Commons:Village pump/Archive/2007/09

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Village Pump archives
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2007 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12
2008 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12
2009 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12
2010 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12
2011 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12
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Contents

Interwiki links for categories and galleries

Has there been any consesus on how interwiki links for categories and galleries should be made? If both a category and a gallery exist in Commons for the same topic, should they both have interwiki links to the article pages on the Wikipedias? Or should the category have interwiki links to the Wikipedia categories and the gallery have interwiki links to the Wikipedia articles? What should be done if there is only a category in Commons? I've tried to search for relevant discussion about this, but I can't seem to find any. YooChung 12:49, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

The standard practice seems to be that galleries have interwiki links to galleries and categories have interwiki links to categories. Samulili 14:00, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
There is no such standard practice. The images you can find in Commons categories are there for illustrating Wikipedia articles, not Wikipedia categories. More, in order to properly organize the topics structure in Commons, we need informations which we find in Wikipedia articles first.
You have to understand that Wikimedia Commons is not an encyclopedia project, and therefore many things you have learnt in the Wikipedia projects are irrelevant here. --Juiced lemon 13:46, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I mustn't have really thought about the whole of what I wrote. Naturally there aren't interwiki links between galleries because other projects don't have galleries as separate pages. D'oh!
@YooChung: There are regular interwiki links between categories. From a Wikipedia article, there are usually links to commons with en:Template:Commons template or similar. Commons galleries, on the other hand, have links to Wikipedia articles at the top of the gallery page. Samulili 15:34, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
... or from Wikipedia articles to commons categories using the en:Template:Commonscat template. --Foroa 16:39, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
and above all Template:Interprogetto.
The same subject (Interwiki links for categories and galleries) have been previously discussed on June 2007. I apply the only system which was proposed: Commons:Village pump/Archive/2007Jun#Proposals (by myself). --Juiced lemon 18:23, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I had only thought of asking about interwiki links from Commons to Wikipedia (so is it the consesus that Commons categories should be interwiki linked to Wikipedia articles? or is it the other way around? I can't quite tell ...), but the Wikipedia templates above made me wonder about interwiki links from Wikipedia to Commons. I have been interwiki linking categories with categories and articles with galleries (and vice versa) in both Commons and Wikipedia (actually using templates in WP, though), but has this been a good idea? If Commons categories should always be interwiki linked to WIkipedia articles instead of categories, it occurs to me that Wikipedia articles should also be linked to Commons categories instead of galleries ... YooChung 00:30, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

IMO it doesn't make sense for anyone to say "should" or "always" because Wikipedia doesn't always have a category where we have a category, and Commons doesn't always have a gallery where Wikipedia has an article. I think just link to the most useful thing. Sometimes it is a gallery, sometimes it is a category. It's not something I would lose sleep over. :) --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 00:51, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

About derivative works

There are wikipedians from Chinese Wikipedia concern about the copyright of (1) Image:BOCHK passbooks cards.jpg, (2a) Image:Tvb-weekly-special.JPG ver.A, (2b) Image:Tvb-weekly-special.JPG ver.B, (2c) Image:Zeitschriften.JPG and (3) Image:Wii Wiimotea.png. I just take a look on Commons:Derivative works, but still not quite sure about the clear status on each piece of work. Could anyone answer that if they are suitable to be placed on Wikimedia Commons or not?! Stewart~惡龍 06:57, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

(1) yes (2a)(2b) no (2c) yes (3) yes. --Fb78 10:01, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Could you please give reason as well? Many thank. Stewart~惡龍 16:29, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
The reasons are laid out pretty thoroughly on Commons:Derivative works. Photographs on magazine covers are protected, so you can't reproduce them here. Simple designs, such as the credit cards and the Wii console (which basically is just a box at an angle) are not protected by copyright. --Fb78 07:37, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
would you like to further explain why Image:BOCHK passbooks cards.jpg are not copyrighted? Bank notes and Credit cards maybe utilitarian objects, but the logo of BOCHK and the graphic design on the credit card sould be copyrighted. Is "simple design" not an "art"?--Srr 06:17, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
  • The image (1) Image:BOCHK passbooks cards.jpg clearly, in my view, does reach the threshold for copyrightability - indeed, even the pictorial logo down the right side of two of the cards does that. I'm afraid it and the others mentioned cannot remain here. (3) Image:Wii Wiimotea.png is OK, though, as it shows little more than a 3d box which will not attract copyright. I've tagged the problem files on Commons for speedy deletion. --MichaelMaggs 06:28, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
    • I'm sorry but as those images are still in argument. It's not that good to put them in speedy deletion. I'd prefer Commons:Deletion_requests rather than that. And, I'm worried about images like this are deleted without any notice, it's because, some of them probably still can be used on Wikipedia (or other projects) under fairuse.Stewart~惡龍 11:04, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

30 August 2007

Commons user accounts, by choice of interface language

Some of the folks at Wiktionary asked me to report on the user interface settings used by Wiktionary users. I thought the results might be interesting for commons as well. Enjoy. --Gmaxwell 02:02, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Users Interface language user preference
108864 en
31821 es
12487 fr
11552 de
5367 pt
3655 ja
2664 pl
2423 it
2065 nl
1625 sv
1621 pt-br
1235 no
1223 ar
1012 ru
830 zh
501 ca
488 cs
349 fi
233 zh-tw
231 hu
219 bg
204 zh-cn
174 zh-hk
166 he
165 da
123 tr
101 zh-yue
89 fa
77 id
59 sl
55 ko
54 ro
48 eu
47 vi
44 el
39 lt
38 hr
37 nn
32 th
31 eo
29 uk
23 sr
17 et
11 is
10 ms
8 gu
7 ast
6 gsw
5 be
4 br
3 be-tarask
2 af
1 ab
Cool, thankyou. I copied this table and put some notes about it at Commons:Registered users by language preference. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 09:13, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Also if you could copy the SQL query on that page, it would be useful for in the future, so we can reproduce the stats consistently.
I wonder what proportion of users in any given non-English wiki use the English interface? pfctdayelise (说什么?) 09:21, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Most accounts are not used, and I assume that the English interface is the ‘by default’ one. So, in my opinion, these stats are of little interest. The number of edits with a given interface would be more significant. --Juiced lemon 09:42, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Definitely the English figure will be grossly inflated, but it seems to me that you wouldn't bother registering and changing your language if you weren't going to edit, so I think the non-English numbers must be good. Of course they will be under-represented, because some users will keep using English or won't even realise it's possible to change it, but they are a useful estimate hopefully. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 08:09, 2 September 2007 (UTC)


1 September 2007

some easy use guidelines please

Not all of us are able to understand how we are supposed to go about uploading photos and other things. I've spent most of the morning jumping from here to there looking at various instructions and guidelines and as a newbie what I would really like would be "How to upload your work in X easy steps" or similar. I want to contribute photos, which I have, but I do not want to spend hours trying to find out how to do it. Can someone give me a linear A to F? westvidalWestvidal 10:15, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Hey Westvidal, have you tried to the Commons:First steps? Let us know if there's anything that's not covered in there. cheers --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 10:42, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Advertising in the main page

Some users have decided to advertise in the main page here.

I thing such advertising is against Commons policy (see also Talk:Main Page#Edit by User:Juiced lemon): a minority of users cannot decide to seize the main page for themselves. Therefore, I request the cleaning of the main page. --Juiced lemon 09:57, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

I would not characterise "meet our photographers" as advertising anything. Rather, it is showcasing some of our best work. I think we ought to be encouraging good photographers to contribute more, and some recognition is a good way of furthering this. Thanks for bringing this up here to discuss it, but can we please keep the discussion in one place? See also Commons_talk:Meet_our_photographers#Main_Page and Talk:Main_Page#Edit_by_User:Juiced_lemon ++Lar: t/c 10:26, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't criticize Commons:Meet our photographers, but this page is only a Commons project amongst many others. The Community has not decided to promote more particularly this project and the related activities. Therefore, it's fine to link it in Commons:Community Portal and Commons:Featured pictures, but not in the main page, which is intended to the access to Commons database at first. --Juiced lemon 07:23, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
You are the one who says the main page is (only?)/first intended to access the Commons database. This change is not impeding anyone to access the Commons database anyway. Displaying the POTD doesn't exactly "provide access" to the database, but it serves a useful purpose nonetheless. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 07:37, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
I commented on Talk:Main_Page#Edit_by_User:Juiced_lemon, let's keep the discussion there Finn Rindahl 07:41, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Now, the place for accessing the Commons database is only 1/8th of the displayed part of the main page. Any addition above this place obviously impedes access to the media files. Quote (author: Juiced lemon):

Tasks which are useful to Commons project:
* before an upload to Commons:
  * draw an image
  * take a picture
  * record an audio file
  * find an existing media file with a free licence (possibly, negociate for it)
* upload a media file which is:
  1. in the scope of the project (that is with a free licence)
  2. not already in the database
  3. not obviously superseded by another file
* classify media files of the Commons database
* organize the Commons project
* write documents in order to help people to concur to the project goals
* check the compliance of people actions with Commons goals, rules, methods and customs
Perform a particular task, like “upload an media file”, don't grant you any privilege, or any skill you don't already own.

Take a photograph is only a particular task amongst other ones. --Juiced lemon 08:09, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Hm. It would be great to have more users classifying images. What about creaeting Featured Galleries, that show a featured collection of images? This will probably draw more users into organizing media. -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:23, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Necessary to OTRS this info?

The flag and coat of arms of Nova Scotia keeps getting deleted because the government of Nova Scotia website says "use of the Nova Scotia flag in a respectful manner as a symbol of the Province of Nova Scotia is permitted".

I have however contacted the the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and asked them if the flags and coats of arms of the provinces of Canada (and Nova Scotia in particular) are protected by copyright. I got an email back stating that "the arms, crest or flag adopted and used at any time by Canada or by any province or municipal corporation in Canada" are only protected by section 9 of the Trademarks Act.

Can I just add this to the image summary template, or do I need to forward this email to OTRS? Anrie 09:04, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Judging from meta:User_talk:Anthere#Licensing_policy, the question on whether coats of arms are "free cultural works" or not is still an open one. Teofilo 12:11, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
Anrie, please forward the email to OTRS and also mention the template. -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:20, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I give up. Deletion requests much too complicated - so keep the copyvios.

Dear formidable members of this wonderful community. Get real, you can't change the ridiculously complicated procedure for a deletion request all the time. Obviously a degree is not enough anymore to deal with your procedures, one needs a post-graduate program. I'm here to fill out deletion requests for two copyvios (derivative works) and I don't understand the new procedure anymore. You don't want copyvios to get deleted, right? Well, keep them. I don't care anymore. I will remove them from articles on de whenever I find some, but I won't report them here. May they stay forever. --h-stt !? 21:32, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Would you be willing to add MediaWiki:Quick-delete.js to your JavaScript file, which significantly simplifies the deletion process? (Check out the MediaWiki talk:Quick-delete.jsfor how-to instructions.) --Iamunknown 21:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
There is a button "Nominate for deletion" in your left sidebar. If you click it everything should go automatically. If it doesn't, we would like to hear your comments. -- Bryan (talk to me) 21:51, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Hey, I'm surprised - and in a good way. Please include a note about this new function in the toolbox into the template {{delete}}, the version shown if one tries to put it into an article by hand. Oh and a short explanation in the popup-window would be nice. Something along the line of: "Your entry will be given as reason in the listing" --h-stt !? 22:11, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, {{delete}} says If this template was added because you clicked "Nominate for deletion" in the left menu, which implies the existence of a "Nominate for deletion" button in the sidebar. But maybe we should make it more clear by bolding it? -- Bryan (talk to me) 09:53, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Can't we add this function to the standard monobook? --Jollyroger 08:28, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

-Joseph William Burzynski

I am looking for family of Joseph William Burzynski,born 1894 in Sterdyn,Poland. I now vey little about his family. His mothers maiden name was Boltoze. I do not know her given name. I believe he had a brother John and maybe a sister Helen. Joseph left Poland at age 14, landed in the US then later went to Canada. In Canada he married Pauline Winczura, out of that union a family of 6 girls. Joseph lost contact of his family during the second world war. I do not have the knowlege of reading Polish. I would appreciate any knowlege that may be out there about my father.

Louise O Burzynski Gilley loubeanie2@msn.com

This is a site for hosting images and other media for use on WMF projects. It's probably not the best place for your query. There are a lot of resources on the web. Try the Geneology article on Wikipedia for some possible starting points, or you might try asking your question in the right subsection of the Wikipedia:Reference desk. ++Lar: t/c 11:06, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

regrets to excessive policing

What I was given to understand and that what I impression I still hold about various wiki projects is that various projects and pages/gallaries become slowly operational over a period of time .I am a active member from Marathi Language Wikipedia before few months I had created a gallery that would slowly develop in Marathi language main page here in Wikimedia commons along with proper notice for and links for marathi language wikipedians unfortunately some of you came deleted the page afterword some gentleman came deleted talk page of the gallery and both the pages that the prospective gallery and its talk page were extensively linked in various marathi language co-projects like marathi wikipedia wiktionary etc.

I always felt uncomfortable and displeased with excess in policing in the name of clean up.I had invested considerable time to see that good no. of Marathi language people get diverted here . I do regret what happened to my good efforts.

Mahitgar 15:56, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

The contents is still here, and has alwayd been, as Template:Portal notice-mr. But I have restored the deleted page मुखपृष्ठ for you. It was probably deleted because it only contained the template. / Fred J 20:51, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Fred very nice of you, Just yesterday some of the editors at Marathi Language wikipedia have come up assuring support for Marathi Language main page at commons. Mahitgar 15:50, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Mr. Krabs

This user keeps vandalizing. Can somebody block him? —Squidward 02:58, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Can somebody block SpongeBob, too? He's getting annoying! —Squidward 03:08, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Annoying vandal indeed! Give him the boot! —Sandy Cheeks 03:17, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

The place is here, the time is now...

A strange thing was reported on the French-speaking Bistro concerning Image:Shinhwa07.5B.jpg‎, which appears in Category:Copyright violation. Following the link will get you to Image:Shinhwa07.jpg, which was deleted some time ago and is definitely not the same picture. Yet it's perfectly possible to view diffs, such as this one, or to view this picture from one of the Wikipedias, see for instance en:Image:Shinhwa07.5B.jpg. Any idea what's going on? Jastrow (Λέγετε) 09:03, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

It seems like the “.5B” part of the name is ignored: Image:Shinhwa07.5B.jpg. Possibly a bug. --Juiced lemon 09:33, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Yep, looks like a bug. The software doesn't like multiple dots in the file name. Using "Shinhwa07%2E5B.jpg", I was able to delete it. (It was an album cover. %2E is the encoding for a period.) Lupo 09:41, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
We have a number of pictures with multiple dots in the file name (e.g. pictures from the British Museum with accession number in the file name) and they don't pose any problem for now. I'm not sure I understand how this bug works: why was the ".5B" part was just ignored? Jastrow (Λέγετε) 09:50, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Don't know. "%5B" is "[". File a bug report! Lupo 10:26, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
It's caused by our MediaWiki:Monobook.js. See Commons:Bistro#Bug ?. Do we really need these lines? They unconditionally remove any ".5B" ("[") and ".5D" ("]") from the href, which gives interesting behaviour for .5B: that goes to the main page (open for editing)! At the very least do the removal only after a "#"! Lupo 12:32, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
See also Bug 2831. Lupo 12:33, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
For a fix, see MediaWiki talk:Monobook.js. Lupo 15:27, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

বাংলাদেশ or Bangladesh?

The Bangladesh page has been moved to the বাংলাদেশ page, while a category was named বাংলাদেশ alongside the category named Bangladesh. All very nice. But, isn't Wikimedia a global project? Doesn't the use of vernaculars scripts, especially non-international scripts, make it difficult for most people? Is there a policy on this? If yes, why it is not being applied in this case? If no, why it has not been thought of yet? This particular script is my native script. But, for me a global repository of knowledge sounds bigger than nationalistic fervor and zeal. Cheers. Aditya Kabir 17:17, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

You can see the proposals on titles of articles at Commons:Language policy. I think it's not very clear, and it may deserve some discussion. I don't know what is the best answer, though. If you see that people don't discuss here, you might try at the talk page there. - Keta 18:13, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
I can't support this kidn of move for a second. Being an international project, we mustn't have galleries or categories named in some minor obscure language, eg. w:Finnish. The only reasonable thing to do is to use the lingua franca of the current day. Samulili 14:16, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I support articles being in native language, for consistancy. There is Sverige, so what is wrong with Россия (with a redirect from Russia)? But -- as per our policy -- the categories should be in English. Fred J 14:53, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Create redirect, people! They work for galleries! --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 10:55, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Don't more people speak Chinese than English? Should we change everything to Chinese? --Londoneye 11:44, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Wrong image name

Hi, I found an image with a wrong name: Image:Rigugio Bertagnoli.jpg should be renamed as "Rifugio Bertagnoli.jpg" (as you can read in the image itself), "Rigugio" is clearly a mistake. Can anybody do this? Thanks. the preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.15.251.194 (talk • contribs) 21:33, 26. Aug. 2007

Hi, due to software limitations, images cannot be automatically moved/renamed. The only way to do it is to upload it again with the right name, and mark the bad one for deletion with {{bad name|better name.jpg}}. thanks --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:35, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I don't know how to upload an image, I never worked on Commons before. Can anybody do it for me, please? the preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.56.191.161 (talk • contribs) 19:27, 27. Aug. 2007

OK, I've done it.--Londoneye 11:54, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Blurry images

Simple question: is it possible to 'unblurry' images, and if so - how? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:57, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Images can be sharpened to some extent, but there is a limit to what extent. See en:Unsharp masking. If this is in relation to a wikipedia image try asking en:User:MIckStephenson

86.145.179.212 21:05, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

why does th e link not work?

86.145.179.212 21:10, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Works OK for me.--Londoneye 11:57, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Favicon for Wikimedia Commons

I've been uploading Favicons from all Wikimedia projects I could think of and Commons is the only one that didn't have one. Anyone up for the task of making one? --Steinninn 02:59, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Er, Commons has a favicon in my browser...? pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:45, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
And you can see that as easily as all browsers do… [1] --Mormegil 13:20, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Funny. I don't see it. Could you upload it with the rest of the images --Steinninn 14:48, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
I can see it, but it has bugged me for a while that it appears on a white background. A version with a transparent background would be better. Any idea how to change it? the wub "?!" 18:03, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, uploading a new version of Wikimedia#Favicon and reporting it at bugzilla should work. The only Wikimedia favicon that looks transparent to me is the Meta on. --Steinninn 05:08, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Hogarth on Wheels!

I've turned up a book showing, in extreme detail, all of the works that were ever reliably attributed to Hogarth. I'm going to scan all of them in and claim PD-art/PD-100 (He died in 17something); will anyone upload them for me? 68.39.174.238 01:21, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

That's fantastic, but can't you get an account and upload them yourself? --Fb78 07:48, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Alright look for them this weekend. 68.39.174.238 17:02, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Fundraising buttons

Copied from the mailing lists. Those of you with graphic skills should take note:

From Sabine Cretella

Hi, some of you probably already noted that we are starting to work on the fundraiser. Over time you will see some requests for help here and I hope you will do so  :-)

At this stage there are two active tasks and one of it is the creation of the Buttons for the fundraiser.

Description: meta:Fundraising 2007/Buttons and banners to be translated

First examples and translations: meta:Fundraising 2007/web buttons

So if you have ideas to create buttons, banners etc: just do it  :-)

Wishing you a creative and wonderful day!

Sabine


Cary Bass demandez 12:43, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

b u n c h o f p h o t o s a b o u t.com

I just found links to this image site in several Wikipedia articles (and removed them). It calls itself "the Unofficial Pictorial Extension of Wikipedia , the free encyclopedia." I never heard about this site and couldn't find any discussion here or on the English WP. Some pages (like this) just show images hotlinked from all over the net, others are uploaded on that site. And no mentioning of authors, copyright, etc.. Other pages (like this or this) load thumbnails directly from the Wikimedia servers, and again doesn't mention author/source/license. So was this ever discussed with the Wikipedia community? Or should it be blocked because of hotlinking (and possibly because of copyvios)? --91.65.124.74 02:21, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Links to this site should be removed and the site should be blacklisted. Hotlinking is not allowed and should be blocked as well. --Fb78 10:35, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Think I'll maybe look at a Meta level blacklisting - looks quite extensive across wikis. Did you report it at the en wp spam project? Thanks --Herby talk thyme 10:42, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
That is definitely not an official site. Are we supposed to contact WMF lawyers so they can blast them or something? pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:00, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
It calls itself "the Unofficial Pictorial Extension of ..."', anyway, what happend to talking? --32X 19:23, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
  • reset

Massive cross wiki spam, blacklisted at Meta - thanks --Herby talk thyme 07:07, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Where can I find a dump of the Wikimedia Commons' database ?

Actually this is not my question but a question asked by someone else on the French Wikipedia's Bistro : fr:Wikipédia:Le_Bistro/2_septembre_2007#Dump_wikimedia_commons. If you know the answer, would you mind answering there ?

Teofilo 10:44, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

The raw text databases are here: http://download.wikipedia.org/backup-index.html. The image database is not publicly available yet. However, the developers are making efforts to run an rsync3 server that will allow the replication of Commons' images. -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:19, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
Are you making that comment on the basis of the wikitech-l discussion a few weeks ago, or do you have some more information since then? pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:37, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, this was only a few days ago. There is no official information yet though. -- Bryan (talk to me) 13:04, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Bryan, for your answer. Teofilo 13:53, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

RSS feed

Hi everybody, is it possible to use a RSS feed for images of a special topic? What I need are random images from the plant species 'Solanacea' on my website and there are a lot of nice images available in wikimedia. It would be nice to have these images on my website included through a RSS feed. Does anyone have experience with that?

You can get an RSS feed for a category like this. Or you could, if the toolserver would be working. Should be back in a day or two... Note: This will not show random images, but the last ones uploaded in that category. --Magnus Manske 15:09, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks a lot. Sounds useful in my case. I will try this approach.
We now have Commons:Feeds. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:33, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Tagging

I have recieved permission to upload images from a website. I got the confimation via email. I would like to find out what tags need to be used before i upload and how do i prove that i have permissionAdam.J.W.C.

  • And how are we supposed to help you if we don't know what that permission says? (Forward your whole E-Mail exchange it to permissions-commons AT wikimedia DOT org and make clear in your E-Mail to which images from which website it applies and also mention that you need help to figure out the right tag.) Lupo 06:48, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Check out Commons:OTRS for some more details about "proving" permissions, and until the images get processed you can tag them with {{otrs pending}}. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:32, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the info, I have sent an email to the above address, It contains my request and his reply. I will upload one of the images and tag it as instructed above. The image is of a man inside an operations bunker standing on a ladder in front of a map of the south west pacific theater of war. ThanksAdam.J.W.C. 04:44, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Image to rename

The image Image:Catilina lors de la conjuration.jpg should be renamed because it does not depict Catilina but Jugurtha. I've explained in the relevant page what should be done and why. But I don't know how to rename images. If anybody knows how, please do it in my place. Thanks in advance. --Vermondo 00:48, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that when I'm uploading for example my own work, the side bar is missleading. Where it normally sais Upload file it now sais Upload your own work. That is because the system message MediaWiki:Upload/ownwork has been changed. I see four things we can do.

  1. nothing
    Not my choice, you think you will go to the same form again, but instead you go to Commons:Upload, sure, you are still only one click away from your destination, but we are professionals, we shouldn't have it like this.
  2. delete MediaWiki:Upload/ownwork
    The only thing I know this will change is that the title of my own work will change from Upload your own work into Upload file.
  3. change MediaWiki:Upload-url/ownwork into [2]
    When you are at my own work and click on Upload your own work at the sidebar, then you will actually be taken to that form.
  4. change upload-url|upload at MediaWiki:Sidebar into upload-url|Upload file
    Now the sidebar will still say Upload file no matter what form you are in. The downside is, when you set your language into something els then English, you will still see Upload file. Maybe we could create a new system message.

The same goes for the other fictional languages (fromflickr, fromwikimedia, fromgov, more?). I'll go with number 4, but number 2 is tempting. --Steinninn 03:42, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Hm. I didn't notice that before. It's a side effect of the fact that the label on the sidebar is reused as the heading for the upload form in question. I think the custom headings are useful, so I don't think there's anything we can do about the sidebar links. They are only "wrong" for one page. We can't do option 4 because it will break multilinguality. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:31, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
What if we use uploadbtn instead of upload in the sidebar? Do you have any idea what that system message is used for? --Steinninn 15:56, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Mayflower

I almost died of old age waiting for a response from Mayflower. I may have a couple keystrokes left... they may be my last... ....gurgle!

The toolserverdatabase has problems. s2 is currently unavailable, see tools.wikimedia.de/status_s2. The database for Commons is on that cluster.--Erwin85 11:43, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Commonswiki appears to be up to date on Yarrow. Maybe we should poke around with Tango. -- Bryan (talk to me) 18:10, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

EXIF problem

Recently, I uploaded my photos to Commons and chose Dual Free License, but in the EXIF showed "Copyright holder" tag with "Copyright 2007" (like this), did this camera "BenQ C1050" has any problem? If this problem still continued, what should I do and did anyone have idea about changing EXIF data? Rico Shen contact... 17:37, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

What's the problem? Your photo is copyrighted, and you licensed it under both the GFDL and CC-BY-SA-2.5. So everything is fine. GFDL/CC-BY-SA-2.5 does not mean you'd give up copyright! You do keep the copyright, but you grant a non-revokeable liberal license to use the image to anyone else. Choosing a license tag on Commons does not change the EXIF data of the image. ... Or wait... is your problem that the EXIF shows "Copyright 2007" instead of your name? I don't know how to fix that on your camera. To fix it in the JPEG, use an EXIF editor. Lupo 19:38, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Rico Shen, have a look at Commons:Manipulating meta data. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 05:43, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
I asked for this question because someone may misunderstand that the picture is "All rights reserved", but the EXIF information of BenQ C1050 shows just "Copyright 2007", not include "All rights reserved", it means that the license of photos is still decided by users freely. If still have the problem, I'll contact BenQ Taiwan for solving this problem. Rico Shen contact... 06:45, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
The default for any picture is "all rights reserved" unless mentioned otherwise. Someone seeing "Copyright 2007" is more likely to assume "all rights reserved" than dream up his own. The type of person who does interpret this too freely is the type who have little regard for licenses anyway and they'll copy the picture no matter what it says.
I don't think you need to worry about this: clearly all rights aren't reserved, as is made clear by the extremely big licenses in the summary section, which people will see long before scrolling down to squint at "Copyright 2007". And as Lupo has said: "Copyright 2007" isn't wrong, that's still the year in which you created a work to which some copyrights belong only to the you.

Category:It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

I could use some help identifying some of the actors in Category:It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and categorizing them. Would someone like to lend a hand? Thanks!... -- Yekrats 10:58, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

see http://imdb.com/title/tt0057193/
--Juiced lemon 12:42, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Category:Cities by the Oder River

User:Sebastian Wallroth has just created this category, but this name makes me think about floating cities. I should like rather Category:Cities along the Oder River, or something like that.

However, as I am not expert in English language, I ask for other opinions. --Juiced lemon 14:41, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't river be with a small r and not a capital? (It's not German ;)) -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:23, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Capital is usual in such case: Oder River. --Juiced lemon 19:42, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Not sure what is the better name, I'm no native English speaker either ;) Whatever the outcome it would also affect category:Cities by the Rhine and category:Cities by the Vistula, the top category Category:Cities by river I take it is more like Rivers by continent, writers by nationality and so forth. Finn Rindahl 21:31, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Categories “by criterion” are not concerned (see Commons:Naming categories#Categories by CRITERION).
Google test:
  • “cities by the Rhine”: 6 (2 from Wikipedia Commons)
  • “cities on the Rhine”: 3890
  • “cities along the Rhine”: 3990
--Juiced lemon 23:04, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Seems a close call between on the and along the, either is fine with me. The google test should effectively disqualify by the Rhine. But this seem to have been discussed before, with the opposite result: see Category:Cities and villages on the Rhine which has been made a cat redir to category:cities by the Rhine. Anyone remembering this? Finn Rindahl 23:38, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd have thought "by the River" is better; after all, we say "Sussex by the Sea", not on or along the sea!Londoneye 12:03, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Why the Oder River? The Oder is a small important German river- say like the Spee or the Sieg. European convention is to place the word river before the name. With larger rivers- such as the Rhein (Rhine) or Donau (Danube)the word river is often omitted. So we have the River Oder, the River Sieg, the River Spee. I think that this then has a knock on effect with the 'by' and 'along'. To my thinking, a city by a river is one where the river does not pass through or along the borders, where a city is along a river, the river passes through the city. If we group together those cities- then the river almost certainly will pass through a piece if the landmass. Now Brighton is on a sea not a river- but one could have a category: Holiday resorts along the Sussex Coast.ClemRutter 12:57, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Image:Mulroney Memoirs.jpg

What is the proper licensing for a book cover ? Canuck 19:41, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

  • {{fair use}}. :-) Since we don't allow fair use, this will be deleted. Lupo 19:47, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Non-photograph images

Could you point me to policies on who holds copyrights to non-photographic images? For example in case of medical x-ray images (for example http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Xray_empty_dental_space.jpg) are they copyrighted and if so who has right to release them to public domain: a patient in the image (most likely), a technician or doctor who pressed the button (less likely), or hardware owner (very unlikely). How about x-ray images of cargo containers (like http://www.cargolaw.com/images/Singles06.Co-Loading2.GIF) who has copyrights to those: owner of the container, person in the image (if any), hardware operator, organization that owns the hardware? Does wikicommons have any guidelines on this type of images? Thanks in advance -- Jarekt

There's nothing special, per se, about non-visible-light photographs. There's no difference of paying a dentist to photograph a tooth vs. paying someone to take a standard 35mm film picture of a whole person. The photographer generally holds the copyright. Cburnett 04:01, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
That's correct. The person who sets up/operates the photomechanical device holds the copyright. In the US, this can also be a corporation or government body. The person who is being depicted never holds the copyright. --Fb78 11:24, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Hm, if you pay the dentist, does that make it a work for hire? :) pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:33, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Likely not (at least in the US where I know the law). IIRC, health care providers are generally considered the owner of the records. Laws say that you have the right to a copy only if you make a request and you are required to pay a reasonable fee for copying them. FloNight♥♥♥ 16:10, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

If copyrights of medical images are held by technicians that operate the machine than all the medical images donated to wiki commons by patients do not have proper licenses. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Chest.png or http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Cdm_hip_fracture_343.jpg or http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:LCA-RX1.jpg as examples. Some uploaders stated that they took the photos of x-ray images so they are the authors. I believe that patients should be able to upload their own medical images, but that does not seem like a proper justification. If they have such legal right than there should be license choice that fits that scenario. If thy have no such right than it should be added to FAQ or some other easy to find place. Jarekt 19:31, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

The radiologist has no rights when he can't prove it:
  • non-digital techniques: either the radiologist don't keep a copy of the images, either he keep them during a short time
  • digital techniques: lenght of storage?
--Juiced lemon 22:09, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
It's simpler than that. The radiologist has no ownership because they are the employee. A creative work done during the course of employment is, by default, ownership of the employer (unless you have specific arrangements to the contrary).
As for ownership by the patient, that has to be evaluated on a per-image basis because you don't know if they were granted copyright ownership. Cburnett 03:08, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
YLMV, your legislation may vary. One shouldn't say that a work done during the course of employment is, by default, ownership of the employer because that is not the case everywhere. Samulili 07:30, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, it should be considered the default unless otherwise stated. On the copyright status, I think that most of these images (if not all?) lack originality, so no copyright claim can be made. There are simply the work of a machine, like a scanner. The radiologist is there to interpret the images, not to create artistic content. Yann 14:50, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Samulili: touche. That is the US's take on the employer/employee-copyright position.
Yann: the originality is there to the same extent of photographing any specific object. Just because I take a long-exposure of a waterfall (hardly original) doesn't mean I don't get a copyright to my photo. And simply because a radiologist has an ancillary job of interpreting doesn't mean the work in making the photo is for naught in terms of copyright. Cburnett 05:06, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

6 September 2007

Duplication

I found this feature image Image:Along the River 7-119-3.jpg is a duplicate of Image:QingMingShangHeTu Big.jpg. They are both exactly a copy of http://www.npm.gov.tw/masterpiece/enlargement.jsp?pic=K2A001110, but used different compression ratio to reproduce. After some sampling and comparing, I can say the color of Image:QingMingShangHeTu Big.jpg is closer to http://www.npm.gov.tw/masterpiece/enlargement.jsp?pic=K2A001110 than Image:Along the River 7-119-3.jpg. It means Image:QingMingShangHeTu Big.jpg is closer to original version of NPM than Image:Along the River 7-119-3.jpg.--百楽兎.png百楽兎 02:26, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

A deletion request of featured picture: Image:Along the River 7-119-3.jpg was made. Please DON'T write your opinion here.--百楽兎.png百楽兎 05:38, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Hogarth images (Large)

http://68.39.174.238/WH.zip — A load of free engravings of Hogarthery, including the long missing (From WpA) "w:Industry and Idleness", as I promised above that I would scan and make available. Licence should be PD-Art|PD-100, given that he died in the 1700s. 68.39.174.238 17:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

I will upload them, if you can provide some more information about the book you scanned it. Thank you for the work! -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:56, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
They come from two books, 1st of which was "The genius of William Hogarth", the second, "Hogarth's Graphical Works". 68.39.174.238 01:03, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Ok. Uploading. To everybody: The images are here [3]. Some of them need rotation and or cropping; you're help would be appreciated. -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:30, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Also, all the old uploaded engravings need to be marked as redundant and replaced providing they aren't better (Which isn't likely, all the one's I've checked thus far were all at low enough a resolution you couldn't read the verses at the bottom. 68.39.174.238 01:42, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Google Pdf Scan

I found this at Image:Germania_32_1887.pdf, but should be treated as a general matter. The conflicting page is the first one, which i reproduce below. Warning: It's a big file (16,51 MB), full of embedded images.

[Google logo]

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world’s books discoverable online. It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that’s often difficult to discover. Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book’s long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. We also ask that you:

  • Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes.
  • Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google’s system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.
  • Maintain attribution The Google “watermark” you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.
  • Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can’t offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book’s appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world’s books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at http://books.google.com/

Discussion

Now, #1 is against Commons licensing guidelines. #2 not applicable. I'm happy with #3, but we may want to remove the Google logo, as it's copyrighted, to avoid giving it with a PD book. As they're asking us to keep the notice, there wouldn't be any copyright infigement, though. We're already aware of #4.

Due to #1 we would need to reject it. However, it's a scan of PD so we can decide to use it as Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.. IANAL but i understand #4 as abiding them under US rules. Also, i prefer to read it as kindly asking us to comply with it instead of requiring to do it (and IMHO they can't do otherwise) but i would appreciate the opinion of a native US speaker.

What do we do? Platonides 14:20, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that we ignore Google's fraudulent claims. The book is in the public domain, and Google's use of a photoscanner does not give them any copyrights. --Kjetil r 18:45, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
"Fraudulent"? That's a bit strong. They're politely asking the user to do certain things and not do others. They don't claim copyright, as they darn well known that they don't have a copyright on it. That's way better than the large majority of other archives, who just slap a copyright notice on everything. I would, like Platonides proposed, ignore #1. If it's not too much work to remove the Google logo from the PDF, then do it, but if it's left in there, I don't think it's a problem. I don't quite understand why de-WS needs to upload these PDFs here (or anywhere else), though. (But I've got nothing against it, either.) Why can't they just link to the Google page instead? Do they fear that it might disappear there? Lupo 07:41, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes, they fear it might disappear there. Does Google commit to leaving these scanned pages where they are for the next five months, or five years, or forever? I'm sure they don't. If they're gone from Google, they're gone forever. That's one thing. The other thing is: Google politely asking for usage is nice, but I think we can ignore that. What are they going to do? They're offering material which is in the public domain, and people use it. So? --Fb78 07:48, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
I think having Google's logo on Commons is a pretty big policy violation. It should be cut out. -- Bryan (talk to me) 14:19, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
Am I the only one not wanting to have this material on Commons? :-/
I think it would just be better for everyone to have it at google... the only reason why not is because google might delete them, and is that likely to happen? I don't think so..
Fred J 14:47, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
This material is 1. free and 2. useful for one or more Wikimedia projects. So it's not against Commons:Project scope. The friggin Google logo can be cropped out, if anyone actually believes that it should not be there. @Fred J: Google is a company, a company's goal is to make money. If at one point they feel that offering free book scans doesn't work for them anymore, they can just cut it off. Noone can keep them from doing so. When editing Wikipedia, there are so many links you have to pull from archive.org because the original site took them down. Why let this happen to these books? It's not like Google owes us to keep them in place. --Fb78 16:48, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

requesting correct edit to Category:Commons-mr

Dear SantaClaus you seems to have made an edit to Category:Commons-mr This Category is supposed to be for Marathi Language (This language is used in western parts of India).Your edit dated 19:39, 3 March 2007 states * This category contains French articles only.

For your info This category has nothing to do with French per say .Secondly part of Marathi speaking people do understand english but not French. So Undersigned requests to correct the edit made by you, apropriately.

Since I am not fully aware of all rules at commons I hope you will help us in correcting above mentioned edit.

Mahitgar 16:48, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

He already fixed it. Remember that this is a wiki, and you do not have to request from anybody to fix such a thing. -- Bryan (talk to me) 18:45, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

11 September 2007

License help

I need some help with a license issue... We've got a user (User:Theeuro) who works for the ECB and as such can influence under which license the ECB releases their national euro coin face pictures, with which we've had problems a few times up to now. Under what license would they have to release it so that we can upload their pictures here on the Commons without running into any trouble? Thanks! —Nightstallion (?) 23:51, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

CC 2.5 should be the safest, although it appears we are ok with 3.0 too (but there are better experts then me to discuss the 3.0 issue).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 01:22, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I suggest that they require attribution. That's almost always a good thing for commercial organizations. Putting Share Alike (meaning the license carries to any derivative works) is also often good, so the best license to use would then be {{Cc-by-sa-2.5}} ... or {{Cc-by-sa-3.0}} see Category:License tags ++Lar: t/c 10:16, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Or {{GFDL-1.2}} to make use in print difficult. -- Bryan (talk to me) 12:01, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
I fail to see where "to make use in print difficult" is located within the project scope and free content idea. --32X 23:25, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Image:Dp logo bw.jpg

and Image:Dp logo cmyk.jpg both posted as PD. I am not really sure if that is true. Any ideas. --Tarawneh 02:05, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Some letters and a (simple) post horn, nothing that can be copyrighted. Only the use of the images is limited but still within Wikipedia's project scope. --32X 23:36, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Rename

Dear administrators of Commons, please rename me from User:Ostikhin to User:Flrn. --Ostikhin 12:12, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Image:Hübner Über mechanische Copieen von Inschriften.djvu

Why isn't this file shown directly? Can somebody help? .:. Sarazyn 14:10, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Alright, fixed it. Wrong MIME type. Sorry. .:. Sarazyn 15:10, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

12 September 2007

New upload warning message

May I point to the new upload warning message MediaWiki:Filename-bad-prefix? It was activated today and warns the users when they use file names typically assigned by digital cameras. The list of prefixes can be edited here: MediaWiki:Filename-prefix-blacklist. I hope this new warning helps a bit to get more descriptive filenames in the future. --Raymond Disc. 20:26, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I think "IM" should be added to the list (HP C618 and other cams). - Erik Baas 20:37, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Dose this mean they are simply not able to upload these names or are just warned? Anyway, great idea. --Steinninn 20:46, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
It's a warning only like previous existing warnings too (e.g. for an already existing image). --Raymond Disc. 20:50, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
AWESOME thankyou!! pfctdayelise (说什么?) 22:14, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
I suspect this is the root of my problem with using Commonist to upload photos. My photos maintain the image numbers assigned by my camera so that I can easily reference them on my computer, should I be contacted about them. However, I also add details to the filename to differentiate it and provide description. Now my photos now erring during the Commonist upload... is it because of the IMG text in the filename? This error began on September 7. I have several thousand photos to upload of places and objects which currently lack any photos at all and have no desire whatsoever to go back through them all, make copies, and then remove the IMG from every single one JUST to upload. If this is indeed my issue, can an exception be made for photos with a filename longer than 8 characters (to cover DSC_#### or IMG_####)? --Bossi (talkgallerycontrib) 02:57, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

8 September 2007

MediaWiki:Addsection

User:Omegatron and yours truly are having a discussion on the talk page about the change to "add comment" for the English interface, and I cannot seem to work something out. More input is needed on this, since it is a site-wide change that may draw some question marks. Please direct any input to that talk page. —O () 21:09, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Draft of a proposed policy on watermarks

A basic, initial draft has been created at Commons:Watermarks; please take a look and edit/fix/add to/discuss, etc.. Cheers :) -- Editor at Largetalk 05:16, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

JavaScript PNG transparency fix

The English Wikipedia now employs a JavaScript fix to make transparent PNG images display correctly on Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6. I propose that we add this bit of JavaScript to the Commons as well. The full code, for those technically inclined, is:

/*

Correctly handle PNG transparency in Win IE 5.5 & 6.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola. Updated 18-Jan-2006.

Tweaked 9 Sep 2007 (UTC) by Remember_the_dot so that it works properly inside Common.js

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola/pnginfo.htm states "This page contains more information for the curious or those who wish to amend the script for special needs", which I take as permission to modify or adapt this script freely. I release my changes into the public domain.

*/

function PngFix()
{
   if (document.body.filters)
   {
       for(var i=0; i<document.images.length; i++)
       {
          var img = document.images[i]
          var imgName = img.src.toUpperCase()
          if (imgName.substring(imgName.length-3, imgName.length) == "PNG")
          {
             var imgID = (img.id) ? "id='" + img.id + "' " : ""
             var imgClass = (img.className) ? "class='" + img.className + "' " : ""
             var imgTitle = (img.title) ? "title='" + img.title + "' " : "title='" + img.alt + "' "
             var imgStyle = "display:inline-block; vertical-align:middle;" + img.style.cssText 
             if (img.align == "left") imgStyle = "float:left;" + imgStyle
             if (img.align == "right") imgStyle = "float:right;" + imgStyle
             if (img.parentElement.href) imgStyle = "cursor:hand;" + imgStyle
             var strNewHTML = "<span " + imgID + imgClass + imgTitle
             + " style=\"" + "width:" + img.width + "px; height:" + img.height + "px;" + imgStyle + ";"
             + "filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader"
             + "(src=\'" + img.src + "\', sizingMethod='scale');\"></span>" 
             img.outerHTML = strNewHTML
             i = i-1
          }
       }
   }
}

if (navigator.appName == "Microsoft Internet Explorer")
{
    var version = parseFloat(navigator.appVersion.split("MSIE")[1])
    if (version <= 6 && version >= 5.5)
    {
        window.addOnloadHook(PngFix)
    }
}

The only downside is that IE 5.5 and 6 users will no longer be able to right-click and save thumbnails of images. However, this isn't a big issue because users do not typically want to download thumbnails; they usually want to download the full-resolution image. And, of course, the problem does not affect users who upgrade to IE7.

Any thoughts? —Remember the dot (talk) 03:04, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Why should this another code be needed? Isn't this (or an equivalent code) already in the IEFixes which adds Mediawiki? Platonides 13:45, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure IEFixes.js only fixes transparency on the Commons logo. This would fix transparency issues on nearly all PNG images. —Remember the dot (talk) 19:05, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Please don't do this -- it seems to be creating significant issues for my browser when viewing Wikipedia (pages sometimes not displaying until all images have fully loaded, and more frequent browser crashes). AnonMoos 06:02, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

9 September 2007

Graphic source, author, permission

I uploaded a graphic to Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Necdet_Yasar_in_1972.jpg It is not available at the Turkish Wikipedia site. I took the photograph, own all rights to it, and assigned Creative Comments Attribution 2.5 permission to the image.

What am I doing wrong? Neyzenhasan 18:21, 12 September 2007 (UTC).

✓ Done This was a syntax error on tr:Necdet Yaşar, not a problem with the image. Poulos 21:12, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

fonts

Has there been any discussion on allowing fonts (PS/TTF/etc) to be uploaded to the commons? While they are not strictly media, having them as part of the collection would assist people creating media that consists of only free fonts, and would also be useful for our SVG->PNG translation logic. Is this a minefield we are ready for? John Vandenberg 14:47, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I've just created {{Open Font}}, so there you go. --Fb78 17:19, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
I saw that; it is what prompted my query here. Special:Upload complains with ".ttf" is an unwanted file type. John Vandenberg 17:58, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
I think a font file isn't an actual media file (i.e. a definite concrete visual and/or audio display). Check out sites such as http://openfontlibrary.org/ , which are more geared to deal with the special requirements of font distribution than this site is... AnonMoos 01:24, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

gif files

I have uploaded 200+ GIF files as they are original files used in the CIA World Fact Book and fidelity is an issue with these are they are used on the Wikisource s:WFB. One has now been tagged with {{BadGIF}}[4]. Do I need to be concerned or is there a tag I can use to indicate that these images should not be modified/replaced/etc? John Vandenberg 07:51, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Frankly, I wouldn't pay too much attention to it. AnonMoos 08:08, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
If I'm not misstaken there was a tag called Original which was used to tag images which should not be deleted once superseded (back in the days when superseded images got deleted). I know that some of the CIA World Fact Book images got slapped with that tag. /Lokal_Profil 11:24, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Multi-licensed images from other projects

I'm transferring free images from Wikipedia, and I came across one with two licenses. Is there an appropriate template for this, similar to {{GFDL-user-w}} and {{PD-user-w}} (which are the only two the upload form points out)? --CrazyLegsKC 23:18, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

{{Self}} is your friend. --32X 01:07, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I did know about that template, but I wasn't aware of the parameter that allowed one to specify an author other than one's own self. --CrazyLegsKC 01:39, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
You could also use CommonsHelper for image transfer. It takes care about license templates too. --EugeneZelenko 14:21, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

14 September 2007

OTRS request

Could someone with OTRS access please tranfeer the e-mail correspondence on Image:MichaelShermer1.jpg to the OTRS database instead (assuming that it's valid). /Lokal_Profil 00:36, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Attitudes to Admin activity & Community policy

I've re-written this a few times mentally and abandoned it, for those of you who may not realise it I am quite annoyed. The community worked on, discussed and then voted on a policy to de-admin those users who were inactive, the process ending in June. This was as a result of concerns expressed on various community pages prior to this. Considerable work has been put into this by various users over that time culminating in contacting those who were inactive and asking them if they still required the tools - an almost overly reasonable approach in my view.

Many of the comments there are perfectly reasonable. Some of us were in discussion on Commons-l about comments such as this and this. It appears that some of these Admins feel unable to spend the time watching community pages. However the last straw to me is this. I am sure this user will have given valuable assistance to Commons in the past, personally I have no idea who they are as I've seen no log entries I am aware of here or elsewhere but the complete disregard for the communities views I find very offensive. If anyone were to RfA with the fact that they might be inactive and disinterested to this degree in policy I sincerely doubt anyone would vote for them. I fail to see why they should be allowed to take this stance after gaining these rights here.

I'd appreciate the views of the community, thanks --Herby talk thyme 10:43, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Some people see adminship as a reward for "all" they have done for Commons and do not like to lose it. I don't want admins who have no interest in the community and see adminship as a status. Adminship is a tool for people who who want to serve the community by doing the dirty jobs, not a status to show off your contributions on Commons. -- Bryan (talk to me) 11:13, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
+1 --Polarlys 12:26, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
+2 --Digon3 talk 13:42, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Try not to take it personally Herby... I'm sure the vast majority of the friction is caused by the fact we are trying to implement this policy after the fact. If we had had a policy like this from the start, I doubt it would have caused any problems.
Some of our inactive admins are people who, once upon a time, were very active. I don't think they only want to keep their admin flag to "show off". It must be either for convenience (to delete their own mistakes) or because of a belief about what the admin flag signifies (only trustworthiness to use the tools for the good of the project, or something also about being part of the active community here?) --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 14:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
If I were taking it personally I assure you that you and everyone else would know. To call a debated, voted on policy "fatuous" is at the very best uncivil and disrespectful of the community in my opinion. It would appear from the comments above yours that I may not be the only one --Herby talk thyme 14:30, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
It's not worth getting yourself annoyed by comments like that. There are always one or two people who kick up a fuss when something gets changed and who feel that they can trash with five second's thought carefully designed procedures that others have spent many hours diligently working on. We appreciate all the effort that has gone into this, Herby, even if that user doesn't. --MichaelMaggs 15:35, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
++ -- Bryan (talk to me) 16:29, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Herby is doing no more than reiterating what many people think.--Londoneye 12:02, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
I have no interest in seeking status or being rewarded for my contributions. I did in fact gain this community's trust when it was quite young, and I have in fact contributed a few photos in the past. I have lately been less active because I have not had the opportunity to travel far and wide and take more pictures since I made my earlier contributions. I have not disappeared; I intend to contribute more whenever I can (in fact I have a few photos from the past summer which I will upload soon); I do not pretend my past contributions give me the right to permanent adminship.
However, I do "still need my adminship", and I do find a policy fatuous (i.e. foolish, ill-thought-out, unnecessary) which talks about adminship in terms of "need". Whenever I'm active, I use my adminship regularly. I've done maintenance in the past; perhaps I'll find time to do more. If someone wishes to call my trustworthiness into question, let him do so; meanwhile I wish to retain the convenience of being able to clean up after myself and do the occasional bit of maintenance when I run across some rubbish. This would cause no trouble to anybody but myself. My password is strong so security is not an issue. I missed my chance to comment on the policy when it was being made, so I am doing so now (in expanded form because the succint summary of my opinion has been taken amiss). I am not disdaining the effort that went into this policy (I'm sure it was a lot); I simply find the outcome of that effort grievously misguided. In other words, I'm sure you thought hard about this, but I still think you're wrong.
To my disbelief, you question whether I "should be allowed to take this stance" as an administrator. I am not part of some ruling party which requires its members all to think and speak the same (though the several above 'me-too' comments are far from encouraging). Surely I can take what stance I please? Evidently I disagree with the community's views; but voicing my disagreement is not equivalent to "complete disregard" -- just as criticism of the law is not the same as civil disobedience. Does this make sense? — Dan | Talk 05:05, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Interesting - suffice it to say I am diametrically opposed to your position. I guess it depends on your view of working with a community - I hope that I would be a little more considered in my approach on any wiki I was active on. I am not aware anyone called your trustworthiness into question. If I were inactive somewhere I'd let go the rights, it isn't as though they are hard to regain. For those of a curious bent I'll save you looking for this & this. Maybe you will become active again --Herby talk thyme 14:46, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Removing sysop status from inactive users:
Benefits: less admins?
Cons: less admins?
  • Leaving sysop status to inactive users:
Benefits: Users who ocassionally need to cleanup or delete something they run across while working somewhere else, may do so without bothering anyone (after all we trust their judgements since we gave them the sysop bit)
Cons: more admins?

I think that summarizes Dan's points and they're indeed my point of view. We have sysops on eswiki fro mdawn of time who have been inactive for years now, and they retain the sysop bit, no harm was done. Moreover, a few of them occasionally return and use their tools, removing the bit would only cause them to be unable to perform a tiny amount of work, with no real benefit, only perceived. If people are using the tools and improving the site (even if very once in a while), who cares that they think of the bit? what matters is the result, they help, they good. -- Drini 00:45, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes that's fine because everyone is entitled to their opinion. I don't mind Dan's comment, nor Drini's. At the time the policy was voted for, it received almost unanimos support and if I am not mistaken all the admins who voted supported it. If there would have been more oppose-voters, we'd have to re-write the policy and try again as a natural process of establishing consensus for policies.
The de-adminship following the proposal -- ie the final step -- will start as soon as I find the time to make the requests at meta. After that, if there are enough people opposing the policy, it can be discuss and maybe altered or re-written.
Fred J 01:30, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Commons Category policies sorry!

Interacting with JuicedLemon here I was informed that we follow en wp as far as categories were concerned. I asked for a link to the policy which I did not get. Pointing out that Commons was a multi wiki, multi lingual project I got the answer that projects are managed according to their own rules or guidelines. This leaves me with a particular query & a general one.

  1. It seems obvious to me that JuicedLemon choses exactly which approach to policy suits the argument in hand. Small wonder we have some frustrations.
  2. I feel we must try and clarify this for the sake of newcomers who may well be puzzled, those who work so hard on categories which is necessary and last but by no means least those of us who would prefer to stay away from all the fun but get dragged in.

Applying en wp categories seems like a start but we must be quite sure that what we have here is easily findable by those for whom en wp is not the home project too. OK - can of worms I know but the can just keeps getting bigger & I think we really must try and tackle it.

Thanks --Herby talk thyme 14:27, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Where a category name is contentious, I generally support following English Wikipedia. Why? Because where a name is contentious, they will have already had the argument several times. I don't see what Commons will gain from having the same argument again. Potentially we can shortcut a lot of drama by following a standard decided by someone else. English Wikipedia is the easiest, because our categories are in English, and they are the most likely to have all the topics that we have. Not because they are more likely to be "correct" or anything else. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:41, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

15 September

How to categorise photos of specific people?

I just uploaded a photograph of three well-known people. Having read the instructions Commons:Categories and Commons:First steps/Sorting, I'm still not sure what do. See Image:Rubin-greenspan-rongji.jpg. I added categories [[Category:People by alphabet|Zhu, Rongji]] and [[Category:Politicians of China]] to the image page. But I don't understand:

  • Why doesn't Zhu Rongji show up in [[Category:People by alphabet]] under "Z"?
  • How do categories like [[Category:Albert Einstein]] get created? Do I do that manually, or does Category:People by alphabet do that somehow?
  • If I create a category named after the individual, how do I order the names? By usual order (family name first for a Chinese name) or by firstname familyname (consistent with European-language names like "Albert Einstein")?
  • How do pages (not categories) like Albert Einstein get created? When is it appropriate to create them?

I think it would be helpful to add a section to Commons:Categories explaining a bit more about sorting and categories for media about people. Thanks. JimDeLaHunt 07:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The image did appear on Category:People by alphabet: Z under Media in category "People by alphabet". It shouldn't have, though; read the category description. This category is only meant to hold other categories and gallery pages. This is because it would simply not be useful to have every media file that's related to individuals in a single category.
Categories are not automatically created. You may create a new category by creating a new page called Category:Whatever and adding a description and one or more parent categories to it.
As far as name ordering, I would go with the way the name is usually rendered, so family name first for most Chinese names (I understand that some people, particularly when migrating to other countries, reverse the order of their names or treat their given name as their family name). However, I believe the sorting key should go by the actual family name.
Pages (galleries) are created manually, just like galleries. Whereas categories are populated by tagging images, galleries are populated by editing the gallery pages themselves. There is currently no consensus on which is better, so both systems are used pretty much in parallel (the general principles mentioned in Commons:Categories also apply to the sorting of media related to people). Also see Commons:First steps/Sorting.
LX (talk, contribs) 09:48, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, LX. Your clarification to Category:People by alphabet was very helpful. I'm hoping that "be bold" applies here as well as at Wikipedia, because I went ahead and was bold, even though I'm a Commons novice. I'd appreciate it if more experienced people could review all of these changes.

I hope I guessed right. But if not, my apologies. I'm sure the helpful folks here will improve what I did. JimDeLaHunt 02:42, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Sound file attribution

I'm new to Commons and I need a little advice on how to attribute a modified sound file and links. The file is:

Ultrasonic bat calls

I've put in links to the original sound file, but these are coming up in editing mode - why?

All the information is there, can someone please advise?

David User:Keoka

I've fixed the link for you, "Image:" was missing. --rimshottalk 11:46, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Added a caption here. Question: if they're en:ultrasonic, how come I can hear them? The media description page should explain that these have been transposed from 40kHz to a frequency audible for humans. Lupo 07:10, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
And why does the caption not show? Just having this "play button" is not very informative! Lupo 07:11, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
I posted to wikitech-l about improving the caption etc for audio files. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:31, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Server problems?

Hello. I've noticed a few disappearing images between here and the english wikipedia. The images on en:Nikolai Evreinov keep appearing then disappearing (though if you follow the link they are there). Same thing with en:Commedia dell'arte. Now images on here seem to be disappearing - Image:Charles Kean as Macbeth 1858.jpg for example. Is it me? Is there a way to fix? Thanks, DionysosProteus 02:55, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

That was happening to me, too. I purged the problematic images, and that seemed to fix it. Try doing that on your computer. --CrazyLegsKC 04:34, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
A lot of SVG images suddenly don't show up anymore. I tried purging them, and the articles they're on, but this doesn't seem to fix anything. Shinobu 14:34, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Note: this is discussed above. Shinobu 14:38, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
The purge function does seem to fix for a short while, but it's only temporary. I didn't notice the discussion above, so any further comments should go there.
DionysosProteus 17:20, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

16 September

Flickr license changed during upload session

This evening I have been uploading Formula One-related photographs from this Flickr photostream. When I started, the images were all CC-BY-2.0, but just now the licensing has changed to CC-BY-NC-2.0. Although all of the images I have uploaded from this photostream were freely-licensed, they have not yet been reviewed by Flickrreview or an admin. Is there some way in which I can confirm that the images were freely-licensed when I uploaded them so they won't be tagged as incorrectly-licensed?--Diniz 21:48, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

If the uploader at Flickr accidentally gave the wrong lic and changed it, we need to honor the change I think. People need to be able to lic their work as they see fit. FloNight♥♥♥ 21:59, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
It's been established many times that though we might often wish to honor changes to a more restrictive license, we're not usually under any legal obligations to do so.. AnonMoos 01:28, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Three separate issues. Legally, we may or may not be able to force a person to honor a free license depending on several factors. Do we want to spend the money or time to force the issue? Ethically, do we want to force someone to license their work in a manner that they never intended. This could cause someone to have a loss of income or cause other difficulties in their life. Are we going to ignore these considerations? And from a public relations point of view, when our success depends on people generously donating their time and work to the project, do we want to cause people to have a bad feeling towards us? For these reasons, I feel that it is almost always in Commons and the Foundations best interest to allow folks to remove their work from here if they want to do so. And for us to honor folks new licensing even if in the short run we loss a few images. I think we need to be wise and think big picture. FloNight♥♥♥ 16:33, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
If they changed the license that quickly, it's probably an indication that the cc-by-2.0 was just a mistake, and we should remove those pictures. In my opinion the situation is different if the user had left a cc-by-2.0 license there for a long time, and then changed -- in that case, they intended to license it that way originally. But in this case we should assume that cc-by-nc-2.0 is the desired license and remove them. You may want to try messaging the Flickr user to explain the situation, and see if they might change to cc-by-sa-2.0. Carl Lindberg 15:09, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone for your comments. I would really like to keep these images if possible, as many of them are currently unique in what they depict and all of the ones I have uploaded were freely-licensed when I did so (I was using the Flickrinfo tool to speed up to process of formatting the information, which would not have allowed me to upload non-free images). I don't think it was a case of the Flickr user making a mistake by selcting the wrong license when uploading, as the photos with an accurate date are dated September 8, four days before I uploaded them to the Commons. Contacting the Flickr user seems like a good idea (I saw an old message from a Wikipedian/Commons user on their profile page), but I don't have a Flickr account and I am never likely to do so, and creating one for this sole purpose seems to me to be wasteful. Would anyone with a Flickr profile be kind enough to contact the author of the photos?--Diniz 14:49, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

13 September 2007

which upload form to use

I took an image of a map from the commons, and cropped it to make it better for use in articles, but now I don't know if I should use the upload form for my own work, or the one for "from another wiki project", or some other that isn't automatically a choice. Help? Murderbike 17:37, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Don't chose from that list. Go to the page of the original image, copy the license tag from there and add it to your upload (works for non-gov pd, cc, gfdl). Stealing a baby's lollipop couldn't be easier. --32X 20:31, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

iHeritage project: Sunday 23 September

Hello,

I posted about this on the mailing list. iCommons is running a small collection project called iHeritage in South Africa, with one collection day being this Sunday. There's info about it here: http://icommons.org/iheritage They will be encouraging people to upload stuff either here or to Flickr. In an attempt to make Commons a bit more userfriendly for them, I have written a couple of pages specifically for this project: Commons:Welcome, iCommoners, and an upload form.

I have no idea how successful or otherwise it will be, but if anyone finds any confused users, please be kind to them :) or let me know. thanks, pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:42, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

D.C. government & copyright

What is the copyright status of images created by District of Columbia government employees? I've been uploading images from http://www.film.dc.gov/film/cwp/view,a,3,q,613602,filmNav,%7C30717%7C.asp under the assumption that they are public domain as works of the U.S. federal government. My understanding was that as an agency created by Congress, the D.C. government falls under this rule but could someone with legal expertise comment as I could easily be mistaken. --Monack 22:17, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

They aren't telling, T&C says that "United States and foreign copyright laws and international conventions protect the contents of the Site.", but also that "You agree to abide by all copyright notices posted on the Site.", which seem to be nonexistant. 68.39.174.238 22:28, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
The DC government is not a part of the US federal government. Under the District of Columbia Home Rule Act of 1973 it is it's own acting body of governance for most jobs needed to run the city, like a Mayor. Any images taken by DC Government offices would be property of the DC Government. Now I don't know what their copyright rules are but I can't see why they would restrict use of their images. And since there is no copyright marks on the page, they seem to have not claimed a copyright on the image or else they're just Public Domain. Also, the Terms & Conditions say "You agree to abide by all copyright notices posted on the Site." Since there weren't any, there's no reason why you cant use the images. 208.58.3.115 05:44, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Legal issues relating to the DC government and its connection to the federal government aside you don't have to 'claim' copyright for something to be copyrighted. Also the fact that someone forgot to put a copyright notice on their site doesn't somehow make their copyright invalid. Unless they specifically say their images are in the public domain or can be used for any purpose or there is a legal reason why images produced by the DC government would be in the public domain, please do NOT assume they are Nil Einne 08:41, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
This is how I understood matters as well... failure to assert means copyrighted (in the standard way with all rights reserved) by default. PD, GFDL, CC, FreeArt et al need specific assertion. ++Lar: t/c 22:18, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
I found the answer to my question:

Also, there are some entities that might seem to be part of the U.S. government, but are not. For example, the U.S. Postal Service is no longer a branch of the U.S. government. In addition, while under U.S. control, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and organized territories of the U.S. are not considered to be part of the U.S. government for purposes of copyright law.[5]

So apparently the images aren't PD. I'll get them removed. --Monack 15:30, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Right. In the future, you might also consider looking at WP:PD. It has that info in the last paragraph of the section U.S. government works. Lupo 15:36, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Did I do this right?

The image Image:MBTA Boston subway map.png was taken from a web site with a cc-by-2.0 license. There is an inferior version on en-wiki that I tagged for speedy and notified the creator. He responded that he had an even better more recent version with the colors fixed which he uploaded to commons as Image:MBTA Boston subway map 2.png with a cc-by-3.0 license. Then he left me a puzzling comment. [6] I took it to mean that he wanted to replace the original version with the new version instead of having both. So I re-uploaded the new image and overwrote the original file Image:MBTA Boston subway map.png with the new file and transferred the copyright info. I suppose the duplicate Image:MBTA Boston subway map 2.png should be deleted. If I did not handle this the right way please let me know. Dread Pirate Westley 20:37, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi, yep, you did everything about right. I deleted the "2" version. In future you can tag things like that {{duplicate|image:propername.jpg}}. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:00, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Images to delete

These 2 images : Image:Citricacidcycle ball.svg and Image:Proteinstructur-ar.svg should be deleted, because they are not rendering correctly. YassineMrabet 21:22, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

As stated abowe: Please use the relevant process for deletions. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with these images. --Steinninn 21:27, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Image thumbnails not showing

I've found that these images don't display correctly in their category thumbnails:

They are simply a block-pixelated mess instead. Ingolfson 08:54, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

The first and third should be ok now, I can't seem to manage to purge Image:Forest & Bird headquarters.jpg though :o( Finn Rindahl 09:27, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Works for me... pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:30, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Association football uniform or kit ?

According to the poll in Commons:Categories for discussion/Current requests/2007/07/Category:Soccer in England & Category:Soccer in Scotland, most of categories about association football will be renamed. At the moment, the used terms for association football equipment are not consistent, since we have Category:Soccer uniforms (and subcategories for specific countries) and Category:National football kits - Category:Football kit templates.

After a sort search, I got hints (Colours of football, kit (football)) that “kit” is far more used than “uniform”. So, I plan to built a substructure based on Category:Association football kits.

Do you support this conclusion ? --Juiced lemon 09:02, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd call it a strip. As in home strip and away strip. William Avery 11:36, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I think that strip concerns only clothes. I speak about categories for the whole equipment of an association football player:
  • shirt
  • shorts
  • socks
  • shin guards
  • shoes with studs
--Juiced lemon 13:19, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Definitely, kit for the top level category then. You are certainly correct that uniform would only be used very rarely, if at all. I was thinking only of the schematics used to show team colours. Shin guards and boots aren't in team colours though are they? So where you are categorising the diagrams used in soccer infoboxes by country or team I think strip is the most suitable word. The 'shoes with studs' are (association) football boots. William Avery 16:31, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I should prefer Category:Association football kit diagrams for consistency. In Category:Football kit templates, one finds currently diagrams for bodies of shirts, for right and left sleeves, for shorts and for socks. --Juiced lemon 17:05, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

categories

The Category:Sundial is within the category:Sundials I and others would like to re categories sundial into sundials then start categorising into types of sundials. Two things 1 does anyone see a problem with this and 2 is there somewhere else I should put this notice / request. Thanks Edmund Patrick ( confer work) 11:39, 18 September 2007 (UTC) Please note that although in red the category Sundials does exist. Not sure why the link is not working. Edmund Patrick ( confer work) 11:41, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Hm, you may be confusing pages (galleries) and categories here. Sundial is a gallery within category:Sundials, there is no category:sundial, it' just a redirect to Category:sundials Finn Rindahl 11:57, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for that. The difficulty I still have is put in search - Sundial and it takes you to the gallery sundial bypassing category:Sundials, unless you happen to wonder what category Sundials is at the bottom of the page. Put in Sundials and you go to the category which lists sundial as a gallery. Put in Sundial and you could miss all the ones in Sundials. As we want to start to categorise in type of Sundial and Sundial by Country I believe we should re-categorise all to Category Sundials then I suppose the problem will be solved. Edmund Patrick ( confer work) 14:41, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure I follow you here, but I will still offer a couple suggestions: 1) Add a note on top of the gallery like the one on Brisbane, saying that the rest of the sundials could be found in the category. 2) Make sure all sundials are categorised, a gallery is a supplement to categories not an alternative. The gallery should only be used to present selected representative images of sundials.Finn Rindahl 15:21, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Above all, there is a need for a check box, near the search field of the main page, in order to search for categories, and not galleries. --Juiced lemon 15:25, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Northern Rock queue pics, anyone?

On the Dutch Wikipedia I'm writing about the current crisis in the financial markets. This is currently rather a lot of text, with only one graph to enliven it. Is there a British contributor to Commons who has made a picture of a queue of Northern Rock clients, waiting to withdraw their money from this bank? Would be very grateful! Best regards, MartinD 08:23, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi Martin, you should try asking at the wikimediauk-l mailing list. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 12:28, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
I will, thanks! MartinD 12:33, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Some photos now in Category:Northern Rock. Man vyi 05:40, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Just what I was looking for, thanks a lot! MartinD 11:41, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Another thumbnail problem

this file is still showing an earlier thumbnail, generated from an incorrect SVG file. I re-uploaded the file, but the thumbnail still shows the old incorrect version. Huskyoog.jpg Husky (talk to me) 21:40, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Looks OK to mee, could you explain a little bit more what the problem seems to be? Finn Rindahl 21:51, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
I did it already. --32X 21:53, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! Huskyoog.jpg Husky (talk to me) 23:21, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Template for texts of monuments

Is there any template for texts of monuments? I'd like to quote the texts from images to make it easier to search for them or to translate them. Image:Gedenkstein Friedrich Hermann Rötschke.jpg is pretty much obvious, but Image:Monument for the last wolf in westphalia.jpg is quite hard readable and therefor I'd prefer a well formated text version too. Any suggestions? --32X 21:53, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Another thumbnail problem

The problem with thumbnails or special sizes of certain images is still ongoing. My example of today: In [7] the entry of Larix occidentalis the second pic of the gallery is not displayed.--JFKCom 22:38, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

✓ Done Finn Rindahl 22:48, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


United Nations Poster Image

  • Please check it out: Image:425px-Naciones Unidas 3 repaired and.png.png
I've replaced the damaged image with the same image after repairing it, and coverting it from JPEG to PNG.
Now the posting(s) need cleanup.
Also, the image needs re-naming: I want it to conform to the old name, but replace thev 3 with 3.1, and it should end in .PNG.
Thanks. --Ludvikus1 12:23, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

September 19

What is going on????

Thank you very much for your care about every field in description form. If you prefer them over images - you can have an description. I come back to russian wiki, where people do no delete images by a bot. PLEASE, REMOVE ALL MY IMAGES as db-owner, as you remove Image:Порт Артур. Сухой док и доковая мастерская.jpg, image:Порт Артур. Железная дорога и вокзал.jpg, image:Порт Артур. Туземный городъ — китайский.jpg, image:Порт Артур. Набережная.jpg, image:Порт Артур. Внутренний восточный бассейн.jpg, image:Порт Артур. Дворец Наместника на Дальнем Востоке.jpg, image:Порт Артур. Углубленный западный бассейн.jpg. Now I'm cleary undestand, that you want every one talk english. OK. You can talk english. Without me. Removing my images just 'couse you can not move your back to translate description (where provided FULL information at russian, 'couse it was an old russian magazine, and i'm russian) - you can freely remove all my images. Thank you very much for such speedy displaying your real side. About ~20Gb photos from russian museums will be uploaded to russian wikipedia (where no one will annoyed by russian language), and will nere be uploaded to commons. If you like english description over images meaning - ok, play with english. Without images. Saionara. #!George Shuklin 05:33, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I'm not very familiar to image deletion procedure, so just remove this (it's really sad to redo all my work at russian wiki, but there is no other way to keep em from non-russian-non-thinking-bots): list of images removed. Siebrand 07:20, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

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Спасибо за то, что Вы загрузили в Викисклад (Wikimedia Commons) свои файлы. Обратите, пожалуйста, внимание, что изображения и другие файлы, расположенные здесь, должны находиться под свободными лицензиями и быть полезными в других проектах Фонда Викимедиа. Чтобы другие люди могли воспользоваться Вашими файлами, к их описаниям необходимо добавить следующую важную информацию:
  • Кратко опишите, что изображено на фотографии;
  • Укажите автора и дату создания. Если это Ваша собственная работа, напишите об этом, если автор - другой автор Википедии, то дайте ссылку на его страницу;
  • Если Вы не сами создали изображение, укажите источник, то есть место, откуда Вы его взяли;
  • Добавьте Шаблон лицензии. Изображения, правовой статус которых не установлен, будут удалены;
  • Добавьте ссылку на изображение в одну из галерей - страниц, состоящих из тематически подобранных файлов, или в соответствующую категорию. Это нужно для того, чтобы другие также смогли найти Ваш файл. Если Вы не знаете, куда включить Ваше изображение, воспользуйтесь специальным инструментом.
Если Вы скопировали файл из другого проекта фонда Викимедиа, пожалуйста, также скопируйте всю информацию о нём и укажите имя загрузившего участника.
Для создания описания рекомендуется пользоваться специальным шаблоном. Детали применения этого шаблона Вы можете посмотреть на странице его обсуждения
Пожалуйста, давайте как можно больше информации о файле. Если такой информации будет недостаточно, файл может быть удалён. Если Вы хотите узнать больше, прочитайте статью Первые шаги(англ.). Также Вы можете задать свой вопрос на специальном Форуме(англ.). Спасибо. Siebrand 07:20, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Hello, I would love to see and enjoy your Russian images. Would you have any idea/suggestion about a compromise in naming/labeling of the images so that we can find our way in your images ? Thank you for your effort. --Foroa 07:27, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

  • I put a complete Russian description. If you could not read it, it is not my problem? Why currently I see a deleted images (which take a few hours of my work)? If has a Russian description (description="... Из журнала Нива за 1904 г" (from magazine Niva of 1904)) and they are deleted. If someone so lazy to translate before deleting - I have no intension to splend my time for works, wich will removed so easy. As I say, please remove ALL my images. I'll reupload them at russian wiki. #!George Shuklin 07:53, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
  • I guess the decision of removing George Shuklin's images was wrong. They can be qualified as a 100 years old orphans (without any author mentioned in the original Niva magazine). --Boleslav1 10:56, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
    • Problem was not in images (and they were not deleted - see deleted edits of George_Shuklin), problem is description itself. Explanation of problem was given in Russian. It looks like other person took care about these images. --EugeneZelenko 14:14, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Hello George Shuklin, the problem is that people allover the world are so kind to donate images to the commons. Nobody here can understand all the 150 or more languages that are used on the various associated wiki's. The agreement here is that we try to provide files with names (in plus/minus English and a couple of significant English keywords). With that type of information, your files become usable for most people all over the world, as you can use files form Chinese, Japaneses, Indian, Arabic, Inuit, ... origins. Commons mean: doing something together, and if you have specific questions or needs for specific help, I am sure we will find somebody to help you. This too is commons. --Foroa 17:01, 18 September 2007 (UTC) And before I forget it: Wiki image file names cannot be changed as they are used as key in the database and the file system. So, even if we find a good soul to translate the file names, we would need to download the files, rename them, and upload them again, which is quite a lot of unnecessary work. --Foroa 17:17, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

So, you say me: "go and learn english". My replay: "NO". I've never agree with such conditions. I do not want to learn english, I do not want to talk english. I just want to help develop a russian wiki. Russians wikipedians say me "its better to upload images with free licences to commons". I did this. But I do not want to do this at english. Or I'll use russian (and ONLY russian - for categories and descriptions, adding english one only if musemum note for exhibits has it) or I go back to ru-wiki with clear heart. As result, please, select one of two ways: OR I will continue use a russian text (description and categories) OR I go away. Please, say answer clearly to avoid unnecessary actions. If it is a consensus - I'll accept any of two. #!George Shuklin 18:31, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
The editor did not say "go and learn english". From your text it is clear that you have a good enough grasp of the language to correctly name files. If you don't want to then that is your call - you could find another editor who is willing to translate for you, or you can upload to your local wiki (if they want you to upload here then you can debate with them on it) - either way this is the commons - not an image dump for each language wiki - and hence there have to be some ground rules to enable everyone to use the content. Best wishes, SFC9394 18:53, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
So, wich variant is correct one? Go away or continue russian? #!George Shuklin 19:03, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
The correct one is "Go on with Russian descriptions, Russian file names and Russian galleries, but please use English for categories."
Russian file names are absolutely no problem. Descriptions and galeries can be translated to many other languages, but categories are the most important part for sorting, grouping and collecting images. --32X 10:33, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Commons is for all wikimedia projects in all languages. That means that users should be allowed to use the language they know best, it does not matter if they speak English or Russian or some other language. So requiring image names and descriptions in English is really not good. It is much better if a user provides good names and descriptions in their native language, than if images are badly named and badly descripted in English. It is of course good (but not necessary) if users also provide English descriptions (if they can).

Also, it is not necessary to have English names for images to be usable for other projects. Images can be included in all projects regardless of the file name. And helping projects find images is better done by translating descriptions, categorising images, and putting images in appropriate galleries. This only requires that Commons has some users who are able to translate from each language, not that all users know all languages. So reuploading renamed images and deleting original uploads is just extra work that serves no purpose. (If someone really wants English file names, it is better to ask the developers to try to implement image redirects.) /Ö 20:45, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

And just to remind people, Commons:Language policy accepts any language for image filenames. We do want to encourage people to transwiki the masses of existing free images in each project, and the process goes more smoothly if the local file names can be preserved. Stan Shebs 14:56, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but there was some misunderstanding on my side and some vague standard on the other side concerning the file name. What I meant to say that the filename should be in a Western characterset (policy says: If possible, stick to ASCII so that ...), but contrary to what I believed, modern systems seems not to have problems to display the Cyrillic, Chinese, arabic characterset, so I guess that this constraint can be dropped (TBC). What you write with that characterset: well there are some preferences but in fact you could even invent your own language. So indeed, the only compromise to be found concerns the category names and I am sure that some helping hand will be found to translate/move your image categories as necessary. I think that if you have two or three more discussions on the commons, your English will be perfect. Thank you for your goodwill anyway. --Foroa 13:34, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Does that also go for category names as here? Lycaon 15:04, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
No, see 上海 and corresponding Category:Shanghai. ALTON .ıl 07:19, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Coming up on 2 million images

Apologies if this was discussed elsewhere. It seems we are coming up on 2 million image files soon. When we hit 1M, we had a quite lovely (no bias here! :) ), although somewhat slow to load, commemorative project: Wikimedia Logo Mosaic and a press release. Is anyone doing anything for 2M? I note that en:wp had a much less elaborate celebration of hitting 2M articles than it did for 1M, so perhaps 2M just doesn't carry much oomph :) ++Lar: t/c 14:11, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

The most important is that we'll have more media files in Commons than articles in any Wikipedia project (2,013,651 articles in the English Wikipedia). --Juiced lemon 15:16, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Maybe someone with access to the thumbnail storage could have a look at these :

http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~dabr/htmlparts/newindexhtmls/projekte/sub/mosaiccreator/index.html and http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/schani/metapixel/ A High quality Mosaic of some self-referring photo would be cool. There is isn't much time left, so I guess it would take way too long to download several 1000 Category:Quality Images thumbnails, reduce them further in size then process them, but maybe someone can pull them off a backup. --Inkwina 21:51, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Image:Einheitskreis Ani.gif

Please repairs to previous version. --Gouwenaar 21:00, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Use the revert function if you want to go back to the old version. Jackaranga 05:43, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
I 've replaced the older version. --Gouwenaar 15:22, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
The last tan-value shouldn't be ∞ since it is not defined. --32X 19:20, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation for categories?

I stubmled across Category:Maule which contained four images. With en:Maule in my mind I did some cleaning. Two of these images were moved to Category:Maule (Yvelines), the other two went to the newly created Category:Maule Air. What should I do with this empty category now? Is there some kind of disambiguation for category pages? --32X 01:18, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

If the name of the aircraft manufacturer is "Maule Air", I think Category:Maule could be used for the french city with a disambiguation link to Category:Maule Air. /Ö 09:03, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
And what about the river, the region and the community with the same name in chile? Just because we don't have much material of that geographical structures doesn't make them less important. --32X 10:49, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Status of other languages on Commons

Dear all!

I have noticed that usually only the English versions of our project pages are really up-to-date. This goes not exclusivly but especially for the page Commons:Licensing and Commons:Copyright tags. If you have a look at the other language versions you can see often that license tags that are depreciated now or which were deleted are still present as possible licences and that new one are not yet included. As mentioned before: Those two page are only an example for my point.

The aim of Commons should be to offer all the relevant information in a large variety of languages.

Therefore, the information in all offered languages should be as up-to-date as possible, because otherwise there will be discussion were actually no discussions are needed. This consumes a lot of time especially of the admins and causes frustration on part of many users who thought that the information they found in there language is current (but in fact was not).

Therefore I propose the following:

  • Let the English versions of all pages be the only "official" version on which discussions should be based. Because usually the English versions are definitivly up-to-date.
  • All other languages should be updates as soon as possible. Maybe we can find volunteers who make up translation teams and pledge to update the pages regularly. These teams shoudl be listed on a subpage of Commons:Language policy.
  • In the case of disputes on the different language versions a multiligual team of administrators shoudl help to solve these problems. These admin should be listed on subapge of Commons:Language policy.

Well friends. These are my thoughts on this. I await your comments. --ALE! ¿…? 07:57, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Good initiative. However, it would be nice to have on each project page (some of them are not even approaching draft version):
  1. a status if the page is under evolution or discussion, formally agreed, ...
  2. "The date of the latest significant update (or version number)
In addition, on each translated page:
  1. version/date and status of the last translated source (+link to it)
  2. possibly a warning of translation category when too much out of sync of the master page (after major revision)
All this implies that there must be a better controlled process to update/release project pages.
--Foroa 08:32, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Filename prefix blacklist

Using Commonist to upload, I have recently been receiving these errors after completing the upload. I suspect my problem is linked to the filename prefix blacklist, which I understand was implemented on September 7 -- the same night I began experiencing this problem.

My images all maintain the lead characters "IMG_####", but as you can see from looking at my gallery of photos, I include descriptive filenames in addition to the IMG_#### tag. The IMG_#### tag is used to sort and reference photos on my harddrive. I have several thousand photos with descriptive filenames but also have the blacklisted prefix, and by no means do I intend to make copies of all of those files and remove each prefix solely to upload to Wikipedia... that would be quite an endeavor.

On the one hand, this prefix blacklist may go against the foundations of Wikipedia by making it more difficult for users to upload useful content. At the least, I ask that the blacklist not affect images which include the prefix text in addition to extra characters (perhaps set a minimum character count of 9 characters, inclusive).

Thank you for your time. --Bossi (talkgallerycontrib) 05:04, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

It sounds like an issue with the Commonist, an external tool. The Commonist should be patched to ignore these kind of warnings, completely or as you mentioned if the filename has a lenght of at least 9 characters.
The warning is no real barrier for users who use the standard upload form as the prefix blacklist warning is a warning only as other warnings too. It can be ignored without any problems (but should not be ignored as long as renaming of images is impossible). --Raymond Disc. 05:59, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Commonist is a good and very effficient tool; it saves me many hours and many mistakes. Warning messages should be limited to the strict minimum, otherwise they will be generally ignored. Commonist should be clearer about the warnings it received. Anyway, it is not a good practise to do message filtering on two different places. --Foroa 20:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
An alternative might be to put the original image name to the end of the file name. This would lead to a more descriptive beginning and avoid the check. --32X 18:15, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
I had considered that, but that would disrupt the automatic sorting which the numbers provide for on my computer. It'd also mean many many hours of renaming each file one-by-one. --Bossi (talkgallerycontrib) 00:18, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
You could open a "command prompt (a.k.a. "DOS box") and rename all files in one go, for example ren IMG*.* XYZ_*.* (or preferably somthing more useful than "xyz" ;-) ) which will leave the numbers intact. - Erik Baas 19:35, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I emailed the author about the problem. If he does not respond, I will see whether I can fix it myself. -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:48, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Good news. IrfanView is free to download to Windows. I too need to maintain the image numbers in the file name (Reasons of Sanity). I just discovered Commonist and it did all I wished except Bulk file renames--somewhere Irfan was recommended, and it comes with a tool called IrfanViewThumbnails. Your select say 100 images from your WindowsXP directory, highlight them, fiddle with the setting and it renames all the images appending an incrementing number to all of them. An option allows you to set the starting number of the sequence (sync it to the existing number). A Windows XP bug makes it sensible to have only 100 files in the input directory- o it freezes. That was there in the FAQ. (It explained a problem I had had in May with a directory that crashed in Windows Explorer that wasted about 6 days. <That was a bonus>). Start with a small directory till you master the options. ClemRutter 20:51, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Windows explorere and Google Picasa allow to select any number of files and rename them all in one go. The given filename gets extended with a number to differentiate them. Picasa allows to reorder manually and quickly thumbnails in a logical order on the screen, for example pictures of a building in a clockwise fashion, followed by some building details, followed by the interior pictures. Then they can be renamed as selected in the displayed order. Suggestion to start with number 10 when more then 9 pictures are present; in that case, commons displays them in the same order (otherwise commons orders name 1, name 10, name 2, name 20, name 3, ... --Foroa 20:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the tips, but none of those programs suit my needs. In what forum was the blacklist discussed and implemented through, and how can I go about requesting it be disabled? --Bossi (talkgallerycontrib) 05:22, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Strange filenames and licenses

What should one with a user who consistently upload pictures using strange and misleading filenames? The user in question is User:Easyplex. I already adressed the problem on his talk pages several days ago, but did not get a reply. Since I'm not sure what to do, I'll adress the problem here and invite him to join the discussion.

Easyplex has uploaded several files with very strange filenames that do not fit the pictures' content at all. Some examples:

  • Image:Cypraea-trigris-001.jpg. The image shows a landscape, according to the image description in "Taipei County, Formosa" (Taiwan). Cyprea are Cowry shells, there is a species called Cyprea tigris (not trigris). No cowry shells at all in the picture.
  • Image:Al-sahaf.jpg. The image shows the Brazilian and Russian presidents and the Canadian prime minister at the G-8 meeting in Germany on June 8. What is the filename supposed to mean?
  • Image:Schlumpfilein.png. A NASA image showing how the launch of a Mars habitat could look like. The file name is German, meaning Little smurf in English. What does the file name have to with the picture?
  • Image:Hochsprung.jpg. The image show a British military ship, HMS Invincible. The file name is German again, meaning High jump. What is it supposed to mean?
  • Image:Fahnenjunker-AGA.jpg. Another ship, the Brazilian aircraft carrier São Paulo. The file name is German yet again, meaning ensign (the military rank). I do not know what the AGA is supposed to mean.
  • Image:Lichtschranke.jpg A military jet airplane from Brazil, the filename German yet again, meaning light barrier. There's no light barrier whatsoever on the picture.
  • Image:Geloebnis.jpg Another military plane, this time a Lancaster bomber in Canada. The file name is German, meaning pledge or solemn promise, used mostly in a military context (see Ceremonial oath of the Bundeswehr).
  • Image:PartituraLiliMarleen.png. According to the image description, this is the flag of the Kingdom of Sarawak. What does this have to do with Lili Marleen?
  • Image:Hbf.Erfurt1.png. Another flag, according to the image description that of Damaraland in 1864. Erfurt is a German city, and Hbf is the usual German abbreviation for Hauptbahnhof (central train station). Again, I don't see any connection between content and filename of the image.
  • Image:Westerplatte1939.JPG. This picture says it shows the Elbow River in Canada. Westerplatte is the German name for a peninsula in Poland, where the Second World War was started in 1939. What does this have to do with the Elbow river?
  • Image:Franchispas12.jpg shows the same river. The meaning of the file name is unclear, it does not say anything about the image in any case.
  • Image:Jäger IDZ.jpg. According to the image description, this image shows Okanagan Lake in Canada. Jäger is German for hunter, or short for Jagdflugzeug (fighter aircraft). No hunters or aircraft are to be seen on the picture.

I do get the impression this user sees Commons and/or Wikipedia as a joke. Besides the strange filenames, he chooses strange image licenses (Copyzero license, Mozilla Public License), even adding them to other users' images ([8], in this case the Open Audio License), and uses a lot of gimmicky font colors.

What should one do with such a user and the images he uploaded? Re-upload the images with more fitting file names? Admonish the user to use better filenames in the future? Suggestions are welcome. Regards --Rosenzweig 11:48, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

The file names are the names of deleted files linked to from archived deletion requests at Commons:Deletion requests/Archive/2006/03 (and maybe other archives). I think this is disruptive behaviour, and that the user should be blocked if he does not respond. /Ö 12:10, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I see ... Among Easyplex's uploads are even more files with file names linked to from this archive. This is definitely deliberate. The impression that Easyplex does not want to contribute in an earnest way deepens. --Rosenzweig 16:13, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
It does look like the User is deliberately being a brat for their own amusement. User page infobox notes the User doesn't speak Hungarian nor Gaeilge; edits shows User speaks colloquial English. What are we to make of Image:Hm06 logo de col.png Coat of arms of the Colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, listed as own work, and licenced GFDL and "the Creative Commons "Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Malaysia" Licence"? Add that the title is that of a file deleted last year for "the logo of the "Hannover Fair" in Germany". I suggest the user be asked to reupload any original work under more descriptive not misleading titles, and perhaps stick to more usual licences unless some explanation can be offered that something else is prefered? The user has been being disruptive. Easyplex: Please don't be a brat here. Thanks. I agree the user should be blocked if there is no satisfactory response; I would suggest if it came to that deleting the user's images as well (unless someone wishes to take the time to properly source and reupload them under proper titles one by one).-- Infrogmation 16:53, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
If this person only intends to disrupt the project and to provide misleading information then a block seems fine. Trying to dig up the correct sources and licenses sounds like a waste of time. Just delete all his uploads. It is not our job to try to locate the webpages he took them from. Valentinian (talk) 17:27, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
The editor was alerted to this discussion on their User talk page, and has since uploaded under inappropriate titles per pattern. I added a further warning. How much longer (if longer at all) do you think we should give the editor before blocking and deleting? -- Infrogmation 02:57, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
See also the deletion request for Image:Argentina flag.png licensed as CC-(something)-Poland. The coat of arms image of the British colony was yet another copyvio. That image is drawn by Juan Manuel Gabino Villascán and was taken from [9]. I've marked that one as an obvious copyvio. Block the account, delete all uploads and *then* he might try his luck applying for getting back on board. Valentinian (talk) 09:14, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Blocked for one week to start with, seems clear that this is intentional disruption. Finn Rindahl 09:33, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm with Valentinian and would delete them all. -- Bryan (talk to me) 11:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Fine by me. Shall we wait, say, 2 weeks to give the user a chance to make amends after the current 1 week block expires? (The short term rather than permanent block suggests one more chance is open to the user.) I don't object to the offer of a last slim chance to reform, but if none is forthcoming, I agree a permanent block and deletion of all uploads by the user is appropriate. -- Infrogmation 21:12, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure whether we really should wait that long - I've asked the user to adress our concerns at his user talk (and will add anither comment about that), but so far he has only commented on the particular files listed for deletion Image:Hm06 logo de col.png (tagged copyvio) and Image:Argentina_flag.png listed for deletion here (those two images should deninitely be deleted now, but as I'm the one who blocked him I'll leave that decision to others. If the user can give some reasons for his recent actions I suppose he could have the opportunity to make amends after his block expires - my initial thought was that the block should be permantent unless he provides some answers. It seems, however, to me that this is som bizarre idea of a joke, and I'm seriously inclined to delete the lot of it. Finn Rindahl 21:34, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Deleted all of them. If the user wants to have them back, he is free to do so, but only with correct licensing and filenames. -- Bryan (talk to me) 10:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)


Actually, there are even more files with strange filenames and licenses uploaded by this user; the ones presented above were only a selection. If you deleted those, you should delete the other ones as well. They are:

All of the filenames are taken from the deletions request archive mentioned above, I hope I got them all. Regards --Rosenzweig 17:10, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, it does seem you're right here. I'm deleting those too. Finn Rindahl 17:39, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
This is getting cumbersome, but among the user's uploads are at least 20 more pictures that bear the names of other files that were deleted. Other filenames include the not very descriptive an rather misleading Air, Sea or House. Another unnecessary gimmick is the addition of gaudy frames to photographs. I fear an admin with some time on his hands will have to look through the uploads and delete those that are questionable. Or, as suggested above, delete them all and reinstate the few that may be ok on appeal. Regards --Rosenzweig 10:35, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Handling delections of files in use more gracefully.

I am an admin of the Wikipedia for Ripuarian languages. We suggest, as per our intro text on the Special:Upload page, to upload almost everything to Commons, so as to maximize benefits of those uploads to everyone in the word. We use many files available from Commons.

Patrolling recent changes, from time to time, I come accross media files that were already deleted from commons, and are now deleted from the Wikipedia by a bot, CommonsDelinker.

Imho, this order of processing is faulty, and needs to be reversed. That means: first remove references from each place where there are any, then provide time for editors and admins to react (protest, look for a replacement, copy to local wiki, whatsoever), and then, say a month later, remove the file from Commons unless protest lead to a new decision, and the media file is now kept. (If it is kept, best have bot restore references where possible)

Dealing with an already deleted file, on which there is no more data available, is much more tedious a work than being able to see what it is all about. There is no reason to put such a burdon on editors. Also, regarding the fact that, while there may be reasons for deletion from commons, these may not constitute reasons for deletion from the local wiki. Yet, uploading a file locally is only possible, while the file and its accompanying data is still there.

--Purodha Blissenbach 09:01, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion.
But if all deletions had to be one month in quarantine for a month, Commons would be overfilled with copyright violations.
I think a better solution for the Ripuarian language Wikipedia would be to install a CommonsTicker.
Regards, Fred J 10:06, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi Purodha,
As Fred says, installing a CommonsTicker will solve a lot of your problems. You will get notified when important changes are made to images that your wiki uses, such as when they get nominated for deletion. Then you will have a chance to see if you want to copy the image locally, or remove it from an article, or whatever.
It's great to hear that ksh: is encouraging users to use Commons. I see you wrote -- that's really cool. :) If you or someone else from ksh: become more involved at Commons, we would love to have some admins here who speak a Ripuarian language. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:55, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Ah yes, this dilemma. I run a bot on the English Wikipedia that removes references to images that will be deleted in the near future, and I get yelled at from time to time about doing things in the wrong order. --Carnildo 19:04, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Some day I'll make a function to mass undo delinks by CommonsDelinker. Some day. -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:33, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the hints. I've set up a request for CommonsTicker for our Wikipedia. --Purodha Blissenbach 16:51, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

USGov upload wizard informationless

The U.S. Government license wizard page [10] does not seem to have the information template available. (SEWilco 03:33, 22 September 2007 (UTC))

Ogg file player

Who's responsible for introducing Java player for Ogg files? This player does not completely work, neither on Opera nor on Firefox/IE (Windows XP, SP2, Java 6.01 SDK). What's the sense in introducing something that will prevent all users from hearing pronunciation recordings? Before this "player", you could at least download the file and play it on your personal music player.

Take a look at Image:En-us-David.ogg - I don't hear anything. --Derbeth talk 18:47, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

It appears that especially the short audio files have trouble getting heard... :( Siebrand 22:23, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
This is a known bug.
You can still download the file, of course! As always, right-click on the linked filename below the play button. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 04:42, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I have figured it out already, but take in mind that not all users may find out this method. I have just received complaint from a Wiktionary user that it is impossible to hear audio pronunciation from Commons. It's definitely not obvious to get how to play these files with this defunct player. Lots of users may have the same problem. I think this is a great deal of irresponsibility in introducing thing that not only does not work properly, but makes things previously easy - very hard. Such things should never occur. --Derbeth talk 08:50, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I don't understand how introducing a new method that doesn't work, makes the old method harder. The old method is not affected by the new method. Also the fault is with the Cortado player, software created by a third party, not anything the Wikimedia developers have done (except enable it). pfctdayelise (说什么?) 13:40, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Licensing

Is the licensing for Image:Schokoladenkuss.jpg PD-ineligible? Sahmeditor 22:08, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

No. According to German law it is at least a Lichtbild (simply photograph, protected 50 years), if not a Lichtbildwerk (photographic work, protected 70 years pma). If the author wants to release the image into the Public Domain, it should be PD-user. --Matt314 23:05, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Image Problems

Wikipedia has been having many image problems for the last few hours.. I think all Common files.. where we have to do a purge action, which fixes it for a short time... something to look into. The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.146.133.57 (talk • contribs) at 08:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Thumbnails keep disappearing on the Quality Images Candidates pages (for last couple of days), does anyone know what's causing this? --Tony Wills 19:25, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I did not know this and I uploaded twice an image, how can I delete any of them? --Mavila2
On irc://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-tech it was mentioned MANY times. The first thing that was discovered was that the disk array for the thumbnails was full. This in turn, caused all subsequent re-sizings to render zero-byte images. The disk space was quickly expanded, but a considerable amount of residual damage lingers. Here on Commons, there used to be a tab called [Purge] that would link to an image, e.g. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image:Commons-logo.svg&action=purge. Anyone know how to turn this back on, while this problem persists and the devs look into it? --Connel MacKenzie 01:44, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
It's in a js that provides extra tabs besides the ones that appear by default. Myself or another admin could look into it, but I'm unsure if there's consensus for this to be made available again. —O () 02:02, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the info - I'll add includePage('MediaWiki:Extra-tabs.js'); to my Special:Mypage/monobook.js right now, then. --Connel MacKenzie 02:11, 16 September 2007 (UTC) Whoops! 02:15, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the info, I have found a thumbnails URL and added &action=purge on the end and it indeed shows the correct image, but trying the thumbnail without the &action=purge still doesn't work (and yes, I've cleared my browsers cache). Can't all zero sized thumbnails be deleted (or all thumbnails generated during the period of the problem if there are other types of corruption) ? --Tony Wills 03:27, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
The problem seems to be getting worse, more + more thumbnails are disappearing --Tony Wills 03:30, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
I really hope this gets fixed soon... can't a server admin simply remove all the empty images? Or is the software still generating empty thumbnails for some reason? Shinobu 14:39, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Is there something on Bugzilla about this? Funpika 19:45, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
What i've noticed seems to be struck really bad are the flags of different nations. They keep going on and off. Anyone have any idea when this is gonna fix up?Cpesacreta 06:05, 17 September 2007 (UTC)


OK, so what happened is that a disk filled up and therefore thumbnails stopped working. That got fixed. But it seems like maybe there are some ongoing problems. If a simple purging doesn't fix the problem, report it here. Here is a Javscript that is useful if you do a lot of purging:

includePage('MediaWiki:ThumbnailPurger.js');

Put it on your Special:Mypage/monobook.js and then you will get handy links in the toolbox for image pages. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 10:28, 17 September 2007 (UTC)


I have added a purge tab in the ExtraTabs.js (onle works in the Monobook skin). Sanbec 10:48, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure it is the same problem you are discussing, but a tree picture of mine keeps showing the wrong thumbnail (from a previous version that I uploaded by mistake). Luis Dantas 11:56, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
No, it's no the same problem. Actually it's no a problem, you must only refresh the cache of your browser. Sanbec 12:06, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Not to mention that I'm having trouble uploading djvu files (sometimes I have to upload 5 version before it works), now PNG files are screwed up, too. Image:12 656477H.png says "no proper thumbnail parameters". What the ... ? Wikisource-logo.png Jonathan Groß Wikipedia-logo.png 12:30, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm experiencing problems with Image:SWE-Map Län2007.svg, the png rendition of the svg image is not updating as it should and the link to the svg file still points to that three versions ago. Tried purging but to no use. /Lokal_Profil 19:15, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm gettign the "broken image"-x on the following files: Image:Fjorda, Solvik.jpg (breaks in informationbox on this page: no:Velmunden). I have a swimilar problem with this image: image:Kikut.jpg - Mr. Hill 20:05, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Seems to be working now Finn Rindahl 20:14, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Another problem showing now is that when new versions of the pic are uploaded, the English Wikipedia shows the new thumb, but the Commons pic is the previous version. See Image:Coach USA MCI.jpg as an example. --AEMoreira042281 04:34, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The thumb of Image:Harz map topography.png is not displayed and I could not fix it with "purge". Bamse 07:48, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

It's too large for the thumbnailer. Use DjVu or maybe JPG instead of PNG. Lupo 07:56, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

19-Sep-2007: Some images would periodically disappear, as though image-cache files were kept on multiple servers, where an invisible cached image depended on which server was being accessed during the period. Also the same images used from transcluded templates might appear for one template but not another, as if each template were linked to a separate cached-image copy. Note that the images selected by a template are usually determined "live" whenever an article is being displayed, not just during editing of articles which use that template: changing a template will affect its next article to be displayed. -Wikid77 11:22, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

It apperas that the rendering problems of Image:SWE-Map Län2007.svg was due to something else, but for some reason when I click the link that's supposed to take me to the svg file it still links to the version from 23:47, 15 April 2007. No clue why and purging didn't help. /Lokal_Profil 14:34, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Image:NAMA Enfant & veillard lisant.jpg not appearing. --User:G.dallorto 12:11, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
Purged. ok now? Finn Rindahl 12:24, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Visible by redundant image

17-September-2007: On English Wikipedia, I have set the default "mark=" image file for map pointers as the (redundant) copy, Image:Red_pog2.svg (identical to the original pointer), to bypass the ongoing image-cache problems during September 15-17, 2007. I have changed "en:Template:Location_map" and "en:Template:Infobox German Location" to link "Red_pog2.svg" fixing thousands of articles. Only the original red-dot image (Image:Red_pog.svg) has been disappearing at size 8x8 pixels: the blue dot (Image:Blue_pog.svg) and redundant red-dot "Red_pog2.svg" have been reliable when sized as 8x8 pixels. -Wikid77 12:28, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

This picture does not work: Image:Cortina60erJ.jpg. --Alex1011 08:25, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

This picture doesn't work, either, and I don't know what the problem is: Image:Linera&Amorim2.jpg--Diotime 17:45, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Th pcture is oke, but the tag image isn't showing up. Image:Coat of arms of Zeist.jpg
20-Sep-2007: For several months, newly-created Wikimedia Commons images have sometimes had a multi-hour delay before being available for reference on English Wikipedia. The delay problem has been so frequent that I would create a new image page and then plan to wait up to a whole day before using the new image; however, some new images were available within minutes. I don't know where else that delay problem has been discussed. Another issue for months has been uploading of revised images that seem stuck on old revisions: now there is a new "purge" tab above each Wikimedia image-description page, so try clicking that tab if an uploaded revision seems stuck on the older data. -Wikid77 06:51, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

These images don' work: Image:Skorpion_WP.JPG and Image:Żandarmeria_Wojskowa.JPG --Raf24 16:13 CET, 20 September 2007

Djvu

Hello, Some DJVU files show an error message: "This file may contain malicious code, by executing it your system may be compromised." The look alright with the djvu plugin. I can imagine newbies frightened... Yann 14:48, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

svg

image:Schiff aus BSicon BOOT.svg Schiff aus BSicon BOOT.svg is incorrectly scaled, too wide, + clipped. Another svg had the same problem, unfortunately I lost track, which one it was. --Purodha Blissenbach 11:51, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

{{PD-self}} and flags

Hello, I would like to discuss, the use of PD-self, as a license tag for images of national flags. I hope people can take a minute to try to understand my point, also I am not a copyright expert so I may be mistaken or confused on some points.
Hopefully an image of a flag will be as close as possible to the reality, probably even identical.
And we agree that if the user is releasing the copyright into the public domain, then that means he once owned the copyright.

  1. However I'm pretty sure copyright laws expressly forbid the copying of copyrighted material, by any means, including a manual copy (ex: retyping a book, or writing it out by hand doesn't make you the copyright holder). Other means of copying such as digital or chemical identical copies are forbidden also.
  2. If a 2 dimensional work is released into the public domain already, then any copies of it can not be copyrighted by the person making the copy, or else we would come back to situation number 1, and public domain images would never exist.
  • Therefore my question: how were these images of flags created and released as PD-self without breaching either of the two points I just mentioned ?
  • Answer: the user who created the image is a representative of the State owning the copyright. However I have seen users upload several flags from different countries making this hypotheses implausible.

Please correct me if I was wrong with any of the points above, as a comparison think what would happen if you made an exact copy of the illustrations and the text in a book and tried to release it into the public domain. Or inversely if you tried to register copyright on the national anthem.
I hope that if anyone reads this, they will consider if what I said is true or not, and not simply try by all means to defend the long lasting practice.
Example deletion request: Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Flag of Algeria.svg Jackaranga 05:23, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

This is another case of copyright law differing in various jurisdictions. In those jurisdictions that do not protect copyright in new images created using non-copyrightable or out-of-copyright images, the PD-self disclaimer is immaterial in respect of such new images. The disclaimer is however material if any such image may be reproduced in a jurisdiction that recognises copyright in such images (for example, when retyping a book might thereby create a new copyrightable typographic layout). Belt and braces is no bad thing given the patchwork nature of intellectual property legislation worldwide, I'd suggest. Man vyi 11:47, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the answer. For me though it is simply copyright infringement. If the work originates from a country listed in Circular 38a International Copyright Relations of the United States, then it is illegal for wikimedia to host an illegal copy of it. This is simply due to the fact that disregarding all other laws in other countries, wikimedia is hosted on American soil, is an American registered charity, and must make sure that users abide by US law. If the flag was originally in the public domain, then claiming ownership of a copyright on it is incorrect, and if it was not in the public domain, then no copies of it can be either, and it is a typical case of copyright infringement, identical to copying all the thousands of images that make up a DVD and putting them on internet.
It's not complicated: commons users can not under any circumstance (unless they are an official representative of the government of the country), own the copyright to a national flag, and as such can not release it into the public domain. The fact that the users may have been talking about the copy they created is irrelevant, when talking about a 2 dimensional work. Any copies of a 2 dimensional works must be released under the same license as the original, not "released into the public domain by the copyright holder Joe Bloggs", and in some circumstances such copies can not be distributed on internet without breaking the law. Please see [Copyright Office Basics] for more information. Jackaranga 22:08, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
That's all very well of course while the images are hosted on servers based in US jurisdiction. The images need to be freely used worldwide though, including in jurisdictions where copyright may subsist in images of national flags or other 2 dimensional works. You'll notice that the PD-self template also covers cases in jurisdictions which do not recognise releases to the public domain, and I'd have thought the wording is wide enough to cover the eventualities that seem to worry you. Man vyi 06:40, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Pertinent discussion ongoing at the Bistro: Commons:Bistro#Copyright_sur_une_reproduction_photograpique. A solution of dual licensing to accommodate US and European copyright law seems suggested. Man vyi 11:38, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
If the flag was originally in the PD, wouldn't an obvious solution be to tag it as such? After all, releasing something in the public domain that is already in the public domain is a logical impossibility. Shinobu 14:46, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, this is exactly what I mean, it is absolutely impossible for anyone to own the copyright for a flag, unless he is a representative of the government.Jackaranga 17:44, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Um well, it turns out I was wrong on some accounts, if the image was created in France, then the author can own the copyright to it, even if it as an exact replica, and this right applies also in America due to the bilateral agreements. So basically what I said above was correct, unless the user made the image in France. As we will never know what country a user made the image in, I guess users can do what they like. Probably the commons is violating American law, by allowing users to apply French law to themselves even if they don't live in France. See Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag#Country-specific rules, I will add France as it's not there yet. Personally I find it rather unlikely that all the users who uploaded flags with this license live in France... Jackaranga 18:40, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Nevermind I give up, it's too complicated for me. Jackaranga 19:08, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
My understanding of the PD-user tag is that it simply implies that the user releases any potential copyright they might own for the image, not necessarily that they ever claimed such a thing. National flags are governed by a complex set of copyright laws, national and international, and will be covered by them regardless what we say on this website. --Himasaram 12:27, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Not even that - under many jurisdictions there is a "lower bound" as to what materials can be copyrighted at all. Things or designs not elegible to copyright usually include everything in widespread use, or overly simple, such as single letters, a plain scetch of an arrow, a single colour not put in any shape, etc. - these are not regardes as creative artwork and hence not copyrightable. A majority of national flags are consisting of 2 or three colored stripes, such as the tricolore, or similar. Those are pretty unarguably not copyrightable under such jurisdictions. An excesseive wealth of those rules is "imported" into US regulations by bilateral or multilateral treaties. This in the end does lead to little worries in these cases, since there are only two things to consider: design (no problem) and technical representation by "creatively assembled" bits and bytes (even less a problem, at least under said jurisdictions) --Purodha Blissenbach 12:11, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Gallery page into category

Seems to me that the images in US Army Corps of Engineers should all be in a Category:US Army Corps of Engineers (which would presumably go in the same categories as that page, although I have my doubts about Category:U.S. World War II forces, since the Corps dates back to the first days of the Republic), but I really don't feel like hand-editing to make it so. Is there some sane way to get this to happen as a bot task?

I'd really appreciate a central page on the various things that can be done by bots and exactly how to request each. Does such a page already exist? - Jmabel | talk 17:23, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Do you know this page User talk:CommonsDelinker/commands? --Juiced lemon 19:10, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Certainly useful; not sure if it would be OK for this case. But was there any reasonable way I should have found this oddly named page? - Jmabel | talk 17:52, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

EXIF links and en.wiki

I've started a discussion on the en.wp village pump regarding implementation of a pseudonamespace for exif links. The problem is exif links are fixed to whatever the camera/scanner produces, and these have the potential to clash with encyclopedic redirects. That is really an internal matter for Wikipedia, but if it is adopted the mediawiki files would have to be adjusted accordingly here.--Nilfanion 21:13, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I think using the image name space would be a simpler way to do so. --32X 18:12, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

September 22

Thumbnail problems

I think the only way to have the lost image thumnails back is to re-upload the pictures. I've just done that with the Pictogram voting info.svg Info template and it worked! - Alvesgaspar 10:21, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Purging the images so far worked quite well for me. --32X 18:12, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Betawiki: better support for your language in MediaWiki

Dear community. I am writing to you to promote a special wiki called Betawiki. This wiki facilitates the localisation (l10n) of the MediaWiki interface. You may have changed many messages here on your favourite wiki(s) to use your language for your language profile, but if you would log in to for example the English language Wiktionary, you would not be able to use the interface as well translated as there. Betawiki supports the full core translation of MediaWiki, as well as the translation of messages of over 75 extensions, with 981 messages.

If you wish to contribute to better support of your language in MediaWiki, as well as for many MediaWiki extensions, please visit Betawiki, create an account and request translator priviledges. You can see the current status of localisation of your language on meta and do not forget to get in touch with others that may already be working on your language on Betawiki.

If you have any further questions, please let me know on my talk page on Betawiki. We will try and assist you as much as possible, for example by importing all messages from a local wiki for you to start with, if you so desire.

You can also find us on the Freenode IRC network in the channel #mediawiki-i18n where we would be happy to help you get started.

Thank you very much for your attention and I do hope to see some of you on Betawiki soon! Cheers! Siebrand@Betawiki 22:34, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

September 24

Page SS-Aufseherin

A new editor User:Joannaczopowicz is putting a lot of work into creating this quite valuable page in, it seems, Polish. But there are clearly copyright issues with some or all of the images. Could somebody raise this in Polish with the editor. I do think language problems are at the root here and not all of the files may need deleting. --Simonxag 23:23, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks like this aren't copyvios, only the correct attribution/licenses are missing. For example his her Image:Ss-irmagrese.jpg is a crop of Image:Irma Grese.jpg. --32X 00:01, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I wish I could say the same about the paintings at the end of the page. All the artists had to be alive post WW 2 and the names given do not tally with "Self made". --Simonxag 23:50, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

All the portraits seem to be taken before British trials, so the license is wrong and there is no source. The artworks on the bottom of the page ("own work) are copyvios, Helen Ernst for example died several years after the war. Other images are screenshots from a film. The private drawings have no encyclopedic value. ––Polarlys 22:04, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

September 23

Fake images

Hello.

On it.wiki we have recently discovered that one user has been writing articles about non-existent ancestors of his (for those of you fluent in Italian, here's the story): these articles have been deleted.

Unfortunately, the same user has uploaded 8 images to Commons, pretending them to be of his ancestors: [11]

We have identified one of them, namely this one: the man is NOT Vittorio Alberto Balzarotti (the file description has already been corrected), rather prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia (see the real image, and note that the fake one has been altered with Paint to erase one detail).

There are 7 more:

Can someone identify the men in the portraits so that the files can be either renamed or replaced and deleted? It is likely that they are members of the House of Habsburg, or Hohenzollern, or some other German noble family, and that the images have been slightly altered like the one above.

Thank you --Moloch981 12:40, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the Prussian image has obviously been faked. If the rest of these images have been deliberately misnamed as well and/or faked by digital modification, then they're worse than useless to this project (worse than useless since they deliberately try to misinform our readers). Not to mention that the licenses will be nonsense as well, since we have no way to tell whether they come from countries where PD-art applies or not, and if not, who the photographers are. Delete. If somebody one day finds out who these people actually are, the copyright status of the images can be reevalued and reuploaded with correct names / copyright status. Valentinian (talk) 13:15, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
It is not the only upload that looks fishy. Image:Stemma.Card.Bevilacqua.jpg shows the coat of arms of a Cardinal from Philidelphia. But if this is indeed "own work" by an Italian, then why is the text written in Dutch? His uploads generally seem to have no proper sources or copyright information, but simply nonsense like "own collection". Not to mention that the image doesn't have any information about the name of the person that created the blazon and since this image is obviously created after this person became a cardinal (i.e. no earlier than 1987) it is physically impossible that the heraldic artist should have been dead for 70 years. Somebody needs to take a general look at this user's list of uploads. Image:Schuster.jpg looks like a copyvio as well (I doubt that this uploader was even alive back in 1954 when this person died). And no chance that the same person drew both the coat of arms listed above Image:Stemma.Card.Barbarin.jpg and Image:Stemma.Card.Aponte.Martinez.jpg, the three heraldic styles are markedly different. I also doubt that this person took image:18a-Batoni Ritratto del principe Abbondio Rezzonico.jpg himself. Notice also User:Leopold's talk page. Copyright violations isn't something new here. Valentinian (talk) 13:42, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I requested the deletion of all the 8 images listed above. --Moloch981 19:25, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

And I've found the source of the ecclesiastical coats of arms. They were all taken from the subpages of http://www.araldicavaticana.com/conclave.htm . Given the preceding history of this account, I've marked them all simply as copyvios with indication of the source of the original images. It wasn't even difficult finding the source website given that are rather few websites about the Lithuanian cardinal. Valentinian (talk) 21:02, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
A bunch of images of this users were deleted by pftcdayelise after a first discovering of faked images. --Jollyroger 08:53, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
OK, this guy has caused enough trouble. He is now banned from Commons and blocked idefinitely. Are there any of his images which in fact should not be deleted? --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:29, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

The pictures can remain if they are tagged correctly. The pictures are not fakes but serious historical sources used for a fake. --Historiograf 18:26, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

The images could be 'reuploaded with the correct name and source if identified, as long as we don't know who these images depicts, and especially since the only one that has been identified has been manipulated, I say delete all of them. And probably, to be on the safe side, delete all the uploads of this user that does not have a 100% verifiable external source. Finn Rindahl 00:34, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

This case reminds me of something else: We need reliable sources for historical documents to enable further usage outside Wikimedia projects and to allow usage of these images in an encyclopedic context as well. ––Polarlys 18:50, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

The lot of them need to go. We can bring them back if and when. To the point about reliable sources, I agree, if we can do something in this area it increases the value of the resource. There is a proposal on en:s about this, see s:Wikisource:Scriptorium#We_need_tags_and_categories_for_sources_of_poor_provenance ... ++Lar: t/c 00:59, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Delete them all. Other uploaders can reupload the images later again provided that they can provide us with correct descriptions and licensing. And I agree with Polarlys that a lot of images need better sourcing. Valentinian (talk) 22:09, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Creative commons issues

This newspaper article: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/09/21/1189881735928.html reveals some interesting issues when a company (Virgin) has pushed the creative commons attribution in a way that was almost certianly not intended by the uploader to Flikr. A bit sobering in the consequences for the subject of the photograph even if all legal. If you are freely licensing you had better mean it perhaps and think about the feelings of your subject if the image is used in ways you dind't anticipate. --Golden Wattle 07:11, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

We'll have to wait and see what the court says. Might be interesting for the question of model releases. --Fb78 09:28, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
I gave up dual licensing some time ago with this kind of concern in mind. The "bulkiness" of the GFDL has some weaknesses, but it's a much stronger license. --SB_Johnny | PA! 10:05, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
How is that related to CC? The issue here seems to be personality rights, not copyright. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 10:17, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I try to never freely-license pictures of people I know...
The issue is really that Virgin never got a model release and are using the girl's image in a derogatory way. As far as I can see the CC license is irrelevant. I don't know why they were named in the suit. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:15, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
True, but they used a CC license that required attribution, and attribution was never given. If the requirements of the CC license, such as attribution or share-alike are to have any merit, then they must be respected under all circumstances; and the court should rule accordingly. / Fred J 11:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I read the article again and he was given attribution. My bad, sorry. / Fred J 11:27, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
The thread about it on commons-l two months ago [12] Platonides 21:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
This thread on Flikr where the usage was revealed to the subject and the photgrapher gives more detail about cc vs model release as per comment's above.--Golden Wattle 01:42, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Which raises the question: Does the Wikimedia Commons require a model release? Is there a boilerplate text available anywhere on the wiki that would be useful for these kinds of things? Titoxd(?!?) 02:45, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

This case is rather interesting and should be followed very closely by us. To avoid such problems (if resulting from ignorance on part of the user of the image), all images of an identifiable person should be tagged with {{personality rights}} that produces the following warning:

Personality rights Although this work is freely licensed or in the public domain, the person(s) shown may have rights that legally restrict certain re-uses unless those depicted consent to such uses. In these cases, a model release or other evidence of consent could protect you from infringement claims. Though not obliged to do so, the uploader may be able to help you to obtain such evidence. See our general disclaimer for more information.

-- Túrelio 06:25, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

To Tixotd, about the model release, we don't require one and so far we don't have any boilerplate text for it, but if anyone does find such a sample document we would love to know about it. Ownterms.org (CC-licensed sample legal docs), too. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:52, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I have some boilerplates and you can find heaps of them on the Web, but I'm not sure if they can be much help for us. AFAIK, there are countries (such as France) where a model agreement must be specific and state as precisely as possible the type of publication (newspaper, magazine, etc.), the date of publication, the context (advertising/reporting) and so on. I don't know if a very general agreement (granting the right to use the picture for any use whatsoever) is valid. I guess it would be better than nothing, though. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 12:22, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
granting the right to use the picture for any use whatsoever - besides the question of validity, who would sign such an agreement?
Whether or not we can find a solution for the model release, I think it is still important to make it very clear to the image-user that it is his/her responsability to check whether the image can be used for the intended purpose. -- Túrelio 12:56, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I've heard on discussion groups of such agreements for paid models. People generally take "any use whatsoever" to mean "even commercial or advertising use"... Jastrow (Λέγετε) 13:11, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I think it would be wrong to demand a model release for every photo. This would be impossible to get with most of the celebrity photos. So, in this case we could abandon celebrity photos completely, it would make no difference. On the other hand, it could be damaging to place this "personality rights warning" on every image description page. This could be construed at a court of law in non-intended ways. It would be proof that Wikimedia Commons people or the foundation are well aware of the problematic nature. We should leave this case to the professionals and their judgement when they reuse the photos. Furthermore, the case in question on flickr is not decided yet, and the subject in the case in question was depicted in derogatory circumstances (Line: "You can dump your mail friend" or similar, together with a picture of a girl, in an advertisement campaign). This is hardly the case for uses in a Wikimedia project, our uses are very different. The advertisement professional should have shown better judgement, or perhaps they provoked this intentionally. In both cases, they did it on their own peril. Longbow4u 17:09, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Celebrity pictures are quite a different issue. In most countries, the agreement of a public personality in a public place or event is not required. Personality rights do apply, though: the problem isn't restricted to ad agencies, it can also apply to any group or individual with a political agenda or some personal crusade. Anyway, I don't think celeb pics are really a problem here. The concern is about pictures of non-public individuals. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 14:30, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I have commented at http://lessig.org/blog/2007/09/on_the_texas_suit_against_virg.html from our (German WP) point of view. Please read the complaint at http://lessig.org/blog/complaint.pdf. This is not only a personality issue. An owner of a trademark (given the logo is'nt protected by copyright) can sue us in the same way if a third party uses a Commons picture violating its rights because we failed to warn the user (we have a warning template in this case so far as I know but you understand the principle - you can also take German Geschmacksmuster, Coat of Arms, Olympic Rings etc) --Historiograf 17:04, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the links and your comment. However, I don't quite understand your emphasis on This is not only a personality issue. Technically this may be true, but IMHO the violation of the depicted girl's personality right (aka privacy) is the main issue here. (Still, even in this discussion there are votes against the "personality rights warning".) Compared to that, the missing attribution is a minor issue. -- Túrelio 21:33, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Copying of image summaries

The description text on Image:Hurricane Ophelia 14 sept 2005 1605Z.jpg is a direct copy of the descriptive text at the source page. There is no copyright concern here as the source page is PD. However, a direct copy like this strikes me as plagiarism and so probably should be discouraged. Furthermore in the case of this image, a fair chunk of the text copied is not actually that useful. A rewrite/summary of the descriptive information as on this image seems to be both better for our purposes and avoids any concerns about plagiarism.

Should we be discourage blatant copying of the source's description in our documentation?--Nilfanion 23:28, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Properly attributed I see nothing wrong with copying freely licensed text. The rub is, is the text useful. This particular text is the sort of folksy narrative you get from the Hurricane Center while a storm is ongoing. It's fun to read at the time, but not very useful later. So I'd remove this particular text, as I would any not particularly useful text, copied or not, but not change policy. If there were a documentation change it should be to encourage people to make useful remarks about the image (properly cited when that matters). ++Lar: t/c 00:51, 26 September 2007 (UTC)


The source of the text and image are in the source section, so the author of Image:Hurricane Ophelia 14 sept 2005 1605Z.jpg isn't passing the text off as his/her own, ergo not plagarism. Usefulness of the text is another issue. Cburnett 01:46, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

ID shrooms

Hi, can someone help add the taxonomy information to this image? And if there are people that enjoy that kind of stuff, I have more here. Thank you! Dori - Talk 04:24, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Commons 2.0 ! project : set up a graphic community here need contributors & leaders

User supporting commons 2.0
User supporting commons 2.0

Hello, I make an adversing to get contributers and leaders on the Commons 2.0! project, which aim to make a true & active community of graphist on Commons.
The ideas come from the French graphic lab which made alone about 1.300 images creations or improvements in 2 years with about 10 to 20 volunters. On commons, we have now and we talk about 1.000 graphists in the "User abilities" categories, 1.000 graphists ready to help, and already understanding the wiki-syntaxe, the principles of Wikipedia, etc.

I set up this list of projects since 2005. Since I'm now leaving Wiki-commons, I hopes somes actives users may put the energy need to make this project active and significantly efficient for 2008.

So, I encourage all actives users/graphists to involves themselves in the project, all uploaders to make images clean up requests on the Graphic Lab, and to perform clean up if you can, to lead the project toward innovating services. In short : be aware of this Commons 2.0 ! and its graphics Lab, and make the place living !

You can show your support by adding {{User commons 2.0}} on your user page which will be REALLY helpfull to allow more users to know about the project.

More informations and links on :

Yug (talk), the place is your ! 06:21, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

September 27

WWII images from Poland and 1926 Polish copyright law

I have a shoe box with 60+ WWII photos from Poland, no authors, no information if they were ever published before. Polish copyright law valid from 1926 to 1994 puts all published images without copyright tag on the image in public domain (see {{PD-Polish}}). However, I do not know if the images were ever published, so I do not think I should be using this PD template. After looking through Polish copyright law I found that according to the Art.21 of copyright law of March 29, 1926 (valid until 1952) photographs loose copyright protection ten years after picture was taken. So this seems to be a safe bet. What steps should I take prior to uploading? Should I create a PD template?Jarekt 03:46, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I think you should get some more input at Commons:Bar and pl.wp to be sure that that law applies in the case, before making a template. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 09:14, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I will do that.Jarekt 12:17, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Artificial Intelligence

is it true that neural networks process information based on a sequencial algorithm?

Yes and no. For a more precise answer, please go to en:Wikipedia:Reference desk. --Fb78 11:27, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Category naming

What is the prefered naming of rivers? We have different named river categories on commons, e.g. Category:Fulda (river) or Category:Rhone River. I asked for renaming of Category:Alster (River) to

--GeorgHH 12:47, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I would recommend Category:Alster (river), because sometimes "River" "Creek" "Water" is part of the name but here it is not. -- Klaus with K 14:09, 24 September 2007 (UTC) (hasten to add only for the case where disambiguation is required) Klaus with K 09:46, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Symbol support vote.svg Support -- Túrelio 14:20, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Symbol support vote.svg Support --84.159.141.88 21:54, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Please take this to COM:CFD. Thanks. Siebrand 16:11, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

The prefered naming is the name of the matching English Wikipedia article: Alster. In Commons, a disambiguation suffix is NOT used when there is nothing to disambiguate.

Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose --Juiced lemon 22:48, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
The disambiguation is Category:Alster. --GeorgHH 20:05, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Aspects of the above item, and coincidentally the following item, are covered at Commons talk:By location category scheme, where I think they should all be. Maybe I'm one of the few lucky people to know about that category scheme? Robin Patterson 11:23, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Please do not use villige pump for this. -- Cat ちぃ？ 17:22, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
If you're going to tell people they shouldn't do something here, you should at least mention where they SHOULD do it. :P --> commons:categories for discussion pfctdayelise (说什么?) 06:43, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Dual-licensing

While legally it isn't too much of an issue, I am bothered by images uploaded with multiple licenses at least one being something incompatible such as a combo of GFDL and CC-BY-SA-NC. I hence prompt the issue to be addressed. -- Cat ちぃ？ 17:15, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Could you please explain where you see problems of incompatibities if an image is available under multiple licenses where one license can be freely chosen? Regards, AFBorchert 20:47, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
90% of the people won't understand it (and some upload NC-only-files) and all in all it's a way to license files in a restrictive way. ––Polarlys 21:12, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, the question is about combo licenses and not NC-only-files. As long the license can be freely chosen and at least one license is acceptable (like GFDL, for example) what is the problem or where is the supposed incompatibility if a license like CC-BY-SA-NC is added as an alternative to it? Or are you just concerned that people could be confused by such uncommon combinations? --AFBorchert 21:49, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
I am not concerned, it's an experience (like “Schöpfungshöhe-Regelungen”): People see one simple cover artwork in an article, maybe a black background with a common writing. Then they upload the latest cover by $favorite_popstar and put it under the same license. Furthermore we should discourage people from using restrictive licensing. Reason? The goal of this project. Some of our professional photographers (…) already exploit Wikipedia somehow (please don't lynch me): Bad resolution, high compression, restrictive license and two pages of terms and conditions and possibilities how to obtain a file with better resolution and different conditions. ––Polarlys 22:00, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Agree with Borchert: as far as one license is acceptable, can't see anything wrong in a double licensing (not saying it is a smart thing, but is a right of the uploader to choose licenses as he wish) --Jollyroger 08:13, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
The first thing you are talking about: I understand what you mean - but there's no good reason to do forbid double licensing with a NC/ND license. It's okay with the project scope, as long as there is at least one free license. People misinterpret it? People misinterpret a lot. People don't understand Fair use, people don't know the difference between a spoon and Mickey Mouse, people think it's okay to upload protected artwork if they find it on the subway, people don't understand what copyright even is. So? What we do is clean up after them and make sure they don't do it again.
The second thing: Professional photographers want to make a living. Otherwise they wouldn't be professionals. Wikimedia Commons does not discourage people from earning money with free content. It's within the project scope, and there's no reason to oust people who contribute with their professional work AND still want to make money. They owe us nothing, you know. --Fb78 08:17, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
I never said about banning them. Currently there is nothing discouraging it. Licenses should be kept as simple as possible. Custom licenses should be frowned upon though not banned. Having a CC-BY-SA-NC and GFDL next to each other is a contradiction. It is a possibility that the uploader does not know that images licensed under GFDL is commercially usable. -- Cat ちぃ？ 10:27, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Having CC-BY-SA-NC and GFDL next to each other not is contradiction. You can hand out an image to person A under GFDL, and to person B under CC-BY-SA-NC. Person B can still use GFDL, and person A might want to use CC-BY-SA-NC, if they don't use the image commercially and don't want to print the GFDL license text. This is perfectly fine for all parties.
Oh, and about the "there's nothing discouraging it". People who know what they are doing with licenses also know why they are using double licensing. People who have no idea what licenses are should read the guidelines which suggest using one or two free licenses. We have WAY too many guidelines on Commons and noone reads them anyway. Most of them are just used to give weight to arguments in discussions.
What most people need is basic information what a license even is. Take the above discussion about a lawsuit. The plaintiff claims that Creative Commons neglected to tell him what "commercial use" is! What I'm trying to say is this: People who use CC-NC on Commons know what licenses are and know what they are doing. We should be happy about that and let them do it. Everyone else should learn about what a free license is and what it means and whether they are sure that they know what they are doing. --Fb78 11:16, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
To White Cat, this issue has been discussed a bit before, I think on the VP and also on the mailing list. My memories of the conclusions are: non-free dual licenses are accepted, but not encouraged. "Not encouraged" means not creating templates for them, not listing them in the license selector, not publicising the fact that we accept this. It is not a bad idea to confirm with users who dual-license non-free that they do understand the implications of the free licenses. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 06:41, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

{{PD-Art}} and Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag#Country-specific rules

Hello, I have some questions. My main question is: Is Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag#Country-specific rules, a legal obligation ? The English wikipedia, refuses to acknowledge the existence or validity of such claims. They say that it is OK to violate foreign copyright on the English wikipedia, because the material would not be copyrighted had it been created in the USA. They also claim that the reason Country-specific rules exists is because the Commons has a more global objective, is this true, or does it exist simply because the works are copyrighted in the USA as well ? Jackaranga 12:52, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

The general rule on Commons is that a photograph should be free for use under the copyright law both of the USA and of the country where the photo was taken. Hence, a PD-Art tag is accepted only if the image is taken in a country where such reproductions are permitted (as they are in the US). On the other hand, the rule is not used consistently - eg where Freedom of panorama is being claimed, it appears OK here if the photograph was legally-allowable locally regardless of whether or not a similar picture taken in the US would be allowed. What the rule should be is another matter, and to some extent that's a policy rather than a strictly legal issue. The Wikimedia Foundation's lawyer has been asked to advise, but so far as I am aware the Foundation has so far provided no guidance, so the individual sites have had to come up with their own policies. They are not necessarily consistent. --MichaelMaggs 17:22, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag is a joke, as the users participating in deletion requests and the admins closing these requests do not care about it. We should either delete it, or start following it. --Kjetil r 00:28, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Is there any way to bring order to Categories?

Much of the time when I click on a Wiki Commons link in a Wikipedia article (English) I get the message that the category has been deleted. Today I was looking for Minarets (whose catetory has been deleted) and now I find Minarets under Tower -- not an intuitive place to look. Apparently, it does not fall under Islamic architecture or Mosque or Minanert, or the architecture of the country it is in, like Chinese architecture (which the one I am looking for is). Only by going to tower first, can it be found. And not all minarets are found there.

The minnert I am looking for is in China. Apparently the minnert I am looking for (and I know it has a page because I have seen it) is not under Tower> Minnerts. If I try to categorize Chinese architecture in a category so I can find it, someone deletes it. Everytime I tried to categorize galleries in a way I can find them, I get a patronizing message on my user page that my categories have been deleted. I suppose I can spend days of hunting again, but frankly I am getting tire.

I have been told in the last message to me that when I do accidentally find the page I am looking for I should link it to my user page (I guess that is what he means) rather than try to categorize in ways that are useful to me.

What is the point of forbidding people to have useful categories? If I am doing an article on Doors (which I was until the last person deleted my categories and lost my door image) why can't there be a category for doors. And why did the editors here remove the photo of the door I was going to use (now lost forever) from Category:Doors? --WhoNose 15:29, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

See Category:Minarets. I don't see anything in your deleted edits regarding a category for Chinese Architecture... when did you do that? --SB_Johnny | PA! 16:04, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
You haven't been looking for the Emin minaret by any chance? For some reason that one wasn't in Category:Minarets, but I added it there. Doors are in Category:Doors. I think you will find a door there that satisfies your demands. Maybe the image of the specific door you are looking for has been deleted. If you are looking for doors in china, try Category:Doors in China. We certainly do not forbid useful categories :) --rimshottalk 16:24, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
There are two different categories with minarets. There is one with a bunch of minarets from different places but without the Emin minarets. And then that one with Emin minarets. I would have to go back to Wikipedia to get the links I have saved. I don't bother here. No point. I just link to the picture on Wikipedia, so if you screw up the categories, I'll still have access to it. --WhoNose 00:31, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
P.S. A minaret is not a tower. Why don't you have church steeples under towers? You seem a little prejudiced here. --WhoNose 00:34, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Yikes! WhoNose, we do in fact need help coming up with a consistent category system, but that sort of thing takes patience, time, and cool heads. Are you able to offer any of those things, or are you just telling other people to do things you're not willing to do? --SB_Johnny | PA! 00:39, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) As I have said before, although I am quite successful wih categories on Wikipedia, here my categories just get deleted. So what is the point? I will not try any more -- way too frustrating.

I have not worked on anything regarding India for at least six months. I have been working exclusively with China. But, as I said, I just link every pic I may want to my Wikipedia pages. Since many of the {{commonscan}} don't work anymore on Wikipedia articles since the category links are broken because they have been deleted here (for minarets, for example - that link on the Wikipedia to here is broken in that article now), that is the only way I know to have access to the pictures I want, without spending hours, if not days, looking here and not being able to find a picture I know I saw somewhere here. --WhoNose 00:44, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
I think you mean {{commonscat}}? My personal (and unofficial) policy on this is to never use that silly template, but use the plain old {{commons}} one instead. If there's no gallery (but there is a cat), just make that pagename redirect to the category. Any admin worth his salt will check "what links here" before deleting, and will correct the redirect if they delete a cat. --SB_Johnny | PA! 00:51, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi WhoNose,
I believe some admins are mistakenly deleting categories that have been "redirected/moved/renamed" instead of leaving them as redirects (so people can at least find the correct category). I made Category:Minaret a redirect again. If you know of any other categories please feel free to let me know and I will undelete them. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 06:57, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
In my experience redirecting a category is not a good solution: you end up with pictures mistakenly classified under the redirected category, which are extremely hard to find afterwards. What we need is a kind of CheckUsage for galleries and categories. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 09:21, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for understanding there really is a problem. You are the first person here who has. Every other response to my posts has been defensive and blamed me. --WhoNose 14:43, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Whonose, we all acknowledge that our category system is far from perfect. There are a lot of categories already, so it's difficult to add some without disturbing anything. On the other hand, it's still incomplete and often inconsistent. What we say is: try and be patient. Tell us what precise categories that were deleted, so that we can try to find a solution. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 16:49, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
I spent the better part of a day trying to gather all Chinese architecture under one heading (no matter what other headings they were under, like Tower etc. All my efforts were deleted and Chinese architecture is wandering around again. (Why under Category:Mosques do you only have Saudi Arabian mosques, for example?} I do not know where Chinese mosques are, perhaps under Building by function? Or Buildings by country? or Religious building (excluding Saudi Arabian mosques)? I have looked through all those categories so many times for Chinese architecture pix. When I find them it is usually by accident. If I put a category on it to get it in the general realm of China, it is deleted. My wish is that there would be a way of finding pix of Chinese architecture without looking through everything. Further, I wish editors would not delete my categories within hours after I make them without at least consulting me or providing me with another way. There is a category of Chinese minaretS that is not under minarets, for example. --WhoNose 18:02, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Jastrow: redirecting the category is a better solution than deleting it. Deleting it is an incredibly bad idea. Bots can move the images if they are put into redirect categories by accident. But deleting things like singular categories (ie "Minaret" not "Minarets") is cutting off our nose to spite our face by ignoring the usefulness of redirects...i.e, to redirect users to the right page. As WhoNose points out it can also cause of lot of totally dead links from Wikipedias into Commons. Meeting a redirect is ugly, but far better than nothing. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 04:20, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Do bots actually move pictures which are in redirect categories? I find this an important problem. Also, would it be difficult to create a CheckUsage for categories and galleries? This would solve a lot of problems. Jastrow (Λέγετε) 10:24, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
I am not sure if there are currently any bots that do this; there used to be. Perhaps not anymore. But if there was one once, I think there can be one again. :)
As for a "global Whatlinkshere", it seems to me it shouldn't be too hard, but someone else should answer definitively if they know. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:15, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Mosques & minarets

Are you aware that mosques and minarets are related? That mosques may have minarets? Why do you not have Category:Towers > Church steeples. Then have a separate, completely unrelated Category:Religious buildings > Churches. That is the logic behind the way you categorize mosques and minarets. (I repeat, when I try to fix something like this my categories get deleted.) --WhoNose 14:51, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

"Are you aware that mosques and minarets are related?" - Yes, that is why Category:Minarets is a subcategory of Category:Mosques. Could you try to point out why they do not seem related?
"Why do you not have Category:Towers > Church steeples" - We have Category:Church towers for that purpose. It can be found in the same category as Category:Minarets, namely Category:Towers by function. --rimshottalk 16:47, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
My apologies if I make an off topic comment, I've had a few bottles of whine. This is a wiki *and* a community project. If something can be improved, do it. Those who can do, those who can't criticise. </rant> Cheers! Siebrand 17:14, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Don't create category links like the red arrow!
Well, my categories a few days ago were all deleted. We will see if the few I did today will suffer the same fate. No point in putting a lot of work into something that is going to be deleted without notification. I can see you have had a few too many bottles of whine. To try to get help here is just getting whinning answers back. --WhoNose 17:51, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
WhoNose: what categories are you talking about? Again, I see only one category in your deleted contribs, and it was a misspelling ("Architetural elements"). --SB_Johnny | PA! 21:58, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
@WhoNose, please read Commons:Categorization or at least the short paragraph Category structure. A lot of your category-adding in the last days was clearly what is explained as not to do (see graph to the right). That is not a big issue as you might not have known until yet. But you shouldn't react harshly if others try to correct mistakes. Apart from differences in opinion, everybody here sometimes makes mistakes (we all should remember to assume good faith). -- Túrelio 08:42, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

September 30

photographer databases needed / info on Julian Mandel

Help with a translation (and misquotation) of the Aeneid

I am reading "The Thirty Years War" by C.V. Wedgwood.

The support of King James of Britain is solicited to support Elector Paletine's candidacy to become King of Bohemia as against the Hapsburg candidate. Part of the James's reply to the solicitation was to quote (actually ingeniously misquoate, according to Wedgwood) 3 lines of Virgil to the effect that he would have nothing to do with Bohemia.

Below is the "misquote" cited in Wedgwood.

O praestans animi juvenis, quantum ipse feroci Virtute exsuperas, tanto me impensius aequum est Prospicere atque omnes volventem expendere casus.

Is there someone who could explain how the misquote alters the original? the preceding unsigned comment was added by Helaine (talk • contribs)

Your best bet would probably be to ask on the Latin Wikisource Scriptorium. --SB_Johnny | PA! 15:47, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
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