Commons:Village pump

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Village Pump Shortcut: [[:]] Welcome This is the Wikimedia Commons Village Pump, which is used for discussions of the operations, technical issues, and policies of the Wikimedia Commons. Other discussions are welcome here until pages are created to hold them. This page is intended to serve the same purpose for Commons as Wikipedia:Village pump. Frequently asked questions (FAQ): Vandalism/Image protection - If you want to protect an image out of the Wikimedia Commons that gets vandalized please join the IRC-channel #wikimedia-commons at freenode.net and drop a note there. Copyright violations - If you think a certain media file is a copyright violation please do not list it here but instead at Commons:Deletion requests. If you are unsure about the legal status of a media file ask at Commons talk:Licensing for clarification. Copyright policy - If you want to ask here why unfree/non-commercial material is not allowed at Wikimedia Commons and if you want to suggest that allowing it would be a good thing please do not comment here. It is a waste of your time. One of Wikimedia Commons basic principles is: "Only free content is allowed." Please simply accept this self imposed restriction like NPOV in Wikipedia. What are the Commons - If you have a question about the Commons and how it works, you can ask it at Commons:Help desk. Further frequently asked questions... NOTE - Discussions are archived in Commons:Village pump archive. Archivings are performed regularly, but there are archiving instructions available. Start a new discussion

3 July

Please move another category

Category:Native Americans flags to Category:Native American flags -- Himasaram 11:45, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

5 July

Photos of recent public sculptures

It pains me to bring it up, but as JeremyA observed last month in thread "Keeping of a photo not usable commercially", the photographs of publically displayed modern sculptures (life of artist +70 years) might be subject to copyright restrictions. Today, I ran across a Christian Science Monitor article on the subject [1] which seems to confirm this, according to American University School of law professor of intellectual Law Christine Farley.

We have a lot of these photos so maybe the Wiki Foundation Lawyer can look at it and issue an opinion. It would really be a shame to lose the Calders, Moore's and Brancusi's. Also curious if the rules for public art are different in the EU (hopefully similar to the general copyright exemption for architecture).

• Category:Alexander Calder
• Category:Henry Moore
• Category:Constantin Brancusi
• Category:Niki de Saint Phalle
• Category:George Rickey
• Category:Hendrik Andersen
• Category:Donald Judd

-Mak 01:51, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Most of this stuff will have to be deleted, according to Commons:Derivative works. Especially the ones that were taken inside museums or on private grounds. Laws on public art differ from country to country in the EU (see the policy article linked above). --Fb78 08:58, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I think we need a more targeted approach. The Christian Science Monitor article mentioned says that these laws are disputed, too. Also, some of those photos of sculptures above were taken in Germany by Germans example, and are subject to w:de:Panoramafreiheit, that means they are legal for Germany. The more targeted approach would be the following: if we have a sculpture in the public whose copyright has not yet expired, but the photographer who took the photo has licensed the photo under a free licence, and we know when the sculptor died and can confirm when this derivative work (photo) will enter into the public domain

-> then we hide this photo until the date of it entering into the public domain.

Only admins or some few admins for that matter could view the file itself, while the file name and the image description page would be public to all.

1. So everyone could see when a particular object will enter into the public domain.
2. We could establish over time a fairly comprehensive copyright archive. Something which is not available in this form anywhere in the world, and which would be pretty valuable.
3. We would show our respect to current copyright law.
4. When there is again a copyright reform, people who defend the public domain will have a very impressive archive to point to and show the possible harm of copyright extensions. See w:Eldred vs. Ashcroft.
5. If we do not do this, we do not respect the art of the photographers.
6. Our Admins will have time and time again to establish the copyright status of these sculptures, without recourse to prior decisions in these matters.
7. There is the possibility of a review of our decisions in case of error or a (favorable) change in copyright law or a later licence by the rightsholder for our material.
8. Such a software change would be only a minimal effort for the developers.

Longbow4u 18:09, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Sound like a great idea to me- retention of a copy for such non commerical purposes seems defensible, but I have no expertise in IP law. One tangential weird side benefit is as a perc to get people to volunteer for the drudgery of adminship too.

Anyway, it's a long long time to wait for a lot of these- Claudel- 2013, and 2046 for Calder. I think the Wikis are going to have to fall back on fair use otherwise any modern art article is going to be pretty pointless without images. My reading of Commons:Derivative works has been that even museum sketches of copyrighted work are not permitted (see comic book figures: drawings). What I am not so clear on is how "Impressionistic" the sketch would have to be in order to get out from under the derivative label. So if even impressionistic sketches are forbidden, I suppose you could do illustrative things- eg. Make a Calder like mobile animated gif, and release it PD- stating "Done in the style of Calder's mobiles". You are really have problems for the more subtle stuff though. What do you do for Claudel. No sculpture is going to communicate the essense of her work except for someone else in her class in the same style- You might as well show a Rodin with some figure in a gesture of pathos. So if sketches aren't allow, we have no great work arounds except for "in the style of" unique works imitating the style of the more high impact folks- Calder, Duchamp, Giacommetti, Oldenburg.

Detail point on Longbow's list. I think we have to acknowlege weakness of the economic argument portion of #4 point above. For this to have any relevance for future court decisions, in order to counterbalance the harm that the entrenched industries will squeal about, you would have demonstrate a large enough number of successful enterprises whose business model is dependent on recent creations having a shorter copyright. Yet in cases where there have been such enterprises, it hasn't turned out well. The rulings regarding the practice of sampling riffs common in hip hop or rap music have not gone in favor of such lucrative economic activities. (See here for an interesting detailed view of that if you are into music). Culture is the loser, but I think I am likely preaching to the choir. Anyhow, acknowleging the weakness does not mean submitting to the conclusions- eg the mind numbily horrifying notion that that entrenched industries effectively have rights in perpetuity to copyright restrictions. It does mean that we have to be realistic and deal with the weakness one way or another. -Mak 20:43, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

As I have a few of my own photographs of public art uploaded here (A Picasso, a Calder, and a Chagall) I have tried to research to find a definitive answer, at least for those art works that are in the US. Although I am not a lawyer (nor a US-citizen) it seems clear that photos of non-PD public art in the US should not be sold commercially without a licence from the copyright holder. However, from what I have read there seems to be some doubt as to whether such copyrights would be upheld in court, and I can't find any legal precedent. I have been planning to move my own photos to the English wikipedia and declare tham as 'fair use', but I have been waiting to see if others get removed from here first. --JeremyA 00:06, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

No precedents? You know about the case against the Beanie Baby catalog, right? Beanie babies are copyrighted as sculptures just as are art sculptures, and the artist has the exclusive right to sell photographs of their work. If you want to provide an image that could be substituted for such a photograph sold by the artist, then you can't even claim fair use. So the wikis will have to partly obscure/ make a low res copy of most modern art images, otherwise even a fair use defence will not work. (At least to my legally untrained mind)

Since this covers all of Modern art for all of the wikis, really it would be nice to get the Wiki foundation lawyer to issue some guidance on how degraded the fair use representations should be for Modern art. Secondly, it would be nice to know if applications of Longbow's proposal are ok- that Commons can legally retain non public copies of such images. It would be nice if Admins had access- could go into commons and find them, then could degrade them for fair use inclusion in their wikis. -Mak 22:42, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I was referring specifically to sculptures that are permanently sited in a public place. I realise that US copyright law does not treat these any differently from any other sculpture, however the law in some other countries does. The precedent that I was thinking about was whether the copyright of a public artwork had ever been tested in court. I'm not sure that obscuring is necessary for fair use (we don't do that with logos for instance), but certianly I would lower the resolution such that, in my opinion, it would not be possible to sell prints of the photographs. We would also have to be careful which articles the photos were placed in—a low resolution version of Image:Picasso Chicago 060409-2.jpg might be fair use in an article about Daley Plaza, but probably not in a more general article about Chicago. JeremyA 23:58, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'm sad to see these go, but as they can now be easily undeleted I am going to start deleting some of these images. I am starting with my own photos of public artworks in Chicago; as an example of how they might be reuploaded to individual projects as fair use, I have done this with my photo of Calder's Flamingo that is used at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kluczynski_Federal_Building. --JeremyA 17:35, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Jeremy, could you drop a note on village pump when the flamingo Calder Fair Use review is over so that we all can learn how if there is anything new regarding public permanent displays or modern art fair use rules? Thanks -Mak 22:59, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Fair use review seems to take a long time at en. However, I decided to test the water on what the consensus at en would be to do with these images, so I started an ifd on one ([2]) and the first reply was the suggestion that the image should be retagged as fair use. --JeremyA 04:07, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

• Keep pictures of works permanently situated in a public place. Wikimedia Foundation should declare that policy --Historiograf 22:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

In Europe for example The_Little_Mermaid is very problematic. See the Snowball case --Elgaard 23:02, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I am new to this.My hobby is to make drawings &paintings of old buildings-or may be not so old along with a more or less well kept cultured landscape.I even take photos of same to save me from overfrequent sneezing. I like it best when they are dissolving.These buildings are pieces of rustic architecture.Someone has made them maybe recently. What about copyrights to buildings - pics of?

Can Brandenburger Tor show up in Wikipedia? We have in Norway a cathedral which is just finished with finer work e.g. statues on the walls - some, but not all, reconstructions, some originals of yesteryear. If someone (definitely not me ) made a painting of some likness - would it be neccesary with more than the artists freedom for Wiki to use? Two possibilities: 1. Lower solution to something like last generation cellular phone (They are following cameras in snobbery) 2.Watermark pics. Freeware available.Text:Illegally copied Does my sign come by itself? Bjørn som tegner. I`m norwegian

July 21

Trains of the world

I think categories

• [[Category:Trains_in_the_United_States]]
• [[Category:Trains_in_Indonesia]]
• [[Category:Trains_in_Portugal]]
• [[Category:Trains_in_europe]]
• [[Category:Train/Belgium]], [[Category:Train/Britain]], [[Category:Train/Cuba]], [[Category:Train/Czech]], [[Category:Train/Denmark]], [[Category:Train/India]], [[Category:Train/Poland]] and [[Category:Train/Spain]]
  

should be renamed to the new "official" denomination [[Trains in XXXXX]]. How can I do this without changing the tags manually? --Jollyroger 11:39, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

P.S. Why the "hide bot edits" in recentchanges doesn't hide the MakBot: Changing Category:XXXXXXXXX changes? --Jollyroger 11:42, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Orgullobot can do category renames. So can MakBot, I guess - apperently, MakBot does not have a bot flag. It should. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 12:31, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I am open to an Bot flag for MakBot, but no one has voted on it. MakBot applied for a flag prior to this mass conversion. Commons:Administrators to vote on it. Today is the last day for this mass convert, so it won't be flooding people's watchlists as much. -Mak 16:51, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Jolly- Though Orgullobot does a great job on this sort of thing and should be considered first, MakBot has volunteered to run these conversions. If there are any more to add to the list, please submit them on the makbot talk page. If I hear nothing more by this afternoon, MakBot will convert what you have listed above. -Mak 16:56, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I asked Orgullo for the conversion, but had no response yet. Do as you wish, as far as they are changed :-). The above should be the full list. Thanks for the quick and detailed answer and help, and thanks for the work you and your shiny bot do! --Jollyroger 23:00, 21 July 2006 (UTC) (who maybe is late, depending on the time zone of "this afternoon" :-D)

Ok. I started to do this but I don't understand what you want. Underscores are spaces so all the bulletted names fit the Trains in xxxx pattern. The others listed with slashes are articles, not categories. If this pattern is supposed to apply to articles too, then you can just copy the wikitext of those galleries to an alternately named article page. Plus I see a lot of "of countryname categories, but you didn't mention those. I will let Orgullo sort it out with you. I'm baffled. -Mak 01:16, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

The categories should be trains **OF** XXXXXXXXXXXXX, as you see here. The "articles" are photo collections, so I guess they should follow the same naming scheme. Underscores came from cut&paste, of course they are simply spaces. --Jollyroger 08:52, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, for the confusion- your wording suggested the destination name would be the "new "official" denomination [[Trains in XXXXX]]". So ok. I get it not. You want Of. Seems fine to me. There is some small benefit of predictability in guessing cat names if there is a uniform rule for preposition selection. The rule proposed in the location scheme is that "of" be used except in cases where it is ambiguous eg. Russian paintings -> Paintings of Russia. Commons has an unusual number of choo choo pictures and really I only know what my children know about them- which more has to do with Thomas the talking train.

For the US and large rail systems as in India and China, there may seem to be no ambiguity, but in Europe you could have lots of situations where a picture of a train was taken "in" Italy, be "from" Germany due to manufacture location, but now be "of Spain" since it's operating company is located there. I have no idea what the railroad experts who created these categories intended or think is best for the organization of their areas.

I would take this offline to solicit opinions on some Trains talk page, but I have no idea where the Train guys talk about this kind of junk. -Mak 17:13, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Certainly for Great Britain, the form Category:Trains in Great Britain or Category:Trains in Britain are unambiguous and logical. Where trains travel to the continent via the channel tunnel, photos of the Eurostar for example can be found by the categorisation by type (e.g. Category:British Rail Class 390) with see alsos where apropriate. Although a few other British trains do run abroad, this is not what people would expect to find when looking for photographs of British rolling stock.

A difficulty comes with how you categorise the Republic of Ireland/Northern Ireland. This caused (unnecessarily) heated debate at en so I will leave it to others to suggest their preferred scheme.

For trains manufactured abroad, e.g. the Category:British Rail Class 185 was built in Germany, pictures of these trains there would still be categorised under the British Rail Class scheme.

there is no central disucssion place for train related topics on Commons currently, hence the category heierarchy is confusing and riddled with duplication. One of the many things on the list to do when I have time is sort this out. Thryduulf 01:06, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Thinking more about the Irish question, Category:Trains of Northern Ireland and Category:Trains of the Republic of Ireland would not fit nicely with something like Enterprise which is a cross-border service operated jointly by Northern Ireland Railways and Iarnród Éireann with each owning 2 of the 4 locomotives and half the rolling stock. Thryduulf 01:20, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Why not just put tit in both categories, that way which ever your interested its there, The same would equally apply to all cross border trains services. Gnangarra 03:49, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the correct name should be "OF". I try to explain this using examples of the categories I use often:

1. rails are operated mostly on country basis, so it is logical to say that ETR500 is a train OF Italy (sth like "product of italian culture and industry")
2. Cisalpino is a train OF Italy, but runs IN Germany and Switzerland. Adding a photo taken IN germany could make it difficult to search for Cisalpino images. I think it should be tagged with the three nations.
3. most of the subcategories now are named OF
4. Category "locomotives" has subcats "locomotives OF italy" and such. Using a different form may be confusing. check this and similar
5. Sometimes trains are sold in their lifetime. Some ALn772 run IN Poland, but they are still trains OF Italy (created by italian railway adiministration). They are OF poland too, of course. tagging a photo of them taken in Poland as "IN Italy" is IMHO wrong

that's my 2 cents. --Jollyroger 11:38, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikisoure:Image use policy

See wikisource discussion at Wikisource:Scriptorium#Implement_Wikisource:Image_use_policy

Over at Wikisource we're working on developing an image use policy, and we're considering outsourcing all of our uploading to Commons. The question is how everyone on Commons feels about wikisourcians uploading scanned pages of text that are to be transcribed or used to proofread existing Wikisource works (see Image:LA2-NSRW-1-0019.jpg for an example of such a file). Does anyone have an objection to wikisourcians using Commons in this way? Most of the users doing these kinds of uploads will have some experience with wikis and will likely tag and categorize everything appropriately, so hopefully it won't result in more cleanup work. Feel free to comment on the policy, so that we can create a solution that works well for everyone. --Spangineer^en es (háblame) 11:56, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I see no reason not to have scanned text here if it's free and useful for wikisource (and tagged and categorized, of course). But please be careful with mass uploads for a while: start with a hundred or so, and ask/wait for comments. Also, for scanned documents, perhaps wait until we have DjVu support, so you can upload a document as one file instead of one for each page. DjVu support is being worked on by JeLuF, the demo i saw looks quite good already. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 12:34, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Didn't Brion announce DjVu support some time ago? I'm pretty sure he did...

Spangineer: if it's useful for wikisource, I can't imagine why we wouldn't support it. I suggest developing a good category scheme that you can encourage people to use. e.g. create subcategories of Category:Wikisource such as Category:English Wikisource or Category:English Wikisource documents. And then create subcats of that for particular works, I guess.

Also I would add guidelines for image naming (eg. "Lastnameauthor, Firstnameauthor - Nameofwork - 001/200" (page 1 of 200). Or some similar format, maybe different ordering.

Also advise that scans shouldn't be labelled with "-self" licenses, ie. scanning doesn't create new copyright. So they should always clearly label the original author and the copyright status of the original work.

Lastly, I assume Wikisource has a CommonsTicker?? pfctdayelise (translate?) 13:01, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

OK really last comment :) Maybe WS would like to wait until after the single login feature is implemented? then its users won't have to sign up to Commons as well. pfctdayelise (translate?) 13:09, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I strongly discurage the cration of a special category hierarchy for wikisource. Category:Wikisource is for media about wikisource (logos, screenshots, icons, etc), not material used by wikisource. Similar categories for Wikinews have been deleted.

Instead, think of a category scheme for scanned text. As a start, further up on this page a tag was proposed to mark text-only images (i.e. scanned book pages). Perhaps they could be sorted by author, language, time and genre or something - although it may not be necessary to create extra "text"-categories for each "facette". The new categories should be integrated with the existing structure, of course. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 13:21, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with Duesentrieb. See also http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:De_Wikisource_book Joergens.mi and Arnomane have worked together to find useful ways for the Wikisource.de upload at Commons. Duesentrieb has no deeper knowledge of the problem (nothing new, I wonder why he was elected as admin ...) and no right to speak for the Commons community --Historiograf 18:38, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Then please educate us about the "deeper knowledge". In what way is it useful to organize media on commons by where they are used? Why would it be "wikisource books", not "scanned books" or "historical books"? In any case, I have not claimed that anything I said is consensus or policy. I have state my opinion and experience. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 18:50, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

• • Ok. You stated your opinion, but collecting information before stating anything is a much better approach.

For deeper knowledge, please look here Definition Book-Templates

• It´is simply called De_Wikisource_book for the following reasons:

de

1. because the text is in the german language,
2. The scans will be used in german language Wikisource

Wikisource

1. that anybody know where this scan is in use
2. where to ask when problem arises.
3. Members of the german language wikisource will take care for these sets of scans.

book simply to indicate that is not a simple set of scans in a courious language but a combined thing called a book.

Whe had a bigger set of discussion some time ago together with arnomane how to organize it. the results of that can be seen here User:Joergens.mi#Scanned/uploaded_Books

Especially have a look at this Rechenbuch des Andreas Reinhard. The professional scan of this has been done in a close Cooperation of the Universit of Göttingen and the Wikimedia Deutschland.

Additional Information to the whole Process can be found in the help pages of the german language Wikisource. Feel free to ask in the scriptorium of the german language wikisource or to contact me at my Talk in the german language Wikisource.

The scan ist not only used to proofread the text, but also to give a view to the used Original for scientific evaluation of the text --Joergens.mi 19:19, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not totally happy about the idea to upload thousands of scanned pages. The only use I can think of for them is on Wikisource of that language. To upload them on Commons seems unnecessary to me.

Fred Chess 19:50, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

They are not only useful in that language, as Wikisource is also about translations, and they may be nice as reference points on the other Wikisources. In addition, sometimes it is nice to show excerpts from important historical documents in Wikipedia.--Eloquence 20:14, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

It is absolutely necessary to have these high quality scans on Commons the central repository for multimedia files of the WMF --Historiograf 19:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

@ Fred Chess The only possibilty to use sources even on an scientific level is if you have a proof for their quality. and this proof is given by scans. Look at this book Rechenbuch des Andreas Reinhard there are only a few of them available on the world. the only place in the world were an digitized Version exists is Commons in conjunction with the transcription availabe on wikisource. And you are not happy about such a treasure --Joergens.mi 20:43, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Exactly, DE as the prefix isn't correct. DE in captital letters represents a state (Germany). Small letters would be correct, as they represent languages. Schaengel89 22:24, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

@Schaengel89 i would prefer when you would have a close look to the things a they are the Category:de_Wikisource_book is written in lowercase letters. By this your text is simply wrong!. --Joergens.mi 08:45, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I strongly recomend to discuss the matter of organizing such material in depth here at the village pump and/or the mailing list. Looking at the exising structure and template, here are a few thoughts:

• having a template and a gallery page for each "scan set" makes perfect sense to me. The template could also mention a "maintener" for the scan set, or link to an appropriate project page on wikisource or some such. In future, it may be preferable to have an entire scan set as a singe DjVu file - or maybe not, it's ultimately up to you.
• I don't understand why you would want a gallery and a category for each book, with the exact same title and the exact same content. This seems redundant to me. It also seems to cause confusion, see Category:Rechenbuch Reinhard, Category:Drei Register Arithmetischer ahnfeng zur Practic and Rechenbuch Reinhard.
• The scanned books should be sorted into the existing category structure by creator/time/topic/style etc. Just dumping them into a "german books" category would render them essentially useles, because they would be hard to find by people navigation by topic. This should always be kept in mind.
• Having extra categories for scanned books in a given language seems reasonable. I don't see however why it should be linked to wikisource in any way (except maybe by a sister project link - although I don't know where on wikisource that should point to).
• Generally, categorizing by "where the image is/will be used" is not a good idea - you don't know where it could be useful (see the comment by Eloquence above), so the categorization is misleading at best. I can't see how it would be helpful - if I want to know what images are used by wikisource, i go to wikisource...
• Another minor point: don't use flags to indicate languages in the template. This is inappropriate and has been deprecated after long discussions.

Regards -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 23:23, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

There is small mistake in this projekt, which is to be cleaned up. the Artikle is Rechenbuch des Andreas Reinhard and the catgory is Category:Drei Register Arithmetischer ahnfeng zur Practic. The article is intended to give some information on this book. The category is intended to build a ribbon aroung all pages which are part of this projekt. Because of an misunterstnding some wrong items exists. But I´m cleaning up this moment. the structure can be seen on my page the need for the category ist quite clear to get a automatic connection from one scan to the whole book. As long as guys are running aroung ang putting boxes like this

English: This image file contains a scanned text page with no illustrations. Deutsch: Diese Bilddatei enthält eine gescannte Textseite ohne Illustrationen.

into some pages there ist need for tying things together.

--Joergens.mi 08:45, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

These are all great suggestions.

• Re DjVu; I've never heard of it, but based on these comments, it sounds awesome.
• Re categoization scheme: That's key. I've added a slightly modified version of pfctdayelise's image name suggestion, along with a categorization scheme. It should be fleshed out more though. Assuming we don't use DjVu right away, would something like the following work to categorize Oliver Twist:

Category:Charles Dickens - OT --> Category:Charles Dickens texts --> Category:English scanned texts

If we did use DjVu, we could just eliminate the first category of course. And of course this system can be incorporated into other categories (for example, have Category:Charles Dickens texts also feed into Category:Charles Dickens and Category:Charles Dickens - OT feed into Category:Fiction books).

• Obviously, I agree that we shouldn't label these by intended use; hopefully a variety of people will find uses for them.
• Wikisource does have a CommonsTicker, thank goodness.
• Would a separate template be necessary, or would just the category and normal image description template be sufficient? I'm thinking that if the image description includes the title of the work, who author is, the page number, etc. (most of which should be obvious from the image name), that that should be sufficient assuming it's properly categorized and tagged for copyright.
• Anything else I'm missing here? Suggestions are certainly welcome, either here or by making changes to the Wikisource policy directly. --Spangineer^en es (háblame) 02:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

To more completely fracture the discussion, I've posted a potential model for categories at Wikisource talk:Image use policy. Please make any category structure-related comments there here. Thanks. --Spangineer^en es (háblame) 12:30, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Let us please discuss this here, since it concerns the category structure on commons, which should also be used by other wikibooks wikisource projects.

The page you linked to looks good for a start, although i'm not sure if a category for each book is needed if there is going to be a gallery for each one. But that does not change the overall structure, just the type of the "leafs" of the tree. AS to templates: the ones used by the german wikibooks wikisource encourage rich information, and feature "previous" and "next" links to navigate a book. Seems like a good idea.

I don't think the country of origin is important here, but the language is. The title of the book category (or gallery page) should contain the language, at least if it's not clear from the title itself - i.e. we may have the "Oliver Twist" in English, Chinese and German, the name always being the same. So perhaps use Oliver Twist scan (german); Consequently, there would have to be Category:Charles Dickens texts (german), which would have to be in Category:Scanned German texts and in Category:Charles Dickens texts or directly in Category:Charles Dickens

The categories for scanned books must always be contained in some way in the author's category - which in turn would be reachable by country of origin - i.e. Category:Charles Dickens would be in Category:Writers from Britain

To disambiguate titles like Principia Mathematica, use the full- or subtitle (Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica) or the author (Principia Mathematica (Newton))

-- Duesentrieb^(?!) 13:21, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

@Duesentrieb: there are small fault in your writing

• with german wikibooks I think you ment german wikisource (german for the language)
• The idea to put the langaguage in to the tiltle is worth thinking of. On the other hand in our articles, there is some more information on the subject, which are also worth to be in the title. I think it schould be either in the title or in the article. Your idea to distinguish between the german and english scan of the same title by that is ok. --Joergens.mi 15:01, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, of course, wikisource, sorry - I was writing "book" so many times i got confused. But OTOH, some wikibook may in fact use the scans - which is one of the reasons that "wikisource" is not something that should show up in the names of categories or galleries. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 16:41, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Discussing it here is great; the reason I suggested that we discuss categories on the policy talk page is that some people aren't sold on the idea of putting everything on Commons. But on second glance, it does appear that there is broad support for doing everything over here, so I have no problem with continuing the discussion here. --Spangineer^en es (háblame) 17:19, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

• We don´t want to discourage anyone to use this scans, otherwise we wouldn´t put them to commons. The main idea is to make them real public available in commons. But we are working on transcribtions of these scans to ascii (utf-8) text in wikisource, to make them available for generating pdf or scientific research, therefore the information is simply that the transcription is or will be available in de-wikisource. Several of these textes had been only available to a limit set of people, now they are available for all. And we are constantly looking to find more od such books like Rechenbuch des Andreas Reinhard. There has been fault on my side. The scans of this book are the scans of the only existing original handwritten version of the book w:de:Andreas Reinhard, all other books are (only) printed versions. --Joergens.mi 21:44, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Let me clarifiy that I think it's really cool what you are doing, and that I welcome this material to commons. I still don't see any reason whatsoever to mention wikisource in the category name - such information is much better placed in references to a wikisource project in the "book gallery" or on the individual image pages. Categories represent topics that apply to the content of the scans - "wikisource" is no such topic.

That being said: I see this issue only with your "root" category right now - even though I don't like it that way, I can live with it, and it can easily be changed later. I just want to ask you not to create any more like it - until now, the subcategories do not reference wikisource in their name. They shouldn't.

There are people from the english and from the german wikisource active in this discussion - perhaps you could try to coordinate a common structure? Spangineer has already proposed something - together with integrating the language of the scanned text into the category structure, it looks loke a good start. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 22:19, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

• I think there is no interest to create more categories with the name of german wikisource in it. The reason for the name is simply to say where does the text come from und who can help if any problems arise. If you take a close look to the books already put to commons you can clearly see that the title ist strongly book related. the idea putting the language to the title will be discussed. If you have a look into the category you see the purpose for it, in the small text on top. --Joergens.mi 15:09, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Another concern has come up on the Wikisource discussion—is there any way for materials used by wikisource to be protected on Commons? For example, Wikisource contains the wikisource:CIA World Fact Book, 2004, including images. Because this is a copy of the 2004 factbook, we want the 2004 map pictures. However, if all wikisource images were hosted on commons, it's likely that someone would come around and say, "Oh! They haven't updated to the 2006 CIA world factbook map yet. I'll take care of that for them", not realizing that that isn't helpful at all. In general, all "image updates" to works appearing on Wikisource aren't going to be helpful, except perhaps for technical improvements to existing images. Even with that it would be better to upload a new version. Fortunately, there are ways to make it clear that images shouldn't be updated (by specifying the year of publication in the image name and image description page, for example), and image undeletion is now possible, but these steps don't eliminate the problem. Has it ever been considered that certain images be protected to prevent accidental/malicious changes? On wikisource, complete and proofread works are often protected, since there's rarely a reason for such a text to be updated. Couldn't similar conditions apply here? --Spangineer^en es (háblame) 18:23, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Hm, I'm a bit ambiguous. Large scale "preemptive" protection of things on a wiki just does not feel right no me. And indeed, the fact the some images should not be "updated" could and should in any case be made clear by the title (i.e. give a date). On the other hand, I can't think of a good reason to "update" a scan of a historical document for example, if it was uploaded in good quality and resolution - from that perspecifve, protecting the image wouldn't hurt.

Perhaps we could have a "please do not replace" tag or something - it should be pretty easy to write a tool that checks if any image marked this way was replaced - and with a bit more effort, even if such a tag was removed; on a second though, this could and should be integrated into CommonsTicker. This would show if tehre even really is a problem to solve. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 20:07, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it's already set up in CommonsTicker, and an example of what I'm talking about occurred on July 6. I've since rectified the situation (uploaded the old version to a new file name and changed the image link in the page), but it does happen. Of course, the image should have included the year in the title. Considering all this, I've made some changes to the proposed policy with different suggestions and conventions. Feel free to comment; this will probably moving to voting on wikisource fairly soon. --Spangineer^en ws (háblame) 21:40, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Also, the issue of where to put these. I created Category:Scanned English texts but then thought that it might be better to include text images produced by other means (like photography). Or is that just another method of scanning? I'm thinking about Category:Digital texts, Category:Digitized texts (though that gets into the British vs. USA thing; scary), or simply Category:Texts. I don't like Category:Text pages; some of the pages aren't exclusively of text. Rather, the term "texts" here means "text-based works" or the like—at the level of books, poems, etc. Any input would be appreciated. --Spangineer^en ws (háblame) 22:05, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Open letter on censorship - Carta abierta sobre censura

This is my opinion about an act of censorship carried out by user:ALE!

My first gut reaction to what I think is a vile act of censorship on your part by deleting an image of my creation, mac junk.jpg, was of extreme anger, and consequently, it was accompanied by the desire to throw insults. However, I doubt that insulting a person whose brain I suspect must be in the dark confines of his body is useful. For I doubt they could be comprehended.

Your justification that reads “image is an artificial creation used to make a non neutral point, out of scope of Commons” is nothing but a reflection of ignorance and intolerance.

With your Taliban/argentinian military-like criteria, the world of art should disappear, for you should learn somewhere along your life that every image created by man is an artificial creation that makes non-neutral points. An image is a symbol that has a purpose, and that is to communicate an idea. It is the synthesis of a point of view, a philosophy, a thought. An image has the capacity to transport and transform people. Show me a single work of art that does not make a non neutral point.

The flags that you display in your user page are artificial creations that create or created feelings of loyalty/belonging, ideologically charged, symbolizing a political view that I doubt were agreeable to the original inhabitants of your country that sadly, were replaced by the likes of you.

Your voting record in deletions, lame reason after lame reason, should nominate you for Censor of the Year.

This is what I think. Are you going to censor it too?

Esta es mi opinión acerca de un acto de censura por parte del usuario ALE!

Mi primer reacción visceral a lo que yo considero un vil acto de censura de tu parte al eliminar una imagen de mi creación, mac junk.jpg, fue de extremo enojo, y consecuentemente, acompañada de un deseo profundo de lanzar insultos. Sin embargo, dudo que insultar a una persona cuyo cerebro, yo sospecho, se encuentra en los lugares más oscuros y recónditos de su cuerpo sea útil. Dudo que puedan ser comprendidos.

Tu justificación de que la “imagen es una creación artificial utilizada para hacer un punto no neutral, fuera del alcance de Commons” no es más que un reflejo de la ignorancia e intolerancia.

Con tus criterios dignos de los Talibanes o militares argentinos, el mundo del arte debe desaparecer, y debes de aprender en el transcurso de tu vida que cada imagen creada por el hombre es artificial y que intenta transmitir un punto no neutral. Una imagen es un símbolo que tiene un propósito, y es el de comunicar una idea. Es la síntesis de una postura, una filosofía, un pensamiento. Una imagen tiene la capacidad de transportar o transformar a la gente. Muéstrame una sola obra de arte que no intente trasnmitir un punto de vista.

Las banderas que muestras en tu página de usuario son creaciones artificiales que crean o crearon sentimientos de lealtad o pertenencia, cargadas ideológicamente, simbolizando un punto de vista político que dudo eran del agrado de los habitantes originales de tu pais que tristemente fueron reemplazados por gente como tu.

Tu record en eliminaciones, triste razón tras triste razón, deberían nominiarte para el Censor del Año.

Esto es lo que yo pienso, lo vas a censurar también?

--Tomascastelazo 16:48, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh, the Mac Junk image was deleted? It was about time. Commons should not host that kind of obvious propaganda. It is clearly stated at Commons:Project scope.

Fred Chess 19:46, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Fred, Could you please quote verbatim what you say is clearly stated in the Project scope? About time? Should? Obvious propaganda? If those are not argments that any fool can use to censor anything, I do not know what is. Censorship is a big deal.

By the way, please go to Category:Christianity, since you are an administrator, there you will find hundreds of images that fit ALE!´s criteria of artificial creations that make non neutral points, that is, they promote the existence of beings that have never been proven to exist and in whose name, millions of people have died, therefore I propose that they be deleted. They seem to be very, very dangerous propaganda. --Tomascastelazo 20:41, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

The image in question was borderline at best from a copyright and trademark point of view. It was also heavy user POV, and I (and many others, according to the deletion request) don't see any way how it could be useful to wikimedia projects. Samples of propaganda an other non-neutral material have a place on commons to document such propaganda, or as samples of the work of well known artists, etc - but not as personal statements of users.

Commons is not a place for personal image collections. That applies to party and family snapshots as well as to images that illustrate your personal political agenda, or your current art project. You are of course welcome to put images like that on your homepage, on flickr, or whatever. I even agree to an extend with the point made by your picture, but Commons is the wrong place for it. Calling that censorship is quite over the top. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 23:00, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I can't see that the use of the MacDonalds logo was anything other than 'fair use', so it had to go. William Avery 12:58, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Re: quote from Commons:Project scope: "Media files that are not useful for any Wikimedia project are beyond the scope of Wikimedia Commons."

Fred Chess 15:40, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Dear Fred,

I just want to make a few points.

1. The disagreements, from my point of view, between people can be worked out. 2. I do not take critisism of myself or my work personally, but if I am critisized, I have the right to reply and ask for arguments. 3. I am not attached to the image in question or any other image that I create. In fact, I am convincible when my work does not work and it is pointed out rationally. 4. I am fiercely opposed to censorship. 5. In my non neutral point of view, the Wikipedia project should be approached with an open mind that errs on the side of tolerance, not intolerance. And censorship, anyway you want to dress it, is a sign of intolerance.

Now to business, you quote fro the Commons scope page, but you do not quote enough. I reproduce other parts os the page so as not to base opinions on a very narrow interpretation of a sentence on a page:

Commons quotes in italics:

Private image collections and the like are generally not wanted. – It says generally, it does not ban personal images. I have found countless personal images that have not been targeted for deletion. Why this one? Wikimedia Commons is no web hoster for e.g. private party photos, self created artwork without educational purpose and such. – I say that the image has an educational purpose, as a call to conscience about caring for the environment and as an illustration of a photo technique. I reproduce the Wiki definition of Digital Collage: Digital collage is the technique of using computer tools in collage creation to encourage chance associations of disparate visual elements and the subsequent transformation of the visual results through the use of electronic media. – The image obviuosly rattled someone´s cage, and yours. It elicited a response, and your reaction was to delete, thus committing an act of censorship. However it is allowed uploading in small quantity images of yourself and others as long they are useful for some Wikimedia project (for example an Wikipedia article, a Wikinews report, in a meta article, on a user-page). I want to use the image on my user page – Why deny me the privilege extended to thounsands? In the same page that you quote, I find arguments that support my point of view, in fact, I find more!

This is not about me. This is about bringing to the discussion the issue of censorship.

In my opinion, wikipedia is a great project, and the work of the admins is a great contribution, but we should guard against the zealots that can hinder the search for knowledge and understanding. Who watches out for them?

Censorship, my friend, is the real issue. And it is too delicate a matter to be left in the hands of e-goons. Being computer-wise does not make them: 1. Knowledgeable; 2. Harmless; 3. Right.

By the way, I plan to upload the image again to be used in my user page, well within the scope of commons.

Yours truly, --Tomascastelazo 14:30, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

You are correct that we ( users of Wikimedia Commons ) want to "censor" the image in question. I do not believe anyone can claim it to be their human right to have their images here. I think that since we on Commons have already made it clear that we don't want that type of image, it is futile for you to discuss this with us. Perhaps you should try our mailinglist (http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l ) that is read by people from the Wikimedia board. If you get support there (which I doubt) then you can proceed as you wish.

Fred Chess 18:20, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Tomas, please don't re-upload it. It can be undeleted if necessary. But so far I don't see any support for that besides you. pfctdayelise (translate?) 23:01, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I have no idea what this image is about, but the general point I think Tom was making about a limitation about posting such information on Wikis is correct. The general impact of the NPOV policy and collective determination of content means that, were wikis around at the time of Gallileo, then the substance of his discoveries would be deleted in very short order. Similarly, if this were 19th century France, Van Gough would not be able to post his "junk images/ personal artwork" because at the time, it would have been quite correct that no one would have seen any value for them in any online encyclopedias. So Tom, that is really the breaks on contemporary art, or leading edge information of any kind. That doesn't mean that Wikis are bad, it just means they aren't a perfect medium of communication for everything.

That said even if everyone agreed that this was a valuable image that everyone would like to have on commons, we couldn't keep it anyway. William Avery's point is correct. Although artists are entitled to make "Fair Use" of art, Commons does not accept any Fair use images. So to keep it we would have to get permission from McDonald's which from the sound of it they would be somewhat reluctant to give. -Mak 20:30, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I should clarify my post of the 23th of July where I implied that Commons censors material. I find it obvious that Wikimedia Commons does not censor material, if censor means to remove material that may be controversial. I find this persistant accusation from Tom to be ridiculous. Wikimedia Commons is however not a general image provider, and it deletes images with personal statements because they go against the ideas of an encyclopedia. We have deleted for example "statements about pres. Bush" (several times) and "statements about homelessness", and now your "statement about McDonalds". It is not about censorship, but about the purpose of Wikimedia Commons. I find this matter so clear-cut that I don't see the point in discussing it again and again.

Fred Chess 09:37, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

• Pfctdayelise: Ok, I get it, a billion flies canot be wrong....

• Mak: Thanks, you get my point... and if you saw the image, it is no big deal, and that miniscule thing is precisely what makes it a big deal... And I do appreciate the Wiki project and the work of committed people, otherwise I would not waste my time with this. I too want to contribute, even if that means to be stubborn, there is a lesson for everyone, including me.

• Fred: A refresher on definitions:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

The act of hiding, removing, altering or destroying copies of art or writing so that general public access to it is partially or completely limited.

The practice of suppressing a text or part of a text that is considered objectionable according to certain standards.

Action taken to prevent others from having access to a book or information; a public objection to words, subjects and/or information in books, films, and other media with the idea of depriving others from reading or viewing them.

the means of keeping unpleasant (or unsociable) desires out of consciousness. Censorship is circumvented through dreams, parapraxes (or "slips of the tongue"), word association, and figures of speech.

Decisive acts of forbidding or preventing publication or distribution of media products, or parts of those products, by those with the power, either economic or legislative, to do so.

something that is meant to prevent free expression

--Tomascastelazo 16:30, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

The standard is pretty well articulated. You have to make the case that it would not be unlikely that an uploaded image would be used by one of the Wikimedia Foundation wikis. The act of enforcing editorial standards does technically meet the definition of censorship as Fred's earlier note acknowleged, but that is a technical sense of the word that is indistinguishable from what any good editor or creator does as a matter of routine. You subtract the stuff that is out of the scope of what you are attempting to do. To assert the general sense of censorship you have to show that the aim of controlling perceptions is in favor of one particular value system over another.

Many folks were taking a lot of exception to that perhaps unintended assertion you were making. As stated, personal statement type images are regularly deleted from all ends of the political and social issue spectrum. The only value system being promoted is a very general one- that which is biased in favour of general, collective knowlege over personal knowlege. That is a profound point of immense proportions but is really pretty esoteric that ranges into epistemology. Anyway, at that level, sure- the herd wins in the short term, but so what. Individualistic voices in the wilderness triumph over time. Note that such individuals are probably doing something wrong if they are immediately greeted by the collective with open arms. Because this is a heavily collaborative concensus driven environment populated by oftentimes uninformed and stubborn amateurs (myself included), this particular venue is really a bastion of the collective- so you aren't going to get a lot of traction here for knowlege and messages that are not what you would find in various reference books in the local library. Ok, it is mashed potatoes and there is so much more. But look at where the baseline is. The world has a long way to go in understanding simple collective truths. Guys are walking into cafes and markets and blowing up fellow muslims because their only exposure to the knowlege of the world has been delivered to them by ignorant mullahs. Similar stupidity occurs in the west with much larger consequences when uninformed populations vote for politicians based on other simplistic models politicians project concerning how they want us to think about the world.

Wikipedia and Commons are not BBS's. I don't see why there is any reason to make a big deal about it- those areas are well covered on the net. The wiki foundation wants to do something else, and do it very well. So just as a personal statement article in Wikipedia would be immediately eliminated, the same attitude will greet corresponding images and videos. There are countless flame wars on Wikipedia concerning such "censorship". This discussion really is no different.

The goal of the foundation is to give the world's knowlege to every single person in their own language. That includes visual and aural knowlege as well. That is a pretty fricking huge goal to achieve without throwing personal perspectives into the mix as well. Aren't personal statements part of the sum of the world's "knowlege" too? Well, you have a point there, but I think it is a more manageable goal to focus on collective knowlege presented with a NPOV first.

That is enough to keep us busy for the next 50 years or so. It is a great task to be a part of, but it means that part of what you have to share cannot find a home here. No matter really- there are lots of other opportunities for exposure. Commons is just not the right medium for it.

-Mak 20:07, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I was the nominator for this image to be deleted, my original reason was that by manufacturing the image through the addition of the McDonalds sign (its also a logo and trade mark), then by naming the image Mac Junk you have directly atribute to the corporation unsubstanciated alligations from the corporation had a legal right to challenge. Within the image there were clearly identifiable multinational companies for whom the additions of a sign could have been argueable. Additional arguements raised, its not usable on any wikiproject to which you offered to write an article for. Also that you didn't have permission from the corporation to use their logo, trademark. Later during the discussion you added it to the censorship page claiming that Commons was censoring you. I could have at that time just removed it from the page but I chose to move it too the page on digital collage, even though as you arent a notable artist and the subjects construction wasn't sufficiently obvious to demostrate the art form, a credit to your editing abilities. But this is an unwarranted attack of an Admin for doing what was asked and majority of commenators agreed to. Gnangarra 04:19, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

July 22

Category templates?

I would like to learn a little bit more about templates to tag categories which should be renamed. E.g., there are two categories Category:Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz and Category:Thomé, Flora von Deutschland within Category:Botanical illustrations; both refer to illustrations from the same book. I put the images in Category:Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz (which had less images) to Category:Thomé, Flora von Deutschland and put a category redirect template in Category:Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz. However, Category:Thomé, Flora von Deutschland should possibly be renamed to "Category:Thomé, Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz" (which is the complete title of that book). Is there any template to achieve this?

Anyway, I am a bit confused about the categories Category:Illustrations (which is in Category:Illustration – why?) and Category:Drawings, as there is no clear pattern how to assign these categories to the images. Maybe there should be a kind of definition, say "Illustrations is a category reserved for illustrations (excluding photographs) from books" (or something else) at the head of the category page? Of course, one would have to sort the images in accordance ... Cheers, --Ulf Mehlig 09:57, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Please delete this file

Feel free to delete this file; I tried to make a SVG version but it's not yet fixed. I'll fix it tomorrow (or so) but deleting the previous versions will save Commons some HD space. Thanks, Simeon87 23:08, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I fixed the image by converting the text to paths. There should be a better way though, cause the SVG is now 30 times larger than the PNG. NielsF 23:18, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

It's kinda odd, I tried Inkscape to create this but somehow text seems to cause trouble. After some Googling, I stumbled upon this page which describes the same problem (text becoming a black rectangle). I'm kinda new to creating SVG files so I dunno; perhaps some other editor doesn't have this? - Simeon87 09:56, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Check commons:bugs and search bugzilla: and if your problem hasn't been described yet, please add a comment to an existing bug if it seems related or otherwise start a new one. pfctdayelise (translate?) 10:23, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

bugzilla:5710 (SVG flow text rendered incorrectly) seems to be the bug because after disabling the the flow-option of the text, it changed from a black rectangle to text. Well, it still refused to place enough spaces between the characters; it did show correctly in Inkscape though - I haven't found a bug in bugzilla that describes that but I'm not sure if it's Wikipedia related. - Simeon87 10:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Well it would be RSVG-related, since that's the renderer MediaWiki software uses. If you can view it correctly in another program and it validates, I would guess it's a MediaWiki problem. pfctdayelise (translate?) 11:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I viewed the image in another SVG program but in there, it placed all the numbers next to each other with 1 space, left aligned whereas it should display them with multiple spaces in between.. should one place the numbers as seperate text objects or so? In the XML code it does list the spaces but depending on the program (or website, like Commons) used to view it, it either displays them or not. - Simeon87 12:06, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

No panorama freedom in Belarus?

I read carefully article 19 of On Copyright And Contiguous Rights Law and on my understanding Belarus doesn't allow panorama freedom.

reproduction or communication for universal knowledge of works of architecture, fine art, photos, which are permanently located in a place opened for free visiting, except for cases when an image of the work is the main object of such reproduction or communication for universal knowledge or when it is used for commercial objectives;

According to article 7 copyrights cover:

• works of painting, graphic art, sculptures and other works of fine art;
• works of architecture, urban planning and garden-and-park art;

On my understanding modern sculptures and buildings could not be shoot freely. I assume that building/sculptures made before beginning on 20th century is in public domain (most likely authors died 50 years ago).

I’m not a lawyer so I'm interesting in other people opinions, especially of people with legal background. Also will be good idea to see summary of similar discussions for other countries that doesn't allow freedom of panorama.

EugeneZelenko 15:43, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to add your results at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Alx/Sandbox Alx has given me permission to make use of his page he is not able to maintain actually --Historiograf 00:13, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Libelous contributions?

See User:Dridgeisbudgets gallery. I am thinking of blocking him and deleting all this stuff, it seems to me that his contributions are used to make fun of some guy. Will a block be appropriate in this case? Kjetil_r 16:37, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

They don't look like useful files for any Wikipedia project; I wouldn't mind ;) Simeon87 17:29, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

User:Slomox took care of his uploads. Kjetil_r 00:06, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Flag of Italy

As regards Image:Flag of Italy.svg, the colors are incorrect.

• The Italian constitution says that the flag is green-white-red.
• The Italian government issued the Pantone textile codes for the textile flags.
• No Italian institution ever issued RGB/CYMK codes.
• No official conversion table between Pantone and RGB/CYMK codes exists

The people behind current version of said image claim that a randomly selected color, close to white but actually a shade of blue, is to be used.

The image colours should be changed, but someone protected the page, even mocking about the "Wong Version". (:OMG, it's not the the wrong version? This is why admins should pick the version they protect totally at random :) -Samulili 20:06, 22 July 2006 (UTC))

What is it possible to do to change the colour to the correct shade?--FlagUploader 13:04, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok, let's break this up. IMHO:

File:True Flag of Italy.svg

• both versions are argumable correct (or incorrect). Thus, commons should have both.
• what you call them, i don't care. Make it Image:Real Flag of Italy.svg and Image:Correct Flag of Italy.svg or whatever - or perhaps use Image:Flag of Italy (textile).svg or something. For practicle reasons, an existing and much-used file should remain unchanged, an alternative version should get a new name.
• Which version is used where should be discussed there, not here. I think it only really matters in an article about Italy or Flag of Italy - there I would recommend to show both (see right); with a good monitor and a sharp eye, you can thus compare the colors, which would actually be informative.

Regards -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 13:57, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Are you mocking me, sir? First you tell me to come here to discuss this matter, and then you tell me to go somewhere else? A bit more of seriousness won't hurt you.

As regards the place where to discuss (and underlining that you told me to come here) a talk page could be not evident enough to show that a dispute is active.--FlagUploader 16:23, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear. I did indeed tell you to bring any ongoing dispute to the village pump. If you can't agree on what version is correct under a given name, don't get into a revert war but discuss here.

BUT I'm telling you that we should have both on commons under different names, so that people can decide on a case by case basis which one to use. That should be debated there.

So, unless you insist to have one or the other version under a specific name (which I find silly), I see no point in arguing on commons, because the solution is simple: keep both. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 18:28, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Dudes, I am on a professional monitor, with colors set to real tints, balanced with calibration cards, optimal brightness and such... and I see no difference at all. Doctor, what's wrong with me? --Jollyroger 15:53, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

maybe the Flag of Italy has a real pale shade of blue, something like +0,025 B... But you have to look close, very close, and there is no difference on any standard display.

On this laptop, the top one seems slighly blueish compared to the bottom one! David.Monniaux 19:39, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

The top one is the current image, which was decided upon by Consensus, but the original bringer of the post kept on uploading images without prior discussion. If the central stripe of the Italian flag is supposed to be plain wite, the Italians would have said "Standard White" for their Pantone colors or do not give a white shade for Pantone (like how the US, Canada, Bulgaria and the UK. There is no such thing as a Pantone shade for white, other than "Pantone/Process White" and if there are other colors mixed into Process White, then it will get it's own Pantone code. And since Italy has given a specific Pantone color code to use for white, we will use not, not "Process White." User:Zscout370 ^{(Return fire)} 19:52, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

What are forgetting to tell is that nobody, even Mr. "Consensus", gave a good reason why, of all the RGB combinations, this should be the correct one. And no, claiming a majority is not a way to transform a bad choice into a good one.

As already told countless times, the codes given by Italian Government are textile ones: if Italians wanted to issue RGB codes they would have done.--FlagUploader 21:16, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Just my luck, Pantone has a sample of Pantone 11-0601 on it;s website in a RGB format. I will go ahead and use that for the white section. It comes out, on my end, as faf5e8. Source: http://www.pantone.com/products/products.asp?idSubArea=7&idArea=31&idProduct=332&idArticleType_Products=0. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return fire)} 22:25, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

NVM, it came out as a very dark Pantone shade, almost pinkish. I'm launching a few emails now and see how far I get. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return fire)} 22:49, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Zscout, do you realize the funny part of all this?

When I told you all that the colour you "invented" was uncorrect, you told me that it was the one you derived from Italian government (textile, if I am allowed to add) specifications and from a (rather obscure - still my opinion) website conversion table, so I should bear with them.

Now you find some sort of "official" rgb codes, and you are dubious because it turns out "a very dark Pantone shade, almost pinkish"?!

So, in the end the colour of the Italian flag will not be decided by Italian government, who never issued rgb codes, but by Zscout!!

My congratulations, great display of dilettantism.--FlagUploader 16:23, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

dear Flag uploader, I'm as much Italian as you are, and I too would prefer to have a "real white" flag, but I'm growing tyred of your childish behaviour, I'm really fed up of reverting you pointless substitution of the "True" flag. I hope you will stop this nonsense and move to italian wikipedia or to category:User it-N in order to look for some consensus. I myself will support you point, but not as long as you continue these nonsense vandalisms. Regards. Paulatz 10:55, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Dear Paulatz, it is not a matter of nationalism, but rather or dilettantism hurting the quality of WC. You look not able to distinguish vandalism from content dispute. The fact is that you can have an image of a tricolour green-some_sort_of_blueish_white-red, as well as I can have a green-white-red one. The real matter is what of these two versions is the "real" flag of the Italian Republic.--FlagUploader 15:06, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Please note that from a heralic point of view, both flags are the same. The blasonig does not make a difference between similar colors - white and silver and gray would even be the same. Many states have a more detailed definition of their insignia, that's true. But the flag is the flag, the clours may vary as the medium dictates. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 16:02, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

It's not a matter of true vs. non-true, and I can assure you that I'll prefer to have the true white in the flag, I can also understand that you are pretty much frustated of dealing with people which seem to ignore common sense at all. Still bitching around is not the way you'll get the color changed. I propose that we start a formal discussion in the Bar italiano in order to ask the most involved people to settle once and for all if the flag has to be #ffffff or the odd light shade of blue. In the event the italian commoners will choose the white version (and we both can guess it's likely to happen) you'll just have to ask an italian admin (e.g. Red devil 666) to restore the correct versions of the flags. Paulatz 16:15, 28 July 2006 (UTC) It's odd to write in english, as long as I could write you privately in Italian, but I'll prefer to keep this matter on the village pump to prevent future arguments.

If the Italian Government also comes out with better Pantone, CMYK or hexcolors, we'll use that too. The main problem I seewith this image is not the choice of white at all, but as pointed out before, the Pantone colors are textile colors. Most programs that I have do not work using Textile colors. Many websites give many shades to the same Pantone code, and to be honest with you, it's begining to annoy me. I'll browse around more, but all of my Italian flag contacts have gone MIA. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return fire)} 05:40, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry, there's a discussion going on here, as you cannot understand it I'll write an abstract in a couple of days. Bye, Paulatz 11:08, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Zscout, if you find that none of your graphic programs use textile colors, and there is no official translation between Pantone and RGB, why don't you suspect that maybe there is _no_ conversion between Pantone and RGB? Is it so difficult to understand that Pantone deals only with physical objects and tries not to decide how a computer should behave? Don't you think that if Italian Government wanted to fix the rgb colors of the flag, it would have been issued them?--FlagUploader 21:14, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

The only three government's that I know that gave out specific RGB codes was Canada (#ff000 for the red, #ffffff for the white), the United States and Bulgaria. I have a sheet from the British Government about what colors to use. I have some more resources I could try to tap, but I need a few days to dig them out. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return fire)} 21:30, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Resolved; using FFFFFF for now, will determine the color status later on a "sandbox" image. See more at [3]. In brief; I am going to write a few letters and prod my contacts again and see what happens. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return fire)} 09:26, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

July 24

Theme park characters

Theme park characters: Is there any free license they can be uploaded under? -- Zanimum 15:28, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Only if the characters are under a free license. In short: no. See Commons:Derivative works. --Fb78 17:28, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

So if someone were to upload the image to Wikipedia, what license would it be? Like, wouldn't suit designs be copyrighten theoretically, and thus a picture like this be against the rules? -- Zanimum 20:23, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Server-Cache is not purged after SVG-upload?

Using the standard image-link directly below the image on an SVG-image page does not return the most current upload. For example:

• standard link returns old SVG-image
  • http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/A_Yin-Yang-Yuan_Symbol_-_Triality-One.svg

Adding ?action=purge to the URL

• returns newest SVG-image
  • http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/A_Yin-Yang-Yuan_Symbol_-_Triality-One.svg?action=purge

Any ideas what the cause is, and what can be done about “this bug”? -- ParaDox 18:16, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

The server cache is purged after upload of a new version (well, sometimes that fails, but that's quite rare). What is not purged is your browser cache. Hit Ctrl-r when looking at the image (well, that's for Firefox - find out yuerself for other browsers). -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 19:59, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

You were right, thanks. What does puzzle me is that emptying the complete cache in browser preferences has no effect, and only when looking at the image does Ctrl-r solve the problem. Oh well ... -- ParaDox 23:11, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Licenses in the upload menu

Why are only the most recent versions of the Creative Commons licenses listed? It's kind of annoying to have to go back and edit the uploaded page to fix license versions to that used by the original image creator. Morven 19:17, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Just use no license in the menu and write {{foobar}} directly in the description! It makes sense that the menu (used by beginners) only reflects the most common choice for newly created photos (when it had more exotic choices, a lot of people chose bogus licenses). David.Monniaux 19:37, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

July 25

I'd like to create a box in hungarian wiki for the featured picture here. How could I do that? Thanks. NCurse 09:02, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, you can't, as Commons templates are not available to the other wikis. Platonides 09:45, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Adjectival placenames- second pass

I don't think many folks are especially interested in this conversion, but for the few who are, here is an update. In the first pass, approximately 60K pages were updated, and 2040 categories were renamed in the first pass completed last friday.

The second pass will be smaller. There are 1400 straggler categories I missed in the first pass that have adjectival placename appearing names, of which I estimate at least 1000 will need to be changed. It is slow slogging through the candidates since many are uncommon locations. I am running across a surprising number of mispellings and will be correcting those.

In the second pass, I shall place a warning note 1 week prior to the next sweep. A few people responded to the warnings but the volume of folks with issues was fairly small. Since these renames are simple to revert the waiting period for the second pass will be shortenned from two weeks to one week. -Mak 09:24, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Uploads by Litta

I'm sorry if this isn't the correct place to bring this up, but I suspect User:Litta of using erroneous licence information, most of the users contributions are of images that clearly are copyrighted (i.e. the Janice Joplin album cover, and the bookcover of the dog Tassen). Could someone please take a look at these images (I suspect all of the user's uploads are given under false lisence), and delete those that are clearly copyright violations? I have tried to warn the user on his/her Norwegian user discussion, but I'm ignored. Opus 09:39, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

All of the uploads have been tagged. Siebrand 11:38, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Is this permitted?

Hi! I'm fairly new to this and I find the licensing rules very complex. I recently uploaded a GFDL image from the English language Wikipedia site, because I wanted to use it for a Swedish language article. (See Image:Nfpony.jpg). I have stated the same license as the original image, plus where it was posted and by whom. Before I start uploading other GFDL images, I wan't to know whether this is correct procedure! If it's not, I'd like to know if you can really use any images that aren't your own in the first place!

--Wilma Sweden 17:37, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

On a first glance, everything looks ok, but not quite so on a second look. Here are a few things to improve and keep in mind:

• also mention when the image was uploaded

>>Done!

• make sure that the original description page contains all the information required, including
  • The License (ok in this case)
  • The creatore of the image (missing in this case)

>>Also missing from original image on Wikipedia-en in that case, I was assuming uploader = creator

• • If not self made, the source and some way to verify the license (also missing)

>>Uploader added image to article at date of upload (11/6/2005), over 1 year ago. Image remaining in article ever since.

• check if the information on the originla description page is believable:

>>No reason to disbelieve original description.

• • See if the user is new. New users often uploade mistagged files (knowingly or unknowingly). (in this case the user is new: [4])

>>New user??? This upload is over a year old, as are his edits to article where image is included!!

• • If the image is claimed to be self made (and recent), it should usually have high resolution (in this case the image is a bit suspicious - could be copied from a website somewhere)

>>Original user had contributed 4 images, all with similar metadata indicating camera "Sony Ericsson K750i". That is a mobile phone, which together with age accounts for low resolution!

• Ask the uploader to provide mre information if everythign is missing

>>Can't, because the user account appears to have expired. Since the idea was to use the image for exactly the same purpose as original uploader (wikipedia article illustration), I thought this would be OK!

Hm, this has gotten longer tha I intended - basically, it's more or less common sense: The GFDL requires the creator to be named explicitely - this is missing here. So, please ask the uploader. Keep in mind that if you upload something to commons, you should do at least a sanity check on the information provided.

>>See above. Uploader can't be asked, account appears to have expired.

Generally, when uploading images to the commons, please remember to put them into a category and/or a gallery page. Images that can not be found in the category structure are essentially lost and useles to others. See Commons:Categories for some more info.

>>Image has been categorized sensibly now.

>>One final comment: After I had copied this image from Wikipedia-en I found the initial Welcome/Help page on my own user page, with tips like "If you're copying files from another project, be sure to use the CommonsHelper". That makes me wonder: In what context would this be helpful? To whom?

>>Finally: is there a template for creator info when creator is known, has given permission but delegates to me to upload? '

Thanks for contributing, and sorry for all the mess and beurocracy around here :/ -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 18:23, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

>>Yes, it is a mess! People are encouraged to publish images here because then they would be accessible to all the language version wikipedias, rather than publishing them on each individual language-version wiki, but this amount of red tape kills that idea, I think. I'm not in any way trying to dispute your policies, but to understand them, and the easiest way to do that is by way of example. Please bear with me! ;-) --Wilma Sweden 22:51, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

First of all, sorry for my wording: The user is not new, he was new when uploading. In fact, he was not even active for a full hour in the wikipedia, ever. That does not necessarily mean that the images are copyvios, but it does not inspire trust either.

The remaining question is: may we assume that this is the uploaders own work? If yes, that should be mentioned on the description page. Generally, Commons requires an explicite statement of who created the picture - not sure if/how this could be waved in this case...

The general problem of commons is: we try to be open and welcoming, but we want and have to be very strict about copyright. The two are not easily combined... -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 23:46, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

To Wilma: not everyone transfers an image to Commons from another project as their very first edit, you know. And now you know for next time, right? pfctdayelise (translate?) 05:35, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

July 26

favicon is still broken

As I reported back in april, the favicon on the commons is broken. All that needs to be done to fix it is to make sure the mask is opaque and that there are multiple versions available (both 8 & 32 bit) to work on all favicon supporting browsers. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 06:31, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

searching for my uploaded image

Hello all, I recently uploaded a image but when I do a search for that image using part of the name as the search criteria it does not come up in the search results. Any suggestions?

Thanks

Please sign posts with ~~~~ (4 tildes). [5] says it's Image:MonmouthBattleField.jpg. The search function isn't always up to date though, so adding a category and/or using the article in a gallery page might help you (and others!) to find the image. NielsF 18:38, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Cafes and Category:Cafés

Only the names of that categories are different, i think. But which is the right one. Please, can anybody make a category redirect? Thanks. --GeorgHH 18:41, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Done. NielsF 18:58, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Last I checked, "Cafés" is not english, as so this cat name is against Commons' language policy which states that category names must be english (for now). At least stick to Ascii- it makes it easier for folks who don't have those particular accented characters on their keyboard. -Mak 06:14, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah fine as well, as long as there's only one category. Although Cafés/Cafes, which one, see [6], [7] and [8]? NielsF 11:43, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Sure there are tons of loanwords in any english dictionary- eg. sauté, roué, café, touché, fiancé, crème brûlée. Of course it is useful for english speakers to know what the correct spelling and pronunciation is, since so few do. What would be best is if we had a phonetic interchange language for world communication that did use diacritics, but I digress.

In the meantime, accent acute is not here or

Or here, or here or here.

• Croatian [9]
• Danish [10]
• Dutch [11]
• Finnish [12]
• German [13]
• etc. etc. etc.

On the other hand, maybe it would be good to be Inaccessibly Correct, a style of thinking that would insist on the most proper spelling even if most people of the world can't type it. English only issue aside, common typability is important. Let's stick to the symbols on the standard qwerty keyboard. -Mak 16:32, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Fine with me, although I have no problem with typing é, ë or è on a qwerty us-101 keyboard, but that's a software issue. I'll instruct Orgullobot to swap the categories. NielsF 16:49, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Probably irrelevant but those pictures aren't worth much. There is accent aigu and grave in Finnish/Swedish keyboard (´ `) as well as circumflex, diaeresis and tilde ^ ¨ ~. -Samulili 08:02, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

It is trivial when you know how on Macs and Windows boxes. Cyrillic is regularly typed on my keyboards- and all but one are standard qwerty. But for someone without such a characters in their language- the knowlege is arcane. -Mak 00:04, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

If you select Latin on the dropdown combo on the edittools, you have all the accents (and in general, you should find the strange characters for the language you're typing).

And if you don't natively have the character you need, do as everyone else: search for it and copy & paste, or use a character-table program. Platonides 14:15, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Problem with autogeneration png thumbnails from svg.

Hello I have problems with thumbnails of Image:Utricularia_trap_expansion.svg and Image:Utricularia_traps_(sketch).svg. I made both in Inkscape. --Petr Dlouhý 19:51, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Image:DarlingtoniaZones.svg have same problem. Inkscape, Opera, Konqueror show images correctly. --Petr Dlouhý 22:34, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I have find another image with same problems. Image:Intrastate Interstate Highways.svg --Petr Dlouhý 22:32, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

The problem was on your side. There were several references to images on your own hard disk in the images, probably a .gif or .png you used as an example to make the file. With the Darlingtonia, you used flowed text, an Inkscape function which isn't supported by the standard SVG-format and/or the MediaWiki-PNG-renderer. See Commons:Bugs as well for more known issues with SVG. I've cleaned them up, so they work properly now. The other (intrastate interstate) probably doesn't thumbnail properly because it's huge (40000 px and more). NielsF 00:41, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much. --Petr Dlouhý 02:18, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Those .png images in SVG was images of daphnia. I think, that it is important for this schemes. Look at Image:Utricularia traps (sketch).gif and Image:Utricularia_trap_expansion.gif. Is here some way how take .png images into SVG? Thank you for answer. --Petr Dlouhý 03:07, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Finaly I have find it. In inkscape is it Effects -> Images -> Embed all images, if somebody will be need it. --Petr Dlouhý 02:58, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

July 27

New to Group, Easy Quesiton

I often browse stadium pics on the site, I have several personal pics that I would gladly upload to fill in holes on the site (lots of stadiums have no pics). I don't want to link, but upload so anybody can use. Where do I upload?? What is the process. Thanks.

See Commons:First steps for a tutorial. Kjetil_r 00:59, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

MakBot on hold

Could someone wake up one of the bureaucrats up so that MakBot can get a bot flag? There's 9-0 supporting since I put that up for a vote July 14th.

I am holding of on the next wave of adjectival placename changes until this is approved because the volume of MakBot's changes is effectively making the "recent changes" list useless for folks. -Mak 06:27, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Screenshot of a game modification application?

I'm trying to upload a screenshot I took of Guerilla.exe, a tool used for modifying content for Halo: Custom Edition, for use in a tutorial on a Wikimeda Wiki. I'm having difficulty figuring out the correct license(s) and tags to use. The program states that it is (C)1998 Bungie Software Products, Inc. The application is free for download and use if the user has a copy of Halo: Custom Edition installed. Halo: Custom Edition is free for download and use if the user owns a retail copy of Halo: Combat Evolved for the PC.

Am I allowed to upload this image? If so, what tags and license do I select?

Unless Halo is released under an open source license such as the GPL, it's not free (as in speech) software, so screenshots are not free either. Therefore you should upload screenshots to your local wiki if they accept fair use images. Typically it would need a template like {{Screenshot}}. pfctdayelise (translate?) 07:23, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Location of Canary Islands

I and User:Satesclop disagree on the location of Canary Islands. I hope that those of you who have atlases could say your opinion on which is closer to the truth:

• CIA-version
• CIA-version modified by Satesclop

-Samulili 08:21, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

These two versions also have a difference wrt to Montenegro, but that can be fixed. -Samulili 08:23, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

The first is closer. See these maps:

• 
• 
• 

Sanbec ✉ 09:13, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

It is not just. I don't speak English (this text is an automatic translation). I say in my defense that in the original map of the CIA THE CANARY ISLANDS DON'T APPEAR ([14]). Someone added them, and I have made them proportional (because others were too small). Which is the problem? Are they too much separated from the continent? So to bring them over more. File:Cod.png Satesclop 15:33, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I have placed the Canary Isles more near the African continent ([15]). Is it correct? I hope that this one problems has been solved. File:Cod.png Satesclop 15:49, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

date categories

Want we use categories for a exact date (without fixed importance) on commons, e.g. Category:29 May 2005? I think this is not convenient. An user added around 30 categories like this. --GeorgHH 10:32, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't want them. -Samulili 10:51, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

ACK. Bad idea. pfctdayelise (translate?) 13:17, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Extremely useless overcategorization, nobody is going to look for an image taken on a particular day. NielsF 13:33, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I have the categories orphaned, the images moved from the categories and the categories marked for speedydeletion. --GeorgHH 20:48, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I have now deleted all categories marked by Herr GeorgHH. Kjetil_r 23:21, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Just for reference, it is better to categorise by the event that makes a day significant rather than the day itself. although we have Category:9/11 (maybe lazy Americans don't want to type! :P) it would be better as Category:September 11 attacks. Hm I just noticed Category:New York City from 2000 to 2004... I hope someone's maintaining that. :o pfctdayelise (translate?) 05:32, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that Category:September 11 attacks is better category, too. And we can mark it with a redirect to Category:9/11. In principle the event that makes a day significant should named of the category. --GeorgHH 08:49, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Where to ask for the protection of an image?

Where is the correct place on commons to ask for protection of an image?--FlagUploader 13:02, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Here would be a good place to start. I guess it's about the Italian flag again? I was about to protect it but didn't see any difference in the versions you and Reisio uploaded, so please explain. NielsF 13:31, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

My version has white, his a blue-ish shade of white. The point is that the two flags are different, and should be both kept so that users (here and on Wikipedia) can choose which to use.

On a side note, Reisio is writing on his talk page, about the reason why we should have both images that:

It's irrelevant anyways. I am both a user and contributor here at commons and at en and various other Wikipedias, and it's my right to revert your idiocy (my emphasis)

Is this display of arrogance and uncivility tolerated? In that case I would like to say to Reisio what I think of him.--FlagUploader 13:36, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Plus, he is still reverting Image:True Flag of Italy.svg, thus making it a copy of Image:Flag of Italy.svg.--FlagUploader 13:46, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok. I downloaded both the current version and the one before that and they both had pure white colours, so that's why I asked. I've protected the page for now. I've also asked Reisio to keep the discussion businesslike. NielsF 13:54, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate that the folks involved in this dispute are serious about the situation, and so apologise for this comment, but does the commons have an equivalent of W:WP:LAME? This dispute would seem ideally suited - revert wars over a shade of white that is near indistinguishable unless the two shades are lined up side by side! SFC9394 14:58, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Commons has no free content?

Check out this search.

Very oddly, there is exactly one wikimedia page that google recognizes as having free content. Similarly with *.wikipedia.

There is something on this page that google is recognizing. Whatever it is- we need to get it on all relevant wiki pages. -Mak 20:44, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I believe both Google and Yahoo! spider the rel-license microformat. For instance, Wikitravel, which uses this microformat, is fully recognized as free content. I'm not sure if either search engine would recognize the GFDL as a free license, and supporting template-specific license attributes would be a bit tricky.--Eloquence 23:25, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Right you are. In fact if I had not been so lazy, I would have openned the HTML, because they commented heavily what they were doing with the required rel="license" html.

Not sure what you meant about it being tricky to add for templates. The html is about as simple as it comes. Extensions to add such html is straightforward- you drop an xml file in the extensions folder, set a hook for the parser, register the extension in the configuration file and away you go. Maybe there are issues about adding extensions on commons I don't understand though. I added iframe support and a few others onto my site. Even if there is a concern about links to unsupported locations, the xml could support operands eg cc2.0, cc2.5 that would generate only the supported urls. So you just plop one of those on the correct PD-Template and you would be good to go. If no one is interested in implementing it, I'll do it. -Mak 02:27, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what this involves, but please use extreme caution when editing the license templates, especially the heavily used ones. I suggest trialling it on a less-frequently-used template and confirming with a dev that the changes should be fine (if staggered). pfctdayelise (translate?) 05:29, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

An extension to support rel=license wouldn't be too hard, I suppose. If we do that, we might think about other useful microformats, and possibly even make such functionality part of the standard MediaWiki link syntax.--Eloquence 21:36, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Yahoo appears to be doing more than recognizing the rel="license" microformat. Searching on image [16] gets you 617 hits, and they aren't using that microformat.

The microformat seems only to be for Creative Commons licensed content. Google explicitly states they are only covering Creative Commons licensed content: "The "Usage Rights" feature identifies websites whose owners have indicated that they carry a Creative Commons ( http://creativecommons.org/ ) license." [17]

The problem them is that a whole lot of our content use templates like PD-OLD, not Creative commons. So we wouldn't get any hits unless it is permissible to include this HTML for pages using those templates as well. Anyone have any opinions on that? -Mak 22:03, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Any idea if they recognize the Creative Commons public domain deed?--Eloquence 21:39, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. They could do whatever they want to do in the code. According to the microformat spec for license, the following are acceptable for example:

<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" rel="license">cc by 2.0</a>
<a href="http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0" rel="license">Apache 2.0</a> 

Presumably, the google spider is going to handle the second case different from the first. The resilient approach would be just to look at the domain and accept any link creative commons as validating the google statement that they only recognize Creative Commons licenses. However, they might get real pickey about it and specifically validate against the known locations for the 1.0, 2.0 and 2.5 licenses. Their code would break easier that way, so the conservative thing from an engineering POV is to do the minimal- just validate domain.

If this particular page did work, could we use that on our PD templates? If so, then I am motivated. Best way would be for me to just stick the following on a private Mediawiki page I own that I know is spiderred and see if google recognizes it. -Mak 21:55, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/" rel="license">Creative Commons Public domain deed</a>

Featured pictures

Could somone give me hand with categorizing featured pictures for June and July? I've added count summaries and (not) featured to the templates, but I'm leaving on holiday tomorrow and will be without internet for about eight days. The templates can be found here: Log/June_2006 and Log/July_2006. Howto is here: "What_to_do_after_voting_is_finished". Thanks. Lycaon 22:12, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Photographers/ Color accurate folks- your opinions?

A color calibration target is used for including an object with known colors in a photograph so that it is possible to adust the delivery display (or printer) to reproduce the photograph's colors with the highest accuracy.

It would be nice if we could have some sort of suggestion for folks who are going out shooting objects where color accuracy is critical (cultural artifacts, paintings and so on). I guess the pro way to do scene matching would be to recommend taking the image with a color bar in the scene, eg Kodak Q-60 Q-13, GretagMacbeth ColorCheck, or even some Pantone based target.

That way, a hundred years from now, folks will be able to look at a Commons image shot in 2006 and have a pretty good idea of what the colors realy were because there are known colors in the scene. But those are proprietary. I suppose we could use a SMPTE color bar, but color spaces of various devices are hugely non linear, so really that is probably not enough data points. Can anyone recommend a public domain color bar target for this purpose that would be readily available to anyone doing some Museum shooting? -Mak 22:15, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

My thought is that we suggest folks use either the Kodak or ColorCheck targets, and cut the target up so that is is one long band, then photograph the object with the target at the edge(s) of the frame with the most representative lighting. Prior to upload, the photo is cropped so just a few pixels of each color is visible on one of the sides of the photo. This way, there is no motive to crop out an extraneous color bar because it shall not be noticable. A comment embedded in the EXIF metadata note which color target was used.

Commons will then be able to host authoritative images of paintings. Folks making prints of Commons images, or displaying images on electronic screens will be able to calibrate their output so that they can have color accuracy that is simply not possible without such a practice among commons volunteer photographers.

Of course the big problem is how to hold up a color band in the Louvre without the guards getting freaked out. Cameras are so small that they are easily concealed- but for low light, a wheelchair would be ideal for excellent stability and concealment of even the most bulky digital with a big light gathering lens- then take very long exposures, but I digress. But how to conceal that color bar? Hmmmm. Perhaps a helper who stands in frame with a Q-60 banded walking stick?

Joking aside, I suppose really we don't need Q-60 or Pantone ColorCheck targets. They are rather pricey ($60 USD) and possibly there are rights issues. All we really need is an image that a person could take to a photo finisher and have reproduced accurately. The spectral values can be specified extremely accurately in photoshop, so if we give them the correct values, they should be able to use a colorimeter on the prints until they get it right. Or would that wind up costing $60 for the resulting print? Humph. -Mak 19:13, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

{{PD-Iraq}} again

Referring to an old talk about PD_Iraq template here, and as suggested by pfctdayelise, it is now agreed on en.wiki that {{PD-Iraq}} should not be used. Next is the text now in :w:Wikipedia:Public domain#Countries_without_copyright_treaties_with_the_U.S.

Countries without copyright treaties with the U.S.

In brief: use such works under a "public domain" claim only if the copyright in the country of origin has expired.

According to Circular 38a of the U.S. Copyright Office, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Nepal, San Marino, and possibly Yemen have no copyright relations whatsoever with the U.S. (Eritrea isn't mentioned at all.) Works originating in one of these countries thus are not copyrighted in the United States, irrespective of the local copyright laws of these countries.

On Wikipedia, such works may be used under a "public domain" claim only if their copyright in the country of origin has expired, even though legally the work is in the public domain in the U.S. Jimbo Wales has expressed a strong desire that such countries' copyrights be respected. Furthermore, it also avoids future problems with images on Wikipedia if some of these countries should enter a copyright treaty with the U.S., because then suddenly such works will become copyrighted in the U.S. by virtue of the URAA (see above) if they are still copyrighted in their country of origin. Previously uploaded images might then have to be reevaluated. As an example, consider Iraq, which is, despite all the political and military confusion, a WTO observer and is in the process of applying for WTO membership. If and when Iraq does become a WTO member, the URAA suddenly will apply, and Iraqi works that are copyrighted in Iraq at that time will become copyrighted in the U.S.

Any one against freezing template PD-Iraq here. --Tarawneh 06:02, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree: all images using that template have to be re-evaluated. It's also consistent with out policy to always look at the laws of the country of origin first. If it's not PD there, it shouldn't be tagged PD here. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 17:33, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Images from Livius.Org

A lot images from livius.org are marked as copyvio and already deleted in the past days. This was ok based on the known information but now we have new information from livius.org. Please stop deleting, I will provide the release this evening (UTC+2). For user with OTRS-access: See ticketno. 2006072810003788. Thank you. --Raymond ^Disc. 06:05, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

We have got this confirmation:

Von: "Jona Lendering" <adsl294196 (at) tiscali.nl>
An: [[:de:User:Carbidfisher]]
Betreff: Re: Change of copyright policy
Datum: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 00:35:52 +0200

Dear Christian

I would not care too much about this. Just use what you have; consider
this message as an official confirmation. I will one day study Creative
Commons licenses and so on, but for the time being, the photos on my
website can be used by everyone; a link back is nice but not an
obligation. (I only charge money from official publishers, who can buy
really big files.)

Best wishes,

Jona

I think, this confirmation is clear enough to remove copyvio-marks and restore already deleted images. Meanings? --Raymond ^Disc. 21:09, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Great that Jona is flexible there. Unfortunately, however, this is far from what we need as a clear licence:

1. It is not clear what licence he is talking about. Copyrighted free use? A CC licence? Which?
2. He says the licence (whatever it is supposed to be) is for the time being. This is incompatible with policy – licences cannot be revoked. It also appears as if Jona is not quite aware of this.
3. It is not clear what images he is talking about. Not all of the images on livius.org are made by him, some are by his partner, some by third authors. He can only licence the ones he authored himself, we need to know which ones these are. The images uploaded here don't make this difference either.

I think we do not have a valid licence to use the images.

Could you possibly make a list of all the images we have/had from livius.org, mail it to Jona with a clear text licencing for Creative Commons and ask him to remove the images he did not make himself and mail it back with the signed licence? That's the only thing I see working.

--Wikipeder 21:56, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

"I only charge money from official publishers" :( It doesn't sound like Jona intends to make these files free content. --Gmaxwell 06:41, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Note who can buy really big files. We don’t (or didn’t) have any really big files. -- Carbidfischer 16:52, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

USERNAME variable

This doesn't exist yet, as we know, but we'd like it for those pesky -self templates. m:User homepages appears to describe an extension that adds such a variable. Anyone want to take a look at the code and maybe convince the devs to add it? --pfctdayelise (translate?) 07:43, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

If you want a link to a user page you can use something like [[Special:Mypage|your page]], it will render as "your page". I don't see that this username variable is really useful, most logged in users already know which user name they use. And I think that the -self templates should tell the name of the author, not thewho is currently looking at the page. /82.212.68.183 10:34, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Note bugzilla:4196, such variable would not be probably implemented because of caching. --Mormegil 10:47, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

It would have to be implemented as an immediate SUBST, like the way ~~~~ works. Still, I don't see what huge functionality this delivers. -Mak 16:09, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

They would be useful to use in PD-self, GFDL-self etc templates, where when the image page appears in other projects it typically says "I release this image..." with no indication of who the "I" is. Either a USERNAME variable, or transcluding of the upload history is required. pfctdayelise (translate?) 23:47, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

The alternative to create individual user licensing templates aka what I've be toying around with here User:Gnangarra/Sandbox... As cc-by-2.5 does specify that Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor. , its then only reasonable to include the Author in the license template thoughout wiki projects anyway. Gnangarra 01:57, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Use {{self|author=~~~}} - simple enough, no? -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 07:43, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

So how do we get users to do that automatically? Trust me, doesn't matter how many nested templates you use... those stupid tildes can't be tricked. pfctdayelise (translate?) 23:28, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Default would be the current wording and then If the User want to have their name in the licensing they would remember. Gnangarra 00:44, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Page-duplication at Commons:Village pump archive-30

This protected archive page has its entire text except for:

{{Village pump archives}}

duplicated. Can some admin fix this? -- Paddu 09:18, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

List of countries whose money doesn't protected by copyrights

Do we have somewhere list of countries whose money doesn't protected by copyrights, so coins and bills images could be Commons material?

And related question. What is copyrights status of Transnistria money? I tried to Google something about Transnistria copyrights law but unsuccessfully. From other side Transnistria independence is not recognized, so Moldova copyrights law should be applied (where money are not protected by copyrights). From other side Transnistria money could not be recognized by Moldova as money. Any comments?

EugeneZelenko 14:34, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

It would be very helpful to have lists of copyright issues by country. Panorama freedom would be especially useful. Jkelly 17:53, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll check some places out, like Belarus (so I can answer yall's detailed questions). User:Zscout370 ^{(Return fire)} 18:23, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I Need HELP Categorizing my Uploaded File

Hello, I am a new "Wiki" here and I need help categorizing the file that I uploaded to Wikipedia and the Commons entitled " Ejaculation_Educational_Demonstration.ogg " so other people and Wikis can find it and use it if they like. The file is currently being used on the " Ejaculation " page at en.wikipedia.org. I would like to enter it into the Categories of Andrology, Human Biology, Male Reproduction, Penis, Semen, Sexology, Reproduction, Video, and any other Category that would be appropriate in both Wikipedia and the Commons. Thanks For Your Help, ima_learner Ima learner 18:14, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

You can find useful information at Commons:Categories. Please use the most descriptive categories available, and also consider adding the file to article pages. Thanks for contributing. Jkelly 18:45, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Problem with large 1 bit PNGs

Large 1 bit (black & white) PNG files cause a problem. They are only shown non-antialiased on their corresponding image page, and they do not show up at all when embedded in another page (e.g., this image). This problem did not occur until a few months ago. I was obliged to scale down one of my images which had worked fine until then, because suddenly the thumbnail was blank. Is this a known issue? --Phrood 00:52, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it's general problem with big png images, big meaning biggern than 3500x3500px or 12.5megapixels, see First_steps/Quality_and_description#Quality. --Tomia 18:12, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

July 30

Template:GFDL

What exactly is the point of the self-link at the beginning of the text? It just shows up as bold-text GFDL: and doesn't really seem especially helpful for anything. Can a administrator possibly remove that? -- San Jose 13:37, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmm yeah, that was kinda useless. NielsF 23:59, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Need help in blocking a vandal using the commons to attack an en-wp user

Darth Vacatour (talk · contribs) is uploading images to the commons to solely attack en:User:The Wookieepedian and his pages, and I cannot find the equivalent to en:WP:AIV on the commons. Ryulong 23:16, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

You've found the equivalent! Anyway blocked the user before you posted this comment. Cheers. NielsF 23:54, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Where is "Vandalism in progress" (COM:VIP) link?

There seems to be an active Matt314 (talk · contributions · Move log · block log · uploads · Abuse filter log) block user who is tagging things for speedy deletion, as the deletion process seems to be undergoing some automation, the vandalism is probably harder to catch. These images and probably many others, are in use, as CheckUsage plainly shows. Therefore, marking them for speedy deletion is obvious vandalism. --Connel MacKenzie 04:19, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi! I did mark some images as {{Morguefile}} yesterday which redirects to speedy delete, please see en:Template talk:MorgueFile. Sorry, I was not aware that these images are heavily used, but since there were a lot of these images that I found via Special:Linksearch I checked usage for only a few. --Matt314 07:32, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Listed them at Template:Deletion_requests#Images_from_Morguefile. --Matt314 07:40, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, marking used files for speedy deletion is OK if they are clear copyvios or or clearly against policy. However, in the case of images that have been around for a while, with their license status being disputed, a regular deletion request would of course be better, and unlinking would be good too (preferrably with the help of the local communitites).

Calling this vandalism is a bit far fetched; As far as I can see, the images have to be removed. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 08:40, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Characterizing it as "vandalism" is perhaps less than productive. But your new template "morguefile" is a new twist, and quite unfamiliar. Having read the above pages, it is completely unclear if the name "morguefile" refers to "dead images" or to some website, or both.

I still don't understand commons. Why do you do this to sister projects? You've got that cached "red X" replacement method you can use if you're not going to ever use the CheckUsage tool. The same links to commons don't exist when there is no image.

The reason this (or, rather, these images) don't meet commons' criteria is still very unclear to me. Does tagging it with 'morguefile' somehow magically identify a copyright violation source? Why doesn't it identify that source? The veracity of whether it actually is a copyvio can't even be checked. The template name "morguefile" implies only that the image has already been orphaned (which obviously is not the case!)

Commons' policies again seem to be exceeding their remit. Even with some sister projects using CheckUsage to identify major errors on the part of commons' sysops, the knee-jerk reaction to identified problems is unacceptable. This image was re-vandalized and deleted without a replacement placeholder, nor without being orphaned. The overall policies that commons are permitting are completely out of hand.

How is it that any commons sysop actually believes actions like this are helpful? There can be no such thing as a speedy delete on commons. Replacement of images with a cached placeholder sidesteps all the problems your current abusive policies permit. Why is commons so resistant to doing things right?

Perhaps you don't believe that these policies are frustrating, infuriating and disruptive? Do you (collectively) just not see the problems this causes? --Connel MacKenzie 16:48, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Morguefile used to identify images from http://www.morguefile.com/ which was believed to be a free source. After several discussions (including as linked above), it was decided their license was not sufficiently free. The terms of use are not acceptable. So Morguefile images should not be used.

The template was thus deleted which is rather unfortunate as non-admins cannot now see its history. It was recreated as a RDR to template:noncommercial to alert users who tried to use the template, that it was no longer acceptable.

This is a pretty standard process that I don't see much wrong with. We have to be flexible in response to changing understandings (and also changed licensing terms).

User:Matt314 is not an admin. I'm not sure if you're angry about the tagging he has done or deletion someone else has done. If it's deletion I suggest you approach that admin directly.

Commons has to balance copyright concerns against the desires of the projects. It's an extremely long, unfun and involved process to not upset anyone. With all due respect, no copyvio would ever be deleted if that was our only concern.

I'm pretty sure we've never claimed to be perfect or above reproach, either. So we make mistakes, we're human, sorry we haven't solved that one yet and managed to run the Commons solely on bots. pfctdayelise (translate?) 09:17, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Erin Silversmith's conduct

I didn't want to report this here, but I'm left with no alternative.

Erin Silversmith replaced Image:Yes check.svg with a new graphic that she created from scratch. I preferred the original image, but I didn't feel that it was my place to revert (thereby unilaterally declaring that the previous version was superior). Therefore, I decided to upload it under a different name: Image:Green check.svg.

A short time later, Erin deleted this image as a "duplicate." Obviously, it was not a duplicate, because it was no longer available for use under its original name.

I responded by politely requesting on Erin's talk page that she restore the image. This led to a discussion (partially quoted below) that she then removed in its entirety.

Erin indicated her unwillingness to allow both icons to co-exist (referring to my desire to do so as "idiotic"), and she reverted to the previous version of Image:Yes check.svg (implying that I was too stupid to figure out how to, despite my explicit indication that I didn't want to). She stated that "if [I] can't accept an improved version and insist on multiplying junk, then [she]'d rather the slightly inferior one remained as the sole version." Instead of restoring the proper description and licensing information, she added the statement "Gregory Maxwell's version has been reverted to to please User:Lifeisunfair."

In response to my request that she reduce the image's size by removing extraneous information (which she previously mentioned doing), she replied that she "won't make any more improvements to the image, as there is the risk that [I] will persist in reuploading old versions under new file names and [she doesn't] want to have to follow [me] around with the delete button."

Meanwhile, a related deletion discussion produced this exchange, in which Erin was similarly rude.

I don't know about the Commons, but this type of behavior isn't tolerated at the English Wikipedia. I'm an administrator there, and I would never abuse my tools in this manner (by unilaterally deleting an image in favor of a different one of my creation), nor would I dream of addressing another user with the incivility that Erin has displayed.

I've attempted to resolve this dispute amicably, and I'm posting this as a last resort. —Lifeisunfair 06:27, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

If Eryn's only complaint was that the old version was bloated, someone could go back to my orignal and change the stroke width by hand... My orignal was around the size of her improved version but someone later loaded my file into an editor to change the stroke width and in the process bloated the file. Really though, size shouldn't be a concern... we don't send the actual SVGs to the users, and someday when we do we will be sending them gzipped. --Gmaxwell 06:37, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Erin believes that her rendition looks better. She described yours as containing "strange flat bits," but I don't see anything "strange" about them. In my opinion, her icon's shape is peculiar and unconventional. (Checkmarks usually aren't so rounded and uneven.) Nonetheless, I was more than willing to allow both files to remain, and I even allowed hers to take over the original name. To Erin, this was utterly unacceptable. She felt that the idea was "idiotic," so she reverted from her "superior" version to "please" me. —Lifeisunfair 06:50, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I think she's only some kind of ignorant... have you ever tried to contact some of the other admins who could talk to her? Usually, normal admins shouldn't act like this... --Sven 20:23, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

In fact, I posted this in the hope that someone (perhaps an admin) would intervene. —Lifeisunfair 23:06, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Going by what is stated at Commons:Deletion guidelines one should not speedy delete images based on ones perception that it is superior to another. Personally I would say that artistical creations, such as "Yes"-signs, have all right to exist in multiple versions if they are different. But I can't view svg files on my computer and so I can't tell how they differ...

Fred Chess 21:09, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Commons and multilingualism

In my opinion languages on commons are badly supported outside standard help pages. We have categories in different languages, mostly in english. Categories are limited through mediawiki's implementation but normal image pages for example are not. Everytime I upload a picture, I have to decide which language I should use. Recently I am deciding in favour of german, as it is my mother-tongue and there is no point in making understanding harder for my fellow wikipedians. I could write in different languages but I don't wanna be bothered with missing support or unreachable documentation. And please don't ask me to fix anything myself, cause I am only using commons instead of local (german) wikipedia. All I say is: I would help ppl with other languages to understand my pictures, if there would be an easy and satisfying possibility to do so. What is unsatisfying?

1. Documentation on the upload page how to specify descriptions in different languages.
2. Including different languages in general (technicaly impossible to tell which language is used cause no xml-lang tag is used).
3. Only displaying local language and ignoring other languages on display.
4. Handling of discussion threads in different languages ("Hey guys I don't understand what you are saying, please speak english")
5. Support of non-english-speaking ppl on pages like deletion request and so on. I might be wrong here, but a often heard complaint on the german version of village pump is that the requester needs help with something cause he doesn't speak english well enough.

I don't wanna blame anybody with this, just wanna point out some problems of an average user. If there are easy solutions for my problems, I would be thankful for any hints. --Chrislb 18:32, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

• There are varying Multilingualism philosophies. It is useful to keep in mind that not everyone has the same goals or approach when they discuss multilingualism.

Regarding point two, perhaps you are unaware of the way you can indicate language using a language template like so:

Français : Je parle français en petite peu.

• Issue- the more languages on a page, the more the visual clutter. Commons is on a bit of a grand adventure regarding omnilingualism. Consider the image Image:Hitler and Mussolini propaganda Luce photo.png. Let us assume the world 10 year from now, and each of these captions where hand created describing the particular scene of Hitler and Mussolini's meeting in Rome. (In this particular example, these actually aren't and are topic sentences copied from the wiki articles on Hitler in Mussolini from the respective language wikis). A question that immediately hits you is: What if most of the languages were represented? Look at the number of interwiki links on the sidebar. What if every single one of those languages had a caption? The description would be enormous.
  • One solution advocated by some is a text folding feature. Right now, if your browser supports stylesheets (nearly all do), then the individual users can customize their view of the articles to hide all text marked with the language templates (eg {{fr| text}} for languages they are not interested in. The problem with this is that it is a bit of a hack and is not a solution for casual visitors to commons. There are other solutions for text folding, but would require non trivial changes to the mediawiki software. Since this change would primarily only benefit Commons- and then only the few pages that have large numbers of multilingual passages, that positions the feature pretty low on the priority list.

• This is a frequently discussed subject so perhaps some of the old timers can fill in more here. -Mak 20:13, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

License: Can I upload very simple logos from GPL-organisations?

Hello,

I would like to upload the logos from en:X.Org (like this one) and from the en:freedesktop-Foundation (like that one). They are very simple (e.g. the X.Org logo looks exactly like Image:X11.svg only with an arc around the X) and the organisations make free software (GPL). I haven't found any copyright information (except of this secretary mail which of course says it's logos are property of their owners). In the de:German wiki, there's an image template for logos that aren't complex enough (Threshold of originality), but I haven't found any common thing on the commons. Is there any opportunity to upload these logos, maybe as GPL? --Sven 20:16, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Logos of free software/content are not automatically free - prominent examples of non-free logos of free projects are the logos of Mozilla, Debian and the Wikimedia Foundation. Please upload logos only if they have been released explicitely under a free license.

If "simple" logos are copyrightable, and how to define "simple", is a matter of debate; On commons, there is however traditionally a strong bias against logos -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 12:16, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Who to contact for fixing Mediawiki messages in Bengali?

Some of the mediawiki messages in Bengali language have wrong spelling, or not consistent with common usage of terms. I'm not an admin here, so can't edit the mediawiki messages, but can an admin please help me in doing that? Thanks. --Ragib 23:07, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Note here the related MediaWiki messages and the correct translations. Me or another admin will update them. --Raymond ^Disc. 06:49, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Also will be good idea to update translation file in SVN. So you changes will be shared between all Wikimedia projects. --EugeneZelenko 14:55, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Hey Bureaucrats!!!

I know you must be on vacation getting some much needed rest, but MakBot needs a bot flag, and Panther needs his Admin flag. Those proposals are over 2 and 3 weeks old. I put the Bot on hold since it looked like folks prefer their RC list not getting flooded, but there are quite a number of tasks backing up for it to do....

So put down the Mai Tai for a second and take a look at Commons:Administrators. Okay?

I left messages for Dbennbenn and Andre Engels on en:wiki where they have made recent edits, but if I hear nothing in a few days, fair warning- I am going to have to release MakBot again with or without the flag.-Mak 00:34, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Italian Government Public Domain Images

Commons needed an additional template for Italian Government works. Consider the draft template at Template:PD-ItalyGov, and make corrections or discuss on Commons_talk:Licensing#PD-ItalyGov page as necessary. -Mak 04:24, 1 August 2006 (UTC) [[Category:]]

{{PD-Italy}}

I reworded {{PD-Italy}} to better explain what a simple photograph is in Italian law in contrast to a photographic work. See also Template talk:PD-Italy. --Wikipeder 16:08, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Photos transformed into 3D model

I have seen experiments with this out of universities, but apparently, we will be able to use this soon to construct 3D models of objects using a series of photographs of an object. This is very cool for taking pictures of sculptures and cultural artifacts found in museums and of very high value for our wikis. [18]

• the article notes: "photo-sharing websites will be early-adopters of this technology".
• I wonder what format Commons accepts for 3D display engines? I know there are a few open source tools out there, but the only good engines that work off the net are proprietary. -Mak 21:02, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

mediawiki:Sitenotice

Please add the following to mediawiki:Sitenotice/ar (I think)

<center> تم فتح الباب [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_candidates_2006/En لقبول مرشحين] و ذلك [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Elections_for_the_Board_of_Trustees_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation%2C_2006/Ar لإنتخابات مجلس الإدارة] الخاص [http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home بمؤسسة ويكيميديا فاونديشن].<br> سيتم إغلاق باب الترشيح يوم الإثنين 28 أغسطس 2006 في تمام الساعة 23:59 بتوقيت غرينتش </center>

Thanks --Tarawneh 21:20, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[X] Done. --Raymond ^Disc. 22:33, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I switched to Arabic interface, but the note was still in English!--Tarawneh 02:29, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm. Same problem with the German interface... I have asked at the tech-channel, it is a known bug. --Raymond ^Disc. 06:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Commons:Project PLANTS Gallery

Has anyone (other than myself) thought of systematically mining the pictures in the USDA PLANTS Gallery into Commons?

Pros:

1. Option to fetch only the non-copyrighted, free pictures from the gallery
2. 10,622 pictures, between illustrations and photographs, as of August 2006
3. Species are fully identified
4. Most images not on Commons right now
5. Many photographs of seeds, useful for field identification

Cons:

1. It's a lot of work (but isn't that what we're here for?)
2. Some pics require cleanup

User:Franz Xaver had asked me to put my personal pictures up first, but now that I'm done with mine I've taken PLANTS up once again. The process I use is as follows:

1. Visit the gallery methodically requesting only non-copyrighted pictures (right now I'm on page 4 of 213 50-pic thumbnail pages)
2. Search the Commons for the scientific name of the plant - sometimes I find the image already here, other times I see there's no need for the USDA picture because there are equivalents (and some times I find copyrighted, non-free pictures from PLANTS and I act accordingly, requesting deletion here)
3. Clean up the picture:
   • for JPEGs I trim black slide borders, if any, and perhaps auto-correct light
   • TIFF drawings are always edited for dark spots, most often thresholded into black and white, sometimes the background (i.e. white not inside plant drawing) is turned to transparent, always converted to PNG
4. Register the information for future upload using the file upload script (I could just as well upload it using the regular form)
5. Run the file upload script when there's a nice batch of images

Would anyone think of sharing this work with me? We could split based on first letter of latin name: I'm doing A right now. By all means stay with your projects, if you're busy with something else or find this too complicated (or have no particular interest in plants.) Let me know otherwise, either here or to my talk page. – Tintazul ^talk 05:35, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

You may want to announce this at Commons:WikiProject Tree of Life. Their aim is to have an image for every species on earth. Personally, I'm trying to find images for all Tree-of-Life articles on the English wikipedia. I've found a lot of good images at the USDA, but if an article already has a picture, I don't upload the image here. Eugene van der Pijll 17:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I thought many of those pictures aren't usable because of the license as they require non-commercial use? -- Ayacop 10:48, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

All images at USDA-PLANTS are available for non-commercial use, but many of them are copyright-free. You can select the copyright-free ones at the selection page [19]. Eugene van der Pijll 17:17, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Duplicate categories in two different languages

Both Category:Coats_of_arms_of_Sweden -- Category:Escuts de Suècia and Category:Coats of arms of the United Kingdom -- Category:Escuts de Gran Bretanya are duplicates in English and Portuguese respectively. They should be merged somehow. -- Himasaram 13:58, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Done. -Mak 19:48, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

bot software needed

I am looking for bot code to replace images in articles. Once we get a feed from CommonsTicker we replace the photos manually. This is OK, if the photo was used in two or three pages. When you have it in more pages then things tend to get annoying somehow. I use Python. Any suggestions. --Tarawneh 16:08, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Myself and Orgullomoore use the Pywikipedia python framework. It is far from perfect, and can be a devil to install but there is a support community and it has some decent safety features in it. -Mak

Thanks, I have modified the replace.py and it is working fine. --Tarawneh 01:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Creating a WikiProject practices page

I've been working on cleaning up some of the year categories and related material. I'm interested in starting something for years similar to the WikiProject pages on en:Wikipedia-- where interested editors can discuss the best way to set things up and what reccomended practices should be. (There have been some serious differences of opinions between various editors, so some sort of discussion is needed.) As I don't see anything like Commons:WikiProject existing at present, could someone either point me to the Commons equivilent, or make suggestions on how to start such? Thanks. -- Infrogmation 16:15, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds great. The nice thing about no infrastructure for Wikiprojects is that there is less bureaucracy to trip over. I'll join. How about Commons:Wikiproject Time? -Mak 20:06, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I've made a start at your suggested title. Participation by others interested is encouraged. -- Infrogmation 18:33, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

(To infrogmation) See Category:Commons projects, which is a jumble of stuff including some wikiprojects. Commons category schemes can also be considered to be the domain of such projects.

Just dive in and create whatever you like, but keep in mind a few things like - minimise rules and bureacracy - Commons has few dedicated volunteers so the KISS principle MUST apply - multilingual concerns. My point is... having 20 very well defined and strict guidelines is all well and good, but users are going to jump in without learning them, and we have to work with that, that's reality.

What kind of things did you have in mind, specifically? pfctdayelise (translate?) 05:04, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I agree, things should be kept simple. There has been disagrement over some pretty basic stuff (eg, including images from other years in article about one specific year), therefore the need for something-- and I hope such a project can improve the Commons chronological organization in general. Cheers, -- Infrogmation 18:33, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Gallery&Category merge in the pipeline?

Some time ago I came across a discussion about possible ways of unifying Categories and Galleries to avoid the duality Category:XYZ and XYZ. Prompted by the action of some users a few days ago (now reigned in) of "transferring" entries from categories to galleries which included removal of the category tag I have the question of whether there are some wiki-commons-software changes in the pipeline to merge or unify these two entities. Has the discussion continued unseen by me?--Klaus with K 17:00, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Many people believe that the so called duality is good- myself included. If the software ever could support such a merge, I personally doubt that anyone could pull together a concensus on adopting it. It is way too controversial, and there are deeply entrenched positions on this issue. -Mak 17:34, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

To my knowledge there has been no further development on that issue. pfctdayelise (translate?) 02:57, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Pictures with the same name

I'd like to insert the photo Image:Cnr.jpg from commons.wikimedia.org in the article CNR. Unfortunately it seems, that there is already another Cnr.jpg in en.wikipedia.org. How can I insert the other image? I personally think this might be a candidate for the FAQ...(?) --84.226.159.166 18:47, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I would move the Image from the enWP to the commons and delete it then (Nowcommons & Delete template) --Stefan-Xp 19:30, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I created an account here now. I also already thought about this. Then I just make a reference to this user on en.wikipedia.org (author) in the author-attribute? Because if the orginal picture will be deleted, there might be no reference to him anymore and I absolutely can't grant that the picture has the indicated license (which might be a problem with this user if you take a look at his talk page)... --Valio 20:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Use the CommonsHelper, that'll make copying all the information easier. See Commons:Tools and en:Wikipedia:Moving images to the Commons for details.NielsF 20:36, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Classroom posters

Most North American classrooms have posters on the walls that present various types of at-a-glance information. From what I've seen in Canada, the most common subjects are:

• Colours, numbers and other basic vocabulary in kindergartens and second-language classrooms.
• The multiplication table.
• The standard periodic table, annotated with mass numbers, states at SATP and other basic properties.
• Maps of the world, the continents and Canada, both physical and political.
• Historical timelines.
• Diagrams of plant and animal cells, the biogeochemical cycles, and the food chain.
• Colour theory.
• Music notation.

From what I've seen, these posters tend to be very expensive and go out of date quickly (particularly periodic tables and maps). Furthermore, I seriously doubt they're available in the developing world or in all languages. Hence, I think it would be a good idea to produce open-source alternatives so that:

• They could be locally printed in the developing world, as soon as a printing press became economical.
• It would be easier to keep them up-to-date, correct errors, and translate them into underserviced languages, without relying on market pressures.
• School boards could print their own posters, send them out to schools, and save money.

Thus, I suggest we start a project to create scalable posters and wall charts for use in the classroom to present important facts in as many subjects as possible, from kindergarten through university level. Seahen 01:18, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Interesting idea. I know the charts you mean, I have one for weather in Chinese. :) [BTW, the periodic table goes out of date??] I suggest that you just start up a project (commons:WikiProject School Charts or similar), whack together some guidelines, spam some people who might be interested, and start creating. wikibooks: may have some interest in this too, or more specifically, Wikijunior. pfctdayelise (translate?) 10:48, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Interesting idea, Commons:Quality Images has only pd-self images all in details capable to being printed clearly in large size. Gnangarra 10:54, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

There are some kinda similar charts at http://www.allposters.com/ (look under 'Education'), although they have a lot of random inspirational picture posters too. A pro-quality world map (+country maps) would be a pretty awesome thing to be able to brag about. pfctdayelise (translate?) 10:52, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

This image would have to be one the first posters created Image:Ant worker morphology corrected.svg Gnangarra 11:05, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Manual thumb syntax

Error creating thumbnail:

I just became aware of this today.

[[Image:Casa Romana Park 04.jpg|thumb=Anchovy-thumbnail.jpg]]

-->

Nothing special? Click on the image, and see where it takes you.

OK obviously abusing this syntax to unduly surprise the reader is a bad idea, but this can be useful for situations where the automatic thumb image is not very good quality. I remember an example of this on the VP a while ago. Well actually, I guess this is the only legitimate use of this syntax, since "surprises" like my example are denying access to the copyright information of the "thumb". pfctdayelise (translate?) 04:55, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

This is great. Thanks. I have often rejected an image because the thumbnail version of it was so awful. Not only does this make it possible to tweak out any scaling artifacts, but it is possible to crop out non essential material from the thumb. -Mak 05:22, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Watermarks on images

Is there any policy re: watermarks on images? en-wiki forbids it on user-uploaded images (see en:Wikipedia:Image use policy#User-created_images). It would make sense for Commons to have something like that too, but I was unable to find any such policy description via the search engine. howcheng {chat} 17:39, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I guess there isn't a policy at the moment that forbids it, but it is or should be strongly discouraged (see here). There's also a discussion on Template talk:Deletion requests going on. NielsF 17:57, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

It looks like en.wp forbids it on user-created images, which makes rather more sense that user-uploaded images. :) pfctdayelise (translate?) 03:00, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Catalan claims

I have a disagreement with User:Martorell about category names. In spite of this rule, this user wants categories with catalan names and reverts some of my last changes ( example : http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Cities_and_villages_in_the_Land_of_Valencia&action=history ).

See the talks on my page and his page.

I think that Martorell is a catalan activist and desorganizes the project with partisan claims (he classifies Catalonia categories under french ones!). What do you think about this ? --Juiced lemon 20:15, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Chauvinism claims

The only one difference that I see between rules applied to articles and rules applied to categories, is that "others" must be in English. In the rest of the case, I consider it's the same rules applied to articles. Am I wrong?. It's not desorganized, it's organized with other criteria. The actually desorganization is that you don't asked anyone before to do very wide changes, first to put template purposes and to talk in the discussion page. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 20:17, 3 August 2006 (UTC) PD: I'm not a Catalan activist, I'm a Valencian Wikimedian.

I don't need your permission to make changes, i. e. create more specific categories in order to classify haphazardly arranged images. You didn't ask me, and you have reverted my changes and put again images in imprecise categories (example : Girls in historical Valencian costumes.jpg (diff)). --Juiced lemon 22:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

It isn't about permission, it is about consensus. You came to a work already done that anyone found it any problem for a long time. Why do exist templates such {{Move-category}} or {{Move}} specially indicated for very populated categories? These aren't ornamental. Haphazardly arranged images were very few images, the category Category:País Valencià was organized well enough altough it was needed to do some improvings, specially in typos, and you done it, ok, very good for you. But you fell in cultural arrogance with me. There are a lot of toponyms in native form in categories. Here exist Category:Sevilla and not Category:Seville. The same matter for Category:Mallorca and not Category:Majorca. Or Category:A Coruña and not Category:Corunna. Or Category:Granada and not Category:Grenade. And anyone see it as a trouble, only you. Only in the case of non-English sentences it was seen as a problem, such as Category:Escuts de Suècia being moved to Category:Coats of arms of Sweden. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 22:54, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

PD: And what about moving[20] Alacant - Alicante to Alicante? It isn't a category, it's an article. According to language police it says specifically to respect native form. Another exemple is Bruxelles - Brussel and Brussels as a redirection. Your reasons against me are lacking in truth. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 23:46, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

As far as I understand, (and anyone knowing different please correct me), you can do as you please On article pages. Regarding Category names the two main bits of guidance are-

• use Ascii characters in category names
• use english language cat names (for now)

So to the point of this dispute- What about proper nouns? I came across the same issue regarding which place name to use when working on the By location category scheme. I don't know that there is a broad standard for this. Maybe that is wrong. I considerred the following approaches

• Choose the version used the most on the net (with the greatest search hits on google).-
  • advantages- uses the term that most users are most likely to use when searching for something.
  • disadvantages- It's majoritarianism, and if imposed broadly means that minority cultures are at an extreme disadvantage since the terminology of the majority will always squelch the minority.
• Choose the version on some online authority that allows input. This could be any of the wikis or even a nonwiki source, but since english was chosen for the category language, it makes sense that English WP be the authority.
  • advantages- Minority views have a chance because motivated individuals can get the title accepted on EN:WP by being persistent.
  • disadvantages- People may not be able to find the item since they are unfamiliar with the alternate spelling of the proper name. By insisting on local terms, the general public has a more difficult time finding information on the local places and culture that the advocate presumably is attempting to assist. Their actions have the opposite affect.

I chose option 2- go with EN:Wikipedia, and folks on that scheme went along with it. To be honest, there weren't a lot of folks there to argue with so I don't know how representative that decision is. Really, I could have gone along with the google scheme too, but I strongly prefer inclusiveness of minority views. Let the people fight it out there, and whoever wins, and whenever it flip flops, fine- we can rename the cats here. As far as Commons search goes, it doesn't matter, because for example you can make catalonia and catalunya go to the same place. That's what I wrote in the policy.

Any educated person knows that its Wien, Firenze, Venessia or Catalunya. Personally, "Catalonia" hurts my eyes and my ears, but that's what it is in En:WP, so tough break for me. If I felt strongly- I would argue the case on En:Wiki. -Mak 23:50, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

It's Commons, it isn't Wikipedia in English. It's a multilingual project. I'm agree that categories must be in English for sentences in order to a standard language. But, I suppose it's an eventual solution until a tech improvement multilingualism in categories. And, in adding, if we would read en:Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not we were noticed that Wikipedia doesn't considers as a dictionary itself. Specifically it's telling that "Wikipedia is not in the business of saying how words, idioms, etc. should be used", so it shouldn't be the authority.

But proper nouns belongs to persons and their culture, and some persons aren't English-speakers. Would do you translate "Don Quijote" as "Sir Quixot"? Or "José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero" to "John Louis Rodericks Shoemakers"? I think it should be respected in native form, and using the {{Category redirect}} template for alternative categories.

Anyway, all the characters you find in "País Valencià" used are ASCII, as Category:José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Aren't these? --Joanot Martorell ✉ 23:56, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Right. You mean the place would be called New York, not ca:Nova York. Heh heh. Small joke- I get your point and my personal opinion agrees with yours. If Chicago were translated from the Native American Potawatomi language, we would call it in English "Skunk Cabbage". Personally, I much prefer Chicago, and that people be faithful to to how things are named and pronounced locally.

We are making progress here on Commons. But in the meantime we will have to endure some of the absurd transformations that people make of local pronunciations and spellings. As I said- everyone is guilty- the catalunyan wiki names for "Venice" and "Florence" are just as awful as the english names. And you think catalunya is treated badly- Consider the awful approximations that non slavs make of slavic language names. "Khruixtxov" doesn't come anywhere close to the correct pronunciation- even though all of the sounds necessary are regularly made by speakers in catalunya. Even take the easy names- how about the capital city of Russia. Moscou? There should be a v sound in there (transcrit Moskvà)... Why not spell it the way it sounds. Nevermind- hard to break habits, unfamiliar consonant combinations, lazy mouths and all that I know.

In regards to Commons, we do not yet have a multilingual category translation but it is not unlikely that we will see it one day. In the meantime we have to pick one language for internally encoding the lookup names. What the display names are will be handled at display time- but natively, the database has to have a single encoding form. It so happens that our only display form is identical to the encoding form. But that will change. While we are only able to use english, to determine the encoding for proper names we must use some authority, and you must admit that using en:wiki is better than google as an authority. You are absolutely correct that en:wiki is not a dictionary but the wiki dictionaries currently have insufficient coverage- of course it will change but today, it just doesn't. I personally believe that an evolution of the wiki dictionary solve much of the single language user interface problem so that everyone can interact and display Commons category space in their own language.

For the time being we need to have a single language to map to, and there are much worse choices than english.

Regarding Ascii- you are confusing ascii with Ansi or Extended_ASCII. Ascii is the character set that is on everyone's keyboards and has no accented characters. The diacritics common in the north of europe will not be found on keyboards in the south, and vice versa, so using diacritics though faithful to the local language and pronuciation makes Commons less accessible to people that can't type them. It's true that most knowlegable people know how to input characters on their keyboards, (cyrillic is commonly used on mine) but we want grandmothers to be able to use the wikis.

I know it is an undesirable situation, but I firmly believe it shall not be permanent.

-Mak 02:05, 4 August 2006 (UTC) -Ammended because my wikitext about ca:Nova York was not visible. -Mak 16:33, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, you're in right about the using of ASCII. I've mistaken in it, and I would have no problem to change "País Valencià" to "Land of Valencia", but... what about a lot of proper names with accentuated vowels as the exemple I showed in my former intervention, Category:José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero?. Should it be Category:Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero without "é" (e accute) and "í" (i accute) accents?. Sure?. Or in categories such Category:San Sebastián, a basque city, should it be Category:San Sebastian, without "á"?. I'm not sure at all. Why not to adopt Extended ASCII? Sure there are also scandinavian and germanic diacritics. Perhaps, the most important is about using Latin alphabet, and all diacritics used for Latin alphabet should be welcome.

Also I see another problem, I understand that here should use Florence instead of Firenze, Catalonia instead of Catalunya, but because these are traditional names in English (exonyms), and because these are very widely known places in the world. But I think we shouldn't follow all the names used in EN Wikipedia, because some of Valencian toponyms are in Spanish form and among others are in Catalan form, there are no form in English for most of these. You may find, by exemple, in en:w Alicante. Is it in English? I don't see as it, it's in Spanish, instead of "Alacant" in Catalan. Also you may find Elx in en:w, in Catalan instead of "Elche", in Spanish. Or bilingual Catalan-Spanish form such Alcoi/Alcoy. But Juiced lemon insists badly that "Alicante" is in English, and I'm disagrees him.

In order to decide wich form to use for Valencian toponyms in Commons, here was decided a lot of time among the users who are working classifing in Valencian toponym categories to follow the linguistic predominance stated legally for each municipality. As it, some of these are declared as Spanish ("Castillian"), and among others in Catalan ("Valencian"). According this criteria, we use Category:Torrevieja (in Spanish) instead of ca:Torrevella (in Catalan), because this municipality is officialy Castillian-speaker native. But we use Category:Alacant instead of Category:Alicante, because it's officialy Valencian-speaker native. In the article name, we use the official form, it's Alacant - Alicante, such Bruxelles - Brussel, because both forms are official.

I also want to note that I wouldn't like to suspect cultural arrogance, ethnocentrism for Juiced lemon, because the fact he moved article Alacant - Alicante to Alicante with no reason (it isn't a category). --Joanot Martorell ✉ 08:22, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

PD: I've noticed that below the edit box there is a table of different characters with diacritics used by some languages. So everyone can select Catalan, Spanish, French, etc. and click over a accentuated vowel. In this case, it shouldn't be any problem to input accentuated vowels for scandinavian or germanic keyboards. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 10:34, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a decided opinion about this, but some things to think about. Mak said that Any educated person knows that its Wien, Firenze, Venessia or Catalunya. Well, until I looked it up just then, I didn't know Firenze was Florence. Whether that's because I'm uneducated or not European or some other reason, who knows. Commons should still be usable by """non-educated""" users in any case. :P

For place names. Make sure you think your argument all the way through. Should we have category:中国? OK, no problem... then should we have Category:People of 中国? Or Category:中国人? (Ignoring the possibility of category:中國, (traditional) and the like...). And for countries with multiple official/native languages, multiple representations in multiple scripts and all equally accepted and prominent? pfctdayelise (translate?) 02:52, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, for those languages usually there are latin transcryption systems, such the romanji for Japanese script. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 08:51, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Just a small note, it's not that simple. For a start Chinese characters are recognised for 8 major Chinese dialects/languages, a transcription system is only for one. Secondly the transcription system is more like a crutch for learners than the true language in characters. This is my impression. I imagine it is very similar for all non-latin scripts - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Arabic, Sinhalese, Russian, ... .... using a transcription system is not a great solution. pfctdayelise (translate?) 12:41, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I can just emphasise your point. There is no point for Koreans to learn one of the korean romanisations, as they have an alphabet themselves. Other example: We have a dispute on german wikipedia which romanisation to use for cantonese, if any as there is no accepted standard. The only solution for me seems to be a category in the native language, though I don't know how mediawiki will work with that. Commons is a bit arrogant as it asks ppl to learn english or at least the latin alphabet. You can see my dislike for the current status on language support a bit higher on this page. Anyway, all we can do is: try to work with the current system given as good as possible. --Chrislb 20:06, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I have moved just now Category:País Valencià to Category:Land of Valencia. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 09:32, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I am not arrogant: I just try to proceed with method. When I edit a image file, I manage to correct all the categories at the same time. So, the categories Catalunya and País Valencià were moved during a general sorting process.

You criticized me for moving Alacant - Alicante to Alicante “without reason”. Of course, I had a reason: “Alacant - Alicante” is not the name of a town. There is no rule about article titles, only a proposal for native name of places. It means that you have to keep a single name for the place. IMHO, composite titles must be prohibited, because you can always choose the first item of the list as the single name.

I choosed “Alicante” as the native name, because it seemed to me that most of the population were castillan speaking people. If I was wrong, you can rename this article as “Alacant” : no problem. --Juiced lemon 10:50, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, most of people speaks Spanish in Alicante, it's true. But it isn't a reason to avoid "Alacant" in article title nor the categories. When we use linguistic majority criteria, so let change all in Chinese, the most spoken language in the world... ¬_¬' It was largely discussed in Category Talk:País Valencià about the names, and all users who participated there are agree to an criteria for those subjects. But no problem, your work checking categories into Category:Land of Valencia is good, in general overview, only there were some biasing or, at least, should discussed first. If you say you aren't arrogant, ok, I believe you, I give you a chance once more. Cheers. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 11:25, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Just a datapoint- there is no standard for "extended ascii"/"8 bit ascii"/"ansi". I think you mean to propose that "Latin-1" become the symbol set for categories. But it still doesn't address the keyboard problem. How do people type stuff into the search box for example if it is accented. I agree unaccented characters are very strange because they are completely different pronunciations and indeed are different (mostly non existent) words. The impact is bad for browsing categories. One thought was that for categories that had interwiki links to catalunyan or russian wiki article, the engine could display the correct local name at the top. The better solution is to make reference to a version of the Wiki dictionary that had good coverage. This would not work for many low end browsers without support for CSS and Javascript. The problem with making it server side due to the expansion of the cache to cover every version of the pages for every language. Not a pretty choice, but I vote for client side polymorphism to solve it. But I am not interested in working on that project and rather unfamiliar with the machinations on this subject so it is really up to the developers who are. I suppose there is some value for interested parties expressing how valuable this would be for commons so that developers understand the relative priority. Does someone have a link to the bugzilla entries for this feature?

In any case, the situation at commons in my view is temporary, so really you guys might as well not waste your time over it. When Commons comes out with the feature I described (or some functional equivalent) Castilians will view it one way, the Catalunyans another. Personally, I would think the most interesting struggle is getting the "authentic" names into the lingua franca versions- eg EN, FR and what have you. But of course the place to fight that struggle would be on other Wikis. (Not that I am attempting to send you elsewhere. Commons needs people which strong interlanguage skills.) -Mak 17:17, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

In general terms, I'm agree with your thoughts. I want only to point once more about the diacritics: I'm not sure at all, but I'm supposed that if you input in search box a word such "telepopmusik", the search engine would treat all accentuated vowels as not accentuated, and there would show you "télépomusik", "télepopmusik", "telépopmüsik", etc... as hits if those exists. Am I wrong?. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 19:04, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

List of the disputed categories

(no exhaustive list)

Category names		Wikipedia references
according to Martorell	according to the WC rules
Alacant	Alicante	w:Alicante
Cities and villages in the province of Alacant	Cities and villages in the province of Alicante	w:Alicante (province)
Comarques de Catalunya	Comarques of Catalonia	w:Comarques of Catalonia
Perpinyà	Perpignan	w:Perpignan
Province of Alacant	Province of Alicante	w:Alicante (province)
Province of Castelló	Province of Castellón	w:Castellón (province)
Province of València	Province of Valencia	w:Valencia (province)
Rosselló	Roussillon	w:Roussillon

updated (comarcas/comarques). --Juiced lemon 00:47, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Martorell have reverted my edits to restore most of the incorrect categories. --Juiced lemon 16:58, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Those forms aren't only mine, but also for a several users that showed their disappoint with you. And those proper names aren't English... all are Spanish or French, and their criteria is clearly following linguistic majority. The "linguistic majority" is for chauvinism thinkings as you have, not for a multilingual project such Commons. These arent Commons rules, these are YOUR rules. I will request a checkuser on your user account, I've my suspects of sockpuppeeting. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 18:56, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

My rules are the Wikimedia Commons community rules. If you don't like these rules, that's YOUR business. But, you cannot impose YOUR rules over YOUR categories. I have added references to the table (tell me if I made mistakes). --Juiced lemon 00:33, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

These aren't English names (aren't traditional exonyms), so a criteria was managed already since now for these cases. That's all. If you want to change this criteria, let's go to discuss it but, please, don't overpass with an non-existent rule about to follow en:w (Commons:Language policy).

If you're so interested to change toponyms of Spain into traditional names in English, perhaps you should start for actually English names such Seville, Grenade, Majorca, Corunna, Minorca, etc... and keep waiting to see the reaction of users who were working in these categories. The list you show here, any of these are in English, and in each article you refer from en:w: it's mentioned in starting both names used, and specifically it's telling forms in Spanish, French or Catalan, but not in English.

Your problem aren't the rules on Commons. Your bussiness are cultural bias, and political reasons, in special for those french subjects (Perpignan, Northern Catalonia, etc...), as you're French person. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 00:53, 5 August 2006 (UTC) PD: Notice that I'm from Alacant, as my user page tells...

PD2: If you are so interested to follow en:WP... why don't you accept the following from en:Perpignan: "Perpignan was the capital of the former province and county of Roussillon (French Catalonia or Northern Catalonia). It is also capital of the historical Catalonian comarca of Rosselló. You want to follow in some subjects, but you're avoiding in another subjects that aren't in your interest. Is it political reason or not?. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 01:10, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

About Northern Catalonia

The disagreement is not only about category names, is also about Northern Catalonia. Commons is a multicultural project, and people of Northern Catalonia have right to be represented here. The official website of the Conséil Général des Pyrénées Orientales recognizes the Catalanity of this territory. Before making big changes, we should ask for them and talk about it. If not, can be considered vandalism for some administrators Pmmollet ^talk  07:28, 4 August 2006 (UTC).

Northern Catalonia is not a existing region, but part of cultural identity claims. Northern Catalonia people and Northern Catalonia places don't exist, as Catalonia don't belong currently to the islamic world (see File:Age of Caliphs.gif).

You have no right to mess up the Wikimedia commons classification system with political claims. For near everybody in the world, the Catalonia category concerns a autonomous community of Spain, not an old region. So, architecture of Catalonia concerns only spanish buildings, and is not part of architecture of France, and so on for other Catalonia categories. --Juiced lemon 11:58, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Northern Catalonia is not only a political claim, but also it's a cultural claim. There's the same culture, architecture, language and gastronomy in Spanish Catalonia and Northern Catalonia. If Wikimedia Commons it's a place where anybody can storage culture, why not to put both Catalonia together in a Category, when most of people from Pyrenées Orientales feel la catalanitat or la catalanité (in french)? --Pepetps 13:10, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I support this proposal. --Juiced lemon 13:21, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Well... Juiced lemon, you said: "Northern Catalonia places don't exist, as Catalonia don't belong currently to the islamic world (see File:Age of Caliphs.gif)". Wow! Are you saying that Catalan origin are arabic roots? I'm sorry to telling that you're bad informed. Please, read first en:History of Catalonia, en:Principality of Catalonia and en:Northern Catalonia. Once it's done by you, you would be able to discuss with right aknowledgement. Administrative borders aren't the unique reality. Cheers. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 13:16, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

My opinion remains unchanged : we cannot make ambitious plans based on hypothetic future events. --Juiced lemon 13:32, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

It isn't about future, it's about present-day. It is not about borders only, it's about culture. You aren't unchanged, you are moving into editwars, and it's no consensus. I've blocked you for two hours because of ongoing editwar crussade, I'm very sorry because you aren't willing to reach mutual understanding. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 14:01, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

That is an abuse of your administrator abilities. Your “concensus” sums up in your own opinion. You have allready blocked another user for the same reasons (impose your viewpoint) : see [21]. --Juiced lemon 18:30, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I have had to stop your editwars. I'm not the only person you're struggling, also with pmmollet and pepetps. User Joan Puigbarcell had the same problems as you show here: arrogance, overpass works of other users with too widely changes, editwars, linguistic and cultural biasing, political thinkings, etc... This user was worried only to "delete" very correct information, and we want to add more information. We don't want hide anything, but you want hide that in France there is Northern Catalonia. The same attitude, the same motivation... same user? I will request checkuser on your account. Cheers. --Joanot Martorell ✉ 19:10, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I just intend to follow the rules : I have no bias. You act as an extremist : you don't respect any rule (except of yours) and anyone. I assume that we (I and Joan Puigbarcell) are not your first victims. --Juiced lemon 20:00, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Arbitration?

OK... obviously this isn't going anywhere productive. I suggest that you both accept a third party to arbitrate. They will listen to what both of you have to say and make a comment about what future behaviour from both of you should be. It will only work if you both agree to accept the arbitrator's conclusions, even if they disagree with you. Obviously you cannot both be right. Will you agree?

In the meantime please stop ALL edits related to this in any way whatsoever - even if you are leaving things in the 'wrong' way just please STOP, it won't help. --pfctdayelise (translate?) 05:14, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Chemical structural formulas PD-ineligible?

I have found that many, even quite simple, structural formulas are marked as being without license or without source information. I wonder, however, if most of these could be considered {{PD-ineligible}}. See for example [22], [23], and [24]. They way to draw them is quite standard and not much creativity can be used, so I'd say yes and even the more complex ones can really only be drawn in one way [25].

Still, I do ask myseld where to draw the line. Coloured and 3D: [26], [27]? IMHO, PD-ineligible, as even the colours are standard.

This beauty, imho, is over the treshold of originality: Image:Tumour_suppressor_p53-DNA_complex.jpg. -Samulili 16:48, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Image watermarks

On English Wikipedia, there is a clause in the image use policy against adding watermarks on user-created images and there is a template (Template:Imagewatermark) for images with watermarks on them. Are the images with watermarks (from what I noticed, most of them are copyright notices and a few titles/descriptions of the image) allowed in here or should we import that template from en.wiki ? Bogdan 20:14, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Please see #Watermarks_on_images slightly above. NielsF 20:26, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

{{No source since}}

Images Rainbow4.jpg, Rainbow3.jpg, Rainbow2.jpg, and Rainbow.jpg, are all tagged with the no source since. The tag sates: image can be speedy deleted seven days after this template was added and the uploader was notified. The meta-data clearly defines the source of these images; a FinePix A210 , FUJIFILM camera, used in the same day, same time for the four pics, by the user Anthony, I don't think that he will make it back here in time; Anthonys latest contribution here dates back to 05:23, 5 October 2005. He posted the four pics back on 2004, and he used the same camera in almost all of his other pics. This is not about the four pics, this is about the procedure used. The way No source since tag is used should be evaluate carefully. --Tarawneh 04:31, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

If you want, change the tag to {{Own work}}. But the fact is, no source (author) information was provided. We are not allowed to guess. We can only work with the information people give us. pfctdayelise (translate?) 05:07, 5 August 2006 (UTC)