Commons-l February 2007

40 participants
31 discussions

Making a home wiki field in user login
by bawolff 20 Mar '07

20 Mar '07

Flo said: >My additional wish would be a way to contact one time contributers. There >are several ways to achieve this: >* Creating a field "home wiki" on the resistration form. ... How hard could that be? Create a field in the log in page saying ''I ussually contribute to project x'', preferably this could be done semi-automatically via referrer headers or wikipedia linking with a url like http://common.wikimedia.org/wiki/special:userlogin?from=en.wikipedia . The thing gets automatically filled out, and the user can change it if he wants. Then when he creates an account, his user page has a template on it automatically that says, "so and so is usually at foo, leave a message both here and there". Then if orphanbot [or whatever you call your bots that send messages] comes a long, sees it, and leaves a message at both commons and the local wiki. --bawolff

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King of the FlickrLickrs
by Erik Moeller 09 Mar '07

09 Mar '07

I'd like to officially announce Andre Engels as the reigning KING OF THE FLICKRLICKRS. Andre was one of the first FlickrLickr reviewers, and has reviewed a total of 30,000 CC-BY-licensed Flickr images so far. http://epov.org/cgi-bin/flickrlickr.pl?stats=1 Thanks to Andre for his continuing dedication. Though, KenWalker is catching up quickly with 24,000 reviewed pictures. ;-) There are currently 65 registered reviewers. For those who do not know, FlickrLickr is a collaborative review process for picking freely licensed pictures on Flickr that should be uploaded to Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:FlickrLickr You see 50 random photos per page, edit their descriptions, and tick the ones you want to upload. The vast majority of photos on Flickr is of no relevance to us, or of unacceptable quality. So far, more than 150,000 pictures have been reviewed, and about 8,000 of these have been uploaded to Commons. New pics are being uploaded to Flickr at a much faster rate than we can review them -- there are more than 5 million pictures under acceptable licenses on Flickr. So we always need more volunteers. Just e-mail me off-list if you want an account (include your Commons username). You can review some of the favorites chosen by FlickrLickr users here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:FlickrLickr/Highlights (That page could use some reorganization - feel free to be bold. :-) Some FlickrLickr pictures have become featured, and we do our best to ensure that useful pictures get included in Wikimedia articles. Volunteer today, and one day you might be the next .. KING OF THE FLICKRLICKRS. ;-) -- Peace & Love, Erik DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees. "An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic

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recent legal issues in France
by David Monniaux 01 Mar '07

01 Mar '07

Two legal changes in France, one working for us, one against us: 1) Wartime copyright extensions Before 1995, the normal duration of copyright in France was 50 years after the death of the author, or after publication in the case of collective or anonymous works. However, there were special extensions meant to compensate the world wars. Due to European "harmonization" of laws, the normal duration was extended to 70 years (following Germany, I think). The lingering question was whether the war extensions still applied. The French Court of Cassation <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_of_Cassation> said they didn't (at least in the case where extensions didn't start to elapse before 1995, but those who did will be over in 2009 or so). A yet unsolved question is the case of the 30 year extensions for authors killed in action (the only major author that comes to mind is Antoine de Saint Exupéry <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint_Exup%C3%A9ry>, of /Little Prince/ fame). Wikimedia France is having its counsel investigate the exact implications of this evolution. In any case, it seems that the situation is better for us. For the curious, the relevant articles are in the Code of intellectual property, L123-1, -8, -9 and -10, and in rulings 280 and 281 of the Court of Cassation, first civil chamber, for 2007. 2) Repression of 'happy slapping' The French parliament has just passed a law aimed at preventing delinquence. Among a gazillion of measures on diverse issues more or less related to delinquence, the Senate passed an amendment aimed at repressing 'happy slapping'. 'Happy slapping' is basically youngsters beating up people, filming the scene with cell phones, and broadcasting the movie in order to humiliate the victim. Unfortunately, the wording of the amendment was broad, and basically criminalized against filming or broadcasting the film of certain kinds of violences, unless one does so for gathering evidence for legal proceedings, or as part of the normal work of a *profession* whose goal is to inform the public. In short, they have outlawed normal citizens (not professional journalists) video reporting on certain kinds of violences. This could prove a problem for Wikipedia, Commons and Wikinews contributors; for instance, if reporting on police violence. Wikimedia France contacted officials, who claimed that this was not the intent; the only target was happy slapping, and that if we had called them earlier they would have the amendment altered. Now, several good things can still happen : * The opposition has had the law sent for constitutional review. It is possible that this article will get constitutional "reservations of interpretation" that will clarify the situation of non professionals. * The government will perhaps clarify the issue; that is, make it clear that the intent of this article is not to punish non professionals reporting on events with a goal to inform the public. * Even if the law is accepted as is, prosecutors may get orders not to enforce it against non professionals who merely meant to inform. * Judges may also decide the same, if they feel there is a superior need of freedom of speech. Finally, do not forget that there are legislative elections 3 months away or so, and this law may go 'pschitt' if the current opposition wins. In any case, I don't expect actual prosecution of "citizen journalists", though I envision as a credible possibility that overzealous police may want to get rid of undesirable reporters using this law. Even if you are prosecuted or sentenced in the end, being taken into police custody is intimidating enough. Wikimedia France tries to get informed on that issue.

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Mayflower: Wikimedia Commons media search
by Tangotango 27 Feb '07

27 Feb '07

Hi, this is a follow-up to my posts regarding "The Ideal Wiki Software" on foundation-l, from late January. I've uploaded my Wikimedia Commons image/media search tool, dubbed "Mayflower", to the toolserver; it's available at http:// tools.wikimedia.de/~tangotango/mayflower/. Just to recap, this tool allows full-text searching of the Commons database, returning a gallery-based results page, much like Google Images and similar services. The main goal was to make a user- friendly interface, so that even non-Wikimedians can take advantage of it. As I said back in January, I'm still interested in Brianna Laugher's idea of making a gallery-based, full-text search feature available as a MediaWiki extension, so that it can take advantage of the existing MediaWiki search index and the stability of the main servers. Any comments and/or suggestions would be most welcome. (Sorry if this looks like an advertisement; I don't usually advertise new tools, but I thought the foundation-l and commons-l communities would be interested.) Cheers, Tangotango

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Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] a new free image!
by David Gerard 27 Feb '07

27 Feb '07

Here's a question. Is it acceptable to put a non-free licence as an option if a work is also clearly under a free licence? If so, I might be suggesting this to a few people and organisations ... there's one or two I think I could get GFDL-plus-CC-by-nc-nd past ... [Erik - not just that one, another one I'm speaking to. w00t!] - d. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco(a)gmail.com> Date: 27-Feb-2007 16:53 Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] a new free image! To: wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org If I remember I even saw a picture doubly licensed as GFDL + CC-BY-NC-SA (on en.wiki), which I recognised as pure genius. I wonder if such a double licensing would be allowed on commons :) Marco Yonatan Horan wrote: >And if you release the photos under the GFDL rather than a Creative Commons >license it's highly unlikely there would be any commercial usage as the GFDL >would have to be attached (to the newspaper, book or photo) and it's a long >document. Newspapers and books (the two more likely uses of your pictures) >would probably rather pay you to use the picture as they're not going to >include the GFDL in their publication. We have a few professional >photographers on commons that do this to protect their living and still let >us use their pictures under the copyleft GFDL. In fact, in the case of the >person who this long thread is about, he is a professional photographer who >released the image under the GFDL so he can get some sort of compensation if >somebody wants to use it commercially. > >-Yonatan > > > _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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image search engines
by Brianna Laugher 27 Feb '07

27 Feb '07

Yotophoto seems to have improved since the last time I looked at it: http://yotophoto.com/search?kw=wikimedia+commons They link correctly to image description pages rather than raw images. They say "Originally an experiment to facilitate easier image searching of the Wikipedia, Yotophoto eventually expanded to index other well known free image sites." I didn't know that... Anyone know how to do a site-specific search there? Because of Wikipedia's habit of having the "fake" image page when using an image from Commons, I suspect we will languish in anonymity for some time yet... cheers Brianna user:pfctdayelise

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a new free image!
by daniwo59＠aol.com 24 Feb '07

24 Feb '07

Today we got a nice new image on the English Wikipedia--see [[Dennis Johnson]], a star of the NBA, who died recently. The image has a story, and the story has a moral. I want to tell it. The creator is an established sports photographer who has worked for the NBA professional as a photographer. He is also one of the many thousands of uknown (to us) fans of Wikipedia who visit teh site regularly. When Johnson died, he went to the article, and noticed there was no picture, so he decided to donate one that he took. He called the office to ask how to do it. After speaking with him briefly, I realized that we have a potential treasure trove of FREE images here, which he was willing and eager to share with us, from the NBA and many other areas. I asked Greg Maxwell to speak with him about licensing, and the rest is history. He selected an image and released it under the GFDL license. Hopefully, there will be more to come. As for the moral of the story: we were missing an image, and someone decided to release one of his own--a high quality professional image at that. As for now, I can only wonder at the argument that we keep fairuse images until we find free ones. The fact that we did not have an image encouraged someone to "fix the problem" and provide a free one. There will likely be many more to come. So, I just want to say thank you to the photographer, who understood the value in what we are doing, and to Greg Maxwell, for spending time with him and explaining the free license philosophy. And I also want to thank all the contributors who did NOT rush to post a fairuse image. Because of that, a magnificent image is now free. <BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com.

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Re: [Commons-l] a new free image!
by Howard Cheng 24 Feb '07

24 Feb '07

You know, it's been in my mind for some time that sports reporters could be a good source of photos. Since they get access to sports personalities, we could make personal appeals to them to take pictures (with their own cameras) when they do interviews for Wikipedia purposes. Maybe we can organize an email WikiProject for Wikipedians and Commoners to solicit reporters at their local/regional newspapers? Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin(a)gmail.com> wrote : > I would also like to thank Jkelly's excellent customer service in > dealing with this gentleman fairly and politely when he had second > thoughts initially about contributing (working with him to delete the > unintended contribution until Greg could take the time to fully and > fairly explain to him what he was being asked to agree to) and Cary > Bass (Bastique) for some behind-the-scenes OTRS work to make sure > everyone was on the same page. > > Good work, everyone! > > Kelly > :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Howard Cheng http://www.howcheng.com/ Wise-cracking quote goes here.

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Re: [Commons-l] Commons-l Digest, Vol 21, Issue 26
by GerardM 22 Feb '07

22 Feb '07

Hoi, There have been problems in the past with people replacing png with svg where the actual content was said to be the same but wasn't. The consequence is that the automatic replacement of any content is something that will not be trusted by many. It is a matter of trust... lack of trust based on past performance. Thanks, GerardM On 2/22/07, commons-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org < commons-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote: > > Send Commons-l mailing list submissions to > commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > commons-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > commons-l-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Commons-l digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: [Foundation-l] Commons request for input: policy > onautomatic image replacement (bawolff) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 20:19:21 -0700 > From: bawolff <bawolff+wn(a)gmail.com> > Subject: Re: [Commons-l] [Foundation-l] Commons request for input: > policy onautomatic image replacement > To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" > <Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > Message-ID: > <c9d967260702211919l38aefadesd6492abc991cc58b(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:07:02 +0100 > From: " Artur Fija?kowski " <wiki.warx(a)gmail.com> > Subject: Re: [Commons-l] [Foundation-l] Commons request for input: > policy onautomatic image replacement > To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" > <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > Message-ID: > <ea8e5e7f0702200307j61ad19fdx1d0104493672a9b0(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > 2007/2/20, peter green <plugwash(a)p10link.net>: > > > >> personally i think such svg gnomes should be blocked on sight but thats > a > >> descision for individual projects to make. > > > > >So come and ban me for changing bitmap COAs to SVG versions, and I will > >delete them without changing to SVG on your project:P > > >You have axe so nobody can forbid you to cut off your head! > > >AJF/WarX > > > Posts on this subject are really confusing. what's the problem with > linking to svg's? > > -bawolff > > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Commons-l mailing list > Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l > > > End of Commons-l Digest, Vol 21, Issue 26 > ***************************************** >

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Re: [Commons-l] [Foundation-l] Commons request for input: policy onautomatic image replacement
by bawolff 22 Feb '07

22 Feb '07

Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:07:02 +0100 From: " Artur Fija?kowski " <wiki.warx(a)gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] [Foundation-l] Commons request for input: policy onautomatic image replacement To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Message-ID: <ea8e5e7f0702200307j61ad19fdx1d0104493672a9b0(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" 2007/2/20, peter green <plugwash(a)p10link.net>: > >> personally i think such svg gnomes should be blocked on sight but thats a >> descision for individual projects to make. > >So come and ban me for changing bitmap COAs to SVG versions, and I will >delete them without changing to SVG on your project:P >You have axe so nobody can forbid you to cut off your head! >AJF/WarX Posts on this subject are really confusing. what's the problem with linking to svg's? -bawolff

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Commons-l February 2007