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Village pump copyright • proposals

Administrators' noticeboard vandalism • user problems • blocks and protections

A village pump in Cork, Ireland []

Centralized discussion See also: Village pump/Proposals • Archive  • M:D Change pre-fill on category creation page due to Wikidata (29 February 2016) Request for comments concerning the naming of user categories (22 January 2016) Template: View • Discuss •  • Watch

Oldies

Share my Content here with CC-BY-SA and on Youtube with standard Youtube license

moved to:Village pump/Copyright#Share my Content here with CC-BY-SA and on Youtube with standard Youtube license

Copyright for books or printed official publications?

• moved to Commons:Village pump/Copyright#Copyright for books or printed official publications?

What license?

• moved to: Commons:Village pump/Copyright#What license?

archive.org

• moved to Commons:Village pump/Copyright#archive.org

Great Britain & Ireland postcards

moved to Commons:Village pump/Copyright#Great Britain & Ireland postcards

April 03

Category system

I think we should change how we use categories. For example, the Category:Unidentified plants in Germany is unnecessary. All media in this category should be in the Category:Unidentified plants and in a Category like "Photo taken in Germany".

Why is this desirable?

• No step back: Such a system allows to store the same kind of information
• Separation of information
  • This is good, because Category:Daffodils by country does not have a subcategory "Daffodils in Germany". Lazy editors might simply move the file to Category:Narcissus. Information is lost with the current system.
  • It makes sub-categories to be on the same "level" of information. Sub-categories should be only more specific, that means of the same type of the main category. For example, Category:Narcissus should only contain sub-categories of more specific types such as Category:Narcissus gaditanus‎. It should not contain
    • Category:Narcissus in art‎ (rather Category:Narcissus‎ and Category:Art‎ from which one can automatically deduct it is "Narcissus in Art")
    • Category:Daffodils by country‎ (rather Category:Narcissus‎ and something like "Category:Taken in Germany")
    • Category:Narcissus by color‎ (rather Category:Narcissus‎ and something like "Category:Blue")
• Better tools could be written: I was just about to write a machine learning tool which should help to find categories (or more specific subcategories, if a category is already given), but this is currently harder than necessary.

What do you think?

Best regards, --MartinThoma (talk) 09:39, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

I agree, our category system is completely bonkers. There is no way that unrelated attributes should be combined as one category. The "Location" attribute is quite separate from the "Main subject" attribute, etc. It is a wonder anyone can find any images in our deeply nested labyrinthine mess. Looking for a picture of "David Cameron" outside "10 Downing St"? Well someone has put most of his pictures inside "in year" categories as if the date the photo was taken is the most important sub-attribute of "David Cameron". I don't know anything about the Wikidata project, but one has to hope they have discovered a better way of classifying things that perhaps could be used here. It is sad that so much volunteer effort is being wasted on this system that is of very little help to end-users. -- Colin (talk) 10:31, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the problem you see, but are you saying that Category:Narcissus in art‎, Category:Daffodils by country‎, Category:Narcissus by color‎, and similar categories shouldn't exist? I'd disagree with that. One reason is that having the files in question directly under the art, taken in country, and color categories would overcrowd those categories. The art category alone currently has almost 2000 files in it. --Auntof6 (talk) 10:41, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

What does it mean for a category to be "overcrowd"? Surely you're not talking about technical problems, are you? --MartinThoma (talk) 11:56, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

A system like this would also require a better browsing method designed for it - one where looking for images in the intersection of two categories would be very easy (among other things). If there are tools for browsing a category smartly the size wouldn't be an issue. BMacZero (talk) 15:45, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

For what it's worth a script/gadget to do category intersect searches probably wouldn't be that hard for someone with Labs access and would be a great benefit. Reguyla (talk) 15:53, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

FastCCI, a default-activated gadget since 2014, can perform category intersections.    FDMS  4    15:59, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) There is a tool for that: FastCCI. Go to a Category, click on the little arrow next to "Good pictures" at the top right, click on "In this category and in …". It works quite well and it would work much better if we had a flatter category tree.

Our current system of categorizing stuff by multiple attributes is a relic of the early times where category intersection was not an easy thing to do. Which results in Categories like Category:Videos of Purple Boeing 737-300 of British Airways landing at London-Heathrow Airport in 1987 at sunset. Yes, I'm exaggerating, but unfortunately not that much. --El Grafo (talk) 16:03, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Just started watching Dschwen's excellent talk again. Turns out I did not exaggerate: Category:Demographic maps of 15-17 year old dependent children whose fathers did not state proficiency in English and whose mothers speak English only in Victoria. This is adness. Coplete and utter adness. --El Grafo (talk) 16:17, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Totally seconding the recommendation for Dschwen's FastCCI presentation! Here you go:

• 

  FastCCI - Taming the Commons Category Tree. Dschwen, Wikimania 2014

• Play media

  Talk: Now available under CC-By 3.0

• 

  Fastcci intersect

• 

  Fastcci intersect

 Info See also de:Hilfe:Suche/Deepcat (Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2015/11#Deepcat_Gadget:_intersection_and_subcategory_search_on_Wikipedia_and_Commons and phabricator), allowing category intersection search in cirrus. --Atlasowa (talk) 21:56, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

• I also think that the category intersections should be generated on demand, not hard-coded into category names. Users may want to break down a category by date, license or author, for example, instead of location. The main thing that prevents it is that the current user interface isn't designed for such intersections, even if they can be produced using work-arounds such as FastCCI. Without a better interface, it would be hard to establish a consensus to forbid category intersections, and without that, anyone can create them and there's nothing you can do about it. I once asked about categories like Category:September 2012 in Bute Street, Hong Kong and in the discussion one person even said that deleting such categories was vandalism. --ghouston (talk) 00:30, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Like most people here I agree that we would be better off without intersection categories, IF we had the right tools, which are easy to use and enabled by default. And going a step further, some things like date and (possibly) place should not even be recorded using categories, but using a useful metadata system. (Which should integrate with Wikidata.) --Sebari (talk) 00:49, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Ok, I think I see a consensus here: We should do what I proposed, but only after we have good integrated tools to make the intersections. I have two ideas for this: First, I would create another search page similar to write-math.com. You can see the search terms is [arrow][mnsymbol] right, where [arrow] and [mnsymbol] are categories which get intersected. I think this is a very natural way to search for the files. The second idea is to propose possible divisions (e.g. by color, year, ...). This can be done automatically by looking at which categories the files also have and applying an information-theoretic criterion like the Gini coefficient.

But I should probably talk with somebody who is involved in MediaWiki development. I don't want to develop something and then it doesn't get integrated. (And I would prefer it if somebody else wrote the code.) --MartinThoma (talk) 06:43, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

I really don't think we should make rash decisions and end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. There is no way that after a couple of paragraphs are posted on the Village pump that we can "see a consensus" on this. If you wish to see better search tools developed then very well, but I don't think that should change how we store images here. I think these are 2 different things that are often confused. I would hate to see the simplicity of the current system sacrificed for a complex, supposedly All singing, all dancing search system that you would need to be educated on or experienced on how to best to use it and that may well have hit and miss results. It's very easy to see faults in the current system but it may be impossible to develop a better system that handles such a variety of content and still stays simple, consistent and easy to use. Oxyman (talk) 14:46, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

My thought was to improve the current search / implement a way to do easy category intersections and then talk again about how we manage categories as a community. Currently, it seems that nobody wants to change the way we use categories because the lack of tools. So this is a killer argument against changing the category system. However, I don't see any argument against new features in search / new search tools / a new design. --MartinThoma (talk) 15:49, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

I can see benefits to improving search tools, I just don't think that they should replace the category system Oxyman (talk) 21:57, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

I think we'd run into different problems by broadening the categories too much. For instance, should a search for intersection of "People" and "Germany" show German people in Germany, or non-German people visiting in Germany, non-German people living in Germany, or German people living outside Germany? Should a search for "Flowers" and "Germany" yield images of common German flowers (like daffodils), or images of exotic orchids in flower shops in Germany? FastCCI looks great, but I don't see it solving that issue. I'd say that narrow commons categories can provide a service if you are looking for something narrow. - Themightyquill (talk) 08:03, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes, those category intersections would be ambiguous. You could have separate categories, such as Located in Germany, Born in Germany, Holding German citizenship. The latter would only apply to people, the first to all kinds of objects including living ones, the second to all kinds of animals. It would look different if done via Wikidata-like topics. Nobody said it would be easy. --ghouston (talk) 00:58, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Basically that's why we need COM:Structured data. Does anybody know the current status of that? --El Grafo (talk) 11:27, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

User:MartinThoma says he sees «consensus here». Maybe here. In Commons at large, not really. Users who actually work for Commons (i.e. not merely use it as a vanity display case for selected photographs, or as a tool for WMF politics) are too busy adding categories to media files and are too bored already to even react every time a newbie pops up in VP suggesting the whole category data be dismantled just because it doesn’t fit their lack of knowledge about successful crowdsourced ahierarchic notional cladistics. Of course distroying is (or would be) easy, but it doesn’t make it right. FWIW, 90% of Commons files is uncategorized or undercategorized: focus on that and leave other people’s useful and meaningful work alone. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 10:41, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

I sympathize with Tuvalkin's response. Nemo 10:44, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Category:Crêpes in Takeshita street. What more can I say? - Jmabel ! talk 00:21, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

• I see that someone implicitly replied to that be removing the category without discussion. Not the worst way to deal with it. - Jmabel ! talk 15:45, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Moved to Category:Marion Crêpes, Takeshita street Delphi234 (talk) 07:09, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps someone could summarize all tools used for category intersection at Commons:Tools/Category intersection? -- Rillke^(q?) 08:15, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Wrapping up an old discussion

I'm wondering about the process. I'd like to act on this. Input? Thoughts? Guidance on how things go around here? Thank you and best wishes to all, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 01:02, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

I just dropped my 2 cents in. Not sure how the closure process actually works, though, which seems odd because I feel like I should by now. KDS4444 (talk) 00:41, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

The rest of the "manual" is in Commons:Categories_for_discussion#Closing_a_discussion. –Be..anyone 💩 23:30, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Files do not appear

Hello.Some of the files do not appear in Category:Book of Hours 1984 (example), what is the reason?Thank you --ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 15:57, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

• I'm not sure what's wrong, but I fixed your example by making a null edit to the file page in question. I suggest you try doing the same to any others that exhibit the problem. - Jmabel ! talk 20:03, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
• It is because category updating is in the job queue, so there is probably a delay in updating the categories (credits to Zhuyifei1999). ★ Poké⁹⁵ 06:27, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Biggest donation of photos from Italy

Hi to all,
As the Wikimedian in residence at the digital library of BEIC (GLAM/BEIC), I'm happy to announce that we uploaded almost the entire digital photo archive of an important Italian contemporary photographer, Paolo Monti (1908-1982), with nearly 17.000 images (the whole archive was acquired by Fondazione BEIC). This is the biggest donation of images in "one shot" ever made in Italy by a cultural institution. It’s also the first time that a digital archive from a famous photographer is almost completely uploaded into Wikimedia Commons.
The photos represent various subjects (art, events, architecture, people, portraits, nature, artistic nudes, experimental) and were shot since 1950s to 1980s. Many of them are B/W, but there are also many amazing colorful artistic/experimental pictures as well as the first strips collection (with test prints etc.) of Commons. There are also many precious contemporary architecture photos, because Paolo Monti was commissioned to do reportages for magazines and catalogues - and of course he made it with the full permission of the architects. So we do not have to worry the typical lack of "freedom of panorama" in Italy.
The photos uploaded few days ago were all selected and "tagged" manually by BEIC-commissioned cataloguers working according to the standards. To give Commons the best quality end result possible, the upload was done with the highest resolution available and with all available metadata. See them in Category:Photographs by Paolo Monti.
I'd like to thank the many commoners that helped us till the first minutes - I was amazed by their enthusiasm - and kindly ask for you patience and help, because I know that some commoners don't like "red" (uncreated) categories derived from the original catalogue. We worked hard to fix the most part of them and I think we will be able to complete this work in the next weeks - with your help. Yes, there is a lot of work to do, not only in improving categories, but also in using images into Wikipedia articles, and - if you like - selecting the best photos to candidate them as "featured pictures" or "valued pictures". Thank you, --Marco Chemello (BEIC) (talk) 13:56, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

A wonderful donation, indeex! As for the redlinked categories, I see that some of the ones with Italian names were actually defined. One is Category:Bambini. I believe it is our practice not to define categories with non-English names if the purpose is to redirect to the English-named category -- at least, I've seen many such categories deleted. Also, if these categories are created, they should not redirect to Italy-specific categories. For example, Category:Bambini redirects to Category:Children of Italy, but it should redirect simply to Category:Children. --Auntof6 (talk) 16:50, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Fully agreed, on all accounts. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 14:37, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

While I agree in principle and I initially did so too, this is a common practice since multiple years, presumably for reasons of practicality. Better discuss changes in a specific discussion. Federico Leva (BEIC) (talk) 22:04, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

These are the category pages that were not created this month and do not redirect to a disambiguated category page. I don't think such redirects are common practice (and also agree with Auntof6).    FDMS  4    22:30, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

(Edit conflict)There are only 252 of them. In a project this size, I don't think that constitutes a common practice. --Auntof6 (talk) 22:39, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

“and of course he made it with the full permission of the architects. So we do not have to worry the typical lack of "freedom of panorama" in Italy.”

This is worrying when it comes to Wikimedia Commons' policies. We need evidence of such permission per the precautionary principle. Otherwise such images which includes images of buildings which may be covered under FoP will (unfortunatly) be deleted. Josve05a (talk) 22:12, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Another issue I'm seeing here is that people seem to be assuming that all these photos are of things in Italy, but that isn't the case. As an example, look at this one (link is to a specific version of the photo): it appears to be in Florida, because there are categories for Key West and because the words "Florida Keys" appear on the boat. However, someone apparently assumed it was in Italy and moved it from Category:Imbarcazioni to Category:Boats in Italy. Since Cat-a-lot was used to do that, the same move may have been done to other files. Earlier today, I changed a lot of the new category redirects to remove "in Italy" from the name of the target categories, but many files may have been moved to the "in Italy" categories already. --Auntof6 (talk) 03:54, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Input requested for building a database for public domain (AutoresAr)

Hello everyone! We're presenting a proposal for building a database of argentinean authors in the public domain. Our proposal is based on a project already been carried out in Uruguay, called AutoresUy, already accepted as an unique identifier in Wikidata. We think it's necessary and desirable to have more projects of this kind. In order to achieve this, we have set up a plan that includes workshops, edit-a-thons and lots of hard work to build, improve, and expand this database and help Wikimedia projects. Please leave your input in the talk page, or directly an endorsement if you think it's worthed.

IEG proposal for AutoresAr. --Scanno (talk) 14:43, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Isn't Wikidata query by date of death should be enough? --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:18, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata support: arbitrary access is coming on the 26th f April

Hey everyone :)

A while ago I asked for testing of the arbitrary access feature here. This will enable Commons to make use of all the data that is on Wikidata. Given that no major issues were found during testing we are going to enable arbitrary access for you on the 26th of April. I hope this will make many great things possible for you. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 17:39, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Great news. --Jarekt (talk) 19:43, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Excellent news! We'll have the real fireworks on 26th, but I hope you don't mind me prematurely lighting a little sparkler right now ;-) --El Grafo (talk) 08:13, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Haha no I don't mind at all ;-) --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 08:15, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

April 14

New categories not showing up

I've lately been subdividing some broad categories and moving the contents to the new subcategories with Cat-A-Lot. I've often noticed that the new ones don't immediately show up in Cat-A-Lot or the parent category; for example, Category:Wooden houses in DeKalb County, Indiana didn't immediately show up in Category:Wooden houses in Indiana, even though the DeKalb category lists the Indiana category as one of its parents. No problem; doing it manually isn't hard, and I assume that this is a database-going-slowly problem, as explained in the fourth bullet of en:MediaWiki:Notitletext.

However, I created the DeKalb County wooden houses category thirteen hours ago, and it's still not showing up, so Category:Wooden buildings in DeKalb County, Indiana claims that it's empty. What's going on? The wooden buildings category is listed as a parent of the wooden houses category; it's not a typo in the category's code. Nyttend (talk) 00:25, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

There was a bug that caused this to happen sometimes. It was supposedly fixed, but maybe not: [1]. Null-editing the child category will probably fix this instance. --ghouston (talk) 01:09, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

I've seen something similar. I just reload the page once or twice and then everything looks as it should. --Auntof6 (talk) 02:16, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Same problem with File:Old Tempelhof airport 2016 (4).JPG. Doesnt show in the new category: 2016 at Berlin Tempelhof Airport.Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:37, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Bug on this wiki: int:lang returns "fr" when uselang=pcd

When the default user language is set to Picard (pcd), or a page is viewed with "?uselang=pcd", the special template "int:lang" returns "fr" instead of "pcd".

Also when the language is set to Alemanic (gsw), the special template "int:lang" still returns "als" (non-standard legacy code) instead of "gsw" (standard code).

Proofs: {{int:lang}} currently returns "en" (unless you've not used the links below, this should be the language code of your own language in user preferences).

• View this page in Picard (pcd: standard code) : should return "pcd", not "fr"
• View this page in Alemanic (gsw: standard code) : should return "gsw", not "als"
• View this page in Alemanic (als: legacy non-standard code) : should preferably return "gsw", unless the real language code "als" is reassigned to the correct language
• View this page in Norman (nrm: legacy non-standard code) : which standard code should it return, given that standard code "nrm" is reserved for another unrelated language ?

In summary, the MediaWiki translation resource pages stored for "int:lang" do not always return their own language code (even if the language code is supported in MediaWiki translations): these are

• MediaWiki:Lang/pcd : does not exist, so "int:lang" attempts to find a translation of the "Lang" message in another fallback language and returns "fr"
• MediaWiki:Lang/gsw : incorrectly contains "als"

This generates bugs in "autotranslated" pages or templates, where existing translations are not displayed as expected (for example with Template:LangSwitch), and messages in another language are displayed.

verdy_p (talk) 11:18, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the admin for the new corrections ! verdy_p (talk) 11:56, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

You welcome, If you find some more issues with MediaWiki namespace pages please leave message at their talk page with {{Editrequest}} and I or some other admin will be happy to help. --Jarekt (talk) 11:59, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Please use the preview feature, 18 revisions for a single post is a bit excessive (watchlists, page history, …).    FDMS  4    12:02, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

All previews were correct, these were some added precisions (there was still no reply before that).

We should probably check all MediaWiki:Lang/"code" subpages:

• To see if they all contain the same "code", given that int:Lang depends on this (there may be some exceptions for strange codes used for special internal purposes, but not intended for use in translations)
• There may also remain some old items for languages whose support has been dropped (such as "zh-CN", "zh-TW", "iw" ?) or for other non-standard codes that have been reassigned to another language ("nrm" is still an exception), or replaced by new shorter codes ("zh-min-nan" is still supported as an alias for "nan", but there remains translations made with "zh-min-nan").
• There are also probably other missing items for newly supported languages that were added to MediaWiki translations (we should check the list of languages imported from translatewiki and enabled in MediaWiki and installed on Commons).

verdy_p (talk) 12:43, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

NRM guess: NRF, cf. Norman language. –Be..anyone 💩 16:22, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

I checked the list of all "supported languages" and within them, there are missing resources for int:Lang:

All other "MediaWiki:Lang/*" for supported languages are correctly setup with their own language code. verdy_p (talk) 13:33, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Fixed --Jarekt (talk) 14:04, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. You can see the effect in my User:Verdy_p/sandbox page (which lists all supported codes and their names); I could have written a module for that, but I just used the Module:Languages to extract the list of language codes. May be we could add a testcase for Module:Languages making sure everything is fine in this list. verdy_p (talk) 16:56, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Does anyone know of any good guides or tools for understanding rules around content reuse outside of copyright restrictions?

Hi all

I'm looking for some information on other restrictions to reuse outside copyright for people interested in reusing content from Wikimedia Commons. The current Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia guide says: Other restrictions may apply. These may include trademarks, patents, personality rights, moral rights, privacy rights, or any of the many other legal causes which are independent of copyright and vary greatly by jurisdiction.

Whilst this is useful information it doesn't provide people with an answer to if they can use the image or not and the time commitment needed to understand the laws and apply them seems unrealistic. I wanted to know if there were any useful tool people could use that would help them know wether they could reuse images without needing to understand the laws using a series of questions e.g is the image a trademark, does the image have a person in, what country are you using it in etc.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 12:48, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Usually people use the Commons:Copyright rules by subject matter examples. Nemo 13:08, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry I didn't explain myself well, I'm talking about this for people wanting to reuse content from Commons, not upload it to Commons and the rules they need to follow which are not copyright laws. Thanks John Cummings (talk) 13:24, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

John, you already have my remarks on this, right? - Jmabel ! talk 15:58, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Jmabel, yes, thanks very much :) I'm just looking for an existing comprehensive tool so I can just point to it rather than having to write it. John Cummings (talk) 18:35, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

John, My understanding of that section of Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia is that files with likely additional restrictions should have been tagged by {{Trademark}} {{Personality rights}} and similar templates; however in case they were not it is reuser's responsibility to understand his legal obligations under the laws of each jurisdiction. I guess we are trying to mitigate chances of lawsuit like the onehere. I do not think it is possible to foresee all legal responsibilities of image reusers in all jurisdictions, as they my vary greatly. We could create a page with "series of questions" to guide them but in the end the only way they can be sure they do not break some law would be to check with a layer. --Jarekt (talk) 17:15, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

What is the difference? Commons is about uploading files that people can reuse. Nemo 15:29, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Is there a mass import tool for importing content from Internet Archive?

Hi all

Does anyone know of a tool to mass import content from Internet Archive to Commons? Possibly something similar to Flickr2Commons or perhaps something that can import larger collections more quickly?

There are several openly licensed collections of content that could be very useful.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 13:30, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Fæ would probably be the best person to ask about this. INeverCry 19:55, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Did you check Commons:Upload tools#Internet Archive? Nemo 15:30, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Replacing DEFAULTSORT with {{MenByName}} as appropriate

I noticed recently that NeverDoING was replacing {{DEFAULTSORT}} and other categories with {{MenByName}} such as here. I don't really care personally which way we do this, and frankly the {{MenByName}} NeverDoING created might be more efficient, but I think we should be consistent and if this is desired we should just get a bot to do it and go from there. Reguyla (talk) 20:30, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Assuming last name = surname? Cute. But you need to rename it {{Men(exceptKoreansChineseJapaneseHungariansAndMostPortugueseBraziliansEtcAndAlsoIffyForIcelanders)ByName}} — very “effective” indeed. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 22:18, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

I do completely agree that there are names it won't work on so we certainly couldn't do it on all of them. But it would be fairly easy to do it if it had something like \{\{DEFAULTSORT\:last_name\,[ ]+first_name\}\}

Sorry that comment was mine. I guess I forgot to sign. Reguyla (talk) 14:16, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

NeverDoING, I do not like when templates hide {{DEFAULTSORT}}, as I occasionally look trough Category:People by name and look for categories missing {{DEFAULTSORT}} so it can be added. When templates add {{DEFAULTSORT}} and than someone adds conflicting {{DEFAULTSORT}} than you and up with hard to debug page errors. That is why {{Creator}} templates do no add it, although they could. --Jarekt (talk) 16:44, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Maybe use subst, so the {{DEFAULTSORT}} shows up explicitly? --GRuban (talk) 17:52, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Default namespaces in search feature

Quick question: If I'm not mistaken, the "File" namespace isn't included per default if you start a search. In my opinion, it's actually the most important namespace for searching on Commons; all the time, I find content only if including "File". So, would it be possible to include it per default, or are there good reasons not to do so? Maybe strain on the servers? Gestumblindi (talk) 20:58, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Odd, I get ns0=1 ns4=1 ns6=1 ns8=1 etc., where ns6 is File. To reproduce, try a weird default search (I used testtesttest), try the same with the advanced search, and click "Search" on the advanced form to get an URL showing the used Namespaces. I have "Remember selection for future searches" unchecked at the moment. Are you talking about the "search suggestions"? That would be a different story, and I can't tell it. –Be..anyone 💩 22:10, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

@Be..anyone: I get Gallery, Help, Category, MediaWiki talk, Template talk, Creator, and Institution - "Remember selection for future searches" is unchecked, and it's the same even if I'm logged out. But if try it with a different browser I don't normally use, the "File" namespace is included per default indeed... Gestumblindi (talk) 00:04, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

You can override the defaults. If you've ever checked "Remember selection...", you'll no longer use the site default, and instead use whatever you had checked. [However, if you are logged out, you should definitely get the site default]. Bawolff (talk) 18:59, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

April 15

Hide button for editing change tags on history pages

Please see Commons:Administrators' noticeboard#Hide button for editing change tags on history pages. ★ Poké⁹⁵ 06:19, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

April 17

Non-empty subcats

Is there an easy way to list only subcategories that are not empty? Or alternatively to list the sub-cats of a category in descending order of number of items?

I'm considering using quite a lot of dispersion categories with an upload I'm trying to think out the strategy for, and I want to know whether it's possible to easily see only the ones that still have work to do. Jheald (talk) 00:21, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

CategoryTree has lots of interesting features, but I've forgotten everything about it. Maybe it can do or at least help with what you want. –Be..anyone 💩 15:18, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Meta categories by denomination

Template {{metacat}} is putting categories by denomination into Category:Categories by name (flat list). I don't think this is right. For examples, look at Category:Christian missionaries by denomination. This category is for missionaries grouped by their religious denomination (Mormon missionaries, Roman Catholic missionaries, etc.). This is not grouping by name, but by religion.

In Category:Categories by name (flat list), there are 127 "by denomination" categories. All but two are for religious denominations. The other two are for money. I don't think either the religion-related ones or the money-related ones belong under the "by name" flat category. I can't find the template that assigns the name, however, so could folks here 1) say whether they agree with this and/or 2) point me to the right template to change? Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 07:25, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

They should be using {{metacat|denomination}} instead of {{metacat|name}}. However Template:ByCat converts "denomination" to "name". The only category I can see [2] using "denomination" in a non-religious sense is Category:Coins by denomination and that's just a redirect, so I'd suggest removing the mapping in Template:ByCat. --ghouston (talk) 07:49, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

They do use {{metacat|denomination}}, but denomination maps to name. The two categories I saw were Category:Ancient Greek coins by denomination and Category:Money of the United States by denomination. --Auntof6 (talk) 08:32, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

I edited Category:Christian missionaries by denomination, but others like Category:Christians by denomination use "name". --ghouston (talk) 09:36, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

OK, then it sounds like some need to be changed. I can check them the next time I'm back on my main PC. However, the mapping issue still exists. --Auntof6 (talk) 09:46, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

I think to make them go in a separate flat category, a new line would need to be added too. However "religion" maps to "institution" so maybe denomination should too. --ghouston (talk) 07:55, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

As long as we have both the religious and monetary meanings for denomination, it shouldn't map to institution, either. I'm thinking it might be better for it not to map to anything, or to map to itself. It could be problematic, though, to have the different meanings combined.. --Auntof6 (talk) 08:32, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Different coin categories use "by face value", "by nominal value‎" and "by denomination", maybe they should be normalized. --ghouston (talk) 09:39, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Good idea. --Auntof6 (talk) 09:46, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Denomination Blues (couldn't resist). Jmabel ! talk 14:40, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

I don't understand the problem. A denomination is a name ! --DenghiùComm (talk) 05:11, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

But it isn't the name in question here. As an example, look at two categories:

• Category:Chicken breeds by name contains categories for specific breeds of chickens. One is Category:Rhode Island Red. "Rhode Island Red" is the actual name of a breed.
• Category:Churches by denomination contains categories for churches, grouped by religious denomination. One is Category:Anglican churches. "Anglican" is a name, but it is not the name of the churches in the category, it is the name of the organization that they belong to. The category that groups churches by their names is Category:Churches by name.

So if we don't want to have "denomination" map to "denomination" (even though the flat category for denomination already exists), maybe it could map to "institution" (I think that one already exists in the ByCat template). That would still leave the question of how to handle the two "by denomination" categories that are for money.

I hope that makes sense. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:10, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for this. I definitely remember struggling with using metacat on these "by denomination" categories a while ago. - Themightyquill (talk) 07:40, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

I see that English Wikipedia's article for denomination in the religious sense is called Religious denomination. Maybe we should name our related categories accordingly, to distinguish from other meanings of "denomination". For example, we could have Category:Churches by religious denomination instead of Category:Churches by denomination. --Auntof6 (talk) 08:05, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Download multiple photos at once

Hello everyone! I wanted to ask you information! Of Commons there is a system to make a download of many photos at once? Let me explain: long ago, I uploaded several pictures of graffiti (several hundred), now I want to recover them to save them on my computer, but to do the download to a photo at a time it would take me too long! How can I do? --Nicholas Gemini (talk) 13:11, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

You can use Commons:Imker (batch download). --Steinsplitter (talk) 14:58, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! It was very helpful! --Nicholas Gemini (talk) 00:38, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

In case that you will have to do another batch download in the future, a tool like the JDownloader is really convenient. This software takes Youtube videos, media from Commons and Flickr, cloud hosted stuff (with AFAIK the exception of encrypted files from Mega) and more as long as you can feed it an URL (semi-automatic via a watched clipboard). Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 00:59, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you all for the help! --Nicholas Gemini (talk) 09:03, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Places of the Spanish Civil War

There is a contest running about Places of the Spanish Civil War.

It is a contest, we have prizes (frankly, I have them here in a box), and going to take those pictures is fun (I do know, I've gone picture hunting this morning - and I cannot get any prizes).

But that's not the reason I want you to join. We went to take pictures of one of the places: Posición T-4 in Viver. It has almost dissapeared, buldozed. Almost gone. Forever. There are no more remnants above ground.

So if any of you happen to be in Spain near any of the places we are looking for, it's time to go and upload some pics before more places suffer T-4's fate.

You can join here.

B25es (talk) 17:09, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Server switch 2016

This is over. There was a 46-minute editing outage, and then about 20 minutes when Special:RecentChanges wasn't behaving normally. If you found any other problems, please {{ping}} me before Thursday's switch back. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:16, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

April 18

How much cleanup is permissible in a documentary photograph?

• 

  File before cleanup

• 

  File after cleanup

How much cleanup is permissible in a documentary photograph? Perhaps I should ask this question on Wikipedia, but it seems to me to be more appropriate here, where the conversation might cross the boundaries of the many Wikipedias.

My question is prompted by these two versions of a photo of singer k.d. lang. Our article on the English-language Wikipedia uses the latter version. There has been a lot of cleanup, more than I personally would consider appropriate for a documentary photo. In particular, the smoothing in the face seems to me to completely change her skin texture, with the effect of making her look some 20 years younger. This seems to me to go beyond simple cleanup of an imperfect photo into the range of doctoring an image.

This sort of derivative image is clearly allowed by the license. My question is whether it is still legitimate to call the edited result a documentary photograph and to use it in Wikipedia without discussion of its nature. I'd be extremely interested to hear what others think. - Jmabel ! talk 06:09, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

@Winkelvi: The rework in question was yours, I believe (since you uploaded it). - Jmabel ! talk 06:11, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

The original photo (incl. crop) might be not perfect (white balance (?)), but I like it better than the reworked crop. –Be..anyone 💩 07:59, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

In keeping with our philosophy of not second-guessing sister projects, I have a strong view that this question belongs at en:Talk:K.d._lang. That said, I agree with you that it seems over-processed, possibly leaning towards mendacious. Storkk (talk) 09:24, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

I also think it's up to the editors at the sister project to make the decision. But I've swung the mop and added {{Retouched picture}}. --El Grafo (talk) 12:08, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Proposal to globally ban WayneRay from Wikimedia

Per Wikimedia's Global bans policy, I'm alerting all communities in which WayneRay participated in that there's a proposal to globally ban his account from all of Wikimedia. Members of the Commons community are welcome in participate in the discussion. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 14:37, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Michaeldsuarez, for taking the initiative to notify our local Wikimedia Commons community about this ongoing discussion. Much appreciated, -- Cirt (talk) 18:58, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

You're welcome. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 19:39, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Is there an easy breakdown of scenarios when a file is considered a duplicate?

When files are the same except one is higher quality, we tag the others as duplicates, but there are variables that make me wish for a nice table to break down when something should be tagged as such vs. another avenue.

A couple specific questions, anticipating that such a table does not exist :)

1. Does the order in which files are uploaded matter? If a higher resolution image was uploaded prior to the low resolution version, that's straightforward, but what if a higher resolution version is uploaded most recently? Is the original tagged as a duplicate? Should the newer one be deleted and instead uploaded as a newer version of the same filename?
2. Is is always acceptable to have separate .jpg, .png, and .svg files for the same image, if they are the same resolution? When are .jpgs/.pngs considered redundant to one another, if ever? What if one is higher quality?
3. How can you tell if a jpg/png says it's higher quality, but is actually just a scaled up version of the same image?

Thanks! — Rhododendrites ^talk |  17:55, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

• To answer part of this: if they are in different formats, then they are not duplicates. And while order of uploading may be in some cases a tiebreaker, it is otherwise irrelevant. - Jmabel ! talk 19:59, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
• Answers:

1. It may be so. It is often done in this way: a low resolution file is re-uploaded with a higher resolution version.
2. svg files do not have resolution. They are vector graphic files. Usually if a svg file is present png/jpg raster files are not needed although they are strictly speaking not duplicates. Preference for png or jpg depends on the image type: if it is a photo then jpg (or tif) is preferable; if it is some kind of drawn graphics then png.
3. It is a tricky question. It should be decided on case by case basis.

Ruslik (talk) 20:09, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

See also Commons:Village pump/Archive/2016/03#How to decide which one is the duplicate. — Speravir_Talk – 23:26, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

@Jmabel, Ruslik0, Speravir: Thanks for these responses. For context, the other day I uploaded some images from the NASA Flickr stream, but didn't promptly manually check to see if any were duplicates (for those that Flickr2Commons didn't catch). Ras67, who I should've pinged here to begin with, tagged a few as duplicates. This is all well and good, and when I did get around to checking the rest, I tagged a couple more myself. I had questions about a couple, though, so I might as well specify.

The first one, File:STS-6 (15014637209).jpg, was nominated for deletion here as being a duplicate of File:Sts-6-patch.svg. As the latter is a vector graphic and the former is a photo of the graphic on paper, they didn't strike me as duplicates but wondered if there was precedent to consider it "duplicate enough". Then I noticed there's also File:Sts-6-patch.png, which is more accurately a duplicate of the one I transferred from Flickr. It's also a graphic rather than a photo, but there doesn't seem to be a reason we'd need the photo version. (In other words, the rules are confusing, but I don't have any issue with one I uploaded being deleted).

The second is File:Expedition 13 (15146747749).jpg, a 4212x4000 jpg. It was tagged as a duplicate of File:ISS Expedition 13 Patch.svg. Again, it seems odd to tag a jpg as duplicate of svg, but for a graphic like this I don't know if there's precedent to only keep the vector version. If anything it seems like more of a duplicate of File:ISS Expedition 13 patch.png. In that case, the latter is lower resolution at 1967x1847, so it seems like it would make sense to tag that one as a duplicate of the jpg, no?

Third, and finally, File:Expidition 28 (15147193627).jpg was tagged as a duplicate of File:ISS Expedition 28 Patch.png. Here the existing png appears to be a somewhat lower resolution. If png is typically preferred for graphics, though, what takes precedence?

I don't mean to use the village pump to sort out specific content questions -- I'm trying to draw conclusions based on these examples for best practices. Thanks again. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  15:49, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard: Australian biosecurity

• Johnny Depp and Amber Heard: Australian biosecurity

Video made by author:

Australian Government Department of Agriculture and Water Resources

Are files made by the Australian Government as this one, in the public domain ?

Thank you,

-- Cirt (talk) 18:50, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Per Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory#Australia, the copyright for Australian government works expires 50 years from creation. --rimshot^talk 19:23, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-16

20:40, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

El_Grafo@Deep_Thought ~ $ telnet telnet.wmflabs.org
Trying 208.80.155.160...
Connected to telnet.wmflabs.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
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                          The Free Encyclopedia
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Version 1.27                    16 Apr 2016                  131,217 Users
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
                            MotD last updated: 02:45 PM April 16, 2016

Welcome to Wikipedia!  We are the world's largest community driven dial-in
hypertext encyclopedia with over 5.1 million articles in English.
[…]

Wow, this actually kind of works! Seems like good (?) old Telnet might get a bit if a revival through Tor? --El Grafo (talk) 21:56, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

It was meant as an April fools joke originally. Generally speaking I don't think telnet is likely to get a revival for anything serious (but there are still places where you can play games over telnet - telnet://nethack.alt.org comes to mind), although I hear using ssh over tor hidden services is beginning to become popular for people who want to access hosts with dynamic IPs. Bawolff (talk) 19:13, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

 Support gopher. ;-) –Be..anyone 💩 00:01, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Well, useful or not, it's nice to see stuff like this still exists. There are stills some MUDs around too, tried MorgenGrauen myself for a few hours not too long ago. The Usenet seems to be dying a slow and painful death (with the possible exception of alt.binaries.*) – kind of sad to see this, even though I never really used it. --El Grafo (talk) 09:17, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

April 19

Commons and (image) search engines

First the/my problem: As I take quite a lot of pictures of people, every now and then I get requests via e-mail or personally from the depicted artists etc., asking me to please remove a photo because the quality is not sufficient, they don't like it or similar. I have no problem with that and if I could, I would just delete the pictures concerned - simply because of respect for them. I can't. And the deletion policies here don't seem to consider (this kind of) respect as a valid reason for deletion respectively the people active at deletion requests won't support such requests on behalf of personal wishes of the people whose pictures we display.
So I thought of a milder solution than deletion: Is it possible to add <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"> or something similar to image pages? This way the images would still be available here, but external image search engines would not show them. Would help me a lot when contacting artists, agencies etc. asking them for future accreditations or their consent for being photographed for Wikipedia/Commons. --Tsui (talk) 00:34, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

MediaWiki allows that by using the __NOINDEX__ magic word anywhere on the file's description page (as documented at mw:Help:Magic words). No idea about the Commons policies around this. Matma Rex (talk) 02:11, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Matma Rex, sorry to bother you, but will that prevent all indexing of the raw media file? i.e. if a file page uses __NOINDEX__, but that media is included using ([[File:....]]) on an indexed page? The help page doesnt specifically address the file/file-page aspect. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 12:29, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

No idea. Depends on the search engine. Matma Rex (talk) 12:44, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

I also face the similar problem as @Tsui described, it will be a great tool if explored. -- Biswarup Ganguly (talk) 15:29, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

I strongly suspect that the raw media file would still be indexed if the file is used on some indexed page. Except it should be noted that old versions of files will not be indexed for commons (but only for commons. Wikipedia et al have their old files indexed. I have no idea why only commons is included in robots.txt but others are not). Bawolff (talk) 19:09, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

geograph2commons tool

The geograph2commons tool doesn't seem to give the right description when uploading an image. For starters, the link doesn't work. It also comes out as [https://tools.wmflabs.org/geograph2commons/ grograph2commons]; notice the issue here? "grograph2commons", not "geograph2commons". I don't think I can change this, and even if I could I don't know how. If someone (an admin, etc) could fix these errors that'd be great. Anarchyte (talk) 15:03, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

• Once it's uploaded, you should be able to edit the wikisource as readily as anyone else. A link can be edited just like any other content.
• As for the error in the tool, I believe Magnus Manske (talk · contribs) maintains that, though I'm not certain. He will almost certainly know who does, if it's not him. - Jmabel ! talk 19:29, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Fixed typo. The URL works for me. What's the problem with the description? --Magnus Manske (talk) 22:16, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

@Magnus Manske: Sorry about the mixup, instead of the description I meant the upload comment. I don't know if things can be Wikilinked/linked in there but at the moment (I just tested it) it isn't coming out as a blue link. Anarchyte (talk) 01:05, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

April 20

Problematic usernames

Does Commons have a noticeboard specifically for discussion usernames which are suspected of being in violation of COM:UPOLICY? Is COM:ANU the Commons' equivalent of Wikipedia's en:WP:UAA? The user in question is User:SDTsorority. Even thoough they've only made three edits (maybe some others were deleted), this kind of username would almost certainly be blocked on Wikipedia per en:WP:ORGNAME without discussion, but not sure how Commons' handles such things. Wikipedia does have en:Template:uw-username that can be added to the user's talk page, but again not sure if Commons' has a similar template. -- Marchjuly (talk) 04:24, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Something similar to WP:ORGNAME has been discussed numerous times in the past, but rejected. See sections on Commons_talk:Username_policy. Storkk (talk) 11:11, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Deletion request

(sorry my very bad English) I create, in my mistake, this category Category:Solar eclipse of 1883 April 16, but the correct it's Category:Solar eclipse of 1893 April 16; please, anyone, delete first category? Tks, André Koehne ^{TALK TO ME} 08:55, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

 Done with {{badname}} per COM:REDCAT. –Be..anyone 💩 11:19, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Should CommonsDelinker remove redlinks from DRs?

Is behavior like Special:Diff/164712655/192642388, Special:Diff/193266615/prev, Special:Diff/192642388/prev, Special:History/Commons:Deletion_requests/Files_in_Category:AIDS_Poster_from_Wellcome_Images_(check_needed) and most recently Special:Diff/193784503/193941566 new for CommonsDelinker? I would think it obvious that it is extremely undesirable, but am I totally off-base here? Is there ever a reason for CommonsDelinker to edit DRs at all? Not sure who to inform other than Magnus... ideas? Storkk (talk) 11:22, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Currently fixed for DR and REFUND. Storkk (talk) 12:40, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

• If we talk about CommonsDelinker, I want to add, (for the 3 time), that it will be good that CommonsDelinker don't edit the logs too (e.g. the Featured picture candidates logs) as the result is some bugs with the transclusions that include file names. Christian Ferrer ^(talk) 12:59, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Category:Welsh Landscape Collection

@Jason.nlw: There are nearly 5,000 images in this file. I see that Jason, WiR at the National Library has created three pages (locations). Does it also need sub-categories for the collection (although each image has cats)? What's the protocol with pages vs categories, or go for both? Llywelyn2000 (talk) 11:36, 20 April 2016 (UTC)