Commons:Village pump

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November 29[edit]

Intimate images without subject's consent[edit]

When I say "intimate images", I am referring to images of genitals, buttocks or breasts, where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. This appears to be the case in Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Matt Bio Research, and I cannot believe what I am seeing there: one user is arguing that these images are OK because just because they are not "identifiable". I argued that there is doubt as to whether the subjects consented, and the other user has not disputed this: they are simply pressing on with the identifiability argument. I am not convinced that distributing these images is even legal.

The only thing more shocking than that discussion is the fact that we don't have a policy on this. Brianjd (talk) 04:03, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • How are these images different from the >10,000 other images we have on the same subject? And why are you giving these images the Streisand Effect by telling everyone they are too naughty for us to host? --RAN (talk) 06:10, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @Richard Arthur Norton (1958- )
    • How are these images different from the >10,000 other images we have on the same subject? The uploader has produced evidence of bad faith.
    • why are you giving these images the Streisand Effect by telling everyone they are too naughty for us to host? The deletion request itself does that. But perhaps it would have been better to wait until it was closed before bringing attention to these images. Brianjd (talk) 06:46, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • The discussion was closed as delete based in part on COM:DIGNITY. It seems like we resolved the issue. If there are other images like that, list them for deletion. If you want to chance the policy, then suggest a change at Commons talk:Photographs of identifiable people. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:55, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @Ricky81682 I don't think this guideline is getting the attention it deserves, but I will try anyway. Brianjd (talk) 06:47, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @Brianjd Well, that's why I said list them for deletion. It's not like the images were kept. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:56, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I see that the images were deleted because the person is identifiable, can someone tell me who the person was? How did you identify the person? --RAN (talk) 05:54, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) I don't see any claim that the subject(s) are identifiable. Brianjd (talk) 06:47, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't that what "privacy" and "identifiable people" means? Otherwise it is just one of >10,000 anonymous intimate body part photos we have. I am not sure how the consent argument is invoked, we never required consent forms be signed and submitted for any identifiable people, and these photos are not of an identifiable person. --RAN (talk) 07:03, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): My understanding is that these are images of random people's body parts without the uploader writing "my body part" or "a model" or something to give some context. Others may be things like images at a nudist parade which has an identifiable person clearly without their consent. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:56, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • We have over 1,000 nude images that do not contain the words "model" or "body part", what will be the fate of those images? From a legal perspective, consent can only be determined if we have a signed model consent form, which Commons has never required for any image. We have over 1,000,000 images of people. --RAN (talk) 02:38, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Piggyback photographers
  • It is not always appropriate to ask for written consent for a photgraph. I am a 70-year-old retiree. In order to take the photograph unposed, I did not seek the young ladies' consent until after I took the photograph. Given our age differences, I started off the converstion with "I do not want to know your names or where you live". Fortunately they spoke English. I then explained why I took the photograph and helped them bookmark my upload page on their Smmartphones". Although this example does not involve nudity, the pricipals are the same - the young ladies concerned are the focus of the image, they could be identified (though with difficulty) but unlike people in a parade (nudist or otherwise), they were not exhibiting theselves to the general public nor were they interacting with the photograher until after the event. Martinvl (talk) 17:11, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • " we never required consent forms be signed and submitted " - The opposite is true: Commons (OTRS now VTRS) does not accept model releases to be submitted. A fotographer may have one in them own archive, but not at commons. --C.Suthorn (talk) 20:54, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

December 07[edit]

png to svg[edit]

What is the best free online png to svg converter that gets it right the first time, there are a half dozen online that do a poor job. I want to convert File:CGA Örbom.png. --RAN (talk) 13:14, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • I spent years working in computer graphics (CAD, to be specific) and I'm pretty confident in saying that there is no great way to convert raster to vector. At best, you can get some degree of approximation. - Jmabel ! talk 16:51, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I do not see that image as a good candidate for vectorization. Digitizing the individual lines would require a lot of coordinates and would make the file huge. In addition, the vectorization would start copying the noise in the cross hatching rather than giving the expected sharp and colinear edges. Unlimited scaling also does not seem reasonable. At small scales, all the lines blur together to give a good image. At medium scale, we can appreciate the image and see the lines. I suspect at large scale, the lines would overwhelm the image unless one stepped way back. Glrx (talk) 19:28, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks! I was able to do an etching into a nice svg, but it took me a long time to get it right. I will see if I can find the image to show you. --RAN (talk) 03:54, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

December 09[edit]

Copyfraud vs. watermark[edit]

I was cleaning the Copyfraud category and there are several examples of institutions adding watermarks to images so that you have to pay if you want a clean copy to publish in a book. I don't think that is copyfraud, no one is falsely claiming they own the copyrights, they are just making a monetary decision to force you to pay if you want a higher resolution, watermark-free copy to publish in a book. Most of the other examples are clear claims of copyright of public domain images. See: File:Copyfraud darmstadt.jpg (watermarked with the name of the institution) versus File:Hiram Boardman Conibear obituary.png (rote notice added to every article from every year) and File:British Museum Fortuna statue, with copyfraud notice.jpg (my favorite). I want to remove the watermark ones from the category, unless the watermark specifically makes a copyright claim. What do you think? I will add in the category "Images with watermarks". --RAN (talk) 04:06, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Eizabethan Prosthetic Arm
  • This is a good example of Alamy making money from a photgraph that is freely available on the internet - compare it with the image on the right. I know for a fact that the original photgrapher does not receive a penny from Alamy (or anybody else for that matter). In their blurb, they claim that their fee is for "for access to the high resolution copy of the image".
Would the watermarks on this image, were it to be loaded from Alamy, be construed as "Copyfraud". Martinvl (talk) 16:45, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would say not fraud, just a smart business model, find something free and then find a way to charge for it. In economics class, it was called "selling ice to the Inuit", now it would be called "selling bottled water when water from the fountain is free". P.S. I just warned a person at Wikidata that dedicated a photo collection to the public domain, that they should have done it by creative commons with attribution since Alamy does not always pick up the attribution data from Commons if it isn't formatted consistently. --RAN (talk) 20:31, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have separated the images that are "watermarked to prevent free use" from those making a false claim of copyright ownership (copyfraud). Museums and archives use both techniques to prevent free use, and to encourage paid licensing of a higher-resolution, watermark-free image for commercial purposes. --RAN (talk) 21:10, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Unsigned bot[edit]

Hi, The "Unsigned bot" stopped working. Any idea? Yann (talk) 10:55, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Yann: I have not yet gotten a response from Eatcha about this request.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:33, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

December 10[edit]

Insufficient data from a SPARQL request on wikidata[edit]

I pull images through a SPARQL request on wikidata, to access the license, and to give proper credit I use the following request:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=imageinfo&iiprop=extmetadata&titles=File%3a##FILENAME##

Like:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=imageinfo&iiprop=extmetadata&titles=File%3aAnnunciation%20(Leonardo).jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=imageinfo&iiprop=extmetadata&titles=File%3aLa_belle_ferronni%C3%A8re,Leonardo_da_Vinci_-_Louvre.jpg

Now I noticed a problem on File:Annunciation (Leonardo).jpg. I am not getting the author (the photographer), but only the artist, and in the data I receive the author (photographer) is only mentioned in the Categories field and nowhere else. On File:La_belle_ferronnière,Leonardo_da_Vinci_-_Louvre.jpg (from the same Artist and the same author) I can access the author (photographer) via the artist field because there is a separate Photograph object. How can I reliably access the Author via the API to give proper attribution? Thanks. DarthBrento (talk) 19:01, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Adding data + document file formats[edit]

Have there been recent discussions about what data + document file formats to add to the list of "acceptable file types"? --SJ+ 20:20, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

December 11[edit]

Porn in commons[edit]

Someone please would enlighten me about the status of pornographical images in Commons?

I have noticed several dead proposals (COM:SEX, Commons:Pornography and many linked discussions), and occasional references to various very generic policies about censorship. Despite the vast amount of discussions there is no policy saying yes, porn is allowed, because <reasons> or no, porn is not allowed because <reasons> and the threshold is <this_and_that>. I was thinking of actually linking some of the images here (one can start from here) but I believe many people would be extremely shocked to see those in this open and common discussion. And I guess that is also my point here.

I'd like to request a clear statement here from you (from we all), people. Don't close your eyes and act like it wasn't there. Allow or limit, I don't care which one, but shall be decided, not done by handwaving. Especially for images don't linked from anywhere, just being there for... um... for whatever reason, like there wasn't any porn elsewhere on porn-oriented sites.

I was actually asked about this and these questions have triggered this request.

Thanks for your input, and please: keep discussion civilised. --grin ✎ 11:50, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Porn should de treated like any other content. The only difference is that we are more careful with low quality files and even more strict with unclear sources for personality rights reasons. And there is also a problem with indented spam and vandalism in these topic requiring more attention on all contributions there. --GPSLeo (talk) 12:16, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"Should be", I am not really sure whether you mean you are not aware how porn is seen and handled in the current society, or how the legal frameworks of various countries handle it, or you simply chose to ignore that. I can assure you that porn is not like an image of a flower, and there may be legal implications providing that category of imagery to underage persons. (If you really don't know about various laws differentiating pornography then tell me and I will provide you with some examples; not that I want to.)
My question wasn't, I repeat again, why it isn't banned, nor have I complained about handling. My request was specifically to describe this category and its handling, instead of acting like it didn't exist. (If you agree, we can write into the Censorship policy that "pornography is allowed since we believe it would be censorship", so it would be a good basis for debate. <hhok/>)
(Obviously specifically writing down that "porn is allowed without restrictions" will have implications for Commons and Wikipedia generally, but it's not my job to foretell the future. Right now it's in the shadow, and there is nothing guaranteeing that it is going to stay there.) grin ✎ 15:37, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Anything under the slightest suspicion of so-called child-p0rn has to speedied instantenously, uploader blocked and WMF-legal has to be notified. See also {{2257}}. Anything under the suspicion of so-called Revenge porn should also be speedied. --Túrelio (talk) 12:49, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There are large batches of porn images which are not referenced in any articles. Many of those has pretty dubious licenses, like "cc" license from flickr where the flickr account owner has no personal data and his/her email is at a free and usually anonymising provider, basically providing no authority behind the licensor, and most of them are "verified" by a bot. Also it is not clear how Wikipedia (or Commons) follow various laws about protecting of children from improper imagery (for whatever the present governments deem improper). grin ✎ 15:41, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For the latter issue: we have no means to protect children from disturbing images. That is not restricted to porn, but includes e.g. war imagery, crime scenes and medical images. Technical measures have been discussed, but they are thought to be both ineffective and very problematic. And yes, we do want to document pornography, like any other aspect of modern (and ancient) society. –LPfi (talk) 17:31, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I can imagine the headline: Facebook hacked, millions of pictures stolen. Facebook denies any responsbility.--Giftzwerg 88 (talk) 10:31, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
But more likely one day all the pictures get stored on a server in Chișinău by a contractor hired by facebook. And all of a sudden the contractor breaks all ties with Facebook and keeps the pictures and sells it to somebody else because facebook no longer wants to pay the increased storage fees.--Giftzwerg 88 (talk) 10:37, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Searching my uploads[edit]

Is there a way to just search for svg files in my uploads? --RAN (talk) 21:27, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User talk:Fæ[edit]

User:Fæ is sadly no longer active, but User talk:Fæ is still very busy. Automated archiving there has failed, and the page is exceedingly long; can someone familiar with the bots that do such work please take a took, and fix it? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:45, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I changed the bot parameters, hopefully it works, and I also hope Fæ doesn't mind. :-) - Richardkiwi (talk) (talk) 23:00, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Has someone taken over Fae's role in uploading the new image releases from the Library of Congress? --RAN (talk) 23:33, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
AFAICT, no-one has taken on any of the very useful tasks Fæ used to undertake; I asked about this here, recently, and got no replies. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:43, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Richardkiwi: Thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:43, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am back to loading individual ones manually, which is time consuming, and I only do ones of interest to me. I asked him to teach me the software before he left, but I asked too late. There also was a problem with his uploads from the LOC, in that maybe one in 500 images didn't load, for whatever reason, and was skipped. I wanted him to go back and see if he could reload the missing ones automatically. --RAN (talk) 20:22, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

December 12[edit]

Chrome extension for cropping that scrolls down past the bottom of my screen[edit]

I am not sure if I can describe this easily. I cut articles out of public domain Library of Congress newspapers for Commons, mostly obits. The LOC scans a double page and displays the double page. I want to be able to to do a screen grab of just the obituary, where I create a rectangular box to cut and paste the image of the article, but I want the box to continue to scroll past the bottom of my screen. All the Chrome screen-grab extensions I have tried so far allow me to create the rectangle for cropping, but they stop at the bottom of my screen, and I have repeat the process for the bottom half of the image. If I make the image small enough to fit on my screen I lose resolution and cannot perform OCR. Now I download the whole double page image and have to search for the obituary again by reading both pages, sometimes I can't relocate the name I am looking for on the double page. Any suggestions? --RAN (talk) 00:53, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@RAN: You could increase the resolution of your video card to the maximum your monitor supports, or upgrade one or both.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 01:33, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Another workaround I have been using is to change Graphics Options > Rotation > Rotate to 90 degrees. It has the length of the article now oriented with the horizontal length of my screen, but reversing it is difficult, my computer does not support hotkeys for the change back and forth. You are right, probably better to get a new kick-ass computer and bigger monitor. --RAN (talk) 01:40, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Use bigger hardware to overcome lousy software, that's one solution of course. My fvwm allows my setting a large virtual resolution. When I maximise the browser window all the image would fit on my (virtual) screen and the window manager would handle the scrolling. Might not work that well with truly huge files, but for any newspaper scan the approach works well (avoid resizing the window manually, as the normal size would then also have to be restored manually, unless you have a button for setting a default size, but such a button is easy to configure). –LPfi (talk) 13:39, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RAN: would temporarily switching to a different browser be an option? In Firefox you can just right click somewhere on the page, then go "take screenshot" -> "save full page" (and then crop to the desired portion of the page afterwards). El Grafo (talk) 19:32, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wow, excellent, let me take a peek at that, I haven't been using Firefox in years, let me install it and see if it helps. --RAN (talk) 19:38, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

December 13[edit]

IPs deleting structured data[edit]

Every day there are around 30 edits by IPs just deleting all structured data of files. Is there a possibility to create an AbuseFilter to prevent this or do we need to request a new Mediawiki feature for this? --GPSLeo (talk) 13:54, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]


Street art vs Graffiti[edit]

I was trying to clean up the cat Graffiti in London when I noticed there is significant overlap between these two categories, at first i thought it was a case of duplication that has made it's way down the whole local cat structure, but en:wiki has two separate articles for the two concepts. I am having a hard time distinguishing between the two concepts in practice when it comes to categorisation Category:Street art describes it as "Street art is a subset of Public art which denotes unsanctioned artwork in the public space." Category:Graffiti states "This category is for graffiti- and street-art." One of the main differences between the two concepts is public perception, seems too subjective for a category structure. So what is the best way to categorise a spray painted picture on a wall? Oxyman (talk) 14:05, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, IMO the description needs a fix. Street art is legal, Graffiti is not. Yann (talk) 14:16, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Is that the whole difference? As a quick search seems to indicate that street art is often illegal while I have seen a lot of legal graffiti. Graffiti just seems to mean "street paintings" while street art is a whole larger category that includes other forms of street art. At least that is what I suspect based on how "Straatkunst" and "Graffiti" are used in Dutch. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:06, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Old time graffiti
  • I understand the confusion and I wonder if there is a clear difference today. Artists like Category:Banksy are considered "graffiti artists" and "street artists". "Graffiti" was considered defacement in the past and something to be painted over, but now some of it is seen as "politic protest" and "public art". Krok6kola (talk) 19:25, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The blanking of "User talk:Rodhullandemu"[edit]

For context, user "Rodhullandemu" has recently been banned by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) likely for threatening a poor vandal that just wanted to have some fun. I had the idea to open up a thread here to discuss if it might be wise to unblock their ability to upload images here but in light of this ban such a discussion would be futile. In relation to this I noticed a recent trend that the WMFOffice has started blanking user talk pages as they did here. Not only did they remove other people's comments they removed the archiving system, in fact the WMFOffice seems to systematically remove anything except for block notices, sock-tags, Etc. which just seems like spiteful gravedancing to me. While blanking user pages is (unfortunately) acceptable, blanking user talk pages is something that as far as I know isn't something that is regularly done in any non-Francophone Wikimedia website.

Would it be wise to make a policy or guideline against the blanking of User talk pages and then ask the WMFOffice to respect that? I personally do not see what benefit it has to blank user talk pages. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 14:58, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pictogram voting comment.svg Comment, I am afraid to talk directly to the WMFOffice as I am convinced that they simply ban-without-appeal anyone that interacts with them, the fact that Rodhullandemu stated multiple times that he was talking to the Trust & Safety Team makes me believe that this was the case, if anyone would talk to them do not mention that such a policy was my suggestion. As the growth of users getting WMF banned seems exponential with no transparency, so I can only assume that very little or no reason could be a cause for a ban. So this policy suggestion is not something against the WMFOffice simply weighing in if the current practice is beneficial to the community or not. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:02, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Donald Trung: FYI, I corresponded with them via email in 2019 about Hasive, and my account lived to tell the tale.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:15, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, While I find the ban warranted (i.e. among other reasons for exporting the conflict on WD), I have no objection to restore the archiving system of his talk page. Since he uploaded many images, there is a need to send a DR notice somewhere, if anyone wants to monitor his page. Regards, Yann (talk) 21:18, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. That is one reason. We should also not hide history. We cannot just pretend these users never existed.
For the user page, I believe we should not blank them either, as long as the content isn't objectionable (if edits during the conflict were, restore an older version and add the template to that).
I think the spirit of the attribution clauses of many free licences require that we attribute the users' presentation of themselves (including possible links to an external site), not a blank page with a "banned" template. If I cannot trust WMF to keep my user page, then I would have to make the author line point to an external page inste4ad of to Commons.
–LPfi (talk) 21:57, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There is no requirement for the WMF to keep your userpage if you are globally banned. -- Guerillero 10:29, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Realistically for WMF globally banned users, the userpage should be blanked and locked with a message to redirect any editing queries to another venue. Both for the user's own wellbeing and to prevent the usual peanut gallery effect, good faith editors leaving messages not realising they will get no response, other editors using the talkpage as some sort of shrine and so on. The 'breaking archiving' argument is largely pointless, for a globally banned user, notifications serve no purpose, as they will never be able to do anything about it personally. If the page is locked for editing, nothing will need to be archived in the future. The same argument is perfectly valid for someone who is temporarily blocked/banned however, as they may return at some point. That is almost certainly never going to happen with a WMF banned user. That they had many contributions is a red herring, any media on commons nominated for deletion will show up in the usual places and have the usual audience. With the only real difference being the absence of the globally banned user. The idea that somehow the deletion discussion will be missed, and by implication treated unfairly, if Rodhullandemu's talkpage does not contain a notification is bordering on 'this user's contributions require special treatment'. I might actually make it a suggestion to the WMF T&S team they do implement a blank & lock policy, because allowing other editors to constantly notify someone who has been forcibly seperated from the community is not good for their mental wellbeing. Better to make a clean break of it. Only in death (talk) 11:39, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that for the talk page, archiving and adding a template explaining the situation would be the best solution. The archives may still be interesting for many purposes, so hiding them away is usually not a good idea. For the user page, as long as we keep any works of the user, we need to attribute them, and linking a blanked page for attribution is nonsense. If the WMF doesn't respect this, then WMF cannot be trusted for attribution purposes, and anyone should link to a page under their control instead, if they have a persistent one. We do not want attribution links to go to Facebook pages instead of Commons, so respecting the user page is not only a question of being fair and true to the spirit of the attribution requirement. –LPfi (talk) 14:04, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have the target of the redirect at User talk:GeographBot on my watchlist, and find that useful, even though obviously GeographBot itself will never benefit from deletion notifications. While I'm not likely to add any humans' user talk pages to my watchlist for this reason, I can easily imagine that others might, and that to me would seem to justify keeping user talk pages unprotected except where there's an actual problem that protection would solve. --bjh21 (talk) 18:00, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is this about a matter of policy, or about objecting to the ban? The OP seems to be conflating the two things. It also seems a little paranoid to say that the office will ban you just for talking to them. It makes it hard to take this seriously to see such a ridiculous sentiment expressed. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:29, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I see nothing wrong with WMFOffice's actions - They exist purely to boot people out. Expecting them to mess around with archiving is bit OTT. They should continue to blank pages and if people really wanna re-add the archive back then fine. I agree with their userpage blanking too. –Davey2010Talk 23:25, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Recordings of EmacsConf in Wikimedia Commons[edit]

I've contacted the organizers of EmacsConf through #emacsconf to ask them about uploading the recordings to Wikimedia Commons. For what I could perceive from their answers is that they are willing to do what would be more beneficial to the community and these are some questions that popped up.

  • Will it be useful to Wikimedia Commons?
  • What would be the differences to uploading them to archive.org?

It is worth mentioning that all the recordings can be found in the official site of EmacsConf. In addition to that, anyone can contribute to that site as explained in the Edit section of the page (this requires running some commands in the command line).

Additional context: Some of my reasons for proposing this idea were (1) People can contribute by adding subtitles in 444 languages (2) Subtitles vandalization can be easily reverted by contributors to this site (3) Contributors don't need an account (4) Adding subtitles to a video is frictionless thanks to the user-friendly interface of Commons (5) Videos can have structured data which make them easier to find (i.e. part of (P361) EmacsConf (Q103942956), instance of (P31) lightning talk (Q926186), language used (P2936) English (Q1860))

I would appreciate any information to make a better decision. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rdrg109 (talk • contribs) 18:34, 13 December 2021‎ (UTC)[reply]

  • Just an aside so no one else needs to check: these are licensed CC-BY-SA-4.0. - Jmabel ! talk 21:38, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The videos have been published and can be found in Category:EmacsConf 2021.
  • Will it be useful to Wikimedia Commons? As stated in Welcome, "Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely licensed educational media content". All talks of EmacsConf meets these requirements, so there's no problem in uploading them.
  • What would be the differences of uploading them to archive.org? Each of them have their features. Some users might prefer to use archive.org, while others Wikimedia Commons.
I think my questions have been solved.
Rdrg109 (talk) 17:11, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RfC Structured Data on Commons Stable Interface Policy[edit]

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T290671

Hello everybody! The Structured Data engineering team would like to share with the community the draft of a new operational policy, regarding the stability of public interfaces and data formats here on Wikimedia Commons. The policy is largely based on the same operational policy established on Wikidata back in 2016.

This policy will not impact the project's content, nor the community processes, but the team wants to follow community process for its adoption. Any user interested in providing feedback on the policy can do so in the relative talk page.

We would like to wait until Sunday December 19 for any feedback on the proposal. If there are no objections by the end of the week, the policy should be considered adopted. -- Sannita (WMF) (talk) 21:01, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

December 14[edit]

Photo challenge October results[edit]

Autumn leafs: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image Faggeta di Canfaito (cropped).jpg Autumn trees against the sky in Six Mile Canyon near Virginia City, Nevada, USA.jpg Bamberg Bruderwald Herbst-20151102-RM-110637.jpg
Title Faggeta di Canfaito (Marche,
Italia) nella nebbia autunnale		 Autumn trees against the sky
in Six Mile Canyon near
Virginia City, Nevada, USA		 In the Bruderwald in Bamberg
Author IvoK. Semiautonomous Ermell
Score 24 14 12
Loneliness: Entries • Votes • Scores
Rank 1 2 3
image Dromedar Oman.jpg Dans une belle ville du sud de la France.jpg Одиночество в большом городе.jpg
Title Lonesome dromedary in
Wahiba Sands (Oman)		 In a beautiful town,
in the south of France		 Одиночество в большом городе
Author DEspel Celeda Андрей Малков
Score 14 13 12

Congratulations to IvoK., Semiautonomous, Ermell, DEspel, Celeda and Андрей Малков. -- Jarekt (talk) 03:20, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Question about image deletions[edit]

huge apologies but I have no idea how to post a discussion! Do people just edit this section and talk?? I have had a series of photos deleted that I uploaded. I took the photos so there is no copyright on them. I don't know if I checked the wrong box when uploading, but I replied to comments I received on those images a couple of months ago to confirm I was the author. Perhaps I did not reply in the correct area as I was not notified of a reply. @Taivo deleted some of the images and I tried to comment on their talk page but I can't see where my comment appeared. I have been casually adding to wiki over a few years but only do bits and pieces so have never joined the chat areas before so don't know how to actually engage/chat to other editors. MRichards01 (talk) 03:28, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is the right way to post a comment, yes. I see you got some answers from Taivo and in the deletion requests and their talk pages (the talk pages of those are for meta-discussion and seldom used). If you have questions on any individual files, just ask. Asking the closing administrator, such as you did with Taivo is one recommended route, but as you started this discussion, you can equally well continue here. Please link the deletion request or the deleted image, so that it is more easy for others to check what happened. For Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by MRichards01 it seems there is conflicting information, but perhaps these are just free access, not free to edit and reuse. That is a common problem: "free" or "open" are not well-defined. For your own photos a few ways to provide evidence have been suggested, but there are more ways. –LPfi (talk) 13:44, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Questions about Wuppertal rail 1990 pictures[edit]

Wuppertal Oberbarmen rail 1990 1.jpg

I try to find the locomotive type '360', but its not Category:Henschel DHG 360 C.

Wuppertal Oberbarmen rail 1990 4.jpg

These stainless steel coaches where typical in Germany, but cant seem to find them in Category:Railway coaches of Germany.Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:42, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The '360' locomotive is a renamed DB Class V 60. The coaches are N-class coaches of Deutsche Bahn. --Raugeier (talk) 12:09, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Do you know the type of (old) electric locomotive? I cant read any dentifying number. It looks old with a flat nose.Smiley.toerist (talk) 23:57, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Looks a lot like an E 41. (DB class 141) -- Herbert Ortner (talk) 12:55, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The filenames of both images should be slightly corrected as the station is called de:Oberbarmen (not Oberarmen). --Túrelio (talk) 11:57, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is this a good idea?[edit]

User:Niketto sr. has begun using Magnus Manske's ListeriaBot to create and manage galleries such as Paintings depicting the Ciociaro costume. I'm not sure this falls within policy. Galleries are supposed to be collections of particularly good images on a specific subject curated by the community. These galleries warn that the bot will eliminate manual entries, so that the community can not change its work. It seems to me that that is outside of our understanding of Commons Galleries. .     Jim . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 13:51, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If you wish to create and manually maintain Gallery:Paintings depicting the Ciociaro costume, there seems to be nothing stopping you. It can happily exists alongside the page mentioned above, which seems both useful and interesting. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:54, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

December 15[edit]

"White American history"[edit]

I believe Commons:Categories for discussion/2021/12/Category:White American history probably deserves broader attention than a typical CFD, so I am mentioning it here. - Jmabel ! talk 01:54, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

University of the Netherlands: video lectures from scientists which should be uploaded[edit]

Lecture by chemist prof. dr. Nathaniel Martin (Leiden University) about the history of antibiotics.

Dear fellow wikipedians There are some interesting 15-minute lectures of scientists which are Creative Commons and should be uploaded to Commons and used on the English Wikipedia. Here is the license which states that all videos of this YouTube channel are Creative Commons:

There are already many videos that are used on Wikipedia, especially in Dutch (I contributed to adding these Dutch videos a lot myself):

But, there are also a lot of English videos that still need to be uploaded to Commons so they can then be used on the English Wikipedia. Here are 56 video’s in English:

I uploaded already 7 of them:

Now it is pity that the tool to (semi-)automatically upload videos from YouTube to Commons does not work so well:

However, you can do this via, for example, the following tool: [1]. Commons does not accept mp4 but does accept webm format, so the videos have to be converted to webm. A small number of these videos maybe will not find a consensus to add them to Wikipedia. This has happened in the past because a small number of videos are seen as not neutral enough or of too low a level. But the vast majority are of excellent quality. This must therefore be considered on a case-by-case basis. But this is a lot of work to watch all these video’s so that’s whay I call for help. Sometimes the titles of the lectures are a bit provocative or not so neutral, but you can solve this by starting the video on second 20, for example via |start=20|. See example above. You can determine which frame is used as thumbnail, if desired, via |thumbtime=909|.

So hopefully people will want to help out with this, either to upload the video to commons or to add them to the English wikipedia. --PJ Geest (talk) 13:38, 15 December 2021 (UTC).[reply]

Problem with reuploaded pdf multipage file[edit]

Hello, for the first time, I reuploaded a pdf correcting two pages of the pdf, but the reuploaded File:Guinault - Sergent ! (1881).pdf does not show correctly, neither at commons nor at wikisource. How to get it correctly done. --Havang(nl) (talk) 11:29, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

David Shankbone converts license to public domain[edit]

I have a technical request - is anyone able to change the license of all of user:David Shankbone's uploads from Creative Commons to public domain? He invited this in September 2021 at User talk:David Shankbone.

Background - David Shankbone is probably the world's most popular photographer in terms of how many times his photos have been published. He became popular because his photos were good, they were of celebrities, he took a lot of them, and they were the only freely licensed photos which existed for many people. Newspapers and magazines around the world used them whenever they mentioned a celebrity and needed a free photo. This is a flagship photography collection of Wikimedia Commons, and changing the license to make the files more free would be useful.

Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:29, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As this is an astonishing move, it should be doublechecked whether this is really his authentic will. In addition, it should be clarified whether he means really "self-public domain" or CC-Zero.--Túrelio (talk) 20:38, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
He probably does mean "self-PD", but of course he can't do that.
Also Shankbone's website is dead, so who knows what's going on. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:57, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Commonist, not working?[edit]

I just tried to upload pictures, with Windows Commonist. Worked last time, long time ago. Now "Fails". Error messages says someting like "Invalid cookie header", and "Token parameter must be set". Anybody knows what happened? What can be done? I have like 100 pictures, muste be uploaded with pre-set license and categories, so Upload wizard takes way too much time, it must be uploaded one time all stuff. Note that it is the Source, Author, Permission, License that has templates, but that does not work with Upload wizard. Any suggestions? Or any batch "change-image-parameters" available? --Janwikifoto (talk) 22:57, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

At the risk of being "that guy", did you clear your cache, log out and log back in, or use a different browser? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:10, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Commonist uses a windows java program. So it does not upload from a browser. I can not see how a browser would affect. --Janwikifoto (talk) 07:30, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
BUT, but, there is the Log4j security holw, that affects Java... maybe Commonist and other Java has been disabled on Commons front-end...? --Janwikifoto (talk) 07:31, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Janwikifoto and Koavf: Sorry, Commonist does not work at the moment. Please see Commons talk:Commonist#missingparam: The token parameter must be set for details. You may use VFC to change your file description pages en masse.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 11:14, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Barbados needs updating[edit]

Barbados is now a republic and will not have (e.g.) Crown ownership of anything. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:55, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

December 16[edit]

WCQS upcoming release to production[edit]

We are excited to announce that Wikimedia Commons Query Service (WCQS), currently in beta, will soon be in production with a planned General Availability date of 1 Feb 2022.

Please see this page for more details: [2](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:SPARQL_query_service/Upcoming_General_Availability_release)

Thanks for your patience! MPham (WMF) (talk) 08:44, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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