As we are approaching the 10,000th article in the Persian Wikipedia, we are looking for ideas for a splash screen picture. I know there were some in other Wikipedias. Could anyone please help me to find those images. Thanks. JazzM
Why is the text for PD-old on the upload-site, changed from autor died more than 70 years ago to 100 years ? I belive it is still PD from 70 years from the death of the autor/artist -- Nico-dk09:23, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Can articles in Commons have subpages? I discovered on en they cant (even though user pages and talk pages can) which means that OS/2 is an article not a subpage of OS. But I presume it is configurable so I wonder how commons is set up. I want to make a gallery subpage which I can include on other pages for sets of images that are referenced in more than one place (buildings designed by multiple architects for example), but I cant include the whole page as that includes the categories too. Justinc11:19, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To avoid including the category, put <noinclude> around the category links, or alternatively <onlyinclude> (not <includeonly>) around everything you want to include.
I found it odd that the dynamic pages here at Commons referenced common.css, most notably because we didn't have that particular stylesheet. I copied the one from English and saved it as common.css. It will probably make certain things look better. But if not, let me know. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir21:16, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm currently looking for photographs, posters etc of the Great Leap Forward. I've found this site which has some great content. Can someone familiar with Chinese copyright law explain what the deal is with these, are they public domain or not? Thanks :) I have uploaded one, if it turns out that they aren't free, please delete it. Image:Great leap forward-Backyard smelting 1.jpg.jpg - FrancisTyers10:27, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, do you think it would be possible to trace the original authors (or copyright holders)? If not should the one I have uploaded be deleted? - 88.96.32.19502:13, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
On this page all images of the alphabet are white, only the numbers are still present. On the top a big tag {{ConvertToSVG}}. Anyone any idea? Noorse12:28, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Whoever made the new files and deleted the old ones failed to replace them in this gallery. They where a bit tricky to find, but I fixed it. -- Duesentrieb(?!)16:22, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, thank you for correcting this, however - it seems that the flags haven't been made properly :( Hotel and Foxtrot are 2 flags that should, afaik have white in them, not grey - and there are more like these. What's going on on commons? Noorse16:41, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes when people create SVGs they neglect to include objects that are painted white. I have done this myself several times, however, I try to view the completed product in both Firefox and IE in order to ensure that they render properly. Incedentally, Noorse, in Firefox, the grey that you see is in fact appearing white. Usually a simple text edit on the SVG files is all that they need to be corrected. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir17:25, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Those two are fixed. I want to reiterate, especially to everyone who creates SVG files, that if white is a necessary color in any object to make sure that you remember to include a solid, positive, white background, rather than leaving it transparent. Not only will it not render correctly in Internet Explorer, but if you have a background color other than white, it may show through. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir17:39, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry that I missed this article! I've been trying to deprecate the PNG versions of these images and get them deleted. They popped up in a number of unusual places, and for some reason there's 2 SVG series for these. If you see any problems with the SVGs, please feel free to either fix them or ask for help in fixing them. Deco03:51, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There's no standard. I prefer just species name, authority, and common names in different languages, and rely on category system and interwiki for navigation elsewhere. Stan Shebs01:54, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I do not think it's a good idea to accept too restrictive national laws in this way. In the en Wikipedia few people accept that other laws than the US law are relevant. According US law the pictures are legal. According to German law (a big country in Europe) the pictures are legal. Why defining "country of origin" as the place where the object is? If a German citizen has taken the photo the country of upload is Germany and the pictures are legal. --Historiograf17:50, 5 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Histriograf, please don't blame only Americans (and some of us, frankly, are getting tired of American-bashing). We have ample speakers from other English-speaking nations to validate the laws of Ireland, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand as well. It's non-English speaking country's laws that many people at English Wikipedia consider irrelevant. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir22:57, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For the photograph, the country of origine could be argued to be germany... however, the original artwork to consider here is the atomium, which surely originates in Belgium. Since the copyright holder has rights to the picture under belgian law, he could also sue for that in Germany, right?
Added the picture on the Requests for Deletion page, and I quite agree with Historiograf and Duesentrieb that it is ridiculous that I had to do this. Thanks for the discussion! MartinD09:27, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Dura lex, sed lex (Law is stupied rough, but it's a law) Romans used to say. I consider it totally idiot, but atomium is copyrighted, and Belgian copyright sociaty SABAM watches out for copyright violations. So we sould delete the image. But dont't be sad, in 2076 atomium image will be public domain (architect died in 2005). In the meantime we can replace atomium photo by Because of idiot copyright law we can't put the photo here note Kneiphof18:44, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It seems like I've made a terrible mistake: "dura" is rough in Latin, not stupied. I've been confused because of this old Russian joke: "Dura lex sed lex" Romans used to say. But you don't have to know Latin to understand that our law is "dura" (note: "dura" is Russian for "stupied woman") Kneiphof13:26, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Next time Jimbo Wales goes to Belgium (he went there in February 2005 according to en:User:Jimbo Wales/These are the voyages... he should address the problem and ask the Belgian people to change their law in accordance to the relevant European directive. If the law changes, we won't have to wait until 2076. --Teofilo02:56, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Kneiphof. A text like "We're sorry but we cannot show you a photo of the Atomium for legal reasons. You are, of course, very welcome to travel to Brussels and look for yourself. As far as we know, there is no fee charged for looking at the Atomium. Please note, however, that you will do so at your own risk." would look very nice.;o) MartinD08:38, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm belgian and I want that this picture stay on Wikipedia. That's a stupid law and I will try to change that in my country. I'm myself architect but i don't want that the pictures of my buildings became "copyrighted". SABAM are swindlers...
Image editing help
I first posted this on the English Wikipedia, but I was told I might be able to find help at Wikipedia Commons. I was was wondering if anyone here could help me edit some pictures that I'm going to upload to Wikipedia. I'm trying to make panoramas with two or more images. Normally, I can just combine them with Photoshop with no special editing. However, these pictures have differing light levels and the division between them is very noticeable. I've tried adjusting the brightness and contrast and have gotten some better results, but still far from what I would consider acceptable. If anyone knows how to fix this, I would greatly appreciate it if they would help me. It would probably be better to leave a message on my talk page than responding here. -- Kjkolb04:54, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I just have one suggestion: upload the original photos first (all with the same title, and edit summaries that identify their sequence). That way anyone who comes along can improve on your panorama work; you don't have to get it perfect the first time. (Fred Chess, the same issue applies to your Image:Malmöhus in Malmö, joint image.jpg.) User:dbenbenn23:06, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't talked to Joschy yet, but do you think we should keep all these pages on Commons ? They are written in German, and I think the probability that they will be used on other projects than the German language wikisource is very small. Wouldn't it be better to upload them on the German Wikisource only? And if we keep them here, we should put them in a category. The license has to be rethinked : it can't be GFDL, as the downloader is not the author of the pages. For example I changed this one into {{PD-art}}--Teofilo02:13, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Our mission is to host all free media files that are useful to any Wikimedia project. Just because they're in German and only useful to the German Wikisource is irrelevant. Of course, the false GFDL tags should be fixed, and the images should be categorized. I would recommend categorizing them by the title of the book they come from. Maybe someone who speaks German can explain these two points to User:Joschy. User:dbenbenn06:36, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with dbenbenn. All files used in Wikimedia projects should be uploaded to Commons unless they are non-free or purely personal in nature. We cannot anticipate all potential future uses (e.g. translation taking place on another wiki), and it makes no difference from a storage point of view. (Arguably, Wikisource doesn't even need local uploads.) The only important thing is to not clutter up the filename namespace or categories which also contain other images. PD-art seems to be the correct licensing tag; I left Joschi a note about that.--Eloquence08:32, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have to agree with Eloquence and dbenbenn. And of course these images are important for Wikisource. There you also need the faksimile in order to have a distributed proof reading and in order to display the original book. Have a look at Wikisource Teofilo and you will see that these images make perfectly sense. Arnomane08:41, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Arnomane and protest against German-users-bashing of Teofilo. Aronson has uploaded also an English multi-volume-book at Commons. See en Wikisource Scriptorium (archive) --Historiograf15:36, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is a textbook, is it not? Then it would likely have multiple authors. Also, the copyright would likely belong to the publisher anyway, and not be the property of the authors. Ye gods, copyright law can be so confusing. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir17:19, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have discussed the Copyright problems shortly with Lars Aronson concerning the Blitzlexikon. Brockhaus has to show that the not known authors of the book were as such authours known in the relevant circles before 1995. It is not very likely that this could be done. More problems make the illustrations (according German law before 1995 the anonymous work rule doesn't fit for works of art) --134.130.68.6520:53, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Of cource those images should be kept on commons. Firstly, as User:dbenbenn pointed, the fact that it is in German doesn't mean that it can not be useful for other languages wikiprojects. Secondly, nowdays wikicommons are also used as project on itself, a source of free images. Peolpe come to search free images here, not necesserally to use them om wikiprojects. Kneiphof18:34, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is Joschy! I've deleted my last statement. My new Massageis:
I will delete alle pages on wikisources.de all pics from the commons. All pics I loaded up are those on my User-site. I do not want to go in prison, just because of such things. in my later doing, I just write in German. -- Joschy14:17, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ich werde nun alle Seiten auf wikisource zum Löschen stellen und alle Bilder von den Commons Löschen. Es sind nur die Bilder, die auf meiner Benutzerseite auf den Commons stehen. Ich will wegen solchen Sachen nicht abgehen. -- Joschy14:17, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is Joschy:
Ich erlaube allen Admins alle Bilder, die mit dem BROCKHAUS-PROJEKT zu tun haben, zu Löschen. Ich werde sie auf meiner Benutzerseite noch als Link stehen lassen, so dass man sehen kann, welche Bilder noch da sind und welche schon fort. Ich bitte um eine schnelle Abfertigung!! -- Joschy16:43, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This user commited several copyright violations (the only things he did were actually copyright violations). In my opinion this User should be banned. ((o)), Ja, bitte?!?07:02, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a rule making compulsory to put images in categories other than the license categories, or is it OK to create a page like Dartmoor (the page is in a category, but each image is not categorized except for license category) ? At present, category:Devon contains "Plymouth" as a sub-category category:Plymouth and Dartmoor as a page, with no corresponding sub-category. This doesn't look very consistent. I understand that article pages were created in prehistorical times when Mediawiki did not support categories, but I don't see the point in creating article pages on Commons nowadays. --Teofilo15:20, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Block him for several hours or days for this behaviour. Or speedy-delete his contributions if no license/source is added withind two or three days. --Denniss18:45, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And these are just the ones I could find before the search engine died.
So, is there any preference as to which (if any) graphics file should be the "default" one? Is an "ugly" SVG preferable to a "pretty" PNG? Is a public domain one preferable to a GFDL one? McNeight00:23, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"So, is there any preference as to which (if any) graphics file should be the "default" one? Is an "ugly" SVG preferable to a "pretty" PNG? Is a public domain one preferable to a GFDL one?"
The assessment of SVG looking ugly on IE is reason enough not to force this transition in the way it was done to image:Commons-logo.png. It's up to the local Wikipedias if they want to switch from PNG files to SVG files -- for 99% of readers, the advantages of SVG-versions are negligable (or who wants to print a wall image of Achtung.svg?), but a majority of users still use browsers like IE which renders it ugly. / Fred Chess01:03, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand how it's possible for SVG to look ugly in IE, while PNG doesn't. MediaWiki doesn't send SVG to the browser; it converts the image to PNG and sends that. In what way do and look different in IE? User:dbenbenn01:33, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Which? My point is simply that the PNG version and the SVG version should look identical; if one has a grey background in IE, they both should. User:dbenbenn11:45, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There must be a dozen open source commandline apps that can be used to convert rsvg's PNGs to indexed colors. Someone with the access should just take a few hours and fix the bug. ¦ Reisio03:27, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is really quite silly. If you don't like how the SVG looks, make another SVG. If IE's PNG transparency issues bother you, consider using IE7 beta, or just add a solid white rectangle behind it. This isn't an issue of SVG vs PNG but of personal image preference. Deco10:05, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My feeling is that if you don't like how IE renders PNG transparency, you should switch to Firefox. Anyone who does use IE obviously doesn't care much about the grey color, so why should we care? Anyway, I used to use IE at work, and I certainly wouldn't call the grey color "ugly". User:dbenbenn11:45, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The way I'm understanding it now is that the PNG issue is a transparency issue in IE with PNG images. Really has nothing to do with SVG renderer at all. This error has been straightened out with IE7, but unfortunately, users on anything less than the latest versions of Windows will not be able to run IE7. I have very mixed feelings about this, because I honestly feel that the average user is still caught under the Microsoft umbrella and doesn't realize that there are other choices. Therefore, the "ugly" PNG transparency grey problem will still be viewed by around 50% of wikipedia users. This number will slowly erode as more users switch to Firefox or begin using IE 7. I prefer SVG because the an image looks just as rendered at 20px as it does at 300px. I would suggest that those who are here and complaining try to view the image in some browser other than IE5.5 or IE6--like Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera or Safari; to name only a few. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir16:10, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My personal opinion is that some people are abusing Commons to run a hobby project: making SVG-files. Problem is that they think they can do as they please, annoying the worldwide community deleting good quality images used on thousands of pages worldwide. This is very close to dictatorship - Quistnix01:31, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh no! He forced me to use SVG instead of PNG! I feel so dirty now! I'm being oppressed! Seriously, I don't get it. If the conversion to SVG is done right, it should be equivalent to the PNG version - if the PNG was transparent, so should be the SVG - both will render incorrectly in IE. If the PNG had a white background, so should the SVG. PNG images with "indexed" transparency are no good, because they do not support alpha blending (just like GIF doesn't), thus you get an ugly "glow" around the edges, if you use the image on a dark background.
Is this really about the IE bug? Go tell Microsoft. But I have the impression this is more like "hey, I spent two hours making this, how dare you make it better?!" Commons is not Flickr - this is not a personal image repository. Just like anyone is free to edit (and replace!) any text on a wikipedia, people can improve and replace images on the Commons. What's the big deal? -- Duesentrieb(?!)12:33, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It is not just about the IE bug, it is your attitude: people who upload a properly licensed image of good quality to Commons find it replaced by another image of equal quality, but with another name. If you do such a thing, and delete the other image, it is your responsibility to fix the links. If you feel otherwise, you are not qualified for the job - Quistnix14:16, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Your concern is whether the image is going to be of "equal" quality. A 150px PNG image of a sign is certainly not going to be of the same quality as an SVG image of the same sign, which will translate into any size for usage. Of course, those of us who are following procedure are modifying the links within the projects. If you can cite an instance where this did not happen, please, bring it to our attention and we will ensure that the person in question is better educated about procedures when replacing images. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir17:19, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
When deleting redundant images, all pages where the image image was used must be updated. I never said anything else. But that was not the issue in the dicussion above, was it? -- Duesentrieb(?!)17:47, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Before commons goes any further with this nonsense, you should realize that Mediawiki is not serving svg. Check what is actually served to verify this. - Amgine18:17, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My point is "please stop deleting 'deprecated' .png images in favour of .svg; there's no point to it." Also, it's my understanding (which may be very wrong) that MediaWiki is creating a single .png on upload, and working from that. - Amgine19:06, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
MediaWiki does re-render the SVG for every thumb-size you request (up to 1024 pixels, see below) - rendering it once and then scaling the PNG would be completely stuid.
The cost in volunteer time to update links, or repair damage where the update was not possible, is higher than the storage cost. The cost in good will is even greater. If it is not an existing problem, do not fix it. If it is an existing problem, interfere only so much as is necessary to address only that problem. - Amgine06:37, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I just realized, you asked "What is my point?" above: your insistence on the use of svg images is costing server time and has no point. Prove you should do this before question why I'm asking you to stop the nonsense. Is there a specific benefit to all of the wikiprojects, one which is universal, immediate, and outweighs the cost of your personal crusade? If not, quit being so arrogant. This isn't personal, and it isn't yours. - Amgine06:47, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The point, as I understood it, is that someday when Wikipedia 1.0 is put to print, raster graphics are going to look like garbage. Vector graphics will be scaled to the print resolution without any artifacts. Obviously, nothing can be done about JPEG pictures, but to replace PNG with appropriate SVG versions will benefit the entire project. And the sooner these PNGs are replaced with SVGs, the less work will have to be done later finding and replacing all references to PNGs. McNeight22:56, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Which project? Wikinews has thousands of archived (protected) articles which are likely never to be printed and which serve as source documents for various language editions of Wikipedia.
Further rebuttal: even assuming a printed edition akin to de.Wikipedia, images can be updated at that time as an element of that project. It still does not address pre-emptively deleting images without a demonstrated problem. Build the .svgs, no problem. Don't delete the .pngs unless you have a specific reason to do so. Save yourselves, and others, some hassle, please! - Amgine03:06, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. Apparently, there's a hard limit of 1024 pixels for SVG rendering - if you request a larger size, it's rendered to 1024 pixels, and your browser scales up the resulting bitmap (which gets chunky, naturally). Note that this has nothing to do with SVG in general, or this SVG size. Apprently, it's simply a limit imposed by the MediaWiki - which also makes sense: there has to be some limit, and to show an image larger than 1024 pixels on a wiki page is never useful, IMHO. -- Duesentrieb(?!)19:16, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
More precisely, MediaWiki limits the thumbnail size to the larger of 1024px or the image's "natural size". So if for some odd reason you really need a larger thumbnail, you can do it with a trivial edit to the SVG code. This is a bit of a security hole itself, since an SVG's "natural size" can be arbitrarily large. For example, Image:Map of Colorado counties, blank.svg is in meters, so its "natural size" is 623349x451093. Obviously MediaWiki should just say no if someone requests the 623000px thumbnail. See bugzilla:3828. User:dbenbenn21:27, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like the "natural" size is ignored for SVG now, as it should be: the "natural" size of this image is 1144.17x1533.65 (no unit given, pixels asumed). -- Duesentrieb(?!)22:43, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, yes. I don't understand where you get the 1144.17x1533.65, but when I do [[Image:Map of Colorado counties, blank.svg]], the page I get uses the 1024px thumbnail. Great.
This should be scaled up
So MediaWiki ignores the "natural size" of an SVG when that size is too big. Any chance of getting MediaWiki to ignore the natural size when it's too small? For example, the image on the description page at Image:Nuvola-fs-blockdev.svg isn't scaled up (to the size specified by Special:Settings) and the thumbnail to the right isn't scaled up.
Obviously I could fix that specific SVG image (by adding a "viewBox" statement to the SVG element) but it would be nice for MediaWiki to handle scaling SVG up automatically. That's the whole point of SVG, after all. User:dbenbenn00:28, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We delete redundant PNG versions of SVG images because they are a maintainence problem. If we discover an error in one, we have to fix both. And fixing PNGs is really hard. Maintainence problem, that's the only reason. Deco08:41, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think there is a lot larger problem. You are scaring people away from commons. I don't have the guts to upload, because of the view you have. You look to outsiders, at least to me and other users i know, as a bunch of people that doesn't know that they are handling pictures of all projects. That your responsibility is larger than your own project. Just as the responsibility of the english wp is somehow larger then that of the dutch (people often translate from english). You take care of our treasures, and we don't trust them to you if your image is that you cannot handle them If we think that you randomly convert to svg, then delete the png, and other users have a lot of troubles of fixing it. I don't know if this is really what you do, i hope not so, because that would mean that "we" are indeed in trouble of securing our images, but i think it's now the time to do some PR. To show the world how ou are working, why and who. And to show your qualities, and what exactly goes wrong, and how many times. And why. And how you try to prevent it. You have a very bad PR, at least on nl.wp, and please fix it. Effeietsanders23:19, 17 February 2006 (UTC) (if people want to react directly to me, please add comment on my talkpage on nl.wp or ask me on IRC. Because of the problems I'm not around here much. I just upload my molecules etc on nl.wp... )[reply]
This has come up a few times. We make a special exception for the Mediawiki project logos, which are both fully copyrighted and trademarked by the Wikimedia Foundation (stored on Commons I assume solely for convenience). This provides legal repercussions for imitator sites pretending to be us. If one of these is marked GFDL, that's probably an error. Deco10:03, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, it isn't an error. Image:Wikisource-logo.jpg is GFDL, since it is a trivial modification of Image:Iceberg.jpg, which is GFDL. Even if Uwe Kils, the photographer, were to transfer his copyright to the Wikimedia Foundation, the image would still be GFDL. The other images at Wikisource are obviously derived works of Image:Iceberg.jpg. As I understand it, that means they must be available under the GFDL, whether the copyright belongs to the Foundation or to Kils. I'll update the tags on those images soon unless someone explains that I'm wrong. User:dbenbenn11:40, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If the original copyright holder agrees that the derivative work does not have to be GFDL, then it doesn't. I think it's quite possible that this is the case here, but I have not investigated. -- Duesentrieb(?!)14:17, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The following debate is temporarily closed before it gets too much more heated. Please do not make any edits for the time being.
I don't like the current situation
Like the user who complained that images he had uploaded to Commons were replaced by "improved" versions and then deleted. This occurs every now and then. All other images go through the deletion process but if an admin decides an image has been improved, he replaces it with the "redundant" cross and then deletes it after a month. Furthermore, all PNG images people have uploaded, are being deleted just like that replaced by SVG.
When people upload images they expect them to be kept except for copyvio. As the situation is now, I'll recommend people to upload images to their local Wikipedias instead where they won't be deleted. / Fred Chess11:50, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
When people upload images they expect them to be kept except for copyvio. That idea is completely wrong, commons is not a personal image repository. If I write a text for wikipedia, I can not expect it to be kept unchanged, or even kept at all. It's the same with images.
If an image has been improved (i.e. edited), I would suggest to always keep the original in the upload history - if the improved version is under a different name, re-upload one of the images would have to be re-uploaded over the other. In some (rare?) situation it would also make sense to have them separately - that depends.
If an image has been converted to another format without loss, I belive the image in the "not so good" format can be deleted if no longer used, because it is not useful in any way. Re-creating drawings in SVG is IMHO such a case (if done correctly). The IE rendering bug is not an issue here: if the original PNG was not transparent, the SVG shouldn't be either. If the original was transparent, it also rendered incorrectly in IE, and so will the equivalent SVG. Anyway, if an images is superceded by another one with a different name, all pages using the old one should of course be changed before deleting it.
The "overwriting with a cross" procedure is in place to give people time to object to the deletion - if no one objects, the problem can't be that bad, can it? I actually would use that procedure only if the image is still used somewhere, and for "critical" images that are used a lot in templates, etc, like for flags, logos, and such. Other images that are (really!) redundant and orphaned could IMHO even be deleted without further ado. -- Duesentrieb(?!)13:49, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As an admin on en:, I can say that images there are more likely to be summarily deleted for various reasons, rather than less so. An orphan on commons might have a use on any of many wikimedia project, while an orphan on en: is just maintenance overhead. Stan Shebs15:43, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In general, a conversion from one lossless image format to another lossless format is not by itself lossless. It depends on how you do the conversation and if the new format indeed convey the information of the old format. If you try to translate a raster image into a vector image you will most likely introduce errors in the process. If you simply remap one raster file as another and wraps it all into a vector package you have fooled yourself into thinking you have a vectorized image, yet what you have is something your software wont balk on rescale.
My original thought about the whole discussion about deleted and "fixed" images was that the contributors was picky about changes to the images they uploads. Now I see this as a much more fundamental problem as the present situation makes it impossible to use commons as a dependable repository. I'm actually tempted to believe we need another solution to safely store originals to avoid tampering. Commons are great for images where you would like someone to fix your images but it is not a good solution for documentary material.
Nonsense. You still have not pointed to any single example of this "fundamental" problem with original images being deleted in favor of fixed images. User:dbenbenn22:49, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
@dbenbenn: why are you retorting to this way of discussing? This leads absolutely nowhere. You seem intent on twisting every discussion into a discussion on person instead of case. Why? Noorse23:12, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
John Erling Blad continues to make vague allegations that admins here are part of some vast image deletion conspiracy. I'm tired of it. If he has anything specific and constructive to say, I'll be the first to listen. But alleging that the Commons has "fundamental problems" and isn't a "dependable repository", then refusing to give any evidence, is just trolling. User:dbenbenn00:32, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
@Stan Shebs: You might want to have a look at Commons:Tools. There is check-usage for external reference checking which gets used as often as possible and its usage is strictly required in case of redundant image removal but only encouraged at copyvios out of practical reasons. Arnomane00:26, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Message for all photographers at Torino 2006 Olympics
Ciao everybody :-) I would like to inform you that we posted instructions on both Italian Wikipedia and Wikinews to upload all personal photos of Torino 2006 Olympics directly on Commons, under a free license and with the Category:2006 Winter Olympics in the summary. Contributions from all other photographers (or spectators/participants with a camera :-) are of course very welcome! Grazie :-) Ary2913:33, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It will not change before we get a good way for internationalized category titles (and maybe templates?...); The very least would be to make category redirects work correctly (some problems have been fixed, but you still have to use the "real" name on the page you want to categorize). -- Duesentrieb(?!)17:22, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Teofilo. What would you think if I upload files with let's say an arabic name and place it in an arab language category (ok I can't speak or write it). But most of us would have no chance knowing what it is about. This has nothing to do with cultural domination but with practical problems. Arnomane11:56, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I was reading Commons: Images for cleanup and came across this on the page, which made me laugh. I've italicized the questionable portion:
8. Low quality pictures:
Some pictures just aren't pretty looking, and new versions with higher quality should be found and used instead.
What to do: look for a substitute around the Internet. A good place to start is throught the image search feature in most search engines. Just remember: keep the copyright policy in mind before uploading.
Now that I've settled down--I want to point out that it's extremely rare for any image search to come up with completely free images. Should this not be instead a list of open source image sites rather than a suggestion that we encourage widespread image searching? Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir17:37, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I use google image search all the time; the trick is to restrict it to "site:.gov" or "site:.mil" or some other mostly free domain. Of course, if you're looking for say, a specific old painting, even that's not necessary.--Pharos00:40, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think that eventually we'll have to delete nearly all these pictures (with an exception for dual-licensed pictures). The reason is this :
en:GNU Free Documentation License#GPL incompatible in both directions. For a start, I suggest writing a warning in the headline of this category, explaining this problem and asking people to either dual-license their work or choose another license for their picture. --Teofilo06:55, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the GPL is incompatible with the GFDL. So? The Creative Commons ShareAlike licenses are incompatible with GFDL too. We host media here that's available under any free license; we don't require the licenses to be compatible with the GFDL. User:dbenbenn07:04, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wikimedia Commons is a aggregation of independent work (See GFDL license text). Thus the single files are not conflicting and even if I would have an image that is partyl GPL and party GFDL (e.g. a screenshot of Wikipedia in Firefox) I simply don't care and encourage people to upload them (as everything is free content) and tell to people that they should care about more important things. Arnomane09:28, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's true : there is a provision in the GFDL that permits GFDL contents to be included into aggregates of works under different licenses. The problem is that there is no such provision in the GPL. You can mix up GFDL with a lot of different licenses. But GPL forbids inclusion into aggregates as long as you don't receive a special written permission from the author (this is written in article 10 of the GPL legal code). Because GPL is so severe, The GNU foundation created the GLPL (GNU lesser public license) which is less severe. If you want to make an aggregate with different licenses you must use GLPL, not GPL. --Teofilo01:35, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Teofilo, please get a grip. Before proposing any mass deletions, read Commons:Copyrights, Commons:Licensing and Commons:Criteria for inclusion carefully and be sure to understand the implications. While you are at it, look into discussions here and on wikipedias regarding what, and what is not, PD, how copyright applies to parts of work, and how it is based on originality.
The whole idea of applying GPL to images is really weird. But it's a familiar license to people, so they use it. Regardless of the precise legal issues, I doubt anyone who releases their content under the GFL is going to come after us with pitchforks for using them. Deco08:38, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Star and dagger for born and died
I can't figure out how it seems to have not occurred to so many otherwise intelligent editors, that using the star and dagger (cross) for 'born' and 'died', being based on Christian symbolism, is highly POV (I'd leave the same message on DE if I knew enough German). 24.17.48.24116:01, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Crosses don't kill people, people kill people. Christians are not the only people who have ever used daggers to kill other people. Daggers are death utensils in many cultures. But Commons isn't the place for this conversation. Articles here are limited to galleries and brief descriptions. Feel free to post at de: in English! I'm sure someone will respond. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir16:28, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Crosses do kill people; that's why they were used for executions. (DS on en.wikipedia)
Um, I think the New Testament pre-dates pop culture movies by a few years. And I only went with the POV argument because it seemed more clear-cut. I also have issues with using punctuation in the place of words. Surely if the WP:MoS proscribes words instead of initialisms/acronyms, it would prefer words over relatively ambiguous punctuation. 24.17.48.24117:37, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh my god. If you have problems with these nice short signs please go to my beloved de.wikipedia at http://de.wikipedia.org that is "littered" with these signs and start cleaning up there but don't wonder if you get blocked and called a vandal. :p Arnomane17:43, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with User:24.17.48.241 that * and † are less useful than "born" and "died". We aren't printing on paper, so there's no need to use potentially confusing symbols or abbreviations. I replace those symbols, and "b." and "d.", with "born" and "died", if I happen to be editing a page anyway. But I don't think it's worth losing sleep over, either. User:dbenbenn17:46, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I work on an encyclopedia and I prefer words. What an amazing coincidence. (And I specifically said I DO NOT speak German.) And thank you dbenbenn--I replace b. and d. on Simple, where I mostly edit (nowadays--I am a top-60 contrib to EN, but have become too disillusioned there to continue (morethan half of image links are stub messages and other non-core uses), as well. Words are a good thing. Oh, and by the way, is "Geburt" a good word to substitute for "born"? 24.17.48.24117:56, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No and please have a look at categories previous to your assumptions. And: Geburt is a noun not a verb. Please leave it as it is now. It does make sense. Arnomane18:22, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As I have said THREE times now, I DON'T Speak German (despite having ancestors resident at the Klopp Castle), so I can't have a look at categories previous to your assumptions, because I don't know what cats to look at. Jeez, how dense are you POV pushers?24.17.48.241
I had corrected my first assumption that you speak german after a minute or so. Despite that I have something more important to do than hairsplitting about these common signs. Arnomane20:39, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"Nobody's opposed to it", but nobody will tell me the acceptable German equivalent. Kinda sets me up for failure, it seems. I become a "vandal" just because I like WORDS, but don't happen to know the right one(s) (in German), just because my great (I don't know how many times-8 or 9)-grandfather thought it was a good idea to leave Germany. "common signs"? I first encountered them on Wikipedia. Maybe they're 'common' in Germany', but most of the English speaking world uses WORDS, not random punctuation. 24.17.48.24121:14, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Are you saying they're on German pages here at Commons? Well, babelfish defines "Geburtsjahr" as "Year of birth" and "Jahrverstorbenen" as "Year deceased". Maybe someone else can elucidate, but I don't know why if it's at Commons you can't simply put (born) and (died)!!! My goodness there's so many more important things to work on around here. So much to do!!! I guess it's just a matter of personal priorities. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir21:20, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
FYI: born = geboren, birth = Geburt, Year of birth = Geburtsjahr, died = gestorben, death = Tod, Year of death = Todesjahr. And yes I have really other priorities. There simply so many things to do. Arnomane23:43, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, this is getting so mixed up. First, there is no connection between German articles and Commons articles beyond the fact that I have seen stars and crosses both on DE and Commons FAR more than where I usually edit, which used to be EN, and now is Simple EN. Benito Mussolini here on Commons is an example of my seeing them here. Next, yes it is about priorities, and that is why I tried to be pro-active, and to get others to start using words instead of symbols. If hundreds of other editors at Commons and DE are going to continue to use punctuation instead of words, there is no way I alone can convert all the punctuation into words. And, it is not enough of a priority to me, for me to even try. I guess I was mostly irked by the seeming disconnect between written Wikipedia policy/guidelines that say NPOV _words_ should be used, while in practice, punctuation (that I still believe has enough connection to Christian symbolism to not be NPOV) is actively being used, instead of the simple words 'born' and 'died' and their equivalents in other languages.
So, anyway, I've gotten it off my chest, and I appreciate your taking the time to give me the German equivalents. When I used Babelfish to translate "born" to German, it gave me "getragen", but when I Babelfished that back the other direction, it gave me "carried", so I knew that probably wasn't the right word for the meaning I was looking for. And sorry about my uncivil rants above, I think I'd had too much to drink at that time and got carried away. 24.17.48.24106:43, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Tradition alone will never make anything POV. A star used to mark a birthdate is not christian at all, and the interpretation of the dagger as a cross is by tradition. — John Erling Blad (jeb) 22:49, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
More Asian administrators needed
It is impossible for most of us European admins to assess copyright information Asian uploaders provide. So if you are from Asia or have a good understanding of an Asian language, and you can show you are a trusted user, it would be nice if you nominated yourself at commons:administrators. / Fred Chess06:21, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There is also need for Japanese-speaking admininstrators (or at least active users). I've noticed the strange fact that Japanese contributors do not put category tags very often. With description availible only in Japanese, it's difficult for other users to give appropriate categories to those pictures (you can not give category of place for exapmle, since you aren't able to read it). Kneiphof17:57, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You don't need to be an admin to input or change categories. The problem of missing categories is general for all languages, as there is no rule making categories compulsory : see my above message #page or category ?. Do you have any examples of Japanese contents that need translation? --Teofilo07:36, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The weather bot is currently defunct; I believe it would be a good idea to remove the archive of historic images. I will attempt to contact the weatherbot author and the person who hosted it to verify this. - Amgine19:01, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I've been informed that a few of these images, the last ones, are still in use in a few places for layouts, and testing examples. If you could delete all but these last few images (and I will try to track them down for you) that should be helpful for commons. - Amgine19:25, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is a quick query to grab them from a database: select il_to,page_title,page_namespace from imagelinks,page where il_to like "%at%UTC%.jpg" and page_id=il_from and page_namespace!=10; If you want, I could write a quick script to run this on all Wikinews DBs. Could take until Thursday though as I'm travelling.--Eloquence00:45, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK, stop. We try to get Duesentriebs software fit contact him if you have any suggestions. This is a good example so we try to get the toolserver fit. I try to create an efficiant bot to delete over 27000 images from the server which is currently 7% of all images (accordig to Duesentrieb). We can work it out (Beatles). greetings --Paddy23:38, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's good to delete some data trash from database. The weather bot pictures and similiar pictures could be better generate automatically by software. Greetings --213.54.77.28 01:05, 18 February 2006 (UTC) (it was me Finanzer01:06, 18 February 2006 (UTC))[reply]
Need help looking for an image
Is there anyone who would be willing to look through a category and its sub-categories for an image? I am on a dial-up connection and loading 200 images takes at least 10 minutes, so you can see how frusterating it is looking for an image in a category where the images are not listed by what they represent. I am desperately looking for an image in Category:Nuvola icons that looks like a television. Please help.
PS. Could the volunteer please reply to this on my wikipedia talk page? I don't know how to link to it across the various wikis. I am Lady Aleena there as here.
Hi all. On en:wiki, it was changed the tag PD-Flag, like tag PD, because it isn't a tag with a lot of informations. I think that we can do it here too. What are your ideas about this?
Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. Please try again. If it still doesn't work, try logging out and logging back in. message appears very often when I trying to save changes. Sure, I tried to re-login, but nothing changed. --EugeneZelenko21:00, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have been having the exact same problem with my personal install of MediaWiki 1.6.6. I know it's not server load because there's no load on the server. Further, I get it 100% of the time that I'm logged in. This makes it very frustrating when trying to change the sidebar on my site -- I just can't do it! I've cleared cache, deleted cookies, restarted Apache, you name it. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. User:Elfbjorn 08:44, 04 Jun 2006 (UTC)
Problem solved. My sessions directory was not owned by the right user and group. I've fixed this problem. The location was /var/lib/php/session. I guess it helps to look at the Apache error logs. (Sorry for the nuisance.) User:Elfbjorn 04:09, 05 Jun 2006 (UTC)
I've got many aircraft photos on my webpage, which I can offer to Wikmedia Commons under acceptable licence. They're maybe not very special, but most of them is of high quality, higher than most of the photos which accompany aircraft related articles in Wikpedia.
What should I do? Should I upload them? All? There is more than 1000 photos.
But you must use a different license than cc-by-nc, non-commercial images are not allowed here. Nice set of images though. --Denniss03:06, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We need to know who is the photographer of each photograph. If you are the photographer, you can choose a license among the licenses suitable for Wikipédia. If you are not the photographer yourself, you must ask the photographer to choose the license. --Teofilo07:05, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please do upload them! You can use the Commonist tool to upload them in bulk. Do we have a detailed discussion anywhere explaining why we don't accept noncommercial? I think this could encourage people who might otherwise demand it. Deco08:35, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As the internationaliz(s)ation of Commons progresses, we will have to deal with this issue more and more. See talk page for Talk:Київ. This has been moved back and forth, and will continue to be moved back and forth until we reach a consensus as to where it goes. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir16:49, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Article lemmas should be in English if most of the people are unable to read the lemma. So yes non latin alphabets are in a disadvantage but well we have to live with that. Redirects can be in every language. And of course the description of images can and should be done in as many as possible articles but people always concentrate on such irrelevant things as an article lemma. ;-) Arnomane09:11, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have no opinion on the use of nonlatin alphabets, but the current practice is that article names should be in native languages, just look at the artices about German cities. --Numerius Negidius11:25, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but German town names have the advantage that they are written in Latin alphabet with only a few diacritical signs (ä, ö, ü, ß) that can be recognized as "normal letters" plus something more (despite the ß which is a letter composed out of a long s and a z). So Latin alphabets with diacritical signs can be read by everyone in the way that you can recognize it's single components (how you pronounce it is irrelevant) and thus can easy be remembered and you can differentiate between them. Look into a category full with town names written in Arab, Hebrew, Chinese, Korean, Hindi whateever non latin and try to orientate there. It won't be fun. The lemma of an article is for easy recognition and finding the specific images regardless where you come from. This is also no cultural dominance, this is a question of accessibility of Wikimedia Commons. For sure it is important to improve the image descriptions in every language: This is the topic which is really important and that needs huge improvement in order to reduce the problem that Commons ist too much centered around English.
At some point when, we have some kind of "translateable lemmas" we can have native lemmas additionally and this would be of course a cool thing. But this is something the Wikisoftware is not able to do at the moment and the m:Ultimate Wiktionary people are working on right now. So for now, please use only article names with alphabets derived from latin. Arnomane12:15, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Commons policy indicates that local language be used for place names. This has been established. The original page move was to Kyiv, and as it seems that Cyrillic seems to be entirely unpopular, I have moved it back to Kyiv, which is the official Romanization of the Ukranian name. Please do not move it again. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir12:46, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Київ is probably better for consistancy. We'd expect Ukranian to be the main contributors of media related to Kiew so why shouldn't they use their own name? Transliterations are dependant on the language -- an "official " translitteration is peculiar. And we have redirects so it's not a big deal for the rest of us what the article name is. / Fred Chess15:05, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is not about beeing political correct and what Ukrainians may expect. It is about accessibility for all contributors (and believe me, I have to look at articles about e.g. Kiev as well). Of course I don't want to enforce an English dominance here. I try to avoid it where possible. So here a suggest how to proceed:
For languages written in latin based alphabets it is easy. We could simply use the native town and location name as lemma and the English one as redirect. This would solve the problem for most european languages and for some others as well e.g. the w:Vietnamese language. Then there are some languages that have an accepted alternative latin based writing. This could be done e.g. in case of the w:Chinese language. We could write Chinese town names in w:Pinyin. I'm sure such latin writings exist for other languages as well. In case of languages where no such possibility exists (I guess e.g. all greek and cyrillic alphabet based languages) we could use for the lemma a reasonable english rewrite of the name that is build after linguistic rules (there are some experts in Wikipedia so we could look at the actual lemmas in use in Wikipedia). I think this would give us with the current technical possibilities accesibility and as much as possible native writing at the same time. Arnomane15:50, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I concur. I think the primary concern here is ensuring that English place names do not nominate on the Commons, simply because it's the name of choice at English wikipedia. Names like Catalonia, Vienna, and Kiev should be in the local language, whatever preferred Romanized form (Catalunya, Wien, and Kyiv, respectively).
It makes me want to cry? Using pinyin is not a great solution. Pinyin is a nice crutch for foreigners, but in my experience Chinese people rarely use it. Pinyin, as you're probably aware, is only a romanization for Mandarin - so to a Cantonese speaker it means next to nothing. Characters at least have the property that they are usually the same in all Chinese languages/dialects. Should we have Zhongguo instead of China? or Zhōngguó? Here lies pain.
Certainly continuing to use English, as has been the case so far, is the easiest option especially for native speakers like me. But what policy would encourage Chinese speakers to contribute the most? ... Characters. But we can't use them until we have full internationalisation. So...IMO until we can have characters, better to stick to English. pfctdayelise (translate?) 23:21, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We should just use whichever is uploaded first, then have the localization scripting do the rest. We should be able to symlink Изображение:Русский.jpeg to Image:Russian.jpeg - one file, but as many local names as we want. When we can do that and bug 4421 is resolved, then we'll have a truly international project (almost as much as the English-biased Internet will allow, anyways). ¦ Reisio23:43, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well of course images would be a nice thing to move. So we can only wish the people to chose a good name that makes sense for all at upload. But that thread here was mainly about gallery articles, that can be moved.
@pfctdayelise: Well I'm of course no chinese expert, it was just a thought of me. If Pinyin makes sense for mandarin only this wouldn't be much help probably and cantonese people would regard is as foreign language too. So perhapes some resonable english equivalent for chinese seems to be appropriate here (perhapes english name in case of common english words and a proper linguistic transliteration for others would be the way to go for chinese). Arnomane00:23, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm against any form of (western-)eurocentrism and in favour of a strict application of the Language policy stating that places should be written in the native language. The main title should be written in chinese characters. Latin (that means pinyin, EFEO, Yale, Wade-Gile, the various Cantonese romanizations, etc.), as well as cyrilic, hangul, greek, hindi, arabic transcriptions of Chinese names should be available in redirects only. Teofilo07:48, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Teofilo please read. I don't want to impose others my prefered alphabet and my culture but I guess everyone that has a computer and internet access is capable reading the latin alphabet and we have to face the fact that everyone needs to read the articles lemmas without problems. I don't want to have the "pure ideal" solution modeled after political correctness. I want to have a working solution. Imagine walking through categories full with foreign alphabets. But I guess you like the pure political correctness regardless if it is a pain for the whole project or not. This is not the way we can improve the situation of native language writing for all of us. And if it is so much important for you please do the same as me and write mulitilingual descriptions for pictures. This is what helps native speakers most and what is heavily needed. But of course this is much more work than a single article lemma and is thus not that ideal for debates on principles... Arnomane09:43, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I believe a dual system could work quite well. If we keep article names in native scripts and category names in English, both native speakers and non-native ones should stay happy and un-confused. This isn't about being politically correct, it's simply the easiest solution. -- Ranveig21:47, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Of course this would solve the problems for categories but the image galleries of commons are included in all relevant wikipedia articles of the various languages and now try to imagine how much failures you will get correctly including chinese lemmas in a german article (technically it works as you can see at interwiki links but socially...). Arnomane00:36, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Um, let's see -- there's cut and paste which will help you copying the Unicode correctly, and as you've mentioned previously, redirects. I don't see the problem. -- Ranveig11:06, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
we have to face the fact that everyone needs to read the articles lemmas without problems--> Where is the problem if you input redirects in romanized forms and translations in several languages at the top of the page ? For example if you click on Peking or Beijing you are redirected to 北京 where an English explanation is provided to you (en: Beijing is the capital of the People's Republic of China...). --Teofilo11:24, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I never said that it is technically impossible. But my main concern is: "KISS - Keep it simple stupid." And a required alternative name for categories is for sure an additional complication and it will be definitely done wrong in at least 10% of the cases and I don't want to have an additional clean up required for those gallery articles where only an chinese name exist and I need to find out somehow what town it is about at all. We all know how messed up categories are even right now. The second point is that finding an existing redirect ist not that easy for an average user. So please let us concentrate on the real important things: Improvement and internationalisation of the image descriptions. This is what helps us most at the moment with respect to internationalisation. Arnomane12:23, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think knowing English or any foreign language should not be a requirement to contribute to Wikipedia. The average citizen of the world should be able to contribute to Wikipedia without having to bother how the scenery or object he took a picture of is said in a foreign language. He should have only to concentrate on whether the picture fits the encyclopedia article he is writing in his own language. If another Wikipedia wants to use the same picture in another language version of Wikipedia, it should be this other Wikipedian's duty to translate, not the first one's. Maybe we should divide Commons into language versions, as Wikisource did a few months ago. Teofilo17:48, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No you don't need to speak English at all in order to read words in latin alphabets. I can "read" e.g. italian, although I don't understand it. I can read the single letters and will pronounce the word German. It doesn't matter that my spelling is plain wrong it is just important that I have some word label in my mind. And believe me a word label is much more easier to recognize than an image label. E.g. if I look at a chinese word it it is a picture for me and now I need to remember all the single details of that picture. This is impossible in case of chinese if you can't read it and thus can't remember it as a word as it is very complex.
I want the average citizen to contribute to the whole Wikimedia Commons not just a narrow area. And I don't want to require the average citizen able speaking English es well. That's why I promoting and helping translating the texts. And regarding dividing it: Simply forget it and dividing Wikisource (which was promoted by some Germans as far as I know) was IMHO a very bad decission. Arnomane10:06, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Short translation request
I would be very happy if anyone could add any translations they are confident of to User:Pfctdayelise/Translations. There are two short sentences to be translated, that I use when "orphaning" an image (removing any uses of the image, because it is likely to be deleted). I like to leave a message explaining why the image is being removed as otherwise it can seem very abrupt and unfriendly. And of course it is much nicer to leave a message in the native language rather than English. This is not (AFAIK) required, but I like to do it, and anyone who wants to use my page to do it as well is welcome of course!
I have been assigned Donegal, Ireland as a project and I want to focus my energy on Donegal Castle. So I really need images from all sides of the castle and maybe a floor plan if possible, as I want to recreate it in it's entirety and all it's glory! This is by far the most interesting and challenging project that I have ever been involved in and I want to make it my very best ever! So please anyone that can help with any pictures would be extremely appreciated. You may reach me at Tazz58@netzero.com at any time. I have until February 25th to complete my project and turn it in, so please submit any images asap! Thank you, Terry
I'm sorry but at first we are focused here on w:Wikimedia-projects. So if your project is a project the Wikipedia article about w:Donegal Castle (hey it's empty so you can start right now a fresh article, see also w:Castles in the Republic of Ireland) will benefit from well then it's for sure an interesting projet but: We are unable to just got to some random place (too far from my home) and take pictures ASAP. So wyh don't you take the pictures by yourself? Wikimedia Commons grew up to this size because everyone did make it for himself what he wanted to be here. You can't say: Hey people do this for me. This is not how the project works. You could have asked better: E.g. that way "Hi folks, I'm currently collecting images of Donegal Castle for some nice multimedia effects for the Wikipedia article about it. I have some images and work done already and ask you if there are some people willing to join this project and to look into their image archives if they have further images so that we can create a complete virtual tour." That would have sound much more better. Arnomane09:00, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Many of the admins here are admins are other projects, but I am not and I suspect commons is a different situation anyway. Since we have no official blocking policy, could some admins describe the guidelines they use when deciding to block users?
In particular, is it possible to restrict users from uploading only? It seems like this would be a very useful thing to do for users who don't provide source information and don't respond to messages on their Talk page. It only takes 2 clicks to upload a copyvio/unsourced image, but so many more to get rid of it (if it's uncertain)... really annoying. I am especially hesitant to block people who might simply not understand English.
It isn't possible to block users from uploading only. It would be a nice feature. Right now, it's sort of a catch 22: someone uploads a bunch of unsourced images, gets blocked, then can't add the sources anymore!
Yep me too. Anyone else who agrees should click on the bug and vote (although you have to register an account first. NB your email will become your username, so consider using a free email). / Fred Chess20:15, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I personally block users that either:
Act in blatant bad faith — for instance, lie in sources or licence conditions. (Case in mind: "personal photo" on a photo tagged BBC in the corner)
Continue to upload stuff in copyright violation after being warned repeatedly.
I put in the blocking message that they should pay attention to messages on their talk page and they'll be blocked until they answer.
Upload copyvios so fast that it's the only realistic way to deal with them.
Vandalize pages.
Really, my determining factor is an estimate of "bad faith". I don't mean to block people that do understandable errors (our procedures are sufficiently complicated). However, I don't know why I should take kid's gloves with people that deliberately ignore our rules. David.Monniaux18:22, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Stock.Xchng license
I have doubts about using images from http://www.sxc.hu - take for example Image:Baby.jpg. Author put a note Royalty free, no restrictions, but when you click on View image license on preview page, you can see a buch of restrictions including SELLING AND REDISTRIBUTION OF THE IMAGE (INDIVIDUALLY OR ALONG WITH OTHER IMAGES) IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN! DO NOT SHARE THE IMAGE WITH OTHERS!. I don't know what to think about this... A.J.15:04, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Stock.xchng has changed their Image license agreement since COM:SXC was made. The line you quote above wasn't there before.
I wonder if we should revisit the Stock.xchng issue now. One argument before was that we weren't breaking any of their prohibitions (such as "spreading hate or discrimination"). But obviously any image uploaded here does break the new rule against redistribution. User:dbenbenn01:06, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The previous decision was wrong. The idea that we couldnt make a gallery (how free is that?) or that someone who uploaded stuff knowing the download conditions could have the download consitions ignored was legally wrong. The usage conditions were never free. The new conditions are clearly even more non free. We should never have got involved in copying stuff from this sort of site. Justinc01:28, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's a little change. On archived discussion you can see Selling and redistribution of these photos (individually, or as a whole) without written permission is prohibited.: changing prohibited to STRICTLY FORBIDDEN is only detail :) I wonder if all Stock.xchng uploaders were notified about the change, though... And did they have to agree for that? Do their regulations allow changing rules during the game? Strange... A.J.11:52, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I feel the same astonishment as Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason : Why are people voting yes on the above option and no here? Either these terms are enforceable or they're not... Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 22:10, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC) (Commons:Stock.xchng images/vote), although I am not sure like he is, that the stock xchng website has no right at all. Even contacting individual authors to ask them to send their pictures by E-mail, or to upload them themselves on Commons might be seen as an infringement of the "image license agreement" set by the stock xchng website owner. Individual authors could be contacted for pictures different from those displayed on stock xchng, though. Teofilo10:55, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I joined stock.xchg hoping to get some explanation and to contact the authors. I'm now sure that there are basically two conditions:
I allow stock.xchng to distribute my images unter terms of their Image License and
I agree that I won't demand any payment from them.
Many people there feel that Image License is too harsh and put copyleft licenses on their profiles: they don't get any repression for that. I'm sure that the voters decision is good and our current stock.xchng policy is OK. A.J.13:51, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Basically, when you disagree with the terms & conditions of a website, you should stop using that website. Most of the Wikipedia voters said that they disagreed with the stock xchng policy, so Wikipedia should stop using the stock xchng website. It's as simple as that. Teofilo14:44, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm talking about the situation where you don't get permission from SXC, but directly from the author. It's similar situation that someone puts some content to Wikipedia under GFDL license, but some other guy calls and asks "I'd like to pay you for that to get rid of that GFDL stuff". All this confusion is because SXC rules are soooo unclear and complicated, but when you look at them in my way they become clear (detailed examination is archived voting). Besides, their discussion forum is full of policy questions, I'm now investigating it. A.J.16:54, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
MsPaint
Can I upload images I've created using MsPaint? (Or do Microsoft have some of the copyrights?) 87.69.89.35
Please block this user and delete contributons (again). Keeps on uploading images from various canadian forces websites. They have already been deleted here (AFAIK by User:Shizao) and some of them even at the en Wikipedia. The same applies to User:Alan Rowlands (a suckpuppet of him ??), his canadian submarine images appeared at en wiki as noncommercial with source canadian navy or department of defense. At least one was already deleted here and one at en (now misteriously available here ...) --Denniss18:14, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed that you deleted my image [Image:HMCS Windsor (SSK 877)] because you said "Canadiam military forces images are for private use only". I agree with you, however if you check http://www.navy.forces.gc.ca/mspa_gallery/gallery_e.asp?category=2&page=3 you will see that the image is not copyrighted by the Canadian government. It is my image that is used on their webpage (among others). As I am the original photographer and copyright holder I am able to upload it on Commons. Alan Rowlands 19:55, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Grillo, you are under the misconception that no images hosted at Commons may be subject to any limitations. We would not host images that are GDFL or cc-by (which may require attributin) if that were the case. Much of the language of our policy needs to be revisited. Coats of arms are items that should be allowed to be hosted at Commons. The restrictions are different on these as the potential misuse of them will not stem from possible wikimedia policy. Please, don't anyone begin deleting local insignia of states/counties/cities, until it has been adequately explained why usage of these at wikipedia projects will not violate the terms of usage of these emblems. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir00:28, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
NB they can be used commercially per se. Just not as part of the marketing of a commercial product in such a way that it implies the product is endorsed by the municipality or county. But if you want to publish a book of coat of arms, go ahead. / Fred Chess07:28, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I know that many images published on the Commons have restrictions, Commons is not a collection of PD images. But, as far as I'm concerned, the images can't have a non-commercial licence, and these images can't be used to promote commercial products, thus, for example, I can't print these images on a t-shirt, the classic example. Or maybe better, I can't print these images on a t-shirt that promotes another product. I also can't, for example, use one of these images in a commercial ad for any product. Isn't this a violation of Commons policy or have I misunderstood something? /Grillo17:23, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding of the situation is that the restriction is imposed by something external, ie. the laws of a country, not actually relating to the creation of this specific image. Therefore it is ok, because all Commmons images, like all images period, are subject to the laws of countries (for example defamation/libel). Would that be an accurate summary? pfctdayelise (translate?) 00:02, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
E.g. Let us take this well know example: Image:Flag_of_Germany_1933.svg. This flag is not copyrighted in Germany as it was an official state insignia but if you are walking through the streets with that flag in Germany you won't walk far... You will get quite some trouble with civilians and the police in no time as it is a crime in Germany wearing nazi symbols. But this has nothing to do with copyright. Ok let's take some less drastical example: I release a picture of mine under a free license. Now imagine someone takes my head out of this free image and places it on top of a GFDL-picture of w:Pamela Anderson naked and places some not so nice accessories in my mouth... I can sue that person that released that picture because the rights of my person would have been infringed deeply (don't know if the same would hold for Pamela Anderson... ;-) ) . But this has nothing to do with copyright either. Arnomane00:28, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Note to all Wikimedia Commons sysops :-)
Hi all. I have enabled a new feature in the interface via MediaWiki:Monobook.js (with a Javascript written by User:Dbenbenn, User:Avatar and User:Duesentrieb and a little bit bug fixed and adapted by me) that way that it looks like a new function of MediaWiki.
This feature is enabled for sysops only by default in order to test it and in order not to harm the m:Tool server it is pointing at. However every interested non-sysop is invited to copy the sourcecode of that article User:Arnomane/JavaScript in his private monobook.js. This Javascript has even some more functions with regard to categories that I did not copy into the global one as I did not want to clutter the interface to much by default for sysops at one time and as one of the category tools does not work right now.
What are the new functions?
Go to User:Arnomane on the upper right corner you will see three new buttons: "gallery", "orphan" and "untagged". These three tools are from User:Duesentrieb and are located at the tool server. They display all the images uploaded by that user you are currently at in a nice overview and give you lots of metainfos at hand, like if the image has no license tag and much more. These tool will help working up quickly user uploads of users that made failures at uploading and hopefully help us fighting the copyright issue more efficiently and identifying bad users uploding copyvios earlier.
Go to Image:Bundesadler.png (yes I could have used another insigina as well that gets used a lot ;-) ) and you will see on the right of the other tabs the tab "check usage". This is the new rewritten "check usage" version of Duesentrieb that searches the usage of an image in all wikis and is much more faster than the old one.
Of course these four buttons do only occour if you are within the appropriate namespace and don't get shown at gallery pages or this page e.g. Note: These buttons at user pages can be out of the screen on low resolution screens so that you need so scroll horizontally. But I think this is not a big problem and perhapes someone can code a dropdown menu in Javascript for these three buttons so that we have less clutter and can integrate it later. Arnomane01:15, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
P.S.: If you aren't a sysop (or if it does not work for you) you can look directly at the examples here:
Great idea! It didn't work for me at first. The problem was that my User:Dbenbenn/monobook.js had some functions with the same names as the new functions in MediaWiki:Monobook.js. I changed the function names in my .js file, and now the tabs work.
Any non-sysop who wants these tabs can turn them on by putting the following code in their own monobook.js ([[User:YOU/monobook.js]]:
@dbenbenn: I saw that you tried to change the global one. The problem is (I didn't know this as well) is that you need a cache refresh on servers in order to update the global monobook.js. So your fix might could have even worked. Hm the function name clash I didn't think of it: I should have given all functions a global prefix. Arnomane09:47, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My change didn't work just because it was broken ;). Fixed now. It was just a minor issue: when viewing a page called "Editing User:Foo", the new tabs would think you were editing User:Foo. Global prefix might be a good idea. User:dbenbenn12:29, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The one possibility is that there is probably a clash of function names. The other one is that the clean up by Dbenbenn after my change did cause a compatibility problems with all browsers exept Firefox 1.5 as it does not work in my w:Konqueror but with my Firefox at the moment. The third possibility is a caching problem that an old version of the global monobook.js is deployed for some time. See my discussion page User talk:Arnomane##Monobook.js for details. Arnomane13:02, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I put "function get_sysop_status() { return true; }" in User:Baikonur/monobook.js and can see the additional tabs in the preview but after saving I can't see the tabs in any namespace I tried. I cleared the cache. I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.1 on Debian GNU/Linux. I also tried User:Arnomane/JavaScript but with no success either. --Baikonur14:58, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Big update: There were several reasons why it didn't work for all.
There was perhapes some compatibility issue with Konqueror (perhapes Konqui does not like string equations but I'm unsure if it was that) and there was an internationalisation issue. Beside MediaWiki:Monobook.js thee are localised files as well, e.g. MediaWiki:Monobook.js/de for German language settings... That's why it didn't work for people that set their language to German... If have added this to all existing Monobook.js/language. So it should now work for everyone regardless which language is in use. Bastique told me that the script now works without problems in Opera and IE as well.
I took the improvements of Dbenbenn and made some further adjustments and now it should work everytime on these pages regardless if you edit them or watch the diff or are at a subpage or whatever. These functions are also now interface language independent.
I gave all functions a "global_" prefix. So there should be no clashes of function names.
Beside that there is a small bug noticed by Dbenbenn and others. If you are at a user that has an non existant userpage these buttons will disappear. This is due to the fact that at these pages there is no label 'ca-delete' (you can't delete a page that does not exist) which I'm using in determining if a user is an admin or not. So if you have some better routine determining an admin please test it in your local monobook.js and let me know.
You can bypass this bug and every non-admin can enable these new features for himself if you write the magic line that was already written above into your local monobook.js: "function global_get_sysop_status() { return true; }".
I currently don't know why the tool server has such a large lag (normally the server is in sync). I hope that it is only a temporary issue that can be fixed soon.
There are some more tools on the toolserver and some nice internal commons features that could be enabled directly as well... That's all for now. Enjoy. Arnomane23:35, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
@dbenbenn. Take another look at my User:Bastique/monobook.js, you'll see this particular script only works if the URL contain either the words "newusers" or "whatlinkshere" pages. My personal Javasccript only affects the User Creation Log page and the What Links Here page, neither of which have anything to do with this script. Otherwise, I have the same exact javascript as everyone else. Consequently, the bug had nothing to do with my javascript adding block links. For your information for the future. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir13:37, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have fixed the bug now. Now it works reliable also on non existant userpages, see [5]. There is another bug with protected pages (admins won't see this but normal users, as there is no 'ca-edit' for them at these pages). I will fix that too. Arnomane12:57, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Odd, for me it works on Windows 2000 SP4 with Firefox 1.5.0.1 but not on Debian GNU/Linux with Firefox 1.5.0.1. I don't know why, any ideas? I cleared the cache. I logged out and in, no success. --Baikonur14:33, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The reason why it did not work was that I had changed the function name. So I have fixed it in your monobook.js see [6]. The one browser had an old version in the cache and thus it worked there, the other browser did have the new one... It should work now in both after you made a cache refresh. Arnomane16:39, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have now fixed again a bug. It should work now on all write protected pages too (admins won't see this bug as they can edit every page). I hace also compiled this discussion here into a new tutorial which you can find at Commons:Tool integration. I hope that it helps. Enjoy. Arnomane18:49, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Over the past few days I've been trying to help a little with the backlog of images to be deleted, and saw that currently, the images are only categorized by the month in which they were tagged. That's not going to be too helpful once we get things under control around here, so I've somewhat preemptively copied the No source template from the English wikipedia and adapted it at Template:No source since. It's more editor friendly and should help admins figure out which images can be deleted when. In the long run, I think it should replace Template:No source. For an example, see Image:DSC01661.JPG, and Category:Images with unknown source as of 15 February 2006. For the time being, all images are categorized into both the date specific category and Category:Unknown - February 2006. I'm open to suggestions on this, but it seemed like the logical thing to do considering the number of images getting uploaded to commons. Feel free to comment here or at the template's talk page. --Spangineerenes(háblame)23:39, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I've tested it, as many people are already aware. Unfortunately, the {{PAGENAME}} doesn't take into consideration if it's a different namespace, like user name... so it will pull up an incorrect name on a User Page talk page. So we'll see.Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir03:29, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's going to be more of a burden on normal users than it will be a help to new ones (and they'll probably find it annoying after a few edits, too). ...and as others have pointed out, its functionality is flawed. ¦ Reisio11:38, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have almost 70 pictures taken in Barcelona, inside and outside the buildings of Gaudì, and I'm going to upload them on commons, but on a paper given into the Casa Milà is written: taking pictures or videos of the building in order to sale or publishing even on internet, is forbidden and legally persecuted. Is this possible? Thoose pictures are taken by myself to a building builded almost 100 years ago by a person dead 70y ago! So I think I can freely upload on COM thoose images ignoring the message, but before i would know the opinion of someone who knows better than me te law on Copyright. The Doc23:49, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Images taken from outside have no problem for sure, images taken from inside may have a problem (or not, not sure in this case). --Denniss00:12, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Panoramafreiheit (no copyright for photos of protected objects from a public place or street) which exists in some European countries is not relevant here because Gaudi is mor than 70 years dead. If there is a Spanish law regarding the propriety we should ignore it. --Historiograf22:13, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
They can claim what they want, but according to copyright law Gaudis' works are Public Domain, and they have no legal basis to forbid publication of photos of his works. Kneiphof16:19, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think you will find that just as you need a permission to reproduce photographs of individuals the same applies to buildings. Whilst not neccessarily copyright you generally require permission from the owners to publish pictures of buildings and they can stipulate the context in which images are allowed to appear.
Yes, you are not allowed to publish pictures that can violate other peolpe privacy. This applies to the private exterirs interiors, but not to the structures that are in the public place. As far as I know Kneiphof18:49, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
La Pederera, when you go onto the roof, has a notice forbidding photographs for non-personal or commercial use. When I looked at uploading my photos here I thought that a CC-NonCommercial licence would be cover the problem but it's not fine for Wikimedia. I'd agree there's no way they can stop exterior photos, but interior I'm not so sure about. Copyright aside, it might be argued that ignoring the notice / conditions of entry constitutes breach of contract. I don't know Spanish law.
Chris H18:24, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
3D in the Commons, no one interested?
I think the Commons doesn't has a file format for 3D. After a proposal here nobody answered, supported or opposed the idea. The commons has currently file types for images, sound, video, rich text documents, and vector graphics, but not a single 3d format. Because 3d objects take a lot of work to build, the Commons would be great to build a free library of such objects. Anyone could improve or add more detail to a 3d object, scene or animation. --OsvaldoGago13:36, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's a great idea, but has some problems. Mediawiki has no built-in support for 3D model formats, but that doesn't mean they couldn't be used by other contributors to produce great images and animations. The main issue I think is that no clear standard format has emerged for 3D models. If we were to choose a format, I submit that we standardize on X3D files for this purpose, since it's a modern open standard that's becoming more important and there are already several conversion tools available for it. Deco22:02, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, textures are reusable in and of themselves, so perhaps they should be uploaded separately. The description page for the model file can reference all its prerequisite files elsewhere. This does make downloading them all a hassle though. We could upload archives of model files and all their prerequisites, but that seems odd. Considering that most of the features of Commons do not benefit 3D models (since they cannot be included using standard markup), maybe what we really need is a whole new wiki for 3D artwork. Deco23:21, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with the textures is that we have more than one folder for the upload, so it is difficult to find the right path after the upload. So I think also that the Commons is not the right place for 3D in the moment. One thing you can do is to make a free texture-library here, I mean optimizes images with a size of 1024x1024 or so and with invisible borders. For this we need no change in the software. Kolossos15:17, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Trying to upload a new version of an image, I am blocked by the foolowing error: "A file with this name exists already; please go back and upload this file under a new name." What's the problem?--FlagUploader11:15, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Replace - yes. Not being able to do that for four days after registration is not that big of a problem I think. Deleting images should be done by admins only. -- Duesentrieb(?!)02:16, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I just got a version of this message for uploading an image at en with the same name as an image here. I knew it had the same name, that's why I was doing it! (An album cover) I wasn't even over-writing an existing file. In cases like this, there should be an option to "ignore warning and upload anyway". pfctdayelise (translate?) 13:22, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
On another place, I recently asked (no answer yet) whether it might not be useful (and could be done at little expense) to create a template called approximately "Sorry, I uploaded bullshit, please delete ASAP, signed: MYSELF". This might help to kill bad uploads with minimum delay, won't it? --_w., T.P.B01:48, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It might be helpful but I'm not sure. It might just add another layer of confusion to a user trying to find out how to get his bad image speedy deleted. Regardless of what is written on the page, admins should always check the page history to check that someone isn't "spoofing" the request - pretending to be the uploader and requesting deletion, when they're actually someone else. That's really important and that wouldn't change with a new template. And it's not enough to say, "Sorry, I uploaded bullshit". Really we need to know what is the actual problem. Hopefully we can them help them avoid the same situation in the future. Sometimes people don't know that you can upload over the top of an image. If someone is new and gave a file a bad name or didn't understand the licensing situation, then certainly their images should be deleted. But if they've been around a while and have just become angry and decided they didn't want to have anything to do with Wikimedia anymore, well no, that's not a good enough reason to delete the images. This doesn't happen that often though. The best way to kill bad uploads with minimum delay is to have more admins watching CAT:CSD. That will solve it, not a new template. pfctdayelise (translate?) 02:22, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ack. Unfortunately, r.e.l.i.a.b.l.e manpower seems not to be redundant. So, if I, TPB, get sufficiently clear instruction how to formulate my deletion request and what exactly I have to write there, it might help admins to decide quicker whether the request is justified or faked. I thaught such template (or at least clear instruction) could be offered with my very first visit at the uploaded picture's description page, and if executed/approved say within a few hours, by same uploading IP, might prove its legacy automatically thereby asking less attention from admins.
My personal story on this: I had asked for the English term for German "SLA" on German Picture Tutorial Talk page and had no answer for 3 days, until I by chance stumbled over template "delete" which I now propose to use, as it seems the least disturbing to me. I meanwhile saw an admin seemingly expert in picture tutorial proposing to some newbie template "redundant" for applying for speedy deletion! --_w., T.P.B07:05, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Olympic games
Unfortunately the orgainzing comitee states that photos and video recordings of olympic events can be take for personal use and can't be used commercially. Nevertheless I've taken pictures at a women ice hockey match; Sweden vs. Russia. I'm going to upload some of them on it.wikipedia, with a cc-by-sa-nc-nd-2.5. if you need them for some local projects, you can find them at w:it:Utente:Snowdog/Galleria fotografica. --Snowdog00:12, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is actually an interresting question - the rights to publish pictures and videos from sporting events is marketed at high prices. But I don't see how the even managers have any say in that at all - they surely don't own any copyright. So, i actually suspect that the worst thing they can do to you is to throw you out...
Snowdog, if they were my pictures, I would ignore the silly rule and simply tag the images with cc-by-sa-2.5. Doesn't IT have a prohibition against noncommercial photos? EN does. User:dbenbenn02:58, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We have to look carefully at all these rules, and not dismiss the issue in the "I don't like the rule, will breach it" fashion. This looks like a serious problem. If we publish pictures from the Olympic games, we need to know which Italian law permits us to do so. In case no such Italian law exists, we'll have to delete the pictures. In France newsmakers are allowed to copy a few amounts of video contents (once every a few hours) without permission from the original television channel that provided the video, as part of the freedom of information : this is a sort of "fair use" . It could be OK for the French language Wikinews, but I am not sure whether it can apply to Wikipedia. I am not sure whether the same doctrine could apply if you enter the stadium as a simple spectator and take your own pictures, instead of copying television videos. Maybe not. --Teofilo07:30, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Article 18-2 of law n°84-610 of 16 july 1984 (Law on the organization and promotion of sport and physical activities) : « Le vendeur ou l'acquéreur de ce droit ne peuvent s'opposer à la diffusion, par d'autres services de communication au public par voie électronique, de brefs extraits prélevés à titre gratuit parmi les images du ou des services cessionnaires et librement choisis par le service non cessionnaire du droit d'exploitation qui les diffuse. Ces extraits sont diffusés gratuitement au cours des émissions d'information. » (The seller or the buyer of this [broadcasting] right shall not oppose broadcasting by other electronic media of short excerpts picked up without charge among the images of the licencee and freely chosen by the service who broadcasts them without being a broadcasting right licensee. These excerpts are broadcast without charge during news programs) (my translation) (full text of the law (in French))--Teofilo07:51, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A similar problem arose when I checked the ticket conditions for the Australian Open, so I think it is likely this problem exists for all major sporting events. After some discussion I concluded that the worst they could do was revoke my ticket - ie. throw me out of the event. There was no way they would have any jurisdiction over the copyright of the images I took. pfctdayelise02:01, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think they (oranising comitee) have any legal basis for their claims on the usage restrictions of the photos. This is just a part of "bad fashion" to claim copyright for everything. I've even seen sites that claime copyright on the old (very old, Renaissance and Middle ages) art they show on ther site. I believe every wikicommoner is familiar to this phenomenon. True, we have to respect copyright law, but we don't have to follow every claim. Kneiphof18:13, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Most people are not able NOT confusing copyright laws and sui generis laws (protection of the olympic rings in a lot of national laws) in the field of IPR and contracts and rules a owner of a property can statute ("Hausrecht"). A copyright law binds a third party because it is an exclusive right. If I take a picture in Torino and am silly enough to use my name uploading to Commons I can eventually be sued by violating a contract (which is made by buying the ticket). Commons or another user can only be sued if there is an exclusive right not only a contract. We have here good privacy rules protecting uploaders who wants to be anonymous. I strongly recommend the upload of pictures with temporary "anonymous" accounts if they are according our rules concerning the copyright but problematic regarding owner's property rights and contract law. We should only accept copyrights not any other claims of property owner or event manager --Historiograf22:53, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Historiograf, I don't understand it quite well. Really. Do they really have a legal right to forbid people to use the photos of the Games every way people want? I've heard about a owner's right but, I thought it only upplied to private places. Do owners really have a right to control the photos of their property? (that isn't really a case with the Games, since I can hardly consider them "property", but I'm curious). Imagine that I take a photo of a street wiew. Is it really so that the owner of each house on this picture have right to forbid sertain usages of such a photo? Seems a bit nonsence to me...
Commons has a new bot, Orgullobot, written and controlled by myself, which has quite a history on es:, that is removing images to be deleted here on commons from all of the other projects so they don't become fruitless links. The bot is still in a testing phase, so I have not asked for bot status yet, I prefer to be scrutinized while there is still time. With the bot has arrived the introduction of {{Orphaned}} and its respective category. Wishing all the best of days,--Orgullomoore17:27, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Two comments. Would it be possible for the bot to incorporate User:Pfctdayelise/Translations? What kind of message does it leave when it removes an image? Also, when is the bot implemented? After consensus has been reached that an image can be deleted, or as soon as an image is listed on COM:DEL? If it turns out an image is OK, is it able to somehow "unorphan" the image? pfctdayelise (translate?) 23:23, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It is very possible to incorporate your translation page, as of now it leaves a message in English: ex. Secondly, I have been withdrawing copyvio images that I am sure will be deleted (Marvel comics, images obviously marked (C), logos, etc), mostly because I have no way of knowing what images are finalized; I would love to cooperate with the admins to be more efficient in doing this, as I have done some with Sanbec. If the image turns out to be OK, I have written a reversion bot, but that implies that no one else has touched the page since the image was withdrawn. As the bot keeps logs of everything it does, it wouldn't be impossible to do a manual reversion, though. Aditionally, the bot is not capable of completely orphaning all images. This is because some images are embedded with in <gallerys> or form part of akward templates, but it can do a good 90%, leaving a small manual task at times. I would also like to request more work ;), this was just something I saw the need for while RC patrolling and seeing hundreds of IP edits (presumably Commons admins:) removing images to be deleted manually, I will be happy to be able to facilitate more tedious commons task, if anyone has any ideas.--Orgullomoore23:38, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's fantastic. It would be great to see this running with local-language comments. Is it possible to comment out the image rather than just delete it? As in <!-- [[Image:Foo.jpg]] --> I think they do this on en: and maybe the editors don't get so alarmed. Then later they (local editors) can always check if the image still exists and if it does, restore the link, or if it doesn't, remove it entirely. Also is the bot using Commons:Tools#Check-Usage by Avatar or Deusentrieb? The latter covers all wikis (?? I think) but says it is "still experimental". pfctdayelise (translate?) 00:28, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding #4 - that seems like a ridiculously huge requirement. There's over 100 wikimedia projects now. Then how can the bot check over 100 talk pages?! (in native languages, no less) Until a universal login is implemented, I think it's enough to link to the bot's commons userpage. That's what I do when manually orphaning. pfctdayelise (translate?) 00:07, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Erm..I was thinking the same thing. It's gonna be hard for me to get a flag on all 100+ projects, and the bot shouldn't be making too many edits on one project at a time, since it goes from A to B to C to D to A to C to B....--Orgullomoore01:44, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have received a complaint that this bot is breaching wikinews image policy. This is reported to be causing wikinews to make wikinews copies of PNG images on commons so that this bot will not damage wikinews. The images here are apparently being replaced by SVG versions, contrary to wikinews policy on image use. Please remember that:
bots must follow the policy of each wiki they work in
bots must use an account, not anonymous edits, so it's easy for projects to identify the bot and, if necessary, to block it for policy violations. Part of the complaint against this bot is that it is using IPs which are hard to block effectively.
each project makes its own image policy and the role of commons is to store the images they want, not override their policy.
images are not used only at projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, so deleting an image in all the projects it hosts still removes the license information users at other places need - images here may have to be kept foever to protect thelicense information those external users need.
There is now a request for removal of bot status for this bot at meta. Please discuss over there. Please do not use this bot until the proper permissions have been obtained and when those have been obtained, pleae remember that is is your responsibility to follow the policies of all projects where the bot is being used. Jamesday03:59, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It stands clear that the bot was falsely accused, and never touched Wikinews. Was discussed in IRC. Orgullobot doesn't make copies of any images, nor anything of the sort.--Orgullomoore08:00, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
just an idea, but maybe it would be nice if you could let the other projects know that you'll be deleting randomimage.png sometime this week. That way images could be replaced with other (more appropriate) ones before they're beying redcrossed! Henna08:09, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you see a cross image in an article, just revert the image back to the previous version. No image should be replaced by a cross without first being completely orphaned - this is explained at Category:Redundant, but occasionally people forget to read the instructions completely. ¦ Reisio11:41, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Note! OrgulloBot has done a lot of the work for us on orphaning redundant images. Unfortunately, the bot has placed these in the Speedy delete queue--Please note that these images should uploaded with cross.png, cross.jpg, cross.gif or cross.svg and made {{Deleted duplicate}} instead of speedy delete. This is important! Everyone! Users and admins, we need to replace the {{Db}} tag with the deleted duplicate tag and upload crosses to these. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir13:56, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And the reason we don't delete them straight away is in case users are unhappy with the replacement, in which case it should be marked for clean up, reverted back to the best version, and the creator of the SVG should be given a poke in the ribs for not noticing their SVG was worse quality than the PNG... is that about right? pfctdayelise (translate?) 17:09, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I hadn't read that originally, but the text on the template itself, "Admins: do not delete this page until all uses have been replaced!", led me to believe that once no projects were using the image, it could be deleted. Perhaps the template needs a minor rewrite, or maybe I just need to do more research in the future :). --Spangineerenes(háblame)19:11, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Logos of german political parties
Admin Paddy deleted the link to a logo of the german political partie "greens" on de; the logo must have been deleted on commmons before. Summary was, that logos are not permitted on commons. However, our article Deutschland (Germany) still contains the logos of the other relevant german political parties, wich are still provided by commons. Of course, it is not OK to delete the logo of one - but only one - german political party here. Is it really neccessary to delete those logos?--Berlin-Jurist08:06, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
an image vanishes
Could anyone possibly tell where the image named image:50_cent_by_TheOne.jpg went ? I can't find any clue about what happened, I don't know if there has been a deletion procedure... TheOne
Responded on user's talk page. A couple of procedures failed here: an anon blanked the source and licensing info which was not picked up. The image was tagged {{Unknown}} and the uploader was not notified (BTW, how is {{Unknown}} different to {{No source since}}, anyway?). The deleting admin didn't notice the vandalism which is the real problem - admins should always check the edit history carefully before deleting an image. pfctdayelise (translate?) 14:19, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
wow. I'll think twice before uploading an image again ! TheOne
Just for the record: I had such an IP vandalism on my images too. It was a person from de.wikipedia that did not like me... However I realised it qickly and some other admins quickly reverted the vandals' speedy-deletion and fair-use tags and my images are still alive here. So I hope that all admins are alerted that it does not happen often but should be always taken into account and thus need to look at the image history previous to a deletion. A solution to the problem would be as well that we enable the m:Enotif option at Commons (as many people do not frequently look after their images in commons) so that every user can switch on the email notification. However this is something the wikimedia server admins can only decide. Arnomane20:32, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Precise sources
The Wikimedia Foundation has just received a complaint about an image found on the Commons, of a US Coast Guard plane. Our page on it just said "PD - US Coast Guard" and a link to the USCG page. Somebody alleges that he took the photo and it is not PD.
PLEASE, when you put a photograph from a US government site, use its precise URL there. Not just a link to the main page of the government service.
What about talk you talking you? lam not understand me. 蠢货
problem
this text comes from above, and is therefor GFDL. Original author: Effeietsanders
I think there is a lot larger problem. You are scaring people away from commons. I don't have the guts to upload, because of the view you have. You look to outsiders, at least to me and other users i know, as a bunch of people that doesn't know that they are handling pictures of all projects. That your responsibility is larger than your own project. Just as the responsibility of the english wp is somehow larger then that of the dutch (people often translate from english). You take care of our treasures, and we don't trust them to you if your image is that you cannot handle them If we think that you randomly convert to svg, then delete the png, and other users have a lot of troubles of fixing it. I don't know if this is really what you do, i hope not so, because that would mean that "we" are indeed in trouble of securing our images, but i think it's now the time to do some PR. To show the world how ou are working, why and who. And to show your qualities, and what exactly goes wrong, and how many times. And why. And how you try to prevent it. You have a very bad PR, at least on nl.wp, and please fix it. Effeietsanders 23:19, 17 February 2006 (UTC) (if people want to react directly to me, please add comment on my talkpage on nl.wp or ask me on IRC. Because of the problems I'm not around here much. I just upload my molecules etc on nl.wp... )
Effeietsanders. You are beating a dead horse. You are writing this post as if nobody has responded to the issues in question, without even explaining what the issues are. Stop saying things about the administrators at Commons that are untrue. Apparently, there has been a complete miscommunication of information at Dutch Wikipedia, and as a dutch speaking person, it is your responsibility to get the facts correct and convey them in that manner. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir21:04, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Evidently, the problem is in miscommunication. Someone from Dutch wikipedia needs to volunteer to participate here at the Commons. Then you may understand our policies and procedures better here. People are not using Commons less, but more, from all over. It would be a shame for Dutch participation to be at a minimal level because of some lack of understanding or miscommunication. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir21:29, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I can only agree to Bastique. For sure there were and are problems at Wikimedia Commons as in every other Wikimedia wiki. So there are for sure urgent issues in nl.wikipedia as well... And by the way I did work on solving the problem with the flags, that's why I created Commons:Transition to SVG that is everywhere prominently linked in Commons and which is a must read for all that convert images to SVG. The second point is: We urgently need people of nl.wikipedia involved here. We cannot do magic and listen to wishes we are not aware. E.g. I'm coming from de.wikipedia. In de.wikipedia there are people as well that dislike Commons (because of "English centered" blabla and such) but there were quite a lot of people in de.wikipedia that saw the huge potential in Commons namely:
Avoiding duplicate efforts.
Easy overview over images that can be integrated into articles.
If we jump in, we have influence on the project.
If Commons is mature de.wikipedia will drop it's image upload like Wikinews (it is already decided but just stalled for the time beeing) and move all images to Commons. Then de.wikipedia itself can center around the texts and does not need to care that much about image clean-ups. This is a large advantage as every project has it's task it can concentrate on.
And believe me cleanig up images in every local Wikipedia is no fun. This is work that you only want to do once and that's what Commons is for: Reducing duplicates efforts and thus saving lots of time that can be spend improving Wikipedia. So please nl.wikipedia do not expect us beeing perfect. We can't solve all of your problems without your help. Jump in nl.wikipedia! We need you.Arnomane23:12, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, your statement about wikinews is incorrect. :-( The opposite is true at least as far as en.wikinews is concerned: They have demanded, and obtained their own image upload. They now plan to copy any remaining images not on their own wiki off of commons, and then they intend to abandon commons entirely. See section lower down for more information. Kim Bruning20:36, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well I could rant here a lot about people that wants us to do things we are technically unable to do but I guess it is better to keep my frustration for me... I have never seen a Wikinews person that tried to solve the problem earlier with a clear rationale within Wikimedia Commons beside some random IRC chatting. And my strong wish for joining in did not get into their minds. I fear in this stage I can say what I want it wouldn't get considered by Wikinews and other similar cases. Would be cool if it is not the case though. Arnomane01:33, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I made a comment on User:Effeietsanders' talk pages, and asked our nl-speaking admins for some help in this issue. Commons needs to have a good relationship with all wikipedias because Effeietsanders is right, our responsibility is larger than just here, and we need to make sure that nl.wikipedia and commons both understand what the other is doing and is happy that they understand why they do it, and what the processes are if they're unhappy. pfctdayelise (translate?) 23:49, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately categories cannot be easily renamed or moved. The images need to individually moved to the new category, and the old category should be marked {{category redirect|United States actress}}. pfctdayelise (translate?) 03:10, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Haha, what do you know, my bot can do this. I think I need a flag though. If no one opposes, I will be asking for one on Meta. That said, does anyone oppose?--Orgullomoore19:43, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I mentioned this over at Commons_talk:File_types, but maybe that was the wrong place. Perhaps it will get more attention here.
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.
Perhaps the .orig should be added automatically. (with or without asking the user if they'd rather cancel)
The whole point of using .orig is to delibrately break GUI file type association. These files are not to be downloaded for any old random use. They would exist only to better comply with the GFDL and to avoid irreversible data loss. It would be expected that the files are downloaded only to re-convert them or to examine the original for data such as copyright markings. When a new free format replaces .ogg we can convert from pristine originals instead of from a first-generation or second-generation copy.
You know the huge amount of orphan images we have, many of them totally orphans but many others which are just in articles/galleries but still uncategorized. Would there be a way to automatize the categorization of these images? it should be easy as they only need to add the same category the gallery has, at least. Well, just an idea, it's so heavy to add categories manually :( Anna19:51, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Cool! If a bot can do it, I'll give my blessings to that flag for your bot and get ready to put it to work, there's a lot to do. :) Anna20:16, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know whether this is something a bot should do. Anyway, Duesentrieb's CommonSense tool is designed to help people find and categorize orphan images.
Hi! IMHO that people must read this. And also we can note that there are "themes" that we can't put all images in a gallery because they are too much. So gallery can act as an "guided index" and link to the category with all the images there.
Also note that there is people (most of people used to work with image database and banks) used to search images by "concepts", keywords... say categories. If you are searching by category you need all images there.
CommonSense is a very useful tool, but it won't save the tedious manual work of categorizing dozens of images that we already know which category they should be in, for example this one Maps of Shanxi, they all should be in Category:Maps of Shanxi and so on with many other galleries in the same case. Of course, the bot would not work categorizing massively, but with images from galleries chosen carefully. It'd be a coordinated work between the bot programmer and me or any other users who need a similar job like the example to be done. I also agree with Colegota about the need of having images categorized in at least one category. Thematic galleries are often dynamic and anyone can replace an image in a gallery, with the result of another orphan image if it's totally uncategorized.Anna01:17, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! I agree that "smart bots" ;) can be very useful. Even we can think in bots for help in (almost) smart recognition of orphan images previous to fix it... Maybe by merge some algorithms in CommonSense with bot process... Regards, --Colegota09:49, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Negative news
Hello, I've basically gotten two negative reports on wikinews in the last um, 48 hours. Can you help me? Shall I make my report?
Basically, nl.wikipedia is going "*&@#(*@#!@(#!@(*#&!@(*#&(*Q@#&(@*#&(!@*#&!@# commons! We're about to give up on these *@#&@*#&*@#" , Ok, that's not good. This was after they went whac-a-mole trying to fix thousands of broken image links across hundreds of pages, as a result of the great flags to SVG conversion. At times they also lost high quality pngs and were left with basically stick figure drawings. That's ... kinda bad. Perhaps communication with nl could be improved.
But the position of Amgine, one of the top editors at wikinews is more chilling. "Commons does not support wikinews" he states. An utter vote of no confidence. "Commons deletes images used in old articles, thus destroying our historic record, we simply cannot accept that. We plan to avoid commons for any new articles.", also he says "We're considering using a bot to download all images used on Wikinews from commons and uploading them to wikinews."
Oh dear. What's going on? Why are people so negative?
Because there's absoluteley no communication between Commons and the local Wikipedia's (certainly not the NL wiki). This is our point of view: suddenly, someone on Commons decided to convert all png-flags to svg-versions, which then happened. Right after that, all correct png's were marked redundant, and replaced with those dreadfull red crosses: the result: a few thousand pages on our wikipedia (nl) with red crosses on them, without us even knowing why. Furthermore, all other flags were also marked redundant, and that was it: no warning, no explanation, no help for the local wikipedia's at all: we on wiki nl had to find all possible flags, tag them to put them all in a category, and then replace them with correct images: this required a huge amount of manpower, and many more hours of bot-work, and all of this racing against the clock, because th images on commons seemed to change with the hour. Well, i'm actually not very good in explaining, but User:Quistnix made a nice analysis on Pfctdayelises talk page. To summarize: we're fed up with the fact that images on Commons appear to be deleted randomly, and we don't understand why images must be converted to svg, and why quality is a lesser issue than file formats. Oh, did I mention the absolute lack of communication? --Tuvic20:52, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Several answers: For sure there were and are problems in Commons. And they were mostly related to flags (conversion from PNG to SVG). This complain with respect to the red corssed flags that were still in use is now quite some time ago and the admin that did that got a very distinct message. Most other complains are (indirect) complains about our image policy that we use free images only. For example we delete unfree image and do not upload them to the local wiki where they might be allowed simply because we don't have the time for that and because it is not our problem but the problem of the uploader to correct it if he did upload unfree images to Commons. Another point is that we edit the database itself. E.g. there are a lot of duplicate images (exactly bitwise the same or same image in lower resulution) so we relink every usage to the new one and delete the other image afterwards. Or someone did upload an image with a cryptic name like 12345GFTJ.jpg which is also very often. So occasionally we reupload it under a more resonable name and relink the usage. So it is impossible to claim that old wikinews articles won't get edited anymore at all. It is technically not possible at the moment (lack of feature in MediaWiki) until we have image redirects and image move (and even then there would be cases were you need to edit an old Wikinews article). We Commoners have created quite some tools in order to keep track of the images everywhere and in order to manage them to bypass the lack of features in MediaWiki but we cannot do magic and we cannot code everything by ourselves. With respect to communication. We Commoners are all coming from local projects and communicate a lot with these local projects we are coming from. So it is the responsibility of every project that wants Wikimedia Commons acting in a certain way to jump in and starting communication and not to wait and complain if something happened they did not agree on (apart from clear failures like the red crossing thing). So please do not complain about lack of communication and jump in, we are already full of work with the communication with our own projects. Arnomane22:04, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please do not dictate to the projects how images can and will be dealt with. Instead, please work with us, and support us, as your mission requires.
Wikinews is also creating tools, to work around Commons. We will make sure our tools are available to all projects on Meta.
I would request, again on this page, that Commons not delete any image unless it specifically violates copyright and is not used. I would again request that commons not edit the projects to remove image use, but instead communicate with the project how best to approach Commons's goals. I know I am not the only person who has tried to communicate with Commons; I have done so on at least 5 occasions, as well as many IRC, Skype communications with Commons admins. - Amgine22:36, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that I dictate. Look there are several active Commoners like User:Duesentrieb, User:Dbenbenn, User:Avatar, User:Bastique, User:Arnomane and many more that put a large effort in enhancing Wikimedia Commons (see e.g. Commons:Tools and Commons:Tool integration) in order to organize images better and to let those bad things not happen. But we need more helping hands. Really. Please do not alienate us. We do our very best. Wikimedia Commons is a large and great challenge. It would be boring if there were no problems. Let's come together solving them and please do not make such things like duplicated bot uploads in Wikinews. Arnomane23:04, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Copyright problems must be dealt with, regardless of whether or not the image is being used. If it were possible to remove non-free images from old wikinews articles, I'd do it, but I can't because the pages are protected. It's your responsibility to make sure that images you use in your articles are free use. If they aren't and I can't remove them from the articles, I'm going to delete them anyway. It's illegal to use copyrighted images, whereas it's only inconvenient to have an empty box on the article. As for png vs. svg, I don't see any problem with leaving the png files here on commons. --Spangineerenes(háblame)03:24, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think wikinews uses all that many copyrighted images, actually, but perhaps you've looked into it, and know a lot more about it than I do. If so, please share your findings!
Note that wikinews is a news source, it provides day to day news , while its old pages are an historic record. So for wikinews, a blank box where once there was an image is not an inconvenience, it's a disaster. Every lost image in history is damaging to the project, and damaging to the reputation of the project and the morale of its contributors.
A blank box on a real time news article is actually worse. That's a total loss of face in public *news*. I think your own imagination can give you a better idea of such a faux pas than my own words ever can. If wikinews is to compete with the likes of cnn or bbc, or other professional news services, we're going to have to figure out means to prevent such incidents.
If wikinews reporters are incompetent and provide non-free images, then that is certainly also an issue that needs to be addressed.
I think the problem can be put down to lack of communications between different wikimedia projects. Different projects have different needs, and we need to get them across between the different people. Where there's no communication, there's a lack of understanding.
Let's try to figure out ways to improve understanding! :-)
Can anyone show where Wikinews is "considering using a bot to download all images used on Wikinews from commons and uploading them to wikinews"? Actually, if Wikinews needs to have a "historic record", with a guarantee that images used in old articles will never change, perhaps they really shouldn't be using the Commons. Presumably they shouldn't be using a wiki, either. Wiki software just isn't well suited for preserving historic records.
Anyway, I'd like to see some evidence that "Commons deletes images used in old articles". It's against policy to delete free images that are used. If it's been done, the person responsible should be reprimanded. User:dbenbenn09:06, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've probably deleted a few hundred files over the last week that were languishing in Category:Unknown, and I remember one of them was used on a wikinews article. Another one I just found that doesn't seem to have a free license is Image:IS2004-2140a copy.jpg. Its license seems to exclude commercial reproduction, which makes it unacceptable for Commons. But it appears on this wikinews article. Am I supposed to let it go, or enforce Wikicommons policy? --Spangineerenes(háblame)16:26, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The PNG/SVG transition was certainly done in an inconsiderate manner which led to lots of problems and hard feelings. As for Wikinews, I'd like to see some concrete examples of images that have been deleted. We cannot keep copyrighted media under non-free licensing on Commons, regardless of whether they are being used. Moving these images to Wikinews doesn't solve the problem, it is equally questionable whether they would be allowed there, as the English Wikinews only allows very limited fair use. Double-uploading only creates a maintenance nightmare when you're dealing with real copyright issues.
Commons admins do not delete images because they like to wreck havoc, but because they must exercise due diligence in removing copyright violations. We receive uploads from clueless users every day who clearly just grab whatever they find on the web and don't bother for a second to try to read and understand the many warnings about the images having to be free. In many cases, the uploader is contacted beforehand and given an opportunity to remedy the situation. But when that doesn't happen, we have no choice but to delete the image. And no, the fact that it is being used does not alter our responsibility.
The now nicely integrated "check usage" tab should reduce the incidents of images in use being deleted without notice. Beyond that, there are people like myself who are admins on both projects. If there's an issue on Commons that needs to be resolved, you can talk to me. We should also discuss ways to get more "project representatives" among our administrators. Finally, if we had image undeletion capabilities, all these issues would be far less critical. This is a development project the German chapter could pay for, for example.--Eloquence09:57, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Kim Bruning for bringing this to our attention.
As the situation currently is, I'd recommend local users to upload images to their local wikipedias instead of the Commons, and to ask their admins not to delete local images with the NowCommons tag. That is the safest way to ensure their images will be kept.
Until Wikimedia Commons administrators has a substantial base in Wikipedia-project administrators, I'll not trust it will serve the projects well enough. / Fred Chess10:10, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes the PNG/SVG flag conversion was not done good and if you read Commons:transition to SVG and its talk page (I created it after the first severe incident in order to avoid such problems) you see that there were probably people from all sides that did not really understand what this page was about. :-(
The second point is: Some Wikinews people like Amgine want us to provide permanent image links. This is something Commons is technically unable to provide and this is something some (of course not all) Wikinews people need to realize that we cannot fullfill technical impossible demands. Even if there is no copyright violation in the image we need to sort the images, remove exact duplicates, change cryptic file names and so forth. Commons is no image dump. We Commoners hate it that people consider Commons as a image dump as this leads to nonexistant image descriptions with no valid source given and in many cases to bad filenames, wrongly categorized images and uploaders that do not react to our requests...: In short regarding Commons as image dump is just very hostile towards the hard working people that maintain Commons.
However and this should be now clear for every Commons admin: If you remove a redundant image you have to change it's usage first. In case of copyvios we cannot change the usage everywhere as it is way to much work. That's also why I enabled this check usage button inside Commons among others.
So my aim is twofold: On the one side we Commoners look after the other projects and be carfully on the other side the other projects that need need to realize that we address these issues very seriously (like we did with Check Usage). Arnomane12:22, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't agree with all this; to some extent Commons is an image dump, and it's a service. It's kind of pointless to have a Commons that is pleasingly-organized for local admins, but not used by anybody. (Aside from the Wikinews situation, the daily volume of good free-license pictures still being uploaded to en: is a hint that Commons is not getting as much adoption as it should.) Stan Shebs14:21, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry but you are wrong. Do you know e.g de.wikipedia? Do you know how much attention Commons get from the second largest Wikipedia? Do you know how much Commons is beeing used there? Very much. Beside that en.wikipedia just recently started improving their image licensing hell and still has a very long way to go compared to other Wikipedias within that respect. And Commons is no image dump, Commons is an image repository that's a large difference: Everyone that is unable to provide good image descriptions and does not care about sorting the own images right does harm Commons seriously. Arnomane15:42, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I know all about de:, and I'm sure there are many who would be perfectly happy if commons were de:'s repository and nobody else used it. But Commons' official mission is to serve all Wikimedia projects, even the ones you don't care about. Stan Shebs20:02, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's too much to ask, to ask people to provide information that they would be required to provide in their local project anyway. I don't know of any project where it is officially OK to just upload anything you find anywhere, with no thought as to copyright or licensing. All the other things are just niceties, requests, (description, categories, good file name)that uploaders don't have to comply with, but we'd really appreciate it if they did. So I don't know how anyone could be "turned off" Commons by our requests. pfctdayelise (translate?) 01:41, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've said it a great many times, but again: PLEASE DO NOT DELETE STUFF UNILATERALLY even if you think we have "better stuff". Just mark the images as "obsolete" and wait for people in other projects to make the change.
Just as a general observation, it would be very helpful if projects were to create commons pages briefly describing how they use commons' media, and any specific requirements. While I have personal knowledge of w:en: policy for images, I have no idea about wikinews, wikibooks, etc, and I don't read Chinese at all, so without a page written in English I don't have much chance of helping Chinese-language projects. Commons should be the repository of choice for images, so let's get more info about what would make it "choice". Stan Shebs14:13, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's an excellent plan Stan Shebs, I'll second that! :-) It's a good start. Would nl and wikinews be interested in making such pages? Kim Bruning16:46, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
After reading a lot of text on several pages:
Commons:Transition to SVG: this page is good: it's a good summary of what to do. Let's hope the procedures are being followed in the future, to avoid thing like the flags.
Copyvio's and junk should be deleted, no doubt about that.
Replacing images with red crosses should be avoided at all times. Although the flags were replaced months ago, we only just recovered from that on NL wiki.
Explanation pages about commons: I'm afraid I don't really get the idea.
I don't think removing images should be abandoned, but it shoult happen with the uppermost care, and not taken lightly.
One of my skills is color correction of images. Would it be possible to create a template for {{NeedsColorCorrection}}? This would cover color correcton, levels correction and contrast/brtightness correction. Is there a similar template already in place? Jossifresco23:52, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, how can I properly use a picture from commons that is licensed under CC-by-sa, e.g. in the web or in a newspaper? Where can I find the policy for that? Is name attribution ok, or what do I have to add? Thanks for an info. --80.135.144.23507:44, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You should read the actual license. For CC-by-sa-1.0, the legal text is here.
The relevant section about credit says you must "give the Original Author credit reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing by conveying the name (or pseudonym if applicable) of the Original Author if supplied; the title of the Work if supplied" If you're using an image on the web, a link to the Commons image page, and to the user page of the author, would also be a good idea. User:dbenbenn08:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Restricting uploads for new users
Do we need something similar to Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act to prevent new users from uploading images the first few days? I heard a rumour that that's already in place at the English Wikipedia. Yesterday one user registered here and immediately started to upload various drawings of The Simpsons family. A restriction like this would inconvenience every new user but stop them from uploading before they have had opportunity to become familiar with Commons policy. Thuresson08:25, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how being registered would magically help people to get fammiliar with policy. What do you expect a new user to do except upload images? Take part in policy discussions? Mess with the category structure? I find this unlikely... -- Duesentrieb(?!)11:36, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've thought about that too; the problem is that simply having an account for a few days isn't going to suddenly make people understand that most stuff on the internet is copyrighted. What we need is some sort of online class that people have to take and pass and only then will we allow them to upload stuff. Plus then we'll be able to instantly block them if they upload obvious copyvios. Don't ask me about implementation; I provided the idea so someone else has to do it =). --Spangineerenes(háblame)01:15, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
CommonsProject Insignia
Scope
The scope of this project will be to coordinate national, regional, civic, corporate and organizational insignia such as Flags and Coats of Arms in order that Commons meet the requirements of all involved projects, providing multiple formats of insignia for viewing as well as other varying media, ensuring that all adequate licensing considerations are met, in order to remain effective as a common repository for media relating to all of the WikiProjects.
Discussion
It is my hope that we use this project in order to categorize and meet all of the needs of our projects relating to insignia. Commons should be a repository for these items and it is our obligation to ensure that we provide accurate, up to date information as well as multiple formats. Please join in this discussion in order that we get this project underway. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir14:18, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As a result of our last flame fest I did stop arguing there and concentrated on solving one of the reasons behind that flame war: Our introductional pages for "outsiders" are not very helpfull and urgently need an update and a more friendly text.
Thus I have created a new Main Page. It is now centered around content (like Wikipedia main pages) not organisation, as info on organisation isn't helpfull for someone we want to impress and to attract with our Main page. It is modeled after prototypes for the new Main page of de.wikipedia and is thus heavily based after recent usability studies that are currently done there. So the content page is also very condensed. It is also intentionally that there is only one direct hint ("..that anyone can extend") that you can contribute to the project as paradoxly more info about that confuses the people and thus they do not find the info that they can in fact edit it (or think that it is to complicated if there is a lot of text about contribution directly at the main page). I replaced by the way old info and wrote a new Commons:Welcome page (directly linked from the main page) that will be also placed prominently in the left navigation sidebar later.
I also made some new "Picture of the day" and "Media of the Day" templates (that nonetheless rely on existing stucture) that are more flexible for translations and easier to manage.
I hope that others will translate the page into the various Wikimedia Commons languages.
Well that is what Commons:Welcome is for. I will link it later after I redesigned the Commons:Community Portal in the left "navigation" menu. Maybe you also want to have a look at de:Diskussion:Hauptseite/Umstrukturierung, de:Wikipedia:Meinungsbilder/Neue_Hauptseite (Inhalt) and de:Hauptseite/Umstrukturierung/Vorschlag 3 which was my inspiration source I build upon it. However in a first version of that page in my sand-box I thought as you and had there a brief box about what Commons is but I was sold by the arguments that people want short sentences - so called claims - in order to recognize something (like the fact that you can edit it). That's why I removed the Commons about box and completely centered the page around the content itself. By the way this design proposal flying around in de.wikipedia is inspired by w:Main Page which also shows this "claim thing" and nothing more about the Wikipedia itself and is also centered around content only. Arnomane01:38, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It is inconvenient not to say what Wikimedia Commons is, and I urge you to add a sentence in the intro section. It's like a book without preface.
Currently 90% of the text is about the featured picture. That is unproportional, don't you think?
I know that it is not traditional not talking much about the project itself at the main page (and thought about it for quite a while) and came to an interesting conclusion (after studying en:Main page as well, where it is exactly the same way): Mentioning to much how easy and what exactly Commons is makes people think that it is too complicated and too complex as we need so much text explainig how easy it is... That's why there is this central "claim" on top which is the condensed description of Commons: "Welcome to the Wikimedia Commons a database of 105,232,623 media files, that anyone can extend". So you can compare this to the title of a book - the main page is the "preface" (you won't expect a large explanation at the preface of a book). People now follow the link to Commons:Welcome provided at "anyone can extend" and now expect that there is a more detailed explanation of the Wikimedia Commons and how they can contribute. They now expect beeing told in more details and thus want more information and do not think the same as if the same text would be provided at the main page. It's a psychological trick as people wanted to go to the page that explains how to contribute... All people that do not click that link will look at the content and will hopefully dive into the content we proudly provide. And as the content is what Commons makes Commons I think large space for content presentation at the frontpage is important. Another problem is: There is no space left for a more detailed description. If you place it on the left collum, where it would belong to, the "Picture of the day" is to much below and people on low resolution screens need to scroll in order to see it, which is a bad thing (the problem would be much reduced if we could get rid of the language template on top but a drop down box I would like to have is technically not possible with current MediaWiki, neither in wiki nor in HTML, the parser does not accept the HTML...). You could alternativeley place the image on the right but this is not good either as English is a left to right language and you expect the main content starting on the left. Images in articles are on the right as they are not the main content of the article but here the image itself is the content (and the text below it is just an additional info). Thus I placed the navigation on the right side. If I would place now the image on the right there would be a problem with the content navigation... So it is not an easy thing and the problem would be easier if we wouldn't have the language template. Arnomane01:59, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Arnomane... this is great work. No opinion on the colors. I love the new searchbox; we should find some way to suppress the sidebar search for the main page. +sj +06:23, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! Nice work. I have a couple of suggestions. First is to include a direct link to Places in Society and Culture section. I think it's an important an growing category in Commons. Other is about the sentence "that anyone can extend/edit". When I read comments from people talking about Wikipedia, I believe that most people thinks that "anyone" means "others". I'd prefer something like "that you too can extend/edit". Regards, --Colegota12:04, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
@Colegota: Thanks a lot for your feedack. The category overview needs an improvement. This was the part of the page that got not that much attention by me... I have added you suggest and would be very happy if you can create a tree according to what you think is important at the Talk:Main Page so that we can improve the section on the Main Page. Hum with the sentence. English is not my mother language so I was looking at en.wikipedia in order to write something that sounds good. Mostly I use instead of "anyone" "anybody" but as this "anyone" gets so much used at en I thought that it is perhapes better... AFAIK your sentence would be better if it is "that you can extend/edit too." Are there other native English speakers around that can help with that matter?
@Sj: Hm this would be a cool thing suppressing the left side search bar on certain pages. Can you investigate on this a little bit and ask how the chances are that we would get such a feature? (I'm currently rewriting some other pages as well). Arnomane15:23, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The new Main Page is very practical and visitor-friendly. I love it. One minor suggestion, though: for the links to Pictures of the day and Media of the day, the link text should be more straightforward. I believe rather than to link the word "project page", actually have the link text as "Previous Picture of the day" and "Previous Media of the day, just to make it more intuitive. As for the use of "anyone", I would prefer to keep the "that anyone can extend" welcome text, since I doubt there is any benefit of wording it otherwise, and at the same time breaking the consistency with Wikipedia.—UED7705:40, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
(Replicated from Talk:Main Page:) It currently says "a database of xxx media files, that anyone can extend". I think the word "contribute" better describes what we do here on the commons, so I propose that we change it to:
Actually, yes, "to which anyone can contribute" is much better and clearer. I would support it, since it's still in line with the Wikipedia version. —UED7719:11, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have no changed it to the sentence proposed by you and also shortened the links to "Previous picture of the day" and "Previous Media of the day" according to your suggestions. The two templates Template:Motd2 and Template:Potd2 are now fully translateable. Just give the variable "language=YOUR-ISO-CODE" (e.g language=de) in the call of the template, save and edit the missing red links (that will make the template look strange until they exist) and make a reload and you will have it fully translated in your language of choice (of course the image/media description needs to be translated for every day if it does not exist). You will notice a small edit link next to the text. If you give the language variable you will have two edit links, one to the english description and one to the description of the language you gave the template. So you can easily click on both links take the english description and translate it in the other and voila you have the translated description in no time. If you don't give the language variable you will olny get the edit link to the english page. So if you have set the language variable to english you will get two links to the english description. ;-) So either you remove the variable or take the language code you like... Arnomane00:03, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! About my comment for the sentence. I'm spanish and not very kind in English too. I recently read a lot of comments about Wikipedia in newspapers, forums, etc. Most in Spanish. I noted that when people talks about wikipedia uses a lot the sentence "that anyone can edit" ("que cualquiera puede editar"). At least in spanish when you say "cualquiera/anyone" most times means "any else" and even can be despective. This meaning has been used by media trying devaluate Wikipedia contents and/or quality.
That's the reason I think a sentence like "you too" will imply people more than "anyone". And this is the reason because I've put the "too" close to "you" instead of "edit/contribute". Well, just an opinion. Regards, --Colegota14:06, 27 February 2006 (UTC)PD I also agree with the word "contribute".[reply]
rebuildImages.php and database connection
I'm trying to run the rebuildImages.php file, and I get the following error:
(Can't contact the database server: Access denied for user @'localhost' to database 'correctdatabasename' (localhost))
The only thing which I have edited for this post is the 'correctdatabasename' text. In my LocalSettings.php file, the correct db info has been populated. Why is it pulling the text '@'localhost instead of the actual username? Where is this coming from?
Thanks.
I'm sorry we can't help you with that problem as we aren't the programmers of MediaWiki, we even do not maintain the servers this wiki runs on. We are the w:Wikimedia Commons people using that wiki. So you probably get in contact with the right people via the homepage of the MediaWiki-software: http://www.mediawiki.org. Good luck. Arnomane00:48, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Redirects do not really work for categories. If foo redirects to baz, and you go to foo, you will see category baz (this was fixed). However, if you put an image into category foo, you will not see that image in baz (this was not fixed). I strongly recomment to stick wil the "categories are english only" policy for now. -- Duesentrieb(?!)11:24, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think that's still the best way to deal with it. It's also easy to use a bot to change all categories marked that way, as soon as categorie "redirects" really work (as a matter of fact, redirecting works, but what we want is aliasing). -- Duesentrieb(?!)14:19, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify: i don't think we should create "category redirects" with {{Category redirect}}. This should be used only in cases where a categorie has been moved, or is likely to be created in the wrong spot. Creating a pseudo-category per language would create a complete and utter mess. -- Duesentrieb(?!)18:17, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hm. I have been creating a lot of category RDRs as an alternative to deleting them (I figure if one person makes that mistake, it's likely others will). But they're mostly for bad punctuation or miscapitalisation in English, not from other languages. Some are definitely needed, like I think Category:American vehicles is now Category:USA vehicles. Should I go back and have a look at the truly crappy ones and just delete them now? pfctdayelise (translate?) 00:20, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I thought there was a page for this, but I couldn't find it in a few minutes of searching. I uploaded Image:Mithai.jpg, but I'm not very good at image processing, and I hoped someone could either give me pointers or fix it up for me. The color is a bit off and it could stand some cropping and or creatively blanking out the plate in the lower left. Thanks all. - Taxman04:59, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As there were very differently-coloured light sources in your picture, it would be very difficult to balance those - you'd almost have to rePaint the image ;) - I hope, you'd like my edit, if not, please just revert. _w., T.P.B02:26, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
otter picture used on website, Google, without CC tag nor attribution
Check-usage and deletion warnings on wikipedia pages
Eloquence says above : The now nicely integrated "check usage" tab should reduce the incidents of images in use being deleted without notice.
I do not understand this statement. If you want a warning to be put on the wikipedia pages, you should change the deletion procedure accordingly. Here's the current procedure :
Add {{Deletion request}} to the top of the image, category or article page. (For templates, use {{Template deletion request}}.)
Notify the uploader on their talk page. You can use {{idw|IMAGE NAME}} on user's talk page.
List the image at the bottom of Template:Deletion requests using the following template (abridged).
in 99% of the time, there isn't even a local image description page. Even if there is, it's unlikely more than one person is watching it. Putting warnings on wikipedia image description pages would be a lot of work, and completely pointles, because noone would notice. Btw: the deletion warning on commons is transcluded to the local wikis, so it's visible there. The change just does not show up in RC/watchlists at wikipedia - but as I said, it's unlikely anyone is watching anyway.
For heavily used images, I would propose to put a notice on the village pump equivalent of the local wiki. In other cases, notifying the uploader should be enough. Sometimes it's a good idea to notify the uploader on his/her "home wiki" - but it's not always easy to find that "home wiki", especially for new/unexperienced/problematic users.
One thing that could be done is to put a notice on the talk pages of articles that use the image. But that's not even done for "local" deletions on the wikipedia, I don't see whe we should go through all the pain of doing this. -- Duesentrieb(?!)13:09, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
When I delete an image, I give a notice explaining that the image is/ being/will soon be deleted as a copyright violation (as that is by far the most common reason), using these translations -> User:Pfctdayelise/Translations. Then I mark a notice on the image description asking admins not to delete the image for 7 days. This is in order to give local wikipedia users a chance to come and copy the image to their local project under "fair use" provisions, if they wish/are able. But this is a practice I made up and is not required by admins or anyone else. I can't imagine what more we could do than that, though. pfctdayelise (translate?) 14:29, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The case for dividing Commons into separate language editions
The other day, after receiving a request here on the (English) Village Pump, I put a message on a Japanses user's talk page (on ja:) to ask him to put his images uploaded on Commons in images categories. Here's his answer :
I am sorry that one of an answer is late.
Because I do it regarding a category, but English is not readable so much and does not understand it what kind of thing there is, there can be a thing forgetting it.
I will think that I will perform pasting up in the case of a contribution about a thing to understand in future.We are looking forward to hearing from you.Shinkansen21:56, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This morning I check the French "Bistro" (that is the French Village Pump) and I find a message from someone who uploaded an image and can't deal himself with an {{unknown}} warning tag, because that tag is written in English. :
Si une personne vous offre une photo, pour être implantée sur un article wikipédia en rapport avec cette personne...quel Copyright enregistrer..??? il est décourageant de passer du temps pour avoir quelques photos en rapport avec les articles wikipédia, et après les avoir copiées sur le serveur...les bandeaux fleurissent, posés en anglais et pour cloturer l'affaire, il est impossible de communiquer avec cet administrateur (Anglais)....c'est l'impasse...les photos disparaissent. Y-a-t-il un français dans l'avion..?? - Je suis ordinairement patient mais là je perd mon temps...- --zivax-Discuter 16:30, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
I translate what he says : Speaking with this sysop is impossible (English).... this is a dead end. Pictures are disappearing. Is there a Frenchman in the plane ? I am usually patient, but here I am wasting my time
I think these two samples strongly document the need for a "Commons" website in every language, or at least in major languages such as French and Japanese. For two users who dare to say that they have troubles speaking and understanding English, how many more people just don't complain and just stop participating in Wikipedia (or at least stop uploading images) ? Teofilo08:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Tell them we are doing the best we can for a transition into other languages. :-)
Messages should be made in a language the person understands... so ask any nice person you know speak the language, or use the {{List of administrators by language}}.
Teofilo. Once again. Commons will not split it is technically not possible with current MediaWiki as the images of Commons get used everywhere. Imagine the nightmare if you would have zillions of Commons and you could use them everywhere (try to fetch an image out of a language Commons you are unable to read) and then the duplications bewteens these language Commons. Your examples show that we need more documentation in native languages. With regard to french I am a bit wondering as we have quite some french people here. So start translating e.g. our new Main Page and Commons:Welcome into your language(s). This would be a good start. Arnomane09:56, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have another suggestion : how about keeping only one Commons website, but instead creating categories in all major languages (languages of Wikipedias with at least 100,000 articles) , and making as many copies of each images as languages. This way, we could have a category tree in every language. For example, in the case of Image:Nagoya-shikou-7000.jpg, I create copies like this :
you want to copy the image files for that? Why?! That would be completely useles, a awful waste of diskspace, and hell to maintain. Separate categories trees can be done without copying the image, but are not a good idea either, IMHO: the current category system is already a mess. Trying to maintain several, interlocking trees will make things a lot worse. As I said, aliases for categories would help, they could be used like we use redirects for galleries now. And a smart search. But that's about as good as it gets.
Teofilo, before making propsals that would litereally keep hundreds of people busy for hundreds of days, please be sure to know what you are talking about. -- Duesentrieb(?!)13:29, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You can't prevent the people in the world from speaking different languages. Notwithstanding the philosophical question on whether the aim of mankind should be efficiency, maybe you're right that the world would be much more efficient if you forbade everyone to speak any language but English, but... you simply just can't. Authorizing only one English category tree serves the English speaking community only, and makes the Wikimedia projects less international than they used to be before "Commons" existed. Teofilo14:22, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OMG. Perhapes you know that my English is not the best and that I can write in German much more better and faster and thus prefer communicating in German and when I'm talking German I avoid English vocabulary wherever possible. So I persnally am very much interested that "my" language gets supported at a high level in Wikimedia Commons. But what you're suggesting here is nothing what is technically practicable. This why we are against your ideas. You can't demand: "We need to do technical/practical impossible things as it is political correct to demand it." I'd suggest you first watch w:Life of Brian (especially the scene where a man wants to get children and thus enforces a vote against nature). Perhapes you see then that we are not against you or against diversity of languages in Commons but that we try to think a bit at the impact first to a proposal and do the hard work enabeling multiple interfaces and we do translate the text stuff. This is what helps us most. I don't want to repeat myself again and again: Please help us translating important pages into your favourite languages and present them in a pleasant way. Arnomane14:39, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Having several categoriy trees would actually server no one. I'm not saying we should only support an english category tree. I'm saying we should support only one category tree, suitable for all languages. This will only be possible with new software features, we should work towards getting those implemented. We should definitely not create a mess of redundant pages, but should try to prepare for a better system - for example, by providing interwiki-links in categories, so category-aliases could later be automatically created based on the interwiki-links.
You are proposing huge changes that would mean lots of work, but you don't seem to understand how a) the community and b) the software works. -- Duesentrieb(?!)14:49, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Categorizing things is culture specific. Communities should be free to categorize things in a fashion proper to their culture. If in some culture birds and insects belong to the same category (because they can fly) we should not prevent them to do so on the ground that in England, or in Europe, birds and insects are considered to be separate things. In English a non-electric fan and an electric fan are considered to be the same thing : a "fan". In French they are considered as being two separate things : "éventail" (the non-electric one) and "ventilateur" (the electric one). Therefore the idea Joanot Martorell develops below is probably the best one : remove all categories and galleries from Commons. Teofilo16:09, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There are two separate issues here. One is the translation of descriptions or names of a category into many languages. This we can and should fix with software improvements -- though it will not be simple, it is doable. Another is the existence of many related, but different categories -- "cultural" and other variations can lead to different groupings of items or images or sounds. These cultural differences are not dependent solely on language differences - and you can find many multi-categorized items and pages on commons today. +sj +
This problem has a less technical solution : allow people to create many categories, if they want. Some categories may not have translations in all languages; a narrow category such as "ventilateur" [not including the éventail] might only exist as a single word in a dozen languages; it could still be described in English ("non-electric fan"). Despite there being no common category with this name in English, it would still be a useful category to be able to browse for a reader/user who does not speak French. +sj +18:54, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Teofilo, please go ahead and fill in the red link to the french version of Template:Unknown - that would be a start. Watching the french pump, and maintaining a french community portal, would be other things to do to help french people. I agree that multilanguage-abilities of MediaWiki are limmited, but it's (slowly) improving. I also agree that we need better support by the community for people that don't speak english - if you have any suggestions, please tell us. Splitting the commons into separate projects is definitely 'not a godd idea - in fact, it contradicts the very purpose of the commons, namely, to have a central repository for images. -- Duesentrieb(?!)12:38, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Commons at present cannot be used efficiently by people not mastering English sufficiently. I have a third idea : create a new policy forbidding to categorize [[:Image:name of image]] pages direcly. Instead we request users to insert the image in language-specific article pages, and each language-specific article page enters a language-specific category. That would mean for example :
Maintaining separate pages for different languages is massive overhead, and largely pointles. The current system for gallery pages is quite OK IMHO: have a single page with a short description in many languages, have redirects for that page in many languages, put description in different languages on the image description page.
Things where internationalization is still a problem are: categories, templates, policy-, help-, and discussion pages. If we implement workarounds for those, the overhead should be kept to a minimum, and what we do should be easy to convert to a real solution. Examples would be the {{Category redirect}} template and the translation links in {{PD-Art}}. -- Duesentrieb(?!)14:17, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What is really needed is the implementation of m:multilingual MediaWiki. There's a good chance that we can get funding for this and development might start as early as next week, so please don't implement any stopgap measures that will complicate things unnecessarily. If it doesn't go ahead, I'll post here again and we can think about alternatives.--Eloquence13:53, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is a great idea. Teofilo 15:18, 24 February 2006 (UTC). But maybe Joanot Martorell's idea of removing all categories and galleries from Commons is even greater... Teofilo16:09, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A few things just occurred to me:
The easiest way to create licalized category trees is to use the one at the wikipedias. Simply add "sister projects" links from wikipedia categories to commons categories. This way, people can browse the tree in their favorite language, and hop over to the commons when they found what they where looking for.
It would be quite simple to make CategoryTree show translated category names based on interwiki links. I'll work on it. Maybe it will be online this weekend already.
If interlanguage-links would be kept in a table in the database, Names of pages and categories could automatically be translated according to the user interface language. The change to the database (and the code to fill that table) is not trivial, but doable, and having those links in a table would be a good idea anyway. Translating the category listing would then be trivial, and wouldn't even mess with caching, because that's don per-user-language anyway. Maybe I should file a feature request...
If anyone's interrested, a new version of CategoryTree is online. You can select the interface language, and it will try to show translated category names based on interwiki links. If you would like to provide more interface languages, please have a liik at meta:User:Duesentrieb/CategoryTree. Please also add interwiki links to categories where they are missing - but note that they won't show up in the tree immediately, i have to regenerate the translation table by hand every now and then. -- Duesentrieb(?!)21:30, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, maybe I miss something, but I can't understand the use of CategoryTree for languages/translations. I select a category name and a wiki or commons. It shows me the category tree in the wiki or commons (or project), but... What about trasnlations? I've tested with china, beijing, pekín in commons en: and es:
If you set the interface language to something different than english, and select commons as the project, you will see translations added to some of the category names (the ones that have interlanguage links for your language). The translation-db has to be maintained by hand, and is currently only available for categories (not articles) on commons. For example, look here - you get History (Historia), People (Biografías), etc -- Duesentrieb(?!)13:56, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I missed something. :) Ok it seems to be useful again. Well, a couple of comments.
First at all, I'm not sure about all around convert multilanguage pages in "singlelanguage" localized pages. I fear we can lost information, so I'd like to have an "all" option in laguage list. I can read other languages than Spanish, so for me will be more useful a listing saying "(es:Historia, fr:Histoire...)". Because many times some people has put an information that can be useful for your search but you only can see the one in your language and maybe there is not or is not enought. I do it often when I started upload photos from a site and I have no much information. I search trough en: and later Interwikis. And now this tool can save a lot of time to me, but better if I must not change from any language to other. Think for example that there is an interwiki to Portuguese but there is no tool translation for Portuguese, it will be useful too to have there also "(es:Historia, fr:Histoire, pt:História)".
Now, a little of feedback after trying CategoryTree. We must note that category trees are different often between commons and wikis. Also note that many interwikis in commons categories are to articles because in the wikis there is no such category but the article.
Now check this one. I'm asking for Category:Turpan. There is an interwiki to several wikis but the tool can't find it. At first glance I supposed that the reason was that interwikis are to articles instead of categories, but look at Category:Gaochang ruins subcategory where the tool is capable to find it and is also an article in spanish wiki. You can have similar results changing laguage to English for Turpan.
Thanks for your feedback. First of all: Having all languages on one page, and showing/hiding languages selectively using javascript, would IMHO make sense for image description pages, gallery and category headings, and maybe templates. I wouldn't want to do that for policy pages, however. Also, I agree that users should be able to define a set of languages to hide or show.
Also, CategoryTree does not care if the interwikis go to a category or to an article. However currently the translation is not show for the root category (yes, that's a bug) - have a look at this, you fill find Turpan to be translated. -- Duesentrieb(?!)21:52, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it tranlsates Turpan and Urumqi. But the rest of Cities of Xinjiang also have interwikis and there is no translation. I'll keep trying. Regards, --Colegota09:50, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As I said: currently, no translations are shown for the category you select as the root of the tree. That's a bug. I'll fix it some time soon. -- Duesentrieb(?!)11:45, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
When I said "the rest of Cities of Xinjiang" (but Turpan and Urumqi) I'm talking about the other Category:Cities in Xinjiang's child categories. That's Kashgar, Khotan and Yarkand. In the example Kashgar is not "the" root category but "Cities in Xinjiang". Regards, --Colegota15:04, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
uh... you'r right... i have no idea why, but I intend to find out :) This was a quick proof of concept hack, I hope to improve on it soon. -- Duesentrieb(?!)02:29, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
About multilingual categories
On wp site in every language I've realized that the description pages of images uploaded on Commons can be categorized there. So, a image on Commons such Image:Normal_zeilschip38.jpg can be categorized as "Category:Photos of boats" on wp-en at en:Image:Normal_zeilschip38.jpg, "Categoría:Fotos de barcos" on wp-es at es:Image:Normal_zeilschip38.jpg, "Categorie:Images des bateaux" on wp-fr at fr:Image:Normal_zeilschip38.jpg, "Categoria:Fotos de vaixells" at ca:Image:Normal_zeilschip38.jpg, etc... Here in Commons we only would have to classify contents on categories about licenses of use. What do you all think about it?. --Joanot Martorell✉10:18, 24 February 2006 (UTC)PD: Perhaps it would be fine that MediaWiki on Commons could recove the categories in the language chosen from user preferences, checking the database of every wiki project in those language[reply]
Well this is all for sure interesting but what there are two things:
At first our english category system needs to be cleaned up it is currently a total mess. Now imagine adding zillions of language categories we wouldn't know where to start with...
Your proposal with user defined settings is currently not possible and I am afraid that it will not be done anytime soon by the devs (they have plenty of other things to do) until you just grab the source and code it for yourself (which would be a cool thing; this just my personal experience). So please let us concentrate on what we can do right now and not on nice wishes for the future. Arnomane10:54, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The present category system should be moved to the English language Wikipedia because it is an English language category system. Then it would be up to the English Wikipedians to improve it if improvements are needed. Teofilo16:05, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So, when uploading an image, I should categorize it in every wikipedia? When searching for an image, I should look into all wikipedias? I don't think so... An aliasing system for category names, plus a "smart" search engline that knows about translations, internationalized templates that depend on user interface language... that would help. Oh, btw: checking the categories in all project would mean 650 database queries, possibly to boxes across the pacific. That's not feasable. -- Duesentrieb(?!)12:42, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
At least, I want to mean that users from every wp would categorize themselves in their wiki the images they're uploading here. Users from Commons should categorize only the license of use. By exemple, I'm a user from Catalan WP, I upload an image here with a chosen license. So, I would categorize this image on ca-wp by subject. --Joanot Martorell✉14:01, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think easiest solution to use existing category structure for articles in your WP. You just need to provide link to Commons category from category (Commons template). At least you will need to maintain one category tree, not separate ones for images and articles. Of course Commons still need categorization by subject. --EugeneZelenko16:52, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I like your idea, Joanot, because it is center-less idea, leaving all languages equal. That means removing all categories and all gallery pages from Commons. This is a bold and great idea ! Teofilo16:05, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So, how do you expect to find an image about topic X then? By looking in all Wikipedias? Or do you want to require people to categorize their images in every project? The point of the commons is that images can be used by other projects too - that's impossible if people can't find the images in a central place. -- Duesentrieb(?!)17:23, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've thought in the same way as you explained in the last comment in the above thread. If I would want to find more images, I could follow the interwikis. In adding, the interwikis would be useful to add uncategorized images that you find in the same category in a wiki of another language, as files from commons are the same for all wikis. In spite of this proposal, you're on right that a centralized category in commons is much easiest. I only wanted to give a idea for people that doesn't understand English, a case to have their own media repository category at wikipedia in language of them. --Joanot Martorell✉20:40, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Because the code was changed by Tim Starling to do just that. [7] This might make sense given that a category is useful whether a description page exists for it or not, but I don't really know what his motives were, so you should probably ask him.--Eloquence13:50, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is this a good idea? Now to check whether a category exists, you have to actually go and visit it. Won't we end up with tonnes of split categories of the form Category:Noun and Category:Nouns. Most categories are at their plural form, but not all - just last week I remember trying to put something in Category:Taxis when the correct (or at least, in-use) category was Category:Taxi. Hmmmm.... pfctdayelise (translate?) 14:54, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It has been reverted back so non-existing cats reappear in red (this is fine). But is it possible to show cats in different colours than red and blue only ? Would be nice for Category redirects to have them in green or other colours. --Denniss03:59, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. Can someone make out of these currently not that helpful Commons:First steps an example based tutorial like Commons:Licensing (prefereably a similar structure with image screenshot examples)? If some tells me do it myself. :p Well I'm currenty rewriting many other pages in Commons-namespace. ;-) Thanks a lot in advance. Arnomane17:24, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
broken thumbnails
For some reason, all the thumbnails created from Image:Map mn khuvsgul aimag.png fail to display in Mozilla Firefox 0.8 on Linux. I don't currently have a newer version of Firefox to try, but all other browsers (Opera, Konqueror, etc.) display them fine. The problem is not with the original image file, because I just uploaded a new and entirely different version. It rather seems that during the initial upload, the software got a hickup, so there's something strange in the database now. Any technicians in the house? --Latebird19:02, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Very strange. The server must be sending some unusual data, which only interacts in that way with my specific browser. But if et works for everybody else, then I'll stop worrying for now. If any developer sees this, maybe they can have a look at it anyway. --Latebird10:06, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a message on the description page of deleted files that said "This file has been deleted" , and then the latest message, e.g.
I just logged out to check what happens. When you go to Image:Sonic bang 050817-N-3488C-151.jpg it gives the "this page does not exist" message. The last line says, "If this page used to exist, it may have been deleted. Check for Sonic bang 050817-N-3488C-151.jpg in the deletion log" and there's a link. When you click on the link, you see the summary the same as above. So, this information is available to everyone. pfctdayelise (translate?) 14:57, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Last year, I created the merger icons that are used at the English Wikipedia (among others). Since then, there have been two independent attempts to create SVG versions. The problem is that the MediaWiki software automatically converts all SVG files to the PNG-24 format (including the ones for which the PNG-8 format would work). As a result, images containing transparent backgrounds display improperly for most users (because of the infamous IE 6 bug). The same MediaWiki deficiency affects PNG-8 files that are downsized (which automatically become PNG-24 files).
Yesterday, I noticed that two of the merger icons had been tagged for replacement with SVG versions. I removed the template, noting the specific reason in my edit summaries. Today, Sanbecreverted my edits via the administrative rollback tool (as though I had committed simple vandalism) without any communication.
Another issue is that some users (including Sanbec) believe that PNG files are inherently superior to non-animated GIF files under all circumstances, and that all non-animated GIF files should be replaced. What many fail to realize is that older versions of some browsers (such as IE, Netscape and Opera) cannot handle PNG-8 transparencies properly. While it's true that relatively few people still use these older versions, I don't believe that a file size reduction of 132 bytes justifies this reduced level of compatibility. Sanbec evidently disagrees with me, and feels that discussion is unnecessary. —Lifeisunfair16:30, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, you're certainly correct about the technical issues: transparency will not work for many users with SVG or with scaled PNG. But I don't think that's something that's worth worrying about. The only way to support transparency for people with deeply broken browsers is to have every image be GIF. That's a bad solution, though, because it punishes everyone else: GIF doesn't look as good, because the color space is a lot smaller. Also, GIF doesn't support good antialiasing.
Furthermore, anyone who has a browser that doesn't support PNG transparency, and is at all bothered by that fact, can very easily fix the problem by using Firefox instead.
Excuse me, but I don't see any reason to suppress files (except for copyright etc. reasonsà, even if we have "superior" SVG or whatever files.
In addition, you just can't tell people to change browsers. There are tons of people with older machines out there, people that can't install modern memory guzzlers. David.Monniaux22:17, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The {{Convert to SVG}} is originally meant to tag images that would be suitable for SVG format. I have removed the portion of the template that reads, "After uploading an SVG, add the templates {{redundant|Image:new image name.svg}} and {{Deletion request}} to this image, update all uses of this image to refer to the SVG, and add this image to Commons:Deletion requests." I don't think we're quite ready for SVG images to completely supercede gif or png images, but images such as these certainly benefit from SVG formatting. Cary "Bastique" Bassparlervoir22:24, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Aside from a desire to display the icons at a larger size (which there's no reason to do in their primary context), how would SVG formatting be beneficial? —Lifeisunfair22:49, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't say anything about replacing SVG/PNG files (both of which are formats that I've uploaded) with inferior GIF files. The point is that there's nothing wrong with these GIF files. They're tiny and clean. They don't require 24-bit color or antialiasing. They're correctly sized for their intended application, so there's no need for them to be scalable. And because of their shapes and dimensions, a dark gray background renders them virtually unrecognizable (so yes, usability is harmed).
The problem here is that people insist upon "fixing" things that aren't broken, thereby breaking them in the process. The attitude is that SVG is automatically better than PNG, which is automatically better than GIF. This simply isn't true. These decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis, and they should not be unilaterally handed down by an editor who cites a website called "Burn All GIFs." (I'm referring to Sanbec.)
And for the record, I'm a Firefox user, but I see no valid reason why we should go out of our way to mess things up for IE users. As David Monniaux pointed out, many have no choice in the matter (which describes me when I'm at college or the local public library). —Lifeisunfair22:49, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Commons and the Wikipedias are free project. GIF is NOT a free format. Yes, I say "Burn All GIFs!". It's a critical issue that some users see some maintenance icons with incorrect background? I say NO. Is there a bug with the mediawiki software? Report the bug instead keep the deprecated gif. Please talk about your problem, not about me. Sanbec✉09:14, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"The latest expiration date of the GIF-related patents will most probably be Friday, 11 August 2006" (en:GIF). I'd rather wait for a few months than wreck havoc with various projects. David.Monniaux10:18, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Part of my "problem," Sanbec, is that you're imposing your will on the rest of us. In the process, you're treating those of us who disagree with you as vandals—ignoring our input and reverting our edits without comment or discussion. Your administrative status does not include the authority to unilaterally overrule dissenting viewpoints, nor are you in charge of deciding what is or is not "critical" to the community. I believe that compatibility with the most computers is more important than your disdain for a popular graphical format, and my opinion is worth as much as yours. —Lifeisunfair14:30, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think Sanbec's action is another one of those that is giving commons a bad reputation. This is supposed to be a repository for projects, not a podium for ideologues. The situation seems similar to what is happening in the US, where pharmacists are refusing to fill prescriptions because they think their personal beliefs should take precedence over the doctor's opinion. Stan Shebs14:02, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Typical that most experienced computer users use Firefox and say "what's the problem? Use Firefox", yet the average user still uses Internet Explorer and will probably continue to do so for a time to come. / Fred Chess10:14, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Many browsers understand 8-bit PNGs just fine. If a fairly old browser cannot support transparency AT ALL, then the pallet entry for which is being made transparent should be made a decent color in case it 'shows' up. There's little to worry about PNGs not being 'compatable' enough when they're set to be as basic as a single pallet entry fully transparent on a 256 color pallet. To quote an earlier person: "they don't require 24-bit color or antialiasing." You're right, they don't. Don't make them 24-bit. Set their first pallet to be white so when its transparency gets completely ignored, an image on white is seen thats still entirely readable. Don't put 24-bit bit PNGs with transparency("RGBA") up if you don't want IE6 users to see it with a wierd grey background. 131.151.191.18608:46, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The main issue concerns SVG files. As I explained, the MediaWiki software automatically converts them (as well as all scaled PNG files) to 24-bit PNG files. Currently, there is no way to prevent this.
I often upload both 8-bit PNG files (sometimes with transparencies) and 24-bit PNG files (usually without transparencies), depending upon the situation. In the cited case, however, the difference in file size between GIF and PNG is miniscule (even after the latter has been optimized via PNGOUT, which I always do). An 8-bit PNG version would be fine for most users, but there's too little benefit to justify adversely affecting the small minority.
And of course, there are some cases in which GIF is simply the best format. A couple of days ago, someone replaced two of my 30x30 GIF icons with 600x600 PNG-8 versions. Upon being the scaled down, the new icons became PNG-24 files that were almost four times larger than the original GIFs (and displayed with gray backgrounds for most users). That isn’t surprising, given the fact that even 30x30 optimized PNG-8 versions turned out slightly larger than their GIF counterparts (which is why I uploaded them as GIFs in the first place). But for some reason, the prevailing mentality seems to be "GIF bad, PNG good." —Lifeisunfair02:28, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No more unilateral deletion decisions
Folks,
I think it is definitely wrong if an admin decides that, technically, it is better that we use format foo instead of bar, whereas many people use bar and have somewhat decent rationales for using bar.
This is exactly this kind of behaviour that makes projects grumpy about commons.
PLEASE We have lots of room on the servers, a few GIFs or PNGs instead of SVGs or whatever will not kill us.
Yes, *please*. More generally, please give more notice to projects that use commons images, when there is a multi-image renaming / deletion campaign of any sort; there are few things more frustrating than a transclusion system [already a bit complicated] that mysteriously stops working. +sj +18:45, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
@sj and @David.Monniaux: I case of the PNG - SVG thing I absolutely agree but as we in Commons are now able tracking where an image get's used there is absolutely no reason not replacing exact duplicates in local projects by ourselves and then (but only then after relinking) delete the now unused duplicate. See my comment further below as well. Arnomane09:40, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yesterday there was some panic because of a logo being replaced for the nn.wiktionary and no admin could be found.. Yesterday there were complaints of SVG pictures replacing weapons and they were wrong NOT identical. The insistence on replacing stuff damages the reputation of Commons it makes people NOT use Commons..
There is no excuse when you get it wrong. There is no excuse because the credit has been used up. People do NOT trust the Commons folk to do a good job and there is ample reason that this is too often the case. GerardM10:01, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Gerard would you please consider that Commons is not a unique body? You're ranting here at the wrong people. Please give details which files were the problematic ones and we can identify the one that did cause the problem but please do not make these general rants about evil Commons people here (Perhapes you can notice how many things I am doing here in order to improve the situation, just look at my contribs here). Thank you. Arnomane10:43, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
May be Commons should have Commons:Replacement requests (similar to Commons:Deletion requests) where file replacement could be discussed. I think timeframe should be bigger (like month) so more chance that affected projects will know about replacements and object it (if necessary). Image could be deleted only in case if no serious arguments against replacement were given.
I think this policy could keep happy both parties: Commons users and people who want to keep Commons cleaner.
Well it depends. I personally do remove a lot of exact duplicates (exactly the same image with exactly the same file type in the same or minor resolution, about 20% of all files are affected) by myself without bothering others after I have relinked all usages as everything else would be pure bureaucracy and as I want to do my admin work efficiently. However I would never replace an image by another one outside the normal procedure if it is not exactly the same (e.g a PNG flag and a SVG flag). So for these kinds of not exact duplicates please enhance the existing redundancy queue in the way you consider (but I would suggest avoiding parallel structures and to much bureaucracy as this will also lead to failures as recently seen). Arnomane19:17, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. We should just keep the old and the new. The old can be tagged "note: superior version at Image:Foo.jpg" or whatever. There is no good argument to even delete the old. Will not keep everyone happy because we can't expect local project users, who are actually USING the images, to follow every discussion on Commons. It's their choice. If they want to use a crappy image, who are we to stop them? Let's worry about the bigger and more ongoing issues of orphans, copyright violations, and agitating the dev's for full multilinguality. pfctdayelise (translate?) 00:32, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No. For example in Commons:Category scheme astronomy where I am mainly working on images I noticed that about 10% of the images do exist in Commons as a duplicate and about 30% more images are not uploaded in the best available quality. Furthermore about 80% of the images have local duplicates in one of the local projects with a different name than in Commons. So what I am doing? At first I upload the highest quality that's availabe and if the existing image names are bad I upload them under a new one. Then I relink all usages, tag all local project duplicates with "NowCommons" and delete all exact duplicates in Commons. So I don't touch the article content itself and as I am replacing the same image a reader still get's exactly the same content. And of course I do give every image a very good description with exact source and so forth so it is an improvement in any case. If someone complains about replacing an exact duplicate (same content same file type) with even a better image description in every case I can't help him and he better should not use wikis. With the same reson that people complain on small edits with image relinking (that is done manually by me) people can complain on the interwikibots that just make one small edit in most of the cases (that also do not change the article content)... I will never keep exact duplicates in Commons as I also have enough to do maintaining one copy of every file in my area. It is not just about some seldom random duplicates and it is also not a question on disk space it is simply a question of improvement, order and maintainance. What I do understand in contrast is that people do complain if other people are replacing png-versions blindly by SVG's without double checking if the svg is really accurate (another topic where I am currently neutral is the probem with transparency). That's why such pages as Commons:CommonsProject Insignia are badly needed. Arnomane09:33, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Again, there are two distinctly different cases that are being mixed together. For exact duplicates, doing what you described, I can't imagine anyone would have a problem with. For non-exact duplicates (eg PNG -> SVG), I think they should be kept and such a page is not necessary. pfctdayelise (translate?) 23:36, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes these are different cases but people mix it up and that's why I wanted to make clear which kinds of real and not real duplicates exist in order have the problem clear. But what can we do if those people that do make these harmful changes do not even listen here on Village Pump? That's my problem. I can only look at those people that are known to me. :-( Arnomane00:18, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Another multilingual suggestion
This idea consists in extending the multilingual structure presently used in the [[Mediawiki:]] namespace that enables users to read system messages in their own language. These Mediawiki files are language-specific, like this :
Now let's see what happens when an Italian user having no foreign language skills wants to upload a picture from Paris. He can easily find the Italian category category:Pariggi because this is a page written in his own language. On the top of this category page, a message tells him "Per favore utilizza {{Pariggi}}" (please use template {{Pariggi}}). So he inserts template {{Pariggi}} in the picture page.
The purpose of {{Pariggi}} is to insert the picture simultaneously in all language categories. The source code of {{Pariggi}} would be "# REDIRECT Template:Paris". And the source code of Template:Paris would contain : [[category:Paris/fr]] [[category:Paris/en]] [[category:Paris/de]] [[category:Paris/ja]] [[category:Paris/it]] all together.
This way, an Italian user having no language skill in Japanese/English/French/German can insert a picture inside the Japanese/English/French/German categories...
For sure an interesting idea but it won't help us much if we dream about it (yes I had to learn exactly this by myself a rather hard way). Most of the time you need to grab the source and code yourself. See: http://www.mediawiki.org. As there are other solutions around with actual existing code (see meta:Ultimate Wiktionary) it would be helpfull if you can look at their progress and get in contact with these folks. Other than that please help translating such pages like Main Page, Commons:Welcome, Commons:Community Portal and help updating a lot of outdated pages like Commons:First steps. Most of the pages in Commons-namespace were edited the last time last may! Really! Please start working in Commons:Translation coordination core. I can't do everything by myself. This is a call to everyone. Arnomane11:46, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please have a look at the new version of the CategoryTree tool: it shows translated category names based on interlanguage links. For example, look here - you get History (Histoire), Occult (Ésotérisme), etc.
Createing multiple, redundant category structures would only make the mess worse. Internationalized description texts can easily be done using javascript. That's what {{En}}, {{Fr}}, etc, are for. No need to have several pages. The same mechanism could also be used for templates, btw. We'd just need the javascript that hides unwanted languages enabled per default.
Fot templates, I'd like to have the same mechanism as for system messages, though. THis wouldn't even affect the cache, since cachign is done per-language anyway. It would tricky for pagelinks, imagelinks, etc - all language versions of a template would have to be taken into account. -- Duesentrieb(?!)14:07, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think Teofilo's suggestion is a bad idea, because it involves having a separate category for every language. Here's what I think is the ideal solution.
Implement some way to translate the title of a category. For example, when I'm viewing an image in Pariggi, I want the category listed at the bottom to appear as Paris. An Italian user viewing an image in Paris wants to see Pariggi in the category list. The same translation would apply to the category title on the category page itself. Presumably this could be done with things like Category:Paris/it, though a more natural method might be to have the category title considered "metadata", and have all the metadata accessible in one place.
Bugzilla3311 is a half-step in the good direction. What Bugzilla3311 will not provide is a way of showing the list of subcategories and supercategories of a given category in several languages. Somehow we need to provide data like these :
I wanted to upload some pictures of Matchbox toys from my small collection, but I've noticed that they have copyright sign on their bottom. So, woldn't upload of photos of these toys be copyright violation? Kneiphof22:22, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Toys and toys cars need to be deleted, automobiles are according to German law not copyrighted. We cannnot accept unfree pictures of copyrighted objects and in the German Wikipedia wo don't. --Historiograf01:20, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree we should change the silly logo policy and accept logos and trademarks. They are accepted anywhere else and their use on Wikipedia articles can hardly be abused. / Fred Chess10:12, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How about a picture of a yard with toys scattered about in it, such as Image:SiltToyJeep.jpg? Anyway, if German law doesn't allow photos of toys, what's with all the copyrighted toys depicted at w:de:Spielzeug? Methinks not all de: editors agree with Historiograf. Stan Shebs14:49, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There are many monuments fotos on Commons and almost all monuments are copyrighted by their author or government/administration institusion that set up a monument. Should we delete them too? I don't think so. I don't know if that is proven in court, but what is copyrighted here is a 3D object (toy/monument/car) design. To reproduce this you have to make another toy/monument/car very similar to original object BUT when you make a 2D object that's a completly different story, because you don't actually copy the object itself. A.J.16:00, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Most countries make an exception for copyrighted works that are permanently publically displayed (but France, for instance, apperently has no such exception). If you make a picture of a monument in a country that has such a low, you are free to license the picture as you like.
I agree that'S quite a different story if you copy a 3D object, or if you make a picture of it. Nevertheless, copyright still applies in the latter case, though you would share rights to the image with the creator of the original. -- Duesentrieb(?!)20:37, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Until I see de: emptied out of photos of copyrighted objects, I'm just not going to take this "sharing rights" argument very seriously. It would mean that photos of insides of houses cannot be free, because the designs of furniture, appliances, and light fixtures are almost all copyrighted, and they are going to be in the background of pictures of anything else. And just look at the pictures in w:de:Küche or w:de:Badezimmer! Blatant copyvios everywhere! Stan Shebs00:10, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you accept nearly all things as copyrighted your conclusion is cogent - but only then. Design protection in Germany has its own rules you should know before speaking of copyvios. --Historiograf02:33, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you want non-Germans to adhere to German design protection rules, you might want to write them up somewhere here. I now have no idea whether any of my non-nature-only uploads are OK or not, and so can't do anything about them. Stan Shebs20:06, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No this will not happen in general. In case of copyvios we have not the man power also doing the unlink work. In case of redundant images we do it (and there it is required). This is nothing against the other projects but we cannot manage every aspect of their files by ourselves. Currently I am writing an automated tool that will enable local wikis to keep track on our deletion requests and our deleted files that get used by them so that they can get involved in the delete discussion and do the apropriate action in case of a deletion. Arnomane00:23, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Licensing to commercial publishers
I've had several requests for use of my photos my commercial publishers, even though these photos were under free licenses (GFDL or CC-something). Apparently, these publishers were not happy with the conditions in those licenses, or found them insufficient, or whatever, and requested that I grant them a particular and specific proprietary license.
It is possible that these publishers could have used my work for free. I'm not their legal department, it is not my intention to provide them with free legal advice on what they can or they cannot do with my photos — the licenses are there, they can read them.
I've thus decided to charge for the service of writing authorization emails to commercial publishers, as explained in User:David.Monniaux#Authorizations.
Some other user has begun harassing me about this (ignoring my email answer). I don't approve such kind of busybody behaviour on his part. He threatened to expose this on Village pump; this is what I'm doing now. David.Monniaux08:23, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well if you are the author you can add as many alternative licenses as you like even if you have released them let us say under CC-BY-SA. If someone does not like the license you can grant him everytime a special license and even granting these alternative conditions for a fee is totally ok. So there is no problem with your text, even not morally (but I guess you know all this and just wanted to assure you that we see this the same ;-). Arnomane09:35, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I do not consider it polite to remove a question on a user talk-page, and it is not “harassing” when User:Grillo rewrites his question.
Busybody n : a person who meddles in the affairs of others. This is exactly a suitable definition for a person who wants to dictate what others put on their user page, for no good reason (Did the page say anything incorrect? No. Was there any content against applicable Wikipedia policies? No.). I may also point out that repeatedly inserting the exact same question despite having been answered (by personal email, no less) is fairly obnoxious, and counts for me as "harassment". David.Monniaux12:36, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, you can do that - publish stuff under the GFDL, and if people want to use it without following the terms of the GFPL, charge for it. Makes perfect sense to me. -- Duesentrieb(?!)12:01, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I fully support David.Monniaux on this. Grillo very obviously had no clue about what David was saying about his photos: "your images can't be used commercially without paying you a fee"... nothing of the sort is ever stated. Repeating this silly question over and over again and admonesting someone clearly better-informed than he is was neither polite nor intelligent, so I do not think that David can be blamed for his behaviour. Rama12:46, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Bah, this whole quarrel is ridiculous. I apologize to Grillo for being somewhat rude, but I really felt unjustly harassed by his claims (not to mention them being potentially confusing for the people I was dealing with). David.Monniaux12:54, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In case of further confusion, you can always point to a moderately-famous example of successful dual licensing - w:en:Cygwin. Cygnus and now Red Hat have made a nice little income from Cygwin over the past several years. In fact, one of the reasons to use a standard license like GFDL or CC, rather than trying to invent one's own, is to get details like non-exclusivity right. Oh, and congrats on the publishers' interest! Stan Shebs13:20, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Download the (high-res) picture to your computer, then upload it to Commons with preferably the same image name and the source and licence intact. That is as far as I know the only way. /Grillo10:56, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly advise you to check the license of the image. Some images were moved to commons from other wikis even though they carried dubious or even fairly evidently false licenses... David.Monniaux13:31, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
SVG version
Ugliness is entirely subjective. And the IE issue is going to be fixed very soon, according to the techs. McNeight, I've improved upon it. Cary "Bastique" Bass parler voir 01:06, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
and 
look different in IE? User:dbenbenn 01:33, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
. You may also post an ad in en:Wikipedia:Requested pictures. Shouldn't we make clear that answers to questions asked on the Village pump are seldom ansered by mail? --Teofilo 10:44, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Support this wholeheartedly! Will offer any help as well. Cary "Bastique" Bass parler voir 00:31, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
![[1]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Cross.png){kind=link}
![[2]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Cross.jpg){kind=link}
![[3]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Cross.gif){kind=link}
![[4]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Cross.svg){kind=link}
