Commons:Village pump
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January 07[edit]
[edit]
See this discussion on the file page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noliscient (talk • contribs) 14:34, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
February 05[edit]
Category pages that look like quasi-Wikipedia articles[edit]
I'm not very familiar with how category pages work on Commons. One of the bullet points in COM:CAT#Creating a new category states A short description text that explains what should be in the category, if the title is not clear or unambiguous enough on its own. is acceptable, but I'm wondering about a category like Category:Midway Theater, Allentown, Pennsylvania which seems to be an attempt to create a quasi-Wikipedia article on Commons. The content on that category page seems, in my opinion, to go beyond what would be considered a "short-description" and basically seems to be someone's own original research. I don't know about the licensing of all of files populating the category, but most if not all of them seem to be licensed as {{PD-US-no notice}}. The files include newspaper advertisements and newspaper articles about the theater, these all appear to be cut-outs or clippings and there's no way of knowing whether they were covered under the copyright of the entire paper. None of the files seems to be used in any Wikipedia articles, which is another reason why I think the category page was created to be a de-facto article so to speak. My understanding is that print advertisements were required to have separate visible copyright notifications on a per ad basis, but newspaper articles (text and photos) were not required to do so and instead were covered by the copyright notice for the entire newspaper as whole. If my understanding is incorrect, then perhaps the files are OK as licensed; however, I'm not sure about the stub-like article content at the top of the page and hoping others can clarify whether it's OK for Commons. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:50, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
- Putting aside the whole copyright question and whatnot, I'll usually either shorten long descriptions to a few sentences or just delete it whole cloth depending on if it's clearly OR or not since this isn't Wikipedia. Especially if the information is only tangentially related to the category. That said, I don't think it necessarily hurts to have a basic description if it helps people understand better what the images are about. Even in cases where it's not referenced (at least if it's uncontroversial). Like if it's a category for a historic building that burned down and was rebuilt several times, cool. Have a short description about it since the information provides context for the images. Three huge paragraphs going into mostly pointless historical minutia is clearly overkill though. There's no reason that stuff can't just be added to Wikidata or the descriptions for the individual files. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:04, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
- The description is a bit much; if it were sourced, I'd suggest turning it into a Wikipedia article, but without that, we can't. @Atwngirl: this is basically your work. I assume you had sources. Could you consider adding appropriate citation and moving the bulk of this to en-wiki? I assume some of this can be cited from exactly the newspaper stories that are among the uploaded clippings.
- Also, Atwngirl: the uploads are at least mostly yours (I didn't go through them all). U.S. newspaper content from 1936 can very well still be copyrighted until 2031 (etc. for later dates). The ads are probably good, lacking copyright notices of their own, but of course clippings of individual articles don't have "copyright markings". There is usually a single copyright notice for an entire daily newspaper. Certainly the newspaper would have been copyrighted. We'd need a specific reason to believe that copyright was not renewed. Do you have a basis for that? You appear to know what newspaper they were from. If you need some assistance if figuring that out (I'd like to keep these if we can), you can probably get that at Commons:Village pump/Copyright, but please in the future sort out that sort of thing before uploading. You presumably don't want to go through this amount of effort just to have your work deleted as copyright violations. - Jmabel ! talk 04:39, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
- The paper is The Morning Call of Allentown, Pennsylvania, which did not renew any copyrights. I think the history is good, since we do not have an article. It provides search terms for someone looking for images. If it was on Wikipedia, we would just need the lede, the first few sentences, from a Wikipedia article. --RAN (talk) 06:04, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Atwngirl has been around a long time and more or less single-mindedly has been contributing memorabilia related to Allentown, PA. She is either an enthusiastic private historian of the town, or more likely has some official connection to a historical society, library, or museum in that town with privileged access to many of these items. I have not seen any declaration to that effect, but it would be nice to know the background here, because considering the extensive history of that one building in question, there may be much more where that came from. Elizium23 (talk) 08:01, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
- This is interesting to me because many of the photos of the South West Sydney that I’m taking are significant for their area, but may not be significant enough to entail an article in Wikipedia. However, I have found quite a lot of information on the subject of the photo. I would like to add detailed information, but I’m wondering if I might need to create a seperate resource off-wiki using a CC license as this sort of data won’t be allowed here?
- I’d love some clarification in this. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 15:40, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Chris.sherlock2: I wonder if Wikispore could be useful for this sort of project? I certainly think that more small wikis would be a good thing! :-) (I've got an idea for a local wiki at https://freo.wiki ). — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 09:19, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
- I wonder if a local history spore might be worthwhile? Lots of local history just cannot get onto en.wiki, but is still very important. It would still need to ensure that NOR and citations are used, but it would be pretty interesting! I know many local historians would likely love it. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 13:29, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Chris.sherlock2: I wonder if Wikispore could be useful for this sort of project? I certainly think that more small wikis would be a good thing! :-) (I've got an idea for a local wiki at https://freo.wiki ). — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 09:19, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
Just as an example of what I think is entirely within reason for a category about a building: Category:1012 First Avenue, Seattle. A lot of what is here is name changes, when stories were added, what was in the building, when the facade changed, all of which are likely to be useful in categorizing photos, including whether they refer to this building. guess we could have a proper en-wiki for this building, because it has Seattle Landmark status (so we'd have the notability), but what is here would still be pretty stubby for Wikipedia, and it doesn't seem likely that a non-stub about this will be written, at least in the foreseeable future. - Jmabel ! talk 04:48, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
- I appreciate all of the responses my OP has received so far. Category:Melody Circle, Allentown, Pennsylvania is a similar page to the one about the Midway Theater that was also created by the same user. Again, a few sentences or even a short paragraph would seem to be OK as an introduction to the images found on the page, but these two category pages (there might be more) do, at least in my opinion, go beyond that and seem to be more of an attempt to create an English Wikipedia article about these buildings on Commons, without necessarily having to deal with all of the policies and guidelines of English Wikipedia. If the content can be reliably sourced per en:WP:NOR or if the buildings are English Wikipedia notable in their own right per en:WP:NBUILDING, then there's probably a way to incorporate all or some of this content into a newly created or already existing English Wikipedia articles. I'm not sure, however, it's such a great idea to allow it on Commons just because no such articles about these buildings may currently exist. I don't think Commons was ever intended to be a en:WP:ALTERNATIVEOUTLET for English Wikipedia as a place for others to what might be considered their own "original research". If these category pages are the result of efforts on behalf of a local historical society or similar group, then perhaps the content would be best hosted on said group's own website or own wiki-site than Commons if it's not appropriate for English Wikipedia. — Marchjuly (talk) 15:42, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
- I mean, at the very least it's not in a discoverable place. Who among us, seeking encyclopedic information on an item, visits its category page on Commons? Furthermore, the polyglot nature of Commons militates against it becoming an alternate enwiki repository of this stuff. Elizium23 (talk) 15:53, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
- I don't necessarily disagree with any of that, but at the same time this does seem to be sort of related to COM:PS#Excluded educational content, at least it seems that way to me. Would similar text content be allowed, for example, on a Commons user page per COM:PSP? I get that Commons isn't English Wikipedia and thus the latter's policies and guidelines don't apply per COM:NOTWP; however, it doesn't seem as if Commons should be the place for posting or hosting an individual's or group's original research per COM:NOT#Wikimedia Commons is not an encyclopedia, dictionary, guide, or book. — Marchjuly (talk) 17:42, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
- I'd put the information in Category:Cinemas in Allentown, Pennsylvania in the same category. It's useful and interesting sure, but still better served by cited somewhere else. For instance Wikidata. I'm not sure most of those cinemas would qualify for individual Wikipedia articles, but that's the kicks sometimes. That said, I'm pretty sure the bar for inclusion is a lot lower for articles about geographical locations then other subjects. So I don't see why it couldn't be included in [1]. It looks like there's already a lot of overly detailed, unreferenced material in the article already. So really what's the difference at this point? There's no reason Atwngirl can't cut the article back and include whatever she wants to there instead of putting it on Commons where no one is going to see it. BTW, it looks like she hasn't even edited the article before and it's been edited thousands of times by a single user in the meantime, which is interesting. Either way, the article could definitely use more people editing it and a more diverse range of information about Allentown. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:48, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
- Category:Betzs Restaurant, Category:Allentown Trust Company and Category:Cigar Manufacturing and Marketing in Allentown, Pennsylvania are yet some other examples of this. This user has created more than a thousand new category pages since 2016. Many seem like a typical Commons category page that has mainly files and very little if any textual content. Others start out that way but then textual content is subsequently added to them through “minor” edits until they start looking like articles with image galleries. Whatever the reason for creating them, a pattern has been established and more of these category pages will probably be created in the future. — Marchjuly (talk) 19:13, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
- I believe we've indicated enough of a consensus that this stuff is (1) OR and (2) out of scope for Commons, so shall we officially discourage this user from continuing? It's been 3 days since her last edit, so I assume she's on a bit of a break and hasn't had opportunity to notice, or participate in, our discussion here. Elizium23 (talk) 19:16, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
- They could just be busy and haven’t logged in recently. I’ve added a {{Please see}} to their user talk page (I should’ve done that sooner and my apologies for not doing so) to let them know about this discussion. — Marchjuly (talk) 19:30, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
- I believe we've indicated enough of a consensus that this stuff is (1) OR and (2) out of scope for Commons, so shall we officially discourage this user from continuing? It's been 3 days since her last edit, so I assume she's on a bit of a break and hasn't had opportunity to notice, or participate in, our discussion here. Elizium23 (talk) 19:16, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
- Category:Betzs Restaurant, Category:Allentown Trust Company and Category:Cigar Manufacturing and Marketing in Allentown, Pennsylvania are yet some other examples of this. This user has created more than a thousand new category pages since 2016. Many seem like a typical Commons category page that has mainly files and very little if any textual content. Others start out that way but then textual content is subsequently added to them through “minor” edits until they start looking like articles with image galleries. Whatever the reason for creating them, a pattern has been established and more of these category pages will probably be created in the future. — Marchjuly (talk) 19:13, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
- I'd put the information in Category:Cinemas in Allentown, Pennsylvania in the same category. It's useful and interesting sure, but still better served by cited somewhere else. For instance Wikidata. I'm not sure most of those cinemas would qualify for individual Wikipedia articles, but that's the kicks sometimes. That said, I'm pretty sure the bar for inclusion is a lot lower for articles about geographical locations then other subjects. So I don't see why it couldn't be included in [1]. It looks like there's already a lot of overly detailed, unreferenced material in the article already. So really what's the difference at this point? There's no reason Atwngirl can't cut the article back and include whatever she wants to there instead of putting it on Commons where no one is going to see it. BTW, it looks like she hasn't even edited the article before and it's been edited thousands of times by a single user in the meantime, which is interesting. Either way, the article could definitely use more people editing it and a more diverse range of information about Allentown. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:48, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
- I don't necessarily disagree with any of that, but at the same time this does seem to be sort of related to COM:PS#Excluded educational content, at least it seems that way to me. Would similar text content be allowed, for example, on a Commons user page per COM:PSP? I get that Commons isn't English Wikipedia and thus the latter's policies and guidelines don't apply per COM:NOTWP; however, it doesn't seem as if Commons should be the place for posting or hosting an individual's or group's original research per COM:NOT#Wikimedia Commons is not an encyclopedia, dictionary, guide, or book. — Marchjuly (talk) 17:42, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
- I mean, at the very least it's not in a discoverable place. Who among us, seeking encyclopedic information on an item, visits its category page on Commons? Furthermore, the polyglot nature of Commons militates against it becoming an alternate enwiki repository of this stuff. Elizium23 (talk) 15:53, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
It's been more than a week since Atwngirl was pinged/notified of this discussion, but they still haven't responded. Their last Commons edit was on February 4. It's quite possible they just are busy with other things, but Commons still marches on; so, perhaps it's time to figure out what if anything needs to be done here. Should these category pages just be blanked of text completely? Should only a short paragraph remain? Is only an infobox really needed for those pages that have them? -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:30, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
- Should these category pages just be blanked of text completely? Certainly not, though it may make sense to edit them down considerably. I think the example I gave above shows about what is appropriate. Also: where there is no equivalent en-wiki content, it would be good to save any content (beyond what is effectively covered by the remaining text or infobox) on the respective talk pages (on Common or, if there is a relevant article, on en-wiki) as potential material to flesh out for en-wiki in the future. - Jmabel ! talk 16:06, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
- I'm not so sure that we should take it upon ourselves to preserve much of this at all; if it is unsourced and original research, no Wikipedia project would accept it anyway, certainly not enwiki. If it can't be sourced and doesn't meet WP:V, then it must be removed outright. The WP:ONUS, burden of proof, is on the person adding material, so if Atwngirl is unable to do so within a short time frame here, we should absolutely, completely, remove unsourced material. Elizium23 (talk) 17:15, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
- Those are all Wikipedia policies, aren’t they? Do we have commons policies that she is violating? I’m not a fan of citing Wikipedia shortcuts on commons. Commons is not Wikipedia (thank god). - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 20:35, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
- Since the text which Atwngirl has contributed would only be appropriate for inclusion on enwiki, that's the only wiki whose policies should be considered when deciding whether to retain or delete this text, right? Commons policies would dictate that we remove it all, completely, immediately; we have no use whatsoever for it here. Elizium23 (talk) 21:21, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Elizium23: I disagree, and in fact here is an edit that you recently made along these lines (unrelated to User:Atwngirl) that I think is dead wrong. The person whose material you removed, User:Publichall, has consistently shown themself to be very knowledgable on Seattle architectural history, and while I wish they had provided a citation, the material you removed could be very useful to date specific photos of the building (or simply to identify them as this building) and/or to help someone find this building in a search for any of several businesses that were based there. Removing information about architects seems particularly odd: Commons routinely indicates information about architects of buildings, and almost no one her provides a citation when (for example) adding an architect category as a parent category for a building category. - Jmabel ! talk 23:57, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
- ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- I think sourcing and verifiability here on Commons is more than a little bit bonkers, considering what people can get away with in terms of depicting things in images that they would never, never in a million years be able to write in prose on any Wikipedia project without a reliable source. But, you do you, I guess. Elizium23 (talk) 00:05, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- I think having at least one paragraph helps cover subjects that might never meet the main wiki's notability requirements but I'll admit to getting a bit long winded for some, since the coverage of these subjects on the wiki is so severely lacking, I'm trying to link as many of these photographs together as possible for future researchers to benefit from. In most cases here it seems that linking to a Wikipedia article is the only form of citation, so it gets messy when there is nothing in the Wiki to even reference, especially when trying to justify parent categories. I'm currently putting together a full article for the building in Jmabel's linked category, and when I get around to publishing it and making a wikidata entry for it, the description can be be chopped down as needed. In the meantime It's more or less a memo for further research. Publichall (talk) 06:10, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- I'd suggest that when removing material that is uncited but plausible, it's best to move it to the talk page. Very few people will ever find it in the history. Similarly, the talk page may often be a better place to put "a memo for further research" in the first place. (Statements about living or recently dead people are, of course, a different matter: anything the least bit controversial should be well-sourced.) - Jmabel ! talk 16:30, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Elizium23: I disagree, and in fact here is an edit that you recently made along these lines (unrelated to User:Atwngirl) that I think is dead wrong. The person whose material you removed, User:Publichall, has consistently shown themself to be very knowledgable on Seattle architectural history, and while I wish they had provided a citation, the material you removed could be very useful to date specific photos of the building (or simply to identify them as this building) and/or to help someone find this building in a search for any of several businesses that were based there. Removing information about architects seems particularly odd: Commons routinely indicates information about architects of buildings, and almost no one her provides a citation when (for example) adding an architect category as a parent category for a building category. - Jmabel ! talk 23:57, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
- Since the text which Atwngirl has contributed would only be appropriate for inclusion on enwiki, that's the only wiki whose policies should be considered when deciding whether to retain or delete this text, right? Commons policies would dictate that we remove it all, completely, immediately; we have no use whatsoever for it here. Elizium23 (talk) 21:21, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
- Those are all Wikipedia policies, aren’t they? Do we have commons policies that she is violating? I’m not a fan of citing Wikipedia shortcuts on commons. Commons is not Wikipedia (thank god). - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 20:35, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
- I'm not so sure that we should take it upon ourselves to preserve much of this at all; if it is unsourced and original research, no Wikipedia project would accept it anyway, certainly not enwiki. If it can't be sourced and doesn't meet WP:V, then it must be removed outright. The WP:ONUS, burden of proof, is on the person adding material, so if Atwngirl is unable to do so within a short time frame here, we should absolutely, completely, remove unsourced material. Elizium23 (talk) 17:15, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Atwngirl She can start a Fandom wiki called Allentown, Pennsylvania and link to it from Wikidata, even if she starts an English Wikipedia article on a topic, it can be backed up at Fandom, in which she would have admin rights. We can also enclose the category text in a box and have it closed by default, so it doesn't push down the images, but it would still have the text available to provide keywords. --RAN (talk) 00:08, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
- That may make sense. Having dealt with Atwngirl before, I doubt we will get much of a response and a lot of the edits will be steathily reverted a few months from now under the excuse that it wasn't perfectly done. I spent months and months breaking Category:Newspaper advertising in Allentown, Pennsylvania all from crazy decade categories into Category:The Morning Call (Allentown, PA) by year but they all got reverted back without any discussion and are stored in the decades structure which has thousands of images at a time. It is clear someone wants to create their own universe of articles and stories and categories but very few of these things are going to be used because they are organized in overly broad categories and someone will fight to keep them that way. If someone does clean up the category descriptions, have the pages kept on your watchlist. You will go nuts. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:20, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
- If Atwngirl is too busy with real world stuff at the moment to respond, then I don't believe there's any need to wait any longer to try and resolve this. If at some later date, Atwngirl disagrees with whatever turns out to be the consensus here, they can ask for clarification at that time. Whatever text content is removed from the category pages will still be in the page history if Atwgirl wants to retrieve it at some later date to use somewhere else. I'm not sure that storing the content on the category talk pages is really a good thing; however, if that's the consensus, then so be it. Finally, Atwngirl has been a pretty prolific uploader over the years, but many of their uploads have ended up deleted via DR or some other reason. Going through all those that remain and assessing their licensing is probably going to take a fair amount of time as well. Perhaps in the process of doing that, the category pages can be cleaned up a bit too. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:21, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
February 08[edit]
Calidore and Pastorella[edit]
Hi. Would anyone here be able to find an original scan of this picture (the original source is a book published in 1909) and upload it to Commons? Thanks. ~ DanielTom (talk) 09:20, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
- That could be quite a challenge, but not impossible. The artist in question died in 1952 and so, as a UK citizen, her works entered the public domain only this year. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:35, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
- TinEye finds six versions. One is b&w, the others are with Bridgeman, and watermarked. Google finds none. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:11, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
- @DanielTom: Are you looking for higher resolution, or no watermark, or both? --RAN (talk) 00:22, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
February 14[edit]
Hi, This category contains several misplaced subcategories, which should be in Category:1 (number), but I can't find where the issue comes from. Thanks, Yann (talk) 11:16, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
- They all seem to be categorized automatically through Template:Groups. Category:2 seems to have the same problem. Pinging @Joshbaumgartner ... El Grafo (talk) 12:34, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
February 15[edit]
Video game trailers[edit]
- c:File:Hogwarts Legacy Official 4K Reveal Trailer.webm
- c:File:Gotham Knights - Official Cinematic Launch Trailer.webm
- c:File:MK11 Official Spawn Gameplay Trailer.webm
- c:File:MultiVersus – Official Cinematic Trailer - "You're with Me!".webm
Maybe it's just me but i find it hard to believe that whoever's behind the YouTube channel actually managed to get permission from the publishers to release their titles (trailers) under a license that explicitly allows for commercial use by anyone for anything.
Anyone got a clue what happened? Are they really that charitable or is there some bug that causes channel operators to change to the "Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)" by mistake?--Trade (talk) 20:19, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
- It certainly does seem to be an official YouTube channel. - Jmabel ! talk 00:00, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- The question is more whether or not their social media manager are actually authorized to licence their Warner Brother's property out Trade (talk) 01:24, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- You would think that if Warner Brothers' large legal department had a problem with this, they would have long since sought a "cease and desist" order on something so visible. It would seem to me that this YouTube account has apparent authority. They may have been foolishly sloppy with their rights, but they've issued an irrevocable license. - Jmabel ! talk 16:33, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- The question is more whether or not their social media manager are actually authorized to licence their Warner Brother's property out Trade (talk) 01:24, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
February 16[edit]
Drawing of Mary Louisa Molesworth[edit]
Need help in uploading this portrait to illustrate Wikidata item and three corresponding wikis. Somehow their "use this image" button is not working for me. Thank you. Henry Merrivale (talk) 11:33, 16 February 2023 (UTC).
- @Henry Merrivale: The en:National Portrait Gallery, London has also marked the image with a copyright notice and is only offering it on a NC CC license per this, which seems a bit odd given that it's apparently from May 1895. You might be better off, if possible, trying to find the image somewhere else given en:National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation copyright dispute since the NPG apparently has its own ideas on how copyright law works. -- Marchjuly (talk) 12:11, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks. Will try to find it somewhere else. Henry Merrivale (talk) 12:32, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Henry Merrivale: Just to clarify, I tend to agree with what's been posted below in that the drawing is PD and most likely would have no problem being hosted by Commons. The point I was trying to make is that the NPG seems to believe that its digilization of the drawing generated a new copyright that it owns. Under US copyright law, this wouldn't appear to be the case, but NPG feels (or at least felt) British copyright does allow them to do this (at least that's what they seem to have argued in the past). Given that it seems to have had no problem getting lawyers involved before and that it seemed to prefer to go after a particular individual user than the WMF as a whole, there's no way to say it won't try and do so again. Perhaps the situation has changed and an agreement has been worked out between the NPG and WMF to allow Commons to host NPG images. Maybe, though, it would be best to try and use the lowest resolution you can find on the NPG website just to play it safe since it seems to have agreed that those are OK. However, the problem is that it's still licensing the low-res images as CC-NC, which means it's still asserting a copyright claim over them and still trying to restrict commercial usage of them. I don't think the file would be deleted from Commons if you uploaded it under a PD licesne, but I can't say how the NPG would respond. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:49, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
- en:National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation copyright dispute is absolutely not a reason to not use an image. Our decisions are based on whether copyright still (or might plausibly) still exist in the work; not copyfraud by institutions that should know better. That said, artworks will be OOC if the artist died in or before 1952; and Walker Hodgson (born 1864) could plausibly have lived into the 1970s. We need to find the actual date of his death. [that said, we have several of his works in Category:Walker Hodgson, claimed to be PD based on 70 years post-mortem.] Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:55, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- The dispute with NPG is not one of copyfraud but rather the more complex issue of the institution covering its costs of digitisation (in order to fund future digitisation) and a Wikimedia editor who used their programming skills to obtain a higher quality version of the image that the gallery was intending to keep behind a pay wall (the pay wall was badly implemented, which allowed the editor's actions to succeed). While the editor's actions were technically correct, they pushed Wikimedia into a morally grey area and damaged our relationship with an institution that could have provided us with easier access to more images than those obtained in the editor's initial haul.
- I don't think NPG has ever said that they dispute our access to their lower resolution versions that are freely accessible on their website. So long as we can justify an appropriate licence, we can copy across those lower quality images. From Hill To Shore (talk) 14:31, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- It is precisely one of copyfraud; since the NPG claims rights in digital reproductions of works by people dead far longer than the 70 years necessary for copyright to have expired, at any and every resolution. A desire for "covering its costs of digitisation" is not one of the criteria in either UK or US copyright law. I believe the WMF legal team and/or EFF pointed this out to NPG at the time. You'll notice, for example, that the Wikipedia article on the case is called "National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation copyright dispute" and not "National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation recovering cost of digitisation dispute". It says, in part "The NPG letter stated the claim that... the high-quality photographic reproductions are recent works, and qualify as copyrighted works due to the amount of work it took to digitize and restore them", which sounds very much like "a false copyright claim by an [...] institution with respect to content that is in the public domain" (i.e. copyfraud) to me. But if you do believe the NPG's claims of copyright to be correct, do feel free to start deletion discussions for the high res images concerned. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:15, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
- UK copyright law follows the en:Sweat of the brow doctrine. It is a rather grey area of copyright law but dismissing it as "copyfraud" is rather unwise. "Copyfraud" presents NPG as entirely in the wrong and gives the impression that reusers are perfectly safe from any repercussions. 1 court case and some official UK guidance since the NPG incident have sided against such a loose interpretation of UK law, but no one has updated the law to remove the problem at source. A court may choose to agree with you or it may not.
- Your suggestion that I start deletion discussions is rather disingenuous. As I said in my initial comment, there are more complex issues involved in this case than your choice of labelling it as "copyfraud" would indicate. Describing a situation as complex and "morally grey" doesn't mean the solution is to delete everything. From Hill To Shore (talk) 18:26, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
- It is precisely one of copyfraud; since the NPG claims rights in digital reproductions of works by people dead far longer than the 70 years necessary for copyright to have expired, at any and every resolution. A desire for "covering its costs of digitisation" is not one of the criteria in either UK or US copyright law. I believe the WMF legal team and/or EFF pointed this out to NPG at the time. You'll notice, for example, that the Wikipedia article on the case is called "National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation copyright dispute" and not "National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation recovering cost of digitisation dispute". It says, in part "The NPG letter stated the claim that... the high-quality photographic reproductions are recent works, and qualify as copyrighted works due to the amount of work it took to digitize and restore them", which sounds very much like "a false copyright claim by an [...] institution with respect to content that is in the public domain" (i.e. copyfraud) to me. But if you do believe the NPG's claims of copyright to be correct, do feel free to start deletion discussions for the high res images concerned. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:15, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks. Will try to find it somewhere else. Henry Merrivale (talk) 12:32, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Henry Merrivale: Per [2] Hodgson died on 11 June 1946; his works are in the public domain and you may upload the image here using {{UK-PD-anon}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:24, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Pigsonthewing: {{UK-PD-anon}} is for anonymous works only and can't be used where we know the creator(s) and the death date(s). If we can establish that the image was published prior to 1928, the licence to use here is {{PD-old-auto-expired|deathyear=1946}}. If we can't establish the publication date then we get into more ambiguous territory related to the URAA. From Hill To Shore (talk) 18:46, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
- A mispaste; and all Hodgson's known works (at least those online, depicting the famous; some of family embers are reported;y in the ownership of his family) were apparently published before 1924. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:32, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Pigsonthewing: {{UK-PD-anon}} is for anonymous works only and can't be used where we know the creator(s) and the death date(s). If we can establish that the image was published prior to 1928, the licence to use here is {{PD-old-auto-expired|deathyear=1946}}. If we can't establish the publication date then we get into more ambiguous territory related to the URAA. From Hill To Shore (talk) 18:46, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
Reminder: Join the Conversation about Improving Toolhub Integration with Commons[edit]
Hello everyone!
This is a reminder about the conversation started a while back about improving Toolhub integration with Commons. Recently, more clarity around who can make edits to Toolhub was provided, so hopefully that helps if that was the reason you hadn't engaged in the conversation yet.
The Technical Engagement team are interested in having more tools that are helpful for workflows on Commons listed in Toolhub and for those tools to be more discoverable to folks who are contributing to Commons.
If you're interested in discussing the proposal, or if you have your own ideas to propose improving Toolhub integration with Commons, please join the conversation at Commons talk:Tools discussion page.
looking forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas! Udehb-WMF (talk) 13:25, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
Cropping images[edit]
How much should an image be cropped by to remove a damage / border / sticker artifact, before it ought to be re-uploaded as a separate file?
This is a crop to 70% of the previous image size. See others too: Vysotsky (talk · contributions · Move log · block log · uploads · Abuse filter log) My concern is that for some of these, like the motor-racing ones, we're starting to change the original composition of the image. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:12, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for asking this question. (1) I upload higher resolution images of files, e.g. Images from the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (a set of 485,000 photos, of which 25,000 are used in several language versions of Wikipedia). I always look carefully for any improvements or crops that have already taken place since the original upload date and only use images from the same source. (2) I also crop pictures (from other databases, like the Anefo examples you mention here) if there are irregularities in the image. I take care to keep the original composition by cropping only damaged parts. If I think the composition would be changed by cropping, I ask specialists at the Photography workshop to remove the watermark without cropping. Vysotsky (talk) 16:35, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Andy Dingley and Vysotsky: There is zero question that 70% crop should have used a different filename. Any crop of an image from an organized archive should use a different filename; the only exception is to remove excessive white borders, and even that is a judgement call. - Jmabel ! talk 16:38, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- Sorry, one other exception: removing a watermark that is in a margin. E.g. the overwrite here. - Jmabel ! talk 16:41, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Andy Dingley and Vysotsky: There is zero question that 70% crop should have used a different filename. Any crop of an image from an organized archive should use a different filename; the only exception is to remove excessive white borders, and even that is a judgement call. - Jmabel ! talk 16:38, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- I would certainly prefer a different filename on those. It is not obvious that the white area there is better than having a watermark. - Jmabel ! talk 17:55, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- Really? My proposal would be to crop away the lower part of the grass (photo 1), the right 5% of the wall (photo 2) and the lower part of the sand (photo 3) and upload these crops as new versions of the original images. The composition of these press photographs will roughly stay the same, the original can still be found and no essential part of the photos will be missing. The alternative (filling the white areas with resp. grass, sand or wall) is not very attractive and much more time-consuming. Uploading as a separate image is a waste of time, if you ask me. Vysotsky (talk) 20:32, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Vysotsky: I see: I thought that white area was the result of some Commoner's removal of a watermark, but I take it those were clipped at the Dutch National Archive (a weird decision on their part, if you ask me). I really don't have an opinion what best to do when the archival source has already screwed up the image by clumsily removing a watermark. I would not oppose cropping in these cases, but I'd also have no problem with using a new name and keeping these as an indication of precisely what is in the archive, rather than that being semi-hidden in the history.- Jmabel ! talk 00:05, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Vysotsky: Uploading a separate image does not have to be such a waste of time; have you looked into using dFX? — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 00:13, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
- These negatives are large glass plates. The white rectangles are paper catalogue stickers. In most cases they're off the image area, but it some cases they're over it. That's no problem to remove if the negatives were wanted commercially, but it wasn't done before the bulk scanning.
- If anyone ever wants to crop these images in the future, that's up to them (we massively crop a lot of the group portraits to extract notable individuals). But those go back as new filenames. We should preserve the original images (even at the cost of a visible sticker), there's not much push to crop these pre-emptively. I'm not going to argue over small crops, but if we're taking more than maybe 10% (this is open to discussion) I think this should be a new file. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:31, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
- I think we're nearing consensus. I would only like to address the time aspect once more. Anefo photographs are used heavily (total image use of this collection >170,000, distinct image use >22,000). If a photo is used in dozens of Wiki language versions (the record Anefo image is being used 352 times on Wiki) I would have to replace the watermarked image by a cropped image manually in several language versions if I would upload the last one as a separate file. This seems a bit of an overkill, if I only remove a piece of grass, wall or sand. So I think the proposal by Andy Dingley (small cropping up to 10% is OK) would be beneficial, if these crops replace the original. There should be no change of the composition. Vysotsky (talk) 09:32, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Vysotsky: You do not need to do this manually in all Wikipedias. That is what User:CommonsDelinker is for. - Jmabel ! talk 15:55, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
- I think we're nearing consensus. I would only like to address the time aspect once more. Anefo photographs are used heavily (total image use of this collection >170,000, distinct image use >22,000). If a photo is used in dozens of Wiki language versions (the record Anefo image is being used 352 times on Wiki) I would have to replace the watermarked image by a cropped image manually in several language versions if I would upload the last one as a separate file. This seems a bit of an overkill, if I only remove a piece of grass, wall or sand. So I think the proposal by Andy Dingley (small cropping up to 10% is OK) would be beneficial, if these crops replace the original. There should be no change of the composition. Vysotsky (talk) 09:32, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
- Really? My proposal would be to crop away the lower part of the grass (photo 1), the right 5% of the wall (photo 2) and the lower part of the sand (photo 3) and upload these crops as new versions of the original images. The composition of these press photographs will roughly stay the same, the original can still be found and no essential part of the photos will be missing. The alternative (filling the white areas with resp. grass, sand or wall) is not very attractive and much more time-consuming. Uploading as a separate image is a waste of time, if you ask me. Vysotsky (talk) 20:32, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- I would certainly prefer a different filename on those. It is not obvious that the white area there is better than having a watermark. - Jmabel ! talk 17:55, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- What if instead of cropping, the images get retouched/restored, with the restorations uploaded as new files and used in articles? This photo would be rather easy to restore, at least the white strip on the right (I use GIMP, and the Fix and Clone tools work wonders on removing scratches, blemishes, and text). It would be a bit trickier to retouch the sticker areas in the others two, but the more savvy volunteers at Commons:Graphic Lab/Photography workshop could probably clone and fill-in the grass and dirt. Heck, maybe I'll try restoring one tomorrow. --Animalparty (talk) 07:50, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Animalparty: sure, but definitely under a new file name. - Jmabel ! talk 16:31, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
- What if instead of cropping, the images get retouched/restored, with the restorations uploaded as new files and used in articles? This photo would be rather easy to restore, at least the white strip on the right (I use GIMP, and the Fix and Clone tools work wonders on removing scratches, blemishes, and text). It would be a bit trickier to retouch the sticker areas in the others two, but the more savvy volunteers at Commons:Graphic Lab/Photography workshop could probably clone and fill-in the grass and dirt. Heck, maybe I'll try restoring one tomorrow. --Animalparty (talk) 07:50, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
- why is it necessary to crop out the white part? it doesnt affect the subject of the image. it's part of history now -- the original full photo has lost a part to whatever caused the white part.
- have you not seen surviving fragments of old publications? they are what they are.
- it's even worse to "restore" the missing part, which is fake. RZuo (talk) 07:12, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
Nicourt company[edit]
The Category:Nicourt contains a series of postcard photographs published by Nikolaos Kourtidis from 1936 to 1940. However, it is not clear whether it is common property because we do not know the date of Kourtidis' death, nor even who has the copyright (if anyone has them) — Preceding unsigned comment added by ΔώραΣτρουμπούκη (talk • contribs) 19:18, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
- The most appropriate license would be "PD-EU-no author disclosure". Kourtidis is the publisher and the photographer was anonymous. --RAN (talk) 05:52, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
- thank you!! ΔώραΣτρουμπούκη (talk) 18:47, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
Universal Code of Conduct revised enforcement guidelines vote results[edit]
The recent community-wide vote on the Universal Code of Conduct revised Enforcement Guidelines has been tallied and scrutinized. Thank you to everyone who participated.
After 3097 voters from 146 Wikimedia communities voted, the results are 76% in support of the Enforcement Guidelines, and 24% in opposition. Statistics for the vote are available. A more detailed summary of comments submitted during the vote will be published soon.
From here, the results and comments collected during this vote will be submitted to the Board of Trustees for their review. The current expectation is that the Board of Trustees review process will complete in March 2023. We will update you when their review process is completed.
On behalf of the UCoC Project Team,
Zuz (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
February 19[edit]
Garbage in remarks section of the Metadata[edit]
Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:45, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
- As in other photos taken with the same camera. Wouter (talk) 18:49, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
- This is a problem of that camera i think. As far as I know, they are not supposed to use that field for private camera specific purposes. But a lot of broken technology has been made over the years, so theres gonna ve sone garbage and then that will show in MediaWiki. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:15, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
Transcoding large MPEG videos[edit]
I am thinking of transcoding large MPEG videos like File:My_wish.mpg and File:TRAPS-Brao_people.mpg to a better format like VP8 or VP9. What do you think? - Yuhong (talk) 20:05, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Yuhong: You don't need to do anything, it is already done. See the bottom of each of these pages. Yann (talk) 20:24, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
- Not what I meant. Just storing the video on WMF servers has its costs, not to mention the bandwidth costs. I am only talking about large videos here. - Yuhong (talk) 20:50, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
- Everytime a video is re-encoded it loses quality. We should store the videos in whatever format they were originally encoded. Nosferattus (talk) 20:57, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
- I am thinking of only doing this against large videos. - Yuhong (talk) 20:59, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
- The videos in question are already on WMF's servers, and reencoding them will not remove them. We pretty much never remove files from the servers. It is, of course, technically possible, and I guess it happens for things like if someone uploads child porn, but when you "delete" a file or version here, it just becomes invisible to non-admins. - Jmabel ! talk 01:12, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
- There is a CPU cost to transcoding the videos, right? Though the file size difference don't seem to be large. -- Yuhong (talk) 01:25, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Yuhong WRT Wikimedia: All videos uploaded to Commons are transcoded to VP9 automatically after upload. It doesn't matter, what format is uploaded. People will ever only see the VP9 transcoded version. This transcoding is done only once, then the transcoded versions are saved for every later use. Only if a new version is uploaded, new transcodes will be generated. But every time a new version is uploaded, new transcodes are made. Even if you upload a VP9 video, it will be transcoded. In your example of a MPG video (actually mpeg2, but extension mpg is used) it would only make any sense to upload a new version of the video, if this is not the orginal format of the video AND you have access to the original format version AND the original version of the video or a better transcode to either VP9 or AV1 can be uploaded. Today most videos are uploaded as VP9. Other formats (ogv, mpeg2 and pretty much nothing else) are only preferrable, if this is the most original version of a video available for upload. C.Suthorn (talk) 07:05, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
- There is a CPU cost to transcoding the videos, right? Though the file size difference don't seem to be large. -- Yuhong (talk) 01:25, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
- The videos in question are already on WMF's servers, and reencoding them will not remove them. We pretty much never remove files from the servers. It is, of course, technically possible, and I guess it happens for things like if someone uploads child porn, but when you "delete" a file or version here, it just becomes invisible to non-admins. - Jmabel ! talk 01:12, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
- I am thinking of only doing this against large videos. - Yuhong (talk) 20:59, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
- Everytime a video is re-encoded it loses quality. We should store the videos in whatever format they were originally encoded. Nosferattus (talk) 20:57, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
- Not what I meant. Just storing the video on WMF servers has its costs, not to mention the bandwidth costs. I am only talking about large videos here. - Yuhong (talk) 20:50, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
February 20[edit]
"City" has various colloquial meanings ranging from "very large town" to "local administrative unit of any size". In consequence and looking at our categories there is no clear understanding whether the subcats in Category:Categories by city are catch-all for stettlements of any status or if there should be differentiation into "by city", "by municipality" (which in some subtrees is understood as a general term including cities, sometimes as excluding them) and in some coutries "by town" and "by village" for further differentiation. Cats with "by city" as catch-all are still dominating, but the other subtrees are growing. This leads to e.g. "Category:Churches in Foo" being in different trees depending on the administrative status or size of foo. In practice it even leads to the objects being in "by-city" trees as well as in "by-municipality" trees as some topics differentiate between the two and others don´t.
My questions: (a) Should subtrees be formed along the status of the relating local administrative unit or not? (b) If not, is there a word that is universally understood to cover all kinds of towns and villages, making it clear both fit in the category? --Rudolph Buch (talk) 14:59, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
February 21[edit]
Topic in country template[edit]
The template Template:Topic by country is producing some nonsensical categorisation. For example, Category:Civil engineering in the United Kingdom turns up in the parent categories in North America, South America, Africa and Oceania; likewise France. While I realise that these countries may have territories in these regions, categorising them in those parent categories just defeats the purpose of the region categories. I don't know where it is pulling these categories from - presumably a subtemplate. Simon Burchell (talk) 10:17, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Joshbaumgartner: You have been working on the category (and the single template it is using) recently. Is this a problem you are aware of? From Hill To Shore (talk) 11:27, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- @From Hill To Shore: Thank you for pinging me on this. I am aware of this categorization behavior, and it is intentional (not that it can't be changed). There is a data template that lists what continents a country is present in, and uses that to categorize a "topic in country" under each of the continents it is present on. This is not an issue for most countries, which are present in only one continent, but there are several multi-continent countries. The United Kingdom is an egregious outlier in this category as it covers just about every continent, even today, and thus just about every continent has a United Kingdom presence that needs to be accounted for. While naturally the lion's share of any topic about the United Kingdom is going to center on Europe, it is not exclusively so. There are some ways this could be refined. If, say, Civil engineering in the United Kingdom were to be sub-categorized into civil engineering in the United Kingdom in Europe, civil engineering in the United Kingdom in North America, etc., the continent categories could be removed from the parent and instead moved to these single-continent sub-cats. However, that's not something I think anyone is eager to embark on. Alternatively, we could remove all multi-continent countries from single-continent "topic in continent" categories, and instead add them to something like "topic in multi-continent countries". I don't particularly care for this a whole lot, but it could work. In the end, I do not think it is as bad as it might seem on the surface. The reality is that the United Kingdom has a factual presence in Oceania, and thus if one has a category covering civil engineering in Oceania, part of that topic includes the United Kingdom, even if Oceania is only a tiny fraction of the United Kingdom. This is why the template works the way it does, but if we want to go a different way with it, I stand ready to make the needed changes to it. Josh (talk) 17:12, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- If this is a reference to the British Overseas Territories - I note from the Wikipedia article "The British Overseas Territories (BOTs), also known as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), are fourteen territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom. They are the last remnants of the former British Empire and do not form part of the United Kingdom itself." (my italics) - as such the United Kingdom should not be categorised within those regions - it may have a role in governance, but does not actually have territory there. Simon Burchell (talk) 10:21, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
- @From Hill To Shore: Thank you for pinging me on this. I am aware of this categorization behavior, and it is intentional (not that it can't be changed). There is a data template that lists what continents a country is present in, and uses that to categorize a "topic in country" under each of the continents it is present on. This is not an issue for most countries, which are present in only one continent, but there are several multi-continent countries. The United Kingdom is an egregious outlier in this category as it covers just about every continent, even today, and thus just about every continent has a United Kingdom presence that needs to be accounted for. While naturally the lion's share of any topic about the United Kingdom is going to center on Europe, it is not exclusively so. There are some ways this could be refined. If, say, Civil engineering in the United Kingdom were to be sub-categorized into civil engineering in the United Kingdom in Europe, civil engineering in the United Kingdom in North America, etc., the continent categories could be removed from the parent and instead moved to these single-continent sub-cats. However, that's not something I think anyone is eager to embark on. Alternatively, we could remove all multi-continent countries from single-continent "topic in continent" categories, and instead add them to something like "topic in multi-continent countries". I don't particularly care for this a whole lot, but it could work. In the end, I do not think it is as bad as it might seem on the surface. The reality is that the United Kingdom has a factual presence in Oceania, and thus if one has a category covering civil engineering in Oceania, part of that topic includes the United Kingdom, even if Oceania is only a tiny fraction of the United Kingdom. This is why the template works the way it does, but if we want to go a different way with it, I stand ready to make the needed changes to it. Josh (talk) 17:12, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
Temperature indication[edit]
Sometimes the there are things not visible in the picture. A temperature of 38 degrees Celcius. The only thing visible is that alle windows are fully open. Is it usefull to mention the temperature in extreme cases? Certainly when records are broken. It can be supported by weather sources.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:06, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- In structured Data I have added the temperature, but I get warnings.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:12, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Smiley.toerist: Adding a temperature property to the structured data of an images implies that it's the temperature of the file, but the file itself doesn't really have a temperature. I would suggest adding the temperature as a qualifier for the entities in the "depicts" property (aka "Items portrayed in this file"). TilmannR (talk) 14:19, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- I was thinking along the same lines and tried it here, but I also got an error/warning/complaint. El Grafo (talk) 14:24, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- @El Grafo: Which warning was it? allowed-entity-types constraint? TilmannR (talk) 14:48, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- I got two:
- allowed-qualifiers-constraint for using temperature (P2076) as a qualifier for depicts (P180)
- allowed-entity-types constraint "The property temperature should not be used on this type of entity, the only valid entity type is Wikibase item."
- (see current version of File:赤バック 体温計 (6048895685).jpg). El Grafo (talk) 15:31, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- @El Grafo, @Smiley.toerist: I asked the Wikidata:Project chat. They probably know more about these constraints than Commons users and are qualified to change the property definitions, if necessary. TilmannR (talk) 17:36, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- I got two:
- @El Grafo: Which warning was it? allowed-entity-types constraint? TilmannR (talk) 14:48, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- I was thinking along the same lines and tried it here, but I also got an error/warning/complaint. El Grafo (talk) 14:24, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Smiley.toerist: Adding a temperature property to the structured data of an images implies that it's the temperature of the file, but the file itself doesn't really have a temperature. I would suggest adding the temperature as a qualifier for the entities in the "depicts" property (aka "Items portrayed in this file"). TilmannR (talk) 14:19, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- i dont think it's useful to add a statement of atmospheric temperature based on weather data. it should only be added if it's measured like 赤バック 体温計 (6048895685).jpg . RZuo (talk) 16:22, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- on top of that, atmospheric temperature <> temperature of the depicted subjects <> temperature measured. it's not so helpful if these are not distinguished. imagine a photo of a furnace in the north of sweden in winter. atmospheric temperature outside might be -10 celcius, temperature of the furnace might be 1000 celcius, temperature of a handheld thermometer in the vicinity of the furnace might be 39 celcius...--RZuo (talk) 11:26, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
- Agreed. "This image was taken at 36°C" is not something we should routinely add to our metadata. "This image shows its subject at 36°C" is a different thing and may be useful for some things (like hot steel, which glows in different colors at different temperatures). This is probably something that should simply be mentioned in the file description.
- "This image shows a thermometer that has measured 36°C" and the related "... shows a display that displays 36°C" are yet another thing. We do have Categories for this, som we may want to model this in SDC too. So this edit in a way was nonsense: That's a medical thermometer that at some point in the past has measured a temperature of 38°C, probably while having its tip somewhere inside someones body. It is now showing that temperature, but the thermometer itself probably has room temperature. El Grafo (talk) 11:51, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
- on top of that, atmospheric temperature <> temperature of the depicted subjects <> temperature measured. it's not so helpful if these are not distinguished. imagine a photo of a furnace in the north of sweden in winter. atmospheric temperature outside might be -10 celcius, temperature of the furnace might be 1000 celcius, temperature of a handheld thermometer in the vicinity of the furnace might be 39 celcius...--RZuo (talk) 11:26, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Africa Environment Day / Wangari Maathai Day Office Hour[edit]
📢 (In) formation Vous souhaitez en savoir plus sur Environnement Day / Journée Wangari Maathai Souhaitez-vous avoir des idées sur la façon dont vous pouvez vous impliquer? Ou peut-être avez-vous des idées que vous aimeriez partager ? Si la réponse est "oui!" alors cette Office Hour est pour VOUS ! Date: Jeudi, 23 Février 2023 Heure: 15:00 UTC (Ici, est liée votre heure locale) Lieu: Google Meet Langue de discussion: Français Vous êtes invité.e.s à assister à la première Heure de bureau d’Africa Environment Day présentée par Manouka[Kakou]. Au cours de cette session, vous serez initié au projet et aurez l'opportunité de poser des questions et d'obtenir des réponses. Partagez ce message avec les membres de votre communauté ! Abiba Pauline (talk) 12:35, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
Community feedback-cycle about updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use starts[edit]
Hi everyone,
This February 2023 the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Department is planning to host a feedback cycle about updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use (ToU) from February, 21 to April 2023. Full information has been published here.
The Terms of Use are the legal terms that govern the use of websites hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. We will be gathering your feedback on a draft proposal from February through April. The draft has been translated into several languages, with feedback accepted in any language.
This update comes in response to several things:
- Implementing the Universal Code of Conduct
- Updating project text to the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (CC 4.0)
- A proposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing
- Bringing our terms in line with current and recently passed laws affecting the Foundation including the European Digital Services Act
Regarding the Universal Code of Conduct and its enforcement guidelines, we are instructed to ensure that the ToU include it in some form.
Regarding CC 4.0, the communities had determined as the result of a 2016 consultation that the projects should upgrade the main license for hosted text from the current CC BY-SA 3.0 to CC BY-SA 4.0. We’re excited to be able to put that into effect, which will open up the projects to receiving a great deal of already existing CC BY-SA 4.0 text and improve reuse and remixing of project content going forward.
Regarding the proposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing, the Foundation intends to strengthen its tools to support existing community policies against marketing companies engaged in systematic, undisclosed paid editing campaigns.
Finally, regarding new laws, the last ToU update was in 2015, and that update was a single item regarding paid editing. The last thorough revision was in 2012. While the law affecting hosting providers has held steady for some time, with the recent passage of the EU’s Digital Services Act, we are seeing more significant changes in the legal obligations for companies like the Foundation that host large websites. So with a decade behind us and the laws affecting website hosts soon changing, we think it’s a good time to revisit the ToU and update them to bring them up to current legal precedents and standards.
See the page on Meta to get all the information.
On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Legal Team,
Zuz (WMF) (talk) 12:41, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- @Zuz (WMF) Your second link is broken (superfluous "wiki"), should be updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use. El Grafo (talk) 13:17, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
Global ban for Livioandronico2013[edit]
On Meta, there is an RfC on Global ban for Livioandronico2013 -- one of our most persistent sockpuppeteers and LTA here on Commons. Anyone who wish, please participate. --A.Savin 15:27, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- For those poor souls unfamiliar with abreviations:
RfC = Request for Comments (solicitud de comentarios)
LTA = ?? ?? Account (Cuenta de ¿¿?? y ¿¿??) B25es (talk) 07:20, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
February 22[edit]
Automotive generation categories[edit]
A category discussion is underway regarding the naming of generation categories in the automotive world:
Broader community engagement is encouraged as this discussion could affect several categories within the automotive tree. Please review and comment there if you are interested. Thanks, Josh (talk) 01:38, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Category:Flags of counties of Wales[edit]
Category:Flags of counties of Wales seems to contain various fictitious flags. someone should sort out which are real and which are not, and change descriptions and filenames accordingly.--RZuo (talk) 11:26, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Photograf family Gay-Couttet[edit]
I have scanned an old black-White postcard 'La Mer de Glace'. There is the mention '(48) Photo Mont-Blanc Gay-Couttet'. The problem for licensing is by wich generation the picture is taken? see Un siècle de photographies à Chamonix, la famille Gay-Couttet. If it is R.Gay-Couttet(1925-2002) [3] it is to recent. The date posted is unclear, but it is with a 5 french franc poststamp. Smiley.toerist (talk) 16:01, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
- I can scan the backside, with date stamp information (I cant deduce a date from it, but someone may have more experience of it). But if the picture is later found to be not PD, it is a bit out of scope to keep the backside image.Smiley.toerist (talk) 16:13, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
- I'm pretty knowledgeable about postcards so I can look into it if you want. Uploading the back would probably help to. It's always preferred to have images of the back of postcards if we can anyway. BTW, if your interested there's Commons:WikiProject Postcards. We are always looking for new members. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:19, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
- It could very well be R. Gay-Couttet(1925-2002) for a picture taken in 1948. Les photos de Michel Couttet et de Auguste Couttet (1868-1933), son fils, peuvent être acceptées sur Commons. Yann (talk) 16:27, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Purpose of "Other versions" section in Summaries[edit]
I've noticed a couple of times that the "Other versions" sections in the summaries of some files are being used for random images that are only tangentially related to the original image, if at all. For instance File:Stamp 1943 DRBM MiNr0113 mt B002.jpg lists File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-C08786, Zeesen, Jungfliegerheim übergeben.jpg as another version of it, but there isn't really a clear connection between the two images. Let alone is the later a "version" of the former. Same goes for File:Stamp 1943 DRBM MiNr0125 mt B0012.jpg, which lists File:Benda Jaroslav (1882-1970), malíř.jpg when it's not a "version" of the original. It seems like people are trying to use the "Other versions" sections of file summaries as rudimentary categories or something. So I'd like to know what the consensus is when it comes to using the "other version" sections of files in this way and if it would be OK to delete links to files that aren't actually versions of the original. Thanks. Adamant1 (talk) 16:50, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
- Removing "other versions" that are only tangentially related is appropriate. Broad collections (e.g., images of doves with olive branches) are the purpose of categories. However, there may be information that belongs elsewhere. It looks like Benda Jaroslav belongs in the artist/author field. Postal administration of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia may be a corporate author or a publisher. The point is that the "other versions" field implies an important claim that should not be deleted even if the image of Benda Jaroslav is removed. Glrx (talk) 17:51, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
- Things like this should be in the description, not in "other versions". It's perfectly OK to have a gallery element in the description. - Jmabel ! talk 18:00, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Bad licenses on OK files[edit]
In following up on a user question on Help desk I noticed that a lot of images that are just signatures have totally bogus CC licenses. I'm guessing that all (or nearly all) of these would be OK as {{PD-signature}}. Should there be an effort to go through and fix these systematically? Or is it really not that important that these PD files are marked with bogus CC licenses? - Jmabel ! talk 21:56, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Category:Transgender women of the United States[edit]
Should detransitioners such as Kristin Beck still be in this category? --Trade (talk) 22:05, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
- Convenience links:, en:Chris Beck (Navy SEAL). - Jmabel ! talk 22:41, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
I can't work out the scope of this category, and its creator is blocked so I can't ask him about intent.
- I can't even tell what portion of the category is proper noun and what isn't, and since the only parent category is Category:Columbia River Gorge I can't get there by intersecting parent categories.
- We have a Category:Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, which seems a more likely parent than Category:Columbia River Gorge. Given that this was created as a subcat of Category:Columbia River Gorge rather than Category:Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, is there any reason to believe that these images all fall within the latter?
- Is there a work called Historic Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Photos and this is originally intended as a category specific to that work?
- I think not: I see one image here as recent as 2007, placed there by the same banned user who created the category.
- In any other case, "photos" should be lowercase.
- Given that it's not all one proper name, what does "historic" mean here? Before some particular date? If so, what date?
- Again the 2007 image put in by the creator of the category makes me wonder…
- …is this category useful at all? - Jmabel ! talk 23:27, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
- No, not useful at all. That sockpuppeteer created a lot of poorly named categories to dump mass uploads in (rather than putting in the effort to properly categorize the images.) Feel free to recategorize the files to the parent, then delete. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 07:48, 23 February 2023 (UTC)