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Now that mp3s are no longer patent-encumbered, and WMF Legal has signed off on allowing mp3s on our projects, we need to decide how mp3 uploading will actually be implemented. There appears to be general consensus to enable mp3 uploading, but many people have expressed concerns about the potential for increases in copyvio uploads. A solution that has been proposed would be to limit mp3 uploads to particular user groups. Should we limit it to particular groups, and if so, which groups? Note that we already disallow all uploads of large audio files by newbie users through edit filters. Kaldari (talk) 22:22, 27 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note 'user groups' here refers to Commons:User access levels#User groups, not Category:Wikimedia user groups. ;-) --John Vandenberg ^(chat) 02:24, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Create a special permission level that has to be explicitly requested by non-admins. Make it easy to ask for, and grant it readily to experienced users, but I think auto-confirmed is too low a bar. - Jmabel ! talk 22:57, 27 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• The phased approach mentioned in the previous RFC would imply a "MP3 uploaders" group is created. That seemed to be the consensus of the last RFC. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 02:31, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Maybe we need a new level of general "Uploaders" that could be trusted to upload MP3 files, upload directly from Flickr using UploadWizard, have higher upload limit in UploadWizard, etc. A position of trust, which can be granted by the community, and removed if person is abusing those powers. --Jarekt (talk) 02:37, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • A special right would make sense if it is also used for Flickr. Regards, Yann (talk) 07:32, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I like the idea of a temporary "MP3 uploaders" group during the initial roll out (or a permanent "Trusted uploaders" group). I think we could probably also give the right to admins and image reviewers. Kaldari (talk) 03:27, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• It then can be lowered to autoconfirmed. Ruslik (talk) 20:13, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• John Vandenberg ^(chat) 02:29, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

•   — Jeff G. ツ 16:19, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Another approach would be to hide it behind a "Beta feature", and that beta feature has a special step which requires the user explicitly acknowledge that uploading MP3s is not to be used for commercially produced music. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 02:39, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • @John Vandenberg: Adding an extra step will deter people who don't understand copyright issues, but it won't deter pirates (people who are using Commons + Facebook groups to share pirated music). Kaldari (talk) 00:12, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• During phase 0, restrict uploading to MP3 with w:ID3 tags, and only enable when the File page metadata and MediaViewer shows those tags so that users/reviewers can see them. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 02:39, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• My general opinion is that we should initially treat MP3 the same as OGG, but place a warn filter about copyright to educate new users. If abuse becomes widespread, we can tighten things up in response. Guanaco (talk) 05:31, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • That makes the most sense to me. How you're currently handling ogg should be the goalposts for handling mp3. Evilphoenix (talk) 19:59, 12 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I agree with John and Guanaco. --Nemo 08:43, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm quite confused about your RFC. It doesn't seem to me to accurately reflect the complexity of the previous discussions. The previous discussion mentioned a new user right, not user groups. If this is just a terminology issue, and you are talking about a new user right, why can't it be held by multiple existing user groups or even a new group? Where did the three options come from? Why just these three? Is your RFC intended as a replacement for the phased approach suggested by CKoerner (WMF)? It is not clear to me whether you are suggesting that this user group restriction, if any, is about the "Phase 0" testing phase that precedes the "everybody can upload MP3" phase that occurs after the tool intended to assist with patrolling MP3 uploads is developed. Or are you proposing some sort of indefinite restriction on mp3 uploads to particular user groups? —RP88 (talk) 23:11, 27 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If this RFC is about which user groups should be granted the "upload mp3" right during the "Phase 0" testing phase mentioned in the previous discussion, personally I think this hypothetical uploadmp3 user right should be held by "Image reviewers", "Administrators" and a new group "MP3 uploaders" that would be easy to acquire at COM:RFR and readily revoked if abused. After the tools are ready I think MP3 should be treated like other file types and the uploadmp3 right would then be added to all of the existing groups that currently have the upload right. —RP88 (talk) 23:25, 27 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@RP88: It could definitely be a new user right that was applied to various groups. I was just trying to simplify the discussion since some people get confused about how user rights work. Whether it's implemented through a new user right or not is just a technical implementation detail anyway. What really matters is which user groups are going to be given the capability. I started it with three options just as examples, but someone added a custom group choice as well, which is great. I think your suggestion for a new "MP3 uploaders" group during phase 0 is a good idea. Kaldari (talk) 03:24, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Do we need a new user right for this at all? If MP3 uploads are simply enabled, we can manage this via an abuse filter. In response to abuse or lack thereof, we can reconfigure the filters as needed. Guanaco (talk) 03:42, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Guanaco: No, we don't technically need a new user right, especially if it's going to be managed via an abuse filter. That's why I left user rights out of the discussion. We just need to figure out what groups should be able to upload mp3 and then we can figure out the technical implementation, which may or may not involve a new user right. Kaldari (talk) 05:25, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

 Support for using abuse-filter. Less bureaucracy. If we ever decide that everybody can upload .mp3, we can deactivate the filter with one click and done. --Hedwig in Washington ^(mail?) 12:06, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

•  Comment We will definitely need new report page or expand User:OgreBot/Notable uploads. @Magog the Ogre: any thoughts? --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:17, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No one's posted anything new for a week, so I'll assume this discussion has run its course. As in the previous discussion, there seems to be a roughly even split between folks who want to initially limit mp3 uploading to a special user group (along with some existing trusted groups) and those who want to open up mp3 uploading to everyone (but with some kind of warning or filtering mechanism). Typically when there is no clear consensus, we stick with the status quo, but in this case the status quo would be to not allow mp3 uploading at all, which almost no one supports (per the previous discussion). Between the options listed above, it seems that "A special permission level" is the best option to go with for now as it has the highest level of support and is fairly conservative. We can always open it up to more users later (by simply editing the abuse filter). Would anyone object to moving forward with that plan? Kaldari (talk) 21:22, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just some questions: If MP3 format will be restricted to admins and editors with special user rights, what are your ideas of special permissions? Also, can non-free files in MP3 format be allowed in also local wikis? --George Ho (talk) 02:08, 7 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@George Ho: I was thinking: Create a new "Trusted uploaders" user group; Give it the following permissions to start with:

• Not be affected by IP-based rate limits (autoconfirmed)
• Upload files (upload)
• Overwrite existing files (reupload)

Allow admins to assign users to the new user group; Then create an edit filter that limits mp3 uploads to users that are either admins or trusted uploaders. The answer to your second question depends on the consensus on other projects. Kaldari (talk) 01:07, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Trusted uploaders"? "Trusted" sounds too... I don't know what words to describe it, but I would neither use nor want to be a "trusted uploader". How about just "MP3 uploaders" or "audio uploaders" instead? --George Ho (talk) 01:35, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@George Ho: "MP3 uploaders" is fine with me. Kaldari (talk) 03:47, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We need some serious help with automatic mp3 copyvio identification. Otherwise we have the whole Top 500 here in no time flat; not to mention our Ghana-Facebook connection. Oh boy, that's gonna be fun. I assume we will delete ~90% of the uploads on sight, with a significant percentage of Com:PCP. Trusted uploader my knee. Even users with over 1,000 uploads give us copyvios on a regular basis. Either Admins and higher only or serious ammo for the abuse filter. If we have to have a new user right, let crats or stewards deal with it since admins often are too fast and generous with user rights (see filemover). What about xwiki uploads? Blocked for new users? Even when they are admins on another project Technically and legally possible doesn't mean lets do it and worry about the consequences later. Too much crap coming in as it is, we need to do this right and not hurry into it. Oh boy..... --Hedwig in Washington ^(mail?) 02:24, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Hedwig in Washington: I think you're right so I created 2017 Community Wishlist Survey/Multimedia and Commons#Audio/video review tool (for mp3s especially). As far as the abuse filter, it will totally be under the control of the Commons community, so it can be adjusted as needed. You could even block the ability to upload mp3s from the "MP3 uploaders" group, although that might be a bit confusing for people :) Kaldari (talk) 03:58, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't solve the problem that identifying a copyvio mp3 takes a lot more time than a photograph will ever take. Oh boy.... --Hedwig in Washington ^(mail?) 04:20, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Somebody should look into the legal issues before implementing any sort of automatic mp3 copyvio identification. Wasn't there a recent case in the USA where a site lost its DMCA safe-harbor protection because it was moderating user submissions? Possibly Mavrix Photographs vs LiveJournal. --ghouston (talk) 04:49, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's an interesting case. It looks like the main problem was that the LiveJournal moderators were acting as agents for LiveJournal. LiveJournal selected the moderators, trained them, and basically had them enforcing copyright law on behalf of LiveJournal. In our case, it's almost the opposite. The WMF would be building a tool for the community to utilize as it saw fit to enforce community policies. The WMF would not be involved in selecting the reviewers, training them, or controlling what they did, so I think it's unlikely that a reasonable juror would conclude that an agency relationship existed between the WMF and the file reviewers, but IANAL. Kaldari (talk) 06:22, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I create a Phabricator task for setting up the user group. Kaldari (talk) 17:13, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Kaldari: One doubt here: who should be able to revoke this right in case of mistake or abuse? Stewards? Bureaucrats? Admins? Or indef block only applies in such case? Ankry (talk) 14:16, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Ankry: Oops, looks like no one can revoke it currently. I'll change it so that admins can revoke it (since they can also add it). Kaldari (talk) 20:56, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed now. Kaldari (talk) 20:41, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hey everyone,

The Community Wishlist Survey is the process when the Wikimedia communities decide what the Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech team should work on over the next year.

The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. You can post technical proposals from now until November 20. The communities will vote on the proposals between November 28 and December 12. You can read more on the 2017 wishlist survey page. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 20:49, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• …«is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors» Hahaha, good one. Tell us more ironical absurdist jokes, please. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 21:19, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Tuválkin If you do not like the tools Community Tech team is focusing on than you should propose your own ideas at 2017 wishlist survey page or vote on ideas you like. If you do not vote or your opinion is in minority than you should not be sarcastic about what others decided the priorities should be. In my book some of the things created by tech team is truly awesome: quarry, Wikidata Query servise, cross-project notifications, Wikidata, Lua, Kartographer Map support, etc. come to mind. --Jarekt (talk) 14:50, 7 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Bitter sarcasm is the penultimate consolation of the defeated (the ultimate being to be able «I told you so» while scavenging the ruins of a once great civilization). In general, the WMF and a shockingly large group of enablers has never been about empowering «experienced Wikimedia editors», quite the opposite — not as a conspiracy, even, but out in the open. There is an obvious trend to dumb down everything the hoipolloi is allowed to do (down to “gamification” of Wikipedia editing!!) while driving a wedge between said hoipolloi and experienced editors. You mentioned LUA and Wikidata as a good thing: Well, even if/when they work flawlessly, in practice they mean that things that were previously done in wikitext now need a passable familiarity with JSON to be understood, let alone influenced. Wikitext presents a smooth learning curve, from merely entering text up to creating (and mantaining and improving) “esoteric” templates. Replacing wikitext is the current trend (as clearly stated; not a conspiracy) and that transforms the said sweet smooth curve into an unsurmountable learning cliff — aiding (along with other trends elsewhere) to halt the sociological movement that started off in the 1980s with the popularization of computing, a movement of which Wikimedia projects are one of the most impressive and positive results. Quarry is a great tool, sure, but most of the great tools that we use in Commons were not created by any WMF outfit, but by individual users: Created without any support from the WMF and often having to picked up in pieces after some WMF-sponsored change affects those tools. WMF’s forays into introducing tech novelties (under the name Community Tech or not) include widely dispised contraptions such as MediaViewer, Flow, the typographic update, VisualEditor, Wikidata as a whole, and more I’m fortunate to have momentarily forgotten. One or two good things Community Tech might have done matters little on the face of the wrong things that are done (and planned). And that’s the tally I’m counting. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 02:22, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Man your life must suck. Having to deal with all those emotions every time your bank website changes, or when your phone has an update and stuff... luckily there is this place where you are allowed to give at least some input ! —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:45, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tuvalkin -- I really would not group Wikidata in with some of those other things. It originated from a German group (not the narrow clique of WMF-employed programmers whose efforts sometimes yield strange results), and ordinary article-editors on the individual Wikipedias and ordinary image-uploaders on Commons barely notice it (which is the intention)... AnonMoos (talk) 06:24, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The error is:

Error: Unknown dependency: jquery.placeholder
Stack trace:
sortDependencies@https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/load.php?debug=true&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki%7Cmediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin=vector&version=1b46sjy:11984:12
resolve@https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/load.php?debug=true&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki%7Cmediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin=vector&version=1b46sjy:12046:6
using@https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/load.php?debug=true&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki%7Cmediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin=vector&version=1b46sjy:12888:22
mw.loader.using@https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/load.php?debug=true&lang=en&modules=user&only=scripts&skin=vector&user=Zhuyifei1999&version=1xp08nu:10:11
@https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:VisualFileChange.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript:2001:1
mightThrow@https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/load.php?debug=true&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki%7Cmediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin=vector&version=1b46sjy:3583:21
resolve/</process<@https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/load.php?debug=true&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki%7Cmediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin=vector&version=1b46sjy:3651:12

The dependency jquery.placeholder was removed in gerrit:386470. Up to 13 scripts may be affected and most likely needs fixing (of two I checked both use placeholder() call). CC @Perhelion, Jdforrester, and Krinkle, @Eurodyne, Josve05a, and Jon Kolbert. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 06:58, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have reverted the jquery.placeholder and jquery.badge removal for now as temporary measure. I would like to remove them again in ~2 weeks - is that feasible? I'll do a broader announcement tomorrow, it's pretty late here. Legoktm (talk) 07:10, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, is there a way to solve the problem temporary charging the VCF script in my .js user page? Anna (Cookie) (talk) 20:42, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed all uses of jquery.placeholder on Wikimedia Commons. example. --Krinkle 21:52, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Krinkle: Legoktm mentioned 'jquery.badge' being removed. Could you fix those as well? --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 23:40, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Zhuyifei, given it is used as .badge here all appearances in Commons in relevant namespaces (User, Mediawiki and Module, the latter just to be safe): badge insource:/\.badge/. I do not know whether they all are instances of jquery.badge, though. — Speravir – 18:37, 10 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Cookie: I don't understand your problem. Could you clarify? --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 23:00, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry Zhuyifei1999, I meant if I could load a fixed script temporary in my .js user page. Silly question I'm afraid. Now I see it's working again, so thanks Krinkle :-) Anna (Cookie) (talk) 02:38, 10 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Krinkle, Legoktm, Zhuyifei1999: this is happening again. I turned off my browser cache and turned on debug mode, still occurring. I see some scripts are still using jquery.badge.[1]

   ?debug=true:256 Error: Unknown dependency: jquery.badge Error: Unknown dependency: jquery.badge

Magog the Ogre (talk) (contribs) 04:23, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, it got missed in the new deployment branch, it's been temporarily fixed but someone on Commons needs to fix the scripts that use it in 2 weeks, otherwise it's going to happen again. Legoktm (talk) 17:54, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm for a local copy of the badge module (as Legoktm mentioned on phab:T178450) as there seems no replacement for this. PS: It is/was also not tagged as deprecated on mw:ResourceLoader/Core modules -- User: Perhelion 03:31, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello.

I have a problem with those 3 cats... What's the diffrence?

In category:Musicians from Czechia we have category:Classical musicians from the Czech Republic or elsewhere category:Musicians from Czechoslovakia...

May we redirect or leave like that?

Thanks LW² \m/ ^{(Lie ² me...)} 04:40, 11 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Czech Republic, but some items may correctly go to Slovakia. --Fæ (talk) 04:53, 11 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Czechia and Czech Republic are interchangeable, and we really should settle on one or the other. But it seems presumptuous to say that (for example) that a musician whose entire career was in the former country of Czechoslovakia is a "musician of the Czech Republic", especially if you don't have the specific knowledge to sort out whether that person is Czech vs. Slovak. - Jmabel ! talk 07:51, 11 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

So it should stay like this? I don't remember wich kind of musician's cat but I saw a redirect from Czech Rep. to Czechia so each time I had to creatae a cat I created it as "...from Czechia" but without knowing really if people was from one or the other... Generally, I use the country I find on Wikis or Internet.

I hope it's not too bad like this. Anyway I keep the mother cat's name when its exists because mainly I create only female/male cats.

If we have to choose, Czechia is shorter and easier to write, for me.

Thanks to all. LW² \m/ ^{(Lie ² me...)} 22:59, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, there is a related CfD at Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/12/Category:History of Czechia. The decision should be made based on what is standard English usage, not on what is shorter. --Auntof6 (talk) 01:16, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I am editing Category:Serra da Canastra National Park and would like to create smaller categories for the pictures of the animals and plants that exist there. I'd like to know if there is a guidance or consensus over if I should create "Plants of Serra da Canastra..." and "Animals of..." categories, or "Flora of..." and "Fauna of..." ones. It seems that people discussed this in 2008, but they don't seem to have reached a conclusion. Thanks a lot. Mateussf (talk) 18:21, 12 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Hello I think there is a kind of consensus towards "Animals of...", a quick example. Christian Ferrer ^(talk) 20:12, 12 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks! Mateussf (talk) 01:36, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone know Baidu well enough to know if we can trust images from there as being compatibly licensed for here? e.g. File:5646521s21d651s.jpg WereSpielChequers (talk) 11:54, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's as good as saying "source: Google". Marked example as no source. --Fæ (talk) 12:01, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly not. Deleted. Yann (talk) 15:46, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wikitribune has launched recently. The policy on copyright is at https://www.wikitribune.com/project/copyright/. It would seem sensible to upload all photographs meeting COM:L to Commons, perhaps automatically.

It's not clear to me how to check whether an image is being hosted on Wikitribune or where the license statement is. Could someone confirm what license this promotional photograph of Jimmy Wales is, and where it is hosted on Wikitribune? https://medium.com/wikitribune/hello-world-this-is-wikitribune-4b46ef829a9a

Thanks --Fæ (talk) 13:46, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There are so many things wrong with that page on copyright. Rather garbled language wrt copyright and licences and confusion over whether text is CC BY or CC BY-SA, which is a huge difference. Looking throughout the site, I see images with no attribution (especially images that are thumbnail links to articles), images with incomplete attribution (doesn't say or link to where they got it, which is required by most CC licences), an image from Reuters which presumably had to be paid for and won't be free, and an image that claims the licence holder is the subject of the photo, which is often a dubious claim. They will be able to use certain non-free photos under a "fair use" claim, but which won't be permitted on Commons.

Right now, I'd say we shouldn't touch their photos with a barge pole, and wait till they get their act together. They could, for example, get sued by Reuters for using a very much all-rights-reserved photo, and Reuters then decided to go after a Commons user who uploaded the image here under the assumption "Images are generally CC-BY-SA 4.0" was accurate or useful. -- Colin (talk) 15:48, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wikitribune is still work in progress. It requires experienced editors with knowledge of copyright (and journalism) to knock it into shape. Won't happen over-night. Just hang in there until Wikitribune has developed comprehensive policies. Then we can appear all knowing by suggesting you RTFM - which we haven't formulated much beyond the basics yet. Still, feel free to put your paddle into the cauldron and stir the pot. P.g.champion (talk) 19:17, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well before one starts publishing pictures, I think there need to be a picture editor who knows a thing or two about copyright and licensing. I'm sceptical a newspaper or current-affairs journal can survive without taking agency photos. We want pictures with our news, and we want today's pictures. It becomes very tired very quickly if the only photos you can get e.g., of Theresa May is the official Downing St photo. Unless Wikitribune wants to hire its own photographers, it won't be a source of images for Commons. -- Colin (talk) 13:13, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There was a time when newspapers didn't have the printing technology to publish images and they survived. Publications like the Times, once just printed factual content an allowed the reader to make his own mind up. Hopefully, we can get back to those halcyon days -for those that want to know the news and not read yet more chernalisum </rant> . P.g.champion (talk) 13:52, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the presence of images has anything to do with churnalism, or of biased proprietors, sloppy journalists, fake news, etc. While early newspapers were indeed rather primitive, they've been illustrated since before photographs were invented. Indeed, until half-toning was invented, an engraver would make a copy of a photograph in order for it to be mass printed, such was the demand for illustrations. Look at any serious newspaper and you will struggle to find any article that is not illustrated with a photograph or artwork of some kind. The idea that one could launch an international news publication without access to current photojournalism is rather ridiculous imo. -- Colin (talk) 15:24, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Has this idea ever been put forward? A venue for people to post pictures that need identification and for other users to offer answers/suggestions? It seems like there are an awful lot of knowledgeable people here and an awful lot of people who like to identify subjects properly. I found the page Commons:Identifying organisms, but it's mainly about external resources. I typically put in some effort to identify an organism when I take a picture of it, but my knowledge is limited. I wound up creating a user category for my own images that still need identification. I went to the enwiki Reference Desk a with this a couple times before, but with very mixed results. I wonder if a dedicated forum might draw people in? To be clear, I'm not just posting this to solicit people to identify things in my pictures. :) — Rhododendrites ^talk |  07:13, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Reddit has some good communities for this type of request for both living and non-living subject matter. A example of some of these are:

What's this bug	What's this bird	Animal identification	What's this plant	Mushroom identification
What is this	What is this painting	What is this thing	What's this rock	Where is this

- Offnfopt^(talk) 07:34, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Offnfopt: Would you say that the existence of these communities would make hosting the same sort of activity on Commons unnecessary? — Rhododendrites ^talk |  23:31, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Rhododendrites I wouldn't say unnecessary, just there is already a lot of foot traffic to those groups on reddit. If it were me I'd prefer to use existing communities than trying to start a new one from scratch. But if that is something you want to tackle go for it and I wish you the best. - Offnfopt^(talk) 01:34, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Having submitted a few images to /r/whatsthisplant, it does seem to work quite well. I see what you mean. No need to try to reproduce it. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  03:11, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Edit: The image you have here File:Unidentified flowers in Central Park (81557).jpg looks like a variation of a Asiatic Lily. I did a quick search of Asiatic Lily variations and that looks very similar to the Lilium 'Dimension' Asiatic hybrid. - Offnfopt^(talk) 07:46, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! — Rhododendrites ^talk |  23:31, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How is a category like you created more useful than putting them in an existing category like Category:Unidentified plants? Seems to me that it is more likely that someone knowledgeable would find them in the latter category. - Jmabel ! talk 16:35, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly recommend that one of the best uses of gallery pages would be to do the equivalent of what I did at Romanian Orthodox churches in Bucharest. Makes it easy to see the small differences in one place. I think it would be great if someone did that (for example) for various species in a gallery page at the genus level. - Jmabel ! talk 16:35, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Jmabel: To be clear, this wasn't about my category, but the reason I created it is so that I can go back to it to "finish the job". Sometimes I'll try to identify things that aren't my own uploads, too, but when I cannot identify my own images it bothers me, so I revisit that category from time to time. That does seem like a great use of a gallery, btw. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  23:31, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Rhododendrites: & if you plan to finish the job, that's a great use of a personal category. - Jmabel ! talk 00:30, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

On my experience, probability of identification is much higher on external resources, like Flickr for birds or http://bugguide.net for insects in USA. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:49, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I think a specific commons page or at least a gallery page is a great idea. A lot of the images in Category:Unidentified X are simply placed there because the image file doesn't specifically contain a name, not because it would be difficult to identify them. For images that users have actively tried to identify but failed, a specific forum would be quite useful. - Themightyquill (talk) 09:13, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

 Agree Lotje (talk) 10:30, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Last Sunday we took some pics in Alboraia of (in Spanish) secaderos de calabazas. You can see one in this file. How should I call them in English? Thanks. B25es (talk) 19:10, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

According to Google Translate they are "pumpkins dryers". Ruslik (talk) 20:09, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Though possibly "squash" rather than "pumpkin", depending on the species. - Jmabel ! talk 21:04, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@B25es: I don't know if there is a technical term for this. How you describe it based on that phrase would be whether you want to describe the activity or the object? It is either the activity "drying pumpkins" or some sort of rack/structure with which one dries pumpkins. Of course "pumpkin" is a word we use in English quite imprecisely to mean any of a range of winter squashes. Perhaps "calabazas" works similarly, but "calabaza" is a specific type of squash, too, so it may be most appropriate to simply leave it as something like "drying calabazas". — Rhododendrites ^talk |  23:27, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Another possible English term is "drying rack". Before I looked at the image, I was going to say "dehydrator", but that usually refers to a machine. --Auntof6 (talk) 01:09, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, people! I think that "Calabaza drying racks" will be fine. B25es (talk) 16:32, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• "Calabaza" is Spanish for English "calabash" (@Rhododendrites: Pumpkins/squash and calabashes are different animals.) Has our language policy changed? Or are all calabashes, and their driers, Spanish? (No, they are not.) -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 00:56, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have uploaded two images about Roma people in Italy I have enhanced with the GIMP. The first one has a correct brightness/contrast balance; the second one is by far too bright, even if it looked perfect on my PC (and also here, the problem seems to affect thumbnails only). What can I do to solve this problem?

--Carnby (talk) 21:27, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Carnby: You could ask at the graphics lab for help. -> Commons:Graphic Lab/Photography workshop. They are able to save/repair almost anything you throw at them. --Hedwig in Washington ^(mail?) 22:52, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is phab:T106516 --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 22:57, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I added the Gamma value, but the second file is still quite bright. I've also edited the first image, but now it is bright, too. If you are not satisfied revert it. — Speravir – 03:04, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your effort, but the first one looks worse and you have manipulated the wrong version of the second. I have asked the folks at the Photography workshop since I'm not able to solve the problem with the GIMP.--Carnby (talk) 12:42, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just as remark:I intentionally used the first uploaded versions. — Speravir – 02:49, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You need to add a PNG gamma chunk ("gAMA") with a value of around 0.45 to get around this bug, and the result will only be predictable if your PNG editing program does this and nothing else. If you have a binary editor, adding the 16 hex bytes 00 00 00 04 67 41 4D 41 00 00 B1 9E 61 4C 41 F7 at file position hex 0021 (after the IHDR chunk) should do the job... AnonMoos (talk) 05:55, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I converted the adjusted image to jpg, uploaded it as File:Rom abruzzese in piedi sul cavallo.jpg and the editor is now using that one. Besides which jpg is really a better format for continuous tone images anyway. Ww2censor (talk) 12:25, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have tried to save gAMA with TweakPNG and manually with HexEd.it. No results.--Carnby (talk) 10:30, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have created the Category:Romantic images of children. What kind of method is used to highligth the children? Is there a category for this?Smiley.toerist (talk) 09:53, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I do not understand your question "What kind of method is used to [highlight] the children?" What do you mean here by highlight? - Jmabel ! talk 16:33, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi everyone! I warmly welcome you to attend the next IRC office hour about Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons: next Tuesday 21 November at 18:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office ^webchat. Amanda, Ramsey and I will be there to talk about the work of the last months, and to explain what's coming. You can also ask us all your burning questions :-) The chat log will be published afterwards for those who could not attend. All the best! SandraF (WMF) (talk) 10:10, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, this image is not of Wettern House which was in Dingwall Road, Croydon on the western side of East Croydon Station. This image appears to be of the AIG Insurance Company building, which is to the southeast of the station and is located in Altyre Road, Croydon. It is still standing and is not part of the proposed development of the Ruskin Square / Wettern House site. This file is extracted from another, that being File:East Croydon Station looking south (geograph 1935542).jpg where the description is accurate. Should the mislabelled file (Wettern House) be deleted from Commons as it is incorrectly described but the original retained? Thank you. Eagleash (talk) 12:34, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My mistake here, I thought I'd found a Commons-licenced photo of the building after comparing it to other photos online, but must have mixed things up. No objection to this image being deleted. --Gapfall (talk) 13:43, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted as requested by Gapfall. --Hedwig in Washington ^(mail?) 17:52, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Eagleash (talk) 20:08, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a way to configure one’s prefferences so that all text characters are rendered in monochrome? Some characters started to show in “emoji” style lately, which is annoying for some users. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 00:53, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Not that I've seen, but then a lot of my reading is of diffs.   — Jeff G. ツ 00:57, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• What do you speak of? 1.) – 2.) 3.) 🙂 … The first two are intentionally inserted by users, but if you think of the third variant, then is only dependent on your OS or browser and the used font, and I do not know, how to overcome this; see also en:Emoji#Implementation. — Speravir – 02:45, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I speak of the 3rd, yes. I thought the display in emoji style was remote, not local. I’ll work on it locally, then. Thank you, Speravir! -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 03:42, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A bad hack that is working here in Firefox on Win7 is the following:

1. Download the free font Symbola from its original source (Unicode Fonts for Ancient Scripts).
2. Close Firefox. Go to Firefox program directory and into subdirectory fonts. Backup the existing font EmojiOneMozilla.ttf.
3. Copy Symbola_hint.ttf into fonts and rename it to EmojiOneMozilla.ttf.

Check on e.g. en:Emoticons (Unicode block) before and after this hack. This has, of course, to be repeated on every update. — Speravir – 05:42, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ping forgotten – this was obviously meant for Tuvalkin.— Speravir – 05:44, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks — it works! (Actually, I already had Symbola installed.) It’s surely what passes these days for “deep web” hacking… -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 00:42, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

https://www.flickr.com/search/?tags=bookcollectionbiodiversity —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:47, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Many of the images from the Biodiversity Heritage Library that are public domain or freely licensed have been uploaded to Commons. See Commons:Biodiversity Heritage Library and Category:Files from the Biodiversity Heritage Library. —RP88 (talk) 03:18, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You could request a Flickr batch to be uploaded. --Donald Trung (Talk 💬) ("The Chinese Coin Troll" 👿) (Articles 📚) 11:18, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone know what this guinea pig (?) with long ears is exactly? Have done a search but can't find anything exactly like this one.

Sardaka (talk) 08:31, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• All references I find online to "guinea pig with long ears" are using it as a joke to refer to rabbits. - Themightyquill (talk) 09:07, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• (Biologist here.) It’s a rabbit. (Shhhh…) -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 00:24, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks. I get the picture. Sardaka (talk) 08:32, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I proposed Category:Graphics for discussion at Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/02/Category:Graphics and Jeff G. urged me to bring the matter here.

The category description at Category:Graphics points to en:Graphics which defines graphics as "visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone to inform, illustrate, or entertain. (...) Examples are photographs, drawings, Line art, graphs, diagrams, typography, numbers, symbols, geometric designs, maps, engineering drawings, or other images." Unless I've missed something, that's all images. This category, however, is a sub-category of both Category:Illustrations and Category:Images. I'd either like a more specific definition, or a redirect to Category:Images. Otherwise we have a whole unclear/unnecessary layer of categorization. Thanks. - Themightyquill (talk) 09:02, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think a better definition would be to exclude photographs... AnonMoos (talk) 06:34, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fæ directed me to the Village Pump ⛽ to look for other Numismatists who are interested in uploading a few batches for me as (s)he only uploads larger batches and the batches I requested are too small for him/her, so I will be looking for anyone who owns a desktop computer 🖥 here to help me with these two (2) separate requests.

Commons:Batch uploading/Illustrations of Vietnamese cash coins from Ed Toda's "Annam and its minor currency".:

Currently I am planning on drafting a large inclusion of images into the article w:nl:Vietnamese văn and hope 🤞🏻 to use the illustrations from Eduardo Toda y Güell’s Annam and its Minor Currency for reference, though the historical accuracy of these images leave much to be desired they are great sources of information 🛈 nonetheless and the accompanying text was up until Dr. Barker's book the Western World's 🗺 primary source of the monetary history of Viet-Nam. For that reason I would like all of the illustrations from that book 📚 to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, however as I do not have a desktop computer 🖥 I am not able to use Commonist or the VicuñaUploader to upload this batch of around 300 pictures 📷.

If anyone has the time ⌚, then please click on the above link 🔗 and upload that batch. 🙇🏻

Commons:Batch uploading/Edo period coin collecting catalogues:

I don’t actually plan on using these for Wikipedia further than I have (which was as an inline citation), however there two (2) books hosted on the website of the University 🎓 of California at Santa Barbara have a great educational and historic value as they are coin collectors’ guides from Edo period Japan (the Tokugawa Shogunate) and could be used in many educational manners outside of Wikimedia projects, these files 📁 are all quite small so uploading them won't be difficult (please see the above batch request for more (sloppily formatted) information 🛈). 🧟🏻

So if there are any passionate numismatists around here then please use the VicuñaUploader or another tool that I can't use because of the technical limitations of mobile editing, and upload these images. As I am very busy please direct any questions regarding these respective uplaod-batches on the individual pages so I will know what tự answer, and where to answer them, if you're not interested in coins at all and just want an excuse to upload a few hundred images then you're welcome too, of-course. 😉

Note 📝: All of these requested images are in the public domain, and there’s no copyright © protection for any of them. However I do request that the source pages are properly linked for attribution out of respect for Dr. Luke Roberts and Sema (Pyvanet~commonswiki), and to make the original sources to be easily found. Also the text I wish 🌠 to be imported from the book 📚 “Annam and its Minor Currency” is also fully in the public domain.

Sent from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱. --Donald Trung (Talk 💬) ("The Chinese Coin Troll" 👿) (Articles 📚) 11:17, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Something I find baffling here is how admins/sysops waste their time looking for “abandoned accounts” (Wikimedia (global) accounts that haven’t been used for more than 2 years) to delete all of their personal pictures 📷 (such as selfies, family pictures 📷, Etc. that they exclusively used for either their Wikipedia or Commonswiki or other wiki user pages), why? No serious, why? They themselves released it here and they chose to allow anyone to use it, I would argue that their educational value comes from the fact that they add a face to an educator (someone who edits Wikipedia), these people could've stopped editing for various reasons including having died 💀 in real life, imagine if someone like this dies and this is the only publicly available picture 📷 of them, they never bothered with the Facebook, after 9 months Microsoft/Google/Apple/Yahoo!/AOL wil delete all of your personal pictures, and no physical pictures 📷 of them exist, feel good about wanting to boast your deletion stats now? Well, anyhow I simply don't see the value in deleting those pictures, it doesn't save any server space nor does it benefit Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons in any way, in fact the only thing you're doing is “taking away the face of a contributor”, I say that we should adjust the policy to stop deleting old personal pictures 📷 of accounts that have been “abandoned” (heck, there might just as well be people that took a few year WikiBreak and come back to see this), I just really don’t see why there’s any rationale for deleting those pictures 📷.

Sent from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱. --Donald Trung (Talk 💬) ("The Chinese Coin Troll" 👿) (Articles 📚) 11:17, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Donald Trung: The only admin I know who regularly did this is no longer here. I'd support restoring such images in most cases if you find them, and the person was once an active contributor. Most of what we delete nowadays are copyvios, self-promotion or throwaway selfie accounts. Guanaco (talk) 12:17, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please read Commons:Project scope. If personal photos are not used, why they should be uploaded at the first place? --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:09, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

the deletionists rule, they have nothing better to do than destroy the work of others. but if you have a list, go send it to DRV and we can have some scope drama there, just like "50p for pants to throw at shakira". File:50p a pant (4746731770).jpg Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge 04:35, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The 50p for pants image still makes me smile. As evidence of drama, that particular set of DRs was very mild and mostly mellow. Compared to, other places, this project is not so awful you know. --Fæ (talk) 13:01, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not crazy over tagging personal pictures except for selfies that don't meet basic COM:EDUSE guidelines, but why should a policy be changed for no reason other than the need to put your personal pictures in every nook and cranny of the internet? -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 13:18, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

Per the discussion above, a new MP3 uploaders user group has been created on Commons. (It still isn't possible to actually upload MP3s to Commons yet, but after we get this user group all set up and the abuse filter created, we can turn on MP3 uploading.) The next step is for us to decide what requirements are necessary for a person to be added to the MP3 uploaders group. Should there be a minimum number of edits? A minimum account age? Do they need to verify their familiarity with Commons' licensing policy and copyright law? Please express your opinions/ideas below. Kaldari (talk) 01:18, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

1. Account at least 1 year old, active within the last 30 days, 2500 edits, no recent copyvios (3 or 6 months?). Somewhere along that line. My 2.5¢ --Hedwig in Washington ^(mail?) 01:30, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think it should be very easy to acquire so long as it can be easily revoked. All that would be required is making a request that makes it clear the user has read and understood Commons:Copyright_rules_by_subject_matter#Music. The request could be handled at a new section of COM:RFR. —RP88 (talk) 02:48, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's where the request should be made. But there has to be a hurdle. Patrol, filemover, etc aren't given away for free either. --Hedwig in Washington ^(mail?) 02:57, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with Hedwig's suggestions except I think the account age shouldn't need to be longer then 3-6 months. Some time is necessary, showing you understand our copyright policy is necessary yes, but that can be shown through a history of 2500 edits without needing to have a designated account age that is as long as a year. -- Sixflashphoto (talk) 13:23, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just let admins use their own judgement. A GLAM might need the right even if their account has zero edits because they want to donate material making Hedwig's proposal a bit unpracticle. Natuur12 (talk) 14:15, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I think admins and license reviewers should be able to assign the permission at will. This isn't like patroller which can allow bad uploads to escape our notice, or file mover which can cause serious cross-wiki damage. If it's abused, we block them, delete the files, and carry on. Guanaco (talk) 14:37, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I agree with Natuur12. --Steinsplitter (talk) 14:41, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• IMHO, this is about as 'trustworthy' as confirmed or autopatrolled --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 04:59, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Per RP88 and Natuur12, a COM:RFR should be fine. Christian Ferrer ^(talk) 19:54, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

OK, so it sounds like we'll leave it up to admin discretion and use COM:RFR to handle the requests. Thanks for the input! Kaldari (talk) 04:12, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Suddenly I cannot create links from commonscats to wikidata anymore. For example if I click the links bottom left on this page: [2]. It doesn't open the dialog anymore. Does anyone have this problem also or know how I can fix this? Rudolphous (talk) 07:19, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If I logout it opens a dialog, but the "create new page" dialog. This is also weird since the wikidata entry exists. See [3] Rudolphous (talk) 07:21, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is almost always caused by a conflict of javascripts that you use. You can try disabling some gadgets/scripts until the problem disappears. You need also to report the contents of your browser console as explained here. Ruslik (talk) 20:46, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I had a similar problem reported today; a null edit helped.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:55, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Offnfopt^(talk) 17:28, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

File:Hijiri88's postcard from Wikimedia Taiwan.jpg was uploaded by me for the sole purpose of transclusion on my English Wikipedia user page, and I don't why it was transferred to Commons. I am not comfortable with my username appearing in a Commons file name, and if outright deletion from Commons is not an option, I would like (a) an explanation why, and (b) the file name to be changed. Hijiri88 (talk) 09:14, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, please don't tell me that this is the wrong place for my request. I am already 90% certain of that being the case.

Thing is, I should not have to familiarize myself with the norms for Commons just because I engaged in activity on a separate Wikimedia project and someone else, without my consent, dragged me here. I'm not a regular Commons contributor and have no immediate intention of becoming one, so trying to independently familiarize myself with Commons processes rather than simply asking at the Village Pump (what this is) would be pointless.

Hijiri88 (talk) 09:23, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Concerning why it was transferred you can asked @Fastily: who transferred it. Concerning deletion, I do not see any problem, but I would just wait for some time (say a day) to see whether there are any motivated objections.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:16, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Correcting ping: @Fastily: --Ymblanter (talk) 10:17, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Every free file should be on Commons, not on some local Wikipedia, that's why it was transferred, just like many other files. This probably covers your concerns. Multichill (talk) 14:48, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Multichill: It's not a free file. I don't know if you know how to retrieve the file's original en.wiki history (I don't), but if I recall correctly: I wanted to use it on my en.wiki user page and the original upload said I wasn't sure about licensing but that I wanted to authorise myself to use it on my userpage. I was then coerced by a bot to give it a "proper licensing template", and in utter confusion I picked the first one I could find. But the image actually contained a tiny amount of "non-free content" that I was then asked to remove by another user who also changed the template by themselves, and when the image was ported over to Commons it was done so carelessly that the Commons version was the one that included the non-free content that I had been asked to remove, and this led to my user page also transcluding that version that I had already painstakingly edited. Had I known any of this would happen I would have likely been much more careful about the template I used (or rather indirectly authorised another user to use).

Heck, I probably never would have uploaded the image in the first place if I know uploading images of my personal property and en.wiki activity for use in my userpage was such a pain.

I apologize if I'm getting any of this wrong, but it was ten months ago and apparently the only still-live record of the file's early en.wiki history is on my user talk page.

At this point, I'd really rather just have the image deleted off both Commons and en.wiki and this whole incident just forgotten.

Hijiri88 (talk) 23:10, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Repinging User:Ronhjones. Hijiri88 (talk) 23:13, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Here is the original entry when first uploaded

== Summary ==

{{Information
|Description = A photo of the address side of a Taiwanese postcard.
The postcard was received by me ([[User:Hijiri88]]) on January 11, 2017, for contributions to [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia Asian Month|Wikipedia Asian Month 2016]]. Not sure if it was for French or English Wikipedia, but still waiting on the the other one either way (another similar photo will be uploaded then).
I am not legitimately sure of the copyright status of the words written on the card, but it's probably fair use to put this photo on my user page either way.
(My personal information is blanked out, except for the first line of my address that I already revealed on-wiki [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Hijiri88&diff=676672931&oldid=676672756 here].)
|Source = I took the photo
|Author = Wikimedia Taiwan (portions edited out with sub-text by User:Hijiri88)
|Permission = '''Evidence:''' Will be provided on request.
}}

;Other information:
The following was entered into the boxes for "non-free" images because I was being super-careful but was not aware that filling in "User:Hijiri88" in the article-for-intended-use box would prevent me from uploading.

Wikimedia Taiwan (portions edited out by User:Hijiri88)

The photo is mine, but it contains text that was written to me by someone else. Not sure if that means it's copyrighted.

This will be used in my (Hijiri88's) user space as an illustration of contributions to Wikipedia Asian Month.

Umm... it is text alone. The non-text portion (the fact that it is a photograph) is mine.

I don't know. This almost certainly is not a non-free work. I only clicked that option to play it safe.

The only conceivable owner, if not me, is Wikimedia itself. I just don't know the copyright status of the non-public text included therein ("Hi, [...] 亞洲維基人愛你！ Wikiedia Asian Loves you! [...] We appreciate your contribution in Wikimedia(sic) Asian Month in 2016.").

(But if someone thinks the postage stamp is not covered, that too can be blanked out.)

I only intend to use it on [[User:Hijiri88]] and possibly [[User:Hijiri88/Articles I created or significantly contributed to]], but nowhere outside my own user space.

== Licensing ==

I think...?
{{Category ordered by date|Files licensed by third parties|2017|01|11}}

ImageTaggingBot tagged it as no license, it got changed to PD with the stamp blocked out, and then as a free file it got moved to commons. Without the stamp, it's just text and simple shapes, so PD-textlogo. The image has now been set to non-index, so it won't appear on any search engines. This is better than if it had just been left on en-wiki - google would index it just the same as commons. There is no advantage for the user just to have it on en-wiki. Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 00:40, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Yes, I vaguely remember writing that.

It seems I'm not allowed have an image on my English Wikipedia user page unless I release it into the public domain and have it transferred to Commons? If that's the case, I'd rather just not have the image on my user page, so I've now removed it. It's good that the image no longer appears on search engines, but the file name still appears in the searches for the categories in which it is included.

I'd also still like it deleted. Now that it's no longer in use on any Wikimedia project I can't imagine that being a problem.

Hijiri88 (talk) 02:14, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Hijiri88: Addressing your first concern, that is correct. You can only have images on your userpage that are free for use elsewhere. Regarding the second concern, you can have it on English Wikipedia. You just have to tag the page with {{KeepLocal}}, which I have now done for you as a courtesy.[4] That said, there is literally no reason to do that. Regarding the third request, you can start a deletion request, and we will consider whether or not to delete as a courtesy. We don't have to, since you released the image under a free license. Magog the Ogre (talk) (contribs) 02:27, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Rohnjones: @Magog the Ogre: I have a reasonable-enough response to There is no advantage for the user just to have it on en-wiki. and That said, there is literally no reason to do that., and have emailed both of you. I don't want to send any more emails, so I would appreciate that point not being made by any more people (the only reason I emailed Magog was that their comment was posted while I was drafting the email to Rohnjones). Hijiri88 (talk) 03:05, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like everything was deleted. Multichill (talk) 17:25, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is text on an old tombstone on a cemetary in The Hague, in what could very well be Chinese language. I'd like to find out what it says. --oSeveno (talk) 14:52, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The top three characters in the right column are the name of the country of Japan (en:Nihon Koku). There are some numbers in the left column. That's as far as I can help... AnonMoos (talk) 17:15, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(Edit conflict)The text looks to be a Japanese variant of the Chinese text, and written from top to bottom, right to left. I cannot fully read nor comprehend it, but transliterating it into simplified Chinese it is: "日本国临时代理公使 ?六位?五等樱田亲义之墓 明治十八年五月十五日平" (two unreadable characters marked with question marks). --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 17:21, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Google Translate says that is "Provisional Acting Minister of Japan? Sixth? Fifth Sakurada Yasukuni Meiji eighteen May 15 peace".   — Jeff G. ツ 20:05, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's not "Chinese" in the conventional sense, as everything written on it would normally be read in Japanese. I have personal problems worrying me at the moment so I don't have time to look into it, but "Meiji 18"=1885. The first unreadable character is from context either 正 (senior sixth rank) or 従 (junior sixth rank), and based on the appearance of the character almost certainly the latter former. The other unreadable character is clearly 勲, which appears to relate to some order in the Japanese honors system (he would be 5th class based on the following two charatcers). His name in Japanese is 櫻田親義 (Sakurada Chikayoshi -- no idea how Google got "Yasukuni", which would be somthing like 靖國) and according to this he was a Japanese diplomat in the Meiji era, and served in the Japanese consulate in Rome at some point. Hijiri88 (talk) 23:26, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry. Also, 公使 means "minister" in the sense of the leader of a diplomatic legation, since this wasn't clear from the Google Translate approximation given above. The Japanese for minister of state is 大臣. Hijiri88 (talk) 00:13, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, the last character doesn't really look like 平 as Zhuyifei transcribes it, and this is what leads to the nonsense translation "peace". 平 has neither a curve at the bottom nor a bit extending up at the top, as the character in the image appears to. 乎 would be my guess based on the curvature, but it's also not a perfect match, and I've actually only encountered this character in kanbun (classical Chinese) and man'yougana (phonetic transcription) text and don't really understand it off the top of my head. Will look a bit closer later. Hijiri88 (talk) 00:29, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to you all, @AnonMoos: , @Zhuyifei1999: , @Jeff G.: , @Hijiri88: . I have been able to find out what this grave is about: In 1885 a Japanese diplomat with the rank of “Chargé d'affaires”, named Sakurada, was stationed in the city of The Hague, the Netherlands. He had a mistress from Belgium, who shot and killed him in a hotel in the city of Rotterdam. It was a crime of passion. He was then buried in The Hague. According to a newspaper of that time, Mr. Sakurada was of a family of “former daunio's”, but I have no idea what that could mean. The newspaper suggested it could be considered to be equal to some sort of Japanese nobility. It is probably written in phonetic and most likely misspelled. Anyone a clue? Anyway, my thanks to you all for your help. I am considering writing to the Japanese embassy to ask if they are aware of this grave of a former diplomat of their country. After all, it has cultural-historical value. Regards, --oSeveno (talk) 17:14, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, it says Sakurada was the son of Kaisin Nakai and Towa Nakai, from Kita Ouwa Kori, province of Iyo, on the island of Shikoku. I just love the age of digitalization and online access to archives and old newspapers. --oSeveno (talk) 18:13, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@OSeveno: It seems your source has a fair few misprints. "daunio" is most likely "daimyo" (see [5]), and I'm not exactly sure but English Wikipedia's article on Iyo Province gives "Kita Uwa Kori" (gun and kōri are the same word, and spacing is arbitrary). "Kaisin" is not a "misprint", per se, but most people would write it as "Kaishin". A brief Googling didn't bring up anything on his parentage in Japanese, though, so for all I know it could have been something completely different. Hijiri88 (talk) 22:36, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Hijiri88: You are right, in 1885, but most likely in the entire ninetienth century, journalists didn't have the resources to check for correct translation and spelling, of languages that do not use the Western alphabet. No Internet to aid them. I also noticed that the name Chikayoshi was not mentioned anywhere. They just wrote T. Sakurada, T. standing for Tsikayoshi, I'm sure, while everywhere else in newspapers they used the full names of people. --oSeveno (talk) 07:35, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I want to search for the photos taken with DSC-WX70 for example. Only a small part of such files are included in the Category:Taken with Sony DSC-WX70. The Metadata of the files is not included in the Wikimedia Commons backup, so I can't use AWB database scanner. Is there any way to search for such files - other than typing "DSC-WX70 site:commons.wikimedia.org" in Google - and to do it in a manner that can create a list with all such files? Thanks. -- Fructibus (talk) 23:23, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not ideal - but https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/23166 (Returning all of them was taking too long, so i set it to only return the first 200 alphabetically. Remove the LIMIT 200 to get all results.) Bawolff (talk) 08:50, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Bawolff: Thanks a lot, this is an awesome tool! It looks like it has a glitch when saving to a CSV file though - it will add extra double quotes, based on some strange criteria. For example in this list User:Fructibus/B - for example the position 379 - File:"(Antique_Building)_faceing_the_Iglesia_de_San_Francisco,_Centro_Histórico_de_Quito.JPG" - in reality the image is at File:(Antique Building) faceing the Iglesia de San Francisco, Centro Histórico de Quito.JPG. The next link (380) doesn't contain extra quotes. When saving in Wikitable format, the names are all ok. -- Fructibus (talk) 03:46, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

its because the filename contains a comma. If you parse the csv file with a proper csv parser it will remove the quotes. Bawolff (talk) 20:42, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please be conservative about how far to go with metadata analysis or publishing it on-wiki. Though the data is public and accessible, we don't want to be seen to be deliberately tracking individuals, just because they did not know how to anonymize their camera EXIF data. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 20:54, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, first of all I apologize for my approximate English... I found a problem with many templates in question, for example {{Veronayear}} vs {{Verona-year}}, and I would like to know a community opinion to find a standard to create one that can use in all cities, with exceptions for nations (as well as Italy...) that need further subcategories. For example, I've modified {{Veniceyear}} and {{Florenceyear}} to have automatic categorization by region of Italy and city so that it's easier to find and use them. Summing up, do we keep templates with what standard, with or without dash? Is there anybody with whom you can organize some kind of festival to optimize this type of templates? @Jbribeiro1: @J 1982: . --Threecharlie (talk) 10:15, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It seems more common to have no dash. For the Verona templates, very few pages use them, so we could either delete the one we don't want, or make it a redirect. --Auntof6 (talk) 10:33, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Similar problems in {{Venetoyear}} vs {{Veneto-year}}, the first generate the Category:Veneto in the 2010s (uncorrect for similar categories used in other nations, see {{Campaniayear}}), the second the standard Category:2010s in Veneto.--Threecharlie (talk) 10:42, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Automatic categorization using templates for categories always sounds good, but turns out hard to work with. Besides that I don't like the whole splitting by year, it just makes it harder to find images. Multichill (talk) 17:29, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

On the English Wikipedia, emojis redirect to articles (for example 🦌 redirects to en:deer) but the Commons treats emojis as a bad title. Is there a way to fix this so redirects are allowed for emojis? This would help internationlizaion. WhisperToMe (talk) 10:56, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

These titles are blacklisted (for spam reasons), and only admins are allowed to create pages with non-"Basic Multilingual Plane" characters. I've started creating some of these redirects now. Feel free to poke me, or another admin, to create specific redirects. --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 11:40, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Commons doesn't have articles, just galleries, so naturally not every imaginable search term is covered by pages or redirects in the main namespace. Having some emojis redirect to galleries and others to categories not only isn't exactly desirable from a usability perspective, it also goes against our principle to generally avoid cross-namespace redirects.    FDMS  4    20:26, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Less than 1 in 4 persons in the world can understand basic English. So I develop an app that allows non-English speakers to upload pictures to Commons (with all of the necessary selfie/copyvio protections, yes).

The app lets them select categories for the uploaded picture, but unfortunately now these categories are all in English, so the users do not understand them, and more importantly the search bar does not return the right things, for instance typing "España" in my app's category search bar does not make the "Spain" category appear. Even more for languages with non-Latin alphabets (only 36% of the world population use the Latin alphabet).

Question: How to localize a category name?

My initial idea would be take the appropriate label from the category's Wikidata item, for instance "विकिपीडिया:श्रेणी" from https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6741108. Is it a good idea? Is there any better thing to do? Or do you think anyone with interesting pictures must learn English first before they are able to categorize? Cheers! Syced (talk) 11:17, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's well known issue almost from the beginning of Commons. See Commons:Structured data for direction where Commons is moving. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:55, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Another emoji thing: I would like to see a parameter for emojis in Template:Translation table. If an emoji on ENwiki redirects to a particular topic, that same emoji could also be placed in the page or category's translation table. It may be necessary to have a similar field put on Wikidata entrries. If so I can open a discussion there too. WhisperToMe (talk) 16:41, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

19:18, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We have a copyright history statement at Category:Time Magazine that covers the copyright history for that publication. Do we, or does anyone external to Wikimedia, have a centralized place where these statements are stored. The process of confirming renewals is time consuming, so she should not waste time duplicating work already completed. If we find contrary information we can always modify the statement. Ideally we should have a statement at the category of each publication of what is currently known, and have it worded in a standard template. Not duplicating work already completed would save a lot of time. RAN (talk) 23:33, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/firstperiod.html has much of this information. There's several periodical pages on the English Wikisource that list renewal information for the periodicals.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:48, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Can you link me to an example of a Wikisource copyright notice? RAN (talk)

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Weird_Tales and and https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Analog_Science_Fiction_and_Fact .--Prosfilaes (talk) 06:06, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! I want to download the author and license of all the files in a category, so it can be property reused in a project. But can't find a way to download this metadata. I found how to donwload the files, but this files are not downloaded with their info. Is there any option to do that? -Theklan (talk) 16:02, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Theklan: You can extract this using the MediaWiki API. Here's a link to the API Sandbox demonstrating it: [12] I used generator=categorymembers, gcmtype=file, and gcmlimit=max to get information about files in a category and prop=imageinfo with iiprop=extmetadata to get the machine-readable metadata extracted from the {{Information}} template. For a small category (at most 500 files) you can just use the URL produced by the API Sandbox. For larger categories you may have to understand how the API handles continuation. --bjh21 (talk) 17:21, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

PS: iiprop=extmetadata is implemented by the CommonsMetadata MediaWiki extension. --bjh21 (talk) 17:29, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! -Theklan (talk) 17:39, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Theklan: Yesterday I was doing just that (reading author name) of all the files in a category. I was using a rudimentary but very reliable approach - using wget, grep and sed - which doesn't require learning SQL or API:

• First, get the list of all the files in the category. AWB can do just that. Set the "Source" to "Category" and push the button "Make list" (In the bottom-left box). Then select all the items in the list (Ctrl + A) and then copy (Ctrl + C). Then copy the list into a text file.
• Second, get the URL links of those files - for example the URL of this file - File:نراق.jpg - is actually https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%D9%86%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%82.jpg.
  • Edit any page and copy the list of your files, with the "* [[:File" and "]]" prefix-suffix, push "Show preview" - you get a list like this - and then save the html page from the browser (don't push the "Publish changes" button).
  • Use grep to find all the links: cat in.htm | grep "<li><a href" | sed -e "s/. title=.*//" | sed -e "s/.*\x22//" | sed -e "s/\x25/\x25\x25/g" > out.txt
• Third, download all the pages, using wget, like this: " wget --no-check-certificate -O "tmp.htm" "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%D9%86%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%82.jpg" " - for each file.
  • Use grep to find the author name: cat tmp.htm | sed -e "s/<\/a>/<\/a>\n/g" | sed -e "s/<\/bdi>//g" | grep "title=.User:" | sed -e "s/<\/a>.*//" | sed -e "s/.*>//" | head -1 > user.txt
  • Do that for every file (you can make a script to download and to search author name for all of them)

If you know wget, grep and sed - or if you can get familiarized with them easily, this is quite a good way to do it. These are Linux tools but you can use them on Windows very easily, by downloading the GNUWin32 package and putting the executables somewhere in your %PATH%. Not very fast but very reliable. No 500 files limit. You can use it for categories containing 200,000 files without changing the script. -- Fructibus (talk) 20:51, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It seems more difficult than looking at the API! But thanks for the solution, yes! -Theklan (talk) 20:57, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like a tangle-jungle of scripts, indeed. But grep (and also sed) is an essential text-processing tool that can help you in a vast amount of situations. And they are really addictive tools. Oldies but goldies. -- Fructibus (talk) 21:04, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I was using the "Cat-a-lot" (super)gadget yesterday and I tried to add a category to 10,000 files. Usually the users categorize maximum 200 files at once (the maximum number of files listed in a category page), but the gadget has a new feature to add/remove categories to the files in a gallery. I was using this new feature (my gallery is at User:Fructibus/A), but after categorizing 1,900 files (at a speed of probably more than 1,000 files per second), the gadget hanged. Then I tried it again in another browser, and it hanget at 3,400 count. Then I tried in another browser and it hanged at 8,600. I suppose it hanged because there is a limit for how many edits per second can a user make.

And then my question is: what is the edit speed limit for a regular user? Is it documented anywhere? Thanks. -- Fructibus (talk) 21:04, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]