Commons:Village pump/Archive/2005/09

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GFDL Image

I'm not familiar to license, tell me please. I found a good picture for my preparing article in another language of wikipedia. I'd like to use the picture in my article. But the picture was uploaded by another user with GFDL license. May I upload the picture to Wiki-Commons and use it in other languages of Wikipedia? --汲平 02:54, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Yep. Just make sure to indicate where you got the picture (which language Wikipedia, and what was the title there?). Also, copy all information the uploader gave. dbenbenn | talk 03:02, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Mentioning the source this was isnt a good ideaq, because in most cases the picture is deleted from the original wikipedia and all license information may be lost. Its better to mention the *real* source. --Huebi 05:25, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

And the name of the uploader (at least when he is the creator). -guety 03:09, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your answers. In many cases, GFDL images are taken by donors themselves. What shall I mention about the "real sources" of those images? For instance, is it acceptable that "The origin of this image was taken by (donor's name with link), (name of the original photo with link)" ? --汲平 14:58, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this is the preferred way. But keep in mind that the image may be deleted from the wiki it was copied from, because it is redundant to have it there and on the commons. So the link to the "real name" is not really helpful if the image came from a wikipedia or such. But linking to the original author, and copying all information s/he provided, is important. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 10:52, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the Creative Commons Attribution licenses require that you provide a link to the original location of the photo. I don't know about the GFDL. dbenbenn | talk 18:56, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

La Cigale

An anonymous IP claims that the image image:La Cigale.jpg painted by Jules Joseph Lefebvre requires a licence fee, which he paid for his website, the rights on this particular digital image are owned by Corbis. The image was painted 1872 and Lefebvre died 1911, can they claim copyright on this work? startaq 11:29, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

If the image is PD, they can not claim any rights to it, nor can they require a fee. The situation is a little more fuzzy for reproductive photos, but it is generally assumed that they are reproductions, not derivative work, so no (c) applies there either (we have lots of images here based on this assumption). Remains to check if the picture is in fact PD: as far as I know, it is, for France has a protection period of 70 years pma, which in this case exired 1982. If you want a definitive answer, though, ask someone who knows more about french laws. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 12:31, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

See also Commons:Deletion_requests#Image:La_Cigale.jpg. User:202.81.18.30 keeps removing the picture from Jules Joseph Lefebvre. It's very annoying, maybe he can be blocked (the IP used is always the same), or the page protected? startaq 01:54, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

France has 70 years + the war periods + possibly 30 years if the author was killed for France (which would be the case for, say, Saint-Exupéry). David.Monniaux 11:31, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

language templates

There are this little templates for languages like template:en, template:de, template:fr. But I don't understand why en has an other syntax than de? The first has to be set in front of english text, the latter takes german text as parameter. This makes no sense to me. All this templates should work the same way. (with text as parameter seems more logical, because you can tag the whole text as "in language X". But I don't know the technical implications...) --::Slomox:: >< 11:48, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be possible, to make templates, that take the text as parameter, which add a div or span tag and a class value, so for example the german wikipedia could hide the description of the picture in foreign languages, so only the German description (and possibly the English in case there is no German) is visible?

Templates are like this:

<span class="commons-LANGCODE commons-lang" lang="LANGCODE">{{{1}}}</span>

You put this CSS in the local Wikipedias:

.commons-lang {
 display: none;
}
.commons-LOCALLANGCODE {
 display: inline!important;
}

You write this in the image description page on Commons:

{{en|This picture shows foobar.}}
{{de|Dieses Bild zeigt foobar.}}
{{nds|Dit Bild wiest foobar.}}

HTML in German Wikipedia would be:

<span class="commons-en commons-lang" lang="en">This picture shows foobar.</span>
<span class="commons-de commons-lang" lang="de">Dieses Bild zeigt foobar.</span>
<span class="commons-nds commons-lang" lang="nds">Dit Bild wiest foobar.</span>

But you would only see this on screen:

Dieses Bild zeigt foobar.

--::Slomox:: >< 14:37, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

I love this idea. The only problem is that it isn't backwards compatible: if you change Template:En, you leave an ugly {{{1}}} on all pages until they get updated. dbenbenn | talk 16:07, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Bulk transfer of files

Has anyone got a bot that will bulk transfer files from a language Wikipedia to here?

I was thinking of w:en:User:Our Phellap/Gallery (I've told him to upload them here, but does he listen?). I can quite easily edit out a list of the relevant files.

Oh, and why isn't this in the FAQ? Duncharris 20:16, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

File sizes

I was trying to upload some scans of old maps and I noticed that it asks if you upload anything over 5MB, although before I had started uploading I couldnt find any recommendations about maximum filesize. The original scans are ridiculously high res (600dpi) as I got a friend to scan them on a good quality scanner, so I took them down quite a bit when converting to png from tiff (oh does anyone know if ImageMagick compresses png by default?), but even so I was left with 18MB. Whats the recommendation? Its only really an issue with scans as most other things arent that lage (other than video). Justinc 22:03, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Please ignore the warning and upload your scans. It's possible the PNGs can be compressed further, but probably not too much. In my experience, ImageMagick is reasonably good about that. dbenbenn | talk 23:30, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Double Names

I've had several instances where I've uploaded a photo, only to realize that someone else has already uploaded a photo with the very same name. When referencing the photo in Wikipedia, the other photo appears. I then uploaded the photo again with a different name.

I now see that there's a way to rename photos. But what should I do with my duplicates? Also, is there any way to predict which of the two photos will be shown? jvdc 17:56, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I guess you're talking about the situation where you upload Image:Foo, and the English Wikipedia (say) already has w:Image:Foo. In that case, the version local to the English Wikipedia will be shown in articles there, but your version will still be available to any other project that doesn't locally have an Image:Foo.

Please tag any duplicates with {{redundant|[[:Image:new image name.ext]]}}. dbenbenn | talk 18:27, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

How do I tag the images? jvdc 16:06, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Go the the image description page, click the "edit" tab at the top, and insert the text. It's just like editing an article on Wikipedia. dbenbenn | talk 17:37, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

How to simply create a thumbnail page with all my Pictures?

I'd like to have a gallery with all the pictures I've uploaded so far on my personal page. Is there any trick or template to do that quickly without having to rummage through all the pictures in the "my contributions" list, copying and pasting their addresses? MichaelXXLF 08:18, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Nope, sorry, you'll have to do it by hand. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 10:23, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Ther'S now a feature request for this: Bugzilla:3341. Vote for it, if you like -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 10:49, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Cool! Thank you! MichaelXXLF 12:04, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Template:thumbnail

I have created this template to tag images that have been uploaded as a thumbnailed version. Do you think that makes sense? Should we create a category to go with the template? Plase comment and improve! -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 13:29, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

• Good idea, it's a common newbie mistake to save the thumbnailed version and upload that. Perhaps it could be made a little less strict; it's usually done by mistake, and this makes it seem like you're very close to getting shot at dawn. Cnyborg 16:39, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

hm, i was just being the usual, streight forward me;) Well, feel free to edit it. But the tag should keep the "warning" character, because it should also warn people not to delete the original. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 17:27, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

I can't really come up with anything better myself, just something to keep in mind. One other thing, though; I assume that many of those who make this mistake does it because they're not familiar with wiki-thumbnails; a brief how-to guide, to which the tag could link, might be helpful. I've read something about it before, but I can't remember if that was here or on another project. If there's nothing here, I already have something in Norwegian from an explanation I gave someone, and could easily translate it and find some suitable title for it. Cnyborg 20:41, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

that would be excelent, go ahead! We really need a "copying images from a Wikipedia" howto, which also mentions the license issues, NowCommons templates, etc... -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 21:30, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Wrote Help:Scaled images (feel free to move it if there's a better name for it) and added a link to the template. I agree that we should have a guide to copying media from Wikipedia. I'll try to contribute with something; I've dealt with a lot of the problems that can arise on no:, so I have some ideas. Cnyborg 21:56, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

How to search in Commons?

I tried to search for images but I find it almost impossible to do. For example: the database has at least one image of a Francis Drake statue. The uploader has put these two words, Francis and Drake, in the text with the image, and even the filename contains the words. But no matter what I try I can not find the image with the search engine. Do I do something wrong? It seems to me that the only way to go is a laborious browse through the categories, but then, if a picture is not categorized or categorized wrongly, it is lost forever... Jan Arkesteijn 14:55, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Newly created - Francis Drake - with the help of Newimage search. Man vyi 16:15, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for creating the Francis Drake page. But how did you do that? What is Newimage search, where do I find it? Jan Arkesteijn 17:24, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

You can see a gallery of new images with Special:Newimages (which is linked in the "goodies" box to the left). Creating a page is just like editing one, except the page doesn't already exist. dbenbenn | talk 17:44, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Aha, thank you! Good, I can search on partial strings in the filename. But how do I search for textelements in de descriptive text of een image-page. Because many filenames are not very descriptive. Jan Arkesteijn 18:08, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Normally you can put your search string in the "search" box to the left and click "Search". Right now search is disabled, so if you try it you just get an option to use Google. Unfortunately, Google (still!) doesn't index the content of image description pages. dbenbenn | talk 18:54, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Birthday

[[Image:Template:Potd/2005-09-7|thumb|right|This should be a birthday cake on Wednesday!]]

Wednesday, September 7 is the Commons' birthday. We should celebrate by having a birthday cake as the picture of the day. Unfortunately, we don't seem to have any potd-worthy pictures. So, if you have a good birthday cake picture, please upload it in the next couple of days so we can celebrate properly! dbenbenn | talk 17:42, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons looks young for its age.

Actually, I think the image to the left is pretty festive.--Pharos 00:44, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

That's pretty good! Too bad the candles aren't lit, though. dbenbenn | talk 06:11, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Another alternative

I like Image:Birthday candles.jpg best. Duncharris 14:37, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Deletion of Creative Commons logos

Please take a look at this. --Avatar 01:31, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Please stop fooling with the CC symbols. They're here for a reason; and they're so widely used that we actually cause great disruption by changing them. No matter what you think, they should be left alone -- really.

The same type of argument (that claims the CC symbols cannot be used) could equally well claim that we cannot use the CC licenses -- without identifying them by their accepted symbols. Cut logic away from rationality and anyone can fly to the Moon on self-generated gas.

Since I am provoked, I shall contact Creative Commons itself and try to work out this issue. Meanwhile, if I see any more degradation of the symbols, I will be quite upset. — Xiong熊talk* 20:04, 2005 September 11 (UTC)

European Parliament images

Template:EU image is used for some photographs from the European Parliament website. The quoted copyright policy states that "reproduction is authorised", if not otherwise noted, though it goes on to say that those wishing to use "contents of this site" for other than personal use should request written permission to do so.

If we ignore for a moment the apparently contradictory terms, the fact remains that the photographs are explicitly not authorized for the creation of derivative works. No matter how we spin it, "reproduction" is "reproduction" and nothing else.

I have sent an e-mail to the address specified on the website asking for clarification. In the meantime, I suggest we add a notice to the template that the copyright status of these images is uncertain, and that they may be deleted.

I believe it's important that we follow the letter of their policies, so that we don't wind up having to clean up a large mess if they complain later on. Furthermore, if their images are effectively non-free, and we only realize this later on, we have wasted precious time which we could have spent finding alternatives and lobbying the European Union to provide truly free content.

Let's not hush over copyright policies which are apparently permissive, but not quite permissive enough. I would appreciate your comments.--Eloquence 10:09, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

I can't see that there are contradictory terms; the part about asking for permission just modifies the general permission. In other words, use them freely, but only for personal use. By that interpretation, commercial use is not allowed unless a specific permission is given. '

I agree that reproduction means reproduction, so no derivative works.

In my opinion, the license is not compatible with Commons policy It might not even be compatible with general use on Wikipedia, since that's not strictly personal use. Cnyborg 18:52, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

According to my experience with dealing with French and other European administrations, they probably don't have an established, well thought out policy on intellectual property issues regarding their web site. The question will probably embarass them. Let's wait for an answer before we take any kind of action. David.Monniaux 19:22, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Source of image

Some pictures are made from scratch with a programme and it could be useful to publish both the exported image (jpg, png or gif) and the source (dia, xcf), in order to give the possibility to anybody to improve the picture.

How can I add a link with the source in the same page of the image? I would be interested in doing something similar to Image:Computer-aj aj ashton 01.png, in which there are both the image and the SVG source. Alessio Damato 10:51, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

"Soon", we'll be able to upload SVG and have it rendered directly, just like PNG. In the mean time, though, you can copy it as text to a page. In the example you linked above, the author simply went to the page called Computer-aj aj ashton 01.png/SVG, clicked "edit", and copied the SVG source. dbenbenn | talk 15:45, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

big PDF file

I have a PDF file I would like to upload, it is 11mb and it would be used as a primary source of information in a Wikipedia article. Is this too big? Jooler 18:04, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Hello I'm still here!! Jooler 22:42, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

"Is this too big?"—there's only one way to find out. Last time I checked the upload limit was 8MB, but it might have been raised. dbenbenn | talk 22:58, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

disgusting image vandalism

Zit Busterson just uploaded a disgusting image over the weather map, which I reverted. --Ixfd64 07:18, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

He or she repeats it.--っ [Café] [Album] 07:48, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

The logos of the WIKIMEDIA are not straight GFDL. But what to do about that

The Wikimedia Foundation logos are indicated to be GFDL. This is absolutely false as they are trademarked by the foundation. This means that people cannot make derivates because that is against the interests of the WMF.

This is part of a bigger issue; logos of companies and organisations are something that we very much want to have on the Commons. They need a license that acknowledges their TM status and gives us the freedom to use them with our articles. So in essence we need a license that is as free as is applicable given the TM status of these logos. GerardM 14:32, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Where are they indicated to be GFDL? They should all have {{CopyrightByWikimedia}} tags, not GFDL ones. Non-free logos shouldn't be uploaded to commons since the concept of "fair use" doesn't really apply to an image repository in the same way it would to individual articles. Projects that allow fair use might choose to upload them locally under that. Wikimedia ones are an obvious exception since we're not violating any copyrights by hosting Wikimedia images on a Wikimedia site. Angela 23:03, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia logo all these logos are indicated as GPL.

Gerard, you uploaded these... As far as I know those are the only wrongly tagged ones. I'll fix them now. Angela 10:29, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I started to do this and noticed you already done it. :) Thanks, GerardM 11:25, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I do however disagree that "fair use" would have to be the only license that would allow the use of TM logos. At this moment, a company cannot even authorise the use of their Logo with Wikimedia articles because no license has been formulated that does allow the use in cpmbination with articles but does not allow activities that are against what can be done with TM material.

Even if companies were to "authorise the use of their Logo with Wikimedia articles", they could not be placed on Commons and would be deleted on many projects, including en, since permission-only images are not allowed. Angela 10:29, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

The authorisation would be exactly the same as the authorisation for the WMF logos. They would be as free, they would acknowledge the TM status of the material. GerardM 11:25, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

It is true that there is no copyright infringement. The Wikimedia logos are however not "free". And as such it should be possible to host logos under similar conditions as the Wikimedia logos. GerardM 10:13, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikimedia is an obvious exception. This was already discussed at Deletion requests. Angela 10:29, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

It is also true that our mission is to inform. When by law there is material that has implicit restriction on its use it does not mean that we do cannot use it to inform. It is like the number π it is a fixed number and it does not make sense to edit it. The same is true for logos of organisations; there is no need for the freedom to be able to create derivatives. It is contrary to the purpose of its use and it is contrary to the law. Being dogmatic is stupid if it defeats our objective. GerardM 11:25, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Our objective is to have a repository of free media. dbenbenn | talk 12:23, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

No, that is NOT the objective of the WMF. The Freedom serves a purpose. The purpose is to inform. GerardM 13:01, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm talking about the Commons, not the Wikimedia Foundation. The objective of the Commons is to have a repository of free media that is potentially useful in Wikimedia projects.

You write that for logos, "there is no need for the freedom to be able to create derivatives". I disagree. We had to delete Image:Wikifox.png, a combination of the Mozilla Firefox logo with Image:Wikipedia-logo.png, because those two logos were not free. dbenbenn | talk 14:54, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

You do miss the point. As this Freedom is not available in the first place, the creation of such a mix is not allowed. This has nothing to do with the need to host logos. We need a license for material for which it is obvious that it cannot be freely altered like TM material. GerardM 12:13, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

My point was simply to demonstrate that the creator of Wikifox.png did have a "need for the freedom to be able to create derivatives", contradicting your assertion that there is no need for such a freedom.

I'm curious what would be the point of "a license for material ... that cannot be freely altered." We don't host such material here at the Commons, and anyway we have Template:Nonderivative for material that cannot be freely altered. dbenbenn | talk 19:26, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Commons localisation

Hoi,
Have you seen http://epov.org/uwd/index.php?title=Tag:Dog&action=edit ?? It is a mock-up on how Commons can be localised by adding "tags" to pictures or to categories. When people can find picttures in their own language, they are more likely to upload to Commons as well. I think we could have some 4 million pictures about China alone if we did a good job on providing Metadata that can be used by all. GerardM 14:45, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism: Reports and Investigation

Isn't there any page on commons where one can report vandalism similar to en:Wikipedia:Vandalism_in_progress on the English Wikipedia? During ongoing vandalism I could not find an admin to block users. In the last weeks I found the "puss ass"-vandals of User:Looie XIV and User:Tin Can Sam. To me, their "contribution" looks clearly illegal. I think someone should try to figure out who is behind those edits and get in contact with law-enforcement. Is anyone from wikipedia doing this? What do others think about this? --Warden 20:36, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Malaysian government

Image:Mahathir.jpg is labelled by the uploader as "This image is a work of an employee of the Office of the Prime Minister of Malaysia, taken or made during the course of the person's official duties. As a work of the Malaysian government, the image is in the public domain. (feon en:)"

If this is the case this needs a template and a reference to Malaysian law. Otherwise it looks like a copy of the US position (which given most Malaysian law is closer to UK law seems less likely). Justinc 20:41, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Copyright status of images containing notes of melody of copyrighted songs???.

Hi, I'm a user of swedish Wikipedia, our Wikipedia has a policy pretty similar to Commons (only free pictures, except we allow some fair use - but only logotypes and rare exceptions where no alternative pictures are available (teared down buildings etc), easy cases to differ out).

Of course, taking pictures from en is pretty usual anyway. As long as staying away from fair use pictures everything usually works ok. Then one day one of the other users on sv wanted to use a picture of notes. The notes, to my knowledge, hasn't been copied from anything else directly, but has only been written "by hand" while listening to the song, ie they depict the melody of a song (copyrighted). As I've understood it, those aren't usable without a license or without taking use of fair use or equivalent due to the melody being copyrighted, but I'm really no expert...

Unfortunately, no one on sv is really good on copyright, and I put a question on the English Wikipedia if the license info really was correct (I doubted we could use it on sv as the melody AFAIK is copyrighted and not GFDL-compatible-licensed.). They don't seem to really have understood or at least not seen my question though. Guess they're also not that good on copyright (and at least they don't have to worry as much thanks to fair use).

The exact example: en:Image:Hott_Butter-Popcorn_Melody.PNG. Would this image be allowed on commons if I uploaded it here (what I'm planning on doing if it's going to be used on sv)? Thanks for your help in advance. TERdON 21:18, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Off the top of my head, that looks pretty much like fair use to me -- fine in Wikipedia, and if I were you, I'd consider tagging it that way, there. No good on Commons. (IANAL!) — Xiong熊talk* 04:22, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Help me to identify a flower-fly～～

Here,Image:Syrphidae in GSCAS.jpg,who know it ?--Snowyowls 01:29, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Japanese City Symbols (part 2)

Part one can be found here. I think I'm okay with the maps and as soon as I get the copyright information from the original creator on the ja.wikipedia, I'll start uploading those here. The main question is this:

Regarding this, this, this, this, and many more others to come:

These images are currently on the en.wikipedia and have the trademarked/copyrighted logo license tag. Knowing that people from any wikipedia can use images on this site, that these images fall under the logo copyright in the United States, and that I have almost no clue on the nature of these images under Japanese copyright law, is it safe to upload these images here? I would like it if someone, preferrably someone with a better knowledge of Japanese copyright law, could clarify this, but any effort is appreciated.

-Nameneko 05:21, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Where to report copyright problems

Is there some page where one may report suspected copyright problems, like en:Wikipedia:Copyright problems? I have a problem with the GFDL tag on Image:Holy Birman Tomcat.jpg (see the uploader's talk page). Lupo 07:30, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

You can just mark it is copyvio and say why, people keep an eye on Category:Copyvio. Justinc 08:48, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commonplace

When upload images with Wikimedia Commonplace, the program changes the extension of capital letters automatically to small letters (Image:Situacion A Fonsagrada.png / , Image:Situacion Viveiro.PNG in Category:Maps of Lugo), this is a problem because the original images are connected with the version in capital letters (gl:A Pontenova , pt:A Pontenova). Which is the solution: upload again all images individually? Thanks. --Prevert^(talk) 12:18, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Upload manually, and complain to the author of Commonplace. If you do complain, perhaps you could ask him to fix the silly backslash issue. (Commonplace puts a \ at the end of the upload summary.) dbenbenn | talk 22:30, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Newuserlog

I've installed my extension that logs new user creations at Special:Log/newusers, it's neat for finding new users to welcome, usernames to ban and for catching vandals. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 22:27, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Cool, I have been waiting for this for quite some time now. Thanks once again for improving MediaWiki, and for making Commons a better place :) -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 07:52, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Request for image source

Often finding myself in the position where I have to request sources for images, and not finding an appropriate template, I suggest this text for template:

Greetings ! Thank you for your contributions. It is important that you know that having the source of images is absolutely necessary to back the claim that they are under such or such licence. Would you mind adding this information on your contributions, please ? If you have taken the image from a web site, please cite the URL, and if you have taken the image yourself, please say so. Without this, the images would have to be removed, which would be a shame. Thank you for your understanding and good continuation on Commons !

This could be translated, obviously. Just an idea... Cheers ! Rama 11:30, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Special:Newimages can now be included

• 
  Cambuslang Park Borgie Glen 5.jpg

  Crowsus
  16:55, 4 May 2024
  4,000 × 3,000; 6.65 MB
  

I changed Special:Newimages so that it can now be included like {{Special:Newimages[/int]}} where int is an integer between 1 and 48 specifying how many images to show. For instance to the right here is the latest image to be uploaded to this wiki as of page loading. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 14:28, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

That has worked on the three random images of mine I checked, thank you. Thryduulf 19:09, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

That's really cool. For dummies like me, the code is:

{{Special:Newimages/17}}

— Xiong熊talk* 04:37, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Metadata

I've just been through a lot of my photographs here to add a category to them. I've noticed that some have the metadata of the image displayed, but others do not. I can't spot a template or anything like that generating the table so I'm baffled as to why some images have it and some don't. Is there a way that I can automatically add the metadata to the images or is it a server thing? Thryduulf 18:55, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

It's a server thing. Apparently the metadata box is only added to new uploads. I hope that eventually old pictures will get it too. I'm not aware of anything you can do to force the creation of the metadata box, except re-upload the photo. dbenbenn | talk 19:41, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

If it is only new photos then why does Image:Racing-reliant-robins mendips-raceway 2005-05-30.jpg that I upload on 31 May have it but Image:Earl's Court District Line platforms.jpg uploaded on 22 August not have it? Thryduulf 19:52, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Oh. New theory: there's a process running on the servers going through all the images and extracting EXIF data. So eventually all JPG files will have metadata boxes, but it might take a while. dbenbenn | talk 20:04, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

What about JPEGs that don't contain any metadata? will some kind of message be displayed to that effect or will there just be no metadata box? Plugwash 21:06, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

It appears that there is simply no metadata box. dbenbenn | talk 23:43, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

What you're seeing here is the Exif metadata feature in action, previously the PHP the servers were using wasn't compiled with Exif support but they now have that support, which means that metadata info should be showing up on all images (it was designed to automatically regenerate) but I didn't account for memcached entries in the parser cache which will have to be invalidated (we're working on that).

Please don't start to re-upload old images, the issue is being worked on. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 20:52, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

update: you can now action=purge images to regenerate the metadata for them. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 21:15, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

update: I ran a maintenance script that should have fixed the issue, report if it happens again (note that you may have to clear your browser cache with shift+f5). —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 13:15, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

The metadata feature is nice. However the links on it are not useful (en wikipedia links to camera names). Why not link to categories on Commons, so you could find all the images taken on a particular camera model? Justinc 23:48, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Metadata - copyright

I have a Ricoh Caplio G4 camera, and with the new metadata options I noticed that it lists Copyright holder (C) Caplio G4 User. Nonsense, of course, I hold the copyright as I took the pic. On the camera I cannt find any setting to change it to my own name. Does anyone have suggestions? TeunSpaans 21:25, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

There is a perlscript "exiftool" - there should be a way to change this info on your harddisk with this tool; just a suggestion -- Schusch 22:03, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

IMHO we should add a warning to the image metadata box. see bugzilla:3402 you'll have to either change it with exiftool and re-upload or just put a warning on the description page that its inaccurate. -- Plugwash 22:38, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Alter and reupload them all????? Terrible! I have uploaded hundreds of photos by hand. TeunSpaans 04:39, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, technically it is true, since you are the "Caplio G4 User" (probably there is a way to set this to read your name or you handle instead). I don't think that this is do confusing :p Rama 10:15, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Does that mean I dont have to change them? TeunSpaans 17:13, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Could someone please help? I've tried to make a template at template:cam msg to clarify the situation. However, now I try to use it at Image:Dauwbraam 03-09-2005 15.55.24.JPG, the {{GFDL-self}} template no longer works. TeunSpaans 20:16, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Both GFDL and GFDL-self templates appear to be working on that image. If it continues not to for you, try clearing your cache. Thryduulf 22:49, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Eh, the copyright field in the metadata means nothing; it's the license you actually specify when you add it here that matters. --SPUI 22:59, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Interface translation

The message MediaWiki:Village pump-url is common for all the interface languages.

I've translated MediaWiki:Village pump-url/es but it doesn't work.

Can anyone fix this error?

Thanks. Sanbec ✉ 23:18, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

To fix this problem requires editing LocalSettings.php on the server. There should be a line in that file like

$wgForceUIMsgAsContentMsg = array( 'mainpage', 'portal-url' );

'village pump-url' needs to be added to that list. dbenbenn | talk 02:48, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Who can do it? How and where can I request it? Thanks. Sanbec ✉ 10:25, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

That's exactly what he doesn't need, it needs to be not pulled as a content message. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 22:30, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Um ... are you sure? He needs the content of MediaWiki:Village pump-url to be translated when supplied to MediaWiki:Sidebar, just as MediaWiki:Mainpage and MediaWiki:Portal-url are.

Or to cite the code: includes/Skin.php, line 1329, uses wfMsgForContent to interpret the "village pump-url" in MediaWiki:Sidebar. wfMsgForContent(), found in includes/GlobalFunctions.php, line 315, will set $forcontent = false if wgForceUIMsgAsContentMsg is modified as I suggested above. Then line 316 will call wfMsgReal in exactly the same way that wfMsg would have on line 283. dbenbenn | talk 23:21, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Nah you were right, my mistake, I've added village pump-url to that list. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 13:31, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

---

Sorry, my english is poor (en-1), I can't follow your talk :( But I have seen that MediaWiki:Village pump-url/es works now! Thank you very much.

I have another MediaWiki message to add to the list: MediaWiki:Copyright/es

Can you add it, please? Thanks. Sanbec ✉ 22:22, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

By the way, see mediazilla:3413 for a proposal to fix this problem in general. For example, we might eventually want to translate MediaWiki:Disclaimerpage and other pages. The current situation, where we have to bother Ævar for each of them, isn't a very good solution. dbenbenn | talk 06:08, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

I have written How and where can I request it? I don't want to bother anybody. Thanks. Sanbec ✉ 22:16, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Er, in case it wasn't clear, I was addressing my comment to anyone in general, not to Sanbec specifically. I rewrote my comment above to clarify that. dbenbenn | talk 22:32, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

SVG support finally enabled!

SVG-Version of the Commons logo

Finally (thanks Brion!), we are now able to upload SVG images, which are then rendered on the server an display in the browser seamlessly - see the commons logo to the right. If you have images in vector formats, please start uploading them and be sure to report any problems!

SVG should become the preferred format for maps and diagrams - if we don't experience serious problems, Commons:File types should be changed to reflect that.

Enthusiastic greetings -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 10:55, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Woot! Does anyone know a good, free way to convert either MetaPost or PostScript to SVG? dbenbenn | talk 18:45, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Anyone know a command line tool that vectorizes text within a SVG file? -- 3247 22:23, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Bah. After less than a day, SVG is disabled again. dbenbenn | talk 02:55, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

it's back on - there was a security problem with the ability of svg to include external images - which is fixed now. There's still a problem with with mime type when downloading the svg source, though. I hope this gets fixed soon, but rendering and uploading works fine already. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 13:29, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

While I have been asked to draw SVG images, for some reason, my two attempts did not work. If others are having problems with SVG files, then we should have a notice that says that others can convert the image for us, provided that credit is given. Zscout370 (sound off) 19:53, 2005 September 12 (UTC)

There's no need for a special notice. Files here can be modified freely; converting to a different format is always allowed. dbenbenn | talk 20:02, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Advanced Music Search

Could we make an advanced music search feature that would help us find the name or author of a composition based on the melody, tune, rythm, harmony etc.?

Cathegorizing music into genres, kinds, types, etc. is useful, of course, but sometimes it's difficult to decide.

Petusek

Something like that would be cool to have indeed, but it's very very complicated to write. It's a task for an artificial intelligence, really. Here is probably not the right place to look for people who can do something like that - maybe google a few university websites, they may have projects that move in that directiony. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 20:17, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Button texts in other languges

Since the database lock this afternoon (and even some minutes before) the button texts in other languages are blank. In Dutch almost all texts (and links) are missing, in German many texts (like the translation for discussion, edit, history, watch) are blank too. I did not check others. I temporarily switched back to English by typing Special:Preferences and changing the language. Please have the button tetxt in other languages restored (either to the correct version or temporarily to the English texts). HenkvD 21:19, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

please be patient, the system messages got messed up by the latest update. Currently, the message caches are being cleared, brion said that "this will take some minutes - where 'some' is 'a lot'" -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 21:44, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I was patient for a few hours. I was only worried that this might be overlooked. Since that is not the case, I will wat some (a lot) longer. HenkvD 21:55, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

More info: MediaZilla:3430 - Sanbec ✉ 22:53, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

EXIF Metadata / License templates

Hi, could anyone please fix all the license templates (1 + 2), which are displayed below instead of beneath the metadata box, what is a disgusting waste of space (example)? I think it is only necessary to remove the needless width=80%/90% from the templates. Anyway, the layout of these license boxes would look much better without any width restriction at all, because everyone uses another resolution or window width. Therefore all templates should be flexible. Regards - Thomas 22:07, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Why Metadata?

I may have missed an earlier discussion, but if so, please direct me to that spot in the universe... I uploaded a picture the other day, and saw that a lot of rather technical info was supplied with it, camera make, shutter speed etcetera. I suppose that is was somehow sent over with the picture. But why do we specify all those things? What use could it be to the average reader? "OK, it is a lovely scene, but now that we know that it is made with an ALDI camera, I'd rather not use it." It's not that I object to anyone knowing that my camera comes from the Aldi, mind you. I've grown over that stage. But why would anyone else want to know about saturation and sharpness and scene capture type? Best regards, MartinD 05:03, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

A lot of people deliver nothing about their pictures, so someone thaought this box is better then nothing. But IMHO some information is not necessary and the box does not float very well und sometime bumps with other boxes like copyright boxes. --Huebi 06:10, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi Martin - you always deliver this info with your photos except you delete it at home before uploading (some older image-processing-software does this without notifying). So this makes the uploading more transparent for people who upload images (they now can see what they deliver) - if they don't want to deliver this information, they now know that they have to delete it before uploading the image. On the other hand, many people want to deliver this information (for example time and date of the photo) - so now you don't have to download and analyse the picture to find this information. I think people should be tolerant enough so that the brand of the camera does not count more then the content of the photo. By the way - Medion is not only sold by Aldi ... Greetings -- Schusch 08:27, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

See it the other way around. People who like your images might think: "Wow, you get this quality out of a Medion camera? I think I'll get one myself!" Or, more generally, using this information, you can easily compare different camera brands using the thousands of files available on the Commons. I think that's useful.

If you absolutely want to remove the information (known as EXIF) from the file, you can do this before uploading it. For Windows, allegedly IrfanView works without loss of quality (using Linux, so can't verify).--Eloquence 12:31, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

jpegtran -optimize will do it on Linux. dbenbenn | talk 17:41, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

The metadata is only fascinating to 0.1% of people, who also presumably have the savvy to realize that it may have been deliberately altered before upload, plus (as is usual in my case) it does not reflect any postprocessing with levels, balance, etc. I think it would be better to put it on a button to be displayed on demand, or at least display as a section underneath all other sections, instead of trying to push itself up to the top in a bid to get attention for itself. Stan Shebs 12:53, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

See MediaZilla:3439 and vote for it if you want the EXIF data to be displayed only optional, perhaps with an on/off function.

And could some sysop please change the license templates as I requested above? Thanks a lot. - Thomas 19:14, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for all the feedback! It doesn't really bother me giving this info -though I'll try to see what IrfanView can do in respect to deleting this info. (I think I have downloaded it once, it should be somewhere around on my pc.) But I do think that displaying this info with every picture may confuse people. People like me, for instance;-) Thanks! MartinD 19:33, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

My main problem with the metadata is that on diff pages it floats up over the diff which is rather annoying. -- Joolz 17:15, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Trademarks

I'd like to point you to a discussion about a change for the licensing policy with respect to trademarks on Commons talk:Licensing#Trademarks. -- 3247 00:04:52, 2005-09-13 (UTC)

Why "no commercial use" licenses are a bad idea

Because the issue keeps coming up, I've written an essay describing the disadvantages of licenses which forbid commercial use, particularly the Creative Commons -NC licenses. These licenses are rightly forbidden on the Wikimedia projects, but much existing content on the Net is licensed under them. I hope that this summary of arguments will be useful to those trying to convince content creators and copyright holders to license their works more liberally.--Eloquence 23:27, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

That's an interesting point. Thanks a lot Erik. - 80.145.243.127 00:37, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

i will "kindly thank the creator for making their work available for free, and ask them to change the license". Petrus 01:50, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

moving of a category

Hello!

Can someone (an Admin?) move the Category:Santa Cruz Province to Category:Santa Cruz for the sake of consitency with other Argentine provinces categories? The Category "Santa Cruz" currently exists but is empty. --ALE! 11:40, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

It does not help to be an admin to do that - you should find someone running a bot for this... -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 12:12, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Possibly dumb question: What about Santa Cruz, California -- county and city? Maybe Santa Cruz should remain empty. — Xiong熊talk* 03:42, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

RyanCahn auto-block?

I know that User:RyanCahn was blocked a while ago for making fake articles. However, he keeps getting auto-blocked every day. It seems that as soon as the block expires, the IP is blocked again. I thought that IP auto-blocks were supposed to happen only once per username block? --Ixfd64 02:20, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't see any autoblocks of Ryan in Special:Log. Anyway, RyanCahn is blocked indefinitely, so he should expect to get autoblocked if he trys to evade it. dbenbenn | talk 02:38, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that auto-blocks are shown in the block log. They're only shown in Special:Ipblocklist, I think. --Ixfd64 00:38, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikilanguages and Audio Files

I have started Wikilanguages into which audio examples of languages and dialects from around the world can be placed. The audio files (only one exists currently) would be placed into the Commons.

I have read that if a file with the same name/location is uploaded, it will overwrite the existing file. If this is the case, how can these audio files be protected from vandalism?

The same way wikipedia articles and commons images are protected: by watchful people. There has also been some talk about allowing new users to overwrite existing files after x days (or x edits, or x uploaded images, or...) - i'm not sure if that has been implemented yet. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 11:12, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Articles are easily protected because all previous versions are saved. Is this also the case for images and audio files in the Commons? If not, then how can prevous images and audio files be restored if they are overwritten by a vandal? Gary Cziko 14:51, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, all old versions are available on the File's description page. They can easily be reverted. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 16:07, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

MIME search

You can now search files by at Special:MIMEsearch for example this lists all svg images on the server. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 14:49, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Is there a MediaWiki message that displays at the top of Special:MIMEsearch? It might be nice to list there the common possibilities: image/png, image/jpg, image/svg, and whatever the MIME types are for OGG, MIDI, and other file types. Alternatively, there could be a drop down box. dbenbenn | talk 16:08, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

IMO it would be better to have an optional Help tab on each specialpage that would link to documentation for that page, but to answer your question then no, there isn't a message like that. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 17:17, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

A dropdown list would be kind of nice, though. I guess there can't be much more that 10 different types in the DB now. But on the other hand: In the current form, I don't find this terribly useful. For everything else but SVG, you just get too many results to find anything in particular.

I would like to have a "Media Search" page, which uses the normal search index, limited to the Image: namespace, and then (optionally) filters the result by mime type (if no "/" is in the type, it should filter by minor) - or better, by "media type" (image, audio, video, text, etc), which is already in the database too. The "media type" is often, but not always, the same as the major mime type - ogg has only one mime type, but theora is video and vorbis is audio - it should be detected correctly, I wrote it that way...

If we then could also filter by license, we could finally call ourselfs a media database. No, Ævar, I'm not expecting you to write that, I meight even do it myself in the not-so-near future. I'm just brainstorming. Chears -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 08:53, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

I may write Specia:Mediasearch yet which would allow some of those things, searching by file type, mime type, width/height, size range or any combonation thereof. Licenses are a bit harder to do though, I guess you could just presume that Template:$License existed and search the link table for that information. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 17:54, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

That sounds quite good already - especially with the template bit, that sounds nice and simple :) But I would like to stress that for the media search to be truly useful, one should be able to narrow the search using keywords, i.e. the mediasearch should also use the "normal" search index. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 18:03, 15 September 2005 (UTC),

Oh, and while we are at it: if it would be possible to filter by uploader/contributor, this would also take care of bugzilla:3341. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 18:23, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Japan inititiative

I propose to take the initiative in making the Commons more popular in Japan. Objective is to get more Japanese involved to contribute photos. The initiative consists mainly in putting the corresponding commons templates on the Japanese pages to attract more traffic to commons. E.g. take any commons page, go to the entry in the English wikipedia, follow the existing link to the Japanese entry in the interwiki, open the edit function (it is at the same place, although with japanese characters, and paste the commons template as you would in the English wikipedia at the bottom of the page, where you would expect weblinks. For instance ""commons|Castle"" or ""Commons|Category:Castles in France"". Save, that's it. I do this from time to time, but with combined effort we could be more effective. Greetings, Longbow4u 12:11, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Ejaculation

Allowed? Take a look here —Mac9 09:30, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Yea, we have a few more of those. I doupt the educational value of those images - we should take care not to become an exibitionist platform... -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 10:30, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

It's a bit re-re-re-re-re-redundant, but so are lots of images. I do not think that this is a problem, at least not now. Rama 13:32, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

I think such activity should be limited, but who will judge scientific/moral value? --EugeneZelenko 01:32, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

There is a possible case of Exhibitionism with such images (ideally it requires then a speedy deletion) . Please, adopt policy to admit drawing/artworks, no intimate images by anonymous people. --Cosoleto 10:36, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

We want "intimate images by anonymous people", as long as they are potentially useful to Wikimedia projects. Body parts and sexuality are encyclopedic! dbenbenn | talk 23:48, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but we don't need pictures that look like bad amateur porn. --Fb78 10:59, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikiversity Vote

Voting has started for a new Wikimedia sister project proposal called Wikiversity. This is a request for anybody that is interested to cast a vote either in support or opposition to this new project proposal. The results of this vote will determine if this project will be started on its own seperate group of wikis as a Wikimedia sister project, together with approval from the Wikimedia Foundation Board. Discussion about this proposal should take place on the Wikiversity discussion page.

License search

I wrote a special page to search for files in the Image namespace that link to certain pages in the template namespace at Special:Licensesearch, for example Special:Licensesearch/GFDL lists all images linking to the GFDL template, furthermore it's possible to define aliases for the search at MediaWiki:licensesearch_licenses, for instance putting:

* GFDL|GNU Free Documentation License

there (which I did) will allow searching for Special:Licensesearch/GNU Free Documentation License. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 16:39, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand the purpose of this feature. Special:Licensesearch/GFDL lists all images linking to the GFDL template, but so do Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:GFDL and Category:GFDL. I suppose the code will be useful, however, in implementing Duesentrieb's "media search" feature. dbenbenn | talk 00:02, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah you're right, it sucks, removed. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 13:31, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Croatian Currency

Images (eg Image:Croatian_dinar_500b.jpg have been uploaded. For reasons given in w:Reproduction of Croatian currency ie

• for photographs, drawings, pictures, films (movie) and in general, any work where banknote isn't central or only object of that work and which doesn't include magnified version of design of the banknote;
• for reproduction of banknotes specified in point 1. of this article, whose length or width is increased more than 125% or decreased more than 75%, no mather what material is used for reproduction.

This doesnt seem free to me, so I think they should be deleted from Commons. And the actual image pages have the image as the only object, so are in violation. Justinc 22:39, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

I wonder what the "whose length or width is increased more than 125% or decreased more than 75%" could even mean for a digital image. dbenbenn | talk 23:26, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Translation problem ? Either a reproduction within the 75 to 125% range is forbidden or is the only range allowed. --Denniss 23:58, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

No translation problem. The Wikipedia article linked above makes it clear that reproduction is allowed in the cases of the above two bullets. dbenbenn | talk 00:04, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Copyright questions

Yesterday, in my Norwegian class, I was looking at some photos in my book, and I was annoyed. The text stated that the artist of these image had been dead for some 150 years, yet the image was marked "© (This and that) musem". Of course, these museums have no rights to claim copyright over these images. My question then is this: May I scan these images and upload them to Commons marking them as Public Domain? Jon Harald Søby\^{no na} 14:45, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, the issue of the copyright to reproductive fotos of paintings is a bit blurry - while at the commons, such copyright claims are generally considered to be unfounded, national legislation and practice differ. You should have a look into norwegen laws and judgements regarding this issue (or ask someone who knows such stuff) - if you find something out, please add it to Commons:Licensing. Also, keep in mind that the museum meight sue you (or us). Maybe you could just ask them to disclaim such copyright, while pointing to the relevant sections of national law. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 14:53, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

They're welcome to try to sue the Foundation, as it's only bound by US law.

They could, however, quite possibly sue an uploader. More caselaw. Fun.

James F. (talk) 17:34, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Why, yes, the foundation is only bound by US law, which is bound by international treaties to enforce the copyrights that exists in other nations. But they will probably trie to get hold of the uploader, that's true - although I don't think they will, until someone uses the picture commercially. Which should be possible... -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 19:08, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Under Norwegian law, works are PD 70 years after the creator's death (Åndsverksloven § 40: "Opphavsretten varer i opphavsmannens levetid og 70 år etter utløpet av hans dødsår" / "Rights of the creator lasts for the lifetime of the creator and for 70 years from the end of the year of his death"). In some cases, there might be enough digital enhancement and such to claim a new copyright; also, photos of framed paintings might be considered independent [minor] works (with a protection period of only 15 years after the photographers' death unless there is an artistic quality to the photo). In most cases, the copyright notice is used instead of a more appropriate "Courtesy of..." notice; in other cases they really think that they own the rights to the photo reproductions, but under Norwegian law one can not claim independent copyright for mere reproductions. Cnyborg 01:19, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Duesentrieb is wrong (again and again). It's a clear game. Museums will not accept the US decision Bridgeman v. Corel in 1999 which has made clear that also according to UK law mere reproductions are not copyrightable. This opinion is the clear policy of the German wikipedia and the legal foundation of the PD-art template. There is also a court decision in Japan for woodcuts which says the same. If museums are loosing revenues it's not our problem. Public Domain is a common heritage of mankind. --Historiograf 20:51, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

For US law see: "78 See, e.g., Earth Flag Ltd. v. Alamo Flag Co., 153 F. Supp. 2d 349 (S.D.N.Y. 2001) (holding that a cloth reproduction of a photograph of the earth taken by Appollo astronauts lacked sufficient creativity to merit copyright protection because “); Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd. v. Corel Corp., 25 F. Supp. 2d 421, 427 (S.D.N.Y. 1999) (holding that (under U.K. law, construed by reference to U.S. law) exact photographic reproductions onto color transparencies and CD-ROMS of old paintings lack sufficient originality to merit copyright protection because “a photograph which is no more than a copy of the work of another as exact as science and technology permit lacks originality.”); L. Batlin & Son, Inc. v. Snyder, 536 F.2d 486, 491 (2d Cir.) (en banc) writing that “‘[T]he mere reproduction of a work of art in a different medium should not constitute the required originality for the reason that no one can claim to have independently evolved any particular medium.’ ” (quoting 1 MELVILLE NIMMER, THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT § 10.2, at 94) (1975)), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 857 (1976). Of course, some photographic reproductions contain sufficient originality to merit copyright protection. See, e.g., Schiffer Pub. Ltd. v. Chronicle Books, LLC, 2004 WL 2583817, *8 (E.D. Pa. 2004) (holding that photographs of fabrics involved significant creative decisions by photographer and therefore were original works)." Note 78 in the Copyfraud article http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=787244 . --134.130.68.65 23:30, 27 September 2005 (UTC) Historiograf

PD-US after 1923

Please have a look at Special:Contributions/TheFoxx. He uploaded some pictures of cartoons from the 1930s and 1940s. The licence template is PD-US, but in this template 1923 is mentioned as minimum age. That does not match. --::Slomox:: >< 17:56, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

if you are sure they are PD (when did the cartoonist die?), you should label them as {{PD-old}}. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 19:03, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, it's obvious that images created after 1935 can't be PD in any case, so most of these will have to be deleted. --Fb78 15:30, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Not true. According to Commons:Licensing, for stuff originally published in the United States, "anything published before January 1, 1964 and not renewed is in the public domain". Of course, it's basically impossible to prove the copyright was not renewed. dbenbenn | talk 15:49, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Currencies of internationally unrecognized countries

Hi there. I'm wondering about who hold copyrights for currencies of internationally unrecognized countries that existed only during wars and were destroyed by occupation/liberation of this territories? For example, I'd like to upload scans of Krajina Reformed Dinars and NDH kunas (that is, not nowadays kunas, but kunas used in Independent State of Croatia). Now, what's legal status of those scans? I mean, if anybody held copyrights for those, those institutions disappeared when those "countries" where destroyed, right? So, are this scans then public domain or should we create a Template stating "these are currencies of internationally unrecognized countries which were distroyed in a war and we don't know who should we ask for permision" or something like that (I'll formulate it later if neccessary)? --Dijxtra 22:20, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Let's extend the matter: what about the currencies that were replaced with the Euro currency in some european countries? G®iffen 23:43, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Umm, I wouldn't extend it that way. Countries and national banks in question still exist. So, I think pre-Euro currency problemy could be easily solved on case per case basis by writing to national banks of each country. Problem in my case is this national banks don't exist any more, and nobody succeeded these institutions (like Russia succeeded USSR). But, another thing occured to me: what about currencies of Czechoslovakia, SFRJ and such countries that didn't have one succeeder, like USSR->Russia case? What about those? Again, we don't have a national bant to be written to... --Dijxtra 09:53, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

In the case of the USSR, Russia is the largest succeeding entity and if I were writing to enquire about the copyright status I would write to them - as they should know.

In cases where only a small number of entities succeded (e.g. Czechoslovakia -> Czech Republic and Slovakia) then I'd right to all of them and hope they give the same answer. In the case of the Independent State of Croatia, you might try Croatia as the closest surviving entity today.

Alternatively, if you can find out where the central bank was - e.g. if the central bank of Czechoslovakia was in Bratislava and the central bank of Slovakia is also in Bratislava then I would write to that institution as they are the most likely to have the records (imho).

For situations where one bank has replaced several, then the current bank should either have the information or know who to forward/refer you to to get it.

If the insititution that held the copyright has not existed for longer than the time to become PD has elapsed, then I would expect the currency to be PD also - i.e. if in Country X works become/became PD after 50 years, then if the Central Bank of Country X has not existed for 50 years, then I would suggest that the currency would be PD. IANAL though. Thryduulf 11:00, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, everything you said is real nice, but the thing is, I don't have a problem with USSR or Czechoslovakian currencies (which are, as you mentioned above, rather easy to solve, you ask Russians or Czechs and Slovaks), I have problem with NDH (today Croatia is trying really hard not to be close to NDH :-) ), Yugoslavia (here we have 6 national banks) and Krajina (it is questionable whether this entity could be called a country at all or did it have a national bank). Now, I think that problems of those countries would be much more easily solved by Wikimedia stating by "we're very sorry if we're wrong, but we think this is PD, correct us if have copyright on it" than by trying to contact somebody... --Dijxtra 12:46, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Introducing FlickrLickr

Any user with access to the frontend, pictured here, can review a slice of 1,000 photos and flag those of high quality to be uploaded to the Commons.

I've created a frontend and backend for selecting freely licensed photos from Flickr to be uploaded to the Commons. See User:FlickrLickr.

Using the Flickr API, I am building a database of free photos from Flickr, and users can apply for access to the frontend to review slices of 1,000 photos each. After a slice is finished, I briefly review it and run the upload bot to upload the selected photos to the Commons. See the above page for more information.

There are currently almost half a million CC-BY photos on Flickr, and new ones are uploaded every day. I hope that a systematic effort to review these photos will greatly enrich the Commons.

Please help by applying for access to a slice of Flickr. Best send me an e-mail and I'll give you a username and password. Note that having done some prior work on the Commons or other Wikimedia projects is mandatory, so please point out your username so I can look at your past contributions.--Eloquence 04:38, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Copyright issues with museums

Sorry if this is a FAQ, but I could not find the answer after a quick search. In some museums (unfortunately, almost *all* Florentine museums), visitors are forbidden to take photographs or to film. Nevertheless, if one did take some pictures, when the guards are turning their backs for instance, could these "stolen" pictures still be uploaded on Commons? We're talking here about PD artwork, of course, such as Roman statues or paintings by Raffaello. Jastrow 09:59, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

This is not possible. When it is not allowed to take pictures inside a musuem you cant put it under PD, GNU FDL or cc. So it is not allowed to upload those pictures into commons. --Huebi 11:40, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

This is not entirely true: the rules of the museum do not effect the copyright status of the fotos, as long as they show PD content only. The pictures would be OK on the commons. But they are evidence that he violated their rules - I have no idea what they could to to you if they find out: that depends on the nature of the rules, national law, etc - one of the questions would be, if you enter a contract with the museum by buying a ticket, i guess. But IANAL... -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 13:11, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

It is true. Read the german "Urheberrecht". You cant get a copoyright for such Photos, as a result you can not put it under a license. Actually german laws differ between pictures of 2 dimensional object "picture from picture) and 3-dimensional ("picture from sulpture". In france, it is more complictated then in germany, even photos taken from public places from copyrighted buildings cant get a copyrigth and it is forbidden to publish them. Anyway, this is my last statement here, cause i'm not working any more in wikipedia and therefor i'm no longer interested in commons. Thanks for the fish. --Huebi

Oh - you are leaving? That's sad... Why?

As to the matter at hand: what you say is true about pictures showing the enterior of the museum, i.e. shots of the architecture, paintings in context, etc. For reproductive fotos of paintings, it does not matter (at least for the copyright) where they where taken, and if the owner of the painting like it or not (because, if the painting is PD, they own the object, but not the copyright). The creator of reproductive fotos has IMHO no copyright, because reproduction is not considered creative work - thus, the images, if uploaded to the commons, should be labeled PD. But this is not relevant to the original question.

The only problem I really see is that the photographer meight be violating a contract s/he has with the museum. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 14:56, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, Duesentrieb is correct; see the deletion request for images taken within the Sistine Chapel.

James F. (talk) 09:24, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

There is a discussion going on on de.wikipedia whether we can use pictures that collide with local restrictions (see de:Wikipedia:Fotos von fremdem Eigentum). The real problem is not simple reproductions. Two-dimensional reproductions are an issue of copyright only, which doesn't collide with any rights of the owner.

The real problems are pictures of three-dimensional works of art (statues etc.) or other objects taken in museums or private collections. No decision has been made so far whether such images can be used on de.wikipedia - 'neither for nor against such pictures.

Legally speaking, the owner of an object has a right to use it freely as he wants. If someone takes a picture and gives it away for free, the owner may claim a restriction of the right e.g. to sell pictures of it or to make money by entrance fees. This may give him the right to ask for a removal of such pictures from a website or a publication.

You have to see that Wikimedia Commons acts as a publishing medium with a local selection mechanism and therefore holds a certain responsibility for what is being published. --Fb78 14:38, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

For me PD of heritage collections is higher estimated than owner's rights. In Germany there is no thing like "right of the picture of the own thing". See also the new term COPYFRAUD http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=787244 --Historiograf 20:38, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

commons-logo.png or commons-logo.svg?

Now, that we have another version of the commons' logo, we should clear, which version we are going to use: The PNG-version with the resoulution of 1024x1335 and the seize of 58 KB or the SVG-version with the much smaller resolution and the seize of 3 KB? Commons:Criteria for inclusion#Quality says, that the resolution for diagrams (a logo isn't a photograph nor a sound file) should by as high as possible. Please tell your meaning! Schaengel89 @me 12:14, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

The term resolution simply does not apply to vector graphics like SVG images: such graphics have a default rendering size, but they can be scaled up infinitely, without any loss or artefacts. That's the point of vector graphics: they are small (in bytes) and can be zoomed at will.

That being said, I see no reason to use the PNG any longer, although it should be kept as a reference. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 13:17, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I think that on image description pages, SVG images should be shown at the user's selected size (choices are 320x240px, 640x480px, 800x600px, 1024x768px, 1280x1024px, and 10000x10000px in Special:Preferences) regardless of the SVG's "natural" size. That would avoid some confusion in cases like this. Please see bugzilla:3499, where Brion has refused to allow this type of bug to be fixed. dbenbenn | talk 15:27, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I think, SVG images should not be shown at the thumbnail size, but at the image size as limited by the user setting "Limit images on image description pages to:" (320px, 640px, 800px, ..). -- aka 15:59, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

This is the case, unless the default rendering size given by the SVG is smaller than that setting. Compare Image:Baustelle.svg -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 16:16, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Oops, sorry for the confusion, aka. I corrected my comment above. I'm saying that the "default rendering size" should be ignored. SVG should be scaled "up" if necessary. The whole point of SVG is that conceptually, it has infinite resolution. dbenbenn | talk 16:40, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Video file upload

Hi, I have a small or better huge problem. I created a "language file" for my kids - using pictures of commons, open content music, adding my recordings of the words. The idea came because mine were watching Enlish lessons on Rai Educational and now know animal's and colour's names in English and they also pronounce them - for German: they understand me and watch TV, but they don't use the language, they don't pronounce the words. So using pictures from here I created a file with fruit names, singulars and plurals and they indeed started immediately to pronounce them and "play" with the video (or better slide show). It is 63 mb and in mpg format. Now I cannot upload it here as is - how can I convert it to .ogg and who can have a look at the first and last slide I inserted with the introduction and the attributions in order to be sure things are done correctly? Someone also told me that there is the Xvid-format that is free as well. And then: I have problems in uploading such a file - at a certain stage I receive the message that the document is empty :-( well, HEEEEEELPPPPP!!!!! Thank you!--SabineCretella 14:10, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I just heard from Gerard that DVIX will be a supported format - if so: I can create that one with the software. Where can I find further info on this theme? Thanks! --SabineCretella 13:33, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

the page Commons:Software should contain what you need -- it "should" both in the sense that it might, and that it would be nice if it did. :p Rama 14:38, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Uploaded files & watchlist

Particularly pertinent here. There is now a box you can tick to add the pages to your watchlist.

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2570

However, as Bion notes:

Uploads don't add an entry to the recentchanges table for the *image*, just on the upload log, so you won't see anything in the watchlist on a re-upload or image revert.

What you will see is someone adding "{{deleteme}}" to the page or commenting on its talk page.

What you won't see is someone replacing it with goatse.

commons images

i'm new to this site but i've read about vandals of the images of commons. people please realize your native images mean alot to other people and is a part of your heritage you should be proud of so please no more vandalizing. thank you knitelobo...

Why GFDL-en?

1. Please, see MediaWiki talk:Licenses#Why GFDL-en?
2. Why not all the MediaWiki messages can be translated?
3. Why not all the MediaWiki messages appear at Special:Allmessages?

Thanks. Sanbec ✉ 08:53, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commonplace 1.1

I'm not able to upload pictures with this program any more. Any hints? -- Stahlkocher 16:11, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Neither am I. :-( --AndreasPraefcke 19:09, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Templates as licence tags

Is there anywhere an interdiction to use templates as licence tags for pictures uploaded on Commons? This kind of stuff is in my humble opinion dangerous (hundreds of pics can change licences in five seconds) and should be simply banned. Not to mention the addition of the camera thumbnails which I find totally irrelevant to the licence tag. If people are lazy, they can just use the subst: feature, can't they? notafish }<';> 09:18, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Of course, all license tags are templates. I have no opinion about this particular example. I agree the camera thumbnails are a bit irrelevant; of course, anyone is allowed to edit the template, so you can easily remove them. dbenbenn | talk 12:46, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Of course you're right, and I'm stupid! lol /slaps forehead :-D. Geez. OK, let's rephrase that. A template in a template in a template...could we avoid this? notafish }<';> 12:51, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I guess the problem with this template is that the name, Template:Fir0002 20D, doesn't indicate anything about the copyright status. On the other hand, if Fir decides to multilicense his stuff as cc-by-sa-2.5, it only takes one edit. dbenbenn | talk 14:56, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Image:Old norse, ca 900.PNG

I made this map for English wikipedia, but when I uploaded it, I was not aware of the difference between PD and GDFL. If someone could change it from PD to GDFL, I would be grateful.--Wiglaf 17:13, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Done. Note that you could have done it yourself. dbenbenn | talk 20:17, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but I don't want to mess with possible policy problems, so I thought I'd better ask. Thanks for your trouble :).--Wiglaf 18:38, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Speedy deleting unknown-copyright images

Jimbo recently decreed that images with unknown source or copyright status on the English Wikipedia would be speedy-deleted after a week.

Our own Category:Unknown has nearly 2000 entries. I propose that any picture that's been tagged as having unknown source or copyright status for more than a week be subject to speedy deletion. If you agree with this, please say so—I'd like to see a strong consensus before modifying Commons:Deletion guidelines.

Specifically, I propose to add

• a file with unknown source or copyright status, that has been tagged as such for more than a week.

dbenbenn | talk 04:16, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

EX-TER-MI-NATE. Wipe them out -- all of them. Terminate with extreme prejudice. etc. Rama 09:56, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Of course I agree with this reasonable proposal. Users definitely have to learn which information they have to provide with an upload. Anyway, as some admins inherently used to do, we should still ask uploaders to add information if there is strong indication that an image is really selfmade and also worthwhile to keep (perhaps because of a unique motiv). But this should be seen as a recommendation, not as an obligation. It is also still important to clear "unknown" images out of thematic galleries or categories by return (when they are tagged as unknown), not first at the day of deletion.

And I think, no one likes deleting beautiful images, so the risk of misuse of this proposal is very low. The only danger I'm thinking about is an already known form of vandalism: Someone removes important information from an image description page and, perhaps in a second edit, substitutes a correct license with "unknown" - this is especially known from several cases, in which one user wants to annoy another (naturally, substitution can happen by accident, too). So the following cannot be stated often enough: Speedy deletion of images always needs reliable admins who always look up the history before deletion (because once deleted, images still can't be restored regularly). --:Bdk: 09:59, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that is of course a valid point as well. As much I have an urge to deleted images like Image:Air France flight 4590.jpeg ("This photograph is deemed to be in the public domain. The photographer is unknown." yeah, right...), as much it is obvious that Image:B-24 hit by Flak.jpg has a very high probability to be in the Public Domain, even if the source is missing. Rama 10:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

The only problem I see with this is that we don't have a way to know where the images are used (the checkusage tool does not check all projects). For that reason, people have started overwriteing images with the cross you see on the right before really deleting them. I propose to do that immediately with images missing vital licensing info - that way, people will notice. It would be nice if this would become a one-click-matter for admins, though. It would also be very useful to have a way to see at a glance when a tag has been placed. Unfortunately, the software does not (yet) provide a way to do that without digging around the page history.

Also, when tagging an image as {{Unknown}} or {{No source}}, please remember to notify the uploader, for instance using {{Please tag images}}. Just my 2¢... -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 10:18, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not so big on marking the image - it won't even show up until the cache in the other project is purged, may not happen for a while. Speaking of description vandalism, I almost got tricked yesterday because the en: image description's mention of fair usage there was blanked, and the image then uploaded to commons giving en: as the source. I think we're going to have to get more insistent about requiring people to provide full descriptions on commons rather than links to other WPs. Stan Shebs 14:28, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

... always including the full history with date(s) and the (nick)name of the original uploader, not as raw text but with a correct link to the users page, YES, ack! It is just copy and paste, and a little fixing of interwiki links, not more. We definitely don't require too much. It's so easy but people are too lazy ... --:Bdk: 16:20, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with this. The images can always be reuploaded. 2000 is a big backlog (nothing like en but still). Commons must be absolutely clean. Justinc 23:26, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Image talk:47roof.jpg

Check out this talk page.

LoC

So, it took me awhile, but then I remembered there's now a wait period before a new account can upload. Right? That's why there's no upload link? How long does that last?

I have a question about the Library of Congress. Can someone answer yes or no to this? It seems to say the recordings are public domain (or rather, "ineligible for copyright"), but the folk musicians in question may have "publicity rights". It says noncommercial and education use only, but if there's no copyright, how can they say that? What about this one? It looks like we can't use it, though I'm not sure its meaning is different from the first, just its wording. I had uploaded this one to en.wikipedia because it's from 1893 (the copyright statement on that collection is the same as the second, I think), but someone tagged it as fair use. (I know, I should have included a link) TUF-KAT 01:23, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

As far as I see, the statement about public domain refers to the act of recording, which was done by an US federal employee - other people, especially the performes, have rights to the results, too.

Especially with recordings of music, you have to take into account three possible parties that may hold a copyright: the people who recorded it, the performers, and whoever wrote the music and the lyrics. Recordings of folk music from the 30s and 40s may still be copyrighted (the performers are probably not yet dead for 70 years) - however, they would have had to renew their copyright sometime in the sixties, I think...

It's all a bit complicated. Maybe it would help to send an email to the LoC, asking them to clarify. I have done things like that in the past, and usually got an answer, even though this may take a couple of weeks. Mostly it has turned out that the works in question where not PD, aven though the website did not make this clear. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 09:52, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

You're saying that when you record someone singing, the singer has copy-rights. I'm just wondering: by analogy, if you photograph a person posing, does the poser have copyrights? Bah, copyright is so tiresome ...

Oh, and for what it's worth, the chance of the singers in this case having renewed their copyrights is virtually nil. I think this is a case where we should avoid copyright paranoia. dbenbenn | talk 18:06, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

The poser on a picture has no copyrights, but he or she has privacy rights (in many countries). That means, you can't publish the picture without his or her consent. In Germany, for example, consent is considered given if you pay the model for posing.

I don't agree with you on the music case. Music from the 1940s is definitely copyrighted. If the artist is unknown and remains unknown, it will be in the public domain 70 years after the date of the recording. --Fb78 18:26, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

False. See Commons:Licensing#United States. "Anything published before January 1, 1964 and not renewed is in the public domain ... Anything published before March 1, 1989 with no copyright notice ("©", "Copyright" or "Copr.") plus the year of publication (may be omitted in some cases) plus the copyright owner (or pseudonym) is in the public domain." In particular, if these songs were published without the singer being identified, then the singer gets no copyrights. dbenbenn | talk 22:45, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Yea, all I was saying is that the copyright the performers may have (had) should be considered.

About people posing of Fotos: if what they are doing goes beyond "just standing there" to the point that it can be considered art, then, yes, they have (copy)rights. This is especially true for pictures of theatre plays, "shows" and "performances" - this may also apply to rock concerts and such (Rammstein comes to mind). -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 18:33, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with that. Copyrights matter where people are artistically creative, as in this case. Still, when you take a picture of people that do nothing but stand there, they still have a right to the picture. --Fb78 23:50, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I think the singers are always identified by name, or at least they often are. And since none of it has a copyright claim on it, and many if not all are from before 1981, they'd all be pd, right? Would I upload it with a pd tag, or should I may be just copy the statement from the LoC (I suppose that would be pd). Tuf-Kat 07:06, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

PD Phalanx images from the Deutsch Wikipedia

These two images -

1. Phalanx.gif
2. Makedonische_phalanx.gif

Appear to be in the public's domain. 80.178.148.230 17:24, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... the source is a webpage by the US. Army War College - the copyright notice is here [1]. Please someone have a look - to me it is not clear if all (or what parts) of this publication is PD. It would be cool if we could use this, there are a lot [2] of good pictures there. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 18:00, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

IANAL but as far as I can tell, anything that is not from the West Point Military History Series books would be PD US Army. Anything that is from the books would be copyright the author(s) of the books. If it is unclear what the source is then I'd assume it is not PD. Thryduulf 14:07, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Sadly, I see no way to determine which images are "additional material" from West Point, and wich are not. Also, some (or even all) the material from West Point may be PD too - or not. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 14:46, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

SVG files

Are SVG files viewable in most browsers? Look at this image - does it seem to show up for anyone? --• Thorpe • 21:47, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

SVG is not delivered to the browser, unless you klick the source (or date) link on the images description page. SVG is rendered on the server, your browser gets a "normal" PNG. The Mushroom shows fine for me, in Firefox and Konqueror. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 23:56, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

The only problem that I see is that the trancparency looks in the Internet Explorer gray and in the Mozilla white. So in InternetExplorer in Image:Flag of Cuba.svg the star has another color then the two strips.Kolossos 06:19, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Image:Alte Stadtansicht Potsdam.jpg

Could anyone please delete the second file version (timestamp 03:42)? i uploaded the wrong picture, and the 3 MB could be used more wise. thanks in advance. --BLueFiSH ?! 01:48, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Done. Thuresson 15:52, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Server problem?

All the history since 13:04 seems to have got lost. Images from after that seem to still be there, although these could be cached. Justinc 14:28, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

ok, its seems to be returning - new images now working. Justinc 14:35, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Ferdinand Porsche

Is the user who uploaded w:Image:1porsche.jpg correct? Should it be considered PD? Yuval Madar

The uploader indicated his opinion that it's fair use regardless, so it's probably fine for the English Wikipedia. Anyway, the Commons isn't the place to be discussing it. dbenbenn | talk 18:26, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Image:Wiki.png

Image:Wiki.png should be moved to a different name (reuploaded at Image:Wiki-commons.png) as it currently is aliasing that name on every wiki project and therefore not allowing local logos on those projects. Tim has already changed the logo location, so it shouldn't break the commons logo, but we should wait about a week before moving it to give time for the caches to update. I've listed it for deletion. Dori | Talk 18:09, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

The logo in the upper-right is now http://commons.wikimedia.org/images/wiki-commons.png, which is not editable except by developers. It used to be http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Wiki.png, i.e., Image:Wiki.png, which is editable by administrators. What is the purpose of the change? Also, I don't understand what you mean, "aliasing that name on every wiki project and therefore not allowing local logos on those projects". Every project has its own logo, usually named Image:Wiki.png. For example, the English Wikipedia still uses w:Image:Wiki.png as its sitewide logo.

Anyway, under the current situation, there's no reason to have Image:Wiki.png at all. There's certainly no reason to re-upload it to Wiki-commons.png. It's just a thumbnail of Image:Commons-logo-en.png anyway. dbenbenn | talk 18:16, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

The reason I reuploaded it is so that it might be again be editable by administrators as the logo. The old name was too generic and blocking other wikis from using that name for their logo. Dori | Talk 18:35, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

move the logo to a different location, but one that is wiki-editable, like Image:Wiki-commons.png. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 18:51, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Why? As I proved above, Image:Wiki.png doesn't "block other wikis from using that name for their logo". And since Wiki.png is the standard name for the sitewide logo on all wikis, the name isn't actually generic: to people familiar with the convention, it says "this logo is the sitewide logo". dbenbenn | talk 19:05, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I see, there's a new software feature that prevents non-admins from shadowing Commons pictures locally. I agree with Duesentrieb now. Sorry. dbenbenn | talk 19:13, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

SVG-Logos

Are there SVG-versions of wikimedia project logos? It would ease the creation of localized logos, when you only have to replace the text in the SVG-code. --::Slomox:: >< 23:38, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

proposal for original data

Sometimes conversion to a supported file type is lossy. For video, this is just the nature of the way we store nearly all video. For office documents, there may be some unsupported feature. For images, there may be colorspace or lens information. Some images come in raw format, and could be improved by future software if we keep the original.

Problem is, there are security issues, and we don't wish to encourage crummy data types.

To solve this, let us have a .orig file extension that maps to the application/octet-stream MIME type. Clicking on such a document will only allow saving to a file, even if the web browser ignores MIME types.

So then I may rename a file from something.bad to something.bad.orig if I wish to retain a copy here. I'll then upload in a desirable format or two, or I'll ask here for help converting the file.

AlbertCahalan 00:38, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

image replacement failure

I tried to replace Image:CookbookRaisinOatmealMuffins.jpg with a zoomed-in version. The caption changes were accepted, but there was no sign of the image change. I then used the obscure (in other words, not really acceptable) hack of using action=purge on the end of the URL, causing even weirder results. I ended up with the old image scaled to the size of the new image. The history shows that the new image is there, but I don't see it.

AlbertCahalan 01:17, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

I think the problem is a failure to supply correct cache-related metadata to the browser. A shift-click on the page reload button worked. Normally, that should not be needed. The web site is supposed to let the browser know that a cached version is no good anymore.

AlbertCahalan 01:27, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Ther's no way for the website to do that if the browser does not ask. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 09:08, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Louvre Pyramid pictures

There is a discussion going on on Template:Deletion requests whether to delete or to keep Image:Paris Louvre Pyramid Sunset.jpg and Image:LouvrePyramide.jpg. The pictures are copyright violations under French law, but not in many other countries. The discussion has been going on for weeks and it's been very slow, so I'm asking the experts of international copyright to take a look at it. --Fb78 09:50, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

If the image is a copyright violation in France (which it is, IMHO), it's a copyright violation in any country that has treaties about copyright with France, i.e. all EU contries, the US, and many more. Note that the place of creation and publication of the original work (i.e. in this case the building) determines the law to apply - otherwise, Micky Mouse would be PD in Europe... -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 10:12, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

The first is, arguably, not a copyright violation regarding French Law. The Court of Cassation held that the presence of a work of art in a whole photographic ensemble does not result in the artist having rights on the photograph (case: Daniel Buren and others about the Terreaux plaza in Lyon). David.Monniaux 12:21, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Duesentrieb is wrong. In Germany (EU member) the image is definitely no copyvio (Panoramafeiheit). A German court has recently decided that distributing pictures of the Austrian (NOTABENE creator: Austrian) artist Hundertwasser house at Vienna (NOTABENE place of creation: Austria), which were made from a house (not a public place) and which were in Austria absolutely legal, in Germany is prohibited. Keep and wait whether Commons is sued. --Historiograf 20:24, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

That'S interresting - what are the details of the case? Reasons given for the ruling?

If this is legal usus, what are copyright treaties there for? Does this mean that the copyright of the place of creation can be ignored? The cules of which country would apply on the commons, then?

I'm confused... -- 84.185.255.192 22:00, 27 September 2005 (UTC) Duesentrieb^(?!) 22:37, 27 September 2005 (UTC) for some reason, my session was lost

Duesentrieb - you should be able monitoring the article Panoramafreiheit in de and the discussion page. You also should be able to read the lawyers text ("Rechtsgutachten") for Wikimedia with more informations on the international aspects. There is no single law for Commons. Commons can be sued in each country of the earth if a court decides that it is competent. Read Junker's dissertation at the Kassel University Press (reading is free, printing not). You will be more confused I am sure. Feel free to contact me in German my English is not good enough to handle with legal subtilitates here --Historiograf 14:53, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Sure, unlike many people here who don't understand german, i'm able to monitor and read those articles (there are some contradictions in de:Panoramafreiheit, btw). But since this is relevant to a long standing deletion request, a short summary in english meight be helpful - best on the deletions page. There is no point in talking about here. If the commons meight be sued under frensh law, doesn't that imply we have to adher to those laws when dealing with artwork from France? -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 15:46, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

use of a midget (dwarf) by a st louis baseball team

I WOULD LIKE TO FIND A HISTORY ABOUT A ST LOUIS MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL TEAM THAT USED A DWARF ON THEIR TEAM. I BELIEVE THIS HAPPENED IN THE 1940S. YOUR ASSISTANCE WILL BE GREATLY APPRECIATED.

STAN ZITA mvh@socket.net

Sorry for creating a precedent by replying here, but anyway... Use Google to search for baseball+midget in Wikipedia: http://www.google.com/search?as_q=baseball+midget&as_sitesearch=wikipedia.org – which will at least point to Eddie Gaedel (the man in question), St. Louis Browns (the baseball team), and Bill Veeck (team owner). --Eddi 15:27, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

FlickrLickr: The first 14,000 photos

A total of 14,000 CC-BY-licensed photos on Flickr has now been reviewed using the collaborative process described at User:FlickrLickr.

A total of 1,284 photos has been uploaded to the Commons so far, i.e., less than 10% of the reviewed photos on Flickr have been deemed useful. I have collected some of my personal favorites on User:FlickrLickr/Highlights.

We're splitting the ~500,000 CC-BY images into slices of 1,000 each, which are reviewed one by one by different people. The reviewers so far:

• Andre Engels: 5 slices
• Angela: 1 slice
• Benjamin Esham: 1 slice
• myself: 7 slices

We need more FlickrLickr reviewers! Just email me to get an account for

http://epov.org/cgi-bin/flickrlickr.pl

and I'll set you up. It's very easy: All you need to do is select the images you want, and edit the descriptions and categories. When your slice is done, I'll post-review and upload it.

The decision what photos to keep is often very subjective, of course. I think the best approach is to take into account

1. uniqueness
2. usefulness for Wikimedia
3. technical quality.

If a photo shows a very common object, animal, place or process, then it should probably only be picked if it is of very high quality. If it shows something more unusual, the first question is whether it is at least theoretically identifiable, and potentially useful for one of our projects. Technical quality isn't quite as important for these.

We also need to be careful not to let mood affect our judgment. For example, if you're very hungry, you might select hundreds of photos of food ;-). So far I'm acting as a final reviewer on all slices, but I'd like to delegate that role to someone else at some point.

Again, if you're interested, please email me and I'll give you a slice to look over. It can be very addictive.--Eloquence 17:24, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Could you add in a note to get people to work a little harder on categorization please? Since the names are often unhelpful, and the chosen categories frequently don't exist, we get a lot of orphaned photos - and without a link from a page or an already-created category, the image has effectively disappeared into the soup. Stan Shebs 18:19, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

FlickrLickr proposes the existing tags from Flickr as categories, and allows the reviewer to edit them. It's up to each reviewer to try to find the best possible match. Future uploads by FlickrLickr will record who reviewed the image, so you can contact reviewers personally who use "bad" categories. Personally, I think that categorization on Commons is irredeemably broken until we have category synonyms and internationalization, at which point we can systematically "activate" categories which are currently meaningless. Many if not most uploaded images on Commons are neither categorized nor linked. It's much better to have "non-existent" categories (which can still be browsed) than none at all.--Eloquence 21:06, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

At least back when "latest files" came up in less than 10 minutes :-/ , I reviewed lots of new images, and of the ones where I looked at the description pages, I had the impression that most were linked or categorized. (Perhaps not surprising, since multi-related-image uploads now account for a large percentage, and the uploaders like to see them in a group.). A couple things FlickrLickr could do would be to a) show which categories actually exist (red/blue link style), and b) try pluralizing, which in conjunction with a) allows intelligent choice. Advice to substitute more generic categories would help too (or automatic substitution?) Category:Plantae is better than a nonexistent species category, because people make sweeps through generic categories periodically. Stan Shebs 21:56, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

If you want, I can send you a dump of the FlickrLickr TAGS table which contains all the tags from Flickr I've received so far. You can then write search and replace rules (either as text or as Perl regular expressions). I've already filtered some bogus tags, but some automatic conversion probably makes sense.--Eloquence 23:12, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm, sounds like fun, but I have a personal backlog of 8,000+ photos to work on, and just five months to do it in before the desert spring season starts! Stan Shebs 00:33, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I have no clue who flicker licker is but it seems more work than help sometimes. For example: cs:Wikipedie:Pod lípou#Co to je za radnici?. Just an image of a *beeping* apartment house with a café downstairs. The other image I deleted was up already. I am not sure, it is so great. I oppose not considering the naming of an image and I totally oppose uploading redundant images. I prefer a capable human is present before uploading anything if not absolutly sure. mfg --Paddy 01:43, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

FlickrLickr is not just one person or one bot -- it's a group of people reviewing files on Flickr. These people make different decisions and use different standards. Recent FlickrLickr uploads will have the reviewer pointed out on the description page so you can talk to them directly if you disagree with their decision or their judgment. In that respect, it is no different to a human looking at photos on Flickr manually, and uploading those they like -- just much more automated.

As for the data quality, it seems likely that the quality will actually be higher than for many uploads that go directly to the Commons. That's because the initial metadata description by the Flickr user is reviewed by the FlickrLickr team member. Mistakes will always be made, no tool is ever going to change that. That's what wikis are for.--Eloquence 03:19, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

And now FlickeLickr has stopped, due to the missing Flickr API? LoopZilla 10:31, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Most of those are useless anyway.--ASDFGHJKL

A questionable category

I'd really appreciate your opinions and help on this matter: Some days ago, organizing two duplicated categories: Category:A Coruña and Category:La Coruna, I moved the information from the first one to the second, leaving category "A Coruña" as a redirect to keep the possibility of a search for that category in vernacular language, it isn't correct according to the policy though. Now I've been asked by a Spanish user to do the contrary, then my doubts arise here:

• According to the Language policy So far, Categories are in English.
• The special spelling of A Coruña, with that Ñ which is not a common letter found in non Spanish-speaking keyboards and could create problems of search to many users.
• Category:La Coruna, whether it stays as a redirect (if this is possible) or the main category it's bad written if I'm not wrong, as it should be spelt La Corunna.

What should I do then? Any advices will be very appreciated. Thanks Anna 21:21, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

I think the category should be at "A Coruña", the "native" name. It isn't like Corunna is much more common in English, and besides, the occasional ñ won't kill anyone. Note that the English Wikipedia uses w:A Coruña. dbenbenn | talk 21:49, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I'll move the content to the right category and then I suppose La coruna is even less common as it is bad spelt, so that Category:La Coruna should be dumped to create a proper redirect en castillian La Coruña, right? Anna 23:36, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Commons:Administrators

In the voting to give administrator status to User:Anna, several things seem irregular: users pressuring other users, users who register and vote the same day ([3], [4]), attempt to export spanish wikipedia policies to Commons. Please, I request that somebody supervises the voting. In addition, can be administrator a user who does not know or ignores Commons's policies? For example redirected pages from native and official name of places from Spain to names that agree with spanish wikipedia policies. Thanks. --Prevert^(talk) 22:48, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi. What is the problem here? Let's start with the users pressuring other users: Would you mind pointing out a place in which this occurs? The only thing I see is people discrediting the reasons for which others vote against. For example, an objection was brought up about a mistake that the proposed administrator made over two months ago. Obviously, I saw it more than fit to point this out as to prevent the vote from misleading other users. Arguments are given about why the user should not be an admin and they are responded, understandably, with clarifications on why these arguments --according to the responding user-- are invalid. Another example that might look like pressuring is the commentary in response to Antoine's vote. For those es-0's , the response says "Any reason, or is just because you can?". This is because Antoine is extremely famous on the es.wikipedia for trolling and casting seemingly unreasonable votes without giving any reason at all as to why. Let it be known that Antoine is the single most blocked user on the es: wiki, so I wouldn't feel too sorry for him.

Now, as for users registering the same day to vote, I don't see the problem here either. All of the users have extensive backgrounds on the Wikipedia in Spanish and this is very likely the first time they have needed a registered account, to show their support for a colleague. What more is Commons than a big garage for the other wikis? Does it make any sense to require a long background to vote in Commons and to ignore backgrounds in other Wikimedia wikis when the outcome of the election affects all of the Wikipedias? One big reason for the extreme favor is due to, as stated in the proposal, the tremendous lack of Spanish speaking adiministrators vs. Spanish speaking users in Commons. The users want representation here. If it is necessary to prove the identity of these Wikipedians, I'm sure it can be done cooperatively, smoothly, and easily upon request.

And lastly, you complain about something that happened over two months ago and has nothing to do with the rest of your complaints. The tone of your message goes from "not fair, too many people are voting for her" to "well, she's not any good anyway." A big saludo from the U.S.--Orgullomoore 23:54, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

I take for granted that WikiCommons users who registered after September 24, 05:05, when I nominated Anna can not vote and their votes will be ignored. This is standard procedure to prevent username hijacking and ballot stuffing. Thuresson 07:58, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I didn't know I should be a registered user here to vote. I thought it was enough to be a user in other wikipedias, as I am, and this is how I knew about this poll. But, that's right, I can't prove you who am I, can I? Well, maybe you can e-mail me from my es: wiki user and I will answer you...

However, I understand and accept the rule. Salut, --pieter 13:48, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I had forgotten my old account's password. I've recovered it now :). --Angus 21:45, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi! I'm from Valencian Wikipedia (or Catalan, whatsever you want). I've prevented also vandalism about voting with accounts registered after September 24 in our Village Pump. I've also recommended to express their opinions here for whose shouldn't participate in the voting. Cheers. --Martorell 09:59, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I've just finished checking every vote until now, and I've only found two invalid votes you, the same wich mentioned, Prevert. --Martorell 10:31, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

• Please, fair play. More votes from not real WikiCommons users: [5], [6], [7] . --Prevert^(talk) 13:13, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Feel free to disqualify as many votes as you see fit for the election to reach the outcome you desire. :-/ --Angus 21:59, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I urge you, Prevert, please point out why you think these users are not "real"--Orgullomoore 00:21, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

• See user history and [8], [9]. --Prevert^(talk) 03:27, 30 September 2005 (UTC) + [10] --Prevert^(talk) 17:38, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Practical multilingual messages

Please take a look at User:Taw/Practical multilingual messages. We can make Commons a lot more multilingual than it is now, without significant changes in software.

The proposal is at the proof-of-concept stage. Technical and organizational improvements are certainly needed before we actually give it a try. Taw 02:03, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm all for it! -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 11:29, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Her's one example of something that would look good in userlanguage :-) I'm not that much into programming, not even in Danish, so I don't get much from the technical part of the description in the link.

I find the idea very interesting, and I might translate some English textboxes and stuff to Danish once this is implemented.

Would it be possible to make a list of templates that need translation? (Maybe it's already here somewhere?) G®iffen 12:51, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I updated the code. Now it is more HTML-ideologically correct and provides a switch to show other languages. Taw 09:14, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I have it working for me. Check:

• User:Taw/monobook.js
• User:Taw/Practical multilingual messages test

With the code (and preferences "pl, en") the following is displayed:

(show other languages)

To jest test

(show other languages)

This is another test

Das ist dritte Probe

これは三番目試みです

And without the code, you will see:

To jest test

This is a test

Das ist eine Probe

This is another test

Das ist andere Probe

Das ist dritte Probe

これは三番目試みです

Something nicer than hardcoded "show/hide" messages will have to be implemented. Other than that, I think we may start converting messages like disambig and licences to this system. Taw 10:14, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Licences

Regarding Commons:File upload service, would it not be preferable to state that the files will be double licenced under the GFDL and the Cc-by-sa ? (see [11] for rationales). Rama 07:59, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

This would only be acceptable if we make it clear that by using the service that the copyright holder is not designating anyone else (i.e. Wikimedia or 'The commons') as the recipient of attribution for the work. See the difference between 4.c in cc-by-sa-2.0 and cc-by-sa-2.5. This is a concern because CC-BY-SA-2.5 incorporates aspects of CC-WIKI, a license which takes attribution from content creators and grants it to website operators merely because they operate a website. There might exist an argument for such loss of attribution for highly collaborative works, but no such argument can be made about images on the commons because there is very little collaborative development. Many photographers find the level of attribution in GFDL insufficient so I expect they would really object to giving up attribution completely. I am really disappointed that the Creative Commons folded to pressure from various forces in the Wiki hosting world and snuck that little optional section rather than making a new type of -BY style tag. One of the nice things about the CC licenses was that they allowed a small degree of customization without a mess of secondary disclaimers. Oh well. --Gmaxwell 16:31, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Image replacing bot

I think replacing redundant images on all WikiMedia projects is big issue now especially at the time when SVG support added and will be good idea to replace bitmap images with their vector counterparts.

User:RCBot did that job in past but unfortunately User:Richie doesn't have time to support its operation.

May somebody who understands bots well (disclaimer: I'm not :-) will take over bot code and will make it working again?

EugeneZelenko 14:30, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Linking to Commons user page from Wikipedia

Could someone please explain how I can link to my Commons user page from Wikipedia? Thanks. DeltaOmega 04:22, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[[commons:User:DeltaOmega]] should do the trick. --Fb78 11:07, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Article or category?

I asked the question already at Category_talk:Cities_in_Austria and at Commons talk:Categories but did not get an answer yet, so maybe here is a better place: When should an article be created and when a category? For example, there is an article Linz and a Category:Linz; there is an article Wien and a Category:Vienna, Austria. Does it make sense to have both? --NeoUrfahraner 08:39, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it does. Every single Vienna-related photo should be in the Category:Vienna, Austria (or subcategory). The best (however you define that) photos of Vienna should also be in the article Wien. Thuresson 11:16, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Do I understand correctly: The article should contain the "best" pictures while the category contains all the related pictures? Or, put it the other way round: when I upload a picture, I should add all the related categories but put the picture only to one or two articles that match best, cf Commons:First_steps? By the way, there are currently two categories for Vienna: Category:Wien and Category:Vienna, Austria; which naming convention should be used? --NeoUrfahraner 11:38, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

A lot of people are busy moving pictures to articles and removing them from the categories. Are you saying this is wrong? --Fb78 11:40, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I've always felt that is wrong, and I agree with Thuresson's comment about the relationship between categories and galleries. The main benefit of galleries is that you can exert editorial control and remove less-good pictures; whereas a category should be complete. dbenbenn | talk 12:41, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

There's no general consensus about categories vs articles, although in some topical areas there is some general agreement - at least 95% of plant/animal pictures identified as to species are linked to rather than categorized, while the reverse is true for stamp scans. I'm not familiar with the theory that only the best pictures should be in galleries, I don't think very many people follow that practice, and as a policy it has the obvious danger of provoking pointless edit wars over which pictures are "less-good". One of my working rules is that article and category structure should generally mirror WP structure, which facilitates navigation back and forth, in turn reducing the typing, guessing at titles, and wondering if search is accurate today. :-) Stan Shebs 13:25, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I believe my system is the more vandal-proof - a photo can not remember which articles it has been removed from, but its categories will always be in the image history. Also, that day WikiCommons has 5,000, 10,000 or 50,000 photos of New York City it is not going to make sense to put each photo in an article. Thuresson 10:33, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

A good point about image history! I'm not too worried about 5,000 NYC pics; people tend to break galleries (and categories) down, so one would first have per-borough galleries, then per-neighborhood and landmarks, and then maybe per-street. (I see the subdivision is in progress, Category:New York City streets already having 8 subcats!) Stan Shebs 16:33, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

OK, I see a lot of arguments for categories (for me, personally, I prefer categories because they are less work; most work is done automatically). So why do we need articles at all? What information should be in the article that is not in the corresponding category? Thuresson said that articles should contain the "best" pictures; for me, however, this is not sufficient to justify the existence of articles. --NeoUrfahraner 16:55, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Take a look at Cypripedium calceolus. There's a lot of structure there, that couldn't be done with categories. I'm also highly in favor of categories, but galleries have their place too. dbenbenn | talk 01:29, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

So let's say: categories for the coarse structure and articles/galleries for the fine structure? --NeoUrfahraner 05:53, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Sort of, I guess. I think it's more important to follow the conventions already adopted for areas, or if an area is lightly covered and not too active, to come up with a design, describe it somewhere, wait for a bit for feedback, then follow through and change existing structure to conform. If you have a good design, you'll know because other people will pick up on it and start using for their uploads too. Stan Shebs 22:13, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

City categories

While we're on the subject (sort of) -- what's the deal with city names in categories? Did the policy ever officially change into making it [City, Country], like the policy seems to be in category:cities in Germany, or is it still in the process of being shaped?

I for one think it's rather odd to have such a "disambiguation" name for a city when no other large place with that name exists -- such as Vienna. -- Ranveig 12:45, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I would like to see all those follow the conventions for the language WP corresponding to the language of the majority of the cities' residents. Stan Shebs 13:25, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Berlin photos offered on the city's official website

Are these photos compatible with the commons' requirements, e.g. the attribution sharealike license? Download conditions:

All rights to the photographs are controlled by the federal state of Berlin (Presse- und Informationsamt des Landes Berlin) and Berlin Partner GmbH - Hauptstadt-Marketing. They may be downloaded free of charge for serious, non-commercial purposes. Picture resolution varies and is suitable for print sizes of DIN A5 to DIN A4. The photos may not be altered, although they may be adapted to meet the technical requirements of the item being produced.

Visual material may be used, reproduced, or distributed free of charge only if the copyright notice for each photo appears in accordance with copyright law. Special conditions apply to commercial uses (e.g., the sale of any products), which the user must negotiate with the photographer. In such cases, users must obtain the express permission of the photographer.

--Marek Moehling 21:16, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

No. Pictures on the commons must be usable for commercial purposes. --Fb78 21:54, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have to agree with Fb78. I would, however, be interested te hear what the copyright holders mean by "serious use"...;-) MartinD 12:28, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Template for PHIL (Public Health Image Library)

Just wanted to know I could write up a template for this photo Source. The Adress is http://phil.cdc.gov. The License would be PD-US and I thought about something similar to the existingTemplate for USDA : Template:PD-USGov-USDA --Chb 17:00, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Sure, go ahead! -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 18:45, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I already wrote such a template, it's Template:CDC-PHIL. David.Monniaux 12:12, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Original Wiki Fiction. (Wiktion?)

I've been toying with the idea of creating original Wiki fiction. This is not a new idea, really (I think someone referred to it as "Wiktion" once). What I was thinking about, though, is not the old "I write a paragraph, you write a paragraph" kind of collaborative fiction, but rather something more similar to what we're doing with Wikipedia, where one person writes, say, an outline (a stub, if you will) another starts writing the story, someone else fixes the grammar, another changes the story to add depth to characters etc. I haven't really thought it all the way out so my questions are basically:

Do you think it would even work?

Do you think this (Wikimedia) is the place to do this kind of thing?

Also, what would you think would be good guidelines for writing like this? "Getting your facts straight" might work for Wikipedia, but not here, I think... -- Zackipooh signature added -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 18:23, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi Zackipooh

• Do you think it would even work?

Yes, I think it could work.

• Do you think this (Wikimedia) is the place to do this kind of thing?

No, Wikimedia is all about collecting factual knowledge. But en:Wikicities may be a good place to start.

• Also, what would you think would be good guidelines for writing like this? "Getting your facts straight" might work for Wikipedia, but not here, I think...

Well, it all depends on the type of fiction, subject, size of the work, etc. Basically, try to attract an active community, and try to get them to have fun and be nice to each other. Easier said than done...

Another important point would be your licensing policy. People are generally more willing to contribute for free, if the result is going to be free. If you want to allow commercial use is a different qustion, though.

Ok, some general remarks: I don't really understand why you ask this here - a more suitable place would probably be the Wikimedia's meta wiki, but you'll have to be patient to get feedback there. You can also try Wikipedia, where this would be off topic, but likely to get some more responses than here.

Some hints about wiki syntax:

• Please sign your contributions to discussions. You can do this easily by typing ~~~~ (for tilde characters).
• Use wiki syntax - for a start: a blank line starts a new paragraph, a line starting with * makes a list entry. If you use HTML markup, always close your tags.

HTH -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 18:23, 30 September 2005 (UTC)</sup>

Aufter a short search on wikicities, I found the Novelas Wiki. From the main page: "Novelas is aimed at co-operative fictional writing. Any language is welcome on this wiki. Current content on this site includes Spanish novels and English novels. You can help by editing the existing novels, add a word to the one-word-at-a-time story, or start your own!" - this sounds like what you are looking fore... -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 20:39, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! This is a great help! And sorry about the syntax... --Zackipooh 21:26, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

No problem. And the syntax stuff is not a big deal here, I just though if you where going to start your own wiki, you should get it right :) -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 19:03, 2 October 2005 (UTC)