Commons:Village pump

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# 💭 Title 💬 👥 🙋 Last editor 🕒 (UTC)
1 Proposal: AI generated images must be clear they're AI in the file name 104 36 Bastique 2024-10-04 21:17
2 Proposal: de-prioritise AI images in search 38 17 Ckoerner 2024-09-30 19:10
3 Monuments database in Russia 38 9 Svetlov Artem 2024-09-30 09:17
4 Bad tracks 6 4 Андрей Романенко 2024-09-28 13:52
5 Hosting HDR images as JPEG with gain map 0 0
6 Natalie: girl's picture 18 10 Jeff G. 2024-09-29 04:55
7 Dating categories of old newspapers with news from many dates and places 6 2 Smiley.toerist 2024-09-29 11:44
8 How to change the text in a speedy deletion (GA1)? 3 2 JopkeB 2024-10-02 05:21
9 Publishers info in newspapers 11 6 Enhancing999 2024-10-04 12:33
10 Special:EditWatchlist timed out 11 5 ReneeWrites 2024-10-03 23:52
11 What is correct English name for this? 6 5 Broichmore 2024-09-28 15:11
12 Links to sister projects 2 2 Koavf 2024-09-28 10:55
13 Help:Misinformation 6 5 Prototyperspective 2024-10-03 09:52
14 Template:No advertising 2 2 Prototyperspective 2024-10-03 10:00
15 Why? 4 3 Jeff G. 2024-09-30 14:00
16 Image not displaying at correct resolution? 4 3 Bastique 2024-09-30 21:49
17 Sliding location 5 3 Broichmore 2024-10-01 07:22
18 Rename of images 2 2 Bastique 2024-10-01 16:07
19 Commons Gazette 2024-10 1 1 RoyZuo 2024-10-01 18:56
20 Cat-a-lot is slow 6 4 Adamant1 2024-10-02 16:19
21 Intersection category of gender, occupation, nationality and decade of birth 7 5 Adamant1 2024-10-04 23:13
22 What are these Arabic seals called? 1 1 Omphalographer 2024-10-05 20:40
23 Template:Cosplay at 3 2 Ellicrum 2024-10-05 23:02
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Oldies

Is this an over-categorization?

Hi. Sometimes I see images that have many categories that describe everything in the image. For example, this or this image. Is it a good idea to try and describe everything and for an image to have that many categories?--Дима Г (talk) 21:58, 12 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, both pictures are overcategorized. Pictures that are in a category and its parent category are overcategorized.
  • In the first picture, Sitting is the parent category of "Paintings of girls sitting on the ground outdoors", through "Paintings of sitting girls" → "Sitting girls in art" → "Sitting females in art" → "Sitting people in art" → "Sitting in art".
  • In the second picture "Females facing left" is the parent category of "Women facing left and looking left".
--Snaevar (talk) 22:58, 12 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
While User:Snaevar aptly applied COM:OVERCAT to the images mentioned by User:Дима Г, the latter’s question remains unanswered, and the short answer is — yes, it is:
Please note that overcategorization doesn’t apply to “many” categories, but to redundant categories. A file with with only two categories might be overcategorized (if those two are redundant — only one, the more specific one, would convey the same exact meaning), while a file with 50 categories (like a typical Mordillo cartoon or a page from Where’s Wally?) might be not overcategorized.
So, yes, it is «a good idea to try and describe everything», and therefore «for an image to have that many categories» is a mere result of that curation practice. In some cases, suitable sections of an image may be extracted/cropped and become a separate image, for which some more detailed categorization may be moved from the origina, laerger image.
-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 05:20, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

API to search for a Commons category "smartly"?

Our app Upload To Commons lets the user search for categories to add. Unfortunately, a search for "Fortress in Holland" does not return the actual category "Castles in the Netherlands", so searching for the right category is painfully difficult.

Is there an API that would "guess" the right category? Possibly an external usable API.

What I have tried so far, with did not work:

If it is too hard, at least finding the category "Power plants in New Zealand" from "new-zealand power plant" would be great already.

Thanks a lot! Syced (talk) 06:19, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

How do you envision creating and editing the heuristics for such functionality? Central mapping of related concepts? This would be unwieldy and error-prone due to lack of context. Additional keywords in each category? This would be a nightmare to maintain, resulting in totally unpredictable behaviour depending on the state of each individual category.
As for your first example, there's nothing that says we couldn't have a Category:Fortresses in Holland as a subcategory of Category:Holland and Category:Fortresses in the Netherlands. If you somehow map searches for a region of a country to show results for the country it is in (or a specific building type to a more general one, Category:Castles being a subcategory of Category:Fortresses), how do we encourage users to pick categories that are both appropriate and as specific as possible? How can you tell if a user searching for Holland has conflated the region with the country or if they really mean the region?
As for your second example, Category:Power plants in New Zealand is the third result when searching for new-zealand power plant. The two first results (Category:Hydroelectric power plants in New Zealand and Category:Kawerau Geothermal Power Plant) probably score higher because the search words appear both in the title and in the category pages themselves (in reference to parent categories). I don't know what the search algorithm looks like, but I could see a case for boosting the score of results that have a high degree of bidirectional correlation between the title and the words in the search string over results where the words in the search string appear more frequently overall – in other words valuing signal-to-noise ratio over signal strength. —LX (talk, contribs) 13:52, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Google can infer Netherlands from a Holland search, and there are semantic tools and data sets available out there, so a motivated team could build such a server :-) While automatically finding THE right category might be difficult, an API could at least give 10 or 20 suggestions and let the user pick the right ones. Actually, that's exactly how the app will work. Syced (talk) 12:15, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I can't leave a "Happy 15th" birthday message...

... because it has to be tweeted!

I don't "do" social media, and doubt if I am alone in this. So the happy, postitive message I wanted to send has no 'place' on Wikipedia because I am, in effect, discriminated against. Cheers! Shir-El too (talk) 09:01, 15 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Same here, to make a long story short. Not that I would ever spam anyone about Wikipedia’s anniversary, anyway: The Xth most visited site on Earth doesn’t need my (or anyone’s) handful of “followers” to gain visibility — the promo banner that plagues every page is more than enough. But this is one more datapoint to mark the trend followed by the “powers that be”: A trend essentially inimical to the worldview of those who contribute daily to create something that’s worth tweeting about. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 16:48, 15 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Incomprehensible error message does not let any Campaign edits

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T123840
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T123842

Hello, I have a kind of showstopper. I tried to create one campaign and got a strange error warning: Value "cc-by-sa-4.0" not in enum for property cc-by-sa-3.0 that didn't let me save the edit. I have realised that the problem is general if I want to edit any existing campaign. Examples are Campaign:wlfolk, Campaign:wle-es, Campaign:wlm-es, ... can somebody give me a hint how to cope with this problem? Poco2 17:52, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. Just to verify, can anyone else reproduce this? (I can't try myself, don't have the rights to edit these pages here.)
"enum" is an abbreviation for enumerated type, so the error message means that "cc-by-sa-4.0" is not a valid value for whatever you're trying to use it for; looks like something suddenly decided that it's not a real license. I don't see any configuration changes that would do this. And the "cc-by-sa-3.0" part does seem bogus regardless of whether the rest of the error message makes sense, it should be something like licensing -> ownWork -> licenses -> 1 to indicate where the invalid value is in the JSON… Matma Rex (talk) 18:54, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Nevermind, I was able to reproduce the problem on my testing wiki. I'll find out what went wrong and fix it. The soonest we'll be able to deploy the fix is on Tuesday, though (we don't do deployments on weekends, and Monday is a holiday in the US), see deployment schedule. Matma Rex (talk) 19:32, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Matma Rex for your feedback and bug report! Poco2 19:52, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This should be resolved now. Matma Rex (talk) 18:15, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Mass influx of selfies from Christ University, Bangalore

Hello. It seems like a very large section of students at Christ University has some sort of assignment to create a userpage on a WikiProject (sadly, they haven't created any content which is actually useful for any of the projects). It appears to be through the Wikimedia Outreach program. The result has been an absolute flood of {{Userpage image}}s. Patrolling the past 24 hours of uploads:

  • I've tagged 107 images for deletion, as they were unused.
  • I've tagged another 100 or 200 with the {{Userpage image}} template.
  • There are many more uploads which I haven't gotten to, and may not get to.

I thought we should be aware of this. I will leave it up to the community whether we consider this to be a positive or negative thing. Magog the Ogre (talk) (contribs) 23:35, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose it's up to the rules of the Wikiprojects what sort of user pages they allow. The images seem OK for Commons as long as they are used somewhere. --ghouston (talk) 10:46, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Identifying and nominating unused user page images for deletion

Do we have a good way to search for unused files tagged with {{user page image}}? https://tools.wmflabs.org/glamtools/glamorous.php can tell me which files in Category:User page images are being used (the most), but not which ones aren't. —LX (talk, contribs) 18:58, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Likely with a query on quarry, I can look into that on a later moment. In similar situations in the past I've used visualfilechange, which can indicate if a file is in use or not. However can not automatically select on this property, thus 1-by-1 selecting would be needed if you wanted to nominate the files. Basvb (talk) 12:34, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, I can't find an easy way to look for global usage. this works for local usage (credit [1] for most of it). The only way I could currently think of is to check for the il tables of each wiki using quarry, which is not a nice solution. However as there are multiple locations using global usage (the file itself, the glamorous tool, the visualfilechange tool) something must be possible here. Maybe somebody who is familiar with those can be asked. Basvb (talk) 13:15, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
How about https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/6923 ? (Note, that happens to also exclude things used on pages like User:OgreBot/Uploads by new users/2014 January 30 00:00. An even better query might be https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/6924 ). Bawolff (talk) 05:50, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
That seems to work, couldn't find the globalimagelinks table myself somehow. Mvg, Basvb (talk) 12:01, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Some are valid regular images (with other categories), maybe we should separate those (and remove their user page image template) while nominating the other batch. LX, any thoughts on what to do with the info? Basvb (talk) 12:08, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Basvb: Yes, my thinking was that we should identify user page images with no content categories and nominate them for deletion. Files newer than one week or so may be spared for those who need some time to figure out how to include images on pages. —LX (talk, contribs) 15:11, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
[2] has everything older than 1 week and with only 1 category (thus no others than the user image category). adds up to almost 1400 images. I agree that these images are out of scope to my best knowledge and therefore nominating seems like a good idea. I know mass nominations (1400 images from ca 1000 users) are not always welcomed, but that seems like the most suitable way, any things we should consider in this list? Basvb (talk) 18:57, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
(I decided to create a separate subheading for this related, but broader discussion.)
Basvb: Thanks for that! I'm thinking the way to go about this is to set up some gallery pages in my user namespace (of course this will mean that they are technically in use), and then use VisualFileChange to nominate files on those pages for deletion. I sorted the list by upload date, and if we split it by year, the largest batches will be 2011 (258 files) and 2012 (253 files), which seems more manageable. 2005–2008 can be combined for a batch of 137 files, which is close to the average for the rest (176 files; ignoring 2016 with only two files). Any thoughts before I go ahead? —LX (talk, contribs) 23:33, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@LX, sounds like a plan. I added the images to galleries at User:Basvb/UnusedUserImages, you can move them/the page or use the page however you like. Maybe we've to walk through a few edge cases first (not all are simple selfies/headshots). Mvg, Basvb (talk) 18:31, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Basvb: Looks like we were both working at this at the same time. The first batch is here: Commons:Deletion requests/Files on User:LX/Unused user page images, 2005–2009. Thanks again for your help! —LX (talk, contribs) 18:59, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Aah, I should've looked to your edits first. Well nevermind my page then. Basvb (talk) 19:16, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

January 17

Shipping container category name needs review

In the name Category:Dry Specially Container by type Cord( 09 ) ＆ Cord( G9 ) I can see a few problems:

  • spaces separating brackets from their content
  • ampersand encoded as "＆" U+FF06 FULLWIDTH AMPERSAND instead of "&" U+0026 AMPERSAND (its Unicode canonical equivalent)
  • incorrect capitalization
  • concordance error (adverb qualifying noun)
  • possibly bad word choice ("specially" instead of "especially"?)
  • misused preposition ("by type" instead of "of type")
  • possibly a misplaced synedoche ("dry" for "dry goods"?)

I’d move it to Category:Special dry-goods container of type Cord(09) & Cord(G9), but I haven’t the foggiest idea whether that’s an even remotely correct term. Any shipping buff around? -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 03:56, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A CfD page was created. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 22:45, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Commons:User-specific_galleries,_templates_and_categories_policy#Categories

This hast to change. If I wasn't a Wikipedian, and did the exact same work I was doing, I would - quite rightly - get my work categorised as my work, linking all my work together.

Commons does not allow searches that include uploader, and we had an outright policy for years saying that templates should be used that refer to the uploader.

It is insultuing and wrong that we, for some reason, think hard-working Wikipedians should be denied the credit we give to any other person, famous or not, just for not being a Wikipedian.

I would ask that this policy is changed, because I think that basic lack of respect for contributors is sufficient reason not to allow my work on Commons. I don't have to work for Commons, after all. I can stop.

I am tired of discovering months later that Category:Adam Cuerden's restorations has been set to hidden by someone in order to deny me credit, despite the huge message stating "Do not do this" Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:04, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Actualæly, we can keep this simple. I can use the following template for my files:

© The copyright holder of this file, Adam Cuerden, allows anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that the copyright holder is properly attributed. Redistribution, derivative work, commercial use, and all other use is permitted.
Attribution:
"Adam Cuerden". This may be given any way desired, however, on Wikimedia Commons, the file must appear in Category:Adam Cuerden's restorations, which may not be a hidden category.

Would that make everyone happy? That changing the status will be a copyvio? Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:16, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Adam Cuerden: I don't think this non-copyright restriction makes much sense (it feels a bit too specific to me), but other than that, I do not have any issue with your category not being hidden (that is, being visible in the same font size as any other category). In the end, any other file hosting service (Flickr, DeviantArt, you name it) allows their regular visitors easy access to other works by the same user, which is something that we currently do not do. If I might suggest something, I think Category:Restorations by Adam Cuerden would be a bit better (and follow current Commons category naming policies) — and I suggest we leave the current category name as a redirect not to break links. How does that sound? odder (talk) 13:48, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And, may I add that, when you have someone upset at the lack of basic respect, condescending messages about it is a terrible way to calm them down. Can someone please make it clear to Jean11 to never, ever talk to other users that way? Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:53, 17 January 2016 (UTC) I'm sorry I'm so annoyed about this. But this shows a basic lack of respect for Commons' contributors, and I think that I am entitled to a basic level of respect. Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:17, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Adam Cuerden: I also think that I am entitled to a basic level of respect. Speaking of which, remember when I volunteered two hours of my time to participate in Wikivoices #45, on the assumption that its audio file would be shared with the public. Then, you suppressed the release of that audio file to the public, saying that your bout with "headaches" prevented you from uploading the file to Wikipedia. So, while you're stomping your feet, demanding respect, why don't you go stomp your feet over to the mirror and look at yourself? - Thekohser (talk) 15:51, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
All such categories, which are not the 'creator' of the work depicted in the image is hidden. "Photographs by Flickr user X" is hidden, "Artworks by Artist Y" is not hidden. There's a fine difference of what should and should not be hidden, but there is a good reason too. People might be searching for "Artworks by X" and think of what they might find, however "photographs by Flickr user X" may be different photos of different thing a and no one will search for something like that sibce it isn't a qualifier for what might be in the image. Hope I'm making some sense. As for the 'I deserv this' and 'I deserv that', Wikimedia Commins is not a place you get things from or earn rewards, it's a place we store images. No more. No less. And no, you can't do an attribution thing like that, not applicable with Commons policies of acceptable licenses as well as I would think WMF might then take a position regarding PD-art in refards to restorations. Josve05a (talk) 17:42, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Restoration is usually much more work that taking pictures. We need to find a consensus satisfying for everybody. I don't have objections about Adam's positions: he is not claiming a copyright, just asking that credit is properly done. Regards, Yann (talk) 18:57, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
If Commons doesn't feel that its creators "deserve" credit in the way they desire, there is nothing forcing their users to continue contributing. But I think that that is a solution that satisfies nobody. But it's one I will do if Commons' official policy is to disrespect its users. Further, I live in the UK. I have a copyright, I just choose not to enforce it, because I think Commons is important. But no work is important enough to feel bad about yourself because the project values you so little they won't allow you even the most minimal credit. Adam Cuerden (talk) 19:37, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Although I've made my own user categories hidden, I don't seem to recall any policy which requires it. Unless we have such a policy, I fail to see why Adam cannot have his own categories non-hidden. I personally do not consider it an attribution issue (if the credit "Restored by Adam Cuerden" was removed, that would be a different story), but if Adam feels strongly about it, if there's no policy then there's no reason not to let him do as he pleases.
And yes, in the jurisdiction where Adam lives he can claim full copyright over the restorations (conversely, for works he didn't scan, the scanner could possibly claim copyright over the scan and derivative works). Just because Commons doesn't recognize his copyright doesn't mean he can't claim a copyright. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 23:30, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Have a look at the policy page that Adam linked in the header. We do have such a policy. --Sebari (talk) 23:35, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Non-hidden categories contain information about the subject of the file, not meta-information about the file. This is what hidden categories are for. And rightly so. Appropriate credit is given to authors field of the information template. You seem to be very angry about a non-issue/misunderstanding of categories. --Sebari (talk) 23:34, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Commons users are generally non-notable. Hence, user categories need to be hidden. --Leyo 00:33, 18 January 2016 (UTC) PS. The category should get rename to something like Category:Restorations by User:Adam Cuerden to make it clear to every reader that Adam is not a notable person, but a Commons user.[reply]
Touch my credit, or hide the category and Commons is never getting another restoration from me again. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:01, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
That is no basis for discussion, I'm afraid. --Leyo 01:43, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Seriouslyu? You're so determined to deny basic credit that you'd rather lose a user than give it? I think I've learned all I need to. Adam Cuerden (talk) 02:41, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well it might be a nice thing to allow users who have a prominent hand in creating the image (including people who put non-trivial effort into restoring the image, such as Adam) to have their own non-hidden user categories, and I certainly don't have any objections to allowing that, but it seems entirely unreasonable to require such as part of the license. Any license dictating such a specific type of attribution is non-free in my opinion, and should not be allowed [I suppose that point is a little muddled with the whole pd-art thing]. I also fail to see how we as a community have any moral imperative to organize media in any specific way. Ultimately the point of Wikimedia is that people can re-use, re-mix, etc your content in any way they see fit, including ways that you might not like, provided that people keep your name on it, which they have. To conclude, this should be a "what do we all feel like doing" type discussion, not a "you're being evil if you don't do X" discussion. Bawolff (talk) 03:54, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not asking for a giant splash page on each of my restorations. I'm simply asking fr a category so that people interested in my work can find more of it, something Commons otherwise makes very difficult. If simply wanting easy access for peoople to a collation of your work is too much for Commons, then why the hell should I keep contributing to somewhere that values me so little that <bold>this whole discussion is about how we need to keep people from finding out what other things I've worked on, because creators are meant to be anonymous and unseen on here? You want to deny me the right to provide users access to a list of things I've worked on from each image, in the least obtrusive way possible - a category link at the bottom of the page. If you're going to deny something that little, enough to show that users are actually respected, and niot seen as some tools for getting stuff, that need to know their place, and not adsk for credit, and maybe we should deny them the right to any credit at all, hmm? This is a matter of basic respect. And you are evil if you deny credit.<bold> Adam Cuerden (talk) 04:40, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is what gets me about this situation. This is what you're willing to drive a ten-year contributor to Commons over: wanting a tiny credit at the bottom of the page. For that, you're willing to insult me, belittle me, and make it clear that my work isn't valued. I never expected it to end like this. This has gone way too far. It's clear that contributors aren't respected here, and it baffles me that asking for credit for work is what Commons would draw a hard line against.

I can't do volunteer work for a group that apparently views me as no better than their slave. Adam Cuerden (talk) 05:41, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hidden categories are not usually "invisible". The are pretty much the same as regular categories but displayed on a separate line on the file page. It'd probably be better if they were named "metadata categories". --ghouston (talk) 06:59, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Adam, I really think you need to step back and calm down. In this thread and on a thread on you talk page, you are accusing people of various stuff that they neither said nor intended to say. And you are being very aggressive about it. Personally, your behaviour and confrontational manner in this thread makes me not even want to consider your arguments. --Sebari (talk) 07:37, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sebari, don't do this. It is patronising bullshit, doesn't have the effect you think it does. Commons needs to do better to recognise when its contributors are upset and handle that sensitively and wisely, rather than telling them to "calm down dear" or "be mellow". If the tone puts you off, then find something else to do. -- Colin (talk) 09:18, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I don't agree. An angry tone does not help in any way. Your unfriendly tone does not help either. If you cannot discuss in a civilized manner, I refuse to take you seriously. --Sebari (talk) 09:31, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It would be one thing if this was a one time thing (Everyone gets angry sometimes), but almost every interaction I've had with Adam, he has been yelling and screaming. This is probably one of the milder interactions. Tolerating these sorts of tantrums creates quite a negative environment for everyone, and also sets a precedent where people become angry to get their voice heard. Then everyone is angry all the time. I think this is a bad thing. Bawolff (talk) 00:55, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Ghouston: For reference, the display name can be changed by editing MediaWiki:Hidden-categories (Already, its called non-topical/index categories if the page you're looking at is a category) [See also related mediawiki:hiddencategories (For on the edit page), mediawiki:tog-showhiddencats (for preferences), and mediawiki:hidden-category-category (The tracking category, although changing that one can be disruptive as the change is propagated slowly)]. Bawolff (talk) 08:00, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why are the creatives, who happen to be Commons users, denied a full category for their works? Whereas a painter who may not be notable can be categorised. So the test isn't that Commons users are not notable (as someone suggests) but a prejudice against "users" and a lack of respect (as Adam notes) for their value to the project. Someone who is merely "User:Colin" or "John from Flickr" is viewed as not a real artist. This is perhaps a hangover from the collective Wikipedia mindset that any work uploaded here is the work of a group of people (who derive their words from sources others have written) and who should be individually humble -- and not an identifiable person worthy of credit. Perhaps it is the snobbery one has that real artists paint or sculpt, but photography or photoshop creative skill is not "art". But images on Commons, by and large, are the result of one person. At the most two (such as Adam's restorations, or where someone processes someone else's raw files). The term "hidden category" appears to be a misnomer since it is visible even to logged-out users. Is it perhaps hidden from the search engine? I would support the idea of giving greater prominence to the creative person or people who produced our images, though the main category system. If there are consequences for how our search works, then we can deal with that. I do think that in general Commons does not appreciate content-creators enough. And, btw, if Adam wishes to be credited as "Adam Cuerden" then we should do that (rather than User:Adam Cuerdan) because he's a human being, not an account on a filesystem. -- Colin (talk)

The main reason we have hidden categories, is beacuse there might be a need to find an image somehow, that does not relate to what's being depicted in the file. A better word might have been metacategories, but before they were indeed hidden by default, since they had no relevance for a user lookng for an image based on a subject, which is what categories was made for in the first place.

Another thing, to force in attribution-ways to include a non-hidden category is definetly not ok, since at any time Wikimedia might disbandon the category-approach and start using Wikidata (please, sooner than later!), which mean that it would not be inline with the "free-use" that we require.

You may use {{Other fields}} to add another field for "restoration by...". Josve05a (talk) 09:42, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Using {{Other fields}} would get my approval. This could also not only mention the restorator's name, but also link to their user category. And it is more visible than a category. --Sebari (talk) 10:07, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
+1 --Leyo 13:14, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I have several thousand files, which I have been sorting into categories for years. Hidden categories are ONLY visible if you've changed a tickboc in your preferences at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. They are invisible to those logged out. I don't want a huge splashy link with graphic or anything, I just want a category, clearly linking together my work for those trying to find it. Your solution is to tell me to go over the several thousand files in my history, and manually check and edit every single one. It can't be automated, we'd need to exclude the non-restorations, and I've been editing 10 years. At the moment, I'm resigning myself to leave because this has been nothing but people attacking me. If "other fields" was a solution, I'd have used it, instead of listing the various authors, including myself, under author, stating what each did. Is your solution seriously for me to basically make something like {{Vincent van Gogh}}, and make my name far more prominent, so there's room to fit all the links in? Because that would be ridiculously tacky, and far, far more disruptive than a category.
Finally, you state that you have hidden categories to handle things not in the file. Of course, Category:Félix Nadar, say, contains 99% works that don't show Nadar, as do many non-hidden categories. Using a non-hidden category to credit the creator of a work is standard practice for everyone but Wikipedians, who are being treated as second-class citizens. Adam Cuerden (talk) 10:22, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't participated in many discussions on this site except, lately, in the Featured Pictures candidates threads, but for the life of me, I can't understand why it's so important to anyone not to have visible categories for different people who restored old pictures. It doesn't really matter whether these folks are famous outside of Commons; whoever doesn't want to use the category as a search term doesn't have to. Wikis are collaborative, but I think most restorations of old photos are not collaborative but done by a single person; is that not the case? So I don't understand the up side of refusing to permit these kinds of categories. Who's injured by allowing them? Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:52, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Adam Cuerden -- Over those ten years, I've observed that you often seem to have semi-strange finicky demands and certain tendencies to self-dramatization, so I'm not necessarily too impressed. AnonMoos (talk) 00:19, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

historical note: Hidden categories have been visible to anons (and defaulted to visible for logged in users) since July 9 2011 (See https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Village_pump&oldid=36042358#Hidden_categories:_change_the_default_setting_for_logged-in_users and phab:T24689). Bawolff (talk) 01:06, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The arguments against showing the category don't make any sense

Also, can I point out the bizareness of a solution being proposed that boils down to "Make the link to the category far more prominent, because it's fine to have a link to the category, just not a subtle one at the bottom of the page? Is there even any logic behind the arguments against me? Because here's what we have:
It would appear that the only actual argument being made by anyone for why categories of user works are hidden is that users of Commons are "non-notable", and thus should be treated as second-class citizens. However, even the most obscure photographer or artist can have a category here, there is no test for notability. Even not having a known name is not an obstacle to categorization. Category:Master of the Stauffenberg Altarpiece despite him having no other known works but the Stauffenberg Altarpiece, from what I can tell. Are you seriously saying that categorising him is categorically more valuable? The arguments are nonsense, they basically only work if you accept Wikipedians are second-class citizens, and I do not accept that view, I think we are either valued members of the project, or shouldn't be editing here. Adam Cuerden (talk) 11:01, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Next steps

If the history of the guideline Commons:User-specific galleries, templates and categories policy is reviewed, it can be seen that major changes, in fact most of the text, was added in the last 18 months without a formal process of proposal or canvassing to establish a community consensus. Much of the above discussion treats this guideline/essay as if it were a policy, it is not. Unfortunately the guideline itself reads as if it were a mandatory policy by re-enforcing the guidelines with statements about practices which "must" be used and making other things "forbidden".

Adam Cuerden's complaint in this context is a valid concern, and the guideline fails to give reasonable advice for a user who would like to see their collected works or projects easy to find, nor does it explain how image page credit templates, links to Commons project pages or even links to external project pages might help, if the evolving norm on Commons is to use hidden categories.

I propose two steps forward:

  1. Folks back off from changing attribution or categorization of Adam Cuerden's uploads until there is a solid consensus for the relatively recent changes to the misnamed Commons:User-specific galleries, templates and categories policy guideline. A breathing space of a couple of weeks or months will help discussion to move to the guideline talk page and for the next step to occur;
  2. Interested parties work collegiately with the aim of rewriting the guideline to make it more helpful (and in a less dictatorial tone). It may help to rename the document from "policy" to "guideline" or to separate parts of the document seen as having sufficient community consensus to become a policy, then to propose them as policy.

As a long term contributor to Commons, I recognize Adam Cuerden's work as widely valued, and apologize for the above discussion becoming a negative pile on, rather than the collegiate improvement everyone here hopes for. --Fæ (talk) 11:00, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm confused, since my understanding is that hidden categories are visible by default, even for logged-out users, and that's how it works for me if I log out. You can only hide them by setting a preference (a preference that doesn't need to exist on Commons as far as I can see). I'd also say that such metadata categories should be "hidden" regardless of how notable the person is. --ghouston (talk) 11:02, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Ghouston: Category:Étienne Carjat, Category:Carl Van Vechten, Category:Lithographs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Category:Claude Monet - Should all these be hidden as well? Adam Cuerden (talk) 11:04, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Frankly this is a bad tangent. Commons has no accepted definition of who or what is notable or not and therefore "worthy" of a visible category. If people believe this is part of the guideline, then it needs to be rethought, discussed on the guideline talk page and expressed in a more measurable way. --Fæ (talk) 11:08, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say Category:Étienne Carjat is a topical category, while Category:Photographs by Étienne Carjat‎ is a metadata category and should be hidden. --ghouston (talk) 11:11, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No. There is no reason this category should be hidden. Yann (talk) 11:29, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Fæ, that's a good proposal. Yann (talk) 11:07, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. But let me just point out that the content of the guidelines hasn't changed recently, only some unfortunately worded "clarifications" have been added. --Sebari (talk) 11:41, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Sebari, thanks for the correction. A misreading of the guideline page history gave the impression that most of the text was more recently added. The suggestions for a better consensus still seem a sensible goal. --Fæ (talk) 13:00, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Adam, part of your complaint seems to be that "hidden categories" are not visible to logged-out users. Please can you re-check this as I and several others believe it not to be so. Since they are all visible, the comes down to the prominence within the category listing, font size and perhaps how search handles it. It is therefore possible for anyone to locate your images by your category, though I can't confirm how search would compare. We could all do with some official documentation on community-agreed reasons for using main vs "hidden" categories since much of what I read above seems to be personal speculation stated as fact. I note that the example in the guideline "Category:Photos of London by User:Example" pretty much tells you all you need to know about how broken Commons categories system is. There is no way that "London" (subject location) and "User:Example" (author) should be combined in any healthy category system. So to some extent, an solution agreed here is trying to make the best of a pretty awful legacy architecture that we would do well to move on from. -- Colin (talk) 12:50, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Colin: It does show (it didn't in the past, I believe) but I think they may be hidden in other ways. And if they don't, what on earth is the point of having the possibility of hidden categories on Commons?
As for the suggestions - Look, the rules were presumably written in order to allow frivolous User categories, like "Images that User:X likes" or such. And those should legitimately be hidden. However... Adam Cuerden (talk) 15:02, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect if you are right that they were once hidden but no longer are, then the name is a legacy of that older feature. We could perhaps discuss a rename. But the guideline does explicitly discourage "frivolous user categories" like "User:Example's favourite pictures". We do have other hidden categories that mix users with quality/featured awards which probably are best regarded as of low importance to anyone outside of Commons. A problem is we only seem to have two kinds of categories and one of them is definitely considered the lower one: hence the offence taken when significant (co)author information is reduced to being a second class attribute. Why is "March 2012 in London" (which someone added to one of my pictures) of higher-class status than a category for the author of the work? If the "hidden category" is for internal-commons use tags, then who the author is (or did significant restoration work, for example) does not belong there -- the fact that the author may also be a Commons user rather than an already notable artist shouldn't matter to Commons. We shouldn't be judging whether a creator is worthy of recognition in our category system but instead value all our content creators equally. -- Colin (talk) 15:40, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The idea seems to be that topical categories are listed separately to prevent them disappearing into the mass of metadata and maintenance categories. Categories like "Category:Photographs taken on 2016-01-18 to me are pure metadata and should be hidden, but when you have Category:March 2012 in London it's mixing dates and location. Ideally I think we'd classify topics, locations, dates, etc., separately and have a user interface that made it easy to intersect them in different ways, but given we currently only have two category types to work with and a lot of intersection categories, it's going to be tricky and inconsistent. --ghouston (talk) 21:18, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Long term solution

The ultimate answer is to patch MediaWiki to allow more than two classes categories (i.e. default and "hidden") to be defined per wiki, and for these to be settable in the category. For example Commmons may want some or all of "topical categories" (e.g. Category:Plastic flamingos), "uploader categories" (e.g. Category:Restorations by Adam Cuerden), "creator categories" (e.g. Category:Photos by Chris McKenna, Category:Drawings by Claude Monet), "metadata categories" (e.g. Category:Featured pictures on Wikipedia, English supported by Wikimedia UK), "maintenance categories" (e.g. Category:Convert to SVG), "temporal categories" (e.g. Category:2016 videos), "geospatial categories" (e.g. Category:Northern Territory) and "temporal and geospatial categories" (e.g. Category:2009 in Portugal). I'm not a programmer and don't have the foggiest how to go about doing this. I have suggested something similar previously, in think in a Wiktionary context (e.g. Part of speech vs topical categories) but I can't find where I did that. Thryduulf (talk) 20:35, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Seems overly complicated when we already have 'hidden' available via metadata query and can filter categories by template, parent category and several other qualities. --Fæ (talk) 22:40, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
having a method to set the "relation type" of specific categories is an interesting middle ground between vanilla mediawiki categories and full on SemanticMediaWiki (imo). However it seems like wikidata is the current favourite future solution to this type of problem in the Wikimedia world. Bawolff (talk) 23:47, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'd argue that restorations are more than mere uploads, unless the several hours or days (it varies) spent on them don't count. Adam Cuerden (talk) 02:42, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Restorations are authorship, and authorship should be tracked by standard categories

Fae makes a good comment above, but I think this is actually a more fundamental issue. I'll admit, I was canvassed from Jimbo's page - but only made up my mind after looking at the examples he posted. There is enough work there that the restoration could be wrong; or its style could be different -- hence, it is authorship, even if it incorporates a large degree of previously published material. You can say that Adam Cuerden is a non-notable person, producing work we don't need - if you think so, then you should push to delete the images. But if you believe they are in fact beautiful efforts made to improve the encyclopedia, then you should admit that Cuerden is an author whose works we wish to curate. And it's just basic straightforward encyclopedic order to categorize works according to the author of those works.

I should add that my feeling is that this is the inevitable ugly end of censorship - certain people pushing to crack down on user "porn" galleries, to bully Seedfeeder out of public view etc. You poke one little hole in the balloon and in the end all the air leaks out, even from the far end; you push out a contributor you had no problem with just to stay consistent with policies you never needed to start. Wnt (talk) 01:08, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're taking for granted that we should "categorize works according to the author of those works", and assuming everyone is fighting over whether Adam is an author - where really, everyone agrees that Adam is very talented and should get credit for his work. The part that's unclear is under what circumstances we should "categorize works according to the author of those works". Many (I would go so far as to say most) works on commons are not categorized according to their author unless their author is independently famous and currently, contributor specific categories are sorted with license categories rather than descriptive categories (Although the two groups of categories are right next to each other on the page, not like its super hidden). Maybe this should change. Maybe every work should be categorized by author. That is what needs to be discussed, not some strawman about if people think Adam does good work, which nobody disputes. Bawolff (talk) 01:42, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I thought it was even more trivial, whether Adam's category should be topical or non-topical. If you look in Category:Photographs by photographer, there are many entries for Flickr users who are not necessarily notable in the Wikipedia sense, and there's no particular reason not to treat Commons users equally. --ghouston (talk) 03:22, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Bawolff: Honestly, I thought that was an inadvertent omission when it happens. I mean, I'm no paragon ... half the time I forget to characterize an upload, get nagged by a bot, and/or stick one category on it to shut it up. So I tend to omit a few possible categories. But when someone does categorize by author, I think of that as being the way it's supposed to be. Wnt (talk) 10:51, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
One more who agrees with Wnt. (And also came after reading Jimbo's talk page!) The examples that Adam cites are sufficient changes that they are as much authorship as taking a photograph of a work of art is - the work of art is likely still recognizable, but you can take a good photo or a bad photo - and I don't see any reason to deny him a category of images that he modified this much. --GRuban (talk) 04:23, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"User" categories

My understanding about "hidden" categories is that it is displayed in smaller fonts under the sub head "Hidden categories". They are not hidden (now, at least). I've no hard feeling about how they should be; so no comments.

But I'm not a fan of Commons:User-specific galleries, templates and categories policy. It looks to me written to discourage users from too much self promotions. It is OK in that sense; but not OK if adding too much bureaucracy. I remember the failed Commons:User pages and the loss of one admin. Similarly, the "categories" and "templates" sub-heads also look to me written as some "failed attempts" to discourage some promotions.

Coming to "categories", it talks about categories like "Category:Photos by User:Example"; but not about the parent category, "Category:User:Example". It seems we've a practice like creating Wikimedian's categories with the prefix "User:" (hidden) and others without it (not hidden too). And it seems the argument behind this separation is we (some of us) think Wikimedians are not notable (or not deserved to be notable). So my user category is Category:User:Jkadavoor whereas another photographer from Kerala is Category:N. A. Naseer. But we've exceptions too. See Category:Odder, Category:Patricio Lorente. I'm not saying me or Adam is "notable" as those Wikimedians; but it is a difficult to define matter, at least. And IMHO, better no separations as Commons has no "notability criteria". Jee 05:29, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me that there are three different kinds of categories being discussed:
  • Categories describing who the subject is (e.g. Category:Odder)
  • Categories describing someone who had a significant hand in creating the work (Artist, photographer, restorer, etc)
  • Categories listing all the images a specific user uploaded.
Personally, I think the first two types should be normal categories, and the third should be a "hidden" category, regardless of however notable the subject of the category is (notability criteria seems like a way to have a large number of useless arguments). Bawolff (talk)
But usually a user/photographer/artist and his/her work categories have a parent-child relation (eg: Category:N. A. Naseer, Category:Photographs by N. A. Naseer). Does this relation reed to be removed or the child categories need to be hidden while keeping the parent active? Jee 07:19, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry Bawolff, I misread your comment. So you think the "uploaded by" category only need to be hidden which is clearly a maintenance/meta category. That is a nice thought. Jee 02:47, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure why some people see the hidden categories in a small font. In my browser they are exactly the same size as the topical categories. In the screen shot above, they seem quite hard to read, which is undesirable. --ghouston (talk) 10:10, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Your browser = IE? Then try e.g. Firefox. --Leyo 11:26, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm using Firefox, but I found it: I've set the minimum font size to 12pt in the Firefox preferences. It makes everything readable on my display. --ghouston (talk) 11:37, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
In the link provided by Bawolff above, we can see the suggestion to reduce font size. It is one issue. The major issue is we treat Wikimedians and non-Wikimedians differently. I can understand the spacial consideration to "notable artists" who have wiki pages. But considering simple Flickr users above Wikimedians is not so good. So either both, user categories under wiki users and external photographers should be hidden or visible, uniformly. Jee 12:18, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Um, what? So Category:Odder refers to a user instead of the city? Now listed for discussion because of the confusing name: Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/01/Category:Odder. --Stefan2 (talk) 14:13, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Commons should not be having these debates on the threat of a user leaving, if such a user wishes to leave they are free to do so, any decisions or discussions should only happen after such threats have been removed and are no longer part of the discussion, also sufficient time should be allowed to pass to ensure no knee-jerk decisions are made Oxyman (talk) 18:44, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I find any font smaller than 12pt is hard to read on my display. It affects menus in Commons too. I don't know if my setup is common enough for this to be a flaw in the Commons design. However I see no reason for the non-topical categories to be displayed in a smaller font, they are already separated from the topical categories.
I'm not sure if there really is a difference in how Wikimedians and Flickr users are treated. You'll also find Commons users under Photographs by photographer. I'm not sure even if the user categories guideline is relevant, since it only applies to user categories like "Category:Photos by User:Example", not metadata categories like "Category:Photos by Example", and since there's no notability requirement for Commons categories there's no problem with creating the latter as long as there's something in-scope for it to contain.
There are difficulties with categories for non-notable people. Everybody in the World can potentially create a user page, upload a selfie, and add the selfie to a self-named category. There are already many thousands of uploaders to Commons who could do that, and if it started to become popular it may be hard to find the notable people from all the non-notables with the same name. Or people just using the same name of somebody famous online, since we have no way to verify that the names of non-notable poeple are real, or any requirement to do so. At very least we have a disambiguation problem. --ghouston (talk) 21:41, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
We could subdivide the category to address this. Category:Photographs by photographer might have subcategories like Category:Photographs by photographer (professional photographers), Category:Photographs by photographer (Flickr contributors), Category:Photographs by photographer (Wikipedia contributors) etc. Wnt (talk) 01:12, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The first one may also be named Category:Photographs by photographer (notable photographers) or so, since some Flickr and Wiki(m/p)edia contributors are also professional (non-notable) photographers. --Leyo 01:30, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It's already done that way too, in Category:Flickr streams. That has a couple of advantages: it handles files that aren't photos, and it sets up a separate namespace of Flickr user names. --ghouston (talk) 02:16, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

→ Commons:Requests for comment/User categories --Leyo 21:58, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed text

Users are welcome to create user-specific categories. These fall into two types, which have different rules:

User as creator of the content

The user has created the content, whether as photographer, restorationist, artist, diagram creator, 3D modeller, or any other type of work. These should generally be of the format "Category:Photos by User:Example" (or "Category:Photos by Example", if the user uses their real name). These should be categorised as per normal categories of this type, e.g. Category:Photographs by photographer, but also into Category:Images by Wikipedians or a subcategory thereof.

User is NOT the creator of the content

Other user categories, e.g. "Category:Uploads by User:Example" must be categorised only under the category User categories, and must be a hidden category. This should be done with only one supercategory by adding {{User category|username}} to the category page, which automatically hides the category. Subcategories may be placed in the user's supercategory using {{User category|cat=subcategory}}. Note that, even if the user has created some work, work they have not created must only appear in hidden categories, and these should not be part of the main category tree.

Categories shouldn't be created to collect files based on the opinion of any user (e.g. "User:Example's favourite pictures"). Annotation like this should only be done through gallery pages as described above.

All files must be accessible via regular categories and/or (main namespace) galleries, even if a creator category is used. User-specific categories and galleries, like license categories, do not "count" towards accessibility.

Notes: I'd suggest renaming {{User category}} to {{Hidden user category}}. It's misleading at the moment, given its main purpose is to hide the user category.

One thought: It may be that we should simply forbid user categories where the User is not the creator of the content. Can anyone give examples of categories that aren't related to content creation that we should encourage?

Any thoughts or improvements? Adam Cuerden (talk) 18:28, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please read Commons talk:Requests for comment/User categories#Not hidden. --Leyo 19:08, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

January 18

When will POTY 2015 start?

POTY 2013 and 2014 round 1 started in Jan. 17. but it's already 18th. any plan?-180.67.45.91 16:03, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Rillke: @Odisha1: @Mono: @Beria: You know how to setup lists etc.? --Steinsplitter (talk) 16:17, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No, no plan, sorry. I'll have no time before Feb 6. -- Rillke(q?) 18:47, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I was in vacation in December and I thought the rest of the team had taken care of it. I can sort the FP and create templates and all, but the script for voting was creating by @Rillke: and I have no idea where it starts and ends :D Will do all I can and Rillke can correct my mistakes later :D Béria L. Rodríguez msg 03:22, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
For easier sorting of candidates, you may use the idea from User:Rillke/gallery-sort-demo. Perhaps someone has time to compile a list of all potential FPs like we had last year (warning, huge page)? -- Rillke(q?) 12:35, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
So all of Commons:Featured_pictures/chronological/2015-A and Commons:Featured_pictures/chronological/2015-B? --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 04:48, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Jee 05:17, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, missed that we had already two diligent elves: Commons:Picture of the Year/2015/Candidates, User:Uğurkent/deneme. -- Rillke(q?) 09:17, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Rillke: Looks like the gallerys has been created before 2016. Wondering if all files are in. --Steinsplitter (talk) 09:15, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Image deletion (NehalDaveND)

Can anyone guide me what is the reason behind this deletion ? here, here and here I put my point no one responding. Please guide me. NehalDaveND (talk) 18:33, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It is not clear what you mean by "open source"? The images must be either in public domain or, if not, they must be released by their authors under an appropriate licence. As to your friend's images. Nowhere on the file pages you said that the images were made by other persons. You just asserted your own authorship. Ruslik (talk) 20:15, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  1. @Ruslik0: Thank you for response. By "Open Source" I want to tell you that, text in that images are open source. I am not a creator this is true. But the text written before 5000 years ago. I had mistaken that, I uploaded those images with "Own" tag. After that I put a link, where those Shlokas (that text) are written. Here you can see all text. I took the text and I made easy translation of the text. After that I put that text in PPT and export those images.
  2. About my friend's images. I called them and spend money for those images. So I took as for "own". If that is the problem, I am ready to upload those images with my friend's work. Please tell what I should do for that ? NehalDaveND (talk) 08:28, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, "Open source" is the wrong term here. Old texts are in the public domain, but the artistic rendering may get a copyright. As the drawings seem recent, we need to have a formal written permission from the author. I also wonder if these are in scope. Regards, Yann (talk) 10:46, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Yann: , Till now I couldn't understand that what is the main problem in image? Text or Design ? Text is as you say in public domain and image design like अर्थः, flowers etc are made by me in my computer. I have row files of those images. I don't know about "artistic rendering". Please send link if there is some policy about that. NehalDaveND (talk) 13:07, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Taking the first image in the list as example (File:तं तथा कृपयाविष्टम्.JPG), it is a artistic rendering of Krishna copied from [3]. Se we need the artist's permission. Idem for the third. File:विदेशे योगदिवसः.jpg (2015 International Yoga Day) is certainly in scope, but we need the photographer's permission. Regards, Yann (talk) 17:14, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oh ! Now I understood what is the root of this problem. @Yann: Thank you to clear this. I will remove that Image from my image. I spent money to get Yoga day images. Now If I will go to permission, again I will have to spend money in calling all that. So It is okay with Yoga Day Images Deletion. This Year I will click some images my own. Please guide me if I am wrong in this or You want to add something. NehalDaveND (talk) 02:23, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks to {{tps}}, I read in this last couple of days User:NehalDaveND’s plea in the talk pages of several users envolved in the mentioned DR, but he left the DR page itself mysteriously alone: Anyonme checking it will find an uncontested DR filed by one admin and dully closed by another 7 days later. Not that this user’s arguments for keeping these files, blameless as he is, would have caused a different outcome, but still it boggles the mind. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 05:04, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Yann: @Tuvalkin: Please see this image. After your conformation I will make other images like this. NehalDaveND (talk) 10:05, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Tuválkin: Well, not really: Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Eugenio Hansen, OFS. Regards, Yann (talk) 11:52, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • User:NehalDaveND, not sure why you ping me on this, except maybe to prove me right once more: I noted that you chose not to add a single word to the DR discussion about your files, which was open for 7 days and of which you were aware, yet to managed to, within that week, write about the matter in several unrelated user pages — and now you keep doing it here now in the VP.
Now you ask me to look at [[:|your new image]] and you offer to create more like it after my evaluation? Don’t bother — I personally abhorr religious imagery of any kind, and this one doesn’t even enjoy the usual attenuants: It’s neither historical not artistic. Make more if you want, but I don’t want to even know about it.
Technically, though, I need to ask:
  1. Who owns the copyright of the included photo? (You expected to present proof if it is yours or authorized from a 3rd party — your COM:AGF score is exhausted.)
  2. Why is the photo’s aspect ratio distorted?
(I assume that the depicted monument architecture has no PD/FoP issues, that the text is PD, and that the non-trivial typographical arrangement is yours.) -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 08:08, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I get it now. The photo is publicly licensed as CC-BY-SA in Flickr — good then. But you made a mess of the attribution. I have to finish cooking a logo for a client (on a satuday!), but will fix this after breakfast if nobody does it first. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 08:11, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
✓ Done (The included photo you chose to source to Flickr was already in Commons — good thing I checked before uploading; this just keeps getting “better”.) -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 10:40, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Tuvalkin: Sorry to disturb you again. But that file again deleted by other admin. You told me that don't leave DR page alone and I have done same. But an admin deleted my file. I want to use that file in sa.wikipedia's page कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते page. It is educational image. Because It is taught Sanskrit Shloka of Shrimad Bhagavad Gita. That deleted image was in this page only. See here... I know for you I am {{tps}}. But I need help. I want to work in sa.wikipedia. NehalDaveND (talk) 15:23, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
User:Ellin Beltz and User:Yann are helping you (or at least trying to) much more than I could (or would). Good luck. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 01:21, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

2016 WMF Strategy consultation

Please help translate to your language

Hello, all.

The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has launched a consultation to help create and prioritize WMF strategy beginning July 2016 and for the 12 to 24 months thereafter. This consultation will be open, on Meta, from 18 January to 26 February, after which the Foundation will also use these ideas to help inform its Annual Plan. (More on our timeline can be found on that Meta page.)

Your input is welcome (and greatly desired) at the Meta discussion, 2016 Strategy/Community consultation.

Apologies for English, where this is posted on a non-English project. We thought it was more important to get the consultation translated as much as possible, and good headway has been made there in some languages. There is still much to do, however! We created m:2016 Strategy/Translations to try to help coordinate what needs translation and what progress is being made. :)

If you have questions, please reach out to me on my talk page or on the strategy consultation's talk page or by email to mdennis@wikimedia.org.

I hope you'll join us! Maggie Dennis via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:06, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • @Mdennis (WMF): The layout is a little crazy. The link above forces you to slowly navigate through four pages, when what I wanted to see was what the proposal looked like overall before making any comment on individual parts of it. Then when you wonder where user comments are, the big link to make a comment forces you to make a comment before being able to look at what everyone else has written. This all means that users will be driven to comment on the first page of three and may never get to the other two even if the other topics interest them more, and users will duplicate each other's thoughts and only realize they are doing so later.
It's all very "un-wiki" compared to how we normally treat proposals or assess consensus and seems to be trying to behave like a user survey, which fundamentally it is not. --Fæ (talk) 22:48, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, Fæ. It is odd, I know. It was the best approach we could come up with under the circumstances of three topic areas, three broad questions, and potentially 21 approaches (6 defined; one suggestion). Unfortunately, there's real challenges in asking such a complex series of questions in multiple languages. Each page and every preload is marked for translation, so we can't have responses on the same page where the questions are asked without invalidating those translations or having separate consultations in every language (which has other issues, such as ghettoizing responders). We considered doing an actual poll, but there were challenges with that as well, including that people would not be able to see what others were saying until the poll was over and that languages would have had to have been locked down in advance. Given our time limitations that seemed like a really bad idea in itself. Stuff is still being translated. :/ I could add a link to the pages where the discussions are hosted (nothing esoteric there - it dumps comments onto the talk page), if you think that would help. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:59, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The issue is navigation, so that users that want to jump to a one page overview or to the current discussions about the strategy, see an obvious way to get there without being forced to answer questions first. So, yes a link would be helpful, but perhaps you can factor these options into the navigation box and make it highly visible on the landing page? --Fæ (talk) 18:02, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Fæ. A link to the discussion has been added to the navigation box, at least. I'll talk about changing the landing page. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:52, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hello, Tuválkin. Fortunately, Outreach is not simply done by the WMF; there are many volunteer and affiliate groups leading outreach efforts. I also can't tell by the section above if it is an outreach project or perhaps simply a Facebook drive these students have created or something else. Do you have any more information? You're welcome to reach out to me on my talk page, since it's unrelated to this discussion. :) Or ping me in the relevant section. If it's a staff program, I'm happy to reach out to the relevant staff to see how they may assist. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:52, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your feedback, Maggie Dennis. It’s a relief to know that the “outreach” action that caused a flood of off topic image files to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons was not triggered by the WMF. In that case the community feels free to investigate the matter and dully deal with it. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 07:00, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

January 19

Stratford instead of Straford

The Flicker user Hugh llewelyn misnamed a lot pictures with straford. I renamed some pictures and corrected some texts but someone please help or automate the proces? Some pictures are not fully categorised with (Trains at Stratford station) and (20xx in rail transport in London). When renaming I also try to use more sensical names: Class xx number yyyy at Stratford.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:37, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As long as we limit it to just the one user's files, and ideally to a quick skim for any cases where it might be intended to be something else (Strefford, say), I don't see a problem. Wouldn't want to go to a general search of all files by all users, as it increases the false positive/incorrect fix possibilities (for example, it's a plausible surname). Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:12, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Such as: File:An Answer to the Earle of Strafords Conclusion 1641.jpg. I cleaned upp the rail pictures (except for the US: I am not certain about a Straford branch). Unfortunately a lot off the files have meaningless namens and numbers serving no purpose.Smiley.toerist (talk) 20:33, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Caption Challange

Commons:Silly things has the caption challange.

But I'd like some feedback from Commons people about it. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 21:32, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What kind of feedback are you looking for? BMacZero (talk) 22:17, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It's continuation and some processes so I don't have to rememberer to upload a new one continually each week :) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:19, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
An easier way to add a caption would be great. (See how the Signpost does for comments (has a "+Add a comment") and polls (subpage as stuff)) Josve05a (talk) 22:24, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Communicating with misattributors of images from Commons

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/generalmoney/the-poorest-county-in-each-state/ is a MSN Money page that has 50 pictures, many of which from Wikimedia Commons labeled "© Wikimedia Commons". Chasing down every blog on the net for correct attribution is impossible, but this is MSN Money; surely we can get them to properly attribute their images. They've got style guides to get this type of stuff right. I understand only the copyright holder can sue, but I seriously doubt they contacted a dozen people and everyone said they didn't want their name on it, and I don't think a lawsuit is the right approach. Could we get a letter from the Wikimedia Foundation politely thanking them for the attribution, and pointing out what they should have done to follow the license? It is an issue for us; we have, not infrequently, highly upset users complaining about failures to follow the licenses and sometimes demanding all their files be removed from Commons, and personally I find it a little demotivating that if anyone used my images, there's a good chance I wouldn't even get the attribution I asked for.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:15, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(Can't the ToU be changed to add that "by uploading your own files to Wikimedia Commons, you allow other users, and employees of WMF to send DMCA-notices to third-parties" or something like that...would be grat :p) Josve05a (talk) 23:26, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think that should be a ToU issue. (1) It's perfectly OK for someone not to want to pursue a violation of their copyright, so at most this should be an opt-in. (2) How are we supposed to deal with the possibility that the user may have given separate permission for a usage that we might not know about? - Jmabel ! talk 16:39, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also, in a case like the one you point at, you can write them a letter indicating that the images appear to be misattributed, and giving a general explanation. And/or you can inform the individual contributors whose copyrights appear to have been violated, and/or use the {{Published}} template on the respective file talk pages with an indication that it appears to be illegal use. - Jmabel ! talk 16:43, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
And remember that part of OUR protection is the fact that Wikimedia and it's employees can operate under 'safe harbor' provisions. If WMF start communicating with people on behalf of the rights of individual contributors, that would likely infringe their ability to not get sued over the actions of a single contributor. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:59, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Good point. And what we can and the copyright holder can do is documented at COM:ENFORCE. Jee 15:50, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

January 21

WMF Trustee Arnnon Geshuri

A vote of no confidence has been raised centrally at m:Vote of confidence:Arnnon Geshuri. Please vote or add comments there. --Fæ (talk) 00:24, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Backgound for uninvolved users: en:User:Cullen328/Arnnon Geshuri --Steinsplitter (talk) 14:41, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Has been formed into a formal RfC now: m:Requests for comment/Vote of no confidence on Arnnon Geshuri --.js[democracy needed] 07:47, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Uploaders per category

Is there some tool to get a list of the uploaders of all files in a category? -Geraki TLG 11:46, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No, but you can get the report by looking at http://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/6968 - just change the category name in the script (the "c.cl_to="). --Fæ (talk) 12:08, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Über cool tool! -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 04:01, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Undeletion request

I opened an Undeletion request of two images with FOP. If you're interested please consider visit Commons:Undeletion_requests#Caliwood_-_03.jpg_and_Caliwood_-_04.jpg --Sahaquiel - Hast du eine Frage? 16:30, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

January 22

Get rid of the Original upload log section

Hi village pump, all files that have been imported from other wikis (e. .g La nave Vlora in arrivo al porto di Bari - 8 agosto 1991.jpg) contain the mentioned section to have some kind idea what happended to the file before uploading it to Commons. I would like to remove it due to two reasons: (1) it is not interesting for the viewer of the file description, (2) it creates problems for searches and automatic replacements (e. g. by bots). In both cases the problem is that the history is treated like the acutal content of the file description. So you (1) either find things that you do not search for or (2) you must be very careful to not modify the upload log section when doing modification on the file content.

My idea is that OgreBot 2 could remove that upload log section when it cleaning up new uploads. This way interested user can still access this information by switch to a previous version of the file. Of course we need a full cleanup if all already cleaned files. --Arnd (talk) 09:41, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why not put it on the corresponding talk page, like BetacommandBot used to do with file description page histories?
While we're on this topic, here are a few other things I'd love to see for moved files:
  • File description history information for files moved from other projects. Copying descriptions without preserving their authorship information may constitute copyright infringement.
  • A link to the original page log, which in most cases would be far more useful than the original file description. In most cases, the original file description has been deleted, making the link point to a mirror of the same file description you're already looking at.
  • Proper English. "All following user names refer to en.wikipedia" doesn't qualify (and it's not particularly relevant now that we have SUL). :-)
—LX (talk, contribs) 12:44, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks LX, for me the discussion page solution is also fine. The effort to implement seems to be similar to what i suggested. I also agree with your other points. However, in my opinion we should try to first start with an easy solution and then think about improvements. But in any case we need some form of agreement if the proposed changes make sense. But where to get that? Or should we just open a ticket ... as always? --Arnd (talk) 16:53, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This seems to be as good a place as any to develop consensus. Once that's done, Commons:Bots/Work requests can be used to request assistance from a bot operator. —LX (talk, contribs) 17:06, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
"Open a ticket": do you mean Phabricator? As I see it, this isn't a software issue, so there's no need to do that. I've always found this section a bit clunky, and as all Commons-acceptable licenses require nothing beyond the names or pseudonyms of authors, it's not license-required: if we provide the names of the authors of previous editions in the |author= section of {{Information}}, we satisfy the license's requirements. I like the idea of moving the log entry to the talk page and removing it from the file description, and I'd also agree with the idea of linking to the log on the source wiki. Nyttend (talk) 18:27, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
+1 --Achim (talk) 18:32, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I am not in favor of this.
  • Sometimes a file has multiple versions, with multiple uploaders adding a piece. This is important to keep readily visible for attribution purposes (like the local upload log)
  • Occasionally the authorship is only properly conveyed on the description page through upload log.
  • Even when the file is not self-created and has only one uploader, sourcing the time and user for the upload is important. This can help users track down when a file was originally uploaded to a wiki (e.g., for sourcing, to figure out proper attribution in case someone made a mistake, to attribute the uploader in case s/he had a part in digitizing the upload, etc.).
I would be open to other proposals. But it should be worth noting that I had originally had OgreBot add the upload history to the talk page of the file in question for this task, but encountered resistance from the community. Magog the Ogre (talk) (contribs) 04:00, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikidata & GLAM 'down under'

In February, I'm undertaking a three-week tour of Australia, giving talks about Wikidata, and Wikipedia's GLAM collaborations. Do join us if you can, and please invite your Wikimedia, OpenData, GLAM or OpenStreetMap contacts in Australia to come along. Andy Mabbett (talk) 13:38, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Community Tech status report

Hi, a short update from the WMF Community Tech team. We did a community wishlist survey in December and got a list of things the community wanted to prioritize. We're currently investigating all the top ten wishes, but are also looking at two in more detail: migrate dead links to the Wayback Machine and pageview stats. The dead links are less of a problem for Commons, but there's at least one project in the top ten (trying to find a way for multilingual categories on Commons) that's specifically relevant here. For more details, see the status report. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 14:33, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A minor improvement

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T124425

It would be really great if the link found in the text "(must contain a valid copyright tag):" in the upload wizard was set to open it in a new page. As it is, clicking this link navigates away, and, depending on your browser, might ruin everything. Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:38, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Whoops, indeed it should work that way. Filed as phab:T124425, should be easy to do. Matma Rex (talk) 15:40, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you; I've lost a lot of upcoming description pages by clicking this link accidentally. Nyttend (talk) 18:24, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Maury Markowitz and Nyttend: I looked into it now and discovered that the link I was thinking of [4] already behaves this way. Please explain where exactly you encountered this problem. (Also, what browser/OS are you using?) Matma Rex (talk) 18:03, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Should "Photographs by photographer" subcats be hidden?

I just un-hid Category:Photographs by Georg Pahl because it seemed to me that most subcategories of Category:Photographs by photographer are not hidden categories, and I also thought that users very well may wish to see photographs by a specific photographer, so I didn't see why it should be hidden. However, I notice now that many of these categories are hidden - though not all. For famous photographers, they typically aren't hidden, e.g. Category:Photographs by Nadar. For (probably) non-notable photographers, e.g. flickr users like Category:Photographs by Antti, the categories seem to be typically hidden. That makes somewhat sense, but there is a large grey area: For example, the categories in Category:Images from the German Federal Archive by photographer (to which the one I un-hid pertains) are hidden, but many of these photographers are probably notable or otherwise of historical interest. What to do? I would lean towards removing "hidden category" from all these... Gestumblindi (talk) 20:45, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See Commons:Village_pump#.22User.22_categories too. The "hidden category" concept seems outdated as those are no more "hidden". Only some smaller font is used. Further, it is very difficult to distinguish notable people from others. Jee 03:20, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I thought these categories still aren't displayed to non-logged in users. So, if they're now just "smaller font categories", they don't seem to make much sense, indeed. Gestumblindi (talk) 16:21, 23 January 2016 (UTC) Addition: But maybe renaming them e.g. to "maintenance categories" and creating a clearer distinction would be useful, see here... Gestumblindi (talk) 16:33, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Login

I have issues with my Login on Commons. Everytime I try to login, I get a error warning "Login error - Wikimedia Commons uses cookies to log in users. You have cookies disabled. Please enable them and try again." Cookies are enabled. On all other Wikipedia sites I can login with username and password. I tried changing my browser (Firefox 43.0.4) and Safari 9.0.2, nothing happened. --79.192.255.106 21:53, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

January 23

Please read Commons talk:Featured pictures#Featured set invisible, which no-one seems to monitor at all. This is a very bad ongoing problem. As long as featured sets don't display, we shouldn't pretend to show them on Commons:Featured pictures, and we shouldn't support any further nominations of featured set candidates until this problem is corrected. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:56, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is a problem with FPCBot, which updates the list. You should raise this issue on the bot's talk page. Ruslik (talk) 20:13, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
IMO the first image is the set should be used. Regards, Yann (talk) 21:53, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This is the third place I've posted about this, after over a month with nothing being done. OK, I'll post on a 4th page, but it would be nice if someone cared enough to do something about this, instead of sending me from one place to another like an operator at a large corporation. And while I've got your attention, please have a look at this thread about a fraud who is making a laughingstock of our Valued image listings and do something about that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:47, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Done, and sorry for being crabby. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:57, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
OK, now I'm a lot crabbier: Look at the reply I got at User talk:Daniel78#Featured picture sets are invisible. Are all the admins and other technical people on this site asleep at the wheel? Who cares enough to deal with these problems, or should I just throw up my hands, say "Fuck it" and stop spending time on this site? Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:33, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the VI problem was dealt with (thank you, El Grafo!). However, the FP display problem is of longer standing and needs to be dealt with. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:39, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, This is a symptom in a larger issue. Daniel78 is not currently doing any development on the FPCBot. So we need more people involved.
We don't have many set nominations, so this issue doesn't occur often. So it should be fixed, but for me, it is a lower priority.
However the bot doesn't remove and archive withdrawn nominations, even when confirmed with {{FPC-results-reviewed}}. That happens quite daily, and it is a higher issue. Regards, Yann (talk) 11:00, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
That sucks! On User talk:FPCBot, it says "I am a bot, talk to Daniel78 instead." If User:Daniel78 is not supporting the bot anymore, that text should be removed. But from what you're saying, no-one is supporting that bot right now. So that means the site is truly asleep at the wheel. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:06, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we are all volunteers here, including Daniel. Regards, Yann (talk) 12:28, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I understand how Wikis work (or in this case, don't work). I'm an admin at Wikivoyage.
Regards,
Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:12, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

January 25

New feature “Watch changes in category membership”

Hi, coming with this week’s software changes, it will be possible to watch when a page is added to or removed from a category (T9148). The feature has been requested by the German Community and is part of the Top-wishes of the technical wishlist. The feature has been deployed to Mediawiki.org and German Wikipedia already and will become active on Commons on Thursday, Jan 28th between 4:00 and 5:00 pm UTC. It will also become available on all Wikipedias at the same time. The feature is configured as “opt-in”. It is switched off by default and needs to be switched on individually in the watchlist and recent changes preferences. You can find a detailed explanation of the feature here. If you have any questions or remarks about the feature or if you find a bug, please get in touch! Bugs can also be reported directly in Phabricator, just make sure that the project “TCB-Team” is added to the task. Cheers, Tobias Gritschacher (WMDE) (talk) 12:58, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to everyone for bringing this feature back. The "teaser" we got half a year ago showed me what a useful feature that was. --Sebari (talk) 04:44, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And if an admin trolls you... just suck it up

Or what’s the lesson here? -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 15:05, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2016-04

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • You can now follow when pages are added or removed from a category on German Wikipedia. The plan is to add it to Wikimedia Commons and other Wikipedias this week. [5][6]
  • Administrators can hide individual entries of a page with RevisionDelete. There is now a button to choose "all", "none" or "inverse" in Special:Log. The article history will get the same buttons soon. Wikis that have done this locally with JavaScript will be able to remove that code. [7]

Changes this week

  • You will be able to see the references when you preview a section you are editing. This will happen even if there is no <references /> tag in that section. [8]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 January. It will be on all wikis from 28 January (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 26 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • There is now an extension called ArticlePlaceholder. It can automatically generate content on Wikipedia with data from Wikidata if there is no Wikipedia article. It will have a tag to remind the reader it is not an article and ask the reader to create one. The developer is now looking for smaller Wikipedias that want to try the extension. [9]
  • The OTRS system will be upgraded. The plan is to do this on 3 February at 08:00 (UTC). It will probably take 6 to 8 hours. OTRS will be down during the upgrade. [10]
  • Users will soon be automatically congratulated when they reach some edit count milestones. [11]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:38, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

(I have subscribed the Village pump to receive the weekly Tech News, it was previously only being delivered to Commons:User scripts/tech news. I'm hoping you'll find it useful. Matma Rex (talk) 17:05, 25 January 2016 (UTC))[reply]

Notification of DMCA takedown demand - Takedown of File:Fashion-Designer.jpg

In compliance with the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and at the instruction of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, one or more files have been deleted from Commons. Please note that this is an official action of the WMF office which should not be undone. If you have valid grounds for a counter-claim under the DMCA, please contact me.The takedown can be read here.

Affected file(s):

To discuss this DMCA takedown, please go to COM:DMCA#Takedown of File:Fashion-Designer.jpg Thank you! Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:00, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Caption Challnage...

This weeks photo is up at Commons:Silly things

???

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:23, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia world maps with lines to dependent territories

Can anyone locate and compile all the world maps with lines to dependent territories into one area - or the links to thereof? There is one I'm looking for in particular, I discovered it a few months back, and now I can't find it anywhere. --Abbazorkzog (talk) 19:25, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Adding PD-ineligible as a license option in UploadWizard

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T123982

Hi, recently someone suggested that we add {{PD-ineligible}} as a license option in UploadWizard. I would have found that convenient myself a few times. Does this sound like a good idea to you? Matma Rex (talk) 20:52, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Brilliant idea! See Commons:Upload_Wizard_feedback/Archive/2014/10#Not_helpful for an example instance of a common case where the Upload Wizard is a [wild goose chase|signless maze|maze of twisty little passages, none alike|pick your-dystopian-analogy] for the uploader. A w:use case analysis description for a smart but naive first time user wanting to upload the example image would show the user of the current system likely traveling through a ridiculously large maze of a dozen false starts and dead ends. Anyone else? --Elvey (talk) 04:33, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Jebulon est d'accord; French-speaking user asking for something similar: CC-0 support.--Elvey (talk) 04:33, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like the Upload Wizard was recently changed? Now it offers a flexible option (new since when?):
      Another reason not mentioned above
           The license is described by the following wikitext (must contain a valid copyright tag):  [box to put a tag in ] [preview button]
One can insert {{CC-0}} or {{PD-ineligible}} there. This is good! And...
Unfortunately, "valid copyright tag" links to a page that lacks a ToC and leads to one of the long dead-end paths of the aforementioned maze - with the following mess of a statement:
Depending on what license you choose using the license selector, a so-called copyright tag is inserted into the resulting description page, such as {{Cc-by-3.0}}.
It's a mess because it's unclear what a license selector is and the link provides no clarification whatsoever as to what a license selector is. --Elvey (talk) 04:33, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The custom license option was there all along. It appears to have been implemented in 2011. I thought you're aware of it. Matma Rex (talk) 10:49, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm skeptical. The overlap between users who have a sufficient understanding of threshold of originality issues to be using this rationale and users who don't know how to use wiki markup to invoke a template is likely small. The current text of MediaWiki:Mwe-upwiz-license-pd-ineligible is "Too simple to be copyrighted". This type of option is a magnet for uploaders who don't understand copyright and cannot imagine that they aren't allowed to upload whatever they like to Commons. It's bad enough as it is – you can hardly get through a page of Category:PD ineligible without stumbling over multiple blatant copyright violations. Here's a very quickly gathered sample:
—LX (talk, contribs) 00:19, 27 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

January 26

Jpg to png

I have added the new extentions to the map File:Netzplan Köln technisch english.jpg. However I changed the format to the stable png format (with jpg there is local rendering by every change). Normaly a small map change is made with uploading a new version. This time I have uploaded a new file, File:Netzplan Köln technisch english.png. I have mentioned the original author, but maybe the administration is not complete. I have changed the links so that the Wiki articles get the correct version. I am aware that a svg version should be made, but I dont have the time or software to make a completely new file.Smiley.toerist (talk) 10:24, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Need help finding a map

Hello, I used a specific map to make a chart of WW3 alliances, seen here:

File:WWabbazorkzog.png
WWIII rough draft

I decided to make a new one to replace this old one, but I can't seem to find the map I used. I did not make the lines to join dependencies as they were already there, and I can't find the map and was wondering if someone could help me find it. Thanks,

--Abbazorkzog (talk) 14:05, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't know which map you used, how do you know that it was freely licensed? Also, how does an imaginary map of alliances in an imaginary war fit within the project scope? If you need freely licensed blank maps, take a look at Category:Blank maps of the world. --rimshottalk 20:36, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Are people getting redirected to wikimediafoundation.org?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T124804

Many of the pages on Commons are redirecting to wikimediafoundation.org. The Village Pump only started working a few minutes ago, and the front page (commons.wikimedia.org/) is still not working properly. What's up? grendel|khan 19:14, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Very annoying. I believe the same problem caused a drop-out for bot accounts too. --Fæ (talk) 19:16, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Phab:T124804. Matiia (talk) 19:18, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, Matiia, that was a "silent" edit conflict. Rgds •  • hugarheimur 19:20, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Note that status.wikimedia.org reported that everything was functioning perfectly at the time. Perhaps the monitoring has a gap in it? grendel|khan 19:21, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

RC link. The direct link Special:RecentChanges is leading to the WMF wiki. Discussion at German Wikipedia: de:Bildereinbindung spinnt?, de:SUL-Login spinnt auch und wieder, de:Commons ist weg!. Also Login Wiki and Meta were/are affected. --Bjarlin (talk) 19:26, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T124812
I apologize for the problems caused. I can explain the issue with the status page. That is handled by an outside resource which provides us very little flexibility on what to show. For this particular problem, commons.wikimedia.org wasn't failing, but redirecting to the wrong page, something that that control panel cannot detect. For this reason, we are obsoleting that page. The Operations team was aware of the problem immediately and started working on a fix immediately, that was complex as it had issues with the varnish caches needing purging. The total outage time was of a bit less than one hour. We are now gathering information of *why* it happened and present a report to all of you. Regarding the status issue, we have created the issue on the side. (please note this is not an official message) JCrespo (WMF) (talk) 20:13, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for keeping us informed. Regards, Yann (talk) 22:08, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Pre-production starts for Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons tutorial videos

We are excited that pre-production has started for a series of motivational and educational videos that will introduce Wikipedia and some of its sister projects to new contributors.

Over the past several years, many videos have been produced to train new contributors. This series will feature VisualEditor and the new citation tool called Citoid. Additionally, the series will include an introduction to the Wikimedia Commons repository of freely-licensed media.

The video series and associated materials will help students and instructors who participate in the Wikipedia Education Program. The series is also designed to assist the professional staff and volunteers of galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) with understanding how their content gains exposure on Wikimedia sites, and how to document or upload their content for direct viewing on Wikipedia and its sister projects.

The video content will be available in segments that can be viewed, translated, or updated individually.

There are currently volunteer translators for Arabic, Armenian, Czech, German, Greek, Odia, and Spanish. Additional volunteers with high proficiency translation skills are welcome to sign up on the talk page.

We are currently seeking feedback on the outline for the scripts, as well as suggestions for an attractive name for the series. Please leave any comments on this talk page!

Regards,

Pine✉

Series director and screenwriter

Notes

This series is funded by an individual engagement grant from the Wikimedia Foundation. A big thanks to the community, the IEG Committee, and WMF for their support. </translate>

Discussion

  • User:Pine, why the <font size=3> thingy?, why the formulaic intro «We are excited that»? Do you think your message is somehow more important than anything else on VP and therefore needs a bigger text body size? And who is "we"?, since you signed individually? Are you trying to worsen even more the impression that some of us already have about the WMF and other percieved powers that loom above the common user? -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 23:10, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • First, I'm not a WMF employee. Second, I am disappointed in your assumptions of bad faith. When you are less angry, please ping me again and I will talk with you. --Pine✉ 23:18, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Tuvalkin: , very little of the existing or proposed video content is targeted at existing users on Wikimedia projects. This is outreach stuff. This is a project from Cascadia Wikimedians. Yes, we got a grant from WMF. That doesn't make this particularly a WMF project, except insofar as all of the Wikimedia stuff is a WMF project. - Jmabel ! talk 00:05, 27 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

January 27

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