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COMMONS DISCUSSION PAGES (index) Commons Help desk Village pump (general discussion) Copyright Proposals Technical Graphics and photography discussion Photography critiques Image improvement Illustration workshop Map workshop Photography workshop Video and sound workshop Categories for discussion Undeletion requests Deletion requests Volunteer Response Team/Noticeboard Translators' noticeboard Work requests for bots Contact administrators Vandalism User problems (Dispute resolution) Blocks and protections Bureaucrats' noticeboard CheckUser requests Oversight requests Telegram IRC webchat Commons mailing list (archive) Commons' bugs on Phabricator Welcome to the Village pump This page is used for discussions of the operations, technical issues, and policies of Wikimedia Commons. Recent sections with no replies for 7 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; the latest archive is Commons:Village pump/Archive/2024/07. Please note: If you want to ask why unfree/non-commercial material is not allowed at Wikimedia Commons or if you want to suggest that allowing it would be a good thing, please do not comment here. It is probably pointless. One of Wikimedia Commons’ core principles is: "Only free content is allowed." This is a basic rule of the place, as inherent as the NPOV requirement on all Wikipedias. Have you read our FAQ? For changing the name of a file, see Commons:File renaming. Any answers you receive here are not legal advice and the responder cannot be held liable for them. If you have legal questions, we can try to help but our answers cannot replace those of a qualified professional (i.e. a lawyer). Your question will be answered here; please check back regularly. Please do not leave your email address or other contact information, as this page is widely visible across the internet and you are liable to receive spam. Purposes which do not meet the scope of this page: Please do not make deletion requests here: use the relevant process for it instead. For technical support and graphics talks (PNG, SVG, GIF, etc.), please post on the Graphics village pump. To ask for image improvement, see: Graphic Lab/Photography workshop for photographs. Graphic Lab/Map workshop for maps. Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop for other illustrations. To ask for video or audio improvement, see Commons:Graphic Lab/Video and sound workshop. For translation requests, please post at Commons:Requests for translation. For media requests, please post at Commons:File requests. Search archives:     Start a new discussion

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Old manual pump in Fetonte Place Crespino, province of Rovigo [add]

Centralized discussion See also: Village pump/Proposals   ■ Archive Commons:Requests for comment/Hosting of free fonts in Commons (18 July 2024) How do we organize categories by date (14 May 2024) Should PD-CQ Roll Call be used for recent images? (5 January 2024) Technical needs survey (17 December 2023) When does PDART apply to textile works? (15 November 2023) Does this image contain "love hearts"? (17 August 2023) Overhaul of categories by period (5 December 2022) Version of Saudi flag to use (11 July 2022) Concern regarding revocability of KOGL licenses (22 December 2021) Should deleting content from your own talk page be forbidden? (11 November 2021) Revise the COM:FOP Sweden section (1 February 2021) Change technical name of LRs to license-reviewer from image-reviewer(2 November 2023) Template: View   ■ Discuss    ■ Edit   ■ Watch

	SpBot archives all sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=~~~~}} after 1 day.

Oldies

Comments in filename

File:The President Wilson Hotel Geneva - Starwood Luxury Collection! Switzerland - 01112009 Great hotel, good food and drink, photography is not allowed, smiles are rare here!.jpg Is this allowed?Smiley.toerist (talk) 07:01, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes. --Fæ (talk) 07:23, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Policy Commons:Project scope/Neutral point of view says it may not always be possible for file names and related descriptive text to be "neutral". However, neutrality of description should be aimed at wherever possible. While the "review" in the filename is mostly positive, and so unlikely to attract unwanted legal attention of the hotel owner, Commons is not TripAdvisor. I suggest that our policy in fact strongly encourages the removal of that sentence, which appears to have ended up in the filename as a result of the upload tool's simple algorithm rather than any deliberate ploy to force Wikipedian's to insert hotel reviews into their article text :-). It doesn't belong in the description paragraph either. -- Colin (talk) 07:35, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

I have asked for a rename under reason 5.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:12, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

I have the same problem with most filenames in Category:Model at beach (Philips advertisement). While filename stability is very important, and although improvement file renaming is a neverending slippery slope, this kind of (needlessly) creepy/smarmy characterization arguably falls within the spirit of COM:FR§5: «gratuitous vulgarity, personal attacks/harassment». Anyone against such renaming? -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 14:49, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Template:SVG Chart

Moved discussion to Template talk:SVG Chart -- Offnfopt^(talk) 12:07, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

June 12

Naturalis - using persistent links to come?

Naturalis Biodiversity Center intends with me to upload thousands of images to Commons from their online databases. However, they are in the process to introduce persistent links and want only the future persistent link to appear, so no longer, for example, this one. This can entail that in the mean time thousands of broken links will appear, causing error messages etcetera.

• Is this acceptable?

Regards, Hansmuller (talk) 07:31, 12 June 2015 (UTC) Wikipedia project with Naturalis

Hi Hansmuller, it could be possible to find a smart template-based solution for that. Can you tell us more about how the links are currently structured and how they will be structured in the future? Will the IDs still be the same? Can you estimate how long the transition will take? Cheers, --El Grafo (talk) 15:04, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

File page of image as a example of the links in question, for those reading this. Offnfopt^(talk) 07:33, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! At this point IT staff at Naturalis isn't sure yet how it's gonna be. In the crab example of Offnfopt you see the present structure, a simple link for the image, and an api call on a Naturalis database for an original description page with biological info. Regards, Hansmuller (talk) 08:32, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Present link structure, for example that crab:

• image only http://medialib.naturalis.nl/file/id/RMNH.ART.5/format/large, for upload and reference on the Commons page
• description + clickable image http://bioportal.naturalis.nl/nba/result?nba_request=http%253A%252F%252Fapi.biodiversitydata.nl%252Fv0%252F%252Fmultimedia%252Fget-multimedia-object-for-specimen-within-result-set%252F%253FunitID%253DMNH.ART.5

Future persistent link structure as a reference on the Commons page:

• description page + clickable image: http://data.biodiversitydata.nl/Naturalis/multimedia/RMNH.ART.5 (not yet functioning)

Before September 1, persistent links should be introduced at Naturalis. Of course, a smart template-based solution would be very attractive (i myself am not able to create this..). Kind regards, Hansmuller (talk) 14:32, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

@Hansmuller: I've got some ideas but don't have the time to test them at the moment. If you haven't heard from me after the weekend, i might have forgotten about this – in that case please leave a short message at my talk page to remind me. Thanks, --El Grafo (talk) 13:00, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

File:DELIDAS LOGO JPEG board.jpg and File:Gul Delidas Stark sås 150 grams flaska.jpg

First image was uploaded in 2006 and second was uploaded in 2013. These are the only images upload by the editor and both are claimed as "own work". Neither image seems to meet the exceptions specified in COM:PACKAGING and it is also likely that the uploader is not the owner of the copyright. - Marchjuly (talk) 07:51, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

I've nominated both of these files for deletion per my reasoning given above. I thought that discussing the issue here at VP was a good idea to do, but realize now such a step was not needed. OP, etc. can be removed/archived as needed if inappropriate for this page. - Marchjuly (talk) 01:05, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

File:WHTX-AM 1570.png

Logo of radio station uploaded as own work, but there's no indication that uploader owns the copyright. This CNN article in which the image is used is dated exactly the same day as when the image was uploaded to Commons, which might indicate that the CNN article is where the image originated. For reference, similar images uploaded by same editor have been deleted for copyright reasons. Seems most likey to be a non-free logo mistakenly uploaded to Commons as "own work". - Marchjuly (talk) 16:58, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

• Given his account name as User:Radiotvman, it could well be his own work. Or not. Have you contacted him? Nominated the image for deletion? I'm not sure why you think this needs the broad discussion of the Village pump. - Jmabel ! talk 16:21, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi Jmable. Thanks for the push in the right direction. I thought that VP was sort of a Commons Teahouse/discussion board type of place to get general opinions of other editors about whether an image was acceptable or should be nominated for deletion. I wasn't intentionally trying to muck up the page with these posts. My bad if that is what I ended up doing. - Marchjuly (talk) 21:25, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

The 'copyright' VP is a better place for such questions, but this image is worthy IMO of a DR for the 'topical' evaluation there... it's a threshold of originality question, really. Revent (talk) 07:20, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply Revent. I completely forgot that there are two VPs and that the "copyright" one is where I should've gone. Should I move this post their for further discussion or simply start a DR? Thanks again and sorry to all for getting the VP tabs mixed up. - Marchjuly (talk) 00:14, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

File:Seymore D Fair Children's Education Foundation Logo.png

Image uploaded as own work. It is supposed to be the logo of the foundation, but I can't find it anywhere on the foundation's official website or any of it's social media accounts. Same uploader had various other files deleted as for lack of permission, so not sure if it is a non-free logo mistakenly uploaded as own work. - Marchjuly (talk) 13:02, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

• Again, why are you bringing up things like this on the VP rather than simply nominating files for deletion or contacting uploaders? - Jmabel ! talk 16:26, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

• Nominated with Marchjuly's comment here as the rationale. Nyttend (talk) 20:02, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Uploading from other websites

What is the protocol, if any, for uploading photographs from other websites? Is this permitted?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Rhobat Bryn (talk • contribs)

Hi! Please do not double post. You already got an answer here. Gunnex (talk) 18:37, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Nominate-for-deletion script

Not sure where to request changes to scripts, so if you know of a better place, please move this there.

A "nominate for deletion" link appears in the toolbox when viewing most (all?) images, and it provides a link to a helpful script that takes care of the entire process of nominating an image for deletion, aside from writing the rationale of course. There's one problem, however: hitting "Enter" causes it to run the script. I'm often hitting the wrong key and sending through a nomination when it's not complete; see this mangled DR for an example, created because I accidentally hit "Enter" when I meant to type a quotation mark. Could it please be modified? I don't care if it's modified by removing the hit-enter-to-run feature (i.e. you'd have to click the Proceed button or navigate with the tab key), or by giving you a prompt, or waiting a few seconds and giving you the chance to stop the script before it runs. Nyttend (talk) 19:59, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

This would have a (negative) impact on the workflow of many users. If you click the expand icon next to the rationale field, you can already hit enter without proceeding.    FDMS  4    00:00, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

How would it have a negative impact? Hit "tab" twice and you're on the Proceed button, and hitting Enter or the spacebar will send things through. It's a trifling thing to reprogram a bot to do this. Nyttend (talk) 03:52, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

The enter-to-proceed was a feature requested by many users. The only way to accommodate both interests would be a user preference, from what I see. You may add a section to MediaWiki talk:Gadget-AjaxQuickDelete.js requesting that. -- Rillke^(q?) 13:36, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

June 15

Zoom browser broken again

See, for example, File:All Saints Margaret Street Interior 2, London, UK - Diliff.jpg. Such images really need the zoom browser to be appreciated, and because many browsers or computers struggle to open them. @Dschwen: -- Colin (talk) 06:58, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Just have to comment, extremely nice image linked. Worthy of a FP nom, IMO. Revent (talk) 07:24, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

It has one: Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:All Saints Margaret Street Interior 2, London, UK - Diliff.jpg. And one problem is people complain it is too large, which is really a problem with browser's not really being designed as high-resolution image viewers. So that's where the zoom browser makes it much more useful. -- Colin (talk) 09:37, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T54717

This is f'ing frustrating. Something changed again on tool labs. This error is new. Fcgi is broken. Some libraries disappeared from the webserver nodes. I reopened the ticket in which I requested them to be installed. --Dschwen (talk) 01:54, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, I fixed this by doing a

 webservice --release trusty restart

Let's see if this is all. --Dschwen (talk) 02:35, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Help with generating links to images at given size

Can anyone help with template/javascript code to make it easy to display an image at a given size. This might be a given megapixels or a given reduction from full size (e.g. 50%), or even a combination (e.g., 50% or 8MP whichever is larger). See Commons talk:Featured picture candidates#Image viewing tool for FP for details. -- Colin (talk) 11:59, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Search function on Commons and Wikipedia is dead

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T102463

Already since morning, the search function here on Commons and on Wikipedia (at least :de) does not work and instead produces an overload-message

• "Bei der Suche ist ein Fehler aufgetreten: Die Suche ist derzeit überlastet. Bitte später erneut versuchen."

However, when I call Wikimedia status[1], everything appears in green, AKA "no problem". WTF? --Túrelio (talk) 12:43, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

@Túrelio: Basically, they broke it WMF-wide, and rebooting the search server supposedly fixed it, but they are keeping it down until they can figure out why it broke. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T102463 Revent (talk) 13:00, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. --Túrelio (talk) 13:01, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

June 16

Copyright tags for sculpture and photo

Frequently, we will have a photo of a sculpture that has a tag like {{PD-old-100}} along with {{Cc-by-sa-3.0}}. The {{PD-old-100}} tag is misleading for at least two reasons: (1) it says, "This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights." That is definitively NOT the case - the file can only be used if you comply with the terms of the Creative Commons license. (2) It categorizes the image into a sub-category of Category:Public domain, which may lead someone to mistakenly believe, again, that the image is in the public domain.

I know that this is at least something of a common practice - but it's a very bad common practice. In some cases, it's ridiculously obvious that the underlying object is hundreds or thousands of years old and is obviously not subject to copyright.

Some image pages, like File:Hirsfängare Neapel, F Bourgeois - Livrustkammaren - 86545.tif, put the object in its own collapsed section, which is an improvement, although it still categorized in the PD category.

Others, such as File:Hispano-Moresque - Large Plate with Concentric Bands - Walters 481214.jpg, whose template Jarekt (talk · contribs) has now protected to his preferred version to prevent anyone from being able to improve it, are horribly written and display the PD template above the actual license template, and thus more likely to be noticed. A well-meaning person desiring to re-use this content could, from a cursory glance, think that this image is in the public domain.

I would like to suggest making an effort to standardize these template by adding an "underlying=1" parameter to the PD-old-100 (and similar) templates. If underlying=1 is set, then (1) the message "This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights" is replaced with "the object depicted in this image is free of known restrictions under copyright law, but this image itself is a derivative work with its own copyright. Please see the accompanying tag for additional licensing information."; (2) the image will not be in a public domain category, and (3) the grey (c) gets replaced with a different icon (maybe something like File:PD-icon-info.svg?.

The purpose of this exercise is to give it a visual cue that the image is not actually in the public domain. --B (talk) 04:45, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

{{Infosplit}} and {{Author}} can (and often should) be used in such cases, though it doesn't seem to be frequently done. The example uses in the documentation of the infosplit template, in particular, should be illustrative. Revent (talk) 05:45, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

(further comment) As far as the dig at Jarekt for protecting that template, a licensing template with over 18,000 transclusions seems a rather obvious candidate for protection. Instead of assuming bad faith on his part, you can simply make an edit request on the template's talk page with your suggestions. Revent (talk) 05:55, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Is it possible to modify {{Cc-pd-mark-footer}} to not show up if any template that is not another PD template is present on the page? It just seems ridiculous to say "This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights" when that is definitively 100% not true. --B (talk) 15:22, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

I  Agree that {{Cc-pd-mark-footer}} text and machine-readable marking should not be added when PD license template is accompanied by other non-PD license templates, as it often happens with sculptures, music and other works which might have multiple licenses for multiple authors. Many images using {{Art Photo}} also have that problem. {{Cc-pd-mark-footer}} is part of all (or most) PD license templates (2.2k in all) but should be skipped if non-PD license template is present at the page. To my knowledge we do not have any templates which can change their functionality based on if other templates are detected on the pages or not. Maybe something can be done with JavaScript. I had discussions with other users about this before and usual attitude is that this is too complex to contemplate or that the problem is too rare to worry about. Others like B decided to remove DP license templates from 18k files without talking to anybody about it. One other drastic solution would be to remove {{Cc-pd-mark-footer}} from PD licenses. --Jarekt (talk) 16:21, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T89692

• License and other information should be separated to be machine-readable, but that's not possible in the case of File:Hirsfängare Neapel, F Bourgeois - Livrustkammaren - 86545.tif. This should be fixed. Regards, Yann (talk) 16:53, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
  • I hadn't even considered the machine readability aspect of it. What about adding a parameter to the PD templates "underlying=1"? "underlying=1" would remove the message that the image is PD, hopefully come up with a different icon that makes it clear to someone casually glancing that this image is not public domain, and remove whatever machines are reading that makes them think the image is PD. That would allow the issue to be resolved in bulk for all of the source templates that transclude the PD template. I would bet that a bot could even add underlying=1 to any individual image that has two templates, one of which is PD. As for being able to detect what other templates are on the page ... how does the GFDL template do it? I have seen where GFDL will show the re-licensing notice, but hide it if there is a cc-by-sa-3.0 template on the page? Or on Wikipedia, there are navigation templates like en:Template:CBSNetwork_Shows_(current_and_upcoming) that show up as expanded if they are the only template on the page, but collapsed if there are any other navigation templates. In en:Zoo_(TV_series), the CBS template at the bottom is expanded, but in en:Blue Bloods (TV series), it is collapsed. Neither usage of the template has any parameters, so I'm assuming that there is some magic where it is aware that there is another navigation template on the page. --B (talk) 20:25, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

There are probably hundreds unique PD templates and each would have to be edited and documented separately. Then there are wrapper templates like {{Self}}, {{PD-Art}} or {{PD-old-auto}} that call other PD templates and would have to pass those parameters. The GFDL does change it's behavior based on presence and absence of CC template, but I think only when both are wrapped in {{Self}} template, so I think the magic must be hiding in {{Self}}. --Jarekt (talk) 03:08, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

an image from facebook

hi.i want to upload an image from facebook.can i upload it or no.and if i can how can i upload it?.https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xft1/v/t1.0-9/s720x720/1376569_1378298162444575_478043588_n.jpg?oh=277579154e5991403c2205a7e4805a0c&oe=56285F2D--سوزوار (talk) 15:15, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Your link here gives an error, so I can't see what you mean to upload, but very few images on Facebook can be uploaded, unless they are photos you took:

• Generally, images on Facebook are neither in the public domain nor free-licensed.
• Many pictures on Facebook are, in fact, posted by people who actually didn't even have proper legal rights to post them there.

Technically, if the picture is one of the relatively few that is OK, you would download from Facebook to your computer, then upload in the usual manner, attributing the source and indicating licensing that is appropriate to that photo. Unfortunately, even if an image on Facebook was uploaded at a high resolution, I'm unaware of any way of obtaining a resolution higher than what you can see on your screen. - Jmabel ! talk 16:16, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

That specific image looks more like marketing/advertisement than educational? And as written above: The license must fit. --Malyacko (talk) 08:31, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Replace pictures with watermarks

Dear all, I uploaded some years ago some pictures with my signature on the lower right corner. I do not want anymore my name to be on that images for a matter of privacy. I have each version without watermark and I can upload it. Can you please help me and tell me how to delete the images? It all seems so difficult, I already tried but I failed. Thanks a lot.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Files_of_User:harlock20

To upload a version without the watermark, go to the list of the files you have uploaded, click on the relevant photo, scroll down and then click "Upload a new version of this file". -- Robert Weemeyer (talk) 15:49, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

If desired for privacy, you can then ask an administrator to delete the older revisions that include your personal information. Revent (talk) 16:19, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

I tried to do it with one of the images, I link it here https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Puente_isabel_II_en_sevilla.jpg As you can see on the File history, the first two versions have watermarks, the last two versions no. How can I contact an administration for the removal of the signed versions? Thanks

I just did it for File:Puente isabel II en sevilla.jpg. Just send me a list (or post it here) and I can hide the other as well. --McZusatz (talk) 12:23, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Gadget description translations

Hi! I have translated some gadget descriptions (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 & 15) to my language long time ago but I don't see translations in this page. Could some admin do something? --SMAUG (Talk – Contributions) 17:07, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

If I missed something, it was due to a loss of session data. Blame MediaWiki for that. Sorry you had to wait that long. Next time, please include {{Edit request}} so the page is at least categorized into the admin backlog. -- Rillke^(q?) 17:24, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Restore image - File:TPoliceExplorer.jpg

I'm new to uploading, and uploaded File:TPoliceExplorer.jpg but it had the wrong license. I messaged the flickr user and he was okay with changing the license on the image. Can the file be restored? Is it the right license now? Thanks. Shoman93 (talk) 19:28, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

@Shoman93:  Done File restored. Thibaut120094 (talk) 19:45, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

The last mile

I finaly reduced the work Category:Images uploaded by Natuur12 (clcean up2) to 10 files (was about 380). Can somebody find the location of the picture (and File:Amtrak loco on the level crossing (2289063956).jpg) from the same place and time?Smiley.toerist (talk) 19:41, 16 June 2015 (UTC))]]

It looks like someone grabbed the geotags from the Flickr pages already. Revent (talk) 00:17, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Er, actually, disregard. Those coordinates are apparently wrong, as they show up as inside buildings and not on railroad tracks. :( Revent (talk) 00:19, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, they helped a lot: Looked for the nearest 2-track railway on OSM, guesstimated that the image would probably show a railway station, picked the nearest one, switched over to Google street view, et voila: found the arches on the brick wall . The other one should be very near … --El Grafo (talk) 09:31, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, the next problem is File:Steam locomotive under restoration (197086166).jpg. There are several pictures of Peter Van den Bossche (:Category:Photographs by Peter Van den Bossche) taken on 2003-09-06 in some workplace/museum. I suspect in Luxemburg but I am not certain.Smiley.toerist (talk) 19:12, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

I found the location and created a new category: Category:Oignies CMCF. The locomotive 231.C.78 seems to famous: [2] [3], but I cant seem to pinpoint the precise category for this pacific type steam locomotive.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:42, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

When I check the dates: The last picture before this, is a boatrace in Turku, Finland on 26 august 1999. It seems reasonable that two days later, 28 august the two pictures where taken in Estonia and he didnt have time to be further away in for example Latvia. So I place them in Estonia. The last picture on 11 september has another picture taken on 10 september, so I also place them in Estonia.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:29, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

June 17

File:Ayesha Quraishi 2005.jpg

I see some problems with this file : in the history of this file, we see that the image has been changed. Which leads to 2 problems :

1. The previous file can't be used anymore
2. The OTRS authorization may apply to the first picture only.

Could anyone fix those problems ? --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 05:40, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Credit-less reuse of Commons images

Hi, what is to be done when a Commons image is reused (particularly by newspapers) without due credit given and/or the licence noted? I've seen a number of Indian news sites use Commons images with (when they are feeling generous) a note attributing the source to just "Wikipedia" or more often than not, nothing at all. For example, here's a news article which uses a cropped version of this image without any credit at all. Thanks. --Cpt.a.haddock (talk) 14:21, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

As the copyright-holder is the one to complain, it's best to notify him/her (and eventually leave a link to the infringing re-use on the image-talkpage). --Túrelio (talk) 14:41, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Conversion of still GIF images using color or transparency to PNG

So I have been running User:GifTagger for some time until it was blocked due to "Problem with the editing and the enforcement of an opinion without conversation with the relevant community" in January. I had to clean up the code and was too busy with other things that time anyway. Though, now I feel like getting a discussion up on this topic. I had some users on my talk page asking if I could fire the bot up again but I'd rather have any sort of feedback before getting blocked out of the blue again. --McZusatz (talk) 20:20, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Just to start the discussion, I will present what I think are the advantages of using PNG over GIF:

The thumbnail of this gif is useless as it only shows some random black pixels. Sadly it was used in two articles.

Much smoother thumb

1. Better thumbnails
   C.f. thumb on the right; GIF thumbnails are often pixelated due to transparency (Only a single transparency index is supported). Also PNG thumbnails support 24-bit RGB in contrast to a maximum of 256 colors in GIF (thumbnail) files.
2. Smaller size
   GIF files tend to be larger than PNG
3. Easier editing/"Lossless" editing
   Someone may want to edit those files. Surely the editor prefers a 24-bit palette over the 8-bit GIF-palette without uploading a new PNG derivative file before or after his edit by fiddling with (partly) broken tools such as UpWiz or DerivativeFX. Also you can not apply most filters to indexed palettes which results in a lossy process: Palette -> 24 bit -> Apply filter -> another? Palette
   However, the conversion from GIF to PNG is lossless and also the transparency, if present, does not get lost. (PNG supports 8-bit transparency in contrast to GIF's 1-bit transparency.)

--McZusatz (talk) 20:20, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

My opinion is to leave the GIFs as is and only update them on a needed basis. A large number of GIFs should be replaced by SVG (vector data) to begin with, so a extra PNG is unneeded in a large number of cases. Thumbnail point you made could be dealt with by generating PNG thumbnails with a anti-alias option instead of generating GIF thumbnails (i.e. similar to how we convert SVG to PNG for thumbnails/re-sizing). This is an issue that could be fixed through the wikimedia software end without having to re-upload a new version of every file. Offnfopt^(talk) 22:27, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

@McZusatz: One rationale I find hard to understand is (for example at File:Enrico cialdini.png): "This GIF was problematic due to non-greyscale color table." Isn't it correct for a colour image to have a non-greyscale colour table⁇ I'm not sure which of your other rationales may also apply, but the filesize was bigger than that of File:Enrico cialdini.gif. I'm also a little concerned that (non-admins) lose the edit history of the deleted files, so it's harder to check the licensing etc. --99of9 (talk) 06:25, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

99of9 After reading your comment, I went ahead and ran a small test case of some of the files in the contrib list for the bot. I don't have access to see the pages for the deleted files, so I converted the PNG files to GIFs using the exact same indexed palette found in the PNG, so there is no loss or change in the image from the conversion I did. The original GIF file sizes may be different from mine depending on what options they used to save the files, I didn't do any special optimizations or tweaks to the files. The below table is the results of this small test case. You can see from the table that the claim of PNG having a smaller file size did not hold up to this test case. Also as I stated before, the bulk of these images are better served being converted to vector graphics due to the nature the pictures. Offnfopt^(talk) 08:50, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

File	GIF size (in bytes)	PNG size (in bytes)	Smaller file size	PNGopt
File:Enis logo2.png	1,997	2,150	GIF
File:Enlarged lateral ventricles in schizophrenia.png	45,747	58,353	GIF	39.227
File:Enlarged spleen.png	10,106	10,960	GIF
File:Enlluita-logo.png	5,500	6,009	GIF
File:Enmascaramiento temporal.png	4,032	5,391	GIF
File:Enneagram - 2.png	30,934	31,843	GIF
File:Ennea triangle.png	1,139	2,161	GIF
File:Enrico cialdini.png	19,980	23,409	GIF	17.314
File:Enrin u0.png	13,577	20,241	GIF	11.227
File:Ensea-fonctions.png	7,854	7,815	PNG

I can agree Offnfopt and 99of9. The file size is only one point, as I mentioned to McZusatz before, the bot need a simple PNG optimizing function (I used the very fast PNGGauntlet). So I only vote for the bot if he has such functionaltiy. ↔ User: Perhelion (Commons: = crap?)  09:29, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I replaced the poor PNG optimization with some better one in the meantime, so this should not be an issue any more. --McZusatz (talk) 10:11, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

@99of9, Offnfopt: Your proposal to use PNG for thumbnails instead of GIF, indeed solves the issues that can be observed in GIF thubnails today. Nonetheless, I'd still prefer to have the source image in PNG as well to make it easier for users to upload an enhanced version without going through quantization of the color values. This quantization degrades an image slightly if the color values don't match the quantization levels. --McZusatz (talk) 10:11, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I want to add that I'm not against the bot per se, when I first posted I was in the mind set thinking the bot was going to leave the original GIF, so I was thinking it was going to cause a large number of duplicate files. But being that is not the case and letting the pros and cons rattle around in my head for a while, I'm warming up to the idea. Though I do worry about the bot encountering a file configuration it may not be able to handle and end up outputting a garbage PNG file and removing the original GIF. I wonder if the bot should generate a paged gallery log of files converted so others could keep an eye on the changes being made without having to scroll through the contrib log of the bot. I also support the good suggestion by Perhelion. Offnfopt^(talk) 10:29, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

There is https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ListFiles?limit=500&user=GifTagger&ilshowall=1 but I can also create a custom log page if you want me to. --McZusatz (talk) 14:42, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: If you have any issues with the Bot, please raise them. --McZusatz (talk) 14:42, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

---

The "non-greyscale color table" bot comment is due to giving non-transparent greyscale GIFs lower priority for conversion (i.e. not to be replaced without a further round of discussion at a future date), because of the fact that PNG thumbnailing for many years was significantly worse at resizing opaque grayscale PNGs than GIF thumbnailing is at resizing opaque grayscale GIFs -- and also various developer comments which have led to suspicions that improving PNG resizing in this area is not a WMF priority, and in fact that the very belated partial progress which was finally made in such PNG resizing could actually be reversed if WMF developers choose to adopt image software with some nifty features in other areas. See the discussion at Commons:Bots/Requests/GifTagger... -- AnonMoos (talk) 12:32, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Images of HM Government ministers and MPs (published on UK Government sites)

A reader has expressed displeasure that an image of a UK Government minister was deleted.

That reader argues: "Images of HM Government ministers and MPs (published on UK Government sites) are not private property - they belong to the people (UK subjects)."

I see two issues here: 1. Confirmation that photos of UK ministers published on government sites qualify as public domain 2. Clarification that it is helpful for the upload or to identify why an image might be public domain, especially in cases where it is not obvious, and it should be understandable that in the absence of such helpful information we err on the side of caution and delete until such evidence is provided.

I suspect that our contact person is correct regarding the status but I have been unable to confirm it within the pages I have reviewed.

I looked at Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory and I do not see anything within the UK section indicating the special status of photos of government ministers published on government sites.

I looked at: Commons:Copyright_tags and I did not see any tags seem to be appropriate.

Can someone help me identify within our guidelines appropriate guidance suggesting that this image should be public domain?

Once that is done, I will politely point out to the contact person that the uploaded file contained no information suggesting it qualified as public domain, as well as no suggestion that it came from a government site. Once that confirmation is provided I can undelete the image and tag it appropriately.--Sphilbrick (talk) 20:41, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

For most UK government sites, the copyright tag is {{OGL}} - provided that that license is stated on the site. Example.--Pere prlpz (talk) 21:20, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

The only UK government specific copyright information I have seen in passing would be "Parliamentary copyright" (see the template) and "Crown copyright" (see the template). I'm not a expert of any of this, so just providing the links so you can further research the issue at hand. Offnfopt^(talk) 21:38, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

At the end of https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/prime-ministers-office-10-downing-street you can see at right "© Crown copyright" but at left "OGL All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated". Therefore here "Crown copyright" just implies that the Crown has the right to license the content, and it chooses to license it under the OGL license - a free license free enough for Commons.--Pere prlpz (talk) 22:04, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Key point to note of your quote is "except where otherwise stated". A prime example is on the MP page when you click the link "Download a high-resolution photo of David Cameron" it links you to a photo on their flickr account, which then says the picture is licensed via by-nc-nd 2.0 Offnfopt^(talk) 22:36, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt responses. I'm concluding that I should not automatically assume that a photo found on a UK government site can simply be copied. We need a more explicit statement of license.--Sphilbrick (talk) 01:27, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

In general, the official approach of UK Gov for new published material is to prefer OGL. However this remains optional for all Government departments and is not retrospective for previously published works (as mentioned above most often found as Crown Copyright or Parliamentary copyright). In all cases a reuser must check for an explicit statement of copyright. Though we should be grateful that OGL exists and is a great step forward, the reality is that most Gov websites remain confusing and unhelpful for reusers with respect to copyright, especially when compared to the approach taken by US Federal Gov. --Fæ (talk) 04:18, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

User talkpage errors

I'm getting errors with every letter I type on my own and other users' talk pages:

Error: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki&only=scripts&skin=vector&version=DIGuuO6q line 4 > eval at line 352: TypeError: pending.abort is not a function

These error messages obscure the right part of my screen, making it a bit of a bitch to finish messages. This just started happening today. Anyone know what this is and how to stop it, or when it will stop happening? Thanks. INeverCry 22:52, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Same here when i'm editing any page. Thibaut120094 (talk) 00:05, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

 Comment I just got the same error editing a deletion request page, and I'm getting the error now as I type this. INeverCry 00:23, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I haven't experienced the error yet. You two may want to compare the gadgets you use to see if maybe you can narrow it down to one of those. I only have the gadgets enabled that were enabled by default. If I experience the error I'll see if I can pinpoint the script and update this post. Offnfopt^(talk) 01:28, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

June 18

Three weeks to save freedom of panorama in Europe

The London Eye, blacked out to show the effect of removing section 62 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, which allows the photography of buildings in the UK

As many of you will know, the amendment on freedom of panorama adopted to the Reda report by the Legal Affairs committee of the European Parliament on Tuesday was very bad, namely that the European Parliament

16. Considers that the commercial use of photographs, video footage or other images of works which are permanently located in physical public places should always be subject to prior authorisation from the authors or any proxy acting for them;

The text had support both from the centre-right EPP group and the centre-left S&D group.

It will now be voted on by the full European Parliament when it considers the full text of the Reda report in its plenary session on 9 July.

Unless we can generate enough public outcry to persuade MEPs at that plenary to stop or amend the text, in its current form it represents a threat to the overwhelming majority of Commons images of public art and buildings and Wiki Loves Monuments created since 1900 in all countries of the European Union.

There is more detailed (slightly UK-centric) draft article for the Signpost, at:

• en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-06-17/Three weeks to save freedom of panorama in Europe

I have also started a project stub at

• c:Commons:Freedom of Panorama 2015

to be a central on-wiki space for campaign ideas, resources and discussion. Please sign up if you have ideas or can help in any way, and help to gather together a library of useful materials, contacts made, letters sent and responses received.

I am sure there are also other things going on across Europe. Let's share what people are doing, and do what we can to beat this thing. Jheald (talk) 09:01, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Convince the WMF to allow non-commercial licenses. Throw in non-derivative licenses while you're at it. INeverCry 09:38, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

You must have clicked the wrong button, @INeverCry: this ain't Flickr. odder (talk) 10:09, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, I just helped a guy I opposed in his RFA get his bit at BN, so I figured why not extend the irony a bit further by standing with the inclusionists... INeverCry 10:20, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, this rings of "24 hours to save the NHS". The long term Commons community is excellent at sticking to the facts, the message should be able to speak for itself. Perhaps our lobbying can remain factual rather than being spun by PR and new media professionals? --Fæ (talk) 09:48, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi @Fae: . I'm not a PR or a new media professional, just a regular Commons user who was desperate to let people know what was going on. I'm sorry if you think I'm not up to scratch or don't have the skills -- but that's why this campaign so urgently needs more people to get involved. Jheald (talk) 10:11, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

No need to apologise, my comment was in no way a personal attack directed at your skills or background as is completely clear in the words I used if anyone reads them. I am aware of the context of how this approach was formed, the list of professionals who contributed to it, along with a number of chapter employees releasing statements for their organizations, and have already worked hard lobbying on this for many months.

It would probably be more effective to engage the project community early in this work, rather than with a deadline of the last 3 weeks, especially if you want some practical evidence, such as an agreed position with a supporting community consensus. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 10:35, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

@Fae: You're probably right. Chapter communications aren't as good as they should be. But to some extent it's our job, as the project community, to come forward and own this -- there's a limit to what chapters have the resources to do. I'm just a regular user, trying to do my best. I wrote to Mary Honeyball, sent her two author-illustrated books on statues and monuments in London, to try to show her what would be hit by this clause, talked to her assistant, all to no avail -- but on my own initiative, not the chapter. We can't expect the chapter to do this for us, we have to do it for ourselves.

Similarly, the Signpost article was me trying to do my best, grinding on until 4am to try to get the text together, because words don't come easily to me, but I was desperate that somebody needed to do it. Yes, it would have been great if we'd got our act together months ago. But this is where we're at, and this is what we have to work with now, if we're to pull the situation back. MEPs simply don't understand why "noncommercial only" is a problem, even MEPs from countries that currently don't have any such restriction -- for example, here's a blog this morning from the quite sane and rational and moderate Czech EPP member Svoboda, who was part of the overwhelming vote in the committee for the Cavada amendment. Unless we can get broader awareness and debate going, this will be lost. Jheald (talk) 11:47, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Jheald I have begun tweeting about it. Here, here and here. Thanks for bringing to our attention. 106.69.128.124 12:20, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
I have written to "my" MEP and asked to reject the anti-FOP proposals #413-418 und #420-426. --Túrelio (talk) 12:30, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

That's great (and good links). Did you get a reply back? Note that, going forward, those amendments have now been voted on and finished with. There may or may not be new amendments for the plenary, but the baseline text for the main Parliament vote will now be the text I blockquoted at the top above. Jheald (talk) 12:51, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

No, I didn't get a reply (didn't expect it anyway). But I will contact other MEPs from Germany and encourage other users to do so. --Túrelio (talk) 19:18, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Posted a mail to the mailing list. --Steinsplitter (talk) 16:36, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Actually it isn't important wether Turelio got an answer. There ist one thing what counts: each and every Member must get thousands of emails from different people. However it might also help if the WMF would engage in this but again the WMF considers playing Office action games at this time as a more important thing to do. --Matthiasb (talk) 20:07, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Request by Russavia

Hey gang, this is Scott (Russavia). I have a request. If you look at, for example, File:Park Hyatt, Shanghai (3198569878).jpg you will see in the "Source": * Uploaded by [[User:russavia|russavia]]. I believe this is causing files that I have uploaded to be mis-attributed to "Russavia" instead of the actual author. An example is this. This is, unfortunately, a widespread occurrence, and harms the ability of re-users to easily credit works on Commons to their correct authors. Especially since "Russavia" appears in the "Use this file" links.

To make files easier for re-use, I would like to request that someone go through this, or ALL files uploaded by myself, and remove the above wiki-code from all those uploads. I am making this request using one of my normal IPs, and this request can be confirmed by checking with me on IRC if required. Thanks, 58.7.136.251 09:57, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I could look at this and maybe fire up user:YaCBot to do it. --McZusatz (talk) 10:27, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

@McZusatz: Not that I'm going to edit a third of a million files myself, but I did verify this with him on IRC (he has a Freenode cloak), and it is a legitimate request. Probably a bit pointless to block the IP, though. Revent (talk) 10:32, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Lol, its not like WMF ever cared for Commons Wiki..they wouldn't even let Scott fix his own mistakes...--Stemoc 11:42, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks McZusatz if you could do that it would be great. Once it is completed for my uploads, I would seriously look at doing it for all uploads on Commons. It is a common problem and sincerely isn't limited to myself. 106.69.128.124 12:12, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

 Running for your uploads and all others. --McZusatz (talk) 18:45, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

OTRS and other relevant issues but not directly related to this request

While not wanting to get involved in one of these battles, I've processed quite a few OTRS tickets in the last few weeks, and see a discouraging tendency of uploaders who think that the author field is the place to put the uploaders name. I get that we can't change the term to "photographer" because many images are not photographs, but I wish we could find a better approach.--Sphilbrick (talk) 14:57, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Author is the correct name for that field and definitely not suitable for any other info like "uploader". But unfortunately some people think uploding files from some other place is the most prestigious work and consider themselves as #1 contributors here. Some tools also designed to add that nonsense (eg: Commons:derivativeFX). I had manually fixed that field in many uploads earlier. Designers need to be well educated about copyright matters. Jee 15:23, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Probably, adding an "uploader" field would make the system more understandable for those uploaders. If there are different "author" and "uploader" fieds it would be clear that author doesn't mean uploader.--Pere prlpz (talk) 15:41, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

But our system allows anyone to overwrite files. So we need Uploader 1, Uploader 2...Uploader N. Jee 15:46, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: Uploaders should be advised that they are credited for their upload work in the file history, any OTRS volunteer must take care to have truly validated the correct attribution for the Author field and advised the uploader if there is doubt. I could create a bot to pull the upload account information out of the image history log and slap it into an {{information}} template, but that would be exceedingly pointless at it duplicates what can already be seen on a standard Commons image page. --Fæ (talk) 16:30, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I just took a look at the upload wizard. After selecting the image, default is that the file is not your own work and there are two fields labeled source and authors. The second field has a small light gray question mark in paranteheses. If you hover over it, the text says The name of the person who took the photo, or painted the picture, drew the drawing, etc.

However, despite using this hundreds of times I had never noticed that text before. I suggest that many uploaders have never seen it. My guess is that the designers of this form were looking for a clean look and I'd like to respect that, but the fact is, many many submissions have that field filled in with the uploaders name.

What harm would occur if we spelled that out a bit more explicitly, for example:

Author(s) (The name of the person who took the photo, or painted the picture, drew the drawing, etc.)

If we did that we might want to do the same with source which is also misused. I understand this shouldn't be considered casually and perhaps I should make this a formal proposal, but it might be worth an experiment to see if it cuts down on the number of mis-filled out files.--Sphilbrick (talk) 19:04, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

_____________________________________

That makes complete sense to me. Anything we can do to make it clearer to the submitter and making it less onerous to cleanup would be an improvement I would think. Reguyla (talk) 19:10, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

• Without regard to any anger some people may feel for the individual making this suggestion, he or she is making an important point. When I use google's image search on my wiki-ID, "Geo Swan", while I find that some of the images credited to me on other sites are actually images I actually took myself, most of the wikimedia commons images that have been re-used by third parties that are credited to me are actually images I uploaded that were taken by someone else, and were in the public domain, or otherwise free.

So, third-party re-users tried their best to correctly honor the right to attribution and credit the individual who created the image, and found our distinction between authors and uploaders so confusing they incorrectly credited the uploader (me), not the "author". I suggest that any of you who try this will find the same thing, that like Russavia and myself, you will find you are incorrectly credited with more images for which you were simply the uploader than the credits to the images you took personally.

@Jkadavoor: wrote "Author is the correct name for that field and definitely not suitable for any other info like uploader." Sorry, I disagee. The field that Jee thinks should be labeled "author" is best filled with the individual or organization which owned the intellectual property rights, if the IP rights were owned by someone other than the photographer. "Credit to" is another alternative. Whatever name we use for this field, we should render it in bold, and double or triple size, to make it harder for good faith third party users to be confused and credit the uploader, instead.

I just did a google image search on my wiki-ID. Of the images it tosses up, that I recognize, the first seven are false positives, image I merely uploaded, which, however good faith third parties incorrectly attributed to me.

FWIW I don't google myself because I am vain. I occasionally google myself so I can see if those hatemongers at wikipediareview are slandering me again.

Even though some people seem to continue to bear a grudge against Russavia, he or she has raised an important point here, and deserves a thank you. So Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 21:42, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

• I didn't fully understand your disagreement. If "copyright holder" is different from "author", it also need to be mentioned there with a prefix "copyright:". But "uploader" or somebody do minor edits which are not qualified for "derivative work" need not be mentioned there. Note that our generic template {{Information}} use "author"; but special templates like {{Specimen}} and {{Photograph}} use more specific words. "Author" can be changed to "Author/Copyright" if it is more easy to understand.
• Media Viewer and many external sites like EOL is populating the attribution from "author" and "source" fields. So they should not be used for other purposes.
• I remember that I made a proposal at VPC based on my experience. It attracted some response and LuisV (WMF) agreed with the need for improving our file pages. But after that, the proposal died without any action.
• I suggest to improve the license tag and file page so that reusers can easily gather all attribution information like title, author/copyright, source, license (TASL) from a single point as boldly mentioned on top of the permission field. Jee 03:06, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Why an admin allow a banned user to edit here?

Seriously? A banned user edits here, the WMF blocks the IP, and a Commons admin unblocks him? Good grief, Commons is broken. --B (talk) 18:18, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

You are mistaken, Russavia was never banned. Bans require a rationale and can be appealed. Office blocks have none of this transparent governance. --Fæ (talk) 18:37, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Silly me to think that the organization that runs a website has the authority to ban people from using it. --B (talk) 18:56, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Please do not parody what I wrote. --Fæ (talk) 19:57, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

To avoid further pointless wikilawyering over words; note that blocks are as defined by Commons:Blocking policy. A WMF Office action is known as a "Lock" and the WMF Office action on Russavia is known as being "locked globally". This system has no community consensus and none was sought. Commons Administrators have no authority in this system, nor are Commons Administrators requested to take any action to support such WMF Office actions. To protect themselves from risks external to Commons, unpaid volunteers should never take it upon themselves to either interpret or apply a WMF Office action, further no employee of the WMF shall ever ask an unpaid volunteer to take action related to a WMF Office action. --Fæ (talk) 12:07, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

If the WMF wants to ban him that's their right. Personally I am here to contribute to building knowledge (writing an encyclopedia, etc.) so as long as the editor is editing positively I don't really care if he is banned. He addressed a relevant problem so there is no validity to the argument that we should simply ignore it and stick our fingers in our ears shouting HE's BANNED, over and over. The WMF only gets involved when they want to and oftentimes when we ask them tin intervene they run off into a corner and hide so if the WMF doesn't like the community taking reasonable suggestions and valid problems seriously regardless of the source, then they can hire full time people to make improvement's to the projects to keep them running instead of volunteers. That's just my opinion. Reguyla (talk) 21:25, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

On User:Russavia: "Consistent with the Terms of Use, Russavia has been banned by the Wikimedia Foundation from editing Wikimedia sites." The only person wikilawering over words here is Fae. -- Colin (talk) 13:02, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Nope, I am as well I suppose because I agree with the technical definition that Fae gives as well and the term ban is loosely used in that statement but its not technically accurate. But technically you are as well. Lawyering, wiki or otherwise requires 2 sides. So regardless of the side of the argument, both sides are technically wikilawyeruing. As I said above. The WMF is free to do as they wish and the admins here are as well. I suppose any commons admin who wants to can continue chasing him around until their hearts content, but we should be doing what benefits commons, not what's politically convenient for the WMF. If positive edits are being made and they improve the project for our readers and users, I personally do not really care who is doing them. You clearly feel differently and that's ok. But that's not wikilawyering, its just life. Personally if the WMF wants to keep chasing after him let them. Otherwise there is a ton of work that needs to be done on the project and it takes editors to do that. Banned or otherwise. Reguyla (talk) 13:19, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

The point is that global locks and office actions are just how the ban is enforced (albeit ineffectually). So Fae, in arguing with User:B, is just completely wrong. It's a ban. It might not be a community supported ban. But it is still a ban. And every one of us signs up to the Terms of Use every time we edit. It is about time a few people here dealt with that and moved on, whether they like it or not. -- Colin (talk) 13:50, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I must admit that, as someone who has been the ongoing target of an unfair ban (on ENWP) that was done by manipulating policy and continues to be an extremely frustrating and aggravating issue for me to date, along with the WMF's attitude towards commons and the Wiki communities in general, I am sensitive to a perception of being unfairly treated and find it personally difficult to blindly obey the "Trust us we know what we are doing" attitude and the "Secret evidence" justifications. I completely understand that they cannot tell us why they added the lock, but personally I do not perceive it as our problem. Let them deal with it if they want, or not. Especially if we do not "need" to know why they did it, when we all know about the JimboGate incident, we have no reason, requirement or need to enforce a WMF lock. Reguyla (talk) 14:06, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

We have no policy that requires anyone to do anything on this site: we are all volunteers. If an admin wishes to block a Russavia sock they may, and WMF takes a very dim view of anyone interfering with that (such as unblocking the account or harassing that admin). But an admin can choose to ignore socks just as they can pick and choose whatever they do on Commons. This is already all well established by earlier discussions. There's no need for anyone to continue to spread misinformation about the fact that Scott is banned. -- Colin (talk) 14:27, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

One of the fundamental policies of Wikipedia is "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." This clearly applies to blocks and bans. What sockhunters fail to recognize is that the only thing they can be hunting is vandalism, not the fact that a banned user is ignoring a ban. Policy requires them to ignore the ban. I thank Scott (Russavia) for bringing these edits to our attention. Delphi234 (talk) 06:06, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

So what this and this mean? Glad to see people have revelations when one of their colleague is victimized by the same set of rules and practices they followed for years to suppress their opponents. By his own words "it difficult to believe that he is legally competent to understand and agree with licencing terms, because it appears that he does not understand what being indefinitely blocked/banned on Wikimedia means." Jee 16:27, 21 June 2015 (UTC) Why R. allowed to report issues; but PK is prevented to report legitimate copyright issues is also worth to consider. Jee 17:09, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Delphi234, just in case you didn't notice, this is Commons, not Wikipedia. Still, IAR, while not a policy here, is useful if interpreted correctly. Lots of our banned former-users were capable of of doing a lot of good work. The ban means we lose out on that work, which is sad, but we deal with it and move on. Being banned doesn't mean "you are from now onwards only permitted to post to Commons if everyone agrees what you write is really helpful and positive". Being banned doesn't work like that. It means you can no longer directly contribute or participate here. On any level. We are being taken for fools by those suggesting that somehow we need to permit the odd russavia posting or the odd unblocking, in order to receive these words of wisdom. Russavia knows how to use email, IRC, and many other communications where he can pass on suggestions like the above. If they are helpful, then I'd hope a non-banned user would act on them and improve the site. This is all totally known and understood. The only purpose to Russavia posting to the village pump, rather than indirectly to a friend, is to remind everyone how very not dead he is, and to moon at the WMF. -- Colin (talk) 17:14, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

As discussion on this sub-thread has devolved to making dramatic claims of "victimization" and "suppression" based on user talk page edits from 2013, I think we can safely move on.

If anyone wishes to provide evidence of harassment on Commons that requires action, then the Village Pump is not the right place. Present your evidence at COM:AN/U. --Fæ (talk) 16:59, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

The discussion is about whether a banned user should post to the village pump, and an admin unblock them so they can post further. They shouldn't. You know that. I know that. Denniss knows that. -- Colin (talk) 17:14, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Village pump gaming of discussion by manipulating titles

Could an administrator please give a warning for those changing thread titles after discussion is established? I find this unacceptable as a way to deliberately manipulate the views of others by post-hoc reframing of the topic. This is disruptive, non-collegiate, and in my view serious enough for a block.

Evidence

1. diff
2. diff
3. diff

--Fæ (talk) 17:35, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Reverted for now - reverting & discussing is the standard procedure but edit-warring is not ok. --Steinsplitter (talk) 17:40, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

4. diff

@Steinsplitter: You will need to revert again to restore the original title, it was not "Why an admin allow a banned user to edit here?" which was not the topic that the comments on the thread were responding to. This is disruptive gaming. --Fæ (talk) 17:49, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) ::This is not a side tracked discussion; have its on topic. That title was added by a banned user to dilute the seriousness of discussion after B made a serious allegation. Last, admin should not defend other admins. Jee 17:46, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Could an administrator please give a warning to those inserting POV thread titles after a discussion is established. I find this unacceptable as a way to deliberately manipulate the views of others by post-hoc reframing of the topic. This is disruptive, non-collegiate, and in my view serious enough for a block. Oh, wait, the user who did it is already blocked. Now I see Fae, Jee and Steinsplitter edit warring over a section heading created by Russavia. Why don't we ask User:B what sub-heading his query "Seriously? A banned user edits here, the WMF blocks the IP, and a Commons admin unblocks him? Good grief, Commons is broken." should have. I think "On whether Russavia should edit here and Denniss unblock him" is neutral and accurate. Jee thinks "Why an admin allow a banned user to edit here" is accurate. Fae prefers Russavia's text "Side discussion not actually relevant to this request" which is clearly an attempt to close an important discussion as "irrelevant". I'd like an uninvolved admin to comment and hand around the blocks to anyone edit warring, certainly not someone like Denniss. -- Colin (talk) 17:52, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Image Download link forms bad URLs

I am currently experiencing a few bugs when using the "Download" link to download images. I think it worked a few weeks ago.

Example page, picked at random: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wombat_Tasmania.jpg

In Firefox, the Download link appears first in the list of links across the top of the image.
In IE, the Download link appears to the right of the image.

Clicking the "Download" link brings up a window showing

Page URL:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWombat_Tasmania.jpg
File URL:
https:https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Wombat_Tasmania.jpg
Attribution:
By D. Gordon E. Robertson (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Notice the doubled "https:" in the "File URL" field. Clicking "Full Resolution" then loads a URL which will never work:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Wombat_Tasmania.jpg

Scrolling down to the versions table and clicking the Date/Time next to the current version of the image works.

Any ideas? — Mwr0 (talk) 14:33, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I guess that's partially my bad due to gerrit:218819. The stock photo gadget needs to be updated. Bawolff (talk) 23:42, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

This now appears to have been fixed by this edit. At least, it works correctly for me now. Revent (talk) 10:54, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes!! Looks to be fixed!!  Thank you. — Mwr0 (talk) 19:09, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Ongoing Labs Outage Update

See details here about labs outage -- Offnfopt^(talk) 16:11, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Labs is back up with some notes for those who run tools https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/labs-l/2015-June/003814.html Offnfopt^(talk) 12:12, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Help needed to classify old-timer automobiles

In Category:Hoek van Holland there is a series of pictures taken on 2010-05-16 of vintage cars. There must have been some event at that time. (or they where using the ferry)Smiley.toerist (talk) 21:48, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I changed some by looking up the plate, but I did a reverse search on one of the images and found this page de:Benutzer_Diskussion:Spurzem/Archiv/2010#einige_Autos... a lot of the same images, but they're lower quality than the ones you're going through. But you can get some of the car descriptions from that page. Offnfopt^(talk) 22:18, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

One multilingual file instead of many language files

Hello. One day I decided to help a few Wikipedia. I decided to download the series of files for ESC articles (used in score tables) with the texts of countries where they are used vertically. Each language section of Wikipedia I had to upload the new files (excluding the similar names). Now I decided to make a multilingual file and check it out. it works. And here's my idea, and the question:

Maybe I replace multiple language files into this one file?

What am I talking about? I mean delete (that currently used) and replace it with one files (40 texts of all participated country of ESC instead of 400 files of each set language of countries). For example, this one test file (for example, it names "ESCAustria.svg") can be replace 9 of same files (File:ESCAvstriya.svg, File:ESCÀustria.svg, File:ESCRakousko.svg, File:ESCØstrig.svg, File:ESCOostenrijk.svg, File:ESCAustria.svg (as basic), File:ESCΑυστρία.svg, File:ESCAustria.svg (in Polish it have same name, but some countries have'nt), File:ESCAvusturya.svg).

How it works?

Multilingual files is able to change. And I want to delete all language files and replace only 40 (how many countries in ESC?) multilingual files (that contains 10-20 "switch" varioations). I mean that:

File:ESCCountry.svglang=azlang=calang=czlang=dalang=nllang=ellang=pllang=tr replace File:ESCCountry.svg (closer look at filenames [or URL-links])

And I want to do this with all files. Or by hand, or with bot. "lang" no need to enter, if your browser recognizes you as a native speaker (it very good for Native Wikipedia Users). For example, in Russian Wikipedia (if exist "ru" variant in code of file), (as Russian) I see the Russian version without the use of "lang=ru" variant in all Wikipedias. See more Commons:Translation possible/Learn more. ← Aléxi̱s Spoudaíos ^talk_rus? 12:16, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

This is impractical and will not even work. To have one image file and then a bot to "change the text within a saved image", which is basically being proposed here is way too complexed for even a bot to do. It's like saying upload a blank canvas and depending on what is written in a parameter changes the image on that blank canvas. It is impossible. Wes Mouse | ^T@lk 12:50, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

@Wesley Mouse: I think you may have misunderstood the proposal. With SVG files it is perfectly possible to have one file contain multiple text layers for different languages and choose the one to be displayed based on the language settings of the user who looks at it (not documented very well, but see Help_talk:SVG#Multiple_Language_SVG). File:ESCCountry.svg is an example for this: You can change the language by adding a language code to the URL (File:ESCCountry.svg&lang=az) or manually by using the Render this image in option on the file description page. --El Grafo (talk) 13:13, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

@Wesley Mouse: It works even in non-Wikimedia wikis. SVG use standart HTML-tag. If I offer this, then it works. For example add [[File:ESCCountry.svg|lang=tr|30px]] at Turkish Wikipedia and you will se Turkish variant of file. All turkish users (that sistematically used turkish interface and language) will be see turkish name of country. And if you place [[File:ESCCountry.svg|30px]] at Turkish Wikipedia, you will see only English version (because I set up it as basic in code). BUT all turkish users will be see only Turkish version of file. ← Aléxi̱s Spoudaíos ^talk_rus? 13:14, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I like it, I don't know how it works, but I like it. --AxG (talk) 17:11, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I all figured out. I'll update base files (English), and then replace them all (where use) for these basic files. It will have to call all of the same native names of the countries. After all the replacements, I will send a request for the removal of rest of existing files (Danish, Dutch, Czech ...). No one was hurt, and everything will work as it should. Before a request for removal, I test the functionality of changed files and report it to you so that you are sure. If something will not work, I will be rolled back all my changes and everything will fall into place as it was. As for the English Wikipedia, then you should not even be any changes. The only thing that may be unusual, that if these files will not appear in the language, but it is already associated with your language settings. If you use the Danish language in the English Wikipedia, then you'll see the Danish title. This can be corrected By stamping "lang=en" in each file. Then the files will be 100% in English, regardless of the selected system language of your wiki. In general, you do see everything when I start work on this in the coming days. ← Aléxi̱s Spoudaíos ^talk_rus? 10:35, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Most of my work is in creating SVGs and translations. See Help:Translation tutorial. Delphi234 (talk) 06:03, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

So it is possible then? Fabulous! I didn't know it woyld be possible, but now that a couple of editors have explained it can, then I REALLY like this idea. Wes Mouse | ^T@lk 15:30, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Missing information templates affecting reusability of content

Hi again guys/gals. This is Scott (Russavia). I am editing here using a proxy as the WMF globally locked my last two real IPs, and frankly, I can't be bothered resetting my modem to get a new IP at this time. The authenticity of this message can be checked by asking me on IRC if required.

It was recently brought to my attention on Twitter by an individual who utilises a lot of Creative Commons licenced media, and especially from Wikimedia Commons, that the "Use this file" option was missing on a file. I worked out this is due to it missing the {{Information}} template. A few days later, I was again alerted to another file which was missing the link. Upon checking Category:Media missing infobox template has approximately 530,000 files in it. This equates to around 2% of media on Wikimedia Commons that is essentially difficult (read: impossible) for external re-users to easily use. I alerted the WMF (@wikicommons) to the issue, but don't imagine this is something that is in their area of interest in raising with this community, so here I am.

Having 2% of Commons files being almost impossible for external reusers to use, and comply with licencing, easily is something that is untenable. I do understand that everyone has their own thing going on. Jarekt raised the general issue of missing templates in November 2014, but there was no input. Perhaps people don't know what these missing templates mean for reusability of this content.

Simply put, there needs to be a solution to this problem, and hope it can be looked at. I could recommend the following:

1. Establishing a task force of editors, especially the gnomish type (editors like Revent come to mind), who could manually work through these hundreds of thousands of files and fix the issue
2. Have a bot operator, such as Steinsplitter, Zhuyifei1999, Odder, Fæ, etc, see if a bot couldn't somehow help to put these information templates on such files. Perhaps this could be done with AWB, I don't know?
3. Institute a filter that disallows uploading of new files which don't have such templates.

That's just a few ideas I have, workable or not, I don't know. I don't mind doing the changes to the odd file when it's brought to my attention by an external reuser, but obviously I am not in the position to do anything long-term, etc. So I turn it over to you guys and gals to see what you can up with. Cheers, 31.193.140.164 12:57, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Russavia, Thank you for raising this issue. WMF is actually also interested in it and they promote m:File metadata cleanup drive which resulted in Commons:Bots/Work_requests/Archive_11#Adding_the_Information_template_to_files_that_don.27t_have_it this effort by bot operators. Unfortunately it quickly died out since we are mostly talking about some of the oldest files on Commons, which were also edited for last decade and do not lend themselves easily to bot operations and doing it manually is too depressing to contemplate. We managed to clean up files with broken infobox templates and many home-brewed information templates, but that hardly made a dent. Somethings I was contemplating:

• Contact all the uploders of files in Category:Media missing infobox template give tem a list of their files which are missing infoboxes and invite them to fix them. Some might still be around and willing to help.
• Propose Policy requiring all new uploads to use a infobox, since ttere is still plenty new uploads without any templates.
• develop bot preventing or reverting any edits that cause loss of all infoboxes or all licenses.

--Jarekt (talk) 13:19, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

 Info probably won't help much, but I made a proposal to add Category:Media missing infobox template to Commons:Community portal. --El Grafo (talk) 13:40, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Not a priority fix IMHO. The information template, indeed any template is optional. Rather than de facto making it mandatory, it would be more helpful if the structured data proposals that the WMF started but have since forgotten about, apparently, were resurrected, gained solid community support, and were thoroughly tested and bought off by a community panel. --Fæ (talk) 14:09, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

As I understand it adding infobox templates is a first step of implementing structured data, because pages with infoboxes can be much more easily parsed than the ones without. --Jarekt (talk) 14:21, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

That makes sense. I know you are both good with bots and I am also to a lesser degree capable as well. When I looked through the lit of Category:Media missing infobox template I see images with some easy to automate scenarios, quite a few images that IMO we do not need and could/should be deleted anyway. So although I agree with Fae to a point that its not a huge priority, I also don't think we should ignore the problem either and if we can fairly easily automate the task and clean some up we should. Even if we can only do 50, 000 of the 550, 000 by bot, its a start. Reguyla (talk) 14:26, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

It's not so much that WMF forgot about it, actually lack of metadata was again identified this last quarter as one of the key elements that keeps back the projects in all kinds of manners.. It's just that realization has set in that we need a lot more fundamental work done before people can start building a system for File metadata. Starting now (or rather last year) would have resulted in a train wreck. There need to be more/better/standardized building blocks before we build a tower. I suspect this effort although initially very invisible to a lot of people will be very important in the long run to finally solve this problem. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:46, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

@TheDJ: Thanks for highlighting the tech discussion. It is a shame this is lost in the long grass (invisible is apt) considering what a huge difference it would make to how the projects might integrate, and how Commons could become a consistent user & mobile app friendly platform with a much improved API (hopefully out-classing Flickr's). For me at least, this is one to mentally park until the WMF makes a firm public commitment and invests some serious grant money into making it visible for contributors like me and end reusers of our service. --Fæ (talk) 15:07, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

 Comment COM:MRD is worth taking a look at for anyone not familiar with it, as it's relevant to why {{Information}} templates are desirable. Revent (talk) 14:28, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, one thing I was thinking about was scraping the Creator data of the applicable ones and then writing that to the Infobox of the File that's missing it. That should cover quite a few and although it may not be 100%, its still better than nothing at all. There are also quite a few (about 13, 000) with OTRS approval so IMO some of those can probably be done as well if the OTRS data is available and can be used to automate the task a bit (of course that would rquire someone with access). Reguyla (talk) 14:31, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

 Info AFAIK @Ladsgroup: is working on a bot for this --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 14:36, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks and that will cover some as well. But it only covers certain situations which will still leave a lot to do. But that would at least be a chunk done. Reguyla (talk) 14:59, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

In December we fixed quite a few of those, I focused on files from some high frequent uploaders, there were some nice patterns and particular uploaders often have a similar style of formatting their file descriptions between their files. On User:Basvb/cleanup some links can be found for the approach I used there. Looking at the progress now it seems that in December we dropped the number of files without information template with almost 100.000, since then however the influx seems to be as high as the number of files being fixed. The approach of requesting all uploaders (especially those with a low number of files) if they are willing to add the information templates to their files as suggested by Jarekt seems a good idea. In January we also discussed the issue of how fast vs how good these files should be fixed. A higher quality in adding the templates (making sure the author is never on accident put in the description field etc.) makes for a slower progress. A more coördinated drive to adding information templates would be welcomed by me. Basvb (talk) 16:43, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the link. I'll check that out and I'll definitely help chisel away at those myself. I'm not so much use here at uploading files and copyright decisions but I am pretty good at the gnomish stuff. :-) Reguyla (talk) 19:08, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi all, this is Russavia. Thanks for all the info above, I'll leave this in the capable hands of those above who have mentioned various things going on in relation to this. I understand it's a massive undertaking, but it will be well worth ensuring re-users can used repository content with ease in the future. Cheers, 85.234.133.143 20:19, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

If somebody wants to do some by hand/one by one than this search (other link with only FP on commons) might be a good starting point, this are 560 files which have the assessment template (indicating that they are likely a FP on some wiki or here) which are missing an infobox template (some of the higher ones have a user-template similar to an infobox template but without machine readable data, those likely need some additional discussing). These FP are arguably some of the most likely images to be reused because of their outstanding quality. Basvb (talk) 20:48, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Separating history - can it, should it, be done

Someone uploaded a new image, using the same name as a deleted image. The new image is File:6th FL ANV Pattern.jpg. This is a photo of a reproduction of the original. A photo of the original was uploaded and deleted.

I think it would have been better to upload this new photo with a different name, to avoid the mess that we have, in which an acceptable photo has the exact same name as a deleted photo. However, I am not sure:

1. whether this is worth worrying about,
2. or what to do if it is

I considered deleting the photo, and asking the uploaded to use a different name. However, the uploader will be unable to upload in that situation, as the Upload Wizard will detect that the image matches a deleted image.

I considered renaming the image, to, for example File:6th FL ANV Pattern (reproduction).jpg

However, I think the renaming, which of course is a move, will carry along the history of the deleted image. My goal is to separate the two. Can this be done? Should it be done?--Sphilbrick (talk) 14:48, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

• I assume that in your proposed name you mean "reproduction" not "reporduction". Jmabel ! talk 15:45, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Fixed, yes.--Sphilbrick (talk) 21:15, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

• I don't see any evidence of a prior file at that name. I'm an admin, so I'd expect to be able to access that if it exists. Why do you believe there was another image there? - Jmabel ! talk 15:48, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Click on history, then on

View or restore 3 deleted edits?

And look at the 17:47, 18 June 2015 entry--Sphilbrick (talk) 21:18, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

• @Sphilbrick: I've separated the files into File:6th FL ANV Pattern.jpg and File:6th FL ANV Pattern (reproduction).jpg. File:6th FL ANV Pattern.jpg is, however, currently tagged for speedy deletion, so I suggest you fixed it as soon as possible :-) Thanks! odder (talk) 22:15, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I've now handled that one. The other can remain deleted.--Sphilbrick (talk) 01:39, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

cleaning up, creating link inclusion criteria, and consolidating Free Media Resources

Hi Commons,

Some years ago I came across w:Wikipedia:Public domain image resources -- a great resource both as an editor myself and for when I work with student editors. A little over a year ago Klortho suggested it, as well as meta:Help:Public domain image resources, merge/redirect to the same page at Commons (Commons:Free media resources -- and in particular /Photography). Seemed like a logical idea rather than try to maintain parallel resources, but it never really went anywhere.

All three are magnets for spam. There are plenty of great links, but many are clearly just set up to get some ad revenue, which just collect republish whatever domain images they could find on other sites. Others say public domain but seem sketchy about it. Others have just a handful of random pictures that either the site owner took...

I'd like to follow through on this -- move image resources to the Commons and clean up what's here. Nobody contended that move at the Wikipedia page, but it would, of course, require a thread opened at Meta to take action there. I think an important first step, though, would be to come up with a standard for links. For that I could use some help. Wikipedia has a pretty clear external linking policy. Being a list of resources in the Wikipedia namespace, it's a little fuzzy, but there's nonetheless precedent for removing spammy sites wherever they may be. As I have less experience on Commons, I don't know if there's the same sort of approach to or opinions on [apparent] spam. I could also use help creating a standard for the way the sites describe their copyright/terms. I'm familiar with copyright on Wikipedia, but say, for example, a site says, effectively, "we're pretty sure these are all public domain, but if we're wrong, let us know." Others say public domain but provide links to where they got the image -- and the license is a bit different. It's messy.

Maybe the best approach would be to only allow links to collections published by traditionally reliable sources (like a museum, government agency, or educational institution), collections of original work (e.g. here are all my pictures of birds I've taken and released CC-0), and collections on on sites which have an established reputation as resources (like, I think, Pixabay). Most importantly, this precludes including aggregator sites, which are most of what's added to these pages.

I'm posting to the Village Pump because I'm pretty sure people aren't watching those resources talk pages but it concerns pages which are likely frequently consulted by the public -- and the advice I could use is more general. Thanks. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  15:58, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Problems with File Upload?

In last two days number of files was uploaded from a first time users (all with a single edit) where the metadata consists of {{Information |Description= |Source= |Date= |Author= |Permission= |other_versions= }}. Example files:

• File:Dura.jpg
• File:Massenet's-birthplace.jpg
• File:首都大廳.jpg

Is this related to the labs problems in last 2 days somehow, or did several first time users suddenly discovered some unusual way to upload images where they are allowed to leave all the fields blank and still upload the image? --Jarekt (talk) 18:52, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

HTTPS

Hi everyone.

Over the last few years, the Wikimedia Foundation has been working towards enabling HTTPS by default for all users, including unregistered ones, for better privacy and security for both readers and editors. This has taken a long time, as there were different aspects to take into account. Our servers haven't been ready to handle it. The Wikimedia Foundation has had to balance sometimes conflicting goals.

Forced HTTPS has just been implemented on all Wikimedia projects. Some of you might already be aware of this, as a few Wikipedia language versions were converted to HTTPS last week and the then affected communities were notified.

Most of Wikimedia editors shouldn't be affected at all. If you edit as registered user, you've probably already had to log in through HTTPS. We'll keep an eye on this to make sure everything is working as it should. Do get in touch with us if you have any problems after this change or contact me if you have any other questions.

/Johan (WMF)

22:01, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

After the Labs outage with all my cron jobs suspended, my files reverted to a 10 days old backup, the API continuation parameter change, I hope this is the last change potentially breaking my bots. -- Rillke^(q?) 22:06, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

+1 --Steinsplitter (talk) 18:30, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Wrong Village Pump link in Ukrainian locale

Dear Commons, I need advice on how to correct the Village Pump link that appears under the logo in the main menu when using Ukrainian locale (i.e. interface language). Presently it points to Commons:Форум, which is the Russian-language Village Pump. It should instead point to the Ukrainian-language one, Commons:Кнайпа. How to correct this? --YurB (talk) 10:52, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi YurB, I corrected MediaWiki:Village pump/uk and created MediaWiki:Village pump-url/uk, please tell me if it's good? Regards, Thibaut120094 (talk) 11:05, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Thibaut120094! It is correct. --YurB (talk) 11:29, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. YurB (talk) 11:29, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

OTRS question

Dear Commons, I have a question about getting OTRS permissions in the following circumstances:

1. The permissions are planned to be received from inheritors of composer(s) of several classical musical compositions, recordings of performances of which by Ukrainian Art Song Project are planned to be uploaded to Commons;
2. So there will be in fact two levels of the permission:
   1. The copyright on the musical composition itself - which belongs to the inheritors of the composer(s), and which is the critical aspect of my question;
   2. And the copyright on the performance and recording - which belongs to Ukrainian Art Song Project;
3. The permission from the inheritors will be negotiated by Ukrainian Art Song Project, and then forwarded with their own permission on the recording to the OTRS team;
4. The permission is likely to be on paper, because the inheritors may not be active on the Internet (I suspect some of them may not even have an email account).

The performance rights permission is simple - there are already files with such permission confirmed, because only the permission from Ukrainian Art Song Project had to be received, as there were only performances of public-domain music so far. In continuation of the project we plan to receive permission on several other non-PD pieces from the composers' inheritors in order to upload several more recordings. So my question is the following:

Which form of permission should Ukrainian Art Song Project request from the inheritors? Sure it will be based on Commons:Email templates, but how exactly would it have to look in this case? In particular, should we first upload the files and mark them with the {{OP}} template, and then include the links to the files in the (possible signed on paper) permission? Or may we just include the titles of the compositions to be published instead of the direct file names (because the process of receiving the permission may last a couple of weeks)?

The situation is also complicated somewhat by the fact that Ukrainian Art Song Project is based in Canada, and their representative will visit Ukraine for a limited time and meet the composers' ancestors, this is why I want to make sure we prepare a proper permission template beforehand.

Your advice will be highly appreciated. --YurB (talk) 13:46, 20 June 2015 (UTC)