Category talk:Historic American Buildings Survey

Images in this Category should not be cropped. They're historic material, not "some" image one found on the web. --Matthiasb 19:15, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

For them to be useable on any wiki they should be cropped. We are not creating an archive of historic images - that already exists in the Library of Congress and each image should be linked to its source. I agree they are histo--Matthiasb 14:14, 25 April 2008 (UTC)ric images and should be available to illustrate wiki articles. IMHO that is better done without a border added in the past by an archivist. Finavon 19:37, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Where is the consens for reverting them? I can't find a discussion about reverting to a version against the usus and rules of Commons. -- Cecil 20:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Unless the images are being cropped and uploaded over the original version, this isn't a particular big issue. Only if the original image is being destroyed does it become something worth reverting. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:49, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Where is consensus for cropping them? Would you cut an image by Rembrandt out of the frame because you don't like the frame? Cutting historic documents I consider as barbarism. It's not about Flickr images or what is found elsewhere in the web. In Wikisource they also don't change spelling or grammar. And sorry Commons:Media for cleanup#Images with unnecessary borders doesn't cover this. --Matthiasb 14:25, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I would crop the image of a Rembrandt picture, because otherwise we would not be allowed to use it here. The frame makes it 3-D and it has it's own creator. But I'm sure you would be willing to figure out for all the images here who was the artist of the frames so we can show the pictures with them. All this pictures don't have a frame originally, or do you think the photographer put a frame around the house and then made the picture? They are just archived that way and whoever digitalised them did not remove the borders (for speed, preservation or whatever). Some of this paper frames are larger then the image itself and thus unusable for use in the other projects. If you want to have the frames go to the source website. There you can get them in several formats and resolution. And there they will always be because the loc is archiving them. Here we want to use them and not put them in archives (read COM:PS, if you don't believe it) and sorry but pictures with 20% tilts and 5cm borders are not usable for the other projects. -- Cecil 15:51, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I didn't talk about licensing issues I talked about the original painting where the canvas is (was) much larger than what is visible within the frame. Sadly enough, people are cropping pictures for centuries. BTW: COM:PS says we will not do censorship and cropping an image is censorship of one kind. And the fram does not hinder you from using the image. Each user can crop it for his own, if he wants. I don't, so why you're enforcing me to use a cropped image?

Commons is a repository of images, both historic and new ones. Why cropping of such images is bad you can see with one of the most famous paintings by Edouard Manet, which actually was much larger and two fragments of this still exist. Also the detail images in the category show you how cutting can manipulate the viewers impression (though they're contributed for educational reasons, see french article fr:L'Exécution de Maximilien.

Please bear in mind that we're not talking about watermarks or logos or whatsoever. Therefore we're not talking about unnecessary borders in the guideline which were mentioned in one of the edit descriptions.

If the usances of Commons are make it necessary to cut this images and doing so makes you happy, if you really feel that the image must be cropped at each prize – feel free to do so but upload it again under another file, like f. ex. Image:220 Pearl Street 035129pu.jpg and Image:220 Pearl Street-adjusted.jpg. But please preserve the images in this category as they are: documents from our past. --Matthiasb 07:44, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

So you say, just because somebody did a sloppy work digitalizing that pictures we should keep them that way, tilted, with sticky tapes and archive numbers in the corner, because that is in your opinion the way they were originally. Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? When the fotographer made them they didn't look that way. They were straight and they had no archive numbers or other klimbim. Maybe they now have scratches and there colour does not look good anymore, but that is done by time and should not be changed, but removing the damage done by people is something that should be repaired. Since you like to compare fotos with paintings: what do you think was done to Munchs Scream and Madonna when they were returned to the museum. There is a whole documentation of how they were reworked to remove the damage done by people. They didn't say, oh it happened lets preserve the damaged rest.

Media files that are not useful for any Wikimedia project are beyond the scope of Wikimedia Commons. Your example of Pearl Street is logically unused by all Wikimedia-projects because the only thing it documents is hasty use of a scanner. The archive for preserving them in that quality can be found at the source information and this archive will always stay, because it has the goal to do preserving. For private use you know where to find them, you don't need to use the foundation webspace then. -- Cecil 14:39, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Who says they're not useful? Hundreds of them are used uncropped, in the EN:WP and elsewhere. Interestingly you're mentioning Munch's Scream and Madonna and you're advocating exactly what was done to those drawings: you're cutting them. And exactly that the museum is reverting: they're not trying to make the picture better than it was. Munch's signature will stay on the picture and the museum's registry number on the back or the frame probably also will. Well, I made the mistake that I uploaded some of these images here, in future I will upload them at the German WP directly. Well, it has a reason why so many wikipideans have bad feelings with commons. This is one of them. --Matthiasb 14:14, 25 April 2008 (UTC)