User talk:CarolSpears/2008-01

FYI: Category:Tonto National Monument

Hi, I only just now found your edits of September 24th, when you removed the category:Tonto National Monument and moved all its images (only three) to category:Tonto National Forest with the comment: "Tonto National Monument is just wrong". I reverted those edits and put all three images back into the recreated cat. There is a Tonto National Monument, at least, that's what the National Park Service claims at http://www.nps.gov/tont/ as well as the en-WP at en:Tonto National Monument (de-WP and fr-WP agree). Please don't delete it again. --h-stt !? 20:57, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Okiedokie. I only started in Oregon because of the way the web interface worked and the stash of photographs there is really cool. Also, I had no idea that there was such a thing as a National Monument and a National Park and the other National things. Did it take you very long to clean up that big mess I left there? -- carol 21:14, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Not a big deal, I already knew two of the three images from the de-WP so I looked into your new category and the history of the images there. Thus I found the third image. Reverting your edits was a matter of a minute or so, I'm pretty proficient in things like this by now. I just wanted to inform you of my edits, so you would not try to revert them. --h-stt !? 22:43, 1 January 2008 (UTC) PS: Have a happy 2008, may some of your whishes come true.

Image:Carex acuta2.JPG

(from the talk of Larbot, my alternate account... where you said...) I need to apologize because I have retemplated this image for rotation again. It doesn't look up-side-right either way. Mostly, I am leaving this note to let you know that I will try to bother you less than that image is bothering me. By the way, did you look at it? I don't expect you to look at these images, but could you look at this one this time and do what you think will make it to be up-side-up?

yours in confusion -- carol 22:23, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Carol. Happy New Year. I'm not sure exactly why you left larbot that message... I don't think I've had anything to do with the image from either that account, or my main one (Lar). I think it's a pretty image, and I agree with you that it may be hard to tell which side is up. The way it looks right now, to this very untrained eye, appears to be right side up, but I have no basis for that, as I don't really know anything about grasses... Perhaps you meant that message to go to a different account? Best wishes. (also yours in confusion. :) ) ++Lar: t/c 23:27, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

The bot did what a good bot is supposed to and rotated the image -- so I clicked through via the history log and then the suggestion at the bots page. I thought that retagging it was annoying and I didn't want to be annoying.

Nice bot, btw. -- carol 23:34, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Larbot really is just an ID to run w:WP:AWB with. and I do not think that ID ever touched that image. So you may want to talk to someone else about it. I do apologise but I had nothing to do with the image or its rotation. ++Lar: t/c 00:56, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

One thing I am not confused about is that I got to you through my watchlist when I did leave that message there. I think that something that confuses people from the United States is that song lyrics: 'amber waves of grain' and 'purple mountains majesty'. I think that the mountains are not purple until the grain is amber. Do you have any thoughts about this? -- carol 01:09, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

No, my mind is a complete tabula rasa on that topic. ++Lar: t/c 04:20, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

tab reset for tabula rasa

tabula rasa was a very new two words for me, together and separate so I went to wikipedia to read about those two words together. It is the most psychology that I have read in a long long while, choosing instead (I guess) to be victimized by psychology or to try not to be. I find it difficult to believe that this black art is still alive especially since none of that matters. I am going to review what I read before commenting on it too much, but I find it interesting that every description of some psychological this or that inevitably ends with "we don't know about racism and genderism". They cannot know until racism and gender is taken out of the economics. The difficult differences that I always saw seemed to me more about 1)whatever drug had been ingested or 2)ease of life due to economic stature. Ohho, then that stupid bell curve again. I need to get back to reading about just that thing you mentioned. But that bell curve is something. It was with a strong feeling that I went through college being the 'C' that I started to write articles about the 'science of biology' (I say this sarcastically). Being a 'C' in the study of physics is very different than being the 'C' in the study of physics. And there is another thing that the psychologists do not speak much about, the differences in goals among similar people.

"Profiles" are written by psychologists? They need for racism and genderism to exist to have anything at all to talk about. Does it live with anyone except the psychology artists? Blah blah blah blah blip blop. I can't say enough about how much most of that doesn't exist and if it does exist, the method of controlling the environment to make it work probably needs to have the observers to be the observed because of the wrongness of it and the wrongness of a brain that would put such a thing into place.

Anyways, I moved my pages somewhat because I had forgotten that those snake-oil salesmen were still around.

The preceeding has been a raw reaction. Do not fill your blank mind with it. Thanks -- carol 06:06, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Please do not be involved with that game. -- carol 06:13, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Needs flames

Done. Ben Aveling 10:52, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Very nice! I should poke around and see if vidars flame plug-in is still online somewhere. He wrote that with script-fu, if I remember correctly, I don't think that python was available for GIMP yet. Python shouldn't be just about snakes and cheese....

Hmm.... -- carol 11:09, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Lol! Cute. Durova 19:16, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Well...

Happy New Year Carol. Your well-jokes/puns are, though not very appropriate at that place, actually quite funny. Lycaon 10:57, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Well some are deeper than others. Happy month=01 to you as well. -- carol 11:07, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

PITA ?

Sorry Carol
english is not my mother language so for PITA I just found that. What does it mean exactly ?
For my QI candidate picture I just expected an answer about the quality. A lot of images about living species are put in the gallery of the species page, and this species page is the one categorized. That was the rule explained somewhere.

When I first started to do things here, the first thing that I was told is that the commons is not the place for documentation. I thought about that suggestion and it made sense to me. Then, a short while after that, categories that I was making were being reverted without mentioning it to me or discussion. I was trying to upload a huge and awesome stash of images that I had found so the reverts to what I was doing in my mind still were just plain rude. The category I was making were not correct (even though in many many many ways they made sense) and the person making the reversions ended up being a person who had opinions more than rules. And, the uncat template being placed on orphaned images is kind of proof of that.

Image descriptions (complete image descriptions) are great though -- I just had the awesome experience of having a large group photograph image mapped so that the faces are wikilinked to the names here. So, there is perhaps a fine line between documentation and image description. Often, I find the image that fits my needs better in the Category and not on the gallery. There are also a lot of gallery which include only one image. -- carol

There are a lot of suggestions that will be given to you. If you want your uploads to remain unmarked, it is best to put them into a category and to use the description template and to do whatever you can to make it easy to understand what the image is about and easy for people to find it -- that is my suggestion. I am certain that there will be plenty of other suggestions given to you. You could try this though, try to categorize 25 or 100 of the images that have been given the {{uncat}} template. I think that you will have your own opinions after that. -- carol 05:01, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

This way is much better so you may order the pics on the species page and write a caption. Sometimes I have uploaded pics and directly categorized in the family. Then people in charge of maintenace have removed it and just put the picture in the gallery of the species page instead. --B.navez 04:04, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Heh. I like pita bread. Image:Fladenbrot-1.jpg is pita bread. PITA is an acronym for some english words that when used together are a phrase that most people who live in United States and Canada (and perhaps Mexico by now as well -- making it all of North America) understand to mean a problem that is unpleasant to solve. Here is an example of use "Pita bread is a PITA to make." And I guess that it is because it seems to be rolled very thin and my guess is that baking time/temperature is very specific.

There is software that gets used on the image collection here that searches to see if the image has been Categorized or not. The software is somewhat not so intelligent that it doesn't know that there are some templates that add category to the image pages. I spent a week or so trying to determine the category for several of the images that are found in the uncategorized category, that week was more interesting than fun. I think that me and a few others got that group of images to be less than 1000 images and that probably lasted only for a few hours. I was told when I first started to do things here that there is an average upload of 3000 images a day to the collection here. Managing that number of images is almost impossible, managing most of them is a great goal.

There is or was or maybe is or was a little bit of a battle between people who want the images to go into galleries and people who want images to go into categories. I personally prefer Category because I can more easily see the file size and the Galleries are difficult to manage and when you are sorting through a lot of images, being able to paste a Category to the page and test it with the preview makes sorting go a lot faster.

That is too many words maybe for a non-native English speaker. What is your native language? And is there a similar phrase to what the acronym PITA in your native language? Also, I am confused because I thought I saw that you were active on English Wikipedia. -- carol 04:47, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

@B.navez There is no one 'in charge of maintenance', no one has more right than any other to determine categorization etc. But some people working on the tree of life project have their own ideas about how images should be categorized (or not categorized) which are different from the Commons standard (whether it is better or not, it is different, and so causes continuous conflict). Fortunately they mainly operate in the plants categories - so just don't bother categorizing plants ;-). I agree with Carol that the description is a most important thing - images can be added and subtracted from categories and galleries by anyone, but it is almost always the uploader of the image who actually knows all the details of the image and can give it a good description. The search facilities will find it if it has a good description even if it is not categorized or filed or named properly :-) --Tony Wills 12:41, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your piece of education about how baking PITA : of course it was not in my lesson book. Now I feel better and more instructed. In french we could just say "emmerdant", I suppose.

I am not against categorization, it is often very useful. Though I am not convinced of its utility for the biological species. But I let everyone categorize my uploadings if it brings some facilities. Of course, good description (what or who, where, when, ...) is the most important thing and I think I do it rather seriously. You may check on my contributions.

I just find lack of category is not an argument when judging quality images candidates if description or gallery putting is good on the other hand.

However, I have categorized the picture. Could now someone make an opinion about my proposed picture ? I have another version more tightly cropped. Image:Anacridium melanorhodon arabafrum 2b.JPG

Happy new year 2008

--B.navez 13:44, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

That is a great image of a locust -- do they train them to maintain that classic pose? I think that begonia needed a little more water though.... -- carol 18:19, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Image:Dornberger-Axter-von_Braun.gif

Hi. You're name came up in a recent undeletion. Please see: Commons:Undeletion_requests/Current_requests#Image:Dornberger-Axter-von_Braun.gif. Regards, Fred J (talk) 22:35, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Can you believe that this is not the first mistake that I have made? There is an interesting condition that seems to exist in this new millennium in which there is no one who has made mistakes before except for me. Do you think that this condition will persist? -- carol 03:09, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I am sorry that you are sorry, that you are sorry about being sorry for this sorry mistake. I am pretty sure I have made mistakes this millennium before you - I had a head start as we are probably at least 16 hours ahead and got to the new millennium before you (on 1st Jan 2001, although many celebrated a year earlier for some reason) --Tony Wills 21:43, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

My favorite disc jockey from Detroit -- got fired for not playing a certain artist during a pledge drive (it was not worth the $250 that they lost). His complaints about life and his taste in music were beautiful; he had strong opinions and a 2 or 3 hour radio show of mostly music. The millennium starting at the wrong year was one of his finer rants; he was ranting about that in the eighties already -- and often. One day, I was listening to him in my car (while driving) and in one of the music breaks he started ranting because someone had called and suggested that he listen to and consider playing an artist who had just made it to a more mass audience. He had been playing this artist for 10 years or so. His rant was exquisite; he said something about how there were some occasions in which the phone cannot be hung up quick enough or loud enough (or something like that). Uncontrollable laughter is not the best attitude to manage while driving a couple of tons of vehicle (which may or may not have had a completely functioning brake system at the time). I might have had to pull over to get over that broadcast. There is a Dave Dixon dent in my brain where my music tastes are. It has the grooves perhaps of some of the vinyl I listened to with the headphones running across the dent and sparkling with some cd diffraction grating as well. He was a huge man so that dent is kind of ugly. He has been dead for more than 10 years now and I am still sorry he is gone. This world is not a better place without Dave Dixon in it. I am the guilty kind of sorry as well, because I am sorry that I did not have the $250 it would have (perhaps) taken to save his job there. -- carol 02:42, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

† Names of recording artists mentioned in this text can be provided.

about being sorry for stuff

Heh, there are as many different flavors of sorrow as there are different kinds of snow. Waitress/waiter sorry, where they really are sorry that your meal did not appear when or as expected (10 years of experience there and I know that no one cares about the real reason); the sorrow that is like empathy where the expression of it is not a claim of responsibility or guilt but more like a 'you have a bad situation that I either remember or can guess is not so good' and then there is the 'I am sorry that I did that'.

This is that sorry which is due to the fact that I did something wrong. Look at this masterpiece. When I deleted that other image, I interfered with this kind of work. I think that I have helped some with templates and stuff, but the deletion was sheer interference and I am the guilty flavor of sorry. -- carol 02:42, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I don't really care about sorries and mistakes... Just as long as the problem is fixed :-)

Take care, Fred J (talk) 00:27, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Image:Shaggy_Hawkweed.jpg

Image deletion warning

Image:Shaggy_Hawkweed.jpg has been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether it should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this image, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it, such as a copyright issue. In all cases, please do not take the deletion request personally. It is never intended as such. Thank you!

Carl Lindberg 23:34, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Image:Foureur outils.jpg

Yo are right, but you should know that the rotatebot only works on images that have to be rotated (a multiple of) 90 degrees. So, no problem. - Erik Baas 16:00, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I am in complete agreement with you about that. I really should know that. -- carol 02:52, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

;-) - Erik Baas 23:55, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Flipped image

I wouldn't have noticed it myself, had I not tried to read the text of the painting. :-) Who knows how many images (not to mention Commonists) in Commons are flipped in their turn? ;-) --User:G.dallorto 16:02, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Not just here, but almost everywhere else, and on some days more than others -- I think it is easier to count the things/images/peoples imagination that are not flipped or skewed. ;) -- carol 02:56, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Image:5210 - Near Eigergletscher Station.JPG

Sometime before tomorrow I am going to oppose this image at QI. The reason is that at least for these last few days, I have been trying to keep images from being deposited wherever QIBot puts unassessed images and because the light on the rocks is too harsh in the image, maybe a few other things.

I enjoyed reading the wikipage about the piles of rocks though and I was wondering if you know what purpose this pile had. While sorting through the QI nominations, I kind of enjoyed putting the ancient pylon thing into the Optics gallery along with the more modern stuff that is already there.

To me, a marker for a grave site or an accident is a different kind of interesting than a marker for astronomical purposes or early attempts at surveying. In the upper peninsula of Michigan, the last time I went through there, a bunch of hippies had been there a little before then and there were piles of rocks (not this intricate) all around that they had built. Those were cool as well, but for a different reason than the ones I mentioned earlier.

I am asking this about that image because I was going to place it on the article but it is not as good as others that are there, unless you could honestly report what its purpose for existing was. -- carol 04:09, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Alas, there's nothing too fancy for it: the cairn's purpose is just for wayfinding during snowy conditions. Some of the rocks have red/white and blue/white markings sprayed on them for novice and expert trails, respectively. Of course, when it snows, the markings disappear -- so the rocks serve as the guide signs. Cheers! --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 05:38, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

QUITY time

Thanks for the inspired inside out, 10 pointed star-barn, if I ever build a barn I will nail it to the front to fend off evil spirits (or evil editors) ;-). I should perhaps upload some of the more colourful resin drops, that I photographed last year, they'd make interesting GIMP toys too.

Thanks for taking over the QI filing work, working for the Bot :-), I hadn't had to cope entirely on my own, (as you will have noted) your sparing partner User:Lycaon often chipped in to help when I was getting too far behind :-).

Believe it or not, it was not a take-over! Without actually looking the word community up, it makes me think of a bunch of people doing fun things and a few not fun things to make the local environment nicer. Kissing photographer-diva ass might not be the best thing towards making the local environment nicer. My assumption here is that they are putting their photographs here for the exposure instead of on their own web sites which might not get so much and where they would be responsible for maintenance and also for the purchase of bandwidth.

And about User:Lycaon -- I do not understand the reasons that text disappears from talk pages. Two now have done this -- and one of them removed it from my own talk page! The person who removed the simple howto that I left in my web site project in 2003 told me when I asked him that 'there were things that I did not understand'. I have a problem now in that occasionally I think before asking what should have perhaps been obvious questions. The person I mentioned, male, approximately 10 years younger than me, from a different country. This condescending answer burns in my brain now. The response I would like to give him is "TRY ME!" and my 'understanding' is the most taxed of those things that make a person human.

I am not going to discuss with you the parts about the community members all doing positive things though and I could see that you are well past the idea that the work would be shared. I did not look at the whole history even when I realized that you would probably be needing a break. Interestingly enough, the television that I have access to seems to be about the entertainment of others (like, if I smoke a cigarette while watching it -- the content changes). That is television that is being made for the entertainment of others and I am not very much interested in it. The closest thing to reality that has been in my life since being relocated to California is television. I am very sad about this, but I am much less sad than the situation is -- at least on the quality totals.

What would be really sad is if it became more entertaining to watch two contests completely break -- completely stop working and stop being able to claim credibility. That is entertainment!

I honestly did not become involved with GNU so that I would be spending my life cleaning up diva turds. I suspect that this was not your goal either -- I complain about the television here because there are two things, a television and my computer. It is not the life I was working for. It is not life and I did not do anything that was so bad that these should be my options. So, if it becomes entertaining to get you unstuck from the machine and to watch the machine collapse due to an excess of diva shit and no one who really has cares and respects -- then let the real entertainment begin!

These wiki communities are certainly interesting. On the whole a very interesting philosophy, but there always seems to be an increasing bureaucratic element. Driven largely, I think , by people not having enough time to do what they want in a considered way. So short cuts develop, people (or worse, Bots) plaster notices on peoples talk pages as though they are legal notifications, images are nominated for deletion in bulk, images are deleted by rules of thumb, work is undone without analysis of the work that will be lost. We seem to be under the illusion that we have free images and unfree ones and spend a lot of time nit picking when we in fact have no real proof that any images here are free - declarations by people using assumed names (handles?), OTRS emails of slightly better provenance. People are judged on past history and 'convictions' rather than judging each action on its merits. Whole swathes of work are destroyed and people discouraged rather than having their energies channelled into something else.

And perhaps there are other situations here where a few people who really meant what they said are being left alone to clean up diva shit. I would have preferred to share this work with you when it still could be shared.

I often think that we should turn the objectives of these wikis on their head. We should not have a goal of producing a free media bank (or whatever the goal is here :-), we should have goals of growing co-operative communities as the first consideration. Commons is perhaps still small enough, en:wikipedia is far too big. There are then many projects that these communities can apply themselves to. But the core goal is the maintenance of that community.

I am not a documentation writer. The little bit of writing that I did was really honestly driven by a desire to give certified/degreed 'scientists' a chance a humility as I have had an excess of this experience myself and most of it has been good. (Or what reason would that still be a goal or an obstacle?)

The trouble with the current model is that the project goals are seen as the higher priority, goals which can never be reached - wikipedia can never be 'finished' (it will no doubt wither some day, but never completed), Commons can continue to grow forever (unless the universe stops), there will never be a media bank of everything, let alone a media bank in which everything it contains is documented and filed to 'perfection', and every item is shown to be free. Never completed so long as the world continues, images are uploaded, laws change, people breath. We can't even mark asingle image as completed, {{This image page is finished and will never need changing}}. But we work even harder, every faster, automate 'tasks', trying to get ahead, trying to catchup, I don't know what.

To me, elite is not when you use your permissions to alter the history so that you appear elite.

At the point that you can formulate your goals, they can be automated as well -- then there are no people and the system can probably be easily hacked. I don't think that a computer will ever replace what a thoughtful human being can do. They are beautiful calculators.

So what if we had a model where the community was the purpose, the goals are to sustain the community and nurture its members, getting the best out of each, finding satisfying ways for them to contribute? All too warm and fuzzy ? ;-). The community can then set itself tasks (eg creating a media bank).

It would have been nice if you still have some enthusiasm left towards helping with the bot turds. Although, since 2003 all that I have learned is that you do not make friends while working together -- it just felt good on my end. Or even worse, that people who work with me (that is do some of the fun stuff and do some of the not fun stuff) make a friend but that I don't. It becomes very difficult to work for a community who only get together to show you up and pick apart everything ever attempted. I am speaking of things from years ago now.

Do you ever get the feeling that the showboats can only show that it is easier to purchase a mate/work partner, give them a false background and get a better consensus than it is to get a mostly proven qualified person through?

It takes a certain amount of balls (regardless of gender) to use your own name on the internet(s). I am assuming that Tony Wills is your name. There is an impressive lack of balls but no lack of strong opinions shown on the internet.

I don't know that it would 'work', it would be less 'focused', 'less directed' to achieving a tangible completed result ... these thoughts are a work in progress :-) --Tony Wills 23:09, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

The people who can actually accomplish things -- often they do not have a voice. I have a difficult time forming the words which ask for help and enough pride and belief that it also causes an interference in the ability to communicate when I need help with something. Did Lycaon notice that you needed help or did you ask? -- carol 05:19, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

• I am not very good at delegating, or asking people to do things for me. And I can be a bit of a 'control freak', and check others work, which takes more time than doing it myself :-). But after watching your mastery in dealing with QICBots offerings, I am happy to let you take over :-). When I started playing the QIC game everything was being done manually (all promotions etc), a bit of a pain. QICBot has certainly cut that work down to size. The CR section is still all manual though - although I expect that QICBot can probably handle CR promotion etc now, if we just change the format a little, I might inquire :-). The person who was doing a lot of the QI janitor work was foolish enough to leave an edit summary suggesting that others should help. For his recklessness he got me. I am happy to share the 'work' with you, if you don't want the joy of having full control :-).

Who was that person?

I never ever wanted full control. Real life experiences that I have had have been more in steering people while I was in "control" -- not in dictating their every move. When I was working for someone, I used to get very angry when the expectations were that the underlings follow the rules but the overlords don't have to. It seems that all of my chances to make that work have been delegated to people who are good enough because maybe I am not perfect. Me and whatever people who were working with me, we did not always get our jobs done the way the people in charge would have liked it to be done -- but those people often seemed to be more theorists than experienced. The job usually involved selling things and having people to come back to buy more and pretty much always, regardless of the lack of staff or whatever -- those last two real goals were achieved. I was pretty good with delegation. I did not sit on the phone while my staff had long lines either. The last place that I worked preferred this and that girl became my boss. It doesn't seem much like capitalism where the goal is to sell things and have those buyers come back for more. I wonder how many people were dishonest about what the real goals were? I have no problem delegating, I even was pretty good at spotting talent.

I would not have let someone like me rot in a subdivision in California. I might be a rotten little troll by now. Sad business, and here all along, I knew how to delegate and work with a team of people.

When the girl started to write the book for GIMP, I took my web site down. I started with that group as a team player. Then, they brought in another girl and I took my web site down again. They bring in people who cannot work as a team, it seems. It starts to stink like, well, like an unaccomplished child has stolen your life and is running away with it. They made this weird thing where it was a husband and a wife and the developer who was adoring the wife. If I paste the url, I think that the spam starts and it makes the bad situation seem more and more real. I did not build something like that nor want to be in something like that. Sometimes, my sadness is unbearable about it all.

Your kind nature and your example (like I think that you had to fix what I had done the first and second time I tried) is probably the closest internet example of what I did in my real life to work with people and get them to learn whatever job and to enjoy it even. Getting to know the people I worked with and the people who frequented the live locations is something that annonymity has made impossible to do on the internet -- but in a real life, knowing that this employee cannot stand that one customer and oh, hell -- there was a retirement community across the street at that last place; so knowing which little old ladies and little old men needed the extra attention or whatever.... I was much better at teamwork than I have been at watching my ideas walk out the door and at not having a team. Can you imagine that?

One thing that I was very bad at was populating the 'technical merit' sections, which I note you do quite well (I presume you noticed that an individual image can of course go in multiple sections, so it can go in the technical merit and subject areas at the same time).

I didn't do such a good job at that, btw. I read the archived promotion -- if it said composition then I put it there. Once, I put an image in composition because there were too many place images or whatever that time.

I think when I started the mode of operation was to put images onto the QI page, then archive them into the sub-pages when finished with. But I found many images had accidentally missed out on being archived, so I just started the 'belt & braces' method of sticking them on the main page and sub pages at the same time, so nothing ever got missed. The categories were apparently copied over from FP, so we ended up with 'Historical' (ie FP= old B&W images) and 'Astronomical' (ie FP = NASA) which don't really fit. I never put anything under 'Proportion' either (I don't really think every pano should have ended up there). We should probably do a make-over and add things like 'Works of art', and do away with 'Historical' and 'Astronomical'. But then we should probably remake the system - I wonder if anyone actually looks at the QI subpages, and if so, why?

I had a different work flow. I filled the images into the big galleries and then I filled in the little ones and erased them as I went. I did not like the two bugs mating. I had a chuckle when trying to communicate that and I got a little chuckle everytime I left them there and the idea of leaving them there for the next eight months until somebody had sympathy for me was starting to be not that funny any more.

• I might propose doing away with the QI sub pages as even with the best will, and sporadic attempts, they need much more structure and continuous sorting to make them useful. If people want QI images on a particular topic they are probably better off using catscan. So I think if we maintain the main QI page, to show off what you think are the results of a corrupt and self serving process :-), and set up a bot to trawl through pages putting a little QI or FP logo next to images on gallery pages we will probably have all we need.

  I agree with you on the subpages. It is not worth the effort. And to do it better you need more domain knowledge that is reasonable to expect that a generalist moving a batch of images should have. For the VI proposal, (you have been very silent in the debate regarding this lately), I was actually thinking about not moving the images to a VI page at all, such have them added to a Category:Valuable Images and then let a bot add a small VI logo to VIs on gallery pages. Just to keep it simple...and I also propose doing the CRs inline without changing the template. -- Slaunger 13:18, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Are those covered bugs really considered to be crustaceans btw? TOL is quite foobar!

• What do you think of the 'valuable images' proposal?

I like it -- it too will degrade into a claptrap though (where the cuddles and kuddos become unreasonably appealing and important; given to some who are good enough and not to others because they are not perfect). I think that I am misusing that word 'claptrap' but the two separate words work. I am even afraid to look it up....

To upload a great image and to share it is the reward. As I mentioned earlier, I have had a 45 year lesson in humility, if it was good for me, it has to be good for others.

• FP & QI and POTD and even POTY are just projects setup by a few people, and don't have a huge significance. As I have said in a previous debate, getting QI and FP tags is more about ones interest in participating in the QIC/FPC process and pandering to the voters/reviewers, than it is about good photography. It's similar to IQ - IQ is not a measure of intelligence, but a measure of ones ability and interest in passing IQ tests. IQ may be correlated to all sorts of things, but even if it does correlate with intelligence it probably doesn't with wisdom :-). An image getting QI/FP may relate to the image's good qualities and even the ability of the photographer, but the only thing it definitely relates to is the ability of the nominator to get images tagged QI/FP :-). I think too many people give too much significance to these tags :-)

I enjoy the images in the rss feed, or I did. There will be some in there now that make me consider not getting the feed. The image that I uploaded that I listed there was not to be in that feed, btw. That one fact might have been overlooked. My goal was to put a better image where the first one had been. I am less interested in English Wikipedia image of the day, btw. I have to make a special effort to look at it and quite often I don't or I forget to. That is the simple fact of really simple syndication. Also, the really simple syndication which only puts urls into the feed -- I rarely use them.

It was the sound of POTY when I read it in my mind that made me write about it on my web site. Perhaps it sounds like 'party' if read with an english accent, but with an American accent -- it doesn't sound like a party. That stupid image, I really did (really really really and honestly) redo the renovation because I thought that the one that was there was pathetic. I could have used Photoshop to do that, I could have used Paint Shop Pro to do that. Clone tooling is a fairly simple paint operation and the idea that one application can do a better job of it than another is something out of kindergarten or preschool maybe.

• I think some of your actions in the QIC pages are approaching trolling, I think you've made your point and I think people know that you were upset by other's actions. Yes, you can point out the faults with the QIC/FPC games, but there is no need to try and bring them down - leave those who enjoy them to play that game. Just like with other GNU type projects there is the joy of forking - if you don't like something, start your own fork ('Honest images' :-), no need to undermine other projects. If people agree they will join you, if they don't, well you gave them the chance :-)

I started with a lot of respect for the images that I saw going through both of those whatever they are. I was looking for images that would be suitable and interesting for that plug-in. I actually was trolling for good images -- depending on how that word is defined.

If the way to 'bring them down' is to get the one person who is cleaning the bot turds to stop doing that and then not clean the bot turds myself -- it deserved to fall. The participants might return one day and be more like perfect instead of just 'good enough'.

Long before GNU and software and before I had access to a computer that I could 'attempt' to control, there is a problem in that I am not perfect but others are good enough. I suggest that those who are good enough have reduced me to a troll. Indeed, the situation that caused me to enjoy filling a summer with finding images to feed that plug-in with is one in which I was not perfect but others were good enough.

My life was taken from me. Not my bodies ability to breathe, eat and that life -- but the people I knew and the stuff I had collected and the good (not perfect) stuff I did in both my day job and my volunteer job. The people who pillaged and used my web site mechanism -- is it typical to discard the people who did the things and got the people together?

So, once my respect is gone, it becomes my goal to do what I can to debunk the 'good enough' on the chance that those who were 'not perfect' might get the life they made and their stuff back. Or, not erased from the project(s) they helped to build. Me included.

When you said something about uploading more resin images for GIMP toys, I had to wonder if the inuendo was intentional. It was not the kind face that most of your communication has. The fact is that Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro both come in boxes. The software GIMP, doesn't. I am really sick of the abuse of the name. It was intended, perhaps, for a more intelligent group of people.

Things are so wrong here, locally. One day recently in this area of very very stable and predictable weather -- I was baking a cake. I was going to geocode it and I was going to put it in the park (it was raining and the rain was scheduled to last through the next day) and get a photograph of it. It was to be a reference for old people and I had to explain it to the unaccomplished yet 'good enough' child who 'gets things', 'knows people' and 'goes places' here. The rain cleared right up as the cake was baking. Tonight, he mentioned Panama and look what I found sitting on the help desk. If I do not speak to that person, then there is nobody. My mental state is good enough that I will not invent an imaginary friend to speak with. Things are wrong here; it is not life and it is not living.

As far as what I have been doing lately with QI, I have been treating it like a game of Tetris. Trying not to let good images go away and trying to keep the unaccessed good images before they go where hardly anyone looks. If thinking that Richard Bartz is using the contest to make a dumb joke about linux not being ready for the desktop over and over and over again makes me a troll -- look at the conditions that caused me to think that. The images were good and I really think that they could be cropped and color adjusted to use for both the desktop and for documentation.

I really don't think Lycaon wants that image to be in a collection of good images. If he does, then I suggest that he has lost respect for the quality there as well.

• As for real names, I couldn't possibily confirm nor deny :-), but I have used that name for a while and I can find some of my posts going back to 1987 on the web. There are quite a few douple-gangers out there, who are not me (even at least one photographer who is rather better than me). If someone wanted to they could probably piece together my involvement in various things over two decades. --Tony Wills 12:54, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

The Quality of troll that I am is astounding, if you would like to know the real truth. I awoke in 2002 and heard the election results and Gore had won. I went back to sleep. When I woke up again, Bush had won. I actually don't believe that George Bush is the President even. So, when I approach something with respect and that respect gets lost -- the level of troll that I have to supress is one that doesn't believe anything from the last six years. -- carol 16:28, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

the less of this

• This discussion is a little fragmented, so here are some responses together, probably in the wrong order :-)

My reference to GIMP toys was not at all derisive, I am an advocate of open-source and Linux. And use GIMP on this Linux box (Ubuntu at the moment). I have always looked at computers as intellectual toys. But I've never had time to properly learn how to use GIMP, let alone explore its possibilities.

What gave itself the name of v753g2-86? Computers are beautiful calculators. Some calculators run better than others, some come with software pre-installed, some have a cult following. They are just beautiful calculators.

I think a bit of new blood, and a review of standards in FP and QI is great. But the bite and sting of some critiques blinds people to the message, damn things gently and see if it is better received :-)

I think the standards and the goals are fine.

I had what I consider to be my best image Declined gently in QI. Being totally ignored (the name that did not ignore it can easily be read as 'been having a fling') in FP was at best a funny situation. "WE ARE TOUGH, CODDLE US!" is difficult to mastermind -- at least for me. I will try to look for some examples of how to do this to follow.

Waking up with George must be an unpleasant experience (does anyone still admit to voting for him ;-)

It is unbelievable. Many many other things have hit the believability shoot since then as well. For example, right before Bill Clinton had his little sex scandal, it was all about Hillary's healthcare plan. I started thinking about the simple and adding things up and it occurred to me that it was perhaps a money maker to have a sex scandal, especially if there was not actually a healthcare plan. The car that used to be known as a Yugo turning into a Ford Festiva around that time and from that war seems to weave in and around that healthcare/scandal story very nicely as well. The country whose government and history I studied and was proud to live in does not exist right now either.

I watched C-SPAN for a while. O'Bama's name kept scrolling then saying that he was going to be announcing his election. I don't think that anything was actually happening in the offices of our well paid and influential congresses. People were announcing football scores from what seemed to be small towns who had maybe lost track of their hometown newspapers that used to do that. And this is what Congress was doing when I watched. I don't believe in the candidates which are running right now either. Too many things were not happening there.

I wouldn't cry too much about images that fall off the end of QIC, there's nothing to say people can't resubmit images and certainly ones that fall into the un-assessed category should be given another go. I noted that when I started back in Feb last year that QI had been slow over January, fewer people about on Commons perhaps?

I myself feel unassessed or wrongly assessed. I also feel misclassified and that I have been put into the wrong category or even worse, that the system I was misclassified within is itself very broken. I was looking for a goal which would be as impartial as could be. It feels good to not let images just drop through.

I don't think you are actually trolling, you make many good points, and obviously have good photographic and graphics experience and judgement. Whether Commons will satisfy your needs in terms of recognition/fulfilment/stimulation etc I don't know, I am still wondering after almost a year here. Too much time, is the project worth it? Is it good return for the time I put in (waste?) ... it's 3am, time to get some slep :-) --Tony Wills 14:15, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

The trolling that I have done I think was a reaction to the way that words have more than the obvious meaning. Trawling -- I did that last summer and the catch was good. I am well past needing recognition and fullfillment. I am not going to get this in California -- I don't even want it here. I needed an automobile because where I worked was miles away and the public transportation ceased before those places did. Here, a child drives what was a brand new car about a half a mile though what is not ever much worse than a drizzle of rain, in a state proud of its public transit stuff and checks me on my facts and tells me whatever crap he wants to make up. It used to be because I did not get my degree. There will always be a reason like that, I am convinced of this.

This is the internet -- perhaps you are him even. I do not like this life -- how do you not become a troll in it when the people who accuse you of this are anonymous and able to troll themselves? My idea when I got started was that my real life would gently change (not come to a screeching halt the way it did in November 2003) and my internet life would also gently change. This did not happen. I would like to take this wikithing and everything that I did and do more seriously but doing that fails and fails and fails.

I am not trolling -- I am trying to be impartial online and live/stay (because I don't think that there is much real life here) in a world that makes no sense. None whatsoever. I am sorry about this or do I need to apologize for this? Also, it doesn't seem to matter what I do. Do a fairly good job at my paid work, do a fairly good job at my volunteer thing -- people catch me making real human mistakes and it becomes an unpassable issue for me. If you cannot achieve a success in either of the two economic models you are working in -- is that what gives people the perception of a troll? My mom once said that communism (and flavors of it) failed because there was no incentive. Capitalism failed for me that way. It did not matter how much the goal of sales and people returning for more sales was achieved, the incentive of advancement was not there ever for me as it was for others. I look back at the money I made for my hard work and it adds up to be enough to pay bills with just a little allowance left over. The income had nothing to do with success. The income that I see others get has nothing to do with success or skills.

Who was the person that you took over for? -- carol 18:56, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Timeout

Hi Carol, I think your message sometimes get messed up by aggression. Often your critiques come across as valid, but highly loaded. Sometimes this is perhaps just from context or history rather than an individual post. For instance I can see each of your actions re Antidorcas marsupialis as reasonable, and I can see you have even toned down earlier remarks. I can see that the actions of others regarding this nomination were provocative and things weren't handled well by many concerned (including me). I hope you will take a breather (there is no hurry :-), and we can get this nomination discussion back onto an even keel :-) --Tony Wills 12:43, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Heh, all I can see is that there was one photograph that I did not like from that photographer. I could reword that list and make it 'mine' but it was a good review and caused a withdrawal in the other thing.

The previous comment about 'comedy' was perhaps unfitting though. --Tony Wills 13:08, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

The nomination and the subsequent withdrawal made me laugh. Was that rude? It is not a very good photograph. It has focus and it has a lot of other good things but everything that was said about it was correct. -- carol

I looked at your bumble bee. I am wondering if you can make a claim about the noise the same as the CA on these crustaceans. And are they really crustaceans? -- carol 12:50, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Apparently they are Crustacea, they just crawled out of the sea a long time ago (probably well before our ancestors). We call those beasts 'slaters' around here. One year (long, long ago when I was young ;-) a quail or similar bird turned up at our house, quite tame, and for some reason it loved eating those things, so we went around the garden turning over stones etc for it to have a feast.

When I was reconsidering if those were actually crustaceans or not, I thought about that sea horse which is also in the QI collection. It seems as much like a real horse as those bugs are like shrimp and I started to think that maybe some biologists were making fun of people here....

In the last few months, I have eaten 3 halves of raw quail eggs. I think that feeding quail must be a good thing because the eggs were delicious. -- carol

Do you agree about the irrelevance of background noise/focus/exposure ? --Tony Wills 13:08, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

When I looked at the photograph of the bumblebee there was some noise on the wing and on the leg. It did not seem to be that much and I prefer the original.

The word noise has so much meaning -- it becomes very difficult to separate the image from life conditions. For instance, I write too much on the computer and that is noise except it is optional to read and unless you are using voice simulation software, it is not noisy. It is a very quiet neighborhood here; with the occasional noisy cellphone users (there does seem to be a need for constant reinforcement -- ie, talking to friends on phones or even worse perhaps making it appear as if talking to friends on phones) passing by. Having spent more than two decades actually seeing perhaps more than a hundred people a week -- I humbly suggest that the noise should be expected and that the mental health of the people who put me into this situation should be checked and then perhaps rechecked and even the evaluation methods for checking mental health be rethought. Or, the suggestion of noise is being occasionally misinterpreted by me.

The world was a better place to me when people could have a smoke at intermissions and chat with the people they went to the show with -- this world where people make phone calls at intermissions -- it seems somewhat sad like that it would be better to die slowly from smoking cigarettes than it would be to be in need of such constant telecommunication.

Then this background stuff. The image we are talking about has no background problems. Actually looking at an image and evaluating how the pixels are presented is one thing. If it is a suggestion that people have background problems -- I am curious about the specifics. I probably have a better handle on the things that I have done wrong than what anyone else has. Especially in this day and age where it is really easy to manipulate pixel images. In those decades of having hundreds of people in my life, weekly, I rarely investigated what those people had done before we shared that little bit of time and space together, beyond what might come up in the conversation. I have done this on the internet as well. It is friends and family who have 'hurt' me the most as well, so, I am uncertain if the further investigation of strangers would have changed these facts. -- carol 17:20, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Image:Street light-hrad bratislava.JPG

Yes, they are electric lights :) Pudelek 18:16, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I honestly was not and still am not able to tell the difference. Heh! Thanks -- carol 04:00, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Truce

Hi Carol. I've noticed what happened to Tomascastelazo. I don't want this to happen to you or myself. Truce? Let's get along. Lycaon 23:08, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I am uncertain how to do this. I can say (or type into an html generating software) this with great certainty because it is unclear to me that we were in need of a truce; with the exception of the erasure of things I wrote and with a few hints that perhaps I hurt your feelings.

I can tell you what you need to do to get along with me. Just be yourself. You were an interesting contributor long before any communications transpired between me, you and others here.

It occurred to me rather late in all of the 'action' here that the image of the bird running from the dip in the road of yours that I love so much -- that the bird is supposed to be me perhaps since the college that I have not graduated from is EMU. I cannot speak for everyone who attends that college either now or in the past, but being that it is located in Michigan and this bird has only been recently introduced to some farms there -- it never occurred to me that I was this bird. Should I apologize for this? It is a very funny funny image and I tend to be more jealous that you were in a situation to get the photograph and had the whatever it is on the inside to use the camera to get the photograph.

I am sorry about Tomascastelazo. When that photograph of the volcano went up in FP, was it Dori who suggested that the guide in the 'graph looked lonely? In the reading was the mention that his images were being used in psychology books. My decision on how to handle all of that 'input' from the FP 'regulars' was to consider that they were all very used to being successful home computer/internet psychologists and to enjoy these masters at work instead of being too worried about the fact that 'people with home computers have mastered the "art" of psychology'. Was this a bad approach to take with a bunch of 'regulars'?

There is indeed a large area of real life perhaps where fiction and fact overlap. It is really good to sit back sometimes and ask yourself if you would really like/enjoy/need the fictional people and situations; at least it has been for me.

Perhaps you could give me some instructions about how I might better participate in a truce with you?

Also, Dori seemed to understand the 'real things that were going on here' much better than me -- should I get Dori's opinion about the changes to Tomascastelazo's user page so I might better understand the psychology/reality of the regular contributing and accepted photographers here? They seemed to need each other to make the complete message about that one particular image -- at least to me and my limited and recent review of the goings on here. -- carol 03:54, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Image:Dunes and Lake MI 20060925142822.JPG

---

Hello, and thank your for sharing your files with Commons. There seems to be a problem regarding the description and/or licensing of this particular file. Please remember that all uploads require source, author and license information. Could you please resolve these problems, which are described on the page linked in above? You can edit the description page and change the text. Uploading a new version of the file does not change the description of the file. This page may give you more hints on which information may be missing. Thank you.

This message was added automatically by Filbot, if you need some help about it, ask its master or go to the Commons:Help desk. --Filnik 11:47, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Villa in Katowice

Hello! Thank You for editing my photo of villa in Katowice, but I have question for You: what do You mean by 'Needs more work'? What's wrong? It think that edited version is good enought for QI... --Lestat 10:15, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

The gradients that were used for the skies -- it was a quick mock up for me and not what I consider to be a detail minded thing. Even in the thumbnail, I am uncomfortable with the gradient blend used on the left side -- for instance -- carol 10:18, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Hey... care to join?

Go to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Image:Catrinas_2.jpg#Image:Catrinas_2.jpg and see what you think.

--Tomascastelazo 23:37, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Lately, I am impressed with the small shades of color differences that I can see with my eyes. This discussion of laws is almost the same thing -- but not.

Also, one of the (probably) randomly delivered fortunes I saw today was a collection of first lines for really bad fiction and one of the lines was about how even after much medical scrutiny -- in the absence of tumor and other similar problem -- they had determined that Byron was just simply an asshole.

That and how much I love that image -- not only is my brain screwed up today as I first noted, I would really love for the image to remain here and would try to read that into any law about whether to keep it or not.

Here is something funny and quite different. I have the one souvenir from my too long stay here in California that anyone could ever possibly want. It is a bottle of water imported from Mexico. I cannot think of a better souvenir and my time here has made me loathe these two words but, it is really would be the top of the bottom as far as water is concerned -- don't you think? -- carol 06:30, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

3RR

Please see my response to you at Wikipedia:Village_pump (miscellaneous)#Question about the three reverts rule.

By the way, your user page says that you can contribute at a "basic level" in English. Clearly you are either a native or near-native English-speaker; en-1 would be for someone who can more or less read English and might not even be able to write it; you might want to change that template to something more appropriate. - Jmabel | talk 01:00, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I find it interesting -- an environment where you rank yourself. It is almost as interesting as an environment where other people rank you. I find it much more interesting that you were able to make your own decisions about this; interesting and promising.

Also, I recognize your name from the large number of uploads you have made from Seattle that I have seen in the new uploads stream. I should thank you perhaps for taking time from that to deal with issues of aggression on English Wikipedia. I really am confused (before I visit there today) because I thought that profanity was somewhat accepted (just calmly reverted) but responding badly to having your articles edited while you were working on them was good and appropriate cause for being banned. Is it that some aggressive behavior is accepted from some people? Sorry for my difficulty in finding the consistency. -- carol 06:09, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Please stop

Please stop uploading your edits over my photos. If you like you can upload them as a new file. --Digon3 ^talk 15:10, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for contacting me about this. I will not have any problem if you revert the images I uploaded; simply. Without communication, all I know how to do is to experiment with behavior.

Then you got Richard Bartz who tells people that it is commonly shared images and anything can be done to them.

I was honestly surprised when you withdrew your crystal image instead of reverting it. How come you did this that way? -- carol 15:20, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Please stop uploading your edits over my photos. Even more so when it interferes with an image assessment. Upload your edit - please - under a new image name, then it may be welcome. -- Klaus with K 16:40, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Sure. Can I upload a screenshot of how to revert such uploads for you? -- carol 16:47, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't mind letting my edits sit there in the history. -- carol 18:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

• I withdrew the crystal image because I didn't like the background (and DOF) I had and for some reason I could not revert back to the original. I welcome your edits to my photos, just upload them as "image:filename (edit)". --Digon3 ^talk 18:10, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

It was the software not working correctly? Or perhaps it was badwikiways? I can revert it (I think) if you need me to. -- carol 18:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I think admins can revert images properly (ie leave everything intact including uploader etc), I think ordinary users can revert, but it acts as though the reverting user has re-uploaded the image so it ends up in their gallery etc and shows as uploaded by them instead of the original author. Although anyone is free to modify images (as per required licenses) it usually saves a lot of grief if you upload changes as new images as very often the 'improvements' aren't appreciated (eg my own experience improved vs original :-). I think basically anyone who can upload images can use the 'revert' function, simply because they could do the same thing by re-uploading the earlier version anyway. --Tony Wills 21:48, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I have seen plenty of examples of both -- uploading a different version with the same name and uploading a different version with a different name. In FPC I saw a lot of "helpful" denoising and downscaling last summer and most of those uploads were to the same name/location. While transferring images from English Wikipedia, I have appreciated it when the original version was in the history. There were some color 'corrected' versions being displayed there that were terrible! Putting the tablecloth shadow on the rock was on a scale of destructive (0 being not so much and 10 being total damage for this one time use), about a 2 and I was surprised at how long it took to be reverted to the version that was in the history.

There are two things I think about almost all images that I retouch and upload. The first thing that I think before uploading is that I actually improved the look of the image. Any color manipulation tends to lose data, so I am really thankful that the original with all of the color information is still in the history because of the second thing that I think. In no way do I ever think that my version is or always will be the best.

Here is my example: Image:Wheat-haHula-ISRAEL2.JPG the image that was on display is here and the image that I used to make the version that is showing now is here. If the original had not been available, I would not have been able to repair it. It needed repair. The original is still there so that anyone with an idea that my repair is not good or that they can repair it better than I did, they have all of the original untouched information that was uploaded.

I have been mildy abusive sometimes. Rotating Richards grasshopper did not seem to hurt any feelings there and I still wait for it to be reverted. I marked the time that I figured out he was uploading images cropped for desktops though. I spent too many years waitressing and stuck between the front of the kitchen and the back of the kitchen and then selling mostly edibles to whoever wanted to shop (ie, no class or origin restrictions and no tags on people about what software they use) to not attempt this as a means to opening up communication or to see what it is that is going on here. -- carol 11:00, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

RE:Yikes

I noticed that there was additional help today with QIBot droppings and I thought, gee, isn't that nice.

Then, on another wiki, I discovered that it might not have been so nice -- that this person is one of them them in this case being major E&CAs! Such major versions of them that I haven't seen the descending part of the C in such need of a capital D in a very long time.

Where do I go from here!!!!? -- carol 18:11, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I have missed something here, your happy I moved some QICbot droppings around but is there something else I may have done that you dont like. can you please clarify either on my talk page or via email. Gnangarra 23:16, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

please can you explain, as I feel that I may have done something to upset you and dont know what it is? Gnangarra 11:10, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I am not upset, just my plans are. I have made some decisions about what to and not to do on other wiki. In this case, I am making my decision based on a movie Amadeus, the fictionalized story of Mozart and his 'enemy' Salieri. Mozart dies young and Salieri ends up in a sanitorium filled with 'mediocrity'. Which one would you rather be? -- carol 11:24, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd prefer to be compared more to Brahms. Gnangarra 13:51, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

The real comparison I made is much more complimentary than any Paul Schaffer fiction or than any long since dead composer and you will just have to trust me on that. heh. -- carol 08:26, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

{{NASA-image}}

Hi carol. Just to get this clear, I created the the NASA image specifically so that we are not dependant on NASA urls. As such you should not use it to include the original URL. I guess we could add URL paramaters if desired, but I was rather hope-ing to generate these automatically at one point in the future. TheDJ 20:06, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Heh, sorry. I was just trying to make the template work and look pretty. The images from history.nasa.gov -- they seem to remain in place and have no identification.

With great fondness for the template -- carol 06:34, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

This is the intended usage. A link to the source of the material, + the template that specifices the NASA Photo NO. The Photo NO. is not by definition specified in the URL (I know, its not logical, that's exactly what's wrong with the entire system that NASA is using). TheDJ 13:10, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Sure -- the template starts to look like a redundancy without function though, to me. However, I write this now with a slight hurt and feeling of injustice and a greatly amplified feeling of being pestered because I thought that I worked through everything correctly. It is the kind of thing that I get over with shortly after I speak or write something snippy about it.

The temptation to put a number into the template which could have the beginning of the url filled in for me at some time in the future was strong. I cannot come up with the correct terminology right now, but it would be nice to be able to put a NASA news article id into this or a similar template and get a url back for the effort. Thanks for looking it over. -- carol 15:01, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes I am still looking at the possibilities of that. It would be nice if it could do that. But it is a secondary goal of the template. It's primary goal is to track NASA photo ids. With these IDs, you could for instance visit NASA and get your hands on the exact original. So far it is just metadata, and not really sourcing-data, and whenever NASA decides to follow a logical system and merge all their different galleries and makes them searchable trough URLs instead of HTML POST forms, than hopefully these IDs can be used to generate "permanent" IDs. TheDJ 18:22, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

POTY points

With respect to your comments about the varying (and decreasing?) quality of FP images, what do you think of the results of the first round of voting for POTY 2007? I thought I would look for correlations between numbers of images getting support in POTY and recognition in other ways. Here is a table showing the photographic contributors (ie ignoring svg/gifs) who had the most entries in the top 50 and top 100 of POTY 2007. So judging from the public's view there is a clear top 5 photographers. (Andreas Tille didn't have any FPs in 2007, more active here in earlier years, and Alves had high ranking illustrations rather than photographs). All the top five got a picture into the top 20 images (and into POTY2007 finals), all except Mila are recognized as qualifying for 'Meet our photographers), except Mila Zinkova who is recognized as a better photographer by the public than his total number of FPs would suggest (I think all his FPs got into the top 100, 3/4 in the top 50!). But Luca Galuzzi stands out with 10% of the top 100 photoggraphs, and his best image is rated 8th. It will be interesting to see the order from the final voting round.

I now know 100% more about this years POTY than I did 15 minutes ago. This is not only what I think, it is also what I know. -- carol 06:39, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I would like to see if there is a correlation between votes in FPC and votes by this wider public group. And perhaps more interesting would be the correlation between individual's votes for/against and the public's views (ie whose reviews correspond best with the public's views).

Is it a wider audience? I looked at the system to start to vote once and thought 'forget this, just another bunch of hoops to jump through for a bunch of photographers who decided to ignore me when I accidentally tried to make one of their images better and tried to get rid of a terrible horrible item in their collection'. I will be honest, I would probably have jumped through those hoops for a photographer or image that I believed in. I have actually started to enjoy some of the photographers as people who communicate via wiki -- but there again, isn't it better to remove interesting people from an environment in which it is a bunch of little girls who like each other and no one else?

Interesting. If you're keen on work, you might also consider counting the total number of FPs, and/or the total number of FPs nominated/promoted, and/or the for/against votes in FP nominations. I would hope that people with a high/low success rate in getting FPs promoted should receive a similar result from the wider public. I wouldn't necessarily worry if there are differences, but it would be good to know what they are. Regards, Ben Aveling 07:20, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

PS. One possibly distorting factor may be that not all categories are the same size. I haven't done the numbers, but it may be that it is easier to get into the top 100 if you are in a smaller category. Or maybe not, I assume that not all categories will have attracted the same number of votes. Either way, that should get sorted out in the 2nd round. Cheers, Ben Aveling 07:29, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

How many of the votes are by the people who usually do the voting anyways? I quit voting in the regular one because I was the last vote too many times.

How many people don't give a damn about it because it seemed to be a very very closed system? Once I described the physics office supply closet at my university as a fiber optic since I had a heck of a time finding anything in it and it seemed to be suffering from internal reflection. This seems to be the same thing only filled with living people intent on keeping it that way.

ps, btw Ben Aveling, I think that you do know the difference between grain and noise now, but I do not think that your voting reflects this.... -- carol 07:51, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I'm not sure I do know what grain is. I think I know what noise is. Commons:Image guidelines doesn't help. It says "advice: To reduce noise, use the lowest practical sensitivity or film speed(for example: 200 ISO film is less grainy than 1600 ISO!)." en:Film grain doesn't help me much either. It says "In digital photography, image noise sometimes appears as a "grain-like" effect.". From which I gather that, at least in the strict sense, grain really only happens with film? Do you think I made any wrong calls, or did I just mis-describe what I was seeing? Cheers, Ben Aveling 11:49, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

---

Num top 50 FPs	Num top 100 FPs	POTY2007 top100 ranking	Name	Meet our photographers entry
4	10	8	Luca Galuzzi	User:Lucag
4	6	12	David Iliff	(qualifies but hasn't posted profile)
3	4	19	Luc Viatour	User:lviatour
3	4	3	Mila Zinkova	(not qualified)
3	4	9	Daniel Schwen	User:Dschwen
2	2	11	Malene Thyssen	User:Malene
2	2	52	Richard Bartz	User:Makro Freak
	2	59	Peter	User:Fir0002
1	2	21	Derek Ramsey	User:Ram-Man
			Joaquim Alves Gaspar	User:Alvesgaspar
	1	74	Hans Hillewaert	User:Lycaon
			Andreas Tille	User:Tillea
	2	57	Benh LIEU SONG
1	2	49	Mdf
1	2	20	MichaelMaggs
	2	60	Thermos
	2	81	Tomascastelazo

POTY 2007 real statistics

The table above is almost useless and misses completely the point. People don't vote in authors but in pictures, and there are themes clearly more popular than others. The table below shows that the most popular themes are nature shots and (cute) mammals, and the least popular, insects and birds. Trying to deduce the quality of the authors and the rightness of the FPC decisions from that is not sound. -- Alvesgaspar 09:38, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

'Real' statistics? Statistics on different themes perhaps. I wasn't deducing the 'quality' of photographers, I was listing the ranking of their works and hence their ranking as contributors of FPs. 'Deducing the rightness of FPC decisions' can have a few meanings - from this vote we can't determine whether the 'right' images were promoted through FPC as POTY voters did not get to vote on the other 2 million images. But there is a lot we can learn. --Tony Wills 13:09, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Speaking of themes and also assuming that everyone who has written here is also reading it and perhaps a few others -- where the hell should the fireworks photograph go in that gallery set up contraption? -- carol 12:38, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I created a new subsection Commons:Quality_Images#Events, and found a few other pictures that fitted this new subject to :-) --Tony Wills 20:25, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Yep, I saw that and I appreciated it. Did you see that I did the same thing for reptiles? -- carol 20:30, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Lets say that the photographer with the cute puppy dog photograph wins and lets call that photographer User:PerfectInEveryWay. What happens to User:PerfectInEveryWay? What is the motivation? Do they get to go places for GNU documentation purposes? Do they get donations of new equipment? I ask this honestly because I am curious at the reasons that the environment has seemed so closed. -- carol 11:30, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

As a prize, they get free access to the whole of wikimedia and all its projects (free as in they don't have to pay, not free as in unrestricted :-), and they are allowed to edit just about any page, and can upload as many images as they like (so long as they are free as in unrestricted).

OH Yippie! I need to dig out that photograph of butterflied turkey spam I have been sitting on to see if I can get some of that. -- carol 13:56, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

@Alvesgaspar: Yes that is an interesting table too. Yes, a bias in photographic subjects may give some photographers an advantage over others - but doesn't that just say that some people photograph more things that the public want to see? - they are producing a higher number of 'valued' images (valued by a wider public). If that isn't a measure of the photographers value to wikimedia, then what is?

(262 images were Animal/Plant/Nature - over half the total FPs, perhaps too much of the same thing, perhaps we need to get back to sunsets :-)

What I haven't come to a conclusion about is 'is Carol right?', are our standards & criteria inward looking (self serving even) or do they reflect what the general public wants to see? Are we really finding images with that 'Wow!' factor? Are our FPs what the general public values? As Carol points out, the voting public in POTY is a relatively select group as there were a few entrance hurdles, and it was perhaps all too complicated :-). So perhaps they don't represent the general public, but they are at least a wider public, not just the people who happen to vote in FPC. --Tony Wills 12:48, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

• • @Carol: I'm not sure I understand your question, but photographers (as people, in general) are biased and limited by their own interests, talents and limitations. This means, for example, that I will probably never be a good photographer of sports, society events or fashion. About the motivation, I would say that most of us (amateur photographers) seek mostly to reach some temporary and personal perfection goals (which vary with time) and hope that our efforts and results are recognized by others, especially our equals. In this process we also learn a lot about the technical and aesthetycal aspects of the business, and sometimes experience a great satisfaction just by looking back and verify how much we have improved. -- Alvesgaspar 12:51, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • @Tony: Could Einsten have been a top violinist (he did play the violin, I belive) if he wanted to? Will I ever be able to be a top photographer of people if I want to (and I do, believe me!!)? - Alvesgaspar 12:55, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I am just going to leave the disney photographs there. I don't do disney -- just some of their movies are okay.... -- carol 13:12, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps there is hope, remember that film where the scientist accidentally swaps his body with a fly? Just find that fly and you can combine nature/people photography ;-). I often think that with my basic camera, I would be better off photographing buildings in bright sunlight, they wouldn't move, I could do the shots many, many times, I could choose when to take them, macro mode wouldn't be needed ... no!, the world has too many buildings!, I must go and photograph something useful like another bumblebee (blowing in the wind, in either harsh light or deep shadow, only seconds for the shot :-) --Tony Wills 13:27, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

When TonyWills was complaining about the wind in NZ a few days ago, I was going to request a photograph of a candle burning on both ends and also under a bushel which would illustrate at least two songs and some bible scripture (I think) -- but I didn't. -- carol 14:01, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @All. I think this is an interesting debate as to whether the relatively narrow forums at COM:FPC promotes the images which a more general audience also thinks is the top of the cream. One thing I thought about when I voted was the way I personally reviewed the nominees in round 1 and 2. In round one I decided to vote on approximately 50% of all the images as I thought that would provide the most nuanced input for round 2. This review was done rather fast because I did not have all day assesing so many photos (514); I inspected most of the photos in thumbnail only recalling also my previous reviews on FPC of the images. I knew I ought to click twice on each image to inspect it in full size, but his was simply too time consuming. I knew photos of bad technical quality would be more inclined to get my vote this way as I would probably not see even pretty obvious technical problems in thumbnail. For round two I was surprised to see that most of the images I considered the best were not in the final. However, in round 2 I took the time to carefully inspect the best ones before placing my vote. I do not know how other reviewrs have done, but I think it is likely that many reviewers have not had the time to look at many images in a higher res than thumbnail in round 1. I think that this process in itself favours photos, which has a very good composition, colours and lightning (as you notice this in thumbnail), but perhaps not the best resolution, DOF, sharpness etc. When I review a photo at FPC I spend much more time on assessing the image thoroughly in full resolution including its image page. As I see it the POTY process favours photos which has a strong immediate wow and deemphasizes the technical aspects. The latter is often considered quite important at FPC (and sometimes critized), and I think this gives a different result. I think the POTY process is good at identifying images, which does well in online content in relatively small sizes. However, if you want to do printout in larger sizes, I think the FPC process is the most adequate. -- Slaunger 13:33, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

• I think you are absolutely right and I subscribe everything you said (only my English is much poorer than yours) :-). In POTY contest it is the first impression that counts. So, composition, colouting and theme are the most relevant elements. In FPC users usually examine the pictures more carefully and care about technical excellence. I'm amazed with the fact that in the top 10 POTY pictures there is (at leas) one with obvious pixelation in the sky! -- Alvesgaspar 14:55, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, now I am interested. Which one? -- carol 16:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

It is a night shot... Alvesgaspar 16:47, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

@Alves. I think you could be a great peoples photographer too. We have seen a few good examples already of your daughter. To improve, you could try and do some more work, post your photos at, e.g., photography critiques and get some more feedback... But I have no idea if Einstein could have been a really good violinist, not so sure he really wanted to become a good violinist either....that may be the difference between you and him. -- Slaunger 13:33, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

@Alves: I agree that the process did tend to encourage comparison at the thumbnail level. At the very least only those that look good at thumbnail size would have a chance of further scrutinisation. Should we rename the contest 'TOTY' ? --Tony Wills 21:34, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

• Ahah, good point, Tony! With thumbs progressively smaller in each year's competition... Did you read Orwell's 1984 (of course, you did)? In that SF (horror) story, vocabulary was kept reduced to the minimum necessary for people understand each other in trivial things... -- Alvesgaspar 21:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

• In 1984 I went to hear a lecture by Kurt Vonnegut. He mentioned something which is actually a simple explanation for most of my problems. That the 1984 scenario was economically flawed, that it included the need to trust 3 or 4 people for every 1 person that wasn't trusted. He mentioned that a much more viable way to achieve the goals set out in that book was to provide a single source of information instead. I do not like how this has happened to me in California. -- carol 04:59, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Dreamy, idyllic POTY pictures - what about real life ?

What surprises me the most is that in the second POTY round, one can find mostly dreamy, idyllic pictures. I see no emotions, no real connections to humans, almost no "real" life. None of the pictures would probably ever win a world press contest. Are we still in a sterile design era ? Is an encyclopedia afraid of emotions ? --Foroa 17:19, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps that is a problem , the wider voting pool mainly comes from a 'pedia audience and is looking for 'encyclopaedic' images, but Commons caters for more varied projects. --Tony Wills 21:44, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Heh, I need to look at them maybe. The farmers that I lived among in the '90s, my mom was complaining about them once -- she said that they were unhappy when the weather for a particular year was bad because it was bad for the crops. But that they were also unhappy on those years when the weather was good because everyone had a good crop, not just one or two of them. That is your real life I think.

Global phenomenon. I have observed the same behaviour among Danish farmers - my heritage. -- Slaunger 20:16, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I enjoy the stream of POTD. I really really do. -- carol 18:49, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Good point, Foroa. I am a little puzzled too that there is only one photo with people in the final - the fire fighting image, and no photos of people showing emotions as if interacting with real life. For instance, I had anticipated that some of outstanding people photographs by Tomascastelazo had made it to the final. And I agree that the images in the final are not the kind of pictures which would win a world press contest. I would have suprprised me it is was as the reviewers and the process here aresoo different from what you'd have in a press contest. -- Slaunger 20:16, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I too was a little disappointed about the final 28, perhaps it was because I had seen them before, but none seemed striking or exceptional. --Tony Wills 21:24, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah some of the final 28 are disappointing but these all gone through the COM:FP filter thats inevitably bias to opinion of Commons User, more notably the handful of regular reviewers. The question is now did a flaw in the format, the selection or some other system influence this result and can or do we need to address it. Gnangarra 08:47, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

They looked good to me. -- carol 09:40, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Homecoming Queen, SLHS 1980

There were 5 girls (I think) for that dubious honor. 4 of them were honor students and cheerleaders. One of them was a nice girl who also partied. Guess who won? The 4 girls split 2/3s of the vote and the one girl got 1/3 of the vote. I read about how this happens in a book that was about how democracy doesn't work because it ends up working the way I just described. 20 years later, when I went back to my hometown I reflected on all of that. As much as I liked the girl who won and had found her much more approachable back then, there was the girl that I disliked (for me then it was jealousy, not actual dislike) the most and in my review of life and how things are, I remember that one making the posters and doing the crap.

Pretty photographs are not about people though, are they? Votes turn out that way though -- it was a while back (I think in a discussion with Foroa I had about how when the name appears with the photograph, there starts to be a bias if well, if I have been paying attention. I cannot say that about others though. That first discussion -- there was the mention of camera bias also. I like to think that the camera I bought is going to work as good or better and it is really difficult to not think that way.

Then my favorite photograph from last year shouldn't make it because of obvious clone errors that were in it -- it was my favorite due to the perception of fun that I was having. Stupid reason and that is about the people and not the photograph.

It will be more interesting to see what comes out of the end of that digestive process than it will to figure out how to participate. -- carol 13:56, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I think you're making a good point here - if there were the same number of votes per category, and I don't know if there were or not, then pictures in the smaller categories have an advantage, because they have less competition. Regards, Ben Aveling 06:34, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Except, it was a place that won? I haven't looked yet, but Places in QI is one of the more bloated categories. Heh, I just looked the book up, Paul Hoffman Archimedes' Revenge -- this egg is on the cover of it. -- carol 09:02, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Image:London Eye at night 2 edit.jpg

Hello. Thanks for your comment on my picture at Commons:Quality_images_candidates/candidate_list#London_Eye_at_night. I've tried to reduce the noise in the image via software, and I've uploaded an edited version at Image:London Eye at night 2 edit.jpg. I'd appreciate your views on the edited version, if you have the time. Thanks again. Mike Peel 09:20, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Bored yet again? ;-)

diff. Lycaon 13:12, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Heh, checking up on YOU! There were at least 3 other things that were not mentioned that were wrong with that photograph.

Actually, yes. Bored. Thanks for trying though! -- carol 13:26, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes I don't want to discourage the author too much. Lycaon 13:28, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Image:2007-10-28-GIMP.png

Image deletion warning

Image:2007-10-28-GIMP.png has been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether it should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this image, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it, such as a copyright issue. In all cases, please do not take the deletion request personally. It is never intended as such. Thank you!

-Nard 17:58, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

CR archiving

Hi Carol, thanks for archiving completed CR entries. But note that there is no magical Bot that does the promotion of these images, so that you need to execute the promotion of the image when you archive it. (In brief, tag the image {{QualityImage}}, notify the author, add it to the QI page, and sub-pages :-) --Tony Wills 09:57, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Ooops, sorry! I am digging one of them out again because a vote was changed by the nominator. I will know to take the template off from the authors page as well now. -- carol 12:10, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

svg maps of Russia

an easier way? /Marmelad 19:32, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah:

1. Use names that don't include the date like Image:Map of Russia - Zabaykalsky Krai (2008-03).svg should be just Image:Map of Russia - Zabaykalsky Krai.svg
2. On the day that the maps change, upload the new versions of the maps to the same namespace here.
3. Change the few articles that will need the changing due to the political boundries that have changed.
4. The next time that the political boundries change, change the images but not the names -- upload the new set on the day that the names change. The images will change in the articles without the articles needing to be edited, again.
5. Use software to generate the maps -- actually, the set that I worked with was so well done, that I assumed that software had made it.

Have you any experience with uploading images into the same namespace here? There are several versions of software that can do this that are being used here. This is a good application for software because the images are already fairly uniform. I found a few more that I had missed when I made my 'tour of russian oblasts and krai'. Some of the choices I made that kept the task interesting for me were not the best choices for getting all of it done.

Changing all of the articles to show the change in the image name -- that is a dreadful task. I know, I did it -- it was kind of fun the first time, in order to do it well and somewhat quickly my recently acquired knowledge of how images are stored here helped immensely. The next time though -- it will not be fun, it would be dreadful.

I would do that again though, just to change the names of the images on the articles to something more timeless so that it never has to be done again. If the images are created and uploaded as I outlined, just an upload into the already existing namespaces would change all of the maps on all of the articles.

What is the difference between a Krai and an Oblast? -- carol 22:36, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll answer your question since it was I who asked Marmelad to create, and name, the maps (he is a lot better at autogenerating them). Anyhow I asked him to add the date to the filename for a couple of reasons.

1. Most of the maps currently used are date tagged e.g. RussiaJewish2005.png, RussiaJewish2007-01.png, RussiaJewish2007-07.png, Russia - Jewish Autonomous Oblast (2008-01).svg. Also date tagging the image makes it easier to verify that you are using the latest version.
2. Just because a map isn't no longer correct doesn't mean that it can't be usefull to someone. By not uploading on top of the last one the old maps are still usable if someone would want them.
3. Currently there isn't just one set of maps being used so there isn't just one map to upload over. E.g. for the Jewish Autonomous Oblast all of the 4 maps above are currently used on en.wiki, never mind which old maps might be used on the less active wikis.
4. Replacing old maps by new ones doesn't necessarily have to be hard work. Telling CommonsDelinker to do a universal replace reduces the problem to making a list of old and new filenames.

This is what I know about using those files. I think that there is 80-90 of those maps? I found a mixture of map usage at English wikipedia while I was replacing them. Many of the articles still used those little pink png. I wrote about the problems when it was still fresh in my mind.

I am glad that software is being used to generate the map making and the upload; it was not my intention to insult anyone by suggesting that it should be. I spent all that time changing those maps thinking about how many of the steps of the map upload and usage in articles could be automated or parts of the process to be totally eliminated. My goal during those two days was to reduce the number of duplicate maps that were here.

Image:Range of Hieracium lachenalii-Russia.svg is where I became involved with the maps of Russia. When I view that image page, I see a history of uploads. While I was replacing all of the Russian maps in the articles at wikipedia, and the recap on the talk page with the person who was going to change those articles to use the new svg maps -- I thought that using that upload history to store the maps 'historically' would be useful and not so difficult for users of them to understand.

I understand that not having duplicate maps was my own goal and that commons has no problem with the uploading and storing images and these physical but not political duplicates. There are just some things about ease of understanding what they are about and ease of use that get missed when all of those duplicates exist. Having a history stack of the changes that each map when through on the same image page makes some sense though? -- carol 04:27, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Not sure I understood your comment about using software. The maps were automatically generated and (knowing Marmelad) uploaded using Commonist. Is there a better way? /Lokal_Profil 01:14, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

P.S. krais and oblasts give some explanation but doesn't really point out the difference. The impression I got is that Krais are even less densly populated then Oblasts, sort of like census areas in Alaska, but thats just my guess. /Lokal_Profil 01:19, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I haven't used any of the commons upload software yet (other than the web page dialog) -- I assume that uploading an image to the same namespace is an option.

Ease of doing things here on the commons is one thing -- I was thinking about the ease of updating the maps in articles. Those two days I spent changing the maps -- it wasn't just on English wikipedia. I visited many wiki because my goal was to get rid of what I perceived to be duplicate maps here. To be able to update all of the maps on all of the wiki at the right time and with accurate maps -- that the goal with my suggestions.

It should be beautiful, actually, if you can imagine it. The day that the political boundries change, the maps being displayed on potentially 744 wiki can also change. This can be accomplished with one more name change to all of the wiki using the maps currently and by using the same namespace and really utilizing that upload history.

United States is so young with its use of European style government, that 'tour' of Russia and the hint at the changing policy and boundries there, it was so interesting to start to think about while I was going through that almost repetitive task of changing all of the map names in the articles. The amount of stuff in this world that I don't know; it is weird how the older I get the more I know I don't know. Your postscript about the difference helped a lot with one of those things, thanks! -- carol 04:27, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

After seeing your map I see a case for not uploading new maps under new names. Updating your map to use 2008-03 borders would make it more correct (well at least in March) but wouldn't actually add any information so uploading an update over the same name would make sense. When it comes to maps that deal specifically with the federal subjects (e.g. A, B or C) then I think the different maps might fill a purpose and so new maps would be uploaded under different names. If other users feel that it's not necessary (where is the best place to coordinate this?) then I can accept uploading on top of the "non-dated" images. (e.g. in the previous example A and C would always be a new file whereas B could be updated).

If we decide to go for non dated images (and even if we do this would be relevant for images such as your map) I think it would be usefull to categorise the maps by the borders that they are using, that way it's easy to spot the maps that still haven't been updated.

Whichever way around we do it all the maps would be simultaneously updated across the wikis, either by uploading new maps on top of the other or by universally replacing the old image with the new one using CommonsDelinker. First time around will be slightly more difficult though since we'll need to go through a lot of older maps as well. I've started to prepare a "hitlist" for CommonsDelinker which can be used on the 1st of March. Our main priority is to keep the wiki articles correct independently of the naming so if we decide to go for non dated images later on we can always just let CommonsDelinker run again. /Lokal_Profil 11:38, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

The base for the "hitlist" can be seen on User:Lokal Profil/hitlists/Maps of Russia. /Lokal_Profil 12:00, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem with my ideas about the best way to do things is that I did not use any software beyond the web interface. My maps are doing an entirely different task -- political boundries for wildflowers are very silly. Not so silly for an area like Russia which has been defined into such smaller parts but for China (an example I haven't researched yet) or Australia -- the lack of divisions make a range map not work. In United States, the USDA Plant Zones exist -- which naturally describes most of that information.

I somewhat assumed that the software would not change the names of the maps on the articles since so many of the pages that were using them were using different versions. Sometimes the pink png, and there were three attempts at making one set of svg maps that I found (four if you include my very incomplete attempt to do this).

On a different matter, what do you know about the assumption of good faith on English Wikipedia? Is it always one-sided? -- carol 12:26, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

The software won't change all of the versions automatically. Ill have to specifically match each of RussiaJewish2005.png, RussiaJewish2007-01.png, RussiaJewish2007-07.png, Russia - Jewish Autonomous Oblast (2008-01).svg with Image:Map of Russia - Jewish Autonomous Oblast (2008-03).svg and repeat this for each subject. Luckely though I've picked up enough excel programming skills from Marmelad to generate the lists without to much hasle.

Not sure I understand your question about assumption of good faith on English Wikipedia/Lokal_Profil 02:17, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

what the commons user thought about those maps

I had a 48hr ban that was closer to 56 hours and it was possibly due to a misuse of a word by another person, not me. I asked that question more for the timestamp ;) I am going to untab now.... -- carol 11:25, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I found another map that I had missed yesterday -- although, I didn't review what I had written before and the replacement map from the set I was using did not exist for it. I moved all of the maps I used into the SVG Maps of Russia category while replaced them so, not only was my approach so weird (from trying to find a good blank to use for a range map of an inconsequential weed) everything I needed was really hidden within the category structure. I should have used the list of Federal subjects of Russia but I started all wrong. There are many different scripting languages, most of them rely on the same logics though. The highlighting of visited urls in my browsers rendering of the page was the most useful thing that might not be obvious to anyone working within the project. If I were to attempt to change all of the maps again, I would start with a fresh browser history.

Problems I found when thinking about how to script it:

• info boxes were inconsistent
• different images had been used -- you pointed out the different names in the one case
• I had no clue about the politics like which areas had been absolved and which had been newly created (I guess that I was like software in that case) so when I found a few areas that no longer existed, I wanted them to have the gray and red svg maps as well and thought that the article should be about how it doesn't exist and when that happened
• my mind was thinking about the way the images are at commons -- so I was thinking about the ease of using them (hence, I thought that the duplicates were a problem), I liked having them in the Category of their area Category:Jewish Autonomous Oblast and in Category:SVG maps of Russia, heh -- the Category:Categorized SVG maps of Russia didn't exist then (I didn't think that all SVG maps of Russia should be in the category of SVG maps of Russia -- my range maps would just be clutter, for example and better located with the plant information.)
• then the additional problem of the images on other wiki, which just expands all of the problems that I found on English wikipedia and potentially font/language reading problems....

It was these problems and the fact that I was thinking about it from a Commons user POV that made me think that using the same name for the images and utilizing the upload history capacity of the commons storage system was the best solution. Even writing about this now, I am inspired by the potential of ease in the future to follow some of those pink png around and replace them with their SVG reproductions.

I cannot help but think that one massive clean-up, a simple naming scheme and the time showing in the upload history instead of in the name is such an eloquent solution. Future users like me would go to the Russian maps categories, find those and use them -- without needing to understand the fluid nature of the politics of the area. The need to write and run 3 or 4 different scripts to change the image names in articles would not be there any longer. The wikis using them could have whatever mess of infoboxes they wanted and it would not affect the tidiness and sensibility of their storage here. More energy could be spent on writing and expanding articles. Script writers could concentrate on making scripts for a user like me who needs to highlight some of the areas and not others.

Heh, and Lokal Profil -- I remember now where your name as author of maps was in all of this. When I was looking first for a usable Russian blank map, my first thought was that I was sorry they were not like the North American maps you had made. That one blank that I eventually found was as good as yours. Have you considered making maps for Oceania? I had worst problems making the range maps for Australia and New Zealand. Sorry for all of the words.... -- carol 11:25, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Recent activities

Hi Carol, I think you know that your edits regarding Commons:Quality_images_candidates/candidate_list#Saint_Constable_Church are being disruptive. I have been supporting you where you have a reasonable point to make, but in this case the rules are clear. Rather than starting a disruptive edit war, I suggest that either you try to get the rules changed or clarified (perhaps allowing greater flexibility in the timing), or press for a QI de-listing process so that genuine mistakes (like your promotion then decline of that image) can be reversed. --Tony Wills 21:00, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

A solid one half of the vote was from the photographer and nominator. Others have changed votes before. Photographers and nominators are not allowed to vote.

I am in a banned condition on English wikipedia right now and if I am following the reasons for this, it is because I put a template on an article but did not have the template proclaiming that I use friendly on my user page.

Doing that, allowing Alves Support to change the outcome will encourage time stamp changing. Right now, it is just fun to do. When I add the votes up it equals 1/2 Support (because nominator, photographer votes don't count) and 1 Oppose. Did I add correctly? -- carol 22:14, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I am not active on wikipedia, so have not seen what fun you have been having there. And, no, the voting on that image is quite simple. There is one promotion from you and one decline which was discounted as being too late. So it was moved to CR too late, and no one else appeared to have any other opinions about it. I think that you will either have to be more careful on what you promote in the future, or faster at changing your mind :-). As a friend of mine likes to quote "Better late than never is a comforting refrain, when you arrive too late to catch the train" ;-) --Tony Wills 22:40, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

The 'train' would be QICBot though? I caught it. -- carol 22:45, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

QICbot doesn't run to the 48hr timetable, but just trundles along and cleans up, upto 23hrs 59mins and 59secs behind schedule :-). Some people mistake it for the train, but it just the line maintenance vehicle ;-) --Tony Wills 23:45, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I was kind of pulling for the bots cow photo for POTY, btw.

The problem at wikipedia -- the 'protection of the encyclopedia' -- I feel a little that way about the QI collection. That is a really great collection of photographs which do not have the photographer name prominently displayed. This was extremely helpful to me recently.

They are doing that again at english wikipedia. The history has been edited. I replaced an image of a grape hyacinth with an image from the QI collection and the image is gone and its inclusion is erased from the history there.

1. if the image should not be there, it should be removed and the person who removed it should have no problem with their wikiname getting credit for that in the history
2. I would like the changes that I actually made to the page to be there.
3. Whatever administrator who made the changes -- the actual computer has a record of this -- what reason would they want this not to be known?

--carol 02:01, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

The edit is in the history wikilinks within image thumbnails was/is not working there though. Too bad that the encyclopedia is being protected from me so that I can't repair it. Much of my whining was uncalled for. -- carol 02:08, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I am quite uncertain though if the editing of the history of the encyclopedia is protecting the encyclopedia as much as the claim is being made that this is what is occurring. The last time I was banned there -- history was edited and that isn't protecting the encyclopedia's integrity very much. What do you think that editing history would protect?

I cannot get the idea of the movie Marty out of my mind these last few days. The movie about the football player who did not measure up but loved the team so much that they bent the rules so he could play (I am not certain that I saw the movie, I just remember the plot). It is a really boring movie though, if the only thing that Marty could do is to find good restaurants. -- carol 00:27, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, not Marty -- Rudy. -- carol 01:42, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I didn't realise it was the Bot taking photos, looks like someone implemented my idea ;-). As concerns wikipedia, I think that an important thing in these wikis is transparency, that every action can be examined and questioned, and that it is the community who gets to maintain the integrity of the project not someone with assumed powers. Like a lot of societies founded on ideals I think the wikis slowly are overtaken by bureaucrats and rules and procedures - I think this is in response to the size of the projects and the increasing amount of disruption by vandals and people being disruptive for other reasons. People get tired of repairing damage and tend to leave it to the few who like being bureaucratis and sometimes officious, a bit like societies leave governance to those who enjoy it, or who have other reasons for taking control (the politicians). The more disruption, the easier it is for people to tighten the rules and procedures - a bit like the demolition of civil liberties (right down to off shore Gulags) afforded by going to war against a concept. I know that you like making points by taking to extremes what other people have done, and poking fun at what people do, and their double standards but how about cultivating support for your arguments, rather than giving people excuses to close you out :-) --Tony Wills 02:13, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

The first time that I completed the taxobox for an article and laid out the headings on the page (after looking at how a few other articles had done this) I was tired and decided then to sleep and start with the article parts the next day. In those hours, a template was pasted on what was basically a blank article with a taxobox claiming that the article needed more content. It looked to me to be extremely sarcastic as there was no content there. I was offended and laughed and I kept to my plan -- only adding to the todo, the request that the template paster remove the template when I had finished.

I thought that the sarcastic yet accurate placing of templates was part of the fun. In this particular situation, I sense an abuse of the word stalk by the people who are in position to abuse it.

Also, I have seen this before; this type of human critter. They can come from any country, I suppose. Not have specific skin, hair or eye color but have other things in common. In real life situations they are quiet and almost invisible. Sometimes, their fanbase can make them weak though -- as too much support from always the same people -- once I compared this classification of people to the monopods from the CSLewis fictional science thriller, Voyage of the Dawn Treader -- possibly my most favorite book if I had to identify one. The monopods had one leader and all of the other 'pods did everything he said and always always agreed with everything he said.

I have seen this before and I would like to skip some of the parts this time, if not all of the parts..... -- carol 03:16, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I went and had a look at your activities on w:en, and agree that the posting you got blocked for was insignificant and the block, IMHO, unwarranted, but then that's another world, another culture :-). They have a point re stalking though, it is not appreciated when people follow someone elses contributions, and start editing in the same places - it is not nice to be followed around (it starts to get personal) ;-). The quotations at the beginning of articles were probably quite apt if you were writing a book, even a text book, especially a GNU manual. Unfortunately many on en:w take writing an encyclopaedia very seriously and like things dry, sanitised, and, well, boring. Creativeness, humour, sarcasm, irony and maybe fun, have no place ;-). The whole thing is an interesting experiment in 'construction of knowledge', can a bunch of non experts create something useful? Surprisingly the process does seem to actually generate useful (though dry) content.

The ability to write that content, and keep it dry and still keep it interesting is a skill that I probably don't have and there is a lot to be said for comparing your work to and trying to keep up with masters of whatever new thing that is being attempted. -- carol 13:24, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

One aspect of these wikis is that actions are judged on past actions, not isolated events with a narrow context, so unlike any natural (or otherwise) justice system, decisions are made about your intentions based upon history (your reputation) and not just what was done. Assume good faith is interpreted as assume good faith until you suspect otherwise. Back to that 'reputation management' thing.

Heh, when does that start? -- carol 13:24, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

The interesting thing about Commons is that taking photographs, or making graphics, is an inherently creative act. The 'no original research' concept goes flying out the window - every photo you take is original research, you don't know whether what you're 'documenting' with the photo has every been seen or documented before. You choose the POV for the photo, you might take macro shots, or stop action photography, you are encouraged to manipulate the camera settings and edit the photo eg get rid of backgrounds (DOF or editing), or get rid of distracting elements (eg people at a tourist trap), - all things that present an image that is not what is actually seen by an observer. You choose what story to tell with the photo, very creative, very much based on your POV.

And don't forget that emotional response stuff!! -- carol 13:24, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

PS don't waste your time tilting at windmills or doing battle with dragonshamsters, life is too short ;-) --Tony Wills 10:10, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I have been thinking about my 10 minutes with a digital camera that was closer to my AE-1.

Image:SantoCondestável 2008-2.jpg

Again it is archived. If we start allowing late re-call of images, without the nominators agreement, then we will have created a defacto de-listing process that hasn't been agreed to (how long after a promotion is too long?). The rules do state that the image is promoted after exactly 48hrs since review, it seems reasonable to only allow variations to that if the nominator consents, or the community over rides its own rules. Neither of those two things happened. It may have been better if it did go through CR, but it didn't.

If it is indeed so bad that it should not have been promoted then you can blame first the nominator for nominating a poor image, then the reviewer for initially promoting it, then the community for not insisting that it go through CR - take your pick ;-) (otherwise perhaps it was sufficient for QI) --Tony Wills 10:56, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I won't fight you on that, but it was also be nice if the svg that I put up about the range of where some of that particular photographers photographic subjects can be found would also be returned. -- carol 13:26, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

You'll have to point me to the image in question, I think I missed that one --Tony Wills 22:47, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Image:Range of Hieracium lachenalii-Europe.svg it is not found in Spain but the photographs of it here are from portugal. I cited a commons gallery for this because there was no other indication that the species can be found in that european country. Interestingly enough, it is the same with a particular mosquito -- but I did not make a range map for that. Instead, I became confused about the location of commons photographers.

And the image has once again changed but not the uploader or the history of upload. -- carol 04:32, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

You have uploaded 4 versions of that SVG, each slightly different, is the right one not showing? Is the image showing up not the one you uploaded last? --Tony Wills 11:03, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind if they all disappeared and maybe this information right now should be exchanged and then deleted. The first SVG that I uploaded had information about my computer in it. After stripping the information from the file, I uploaded some more versions. I had a laugh later when I saw that others make their SVG to point to the logging area of the typical *nix computer. Heh, it is a honeytrap I think :)

The exact information that disappeared from English wikipedia and from here was that Alves photographs did not come from Portugal. My map has Spain not highlighted but Portugal is. I suspect that the photographs were taken in Brazil. The only evidence that I had that some of those species of plants and of that mosquito were in Portugal were Alves photographs. The last time that I looked at the maps, Spain had been highlighted. I never did that. Uncitable although, I watched how quickly citable information changes and all I have to say is that the depth of my 'Not impressed' by it cannot be expressed with socially acceptable words.

I understand the feeling for the need to disguise your location when becoming even a minor online character -- when I first put my web site online with information about how fun where I worked was -- we got busier. The problem was more in that I was pretty sure that I could handle the people who would have been reading those web pages; instead, I got removed from having the authority to manage them (and coach/assist the rest of the staff to manage them) and became managed by people who did not understand this new influx of people like I did. I knew who my audience was. The stupidity of the managers now -- I write about a movie I saw 20 some years ago and the next time I go outside to conduct that little bit of real life business, they have a 'look alike' there -- someone who looked like the main character of that movie. How can I meet my needs and discourage things like that from happening? The depth and the breadth of the shallowness!

I will be very surprised to discover that Dschwen is not actually Kelly Martin -- so surprised that I will not believe it. Kelly Martin is an invented name also so, no great loss there. Rotating the wiki-nicks might be happening. If all that a group of people can do is prove that they can abuse nice people, what has been accomplished? I first learned of Kelly via the traumatizing of the artist of Tux -- I think that when I first got online, that I already came from a really big world. The ongoing traumatisizing of me is an indication that certain groups of people perhaps should have the problems they bring onto themselves. I am sorry that my ongoing experience can only prove this -- it is not the kind of life and interaction among people that I had back when life was more real to me -- and it is not where my efforts start to go.

Here is another question that I have. How much of what I have done has gone only to a computer in Montreal? There are images that are there to help me remember when all of this stuff might have happened.

In real life, I would like to meet any person who can get 20-30 (ages 15 to 18 years old) students who have just consumed ecstacy to behave and to watch a movie about the early 1900's Sears catalog. I was fired for not accomplishing this thing which I think is impossible. I also think that I was fired from my other job because my manager wanted me to work there when the place was owned by different people. This would have been awesome in Michigan, a step up that I have deserved to have for a very long while; in California, to only have as an option a lateral move to an income that cost of living adjusted was the same same same same thing -- there are some really big problems....

That was mandrake, I guess -- with giving the 'E' to that class. I don't have the logs to map one against the other right now, but he was online talking about interviewing with Microsoft. Is it what companies want? Employees who can prove their 'worth' and abilities by destroying people? If I were running a company and I wanted it to be a success, I do not think I would want to hire people who prove themselves that way. Is that unusual? -- carol 12:55, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

In real life I also do not have a problem with photographers who say they live in one place but provide photographs that say they don't. Alves could just as easily not say that he lives in Portugal on his user page -- I don't think that I would have used him as a reference then. Matching statues with weed species is a large jump that I would probably not have been interested in researching.

Further, I would encourage Kelly to clean up the QI archives of all of the clonetooled crap that she probably put there. It probably was way too much effort for the little bit of laugh that a few people had, in my humble opinion. -- carol 12:09, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I can't quite understand why a weed species like that would deny itself the pleasures of Portugal or Spain, surely there is some nice corner of both those countries that would happily accomadate another weed, and with all the free flow of people between EU countries I doubt the seeds have difficulty hitching a ride. I would not trust the distribution data :-). Your latest version of that SVG includes Portugal, no version includes Spain.

Spain grows oranges and France doesn't? I think it has to do with the growing conditions. I was surprised to learn that it snowed in Spain, I was also surprised that it snowed in Iran -- that is the reason that I relied on the information provided by the people who are supposed to be responsible for it. -- carol 11:47, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I would have thought being asked to "watch a movie about the early 1900's Sears catalog" would drive most people to drugs ? --Tony Wills 10:43, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, in my experience with a mostly drug-free population of teen, a movie about the music of New Orleans was not enjoyed much, which made me try to never be a sub for band class again. I think that if they had embellished the movie (which was for a history class) with that dance music which is specific for the drug, and lights and flashed the pictures from the catalog and sang the information with that repetitive beat that the drugged group might have been more receptive to it. The class itself was one that the substitutes tended to avoid. I can find interesting things in things like that movie had, with regular students (sugar at lunch was a huge problem, but not one that could not be gotten around). Most of that age group -- things haven't changed so much; they just need a little steering or a pointer for a direction to have just a little more to think about and their little brains start to work pretty well.

One of those drugged students asked me "what is agriculture?"....

There were so few differences between students in the twenty years there since I had been one. Hair was cut shorter, not too many rugby shirts (meaning, just a few style differences). Even though the school changed buildings and locations -- it still had the same smells and sounds. The drugs were different -- we did not have anything like that around. I never saw any cocaine either -- I barely heard about it when I was in high school even. When we were in school, we had a designated smoking area that we were allowed to smoke tobacco in -- other things were smoked there also, clandestinely. Perhaps that since I was a 'good child' I saw 'good children'. I saw a lot of really cool and interesting kids in my few years as a substitute teacher; my performance was not 100%, I did at least as well as many of the substitute teachers that we had back then.

It is really a case where the hacker who says your system is flawed and I can prove it and the proof got fired instead of repairing the problem and thanking the people who exposed it. It would be interesting to see a world where a teacher has to overcome a problem like this before achieving teaching certification, eh? The current presidential administration is there due to some voting problems (people in Florida thought they were voting for someone else) -- I think I am going to write about that on your talk page though....

To the outside world Microsoft embodies US values (as does that other M corporation), time to emigrate?

That the best thing to use is the thing that came pre-installed? Life here, real life -- it is not like that. We didn't become the innovators and such that we were by settling for what was dished out to us. Microsoft software is like the Queen of England that way. It is really more of an issue that computer technology is faster than the court system.

What other M corporation? I am from an automobile industry state, so I think that everything is a problem with the big three there: Chrysler, General Motors and Ford. And the fourth largest automotive related corporation, the UAW which (in my humble opinion) did more to destroy families than anything else. I love the country that I learned about in my history and government books. Home of the free, the brave and the proud -- we have been like that more often than not. -- carol 11:47, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I am wondering whether we should make it a requirement in QI that people upload their original (from camera) image (well JPG, not RAW) first. They can upload their edits over top, but it would be nice to see where they started from. --Tony Wills 10:43, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

It would be nice to have an easier way to get the best edit (and not the last edit because over-editing is a threat as well) into the collection. My experience at FPC with my edit shows me that there is a problem. The version of that Lily that was POTD recently; mine version is lacking the selection halos and the additional blue smear from clonetooling. Eyes are different, they see different things. I could see when an animation (that I made) had one frame that was one pixel off and others couldn't. I could see in a layout of smaller images when a couple of the smaller images were a few pixels off. My friend who could not see those things, was certain that she could see when an images' all-over colors were off (like the photograph machines correct with +2 Yellow and such). That too me was more difficult to prove because she really liked photographs that looked like those excessively bright touristy postcards and I kind of liked a little more of a variety -- much of that I think was taste.

I admit, I don't understand RAW -- I haven't seen a file like that and I don't think that my camera gives me access to them. Is it too much to ask that photographers also be the best editors? I think it might be. They are almost completely different skills. -- carol 11:47, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

One, two rubbershoe

I would put the shoe into objects .. Bg Richie --Richard Bartz 17:19, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the help -- carol 17:29, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

You are welcome --Richard Bartz 20:43, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Orton effect

Hi Carol,

Are you referring to the process I used for this Orton effect photo? It's available here. (P.S. You can always do testing in your own sandbox :-)) --bdesham ★ 18:01, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Yep, I looked already and I saw this already and I appreciated that the tutorial was not totally specific to one app or another. Then I had problems pasting the url to the tutorial that I found earlier yesterday to your talk page. I was attempting to match the two layers for two layers text effect.

I could write a script for GIMP to make the Orton effect, but I script with Python and I am not sure what the status of gimp-python is for all the OS. Would you be interested in that? -- carol 18:10, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, you were writing here about not answering the questions that others ask on your talk page? The offer of the script still stands.... -- carol 18:16, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Assumption of good faith

mean spirited clone tool abuse -- for no good reason!. Care to elaborate? --Dschwen 22:28, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Overly dramatic? Probably I was seeing a lot of dust removal spots and taking it personally. In my defense, there have been a lot of these images QIC lately.

I was pulling for your cow, btw. As far as I am concerned, your cow is the POTY. -- carol 04:46, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

QI page

I have just converted the main QI display page to include lots of little sub-pages that hold the latest updates for each section. This is to make it easier for all the other language versions of the page to put their own titles/heading on each section. The main difference when editing the QI page will be that you have to add images by clicking on the edit tag for a sub-section. If you edit the page or major section headings you will only see the template/transclusions not the image names. Having each as a sub-page will have the side effect that after editing a sub-page you will not automatically be back at the full QI page (you will have to use the browser back button to get back to the full page).

I don't know if anything has changed in the ordering of images on the Objects page, but a lot of those big galleries have had the images sorted in various ways at times (ie similar photos grouped together) so the order is not chronological (but no one maintains such sorting, so it may be a bit muddled :-) --Tony Wills 11:50, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

see Commons_talk:Quality_Images#What_is_the_purpose_of_these_galleries.3F --Tony Wills 22:11, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

This is spam? -- carol 22:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I was spamming a number of talk pages with that link to get some interest in the subject :-) --Tony Wills 23:57, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Trans Europe Express

The process of oviposition
1 Through chemical receptors the Wasp suspects the Host for her Eggs
2 With the bigger spike, the Wasp drills a hole in the bark
3 The Wasp inserts the 2nd, intrinsic Spike
4 Doing corrections
5 Depositing the Eggs
6 Depositing the Eggs

How you would translate this properly ? --Richard Bartz 19:22, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

First of all, wikipedia says that she is testing for sound vibrations so "chemical receptors" doesn't seem (or sound) correct for a short description.

The process of oviposition
1 Tapping with her antennae the wasp listens for the vibrations that indicate a host is present.
2 With the longer ovipositor, the Wasp drills a hole through the bark.
3 The Wasp inserts the ovipositor into the cavity which contains the host larva.
4 Making corrections.
5 Depositing her eggs.
6 Depositing her eggs.
7 Not pictured here is the male who just taps around looking for females.

My (too) many semesters of calculus and physics (which were about changes and how to throw things, if I remember correctly) did not prepare me for this at all, btw. That is an interesting reproduction process though, that relies on the female having a drillbit and chute made of metal. I don't want to think about it any more.... -- carol 20:15, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Hans gave me more informations, what do you think ? --Richard Bartz 22:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that your photographs were really good. That page says sounds and not chemistry as well. It is very difficult to imagine that nature evolved this sort of critter. I also think that the males are funnier to write/read about -- "senses females chewing wood". -- carol 22:37, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Commons:Quality_images_candidates/candidate_list#Mahana panorama

I note that you opposed this, then later added a support vote, I will assume this was a change of mind, and take it that you want to cancel the oppose vote and support instead. Let me know if that is wrong :-) --Tony Wills 04:38, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I was trying to draw attention to it; I didn't think through it. I have opposed it there and several other places and my opposition there is accurate and well considered. -- carol 08:46, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, Lycaon's interpretation was right, I will just count your oppose vote, and it will drop into the unaccessed bag :-) --Tony Wills 10:27, 31 January 2008 (UTC)