- very happy with. --Jwh (talk) 15:18, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Jwh, you mean this — Special:Upload? -- Tuválkin ✉ 14:02, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes I think so, if I remember well there was a time it was more hidden and it was difficult to avoid the wizard. I tried the wizard several times as it allowed to upload multiple files in one transaction, but got often error messages and had to start all over. But that's tempi passati - as I mentioned I'm very happy now with Vicuña. --Jwh (talk) 16:05, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear about these problems. Might be helpful to run UploadWizard with the debug option enabled by adding "?debug=true" at the end of the web address (after "Special:UploadWizard") and performing those steps again and checking if anything appears in your browser's JavaScript console when loading the page (more information: Firefox ≥24, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Opera). If the problem is reproducible, it would be great if somebody who faces this issue could report the bug in 'Phabricator' by following the instructions How to report a bug (only one problem per ticket please), in this case under the project 'MediaWiki-Extensions-UploadWizard' (direct link; see the Phabricator help for account information). --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 07:27, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

So, the Upload Wizard was created because all other tools were too geeky — it dumbed down uploading so that even the village idiot could use it (and they did!), and now it has problems that need the user to manually add quearies to the url and to file in phab tickets. That makes sense. -- Tuválkin ✉ 07:44, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes yes, we all know it was very badly written, and that we are still paying the price for it so many years on, reiterating that isn't going to help in getting anything fixed. Getting those few people who know how to open a web inspector to use the debug flag MIGHT help however. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:28, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Actually, I had another idea: Nuke it all from orbit, reinstate the previously offered tools, find out who decided it was needed and worked on it and who kept pushing it to be funded and developed instead of useful tools — and fire, block, office-ban them all, bury the key and and superprotect its grave. And then we can go back to work. -- Tuválkin ✉ 13:15, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

I can confirm issues #1 and #2 from Sailkos post. These problems have been there for months now, especially the missing preview images are a big nuisance. I've had problem #3 a while ago, but the lastest uploads didn't produce such errors. --Magnus (talk) 08:38, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

March 15

Creating a free and open source typeface

Hi, I know this isn’t the typical business of Commons, but I am currently designing a typeface and would like to release it as a free and open source font with help from the Commons community. I’ve written a rationale for this font project that you can read at File:A proposed free and open source typeface.pdf (use pdf reader; pdf may not display with Firefox pdf.js). Typefaces are resources much like the images and video that Commons currently produces, and expanding into font creation I believe is a logical expansion of its mission. Please take a moment to take a look at my proposal, and perhaps test my font which lives on GitHub!

It is critical that we do not ignore the importance of type in the development of libre ecosystems. Typography has always been a stubborn holdout in this regard, and to this day there remain few free high-quality comprehensive text typefaces. Free type is mainly concentrated in a handful of flagship “superfonts” that contain a staggering catalog of glyphs, but lack greatly in the quality of design and typographic styles and features seen in professional type. To my knowledge, there are currently just two great open source text families—Gentium, which is still incomplete, and Linux Libertine, in addition to a few corporate gifts such as Adobe Source Serif and Bitstream Charter. To help fill the gap, I present my own original type design and ask for the Wikimedia projects’ help in finishing and releasing my font to provide a quality free font choice…

—♥ Kelvinsong talk 15:59, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

This font looks really lovely texts are convenient to read in it - thus I hope I can read Wikipedia articles in that font one day - including mathematical formulae of course. ${\frac {-4\pm {\sqrt {6^{2}-4\times ac}}}{2a}}$ -- Rillke^(q?) 23:39, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

I love it, except for the crossbar in the capital A, which is very distracting to me. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:23, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I’m not sure exactly what you mean. It's right where crossbars on A’s usually go. Is it too high? too low?—♥ Kelvinsong talk 02:47, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

The crossbar in the A also looks messed up to me (using MacOS X). Kaldari (talk) 06:25, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

I checked the PDF in Windows and iOS and fail to see any glitch of the capital A. Maybe a screen cap from MacOS would explain the issue better. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 07:43, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

You can see my problem in this screenshot. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:23, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

I noticed that in the small f: phab:F97280 - installed the otf font files under Windows. -- Rillke^(q?) 11:59, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

That is very strange, I have never seen it do that! It usually happens when there is a contradicting intersection, but shouldn’t be happening there considering both contours are clockwise—♥ Kelvinsong talk 22:32, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

@Kaldari Rillke & User:TheDJ, I’ve fused the A crossbar and the f crossbar & pushed updated font files to github. Pls download & check to see if the problem is still there on ur computers—♥ Kelvinsong talk 22:55, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Yeah looks like expected now. Although not that eye-catching the "t" glyph is also affected; interestingly only with smaller font sizes: phab:F99875 -- Rillke^(q?) 13:36, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

@Rillke Fixed—♥ Kelvinsong talk 22:14, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm no font expert, but your font looks elegant and classy. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 02:14, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks sm!!—♥ Kelvinsong talk 02:47, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

@Kelvinsong: Sounds like a great idea. I'm going to let the WMF designers know about it in case they want to contribute. One thing to keep in mind: The SIL Open Font License (which is one of the most popular free font licenses) covers use and distribution of the font as a whole, not the individual glyphs. If you want to make sure that your font is completely free (both the software and the design elements), I would suggest using a CC0 or CC-BY license (or dual-licensing with both CC and SIL licenses). Kaldari (talk) 06:24, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

@User:Kaldari idk I was going to use GPL font license to avoid the whole Charter parallel design mess—♥ Kelvinsong talk 22:48, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

@Kelvinsong: GPL+FE works too. Don't be afraid to multi-license though :) Kaldari (talk) 23:08, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

This is a very nice font and well-designed. I hope I'll see this on Wikimedia projects at some point, and maybe even elsewhere on the web. Definitely my favorite custom serif font for paragraph texts. --GeorgeBarnick (talk) 07:00, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Very interesting and good-looking to my uneducated eye, but I guess that's up to the real font experts to judge (would it be possible to get feedback from a professional?). Just out of curiosity: What's wrong with Computer Modern/BlueSky/Latin Modern? --El Grafo (talk) 08:32, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

"It is critical that we do not ignore the importance of type in the development of libre ecosystems." YES! We discussed a lot about this topic and I'm personally very happy to see that you have stepped in so decidedly. Besides, I have seen several of your works without knowing that they came from the same designer. Congratulations for your skills, and thank you very much for your contributions.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 18:47, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

@User:Kaldari & @User:GeorgeBarnick thank you sm for saying that!! ☺️

@User:El Grafo I’m not sure yet. All the major type designers communities went into strange decline in the past year but I’ll send some samples out. && I don’t want to get into a rant but Computer/Latin Modern is jsut a dreadfully designed font. It was not even created by a human; it was made by a computer with only a rudimentary sense of curve aesthetics. The italics are half-decent but unstandard & so hard to read for long stretches. It is a decorative font at best, and is very illegible for body text. If you want a didone font; use Didot or New caledonia. It also gives off an impression of laziness on the part of the author, and a tone of dreary technicality on the content. The only thing it does well is it works well with TeX (I heard, since I don’t use TeX).

@Qgil-WMF Thanks sm!! & any hint if this is something WMF will be taking a lasting interest in?—♥ Kelvinsong talk 22:44, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

@Kelvinsong: , Vibhabamba is UX designer at the WMF, and I recommend you to follow up with her. She has posted some advice below already.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:54, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

I read about Google's w:Noto fonts recently (Noto = "No tofu") - that already has 98 fonts completed. Is that (code, main site, Apache licence) something that would be compatible with our needs, and your (fantastic, as always) efforts? I hope we can avoid competing standards and mass-duplication of labour, as well as getting the largest possible global installation-base. It might be ideal to collaborate on this existing effort? Quiddity (talk) 22:49, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

@Quiddity you are confusing fonts with apps. Fonts are in a way software. But they are not built nor used in the same way apps are. If I went out and built a new open source word processor, you might be justified in asking me why I didn’t just contribute to LibreOffice (though if u ask me, LibreOffice is a mess, not as bad as GIMP but approaching). That’s bc you only ever need one open source word processor & it’s better to have one really good Libreoffice than two lesser rival apps that do the same thing. But fonts are not apps. For one I cannot contribute to an existing font project in a meaningful way. I do not know who designed Noto (it seems to be credited to one “Google”) but only that designer can make more Noto glyphs. I, with my typographical experience can offer suggestions and critiques on his (or her) typeface & fix bugs. But I cannot directly contribute to it. Only Noto’s designer can design Noto Serif.

More importantly, diversity is a pro in type design, not a con. There is no such thing as “duplication of labor” or redundancy in type design, only lost potential. This is an extremely big issue & I could write a whole article about it. but anyway—specific reasons why it makes sense to create a new font:

• I don’t really like Noto Serif : This might be a bit subjective, but personally I am not a fan of its design (largely lifted from Droid serif). Droid serif is at perfunctory glance a more polished interpretation of the “computer type” families. In essence gluing serifs onto sans fonts. Sometimes that works, some people like that, but to me it makes a font that’s uncomfortable to read. Don’t get me wrong. Droid serif is not a bad font—in fact it’s better than the professional fonts some of my textbooks are set in—just not my taste. It’s not exactly a design I am enthusiastic to contribute to, uk? ofc that could just be my own typographer’s bias
• I couldn’t contribute to if I wanted to : basically see what I said before. Only Noto’s designer can design Noto Serif. I have done such a thing before, contributing IPA glyphs & stuff to existing fonts. You can get a decent grip on what the original designer meant but it’s difficult & basically what I would truly call wasted energy. —♥ Kelvinsong talk 23:31, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
• It wouldn’t be “our own” : Typefaces, even libre ones, have “owners”. Usually this is the company or organization that uses it the most. Google “owns” Roboto; Mozilla (w Google) “owns” Open Sans; Apple “owns” Helvetica, and big surprise, Google “owns” Droid/Noto. It’s a hard concept to put into words, but you get what I mean. Fira, Gentium, and Libertine don’t have this problem. You can just kind of smell it.
• Noto isn’t really free : No typeface is (or should be) free as in gratis, but you could argue that Google’s superfonts aren’t even free as in speech. They’re more like legally-irrevocable gifts that we are allowed to use at Google’s grace. && Google has a poor track record with its treatment of the type design craft & I’m reluctant to give my labor to them. && see [6]
• We still need new fonts : Even if Google was the most angelic company in the world; even if Noto was the best designed font in the history of the planet; even if its designer’s vision of the typeface was magically transferred to my heart, we would still need more choice in type. We’re starting to reach saturation with Linux distributions. Fonts still have a long way to go. Feel free to google “why we need new fonts”, because every type designer on the planet has been asked this question at some point, and some have written extensively on it.

I hope this makes sense I didn’t want to spend too long writing a long explanation of this topic—♥ Kelvinsong talk 23:31, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

@Kelvinsong: That helps immensely, thank you for the details. This proposed project is intriguing, and I wish it great success.

(Ramble: I adore the vast diversity of typefaces, and have spent many an hour browsing typography blogs/libraries/articles, and learning some of the nuances of the basics [Foundry:Family:Face:Font! But I still mix them up like a philistine, all too often >.< ], but most of my online font-usage-knowledge is still from circa '98-'02, when kottke's silkscreen was all the rage, hence I have somewhat outdated views particularly regarding embedded webfonts! Again, best of wishes for this proposal. I look forward to this elegant and accessible work of science and art. :) Quiddity (talk) 06:05, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

@User:Quiddity Thanks!! && btw a foundry is the font publisher (usually a company or artist collective; sometimes an individual). Family & face are the same thing; Font can either mean the same as Family or refer to a single instance of a family.—♥ Kelvinsong talk 13:07, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

@Kelvinsong: Hi! While I am taking a look at your typeface, it would be a good idea for you to submit it to Typographica. I could help connect you with Stephen Coles. Is there an email address where I can reach you? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vibhabamba (talk • contribs) 08:03, 19 March 2015‎ (UTC)

March 16

File:Las mozas del cántaro.jpg

What happened here, the picture is bluish on the Commons page and on the French and Spanish WP pages about the painting, but when downloaded the file has perfectly normal colours? Oliv0 (talk) 09:18, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

The file has an embedded colour profile, probably from the Imacon Flextight Precision scanner used to create the image. Most browsers will just ignore this. I'll apply the profile, if anyone really needs the original, it's still available in the file history. — Julian H.^✈ 10:17, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

@Julian Herzog: Thank you ! Could the bad rendering of the original file be due to m:Tech/News/2015/12 / Recent changes "The servers that resize images are using new software. phab:T84842"? Oliv0 (talk) 16:01, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't know if anything was different before. But the thumbnail generation definitely doesn't do anything wrong, it keeps the colour profile from the original file. So technically, everything is correct, it's just not helpful because browsers don't use the profile. — Julian H.^✈ 16:14, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

most (not all. Especially not mobile phone) browsers use colour profiles. I dont think it has anything to do with image render upgrades. Probably either original had wrong colour profile, or there was something weird/obscure with the profile and it got damaged during the shrinking of the image (ive heard of that happening on files with multiple conflicting colour info). This is speculation though, i havent looked at original file. Bawolff (talk) 23:43, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Collapsing in-line text

I know that we have templates to collapse cells inside of tables, but is there any way to collapse text that's in-line with non-hidden text? --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 17:11, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Can you give an example? Ruslik (talk) 20:00, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Click me! Have a look at mw:ResourceLoader/Default_modules#jquery.makeCollapsible and build a template from it. Note that ID attributes must be, surprisingly, unique per page! Mind transclusion and other Wiki-magic. -- Rillke^(q?) 12:14, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Help needed with fixing files in Category:Pages using Information template with parsing errors

As a side effort related to m:File metadata cleanup drive we are tracking now files that do not have any of the standard infobox templates or templates derived from them, in Category:Media missing infobox template. A subset of those are files that seem to have parts of the {{Information}} template: those were placed in Category:Pages using Information template with parsing errors. Many files in that category started with a valid {{Information}} template but some edit to the wikitext broke it, for example this edit 7 year ago, and they just need a minor syntax correction. However since this is the first time we compiled such list there are a lot of files to fix and we could use some help with them. --Jarekt (talk) 18:55, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Why does Commons host so few Public Library of Science PDFs?

The Public Library of Science is an open access collection of scientific journals. So far as I know, all of its contents are under Creative Commons attribution licenses that are compatible with being hosted on Wikimedia Commons. Naturally we host hundreds if not thousands of images and videos that were first published in a PLoS journal. I know Wikimedia Commons also hosts PDFs of freely license publications because Wikisource has transcribed some of them. However, we don't seem to have many, if any PDFs of actual PLoS articles and I was curious as to why. It doesn't seem to be lack of interest or awareness because as I mentioned earlier we host hundreds and hundreds of pictures and videos. Why not copies of the PDFs? Abyssal (talk) 20:55, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Yes, the license allows these files to be hosted here, but what would be the objective to host them in quantity? Regards, Yann (talk) 21:00, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

@Abyssal: @Yann: This is an excellent idea with lots of applications. There is a pilot of it at en:Wikisource:Wikisource:WikiProject Open Access/Programmatic import from PubMed Central and related ideas at en:Wikisource:Wikisource:WikiProject Open Access. Wikimedia Commons may or may not be the right place to put PDFs; if the content where put into Wikisource then parts of it could be deconstructed and tagged with metadata, whereas an entire PDF file could not be easily taken apart and remixed. Some people have called for source content on Wikisource to be matched with a PDF upload on Commons but that may not make sense for digitally-born documents. I would be happy to talk this through with anyone. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:35, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I can see the use of these files if they are transcribed on Wikisource, or used on Wikipedia (or Wikibooks, etc.), but I am not sure uploading thousands of them without any prior use in any Wikimedia projects is useful. I am ready to be proved otherwise. Regards, Yann (talk) 09:52, 17 March 2015 media

While surely most if not all image and video files from PLOS publications are within COM:SCOPE, I question the utility and benefit of hosting complete PDFs on Commons and/or transcribing them to Wikisource. For all practical purposes, the complete text of PLOS and other online open access journals are already fully digitized and completely machine searchable, unlike say old PD books and journals on archive.org, which while they may have minimal OCR scans, these often contain significant amounts of typos, poor formatting, electronic gibberish, and other impediments to easy online utilization. So rather than asking why Commons doesnt have PLOS PDFs, I'd ask why should Commons host PLOS PDFs?-Animalparty (talk) 04:43, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

March 17

SUL finalization: Commons and usernames that are redirects

Hi all,

I started contacting users that are slated to be renamed for single-user login finalization. Unfortunately the way the script was set out it followed redirects from old usernames to new usernames in some cases and warned users that they were to be renamed even if they were not scheduled to be but the old username is. The script was stopped the moment this was first reported and has been fixed. However, there are still a lot of messages in the queue following the old script that need cleared out before the new one starts. There will still be some more users that will be contacted that are not actually going to be renamed. My sincere apologies in advance for the confusion this is causing some affected users, please spread the word. Thanks, and again sorry for the trouble. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:35, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I am one of the people who got this kind of message, which led me to make a suboptimal choice at Special:GlobalRenameRequest, and now I can't change it anymore. It would be nice if someone could stop this renaming process (Mate2code to WatchDuck) for me, or tell me how to do it. mate2code 13:59, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I also got several such messages. Could you send a message to all these cases please? That would make sure that the issue is fixed. Thanks, Yann (talk) 14:03, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Replied at phab:T90820#1130742. --Ricordisamoa 23:55, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

March 18

Attention: new file moving errors

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T93009

i had 2 cases in the last hours where file moving produced two bad "pages" instead of one "good page" and a redirect. for further inspection i leave the following pages without a deletion request:

• old name File:Sauerland-Landchaft im Sommer (14652091457).jpg – there's now a redirect and an image placeholder, but the image isn't displayed (broken)
• new name File:Sauerland-Landschaft im Sommer (14652091457).jpg – there's the information, but no image

in the move log there are more examples moved by other users, eg. see File:The Soviet Union 1971 CPA 4061 stamp (Order of the October Revolution and Building Construction) cancelled.jpg

can someone please take care? maybe also a sitenotice so that no further files are moved until the problem is solved? Holger1959 (talk) 03:23, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

This is phabricator:T93009. --Didym (talk) 03:28, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

thank you, so manual purging the new page seems to help. good, i know now. Holger1959 (talk) 03:31, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Not only the file moves are affected, deletion without manual purging also does not hide files and pages. --Didym (talk) 03:32, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Even worse: When restoring deleted file, apparently only the description text versions get restored, not the actual file. At least that's what happened with File:H Steiner zug. - Entwurf zum Denkmal Heinrichs vom Mömpelgard FedZeich.aquar. ca1578 (ZaWH08).jpg. Prior to restoring, the file was still accessible; I still had it in an open browser tab und could re-upload from that. Can anybody else confirm such problems with restoring files? --Rosenzweig τ 18:39, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

In my watchlist it says, among other things the file is not shown after undeletion. -- Rillke^(q?) 18:41, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

OK, the original file version is now back. Apparently some kind of delay. --Rosenzweig τ 18:44, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

March 19

New file renaming criteria in place

Community, I am here to notify you that the works around implementing Commons:Requests_for_comment/File_renaming_criterion_2 are finished; a lot of translations are missing. Although I am not opposing development of policies and guidelines, the volume of work required due to multilingualism and integration into software was enormous and even the new criteria are image-centric. For the future, before starting up RfCs, please make sure there are sufficient resources for putting their results into place. Thank you. -- Rillke^(q?) 01:51, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

• Is there somewhere we have the definitive English text and a list either of what languages need translation or what languages have been translated? - Jmabel ! talk 05:17, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Please confer to and translate Template:File renaming reasons/i18n. Some of the former translations might be of help. -- Rillke^(q?) 09:47, 19 March 2015 (UTC)